by John Bninski
Straight from the Motherland, here’s a special Friday Special from our foreign correspondent stationed in Russia, John Bninski.
In our new globalized economy, the makers of Russian nesting dolls, or matryoshki, have found they need to diversify their wares and cater to a wide variety of market sectors. Here are a few of the latest lines in nesting doll fashions…
Russian Roulette dolls ($0.07): Like the traditional Russian nesting doll, but with a unique Cheka-inspired twist. Each doll has a small plastic explosive fastened inside it. Any given member of this doll family may or may not detonate when opened. Recommended as a gift for friends in Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Geometrical progression dolls ($0.248163264128): Designed specially for college students in incommodious apartments such as Hill College House. In the traditional matryoshka, each successive doll is smaller than the last by a constant fraction, giving a whole row of six or seven dolls for the display of which there may simply be no space in a dorm room. The brains in our R&D bureau solved this problem by coming up with the geometrical progession doll: each doll is [r^(-n)]*100% the size of the previous one, ensuring that the dolls quickly get small enough to fit in even the most exiguous Hill double.
PRC dolls (10 for $.05, $.50 per 1000 for orders over 1000 units): After the fall of the Soviet Union, the mantle of Glorious Socialist Shit Yard Worker’s Paradise passed to the People’s Republic of China, and with it the fine art of matryoshka-making. The PRC doll family has only one doll inside the mother, in strict accordance with Bejing’s Directive No. 7025 on population control. If you find a PRC doll with more than one child inside, inform the authorities immediately and the manufacturer will be run over by a tank.
DPRK dolls ($.50): A spin-off from the PRC doll line, these dolls are much thinner than traditional matryoshki, on account of growing up on a diet of mouse ears and sawdust. The manufacturer informs us that the smallest doll contains a surprise, but nobody knows for sure.
Voodoo hex dolls ($6.66): These are custom-made for each buyer. Submit with your order specifications for the manufacturer to make this doll resemble a female you dislike. When you open the doll, your female enemy may find she has unexpectedly given birth to quintuplets.
Mobius dolls ($): Great for kids who need a toy to keep them occupied for long periods. Open the largest Mobius doll, and then the next, and then the next, and so forth. You can do this for several hours before noticing that all along you have been opening the same doll.
1920s USA doll ($.05): Return to normalcy with a good old-fashioned American doll after browsing through all those queer foreign ones. The 1920s USA doll comes in any color you like, as long as it is black. Warning: this doll is so much fun that the letdown from opening the last doll and finding that there are no more has been known to cause severe depression. Bathtub gin not included.