I did, after all, manage to earn my milestone tenth stint in the SHIZO (punishment cell) last year. My prison ghouls didn’t slack off and convened their commission on the holiday, December 31, especially for me. — Convict Navalny, the video surveillance operator recorded that you were washing up at 5:24 a.m., whereas according to the schedule your wake-up time is 5:00, and washing is at 6:00. Given the seriousness of the violation (that’s honestly what they said), you will be sent to the punishment cell for the maximum term — 15 days. And just like that, my plans for a fabulous New Year’s were shattered — plans for which I had laid in a bag of potato chips and a can of saury. So I rang in the New Year in solitary, in the company of my old friends: a homeless man (he was feeling down) and a madman (he howled and screamed behind the door). New Year’s in the SHIZO is like any other day: up at 5, lights out at 21:00. So for the first time since I was six years old, I simply slept through the entire New Year’s night. All in all, I’m satisfied. People pay money to celebrate New Year’s in some unusual way, and I got it for free. The only thing that worries me a bit is my homeless neighbor’s depression. Maybe I should call him the tractor driver now: I did manage to clean him up quite decently, and that is his profession. They released him on January 3, and on the 4th they brought him back to me again. What’s more, when they release him, they don’t take him back to the barracks like everyone else; they always declare him sick and put him in the medical unit, which is packed with flu patients — there’s an epidemic here. And exactly 24 hours later they throw him back into the SHIZO with me. It seems they’re using him as a bacteriological weapon. No wonder he’s depressed. Don’t get sick in the new year! 😉