Fan mail came down the pike this morning, folks, so I'm going to share it with you here:


I can't help but be heartbroken when I read things like this. For the life of me, I can't understand why this is the case, either. In 2008?! Whatever happened to the Czech Famous Eights?

I, too, am a regular traveller on those same trams and metros (like this morning, for example), and I too am utterly dismayed by the paucity of laughter, the graveyard-like silence, and the wafting rank odour of alcohol so freakishly early in the morning.

And these are not old battle axes, friends.

These are young up-and-comers. The Beautiful People -- XX and XY chromosomal types both. The ones who will be representing the future face of this nation, when crusty old brontosaurus rexes like Vaclav "I Am Your Santa" Klaus and Jiri "Steal the Cheque" Cunek are long since gone, no longer able to foist their pet theorems onto a nation so blithely accustomed to acquiescing to commands from on high.

The Beautiful Ones. These are the types who will carry the Czech torch into the glorious future. The guardians of the Czech legacy, the trustees of the history of the nation which stretches back centuries. Not into the murk of isolationism, knock on wood.

Look, friends, I aim to increase the peace. So I'm won't sling sharp-tipped barbs your way this morning as I rail against the prevailing conditions in Prague society.

There's hardly any point in that, and you don't need a headache and stomach cramps as you sit back in your easy chair munching your third chocolate mini-danish (of the half-dozen in the doggie bag you snagged this morning from Paneria). It's Friday. You've worked hard. Let your sacroiliac slide. Do what you do best.

I often get mocked by my expat friends who've been here for more than a decade. I can of course name names, but best if you swing by the following link for a listen to some of these people. During "The Knowledge" project at the CR's largest portal for the English-speaking community, Expats.cz, I was often told by these same expats of the existence of a downward-slanting curve (not kurva). How their enthusiasm for wanting to make a positive, constructive change to the prevailing, sometimes dour, sometimes gleeful, conditions in Prague society by (Ghandi-like) "being the change [they] wanted to see" diminished with the more years they spent in the capital. Which is a right pity, if you ask me.

Yet, somehow, the optimist in me wonders whether things have changed since the '90s. Moreover, have things even changed since Y2K?

Think of the Man of Steel-like leaps and bounds we've made since May, double-oh-four. We're the envy of the region (look how many Bratislavans live in Prague, and how many Slovaks work in the CR, more generally). So much the envy that Uncle Sam has decided to make our ODS mandarins an offer they can't refuse, and we all know what I'm talking about there, don't we?

Here are some questions I would like answered, and these are hardly polyannaish on my part:

** Why are intelligent, highly-skilled, attractive (oftentimes female) Czech young people not maximizing their aptitudes to the fullest? I will not accept answers that go along the exhausted lines of: "...because their parents and grandparents grew up during Normalization, so they inhale the latter's putrid lessons by osmosis," or "...because they work in a company full of underachieving louts who constantly hammer down their loftiest ambitions." That's not on, kids, because those same young men and women are surfing the same Internet as I am. They are as globally mobile as I am. They can interact with the same internationals, just like I can. Why, one my close colleagues at Aktualne has even been places I only wish I could see! Why can't more be like him? Hi Pavs!

** Why does Czech society take only the choicest parts of the developed world's innovation, chucking those others which don't accord with its staid way of thinking? You know what I mean here, so let's take some indicative examples: Democratic institutions, but sans a strong non-governmental sector. Members of the EU, but you don't want those same Western European norms to apply to you. You want to be accepted as sovereign peoples with a gifted culture and a clever language, but you don't want to accord that same right to the newcomers in your midst. You want to master foreign European tongues -- Spanish, French, German, English -- but you hardly want those sorts of people to join your nuclear Czech family...the equivalent of "...yeah, sure, I've got black friends, but they're not coming into my house, m'kay?"

** Why are our most reputable news organizations rifling through the manure heap to grow their online audiences? Here's a winner for you -- I was reading Radio Prague's evening newsletter last night (31.01.08) and there was a full paragraph in prime e-real estate (smack in the middle of the page) devoted to how a Northern Bohemian veterinarian is being brought up on negligence charges for not treating a gravely injured dog. All because the police officer who delivered the ailing canine to his clinic works for the same municipality which towed his car last year. This rubbish is news?!

So, in response to the above question...do we deserve what we're getting?

You tell me, Frank.