I just love Matt Groening! In fact, I just love any author that can create fun, intelligent and modern software, be it books, movies, websites, granite statues, whatever...

I can easily understand my strong tendency towards such software, as I grew where most forms of Culture were a synonym of old & heavy ideas, no matter how great. Of course I can honestly recognize the superb quality of many works of Art, from prehistoric ages to the XVIII century... but enough is enough, and after too much pressure and bla bla bla about such [old] works, you have got to wonder if they are enough your time. Your time is the PRESENT time! Not your (grand)^n-parent's time!

This means that, from as soon as I was I able to develop a minimal critical ability, I started looking for modern references - for people who are / were still alive! The dead are dead! I don't want to die and then learn, reincarnations later :), that authors from my époque have become subject of idolatry! I want to be able to notice and share their geniality today!

This attitude lead me to Martin Amis, Irvine Welsh, Peter Molyneux, Woody Allen, etc, etc and Matt Groening.

I first became aware of Matt Groening with the adorable Simpsons!, who only arrived to Europe in 1991, or later, depending on your country. Portugal first showed the series thanks to RTP, who managed to broadcast the first 7 seasons [1 episode / week] but then just ceased the exhibition, never buying more shows. Fortunately, by then, SAT TV was very popular and I managed to build a season interface to decode the videocrypt episodes, as broadcasted by Sky One, which is NOT to be sold to the Iberian Peninsula.

Well, Futurama is Groening's latest and - as I far as I know - it doesn't show anywhere in Europe! Outrageous! I've been watching some tapes of Futurama, as sent by an USA friend, and... what can I say... it is a monumental demo of geniality!!

Episode 1 starts on 31 December 1999 and immediately introduces you to the central figure: Fry, a [pizza] delivery boy. Fry is playing some space invaders, when he is ordered to make a deliverance to a I. C. Weiner [joke!] @ a cryogenics lab, which is the kind of place people to go to enter a cold suspended animation state, expecting the humanity to have, one day, the technology to wake them up.

So, it is the last day of 1999, everyone is having a great time, including Fry's girlfriend [with someone else], except for Fry who suddenly understands that he doesn't like his job, that he is having love problems and that he was victim of a bad joke. Demoralized, our man slips somewhere and manages to freeze himself for 1000 years... OUCH!

Fry wakes up on 31 December 2999. This is the future, as if you didn't notice :)

The future is very comic. There are suicide cabins, people travel on tubes, people have implanted a chip that binds them to best job they can do, and there is Leela, a one eyed woman, that must implant the "delivery boy" profession chip on Fry.

Well, there is a problem. Fry thinks he deserves a 2nd chance, after 1000 years in the waiting. He doesn't want to be a "delivery boy"! But that is illegal and he starts an argument about that. When Leela slips and freezes herself [for just 5 minutes], Fry escapes and goes looking for his sole living relative, as detected by some DNA hardware.

Fry's sole living relative is his great-great-great-great-great grand nephew, Professor Hubert Fansworth. Our hero does try to phone him. That is when mistakes a suicide cabin with a phone cabin :) Thankfully the cabin isn't that great, and he saves himself along with robot Bender, who enjoys bending stuff.

Well, from now on you'll be introduced to the police. There is this great sequence, when Leela informs two cops that she has found Fry. The cops, which are 1 meter behind her, answer that they will arrive in 5 minutes!!! :))

After fighting with Richard Nixon's head [!!], Fry, Leela [now a friend], Bender and Fansworth escape the police on a spaceship!!

Those were my first 22 minutes of Futurama. If you have never seen it, you really don't know what you are missing! It is for joys like this one that it is worth living!

AUTO Haircut

I had a great disappointment with my last haircut. I paid for something that strongly had gone against my expectations. So, I decided that, in the future, I would be cutting my own hair! Not that unusual in Europe in general, but not that popular @ Portugal.

I bought a PHILIPS machine and ventured myself today, a few hours ago. Everything went just fine. On the end, there were thousand of capillars on the floor and the haircut is not that imaginative, but I am 100% satisfied!

My haircut is kind of military, short and uniform all over the surface. In the next 4 haircuts I will have spared enough money to make the machine profitable, plus I avoid the many risks of going to a barber / hairdresser. Did you know that you can get infectious diseases just by being exposed to the same scissors of another customer?! YACK!

Auto haircuts for me, from this day on!