Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

All’s well that ends well and, as I’m writing this once again in the comfort of my cozy little flat and Isabel safe asleep in her bed, the day has ended well, but  it was spotty as fuck there in the middle.

As I was taking Isabel to school (and forgetting to validate my tram pass, but remembered it on the second leg of my  journey and did not encounter any inspectors) she asked if I would be at home when she finished, because she had no phone nor keys.  I said sure, no problem.
Later, during my Monday morning lessons (two guys who share an office – one is a complete beginner and the other is quite advanced so it has to be back to back individual lessons, which is very good  for me) I  remembered that I’d offered to meet a woman at 1 p.m. about lessons for her kid at 1 o’clock, but as she hadn’t  confirmed, I figured it  would  be  no problem rescheduling.  But, I got a message just before the lesson ended and, sure enough, the message was ‘One o’clock is fine, see you then.’
Well, I considered just calling and rescheduling, I’m sure it would have been  fine, but I called Helena to see if  she could  suggest a solution and she did, without hesitation.  Go home, get Sam’s keys (Sam’s in France, on an  exchange program), drop off your keys with Isabel at school, and go to your meeting.

Like the bad mathematician that I am, I messed up the order of operations and left out a key detail.  I found Isabel O.K., although I didn’t know where her classroom was, friends of hers recognized me and led me to her.  As I left the school, I thought “O.K., now to go home and pick up…uh oh.”  Couldn’t pick up Sam’s keys because I could no longer get into the flat.

No big problem, I thought, I’ll just go straight to the meeting.  I thought  I’d be there way earlier until I checked a map.  She had plainly written Spořilov, but I  was  thinking Spojovaci, which is an easy mistake to make  but a native Czech never would.  Anyway, I was still a little bit early, but starving because I’d had no breakfast and it was lunch time, so I stopped into an Albert Express and bought a pack of cookies.  They  were kind of gooey and sticky, made worse by the day’s intense heat.  So, I went into the park where I saw a fountain, a drinking fountain.  I pressed the button and water shot straight up, about a meter into the air, a thin stream with  the force of a fire hose.  I managed to wash my hands and get a drink but I was splattered and looking ridiculous when I saw a woman with a small  child approaching me.  “Are  you Willie?”
Actually, our meeting went fairly well, her kid was a bit shy, but he’s 6 years old and they don’t always open to strangers right away.  He knows the alphabet song, all of the basic colors, and the eentsy-weentsy spider, so I think we’ll get along just fine, if his mom decides to go ahead with it.
The way back was quicker than the way there (I don’t need to take the Metro all the way  to  Rozstyly, it will be quicker to go to Budejovice and catch a bus from there for about 3 stops) and I got home about 2:30.  Isabel wasn’t home yet, so I went and sat in the park and played Pix Words on my phone for about an hour, then went back.  Still not there, and I was getting a bit pissed  off.  We do keep  an extra key with a neighbor but, since I still expected Isabel to show up any second, I didn’t want to bother her.
I  called Helena and she  called Isabel’s friend’s mom, and found out that they’d had an after-school thing, so that  explained it at least.  She eventually got home about 5 o’clock and I didn’t even have the satisfaction of righteous anger because I hadn’t actually told her what time to be home, and I don’t want to be messing with school activities.

But, she’s got to  start carrying her own keys, that’s for sure.

Hillary Clinton  left the 9/11 Memorial earlier today, and it  was clear she was not well.  As she got into her car, she appeared to faint.  Now I feel bad about some of the mean things I’ve said about her, especially yesterday when I said “I hope she dies,” on a particularly  combative thread.

I haven’t  actually changed my position – Hillary Clinton’s demise might be the best thing that  could happen for America – and the world – but I do feel bad about thinking it.

Maybe she could just be sick enough to be forced to step down?  Nah, she ain’t going  to step down as long as she’s drawing  breath.  We can see that.

After her Cleveland Cough-a-thon, they  said it  was allergies.  Today, after  not taking her to a hospital but to her daughter’s apartment, her doctor  said it was dehydration, or  pneumonia.

That struck me as a bit of double talk, because dehydration and pneumonia are not the same thing.

On CNN, they were fawning all over her, (fair  enough, if she’d died the praise would be sickening) saying what  a grueling, physically demanding thing it was to run for president.  What grueling schedule?  She goes to private fundraisers, in fancy hotels and millionaire’s mansions, away from the cameras.  She hasn’t got a grueling schedule.
Well, maybe I’m being  a bit cynical  here, standing  for hours in the sun can cause problems, and she’s not a young woman.

But, if she thinks the campaign trail is grueling and a threat to her health, wait till she tries being president.

I saw this article a couple of  days ago – well, I saw the headline and then read the comments section, which is my usual m.o..  From my studies of, and brief time working in, journalism, I know that a lot of stories are written because space needs to be filled, and the stories never match up to the headlines anyway.

Going straight to the comments section is easily justifiable in this case.  I’m not interested as much in the robots themselves as I am in people’s reactions to them, which were about evenly split.  Those who treated it like a big joke, and those who just thought it was ‘disgusting’ and ‘creepy.’  A few women asked where the male robots were, but I think they were mostly among the joking ones.

Well, they are coming.  Whatever the state of the art is now, it will only continue to improve.  The more the state of the art improves, the more people will get them, the more the price will drop, and the more people  will get them.
There will be android robot men for women (and gay men) and android robot women for men (and gay women.)  The technology is almost there, and the market is surely there.

Some will have them because they are lonely and have no relationships, some will use them as an adventure on the side (not all of these will be owned at home – there will be brothels), some as a sexual supplement for swinging couples.
Some people will continue to say it’s disgusting.  That will happen for several future generations.  People are judgmental sorts.

One aspect of the situation that has been overlooked: a lower birth rate.  Overpopulation is probably the world’s most serious problem, and here is the solution staring us right in the face.  That’s worth something.

We spent this evening bowling because Helena  had some coupons, and we are the kind of family that does not let coupons go to waste.  We met a friend there, someone I haven’t seen for quite a while, so that was an added plus.

Helena made the same comment she makes every  time we go bowling: “We should go bowling more often.”  It’s true, I agree.  We should go bowling a lot more often because, honestly, we both kind of suck at it and, since it’s something we do maybe once a year, if that, our scores are never going to improve.

A good time was had by all, however.  That’s the thing I like about bowling.  Although it is a competitive sport and requires a certain amount of skill and practice to play well, people of all different levels can play together and all get the same amount of time participating, everyone’s turn  is just as long.  If you are playing tennis, or chess, or even arm wrestling, and one person is really good and the other a complete beginner, neither one is going to have a very good time and, at the end of the exercise, one contestant is going to feel humiliated and one frustrated.

Not a problem with bowling.

I wasn’t too terrible in the first game, even threw a couple  of strikes, but in the  2nd game the ball just seemed hell bent on going into the gutter every time and even Isabel beat me – which I think she was pretty pleased with.

Pizza afterward and then home.  Also, it was a couple of hours offline and interacting with the real world.  I need that occasionally.

It was stinking hot today, it wasn’t too bad on the way to school because it was early  in the morning, but when I was coming home at one o’clock I was sweating through my shirt and the tram was like a sauna because windows are like prisms, they heighten the power of the sun, it is the exact opposite of standing in shade.  When it would stop and the doors would open, there was a puff of a breeze, but that was the only relief.
I am not complaining.  Soon the days will grow cooler and everybody will have to add a layer or two of clothing and the homeless will take up permanent residence on the trams and, even more so on the Metro, shuttling back and forth across the city because it’s the only place they can be to avoid, you know, dying, and it may be uncharitable of me to complain about the stink but, damn.
I have heard several people mentioning the phrase ‘Indian Summer,’ or the Czech  equivalent, ‘Babileto,’ i.e. Grandmother’s Summer, and I take issue with that.  This is not Indian Summer.  This is the continuation of summer, we’re getting an extension on the warm weather this year.  Whether that’s due to global warming or  we’re just lucky, I don’t know (it’s global warming), but my  point is for it to be Indian Summer, there has to have been an intervening period  of autumn, and that has not happened yet.  The few cool days we’ve had recently have been because it was raining, but it was summer rain.
A few leaves have fallen from the trees but it’s because they have burned up and are brown.  The reds and golds that make Prague so spectacular in the autumn have not happened yet.
Despite the specter of global warming and impending global famine, I am not too sorry that we are having longer, hotter summers and shorter, not so cold winters.  Selfish of me, I suppose.