In case you’re wondering what I got, it’s this:

You’re Medical Malpractice!
Thanks to you, people not only see healthcare interactions as a chance to get better, they also see them as a potential lottery ticket. Unfortunately, everyone bears the cost of that lottery so that the payoffs are coming from the entire group of people who could get sick which is, at last check, uh, everyone. Sure, people should be disincentivized from doing harm as a doctor (I think there’s an oath about that), but since they just get insurance to pay for you, it doesn’t really seem to make anyone better. But they do order a lot more tests, just in case. Which helps keep the price of the whole operation (get it?) that much higher. But who doesn’t like playing the lottery?
Take the Consequences of Capitalism Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

You can also find this on Facebook, unlike the last 13 quizzes I’ve created. Though they’ll be up on FB too.

There’s awesome, and then there’s awesome squared.

Welcome to the latter.

Das Pop: The Game from Big Active on Vimeo.

Came across a Reddit user today by the name of AParanoidEmu. Today he was calling the internet Hive Mind’s attention to the Great Emu War, an Australian military campaign designed to eradicate 20,000 brave Emus who refused to leave their homeland.

If you should happen to participate in the Reddit community, I urge you to make contact. He tirelessly champions the cause of emus on Reddit, and we here at TMR salute him. Mep, to you, sir.

Last night I frequented a local theater production of Slaughterhouse Five featuring the surprisingly versatile Lily Vonnegut.

I’m don’t fancy myself as much of a theater reviewer, but the performance deeply affected me, as I relived some of the more poignant moments of such a formative work. Suffice to say that both A.J. Diamond and Don Sclossman effortlessly captured the perplexed, unstuck in time, Billy Pilgrim. Schlossman, who is a dead ringer for the love child of Darrell Hammond and Glenn Beck, is clearly destined to take the roll of Beck in a future Christopher Guest mockumentary.

This was not an easy piece to take to stage, given the non-linear plot line, forcing the players to quickly shift between a 60s barbershop quartet and German soldiers torturing a group of POWs. Every actor had two to three parts to play at minimum. It was especially pleasing to watch Gretchen Koerner prattle on about an engagement gift as Valencia, and subsequently return to the stage as a barking, German staff sergeant. Even the Tralfamadorians (Vonnegut’s plunger-shaped aliens) were given a surprising amount of depth.

It had been several years since I had read though the book, and in the reproduction, I was struck at how keen and incredibly relevant is Vonnegut’s critique of American hegemony.

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves…. It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.”

For all the now en vogue criticisms of banking cartels and financial terrorists, Vonnegut had our society’s fate absolutely pegged 40 years ago. He recognized that despite the shifts in party politics, and despite pop-culture and counter-culture movements, America has been on an unwavering march towards an Oligarchic State. The seeds were planted during the Industrial Revolution, and we have not veered from that path since.

I was especially pleased to see those critical philosophical excerpts featured in the theater piece. It seemed, at times, that the chic Los Angeles audience attending had absolutely no idea what to do with Vonnegut’s prescient progressive soliloquies. All the more reason that they were necessary to include. This culture needs a heaping dose of Vonnegut horse-sense, more than ever.

On a personal note, it meant a great deal to have met Lily, who found the Meppers via our Vonnegut video. I only wish that Storey could have been there, as well. The evening was a welcome reminder that your work can affect people that you least expect, if you’re willing to give of your inner self.

This Close or This Far from Peter Lee on Vimeo.

I’m not going to say that boxing films are at the top of my list in general, but I think this one has something to say.

While some of us are tired of the same old formulaic nonsense, one must admit that this is a very impressive feat for a writing staff made up entirely of manatees.

A spartan yet somewhat cryptic work, Switch slams the viewer with distopian imagery reminiscent of the Matrix or George Lucas’s THX 1138. In it, a man (seemingly born into servitude) must choose from the limited paths presented to him as he blindly races down an array of infinite corridors. Some of these lead to wealth, some to passion, and others to simply more yet unopened doors. We are left with the suggestion that the entire race is little more than a mad dash towards death.

This piece, already receiving high recognition on the foreign film festival circuit,
falls well within the French Existentialist tradition.

Heavy stuff for a weekend internet foray, yes. But what better time than the wee hours of a Saturday morning to question the worth of ones existence, no?

Zittrain describes a system based not on economics and self-interest, but on random kindnesses, free favors, and civility. What he is describing is no less than the evolution of mankind into HuMan 2.0.

Incidentally, for the Meppers take on Wikipedia vandalism, check out Mep Report #26.

Link via Philosophy Monkey

This Japanese site will take any portrait-like picture that you upload and automatically convert it into a blinking, nodding, quasi-zombie animated template ready to model various animal heads, wigs, and facial hair.

It’s easily good for 45 minutes of time wasting. Fun, fun.

Link via BuzzFeed.

Link via /film

This routine, filmed a couple weeks ago at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theater, will give you a good sense of Maron’s plodding, dark, self-loathing, intellectual style. He seems equally depressed as the Patron Saint Bill Hicks would be having to face a media world as over commercialized and sold out as ours is.

One of my new favorite toys is this online tool that allows you to indulge your wildest internet egocentricities. The tool seeks out your each and every Google-worthy act and unceremoniously dumps it into one of many pre-determined category bins, forever branding the nature of your service to the human race.

It’s so uncompromising and final… This pleases me.

And now, the Personas breakdown of the entire Mep staff. Apologies to Greg, who has a somewhat more common name than the rest of us (hence the prominent “illegal” heading in his breakdown).

Today, the entire film can be found on Hulu. So ready your supply of Doctor Pepper and Mountain Dew, jump into a nearby Teamspeak channel, and enjoy:

For those of you who haven’t read Matt Taibbi’s scathing Rolling Stone commentary on Goldman Sachs, entitled, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” it’s well worth a look. In it, he refers to the banking behemoth as a “Great Vampire Squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”

Blaming Goldman for both engineering and profiting off of every major bubble since the great depression, Taibbi describes the elaborate political network of Goldman Sachs alums who represent some of the most powerful people on the planet.

As the flak began rolling in from financial commentators and Goldman itself, the chief rebuttal to Taibbi’s thesis seemed to be,

“Well, Goldman is just smarter than everyone else, they were ahead of the curve, and so they took the greatest advantage.”

This justification sums up how frightening the world we live in really is. According to the free marketeers, then, it is the duty of our best and brightest to exploit those that are less talented and have less foresight.

There is no other way to read that comment. Goldman apparently believes that, as the leading financial conglomerate in the world, it has some sort of manifest destiny to rape, pillage, and plunder. And God Help anyone who tries to get in their way or question their underhanded tactics and motives.

From my point of view, I don’t see a great deal of intelligence in the actions of Goldman Sachs. Craftiness, sure. Manipulation, absolutely. But Goldman Sachs has never created anything. They have never contributed anything to this world. They do not possess anything resembling real genius. They have proudly installed themselves as an over-nourished barnacle on the ship of the world economy. That will be their legacy. Not a legacy of innovation, or contribution, or enlightenment, just one of suction.

And thanks to Matt Taibbi, many more folks are aware of just how much Goldman Sacks sucks.

The Emu Peck of the Week is a new weekly feature on TMR that will point you to something on “teh intrawebs” that especially stands out, and/or pleases the Giant Flying Beaver That Rules the Universe.

In the first ever installment of the Emu POTW, I’d like to bring your attention to an amazing little website called FUH2.

FUH2 presents a special tribute to the GM’s defunct guzzler, Hummer H2. FUH2 is a mecca where hundreds of devoted followers take pictures of themselves flipping off these vehicles wherever they come upon them. There are FUH2 tribute videos, song parodies, and even a haiku:

Hulking black Hummer
Purchased in rank atonement
small peckered driver

And honestly, who of you hasn’t had the urge to flip off the drivers of one of these ego-enhancement abominations? Good thing for us that the internet always thinks ahead.