Go, Cougar, Go!

Cruella, what exciting gossip do you have for us today?

Well. The BEST piece of interesting gossip I can think of, is there are certain people involved with the program who are like 4 feet tall and totally working the cougar thing, as in, she has been emailing some of the students and is all over the tall and well built ones in class.

What do you mean, all over them?

Well, I mean that she asked one of them (Soviet-Worker Man) >>Is Everything about you big?<<

Cruella, she can't have meant it that way-

Well, she did. And I think you know when you are making a double entendre, me being the Queen of the Double Entendre- as in I have several to tell you later.

I can't object to her taste in men. But at the same time it's kinda odd to see such blatant lust from a cougar, it is all out in the open and then some- when you wear little skimpy dresses with transparent tops, it's kinda like watching one of those bitsy dogs get all hot for a very large dog, and start humping the larger dog's leg with enthusiasm- yah.

Other gossip: Everyone on the trip has pretty much gotten them some, usually with other programme participants- which is very different from Austria-but a couple of them at least have been in front of the Help! discotheque. The ladies there are for rent you know.

Now I have yet to purchase any souvenirs, beyond my bitsy swimsuit, but I am thinking more along the lines of jewelry/one of those birds made out of semi-precious stones and less some antibiotic resistant VD. I- no. Somehow sleeping with random strangers is not so bad if they aren't getting paid for it. That makes it just so much worse for some reason.

I had always had a high opinion of law students and their professionalism, inculculated in me by people like CHITTAM and several of the Jocelyns/Joslyn and even though Mr. Peabody may be ANNOYING, he is Professional. The scales have fallen from my eyes and also let me say this: I do not personally care to find out how much of a bribe it takes to let you off violating drug laws in another country.

But Cruella, you have been good, haven't you?

Well, yes, I have. But- this is the 100% truth- I got drunk and told Robin he didn't know what I feared, (many times, y'all know exactly how annoyi ng I can be when I am drunk) because I got no reassurances from his quarter, so he decided I was being disobedient and disrespectful and !broke up with me!

Over that, Cruella? Really?

That's what I said! I still think I will go see him but the beach is beckoning today so 10b-5 paper is not going to get written anytime soon, plus I have Bar Fitness + MPRE to deal with when I return. So.

Cruella, are you sure the beach is beckoning or are you going to talk to the Mexican Sociology professor?

Y'all know I need to practice my Spanish before I go to Mexico- which, instead of my Spanish helping me with my Portuguese, the Portuguese has infected the Spanish so now it sounds a right mess. I already had a messed up combination of French/American accents, and now with Portuguese added, I'm going to sound like - I have a voice synthesiser stuck in my throat and it's stuck on shop demonstration.

Some great things have happened though, like, y'all know I have been fairly insecure about this whole experience, because I don't like it, and I used to feel fairly adventurous and go off and do exciting things, and I really don't want to be 77 years old and a grumpy unadaptable old man. I am not ready (yet) for the Fixodent Future. I need to be flexible and not so whiny, although law school + solitude + other fears of the outside etc will make you a little loopy. Well, the great thing that happened was that we had to do presentations for International Business Transactions class which preview our paper topics, so I thought, if I do something I already know about then I can spend my time working on quality rather than just putting it together in the first place, right? I'm really gunning for an A in these classes because dammit, I have been working hard and participating and so forth.
So I decided to do Special Concerns in Brazilian Arbitration Law and I found some chap's blog, in English, and I emailed him and he agreed to meet with me! I was so excited! He is the general counsel for Enel and does lots of high-power arbitration work.

This made me excited because it temporarily restored my confidence, a great deal, until I got drunk and whined at Robin about him not knowing what I fear. I felt, I can go to a foreign country where I don't know anyone and make contacts and work my groove thing! Yes! And be successful, so go Cruella!

And then my presentation was successful and a couple of people wanted it. So that was great, and y'all know how I said I wanted to not be That Student?

Well I think I may have become That Student, as in, Well, do y'all know That Student wrote 12 single spaced essay for his final and everyone else wrote 3? So this year I'm putting a page limit on it? But I think, that's a good thing.

Anyway I have a couple more random remarks:

I haven't eaten anything really terrific here. The food is ok, when I do eat it, but nothing has been spectacular.

And there are some mysteries in my building. How can traffic noise carry so well to the 11th floor? I can hear everything like it were right outside my window, and the sheer variety of street noises is impressive. I can hear a child shouting in the street perfectly clearly all the way up here.

The other mystery is, why does only one lift work at once? Every time I leave/enter the building, only one of the two works. Then they alternate during the day. Do they not want to use them up? If there were a fire, of course you aren't supposed to use the lifts anyway, but this building is full of OAPs and how are they going to get out? Then I don't think I've been in a single building in Brazil where all the lifts worked at once.

The next to last mystery (what, this is like the rosary Cruella?) is that I told y'all I had a cold- the same one everyone else has had- but this has been continuing; my body has apparently trying to produce some Guinness World Record for mucus - (ewww Cruella, yuk! Why did you have to tell us that?) Because it has and apparently it can produce a truly astonishing quantity of mucus. O, fond memories of Rio-

I'm astonished that someone tried to kill Jimmy Carter- really? No, seriously? He wasn't relevant when he was PRESIDENT. Next thing you know someone's going to try to kill Reagan, who dead, buried and senile has more influence than Carter. And this time it wasn't a giant swimming rabbit. And Carter's like, ANCIENT, give it a few days. That would make a great plan to kill Carter, I am killing him, slowly, with my thought rays (should I be writing this? Y'all know this is comedic, right? I do NOT want to kill Jimmy Carter. I do NOT want to kill anyone, especially people protected (perhaps?) by the government.) And then in a few years when he pops off because he's like 102, then you can claim credit for it. The thought rays worked! Just slowly.

More >>Fun<< in Rio

Well- (you non-commenting jerks)- I have all moved into the 21st century, only like a decade into it and started a Facebook. I was totally peer pressured into it. But y'all know, my blog is my first love, and I am sticking with it. So if you want to know what I'm actually doing, then you should read this.

So 4 more people out of our group got mugged/attacked: Streetfighter- someone came up, snatched her purse and she ran after them and GOT IT BACK, which I thought was amazing- and then three other people were walking through a tunnel and got held up at gunpoint. Granted, they shouldn't have been walking through a tunnel, and two of the guys got held up because instead of running like I would have, because I am a ninny, they tried to help. Still.

This has inspired a Gashlycrumb Tinies version of The Georgia Staters in Rio as in:

A is for Alan terminally drunky
B is for Braxton attacked by a monkey
C is for Carol who fell down the stairs
D is for Danielle
E is for Elizabeth, bitten by an infected mosquito
F is for Forsling, Bradley
G is for Gideon, strangled iwth his headband
H is for Harge, crushed by a jealous man
J is for Jameel -
I is for - Iorio, Augie,
K is for Kiwan who should have hid his junk
L is for Laura who opined once too many
M is for Mariana drugged by a bennie
N is for Natalie
O is for -
P is for -
Q is for questions, - had too many
R is for Rhett
S is for Simone dancing too funky
T is for Trina
U is for -
V is for Vint, Colin daSilva, attacked by a cougar
W is for Will, murdered by Crawford
X is for Xavier, attacked with a shiv
Y is for Yesebel, too sexy to live
Z is for -

As you can see, I have not finished it. Also, I have been thinking about nicknames for my classmates.

Soviet Worker man, Eeyore, Dorkula, 1973, Big Watch, Ron Howard, Mr. T, Rapunzel, and Brazil Nuts.

Have you been Good, Cruella?

Well, half and half. I have been Better than I expected to be, but then last Thursday was Will Chu's going away party and I tried to be good and then everyone was going out and I- got peer pressured into going. Well, seriously, when am I going to do that if not here and with a huge group? So I did, and it was ok, and I drank some things called Blue Lagoons?

And the next day I was still drunk. At least I made it; only half the class was there and this was remarked upon by the professor. She did not take it well. No one else went to class. She did say that she did not mind if we slept through class- as one person did- as long as we made it. Ok?

Then we went to Paraty (pronounced Parachi) and it was ok, but cloudy and chilly. At least it wasn't Rio. We did go out on a boat, but it wasn't as boozy a cruise as the last one, and we did play a game called >>Fuck It<< in the dark, which sounds much more exciting than it actually was.

We tried to visit several churches on Sunday, but they were closed.

I did not make that up. Also there was, as a tourist attraction, a man dressed as a slave with whom tourists could take pictures. I do not care to know what sort of person wants to have their picture taken with a man posing as a slave. Aunt Jemima could be bad taste but that is just vile.

Today a few of us went to see the Christ the Redeemer statue that Rio is famous for. We took a taxi, which ended up being rather expensive but I'd rather get mugged with my consent and preagreed price than the other way around. One of the other classes took a field trip to see a landfill and the sewage treatment plant. I was happy that was not our class. Rio smells plenty bad enough already without having to investigate the sources of the bad smells further. The Christ statue was very nice and had lovely views of the city below. Rio is quite nice the further away you get from it.

O and I had a cold, so then I took some medicine called Res- something or other. I didn't know that I felt BETTER, but I certainly did feel DIFFERENT! As in, weird!

Then - there's a long homework involved story, but the homework made me feel better (?) (told you I was sick) and then - I did feel better enough to tell Alison some jokes about pussy, which also involved banana pizza.

If you get curious enough to try banana pizza, you can eat it in Rio.

What Did Cruella Do Today?

Today, for International Business Transactions, we went on a favela tour.

What do International Business Transactions have to do with a favela? I have no clue either. I would have rather gone and seen a law firm, or a steel mill, or a container ship, or - you know, something to do with International Business Transactions. I can see smelly poor people at home. I do not need to travel thousands of miles to do so. I certainly didn't learn anything about International Business Transactions. I did engage in an International Business Transaction, I suppose, when I bought Robin a shell necklace and a magnet shaped like an ass.

Really.

However, like the little girl in Thurber who found that some book taught her more about penguins than she ever wanted to know, the favela tour taught me more about the political system of the favela and Brazil than I really wanted to know.

Actually, y'all know how I was complaining that this apartment is not cheap nor cheerful? The favela was cheap and cheerful. And it did not smell bad; in fact, quite the opposite, as people seemed to be cooking many delicious things.

There was a long diatribe- actually- many long diatribes about how if you don't mess with the drug dealers, they won't mess with you, and all the violence is inter-drug dealer related, and I thought, that is just like home.

Actually, the highlight of the trip was that we saw a tiny, squirrel-like monkey on an overhead wire.

"If that thing jumps on me, I'm going to scream like a girl," Braxton commented.

O really. "Now I have something to anxiously anticipate," I said, but I was sadly disappointed. No monkey jumped on him, or anyone else, and no one screamed like a girl.

Also various acts of violence were committed against cones by motorists.