Don't remember much of what I did during the day, probably really worked... Here, I considered, with Jan, buying TextControl from some smartass Germans, 1898 €; in the bizobject for SHET (the 2009 version then, migrated later into 2013 and 2017) introduced defaults as per F#1855 (the fogbug number), and the same thing in Belrap and CAAR; for SHET there was yet another detail in validations, of which there are hundreds, the work on them is endless... So, a day like any other.
In the evening I remembered to see what's going on on ppp... and spent the time until after midnight, desperately trying to match my reading speed with the tempo of manufacturing history.
The chef* of thenew radical party, SNS, torn off Šešelj's radicals a few years ago, Toma Nikolić aka Toma Undertaker, moderately literate character who really dug graves back in the day, who can't exactly state the name of the college he allegedly graduated, was on hunger and thirst (!) strike for three days now. We all took that as a grand sham. Why did he do that, i.e. what was the pretext, nobody even remembers nowadays, it was plain and simple a political stunt. The idea was to make believe how they were almost forbidden, how they don't get proper media coverage, staged protests against that, whatever.
They also organized a rally in support of him, and one Anđus, if I got the name correctly, on Focus radio, did something like live coverage, not moving his ass out of the studio, but rather relying on listeners calling in and sending SMS messages. Then someone on ppp had the idea that we could contribute as well...
To avoid spelunking down the memory street, here's what one forumaš, then already a columnist in „Danas“ (today), published two days later. I wouldn't have known who he was, had one of the forum's lady not been so corteous to whisper it to me...
On eighteenth of april of the current year, the bridge by Beška suffered significant damage amindst a clash between the supporters of Tomislav Nikolić and serbian riot police. In this skirmish, the police used water cannons, MP-40 machine guns(5) and „Sherman's“ tanks. Sounds unusual?
Exacty that could be heard on Radio Fokus in the said night as a consequence of spontaneously organized action of members of one internet forum who saturated the radio with sarcastic and false news. Namely, on the said radio the whole evening was dedicated to messages of support to Tomislav Nikolić, who is on hunger and thirst strike, and which were sent by phone and SMS by overwhelmingly worried and by government annoyed citizens. „Endure, Toma“, „We'll take the yellow(1) down“, „Rise, Serbia“ and all such in the spirit of postkosovian cycle(2), which the news anchor dutifully and passionately shared with the citizenry. In such a situation of collective hemmorhage of patriotism into brain, a group of forumaši(3) had the wits to use this medium(4) of austere filtering of information by directing a heap of in-jokes and false news wrapped into all kinds of worry over Nikolić's dehidratation.
Things which must be explained, despite this guy's using regular reporter's language:
(1) the yellow are the democratic party, presently in power. Their flag is actually blue but with yellow stars and lettering, pretty clouse to those of the EU. They are the main party of the coalition which toppled Milošević in 2000.
(2) double entendre here: in serbian lore, the epic poetry is divided into pre-kosovian (battle of 1389, attempt to halt the Osmanli/Ottoman invasion), kosovian, post-kosovian cycles, plus some smaller ones before and after that. In the current political situation, this is post-kosovian in the sense that there's some pause after the huge hubbub caused by Kosovo declaring independence in 2008.
(3) forum members, colloqually called this among themselves
(4) medium is singular of media; in serbian context its primary meaning is unit of publishing - be it a radio, tv, newspaper, magazine, web portal or whatever, each one of them is a medij (medium). It's known here that media is plural of medium, a fact which is almost lost on anglophones.
(5) MP-40 is a real machine gun, something from WWII, not manufactured since forties; one of forum members, who actually sent that message, has MP40 for handle. Also called Mrčo (in cyrillic, Мрчо, easy to misread).
For example, one of the messages was „Help god from faraway Bruxelles. Don't give, Toma, and to the victory, and afterwards be our guest in the from crosswords known spa(6) Spa, to regain strength well„. Then, message „Most importand is the defence tomorrow at the new castle“, signed „Unity M“ (allusion to the Newcastle vs Manchester united match). Messages were signed also with „Srboljub Koprofagov(7)“, „Greeting from Vaginovci“ etc, and the anchor read them all and the ether suffered [them all]. Soon the devil took away the joke into the very center of hellish laughter, when fake reports of thousands of people who are coming from Slavija, of two thousand folks from Novi Sad who are just departing to Belgrade and of the bridge at Beška which was blocked by the police and the „rising tensions“ there. Orson Welles would have been proud.
Under the guise of „breaking through the media blackout“, ironical and sarcastic remarks („they'll sell our churches because they're on good locations“), internal jokes („We can't even afford a ticket to Priština“ - allusion to the lyrics of the Galija band(8)) and false reports about fights („Beška must fall tonight!“(9), with sounds of police sirens worked into the background of the call) have smothered the emisija dedicated to Nikolić's strike about his own body's physiology. Forumaši had top grade fun for several hours, still not quite believeing how easy it was to, by use of patriotic slang, plant any kind of cuckoo egg rubbish to media.
(6) the word for medicinal baths is banja (from italian bagno), so „banja Spa“ translates as „spa Spa“, sorry about your language, and the word is among the crossword makers' favorite, as it fits too often.
(7) Srboljub is a regular name, translates as Serbophile. Koprofagov, well, one needs to understand that much greek - shit eater.
(8) simplified for the newspaper. There's a topic „ticket to Priština“ which really is from that song, and it's the topic, not the song, that the message alluded to. The Galija was always SPS aligned, their frontman at least, and they were widely derided and considered third grade band on the forum. They were big once, but that was forty years ago.
(9) In the cinematic epic „Battle on Neretva“ by Veljko Bulajić, Tito never appears in person, there's only one note signed by him, „Prozor must fall tonight“. Prozor is a place in Herzegovina, which was of strategic importance that day. And, BTW, it's one of at least dozen places in BiH with meaningful names - this one means window.
At Beška, specifically at the bridge, there was nothing, nobody was gathering, no crowd from Novi Sad was departing to Belgrade, nothing was organized, the whole thing was invented in the thin air/ether.
Few things that din't make it into the article, „see you on Ikar(us)'s pastures“ was about user Ikar and his „have a graze at my balls“, and, um, above footnotes. I'd have to reread all the 200 messages to remember, and I'm not sure I can log in there nowadays, not to mention find where that was.
I also had some ideas what else could be submitted, but wanted to read it all first, as there was good chance that someone already came to the same idea. By the time I reached the current flow, it was past midnight and the circus has already ended.
The author of the article did take a part in the fun, but modesty prevented him from taking credit in the public.
Later I asked myself did we actually help the lambskin clad radicals come to power. As they said in some previous generation, šala šala pa vešala (joke joke then scaffold).
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* chief and chef (here: šef) are the same word.
7-VIII-2026 - 16-VIII-2026