The Next Next Best Thing

Retorno
Ao caminho
Do deleite...

- Casti, from Duplo desejo

Recently I said that because of the painful cold snap currently underway in Minnesota I was going to move to Brazil and blog in a Speedo [Note: if you are a straight male you won't want to click that link]. Some of you found the blogging-in-a-Speedo part of that post disturbing, while others of you found it intriguing and, in some cases, titillating. Unfortunately I only heard from the people that were disturbed.

Take heart, disturbed people, sadly (for me) I'm not moving to Brazil any time soon. And for the intrigued people, knowing that my Speedo is a vivid electric blue should enhance your mental image considerably. For those of you who were titillated, no, I'm not gay, sorry, not even bi.

Since I'm not moving to Brazil I thought I'd do the next best thing -- well, okay, the next next best thing -- and Brazilify myself as best I can here in L'Etoile du Nord (the Minnesota state motto, fyi).

We interrupt this blog for an important announcement: I just went to a web site to double-check my memory and my French and provide the above helpful link at no extra charge to you, the consumer. Imagine my stunned amazement when I found out that we also have a State Muffin! It's the blueberry muffin. Too bad, I was thinking it might be Mary Tyler Moore's. We also have a State Mushroom, which I'm pleased to report is not me. We now return you to the Hulles blog, which is already in progress.

To embark upon the Brazilification Of Hulles required the help of a couple of my friends. My friend Erin burned the "Bebel Gilberto Remixed" CD for me and gave it to me last weekend. My friend Anne Frasier helped by going someplace warm without me. My friend Casti helped by being totally hot. Thanks to all of you except Anne.

The Bebel Gilberto CD is infectious. I was not familiar with Bebel prior to listening to this, but now I'm crazy about her. I have some small regret that the CD I have is sort of a dance remix, not the original, but one plays the hand one is dealt and I'm not whining a bit. I do intend to buy her original CD at the soonest opportunity though. As far as the remix goes, I particularly like track 8, "Cada Beijo." I like it so much that I played it 10,328 times last night.

At this point I should issue a warning: "Cada Beijo" should be considered an extremely potent Implement of Seduction. You should immediately add it to your "Alright, I Finally Got Her To My Place, She's Finished Cleaning The Bathroom, And She's Drunk" collection. In my opinion it should be second only to "Die Without You" by PM Dawn, and ranks ahead of anything by Sade. Yep, it's that steamy.

As I was playing it over and over last night, I found myself succumbing to its steaminess even though I was at home alone. Well, I wasn't really alone. Mimi my big-boned cat was present as well, exhausted from her recent nap and reclining on the couch getting ready to rest with her eyes closed. Now Mimi knows me pretty well; so well in fact that she can sense my mood in some cases before I am aware of it myself. So I was a little startled when Mimi sleepily looked over at me, turned away, then did a double-take, emitted a high-pitched yeek! then launched herself like a (fat) rocket into the bedroom and hid under the bed. Poor thing, no matter how often I tell her I don't do cat she never quite believes me. I suppose that "better safe than sorry" is a good policy if you're a cat and you live with me. I am a sex dog, after all.

At any rate, I was certainly in the mood for whatever the Portuguese word is for love last night. Hot love; tropical love; really sweaty jungle love; the kind of love where you dance at Carnival until 3AM then fall into the bed that miraculously appears wherever it is that you're dancing (that doesn't have the mouse version of Kate Winslet in it) and tangle appendages with your nymphomaniacal dance partner for ten days straight. Incidentally, the really unlikely thing about this fantasy is that I'm an old white guy from Iowa and couldn't dance to save my life, or hers for that matter. But I suppose it doesn't matter since it's a fantasy anyway; I might as well go for broke and imagine I can dance as well. The bed magically appearing seems more plausible though.

I specifically need to state for the record that last night I was not fantasizing about dancing etc. with anyone in particular that might happen to live in Brazil and be gorgeous to die for and write blog epigrams. Whether or not you believe me is up to you, of course.

To enhance the Brazilification Of Hulles I started reading Jorge Amado's "The War of the Saints" last night. I finished rereading "Love in the Time of Cholera" by García Márquez the night before (another good January book) so it was perfect timing. I don't know much of anything about the book, and all I know about Jorge Amado is that he's Brazilian, but so far it seems like it might help address my desperate needs at this point.

In this Brazilification process I suppose I really should go back to learning Portuguese, but I have to confess I have been slacking in this area a bit lately. Unfortunately this aspect of the master plan will probably not be implemented anytime soon, since I have a lot of other stuff occupying my brain right now. The good news is that even without studying as much as I should I find that I'm able to understand Casti's writing more and more without the $@!*% autotranslators, and listening to Bebel over and over does not hurt my Portuguese comprehension either.

And there you have it. If Hulles can't go to Brazil, he'll make Brazil come to him. Yikes. That gives me an idea. I wonder how much a plane ticket from Brazil to Minnesota is? They're probably cheap; who the hell would want to fly from there to here in January? Not that I can afford it right now, but there is a liquor store nearby that does a decent business on week nights and should have some cash in the till. And not that I could possibly be imagining importing the woman that I wasn't fantasizing about earlier....

See, it's thoughts like that that warm me up. It's good to have fantasies. Hot fantasies; tropical fantasies; really sweaty jungle fantasies.... Maybe I'll get through this winter after all, even if I'm not in Brazil where I can blog in a Speedo. Lucky you -- I would have posted pictures.

-- Hulles

Note: the epigram translates roughly as “I return to the road of delight...” At least that's what I hope it means.