Issue 168

Issue: More on Autism.
Upon further research, I managed to Harry Lime myself. Two issues ago, I said that even in a newborn, it would have to take 2000 vaccines for the amount of thimerosal in vaccines to kill it. I found out a few days later that, of all the vaccines that are given to kids before the age of six, only seasonal flu vaccines even contain it, and not all flu vaccines contain it. In short, by this point, thimerosal is even less of an actual threat to their children. I mention this A) Due to my need to correct myself, and B) Because there is actually a possible new treatment for autism that might possibly work. From what I've heard, there is supposed to be a drug, currently called STX-107, that is supposed to limit a receptor that the pharmacologist Mark Bear believes could cause autistic behavior in Fragile X syndrome. It certainly seems interesting, although, admittedly, there is no concrete evidence yet that it could actually generalize results to patients all over the autistic spectrum, or, for that matter, that it can actually work in humans, but it is nevertheless interesting news. This raises an important question; I have hyperlexia, which is on the autistic spectrum. I have been able to fake my way through the Neurotypical world. Given that the disorder gives me a unique perspective on the world, would I take drugs that limit it? All I can say is that given my habit of blacking out and sometimes freezing when reminded of my abusive old school, not being able to relate to people is probably the least of my mental problems.

Film Review of the Day: Stalag 17. Who would have thought that a movie about being held hostage by one of the three most evil regimes would be so... light-hearted? I'm honestly quite surprised that somebody managed to make such a lighthearted movie about Nazi camps with the memory of Auschwitz so fresh in many minds, but I suppose the fact that it's just a POW camp and not Treblinka certainly helps with the mood dissonance.

Quote of the Day: "If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's s___. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.”
_______________Jenny McCarthy. The mere fact that she actually prefers a disease that cripples and kills kids slowly to autism should say a lot.

Link of the Day: Jenny McCarthy's Body Count.

Tract Review: Going Down? Folks, I truly have no idea what is going on here. The first four pages chronicle a Western Story. I can only assume that it is supposed to be a Deadwood reference about four years too late. The story switches to Jim Backus watching said western, while his wife Susan Boyle complains about the swearing (nonexistent, I might add. Not even symbols.) They get into a car crash and call their pastor Patrick Swayze and berate him for telling him that Hell doesn't exist. After having nightmares about Jim, Susan, and John Waters (who makes no other appearance in the tract) welcoming him to Hell, he has nurse Judy Ken Sebben from Harvey Birdman introduce him to somebody who looks like either Jimmy Carter or my Grandpa, who makes him rededicate himself to Jesus Christ. Ladies and Gentlemen, even with his history of claiming that the Catholic Church is directly responsible for every evil on Earth since the Edict of Milan to making some tracts with baffling premises, this would probably be the crowning evidence that Jack has some serious mental problems. Read it here.

Issue 166

News: The Thiomersal Controversy.
A few weeks ago, I signed up for a human Development Class, but I eventually transferred to another section after the second class. Three things crystallized my desire to transfer: 1) Her claim that if one couldn't relate to people (and I honestly cannot), the class would be very difficult indeed, 2) She showed "The Business of Being Born" in class. As I mentioned earlier, it was poorly researched (attempting to coorelate infant mortality with hospital births), biased (no, bias implies that the other side is represented, in however poor a light. It's not a documentary, it's not even a propaganda piece; it's an infomercial), and very poorly done. The third thing was that she seemed to show that there was a link between vaccines and autism. I openly facepalmed when she brought it up. And in light of the fact that the Lancet recently retracted their paper which claimed that there was a coorelation between the MMR vaccine and Autism, I think it's necessary for me to do a little piece on the controversy. Here's the summary of the controversy; some parents of autistic children believe that autism is caused by vaccines. To make this seem somewhat less of a leap, they claim that the Thiomersal in some vaccines causes autism. No word on why this didn't do anything to most of the children who received the vaccines. Folks, I'm going to set the record straight; Thiomersal isn't in all vaccines. And even in those vaccines it is in, it is used in very small quantities [.1 mg, which is sufficient for a preservative], and considering that the lowest lethal dose of Thimerosal is 60 mg/kg, it would seem that there is very little danger. To put it into perspective, keeping in mind that the average weight of a newborn baby is 3.2 kg, it would take over 2000 vaccines to kill it. And please bear in mind that almost nobody is recommending that anybody take anywhere near that many vaccines in their entire lifetime. However, when I looked into the controversy I found something interesting; while some of these parents claim that mercury is poisoning their children, guess how they try to cure it: by putting more hazardous chemicals into the bodies of their children. Yes; it's called Chelation therapy, and it works by using chelating agents that combat lead poisoning to turn the thimerosal into a safer chemical; of course, by the time people get into it, it's already been metabolized, so, in essence, you're trying to use a potentially hazardous chemical to neutralize a chemical that's already been neutralized. And, in addition to not working, it has been known to cause a few deaths.

Band Name of the Day: We Will Not Use Styptic Pens in the Future. Of course, we hardly ever use them now.

Film Idea of the Day: Death Park. A short story idea I'm currently working on. It has a man going to his brother's theme park, apparently to become a partner, but it turns out that the rides are almost all dangerous (for instance, a wave pool so dangerous that it boasts 30 saves per day), and some (like a looping water slide) are even lethal. Based on a true story, or more accurately, a real water park. Imagine if Kafka's "Penal Colony" was actually a waterpark.

Film Review of the Day: The Third Man. I recently bought this movie online, and just today I received it, getting it before it becomes nigh on impossible to find (an issue I hope to get into later). I haven't watched the disc yet, but I know I have seen the movie before, so I'll go from memory. Simply put, it is probably the greatest British movie of all time. From what I remember, my favorite parts were the score (the happy zither score manages to throw the bleakness of the events happening around it into sharp relief,) and, simply put, Harry Lime (The most amazing thing is that with all the acclaim about his character, it's easy to forget that even mentioning the fact that Orson Welles is in the movie is a major spoiler. And, for that matter, even though he may not have had as major a role in making the movie as previously thought, the parts he did contribute managed to do something I previously thought was impossible; a point which is inaccurate, but even in being made wrong, only furthers his point.)

Quote of the Day: "In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
_______________Harry Lime. No, the Cuckoo Clock is a Barvarian creation. Damn, Harry, even when you're wrong, you're right.

Link of the Day: Just so you're clear, Death Park will be based on an actual park. Even the looping water slide, unfortunately.

Correction: Two issues ago, when I posted a link to the Bad Webcomics Wiki, I made a remark about a wolf that molests children due to a brain tumor. I was, in fact, mistaken. The wolf is actually a mouse. Yes, it is a mouse that is the size of a wolf.

Issue 121

News/ Review of the Day: The Bratz Cult. (This issue may or may not have been guest authored by James Lipton.)
When I first discovered this movie in the trailers leading up to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I assumed that it would either be a classic on par with ...if, or the biggest bomb dropped since they stopped bomb testing in Nevada. Little did I know that it would be both. It would only be a matter of a few months before I would be able to watch it when I got the DVD (since my usual channels of gaining such films had failed me), shocking my mother even more than the purchase of Natural Born Killers I had announced to her only moments before. What I saw astounded me. With its blatantly obviously failed attempts at satire (from the school-enforced cliques [including, bizarrely, students who "liked to dress like dinosaurs", which meant putting dinosaur paraphernalia on standard clothes] to blatantly obvious homages to other current fixtures of teenage culture, like High School Musical and Super Sweet Sixteen) and completely outlandish sights treated as if they were completely normal (including several of the aforementioned cliques, a girl undergoing her second Sweet Sixteen on a whim, and contortionist-violinists), I am surprised that there aren't more people who share opinions of this film as I do: It's so bad, it's good (or, in a neologism one student creates, "awesomeful"), on par with virtually everything of note that Ed Wood has done or Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's as if the makers of the film were playing an elaborate joke, hoping that the barely-pubescent teenyboppers this film seemed to be marked towards would get the story of friendship, but that everybody else would notice what I did, but they clearly didn't, if most of the reviews of this movie I've seen are any note. It's about time that people started noticing this movie for what it is; a trainwreck so bad, it somehow turns out good. Maybe in a few years, this movie will end up undergoing a second birth, with another run in theaters, people dressing up as and quoting characters in the movie, and possibly even a drinking game where the viewer must drink a shot of vodka whenever something absurd happens, and double whenever the characters make note of it. Of course, this may be too much, especially the drinking game, but it could happen. In fact, if this manages to become common enough, I would be quite pleasantly surprised.

Band Name of the day: Awesomeful. From the above movie I just reviewed/borderline hagiographied.

Film Idea of the Day: A Teenager rises to fame, his parents manipulate him for his money and fame, sometimes blackmailing him, and he ends up defiantly exiting it all, only to end up like Lemuel Pitkin in A Cool Million post-mortem.

Quote of the Day: "My South Will Rise Again"
_______Robert E. Lee, Squidbillies, this is the worst double endendre ever in what may possibly be the most bizarre Adult Swim ever.

Link of the Day: A short listing of some of the most evil sections of The Bible.

Issue 115

News: Mary Ann, Mary Jane, and The One Percent.
Two news stories have converged around the same time. The first is that Dawn Wells, Gilligan's Island's Mary Jane had Marijuana discovered in the car she was driving (curiously, this actually was old news that I only discovered recently.) As it turns out, she ended up only having to pay a small fine and do half a year's worth of probation. Around this same time, (come to think of it, on the same day as the sentence was announced), it was revealed that, for the first time in American, and possibly even modern, history, more than 1% of all American adults are currently behind bars. Now, what is behind this rate of incarceration? The answer is simple: The war on drugs. As I have stated before, I know that while drugs can be dangerous, there are a lot more dangerous activities than drug use (joining the Republican party, for instance). Even throwing away the fact that arresting somebody for the possesion of a plant which grows naturally throughout the world, the fact is that throwing people in jail for minor offenses like drug possession and use, ultimately, they do not end up learning their lesson that drug use is supposed to be wrong, but they often develop camaraderie with other, more dangerous, inmates. Either as a result of this, or as a result of the fact that many employers are reluctant to hire ex-cons, they often return to jail for crimes which are more detrimental to society than smoking a joint. With this in mind, what benefit does illegalization of drugs do, except fill our prisons and cause drug lords to grow fat on the profits of something which often used to be sold in pharmacies, as Heroin was. Of course, the major reason that drugs became illegal, and the ultimate goal of these laws is to create a drug-free society, wasn't it? Okay, I'll give you that one, but there is one peoblem with that line of reasoning: For every culture that knew that there was some way that they could get a high, they always managed to do so, even if it just meant planting grape vines for Caecuban wine (read Horace if that phrase means nothing to you), and virtually every attempt to try to completely end intoxification has failed horribly. For instance, Take Prohibition. In 1919, it was decided that alcohol was not to be sold at all. What were the consequences? It didn't lead to widespread sobriety; All it lead to were creation of inferior liquors, bad men growing fat off the profits of good liquors, and a constitutional amendment ending it.

Band Name: Come to think of it, the Title for today's news seems like a better band name than anything I can come up with.

Film Idea of the Day: A promising college student disappears. When she is found, she, through her split personalities (Svetlana, the Russian whore; Mickey, the male brooklynite heroin addict; Kate, the British psychopath; and Bobbye [sic], the fast-talking and androgynous con girl, all played by different actresses and actor), reveal a shocking criminal past.

Film Review of the Day: 24 Hour Party People. The story of Factory Records as told by Steve Coogan as Factory Records founder Tony Williams. While the scene showing Ian's suicide is glaringly inaccurate, since it shows him already dead as Stroszek is still airing, when in reality, it didn't happen for several hours afterwards, and the fact that I am unfamiliar with the non-JD section of Factory Records' history, I still think it is good, although I'm sure that Control will most likely be more suited to my interests.

Quote of the Day: "Tristram Shandy was a post-modern classic written before there was any modernism to be post about."
__________Steve Coogan, Cock and Bull Story.

Link of the Day: The famous Denis Leary monologue.

Issue 70

News: Medicinal Marijuana.
Fairly recently, I had dinner at Bennigan's with a married couple who are friends of my parents. The husband is an arch-conservative, so much so that, in 2000's election, he did not vote for Chimpy del Führerdente (read: pResident Bush, with sections of names recalling A chimp, Hitler, and Castro), but actually voted for Pat Buchanan (No, they are not from Florida if anyone asks, but from Chicago, like my parents and I are). He actually mentioned that he "read everything on [my] blog" and particularly mentioned my occasional references to Marijuana and my pro-legalisation stance. I did not ask him about his opinion on my frequent writings on religion on the blog. He said that Marijuana is dangerous stuff, especially when driving (with that said, while I do firmly believe Marijuana should be legalised, I don't think that legalisation should extend to being on pot while driving.) What he also said was that he believed that it is an uphill battle trying to keep America pot-free and that it might as well be legalised. After this, my mother mentioned that she mentioned that she was considered for becoming one of a few people in Illinois to get access to Medicinal Marijuana, if it were to be legalised here, which it wasn't, and she declined because she can't stand smoke, an intolerance which has continued to me. With this in mind, I decided to look up information on medicinal marijuana and I found that every time that marijuana's effects on various illnesses, it has been shown to be superior to most commercially available drugs in some illnesses, such as illness due to Chemotherapy, and glaucoma. Since the first post-criminalisation studies on medicinal marijuana came to light, it was legalised by several states, although the federal government has yet to legalise it, thinking it will pave the way to harder drugs being legalised, even if ending the War on Drugs which eventually came with criminalisation could benefit both major parties: Republicans could cut taxes and Democrats can put the money to better use.

Band Name of the Day: "Pretty Dumb, Asinine". More of an album title, but it came from the dumblaws site I will link to below.

Series Idea of the Day: A humanoid alien who has worked in the Earth studies department of an interstellar college goes to Earth as a college student. One defining feature is his "Addiction" to opium, which he only uses to lower his IQ (down to 155) and help him speak English.

Film review of the Day: Mighty Aphrodite. Woody Allen's film about a writer who adopts an intelligent child and becomes obsessed with his birth mother who turns out to be a porn star with very little intellect and a Mickey Mouse voice. Of all the films I have seen of Woody Allen, this displaces Manhattan by far as his best R-rated film.

Quote of the Day: "Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm?"
_____Voltaire, Letter 160 to Frederick the Great (April 6, 1767).

Link of the Day: Some of the stupidest laws on the planet.

Issue 63

News: D.A.R.E. to keep ineffective programs in schools.
I just recently decided to talk about something I haven't taked about for a while now, and that is drugs (and specifically the War on Drugs, or as I call it, Prohibition II: Electric Boogaloo). My stance can be best summed up as: "While there is no doubting that Drugs are harmful, the Government has no right to keep one from doing whatever he/she wants with his own body (especially if the person is of age)." One major facet of this that I will rant against is the Program DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance and Education). One of the major flaws of the program is that, when one compares the students who had DARE and those who hadn't, the students who had the program were ironically much more likely to take drugs (which the program defines as anything from Tobacco to Heroin) than those who hadn't. I had actually taken the program in the fifth grade and for the time being, it seemed to work, but years later, it would have seemed to have backfired as while I don't partake in drugs, I am vehemently opposed to the War on Drugs. There is also one major problem with the problem which proves my point. In the program, there is encouragement to report parents who posess some drugs, or even firearms, without telling them what was to happen to their parents (many of the people who have reported their parents believed they'd get the same treatment they themselves were given in the program) before they were arrested and thrown into prison (It is interesting to note that while Charlie Manson is eligible for parole, even if the likelihood that he will get it is zero, the parents who were arrested were not eligible for parole.) In many of the cases of children turning in their parents, the Children often wind up in therapy for feeling the guilt of having torn their family apart (I argue that the guilt really should fall upon the program). Anyway, the moral of this story is that Drugs are harmful, but a family destroyed by a government program is even worse.

Band name of the Day: The Testicular Sound Express. A name that Peter Griffin suggests giving to the band he formed with his family in the Family Guy episode "Don't Make Me Over".

Film Idea of the Day: For once I have come up with a blank on film ideas.

Film Review of the Day: The Breakfast Club. The film is about five students who don't know each other in a Saturday detention. They seem to appear to each other as one-dimensional stereotypes in the beginning, but the Characters reveal themselves further as the days go on. The film is particularly interesting, not only for its use of character development, in that, unlike most teen movies, it actually gives off the feel of a play adapted for screen (although it was, in fact, directly written for screen, although John Hughes has been asked to rewrite the film as a play, but hasn't.)

Quote of the Day: "I mean if modern day humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, then where are all the skyscrapers from years gone by? Where are all the books and artifacts? Where are the planes and cars?"
__________Supersport, Carm.org Discussion Forums From the site below.

Link of the Day: Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

Issue 24

News: AA Still Sucks.
Just this week, I saw the new South Park Episode in which After Randy Marsh gets a DUI, he attends an AA meeting and ultimately decides to drink more. After a few minutes, he realizes he should have just cut down on his drinking. In this article, I will explain the facts of AA to you. In America, 1 in 13 people have Alchohol Problrms. Fortunately, I am one of the other 12. Because of the Alchohol Problem, 12 Step Programs are Booming, and Drugs are just the Tip of the Iceberg. Other 12 Step programs non-drug related are crusading against Pack Ratting, Cross Dressing, Debt, Emotions, Dysfunctional Families, Gambling, messiness, misogyny, Overeating, Sex, and profanity, among many others. One big thing about the 12-step program like these is that they are essentiaLLY religion. In essence, the 12 steps are admit your powerlessness, accept a higher Authority, turn over your life to said god, make moral inventory, admit your wrongs, Be ready to ask God remove all these defects, Ask God to remove them, make a list of all people you harmed, make amends to them, Admit future wrongs, pray, and spread the word. Another point is that they claim that Alchoholism is a disease. It is not a disease, but an addiction, and since all addictions are voluntary, it is purely a matter of behavior. They haven't Changed their methods in 70 years. Maybe it's because they're a religion or because their method is infallible, but of all the people who attended AA, only 5% of them still stay with the program. Oddly, they believe that they and their method of Bible-thumping is the only cure to it. Also, they work by replacing a time wasting, degrading compulsion/addiction/obsession with another time wasting, degrading compulsion/addiction/obession. The biggest wrong about AA is that the US Government fully supports it, despite being a cult, to the point that a 12-step sentence has been a staple of alchohol-related trials, and while this has been proven to be unconstitutional in a court of law, it still stands as a sentence. Want to quit drinking? Here's a One Step Program: JUST STOP DRINKING SO MUCH!!!!!!

band Name: AA Anonymous. Read above.

Movie Review: The Odd Couple II. Oscar and Felix are back to try to go to their Children's wedding. They cannot get to the wedding because they kept getting arrested. This film was the rare sequel that betters the original.

Movie Idea: Untitled. An intelligent Teenage DJ gets a letter by an Apostate of a Christian Sect focused on a college named Bijou University, and starts to start a Radio war on that College.

Quote of the Day: "No, cancer is a disease. My dad needs to drink less."
________________Stan MArsh, from the Episode of south Park I mentioned in today's article.

Link of the Day: A Day With Diogenes.

Originally Written 4 August 2005

News: Here's Trivia Time: Which country has the highest percentage of its people locked up in prison?
A: Give up? It's The US of A with 0.705% in prison, but most of the people there could be free if not for one barely constitutional practice.
Today, I will tackle an issue that most people are afraid to question: The War on drugs. Sure, drugs are bad for you, and I've been sober all my life (apart from second hand smoke when I'm downtown, and a sip of sherry, which I hated), but it's a free country (or at least, it's supposed to be), and in a free country, people are free to mess their bodies up in any way they please.
Here are some facts:

* In 1919, Congress passed a constitutional Amendment to outlaw liquor, and because of it, for 14 years, Alchohol drinking and organized crime went to an all time high.
* Then, in 1933, The amendment was repealed.
* Then just after watergate, The War on Drugs was Started By Richard Nixon in 1972. RICHARD NIXON, people!
* At that time a bag of Heroin cost $30 and was 5% pure. This is like buying a $30 box of 12 donuts with only 2/3 of a donut.
* Nowadays, an 85% pure bag costs $4. This is like buying a 12 donuts box for $4 with only 10 2/3 donuts.
* Adjusted for inflation, Heroin is 600 times cheaper now than in the early 70s.
* While LSD and Pot (Neither of which has ever been directly fatal to human beings in the 6000-4 million years we have existed) are illegal, Nicotine and Alchohol are legal.
* Nicotine and Alcohol (both of which have been responsible for deaths, although the former causing cancer) are legal.
* It cost $20,000 to keep Tommy Chong in Jail. This is likely more than it would take for you to keep keep him on your couch.
* Drug use is up 60% from the last few years.
* The Government's anti-drug PSAs don't work at all and make the people who view it want to do drugs more.
* If we freed everybody who was put in jail for drug charges who is still there now, we would be on par with most developed nations.
* What right do we have saying a man who wants to spend his life hooked to a Turkish Skull bong cannot do so?

Here's my plan: Legalize drugs for one year, and see how that goes. Likely, at the end, the drug use rate will lower. Like I said, I am sober, but if you want to mess your body up, it's no skin of my nose. (Sources: Penn and Teller's Bull**** epsode 204, and www.newspeakdictionary.com/ct-prohibition.html )

Band Names: Or at least better album titles. Both of these come from episodes of All in the Family. The first: Last Will and Tentacle, comes from an episode in which Archie gets drunk out of his brain after being locked in the basement. The Quote comes from a scene in which he records his will on a tape recorder while stone drunk and he mispronunces "Testament" as "Tentacle". The second: Lights out at the Reptile House. It comes from an episode of That was on TV land recently in which Gloria is angry at mike for not wanting to be in the delivery room when she gives birth. The quote comes from a section in the show in which her baby's sex is predicted with a ring. The test requires absolute quiet and, as a result, after a few characters shush each other, Archie says "What is this? Lights out at the Reptile House?"

Film idea of the day: The Untitled mockumentary-style document of a relationship between a late 50s-early 60s Author and an 18-year old girl.
Also, Ugizar update: Remember the character in Ugizar I mentioned that claims that because of Italy's film industry, the World is fake? I have added another bizarre quirk. He is frequently seen pounding his manifestos on a typewriter he claims Jack Kerouac used, on a desk with a whole bunch of half empty perfume bottles in his underwear.

Review: Rebel Without a Cause. James Dean plays the tortured Jim Stark, a teen who comes to a new town looking for love he doesn;t get in his middle class family. Despite the stellar cast (Dean also has Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and a very young Dennis Hopper at his side), the film has one major flaw: It should have been shot in black and white. It was intended to be shot that way, but the producers wouldn't let the director film it that way.

Transmetropolitan. The first graphic novel to be reviewed by me in this blog. In it, Spider Jerusalem is a reporter who vents out his cynical views through his Column, I hate it Here. In the column, he goes against two corrupt presidents he names The Beast and The Smiler.

Quote of the day: Emo Phillips Blowout (courtesy of Wikiquote)

* How many people here have telekenetic powers? Raise my hand.
* I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming...They don't know I'm only using blanks.
* I wanted to get from 4th street to 8th... Then I remembered Einstein postulating that parallel lines eventually meet. They're dredging my car from Lake Michigan as we speak.
* Why be prejudiced against anyone because of their race or nationality or creed... when there're so many real reasons to hate others?
* I was with this girl the other night and from the way she was responding to my skillful caresses, you would have sworn that she was conscious from the top of her head to the tag on her toes.
* New York's such a wonderful city. Although I was at the library today. The guys are very rude. I said, "I'd like a card." He says, "You have to prove you're a citizen of New York." So I stabbed him.
* Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil. Other than that, though, it's been a good day.

Site of the Day: www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net
This page is the rantings of a man who, despite never spending time nor money on advertisements, claims his website has had over 100,000,000 visitors. Also, here are some old April Fools Day things from his site:
www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=april_fools04
www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=april_fools05