Russia is safe from the threats of businessmen, Boris, and bloggers...

As someone who spent two of his formative years in Russia during a formative time in its history, like many I've grown increasingly concerned with the excesses of the Putin regime, especially with friends and now family living there. Count me in with everyone else who considers the Khodorkovsky sentencing to be utter bullshit. It is really amazing how unforgivably brazen this travesty was; having grown up with only the vaguest ideas of how dissidents and poets were treated in the seventies, I had thought that the days of the show trial were long gone, naive me.

Boris Nemtsov was often mentioned in the 1990s by my friends and peers as a man who could lead the country someday. Here's an old clip I remember watching with friends cheering on as he causes fascist asshole Vladimir Zhirinovsky to lose his shit and start throwing water and glasses. I believe the catalyst was when Mr. Nemtsov, then-mayor of Nizhii-Novgorod, invited Vlad to come to his city so he could be cured of his VD...


Mr. Nemtsov was just arrested and sentenced to 15 days in jail for protesting "illegally". My Russian mat' was never my strong suit, but I'm pretty sure the verb for "to rape someone in prison until the victim's asshole could conceivably fit the Caucasus mountain range" is och'kovat'. I hope it's a verb Mr. Nemtsov doesn't hear...

Mrs. Nevskaya introduced me to the blogger top_lap back when Russia was on fucking fire. He achieved some (perhaps unwanted) fame when Putin answered one of his critical blog posts with his special brand of petulant dickishness that he normally reserves for legendary Russian rock stars. So when Mr. Lap's blog had been down a week or so ago, my wife and I feared the worst. It's up and running now, so I recommend you all give it a read (via google translate if you're not a Russian reader). It's crude, childish, and hilarious. In short, it's the blogger I aspire to be.

S novym godom!