Respect Authority

Zero Tolerance is a weekly feature, appearing on Saturdays, that briefly covers some unacceptable offense from the prior week. This is far from a hard science, in fact, it’s entirely likely that it’s not even fact based — indeed, this is pure opinionated ranting because it’s my website and I can cry if I want to. — RA

Ever since the Cold War ended, we’ve been cutting Russia an inordinate amount of slack. To be frank, fairly little has actually changed since then: they still like Communism, have better vodka than they’re sharing with the rest of the world, and insist on electing leaders whose names no one else can pronounce. To top everything off, I’ve been waiting since Day One (being about three weeks ago) for someone over there to give the American media a call in an effort to officially dispute Sarah Palin’s claim that her close proximity to the country makes for solid foreign policy experience (Seriously, someone couldn’t just ring up the Times and give a little “Privet, this is Russia. That bitch is full of shit.”?!)

But the latest outrage from the country that brought us both Lenin AND Stalin is this horror from the depths. The revelation of a so-called “Moscow Monster” comes only a few short months after a similarly mythical being was happened upon in Long Island, and affectionately dubbed the “Montauk Monster.” I won’t go too far into that discovery, primarily since it occupied my psyche for weeks and I’m only now beginning to recover enough to write my forthcoming nonfiction book on the subject, but also because the fact that Long Island’s contribution to the funky-shit-that-washed-up-onshore category was noticeably less impressive and in the end probably some sort of decomposed dog.

Russia just HAD to go and get a bigger, creepier and more prehistoric looking mythical being, and then have IT wash up on ITS shore, and in typical Soviet fashion, hide all information about the creature for two years, in what I have absolutely no doubt is a concerted effort to one-up the Americans in the mythical being arena which, don’t doubt, has far more relevance than one would initially think. (For example, when we enter the Cold War II, which will inevitably become the Hot War I if a certain maverick duo gets elected, don’t you think respective countries’ holdings of fantastical creature armies will come into play? It will.)

So fuck you, Russia — your accents are scary, your vodka strong and your beach detritus terrifying as shit. Just promise me one thing, if you ever choose to release one of those beings on the world, a la Jurassic Park II: The Lost World, send it Alaska’s way first.

[LA Times Blog]