A bad moon rising is no loony tune

My eyes were ready to shut down for the day, but my brain would not allow that to happen.  It was past my regular bedtime, and way past the bedtime in the Eastern and Central timezones in which I spent the last few days.

All because of a lunar eclipse.  I suppose my behavior was further evidence linking the moon and madness!

But this was no ordinary eclipse and the blood red eclipse.  So they said.  Thus, of course, it was a blood red madness to stay awake.

Stay awake I did.  There is indeed something about the natural drama that unfolds.  It is magical.  One minute it was a bright full moon--yes, we had a clear sky even here in Oregon!  A few minutes later, it was as if somebody had bitten into the lower corner of the white fruit.  And then more chomp.

The eclipse is a drawn-out affair, which might have worked well back in the prehistoric era.  In the contemporary world where people seem to do ten things in one nanosecond, the eclipse was the slowest of slow motion, even for the slowpoke that I am.

So, to keep myself occupied, I checked the Twitter feed.  For the hashtag on the eclipse.  One caught my attention; I then read the news and tweeted about it:

I see a bad moon rising! Cannibal brothers out from #Pakistan prison found feasting on human head http://t.co/fzcpRR4f2S #BloodMoonEclipse
— sriram khe (@congoboy) April 15, 2014

If I thought I was a lunatic to waste my sleep time to watch the lunar drama, here were the real lunatics.  Cannibalistic at that!

Two brothers in Bhakkar, Pakistan who were imprisoned for cannibalism have now returned to eating human flesh, it has been reported, after the head of a boy was discovered at their house.

So, whose bright idea was it to release from prison two cannibals?  Looks like the prison and justice officials are even more lunatic than the cannibals themselves!

The crime: "they were found to have disinterred and devoured up to 150 corpses from a local graveyard." 

The punishment:

Pakistan has no specific laws against cannibalism, alarmingly, but the pair were arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order section of the Pakistan Penal Code and sentenced to two years in prison along with Rs50,000 in fines.

I had to keep reminding myself that I was not reading The Onion.  Real life is certainly stranger than the fictional world.

Police raided their home this week and recovered the head of a human boy, according to District Police Officer Ameer Abdullah, with Arif being arrested and admitting to his cannibal recidivism, while Farman is still on the loose.
Police have now begun a search to find the missing brother.

Boy am I glad that I live far, far away from this cannibal on the run!

Meanwhile, the moon was being gobbled up by the god-eating Rahu/Ketu, and was now only a sliver.  I stepped out on to the middle of the road.  "Is it red yet?" asked a neighbor from her porch.  It is not only misery but also such lunacy that likes company!  Her husband joined her on the porch.  They went back and left me the lone lunatic.

The Rahu/ketu duo finally ate up the entire moon. But, the moon didn't turn dark.  It was colored.  Madness completed, I left it to the gods above to clean up the celestial gobbling up and went to bed.

A long day lay ahead for me as the madman in the classroom.  I worried that I will be madder than ever.