Please don't grab the red pencil: there is no typo in the title. Just as there is no mockery of the word “literature” here. Usually Roman Arbitman writes about books, but here, for the sake of variety, he decided to write about life. It turned out to be far from being as fun as usual, but all complaints, please, are about life, and not about the author. He is only a mirror: what he sees, he reflects. Spiteful critics, of course, will say that Arbitman is a distorted mirror, and they will be partly right. Well, yes, it’s a little crooked, but what? There is no ideal straightness even in the Chamber of Weights and Measures, and even less so in our Chamber No. 6. Happy reading! This collection is based on columns first published on the Radio Liberty website, in the Nasha Versiya newspaper and in the New Time magazine.