the lugubrious blog: May 2013

Ah, long gone are the days when we had time to devote to this morbid fascination with death - that we all share, verily... Long gone are the days in which we indulged in monthly, sometimes weekly and sometimes even case-by-case eulogies of notable and less-than-notable demises worldwide... And extra-long was the delay between our last posting here - and this one now!

Thus, all in all, it is long overdue that we return to this courting death thing that we had going here - and all the more so, given our first topic of the day, too (you'll soon see what we mean by that...!)

We thought we'd do something new though, something different at any rate, for this return to form - skeletal form though it might be (and you'll soon see what we mean by that too...!)
So here it is then, without fanfare nor parade - after all it is not the Mexican Day of the Dead or anything of the sort! Just a little round-up of striking news items that all have one thing in common and that is... you guessed it... DEATH.

Off we go - into the Great Beyond...! Or not quite... Not quite yet...

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PCmag.com's ever crystalline SecurityWatch had a fascinating article recently enough predicting that the internet - this thing we love to overindulge in right here - would become a vital (!) accessory to murder soon enough; in fact, as early as next year!

In the article, which you can find here, a reputable security firm is amply quoted as it pronounces the death sentence for many an anonymous user (no relation to Anonymous - the group - surely not) as it deems that all the tools are in place and the stage set for the web to become a murder weapon by 2014. Things deemed of ''the future'' in general, such as self-driving cars, are especially prone to hijacking via an internet connection: and cyberpunks with a grudge could well drive those cars into brick walls then, and with impunity at that. Less science-fictiony and far more plausible would be the remote trafficking of remotely-operated pacemakers - once again, hackers with a grudge could easily snuff out the very lives of he or she who pissed them off the most lately... A proliferation of mobile malware - such is the new plague of the 21st Century. And such cyber-attacks will go beyond mere data breaches and the embarrassing moments they always occasionate. Cybercriminals will increasingly show more and more proficiency at finding their way to their intended victims: be them the common denominator or be them a Fortune 500 company that depends upon cybersecurity heavily. There is nothing closer to the proverbial ''perfect crime', than to be able to strike from a distance and remain undetectable afterwards. All of this is very possible and very near, according to Internet Identity, a security firm that clearly knows what they're talking about.

Of course, this IID security firm is setting up its own business with all of its dire prognostications - scare up the potential customers with either rising costs (from the competition or generally-speaking) or the spectre of lurking menaces looming over the horizon, and you are effectively all set for an excellent fiscal year ahead... The article makes a comparison with the boldness of a truly dire prediction - that of the end of the Mayan calendar meaning the end of everything, too, and not merely of a cycle - but, truth be told, the Mayans, at least, were not making any predictions (if they ever truly did at all) with invested interests in mind... PCmag's Max Eddy doesn't buy too much into all this - and neither do we, evidently. Scare tactics can only work so much and for so long, you know...

We thought the picture illustrating the 1001 dangers of the internet was priceless though:
our compliments to whoever designed it and snapped it, too...

Credits: PCMag.com/SecurityWatch

with Neil Rubenking

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What's this latest fad that we have seen emerging in various specialty shops across the land - something gothic, something wicked, something bare to the bone and downright... skeletal.

They're called Skelanimals - and fanboys and fangirls alike, on both sides of the spectrum, cannot get enough of these things. They're the new Pokémons! The new Digimons! And they're downright... ghastly! But in a cute, fuzzy way, sure...

When I first heard of these (I thought they were named ''Skeletanimals'' - which would have, perhaps, made more sense but might have been less marketable too: I am sure that's what they figured, too...) I thought I might have been stumbling across an old idea that had never panned out... But, what, with licensed products readily available for the first time ever (aye - DC, desperate to become trendy in any way, shape or form -even if a skeletal one- authorized the fine not-so-closeted skeletons over at Skelanimals Headquarters to distribute their Skelanimalistic versions of Superman, Flash, Batman and Green Lantern worldwide - or, at least, all across North America.) and an ever-increasing presence in media everywhere (and the net - again the net!) it is clear that this is all happening RIGHT NOW. We're in the age of the lugubrious, folks - what can we say...

They've developed their own brand and their own stars, too: a critter named ''Dax'' headlines a group of obviously walking-dead pets that, somehow, carry on with their routines beyond their lifespan itself... Fans proudly wear, flaunt (heck, HUG) their Skelanimal everywhere: at work, on the street, in Church...! (Makes sense, actually: in Church! But we're about to digress now...) Verily, not since Pet Sematary has such a thing been seen anywhere! A series of animations have been done to promote all the merchandise - all evidently inspired by things such as ''Nightmare Before Christmas'' and the latest (greatest?) Franekenweenie which, themselves, emulated the late, great Charles Addams - and his eccentric ''family''... Below we've embedded one of these animation shorts, featuring the second star of importance of this Skelanimals death-defying line-up: it's Maxx, the bulldog. Even Frankenweenie doesn't have as much of a zombie-terrific ending as this one, you'll see...

What else can we add to this - when death (and the ever-so-near inevitable demise of our beloved pets - be them dogs, cats or goldfish) becomes the subject of a cutifying merchandizing process, there is not much else to add but this: what a terrifying fascination we have with death, folks - what is this?!? (Don't bother answering that and just go back to cuddle with your favorite Skelanimals pet already... Shoo! Scram! Good dog - dead dog... *Sigh*)

Dax - of the Skelanimals LLC

By Art Impressions Inc.

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Finally, we cannot make omission of the sad state of affairs (in all possible meanings of the expression) over in the European Union. As prices soar, austerity measures are implemented left and right and wages vanish into thin air, the word ''crisis'' actually fails to encompass the full scope and magnitude of what is happening to certain poor folks out there...

Some have turned to drastic measures in order to remedy to it all: they do so in one swift action and that action is self-extermination. More and more observers are talking of a ''suicide surge'' in many European countries, as many individuals do not see any other way out of the constant strife that they are mired in. Auto-termination is sometimes doubly tempting as, on top of the economic woes, populations affected by harsh recession are also tormented by widespread outbreaks of disease that are uncharacteristic for their region. It all stems from the main dilemma at the source of all evil: man-made power of purchase.

Countries such as Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal are mentioned, time and again, in articles relating this outright apocalyptic state of things. A research into these events that covers all the way back to 2008 up to now has indicated that austerity measures have made things only go from bad to considerably worse. Many more countries are being affected but the research focused on Greece the most for its most gruesome findings: outbreaks of malaria as recently as 2011 came about as a direct result of cuts in spraying programs to kill mosquitoes. Willem De Jonge of Médecins Sans Frontières in Greece was quoted lamenting that such epidemics are not at all something to be normally expected in that country. Other uncommon outbreaks included the famous West Nile virus rearing its ugly head again due to the very same favorable conditions - and dengue fever. A lack of resources is invoked at all corners - or a lack of generating funds to provide those resources. Whatever the case may be, it is fast becoming a vicious circle leading straight into the arms of the Grim Reaper...

In Madrid, Spain, everyone agrees that their medical care system is rapidly deteriorating to the point that lives are being lost solely due to cutbacks. Radical health care reforms seem to have been one of the primary ways to go for all of these nations implanting severe austerity measures - yet, that is exactly what should be avoided, according to most experts (and the plain old casual observer endowed with common sense.) For to do so is to make the dire situation become that more intolerable for everyone involved, especially the masses. But no one seems to be listening to Hans Kluge, for example, who is from the World Health Organization's European office and has been saying exactly that - so why would they listen to anybody else? Mass protests against these inhumane conditions are organized - especially in Greece, of course - however it is there that desperation levels have been the most evident as the suicide rate has increased by 40 percent in 2011 alone, in comparison to 2010. And it came in various forms, too, as some acted suicidal quite involuntarily when they shared syringes that proved to be contaminated; you see, funding for needle exchange programs was among the first thing to go and so drug-users were suddenly as vulnerable as they had ever been before. The result was an exponential rise in the number of HIV infections among all of these addicts who just couldn't help themselves...

Now this study (helmed by Martin McKee, professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and launched online in late March 2013, to be subsequently published by The Lancet) is thorough and far-reaching as can be - but it still makes abstraction of the full scope of things all across Europe. It makes no mention of eastern Europe and the strife there: people have been setting themselves ablaze in front of their parliaments, in sheer complete despair... Death appears, to them, as the sweetest release, the only possible deliverance from their daily plight. And why is it such? Because there is ''no political solution'' as The Police used to sing: no matter who they elect, the same corruption comes to the fore again and again. And so they'd rather become Spirits In This wretched Material World...

The study also failed to mention any of the thousands upon thousands of cases who live on in abject conditions in ghettos, shanty towns and slums all over Europe - perhaps because those have been in these conditions even before the world went into recession ''officially'' which belies a far more deeply-rooted problem than a mere ''sudden'' economic collapse. What it reveals is that our model for society - where the rich get richer and the poor poorer, where the middle-classes are endangered species and where anything goes as far as the powers-that-be are satisfied - well, it is not a good model at all. But we cannot blame the Lancet for not wanting to get too political - it is, after all, not its specialty nor its vocation.

All we can do is thank whoever was free enough to order and release this information, though as incomplete as it may be - for, even so, it may get more peeps into thinking as they should. And that is as some of my best bros in the whole wide world say: memento mori...!

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But why not end this with another free promo for them pesky Skelanimals there - huh?

For we didn't mention they had a bat before - and it might well be the one design that came all together the most conclusively out of all of them indeed... We failed to catch its name, alas: but we would probably think of it as the ''Mini-Angel of Death,'' surely... What else?