Gde moy tridtsat' baksov? According to Google Translate, I’m going to have to learn how to say that — preferably in a manly, no-nonsense voice — if I’m ever to get the thirty bucks the Russians owe me. They really do owe me the money, too.
But I’m going to have to be careful. I’ve seen enough old James Bond flicks to know that, should I make the Russians mad enough, they will a) strap me to a table and cut me in half with a high-powered laser beam, b) come for me in the middle of the night and lock me away in a Siberian gulag where I will be forced to live on a diet of moldy bread and melted snow, or c) drop a nuclear bomb on Washington.
The Russians, obviously, are not to be trifled with.
Still, they owe me that thirty bucks and with Washington being what it is these days, a nuclear bomb might not be the worst thing that could happen there. (Kidding! I do not need the NSA on my butt as well as whatever’s left of the KGB.)
Maybe I’d better back up a minute.
For the past four years, I’ve had a great relationship with the Russians; with one Russian, anyway. His name is Vladimir Aleksander, which, you must admit, is one cool name. Vladimir owns what I assume is a fairly large publishing concern in Moscow; his company publishes several English language print and electronic newspapers and magazines.
A few summers ago I started writing horoscopes for Vladimir. He needed a writer who could speak English (I can!) and make sense of a Google-translated horoscope originally written in Russian by a Russian astrologer (I could not, but pretended I could in order to pick up the $300 per month Vladimir was willing to shell out for this service).
Since astrology is (I believe) nothing more than mass delusion — much like people thinking Divorce Court is entertainment — I didn’t feel too guilty about taking Vladimir’s cash. And my horoscopes, while not remotely accurate, were as accurate as any other horoscopes you’ve ever read.
Somewhere along the way, Vladimir found out I also wrote this Reality Check column and asked if he could include it in some of his publications. Since I was already practically robbing the poor guy with regard to the horoscope deal, I told him he could pull the column off the Internet and run it gratis whenever he liked.
Well, it turned out he liked to run it a lot. He continued to print my column every week even when I stopped writing the horoscope for him, nearly two years ago.
Because I’m a lousy businessman, I never gave it a thought until a couple months back when I checked the stats on my blog — mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com — where my column appears each week. It turns out about a full third of my online readership is now headquartered in Russia.
On one hand, I’m flattered Vladimir considers my little column worthy of his big city readership. Moscow has a population of over 11,503,500 citizens, at least seven of whom read Reality Check every week! On the other hand (the one that likes holding money) an extra thirty bucks a week would come in handy next time the electric bill is due.
On the third hand (I’m gonna need at least three, maybe more, to make this work) I don’t want to wind up strapped to a table with a high powered laser beam inching toward my nether regions. It seems a big risk for just thirty bucks.
On the fourth hand (told ya) $30 U.S. equals 968 Russian rubles, which sounds like a whole LOT of loot. I’m not greedy by nature, but 968 rubles buys a lot of Borscht, man! If I ever have to move to Russia (as seems all too likely by the time the IRS gets done with me) I could live like a king on that kind of money.
So. Laser beam, gulag, poverty … none of my choices seem particularly desirable. For now I guess I’ll just do what I always do: send my column to Russia. With love.
Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and online in ebook format at Amazon.com.
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