The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов

of the A's' General Staffs reports me the quantity of their armed forces, yet adding up the military clerks and other suchlike chmo the numbers would be way higher. Still and all a manly man keeps to his word, if it was said 100 let it remain 100: keep the change!)

Now, every serviceman wears army boots. For the sake of calculus simplicity, imagine that all the warriors, from privates to generals, put on the same, cheapest, ‘kirza’ boots for $12 a pair. The footwear is worth its price and serves for 2 years (The artificial leather plant named after Kirov always was a reputed producer), thus, one year of the conflict secures peace-keepers' revenue for $ 50 000 by ‘kirza’ alone. But camouflage pants, Velcroed jackets, pea-jackets, belts, helmets?! But Kalashnikov assault-rifles, machine-guns, mortars, artillery, both ground and anti-aircraft?! But the ammo for all of the mentioned and still upcoming equipment?! But military trucks, armor vehicles, tanks?! But the land mines, anti-personnel as well as anti-tank ones?! But choppers, jets, radar and missile installations, night-vision devices?! But… (nearing the third decade of the conflict it dawned even on Jews in Israel what a bonanza it is here and they started to supply drones.)

I am running out of my fingers but we haven’t yet reached the military advisers who help each of the A sides to master the delivered weaponry. They also have to be paid for. In full… As they used to say in the besieged Stepanakert in the winter of 1991-92, ‘The Armenians pay Russians to shoot their artillery while the Turks (in Karabakh, Azeries are handled ‘Turks’ for some reason) pay Russians to miss the target’. Which is a jest, of course, because the military advisers never miss when Securing of Interests demands it. So it was in Khojaloo, so it was in Horadiz – the two key moments that did not allow the conflict to untimely die out. That’s the essence of Securing of Interests on the international arena, stick to it and keep it on.

However, the game is so engaging that it goes on at the internal level as well. Let’s take, for instance, R1. One calls it ‘Russia-Mommy’, another one handles it ‘Russastan’, the popular Lubea band sings ‘Russeaaa!’, I call it Russia but all those discrepancies converge in the same mujik who after his working day throws the earned money in with his pals to buy vodka and gulp it from the bottle’s neck and then he comes home to give his kids a stinging example of a reprimand, fuck you, fucking motherfuckers! Then fucking batters his fucking wife for speaking up fucking too much and falls asleep on the floor next to the cooled away Russian oven covering himself with his padded jacket while his petty Czar soigne gives out bon mots from the TV box above his sleeping head. And that’s the way it should be because State is a multi-functional community of people where each person performs their function. Someone is to make decisions which interests should be secured and in what way, another one executes those decisions, still other glorifies in his carols the decision maker and its executors and so on and so forth because I have no fingers enough for each and every one down to this very mujik who’s snoring now on the floor under his padded jacket and is nothing of a functionary but the material for the internal Securing of Interests.

Now, he’s given up his day pay to the treasury exchanging it for vodka distilled from the mixture of sawdust and oil byproducts and later he’ll give up his son so that they format the boy into a law enforcer who will Secure the Interests against his dad and other mujiks. The sleeper’s daughter will, of her own will, choose the career of a prostitute because someone should entertain the other functionaries in the society at their leisure time.

The hardest lot, of course, is that by those from the highest functional layer. Besides Securing the Interests in the outer and internal space, they have to think about their own interests too and that’s where they can’t allow themselves any slacking. Constant alertness and readiness for anything is the pledge of success. Here 'anything' means anything at all – to kill, to betray, to give in, and to lie under (not only metaphorically)… Securing of Interests demands utter dedication.

People! Humans! Countrymen! Do we really need all that?! What do we gain? Power, money, glorification? Be vigilant, O, neighbors, don’t get hooked with that petty scam! Power-money-glory are nothing but a means and not the aim for a sober-headed member to a human society. No! Our aim is the purest, unalloyed envy. Envy from the rest of society members is all we need. That's the apogee, acme and climax of human existence. Mere survival is not the goal for a Robinson Crusoe, what he really needs is finding an envious man Friday. Because neither nanny-goats no billy-goats can stimulate a normal individual. That’s where lies the foundation corner stone to uphold the working model of the human society. Perpetuum Mobile, with your kind permission, checked by the uncountable millennia of usage. At one pole of the society vertical there is Slave in a state of eternal inebriety while at the opposite pole we see Pharaoh – same shit of an animal only Rollex-ornated…

But why have I slid to expressing myself in such an evasively streamlined manner? Am I afraid to unequivocally disclose the scumbags' identity? Well, firstly, I’d rather avoid soiling my letter with the sewage stinkers’ names and, secondly, I’m far from being sure that Listiev, Mkrtchan, Nemtsoff, Sargsian and countless other executed from behind a corner would not start playing Securing the Interests the same shitty way were they to reach the higher levels in the game itself which is so f..er..yes! fucking addictive. You start to feel yourself kinda Almighty, you start to change the rules and draw new laws… Well, not the laws of