UGH Aficionado: Carnival

What up, Monsters? I’m Polterjane and I’m here to talk about Carnival. I live in Brazil, and this week was Carnival week.

Brazilian carnival is very famous around the world. I’m sure it’s one of the first things that pops into people’s minds when I say Brazil, along with prostitutes, Gisele Bündchen and caipirinhas.

So in case you aren’t familiar with it (I’m very jealous of you), in a nutshell, it goes like this: A whole week where everything but hospitals and drug stores are shut down so people can jump around on streets while drinking, dancing and fornicating with strangers. It’s great (no, it isn’t)!

They don’t even care if it’s raining. They WANT to get sick on Carnival, if it can’t be an STD it has to be at least pneumonia.

Also something that should be noted: if you live in Brazil, you can’t escape Carnival. If you go out, you will see giant ass trucks and assholes in costumes jumping around to horrible sounding music while people throw condoms and water at them (some people call it parades. I call it conglomeration of assholes and douchebags). If you’re in a car, good luck arriving anywhere when all the streets are closed for said assholes. If you’re in your house, good luck NOT listening to the sounds of people enjoying themselves way too much.

And since it’s basically impossible to escape it, the only other option is to join in. If you like horrible music and ugly people, you have a certain parade you can go to. If you like naked women, alcohol, men being gross and WTF moments, you have everywhere you can go to.

In case you’re wondering, she’s a banana and that’s King Kong behind her. Carnival is the only time of the year when it is acceptable for people to look inside a woman’s anus in the middle of the street.

If you like the Beatles, you can go to this:

Somehow this looks even worse than the banana lady.

If you like molesting children or having your children be molested, there’s also this:

I’m pretty sure this is a parade celebrating pedophiles. Is anyone seeing any actual children in this picture?

If you like good music and beautiful people,you can stay home and try to muffle the sounds of the horrible music playing outside while looking at a mirror.

Now, I’m not gonna lie and tell you there’s nothing good at all about Carnival. We have almost an entire week free of things to do, alcohol is sold on discount (so is body glitter, but I’m not even gonna go there) and there ARE some parades that are nice to watch.

Very nice, indeed.

So it shouldn’t be too hard to have a good time, should it? I mean, with enough amount of alcohol, I’m sure even this could seem fun:

Who WOULDN’T like to celebrate Carnival with Barack Obama, Gene Simmons and Michael Jackson?

Besides, everyone always seems so happy, like they are having the time of their lives. Maybe I’m just cynical. Maybe I don’t like it because I’ve never been able to participate in things like that and ended up being bitter about it. I mean, look how much fun these people are having:

I hate every single person in this picture.

Things get really depressing when you realize everyone in this picture is at least in their mid-thirties.

So I decided that this year I would have fun in true brazilian Carnival fashion. I would have some drinks and go to a parade. Now, here’s the catch: I live in Brasília. We aren’t exactly famous for our carnivals, we’re just famous for all the corruption, so I had to find something to do, which was actually harder than I anticipated.

I called some friends and we decided to meet in front of Wall-Mart, which is located on one of our busiest streets, if not the busiest. If there’s gonna be a big, maybe even (but probably not) good parade in Brasília, it’s gonna be happening there.

So we got there expecting this:

That baby’s dad needs to be in jail.

But we got this, instead:

The trees seem to be having a great time, though.

That was surprising, since it seemed like I could never escape the parades during Carnival. Just one week earlier we were having “pre-carnival” parades, I remembered my bus taking a detour because of it, so why is it that now that I was actually looking for one, there wasn’t a single soul out on the streets?

Pictured: Not my day.

We decided not to have that let us down. So we didn’t know of any parades where we could go so we could have a bunch of sweaty strangers rubbing up against us. Was that even a bad thing? No. No, it wasn’t. So we went looking for a bar, or something similar. After searching what felt like the entire damn city, we found a snooker bar (do you call it that? How do you call that?). It was couple’s night, which is the worst when you’re out with three single friends (we’re like the girls in Sex and the City, only less shitty), but it was also caipirinha night, which is great. So while we watched couples dance together all night, we played snooker and drank free caipirinhas until we forgot who we were, at which point our designated driver (don’t drink and drive guys, that’s a bad idea) took us back home. Except that, while we’re going back home we find ourselves kind of obstructed. Because of a parade.

So, of course, we stop the car and join them.

Do you guys like the crappy pictures I took while heavily intoxicated?

All in all, it was actually kind of fun. Although I would recommend you NEVER spend Carnival in Brasilia. Go to Rio, instead.

I have no idea what’s going on in this picture.