Glossy News has been fortunate enough to be granted an interview with Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, a man very much in the news these days.
It is not often that the Premier grants anyone from the West an exclusive interview, especially since he is not allowed to enter the U.S.
We had to do the Interview on his exclusive 300 foot yacht off the Crimea coast.
Glossy- “Good day, Premier Putin! May I call you Vlad?
Putin- “Would you like to be kidnapped and sent to a labor camp?”
Glossy- “Ohhh…ummmm…OK, Mr. Putin then.”
Putin- “That more like it.”
Glossy- “So, how was your vacation at your dacha on the Black Sea?”
Putin- “I have new one in Crimea now. It much warmer there. That was half the reason we grabbed it from Ukraines.”
Glossy- “Why did you need a vacation?”
Putin- “Sochi Olympics exhaust me. Many months of being nice, smiling all the time, being friendly with strangers. That very unnatural for me. Also supervising undercover agents and KGB that whole time watching the foreigners and suppressing dissidents took a lot out of me. Also stashing all the money we made in laundered overseas accounts very hard on nerves.”
Glossy- “Why does Russia need Crimea? You are already the second biggest nation land-wise in the world and you can’t handle that. Russia is still poorer than most other countries in Europe.”
Putin- “That because we are the great Russia! Anywhere there are Russians we must protect them.”
Glossy- “Anywhere there are Russians you are going to rush in? They are everywhere in the world!”
Putin- “Exactly! I did say ‘Greater Russia’, didn’t I!”
Glossy- “Does that include Russian Hill in San Francisco?”
Putin- “If it has ‘Russian’ in the name it is considered to be fair game.”
Glossy- “Looking at Russian history it looks like the only way your country can only get ahead by bullying and taking over neighbor lands and ruling them with an iron or a hidden hand. Russia appears to not be very creative at making its own way in the world without leeching off other people or treating its own people like farm animals.”
Putin- “If we strong then we must show we are strong. We do other countries a favor by taking them over. They get to experience first hand Russian culture. And we do it in a different, as you say, creative way.”
Glossy- “By ‘creative way’ do you mean watching them like hawks and sending in the KGB to hogtie them when they are the least bit dissident?”
Putin- “That take much creativity. Also much brute Russian muscle.”
Glossy- “And by Russian culture do you mean ballet, literature and films?”
Putin- “No, Russian secret police, cheap Russian housing, Russian surveillance, shoddy goods, vodka and cooked cabbage.”
Glossy- “ I see by one of your biographers that you were hired by the KGB at age 22 and worked for 16 years as a “specialist in human relations”. Is that anything like human resources?”
Putin- “In Russia “human resources” mean what you can get out of a human body once you are done with it- gold teeth, kidneys, change left in the pockets, etcetera. I was a specialist in “human relations”. That different. I am expert in all human relations that give me control over other people. I find that is only human relationship I need and like.”
Glossy- I see that President Yeltsin hired you on as the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union. Did he realize then what a cold fish you are?”
Putin- “I wait and apply when he dead drunk one night. He was seeing double when he signed the papers. When hangover wore off two days later it too late. I had already pass necessary laws to prevent me being expelled from job.”
Glossy- “Mr. Putin…”
Putin- “Why don’t you call me ‘Czar Putin’. I like that better.”
Glossy- “OK, Czar Putin, it says also that in high school you took an interest in spy work and started working towards becoming a lawyer as a gateway towards getting in the KGB.”
Czar Putin- “In U.S. lawyers become experts at digging through other people’s excrement- same in Russia.”
Glossy- “Umm….OK. Mr. Czar Putin, I see again by the biographer that you are fluent in German and worked for five years undercover in East Germany as a spy. It says that you “were expert at reading and manipulating people and was unfazed by violence.” Is this true?”
Mr. Czar Putin- “Did you see how I wasted the time of some of the world’s greatest leaders at the conference on a peace treaty with Ukraine that bought me time to build up the rebels with arms? Would you consider that expert and being unfazed by violence?”
Glossy- “Yes, indeed I would. So, Mr. Czar Putin, in closing I would like to ask what you see as the future for Europe?”
Mr. Czar Putin- “For the future of Europe I foresee no Europe at all. I see Greater Russia, from sea to shining sea!”
Glossy- “Ahh, that is a United States theme song, sir.”
Putin- (He smiles widely) “That may be ours someday too.”
Could you guys keep it down please?
I’m trying to sleep here!
I’d remark but I’m an advocate of nut neutrality.
We’re Dick n John, and we’ve disapproved of Mr TM’s messages. We have disappeared him fully and finally from this comments page. If you ever see your colleague again, it won’t be here, in the full bloom of his pre-30s, jesting about Rfreed’s article…
Is that menacing enough for you? We’re watching his every step, and we will ensure he doesn’t cause any more trouble for you guys.
Remember, we are protecting your security and the boundaries of your comments pages every day.
We’re Dick and John, and we approve this message. And we don’t approve of people who satirize us.
And Putin is an asshole. Just thought we couldn’t leave that one out…
Huh? Merriam-Webster Dictionary (sic)? I’ve heard of that website, but I always thought it was kind of a “The Onion” for language users. 😉
(Ignore the unfortunate juxtaposition of a definite and indefinite article. It’s just semantics, isn’t it…
Well, syntax :P)
(Still, like Big Brother and Stalin, the semantics police tend to throw around arbitrary accusations of “that’s just semantics,” in order to act as a conversation-stopper; and as these guys bug me, I guess I’m gonna concede you this point, just this once).
By the way, the example for the entry you mentioned used this as an example:
“One sockdolager of a short story… but he seemed to be the only one in the room amused…”
I hope that wasn’t an arbitrary jibe at our Special Relationship between satire writers of our Great Unified Global Village.
For, As the carnivalesque opera buffska figure Putin has been charitable enough to inform me:
“The international comedy world is an anarcho-realist order with no single figure possessing either the overriding authority, nor the power, to put a stop to the endless, Darwinly-vicious cycle of revenge witticisms and pleasantries.
“So, Komrad, if you do not laugh, you will cry. That is why my sense of humour (ha! Orthographics!) is so renowed in the backward, uncivilised, da indeed, the morally and even politically impoverished First World Occident of respect criminals, reverence splittists and civility hooligans at Glossy News and fellow bourgeois non-satire news outlets Fox and MSNBC.
“I would censor Glossynews, but I think I can make use of their efforts as groundbreaking hipster-po-mo irony, in order to booster my efforts to further democratise my Russia!”
“(Kinda orthographically edgy, huh!”
Kulak? Screw those wealthy Russian farmers! Sadly, wealthy farmers are no more in America so there is no regional equivalent term to toss back as an insult. Dystopian slang for modern economic status have yet to be invented to define me, either.
And why does the European continent insist on adding superfluous vowels willy-nilly when clearly ‘harbor’ is just as effective?
Wish I had a sockdolager for this comments thread, but unfortunately I find myself grammatically farctate.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sockdolager
Nyet, Komrad Kilroy…. properly cited footnotes from Leavis or Monroe Beardsley; or it did not happen! Our hedgehog-men of letters are smarter than your fox-folk of decadent Occidental Fakepolitik.
Putin shall not be fooled by your semantic word games.
Sigh……
It must be my karma……..
Or else the Russkies are expanding their hacking business.
Writing disclaimers in Cyrillic is considered an insult in any post 2056 a.d. society. Of course, if you’re not opposed to pissing off all the Temporal Historians from now until 10,000 a.d., I’ll do it. Screw ’em.
I’m a little disappointed, however, to see you mention post-Yeltsinian-Realpolitiks as relevant at all. Simply makes you look like a rube, not a scholar, TM. But given the subtle differences between Queen’s English and its American variant, the translation is skewed a bit and thus your remark is quite cheeky.
Ya’ll ain’t funny, you know!
Why? Why? Why?
Why do I always attract the nutcases?
Why God, Why???????
Who are these morons? Nevermind, gotta go!
The legal term is “moron in a hurry”… look it up, that’s an actual legal thing. In trademark cases the test of “can it reasonably be confused with the actual thing,” judges have ruled that “only a moron in a hurry” could mistake it for the real thing.
Who are these people???????
Oy. The music coming out of Russia these days. Ever since the hot air industry deflated, the solid Siberian Horn Sound has been reduced to Peruvian Pan Flute status in the charts. Coming to a mall near you.
Super Upgrade comin’ atcha! Don’t EVER EVER insult the Russian hot air industry, it’s one of the only highly profitable things in that whole damn country apart from Żubrówka barbecues, and it is MINE. Understand? Putin is my man, don’t ever EVER think you can insult my best frenemy. I need him more than he needs me, put it that way.
If he wasn’t so full of hot air, he wouldn’t be pooting…
It’s never more expensive to posture than it is to die, Jethro.