1 in 88. You get what you pay for.

Let's play a little thought experiment. Let's say that you want to do something about all the beer cans being thrown out of cars that are littering the highways. One way you might do something about it is to pay people a nickle to pick up beer cans and bring them in to be recycled.
  We do this for awhile and we want to know if this plan is working, so we start keeping count of how many beer cans get brought in. At the end of the year, 10,000 beer cans have been picked up. Wow. That's a lot of beer cans on the highway. We have a big problem.
  We should put more money into it.
  So next year, to more fully deal with this littering problem, we're going to start paying people a dime. This should solve the problem. At the end of the year we find that instead of 10,000 beer cans turned in, we have 20,000. Something is causing the amount of discarded beer cans to grow. We are facing a problem that is growing at an exponential rate!
  We need to put more money into it!
  Yet, at the end of another year, after we find that 40,000 beer cans have been turned in, we have no explanation for this baffling rise.

  The simple answer that if you increase the financial incentive for people to find things, more of those things are likely to be found does not seem to have occurred to most of the writers covering the latest CDC report that the autism rate has hit 1 in 88.
  In the last few years insurance mandates have been passed by an increasing number of states. These mandates require insurance companies to pony up sometimes tens of thousands of dollars year after year for treatments. In the past, many parents might not have been able to afford the princely sums a Marcus Center might charge for their behavioral "therapies." Now it all falls on a third party player if the parents gets a diagnosis for their child that falls under the umbrella of state approved "disorders" eligible for mandatory insurance payout. Both the parent and, in many cases, the institutions themselves, when "testing" for autism, have a financial interest in the result being a positive finding. "Diagnosed" early enough, a toddler could, over the next two decades, potentially bring a million dollars or more to an institution that also provides "therapy."
  Ami Klin, "Chief of Autism and Related Disorders" of the Marcus Center (and chief proponent of eye-tracking twaddle) seemed genuinely taken aback when I asked him at an AAC meeting a couple months back about such conflicts in interest at his own institution, as if the endless stream of intellectual mediocrities that have been paraded through the AAC as respected experts were somehow to be beyond moral reproach. No need to worry about such things at the Marcus Center, he assured me, as well as the rest of the audience, when I asked about what the wall of separation was between the diagnostic and theraputic sides of the Marcus Center.. After all, the testing was done by "scientists."
  Well, that's a relief.

  Or, maybe, Ami Klin just doesn't understand human behavior.


  Or, then again, maybe he does.

 
 

Mojo Monday

Mojo Monday

Mojo Monday

Mojo Monday

Dead Sketch: Here's the Deal

  The new Sketchworks show opens this Friday and I have a whopping one sketch in it. Usually I end up submitting five or six new pieces and about an equal number of older ones and I get, on average, about two or three in. First or even second time rejections can eventually make it into a show. Some things, like robots and dying children, are timeless. Other things have a much shorter shelf life.. If they don't go the first time, they're dead.
  This one here? It's dead.:

HERE'S THE DEAL
by Walt Guthrie

(Michael Vick and his press agent stand before a table at which are seated three committee members)

COMMITTEE MEMBER #1
Really, I don't see how we can do this.

MICHAEL VICK
What are you talking about? I did my time! Man has a right to make a living.

COMMITTEE MEMBER #2
Mr. Vick. You strangled, electrocuted and tortured dogs to death, I don't know. Before we could consider you, we'd... (shrugs and throws up his hands)

MICHAEL VICK
(aggressively)
WHAT?

COMMITTEE MEMBER #2
We're going to have to hear that you you have truly changed, that you have learned that dog fighting is deeply wrong, and that you no longer embrace that lifestyle. And it can't just be a script that a press agent gives you to read.

(Michael Vick's press agent hands him a piece of paper)

MICHAEL VICK
(reading)
I have truly changed. I have learned that dog fighting is deeply wrong. I no longer embrace that lifestyle.
(agent points out something on the page)
And this is not a script that my press agent gave me to read.

COMMITTEE MEMBER #1
Wow. That was just...wow

COMMITTEE MEMBER #2
Okay. Come on up here and get your Nike endorsement deal.

(Michael Vick comes up and snatches the contract out of his hand with a sense of entitlement)

COMMITTEE MEMBER #1
Okay, next up is (looking at sheet of paper) Casey Anthony.

(Casey Anthony walks in and goes right up to the table)

COMMITTEE MEMBER #1
Ms. Anthony--

(Casey Anthony's mother, Cindy, bursts into the room and wails at Casey)

CINDY ANTHONY
WHERE'S CAYLEE?

CASEY ANTHONY
(visibly annoyed)
Mom! I'm trying to get a shoe deal here! Jeez! (rolls eyes)

CINDY ANTHONY
WHERE'S CAAAYLEE?!

CASEY ANTHONY
Mom! What do you want me to do? I'm in a committee meeting. If I could help you I would! But I can't.

CINDY ANTHONY
(deflating)
I love you.

CASEY ANTHONY
Whatever. 

COMMITTEE MEMBER #1
Ms. Anthony. You are a very well known celebrity but as a woman widely believed to have murdered her child, well, an endorsement contract might carry some downside. What do you intend to do in the coming year, to show that you a person we'd want to be associated with?  

CASEY ANTHONY
Well, I want to get pregnant again and I know what you're thinking but don't worry because I intend to totally devote the next seven or eight months of my life to raising that kid.

COMMITTEE MEMBER #2
Well, that's very commendable, Casey. But we'll going to have to hear more from you than just that.

(Michael Vick hands Casey Anthony his script)

CASEY ANTHONY
(reading script)
I have truly changed. I have learned that dog fighting is deeply wrong. I no longer embrace that lifestyle. And this is not a script that my press agent gave me to read.

COMMITTEE MEMBER #1
Wow. That was just...wow.

COMMITTEE MEMBER #2
Okay, come on up here and get your Nike endorsement deal.

(Casey takes the contract and begins to dance like she's at a party)

COMMITTEE MEMBER #1
All right. Next up is (looking at sheet of paper) Dick Cheney.

(Scowling Dick Cheney enters room with Secret service Agent)

COMMITTEE MEMBER #2
Mr. Vice-President,You have--

DICK CHENEY
Go fuck yourself! I don't explain anything to anyone.  Got that?

(Casey Anthony hands script to Dick Cheney who speed reads it)

DICK CHENEY
Fuck this shit. I'm not changing one iota. Fuck those dogs. If I want torture a dog either for national security or just because I want to bust a nut over it, that's what's going to happen. So you can suck it, Nike. You can suck it like I had that limp noodle George W suck it 24-7.

COMMITTEE MEMBER #1
Wow. Just....wow.

COMMITTEE MEMBER #2
Okay. Come up here and get your Nike endorsement deal.

DICK CHENEY
Yeah, yeah. (to secret service agent) Go get it.

(Secret service agent goes up and rips it out of Committee Member #2's hands)

DICK CHENEY
And Get one for Scooter too.

(Secret service agent swipes some more contracts off the committee's desk and comes back to where Cheney is standing)

(Cindy comes up to Casey)

CINDY ANTHONY
Now that you're done, dear. WHERE'S CAYLEE?

CASEY ANTHONY
Mom! You're embarrassing me!

CINDY ANTHONY
                               WHERE'S CAYLEE?                            

(Dick Cheney, annoyed, takes gun from his secret service agent and walks up to  Cindy Anthony and shoots her in the face)

CASEY ANTHONY
THANK you.

(Everyone stares at Cindy Anthony's dead body for a beat)

CASEY ANTHONY
You want to go party?

(Dick Cheney shrugs non-committally)

MICHAEL VICK
Let's go drown something.

CASEY ANTHONY
I'm in.

DICK CHENEY
We can swing by my compound, I got a whole set-up in my basement.

(Lights dim as they begin to walk together off stage)

COMMITTEE MEMBER #2
Okay, next up (looking at paper)...the guy in charge of beating the foreign kids who make our shoes.

Mojo Monday

Mojo Monday

"Dear God No!" sneak preview this Friday

  They grow up so fast.
  Seems like just yesterday I was having blood squibs taped to me for my two second big screen debut in the faux-70s Bigfoot vs. biker exploitation flick, "Dear God No!" Now the film is premiering (or sneak peeking or whatever) at the Plaza in Atlanta this Friday.

 

Faux movie poster for the would-be  Japanese release of Dear God No!

Mojo Monday

Mojo Monday

Mojo Monday

Mojo Monday

  I do a lot of work with Mojoworld Generator, a 3D planet generator and renderer that uses fractal geometry to create worlds with literally infinite detail. On Mondays I'll be posting some of the more interesting pics that I've rendered over the years.

Bernie Marcus Stars In Some Marcus Center PR Crap

The Marcus Autism Center has a bunch of fluffy PR videos on YouTube. Let's take a look at one.

  Here Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus takes time out from his busy schedule whining and bitching about federal regulations and unions (workers voted against unionizing the Home Depot because they knew that unions would prevent parking lot cart pushers from becoming the company vice president) to talk about the Marcus Autism Center which is, of course, named after his wallet.
  Bernie mentions two things that raise eyebrows. One, his question about how do you know when someone who is nonverbal is suffering or in pain. His answer: SPECIALISTS!
  Hmmm. Specialized in what exactly? Because the specialists you get at the Marcus Center are specialized in behaviorism, which is, by its own definition, a field completely unconcerned about what goes on inside the mind. I can use modified Skinnerian techniques to train my dog to fetch but it's not going to be that much of an aid in helping me figure out why Fluffy's feeling sad.
  Second, Bernie says that Marcus has, over the course of its existence helped over 40,000 kids.("And Growing!") Wow. So if even a tiny percentage of those kids who are not adults are willing to pay back Marcus for the great treatment they've received then the Marcus Center should be able to brings hundreds of adultautistics to testify on the center's behalf.
  Except, these adults are unknown to anyone at Marcus I've asked on the subject including Don Mueller.

  Let this miniscule or completely nonexistent set be the real testimonial for the Marcus Autism Center.

  By the way, low level Marcus employees. You need a union.
 

Galas and Kenna Valentina

From a photoshoot a couple months back:

Anyone? Mueller?...Mueller?

Before this gets any more stale, here's my write-up of my March meeting with the Marcus Center's Don Mueller:

When robots or computer animated humans get too close to looking real without completely nailing the illusion they project something called the Uncanny Valley.
  Don Mueller is the only human being that I have ever met who projects his own Uncanny Valley. I had never really noticed this effect before until I sat down with him in his office on the morning of March 16th, but once there it was impossible not to see it. There's just some little bit of humanity that people normally radiate that Mueller simply doesn't. Normally I might not mention this, but since Mueller is the Executive Director of the Marcus Center, whose whole reason for being is to, essentially, modify the behaviors of autistic children so that they can pass for normal humanity, his deficiency in this regard stands out with a particularly ironic clarity.

  The meeting had been suggested by Mueller at the end of the previous month's Atlanta Autism Consortium meeting after he objected to my questioning of a speaker. I had speculated in an earlier post that I thought the purpose of this might be to lay the groundwork for my eventual banishment from future AAC and other Marcus Center related events. That's not how it turned out and now, three months later, I'm still somewhat unsure as to the nature of Mueller's original intent.
  Attending this meeting, in addition to Mueller and myself, were Gregory Abowd, who runs the AAC meetings and my associate, Linda Styles.
  It had been my plan to actually record the conversation and then produce a transcript. But when Linda brought out a mini-cassette player and placed it on the table, Mueller made clear that he would not consent to a taping. Such would not be, he argued, conducive to building an atmosphere of trust between us. "At this point, do you really think there's any danger of that happening, Don?" is a question I thought of asking. But didn't. In the very spirit of building an edifice of trust.
  Still, recording undermines trust?
  Hmm.
  Since I began meeting with these behaviorists two years back, I have been been amazed at how the mediocrities (at best) that comprise the core of the behaviorist community continually project their own inadequacies onto others (and how frequently they do so in the name of science): Amy Wetherby claiming repetition is a danger sign in the course of delivering a painfully repetitive (by her own definition of the word) power point presentation; an ABA proponent who waxes on about the horrors of lack of eye contact who then refuses to look me in the eye even for a moment while I am asking him direct questions about his methodology; the parade of experts who claim that the people they study lack empathy or a "theory of mind" while they themselves clearly show themselves incapable of applying either to someone outside the narrowest parameters of their own comfort zones.
  How many events have I intended at the Marcus Center in which a main theme was surveillance? Children, sometimes aware they are being filmed, and sometimes obviously not; their every gesture and utterance scrutinized, and judged by a series of juries they are unaware even exist. I remember all the many times that Mueller had spoken up that recording these children without their knowledge or consent would be inconducive to building trust with that child.
  Oh wait. I got my numbers mixed up. It wasn't "many" times.
  It was actually zero.
  As always, there is one set of etiquette and ethical boundaries for those who would make the rules and another for those whom they would have live under them.
  Whatever.
  Mueller let me know that he considered my questioning of the speakers at the AAC meetings to be inappropriate. Abowd, sitting across from me, said that he did not consider this the case at all. Mueller then pointed out that there were those who had come previously to the meetings who no longer were attending because of me. I countered that I had a member of my smaller group who would no longer be attending the meetings because he could no longer stomach the barely-hidden derision of the so-called "experts." There are casualties on both sides in this war.
  I related to Mueller how, as a member of Bob Morris's group I had spent two years discussing with Bob the nature of the behaviorist. Bob believed that the behaviorists that he engaged were misguided and that, with the proper argument, they could be reasoned with. I came to believe that the behaviorists were not scientists at all. They were pseudo-scientists, cast from the same mold as astrologers and creationists. While Bob was alive, I had, out of respect for him, stayed, for the most part, out of this arena. But I had also watched the eye-rolling derision with which he was been treated by this community of "scientists." Respect, for the behaviorist, is a one way street.
  I had started coming to the AAC for one purpose. To demonstrate conclusively to my people that the behaviorists and their allies are frauds. And I believe that I have done so. Real scientists and researchers simply do not behave in the shameful and cowardly manner that the behaviorists at the AAC and other events I have attended have behaved. Who does behave this way? Con men. 
 If these really were men and women of science, how easy would it have been for them to meet my simple inquiries? After two years, how many of them have been able to answer the simplest question of all: what empirical evidence exists to classify everyone on the autistic spectrum as disordered? They base their science on this assertion.
  Mueller's organization gets rich off of it.
    Mueller asked what I'd like to see from the Marcus Center.  I did not give my standard line that I wished to see everyone who worked there live a life of regret and eventually end up cursing my name on their deathbed. Such statements, I know, are not conducive to building an edifice of trust.
  Instead, I simply stated that I wished to see it go out of business. Even this pared down statement seemed to catch him off guard for some reason. I don't know why since he had already heard me say, at that very meeting, and several other gatherings, I'm sure, that I considered behaviorists to be engaged in scientific fraud. Why would I, or anyone else, wish to see people whom they believed were engaged in fraud continue on in their fraudulent activity?
  I don't know. Perhaps Mueller simply lacks a theory of mind.
   At the end of the discussion, which ended up running about 70 minutes, it was time to sum up. I told Mueller that I intended to continue at the AAC meetings exactly as I have been. If he wanted any change, then he would have to ban me.
  And with that, Mueller coldly thanked me for coming.

Walt Guthrie

Anthony Weiner and the Charles Woods Dilemma Part One

  

What did Charles Woods get for Christmas?

  A pair of glasses and a staple gun.

  That is probably the first political joke I ever heard. Not so much a political joke, really, as a joke about a political figure. There were lots of jokes about Charles Woods on my elementary school playground while I was going to school in Alabama in the '60s. I don't recall hearing any jokes around that time about Wallace who was then governor and leading the state and the region down a truly monstrous path.

  Charles Woods did not lead anyone down a monstrous path. He was simply a monster. In the crude, simplistic, purely physical way that monsters exist to sheltered children.

  Woods had been shot down in World War II and as a result suffered extreme burns on his face and hands. With virtually no real facial features at all, he resembled Dr. Phibes from the Vincent Price movies. Amazingly, he decided to enter Alabama politics and had some success at it.

  I was a political cartoonist for the Birmingham Post-Herald for twenty years and during that time I would occasionally consider the Woods dilemma.

  An editorial cartoonist uses caricature to exaggerate the features of political figures and others into representations of their true selves, at least as seen by the cartoonist. It's an easy tool to abuse. This is, of course, highly unfair. .But politics itself is unfair.

  Still, there is a line

  It's one thing to render, through caricature, a fat senator into a bloated hog or over-emphasize the unattractive features of a homely governor. (I took particular pleasure in drawing the loathesome one-time Attorney General Charlie Graddick, who, over the years devolved in my cartoons into a doughy fish-lipped Mr. Potato head). It 's quite another to apply these same techniques to the deformed features of a burn victim!

  Even though Woods remained in the political arena through my years at the paper, I somehow never found myself in the position of having to actually caricature him so I don't know what I would have done. There were, however, some pretty butt- ugly characters who did land in my sights and I did not hold back from exploiting their physical deficiencies in the least.

  So, what, other than degree, is the difference between exploiting the natural everyday ugliness of a politician and doing the same with a Charles Woods?

  I'll attempt an answer in the next post. An answer that, I think, bears on the media reaction to the Anthony Weiner affair. 

 

Giving That Rapture Guy His Due

  So the world didn't blow up. Or get raptured. Or whatever the fuck was supposed to happen this weekend that didn't.
  There's a lot of people out there now heartily mocking Harold Camping's apocalyptic prediction and the dumb people who took it seriously. And they should.
  But, you know, Camping's stupid religion isn't stranger or more "out there" than any of the other competing faiths. At least Camping put his set of beliefs up for an actual empirical test. And now we can see it's Grade A bullshit.
  Many of the people who are now laughing at his believers owe their owe allegiances to religious institutions pushing claims that are equally or more absurd. But almost all of these institutions, even the ones with their own specific brand of End Timeism, have long ago learned the secret to keeping their lucrative fraud rolling: Don't be specific!
  Keep it all vague and murky.
  God is coming. The Promises will be fulfilled.
  "But no one can know the hour or the day." Blah blah blah.
  Just don't lose your faith. You'll be rewarded...eventually. Whatever, dude.
  It's a con that can run forever. And probably will.
  That's how it's generally done. But Camping, somehow, never got the memo. He --as opposed to,say, the Catholic Church or your local Baptist preacher--  actually did give his followers the oppurtunity to empirically test the mettle of his claims.

  How unchristian of him.

I Do What I Have To Do For "What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar?"

Matt Bartholomew practices his game face    (photos by Tom Robertson)

  Had the premier of my film at Atlanta's Plaza Theatre last night.

  By film I mean the one minute and forty second short that I originally wrote and shot for Sketchworks last month. And by premier I mean: "Hey Luke, you want to show my piece before the monthly Splatter Cinema film?" "Yeah, okay."

  So, yeah. Going on before the 1984 horror turkey "Ghoulies" isn't exactly opening at Cannes but nevertheless it does technically make me eligible for an Academy Award nomination.

The cast and crew of What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar?

  The piece, What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar?, was originally written a couple years back for Sketchworks but never made it into a show. It's a simple joke: What would you do for a Klondike Bar?" "I'd kill my wife for a Klondike Bar." "Well, here you go." Gory domestic crime follows.

  I've found that the more murder I put into a comedic script, the harder it is to get it accepted for stage. When I put on my own show last year, Crimes Against Nature, which consisted primarily of the scripts Sketchworks thought were too extreme to include in their main shows, I ended with Klondike and was pretty happy with the crowd response. So when I started shooting short films for Sketchworks last year, I put this script near the top of my list.

I demonstrate to Matt the proper way to stab Sasha Friedman (left) to death.

The important thing was that, given the deadline, this be a quick and cheap production. No using colored gels and constructing a Goblin-esque soundtrack in an attempt to mimic a Dario Argento feel. Just get in and out. We shot just a little over two hours and most of that was just rehearsal. Once the fake blood started covering actors, reshooting would be extremely difficult.

Matt after another application from Shane Morton's bloodhose

  It went more or less according to plan. Sasha Friedman, who starred in Crimes Against Nature along with George Faughnan, reprised her role as the wife and Sketchworks-regular Matt Bartholomew replaced Faughnan, who was unavailable, as the man driven to madness and murder by the temptation of a momentary pleasure. Atlanta horror jack-of-all-trades Shane Morton provided his bloodhose expertise.

  So a few days of furious editing and then a just-in-time delivery of the product for the show and...

  Denied.

 "It's just not right for the show."  Too much blood.

Fuck!

Too much blood my ass!

  

  So anyway... "Hey Luke, you want to show my piece before the monthly Splatter Cinema film?"

   "Yeah, okay."

  In this business, it's all about who you know.

Life In Atlanta

I love this town.