[SIC!]	- the eXile carefully considered responses to your letters
editor@exile.ru

SKOAL DIP-SHIT

The following two letters were sent to us in response to last issue’s [sic]. The author of these letters is a Bosnian immigrant living in the USA who objected to the eXile’s crude humor and alleged anti-Americanism. We, for our part, took the high road and called him a “smelly immigrant” and an “Islamic terrorist” with plans to set off a fertilizer bomb at the national spelling bee championship. We further threatened to bring this matter to the attention of the INS.
    Hello, editor,
    Hello, I canot believe You can be so ruide to people who donot deserve hatred for no reason. Your day will come when people are rude back at You and hurt feelings of yours.
    Skoal Zafranov
    Editor.
    I know now why you dont dislike America. It is beacause you can live anywhere and pretend to like and then hate people for no reson whatsoever. Blue pasport can bring you far. but noit far enough, freinds. Dont dare call me terorist beaucause I am never have excepted money from Bin Laden and never plan to do damging harm to USA. I love American good people that help me and nice to me, but you are no good and only have insults your Fatherland. Just Bosnian I AM doesnt mean I am terorist .... what was not true you said before. I am not feared of CIA beacause i am the good behave citizen. I love USA more then YOU your home country. God will punish you for evil. Thats all. You are not good people.
    Skoal

BIG GAY AL

    Editor:
    This is my third letter to you guys. So far so good - I have yet to make it to your office to pick up my t-shirt as I was arrested by the Militsia on my last attempt. This time I am writing to you in utter deperation and hope - some kind of tragic irony there. I’ll get to the bottom line - HIRE ME!
    I am a talented, brilliant, freak of nature who happens to love the depravity of Moscow. Not only that, I want to escape New Mexico. If you want me to rant about my technical talents, I will. But suffice it to say that I am a computer geek, photographer, and speak enough Russian to get along on the street. And oh yeah, my perversities generally don’t get in the way of work - not unless required.
    On a side note, I recently sent out an email to my family and friends asking them to sponsor my next trip to Russia. I ran out of money making so many trips there. Let us hope and pray for a capitalist miracle. Also, if Manuelita reads this - WRITE TO ME!! You guys ought to meet her - she’s too cool. She’s lost somewhere in the naive recesses of Moscow - I want to rescue her! You might find her sitting in front of the Bolshoi checking out the boy candy.
    You guys are just too fucking awesome for words or pictures to show. When’s the next book coming out? Grace me with your benevolence and plentitude.
    Your Humble Servant,
    Al Lucero
    Albuquerque, New Mexico

FEARING MACPHERSON

    Thank you for making me aware of the MacPherson family travel chronicle. It’s the most horribly entertaining thing I’ve experienced since I stopped snorting Darvons.
    Ed Walmart

HOW TO BE AN IDIOT

Re: How to commit murder / Appalled
    yeah, but funny as shit, good job. Looking to join a US company doing business in Russia, like to move back to Moscow. Any ideas on where to look for positions w/ US companies in Russia? Also, why didn’t you fucks write word one about me & that numb cunt that tried to flambee me in the embassy back in ‘96?? sheesh.
    JH

WHORE-KNEE

    Hi!!
    What a fucking paper your exile is!!! The only thing you cover is ‘blowjobs’ and ‘tits’??? There is nothing to read for girls!! And one other thing! Last time we’ve been to Boarhouse noone has bought us a single drink!!!
    Hey, guys!!! Why are you so greedy??? We are very nice and we are not whores!!
    Disappointed Nika

STREAM OF CROTCHLESSNESS

    March ^, @))! Lulling, Louisiana
    Something wouldn’t me let die but, dove only, but perhaps eyes almost with human and empty. Window was perched outside. Killed. But perhaps. When people understand that, no disasters at all... fly will they...dead and across frontiers, a great, who amazed New York. He himself killed right seventies, me to said: “Vsky, or NO?” Deaths predicted with suggestive force, AND I shall not merchant for the navy, be intimitated. Immortality, extremists, self-slaughterers, madmen, fuck-ups, Great Lakes, Ontario...Rum and Coke...Rum and Coke...Rum and Coke...Rum and Coke...Rum and Coke...I quit. Turn your rifles on yourself, criminally predictive, prophetic pessimist...crushing waking children...I am not your judge! I will just sneer at your passport...”What is that? An eagle? Curilic...Ha-Ha.”
    Mikhail

SAMMI’S FINN-ISHED

    “Hyrskylahti now awaits trial in a St. Petersburg jail”
    —- ciao!
    woke up today when our consul from finnish consulate in saint petersburg called me and said, that he read in yesterday’s the moscow times, that i been arrested and now waiting trial in a st. petersburg jail.
    i was fucking scared, thought that i have lost my mind.
    later i found out, that it was actually anna badkhen &the moscow times (now a reporter for the borston globe) who had lost their minds. (http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/03/01/007.html, Thursday, Mar. 1, 2001. “Look Who’s Caught Up In Spymania” By Anna Badkhen)
    Now finding out ways to sue her and the moscow times (my family and friends from finland are all in panic calling me & btw, it is not very good publicity especially in russia, that they are claiming that you are jail for spying...).
    i let you know more if this sounds interesting,
    sami hyrskylahti

JEWISH BUTT PILOTS

    As you must be aware, we Jews are in the forefront of the gay movement throughout the world, and we count among our numbers such great loving men as Roy Cohn. So, we are very angry that you did not mention any Jewish gay clubs and events in your Gay Community Bulletin Board. And we would like you to apologize by printing the following:
    The Schlang in Tuches Society, Moscow’s new Jewish gay club, meets every third Tuesday for kosher fudge in the basement synagogue inside Chance. This month’s topic - Vaseline - does it have to be kosher? Speaker will be Dr. Bert Dickstein of the Lambda Health Clinic, 47 Butyrskaya Ulitsa.
    Thank you for your kind and loving consideration.
    Love,
    Steve “The Faygele” Faygenbaum
    Treasurer
    The Schlang in Tuches Society
    Moscow

IT’S ALL GREEK TO US

    Hello I am from Mexico,
    My name is Elias Kanellopoulos. I am 20 years old. The other day i watched a special program about your newspaper,it was called the exile,in some of the hbo channels. It was really cool watch how is to live in Russia,it was very amazing when you went to the jail in siberia,oh man it is a nasty place,and your interview with Lebed was Really good. Well maybe i’m boring you with all this so let’s get to the point.I want go to Russia after finish my university studies that will be maybe next year,and i want to know how hard it is the life there,how hard it will be get a fucking job,and stay there for some years.Can you tell me how insane(dumb) is this???? Life in Russia it is a bitch so i wanna be prepared. Well i guess that’s all for now,by the way your newspaper it is too cool,it is very acurate with the new Moscow lifestyle.
    Ok dude i will be waiting for the reply
    THANX.......
    Your reviews about the clubs are all true,the Me100(mesto) it is the best strip tease club on the city?

Six on one

    Dear everyone,
    Last week, when I was chilling out with a group of friends having the usual Friday night drinks..... a friend of Mark Ames’ , who is a collegue of mine, told me that Dan Higgins is actually 6 people??? This information sent me into a total knock-out... Is that true? He looked like he knew what he was talking about, giving me this “you’re so stupid if you didn’t know this already” look, so I decided to find out the truth... and double check with you for a start...(which was probably a stupid idea after all, you’ll just come up with some bullshit answer as usual:)..... but still.....so what’s the story? It would be a total disaster if it’s true, I’ll be heart broken
    forever <sobs>.....
    Vita

[SIC] LETTER OF THE YEAR!

    Dear Mr. Ames,
    let me say that I totally agree with your point in “Conspiracy of optimism” article. I am delighted to see that at least Western community stays sober and Putin’s magic media wand does not spell a feeling of AOK to you, guys.I am Russian, and I feel like I am losing my identity. I want to love this country not blind folded, but eyes wide open, not only criticizing the drawbacks, but working out my own bit to invest into Russia’s better future.
    But the older I get the more transparent future is. Russia won’t make it. And I cannot love it just for its nature or 2-3 of my friends I grew up with. For me the question of what I can love my country for is open and very actual. I try to find the good things about it and simply cannot.I say to myself - hey, I did studies out of charge. Well, OK. But it was Soviet Union legacy back then. Ok, medical treatment goes here, whether of a bad or good quality. What else? Nature? Polluted. People in general? I would so much love to say that Russians are beautiful people...Like they say it on TV. Great Russian Nation, blah blah. But Russians are not great. They did so much terror and turmoil in 20th century that its just amazing how much this nation likes itself. May be its rather aggressive behaviour comes out of natural defense mode? In reality Russians are angry, over-politicized, easily driven MASS, which lost identity and trying to find an external or internal (read Chechnya) enemy in order to re-unify. We, Russians, live like if WWII ended up just a year ago, and we do know that next war is coming tomorrow. So, it does not make sense to invest into or improve our life at all. Just look at how we do live, how we work, how we build families, how we die. We live the same way we rest at cemetery. Each apartment is a stronghold, separated by a steel door, in houses with a space-saving design like if we are in Japan where territory is limited. The same is at cemetery, -tiny graves, secured by fences, again in a space-saving fashion. If you are alive and different, - for instance you put a new fancy mat at door step or just the bell is too lovely to hang out - c’mon, everybody knows it would be ruined tomorrow, because in Russia you have to stay pale, almost non-existent, not to cast a problems over by driving attention of literally LOSERS around, seeking out for revenge. If you are resting in peace and your obelisk is too good -same outcome is rather apparent. Only in Russia you can hear people boasting out loud about Great Russian culture, meanwhile at every day level its people know nothing about community living and decent lifestyle. They piss in elevators; they devastate anything, which is build with creativity and for ages. They dump out consumed bottles and cigarette butts on their way around like if the whole Moscow is one big dumpster, even if a real canister stays mere 5 meters away. They never let you go first or free up some space in a crowd; they will rather kill you, accelerating, if you try to cross the road in front of coming car. Their national ideals are mobs from movies, and the whole country is dressed up in black leather, so it’s like the darkest night in Calcutta. Yet we can mumble every day on TV in Pushkins’ birthday running count-down campaign - “There are 153,152,1xx days left till the birthday of Alexander Sergeevitch Pushkin.” Am I crazy or country just lost a sense of reality? Is Pushkin the only Russian poet? Or what? What kind fucking parody we all play a role in?
    And to top it off our Mayor says that Moscow is the most beautiful city in the world, “especially at night”; our President says that Russia will kill fuckers in a toilets, and everybody is actually satisfied with all that nonsense, our Duma says that Far East is an area out of dispute with Japan, while people are just at the brink of starvation and cold over there...
    I remember back at institute (kind of mixture between college and university here, bet you know it), - my professor of history told about cold and hot society theory. Now, if Brits are of a cold type - there are democratic institutions, and cyclic development does not bring cataclysm any more, - Russia won’t get rid of wars or starvation next 100 years at least. It just cannot, due to mentality or, lets put in another way, several factors:
    1) Middle class is absent
    2) Abundance of natural resources scattered all over, so Russia will not use high tech to grow up GDP
    3) Absence of private property and respect to it in national mindscape
    4) Inability to work hard, if not oppressed
    5) No law, and law abiding state power
    6) Absence of respect (substituted by fear) to state, law or ordinary
    citizens around.
    7) Civil rights absence and inability of people to understand that state is functioning for its people, that police is solely a law enforcement organization and that you, as a citizen, has a priority above the state itself. Generic Russian simply does not understand how to respect himself and thus to respect people around.
    8) Country is too big, but people are rather separated, there is no national idea, Russians like so much to talk of.
    Unfortunately Bolsheviks had succeeded. Homo Sovietiqus exists and will carry on in 21 century. We are like a barbarian society transported in a blink of eye into 21 century from acient Europe. Bristled with weaponry, armed with imperial thinking (The bigger territory -the better) and inability to think and live rationally, like Germans did after WWII, resurrecting in just 10-15 years. Russia has to say to the world, - OK, guys, we fucked up half of the world. We are sorry for that. We for now will shut up and try to build and transform the country into democratic state; we will decentralize it, put a real development plan in place and so on.
    Unfortunately I don’t buy it. Russians don’t have the guts to do it. Its below their national pride, though that would be the gratest symbol of nation’s revival. And this country does not deserve people like me. It’s a crime against my future children to found up a family here, so I even cannot afford this little and have to move my butt far and away. I just have to for my future...
    You guys are lucky ones, believe me, - because you can say. - I am (name the nation here). In the West I am anything but not Russian. It’s my personal tragedy. God curses us and the rest of the world just has a great fun, watching the clumsy Russian beast, eating its heart out.
    And again, - thanks. Will be happy to have beer another day with you.
    Rgds,
    Alex
    Moscow
    P.S. Yet I would strongly discourage you to print issues with articles like “The Gay Russian Hall of Fame”. Its disgraceful to name living and diseased people in a manner your paper deliberately had used. Despite the setbacks and dreadful experience we all witness here, please pay certain respect to Russia, its people and history; it’s a feasible act all we have to carry out, especially when having such an effective communication tool as newspaper (in your case). ...Not only Westerners read your paper, Sir. And while some parts of that issue may sound funny, it’s too much to bear.