Sorry to return to the mundane, but here I am: while checking out my items at Marks & Engels today, I was offered two paper bags; they were expensive, bulky and absolutely useless. When I wept in disbelief to a lovely member of staff, they nodded and said with a sigh that from now on everything, apparently, will be “environmentally friendly” and handy plastic bags will never come back.

See, all the executives of the biggest chains try hard to stay relevant, and any modern and mainstream pompous slogan, such as “sustainable living,” “reduced carbon footprint”, you name it, resonates with them strongly: it means that their profit will stay the same at the expense of our misery. Because you, me, that other person at the next checkout machine add to waste, do not properly participate in social eco-movements and, overall, indulge ourselves as if we had the right to do so. Of course, we should be punished for that, and the punishment can be mild (at least, from the beginning: you never know what will be next), but it should be humiliating enough.

See, I grew up in the USSR, the country, where slogans were everywhere: they surrounded you from the very beginning, and although nobody in their right mind believed them, it was mandatory to comply. And so we did, although it meant to be deprived of basic comfort and lived constantly queueing and seeking for scarce goods. Oh, and we washed plastic bags, too, as we didn’t have enough, but since they were much rarer, it was a rule. And guess what? Looks like I have to be prepared to do it all over again—this time without chants about Lenin and Komsomol, but saving nature instead.

Nah, I am good. And fuck hypocrisy. However, after tomorrow I must collect as many plastic bags as possible. Just in case.