The Infestation is Back

Walking around the streets of Moscow, the past 6 or 10 months, I have had an uneasy and growing feeling that something was wrong, something was off, there was a disturbance in the force, if you will.

The people were the same, serious, going about their business, as in all large cities, but something subtle had changed or rather was changed, gathering momentum, growing, like an subtly seen infestation that would one day over whelm all of us.

It was not until two months ago, when I took a business trip to the Ural Mountains region, to visit some heavy manufacturers that supply us, that I was able to finally put my finger on it. You see, in the provincial cities, especially those on the edge of the main population belt, the malignent thing, this God aweful creation, was spreading and at a rate that it was fully pronounced.

What was it? What so unsettled me? Was it Jihovas Witnesses or some other Western cult import? Was it corruption? Well that's already there, even if somewhat reduced from the Yeltsin era. Was it the Crisis, of which we used to hear so much in the papers?

No. It was much worse. Away from the main western cities, such as Moscow or Novgorod, away from the fashion capitals and trend setters, it had moved with the speed of the plague....

THE MULLET!

The business in the front, party in the back hair "style", the cursed creation that rose out of some back wood hell hole in N.America, in the 1960s, and spread through the less educated and less astute, through out the world, was back. It was brought to popularity, however by a Welsh pop singer, Tom Jones. Ah, yes, the Welsh, that bastion of trend setting. In truth, it had never fully left, but like a simmering plague has laid low, just below public notice, throughout the civilized world. Occassionally, it would make a come back, an explosive of tastelessness. The last time I saw so many mullets was in Bavaria back in the late 1990s, where it is called the "Vokuhila". It looked just as bad on Germans as it does on my fellow Russians.

Seeing this infestation first hand, amongst the "hip" school and university kids, forced me to do some research, where was it big and where was it spreading to? Besides still being a big deal amongst American and Canadian country people, the bastions of the modern Mullet seems to be central Spain in the West, Romania in the East. But most likely, it came to us in force from Germans, who travel throughout Russia and from Russians travelling throughout Germany and with whom we have many business dealings. It would seem that the Vokuhila is coming back in force. Why? God only knows.

There is no known cure for the Mullet, at least none that our government or society has found, so dear readers, if you happen to have one, do us Russians a kindess and tell us how to cure this plague.