Random news

Wow what a whirlwind day. Coming in to work, still hung over from the chillax pace of weekend life…I decided to scan the headlines of the Herald Sun and The Age, a habit (the scanning of Australian newspaper headlines online) which I have not been able to kick. So, many worthy stories aside, I have distilled down to a few of the more interesting ones, though, mind you, some narrowly made the cut over other similarly worthy news items.

First up…we have the story of the sick Austrian man who locked up his daughter when she was 18, in his dungeon, and then, repeatedly returned to rape her over the next 20 years. So this girl was basically locked up, had no sunlight nor rain for 20 years, no exercise, NOTHING, and was basically just kept for disgusting sex reasons. What an animal. And then, he goes on to father 7 of her children, a few of whom he took back to the outside world, gave them to his real life wife (the mother of the victim) and claimed that their daughter had run away to join a cult and left those 3 on their doorstep. Of the remaining few kids, 1 or 2 died and were incinerated, and the others were living in the dungeon. This is just so twisted and sordid. What kind of sick animal of a man is that? To make things more baffling, how on earth could the stupid dumb moron of a mother not figure out, over 20 years, that her own missing daughter, was merely 2 storeys below? I mean…seriously, how stupid is she? And to make things more baffling, this guy rented out his ground floor to tenants, none of whom stumbled onto anything dodgy. If the fricking guy had died, for instance, the hidden daughter, and her kids, would have starved to death. This is a sick tale, and sometimes, fact is stranger than fiction.

In another sordid tale that speaks of the capacity for mankind to commit heinous acts on each other, we have this tale of women (albeit mentally handicapped) in wards being abused and assaulted by other patients or even by hospital staff. The first tale tells of a man who coldly calculated and planned and perpetrated his crime. This tale tells of hospitals who are aware of the sordid goings on but do not take sufficient steps to prevent these things happening. Such a departure from their duty of care should cause them to be sued to high heaven. This tale reminds me of stories and photos I have seen of women in normal hospitals, who while sedated, were abused and assaulted, and even of young women in morgues who were subject to the same treatment. Male nurses should be restricted to handle male patients only.

And in other news, here is proof that today’s children are becoming more stressed and burdened with higher expectations and tougher means of achieving these expectations. Life is no getting easier, inspite of the fact that we are materialistically better off than our parents. We might be materially better off, but we are increasingly stressed and under enormous amounts of pressure. We really should be doing what we can to give them a proper childhood, keep them happy, and not have them worrying over such adult bread and butter issues such as unemployment and housing affordability. I wonder what does it mean, when society evolves to this point. At which stage do we consider that there has been a breakdown in society, a failure on the part of adults to provide them with a comfortable, slower pace in which to grow up, one which we ourselves had.

This article confirms what we men have been feeling and saying for some years now: that the pressure, expectations and demands on the modern male have led to abnormal physiological reactions. Apparently a new study confirms that men are just as baffled as to why their libido is on a steep downward spiral, and what is more baffling, is that they don’t seem particularly bothered. Now THAT is definitely cause for alarm.

And in this bizarre occurrence, a large party of people were partying in a packed balcony area one night when 2 of them got to schmoozing, shuffled too near the edge, and fell off the balcony. The man was fine, but the woman is in critical condition. I wonder what kind of kiss that was.