5 Hurt in French Quarter Shooting

Early this morning at 12:30 a gunman entered Club Decatur, a bar on Decatur St. and Iberville St.(near the Houe of Blues), and shot three men and injured two women (with bullet fragments). The latest violence highlights the fact that the Big Easy is on edge as its Katrina evacuees return to a city that has a murder rate approximately ten times the national average. The National Guard and state police who were called up in June in response to the murders of five youths in a vehicle in New Orleans are scheduled to leave this December. Mayor Nagin will have to redouble his efforts to make the citizens and visitors of the Crescent City safe and thereby make Louisiana's cultural capital a magnet anew for conventioneers and other cash-spending tourists.

Cf. http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/31/D8L3OQJO0.html.

Oedipus: Eyes Wide Open

Albertville, Alabama, police report that Gary Helms, Jr. a nineteen-year-old boy, sought revenge against his brother over a girlfriend by raping their passed-out, drunk 45-year-old mother at Willow Terrace Trailer Park. According to the the Albertville police Sgt. Jamie Smith's account, the mother came to as her son was assaulting her and tried to resist without success. Understatedly, Sgt. Smith said, "It's totally sick is what it is." He is now in jail on $100,000 bond and is charged with first degree rape of his mother.

Cf. http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=5598920&nav=menu33_3_6.

Pagan Prisoners Get Halloween Off in UK

The UK Prison Services regulations require that paganists (including Satanists and devil worshipers) get October 31 (Halloween) or Summer's End (i.e., Sarnhain, its Celtic name) off to be free to celebrate one of their religious days. The 282 English and Welsh prisoners will be allowed to use artifacts such as rune stones, flexible twigs, and unhooded robes in their cells or in their communal rites. (Hooded robes are forbidden for security reasons.) Pagans are afforded two religious "holidays" whereas Christian and Buddhists get three, Jews receive seven, Hindus obtain ten, and Muslims require 26. Some attacked the Prison Service directive as political correctness gone amok while a Home Office spokesperson defended the decision as evidence of its commitment to "treating all prisoners with decency and humanity, which includes respecting those of all religions."

Cf. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23372521-details/Pagan+inmates+are+given+a+day+off+from+work+for+Halloween/article.do.

Eyelash Nip & Tuck

Nose jobs, face lifts, botox injections, breast augmentation, liposuction, posterior implants, labiaplasty. What's next? Ready to increase America's 10 million cosmetic surgeries, eylash transplants are beoming the rage. Using procedures pioneered by the "plugs" for balding men method, docs are using these same techniques to give ladies (and some gents) those luscious, lengthy lashes that they formerly had to glue on. Surgeons charge approximately $3000/eye for the procedure: it involves the removal of 30-40 hair follicles from the back of the scalp and their transferrance to the eyelid. Originally, this surgery was meant for burn victims and the like but now has transmogrified to a praxis to give those willowy waifs that pose and model for America's entertainment and Park Avenue's ad that look that may mandate more monthly attention but negates the need for eye lash extensions and daubs of mascara. Hurray for Hollywood!

Cf. http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2006/10/25/003.html.

Russian Decline

Now that the USSR has devolved into Russia and its erstwhile satellites, the tongue of the tsars is seeing a marked decline even in the mother country itself. Russian is the fourth most spoken lingua after English, Chinese, and Spanish according to the Russian Academy of Science's Center for Demography and Human Ecology (CDHE). Within 15 years the CDHE forecasts that Russian will be tenth. One salient reason is the annual decline of the Russian population by 700,000. Also, the loss of superpower status has diminished the cachet of the language. An analyst at the Institute for Cultural Research, Kirill Razlogov, said, "As the geopolitical importance of Russia degenerated to being little more than a big supplier of raw materials for other countries' growing high-tech economies, so did the demand for knowing Russian. He added, "In many former Soviet republics, particularly in Central Asia, Russia was once the language of the elite: now with advancing globalization, more people opt for English." Now that the Cold War has subsided, Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise, and Hispanics are in the ascendancy in America, Arabic and Spanish are projected to surpass Russian in the number of speakers. To reassert itself on the world stage, this great power founded by Swedish princes and now a superpower (but only a military one), this bear should arise from its hibernation and roar anew as a nation that embraces freedom and democracy.

Cf. http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2006/10/25/003.html.

Mayoress Demands Demires for Dutch Doughboys

Almere (Netherlands) mayoress and member of the ruling VVD libs Annemarie Jorritsma has called for prostitutes to go on foreign missions with the Dutch troops. Ms. Jorritsma said, "The army must consider ways its soldiers can let off steam." She elaborated that it would keep the military from turning to local women. Her suggestion is getting mixed reviews from her fellow citizens. Spokesman for the military trade union, Wim van den Burg told Volkskrant (a Dutch newspaper), "I don't think that my wife would find it a good idea." Even VER (sex industry) spokesman Andre van Dorst expressed doubts and said, I can see something in this, though it's a very strange idea."

Cf. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061023/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_dutch_prostitutes.

Newsweek: Cold, Warm, Warmer . . .

Newsweek admits that its Global Cooling scare was scientifically challenged. Now it claims with more facts, faster computers, and "infinitely more sophisticated mathematical methods" the truth can now be ascertained: the globe is warming! Don't "pour soot over the Arctic ice cap to help it melt" (as it once suggested). And now that we have taken more of the dust out of the air from the coal-burning factories and aerosols (suspended liquid) as prescient scientists demanded, the heat will no longer be reflected back into space. Thanks for keeping us warm, our ecological friends! Keep listening to Newsweek: sooner or later, we'll get it!

Cf. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15391426/site/newsweek/page/2.