PPP still alive

Last month, I received from Amazon the book that started everything ...

This book, is funny to read, sometime disturbing, sometime scary, many times confusing but always full of surprises.

For example among the unfinished scenarios of Petr Sadecky, he mentions in Mtsyry 12 and 13 dated 1963 the story of the "Okhotoiki an golovami dlya polskov i chekhoslovatskey kompartii" (Headhunter for the Polish and Czech Communist Parties) - which took place in a imagined 1969 (because the script was originally written in 1963), in this alternate universe the Kremlin choose Czechoslovak and Polish Communist Parties to hire and train South American Head Hunters (Jivaro) the plan was to create Havoc in the USA by killing all senators, and politicians - luckily in the meantime Octobriana was preparing a counter attack with Apache and Sioux to eradicate the Jivaro.
While at the same time, in the Czechoslovak government a strong wave of independence was started, causing that later (Nov 1970) the USSR would invade with tanks and helicopters Czechoslovakia. From Petr Sadecky's word "we had little idea that our fantasy would become reality in 1968"

So in the same vein of reality overcoming the fiction - I've discovered recently that a cell of the PPP was still active - and of course I won't give away too many details about it ; since it's still a very secret organization. But fear not, because the new PPP is  completely harmless, peaceful and made of the  strangest and most useless of dreamers, artists, idealist, philosopher etc ... like the original PPP, they wouldn't find their place neither in Communism, nor in the new World order of Capitalism.
And they're still producing some sort of continuation of Mtsyry - the Samizdat (or more likely Tamizdat in this particular case).

First, let me introduce you to the one we would call Mister P - he's the artist (Khudozhnik) in the group
and like many artists, he's very difficult to manage, for example if you want a painting or a drawing for a specific date, you can be sure he's going to be late for at least 2 weeks - and then, suprisingly when you think he has stopped doing any art for good - he would deliver an unwanted art just for fun.
When Mister P was young, his dream was to draw comics - his favourites comics character were (in this particular oder) Tintin, Asterix, Lucky Luke then getting a little older he went for Natacha, and comics from Moebius, Gotlib, Rozinsky and so on ... when he discovered the x-men he went a bit funny and stayed in his room for 2 days, he thought he developed a special ability - and was able to move objects ... lately, he got involved in some linux projects (openclipart and Wesnoth), and tried to create a heroic fantasy comics from scratch - he called it "Lore of Lorodun" - but got a little confused and disapointed later when he realized the abreviation was LOL. And that nobody would take him seriously. Anyway I'm grateful, that he gave me permission to use some of his paintings, sketches when I launched this blog back in July. And I'm still hoping he would come up sometime with a full page of Octobriana comics ....
His latest project involved translating a comic based on a French Rock band called "Super Funf".

There's also Mr H - but we don't have many news from him, when young he was very much involved in role playing game, and that must have left him with weird ideas. He's a good scenarist, and was a pretty good dungeon master, his problem was that he enjoyed his story so much, he sometime got a bit upset when the players weren't doing what he expected them to do...
He often asked Mr P to create maps, or fantasy art for him - they wanted to start a project together, and then Mr P was asked to deliver some arts and was given deadline, ... big mistake!
Mr H is reading a lot of news, and is always intrigued about the internet meme phenomenon - don't get him started on the Russian meme or narwhal and bacon (?!).
He has a few interesting theories about the internet being the brain of the subconcious World. His sense of humor is a bit "challenging", he's also convinced that some conspiracy are true - for example after watching the Zeitgeist, he was pretty sure the Twin Tower were an inside job ; and he has other strange ideas about politics and evolution of Humanity. Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure we lost contact with Mr H after those rumors about 2012 being the end of the world. Maybe he's climbing the himalaya ?!

Mrs D - she's our muse at the new PPP - and everyone is in love with her, she is the incarnation of Octobriana, except thats she's  a brunette, doesn't have a large eyebrow and she's of Italian descent.
If you'd ask her she  would show where her family originally come by pointing her finger to the talon of her leather boots (because of the shape of Italy). She's also a big fan of the "Twilight" serie - which I believe is a big embarrassment for the other members - but  everyone can forgive everything coming from a good looking girl.
She has never finished school, her english is very approximative - but her accent is fun to hear. And she has many girlfriends, so like Lydia Borisovna (NSFW) of the original PPP - you can define her as a lesbian who occasionnally loved men. Except that she wouldn't come up with such dramatic sentence as "Take off your clothes and we'll try position 143" - not that we wouldn't want her to - but you know these were different times...

And then last, Mr R  (R for Roy), that would be me, I've joined the group in November - just one year, after discovering Octobriana for the first time on an article of the Prague Post. There was a little exam and a secret ceremony to show that I was "worthy" and could be part of the group (involving some home made liquor, I'm sure you get the idea) - but now I'm in charge of trying to put together on facebook and so far has failed miserably - Mr P is against those social group, that to his opinion is a waste of time, Mr H - last time I heard - has developed theory about a World domination that would use social website to control and threaten every members, and finally Mrs D isn't interested at all. My assigned role would be to become the philosoph (filosof) or the writer of the group. And I hope some comics will be produced later - and also a calendar for 2010.

Link to Octobriana and the Russian Underground on Comic Vintage

Who wants to kill Jessie?

Recently I watched a Czech movie called "Who wants to kill Jessie?" ; and what a good surprise.

I won't tell the whole story but very shortly this film made in 1966 similarly to "Who framed Roger Rabbit ?" is introducing comic characters in real life (except that compare to normal person they can only talk via text balloons).

Now the irony is that what actually killed Jessie were 1968 historical events, as explained in the imdb extract below :

Kdo chce zabit Jessii? (1966) - Trivia: "American remake of this film was discussed with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in the roles of Jiri Sovak and Dana Medricka. Juraj Visny, Karel Effa and Olga Schoberova who played Superman, the gunfighter and Jessie in the original version were asked to repeat their roles. The project broke down after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968."

As a final note. I would suggest to watch the movie opening sequence featuring drawings of the talented Czech artist Kaja Saudek.

Octobriana - experimenting the Social Internet

The social Internet : A Stateless, classless community very similar to Karl Marx description of "pure communism"

Quote from Wikipedia :

Marx argued that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, will inevitably produce internal tensions which will lead to its destruction.^[2] Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, he believed socialism will, in its turn, replace capitalism, and lead to a stateless, classless society called pure communism. This would emerge after a transitional period called the "dictatorship of the proletariat": a period sometimes referred to as the "workers state" or "workers' democracy"

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_marx

Here's my first impressions of my recent experience with the "Social Internet" so far :

On Facebook, excellent surprise the Finnish actress of the Octobriana movie, is there and she accepted my friend request - very cool. I'm a big fan, she always crack me up when she says her line "I'm bored already!". I secretly hope that there will be a sequel of this movie (see my previous post about that)
Anyway what can I do on Facebook - I can poke people, (but I'm too shy to do that) ; join group - there was a Octobriana group there, I join immediately - but it seems that nobody is in charge there anymore - the group is now dormant, too bad...
And I could also make friends with other people, like the new cool artists I discovered on Deviantart.

On Deviant Art, I'm always amazed by the amount of brilliant artworks and artists there - so many good stuff, it's unbelievable - I litteraly spend hours everyday browsing and admiring the talent of those guys there. Lately I discovered the delightful Propaganda poster of Domnx - (jaw-dropping graphics), and also hilarious because of the cunning title and little details (the "Hamster Initiative" ?!).

And last (but not least) Twitter, great  way to end the loop - for me Twitter is like fast-blogging ; perfect for unfinished thougt, or for throwing idea like I would do on a notepad, or simply for saving a link during the day in order to watch it later in the evening ...

• my link on facebook
• my link on DA
• my link on Twitter

Image Credit : animated gif by domnx

20 Years ago ... The Fall of Berlin Wall

The spirit of Revolution at his best!
Octobriana would have been dancing all night, I'm sure.

Octobriana and Vampires

Octobriana is a Russian Super Heroine - but what's her super powers ? she can't fly, she can't see through walls, she can't become invisible ... and yet, she is special - because she represents the eternal spirit of Youth and the spirit of Revolution - which means, that she's immortal ; That's why she could be out of the gulag after 30 years and still look stunning.

Forever young and immortal as super power - that's not too shabby !

So where's the connection with Vampires?

Vampires becomes vampire by being bitten by another vampire ... so they are dead, but ironically they become immortal in the process. Living a curse, of having to survive by drinking their victim's blood - not a cool super power!


On higher level of symbolism, we could say that if Octobriana is the force of Revolution, setting people free and protecting the working class - Vampires represents the untouchable upper class, the underground society with the real power over the ordinary people, being driven by the need of killing others to survive. But not only they kill their victims, they're also alienating them by transforming them into monster...

If we push the analogy a little further - we could see an economic system that put profit as the ultimate goal,  putting the environment at stake and pushing people into cheap labor or slavery - generating financial crisis, fear and unemployment as an excuse for Wars, crime and violence ...

Interestingly (as far as I recall) Octobriana fought against robots, giant walrus, baba yaga, zombies and many foes but never fought against Vampires, ... Yet ?!