Spain, Spain, Spain.
What am I going to do with you?
First you insist on not only retaining but celebrating the barbaric spectacle (I am not going to call it a sport) that is bullfighting. Frankly, that's bad enough. Some nights, when I have trouble sleeping, I stroll down to my secret subterranean lair, pull up a world map on the UberComputer, and put the crosshairs on Spain while I fiddle with the ANTIMATTER ANNIHILATE button.
I haven't pushed the button. Yet. Mainly because of Penelope Cruz. She's Spanish, and up until now that was reason enough to sway me from pushing the button.
But now I see this. Be warned, the link is quite gruesome. Allow me to summarize for the tender-hearted -- horse abuse is now rampant in Spain, as the economic calamity there renders droves of the newly rich suddenly poor. Which means thousands of horses are being abandoned at stables, left to starve, or left to suffer any number of other cruel and undeserved fates.
I'd probably have skipped over the story with a shake of the head had a Spanish vet not remarked that she'd seen numerous cases of horses with untreated gunshot wounds to their legs.
Gunshot wounds received when revelers fired shotguns close to the horses' hooves in order to make then dance.
Let that sink in. There are people out there who find it not only acceptable but amusing to wound horses just to make them dance.
Elsewhere in the article, someone theorizes that the horses are being abused in response to some sort of repressed rage on the part of the formerly wealthy owners.
So again I ask -- Spain, what is your freaking problem?
Spanish crowds mob stadiums to watch some latex-clad jackass prance around and stab a bull until the poor thing bleeds to death. The crowds throw flowers. Despite dressing like Pee Wee Herman, Spanish matadors have somehow achieved rock star status in Spanish culture, all while performing acts that result in swift arrest in civilized parts of the world.
I'm not sure who disgusts me more -- the crowds or the matadors.
I'm sure you'll all seen those videos of bulls managing to skewer some slipper-clad twit of a matador. Or videos of an enraged bull leaping into the stands and trampling a few 'spectators.'
I cheer at both. The video I really want to see is the one in which a bull gives a bovine colonoscopy to a matador before flinging him into the crowd and then leaping atop the shrieking mob until blood and cheap wine run down the stands. Followed by a rushing inferno that roasts each and every 'fan' while they crush each other in a vain attempt to escape. And then maybe a news helicopter crashes into the fire, just to make absolutely sure there isn't one single survivor.
I'd get the Blu-Ray of that. And laugh for the full length of it.
I know full well Spain doesn't have a monopoly on animal cruelty. Americans fight dogs to the death every day. But at least we arrest them when we catch them, and we don't set the dogfights in arenas and praise the courage of the idiots running the shows.
I think I've had it with Spain.
I think the next time I have trouble sleeping, I'm not only going to press the ANTIMATTER ANNIHILATE button but hold it down until all those geologists who've spent years wondering what Earth's mantle looks like can stroll over to the edge of the smoking crater and have themselves a look.
Yes, Spain, even Penelope Cruz can't save you from my wrath now.
What am I going to do with you?
First you insist on not only retaining but celebrating the barbaric spectacle (I am not going to call it a sport) that is bullfighting. Frankly, that's bad enough. Some nights, when I have trouble sleeping, I stroll down to my secret subterranean lair, pull up a world map on the UberComputer, and put the crosshairs on Spain while I fiddle with the ANTIMATTER ANNIHILATE button.
I haven't pushed the button. Yet. Mainly because of Penelope Cruz. She's Spanish, and up until now that was reason enough to sway me from pushing the button.
But now I see this. Be warned, the link is quite gruesome. Allow me to summarize for the tender-hearted -- horse abuse is now rampant in Spain, as the economic calamity there renders droves of the newly rich suddenly poor. Which means thousands of horses are being abandoned at stables, left to starve, or left to suffer any number of other cruel and undeserved fates.
I'd probably have skipped over the story with a shake of the head had a Spanish vet not remarked that she'd seen numerous cases of horses with untreated gunshot wounds to their legs.
Gunshot wounds received when revelers fired shotguns close to the horses' hooves in order to make then dance.
Let that sink in. There are people out there who find it not only acceptable but amusing to wound horses just to make them dance.
Elsewhere in the article, someone theorizes that the horses are being abused in response to some sort of repressed rage on the part of the formerly wealthy owners.
So again I ask -- Spain, what is your freaking problem?
Spanish crowds mob stadiums to watch some latex-clad jackass prance around and stab a bull until the poor thing bleeds to death. The crowds throw flowers. Despite dressing like Pee Wee Herman, Spanish matadors have somehow achieved rock star status in Spanish culture, all while performing acts that result in swift arrest in civilized parts of the world.
I'm not sure who disgusts me more -- the crowds or the matadors.
I'm sure you'll all seen those videos of bulls managing to skewer some slipper-clad twit of a matador. Or videos of an enraged bull leaping into the stands and trampling a few 'spectators.'
I cheer at both. The video I really want to see is the one in which a bull gives a bovine colonoscopy to a matador before flinging him into the crowd and then leaping atop the shrieking mob until blood and cheap wine run down the stands. Followed by a rushing inferno that roasts each and every 'fan' while they crush each other in a vain attempt to escape. And then maybe a news helicopter crashes into the fire, just to make absolutely sure there isn't one single survivor.
I'd get the Blu-Ray of that. And laugh for the full length of it.
I know full well Spain doesn't have a monopoly on animal cruelty. Americans fight dogs to the death every day. But at least we arrest them when we catch them, and we don't set the dogfights in arenas and praise the courage of the idiots running the shows.
I think I've had it with Spain.
I think the next time I have trouble sleeping, I'm not only going to press the ANTIMATTER ANNIHILATE button but hold it down until all those geologists who've spent years wondering what Earth's mantle looks like can stroll over to the edge of the smoking crater and have themselves a look.
Yes, Spain, even Penelope Cruz can't save you from my wrath now.
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