To the People Monitoring My Doings in Russia...

Please turn on the heat in Prospekt Veteranov, specifically, in my apartment. It is really, really fucking cold. I'm not even going to try to sugar coat this. I'm sure that after all of the time we've (however passively on my part) known each other, you're not shocked by my use of profanity. So ещё раз, turn on my god damn heat! Look, if this continues, I'm going to be sick, dead, and fat. Fat because my babushka is under the impression that the only way to prevent me from succumbing to the cold is by feeding me mass amounts of food. If I don't eat at least five dozen blini, a particularly fierce метель (blizzard, not the tasty one) is sure to blow me away to Siberia where someone else will have to resume your duties. Why end what we have going here? I'm sure you could call one of the Sashas you know and get this whole thing sorted out before the end of Kelsey. If not, I'm afraid that I'll have to send Tatyana Petrovna to go all babushka on you with the stick she uses to bang on the wall when the neighbors get loud. It's your call but she is a spry, fierce thing, especially when government hooliganism is involved. So if I get some heat within, say, the next five minutes, we'll be all squared up.

  Спасибо большое!

I Spoke Russian Before I Came to Russia

Today, I learned a sobering and unexpected fact; I don't speak Russian. Yes, it's true. To all of the people who have at some point (thought) that they heard me speaking decent Russian, you were probably high on something at the time. No, as of today, I don't speak Russian. Of course, the second the world made this clear to me was the second that every single Russian in the Russian Federation decided to stop me on the street. Perhaps it was the hopeless, dead-eyed look on my face that assured everyone of my long term residence in Petersburg. The surly muttering and aimless, half-assed hand waving on my part only brought the point home. Why is it that the day that my Russian-skills leave me is also the day that I become a good Russian? This is a cruel joke, Russia.

 I really need a vacation...

Confusing Item of the Moment: The Return of Jafar

As I was perusing Буквоед (think Russian Borders) the other day, I came across this:

                                                      "The greatest film ever...now in Russian!"

  For those of you who don't read cyrillic or aren't cultured enough to recognize the masterpiece in front of you, let me present The Return of Jafar--по русский! This is the stuff that dreams are made of. My first question is simply, who decided that this film needed to be dubbed into Russian? He or she (it wasn't me, I swear) is an absolute...you know what, I can't even. I'm so excited that this is in Russian. I see myself becoming the proud owner of this gem.