Home From Spain.

Home from my family vacation in Spain. It was the first time the kids were in Europe, and when I asked them what they would remember most about the experience, they answered "Ice cream and potato chips." That wasn't the answer I was hoping to hear. Then again, we did eat a lot of ice cream and potato chips, so I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised.

We also took in some of the cultural shit: some churches, a museum, a topless beach. It was my first time on a topless beach, and I really enjoyed it, mostly because of the boobs. The boobs were really terrific and fun to ogle. (When describing how one stares at boobs, I think “ogle” is probably the best word.)

Most of the time, though, we just hung out at our house swimming. One thing I discovered I enjoy doing: skimming the pool. There’s something very satisfying about removing dead things from the water. Now I know how police frogmen feel when they get a “floater.” One element I was unable to master – removing the dead stuff from the skimmer. I’m sure there’s a trick to it, and apparently banging the skimmer as hard as I can on the patio isn’t it.

I also rediscovered my patriotism, particularly as it relates to American made appliances. Those wimpy European refrigerators are terrible. It’s one thing to drink your Diet Coke warm by choice, quite another to do because Europe can’t figure out what to do with Freon. Honestly, I don’t know either, but if you gave me a continent full of people, I could probably figure it out, even if some of those people were from Belgium Lichtenstein and Slovakia.

Another way in which my patriotism was reawakened? Upon learning that Germans look even worse than we do, and the Brits aren’t far behind. There’s a lot of morbidly obese people running around this world, and they don’t all stand up when “The Star Spangled Banner” plays. A lot of them couldn’t stand up if they wanted to, but that’s not the point. And not only are many other nationalities just as physically degraded as we are, they compound the problem with their terrible footwear. If you are ever in a situation in which you do not know whether the person you are observing is American or not, look at his footwear: that will give you your answer. Europeans wear terrible leather toe thongs unchanged since the days of the Holy Roman Empire. Even Florsheims would be an improvement.

Anti-American attitudes overseas seem to have calmed down a lot. People seem to genuinely like our president and cannot understand why we are fighting so hard over giving citizens health insurance. That idea is so ingrained in their cultures that the idea of somebody losing everything they have because of an illness seems, for whatever reason, unfair to them. They can’t quite seem to grasp the concept that insurance companies can’t take extravagant junkets to Vegas if they’re not making shitloads of money by not covering the people who most benefit from their service. Why Europeans can’t get their heads around this simple American concept kind of makes me shake my head It’s called Freedom, Froggy! Learn the word!

Fortunately nobody got sick while we were there because then we would have had to suffer with the guilt of not paying exorbitant expenses for healthcare, which runs counter to my entire sense of fairness and devotion to my maximizing profits for my HMO, who are really good , caring people who simply hate other people.