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Greetings, comrades, and welcome to the Eastern Boer. It's July 11, 2006, and I'm recording from my home in Pilled, Latvia, 22 kilometers from the Russian frontier.

If I step onto my porch when the wind blows from the east, I, uh, well, no longer smell the ozone of the Skof Paratroopers.

Today, the air carries a much more industrial note, the low-altitude smudge of undrefined sulfur, low-grade naphtha,

and the distinct scent of an

Empire's engine block melting down in real time.

You'd be pleased to know that I actually put on a hat while recording this stuff and

put on my good clothes, even though you really shouldn't be looking at me right now.

Because I'm also attempting a certain level of emotional detachment, largely due to a very

polite email from a Western think tank.

They, yet again suggested that I adopt a more professional academic framework, as if the

slow motion collapse of a nuclear power were a particularly dry game of civilization played

exclusively on an Excel spreadsheet, although I believe that

would be called Eve Online.

To satisfy these white paper enthusiasts in Washington and Brussels who prefer their geopolitical

catastrophes served with a side of beige, I've sought a bit of literally guidance.

Yeah, it wasn't easy to do this.

However, I got advice from the best, and, well, first I consulted the classic comedy section

on Goodreads, and found it in remarkably high spirits.

There, nestled quite comfortably between the light-hearted antics of B.G. Woodhouse's

Jeeves and Worcester, sat Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

That charming little rump about a man neglected to death while inhabiting the body of a giant cockroach,

...