10 July 2004

The trampling of the idiots

Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" is my favorite book of all time.  I first read it in high school and have read it many times more since.  Later this month I am going to Spain for the first time in my life, and when there I will close my eyes and imagine that I am Jake (minus a certain war wound), sitting in a cafe with a drink, worrying most about where I am going to eat dinner that night.

I thought about trying to go to Pamplona sometime (I am going to Barcelona on this trip) for the summer festival, but even if I did, I wouldn't go anywhere near a bull.  I've never understood the allure of running down a narrow cobblestone street with a pack of angry steer each equipped with sharp, skin-piercing appendages racing towards me. 

The comic strip "Pearls Before Swine" summed it all up last week. 

I would have to be severly inebriated to even think about running with the bulls, and then I hope that there are officials there making sure that anyone who has celebrated too much doesn't get anywhere near the street.  I would want to attend a bullfight though, just to experience that tradition once.  And I think that the world's largest tomato fight occurs in Spain around this time as well.  I wouldn't mind participating in that sometime.

Now I must shove it along, old sport.  What rot!

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