Hacked By Russians

Ouch, that smarts. Do you feel my pain? Google tells me that this week alone 273 Russians macheteed their way through my firewall, eluding my anti-virus first defenders. Google, which monitors my blog informs me how many hits I get from each country. I have a few followers in Israel, Norway, Portugal and France but to suddenly get almost 300 visitors from Russia smells like pickled herring to me.  

I know you’re out there lurking in my data base, nesting in my bar codes, fondling my case-sensitive passwords. I’ve never been fracked but being hacked, I think, is worse.

You folks couldn’t possibly be actually reading my blog. Could you? Russians haven’t read anything since Pushkin. Your reputation precedes you. Wait, I’m only kidding. I’m confusing you with Trump whom you had elected and his voters. Their literacy is limited to 140 characters.

Now that you control my life, my appliances, my car should I start taking the bus? Was it you who burned my English muffin this morning in the toaster and then ran our dishwasher for 3 hours? And why does my toilet keep flushing?

I should say I’ve long been a fan of everything Russian. I've read Akhmatova. I watch Andrei Tarkovsky films. I use your salad dressing whenever I run out of honey mustard. Peggy and I are reading Gogol aloud every night. You must know this already if you’ve hacked into my library account.

May I ask what is it you want? Maybe you’re confusing me with someone in high places. I’m the other guy, a man of no importance.  I’m not worth your trouble. The last office I held was in the 3^rd grade 77 years ago. Sure, I voted for your arch-enemy, Hillary, but so did almost 66 million other Americans.

Maybe you are just mischief-makers working on your class project for middle-school nerds. Does your mother know what you are up to? Tell me what I can do to help you graduate into the KGB or whatever it is called now. Or perhaps your office is in the subterranean boiler room below the Moscow subway and you hack for the hell of it on your lunch hour.

Would it help my case for you to know that my grandfather was born in Russia…or was it Poland? No, I didn’t think so. The border changed so often back then. Those Russian winters were just as bad in Poland. At least in those good old days a Czar was called a Czar and he didn't even have a Swiss bank account.

Did I tell you I sold my store twenty years ago to a fine Russian family? They’ve been very generous to me. Oh wait, they’re from Odessa. Sorry, wrong country. What’s that? Not for long, you say.  

Would you like me to infiltrate the Bernie Sanders headquarters? Sorry, I’d make a rotten double-agent given my failing memory and proclivity for alternative facts. I apologize for wasting your time with this blog. I imagine you have more pressing nefarious acts to tend to. Instead, why not just hack into our immigration system where you can slip into the front of the line and live happily ever after in the Silicon Valley hacking your way to the good life. 

Maybe we can meet on some neutral ground. You name it. We can talk about this over a glass of spiked tea. You bring the samovar; I'll supply the industrial strength Stoli. My tooth brush is packed along with some long underwear in case I wake up in a Siberian gulag.