Well, it's still hot and humid and I'm doing a lot of sweating; if you think you can beat the stinkiness of my feet, please send your putrid sneakers and socks to: Partido Socialista Obrero Español, C/Ferraz, Madrid, Spain. I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

We went out to the pueblo last weekend and it was nice and pleasant as usual. We went swimming and farted around generally and did nothing useful.

Here's the goofy new bit of Catalooniness. for the last couple of years it's become popular among many Spanish young folks to wear T-shirts with the profile of the Osborne bull on them. Osborne is a big maker of brandy down in Jerez--their most popular brand is Veterano, which is just fine to dump in your coffee in the morning. Their symbol is a profile of a bull in black, and they began putting up huge signs with their bull symbol all over Spain on the highways way back when, I guess something like the old Burma-Shave signs there used to be all over the US. So, the Osborne bull has become sort of symbolic, like an old-time thing that everyone knows about that's always been there. And some smart guy started printing the Osborne bull on T-shirts, and people thought it was cool and bought them. Then people started putting little Osborne bull stickers on the back of their cars.

(NOTE: this is a sure sign of someone's being tacky and tasteless here in Spain: does the guy put stickers on the back of his car, especially those which are the equivalent of those "Makin' Bacon" bumper stickers that people buy at Stuckey's? If so, he most certainly hasn't been to college.)

So the Cataloonies decided they needed to hit back against this Osborne bull epidemic. They've come out with two sticker and T-shirt possibilities: one is the typical Catalan donkey, which is on at least one of every ten cars, and the other is a black cat (CAT = Catalonia, get it?), which seems to be much less popular. Some people, I guess as a joke, have started putting on stickers of a moose in profile. I'm not sure what that would have to do with anything.