City of Tiny Lights

I rant periodically about this and get highly irate when a driver passes a red light, which is frequent here, but I can understand very well why it happens. Venice is the City of Canals, Anchorage is the City of Lights (I got this from wiki), Someplace Else (whatthefuck I read it somewhere but forget) is the City of Towers (Seattle? Toronto? Or, apparently, someplace called Sharn on another world), Porto Alegre is the City of Traffic Lights.
I believe there is not one road in PoA without a traffic light at least every 100 yards; and what's more they are synchronized to turn red as you approach. One cannot help accelerating just an incy wincy to get through that red light when you're in a tad of a rush and the previous 3 lights in the past 300 yards turned red in yer face.

10 things and some Nice Photos

It seems that the current craze is listing the ten things one must do before one dies, or the ten books one must read, 10 places one must visit or whatever:
ah well, here's a mixture, sort it out yersel:

1. Stonehenge.
2. Fart Loudly in the Presence of Her Majesty the Queen of England.
3. Make Love in a Tub of Heinz Baked Beans.
4. Make a List of Ten Things You Must Do Before You Die.
5. Charles Palliser's "The Quincunx".
6. Visit Ankh-Morpork on The Discworld and have a few beers in the Broken Drum.
7. Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
8. Terra del Fuego.
9. Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood".
10. Lie Down and Make Sure You Are Very Comfortable.

Bloody hell, took all morning that did.

Look at THIS and click on "more pictures"

National Identity Crisis

An ongoing debate amongst Welsh people is whether we can accept being called British, there are those that vehemently refuse to be called British and only accept Welsh! Never "English" of course.
"Welsh! Never British!", I've seen in these on line discussions.

CRAP! You are British!

Whenever people ask me here where I'm from or what my nationality is I always reply: Britain and British but I'm not English (because it's far easier to begin thus), THEN I have to go on to explain that I'm Welsh and about the differences.

WE ARE BRITISH! GO STUDY HISTORY!
From the Romano-Greek - "Pretanni" or "Britannia" and - DUH! - think about your school history lessons...when were the Romans around?? UH? EH?? and then... when did the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrive??? Wasn't there a few hundred years time lapse? Who were there first? The Pretanni or the Saesson and Angles?? Is it some kind of coincidence that ANGLE-LAND sounds remarkably like ENGLAND??!! OF COURSE NOT!!

I'm British AND Welsh.

And of course certainly not English.

Thank you and good night.

What the FUCKIN' Blazes??!!

As I write there is the sound of gunshots in the streets. It's freakin' 12.30 lunchtime for freek's sake! I actually began this post with the following:

The United Nations Commission for Finding Things Out has found out that Brazil is: Corrupt, Violent and Racist. What? Really? How so??

Then I heard the shots and modified the post. Last Sunday night around 11pm there was a big gun battle, the worst I've heard since I've been here, must've gone on for a good 10 mins and I believe I counted 3 or 4 separate weapons from different directions. Perhaps today is the counter-attack. I took a peek out on the terrace and saw the usual bunch of skinny clowns rubber necking in some directions, then I saw one of them with a hand gun in his ...er hand (sorry!), it was a big 'un, quite possibly a Browning 9mil or whatever the equivalent is here; that's the first time I've actually seen one armed, I thought about taking a pic with my mobile but it wouldn't've captured anything at that distance.

I've had another surreal experience at the bank, my card was blocked because I haven't yet updated my details by proving my income. I mean I've been depositing between R$2000 and R$4000 every month without fail for the past six years and every year I have to prove that I earn a salary, I mean WHAT THE BLAZES?!

Dewi Sant

Tuesday last, my conversation with Vivi, Big Boss Lady of the Shamrock, went something like this:

Me: So you'll be doing St. Patrick's again this year.
Vivi: Oh yes, of course, you know the usual stuff, green beer, green people, etceterah.
Me: What about St. David's, are you going to do St. David's?
Vivi: What's that?

So I didn't go to the Shamrock last Sat'day, I stayed home and sank loads of Slava.

May the Gods Bless the Beer makers!

WHAT THE BLAZES??!! one and two

What the blazes??!! (1)

I object strongly to my country's flag being used as a snobby upmarket fashion trade mark, I don't mean just a t-shirt design, I have several Y Ddraig Goch t-shirts myself. I mean the image used as an actual trade mark. Brazilian company Carmim use the passant dragon image on their clothes and fashion accessories. Okay, it may not be red and of course we don't have the patent on our flag, but check this out:






Now I can't go out in my Y Ddraig Goch t-shirts without people thinking I'm a rich fashion follower who buys Carmim clothes! YES, It makes me mad. Here's the link if any Welsh person wants to write an angry e-mail off to them, I just did.


WHAT the blazes??!! (2)

Everywhere I sweep there are long black hairs (as well as cupim wings), I mean what the blazes??!! Where do they come from? Long black wimmin? I would say they come from the Good Lady, but I mean, how come she's not freekin' bald by now?

Juan Evans Hospital

Encouraging news to balance out my last post: A bi-lingual road sign, look at the flag in the background, and that building, which perhaps could be mistaken for a valley's Presbyterian Hall, is a 19th Century Spanish colonial structure. Gaiman in Patagonia is the town, kudos for mayor Gabriel Restucha for encouraging the Welsh language there.

Siaradwch yn Gymraeg yn gyntaf!

There's a report on the BBC site about low use of Welsh language services offered by businesses and public services and some of the comments made by WELSH PEOPLE just make me want to rip my hair out! (Or rip their hair out):

"I can speak five languages pretty well, but I find Welsh not only ugly to speak, but really difficult to pick up - I presume that's why most classes are several times a week". Clive Graham, Swansea.
For a start, a person who says any language is "ugly to speak" should have their tongue ripped out. Classes are several times a week idiot, because people see it as an important heritage to preserve, NO language is "really difficult to pick up" especially if you're living in the country where that language is spoken. Go take your 5 languages to where they speak them and get the fuck out of Wales, assfuck!

"Why oh why do we waste vast sums of money on trying to prop up the Welsh language. As a monoglot English speaking Welshman I am sick and fed up with funding bilingual roadsigns, dual language paperwork and having my children denied the option of learning a second foreign language because they have to learn Welsh." Dave H

I want to kill this person. Dave H. your children already speak a foreign language - ENGLISH! You are in WALES idiot.

"Take up of welsh language services is so low because people are allowed to make a FREE CHOICE as to what they speak and therefore chose English; despite attempts at ramming it down our throats. English is the international language of the World and being able to speak it is one of the single greatest 'life skills' any person on this planet can have."Andy, Cardiff

Another one I'd dearly love beat over the head with a Large Welsh Dictionary. Welsh rammed down our throats??? What about English, about 800 years of it being rammed down our throats, it's time we made a change.

Yes I feel strongly about this. And I am aware that this is terribly hypocritical of me, as I make my money from teaching the English language and you may be surprised to learn that I don't speak Welsh myself, I grew up during the time when it wasn't being promoted and encouraged (NOT "rammed down our throats"), at school Welsh lessons were twice a week and not obligatory after 3rd year. However I do believe that the Welsh language must be encouraged at all levels in all areas and I am also of the opinion that Welsh Language medium schools must be phased in and English medium phased out completely. I deeply regret now that I missed a marvelous opportunity to learn the language which would have opened up a whole new culture for me as the Portuguese language has for me here. I live in Brazil I learned and I speak fluent Portuguese. Those of you who live in Wales should learn Welsh; if you don't like it or think it's an ugly language go live in England with your saeson cousins.

Bugger it, it's not hypocritical at all! If I lived in Wales I'd make the strongest effort now to learn the language in a shorter time as possible. And I am learning through internet and cdrom. Not much demand for Welsh in Porto Alegre, though I'm considering moving down to Patagonia.

Yours HUFFED.

THAR HE BLOWS!

A new addition to my collection of "Spot the Porn in the Classics", this is another from Moby Dick, which I've returned to after a long period of reading Portuguese lit. Aside from the numerous references to barrels of sperm and sperm here there and everywhere, referring to the sperm whale oil and I'm not at all sure if old Herman wrote in all innocence, Our narrator, Ishmael is quite the gay sailor boy, as we've already seen; given the task of manipulating the oil which begins to crystallize, he gets rather carried away with himself into a joyous rapture:

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!

Jolly good show, nothing much to say after that really!

ILMATAR

I was treated to a spectacular air show at sundown yesterday; after a 10 km run (yes I'm up to 10 km now, I'll be doing a bloody marathon next if I'm not careful), I was sitting in the cage and thinking a few cold beers would go down very nicely indeed and help recuperate essential biological substances lost during the process of physical exertion . Upon investigation I discovered my fridge was indeed stocked with the necessary liquid formulae. I sat and quaffed, quaffed and sat. And as I quaffed and sat, I observed that a number of small birdie creatures were preforming some pretty damn fine aerobatic maneuvers, I henceforth opened the cage and set my instrument of posterior repose upon the terrace and there commenced to be astounded, indeed timberlyshiverated, by the continuing antics of aforementioned birdie creatures as they plunged, dived, swooped and swerved about my cranial member, apparently, as I perceived later, in a wild hunt of tiny winged blattodea life forms.

MPISHI ANAPIGA MUCHAWI !

MPISHI ANAPIGA MUCHAWI!

ON THIS DAY in 1879.

A British expeditionary column of 2000 men were slaughtered almost outright by a powerful Zuli impi because of the incompetence of a pompous English git, one Lord Chelmsford, making yet another military fuckup, one of many in the History of the Great (fuckedup) British Empire. Isandlhwana was the place. Chelmsford had previously said at the outbreak of war: 'I shall strive to be in a position to show them how hopelessly inferior they are to us in fighting power, although numerically stronger.', yeah, what an arsehole.

FOUR THOUSAND of the 20,000 strong impi marched on to Rorke's Drift, a small outpost and temporary hospital for sick British soldiers, loosely defended by a skeleton force of some 150 men who just happened to be there at the time. 140 against 4000, helluva fight! Anyway this was Holywoodized in Zulu with Michael Caine and Stanley Baker. There must be something in my Welsh blood and a past life calling to me, because I posted THIS a few days ago just on a whim. The 140 were mostly from a Welsh regiment (fighting the English bloody wars for them!).

There are two scenes which actually bring tears to my eyes, one is when the Zulus are in full voice, one of the soldiers at the front says something like, "Do you think the Welsh can do better than that, Owen?" Owen replies with, "Well, they've got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that's for sure", and they proceed with Men of Harlech. The other is when the Zulus are singing in beautiful melodic harmony, thousands of deep baritone voices, the lads are preparing for the final assault, when they would probably be sliced open by the assegai, when one of the older ones recognizes the Zulu song and begins to laugh hysterically, he's finally flipped the others reckon. No, he says, they are giving us a salute to brave warriors and withdrawing.

Pass the freaking hankies again! sniff.

izimpondo zankomo

Ye bunch o' pervies!

Taking a squint at my feedjit reveals loads of hits on "I'm a jiggly tits man", I googled "jiggly tits" and found my blog 6th on the list after a whole bunch of youtube videos (presumably featuring jiggly tits), and a classic first on the list being "juicy tits and jiggly boobs" with the url of www.jugglyjugs.com, oh how beautifully rich the English language is!

This morning I wuz listening to Rush, Moving Pictures, one track, Xanadu, is based on the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I snatched up my The Oxford Library of English Poetry (vol. II, Addison to Young, through Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth, bunch of bloody drunkards and druggies if ever there were) to read over it again, not one mention of jiggly tits or juggly jugs, I was a little disappointed;

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

shit, it's fucking ace like (blast me for a fried pumpkin, I'll never make a literary critic, imagine "review of latest Nobel Prize winner's work: fucking doo dah man, read it!"). Also by STC is The Rime (sic) of the Ancient Mariner which runs on for 18 pages of TOLoEP:

It is an ancient mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

Old Sam was totally blasted on opium of course when he wrote that stuff. A story goes that once when he awoke from an opium induced dream he began writing Xanadu, still stoned as a turnip, when there was a knock on the door and the dreamy vision of that deep romantic chasm which slanted down the green hill athward a cedarn cover, just went POOF to frikkin' smitheries. The Man from Porlock, who came a-knocking on the door, was apparently an innocent insurance salesman who unwittingly fucked up a great classic.

How many times have we been visited by that person from Porlock?

WELSHMEN WILL NOT YIELD!

Men of Harlech stop your dreaming
Can't you see their spear points gleaming
See their warrior pennants streaming
To this battlefield
Men of Harlech stand ye steady
It cannot be ever said ye
For the battle were not ready
Stand and never yield
From the hills rebounding
Let this song be sounding
Summon all at Cambria's call
The mighty force surrounding
Men of Harlech on to glory
This will ever be your story
Keep these burning words before ye

WELSHMEN WILL NOT YIELD!

Sniff! Pass the tissues!
Enough patriotism for today.

We've yielded to the saeson language, I'm bloody teaching the damdest thing (earns me quite good dosh actually), so if you've been following my new blog, follow it again because I've changed the name and the URL.

LIFE

No matter how much you sweep the floor, you will never entirely get rid of those fuggin' cupim wings.

Count Fosco's a Bastard, don't believe him

Will Ladislaw in Middlemarch has been labelled as "An Italian with white mice", I'm wondering, is it a reference to Count Fosco of Wilkie Collins' The Women in White? Answers on a postcard please...
By the way yous may want to check out my new BLOG, blast me for a freeking' pumpkin' if I ain't got time to maintain THIS one let alone my other 2 about Porto Alegre, and now a NEW one! What?! I mean bloody hell! Anyway, I'll try and like I says in the info, I've been teaching English here in Brazil for more than 16 years, s'bout time I wrote some crap about it. What the fuck is Present Perfect again?