Christmas Is Fucked, Santa Shot Down Over Brazil
First of all, Merry Christmas. Even to you Jewish peeps, whom, I was told by Mel Gibson, killed Christ. (Not cool.) Anyway, Jesus is now irrelevant and this is Santas day. Or it was until he attempted to fly over Brazil.
Earlier this week, Santa Claus we shot down over Rio de Janeiro. No, I am not kidding.
Drug traffickers in a Rio slum opened fire on a helicopter carrying a Santa to a children's party, apparently mistaking it for a police helicopter.
Rio de Janeiro has quite a few slums that are controlled by gangs. Check out the movie City of God if you want to know what happened to Santa. Police dont even venture into the slums too often, and when they do, they go with full force, using helicopters and armored vehicles. They do not fly over in a bright red outfit. Ever!
Santa was not injured, but the helicopter was damaged and had to return to the base. Bullet holes were later found in the fuselage. He took a car to the kids party.
Merry Christmas, porn lovers.
Brazil Hosts Enormous Gay Pride Parade
Blowing away all previous gay pride events, like ever, Brazils Sao Paulo Gay Pride Parade managed to draw an incredible crowd of over 3 million party-people yesterday. According to AP writer Stan Lehman:
In comparison, recent gay pride parades in New York and San Francisco have drawn tens of thousands of people, and world gay pride day celebrations in Berlin in 2004 attracted between 200,000 and 500,000 participants.
Sorry America and Europe, you just cant compete with that Brazilian pride. A friend of mine attended the LA parade this past weekend and he mentioned that the turnout kind of sucked. Regardless, its clearly a great thing to generate such a huge turnout for an event where the goal, says organizer Nelson Matias Pereira, is to create a world where racism, sexism and homophobia, in all their forms, no longer exist.
Saying to hell with stereotypes, there were apparently lots of trucks blasting disco and electronic music and the atmosphere was that of an all around kick-ass party. Heres some video footage shot by the lovely Jezel:
You'd better believe those Brazilians can shake it. Cheers to the world for being cool for a day.
YouTube Shut Down in Brazil
YouTube has been ordered to shut down in Brazil until it can find a way to prevent a video of super model Daniela Cicarelli and her boyfriend Tato Malzoni in the act of coitus in shallow waters off the cost of Cadiz from surfacing on its site. Cicarelli sued Google after footage of the couple aired on the popular video website.
A Brazilian judge has ordered YouTube to find a way to stop Brazilians from viewing steamy footage of supermodel Daniela Cicarelli and her boyfriend on the highly trafficked video-sharing site, court officials said Thursday.
But the clip still appears periodically on YouTube, prompting the expanded order from Sao Paulo state Supreme Court Justice Enio Santarelli Zuliani on Tuesday, the court's press office said in a statement.
Primary attempts to remove the footage have proved futile as users continue to upload the video under different names and descriptions. Brazilian courts have ordered the temporary shutdown until Google finds a way to implement filters which can eliminate the possibility of the footage resurfacing.
Lawyer Rubens Decousseau Tilkian, who represents Cicarelli's boyfriend, said YouTube had not gone far enough to prevent access to the clip because people keep posting it using different names for the video.
"The Internet is democratic and has to be defended, but this struggle is to have some level of control to avoid the violations of people's fundamental rights, like privacy and intimacy," Tilkian said in a phone interview.
"The problem is that the system is failing," Tilkian said. "Our objective is simply to get this video off-line."
Sao Paulo state Supreme Court Justice Enio Santarelli Zuliani heard Cicarelli's case against google and ordered the shutdown. The court's order affects all of Brazil and now automatically will be heard by a panel of three judges who will decided whether the order is permanent and whether Google will be responsible for the $119,000 per day in damages Cicarelli is asking for each day the video is viewable.
The video footage has disappeared from YouTube but can easily be found online with a quick google search. It is likely that the ultimate filters of boredom and time will be more effective and efficient than anything google engineers eventually concoct.
Fathers Lock Up Your Daughters! Or Just Lock Up Your Viagra...
So
I have this girlfriend that steals Viagra from her dad. Seriously. I know this because I found it while fumbling through her bedside drawer, half asleep with a migraine, praying to the hangover gods that I might find a trusty pain killer. I grabbed what I was hoping was Vicodin (or at least prescription strength ibuprofen) and was about to pop the little guy in my parched mouth when my friend interrupted with a shriek, Dont take that! Initially I assumed she was just being selfish and wanted to keep the tiny, compressed bundle of migraine-be-gone joy to herself. Thats
uhhh
Viagra, she mumbled, and then explained how she steals it from her dads medicine cabinet when she visits just in case she beds a guy who might need a lift after their drunken bar date. All right then.
Needless to say I never found a painkiller. But the situation led to some thinking about how many other women do that very same thing. After all, it did happen on Rescue Me right? Denis Learys character was continuously dosed with a cocktail of sleeping pills and Viagra by his disturbed pseudo-girlfriend. Isnt TV precious? My point being, this kind of thing doesnt just happen on TV. My girlfriend is proof. Like, real people in real time kind of proof. And its not just American women that are doing the dosing these days.
According to Reuters, it seems that a town in central Brazil has implemented a program nicknamed Pinto Alegre or Happy Penis, where mayor Joao de Souza Luz dishes out free prescriptions of Viagra to elderly couples.
"Since we started the free distribution of sexual stimulants, our elderly population changed. They're much happier," he said.
Ah, but heres the catch. In order to discourage cheating (because we all know that getting that first hard-on in ten years must make men feel like theyve got to share it with the world), the town only gives the free Viagra to the wives who've registered for the happy-old people-sex program. Brazil thinks it's pretty smart.
What the geezers dont realize is that they should just do what we sneaky Americans dowait for your wife or girlfriend to claim shes too tired to have sex, let her pass out, fumble through her bedside drawer, snag the sex pills, buckle yourself into your motorized wheelchair and hightail it to the nearest peep show.
Darwin Throws Us a Curveball
In the southern Brazilian city of Passo Fundo. things are going interspecies. Eighteen-year-old Cassia Aparecida de Souza claims that the neighbor dog had his way with their cat, Mimi, sometime three months ago.
On November 15th, Mimi gave birth to a surprise litter of 6...things.
Three had the traits of a cat (and died shortly later), and three that held the traits of a dog (all of which survived).
A geneticist from the Passo Fundo University in Brazil is planning to take blood samples to verify whether or not the three surviving "puppies" are actually the offspring of Mimi the cat.
Go To Brazil For Rape, Murder And Assault On Election Day
In another example of how Brazil is party central, a Brazilian law allows you to get away with the most heinous of crimes, as long as you do it out of eyesight of the police. The law does not allow police to arrest anyone five days before and two days after an election, unless they are actually caught in the act of committing the crime. It was designed to ensure fair elections because local politicians in the past would have their opponents arrested on election day and locked up until the polls closed.
Today Adriano Saddi Lima Oliveira thinks it is the best law in the world. Oliveira is a 23-year-old law student who confessed to hiring hitmen to kill his mother. He had his mother killed because she was tossing away the family inheritance on her boyfriend. Police would very much like to arrest the killer but they cant because elections are on Sunday. They hope to arrest Oliveira next week.
In the election, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva looks to have been forced into a second-round runoff with former São Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin. The runoff will be on October 20th, so grab your knives and buy a ticket to beautiful Brazil!
Think Your Government is Corrupt? Wait Until You See Brazil
Influence peddling and questionable lobbying have become the coin of the realm in many Western democracies, and scandals like the one that brought down super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff have caused many to wonder whether their governments have been subverted by corporations and other large donors. It turns out that Americans are in the minor leagues when it comes to taking bribes, while the heavy hitters are in Brazil.
A congressional panel in Brazil has recommended that 72 deputies and senators be expelled for taking bribes.
The panel has been investigating a huge corruption ring accused of profiting from inflated contracts to supply ambulances to local authorities.
The 69 deputies and three senators comprise more than a tenth of the sitting members of Brazil's Congress.
The BBC's Tim Hirsch in Sao Paulo says the situation is unprecedented even for a country used to corruption scandals.
The panel, the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI), found that the accused had taken money and gifts in a complex fraud linked to the supply of ambulances to local authorities across Brazil, dubbed Operation Leech by the federal police.
Even when you're stuck with the likes of Bill Frist, John Boehner and Tom Delay, you know that there are limits to the extent of their corruption, mostly because they're living their lives under the microscope of the Washington press corps. While it may not be the best idea in the world to trust the integrity of our government to the same reporters who never questioned the validity of claims that Saddam Hussein was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction without a shred of evidence, the transparency that exists in America (and most Western democracies) as a result of virtually ubiquitous press isn't all that bad. Which makes a scandal like this even worse; it's tough to imagine the response if ten percent of Congress were unceremoniously kicked out of office because they were blatantly taking bribes, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be good. What was that old cliche about power corrupting again?
Now Our Cars Are Going to be Fat Too
The Centers for Disease control estimates nearly two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight and the problem is increasing. . As fast food restaurants and fat filled Starbucks pop up on every corner, Americans just get wider and wider. The number one plastic surgery in the US is now liposuction, which is a healthy and delightful replacement for exercise.
The good news is only one out of every five American children is overweight due to sugary snacks like sodas and high-fat diets as well as the copious amount of time they spend in front of the television and video games. Turns out it is difficult to burn calories while you are playing Halo. Enjoy your diabetes, Billy. The solution to our nations husky problem is obvious and simple:We must rebuild our cities so people walk instead of drive. Shouldnt take long.
But a new horror is waiting on the horizon. Our automobiles may become fatter than we are. Currently Brazil produces ethanol made from sugar cane and it is considered to be very successful. But Brazilians and their autos are just plain sexier than Americans and it is very hot. Our cars dont have the same advantage. Also, sugar is much cheaper in Brazil than in the United States, so the economics of sugar-based ethanol might not work in America.
Currently sugar in the U.S. is made from two sources: beets in some northern and western states, and cane in a few southern states, as well as Hawaii. Chubby farmers who dont put stairs in their fields most probably grow it. There is skepticism among some sugar growers that ethanol from sugar will ever work, as they believe the food value is better for sugar. Another concern is that Americans may pull over on roads and start sucking on their exhaust pipes, which would burn their lips.