Now Playing: 'Hymn of the Soviet Union' by Sergey Mikhalkov
Topic: Random Political Diatribe
Hey, kids: it's autocracy time!
So the Russian government has been, in effect, completely dissolved and a puppet on strings is in the PM chair (until Pooty-Poot says different...)
I'm more puzzled by Putin's blatant power grabs than anything else... he's going to have the whole of Russia completely under his thumb soon (if he doesn't already...)
But my question is: who'd want it?
As part of the Kremlin's push to show Pooty as a 'rugged and powerful' outdoorsman and all-around badass, they've also allowed some steamy shirtless photos of the president/Tsar to be published.
The pics were taken during a Siberian fishing trip.
I wonder what Putin thinks about when out on these rugged, manly trips in a harsh land of and isolation and loneliness. His thoughts must surely be center on his wif-
Oh...
...nevermind, then. Uh, moving on...
A return to the time of the Tsars, huh? Interestingly, the end of the true-Tsarist lineage also marks the end of my interest in Russian history (so much so that, with the exception of a notable soul or two, I'm exceedingly ignorant about most facets of Russian history post-Tsar and pre-CCCP).
While I was writing a chapter of 'Typers' I decided, on the spur of the moment, to put Russia in my main character's backstory: turns out that he spent his very early years in Vladivostok (although he's a native New Englander, but this ends up making sense in the plot considering his family would've had to move away from NE right after a certain major impact event shalacks their continent). This is also convienent because it allows Justin to have a second language (presumably he's conversant in Russian); most everyone else in Typers is at least bilingual, and it was odd that Justin's phonetic prowess never came up...
No particular reason I picked Russia, though: I only needed some place with blisteringly-cold waters where my character could have a near-death experience: a temporary trauma leaving rather permanant resuts.
It could be said that my choosing Russia as a plot point is a subconscious move that hints at my own desire to better understand its land and people (...riiiiiight...) The most plausible reason I did this is because a) I like to say 'Vladivostok' (and I like to write the word 'Vladivostok', even!) and b) an amnesic James Bond was cryptically told to go to Vladivostok at the end of You Only Live Twice, and since I believe that the Fleming novels end with this one (...I'm sure of it, actually... *shudder*) that ambiguous, ominous ending rather stuck with me.
But mostly, I just like sayin' Vladivostok!
