I Think I’ll Listen To Some Sting And Go To Sleep For A While

Here’s one for Carin. As we’ve mentioned, she loves these. Make her day, they do.

A 20-year-old man nearly lost his life getting stung thousands of times by bees after accidentally cutting into a nest while tree trimming.
Austin Bellamy remains on a ventilator in a medically induced coma at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, as of Tuesday night, WXIX reports.
The 20-year-old was up in a lemon tree trimming branches Friday morning with his grandmother, Phyllis Edwards, and his uncle, Dustin Edwards, standing below. At some point, Bellamy unknowingly cut into a bee’s nest.
“When he started cutting them, that’s when the bees came out, and he tried to anchor himself down, and he couldn’t,” Phyllis Edwards said. “He was hollering, ‘Help! Help me! Help!’ And nobody would help him.”

Bellamy’s family members watched the entire episode unfold from the ground, unable to scale the ladder because they themselves were under attack.

I can’t imagine feeling so helpless.

Somehow, the mental imagery only gets worse from there.

“It was just too much for me to take,” she said. “It looked like he had a black blanket on his head down to his neck, down to his arms.”

Bellamy was stung at least 20,000 times, according to an online fundraiser set up by the family. Carter said he ingested around 30 bees as well.
“So he had bees inside of him, and they suctioned bees out of him until Sunday morning,” she explained.

And to think I felt a little twitchy watching Doug Ford swallow *one*.

Happily, since that first story was published, Bellamy has woken up, although recovery is going to take some time. He says he still has breathing problems, and it could take more than a year for all of the toxins to clear his system, according to doctors. And that’s just the physical stuff.

“I tell you, you just get one bee around me, and I’m creeped,” Bellamy said. “I’m ready to run.”
Just as triggering are the sounds—not just the bees swarming in and around him, but the tool in his hands and the work he was doing.
“My emotions, I got to buckle them up just to try and run a chain saw,” Bellamy said.

I too am ready to run if you get just one bee around me, and I have never had the experience of being mauled nearly to death by thousands of them. You’re a stronger man than I, kid.

Happy Whatever You Call The Day After Canada Day

Hope everyone is having a nice long weekend. We are, and I’m sure glad that our biggest plans were for yesterday when it turned out to be beautiful and not today when it’s been raining pretty much straight through for the last seven hours. I know some people who are supposed to be at an outdoor family reunion today. I wish them luck with that.

We spent yesterday at my mom’s for a birthday party. It was a nice time, as these things generally are. Lots of good food, some laughs, some time in the pool.

Kids tend to like me, so I can almost never go an entire day without being attacked by at least one youngster. But this latest one wasn’t quite the child I had in mind.

Me on my knees in a pool while my brother tries to climb his large self onto my shoulders.
You sure have grown since the 80s, little fella.

Yes, that’s brother Brad, a grown ass man, trying to get onto my shoulders.

Me standing straight up in the pool while my brother sits on my shoulders.
That actually worked!

And that’s me, somehow managing to stand straight up with him without killing us both. The pool sits on the ground and it’s not exactly level, so it was hard to get good footing.

Considering I’m kinda old, beaten up and not in the best of shape, I’m impressed I was able to do that. Although I think I screwed up my neck on the dismount. It hurts quite a bit today. Thankfully nothing else does, at least no more than usual.

Me dumping my brother backwards into the water.
Get him off me! Get him off me! Brad is likely the only one who will understand this joke.

For the record, this is closer to what I was expecting.

Me standing on some grass with my 7-year-old nephew on my shoulders.
You’re a funcle. that means a fun uncle.

Enjoy your holidays, everybody. One of us will be back to talk to you soon. I know Carin has no shortage of things to say. She just needs to find the time to say them.

Tansy’s Massive Playlist

It’s been a while since I’ve written about Tansy. In fact I’m overdue. She turned 12 at the end of May, so that’s a big one. I talked to the people who are taking care of her, and she seems to be very much enjoying herself, as are they. She has them wrapped around her paw! She’s walking every day, making friends everywhere she goes because of course she is. She’s the Shmans!

In honour of her 12th birthday, I have compiled all the songs that she seemed to show an interest in and put them in a playlist. She managed to amass an impressive and diverse list of 85 songs! I don’t know how many hours it would take to play the whole list, but I would imagine it would take more than 4. YouTube won’t tell me the playing time, or I’m too dumb to find it. Anyway, here’s the list in all its twisted glory.

Often when I hear a song on the list, I think of her.

And I think I missed one, so I’ll put it here for now.

The song showed up when one of the singers died, and I had to stop and listen and I thought of her. I think it was one I wasn’t sure about.

My brain won’t give her up. It still lets me know when she is due for vaccines. And when I’m grooming Domino, I try to be careful in places where Tansy has lumps. No. He doesn’t have any, brain. You can chill!

I’m so glad she’s enjoying herself. I hope I can manage to see her some day soon. I want her to meet Domino!

There Ain’t Nothin’ Wrong With The Radio

Do you put the radio on for the dog when you go out? It won’t keep your pet calm, study finds
Science is science I guess, but anecdotally, I’m not buying this one.

I can’t speak for Domino yet because he’s only been here for a few weeks and we haven’t needed to leave him alone, but radio absolutely made a difference for Trixie and Tansy. The key is that it has to be the right audio for each dog, which you can only discover through trial and error.

Trix was an oldies fan and wasn’t super picky about it, which is interesting considering how much of a stress pot she was in general. This was nice, because it meant I could put one of the three or four oldies stations we could get on AM on for her and head out.

Tans, on the other hand, took more figuring out. I discovered this while Carin was in the hospital getting to know the captain. Oldies didn’t work for her, at least not when she was young. She appreciated them more in her later years, but when she was two or three? Forget it. She also had an especially big hate on for AM 740 Toronto, which I think is because that station often has a background electronic interference hum that bothered her. She wound up being quite specific about what she liked. It had to be Easy 101 out of Tillsonburg, in the days before Rogers bought it and ruined it. No other stations, not even ones that played similar music, would cut it. And you’ll never convince me that it didn’t help. I remember leaving in a hurry one morning and forgetting to turn it on for her. Man alive. When I got home that day it was like an episode of the Flintstones where she was Dino and I was Fred. She was always happy to see me come home, but this was something else. I made sure to never make that mistake again.

Eventually, both dogs got to the point where if we left them with a radio, it would take them a while to notice when we came home. Instead of waiting by the door or running out and attacking us immediately, they would wake up, saunter out and just be like “oh hey, you’re back. Cool.”

So having said all of that, I’m having a hard time trusting these findings much. Perhaps all of the dogs they looked at just don’t enjoy classical music and would have rather listened to a different genre. And though I’ll grant you I’m far from a dog expert, what I do know about them has me surprised that audiobooks would work in any situation. “Here, Floofus. Daddy’s gotta go out for a while, but this invisible stranger’s voice in a box that always kind of sounds a bit like it wants you for something but actually doesn’t will take care of you.” That just seems like a surefire way to freak them out.

Past research showed that classical music had a calming effect on dogs in chronically stressful situations, so researchers set about testing if it would also relax dogs separated from their owners for a short time. The findings, published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, showed that classical music had only a moderately calming effect on the 82 dogs studied, and no welfare benefits were recorded when audiobooks were played to them.
But the dogs exposed to classical music were significantly faster to lie down and settle than those that were played audiobooks — which spent more time gazing at the speaker.

May 2023s Best News Bloopers


Is a fear of butterflies a common thing?

And on the subject of butterflies, maybe it’s just Carin and I, but does anyone who comes from around KW/Guelphish remember the commercial for I want to say the Butterfly Conservatory with the little kid at the end saying “A butterfly might land on you!”? And if you do, did you immediately think “Oh no! Poor butterfly!” because you know that when something lands on you unexpectedly your first impulse is to try and smack it to death?

Like I said, maybe that’s just us.

Nice Gun. Mine’s Bigger. Behave.

I shall do my best to remove the images evoked by the words “75-year-old nudist” from my mind and focus on what’s truly important here, but please excuse any shuddering induced typos in the following text.

I have never been to a nude beach and have no plans to partake in such activities in the future. This is best for all concerned, believe me. But were I ever to change my mind, you can also trust me when I say that I would never, at any point, decide that playing a few numbers on the old pipe organ in appreciation of the scenery is an even remotely appropriate thing to do during my visit. This has everything to do with morality and common sense, but yes, knowing that I might also get shot to death by an elderly naked fellow for doing so does help as well.

A 75-year-0ld nudist is in custody after allegedly killing a 46-year-old man on a nudist beach at a lake near Lyon, France, over the weekend, according to French press reports. The victim had reportedly fondled his erection while deliberately staring at a female nudist when an argument broke out between the men.
The shooter then took his registered hunting pistol from his beach bag and shot the younger man, police say.

Onlookers reported that the victim—who was not apparently a regular on the nudist beach—had been a nuisance earlier in the morning when he masturbated into the water in front of sunbathers. Witnesses instead said the shooter was a long-time naturist who often discouraged bad behavior on the beach.

I’ll say.

Police have accused the shooter (hmmm…should perhaps be more specific here) the man with the gun (this is harder than I thought…dammit, that came out wrong) the one who is still alive (that’ll do it) of deliberate homicide.

Ok, I think I’ve made it. Pretty sure I even fixed all the typos. But I could use a good, stiff drink now. No! Not stiff! Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

And Now, A Musical Interlude

Here’s Waylon Jennings with his classic, “You’ve Got a Homely Daddy That’ll Walk the Line”.

I can’t pin that one on my dad the way I can with so many of these. This one’s all on me, I’m afraid. I was a small child, but still.

But fear not, I can still go back to the dad well at least one more time.

As with a lot of these stories, we were piled into the van. My family didn’t do Carin style zillion hours long road trips, but we did drive around a lot. My mom had a Trisha Yearwood tape that was in heavy rotation on the car stereo at the time. I was not a fan, but I was outvoted by literally everyone else so I never said much about it. Now and then I would even join in on the family “She’s In Love With The Boy” singalong because hey, why not?

Dad almost never sang along. He sang, but he did most of his singing in the kitchen. In the car he was generally a listener. But not today.

Everything was going along just fine until we reached the line that says “It wasn’t very long ago When you yourself was just a hay seed plow boy Who didn’t have a row to hoe”. There was dad, singing is heart out loud enough to be heard over Trisha, mom and a couple of little kids. “you yourself was just a hay seed plow boy, WHO DIDN’T HAVE A MOTOR HOME!”

The rest of the song went unsung. None of us had enough breath to finish it. If the windows were down, everyone around us could have heard the laughing. They likely would have also heard poor dad saying “What!? What’d I say!? over and over again until one of us finally composed ourselves enough to set the poor guy straight.

Good times.

Dominouch

I may need to think twice about watching wrestling when Domino is around, because it appears he’s mastering the art of the foreign object.

He likes to come over while you’re sitting down and put his front paws up on you. This has evolved into a game with him and I where sometimes I’ll try to tip him over and then we both end up on the floor, flopping, running, and wrestling around. He does most of the running, to be fair. But whoever does what, he loves it. At least I thought he did.

The last time we did this, things were proceeding as normal. We’re having ourselves a grand old time when suddenly he stops, calmly walks over to the big bone Carin bought him a couple days earlier, picks it up, strolls back over to me, takes a mighty swing and just drills me right in the back of the head with it. I laughed so hard it took me a good minute to catch my breath. I laughed, but he got me a good one. Right behind the left ear. Kinda hurt a little, not gonna lie.

So far, it doesn’t seem to have knocked any sense into me. We wound up playing tonight when he got home from a Walmart run. And wouldn’t you know it, the friggin jerk tried it again. This time he went for the face, but I was ready for him. I caught it and held one end of it so he could chew the other. That’s another one of his favourite things to do, so he was happy.

He’s such a fun dog, even if sometimes our ideas of fun are juuuuust a weeeeeeeee bit different.

Sour Dispatch Kids

I have so many questions, and I’m pretty sure the answers to all of them are alcohol and Florida.

A “heavily intoxicated” Florida Man was arrested Saturday night for calling 911 to report that his girlfriend “wished to eat Sour Patch Kids” according to police.
An arrest affidavit does not reveal why Joshua Larson, 37, allegedly phoned the police emergency number at 11:45 PM with the candy dispatch.
When asked about the call by a sheriff’s deputy, Larson “smiled and walked away” from cops outside his residence in Madeira Beach, a city 10 miles from St. Petersburg.
Larson allegedly struggled with deputies as they sought to place him in handcuffs. An “electronic control weapon” was eventually used to take Larson into custody, according to the affidavit.

Yes, electronic control weapon is basically just a fancy way to say Taser.

And also yes, they did charge this fella with misusing the 911 system.