Hey folks, the deadline approaches — if you have something you’d like to submit to the Carnival of Satire, please send me a note or use the BlogCarnival submit form. If you want to email me directly, just put Carnival of Satire somewhere in your subject line and send it to skwib@markarayner.com.
Or, you could just go looking for some satire here…>
Remember, we’re looking for satire, not just humor (though sometimes ironic humor or humorous snark sneaks in).
Dude, this clipart reminds me of my time as an itinerant toe-surgeon in Bangkok.
You can check out the entire Erotic Clipart Alphabet over at Ration Reality. If you think the letter “w” is naughty, wait until you see “y”! Definitely not safe for work, and reminiscent of the Dirty Vicar sketch, especially “y”, thought I suppose that would be the “fornicating bishop” sketch.
Holy crap! I just noticed what’s really going on in the letter “b”…
Excuse me.
A new report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (UK think tank) believes that “nanny state” policies may be justified when it comes to binge drinking.
“At present the UK government is trying to encourage a sensible drinking culture,” says John Krebs, chairman of the committee that wrote the report. “But walk through ‘vomit alley’ in central Oxford on a Saturday night and you will see a conspicuous absence of it.”
Yes, Vomit Alley — a post-apocalyptic world in which gravity inexplicably increases in places, light bends, and your gut comes alive with flavor. I believe the movie is in pre-production and they’ve tapped Kurt Russell to play the lead, Angus McNasty, master of “The Sledge”.
Just don’t try to bring back prohibition, that’s all I ask.
New Scientist Story (requires subscription for full article)
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone south of the border. (At least as far as Mexico.) I hope you’re all having (will have) a good day.
If your family is driving you nuts, perhaps you should go check out The Carnival of the Insanities for a little relief. More crazy here.
And speaking of crazy, I saw this yesterday before Beowulf started:
BTW, I’ve fixed the top commentators widget, so it will only clear at the end of the month.
Initially, I wasn’t sure how to categorize the movie. At first I thought it might be a musical about body mutilation, but then it got a bit darker, and stranger, and quite frightening.
I guess I would best categorize SiKCO as a kind of horror movie with SF tropes and moments of absurd comedy.
It kind of meanders for a horror flick, and a lot of characters get introduced throughout the story (and yes, a lot of bad things happen to them). The one character who remains unharmed — except for a painful interview he conducts with an extremely smug French couple — is the “film-maker” Michael Moore.
The framing device for this terrifying piece of fiction is that Michael Moore is a documentary maker. The CGI experts that created this sympathetic character are geniuses — yes, the protagonist is quite horrible to look, but you can really feel his humanity coming through those pixels, so you definitely sympathize with his want to help people.
And boy, in this setting, people need help. I mean, in this movie, if you’re ill, old or poor, you do not want to need a doctor. Basically, think of the HMOs as a horde of zombies, and anyone needing healthcare as brain-food on the hoof. As (an ex-) doctor, I was quite horrified to think that those organizations would spend so much of their time and effort denying care — clearly something is rotten in Denmark.
By contrast, the protagonist visits several countries that have universal healthcare. Part of it is even filmed in my hometown, of London, Ontario. This segment of the movie is fairly accurate, though there wasn’t much mention of efforts in Canada to privatize medicine. (Mostly unsuccessful so far, thank god.)
On the whole, I found SiCKO a disturbing and somewhat moving horror/comedy, though the ending, where a bunch of Americans are treated by Cuban doctors seemed a little too far fetched to believe. I bet it drives some people nuts though.
I give this four out of five peyote buttons!
Thanks to Archer at Lawyerworldland for suggesting I watch it. | Photo of the evil HMO Directory by brian cors
A hearty welcome to The Skwib’s old friend and psychotropic adventurer, Dr. Maximillian Tundra. He’s agreed to help Mark pick up some of the blogging slack around here, while he is off writing novels and whatnot.
A few carnivals that you might want to check out:
Updated: The November Bookworm Carnival
Carnival of Television
The furry and fun Friday Ark!
Observations on Life
And then you should probably just get it over with and click on this thing –>