Sunday, October 30th 2022. Week 43

It’s 5:15 a.m. and I guess I’m about ready to get back into the world. I feel pretty good. I actually feel a little fat. I did a bit of eating last week. I’m not sure if I’ve come out of it yet but I guess there was a lot of nonsense last week. In the Talmud, they tell us that if we have too many male servants, too many Men working for you, you suffer a lot of theft. It also recommends that if you have too many women, you suffer from witchcraft. Wisdom there for sure.

I didn’t answer these calls and temporarily blocked my phone because of them but I got a phone call from both Lena and Tanya yesterday. Unilaterally, I refused both calls and then blocked the numbers. The rules are the rules and I am not available on Saturday. I’m sure they know that but I am also quite sure that I don’t remember anyone who has helped me out from the local stock of day laborers who has not attempted to break this rule. This is either obstinacy and anti-semitism or it is simple stupidity. I believe in the second one. Well, let me temper that thought. I believe it is the necessity of Monday because it’s Saturday night and this is a good reason to drink. They need money for alcohol. They need money for alcohol everyday but on Saturday night, they are willing to break the law.

I keep the shabbos as much for keeping drunken Saturday parties away from me as much as any love for my heritage or religion. I’ve told people this when they asked me. Most people who learn about this but who do not have any type of clothes relationship with me believe that I am a religious man. This momentarily gives an open door to Christians to find some bridge between us. If I am a religious man, we can at least both believe that we believe in God. This was how Lena approached me to bring my invitation to the local House of prayer. It has a mildly positive effect here where pious believers allow themselves elevated status because of their belief.

I don’t love isolation but I prefer it to integration with people I would rather not suffer. I don’t have the tolerance or the resources to hang out with starving people. I have always been open to entrepreneurial thought if and only if it’s a matter of figuring out the logistics of what actions need to be taken to make some money. I wanted very much to participate in local small business that would supply jobs. I was even willing to do this without a salary and absolutely without any elevated salary. If the company made business, I’d be happy to take one share, the same share as everyone else. I’d also be willing to show up and work as I can just like everyone else. But I’m not interested in being a sponsor, the local bank or the go-to guy that pays for other people’s dreams. I’m not a financer or a stargazer. I don’t pay for my entertainment. Especially I don’t pay for disappointing drunken entertainment. I have not been to a strip club in 30 years.

I’m not a fool but just personal sanity asks me to believe that there is a shred of humanity left in people. I hope against hope that there might be a moment of love or friendship involved in something. I’m not particularly starving and I don’t feel lonely. I don’t mind trading or bartering at a low level and I don’t even particularly care if I’m spending money on things I don’t really need for my survival. I’m not doing this because I desperately need someone hanging around me. I’m just doing it because it allows some sense of interaction with the community. Good or bad, this at least gives people an understanding that they are touching me. If someone is heading towards my place from time to time, they know I’m not Dead and because they have this weird group think, they believe they have their attachment. It’s like my minimum tax requirement.

I’ve noticed that I am free to tell everyone to fuck off from time to time. Tensions will rise and people will start to have their usual dark thoughts. They’d be happier if I was “with someone”. They all live in absolute mortal fear of their own thoughts. God forbid they should think. Their own neurotics and thoughts and desires go against every single bit of training they’ve ever had and it terrifies them. They have no idea what to do with someone who actually enjoys his own thoughts. We’re not going to say the words that I prefer them to other people’s nonsense.

I also want to say that it’s probably a good idea to keep at least some doors open. You never can tell when I would prefer some help to doing something myself. Getting a brief house clean or my clothes washed is a luxury item but sometimes it’s nice to be able to get this luxury. I don’t particularly enjoy Ghenna’s company and I don’t really like being in close proximity to him, he literally makes me sick to be nearby, but I can’t argue that it’s nice to have someone who can dig some holes for you or show up with materials that I personally don’t have access to. It’s good to have these things in your pocket.

The thing is that I am just not going to throw in with them. I do not wish to drink alcohol because it makes me sick. I do not wish to engage in activities that will make me sick. I do not wish to sit around and listen to gibbering idiots escaping from life in brutal belligerence. I don’t like to drink alcohol, I don’t like the effect of alcohol and I don’t like what it does to human beings. I do not like to be around drooping, dripping and delirious drunks. I don’t like the potential of violence from Men or from women. I don’t like the dull synaptic response. I don’t like observing the human animal on alcohol because I do not find it amusing, funny, healthy in any way nor do I wish it near my life. I prefer sobriety.

Drug addicts by the way are just creepy. The problem is twofold there. You have the strangeness of their thinking plus the fact that the world demands that they are criminals. If you were to take the criminal element out of it, you would just have odd individuals who think out of the box. That might be actually interesting. I mean, if you were bored, if you really just wanted some company, having someone who could truly take a flight of fantasy might be interesting to listen to. You never can tell what an original idea will sound like until you hear it. But mixing this with fear and paranoia based upon the paramilitary police hauling you away for most of a decade kind of takes the love out of these things. No fun of any kind is the law of the land. Natural pleasure is disallowed, fun is severely frowned upon and only our obligation to misery is a constant.

So, I know why they were calling me. They were hoping that I would be happy to be hearing their voices. Perhaps I was lonely and wanted 35 seconds of company in exchange for some money that they desperately needed to buy some alcohol. They wanted to go get trashed with their friends and maybe I had some money for them. The answer was a blocked phone number. One of these days I’m going to be smart and block these phone numbers on Friday afternoon at about 4:00. This will definitely make for a quieter weekend. Frankly, they could be on fire and it would not be my business. I guess it would bother me when I found out that they burned to death later on. I would feel sad and would attend the funeral or ask about their health should they survive and need time to recover. But I’m not running to their house on Saturday night with a rug to put them out because I don’t believe they did anything except for money for drugs or alcohol including setting themselves on fire.

Along these lines, this is probably why I despise this war as much as I do. I also don’t want the military coming into my life or the police or any official anybody. I don’t want to be bothered by people who are empowered by martial law or political rights given to degenerates and abusers who thrive under such situations. One of the lessons we were supposed to learn from the rise and fall of the German Nazis was that this perverse government gave Credence and power to perverts and psychopaths. This is what is happening here and people who should never be allowed to rise and abuse others are given power. This is how I come to be my own doctor most of the time. This is how I come to spending a lot of time alone. Too many perverts and psychopaths having too much power and freedom to be abusers.

On the other side, I’m also not completely thrown in with the Ukrainian war effort. I am not a fan of the Russians and they are the aggressor nation. They are the colonizers and the power mongers. They are the Nazis in this and they are completely embedded in the rise of fascism the oil business has been sponsoring for decades. They are the evil of the world or at least deeply in bed with the parasitic evil of the world. They are global warming. They are garbage making destroyers of everything. They take the fun out of life for everybody. 

But you can’t help but notice that inevitably, the ukrainians are cut from the same cloth and grew up in the same schools. They might feel some sense of patriotism in their defense of home, they might have truly thrown out drinking in their military for the purposes of being more effective warriors but they are still fighting the same propaganda War. Their people still live the same lives as the Russian people. They have and had the same division of wealth between rich and poor and their people were in parity with the sort of money that Russians received. A little less of course because the men were still heading to Moscow to make more money than they could make it home. It really is the same place and the same people and for the most part, everybody speaks Russian.

I’m not knocking Ukraine. I am technically half Ukrainian. Or, I’m just Jewish and somewhere in the lineage our tribes, the tribe of my family, went North and stayed long enough to get German names in Prussia before getting evicted and ending up in the settlement of pale. That’s how we came to my father’s Belarusian side and my mother’s Ukrainian side. My maternal grandfather never even claimed to be from Ukraine. Even though the place he is literally from before immigrating to England and eventually to the states it was known as Poland then. Well, it was Poland for the brief period that they reappeared on the map.

Of course, I take pride in the underdog fight. Even if it is a well-financed underdog fight, you appreciate a tough guy when you meet a tough guy. My mother’s family is comprised of complete psychopaths but they are tough guys. Jewish people are very resilient. We have been made hard by a history of anti-semitism. We have been ousted from our homes violently many times. It is in our DNA to expect the worst. I am Jewish. I expect the worst. I am a tough guy and I am forever vigil. I don’t like drunk and stupid parties because I don’t like the potential for random violence from natural anti-semites. I don’t like the thought of getting caught in the middle of drunken belligerence from an idiot Patriot suddenly free from his inhibitions. I don’t like the smell of drunks generally, but suddenly ending up in yet another fist fight would of course take the fun out of it again.

I do have one other complaint about the war in Ukraine. I appreciate that we have all of these rich relatives sponsoring the fight. We have donations from all of these countries who happily send over their War junk to help the ukrainians continue fighting and dying. I suppose it is very pleasant to pay for their entertainment. They get a feel-good story with their tax dollars. The weapons manufacturers get free commercials as to the potency of their death machines. Everybody is appropriately making money and we get to sit back and take pleasure in ukrainians and the Russians murdering each other all without any particular vested interest or fear. The Europeans get to enjoy this like a blowjob from a Russian prostitute. It’s basically the same thing.

Of course, they are not going to look at the situation and say that they will give up drugs because they don’t like the drug dealer. There is still gas and oil coming from Russia and you know, you don’t really want to piss off someone who is providing you with good drugs. Of course, Europe could pull itself up by its bootstraps, go cold turkey and start popping up windmills and solar panels. They could take some of their tax dollars and invest in pure sustainable industries, building up companies that allow for electrical production without burning fossil fuels or using up unsustainable natural resources. They would also be able to invest in their own companies rather than sending money to Russia. It would be the last lazy approach, it would take a little bit of heart and sacrifice to make the changeover. But it would stop the war.

They are never going to come to this decision though. There are too many Nazis in their own ranks. The oil business pays for most of the political action in the world. All of the conservatives are funded already. They are also getting fat checks to do their job just like the Ukrainian army is getting weapons. Everybody’s getting fat on petrodollars and nobody ever gives up their drugs. Not for any reason whatsoever. If you’re connected and your check is in the mail, you are not going to do anything to break this chain.

So we have this garbage fest. Garbage people, garbage military vehicles and the absolute plastic covered garbage to feed them and resupply them all get dumped onto the territory of Ukraine. The Russians like they do everywhere are making a garbage dump out of the land. It requires no extra effort other than to fire the gun and they create some damage which requires money to be spent and the oil business be used to transport the materials to put everything back together. The oil business doesn’t donate any of this material, every single military movement done by an internal combustion engine makes more money for the oil business which makes the entire thing profitable for everybody involved. The only minor cost is all of the cannon fodder which technically speaking is all of the participating soldiers and civilians hanging out these days in the territory of Ukraine. The entire country is basically a meat grinder and Europe and the United States and the Kremlin are just enjoying the show.

How did I end up extrapolating all of that from a pair of unanswered phone calls on Saturday night? I don’t believe in love existing here or anywhere really. Perhaps there are hidden shreds of it, little bits of dusty residue to be found amidst the garbage and wreckage. Perhaps some genuine emotions still exist inside these broken frames. We are all just grabbing for peanuts after all. We are all impoverished. Not just economically here but also morally and socially. Everyone suffers from the misery that everybody contributes to. Everybody just follows the rules saying that misery wins and happiness loses. They quit being communist 30 years ago after all. They became adversarial to each other almost 30 years ago.

Back in the day, the pragmatists used to say that it would take 50 years for people to unlearn this. The fact that many people said that it would take 50 years to unlearn this leads me to believe that this was a thought that was given to them via propaganda. Of course they fed the pragmatism. They fed the pragmatism then in the way they feed the insanity now. It’s all always been propaganda in a land that disallows individual thought religiously. Keep everybody’s eyes and ears on the show. Keep the flow of bread and circuses going. Never let your audience go bored. Never let your audience have a day off. Never let them rest.

Because you know that this was the real reason that these women rang my phone yesterday. They just wanted to remind me that they do not rest on Saturdays. No matter what I may say or how many times I may say it, they just couldn’t help themselves from ringing my phone on a Saturday. They cannot ever allow a day to go by without advertising themselves. They need their pity parties. They need their attention. They just can’t let me have my day. 

They are a product of their environment. This is how they were taught to live.

The simple fix is not to simply block the phones. I have had them come to my gate and scream my name. The more difficult fix is to simply cut them off unilaterally. There is no more money from my house. You will never receive a penny. I’ve tried that. My neighbor who believes himself to be elevated via political and financial help from the chicken people likes to run his gasoline engines from time to time. He believes it’s important to start them up just to make the noise. Just getting in a car in this very quiet place is enough to destroy the peace and ruin the air for a moment. And in the coming winter, without warm air convection taking the pollution up into the sky and further inhibiting the clouds from dropping rain, the poisonous gas will just sit here with us at ground level.

More Russians giving other people their garbage without a second thought. There is no invitation for this by the way. Nobody ever asked them to be around. They just do it out of Christian kindness. They just like to share the misery.

***

In case you’re wondering, I ate three meals from Friday evening until this moment. I made some absolutely perfect flatbread which I cooked with a little olive oil and ate with some tomato based veggies and a remarkably tasty hummus/cream. All the veggies were fresh from the garden, the bread was light and fluffy and delicious and the hummus was very creamy. My third meal was water cooked and was simply some lentils and buckwheat with some noodles and the rest of the veggies. Nothing special, just something warm in the evening after the sun went down.

As for today, I believe my ex partner is coming up again. I don’t know whether it’s for another forest run or perhaps we will just dig up some raspberry plants that are growing in an  unfortuitous spot and move them to a place where they will get a bit more sunlight. There’s really not so much else to do. Who knows? We might even just talk. I doubt this but you never know.

I made my last delivery order from the local supermarket. It’s my last one because they are going out of business. One lucky month after they decided they would deliver to us, they closed it for some reason. The entire region is being shut down. Something to do with the war? Maybe. And unfortunately the things that I would have happily bought in bulk were bought by other people in bulk and we’re unavailable at the time of the final order. Bad luck. Back to the old logistics.

Other than that, my house is very much in order. My legs took a beating the other day but having two easy days and what will probably be another easy day today has helped. I didn’t break anything but I bruised something. I guess I bruise easily. And there is some possibility that I am going to town this week for the first time in months. I have a piece of bureaucracy that apparently I have to take care of myself. Also, my ex partner is heading back up to Minsk for her outpatient operation. Again, I don’t need to put any details here. I guess there is some tiny chance that I would go with her but I would not put so much faith in that. I could if I wanted to but it’s just money spent if there is no particular point of being in Minsk. All of this will be decided within two or three days.

And if it means anything, I’ve managed to get through the last three or four days without ever lighting a fire. The weather has been holding at around 10:00 and this platform I’ve built in the war room is actually sufficient to allow me to be in here quite comfortably. I have a small electric heater but even this is only running on half power. Very economical and I am not quite suffering from the cold. Again, we will see how all of this works when we go below zero. Of course there is one great positive of global warming. It doesn’t quite get that cold as soon as it used to and in town, sometimes they don’t even get snow until after New years anymore.

***

A Reasonable War (a short story)

Thomas was already dressed for work when he sat down at the table to enjoy his normal breakfast. He had decided that he enjoyed this moment of selfishness. He liked preparing his breakfast meal and he liked sitting by himself to eat and pay attention to the morning news. He found it gave him a great sense of self to have this moment by himself. His time was his own, nobody was bothering him from the screen he propped up on The breakfast table and he could eat in peace.

This morning’s breakfast was almost identical to what he had been making for himself since Bea went to visit her sister. The original trip had been for a couple of weeks but now she had been gone for a little bit more than 3 weeks, exactly enough time for him to have gotten used to making and eating breakfast by himself in the morning. He had also come to the opinion that perhaps he liked this better. He was also sure that she had come to the same conclusion.

Whether or not she had known that she was not coming back before she left was something he might never know. He could ask her and she might tell him the truth or she would say something soothing or harming. You never really could know what someone would say and of course, she had not been calling him to find out if he was okay. That is pretty much what told him that she might not be coming back. It was okay if she didn’t. If she was happier without him, he couldn’t argue with that just as she couldn’t argue with his Revelation that perhaps he liked his house better exactly as it was. That was part of the way the world was perfect. 

Everybody had rights and freedoms and everybody did everything by choice. There was even an opportunity to vote on continuing this system or trying something else but that box very, very rarely showed any kind of significant numbers. There were always chronic complainers and sometimes it actually became difficult to find people willing to do something to get the complainers to be happy. There were job boards everywhere for everything and everybody was free to either lend a hand or at least try. Yes, The chronic complainers always required the most attention and allowed the least satisfaction. But that’s life and we just had to live with that percentage of the population and people almost unanimously voted that this is also true.

His attention this morning was on the war. Things were at a standstill. Things were always at a standstill. It is very rare when there is any huge excitement to pay attention to. This was not either exciting or boring to understand because everyone knew that there was nothing ever to create a full victory. The war existed because the war existed. It was completely unnecessary and everybody was completely aware of that. Nevertheless, there was always a segment of the population who thought that we should never allow this archaic method of human elimination to end. There were many, many people who believed that we needed this violence one way or another. People needed to die, the population needed to be quelled of at least the violent people and therefore we all agreed it was generally a good thing. Not everybody. You could never get 100% agreement on anything but certainly well, well, well above the 50% argument ratio. That number rarely got hit either.

The thing he most liked about the coverage of the war was that everything was completely available. The actual statistics of the amount of people participating on both sides was absolutely accurate. The general agreement that no one should play with this was considered fair enough. Everybody knew that there was a certain number of people who would cheat the system. There were not many. There were always unreasonable people who could never accept the reasonableness of everything that we did but even that thought got perennially voted into remaining in existence. Some people cheated and that’s just the way it was. You couldn’t stop them if you tried so it was reasonable not to try.

Basically everybody called in every day. It wasn’t hard. Everyone was obligated to go to work. What that job was was also available to choose. You can pick and choose from a number of things. There were certain requirements. Food production was an absolute. Clothing and housing required many people. The hospital always had people falling and hurting themselves, broken arms and legs and of course people experiencing their last days on the planet or their first days coming into it. There was always something to do and they always needed people. But other than that, there was always a job board where you could choose where to go. The options were sometimes greater than others and you could always go back to a regular position if that made you happy. Well, if it made you happy and everyone there was happy to have you. Unfortunately, that was also something to vote on.

This was the reason that he was so interested in the war today. He was starting to think that perhaps people didn’t like himself very much. He had been thinking about this a lot and it was possible that he was a little selfish. You could be selfish. Everybody was expected to try and enjoy their lives as much as possible. But perhaps it was possible that he really wasn’t showing very much enthusiasm for life. Perhaps he was not really being the best citizen he possibly could.

In the war, it was possible to sign up for any number of jobs. There were of course the front line people who made troop movements and shot weapons at our opposing Force. These battles were always set up with the same amount of people carrying similar weapons on both sides. Sometimes it was a matter of strategy winning and sometimes our physically talented people were just faster and more accurate. It always seemed kind of strange to have people be really good at war. This meant there was always a possibility of them getting killed. It always seemed like such a waste to have good people die like that when they could have had very long lives to enjoy.

Sometimes people chose combat because they were depressed and unhappy. To some, the fairness of the world held little excitement. They simply got used to it and found that they didn’t really care anymore. Things were too reasonable. There was no edge to life. They hoped that entering the crisis situation where there was potential to die would be exciting for them. Some people got their wish and a bullet would find them and they would be missed. Some people stayed in it long enough to realize that they were happier in a reasonable world and came home. And of course some people just got injured and this changed them forever as well.

You didn’t have to go to the front to shoot and be shot at. There were plenty of people who signed up for daily support positions. There were people who were needed to carry the ammunition from one place to another. There was an endless supply of people needed to pick up the wounded and dead bodies and carry them off of the battlefield. There was also the team of landscapers obligated to come in and fix any damage caused by the warfare. There were even jobs available for people who wanted to be War journalists and photographers. When the official television coverage of the war would take place, usually the people managing the cameras were good at not showing exactly how many bloggers were running along with the offensive. They also signed waivers saying they could get accidentally killed. Everyone knew of stories where a blogger was not accidentally killed but killed on purpose because people didn’t like reading their blogs anymore. The vote that this possibility should continue was also in the great majority.

Thomas actually didn’t understand why we needed people running along holding their cameras when there was sufficient national coverage already. Maybe they just wanted to go there but didn’t really want to be responsible. Maybe they just like the thrill of being near danger.

For Thomas, the news of the war was enough. He knew how many people existed on both sides. He knew how many people had been killed and how many people had been wounded. These were absolute numbers. Of the dead people, he knew the cause of their death and their record in other days of War. These were important statistics to a lot of people. For the people who were wounded, he was also aware of how many were wounded by enemy fire, how many were injured because they had shot themselves and how many were injured by their own people. That last group would be intentional and unintentional.

This was another unreasonable thing that he never understood about people. In a situation where you were completely free to go or not go to the war, why would they take the trouble to shoot themselves in the feet? Some people thought that they trusted their own accuracy more than others. Some people wanted to be injured simply to give themselves a reason not to have to do fully physical jobs in the future. But even that didn’t make sense because unless it was an absolute necessity, nobody was ever forced to do anything. Usually people who were stronger and younger liked the physical jobs and were happy to sign up for them. And certainly, they got paid well enough. Everybody got paid well enough as long as they participated.

There was also speculation that some people did it simply because they liked going to the hospital. The hospital itself was not against this except in times of too many people getting hurt. Most of the time, because everything was planned and the statistics and actuarial tables known, plans could be made for the future and the hospital was usually ready for whatever happened. They also understood a certain number of people were going to be injured or killed in the war. The usual people coming in and going out were considered. There was even space for these self-inflicted wounds even if it was a bit unreasonable to have to deal with them. People needed what people needed and this was one thing that nobody ever voted against.

Thomas was pretty happy with his job. He had found his place in the bureau of statistics and had requested a permanent position after having tried it out and gone through a specific training course. Other than the obligatory time working agriculture, this was a job he was pretty happy with. He felt comfortable with his fellow permanents, worked as honestly as he could with the inventory requests and basically thought he was happy enough. Not everybody liked this kind of bureaucratic work for long periods of time. Some people thought statistics were too boring and most people wanted to be out in the weather as much as they could. Very few people liked being inside. This was another reason he had no problem keeping this job.

It wasn’t even a matter of money really. Everybody had the same money and nobody was hungry. There was no such thing as anyone who needed anything. Everything was reasonable. There were no people screaming about sin or morality. People had their beliefs and if he wanted to be spiritual or argue spirituality, there were any number of places both live and online where he could argue to his heart’s content. Nobody was stopping these kinds of arguments nor was anybody particularly stopping anything. If a human being thought they needed something, 99.9% of the time there was a place for them to go and find what they needed. Even killing was possible. That’s what the war was for.

But these were exactly the thoughts that Thomas had in his mind. Perhaps he had been too bureaucratic for too long and had been inside too long and become too soft. Perhaps he was missing out on life. He thought he was happy but perhaps he wasn’t. 

Maybe he was depressed that Bea was no longer with him. He really didn’t know why she was staying away but if this relationship was ending, this would be something significant. He would of course have every right to go find another partner if he wanted to. He didn’t even have to find another woman. He could find a man or a senior citizen or an injured person. There were even self-inflicted War wounds looking for partners. That was a pretty interesting situation to think about. No, if he was lonely he could very easily do something about it.

The statistics on the war were rather banal. 163 people from his sector had died, 194 injured significantly to the point that they could not go on. There were 34 injuries that were not severe enough to stop participation. 37 people had walked away from the fight. 53 people had refused this particular mission. There were also 400 people observing at the battle either as journalists or filmmakers. 70 doctors and 205 assistants were on hand. There were 205 necessary surgeries as a result and only 35 failures from surgical procedures. 12 people died who were thought to have a chance to remain alive and 23 would live but with worse conditions than were anticipated before the surgery. The blame for the miscalculations were 75% on medical students not knowing exactly what they were doing and only one doctor had failed in his duty. The doctor had no excuse for the failure and no particularly significant number of people blamed him. Everybody makes mistakes.

The statistics from the other side were basically exactly the same. He reread the cause of this particular fight. There always seems to be a cause for these fights although it was not really necessary. Usually it amounted to a problem with trade between the two sectors. Some sectors had particularly better land or people more suited to certain things that their neighbors did. Or perhaps it was just a dispute between sectors because sectors like to have disputes between them. Not everybody but there was always a percentage of people who like making fights. So with reasonable discussion and normal trade no longer possible, an application would be made to the war department. Land was designated for the battlefield, weapons were distributed and people were trained. No one was ever drafted of course, it was always a completely voluntary army but it was very, very rare where a sector would simply surrender and hand over whatever they wanted. Perhaps it was a particular type of Bean or maybe one sector had fewer women than the other. It really didn’t matter, sometimes sectors just surrendered and handed over some beans and everybody was happy.

Thomas had never participated in a war. Some of his friends in school had signed up for a couple of weeks. He knew a few people that signed up for war training who never participated in the war itself. There were always people who thought it would be interesting to find out what military basic training would be. Everybody wanted to at least know what it felt like to shoot a gun but not everybody wanted to kill and even fewer people wanted to be killed or have the possibility of such. Thomas never really felt himself to be that self-destructive. He generally liked things quiet and peaceful. The idea of running around and yelling and screaming and hiding as bullets whizzed by his head was a very romantic thought but not one that he actually wanted to participate in for real. He could watch a film about a war and imagine that that was him easily enough. He even had friends who like to take serious hallucinogens and then watch War films just to drive themselves crazy. All of this seemed much more safe than actually killing each other.

But he was intrigued by the thought. Maybe if he were to sign up for the war, Bea would think of him more. Maybe if she thought he had gone off in a fit of hysterics that this might lead her to come back to him. He still wasn’t completely sure whether he wanted her to come back. Their relationship had been good at first, a little a little less after the honeymoon but now they were mostly just going through the motions. He understood that. He understood that the honeymoon was over. Everyone knew this. Honeymoons always ended. Perhaps if he were to go into battle, this might rekindle some fire in him and in her at the same time.

Or maybe he wanted to try killing. One of the most important basic rules, constitutional rules and rules of life was that it was improper for people to kill each other. There was absolutely no unexpected violence in normal life. There were no particular needs and no particular social divisions so there was no need for theft. Nobody was hungry and nobody was discriminated against and everything was voted upon. None of the problems of the previous world existed now and basically everybody had an opportunity to live and stay on the planet as long as they wanted. 

But maybe there was something to this killing. Maybe there was something deep in his DNA that made him need this.

In basic education, people said that at one point fear was the basic Factor behind all wars. Sometimes people genuinely feared for their lives and needed to defend themselves. But mostly this fear was manufactured by the ruling class as a way to keep the lower classes suppressed. A certain percentage of the male population would be killed off and everyone would be emotionally scarred from the battle. Sometimes, the rulers would participate in the battles themselves. But after a while they would sit, far off from the battlefield and observe and even after that, they never left the comfort of their home. 

The hypocrisy of all of this became too much and in a wave of amazingly precise global violence, almost every world leader advocating War had been wiped out within a 3-day period; those three days, March 30th, 31st and April 1st were now international holidays. The greetings we give each other on those days are literally “April fools! You’re dead, Mr President.” This is usually followed by a laugh and a warm handshake.

Thomas also however had been questioning the validity of his life. Perhaps he was too civilized. Perhaps he never really felt very much viscerally anymore. There was no fear so there was no real sense of fear. There was no hunger so he could choose not to eat for a while but there was no point in it. He was not worried about anything because there was nothing particularly to worry about. As long as everybody did their job reasonably, as long as everybody showed up for their 4-Hour work shifts, there would be enough food and clothing and shelter and entertainment and social interaction. There was enough for everybody to keep living and interacting and enjoying themselves and at the same time, they were not harming the planet anymore. All the work that they did was completely carbon neutral and without pollution. All of the food they ate was naturally produced, planted and picked by hand and everybody participated in this. Everybody participated in everything. There was just no reason for great emotions.

But maybe this was the problem. Maybe this was why Bea had quietly wandered away from him. It had given him a lot of time to think. Maybe the world wasn’t worth living in. Maybe he had seen enough and lived enough. He could choose to end his own life. Many people did and the statistics of people who choose to check out were available for all to see including their reasons. The only thing was to make sure that everything was in order and all of your social interactions were brought to a conclusion and then you were free to go. That was one thing about going to war. Because it was seen as an unreasonable thing, you could join the war emotionally. It was perhaps the one legal way to get out of entanglements.

He switched to the screen where people enlisted. There were quite a few options. He understood that even opening this screen would generate a statistic. Everyone would know that he thought about this today. Not that it would change anything but people would know that he considered joining. There was absolutely no reason not to fill out the form.

He had an option for training. He could choose full military training, half military training or no military training. He could opt for any number of specific jobs. If he did choose combat, he would have his choice of weapons.

He thought about it for a moment without checking any boxes. He thought about walking directly into battle without any training whatsoever. He understood that he was free to shoot at the people from the next sector. He was free to shoot and kill them without any repercussions. The only point of order was that they were also free to kill him. Because this was completely voluntary and a matter of individual choice, nobody would ever hold this against him. No one who did not want to be involved in a war had to be in it. And whatever people’s reasons were for holding this fight, you could participate or not as your heart allowed you.

He formed the picture in his mind of raising his gun at a group of advancing men. He could imagine the bullets whizzing by the side of his head. He envisioned taking aim at one person and pulling the trigger of his gun and watching the man fall. He imagined being the man getting shot, the painful thump on his chest and suddenly lying on the ground staring up at the sky. He thought about what it felt like for the spirit of life to leave his body, his last breaths of air, his last moments of vision and sound. And then what? A lack of consciousness. Oblivion. The end and then simply no more.

There was a time when people fighting in the military were seen as brave heroes. They were  to be respected by the civilian population and people were obliged to thank them for their service. Now however, there was no such propaganda. People going to kill each other by choice was simply a choice that people made.

The thought of the end of his life was very disturbing to Thomas. Perhaps he could be happier and perhaps he was bored but it was difficult for him to agree that his life should end. It was almost equally as difficult for him to imagine being responsible for the end of another’s life even if it was reasonably agreed upon.

He closed the war screen and switched off his tablet generally. The moment the electronic information ceased, he felt its presence fading away. He always felt that too much time on the electronic screen was damaging somehow. What he needed was more fresh air.

He opened the tablet again and unchecked his box for the ministry of statistics. They would hold his job for him for as long as he needed. He checked the box for agricultural work and was offered any number of jobs to do for 4 hours. He decided to cut grass. He had one hour to report and learned where he would be needed. He checked the box that said he needed no instruction. It had been a while since he went out to cut some grass. It was probably all he needed. He just needed to clear his head a little bit. Everything would be fine. There’s nothing like a little grass cutting to put everything into perspective. A little grass cutting goes a long way to making one feel that they belong.

***

It’s 3:30 and I’m sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. My ex partner has just headed off down the road to her bus back to town. Our issue with her trip to Minsk and whether I am going along or just making a visit before she leaves is still in question. My time schedule is set but hers is still up in the air. We will know as this day progresses.

I thought we were going to have a restful day but my ex partner made the mistake of stopping in at Ria’s house before coming up to see me. I tried to explain to her that there is a definite difference between men and women. If she wanted a restful day, she should have come straight to me. Instead she visited a woman and was immediately told about all the work she needed to do. This is one of the reasons I do not live with a woman right now. You would think this would be common knowledge already.

We did however smash it around here. We finished planting our garlic, even planting more than the original plan simply because we had plenty of it courtesy of Ria. We also used up the very last of our hay, closing up one box and then made two trips to the forest for some buckets of leaves. Forest leaves make an extremely pretty mulch but you have to cover them with a little bit of dirt to keep them from flying away. After that, we fixed the gutters for winter and brought all the remaining plastic from the water buckets into the barn. We even managed to hang the well pipe up better than it was before. The barn is getting a little crowded but everything feels very well put together.

Before she showed up, Lena came and made a run to the grocery store for me. She was dressed very nicely for church. She made a point of getting a compliment from me and admitting that she looked very good. She wanted me to come with her to church but I made some noises that basically meant no. She seemed in a very good mood to come see me. Her trip to the store came from her tip that onions were on sale. 

Also this morning, I got another call from Tanya telling me her plan was to go to the forest for mushrooms on Monday. She wanted to know if I needed any. 

Nobody is complaining. I also seem to be making friends more with my daughter these days. This is also something I’m very happy about. However, she tells me she has made friends with some kind of yoga person in the capital and is being invited to lay on a bed of nails. I cannot say that I am so thrilled at this news but it’s also difficult to say that I didn’t see it coming. It’s also probably not the first time.

Anyway, the last bit of interesting stuff from today is that I am still waiting for my very last delivery of food. I still have not ordered the window caulking yet. It needs to get done sometime in the next couple of weeks. But basically, there is really only one food box that has not been at least 90% closed up. I still have seven or eight cabbages out on the field. That would be the last box that needs to get filled in.

That story in the last section was something that I call utopian literature. I’ve been looking around for someone else who does this but I haven’t found anybody. There are a lot of people who write science fiction but I haven’t found too many people writing fiction about a future society that simply functions. All anybody ever wants to write about is intrigue and drama or murder. It seems like you cannot sell a book unless there’s a lot of blood in it. That story had some blood in it but at its heart, at least our protagonist told the truth about how he felt about violence and what it was for. I don’t know if this sort of writing is salable or not. I did a bit of it last year. But when I thought about putting something together, some bit of fiction or something like that, the only idea that came to my head that was interesting was exactly this story. To me, this sort of thing is inspiring.

Today was a really good day. Everybody is in a really good mood today. I feel like I am at the center of the small group of people who are happy to have me at the center of their group and this seems to make me very happy. I can’t really speak for the future. I can’t even see really anything but just hanging around and dealing with the weather. But the moment I feel very well taken care of and pretty well loved. It’s a very good feeling and I’m not arguing it even one bit.

***

I have a bunch of clips from my day off. Technically, from last night. I’ll just put him here without too much fanfare.

The first one is Putin’s 3-hour speech in Valdai. I don’t really think he says anything new. There have been some people doing posts about his anti-homosexuality rats and his obvious racism. But, you know, this is who he is and this is what he does. He lives in a different time and from A different World and he’s just milking the last years of his life the way he milked the stage for 3 hours.

If the 3-hour version is a little much or if you just don’t speak Russian, here is the one hour version with autogenerated subtitles possible.

Meanwhile, back in something resembling sanity amongst government leadership, here is Zelinsky pleading for peace.

As for some thoughts about the war and especially what’s going on in the Kherson region, Denys Davydov is pretty good about bringing the details to light.

I’ll be honest with you, it’s getting very difficult with winter coming. Russia continues to play the big boy in the war and the logic seems to dictate that the Russian army, like the Russian people outside of Moscow and Petersburg, are under financed and unprepared. The Russian army has actually underperformed and it’s not just a matter of propaganda anymore. It seems that when it comes to demonstrating military might or tactical superiority, the Russian army really doesn’t know what they are doing. I could be wrong but it seems that perhaps the best and most reasonable thing that Russia could do would be to simply withdraw.

The only problem with this thought is that the truth is he is just a sick old man and that his insanity is what has brought us on. I don’t think he has the capacity to understand that he should back off and I don’t think his ego will allow it. I hope I’m wrong. I truly hope I am wrong.

Meanwhile however, the machine that has created putin, I’m talking about the oil business here, has also created the misery that is the Republican party in the United States. Their relentless Christian propaganda, racism and propagation of violence makes the United States equally as complicit as anything aimed at Mr Putin. Literally, he is not the bad guy in this, he’s just another global politician in the mold of literally half of the United States. I’m saying this because of the obvious racism in this clip from the upcoming Wisconsin elections.

Unfortunately, the Democratic party and specifically our president does not seem to understand that the world should be made up of a lot more than economy, economy, economy. 

Perhaps there was a time when the idea of belief was all that was required of anybody. If the American government and the American people were built on belief, specifically good old fashioned Christian belief, this to me has become nothing but a ruse to steal money. This is not the time to ask people to believe that following money is the answer to their problems because most obviously, the world following money is what has gotten us into this shit box that we live in right now.

I am unfortunately not pleased with either side of the argument. I am actually a bit ashamed. The actual world problems are seeable, measurable and understandable but what the two “most powerful Nations on Earth” are most interested in is the process that has brought these seeable, measurable and understandable global problems into reality. This is not looking forward into the future. This is to global leaders living in their own insanity and 40 years ago. God help us all.

But if it means anything, Rachel Maddow points out that early voting and absentee voting seems to be massive this year. If it is true and the Democratic people are pulling together in force to do what they can to hold things together, perhaps there is some hope.

Or not. It seems like all of the interest in early voting and mail-in voting has to do with physical intimidation and scare tactics being used by the conservative side to keep liberal voters and specifically black voters away from the polls. Seriously, this is stuff we haven’t seen since the heyday of the ku Klux Klan. Welcome to America boys…

***

Okay it’s a little after 9:00 and I guess I should just close up this day. I have managed to put 12 pages of stuff here today. I guess this is about twice as much as I usually do. I hope the short story was interesting. I hope the early morning rant was worth reading as well. I guess everything should be taken seriously.

The truth is however that this was probably one of the best days I have had in a long time. From my visit with Lena early today and with my ex partner for the bulk of today, I am both grateful and stunned and thrilled to have had their company and assistance today. Both were extremely lovely and helpful and beautiful. Even remarkably so.

After my ex partner left, I got delivery of my groceries. It was a melon calling moment because I was quite happy with the service. It was something that I have not had for a long time, it took a ton of pressure off of me as far as picking up necessary goods. But this was the last delivery and they were closing the service for now. I could not even get certain things because they had simply come off the list. I remembered to tip the delivery guy by the way and he seemed very happy. I asked him if he normally got tips and he said it was pretty rare. I said something disparaging about Belarus and he kind of agreed.

When I finally made it to the warm room however, I had a new message from my ex partner. It turns out that the delivery service that brought me that hands-free crutch also delivered pretty much everything you might need. I went in and checked out the service and basically, it was an online version of something very similar to The Price club. They sold everything that you might want but in bulk. Actually, even that was not true. They sold everything that you might want. Not necessarily the cheapest varieties from the local supermarkets but the highest quality stuff. And there were some amazing deals in there as well. In fact, everything I wanted from the window silicon to a decent pair of pruning shears and literally 2 kilos of red lentils were available. Even the whole grain flour that I couldn’t find locally was available in almost any quantity up to five kilos!

I think we might have a problem with delivery considering I have to go to town this week and might be going to Minsk. Nevertheless, from a moment of sadness to Great happiness in one hour. I not only found a new delivery service, I found a much better one.

Of course now I have to worry about not spending so much money. It’s okay though. I don’t think any of it was wasted. It also means that this little house of mine in this crazy little village just got even more wonderful. I am not quite exactly perfect with what I want from the world. I could do a little bit better. But as of the moment I would be a complete asshole to complain. Today absolutely rocked. Today, I won for a change.