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Instructions for using the 'DIY Masterpiece!' kit

Consumerism has already stuck at it in earnest, like the proverbial shirt and ass to each other, you know…

(Ha! I do know a big word or two, huh? And so glibly too! Literally all by itself – 'consumerism'! Even at so early an hour in the day!)

No wonder there are moments when I just want to grab myself by both ears and smooch the bristles in my cheeks (for some reason, it's thicker there, nearby the ears, even though I scrape my pan with seemingly same level zeal… )

The urge to kiss is really profound, full of that pure sincerity that springs from the deep in my heart, without queer inclinations… Just a straightforward kiss of brotherly approval and admiration… Like, a man-to-man one amid the battlefield…

For, otherwise, how far will we get to, and where end up with the current hip tendencies in homo-maso-transwi quirks?..

And one could add a lot of other things in line with the matter in hand, which is far from being palatable or welcome at all. I mean that by steadfast keeping to the right ideals and lofty dreams, you risk your daily rations. As it always was.

The most scanty scraps of life experience should prompt your guess on impossibility to ram so-called tolerance down just any climate zone’s throat, regardless of severity of its weather conditions… Nope. Or are you fascinated by the prospect of carnival along the taiga clearings? To the cheerful rhythm of the axes rumba, hah?

For the sake of bringing it over and driving home even to slow learners I have right now and here had to use an almost direct text…

But let’s leave gay woodcutters to jolly lumberjacks and 'return to our rams', that is to the completely different—by its innocence—grabbing someone by their ears and, with that inimitable Brezhnev’s threefold smooch, smacking them in each ear in turn—chmow! Chmow! Chmow! You deserve it, man! Just look at the squiggles he spewed out on the topic of consumerism!… Or whatever it's called? And it's only two o'clock in the afternoon!

Yep. This here gem of eggheadedness—consumerism—got generously spilled out and used as the very first cornerstone in the introductory notes undertaken for the common public benefit. Notwithstanding the high possibility of a subsequent brutal assault or—contrary, but not less unpleasant—bearing responsibility to the fullest extent of the law…

Yet, the brave and indomitable go the whole hog! Yes, the habitual fear remains by me due to its gene-deep ingrained nature, however, to somehow faded degree—since my ass hasn’t been kicked for pretty long. 'The dead do not reach,' the Etruscans used to say before they turned Romans. Mishanya Rostovtsev explained them to me in great detail before he went enlighten the Emigrant Lyre…

And so I green-light the state approved moral efforts by any moralizing bully who's just itching to dig up deviations from the demands of the present day censorship—full ahead, sonny, with your excavations, collect the evidence, and then shove the finds up your ass for all I care. Because I’m entering life stage crucial to the extinct before Red Book compilation dinosaurs. Possibly, as the last of them…

Well, maybe there still are a couple more lying around somewhere, unpredictable, but certainly not in our area. Yes, I’m a grouchy dinosaur, and the appeal deadline for becoming anything less crabby has been missed, irrevocably, and no sly loopholes to screw the rules, given the size of our technical specifications…

I lived through a time when jeans were still jeans, not a holey veil for revealing kneecaps and the surrounding skin. And the era of red-stitched 'Texas' pants (from which jeans essentially degenerated) still gather dust somewhere in my memory (it's not about the pants, but about the era; you can't throw that in the washing machine).

I remember, as if it were yesterday, a French comedy film was playing (I just forgot its name), where the phrase 'the customer is always right' was said aloud, after which we have what we have: global consumerism. Well, wherever you look, it's there – all’s covered with the bastard’s dirty paws prints.

The falks back then guffawed, as true as I’m here! Everyone wanted at once to become a customer and always be right. That’s how it was laid waste, the infamous USSR, may it never be mentioned.

Although, of course, it's far from the first in the line of degenerates nicknamed 'the state', and I strongly don't recommend delving into the history of the Russian state after 11 a.m. – lest you experience a sharp decline in your vital functions.

In short, it's best to put this clinical case aside, especially since we’re in the instruction manual of a different topic: why did novels go to hell?

For technical reasons, as we've always been taught.

Let's take a simple example – Tolstoy's novel 'War and Peace' – and ask ourselves a frank question: will the average champion texter be able to churn out such a monstrosity (with just two thumbs (left and right), before the end of their life?

We have to sigh here and admit it: maybe up to the middle of the second volume, tops, but they won't reach much further.

From this, the final conclusion emerges:

The novel, as such, has no prospects in the global twilight of consumerism other than the Red Book.

The harsh truth of life: chew it if you want, or spit it out if you don't.

On the other hand, there are plenty of consumerists who have absolutely nothing to do with all their accustomed 'rightness.'

'What you fight for, you get,' was a saying common among the Heroes of the Civil War (1917-1922), marching to the wall a decade later to be made away with according to the Article 58.

(Have any of startup or already finished writers ever noticed the phenomenon of stickiness?

Sometimes you insert a word into a line without giving it another thought, just because it happened to be hanging on in your mind. But it sticks around to pop up again at someplace further in the text. If not in its natural appearance, then at least by distorting the subject matter. The dickens prompted me recollect the USSR! Damn!)

But enough of the sad distractions and self-advertising of my professional cleverness, just let’s focus on the upcoming book before the preface ends.

It's certainly not a novel at all (I don't even understand why the hell I even dragged Tolstoy into this), but merely a kit of spare parts from which anyone with nothing to spend their 'rightness' on is free to assemble their own novel, according to their personal preferences and with full right to do so via copyleft (;-).

And the author (there he is, at the end of the previous line, winking his right eye) will not sue anyone at anywhere. The title itself, 'DIY Masterpiece', suggests exactly this conclusion, that the set of chapters presented within it might be used, say, as LEGO blocks (I didn't have any when I was a child, but my grandkids taught me how to play with them).

However (leaving aside kids of the past or present), each chapter also have a purely technical name: 'Component Puzzle-Piece', acronymized nicely into CPP.

If desired, it's easy to assemble CPPs into pictures, in any combination, right down to spectral psychedelia, or the traditional pyramids, again, to your taste. Change them, insert your own, and even transform them into an engaging online or board game to fill your free time—it's your choice, and you are always right.

Or, just to be clear (metaphorically), here's a box, something's rattling within… What exactly? Who knows! DIY the Masterpiece of your own and you'll see…

You can guess the number of pieces without even opening the kit. It's best to wrap things up here; I can't explain it anymore clearly. Besides, there are also other things to do.

Time waits for no man, but still tolerates me, the last of the dinosaurs.

All the best to all.

Truly yours ` Sergey

Stepanakert, 2022-08-25

CPP #1: Beginning the End

The mechanism crackled appetizingly, with a resonant, reassuring click, just like an English lock should on an apartment door pulled to close…

It probably has a spring inside that first allows the bolt to move back, and once it's reached the slot’s ever ready gap—crack!—shoves it into, and locks tightly as required for sufficient satisfying of the concept.

Of course! Everything must adhere to the main principle, the base of all foundations—the simpler, the more reliable. Immerse in it, understand, and let it check and direct you in all matters—from the mundane to the purely technical.

A hole and a stick—what could be simpler? And yet, they contain absolutely everything necessary for the most complex projects. They were the built-in thing from the very start.

Any rococo ornamentation is nothing more than elements of these two, in variously contorted combinations. This pair is enough for everything – the simplest stick and hole.

Take, for instance, the starting point in any construction project, even the most grandiose and epochal one. What's there?

Ha! The pointed stick of a peg, breaking a hole in the ground!… ‘Just a lit bit further to the left! Exactly! Drive it deeper, Tolyan!’

And at the next stage of the project's implementation, another pair comes into play: a crowbar and the hole it digs. To spite envious neighbors…

This is precisely what the world stands on, since the day of creation – all these pistils and stamens, pistons in cylinders, whatever… wherever you look, these two are locked together, as, basically, is in the action itself: here you go, bitch! here you go, bitch! NOW!… ahhh…

Dmytro Ivanovich chuckled approvingly at his unvarying favorite in the set pair of participants in the same invariable process, which would repeat itself everywhere.

It's hard to say why, but his preference as of a fan was constantly pinned on one and the same of the two. Perhaps it was some kind of solidarity or a certain interest with this particular part in any given pair of O and I.

Moreover, in reality, the action itself might well not even be in progress (yet or already), that is, not even taking place. Still, the slightest hint at it, just like that one, right now – the full of gusto bolt’s clicking into, evoked the feeling of solidarity, and comprehensive empathy.

Dmytro Ivanovich's fan sympathies never changed; they were markedly stable and steady.

There's just one reiterated action, but countless pairs of performers; you can't be pulling for each and every, even less you can root for both sides in a separate pair.

Freeing his mind from the initial motive for a grin, he slowly turned his gaze, and with it also the leisurely flow of consciousness, to the gray concrete in the flight of steps descending to the intermediate landing between the floors, from where it would be extended by the next one, equally gray yet going down in the counter direction, descending to a further depth of exactly the same amount – another measured half-floor, so that there, in turn, it would be extended by the next, about-turned too, going lower, in the same measure, to the U-turn of another to extend the arrived one and continue the circular rectangular helical rotation of the 10 flights of steps 'in the house that Jack built' – a shock worker in production, an innovator, a member of the trade union and the work collective of SID-123, who installed them here as demands the project foreseeing such, and only such, an unchangeable variability of the shuttle-like self-repeating process of ascent or descent. Up: forward-backward… down: backward-forward…

And so they flow, these flights, downward, all the way to the bottom, to the rectangular hole filled with the entrance door, there they led installed side by side, with a narrow span of about half a brick in between. As narrow as the outlook of the poor devil, the worker who installed them…

(Here Dmitro Ivanovich checked the free flow of his conscience stream taking a too cheeky turn. Because that Jack might well be a member of the party too. Dmitro Ivanovich prefers to not dwell on matters from the gray zone, neither gives out nor entertains any bold hints. Thoughtlessly irresponsible. No way, he avoids puns on 'mind narrowness' of a model member of our socialist society.

Not exactly a taboo by him, but simply a sensible restraint. We have everything needful for a happy life, so we don't need anything…

The staircase of 10 flights confined in the vertical shaft, just like any other staircase, epitomizes the crystal dream of a claustrophobe.

And we have no need for wordplay with slippery slopes. Natural selection never sleeps, loyalty to the prescribed standpoints and obligatory views is under strict control, both from without and from within.

Respect for the foundations is duly observed. We are proud of them, we are devoted to them, and we will never betray our most exemplary social way of life. Look into other nooks when hunting the dissatisfied!)

Because simplicity is the basic foundation of strength; any technological marvel ultimately breaks down into combinations of sticks and holes.

Yes, yes! From the faraway moment when a stick entered a hole made of the furry fist of our prehistoric ancestor, and only the sizes vary, but not the operating principle. And the fantasies of backward mythologies about three whales at the foundation of the universe, as well as the disputes of preposterously garbed opium dealers for the masses, about the consubstantial trinity and other such nonsense, are nothing more than the machinations of creeping schizophrenia paid by enemy intelligence services.

Oh well, who to convince here, in an empty staircase.

We even have a properly cultured cage here… well, the staircase one, I mean. It's not exactly terrific, but it certainly deserves a certificate, the Honorary Certificate in the socialist competition for the title of 'High Social Culture Entrance' among all the five entrances in this here five-story building.'

Vandals haven't been scratching their primitive arithmetic here (at any rate, not any higher than the third floor) for their announcements. Whose hole preceding '+' got cracked by whose stick coming after that same sign, and what awaits them after a couple of additional sticks: '='.

Plus the absolute absence of frescoes of a penis and balls, in the style of Picasso. Even though an abstractionist, he sympathized with the cause of peace and progressive change. He wished the socialist camp would grow and expand. And that famous Dove of Peace was his production, when asked by the Soviet Union. For free, by the way…

The whitewash, year after year, peacefully accumulates black dust above the painted, man-high panel of crusted paint coat climbing up from the steps in the flight. The paint (government-issue green, the best color scheme for anything anywhere), bears the inevitable, individual marks of everyday life.

Here, some irresponsible scoundrel, in a process of his home renovation, went down (or up?) to the in-between-the-floors landing and wiped his brush dry (yes, the color didn't quite match, but it's green, after all). Now, without buying a new one, he can start the paint job on the floor. With red, of course.

And over there the deep furrow in the panel’s plaster, the movers were working hard to fit the refrigerator into the cramped space around the turn from the narrow landing, in the process of dragging it (back-and-forward, back-and-forward, and so on) to to the said apartment’s door…

. . .

A usual—and recently too often—predicament occurred: Antonina Vasilna forgot that there was no bread at home, so she sent him to buy one.

No, let's be careful about 'sent'—Dmitro Ivanovich is not of those used for running errands. He's a Senior Lecturer in the English Department, after all. Sounds impressive, doesn't it?

Yes, the institute is provincial, nonetheless a rather prestigious one, decorated with government awards, and not just a mixed bag of nincompoops and bumpkins. Besides, he’s not a plain Senior Lecturer, like the other crickets in the cracks of their positions, but an SL notable for the personal academic baggage, a philological one…

And around here, by the way, such things still count, it’s not Central Asia for you, where khans and beys have been transformed into General Secretaries of CPSU Central Committees in their outlying provinces, by whose side diplomas, titles of laureate, scientific degrees, and so forth, have now become, albeit a special, still assortment of seasonal sales items, for intra-clan gifts…

For whom? Ha! They know best… Asia’s a separate planet on its own. That's who for.

So why, one wonders, should we be surprised by the stubborn resistance of Comrade Rashidov's country dacha—for half a day they were giving a hard time to a battalion of special forces troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs…

Chick-chick-chick-chick! My boys!..

Here’s 'fluffy little balls' for you… Hmm…

'The Party calls 'we must!'' and off they go, the trainloads of White Gold – hogwash and junk whoppers…

But what can you do if Big Bro doesn't get it in his thick head that a field can't produce three crops a year, no matter how many paper millions you spend on irrigation.

It can't: even if you plow it with modernized AKs…

Nepotism, from the Latin for 'nephew,' I think? Nothing near like it here—in the rest of Socialist Asia, on one-sixth of the planet—no, there's not even a whiff of clannishness. Heh!

Your parents-in-law, their brats, the godfather to yours, your brother’s relatives—you can't run away from your homies or shirk them, you're not some kind of ghoul, after all.

And, by the way, regarding mutual understanding, we can only envy the Jews: they'll always find a place for their own, even if he's a complete asshole, and even if they know full well he's a hopeless asshole, they won't abandon their own stranded. The family name like Zilberman or Goldstein certainly obliges you to find a place for the mudak…

And what about our Slavic assholes?

'Petro, have you done a stretch?' – 'Yep. So what?' – 'Well, I have too, but Ivan hasn't.' – 'So what? Shall we see to his paying his debt to society?' – 'Well, we need to get busy, I think…'

However, the phony diplomas and certificates are one thing, but the baggage is a completely different matter. You have to earn it with your head.

Dmitri Ivanovich always had a good head on his shoulders, even from a young age. As soon as he'd earned his Ukrainian Language and Literature teacher's diploma. About then they offered him a year-long retraining course in English, he didn't even consider it: of course! It's like two diplomas, and two diplomas are like two ski poles.

A Ukrainian pole is especially useful among intelligentsia, oppressed by the dominance of Muscovites in key positions. A modest 'Ukrainian language teacher' is like a pass and a letter of recommendation to today's luminaries like Boris Ten, who translated 'The Odyssey' into Ukrainian, and to other important people with leverage.

Hence the position in the English department… a provincial pedagogical institute? – still not a teacher in a one-horse village school. Over the years, the pronunciation has also improved, although Roma Gurevich's damn [Ɵ] sounds more authentic. The Jews are somehow more slick at languages, and a knack for theatrics too, these fellow members of the intelligentsia, oppressed by the same bullies.

As for Shevchenko’s attitude to them, well, there are objective reasons for everything… anyone is a product of the concurrent period, and in his time, the proletarian class hadn't even had time to emerge, for playing the role of future hegemon… therefore the poet slips out anti-semitic statements reminiscent of mid-century farm idiots…

However, Roma can rest easy—98.9% of the Ukrainian-speaking population have never opened the book of Great Kobzar. Taras's heritage is known in volume of a single line, his signature one, the immortally winged:

'…I grew up among the strangers, my hair turns gray in a foreign land…'

… but no futher, thanks to the compulsory secondary education of the Ukrainian SSR. In which territory, by the way, a surname ending in '-ko' in no way guarantees that it’s not a secret agent, this here 'cholovyaga' with whom you're now chewing the fat, in turn sharing your caches of political jokes.

And how many '-ko' types have risen to the top echelons of the KGB? Socialism is good at leveling endemic features.

Slow and steady, the baggage has accumulated. A translation of Shakespeare's play from English! Ha! How do you like it?

Boris Ten at that time proclaimed the challenge: let's bring Shakespeare to the Ukrainian reader! They should be well-informed of the world literature treasures!

Dmitro Ivanovich became one of the informers… no, that is to say… this ambiguity is completely unacceptable…

Yes, of course, the KGB approached him when he was already working at the institute. Or rather, they summoned him… suggested he’d cooperate.

Well, he said neither yes nor no, he needed to think about it. Evasive dragging out followed until they left him alone.

His father had instructed him still back in his student years: 'They’ll come to recruit. Don't become a traitor!'

And, as a result, in the appropriate column on one of the sheets of paper, in a folder with the bold imprint 'Case №' in the center of white, pliable cardboard cover, a corresponding note was carefully written in a bureaucratic hand. Two white strings, glued to the middle of the cover edges, tied into a loose knot, and the folder returned to the massive, dark-steel-colored safe behind the clerk with the invisible captain’s shoulder-straps.

This is how it happened: Dmitri Ivanovich was tacitly believed to sympathize, though not openly, with the Ukrainian nationalism.

However, his public behavior offered no evidence to back the supposition, except for his pointedly constant use of the 'mova'. In his daily life, both in chatting and in teaching, he spoke exclusively in Ukrainian.

Yet, giving preference to the 'native language' won't even lead to administrative liability. Nope. There's no article for that; such a breech is not covered by the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR.

So he lived peacefully, teaching one of English grammars and some other theoretical nonsense to future English teachers, despite the vague rumors that had seeped out through the steel walls of the official safe. It's a small city, after all…

. . .

Yes, he'd swear by anything that upon arriving in Kyiv (a four-hour suburban train ride), he was immediately followed, even at the capital's Suburban Station, by a team of plainclothes men who 'led' him passing from one to another. That is, throughout his travels on public transportation.

They were betrayed by the similarly excessive indifference in their faces, the too fleeting, empty glances (the operational briefing demanded no display of interest)—all these marks on top of the absolute absence of any relapse to the personal thoughts, not even occasionally, that kind of thoughtfulness people on duty cannot fake. No, they didn't indulge in private meditations—duty is duty.

The venerable Boris Ten and those 'sympathetic' to the idea of Ukrainization in the editorial offices of republican publishing houses nodded with complete understanding, when a guest from the provincial wilderness shared his observations, through his 'fresh eye', of the realities of metropolitan life on the trams and trolleybuses…

But even they, seasoned veterans, lacked sufficient awareness of all the tricks of the KGB to put forward even a remotely logical hypothesis to explain the KGB's replacement of his briefcase. While he was riding in a shared subway car. A bulky brown leatherette briefcase with sagging-in sides. He grabbed it from under his seat and got off at the station he needed. He didn't even immediately notice that the briefcase had been swapped; they were so similar.

And when Dmitro Ivanovich realized the weight was wrong and opened it to check, it contained a pair of work overalls, screwed up into a smelly ball. Go ahead and guess what to think about it at all. Blue work overalls, or rather, coveralls. Pretty stale. A peculiar sense of Chekist humor…

. . .

All in all, life, you could say, was a success, if you don't overthink it… After you subtract those annoying moments like when Antonina Vasilna forgets to buy bread.

However, it's also good for tone—the Senior Lecturer, though still quite vigorous, is far from a boy; a warm-up wouldn't hurt…

Antonina Vasilna… As the Russian classic aptly noted, 'a friend of my harsh days… ' and so on, along that line.

A friend from the college… they married almost immediately after receiving their diplomas. A week later.

Ah, Tonechka—Long Braid… the slenderest girl in the group… slim Tonechka…

She spent her entire life teaching Ukrainian language and literature at school, and at home she read Marina Tsvetaeva, in all her editions.

‘Antonina Vasilyeva, you already have a whole warehouse of Tsvetaeva’s at home. Why buying this one? They're just duplicates. Stereotyped.

‘You don't understand anything, Dmitro…’

As if there's much to understand—a new dress for an old but beloved doll.

However, the borscht she cooks is undeniably Ukrainian.

Since when did he start calling her by her first name and patronymic? Well, that was back when the children lived still by… Yes, exactly… At first, it was a joke, now it just pops out on its own—and only like that, not any other way. Automatically.

And what's so surprising about that? All that remained of the braid was a crop of wavy hair, dazzlingly white, about the dry wrinkles in her face.

Pensioner Antonina Vasilna knows the Russian poet Marina by heart, but still occasionally flips through… And from the earliest editions, at that.

Yet, she still retains her slender figure. So slim…

. . .

So, with dignity and without fuss, in style befitting a Senior Lecturer in the English Language Department of the State Order of the Red Banner of Labor, Pedagogical Institute named after (no, he'll have to catch his breath halfway through)…

Yes, with measured deliberation, without delving into any particularly lengthy topic, Dmitro Ivanovich descended to the squares of the ceramic floor tiles on the landing between his floor and the fourth.

From below, the sound of hurried footsteps approached, clearly in a hurry, and soon the sounds of drawn-out wheezing could be discerned. Heavy pants through the nose…