I am in a grumpy mood today, which is one of the hallmarks of gluten poisoning. I ate entirely too much wheat this week, culminating in a fireball of irritability. When I am this supercharged from the gluten, it doesn’t take a big thing to set me off, either. It might just be something as simple as the way someone pronounces something.

For example, right now I am listening to some guys who keep pronouncing dulce de leche as DULL-chay de LAY-chee instead of DOOL-say de LAY-chay. Okay, fine, so they aren’t native Spanish speakers. Great. But they work in the food industry, and this is something they make, and they keep speaking about it as though they are the great authorities on the subject, but how authentic can it be if they can’t even say it right? Damn it.

There’s a guy that does a voiceover for some energy drink thing on television who similarly butchers the word guaraná. He pronounces it something like gur-AH-nuh (as though it rhymes with piranha) when it should be gwar-uh-NAH. And don’t even get me started on chipotle. The worst pronunciation I’ve ever heard of this word was an Irish fellow who says it chih-PUH-tuhl. Good lord. I cringe just thinking of it.

If we insist on stealing words from other languages – and we do insist, because it makes our language fantastically rich – can’t we at least come close to saying them correctly? Or would that make it too easy for everybody around the world to understand each other, leading to the formation of a committee to build a tower so immense that it would have its top in the heavens?

It would be just like the last time, which led God to confuse the peoples’ languages and scatter them throughout the earth.

And this right on the heels of the Great Flood.

Talk about irritable.

After many false starts – and even more false finishes – I finally managed to reinstall my Gallery and upload all my photos back onto it. It took an almost superhuman effort and tried every last bit of my patience, but now I can heave a heavy sigh of relief that all 4000+ images have been restored.

Of course, the Gallery itself looks like crap, but I’m almost afraid to mess with it any more after the last couple of attempts at customization led to the repeated premature demise of the whole freaking thing.

The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to get my videos uploaded again. And I still wish death upon the phishers that initially caused the massive cascade failure of the site.

But for now, I am declaring this one a victory.

Go to the Gallery here.

The first time I ever had a caipirinha (which translates to something like “little bumpkin”) was on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

I was traveling from the remote town of Tres Coraςoes in the state of Minas Gerais to attend a wedding in Santiago de Chile, and decided to stop over in Rio to see what all the fuss was about.

And were there beautiful white sand beaches? Yes. Was there a party atmosphere tempered by a laid back mellowness? Yes. Was there natural splendor juxtaposed with manmade beauty? Yes. And were there scores of hot, topless Brazilian women strolling the beaches while wearing nothing but thong bikinis? Hell, yes!

But for all its beauty and charm, Rio has the reputation of being one of the most violent and deadly cities in the world.

When I went to Copacabana, crossing from my hotel over the distinctive black and cream mosaic sidewalks known as pedra portuguesa and narrowly avoiding the friendly young pimp that was omnipresent outside my hotel, I staked out a place on the beach near a volleyball net and sought out refreshment. Nearby, there was a kiosk run by an old woman who was peddling caipirinhas.

As she prepared my first caipirinha, muddling the sugar and lime and measuring out the cachaςa, she chatted with me (as much as my tortured Portuguese would allow), waxing poetic on all the beauty that Rio and Brazil have to offer, but peppering her dialogue with very stern warnings that I was not to venture out alone at night. She illustrated the danger by showing me her battle wounds: the tiny scar on her earlobe, where an earring was torn from its place by someone riding by on a bike… the jagged cleft on her side where she was knifed for a purse containing a mere pittance… a hack mark on her arm, for no apparent reason.

It was sad, and a little frightening.

But after three caipirinhas and some topless thong-wearing girls’ beach volleyball, none of it seemed much to matter.

And here is how to make your own caipirinhas:

Ingredients

• 2 Teaspoons Granulated Sugar
• 1 Lime (cut into wedges)
• 2½ Ounces Cachaςa

Mix Instructions

Muddle the sugar into the lime wedges in the bottom of a sturdy old-fashioned glass.

Fill the glass with ice. (Cubes or crushed.)

Pour cachaςa over the ice and mix well. (I like to withhold some of the lime from the muddler and squeeze the juice on top.)

Bottoms up!

Variations

Instead of Cachaςa, use:

• Vodka. It’s a Caipiroska.
• Rum. It’s a Caipirissima.
• Sake. It’s a Caipisake.

Other popular variations include replacing the lime with tangerine, maracujá (passion fruit), star fruit, or any combination of lime and/or other tropical fruits.

Also, try the Spanish version, which uses brown sugar in place of granulated sugar.

And don’t forget the topless thong-wearing beach volleyballers. Sure, it’s not 100% necessary, but it can’t hurt!

Saúde!