The Annointed Fig

You know how you have a painful breakup and you really REALLY feel that the other person has hurt you?  You know how you wish you could just go Lorena Bobbitt on their ass?

There's nothing fishy about this.

Well, Lorena Bobbitt doesn’t ever have to wish that.  She HAD gone and done what most of us can only dream about in our most bloodthirsty moods.

But I wonder, does she wish she could undo it?  Certainly, she had enough provocation after supposedly having been driven to abortion by her then-husband, and just before the moment of truth, raped in a fit of drunken ardor.  And certainly, she has gotten off scot-free — just as Mr. Bobbitt.  They had both been tried for their respective wrongdoings and acquitted — before further clogging the court system and getting a much-needed divorce.

Sixteen years later, the unhappy couple has been reunited by Insider, and turns out, Mr. Bobbitt still has a thing for his ex-wife.  He’s been sending her notes, Valentine’s Day mementos — and on the show, generously offered to show her his scar.  Considering that after their legal separation, John Wayne has starred in two porno flicks, Ms. Gallo’s (as Lorena is calling herself these days) response of “Why would I see it now? I can just watch the adult movies,” does very much make sense.

What does not make sense is why she has agreed to the meeting — and why a rather stalkerish behavior is being sensationalized in mass media enough to actually be a reason to invite these people on the show.  Wouldn’t it send the wrong message?  Harass your wife and you will become a media darling again?

Sometimes, I have to really wonder at the mass media.  Are ratings all that separates men from…well, unprincipled men?

Yes, I may be accused to milking the same cash cow, but I don’t think it would occur to me to get these two on the same show — or even get them in the vicinity of one another.  I am not sure what Mr. Bobbitt is like away from his not-one-and-only, but Lorena’s life seemed to have taken a decided turn for the better.

I am not sure I believe the adage of “oh, they are just toxic for each other”, but I do know that sometimes people bring out the best in each other.  It is equally possible the other end of the spectrum, also, holds true.

And the worst part is, this can actually teach someone lusting over Natalie Portman, or, possibly, their next-door neighbor, or even their schoolteacher’s dog that it’s OK to walk over lines, and break boundaries, and skirt the edges of what is acceptable and what actually carries a prison term.  After all, if the Insider thinks it’s all right to “reunite” them, then maybe those icky unions in the stalker’s dreams are, also, a match made in the Nielsen’s boardroom.

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If you are a true follower of the PETA dictums, right now, in addition to the more… ah traditional constraints like no meat, no poultry, no fish, no wool, no leather, no circuses, no zoos, no animal research, no pets, no seeing eye dogs, no goats mowing Google lawns (at least, without proper veterinary care and retirement bennies, which a company like Google will OBVIOUSLY be too cheap to provide), you would, also, be foregoing butter and honey.  Can’t violate something so inherently of the animal kingdom with your morning toast!

Hopping to join a good cause!

Vick-tim of bad press!

Forget, also, drinking milk and eating dairy.  Do you like Parmesan cheese over your lasagna?  Tough cookies — not that cookies are permitted, at least, not the cholesterol-inducing tasty kind.  Oh, and forget the eggs!  Why, there could have been a chick you are devouring with your omelet, no matter that by and large the eggs that are sold have never been fertilized.

Forget, too, that we are omnivores.  Evolution — or God, whichever theory you subscribe to — have conspired to put us on the very top of the food chain.  What we do with our power is our decision.

We could, for example, exterminate over 21,ooo pets in 10 years.  PETA itself is the organization to have done so, though the erm, pat explanation is, they were unadoptable because they were not in the best of help or simply too non-socialized.  Considering  it has expended precisely 0 man-hours a year of its hefty $30+ million annual budget to adopt out 7 homeless pets in their care and considering that football great Michael Vick’s dogs were exactly of that, highly dangerous, “unadoptable” kind, how is it that one amazing person, about whom I had already written more than once, a celebrated tattoo artist Brandon Bond and those he is working with, like Villa Lobos‘ and Animal Planet’s Tia Maria Torres, managed to home everyone of the pit bulls rescued from Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels (with the exception of one, who had terminal cancer, and another who ended up being struck by a car)?  To me, it’s not the majority of animals that are unsocializable, it is the people that are working — or NOT working with them — that are contributing to PETA’s dismal success rate.

But I suppose, NOW it just might improve.  Because PETA is currently deep in negotiations to hire a new hot spokesperson to truly bring their message to the fore.  What with this person’s experience in handling animal-rights related issues and their deep and abiding need to do good by those we mercilessly eat, use for clothing, lawn mowing — or entertainment, as may be the case in racing or illegal cockfighting and dogfighting rings, I can see how the PETA marketing department has truly come up with a gem.

Wouldn’t YOU want to stop abusing our animal breathren?  Wouldn’t YOU want to go and destory every egg-filled case in your local WalMart if you heard that person coming to you with their message?

AWWW, who doesn't love a good wedding?

Because after all, Michael Vick would be a CELEBRITY spokesperson, and when one of those speaks, we, hoi-polloi, sit up and take their heartfelt words to our own heart!  What does it matter that a man is a criminal who isn’t even allowed to return to professional football?  What do we care that he has cold-heartedly put to death several dogs that were too weak to keep around?

PETA, it may be said, is doing its own herd-culling.  So, taken from that perspective, yes, I have to agree, this IS an inspired choice.

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What is it about the Catholic Church that turns perfectly normal men into pedophiles?  Sexual deprivation?  That’s it?  Doesn’t speak highly of our species if not getting any is all it takes to have us start raping young boys or girls supposedly in both our spiritual and physical care.

We are all special on the net.

And what is it, for that matter, about the Internet that turns us into raving loonies drawn to ask about people’s bra sizes, get into pointless flame wars, put our jobs and families in jeopardy while we painstakingly append wings onto penises and make them swoop onto Second Life newbies like Red Barons onto unsuspecting enemy planes?

Or, worse yet, begin and proliferate the sites featuring Nikki Casouras crime scene photos, live (or, rather, very much dead) and in vivid Technicolor?  What could possibly be fascinating about something as horrific as that?  Then again…

The link I am providing does not feature these photos, but though curiosity hasn’t yet killed me like that proverbial cat, this latest bout of it (and of a decidedly morbid kind) will likely leave me with nightmares, because under the guise of doing thorough research, I did search for them, and let me tell you two things.  One, they are disturbingly easy to find, and another, they are…disturbing.  That’s it.  Saw and Final Destination franchises have nothing on these.

And when you take into account the fact that these are real photos taken by officers on the scene of the young woman’s high-impact car crash, the “God forbid!” factor rises like a Geiger counter reading after an atomic bomb goes off a few miles upwind.

For those not in the know about what SHOULD be world wide web’s best kept secret, Nikki, then 18, had an argument with her parents over trying cocaine for what had been the second time in her life.  According to mom Lesli, the first, due to an inoperable brain tumor discovered 10 years prior to the fatal accident, a few weeks before had landed her daughter in the hospital for 3 days.  The altered brain chemistry combined with cocaine has caused a type of a psychotic break.

On Halloween of 2006, having been suspected of for the second time dipping into the poison, Nikki had her own car keys confiscated and her father order her to get ready for another hospital stay.  Ms. Catsouras, already at that moment under the influence, responded by grabbing the keys to her father’s Porshe and taking off down the highway at over 100 mph.

The resulting crash had landed a driver of another car, a law-abiding Honda Civic, in ER with minor injuries (a three-year old case against Nikki’s parents is still pending) and Nikki dead.  The coroner, who had chosen not to release the photos to the family so as not to cause unnecessary trauma, had ruled the death had been instantaneous, and if there is one silver lining to the whole sorry mess, it is that.

Unfortunately, the two policeman on the site of the crash the very next day leaked these images on the net, and the witch hunt on the relatives of a “rich girl” who had gotten what was coming to her was on.  The pictures were being passed around.  The girl’s MySpace page has been hacked and made into a repository of all the gore.  The sickos wrote the distraught family gruesome, Halloween-themed letters — attaching the photos, lest their thought processes go misunderstood.  And little by little, the younger members, those that by a lucky twist of fate, didn’t end up being exposed to the horror, came to actually fear being on line or Googling for their name.

Having had enough, the California family sued the State Highway Patrol for $20 million, and though the department offered its apologies for its role in the fiasco, and one officer responsible had been canned (“for unrelated reasons”) and another suspended for 25 days, by March 21, 2008, Judge Steven L. Perk dismissed the case stating the Highway Patrol was under no obligation to spare the privacy of the Catsouras clan.  Considering as of last year, completely without the family’s permission, a local college was using these photos in one of its criminal-law classes, the judge seems to be in the right — or, at least, within the letter of our precedent-based law.

Required reading before Internet use?

That said, the family is continuing the crusade.  I am not sure other than bringing awareness to the issue of Internet exploitation and all-permissiveness it is accomplishing much these days, but bringing continued exposure to these photos.  All publicity, even of the negative sort, is a good publicity to the sites of the ilk I found on the front page of Nikki Catsouras (aka Porshe Girl) Google search.  Even Christos and Lesli themselves admit that the continued press exposure may drive some, like yours truly, to seek out the photos they might not have been aware of before reading about them in more reputable news outlets.

So, what is the point behind opening old wounds and digging for maggots?  The past is dead and gone, and though I wish the redoubtable officers of the Cali Highway Patrol received worse than a slap on the wrist for their grotesque violation of, at least, a moral if not a legal code, there is nothing to be achieved keeping the war going.  Even if the family received this money, what would it do with it?  Get rich on their little girl’s death?

Or would they give it to charity?  Even that wouldn’t fill that gaping emptiness they might still be feeling — while sapping the funds from the State of California already so badly pressed by the global economic downturn.

Who would win even if the higher court overruled Judge Perk — other than lawyers?  And I don’t know about you, but to me, despite the best efforts of Reputation Defender, a tech company hired by the victim’s parents to disseminate the futile cease and desist notes, this doesn’t sound like a sort of resolution designed to cleanse the net of similarly grotesque imagery — or let Nikki get on with whatever has welcomed her on the other side in peace.

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Our police is there to really weed out…er, weed users.  And if it happens to waste a year of man-hours out of the bleeding pockets of Chicago municipal coffers (that these days is making up for a burgeoning shortfall by upkeeping the prohibitive employee tax and raising Downtown parking prices to a whooping $20 or more for a suburban couple making it into the city for a bite of a famous Chicagoland pizza), well, at least, said redoubtable organ managed to save its precinct from 180 grams of marijuana, trace of cocaine, and a flat-screen TV.

Shouldn't we citizens BE on patrol?

It, also, arrested 21 University of Illinois students and 4 non-students, resulting in yet more public funds being wasted on arraignments, public defendants, back and forth PR.

Sentencing for crimes as minor as this will be negligeable in any.  But ask the precinct and it will have been a job well done!

I don’t know about you, but I personally would welcome some kind of public funds misappopriation hearings.  Certainly, everyone has a right to their mistakes, but if these mistakes end up costing us, taxpayers, quite a bit of money while accomplishing no purpose to justify the expense, there should be a way to limit such investigations in the future.

It could be argued that such practice may prevent more than a few fruitful investigations from materializing, bt that is not at all what I am calling for here.  Instead, after the fact, I would like for it to become common practice in cases as ultimately ridiculous as this for police officials to show just causes for initiating — and in fact, continuing the investigations, and if those end up holding water, well, that’s it, no harm done.

If, however, there has been a demonstrated and persistent lack of common sense, then, of course, there should be reparation — from the payback of public funds down to those on top of the decision making process losing their jobs.

After all, I understand they would if they DIDN’T take appropriate action.  Shouldn’t it also hold true for the other extreme?

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So, you thought your parents were too strict?

Were you grounded when you had brought home an “F”?  Did you have to go to bed without dessert if you didn’t clean your hamster cage?  Were you not allowed to watch a late-night showing of a Freddy Krueger flick on a school night?

What goes around...

Don’t know about you, but I certainly felt supremely used when either of the above chanced to happen.

But after reading a recent report published on life.ru about parents so concerned with their 12-year old’s GPA, they kept him from using a bathroom and stuck hot peppers in his mouth and anus if he brought home a Russian equivalent of an “F”, well, lemme tell you, my inner child is feeling chastised.

Abuse by those you trust the most is to me so much worse than the comparable wrong done to you by a stranger.

You are not expecting those nearest and dearest to do you wrong, and when they do…I think the hurt goes deep.  So deep, many never completely recover.  And those that do not, yet make it through childhood alive — if scarred, in more ways than one — all too often grow up doomed to repeat the same cycle of behavior.  In fact, even infants subsequently adopted out into loving household are now considered at risk for abusive behavioral patterns.  No, it is not a classic argument in favor of nature winning over nurture.

Quite the opposite, in fact.  The theory is, infant abuse in early stages of life may lead to the lowered production of seratonin, a chemical responsible for transmitting brain impulses, the depressed levels of which have long been known to cause anxiety, depression, and impulsive aggression.  The study extending this disturbing school of thought to our youngest members is based on the effects of maternal neglect and abuse on baby rhesus monkeys, whose metabolism and reaction to stress has often proved very similar to that of humans.

Even now not altogether understood, the infant failure to thrive has been a medical staple for many decades.  The failure to develop into an emotionally healthy adult based solely on upbringing in the first few months of life is something that is, also, beginning to make rounds in the professional cycles.

Not to say we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our not so stellar family members.  There are people referred to among behavioral researchers as “resilient” and they are carefully studied – with their consent – for the purpose for of developing programs for “at risk” populace and implementing them as means of preventing the spread of this trend to new generations.

Meanwhile, though, are children are left to rely on civic authorities to protect them from those who have given them life and yet are prepared to make it a living hell for any and all perceived infraction.  But all too often, the authorities fail — either because of frank societal indifference or a gross negligence on the part of the people in charge.

In the case with the disciplinarian couple referenced higher, well, it has to be the former, because action has been taken, just in a mindbogglingly insufficient way.  Having been reported to the police by the boy’s teachers, this particular set of role models was found to have severely whipped their son for every conceivable misdemeanor in addition to their creative means of assuring his study ethics — and convicted by Voronezh court system of cruelty to a minor, sentenced to…8, I repeat, 8 months in a state penitentiary.  With, because it is not separately stated, I assume a possibility of an early parole.

I really and truly do not understand the logic.  Nor, for that matter, do I understand the utter lack of any sort of outrage on the part of the local journalists bringing us that blurb.

Do we have to be cruel to be kind?

There was such a matter-of-factedness in that description, that not even the parents’ contemptible behavior has shocked me the deepest in this sorry mess.  What does it say about the society where this is practically the norm?  And what does it say about our own country, where prohibitive sentencing is practiced and yet, we have equally if not the more disturbing cases coming to light every day?

Is such violence actually bred into us by this point that no amount of prosecution can, at least, scare it out of those prone to it through our genetic and / or learned blueprint?

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• Sunday Money Madness: Money and Frugalness Hello and welcome to the Money and Frugalness edition of the Sunday Money Madness Roundup. Several categories are presented below to help break up the collection of weekend reading links. Pull up a seat, grab your coffee and peruse to your heart's content. Save Money | Frugal Tips: Digerati Life......
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• Psychic Viewing How psychic readings can be done is that some seem to visualize their thoughts as parts of their brain. This isn’t actually so, but the thoughts are energy patterns in a collective field that we are all present in. They have even discovered that dogs can be trained to sense......
• 3 Steps for Smoothing Your Aging Parent's Move to Your Household Sometimes guaranteeing  that your aging parents  receive the very best attention means  moving  them in with you.How can you make such a move smooth and pleasant?  1. Prepare a private room, or rooms, for your parent.This is  just as important for everyone else in the household as it is for your  aging......
• Michael Phelps Edition of Sunday Money Madness Good morning! How is everybody's Sunday fairing? There were several amazing wins during the Olympics this past week. Don't you agree? Two swim races at least with only one one-hundredth of a second margin from first and second place. Wow! Remember a while back when I wrote about money......

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.

• It's a Sheetstorm Out There What do you do when you don't like a public defender assigned to you by our ever-merciful courts?  Aren't they just like a piece of TP, stick to your shoe, and... [/caption] Sorry, what?  You never had a public defender?  Fine, fine, I guess feeding your own courtroom shark gives......
• Flying the Unfriendly Skies I remember 9/11. [/caption] I was ready to step out to go to school / work -- I was in grad school, and it was my first semester as a TA.  Insert me all being puffed up and leave it at that. But my inner glow dimmed that day.  The......
• Killer Moms from Outer Space 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? [/caption] But the point is, in my......
• Doesn't It Just Make Your Heart Go Pitter-PETAr? Khloe Kardashian.  Roselyn Sanchez.  Pamela Anderson.  Eva Mendez.  Holly Madison.  What do they all have in common? [/caption] If you answered, outta this world hotness, you'd be right.  But since I am not compiling a Scoville scale on the female half of Hollywood and outlying regions (though, hmm, this isn't......
• God Go With You... 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......

• FIFA World Cup 2010 - Quick Guide [/caption] FIFA World Cup 2010 Quick Guide features news, information about venues, matches, ticketing and travel destinations..The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the 19th FIFA World Cup, the premier international football tournament. It is scheduled to take place between 11 June and 11 July 2010 in South Africa. The......
• Weekend Reads: Memorial Day and Saying Thanks Edition With Memorial Day upon us once again, it's time to remember those who have served -- and sacrificed. Instead of reciting the standard feel good message, I tend to think about what my grandfathers must have felt when the subject of World War II came up. Not surprisingly, they only......
• 101 Quotes About The Environment. Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. ~Henry David Thoreau Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away. ~Stephanie Mills, ed., In Praise of Nature,......
• ABC Panelists Criticize Ailes’ Evasion Of Why Fox News Cut Away From Obama-House GOP Conversation [/caption] As ThinkProgress reported last week, Fox News was the only major cable news network to not show the entirety of President Obama’s conversation with House Republicans at their annual retreat. Fox cut away from the event 20 minutes early and instead began attacking the President for “lecturing” to the......
• Travel Guide:World Cup 2010 [/caption] South Africa is a large, diverse and incredibly beautiful country. The size of France and Spain combined, and roughly twice the size of Texas, it varies from the picturesque Garden Route towns of the Western Cape to the raw subtropical coast of northern KwaZulu-Natal, with the vast Karoo......

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.

• On the Side of the Angels! What wouldn't you to do to protect someone you love?  And doesn't this, whatever it is, sometimes carry the ringing name of "justifiable homicide"? [/caption] An abused woman can kill in self-defense.  A dog won't be put down for tearing out an intruder's throat and thereby saving her owner.  A......
• America's top 5 best bathrooms 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......
• The Good, The Bad, and The Righteous You know, life is confusing. So much good, so much bad, and it seems lately to swing between these extremes with amplitude growing in geometric progression. Are people getting more bizarre? Cruel? Angelically wise? Mind-bogglingly kind? [/caption] Or is this the case of media becoming increasingly frustrated with its revenues......
• It's Never So Cut and Dried! You know how you have a painful breakup and you really REALLY feel that the other person has hurt you?  You know how you wish you could just go Lorena Bobbitt on their ass? [/caption] Well, Lorena Bobbitt doesn't ever have to wish that.  She HAD gone and done what......
• Who you gonna call? Guinness World Records! Who hasn't heard of Guinness World Book of Records? A conversation-starter if nothing else, since its humble beginning at a May 4, 1951 shooting party attended among others by an opinionated Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of Guinness Beers, it has prompted a slew of daredevils to try......

• UPI News - 6th woman alleges to be Tiger Woods mistress [/caption] Three more women say they have played a round with Tiger. Two more blonds and a brunette were added to Tiger Woods' sultry scorecard Saturday - bringing the married father of two to six over par on his betrayed supermodel wife. Sources told the Daily News that Manhattan clubgoer......
• Corporate Blog Security Issues If you are planning on starting your own corporate blog or executive blog, or if you already have a corporate blog that you are writing in, then one of your greatest concerns should be corporate blog security issues. There are a variety of different corporate blogging security issues that you......
• Book Review: The Dorm Room Diet: The 8-Step Program for Creating a Healthy Lifestyle Plan That Really Works By Daphne Oz While everyone talks about the Freshman 15 and acknowledges that it is a problem, not many books have been written on the subject. Enter Daphne Oz, the daughter of the famous cardiologist, popularized on Oprah. Oz has some great advice to share for those looking to either beat the Freshman......

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.

• Let the Sleeping Dogs... 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......
• When You're Feeling Boxed In... "Man's body cut to fit coffin."  Funny, in a gruesome sort of way.  Straight out of Adams Family gruesome. [/caption] But, no.  Welcome to Allendale, NC -- where it did, in fact, happen. Not to beat...erm, a dead horse, the late Mr. James Hines, a preacher and funk musician, was......
• 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......
• A Hanging Offense There are drug overdoses, medical mistakes, murders. Then, there are suicides, and in comparison they seem...  no, not worse, but rather more...senseless, somehow. [/caption] 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......
• To Kill or Not to Kill -- Pigs? India allows cows to roam free.  Ancient Egyptians buried dishes, crocodiles, and wives to ease the passing of a head of house.  And Jews and Muslims have tasty imaginative diets.  The problem for a dedicated pork cutlets aficionado like myself, these diets very much do NOT include anything originating in......

• Top 10 Article Directories - Your Ultimate Guide When you start creating articles, it is best to have it included in an article directory. An article directory is the best place for people to find certain articles about a topic. And as with top seo services, it is also a good way of getting web traffic for your......
• Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer: Supplement to The Piano Book User Reviews Send this to a friend Acoustic & Digital Piano Buyer: Supplement to The Piano Book Manufacturer: Brookside Press Customer Rating: List Price: $24.95 Sale Price: $16.47 Availibility: Not yet published Free Shipping Available Buy Now Product Description The latest supplement to the pianist's must-have reference The Piano......
• Attention: Buyers, Don't Purchase a Home Until You See This Home Near the Beach [caption id="attachment_1128" align="aligncenter" width="240" caption="Just Listed for only $45,000"][/caption]Have you dreamed of living near the beach all year? Imagine owning a five bedroom and 2.5 bathroom home that your family can use as its permanent vacation home. Just $45,000 gets you that dream and much more. The address of this......
• Disputing 30 Year Versus 40 Year Mortgages. Don't think you can afford that house you want down the street? Think again. Thanks to some enterprising mortgage lenders, you can now get 40 and 50 year mortgages! Now you can finally buy that way too expensive, beyond your price range bungalow you have always wanted. Or can you?......
• Bank Of America Buys Countrywide To Save On Taxes Bank of America (BAC) recently announced it would be buying Countrywide (CFC) for $4.1 Billion putting an end to rumors that CFC was considering bankrupcy. Apart from gaining access to CFC's technology, banking business and god-only knows what it has thats of any worth, Bank of America will also inherit......

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?

• The Pit Ball Goes to the Dogs as Vicktory Emerges Victorious [/caption] I wrote about The Great Pit Ball before -- when it was just a glimmer in its host's eye. A very defined kind of glimmer, true, but when we talked, everything for the grand event was only just coming together. Today, I spoke to Mr. Bond again, with The......
• Back to the Future My cat is 2.5 years old.  In cat years...let's round it to 20. Masha is a purebred.  Top of the line Traditional Siamese.  Seven generations of her ancestors have documented pedigrees.  Her mom's a breed standard, check the Wiki.  And no, this isn't a cat personals post -- though considering......
• Everyone's a Comedian! I am not a fan of physically punishing someone -- lest they killed, raped a dog, tore up something as culturally significant as the Mona Lisa. [/caption] But there are exceptions proving the rule, and one of mine just became one Mr. James Cousins II.  This sorry excuse for a......
• To Kill or Not to Kill -- Pigs? India allows cows to roam free.  Ancient Egyptians buried dishes, crocodiles, and wives to ease the passing of a head of house.  And Jews and Muslims have tasty imaginative diets.  The problem for a dedicated pork cutlets aficionado like myself, these diets very much do NOT include anything originating in......
• Idiot's Guide to Ending Your Life "I just returned home and my whole family's been shot!" By me, should have added the father.  But then, should've, would've, might've.  Before killing his family and himself, the man should have done a lot of things, but he chose his way out.  One, incidentally, that was suggested by the......

• Hipfly Junior Set For Boys And Girls Age 9 - 12 Years Includes Driver, Hybrid, #6/7 And #9/Pw Irons, Putter, And Stand Bag (Left Handed) User Reviews Send this to a friend Hipfly Junior Set For Boys And Girls Age 9 - 12 Years Includes Driver, Hybrid, #6/7 And #9/Pw Irons, Putter, And Stand Bag (Left Handed) Manufacturer: HIPPO Golf Customer Rating: List Price: $149.00 Sale Price: $109.47 Availibility: Usually ships in 24 hours......
• App Reviews: Reeder for the iPad Reeder for iPad has taken Google Reader and articulated it in a way consistent with the user interface elements and techniques that make the iPad usable. While the reader is available for free to iPhone users, the iPad version is sold in the App Store for $5. The developer,......
• Guest Blogger 7 Year Old Eco-Warrier Luka! This is a first! My youngest-ever Mommy-Muse Guest Blogger, at the tender age of seven, has written our first green kids post :-) MiniMonos Mama, Andrea Deely, was planning to write this, but as you'll see, her son Luka delivered the story perfectly....  Hi, my name is Luca.  I’m seven years old. ......
• Prosper.com and Pierre Omidyar in March 2007 Fast Company I read a variety of magazines, but my favorites are the new breed of magazines about business: Business 2.0, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, etc... In March 2007 addition of Fast Company there is an interview with Pierre Omidyar.  Pierre Omidyar is a founder of EBay and a multibillionaire because of it.  He......
• Crawling Chaos - Neil Young - Sound Quality I had a message from Doomage recently which allowed me to update some biographical information on the Crawling Chaos website here, http://crawlingchaos.co.uk/myths/people, but also he expressed his disappointment about the online sound quality. Needles to say, I agree with the sentiment but am forced into this mode by the technical limitations......

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.

• Hitler, Adolph Elizabeth Hitler I am sorry, but some things just make you sick.  Baby seals being clubbed.  Nursing home inmates indulging in orgies.  And Hitler paintings being sold at an auction house at Ludlow, England for the combined value of over $140K. [/caption] One of them, for instance, a $15,000 1910 self-portrait of......
• Idiot's Guide to Ending Your Life "I just returned home and my whole family's been shot!" By me, should have added the father.  But then, should've, would've, might've.  Before killing his family and himself, the man should have done a lot of things, but he chose his way out.  One, incidentally, that was suggested by the......
• I Have a Dream Rather, I had -- and it's been realized! And what do you know, reality is so much better. :-) Welcome to the Inauguration, a hellishly cold day of stalled motorcade bikes, 1 per 500 port-a-potties (the rate determined through strenuous scientific modeling, no less), and copious frostbite, warmed by heartfelt......
• I See Dead People What is it about the Catholic Church that turns perfectly normal men into pedophiles?  Sexual deprivation?  That's it?  Doesn't speak highly of our species if not getting any is all it takes to have us start raping young boys or girls supposedly in both our spiritual and physical care. That......
• Flying the Unfriendly Skies I remember 9/11. [/caption] I was ready to step out to go to school / work -- I was in grad school, and it was my first semester as a TA.  Insert me all being puffed up and leave it at that. But my inner glow dimmed that day.  The......

• Closest to the Divine Even the "saints" felt spiritual darkness. The term “dark night of the soul“ was used to describe the doubts experienced by a man now seen as an exemplar of his faith. It’s been expressed in a lot of art also, but people don’t seem to think about it. The poem “Footprints in......
• School and State at Ends over Gun Decision The decision was made less than a day before the East Wake High School (North Carolina) marksmanship team was set to face off in a statewide shooting competition. At the behest of one of the principals of East Wake, along with the superintendent, the school team was barred from competing......
• Teaching Your Children About Money Lesson #1: Money is not Free During the summer of 2009, my son William  turned 4 years old. I remember that at that age, I didn't know much about money. You basically only care about what gear you will play with for the next 20 minutes. As both my wife and I love to spend......
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• Doctor to sue Taiwan CDC over swine flu vaccination death The Taiwan News is reporting that a gynecologist identified only as Dr. Liu plans to sue the Centers for Disease Control in Taiwan over the death of his seven-year-old son in the wake of an H1N1 vaccination the child was given at school on November 19. The case has been......