Society
From Cooking Pots to Tar: Kyiv’s Invisible Man
A 26-year-old man in Kyiv reportedly came up with an ingenious plan for robbing a shop: cover himself in tar so that he would become invisible in the darkness.
In 2014, one of the enduring images from Kyiv’s Maidan protests was remarkably simple:
People wearing cooking pots on their heads.
The pots were used as improvised helmets and, after restrictions on masks and helmets were introduced, as a deliberately absurd form of protest.
It was certainly memorable.
Twelve years later, Kyiv has apparently produced an important technological upgrade.
The cooking pot is gone.
Now we have tar.
A 26-year-old man in Kyiv reportedly came up with an ingenious plan for robbing a shop: **cover himself in tar so that he would become invisible in the darkness.**
Yes.
Invisible.
Because he was black.
There was only one minor engineering problem.
The shop had lights.
Our hero nevertheless smashed the glass door and went shopping.
His haul reportedly included cigarettes, juice, sweets, an orange, a grapefruit and wet wipes.
The wet wipes were an inspired choice.
Unfortunately, slightly insufficient for what came next.
Security noticed the supposedly invisible man.
He fled.
And because every carefully planned criminal operation needs a second phase, on his way home he reportedly started throwing stones at the windows of a school.
Police eventually caught him.
At this point the authorities encountered a problem considerably more difficult than solving the crime:
**How do you arrest a man who has voluntarily turned himself into a roofing project?**
According to reports, police spent around **five hours** cleaning the tar from him.
The operation required shoe brushes, approximately **12 litres of oil and four litres of detergent**.
Consider the technological progression.
2014:
Put cooking pot on head.
2026:
Climb into tar.
Become invisible.
Rob illuminated shop.
Steal grapefruit.
Attack school.
Require industrial-scale washing.
This is evolution.
Not necessarily in the direction Darwin had in mind, but evolution nonetheless.
And perhaps the funniest part is the original theory.
Tar makes you black.
Night is black.
Therefore you disappear.
By precisely the same scientific method, if you cover yourself in blue paint and jump into the Atlantic Ocean, you presumably cease to exist.
Green paint should make forests extremely dangerous.
And snow can presumably be defeated with a bucket of Dulux Brilliant White.
Twelve years ago, the world saw cooking pots on heads in Kyiv.
Now Kyiv has given us the Invisible Man.
At this rate, nobody should attempt to predict the next breakthrough.
The squirrels might sue for defamation.