Once again, I cannot get to my Residua website since early this morning. It is dead as a doornail. And it is late evening already. The last time something like this happened was five months ago, and I immediately thought of hacking from funny quarters (“Chinese Repression,” April 19, 2011). The same thought came to me this morning. One more time, my letters to The Economist would be sufficient to attract the interest of the appropriate Chinese authorities. There, I do not mince words about the nature of the privatization process in one of the last countries that still parade their socialism or even communism. Of course, I am very well aware that this may be just another attack of my paranoia. At any rate, I wrote to Paul Bazay, who administers my site from Calgary, Canada. As Calgary is some seven hours behind Motovun, it would take a while for him to answer my electronic mail. Or do anything about the dead site, either. It has been many hours already, and I am getting ever more anxious. The best I can do under the circumstances is to start enjoying my last paranoia attack to the hilt. Thus this goofy piece.

Addendum I (September 12, 2011)

In his last electronic-mail message, Paul Bazay assures me that no hackers were involved. Something went wrong with the server itself. It must be my paranoia, my reply acknowledges. I am crestfallen, it goes without saying. The way things appear, Chinese repression is one of my unflinching ideals.

Addendum II (September 13, 2011)

In fact, Yugoslav repression was one of my unflinching ideals ever since I started writing my Residua. I was cautious about the dissemination of my writings, but I published quite a bit from my magnum opus under a pseudonym even while I was still living in my socialist motherland in the late Seventies. And it was published in America, of all places. Throughout this period I had a subterranean wish to be caught, too. That was to be the proof of my writing, I suppose. But I was never even invited by the authorities to explain my untoward scribbling, let alone taken to court or sent to jail. That was a disappointment of sorts, I still remember quite vividly. In short, the dream of Chinese repression is only a distant reflection of a much older but equally silly dream. Real as the danger undoubtedly was, I must have perceived it in rather romantic terms. For me, repression meant salvation back then.