Photo Essay.

To offset yesterday's ridiculously long entry, here’s a text-light ramble based on some of the weirder things I've seen round Sao Paulo of late. Sorry for the picture quality – my phone is absolute dog droppings.

First things first, here’s a photo from our friend’s balcony taken just before our joint birthday/housewarming party.

She’s up on the 18^th floor and the view below is of the close-packed mausoleums which make up the Necropolo de Sao Paulo. Each mausoleum extends downwards about thirty feet with three or four tiers for coffins; space is a premium here in SP, so you build upwards for the living and downwards for the dead. I once saw some unspecified event taking place there at night from up on this balcony, some vigil or internment by candlelight, the flickering light of which was swamped within the hundreds of metres of darkness and tombs stretching off in every direction; it made me feel like getting out my Cure albums. Behind the cemetery you can see Vila Madalena sloping upwards to the horizon. If stared at for long enough, this view starts to feel like that bit in Inception where the street slowly curves up and tilts over your head. At least, it does for me.

In the foreground is a can of Devassa beer, with its current ad campaign offering the chance for four lucky young men (I'm not being sexist here - that's what the copy specifies) to go to L.A. and meet Paris Hilton if they dial the number and hear her voice; losers only hear their dignity sobbing and self-harming at the other end. Employing Paris Hilton for this campaign is a wonderfully backhanded compliment because ‘devassa’ is slang for ‘slapper’ and the strapline for the beer is ‘bem loura’, which translates as ‘well blond’, with the derogatory double meaning present in the original language. Thus, in addition to her numerous high-profile campaigns on the international stage for moral decency and the public good (which include taking legal action to allow public distribution of her sex tape only on the condition that she received a percentage of the profits), Ms. Hilton can also congratulate herself for striking a blow for feminism right here in Brazil. 

Moving on, the next shot is of a wedding dress shop near where we live. They routinely feature in their windows the nastiest wedding dresses my wife or I have ever seen. One had a v-shaped décolletage (I know this word because I am a pervert) which plunged down all the way to the navel. Another presented a woman holding a bouquet of brown and pink flowers roughly the same shape, size and density as a football, which may have been because it was the World Cup at the time.

The dress featured here attracted our attention not simply because of the dress (though it is lovely), but because of the mannequin’s suspiciously powerful arms and the wonderful way the dresser has made the mannequin look completely gormless. You are in love. She’s your fiancé. It’s OK, you don't need to deny it. I love her too.

Here is a photo of another window display, this time of a sex shop down our street.

I don’t want you to think that we live in Sodom and Gomorrah, though. It’s actually very posh where we live. I mean, this shop is actually opposite a very popular children’s nursery, so you can rest assured that it’s a thoroughly wholesome area. Incidentally, this is by far the least shocking item in the window, so I don’t know how parents explain it to their kids. Presumably they say it’s a fancy dress shop for mummies and daddies and then bundle them into the car as quickly as possible before they can ask any more questions/start screaming at the lady in the crotchless nurse's uniform. Anyway, I know that the moment you finish reading this you'll all be pestering me to place an order on your behalf for your very own thong + bow tie + Mickey Mouse ears combo, but can I please ask that you BE PATIENT: the demand for this item is off the hook. I’ve been going in there everyday for the past six weeks to see if mine's arrived, but they just keep giving me that regretful, slow head-shake like they did when J. R. Hartley went into that bookshop to ask if they had a copy of Fly-Fishing by J.R. Hartley. (He was such an egomaniac, though, right? I mean, browse some other books or something while you're in there. I hear they publish new books all the time - you should check them out.)

But I digress. The next photo is from a posh supermarket, showing that it’s not all squalor in my life: the ratio of squalor to inexplicable is in fact steady at around 90% to 10%. 

So, this is a box of chocolates. The chocolate is called ‘Language of the Cat’. Assuming that the title alone might not be enough to tempt you, the designer has kindly photoshopped the head of a stuffed kitten onto the cover. Because the lady loves stuffed kittens.

Finally, because I like to end on a note of mystery like I’m a sort of modern Count of Monte Cristo, here is a photo of a storm drain. Faintly arousing, no?