Russia wants Bulgaria to stop defacing Russian memorial monuments

Bulgarian activists are painting the statues of Russian warriors, and Russia wants them to knock it off. Many are memorials commemorating Russian soldiers who have died in Bulgaria. Russia views their history in the area as liberating Bulgaria, an interpretation that is not shared. Generally, the statues are defaced by activists painting the colors representing other political events like pink to mark the anniversary of Prague Spring, other statues are painted the colors of another country's flag like Ukraine.

Until fairly recently. The main statue of the monument to Soviet Russian soldiers is set high up on a tall base while secondary sculptural compositions that are part of the memorial complex are closer to ground. In mid June 2011 a group of activist artists calling themselves Destructive Creation painted the Russian soldiers in the colors of America pop culture figures, Ronald McDonald, Santa Clause, the Joker, Superman, Robin, Captain America, Wolverine, the Mask, Wonder Woman.

This is hilarious to Americans because we've got nothing to do with it save for our innocent but ubiquitous and globally attractive pop-culture hegemony. We don't even have to try at this point. They do our cultural invasion for us.

The reporting on this is in American press is annoying in several ways. For example, this woman cannot count to two.

Even my German shepherd could count to four. I'll tell you about him some day.

Okay, this lady who gets mixed up at the count of two convinced me, I'll tell you the story now.

At my parents, the dog was outside separated by a screen door. He could see me inside and wanted to come in so he barked. 

His bark was in a regular pattern. That was unusual.

I got up and stood in front of him separated. He still wanted to come in. He hated the separation. He barked at me and I signaled for him to shut up. 

Then I signaled happy encouragement to bark again, jumping and flapping. He did bark again and in that regular pattern again.

He did a new thing, bark in a regular pattern. So I did a new thing. Use that type of barking for a game.

Stop. Shhh, shhh, shhh

Count! Happy jumpy playing, he starts regular barking

Stop!  Shhh, shhh, shhh

Count! Happy jumpy playing, he starts regular barking

Back and forth until I could signal him to bark with my fingers held up. 

Separated by a screen door.

Then bring him inside and continue the barking game.

"Count" in a happy voice to signal his steady regular acceptable barking.

"Bark, bark, bark, bark,"

Fingers snapped closed. Stop!

And so on, now the command "count" with fingers held up means bark in that acceptable regular pattern. Closing my hand means stops barking. It's a wonderful happy face to face game.

But I am doing the counting not the dog.

I show this amazing feat to everyone that I know. We do this game over and over and over. The dog gets praise from everyone for being so smart. Everyone wants to see my dog count.

And not a single person ever questioned the dog counting. No one ever picked up the signal is hand opened, hand closed.

Then one day I held up my fingers beyond the 4th bark and the dog gave a fifth bark as a question and it was the most hilarious thing ever, He knew to stop at four because there are four fingers and he did this a million times so he did that tilted head thing and the fifth bark was half volume with an up-tone like a question. So, gently I hold his face and go, "no, no, no, no, no" and give the correction that is needed. And now he must judge when to stop. It's not just seeing fingers go up,  he must count because now I keep my fingers up beyond when they should close.

And that game worked for numbers up to four but not beyond. With two fingers held up he would bark twice even when I kept holding them up, Three, and Four also worked. But not five. He'd get mixed up along the way and lose track of how many barks he did. Still. He actually could count to four. 

Better than this woman in the video who gets mixed up at two. 

And all that came through a very good deal of happy barking interacting that comes with circus music sounds, "dah-da dun dah  da  dah-da dun dah  do da doodle do dah   do  do   do   do."  and the dog is hopping around happy to be circus dog.