Mercury (Thimerosal) in Vaccination Shots

Something that really bothers me about the media is the idea that it is considerably difficult to challenge what is stated by news agencies as fact. For example, I don't know if ISIS exists or is a story created by the media - when I read alternate-from-the-mainstream media sources such as Al Jazeera, they never use the term ISIS. Historically, I don't even know for sure if the media have ever had any true balance and thoroughly covered topics I'm interested in. The only way I would understand anything at all about modern geopolitics would be to go to the actual places and talk to people there, but that seems really dangerous and expensive. Something I do feel I have some control over and confidence from a fact based perspective is science. I can look up scientific articles, and find out if results of studies are actually matching up with  what science and health sources are saying.

That said, what the media have been all abuzz about lately are vaccinations - apparently 1 lone unvaccinated woman is to blame for the return of smallpox in North America after visiting Disneyland. I have read and heard a few different slants on the story, but something that comes up again and again is the mantra that vaccines are safe, and the anti-vaccination movement is to blame for children not getting vaccinated, after some people protesting that the vaccines may be inducing autism spectrum disorder. And although we are told scientists keep repeatedly saying vaccines have been found to be safe, no articles by the media give any details, just the subtext of "take our word for it, scientists know what is best for you and have already figured everything out for you, don't worry your pretty head about it." It is always these sorts of "trust us" generalized, unsubstatiated statements that act like a red flag for me. So I wanted to dig a little deeper and see what I can find out in real research.

I remember when the anti-vaccination movement was gaining traction in Canada, I was in University and the elderly lady who ran the health food store I frequented gave me a pamphlet about it. From what I remember most of it was fluff that could be dismissed, but something I always remembered reading on it was that they use mercury as a preservative in vaccines. As a biology major I was learning about the devastating effects of mercury on ocean life, particularly on how it bioaccumulates in fish, so fish higher up on the food chain like tuna hold the most mercury because of all the other fish they are eating all contain smaller amounts of mercury, and are held in the tuna's body until it gets to your dinner plate.

Something I didn't understand at the time until I started doing this research here, is that there are different types of mercury. The type that accumulates in organisms such as fish and humans and is very lethal is called methyl mercury, while the type that is used as a vaccine preservative is ethyl mercury.  Chemistry is certainly not my strong suit, but Wikipedia assures me the major difference is that ethyl mercury has not been found to bioaccumulate. That's good right? Well, I'm not sure, so I decided to start looking for articles on ethyl mercury and see what I could find out. Interestingly, there are not many studies to be found on ethyl mercury, but that being said here are some studies I was able to find relevant study information on.

The first of such studies I found takes place in Iraq, where Iraqi farmers have been given wheat seed preserved with ethyl mercury (again as a preservative). In 1961 starving Iraqi farmers ate seeds laced with ethyl mercury p-toluene sulphonanilide. The seeds were donated to Iraq for planting, but it was too late in the planting season, and farmers were used to making bread out of their leftover seed, and were not fully aware of the consequences of eating the mercury laced seeds, because it is odourless and tasteless. Although it may not bioaccumulate, there were profound health effects on people who ate the seeds, and many required emergency treatment. Most notable problems patients had were disfunction of the kidneys, gastro-intestinal tract, skin, heart, muscles. The most constant problem was nervous system problems including disturbance of speech, cerebellar ataxia (loss of muscle movement and co-ordination) and spasticity (Jalili and Abbasi, 1961). It's important to keep in mind though that they were ingesting much more mercury than the amounts found in vaccines.

Next I found a study on pheasants published in 1972, and they found that concentrations of 12.5 parts of mercury per million was sufficient to kill adult ring-necked pheasants within 2-3 months of feeding (Spann et al., 1972). At smaller doses, 4.2 parts of mercury per million reduced egg production 50-80% and increased embryo mortality. Again, pheasants are much smaller than people, but I think we can say that ethyl mercury is not completely harmless.

An important review of serveral studies by Dorea found studies that showed potential synergies with
exposure to multiple toxic compounds. These toxic compounds could be introduced through combination of breast-feeding, food, or other sources in the local environment, combined with ethyl mercury from vaccinations may influence neurodevelopmental outcomes (Dorea, 2012).  He noted that ethyl mercury has a short half-life and so is unlikely to be measured in blood, and also pointed out the disturbing lack of literature in studies on the specific exposure to small amounts of ethylmercury derived from TCVs(vaccines). When studies with young children are properly adjusted for exposure to mercury in vaccines, subtle neurodevelopmental effects can be demonstrated. Something important to think about is not just the effect of ethyl mercury alone, but combined in the body while being exposed to other toxic chemicals such as lead and cadmium, which in our pro-pollution society can be quite common, especially in poor urban areas and industrial production centres. While one toxin may be seemingly harmless, combined with another can be much more lethal.

Another study looked in particular for links to autism. This is because many signs and symptoms of mercury exposure correspond to autism (McGinnis, 2001). The study also indicated gut disease with inflammation is common in autistic children, and is in nearly 90% of regressed autistic children. Exposure to inorganic mercurial compounds have been shown to cause injuries in animals to intestinal mucosa and the colon, as well as deposits of antibody in the intestine. It would definitely be interesting to look for relationships between gut disorders and autism, gut disorders and vaccination, as well as the prevalence of gut disorders in modern times compared to previous decades.

It is in this study I also learned about Thimerosal, the name for the specific mercury based compound used in vaccines. So I decided to do another round of searching for articles on this term, and see if I could find some more relevant articles.

Thimerosal - What are Known Effects?

In 2012 there was some backlash from the scientific community in response to the movement against vaccinations. The paper mentions that a treaty by the United Nations Environment Programme could have banned thimerosal as part of the effort to restrict human and environmental exposure to mercury (King et. al., 2012). However, the World Health Organization's Strategic Advisory Group, backed by some of the scientific community recommended thimerosal be exempt to avoid disruption to the global vaccine supply. There was some argument that it would be unjust to allow it to be used, since wealthier nations have phased it out. The counter argument is that "the real threat of injustice comes from considering the removal of this currently necessary and irreplaceable compound from the global vaccine supply, and the avoidable increases in morbidity and mortality that would inevitably result from disruptions to vaccination programs targeting already marginalized populations in LMICs(Lower-Middle Income Countries). " Basically a moral argument that it is for their own good as well as the greater good, and no mention about how to deal with the potential problems that will come from the mercury exposure down the line.

The statement by the scientific community the last paper refers to the commentary article in the very same publication by Orenstein et. al., on Global Vaccination Recommendations and Thimerosal (2012). They say "Overwhelmingly, the evidence collected over the past 15 years has failed to yield any evidence of significant harm, including serious neurodevelopmental disorders, from use of thimerosal in vaccines. ..The Institute of Medicine, and others have concluded that the evidence favors rejection of a link between thimerosal and autism. Careful studies of the risk of other serious neurodevelopmental disorders have failed to support a causal link with thimerosal. " They go on to explain that the main problem with removing the vaccine is costs, increasing manufacturing costs for vaccines from 200%-500%, reduce manufacturing capacity and increase transportation and storage space costs.

The next study I looked at examined 196 infants and their mothers who attended ambulatory prenatal clinics in the 1st and 2nd trimester in Krakow (Mrozek-Budzyn et. al., 2012). Vaccination history and child development were measured in 1 year intervals over 3 years. They reported only observing adverse effects in the 12th and 24th months of life, with no effect found in the 36th month. They do admit that in populations with higher co-exposure to other neurotoxic elements even a subtle negative effect can indicate greater risk of developmental delays, an important point I mentioned in a previous study, and something I'll return to later. The plausibility of the harmful effect of vaccination on child development was a sufficient argument to remove thimerosal from all infant vaccines in the USA and EU years ago (Canada also ended up banning thimerosal). The results of the study showed that TCVs should be replaced by Thimerosal-free formulas in countries that can afford it economically.

Some interesting studies were done in Japan and have found some substantial results on rats. They found prenatal exposure to thimerosal caused a significant increase in serotonin and dopamine content in the rat`s brains as adults (Ida-Eto et. al., 2013). This indicates lasting neurochemical impairments to the serotonergic and dopaminergic systems of the brain.

The results of another study on rats found premature rats receiving 65.6, 98.4 and 131.2 ug/kg (micrograms per kilogram) of thimerosal displayed abnormal functioning of spatial learning and memory (Chen et. al., 2013). They concluded that their study was consistent with previous studies demonstrating that exposure to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines in susceptible populations, such as premature infants, may be associated with neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.

Back in the United States, another study evaluated children aged 7-10 and their mothers, and found no significant associations between thimerosal exposure from vaccines early in life and typical measures like intelligence, verbal memory, executive functioning, speech and language, fine motor and behavior regulation (Barile et. al, 2011). However, they did find a significant association between exposure to thimerosal and the presence of motor tics in boys. They admitted the measurement of the tics was limited, but still significant.  A major problem of the study that wasn't mentioned however, was that the study was attempted for 3648 families, of which 1985 refused or were unable to be contacted. At the end 1047 were retained for the final sample. We don`t know why so many refused, but it is always possible that children with the most health or mental problems were refused by the parents, because they had enough to deal with as it was without participating in a scientific study. As a general rule of thumb in statistics, if less than 50% of the original sample do not participate in the study, then the results are considered unreliable, because factors related to the study may be influencing who is and is not interested in participating in the study.

Finally, one paper reported recent studies suggest that children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD)  have abnormal sulfation chemistry, limited thiol availability, and decreased glutathione reserve capacity (Kern et. al., 2013). Limited thiol availability suggests vulnerability to Thimerosal . The associated behavioural and developmental outcomes found in autism are plausible as mercury toxicity, since the brain is a target organ for Thimerosal's toxic effects as well as a target organ for the bioaccumulation of Mercury. They concluded that Thimerosal should be removed from all vaccines.

We can see from this not at all random selection of studies there is still a lot of unclarity about the exact health implications of vaccinations including thimerosal. These studies represent a large bulk of the research done on effects of thimerosal and ethyl mercury, and so for starters it must be said that more research needs to be done in this area. We also need to ask the question, why are there not more studies? It has been known for a very long time the detrimental effects of mercury on human health, so it seems strange that mercury would be used without the thorough research to determine its efficacy and health outcomes.

Related to this are the cries from the "scientific community", whoever this may be comprised of, stating that it is safe, while themselves not stating any research backing this up. There seems to be a purposefulness behind the lack of hard data, again leading to the claims that it is for the greater good, without addressing the problem, that is, how do we reconcile doing these vaccinations knowing the health risks that will come down the line. Whose problem is it? Are there considerations that need to be taken outside the simple need to vaccinate everyone?

That said, the fact is that vaccines do contain less than 1 microgram of thimerosal. All of the studies with doses administered to test animals were much larger amounts, and those animals have considerably less mass than humans. A study using comparable amounts, or at least tests with 1 microgram administered. Studies also need to be done to better understand what synergies are happening between ethyl mercury and other toxic compounds.

Finally, it needs to be pointed out that now, in first world countries at least, there is reason to believe that vaccinations should indeed be safe from health concerns, because thimerosal was removed from vaccines in the United States, Canada, the European Union and possibly other countries. Thimerasol is not required as a preservative if vaccines are stored in single dose vials. However, every opportunity that scientists, doctors, and health experts have to express this is lost - they never talk about this point. Why? Because they would be admitting that previous vaccine doses containing mercury did pose health concerns, and despite this they are still being used in 3rd world countries - because new vaccines that do not contain mercury are much more expensive. Single dose vials require more packaging, shipping and storage. Economic reasons seems to be the only reason now why we use mercury containing vaccines at all, and because our modern world holds economic concerns is our primary concern, the cheaper vaccines will continue being used for the foreseeable future.

References

Barile, J.P., Kuperminc, G.P., Weintraub, E.S., Mink, J.W. and Thompson, W.W. 2012. Thimerosal exposure in early life and neuropsychological outcomes 7-10 years later. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 37(1): 106-118.

Chen, Y., Wang, J., Zhang, J., Li, S., He, L. Shao, D., Du, H. 2013. Effect of thimerosal on the neurodevelopment of premature rats. World Journal of Pediatrics, 9(4): 356-360.

Dorea, Jose G. 2012. Neurotoxic metal coexposures and neurodevelopment. Environmental Health Perspectives, 120(6): A226.

Ida-Eto, M., Oyabu, A., Ohkawara, T., Tashiro, Y., Narita, N. and Narita, M. 2013. Prenatal exposure to organomercury, thimerosal, persistently impairs the serotonergic and dopaminergic systems in the rat brain: Implications for association with developmental disorders. Brain & Development 35 (2013) 261-264.

Jalili, M.A. and Abbasi, A.H. 1961. Poisoning by ethyl mercury toluene suphonanilide. British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 18(4): 303-308.

Kern, J.K., Haley, B.E., Geier, D.A., Sykes, L.K., King, P.G. and Geier, M.R. 2013. Thimerosal exposure and the role of sulfation chemistry and thiol availability in autism. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2013(10): 3771-3800.

King, K., Paterson, M. and S.K. Green. 2012. Global justice and the proposed ban on thimerosal-containing vaccines. Pediatrics, 2013;131: 154-156.

McGinnis, Woody R. 2001. Mercury and autistic gut disease. Environmental Health Perspectives, 109(7): A303-A304.

Mrozek-Budzyn, D., Majewska, R., Kieltyka, A. and Augustyniak, M. 2011. Neonatal exposure to thimerosal from vaccines and child development in the first 3 years of life. Neurotoxicology and Teratology, 34(2012): 592-597.

Orenstein, W. A., Paulson, J. A., Brady, M. T., Cooper, L. Z. and Seib, K. 2012. Global vaccination recommendations and thimerosal. Pediatrics, 2013;131: 149-151.

Spann, J.W., Heath, R.G., Kreitzer, J.F. and Locke, L.N. 1972. Ethyl mercury p-toluene sulfonanilide: lethal and repreoductive effects on pheasants. Science, 175(4019): 328-331.

Mary Poppins is Screwed

Imagine it's the year 1910. You are a middle aged white man, a financier rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams, married with two beautiful children. Only, there's a problem: you haven't the time or desire to raise these lecherous offspring. And the last nanny just up and quit for no reason! What is the solution? The sensible course of action is to use your freemason connections and perform a ritual to summon a powerful wind demon who can look after your kids for you!

That is the premise of the epic Disney tale, Mary Poppins.

I didn't read the books, but based on the film, you could argue that Poppins is some sort of unknown mystical creature, or a witch, but let's face it: there is something more sinister to her. She is incredibly vain, unyieldingly demanding, and all too interested in shaping the minds of neglected children. Although the movie is positive and upbeat, awash in everything Disney, I just ask you to consider the possibility that the story is somewhat different than how it was presented, along with unanswered questions. How did this family become so fabulously wealthy? Was it by honest means? Did they have help? Is it possibly to be involved with the highest level of banking and financing without being influenced by powerful organizations such as Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Gnomes of Zurich?

The father/financier, listed in the credits as "Mr. Banks" (what a clever name), never indicates having any connection with Poppins, and doesn't talk to his family about anything related to it, besides the obvious discomfort that comes with trying to hire a nanny. But why would he? He hangs out at the bank and Royal Exchange all day with stuffy old men, I wouldn't put it past him to put on some robes and invoke some dark rituals involving pentacles, silver daggers, silly dancing, that sort of thing. Probably a lot more fun than hanging out with his family, too.

If you are willing to accept, even ever so remotely, this possibility, then please continue reading. I proudly present to you:

Mary Poppins: Demon of the Wind, Harvester of Lost Souls

Mary Poppins flies in on an umbrella and blows all of the competing nannies,  who have been waiting in line patiently all day, away to God only knows where using wind magic, then goes in to the house and beguiles the dad in to the nanny position they have been advertising. The undertext implies she was responding to the ad which was made up by them and quickly torn up and discarded by their father. But what better way to win over their trust than convince them she is on their side? She is no lesser servant of evil, and immediately sees the weakness of the one who summoned her, their father, immediately planning her revenge on those who would dare to demand her services.

The action begins as she shows off her wicked power to the children, and that they too can invoke the harmless seeming magic.

They get on with their day and head down to the park where they meet up with Poppins' friend, a homeless drug addict. Dick Van Dyke steals the show, dancing, singing, cracking jokes; the total package. He is always ridiculously happy about nothing, anything and everything, and he really really likes to dance. He participates gleefully in Poppins' induced hallucinations, right at home with his cartoon animals and animated carnival machines. It is unclear with his drug of choice is, since crack and meth haven't been invented yet, but it could be any mix of laudanum, alcohol or some form of ephedrine. Here he is trying to walk in a straight line.

They pop into the chalk drawing and do all sorts of wacky shit, including driving some horses on the merry go round and having them pop off and ride around. The interesting part here is where Poppins animates merry go round horses. Everyone else's horse has their eyes open, but Mary's horse has its eyes closed, as if sleeping (see picture at the beginning of the article). If anyone has any theories as to what this signifies, I'd be interested in hearing your ideas.

They sing and dance some more with some cartoons, and eventually the magic journey/hallucination ends and they head home. The kids are too excited to sleep, and Mary denies that anything "magical" ever happened. The kids get upset but she easily sings them to sleep with her siren song.

The next day a fucking dog comes to tell Mary her uncle has laughed himself up into his high ceiling loft. As you can expect, hilarity ensues. When they get home Mr. Banks is able to clear the cobwebs of her charming away and attempts to get Poppins under control, but is no match for her dark magicks. She resumes uncoiling her corrupting essence over the children by telling them about a bag lady that feeds pigeons. They fall asleep again, their souls tainted a shade darker.

The next day they head to the Bank, with Mister...Banks to make a deposit, but her influence is still felt - the children rebel against their weak excuse for a father and his masonic pals. The evil power surround them like a dirty, foul blanket to such an extent that they induce panic and confusion in the crowds of patrons nearby, causing everyone to withdraw their savings. The masons sense something is amiss and dispatch policemen to capture the children, but they slip away, eventually finding an obliterated Dick Van Dyke who has been getting high inhaling fumes while cleaning chimneys all day.

He stumbles them to safety and then decides to clean the chimney in their house, which they, reunited with Mary, who rewards their bad behaviour by having them all fly up to the roof, wander around, climb oily smoke stairs, sing and dance with a bunch of dirty men. Finally, the neighbour, an eccentric ex-military man who has clued in to Poppins' shenanigans, shoots fireworks at them, likely blessed by the Bishop of Canterbury.

Meanwhile, Mr. Banks is in deep shit with his buddies over the chaos and confusion caused by his children. He knows he needs to do something, and so tries one final time to fire Mary.

Still no match for her, she has turned his mind to limp, misshapen putty. He heads to the Royal Exchange to meet his fate. I know they have been talking about the bank the entire movie, but you can tell it is the Royal Exchange, not the bank, by comparing these photos.

Symbolically they break his hat and his umbrella. As you probably recall, Mary Poppins also has an umbrella that she uses to fly with. Clearly there is some connection between the Poppins entity and this stuffy, secrative, old organization. They fire Banks and he finally snaps.

This is where the directors' cut ends. Of course it is a Disney movie, so they somehow tack a happy ending on this, for some reason they just forget about it and everyone is happy and still rich. Mary leaves, fully broken from the weak enchantment summoning her in the first place, knowing his children will grow up to be vile minions of darkness.

Happy Days is Screwed: Season 2 Episode 13

In this series, I attempt to demonstrate that the show Happy Days follows the concept of the fantasy world of the 1950's United States, and is full of pro-US ideology and rife with heavy handed statements about morality. Happy days was made from Season 1 starting in 1974. Oh yeah, and so you don't miss anything, the clips are played at 1/3rd speed, and so are screwed, as in the technique used by DJ Screw to acquire a unique style and feel. He was called DJ Screw (RIP 2000) because he used a screw to modify the speed on his turntable. I love his hip hop mixes, and I love things slowed down. What follows is the summary of:

SEASON 2 EPISODE 13: Fonzie's Getting Married

In this episode the Fonz makes a big announcement; he, the teenage Fonz (they are never clear on his age but he is in the same grade as Potsie and Richie and Ralph, who are in high school) is getting married. The gang has a huddle with him in his office:

Yeah, that's right, the Fonz thinks that men should only marry virgins. This becomes a point of contention when, uh-oh, turns out Howard (AKA "Chips" Cunningham) saw her strip at a hardware convention. If this doesn't sound like something a family man like Howard would do, you don't know Howard very well. To find out for sure if it is her, he will recognize her laugh:

Is Howard actually joking, or just explaining what he thinks about bums? Well now Howard's worst fears have been confirmed.  He has to tell Richie:

Eventually they tell Fonzie, who naturally doesn't believe them. They go to the "strippers", 1950's style, to scope out the action:

We never find out what happened to them when he caught up to her. Howard sizes up The Lone Stripper and runs for it:

Fonz drinks in the reality of the situation, man's up and gets over it. Richie has other things on his mind:

And Howard is also busy:

At least Marion knows how to have a good time.

Are Guns N Roses still relevant?

Sometimes, I feel like the last person alive under 40 who likes Guns N Roses. Maybe it's just the nostalgia, good memories hanging out in my friends basement with Use Your Illusions on repeat. Or eleven years old getting on the full school bus awkwardly looking for an available seat while Axl Rose screamingly inquires: Do you know where you are?

Yes Axl, yes I do know where I am.  I'm in the jungle, I'm a small child, I'm going to die.

I grew up in a redneck-y tourist trap of a town, where my peers had aspirations of making good money at local Lumber Yard so they can afford to drive around big trucks and do massive amounts of cocaine. A noble calling, but my stick-in-the-ass type religious upbringing told me that was all kinds of wrong - combined with my dislike of the smallness of the area's mentality (I learned later there are many many places that are exactly the same - this is the world we live in). I left that place and never wanted to go back, but I never stopped liking Guns N Roses. I've been revisting them, as I do periodically, but with so much video footage compiled, I could see lots of different performances of their songs live, and interviews at different points of their career - mostly with Slash, I think Axl pulled permission on a lot of his personal footage, or never allowed it in the first place.

Chinese Democracy has some songs I do quite enjoy, but obviously lacks the visceral feel of the riffs in Appetite and the Use Your Illusions. Obviously the earlier life stuff is great, and much more enjoyable compared to more recent shows (2013), which is too processed and has no viscera, but doesn't sound bad at all. Since the band broke up, and Chinese Democracy took a very long time indeed, most people have forgotten about Guns N Roses.  Even my friend who was a huge fan has not even given Chinese Democracy a test listen. Without Slash, the band is nothing to him. While they left most of their fanbase heartbroken, they are still interesting to check out, and the songs I used to like still sound great to me.

I've been paying special attention, first, to Axl's dance moves - he sings about being super tough through the stories of his life and being on the streets, all the while wearing more ambiguously tough clothing (black wifebeater, leather pants, bandana). With all these signs, symbols, mannerisms of a badass, he still somehow manages to happily bop about the stage, wiggling like the bait bucket at a fishing derby, chirping in a friendly manner to the audience about something that happened to him recently, or someone he dislikes, and sometimes just general words of encouragement and camaraderie - like any good host. His on stage presence doesn't quite match up, but that was a good thing.  He was "your" (the audience's) buddy, at least for the time he was up there. Sure he trash talked people on stage, but he hated on "that guy" who doesn't get down with the likes of us. Then he would wiggle some more and kick a cowboy boot heel at you to let you know he was having a good time.

Something else remarkable, and worth you and I knowing: apparently the scene in Los Angeles was so competitive for bands playing in the area, that the clubs would not hire you - instead you had to raise enough money to buy the entire roll of tickets for your show ($500) and sell as many as you could so you could recoup the money. They had to bust their asses promoting themselves enough to sell out the tickets, by flyering, postering, and probably a whole lot of selling to people they knew.  This is on top of writing songs and playing really tightly, consistently well. Schmoozing and self promoting meant their 24/7 party lifestyle was work of a sort, at least in that critical period before they made it big.  They needed to play those shows to prove what they could do, and their show got big enough with the LA music scene crowd that when the record execs put feet on the ground to find out what was going to be the next thing, they were pretty much already in.

Another key factor to their huge appeal stated over and over was their authenticity. They sang about partying as hard as a human could party, but at the same time completely different from another famous partier Hunter S. Thompson - Never anywhere do interviewers ever verbally make a connection there, but their lifestyle influenced their creative and commercial work in some similar ways. Axl's lyrics on Appetite sounded like they could have been written on a napkin, hiding out at a diner in the early morning to make sure whatever fallout from the night before had blown over. There was, and is, always an introspective aspect to it I like, while not particularly glorifying drugs (but still singing about them because they were such a big part of their lives), and simultaneously celebrating while also hating on women. It has an emotional charge, is all very believable and sound very much like their lives.  This, it has been said, is what lead to their broad appeal and gave them a more fantastic sound than other bands of the time, where they are spilling their heart and guts out to you, not only on the album, but every single time they performed. They are a rags-to-riches rockstar American story tale.

Guns N Roses has a lot in common with Michael Jackson.  Their super fast, super huge rise to fame and massive audiences, with a huge marketing campaign and promotional war machine. While they had a don't ask don't tell policy regarding drugs, and I'm sure they dressed themselves, the promoters controlled all the other aspects of promoting, tours, stage setups and keeping the hype up. The way they were run between the two sets of artists worked pretty much the same way.

Michael Jackson drew on a lot of the style and bad boy imagery, having slash-style guitar solos, taking bits of the scene and aesthetic following Guns N Roses Hollywood strip cultural scene when they got signed. MJ took it in his own direction, incorporating it with other elements he liked as well as the dancing and performance elements, instead taking it to the level of sterile art form. His look and visual style are captivating, but also belong in the "History" museum he created for himself, even as you were hearing it for the first time. Guns n Roses differed in the sense that they seemed to express themselves in a singular sense where they were distinct individuals who seemed to know who they are, while Michael seemed to flow quickly from one fad to the next, dipping in to so many spheres of influence, the constant sense of change seemed to be the only singular defining factor throughout his career.

Still, by the time the Use Your Illusions albums were created, conflict as well as differences emerging between what band members wanted had begun to disrupt their sound. Without the unifying street influence defining themselves and their music, Axl wrote about more abstract concepts about his life that had been caused by fame, wealth and unimaginable influence. The sound was good, but very different, and I think a certain amount of change is reasonable for any band to stay relevant past a few years. However, when you think about what the large part of their fanbase was, it isn't hard to imagine them being disenchanted with something that forced them to think complicated thoughts. Use Your Illusions still had enough talent put in to it by really hard working band members, but according to the history of the time, the differences had fractured the band enough to be irrepairable. Although fans wouldn't learn until years later what had been going on, insiders say you can hear the sounds of the band breaking up in those albums.  There are a lot of melodic, sad, or at least introspective songs, again what they were actually going through. They had put everything in to those albums, and they were not able to follow it up. I think even if they had tried to make another appetite, nobody would have liked it.  Unless they had all forsaken their vast wealth and gone back to living on the streets in L.A. There's no substitute for authenticity.

It's also difficult to measure by today's yardstick, considering how little longevity modern artists have in terms of popularity. Guns N Roses can still draw large crowds (at least internationally) by name recognition alone, but will the next big rock band have such an fascinating rise and blowout? It is the stuff of myths and legends.

Dario Argento vs Hitchcock

You can't read anything about Dario Argento without someone spouting the rhetoric that he is the "Italian Hitchcock".  While both of these directors made an impressive number of films and broke new ground in filming techniques and visual aesthetic, if you really sit down and compare their careers side by side, you'll see it isn't good comparison or even an adequate comparison.  I was prompted to look deeper in to Argento's career when I decided to watch Dracula 3D, an unbearable budgeted badly made scary movie.  Previous to that I had seen Suspiria and Inferno, definitely 2 of his best films.  Bigger than those old films with strong contrasting colors and delicate, luxurious imagery that fills your eyes to the brim with texture and color.  D3D had some of that, but lacked more noticably in aspects where Argento had a previously bad track record in like plot, character development, and the ability to act.

As the movie went on, it became very apparent that Suspiria and Inferno were not an indication of where he had taken his career.  Generally great directors are only given larger and larger budget as even their very name draws ticket sales.  But this movie, Dracula's green screened castle was flat and brightly lit and monster transformations would look scarier if they were a hand puppet.  No money to even afford an aesthetic, his hallmark and what made him famous.  If you sum up his career in a scatter plot based on production budget and box office earnings, you get shapes like this:

The blue line is the quickly cresting and dipping budgets, while the slouching red L is the money his movies took in over the years.  Not at all flattering.  Compare that to hitchcock, who made movie studios ungodly amounts of cash, with the ridiculously peaking Psycho making inflation adjusted earnings of $476,516,129, that's almost half a billion dollars.

The graph for Hitchcock STARTS with one extra zero on the first number of the Y-axis. 

Next take a look at scores based on Rotten Tomatoes scoring.  Again, pay attention to the trend lines that give voice to each man's career.  In both sets of graphs Argento is red & blue and Hitchcock greys.

At the Whim of Movie Execs: The Rise and Fall in Horror Movies

The graph below shows the number of horror movies made in the US as a proportion of all movies made worldwide.  The horror movies (blue line) may not be completely accurate because it was just my physical count off of Wikipedia, but it is still useful to measure yearly changes.  After the great surge in all movies made worldwide in 1981-1982, the trend is a slow, steady increase.  Horror movies stay most consistently around the 30 movie mark, even before the 1980's.  The relative proportions show the peak in Horror movies made in the US in 1987 and the much more enormous movie explosion in 2008 - 2009.  Interestingly, the latter happened right during the subprime mortgage crisis, which you can visibly see by the dip in movies made worldwide.  This also shows the rise in the torture porn subgenre of horror movies, initiated by Saw (2004) but kicking off a massive surge in horror movie making.  This surge is the 5-6 times as large as the horror movie average!  Even Scream (1996), the largest grossing slasher film of all time, did not kick off any kind of significant increase in movie production in this genre.  I would guess when one movie is successful enough, it draws attention and they try to pounce on the trend to make more money, but this is not always the case.  So why did Saw cause a renaissance in horror movie making in this instance, but Scream did not? 

Shortly thereafter it looks like this money making could be sustained ( as the market was saturated), audiences tired and moved on.  In 2013 actually the lowest number of horror movies were made in the US since 1979.  Most of those movies are really terrible anyway, but I'd like to think that through sheer numbers the chances of an unintentionally good movie was increased.  In 2008-09 I liked Cloverfield, Pontypool and Drag Me to Hell, and that's about it.

The other spike in 1987 represents the peak and subsequent exhaustion in the popularity of slasher movies.  Another important landmark and also resulting in audience boredom as the movies get worse and worse.  Perhaps Scream was seen as an exception to the slasher genre since they could not return to making more pointless slasher movies, but a one-time (read: 4 movies and counting) self reflective critique and rejuvination of slashers was acceptable, but could not be capitalized on outside of that series.  I wonder if someone will eventually come out with a similar satirical look at torture porn similar to what Scream did with slashers.

Looking at the LOG function of the data looks pretty interesting as well.  For total movies made, it shows a steady rate that movies are generally being made at since 1981-1982.  The log total horror movies made, however, is too complex for me to really comment on.  The spikes in 1987, 2008, 2009 are still obvious, but all I can say at this point is that the rate that the US makes horror movies fluctuates pretty wildly, and I have no idea why.  Obviously budgetary concerns in funding are based on a combination of "good" scripts combined with the greed of the production companies for where they think they can make money.

So let's take a look at some top grossing horror films in the past few years.  We are trying to figure out why the dramatic drop in horror movies in 2013.  That year was actually pretty good for horror movies, with the Conjuring made a ridiculous $318 million dollars.  Contrast this with Scream ($173 million) and Saw ($103 million).  So what prompted the cut in horror movie production?  It doesn't seem immediately obvious by looking at 2012 numbers.  Prometheus made over $400 million dollars, but had a huge production cost ($130 million) and was part of the Alien series, possibly the most profitable of Sci-Fi series'.  Also while it is technically horror, you could argue that the fact that it was horror was not a factor in the draw of audience. 

 

Pair that with the 2nd most profitable horror movie of 2012 (Paranormal activity 4, $142 million) and you could see that may not add up to being useful.  I actually don't fully know the film cycle, and someone in the industry could correct me, but I imagine there is a 1 or 2 year window generally in movie production.  If we look further back to 2011 things start to fit together a bit better.  Paranormal Activity 3 grossed $105 million, but if you discount it due to the fact it is a series, the next movie Insidious (positively reviewed and considered a success, I haven't seen it) grossed $54 million, a huge step down even from 1990's standards.  If movies on average have a 2 year cycle from green light to theatre release, then the numbers seem to fit.

What the fuck is Obama doing?

Ever since the State of the Union address I have seen a lot of hate for Obama.  From the US it is hitting him from every direction in the States, but I am under the impression no one outside the US seems to care much.  If I were to sum up every article I read on the topic, it's that people are disappointed that there has been no real substantial change which I guess people think was his main promise and not just a campaign slogan or catch phrase.  You, the American that voted for him, thought he actually would do something besides maintain the status quo, but that is not something he is able to do, because he is not calling the shots, really.  People were so severely disappointed in Obama's health plan thing, it almost seems like it was purposely done badly to put people off of the idea of affordable healthcare.  Pharmaceutical companies are in the business of making as much money as possible, and they have a powerful lobby in government.  What the fuck is with the lobby system?  It seems to me like it doesn't matter who is in presidency because they are just supposed to do the dirty work of telling people they are fucked and there is nothing anybody can do whups.

However, in a true effort to understand Obama's position and arguments I have to go to the heart of Democrat sentiment: Jon Stuart's Daily show.  I will watch ALL of this weeks (January 27-30 2014) episodes and see what I can learn.  Ok, wish me luck.

Hi ok I'm back, The Daily Show was not very helpful, unfortunately, but should not be a surprise, they just said a bunch of nice things about Obama and that everyone else is just upset because he tried to work with congress and got shut down and now he is evoking Executive Order to get things done because he just don't give a fuck anymore.  When interviewed, Nancy Pelosi could not explain why they could not get a proper health care website set up.

I guess it sums up what I already said.  They just have no explanation, and just nothing, nothing to say about it.  Nobody has answers and a plan to deal with problems effectively, isn't that the main problem with government?