Day 887
An addict never stops growing. Stupider.
Junk is not a kick. It’s a way of life — William S. Burroughs
You know how literary hacks and opinion leaders have been bouncing around ideas about open society lately: they drone on about the the structured intimacy of clarifying one’s own image and choosing a life path while burning tires on the square after picking up gardening tools at the supermarket.
Well of course it’s galling. It’s irritating that any anyone anywhere can qualify the desire for freedom when it’s so freaking hard just to make up your mind when presented with a display of trowels.
Not that that’s been an issue lately, but I’m still looking for a decent spreader1.
Amidst the above-mentioned paraphernalia frenzy I’ve found myself falling head over heels over crashingly unsexy op-eds championing Ukraine’s form-follows-function fuzz, all designed quite smartly, built to last and affordable.
Ukraine’s aisles of anti-corruption bricolage teem with generations of yellow and blue gadgets that all interlock and look really neat and just make sense to some upstart peckerwood flak at The Washington Post2. I sometimes pause while my brain froths away over some junk (no matter the context) and I think, you know, this would be much easier with a snappy new open-bolt, blowback-operated submachine gun.
We spent most of the weekend pretending to be a Tarahumara indian. The Tarahumara word for themselves, Rarámuri, means "runners on foot" or "those who run fast." I am old and run slow. But I can still run very far.
On the Ukraine jacket, Roman, fresh out of a cage, gave a big interview to Ukrainska Pravda.
In September 2022, there were a number of explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Media have reported that you are the curator of these explosions, although you deny it. Why does your name appear in this context?
- I can't explain it and I don't want to explain it. I can't figure out where this information came from because I have been under arrest for a year and a half. Although I am curious about this.
How would you assess the level of sophistication of these bombings and their effect?
- I don't know how they were carried out, what the risks were. The fact that these pipelines are not working today, I think, has helped us reduce Russia's political pressure on European countries that are helping us today. Secondly, it has left the transit of Russian gas to Europe through Ukraine, so Russia is not bombing our gas transportation system.
In literary news, Edna, advance scout for Irish imagination, is dead.
Philosopher Andriy’s interview appearing in Meduza, about whether Ukraine has turned into a totalitarian state, is making the rounds3.
At the end of 2022, I already said that if we started this war as freedom against tyranny, democracy against totalitarian regime, then today two totalitarian systems are fighting: a small totalitarian system and a large totalitarian system. Only the small totalitarian system - with elements of chaos, Zaporozhian prowess, mixed with Makhnovshchina - unpredictable, chaotic. The other is vertical, blunt, rigid, bureaucratic, reminiscent of the Soviet Union, but on a different level.
This is not new from Andriy, who is these days is offering his philosophy free of charge from Germany.
We scooped him three years ago and didn’t even wax philosophical about it.
Ukraine is a primitive post-soviet feudal autocracy. Democracy here is not underpinned by elections or coordinated work of institutions, but by popular uprisings. Absent them, even the illusion of democracy would not exist4.
Z, whose pep talks are relentless, doesn’t sound worried.
Unfortunately, something has to give. In order to accomplish Z’s goals, Ukraine’s state institutions, starting with the executive branch, need to operate at peak efficiency. They, er, are not. The legislative branch is a joke, the court system is a mess and independent media are few and far between. There is no polemic between Z and his top managers and ordinary citizens about plans to fix gigantic, life-threatening problems. This has to change.
Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack. Roman Chervinsky, a colonel in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was integral to the brazen sabotage operation, say people familiar with planning (The Washington Post, November 11, 2023)