Is Prague in Eastern Europe?

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 Prague is CENTRAL EUROPEAN.

Historically Prague has been part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which was part of either the Holy Roman Empire or the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Historically, I would probably put Prague down as Western Europe but twentieth century history has changed that.

But let’s get something straight. First of all, Europe is big and varied enough that it can bear more separation than into simple ‘East’ and “West.”

That division made some sense in the era of the Iron Curtain. They tore down the Iron Curtain 27 years ago, folks.

Prague(and the Czech Republic and Poland, and Slovakia and Hungary) is Central Europe. Basically the bit of the non-Balkan Austrian-Hungarian empire that fell into Soviet orbit after the War. (You know which war I’m talking about.)

For me the Czech Republic has the business culture of Germany with the engineering culture of, well, the Czech Republic, but there is an eastern flavor to the country; an unkempt don’t-give-a-fuck attitude towards public places; an ability to cut free and improvise in a fun and creative way that I don’t associate with Germany; some embarassing politicians, most of whom seem selected from the ugliest humans Czechia has to offer; too much graffiti; good-looking young women; and of course, some weird-ass home-brewed liquor.*

Yet the homes are perfectly kept with bright flowers and freshly mown lawns and landscaped gardens; sturdily-constructed houses built to last for two hundred years, not too different from Germany.

But old communist-built panel blocks still dominate the landscape. Again this mix of ‘East’ and ‘West.’

I’ve always thought of the Czech Republic as the perfect balance to the procedure obsessed, ultra-organized German thinking and the free-spirited, fun but chaotic thinking of the East…but nowadays, I think it’s more German than ‘Russian’ influenced.

Czech food is like most food of the former Austro-Hungaria super-state: meat, potatoes, sauces, dumplings, cabbage, stick-to-your-ribs, savory, filling, food you crave after a hard day skiing in the Tatras. I’m not sure what people in Eastern Europe eat, but my impression is it’s all, like, turnips and beets.

Czechs in Bohemia drink beer like there’s no tomorrow; Moravians drink more wine; everybody drinks slivovice, a kind of plum brandy that doubles as jet-plane propellant. Eastern Europeans drink vodka.

Now, I will confess, sometimes, when I’m communicating with Western Europeans or North Americans, I will refer to the Czech Republic as “Eastern Europe”.

But it is simply a service to them: because you can’t always deliver a lecture on the different areas of Europe and how to divide them up to people still stuck in a three-decade dead mindset.

But I have to grit my teeth when I refer to Prague or the Czech Republic as Eastern Europe.The Czechs don’t like it and, worse, it is not really accurate. It’s not Eastern Europe. It’s not Western Europe. It is Central Europe. And quite a pleasant place to be.

*(Well, it’s not really home-brewed any longer, but the fermentation starts at home and then is brought to distilleries.)

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Why do Americans hate Russians so much?

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"Americans” don’t hate “Russians.”

Americans hate Americans.

Most Americans just want to live their life and don’t give much thought at all about Russians. but when it to comes to our fellow citizens… We don't even want togive them food.

Got cancer? Not my problem. Dont let the coffin cover hit you on the way down!

Democrat Americans hate the Republicans. They are racist assholes.

Republicans hate Democrats so much that the fact that their country got ‘hacked’ is purely secondary and perhaps even a good thing considering how things turned out.

Social Democrats(Berniecrats) hate centrists. They feel that they are the reason they didn’t win and they feel that Putin’s wikileak was therefore justified. They blame them for Trump because they just couldn’t vote for Clinton.

Centrists hate the far left: they cost them the election and now they blame them for staying home or voting for Jill Stein or whoever.

Rural Americans hate urban Americans, seeing them as lazy effete elites who live in a Woody Allen paradise of cocktail parties and orgies, crack-whores and gang-banging murder sprees.

Urban Americans hate rural Americans for being a bunch of uneducated rednecks who fuck their cousins and hang black people on Saturday night get-togethers.

Black Americans hate white Americans for being priveleged, while White Americans hate black Americans becuase White Americans aren’t privileged enough.

Some Americans hate LBGT Americans for parading in assless chaps. And LGBTG Americans are sure that all the straights are plotting against them.

Americans hate Americans for celebrating genocide with Columbus Day. Americans hate Americans for NOT celebrating Columbus Day, like a bunch of whiners.

In the current climate Democrats are angry at the Russian government and Putin for influencing the election. But this is dwarfed by the hatred they feel towards their fellow citizens and the system that allowed Trump to win.

And the Republicans are pleased as punch that the Russians have taken their side to defeat the real enemy: their fellow Americans who don’t think the same way they do.

ASOIAF: Is GRRM insinuating that the Faith of the Seven is not real?

Of the three major religions depicted in the story (the Seven, Old Gods, Lord of Light) only the faith of the seven has not depicted any true supernatural power associated with it.

He is not insinuating ANY of them are real. Other than the greenseers, of course, who are real, but not ‘gods’ in the sense that they dwell on some other plane of existence.

Sure, some of the priests of R’hllor do some magic, but that doesn’t mean that R’hllor is a real sentient being. It only means that magic exists. If Melisandre sees something in her flames, is the vision being sent to her by R’hllor? Or is it some power she has in herself? Or is it being sent by someone else entirely and purposefully to manipulate her actions?

As far as the Faith of the Seven goes…hey. It was de-fanged and de-clawed centuries before…suddenly it has two bona fide armies working for it and has become a rival to the Iron Throne in power and influence in Westeros.

A believer observing would say there is ample proof of evidence for the Seven intervening in the affairs of Westeros.

A non-believer would find another explanation for things.

What does that remind me of?

Religion in the real world.

Written November 29 2016

ASOIAF: How did Stannis and his knights defeat an army of 100 000 wildlings?

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It wasn’t really 100 000 fighters. It was 100 000 people, including the elderly, non-fighting women, the infirm and children.

The Wildling army, i.e., the actual fighters numbered perhaps 20 000 or maybe 30 000. But a lof of them just ran.

. Still a sizable majority compared to Stannis’ puny army of 1000 or so.

But Stannis’ men were

• better armed.
• Other than the bronze-age Thenns, most of the Wildlings still live in the Stone Age. They don’t mine, they don’t make weapons. The best weapons and armor they have are stolen or looted from vanquished Night’s Watchmen. They armor themselves in wood or leather or bones. They fight with sticks or mauls(a stick with a rock on top of it) or stone axes, for the most part. Stannis’ knights, by contrast, have chain and plate mail, fight with quality iron-forged swords and lances.
• better trained
• Being a wildling is tough; you got to fight to survive. But being a knight in Westeros means you train under a professional eye for your entire life from childhood on. YOu train with sword, you train with lance, you train with axe and mace and dagger and…whatever else is handy and deadly. Your typical drunken-ass trailer-trash Wildling — with some exceptions, like, again, the Thenns — might very well bash your head in with a rock, but he doesn’t train. That’s for kneelers. OK, some might and Mance Rayder does seem to be trying to start some training program going in his camp. But it’s too little, too late.
• disciplined.
• They ride in formation. They lower their lances as one. And unless you are standing in a strong shield-wall with your own spears and pikes and sharpened stakes sticking out to cow the horses, they are going to kill you. Each mounted knight when you consider horse, armor and weapons is nearly a ton. Without iron discipline and common sense tactics(and the Wildlings have niether) your choices are pretty much stay put and die or run and die. The idea of discipline beating numbers is reiterated again and and again and again in A Storm of Swords. Indeed it is the main reason why the Wildlings have never established a toe hold south of the Wall for millennia. YOu’d think they’d learn.
• Mounted. What’s tougher than a trained warrior armed to the teeth, encased in steel armor and coming at you to kill you? The same warrior on a a biting, fighting, armored vicious beast. I don’t know about you. But I would run. And probably die.
• Had the element of surprise.

art by Tomasz Jedruszek

Written December 15 2016

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ASOIAF: What did Varys hope to achieve by killing Kevan and Pycelle?

By killing Kevan and Pycelle he killed the only remaining competent people left in the Lannister government. Things were getting dangerous: Kevan was actually bringing things to order and strengthening the Lannister/Tyrell alliance after all Cersei had done to weaken it.

Well, that is just not good for Varys and his plans.

But it’s not only that.

It’s the WAY he killed them. With a crossbow. With knives wielded by small children.

Who else has killed with a crossbow? Who else is small as a child?

Tyrion.

So when the forensic experts of Westeros, whose competence knows no bounds, examine the dead bodies of Pycelle and Kevan they will jump to the only conclusion possible: Tyrion, hiding in the walls, just as Cersei has long suspected, has come out and not only shot Pycelle and Kevan but stabbed them multiple times.

And so Cersei will manage to continue fucking things up for everybody, thus making it all the more easy for Aegon VI to swoop down and save the day, PLUS she goes a little crazier and more paranoid that the valonqar might pop out of her wardrobe any minute to strangle her.

I can think of better ways to go than being knifed by a gang of tongueless dirty urchins with daggers.

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ASOIAF: What character in ASOÏAF deserves comeuppance?

Littlefinger. That bastard killed the Hand, created an alleged Ponzi scheme that beggared the Realm, orchestrated a massive civil war, possibly convinced Joffrey to behead Ned Stark, killed his own lover, has turned his ward (who some say is his own son) into a helpless drug addict, had a young girl(Jeyne Poole) savagely abused so he could transform her into a sex slave, and has confused Sansa to the point where the arrow on her personal moral compass is just spinning around and around and around…

That guy REALLY needs to get what’s coming to him.

Written November 20, 2016

Can you describe your first physical fight?

I was eleven years old.

It was springtime. I was living in a trailer park about six miles from Mt. Vernon, Missouri, which had about 3000 people living in it. And still does.

Everyday, the bus driver, a big middle aged farmer named Buck would drive our school bus all over the stoney rural routes of the back hills of the Ozarks picking up and dropping off children before and after school. It was a long roundabout journey that took hours, as our stop was the last stop on the line. I remember the rides took forever. Especially in the winter where the bus would get bogged down in the snow or the mud from the unpaved, rocky roads.

 I would sleep, or read or sometimes talk to other students.

In the winter I wouldn’t get home until five or six, due to snowy conditions.

There was a farm boy who lived about a half mile away from our trailer park in a huge house. His name was Joey and he was my age, maybe even younger but bigger than me. Thick arms built up by years of, like, shoveling manure and picking up cows or whatever farm boys do.

He used to sit by me and talk to me but I really couldn’t relate to him. I don’t think I was ever outwardly rude to him but, really, I was into Tolkien back then and wasn’t into talking about sports or anything like that.

This kid eventually used to kind of torment me, in a low-grade under-the-radar kind of way. Pinch me. Give me covert punches in the arms and so on. I came to dread the rides home.

One day Buck made a turn and went on a different road and stopped at a farm house. There were only about five kids left on the bus. My sister, a couple of girls who lived in my trailer park, Joey and myself. Buck was gone for a long time. I don’t know how long it was, but in my memory it was like twenty minutes.

While he was gone, Joey came over to my seat and just started beating the shit out of me. Whaling on me. punches all over my body. It didn’t really hurt but I didn’t know what to do. I had never fought before, other than little spats with my sister.

I am really not a physical person and the idea of inflicting physical pain on another person is just not something that ever occurs to me. I can be quite vicious with my tongue; I am relatively good with words and I can be very hurtful in that way. But not only do I not hit people, it never even enters my mind to do so. So I just kind of sat there asking him to stop. Eventually he did stop and when Buck re-entered the bus (with several bales of hay he had apparently just purchased!)all the other kids told on Joey.

Strangely, I don’t recall much pain in that situation. Nevertheless, I can not describe the utter humiliation I felt at the beat down I had gotten and my utter inability to fight back. I was a wuss and I knew it. Worse, everybody else knew it. All the books I read about heroes fighting monsters and Orcs and what-not…well that wasn’t me. I was a weakling. A nerd. The lowest of the low. If I was a character in the Lord of the Rings, I would have been, at best, Fatty Bolger. Only, I wasn’t that fat. (Back then. Now, a different story.)

Buck sort of grunted. He drove on. WE got to Joey’s stop. Joey sort of strutted out, grinning at me. When he passed by my seat, I stuck my foot out and sent his brawny oversized ass sprawling flat on his goddamn face in the black centre aisle of the bus. Mother fucker!

Under Buck’s disapproving eye, he left the bus, giving me a hateful eye that made me feel sure that he was going to kill me next time he was alone with me.

Afterwards, Buck asked me if I wanted him to report JOey to the principal, telling me if he did, he would also have to report me because he had actually seen me trip Joey. I remembered the little thrill of vengeance I had felt when I tripped Joey, and I told him not to report Joey.

Buck said he wouldn’t and that he never wanted to see him or me fighting again.

Buck never left us kids alone in the bus after that. A little while later, I moved to a different town.

Written December 16th