By Oleg Atbashian
First published in American Thinker:

This was written when I still lived in Ukraine in the early 1990s. It was intended to be a chapter in a fact-based novel, as yet unpublished. Although the Communist Party had been officially disbanded, it still maintained a firm grip on the country, using every means of manipulation available. Proponents of leftist ideologies around the world share one common trait: they always demand to be included, but once you let them in, they force everybody else out, while refusing to leave themselves.The telephone rang.

"Can you be in the Writers Union office at three?" said Rabenko's gruff voice. "We'd like to publish your short stories."

Rabenko's gruffness was surely an occupational disability: as chairman of the local Writers Union, he was required to give fiery motivational speeches at Party meetings, entertain local apparatchiks at drinking parties, and swallow copious amounts of vodka - all of which he did enthusiastically, as a professional duty as well as a personal hobby. The former flywheel in the Party's propaganda engine, the Writers Union was now supposedly independent, although its functions remained unchanged. The axis was still connected to the same gears.

It was April 22 - a date carved into every Soviet brain as Lenin's birthday - the joyful spring holiday. This year, for the first time in almost seven decades, it was not marked by Lenin songs on the radio, Lenin plays in the local theater, Lenin movies on TV, Lenin poems recited by schoolchildren, and Lenin posters on the facades of buildings. Even members of the Writers Union seemed to be no longer required to contort their wits composing Lenin elegies.

It had been raining heavily since the previous night, but the offer was too intriguing for me to stay home. Even if I owned a car, fuel shortages that had struck the country that spring would make it impossible to drive. A reliable source had told me that former Party apparatchiks had sold most of the state-owned gasoline at heavily discounted prices to phony corporations, who in turn resold it abroad at market prices, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. As a result, the streets were almost empty of traffic. Most of the city buses had no fuel to leave the depot, and the few that did were horribly overcrowded. Fortunately, the Writers Union was only five bus stops away. Unfortunately, my umbrella didn't survive the ride.

At a quarter past three I entered Rabenko's office in the back of the Regional Children's Library, water dripping from my coat and the tip of my broken umbrella onto the decrepit parquetry. Rabenko's short, bulky figure rose from the desk to greet me, his Stalinesque mustache stretched above a welcoming smile. Underneath a formal striped jacket he wore a Ukrainian collarless shirt embroidered with red-and-black crisscross patterns - a flavor-of-the-year tribute to the surge of populist nationalism.

Behind the chairman's desk gaped the empty rectangular shape of a much cleaner wall where a poster of Lenin used to hang, with an obligatory thematic quote by the people's leader: "Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Literature must become part of the general cause of the proletariat."

Rabenko responded to my glance with a shrug. "Change is in the air," he said, opening a pack of cheap, locally made cigarettes.

Rabenko's only known literary work was an award-winning novel, The Hand-Made Sea. It glorified the achievement of the Soviet people in building, under the guidance of the Party and the government, a hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper River. This project created an artificial reservoir that flooded dozens of villages and later proved to be an environmental disaster. While no one would buy or read his book voluntarily, all local libraries and bookstores had been stacked with it. The needs of agitation and propaganda in the USSR always trumped the demands of the market. Up until the end of Party rule, state-run publishers kept churning out copies of Rabenko's book. It was usually included in gift packages to Party and Union officials and various delegations visiting the area. The delegates would later put it on display in their offices and never touch it again.

As we shook hands I noticed that the back of Rabenko's hand was tattooed with the word "Misha" in big, crude letters. I didn't know he had the tattoo, perhaps because he never before offered me a handshake. It also occurred to me that if he were to add to it his last name and office phone number, he would have an indestructible business card.

"The country is going through revolutionary changes, and we are changing with it," Rabenko beamed, striking a match. "Surely you've heard about the radical changes in our local literary journal."

I hadn't.

"As a young promising writer, you might be interested to know that we can now publish local authors without special approval from above." Rabenko motioned at the ceiling.

"Surely you don't mean an approval from heaven," I said.

"You know what I mean. There's no more censorship. Thank God."

"I didn't know you suffered from censorship," I said, as I landed on a shaky plywood chair.

"No one was spared," Rabenko mumbled evasively, taking a series of short, vigorous drags from a cigarette that refused to burn.

"I don't recall you using biblical references either," I said.

"That's what censorship did to us - we forgot our roots! Writers weren't allowed to refer to Christianity, which historically underlies our language and culture. Every scribe had a tiny censor planted in his brain. But not anymore. Thank God."

His cigarette still refused to burn. Cursing under his breath, Rabenko poked it with a surprisingly long nail, extracting a shapeless form that resembled a bonsai tree. "Whatever happened to quality control?" he scorned dramatically. "There's no supervision anywhere. This country just can't function without a strong hand. I mean, I'm all for freedom," he added hastily. "If I were to choose between quality control and freedom, I wouldn't hesitate a moment. Would you?"

He threw the deflated cigarette into the wastebasket.

"We can't have both. Something's got to give. No state censorship also means no state financing. We can now print anything, only we have no money for it. How can we continue to serve the people if we can't pay the editors, the printers, and the authors?"

"You can start serving the people by printing what the people want to read," I said, glancing at the rain splashing against the office window. "I never got paid for writing my stories, but that didn't stop me. You too can get a job and continue doing your journal on a volunteer basis."

"Volunteer basis?" Rabenko slammed the top of his desk, sending papers flying in the air. "We've had seventy years of volunteer basis! No more slave labor! People must get paid."

"I can't help you with that," I shrugged.

"Yes you can." His mustache now framed a wily smile. "I hear that you're running an American-Ukrainian joint venture. I also hear that it's customary among American businesses to fund cultural projects."

So this was why he really wanted to see me - a publication in exchange for other people's money. I suppressed a snicker. His assumption was based on an overblown rumor about my friendship with a California man, whom I was helping in a low-budget, shot-in-the-dark attempt to set up the manufacturing of hemp-based clothing in Ukraine on behalf of Bay Area cannabis growers. Our efforts were failing miserably because just about every government official with whom we met fancied a cut on the deal in one way or another, or wanted a spouse employed at a no-show job in a business that couldn't take off due to their unrealistic demands. Former Communists all, they had always believed that capitalism was a dishonest and greedy system. Now that capitalism had become the declared law of the land, they stayed abreast of the times by being as dishonest and greedy as humanly possible.

"I thought you wanted to talk about my short stories," I reminded him.

"I was just about to mention that. We are all great admirers of your talent. Now, what's so funny about my proposal?"

"You asked me for a subsidy. That is funny."

State-subsidized publishing had been the ultimate gold mine for the local Writers Union bosses who ran it like a family business, publishing each other's works and keeping outsiders at a distance. Suddenly bereft of guaranteed government support, they remembered me, an outsider, who they believed had access to an alternative, capitalist gold mine.

For this, he dragged me out of my home in the pouring rain. But now that I was already here, I decided to make it worth my while. I would savor the moment and let him praise my literary talent for as long as I pleased, before telling him that I was broke. In the absence of other means of revenge, poetic justice would be the next best thing.

"The entire Writers Union collective likes your work," Rabenko said, inspecting his long and not very clean nails. "We believe that your latest stories would add brilliance to the next issue of our journal."

"Well, thank you," I said. "But where did you read them if they've never been published?"

"We have ways." Rabenko handed me a plastic folder containing faint photocopies - a fifth generation or so - taken from my typewritten pages.

Back in the day I indeed had been giving away carbon copies of my stories to people who would read them. But I had never seen such a full collection before. Either my writings had become part of the underground circulation called samizdat , or they'd been pulled out of my hypothetical KGB file. It could be both; I may never know the truth.

"We are in awe of your talent," Rabenko went on. "Anyone in the Union will tell you that. There's one condition, though. You write in Russian and we are a Ukrainian-language publication, so your stories must be translated."

"I can rewrite them in Ukrainian," I agreed. "I know the language."

"Of course you can. But still, as your captive fan, I'd like to try it myself."

"No problem," I said. "Hope you'll get paid union wages too. But I also have one condition. As my captive fan, you must remember my parodies about Lenin." I picked a few pages from the file. "I want them to be published first."

Truth be told, the Lenin parodies had already been published in New York, but Rabenko didn't need to know that. They were short pieces, a few paragraphs each. In the deliberately awkward lingo of socialist realism, I described how Lenin and his comrades in the Politburo visited the Moscow zoo because Lenin loved animals, or sneaked out of the Kremlin to beat up capitalist pigs on Red Square, or gave away free light bulbs to the toiling masses, who would wrap them in rags and preserve them in wooden chests for the next generations. The stories were rewarding and funny for people like me, but insulting to true believers like Rabenko.

"I'd love my Lenin stories to be translated by an award-winning author and the chairman of the Writers Union," I said matter-of-factly. "Professor Shtik would be my second choice, but I'm afraid he may print them under his own name again."

Professor Shtik was a local "academician" and member of the Writers Union who had made state-funded trips to Iowa to research American proletarian poetry . A few years back, through a mutual acquaintance, he had found out that I'd been playing with translations of American poetry. He asked me if I wanted a professional review of my work, so I gave him a few copies. A month later I discovered that they were published in a national magazine under Shtik's name, presented as American proletarian poetry .

"Once I see my Lenin stories published we'll talk about the others," I said nonchalantly. I never knew that messing with Communist bureaucrats could be so much fun.

"Well..." Rabenko's eyes became shifty, but he quickly refocused them on the tip of a new cigarette he was lighting up. He used the pause to contemplate an escape route. "With all due respect, don't you think that satirizing Lenin may be somewhat, uh, beyond its expiration date? The people are fed up with negativism and divisiveness. We need something positive, which can unite us all. Lenin is no longer an idol. There's no point in beating a dead horse."

"The horse was alive and kicking when I wrote those stories," I said. "One kick and I could be in Siberia. You wouldn't publish my stories then, would you?"
"That would've been unwise," Rabenko sighed tragically. "You understand, of course, that censorship wouldn't have allowed it anyway."

"So, let's see. It's unwise to beat a live horse. It's unwise to beat a dead horse. Is there a horse-beating schedule somewhere that I can check and see if there ever was a window of opportunity that I missed?"

"There's no honor in ridiculing the weak and the unprotected. If you really want to prove your mettle, try ridiculing the capitalists and the free marketers. The so-called democrats are on a roll now; it takes guts to oppose them publicly. And the people may like that."

In that day and age, the term democrats described everyone who opposed communism, even if they were for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty.

Just then the door creaked and a man walked into the room, shaking off water from his black woolen coat. The drops were few; he must have been traveling by car.

"How can you talk about democrats in such nasty weather?" he chuckled. His head was full of thick, almost entirely gray hair, although he was barely over forty. The warm scarf was carefully arranged so as to leave the diagonally striped necktie visible for observation. It may have defeated the purpose of wearing a warm scarf in bad weather, but it served the more important function of emphasizing his social status. This was the typical appearance of a former Party apparatchik.

"When it pours like this, all loyal citizens ought to be drunk by noon, and it's already three thirty," he declared, winking at me as he threw his coat onto the chair. "Where's your proletarian awareness, Rabenko? So many years of Party membership wasted! Must we hang a special sign here, obliging the Writers Union to serve vodka when it rains? Or did you hide your shot glasses when you saw me coming?"

The gray-haired man guffawed at his own joke, but his laughter stopped as abruptly as it started. "I just was on Lenin Square," he informed us authoritatively. "Everything is back to normal. Lenin's statue has been cleaned, the birthday flowers are in place, and the hunger strikers are gone, along with their tent. See - even democrats understand that when it rains like this, everybody must get under the roof and drink vodka. Only you, Rabenko, don't seem to understand. We have many reasons to celebrate. Come on, I know you keep a bottle in your desk, don't try to stop the inevitable!"

Having overheard part of Rabenko's speech about democrats , he mistook me for an insider - and I wasn't going to disillusion him.

"I was just telling this young author of the changes in our journal," said Rabenko, dragging out words while his eyes shifted chaotically. I could appreciate the increasing complexity of his predicament. Now, in addition to persuading me to give up on Lenin stories, he also needed to warn the visitor that I was not an insider, all the while making an appearance that we were the best of friends - so as not to lose the chance of exploiting the perceived gold mine he thought I represented. He must have realized the impossibility of accomplishing this while continuing to act like a normal human being. I almost admired the Union leader's perseverance, but I wasn't going to help him.

"We were discussing the prospects of publishing my Lenin stories in his journal," I said, picking up where he left off. "Comrade Rabenko seems to think that stories about the leader of the world proletariat are not suitable for our times, and I was saying that there's never a bad time for a good Lenin story, since the subject matter is timeless. What do you think, comrade? In fact, what happened to the Leninposter on this wall?" I pointed at the empty rectangle over Rabenko's desk. "Who authorized the removal?"

My insolence had the desired effect. Rabenko froze with a gaping mouth as the guest roared at the top of his lungs: "Are you out of your mind, Rabenko? A young author brings you Lenin stories - is this not what our efforts are all about? And you refuse to print them?"
I gave Rabenko the I-told-you-so look. He meekly protested but the gray-haired man wouldn't listen and shook my hand with a firm grip.

"Kravchenko. Anatoly Kravchenko."

I shook his hand, silently welcoming a new clueless entertainer to my improvised reality show.

"What did you say about the protesters on Lenin Square?" I asked him, feigning ignorance. "I didn't see it in the local news."

"Of course it won't be in the local news! Not if the editors want to keep their jobs." Pleased to have a grateful listener, Kravchenko assumed the posture of a stand-up comedian. "Last week these two crazy chicks set up a tent in front of the Lenin statue. Right in the middle of the lawn. Granted, the weather was nice and all. So why not go camping at the river like two cultured individuals? No, they wanted to do it on Lenin Square, like a couple of freaking savages. A hunger strike - who are they kidding! Surely they had vodka and smoked kielbasa under the pillows! A week in a tent in front of Lenin - can you imagine such beastliness? Sitting around their nihilistic signs all day - and we can only guess what the bitches did in the tent at night," he snorted.

Rabenko issued a series of deliberate coughs, but the guest was too full of himself to notice.

"What were their demands?" I asked quickly, over Rabenko's coughing.

Kravchenko let out a nervous giggle. "To remove the Lenin statue from the square. Can you even imagine that?"

"It's unimaginable," I nodded.

"They also had some crude signs demanding that the city and regional administrations resign since they're all Party appointees," he continued, enjoying himself. "As if anyone else is capable of ruling this country! We belong in high positions! And if not us, then who, I ask? These clowns? A lunatic asylum - that's where they belong! We would've sent them there already if it weren't for democracy! " His lips twisted with derision. "A freak show - that's what democracy is. Tents on Lenin Square! A circus! Would a normal person go on a hunger strike and live in a tent? You wouldn't, right? And I wouldn't - unless I'm piss-drunk!" he hooted. "And they think they can run this country for us. Freaks, there's no better word! The way I see it, democracy is a freakish system, so it's the freaks who want it. But in the real world, extremists must be kept apart from normal people. Camps! We shouldn't dismantle the labor camps! We may need them sooner than we think."

"I'm sure you found out who those extremists were," I said.

"We knew it before the day was over! One is a museum consultant, wife of a known radical nationalist - no surprise there. But the other one is a school teacher! God have mercy, a teacher! In the good old days she'd be kicked out of school with an old broom! But we now have democracy , so our children are in the hands of lunatics! The bitches have read too many history books and went cuckoo. That's what happens, Rabenko, when one reads too many books and drinks too little vodka!" He winked playfully at the Writers Union boss, who by now had the complexion of a broiled lobster.

"And listen to this - they actually have families! Those husbands, what sort of men are they? Instead of giving their women a spanking, they stayed home with the kids. The losers showed up last night when the rain started, to keep the bitches warm. I don't know what they did in their little tent, but a few hours later they were all gone. A cuddle in the puddle is not their thing, I guess."

"Thank God for bad weather - where would this country be without it," I said, standing between the two comrades, effectively blocking Rabenko's subtle hand gestures.
"But trouble never travels alone," Kravchenko went on, oblivious to Rabenko's twitches. "As soon as they were gone, some hooligan hurled plastic bags with red paint at the statue. A youngish fellow, they say. Big nose, big ears. The police saw him from the far end of the square. They were too far away to run after him. And do you know why they were standing at the far end of the square? Our local environmentalist genius Vinnik had told them the monument was radioactive. It's nonsense, of course - but last week the bastard brought a Geiger counter to the statue and it started clicking! He told them Lenin had absorbed fallout from Chernobyl and was now poisoning the environment. A schoolchild would tell you this is garbage, but our police are not the brightest lightbulbs in the room, if you get my drift. We told them that granite is just naturally slightly more radioactive, nothing dangerous, but I guess they don't trust us after what happened in Chernobyl. So the idiots watched from afar because they were worried about their family jewels, and missed the criminal. We told them we'd twist their balls so hard, they won't have to worry about radiation anymore. Then we made them wipe off the paint from the statue before it set. The bottom of the coat, the pants, and especially the shoes. They worked all the way until dawn."

"You made the police shine Lenin's shoes?" I laughed.

"What do you think? The Police Commissioner himself was roused in the middle of the night and stood there in the rain to make sure Lenin was clean before the people wake up!" Kravchenko chuckled along with me. "They couldn't get the paint out of the small pores in the stone, so it still looks a little like brown blood stains, but at least it's not bright red and you wouldn't notice it if you didn't know what happened. And no one will know. It won't be in the news, that's for sure. It took a whopping sixty liters of gas to clean it!"

"Wait, isn't there a gas shortage?" I asked nervously, remembering the wait at the bus stop, the ride in a crowded bus, and the busted umbrella. "Where did you get sixty liters of gas in the middle of the night?"

I must have asked the wrong question because Kravchenko's eyes suddenly emptied. "There's enough of everything if it's for the right cause. No one touches Lenin! He will always be there; and as long as he's there, we'll be there too."

"And yet, sixty liters?" I was too upset to keep up the pretense. "That's two full car tanks. Come on, you used only six liters, admit it. Then you added a zero to the report and split the difference. Happens all the time, especially on rainy nights. Where would we be without bad weather? I bet you wished the guy had smeared Lenin from head to toe; you could've stolen ten times as much gas. Long live Lenin!"

The gray-haired apparatchik looked me over as if seeing me for the first time. His face lost all its previously human expression and turned into the immovable arrogant mask of a high-level bureaucrat.

"Vandalism doesn't reflect well on your democracy , pal," he said indignantly. "Today it's paint, tomorrow it's explosives. Today they attack a monument because of Lenin's politics, tomorrow they may attack real people who share Lenin's views."

"Didn't Lenin attack real people who didn't share his views?" I said. "Didn't he order the execution of thousands of hostages?"

"Such were the times," Kravchenko said solemnly. "You can't make a revolution with clean hands. But no matter what your politics are, it was also an attack on our people's artistic and cultural heritage."

"If it's art, put it in a museum," I said. "Unless, of course, the intention is to rub it in people's faces..."

"You wouldn't argue that this statue represents 70 years of our people's history and culture, would you?" Kravchenko protested resentfully. "As a writer, you can't be in favor of vandalizing cultural heritage. You must agree; there has to be a tough punishment for crimes against people's culture."

"Wasn't the 1917 takeover of the Winter Palace by a mob of drunken sailors acting on Lenin's orders a crime against cultural heritage?" I asked. "And after they finished vandalizing the Winter Palace, didn't they vandalize the entire country - including historical monuments and churches, let alone literature and the arts? How tough do you think the penalty should be for that kind of vandalism? Surely a little red paint doesn't even begin to measure up."

Kravchenko pointed an indignant finger at me and snapped at Rabenko: "Who is this man?"

"I've been trying to tell you," pleaded Rabenko, who seemed to be feverishly racking his brains for the right words. "He is a talented young author, but his political orientation is... uh... somewhat uncertain... But we are a democratic organization... a big tent... where everybody has a right to individual expression. We're not closed... I mean, we're open to..."

"Open, closed..." Kravchenko barked with disdain. "Are you running a whorehouse or a literary organization?"

Rabenko desperately pulled on his mustache, destroying its classic Stalin-like appearance. "I didn't have time to introduce you," he said. "Kravchenko is the newly appointed editor-in-chief of the People's Truth newspaper."

"I figured he had something to with creative fiction," I said.

"Rabenko, damn you!" Now it was Kravchenko's turn to transform into a broiled lobster. "Is this a mutiny? Why are you sucking up to this... this nobody?"

"The chairman is sucking up to me," I explained quietly, "because my American capitalist venture was about to give his journal a big subsidy. But he can forget about that now. You just talked me out of it."

I turned around, facing the cowering Rabenko. "I can't believe I was about to give you ten thousand dollars. But your comrade just told me the people's Party has enough of everything if it's for the right cause. If they care so much about people's culture, why don't they finance your cultural project? I hear they hit the jackpot shipping the people's fuel across the border."

I grabbed my broken umbrella and walked out into the cold, unwelcoming rain. Instead of heading back to my cold apartment in the leaky housing project, I decided to check on the damage to Lenin's statue. Soon the sky began to clear up. I felt like celebrating - I didn't know how exactly - but in a bizarre way it had a connection to Lenin's birthday. I strolled towards Lenin Square, holding, like a bouquet of flowers, the shapeless crushed umbrella, and cherished the vivid mental image of the two Party stooges blaming each other for the lost opportunity to milk my non-existent capitalist business.

* * *

I never received another call from the Writers Union. A year later, I moved to the United States. On November 28, 2008, almost 16 years after the described events, the Lenin monument was officially removed from the square, which no longer bares Lenin's name. The plan was to transport it to a less prominent location, but when the crane attempted to lift the statue, it crumbled like an empty cape, following the fate of the country Lenin had created.

Lenin's birthday is still openly celebrated by groups of old-guard veterans, who occasionally manage to get younger people involved. However, this year has seen an increase in attacks on Lenin statues in both Russia and Ukraine, the most notable one being the hole in Lenin's backside blown off with explosives in St. Petersburg on April 1, the international Fools Day.

The destruction of the statue in the story was captured on film. Here's our 2-minute video montage:

And speaking of some other apocryphal Lenin stories...


Zombie Lenin: "Must crush capitalism!"

Comrade Red Square,

This Rabenko certainly seemed to have a nose for money. He just couldn't quite figure out how to get his grubby tattooed hands on it. I know people like this. They can smell money. And sometimes they are successful in getting their hands on it. Of course, on the surface, he perceived some capitalist source, like some fountain of Texas Gold, in the form of a gullible American act of charity:

[HIGHLIGHT=#ffffff]

Red Square wrote:"I can't help you with that," I shrugged.[/HIGHLIGHT]

[HIGHLIGHT=#ffffff] "Yes you can." His mustache now framed a wily smile. "I hear that you're running an American-Ukrainian joint venture. I also hear that it's customary among American businesses to fund cultural projects."[/HIGHLIGHT]

However, the money was where he could never get to, in your brain, and your stories of the lunacy you lived through, and you would have been killed for both in the past.

It is not hard for me to visualize this as a film, a comedic one. Between your portrayal of Rabenko and that other character, the former apparatchik with the thick scarf, you personified the system, which may well have never survived so long without such types.

Out of karakter, out of cash, out of patience already for Obama's economic and foreign policies, out of . . . sorry . . .

Red Square,
I actually own a few red star/baby Lenin pins. My grandparents came here to Michigan from Russia back during the great waves of the early 20th century, leaving a lot of family behind. In 1982, my father received a phone call from long lost Russian family members who had recently moved to the USA. They came to visit bearing pins from the Moscow Olympics and some red star pins. The Baby Lenin pins are so utterly bizarre that to this day I'm still fascinated by them. There is a certain creepiness to them that appeals to my senses in the same way that close-up photos of hideous insects do. I never knew that they were a required part of the uniform.

Here is a random site (read: shady site from a Google search) with that simpsons video in the kkkapitalist English language

http://www.truveo.com/The-Simpsons-Sovi ... 1103639424

Comrade Red Square, a most disturbing vision of what the United States may yet become... Thank you for sharing.

There is no comparison in outcome--yet--but daily I deal with government apparatchiks and there is no such thing as a government employee, anywhere, who does not fancy himself to be uniquely qualified, above anyone else, to dispose of everything that falls under his purview.

One could formulate, on the evidence, a theory that there is a mental disease which is caused by other people's money.

It takes a great strength of character, or a good nature, to act well when it's not your money or position that's important. I have in my life known <i>three</i> elected officials who were as careful with OPM as they were with theirs. And I have had 50 years' experience with elected officials. (40 years since I could start to smell a rat.)

This is the reason that charitable foundations always go pink. Governments build pharaonic monuments to the pooh-bah in power. It is not a trifling thing to suggest that no public-works project be named after anyone who is still alive. Did you know that the goddamned ferries at Galveston and Corpus Christi, Texas, are named after the chief engineers at TexDOT?

If Bill Gates wants to put his name on a city that he buys, that's just fine. But for a bureaucrat to put his name on anything that is made with OPM will only urge him into monument building.

Commissar, that of course is why congress not only decided to keep the faces of living people off of money and stamps, but also to require they be dead for a certain amount of time before they could be thus honored. The exception (and I'll buy this one) being dead presidents. Traditionally they get a stamp on the birthday following their death. Perhaps the standard should be same for dead heads of state as everyone else, but I'm undecided on that one. After all, it's a stamp, and even cartoon characters get them now.

Oh crap that reminds me. One can even print their own now. We could have People's Cube themed postage stamps! (Sorry Comrade Red Square for the inevitable thread hijacking that will follow...) https://photo.stamps.com/Store/?source=si10985886

Here's that glorious Simpsons clip in Mother Tongue:

[ CENSORED ]

Comrade Red Square! The video of remova/destruction of Lenin's statue, that the story (as published on American Thinker) links to on YouTube, shows the statue in the city of Cherkassy, not in Kyiv...

Yours truly plans to examine the spot across Bessarabsky Rynok this June personally, and shall report to the Party at once!

Looking forward to your diligent report, Comrade Mi! I have been in Kyiv many times and have friends there, but I'm sure it looks very different today. And much more expensive too (beets in the supermarkets outside of the fancy downtown areas are much cheaper than those sold on Khreschatik).

Greetings Comrades,

I have glorious news. The Amerikkans want change - they will get change. And beginning right now, we are replacing all USSA holidays with the most important to be Lenin's birthday. Other holidays will, of course, be Stalin's birthday, my birthday, Nancy Pelosi's birthday, Barney Frank's birthday, and of course Barry's birthday. Hmmmm, his Hawaiian birthday or his Kenyan birthday... I leave that to you comrades to sort out.

To honor Comrade Lenin, we start by re-carving Mount Rushmore; start with Lenin, then Stalin, then myself, and then Comrade Barry. Do we have an artist who will provide a sketch of the new progressive Mount Rushmore?

Yes, yes comrades, Comrade Obama has learned his lessons well. The masses now consider him the greatest leader of all time.

I intend to write a new book, Fun with Communism. Just a few highlights, dear comrades, I'm not done yet; I will include...

-- Purges
-- Diddling with the food supply
-- Gulag administration
-- Our New Friends (Comrade Castro, Comrade Chavez, The Dear Leader)

We are all, dear comrades, very proud of THE ONE!!! We will crush the bourgeois! The first 100 days were delightful, the second 100 days will usher in The Workers' Paradise, Collective Farms, the end of property ownership, and posters in every room of every building - Lenin, Stalin, me, and, of course Comrade Barry.

I tell you, my friends, Communism is pure fun. (Stalinism is even more fun!) The bourgeois will enjoy cozying up to their new neighbors, when they share their big Colorado houses with 2 or 3 more families from Mexico. Ha!

I so wanted Comrade Hillary to preside over the purges - she is so good at that sort of thing. Now, really, Comrade Hillary, a red button? You want him to fear you, don't you? Just give him a picture of Vince Foster next time.

Comrade Alinsky

Saul, as you know the President's picture appears, or used to, in Post Offices. In Switzerland it's the picture of the commanding officer of the Swiss Army.

This is of course to encourage people.

In the People's Post Offices in the USSA I believe we ought to have pictures of our Many Titted Empress' naked ass, stippled with cellulite, tea-bagging Ann Coulter. If that doesn't put the fear of Stalin in people, I don't know what will.

As a Simpson fan, and equal comrade, let us follow Lenin's advice and crush capitalsim.

Comrade Saul said; [HIGHLIGHT=#eeece1]"we are replacing all USSA holidays with the most important to be Lenin's birthday". [/HIGHLIGHT]

We have a most important one coming very soon: "May Day".

...Let the winds lift your banners from far lands
With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope....

...Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.

When the World's Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life—not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.

Walter Crane, 1894

Ref: https://www.marxists.org/subject/mayday/index.htm

ACDC black ice - stormy may day

Greetings Comrade Grigori

Grigori E.R. wrote: We have a most important one coming very soon: "May Day".

Yes indeed. I would like to know how First Secretary President Soetoro Obama plans to celebrate May Day.

Ah yes, Comrade, May Day is our most glorious holiday.
<IMG width="550" src="https://pro.corbis.com/images/DC001252. ... 21DC534%7D">
LET LIVE FOR CENTURIES THE NAME AND WORK OF VLADIMIR LENIN!- the leader of the October Revolution, the creator and leader of theCommunist Party and the first-in-the-world socialist government.
<IMG width="550" src="https://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/01 ... u/610x.jpg">
This is how the USSA will soon celebrate May Day!

Even Barry's Barrack's new buddy shows us how to celebrate.
I love this one:
Glory to the Mexican Undocumenteds, the tested and powerful weapon of the international working class!

You need to rephrase that in Spanish lest you seem to be lacking in multiculturalism and sensitivity.

When I watched I Robot I knew the scene reminded me of something, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until now... Watch out for the rogue Lenin!

And from another angle, in a different lighting...

When I was a kid I read, many times, Asimov's robot stories. Here are the laws:

<OL>
<LI>A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
<LI>A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
<LI>A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
</OL>

I propose
<OL>
<LI>A progressive must not let anyone have a dollar of his own.
<LI>A progressive must not leg anyone have any freedom of action.
<LI>A progressive must look after his own existence and that's why we have the first and second laws.
</OL>

This one also looked familiar...

The three pillows reminded me of an old joke about a Soviet furniture factory #57 launched a new line of beds for three persons, named "Lenin is always with us."

The reason for it were abundant Lenin posters with the words "Lenin is always with us."

Here, I made a little photo montage. The top image says "Lenin is always with us", the middle one says ""Lenin is with us." The bottom one I just made up.

Mmmm if Lenin is always with us, what about Stalin? I have two rifles made while he was in power. Does that mean he hangs around the boat, picking at my food when I'm not looking, making funny faces behind my back, and hiding my keys?

That's the function of the Trotsky Monster, a pest first described and documented on the People's Cube by Sister Massively Opiated (not to be confused with the Kulak Monster).

If Lenin's always with us, does that mean he's watching me all the time? Even when I'm . . . ?

In the meantime, I've found the perfect quilt to go with that bed and those pillows:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/14/134822/82
<br><IMG width="550" src="https://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk134/mamamorgaine/P1010028.jpg">

I'm still shopping for sheets, wallpaper, lamp and rug to complete the perfect fantasy O-room. I expect to find them eventually. Buried somewhere in a thread on The People's Blog is a picture of girls in "Ojamas."

OMG. Why would anyone quilt a target on their bed? Those bumper sticker targets I see on cars are great for target practice, but I don't get having one on your bed.

Red Square wrote:That's the function of the Trotsky Monster, a pest first described and documented on the People's Cube by Sister Massively Opiated (not to be confused with the Kulak Monster).

Dangit! I just sprayed and fumigated my boat for the Kulak Monsters, but now I must deal with the Trotsky Monsters? That must have been what dropped out when I opened up that can of russian ammo.

Hmmmm... Do they taste good? I seem to be losing my keys a lot, and the daily ration doesn't include much protien. Perhaps I could bait a trap with some cookies and see what happens. Anyone have recipes?

Aahhhh.... do not eat one!... do not fumigate!... there are very specific protocols for clearing out infestations of Kulak Monsters. I am ashamed in my illness I've not been keeping up with my duties... I had long ago promised a Primer on the Kontrol and Eradikation of Kulak Monster Infestations.... They are terribly destructive. They make nests in your closets, in your upright pianos where they will gnaw away at the sound board, rendering the instrument useless and causing the strings to break, which they then take and use for snares... they steal butter, coffee and shiny trinkets. They are Nospurratu - I believe the scientific name derives from the fact that they appear to look a little like zombie cat vampires. And if you come upon one unawares, they can sit very still and take on the appearance of a Ushanka, so you go to put on your warm hat and instead, find yourself with this insidious creature pulling at your hair trying to escape back to its nest... and they are destructive little beasts. One once stole my Peoples Cube and ran with it to a closet where I caught it painting different colours on the squares of my cube. I wrested it away, managing not to be bit... I happened to be chatting with Red and Meow at the time... Meow, squealing like a little girl, screamed over and over for me to stab it and so I grabbed my best knife in the excitement and jammed it in the top of the evil beast's head, ruining my favourite knife in the process... He - Meow - would not calm himself until I had beaten the creature several times with a fireplace poker... But Red kept his head and reminded me to grab the cube and get the paint off before it dried (it was saved) and take pictures for edukational purposes... which is when we found that simply stabbing the creature will not kill it... it is a nospurratu and so rises again with the coming of the next full moon... the only way to make sure it is truly dead is to take the 'corpse' and bury it in fouled kitty litter and garlic and leave it there through the next full moon... We had thought that it was a kreature of legend, imagined in order to scare little children into korrekt behaviour, but no...

So if you find your butter and coffee rations disappearing, or small shiny things, look for a nest of kulak monsters. One got to my acoustic guitar while I was in the hospital, removed the strings to use as snares, and set up house inside it, moving it next to a radiator and so I returned to find my guitar befouled and dried out to the point that the neck was bowed beyond repair and the strings I replaced to test its integrity now hit the frets and the truss rod cannot possibly be adjusted enough to set it up properly... also, being next to the dry heat of the radiator, caused a support inside to simply pop off and the whole sound board of the guitar is warped... it is unfixable, despite trying with several guitar humidifiers to get it humid enough to be worked on by a friend who repairs guitars, or rather, would cost more to fix than it is worth... and I can't play for shit anyway, so I'll just get a new cheap Yamaha dreadnought and hope the little beasts don't get their paws on it...

I had recently discussed with Red the need to catalogue the growing sett (a nest of kulak monsters is called a 'sett' as a family of badgers are) and the different forms they take as they are surprisingly varied in form. I hope to provide a comprehensive primer on how to manage infestations in the future, though with the coming of spring, setts will often remove themselves to the outdoors where they take over the abandoned dens of foxes and other creatures, all the better to raid peoples' gardens and steal the hood ornaments off luxury automobiles. If you have pets, do not put their food outdoors during the summer months as kulak monsters will often raid it, injuring or even eating small pets.... they will enter homes via 'dog doors' as the weather gets colder and they begin to crave butter and coffee once again, and the small creatures on which they subsist in the summer become less available. If you happen to hit one with your car or lumpenwagon, make sure you reverse and run it over again, then put your vehicle in drive, repeating the process 8 or 10 times... then take your Party issued shovel (we will replace it in the instance of Kulak monsters... it is the only time we will replace your shovel) and place the 'corpse' in a heavy duty green garbage bag and find the closest sand box full of catshit... bury the creature in it with as much garlic as you can get your hands on, even if it threatens to make your cucumber preserves bland for the next winter... better a dead kulak monster than bland pickled cucumbers (it is an old Belarussian folk saying, but words of wisdom nonetheless)... and bury the garlic with the corpse in the cat shit filled sand box... make sure that you mark it well with warnings so that children do not play in it... it is actually best if you can nail chicken wire over it to keep raccoons and skunks from digging up the corpses for food and to keep other scavengers as well as pets away from it as well. At the next full moon you will hear ungodly shrieking that will cause you to question your mental well-being.... just have a couple extra vodka rations... the party will provide if you have had to deal with a Kulak... these are the sounds of the final death throws of a kukak monster. Do not give in and think you are being humane in releasing it from its sandy grave. You are doing the entire world a service by killing these creatures... Truly - when civilization falls and man is gone from the face of the earth, the only thing to survive will be cockroaches and kukak monsters and the kukak monsters will eat all the cockroaches... they are the ultimate survivors and it is every cube member's duty to kill these creatures, no matter how warm and fuzzy they may make theselves appear....

And for the sake of Great Stalin's Ghost... do not eat them... you would be better off eating gruel made of newspapers, wallpaper paste and asbestos insulation... and all of us do at some point or another

Housekeeping thanks you for your attention and diligence.
Sister Massively Opiated
Kommissar of Housekeeping, Disappearances, Composting, Dissection and Limo Service.
Official Necroproxy Preservationist
"We Sweep Dead People"

OMG. <i>This</i> explains all, Sister. I have been making increasingly frequent trips to Hobby Lobby for bright shiny things for Bruno. "Bruno," I would shout, "stop sniveling! You know I hate it when you blubber and ruin your mascara and that makes you cry even more!"

"Theocritus," Bruno wailed, "I don't got any more shiny things to look at!"

"I bought a hundredweight of fake, er, real rainbow jewels at Michael's, er, Tiffany's just last week. What did you do you with them? Did you stick them up your nose <i>again</i>? Here. Let me see your beezer."

"No, Theocritus, I promise I didn't stick them up my nose, or anywhere else. They just went away." And with that big tears dripped down his face leaving tracks in the war paint.

About that time I heard a chuckle and turned my head and from the corner of my eye I think I saw something dart away. I has to be a Kulak Monster. After all, what in its right mind would actually steal the Rancho's family jewels? Even the fake ones?

Well, I'll start saving the catshit that Calvin and Hobbes make, and fortunately here we get lots of good garlic. You do recall, Sister, that I have many impaling poles, and on all sides of the Rancho. The creosote ones are to the east, so when the wind is from the west the dreaded Bu$hitler can smell the burning creosote. I am going to catch those little Kulak Monsters, stuff their mouths with garlic and catshit, and nail them to the posts and set fire to them.

I've never met a Kulak I couldn't burn yet.

Pinkie, I much applaud your home decorating ideas with the hexerai of His O'liness. And in a bedroom too. Have you thought of opening a sex clinic? I'm quite sure that the American people know nothing about sex whatsoever. Why after the coronation of His O'liness I realized that all that theory and practice was for naught, in this world of Crypto-socialist Realism.

I just <i>thought</i> I'd been having a good time. I just <i>thought</i> that I knew how it was done.

Because are all acolytes now at the feet of His O'liness, who can instruct us in the perfect Ogasm.

And you can make a bundle peddling it.

Commissar Theocritus,

I stand in awe of your wisdom:
"Crypto-socialist Realism" is so perfect.

Blessed be the "Made" Progressive.......................

Hail, Lenin, full of hate. The proles are with you....

Commissarka Pinkie wrote:If Lenin's always with us, does that mean he's watching me all the time? Even when I'm . . . ?

Yes, even when you're hiding under the O-blanket while munching on Die-For-Trotsky cookies, so as not to share them with your comrades.

Speaking of which, in the light of new revelations, doesn't it seem likely that Trotsky's ashes have been stolen from his grave and baked into cookies by none other than... KULAK MONSTERS? That's where all the SMO's stolen coffee and butter went.

SMO - thanks for the detailed article on handling kulak monsters. Just one more thing: these kritters are born hoarders, whose whole purpose of existence is to steal people's food stock and bury it in the ground where the government can't find it. They also scavenge musikal instrumens for strings to make snares so they can trap wild-life species protected by the government and Earth-First activists.

Red, if the kulak monsters hoard food from other peoples' houses, why are they hoarding bright and shiny things at the Rancho de Rio Grande? I mean, if they wanted some frijoles or tortillas, I wouldn't mind all that much. But that long slog into El Paso or Midland is wearing.

I wonder what changed them...

SMO, thank you for the info on Kulak monsters. That would explain the missing tea, the loss of nice shiny rifle cartridges, and the shrieking thing that was attacking me when I put on my hat this morning. I chalked it up to overly large lice, and planned a trip to the nearest delousing station...

Now that we know how to deal with the Kulak Monsters (Praise Lenin for the knowledge!) What about Trotsky monster? Can we eat THEM?

Trotsky monsters have to be cremated and the cremains baked into cookies. The cookies with the original Trotsky ashes are <i>premier cru</i> cookies; these are secondary in that they are not <i>appellation d'origine contrôlée</i>.

If you have a really big Made Progressive to impress, you need the true Trotsky cookies. But for other people, the Trotsky Monster cookies will serve.

But it's so hard to keep them in the oven; they keep hopping out. Ask our Many Titted Empress how she kept Hansel and Gretel in the oven in the little house made of candy in the wood.

Ahh well the Trotsky monsters will be easy. The muzzle flash from my Модель штуцера Mosin 1938 (strange Babelfish didn't translate Mosin over) will easily cremate the Trotsky Monsters where they stand.

Well, on another thread Red Star said that he saw Bruno lighting farts--that may be one option.

Personally I think of a college friend in Houston, where the roaches are so big you tell them from the cat by counting the legs. And <i>do not tell me</i> that they're water bugs or palmetto bugs. They're goddamned ROACHES.

This pear-shaped fellow got a can of Lysol and a cigarette lighter, chased them around the room, and flash-fried them.

Of course we could get a Fry-o-lator and using rhinoceros-hide gloves (Fat Freddie's cat getting a bath) snatch the little monsters and dump them into the Fry-o-lator, and snap the cover down, and put on a hundredweight until the screaming stops. But I think we need a 2" thick Kevlar cover. I bet the little buggers can float on top of the hot oil and just play dead. I want to see them crisp around the edges.

Of course we could always render up Michael Moore into lard and fry them in that. That's more toxic than plutonium, anthrax, and strychnine all rolled into one and dusted with arsenic.

Commissar Theocritus wrote: Of course we could always render up Michael Moore into lard and fry them in that. That's more toxic than plutonium, anthrax, and strychnine all rolled into one and dusted with arsenic.

Where would you store all of that Michael Moore lard? That much fat will covert to, at a minimum, 12 55gal drums. Hmmmm.... you could use it as a moisturizer for our MTE's hooves.

What about an underground salt dome? they store natural gas in them, and also pressurize air at night to be released in the daytime to drive generators--one of the few ways to store electricity.

I'd say a good-sized salt dome would do it. The only problem would be if the toxic lard melted the salt and sank through the mantle of the earth. On reaching the magma it would cause a reaction which might lead to a sundering of the tectonic plates and a size 11 earthquake on the Richter scale.

Red Square wrote:

Commissarka Pinkie wrote:If Lenin's always with us, does that mean he's watching me all the time? Even when I'm . . . ?

Yes, even when you're hiding under the O-blanket while munching on Die-For-Trotsky cookies, so as not to share them with your comrades.

Oh, like everyone here doesn't know anyway that I always have crumbs in my bed.

Better that than bimbos in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Commissarka Pinkie wrote:Oh, like everyone here doesn't know anyway that I always have crumbs in my bed.

Indeed, a few comrades have complained about unusual rashes and even turned themselves in for sanitary inspection. On closer examination the suspected venereal disease turned out to be embedded cookie crumbs and occasional particles of dried beets. It was later described in a state-subsidized scientific journal as The Pinkie False Crabs Syndrome.

A renowned Harvard academic who wrote it has received a sizable government grant to do research on it. Have you seen him, or is he doing his research by correspondence?

I had cookie crumbs embedded in... well never mind WHERE, but they were there, and they itched. Then the rashes. And oh how it burned! Especially when I went to redistribute some brown wealth. And the beets! Oh don't get me going about the beets! Inner Comrade #7 was most unhappy with the dried beets.

How horrible. The Pinkie False Crabs Syndrome could interfere with the production of People's Tasty Crème! How can we continue with the manufacture of Trotsky Sandwiches without the requisite PTC?

At least if they're false crabs, they won't be crawling around. And if you're eating a cookie sandwich made of Trotsky ashes and shit, you really don't want to be put off your food by something crawling around.

Red Square wrote:

Commissarka Pinkie wrote:Oh, like everyone here doesn't know anyway that I always have crumbs in my bed.

A renowned Harvard academic who wrote it has received a sizable government grant to do research on it. Have you seen him, or is he doing his research by correspondence?

Seen him? He's one of the crumbs.

BTW, I found this lava lamp to go in my "Obamadoir."


[BLOCKQUOTE]
<br>[/BLOCKQUOTE]

cookie crumbs, eh? almost as bad as the Superior Comestible in the rhinoceros' skin.

Them that takes cakes
Which the Parsee-man bakes
Makes dreadful mistakes.

or was it

It was a relief to crumb the table. Crumbing the table gave one time to think, and if Miss Willerton were going to write a story, she had to think about it first.

Commissarka Pinkie wrote:Seen him? He's one of the crumbs.

BTW, I found this lava lamp to go in my "Obamadoir."

I don't know how it got there, Pinkie. But I am fairly certain where it came from.

Rex, <i>j'accuse</i> you of teaching Flannery O'Connor!

I want to know if the crumber is stainless steel or bone, and more to the point, is it worth stealing?

Also, what is your plan for recycling the crumbs? Starches in one bin, proteins in the other.

Commissar Theocritus wrote:Rex, <i>j'accuse</i> you of teaching Flannery O'Connor!

It helps me in keeping my humor and recognizing freaks.

There as an article on her, in I believe, <i>National Review</i>. It's really too bad that I never learned to read a lot of good authors when I was young; now I'm middle aged and impatient with too many things to do, and get my knowledge, such as it is, in snippets, mostly from journalism and trust, perhaps foolishly, for the reviewer, or journalist, to filter out the sound bites, for that is what they are, for me.

GOOD NEWS. The New York Times Company's ads are down 27% and they lost $74.5 million in the first quarter, compared to a third of a million a year ago, if I recall. There is some cosmic justice. Pinch, it's all your fault, you self-righteous b...

Hello Comrades,

I am Kamerad Boogie Marchenland East German Polevaulter and and dance enthusiast. I am here on special assignment for the historical society for the Ministry. I have just informed on the cat lady next store. Heir Cat Lady smelled like a capitalist pig dog. It is all part of Operation Disco bringing back the Carter Years. I am reporting for duty as ordered but alas mein comrades I have no shovel. I assure the shovel I was assignd has been put to good work and not just in digging beets.

I welcome my comrades and Praise in the name of the great and glorious One, all praises to his Teleprompter.

KameradBoogieMarchenland wrote:Hello Comrades,

I am Kamerad Boogie Marchenland East German Polevaulter and and dance enthusiast. I am here on special assignment for the historical society for the Ministry. I have just informed on the cat lady next store. Heir Cat Lady smelled like a capitalist pig dog. It is all part of Operation Disco bringing back the Carter Years. I am reporting for duty as ordered but alas mein comrades I have no shovel. I assure the shovel I was assignd has been put to good work and not just in digging beets.

I welcome my comrades and Praise in the name of the great and glorious One, all praises to his Teleprompter.

Welcome Comrade Boogie. Have you gotten in touch with your Inner Comrade(s)™ yet?

Also, did you bring any of those progressive East German automobiles with you? If so, I would like to be put on the waiting list, to get on the waiting list to purchase a spot on the waiting list to be issued one.

Was Carter a disco god? that just seems wrong.



Maybe he and comrade Chavez could go a few turns on the dance floor.

If Jimmih was a disco god his anthem song should be, "I will survive," not the 1980 election of course but the fact that James Earl Carter is surviving is proof that I am not a witch or that my spells are completely ineffectual. If I were a witch, his mouth would look like a hamster's asshole.

Commissar_Elliott wrote:As a Simpson fan, and equal comrade, let us follow Lenin's advice and crush capitalsim.

Comrade Commissar_Elliott,

I saw your cameo in that Simpson's footage liinked above. I hope you got paid in barrels of oil, AK-47s, or cases of Stoli and not fiat currency.

Commissar Theocritus wrote:Well, on another thread Red Star said that he saw Bruno lighting farts--that may be one option.

Personally I think of a college friend in Houston, where the roaches are so big you tell them from the cat by counting the legs. And <i>do not tell me</i> that they're water bugs or palmetto bugs. They're goddamned ROACHES.

Oh, now you've done it: you've gone and offended the Floridians by renaming their state insect. Who doesn't love the adorable little chitinous palmetto bug only to find it named as something so vile only a capitalist or Republican (or both) could think it up: a cockroach.

I've heard that in the Persian Gulf, dipping them in gold is rather popular. Puts a whole new spin on "goldbugs," I think. Whether it's a halal process, however, is beyond my ken.

Commissar Theocritus wrote:If Jimmih was a disco god his anthem song should be, "I will survive," not the 1980 election...

I think it was "I Will Survive" the swamp rabbit. I guess Monty Python had already gone off the air by then.
<br>Why, give a man enough Billy Beer and he'll bust a (third) leg sooner or later.

Besides, didn't Billy smoke a hooter with Willie Nelson atop the White House? I'm too lazy to Scroogle that one, but talk about gettin' high to get high.

Come to think of it, the very progressive and intellectual song "I Can Speak American" by the British artistic powerhouse The Screaming Blue Messiahs seems appropriate here, as one can dance to it, it mentions W (not as the Evil One, but a "W" all the same), and has Cartery drawls. Oh, and some PhD in Oppression Studies has even spliced four Kubrik films to make it. To think we AmeriKKKans could have remained part of the UK, where everything is better, but we had to go and throw all that away:

I think we have located Pinkie's long-lost mother.

Yahoo News wrote:Yelena Saratova shouts as she and other Communist supporters march to mark May Day in downtown St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, May 1, 2009, with a portrait of the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin at left. During the Soviet era, May 1 was a major celebration of worker solidarity, Soviet might and the advent of spring. After the Soviet collapse, it provided an opportunity for Communists and others angry over the switch to lopsided capitalism to vent criticism.
(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

The original photo was cutting off her shovel, so I added it as a way to restore historical justice.

Red Square wrote:

Yahoo News wrote: During the Soviet era, May 1 was a major celebration of worker solidarity, Soviet might and the advent of spring. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

"worker solidarity, Soviet might and the advent of spring"??? That's hysterical.
Actually I find myself a bit intimidated by this Slovak Oma.

To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, "Wendy, give me the shovel, give me the goddamn shovel, Wendy!"

Red Square wrote:I think we have located Pinkie's long-lost mother.

Yahoo News wrote:Yelena Saratova shouts as she and other Communist supporters march to mark May Day in downtown St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, May 1, 2009, with a portrait of the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin at left. During the Soviet era, May 1 was a major celebration of worker solidarity, Soviet might and the advent of spring. After the Soviet collapse, it provided an opportunity for Communists and others angry over the switch to lopsided capitalism to vent criticism.
(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

The original photo was cutting off her shovel, so I added it as a way to restore historical justice.

Damned if she doesn't look exactly as I remember her. But when you say you added the shovel, do you mean you Photoshopped it, or did you create a lot of--if you'll pardon the expression--"shovel ready" jobs? Someone has to make the shovel, and then someone has to inspect it to make sure it passes government standards; then you need to pay a courier to fly it to St. Petersburg in a 747 staffed with flight attendants serving booze, and have the 747 escorted by fighter jets containing photographers to create a photo-op. Think of all the jobs you're creating! Or even saving.

And you needn't worry about it scaring people and sending them fleeing into the streets. Yelling Yelena's already doing that.

Yelling Yelena may actually be a nice addition to our collection of cutouts - Flat Fatima, Flat Gareth, Lou the Looter, Islamic Rage Boy, and others.

Red Square, GMTA

Like so...

My grandmother...

Pinkie in her old age?

I think not. By that time Pinkie will have become a sort of Super-Uber-Maxima Commissarka, and therefore entitled to a shovel with some bling.

Oooh Super-Uber-Maxima Commissarka. Fancy.

7.62, if you've ever felt the sharp end of Pinkie's shovel, you'd want her promoted and far, far away.

Sweet thing that she is.

I think she smacked me around some when I first came to the Cube. Thus one reason for creating the People's Rifle(TM). Now, I'm just used to it, and am even learning to enjoy getting thwacked by the shovel.

Red Square wrote:Looking forward to your diligent report, Comrade Mi!

Great links, Comrade Mi. For those who can't read Ukrainian, they are dealing with an attempt by a group of five young anti-communist nationalists to break off the head of Lenin's granite statue in downtown Kiev on June 30, 2009. They used a sledgehammer and a folding ladder. I start laughing just imagining how they traveled to the site with all that equipment. Perhaps took a subway to Khreshchatik. And how were they going to run away from the police carrying a sledgehammer and a folding ladder? That's comedy material.


The news stories made me laugh and I think the journalists really enjoyed writing them. And the spread of your links is from "Radio Liberty" to "People's Truth" - that's just about 180 degrees. I especially liked the episode at the police station. How come? Do you read Ukrainian?

Red Square wrote:How come? Do you read Ukrainian?

Wow! I didn't know you were a земляк. So these stories must have a special ring to you, товариш.

<p align="justify">Well, your being from Kyiv was what attracted me to the site in the first place, пане Олег. But, I suspect, there are some other ex-Ukrainians among the (Red) Cubans, aren't there?

<p align="justify">The stories certainly do have a very special ring to me. I was in Kyiv this year for my 20-year high-school reunion (145th school), and was surprised, that one of my classmates (now living in Israel) still so thoroughly detests Germany over Fascism, that he would not go there, while having no problems coming back to Ukraine, where Lenin is still standing... And, whoosh, a week after we all come back to our homes planet-wide, the Lenin is gone...

Alas I don't know of any other ex-Ukrainians here, unless they are acting undercover. And, as I mentioned before, I'm not actually from Kyiv (Ukrainian version) or Kiev (Russian version). I'm from the city of Cherkassy, about 100 miles south of Kyiv. BTW, when Ukrainians say it their way, Americans hear "Cave."

There must be something about those Ukrainian cats sitting on roofs as seen in your avatar. Observe a nostalgic picture I did a long time ago from the memory, as I lived in Siberia, imagining a cat on the roof of my old house on a warm summer night... It looks almost exactly like your avatar.

THE DREAMER

The cat on my coat of arms sits on the fence, rather than the roof, but your "dreamer" certainly is a relative... I shall save it in my collection. Thanks!

LENIN'S REVENGE
Vengeful Lenin Statue Smites Drunk Man in Belarus

AP-Yahoo News wrote:MINSK, Belarus – Belarusian officials says that a massive statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin collapsed on a man who was hanging from it, killing him on the spot.

The Emergency Situations ministry said Monday that the 21-year-old man was drunk when he climbed onto the five-meter (16-feet)-high plaster monument early Monday and hung from its arm. It then broke into pieces and he was crushed.

The statue in the southeastern Belarus town of Uvarovichi was built in 1939.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is a staunch admirer of the Soviet Union, and the nation still has numerous Soviet-era monuments to the revolutionary leader.

Obviously, Lenin statues will no longer tolerate the abuse they've been exposed to in the recent years. Inspired by Obama's organizing message, Lenin statues have also organized themselves into a close-knit community, apparently communicating via pigeons.

Hate to nitpick, comrades, but it's Spring™, not spring.