Warped Weekend

This last weekend has been kind of hard on me. It may take years to recover. Sonya left me all alone to visit her village just outside of Kharkiv. She wouldn’t let me come because her uncle is a toxic alcoholic who makes everyone around him drink and smoke cigarettes and party until 4-in-the-morning, and I am also a person who’s been known to drink and drag the occasional pivo and cigarillo. Therefore, in the best interest of her mental health, Sonya decided to deal with one drunken idiot at a time, lest her troubles be multiplied.

I spent my Sonya-free weekend at the art shows. We smoked and drank beer at each event as they all blurred together in between my speaking clubs. I ended up partying away the curfew a few nights. The amount of alcohol  was actually minor.

It was the tyun-tyun that got me.

VERE, INNUMERIS SIGARRA…

Truly, countless cigarettes…

Too much tyun-tyun for Thomas the Tank Engine. The Little Train that Could could only hang so long before he had to tap out. How many cigarettes can you bum before you buy a pack that only lasts an hour? How many people in one group can have a pack of smokes but no lighter? And when will we all finally bring enough beer and cigarettes to the event like responsible human beings?

The world may never know.

On Saturday, there was a feminist/LGBTQIA+~=•#/&@-:^*€£¥$X art exhibit at a basement bomb-shelter or Ukryttia that now serves as the Kharkiv Municipal Art Gallery. There were almost 20 cops on standby with AK47s in case some far-right folk or lone-wolves wanted to make an incident. No such incident happened but it was a strange scene.

There more cops than people at the event 🤣🤣🤣

The picture of the Ukrainian woman lighting a cigarette with a Molotov reminds me of certain Sonya, but of course, she doesn’t smoke.

She just throws Molotovs when the mood is right…