Senator Lindsay Graham has sworn to make 2017 the year "the US Senate kicks Russia's ass." I’m scared stiff about all this Russo-American unpleasantness. But probably not for the reasons you’d think.
Oh sure, there’s those egghead physicists who calculate the Doomsday Clock who’re all running around with their hair on fire saying the election of Trump puts us 2 minutes 30 seconds away from “midnight.” They claim that the Prez’s tendency to say whatever verbal dust bunny flits through his brain at any given moment raises the risk for some crazy apocalyptic nuclear boo-boo. Sad!
Frankly, this doesn’t concern me one bit. I grew up with atom bomb drills in elementary school, and I can tell you from personal experience, it’s not that big a deal. If you hear sirens, you go into a hallway somewhere, sit with your feet to the wall, put your hands over your head, and you’re good to go! Literally!! That’s all there is to it. I don’t really know why we had drills all the time, because if you do it once, you’ve pretty much mastered all the necessary skills.
No, what has my knickers in a twist is what happens to other aspects of Russian-American relations.
There’s a high risk that Putin might pull the plug on our supply of YouTube Russian epic fail videos. Don't pretend you haven't seen them— clips of teens balancing on the I-beams of skyscrapers under construction, dash-cams of drunk truck drivers veering across 8 lanes of traffic, and army tanks crushing cars at intersections when they don’t have the right-of-way.
Vladimir has us by the short hairs on this one, and I can only imagine the panic at YouTube headquarters at the prospect of a dwindling supply of Ruskie fuckup vids. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if their execs were lobbying Secretary of Defense James Mattis to calm the waters in the Kremlin on their behalf.
There’s also the issue of a possible worldwide shortage of ballerinas, tennis and hockey players, not to mention Olympic women’s gymnasts who for some reason have to shave every morning.
And don’t get me started on Russian nesting dolls. You have to hand it to the Ruble heads, they broke the mold with that one. Children under two will make you take apart and reassemble those damn things until your eyes roll up in your head. Sorry to say, we simply don’t have anything in the pipeline to replace that piece of Cossack ingenuity.
Finally, there’s the looming possibility that the Russian caviar cartels will cut us off from their premium Beluga, which is already $130 or more per ounce. Can you imagine the scene at Dean and DeLuca if the price doubles or triples, with people crushed to death in their rush to get the last tins of Black Russian Osetra Karat Caviar. Oh, the humanity!!
But then, what do I know? It could be there's really nothing going on with Russia at all. I only know what I see on the fake news.