(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
A group of activists calling themselves The Van Helsings celebrated the anniverary of Slobodan Milosevic's death on March 11 by making sure the son of a bitch stayed dead. Both the UK Guardian and Scotland's Sunday Herald report the group's intention to drive a hawthorn stake into the ground and through the casket into whatever's left of the mass murderer's heart. (The cognoscenti will understand that this anniversary is an important one in vampire prevention.)
Milosevic still has his admirers, even while the World Court at the Hague ponders whether to just say Screw It and put the entire country of Serbia on trial for mass murder. There were more people at Milosovic's funeral than there were at Tom Paine's, which says a lot about our dubious species's choice of role models.
Guards have been posted and outrage has been expressed online against making light of "desecration", though it seems clear that the Van Helsings were never serious about actually attempting to stake the corpse-- for one thing, the casket's buried under a concrete vault. For another, if an autopsy was performed after Milosovic's death, the coroner might have moved the heart around, or stuffed it back inside the cavity in one of those little bags they use for turkey gizzards, and there's no guarantee of a straight shot at the offending organ.
This was political theater, which might be all we have left as a weapon when fighting complacency, silence and chauvinism. Mass media and consensual reality are more and more under the sway of murderous regimes. This kind of theatrical gesture might replace the earnest demonstration as a form of protest-- if we want the world's attention, we're going to have to put on a better show than the competition.
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