#i was like wow! tumblrs really getting into the *soviet union*

[lalaboy]

Yknow i thought Goncharov was real for a BIT. Because I thought you guys were talking about Gorbachev

[universal-casey]

thank you for the confirmation, and again i apologise if the amount of questions i have is annoying, but i've been thinking about $wap au & $wap!sovime all day, lol. i also found the on-tumblr lore after sending the previous ask, so i am working with more material now! :D

is sovame (the ship) in any way canon to this au, or was mexico misreading what soviet & america were talking about? (https://www.tumblr.com/universal-casey/657186645842558976/speaking-of-the-wap-au-i-drew-mexico-i-didnt)

did the chernobyl incident happen in california? if so, was there specific reactions that were different to how europe reacted to normal chernobyl? (https://www.tumblr.com/universal-casey/707456447888474112/wait-whats-wap-ukraine-and-ussrs-relationship)

why does soviet become more reclusive after america's death/collapse?

does anything change within the countries made in the cold war (east & west germany, north & south korea, north & south vietnam)? are the countries that allied themselves with either side flipped as well, or do they keep their personalities/ideals?

since america is the USCA, is soviet's official name more similar to normal!america's name? and are their birthdays flipped, since their birth years are? is the russian empire dead, and the uk alive, or vice versa (or something else)?

why is soviet an archer?

who wins space race in the cold war, does the cuban missile crisis change at all?

we already know where soviet's nose scar comes from, but may we know where any of the others (for either of them) come from?

i'd love to ask more, but i feel like i'm overshooting with the amount here already? apologies again. feel free to take as long as you need/want to reply.

— 🎶 anon. (if i may claim a sign-off ^^).

Of course! *cracks knuckles* Time to get writing.

SovAme is canon in the $wap AU. $oviet's kids are actual children here, so no RusAme. Also, they have a fun dynamic together!

The Chernobyl incident did happen in California. Known as the Sacramento incident, as it happened in Sacramento (wow, really?). One big difference in the reactions is that $am was able to hide it way better since California isn't adjacent to any other countries. Though the incident was later discovered by the greater world as irradiated air traveled to Japan through the jet stream.

$ov becomes more reclusive because he's still processing $am's death. He's already lost his wife, and then lost his (unofficial) boyfriend. He's also grappling with the idea of his own hypocrisy.

The countries allied with either side are either flipped (North and South Korea, for example. South is now the absolute nutjob), or joined the opposite side (Cuba became allied with $am, rather than $oviet). Japan and the Philippines also fall under the latter category in terms of who they allied with. China is still pals with $oviet, but Mexico has now taken the modern China route.

$oviet's relationship to his countries is more akin to the EU of modern times, so his name is actually simply the "Soviet Union". Their birthdays are not flipped! $am's is still July 4th, and $ov's is still December 30th (man imagine your boyfriend dying a week before your birthday). Both the UK and the Russian Empire are actually dead, since Soviet could not exist without RE being out of the picture. He does wish that it didn't have to come to that, though.

He's a hunter! He likes to hunt with bows :)

The Space Race is entirely flipped. So $am made the most "firsts" (at the cost of a lot of lives due to carelessness), but $oviet ultimately won by getting to the moon first. Some UCSA apologists like to state that $am was the "true winner", but $oviet always reminds them that $am's casualties were in the hundreds. As for the Cuban Missile Crisis, I want to keep it relatively similar. Though I'm not sure where exactly $ov would put missiles for $am to respond to (since Cuba is aligned with $am in this AU)

A lot of $ov's scars are from hunting, though he's got quite a few from the scuffle with his father. And some from WWI and WWII. $am has a lot of scars, and I mean a lot. But he hides most of them (especially the ones on his face) with makeup. I don't think I ever posted $am's updated ref, so that might be the next post. He's got a cannonball wound that went clear through his left side from the final battle with the UK.

Also don't be afraid to ask more questions lol. I'm wanting to start to draw them again!!

[darknessonthehill]

Wow, this might be the most anti-intellectually-argued political post that I have actually seen on tumblr. In a way I am glad that it's not defending any position that I might want to argue for, because any point or fact would be discredited by this.

It's starts off strong with using 'anyway reminder' to imply the reader should already be aware and agree with anything that follows, which, needless to say, is blatantly manipulative. Then it goes on for a paragraph chock full of emotionally charged language ('utter sham', 'certified bastard', 'world historic sacrifice'), which seems more concerned about packing the most punch than actually believably helping prove the statements.

This is certainly not helped by the OP reffering to the Soviet Union as 'the political project which made a world historic sacrifice to defeat fascism', when compared to the Nazi Germany. This is blatantly wrong and disingenuous in several ways that should be obvious to anyone with a highschooler's knowledge of history.

To start with, the Soviet Union made no sacrifice to defeat fascism. The sacrifice (if you would call victims of war that, which is kinda wierd in implying intentionality) was made in defending their territory from invaders. Saying them defending themselves is a sacrifice to defeat fascism is just not what happened. The mass casualties were when they were on the defensive. When they sacrificed it wasn't for the Nazis' defeat and when Nazis' were defeated, it wasn't a sacrifice. Fighting to stay alive is just that and, from what I know about what the Russian army did after taking Berlin, I doubt that the soldiers felt like martyrs afterward.

The 'defeat fascism' part, which is laughable by itself, seeing that by many accounts fascism is alive and well today in various countries in various severities, is certainly made even less plausible by the OP's dislike of the term 'totalitarian'. What then would be the term reffering to oppresive governments? Presuming they also dislike 'authoritarian' (like someone in the notes, who confidently said it basically meant governments hostile to USA) and, as indicated in one of their previous posts, just want to use fascism, which is defined better, unless they somehow view all of Soviet Union history as good no matter what (in which case they are unfortunately beyond reason), in their terminology the Soviet Union was at least at times fascist itself (in case you want to argue it wasn't fascism, because it wasn't about protecting the Good People/getting rid of the Bad People, russification and moving out of non-Russians and moving in of Russians was a major thing that happened), which invalidates that twofold.

Furthermore, this phrasing of Nazi Germany vs 'a political project' is obviously manipulative in making USSR seem as a small ideological undertaking, which is like an underdog much needing of support, when Soviet Union was a state of its own and a much bigger state than Germany in many ways even at the time of the war. After the war, which is when people in the West wanted to start criticizing it, it was certainly much greater.

To top this all off, when OP was challenged on their claims, what they did was post a bunch of (real or not, still) Ad Hominem stuff. It sure looks like this one person was BadTM, but does it really matter? Not really, through this post alone the reader has no idea to the content or the validity of the author's ideas about totalitarianism. Apart, of course, from the OP calling her names.

Not to mention that disliking the technical origin of a term (which, judging by the discussion in notes in a similar post, is not even neccesarily from this person) is a flimsy argument to begin with. It doesn't really matter whatsoever. Words mean what they are used to mean. Totalitarian is a word that is used right now and ,for example, the Google definition of it is perfecly fine.

This all reads like 'do you see who dares insult (it even says 'extremely insulting') my perfect USSR? A Nazi. You don't want to be a Nazi, do you?'

Anyway reminder that the idea of “totalitarianism” comes from certified bastard Hannah Arendt’s racist navel gazing about “oriental despotism” and is an utter sham designed to create an extremely insulting false equivalence between Nazi Germany and the USSR, the political project which made a world historic sacrifice to defeat fascism.

[talesfromateenagewriter]

My Tricks to Getting A’s in Writing

Because I can. 

My main point here is going to be to just try and get to know your teacher a bit by what they say and focus on writing about those kind of things. My tricks to getting to know them:

Pick apart every single little word they say and transfer that into some sort of genre\book~Steer any regular book-based conversation into a conversation about themes and genres and moods~Or, my favourite, just read a bunch while in their presence (ESPECIALLY in between lessons and when you aren’t doing work! It will make them think that you are a keen reader) so that they will eventually ask you about your favourite types of books, from that you have full control over the conversation. 

So, yeah: when ever you get to do creative writing make sure to write it with your teacher’s favourite moods, topics, genres or themes. For example a few years back my teacher really liked historical fiction. So what genre did I write for our Creative Writing assignment? Historical fiction. Got me an A+.

I’ve mentioned this before but I’m going to do it again because you deserve that A. WRITE SOMETHING EXTREMELY SAD! MAKE ALL THE CHARACTERS DIE! KILL OFF THE MAIN CHARACTER! MAKE YOUR TEACHER BELIEVE THAT HAPPINESS IS A LIE!!!

In that same creative writing assignment, I made the main character die and go to 'Heaven’, expecting to see her parents there, only to find out that they went to hell because they did many bad things in their lives. The thing about killing off your protagonist is that readers usually expect to have them live a happy life, and have that ‘Happily Ever After’. But you have to catch them off guard. Give them what they aren’t expecting.

Before I wrote the story in I think it was in grade 6, our teacher was talking to us about how to make your readers on the edge of their seat (I think that’s the expression). But during the earlier months of the year he had slightly hinted to us that he believed in Happy ending and that Main Character’s Don’t Die. So, my goal for the year was to catch him off guard, kill the main character and then just go on with it like it’s no big deal. Got me an A+.

But you don’t just want to end with a whole: ‘and then after they died their family threw them a funeral and everyone wore black because that’s what people wear to funerals and then yeah...so the end’. You want to end it with suspense. You want your teacher to be sweaty and scared when they finish. You want them to want more. Okay I know this is starting to have a whole 50 Shades of Grey twist to it. But honestly, ew. No. 

The story was about Death and this girl named Annushka. They lived during the Holocaust somewhere in the Soviet Union. Blah blah blah, Annushka was getting raised by this mean-ass woman and eventually escapes her and then goes to a Concentration camps in the SU. And then frees the people. (Yes I actually took that out from somewhere in my very messy room). It ends with her dying. I just now realize that eleven-year-old me wrote a story about Death and a girl in the Holocaust (I got the idea from my favourite book The Book Thief) and basically wrapping the entire idea over the fact that everyone is going to die. Wow I was dark; then again, I’m telling you to make your teachers cry so maybe I still am pretty dark. ANYWAY: you want your teacher to get overly attached to the characters and then kill off their favourite characters. 

Be a dictionary, not a thesaurus. 

I know some people at school that use big words, words that only mature people know. And we all know that we are not at all mature. I can tell you for a fact that right now you are procrastinating and reading this post. Me too. But there’s one or two people you will meet in your life that aren’t on Tumblr. DON’T BE THEM! They are great and do get good grades and whatever. But if you aren’t born a human thesaurus don’t make yourself one! Make yourself a dictionary. Be the person that uses small words with the occasional big word and explain that through metaphors and other literary devices. 

And most importantly, be confident in your writing. If you don’t think it’s good then chances are it isn’t. You have to know that it’s good. And if you don’t know how to write with confidence. Read my previous post. 

-CL

[therealflyingoctopi]

God loves you, He really does

December 30, 2018 I’m an avid coin collector. I have been for years. I remember the first coin I found that sparked my love of collection. I was in the Costco parking lot with my family on a shopping trip and I found this American penny on the ground. But it wasn’t just any penny, it was really warped and it looked like a tiny tank had driven over it because it was jagged on one end and had cuts and divots in it. Looking back now, there’s not much value in a coin that’s been so viciously ruined, but at the time I picked it up and thought “wow this is the coolest thing ever and I’m keeping it”. That was the beginning. Since then, for about a decade, I’ve been collecting coins every time I’ve found them. I always look through my change and always head towards the shiny speck on the ground. Over the years I’ve found some pretty basic commemorative quarters (which there are a lot of, Canadian and American), loonies, toonies, nickels, dimes, and pennies. Some relatively common ones and some more rare ones; such as nickels from the early fifties when they were still made of actual nickel, an actual silver dime from ‘31, a few old pennies from the late 1800′s - early 1900′s, a couple Canadian silver dollars, and a few other fun ones (including the entire 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic set that I bought in Vancouver in 2010 during the Winter Olympics with my own money, which as a 10 year old and new collector, was a big thing). Not to mention all the foreign coins I’ve found. I’ve now got some from all over the world. England, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Bermuda, Uganda, Mexico, China, Poland, Austria, Finland, the Soviet Union (back when that was a thing), and several other places. I could go on and on about my collection, but we’d be here all day. I’ll stop ogling over them now. (Or at least try to restrain myself.) A couple days ago I finally bought those little cardboard squares you put coins in with the see-through plastic coverings, along with binder sheets that those squares go in. (I have yet to get a binder.) I was finally organizing probably a couple hundred coins instead of keeping them stored in an almost overflowing and definitely broken piggy bank. I was looking up online where all these coins were from and going to my Dad to see if he knew some of them. After I showed him a few, he decided to dig out his old collection too. (His is much bigger than mine, but I plan to beat him at some point, probably when I’m really old.) He sifted through a few boxes and found a few doubles he had, so he gave them to me. As he kept looking through his stash he found a very specific coin. He picked it up, held it up to look at it in the light, then finally said, “I have no idea where this came from.” With that, he gave it to me and said “here, you can show this one to your friends at camp.” “This must be a really cool one,” I thought. “Cool enough I should show my friends.” Was it incredibly ancient? Was it an old Nazi coin? (Side note, I don’t condone Nazis. I simply love historical artifacts like these. My sister has a few Nazi coins and I think they’re one of the best finds ever.) Finally, I looked at the coin. I was kind of bummed. It wasn’t incredibly ancient. It wasn’t an old Nazi coin. In fact, it wasn’t even usable currency. On one side it read “GOD LOVES YOU, HE REALLY DOES”, and on the other side it read “NO WEAPON FORMED AGAINST YOU SHALL PROSPER - ISAIAH 54:17″ (Yes it was all in caps, I’m not just shouting at you.) “Ooooh, I get it,” I thought. “Show it to your Bible camp friends because it’s a Bible related coin. Gotcha.” Honestly, this thing looked like it was a token (haha get it) of appreciation from some old 80′s church movement or something. (You know what, because neither my dad or I knew where it was from, that’s probably exactly what it was.) Well sure, it wasn’t something super fancy, but it’s round, made of metal, and something you don’t see every day. Those are pretty much the qualifications for a coin to join my collection. (Unless it’s not round. There are some coins that aren’t round. I don’t have any yet. Unless you count old nickels that are like dodecahedrons or something.) So I took the coin. I kept looking at this unusual piece all day, turning it over, feeling it, and tossing it in the air (and by golly it makes the most perfect coin toss sound when you do it right). I decided to look up the verse written on the coin. Isaiah 54:17. Turns out, only a piece of this verse is on the coin. I guess there wasn’t enough room and tiny print is kind of hard to read. Especially when it keeps glinting in the light. The full verse reads (in the NIV), “no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me," declares the LORD.” As great a slogan as the first part is, I think the coin left out the most important part of this verse. “”You will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD.” When we live as servants of the Lord we gain this heritage. This heritage is that nothing can touch us and we have power over anything that tries to. And to top it all off, we are vindicated by the Lord. Our Father loves us enough to clear us of all blame. Anything we’ve ever done, ever will do, and are even doing right now, we’ve been cleared of it all. Of course this only fully works when we live as servants of the Lord. What does a servant do? They listen to their master and do as they’re told. That’s all we have to do. It’s so simple and we mess it up so badly. In short, when we listen to God and do as He tells us, we’re covered in that protective bubble He puts around us. “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.” Nothing can touch us. Of course there’s another side to this coin. Not so drastic as a flip side normally is, just an addition in this case. Another little tidbit that lit up my mind. That cheesy 80’s church line. “God loves you, He really does.” Most people tend to gag and even revolt when they see or hear something like this. That’s because God and the Church have been easily turned into a cheesy infomercial. Because of this, I usually don’t give churchy slogans like this the time of day. But I felt more compelled to in this case. Maybe because I see all my coins as my children and I love them all, despite their potential flaws. Or maybe I’m not a crazy man who personifies his tiny pieces of metal and the “slogan” was just tugging on me. I probably still am though. (Ok, no I’m not that crazy. I don’t give them names and talk to them. I’m just fascinated by them and like to look at them and take in their rarity. Much like a creator loves their creation, a collector loves their collection. Back on track.) I gave this phrase an extra second to resonate in my mind. “Yeah I know God loves me, nothing new there,” I thought. “Oh wow… He really does. He REALLY does.” The extra affirmation started to kick in. I started to think about my life and all the crazy amazing things I’ve been able to be a part of and experience, in the past year alone. My God really loves me enough to give me all these amazing opportunities and put all these wonderful people in my life. My life can be utterly boring at times, sitting in my room for weeks finishing school. But there are still so many aspects of my life that overwhelm me by how simply good they are. What started as some cheap church propaganda token has turned into an actual revelation for me. Well two, actually. I’m definitely bringing this things back to camp with me. Not so I can start a fake movement and get everyone to raise their hands and get matching tattoos of Isaiah 54:17. That would be wasted efforts. (If they were even efforts at all.) I love physical reminders of things I’ve learned. I have a few already, this is simply the latest. And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I love rare coins, so this is one of my favourite physical reminders to date. If this fun story can leave you with anything, let it be this: Give that cheesy slogan the time of day to tell you what it wants to. Just give it an extra second. If it’s nothing, it’s nothing. But if it’s something, you might not want to miss out on it. Also if you’re a collector as well (of coins, stamps, keys, anything really) don’t hesitate to talk to me. I always find it cool to compare collections and see what treasures other people have found. It all fascinates me. I’ll probably start a stamp collection at some point too. Probably other things as well. That’s all for now. Just let me leave you with one last thing. One last thing to hopefully stick around in your head for a while. The slogan. God loves you, He really does. (Note: Here’s what the coin looks like. It’s about the size and colour of a dulled Canadian loonie, though a lot thinner. I can’t figure out how to put pictures in the middle of a post on Tumblr but they can go at the end. So here ya go. If you know where this might be from, let me know!)

[astrophobia-space-blog]

Status Update: On hiatus (and a preview of some audio drama script!)

Hey folks! I haven’t been updating this Tumblr for a few months. I really appreciate all of your support, and you deserve to know what’s going on. So, here’s the official announcement:

Astrophobia — the audio drama, and the comic — are officially on-hold. :(

The long and the short of it is: I (Brandon) have some substantial chronic health problems. And they kept getting in the way of production so many times that I eventually had to bite the bullet and put the project on indefinite hold. I really hate doing that! All my writing projects are my babies. But of all the ideas I’ve come up with, Astrophobia is one of my all-time favorites. And I’ve been really excited to share the world that we’re developing with everybody.

Is this the end of our traumatized band of space adventurers? Nope! Megan (voice actor) and John (musician/producer) are still committed to the project. And they’ve let me know that I can take all the time that I need to get my health better. Meanwhile, Joe (the comic artist) has had to move on to other projects. But I’m hoping that, when the stars align, we’ll be able to make the comic version happen!

In the meantime, I’m dabbling in prose fiction. (For several reasons, including that it’s easier to produce around my health flares, and because if I have to take some time off from it, my absence isn’t impacting someone else in the chain of production.) And one of my goals with it is to produce some Astrophobia short stories and sell them to magazines and such! So there may be Astrophobia content sooner rather than later.

Again, thank you for your patience and support. I’m going to get back to this project as soon as humanly possible. For now, I thought I’d leave you with an audio drama monologue I wrote for Commander December Primrose that I’m partial to. (I’m really looking forward to hearing Megan record a version of this at some point!)

Orpheus, personal log. Hashtag "mission." ...And hashtag "anxiety."

[PAUSE: COLLECTING HER THOUGHTS] ...So, the longer we're out here, the less comfortable with our mission I'm getting. It's not... I don't mean the official mission. I mean our real mission. The one none of us actually talk about. Because, let's face it...

...Our mission is to die.

I, uh. A couple minutes ago, I made the mistake of looking up the history of deaths related to space exploration. I kind of skimmed it. I got through about the first fifty years — but by then I was too anxious to keep going.

I mean, they didn't teach us this stuff in Worlds History class! We learned about "Apollo 11" and the first moon landing, sure. But we didn't learn about "Apollo One." And that they were using a pure-oxygen breathing mix in the cabin of their vessel. There's a reason nobody uses pure oxygen in space! Because it catches fire. ...Like it did during an Apollo One launch rehearsal. And killed the whole crew.

Oh, speaking of Worlds History class: They taught us about Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union. And how he was the first person to reach space. But they didn't teach us about how he crashed a jet in a training exercise a few years later. And died. And they also left out that he was the backup pilot for the "Soyuz 1" mission. Where the parachute failed, and the descent module crashed. Killing the actual pilot.

Let's see... [PARAPHRASING FROM TEXT SHE'S READING] That first fifty years, there were two different American, uh, "space shuttles" that blew up... One during the launch, and the other during reentry... And there's... uh... well... Then there was Laika.

The first animal to orbit Earth was a dog. From the Soviet Union. She was a stray. They picked her up off the street. Ran some tests. Named her Laika. And then they shot her into space. But...

...They hadn't figured out how to de-orbit a spacecraft yet. They shot her into space. And they knew she wasn't coming home.

The Orpheus? Everyone on this ship? [PAUSE] Every single one of us is a "Laika." [PAUSE] I think that's starting to get to a lot of us.

I can see it on peoples' faces, each time we launch a warp buoy. A "message in a bottle." Our condition, current location... and where we're warping to next.

We do that so... when we disappear? When we stop sending updates back... I mean, there's no way for Earth to know how it happened! But this way, they'll know where we died. We, all of us on the ship. We know that. And it's right there, on everyone's faces.

I always look around when we do buoy-deployment. It's, like... everyone's jaws are clenched. And they're looking straight ahead. But they're not really looking at anything. [PAUSE] Or maybe they're looking at their own mortality? [PAUSE. DRYLY:] Wow, listen to that. I should quit my job and become a space poet.

I mean... the whole Orpheus Program? Our mission is to visit other star systems. One by one. And see if any of them hold threats to us. But, if we find a threat? Well. Unlikely that we'll live long enough to tell anybody.

So we clench our jaws. And send the buoys. And don't talk about the fact that, if we actually accomplish our mission, it's going to kill us all.

My point is... We — I mean, people. Us, as a species. Humans. We killed a stray dog, to help us all out. We killed her for our own knowledge. And... now...

...Now it's my turn. And Boone's, and Amadi's, and Wukong's.

It's a suicide mission. And we all signed up for it.

[PAUSE] There was one other early space program death that caught my eye. An American. I don't remember the name. He was flying a training jet. And a, uh, goose smashed into his canopy! His windshield shattered. Shards of it got sucked into his engines. Engines flamed out. He ejected. But he was too close to the ground for proper parachute deployment. And... yeah.

So maybe we aren't a bunch of Laikas. Maybe we'll go out like that American, instead. Victims of random chance. Colliding with "space geese."

So. I guess there's that to look forward to...

Brandon Seifert Austin, Texas April 21, 2018

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Miracle On Ice: 7 unbelievable facts the Russians really hate (Puck Lists)

PUCK LISTS are lists of hockey things. They run every Thursday on Puck Daddy, except today, because today is special.

A mere 37 years ago — and really it feels like just yesterday — the United States played in a hockey game. You might have heard of it. It was called: an Olympic semifinal I mean the Miracle On Ice.

Oh yeah, the United States of America back when it was really great was able to beat the Soviet Union (or “Russia” in today’s parlance) in a game without broader implications or the transference of anxieties. Obviously, no one analogized something as trivial as a hockey game with geopolitical tensions or the clash of two powerful economic ideologies that had dominated the global landscape for decades.

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What’s so amazing about this game, which was a literal miracle performed by the capitalist God of America and not at all a demonstration of random chance in action, is that very few people talk about on a regular basis. It was a big deal, but so much time has passed that I guess everyone just kind of forgets what happened other than the fact that the United States beat their archrival who they hated so much and the feeling was absolutely mutual for sure.

So with this in mind, and on the 37th anniversary of the game in Lake Placid, here are seven amazing true facts about the Miracle On Ice that are 100 percent real.

(Also, there was a big fight in the NHL that same day in which six players died, I think, but no one talks about it — certainly not within the context of “another fun hockey thing happened that day” — and certainly there’s no video of said event. I’m inclined to believe it’s made up.)

7 – The Russian guys were basically the best team in the world, but our Brave College Kids were not professional athletes at all

The Olympics back in 1980, which was 37 years ago today, was a lot different than it is now.

You see, they didn’t let professional athletes play in the Olympics back then. It’s a little-known fact but if you didn’t have a job at a gas station or a grocery store the IOC would beat you up and make you go to Sports Jail, which has since been banned by the Hague.

However — and this is very unfair, believe me — the Russian team didn’t have to play by these rules at all. In fact, every game in the Olympics, the Russian team came out with hundreds of dollars in their hands like Ted DiBiase, just to show that they were rich professional athletes.

Meanwhile, the nice young boys on the US team all had to push big rocks up hills for nine cents a day. Sure, they had tryouts for the US team in the summer of 1979, months before the Olympics actually happened, and the organizers at USA Hockey had to schedule them around the rock-pushing jobs. A little hectic.

Anyway, the disparity between the athletes whose job was to play hockey and the amateurs who had never even skated before that summer was on display in a game at a little arena you might have heard of called Madison Square Garden. The Russians beat the Americans 10-3 just days before the Olympics started.

Then Sergei Makarov stole Jack Callahan’s car, just because he could.

The IOC didn’t stop him or anything.

6 – USA coach Herb Brooks was very demanding, but the players loved him anyway even after he made them skate a bunch of sprints and they always hugged

Has someone ever made you skate in the dark until you puked because you tied Norway in one of the 61 (that’s it?!) exhibition games you played in the course of four or five months?

If the answer is yes — and it should be, or else we know for sure you are of weak moral character — then you know that the person who made you do the skating is the nicest person you’ve ever met in your miserable life.

Herb Brooks may have assembled a moderately talented team, but he would be damned if that team didn’t also have the ability to run a marathon seconds after a triple-overtime hockey game in which the Russians got to put 14 players on the ice at the same time. And so it was that, under threat of getting cut and sent to Iran, everyone on the US team became a peak athlete who was so so strong.

5 – The game wasn’t even broadcast on live television which is crazy because so many people knew what happened even before they saw the game that’s how crazy it was

Folks, there used to be four channels. And when the US game was played, all of them were showing reruns of “Days of Our Lives.” It’s true.

So by the time the game actually aired, everyone in the United States had already rolled their eyes and said, “Uhh, spoiler alert much?” That was why no one watched the game and footage of Al Michaels’ famous call of Russia’s second goal is lost forever. One guy taped it because he was asleep during the game, but then a few years later, his kids taped over it with two episodes of Punky Brewster. One of them was the one where Punky’s friend or something drinks poison because he or she is illiterate. I can’t find the plot summary online but that was definitely one of the episodes of that show.

Oops!

4 – Viktor Tikhonov pulled the best goalie in the world whose name I forget but he was really good I guess

A big criticism of hockey before, say, 1995, was that all goalies were bad. And it’s true. They’re all wearing little tiny pads and just standing there as guys whale in slap shots from center ice. The first time a goalie saved a shot from the red line was actually in the Miracle on Ice.

It was the Russian goalie, the good one who was the best bad goalie in the world, who took a shot from Dave Christian with about three seconds left in the period. Instead of letting it go in like every other goalie had ever done, the Russian guy said, “I will stop this instead.” That was his mistake, because Mark Johnson came in and scored with just one tick left on the clock.

Viktor Tikhonov, incensed that the goalie had made a save with three seconds left — ample time for the Russians to score their own goal from center ice on the ensuing faceoff — pulled his guy who was famous for being great. Instead he put in a goalie who was famous for being only pretty good. He blew it. That was when Russia forfeited.

3 – At first the players for the USA didn’t like each other because of where they were from, so basically they overcame a lot just to win the gold medal against Russia

Minnesota and Boston are two different places, but they are technically in the same country so they all had to play for the United States. It was a class “tomato/tomahto” situation and Herb Brooks was the right man to tell them they all hated communists a lot more than they hated guys who say “fer sher” instead of “oh yah kehd.”

It wasn’t until the infamous moment while they were all in a Finnish jail when Jim Craig started singing “I Will Survive” and everyone got up and started dancing that the parochial enmity dissolved. That was when the team came together and went through an amazing training montage where they did pushups and scored goals.

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In many ways, that was where the US really won the medal, in that jail cell where Dave Silk did the dance from Staying Alive and got everyone on their feet.

2 – Al Bundy once scored four touchdowns in a single game for Polk High School

The greatest! day! In sports history!

Bundy made All-City back in ’66.

1 – It wasn’t even for the gold medal can you even believe that???

Wait hold on folks! You thought they beat Russia for the gold medal? Come on! This was an easy one! Clearly you don’t know ANYTHING about hockey history folks.

They actually beat Finland, led by star player and famous Donald Trump supporter Teemu Selanne, who was only 9 years old at the time. Personally I don’t think it’s very impressive to beat a team of recent college graduates beat one with a 9 year old on it but maybe you feel different. After all, the IOC made the US play Finland the second the Russia game ended.

In the end, we all got those medals about it. Every American got one in the mail. I’m 58 years old by the way and I’m still obsessed with Russia blowing us up. I will never get over this game.

Man oh man they beat Russia once just four decades ago.

Wow. Do you believe in it? I almost can’t!

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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