The Russian blogosphere conveniently, if bafflingly, revolves around LJ. Each week, RUSSIA! scans the chatter and brings you the top five topics.

• Deacon Andrey Kurayev youtubed discourse on why he (and the church) hate chess slivers its way through LiveJournal. Apparently, chess is condemned because as people associate themselves more with their minds than muscles, the personal hurt of losing an intellectual battle inspires the purest of racial hates, the Deacon explains via an example complete with racial slur. Classy, Father. Response: "I bet he sucks at chess." [Андрей Кураев]

Deacon condemns chess, hesitatingly allows women's weightlifting.

• Art blogger dar-jan presents — "Russian's Bosoms: An Erotic Almanac" circa 1992, an awesomely gaudy mag-artifact with a treatise on breasts, lots of nude commie-flag action and nifty model profiles, featuring environment-loving Natalia and poker table-loving Victoria. Not just rare pre-internet-Russian-amateur porn-explosion treasure for fetishists, it's a prime historic document for erotic anthropologists. Riiight... right? Response: "Where are they now?" Where indeed. [Эротический альманах 92-го года.]

"Arina's faith in God helps her stay afloat in the difficult, chaotic sea of life." (Right)

• Ru-Lj community fail_art apologizes for their legacy of humorous-to-obscene scribbles left in textbooks as former students (or possibly, modern day forgeries), adding some "context" to the dull old pastorial and wartime pictures with ridiculous nudity, blood, peasants with nun-chucks and various insults to the Russian army. Response: "My eyes and stomach hurt." Ditto. [Ребятушки... простите нас за это]

"The Germans weren't very afraid of mechanical bears."

• Realty-buff yoursecondhome shares a unique opportunity to purchase Lychen II, an abandoned Soviet military base, currently decomposing in a German forrest. Browse the enticing gallery of classic dilapidating warchitecture, rusted atomic bunkers, random rotted-through rooms, a cobweb-and-foliage-buried toilet and Russian sauna paraphernalia! So authentic, the red stars still hang on in painted bits to concrete signs. It can all be yours, until August 31st. Posts opens one commenter's old wounds: "Shit, I laid in a hospital over there." [Играем по серьезному!]

Genuine Russian atomic bunker! Perfect for doing... whatever.

• History-philiac hasid shows how the trend of inserting Soviet political leaders into Eastern Orthodox icons and religious paintings lives on with Medvedev's calm smug-mugness painted, all Olde Rus and Holy-like all over the place lately. Commenters add to the absurdity by confusing the phoenix on Medvedev's shoulder with a penguin. [Художественнное мифотворчество]

Holy-holy, God and folly.