Graduation Balls and Cuba Calls

None of the pictures from São Paulo were that great, but I did get some good ones from the graduation ball I went to last week. It was for Andrea's cousin's graduation and it was last Friday. I can say, without a doubt, that it was the best party I've been to since I've been in Brazil! Her graduating class was about 30-40 stundents and each student brought about 30 guests so there was roughly about 1,000 people there. They had an open bar, OPEN BAR DUDE!, and lots of free food that waiters were walking around with. The band was really, really good too. I wore my Dress Blues and that was definitely interesting. I was getting A LOT of attention from everyone else there, it was funny. I had a few Brazilians come up to me and ask me what uniform it was. Andrea looked beautiful too!

I have more news regarding Cuba as well. On the 5th I am departing Brazil for 4 days of additional training in Quantico and Washington. Turns out I'm not coming back to Brazil after that, I'm going straight on leave. So for all you folks back home, I should get there around the 10th. I may stop over in Ohio for 3 days first though, so it may be the 13th instead. Altogether I'll be taking 18 days of leave. There is a slight possibility I might get to stay in Texas longer if my Cuban visa takes a long time to get. From what I've heard that's what usually happens. I'm pretty excited about coming home, I can't wait to get my drink on with my friends in Tejas.

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Update:

Unfortunately, as soon as I published this update I had 3 spam comments. These are the first spam comments I've received on my blog and I'm sure they won't be the last. So to thwart those fuckers I've disabled anonymous comments for now. Sorry about you guys without Blogger accounts but if you want to throw your .02 cents in the ring you're going to have to register now.

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One Last Update:

Holy shit! Apparently blocking those anonymous spam comments wasn't enough. They spam with registered comments too! If anyone knows how to keep these bloody parasites from posting comments please let me know. Since the previous measure didn't do much to stop it I am re-enabling anonymous comments. But please, at least leave your name if you're going to post one. There is even a box on the comment form to put your name in!

Walken Campaign Debunked

Since I posted this a few days ago, it deserves a follow up and some explanation. When I first saw the Walken for President campaign site I was pretty skeptical that it was legit. But entertaining the idea of Walken as President is certainly interesting.

As I thought, it would only be a matter of days after that before Snopes investigated it and post their findings. Apparently Walken plays a role in the new film Wedding Crashers as the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. I have to agree with Snopes on this one, it's either from an overzealous fan of Walken's or it's a viral marketing ploy like ilovebees.com from the Halo2 marketing campaign.

On a different note, I talked to my brother a few days ago. I'm pretty excited that I'm going to get to watch him play football at his homecoming game when I go home. When I talked to him he said I needed to go watch Wedding Crashers and he said it was even better than Old School! He hasn't been wrong on movies so far, he was definitely right when he said I would like Napoleon Dynamite (but who doesn't?). I can't wait to watch it! I might have to wait until I get back to the states to see it, I doubt it will get to Brazil before I leave.


Check out these hardchargers from my detachment. Yours truly is on the far left, I look a lot smaller when I'm in the background! We took this picture earlier today. Also, I should have the pictures from São Paulo soon since my girlfriend's cousins are in town...so patience my friends, patience. I'll post those soon.

Expect The Unexpected

If there's one thing I've come to learn in the Marine Corps its that they'll send you wherever they want. Regardless of what they've told you before. As I mentioned in my previous post I was given 7 post choices for my next assignment...chyeah, right! Instead they're sending me to fucking Havana, Cuba of all God-forsaken places!


I don't know what you think of when you think of Cuba, but for me it's not hot Cuban chicks, nice beaches, and fat stogies. Lucky me gets to go to what I think may be the only post in the world with a no fraternization policy! Which means I'm not allowed to socialize with any of the local populace. Don't get me wrong, Marines are great most of the time and there will be quite a few American employees there but sometimes it's nice to mix it up with some strangers or meet some new folk. We're also restricted to staying within an 8-mile radius of the embassy. So there ya have it, the ingredients for sitting around on your ass all day without anything to do.

It's not all bad I guess. I'll have enough spare time to do other more productive things like work out or maybe actually practice my guitar should I feel motivated to do so. It also means I should get a nice post for my third, and last, assignment. And my year here in Brazil has been all I could ask for. At least I'm not going to Baghdad or Kabul.

What This Country Needs Is More Cowbell!

I don't know if this is true or not yet but on August 9th Christopher Walken announced his intention to run in the 2008 presidential campaign. His campaign site has a limited amount of information on it at the current time. There also appears to be a mirror for the site here.

A few debunking sites, like Snopes.com, will most likely look into this to find out if it is a prank or not. I'd be pretty skeptical that this is real and I'm calling shenanigans for the time being. I think this would have hit the mainstream press by now if it was real. Plus their websites are being hosted by what looks like a game site hosting company. If it did turn out to be legit he'd make an interesting candidate with that unique speech pattern and body language of his. The debates would certainly be interesting to watch. hehe. Post comments if you hear anything else about this.

DC Post Action

Two for one special today! This is the kind of thing I figured deserved it's own post. While I was in São Paulo I got an unexpected call from my assistant detachment commander (A/ for short). She called to tell me that Delta Company had selected me for a DC post. No, that's not Washington, D.C. ...I wish... DC stands for designated country. They're the countries that have a high counter-intelligence threat. I wouldn't volunteer for a DC post but since I'm being "voluntold" to do one I'll make the best of it. Here are the options she gave me:

• Moscow, Russia
• St. Petersburg, Russia
• Minsk, Belarus
• Jerusalem, Israel
• Tel Aviv, Israel
• Beijing, China
• Chengdu China

I had to pick my top three choices out of those so I submitted St. Petersburg, Tel Aviv, and Beijing. Fuck, I wish I would have put Jerusalem instead of Beijing. I've already been to Japan and Korea, I don't want to see any more of that asian wasteland! Moscow seems like it would be fun, but that's a detachment of like 24 Marines and I don't want to go to a large detachment if I can help it. Odds are pretty good that I'll be going to one of those 7 places in October though. When I find out more I'll post here.

São Paulo Rocks!

Wow, I've really been procrastinating with the posts lately. But by the time I've been getting home this week I'm usually too drained to pull together any thoughts coherent enough to merit posting on here. To give you a little taste of what I'm talking about I got back from São Paulo Sunday night and had to work the next day.

São Paulo is mind-numbingly ginormous! A veritable concrete jungle! When we were making the landing approach at the airport it was just city as far as you could see. The flight there was rather cramped...the airlines aren't very accommodating when it comes to their 6" ft. plus passengers. To this I can testify!

However the ol' girlfriend and I got there and settled into our hotel with relative ease. Our hotel, which was nice, was pretty much smack dab in the middle of the city which was convenient for going out and whatnot but it still took at least an hour to get anywhere. The first night we didnt do much besides have dinner and hit up one of the malls and rest. Thursday we went to watch her cousin's graduation/fashion show. Which was interesting to say the least...one of the model's had a dress that turned into a tent, some kind of Transformer shit. Each subsequent day/night that followed was pretty much filled with hitting the different shopping districts and going out to various clubs or bars. Once my girlfriend gets the pictures from her cousin I'll throw some of them up here. All in all it was a pretty fun 5 days. I definitely needed a break from this place and the trip fit the bill.

Things didn't stop there; this week hasn't been slow either. Thursday we had our weekly meeting of Gambler's Anonymous (a.k.a poker night) at the Marine house. I did alright and came up roughly US$30 and then afterwards me and two other Marines went out to one of the clubs to celebrate one of their birthdays. I haven't drank that much in quite a while! And we're doing it all again tonight!

Back in Brazil, baby!

When I got back to Brazil on July 15th I hit the ground running. I haven't had much "nothing to do time" since I've been here. And updating my blog usually falls into the "nothing to do" category. So to appease you hippies here's your update.

Saturday was probably one of the better parties I've been to in a while. Parts of the night I can't remember so all-in-all I would say it was a success. And last night one of the guys had us over to watch a movie and eat some chili he made. He went a little overboard on the spices though and everyone agreed it hurt as much going in as it did coming out! This is myself at Saturday's party with two of the guys that work in the embassy.

The next update will have to wait until next week though. On Wednesday I'm leaving to take a 5-day trip to São Paulo with the girlfriend. I'm excited since it'll be my first opportunity to travel within Brazil since I've been here. More to come on that when I get back.

And while you might think I haven't made any posts lately, I have been updating the site with minor changes. I added the Now Playing sidebar and removed the Blogger bar on the top of the site. I'm also in the process of coming up with a logo. I'm not very artistic so that one might be a while. Suggestions and/or submissions are welcome.