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Great Moments In Cyrillic Firefighting

Great Moments In Cyrillic Firefighting

When I see that wonderful Cyrillic alphabet in the title, I always know what I’m going to get.

Well, not exactly what I’m going to get of course. I’m not a mind reader, and everybody in Russia is half out of their minds anyway, so mind reading might not help. But I always have a hunch that something wacky is going on just past the play button. I’m rarely disappointed.

Picture, if you will, the Russian Fire station. The phone is ringing off the hook. There is a wide assortment of supermarkets, apartment buildings, buses, trains, planes, trucks, cars, scooters, nuclear power plants, and mulecarts fully aflame all over the immediate area. There are pools of flammable hazardous waste leaking out of everything, and even the infants smoke. The Dalmation has three legs left from the last time they all got a notion to do something fun.

Sergei or Ivan or Ivor or Leonid answers the phone once in a blue moon, and yells over the frantic cries for help: Call back later; we’re busy out front.

[Thanks to tovarisch Gerard at American Digest for sending that one along]

For God’s Sake, I’m Warning You, Mute The Video Before You Watch It

For God’s Sake, I’m Warning You, Mute The Video Before You Watch It


The Borderline Sociopathic Boy stays cool under pressure.

You’re in a bad situation. Very bad situation. But you don’t want to make things worse for yourself, do you? No, so you keep cool. You hang in there. You do what a man’s got to do. You wait until the last second, then you do what you have to do with no hesitation. 

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Or you can just stand there and say OH MY GOD over and over again. That might work out, too.

[Thanks to reader and commenter Leon for sending that one along]

Something Tells Me This Guy Can…

Something Tells Me This Guy Can…


…parallel park. Rub his stomach and pat his head simultaneously. I bet he can riffle shuffle like a croupier, and cut the cards one-handed. I bet he sinks the eight without scratching. Probably can go fly fishing without filling his waders with water. He can shoot thirty percent from the three-point line. I imagine he hits the waste basket with his wadded-up first-draft love letters every time. He can chip from the trap and get down in two. Betcha he plays on the All Madden setting. Betcha he doesn’t have to pay for drinks, but does anyway.

I bet that fire is shaking in its boots, right now.

(Thanks to Charles Schneider for sending that one along)

Next Time, Just Get Stuck In A Tree, Little Feller

Next Time, Just Get Stuck In A Tree, Little Feller


Firemen. You pull the lever, dial the phone, and they just come. They’re often found going the opposite direction as everyone else. The definition of bravery has to include going one way while everyone’s going the other, surely.

Sometimes it’s the minor wonders that remind you of the major ones.