At the time I’m writing this post, kids going home from school are walking down my street; I mean, the few who had the courage to leave home this morning to face the rain and the extremely cold (though lovely) weather – a cold front is currently moving through Brazil, making it impossible to wash the dishes without several layers of gloves on each hand.

For those of you reading this post in the north of the world, 13ºC and a light rain might not seem like a big deal, but for Brazilians it is a challenge to be faced. The houses here, even those in the South, have no heating system – the heaters we do have are portable and only work for one room at a time. One is cheap, although it consumes a lot of energy, and the other one is considerably more expensive and not that effective, but it keeps the electricity bill at a normal level.

I’m using a hairdryer at night to turn my bed from an ice cube into a bearable place to try to sleep. The expensive heater was in my plans, you know, but I’ve been tight on money this year. Just hope my heart (with a possible genetic condition) is strong enough to keep my entire body warm this year – the cancer was successfully removed, though.

Anne Rios

[ not an actual writer ]

I’m in no mood to be polite. Yesterday, I bought a bunch of crafting supplies at my favourite international online store, and out of the 150 bucks I spent, 50 were just taxes. And here in Brazil, we are still at a point where this can’t be (exactly) an open conversation because, if I complain about the current government, I’ll be labeled as a far-right extremist.

As is the case today in the entire Western world, where everything that leans even slightly toward the “conservative side” is considered far-right and everything that leans toward the progressive side of the force is considered nothing but good sense.

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My apologies for talking about politics; it wasn’t my intention. But it’s exhausting to spend that amount of money on taxes alone. And mind you, I’m buying crap. Imagine if I had to buy, from international lands, something extremely necessary for my health? I’ll be doomed. No country where the population does not see the power of their own money can be a prosperous country, which, unfortunately, is the case of Brazil.

If you have ever been here, you have seen what the dollar or the euro can do – they do the exact opposite for Brazilians. Everything is expensive in this country, and when the president’s team impose taxes on everything they can, it only makes the situation unbearable – the fan club will always find an excuse, one that, in most cases, involves social justice for the poor (although I thought that helping the poor meant simply getting out of their way).

Since we are talking about being a slave to capitalism, let me complain about a Kindle Signature I bought this week: it cost me 850 bucks on that product, from which 303.18 went to taxes. It’s a known fact that money isn't worth much over here, but still, 303 is still a considerable amount of money. I could have used it to buy imported Pringles, of all things (a pack from the U.S. costs 30 bucks, while a local flavour costs only 15) or a soap from Granado, one of the coolest Brazilian brands in history – this shop has existed since 1870.

I look at my bank account and think that I’m screwed if I need medical care. If my money were being used for something meaningful, I would have left this house a month ago and never looked back. I wouldn’t be in a dangerous situation where only luck is dictating my fate, and I would be living in a neighbourhood where the only noise you hear at night would come from the crickets next door.

And the weather girl was saying on the news, yesterday, that the heatwave was over for now, even though the temperature will reach 32ºC over the next few days – pure terminology meant to fool those who love to believe in the lies told by the press. “Take 20 Covid shots, it’s safe”, “don’t use plastic straws, they are killing the turtles”. So many lines of narrative… I’m feeling like the stupid person on the planet for having believed in them for so long.

I was always repeating something I heard; my beliefs were based on things I liked to hear. How come I didn’t think for myself and let others lead me and use me as a tool to spread their jibber-jabber? Am I still doing it?

The hours I used to spend “fighting” on and off the internet for nonsense beliefs and political ideology… But the worst part, the one that really pisses me off, is that I left the cave by myself, without help, while the ones around me insist on staying there, and those same ones are the ones bothering me today for not having an opinion that matches theirs – I’m such an outsider.

I can not ‘not like’ the way men are diminished so female characters can be elevated. I can’t ‘not have’ an opinion, here in Brazil, about which president (Bolsonaro or Lula) is the nation’s true savior. I can’t say I don’t have a political side, because that makes me one of those useless people who are helping “the wrong politicians” to be elected – none of them care about us, you morons!

Those still in the cave actually believe “the president” is worried about whether poor people have or don’t have meat on their plate. They swear to God that if this or that candidate wins, things will be different, that the injustice will finally come to an end. The crying on Twitter that happened when Trump won… and the same crap happened previously, when Biden was chosen as the U.S. president. Why don’t we, I don’t know, take care of our own business? Go learn a new language (hire me, please), paint your house, study history, not current affairs – sports are a good way to stay healthy and away from the lies meant to turn you into a modern zombie.

I am tired of people trying to mold my beliefs of ‘right and wrong’. I am exhausted from the blindness that prevents one from seeing that there is more than one side to every story. “Can’t you think for yourself?” is all I can think about nowadays – maybe having critical thoughts is too much for any individual to accomplish. And how can I even ask for such a thing? Don’t I have empathy for those tweeting about how bad their lives are because the opposition won this election? I can’t help but wonder if we were all always this messed up, or if this is a 21st century problem.

I’m torn between loving Road Trip With a Vampire and hating it. The good catchy moments the author is so good at creating are there, the funniness from the first two books is in this third one too (the chicken restaurant?!), but the rest…

The ‘gods’ thing instead of just one God bothers me all the time – I’m not that evolved to let it go. And it’s not just the witch that believes that many different entities created the world, the vampire does it as well. Guess only those two (who clearly are more evolved than the rest of mankind) are able to see the big picture here, while regular humans in this story (so primitive) refer to Him in the singular form – they say “God” because they are uneducated and outdated and didn’t yet learn the right way.

Now the second point that is killing me is how the author puts men in such an inferior position. In the first book of this series, My Roommate Is a Vampire, the story unfolds from Frederick being unable to live on his own and counting with Cassie to guide him into modern life. As a vampire groupie, I was in ecstasy with that book, especially with the end – Cassie may resolve everything, but Frederick stepped up to try to fix his problems first.

In the second book, My Vampire Plus-One, Amelia has this girlboss-badass way of dealing and solving Reginald’s life and death situation while working in a full time accountant job. She is more active and imperative than Cassie, she has means of her own and a cat, while Cassie was practically a homeless artist in the previous book – I could see myself in both of them, so real that were their personalities. But Zelda, the witch? I haven’t read enough of this third book to know her well, but I’m already aware that she and only she knows what is good in life. If the feminine characters continue to follow this rate, the main character of the next book will be the ultimate feminist – can’t wait to meet her!

This author can make me laugh like no one else; she has this amazing ability where she can write a story that can be both simple and mind-blowing. That said, please enlighten me as to why she and so many other talented writers go deep into this black hole of destroying men as if they belonged to a less evolved species. What did men do to deserve that amount of hate?

Amelia (the accountant) is a swiftie, and I couldn't help but remember that, when Taylor Swift released a new album full of songs written to her fiancé, the “fans” put a lot of effort into taking away her credibility as a songwriter – her music was better when she was a heartbroken woman who liked to expose her previous boyfriends to the judge of society.

Anne Rios

And now I pay for Twitter – it seems fair. I also chopped a chocolate bar to use on yoghurt or to sprinkle on top of fruits, mostly because I’m obsessed with natural food right now. How and when did we stop eating real food and started eating “safe substances”?

I bought sparkling water to mix it with a strong tea. The idea is to make a natural soda and fool my brain while I get used to the original flavour of things provided by Mother Nature. I finished a 500-piece puzzle and started a new one. I spent money on (maybe not so) necessary products – one of them is a resistance band that I’ll use to do exercises every morning.

Aging caught me and, while I’m still alive, I need to pretend that everything is okay. Meditation escaped me once more, and again I need to start from scratch in the hope of living until I am 100 years old, which is not gonna happen if I don’t stop eating so much junk food – as if it was an easy thing to do.

I finished The Wish Collector for the second time. Great book, with a main character who is a man who is not afraid of being a man. And, in that book, there is only one God, and not a bunch of “gods” like the modern literature insists on saying – modern culture already eradicated the family structure, now its goal is to eradicate religion as well – last month I finished The Starless Sea, and that same problem bothered me the entire book.

In Road Trip With a Vampire (I started reading it yesterday), God apparently doesn’t exist either. The main character, Zelda, keeps referring to gods, dear gods, oh my gods, or something like that. I honestly don’t care that much to remember her exact words, and if I hadn’t liked the first two books from this series, I would have given up on reading that nonsense – good thing I downloaded it instead of paying.

I prefer to pay for what I consume (hence the Twitter Premium). I bought a movie ticket for Fantastic Four and downloaded it to watch at home, I buy original Stabilo pens in stores. But that book… I’ll try a few more chapters before dropping it. Oh, and there is the last season of Stranger Things coming up. Why did I start watching it in 2016? Good thing jumping from a bridge wasn’t a thing at that time, otherwise I might have done it along with everybody else just to be part of the gang.

There are so many things in my head at the moment. More crap that I want to buy, more unhealthy desserts that I want to eat. Should I put flyers about my English classes on the bus stop again or should I try to use Twitter to create quality content? It wouldn’t be that difficult given the quality of the content there – God forbid any adult be reasonable on Twitter.