Sorry I haven't written for more than a week. I'm just fine, but I don't have much to say. This is the boring time in Spanish politics, when the Congress is out of session and the parties are having their conventions. Of course, nothing of any interest is ever said at those things.

Last thing of any real interest said around here was when Eduardo "Señor Genocide" Haro Tecglen wrote in El Pais that (paraphrasing) Hitler killed millions in order to increase inequality between the peoples, while Stalin's sin is much less since he killed millions, too, but in an attempt to increase equality. Too many people around here, like say almost everybody, failed to call the old, failed, bitter apologist for mass murder what he is. And make no mistake: if Haro and his beloved PCE had ever gotten anywhere near real power, Franco's atrocities would seem like a spit in a bucket.

Comment on Franco's atrocities: some of them were pretty bad, but there's never been any call for the prosecution of Francoist police or military or jailers or executioners, not even since it became clear along about 1985-1990 that there was not going to be another military coup no matter what. Possibile answers to this question: 1) everybody has genuinely forgiven everyone else 2) too many people collaborated; you'd have to try the whole country 3) it would wake up too many embarrassing memories among those Socialists who joined the party only after Franco died 4) there would be a call for the trial of the assassins of the Left, like Carrillo, who managed to escape the first time around. I tend to go for some combination of answers 2, 3, and 4, mostly 2. It ain't 1.

The Forum is continuing to suck. They're getting nobody during the day; everybody's at the beach. I now have eight beer labels, so that leaves only sixteen to go to get us both in.

Comment: I really hate going to the beach unless we're going somewhere pretty or where the swimming is good. I'd say the Costa Brava counts as nice enough, and very nice in its better parts. The water's clear and cool and clean all the way up from Tossa past Collioure. Sitges is also a pretty town, but the water's not incredibly sanitary there. Now, I am not a neat freak or a paranoid health-nut wacko. I like swimming in a nice, clean sea. That simply doesn't exist south of about Calella or so in these here parts of the world. It's a muddy, gritty, not overly attractive sea along most of the rest of the Catalan coast. They tell me it's cleaner way down south along the Delta del Ebro. Dunno, haven't been there, but thought I'd mention it.

Besides, you get all hot and sweaty, and I get sunburned, lying on the beach. And it's boring, unless you want to go swimming, which I don't really want to do unless at Cadaqués or Ampurias.

I prefer to go out to the house in the village, which is 1) at about 2000 feet altitude, so cooler at night, not to mention dry 2) has nice, clean air and pretty paths and dirt roads to walk along through fields and forests and olive groves and vineyards and the like 3) has a very clean and meticulously maintained swimming pool, half in the shade of some pine trees, and, get this, bar service. (No real glass, so your rum and Coke comes in a plastic cup. Smoking is, of course, encouraged. Cigarettes, that is.) Also, there are lots of bored teenage girls from Barcelona spending the summer, and they hang out at the pool, so all you teenage boys take note.

Oh, yeah. A few days ago Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro claimed again that the Americans had armed Saddam. Tommy has absolutely no idea of what he's talking about, of course, or he'd know that the great majority of Saddam's arms came from the USSR, China, and France, in that order. The US got less than 1% of Saddam's military spending.