A wild pig has recently wandered into the center of my city, panicked and knocked over a Japanese tourist.
She’ll be sharing the story of getting attacked by a boar in the middle of a medieval city for the rest of her life, I am sure.
Only in the Czech republic.
My friend in a sports shop: “Hello, we would like to buy some walking sticks.”
Store employee: “Of course sir. For nordic walking, power walking, or yoga crossfit walking?”
Friend: “Well for hikes and stuff.”
Store employee: “Thank god finally someone normal.”
What you may not have known about the Monty Python Parrot sketch.
John Cleese and Graham Chapman were one of the Pythons’ two creative units. According to Cleese, they were an enormously lucky match, because they had the same sense of humor, but very different thinking styles that snugly complemented each other. Their creative process was fascinating – the more meticulous Cleese would do the bulk of the work on the scripts, while Chapman would lounge in a chair, puffing on his pipe and staring out of the window for hours. Then, he would drop a tweak that would take the whole thing to a whole another level.
One such instance was the Parrot sketch – apparently, Cleese meant it to be a rather generic “bad customer experience” situation, and candidates for the faulty product included a washing machine and a car. But Chapman, after the usual hours of silence, said ‘Dead parrot’. And they sailed into legend.
Another thing about the Dead Parrot sketch you may not have known – Margaret Thatcher performed it.
Cleese insists she utterly failed in the delivery, but then of course he hates her. I found the performance genuinely funny. See for yourself:
Granted, Maggie Thatcher wouldn’t ever be a comedian, just as Theresa May will never be a dancer.
But Thatcher’s bitchfaced deadpan actually goes well with the material. Perhaps Cleese was worried someone does bitchfaced deadpan even better than him.
A friend works in Germany.
One day, his office was shaken by a powerful sonic boom.
German colleague: “Scheisse, the Russians are here.”
Friend: “Why the Russians? It’s probably the Luftwaffe.”
German colleague: “Don’t be absurd, Luftwaffe planes do not work.”
Also German colleague: “The Bundeswehr is in such a state that we couldn’t even defend if the Czechs decided to attack.”
Good to know, Günter. Good to know.
At a recent binge in a German brewery – best Weissbier in the world, really – our group has closed down the pub, and the last four of us were sitting at a table in the lobby drinking pre-purchased bottled uhhhh humanitarian supplies. Around midnight, a Bavarian farmer, around 60 years, 160 kilos, one-eyed and looking like he’d spent the day wrestling livestock, appeared out of nowhere, wobbled over to our table and sat down.
With a heavy Bavarian dialect, which is closely related to Klingon, he asked “Where’d you get such pretty girls?”
My friend, whom you can see in the picture a bit below this, in a shirt and tie and thick-rimmed glasses and the demeanor of a kindly paediatrician: “We are Czech, you know” (The Czechs being famous for beauty)
The farmer turned his one eyeball to my swarthy, ethnically interesting self, pointed a yellowed finger, and hollered “What? Him too?!”
In America, this is somewhere between a microaggression and a hate crime. In Europe, this is hilarious.
Later that night, aforementioned friend proving the Czech saying that the world is made of bottle openers:
Speaking of my unique ethnicity, there is indeed a top-level plan in the EU to change the ethnic makeup of the continent.
Due to the shocking contents, I cannot stomach to paraphrase it or risk being accused of misrepresentation, so here it is in the author’s own words:
“The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of personalities.
Instead of destroying European Jewry, Europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process. No wonder that this people, that escaped Ghetto-Prison, developed into a spiritual nobility of Europe. Therefore a gracious Providence provided Europe with a new race of nobility by the Grace of Spirit. This happened at the moment when Europe’s feudal aristocracy became dilapidated, and thanks to Jewish emancipation.”
Righto, so a global mongrel race ruled by a Jewish aristocracy. I think Kalergi should have asked the Jews whether they want the job, because the ones I know would ask him if he was meschugge or what. But anyway. This is not some far-right conspiracy theory, this is a matter of public record. The author of the plan is one of the “patron saints” of the EU, to which he started a precursor organisation that, upon his death, passed to Otto von Habsburg (this will become important in a moment), and awards are handed out in his name to figures seen to have contributed to the project of “European Unity”, presumably as well as the other bits. Angela Merkel got one, of course. So did Juncker. And that goblin Rumpuy.
If you haven’t noticed by now that the EU is a reactionary project to restore feudalism and build Holy Roman Empire 2.0, this is when you notice. HABSBURGS, for fuck’s sake!
Two things about it are funny. One, it appears that Kalergi liked to bang his actress wife wearing a Cleopatra costume. This puts the line about the new mixed race being “similar in appearance to Ancient Egyptians” in the proper context. That’s right, the reason Europe is getting racially re-engineered is that some crazy aristocrat a century ago had a really weird fetish for Egyptians.
Tell me we aren’t living in a simulation.
Two, and this is the properly funny part. The political dimension of the plan is more or less what some of the “conspiracy theories” say – the European “liberty gene” is an insurmountable problem for despots. So they’re hoping to dilute it away, and get stupid superstitious savages, physically different from the ruling classes at first glance (making the castes obvious), with the ultimate goal of a new and permanent feudalism. We’ll leave aside the clear racism of assuming that’s what will happen.
The funny thing is that I am the exact thing they’re trying to breed. Part European, part Mongolian, part North African via Sicily. My dudes, this isn’t going to go the way you think.
You’re not getting Caliban. You’re getting Khan Noonien Singh.
Instead of servile untermenschen, you’ll get a combination of Voltaire and Genghis Khan, fiery secular liberals whose goal in life will be to overthrow all thrones and strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest.
Open the borders. I triple dare you.
Gender theory, theology and technobabble from Star Trek have a lot in common. They’re internally coherent systems that nonetheless bear no relation to anything in the real world.
The Czech republic is a country where, if you called a woman a feminist, she’d finish her beer, put down her combination wrench and punch you in the face.
When French people are asked to pay taxes to cover the entitlements they voted for:
I keep hearing that STEM without the moral guidance of the humanities would lead to bad outcomes, but I can’t find a single historical example where that happened. Societies run by “philosophers”, intellectuals and artists (yo, Adolf), on the other hand…
2012: “Those boys sure are silly to buy that bitcoin nonsense with real money.”
2017: “THE UNDERREPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN BITCOIN IS REALLY PROBLEMATIC.”
2018: “Those boys sure were silly to buy that bitcoin nonsense with real money, good thing women were sensible.”
Me usually: Hold the croutons garçon, every calorie counts.
Me when the temperature hits zero: “I wonder how these buns will work with Nutella and oohhhh maybe a splash of Cointreau.”
FYI, they were delicious.