Cinema · Observations · Humour
Well, Happy New Year, officially this time! And enough of lounging about. Neither I nor Vittorio Gassman, in the role of the despotic Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick”, will tolerate any further holidays in the near future.
Moscow · Observations · Humour
Moscow at the moment
NB! · Observations · Society · Humour
The United States remains a remarkable country, where the showing of identity documents at polling stations is a matter of debate. Remarkable indeed.
NB! · Cinema · Observations · Humour
People · Humour
Photo by Paul Nicklen
Geography · Observations · Society · Humour
On the one hand, it is remarkable to see the comic cliché of Americans believing they can buy anything on earth made flesh in the hypothetical purchase of Greenland. On the other, however sociopathic it may look, who can seriously suppose that people would be ready to sell their homeland
Archive · Books · Humour
Here I am in utter distress, for I am surrounded by illiterate and senseless people and must work alone for all of them and set right what a century of chicanery has fouled… With each passing day I grow more and more convinced that bureaucracy is impotent… Saltykov-Shchedrin in
Archive · Books · Moscow · Humour
“But the sovereign himself is building a palace in Moscow!” said the censor. Gogol on the censorship of Dead Souls, 1842
Archive · Observations · Saint Petersburg · Humour
Photograph by Vladimir Baranovsky, 1970s, Leningrad
Science · Mores · Humour
These are not your Granny Agafya's recipes
NB! · Books · Observations · Humour
Books · Mores · Humour
Hm! hm! Noble reader, Is all your kin in health? Permit me: perhaps you would care To learn from me just now What relations, properly speaking, are. Relations are people of this sort: We are obliged to caress them, To love them, to respect them from the heart, And, according