The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: JorgeMacD on August 04, 2006, 08:19:57 pm
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Don't scroll down unless you want to see the sad story of the girl who was born without a face due to a gruesome, sad, sad fetal mutation
but still
http://www.somethingawful.com
For the lazy:
http://i.somethingawful.com//sasbi/2006/08/elpintogrande/04-fibbot.gif
This is the first time I've seen Achewood parodied/even referenced on a big-name website.
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I sometimes enjoy the humor at SA, but that parody seems kinda ... pointless.
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I had never heard of this 'big-name' website before and now I am sorry that I have. THANKS A LOT MR. JORGE.
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You've...never heard of SomethingAwful?
O_o
Anyways, it's not parody for the sake of parodizing Achewood, they're using Achewood's humor to set up the rest of the sad, sad article.
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You've...never heard of SomethingAwful?
Nope, so I guess they shouldn't be too stuck-up about themsleves, huh?
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Why do they refer to it as an "awesome" parody?
It's so-so.
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Why do they refer to it as an "awesome" parody?
It's so-so.
Maybe he is being polite to the guy who made it?
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Yeah, SA is definitely something else.
I have seen specials on television about that little girl. Born without a face is not the appropriate term here. I am also shocked that over $3 million has been spent by US taxpayers for the unholy twists of modern medicine that are necessary to keep this little girl alive. I remember poignantly her nurse describing what her life with the little girl is like. That's right, there's a registered nurse who is paid to sit with the little girl every night, all night, to make sure that her trach tube doesn't get knocked out or whatever so that she can continue to breathe. I wonder how much a nurse gets per 8 or 12 hour shift, for every single night that this little girl has slept. The nurse said that the little girl can cry, and does cry, but because of her trach tube and her facial deformities nobody can ever hear her cry. I thought that was awful for her to cry and yet nobody can hear her. I know that she has a family who loves her, but how far is love going to take her? What kind of life is she going to have? I hope that she will have a happy life because I wish that for everyone, but it just kills me to think about what her life is like, and what it is going to be like in the future.
Imagine all the horrible, painful surgeries that this child has endured. Her parents keep saying that it's only fair for God to decide who lives and who dies. I think that the medical community is playing God by all these ridiculous measures to keep her alive.
I do think that it's horribly cruel for the SA author to keep calling her a monster. She is a human being, like the rest of us. However, if it were my child I would not force her to go through all that. I would have just let God take her when he chose rather than spend millions of other people's dollars to keep cheating death.
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I do think that it's horribly cruel for the SA author to keep calling her a monster. She is a human being, like the rest of us. However, if it were my child I would not force her to go through all that. I would have just let God take her when he chose rather than spend millions of other people's dollars to keep cheating death.
Yeah this is basically why I never visit hospitals or use any sort of modern medicine
But seriously it's not like Something Awful is the pinnacle of kindness and understanding
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Yeah this is basically why I never visit hospitals or use any sort of modern medicine
But seriously it's not like Something Awful is the pinnacle of kindness and understanding
Like rotten.com, they pride themselves on it.
Routine procedures are one thing. Doing a c-section during a difficult pregnancy. For me, getting IV antibiotics when my stupid parotid gland swelled up. People taking antibiotics to avoid dying from pneumonia. There are treatments for cancer and AIDS that can give people a lot more time than we had ever hoped.
Those kinds of procedures are one thing. Three million dollars of other people's money is an entirely different story. I'm not saying that she doesn't deserve it, I'm saying that if I was in their position I would have done things differently.
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Like rotten.com, they pride themselves on it.
I wouldn't go that far ... SA is the awkward kid who breaks out the tasteless jokes when people stop paying attention to him, while Rotten is the one who uses pseudointellectual hogwash to mask the fact that he's a bit of a sociopath. SA seems to have mellowed with age, so the writers probably figure they have to do a full-on shock article every once in a while to keep themselves looking "edgy" lest they be branded sellouts by the fickle nerds who've read SA since it started and complain en masse over the smallest change.
I still think the Achewood parody fits about as well as a glove on my foot, though.
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The way the guy wrote the article made me pretty angry, but what was more galling that he would put this on the front page of a website which regularly attracts people who think it's really fuck*ng funny to make fun of things like this.
While reading it, it felt like the guy was trying really hard to make the whole thing humourous. But I don't think even he had the heart or ability to do it tastefully. It just came off as really, really sad. I looked at Juliana's website, and it is really goddamn heartbreaking. Sure, SA can poke fun at his mother and father for trying to make her feel pretty, but they really do seem to genuinely want to make Juliana have as normal a life as possible. There is nothing wrong with that.
I don't really want to go into a lot of detail about it, but it sums up the abortion debate pretty well; on one hand, this poor girl might have been spared a potentially terrible life, but on the other hand there is also potential for her to have, if not a normal, then at least a happy life she'd never have had if her parents had given up.
As for the comic strip: not a bad parody/repurposement I guess, but it sure works the rough chuckles. The not funny chuckles, that is.
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I clicked the link for the lazy, and I didn't quite get it. I thought it was lame that the creator just changed the saddest thing. Then I read the rest of this here thread and now I think it is pretty disgusting. So, in essence, boo this.
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Maybe he is being polite to the guy who made it?
Ok, that makes sense. Sort of like you'd compliment a small child's mudpie.
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I don't know. Felt like less a shot at Achewood and more like...
Some kind of a half-failed attempt at a "transition" to ease people into something really sad and disturbing that was supposed to be darkly funny and just wasn't.
Such as "We need to telegraph that we are trying to make this funny and... uh... does anyone have an internet popular culture riff we can try and turn into that? Yeah, like, we need to make this completely obvious so that we can sleep at night and not be cursed by the gods to have disabled children for doing this but... what internet meme can we use? Furries? Myspace? ...Achewood? Achewood it is!"
Still, I suppose, we ARE the ones laughing our asses off at a drawing of a cat's erect member.
It could all be relative. I don't BELIEVE so... I think those guys just crossed a line and were being cowards about it but... I'm enough of a bleeding heart liberal to entertain the notion.
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yeah, something awful confuses me. the features (photoshop phriday, movie reviews, etc) crack me up. but the front page, typically, offends me. or is just... unfunny.
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The Front Page of SA is pretty awful, generally. The forums are really where it's at.
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Like rotten.com, they pride themselves on it.
Routine procedures are one thing. Doing a c-section during a difficult pregnancy. For me, getting IV antibiotics when my stupid parotid gland swelled up. People taking antibiotics to avoid dying from pneumonia. There are treatments for cancer and AIDS that can give people a lot more time than we had ever hoped.
Those kinds of procedures are one thing. Three million dollars of other people's money is an entirely different story. I'm not saying that she doesn't deserve it, I'm saying that if I was in their position I would have done things differently.
Well, the thing is, almost no one pays full price for their medical care - it's almost always someone else's money. Even if you have insurance, the whole point is that a group of people pay in to benefit the percentage that need help, and occasionally use the service as well.
The thing is, this is one extreme case but to deny this one extreme case benefits of medicaid (I assume that's the payor?) would also imply that it's OK to, for instance, cap medicare and let old people die, or people in long term care from brain injuries.
Once you start, where do you stop? And who is smart enough to decide where to draw the line?
I don't really disagree with your point - that quality-of-life issues are an important consideration, as are the source of the money - but it's a tough problem to solve.
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Without making a moral judgement on the piece I think this one fails just because the writer can't seem to decide whether they are just going for gross out humour or trying to make some sort of point about when quality of life trumps right to life.
For instance: he keeps coming back to how people with this disease have normal intelligence but if we're meant to be emphasising with the girl then it can't really work as a humour piece and if we aren't meant to be emphasising with her why bring it up? Most of the jokes seem to be directed at the people he sees as either treating her like a show or at her parents and carers acting like she is mentally as well as physically disabled.
On the other hand this has made me want to learn more about her it's not a total loss.
The achewood thing is just odd though.
EDIT: after checking out the little girl's website it seems she is just three so most of the dumb stuff they quote in the journal section sounds like pretty normal three year old stuff to me. I can normally at least raise a chuckle out of SA, but this one is definitely sub-par.
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Well, the thing is, almost no one pays full price for their medical care - it's almost always someone else's money. Even if you have insurance, the whole point is that a group of people pay in to benefit the percentage that need help, and occasionally use the service as well.
The thing is, this is one extreme case but to deny this one extreme case benefits of medicaid (I assume that's the payor?) would also imply that it's OK to, for instance, cap medicare and let old people die, or people in long term care from brain injuries.
Once you start, where do you stop? And who is smart enough to decide where to draw the line?
I don't really disagree with your point - that quality-of-life issues are an important consideration, as are the source of the money - but it's a tough problem to solve.
The government (Tricare, I assume) is paying for it, not Medicare/Medicaid. Her dad is employed by the Navy. Service members don't pay anything at all for their health coverage, which is a good thing. I just don't agree with her parents. I would not put a child through all that. My heath coverage, for example, costs a goddamn arm and a leg. My employer pays for most of it. People who have insurance end up paying for their care.
My point is that yes, people can be kept alive, but at what cost? Yeah, you can do surgery after surgery but she's never going to have a normal life. Maybe when she gets older and can suction her own trach tube herself and doesn't try to pull it out (like babies and toddlers are wont to do, not knowing any better), maybe then the nurse won't be needed. I don't know. I'm just saying that it's one thing for heroic resuscitation measures, such as doing CPR or intubating someone to save them, but it's another to spend millions to try to keep someone alive against God and nature. At what point does the cost outweigh the benefit? Obviously her parents think that it's worth it. I don't. Then again, I'm not a part of their family and I don't know what it's like. Your mileage may vary.
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At the risk of being a dick, why is it God's will that a rape victim who has an unwanted pregnancy should not interfere with the child's development but we can bend nature and technology into a loop to keep people alive who are so stricken that without medical technology they wouldn't survive more than a few days (not thinking of this particular girl here just severely injured, disabled people in general). Isn't God going to be pissed we're defying Him like that?
For the record I myself think we should do everything we can to help the sick and disabled but don't understand how letting nature take it's course in one situation is God's will and in the other it isn't.
On the other hand I guess there is the argument that whatever happen's is God's will and we should do the best we can but in that case why worry whether it's God's will or not? Ain't nothing we can do about it.
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Well
this got out of hand FAST
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Well crap if I had been born like that I know there is no way $3 million of taxpayer dollars would ever have been spent on keeping me alive.
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I and my special lady friend have a similar discussion about stem cell research.
I get all googly eyed, and talk about the possibilities in some weird Doug Henning rainbows and magical wonderment. She will then usually retort with something along the lines of "Really? Are we running that low on people that we need to keep more of 'em around, and for longer?"