Cheap wine and pillowcases

First of all, let me just say this: if anyone tells you that you can't get bad wine in Spain, you can tell them that your ol' uncle Jerod said they could go suck an egg. 'Cause that's what this wine I bought the other day tastes like. Old eggs. Skuuuuuun-kee. Whew. It's making my eyes water just thinking about it. It actually made poor Oisin have to go lie down for awhile. He drank a little bit and then was staring intently at the glass, holding it up to the light, etc. He says, "you know, if the wine stains the glass it means they've used a powder." Duhhhh...wha??? "If the wine stains the glass"??? Yup, sure enough. The wine stained the glass.
It wasn't like I bought the super-ass cheapo wine, either, it was about the same price as all the other wine I've bought here. I mean, very cheap, yeah, 3-4 Euros, but I know for a fact you can get decent wine here for that much. The obvious question is, why would you make powdered wine when it's so cheap to make decent wine. The answer is equally obvious: never underestimate the power of greed. Or the powder of greed in this case, I guess.
Another difference here that I've neglected to mention so far: the pillowcases. They have an ingenious and, imho, far superior format for pillowcases. To whit: they're open on both sides. That's right, it's a cylindrical tube with no seams on the ends. It might seem odd at first, but think about it; why do you need one side closed up? This way, you can make the case tight enough to cling to the pillow, and once you get it started you can just reach in the other side and pull it through! Works great.
So what else is going on...I went for a long walk on Saturday, down to the beach and then along the shoreline for a couple miles. It's a fun walk, and the water was lovely. It was overcast for the most part, but the sun broke through a couple times for some beautiful vistas.
On my way back I thought of a good metaphor for trying to learn how to speak a new language: it's akin to trying to write an email or letter to someone, only you don't have all the letters available on the keyboard. Like a little kid had picked off some of the keys or something. So you have all these thoughts in your head that you'd like the express, but you don't have access to some of the most basic building-blocks of communication.
For example, let's pick a random sentence that anyone could imagine saying or hearing or reading in an email: "I'm going to go to the grocery store to grab some beers and snacks for the football game, want me to get anything for you?"
Now imagine, if you will, that you're trying to write that on a keyboard, but you're missing three simple, but essential, vowels: a, i, and u. Here's what I came up with:
"Me go to the store for beer n' food for to see tv foot-globe contest. Want me get some for too?"