The Russian Elephant

Four-part report of a Stalin-era Soviet delegation to a scientific conference on elephants:

1. Classics of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism on Elephants;

2. Russia—the Elephant’s Homeland;

3. The Soviet Elephant: The Best Elephant in the World;

4. The Belorussian Elephant—Little Brother to the Russian Elephant.

—Soviet-era joke recorded in Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs (London, 1990), p. 123, cited in Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York, 2002), p. 504n.

Homicide 101

Women make up only 6.8% of federal prison inmates in the United States.*

Men evolved to be dangerous.

For every MILF

There's a FILK—

A "father that I'd like to kill."

In most of us, thank Mars, that monkeyfucking gene's by now attenuated—

at least we do the best we can!

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics,"

Mark Twain thought the triple curse of modern man.

*https://www.statista.com/chart/11573/gender-of-inmates-in-us-federal-prisons-and-general-population/

Laika

Laika in her flight harness

"Little Laika" died in heaven

on November 3rd in '57—

which is to say, Sputnik II

in low Earth orbit.

Aged between two and three,

she weighed about 5 kg.

A mongrel in a Moscow street,

her name was Кудрявка: "Curly."

She died of hyperthermia,

no kind demise—poor girly,

all by herself in outer space

(of course, most dogs die alone

—as do we all, if truth were known),

God in mercy lend her grace.

November 3, 2O24