Hey, I hope you all know that the icon I have chosen to represent Tongapup is an actual dog, not some sort of Dark Crystal puppet.

Anyway, I did about three hours of work today and wrote about 500 words, which means I'm allowing myself to blog. And the thrilling theme of this post is, Physical Intimacy in 19th Century Russia. Because I'm reading Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons." (I always need to have a hard-to-penetrate book to read before bed because if I have anything I like too much, I will read it compulsively until it's finished, even if that means staying awake for five hours.) And there is so much embracing and grasping and kissing going on in this book that if the FBI were around then, they'd be all over Turgenev. "He touched his cheek three times with his perfumed moustaches," is one of my favourite lines. Moustaches, plural. You really get the full picture (below): Now those are moustaches! Clearly bifurcated, with lots of initiative on either side.

Why don't fathers and sons do any of that grasping and embracing and kissing any more? It's not just because they don't have big perfumed moustaches. I don't know the answer, but it's kind of sad.