russia sucks.

i spent the early part of this evening watching two very disturbing programs on the topic of the soviet union/russia/whatever it is they are calling it these days. the first was on russian mail-order brides. quite strange, i can assure you.

the second was far more disturbing, and was called "the battle of chernobyl". you do the math. actually, that was the point, sort of: among other colossal fuck-ups of this epic disaster, the soviet government has no offical statistics on how many of its citizens were physically affected by the radiation. and i think we all know why that is: because it was a ton of people. like all the dudes that they made clean nuclear waste off the roof of the destroyed reactor, because even the robots they initially had doing it couldn't take the "heat"...one of the robots even threw itself of the friggin' roof! i can't even begin to describe some of the things i learned about chernobyl tonight. needless to say, i was horrified. the russians just really suck at life. not to be rude, but it's true. actually, we decided that the theme of this evening's discovery times channel programming is: "russia sucks". and how.

so after two hours of depressing revelations regarding the soviet union, i decided to watch lost in translation, which is such a beautiful movie. i am really worried about things lately, and by things i mean really everything... rational, irrational, all of it. i don't know what the hell i think is going to happen, it's as if i think i am going to turn my head and the whole world will be gone in an instant. that right now, this very second, the seeds of my demise are being planted, have already been planted and are growing, unstoppable, elements set in motion and all that crap.

so it was nice to watch a film where there are sort of those feelings of frightened helplessness, but done in a way that is completely unjarring and almost soothing. it was a good idea, for me to watch that.

i went to school yesterday to start the process, the process of getting my shit together. it seems more possible than ever, after actually setting foot inside the building, after actually speaking to a human being about it. i still feel as if i am almost certain to be rejected, but that's probably because i feel as if i am one hundred years old and have the skill set of flo from that show "alice". remember that show? how depressing. i think i have a college degree, i am pretty sure, and i think i may have also written some papers that i can use for my writing sample, and i think there is a slim chance i may be able to sneak in there. otherwise, it's "alice" forever. i'm gonna see if i can find one of those outfits.

just to return to an earlier topic, chernobyl(not to be confused with returning to chernobyl, which you should never, ever do) one other thing that i learned, that they sorta forgot to mention at the time, was that they almost blew all of europe to holy hell with a second explosion, which would have occurred had they not sent some(and by some i mean thousands) of their dopey, unsuspecting citizens, outfitted in hefty bags(de rigeur for cleaning up toxic nuclear spills) in to tunnel underneath the burning reactor. read that again. THEY ALMOST BLEW UP EUROPE. and we, being schmucks, were worried that they were going to blow us up with a missle? there was no one to take care of that, cause everyone after 1986 was busy forfeiting their lives to clean up this ridiculous mess. what the hell do we have spies for? could we have not discovered earlier that the way of doing things over there could, on a good day, be best described as "bobo"? astonishing.