You Miss 100% Of The Shots You Don’t Take

Parent seeks reimbursement for equipment after OMHA’s vaccine policy benches sons
Fuck this guy.

On second thought, no. Do not fuck this guy under any circumstances. Getting that close will probably get you COVID courtesy of him or his unvaccinated family.

Seriously, how did this douche get a story on the news? He should be left to splutter and grumble at clouds on Facebook with the rest of the unclean morons who still think that clogging up our hospitals with largely preventable disease is somehow a personal choice.

You got your registration fees back, dude. That’s totally fine since your kids can’t play. But asking the league to pay for all of the equipment they won’t be using now? Get bent, you rectal chapeau! The association made its choice and you made yours, as you both have the right to do. But it should not in any way have to suffer the consequences of the one you made. That’s on you, my guy. If you get one more penny out of them I’m going to be furious and I’m not even a member.

If you want your money back, sell the stuff or take the matter up with Doug Ford since his government’s guidelines aren’t as tight as league policy. If you want to act like a good person, donate it so that some other kids can play. If the choice not to be vaccinated was made 100% by your sons and you’re respecting it, let them pay you back. They should have plenty of time to work it off now that hockey isn’t on the schedule.

“We’re in for over $2,000 worth of equipment that they’ve only been able to use twice and now not able to play,” said Tony Cortina, whose kids play Paris minor hockey.
Cortina purchased new equipment including hockey sticks and skates for his sons, 14 and 16, about a month before the association announced its vaccine mandate so his kids could take part in skills clinics.
Because his sons have chosen to not get vaccinated, they are unable to play.

“They were very distraught, very upset and they just don’t understand,” said Cortina.
He said while the league is refunding his registration fee, he has not heard back from the association about being reimbursed for equipment.

Cortina called the vaccine mandate “very discriminating,” adding he feels it’s “causing a huge segregation in the community.”

The Reason For The Season

This is a very sad story featuring a 14-year-old who is no longer with us, but I nevertheless feel it my duty to inform you that someone named Winters has frozen to death.

Emotions came to the fore Thursday at the inquiry into Newfoundland and Labrador’s search and rescue system, when a representative of the Department of National Defence and the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre apologized to the family of a teenager who froze to death on sea ice in 2012 before crews could find him. 
“If it was my one of my children missing, I would have wanted 10 helicopters in there,” Lt.-Col. James Marshall told the family of Burton Winters, 14, during a hearing in the boy’s hometown of Makkovik, an Inuit community on Labrador’s northern coast. 
“And I’m sorry that didn’t happen.”

Winters left his grandmother’s house on a snowmobile at about 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2012. A search started early that evening. His body was found on Feb. 1 on sea ice. His family and people in the community believe he may have been on a trail, missed a turn and headed accidentally to sea.

He Was In Bobcaygeon, Doing Computations…

I haven’t seen a lot of all the nephews over the past couple of years because pandemic, but I have been hearing stories about them, particularly the one I call the Sukie Jukie nephew. I swear, he’s a boy genius.

First off, he could spell his name when he was two. He could also spell other words. You know how people spell words so their kids don’t know what they’re talking about? Don’t do that with Sukie Jukie!

He’s also always paying attention and hoovering up every bit of knowledge he can. One time when he wasn’t even 2 yet, he pointed at a cup in my sister’s kitchen and said something that sounded like “Ai Weiwei!” I thought he was just babbling, but then my sister said “Yes! That cup was designed by Ai Weiwei!”

Last year, I got him a stuffy shaped like the Coronavirus. When it finally arrived, he loved it, and he even made a joke that he wanted to take it to school and say “I got COVID-19!” and pull out the stuffy. That’s a pretty funny joke for a four-year-old to come up with on his own.

We’ve had a few Zoom calls and he’s always drawing. Once, we asked him what he was drawing and he said “A COVID vacuum!” It sucks up all the COVID!” Then later, he was drawing and he said it was “a pizza drone!” He might have heard something about a pizza drone, but COVID vacuum was all his.

But this latest one makes me laugh when I even think about it for a second. My sister has a cottage up in the Bancroft area. I guess there was some kind of detour near the cottage that went through Bobcaygeon. Once Bobcaygeon was mentioned, out of the back seat, Sukie Jukie could be heard saying “That’s where the constellations reveal themselves one star at a time!”

He does love looking at stars, so maybe he genuinely wondered what that would look like.

I guess my mom had never heard the song, or never noticed the lyrics, so she was very confused. Then she heard it, and was amazed.

All I can say is he’s going to do great things when he’s older.

It’s A Pandemic, Charlie Brown!

Gill ran into an antivaxx or antimask protest group and thankfully the interaction sounded relatively mild, but it did make me think. I always worry about running into one of these packs of protesters when I’m walking around with Tansy. Maybe I’m weird, but even when I’m outside, I end up just keeping my mask on, not because I’m scared or whatever, but because it’s easier. For one thing, as soon as I get back to the door of the building, I am supposed to have my mask on when I go in. So since I sometimes end up not being able to stop and put it on because people are behind me or someone is holding the door, it’s just simpler to leave it on my face. Plus, Shmans has this silly habit of darting back and forth from side to side. I try to keep it to a minimum but it happens, and sometimes that means I end up all up in someone’s space, so I hope they might be less irritated with me if I’m wearing a mask. But I wonder what some of these individuals would do if they saw me wearing a mask outside. I really don’t want to deal with it and I hope I won’t have to. Here’s Gill’s thoughts on the crew that she ran into on the street.

Before I begin, I must tell you there’s some sarcasm coming, so sit back, at a safe distance, grab something cold to drink, and get slightly uncomfortable.

Sanity Walks
Ever since quarantine began around a year-and-a-half ago, I have wracked my brains for things to do so that I won’t go stir crazy. One thing I’ve always enjoyed is walking, so most days I like to take what I call a sanity walk.  It’s never overly far, just to my neighborhood library, with some stops along the way.

Upstanding Citizens
Saturday I went about the business of my sanity stroll expecting just to run in to a neighbor or two for some commentary on the weather or just minor chit-chat that neighbors often engage in.  I didn’t realize that the weekly “brain surgeon” convention was taking place.  There were a few fine upstanding members of the community milling about, no social distancing, no masks, carrying signs.  I asked the lovely folks what they were doing, and one of the lead “brain surgeons” told me they were a member of some group protesting vaccines for freedom’s sake.  Upon my return back down the sidewalk, the fine pillars of the community had dispersed.

Seriously
I remind myself that had a quick thinking doctor not come up with a way to steam the diphtheria out of my great-grandfather back in the 1880s I probably wouldn’t be here.  Whether you believe it or not God has given you free will, but use it wisely.

Final Thoughts
Though I may have made fun of those folks protesting the mandatory vaccination rules, I seriously hope that they might change their minds and realize that one infection could start a chain reaction.  When I sat to get my vaccines, and each time I don my mask, I think of the heartbreak my great-great-grandmother Agnes Gaudin-Hewgill felt each time one of her children took their last breaths because of diseases we don’t even think about now.  So often we take these advancements for granted, but they do make a difference.

Excuse Me. Have You Been Vaccinated? An Interesting Question, That

This is an interesting problem.

You take a pretty courageous, world helping step by signing up to be part of a vaccine trial. You aren’t sure if you got the real candidate or a placebo and you won’t be finding out any time soon. The province you live in implements a proof of vaccination system. You, who may or may not have been vaccinated, have no idea what to tell anyone who has to ask you about it. What happens to you? Are you denied entry to every place known to man that has been deemed non-essential? Are you let in even though you might be unvaccinated and therefore a risk?

I tend to lean toward giving all of these people medical exemptions, personally. It’s not as though there are enough of them concentrated in one area to cause a lockdown, although you could counter that by saying that it only takes one. You would be right, but if there are already people exempted for other legitimate medical reasons and if you’re going to be exempting people for reasons that ought not to exist (hello, religion), it’s seriously unfair to hang people who could quite literally be life saving heroes out to dry.

For its trial to proceed properly, Medicago is using a “double blind” experiment, meaning some participants are given the Medicago vaccine candidate, while others are given a placebo.
Neither people administering the vaccine nor those receiving it know whether they got the placebo or the real thing, and they won’t until researchers have a chance to compare the rates of COVID-19 in both groups.
Only participants leaving the trial can find out which dose they’ve received.
That’s Lacasse’s main concern right now — that other Medicago trial participants will leave the trial in order to receive an already-approved vaccine, slowing down the experiment.
It’s a concern echoed by Medicago. In a statement emailed to the Star, a company spokesperson said they were “very concerned” about the possibility of Ontario participants being denied vaccine certificates, and leaving the trial because of it.
“We urgently need the Government of Ontario to follow the example of Quebec and provide vaccine passports to clinical trial participants in order to prevent them from leaving the study,” the statement, provided by Tanvir Janmohamed, said.
“Clinical trial participants are essential to advancing vaccine technology in Canada, and should not be penalized for their choice to contribute to science for the benefit of society.”

OwAFewOtherPeople’sBalls.com

There is an update to the story of Gary Van Ryswyk, the elderly gentleman who messed up an in-home castration surgery on a fellow he met on a eunuch website, nearly causing the poor guy to bleed to death. He pleaded no contest to the charges he faced and will be spending a couple of years in prison.

Apparently this is not Van Ryswyk’s first rodeo. How many other rodeos there have been is unclear (the number has been as high as 25 and as low as just two including himself), but the one that wasn’t him also sounds like a doozer. It happened in a hotel, for a start.

The patient was a Florida man named Scott who used the online chat handle “Wanna Be Dickless.”
The 2017 procedure, Van Ryswyk recalled, occurred in a room at a La Quinta Inn six miles from his home. Asked by a detective how the hotel surgery went, Van Ryswyk replied, “Not well.” Van Ryswyk explained that he could not stop Scott’s bleeding, prompting the patient to seek treatment at a hospital emergency room (where Scott made no mention of Van Ryswyk).
A police search of Van Ryswyk’s computer equipment turned up a file labeled “Scott” that contained an “image of a person, wearing surgical gloves, holding up a testicle.” The photo was captioned “Scott’s right nut.”
“I only did one testicle on him,” Van Ryswyk told police as he recounted Scott’s castration. At the time of the procedure, Van Ryswyk said, his wife Ethel thought he was at chorus practice.

The hotel castration, Van Ryswyk claimed, was hampered by the darkened state of the room. “The lighting was really poor in the La Quinta,” he said. “You know, I mean they’re more for romance than they are for surgery.”

They also aren’t for old dudes with failing eyesight and poor coordination, two things we’ve since learned he suffers from.

He told investigators that he thought this one would go much more smoothly because his own home, which he could use because he was now divorced, had much better lighting. Decent theory, but nope. Very clearly nope.

Hopefully prisons don’t have jailhouse medics the way they have jailhouse lawyers. Jesus.

Never A Dill Moment

I have no idea how I should start this, so let’s just get to the good stuff. *Note: Good stuff is not actually good at all…at least not for most of us.*

Eric Detiege, 47, was arrested in March by cops responding to a suspicious person call in Oldsmar, a Tampa suburb. Officers found a pantless Detiege lying on his back in front of a townhouse that was not his home.
As memorialized in an arrest affidavit, Detiege, naked from the waist down, had his penis in one hand and “a large uneaten pickle in his other hand.” Deputy Armando Feijoo reported that Detiege was “using the pickle to penetrate his rectum while he was masturbating.”

He was arrested and charged with exposure of sexual organs, but was released after posting bond. His freedom was short lived, however, as he was caught the following week shoplifting Red Bull and skinny jeans from an area Walmart.

Red Bull gives you wangs?

Anywho, Detiege wound up pleading no contest to the exposure charge and was sentenced to time already served, plus fines and court costs.

We Said Use The Knife On The Food, Not On The Dude!

Story is almost a year old, but it still serves as a good reminder for us all to be better not only this year, but for how ever many more years we’re getting before the planet melts or blows up or washes away or dies of stubbornness or whatever it’s supposed to be doing this week.

The wrong person got murdered, by the way. Assuming the facts as presented are correct, of course.

James Dixon, 28, is charged with killing Vincell Jackson, 52, who was the boyfriend of the Thanksgiving party host.
Jackson was trying to escort Dixon out of the Chicago house because he had put his hands in leftovers early Friday, Assistant State’s Attorney Susie Bucaro said. The fight moved to the porch, where Jackson was stabbed at least nine times, Bucaro told a judge Sunday.

And I Mean It!

This TV commercial keeps coming on, and is yet another example of an ad that doesn’t say what it’s for. But it’s a campaign ad, and for some reason, that bugs me even more.

The viewer can sort of discern that it’s NDP because of the talking points, but how do they know for sure? If the NDP want to use this to get people’s votes, they should try to reach as many people as they can, and not saying the party’s name decreases the chances that people will actually notice whose ad they just heard. Plus, don’t they want to get the vote of people who can’t see their ad? I know, some people will say there aren’t enough blind people to care about, but that’s not what I’m saying, even though I’d beg to differ. Think about it. I know advertisers don’t want to acknowledge this, but commercial breaks are when people leave the room to go pee, get a drink, do something else. They’re not looking at the TV screen. They might hear the ad and wonder who it’s for, but never know. But if it had said “A message from the NDP” at the end, they would know without having seen the screen. And just like that, the ad would have reached more people.

I’m a little sad, NDP. I thought you could do better.

Smoky Mountain Brain

We were listening to music out on the balcony the other night, and some songs came on that made me think of stuff I used to think when I was a kid, and it made me laugh.

The first one was Smoky Mountain Rain

I hadn’t heard that song in so long that hearing it brought back a vivid chain of thoughts. The first time I heard this song, I think I was 4 or so. I remember thinking “So…let me get this straight. You’re just riding in trucks, and then getting out in different towns and yelling her name? That doesn’t seem like it would work too well. What if you’re going the wrong way? Or what if the whole time you’re going one way, she’s going the other way? Heck, why don’t you tell us what her name is, and then we could all look for her?”
I guess I was thinking of those times when our cat would stray, and we’d go outside and call for him, or that time I got lost wandering around our huge yard, ended up walking towards the neighbours, and they had to go down the road calling my name. Whatever the reason, I put way too much thought into this song.

Then there’s the zillion songs that talk about being together until the end of time. I remember thinking “He knows when time ends? He has to know, since he can say he’ll be with her until the end of time. It’s like mom saying we go to bed at 9:00. She knows when 9:00 is and can tell us. So if he knows when time ends, when is it? And what happens when time ends. Do all the clocks just stop? What do we do then?” I don’t think I ever said any of this out loud because I think people would have laughed and laughed and laughed and I would have had another one of those moments where I looked at them and thought “That wasn’t a joke! Why are you laughing?”

This next one I thought about when I was in high school, but I still laugh because my perspective has totally changed on this song. It was “Unanswered Prayers” by Garth Brooks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i2DeBP-paw

Every time it would get to the line about “As we walked away, I looked at my wife, and then and there I thanked the good lord for the gifts in my life…” I thought “What the heck? Did the old flame turn into a psycho? Or did she become ugly and scary and evil? How would I feel if I were the old flame and my old flame was thinking ‘Gees, did I ever make the better choice by choosing my wife instead of you!'” I know now that he was just saying that it turns out that they were probably not as awesome a couple as they had originally thought and things worked out better for each of them, but high school me would always think he was saying “Sheesh! I really dodged one there! What a fool I was!”

And those were the strange old thoughts dredged up by songs. I’m sure I’ll think of more.