Monthly Archives: July 2008

ION, my favorite NYC-area low-budget broadcast network, is showing The Neverending Story tonight at 8pm. Hell fucking yes.

K, I’ve kinda noticed that my blog has been a little overly negative in recent weeks (months? years?). I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing – where better to air your grievances than in public – but I thought it might be nice for me to do with some enforced positivity. I also had a nasty migraine yesterday, so the usually attractive idea of starting my day out with a Mafoo Blog rant doesn’t hold the same excitement as it often does. Right now thinking too hard makes my entire skull hurt.

So I thought I’d devote an entire week to things I like. Or rather, I’ll have an entire week free of things I hate. Ya know, things like… Uph! Nope, not gonna do it.

To commence my wade into the waters of happyland, here are a few recent things I like:

1. I like watching low-budget slasher movies (grindhouse films) on YouTube. I watched two last night, Pieces and Scream Bloody Murder. I’d provide the link, but I don’t want them to be found out and removed. Search YouTube for them though if you are interested, they shouldn’t be too hard to find.

2. I like the Bershire Fringe Festival. Spent the weekend there, caught a couple shows, and hung out with some good friends.

3. I like the International Music Score Library Project. This is serious shit, check it out. Worth a whole post of its own.

4. I like the Montauk Monster:

5. I might might MIGHT be softening my hatred for Wraps. I still think they are weird bastardized burritos, but I had a couple this weekend that were ok…

Huckabee has a good take on McCain, guess he’s out of the veep running…

L.A. knows what’s best for those pathetic low-income areas (sarcasm-alert!).

NYPD strikes again (short ad before the video).

Judy ain’t gonna sit around and deal with no earthquake’s bullshit.

Apparently the gunman in the Knoxville Unitarian Church mass murder was a big fan of… you guessed it: Savage, Hannity, and O’Reilly.

Jack White and Alicia Keys are recording the new Bond theme? Nice.

For the record, RNC plus humor equals awful.

That’s some good police work there Lou.

Bennigans slowly dies, much like my soul the last time I ate a Bennigans monte cristo.

I’m sorry, but this just looks retarded. From what I’ve seen and read about it, it just seems like the standard “Bush is an idiot” crap that you get from much of the left. Stone bought the best actors he could buy, shoved them into the roles of the top players in Bush’s family and cabinet, and pushed it through the production process as fast as he could.

Look. Yes, Bush is a dreadfully incompetent president, probably one of the worst ever. I know it, Stone knows it, half of the country knows it, and this is a movie for that half of the country.This movie will not change anyone’s mind, it is just candy to make people who hate Bush feel good about themselves. Fuck that. I don’t want to see that. I want to see something that challenges my beliefs and ideas, not affirms them. Propaganda does not make good art, I don’t care how much I agree with it. And this looks like a pile of crap.

I’m way over Oliver Stone, btw. He’s a fucking 90s director. He’s like Ron Howard with a chip on his shoulder. He makes romantic, idealistic films – especially his biopics – that fictionalize his characters into neat little dramatic packages. He started the trend of romanticized biopics that create superficial deities of his subjects, whether good or evil. But you can tell that he still thinks of himself as this maverick film maker. Yuck.

Anyway, the problem with this film is that it gives fodder to the critics on the right who tend to portray people on the left as sour, elitist, and mean-spirited. You’ll never persuade someone with insults, no matter how good it makes you feel or how justified you feel. All you will do is perpetuate the fight.

Wow, fuck you NYPD:

7 Funniest Green LOLCats:

Sigh…

Ya know, this whole Carin’-for-the-Environment craze is getting old.

What? Huh??

Yeah, sorry. It’s a fad. It’s temporary. Give it another year or so and we’ll be back to our old wasteful selves again. People are simply too selfish to endure minor inconveniences on a mass scale in order to help Save The Earth.

Don’t think so?

Hey. Remember the 90s? After the excesses of the 80s, the early-mid 90s was a time of unusual social consciousness. I remember being taught recycling in schools, Earth Day was a hit, Captain Planet was chillin with the Planeteers, and people were cutting their plastic soda can holder thingys so fish and birds wouldn’t get caught in ’em. Yeah, that whole thing went away a few years later when the economy started doing better ( music follows this trend as well: top band in 1992 – Nirvana; 1998 – Backstreet Boys ).

The economy sucks right now. The country is fucked because of Bush. It makes perfect sense that people will start caring about causes (that they will not be caring about in about 5 years). I just don’t wanna sit through it.

Still not convinced that this whole carin’ ’bout da environment/global warming-worrying thang is merely a fad?

Then here you go:

Two symbols of decendence, excess, and waste teaching us we ought to learn to restrain ourselves and be more conscientious about the impact of our actions. Yeah. Really. It’s a show. Don’t miss it.

Cuz nobody will care in a few years.

Run for the hills!!

Ok seriously, here is an article in the Canadian Times Colonist about my condition, HHT. The article is oddly titled, The Nosebleed Disease. Umm, kinda catchy I guess. Definitely better than Osler-Weber-Rendu:

Rating 2T [HHT] is characterized by the presence of arteriovenous (artery-vein) malformations (AVMs) that involve direct connections between arteries and veins without the usual intervening capillaries. These AVMs can vary in size from a pinhead to a pea. The tiniest AVMs are called telangiectases. Telangiectases that are close to the surface of the skin and mucous membranes in areas like the nose are very fragile and tend to rupture easily and bleed.
…
For the most part, people with HHT have a normal lifespan, Vethanayagam says. But large AVMs can bleed in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, brain, spine, lung, liver and other sites and create major, sometimes life-threatening, incidents such as a stroke or brain abscess.

Jerome, who needs a blood transfusion every six months, counts himself lucky that he doesn’t need a transfusion every five weeks, like his dad, who also had internal bleeding.

He dismisses his disease “as an inconvenience” because he says he doesn’t want to come across as a whiner and because he is a private person. He’s only talking about HHT because he thinks it may help people who haven’t yet been diagnosed to notice similarities with their own situation.”

I have an HHT Google Alert set up and it’s surprising how rare it actually makes the news. But know you know about it. And knowing’s half the battle.

With Knol.

I’ve been loathe to post on this, mainly because I think that publicity whores like Michael Savage should not be given more press, but I found a productive reason to post. AFLAC (ya know, the commercial with the duck) has decided to pull its advertising from Savage Nation. That’s a good start.

In case you’re unaware of the scandal, here’s some of what Savage said:

You know what autism is? I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.

What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, “Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.”

Autism — everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, “Don’t behave like a fool.” The worst thing he said — “Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.” That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.

Yeah. I mean, it’s really too stupid to even comment on. Really, just so wrong in so many ways and so misinformed, sigh…

Jeanne from Charlie in Wonderland takes up the banal task of explaining why he is so very, very wrong:

Savage is clearly unaware of some basic facts about autism:

* Half of all people with autism never learn to speak

* More than half of people with an autism diagnosis have an IQ that places them in the mentally retarded range

* The number of children diagnosed with autism has increased at a rate of about 15% per year for the past twenty years.

* 60 years ago autism was thought to be a psychiatric disorder caused by bad mothers, even though no evidence was ever offered to support that theory. This theory was rejected by responsible observers in the 1960s.

Regarding the call for a boycott: I am very against censorship. I don’t think Savage should be arrested for what he said or forcibly silenced by the government. However, I think businesses should be accountable for which programs they air during, and people should be encouraged to put social pressure on those businesses who fund programs like his. Savage lost his show on MSNBC for telling a gay caller to “get AIDS and die”. Remember that? This clown needs to be removed from the airwaves and people should pressure his supporters (his advertisers) to withdraw their funding.

For the record, I still believe in public pressure for causes in which I don’t agree. A few years ago, when anti-war voices were being silenced by cowardly advertisers, I hated it, but I defended their right to do pull their funding.

UPDATE: Home Depot has also pulled its advertising from Savage Nation

UPDATE on the UPDATE:
“Sarah from Home Depot” says:

Just to clarify. We are not advertisers on the Michael Savage program.

Awww… I find this so adorable. The candy corn as fire made my day. It’s kind of like an Americana Svankmajer animation.