STALiN'S ANGELS

ANGEL OF DEATH

A normal Tuesday under a free dictatorship. I’m going to kill myself.

What do you say to that? Your fellow class warrior is in pain. But he’s a contrarian bastard. Messages of support have to be constructive.

Well, it’s one option is the best you can come up with, for now. It’s positive at least.

The desperate need an out. Don’t do it! is negativity dressed up as help. Just do it! is business conspiracy designed to enslave Asians under the twin yoke of sportswear and capitalist marketing. We need alternatives here.

Which all begs the question: what would heroine of Soviet Union and Avenging Angel of Sniper Corps, Comrade Lyudmila Pavlichenko have done? Draw on her Masters’ degree from Kiev University to explain how the dialectic of class power shouldn’t be taken so personally? Or from the comfort of her well-appointed, apartment block, take out her Tokarev SVT-40 semi-automatic with 3.5X telescopic sight and put him out of his misery? Bourgeois degenerate.

When ex-grinder at Kiev Arsenal Factory delivers her ultimate man-up-you-big-wuss message to American males, no trace of loss is left in the translation: "Gentlemen, I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now.” Crystal as a glass ball. Balls on the line for freedom, yankee doodle dandy.

For the young state feminists of the revolution, the answer is clear: if all you see is mud, then stop pissing in the puddle, boys.

Fortunately, not everything that is opaque is inscrutable. When the poker face says all is OK all too much, we call the bluff all too easily. Aeroplanes are sheets of carbon fibre held together by adhesive and flown by robots. Passengers wait for two hours while the ground staff blow dry the glue. Only one of these statements is true. Get aboard and find out. Rest assured there is more danger at home - with or without the Kardashians.

But, there is a big but: namely, does all transparency reveal truth?

Take a bottle of water and a bottle of kerosene. Which one are you going to drink: the one that looks like water; or the one that doesn't smell of aeroplane fuel? The safety instructions couldn't be any clearer. In case of evacuation, bowels are predictable. As the plane plummets a 1,000ft, the floor-level lighting comes on and the oxygen mask drops, the underpaid smiley attendant is there primarily for your distraction.

TAKE NOTICE. This paragraph is in breach of no known byelaw. There, you see. Threat contained. Opportunity beckons. The devil’s angel is the cloud of non-detail. The divine messenger has consistently ruled out repossession by demonic forces. But it's only her word against his.

The overall impression must be opaque enough to keep the angel in a job, now that electronic letters and global communications have made flying around with scrolls, trumpets or Red Army choirs obsolete. Until Christmas at least.

Thanks, Lady Death. Clear as mud.




































.