New annoying noisemaker to replace Vuvuzelas in 2014 World Cup

Soccer fans are loud.  Really loud.  A rowdy bunch in general, fanatics of teams all over the world have been known to engage in all sorts of bad-boy behavior.  They throw things from the stands, things like flares and burning mopeds that could seriously hurt someone on the field or down below.  They murder fans of other teams, just because.  And they engage in riots that end up with people dead, and others sentenced to die.  Heck, there’s even a Wikipedia page devoted to “football hooliganism.”

My point is, soccer fans are not, as a rule, shrinking violets.

And yet, there was one thing that caused soccer fans all over the world to beg for mercy.  To lunge for their remotes in a frantic search for the mute button or, for those [un]lucky enough to be at games during the South Africa World Cup in 2010 in person, to wish for earmuffs.

The Vuvuzela.

Looks harmless enough, but these things are brutal.  They’re loud.  They make your ears bleed.  And, thank the heavens, they were eventually banned by UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations.

Not to be outdone, Brazil has apparently come up with its answer to the Vuvuzela, another [slightly less] annoying noisemaker which Brazil claims to be part of its cultural heritage.  They are called Caxirolas.  Please don’t ask me to pronounce it.  Time Magazine recently published an article about them, which is how we learned about them.  This guy was nice enough to model them:

Designed to sound like rain, we think that the sound, once magnified by all of the fans, will be more like the sound of millions of cicadas swarming the stadium than a calm afternoon shower.

But then, we’re talking about soccer fans.  They never opt for “calm.”

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