Taking
my midday tiffin in a place I don't often frequent, I had the chance
to view a TV program I'd never seen before. It was a glitzy show
which seemed to include 2 or 3 cross-dressers whom I eventually
decided were actually very butch women. And there was someone who
very much looked - to my astonishment - as if he'd blacked up. All in
all, it was a dreadful affair and it reminded me of the fact that the
biggest TV celebrity in Spain is one Belén Estéban, a woman who's
famous because she used to date a bullfighter. And because she now
adorns daytime TV. This seems to be because she's even less appealing
after her cosmetic surgery than before and because she's
aggressive and controversial, so guaranteed to give viewers what they
love to watch - a 6-party slanging match. It's a weird world.
Spanish
discourse: I was walking past the pet shop in the mall at 2.30
yesterday when a father and his 6 year old daughter arrived to find
the place closed. "Shit! Fuck!", expostulated the father, before
knocking on the window to get the owner to open up. In like vein, one
of the 2 young women I chat with on Saturday mornings said "Fuck"
3 times within the first 5 minutes of the first session. By the way,
both young ladies cried off yesterday's session, for one reason and
another. Par for the course here. After a while, good intentions give
way to good excuses.
Another
fine example of doublespeak from President Rajoy - The draconian new
measures being brought in under the aegis of public security, he
says, will not threaten personal freedom but guarantee it. Oy vey!
Can anyone be surprised that
elements of the new laws have been likened to Franco era legislation,
by the judges no less.
Which
reminds me . . . I've touched on the Spanish judicial system a few
times in the last few weeks. So I wasn't too surprised to read that
65% of Spaniards have 'no faith
whatsoever' in it. And that 75% think justice here is too slow and
expensive, especially as one of the government's stealth taxes has
been a rise in court fees.
Here's
a BBC article on one of my bêtes
noires, the Galician percebe,
or goose barnacle. Something which - as I never tire of saying - only used to be given to animals until relatively recently.
Finally
. . . I mentioned the local fortune-teller Maestro Sisse last week. I
thought of him when reading this comment from Montaigne's essay on
cannibals:- He also
prophesies to them events to come: but let him look to't; for if he
fail in his divination, he is cut into a thousand pieces, if he be caught, and
condemned for a false prophet: for that reason, if any of them has
been mistaken, he is no more heard of. Divination is a gift of God,
and therefore to abuse it ought to be punishable.
Amongst the Scythians, where their diviners failed in the promised
effect, they were laid, bound hand and foot, upon carts and drawn by
oxen, on which they were burned to death.
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