Mishmash Musings

Well, this is a pretty horrific way to begin a Monday morning. As I was checking out the news today, I saw this story about a 23-year-old Massachusetts man named Kerby Revelus who stabbed his two sisters and tried to kill a third before being gunned down by police. This happened on Saturday, but since I wasn’t online much over the weekend, this is the first I’m hearing of it.

From the scant reports I’ve read, I haven’t seen a motive attributed to Kerby Revelus’s actions. But I mean, seriously, is there anything in the world that could possibly justify what he did? First, he stabbed his 17-year-old sister Samantha, and then he decapitated his five-year-old sister Bianca — as a stunned police officer, the first one on the scene, looked on. Yes, folks, you read that right: this sicko DECAPITATED his five-year-old sister. What’s more, it was her birthday just the day before.

Kerby didn’t stop there. He tried going after 9-year-old Sarafina, who somehow had the presence of mind to call the police amidst all this insanity, but the cops were able to shoot him before he did too much damage. Sarafina is apparently recovering in a hospital right now and will live. Obviously, though, she’s going to be scarred for life in more ways than one.

I’ve found no info on the parents or their reactions thus far.

But man, this whole thing makes me feel ill. What is going on with people lately? Why on earth would this guy want to kill his own sisters in such a grisly manner? Oh, I just read another story that said Kerby was “depressed” because a weapons charge on his record was preventing him from finding a job. Give me a fucking break… not finding a job is not the end of the world, especially since he was living at home with his parents.

Things feel so out of control right now…. How horribly sad.

Unlike a lot of women, I don’t have a huge collection of shoes. I have a pair of nice flats for work, a pair of cross-trainers for times when I need to do a lot of walking (going to the mall, the park, a museum, etc.), and a pair of black casuals for wearing with jeans or slacks when I go out to dinner or something. Oh, and I also have a pair of sandals for the summer. So I make do with just four pairs of shoes!

Anyway, my sandals have been through two tough summers already, and need to be replaced. I’ve been trying to find a pair that are comfortable, stylish, and affordable, and think I’ve come up with the right ones. I was looking at the Merrell shoes website a little while ago and saw this pair of black Pesaro sandals (pictured above). I love the way they look, and know that they’ll be comfortable because they’re made of leather. I really want to order these soon!

Okay, okay… so I know I haven’t been accepted to grad school at the University of Missouri (yet), but that’s not stopping me from rooting for its sports teams. I don’t like basketball at all, but I had to give a little cheer when I heard that Mizzou beat Memphis 102-91 last night to advance to the Elite Eight. This is huge for the school, which is known more for its football program than for basketball.

They play a tough UConn team (the #1 seed in the West region. Why West? I have no friggin’ idea!) next, so making it to the Final Four is not going to be easy. You can bet I’ll be pulling for the Tigers, though. I might even tune in and watch a quarter or two. GO MIZZOU!!

(AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

I’ve never understood the whole attraction of Twitter, but I recently signed up to check it out. I don’t really know anyone on the sight, so I’m just following celebrities right now — which is kind of a strange (yet fascinating) experience.

Two of the most active celebrity Twitterers are power couple Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. They frequently send out “tweets” from wherever they are, whether it’s on a private jet, in a limo on the way to the Super Bowl, at an Oscars after-party, on a movie set, or just chilling at home. I know it’s completely voyeuristic to peek into their lives like this, but for some reason I can’t turn away.

Other celebrity Twitterers include Shaquille O’Neal, John Mayer (yes, Jennifer Aniston’s main squeeze), Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit fame), and Britney Spears.

I know most people probably don’t care to watch the mini conversations as someone like Shaq debates with himself about whether to go to Dairy Queen or pop another Solo Slim, but sometimes following a celeb has benefits. Shaq has been known to give away prizes to people who can quickly give him links to something he’s looking for, and he has also left a free basketball game ticket at Will Call to the first of his followers to go to the window and say “Twitter”. Now that’s pretty cool!

Can you believe that the 2009 Major League Baseball season is going to start soon? Opening Day is just around the corner, as things kick off on April 5 with the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies hosting the Atlanta Braves. The rest of the league kicks into action on April 6 — and then of course there are 161 more games after that.

Opening Day doesn’t really interest me too much, except in two instances. First, I would love to see a team unfurl their World Series banner and receive their championship rings. That would be cool, but there’s really little chance of that happening for this Cubs fan. Second, I would love to attend the first official game at a brand new ballpark. I missed the opening of U.S. Cellular Field, and I hope there’s never a new Wrigley, but maybe I can somehow score New York Yankees tickets in time to see them play their first game at the new Yankee Stadium. Sure, the Yanks aren’t my home team, but they’ve got such a long, rich tradition that it would be worth traveling to see them play.

Well, even though attending New York’s opening day is unlikely, I’m still glad that baseball will be starting soon. I don’t watch basketball, so it’s been a long sports drought since the Super Bowl. At least with so many baseball games, there’s almost always something on when I’m bored during the summer!

What a tortured, twisted existence it must have been for the Sylvia Plath/Ted Hughes clan. First Sylvia, a poet and author of The Bell Jar, killed herself at the age of 30, allegedly because of her husband’s constant womanizing. She literally stuck her head in the oven, first taking care to make sure that her children were safe and wouldn’t be affected by the gas.

Then, another of Hughes’s women did the exact same thing four years later. This was Assia Wevill, with whom Hughes had been involved for some time. The two even had a four-year-old daughter–whom Assia killed before carrying out the copycat suicide.

And now, news reports indicate that Nicholas Hughes, the 47-year-old son of Sylvia and Ted, has hanged himself. According to Nicholas’s sister Frieda, Nicholas had been battling depression for a while, though no other details are available at this time.

What a tortured family…. It calls to mind the opening lines from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, about how all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. Wow.

Does anyone else out there think that there’s just too much Obama these days? How many times does he need to get on national TV to address the country? How about the carefully orchestrated “interviews” on talk shows like Leno? I’m getting tired of seeing/hearing him say the exact same things over and over and over again.

And this isn’t just a partisan problem, either. I didn’t vote for Obama or McCain, because I didn’t think either of them was presidential material. I’m sure I would be just as tired of McCain as well if he took over the airwaves like this.

Overexposure is never good.

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Not many ’80s television shows can stand the test of time and still seem like good products today, but for me, Moonlighting definitely fits the bill. I just got done ordering all five seasons of Moonlighting on DVD, and have been spending a lot of time reliving the memories. This used to be my favorite show when I was a kid, and I’m happy to see that it’s still entertaining even now.

One of my favorite episodes of all is the Pilot. I had a VHS tape of this when I was younger, and I watched it over and over and over again, to the point where I knew almost all of the dialogue by heart. I thought the plot was terrific: beautiful ex-model Maddie Hayes is left penniless by her embezzling accountant, and has to take stock of where her businesses stand. One is the Blue Moon Detective Agency, which she had been holding onto as a tax write-off. She’s determined to shut the place down after having a look at it, but private investigator David Addison convinces her to give the place a second chance. They soon embark on a case together, and the rest is history.

The case itself was pretty cryptic and was actually one of the stronger mysteries of the entire series. It centered around a punk-looking guy with a huge mohawk haircut and a unique watch that looked sort of like a higher end Zenith watch. A lot of people are after the watch, so viewers assume that it’s valuable or at the very least holds an important clue.

It turns out that the end game for the bad guys is a cache of diamonds, which David and Maddie manage to get their hands on — for a few brief moments before the jewels are lost forever after being dropped from the top of a skyscraper.

Anyway, I must have seen this episode at least 50 times, but I’m still not tired of it. Man, I love Moonlighting!