Your Volgi received mail regarding the Czar’s recent post against the media’s pathetic Swine Flu exploitation. He was kind enough to send it on to us, and here it is:

My Dad actually got West Nile virus—and DIDN’T die….It knocked him for a loop, though.

The Czar would like to respond to this person of great royal bearing, and offer a welcome здравствуйте! As a favored correspondent, she is clearly of superior intelligence and most justified in her benign rule of a large portion of the Northern Hemisphere.

The Czar is genuinely sorry, however, to hear about her father, but relieved that he recovered, as indeed most West Nile sufferers did. The encephalitis is probably what knocked him the most. Fortunately, West Nile has a very low mortality rate, and although your father did indeed suffer the effects of the virus, he was one of the rare ones to even get it!

Sadly, in 2005, the media declared that every mosquito bite in the world was instantly lethal, and shame on any parent who allows her children to play outside (a true death sentence!). However, in point of fact, West Nile was a horrible pandemic: if you were a crow. Only now, in the Czar’s home town of Muscovy, are we seeing the odd crow return to the skies where five years ago there were hundreds.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.