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By Russell Working
For the two years that I have been in Russia, I have avoided the traditional Christmas shopper's ennui by loading up on touristy gifts for the folks back home: lacquered trays, Yeltsin matryoshki, a Mummy Troll CD, a liqueur called Honey Based on Deer Antlers. When I return from holidays in the United States, I bring back gifts that are hard to find in Vladivostok: Santa Barbara calendars, tortillas, high-quality batteries, a robe filled with goose down. This technique has proven so successful, I no longer dread shopping. In fact, I have expanded my Christmas list and will be hauling back a sleigh full of presents for my favorite public figures and organizations. All the kids on my list are naughty, but Vladivostok in no place for moralizers, so everyone is getting something anyway. Here are a few of the recipients: -- Viktor Cherepkov. For the former mayor, I have bought a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. His wacko behavior will make him an ideal member of the prosecution team preparing for President Clinton's trial in the Senate. Cherepkov will introduce into the record a videotape, provided by space aliens who recently kidnapped him, of Clinton and Yeltsin in the sauna confessing that they like to strip naked before dialing foreign leaders on their hot phones. (This will force another vote in the House on additional articles of impeachment.) Because the ex-mayor is in hiding, I will leave the 900 boxes of complimentary evidence from Kenneth Starr's office in the Central Square, for Cherepkov to claim when no one's looking. -- Governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko. I once read that "The Godfather" is Saddam Hussein's favorite movie. I'm hoping Primorye's boss -- jowly, tight-suited, foul-mouthed, the man with the mysteriously tiny declared income -- will appreciate the copy I bought for him. -- NHK TV. This Japanese station hired navy Captain Grigory Pasko as a stringer but abandoned him after his work for NHK led to his arrest on treason charges. For loyalty above and beyond the call of duty, NHK's Vladivostok bureau will receive a barrel of Russian nuclear waste dredged up from the bottom of the Sea of Japan. -- United States Information Agency. For its decision to ban one of my reporters from the U.S. Consulate library, this organization dedicated to spreading American values abroad will receive a terrarium full of recently agitated stink beetles. Last summer, the reporter showed up at a consulate Fourth of July event uninvited and interviewed a visiting American admiral. USIA responded by telling the Marine guards never to permit him to use the library. USIA also gets a letter of commendation from the World Congress of Passive-Aggressives for not notifying my reporter until he dropped by the library, months later. Gift buying is a tricky business, and I hope everyone is happy. I want to reassure them all: You deserve everything you got.
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