Big stink in San Sebastian. The pro-ETA psychopaths ("la izquierda abertzale") had a demo yesterday. The Basque Interior Department (law enforcement) tried to ban the demo on the grounds that it might provoke violence or rioting. The Basque Supreme Court overruled Interior on Saturday on the grounds that there was no evidence that the demo was organized by Batasuna, ETA's political branch; the permit to demonstrate was applied for by a private citizen. The Mayor of San Sebastian, the Socialist Odon Elorza, says the Basque Supremes are nuts.

So the psychopaths had themselves a lovely time, shouting "Gora ETA!" over and over in the public streets. Arnaldo Otegi, ETA-Batasuna's spokesman, the most hated person in Spain, gave a fiery speech in which he said there would have been no deaths or bombs if "ETA's proposal to advance toward a national, democratic space for the Basque people had been accepted". Sounds to me like he's speaking in the name of ETA. I'd arrest him and charge him with apology for terrorism, which is illegal here, and then lock his ass up. (Note: in this context "apology" doesn't mean saying sorry, it means arguing in favor of.) Three psychopaths with their faces covered, which is also against the law here, came out on stage and torched a Spanish flag, which is also illegal. Otegi's comment was "Wow, the Spanish flag sure stinks".

Now, I'm not big on symbols. I think burning the American flag or any other national symbol (as long as you bought your own flag to burn) ought to be legal, and I do not think that a secular society ought to protect religious symbols. Of course, if you knock down some church's cross because you hate Christians, for example, then we bust you for vandalism and property destruction and anything else we can throw at you, but we don't bust you for desecration, because that shouldn't be a crime if you're torching your own Star of David or whatever. We consider you a bigot and an asshole, but that symbol is your property and you can do whatever you want with it.

I do think that burning the Spanish flag, though, shows hate for both Spain and the Spanish people. Sure, it ought to be legal. It's also despicable and shows exactly what kind of people we're dealing with here.

I think recall, initiative, and referendum elections are absolutely ridiculous, a system of procedures thought up during the Progressive / Populist era that should have been tossed out with all that other lefty World War One-era crap like the laws which restricted banks to only one state or the various laws against chain stores or, for God's sake, Prohibition.

My major problem with this system is that it smacks of too much democracy. Yep, you heard me right, too much direct democracy. We are a representative democracy, which means you vote for the people who make the laws; you don't make the laws yourself.

The purpose of representation is that one person is elected to be the voice of everybody in an area, and then all the people's elected representatives get together and make laws, restricted by the Constitution. What this does is eliminate the "Let's kill Socrates" danger of mobocracy.

It is also supposed to allow the elected representatives a certain amount of time to make policies work; you're elected for two or four or six years and one of the consequences of this is political stability rather than the indecisiveness of a government that can be thrown out on a whim. Recall elections make it impossible for political leaders to implement unpopular but necessary policies.

Recall, initiative, and referendum are all procedures that interfere with the functioning of representative democracy. Initiative and referendum takes the right to legislate away from the legislature and puts it in direct popular hands. Recall allows an unpopular elected official (not one who has behaved criminally--crooks shouldn't be removed by recall, they should be removed by impeachment and prosecution) to be removed before the end of his term.

The only thing I ever learned in philosophy class was Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative. It says, more or less, that any action you do that you wouldn't be willing for anybody else to do is immoral. Would you be willing to live in a society where everybody pissed in the street? No, you wouldn't, so your pissing in the street is unethical.

Would we be willing to have the President subjected to recall elections? Are you nuts? Of course not. Adams, Madison, and JQA would all have been recalled. Lincoln would have been recalled in 1862. Truman would have been recalled in 1951. The Seventies would have been a series of recall elections. Reagan might very well have been recalled in 1982 and 1987, and Clinton might have been in 1994 and certainly would have been in 1998. Right now there would be plenty of leftists willing to sign a Recall Bush petition. Boy, that'd give the world confidence in steady, responsible American leadership. What it would do is require the President to follow the polls slavishly, much more so than they do now.

Since we don't want recall elections for President, we don't want them for any other post, either. If you still don't like your elected representative when regular election time comes around, that's when you speak out against him and support some other candidate.

The Europeans are having a lovely time making fun of this California circus, which is what they're calling it and what it is. For once the Vanguardia is right when it bashes America. I don't care how much you hate Gray Davis, he did get elected governor, he is not a crook so you can't impeach him, and he gets to serve out his term. That's the way it ought to work, anyway.

Here are a couple of pieces from the Weekly Standard on the oil business and the Saudis. Check 'em out.

Hey, guess what? We're twice as popular as Howard Dean! That's right, according to N.Z. Bear's Blogosphere Ecosystem, we have 59 incoming links while Howard Dean's 2004 Call to Action, or whatever it is, only has 30. Twice as many bloggers think we're worth reading as think Governor Mean is!

So why are all the damn journalists following him around instead of me?

Remember: Vermont has what, around 400,000 people? That means managing that state is about as hard as being mayor of Kansas City--no, actually, much easier, since the KC mayor has to deal with a rotten school system, a high crime rate, several significant and difficult-to-deal-with interest groups, and keeping General Motors, US Sprint, and the GSA happy so they won't move away and take all our jobs.

In Vermont they can waste the State Lege's time debating about gay marriage. In KC the City Council has to deal with things that are much more basic, like what are we doing to reduce the murder rate on the east side or how in the hell can we get some more money without raising taxes again?

The Vangua's big front-page headline today refers to the "Iraqi resistance". There is no Iraqi resistance. There are a bunch of Fedayeen / Baath / Saddamites running around commiting crimes and terrorist acts within a small parcel of land to the west of Baghdad. These people are not patriots. Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro keeps going on about the humiliation of the millenarian Iraqi people. The smart ones consider themselves liberated from a bloody dictator. And if I were Iraqi, what I'd feel humiliated about is that such a scumball had been governing my country for so long and that the native opposition to said scumball hadn't managed to get rid of him. Besides, what Iraqi people? Iraq is three old Ottoman provinces stuck together artificially after World War I as part of the worst peace settlement of all time. Would Tikrit Tommy have written a bunch of stories about the supposed humiliation of the Germans and the Japanese in 1945?

The Vangua is also trying to split the alliance by praising the British troops around Basra for being culturally sensitive while blasting the Yanks for being arrogant and imperialistic for driving around Baghdad and Tikrit and Fallujah with guns. There is a reason for that: as I said before, all of the violence is in a small area near Baghdad where the people are from Saddam's clan and served as his power base. There is no violence in the British occupation area in the south or in the American occupation zone of Kurdistan in the north, because all those people are thrilled beyond relief to be rid of Saddam. It's only the hardcore Saddamites, who were just as bad as he was, who are shooting at the Americans.

First major fire of the year in Catalonia; they had to evacuate a couple of thousand people up in Massanet. It's well under control now. This is going to be a very bad summer for forest fires, since we're still under the heat wave; in interior Spain it's well over 38ºC (100ºF) every day, and it's around 45º in interior Andalusia and Extremadura. There are no signs of a break in the heat for another week. The forests are dry and ready to burn. About the only good thing, speaking aguaficially, is that there's no threat of a water shortage except in the southeast, since the reservoirs got nice and filled up during the wet winter and spring.

Media feeding frenzy news story: two miners got trapped by a collapse in a coal mine in El Bierzo, a mining region of Leon. It took them more than two days to dig these guys out, but they made it and the two miners survived.

Everybody's blaming the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on Ansar-el-Islam, a terrorist group with connections both to Saddam and Al Qaeda. Come on, people, it is NOT a wacko conspiracy theory to say that there is a loose alliance between Islamic terrorist gangs and Islamic rogue states.

The Vangua printed some crap that they got directly from the French Consulate on how the Americans are going into Liberia in order to get a stranglehold on West African oil. Uh, MM. les Grenouilles, that's like saying we went into Kosovo in order to corner the market on goulash. Liberia is an awful long way away from where there's any oil. That's Nigeria you're thinking of, the country with all the oil there.

There are also a couple of nuts from the Vangua, one of whom is the X-man, who say they see some weird shadowy shapes on the fuselage of one of the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center. They demand an explanation. How about this one: Those shapes are an optical illusion. You guys are crazy. Get a real life. I know there's August and not much real news but don't just make stuff up.

Here's an article from Fox News on fat pussycats. All of ours are in pretty good shape (Oscar's doing much better. By the way, the Hill's Prescription didn't acidify his pee so we changed brands to Royal Canin and it did) although they're indoor cats, of course. The article suggests taking your cat for a walk on a leash. Yeah, right, in Barcelona that's sure a great idea.

The fat cat is my mother-in-law's, Fidel. (I named him Fidel Cat-tro.) He's huge. He just wandered into her town, Vallfogona, looking pretty skinny and beat-up, and she took him in. He very quickly caught on to the concept "I been poor and I been rich, and honey, rich is better." He has vowed that he will never go hungry again and so he eats everything he can find and demands more. He's probably about a twenty-pounder, maybe a little more. Boy, is he a tub of goo. When he sits down you can't see his back feet, only his Friskies gut bulging out.

This is La Vanguardia's page two signed editorial from yesterday. Now, in Spanish and Catalan politics, the Vangua is a tolerably good and not overly prejudiced source. They really are pretty moderate; if you're a non-extremist CiU or PSC voter, they're up your alley. They don't much like the PP, though they respect Aznar, and they're not big fans of the Republican Left or the Communists, either.

When the Vanguardia turns on a Socialist leader, it's all over. Zap has been getting slammed by the standard right-wing papers, ABC, El Mundo, and La Razon, and that's understandable, but the Vangua doesn't slam a Socialist until it's pretty clear he's a loser.

Historical note: Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile completed the Reconquest of the Iberian Penuinsula in 1492, conquering the Nazari kingdom of Boabdil with its capital in Granada.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is spending a few days of rest with his family in Granada. There he'll have the meditate about the devastating effects that the lack of leadership, the internal "family" struggles between the Muslims themselves, and, above all, the implacable efficiency and military discipline of the Castilian-Aragonese troops had on the Nazari Muslim kingdom. Boabdil, as we know, had to sign the surrender before the Catholic Monarchs and turn over the keys of the Alhambra before the scorn of the last sultan's own mother: "Don't cry like a woman over what you couldn't defend as a man," they say she snarled at her own son. In his vacation refuge in the Granadan town Almunecar, Zapatero must meditate over whether he has confronted the terrible crisis of credibility that having so many public officials whose real job is that of a property-development agent is causing the Socialist Party. Far from grabbing hold of the tiller, the Socialist leader seems to have opted to wait, probably because he is desperate. But he should not forget that inaction is lethal when you are facing Jose Maria Aznar, whose political discourse--despite his manners--and propaganda machine are just as effective as Ferdinand the Catholic's troops against the indecisive and defenseless Nazari sovereign.

Zap is toast. I mean, getting compared with Boabdil around here is like, I dunno, who's the biggest loser in American history? Jefferson Davis? Cornwallis? Walter Mondale? The '62 Mets?

Here's Mark Steyn on New York's new public Gay High School. This is a terrible idea. The last thing we need are more barriers keeping people apart.

The pro-segregationists' argument is that gay kids are bullied in normal high schools, so they'll be better off if they're only exposed to other gay kids. This is, of course, not precisely the best way to help people get along better with one another. Also, it's reminiscent of real-estate agents' arguments for promoting de facto residential segregation: "Oh, black people will be more comfortable around other black people anyway, so it's in their interest if we steer them toward black neighborhoods."

Here's Steyn's comeback:

...If it's unrealistic to expect Mayor Bloomberg's schools to crack down on bullying, wouldn't it be more cost-effective just to move all the bullies into Bully High School?

There they can bully each other to their hearts' content--or, as the educators would say, celebrate their identity in a purpose-built mutually threatening learning environment.

He's absolutely right. The main reason why public schools don't work any more is that they're full of kids who don't want to be there. Get them out of there. At age 14, eighth grade, you're old enough to get a job. If you don't give a crap about school, leave.

It's those students who don't care about learning who wreck the whole system. They're the ones who disrupt classes, the ones who attack and curse at teachers, the ones who bring their gang fights inside school walls, the ones who pick on anyone weaker than they are, the ones who make the "too cool for school" attitude de rigueur, and the ones who make it hard for the people who want to be there to learn anything in a regular high school, much less a high school in a tough neighborhood.

Get the bullies and the toughs and the punks out of the schools at age fourteen. If they can't read, that's their problem. (As a society, of course, we must provide adult education for those who somehow fell behind as children; I'll bet at least a few of our bullies will sign up for that around age 17 or 18 after three years working at Mickey D's.) They don't want to be in school, so give 'em job training if they want it and if not, turn 'em loose.

Note on Steyn: I like him a lot, but he has a real fixation on continuously reminding us of his heterosexuality. This is probably because everyone just assumes all theater critics are gay, but it seems to really bother him big time.

Seems there have been quite a few gay issues in the news recently, what with the Episcopalians' gay bishop (hey, it's their business, they're a private religious organization, if they want to make Saddam Hussein a bishop they can, and if you don't like it go join the Catholics); the gay marriage hoo-haw (I'm for it as long as they have to go through the same divorce crap straights do when they break up, including the high court costs. That'll cut way back on the number of gays who want to get married and make sure it's limited to people with real commitments instead of people who just want to get married as a political statement); and the Vatican's recent pronouncement (it's a private religious organization, the Pope can say whatever he wants and that's the deal. That's been official policy for a couple thousand years. If you don't like it, go join the Episcopalians.)

One final note on Gay High: I can't help but think that a few homosexuals are in favor of the public gay high school because of clannishness. I know several gay people--as an English teacher, I couldn't avoid it even if I wanted to--who do not like to be around straights unless they are in a position of control. There are two guys at my old school who refuse to treat straight male colleagues courteously. Fair enough, if they want to be bigots it's their problem, but I do not think this attitude is extremely rare, and I do not like gay separatists any more than I like any other kind of bigot. I also don't think it's any coincidence that these two guys are extreme left-wingers politically.

Check out this article from today's El Periodico, Barcelona's working-class paper. It's titled "Three million innocents", and it's about the Parque Guell, the park designed by Antoni Gaudi up the hill above Gracia, half a mile or so from our place. The Parque Guell is a major tourist attraction, and well it should be.

Something strange is happening at the Parque Guell, comments Carlos, one of the regulars at Gaudi's oasis. His opinion counts, he says, because he's been coming here every day for years, above all in the morning. He stays here until about three in the afternoon, he says, because that's when the tourists begin to disappear. It would be better not to reveal why he loves strolling through the park, spending so much time among the mosaics, with the sun beating down on the central plaza where there are no trees. We can't take a photo, either, in order to conserve his anonymity, his secret, and his business.

That is, Carlos is a thief. There are plenty up there.

He doesn't believe in plots or conspiracies, but he knows all about what's happening in the park, where three million visitors came last year during the Gaudi Year. Some days more Japanese come, some days more Europeans, and there are a few days when there is suddenly an American invasion. He doesn't know whether it's because a cruise ship just docked in the port, or whether there is a convention that attracts a lot of Yanquis (sic).

And then, the days that the Americans are wandering around among the magic of Gaudi, the clothing of the policemen in the park changes. The Municipal Police (who are good for nothing except giving out parking tickets) practically disappear and in their place members of the National Police (real cops) multiply.

That is, says Carlos, some Big Brother is watching, though there are barely a few police videocameras in the Parque Guell. It angers him, this is true, that apparently George Bush's citizens deserve more protection than the rest. But protection against what?

The pickpockets and other unscrupulous crooks aren't afraid of uniforms, whether they belong to the National Police or the Municipal Police. To them, those three million visitors are an appetizing market, because they mean a million bags and backpacks, two million cameras, almost three million wallets, and several million tons of innocence and absent-mindedness.

Their favorite places to work are among the crowds around the interminable mosaic bench and at the few outdoor cafes selling drinks and food that the park has. But the worst place, for tourists, is around the back gate, where those who have chosen the Metro arrive. (Those who use the Bus Turistic go in through the front gate and tour buses park near a side gate at the Carretera del Carmel.) Those who use the metro get off at Lesseps or Vallcarca and, after climbing the Bajada de La Gloria, what they find is the misery of a threatening knife.

Check out this "diversity"-related atrocity from the Wall Street Journal. At a university? Some government bureau? Nope, it's the NFL.

Here's the CNN report on the wave of fires in Southern Europe. Fortunately none of them are happening anywhere near here, but Portugal's on fire and Prime Minister Durao Barroso has declared the whole country a disaster area. Fires are also burning out of control in southwestern Spain, in Huelva and Extremadura and Salamanca. People have died, at least 11 in Portugal and at least three in Spain. And the weather is going to be just as hot and dry as it already has been. No changes this week, anyway.

It looks like the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta is serious, that the death toll is going to be high. I'll bet ten-to-one it's an Al Qaeda job, showing how their reach has been reduced; they can't attack in Europe or North America, so they strike in places like Indonesia where security is much weaker. I'm advocating more of the same security policies that seem to be working, with one exception: I don't see anything wrong with ethnic profiling. My appearance fits the profile for someone who smokes dope and I often get checked when traveling. Doesn't bother me. I like security on airplanes.

FC Barcelona has announced that its losses over the last season added up to €150 million, which is just a hell of a lot of money for a sports team. Barca's total debt is about €220 million; a typical yearly budget for the club is between €125 and €150m. They owe a lot of money to the taxman and they're writing off all the loser players they spent too much money on, so that's a major depreciation hit. €36 million for Marc Overmars! And that's not including his big fat salary. Dani, Alfonso, Bonano, and Enke are all going to go, too, and De Boer, Geovanni, Rochemback, and Christianval are all gone. Remember just a couple of weeks ago they unconditionally released Christianval and ate the €16 million he cost. He'll catch on in the Swiss league or something major like that.

The team so far looks like this: Rustu in goal; Puyol, Marquez, Cocu, and Oscar Lopez on defense; Quaresma, Xavi, and Gerard in midfield; and Kluivert, Ronaldinho, and Saviola at forward. Luis Enrique is finally going out of the starting lineup; about time. That guy can only play about 30-45 minutes a game before he breaks. He should be the first sub coming off the bench rather than a regular starter. Overmars is going to ride the pine a good bit, too. They're still trying to sign someone to play left defense; Fernando Navarro is still injured from last season, and Lopez is even younger and more inexperienced than he is. They'd like to sign Gabriel Heinze from Paris St-Germain to play there. Meanwhile, they're trying to get rid of Riquelme, who has said he'll only play loaned out to Boca Juniors. Boca won't pay his full salary, though, which is a problem.

Two well-known Spanish cycling teams, ONCE and Banesto, are going out of business. This is an opportunity for some American company to set up a team around Tyler Hamilton. A good-sized budget for a cycling team is about five million bucks. For ten million they could sign Hamilton and Levi Leipheimer, and they could pick up Spaniards Joseba Beloki, Igor Galdeano, and Ibon Mayo, and then fill out the team with a couple of tough Americans and two or three very good Spaniards. You'd win some stages with that team and you'd be really competitive in the team standings. Maybe you couldn't beat Lance, but you could beat everyone else.

And, the thing is, an American major league sports team would cost you hundreds of millions of dollars to buy. But you could set up a competitive cycling team for five million bucks a year. And for ten million, you'd have the best team out there. This would be a good investment for a company like Coca-Cola, which wants to push its image in Europe. At the same time, cycling is becoming more popular in America, what with the fitness trend and Armstrong's publicity. I think it would be ad money well spent, since you'd get your name on the front pages of all Europe's sports papers every single day.

I posted this in the Comments section and I actually did some research for it, so I thought I'd post it up here too.

I'm assuming that the more money that is spent on books in a language is an indicator of the strength and influence of that language's culture(s)--that is, the bigger the market, the more competition there is, and the more competition there is, the higher the average quality of works in that language is going to be. Thus many works are translated from English and few are translated from Cambodian.

It makes sense that since many more quality works originally in English are available than in any other language, there's not that big a market for foreign books in translation in English-speaking countries, and only the very best get translated to English.

However, in a country like Finland, which produces many fewer original works in its own language, there's going to be a much bigger market for translated books, and I bet at least half of them are translated from English.

According to El Pais Anuario, of the ten biggest bestsellers in Spain in 2002, six were by English-language authors (Tolkien, Ken Follett, Katherine Neville, Arthur Golden, J.K. Rowling, Noah Gordon). They also have a list called "Most Read Authors". I have no idea how they calculate that, but Stephen King and Frank McCourt are on that one, too.

That is, the English language produces many very professional high-quality books aimed at the lowbrow-middlebrow audience that are translated to languages around the world, just like it does in cinema. No other language does that. Middlebrow-lowbrow works written in other languages are not translated to English. Why should we read foreign crap? Our own crap is better. We only translate the very best foreign stuff.

Note that none of the abovementioned authors exactly form part of the Western canon. The more prestigious American authors--Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Ford, T.C. Boyle, Cormac McCarthy, and the like--are not bestsellers in translation in Spain any more than they are in the States.

Miguel de Cervantes is also on El Pais's "Most Read" list, which is why I take said list with several pounds of salt.

Kaleboel links to this excellent webpage called "Street Scams in Barcelona". I've never seen it before, but it's been around for seven years and is full of first-person testimonials.
Petty street crime in Barcelona has always been bad, but it's gotten worse over about the last three or four years now. Violence, now rare, has become common. You will not be murdered--I have never heard of a tourist being murdered in Barcelona, a city with only 40-50 murders a year, almost all domestic violence. You WILL, however be a target of Barcelona street criminals while here. Somebody WILL try to take you off, no matter how cautious you think you're being or how travel-savvy you think you are.

Some British guy (his name is Terrence, so he ain't from, say, Indiana) on the Street Scams thread suggests that one should avoid dressing like an American tourist. Doesn't matter. They'll pick you out as a tourist anyway, no matter if you're wearing the Official Grayish-Black Barcelona Uniform or not. He also suggests that one should not talk to strangers in Barcelona, just as one would not talk to strangers in Atlanta or Chicago. Terrence has it just the wrong way around: Americans WOULD talk to strangers in Atlanta or Chicago, because anywhere travelers go--the downtown streets, the tourist attractions, the shopping areas, attractive restaurants and bars, airports--in the United States is safe. Bad things in America happen in places far away from where tourists or business travelers go. The problem is that bad things in Barcelona happen exactly where tourists go.

Most of the city is very safe from petty crime. But the tourist areas are definitely not. All of the Old City, inside the Rondas south of Pl. Catalunya between Paralelo and the Parque Ciudadela, is dangerous; so are the areas around the Parque Guell and the Sagrada Familia.

Remember that ninety-seven percent of Spaniards are wonderful folks, but the Spaniards who earn their livings dealing with moron-tourists are not. They deal with so many morons that they assume all foreign tourists are morons. Even if you're not, you will be treated like one. The locals will give you no sympathy if you get taken off on the Ramblas. If you somehow get in trouble away from the Old City, though, the people you'll deal with aren't used to dealing with moron-tourists and so will consider you to be a real person.

How to Avoid Being a Victim

1. Stay in a hotel and eat in restaurants outside the Old City. The Eixample, Sarria, St. Gervasi, and Gracia are all very nice and outside the high-crime areas. Sure it's more expensive. It's cheaper in the long run. And the food's better because real locals eat in those places up there.
2. When going touristing in the Old City, leave everything in the hotel safe. Bring a twenty-euro note and a disposable camera. No passport, no credit cards, no fancy equipment, just enough for a sandwich and a cup of coffee.
3. Watch your ass when arriving with your bags and leaving with them. That's when you are most vulnerable. By the way, travel light.
4. Avoid gypsies and Arabs. Assume they are thieves until proven otherwise. And don't stay around them long enough to give them a chance to prove anything. Damn right I'm prejudiced.
5. Avoid anyone who stops you and tries to get your attention, especially if you are in a car anywhere or on foot in the Old City. Let 'em get the time or a light or directions from someone else. Just shrug and move on. If the person becomes insistent, move on really fast.
6. Don't give any money to street performers, and don't stop and watch them. That's when your pocket gets picked.

Scams and Robbery Techniques They've Tried on Me

1. Mustard-on-your-shirt scam
2. Gypsy-women with carnations scam (dozens of times--just get away)
3. Asking-for-directions scam
4. Asking you the time scam
5. Asking for a cigarette scam
6. That American woman who begs near the Plaza del Pi
7. Asking for a few euros for a train ticket (maybe 200 times)
8. Trying to grab your card at an ATM
9. Offering to "give" you a cigarette lighter
10. Trying to pick your pocket in the subway (uncountable times)
11. Begging with doped dogs as alms bait (uncountable times)
12. The "football scam"--one kid shows you Ronaldo's moves while another robs you
13. Surrounding you and overpowering you (four or five times--never got me but two friends, yes. One guy whacked me with a metal bar while I was getting away.)
14. Taking you down with a stranglehold from behind (twice. It worked once.)

Two that I haven't seen mentioned yet:

1. They say they're from a school for the deaf and show you some phony ID. Then they sell you some fifty-cent piece of leather crap for five euros. I have seen this scam in both Madrid and Barcelona.

2. They set up a "petition drive" and ask people to sign against drugs or against AIDS or something else that everybody's against. While you are signing and your attention is distracted, your pocket will be picked.

The Seven Dwarves go to church and all sit down in the back pew. They're all nudging and winking at one another and whispering to Dopey, "Ask the priest, ask the priest." The priest, slightly irritated, says, "Now, please, you're interrupting the service. If you have any questions, ask me, and I will be happy to answer, and then we will return to prayer." So Dopey stands up and says, "Father, are there any midget nuns in the Church?"

The priest, mystified, says, "No, my son, there are no midget nuns. Now, let's return to our service."

After a few seconds, though, the nudging and winking and "Ask him again, ask him again" begins, and the priest is now really irritated. He stops and says, "Now, this is the last interruption I will tolerate. If you have any questions, please ask, and then please be silent." So Dopey stands up again and asked, "Father, are you sure there aren't any midget nuns in the Church?"

The priest is exasperated. He shouts, "NO! There never have been and there never will be any midget nuns in the Church! Now sit down and shut up!"

Sudden, total silence. Then six of the Seven Dwarves look at one another, nod conspiratorially, and break into a chant:

"Do-pey screwed a pen-guin! Do-pey screwed a pen-guin!"

The Relative Cultural Power of Languages

My Economist Pocket Handbook has a list of the top 27 countries in book sales, from the year 1999, in millions of dollars. For rough purposes, let's assume that the money spent on books in a language is equivalent to the real cultural importance and strength of said language. We'll also assume, unless stated otherwise, that all book sales in a country are in that country's language. I know this is very quick and dirty but I think the figures mean something.

Book Sales, 1999, millions of dollars

1. English $34,138m (US 26876, UK 4611, 80% Canada 1193, Australia 1165, South Africa 383)

2. German $10,642m (Germany 9806, 70% Switzerland 450, Austria 387)

3. Japanese $9,913m

4. French $3,813m (France 2840, 50% Belgium 488, 20% Canada 296, 30% Switzerland 189)

5. Spanish $3,245m (80% Spain 1929, Argentina 702, Mexico 614)

6. Chinese $3,009m (China 2387, Taiwan 622)

7. Portuguese $2,856m (Brazil 2506, Portugal 350)

8. Italian $2,658m

9. Dutch $1,471m (Netherlands 983, 50% Belgium 488)

10. Korean $1,740m (obviously South only)

Other languages whose countries make the top 27: Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Danish, and Vietnamese, in order. Non-Spanish languages within Spain, figured at 20%, would be a very solid $482m in annual sales, in the same league as Polish or Danish. If a language can't beat Vietnamese at $339m in book sales per year, it ain't on the list, and if a country doesn't spend as much on books as Vietnam, it ain't on the list either. That means Russian, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and all the Indian-subcontinent languages don't make the cut.

Notice that the amount of book sales in dollars in English, which we are claiming here is at the very least correlated with the cultural strength and importance of English, is not much less than that of the following nine languages combined. Then ask yourself why not too many foreign novels are translated to English.

Per Capita Book Sales, 1999, in dollars

#2 Germany, $120
#3 US, $98
#7 Japan, $78
#7 (tie) UK, $78
#14 Spain, $61
#19 France, $47
#20 Italy, $46

Feel free to read anything you want into this.

The Month of the Cat continues apace here. In addition to our five beasts, we have George visiting for a couple of weeks and we're now officially in charge of taking care of Anna and Raul's--they're our downstairs neighbors--two kittycats while they're away on vacation. That's eight. This is certainly a cathouse we're running here.

Back when we had only four beasts, before we got Oscar, I named this apartment "Els Quatre Gats" after the famous Boho bar where Casas and Rusinyol and Picasso and the boys used to hang out. In Catalan (and in Spanish) "four cats" means "you and me and the lamppost"--that is, just a few unimportant folks. Only four cats, the avant-garde Boho art dudes, hung out there, which is one reason it closed down like a hundred years ago. There is now a bar called "Els Quatre Gats" located on the same street as the original bar, but in a different (though Modernista) building. To my knowledge there is no connection between the historic and the actual places but the name. The existent bar is a perfectly decent place, though rather touristy. Still, these folks are tourists who know who Picasso was and therefore deserve credit for having heard of and wanting to visit the namesake of the bar he designed the menu cover for, his famous first paid job. These people are not morons, and hanging out where they hang out is officially declared Non-Cheesy. Especially since it stays open late.

It is also officially declared Non-Cheesy to go to the Cafe Moka on the Ramblas, where barricaded government soldiers had a stand-off with Orwell's POUM militia, who were up on the roof of the Tabacos de Filipinas building across the street.

Franco Aleman sent me this bit of drool from the Commie intellectuals, the Enlightened and Illustrated Among Us. I'm not going to bother translating it but it's pretty easy to get the gist if you can figure out words like "imperio" and "dignidad" and "plutocracia". The only signers who I recognized are dumb-as-dirt old-lady actress Rosa Regas and Manu Chao's dad.

I like Andrew Sullivan and I like sociological analysis, so when the two get together it's well worth a read. Check out this piece on "bears", the regular-guy subset of gay men. I get along a lot better with this kind of down-to earth gay dude, of whom I've met several, than with the fussy fruity gays living up to the stereotype, who just drive me up the wall sometimes.

One disagreement with Sullivan--he says toward the end of the story that he thinks straights feel more comfortable around the flitty fairy type of gay or around cross-dressers because we know how to categorize them and so they're not a threat, and that bears are challenging precisely because they don't fit the stereotype.

I think a lot of us have graduated beyond that stage. Most of the people I know don't particularly care if you're gay and understand that gay people differ among themselves just as extensively as any other group, whether religious or ethnic or whatever. I, personally, and I think a lot of fairly clueless straight guys like me, feel much more comfortable around anybody, straight or gay, who isn't putting on an act. I just can't stand flirty silly girls, they're so obviously trying to be the center of attention, and I feel the same way about the Richard Simmons-like mincing frootloops. Drag queens make me particularly uncomfortable because they're so phony. I've met a couple, both Barcelona theater types. I mean, what do you talk about? "I think you really ought to try some much more subdued tones of makeup for the fall season. And eighty-six the mascara." Or, "So how exactly do you get into a panty girdle? Duct-tape your schlong to your butt or what?" Or, "I don't care what you're dressed like, I am not going to give you the ritual Spanish man-woman kiss on both cheeks." But I've got no problem with bears and with anybody else who isn't trying to make an impression at all costs. Bears aren't putting on a show, they're being themselves, and I think a lot of us straight people can appreciate that.

By the way, the article is from Salon and so you have to click through an ad before they'll let you in.

Here's some staggeringly important news for the London metro blogosphere: Remei and I will be in London between about September 8 and 14. We're staying with our friend Elisabeth, who lives west of town near the Ealing Broadway tube stop. If any of you folks would like to get together while we're there--you know, spend an evening in a pub or the like--just drop a note in the Comments section or e-mail us at crankyyanqui@yahoo.com.

I swear I'll dive over the balcony railing if I ever hear that damn song that goes, "Last night a DJ saved my life" again. I thought momentarily about writing a parody version, since I've got the damn song playing back in my head, and substituting "BJ" for "DJ", but I decided not to.

Thursday night Clark had a little party down by the beach, so I got to hang out with supermodels. Clark's girlfriend Clara and her Uruguayan friend Ana are advertising models, and are definitely much hotter than the average babe. We're talking nine on a ten scale here; they're both a lot better looking than Ann Coulter, for instance. there's just no comparison. Clara's little sister was there, too, visiting from Buenos Aires, and she's possible future supermodel material. No grass, however, on the infie--God, I can't believe I even thought about saying that. That's so gross. Forget I ever brought it up.

Chick goes into a tattoo parlor and says, "I love the Beatles. I want John Lennon's face tattooed on my left inner thigh, and Paul McCartney's face tattooed on my right inner thigh." So she strips off, the tat guy does the job, and when he's finished he shows the chick in a mirror, and she says, "That's terrible! They don't look anything like Lennon and McCartney. I'm not going to pay you for that." So the tat man says, "Look, I'll go outside and get the first person who walks by, and we'll show them the tattoos, and see what they think." The chick says OK, and the tattoo guy gets the first person walking by the shop. It's the town drunk. The tat man says, "Look, Mac, does the guy on the left look like John Lennon and does the guy on the right look like Paul McCartney?" The drunk tries to focus his bulging, yellowish-red, Pasqual Maragallish eyes and slurs, "I dunno about either of them two, but that dude in the middle looks just like Willie Nelson."

One awful thing about summer here, besides the stifling heat, is the "cancion del verano", the "song of the summer". Pop-music producers compete to see who can come out with the catchiest ditty that will take the country by storm. There's a different one every year. It's always hellaciously bad, and it's always a lowest-common-denominator disco-pop job calcualted to appeal most of all to fourteen-year-old girls. The most infamous recent examples are "Macarena" and "Asereje", but there are dozens of others from summers past that you will hear played by some goddamn pachanga gadinga-dinga band at every goddamn fiesta mayor in the whole goddamn country.

This summer, though, they've done a hell of a marketing job. I don't even remember what product it is, but the TV ads feature a bunch of goofy dudes and / or chicks, rather in the style of beer commercials, singing a silly new song that they have supposedly written in hopes of scoring the "cancion del verano". I believe there are three different ads with three different songs. Anyway, everybody loves the ads, and, guess what? Professional, polished versions of the silly songs have just been released. Get ready, world.

The other thing they have are disco record advertisements. They're all called "Ibiza Mix" or "Playa Mix" or "Cancun Mix" or whatever, and they feature what's called here "musica maquina", "machine music"--i.e. a repetitive pulsating drum-and-synth beat with a simple pop melody (often stolen from public-domain songs; I particularly remember an extremely obnoxious maquina version of "Camptown Races" from a couple of years ago) over the top. The canciones del verano only last three minutes. The goddamn disco-mix CDs last for what seems like hours when your neighbor's kid has one. The commercials are all the same, showing lots of silicone chicks in skimpy bikinis dancing around a swimming pool while some dork sprays them with a hose. Note the very obvious phallic symbol, so obvious that even fourteen-year-old boys get it.

Meanwhile, of course, good Spanish musicians get ignored. I mean, say, Juan Perro or Kiko Veneno may not be everyone's cup of tea, but you can't deny their talent.

There's a lovely scandal brewing down south. The real Jesus Gil, not our pal from Ibidem--which is off the air, I don't know why--but the crooked property developer, former owner of Atletico Madrid, and convicted felon, is the power behind the throne in Eurotrashy Marbella on the south coast near Malaga. His political party is the Grupo Independiente Liberal, GIL--get it? Gil himself has been banned from standing for office due to his enormously long rap sheet, but he runs things anyway, sort of like old Edwin Edwards used to in Louisiana. Anyway, get this, Gil's handpicked mayor, who is currently "enjoying an idyll" with, that is, shacking up with, diva singer Isabel Pantoja, who used to be married to the now-dead bullfighter Paquirri, has somehow pissed Gil off, probably by saying something like "Look, dude, it looks kind of bad if we approve more than ten of your nouveau-riche Mafia-aesthetic imitation-Vegas luxury-condo projects a year in this town". So Gil is trying to dump his own mayor and he's got the Socialist Party and the Andalucist Party backing him up. Imagine that George Steinbrenner put in his man, who was having an affair with Liza Minnelli, as mayor of Palm Springs, and then decided to force the guy out with the help of Ted Kennedy and Lyndon LaRouche. It's something like that.

The cops busted a safe house in Valencia where the ETA cell that set off the bombs in Alicante had been hiding out; the terrorists had left but a lot of their stuff was confiscated, including three kilos of dynamite. This cell will go down very soon, leaving only the cell operating in the North on active status. They won't last long, either. These guys are a bunch of poorly trained amateurs drafted from the youth movement. ETA is on the ropes. They just cannot commit crimes with impunity anymore. The government's strategy of not giving in, of not negotiating when there's nothing to negotiate about, and of using massive police pressure--just what the bleeding-heart Left, the "intellectuals and noted public figures", the Enlightened and Illustrated Among Us, repeated over and over would not work because it was "repressive"--is working.

Here's Andy Robinson in today's Vanguardia.

With a few exceptions, Americans--differently from Europeans--do not read foreign novels, a "dangerous" tendency in the world after September 11, according to editors and cultural critics in New York and Washington. But there are large discrepancies over whether the problem is one of supply or demand. The New York Times, in a recent story titled "America Yawns at Foreign Novels", depicts an American with a closed mentality, paradoxically more chauvinist because he believes that American multiculturalism includes all the diversity in the world.

Of the 100,000 books published in the US between 1999 and 2000, 11,500 of them novels, only about 300 of them are translated...The contrast between the US and Europe is important. All the important American novelists are translated to the principal European languages--which proves the caricature of the anti-American European to be false--and some, like Paul Auster, are more successful in France and Spain than in the US....Marketing experts reject many foreign novels because, as one said in the New York Times, "they are less action-oriented, they are more philosophical than we are used to".

Oh, Andy, Andy, Andy, where do we start?

1) Europeans are no more "cultured" nor "open" than Americans, whatever that means. The Great Unwashed in both continents is equally uninformed.

2) Are you saying that translated novels are not very popular in America because of our alleged fear of foreignness that appeared after September 11? So why are you using data from 1999-2000 to support your claim?

3) Remember, Andy, English is the language we use in America. That means that books from Britain, Australia, South Africa, Canada, Ireland, and also many from India, Pakistan, Africa, and the Arab world, which are written originally in English, ARE NOT TRANSLATED though they are "foreign" books.

4) English is by far the most creative language in the world, in the sense that it produces the most creative products, for lack of a better word, of whatever kind. The Summer Institute of Linguistics says that English has 322 million native speakers, of whom almost all are literate (they have the ability to read and write) and well-off enough to be consumers of culture, though that culture may be as lowbrow as pro wrestling, country music, and People magazine. I will be willing to bet that Japanese, with 125 million native speakers, is the second most creative language. German, with 96 million, would be third. French with 72 million would be fourth. Almost all these people are literate consumers of culture. Spanish has 332 million, but how many are both literate and well-off enough to consume cultural products? Half? Portuguese has 170 million; same thing. As for Mandarin Chinese with its 885 million, Bengali with 189 million, and Hindi with 182 million, while they are of course the languages of great cultures, not many of their speakers are literate cultural consumers.

But if we assume that the users of English, Japanese, German, and French are all equally culturally productive, then English produces more creative works per year than Japanese, French, and German combined, simply because of the number of speakers. And, if we consider the bell curve--that is, the more subjects under study, the longer the tails on each side will be--the peaks of English literature will tend to be higher than in other languages, because the competition for the status of "exceptional" is much greater.

5) I thought we'd all agreed that the New York Times was full of dog doo.

6) What do you expect a bunch of Manhattan literary types to say about their fellow Americans, anyway? That they're grateful we buy the stuff they put out and make them all rich? No, that we're a bunch of stupid midwestern oafs. There's nobody more anti-American than a snobby Manhattanite.

7) There's a great deal more cultural diversity in the United States than anywhere else in the world. The population of the US is about 11% immigrants. It's not chauvinistic to say so when you live on the same street with people from Colombia, Cuba, Poland, and India, as I did when I was a kid, or when you work with people from Nigeria, Vietnam, Ukraine, Iran, Korea, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Egypt, as I did when I worked at the university.

8) What do you mean the "caricature" of the anti-American European is false? The books the Europeans translate are the ones that will play over there. They publish some Paul Auster crap for the pseudo-intellectuals and lots and lots of John Grisham and Stephen King and Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel and other such sub-high school stuff for the Non-Illustrated and Enlightened. You won't find anything by any conservative American authors in any Spanish bookstore except maybe Saul Bellow. And you won't find any American non-fiction, almost 90% of the books published in the US, translated, except for Noam Chomsky's gibberish and Who Moved My Cheese.

9) Also, we just agreed that it makes demographic sense that a lot more books are translated from English than into English.

10) You can't win either way with Andy. If you publish 100,000 titles a year, does he say, "Gee, the Americans sure publish a lot of books. That means they must read a lot and be cultured people"? No, he looks for the black cloud within the silver lining every time. Seems that not enough of these 100,000 books are translated from other languages for Andy's liking, though surely a great number come from other countries and were written originally in English. Like, say, the Harry Potter books, which are very British--they're just an update of the old Billy Bunter school stories--and not American at all in their cultural environment. Yet they sell in isolated, ignorant America, only interested in American things.