I was driving Klara’s 5-year-old friend home from a playdate today. Tried to make small talk about art lessons and springtime activities.

“Yes, OK,” she said. “You are Ukrainian, right? Tell me about the war in Ukraine. Who’s winning? I asked my dad but he seems confused. He says that the Russians have a bad president who is making people fight and they are afraid he’d kill them if they don’t. Doesn’t sound right to me. What do you think?”

Of course, you’ll think I’m inventing this but this kid could read fluently at the age of 3, freaking out adults. Precocious doesn’t begin to describe her.

The translation doesn’t remotely give justice to the vile language Krasovsky uses to express his hatred for Ukraine.

Krasovsky, by the way, is one of the most outspoken and famous gay rights advocates and a champion of AIDS patients’ rights in Russia. Before anybody starts telling me that he’s bouncing off the wall in his attacks on Ukraine “to save his life,” please understand that I’ve followed this dude for 15 years. I admire his AIDS patients advocacy. His life is more comfortable than that of any of the people who are reading this. He’s wealthy, popular, and very sincere. Yes, he’s HIV positive but it’s not a death sentence any longer.

This is an uproariously funny parody of Arestovich. For those who don’t speak Russian, in the video an actor who is playing Arestovich is reacting with his trademark calmness to the news that a nuclear war started, aliens invaded the Earth, Satan is conquering the world, and a black hole is about to swallow the planet.

“Russia has dropped two nuclear bombs on Ukraine,” the actor says. “That’s good news. Putin now has two bombs fewer.”

I laughed until my whole body hurt.

Every bit of data showed a significant spike in serious infection in the week after vaccination. Every country experienced it. The data was overwhelming. All that was necessary was to ask people to self-isolate for 10 days after vaccination. After months of lockdowns, that wouldn’t be a big deal. To make an analogy with regular childhood vaccinations that pro-COVID-vaxxers so love, you are always told to take it easy the first few days after vaccination. Stay home, drink a lot of liquids, watch out for a bit of a fever. And it’s fine, everybody is used to it.

But it wasn’t done. To the contrary, some politicians insisted that people should go out in public immediately after vaccination. And this was never reversed. Many people were needlessly exposed to all sort of bad shit.

N and I went to see our accountant yesterday. The encounter looked like a joke about a Ukrainian and a Russian who walked into a bar. N tortured that poor woman for 1,5 hours, and in the end we didn’t manage to file taxes.

The conversation went as follows.

“What’s your income for X?”

Long pause. “How do you define income?”

“Well, income is the money that you received. How much income for X did you get this year?”

Long pause. “I have a question.” Long pause. A long convoluted question is then delivered.

The accountant answers the question. “Now. What is your income for X that you received this year?”

Long pause. “What exactly do you mean by received and by this year?”

At the end of the meeting, I leaned over to the accountant and said, “Do you see the cultural differences between Ukraine and Russia now?” “Oh, I do,” she said. “I really do.” I’m guessing she’s now looking for places to donate to Ukraine. Or a place that accepts refugees from Russian aggression before she has to meet us again next week.

At the beginning of our relationship, this took a whole learning curve for me to adapt.

“Do you love me?” I’d ask during a romantic moment.

A very long pause would follow until finally he’d ask, “Can you define love?”

P.S. Everybody I tell this story begins to worry about N’s life, so I want to clarify: I find all of this extremely endearing. I’m in love with the guy. He can’t sneeze without me going into raptures.

I want to share this video of the famous footage of the Ukrainian revolution of 2013. I want the people who are still attached to the narrative of “the CIA-sponsored regime change in Ukraine” to watch.

This is only a tiny part of the footage that doesn’t transmit even one 1% of how it really was. A true people’s revolution that brought democracy, change, real reform, and real freedom.

A few months later, Russia invaded. Once the reforms that began back then started to become obvious and massive, Russia invaded again. Anybody who knows anything about the region finds the narrative about CIA coups and NATO expansions to be ludicrous. The revolution was real and wonderful.

Turn up the sound because the music is good, too.