Heh heh. Get it? I just continued the title theme from last week. “Frau Blucher!” Whinny whinny whinny.

I hate horses. Or rather I hate horses who are close enough to inflict harm on me. As you might surmise, I had a couple of bad experiences as a child- one rapid dismounting, one painful bite- that contributed to my hatred of the animal. Though, as noted, I am fine with horses in the field. They can frolic all they want out there. Swat flies with their tail. Make little horses. Just so long as they maintain their distance. Get too close and it’s glue time. Of course, we need glue. It’s what keep us together. Unless you’re a horse. Of course.

Speaking of togetherness, Vladimir Putin is a mighty rider of horses. Who can forget the photos of Putin, shirtless and inscrutable, looking fearlessly into the future? And who knew what the future would be? Surely not the Ukrainian people. Though I am sure that somebody saw this one coming. No matter what the disaster, there are always people who point out that destruction is imminent. All sorts of Germans tried to warn the world (or at least the German people) about Hitler. But Hitler had lots of parades and a cool flag and he was Making Germany Great Again. Until the Red Army came through the Eastern Front and laid waste to the countryside. No Horst Wessel song after that. Those were the days for the Red Army.

Now look at them. Back to the half-assed forces that got Nick 2 stood up against a wall. In Yekaterinburg. Pow Pow Pow. And then several more pows. And then the executioners had to bayonet the royal family. And then that didn’t work, so they finally shot the still living kids right in the bean. That worked. Gruesome. Plus, it really didn’t make a difference. Back to strongman leadership as soon as possible. Those damned Russians. At least they gave us vodka. That’s something.

As the Ukrainians stave off naked Russian aggression, some politicians in the US question whether supporting the Ukraine is the right choice. Oddly, these politicians are mostly Republican. Which is definitely a switch. Because I can distinctly remember Republicans being adamantly anti-Russian for quite some time. Reagan sure didn’t care for them. However, Reagan showed significant signs of dementia his last term in office. So, maybe we can’t always rely on Reagan for our universal truths. He was good with animals, though. Bedtime for Bonzo and all. That chimp probably got Reagan to the White House.

Speaking of chimps (angry ones, in this case), Putin seems like he isn’t willing to quit anytime soon. Never say die, a saying that is most easily used by those who won’t be doing the dying. Kind of like when you go to a youth football game and the dad keeps yelling at his son to “get in there” and “get tough.” In this scenario, the kid weighs 100 pounds and the kid who he can’t tackle weighs 190.
“You’ve got to get in there!” screams dad.

Dad is, predictably, five nine and a half and weighs 165 soaking wet. It is highly doubtful that he could tackle the other team’s running back. Certainly, if he had to tackle one of the 250 pound fathers standing around, he would be a bit less enthusiastic about “getting tough.” Then discretion would be the better part of valor. Anyway, the story ends by the little kid going low and taking a knee to the head, killing him. What? Too harsh? Ok. The little kid gets concussed and never plays football again. He runs cross country instead.

The next fall his dad is screaming at him as he hits the last half mile, “Catch that guy! You’ve got to run!” The kid bears down and falls dead from an unknown heart condition. I did warn you that this post was related to the last one.

I work in mysterious ways. Like when I killed the kid twice in two paragraphs. He’s dead now for real. You wouldn’t have liked him. His name was Nicholas Putin and he would have grown up to be a hedge fund manager. First, we kill all the hedge fund managers. There you go, Shakespeare. Fixed it for you.

Shakespeare. When are English departments going to retire that guy? Read some Russian literature or something. Bulgakov, perhaps. Dostoevsky. Tolstoy. Lermontov. Nikolai Gogol. Technically, Gogol is Ukrainian. He often satirized Russian political corruption. He’s probably not on Putin’s reading list.

Republicans hate that guy. Gogol, I mean. Not Putin. Putin reminds them of someone.

Also, I’m kidding. Republicans have no idea who Gogol is. They think he’s the guy who gets them onto the internet. Yep. There’s a little, extremely old Ukrainian running a switchboard in there.

“Hey, Nikolai! Why aren’t you writing anymore?”

Nikolai pokes his wizened head out of the room. “I’m running the damn internet!”

That could be some kind of meme. I should see if I kind find a picture of Gogol laying around. Or I could just draw my own picture. It’s not like anybody knows the face of an old Ukrainian writer. Well, Tsar Nicholas 1 did. TN1 is dead now. Like his son.

As an interesting sidebar, Gogol was not well-loved in school. The other kids called him the “mysterious dwarf.” I think we can all agree that Gogol would have been horrible at football.