Vaudeville

Hiya mate…

It was with a certain amount of wry, heartbroken mirth, that I perused the pages of my local newspaper, and beheld the spectre of Radovan Karadžić done up like an acid casualty Santa Claus, and caught redhanded doling out radical heath remedies to people with too much money.

Now I’m not saying that just because he’s an alleged mass murderer means that he may not also be a great healer.

But I’ve had it up to here with charlatans and blagmeisters, taking advantage of the mentally ill.

Karadžić has always been a man with his thumb firmly on the pulse of the zeitgeist. When it was hip to be squabbling over territory in disintegrating post communist Europe, there he was. Now, when that’s all old hat, he’s joined the most hilarious growth industry of our times- preying on the fears of hippies in failing health.

And then there’s his poetry.

You can check out some of Radovan’s wild poetic utterances, possibly translated by babel fish but no less mind boggling for it, at:

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/radovan/poems.html

Here, we find the lovely man ‘assuming authorial voices’ of, variously, a messianic demagogue - and a viciously self-righteous misanthrope.

And they say Daniel Day Lewis makes a big effort to get into character. Pah! This guy LIVES his characters! I mean, REALLY lives them!

There is a link between Radovan’s various incarnations, however. ABSOLUTE HATRED FOR EVERYTHING. Including SCIENCE and YOU.

You see, friends, I have terrible wonderful news for you. The only people who know anything at all about healing the human body, are those flawed, untrustworthy, over-payed monsters we call DOCTORS.

And if you have elephantiasis eating your face off, you can pump as much money as you want into the bank accounts of various deranged witchdoctors, and still nothing is going to change.

A bleak prospect, perhaps. But in a way inspiring: because if we embrace nothing else in this depressing post post post post post modern world, let us embrace this:

The TRUTH is always liberating.

Here’s my truth:

You are going to die. You will not regenerate into a new body except, perhaps, AFTER death (burial, reincarnation, who knows?).

THIS IS YOUR LOT. Live it like there’s no tomorrow, because you know what? There ISN’T.

And if you have already been diagnosed with a syndrome that gives you trees for hands or makes you grow an extra face…?

Then use your swiss bank account WISELY. Take inspiration from the great dying monsters of literature: the phantom of the opera, Doctor Strangelove, that guy from SAW- and start a FIENDISH MASTERPLAN of your own!
INSTEAD OF BLOWING YOUR MONEY ON POINTLESS PLACEBO’S, why not instead save all those suicide bombers some grief- after all, many of them are good looking and in perfect health-

strike a blow where it will really count- REALITY!

Whether you strap gelignite to yourself and walk into a meeting of the G8, or simply spend your money paying the rent of destitute failed asylum seekers so they don’t have to go into prostitution… PLEASE rich ill hippy fools, PLEASE-

Just promise me you won’t be paying for the champagne of Robert Mugabe when he sets up a colonic irrigation centre in Stoke on Trent.

Your Humble savant,

THE VAUDEVILLIAN.