Problems...

So, my initial hypothesis was wrong. Apparently, São Paolo has the third-highest Jewish population in the world. So why, then, are there no f'n bagels in this country?

A dude at the school told me this, and it was the first question I asked "Then why don't you have bagels?", and he thought I was being funny. But I wasn't. 

I read the 7th Harry Potter book in a couple days this weekend. Worst pacing I've ever seen in a novel. I don't think she realized she was writing the defining book in her series for 300 pages and then scrambled for the next 300 to tie all the nonsense she was spouting in the first.

Better asteroid-disaster movie: Deep impact or Armageddon? 

Wants: DVDs and BOOKS. 

DISLIKES: long hair and lack of toothpaste. 

One of the things I love about reading Glenn Greenwald is left-leaning blogs tendencies to link every time he goes after a right-wing hypocrisy, but ignoring the complete tenacity in his defending of his civil liberties values against the clear hypocrisy of the Obama Admin.

Here Greenwald goes up against Matthew Yglesias, to be sure one of the most reasonable and entertaining bloggers on foreign policy, about Yglesias' claim that Obama's disturbing record on civil liberties is understandable because that's how the executive branch works. This is a post that will not be linked.

However, a post like this will get linked like wildfire. Greenwald, of course, quite possibly could be short-sighted and underestimating the difficulties of governing in a time like this (and Yglesias' main point is probably correct), but it is quite refreshing to never see Greenwald back down from his values.

I'm losing my edge... but i was THERE

I'm incredibly full right now. This was probably my first real created meal at the pensionato. Boiled up some tortellini and poured some tomato sauce on it. Considering the popularity of toasted ravioli I wonder if the same could be had for tortellini. Mix up some cheese tortellini and calamari for some real fun.

I can't really keep a room clean.

There was a work party last night. It was at a very nice house. They had little canoli's filled with potato salad instead of cream. A series of cheeses, breads, and wines. And potato and chicken salads. I ate my fill, two days in a row now. Hard as I tried to speak portuguese, most would rather speak English. And 3 months in I'm still about as awful.

I successfully mailed a letter, though, on Friday.

Thanksgiving was on Thursday. I celebrated by going grocery shopping. I decided I'd shop at a new market. This one is closer and a bit more comprehensive. However, they do not have any pre-packaged meat. This doesn't mean processed, rather, usually markets have sliced up some cold cuts and put 'em in plastic, same with cheeses. This has just the butcher. I'm doing good on pastas now, but should the fancy arrive, I think I'll write down the fraction and point. Also, I ate a chocolate cake, pretty much a whole chocolate cake in 2 days. It wasn't portillo's sized or anything, rather more like an entenmanns.

It appears I'm missing perhaps the best Hawks team of my lifetime, even though they got shut out last night. The circus trip is brutal on any number of hosts.

It really is summer here.

Two days ago whilst walking to work, it was raining. I have no umbrella because I forget every single trip that I make to the market to buy one. So anyways I'm walking to work in the rain, which happens about once a day, and listening to music. And so all the sudden to the right of me some guy rushes next to me and puts an umbrella over my head. For 4 blocks he just walks next to me so I can be under the umbrella. It's one of those nice things I can't see happening in the states. The resulting awkward thank you and half handshake-highfive, however, seem to follow me everywhere.

On Thanksgiving I had some especially awful internet. Which was inconvenient for the phone calls home. My brother asked if he could call my cell phone, but seeing as I have about $6 on it, I told them no. My father said "I'd like to think talking to your family is more important than your minutes," but the truth is, the process it takes to re-up for this chip, there isn't really anyone i'd recommend calling my phone.

Finally, I deleted Jay-Z's blueprint III. Pretty weak album. I don't even like the songs I thought I liked 3 mos. ago.

Bloodsuckers, bubble wrap and (b)samba

Looking at my ceiling right now, there are 8 mosquitoes. This is troubling. Word has spread through their social circle. I'm easy pickins, a sitting duck. While during the day they don't bother me, they expect me to forget, at night they swoop down and leave open wounds. I cover up best I can, which means they get me in some odd places. Ever had a mosquito bite on your palm? It isn't the itchiest, but it's odd. Knuckle? Yeah. They get the feet a lot. And worst of all, they buzz right in my ear. Last night I killed three, and thought I was winning. But no, they've multiplied? The ceiling is so high, I don't know if I can do anything. I'm not even sure how so many make it up into this room, through my tiny window looking into a hallway.

Friday night before I went to bed I was out on the balcony. I heard some pops. Across the street, a homeless man was sleeping underneath awning. Wrapped in a tarp and sitting on bubble wrap. This bubble wrap was the only thing between him and the cement ground. Yet he couldn't help himself. He found popping the air bubbles so much fun he was willing to waste his comfortability. First he was popping one by one. Then, he began stomping his feet for an epic 'crack-crack-crack'x50. This, to me, seemed very short-sighted. But, I guess when life is that bad, popping bubble wrap must seem like Christmas. And boy, did he have a great Christmas.

The palm is itching now. UGh.

So, this weekend I've been going to a bunch of music acts with Dani and her friend. Her friend, through questions I've asked in PORTUGUESE, I've found out is from Rio de Jineiro, and is a lawyer. The first night we went to a small, hidden place, that when you walked in was an empty room and in the back was a make-shift bar and a piano. Samba bands played all night. Due to the intimate location, I did not attempt to dance. They were all very good at samba dancing, very good. Like a coordinated snoopy atop Linus' piano.

Especially an old man. In a fedora and blazer, he walked like he was 80. And then, it was like a scene I watched from my sister Jordynne's movie collection called "Tap." It was your typical dance movie, some dude get's out of jail, falls into the usual bad habits and meets with his old friends. Here comes trouble, right? Except his friends aren't drug dealers, they are TAP dancers, and his crime? It was innocent, non-violent, altruistic. But so anyways, his friends are all like 80, and they aren't allowed to dance anymore because of the doctors, who presumably are worried about the cardio activity on their heart. But they are unhappy, and it's a conundrum: should they dance and feel alive, or actually BE alive but feel dead? But seeing their old friend out of jail, it just causes them to dance. And these old men, who needed canes to walk, were suddenly doing crazy-legs!

And that's what this old man was like.

Ode to Cup'o'Noodles

I love you. You keep my belly full when my wallet is famished. You teach me about different cultures. You're color-coded consistency keeps my language inadequacies from becoming a problem. 

That one night we had, where I had no way to heat the water, so I used the mysterious tea pot to heat the water, while I eyed the security camera nervously, was so THRILLING. It brought us closer together, as I consumed you.

Carne, Frango, somethin someone told me was hillbilly chicken, they all ESSENTIALLY taste the same, yes, and the flavored cardboard you call meat is difficult to discern its authenticity, but my God how many lives have you saved? Jobs created? Jobs saved? 

Shrimp. Hot n spicy. 

It's a global treat, it would have been in the boxes during the berlin airlift.

I'm a proud owner.

Blogging for flogging's sake.

I learned I could download albums.

The first one said it would take 216 days to download, a total more than my Visa lasts.

But, upon second try, a much more reasonable 21 minutes sufficed.

Surfer Blood - Astrocoast, is worth a few spins. While I don't normally do well with these things, I notice some very toned down Built to spill, a dead ringer for Shins vocals, and some Citay. Good album for summer in brazil if i had headphones.

Girls-album.girls. I've been waiting to download this since before I left, but I forgot too. While I do enjoy it, it wasn't quite as good as I wanted. Few spins.

Nonetheless I needed some new blood in my itunes. I've been burning through the same stuff.

Today I ate a whole jar of pickles, what did you do??????????

not much to say...

You can point to some anybody on the street and it's likely they've had a more eventful 2 weeks than I.

I did move. I am here. 4 walls with a window into a hallway. A bed that on the first night was merely covered with towels and comfortable tshirts I felt comfortable sleeping on. The next night covered with old sheets a nice co-worker gave me.

And, almost mercifully, one of the walls in this 8 x 4 room is salmon. I can't handle anymore white walls. And no more living out of a suitcase.

But yet, no more free breakfasts. And those were important. On Saturday, which was a day of depressing bouts of nothing, absolute nothing, a day where boredom is something to do and everything else is numbness, I walked further than I needed to to get some groceries. Not enough for a week. Enough for a day. A day of eating cheetos. A day of cheese sandwiches. A week's worth of vodka. And a liter of coke. And plastic cups. 50% of each liquid into the cup. It wasn't particularly fun, it wasn't particularly helpful, but it was a task. It did give incentive to move, which was more than I normally had.

I had a 2-hr class at 8 am on Saturday morning with a Japanese student. When it became time to speak he grabbed his hair and smacked his face, looked up at the sky and torturous motions and kind of willed words out. His vocabulary is fine, he knew a lot of words, just in no coherent way. The words eeked out with no discernible pleasure, or any discernible fluidity. The vodka would've been helpful then, but it wasn't in play for hours later.

But the hours at the school are indeed the best. The only amounts of interaction I have. Going home, finishing, signifies the absolute end of the day, but I can lay in bed and stare at a salmon wall.

Can You Move To Brazil?

Hard to say my experience is an example. But how much do you like yourself? Enough to spend countless hours with it? Your meals will largely be alone. Your nights as well. Your mornings, absolutely. Your days, of course. Your weekends - those are tricky. The hostel gave the allusion that things could happen. And for the first weekend it was great. The second was made by Dani, there was no one at the hostel. The third nothing happened except for one night with a bottle of tequila, a bottle of vodka, and 2 Paolistanos and a Curitibano. That has a happy ending though.

And then the fourth here. And the fourth was brutal. Conversations in your head can only get you so far. My dreams even became boring. Probably due to self-induced hunger, I've had many dreams of merely eating. Just at a table eating. The unattainable climax is thinking about getting ice cream, but then I wake up...fuckml. I used to try and act like I had something to do when eating alone at a lanchonette, but I've resorted to just staring straight ahead. Staring up. Staring straight ahead. A conta. But then you have the walk back, and that's something.

And but then a few connections finally pull through, and things are able to turn around. But there is something awful about days just going by. They turn into months, and months, likely, is all I have. I just hope there isn't a point where someone asks me what Brazil was like and all I can muster is "It's kind of like being stuck 4x8 box with one salmon wall. But the food was great"

moving tomorrow.

self explanatory.

Nothin else has happened.

and it comes to a screeching halt.