Verbal Sunstroke

Dust will cover it after successfully defending its centuriesold hearth in this magazine for three years and seven months.

As in every bad WW2 movie where the socalled ideological motivation is the driving force behind the starring actors' unreasonable liberating actssomething exploded in my head between 8.02 and 10.44 p.m. on Tuesday. A false and strictly personal excuse that I a better armed and nastier enemy occupied my mind the week before and that I, why should I lie to you, felt like a manicdepressive while being sensationally pissed off is not good enough to explain the decision which is a direct result of what was simultaneously happening live on several TV channels.

The unlucky people who didn't watch TV that evening and surrendered to the imbecile hedonism of the year's seventh monthall those irresponsible citizens should know what they missed to avoid making the same stupid mistake again. For example, they could at first hear an excessively excited Dusan Cukic, a journalist of Television Serbia, reporting from Tripoli, where in a local tent Zoran Lilic, the Yugoslav President, expected an unexpected visit by Moammar al Ghadafi; I must admit I was personally worried about Cukic's health (although he is the President of the official Association of Journalists) so much happiness on such a small telephone line is too much even for the month when, as Mirjana Markovic (the wife of Serbian President and ideologist of the Communist PartyMovement for Yugoslavia SKPJ) stressed, the bravest Montenegrin people rose against the occupation forces and their servants on July 13, 1941.

But, Cukic was only a starter.

The specialties were yet to come.

Who was the first: Jezdimir Vasiljevic (the founder of Jugoskandik, one of the biggest private banks in the country, who fled abroad). No, I am not wrong. The man is in Ecuador, but thanks to Serb hero Nikola Tesla who invented electricity, the generator, telephone, ink and television we were able to see him on TV in an interview done on the spot by Milorad Roganovic, an editor of Independent Radio and Television Studio B. The socalled scene of this fascinating interview must have been stolen from one of Federico Felini's most drunken films; Roganovic and Vasiljevic sat at the simplest of metal tables in front of a static camera. Boss Jezda (Vasiljevic's nickname) drank beer in impressive quantities and proved to all who kept money in his bank that he is a chainsmoker using an interesting kind of match that when struck sounded like an explosion in a coal mine. Milorad and Jezda sat in front of a wire fence behind which a monument with something that was supposed to look like the globe on the top of it rose to the sky. Behind the monument were some mountains in the mist, the sky was clear, and below the TV picture the supers (the words that mean something and move on the screen irritating semiliterate people who are unable to catch what they say) provided the exclusive information that the interview was at 5,300 meters above sea level, which means that oxygen was scarce, which again will later prove to be very important, even crucial in understanding the whole story.

This is what Jezdimir Vasiljevic said in 58 minutes: he was sent to Yugoslavia (we do not know by whom, it is still to early for him to reveal who his bosses are) to secure the social peace, since he personally saw a map where everything concerning the bloody war was drawn up and marked. The map hung in the cabinet of Marko Negovanovic, the Serbian Defence Minister. Naturally, this prompted him to organise a coup together with the above mentioned Marko and with General Momcilo Perisic who now keeps quiet and was even promoted to ChiefofStaff of the Yugoslav Army.

Then Jezda imported uniforms, weapons and those long truncheons (used in July 1993 on demonstrators in front of the Federal Parliament building) with his trucks from Bulgaria, but They (but he didn't say who They were as it is still too early) confiscated his uniforms, weapons and truncheons. But Jezda and the club figured out that something was cooking and when the scandal broke They called him up and told him, ``You'll be arrested at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning.''

He left for Israel after a courageous escape to Budapest (``I didn't want to, but I had to''). And what about the people whose money was in his bank? They don't have to worry: they'll get compensation as soon as Vasiljevic gets rich, since we found outmodestly and in passingthat Jezdimir got his Master's degree in physics (``I don't want to talk about that, it is still too early'') and that right now in Ecuador he is working on the project of something that looks like perpetuum mobile, only isn't, but uses inertia, digital frequenc. It is expected to be a major breakthrough in the world's industry, since it will be able to turn indefinitely without a crank until we all are turned to dust.

But, Jezda wonders, and it looks like this question bothers him a great deal: Where's the Herzmachine? He personally left it either at the general staff headquarters or to Negovanovic (he cannot remember exactly), but this Herz machine can kill you like a fly over the telephone. You call an idiot, he picks up a receiver, says ``Hello'' idiotically without it occurring to him that this will be the last word he utters in his life, since herz flies towards him killing him directly into the brain, while the receiver that blew up in pieces falls out of the idiot's hand in the gentle slowmotion of deviant death...

In the 58th minute of the interview, in a shot with everything there: the table, the fence, the monument, the metal globe, the mistwe learned that Boss Jezda enjoys the protection of the Ecuadorian police, and one bodyguard who knows karate, and another one whose skill in martial arts was not disclosed (``It's too early now'').

Who was the second: Milja Vujanovic. The official Serbian witch was dogged by grave astrological misfortune since her show was on air at the same time as Jezda's interview which, according to the below signed TV maniac, had no serious mental competition that night.

Milja did try to interpret the explosion on Jupiter which that comet hit making a crater as a warning from the Universe to all those Contact powers who want to impose nonsensical ultimatums on the Bosnian Serbs. But, no one can touch the Serbs since they have a Herzmachine. Speaking of the Croats (who are neither a race, a people, nor human beings), Milja said it would be convenient if they admitted that the territories where they live actually belong to the Serbs and moved to Vienna, which is also a Serb city since ``Vienna'' is a beautiful old Serb word. And on and on she went.

Then Milja got tired and her airtime ran out.

Who was the third: The film ``Walter defends Sarajevo.'' On the second channel. Probably to mark WW2 Resistance Day of all frantic peoples of nonexisting but unitarily frantic BosniaHerzegovina.

If I had watched the whole film that Tuesday with Bata Zivojinovic (actor and MP of the Socialist Party of SerbiaSPS) in the role of Radovan Karadzic, I would have jumped from the top of my apartment block.

That is why I changed the channel...

Who was the fourth: Television Serbia reporter Predrag Vitas who visited the freedom loving Nis, a city in southern Serbia, which only in July, is capable of showing how the sanctions can stimulate those who rely on the wise policies of Slobodan Milosevic and his family.

Just as Vitas stepped into some factory garden that has not been watered since 1946 I felt the wish to watch TV Palma (a commercial TV station in Belgrade, that broadcasts exclusively folk music and films).

Who was the fifth: Vesna Zmijanac. Folk singer and the favourite topic of discussion in the Serbian Parliament. The star of opposition debates. Folk favourite of Radio Television Serbia whose director is Milorad Vucelic. Who, the rumour has it, not only Vesna#s director, but also something much more, something more gentle and more sentimental.

Since the gossip spread around Belgrade at about the same time when the Serbian Parliament was to discuss the Law on Radio Television Serbia it was easy to predict what Vucelic would be criticized for. It could be heard during the parliamentary discussion that Vucelic ``fell in love at an old age'' that he ``is cold as a snake'' (allusion to Vesna's last name, zmija means snake), and, generally speaking, a part of opposition was so feverishly involved with the intellectual folk sphere of Vucelic's life that the agreement on the Law came to nothing.

Was there anything else: There was. There was a debate about the recent fight in the Serbian Parliament on the First Channel. But they didn't show the pictures that could be seen on TV stations Studio B and Politika.

The following could be heard:

One MP telling the other that he is a piece of shit, trash, and all that he is capable only of is pulling out treestumps. Then the other MP responds by saying that he (the first MP) is a motherfucker, and that his entire family, both living and dead, can fuck off, since he is a bastard, a scumbag, and an idiot.

Or:

One MP in the Serbian Parliament tells another MP in the Serbian Parliament that he can perfom that sexual act which requires the mouth to be open in the shape of the letter ``O,'' which he demonstrated, to avoid any confusion, by placing his hand on the spot where the legs suddenly end.

The MP then responds that he will be more than glad to do everything that the first MP told him, but with his daughter (the daughter of the first MP).

``But, she's only six,'' the first MP screamed.

Leaving this scholastic debate on the meaning of oral life on the side, I am ready to confirm, accepting all criminal responsibility, that the entire dialogue could be perfectly heard and seen on TV.

And throughout the whole of Serbia (the parliament sessions are broadcast live by Television Serbia that covers the entire territory of Serbia).

Was there anything more: Of course. At the launch of the Yugoslav United Left (YUL), Dr. Mirjana Markovic, the leader and the ideologist of the YUL, explained that she wished that our ``shopwindows were nice and our streets clean, that the people smiled and that there was no more primitivism,'' apart from describing in a way that proved she is in love with herself that she would like to live in the month of July forever.

Supercool!

Only few days before that Dr. Mirjana Markovic wrote in her diary that Vojislav Seselj (the leader of the Serbian Radical PartySRS) was ``neither a Serb nor a man, but a Turk.''

Looking back I note that only several days earlier Vojislav Seselj was a guest on a chat show on TV Politika. A popular host asked him whether it was true that he is the ugliest man in Serbia. ``Not as long as Dr. Mirjana Markovic is around,'' he replied.

Then something called the Media Group Politika issued an announcement that it will not allow on air anyone who uses their precious TV station to badmouth others.

Several days later the Media Group Politika reported a text of Dr. Mira Markovic where she qualified Seselj.

A physical discussion in the Serbian Parliament about the President#s wife could begin.

Epilogue: My neighbour no longer answers the phone ever since he heard about the Herzmachine. When someone calls him, he just keeps quiet. When the telephone stops ringing, my neighbour start dialing all his friends and acquaintances asking them whether they called him.

That's what you call playing it safe.

I must admit, this neigbour advised me not to write "The Blind Box'' any more.