The Annointed Fig

What do you do when all the problems of the world are solved?

There is no Chrysler bankruptcy setting a pall over the sputtering global markets.  No swine flu among other things, bringing restaurant business in Mexico City to a grinding halt.  No neo-Nazis burning synagogues and painting crude messages on the Jewish grave markers.  No planned May 5th, 2009 country-wide pogroms to commemorate the 40 days since an ostensible suicide in the famous Petrovka solitary cell of a leader of a militant national-socialist movement “Russkaya Volya”, accused of 8 murders spanning Russia, a dedicated teetotaler and “revolutionary”, Maxim Basilyev, 28.

Those historians are dogged. Dogged, I tell you!

And yet, one of the biggest stories of the week is a 65-year old message in a bottle found by workers demolishing a wall at the State Higher Vocational School in the southern Polish town of Oswiecim, the site of the infamous World War II Auschwitz Nazi German death camp.

The bottle with a note signed by 7 concentration camp prisoners inside was literally unearthed in the crumbling mortar of a structure built to house the guards stationed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“We know two of the Auschwitz prisoners who signed the message survived the camp, but their later fate isn’t known,” the Auschwitz museum historian Jerzy Mensfelt said in a telephone interview, leaving it open whether the ensuing publicity would be used to search for more information on the survivors.

And now, time for yours truly to be crucified.  But, SERIOUSLY, why?  Why should we bother these two very old men?  And why is there a growing media frenzy?  Why.  Does.  Anyone.  Care?

No, about the archaeological find, not the horror of the Holocaust.  Jew by descent, this topic has infallibly left me scared, depressed, maddened beyond measure.  It is a colossal crime — against Gypsies, Jews, Poles, gays — the likes of which is practically impossible to truly internalize unless one has lived through it, I imagine.  Or rather, don’t want to imagine.

But why precisely is it imperative to know what happened to people who had been lucky enough to have made it out of that slice of hell alive?

Certainly, they couldn’t but have come out with some sort of PTSD.  Just as certainly, their acclimation to a world still convulsing after the devastating effect of the second global war within less than three full decades couldn’t have been easy.  But that is nothing that we can change now — or could have even changed then.  They have made it out, and while hardly their oyster, the universe was at that point just as much theirs as it had been any man’s.

Here’s hoping they have made some sort of peace with their ordeal and carved out the kind of life for themselves that gave them love, prosperity, happiness — and hurt as few of their neighbors in our global village as possible in the process.  As far as I am concerned, that is the most any one of us can ask for.

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Thousands of Kenyan women from 11 women’s rights organizations vowed Wednesday to begin a weeklong sex strike to try to protest their country’s bickering leadership, which they say threatens to revive the bloody chaos that convulsed the African country last year.

Look but don't touch? Clever!

Fine idea, though hardly a novel or an altogether useful one.  The Woodstock was a phenomenon that spawned urban legends and contributed to a generation born 8 to 9 months after the big bang.  But did it actually change the world in a way not described in the Rolling Stone‘s 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll?  Not really.

Men warred, other men staged protests — and the sexual revolution that came with the advent of dependable birth control changed our culture, but not so much achieved the lasting world peace we are still drinking to every New Year.

Besides, a WEEKLONG sex strike?  Ha!  With quite a few Kenyan men polygamous as permitted by law and government ostensibly not even cognizant of the strike, that’s something to write home about.  Not…

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A first swine flu casualty in US is a 23-month old Mexican toddler in Texas.  Germany and Austria are the latest European countries hit by the disease.  Egypt slaughtered its entire 300K – strong pig population in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease that has now learned to bypass the animal host.  In Australia, health officials are given wide powers to contain the infected populace.  Asian nations, still reeling from their frequent brushes with avian flu, greeted returning airport travelers with teams of medical workers and carts of disinfectants, eager to keep swine flu from infecting their continent.  Gabon and Russia banned pork imports — inviting concern from the economists about protectionists interests using the epidemic as a way to achieve internal policy ends despite a severe damping effect on the global recession-stemming efforts, not to mention the assurances of the medical community that unlike mad cow disease, the swine flu is not at all related to consuming its eponymous meat.

I quarantine you, I don't want to go there!

And in Geneva, WHO flu chief Dr. Keiji Fukuda told reporters that there was no evidence the virus was slowing down, moving the agency closer to raising its pandemic alert to phase 5, indicating widespread human-to-human transmission.  Altogether, there are 6 levels.  Right now, we’re still poised on the precarious level 4 — really, a hop and a jump to a true pandemic, the kind some experts are likening to one that took the world by storm nearly a full century ago, in 1918.

Meanwhile, in the epicenter of the oubreak, Mexico City mayor is considering easing some restrictions that had thus far shut restaturant, schools, concert halls.  There is some easing in the rate of infection, though it is not yet clear what has percepitated the flare up and which populations are the most vulnerable to the infection.  So far, young healthy teens and adults are falling ill regardless of supposedly the natural imminity in that particular group.

That said, Janet Napolitano, the newly confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security with President Obama’s administration, is sounding confident on the chances of United States being able to escape the worst of the brunt.  The spreading avian flu had been a wake-up call 3 years ago, and the fears of Katrina-like mishandling fresh on the minds of the Department, Secretary Napolitano says it is taking the possible pandemic very seriously and all measures are being taken to stockpile enough antiviral medications, as well as to set up alternate locations for treating the patients should the hospitals become overwhelmed.  There is a guidebook created for just this purpose, and the Department is following it to a “T”.

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Heritage Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee has a cause to be aflush with pride.  It won, after all — the 2008 America’s Best Restroom Award and it ain’t nothin’ to piss at!  Art Deco-themed and featuring leaded-glass tiles, authentic terrazzo floors, and a shoeshine station, it is a favorite of thousands of local ladies and visitors a year.  Sometimes, when you don’t really gotta go — you still go.

The none too shabby runner up hails from my hometown, Louisville, Kentucky and lives at  21c Museum Hotel, a 91-room first of its kind hotel dedicated to world-class luxuries, Southern-style hospitality and contemporary art from living artists. The hotel features a 9,000 square foot contemporary art museum funded and managed by the International Contemporary Art Foundation.  In keeping with the hotel itself, the men’s bathroom features one-way mirrors facing urinals and futuristic LCD screens with traveling images of eyes built into mirror above the sinks.  Far out!

Both # 3 and # 4 come from Illinois, Rockford’s upstaging its more metropolitan neighbor Chicago.

Brio’s restrooms at Rockford are best enjoyed by the hermaphrodites among us.  Heaven-themed for women and Hell- for men, they use a variety of materials and mood lighting for quite a psychedelic effect.  Obviously, they are best appreciated as a pair, but I am not sure casual onlookers of the opposite gender are entirely welcome.  Then again, what do I know?

Overlooking Chicago’s famous skyline, Signature Room at the 95th has its famous views extending to its bathroom.  The gorgeous custom woodwork reminescent of the log cabin style, silver accents, and black and white photos from the 1930′s finish the job propelling it to its lofty #4 slot.

And rounding off the top 5 is the hand-painted water-themed refuge that truly gives a meaning to the word “restroom”.  Inspired by John Michael Kohlers Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, this functional beauty gracing the newly expanded Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Massachusetts features etched glass panels portraying exotic sea creatures and plant life in delicate grays, blues, blacks, and whites.

Not your slovenly Uncle Ben’s johns, are these?  So, yeah, gotta get my mind out of the gutter!

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What do you do on a lonely afternoon if you are home alone with your toddler and dog?

Feed them?  Change nappies?  Top off the water bowl?

When you really REALLY heart your dog!

Doggone it, sure — once you finish getting it on with the above mentioned and streaming it to the web like a certain Ontario woman, whose name, just like gender of the victim, is not being released to protect the identity of the baby.

The complaint has began to be investigated after a man called the authorities Saturday to report that he’d seen a woman he’d just met online the night before performing the sex acts on a webcam feed.  Despite very limited information being known, the police managed to identify and locate the woman in record time.

“This was all done very quickly as a result of the concerned citizen coming forward,” said Essex County OPP Constable Janet Hayes. “It all happened in the same day, fortunately for the child. The OPP definitely wants to give huge kudos and our sincere appreciation to the concerned citizen that did the right thing and didn’t ignore what they observed on the Internet.”

Added Hayes, “It was extreme, very extreme behaviour.  Disturbing. Incomprehensible, just that someone is able to conduct this type of behaviour. A normal person can’t even really comprehend that it’s possible for someone to behave that way.  This is very disturbing.”

Even in this age of everything goes, Constable Hayes is right.  Some things really just don’t make sense.  And for the sake of our collective sanity, I can only hope atrocities like this never will.

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Want to see an Old Testament God duke it out with Mohammad on your computer screen?  How about pitting Buddha against Jesus?

Well, too late (if you are a gaming purist) — because it has just been removed from the site of Molleindustria, the developer of the flash video game for dark times, Faith Fighter, a year-old politically incorrect outlet for our repressed emotions and squandered adrenaline that has won and received honorable mentions at such new media events like Pixxelpoint 2008.

All we can do now is remember, salivate -- and find it persisting online!

After a recent statement by a hardline Organization of The Islamic Conference condemning the game, the Molleinudstria has symbolically pulled the game from its servers (copies and documentation to still be found all over the net), coming out with this afterstatement:  “In few hours this statement generated a way more heated reactions than the release of the game. We are not “bowing to the fundamentalists”, we have no sympathy for any religion but we are aware that Muslims are victim of widespread racism in the western world. This islamofobia is functional to the imperial interests in Middle East and all over the world. We just want to make clear that the game was not intended to contribute to the media-assisted narrative “Islamic world vs freedom of speech”.”

Commendable if a touch belated statement.  Not to mention a rather useless and, perhaps, self-aggrandizing one, at odds with an off the cuff image the Molleindustria is trying to project.

I don’t think the OIC had much to worry about when the link was active (after all, this was an equal opportunity offender, if anything).  And the developer now really shouldn’t agonize over contributing to the worldwide religious intolerance.  It has been there before the game had been a glimmer in the creators’ eyes — and unless something truly significant changes, it will continue to be so long after Alexa’s WayBack Machine stops displaying the now-defunct link.

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Facing a possible primary defeat in his home state, Senator Arlen Spector, one of the most senior Republican senators, switches parties — and voila, filibuster-proof Senate (given a comedian-turned-politician Al Franken wins in Minnesota, and this seems likely as things stand).  A cause for a celebration if you are a Democrat like myself, is it not?

Looking forward to your help!

Yes, mostly it is, but with the great power come great responsibility — and the potential for corruption.  Countless students of human nature postulated that, and it would be foolish and hardheaded of me to deny that, especially in the face of current allegations of bi-partisanship being dead regardless of President Obama’s campaign promises.

I still want to think he is doing the best he can to bring such a lofty goal to fruition.  But it can’t be argued that this recent development is going to set back the urgency to achieve that to quite a significant degree.

Nonetheless, I am happy to welcome the veteran senator from Pennsylvania to my party.  With such a boost in the middle of the devloping swine flu pandemic and cautiously positive economic outlook, I look forward to seeing what may transpire in our federal government in the next 100 days.

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What is is with people?!

Sometimes, I feel as old the proverbial codgers in my new contributor’s first article, A Sound Solution to an Age Old Problem — and I am only 30.  Or already.  Where is it they sell those designer Depends?

It hurts me more than it hurts you!

But the point is, in my day, women didn’t indiscriminately kill their own children — much less stab themselves in the belly to rid the world of their fetuses on account of a lover’s spat.

This particular mother of the week (at the rate this is going), Fang Chi-Xue, an unprepossessing Chinese immigrant from Quincy, Massachusetts, ended up fatally poisoning and stabbing her 9-year old daughter, attempting to strangle the victim’s 14-year old sister, all before proceeding to kill her 7 and 1/2-month fetus by turning the knife on herself — or, more to the point, her own abdomen.

Which did, in fact, result in what could be dubbed a VERY late term abortion.

Unfortunately for taxpayers — and the woman herself, if whatever therapy she receives ever snaps her out of her murderous rage — Chi-Xue survived.  Currently undergoing her 20-day competency evaluation, I wouldn’t wish her plight on anyone.  Whatever prompted her to do this has to be horrific, so, if she is still in the throes of it, I can only imagine the demons ravaging her mind.

And if she had gotten herself more or less to an aware condition… well, there I won’t even try to imagine her denizens of Hell.

What is it that makes people go crazy in quite such a destructive way? Is it the media, for constantly highlighting similar horrors? Is it society for not going far enough to pick up on the dangerous cues of the criminally insane? The economy, for plunging everyone into a depression of a very personal sort? Or it just the Apocalypse growing nigh?

The answer is probably going to be “YES” to at least one of the above questions — but which, will ultimately depend on who you ask. So, what do YOU think? Comment away.

• Please, NO get out jail free card! What exactly makes a "mother"?  It this someone who ovulates?  Gives birth?  Trails an "it's a boy" balloon while wheeled out onto the hospital loading dock with her bundle of joy across her knees? [/caption] Or is it someone who doesn't let her baby scald himself in the middle of......
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There’s a funny thing about old people – eventually we all turn into them. As our tolerance for loud music gets lower and our pants higher, we start judging those less gnarled and crusty than ourselves with a sort of snobbish disdain. While some might age gracefully, attaining a zen-like outlook on youth and the circle of life in general, they are a small minority, and this post is not about them.

Kids these days! What's to be done?

No, this post is about the people who regard youth, with a green, bitter envy – after all, the young ones will live, while we old farts will surely die first. Not fair! In fact, in my days, those snot-nosed whipper-snappers did not talk sass to their elders like kids today – they were too busy fighting off hungry wolves with their asbestos-lined schoolbags on their ten mile hike to school through the arctic permafrost. And forget about packing lunches – we had to KILL for our food with our bare hands. So if you came to class without a uniform covered in blood and entrails, and with all your limbs attached – that’s a paddlin’!

Seriously though, rowdy teenagers with their dangerous-looking haircuts and unintelligible slang may certainly be (in our vivid senility-laced imaginations, at least) a menace to South Central – but going to such great lengths as some neighborhoods in Rotterdam, Denmark, to deter the little devils from hanging around in the streets by installing a “teen repellent” system known as The Mosquito, seems downright excessive.

What is this high tech solution to an age-old problem? The Mosquito is a simple device that emits a high-frequency sound that is audible only to those 25 and younger – any older than that, and our hearing deteriorates enough that we don’t perceive the annoying – and headache-inducing – buzz. This is similar to those noise-based pet discipline devices they sell to keep your mangy mutt in line. And for those lucky ones who are still hanging on to their youthful sense of hearing past 25 – sucks to be you!

“Where are we supposed to hang out?” asks one of the prepubescent interlopers. The answer is clear – the sewers. The deep and cavernous sewage networks of Denmark would be a great place to play and develop the sort of social skills kids will need to get ahead in their society. Perhaps with the aid of a giant hyper intelligent rodent sensei, they will develop the good manners, team spirit, and martial arts abilities which will help them truly come out of their (half?) shells, as it were, and help reduce Rotterdam’s crime problems yet further.

Some would say it is clearly an overreaction on the part of business owners and the authorities – but an overreaction that equates to lucrative profits for Rhine Consulting Group, the company importing Mosquitoes into Denmark. Little do they know what they are setting themselves – and their customers – up for.

“It makes the kids irritable and aggressive. It makes them want to tear the device off the wall,” warns Jan Schelleken, a Charlois social worker critical of the devices. You are quite right, Jan. Your cranium is next in line – these skateboarding bozos will stop at nothing to get at the delicious gray matter within. And you think teens are vulnerable, what about the effects on small children and babies? Even if there is no long term hearing damage, spontaneous combustion, or rapid-onset zombism, being subjected to unnecessary environmental stresses such as this doesn’t do anyone’s sanity much good. Where do families spend time with their children? The Mosquito does not differentiate between kids loitering, and families enjoying their day together.

As a member of the ‘over 25′ gang, I suppose I am safe from the ill effects of this device. But I can’t help but wonder if it is it right to assume that young people create unrest and crime simply by playing in the street and ‘hanging out’, and to treat each of them like some sort of biblical plague?

Like wine, genocide is better with age.

There are bad seeds in every age group. Joseph Stalin, for example, came into office at the tender age of 44 – a great age for genocide. Old Joe S. was just one year younger than the monster Adolf Hitler, 45, also starting a productive career of murdering people in large numbers. Another couple of years, and Vladimir Lenin, 47, leads the Communist revolution, destroying many lives. A decade to live, and we have the mediocre lame duck president, George W. Bush, making his grand entrance – shock and awe in attendance – at the age of 55. One more year gone by, and liar-liar Richard Nixon, 56, takes the oval office by storm, Watergate and all.

Seems to me like the 40-and-up crowd creates much more damage to society than the headphone-sporting hookey-playing anklebiters. Should society be taking safeguards to ensure this far more dangerous age group remains contained as well?

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There are drug overdoses, medical mistakes, murders.

Then, there are suicides, and in comparison they seem…  no, not worse, but rather more…senseless, somehow.

Do we have something in common?

We are wired to protect our lives.  Our fight or flight response is definitely a part and parcel of our genetic makeup.  If we didn’t have that, our species would long have gone the way of the dodo.  So, to me, every single suicide is a slap in the face of evolution.

But when a child commits suicide, a 7-year old, to wit, how do you calculate that into the equation?

Certainly, Broward County officials have dropped the ball on Gabriel Myers’s case — failing the victim, the victim’s family, and even the school system, into which the boy had been integrated by ChildNet, the county’s private foster care organization, without the school system’s knowledge of the boy’s escalating patterns of deviant sexual behavior.

Having been sexually molested himself, upon having been removed from the custody of his drug-abusing mother, the boy had proven himself too intractable for his uncle and aunt to handle.  But, at least, they did recognize when they were outgunned.

The ChildNet, having ostensibly offered the best the modern psychiatric sciences can boast of, including psychotropic meds to a boy as young as Gabriel, has finally hit upon the bright idea to introduce the budding sexual predator into a regular school, where he was to learn to control his urges.

Considering the boy’s mental state went downhill fast (now including violence on top of continuing sexual acting-out), it stands to reason why earlier this week, Broward County’s Department of Children and Families head, Jack Moss, has used the blanket federal medical privacy laws to excuse his refusal to shed light on any and all sex abuse allegations.

There really isn’t much to say.  No explanations would cut this.  The boy had, obviously, been severly abused.  Unfortunately, we will never know if he stood a chance of leading a normal life with proper psychiatric and social supervision.

Unfortunately, too, it is one less human to add diversity to our communal gene pool.  But most unfortunately of all, it is one less little boy who will be watching kiddie yogurt ads and gulping up the latest offerings from the prolific Disney animation arm.

Should a child with such severe and deep-running mental issues have been allowed the independence that he was? Probably not. Are we taking our basic freedoms too far, in not protecting those with pronounced mental illnesses from themselves? I don’t know. But I can say that it is clear we need a sweeping review of modern socio-psychological welfare standards.

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