There are a lot of legends have been appeared in St.-Petersburg since it’ foundation 300 years ago. One of them is a legend about a lucky heel. There is a bas-relief of a navy battle on a pedestal of one of the monuments to a Russian tsar Peter the Great who founded the city.

There are two men are saving the third one who survived from sank boat. He is definitely lucky man.

So there is a legend: if you rub his heel, he will share his luck with you. I have rubbed his heel for all my friends.

Be lucky guys!

Apotheosis of war

Russia has tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, which unleashes a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast, the military said on Tuesday, dubbing it the "father of all bombs". The bomb is the latest in a series of new Russian weapons. Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon. Such devices generally detonate in two stages. First a small blast disperses a main load of explosive material into a cloud, which then either spontaneously ignites in air or is set off by a second charge. This explosion generates a pressure wave that reaches much further than that from a conventional explosive. The consumption of gases in the blast also generates a partial vacuum that can compound damage and injuries caused by the explosion itself. The main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature.
U.S. forces have used a "thermobaric" bomb, which works on similar principles, in their campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

'If there is a rifle hanging on the wall in the first act, in the third act, the rifle will be fired." Anton Checkhov.

About pets.
There is a picture of my friend and his dog.

Also there is a poem which was written by my favorite poet Sergey Esyenin:

"Ах, как много на свете кошек,

Нам с тобой их не счесть никогда.

Сердцу снится душистый горошек,

И звенит голубая звезда.

Наяву ли, в бреду иль спросонок,

Только помню с далекого дня -

На лежанке мурлыкал котенок,

Безразлично смотря на меня.

Я еще тогда был ребенок,

Но под бабкину песню вскок

Он бросался, как юный тигренок,

На оброненный ею клубок.

Все прошло. Потерял я бабку,

А еще через несколько лет

Из кота того сделали шапку,

А ее износил наш дед".

In English it sounds like that:

"There are so many cats in the world

So we can not them count.

There is the sweet pea in my dreams,

Also the blue star rings.

Whether in reality, in delirium or in a nap,

Only I remember since far days -

On a stove bench the kitten purred,

It is indifferent looking on me.

Then I was only a child,

And when my Grandma song

It rushed, as a young tiger,

On the ball of wool dropped by her.

All has passed. I have lost the grandma,

And in some years

Of that cat have made a cap,

And it was worn out by our grandfather".

Two days ago was my birthday. A half of my life passed away like one o'clock....
VITA BREVIS! Time is the dearest thing in the world.

English lesson
Pronouncing:
Let it be.
Let' eat bee.
funny.

"Drunk Boris" died last week. Everyone in Russia hated him. So did I. I really ashamed, that he was a president of my country.
There is "The Times"' article about him. I have nothing to add:
"So farewell, Boris Yeltsin. He was perhaps the perfect Russian leader, saving the authorities the usual need to provide hundreds of gallons of formaldehyde by comprehensively pickling himself while still alive. Indeed, while still in office. If his corpse were on display you’d probably need to be over 18 just to view it, what with the fumes.
It took an imaginative leap to arrive at work one day, eight sheets to the wind, pour himself an early morning stiffener, shakily wave his arms around and pronounce: “Right, comradesh, thatsh the end of communishmism, or whatever itsh called.”
If Gorbachev, the man we all admire (and the Russians despise), had clung on to power, there may well have been a gradual, if somewhat one-sided, convergence between our two social systems: it might have taken decades. But after a good night on the lash, Yeltsin made the crucial imaginative leap. To think outside the box, it is preferable to be several feet out of your own, via vodka or antifreeze, who knows.
This is something the pressure group Alcohol Concern seems to have forgotten with all this business about the calamitous effects of alcohol dependency among the young people of Britain. Yes of course they may end up dead in a garret with a liver the size of Belarus at the age of 25. On the other hand, they might be inspired to free the world from the possibility of nuclear armageddon, open the gulags and herald a new era of democracy (if only for a bit). Rather Yeltsin paralytic than Bush sober. Rather Bush paralytic than Bush sober, come to that.
Rather Yeltsin, tie, collar and hair askew pawing at his panic-stricken aides on the tarmac at Shannon airport saying: “You’re my besht friend, Edvard, letsh go for a curry or pizza . . . ” than some painfully sober monkey assuring us all, without blinking: “Hey, I’m a pretty straight kinda guy.”
The drinking aside – and the end of the cold war, and the democratisation of Russia, and the liberalisation of its economy, and the routing of the communist opposition and the freedom of the press – there isn’t much to commend in Yeltsin, still less to find likeable. A smirking autocrat whose commitment to democracy was at least in part imposed by political expediency.
But that’s what tends to happen; the greatest deeds of history, the things we feel most grateful for, are rarely effected by the politicians we most admire. They are perpetrated, by accident or otherwise, by those who felt no need to be constrained by the conventional wisdom – in other words, rogues, idiots and drunks.
The cold war was ended by, first, Ronald Reagan and second by Yeltsin; two people you would probably not wish to invite to dinner. But if Boris did come you’d keep the liquor cabinet locked".