I’d thought things were improving in Russia (maybe they are, but that just makes me shit my pants in fear at the mere thought of how bad things were before they got better).  Putin is taking the classic Russian rough-road to economic growth, and can be kinda proud of the advancements made under his rule.  (All the nukes in the world still ought to be launched at Russia, followed by chemical attacks and then immediately by guys with flamethrowers in chemical suits who burn people even if they’re clearly on their side just because their orders are that damn rigid.*)

Not improving in the sense that anyone would want to live there, but in that economic improvement looks like it could overtake despotic governance in the foreseeable future and Russia could move up to something like 17th Century Russia or even something as nice as say Australia as depicted in the Mad Max films.  You know, something where if you read a story about a Russian guy who severed his own penis to make alcohol out of it and died of alcohol poisoning you’d be shocked, rather than just muttering “when will they learn” and moving on.

Apparently I was wrong though.

So, in the spirit of giving and goodness and all those things you associate with me, I’m not going to just move on after reading this latest story, about how 43% of deaths amongst working age Russians are caused by drinking things like cologne, or just going batshit insane with the amount of regular, “drinkable” alcohol they consume.  I’m going to shove this story in the face of my 3.5 million/day readership, and ask that next time they see one of their Russian friends, they take them aside and have a talk with them about the dangers of drinking perfume, or at the very least go about their house putting “do not drink” labels on all the non-drinkable alcohol you can find.**  (Make sure you really press the point though, since all Russians*** are born liars and will never tell you the truth.  So even if they promise they’ve never drunk this stuff, that’s just all the more reason to worry that they have.)
 
I apologize because I had some funny pictures and funny taglines to put with them alongside this article but I’m posting from scribefire rather than inside wordpress, so putting pics up would border on being a pain.  So here’s just the taglines:

“Yeltsin, aged 22″

“How Russians see themselves”

“How we see Russians”

“A Russian she-bear with her drunk brood, drunk”

“Sexy in Russia”

“Russian DNA has no gene for “goodness”"

*-Sorry, I keep dreaming about 28 Weeks Later.  Especially about how France gets it next time.

**-Remember that they’ll likely be hiding some of it in places like the back of the toilet, or in <insert joke about characteristic Russian hiding places here>.

***-Recent studies suggest that people with even so little as 1/1024 parts Russian blood in them are incapable of telling the truth or having a job.  At the 1/512 level they of course become shape-shifting vampires, also incapable of telling the truth, but somewhat employable under the right conditions.

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