Hi all,
Thanks to the protests here in Kazakhstan, it doesn’t look like this post will appear on its scheduled Thursday, because the internet has been basically cut. But I’m going to write and prepare it. I’ll upload it, when the internet returns, which, according to some rumours, might not be until January 19th or so.
Speaking of rumours, if you’re outside Kazakhstan, you probably have a better idea of what’s going on than I do. (Assuming you get your news from an actual news source, not Facebook. Facebook is basically an advertising company. It provides “entertainment” to keep you “engaged”, and made up stuff is more “engaging” than facts. See? That’s a scientifically proven fact, and wasn’t it boring?)
Anyway, I can’t upload my blog today, and I can’t use my bank card to buy food (the payment machine needs an internet connection to confirm the payment). So, I joined the queue of about 50 people waiting to take out cash from the cash dispenser. Talk about being engaged! It’s not normally the done thing to ogle the screen while people are getting money, but today, it was de rigueur. By the time I joined the queue, only one of the four machines was still giving people their own money back on request, and let me tell you: it was exciting.
When I joined the queue, it was still possible to take out the maximum amount of 100,000 Kazakh Tenge (a little over €200). The queue snaked around the foyer, and I had to follow it around to where the non-working machines blocked my view. By the time I could see the machine again, my adrenaline was pumping as people were already down to a maximum of 50,000 KZT.
Then 20,000 KZT.
10,000 KZT.
The woman in front of me got 6,000 KZT.
I got 0 KZT.
Spare me your pity, however, because only time will tell whether I really left with nothing! Of the fifty people in the foyer (and the line kept getting topped up behind me, so that’s fifty at a time, not fifty total), about ten were wearing masks (Yes, cynical and pedantic reader, I mean nine others and I). Of those ten, four were using their masks primarily as chin-warmers.
Luckily, the highly infectious Covid-19 variant, Omicron, hasn’t reached Kazakhstan. Whew!
According to official reporting, that is, and not the other thing: facts.
So, as I have no facts and can’t go online to find out what is happening from a reputable news source, I’m going to have to guess what’s going on outside. Here we go.
The initial cause seems to have been an almost-doubling of the cost of liquid gas, which people here use for fuel. But in the same way that an increase in bus fares set off wider-ranging protests in Chile, I’m guessing people are now protesting about a lot of other things, such as thirty years of corruption and cronyism*.
As I say, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just speculating based on my perception. Among other things, cutting internet when people want to complain doesn’t feel like the action of a legitimate democratic government to me.
Today’s flash fiction is very much in keeping with today’s theme (it was very subtle, were you able to spot it?).
Enjoy!
The thing about having his workshop in the shed where he also kept chickens was that they were always staring. Arnold ignored the quizzical glances boring into his back as he connected the final wire on the bomb. Finally, it was done, the tofu-like slab of Semtex sweating in the hot shed, just like Arnold’s forehead.
Now all he had to do was decide who to send it to. Arnold had a lot of enemies. Or so he liked to think.
Back in the kitchen, he fried up half a dozen eggs with a half-pint of milk and stared into space as he chewed the undercooked gummy mass. He tried imagining the newspaper headlines. That was a good point. If he wanted a positive write up, then he should leave the media alone. After breakfast, he logged onto his computer to help decide on a suitable target and immediately felt like a martyr. On his desktop was the folder, practically bulging, and which he had cunningly called “New Folder” to deflect attention, where the ladies of his porn collection lived. After years of conditioning, even the plain pancake-yellow folder icon got him excited.
If only he had an actual girlfriend (or two, gorgeous and bi-curious, ideally). Then, if something had happened to one of them, he could use his bomb to avenge her. The closest Arnold had ever come to a girlfriend was when a woman had once smiled at him by mistake. There was also the fact that he had given his chickens women’s names, about which he kept very quiet in his incel forum. He scrolled through the feed.
Politicians, banks, Big Tech, antifa, climate change scientists, members of the secret Bill Gates army (which was actually led by George Soros, except for when it was the other way around).… It wasn’t a lack of options, there were too many. He could even blow up his chickens if he wanted, though that would hardly make the headlines.
Unless…
Unless they were celebrity chickens!
Making his chickens famous kept him busy for a long time. Arnold’s Dancing Chickens Channel grew more popular every week, and the spin-off “Masked Chicken Challenge” was a smash hit on Netflix. He soon forgot all about his bomb, and, because this is a fairy tale, having actual things to do made him a better person, so he even met a girl who liked him.
*My fictional lawyer has asked me to clarify that I’m not suggesting there is any actual corruption here, merely that I suffer from a perception that a non-zero level of corruption exists. Probably because of social media. Hey, I’m the victim here!
