We recently added a counter to the CUbe (at the bottom of every page).

Currently it says:

The People's Cube wrote:You've been counted, Thought Criminal #868048

Write down this number and report to your Kommissar at the nearest railroad station. Don't forget warm clothes and a shovel!

A question Comrade Otis is asking is,

Comrade Otis wrote:"Will the 1,000,000th Thought Criminal get a free prize? Other than a free train ride, that is."

The one I can think of right away is the "Get free out of the Gulag" coupon, but perhaps there may be other suggestions from the grass roots groupthink collective.

Perhaps a free Cube or a shirt too? The lucky bastard will have, of course, send us a notarized screnshot of that page complete with time stamp, in triplicate, as well as three pages of bio, a work record, fingerprints, copies of all tax returns, and 3X4 pictures of him/her/its self, family members, appliances, and dachshunds.

I noticed it, but I am slightly concerned that some might post simply to 'bump' their counts up - much as some members on other BB's sometimes post nonsense or begin threads simply to up their post counts in their profiles... Now, given the potential for a free train ride, I would hope that Cubists will take this seriously and simply not consider it some sort of game...

S.M.O.
Current Thought Criminal #868118

Of course... this sort of thing is probably above most People's Cube Members.

S.M.O.
Current Thought Criminal #868122

In which case, you need not worry...

S.M.O.
Current Thought Criminal #868124

Comrade Red Square, as so many of the Lumpenproletariat of the Western World have not ever had the pleasure of enjoying White Sun of the Desert, how about a free copy for the millionth viewer guest of TPC.

Every time White Sun of the Desert is shown in the West we gain new converts to Socialist revolution!

For those of you who've never seen it, it is a rare Soviet film take on the American Western genre. A must see!

CUBE MEMO:

Some of our members (hint: more massively opiated than others) have confused the number of posts with the number that appears in the counter. Please note that the counter has nothing to do with the Cube database and merely registers visitors who don't even have to post - reading a page is enough. In this sense the counter's memory is similar to that of a goldfish: enter the Cube 15 minutes later and it thinks you're a new visitor. It's not like some simple counters on other sites, where every refreshed page counts (a principle they also used to count Democrat votes in Florida and elsewhere). No, our count is more the "the Hamburg score!"

P.S. I looked up "the Hamburg score" on the Internet but couldn't find any references except this old one in the Moscow Times: https://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/1997/11/15/031.html

"The Hamburg Score" (Gamburgsky schyot) is "a very important concept," wrote Viktor Shklovsky, the famous Russian literary critic and founder of Russian formalism, in 1928. All wrestlers cheat in performance and allow themselves to lose a fight at the behest of the organizers. But once a year wrestlers gather in Hamburg and fight in private among themselves. It is a long, hard, ugly competition. But this is the only way that they can reveal their real class.

Shklovsky maintained that a Hamburg score was also needed in literature. And using popular writers of his period as his example, he argued that, judging by Hamburg rules, "Serafimovich and Veresaev are negligible writers, Mikhail Bulgakov is nothing more than a circus clown ... Maxim Gorky's talent is questionable and Velimir Khlebnikov emerges as the champion."

Comrade Otis wrote:Comrade Red Square, as so many of the Lumpenproletariat of the Western World have not ever had the pleasure of enjoying White Sun of the Desert, how about a free copy for the millionth viewer guest of TPC.

Every time White Sun of the Desert is shown in the West we gain new converts to Socialist revolution!

For those of you who've never seen it, it is a rare Soviet film take on the American Western genre. A must see!

Thank you for propagandizing this great achievement of Social Realism, Comrade Otis! This would, indeed, make a great prize. It also touches on the subject of interaction between Islamic fundamentalists and Communists in Central Asia. Unfortunately the Communists in this movie look too much like cowboys, and the Islamic fundamentalists look too much like the Appaches, but it is all redeemed by the image of Sayeed the "Magic <s>Negro</s> <s>Indian</s> Muslim" whose blood feud with the local sheik (the harem owner and the exploiter of the oppressed women of the Orient) raises towards the end to the level of class struggle.

One thought crime is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic.

I think, in the interest of fairness and maintaining our Progressive Virtues, that we "invent" the winner of this "prize". Yes, it would be far much better to say we gave the prize to someone (who won't exist, mind you) then to actually give it to someone that actually does exist. My idea will thus prevent any prize-envy, prole uprisings and will encourage the proles to continue reading our glorious pages while we can horde the prizes for ourselves. With that said; I openly nominate myself to be the official prize-keeper and will guard the prizes on behalf of the Common Good™ -- indefinitely, of course.

Red Square wrote:CUBE MEMO:

Some of our members (hint: more massively opiated than others) have confused the number of posts with the number that appears in the counter. Please note that the counter has nothing to do with the Cube database and merely registers visitors who don't even have to post - reading a page is enough. In this sense the counter's memory is similar to that of a goldfish: enter the Cube 15 minutes later and it thinks you're a new visitor. It's not like some simple counters on other sites, where every refreshed page counts (a principle they also used to count Democrat votes in Florida and elsewhere). No, our count is more the "the Hamburg score!"

Dearest Incarnadine Trapezium,
I do not wish to 'sound' grumpy (I have been listening to Imogen Heap and Tweaker full blast for six hours, broken up occasionally by Pink Martini's version of Que Sera Sera just to bring on bouts of weeping... I may be slightly psychotic by this point), but I am quite aware of the difference between the number of posts (I believe this is #13750 - my quoting your post #13568.... the post numbers are visible in the links contained in the automated emails the Cube sends out to those who wish to be notified of posts in certain topics...) and the number of counted Thought Criminals (visitors... the counter is currently at 868785)... if I didn't know the difference, how could I post links to specific other posts within different threads, say, in the Cube?

No, oh Great Geometrix!... my point was that someone (probably Meow) is bound to be too tempted by prize of the free train ride, especially as you have curtailed his use of the Tupolev for the time being after the whole Kalifornia debacle... they will go away and come back and go away and come back and go away and come back, ad infinitum, simply to win - which is all well and good unless it plays havoc with the speed of the server, and that I cannot speak to... that they are members who may log in and post, upping their post count to prove they have visited is simply a symptom... and may become tedious or annoying... or both...

S.M.O.
Current Thought Criminal #868785... post 13570

Comrade Otis wrote:

Wait... so this isn't a scene from From Here to Eternity?.... Or Blue Hawaii?...

Sister Massively Opiated wrote:

Comrade Otis wrote:

Wait... so this isn't a scene from From Here to Eternity?.... Or Blue Hawaii?...

I think its from "On the Beach"...

Bvt. Field Marshal Pravda wrote:

Sister Massively Opiated wrote:

Comrade Otis wrote:

Wait... so this isn't a scene from From Here to Eternity?.... Or Blue Hawaii?...

I think its from "On the Beach"...

No no no... it's "Love Boat"!

Chairman M. S. Punchenko wrote:

Bvt. Field Marshal Pravda wrote:

Sister Massively Opiated wrote: Wait... so this isn't a scene from From Here to Eternity?.... Or Blue Hawaii?...

I think its from "On the Beach"...

No no no... it's "Love Boat"!

Meow's right... it's the episode where Captain Stubing, Isaac and Doc take the zodiac to that little island off Thailand after they get that map from that guy Daffy... and meet up with that French couple, and then everything goes to hell...

... oh wait... no... this is Castaway.... right after Tom Hanks loses Wilson...

Link to Wikipedia, White Sun of the Desert

See, there's a reason why you have been required to watch this fim.

Wikipedia wrote:The film is part of traditional space rituals among Cosmonauts. Charles Simonyi, the fifth space tourist, watched the film before beginning his trip to space.

SMO wrote:Meow's right... it's the episode where Captain Stubing, Isaac and Doc take the zodiac to that little island off Thailand after they get that map from that guy Daffy... and meet up with that French couple, and then everything goes to hell...

No no no, the movie you're talking about is The Beach, SMO. Which happens to star progressive uber-celebrity Leo DiCaprio (Leo!).

Chairman M. S. Punchenko wrote:No no no, the movie you're talking about is The Beach, SMO. Which happens to star progressive uber-celebrity Leo DiCaprio (Leo!).

Actually... it's a little known fact that the plot for The Beach (not to be confused with the incredibly depressing film, On The Beach) was originally a Love Boat episode... it simply never aired because it was considered much too dark for LB's normal viewing audience...

... honest...

... why would I make something like that up?...

Sister Massively Opiated wrote:

Chairman M. S. Punchenko wrote:

Bvt. Field Marshal Pravda wrote: I think its from "On the Beach"...

No no no... it's "Love Boat"!

Meow's right... it's the episode where Captain Stubing, Isaac and Doc take the zodiac to that little island off Thailand after they get that map from that guy Daffy... and meet up with that French couple, and then everything goes to hell...

... oh wait... no... this is Castaway.... right after Tom Hanks loses Wilson...

I think it might be a deleted scene from Brokeback Mountain when after a night of passionate homoerotic love making, and anal fisting a certain someone's colon is ruptured. The aftermath is when the pictured character realizes what has happened, and promptly faints (after finishing his... never mind...).

Didn't we get in trouble once for making super quote within a quotes? I think we did... and yet everyone is doing it. I'm ashamed! ASHAMED OF YOU ALL!

The next American space tourist to watch White Sun of the Desert with the cosmonauts may be none other than Bill Gates:

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Bill ... e_999.html

Bill Gates Eyes Flight To Space
Moscow (AFP) April 11, 2007

The world's richest man, Bill Gates, is considering a flight into space, a Russian cosmonaut said from the International Space Station Wednesday, citing Gates' colleague and space tourist Charles Simonyi.

What about rewarding the winner with a Luxury Deluxe Gulag Kit?

It could contain:

* A collection of motivational postcards with popular slogans - e.g. "By thoroughly chewing your food you help society!" "Economy must be economical!" "Wind orchestra - the perfect outlet for collective creativity!"
* A tantalizingly delicious small piece of really stringy chewy salo (bacon) that one cannot actually eat, but one can tearfully chew on special holidays;
* A pair of luxurious "portyanki" - two pieces of cloth (e.g. a small towel cut in two) to serve as socks; and (of course)
* A pocket-sized photograph of Lenin.

I guess if you wanted to go all out with the prize you could include a cube or a t-shit but there is such a thing as being "too generous."

Marx, Stalin, and Trotsky! We have missed or 1,000,000th visitor!

I just checked and the counter showed 1000338 - which means it happened a couple of hours ago.

Of course if nobody claims the prize with a screen shot (Meow with his Photoshop is not eligible) the Party and the Politburo will have to appoint the winner manually.

After careful deliberation we have decided to give the award to me.

As suggested by the collective, the award includes:

- Get free out of the Gulag coupon
- Another DVD of "White Sun of the Desert"
- A collection of motivational postcards with popular slogans - e.g. "By thoroughly chewing your food you help society!" "Economy must be economical!" "Wind orchestra - the perfect outlet for collective creativity!"
- A tantalizingly delicious small piece of really stringy chewy salo (bacon) that one cannot actually eat, but one can tearfully chew on special holidays;
- A pair of luxurious "portyanki" - two pieces of cloth (e.g. a small towel cut in two) to serve as socks; and (of course)
- A pocket-sized photograph of Lenin.

I shall collect the winnings after I submit a photoshopped notarized screenshot of the counter showing 1000000, three pages of bio, a work record, fingerprints, copies of all tax returns, and eleven 3X4 pictures of myself, my family members, and home appliances.

Comrade! Congratulations, you are a lucky man.

NO, NO, NO! I protest this entire contest!

What's so special about a one millionth visitor? One million is just another number. There's nothing special about one million. It's just an arbitrary number! Right now I'm number 1001063. There's only one 1001063 and I'm it. What do I get? Where's mine? Why don't I win too? And anyone reading this, you've got a one of a kind number too. One million? One million? What's with one million? This is elitism. I should win too. Everbody should win. I demand my rights. I demand to win. I want mine!

I wonder how many visitor views the Mime has had over at impeachforrevolution? He doesn't have a counter.

Prizes and games are against the Koran.

I can not support this decadence.

I wonder how many visitor views the Mime has had over at impeachforrevolution? He doesn't have a counter.

Yes, but Mulva does! He's had 19K visitors since November of 2004! That's 575 a month!

Comrade Red Square, be sure to lay out your household appliances on a dirty mattress with naughty magazines and pink thongs so that the collective (and me in particular) can enjoy the pictures to the fullest extent.

Greetings Comrades, may Allah's peace be upon you and upon his messenger Karl Marx too (peace be upon him). Remember the sacred words of the Prophet K. Marx that all competition is unlawful and an abomination in the sight of Allah. Even though we are in a competition with capitalism, we must not be swayed by logic, history, or a good cup of Starbucks. Killing is also wrong, depending on the target or day of the week for that matter.