Comrades,

I have become very suspicious lately. Everyone else is churning out one brilliant post after another, and me, I'm stuck with the bottom of the barrel of ideas. What is going on? I see Pinkie writing one clever vignette after another, and a carrying on intrigue from one abandoned post after another (she thinks I'm not watching her).

Comrade Whoopie seems in tip top shape with his ideas. Comrade The People's Comrade is churning out one relevant post after another, and Fraulein is practically dancing the Tico Tico through every post she comments on.

Chedoh continues to be all cute and clever, and the list goes on.

Who stole my idea function? Was it you, Comrade Red Square? I wouldn't even put it past you. I'm going to dig deeper into this and find out what's really going on around here. I can smell another show trial around the corner.

Colonel 7.62 pops up here and there, but I bet he's up to no good. I mean it only takes a few hours a day to clean a gun collection like his.

Just remember. I'm keeping an eye on you, comrades.

Comradista, No mention of my glorious song writing abilities that poke a finger in the eyes of capitialist swine?

I'm hurt.

The noobinski

Leninka, you know how it is around here, we all go through dry spells from time to time.

Here, I was saving this quote for the next time I step on Red Square's toes.

“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
--Jean Giraudoux

Comrade, I only have to pop in now and then. I lose track of time so easily. Is it already July, 2010 in the standard timeline? Amazing. I'm still basking in the election day glow of our Dear Leader Obama. Eh, tomorrow, or is that later this evening? I'm going to go hang out in 1917 Russia. Such glorious times! Did you know in 1919, Lenin himself gave Red Square a charter to run The People's Cube? It's a delightful document to behold. But I digress.

I blame BP. I think BP took your creativity, stripped you of your ability to widely post, and in general covered you with oil. I suggest you file a claim for compensation, and I'm going to go dump this BP stock I redistributed from a capitalist somewhere in late 2009.

I must confess, I'm not a communist. I just want everything to be fair.

Leninka, I do not agree that you lack significance. But if you feel threatened by a stream of ideas, this is a normal Progressive mindset. So on the one hand you can take comfort in having a sort of paranoia in common with all Progressives. On the other hand you might initiate the normal Progressive response to threatening ideas, i.e. the ideas of others. You should immediately attempt to control the source and transmission of those ideas. Might I suggest a good Book Burning Campaign ™ or possibly filtering the internet of those Comrades propagating excessive ideas so as to align them more closely to acceptable levels of collective achievement.

Thanks for all of your condolences and visual stimulation to my brain waves.

Sorry I did not mention you Groucho Marxist. Did you say you aren't really a communist!! What!! How do you think we make things fair around here? At the point of a gun, or with the threat of extra time in the gulag. This is why you are a commie whether you want to be or not!

Nevertheless, I still think someone is spiking my vodka, or extracting something out of my brain during my regular Jiffi-Lobos. I bet it's that vampire, Grigori.

Come to think of it, I wonder if Comrade Kook isn't trying some kind of brain experimentation on me. I think we need to look a little closer at his activities.

Actually I'm seeking a comrade to assist in the writing of a song in honor of our spiritual leader (he's dead) Che'

Do you have any talents here?

Not right now, I don't. Sorry. I'm telling you. It's gone, all gone.

The world is a zero-sum game, Leninka. By being creative, you take away creativity from your comrades, and vice versa. So the Party has recently decreed that all creativity be redistributed equally to all progs.

Unfortunately, most progs have creativity that measures in negative values. You might call some of them creative black holes. Hence equal redistribution may sometimes result in a zero value for each one of us.

So I wouldn't worry - any misery is bearable as long as we all share it equally. Just enjoy your quota. And it doesn't feel right, that's the sacrifice you have to endure in order to help the less creatively endowed. How do you think they felt all their lives until this decree came about? You should be gratified and feel self-righteous that your loss has become someone else's gain.

And, by the way, thank you for naming names. We will now know who is the hoarder of creativity and will deal with them with all severity of revolutionary justice.

Dear Comrade Leninka, the present rut we are having in Creativity is driven by the Fact that the Dэaя Lэadэя is making all our Maяxist Dяэams come true; we are finally seeing the birth of Amэяika.

Never in our wildest dreams, inspired by LSD, or too much Vodka, did we imagine this day to come. No wonder some unfaithful Russian 'Comrades' are jumping ship and flying out to the Яodina as spy rejects...

The next six months will be a Dяэam Comэ Tяuэ for us, and a nightmare for Reactionary Americans.

Red Square wrote:You might call some of them creative black holes.

It is neither possible nor appropriate to question Red Square, but be advised comrades, the HalMark Gulag For Racial Slurring ™ still has vacancy.

The whole Halmark "black hole" episode reminded me of an old sophomoric joke from the Motherland:

A young beginner teacher drew a cucumber and tomatoes on the blackboard as she wanted to talk about vegetables. She asked the kids what those were and Little Vlad raised his hand and said it was a gigantic dick.

The teacher burst out in tears and runs out of the class. She returns with the school headmaster, who gives the kids a long speech about decency and ends it with a statement: "I will not tolerate hooligans in this school, especially those who drew a gigantic dick on the blackboard."

The People have been reduced to tears.

Is funny, da?

Now everyone will laugh, the first person to stop will be purged!

Is reminding me of equally funny joke from the Motherland...

If you want to fill your refrigerator with food, just plug it into some Party leader's microphone.

Good, no?

(Wait, wait, take your hands off me, it was just a joke, I was only kidding)

Whoopie - that joke was actually about radio... You see, all Soviet apartments were being built with special wall sockets for the radio transmission, which for decades had only one channel coming from Moscow. The special radio that came with it didn't have a dial, just an on/off switch. Plug it into the wall and enjoy, from 6am to midnight, commercial-free government propaganda mixed with mild, carefully measured entertainment.

In the last few years of the USSR, they added two more channels as a sign of liberalization. We were given 200% more choice! New radios came with three buttons for three government propaganda channels streaming from the wall socket.

The most common location for it was the kitchen, next to the regular electrical socket for the fridge - so that people could cook food and eat while listening to glowing stories of success of our planned economy in putting plentiful food on the tables of the Soviet citizens.

Hence the joke about a guy whose fridge was always full of food that no one could buy at the store. So someone told on him and he was visited by the Economic Police. The investigation concluded that he had simply plugged his fridge into the radio socket.


(This picture was once posted by Mi in the news section, with this headline: "Obama: having more than a single source of information is a 'distraction'". You see, Mi was lucky to grow up in the glorious Motherland as well).

Very Progressive and enlightening comrade Red Square. We should all be so lucky some day.

I remember another joke: A Soviet diplomat came to tour America in the 1980's. His tour guide bragged that over 20% of American households now own a video camera. The diplomat not to be outdone replied that over 40% of Russian households have video cameras, but only 10% of the people know it.

Hahaha. Never heard that one before.

Did those Russian toasters ever make one's toast really crisp, or did a piece of bread come out soggy on the inside and burnt on the outside? Of course, if Dear Leader ever had a cash for toaster program, surely the toasters we would get in return would be absolutely perfect, and use no energy whatsoever, right? And what would be done of the old toasters. Would some mechanic be ordered to make them utterly useless by forcing a piece of mushy tofu into each toaster until it gooped it all up? And then the poor little toaster would be taken to a toaster junkyard to be compressed into metal and recycled into a government subsidized luxury hybrid for sale at $48,000 a vehicle with a $7500 credit for anyone who purchased it, of course.

Comrade Red Square,

Glad to hear that all I have to strive for is zero, my favorite number.

Comrade Jibaro,

What explanation for the fact that is a complete void could be better? I am so pleased.

<off>

What is 100 yards long and eats cabbage?

The line in front of the Moscow butchery.

I wonder if those State issued radios were strictly one way. Might they been used to eavesdrop as well? I'd love to see a schematic for the radio as well as the wiring of the socket it plugged into.

I don't suggest that the KGB would monitor every home 24/7 but they may have had the capability to listen in to a particular home if they had cause to suspect the occupants. Much like the FBI can tap your phone line.

This brought me to a tear.

Number one, I have been distracted with boring duties in the gulag and beet fields and have not the time I am desirous of, to spend with my loyal comrades and 'radesses, which is distressful enough. And now I learn that brilliant and intuitive Leninka is "losing her edge" or is in a "dry spell", neither of which sounds very impressive or desirable. Oh, the sadness.
When I find a "dry spell" I find that reach for a little touch of Vodka is helpful and brings back the "edge" we all want for our skillful writing and such.
Have a nip, dear Comradess Leninka and we will look forward to your next blathering on and on skillfully written enjoyments.

Thank you for those tears, Fraulein. Please place them in a collective tear pot, so that they may be shared equally. In the olden days, anyone who even stole a tear might be sent to one of the furthest out Siberian labor camps. Now, they are just making jokes here about my creativity being pilfered. And Comrade Red Square is the worst, trying to trick me with his convoluted and masterful brainwashing talk about black holes.

You're most kindly welcome, Leninka. I have no doubt.... I have little doubt, that in short time, your crafty and acute writing abilities will return with gusto. And unlike poor Comrade Whoopie, you won't be drug off to the hoosegow.

Whose gow now Frau?

Very creative, my hoosegow prone prole.

Leninka - in the Motherland toasters didn't exist and no one would know what it is you're asking. It's a bourgeois decadent habit, don't you agree, to waste people's electricity on making a piece of soft bread harder if you could simply buy hard bread in the state store.

In the USSA, however, toasters play an important role as sex partners of some of the important Party apparatchiks (cough... Chairman Punchenko... cough). Why do you think they are called apparatchiks? As members of the family, toasters and other household appliances automatically obtain voting rights. And since a Party member can have as many household appliances as his status permits, this ensures victories in every election.

After the Revolution, of course, we will go back to a more moral and austere non-toaster lifestyle known as "workers' paradise."

Speaking of Punchenko, where has that deviant devoted party apparatchik got off to? Domething caught in the toaster, perhaps?

Dearest Leninka,
I think it's Bush's fault. He has a "mind sucking" ray device mounted on a satellite. It was launched just before he left office and .....

Grigori writes in his little Red Book of "I can't get no RESPECT", page #1,001:
Commissarka Pinkie said; "that drunken Holy Man" (previous entry)
Comradess Leninka said;"I bet it's that vampire, Grigori."

and the maddening pace of the US conversion to the USSA. Let's face it, we're all exhausted.

I fear I may have abused your creativity Leninka. Forgive my forwardness. I'm noobski I realize. However I fear I have become a "Cuban" now. The sudden rush of glorious inspiration here has resulted in mass writing of parody that may have overloaded the otherwise medicocrity equality that flourishes here. Please forgive. I will now become more like everyone else.

I think dear Leninka has gotten off on the wrong footings here. We should not dwell on individual glory and creativity but the creativity of the collective and the collective is still most creative.

As members of the family, toasters and other household appliances automatically obtain voting rights. And since a Party member can have as many household appliances as his status permits, this ensures victories in every election.

Glorious comrade leader with a small "L" Red Square, I had no idea. This is wonderment become comparables! Does dear Leader (big "L") plan on implementation here? Why, the votes, the votes would be super magnanimous, would they not?! In the gulag, we have many wonderful, modern voting appliances! I have tingle running up my leg!! (never mind, there was a short in the toaster)

and if we can add garden appliance, oh, the excitement!

Comrade Leninka

I have three words for you:

Speaking of work...

Seven paradoxes of the socialist state:

Nobody works, but the plan is always fulfilled. The plan is fulfilled, but the shelves in the stores are empty. The shelves are empty, but nobody starves; nobody starves, but everybody is unhappy; everybody is unhappy, but nobody complains; nobody complains, but the jails are full.

And...

Q: What is an 8 hour workday here at the People's Cube?
A: 8 am to 8 pm

"[highlight=#ffff99]Q: What is an 8 hour workday here at the People's Cube?[/highlight]
[highlight=#ffff99]A: 8 am to 8 pm[/highlight]"

It's more like 8 am to 8 am, but I'm not complaining. Our glorious Kollective provides all.

Comrades,

After a weekend of cleaning up all the black holes of the gulag, and then collapsing in a corner in a drunken vodka coma. I wake up to find this discussion.

Comrade Groucho Marxist,

Do not worry. Here in the gulag, nothing is your fault (I learned this long ago from Comrade Theocritus). Watch how Comrade Grigori blames Bush, as we should all continue to do, for every little blunder.

Phew, Comrade Red Square. I did fear that the owning of a toaster would be all too taxing on citizens by the time our glorious system is implemented, so I am glad to hear that there will be no toasters in the Progressive World of Next Tuesday's ™ "worker's paradise," (which we already live here at the Cube.

Fraulein, you are just tempting me to have something I should not want, or need, with those photos of toasters. Perhaps you and Comrade Whoopie like to collect such mementos, but it's best for the rest of us to forget that toasters ever existed, the sooner, the better. However, that bicycle/lawn mower invention may come in handy.


For the last 15 years, we have mowed our lawn with a hand mower, partly for sentimental reasons, and partly, because it's actually fun to do. My grandmother was a sweet Southern belle who never wore a pair of pants, and yet worked at an 8 to 5 job until she was 85. She also mowed her own lawn with a hand mower.

We have prog neighbors who walk by, and surely they must think that I am a follower of the Goracle, as are they, and yet, it is they who hire the lawn mowing out to be cut with polluting gas mower (which I have no objection to). I rather choose to pollute the air with a large gas guzzling American car, myself, which, surely, they must find abhorrent.

Leninka, Please help

My muse has diedmarxist inspiration has gone. Perhaps too many beets? Not enough vodka? I don't know. I have so many glorious tunes started but ........auuuugh

Is it writers block? Perhaps too many nights away from the gulag....

Help me.