Grigory Lukin.com

To whom it may concern:

I shall not be renewing the lease on unit XXX in the Sunset Terrace Apartments complex. I shall return my key on Sunday, March 31.

My reasons for doing so are many and varied. Here is a brief list of things I find woefully inadequate with this apartment complex:

• Lack of security: in November, somebody broke into my car and stole my stereo. The car was parked beneath bright light. The incident occurred between 6-8pm on a Friday evening. Nobody saw anything, nothing was recovered and there have been no improvements in security since then.
• Pigeon infestation: as far as I can tell, there are no efforts being made to reduce the number of pigeons who live in this apartment complex. A pair of those flying rats started nesting on my balcony.
• Terrible maintenance: I have submitted four requests to have the pigeons removed from my balcony. They are still there.
• Incorrect office hours: your website, your voicemail and the sign on your door claim the apartment office is open until 6pm. I don’t get home from work until 5:45pm and I needed to pick up a package held at the office. Every time I got there, it was closed. After sending emails and leaving voicemail messages for a week without so much as a brief response, I finally went to the office on my day off, only to find out it closes at 5pm, not 6pm as advertised.
• Apathetic staff: is it really that difficult to return a phone call or reply to an email?..
• Strong chemical smell that lasted for months after my apartment’s fumigation.
• Water outages due to unannounced repairs in the middle of the day.

Over the course of my life, I’ve lived in black widow-infested crumbling houses, derelict dormitories and radioactive Siberian towns, but none of them were run as poorly, in such an unapologetically indolent way, as the Sunset Terrace Apartments. I would wish you luck with your failing enterprise, but I doubt anything short of divine intervention would help you at this point.

                                                                                                        Worst regards,

        Grigory Lukin, apartment XXX

My new book, “Madmen’s Manifestos: Chris Donner, Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh and others,” is a bit different from my previous work. It contains manifestos, public testimony and suicide notes of 20 different serial killers, ranging from household names like Adolf Hitler or Timothy McVeigh to people you’ve never heard about.

It all began with Chris Dorner’s online manifesto. When that rogue ex-LAPD cop with elite training went on a rampage, I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who thought it was a bit stranger than fiction. When I heard that Dorner posted a manifesto online, I decided to read it because I was curious to learn what pushed him over the edge and how he justified his actions to himself.

Once I read that, I became even more curious. Of course, I knew that occasionally serial killers and other disturbed people release manifestos, but this was the first time I actually read one. I did some googling and learned that, for some bizarre reason, nobody has ever published a collection of manifestos those madmen left behind.

I know a niche when I see one… I spent the next few weeks researching killers, getting acquainted with copyright law (there were a couple of manifestos I couldn’t include in the book for that very reason) and sifting through public records to piece together courtroom testimonies and notes that were written in foreign languages, etc.

I hadn’t anticipated the psychological toll this book would take on me. I had to go through each of those manifestos and format them. While I didn’t read each of them closely, I ended up speed-reading through all of them, and there’s only so much exposure to a madman’s mind an average person can take. I also had the bright idea to include a micro-biography for each killer, which meant researching them in depth, verifying the dates and casualty numbers, getting far more graphic details than I was ready for.

What began as a “what if” project ended up stretching for weeks, to the point where I had to bribe myself with a new video game to finish the last few chapters. (For my future biographers – it was “X-Com: Enemy Unknown” for PS-3 and it was worth every penny!) After proofreading, double-checking all the details and slapping together what I think is a fairly decent-looking cover, I finally published the book on Kindle.

Just like with all my new books, I’m giving away my “Madmen’s Manifestos” for free! The giveaway will end at midnight this Sunday, March 17th. Make sure to get your free download over yonder before you forget about it. (You know how it goes – you’ll keep reminding yourself and then it’ll be Monday and you’ll have to pay $2.99 and the butterfly effect from spending that money will wreak havoc on your personal life and might change the world as we know it! I hate it when that happens.)

The TL;DR version: My new book is out – go here to download it for free until 11:59pm this Sunday: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BM5L2HW/

And one more thing – don’t forget to leave a 5-star review if you like the book! It’ll make my day – there’s nothing we authors like more than praise from our readers.

“The way to live a long time – oh, a thousand years or more – is something between the way a child does it and the way a mature man does it. Give the future enough thought to be ready for it – but don’t worry about it. Live each day as if you were to die next sunrise. Then face each sunrise as a fresh creation and live for it, joyously. And never think about the past. No regrets, ever.”
Robert A. Heinlein, “Time enough for love”

Good advice… Incredibly difficult to follow on a consistent basis, but good advice nonetheless.

I realize that my Google search history has been even stranger than usual lately. In case it triggered some red flags in your byzantine surveillance system, I’d like to assure you that I’m merely doing research for an e-book on serial killers and do not intend to cause any harm to my fellow human beings. (Well, not counting the girl at the local Subway who took 20 minutes to prepare my sandwich the other day and should probably get fired.)

Please don’t send a flying killer robot (or “drone,” as you like to call them) after me.

Best regards,
GL

Perhaps the rising popularity of tattoos and other permanent body modifications can be explained by the simple fact that in our increasingly transient culture, where everything’s made to be broken, where vows, promises and honor are but empty words, the very idea of permanently, irrevocably altering one’s body is considered rebellious, if only on subconscious level.

I eat my pasta with ketchup because unlike pasta sauce, it lasts for months.
I sleep on an air mattress because they’re way better than beds when it’s time to move.
I don’t have cable because I stream all my TV shows online.
I don’t cook any dishes that take more than 3 minutes to prepare.
I’ve calculated which Subway sandwich has the best price/protein ratio.
I’ve devised a system that allows me go at least 6 weeks without doing laundry.
I drive a rusty 25-year-old car that gets 33 miles per gallon.
I own 1 plate, 1 fork and 1 knife. (And 1 machete, but that’s beside the point.) Spoons are for quitters!
I can pack up all of my essential possessions in less than an hour – and they would fit in my car.
I often complain about shoes that fall apart after only 2,000 miles.
I actually enjoy public transportation when I have to use it.
I am an avid user of the most cost-efficient entertainment out there – library books.
I outsource most of my cooking to all-you-can-eat buffets whenever I can. (The math works, trust me on this.)
Despite my “hedonistic Spartan” lifestyle, I still manage to save ~70% of my income.

At some point after waterboarding me at a Greek Orthodox baptism ceremony, my parents had the bright idea to take me on a trip to the countryside to show me what that whole “nature” thing was about. It was there that I saw a cow for the very first time in my life. A giant, horned, foul monster surrounded by clouds upon clouds of flies. Unaware of the sheer horror – nay, terror! – that gripped my tiny 3-year-old heart, my parents pushed me closer to that vile monster and said, “See, this is where milk comes from!” It was on that day that I declared a boycott on all milk, as well as vanilla-tasting dairy products. My parents made a valiant effort to change my mind and explain that cows are our friends, but by that point it was far too late. The damage had been done and my mind was made up…

Seeing as now, 23 years later, I’m 6’2″ and have never broken a single bone, I’m pretty sure the whole “milk is good for you” thing is a damn dirty lie perpetuated by the Big Dairy. *shakes fist at the Dairy-Industrial Complex*

Madness.

If I try really hard, I may understand the mental processes of people who shoot their coworkers or movie fans. This, however, is just madness. Psychos across the country trying to one-up one another; the most fundamental human rules (protect the little ones) being blatantly, arrogantly disregarded. I am an atheist, so please forgive the irony when I ask this, but is nothing sacred anymore?

Is this the beginning of the end for this country? Or did we miss it? Did the end begin years ago, when no one was looking? Is it too late, and are we surely and inevitably approaching the final destination, beyond whatever hope for redemption we may have had?

Sometimes I daydream about migrating once again and moving to another country. Someplace cheaper, friendlier, safer. Today’s events may be the motivation I need to start turning those daydreams into plans. There is no safety here. Only madness.

Have I ever mentioned that I’m a pedophobe? Those little buggers freak me out. Anatomically, they look like miniature adults. Mentally, however, they’re not even close. They can run around, hit their head on a desk, cry about it – and then do the exact same thing five minutes later! There is no spark of reason, no sentience or sapience (or whatever you want to call it) until they’re seven, or 10, or never, in some particularly bad cases. That scares the hell out of me – those tiny humans who behave so unhumanlike, all action and no reason. And before you ask – yes, I used to be a kid myself; no, I don’t relish the experience.

This is only one out of many reasons why I choose to be child-free. If, due to some bizarre development, I decide I want to have children after all, I’ll just host a high school exchange student from another country. I figure living with a teenager for several months should cure me of any and all obsession with having kids.

(Another reason is the fact that I grew up next to a malfunctioning nuclear power plant. My DNA has more glitches than the beta version of Windows-95, which makes procreation a spectacularly bad idea.)