"You´ll never no"

I apologize for the lack of postings this week. I have no real good reason, other than laziness! I will for sure make more of an effort to keep posting at least 2-3 postings per week so you all will know what is up with me down here in the land of capoeira and samba.

The title of this posting is taken from a t-shirt that I saw a woman wearing. I get a kick out of checking out all the t-shirts that folks have here that have English words, but that are misspelled or make absolutely no sense. One of my favorites was one that an American friend of mine found to buy that said "I am dance cowntry". Another classic was the woman on the bus the other day who was pushing 60 with a t-shirt that said "Wanted: drummer for midnight rock band". Searching for these gems among the crowd make my outings on the street more fun.

An upcoming event here in Brazil that is stirring things up is the city government election in October. They are electing city mayor and city government representative positions, and the advertising has been slowly building up to what will certainly not reach the ferver that the presidential elections had back in 2006 when I first arrived here, but that is definitely annoying in its own right. Some of the advertising is similar to that in the US: television ads, billboards, bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc. But some advertising here is uniquely Brazilian, mainly the "carros de som" or sound cars, which are cars painted with the candidates names that drive around blasting special songs that have been written and recorded to promote the different candidates. These cars drive very slowly all over the city, pausing long enough in each neighborhood so that you have time to memorize the annoying lyrics and so that this music can intrude upon your otherwise peaceful and quiet day. And to think that we are only in August now, and have 2 more months until election day! You have to just learn to tune these things out, but it sure is challenging to do this.

Another annoying thing for me, and I am sure for the graffiti artists it is heartbreaking, is that many political candidates have hired people to paint over some beautiful works of street art with ugly signs advertising the political candidates. I will try to take a picture in the next week to show you what I mean, but take my word for it, they are much uglier than the beautiful art they have decided it is their right to cover up. Now I don´t have the historical perspective to know if this always happens during elections, but it sure makes me sad to see that some of my favorite pieces have disappeared!

I guess that is all for today. I am going to head to see a Brazilian movie called "Era uma vez" (It was one time) with Vilma and will let you all know how it is. It is supposed to be a story about love between a rich girl and a poor guy from a favela. Looks like a good one!