Are you a real doctor, or just a SEX doctor?

Gothamist interviews Dr. Victoria Zdrok, Penthouse Pet of the Year 2004…

Let the idiot speak…

Who else would I be talking about but Bill O’Reilly? And what else would he be speaking about than the Terri Schiavo (pronounced “skee - AH - voe”) fiasco? According to Bill, the current situation is lose-lose because; a) Terri will pass away due to her husband’s selfish hatred for her parents who only want their angel to live out her “natural” life, b) her husband will be vilified as a killer by all “decent” people for the rest of his life, c) the parents lose because they lost their legal fight, d) judges lose because they appear heartless, e) politicians lose because they didn’t intervene, f) right-to-lifers lose because the extreme wing of that group is acting like crazy fanatics, trying to break police lines to bring glasses of water to Terri in her hospice. Win-win for Mr. O’Reilly would be the husband giving authority over Terri to the parents so she can live out her “natural” life WITH her feeding tube. (I didn’t realize that polyurethane percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tubes occur in nature.) He calls this the “rational” and “compassionate” solution, and he’s quite adept at maintaining it — even in the face of the odd challenge from a listener/caller that he bravely never allows to make a rebuttal. His only way to deal with a perspective that differs from his own is to vilify it. The husband to him is not a man who wants to end the suffering of the woman he loves, but a killer. The ACLU is not a group nobly fighting to keep the Government out of our Private lives, and maintain the separation of Church and State; they are a band of immoral terrorists hell-bent on destroying everything good and pure about America. Wow. What an asshole.

Let Terri Schiavo die with the dignity she has left

If irony exists it is this: The brain damage Terri Schiavo suffers from was caused by a 1990 heart attack that resulted from a chemical imbalance (potassium deficiency) due to her bulimia. Now her parents want to keep her alive artificially by forcing her to eat.

So didn’t she basically killed herself with her eating disorder fifteen (15) years ago? OK, that’s not entirely fair. People get sick for all kinds of reasons, but bulimia isn’t like cancer. You have to actively put yourself through it, which is often motivated by psychological factors. Let’s see what some of these factors are:

• Having uncaring, controlling, unaffectionate, intrusive, perfectionistic, overprotective, or anxious parents
• Having a sibling with an eating disorder
• Having a history of sexual abuse
• Having a mood disorder (e.g., depression), pesonality disorder, or substance abuse problem
• Participating in activites that focus on weight, appearance, and lean body mass (e.g., ballet, modeling, gymnastics, acting, singing, figure skating, running, diving)

Wow. This list cuts right to the chase with the first entry, doesn’t it? Her parents at least seem overprotective and intrusive based on their actions. Her husband on the other hand thinks she’s suffered enough and wants her to be at peace. Who’s actually playing God here? (There are plenty of right-to-lifers weighing in online about this, but I sure as hell ain’t going to link to them. You can google them yourself.) If you think Terri should be kept alive and/or there is still hope of her recovering, read on:

1. According to a 1996 CAT scan of her brain, “much of her cerebral cortex (responsible for such minor tasks as problem solving, emotion, complex thought, coordination of complex movement, initiation of voluntary movement, receiving tactile information from the body, processing of multisensory information, complex processing of visual information, detection of simple visual stimuli, language comprehension, complex processing of auditory information, detection of sound quality (loudness, tone), and speech production and articulation) is simply gone and has been replaced by cerebral spinal fluid.” more…
2. She’s been in this state for fifteen years!
3. Before her illness, her husband says she clearly told him she never wanted to “be kept alive by artificial means.”
4. She’s been in this state for fifteen years!
5. The malpractice suit award money — that some think Michael Schiavo is after — has been spent on her medical care.
6. She’s been in this state for FIFTEEN years!
7. Isn’t being with God a good thing to you idiots? Let her go to Him already!!!!!
8. And last, but not least: The name “Schiavo” is Italian and is pronounced “skee-AH-voe”

MAPP Mouse by Masamune Shiro

Masamune Shirow, the creator of Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, etc., has designed a limited edition mouse.

Q: Why does Microsoft suck?

A: There are too many reasons. Today’s is that their keynote speech at the 2005 Game Developers Conference had blowhard XBOX exec J Allard call Nolan Bushnell more culturally influential than Evel Knievel. What a dick.

As the keynote went on, however, Allard introduced some pretty interesting features that the XBOX 2 (codename “Xenon”) will have. The OS will contribute directly to the gameplay experience by providing a consistent UI to access things like online play and interaction with other payers, the gamer’s online identity and stats, soundtrack customization, and system event notifications (like errors). But then he and a bevy of talking heads from the industry went on and on about how the future of games is customization. No shit, Sherlock! In 2001 Grand Theft Auto 3 heralded that in a big way, but the slow creep of RPG-style plot choices and customizable characters has been going on for a lot longer. Gamers have always wanted that, and the odd brilliant developer has always known that. It’s the big guys that try sell the same old thing in a different package that have been holding that kind of innovation back…End of rant.

R.I.P. Lee Eun-joo

People all over the world mourned the suicide of popular 25-year-old South Korean actress Lee Eun-joo. Her family revealed to the press that anxiety about a nude scene she did in “The Scarlet Letter” could have lead her to take her own life. The same news source reported last week that almost 20 provinces recorded a daily suicide rate of 2.13 in the 23 days after her suicide — 2.5 times the average during the previous 53 days.

New movies

Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx makes his long-awaited mindless sci-fi action debut in STEALTH. It’s about freaking time!

For those in need of another Magnolia (I’m so over that movie!), Crash promises to melodramatically explore the angst of urban isolation later this year.

Year of the Yao follows — guess who — Yao Ming on his skyrocket to fame on and off the b-ball court. In 2002 the Chinese rookie’s height started a tsunami of speculation (is it not-PC to call him the Great Yellow Hope?), but his initial performance left a wake of jeers. It will inevitably feature his American translator, Colin Pine, (also a rookie) who was interviewed by Ira Glass on This American Life.

There will finally be a big-budget version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The TV version by the Brits, while closer to the novel’s origins, was pretty sad. Though it’s a Hollywood production and not a literal adaption, I hope the hilarious cricket references will remain intact. From IMDb.com:

The producers have stated that this film is not a literal translation of the books (just as the books were not a literal translation of the original radio show), but all of the new ideas and characters came from Douglas Adams himself. The hired writer simply came aboard to improve structure and make the screenplay more coherent.

The coup de grace of this update is that Philip K. Dick’s wickedly paranoid sci-fi novel, A Scanner Darkly, has been made into a film by Richard Linklater using the rotoscoping technique he used for Waking Life…but with just one art style. Guess Who stars as, Fred/Bob Arctor, the internal-turmoil-ridden hero, who is having trouble synthesizing reality. Shouldn’t some of these roles be going to Jake Gyllenhaal or Johnny Depp?

One more item: Watchmen has a 2006 release date and an official website via Paramount.

South Korea’s Old Boy by Park Chanwook looks pretty damn cool.

Masculine Feminine

Apple has a trailer for Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 Masculine Feminine, presumably in advance of a rerelease. Yay!

Holy moly!

I am twenty-freaking-nine!

Lindsay Lohan’s drinking problem

On top of her phone number being leaked on the internet via Paris Hilton’s hacked cellphone (she’s still not answering) and the fact that her jailbird dad is suing her mom for a cut of their daughter’s millions, Lindsay Lohan has a serious drinking problem.