Let's Get Acquainted, Since We're Here
Aloha, Earthlings. Good evening, gentlemen. What's up, dudes.
Pick whichever greeting feels closer to your heart.
When you decided to open a book with such a loud, clickbait title—more typical of Shorts or Reels on social media—you probably expected a kind of travel guide. Either one where I brag about Europe's glamorous life, or the opposite—where I complain about how unbearable it is to live in the lands of the former Eastern Bloc. You know, the place where everyone suffers eternally and dreams of reincarnating as a little frog in a dumpster (where at least there's some moisture) next to a KFC in Idaho.
Such a person, not yet blessed with the desired drag-queen reincarnation, sits on a bench outside his peeling old five-story apartment block and daydreams. While he dreams of holding a real designer item, not a knockoff, he broadcasts his thoughts into the global information field—or what I'll call the Sad Blogosphere. There, Western readers see these legendary "Khrushchyovkas" (grey freakin buildings) and make protective signs over themselves, praying never to end up there.
In this dead-inside decadence, colors are unnecessary, because they're useless for someone who stares grimly at reality and refuses to see tomorrow.
Today's retreat schedule is fully packed: a trip to the store for stale bread, walking a dog with the face of a heroin addict, then going to work—which, of course, is a Soviet factory eroded by decades of wind, where wooden surface-to-air missiles are still carved on lathes.
And afterward? Coming home with groceries for the week: a bottle of milk and a bag of buckwheat. Then a fight with his wife using frying pans welded together from kryptonite and fragments of Lenin's bones. Playing "criminals" with his kid, using light-version RPGs made of Play-Doh. And finally—a well-deserved sleep on a clay bed purchased from post-apocalyptic IKEA.
But hold on—I'm getting ahead of myself. I haven't even introduced myself. There has to be some order here, otherwise next to your big natural head will appear a smaller, dumb, clueless head, like in Men in Black 2.
My name is Ivan. Because that's how I must be called, even if I were born with the name Clavius. If I had a wife and a child—they'd also be named Ivan. Same goes for my aquarium fish.
So, your humble servant (and I truly am one, dear Sirs) will carve this proud name into his destiny from here on out. I plan to live through every page of this book with it, and I wish the same for you.