Thor's Rant on Brazil (Fifth Time on the Computer)

"Do you speak Brazilian?"

Oi. I'm back.

I'm actually gonna write the agenda this time. Here it is below.

BLOG - corrections

30 poems read ✔

War lit.: pro or anti?

Reader's workshop

HW - FINAL DE SEMANA!

So Ben (the one with the N in their last name) chose me. We (me and Frenchman) were not prepared. I even used my skip card, but Greg used his imaginary +4 card and changed the color to Brazil (??????). So, I succumbed. And here I am.

The kids (Greg, Ben, Ben, Koen) read their bajillion minute long poem about everything that happened in our times at Emerson (and the things that happened outside of it, if you know what I mean). Some others read their poems and stuff, but let's not get onto that. I'm going to go into the subject of today; BRAZIL.

And now, the appropriate text color change.

That's more like it.

Alrighty, so here we go. I'm this shade of green, and Bruno is this shade. 

I've been pissing on Argentina lately, and I've really ignored how bad our country is too. So here's the spinoff of the Argentina rants. I'm gonna attempt to cram everything I hate about Brazil into these measly blocks of text here. It's going to be quite a mouthful. Let's roll.

First off, I'll keep things local. We come from a part of Sao Paulo called Baixada Santista, home of the first city in Brazil (Sao Vicente), the city we're from (Santos), and the city where our friends live (Guaruja). Our city, Santos, is home to the largest port in Latin America. Now, you would say, why are you ranting on that? That's a fact worth boasting about! Well, what's just as impressive as that is the quality of the water. Santos is on an island, which is in a bay, so that alone restricts water flow from the sea. Then there's the harbor, which by default renders the water even worse. And this isn't a problem exclusive to us; you've probably heard about the water in Rio de Janeiro. But there's also Porto Alegre, Vitoria, etc. We travel to places that are states away just to experience what clean sea water is like. Salvador, Florianopolis, and Natal come to mind. 

However, that really doesn't matter much. What really comes to mind when Americans think of Brazil is usually the Amazon, or football, or Rio, or politics, or that. Those are all very flawed thoughts (except for the politics, that's very accurate). Let's start off with the Amazon, soon to be the biggest grassland in the world. Although the government is going to make deforestation illegal soon, companies that knock down trees to make room for soy bean plantations or cattle grazing land are upping up their pace to get as much wood out of the rainforest before 2024, the date where it's going to be outlawed. And that sucks. We're getting rid of not only a big source of our tourists, but also the environment and a bunch of cool stuff, many of which can only be found in the Amazon. That sucks! This sucks! So how about we stop this or something, would that be cool?

Next up is football. Like our politics, it's corrupt. And unlike the stereotype, our city teams are bad.  Santos FC (Neymar came from here! So did Pele!) lost to Barcelona 4-0 in Japan for the 2011 FIFA Club World Cup and lost again 8-0 when Neymar got transferred to Barcelona for his first game there. And I'm not even going to mention how many times coaches get transferred and fired and whatever for scandals and bribes. I forgot which teams specifically, but Flamengo (one of Rio's four teams; the others are Vasco da Gama, Botafogo, and Fluminense) is probably the only one that really comes to mind. They had some corruption scandals that damaged their reputation and changed up their executive staff, and that was kind of interesting to watch. Porto Alegre's team Gremio also lost to Real Madrid 1-0 for the 2017 Club World Cup, but that's still good compared to ours (-___-).

*INTERMISSION*

UNFORTUNATELY, Ms. Nakada decided to be mean, and therefore did not let me contribute to this blog, but, don't worry, kids, you'll learn about the Welsh diaspora in mine.

*UN-INTERMISSION*

We're back. And here's some stuff about Rio. 

A huge portion of their population lives in favelas, or slums. Not really the scenario that comes to mind when you think of the city, right? The first Rio (the movie) is a good reference to see how life is there, except it takes place in February or March (it depends) when Carnival happens, so it doesn't really paint the whole canvas for the entire year. I'll give you a hint - MOSQUITOES EN MASSE. Adding to that, you've probably heard of all the stuff that happened during the Olympics in 2016 (budget cuts, robberies, sea water, corruption, blah blah blah) and how it turned out in the long run. Even worse, it's sad how the city basically pretended the favelas didn't exist in front of all the incoming tourists, ignoring a bunch of the culture that the city is known for. Finally, don't go out at night. Just don't.

Now, we're really getting into the nitty gritty. BRAZILIAN POLITICS, CARALHO. Yes, such a term that is synonymous with corruption. ↞ Absolutely false, don't let the Gringo news distract you from the glory of our beautiful country true.

Hey. I'm not a Gringo. Anyway, we've two syllables for you: Lula. Or, wait, Dilma. Or, actually, Temer... I actually don't even know anymore. It's the thing where the first one went to jail, the other one was impeached, and the third one is just... totally Brazilian.

Still true. Well, let's get in. Let's elaborate first on Lula, where things really start to turn bad. So, he's a socialist in a capitalist economy, and he wanted to make said capitalist economy a socialist utopia. How do you do that? Well, ignoring the basic principle that you can't change a country's system of government without causing major consequences (Soviet Union comes to mind?), he tried. And guess what happened? Major consequences! The economy went down!

*INTERMISSION*

Brandon wants to be mentioned. Say hi, Brandon.

I was here.

*UN-INTERMISSION*

So, his effects were further intensified by Dilma. Dilma made the economy go down even further by basically being Lula 2.0 and intensifying socialism. She got screwed, got impeached, and whatever. She's still doing some crazy stuff with Petrobras (government-owned petroleum company), some say. As for Temer, he has a 5% approval rating. Well, bye. Look up Operation Car Wash.

*INTERMISSION*

Veronica wants to say hi. Say hi, Veronica.

No matter how bad Argentina may be, Venezuela will always be worse. :D 

*UN-INTERMISSION*

Tchau ^_^