Half-Pipe Joke Goes Here

I’m barely coordinated enough to do one of these things.

A Connecticut man wanted for exposing himself and masturbating while skateboarding to trail walkers has been nabbed by police.

Over the course of several days in mid-July, the Southington Police Department received complaints from community members in the area of the Rails to Trails of a man on a skateboard exposing himself to walkers on the trail, said Lt. Keith Egan, of the Southington Police.

 Several witnesses also reported that Martinez-Morales was actively masturbating, Egan said.

The article says that he was “nabbed” by police and that he turned himself in after a warrant was granted for his arrest, which really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But however we got to where we are now, the end result was three counts each of public indecency and breach of peace, and surely a slight sense of awe from more than a few fellas.

Thanks For Dinner. Now What’s Next?

Why the government’s grocery rebate may not do enough to help struggling Canadians
May not? Try will not, especially when most of the article is devoted to many of the reasons why it quite obviously won’t.

I’m not going to tell you that what the government has done here is bad, because it isn’t. Far from it. When you’re struggling, every little bit helps. Been there. I’m glad they did it, even if in the long run it amounts to virtually nothing. Giving poor people a couple hundred dollars one time is a nice thing to do, but it’s not how you deal with an ongoing, continually worsening problem. It isn’t designed to truly fix anything, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either in denial or lying. What it is, more than just about anything else, is a simple way for a government to say “look at us being helpful” while kicking a few uncomfortable cans a little further down the road. If we’re going to talk about real, honest to god solutions to the cost of living, we’re going to have to get into the business of pissing off rich people. And if there’s one thing that governments of all stripes aren’t generally in a hurry to do, it’s piss off rich people. But if we’re ever going to get anywhere, we have no choice. They’re going to have to actually start paying their share and some things are going to have to change.

If we want real solutions, minimum wage has to be something that people can be reasonably expected to live on, and it has to be reevaluated frequently so it keeps pace with reality. Ditto for social assistance rates.

If we want real solutions, we need to start taxing regular people less and billionaires more. One group needs more in its pockets than the other. That’s obvious, but it’s going to take a government with balls enough to not worry about where its party’s next donation is going to come from for us to ever move on that.

If we want real solutions, we need to stop handwringing about the lack of competition across various industries in this country and maybe, I dunno, do something about it. We know good and well at this point that letting a few largely unaccountable corporations do pretty much whatever they want and send the rest of us the bill hasn’t been good for anyone, at least not anyone that doesn’t need to be taxed more. We need to stop approving mergers so that the giants can’t get bigger, and we need to find ways to legislatively cut those giants down to a reasonable size so that so much of what we do doesn’t fall under their sphere of influence.

If we want real solutions, we need to figure out why corporations that cry poor and insist that they have no choice but to raise prices are still managing to rake in money hand over fist. That’s the sort of thing that doesn’t make sense to a sane person who’s having trouble making his own numbers add up while doing his best to pay for it all.

I could surely go on, but you get the idea.

I don’t expect that I’m going to see any of these things happen any time soon. Our current government has been more helpful than most in some pretty crazy times, but it’s already proven that when it comes to the big, system changing stuff, it’s not interested. If you feel inclined to argue that point, look into how electoral reform is going and get back to me.


Grocery rebate cheques are landing in Canadian bank accounts today, but some residents say it isn’t nearly enough to tackle the problem of food insecurity and the rise in cost of living.
Toronto resident Diane Lane says she received about $200 in her bank account Wednesday. While she’s thankful for the help, she says it’s only enough to keep her going, not get ahead. 
“I’m a senior, I live on old age pension, I pay market rent, I live alone, and the food is taking everything I have,” Lane, 70, told CBC News outside a Toronto Walmart.
“It’ll fill my freezer, I might be fine for maybe two months,” she said. “And then I’ll be right back to where I am right now.”

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.