The Diary Of John

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Bau..

Yesterday morning i went with Roberta to Bau. Its a sort of gameshow here in Brasil, u buy a ticket book and pay every month for a chance to go on the tv shows here to win money. After you have been paying the tickets you can get so much of your money back in the Bau store but generally most things in this store are at least three times more expensive than just going and buying in somewhere like Pontifrio etc. A blender was R$120 in Bau but just R$49 in Pontifrio. Wierd init? Plus there are people that Bau employ that visit peoples houses telling them all sorts of bullshit to get them to buy more tickets a month, telling elderly people to go to the Bau store for a free gift if they buy loads of tickets at once or telling people theyare going to be on the show within six months if they buy say 8 books of tickets etc. Its like a license to print money, at least you get some of the money youve paid back though even if you have to spend it in Bau superstores. I think if you pay the full 12 months you get around 80% back to use in the store which i guess isnt too bad. Roberta bought some things for when we start living together next year, it was interesting though to see the other side of this Bau thing.

Oh, i didnt say we were going to move in together? After the next semester we will move as itll be easier for the two of us, i know that Roberta wants to start uni and itll be alot easier for her if we live in the same city as well as being easier for me to get to work.We were buying stuff yesterday, sheets and some glassware too etc. Its alot of fun actually planning all this stuff, i never realized it before hahaha! I think its because almost everything we do together is always a little crazy and funny :-) It'll be around the middle of the year when we move as we wanna make sure we have everything all organized as much as possible to cut down on the stress of moving house (I remember reading somwhere once that moving house is the second most stressful thing to do after organizing a wedding).

We have oral tests this morning, it takes just a few minutes with MEC students to get through the tests and then i cant spend the rest of the morning just relaxing and drinking coca cola hehehe! I'd best go prepare the stuff..

posted at 7:03 AM by john |

Crazy..

Impotence pill stick up

Six pistol-toting Brazilian men appeared to have more than cash on their minds when they robbed a drug store in Rio de Janeiro.

"They specifically demanded that we give them anti-impotence drugs. These drugs and the money was what interested them," Ailton de Souza, the drugstore manager, told Reuters on Tuesday.

On Sunday night, the robbers opened the vault with a blow torch and fled with an equivalent of about $7,000 (3,600 pounds) in cash and cheques, as well as more than 100 boxes containing 400 pills worth about $2,600 -- enough for a two-month sex marathon for each of the six robbers.

"They were pretty indiscriminate about the brands," the manager said, explaining that the men took packages of Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

The drugs, used to treat erectile dysfunction, are sold prescription-free in most Brazilian pharmacies.

Hmmm i wonder why someone would need all those tablets? I cant see them selling many of them for profit as they can be bought easily enough in Brasil. Maybe its a new fetish or something..

posted at 6:59 AM by john |

Monday, December 20, 2004

ID..

In the Uk they are trying to introduce ID cards for all people, alot of people there will not like the idea of this but i think its a great idea. After all we have them in Brasil and we use them all the time when we open bank accounts and buy things using credit etc. Its a aprt of life here that everyone is already used to. I would like to see some sort of biometric data on the Brasilian ID cards as they would help alot when peoples cards are stolen and used by people who are too lazy to get a job and just steal someones cards to defraud some stores etc. Its a small price to pay with alot of benefits but in the UK we always have some half-arsed idiots trying to say it encroaches on someones liberties, yeah they are right, the criminals! With things like dna, eye patterns or voice etc encoded into the cards chips it would make it alot harder for people to use them for illegal things. C'mon Mr Blair, get my card in the post for me hehehe..

posted at 8:38 AM by john |

Controversy..

French Catholics denounce Mary books

PARIS (Reuters) - Shortly before the day that made her famous, France's Roman Catholic Church has stood up for the Virgin Mary by denouncing two new books that question whether she was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus Christ.

In statements made as Christians prepared for Christmas, it has decried the best-selling "Mary, The Mother Of Jesus" by Catholic journalist Jacques Duquesne and "Mary, A Dogmatic Journey" by Dominican theologian Dominique Cerbelaud.

"The two books gravely offend the Catholic faith," declared Bishop Jean-Louis Brugues, head of the French bishops' doctrinal commission that recently reviewed the two works.

Although the Vatican kept an Index of Prohibited Books until the 1960s, bishops rarely comment about objectionable publications anymore.

"This is rare enough to call it an event," the Paris Catholic daily La Croix wrote last week.

The two books attack a central dogma about Mary, who the Church teaches was a virgin who conceived by the Holy Spirit. Honouring Mary is a pillar of traditional piety in the world's largest church and Pope John Paul is strongly devoted to her.

Liberal Christians in some Protestant traditions see the virgin birth as a symbolic way to honour Christ's mother.

TROUBLING THE FAITH

The commission accused Duquesne, a leading French journalist, of "ignorance of Christian thinking" for denying the virgin birth and saying Mary had other children after Jesus -- a point the Catholic Church also disputes.

Duquesne says Church thinking has not kept up with science. "In Jesus' time, people did not know how children were born," he said when "Mary" was published.

The doctrinal commission was more critical of Cerbelaud, a priest who teaches theology at Lyon's Catholic University and argued in his 2003 book that the virgin birth dogma came about "for reasons that spring from collective psychology".

It said his book "could trouble many people's faith" and had been the basis for many of Duquesne's arguments. But it stressed this did not mean a personal condemnation, which could have put his permission to teach theology in jeopardy.

The critique of Cerbelaud's book surprised some Catholics who had earlier praised it.

"This book is worth taking time out for -- with prudence, of course, but it is never useless to deepen one's knowledge of the faith," one northern French parish wrote on its Web site in May.

After the commission's denunciation, it added a footnote in bold print: "The bishops' doctrinal commission has warned against an uncritical reading of this work, which could be understood as denying the dogma."

More and more people are starting to question religion now instead of just blindly accepting what some money-grabbing priest quotes just to fill his own pockets. Books like these can only help people to understand their religions better, stripping away the bullshit to find out the real truth. Of course i very much doubt they will sell these books here, Brasil is mainly Catholic and they tend to only have books encouraging you to spend your money keeping the priests here is the lives of luxury they are definately accustomed to. We can only hope for more of these types of books to be published, after all once people thought the world was flat right?, the same applies to religions too..

posted at 8:21 AM by john |