The Russian General

 

“I’m a 500 Year-Old War Lord.”

 

 

That is just so damn funny — because you notice that they have given him a toilet, but NO Privacy.

 

He’s not ALLOWED to have any Dignity.

 

Like that moment in Spock’s Death scene where, blind, utterly ravaged by enough deadly radiation to kill an elephant stone dead inside of 3 seconds, with every part of his physical being unravelling and turning to cancerous, malignant, undifferentiated mush, after he SOMEHOW pulls himself upright and staggers to his feet — he takes a moment to straighten his tunic before turning around, just in case anybody can see him.

 

If he shits (and he doesn’t), he has to take a shit in front of Other People, watching his every move. Because They Don’t Trust Him.

 

There is a story that James Joyce’s father told him, about The Russian General in some damned war or another — presumably Crimea — where he spotted A General (of The Enemy), walk out into a field and he was preparing to shoot him.... When all of a sudden he unfastened his belt, pulled down his pants and squatted down in the middle of The Empty Field to take a crap. 

 

And Joyce’s Father told him “It made him

look So Human, that I couldn’t do it.”

 

Of course, once he had stood up and hitched his pants back into place, THEN he stopped seeming like a Human Being and became again A General of The Enemy, his scruple evaporated and Joyce Sr. happily shot him dead without so much as second’s thought.