Jerry Springer, Falcon Style

This afternoon, Alexandre was watching the Corinthians vs. Palmeras soccer game on TV (a big one, apparently), and I was trying to entertain myself with the internets. But a far more entertaining thing occurred! I heard some new crazy bird call outside and close by, so of course I ran out to the balcony to investigate.

No, it wasn't this bird-- which I have seen, and didn't know the name of until today, when I was trying to find the name of the falcon:

(that's called a tesourinha... "little scissors")

But something more like this bird:

Except his wings were black, and he had white stripes on the undersides of his wings.

How do I know it was a he? Well, there were actually two hes, and a she. One male (let's name him... Jeff) was hanging out on a big antenna, flirting with his lady friend falcon (let's call her Mary Sue). But then some macho tough guy falcon (his name can be Billy Bob) came up and started messing up Jeff's game.

Billy Bob kept circling around Jeff and Mary Sue, cawing and scwacking (sp?) like crazy, and swooping down just next to Jeff without actually hitting him. Every time Billy Bob got close to Jeff, Jeff ducked out of the way, but as soon as Billy Bob passed, he made calls after him, like "what? What? Come on back! That's what I thought!"

Eventually the two males finally started fighting for real, but Mary Sue seemed to be bored with the whole thing, and she flew off and left them to be their macho selves (fun note: "macho" in Portuguese means "male." ;). One of them (I think it was Jeff) stopped fighting and flew after her, as if to say, "wait, Mary Sue! Don't leave! It's all for you, baby!"

The whole thing was quite entertaining...much more so than the soccer game, at least.
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Is America making a big deal about International Women's Day? Brazil is pretending to make a big deal about it, but the whole thing feels like a damn farce. Brazil has a lot of things to be proud of, but the social views of women / women's rights definitely isn't one of them.

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We went to visit Alexandre's parents this weekend. On the way home, I got a picture of two older people sleeping on the bus because I thought it was nice:

I showed the picture to my friend Ana, and she said "that's so sertaneja!" (If the Wikipedia info wasn't clear, think Barretos.)

On our way home, the bus stopped at the big rest stop that we always go to. This rest stop has started selling Newsweek in English. I am elated. Today there was only one copy and it was last week's issue and it had clearly been used/left on a table/shipped badly at least and it was 12 reais even though the cover had a permanent price written as 11, but.... I paid for it. It was soooo nice to be able to read Newsweek on a bus (just like the good ol' days of BART and AC Transit!).

In it, there was a wonderfully-written article about Obama and the way he has to handle the economic crisis psychologically, as well as a poignant and very exact article that explains the good and bad of California's green energy policies (basically totally dissing the pseudo-liberal yuppies that support impractical green laws that prevent middle class growth and are too expensive to expect everyone to adhere to). If you only read one, read the California one. Especially if your name is Elena. Thenks!

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That's it for now. Life is great when I don't have to spend all my free time preparing classes from scratch for the stupid job. More blog entries for you!

Goodnight