That is to say, he's started rattling off things that he believes to be leftist, such as snowboarding, and rightist, such as cross-country skiing. The whole thing seems to have been kicked off by the behavior of Czech snowboarding team members at the Turin Olympics, which might best be described as "Party on, Jan!"

Klaus aide and economist Karel Kříž said in Czech snowboarding magazine 51 Pro that the snowboarďáci (also the name of a recent film billed as the first Czech teen sex comedy — with apologies to Miloš Forman, whose 1965 Loves of a Blonde, or Lásky jedné plavovlásky, apparently doesn't count) — looked like a bunch of Social Democrats.

Presumably this was meant to imply that loose-living, baggy-trousered, high-on-life kind of imagery is typical of the party of Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek.

Of which Kříž certainly does not approve. Despite Klaus being given a snowboard, which are not actually priced for leftists — indeed, many of the Czech Republic's top competitors are members of the Civic Democrats, the conservative party Klaus helped found — boarding remains tarred as a liberal pursuit.

It never fails, faithful readers: Elections years are very, very good to newspapers.

One thing almost as impenetrable for the Slavonic lingo-challenged remains the great and storied tradition of Czech theater.

The head of the respected Divadlo Rokoko, housed deep beneath the Lucerna shopping pasáž, has made great headway in revitalizing a company that had been leaning toward more touristy fare for a time.

Not so any longer: Artistic Director Ondřej Zajíc, whose last name means hare, has launched, several new absurdist plays, one of which, Zly Jelen, or Evil Deer, is staged entirely from the point of view of ungulates.

Antler-wearing actors actually speak in "deer," which turns out to be not that much more confusing than Klaus' campaign rhetoric, thanks to a helpful deer interpreter, who translates their comments into Czech for the audience.

As with other plays under the Zajíc administration, comic reference is made to "the Evil Hare," which invariably seems to send chuckles through the house.