Exile.ru

I have always felt very much inadequate around other "litteratti."

They always dressed better, have cooler places to go, and seems to have a supreme confidence in their aloofness that I found very alluring and at the same time envious. Why can't I be cultural snobs like these people?

Even now, I am intensely jealous of those people from school. I still remember never getting invited to those cool, "Free Tibet" parties at somebody's basement, where I was told, everybody ironically drank one Labatt's Blue, just so they can make fun of it later. Damn, those guys and their boutique, $180 handmade hemp khakis!

Anywho, after graduation, I never found out what happen to these people. I mean, while I am sitting on my big fat unemployed ass at home, what are those guys doing now? I hope they rot in some fat, American suburb, feeding TPS reports inside a stupid cubical waiting for the eventual layoff when they hit 40... but that is probably going to be my life if I am lucky....

Those guys probably has something cooler to do.

Well, I think I figured it out. They are in Russia.

I just found this thing one the web a few weeks ago. From their website: "The eXile is a Moscow, Russia-based English-language bi-weekly newspaper." A Russia-based English paper? Bi-weekly? Printed and freely given out, pretty much only in Moscow? And it has "120,000 readers" worldwide. Shit.

The best part about this thing is the scope of their writing. They do anything from political coverage, a column by a war nerd,satire, club reviews, to the editor-in-chief's occasional dalliance with Russian prostitutes, in a column neatly entitled, "Whore-r Stories."

There also that tone I really liked. They feel to be Westerner in Russia is a special privlege. They are cool and other Russians with the hots or cool cash can join them. The rest are "sovok" and therefore, worthy of being used. It's just so elitist ... therefore, cool.

This what being a writer is all about. That one can write about anything. And fucking hot Russian babes and getting drunk on cheap vodka while doing, isn't such a bad deal. But, I probably can't hack it. Maybe that's why all those fucking hipsters never invited me to their parties. I just wouldn't like doing snorting coke off a rented whore while contemplating my next joke article against some Russian oligarch who can kill me like squishing an ant.