Dispatches from Poppy Spalding
Monday: The Amazon
Last night I was on Amazon downloading DJ Rico’s hot new MP3 Zombie in a Coma’ but today I’m in the actual Amazon!
You know, people say that the Amazon is the ‘lungs of the world’ because it is so big there are literally billions of tonnes of air in it, just like in your lungs. But when you’re actually here, it’s so hot and wet that there is actually no air at all. Scammed! Even though the 3D effects are immense, it’s not like Avatar. For a start, the beasties actually hit your face when they fly at you. No wonder Sting and his bendy wife went totally bing-bong and got into all that mad sex. One time, a guy I was with asked me if he could do some tantra on me and I was like, ‘No way – that’s how my uncle Steve got dysentery!’.
When I was at school, me and my mate, Becca, did our geography project on the rainforest. We had this amazing diagram showing how Sting eats so many beef burgers daily that he produces an area of methane gas the size of 10 football pitches and this is simply hellish for all his tribal friends, who are forced to flee their teepees and get a hotel in the shanty town. All these facts lead me to conclude the Amazon is more the anus of the world than the lungs – but hey – everyone needs an anus, even Gordon Brown I’m sure.
On the way back from the forest tour, we met some tribal-ish folks living in little huts. They were really nice – totally relaxed around humans. Disappointingly for the Germans on my tour, they weren’t in the nude, but lots of them didn’t have shoes. One sold me a dishtowel made from completely natural ingredients grown by the power of the sun alone. Awesome! This made up for the fact none of them had plates in their lips like Sting’s native buddy. My mate Garry had to get a plate in his skull once, but that was because he roller-bladed down an escalator when he was on coke. I think Sting’s mate’s plate was more for decorative purposes or possibly for getting the advantage in a game of Scatch. Some would say he was cheating but he did go through a lot to get his game up and it wasn’t like he was taking steroids.
I couldn’t find anywhere to get a piercing or plate fitting, but I did find a place which could do me a ‘Brazilian’. Surely, the most gruesome rite of passage an Amazonian can undertake – so I booked myself in! I can’t wait till next week when I can take my brand new growler off to see big Jesus in Rio. Now I know how nuns feel (and no wonder they sing all the time!). And that’s what makes the Amazon the greatest lungs of the world, in the world.