on the big rock jesus mountain * plus boobs

Rio de Janeiro is a heartbreakingly beautiful city with spectacular beaches, friendly people, tons of fun things to do, and a big rock Jesus perched impossibly high on a mountain.

But more importantly, me.

In Rio I learned that I'm cripplingly afraid of heights.

I started to notice something off on Day One, when we climbed to the top of the Jesus.

(When I say 'climbed,' I of course mean 'took the tram thing'.)

I felt oddly nervous on the tram-thing, and then a little off on the Jesus himself. I remember thinking it was probably just residual nausea from the previous day's road trip, combined with the light sadness that comes when I'm about to be separated from Mark. (I know it's lame, but it's the truth.) Mark was returning to São Paulo the next day and Tickby and I would continue to Manaus.

So I felt woozy and unhappy. I avoided looking over the sides of the thousands-of-feet-high Jesus pedestal on which we stood.

But it was just a little, and the rest of the day was great. Spent laughing a lot, taking pictures of the Jesus, from the Jesus, and about the Jesus. We met young Mr. T on the Jesus (not kidding). At night we went to a plaza where there was live music, cold beer, and funny people.

Cut to the next day. Tickby and I went to the Pão de Acúcar - 'Sugarloaf,' - essentially two giant boob-like mountain peaks busting out of Rio. You take a gondola up to the first extremely-high-up nipple, and from there take another gondola up and across to the even-higher boob.

My hands began to tremble in the first gondola. I started to feel extremely sleepy, and had this weird sensation that the areas beneath my eyes were hollowing out. This, I thought, would cause my eyelids to slam shut and the rest of me to crumple like a bathrobe falling off a hanger.

I turned away from the window- which is funny because gondolas are kind of just a bunch of windows- and concentrated like Tiger Woods on staring at the mid-sections of people in the middle of the gondola. I think my idea was to look for familiar vistas. Just seeing midsections made this look more like the normal subway-like crowd it was, and would further the premise that there was a floor in the gondola which was intact and this wasn't dangerous. It kind of worked.

I felt a little better when we got out onto the first boob. The first boob was big and had a museum on it and a sculpture garden, and looked almost like a normal city block. So you could forget that you were unnaturally high up and could die from sneezing too hard.

Also me and Tickby had a photo-shoot of me doing inappropriate things with the sculptures, which helped.

And lastly, when Tickby did go to the edges to take photos of Rio-from-on-high, it wasn't horrifying because if you looked over the edge you saw that there were other tiers right below. In other words, if you did fall over the edge you'd just land like six feet lower and feel dumb. Not die of fast-fall heart failure.

But then Tickby wanted to go to the other boob.

Mind over matter! said I. To myself. We got into the gondola and i did the stare-at-strangers'-crotches meditation again.

But still was overcome with the same limb-weakening symptoms as before. I also started feeling nauseous, and most interestingly: hysterical. I kept it all hidden inside because i'm a ninja, but I felt like my heart was breaking while a swarm of killer-Al-Qaeda bees were hating me in the face. I felt my pulse banging faster and louder until I was pretty sure I was going to die.

Predictably, I didn't die. Which was good. So I got off at the second boob. Which has no other tiers. And is just a slab of floor roosting atop a million-foot-high blade of grass.

The only thing there that separates you from becoming a blood-pancake is an old, rusty, wide open railing. Tickby ran off the gondola and right over to the edge to start snapping photos. I followed her on the WEIRDEST, most alien, rickety legs that used to be mine.

And here is probably the climax of this journey through irrational-fear-hell. As i wobbled toward Tickby --who had her back to me-- and tried to process the sight of my sister standing inches away from a million-mile drop, she LEANED FORWARD, over the railing, to take a picture. And I almost passed out.

It felt like the midsection of my body had been annihilated and my shoulders would now crash down to my hips. My hands were shaking so impossibly hard they looked like they were in disco lights.

I admitted to Tickby now that I was now learning I didn't like heights. We both laughed for a minute, at the weirdness of it all, and then I went to find a place to sit down. I came across a wonderful little pocket or non-death - an area between two buildings, with a bench! - and sat down to wait.

And CRIED for like five minutes.

Even as it happened, I was weirdly fascinated by all of this. I knew that there was nothing to cry about. I knew in my head that I wasn't sad, that it was a great day. I was in a beautiful place. I knew I wasn't in danger, that people ride these gondolas and visit these boob-mountains all day every day and none of them die from fear-fainting over the sides. I knew all of this, and yet could not stop the woozies, or the super-sads, and this was very interesting. I thought that as soon as I got home I would find and scour tons of reading material on irrational fears and learn all about whatever psychiatrists have discovered and concluded about them.

I of course didn't do this, because, you know, BORING, but I sure thought I would that day on the boob.

thanksgiving aboboros

Last week i made a pumpkin pie that was so delicious my clitoris fell off. For serious, it was like, 'Sorry Cill, I can't compete with this shit. Peace. (Thunk.)'

It was disturbingly delicious. Mark and I tasted it at the same moment and both froze. I didn't know what was happening. Mark started talking in one word sentences: 'This. Is. The. Best. BEST. Pie. I've. Ever. Had.' My eyes felt like they were exiting my head in slow motion.

Context: I'm not a very good baker. I don't do it often, and when I do the results are middling at best. I almost never eat desserts and sweets and stuff, so the art of making them has never been a priority.

But I found myself two days before Thanksgiving with a long list of cooking and baking tasks because my GERMAN fiance said he would love to celebrate the holiday, and I don't have a job so felt obligated to make it happen.

Something I learned about Brazilians: They don't make pies. Something else: They don't seem to want you to make pies either.

Not one of the zillion shops I looked in had the things you buy before Thanksgiving. NOT ONE OF THEM.

So I had to make pumpkin puree, which involved buying a pumpkin, severing it Jeffrey Dahmer style, piling it into the oven Albert Fish style, pulling it out and peeling off the skin Eddie Gein style, blending it in batches Richard Chase style, and then cramming it all into tupperware like Dahmer again.

I also had to make pie crust. Do not read blogs that tell you it is easy. It is not easy. Or maybe the actual assembling of the dough is kind of easy, but the shit makes a huge mess and every second of it is a shrill reminder of how unhealthy pastries are, fistfuls of butter and flour and sugar. The only ingredient I actually include in my diet was the ice water.

Another necessity: 'pumpkin pie spice.' You can of course just buy a jar of this shit in the USA. But not here. Because Brazil tries to thwart pie. This was easy enough, just cinnamon and nutmeg and clove and ground ginger, but this seemed like a lot of things to to buy and then only use tiny amounts of.

So anyway, all this felt like a trail of rabbit holes, but finally culminated in a pie in the oven. And I had to admit that it smelled like nirvana-paradise-heaven. It also looked beautiful, because the puree was a very vivid bright orange. When i buy a can of puree in the states it's a more browny orange. This was like stoner-vision.

Anyway, I was cooking tons of other things and they smelled nice too and I let the pie cool and set in the fridge and forgot about it until we were at the table and it was time for dessert.

And then as you know I tasted it and my clitoris quit its job and left town.

Furthermore, something you should know about Mark: whenever something tastes good he says he wants to put his dick in it. He's said it about cashew cream, butternut squash bisque, and vegetable risotto. And he of course said it about this pie.

And a thought occurred to me.

"Do it," I said. "Put your dick in it. There's nobody else here, it's just us. No one else would ever know."

He hesitated.

I emphasized, "This might never be possible again. Nothing is stopping you right now in this moment from putting your dick in a pie at the Thanksgiving table. Do it. Put your dick in it. Put your penis in the pie."

And he said: "I would actually rather like to eat it."

Not after serious consideration, but he chose eating this pie over a ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY to put his dick in a holiday dessert. THAT'S how delicious it was.

We have been trying since to figure out what is going on here making this pie so special. We made two more pies, thinking they wouldn't be as good. The plan was to make one for our neighbors who are always giving us fresh veggies from their garden. But we made two, because we figured my beginner's luck would run out and it wouldn't be good and our neighbors would choke on its horrible taste and die and it would be our fault and no more free veggies.

But we tasted the control pie and it was every bit as terrifyingly delicious as the Thanksgiving one. Mark had it for breakfast, with lunch and before and after dinner.

And our stoic elderly german neighbor saw me on the sidewalk later and shouted, with a GIGUNDUS GRIN, 'The cake is fantastic good!'

And his wife returned the plate within two days and asked for the recipe. She too is now on the case for what is making it so confounding-ly good. And she's going to make it for her family at christmas.

We think it's a combo of awesome Brazilian produce, the American kinds of spices, and maybe even the condensed soy milk i found somewhere, which was surprisingly not disgusting.

This mystery may never be solved. and Mark will likely never put his ween in a pie. And I, clitless, return to the familiar, quiet peace of no desserts.

pippo

Before we leave Paraty I feel you should know about Pippo. Because it's going down in history as one of my favorite dinners of all time, because it's beautiful and you should go there, and because funny things happened there.

Of the dozens of restaurants we passed and admired, we chose this one because it started to rain just as we walked by its door. I love Italian food, and the dining room was elegant and cozy and way dryer than outside in the rain, so we immediately started drinking wine to celebrate all of this. I'm usually not a big fan of vino but Tickby and Mark were into it, so I joined.

Well, the wine was delicious. and the little bruschetta and eggplant-on-toasty appetizers they brought out were delicious. In keeping with my reputation as the cheapest drunk ever, I started giggling halfway down my first glass, and Tickby and I turned our attention to the following page in the menu:

I honestly don't know what we found so goddamn funny about it.

So the owner is a dude named Pippo with a soulful gaze and a huge pepper mill. So what?

But it's kind of a little bit funny, right? He's all 'Hello. I grind you pepper so hard you eat make love it.' he's all 'hello. you eat you noodlies i make cannoli. hello.'

I don't know. We were drunk. And in hindsight, maybe loud. Um, I hope not.

My dinner was so good. It was a pumpkin and sheep cheese ravioli with herbs and I don't remember the rest. But it was so so delicious. To celebrate this I drank more wine.

'Hello. I shake my pepper mill you face you love the ravioli. Hello.'

After a good and thorough laugh at the founder of the restaurant we were enjoying so much, guess who came out of the kitchen to eat his own dinner at a table right near ours?

'Hello.'

Doubly intense: we were, at that point, the only people left. So we had to chat with him and, you know, say hello.

I'll be honest, I didn't feel so bad about having spent a long time making fun of him a lot because I knew i was 100% sincere in gushing about how delicious his food was. Also I was 'drunk.'

PLUS we discovered we have a mutual friend! The manager of a hotel in Sicily near Pippo's hometown, where my best friend got married.

PLUS - and this is where it all gets fuzzy, so I'm going by Tickby and Mark's telling of it - but apparently I was babbling to Pippo about how our mutual friend made the most delicious limoncello I'd ever had and how I had learned in Sicily that I love limoncello.

So guess what pippo sent us.

pippo's fave limoncello

OK in more hindsight I'm embarrassed. He couldn't have been lovelier or awesomer, and I worry that he needed his limoncello to be better than Nunzio's because maybe Nunzio's pepper mill is bigger? But nonsense. Pippo's pepper mill was so huge!

Pippo asked us to send a photo of the three of us to our pal Nunzio in Sicily. So we did.

me, tickby and pippo

Um, this is the end of the Pippo story. Yeah sorry, I guess it's not that funny. But drink some limoncello and read it again and see what happens.

schoonie love

So you know by now that at night in Paraty you're supposed to get drunk and fall down and hang out with pirates. But I bet you're wondering what you're supposed to do during the day. Well, i'll tell you. You're supposed to go on a schooner tour.

our rival schooner

Right near the historical cobblestone area of town, there's a HUGE, maybe quarter-mile long pier with hundreds of yachts and schooners lined up, waiting to take you on a schooner tour. Some of them are pirate themed. There are small private ones and big crowdy ones. They leave around 10am and return at maybe 6pm. In between those times your job is to find a spot anywhere aboard, plunk down, order drinks and food, listen to the live music playing in the cabin, and ... well if you're Tickby, get a massive sunburn. (If you're a normal person you wear sunblock to this kind of excursion, Especially if you're as true a snowflake as Tickby.)

The schooners take you out to pristine beaches on tiny islands and sometimes just stop at places where the water is particularly blue and beautiful, or if there are cool fish or dolphins. Once they drop the anchor (heheheheh) people just start diving off the sides and swimming around. It's pretty wonderful. Tickby and mark swam, I didn't. Little motion sick. All the fresh air and gentle rocking did me a world of good though.

can you find tickby and mark?

One of my fave parts of this schoonie love was the lack of organization. I kept thinking that if we'd been in the states people would have had assigned seating and everyone would demand  the same comfort and service as their fellow schoon-tangs. This was a clusterfuckedy free-for-all in the best way. For example, on the front deck where we spent most of the day, people were sitting and lying everywhere - on the boat's equipment, under stuff, where ever they could dig out a space.

I went to the front tippy of the boat (is that the stern? what is that?) and climbed up onto the shelfy-storage thing where they were storing all the floaties and noodles. It couldn't have been cozier. Mark and Tickby joined me and we had a little boat-tippy party, really probably the best seats in the house. Cushiony with noodles, private, and with the best view.

Within minutes I saw a schooner-staffer heading towards us and was pretty certain she was about to ask us to get down from there because the tippy wasn't for seating.

In fact she was coming to take our drink order. (She must have thought we were a pretty big deal, sitting in the tippy, and wanted to get our drinks out first.)

paraty

I know what you're thinking, and I was thinking the exact same thing when i first read about the town of Paraty: the name is only one letter away from being 'party' and two letters away from 'pirate.' So it's bound to be great.

Accordingly, Paraty is a town that wants you to party, and is also a town that is all about pirates. We learned these things early on our walk around, by the plethora of shops selling nothing but cachaça, and the tour guide dressed as a stunningly hardcore pirate. If you've read my post about the meat-pirates of Fogo de Chão, you know that my keen eye can spot semi-pirates and ninja pirates from muito afar. But this was an uber-pirate. a pirate who wants you to know he's a pirate. He had a real parrot on his shoulder, full pirate robes and regalia, an undeniable pirate hat, an elaborate pirate moustache-and-goatee, and of course pirate boots. I think the tour he was giving was about how pirates used to hang out in Paraty.

(OK I just went against my principles and like, looked up real information: in the late 17th and early18th centuries, Paraty became a major port for the export of gold from Minais Gerais to Rio and on to Portugal. And pirates fucking love gold. so that's why there were pirates around. In fact, pirates changed the course of history in Paraty in a way. They became so ubiquitous and dangerous that people stopped moving gold by ships and built a whole road on land just to circumvent the pirates. Also, though it kills me to post irrelevant information, the word 'Paraty' is Tupi for 'river of fish.' But whatever. It looks like party-pirates.)

welcome to my home of cachaça

The other big Paraty thing: cachaça, which for those of you who don't know yet, is the KICKASS liquor used to make Brazil's signature cocktail, the caipirinha. Paraty has an annual cachaça festival, which is probably awesome in all the ways you might think a liquor festival in a pirate town would be.

(My Portuguese teacher tried pretty hard to also tell me about an international book festival that also takes place there, but I don't remember this much. Only cachaça and pirates made an impression.)

Another thing making an impression: the streets in the historical section. They are cobbled, and while I'm sure the cobble-job done was impressive in the 1500's, when paraty was first settled by whitey, it makes for a lot of stumblies nowadays, especially for people who have been drinking. Also hazardous: the multitude of adorable shops selling gifties and pirate paraphernalia and exquisite antiques and indigenous crafties. You can't look in windows and walk at the same time because the cobblies will trip you. Just saying. Cause like, someone else told me.
 





Lots of bars. Lots of little clothing boutiques. Restaurants of every level of fanciness, though most were fancy. People standing in the streets handing out flyers for happy hours and dance club parties. Oh! And torches in the streets, and very old street lamps.

Cachaça rules.

RUA TRIP! part 2: the fog

It was so beautiful, so enchanting and atmospheric that we kind of forgot that it was also 'dangerous' and we maybe could crash and get dead..

We never bothered to find out if the thick mist hovering over the winding mountain roads on the way to Paraty was a weather condition or just part of that area's climate. And know what? I'm not going to. I don't want to know. It was just part of the magic of driving somewhere in Brazil.

Sure, the hairpin curves and sharp climbs and drops were all pretty hard on my balls. (HEHEHEH hard on my balls HEHEHEH) But I'd do it again right now. It was just so lush and green and dewy and Narnia, even with all the SUV's and road signs and Tickby's gangsta rap.

It could have been frustrating, to be slowed down so much after the open highway, but this was easily my favorite part of the rua from São Paulo to Paraty. I felt like we were in Escape From Witch Mountain. I don't know why, because I can't remember anything about that movie other than the names 'Tony' and 'Tia' and 'Grandpa,' but there we were. It was witchy and mountainy and we were on an escape.

This foggy noise did turn into rain-and-fog though, and as we got closer and closer to Paraty it still felt farther away as the rain intensified or the occasional traffic stopped on the country roads.

So it ended up taking like eight hours to get there.

It was late when we arrived. And it was raining. So we were kind of bummed about these things, but it was so wonderful to be out of the car that I just didn't care. Plus, as you'll see if you read on, Paraty is bananas-awesome.

RUA TRIP! part 1: a word on my balls

My balls are all f-ed up, and they have been for like four years now.

I'm not talking about my cojones, which are obviously huge and made of steel; I'm talking about the balls in my ears, which are supposed to be like on human hydraulics that keep your balance and don't let you get motion sickness.

My balls crap out and let me get motion sickness all the time. It sucks. I hate them. Cars I'm not driving, trains-that-aren't-underground, and taxiing planes, all make me greenfaced and moany, and if I could make upset-stomach moany-sounds the whole time I would. But I can't because this is 'socially unacceptable' or whatever. So I tend to just become very quiet and stare straight ahead, in a semi-meditative state, echoing with whispers of the mantra 'Don't puke. Don't puke. Don't puke.'

So the plan was a five hour car ride from São Paulo to Paraty, a night and day there, then a three hour drive to Rio and three nights there. Then Mark would drive the rental car back to São Paulo while Tickby and I flew from Rio to Manaus on our way to the jungle.

I wasn't looking forward to the motion sickness, but could not WAIT to see the sights, even if they were just monotonous freeway-type sights. mark and I have been exclusively in São Paulo for almost six months now, and while this city is expansive and bananas, well, i'm an American. I like my highways, my 70mph rides, I like covering long distances in mere hours and seeing it all fly by.

VIVA VULVA caught tickby's eye

Yeah. So we were stuck in a little over two hours of standstill just trying to get out of our neighborhood. Tickby took some cool pictures of graffiti, and the happy WTF that is Brazilian sex shops. I drained the soda I'd brought as a stomach settler just to combat the oppressive heat, and of course had to pee within forty minutes.

Our spirits weren't f-ed though. We were finally on our rue trip! Just the stop-and-go motion was a little hard on my balls. (Heheheheh hard on.)

you're not the only one with a gay zorro fantasy

Finally the traffic broke and we were out of the city, savoring our freedom, the wind in our hair! So we pulled into a rest stop immediately. To pee. We also needed more sodies and snacks. And to see if my balls couldn't settle down a bit.

The rest stops in Brazil are impressive. This one had the same kind of food-plaza setup as you'll see along I-95, but the restaurants had buffets of fresh food, there were snack options that were natural and delicious, and there was a bakery where local folks were stopping by to get their bread and cakes. So the whole place smelled nice. We loaded up on sweets and some kind of  awesome caramel corn, sodas and sparkling waters, and gum. Then back into the car, ready for the REAL ACTUAL rua trip to commence. And it did.

my sister tickby

i forgot to set all this up with some expositionz: my sister tickby came to visit and stayed for 2.5 weeks. eager to see brazil and not just me and mark, she initiated an adventurous trip from here to paraty, from there to rio, from there to manaus, and from there to the innards of the amazon jungle. all of this noise will be reported on.

but some info on tickby:

Tickby is a nurse anesthetist. 

Tickby likes: giving people intravenous drugs, traveling, cooking, meeting eccentric people, meeting salt-of-the-earth types, mayhap just meeting new people in general, people who are funny, drinking wine, drinking beer, drinking caipirochkas, making fun of me, reading crime novels, Wesley Willis, muito gangster rap, most other kinds of music, taking photographs, and many other coisas.

Tickby dislikes: vegging out, people who aren't in the medical profession spreading misinformation about human physiology, watching movies, most movies, watching television, vapid political banter, people who aren't respectful of waitstaff, people who analyze themselves aloud, and ... she didn't really like the caipirinhas. 

Yeah, so besides me doing and being a lot of the things Tickby doesn't like, we get along very well, Because we have muitas coisas importantes bonding us together. Loving Wesley Willis and hating people who are rude to waiters, for example.

So stay tuned for the adventures of Tickby and Cill.

tickby is like me only smart, employed and with big boobs

and a giant fig tree in the middle

(Ooh how nice, 'fig tree' looks like 'f-ing tree' in the title of this post. Both apply.)

So then we went to Figueira Rabaiyat, a São Paulo restaurant famous for having a gigantic fig tree in the middle of the dining room. the tree is mad beautiful and mad old. They built the restaurant around it so it could live on through the gentrification of its neighborhood. (I think.) So that’s pretty rad. I wish they could also do that with people who are fixtures in neighborhoods. Instead of pricing them out of their homes, build beautiful restaurants around them and make them the themes of these restaurants. Hm, maybe with people it would be degrading. But with trees it’s romantic.

We all admitted to feeling apprehensive that there would be another pirate type vibe. Like that as another famous restaurant they would feel they had to live up to their reputation and go over the top trying to make their service unforgettable. And piratey. (Mayhap by threatening with body language and 100 free refills to rob and pillage and stuff.)

But it was remarkably low key. No swarming service folk, no befuddling bells and whistles. We even discussed how it wasn’t even a bloggable experience, cause like, nothing absurd happened.

Then a busboy came over and restrained my purse to the chair with a plastic zipcuff. 

Aaaand we’re bloggable. 

We laughed quite a bunch at how weird this was. I know chicks spend a lot of money on their purses, but wouldn’t you think that’d make them (purses) more durable than to perish if they fell on the floor? 

Or were they perhaps worried that a thief might grab my purse and make a mega-awkward run for it through the labyrinthine mess of tables, in the middle of which stood a ginormous tree? 

Whether theft or purse-soilage, the concern reminded us that we were once again in classy-people territory with classy-people eccentricities. And that alone was funny.

Full disclosure: much as like like to make fun of rich people, their food is fucking delicious. Go to Figueira Rabaiyat if you ever get a chance. So so delicious. 

And when we paid the check the dude came back over and released my purse by cutting the zip-cuff with a knife. 

the meat pirates

If you don't already know this about me it's time you learned: I like pirates.

I like pirate figurines, movies with pirates, pirate-themed bumper stickers and other paraphernalia, dressing like a pirate, the episodes of the simpsons with the pirate, and skull-and-crossbones-shaped ice cubes.

Tickby likes pirates too, so we were pretty pumped upon entering Fogo de Chão in Santo Amaro and seeing the staff's uniforms. 

They weren't all-out pirates with peglegs and eye-patches - because this restaurant seems to take itself pretty seriously - but they wore knickers, holsters with wine keys and meat knives, and high pirate boots if i've ever seen pirate boots. They were like pirates hiding in plain sight from anyone who doesn't know as much as I do about pirates. They were ninja pirates.

In other evidence, I saw exactly 0 female employees there. 

Furthermore, there were way too many of them. the pirate-waiters outnumbered customers 2 or 3 to 1.

As Tickby and I waited for Mark to meet us there from work, the pirate-waiters surrounded our table -widely at first, but inching closer and closer with every passing minute. They kept a semi-frenzied activity going to keep us from noticing. But they were closing in. 

When I stood up to go to the bathroom, one pirate pulled my chair back and another pirate pushed it in. When I reached for my sweater, I swear three different pirates helped me pull it on. Every time I took a sip of water a pirate or two or six would come over to replenish my glass. 

Some people like being gang-pampered like this but I found it disconcerting at times. For example I dropped my wallet on the floor and almost had my head tramply-crushed by a stampede of pirate boots when I reached down to pick it up. I also found myself keeping my eyes downcast to avoid contact with pirates, who interpreted most movement as a signal to come over and put more cheesebread on the table. 

Tickby and Mark became too blissfully high on the pirates' meats to worry about the coup underway. Fully relaxed, their eyes glazed over, they began to talk about how they couldn't eat any more, but didn't want to stop. As a vegetarian I was immune to this noise, this pirates' 'table-side meat service' spell. I knew that something terrible was afoot, and the power of this knowledge made the room begin to tilt. As if we were on a slowly capsizing pirate ship.

Yeah it might have just been the sight of all that rare steak after the previous night's copious vodka fraudtinis making my stomach flop around. Add to that the effort of hiding the fact that I felt ill at the dinner table and the energy required to thank twenty-seven pirates per minute for their various solids, and you have an overstimulated altered state.

Or it might have been a pirate invasion.

In spite of such dark turns, I need you to know that I still like pirates. I mean, you wouldn't expect a kid who likes dinosaurs to stop liking them just because a stegosaurus ate his backpack. The kid who genuinely likes dinosaurs would understand that that's what stegosauri do.

Accordingly, I understand that invading tables and being mad fiendish is what pirates do. and I have nothing but respect for that.

the meat pirates provide you with a cow-shaped brochure that is a map of the most delicious parts of cows

fraudtinis!!!

ingredients:
vodka
limes
agave nectar
pirate themed ice (skull and bones-cicles)
maybe other stuff

Tickby and I were gearing up to go to the Skye Bar yesterday afternoon - so she could take some São Paulo photos before she heads home on Saturday - when she got an interesting email from her bank. It read something like:

Dear Tickby,

We're sorry we didn't let you buy all those thousands of dollars worth of electrical equipment in São Paulo today and yesterday. We just thought the purchases seemed suspicious. So please like, call us and tell us you're good and you want all that electrical equipment, and we'll let the next purchases go through no problem. Also, mayhap you should put a bunch more money in your checking account, seeing as you've debited like over $7,000 in the last few days, mostly on electrical equipment.

Toodles!
-Chase Manhattan

A bunch of time ended up spent on the phone with those guys, who said we had to stay by a computer for the rest of the day to fill out time-sensitive paperwork as it was sent to us. No skye bar. paperwork.

So-

Me: Yeah, you know it's so hot out anyway it might be nicer to stay in.

Tickby: Yeah, I was thinking that anyway, it's kind of late.

Me: …Want to get shitfaced?

Tickby: Yes.

I don't know how much I drank. There are large chunks of the evening I don't remember at all. But funnily enough I do remember three different moments at which I thought - hot DAMN I've had a lot to drink! I shouldn't have any more to drink.

someone bought mad electrical coisas

Also, as we got more and more thoroughly hammered, we learned stuff. Drunk googling is still googling. Apparently what happened to Tickby is that her debit card information was stolen by way of a tiny hidden camera installed somewhere in an ATM in Rio de Janeiro, which recorded the number and her PIN. Then someone used it somehow to go shopping for electrical equipment in São Paulo.

Now that I'm sober though I'm realizing there are some story-holes here. How would they use her card number in a store if they didn't physically have the card? Wait I think I asked that when I was drunk because an answer just floated into my head from some vague memory: they put that number on a different card, and ... I don't know. I mean they have tons of electrical equipment. They prolly used that.

Chase Manhattan is currently 'doing an investigation' to determine for themselves that the information was actually stolen. tickby is afraid they will conclude that because the PIN number was used in the purchases, it must have been Tickby making them. I doubt this, but it will still be a nice relief when their investigation is over and they have apologized to Tickby and put $7,000 back into her account.

And I wish I could remember how I made the fraudtinis, because they were friggin delicious.

mad cachorros

Brazilians love blond dogs.

For serious, there are enough golden retrievers and yellow labs here to make Travis feel maybe not so bad about having to shoot the rabies out of Old Yeller.

I mentioned this observation to a Brazilian friend, and he told me it's because of the movie Marley and Me.

And I laughed.

And I laughed.

Who better to set trends than Owen Wilson? You? Me? Marley? Me? Dupree?

Any which way, the prevalence of labs and retrievers gives the city an awesome atmosphere, or maybe just accentuates the already existing one: spastic energy, frenzied enthusiasm, nonstop nose-to-crotch joie de vivre. When São Paulo gets excited, it pees a little. If you throw a stick, São Paulo will bound after it, break it, drag it back to you all deformed and whine until you throw it again. I don't know what that means.

But for real, I can't stop thinking of what a WIN this is for Brazil. Think about it: the last time a breed of dog became trendy for a stupid reason in the US it was because Paris Hilton carried a chihuahua around in her purse. Then a couple of years later there appeared a generation of refugee chihuahuas, probably abandoned around the time their owners realized dogs can shit in purses.

Well Marley and Me is a few years old now and the Brazilians have shown themselves to be not as fickle as fans of ... what the hell did Paris Hilton do again? Act? Reality show? I guess just be everyone's favorite anorexic head on a stick.

tickby snapped this noise in Ibirapuera Park

It could be that they're just living out the entire Marley and Me plot, like owning the blond dog from puppyhood to deadhood, but even then, even if the loyalty is to the trend and not the dogs, it is a win, because even if Owen Wilson is kind of a dumb blond, he is not Paris Hilton.

Anyway, as a dog lover, and an (obviously) excellent judge of character, I conclude:

Brazil: 10
USA: 0

the house

Wait, I forgot to mention that we have a house. We moved in over a month ago. I no longer live in a hotel with a minibar. And to be honest I had loads of time during those Last Days of the Minibar to write and post blog pieces, but I didn’t feel like it.

Often I rather felt like watching Netflix and reading Twilight porn and smoking on the balcony. I would apologize, but I’m not sorry.

And yes, I know, I should have posted daily and chronicled the process of finding a home in São Paulo, one that others might find useful should they relocate. But again, I didn’t feel like it. 

And anyway the particulars of finding a home here were the very things rendering me unable to do anything but watch and read crap and smoke, so why, why would I record that noise and spread frustration and misery like the Bubonic plague?

(i just wanted to say Bubonic. heheh. bube.)

I will give you the midget version: three houses stood out; we called them the monkey house, the pirate house, and The House. 

We moved into The House. 

I wanted the monkey in a major way (cause monkeys rule) and Mark wanted the pirate (cause he likes hammocks and rum) until he saw The House. 

We’re here mainly because it is has a yard for the dogs, a modern kitchen and an affordable price tag. 

Then there are the things I never dared dream of, like the in-the-ground pool, the garden house, the jacuzzi, the walk-in closet. Things that kind of don’t exist in New York unless you're johnny pockets.

The only concern I have about this place is that it is a house. 

I haven’t lived in a house in years because I don't like them. I like apartments, noise, movement. Plus I'm incompetent. 

My first day alone here I spent maybe forty minutes trying to figure out how to turn off the light in the driveway before realizing it’s a motion sensor and all I had to do was stop trying and go away. I’m certain that this is a metaphor for something, I just don't know what it is. 

sinta se em casa, bichos

the honking

It's not new to me. Men in New York holler at women all the time. When I lived in Harlem dudes made me feel like a celebrity named Snowflake.

Here's the difference though: in New York, men do it in full awareness of what they're doing. It's not involuntary. They show their presence-of-mind with a dumb smile, a bobbling head, or a weird about-to-catch-a-football stance, some mixy of sheepishness and brazenness.

But in São paulo dudes honk at women the way you or I flick the right turn signal when we see our exit coming up. It is reflexive. I saw a girl with an onion booty crossing the street to what amounted to a horn-tapping version of the wave. But the men barely seemed to be looking at her. Just a glance, before returning to their phone calls, yelling-at-kids, etc. 

So unmoved do they seem by the juicy asses they acknowledge that you wonder if the acknowledgement has become a tedious chore. You look up to see who is honking at you and the honker gives an impassive nod, as though you just thanked him for something basic and unworthy of thanks.

(Is 'tedious chore' redundant?) 

I think this is dangerous. Because women don't react to car horns honking. They seem accustomed to thinking that a horn-honk is merely show of appreciation for their tight jeans or short skirt, or in my case, slutty dress they didn't realize was so old it's see-through. So they tune it out and stare straight ahead. What will happen when a honk is a warning that some brakes are failing or a rogue tomato cart is gaining on a woman fast?

I'm no anthropologist, but I wonder if this is all because men in the USA are not supposed to honk and holler, while men in Brazil are totally supposed to honk and holler. In the US it is still fun for men because they know that they are doing something degrading and wrong. Here beneath the equator, where sin does not exist, degrading women is no longer fun.

This makes me feel sad for Brazilian men. I'm going to start a campaign of like BRING THE FUN BACK FOR DUDES and try to convince pundits to discourage men here from honking at women. So they can start enjoying it again. 

this taxista honked at some chicks and Tickby snapped his photo immediately

magical médico

I saw a doctor yesterday, and I’m proud. 

Not just of myself, for finally nutting up and going, but mostly of myself, for talking to him for I think five whole minutes before he buzzed for a nurse who spoke English. 

We even chatted while waiting for her. I learned that he has an eleven-year-old granddaughter in Fort Lauderdale who has become a local tennis sensation in spite of having contracted diphtheria during the reconstruction of the South. 

Maybe it was this feeling -that my Portuguese is getting really good- that led me to keep saying yes when asked if I understood things I didn’t really understand. 

A great snowball was born; as his confidence in me grew so did mine and vice versa. Soon he was joking and laughing in Portuguese and I was laughing along in what I’d bet my soul were all the right places. I threw lots of ‘ohh’-s and ‘aha’-s on top to make it pretty.

Then he sat and wrote - spanning two pages of a double-sized prescription pad - what looked like a college essay or the beginning of a novel. He talked a lot about how and when to take each of the six thousand medications he was prescribing, and I think at one point asked if I was allergic to something or other. (I said não; I’m probably not.) 

The English speaking nurse was long gone at this point. (She’d pretty much just walked in, said ‘what you have is viral. We can only treat it symptomatically.’ and then left. I wondered if she was some drunken trick pony hired only to do that.) 

Several people have hinted that the climate here gives gringoes the flu. Which makes sense. If I were a region in South America i would  give gringoes the flu too.

So I figured I’d just continue pretending to understand him, bring the handwritten tome to the pharmacy, pretend to understand the pharmacist, then at some point call one of my friends and make him translate.

Alas, I was too proud. 

Well, a mixy of being too proud, unable to read the doctor's handwriting, and too lazy to type and email what he'd written even if I could read it. (I guess this is kind of bullshit since at that point I had a typed printout from the pharmacist.) 

my sick legs

I figured I would watch Justified on Netflix and occasionally stare at the pile of medication. The answers would come.

And they did, in the form of our realtor dropping by to pick up some paperwork. All I wanted was for her to tell me which ones to take when, but she's German, so she also opened all the boxes and read the little booklets to make sure I wasn't allergic to anything. 

By the time she left I was too tired to start taking them, so I decided to watch more Justified and start anew the next day. And it's working! I feel better.

não falo

I keep thinking I should know more Portuguese by now. 

We got here in early May and I still haven’t set up my voicemail because I have no idea what the shit the automated prompter is saying. 

I’m really good at saying ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘Thank you’ and ‘I don’t speak Portuguese’ and ‘I have three dogs.’ Which is kind of enough to get by. If you’re as good as I am at gesticulating.

The lessons are wonderful and terrible at the same time - I love the Portuguese tutor a lot when he’s telling me about cool places to visit and Brazilian music to check out. The problem is that when he starts telling me to do homework or repeat sentences after him I fantasize about keying his car and hiding slugs and turds in his desk.

This is of course unreasonable because he doesn’t have a car and our lessons are usually at a Starbucks in Itaim Bibi. If he has a desk I don’t know where it is and I’ve never seen it. But I can’t help it. Learning stuff makes me feel like a restless teenager again. I keep thinking I’m angry at my mom and I haven’t spoken to her in weeks.

Also, it’s physically hard. Not just sitting still and nodding a lot, but trying to make sounds I’ve never made before, at least not in a row. I keep thinking Brazilian peoples' tongues must look like those flippy little boneless dudes in Cirque du Soleil. It took me maybe an hour to be able to say ‘qual e o seu nome’ (what is your name) because it’s like: ‘kwow-ay-oh say-oh gnome-ee’ --but fast. My lips are not used to so much rapid scrunching. It feels like doing kegels with my mouth. I’m sure it’s worth it, but for now: tedious.

There are wonderful moments though, like learning that the name Ruth in Portuguese is spelled ‘Rute’ and pronounced ‘Hooch.’ In fact, why don’t I just stop yammering and end this post with a list of my favorite Portuguese words:

anos (years)

apenas (only)

pagina (page)

pergunte (ask)

canta (sing) <-- pronounced ‘cunta’

assado (roasted)

suco (juice)

house hunting

If middle class Brazilian marriages last longer than others, it might be because nobody ever has to share a bathroom.

Like parking spaces, toilets outnumber people in many São Paulo apartments. I doubt it's because of any regulations on toilet-use like with cars, but it's a curious illustration of decadence.

Mark and I have started having fun arguments in our search for a home:

"No, NO! Look, it only has seven bathrooms, what if we have six people over and everyone needs to take a dump at the same time? What are we supposed to do, share?"

Another phenomenon new to me: uncredited toilets. In New York real estate listings, every square millimeter is shouted about. Large closets become 'flex bedrooms' and a wide windowsill is described as a 'flex balcony.'

But here you'll see bizarre shit like a listing that reads 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and 1 guest pizzad, But a look at the floor plan shows five bedrooms, four bathrooms, one guest pizzad. Who the hell undersells an apartment on bathrooms?

I discovered that the unmentionable bath and bedrooms are part of the 'Service Area,' sometimes called 'maid's quarters.' These are the accommodations built for your servants of course, and naturally they don't count as real bathrooms and bedrooms, because you wouldn't want to use them. They are small, without amenities like pretty tiling and decorative fixtures, and universally miserable-looking.

Before we made the leap here I read a lot of gringo expat blogs, several of which celebrated the fact that in Brazilian culture, 'Hurrah! Everyone has a maid!'

Oh really, assholes? Does your maid have a maid? Does her maid have a maid? Does your driver have a driver? Who does your gardener's garden?

Check this out, from an otherwise amusing gringa blog: "...visiting in-laws, end of year festivities, carnival, sick children and school holidays.  The last in the line of things to stand between me and my ‘me time’ was my maid.  She was hospitalized for a week and almost died.  If it was painful for her, it was for me too, stuck at home doing chores instead of indulging my yoga, ballet and lunch habits.  Thank God she came back."

Did you just throw up in your mouth? OMG me too! Elsewhere in the same post, Gringamel (I just made this up! It's like Gargamel from The Smurfs, but for mean gringas! Shut up.) complains about how it's hard to get used to having another adult in your home who knows your business. Then she complains about how she doesn't like hearing TMI about her maid's personal life, personal information which she then reveals on her blog.

If i had a job right now I would feel quite superior to to this Gringamel...

the robot and the slip n slide

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Brazilian television.

From the small sample of it I've seen (none during primetime) I've had enough orgasmic WTF moments to last several lifetimes.

Let's start with the robot:

As I sat one afternoon in a miserable waiting room, I began to notice that nobody around me was miserable. They seemed downright pleased. I followed their collective gaze to a large TV, on which a twelve-foot storm trooper-like robot was dancing.

But by dancing I mean the white man's overbite style: step-tap step-tap, swaying side to side. like, not dancing, but 'dancing.'

On either side of this robot were two young women with huge breasts and juicy asses (there's no other way to describe their asses) in tank tops and hot pants, also dancing the white man's overbite, though with a little more wiggle and grace than the robot.

This went on for a full five minutes.

In the studio audience were hundreds of screaming fans, most of whom were young attractive females.

After an astoundingly long time a white-haired gentleman appeared with a microphone and seemed to be the emcee. He interviewed one of the screaming juicy-assed fans in the audience and people on and around the TV cheered.

Next a young attractive man in tight clothing arrived on stage and joined the robot and girls dancing.

Almost immediately this young man was beaten off the stage with a foam noodle wielded by the older emcee. The audiences roared approval.

That very night i begged my best friend back in New York to come visit as soon as possible. I'm afraid that once I understand Portuguese the experience of these shows just won't be the same and I'd like to share it with her, preferably stoned.

Now lets get to the asses on the Slip 'n Slide:

Late one sleepless night I landed on what was perhaps a gameshow.

About a dozen women standing in a row, every other one young, buxom, beautiful and in a bikini.

Every other one was fully clothed, less groomed, older-looking and ok, several were large folks. I would later learn that these were the bikini girls' moms.

All were standing on a very large grassy hill, where a regular Slip 'n Slide - complete with the sad tiny 'splash pool' - was arranged. It looked greased with something like dish soap.

Now I grew up on shows like Fun House and GUTS and Double Dare and Wild and Crazy Kids, shit filmed on sound stages or in custom-built parks, with multimillion dollar jungle gyms and circus gear installed. A Slip 'n Slide on a hill already seemed way more practical.

I knew it was a game show because they were introducing the contestants with still shots of each of them on the hill in her bikini, followed by five second clippies of each turning around and shaking her ass.

Beside their asses would appear their stats: age, height, weight, and some stuff I'm not brazilian enough (YET) to translate. These ass shaking and stat displays were accompanied by voiceovers from each girl's mom, and capped off with a shot of each mom woman looking serious and nodding solemnly.

Next the girl in question would walk toward the Slip 'n Slide, where she was handed a life-sized toy chicken.

Then, on a LOUD go-ahead from the host, she'd crouch and begin her slippery decent to the splash pool.

With fascinating agility the camera crew were able to track each ass as it trembled with the turbulence of the irregular terrain beneath the yellow tarp. American rock music played for the duration of each run.

After each splash landing the mom-figure would talk again, apparently commenting on her daughter's performance. More than one wept, overwhelmed with pride.

Spike, get on a plane.

laundry day

I am typing in my undies and a blanket because I have no clean clothes.

I took a suitcase full of dirty laundry to a shop down the street from our hotel where the front desk staff said I could drop off and have my clean clothes delivered later at no extra charge. Sim, obrigada!

But the people at the shop seemed to think i wanted everything - socks, underoos, jeans, 12-year old t-shirts, hand-me-down sports bras - dry-cleaned. 

A kindly bilingual woman in line ahead of me translated for us. She asked if $300R ($150USD) was expensive for me.

I was about to reply “for whom (TF) is $150 for clean underoos not expensive?”

Then I realized they thought I was wealthy. 

I looked at myself in the full length mirror nearby, my filthy shoes, my ripped cords, my haggish, messy ponytail, and thought ‘Wow. The rich people in brazil have awesome style.’

Who could have known that thus would begin a journey through the rain, a little over four miles in total, dragging my cumbersome suitcase behind me (which made me miss my dog), humming the patty duke show theme because it was stuck in my head, looking for a normal laundromat?

Well, not me.

The same answer applies to: and who could have known there aren’t any normal laundromats in São Paulo, because all people here do there laundry at home, so anyone looking for one is categorically SOL? 

I didn’t believe it when the front desk told me so. I started to believe it when I read a thread on tripadvisor.com discussing the very issue in this very neighborhood. I only truly came to accept it when my friend confirmed it in an email (and invited me to use his apartment as a laundromat you can get drunk in -sim, obrigada!). there are no normal laundromats in São Paulo.

BUT they’re cousins! Identical cousins and you’ll find: you can lose your mind! When cousins are two of a kind!

i think i'm gonna like it here

Used-to town: Cill would frown
Street snacks only meats

SP splendors: POPCORN VENDORS
Everywhere, holy sheetz!

There are many numerous copious plethoras of other reasons I think I can make it here.

One is that there is a kind of green tea with pepper seeds that is so delicious I want to bathe my face in a river of it. 

Another is that it is warm and sunny and breezy all at the same time, which means I smell like sunblock all the time, and I love the smell of sunblock. 

A third is that the nickname Betsy is spelled 'Bete' and pronounced 'Betch.' 

A fourth is that Mark came out of a restaurant bathroom  and said 'If I understand correctly, a sign in there reads 'Please do not pee on the floor.'

Also the diet coke here is fortified with B-vitamins, magnesium and zinc. SUPERCILL.

Furthermore, I have to hand it to Brazil: the Italian food here rules.

I'm very very very glad to volunteer.

pipoca cart, kids

minibar

A dude is knocking on all the doors on this floor saying ‘Mini bar.’

I guess he comes into all the rooms and restocks the fridge and the snack basket. 

Yeah, he just came in and did that. 

But holy smokes was that stressful. I kept hearing the knocks and thinking they were on our door. 

But then I would hear them again even closer, so i kept feeling more and more shakily certain they were here.

I kept answering him. 

He kept not answering me, but coming somehow nearer and repeating his knocky-chant.

Then a DEAFENING knock on our door. 

“Minibar.” 

And I answered it. 

Holy gorilla pancakes. That shit was like out of Hitchcock.

I’m glad my name isn’t alfred.

And I'm glad we now have all these Cokes!

clean towels

Brazilian toilets have spray gun hoses attached, like how some kitchen sinks have spray guns for rinsing dishes.

The toilet hose guns are not for dishes though. They’re for rinsing penises, vaginas, anuses, taints, and maybe butt cheeks.

My Brazilian friend said he particularly likes to rinse his anus with his toilet hose gun.

I thought aloud that that must feel nice, but then wondered aloud what happens when you stand up. 

‘Doesn’t it drip into your clothes?’

‘No no it’s okay, you keep a little towel nearby to dry yourself.’

But that means he keeps an anus towel in his bathroom. 

Which means I’m now a little weird about drying my hands in his bathroom. 

(I don’t.) 

I mean, it’s probably a clean anus towel, if his anus was clean when he used it. 

But still.

rinse that anus, son

FIVE PARKING SPACES

I noticed while looking for apartments online that many of them seem to have weird ratios of stuff, like three bedrooms, two bathrooms, FIVE PARKING SPACES. Or two bedrooms, one bathroom, FIVE PARKING SPACES. 

I started to wonder who in the F needs FIVE PARKING SPACES. And somebody told me it’s because of traffic.

See, there are too many cars in São Paulo and the traffic is oppressive. So the city government made up this rule that each car can only drive in the city on certain days. 

So the super smart rich people came up with a SOLUTION! They bought more cars! This way they would be able to drive every day of the week. 

And that is how cars came to outnumber household members in the land of Brazil.

The End.

Wait, not really the end. That sounded uber judgmental and now I feel bad.

So i will admit something ‘hypocritical’ about myself. Ehem:

I don’t think I’m as offended by how pathologically selfish and dick it is to buy a bunch of cars when too many cars are the problem; I think I’m outraged because I’m jealous.

Not of having five cars, cause who wants to clean that noise, but of having FIVE PARKING SPACES.

I lived in brooklyn for four years and manhattan for three. Parking spaces are like liquid gold. Parking spaces are nirvana-bliss-heaven in a chocolate popcorn Tabasco. 

Finding a parking space is like hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth when your team was about to lose by three and then you score a touchdown and shoot a three pointer all at the same time. 

Parking spaces are like god massaging your neck and shoulders while jesus gives you a mani-pedi and the virgin mary gives you a facial. And these kids have FIVE.

OF THEIR OWN.

the phantom diarrhea

One of the guide books I read before coming here (can’t remember if it was American or English) advised against trying to avoid diarrhea.

There’s a clearer way to say that.

Maybe not; the author just says you’re going to get diarrhea, so don’t flip out trying to avoid it. Be smart; ask for bottled water, avoid fresh fruits and veggies rinsed in tap water and…I forget the rest. don’t lick the sidewalk. But don’t bother too much because it’s going to happen.

So I resigned myself to a couple of weeks of diarrhea. In fact i was looking forward to it. Not the diarrhea, but the IRON GUT my friend promised i would earn by being sick and having diarrhea for an extended period of time. 

Here’s her logic: Americans aren’t used to real whole food, which has like, organisms in it. Ergo, once we eat real food with organisms, our bodies flip out a little and protest with some diarrhea, But then after a while they don’t want to fight anymore, so they develop an IRON GUT that can handle everything thereafter. That’s what happens.

Wait, she also said that in the US everything we eat is made out of pesticides and corn. So when we leave the US and start eating stuff that’s not corn or pesticides we get diarrhea. But then when we keep eating the non-corn-non-pesticides, our bodies change and become better. That’s what happens.

Or something.

So anyway that all sounded pretty reasonable and I was looking forward to earning my IRON GUT. In fact I went a little crazy you could say, eating fresh fruit for breakfast (it’s so delicious here), accepting drinks with ice in them (the book advised asking if the cubes come from bottled water, but I didn’t want to look like a douche. Plus I don’t speak Portuguese), singing in the shower, and other unconscionably brave stuff.

I even had my first blog post title ready: “PAPAYARRHEA: WORTH IT.”

But you know what? Three days in and still no diarrhea. In fact I feel fine. Great. Montezuma tried me and failed. We were like Harry and Voldemort, and now that I think of it he's probably enraged by my victory. 

And not to be a jerk, but he'll probably take it out on one of you. I know I should feel guilty about this, but i'm too busy not having diarrhea to feel anything other than the comfort of not having diarrhea. HAZZAH.

I am sad though about losing the dream of the IRON GUT. I was so ready for that. after all these years of motion sickness and food allergies and being a pale and queasy weenieface, I was so ready.

...and maybe it’s this longing that has made me start to wonder if diarrhea is simply in the early stalking stages. I keep seeing shadows as i turn corners. 

Maybe Diarrhea is watching me, gathering information so it can sneak up at the worst time (or the funniest, depending on its real goals).

I think if diarrhea was a real villain in a real book it would definitely be a dude, and would look like Julian Carax in The Shadow of the Wind. Wait, if you haven’t read that book delete what you just read from your mind. And if you have, you know what i’m talking about.

Or Zorro. Or the bad guy in Roger Rabbit. Good god that’s IT. The evil guy who burns cartoons into liquid in a big canister. 

Wow, we watched some seriously f-ed up shiz in our childhood day.

OK I promise the next thing I write will be insightful and about Brazil.