Good times abound: spring is right around the corner (last night, I heard a bird chirping in the evening twilight for the first time this year), baseball season is a scant three weeks away… and the Idlewords guy is finally posting again. Maciej Cegłowski is the best writer around, but for months his site was [...]

My wife, baby kid and I have been on the road for nearly a month now and are flying back to Prague this evening. Currently, we’re holed  up in my hometown of Belmont, MA, a town which – despite its close proximity to Boston – was once declared ‘Region’s Most Boring Town’ in a Boston [...]

I’ve noticed a trend: every year, some movie gets a ton of acclaim as an “edgy, hip, breakthrough” movie that elevates it to “Oscar discussion” etc. — and the movie, when I see it, is completely forgettable, so much so that I am bewildered as to why it’s getting so much attention. This happened a [...]

Just in time for the holidays, I bring tidings of “spite houses,” structures built for the sole purpose of irritating the neighbors (by blocking their access to light and air, etc.). I have to say — I can imagine something like this happening, but I’m a litle taken aback that this concept is so well-embedded [...]

Hey, it’s a rare sports-related post. Just when you thought it couldn’t get more bleak for Tiger, this appears on the front page of espn.com: Heaven protect me from the moment when I’m experiencing a crushing personal crisis and the phone rings with a consoling Ron Artest on the other end. It’s the sports world equivalent [...]

This is my publicly-accessible business registry information as retrieved from the web site of the Czech Statistical Office. The line I’ve highlighted in yellow shows my previous address in U.S. Everything’s okay through street, street number, city… until you get to ‘Spojené státy mexické,’ which is ‘United States of Mexico’. ¿ Um… que ? That’s [...]

Yesterday was a nice occasion to stop and reflect on all the things we’re grateful for in life. Unfortunately, it was also the nine year anniversary of Katherine Harris certifying George W. Bush as the winner of Florida’s electoral votes. Well, isn’t that a kick in the teeth. Happy ‘Angst-giving’. Having a spiral staircase in [...]

Every police checkpoint in Iraq, I’ve just learned, has been equipped with a magic bomb detecting wand that is apparently objectively useless, but which Iraqi cops and soldiers swear by. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s [...]

A few nights ago, the wife and I got some take-away food from the corner restaurant, Neklid (‘Turmoil’). I got my favorite dish: a steak cooked in pepper sauce with green beans wrapped in bacon and roast potatoes also cooked with bits of bacon. It’s like bowling a strike every time. Unfortunately, it also has [...]

My friend Patrick once stopped at a Lego store in Hamburg where they sell Lego parts in separate vats. He noticed that there was one vat filled with turbans, another full of mustachioed scowls and a third filled with dynamite-strapped torsos. Voila, the Lego Terrorist was born: He’s small, but his heart is filled with [...]