The Annointed Fig

A woman fatally shoots her 20-year old son before turning the gun on herself.  Classic murder-suicide, right?

It's all in the mind of the beholder.

Mostly.  Of course, there are two little twists.  First, the woman’s motivation.  The long and short of it — I pity Marie Moore.  Really.

What she had done was horrendous, unforgivable, and if there’s a good thing in all of this it’s that she did turn the gun on herself.  I am not even talking from the society’s standpoint.  It’s not about us, taxpayers, having to shoulder the brunt of trial and subsequent treatment.  It’s about this mentally disturbed mother — but mother nonetheless, Mother with a capital “M”, albeit in an altogether distorted font, possibly Wingdings, in anyone’s mind but hers — being able to live with herself had the hospital, in which she’d died following the incident, managed to save her life.

And based on her suicide notes to her boyfriend, no, I really don’t think she could have.  Whatever delusions drove her to this, I imagine, unlike in the case of Susan Smith, the decision hadn’t been easy — nor geared toward her own benefit.  She had been trying to save her son, however misguided the means. “I’m so sorry,” Marie Moore, 44, wrote several times. “I had to send my son to Heaven and myself to Hell.”

I don’t know where either of them will end up.  According to human laws, mental illness is invariably a mitigating circumstance.  Whether it holds true in the afterlife, there are authorities far better equipped than I to, if not answer this, then, at least, venture a more educated guess.

Not that educated guesses seem to be paying off that well, at least, in this tragic story.  Because the second twist is that Mary Moore didn’t just wake up one morning after a lifetime of rational decisions and decided to take her mommy duties to a whole different level.  A self-described “anti-Christian”, she had previously attempted suicide, had been involuntarily committed in 2002, and banned from the same gun range, at which the shooting took place, at around the same time.

Among her effects, there had been found audio tapes, in which she had described hearing voices, one of them, supposedly, God’s, urging to commit these horrific acts.

“I have to die and go to hell so there can be a thousand years peace on earth,” she explains in the two tapes.  “God’s turned me into the Anti-Christ… I’m a good person, but the Devil and God turned me into the worst person in the world. I’m so ashamed. And I’m so afraid. And I’ll pay forever and ever.”

Amidst ramblings of having spent long stints in psychiatric hospitals and hallucinations that had her convinced at times that she was being buried alive, eaten by ants, burned at the stake and gassed, she adds: “I’m sorry to leave you like this. It’s a horrifying thing to do.”

And yet, Larry Anderson, a manager at Shoot Straight, from which Mary had been banned 7 years previously, initially claimed it’s unclear whether the Moores had been to the range before.  More, before renting out their guns, the range requires that customers fill out a questionnaire that includes a section on whether they have ever been convicted of a felony or been declared mentally unstable — but it has no way of verifying the information.

Defending the range’s policies, says Anderson: “If someone acts right, we have to assume they are right.”

“Sometimes, like what happens Sunday, you have no control,” Anderson states.  “There’s nothing you can do to prevent it.”

But is it the case?  Starting from simply limiting the renters from having interaction with anyone, personnel and family members included, until their weapon is returned, there could have been, very much so.

That said, who should be held ultimately accountable for the shooting?

The range, for failing to conduct a thorough background check?  Or is is we, as voters, for not demanding our government institute policies that would make it illegal for operators like Anderson to “assume” before indiscriminately handing out weapons?

Either way, two people are dead.  And for the life of me, pardon the pun, I cannot blame Mrs. Moore for what is clearly the failure of authorities to prevent her from having access to items too dangerous to be handled by folks in her mental state.  That — and, of course, the the authorities and the medical community for failing to properly follow up on her progress after her involuntary psychiatric treatments.

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When a doctor makes a mistake and cuts off the wrong testicle — that’s social injustice.

When a bank employee recommends postponing payments on the mortgage in an enviably good standing so that you could take advantage of the government bailout and refinance — and then, repossessing your home — that, too, is social injustice.

Pork - the other OTHER white meat.

But when your mother repeatedly bashes her buddy on the head with an axe, gouges out choice bits, cooks and eats her in front of your seven-year old eyes before throwing the remains out into a heap of garbage, what would you call that?  And what would you call having your government keeping her confined and away from you for a period of no more than 15 years (should she be convicted of the crime) while men like Khodorkovsky, ostensibly jailed for creative accounting practices (and in reality, attempting to peacefully overthrow the regime), slated to see the light of day on the far side of never?

Recalls 27-year old Olesya Mostovschikova, the third female cannibal arrested in Russia in the last 6 month, this one in the Siberian city of Irkutsk: “I took the axe and hit her a number of times on her head.  Then I cut off her ears, gouged out one eye, cut off an arm, and a hand. I took the hand, arm and eye and cooked these body parts in the oven.  Some time later, I went down to the cellar again because Julia [an otherwise unidentified friend claiming to have gone along out of fear for her own life] said that she was hungry and wanted to eat some more.  We sliced off some more meat and took it upstairs to the kitchen. We fried it on the cooker and ate it.”

Doesn’t sound like someone in the throes of remorse.  Nor, for that matter, a fit of violent rage.  This woman — using the term loosely — seems wholly in the possession of her wits.  Why then, isn’t she going up for 700 to life, no parole forever and ever, amen (Russia squarely on the humane side of the capital punishment Mason-Dixon line, and boy, does it beg to be delivered with it’s Premiere’s gloriously deadpan expression)?

Why is she going to be back roaming the streets within…what, a few years — given a standard caveat for a good behavior?  And what exactly is to happen to her little boy when he sees Mommy Hungriest stopping by for the first time for his middle school play?  High school graduation ball?  Best case scenario, his college soccer match?

I am not advocating capital punishment, it’s too sweeping a topic to address in one blog post.  But I am calling for predators the likes of Ms. Olesya, once caught, never to be permitted freedom — other than of a prison yard once a day under the business end of a rifle.  After all, we do have to be be humane, don’t we?

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I am Lisa, this here blog’s writer, and I am a foodie.

There, I said it, and no, I am not feeling relieved.  I love food. I cook, I like dining out, I like giving everything a fair chance (which, however, emphatically does not extend to vanilla or whatever-flavored oatmeal variants.  So, I’m a hypocrite.  At least, I’m not a closet one, that’s gotta count for something).

These are my skinny jeans.

To make the intro complete, I eat healthy, exercise (eh, do my best, let’s put it that way) — and I’m a female, 5′9″, 190lbs, wear anything between medium and extra large, and know what, I’m no Angelina Jolie (my brood, for instance, is limited to one 13-months old bandit), but damn, I think I’m fine.

Which I suppose may be exactly the problem.

On one hand, psychiatry preaches mental health lies in sticking to how one sees oneself, and damn the rest of the populace, what do they know?  On another hand, it is, by now, a truism that only the mad have the sheer audacity to espouse their own unassailable sanity.

That said, let’s segue back to the food. Rather, to the dread eating disorders, or EDs, the bane of parents everywhere. They are a dime a dozen these days, and if there’s ever a time when languishing in the supermarket checkout lane, I don’t see a photo spread of a celebrity suffering from, recovering from, vehemently denying – or, in fact, outright accused of not indulging in, ha, it’s a shopping trip wasted.

How are we to see ourselves when it really comes down to…er, seeing ourselves? Really looking at ourselves in the mirror – and in the eye, and honestly assessing if we are who we need to be, where we need to be, and not just weight wise.  That is, after all, what ED treatments are all about.

Eating disorders are likened to abusive relationships. They play havoc with your mind and health – but they, also, make life easier, in the short term. There’s no need to go out and find friends, you’re either feeling too bad, or you’re preoccupied (feeding an eating disorder, pardon the pun, does take a lot of of you), or, from experience, you just know they wouldn’t understand when you could do with some exercise, or purging, or binge eating. There’s no need to ask yourself what you’re going to have when waiters are assaulting you with leather-bound menus. The answer’s obvious, if you had your way – nothing, nada (possibly, ice water, though it does make you swell up, so, on the second hand, just ice cubes, thank you, such a hot day out). There’s no need to wonder what to do with a bonus paycheck. Why, upgrade your membership at a local gym, buy another box of laxatives, maybe, another tape measure (for the glove compartment – emergencies happen). Depending on income, you may even afford a new elliptical machine for that cozy little nook right underneath a basement window – behind the treadmill, bike, trampoline, a gymnastic ball, and a souped-up hula-hoop with metal bumps on the inner edge to bruise your abdomen into contracting.

Simple, isn’t it – letting go of everything, shedding, at least, some responsibility for your mistakes, for your less than ideal self-image – yet enforcing your own will, too, putting your enslaved foot down. “ It’s my party, I’ll DIE if I want, DIE if I want to…”, there’s a little something there, you gotta admit.

Taking a bite out of your health.

And speaking of which – partying, I mean – let me introduce you to the relative block newcomers. A more prominent of the three – drinkorexia – a folklore kind of term that is taking a Webster-dictionary wielding crowd by storm, riding the coattails of such questionable icons as Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Amy Winehouse. Particularly prominent among women aged between 18 and 25, with whom partying hard and staying skinny at all cost are often raisons d’etre, thus far, it hasn’t been designated an official medical term and like with any ED, those practicing it never admit to a shred of wrongdoing.

Mind, some of the metabolisms in question might be really THAT good (which, from early Lohan roles just ain’t altogether likely), but every single one is wearing size 0. They had better. Should anyone THINK of graduating to an unwieldy size 2, oh, that’s it, the hunt’s on, the press’s a-baying.

So, how does the rest keep themselves to where if photographed from the side, they run the risk of fading out completely – considering, they do publicly drink, and booze does come with calories, though not of a very beneficial kind? Well, I’ll just leave that to your all’s puerile imaginations. They won’t disappoint. Promise?

Oh, OK, I’ll slip a mickey…er, I meant, a little tidbit. Alcohol -> empty stomach -> severe stomach ulceration -> evacuation from either end -> liver on the fast train up the shitcreek. Enough inspiration?

Another new kid on the pro-Ana websites (it’s a lifestyle, not a disorder, MY AUNT FANNY) is the beast recently christened orthorexia by an actual MD and referring to an out of control fixation on healthy eating. In this one instance of ED, it strikes boys almost as often as girls and in the stronger sex, is commonly associated with BDD, body dysmorphic disorder, where a victim focuses on the entire body or even a part as something they, delusionally or not, consider detrimental to his or her appearance. In an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, one mother described how her son would altogether refuse food if at breakfast, she accidentally allowed a droplet of yolk to so much as color her son’s egg whites.

Finally, it wouldn’t be the Century of the Fruitbat…er, 21st, sorry, if there wasn’t some weight manipulation (read: enforced loss) done entirely via self-medication.  Specifically, on not using enough medication.  More specifically, yet, insulin.  Enter diabulimia, a tool of choice for teen girls in treatment for type 1 diabetes.  Mostly, it is the same self-administered cycle of abuse in play, but now it masquerades as flipping the bird to their diabetes.  The isolating, inconvenient, often debilitating disease ceases being their cross.  For the diabulemic, it is seen to be overpowered, remade into a weapon, the one he or she wields, and if the stakes are even greater than with a less easily concealable ED, well, the payoff is, also, much higher.

Plus, of course, bigorexia, pica, Prader-Willi Syndrome. Those, and the perpetual crowd pleasers, the flagships of the ED fleet, bulimia and anorexia nervosa.

These days, they are everywhere, as commonplace as compressed lungs and broken ribs enlivening the stately crinoline era. Then, there was that pressure to conform; perforated stomachs, miscarriages, internal bleeds notwithstanding, corsets ruled – and people died. But, at least, they did so looking perfect.

May we too be victorious. Godspeed.

Today, young people are dying, too, and the media is right there helping them on their merry way. After all, first it gets to criticize their weight, then act all properly horrified – and finally, for a good long time (on those slow news days), sympathize with the bereaved kin. Triple whammy!

So, me, I call on the bloggers, and news editors, and fashion mavens, and Hollywood directors du jour – and most of all, on you, you healthy 5’-something 150+ lbs fatsos (or 6′ slender magnificent reeds, but naturally so, and more power to ya!), let’s just see what we can do to completely eradicate the very need for the pro-Ana sites on our world wide web!

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The very first vegan I ran into was my high school English teacher, and back then, I have to admit I just didn’t understand the lifestyle.  Nor did I ever go to the trouble of trying.  A lot of it, certainly, had to do with my unwavering belief in everything not in the roasted chicken, macaroni cheese, and fruit salad food groups enjoying no basic right to culinary existence.  But it is, unfortunately, true that a great deal of my early antagonism stemmed from the personality of the vegan in question.

Hey, kids! How 'bout another Big Mac?

Only a decade later — and I now realize measuring an entire lifestyle choice by a single practitioner is…well, abominably stupid.  Better later than never, some would say, and yes, they would be right.  But that was high school.

In college, studying health sciences, I learned the intricacies of bad cholesterol and good, of triglycerides derived from different food sources, of atherosclerosis contributing to the skyrocketing rates of heart disease here in the US — and of inherent dangers and surprising benefits of raw, vegan, vegetarian, no-carb — and fully integrated omnivorous diets.  There’s latter in every one — just as there is a former (these, mostly from uninformed food choices and bad decisions made by every slice of our foodie spectrum).  I suppose the only type of diet I would these days condemn off the bet would be a supersized Big Mac one.

Which brings me to Supersize Me, a single most illustrative (if somewhat preachy and pseudo-scientific) demonstration of what it is to live on clean, self-sustained cuisine vs. the self-indulgent God-knows-what-they-put-in-it dietary school of thought of a rather prominent chunk of American population.

Certainly, it bears to be said the sacrifices Morgan Spurlock went to are obvious to an even unconverted carnivore, but the movie’s relevance to the vegan lifestyle lies actually in what was practically a movie’s afterword.  Once Mr. Spurlock’s self-appointed month was through and his vitals ascertained to be all over the place (which is a tad surprising, considering his binging hadn’t lasted that long, though I am not at all disputing the validity of the findings), what did he turn to to detox?  And what actually helped?

You guessed it, the tasty and cleansing fare as prepared by his girlfriend, Alexandra Jamieson, the longsuffering vegan chief.

She didn’t nag him (at least, not on camera), didn’t quote him statistics to the tune of 40% decrease in heart-related deaths for those, practicing vegetarianism.  That glaring difference being further enhanced by purely vegan choices, not to mention the decreased incidence of colon and lung cancer, kidney and gallstones, diabetes, and even later-life sexual dysfunction, she would have had plenty of ammunition.  She didn’t use it.

What she did was prepare him a going-away-to-fight-the-devils-of-consumerism feast — and a purifying post-experiment regimen to gently get him back down from his perpetual sugar high and unclog the arteries unused to the onslaught of saturated fats.

Of course, that a man used to vegan cuisine responded so beautifully to reentering his comfort zone isn’t much of a shocker, but that his is only one example of vegan detox and that it works just as well for those heretofore completely unexposed to this lifestyle, is.

As things currently stand, I am neither a vegetarian nor a red-meat-gobbling carnivore, but will I ever scoff at vegan food choices again?  I can safely say, never.

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The food around here really blows!

Otherwise,  cannibals would be the most humane lifeform on Earth, and we’d all be blowfish.  Well, at least, some of us.  And these 7 here, having enjoyed blowfish testicles prepared by an unlicensed chief, are already feeling largely at sea in the comfort of their hospital rooms.  Rushed to the ER with limb paralysis and difficulty breathing, they undoubtedly could do with some TLC — and perhaps, a transplant of a less epicurean bone.  But that’s between them and their hibachi chefs.

Now, I know cultures in different parts of the world don’t always agree on what’s yummy.  Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern made a career out of sampling wares liable to turn stomachs of those, dependably cringing during the Fear Factor gags.

Chinese enjoy rotten chicken eggs, British love their gull cousins fresh and poached, Amazon delta Native Americans consider raw turtle ones the stuff culinary dreams are made of, Russians dig caviar, Americans chow down barbecue, Koreans cook dogs, and housewives in certain African tribes whip out a mean beer variant chewing up and spitting sorghum to go with their honey-fried locusts.  Which is all well and good.  I would even try turtle eggs, though I might draw a line at a Korean “hot dog”.

That said, can anyone tell me what’s to be gained from kicking your own bucket with a blowfish?  Is a meal that much more enjoyable with 911 on speed dial?  Late and eating on the run, how could I truly do justice to a bonafide brush with the Great Beyond?  And all dressed up for a leisurely supper, I would rather not worry about finishing a day in a lonely hospital bed instead of my own (along with my date all charged up after our spread of oysters, spices, chocolate, and a helping of wine — but not too much, lest it has an opposite effect).

• Have YOU Ever Danced on a Whale's Grave? Today, I'm staying away from facetious. Nope, didn't have a ghost of Christmas future visit and tell me I am being a thorn in some universal toes.  But sometimes, there's stuff you see and it's...thought-provoking.  And when that happens, I guess there really isn't a venue to get creative with......
• Back in Bleck... Zander Bleck. I love HIM! You know... His Infernal Majesty? Ville Valo has the talent, the voice, the hair...the low-riding pants. Well, hey, I am a girl! But up till now, there hasn't been anyone I've ran into here in the US that had the same flair - and catchy songs (albeit......
• PETA and Michael Vick, a Match Made in Hell 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......
• 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......
• The Rivers of Milk and Honey (and Jam) I am a mom. Unlike a gaggle of my acquaintances, can't say as I had wanted to become one since getting my very first doll, because by and large, I really didn't like the critters.  They never laughed at my jokes, never participated in keeping the play area clean, and......

• I will not eat green eggs and ham Over at MSN Money there’s an interesting article on saving titled “Go Vegetarian to Save Money”. Go read it – there’s another article at MSN on the same topic here. There’s a compelling case to be made that a vegetarian diet is superior, including reasons beyond those listed in the......
• Eat These Foods Every Day Losing weight and getting healthy is about a lot more than simply avoiding foods that are high in fat. Many people unfortunately make the mistake of removing higher calorie foods from their diet without replacing those foods with healthier substitutions. Starving yourself, though it may seem to be, is never......
• Pro America! Ahhh the Fourth of July! A day that calls for BBQ's and beer for the entire country. What a wonderful day to sit back and think about how great it is to be an American. I never truly celebrated the day until I started dating my husband. His family throws......
• Home-Cooked Food For Dogs there's no denial of the fact that home made food is the best form of food. The same goes for your dog too. The market has diversity of commercial dog foods that you can give to your dog. such foods are often found to be less on the nutrition......
• What’s old is new — for the smart at heart The young, purposeful woman sitting next to me in the café busied herself crocheting a new carrying bag. She couldn’t be more than 25 years old, an age at which one might expect her to more likely be reading about accessories in a hip fashion magazine than making them. As......