Summer 2012 Thoughts

Speaking of old people losing their memory, the other day I called my 92-year-old mother. She said, "Thank you for calling. You're such a devoted son." She always says that – even though I don't call her as often as I should – because the first thing I always say to her when I call is, "So, how have you been since we talked yesterday?"

It seems like everybody I know these days is unhappy in their relationship. They feel dissatisfied. They feel like they're being taken advantage of. They feel like they deserve someone better. Of course, I'm talking about their relationship with their mobile phone provider.

Both of my kids would like to have one of those expensive new "smart" mobile phones. I had to explain to them – while they were, as usual, sitting at home all day in front of their computers – that one of the basic qualifications for having a mobile phone is actually being "mobile".

Recently, my two sons were constantly taunting each other by saying to other one, "Are you gay?" That was until I told them that, in fact, the person most likely to be interested in asking that question to another person of the same sex would be someone who's gay.

Speaking of being gay, based on my pornography choices, I'm starting to think that I must be a lesbian.

Kids don’t like to think about their parents having sex with each other. What they don’t realize is that their parents don't like to think about it either.

There should be a term for one of those questions that's more than just a question. Like, when you and your wife are getting ready to go out to dinner, and she asks you, "Is that what you're wearing?"

My wife's not the only one commenting on my appearance. The Internet is like a friend that you wish you had never told anything to about yourself. I once searched for the expression "lose weight".

Now, whenever I look at a website, there's always an ad that says "LOSE WEIGHT!" I want to scream at my computer monitor, "Shut up! Leave me alone already! I'm sorry I ever asked you for advice!"

That "Husband by the Hour" handyman service is a great idea, especially for single women who don't know how to do home repairs by themselves.

There should be a similar "Wife by the Hour" service for single men – you know, someone who just comes by occasionally to tell them that they look like shit, that their feet smell, and that they snore.

Speaking of weight, I'm looking forward to seeing Keira Knightley in the new film adaptation of Tolstoy's classic, "Anorexia Karenina."

Whenever I see the logo on a black Audi, I always think that it would make the perfect set of leg chains for the person who's driving it.

Speaking of crazy people, I recently read that Josef Dobrovský, the noted philologist responsible for codifying the Czech language , was committed to a lunatic asylum in 1801. Why doesn't this surprise me?

On the same subject, it also didn't surprise me to discover that Miroslav Kalousek is a Sagittarian like me.  As an astrological sign, we're kind of famous for saying exactly what we think without sufficiently thinking about how what we're saying might sound to the person we're saying it to.  We mean well, but, as Mr. Kalousek might put it, we tend to sound like stupid fucking assholes.

In July, when he supposedly made those famous phone calls, I checked our horoscope for the month on horoscopy.cz and this is what it said (really): You can succeed in spreading your thoughts more easily. Sometimes you feel that you are very strong, but then, unfortunately, you can easily overestimate your strength. You should certainly be on your guard against quickly clinched business deals. In your professional life, Jupiter does not seem to favor you very much, and you will sometimes feel that your superiors are being unfair to you, and you willwant to defend yourself, which may eventually turn out to be a fiasco. 

Finally, according to my experience, there are basically two types of Czech people – those who most closely identify with Old Shatterhand and those who see themselves more like Winnetou.