To: YOU PEOPLE
From: Vice Minister of Komodo Dragon Affairs, on assignment in Barcelona
Greetings from Barcelona, home of tapas, tequila, and tecnologia. This has been a curiously postmodern vacation: here in Barcelona, one of the leading nightclubs plays flamenco music for the tourists until midnight, and then converts to an American disco for the locals, who then party till dawn. In Scotland, I listened to 14 hours of tango music in a crowded tourist bus, and very nearly indulged in the sin of Chinese-style haggis; reason, and my sensible stomach, prevailed. In Ljubljana, I was expecting to find babushkas in black scarves selling beets at the train station. No such luck: most of the locals wore designer clothes and drove nicer cars than we do. Also in Slovenia, the Republic Formerly Known As Yugoslavia, seven of eight local radio stations played only English songs. And so, while international borders and even cultures may be becoming increasingly porous, we all might want to question whether Bill Gates' and McDonald's conquest of the world is really for the best.
Okay, that was easy: of course it's for the best. The pinnacle of this three-month orgy of consumption I'm calling a vacation has already been reached, however. Nice, one of the more sumptuous fleshpots on the French Riviera, offered two irresistible attractions. First, there were the alluring stuffed Komodo Dragons at the local museum of natural history; and second, a pool of 1,200 breeding-and-feeding piranhae, billed as the largest indoor collection in the world. You can bet your sweet aspartame that I stuck around for the daily feeding. (I regret to say that they did not, in fact, lower in a live cow for defleshing, though the twenty pounds of white fish was impressive enough.) My Pagan Winter Holiday cards will contain photographs of this event, naturally.
Damn. My waiter just advised that the kitchen is out of meatballs, and I'll have to have giant stuffed olives instead.
Life is just suffering, I tell you. Perhaps a few more cervezas and a couple weeks on the beach will soothe the pain. The peasants in the cafe are getting a bit restive, so I must fire photon torpedoes and hope for the best.
Enjoy the drizzle and blizzards,
--Arne