English lesson
Pronouncing:
Let it be.
Let' eat bee.
funny.
пятница, мая 18, 2007
среда, мая 02, 2007
"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".
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".
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