The new prime minister of the Czech Republic just fired the Czech European Commissioner via SMS. That's classic.

And! Introducing Sofistica 2, the latest mix by DJ Dougiegyro.

Dougie will be playing Tulip Lounge from 10pm, so stop by and wish him love and happiness and me happy birthday. I'll be there around 10 or 11. Blog readers who say, "Hey Scott, I read your blog. Happy birthday!" or something along those lines will get a free beer.

Finally we hear something from Chad! He's been laying low for quite a while.

A pilot friend of mine recently pointed out that the capital of Chad looks (and sounds -- click here) suspiciously like "Aunt Jemima." (I corrected the link.)

Holy cow! There's an Aunt Jemima web site.

Hey, Colonel Khadafi! Grant me a special birthday wish -- don't send those Eritrean refugees back home, they'll get tortured!!

Today I am 30. What do I want for my birthday? Peace on earth!

Blow me down, indeed: Prognosis sticker sighting. (Once again, I had nothing to do with that.) UPDATE: It weren't no sticker, rather a rusty metal sign!

Sometime toward the end of August I'm going to Calabria. That's the far-flung toe of Italy's boot, and you can read about it here. My sister and her husband just bought a small house there in the town of Gioiosa Jonica, on the Ionian Sea coast. I've been reading about the area. It sounds a bit like the Western Isles of Scotland, except of course completely different. Here are some books about Calabria.

Today is the last day of my 20s. Egad!

I'm not sure how I feel about turning 30. This year has been a very strange one, and now that we're about midway through 2004, I can definitely say that it will go down in my memoirs as "the year that I turned 30 and was otherwise all angsty and weird."

Last night my friend asked me what kind of food I liked. As in, if you had your dream dinner, what would be on the plate. I came up with two basic food groups: a) Lobster, fresh oysters and fried clams, and b) pizza and beer. The former items are virtually impossible to find in Prague without mortgaging a body part, while the latter is more comfort food than birthday food.

"I'm not really sure why they interviewed you, but heck!"

That's what my girlfriend just said about this interview with Petr Bokuvka (of Daily Czech fame) on Radio Slovakia International. Quick, download it now! I'm not sure how long the link will stay up there. Sorry, but you need RealOne Player to hear it. (Look, just download RealOne Player. It won't kill you, and you can easily disable all the annoying features and have it on your computer for emergency situations like these.)

Skip to about the nine-minute mark in the recording to hear my bit.

OK, for those that are too lazy: I was a featured interviewee on Slovak radio for a feature on fast food. I got to spew my layman's spin on fast food psychology. Best of all, I got to make fun of Czech people for packing all their food on vacations and taking it to, say, Croatia -- a place where the food is actually good, and not much more expensive than here.

As I'm a journalist, a restaurateur, and a vegetarian, that naturally makes me an expert on fast food. And yes, it's true: After all these years, I could still really use a Taco Bell. Even better: a Picante in Zizkov.

We have a ethnically Turkish, Bulgaria-born cook at Tulip who's quite a genius in the kitchen, if a bit erratic and uncontrollable. He's constantly coming up with new lunch and dinner specials and giving them strange names. Whenever I ask him where the name comes from, he gives me a cryptic answer.

Last night I noticed we had spicy chicken curry dish called Chicken "Hamas." I added an extra M to the word.

I think it's safe to say one of the few 100% unimpeachably ethical uses of filing sharing is replacing vital music that's mysteriously disappeared from your CD collection. You bought it, you legitimately owned it, and now it's gone.

So I just rediscovered (yet again) London Calling. Aw yeah.