Drunken elephants die in accident

Yes, rampaging elephants boozing it up and knocking down telephone poles. Have we really come to that?

Look at the related stories: Apparently this is something of a pattern in the Greater Calcutta area.

Funny exchange. Read from the bottom up:

----- Original Message -----
From: V.S.
To: Scott MacMillan
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 4:11 PM
Subject: RE: have you heard this yet?


are we getting old?

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott MacMillan [mailto:scott@tulipcafe.cz]
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 4:11 PM
To: V.S.
Subject: Re: have you heard this yet?


Think I might get a leased line just so I can play this at Tulip.


----- Original Message -----
From: V.S.
To: Scott MacMillan
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 4:11 PM
Subject: RE: have you heard this yet?

they've even played bran van 3000. that's canadian!!!!! that's canadian

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott MacMillan
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 4:08 PM
To: V.S.
Subject: Re: have you heard this yet?


They're playnig the Smiths, from Louder than Bombs!!!

----- Original Message -----
From: V.S.
To: Scott MacMillan
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 3:20 PM
Subject: RE: have you heard this yet?


i wanna live in america, everything's great in america

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott MacMillan [mailto:scott@tulipcafe.cz]
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 12:08 AM
To: V.S.
Subject: have you heard this yet?


http://indie1031.fm/listenlive.html

There's a coherent piece on SpinSanity.com -- a site I generally find leans too heavily toward Democrat-bashing -- about Matt Drudge's gross misrepresentation of Wes Clark's Congressional testimony supposedly supporting the war. (More convincing, I found, that Josh Marshall's defense.)

Seems more evidence that people are being a bit unfair with Clark, although at the same time I'm beginning to think he sort of has it coming with his ill-considered, off-the-cuff and at times nutty remarks. And that plasticman smile.

Dean's fallen into third place in New Hampshire! Weird stuff is happening. Time to start paying attention to something else, like this. Wish I could find that debate online, though. Would be nice to watch it over breakfast tomorrow morning.

Inspection at Czech psychiatric children's ward brings shocking facts to light.

An inspection by the health ministry at a psychiatric children's ward in the town of Bites has revealed gross malpractice: unnecessarily large amounts of tranquilizers to pacify distraught patients, injections being used as a form of punishment, children being placed in isolation and left there for much too long -even restrictions on taking a shower. As one of the inspectors put it "the place looked as if time had stood still for forty years and more"

Very, very disturbing. Perhaps equally disturbing is this quote from the president of the Czech Association for Mental Health:

I hope it is a shocking exception. But the problem is that there are no regular inspections made at psychiatric wards. There is no law or regulation which would make them compulsory.

Perhaps, to misquote Dostoevsky, the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its mental institutions.

Looks like everything those LA bloggers are saying about Indie 103.1 is true, except they left one, uh, sort of important thing out: You can listen online.

G. A. Cerny's back.

I'm thinking of opening up a new cafe in either Most or Litvinov. What do you guys think?

Things to blog about:

- The hike in VAT for restaurants and bars come May 1. Welcome to the EU, suckas. Might save that one for Fistful. UPDATE: Just a posted a nice little rant about that over at Fistful. Check it out and offer comments if you so wish. (To the people who stuffed the comment box last Fistful post, much appreciated.)

- The Slovak nationalist who punched me on New Year's Eve. (I couldn't write about this earlier because my mom was reading.)

- The chef we just fired from Tulip because, like a muppet version of a Czech chef, he couldn't get it into his head that ketchup is for French fries and only that.

If anybody has any preferences, you know where to find me.

And, by the way, here's the comeback of PTV's Prague Webwatch.

I wrote a little thing a while back about the weird disconnection of following American politics from abroad, where you don't have regular television access to the candidates but only read about them on the web.

Well, I just met Howard Dean. Here's the video of his speech in Iowa.

Oh. My. God. Doesn't he strike anybody as, um, well, don't know how to put it nicely -- a bit of a demogogue? Like Matt Welch says, maybe in a crazy good way, sort of.

Better than the video, via Kaus, here are two great samples of the scream and the surrounding oration, put to a beat.

Takes me back to that song on the John Specher Blues Explosion's Orange -- I think it's "Full Grown"? -- "We're number one in New York City! Kansas City! We're number one in Oklahoma City! Houston! Austin! Dallas! We're number one in Jackson, Mississippi! I said the blues is number one! I SAID THE BLUES IS NUMBER ONE!!!!!"

Jo! I wrote something on Fistful of Euros about Czech crony capitalism. None of the regular readers there tend to comment on posts concerning Czech news, but they do have a lot of interested readers. So if you have anything to say about the topic, feel free to go post something.

Slate's Today's Papers headline: Dean Wither.

Kerry Scores Comeback Iowa Victory; Edwards 2nd, Dean and Gephardt Lag (washingtonpost.com): "-- Riding a late surge of support, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) scored a commanding come-from-behind victory Monday night in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, with Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) finishing a strong second. "

Dude....

It's plug time. As I explained to Kid Radical last night -- or was it two nights ago -- I'm slowly introducing a new menu to Tulip. Dubbed "New Winter Delights," it's more upscale bistro-style food compared to the diner-style international melange we've got going on the current menu.

Right now it's available every evening from 6 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. In the starters category.... Grilled aubergine with freshly shaved Parmesan cheese, topped with rosemary tomato sauce and chick peas. Risotto of chicken and wild mushrooms. Saffron risotto with lemon cream sauce and Parmesan cheese. Provencal ratatouille served on homemade foccacia bread. Braised fennel with diced vegetables and bacon served on homemade foccacia bread.

And, in the main courses corner... Fillet of fresh salmon with white wine sauce served with Provencal ratatouille. Tuscan lamb served with roasted red potatoes and demi glace. Freestanding chicken lasagna served with mushroom Duxelles sauce. (That's freestanding, not free range. It means it's built on the plate instead of coming from a big oven dish reheated umpteen times.) Homemade tagliatelle with homemade pesto, fresh tomatoes and Parmesan cheese. ·Homemade tagliatelle with chicken breast, bacon, cream sauce and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Caramelized duck breast with arugula salad served with Parmesan potatoes.

If you have anything good to say about these dishes, please say so in the comments bin. If you have anything bad to say, please let me know privately.

*Slurp*

Giving credit where it's due, this menu was developed by our Australian chef, Gavin Barber.

In the meantime, the regular menu is still available, and to that we've added a chick pea burger and a chicken mushroom burger along with a bunch of wraps. (It goes without saying that I recommend the vegetarian options.) Yes, it's true, we are raising the prices a bit, but only because we've been giving the stuff away for the last year and a half. Enjoy.

Why hasn't George Cerny posted this year?

Why is editing the blogrole (that out-of-date list of blogs on the right) such a huge pain in the ass?