A glimpse of an atrocious hotel lobby in Gagra, Georgia (or is is Abkazia?) sends me back to "That Party at Lenny's."

Yikes. This is the worst hotel lobby I have ever seen featured in a article in the NYT.

Not only is there an old hairy-legged, black-sock-wearing man in shorts sitting on a depressing sofa, not only do limp draperies block the light, not only is there a set-up chess board with extra-large pieces... there's a huge statue — double life-sized — of Vladimir Lenin leaning forward intensely as if he's about to get up and kill you.

The article is about a place in Gagra which is in Georgia (or Abkhazia, "a quasi country whose existence only Russia and three other nations recognize"):

Anti-vegan protesters throw hunks of meat at patrons of the bohemian Kiwi Café in Tbilisi, Georgia.

"Witnesses writing on social media said that customers at the cafe, who were watching an animated science fiction sitcom called 'Rick and Morty,' felt intimidated by the men, who refused to leave. The cafe referred to the attackers, some of whom wore sausages around their necks, as anti-vegan 'extremists.”

The NYT reports, noting that "[t]hroughout Europe, vegan cafes have become synonymous with the counterculture."

From the café's Facebook page: “They pulled out some grilled meat, sausages, fish and started eating them and throwing them at us, and finally they started to smoke... They were just trying to provoke our friends and disrespect us.”

"The tiger is liquidated."

"An escaped zoo tiger was shot dead in central Tbilisi Wednesday after killing a man working on flood relief efforts, a Georgian Interior Ministry spokeswoman said...."

Tbilisi streets on Sunday turned into a big-game park after lions, bears, crocodiles and hyenas went on the loose after flooding destroyed the Tbilisi zoo. Many were shot or drowned. The luckier ones were recovered and returned to the zoo. A hippopotamus on Sunday roamed central Tbilisi Square before being shot with a tranquilizer dart in front of a Swatch store.

Georgian authorities had said Tuesday that the animals were accounted for. But there was finger-pointing Wednesday about why they had declared the all-clear....

After the flood, a hippo wanders in the streets of Tbilisi.

Six lions, six tigers, seven bears, one hippo and 13 wolves escaped the zoo" in the capital of Georgia.

Finally, a post about Georgia.

(Via Wonkette.)

I'll have a post on Pakistan when Musharraf eats an article of his clothing on camera.

"This war did not begin because of a miscalculation by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

"It is a war that Moscow has been attempting to provoke for some time. The man who once called the collapse of the Soviet Union 'the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century' has reestablished a virtual czarist rule in Russia and is trying to restore the country to its once-dominant role in Eurasia and the world. Armed with wealth from oil and gas; holding a near-monopoly over the energy supply to Europe; with a million soldiers, thousands of nuclear warheads and the world's third-largest military budget, Vladimir Putin believes that now is the time to make his move."

Writes Robert Kagan.