Sergey Kuznetsov. NasNet: issue 25

NasNet: issue 25
Sergey Kuznetsov

Publication date: November 24, 2000

Project: nineties

(More details about the project - here )

Keywords: rabbits, psychedelia, addictions

As you know, psychedelic people have their own special relationships with various objects and animals. So, Yura Zaitsev had a subtle connection with rabbits - the reasons for this were unknown, but someone, not without wit, suggested that the reason for this was the similarity of the word rabbit with the name of the famous magician Alistair K., of whom Zaitsev was also a fan.

And then one day Zaitsev and his colleague Slava Lebedev were on a business trip. They lived in the same room, smoked weed, listened to music and socialized culturally. One day, at the local market, Zaitsev bought a large ceramic rabbit, about the size of a table lamp. He brought it to the hotel and solemnly placed it on the table.

Lebedev looked at him for two days and on the third he said thoughtfully:

- What will happen, Yura, if I write the word “f*ck” on his stomach with a pen?

Yura's face changed. A fan of Psychic TV , Current 93 , Anton La Vey and Aleister Crowley trembled and said plaintively:

- Slava, you really won’t do this, will you? Is it true?

The magic word was never written on the rabbit's belly. And after a few years, Yura lost almost all interest in long-eared animals. Or perhaps made it more esoteric and hidden from the uninitiated.

* * *

In the last issue, I made a monstrous mistake: I cheerfully printed the text from a letter from my friend, confident that it belonged to him. Moreover - deja vu, no less - I clearly remembered how he told it to me seven years ago. It turned out that he was the first to tell me - story a life from the site www.anekdot.ru . In this regard, I apologize to my friend (who wished to remain anonymous), Dima Werner, the author of vovke and all readers.

Ivan G. wrote a wonderful memoir about the beginning of the past decade:

The beginning of the nineties was some kind of revelation for me about the limits of human patience and human fall. But my personal ideas about limits are unlikely to interest anyone, so I’ll just tell you a phrase I heard during the era of privatization of everything and everyone (autumn 94): then, after the first frosts, I collected cranberries in the vicinity of Malaya Vishera, came out of the swamp into the village and started talking at the bus stop with the locals. As always, there were complaints and curses addressed to the local and separately Moscow authorities. He asked: what will you do with all this? “You’ll have to endure it,” was the answer. “So,” I say, “there is no limit to patience?” “Yes,” they answer. “If they start selling public land and stop letting them into the forest or into the cranberry swamp, then we will kill THEM. Until then, we must endure.”

I remember this every time we talk about buying and selling land.

Before moving on to the logical topic of hatred, let's insert a form for your memories of the nineties.

Name

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Events

Five kilobytes of hatred

On Monday, a French court made a horrifying decision . Even the persecution against Napster scared me less. They decided that within three months Yahoo! must come up with a way to block the French from accessing places selling so-called Nazi memorabilia - that is, all sorts of items with symbols left over from the time of the Third Reich : porcelain, orders, etc.

I hope the reader does not need to explain what frightened me so much about this decision - certainly not the impossibility of purchasing a plate with a swastika or, God forbid, a lampshade made from the skin of my cousins. The danger lies in the fact that a terrifying precedent is being created: the catalog is prohibited from cataloguing. Moreover, he is required to comply with the laws of a country in which he is in no way located. In the next issue, China will demand from everyone they can to make sure that the citizens of the Celestial Empire do not read anything they shouldn’t read, and everyone will have to take a stand. No matter how I feel about the Nazis or, conversely, the Chinese, I don’t see any difference between these two approaches.

's ban on selling The first sign was Amazon Hitler's book Mein Kampf , which, it turns out, is still banned in Germany. As it turned out, however, it was only banned in German, but it could be sold in English. As a result, the English translation of this work became one of Amazon 's top German sales last year. In addition - here’s a funny detail - the Amazon robot obediently offered all buyers of “My Struggle” to buy a biography of George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the US Nazi Party. The anti-hate groups (the so-called anti-hate groups - a wonderful name, by the way) were furious and redoubled their efforts. Yahoo! became one of the victims of these efforts.

Let's step away from the Internet for a while. Now I am in America - and with interest I observe my friends in all the diversity of their attitudes towards the ideas of political correctness. It must be said that no one has good words to say about her; but Americans, recognizing the excesses and general stupidity inherent in any mass movement, still accept it in their hearts.

When I told my close friend the famous joke of one of the heroes of “Project: the Nineties” that he can never immediately recognize Jews and homosexuals, because until the last moment he wants to think well of people , her face fell. She definitely didn't find it funny - and I'm pretty sure it wasn't because she was both Jewish and lesbian. The monstrous specter of Judeo- and homophobia hovers over her - and does not allow her to appreciate all the countercultural (sorry) pathos of this phrase.

Meanwhile, why should everyone love everyone? I am a Jew and within the framework of this text I am ready to admit that I am bisexual. (You won’t get the notorious phrase “many of my friends are homosexuals and at the same time good people” from me. Somehow I don’t divide my friends according to nationality, sexuality and gender.) But why - love everyone? Do no harm to anyone - yes. Not hitting others over the head with a stick (in the broad sense of the expression) because they are different - yes. But why love? Why should anti-Semitic and homophobic jokes go away? After all, many of them are funny. (By the way, I don’t remember any funny jokes about gays... Although no: “And I bow, I bow...” He also: “What do we need other than fame.” For some reason it always seemed to me that he really about a bunch of my friends, regardless of orientation.)

Then my friend and I (I’ll call her M., so as not to get confused further) went to her house, where 5 more (or so) girls rent one large apartment. Considering that almost all of them are with girlfriends, I am completely confused about them. So, sitting in the kitchen with M. and her neighbor’s partner, I was telling some story in which the word “kike” appeared , which I, of course, translated as kike . It turned out that the listener did not know the word. Everyone began to be touched: now, they say, the bad word has disappeared from the language. They asked her friend (M.'s neighbor), she knew. M. was immediately delighted:

- And this is because she is Arab.

It turned out that this is their kind of game: since the girl is really Arab (somehow it sounds strange in Russian), they tease each other all the time about Arabs and Jews. That is, they behave quite normally.

And I felt sorry for the word kike . It is good that rappers use the word Nikger with might and main , saving it from disappearance. Otherwise, it would have ended up in that part of the dictionary that only specialists know - in an unknown area where an ordinary person cannot reach, because even Yahoo! is about to exclude it from its catalog and its search engines.

PS I wrote the above text in a public place. И, написав про nigger , обратил внимание, что рядом со мной сидит большой негр и читает Сиднея Шелдона. Подумав, я заменил nigger 'a звездочками - вдруг скосит глаза, прочтет и обидится, не поняв контекста. Before sending it to the editor, I thought, I’ll correct it.

PPS I re-read the text one more time. I wonder if the "Big Negro" racism will be seen in the phrase? After all, saying “big white” doesn’t even occur to me. I'll have to ask M.

Feedback

More about Zinoviev, according to Kirill Medvedev, whose reviews are in the Russian Journal, and translations are in the Language Shop. One day, the rector of the Literary Institute, S. Yesin, gathered students and told them the good news: the famous and iconic Alexander Zinoviev kindly agreed to give several lectures at the institute. The first will take place next week.

On the appointed day and hour, someone inquisitive looked into the appropriate audience. Alone Alexander Zinoviev sat in it and read the book “Yawning Heights.” The first lecture was also the last.

This is the story Ilya Ovchinnikov told . What’s most interesting to me is just one unspoken detail: did Zinoviev read “Yawning Heights” out loud or to himself?

Impression

Semi-anonymous de wrote a story with a terrible beginning and a completely happy ending.

Two days ago I almost killed a cat.

For the last three months he has been climbing into our house, pushing aside the mosquito net. They chased him, but he returned. Two days ago I caught him in the kitchen at night. I hold him by the skin and think about the method of murder. Then I realized that I couldn’t cope on my own, and there was no one to ask. He put it in the trash can, pressed it with the lid, got into the car and drove off.

And on the way I realized that I couldn’t go out in the city - I was naked. I drove outside the city and was released at a military prison. The culture shock was the realization that on the way I thought that I would write about everything to Kuznetsov, and then I thought that I was sitting naked in the car, at night, with a cat in a bucket, and thinking that I was thinking that I would write about everything to Kuznetsov, and then I thought...

The most amazing thing is that the author managed to get out of the logical dead end. That is, the endless chain of thoughts did not paralyze his ability to act: he let the cat out, drove home and wrote a letter.

Well done, by the way. You too - write. The best texts will, as always, be published.

Name

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