The War Zone

The war zone.

Walking around on the sidewalks of this place I see some things with which I have much trouble. The first, took me a long time to figure out what it actually was. I mean, I had it figured out right off the bat, but I just could not believe what I was seeing. When I first started walking here I was noticing white spots on the sidewalk everywhere we walked. I asked Hanka what this could be, all of these white spots. She said she had no idea, but at the same time, she was not very good at selling me that answer. It was like she did not want to say. Hmmm. It took me the better part of two months to get a straight answer out of a Czech person as to what the cause of this ‘mysterious’ white spotting actually was. The cause, people. The problem, gum. Yes, gum.

Now I have not been to every major city in the states, let alone the world, so I will not say that this is the only place with this kind of problem. As a matter of fact (the kind of fact that is passed from person to person-you be the judge), it is illegal to sell gum in Singapore. You can chew it there, just no sell it. Is the fact that people suck and can’t find a better place to put their gum the cause of such a law? I don’t know, but when I heard this I instantly got these images of ‘black-market’ gum sales, and chewing gum ‘speak easys’ where you must say the password ‘bubblelicious’ to gain entry to a scene where everyone is loudly chewing and blowing bubbles, getting their fix.

So seeing this here was a bit shocking to me as the place from which I have just come has no problem of this sort. I don’t even want to see the underside of the tables that are in public places here. The gum is probably like stalactites. The black sidewalks here look like the buildings next to them were painted by some lazy painters who did not want to put up a protective screen on the face of the building on a windy day.

The second, and most offensive thing to me, is the land mines. Yes, land mines. One must avoid these when walking the streets of Praha at all cost, lest you should become another statistic in the battle. You may not know it, but Praha is a war zone. The battle that is being waged here is not between two different countries, but two different species. One side of the battle does not even know war has been waged against them. This oblivious side is the human species. No surprise, humans being oblivious, but they are actually enabling the enemy to place its weaponry about the city right under their nose. The other side of the battle, dogs, are being led all over the city to leave their weapon of choice, poop, wherever they please. Yes, stupid humans let their dogs stop wherever they want and create land mines for everyone to step in. In some parts of the city the mine fields are amazingly packed with shit. If you are not watching where you are walking, boom, off with a leg, or perhaps worse(which is the ultimate goal of the dogs), you track some in to where it is that you live. I hate to pick up after a dog, but in a city I understand that it is absolutely necessary. Although a very small part of the population here is actually aware of the battle and doing their part to thwart the attack by cleaning up after their dog, the majority is using the ‘ignore it, and maybe it will just disappear’ approach. I just can’t, for the life of me, understand how people can not notice the problem around them and do something about it. There is actually, in some parts of the city, tools(bags for collection) for diffusing the weaponry placed right next to trash cans.

In a city with so much asphalt, stone and concrete, one would think of a patch of grass or a city park as a sacred place. Nope. I would never let my kids play in a park here. I would treat it as if they were playing with a loaded weapon.

I was going for a jog one day and came upon two ladies taking their dogs on a sortie and stopped to let their dogs pee on someone’s car! I was pissed(no pun intended). That, to me is some disrespectful shit(once again, no pun intended). If I could only speak Czech, I would have gone up to these wenches and acted like it was my ride on which those two psi(Czech plural for ‘pes’ which means dog) were taking a leak. I’d have just lit them up. But really what I would like to have done was something that required no Czech language at all as it would have spoken the international language based on actions. What I would have done was pull up on these two, pulled out my boy, and taken a pee on their dogs. Ahh yes, I would have just soaked those two psi and ran off to let the psi shake themselves off on their stupid owners as a lesson to them, one of which would not have been learned I am sure, but then again, sometimes teaching can be fun whether or not a lesson is learned.

Ok then, just so you can fully know the enemy, I feel that I need to inform you of what the enemy actually looks like here. I suppose you can tell a lot about people by the animals that they choose to own. In this case, dogs can be an indicator of different things. People make statements about themselves by choosing a particular breed over another. What statement people are making here I am not sure. The number one pes of choice is the Dachshund variety. Light infantry in the battle. Awful. These little misfits of the canine world are everywhere. The only thing more cruel in canine genetic cross-breeding is the Welsh Corgi. Little hot dogs with legs, everywhere. Long hair, short hair, every color, some have sweaters, all of them suck. Maybe the ‘hot dog’ pes and ‘parek v rohliku’(Czech hot dogs, see previous chapter) are in some way linked. There is some heavy artillery: retrievers, pointers, etc…, and the very rare B-1 bomber, the Great Dane. Neither of these are around in large amounts, thank god!

As much as I would like to have a dog, a city like this is not the kind of place to raise one. Maybe I will go into business selling dog collars. Each one of them will have undetectable transmitters to which are attached electronic stimulation devices. I will have the only remote and whenever I see a pes planting mines, BOOM, 240 volts right into it. Problem solved.