Oh, the agony!

That man just remembered that he forgot to donate to my fundraiser that I'm having to raise money for a new pair of glasses with scratch resistant lenses. He's distraught over the fact that he could have donated any amount and that a $25 or more donation gets you four of my handmade art cards. Don't be like him. Don't suffer with the guilt and it's subsequent agony. Donate today. Here's how:

Things were a lot faster in 1968

From the 1968 edition of the Home Health Encyclopedia:

Three to five minutes? Those guys were stallions!

All apologies

I apologize for having to go to moderated comments. I'll switch back soon when the assholes who insist on being insulting and contrary leave. Like all bullies, if we just ignore them they'll go away.

The internet strikes again

The idiot governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback, seen here trying to act all intelligent and shit, got his dictatorial hand slapped over the weekend, by a teenage girl no less.
Emma Sullivan, my new free speech hero, wrote a disparaging remark about him on a social network site and the governor acted like all petty tinpot dictators do, he tried to have the girl muzzled and punished. But when the outrage over the incident reached a boiling point, he backed down and tried to blame his staff for being over zealous. Hahahahahaha, yeah, right, It was his staff that's at fault. We all believe that.

The plutocracy always blames their underlings. The 99% has granted us freedom of speech, provided of course you don't actually use it. Incidents like this are why they want to censor the internet. They will stop at nothing to break our dissent and to keep their gilded privilege. But all their clumsy attempts at silencing us will ultimately fail because sooner of later, freedom and justice wins out.

And Gov. Brownback, you still blow a lot you dissent squelching asshole.

This shoud clear a few things up for some of you

Rest in peace

Ken Russell, the man who directed this masterpiece of cheesy horror, just passed away. He was 84.
Thanks for all your films Ken. Bye now.

Today in irony...

Republican house negro Herman Cain says that racial profiling of Muslims is nothing at all like racial profiling of blacks. And this is yet abother reason why this idiot will never ever be the Republican nominee, much less POTUS.

Two TV Reviews

Whites is a sly slice of life comedy set in a fine dining restaurant. It's executive chef is past his prime and doesn't much care anymore, his sous chef is a hard working neurotic, his new intern is a conniving little horse's ass, his front of house manager doesn't like him, his boss is a lush, and one of his wait staff is a barely functioning idiot. This comedy is a very effective modern Brit-com. It's not a knock you over with stupid jokes style American sit com, instead it takes it's time setting up jokes and it gives us fully realized characters instead of stereotypes or cartoon archetypes. Alas, they only made 6 episodes and then the BBC cancelled it. I highly recommend it.

I found Review with Myles Barlow on HuluPlus, it's also available on Hulu on your computer. This is a screamingly laugh out loud black comedy that will leave you in stitches with it's biting satire. The premise of the show is that critic Myles Barlow, written and played by Phil Lloyd, reviews things that other critics won't. Things like stealing, cults, sex, murder, divorce, having a dickhead friend, and much more. Lloyd's deadpan delivery and overly earnest acting are sublime to behold.

I have yet to watch an episode of this show that didn't make me laugh long and hard. Between the things Barlow goes through while reviewing and the things he says to sum up his reviews, there's nary room for a breath because you're usually laughing too hard to breathe. I can see how some would not find this show funny but to me, it's one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. This show and The Librarians are the gold standard of modern Australian comedy against which every other Aussie made show will be judged.

If you're a fan of great comedy, DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW.

And if you like this sort of post please donate to my campaign to get a new pair of glasses. I live on a very fixed income and I'm asking you my dear readers to help me buy a new pair of glasses. Please donate what you can and those who donate $25 or more will get a random selection of four of my handmade art cards.

Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode: Super Crispy Oven Fries/Potato Wedges.

I got this recipe out of a recent copy of Cooking Light magazine.
I started out with two huge baking potatoes. I then peeled them and sliced them into big wedges/fries.
Next I finely grated some Parmigiano-Reggiano (about 1/3 cup), which I then mixed in with about 2/3 cup of bread crumbs (the original recipe calls for panko crumbs to be used but I use what I have). In a bowl I mixed two eggs whites with two tablespoons of cold water. On another plate I put a bit of flour.
Then in this order I: rolled the wedges in flour, dipped them into egg white water mixture, then coated them with the cheese bread crumb mixture. And this is what they looked like before I baked them:
I then baked them in my preheated to 425F oven for about 35 to 40 minutes. Oven times vary and the potatoes are done when they are golden brown and you can easily insert a fork in them.
Salt and pepper them to taste and enjoy!

This batch, this is the second time I made them, was super tasty and very good with the turkey panini's I made. If you want, go crazy with this dish, add whatever spices and herbs you like, next time I'm adding cumin, paprika, garlic, and rosemary. This is a good side dish for most any meal or even as a main dish in a vegetarian meal. This recipe is a definite keeper.

Don't forget, I'm having a fund raiser here to raise money for a new pair of glasses with scratch resistant lenses. Please give what you can and those who give $25 or more will get a random selection of art cards that I made.

Here's a little something for your Friday

Thankful

This year I'm thankful for:
the NBA lockout,
for Roku,
for Netflix and HuluPlus,
for jellied cranberry,
for fresh baked banana bread,
for friends both near and far,
for the fact that my family is mostly far away from me,
for my local library,
for Isolda Dychauk,
for Marta Gastini,
for Assumpta Serna,
and for you, the people who read this blog.

Please remember that I'm trying to raise money to buy a new pair of glasses. If you can spare any money I'd appreciate it, $5, $10, $15, whatever. Most donations of $25 or more get a random selection of my art cards. Here's the how you can donate:

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Who wears the fangs in this family?

I love the public domain film channels on Roku. I just watched this film on one of them:
Oh lord, it was so so bad. Allow me to break it down for you, and yes there will be spoilers.

One dark night in the 1950's a young couple of 40 year old teenagers leave a party so they can make out and possibly have sex. Where do they go you ask? Why to a graveyard of course! The young man kisses the girl coyly and then he proposes. The girl accepts and they move to the backseat of the car. While in the backseat the young man kisses the girl and he slides his hand in the top of her blouse, above her breast. He's near second base and about to slip her the tongue when a scary man who just got out of a grave looks into the car window.

The grave guy, obviously aroused, because hey, who doesn't get a stiffy watching a guy grope a girl near her tit, tears the car door off and proceeds to kill the 'young' man. Then he grabs the girl, who looks like a skinny low rent version of Jenny Agutter, tosses her in an empty grave, not the one he came out of, and they make sweet sweet undead love.

The next day the cops investigate and they question the girl who got raped by the undead guy. One cop suspects a vampire, the other looks like he's Jonesing for a couple dozen doughnuts. Turns out the girl is pregnant but her doctor isn't happy about it because somehow he knows she's carrying the baby of a vampire, I guess they had tests for that sort of thing back in the early '50's. The doctor tells her to get an abortion, she refuses because she thinks the baby daddy is the dude she left the party with who got killed, I guess some of his sperm magically left his penis, went into his finger tip, and when he groped the area above her boob some dribbled down and made it's way inside her. Or not.

In literally the next scene after she finds out she's knocked up, she gives birth. Something is wrong with the baby though. He's an unholy shade of gray and he won't take milk. But when his mommy dearest cuts her finger a drop of blood falls on his little lips and he licks it up. She puts two and two together and she starts feeding him blood. Then we are treated to scenes of a woman holding the hand of a child who is filmed whilst standing in shadows. Then suddenly we're in the 1970's and the boy is now a man.

Yeah, I know, I couldn't believe it myself. Anyhoo...

The boy, played woodenly by William Smith, a character actor you've seen 1000 times in other films, he's made a career of playing bad guys, villains, and ne'er do wells, is attending a night class on myths and folklore that's taught by a shady looking professor. In voiceover we learn that the mother told the kid about how he was conceived and how his real daddy is a vampire. And then it turns out that vampire is the professor! He digs college campuses because he likes the young women and their groovy 1970's blood.

After a lecture about a legendary vampire, who is really the college professor who is teaching the class!, the professor has a one on one with an icy hot blond woman who is supposed to be British. Turns out she looks like the first wife the vampire had, who had gotten burned at the stake. The vampire doesn't suck her blood yet, he decides to wait.

Meanwhile, the son of the vampire goes to the apartment of a woman he met in class, who it turns out is roommates with the icy hot blond! At the apartment a party breaks out and token blacks decked out in '70's finery dance and leer suggestively at white people. The gal who brought the vampire's son home attempts to seduce him in front of the rest of the party attendees, who look on approvingly. After her seduction doesn't turn out too well she pawns off the icy hot blond on him when she comes home. When they leave the gal who wasn't the icy hot blond figures out that the professor is really the vampire!, so she sends out her mind message to him to come to her place. While the professor is on his way, his son is shagging the icy hot blond who looks like his dad's first wife. And he's doing it in his apartment which it turns out is just a flight of stairs up from the party!

Yeah, I know...anyhoo...

The vampire professor finally shows up, promises to turn the gal who called him into a vampire so they can get married and live through all eternity, and then he kills her because she didn't have what it took to keep him interested through all of eternity. After the son of the vampire gets done shagging the icy hot blond she falls asleep but she wakes up in time to go home, take, a shower, and discover her dead roommate.

Then, and this part just killed me, the next day the icy hot blond, the vampire's son, and some people from the class show up at the vampire's house for a seance. And they all act like nothing happened the night before! A dead roommate with no blood in her corpse didn't stop these people from having a good time.

Yeah, I KNOW...

At the seance the professor tries to get the spirit of his first wife to go into the body of the icy hot blond. But things go bad when the spirit of the woman he killed the night before goes into her and nearly takes her over. But the icy hot blond shakes her out of her body and then passes out. The vampire's son picks her up and takes her upstairs where I thought he was going to make sweet sweet undead love to her. But when he heard shots ring out down stairs he rushes in to find that his daddy went all vampire on the other party guests and killed them. Finally, they fight and finally in that fight the kid admits who he is. His daddy laughs like crazy, because all vampires do that shit when they find out paternity, and then the fight some more. The son ends up killing his dad but when he does his fangs come out and oh my gosh! he turns into a vampire like his daddy! And he slowly turns and goes up the stairs to feed on the icy hot blond.

This move was just awful. The two male leads, who both have done better work in other projects, were as charismatic as two by fours. At times I laughed out loud at the bad acting and dullard expressions and emotions some of the actors came up with. And apparently this film killed the career of the icy hot blond woman, an actress by the name of Lyn Peters, because this was her last film.

The sets were interchangeable, literally. The police examination room looked suspiciously like the hospital room which looked suspiciously like the vampire professor's office later in the film The print that I watched was awful. In the first third of the movie everything was differing shades of purple and obscured by fog, which made everything look even murkier. Then when the film flash forwarded to the 1970's everything was differing shades of beige.

All in all though, this was a fun movie. It was so bad and wooden that it was a pleasure to see how bad it could get. It's definitely the kind of movie that used to play at one in the morning in drive in movie theaters.

Pay the piper

As you may have noticed from the top left hand column, I'm actively soliciting donations to my PayPal account from you my dear blog readers. I don't do this lightly or because I like to, but the fact is I've run into some unexpected expenses lately, I need a new pair of glasses, and I live on a very very fixed income.

So if you have $5, 10, $15, $25, or whatever you can give, I'd appreciate it. Donations of $25 of more get you a selection of art cards that are all hand made by me. These are examples of some I've done and if you choose to make the minimum donation that qualifies you for these I'll send you out 4 random ones. I promise they'll all be different and they'll all be signed by me.



As I said, I hate doing this but if I'm ever going to get a new pair of specs, I need your help. So if you can give, please do. And I thank all of you who read me every day.

Thanks.

Professors, pigs, and pepper

Let's step back a minute and think about what happened last Friday on the UC Davis campus. A political appointee, from a Republican president no less, authorized an excessive use of force to clear protesting students off a piece of land they had paid to be on. Then after the students were brutalized by an out of control police thug, the bureaucrat, the Chancellor of the university, says that the spraying of students who were exercising their right to free speech has produced a 'chilling effect.'

Then Saturday night this same bureaucrat refused to come out of a building she was in because students surrounded it. Finally they coaxed her out and the students stared her down. She nervously claimed that she didn't fear the students but her eyes and body language said different. Now to cap it off the bureaucrat, who by the way makes nearly half a million dollars a year in her position, has turned a deaf ear to calls for her resignation. She says the university needs her to stay so she can initiate the healing process, which is like saying that a rapist needs to be allowed to finish raping so that the victim can get over being raped.

Let's be clear about one thing, the students who got sprayed broke no laws. Some have said that the video which shows how brutally they got sprayed didn't show everything, it didn't show how the students were shouting "Fuck the police!" and linking arms after they were told to clear out. No matter what Fox Noise, the powers that be, Newt 'Triple Divorce' Gingrich, or your local yokel policeman says, shouting "Fuck the police!" and linking arms is not against the law. Some claim that the students refused to obey the police and that's why they got pepper sprayed, but when you think about it, you don't have to obey the police. If you're not breaking the law, then you can't be disobeying a police request, because they can't ask you to stop doing something that's legal.

Let's be clear about another thing, that bureaucrat who was in charge and who finally took responsibility for this mess has got to go if she hasn't already. She doesn't have the best interests of the students or her university at heart, if she did she'd have worked to find a non violent way to end that situation. And this woman is a huge part of the problem today in that she's out to make that university a revenue stream for the higher education system of California, not a place of learning. She's a bean counter who wants to make money, not educate. Her salary is far too high as well, if she was serious about wanting to help her university heal and move forward, she'd give back two thirds of her salary so poor and working class kids could use that money for tuition.

The campus cops were out of line in all of this but they were 'led' by a corporate minded bureaucrat who had only the bottom line in her mind when she decided to have her students brutalized. When we let the 'free market' run our public colleges, this is the type of shit we can expect. Capitalism screws over those who have no capital and when it seeks to own public universities and public spaces, it screws over the people who use those institutions.

Last Friday was a shameful day for UC Davis, for free speech, and for dissent worldwide because other countries will use the example the cops here set and they'll run rough shod over demonstrators and protesters every chance they get.

That dirty pepper spraying bastard

I wish I could take credit for this

But alas, I can not.

Reviews you can use

I can see how a film about four bungling wanksta would be Jihadist Muslims might not be funny to some, but I found this black comedy to be one of the funniest films I've seen in recent memory. It skewers not only fundamentalist Muslims, it also jabs complacent Brits, doltish upper class members of parliament, and dopey police hostage negotiators who watch too many made in the USA cop movies.

I highly recommend this brilliant ensemble pitch black comedy.

On the other hand, I recommend everyone avoid this piece of shit:
Scarlet is the young tea bagger/libertarian/right winger/fascist masturbatory fantasy come to life in comic form. A hot young edgy chick with big tits and loads of sex appeal is wronged by the corrupt government so she leads the fight to over throw it. I'm sure when it's target audience, lonely disaffected males who vote Republican because they've fallen for the hype that Obama is a socialist who wants to take away their guns (but when I say guns, they hear 'penis and fuck white women'), reads this they do it with one hand while stroking their engorged Ron Paul's with the other.

The best thing I can say about this comic is that the art is pretty, sometimes.


I have mixed feelings about this series I finally saw:
I started out loving it. And I still do love the first series, the first six episodes. But by the end of the last six, the second series, I hated it. I hated it so bad I wanted every character on it to suffer long and painful deaths. I wanted to punch the guy in the wheel chair who kept spurning all the beautiful women who were throwing themselves at him. I wanted to punch the bearded idiot who was the boyfriend of the American woman in Edinburgh who started the book group. I wanted to waterboard the milquetoast literary agent who let everyone walk over him. And I really really REALLY wanted to push the sister of the woman who started the book group down an abandoned mineshaft.

It all started so well, a lonely American woman living in Scotland starts a book group as way to meet people. And she does meet and befriend a motley collection of misfits. But then in the last six episodes the show took itself too seriously and it stopped being quirky, funny, and winsome, and it became annoying and then even more annoying.

I recommend the first six episodes, but not the last six, in fact, avoid the like the plague if you can. This series is on Hulu and HuluPlus, but honestly, if you're going to Hulu, do yourself a favor and watch The Librarians instead.

Spot the error

One can't escape the stupid.

Brilliant

This cartoon was made in 1945 by a couple of Czechs. It's amazing. I watched it the other night on the Internet Archive channel on Roku. Trust me, it's worth 14 minutes of your time.

I'm flattered, no really, I am

It's nice to know that I'm getting under people's skins enough that they are creating profiles on Blogger just so they can leave insulting comments here on my blog. On the other hand, it's kind of sad to see that there are people who have such pathetic lives that they have nothing better to do than to create profiles on Blogger just so they can insult people.

Oh well. As usual, all insulting comments towards me and my readers will be deleted as soon I see them.

Look inside Ron Paul's bedroom

This is where the magic happens.

99% Y U SO Surprised?

• It baffles me that people are so shocked that the police have been so vicious in clearing up our pitiful little pockets of dissent. What shocks me is that they allowed it to go on for this long before they decided to act. And the other thing that shocks me is that people still believe the police are around to protect and to serve the public, they aren't. The police are here to protect and serve corporations and banks.
• Why is anyone surprised that a man who is in the top 0ne percent is attacking the people who are in the 99%? Frank Miller is at the top of the economic food chain, he's not mega or super rich, but he's well off. Why would he not mock, belittle, and attack those who aren't? I expect they'll deify him soon on Fox Noise.
• The prime minister of Greece calls for a popular vote on austerity and then before he gets to do it, he's sacked. The IMF, the World Bank, and the corporations who benefit from austerity measures will not allow the rabble like us to vote their plans for us.
  
• Young people on the dole in England are being forced to work for hugely profitable corporations for no pay, if they don't they'll be cut off from any assistance. Indentured servitude, it's back. Debtors prisons can't be far behind.
• The powers that be in Washington DC want to stop us from using the internet to spread our discontent and our videos about how they and the cops are fucking us. So they cry that internet piracy is out of control and it must be stopped, and of course in doing so all our forms of protest and linkage with one another are conveniently now outlawed under that anti piracy legislation.
  

Welcome to police state America.

Welcome to third world America.

Welcome to the dictatorship of corporate America.

Obama is not your friend. He's enabling all this shit.

You have only one option: STOP OBEYING AND START OCCUPYING.

They won't win unless we let them.

All kinds of stupid

You'd think that if I keep deleting your comments, after a while you'd stop leaving them. Most people would get the picture and stop, but not Old Fat Head Stu. He keeps leaving vaguely insulting comments and I keep deleting them as soon as I see them.

Score!

I got both of these books today for $5. They're full of beautiful photos, which will be shared in time.

Money, that's what I want

Currency of the future, created by me.

Keep talking fella

The more Herman Cain keeps talking, the less likely it is he'll be the Republican nominee. Not that he had much of a chance any way. In fact, Ass Juice Santorum has a better chance of being nominated than Herman Cain does.

Random shots

Two of best TV series I've ever seen

We discovered this Australian gem of a TV show on HuluPlus on our Roku:
It's about a library run by a panic attack prone semi racist/semi homophobic woman and her support staff. Frances O'Brien, played to perfection by my new comedy hero Robyn Butler, is one of those bosses who takes all the credit, none of the blame, and who has a tortuous relationship with almost everyone in her life, including her mother, her daughters (who we never see), her husband, her priest (she's a 'good Catholic'), and her support staff.
Under her 'guidance' the library, The Middleton Interactive Learning Centre, has it's ups and downs, mostly downs. Ex cons, old friends, dodgy patrons, kid vandals, a government minister who wants profits above all else, make life miserable for Frances and her crew.

Ms. Butler breathes so much humanity and life into what could be an otherwise awful character, her layered performance is a thing of beauty and such a pleasure to behold. She does the nearly impossible, she makes a totally unlikeable character loveable. This series was written by Ms. Butler and her husband Wayne Hope, who also plays her husband in the series. I can't say enough good things about this sweetly funny and knowing show. To me, it represents all the best of what TV has to offer, which is why you'll never ever see a show this perfect and good on American TV. Seriously, I'm besotted over Ms. Butler and her magnificent show.

You can see this show on Hulu on your computer and HuluPlus on Roku.

The other TV show I've fallen in love with lately is this one:
On the eve of her marriage to her long time boyfriend Karl, Donna decides that she'd rather be single, footloose, and fancy free like her two friends Karen and Louise. So she dumps Karl and moves in with her friends. Her friends turn out to be an angry sex addict alcoholic (Karen) and a bubbly but socially stunted awkward woman-child (Louise). Donna manipulates Karl and uses him as a crutch as she navigates single life.

This series shines an unflinching and uncomfortable light on these three female characters. Much of the humor of this show comes from the comedy of awkwardness, which was pioneered by Ricky Gervais and Steve Coogan, although this show takes it to new and even more uncomfortable heights. Pulling was written by and stars the lovely Sharon Horgan.

One of the many reasons why I love this show, and The Librarians as well, is that the writers of the shows wrote complex and not flattering parts for themselves, they end up, more often than not, the butt of the jokes and their characters come off looking like idiots most of the time. And that's not something you'd ever see in a mainstream US sitcom, Sarah Silverman here in the USA is the main exception I can think of.

The other thing that endears me to these shows is that they are limited. They only made 12 episodes and one hour long special of Pulling and 20 episodes of The Librarians. The producers of these shows knew when to quit and they both went out on top.

Pulling is available on Netflix streaming and on DVD.

I recommend them both highly.

Thirsty?

I'd have totally taken a swig of Bininger's Banana Juice back in the day.

Oy vey!

Bart Gould, the Jewish spy who scores with all the Shiksa chicks.

Insufferable assholes on the loose

• Ashton Kutcher- Really asshole? You're going to mourn the firing of a guy who enabled a child rapist? Then you're going to blame others for calling you on it? Hey, here's an idea Ashton, go make another shitty movie. Or go fuck your grandma Demi. And then go fuck yourself.
• Joe Paterno- You're going to have to get used to not being a football coach, is that what you said? Are the kids who got raped by your coach going to have to get used to the fact that you didn't go to the police when you heard that monster raped them in your showers at Penn State? Yeah, I guess they'll have to get used to it. And they'll get used to having therapy because you helped cover for their rapist you old piece of shit.
• Harold Camping- You poor doddering old fool you. You convinced people that your fairy tale god was coming back to earth and told them to quit their jobs so they could warn others by spreading your lies. Now you get to retire and you get off scot free. You should be forced to sell everything you own and to repay those idiots who followed your instructions. And then you should be beaten in the kidneys with a bag of oranges until you piss blood.
• Me- Holy shit, I need to get off my high fucking horse, stop complaining, and start being the change I want to see in the world. Oh wait, hang on, the change I want to see is a wholesale reduction in the gene pool, which means I want to thin our herd of stupid shits and dumb fucks, so there goes most of the population of the earth. Oh well, it's a good thing I keep a tight rein on my desire to eliminate the ninnies and the twits.

The Herman Cain Guide to Helping Sexy Ladies Find a 'Job'

...so I told her, "Baby, just let me put the tip in and if the rest slides in after, well that ain't my fault, 'cause after all I'm a full grown man if you catch my drift."

What? Oh...hello. I didn't see you all standing there. Uh, thanks for dropping by, let's go ahead and get started.

• Ask your sexy lady job applicant if she's good with her hands. If she says she is, then tell her to give you a hand job. If she don't slap you or leave in a huff screaming about her 'rights' then she's cool with you.
• Ask her if she has a green thumb and likes to plant things. If she says yes then tell her you can get her a job planting tulips. Get it? Planting two lips! If she ain't hired a lawyer by now, then you're almost home free homey.
• If she does make noises about getting an attorney, tell her you're a lawyer and offer to show her your briefs.
  
• Next you take her to a church and when she asks when you're taking her there, tell her you just wanted to show her the organ.
• Or you could just get her alone in your car or other small enclosed space and reach under dress or skirt, feel around for her coochie, and then pull her head to your crotch.
  

That's right y'all, I'm all about helping the sexy ladies. Hell y'all, I'd even help Princess Nancy Pelosi. I'd help her perfect her black snake moan if you catch what I'm saying.

Okay, that's all for now. Remember, this shit was off the record. If the Democrat media gets a hold of what I just said they'd crucify me.