Little Joey Stalin's Disappearance (Gori, Georgia)

June 8^th, 2010 - Every infamous homicidal mass murderer has to start somewhere. Well, the town of Gori in Georgia is where Joseph Stalin got his. It is there that you can find his house of birth (enshrined within a Greco-Italianate pavilion) along with a museum dedicated solely to his life. He lived there until the age of three. Its just neato. I have no problem with a Joe Stalin museum but it is a little unsettling to realize that many folks (mostly older generation I presume) in the town actually revere this nutbag as a hero.

The museum contains a plethora of pictures and personal artifacts. It even has room containing only a death mask (a plaster cast of Mr. Soviet himself shortly after his demise). Just a tad eerie. Why stop there? Why not just go ahead and plaster his ass and junk as well? Now that would be a way to immortalize your favorite son. I know when I die I will insist on having my tombstone adorned with a 'genital' death mask. I've already started the paperwork.

And just to make sure there is no doubt about Joey's status in the town there is an obnoxiously large statue of him still standing in Stalin Square right in front of the town hall. This is supposedly the only such monument of this size still in existence. It survived Khrushchev's de-Stalinization program and was left untouched after Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union at the request of local citizens. Seriously? I might be confused by this if the man wasn't so damn sexy. I think that Russia and the former Soviet satellites ought to institute a re-Stalinization program. That man's image makes one hell of a statute.

[Author's Note: Not three weeks after writing this Gori's municipal authorities conducted an unannounced midnight operation to remove the statute. No explanation was provided. This is rather fitting considering this is precisely how Joey often disposed of his rivals. Hasta la vista, Fucko!!!]

"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?"
— Mark Twain 

Fucko's house encased in Greco-Italianate pavilion

Me & Fucko

Fucko's death mask