As with most of my work made for the printed page, this piece looks better in the PDF format. If you don't want to bother with the technical concerns of viewing or downloading the PDF version, here are the other thirty-five titles:

"No 'holes' barred"
"Meet friends now! Women are free!"
"Hot & wild party"
"I'll blow you away with pleasure"
"Horny women will turn you on"
"Hot sex samples"
"Still the best sex in the 90's"
"Do you want to beg for mercy or find someone who does?"
"Let's talk dirty ... call me now!"
"Hottest phone sex in the world"
"Get free phone sex"
"Girls pay you! Hey guys! make money providing intimate services to lonely ladies."
"Two girls & you"
"Older women"
"Hot n' sexy action"
"Personal touch"
"Nasty lonely secretary"
"Open 24 hours"
"Talk to someone on their private home phone"
"Large & lovely"
"Wanna listen to real sex calls in progress"
"Live 24 hour 1-on-1 with Lisa"
"Why pay more?"
"Dirty sex samples"
"Lonely London affair"
"Wet horny sex-starved babes"
"Uncensored unregulated unleashed"
"Hot phone sex"
"Sex calls"
"I will satisfy all your needs."
"100's of beautiful women want to rub you in all the right places"
"Wet 'n' wild"
"Hottest & cheapest sex to hit the bay"
"Sex samples"
"Open 24 hours"

I swam without clothes; it seemed like the Greek thing to do. (I read that the original Olympic games were conducted in the nude after a female trainer snuck into the men-only games.) It felt unusual for my penis to float in the warm water.

I remembered that a turtle once bit off a Filipino fisherman's penis; scientists hypothesized that the turtle thought the penis was a worm. (Craig Van Note told me this so it must be true.)

I didn't swim long; I was worried about getting sunburned.

Clamps?! They obviously serve clams, not clamps, so why haven't the owners changed the sign after many years? I have a theory. When I ate there, the entire staff spoke English well, which isn't that surprising on an island that gets hundreds of thousands of English-speaking visitors a year. I think they had a perfectly worded sign, but then some consultant advised them to put an obvious typo in the sign to make it look "authentic." (For the record, I never saw the sign until after I enjoyed an excellent meal there.)

Despite the Greeks' generally adequate command of English, there are still a few language problems. These miscommunications are usually the fault of well-intentioned visitors like myself. Today's visit to the grocery store provided a typical example.

I bought some bread, feta cheese and beer. As I left, I said "thank you" in Greek. The cashier motioned me back as if I'd left something, then she smiled and said "Cunnilingos." I was thoroughly confused for a second until I concluded that what she must have said was "You're welcome" in Greek, even though I can't find anything in my Greek phrase book that sounds like "cunnilingos." You never know, or at least I never do.

I never went back to that grocery story after the embarrassing incident. That's partly because I left red-faced and flustered, but mostly because I found less expensive beer elsewhere.

As most students of history know, the ancient Greeks exported their language throughout their colonies and conquered lands. What isn't widely known is that the traders charged by the length of the word: the bigger the word, the greater the profit.

Just as unscrupulous distillers water down their whisky, the Greek wordsmiths padded their inventory with unnecessary syllables. Sometimes they sold the inflated word at inflated prices, other times they chopped the word into parts and sold the pieces.

The plunderers of the Greek language were put out of business when Aristotle Stagiros invented the dictionary. Once the language had been formalized--literally carved in stone--rogue linguists couldn't add syllables willy-nilly.

The dictionary came too late to save the Greek language. By the time the academics caught up with the merchants, the latter group had already burdened the language with so many superfluous syllables that almost no one over the physical or mental age of three can learn to speak Greek.

I found a full can of beer that had washed up on the beach. It was clear that it been in the sea for quite a while; little slimy things were growing on it. I brought the can back to the apartment, washed it and put it in the freezer to cool. When I opened it, though, all that came out was clear water. Holy Antichrist! I can't understand how the beer turned back into water. I hope it never happens again.

While I was sitting on the beach a man parked his car beside the road, got out, and walked to the sea carrying a pair of roller-blading skates and a crash helmet. I thought I was about to witness a display of amazing athletic prowess, but the man simply undressed and left his clothes and his equipment on the beach while he went for a swim. (I liked the idea that his property was less likely to be stolen from a pile on the beach that from a locked automobile.)

I saw Turkey across the straight, but I have no plans to go there this trip. I wonder if Turkey will, like Greenland, be one of those countries I see but never touch.

As I walked up the narrow path to the acropolis, an old Greek granny was selling little cloth thingies--doilies or coasters or something. She kept repeating "hand made" and "five hundred." It seemed rather sad that she was, in essence, trying to work for well-off tourists for less than a dollar an hour. (Five hundred drachmas is less than a couple dollars, less than a decent pint of beer.)

Craft isn't widely valued these days.