Q: Does someone still love you, Boris Yeltsin?
Yeah, I know Russians don't drink Absolut. Just go with it.
A: I sort of hate this band (sorry, greater blogging community), but what the hell. It's a special occasion.
"Oregon Girl" once appeared on The O.C
. It is perhaps the least distasteful song on the band's much bloggihooed debut album, Broom, which you can buy here
, or whatever.So hey, former president of Russia Boris Yeltsin is dead at 76. My condolences go out to anybody who still loved him.
Yeltsin will go down in history as Russia's first democratically elected leader evs, and the country's most politically progressive and least dictatorial since, oh, the guy who came immediately before him. He drank a lot of vodka, he killed a lot of Chechnyans, he drank a lot more vodka, he fixed a bunch of things, he fucked up a bunch of things, he resigned when everyone was distracted by Y2K terror, he drank a lot of vodka and he generally left Americans confused as to whether they were supposed to like him.
We thought he seemed like a swell guy — he never threatened to crush us, and he was always smiling and waving friendly hand signals.
At least, I think they were friendly hand signals. It's a fine line between the peace sign and "I'll take two vodkas."
One thing we can never take away from Mr. Yeltsin is his proving to the Western world that Russians named Boris aren't all bumbling caricatures who hang out with women named Natasha.
Some of them, we learned, hang out with women named Naina.
Ah, but Boris, comrade — I keed, I keed. I'm sure it couldn't have been easy, the whole trying to build a newly de-Commied nation of 140 million from the ground up thing. Your administration may have been riddled with corruption and confusion, but old Soviet habits die hard, I'm sure. Hell, just look at the dude running things now.
POSTSCRIPT: Further reading...
- Yeltsin Factoids [Reuters]
- Comments on his passing from world leaders [Guardian]
- Comments on his passing from crazy CNN viewers [CNN]
- "Yeltsin known for gaffes, off-colour jokes" [Reuters/ABC]
PREVIOUSLY IN OBITS: Don Ho, shocker of monkeys.
