I might be becoming a cult icon, I even have my own groupie now - Help!

[carter]

How I became a cultish Icon on Russia.com I'll never know. I started out aimlessly and innocently enough by posting weird personal stories on the Ru.com personals thread for the curious to chew on.

I lived in Russia about two-and-a-half years working as a manager for a nightlife newspaper and as a freelance writer and eventually as editor and staff writer for a plethora of failed glossy print mags. My background in journalism was nil up to that point in my life. I simply knew some folks who already lived in Moscow and whom were already working in print journalism there. Me? Journalist? Never knew I had it in me.

Curt, forward and sterile memos that middle managers are famous for was the only thing I'd written that was ever read by anyone. The fact that 200 plus persons who once worked under me only forcibly read my memos just to find out the latest level of red tape they'd have to cut to request a single vacation day never shook my nascient confidence. Regardless of inexperience, I felt like I had something to say, what exactly that something was I figured I'd have to make up along the way.

Lost in my illusions of being the next great gum shoe to pound the crusty mud and ice laden Moscow streets, I found a cold startling reality. My nom de guerre characters and humor stunts worked well but the undeniable truth became apparent to me, more than anyone, as I labored - nothing makes up for experience as a writer when one tries to write for a real living. Nobody is born to write, it's no gift, it's work and all writers are struggling writers.

I remember watching an empty plastic bag swirl in the wind down Tverskaya. The bag swirled and swirled defying gravity and snow. An endless stream of headlights from cars looked like a stampede of cattle heading toward me as I walked toward the Kremlin. The sky was dark but lit up by the northern winter lights and thundering neon of Mainstreet Moscow. I followed that stupid empty bag as it swooped and swayed in the air and as passers by ignored me just as I ignored them.

My bag eventually hit the red bricks of the Kremlin walls. It tried to gain altitude several times but that wall broke the wind and eventually caused it to fall and scoot lifelessly down the dirty pavement. When I caught up to it, I looked at it, kicked it and then stomped the hell out of it. It was a beaten, trodden, filthy bag of plastic.

Instead of looking like of frothing-mouthed bag killer to anyone curious enough to watch me, I collected myself and started to move on. Yep, you guessed it, then I looked back. That damn bag had taken flight again. It began doing even faster looped-ee loops than ever before. It was taunting me like only a beaten bag could. My only thought was that I needed a shotgun and bird shot cause that freakin' bag thought it was Jonathon Livingston freakin' Seagull.

"You stinkin' bag! Think you can screw with me?" I screamed in a not so friendly voice.

I threw a rock at it, and then another. The militsia asked to see my passport and visa. They gave me the tourist sobriety test by asking for a huge bribe. I must'a passed the test when I told them 'em no idiot would give 'em more than the usual sto rubli. What were they gonna do, arrest me for chasing, yelling and throwing rocks at a plastic bag that was obviously taunting me? The cops made me promise I'd go home, took my hundred roubles, and I walked away from the halls of power still bitter at that flying bag.

I learned a lot in Moscow: firstly to speak Russian, ways of Russian women, to drink vodka like a man, how to live on a dime, to respect craft and artistic work, to slow down, and to understand that just to survive and still be able to smile is good enough.

My plight into stardom on Russia.com is still a mystery to me. Eyerad is a lot funnier than I. Apache and Justo have libraries of endless gut busting pics. Jutka's got a cute azz. Me? All I got are stupid stories.

My first groupie is a big disappointment. Infatuation from a feverish megla-homophobe isn't exactly enviable. But like that bag, sometimes to survive you have to deal with any way the wind blows.

Name the song those last 5 words are also the last 5 words of.... and you'll win a free gay bear pic : )

[Edited by carter on 6th July 2003 at 20:42]

[old-reb]

Great story about the bag. It kept my attention, it was funny and it was educational about life in Moscow.

old reb

[justoleme]

when I first found Carter in another section of this board I was hopeing to find him and show him the sharp side of my Randall mod 14 attack knife because he argues endlessly .But in time,Even if you cant find things to agree on with Carter you find that he is so clever he can insult you in a way that you can find it amuseing.He is not actually a down right mean guy even when he slaps you verbally upside the head.He has been around and has unique ways of telling of his strange life stories.(In other words,,he's kinda crazy but he is a lot of fun to read)

[Shaft]

Carter - first off bad luck on acquiring the worlds least desirable groupie - you have my full sympathy there.

The song is 'Bohemian Rhapsody' unless I'm mistaken.

Btw there is a hilarious acapella version of that song by an english girl-group called "Fuzzbox", also known as "we've got a fuzzbox and we're gonna use it" - worth checking out. At least it is funny the first time you hear it anyway; after that it could get annoying. Like a few things round here...lol

[carter]

Quick drum roll and cymbal crash pojalsta

Shaft is a veeeeenir.

Gottamush, Gottamush will you do the bandango?

Your big gay bear will be posted on my sig line where you can lift it, save it, print it and loath it at your leisure.

[carter]

I must make the following correstion to my "life is a beautifully insignificant angry bag in the wind" narrative at the top of this thread. I referred to my groupie as an megla-homophobe. It's been brought to my attention that this description might be inaccurate and assumptive on my part. Unless I'm mistaken, a homophobe can't be a practicing homosexual.

My groupie/stalker is very possibly a practicing angry gay male and it seems he might be the twisting in the wind like an empty plastic enema bag. It's a touchy douchy mental distress thingy that I'm not sure I can describe.

Does anyone know if theraputic "high colonics" can be used to treat Gay Male Anger?

Please help.

[norad]

Another potential answer to carter's question is "Any Way the Wind Blows" by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.