Vlad

[smokingboot]

Sounds of aircraft overhead, some times louder and more frequent, sometimes less so.

Looking at recent photos of Putin, his oddly puffy face and coarsened skin. I get that Covid/Lockdown has affected everybody, from sitting down too long to eating too much, and of course, age changes face shape, but it doesn't quite look like that. The change is startling, and lends itself to the rumour that he's not quite well. Whispers I'm hearing include claims of immunosuppression, but I know plenty of immunosuppressed people. It had its problems but never made nutters of them.

It's a strange contrast to that guy with the predilection for 70's shirt collars, joking with Tony Blair, conversing amicably with Angela Merkel. It's an even greater contrast with the later PR, the strange pathos of a man showing off his waxed chest while he hunts, rides, fishes, dips himself in the freezing waters of St Basil; the kind of determination to impress that most of us discard when mirrors smile wryly at us; darling, perhaps you shouldn't wear that kind of top any more, mate, those tight jeans must play hell with your sciatica. It's prescriptive and we should ignore it as pleases us. But some say that because men do not get any specific sign off note from their bodies (Leaving now, take care of yourself, yours, The Menses) some do not understand the passage of time in quite the same way as women do.

All those calendars, those portraits are attempts to create an icon, and like much mythmaking it requires a resolute blindness to the absurd. Remember Vladimir as Hercules? This is how one knew something was up. A normal person would have died of embarrassment (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-29512763)

So what happened then? I'm just not buying this fear of NATO on the doorstep business. Putin's Russia held so much of the West in its pockets. Europe wants gas and oil, oligarchs have laundered their money via the UK for years and Trump's cordial connections with Putin were evident. Esper has claimed that Trump mentioned an intention to leave NATO in his second term. When that didn't happen, maybe Putin reckoned that a West weakened by the Pandemic's effect on economies everywhere would have less stomach for war than usual, so no time like the present. A rational build up to an irrational end. Why want it at all?


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And in other news, yesterday hurt, badly. More irritating than the pain is the fact that my trudge to the vets was wasted; they've given me the liquid in a pill bottle with no syringe adaptor. Gah.