Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Let us have a civil conversation, they say, as they cut food stamps, and medicare, and social security.
Let us have a civil conversation, they say, as they cut taxes on the rich.

Let us have a civil conversation, they say, as children are stolen, by the authority of a badge and a gun, and taken away and locked in cages.
Let us have a civil conversation, they say, as protesters are beaten, homelands are invaded, and the oil  companies bidding is done, and they build a pipeline and then the damn thing bursts and destroys the land for miles around.
Let us have a civil conversation,  they say, as the president starts an unwinnable trade war with the whole world, but exempts companies doing business with  his daughter.

Let us have a civil conversation,  they say, as the police continue to kill civilians  with impunity.

Let us have a civil conversation, they say, but keep your  hands off my guns!

Let  us have a civil conversation, they say, as they incarcerate millions of people  just for having a little weed, that wonderful herb that makes you feel all  funny  in the head, and could show us the way  to world peace,  if we would only let it.
Let us have a civil conversation, they say, as they deny millions of people the medicines which would  give  them a long, and pain free life.
Let us have a civil conversation, they say, as they cut funds from public schools to give subsidies to private schools.

Let us have a civil conversation, they will say, as the blade of the guillotine slices through their miserable, arrogant, eminently sliceable necks.

We started off  with  a boat  trip  up to the zoo, which actually takes over an hour, which is  strange, because it’s not all that far.  The boat spends a lot  of time in locks.

So, the boat docked and we walked across Cisařsky Ostrov and then  had  to take a ferry  to the zoo side of  the river, which served as a reminder of the bridge collapse a while back.  That was a cool bridge.

We went to Troja Palace first, then proceeded to the zoo.  My older brother and his girlfriend that they had a senior price, which is one  crown.
Now, I have  mixed feelings about zoos.  I figure some of the animals have it figured out that they are not living in exactly a natural setting.  Certainly the polar bear.  The giraffes, I imagine, who can see over  the fence to a street outside, large  birds like  owls or vultures who  live in cages, and some of the others, like the gorillas and the big cats who, despite having a little bit of a natural habitat to play in, no doubt  find it too small.

On the other hand, I always enjoy a trip  to the  zoo.  I  like seeing  the animals,  I like watching the animals, I like learning about the  animals.

Favorites today: the hippo fart,  the young cheetahs  playing and wrestling on the ground, the orangutan playing  with  a burlap bag, and the polar bears  swimming on their back and looking very contented, even though I count them among the  animals who have  an inadequate  space.

Well, gee, if I  look  to  see first  what story gets the most comments  and  then write my  blog about that, tonight’s winner is the archaeologist who did a bust of  Caesar based on a composite of  other busts of Caesar, except it doesn’t much  look like any of them.  I thought  it looked like Bill  Nighy – you remember, the down and  out rock and roller from ‘Love, Actually.’  A lot  of other people thought  he looked  like an alien.

Now, I’m kind of  obsessed with  a  biopic about Caesar’s life which should, obviously, star Bill Nighy.

Which brings us to another topic.  After they canceled the Roseanne show, more than one of my  Facebook friends suggested that they  keep the show, just kick Roseanne off and call it ‘The Conners.’  Well, I don’t know if  the  studio execs were listening or  if it was just such  a great idea  everybody  thought of  it at once, but  it did strike me as a cool  coincidence when studio  execs announced  just that.
I’d never actually seen the show.  I liked the original Roseanne, and she was definitely  the heart of it.  Whether or not this  new one  succeeds will  be down to the writers.  The actors are all good enough, but without smart-assed Roseanne, I  don’t know that the show will have any  pizzazz at  all.
I just hope the write her out in a funny  way.  Choking on  a piece of  chicken at Popeye’s maybe.  Getting run over by a Fox News van.  Abducted  by aliens,  maybe?

Anyway, Roseanne Barr (the actress, not  the character), is unemployed and, as far as comedy is concerned, damn near unemployable.  But, Sarah Huckabee Sanders can’t  keep up her bullshit  forever.  I think that  job would  be a natural for Roseanne.

Everybody came over  here  in the morning and Helena made pancakes.  The  original plan was to make waffles, but she tried a  new recipe because one of our party has an egg  allergy and so  the batter was a bit runnier and was just  a big mess in the waffle iron, and then by the time breakfast was ready, the L.A. Watsons had  to take off, they had a lunch appointment with some friends who are also visiting Prague.
The pancakes did come out  just fine in  the  end,  though.
Everybody was around the table, working on a jigsaw puzzle, usually I’m looking at the picture on  the box every two seconds, that’s just my m.o., but most of them regarded that as cheating, so we were doing  it  the hard  way.  It  was cool, though,  the  team effort.  Things everybody can do together are good things, regardless of what thing they are, just because they facilitate being together.  We finished it, though.

Then, I taught my last  two  classes for  the year at Kbely.  It’s  one of  the classes I’ll miss but, on the other  hand, I  am really looking forward to a summer break.

Then I came home and there was a series of confused messages between the 3 parts of our party, the L.A. Watsons,  the Seattle  Watsons, and the Prague Watsons, which led to a lot  of people taking extra trips  that were unnecessary, but eventually we all  met up at their  flat and went for  Chinese, and after that we wandered over to a festival that  was  going  on, there’s always something in Prague, and we were enjoying the scene, but left soon after  the music started.
The L.A. clan has to get up at 3 something in the godawful morning to start  their all day,  two stop  journey home.
It was great, and it was too  short.

Often we get into  arguments about whether a politician is truly  evil or  just  stupid.  It’s a bad  argument.  It distracts  us with an  endless loop.  Are they  evil or are they  stupid,  are they  evil  or are they  stupid, and we stop focusing on doing what needs to be done.
In the case of Melania Trump’s choice of jacket  today, I’m  going  to  go  with evil.  Arrogant, entitled, bitchy, condescending, kickdown evil.

First off, she got a lot of  undeserved credit for making a statement on the issue, even  though it was a half hearted statement “Oh, I feel so bad for the poor children, and Democrats and Republicans  must work to change the situation.”  It was really a lame, manipulative, self-serving, bullshit statement, but the press acted like she was suddenly  Mother Theresa.
And then this.  On a trip  to visit the dear little incarcerated children, she wore a jacket that said, on  the back  of it “I don’t  really care, do U?”
One of Melania’s aides said  there  was no hidden message, and Trump said ‘she was referring to the Fake News,’ which makes no sense at all.
The message was not hidden.  It was in plain sight.  Now, I’m not saying that Melanie Trump is  the next Hedy Lamar, but she is  a professional fashion model and knows  a thing or two  about being  photographed, and you can be damn sure she knew what the jacket said, and how it would be interpreted.

She really does not care.  And, like her husband, we know that she doesn’t care, and she knows that  we know that she doesn’t  care.  And she doesn’t care.