Brazilian Supermodel Gisele Bundchen and her hubby, Mr Bundchen, are back in Brazil for Carnival. I saw the news while scrolling through potential destinations to park my butt for a week or two. I do not want to think about what is going to happen when the music stops and we have to pay the tab for all this lunacy.

This would have been the day the Federal Government would have started to shut down, had a last-ditch two week truce not been brokered. I have no idea what they are thinking over there on the Hill. I listen to what the talking heads say about it, and Senator Reid and Speaker Boehner, and cannot understand what they are doing.

It seems to be some sort of game of chicken, in real large bumper-cars with commentators placing the reference point at the Clinton-Gingrich show-down six years ago.

The Republicans blamed Clinton for the shutdown, as I recall, and Clinton blamed the Republicans. It seemed that public opinion favored the president; since Mr. Clinton’s approval rating rose to the highest it had been since his election. I presume that is what Mr. Obama is counting on, and is consequently egging on the Tea Party Freshmen in the House, but I don’t know.

If my business didn’t count on it, I wouldn’t mind if the government just took a break for a while and stopped printing money just to see what it is like.

I mean, we are already having a year without a budget, sort of like 1816, the year without a summer.

It will not be that this year, I am confident, and believe fully that the warmth will come again despite rising gas prices and all the rest. I think that this is going to be an excellent year. I intend to enjoy it, regardless of whether the dollar loses status as the Reserve Currency of the world and we have to settle into some reduced circumstances in the metaphoric equivalent of a trailer park down south.

They are slipping toward Fall down in Rio, not that there is much change in the weather. And oh hell, the Mister in this case is really Tom Brady, QB of the New England Patriots. As you may recall, the Pats took an early exit from the playoffs this year after posting the best regular season record in the NFL.

I envied the Bundches, who were in full party mode in Rio, sambas and masks and all the trimmings. It suddenly occured to me that I need a vacation.

I was dreaming of Brazil last night, don’t know why, but it seemed to be the prefect antidote to perpetual travels to the frozen Northland. I imagine that appeals to Mr. Bundche, who can swim in relative anonymity in a place where no one wears pads, or has any logical reason to do so.

Then it struck me that the conference next week is in Miami. That could almost be a vacation. I looked up the dates for Carnival there, and discovered that 8th Street- Calle Ocho, as the Cubans have renamed it- is possibly going to have the worlds longest conga line the night our delegation is supposed to get in. There were 198,865 people in the one that snaked around the streets in 2008.

Thank goodness the government is not shut down, or else the Bureaucrats who are sponsoring the conference would have to stay home, and we would have to miss the Cuban carnival on 8th Street. My detailed research on Defense Acquisition procedures, the subject of the meeting, indicates this is one of the world’s largest street parties.

We have had family in Miami since it was a little southern town in America, long before it became the capital of Latin America. Herold got out of the Marine for the second time after Korea, and headed south. His bride, Magpie’s sister Hazel, set up their little family and a private business catering to air conditioning, I think. I remember the visits down there in the time when Batista ruled Cuba and they spoke English on Eighth Street.

My beautiful cousins told me they realized things had really changed when Hurricane Andrew roared through and devastated the region. The traffic lights were out for weeks, and when they came back, people treated them as sort of “advisory” things, rather than “orders.”

Nothing was the same after.

It will be interesting to see it again. The last time I was in town was to visit the gigantic flagpole at the US SOUTHERN COMMAND and I don’t think I heard any music at all. Calle Ocho is supposed to spread over 23 blocks of Little Havana, with thirty stages set up at the intersections and a pulsing salsa beat.

I have been craving some merengue, you know? That, of course, and insights into what my government customers think is going to happen in a year that promises austerity.

That can come with Lent, I suppose. I had to look it up. That starts on Ash Wednesday, the day after tomorrow. I guess the timing makes as much sense as anything else these days.

Let’s dance while we can.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com