It happened again. A million people (or, so maybe three or four) from all walks of my previous lives said they'd come and visit me this summer in Prague. And of course, they all flaked in the end. This happens year after year after year.

Yesterday, however, I did get a call from an old acquintance who became a pilot at British Airways earlier this year, doing routes to various European cities and swinging through Prague at the moment. He's my old college roomate from freshman year, and while we never really got along all that well in school, it was quite nice to see him now that we're all grown up. (Actually, he hasn't changed much, so the fact that we got along leads me to believe I was more of a prick in my youth).

I've actually never spoken at length with somebody who flies large commercial jetliners for a living. Oddly, he said the weirdest part of his job is making the passenger announcements and standing at the doorway saying, "Thank you, goodbye, thank you, goodbye...." It's times like these -- not during take-off, landing, or staring out the cockpit window at 30,000 feet -- that he really thinks, "Wait, this is my life?"

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Lately I've been at a loss for words about stuff to blog about. Nothing really hot going on around the blogosphere as far as I can tell. Indeed, is it me or did all the blogs suddenly becoming boring? This thingie about Gregg Easterbrook was a real snooze. I mean sure, I have something to say about it (OK, in a nutshell: what he said was neither anti-Semitic nor smart, and I've always been ticked off at people who think think religion and morality have anything to do with one another and 2 Samuel is a helluva lot more violent than Kill Bill, and I only have that argument ready because I talked about it with my girlfriend over dinner last night). But I just don't see why I should spend much time announcing my own thoughts on the matter to the world at large.

Oh, speaking of the Bible. As friends and readers of this blog know, I've been slogging ("slog," according to Rumsfeld, means " to hit or strike hard ... to assail violently") through the Old Testament for several months now. My problem right now is that I've gotten to Psalms, and while the language and imagenry sure is nice, it doesn't exactly have, hm, shall we say, a suspenseful plotline pulling you through it -- unlike most other books of the Bible. In other words, I don't really look forward to coming home so I can curl up with the Good Book and find out in what new and multifarious ways the LORD is great.

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I lost a bet about some Pixies lyrics, so I cleaned the bathroom today.

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Oh, and if you've come to this site looking for a photo (or a picture of a photograph) of Valerie Plame Wilson, click here. At a private party for high-powered media and Washington diplomatic types...

The buzz ... focused on a shy and attractive blonde who sat nibbling finger sandwiches and discreetly introduced herself only as "Valerie."

She's pretty mean with a AK-47, too, or so we hear.

Note that Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic's literary editor and subject of my post on Monday, was eating from the same buffet table. And I thought Prague was a village...