Freaks (Part Three)

Moving along the village streets, it is not at all strange if one steps on a piece of crap or a dog's pee. If one lives in the Balkans, however, it is not at all strange if one smells the striking stench of the collective identities that thrive here. We go further through the Ex-Yu streets to chronologically send to the end the monsters that emerged from the torn belly of the SFRY.

The seventh monster is the contagion that smolders under the name of the Federal Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This Balkan Iraq appeared on the modern political map in March 1992 after the successful referendum for independence boycotted by the Chetniks. Crookedly planted from the very beginning, this creation consists of two, or rather three entities, the Baliya-Ustasha and the Chetniks, who, despite all the slaughter, are forced to live together, within the same pre-war borders in which they lived from 1944-92 on the wings of Tito's phrases, which, for the sake of truth, had some mystical power. Scene of the bloodiest episodes in the Ex-Yugoslav wars (1991-2001), it is believed that around 110,000 people died in this territory and over 250,000 were wounded. Concentration camps reappeared on the scene in Europe after 1945 and medieval methods of torture were once again actualized by various orthodox Muslims, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians and similar pathologies.

Birth rates are terrible, mortality is stable, emigration is particularly pronounced, the future is extremely uncertain.

Collective identity: Glupe Balije, Mujo & Haso, Muslići, Poturice.

Genocidal potential: Built with the arrival of mujahideen from the third world, the dark traditions of the Handžar division are still alive.

Just a month later, the next abomination dawned on this world, this time a crumpled Yugoslavia, the idea of ​​the morbid moron Milošević S., his wife Marković M. and the Chetnik Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) - SR Yugoslavia. In this case, we have a vague insistence on the continuity of the terminology derived from the ideas of unification of the South Slavic countries. This third and last Yugoslavia (in any case the most miserable) consisted of four of the eight federal and republican territorial entities, namely Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Vojvodina.

Although short-lived, this country indebted civilization with an unprecedented wave of radioactive Turbo-folk, dieselism, cinematic glorification of illiteracy, crime and corruption that culminated in the film Early, an extremely cretinous dress code dominated by tracksuits, gold chains and white socks, the lowest salaries in Europe, sponsorship, crime on a monstrous scale, daily murders on the streets of Belgrade, Valjevo and Surdulica, a land in the jaws of drug addiction, only to end quietly, after the intervention of the NATO pact in 1999 and the secession of Kosovo.

First renamed Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, this state collapsed with the departure of the weaker half of the federation in 2006, At least 13,000 dead and 50,000 wounded, including all military clashes as well as criminal settlements and liquidations and the escalation of other, seemingly unrelated to war-related types of death is the result of the existence of this disgrace of a state.

Collective identity: Dumb Chetniks.

Genocidal potential: The highest in Europe at that time.

The turn of the ninth monster, the most mysterious and least known of all twelve entities, came and that is the Republic of Western Bosnia, the brainchild of the socialist director and proto-tycoon Fikret Abdić. This character, known for the mega-affair with one of the largest food companies in the SFRY - Agrokomerc, dissatisfied with the policy of official Sarajevo - decided on an interesting step, to create his own state! Based around the Agrokomerc company in the neighborhood of a place called Velika Kladuša, as a socialist realist echo of the corporate pseudo-state Fordlandia in the Amazon founded by Henry Ford, this private state, so to speak the dream of libertarians, organized by a cadre of ex-communists is something that was on the very edge of probability.However, in September 1993, this state entity surfaced. Half the size of Andorra and with a population of some 60,000, Western Bosnia survived until Operation Storm in 1995, when for the last time the flag of this small state - which symbolized the centuries-old aspiration of the Western Bosnian people and their leader and teacher Abdić for their own state - was taken down from the masts around the factory halls of the dying Agrokomerc. In their place were raised white flags with a blue shield in which yellow lilies were entwined.

The blood toll for the existence of this state is unknown, although it is likely to be much lower than that of its neighbors.

Collective identity: Balije u zaleđu.

Genocide potential: Unknown, probably low.

There remains one more part of the quadrology of zombified collective identities and state communities in these regions, that colorfulness with dominant red and brown tones, that background of the stench of decomposed bodies, that radiation of the massive transfer of public money into private pockets...

(Roger Mortis, 153)

Freaks (Part Two)

We continue with the kaleidoscope of Balkan collective identities, an extremely sad topic that is most suitable for possibly pushing a suicidal person over the threshold. Although, in at least somewhat rational circumstances, it would be different. Very different.

The fourth creation born from the dead womb of the SFRY is called the Republic of North Macedonia. If some kind of ranking list of surviving state entities were made, this one (along with Kosovo) is at the very bottom. A totally irrelevant piece of land, it does not go out to the sea, there is no navigable river, there are no valuable resources or energy sources. But that poverty resulting from geographical and geological specifics is nothing compared to the misery called the local population.

A morbid, unreal, fantastically stupid population that consists of several identities, mainly of Hunzas (self-declared descendants of Alexander's empire), Shiptars, Gypsies, Seljuks, Chetniks, Torbeshes, Tatars and Tsintsars. Social awareness that is lower than the deepest hole around the Dead Sea, an innate tendency towards corruption and snitching, petty malice and malice combined with an anti-culture of living - makes this place such that refugees from wars in the Near and Middle East, various types of birds (such as vultures) and many viruses and bacteria bypass it. I suspect that supernatural phenomena also bypass it.

Although this work took place the last military act of the ex-Yugoslav wars that raged from 1991 to 2001, with the number of victims on both sides not exceeding 300 and the wounded 1000, the paradise is still in the mood to straighten the crooked Drina. To straighten the spine - not  really.

Terrible birth rate, stable mortality, particularly pronounced emigration, future - no.

Collective Identity - Mentally Retarded Hunza

Genocidal Potential - Almost Non-existent

The fifth is the mildly retarded situation known as the Croatian Republic of Herzegovinian-Bosnia. The Herzegovinians, known as Croats in the offside or as part of their collective identity suitable for stereotypical jokes at the expense of their imagined or real traits - were not allowed to remain without their own state. As a counterpart to their Chetnik brothers in terms of feces flowing through their veins - the Ustashas of course declared their own state on the territory of the SR Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to deceive possible international support for the proclamation of a state known as Bosnia and to gain the opportunity to return territories that were once under the umbrella of the ultimate evil known as the Independent State of Croatia.

But it turned out that this country was an extremely ephemeral phenomenon, imagined in the sick brain of the chief for the poor, the aforementioned crooked-mouthed sociopath Tuđman F. Hanging around on various maps and charts from 1991 to 1996, failing to enter any edition of the World Atlas, sponsoring at least 10,000 graves and 22,000 mutilations and injuries - this state project died under the weight of the ink of the Dayton Agreement.

Collective identity: Ustaše Light

Genocidal potential: Serious, in line with the broader genocidal policy of the mother country.

The sixth is Republika Srpska. This festering wound in the Balkans was declared even before Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, which means that people like Karadžić R. and Plavšić B. were particularly quick in their actions to hatch another cuckoo's egg that would later become an integral part of Greater Serbia.

A hotbed of genocide, crime, human trafficking and everything that was already listed in the section on the Republic of Serbian Krajina - this creation still lives on the margins of memory and legality as an integral part of the Bosnian Federation. But now it does not claim independence and sovereignty. Or does it claim it? For that, they will have to wait for Mother Serbia to give birth to a new Draža or for Jovan Deretic to grow wings. The short-lived independence of 1992-95, which cost 14,000 corpses and 25,000 wounded, I do not believe that satisfies the appetites of the local shamefully stupid and illiterate population.

Collective identity - Serbian shit.

Genocidal potential - Serious, as part of the bigger picture of Serbia's genocidal engagement in the region.

Next time we will get acquainted with the following sources of infection and paranoia in the Balkans.

(Roger Mortis, 152)

Freaks (Part One)

This year marks a third of a century since the collapse of the second Yugoslavia. The Tito one that became pregnant after the insemination by the vampiric nationalism of the mid-seventies and after the death of the locksmith and the last stand attempt of a certain Marković A. to prevent the birth - the inevitable happened, i.e. new state entities began to be born. Great hopes were placed on those entities, that they would grow up, finish school, join the army, get married... if only they would give birth to new entities, no, not at all. If possible, they would grab something from their neighbors, nothing more.

Without delving into the internal contradictions and reasons for the collapse, it would be interesting to look at the seven dwarves who survived from the initial twelve, whose inglorious existence soon began to stink incomparably more than the late SFRY in its most stinking times.

The first was a creation called Slovenia. A meaningless, mountainous country with a scorched seabed and not particularly bad neighbors, this country, which speaks a language that makes the eardrum suffer, went through a short but televisedly heavily exploited war with no more than 300 dead and 2,000 wounded on the way to insignificance. Retaining moments from the previous system with a somewhat less raw transition compared to the others, Slovenia, despite the mega-scandals with the corruption of the most vocal patriots of 1991 (Janez Janša, prime minister whose patriotism cost him at least 20 million euros of public money in his own pocket) in record time found Brussels as a replacement for Belgrade and remained number one in the gallery of freaks.

Birth rate terrible, mortality stable, emigration not particularly pronounced, future - monotonous.

Collective identity: Umazani Janezi.

Genocidal potential: Almost non-existent

The second was the bizarre phenomenon called Croatia. It is said that this country was unusually beautiful. If an analogy can be used, then one could imagine a long-legged blonde with serious sociopathic tendencies and dreams of her grandmother-serial killer who is sexually active only with people with whom she cannot understand. Four years later than that fateful 1991, 26,000 dead. 44,000 wounded was the balance of the creation that would become known under the popular name Prčija in the ownership of 200 families, gathered around the pseudo-dictator Franjo Tuđman (aka Krivousti) and the leaders of the Conversion. The citizens of this country saw salvation from themselves in the endless streams of credits and Brussels where, with a decade-long delay compared to their northern neighbors - they enrolled in the club 28.

Birth rate terrible, mortality stable, emigration in worrying growth, future, slightly suspicious.

Collective identity: Usrane Ustaše.

Genocidal potential: High. Turned into reality 1941-45 and partially 1991-95.

The third is already a kind of pearl. The state entity called the Republic of Serbian Krajina, founded in the days of Evil with the onset of the summer heat in the ubiquitous 1991. This maniacal state once stretched over a third of the area of ​​Croatia and was the cornerstone in the expected imminent unification of all countries where Serbs lived.

Financed through the plunder of the property of exiled people, smuggling of everything that can and cannot be smuggled, remittances from the budget of the patron state that will be discussed later, and general madness - the future certainly looked bright! A relative of the coockoo eggs that they sow to cause later shit (Donbas, Crimea, Transnistria, Abkhazia, Ossetia, Nakhichevan, etc.) - the Chetnik pride did not manage to celebrate its fifth birthday, but disappeared in the autumn and winter of late 1995 when the operations of the Ustasa army, Oluja and Blijesak, wiped it off the map in less than two weeks. 4,000 dead and 15,000 wounded were probably an appropriate price for several years of joy for the population wearing shaykacha hats and opanak footware.

Collective identity - Stupid Chetniks.

Genocidal potential: High. Partially manifested 1991-95.

The fourth in this parade of monstrosity is Macedonia. But more on that in the next installment.

Unfortunately, it will take at least four parts to cover the moment of birth of 12 Rosemary babies from just one womb...Fuck them all, motherfuckers.

(Roger Mortis, 151)

Paths

Human paths are strange. Especially when it comes to collective identity and possible ideological affiliation, some would say the evolutionarily built-in need to belong to a Tribe.

If we start from the assumption of at least a little above-average intelligence in an individual and elementary intellectual honesty - then that individual will reach Anarchy at some point in his life, on an intellectual and identity level. It is simply impossible for it to be otherwise.

Why is it impossible? Because all paths lead to the individual as an individual in itself, the beginning of every group, the last instance of biological predestination. No one was born into a group.

Once reaching it, one does not know where a person will continue and by what coordinates he will leave, The crossroads at which one will find oneself is a strange phenomenon. There are not four directions but countless. The path that one will take is a matter that depends on a thousand factors.

Fear, helplessness, insecurity, utilitarianism, wife, children, social condemnation, salary, pragmatism, car loan...or none of that but something completely eighteen. And completely understandable.

However, the point is that the people who have rubbed shoulders with Anarchy for at least two minutes in their lives are the ones who make life so bearable in these conditions.

(Roger Mortis, 150)

The Wild Bunch

Groups of deserters during the Great War, caught in no man's land or in the mountains, forests and deserts of various fronts - rejected their previous loyalties and, indulging in their madness, plunged into robbery and cannibalism. Completely freeing themselves from the constraints of national affiliation, religious instructions and good manners, fanatically united in their evil - members of different armies fraternized on two grounds.

The first was that typical deserter story where frightened and disappointed young men decided to try to survive without much fuss, hiding together with yesterday's enemies whom they knew through the sight, optical or mechanical. And the second... that was the above-described group of rabid deranged freaks, determined to take revenge on all of humanity, to tear off all fig leaves, to trample on all norms, to kill all that tragic naivety that had put them there, in holes covered with a thin layer of yellowish Sarin. Through the clouds of Chlorine, among the corpses whose eyeholes were being gnawed by rats - it was not difficult to achieve a radical change in perception.

Spiritually destroyed by suffering, perhaps more prone to madness than the rest, or just as a sublimation of general madness in its purest form, these former soldiers butchered wounded ex-colleagues and made simple culinary specialties out of them. Before that, they were thoroughly deprived of all possible material possessions, no matter how modest.

They did not limit themselves to that, but also attacked civilians, farms and oases, shepherds and goatherds, travelers and vagabonds. On the edges of all fronts, small but impressive groups of Wild People thrived, shadows in the fog, panic in the eyes of the recruit who had just arrived at the front who heard nervous whispers among the older soldiers about how the painful screams of the wounded Guillaume or Gary or Gennady or Gunther were interrupted by a few dull blows in the distance, and the stench of roasted human flesh occupied a place in the soldier's mind that nothing could drive out, until judgment day.

(Roger Mortis, 149)

Inglorious past

Interesting and pseudo-touching is the desire of a certain part of the population to lament about family traditions. If we know that in this territory there was no aristocracy, there was only the smallest bourgeoisie and almost no intellectuals - the urge to try to compile a family tree, a genealogical tree of some kind of Mitrevci family is strange. Wow, they survived for a long time. Just like anyone else!

I have never had the desire to dig into the past of my biological ancestors. At least not beyond what lives in the memory of my parents (farthest to their grandparents, i.e. my great-grandparents). I have no doubt that my distant ancestors belonged to the lower social classes (serfs/serf peasants/slaves), their total ordinariness, anonymity and non-exclusivity, and I think that they too would not want to be disturbed in the eternal peace that is certainly better than their rotten life.

A random ancestor in the 17th century, for example. Even if there was a way to find out something (and there isn't), what would he find out? That he was born and died somewhere in the Balkans, lived his life within a radius of 15 km, didn't know how to read or write, struggled to survive physically and save his children from starvation, buried several of them when they were little, had some poor bride, unfortunately the poor thing was always under threat of death during childbirth and died poor, whatever he was born. One would only grieve over the many generations of ancestors who were born in pain, never saw any life and died like dogs. If it were visualized, then it would lead to the visualization of characters like those played by  crypto-actors like Vancho Petrushevski and Dzhokica Lukarevski. And of course Lazar Barakov. At best, someone like Rade Rogozharov.

I don't understand the need for self-deception and empty fantasies that there are precise genealogical trees here that go back 500 or more years. Unless it's a priestly family (and of a higher rank), that's not the case, this isn't England to have a "Doomsday Book" with a population census from 1086. The kingdom was illiterate, the Ottomans didn't issue birth certificates, and there was no aristocracy that would draw family trees. I don't know how one could find out about an ancestor from a mountain village in 1699 without any documentation.

Probably not. Which doesn't stop some people from imagining famous, rich, and powerful ancestors. And that's just a reflection of what state-run historian freaks do on a smaller, personal level.

(Roger Mortis, 148)

Ice Ice Baby

Almost no one tried to be polite, let alone mournful. Drinking spritzer and devouring beans and sausages, the gathered population seemed unable to detach themselves from the everyday stupid atmosphere, from everyday behavior even for two hours to send off the deceased properly. And the deceased...was not a particularly good person but he was not particularly bad either. Having worked in a library his entire working life - and he did not have a particularly large number of friends. It seemed that no one even noticed him.

Considering that one of the deceased's favorite books was "The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells - then we could also engage in a brief amateur and completely pointless psychoanalysis about the projection of the characteristics of one's life onto the tastes and attitudes that a person has...but this blog is not the appropriate place for such a thing since he himself is invisible in virtual spaces. The librarian somehow noticed that book on the shelves more often than the others and always wiped the dust and moisture off it. Maybe he was glad that someone had once remembered to write a book about invisible people, who are a significant minority in the world. The exact number is unknown, but there are certainly more of them than those who identify as Brazilians, let's say.

And it all started so naively.

The snow, which fell for 79 minutes, was enough for the dilapidated roof of the library to collapse under the weight of all 16 cm that had fallen so far. The librarian was alone on duty and as such turned out to be the only victim of this unfortunate set of circumstances. A beam hit him on the head, bleeding and sending him sprawling on the floor. The doctor who came to certify the death and sign the death certificate, scratching his butt and sniffing at brandy, searched his pockets for a pen. From them came the light of day a telephone bill, a party card, a shopping list and a key chain with an erect penis. A pen was not even a cure.

But that was the least of the problems and a pen was quickly found in the ruins of the library. And where is the stamp? To get a stamp, one still had to go to the hospital and the road was frozen. After a three-hour ordeal, the doctor finally reached the hospital and officially declared the librarian deceased. As far as the state was concerned, the librarian was deceased.

The coffin had already been lowered and the people were nervously looking at their watches and their mobile phones, wondering how much longer they would have to stand in the cold. As an old bachelor, the librarian was not particularly careful about his wardrobe. Without a woman's hand in the house, he knew how to sew an extra pocket on his coat or trousers himself, for every new gadget that came out on the market.

And one such, namely a cheap Chinese smartphone, will play a dramatic role in this bizarre story. In this world, there are always people who are not informed about someone's death, so some such person somewhere dialed the librarian's number at that moment. Suddenly, the sounds of the ringtone of the legendary hip-hop artist Vanilla Ice began to echo from the coffin, "Ice, ice baby, taradam taradam taradam tam tam Ice, ice baby". The crowd, unaccustomed to such situations, began to panic and run around, some fell into the unforeseen holes for the coffins, some hid behind the marble memorial plaques, and others were frozen in place.

Then, another sound spread through the air, the sound of hitting wood. The librarian, however, despite the insistence of the state authorities to declare him a corpse, was not dead. To the sounds of MC Hammer, the librarian was taken out by the sober gravediggers who opened the shroud. Recovering himself, he began to look around in disbelief, trying to understand how he had ended up in a hole and what all those crosses and heavens with distorted faces around him meant. "Finally, a day to remember!" - the optimistic side of the ex-deceased's brain called out.

"Kent touch dis, na na na na, tadam, tadaaam, kent touch dis."

(Roger Mortis, (147)

The Disappearance of Makedonski Brod

Yugoslav and Persida had long planned to visit their relatives in the "old country". Although life in Ingolstadt had accustomed them to some different standards, they still had that nostalgic thread that emotionally connected them to the place they came from, something like a kind of umbilical cord that connected the body during astral projection. And so, Yugo and Persa, on the wings of nostalgia and a low-cost airline, arrived in Skopje from where they headed to the location where their ancestors lived, in a place quite far from any sea or even a lake.

But when the car stopped at the appropriate location entered in the GPS device, Yugo and Persa could not see any city. There were no buildings, houses, dogs on the streets, trailers with a trailer hitch... there was nothing! Surprised by this, our heroes logically assumed that it was a malfunction of the GPS device in the car. The next logical thought was born in the minds of the diaspora, and that was to check the location using their smartphones equipped with GPS software. When Persa's smartphone showed the same as the device in the rental car, paranoia slowly but surely began to creep into her bladder. Emptying his behind a tree, Yugo tried to put an end to the dilemma through his phone. But for the third time, the location was there. Unless the satellites had left geostationary orbit in order to prevent Yugo and Persa from finding the City.

No, that was not the case.

Extremely confused, in some kind of delirium - Yugo and Persa began to move around the terrain. The wind that swayed the grass and thorns around seemed to bring fear with it, as if adding to the panic state. What now? Yugo and Persa quickly decided to return to Skopje and spend the night. It was getting dark, and the planned dinner at their relatives’ home and sleeping in the house in front of which they had played in the mud as small children were now just a distant memory. On their way back, they stopped at a gas station to fill up. Still in shock, they started asking the employees if they knew how to get to Makedonski Brod. But none of the employees had heard of such a place.

That only heightened the shock. What, did Yugo and Persa have implanted memories? Didn’t anything they thought they remembered actually exist in reality?! The implications of such thoughts were too serious to be honored with more than 13 seconds in their brain. On their way back to Skopje, Yugo remembered a distant relative from Makedonski Brod who had lived in Skopje a long time ago. Their smartphones proved to be useful this time, as they quickly managed to find Pande, their cousin's phone number. Pande was a little surprised to see their shocked faces in the late evening hours. But still, it was as if he assumed he knew why they had come to him.

After the introductory outbursts of courtesy, the conversation turned to Makedonski Brod. When Pande's daughter mockingly addressed the guests, claiming that there was no such thing - she was sent to her room. And Pande, visibly excited by the confession of Yugo and Persa's recent experience, whispered that the same thing had happened to him too! And no less, no more than nine times. Namely, Pande had been going to that place every year since nine years ago when there was a hailstorm in that place for the last time.

"Sida old girl, I don't know why no one can remember Makedonski Brod. With the city suddenly disappearing from this reality, it disappeared, it was eaten by darkness...somehow I managed to come to terms with it. But with the city simultaneously disappearing from memories - I can't. I searched on this wonderful, Internet they call it, I followed the newspapers, I was on the alert during the news on TV - nothing. Not a single mention in these nine years!"

As sad as this conversation was, it was also comforting for Yugo and Persa, and even for Pande - because now they knew that they were not crazy and that they did not have a false memory. Cup after cup, the brandy warmed the hearts of the distant relatives. Pande even disappeared for a moment. He returned a few minutes later carrying some object wrapped in canvas. In terms of size and appearance, it resembled an artistic painting, but Pande had no such inclinations.

Unrolling the canvas, the proof, the final confirmation, appeared before Yugo and Sida's eyes! A yellow-painted traffic sign that read "Makedonski Brod - 24km".

With an arrow pointing upwards.

(Roger Mortis, 146)

Trash

After watching the movie The Room and enjoying this masterpiece of low-budget production, inspiration for another rant somehow naturally follows. Legend has it that the movie began one day in 2003 when the immortal Tommy Wiseau began approaching men and women at the bar in a bar in a city in Canada. Don't jump to conclusions, he's not a bisexual (most likely Tommy, like every immortal, is asexual) but a film enthusiast who, carried away by the movies with James Dean (!?), decided to make his own movie.

And so Tommy approaches someone at the bar and starts `Hey...do you wanna play in a movie huh?` It is not known how the women reacted to that question, whether they thought it was a fat start or an invitation to shoot cheap porn...however, Tommy was honest and did end up making a movie that immediately found itself on various lists of the worst movies of all time. Why is the movie so bad, if it is rumored to have a budget of six million dollars? Because the movie has no head or tail, to put it in a northern way, it seems like clumsily edited filmed parts and the whole fled in fear of Tommy Wiseau, perhaps because of his appearance.

But maybe Tommy wants to convey to the viewer that appearances are deceiving, so such a creepy character with scars on his face, some Aztec hairstyle, a look as if he was planning to stick a screwdriver in your kidney and an accent that could be the result of living in a German village or possibly from Siberia... he turned out to be a real good guy, a real man, romantic to the core, prone to sexy scenes with candles and all that corny situation.

Life is unpredictable and because in the world, besides sincere film fans who are horrified by such works, there are also those (like me) who are insincere and adore films where you are consumed by the shame of others, where there are so many mistakes that they turn into comedy, where the potential for humor, confusion and laughter is so strong that they immediately decide that they actually like such a film a lot and that is how such a film becomes a cult. The founder of this phenomenon is Ed Wood, a transvestite-director-producer-actor who in the fifties made terribly bad sci-fi horror films but today is a respected director of trash films thanks to the unforgettable biographical film with Johnny Depp and Martin Landau who won an Oscar for his role as Bela Lugosi (a Hungarian actor-scoundrel-legend-vampire).

Let's be clear, not every bad film is a trash film, because to be one it must possess that charm of the difficult to explain "its so bad its actually good" or at least know how to make the viewer laugh and cheer up. Macedonian films, for example, are so bad they are actually just bad. In the past, Japan was not known as an exporter of Anime, Manga and Hentai, but as a source of serious trash production. Godzilla, as an evergreen monster, led the onslaught of Asian trash around the world. For the uninitiated, it's something like a Tyrannosaurus that mutated due to radiation and started attacking cities.

It is also worth noting that films are divided into feature films and television films, and according to quality, into A, B, C and D productions (which is often also called Z because it is the last letter in the Latin alphabet and naturally symbolizes something low, bad, cheap)...

A-production is known and loved by everyone, there certain strict standards must be met in terms of budget, acting, technicalities, post-production and all that, after Waterworld and Titanic the amounts spent on films have grown dramatically to over 200+ million dollars per film. B films are weaker in terms of all the above parameters, but are still professionally made. With C we already have a mixture of professionals and amateurism, and D (Z) is already total amateurism. In TV movies, there are those that can comfortably fit into an A-list film production (Pancho Villa, for example, with Antonio Banderas and Jim Broadbent), expensive and excellently realized films that could also be shown in theaters and not be limited to the small screens.

There are also films that are difficult to classify, such as "Clerks" with Kevin Smith, which was shot for $28,000 but for that money is phenomenal, that gap in the classification has been filled by terms like independent/auteur/indie or something like that. The culmination was the horror with the camera in the forest (The Blair Witch) which cost a handful of dollars and gained cult status and a nice income or the one with a guy who turned out to be Jesus and took place in a shack where good conversations took place due to the phenomenal script (The Earthling)... Another category is straight-to-video films (formerly VHS tapes, today DVD or in Nigeria straight-to-CD) where there is no distribution of the film through cinemas and there is no broadcasting on TV but it can only be rented from video stores or bought and watched. Usually these are heavy action with a basic premise that inevitably leads to breaking spines.

Geographically, there are several centers (Bollywood) that have a long and glorious tradition of stamping out heavy thrash. Hong Kong is one of the countries that produces films in a factory, on tape, from start to finish, filming and production took a maximum of two weeks, the genre was dominated by the aforementioned spine-breaking with the help of quasi-Kung Fu, the fight scenes were filmed in slow motion (the actors raise their arms and legs like turtles) and then they sped it up in the editing to make it seem like some Kung Fu experts were fighting and not scoundrels. On top of that, a generic impact sound is also edited, which I believe is familiar to anyone who has seen at least one such film.

There is also Turkey as a place where legendary thrash films were produced, the Turkish Star Wars is a classic example (you can watch it on YouTube) where the Seljuks stole entire scenes from the original by cutting the film (the expensive scenes with spaceships, for example) and the other is semi-amateur thrash, the main actor is normally the Turkish James Bond - Murat Karamurat (not his real name, but it stayed that way in paradise, like Bruce Lee, for example). In the Turkish thrash subgenre, we often have violations of the laws of physics, so Murat knows how to fly if necessary. Or lift a nine-ton rock. Cuneyt Arkin is the name of the most famous Turkish actor (this comes as the most famous Andorran footballer) and in his career he has beaten at least 99,000 film antagonists and filmed about 300 (!) films. One wonders if he ever went home at all or slept in the studio...

One should not make the mistake of putting all action films in the trash category. Although it is extremely tempting to characterize films featuring a gallery of anti-talents such as Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Van Damme or Steven Seagal as trash - they are not. In terms of production, they are well-made, the budget is strong and, in addition to the main actor who seems funny - there are usually solid actors in the casting who "pull" such a film out of the trash category. Steven Seagal is especially characteristic, a stupid and clumsy appearance and a complete illiterate actor who could not convincingly play even a corpse and who was simply born for cheap trash films but, by some incomprehensible twist of fate, dawned in expensive and well-produced films...

Perhaps the trash phenomenon was best captured by a certain director from Nigeria who claimed to be the best director in the world. When asked if he was better than Martin Scorsese himself, the guy replied something along the lines of "let me see that Scorsese make a movie in 48 hours! Give me 5,000 dollars and in 48 hours you have a finished movie and cut CDs with the movie ready to be sold on the shelves". Nigeria is by the way the country where the most movies are made in the world today.

Recommended viewing - The works of Ivan Rogers, especially the movie called "One way out". That thing cannot be described through text, It must be seen.

(Roger Mortis, 145)

Your Friendly Neighborhood Villains

It seems that in the period of these 35 years after the fall of the previous system, the country has been swept by a Tsunami of violence and crime. Without delving into the reasons for such an explosion of evil - we will focus on the "cream оf the crop" of the so-called blood crime - serial killers and their less famous colleagues, the "mass murderers" For the latter, the definitions differ from one place to another, but for the purposes of this post we will take the magic number three as a starting point to allow them equality in that regard with serial killers.

Disclaimer, it is necessary to know that these are peacetime killers, and those who killed in the frequent, rich in content and sadism wars in these areas belong to some other category.

The first event of mass murder in this territory would certainly be the legendary campaign of Tome Stojanovski and his four victims in the circle of the Skopje Brewery. "Tome from the Brewery" became famous on February 10, 1966 when, armed with a Czech Zbrojevka in 7.65mm caliber, he set out to straighten several crooked paths of his destiny and take revenge for the injustices he was exposed to at work and outside of it. The dismissal from work and the firing from Communist Party was the last drop in the jar and left no room in Tome's mind for a different outcome than the extremely bloody one. 

The second event that would be on the very border of the definition between mass and serial murder is the liquidation of three members of the Mudinov family on November 13, 1995, when three individual murders were committed in Strumica at different locations on the same day. This case is also the only one without an official legal resolution and remains in the realm of speculation, and there are probably politicians and local criminals and similar end products of social metabolism, after all, it was a time of the height of transition and shady deals.

The third character who committed mass murder is a kind of copycat of Tome, a legend that lasts till today. Using a somewhat stronger caliber, the standard 9mm Para, the Vinica avenger Mone Andonovski headed to the primary court in Vinica on September 25, 1995 and there he sentenced three victims - a married couple who had been suing Mone for a long time due to some kind of boundary between their properties and, of course, their lawyer. One of the most powerful reasons for deprivation of life in our country - property and legal problems often cause outbreaks of deadly violence, but most often it is a blow to the head with an ax or a pickaxe, never emptying a magazine into several people at the same time. Until the campaign of Mr. Mone who then fled to Italy from where he was extradited the following year to be pardoned by decree of the then El Presidente in 2006 (!?). He`s free to roam the streets for nearly 20 years.

The fourth in this chronology of maniacs is the guy with the most original name and surname of all listed. The arsonist from Drachevo - Gagarin Zendelović, a middle-aged family man, drunkard and devotee of the legal drug Bromazepam (Lexilium) committed the greatest atrocity of all because during his actions 35 people suffered, but fortunately (or not?) only four died. 11 escaped with serious injuries and 20 others with minor injuries. As a rare example of arson in these parts, Gagarin (lol), a creature from the bottom - found pleasure in watching fires. His magnum opus occurred on August 23, 2005 in Kisela Voda municipality of Skopje, where Gagarin crawled into the basement of an apartment building, slept for a while, and then burned some old newspapers and cardboard in the basement.

He later returned to watch the fire and was arrested the following days after confessing to his family what he had done. His family snitched on him and he wound up behind bars. In a fit of aggression, he threatened to burn down the Shutka pre-trial detention center and ended his life in prison by hanging himself on February 1, 2006 after being sentenced to 14 years in the Demir Hisar mental hospital...

The fifth on this list is perhaps the most effective, and that is Laze Radeski, the murderer of six currency exchange workers from Ohrid. Our Lazarus has nothing beyond banal greed, no "higher" motives, no voices in his head, he is extremely boring in his evil. Laze used a hammer as a weapon and, under the pretext of changing a larger amount, invited the money changers to the sanitary ware store on "Turistička boulevard" and killed them with blows to the head. Cutting up the bodies into parts that he packed into the trunk of his ancient "Polski Fiat PZ-1500" maniac found a temporary final resting place for the remains of his victims in the vicinity of Ohrid and Struga. The rumors about him being an alleged secret police hitman in  Yugoslav times, are probably just that - rumors. Arrested in April 2008, it remains to be seen whether he will serve life in prison or be amnestied by some future El Presidente.

The sixth case is certainly the most famous and the most exposed in the media. On June 22, 2008, Vlado Taneski, a journalist from Kitschevo, was arrested, who allegedly killed four women and then committed fornication post mortem on them. The day after the arrest, the "killer bucket", a phenomenon unknown to the world at that time and since then, entered the collective consciousness. That bucket was the container in which Vlado, according to the comical police reports, managed to drown himself. In some other environments, this might have been an insult to the intelligence of the population, but in Kitschevo and Hunzistan, all kinds of shit happened and still happen, and so did the deadly bucket. For one of the murders later attributed to Vlado, the famous local judiciary convicted the wrong people...

But the story of the Kitschevo Strangler does not end there. On several occasions in the following years, the corpses of middle-aged women murdered with a similar modus operandi to the one with which four lives were previously taken would be found in the Kitschevo district. Whether the final number of murders is over six or even ten and whether the real culprit is walking around freely is difficult to say.

Viktor Karamarkov, nicknamed Sugar Boy (!?) and then the Skopje Raskolnikov, is the only one with alleged literary motives in this sad gallery of violence. Like the literary character from Dostoevsky, Viktor used an axe to kill and killed the same target group, elderly women who could not defend themselves...But unlike Rodion Romanovich, Sugar Boy killed seven women, four outright and three more that died of injures inflicted by the maniac while at hospital. Which means that he took lives seven times more than the untried lawyer from the famous book. Once the top of his generation in high school and a strong student, later a scoundrel and an ass-hole, Viktor, inspired by Rodion, began to explore unconventional ways to raise money. Choosing victims according to age and lifestyle (loneliness), the killer with a health card in hand would appear at the victims' doors, appealing to their maternal instinct with a story that he needed money for his mother's surgery. If he judged that the victim was alone, Sugar Boy  would enter and liquidate the victims with several precise blows to the head. Then he would transform into Termite and collect everything of any value in the victim's home. He was arrested in November 2009, after an extensive investigation and was found in a basement in Gyorhce Petrov municipality, completely "stond" and unable to escape. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The eighth case enters the waters of organized crime and as such may be on the verge of relevance but is worth mentioning because of the unusual weapon used for the murders, the (most) famous AK-47 assault rifle or probably an M-70 or another Yugo variant of the ubiquitous sower of death, the Kalashnikov. Namely, on September 3, 2010, in the Skopje neighborhood of Aerodrom, colleagues in crime were sitting at the same table in a bar, two from right side and one from the wrong side of the law, a member of the legalized racketeering service known as the police. A certain Toni Denkovski entered the bar and emptied at least three frames into the victims, one for each of the murdered. Whether it was a matter of fear and insecurity or whether Toni was just an extremely bad shooter and had to resort to overkill is not known. He surrendered himself the next day and was later sentenced to life imprisonment.

Allegedly, it was a debtor-trustee relationship in which the murderer was in the role of debtor, allegedly he was an old dealer and ex-colleague of the murdered, allegedly he was only an executioner, allegedly he was blackmailed, allegedly the victims threatened him with the liquidation of his family... too much "allegedly" and not enough "certainly", as is often the case in this type of "murders"...

The following are a couple of cases that are an extract of the element of life in its post-transition extreme, the marital relations poisoned by paranoia that often fill the pages of the dark chronicles. On November 9, 2014, in a place called Kavadarci, a divorce took place between a member of the special police forces, unpopularly known as Alfas, and his wife. A few days after the divorce, the namesake of the previous murderer, Toni Stanoev - probably consumed by suspicion and anger, went to the home of his then-newly ex-wife's family and shot her father, mother and sister with his service pistol and attempted to kill a fourth person. One can speculate about the reasons for such an epilogue, but it is not far from logic to assume that the murderer considered the victims responsible for his failed marriage. The police found and arrested him within a few hours in a very symbolic place - the city cemetery...

The last, tenth case of mass or serial murder is almost a carbon copy of the previous one and happened only two weeks later, on November 24, 2014, in a certain settlement of Zletovo with the modest difference that the murderer was a professional soldier instead of a policeman. Dragan Manoilov, haunted by the possibility of his wife's infidelity - left his workplace along with his assault rifle, again a relative of the AK-47, and with it, in a fit of frenzy and rage, decided to kill! Unable to locate the allegedly unfaithful subject, Dragan decided that the saddle would cause more tragedy than the donkey and went to the home of his wife's f Dragan Manoilov, haunted by the possibility of his wife's infidelity - left his workplace along with his assault rifle, again a relative of the AK-47, and with it, in a fit of frenzy and rage, decided to kill! Unable to locate the allegedly unfaithful subject, Dragan decided that the saddle would cause more tragedy than the donkey and went to the home of his wife's family, where after a shooting the family, after a short argument, he shot and killed the father and mother of his wife and the uncle of the alleged seducer of his chosen one...well, with whatever he had instead of a heart. Unsatisfied with the "score" of three murders and with a still unsatisfied thirst for blood, Dragan went to the shared house where he also beat up his wife's brother. But fortunately, this time the target proved tough and in the ensuing fight, the unsuspecting corpse managed to physically overpower the maniac and take away his weapon. The maniac escaped and the next day hanged himself in a barn in the Zletovo district...

In the famous Yugoslav horror comedy that dealt with the theme of serial killings "Strangler vs. Strangler", it was noted that a city that has never had a serial killer on its streets cannot be considered a metropolis. This dubious condition for gaining urban recognition for metropolis status is currently met by Skopje, Ohrid...And the incredible Kitschevo!

Bitola has no airport... and no serial killer. Yet.

Update :

1.In the meantime, another mass murder took place, this time in a settlement called Glumovo, in the Saraj Governorate in Skopje, where the person Shaban Sulejmani shot his brother Avdilj and his two sons with a gun, in the middle of the street and in broad daylight. Shortly afterwards, confronted by the arriving police - the murderer Shaban took his own life by shooting himself in the skull.

This case did not receive much publicity in the media, perhaps because the murderer and the victims were Shqiptars and not Hunzas. And we know that everything is fine when Shqiptars kill Shquipats. Or Hunzas slay Hunzas. Murder becomes murder in the collective consciousness of the people only if the victim and the perpetrator belong to a different collective identity.

Blood feud, an update of content from the canon of Leka Dukagjini or a psychiatric case - the motive for this massacre is still unknown.

2.Less than a month before the event described in the first comment, another bizarre crime occurred.

Of course, this is the oldest spree killer on the territory of the Republic of Macedonia ever, perhaps the oldest murderer with a firearm, possibly the oldest murderer in general or even a perpetrator of a blood crime. The perpetrator was some long-retired cop whose name and surname the media still do not publish, only the initials P.T. At the age of 84, he fell into a murderous rage and with his 7.62mm caliber pistol, probably some old Crvena Zastava M-57 from the time in the Militia - he liquidated his grandson on the spot with a shot to the head. Then he emptied the magazine on his daughter and his wife. The latter died the next day in hospital due to the injuries and the daughter succumbed to her wounds two days later.

Then he took his own life with a shot to the skull, thus saving a certain amount of money for the citizens of the country intended for legal settlement. The information available on the net is too scanty that there is not a single speculation about the causes of the event, and that is quite strange. A maniac who suppressed his thirst for blood acquired in the militia until June 1, 2017, a powerless old man on whom the family was taking advantage, chaotic property and legal relations or just good old psychopathy... all that remains is speculation.

3.On July 26, 2018, a bizarre event occurred in a certain place called Debar, which apart from occasional bloodshed has nothing to boast about. Triple murder of a married couple and their daughter.

So far, nothing unusual for the world of mass murders, but the fact that the other daughter of the same couple and sister of one of the victims was the perpetrator. Finally, we have a female mass murderer, (hurrah), who shot with a gun while the victims were sleeping, had a couple of accomplices who acquired illegal weapons and forged documents so that she could flee to Italy from where she was extradited. 26-year-old B.Poceska, a criminal in an alleged relationship with an Italian mafia boss, cold-bloodedly liquidated her parents and 15-year-old sister with motives that are still unclear, speculations mostly move towards financial or property interests. However, this crime is not original either, it drowns in the banality of greed and, apart from the gender of the murderer and the number of corpses - it is nothing special in the local annals of crime.

But there is time, maybe new information will come out that will change all that.

4.A certain M.V. from the village of Dobrejci, Strumica district, was arrested these days, who has serious claims to become the first village serial killer in Macedonia, for now the number of corpses is fluctuating like a pendulum of death between 3 and 4 corpses, and with it the status of the mass or serial killer. The murders occurred in the summer of 2019, and the investigation found the alleged perpetrator after half a year. 

This blog will follow any new case of mass muder or serial killing and new information will follow as information becomes available.

(Roger Mortis, 144)

Olympicunts

The Summer Olympics, the biggest sporting event on planet Earth and the biggest occasion for an unrelated rant about the connection between sports and some morbid things like identification with other people's achievements, have recently ended. The rant started elsewhere, but as a rule, one has to build on the momentary inspiration with something more, a few extra words in this dark and forgotten corner...The Olympic Games are an interesting phenomenon for many reasons, one of which is playing with the perception of paradise. For example, there are sports like fencing, so uninteresting and always with more competitors than spectators...which is funny.

Some characters in white with masks on their heads that resemble the Fly are staggering around stabbing themselves with a piece of wire. There is also clay pigeon shooting with a shotgun (yes, there is such a thing at the Olympics), wrestling and archery where people who are irresistibly associated with geeks and nerds, fat and clumsy, shoot from heavily modified small-caliber weapons at a target while wearing eye guards like those of pack horses, various visual aids and leave a general impression of undiluted moronism. Archery has as much in common with handling and using arms as riding a scooter has with running.

The Summer Olympics, the biggest sporting event on planet Earth and the biggest occasion for an unrelated rant about the connection between sports and some morbid things like identification with other people's achievements, have recently ended. The rant started elsewhere, but as a rule, one has to build on the momentary inspiration with something more, a few extra words in this dark and forgotten corner...The Olympic Games are an interesting phenomenon for many reasons, one of which is playing with the perception of paradise. For example, there are sports like fencing, so uninteresting and always with more competitors than spectators...which is funny.

Let's not forget his majesty, the king of boredom among sports and the king of monotony - Cycling, which is so boring that it deserves its own rant and banter...But no sport with its moronity can surpass Water Polo. It is clear that it exists only for the masses in a certain country to feel momentarily significant through the fact of `winning a medal for our people`. In this case, mostly Chetniks, Ustashas or Frogs. Or Hungarians. I have no doubt that it was invented by rich English faggots from some same-sex attraction nursery known as `preparatory school`, but here, it has found fertile ground in the sad Balkans...

Beyond that purpose, water polo does not exist. It is so boring, stupid, pederastic and unnecessary that it is not even funny. Apart from the obvious homoerotic situation with a bunch of naked men holding their butts or legs in a pool - there is also the obligatory waving of hands in front of the goal, the same but exactly the same movements in every attack and the general absence of any display of physical intelligence or, at the very least, creativity. And how insane does a random patriot have to be to watch that just because `their` team will win a medal?! To watch a bunch of naked, freshly shaven men holding their genitals? But okay, homoeroticism and nationalism have a lot more in common than the average patriot would like to admit.

Spitting in the air or throwing a toilet bowl into the distance would be far more interesting sports, if only the Olympic Committee had the ear to introduce a couple more disciplines that would interest no one outside of the `medal count` and patriotic madness. Let's not forget his majesty, the king of boredom among sports and the king of monotony - Cycling, which is so boring that it deserves its own rant and banter...

(Roger Mortis, 143)

Micronesian Saga

Birds, though beautiful creatures - have a need to shit. But sometimes their Cloaca is the medium through which the wheels of history are set in motion, unheard-of dramas are written and boring musicals are filmed. And so (to use a long-heard expression) the shit-birds have been defecating for millions of years over an inconspicuous piece of land in distant Micronesia... and that piece of land at one point belonged to the House of Hohenzollern.

There is something Corto Maltesian, quasi-magical, inexplicably charming about the existence of the former imperial German colonial possessions. Usually places that no one wanted as colonial trophies like German (Papua) New Guinea, a place that no one wants to this day, Togo(land), Deutsche Cameroon, Tsing Tao (the unlucky rival of Hong Kong), Tanganyika, Rwanda, Samoa...and probably the crown of the Kaiser's Empire - the incredible island of Nauru in the already mentioned Micronesia, in the southwest Pacific. But the German `race` is known to be hardworking and smart, just like German shepherds, and so the escaped colonists on that desolate island where the rocks were under kilometers of deposits of petrified bird droppings (Guano) - noticed that the droppings of Gulls, Albatrosses, Cormorants and other sea creatures contain phosphates with nitrogen and potassium admixtures that were sought after like dry gold on the world fertilizer market.

Agriculture has always been hungry for quality fertilizers, in this case natural ones - and so tiny Nauru was on its way to becoming Germany's most valuable colonial possession. Although it is about a million times smaller than Tanganyika, let's say. But size has never been everything. Except for the size of the malaria mosquitoes that were the strongest asset of that African territory occupied by tanned Bavarians.

                                                                       Nauru before...

The island once...And why is Nauru important?

Because it is the only country that has experienced a complete ecological collapse and is today literally physically destroyed and almost unsuitable for human habitation. And because as a small territory with a small population and a relatively straight forward history, it is the perfect terrain for determining the ultimate consequences of the operation of a certain dominant economic model in modern times. Guano exploitation continued during the British, Japanese and Australian colonial rule. The indigenous population was not at all interested in bird droppings, but rather engaged in traditional forms of economic life. But, in the fateful year of 1968, Nauru gained independence and, becoming the smallest internationally recognized state after the Vatican, with its two to thirteen thousand inhabitants (half the population of the metropolis of Kičevo, for example) and still significant deposits of dung - the freedom-loving and state-building people of this republic - indulged in digging Guano as if there was no tomorrow. And by the eighties of the 20th century, Nauru, thanks to its modest population and the immodest exploitation of dung - became a country with the second largest GDP per capita - in the world!

But natural resources have a fatal habit of being limited. And on an island the size of a matchbox, despite millions of years of bird defecation - the Guano had to be exhausted one day. And so it was - the phosphate deposits were literally dug up to the bare rocks, changing the very relief of the island!

Disaster never comes alone, so the altered biosphere that had been built on this small, dirty piece of land for eons - caused climatic devastation because there was nothing to protect the poor Nauruans (or whatever they are called) from the winds and the strong sun. It's a pity that no one told them that trees don't grow on stone and that hills can't be bought with dollars.

and today...

However, the biggest downfall was the created habits of the population. Living on a high pedestal, immersed in consumerist madness, unaccustomed to the sudden change in standards created over one or two generations - the people began to suffer from First World diseases, en masse, entire villages became diabetic, earning the not-so-flattering title of ``Diabetes Capital,'' alcoholism took on dramatic proportions, depression was rampant, and the average obesity rate of the population almost doubled from the time before independence, and you guessed it - these are the fattest people on the planet today...

If the Nauruans learned anything from their capitalist colonial masters - it was the entrepreneurial spirit! Micronesian pseudo-Yuppies and tycoons, in conjunction with local politicians, set about finding a way out of the crisis. And where else could it be found - investing...and so the private-state fund that had most of the foreign exchange at its disposal embarked on a series of investments that were supposed to bring salvation. The investment in air transport turned out to be unsuccessful. The entrepreneurs purchased nine (!?) Boeing 737s but forgot to check the range of this type of aircraft. Papua was at the extreme limit of the range and Australia, the main target - completely beyond it!

After that investment failed, it turned into a legal war in international courts due to Australian shit-digging before independence. Here the Nauruans proved a little more dexterous and collected several million in damages in the early nineties. Bear afraid, Nauru fearless - emboldened by this success, the capitalists of this island embarked on a new adventure. Recognition of Taiwan in exchange for money!

Sound familiar? I know...I know...

Charting a cruise ship and opening a cruise line on this already visually miserable island - with its noticeable absence of pearly sand and bright blue lagoons - was a venture tantamount to economic suicide. Tourists want scenes like in commercials. Dystopian tourism is, after all, a thing of the future.

This was followed by the financing of some misunderstood London artist who had an idea for a Musical that would surpass Andrew Lloyd Webber himself and return the investment a hundredfold. ``Leonardo, a Love Story'' by some Greg and Tommy Miller who found unexpected patrons, was a musical-stage work that was supposed to describe the love between Da Vinci and... well, Mona Lisa. The millions of dollars invested in this work ended up with the biggest flop in the history of the West End stage. At the premiere, people literally fell asleep and even those with free tickets left in the middle of the performance! Next stop - the creation of an offshore destination for dubious capital. This ingenious idea really attracted interest, primarily from the transitional Russian and Ukrainian mafiosi via the Russian Central Bank (!) but it is not known what percentage of those funds ended up with the Naurians...

The indomitable spirit of diabetics had another ace up its sleeve. Namely, due to the extremely discriminatory policy of the Australian authorities towards illegal migrants - fearing even to open detention camps on 'its' territory, the huge, continentally massive and sparsely populated Australia, through its politicians - rents the microscopic Nauru as a place where it will build temporary camps and prisons for migrants. For an appropriate compensation, of course, enough for each of the 10,000 remaining residents to buy at least one chocolate bar a week...Finally, after a bunch of failed investments, most of which bordered on madness, and many of which crossed that invisible border by a wide margin, the entrepreneurial spirit of paradise subsided, the UN was called upon to give a few dollars to avoid the outbreak of hunger and epidemics...

And who dies last if not the desire to get rich?

Nauruan politicians in 2015 contacted the Japanese space agency in order to be leased as a place from which Japanese satellites would be launched into space due to the supposedly better location for such a purpose in Nauru compared to any of the Japanese islands...Here I would put an end to this unimportant story from one of the most unimportant countries in the world. A total economic, social, demographic, environmental and health cataclysm with only one way forward - and that is the relocation of all inhabitants from the bare island. Nauru will have the honor of being the first piece of land to be literally destroyed by statism in history. The USSR was lucky enough to be bigger than Russian stupidity itself, so the Aral Sea, Pripyat and Semipalatinsk were just episodes. Paraguay during the Triple Alliance war and of course Cambodia with Pol Pot are other dramatic examples.

Patience, says the popular `wisdom`. And today's Europe has a similar example of devastation.

There is only one country on the planet that has a more greedy, illiterate and delusional paradise.

Yes, that is Hunzistan.

Only Hunzistan has no bird shit.

And it has no sea...

(Roger Mortis, 142)

Taboo 2.0

Many seemingly clear situations I have never managed to arrange in an appropriate folder in my brain, and one of them is the one in which diseases in people, in this case exclusively in men - are considered something shameful and for some reason, a condition that causes ridicule. Of course, the conversation is about the last taboo of the male population, the concept that makes bones tremble and for which comfort is sought in Ethanol and clumsily directed aggression, the problem that dare not speak its name, the absolute of fear and horror - Impotence!

For the point of this rant, the causes and consequences, the classifications of what kind of disease it is and the ways in which men deal with such a problem are completely unimportant. Another interesting thing is that this disease as a term has acquired the right to citizenship and can be used in an offensive connotation and even in order to provoke a random character, very often by the female crowd. It is even more illogical when it is used by the male crowd...

No one, if we do not count psychopaths and sociopaths, would make fun of a blind person or a person without a leg. A malarial or tuberculosis? I do not believe it. Dementia and Alzheimer's? Syphilis perhaps? Difficult... Without possibly randomly browsing a medical encyclopedia in which diseases that would cause someone to laugh would be found, I am not sure that such a thing as a comical disease can exist.

Is the reason the inevitable sexual connotation, or is it that despite the superficial 'emancipation' of the population and the use of smartphones and similar electro-exoteria that has processing power to shame NASA's computing machinery for the Apollo space program for a trip to the moon - we only have a strong delusion of emancipation and progressiveness behind which lies a centuries-old dullness that is just waiting for someone to scratch the surface a little... who could know...

There is also the tradition of male patience and the perception of men as beings less sensitive to pain, so various war veterans with damaged bodies and psyches, various victims of accidents at work or just 'ordinary' diseases like jaw rot - have had to 'grit their teeth' (if they were left to clench at all) and bury their pain somewhere between the interrupted restless sleep and the crying of the seventh baby...And it doesn't matter in the end. A disease is a disease and under no circumstances should it be the subject of ridicule and malice. At least not for people who consider themselves to be anything more than a medieval enclave in the year 2025.

`Hey brother, I heard that Mitre couldn't see a white cat in front of him, he was completely blind, you know, like that from birth... take your mobile phone if it gets hit by a beam it will be bad...`

Stupid?

Stupid indeed!

(Roger Mortis, 141)

Rant about Kitschevo

To have a new and dramatic experience, it is not always necessary to travel far. Local areas also hide unexplored and unknown territories that can amaze the traveler-initiator. One such territory is known as Kitschevo located in a country widely knows as Northern Macedonia. The land of Kitschevo left a strong impression on me. At the entrance to that mysterious land, there are several grain silos that tower over this settlement like Christ the Redeemer over Rio. All two lanes along the main (and only) street are masterfully designed in the form of a straight line. On the left and, by God, on the right, there are buildings, some with four and some with five floors!

Around the ground floors of the buildings, you can see chopped firewood, which suggests that hardworking and honest people live there. There used to be traffic lights somewhere around the city bus station, but more recently that technological marvel that confused the locals was thrown out and replaced with a roundabout... which confused the locals even more.

The elderly people in the tin bus seats wore cut-up handballs on their heads. I don't know where that custom came from and whether it was a result of their local religion or some new fashion. And so one walks around that place and wonders if there is anything unusual... when there, out of sight, on a piece of track sits the main tourist attraction - a locomotive the size of a Yugo and a pair of carriages. Back in the day, when figures in fezzes brought that thing to the city - it must have made an impression on the people of Paradise that would be left by a spaceship landing today. Later, the narrow-gauge system was replaced by a wide-gauge system, during the reign of characters with five-legged heads, and the little sheep named Qiro was left without a job...

Speaking of spaceships, constant UFO activity has been observed above and around Kitschevo, which is sometimes reported by local and national media, but most such incidents remain within the framework of local folklore. It is assumed that in 1947 a spaceship really landed in the district. And that is no coincidence, after all, the term Kitschevo consists of nine letters, thee more than Roswell! And that cannot be a coincidence. Another similarity with Roswell is that in Kitschevo it was planned to film a teenage series called `Kercove High`, which was supposed to be the local counterpart of the American series that had a strange influence on the young population in the infamous nineties.

If your road ever takes you through this picturesque and not at all interesting place - stop and take a walk, give this European pearl of boredom and monotony a chance to touch your heart. You never know, Las Vegas was once just a couple of saloons, a couple of corals, a brothel and a gas station in the middle of the desert. So, Kitschevo can grow into something significant. And in that case, if you visit the place, one day you will proudly argue with your great-grandchildren - `yes, I was in Kitschevo!!!`

(Roger Mortis, 140)

Neighborhood

 he immortal Monty Python, in their famous song The Galaxy song, humorously talk about the nothingness of man in the vast, dark and cold universe. However, a satirical song can hardly capture the place of man in the universe. And man as a man - has divided infinity in order to better understand it. As we know since the days of the meager and atrocious education system - the earth is the third planet in a row in the solar system, which until recently consisted of nine and today of eight planets, after the disqualification of distant Pluto from the team. Here we already reach the limit of knowledge obtained through the medium of the monotonous voice of a random teacher and go further.

The solar system extends over some fifty Astronomical Units (one astronomical unit is the distance between the Sun and the Earth or 150 million kilometers) which comes to approximately 7.5 billion kilometers, more or less. Leaving the solar system, we leave kilometers behind because they do no more work and move on to Light Years (the distance light travels in one year). We leave parsecs to astronomers.

Our modest Solar System was just part of a cloud of stars and at least 200 other solar systems about 30 light years across. That is our slightly more distant neighborhood. The cloud in turn was part of the Local Bubble with various clouds of stars/solar systems over some 800 light years. A collection of several local bubbles formed a belt of bubbles called the Gould Belt and stretched for at least 3000 light years.

Next we come to the Orion Branch as a collection of bubbles and belts 10,000 light years across and as an integral part of the Milky Way galaxy, a modest galaxy of 100,000 light years. Together with several galaxies that gravitated towards it, it formed a subgroup of galaxies 2.7 million light-years across. That subgroup was part of a group of 54 galaxies spanning 10 million light-years known as the Local Group.

Several local groups formed a Cluster of galaxies, we have been in the Virgo Cluster (over 1500 galaxies across 54 million light-years) which in turn was part of the Virgo Supercluster which in turn was a collection of clusters of galaxy groups and had at least 100 clusters of galaxies across its roughly 120 million light-years...The Virgo Supercluster was an integral part of the Lanicae Megacluster, which consisted of a multitude of superclusters and had at least 100,000 galaxies spread across 520 million light-years. Lanikea is the last division, as an integral part of the Universe, at least the one whose shape and size are assumed to be known across 13.8 billion light years and which contains over 100 billion galaxies as part of the complete Universe.

And that, in turn, may be just one of the trillions of existing Universes...If time is added to space (and it cannot be otherwise), then we arrive at at least four billion years of vicissitudes, coincidences and coincidences on Earth and in our Solar System alone that resulted in the emergence of life and finally of course - Man, a completely new phenomenon with his 200,000 years of existence.

I don't know about you, but such information does not seem depressing to me nor does it make me feel insignificant. On the contrary, we are all an extremely rare situation in the Universe and perhaps it is high time to give up as a species the trivialities that dominate the short-lived stay of each individual in this reality. It's clearly impossible and I just hope, I would even say I'm rooting for us not to be the only self-aware species in the Universe because that would be, to paraphrase Carl Sagan - a truly insane waste of space.

No, seriously...I hope Mitre from Resen isn't the highest life form in the Universe.

(Roger Mortis, 139)

Transvestite's last Flight

A certain Jewish savior once declared (or at least is credited with declaring) that mountains can be moved by faith. Twenty centuries later, a strange character named Maurice Wilson attempted to test the accuracy of that statement. Including fasting to supplement prayer as the basis of his understanding of theology, Wilson, a British veteran of the Great War and enthusiast in the field of sacred activity known as Daydreaming - decided to climb Mount Everest in 1934...It would not have been anything particularly spectacular, expeditions to conquer the highest peak on the planet had been undertaken since the late 19th century. Although all of them up to 1934 had failed, often with fatal consequences for the climbers - this did not deter Maurice. Even less so that his greatest mountaineering experience was climbing the sixth floor of a building in Leeds...

As a war veteran, Morris, in addition to several serious wounds, also suffered from a mental illness, in modern terms Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Unable to settle down in one place, his life turned into a nomadic one, including such destinations as the then exotic New Zealand, on the very edge of the British Empire. He was engaged in various things, no one knew exactly how, but Mr. Wilson managed to acquire a small but significant fortune. Tormented by physical and mental ailments, he decided on mystical therapy proposed by a certain mystical Mystic in London, a mixture of Christian and Hindu beliefs and practices that, according to him, could change human destiny for the better.

And things really did get better for Morris. The pain had almost stopped, his psyche had begun to heal, and extremely euphoric thoughts about conquering Mount Everest, one of the last barriers unsurpassed by man at that time, began to swirl in his mind.A great relief from his suffering was caused by wearing women's clothing (!?) in the privacy of his home, and especially women's underwear in the privacy of his pants. Much like another war veteran and enthusiast who twenty years later would `conquer` the world of B-movie production with his `worst films of all time`, the legendary Ed Wood. No one would pretend to find a correlation between the suffering of veterans and the corresponding relief through wearing women's panties, but the thing is, the brain looks for patterns everywhere anyway...

The journey by boat to Hindustan and then by rail and horse-drawn carriage to Nepal or Tibet seemed unnecessarily slow and tedious, so Wilson decided to fly there. Again, nothing special for 2016, but in 1934 there were no air routes between Europe and the Himalayas, so Wilson decided to fly there himself, piloting a plane! The fact that he had only seen planes in pictures or seen them flying far in the sky did not stop him from planning to fly from Yorkshire to Nepal! Planes tended to be an expensive means of transport in general, but fortunately Maurice had enough money to buy a de Havilland DH-60 Mott, in this case the `Gypsy Moth` or Gypsy Moth in our language, a plane weighing about 450 kg `dry` and with a 100 horsepower engine, more suitable for short flights and basic training than for transcontinental epics. The Gypsy Moth was renamed Ever Wrest, a sexy variation of the noun Everest meaning `eternal fight` or something similar...

Although it took him twice as long as the standard one to obtain a pilot's license, Maurice's persistence paid off and here he is as a pilot! The other side of the plan, the mountaineering one - was taken nonchalantly, Maurice simply did not expect that climbing mountains would be something complicated and began to `train` by walking around the surrounding Yorkshire hills that rarely exceeded 600 meters above sea level or fifteen times lower than the 8848-meter high summit of the world. The fine weather, ham sandwiches, thermoses of tea and other comforts of 'training' were a total contrast to the harshness of the Himalayan glaciers, ravines, avalanches and sharp cliffs but Morris did not bother too much with all that...

Wilson's plan, if one can speak of a coherent plan, was to fly to the Himalayas, crash-land on a glacier and continue on foot to the summit. When reading his plan, the terms `irresponsibility`, `naivety`, `absent-mindedness` and `stupidity` come to mind, but I would add something like `admirable simplicity` that is not found even in cartoons. Not having permission to fly through various countries in which he had to land and refuel, Morris set off from Bradford for India in April 1933...and landed within a few minutes due to bad weather conditions. Determined and fanatic, after a small repair of the plane, he prepared for the mythical flight. At that time, the tabloid newspapers somehow joined the event, introducing the public to the ``madman`` who wanted to conquer Everest, presenting him as a combination of a character who built a ``Perpetuum Mobile`` and a sectarian stuck in mysticism.

Despite the flight ban issued by the British Ministry of Transport, Morris flew again on May 21, 1933 and this time he easily left British airspace and continued to Cairo and from there to Persia, today's Iran, an independent kingdom where the local authorities rarely showed good will towards the adventurer Morris. From there, he tried to fly to Bahrain but the colonial authorities refused to allow him to fly to India, after which he returned to Persia and with new supplies of fuel headed for the subcontinent.

And he succeeded! After a nine-hour flight, riding on the last fumes of fuel in the tank, against all predictions and expectations, like Leicester City in the Premier League in 2016, he managed to do the unthinkable - he somehow reached the city of Gwadar in western India from where he was supposed to head to Nepal or Tibet. But here the bureaucrats decided to put an end to his ideas of flying to the top and his plane was seized...

Not losing heart due to the new blow of fate, Morris decided to "winterize" in northern India and with the first days of spring to head for the goal. He hired three Sherpas with whom they disguised themselves as Buddhist monks to avoid the authorities and controls and with very modest equipment and supplies they set off for the goal. But Wilson proved to be overenthusiastic even for the experienced Sherpas - veterans of several previous unsuccessful expeditions. Wilson ignored their warnings that he was going to certain death, and this resulted in him being left alone because the Sherpas decided to return and postpone his death to another time and place, not then and there by sending the unequipped and inexperienced amateur-pilot-transvestite-do-it-yourself-pseudo-mountaineer...

And that was unfortunately the last time he was seen alive, sometime around the end of April 1934. What happened next is only partially known from his diary, which was found the following year by an ``official'' British mountaineering expedition, quite close to his frozen corpse. What is known is that he reached at least 7,000 meters (if not a little more), that old and new pains began to torment him, food and water began to melt and the Grim Reaper somehow reached the brave Maurice Wilson. It is not known exactly when he died, but the last entry in the diary was on May 31st when Maurice wrote: ``A beautiful day. I'm moving on!''.

The members of the expedition were amazed by the female clothing of the male corpse and the absence of basic mountaineering tools on him, but despite this they buried Maurice with dignity. Later theories emerged that Morris was the first to climb Mount Everest, especially after the discovery of an empty tent at 8,500 meters by Sherpas accompanying a Chinese expedition in 1960. The Sherpas claimed that the likelihood that Morris had died while descending from the summit rather than climbing was a scepticism. Whose mysterious tent was just 350 meters from the summit remained an enigma, and whether it was the first unofficial conqueror, the transvestite Wilson - or whether it was a remnant of the even more mysterious Soviet expedition of 1952, which was also speculated to have reached the summit a year before the famous Hillary and Tenzing - will remain in the realm of the unknown. In any case, no one survived the Soviet expedition, and they died in icy death walking towards or below the summit like Morris... so the truth will never be known...

But that ultimately doesn't matter... I find this story incredibly endearing, I wish Maurice had succeeded in his intention and been the first, at least he had gone to his death comforted by the knowledge of his success in his intention, he is one of those unknown but incredibly pleasant historical characters, completely forgotten as only such a person could be.

If there is an `other world`, I hope that Maurice is there in some custom built part of heaven, dressed in warm hiking clothes with women's panties peeking out from under it...

(Roger Mortis, 138)