He is one of those people whom you like and dislike at the same time. One day he’s a cool guy, funny and clever, says things you totally agree with, and the next day he’s such a fucking jerk – you cannot believe it’s the same person. Sometimes, he’s even witty, I have a couple of images to prove it. Look at the bottom right corner of his home pages.

Below is what his earlier homepage looked like:

Apparently, the guy still stays away from smoking. Good for him. I remember reading his lengthy post about quitting. It’s a bummer Tema swears a lot and often writes vulgar and pathetic banalities, total shit in his blog. When he doesn’t, reading his blog, books and the content of his studio’s website is fun. Since his ancestors are highly intellectual, writers, translators and poets among them, his Russian is very good. There are very few people among the the Runet bloggers (Russian internet), who can compare with him.

As a professional translator of English (when in Russia), and Russian (after relocating to the US), I used to read Lebedev’s posts a lot. His profound knowledge of his native Russian, excellent command of English, everything and anything related to linguistics, like typography for example, as well as a keen eye on small details, would make him an excellent translator and/or interpreter. But he became a designer instead. Oh, well. It is still fun to check on him from time to time.

P.S. It’s amazing how one and the same person can be a guardian of the Russian language, and at the same time use his popularity to infect and destroy it. I call this infection lingvonecrosis (лингвонекроз). Of course it’s not only Lebedev’s presumptuous vulgarity and cynicism that kills the Russian language, there are many other counter-culture contributors, but he sure runs high in search-engine stats.