The Pond Is Not Your Yard

[footage of the inside of an ordinary Eastern-European home, taken with a handheld phone camera, the man filming is walking from the living room to the back door of the house] man, narrating in russian: Every fucking year, this time of the year, the pond at my backyard gets infested, What do ponds get infested with? Frogs? Poisonous weeds? Geese? No. Not my pond. [The man opens the back door, stepping out into a garden. Three or four nude, human-like figures dash from the borders of a pond back into the water.] man: Rusalka! I don’t know where they come from or how they get here, and I can’t afford to hire an exterminator every year. I can’t let my cat outside anymore. Last year a rusalka managed to drown a whole deer in my pond. the stench was unbearable. [He walks as he speaks, approaching the pond. There are several eerily beautiful female beings peering at him from under the surface, their long hair floating in the murky water. Their eyes are gleaming in an unknown way. The man holding the camera stops to film them.] man, calm and deadpan: What the fuck are all of you staring at. Get jobs or something. [One of the rusalki, smaller than the others and clearly not a fully matured adult, slowly reaches out of the water with her white, thin hand, grasping his ankle. He appears unconcerned.] man: You can’t drown me, you little idiot. You’re too small. Shoo! [A loud thud startles the rusalki, making them scatter. A second thud makes it clear these are the approaching footsteps of something massive. The man turns around and points the camera at what appears to be a house, walking past above the treeline with chicken-like legs] man, now yelling: IF YOUR HOUSE SHITS ON MY YARD AGAIN I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD-

A man films his Eastern European home and complains that his backyard pond is infested with rusalki, treating the eerie female water spirits like a routine pest problem. He casually insults them until a massive chicken-legged house approaches, prompting him to yell that it had better not defecate in his yard again. The joke comes from deadpan everyday narration applied to Slavic folklore and absurd supernatural events, making it useful as a reaction to bizarre problems or escalating chaos. EN: A man films his Eastern European home and complains that his backyard pond is infested with rusalki, treating the eerie female water spirits like a routine pest problem. He casually insults them until a massive chicken-legged house approaches, prompting him to yell that it had better not defecate in his yard again. The joke comes from deadpan everyday narration applied to Slavic folklore and absurd supernatural events, making it useful as a reaction to bizarre problems or escalating chaos.

• @rzeczyzabawne / 15525 2024-03-12