Ment
Auto-translated
Some things I've read on anekdot.ru over the last n weeks and selected because I decided to post them. There are not only jokes here, but stories as well.
Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov never fills out any forms.
He just bluntly steals a sample...
--------
They decided to determine who is the best detective in the world.
People gathered from all countries and began to compete. The task: A forest of 15 hectares; a hare was released into it, and they had to find it. First were the Americans—a SWAT platoon storms the forest with cops; an hour passes, nothing, two hours, nothing; after three, they bring out the hare, everyone is thrilled, well done, tra-la-la... Next are the English—they drive the best royal soldiers into the forest, a bunch of hunting dogs and other junk; after an hour, they bring out the hare... everyone is in shock, unbelievable... Now it's the Russians' turn.
... Two detectives in uniform with folders stomp into the forest; everyone starts complaining:
- Guys, where are you going? You'll be sitting in there for a couple of days.
Detectives - Everything's fine.
- Oh [expletive], we're going to get tired of waiting for you here.
- Everything's fine. Anyway, they entered the forest.
In the forest: noise, cracking, screaming.
After 15 minutes, they come out!
They lead out a bear in handcuffs. They bring him to the judges.
Bear - Where do I sign here? I'm the hare!))))
------
Yesterday, seven traffic control batons worth five hundred to six hundred thousand rubles per year were stolen from the Ukryupinsk city GIBDD department.
----------
In a grocery store.
- Do you have Roquefort cheese?
- What's that?
- Cheese with mold.
- No cheese. But we have Roquefort sausage, Roquefort belashi, and Roquefort herring.
-----------
The biggest lie of the 21st century is "I have read and accept the terms of the user agreement."
-----------
In 1975, my moonshine still was confiscated. Yesterday I saw it at the "Modernization and Nanotechnologies" exhibition.
---------
Two Jehovah's Witness women are walking through a park with their brochures. They approach a group of biker-metalheads and say:
- Do you believe that our planet will soon perish?
To which they receive an answer:
- And which planet are you from?
--------------
A Moroccan friend told me:
Imagine a city-state of half-wits. Idiots all around. They live normally, but there is a pressing problem—on the outskirts of the city, there is a large pit; individual persons fall into it and break their arms and legs. By the time help is called, by the time the ambulance arrives... In short, total inconvenience.
A commission was created to solve the problem consisting of the three biggest idiots.
They convene. The first proposes an idea:
- Let's expand the pit and station an ambulance there on duty. A person falls in, they won't have to wait for anyone or suffer. They'll be taken to the hospital immediately.
The second:
- Nonsense. You still have to take the person who-knows-where. My idea: build a small hospital next to the pit. A person falls—they go right in there—no need to transport them anywhere.
The third objects:
- Can you imagine the construction costs? My proposal is simpler: we fill the pit at the old location with earth, tamp it down... Next to the hospital, we dig a new pit—let people fall into that one.
-------------------
KETTLE
Many believe that patriotism is nothing other than love for one's homeland.
Fat chance. Now I know for sure that patriotism is the fanatical conviction that "since it's MINE, it means it's the best. And only so. And not up for discussion!!!"
A few years ago, I was heading to the city center on business. Mom asks—stop by "Eldorado," look at a kettle. We need a kettle.
I go in and ask where the kettles are. They point me in the right direction. Aha, here they are, the darlings. A four-story shelf like "from here to lunch," price range from 100 rubles to 100 bucks. I stand there, scratching my head. The consultant is nowhere to be found.
So I wander along this hundred-meter exposition, looking around helplessly. I catch some guy and ask a stupid question:
- Excuse me, do you happen to know anything about kettles?
- And how! – he puffs out his chest proudly. – I'm an electrician!
- Great! Could you tell me...
And he readily, like a seasoned lecturer, begins to explain to me which kettle on display is high-quality and which is junk. I listen intently, gradually figuring out the difference between a disk one and one with a coil, which consumes more energy, which...
- This one, - he grabs a nice little white "coil" one, - will break for you in six months!
- What do you mean "break"? How "break"? - an aggressively minded old lady jumps up to us, - I have one like that! I've been sterilizing jars with it for three years already!
- And we have a "Candy," - a young married couple intervenes modestly. – How many times we forgot to pour water in... and nothing.
- Fie! "Candy"! – pronounces a polished business-bitch. "Tefal" is the only decent brand.
- I had that "Tefal"... - intervenes a guy who is one hundred percent an ex-"bratka". (further on, only prepositions are censored)
I stand to the side with wide eyes: in ten minutes, a whole crowd has gathered in the nearly empty department. Each, clutching "their" kettle in their hand, enthusiastically—not listening to others, but rather trying to shout over the noise—proved that THIS particular kettle was the best in the whole world. Waving kettles around while doing so. The apotheosis was the appearance of security.
Having found out what the scandal was about, the senior officer grunted:
- Well, you've found something to argue about! Here! – he pointed to the cheapest and ugliest one. – We have one like that in the utility room. We dropped it... this... against the wall. About three times. Hm. And nothing. It works.
That was it. I quietly, hiding behind the vacuum cleaner stand, began my retreat maneuver.
P.S. I bought a kettle. In another store. SILENTLY!!!
-----------
Perhaps our militiamen became less corrupt after being renamed policemen (we'll take Minister Nugaliyev's word for it), but they didn't become any less clueless.
Not long ago, a humane preventive measure was introduced for some prisoners—house arrest with an electronic bracelet. It is impossible to remove this bracelet from the leg where it is attached without a special code, and one cannot leave the house with it—the electronics immediately send a signal to call a capture group. So they decided to keep one disabled fraudster in his apartment until trial, putting a bracelet on him—where could this little guy go from our brave policemen, especially with an impairment?
However, when the police came to check on their charge, they didn't find him at home (obviously, they didn't wait for him), but the bracelet was in place.
The thing is, the criminal was missing a leg up to the knee, which was replaced by a high-quality German prosthesis that looked like a real leg. That's where our Russian cops fastened the little bracelet.
-------------
KOSHCHEI THE IMMORTAL AND THE AMBULANCE
The live shoot was interrupted by heavy rain; we hid in a "Gazelle" and waited for better weather near the MKAD.
From football and women, the conversation smoothly slid toward this season's theatrical premieres:
- ... There is absolutely nothing to go see. Everything is derivative, and sometimes even tertiary...
- There are a couple of fresh productions, but mostly I agree—the theater is stagnating.
- The audience isn't coming. It's all fussing and treading water; there are no new ideas. And this has been the case for several seasons in a row.
The operator Andrey unexpectedly cut into the conversation of the avid theater-goers:
- Theater as a genre died long ago, a hundred years ago when the cinematograph was invented. A dead-end branch of art. Forgive me, but in my lifetime I've filmed not one hundred productions and I wouldn't buy a ticket for any of them with my own money... Simply put, there is no play that would emotionally compensate me for the time and money spent watching it!
Just as the avid theater-goers had taken a breath to object to the operator, he suddenly burst out laughing. The laughter was completely out of place given the preceding pathos, which confused everyone.
Having finished laughing, Andrey continued:
- Forgive me. I remembered something. I take my words back. There was one play that I would buy a ticket for with any amount of money, even though that theater was free.
Around 1970, my mother took me to the Palace of Pioneers for a New Year's premiere of a fairy tale that I will not forget until the end of my days. As far as I remember—it was an amateur theater, pleasant already because the children's roles were played not by midgets, but by actual children...
I was about ten, maybe twelve. Sitting and watching.
The whole plot revolved around a pedophilic-minded Koshchei the Immortal and his victim—a little princess about eight years old.
Either the princess would hide from the villain in the audience, or Koshchei himself would descend into the crowd to fish out the girl (but kind spectators handed him over like glass recycling...) and the little victim managed each time to escape and take cover either with a kind fairy or with a bunny who lived for some reason with a carrot... Well, that's not the point.
At the most climactic moment, when the tired princess fell asleep and the audience lacked the decibels to wake her up in time, Koshchei attacked the poor thing. He dragged her up a towering tree higher than the clouds (really higher than the clouds, four meters from the stage, no less). There at the very top hung a chest tied with chains, which according to documents contained all of Koshchei's trinkets: ducks, deaths, and eggs with needles.
Under flashes of terrible lightning, the pedophile stuffed the victim into the chest and locked it with a huge padlock.
About twenty minutes passed before the kind wizards and the bunny with the carrot found out how to destroy Koshchei and climbed the tree. Despite the plaintive moans from the chest and the wild screams of the spectators that the princess was inside and the casket must not be dropped into the abyss, the kind blacksmith at a dizzying height continued to hammer the iron chain, showering everyone with beautiful electric welding sparks.
Below, awaiting death, Koshchei writhed and suffered, wringing his black hands with huge claws.
The chain snapped, the hall gasped, and the chest fell onto the stage with a wild crash.
The pedophile jerked dramatically and slowly lay on top to die peacefully on the lid of his wealth.
Suddenly, a man in a strict suit and tie stood up before us, flowers in his hands. With a quick movement, he tossed the bouquet aside and screamed: "Call an ambulance!!!"
In three jumps, the new fairy-tale character had already leaped onto the stage and rushed to open the chest. But the lock would not give way. The man cast a furious glance into the dark, quiet hall and shouted: "Someone, give me a screwdriver or a crowbar!!!"
Koshchei loomed over the man—who indeed turned out to be immortal—and said in an otherworldly voice:
- Who are you!? Go away... This is my chest!!! I will turn you into a hedgehog!!!
Ah-ah-ha-ha!!!
The man jumped up and with all his might pushed the evil spirit in the chest with both hands. With such force that Koshchei was lifted off the ground and flew. Even his sinister black slippers flew off his thin legs from surprise.
Two meters away, to the cheerful laughter of the hall, the villain landed painfully on his tailbone and hissed terrifyingly stifled:
- Ah... [expletive]!
And the crazy man in the suit continued frantically trying to tear off the mighty lock, but all in vain...
Suddenly, from somewhere behind the scenes, our princess ran up behind the wild man—alive, healthy, and even in a new gorgeous dress—and spoke fearfully:
- Papa, papa, don't break the chest, don't be afraid, the bunny will revive me later. Go back to the hall.
The out-of-breath man hugged the princess, felt embarrassed, and said to Koshchei the Immortal, who was sitting on his tailbone:
- Forgive me, Albert Markovich, I didn't know...
Albert Markovich sadly waved a black claw at the man and, under thunderous applause, overcoming the pain, crawled under the descending curtain.
And a couple of minutes later, the ambulance arrived...
Now tell me, gentlemen theater-goers—what famous modern play can give me emotions of similar strength...? Exactly... [expletive]
-------------------
Lastly, something slightly sad.
IN A TANK
In the late 50s, a young cadet climbed into a tank.
Years passed, party policy changed, and the cadet himself matured and rose in rank.
He managed to marry, father two boys and a girl (from the girl I heard this story). The design of the tank and its deployment changed, but the tanker continued to sit inside—always ready to honestly carry out any order from the Motherland. General secretaries changed, winds of change blew, perestroika began and collapsed along with the Soviet Union, the crazy 90s arrived, but in the tank everything was as before—it still smelled of diesel and white walls created that same familiar Spartan comfort in the gloom.
Unexpectedly, someone knocked on the turret with a small wrench; the tanker climbed out, squinting at the light, and he was told with a smile:
- Comrade Colonel, please vacate the government tank. That's it. From this day on, you are no longer the commander of our regiment, but a military pensioner. Allow me, in the name and by order of, to escort you from the unit gates to your well-deserved retirement. Applause.
The commander's UAZ drove the colonel to the entrance of his Khrushchev five-story apartment building for the last time; so he arrived home in broad daylight with sad eyes and a prop gift saber under his arm.
The colonel was a good soldier and an honest commander; he even felt ashamed to get his wife—a postal worker—appointed as a warrant officer in the unit, although many officers' wives held lucrative positions. To the smallest requests of his spouse, he invariably replied:
- Don't ask, our town is small, rumors will spread, I am the regiment commander; what will my officers think of me if I bring a piece of same-paper from the club? No—that's shameful. We'll buy it.
He didn't even dare to tow his old wheel-less "Moskvitch" to the motor pool for an engine overhaul over many years. And now it's too late...
A pensioner with two days of experience sat by the TV, feeling sad and experiencing phantom pains from the loss of his beloved tank...
Idleness was a very unfamiliar state, for just a couple of days ago, he would crawl home from work only to collapse and fall asleep instantly until the unexpected appearance of a messenger from headquarters; but now you sit by the "box" and not a single dog even calls you. Of course, the regiment commander knew that sooner or later it would be so, but he didn't expect it to be like this...
Finally, the wife returned from work with their daughter; they whipped up some soup quickly. They sat down for dinner.
The colonel, stirring his spoon in the plate without appetite, said in a commanding tone:
- I've been looking at your housekeeping—it's a mess all around; I turn on the kettle and the fuses blow! You should have either thrown it out long ago or informed me of the breakdown.
The wife and daughter looked at each other.
The colonel continued:
- And those rascals are nowhere to be seen, they could've brought the grandkids to make grandpa happy; they know I'm sitting at home now... Listen, what have you cooked for me here...? Why the hell do I need your thin semolina soup!? I don't have an ulcer and I'm not on a diet; I'm a healthy man and I need fried meat!
The wife and daughter looked at each other again. The wife:
- Are you serious about the meat?
- Well, yes...
- Then bring the meat, I'll throw it in the pan, it's a five-minute job.
The colonel left the table offended, rushed to the pantry to the refrigerators and immediately returned even angrier than before:
- Mother of God, what is going on here? The refrigerators are empty; why, I ask you, did I buy you two whole refrigerators—to cool ice in one and mustard in the other!? You have more tits than brains; there are two women in the house, yet you're unable to feed one man properly! I am an unpretentious person, I can sleep on bare ground and eat a single tin of stewed meat, but there are some things!
Wife:
- Have you really gone this wild over thirty years in your tank, or are you pretending?
If you're pretending, then listen to how life is organized outside: Our kettle isn't broken; it's just that from today, before turning it on, turn off the heater. While you were organizing tank wedges at your exercises, a thick cable was run from the unit to our house, so the power never went out. But now that you're retired, they wound it up as unnecessary, so it's either the heater or the kettle...
You're expecting grandkids to visit? How lovely. Grandpa, do you seriously think that after work almost every day children dragged grandchildren across the whole city by bus just so you could make horses on your knees for them!? Did you not see what bags they left us with?
- What bags...?
- Do you even imagine what's happening in stores now and what the prices are? Your huge pension will only be enough for a kilo of not-so-expensive sausages. Tomorrow go get some bread, you'll understand yourself...
The colonel blinked in surprise.
The wife continued, but more gently:
- My poor colonel, are you really unaware that for many years, almost every day while you were on duty, a soldier arrived in a ZIL and loaded our refrigerators to the brim?
The tanker slumped, lowered his eyes, and silently began to slurp his semolina soup.
Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov never fills out any forms.
He just bluntly steals a sample...
--------
They decided to determine who is the best detective in the world.
People gathered from all countries and began to compete. The task: A forest of 15 hectares; a hare was released into it, and they had to find it. First were the Americans—a SWAT platoon storms the forest with cops; an hour passes, nothing, two hours, nothing; after three, they bring out the hare, everyone is thrilled, well done, tra-la-la... Next are the English—they drive the best royal soldiers into the forest, a bunch of hunting dogs and other junk; after an hour, they bring out the hare... everyone is in shock, unbelievable... Now it's the Russians' turn.
... Two detectives in uniform with folders stomp into the forest; everyone starts complaining:
- Guys, where are you going? You'll be sitting in there for a couple of days.
Detectives - Everything's fine.
- Oh [expletive], we're going to get tired of waiting for you here.
- Everything's fine. Anyway, they entered the forest.
In the forest: noise, cracking, screaming.
After 15 minutes, they come out!
They lead out a bear in handcuffs. They bring him to the judges.
Bear - Where do I sign here? I'm the hare!))))
------
Yesterday, seven traffic control batons worth five hundred to six hundred thousand rubles per year were stolen from the Ukryupinsk city GIBDD department.
----------
In a grocery store.
- Do you have Roquefort cheese?
- What's that?
- Cheese with mold.
- No cheese. But we have Roquefort sausage, Roquefort belashi, and Roquefort herring.
-----------
The biggest lie of the 21st century is "I have read and accept the terms of the user agreement."
-----------
In 1975, my moonshine still was confiscated. Yesterday I saw it at the "Modernization and Nanotechnologies" exhibition.
---------
Two Jehovah's Witness women are walking through a park with their brochures. They approach a group of biker-metalheads and say:
- Do you believe that our planet will soon perish?
To which they receive an answer:
- And which planet are you from?
--------------
A Moroccan friend told me:
Imagine a city-state of half-wits. Idiots all around. They live normally, but there is a pressing problem—on the outskirts of the city, there is a large pit; individual persons fall into it and break their arms and legs. By the time help is called, by the time the ambulance arrives... In short, total inconvenience.
A commission was created to solve the problem consisting of the three biggest idiots.
They convene. The first proposes an idea:
- Let's expand the pit and station an ambulance there on duty. A person falls in, they won't have to wait for anyone or suffer. They'll be taken to the hospital immediately.
The second:
- Nonsense. You still have to take the person who-knows-where. My idea: build a small hospital next to the pit. A person falls—they go right in there—no need to transport them anywhere.
The third objects:
- Can you imagine the construction costs? My proposal is simpler: we fill the pit at the old location with earth, tamp it down... Next to the hospital, we dig a new pit—let people fall into that one.
-------------------
KETTLE
Many believe that patriotism is nothing other than love for one's homeland.
Fat chance. Now I know for sure that patriotism is the fanatical conviction that "since it's MINE, it means it's the best. And only so. And not up for discussion!!!"
A few years ago, I was heading to the city center on business. Mom asks—stop by "Eldorado," look at a kettle. We need a kettle.
I go in and ask where the kettles are. They point me in the right direction. Aha, here they are, the darlings. A four-story shelf like "from here to lunch," price range from 100 rubles to 100 bucks. I stand there, scratching my head. The consultant is nowhere to be found.
So I wander along this hundred-meter exposition, looking around helplessly. I catch some guy and ask a stupid question:
- Excuse me, do you happen to know anything about kettles?
- And how! – he puffs out his chest proudly. – I'm an electrician!
- Great! Could you tell me...
And he readily, like a seasoned lecturer, begins to explain to me which kettle on display is high-quality and which is junk. I listen intently, gradually figuring out the difference between a disk one and one with a coil, which consumes more energy, which...
- This one, - he grabs a nice little white "coil" one, - will break for you in six months!
- What do you mean "break"? How "break"? - an aggressively minded old lady jumps up to us, - I have one like that! I've been sterilizing jars with it for three years already!
- And we have a "Candy," - a young married couple intervenes modestly. – How many times we forgot to pour water in... and nothing.
- Fie! "Candy"! – pronounces a polished business-bitch. "Tefal" is the only decent brand.
- I had that "Tefal"... - intervenes a guy who is one hundred percent an ex-"bratka". (further on, only prepositions are censored)
I stand to the side with wide eyes: in ten minutes, a whole crowd has gathered in the nearly empty department. Each, clutching "their" kettle in their hand, enthusiastically—not listening to others, but rather trying to shout over the noise—proved that THIS particular kettle was the best in the whole world. Waving kettles around while doing so. The apotheosis was the appearance of security.
Having found out what the scandal was about, the senior officer grunted:
- Well, you've found something to argue about! Here! – he pointed to the cheapest and ugliest one. – We have one like that in the utility room. We dropped it... this... against the wall. About three times. Hm. And nothing. It works.
That was it. I quietly, hiding behind the vacuum cleaner stand, began my retreat maneuver.
P.S. I bought a kettle. In another store. SILENTLY!!!
-----------
Perhaps our militiamen became less corrupt after being renamed policemen (we'll take Minister Nugaliyev's word for it), but they didn't become any less clueless.
Not long ago, a humane preventive measure was introduced for some prisoners—house arrest with an electronic bracelet. It is impossible to remove this bracelet from the leg where it is attached without a special code, and one cannot leave the house with it—the electronics immediately send a signal to call a capture group. So they decided to keep one disabled fraudster in his apartment until trial, putting a bracelet on him—where could this little guy go from our brave policemen, especially with an impairment?
However, when the police came to check on their charge, they didn't find him at home (obviously, they didn't wait for him), but the bracelet was in place.
The thing is, the criminal was missing a leg up to the knee, which was replaced by a high-quality German prosthesis that looked like a real leg. That's where our Russian cops fastened the little bracelet.
-------------
KOSHCHEI THE IMMORTAL AND THE AMBULANCE
The live shoot was interrupted by heavy rain; we hid in a "Gazelle" and waited for better weather near the MKAD.
From football and women, the conversation smoothly slid toward this season's theatrical premieres:
- ... There is absolutely nothing to go see. Everything is derivative, and sometimes even tertiary...
- There are a couple of fresh productions, but mostly I agree—the theater is stagnating.
- The audience isn't coming. It's all fussing and treading water; there are no new ideas. And this has been the case for several seasons in a row.
The operator Andrey unexpectedly cut into the conversation of the avid theater-goers:
- Theater as a genre died long ago, a hundred years ago when the cinematograph was invented. A dead-end branch of art. Forgive me, but in my lifetime I've filmed not one hundred productions and I wouldn't buy a ticket for any of them with my own money... Simply put, there is no play that would emotionally compensate me for the time and money spent watching it!
Just as the avid theater-goers had taken a breath to object to the operator, he suddenly burst out laughing. The laughter was completely out of place given the preceding pathos, which confused everyone.
Having finished laughing, Andrey continued:
- Forgive me. I remembered something. I take my words back. There was one play that I would buy a ticket for with any amount of money, even though that theater was free.
Around 1970, my mother took me to the Palace of Pioneers for a New Year's premiere of a fairy tale that I will not forget until the end of my days. As far as I remember—it was an amateur theater, pleasant already because the children's roles were played not by midgets, but by actual children...
I was about ten, maybe twelve. Sitting and watching.
The whole plot revolved around a pedophilic-minded Koshchei the Immortal and his victim—a little princess about eight years old.
Either the princess would hide from the villain in the audience, or Koshchei himself would descend into the crowd to fish out the girl (but kind spectators handed him over like glass recycling...) and the little victim managed each time to escape and take cover either with a kind fairy or with a bunny who lived for some reason with a carrot... Well, that's not the point.
At the most climactic moment, when the tired princess fell asleep and the audience lacked the decibels to wake her up in time, Koshchei attacked the poor thing. He dragged her up a towering tree higher than the clouds (really higher than the clouds, four meters from the stage, no less). There at the very top hung a chest tied with chains, which according to documents contained all of Koshchei's trinkets: ducks, deaths, and eggs with needles.
Under flashes of terrible lightning, the pedophile stuffed the victim into the chest and locked it with a huge padlock.
About twenty minutes passed before the kind wizards and the bunny with the carrot found out how to destroy Koshchei and climbed the tree. Despite the plaintive moans from the chest and the wild screams of the spectators that the princess was inside and the casket must not be dropped into the abyss, the kind blacksmith at a dizzying height continued to hammer the iron chain, showering everyone with beautiful electric welding sparks.
Below, awaiting death, Koshchei writhed and suffered, wringing his black hands with huge claws.
The chain snapped, the hall gasped, and the chest fell onto the stage with a wild crash.
The pedophile jerked dramatically and slowly lay on top to die peacefully on the lid of his wealth.
Suddenly, a man in a strict suit and tie stood up before us, flowers in his hands. With a quick movement, he tossed the bouquet aside and screamed: "Call an ambulance!!!"
In three jumps, the new fairy-tale character had already leaped onto the stage and rushed to open the chest. But the lock would not give way. The man cast a furious glance into the dark, quiet hall and shouted: "Someone, give me a screwdriver or a crowbar!!!"
Koshchei loomed over the man—who indeed turned out to be immortal—and said in an otherworldly voice:
- Who are you!? Go away... This is my chest!!! I will turn you into a hedgehog!!!
Ah-ah-ha-ha!!!
The man jumped up and with all his might pushed the evil spirit in the chest with both hands. With such force that Koshchei was lifted off the ground and flew. Even his sinister black slippers flew off his thin legs from surprise.
Two meters away, to the cheerful laughter of the hall, the villain landed painfully on his tailbone and hissed terrifyingly stifled:
- Ah... [expletive]!
And the crazy man in the suit continued frantically trying to tear off the mighty lock, but all in vain...
Suddenly, from somewhere behind the scenes, our princess ran up behind the wild man—alive, healthy, and even in a new gorgeous dress—and spoke fearfully:
- Papa, papa, don't break the chest, don't be afraid, the bunny will revive me later. Go back to the hall.
The out-of-breath man hugged the princess, felt embarrassed, and said to Koshchei the Immortal, who was sitting on his tailbone:
- Forgive me, Albert Markovich, I didn't know...
Albert Markovich sadly waved a black claw at the man and, under thunderous applause, overcoming the pain, crawled under the descending curtain.
And a couple of minutes later, the ambulance arrived...
Now tell me, gentlemen theater-goers—what famous modern play can give me emotions of similar strength...? Exactly... [expletive]
-------------------
Lastly, something slightly sad.
IN A TANK
In the late 50s, a young cadet climbed into a tank.
Years passed, party policy changed, and the cadet himself matured and rose in rank.
He managed to marry, father two boys and a girl (from the girl I heard this story). The design of the tank and its deployment changed, but the tanker continued to sit inside—always ready to honestly carry out any order from the Motherland. General secretaries changed, winds of change blew, perestroika began and collapsed along with the Soviet Union, the crazy 90s arrived, but in the tank everything was as before—it still smelled of diesel and white walls created that same familiar Spartan comfort in the gloom.
Unexpectedly, someone knocked on the turret with a small wrench; the tanker climbed out, squinting at the light, and he was told with a smile:
- Comrade Colonel, please vacate the government tank. That's it. From this day on, you are no longer the commander of our regiment, but a military pensioner. Allow me, in the name and by order of, to escort you from the unit gates to your well-deserved retirement. Applause.
The commander's UAZ drove the colonel to the entrance of his Khrushchev five-story apartment building for the last time; so he arrived home in broad daylight with sad eyes and a prop gift saber under his arm.
The colonel was a good soldier and an honest commander; he even felt ashamed to get his wife—a postal worker—appointed as a warrant officer in the unit, although many officers' wives held lucrative positions. To the smallest requests of his spouse, he invariably replied:
- Don't ask, our town is small, rumors will spread, I am the regiment commander; what will my officers think of me if I bring a piece of same-paper from the club? No—that's shameful. We'll buy it.
He didn't even dare to tow his old wheel-less "Moskvitch" to the motor pool for an engine overhaul over many years. And now it's too late...
A pensioner with two days of experience sat by the TV, feeling sad and experiencing phantom pains from the loss of his beloved tank...
Idleness was a very unfamiliar state, for just a couple of days ago, he would crawl home from work only to collapse and fall asleep instantly until the unexpected appearance of a messenger from headquarters; but now you sit by the "box" and not a single dog even calls you. Of course, the regiment commander knew that sooner or later it would be so, but he didn't expect it to be like this...
Finally, the wife returned from work with their daughter; they whipped up some soup quickly. They sat down for dinner.
The colonel, stirring his spoon in the plate without appetite, said in a commanding tone:
- I've been looking at your housekeeping—it's a mess all around; I turn on the kettle and the fuses blow! You should have either thrown it out long ago or informed me of the breakdown.
The wife and daughter looked at each other.
The colonel continued:
- And those rascals are nowhere to be seen, they could've brought the grandkids to make grandpa happy; they know I'm sitting at home now... Listen, what have you cooked for me here...? Why the hell do I need your thin semolina soup!? I don't have an ulcer and I'm not on a diet; I'm a healthy man and I need fried meat!
The wife and daughter looked at each other again. The wife:
- Are you serious about the meat?
- Well, yes...
- Then bring the meat, I'll throw it in the pan, it's a five-minute job.
The colonel left the table offended, rushed to the pantry to the refrigerators and immediately returned even angrier than before:
- Mother of God, what is going on here? The refrigerators are empty; why, I ask you, did I buy you two whole refrigerators—to cool ice in one and mustard in the other!? You have more tits than brains; there are two women in the house, yet you're unable to feed one man properly! I am an unpretentious person, I can sleep on bare ground and eat a single tin of stewed meat, but there are some things!
Wife:
- Have you really gone this wild over thirty years in your tank, or are you pretending?
If you're pretending, then listen to how life is organized outside: Our kettle isn't broken; it's just that from today, before turning it on, turn off the heater. While you were organizing tank wedges at your exercises, a thick cable was run from the unit to our house, so the power never went out. But now that you're retired, they wound it up as unnecessary, so it's either the heater or the kettle...
You're expecting grandkids to visit? How lovely. Grandpa, do you seriously think that after work almost every day children dragged grandchildren across the whole city by bus just so you could make horses on your knees for them!? Did you not see what bags they left us with?
- What bags...?
- Do you even imagine what's happening in stores now and what the prices are? Your huge pension will only be enough for a kilo of not-so-expensive sausages. Tomorrow go get some bread, you'll understand yourself...
The colonel blinked in surprise.
The wife continued, but more gently:
- My poor colonel, are you really unaware that for many years, almost every day while you were on duty, a soldier arrived in a ZIL and loaded our refrigerators to the brim?
The tanker slumped, lowered his eyes, and silently began to slurp his semolina soup.