What are some funny facts about Czech Culture?

Pictured above, the Greatest Czech of all Time, Jara Cimrman

• Czechs drink more beer per capita than any other country on the face of the earth. As the guide books say, it’s cheaper than water.[1]

• Not too long ago, the sexiest female Czech politicians all posed for a calendar. [2]"Women's political influence is growing. Why not show we are women who aren't afraid of being sexy?"

• When I first moved here, during the weather forecast, if the forecast called for was a hot summer’s day the weatherwoman (or weatherman, sometimes) would, while conducting the weather forecast, strip down to a bikini or pair of speedos so viewers would the appropriate mode of dress for the morrow. Sadly, this has become a thing of the past.

• The Czech Republic celebrates the Catholic saints Cyril and Methodius and the Protestant martyr Jan Hus, on two subsequent days in July. Equal time, I guess.

• The hardest-drinking, most macho, toughest, most amply beer-gutted Czech man will spend Christmas Eve watching reenactments of fairy tales on Christmas Eve.

• Czechs buy live carp for Christmas dinner. They let them live in their bathtub for a few days “to clean them out”before hammering their brains out and frying them up. A tradition which is sadly disappearing but still alive.

• On Easter Monday, especially in some villages in Moravia, Czech men visit women in the town and beat them with switches and/or pick them up and throw them in local rivers, lakes and streams — or failing that, in the shower. The men are then rewarded for their strenuous efforts with colored eggs, sweets and slivovice.

• When the Soviet Union invaded in 1968, Czechs in Moravia, unable to resist in any more significant way, changed road signs to Prague, misdirecting the Soviet army; the Soviet tanks travelled for quite a ways before they realized that they were completely lost.

• Czechs love a good pig-slaughter. People get together, slay a pig, then spend the day converting every single molecule of it into food, getting rip-roaring drunk in the process.

• When asked to vote for “The Greatest Czech of all Time”, Czechs overwhelmingly voted for Jára Cimrman — a fictional character. When the TV program conducting the poll disqualified Cimrman on the grounds that he did not, you know, actually exist, an online petition was launched to keep Cimrman eligible for the honor of “Greatest Czech."

• AThe Czech prime minister is a former FSB (something like the old Czechoslovak KGB) agent….and he’s from Slovakia…allied with the Communists. Not exactly funny but plenty absurd, if you think about it.

• The leader of the local far-right nationalist party is half-Japanese.

Footnotes

[1] List of countries by beer consumption per capita - Wikipedia

[2] Female Czech MPs pose for calendar 

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I Am Part of the Resistance...yuk,yuk,yuk

It captured my attention, that letter to the New York Times, in which a anonymous cabinet member told us that they were part of the resistance.

When I first read the letter, the very juiciness of it all got me thinking like very few Op-Ed pieces ever have.

Because it’s not an Op-Ed piece. It is a powerful political lightning bolt that has been thrown, using the New York Times as the rod and conduit that conveys it’s nasty message far and wide.

It is action, not opinion. An explosion.

Yesterday, after the gossipy glee with which I read the letter dissipated, I started worrying about the implications of what is going on.

This is a Constitutional Crisis, screamed the Facebook headlines ! The cowardly letter writer should show himself and remove Trumpo from office!

These are scary times, I told myself. Who knew how Trump would react? Would he fire everyone and declare nuclear war (possibly literally) against his enemies?
Pilot the Good Ship Whitehouse completely on his own, blazing its fiery trail of destruction and mayhem across the Face of the Earth? Who can Trump trust now?

There’s something so…post-modern about the letter.

Something that makes me doubt it’s authenticity. Not the content of it…but the timing of it…the message of it.

Let’s look at the message. Several points were made: here is what I took out of it:

1. Yes, Trump is an unstable buffoon stumbling from crisis to crisis, creating crises every time he flaps his Twitter-jaws.
1. We knew that already. We’ve had TWO books, including one just last week telling us this, as if it were not perfectly obvious anyway.
2. But Trump has an agenda that pleases Republicans, so we’re keeping him in power.
1. This is also kind of obvious….but who does it reassure? Enemies of Trump in general? Democrats? Hell no! It reassures Republicans who are lukewarm or hostile to Trump.
3. There is a Deep State, but we prefer the term Stable state.
1. Ah, so Putin and Trump were right! There is a Deep State preventing Trump from doing what he really wants to do.
1. And this fires up the Trump base. The Deep State bastards must be 
1. stopped!!!! The only way to help Trump is to get out and vote in November!
2. Not only that, but it makes even civic-minded, somewhat moderate Democrats, the ones who really believe in the USA and the principles it was founded on, start talking about how unConstitutional the picture this letter, which signifies a coup d’etat, really paints.
   
   It deflates them. Does it matter who they vote for? Is hatred of Trump really getting them to support a coup of the country? Where do we go from here?
   
   Isn’t it easier to just, you know, fall back into the sweet bliss of apathy and unwokedness that characterized the last, oh, 40 years of politics in America than deal with all this stress?
2. Don’t worry, the adults are in charge.
1. Another message to non-batshit Republicans. ‘Sall good, y’all. The Agenda is being advanced, after all: and that’s all that matters, eh? We know what you all want. We’ll keep him from nuking Kim and Assad.
In the wake of the message it’s been put forward that Pence wrote the letter. Because of a few words that he apparently uses: lodestar. Especially.
Well, that’s pretty damn convenient. Because Pence is the one mothafucka in the White House who Trump can’t fire.
Who does the letter help? It helps Trump. No one else.
I’m not saying Trump wrote the letter: it has obviously been written by someone a little more literate than our Twitter-star. But I’m not convinced, for all his outrage and his screams of TREASON?????, that he wasn’t aware of it from the get-go. But he doesn’t have to be for it to do it’s nefarious work on the nerves of the American people.
It’s got the quality that I expect only from the best post-modern Russian propaganda:it makes me doubt.
It makes me doubt reality.
It makes me doubt popular narratives.
It makes me doubt the integrity of the government.
It makes me doubt myself for feeling relieved that a non-democratic coup d’etat has been pulled off.
It gets me running around in circles: it is legit? Is it a hoax? Who wrote it? How will it affect Trump? Will he do something crazy now? Should I start stockpiling canned food? Should I be grateful that the Deep State is in charge? Does Democracy really amount to a hill of beans anyway? At least the Cabinet is protecting us from Trump, right?
Somewhere someone is laughing his ass off over this and it ain’t me. But I do admire the showmanship.
I’m calling this what I think it is: one more episode in the Wretched Reality Show that Trump has made of the Presidency.
It scares the shit out of me