Part of this is a true story, I'll tell you which part at the end.
Mr. Keller is a successful television executive who is proud of his Scottish heritage and his family name. He is offered a position at the main TV station in Brazil, Globo TV. At first he hesitated, but he was assured that everyone at Globo spoke some English and move entailed a promotion and a significant raise so Mr. Keller relented. At the Antonio Carlos Jobim airport he was greeted by a driver who took him to his hotel. The same driver greeted him at the lobby the next morning and drove him to the TV station. There he smiled at the receptionist and introduced himself. She smiled back and told him in passable English that she would announce him. She picked up the phone, dialed and said "Mr. Bonner, Mr. Killer is here to see you."
She told him to go right in, he smiled at the mistake in pronunciation and whispered.
"By the way, it's 'Keller', and who am I meeting?"
"You will be meeting with Mr. Willian Bonner, he's the evening news anchorman."
"Bonner? William Bonner. Right..."
This time she corrected him ,"It's Willian, it ends with an n."
Keller enters the office at the end of the hall. There he is greeted by a handsome man who extends a hand and says in a strong Brazilian accent.
"Mr. Killer, hi, I'm glad to meet you, I'm Bonner."
Mr. Keller is now slightly put off at the mispronunciation of his name and asks.
"Bonner is it? Do I have it right? It's William Bonner?"
"Almost right, but I'm used to being called William by the English, it's Willian."
A correction was definitely in order here. Being called Killer is one thing but being called English would not do.
"I'm Scottish"
"Ah, yes, but it's all the same thing isn't it?"
Now, holding back his annoyance, Mr. Keller retorts.
"And my name is Keller, not killer."
"Isn't that what I said?" Bonner asks.
"You said killer, a killer is a murderer, my name is Keller"
"Killer not Killer. Ok I got it now."
Keller continued, "I'm sorry Mr. Bonner, they are spelled differently, one with an e the other with an i." And a little embarrassed about asking for the clarification again he adjoined "it is Bonner? isn't it?"
"Yes it is, that's right. Please sit down Killer"
"Maybe we could use our first names" said Mr. Keller, desperately looking for a solution to this absurd situation. "I'm Richard, Richard Keller"
"Well everyone calls me Bonner, but I'll call you Dick" said Bonner smiling. Bonner looked at Mr. Keller inquisitively and carefully pronounced the name
"Dick Killer...?"
Mr. Keller stood up, thanked Bonner for his time and left for the airport without stopping at the hotel to pick up his suitcase. Being called an English Dick Killer by a guy named Bonner was not worth the promotion or any amount of money.
The story is made up, but the anchorman for the national evening news in Brazil is in fact named Willian Bonner. I kid you not!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
doilies from hell
Every year she shows her appreciation with a gift, last year she gave me dish towels, which were very much useful and used, this year she gave me doilies form hell. Or maybe they are just hell-adjacent, since she is a very pious person and probably doesn't shop in hell. They are a sort of glaring florescent white that would have made Rembrandt envious. I smiled and thanked her and put them away in a drawer. Yesterday she cleaned my house and when I came home the doilies had been pulled out of the drawer and introduced into the décor.
My house isn't "decorated" in the strictest sense of the word, it simply has things in it that appeal to me, and my taste runs towards antique-wood-impressionism-traditional. So now I have Gustave Caillebotte on the wall, a majolica centerpiece and the doily from hell on my dining room table.
The writing desk apparently would have been jealous if it too didn't get a little something.
I don't want to offend her, but seriously, isn't it a little cruel and unusual to expect someone to live with florescent doilies? What the hell-adjacent should I do?
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Leaf guy, ze da folha
Porto Alegre is a city of a million and a half inhabitants that has managed to keep all the charms and customs of a small town. Every weekend a side street of the main park in the city is closed and a huge outdoor fair is set up. On Saturdays it's reserved to organic foods and on Sundays it's an arts-craft-antique-crap-food-performance-fair. It's called the Brique and some characters show up almost every weekend, my favorite is Ze da Folha.
He is a one-man-band, he plays a guitar and a tambourine with his foot But his main talent is a leaf that he holds between his lips to whistle out tunes. He is very good and has a repertoire ranging from Bossa Nova to Tangos. Here he is in a YouTube video. (Love that song btw it's called `Trem das onze`, is it pathetic that I know all the words?)
(the video is not mine it's from this link at google videos: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6803741597798243907&hl=en#)
He is a one-man-band, he plays a guitar and a tambourine with his foot But his main talent is a leaf that he holds between his lips to whistle out tunes. He is very good and has a repertoire ranging from Bossa Nova to Tangos. Here he is in a YouTube video. (Love that song btw it's called `Trem das onze`, is it pathetic that I know all the words?)
(the video is not mine it's from this link at google videos: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6803741597798243907&hl=en#)
Cashews
When you buy a jar of cashews do you know what you are buying? Is it a nut? Ever wonder where cashews come from? From the cashew fruit.
The cashew nut is the stem of the cashew fruit. Each nut corresponds to one fruit, it has to be picked, shelled and roasted. The fruit is then processed into pulp, juices and other foods. The fruit hangs from the tree from the opposite side of the nut. It is fleshy, extremely juicy and on the bitter side, unsweetened cashew juice is an acquired taste.
The cashew nut is the stem of the cashew fruit. Each nut corresponds to one fruit, it has to be picked, shelled and roasted. The fruit is then processed into pulp, juices and other foods. The fruit hangs from the tree from the opposite side of the nut. It is fleshy, extremely juicy and on the bitter side, unsweetened cashew juice is an acquired taste.
Game: how many OSHA violations can you find?
Game: how many OSHA violations can you find?
I looked out of the window of my mother's apartment and saw two men in the process of painting a nearby building. I had to bring out the camera, because no one would believe me if I simply told them what I had witnessed.
The orange apparatus is a compressor, they first washed the walls with a pressure hose. At lunch time, they crawled into one of the apartments OVER the safety bars installed on the windows.
A couple weeks later another nearby building got a coat of paint, this time using a standing scaffolding. The parking lot used for the installation is uphill so that they had to stabilize and level the scaffolding, with required two tire rims, a few bricks and a couple of boards. looks nice and safe!
All of this took place downtown Porto Alegre Brazil.
Friday, January 22, 2010
New canning process
Brazilians patented a new method of canning food products that does not require a can opener. The can has a removable lid, which is held in place by the vacuum in the can. The lid has a silicone-like dot seal on top, which covers a little hole.
Once you remove the dot seal the vacuum is broken and the lid slips right off. The dot seal is easily removed, with a little persistence you can remove it with your finger nail. It's a very clever system. (pics from my phone, sorry about the quality)
Once you remove the dot seal the vacuum is broken and the lid slips right off. The dot seal is easily removed, with a little persistence you can remove it with your finger nail. It's a very clever system. (pics from my phone, sorry about the quality)
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Why were there no theaters in Egypt of the Pharaohs
Why were there no theaters in Egypt of the Pharaohs?
My previous post started with the statement that the stage has been part of human civilizations since the dawn of times, with one exception. Since no one reads this, no one asked, and since it was a long drawn out post I didn't want to go into it. The ancient Egyptians had no theaters. It is interesting that all we know about the ancient Egyptians is based on their art on tombs and temples, while at the same time art was never part of the Egyptian culture. The Egyptians never developed the concept of art for art's sake. You might look at something like this and wonder how is this not art?
It's not. It's an image of the ram headed god Khnum taking the king by the hand and imparting some life affirming aspect of existence upon him (1. you can tell by the ank between them and 2 I don't really know the specific meaning of the scene), it served a practical and functional purpose which was not artistic. The Egyptians never built a theater, all of their shows and enactments took place at the temple courtyards. There were several ceremonies during the year, at different temples, that would have rivaled any Broadway musical extravaganza, and people attended en masse. But these were not shows and they were not art, they served a function. They would have been as artistic to the population as a catholic mass is to catholics. Egyptians worshiped, told stories and tall tales, documented events and asked for divine intervention on their walls. Here is a war scene on a wall of the Ramesseum depicting the chaos of war; chaos is rare on Egyptian walls. 
Art in Egypt always served a purpose and it never had any value or meaning outside of that purpose. For that reason they never developed theater or painting or even sculpture as art forms. Hieroglyphs may be artistic to us, but to the Egyptians they were no more artistic than this text. Well, perhaps a bit more artistic than this text since only 5 or 6 percent of the population were literate and to them the written text would have been stylistic rather than communicative.
And, on an unrelated topic, these were the very last hieroglyphs written. They are in Elephantine Island which was the last hold of Egyptian culture before Constantine had every living thing on the island killed and the language of the hieroglyphs was forgotten.
My previous post started with the statement that the stage has been part of human civilizations since the dawn of times, with one exception. Since no one reads this, no one asked, and since it was a long drawn out post I didn't want to go into it. The ancient Egyptians had no theaters. It is interesting that all we know about the ancient Egyptians is based on their art on tombs and temples, while at the same time art was never part of the Egyptian culture. The Egyptians never developed the concept of art for art's sake. You might look at something like this and wonder how is this not art?
It's not. It's an image of the ram headed god Khnum taking the king by the hand and imparting some life affirming aspect of existence upon him (1. you can tell by the ank between them and 2 I don't really know the specific meaning of the scene), it served a practical and functional purpose which was not artistic. The Egyptians never built a theater, all of their shows and enactments took place at the temple courtyards. There were several ceremonies during the year, at different temples, that would have rivaled any Broadway musical extravaganza, and people attended en masse. But these were not shows and they were not art, they served a function. They would have been as artistic to the population as a catholic mass is to catholics. Egyptians worshiped, told stories and tall tales, documented events and asked for divine intervention on their walls. Here is a war scene on a wall of the Ramesseum depicting the chaos of war; chaos is rare on Egyptian walls. 
Art in Egypt always served a purpose and it never had any value or meaning outside of that purpose. For that reason they never developed theater or painting or even sculpture as art forms. Hieroglyphs may be artistic to us, but to the Egyptians they were no more artistic than this text. Well, perhaps a bit more artistic than this text since only 5 or 6 percent of the population were literate and to them the written text would have been stylistic rather than communicative.
And, on an unrelated topic, these were the very last hieroglyphs written. They are in Elephantine Island which was the last hold of Egyptian culture before Constantine had every living thing on the island killed and the language of the hieroglyphs was forgotten.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Is twitter a stage
With one major exception, the stage has always been part of human civilizations. We have always had a need to tell stories. Imagine a caveman painting a hunting scene on a wall, this was not the action of a lonely artists sitting in a cave by himself, it was a social occasion. We can just see the largest and bravest caveman being taunted by his fellow hunters with innuendos about size of his spear. Rules of theater etiquette started being developed in those gatherings.
The ancient Romans had a strict social hierarchy in their theater seating arrangements, at first only the elite got to sit, later everyone sat but the elite sat in the first few rows. The rules of etiquette in a Roman theater audience were few, when blood sports are on the stage few restrictions are placed on the behavior of the audience. In the Globe the elite would actually sit on the stage. From those cave days to today we have developed a complex set of rules for behavior on and around a stage.
A few rules of etiquette are common sense and widely understood, you should arrive on time. Recently a veteran Brazilian actress managed to pass a law preventing people who arrive late from entering the theater during the performance. You should refrain from talking, especially to the actors on stage, and on your cell phone. But there is a lesser-known theater rule of etiquette that was never posted in the lobby: don't pinch the butt of the main actor. Once in an off-Broadway theater I was on an isle seat of a Frank Langella play in which the sword fight could not be contained to the stage and in a lunge motion Mr. Langella's butt was inches from my shoulder. My mother, who has always been a bad influence, whispered to me "pinch it". Even though the no-butt-pinching rule is not explicit, if I had pinched the butt of the most gorgeous man to walk the earth, I would have been kicked out of the theater and probably banned from Broadway. Heckling is a few notches below butt pinching, but still unacceptable. Throwing things on stage, unwrapping noisy candy, kicking the chair in front of you, wearing tall hats, etc. are all against etiquette.
So is Twitter a stage? Do the rules of etiquette apply to Twitter interactions? When I follow Brent Spiner on Twitter is he on a stage and am I in the audience? Is Twitter just another technological advancement of the stage, like trap doors and pulley systems or better lighting, or is it a brave new world? Am I heckling an actor on a stage if I post 140 characters that irk him, am I disrupting the audience if I post a butt pinching story in his audience's timeline?
Brent Spiner takes questions from his audience, gives them grief and questions their intelligence, so it's not a stage it's a conversation. He tells stories to delight his audience, so it is a stage. But there is no actual stage, so it can't be a stage… so what is it? Twitter is a conversation, a stage, a seat in a lecture auditorium, crowd of strangers, a bunch of friends over for a barbecue, a news channel, graffiti on a wall, a short story, a poem, a hug and a slap on the face all at the same time and in the same place. Suddenly the rules we spent millions of years perfecting don't apply. It's a brave new world and we are starting from scratch. But I have a plan. Before the new rules are firmly established, I'm going to work on a way to pinch Brent Spiner's butt over a wireless connection, while unwrapping candy over my ringing mobile phone. muwahaha But first, I'll be late for every single tweet.
The ancient Romans had a strict social hierarchy in their theater seating arrangements, at first only the elite got to sit, later everyone sat but the elite sat in the first few rows. The rules of etiquette in a Roman theater audience were few, when blood sports are on the stage few restrictions are placed on the behavior of the audience. In the Globe the elite would actually sit on the stage. From those cave days to today we have developed a complex set of rules for behavior on and around a stage.
A few rules of etiquette are common sense and widely understood, you should arrive on time. Recently a veteran Brazilian actress managed to pass a law preventing people who arrive late from entering the theater during the performance. You should refrain from talking, especially to the actors on stage, and on your cell phone. But there is a lesser-known theater rule of etiquette that was never posted in the lobby: don't pinch the butt of the main actor. Once in an off-Broadway theater I was on an isle seat of a Frank Langella play in which the sword fight could not be contained to the stage and in a lunge motion Mr. Langella's butt was inches from my shoulder. My mother, who has always been a bad influence, whispered to me "pinch it". Even though the no-butt-pinching rule is not explicit, if I had pinched the butt of the most gorgeous man to walk the earth, I would have been kicked out of the theater and probably banned from Broadway. Heckling is a few notches below butt pinching, but still unacceptable. Throwing things on stage, unwrapping noisy candy, kicking the chair in front of you, wearing tall hats, etc. are all against etiquette.
So is Twitter a stage? Do the rules of etiquette apply to Twitter interactions? When I follow Brent Spiner on Twitter is he on a stage and am I in the audience? Is Twitter just another technological advancement of the stage, like trap doors and pulley systems or better lighting, or is it a brave new world? Am I heckling an actor on a stage if I post 140 characters that irk him, am I disrupting the audience if I post a butt pinching story in his audience's timeline?
Brent Spiner takes questions from his audience, gives them grief and questions their intelligence, so it's not a stage it's a conversation. He tells stories to delight his audience, so it is a stage. But there is no actual stage, so it can't be a stage… so what is it? Twitter is a conversation, a stage, a seat in a lecture auditorium, crowd of strangers, a bunch of friends over for a barbecue, a news channel, graffiti on a wall, a short story, a poem, a hug and a slap on the face all at the same time and in the same place. Suddenly the rules we spent millions of years perfecting don't apply. It's a brave new world and we are starting from scratch. But I have a plan. Before the new rules are firmly established, I'm going to work on a way to pinch Brent Spiner's butt over a wireless connection, while unwrapping candy over my ringing mobile phone. muwahaha But first, I'll be late for every single tweet.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Decadence
Here's something you don't see every day. It's a chocolate strawberry pizza topped with a scoop of ice cream. It looked like the crust was cooked, and while hot the chocolate and strawberries were added, the ice-cream is scooped on right before the pizza is served. This decadent thing is served at a restaurant called Alpha Point in Alphaville Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The elusive Panamera
A few months ago we did a large translation for Porsche, I now know more about the new Porsche Panamera than I ever thought I would. It apparently does everything you would expect a top of the line sports car to do, holds 4 large suitcases in the trunk and whistles Dixie while doing it. However it's so out of my price range I would need time on the Hubble just to see its price range. I have a feeling they probably charge more than I can afford just to look at the sticker price. So I'm left to living vicariously through others.
I live in a posh neighborhood in Sao Paulo, I imagine Alphaville is something like East Egg in The Great Gatsby, where people play polo and are rich together, only without the polo. This is Panamera country, if you want to go expensive-toy watching, this is the place to be. Cayennes are common around here, you see Ferraris and beamers all the time but I have yet to see a Panamera. It's a sad situation when even living vicariously eludes you. sigh
I live in a posh neighborhood in Sao Paulo, I imagine Alphaville is something like East Egg in The Great Gatsby, where people play polo and are rich together, only without the polo. This is Panamera country, if you want to go expensive-toy watching, this is the place to be. Cayennes are common around here, you see Ferraris and beamers all the time but I have yet to see a Panamera. It's a sad situation when even living vicariously eludes you. sigh
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Egyptology and the Borg
Egyptology and the Borg
On a trip to Egypt last year I was fortunate to visit Dr. Lehner's excavation at the lost city of the pyramid builders in Giza. Dr. Lehner was very generous with his time and gave us an overview of the site. His and the AERA's goal is to study the urban and daily life aspect of life in ancient Egypt and he told us that the greatest misfortune for him is finding gold. Most sane people would be delighted to find gold but not him. The AERA is looking for information about the urban and social aspects of the pyramid builders, where they lived, how they got from place to place, stored and distributed food, governed etc. If you find stairs, a road, a granary, an administration building you can tell much about the society and no one pays much attention to you. He equated it to being in a Borg ship and doing your thing, and while you pose no threat to the Borg, you walk around and no Borg even looks at you. However, when you find a gold item, suddenly the Borg queen becomes aware of your existence and they all descend upon you and your day is ruined.
It's a little surreal standing on a site where pyramid builders walked four thousand years ago having a conversation based on a cultural reference that is esoteric in our own time, and could never have been imagined by the original inhabitants of the place. Dr. Lehner who devotes his life to the study of 5000 year old Egyptian culture exemplifying something with a sci-fi reference was such an unexpected clash between academia and the fringes of contemporary pop culture that it made us laugh. I suppose the most surprising aspect of it is that Dr. Lehner is a Star Trek fan. As if I needed another reason to love the man!
The AERA site:
http://www.aeraweb.org/
more on Dr Lehner:
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/lehner_mark.html
Saturday, January 9, 2010
The myth of the official stamp
Every month I receive my pay stub and every month it amuses me. Not for necessarily for the risible amount printed there but rather because it requires my signature in duplicate copies. The duplicate copies are generated by carbon paper. Really! I kid you not! Carbon Paper! I hadn't seen carbon paper since I was a little girl. Brazilian bureaucracy is rather amusing, here stamps make documents official. A five dollar stamp that can be made at any corner store lends some kind of credibility, officiality and credential to what otherwise would be a perfectly acceptable document. The myth of the stamp's official nature goes as far as people requesting that a translation be stamped (with a five dollar stamp from the corner store) rather than signed by the translator. Once bidding for a job, one of the requirements was that the submission be stamped, without a stamp on the page we could not bid for the job. When I asked why the stamp was necessary I was told that it's part of the procedure, without a stamp the submission would not be considered. Even though the person could not tell me what difference the stamp would make especially since there were no requirements for the stamp. It did not have to issued by any sort of accredited agency or contain any kind of specific information or use any sort of special ink. I simply needed to be a stamp with the company's name, that's it!!!
I think carbon paper exemplifies Brazilian bureaucracy to a T. Antiquated, in disuse, superfluous, old-fashioned, obsolete and extremely official.
I think carbon paper exemplifies Brazilian bureaucracy to a T. Antiquated, in disuse, superfluous, old-fashioned, obsolete and extremely official.
Friday, January 8, 2010
An aspect of Brazilian Society
Brazilian society, more so than the American society, is extremely observant of social differences and it is commonly accepted that within the society there are superior and inferior people. This can be traced back to colonial days when the Portuguese court escaped to Brazil and were immediately accepted as "superior" to everyone else, a ranking was established and has remained in place ever since. To this day the descendants of the royal family who remain are spoken of with a great deal of deference; here the name Bragança is spoken with awe and admiration even though they no longer have royal titles.
There is a formality in Brazilian Portuguese that is specifically designed to separate the classes. You address a superior person formally and conjugate the verbs in the third person to show -they call it 'respect', I call it - 'submission to their obvious superiority'. Here is where I run into trouble. I spent most of my life in the US where the language has no such distinction, and whenever I spoke Portuguese it was to family and friends who required no such distinction. I'm incapable of altering my manner of speaking in order to satisfy the egos of a pampered population that thinks highly of itself, and what's more, to acknowledge some social convention that stipulates that some people have the right to be superior to others. So I go around offending everyone who is accustomed to being shown deference by people who dress like me. (I don’t buy brand names and even though I would fit in at a movie theater in the US, by Brazilian standards I dress like a poor person. The Brazilian middle class dresses to impress each other, people wear what's in fashion, not what they like. (It's a permanent pissing contest.)
I realize that every society is based on a hierarchical model and that members are judged by specific characteristics. But Brazilians have it ingrained into their personalities, it's almost part of their DNA. A person who is the product of an upper middle class Brazilian upbringing will not deign to speak to a doorman or a baggage man or a street sweeper or a truck driver. Here the more money you have the more superior you are, and thus you expect a certain amount of deference from those who have less than you. Once during a visit I commented on the horrific living conditions of some people who were camping under a bridge and the Brazilian who was with me retorted that they weren't really people, they were rats and so they lived like rats. He meant it, from his position in society those people were in the position of rats and in his mind his superiority to them was proportional. In another instance I was in the car with my brother looking for a parking space, I told him to slow down because the man walking between two cars might have been leaving. He looked at the man and without slowing down told me "nah, he doesn't have a car". This lead to a discussion on how in his mind did he possibly think he could tell whether a person was affluent enough to own a car, or not, simply by looking at him for a split second!
A 'normal' middle class Brazilian is able to gauge his superiority to another person at a quick glance. It's a superpower that apparently never fails. Or maybe it's something in the water... Either way, I don't think they realize they are doing it. Most of the time I have a hard time adjusting to Brazilian society, the rest of the time Brazilian society has a hard time adjusting to me. At all times we are at odds on this issue. Oh well.
There is a formality in Brazilian Portuguese that is specifically designed to separate the classes. You address a superior person formally and conjugate the verbs in the third person to show -they call it 'respect', I call it - 'submission to their obvious superiority'. Here is where I run into trouble. I spent most of my life in the US where the language has no such distinction, and whenever I spoke Portuguese it was to family and friends who required no such distinction. I'm incapable of altering my manner of speaking in order to satisfy the egos of a pampered population that thinks highly of itself, and what's more, to acknowledge some social convention that stipulates that some people have the right to be superior to others. So I go around offending everyone who is accustomed to being shown deference by people who dress like me. (I don’t buy brand names and even though I would fit in at a movie theater in the US, by Brazilian standards I dress like a poor person. The Brazilian middle class dresses to impress each other, people wear what's in fashion, not what they like. (It's a permanent pissing contest.)
I realize that every society is based on a hierarchical model and that members are judged by specific characteristics. But Brazilians have it ingrained into their personalities, it's almost part of their DNA. A person who is the product of an upper middle class Brazilian upbringing will not deign to speak to a doorman or a baggage man or a street sweeper or a truck driver. Here the more money you have the more superior you are, and thus you expect a certain amount of deference from those who have less than you. Once during a visit I commented on the horrific living conditions of some people who were camping under a bridge and the Brazilian who was with me retorted that they weren't really people, they were rats and so they lived like rats. He meant it, from his position in society those people were in the position of rats and in his mind his superiority to them was proportional. In another instance I was in the car with my brother looking for a parking space, I told him to slow down because the man walking between two cars might have been leaving. He looked at the man and without slowing down told me "nah, he doesn't have a car". This lead to a discussion on how in his mind did he possibly think he could tell whether a person was affluent enough to own a car, or not, simply by looking at him for a split second!
A 'normal' middle class Brazilian is able to gauge his superiority to another person at a quick glance. It's a superpower that apparently never fails. Or maybe it's something in the water... Either way, I don't think they realize they are doing it. Most of the time I have a hard time adjusting to Brazilian society, the rest of the time Brazilian society has a hard time adjusting to me. At all times we are at odds on this issue. Oh well.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Brazilians vs. Argentinians
In a recent visit to the Brazilian coast, the Pope took a tour of some of the beaches where he was witness to something amazing.
People were screaming, panicking pointing towards the water.
Straining his eyes his holiness saw a young man, dressed in an Argentinean national soccer team jersey desperately fighting off a shark.
There was panic, but three men wearing Brazilian national soccer team jerseys ran into the water. One hurled a harpoon and hit the shark, the second pried the bleeding man out of the shark’s mouth, while the third delivered powerful blows to the shark.
After dragging the unconscious Argentinean to the beach, the thee guys dragged the shark onto the back of a pickup truck.
Still out of breath, the Brazilians were taken to the Pope-mobile.
The Pope was visibly moved and gave them a special blessing:
” Dearest Brazilian brothers, the scene I witnessed here today taught me about the greatness of man, children of God. Without consideration for the rivalry between Brazilians and Argentinians, in a noble and heroic gesture, these self-sacrificing Brazilians saved a brother from the jaws of death, even though he was an Argentinean. This is a great example of the quest for peace between adversaries.”
The Pope took his leave and while the pope-mobile moved away one of the Brazilians asked the others:
“So, who was that guy?”
“Dude! What are you? Stupid? That was the Pope, his holiness, the guy who speaks directly with the Man upstairs. He has divine wisdom…”
“He might have divine wisdom, but he knows nothing about shark fishing… Where’s the bait? Did it get away again? Next time we have to tie down the Argentinean with some barbed wire…”
People were screaming, panicking pointing towards the water.
Straining his eyes his holiness saw a young man, dressed in an Argentinean national soccer team jersey desperately fighting off a shark.
There was panic, but three men wearing Brazilian national soccer team jerseys ran into the water. One hurled a harpoon and hit the shark, the second pried the bleeding man out of the shark’s mouth, while the third delivered powerful blows to the shark.
After dragging the unconscious Argentinean to the beach, the thee guys dragged the shark onto the back of a pickup truck.
Still out of breath, the Brazilians were taken to the Pope-mobile.
The Pope was visibly moved and gave them a special blessing:
” Dearest Brazilian brothers, the scene I witnessed here today taught me about the greatness of man, children of God. Without consideration for the rivalry between Brazilians and Argentinians, in a noble and heroic gesture, these self-sacrificing Brazilians saved a brother from the jaws of death, even though he was an Argentinean. This is a great example of the quest for peace between adversaries.”
The Pope took his leave and while the pope-mobile moved away one of the Brazilians asked the others:
“So, who was that guy?”
“Dude! What are you? Stupid? That was the Pope, his holiness, the guy who speaks directly with the Man upstairs. He has divine wisdom…”
“He might have divine wisdom, but he knows nothing about shark fishing… Where’s the bait? Did it get away again? Next time we have to tie down the Argentinean with some barbed wire…”
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