Coming of Bashmak.

The sound of soil overturned by a shoe.
"Vodka." she said, her voice steady and reverberating into the wilted foliage.
She contorted herself onto her back, swaying her rifle towards the general area of the sound to fire a potshot. A mask concealing an unshaven and steely face that was perhaps almost visible from beneath it greeted her.

"Tritiak. I need to relieve myself."
He slid the owlish face of his respirator aside.
"Hold it."
"Do you have food?"
"No."
"I need a cigarette."
Tritiak produced a single slim bar from his hand, pressed it between his lips, and lit it, a sulfur smell drifting from his struck match.
"You don't."

Bashmak nestled herself more comfortably into the brush and set her rifle until it was stable.
"Using a rifle so close," the man stated. "No sidearm?"
She smiled the wry smile of someone who knew what they were doing.
"If I am doing my job well, I have no need for one," she said. "They will not know I am here. I have given it to Pushkin."

Tritiak regarded it flatly before kneeling, folding his hands around her midsection, unfastening straps of her body suit. She went still with a cold indignity.
"Lift your arms."
She did. He lifted the vague safety of the Kevlar off her and gave her a frighteningly thin substitute - a mere duster coat.
"What is this?" she demanded.
"You don't need any protection if you do your job right. Pushkin has to be seen."
"This is stupid. My vest is not so much a commodity as a gun."
"We do not have bread, Bashmak. Feeding you is compromise for us."
She reserved herself grimly, peering out her scope.

The stillness was broken as Tritiak stood to leave.
And then, nothing.
The pulse in her ears, the coolness in the air, a full bladder was all that was left.
A cloak with a firearm.

From what might of been what was left of what once was a farm, a stirring.

The world looks different out the scope of a rifle. The tunnel vision, like a spotlight, has a way of making things, of making people, more significant.
The gnarled face of a Flesh, like yellowed fat, peered with a sort of sniffling cowardice from between a long-dead grain field.

"Pre-used?" from what little feeling was in Tritiak's voice, one could feel the skilled withholding of some vicious emotion that would have otherwise burst from his face like a Blowout, taking the squashed dough of Drobyev's pudgy face and the rest of the building in vengeance for his wasted efforts.
He said it again as if he were processing blasphemy.
"What do you mean? They are in boxes. These have not been used."
Drobyev looked towards his superior, then rubbed his pastry face uneasily.
"Tritiak, you used them yourselves. I was there."

His snowed glare peered from the dark sockets of his face.
"Were we to let you die, Drobyev? Is that business?"
The buyer, a man of military build and stern voice, set his deduction:
"Half."
Drobyev nodded in agreement. "Half."
The men were at the crates and their numbers were more than enough to dispatch a loose cartel of tourists peddling firearms.
Face sunken and forced onto the terms of his buyers, he threw a pistol that he'd been explaining the intricacies of before he gave a brazen exhalation and nodded. "Half."

Bashmak's face was damp with sweat and bruises had begun to set where the Radiation accumulated from a rest in Pripyat. Drobyev sauntered to her side in a fashion that almost deserved ridicule, his wide frame and prominent girth rocking to and fro.
"Drink," he said. "For health."
He poured her a glass. And another. And another.

The room tilted and sunk like the price of Tritiak's hard-acquired arsenal.
Bits of drunken cheering and the orange blur of men gathered about a fire.
The unfamiliar sink of a bed and a tired soreness in her eyes.

Drobyev had begun to undress himself, his generous stomach spilled from beneath his bodysuit as he lowered himself over the craven, purple figure of the girl. He intended to keep her warm.

She crawled away, but he braced her and carried her back with a grotesque emulation of compassion for what he was about to do. With a guttural moan of approval, he pressed forwards.

Dazed, she held up the firearm in her limp grip - ill-gotten from her crawl from the room.
Drobyev laughed, questioning her intentions with his piggish features.
She felt the heavy pull of the trigger give way to an abrupt plume of sound.

The Flesh made a squeal, a macabre imitation of the noise a man might make when shot.
It's thick skull partially erupted - broken, cracked, but still quite together, as Drobyev's had been.

Pushkin hurried from his cover - Bashmak's suit bounced oddly as it tried to accommodate the man's size. He knelt and began to chop the beast's malformed limbs with his knife.

At the time, it had been Tritiak who had handled the dead beast.
His stubbled face broke into a slight smile as he took the remainder of his fee from Drobyev's pockets.
Staring at the drunken nudity of The Leftover, he offered a slight sentiment in his words.
"I had never liked him."

Tritiak's hands, that time, returned clothes to her, rather than relocated them as they had today.

Jay Gatsby is Dead.

His passing adds an extra pound to my heart.
Let us mourn him.

Talking to Artists.

I am going to sit here and prattle on about how, as a kid, I liked reading about Van Gogh and Da Vinci best. I felt I could relate to the batshit insane Vincent and Leonardo's intricate sketches of anatomy, machine and strange inventions kind of hooked me. Oh, but then I grew out of it all! Klimt with his collage-like painting became the best after I saw his gaudy but beautiful "Portrait of Mäda Primavesi" and, of course, "The Kiss". I also remember seeing Matisse's "The Snail" from a book a curator of a local print-shop read to us when I was small -- when she said, "Would you have believed it were a snail if I told you that is what it was?" and turned the lazy spiral of torn paper on its side, I could squint and see how Matisse, in his blindness, could feel it was what he said it was.

And then, there was Yosu.

I had been listening to W.T. Snacks' weekly DJ sessions on Midnight Snacks before I got lazy and stopped, when I heard a delightful racket explode out my speakers. Flipping through the track-listing for something with a discernible title and then scrolling down song by song until I found the title, I was greeted by poor wordplay.
The track was "Coy" by the Swedish group LOLI RIPE.

This, arguably, put me on a really bad sweet-tooth for bad music. I quickly gathered up all of the LOLI RIPE albums that could possibly fit onto my tiny 2GB drive and then started listening to their equally as terrible colleagues: people like Goreshit and ISOpussy, and I became, at least, frightfully familiar with a man who enjoys writhing on the floor while screaming about Haruhi Suzumiya.

This man, No. 305, is the manager of UGUnet and its twin sister, AUU. I'd eventually come there, as well, in search of more terrible albums to add to my ever-growing collection. UGU was a real treat for that, too, with everything from Dutch men making Cookie Monster vocals over clips from Japanese cartoons to An album comprised largely of No. 305 talking to himself as he does a playthrough of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

However, not all of it was crap. OmoideChip was a whole bunch of really great Chiptune covers. Shako-Pani, with his fondness for Squarepusher and Hidamari Sketch, became an artist I watched for. And finally, I heard Kesson Shoujo.

Kesson Shoujo had released an album called "Watashinokoko" on UGU before changing their name to make the album titular after Yosu deemed the name "too cool". At first, all I had was "Watashinoko". I didn't have a whole lot to go around, and most of it was static layered over the fictitious lead singer's storytelling, nevertheless, I bought a few Jewel Cases and promptly clipped out the album art with a self-made tracklisting and passed the album around to a few strangers and friends.

I'd wanted a bit more, though. One album wasn't cutting it for me. I began to dig and dig before I found his first ancient works, mostly ambient, at a seemingly defunct netlable under his old handle of Kesson Shoujo. I got all of them and eagerly stole whatever he uploaded to his page's media player. I began to save the small videos he put up and all the artwork, as well. While it was more rabid fanboying or borderline-stalking, it turned out to be pretty helpful.

Yosu has earned the ire of a friend of mine for his self-sabotage. Yosu deletes everything when he doesn't like the way he's taking Watashinokoko. His Pixiv page is awful empty because he decided he wanted to focus on crayon, his Videos now amount to two, and he doesn't promote any of his old albums because they're not exactly the best.
He'll also do things like pull the original working of Kesson Shoujo's "Watashinokoko" from UGU's board and re-released it as a Touch-Up.

Nevertheless, I began to regard this guy as a mentor or something.
What did I care if he was singing about disabled people and harsh environments?
I actually cared quite a bit, but it's beside the point. I wanted to hear more of this guy.
I thought I might have had a chance or something when I found out he was attending Comitia to pass out an EP and Supplemental. Being fairly out of the loop, I had to look into what and where Comitia was before realizing I wasn't going to Japan. On some odd whim, I figured "I could write this guy."

I wrote Yosu, wishing him luck and explaining I'd been a fan since Kesson Shoujo.
Knowing his frequent focus on the disabled fictitious singer, Lala, I offered him a link to Katawa Shoujo, which I had begun to watch since it got its official page. They had just released the first part of the game and I figured, "Maybe I can get him on common ground or something?"

He gave me the EPs and a reply in fairly well-spoken English:

"Hello! Thanks for your message.
I distributed two Watashinokoko EPs at Comitia88, the festival of comic and creation, a week ago.
If you want, I'll send you mp3 files of that via Yousendit. https://www.yousendit.com/

By the way, I've already heard about Katawa-shojo, it's famous among the Otaku people in Japan, too.
I haven't played it, but the girls appears very lovely:)

Yoss"

I don't know.
Talking with your idol feels great.
It's entirely possible I pissed myself.

I told a few people who laughed saying I had "set the bar low for idolatry", but someone said "Everyone should have a moment like that". It made me think of that scene in "Where the Red Fern Grows" where Billy Coleman chops down a massive tree. He doesn't have too big a purpose for doing so, but he gets it in his mind to clip it. He finally gets it worn enough that it collapses under its own weight and his father says he's proud of him and that "Every boy should have a moment like that".
Everyone should talk to an idol of theirs, even if it's just once.

I'd like to leave with Yosu's third reworking - or fourth, I suppose - of "Disgrace".
The original sound was sampled in the second half of a Kesson Shoujo track called "January" before it was re-polished into "Disgrace". When Kesson Shoujo was re-polished into Watashinokoko, it became several versions of a track called "わたしと歩いていると恥ずかしいの" which roughly translates to "Are you ashamed to walk with me?", the last of which is just below (Until Yosu proves my friend's thoughts on him right and pulls the video for a fifth reworking.)

Eccentric Teachers.

Throughout my life, I've had the chance to be the student of a few very odd teachers. Now, there's a different between "Good" teachers - there's a handful of competent and skilled teachers who are capable of utilizing the orthodox means of textbook and "Copy this" to educate a mass of unruly students. My hat's off to those men and women, because I'm certain they work fairly hard and get a fair share of disapproval from their students behind their backs, but those men and women aren't who I want to write about. Who I want to write about are the freethinkers and "Creative" teachers, and I mean beyond "We're busting out the colored pencils and construction paper" sorts, I mean the people who are likely under Big Brother's scrutiny for their methods which, while questionable, have not failed to stick things to my mind.

Let's have a look at Doctor Lawrence Pilgram. Doctor Pilgram was a Science Professor I'd had who I'm having a little trouble describing. Part of me wants to say he was an old ledger-monk of "Back in my day", but he used many demonstrations that weren't necessarily allowed by the board of education and even openly admitted trying to cheat inspections to insure he had the materials to do so. I often remember carting old equipment that would never see the light of day and conglomerates of glass beakers out to the trunk of his Oldsmobile (which, in some odd way, I compare to the Yugo GVX, I think.) and the circus-like atmosphere that sometimes followed him in as he took a metal rod and washer and promptly plugged them into a wall, blowing the washer skywards and promptly shorting the lighting in the room or dipped a raw wire into a tank of saline and offer a well-to-do smile on his aged face as he asked nervous students "Who will dip their arm in?"

I was one of the students keen to do so and, as he plugged the cable into the wall, my arm curled into itself and my fingers gnarled like his. "Open your hand!" he kept saying, "Open your hand!" I could not, and the class was treated to me trying to unwind some invisible snake from my arm single-handed which likely resembled a seizure or something.
"That," the Good Doctor said, "Is how the brain uses electrical impulses for muscle control."
I recall other oddities, as well, like his demonstration on how air moves in convection from a flame. Lighting a very tiny Bunsen Burner, Pilgram slapped shipping tube that threatened to touch the ceiling over it. A resounding didgeridoo-like noise hummed through the room which he called his "Moose Call".
The Doctor was an odd man who enjoyed his showtunes and jokes about Europeans and Soviets. As we addressed each other as "Comrade" and swapped terrible jokes that sometimes warranted me a "Oh, that was terrible!" and salutations of "Greetings! Have you money, or good news?" it's not impossible for me to imagine this is the sort of brilliant mind that would perish under the kind of mentalities of McCarthyism.

I also remember an odd time where he'd accosted me as I wandered the halls and asked, "Would you care to help me fix the door on the Girl's Restrooms?" I didn't much care for it, but he said he had arthritis in his shoulders, so I went for it. He said, "When I get lunch, there's always girls hustling in and out of there and the squeaking drives me mad. I've got to fix it or nobody will, because on the school's list of things to fix, it simply isn't there." So, I recall getting odd looks as I hammered a bolt loose, oiled it, and fixed the door that bothered him.

Another man I'd like to address is a Mister Derek Frieling. Frieling was quiet and reserved man well-known for his raging outbursts and the fact that he enjoyed listening to such esteemed bands as Megadeth on full-blast in the early hours of the morning. I recall being made to stand in front of the class to play the role of Hitler and having to hug another student who was made to portray the Soviet Union from behind in demonstration of the Schlieffen Plan and being made to kneel before people of questionable repute who were supposed to Knight me as a demonstration of Feudalism. I recall he often would catch students eating candy which he promptly snatched and pitched at a wall, scattering candy everywhere. People would be momentarily outraged saying, "You can't do that!" to which he would reply "Yes, I can" without further explanation. Sometimes, students would say "What about the poor janitors who have to clean that?" to which he would say "I'm insuring they have a job." I also recall a student falling asleep against their desk, which Derek promptly beat with a ball-peen hammer. The student didn't sleep for the rest of the hour.

Mister Frieling was keen to throw Megadeth and They Might Be Giants lyrics onto a board and explain how a line like "Tremble you weaklings, cower in fear. I am your ruler of Land, Sea and Air. Immense in my girth, erect I stand tall. I am a Nuclear Murderer, I am Polaris" is largely a by-product of Cold War tensions and the ensuing arms races. Similarly, I occasionally feel the need to throw TMBG into Youtube to hear how if I have a date in Constantinople she'll be waiting in Istanbul due to the same class. I remember Frieling wasn't above using a screwdriver to turn off his loudspeaker so he could teach uninterrupted and that he often opened up universally-dreaded tests with a witty joke and that if you were near-sleep as he talked, he would walk very close until he was face to face with you, still talking into the air you were breathing.

Frieling wasn't terribly unique in his approach. His projects and demonstrations were sometimes bizarre, but he often still fell back to "Copy this down, we'll test on it tomorrow". What made Frieling truly unorthodox was his complete disregard for the "Politically Correct" methods of handling things. If a student's sleeping, it's easy to say, "You there, go to the office," but they still miss the lesson. You're giving them what you'd wanted to avoid to "punish" them. Beating their desk with a hammer? They're awake. They're at least hearing you teach, even if it goes in one ear and out the other. His projects, probably the best being a construction demonstration, coupled with the handling of his own problems, helped Frieling get information to stick.

The construction bit was probably the "Doctor Pilgram" moment for Frieling, if you ask me. I recall we were discussing the differences of Communism and Capitalism. By random draw, I was assigned to a group of Communists. He said to us, "You. You'll get a piece of candy if you build a very sturdy structure out of marshmallows and toothpicks. You'll get a piece, regardless, for trying, too." before telling the Capitalists "You. I'll give you a piece of candy if you build the sturdiest structure out of marshmallows and toothpicks."

I ended up being the only "Communist" working. I am credit to team. I ended up with a pathetic structure that resembled a gooey rendition of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Capitalists had a pyramid-like thing that looked like it could probably withstand a light slap, which would inevitably crush mine. He asked us why we thought we failed. None of us knew, as he hadn't come out and said "You. You're representative of Communists", so naturally, we didn't have an answer.
He said, "And that is why Communism dies off if properly contained. At the end of the day, you know you're still getting a piece of candy, and that's why nobody tried." It hit me like a brick and stuck.

I don't know. That sort of teaching isn't going to get advocated too much, nowadays. You can't scream "STUPID" in a student's face because they're representing Hitler when Hitler makes a strategic error at Dunkirk. You can't short out the lighting because you want to show children why electricity must not be allowed to accumulate in one spot. You can't call marshmallows and toothpicks educational. You can't throw a raw wire into a tank of water and tell them to dip their bodies in it. It's all against protocol. It's all begging for some parent to go "What the hell did you do to my kid?"

But you know what I liked about it most?
It all worked pretty well.
Everyone in that classroom knew Hitler fucked up at Dunkirk and we got away. They all knew that muscles are regulated by electrical impulses, and they all knew that they wouldn't be able to eat or sleep in class.

All of them.

You Can Pitch Your Tent In Pripyat.

So, a friend of mine's real hung up on this whole S.T.A.L.K.E.R. bit and chewed the fat with me over some character ideas. He wanted one of those pseudo-Ruskie names for some female Stalker to work with, and I'd come up with "Bashmak" - it's actually a type of boot. He didn't care for the sound of it but, like many other things, it grew on me like a nice fungus. I started to kind of shape a bit of a story to it and kind of liked what I came up with. I'm going to give it a shot, and then probably write about the Industrialization of the Food Industry:

She had been laying there for what she'd presumed to be about two hours. Just laying there, nose in the dirt with her hood pulled tight over her ears to keep Grandfather Winter from whipping at her face, plus, the more still you poise yourself, the more likely you're mistaken to be dead, and mistaken for dead was often the best one hopes for when one finds themselves alone in Pripyat. She had begun a mental evaluation of her options, and they seemed to tally up to "Freeze to death" and "Pray", at which point the former would follow rather quickly - she opted for the first.

There was an ominous creak from a ramshackle structure she judged to be a few meters from her left foot. A sort of paranoia had begun to set in, a cold sweat that threatened to speed her decision to freeze. Would they eat her? There were stories, stories with backing, of things that had once had some sort of reason and some sort of humanity but had lost themselves to the radiation. Her mind began to fit dreadful pieces together - dull, human teeth struggling to pull her apart as her bare body split and bled-out with the smell of autumn in the frost, and then--

Footsteps. Human or once-human she did not know, but they were footsteps. And then more. A pack of mutants, a pack of flesh-eaters all gathered up for an easy meal. She had chosen to freeze, but that was begging too much of providence.

"Vodka!"
A man called it through his hands and it resounded through the vacancy of the air.
"Vod. Ka!"

She held still. There was no telling what sorts these men were. With a slim bit of resignation she weighed the difference between being eaten and being shot on the spot by some band of looters.

" 'Ey, 'ey. Tip 'em over, tip 'em over."

A rough shove met her stomach as a man lowered the butt of his rifle to overturn her.

"Still breathing." A flat voice stated.
There was a clean -clack!- of tight-wound machinery as one of the men tugged the receiver of his gun.
"We can drop a mercy-stroke. She didn't answer."
There was a muffled crunch as a man set down a small wooden crate in the snow and stooped to catch his breath.
"You," he said. "You there, in the Bashmaks. Get up."

She hesitated, but the slight movement of consideration had tipped her hand and exposed her liveliness.

"Get up. You can help carry or you can pitch your tent in Pripyat until something nasty comes to evict you."

She stood. The man was short and squat with a face obscured by a thick mask that rasped tiredly as he wheezed behind it to fill his empty lungs. He picked up a slim box from the top of his load - he had carried not one, but two crates. He propped it on its side and tipped it across the woman's back. She stood, strained and followed The Cartel in ragged steps.



A tall man with a stubbled face held out his arm. The entirety of The Cartel obeyed the gesture. He lowered his arm before bringing it to his face and calling.
"Vodka!"
A black figured at the edge of a twisted treeline waved his arms.
"Vodka!"

He made a haphazard run up the hillside before negotiating with the rough-faced man.
"Do they still want them?"
"Ehh... Of course. Of course."
"You don't sound confident."
"No, no, they do. The price might just be a little too steep."
"Too steep? We couldn't carry it ourselves. We need two men on gun. We had to pick up some leftovers." He thumbed behind himself to address the woman backpacking one of the slim crates.
"Leftovers, ah? So, you won't mind?" he started towards her with a lecher's glare hidden behind his thick goggles.
"We're not talking about guns anymore. How much too steep?"
"Look, I'm just here to say they still want them. You've got no one else interested, so sell them."

The man itched his cheeks with his mitt-covered hand before nodding intently and walking, the goggled man following in tow. He hadn't made but a few meters progress before he paused again. There were several men sitting about a campfire warming their hands.
"Drobyev, did you speak with them?"
The goggled man shook his head.
"Didn't want any trouble and they weren't looking to make it."

He cupped his mittens around his mouth. "Vodka!"
But then, silence.
"Vodka!"
Silence.

The figures stood up slowly, their limp-limbed figures, their slurred mumbling...
The short man set down his crate and retrieved a rifle, flicking its safety before opening fire, the rest of The Cartel moving dropping with the precision of a firing squad and joining his bullet curtain.

The men bled. The snow around them was coppery and raw with it, but they kept walking, firing lazy and uncoordinated shots single-handedly from their guns before at last doubling over into the snow as the woman had, silent as they had been before the call.

Drobyev laughed the uneasy laugh of a liar and began to lead the way.
"Say, Bashmak," he said as The Cartel once again fell into the sturdy stride of the unshaven man. "I was not kidding about what I'd said. It is very cold, no? No? Tretiak holes up to pawn?"
He slapped the wooden crate on her back as if to indicate the cargo.
"Tretiak holes up to pawn, and I might just keep you warm, eh?"

It'd have likely be wiser to freeze, she'd registered.