As I am thinking about this year’s election (I voted by the absentee ballot, by the way) and watching presidential debates, I can’t shake off the feeling that I really dislike undecided voters. They are to blame for the prolonged campaign. What kind of a cave you should live in in order not to be able to make up your mind at this point?!
I have an analogy that I would like to share with you. An undecided voter is just like a woman on match.com who winks at you and then does not answer your email because she hasn’t paid for her membership. You always have to pay-if you want to play, $29.99 it is! If you want to be a part of the democratic process, you have to commit. Apparently, this is news to a number of Americans.
Same thing with mortgages. If you take on more than you can pay for, you have to carry the burden without expecting the government to rescue you. Gosh darn it, as Palin would say it, is the US becoming the good old USSR?
SOTW is back from a whirlwind vacation in Eastern Europe. It is a fun place to visit and to be from, but I would recommend having second thoughts about staying for good in Montenegro. Sadly, it is largely because of the large number of Sovoks roaming and driving the streets of Budva and Kotor.
Franch Fries
Speaking of driving in Montenegro. You would think that a makeshift memorial every 200 yards along almost every road there would make someone stop and think whether this has anything to do with insane drivers in that Slavic country. Apparently not.
For your enjoyment I am posting a menu from a cafe in Budva, Montenegro-looking for misspelled English words is a hobby of mine.
Now, in other news … While I was vacationing, I got evicted from my hole of an apartment in Ypsilanti, Michigan and upon my arrival I decided that I’d had enough. Enough of Michigan and its people, its awful winters, “the Upper Peninsula”-what a joke, the Mackinac Island … So, I loaded my trusty Yugo and moved to the East Coast, to Baltimore where I will be exploring rich roots of the Russian community there.
Finally, one more treat. Here is a common problem-a couple of jokers park their cars leaving too little space for any car to park in between.
What does a normal person do? She would go look for another spot. Not a Sovok, though. Pictured here is an inventive way to park one’s vehicle in such a situation. Only in Montenegro!
Life has been hard around here and I deserve a vacation. So, what does a Sovok do in times of financial troubles? Go on a European vacation, of course!
And … what’s a better place to think about the injustice of life, the cruelty of women, and the coldness of the West than sunny Dubrovnik, Croatia?
As I was afraid, the West finally got me and I couldn’t get away unscathed from it. This time I am talking about a fiasco of a wedding that I was planning with an American woman. Life goes on, however, and I’ve been casting my love nets into the murky sea of online dating. And here is an email that I got (spelling and punctuation preserved):
“When I have seen yours profile I didnt have words. I thought that there is not such man in the world. Now I sit and think about that to write you. I dont know what to tell. If you wish to see my photos, then I can send it to you. I would like to learn you better because you have liked me. If you have some questions then you can write to me on “XXXX” at “yahoo” dot c o m. I with pleasure will answer you. To my mind you receive a lot of letters from girls like me, but I ask you to pay attention to my letter and I hope that tomorrow I shall receive your message. If I am not interesting to you that tell it to me. I will be upset, but I shall not write you more and I hope that you will find happiness.
Will you write me? Really?
I wait ……
Dreaming about such as U.”
Any wide-eyed Westerner would become immediately giddy after receiving such a message but not me. As a shrewd Sovok, I immediately smelled something rotten. First of all, this lovebird claimed to be from North Dakota and her profile stated “I love the clean air, beautiful landscapes, and the down to earth people but the rainy winters are pretty brutal.” Wait a minute. North Dakota has rainy winters? Tell me more! After a quick search on Google, I found out that this sentence was lifted, as was expected, from some other lonesome person’s profile in Kentucky. Besides, the grammar of the letter left no doubt that I was dealing with some Slav trying to dupe some naive Westerner into helping out with some “medical expenses for a sickly grandma” or some other similar nonsense. In fact, chances are that the email was written by some mustachioed man from Kazan by the name Igor (see picture on the right).
I was planning on developing this romance into a full-blown story for “Sovok of the Week”, but I made a huge and unforgivable mistake. After making some small talk in my reply, I signed it with my real name. Now, imagine Igor receiving a reply from a guy with a Russian name. The jig was up and he simply could not win against another Slav.
I think I was right. I never heard from the spell-bound beauty again.
So, here we go. The West screws the East. The East tries to screw the West. The East realizes that it can’t screw its own. History of the last 1000 years in a nutshell.
As Democrats are giddy from uncontainable joy over Bardak Obama’s victory, let me be the first to congratulate Senator McCain on becoming President! I know, it’s a little early, but still. America is not a country of hipsters and soy chai drinkers, even if it appears to be the case if you ever went to an Obama rally. Nor do college students vote, even if they tell you they do-joining an Obama Facebook group maybe cool and could raise one’s status among peers but it does not put a president into the White House. I am afraid we will have 2004 all over again.
I travelled to San Diego last weekend and not knowing any better, I got duped into participating in a Critical Mass bike ride. The exuberance of bike riders, their complicated shoes, the sound of Manu Chao blasting from boombox speakers, and the unmistaken air of Obama support is hard to describe-you should’ve been there. The entire event reminded me of a misdirected and unduly exulted Komsomol rally in support of Leonard Peltier, only the riders were yelling some really unnecessarily crude slogans in support of bicycles and the greening of the planet, much to the chagrin of SUV drivers who watched them in disgust.
And DJ VadimJ was pedaling among those hipsters, muttering some obscenities in Russian, especially when it was time to climb some really steep San Diego hills on a rusty bike. What is the world coming to? Maybe I am finally getting it what it means to be an American-to be free, unhindered by tradition, and sporty. Or not.
Yes, it really is true-”Sovok of the Week” is five years old! Let’s open champagne and bust out caviar! If you somehow found this message, why not write a word or two in the comments, just for the hell of it?
The other day, while in Ann Arbor, I stopped by an intimidating palace of food that goes by the name “Whole Foods.” As I pulled into a parking lot filled with gas-guzzling SUVs and flashy imported vehicles in my Festiva, I could not help noticing happy shoppers leaving the store carrying shopping-bags. Not plastic bags as you would expect the lowly shoppers of Kroger or Meijer would carry. Or no! The patrons of Whole Foods are much better than that. They proudly demonstrate their earth-friendliness by sporting snazzy shopping-bags with a gigantic logo of Whole Foods on them.
Little do the self-righteous opulent Ann Arborites realize that in doing so they resurrect a good old Soviet habit of going to a store with your own bag (pictured to the right) in hopes that perhaps (in Russian, “avos’”; “avos’ka” is also referred to in the Western media as a “perhaps-bag”) the authorities would dispense some rarely available goods like Romanian shoes or butter.
Bravo, Ann Arbor! Way to soften the heart of a disenfranchised nostalgic Sovok !
Residents in the neighbouring village of Ust-Kan said rocket pieces regularly rain down on their area. Parts of the surrounding countryside are designated special zones where people may not go during the launches.
“Sometimes its smooth metal casings, sometimes its bolts. I remember something like an engine fell once,” said Anatoly Kazakov, an Ust-Kan resident
.
So, a “visually handicapped” peasant discovers an “enormous metal casing” in his backyard and demands compensation. I wonder if the casing has anything to do with the tractor missing in Boris’s kolkhoz …
Here is a treat for all of my loyal readers! In case you haven’t noticed, the man with the lion’s mane is none other than Philip Kirkorov, an object of our frequent ridicule.
This is precious: “… the management of Yar Hotel arranged a contest to choose the sculpture which could perfectly express the atmosphere of the hotel.”
Good news for Sovoks everywhere! Now we can drag out our dusty tattered clothing from our closets and be at the cutting edge of fashion! Now, where is my old Karl Marx T-shirt?!
“By the actions of some European member-states, every would-be ethnic or religious separatist across Europe and around the world has been provided with a tool kit on how to achieve recognition,” he said.
“Does anyone in this room think that the Kosovo Albanians are the only group in the world with a grievance against their capital?”
Just as SOTW predicted on February 18th (see below).
You have to give it to the aging revolutionary-he still has suave manners and an enduring sense of style. Even at the sunset of his career, Fidel is sporting an oh so fitting and elegant Adidas tracksuit.
As I was afraid, the West finally got me and I couldn’t get away unscathed from it. This time I am talking about a fiasco of a wedding that I was planning with an American woman. Life goes on, however, and I’ve been casting my love nets into the murky sea of online dating. And here is an email that I got (spelling and punctuation preserved):
