This is a reply to Admin’s post (that’s his real name by the way – Klaus Admin) I am sorry to report that my colleague’s grasp of the Cyrillic alphabet is about at tight as his grip on reality.

As anyone who reads Russian knows, those emails are being sent by the Russian Historical & Cultural Rehabilitation Center. All they’re trying to do is say: “Hey guyniks. We’re sorry!”

Here’s a summary of the most common mails you’ll receive in your spam folder:

Communism – they want to say they’re sorry for all the confusion from this loser political philosophy and they feel really bad that the US, Britain and China (only China admits it) have been so badly infected by it and are calling it the Welfare State. (The operative word is “State”).

They know that no one listens to them any more but they still feel they have to say this: ‘Communism sucks, it always sucked and it will always suck. V.I Lenin was a dumb ass and should never have been let out alone.’

The Cuban Missile Crisis – a large misunderstanding…well, not really. There were missiles but they wouldn’t’ve fired anyway. They were filled with excess vodka – the stuff the locals wouldn’t drink – and plaster sculptures of Stalin. They’re sorry about the scare, and they’re sorry Khrushchev took his shoe off in the Security Council meeting but he’d been on his feet all day…

The KGB – A lot of people got upset with them because of the KGB but it started out as a harmless prank. Kropotnik’s Gay Bar was the original idea but somehow it got mixed up, maybe because of the tie-in with Lubyanka prison which was just around the block and, well, it got out of hand.

If the CIA hadn’t gone nuts and then needed it to keep their own budget alive it would’ve just faded out. Mea culpa to all those boychiks and girlchiks who got their butts kicked over the years. They wish they could make it up but now it’s a bit late…

The Gulags – It’s true they really weren’t holiday resorts – that was a fib – but they weren’t as bad as they were made out to be. Siberia is stunning and a great place to find your inner selfchik.

Stalin – This should be cool now but they feel they have to keep saying sorry for this guy because they’re still finding the bodies. Uncle Joe was a toad – okay they admit it. He did more to set Russian culture back 100 years, and bring moustaches really into vogue – than anyone else. Sorry for both those things.

That’s the gist of most of the emails – nothing about anyone’s “equipment”, Klaus. I think that’s your good old fashioned male anxiety showing thru…

They’re sending one that apologizes for the Marilyn-Monroe-Meets-The-Pope-In-A-Grain-Elevator jokes but I’ve never heard any of those and probably no one else in the West has either.