Health Care CRISIS!!! A Nation in Disarray! Oh No!

This blog isn't as popular as it used to be. If I have any new readers from the last 2ish years.... they might not know that this blog used to be more about "matters of the day" rather than humor and stories and fun stuff. I was actually quite known in the world of promoting rational thinking and being pro-science and stuff.

I took down about 50 articles, some which were quite good, but I didn't want the problems that arise from having opinions on real life matters anymore. A lot of the articles taken down were just opinions on global issues and stuff. They weren't as funny as I wanted to them to be because they dealt with opinions on real life matters.

"To Deric, James Randi"

I think I'm going to venture to do one again. Maybe there's some older readers left who remember the more sciencey "D" of yester year.

I remember meeting James Randi once many many years ago. He signed my copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. That's a lot of name dropping in that previous sentence but it's true (See photo on right hand side). Randi, passed away fairly recently. I became sort of very passionate about rational thinking after meeting him. I remember feeling like it was normal to be the way that I was after meeting someone who devoted his life to it.

Now-a-days on the internet and in real life it's far more "ok" to be a Rational person who doesn't take much interest to magicks and fantasy... but a decade ago, especially on the internet, fantasy n' magic n' craziness was the norm. I see in the young people world it's very "ok" to be a rational person these days. But, to be this kind of person two decades ago was still quite difficult. I was in a complete minority, for the most part, as a person being an advocate of rational thinking and science and who openly did not believe in any hocus, nor pocus, or even hallomagocus.

I stopped writing those essays for the most part... not really because I stopped caring about that... but because I saw the pendulum swing closer to the center and felt the need to promote science and rationality had dissipated due to other people taking the mantle and the young people world embracing it far more easily than older generations did. I do not see the same fervent rejection of rationality that I did twenty years ago.... so I just let it be and moved on... and started writing fiction about alligators or whatever.

One I deleted which was too heavy to think about and bringing people down was about that the 2020s era was likely going to be a health care crisis due to the stats I had seen regarding Canadian demographics. All baby boomers were gonna hit elderly age at the same time, most baby boomers are over weight, and the health care system and our leaders were mainly worried about whether we could cure silly things with magic.... so yeah... that one wasn't received well and was written probably in 2017, I think.

It doesn't seem so "heavy" now though... as it is now 2021... and Canada is in a health care crisis. So... let's think about some stuff.

I don't want to be an "I told you so" kinda guy and I'm not a problem pointer-outer either .... I think that both of those qualities in a human is redundant and pointless. So, let's think of some things that can possibly help us in this current crisis instead of doing any of that.

What are the main three problems that are causing hospital over crowding? I believe now it is:

1) Vaccine Hesitancy
2) Obesity
3) Large Amounts of People Aging into Elderlyhood at the Exact Same Time

Three is a fact that can't be altered or changed. It is how it is. 

Two has always been an issue. I mean, I was reading in the city of Houston that close to 65% of people by 2025 will be considered Obese. Not over weight but legit like physically handicapped due to their own eating. That's not good... but I don't have the answers to this. I was watching this British show called "Only Human" where they do a lot of over weight people segments... and yeah.... obesity all over the world is probably our #2 global health care problem. I don't have any suggestions for Obesity pandemic, which is a minor pandemic in its own right, so I won't throw any out.

So today's article is about "Vaccine Hesitancy in Canada"...

Why only in Canada? Because USA isn't having this issue. They are clocking in at 150 million people vaccinated and it's only April. That's all their at-risk population and they are now climbing into a good chunk of their non-at-risk as well. One Hundred and Fifty MILLION! That's actually quite amazing to think of. They are good at this!

So what's the hold up in Canada? I think they can't move away from the "at-risk" population and hit the rest yet because of hesitancy amongst the 60+ population.

So what is the biggest difference between USA and Canada? Is it supply? Maybe. Is it roll out? Maybe. Is it something else?

It's honestly..... lack of celebrities. I know that sounds silly.... but..... it is.

I have seen on twitter... literally almost every American 50+ celebrity I follow from sports to movies to tv shows to music... all posting photos of themselves getting it. All of them. Band aids on arms ABOUNDS! It is a proud thing for them to do and the rest of their people are saying to themselves things like "hey if it's okay for Fergie Jenkins... then it's okay for Me!" or "hey if it's okay for TV's Frank then it must be okay for Me!"

The United States of America will probably be at 250 million vaccinated by next month and will be entirely re-opened by July with some caveats and eceteras. Canada? We're lucky if we get those numbers by the end of the year or more at this rate.

Celebrities? You gotta show people you are getting the vaccine. Wait... are there even any Canadian celebrities? Fergie Jenkins was born in Chatham Ontario but is more famous in Chicago (where he's gonna get a statue next year... congrats Fergie). He's more American.

Who's Canadian and getting it and showing it and being proud? I don't know. I saw actually the Tennis star, Genie Bouchard, on twitter showing she got it, I think. Other than that... I can't think of anyone. I really believe the hesitancy rate in Canada is even double or triple that of the USA.

We can't open until it hits a certain level... I don't know what it is actually... but I would estimate it is 90% of vulnerable (55+) people. Canada won't get there until 2022 at this rate.

Canada's route with this is to continually punish people until they get through this crisis. We can't go outside until we get all the vulnerable people done it seems. Curfew is 8pm and it is heavy fines to go outside and stuff. It's a measure that won't work.... the key to this now is celebrities showing they got it so the hesitant portion of the vulnerable population gets it in turn. That's what, I think, USA's path to success was.

Who's a Canadian celebrity who could convince 55+ people to get the vaccine? Hmmmmm. I don't know. Who's famous here? Hockey people no? Can we show like Wayne Gretzky getting it?

Here's my idea okay... and this IS NOT a joke. Okay. This WILL reduce Canadian Vaccine Hesistancy by a huge margin. Alright this is an idea for a commercial that would air on the main Canadian channels that elderly people watch like CBC and uhhhh..... CTV.... and uhhhhh.... I think those are the only two Canadian channels now.

So.... here it goes... this commercial should air 50 times per day....

A darkly lit arena lights up. The crowd is empty. Lo.... who is skating in this barren well-lit arena? Surely it shan't be Wayne Gretzky? Oh my... surely enough it shall! Why is he alone in this arena skating all by his lonesome? Oh my... he's skating to center ice.... there's some sort of table there waiting for The Great One...

....SKKSKSKSKSKSKSSKSKSKKHKSHKSSHKSHKSHKSHKSHKSHSKHKHS!

(sound of ice skates stopping briskly and ice shavings shoot up all over the person waiting for him at center ice!)

"Oh wow! Nice to see you here, Wayne Gretzky! What brings you to center ice?" says the Doctor.

"I'm here for my vaccine, Doctor Alice." says Wayne Gretzky.
(Note: The Doctor is HOT. So more people think it's cool and good.)

"You don't say? Roll 'em up Great One let's see what you win!"
(He has a coffee cup tie-in... because if there's one thing Canadians trust is a coffee shop named after a hockey player!)

....Wayne skates away from center ice and takes a massive slap shot into an open net and the puck tears through the netting! Wow!

"I just got mine.... YOU should too.... take it from ME... Wayne Actual Gretzky... the greatest hockey player who ever lived... ten times better than anyone else!" Says The Great One Wayne Gretzky.

Vaccine Hesitancy? After that commercial you'd be lucky if people aren't rioting to get one after this spot!

(Note: For French Language spots Wayne can be replaced with Mario Lemieux)

THE END


(After Note: This is not a joke or satire or anything. I truly believe the higher rate in Canada than the USA in vaccine hesitancy is due to the lack of famous and respected Canadians who are superly known in Canada saying and being proud that they got it.)

Canadian Retro Shows

Alright, so I posted the current itinerary in the blog's intro portion above. As stated, we're not just gonna roll right on after Liberace and follow with Elvis.... that's heavy. It's too heavy.

Let's do some more jazzy fluff and some razzy-ma-tazzy filler to cleanse the reader's brain palette before we go Big Time with Elvis.

A few articles ago, I was talking about 80s and early 90s Nostolgia and how for people born in a very specific niche market (say 1977 to 1987) ... stuff from that era, even if just a simple commercial jingle, has the potential to really jog the mind into a nostalgia-laced adventure to the past.

I want to do one, a nostalgier, but I'm gonna add an extra caveat to make the article somewhat harder to do. I'm going to limit the choice to Canadian Content! Which makes the difficulty level for this article about 300% more harder to write ... which will then make it more funner to write.

If I did straight retro we could be here ALL DAY, gang. If I was let off the chain and just wrote about Ghostbusters, and Turtles, and Pizza Commercials from 1990 ... I could easily jam loose like 1000 words in less than twenty whole minutes. The Canadian Content Caveat not only limits the retro topics but it also, I think, makes the article more uniquer because I don't think the average retro 80s kid in the USA or elsewhere ever saw most of these "gems."

Alright so the conditions are to be from the 80s and/or early-ish 90s and it must have been aired in Canada Region.

I actually now think that some of these were seen by American audiences but not on a wide-scale. I know for sure some of the bigger Canadian Contented shows did breach the border. I think "Due South" where the Mountie (who's a very satirical version of a Canadian) teams up with a wise-cracking big city American detective to solve Can-Am connected crimes did. I know that was picked up and aired in America but I don't know as to what scale it was or if it was limited to obscure cable channels.


Let's write about what Canadian Content is first before we start:

Canadian Content, and I know this statement is going to maybe offend some people here, is basically American Content yet campier, cheesier, and with here-and-there mentions of Canadian geography or concepts (a la "Oh hey, let's go to Toronto this weekend" or "My cousin from Vancouver is coming over!")

So say you have an American thing and you want to Canadian-nize it ... It mainly involves making it cheap and campier... and mentioning a few Canadian landmarks. Let us now look at one of the first Canadian "sit-coms" entitled "The Trouble with Tracy" (circa 1971)...

This is competing with juggernauts in the USA such as All in the Family and the Jeffersons ... and what is the first thing you notice about Canada's Sitcom? It's.... it's..... funny for other reasons than the comedy. None of what the actors are doing seems like something that anyone would ever do in a situation that is comedic (i.e. a Sit-Com) ... they are doing forced bits that make very little sense.

That's not to say that all of them were cheesy... one that I liked was called "The King of Kensington" with Al Waxman ... that show was good. Even the intro shows it's good, look:

"Hey! Tikanis KING!"

That intro is fun, and the foreigners sound cool... everyone is happy and having a good time in Al Waxman's show ... and you can devise this simply from the opening. This show is a fairly rarer example of a good Canadian show. If you dig 70s sitcoms you'd like this one too. I wonder why no Ontario area rapper has never made a rap name called the "King of Kenzington" with a Z in it ... that would work as a rap name.

In modern times, now-a-days ... Canadian content varies .... there's some okay stuff like a "Corner Gas" which would be, I guess, a B- or C+ level sitcom in America ... and the most popular show now has got Eugene Levy and his son in it which is comparable to an Americanized sitcom in all forms ... it is called "Schitt's Creek" and is about these rich-wads having to live in some schitty Canadian town. Schitt's Creek is good enough to be aired in USA and probably is on some specialty streams or channels.

Anyways, now let's head into the specific time frame of Today's Article which is the 80s and talk about Canadian Shows from then!

 

Eighties Canadian Shows! 



Various Kids Shows (80s)

Let's talk about the two good ones before we make fun of all the other ones. Friendly Giant and Mr Dress Up were good shows. They hold up to others of their comparitive genre. I wouldn't classify like Captain Kangaroo as being a better show than The Friendly Giant or Mr. Dress Up ... but I wouldn't go as far as to say either of them are PeeWee's Playhouse caliber (which to this very day is the pinnacle and hallmark of Kid's Shows).

So if you are interested in 80s Canadian Kid shows that were good you can watch some The Friendly Giant or some Mr Dress Up ... The Elephant Show was okay too, I guess ... Fred Penner had his moments as well ... and some pre-80s older good ones include Johnny Jellybean and maybe the best one is The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (which had Vincent Price in it!) but let's move on to some of the more memorable ones that were way less good but more memorable for being cheap and weird.

I'm not gonna do Polka Dot Door again. I wrote on the Door a few years ago with a great paragraph, which was 100% true and 0% made-up, about how three-year-old me would literally watch Polka-Dot Door with my Big-Bird Hammer in my hand at all times just in case that 10 foot mutant monster Polkaroo exited the TV screen. I was ready for it. That monster would not get far if he came out of the screen and into to where I was. Not. Far. At. All. That puppet scared kids, man. It did.

Here's some new content for you... let's talk about Anana. Now there's a puppet that could wig kids out...

 Anana .... is not a friendly looking puppet.

Tele Francais was a show that was aimed at education and language skill precision acquisition rather than entertainment per say.... and it was fronted by a bird-beaked googly-eyed pineapple that lived in a garbage dump. I was older when I saw this so I was old enough to know that monsters can't exit the TV and murder you ... but I could imagine three year old kids being scared-to-the-bone by this thing. It's not a particularly well made puppet. That thing is no muppet, that's for sure.

The cool thing about Tele Francais though ... is they would show you this IN SCHOOL! Yes, and in the late 80s school televisions were gigantic! Not the screen but the apparatus that accompanied them. Some volunteer older kid from the media room would push in this rig that was about 7 feet high and loaded with VCRs to show the class videos ... the wheeling-in of the TV was an event in itself even if they were just going to show you a talking pineapple monster who lives in a garbage dump. Just the looks in the kids eyes when the TV rig was wheeled in was worth it ... we were all like "It's a TEEEEVEEEEE in school? Yes!" It was an EVENT ... watching TV in SCHOOL was always COOL!

The English language Canadian puppets of the era were no masterpieces either. Let's take a look at Today's Special (a show about a dept. store mannequin who would spring to life at closing time) and bear witness to some more less-than-muppet-calibre puppets:

Here we see a three-person bit where a security guard with a mop on his head, a rat, and a computer attempt to make children laugh. I'm not sure anything here is funny ... even to a small small child. I can see kids being scared by mop-man and rat-thing though. I've seen public-access American puppet shows from the 80s (David Liebe Hart style stuff) and I'd probably put Today's Special puppets in league with those shows if you're wondering what is of comparable aesthetics.

As time progressed Canadian puppets got a bit better with things like "Under the Umbrella Tree" which has better puppets but still gives off more of a David Liebe Hart puppet vibe than anything more muppet-esque. The Blue Jay puppet on Under the Umbrellla tree I'd rank as pretty decent.

The most popular kids cartoon which aired exclusively to Canada was The Raccoons ... which is a decent cartoon. To be honest though, I wouldn't place it in the top 20 even of 80s cartoons. It was okay ... but it was nothing to write home about. The writing and animation was good though ... it's not something you'd watch to laugh at, the Raccoons, was a top notch show in quality terms. The only reason I don't have the fondest of nostalgia for it is because when compared to its American or Japanese counterparts I don't think the Raccoons was close to being one of the best cartoons of the 80s not even by a long shot ... here's the intro if you are interested in what the show looked like:

I think they over-used the Burt character until he was an ad-nausea part of the show. I preferred the dog family, and the villain's son who was a nerdy character moreso than Burt who was really forced on you to like him ... he tried too hard, I think, Burt Raccoon. 

My Secret Identity (1988)

Oooooh you'll never knoooooow my Secret Iden-tity!

I would be pretty surprised if this great show didn't bleed its way into the USA and other regions globally... this show was GOOD and not just for a Canadian Show I mean GOOD by any standards.

If you're not familiar with this show imagine you took Kevin Arnold and Super Man and made them the same person. Yeah. It's a cool show.

I think it might even be the inspiration for Doogie Howser in the States ... which I will admit was a show I did not like very much. The premise to Doogie Howser was, I guess, a super smart Kevin Arnold but in the confines of reality where he had no outworldish powers ... just he was smart. I find Doogie Howser to be less-believable as a premise than My Secret Identity to be frank with you. The premise to Doogie Howser is a stretch at best and grossly negligent at worst. Can you imagine in real life you take your grandma or grandpa in to get open heart surgery and some kid walks out and pretentiously tells you "Your Grandpa's in good hands .. mine ... the hands of a pre-pubecent wunder-kid!" ... most of us would be like ... "No way, Jose!"

Jerry O'Connell was not just a smart Kevin Arnold here ... he was Super Man! He could fly! He could run fast! He could punch adults! YES!

Man, this show invaded my day dreams at school in the early 90s like no other. I'd be like in gym class playing european hand-ball or some crap ... and then boom.... day dream time! All these snake monsters, worm mutants, mecha-godzillas, and spider gremlins would just INVADE gym class ... and I'd start flying and suplexin' 'em like it was nothing ... all the girls would be like "woahhhhh" and I'd turn to everyone and be like .... "Well, I guess you all just didn't knooooooow about my Secret Iden-tity! OWWWWW!" and then gently moon-walk out of the gymnasium.

I can't be the only one that had that day dream at school ... I bet most if not all Canadian 80s Kids did. I would even venture a fairly educated guess that to Canadian 80s Kids Jerry O'Connell is much bigger than Kevin Arnold. Much bigger.




T & T (1988)

You also could have called this "Cheesy A-Team."

This time around B.A., oops I mean T.S. Turner was framed for a crime he didn't even commit but is saved by a savvy Canadian lawyer who's name also starts with T ... as to which T and T recruit a band of street smart orphans, ex-detectives, street urchins and family members to solve crimes together!

You see in the intro stuff blowing up right? So you think ... oh wow Cheesy The A Team is going to have several explosions here and there, right? No, wrong. Mr. T solves crimes with orphans more than anything and I don't think, if memory serves me right, he ever built one single sports van into a battle-mounted artillery vehicle to bust out of a cave he and his team were trapped in.

Even though it's a decent show, part of you yearns for something more as you watch it. You're thinking things like... "Oh, this is it! This is gonna be the episode I bet where George Peppard will show up portraying retired Canadian General Hawk DesJardins and he will inform T.S. Turner of a secret mission to overthrow the Guatamala Government that will require T.S. to mount a missile launcher onto a canoe!!!" 

....but no, the episode would just be like Mr. T helping one of the kids from Road to Avonlea find his dead beat dad or something.

I wish cross-overs were bigger back then. You know what would have been cool? A "My Secret Identity" and "T and T" cross over month where both shows combined. Jerry O'Connell would get into a mess he could not get out of, even with the help of Dr. Jeffcoate''s science.... and they'd hire the private investigation services of T and T ... and lo! Mr. T would trip over one of Dr. Jeff Coat's kooky experiments and re-gain the powers he had on the A-Team and MORE!

"Hey keed! I can fly!? I hate heights! I ain't gettin' on a PLANE let alone flyin' like a damned bird, SUCKAH!" 

"It's okay T.... you'll get used to it... just I like I did. I was a regular kid at school, think about I must've felt after tripping over Benjamin Jeff Coat's kooky science experiments!"

"Dang, keed. Oh well... I guess we better go stop those criminals now that we BOTH have incredible Super Powers!"

Again, that never happened on T and T.... which again makes you wonder what could have been.




The Littlest Hobo (1979)

This one creeks into the seventies but it's okay we'll let it through just as an excuse to get this song into this article....

Hmm... I'm gonna put the lyrics in Italics too...

Theres a voice, That keeps on calling me
Down the road, Thats where I'll always be
Every stop I make, I make a new friend
Can't stay for long, Just turn around
and I'm gone again

Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down
Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on

Down this road, That never seems to end
When adventure lies just around the bend
so if you want to join me for awhile
just grab your hat, come travel light
thats hobo style

Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down
Until tomorrow, The whole world is my home
so if you want to join me for awhile
just grab your hat, come travel light
thats hobo style

Theres a world just waiting to unfold
brand new tale no one has ever told
we've journeyed far but, you know it won't be long
we're almost there, and we've paid our fare with the hobo song
 
Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down......
Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on.................

Yes, that's Hobo-Style, friends. I would rank this show's opening in the Top 10 of ANY region. This is up there with the best of the best in terms of openings not just limited to Canadian ones.

I saw a guy on Twitter last year or so have this big Canadian Content Tournament where it was head to head polls and the winner would advance to the next round .. I can't re-find it now ... I only saw it because members of the Kids in The Hall were commenting on it on Twitter. Anyways, The Littlest Hobo lost in the prelimary rounds to ... DEGRASSI HIGH!?

It was one of the most effronterous elections I had ever witnessed in the entirety of my entire life. The Little Hobo, the greatest dog, losing in the first round to Degrassi? No. No. Noooo. No.

The theme song alone for the Littlest Hobo is probably the greatest Canadian-based Content ever made ... it can't lose to a syrupy high school over-drama. If you've never seen Degrassi High it's like Saved by The Bell but if they touched on such obscene and silly topics at the drop of a dime in the corniest of methods. Like say, Screech wakes up one day and catches the AIDS ... and everyone has to learn what AIDS is for a half hour ... that's what Degrassi was. Just content that was sooooo over the top.

That guy who hangs out behind the Raptors bench and keeps them exceptionally motivated was on Degrassi, Drake, playing like a kid in a wheel chair, I think... I don't remember ... it was not a show I would watch by choice and don't remember much of it.

I am very surprised DeGrassi is so fondly remembered by Canadians to the point where it would easily defeat The Littlest Hobo in a King of the Ring style online vote. I always found it corny to the point where you'd laugh at it ... instead of beautiful and great like The Littlest Hobo was.

Teenager shows were really hit-and-miss in Canada. I wouldn't for the life of me have thought Degrassi had the fan base it did. Personally, I didn't like any of the Teenager Canada Shows. Though I do have a soft spot for the intro to Neon Rider which was a good song....

Get on up Off of them Streets!

Neon had a cool song but was aimed at a Central Canada demographic ... which means everyone has a horse on the show. Neon Rider was a guy who owned a ranch where he taught wayward deliquent teenagers how to ride horses ... it is one of a great deal of Horse Shows I can think of that have aired in Canada over the years. I think "Corner Gas" is the only show set in either Saskatchewan or Alberta where no one has a horse.

The Littlest Hobo transcended all demographics ... regional, geographical, age, everything else ... how can you not like the Hobo? He's the best. His song is the best, too. How he lost to Degrassi on an unscientific online social media tournament is so confusing for me... it really is.

Conclusion

  

Okay, So now you know what it was to be an 80s Kid .... In Canada! It must have been such an out-of-body experience for you that I will allot you a few seconds to recollect yourself.

It must have been fun to vicariously know what it was like to be a Canadian person and watch TV in the eighties! I'm sure it broadened your world view and made you feel more Wordly than you did yesterday.

Okay, bye.

Is Freshness the Reason Behind the Hate On for P.K. Subban?

A lot of people were wondering why the reigning Norris trophy winner and excellent hockey player P.K. Subban was benched during the Olympic games in Sochi.

I was excited to watch these games and was sort of disappointed that Subban only appeared in 11 minutes of one game during the entire tournament.

Everyone seems to hate on Subban all the time, all the time, over somewhat pointless things and I'm not sure I understand it.

One thing is for sure, he doesn't look like your average NHL player. He looks more like an athlete you'd find in the NBA, or NFL, or MLB than someone you'd find in the NHL. He's charismatic and flashy...he's rather Fresh, I'd say.

He has an urban flair to himself that is more common in other sports. The NBA especially has the most urban feel to it, The NBA has a sort of hip hop persona that gives it a lot of flavor. Urban freshness is not only accepted in the NBA but encouraged.

The NFL is the next most "fresh" sport, and even MLB baseball which was once regarded to be as "country club" a sport as golf has a had a major make over during the last five decades or so.

Yet even baseball shuns urban elements as not being part of its image. Take the case of Lastings Milledge who created a big hub-bub over releasing a rap album while in the Mets triple-A organization. (Article by Deadspin on Lasting's rap fiasco).

The writer in the article linked above states this would have caused no one to look twice if it were the NBA and Milledge was releasing a rap album, but baseball doesn't want "rap" in its image. It still sort of wants to retain a golf-esque country club atmosphere to its institution...which is odd considering only 63% of baseball players are still howdy doody white guys in the present era.

I don't know if anyone's really noticed...but there's not a whole lot of guys in the NHL who are not howdy doody farm boys. In fact Subban might be the only player in the NHL today who could be described as being "urban."

Which begs the question...


NHL: Fear of Freshness?

Is fear of freshness a real phobia that I didn't make up? Of course it is, it's called Chill-A-Phobia and it's not a made a up mental condition by any means.

The NHL comes across as being super uptight and lame...

Please read the following article: http://sports.nationalpost.com/2013/02/02/don-cherry-is-glad-to-see-the-end-of-the-p-k-subban-carey-price-triple-low-five/

It details the shocking behavior displayed by Subban which SHOCKED an entire nation. What did he do? Well, he had the nerve to dare to preform a "triple low five."

What is it? Well, as opposed to the "high five" which we are all familiar with, Subban and his teammate Carey Price would turn the high five upside-down and preform the greeting/soul-shake at a below-knee vantage point...and then had the audacity to multiply the quantity of the "fives" by three resulting in the aforementioned "triple low five."

Can you believe it? That someone would turn a high five upside down and raise the frequency by 2 units? It's....it's....it's....deplorable is what it is. I myself was shocked, amazed, and horrified (that so much could be so compromised).

The TLF was banned by the Canadiens organization in response to the collective shock that the nation felt whilst viewing this obscene gesture by Subban and Price.

Now if you're sitting there and thinking to yourself..."wait, what? All this fuss over a low-five? What the flying fuck?" then you are probably a good and normal person. Yet to truly understand the shock generated by this you really have to immerse yourself in the customs of the region to truly understand why this was such a huge deal.

Canada Itself: A Fear of Freshness?

It's time for some Canadian trivia !!

Didja know: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air starring Will Smith was originally banned in Canada? It's a fact jack.

Didja Know: Milk comes in these weird ass bags in Canada because Mennonites in Alberta believed milk in cartons promoted promiscuity and lobbied the government to outlaw milk in cartons? You can't make this shit up even if you tried.

Canada is kind of weird sometimes. Its leader for instance is an Evangelical Christian who doesn't believe in evolution. It can be sort of an odd place at times.

The average Canadian person spends their day cutting down trees or some thing like that, then at night they say their prayers to their beloved God, and then they fall asleep with pleasant dreams of painting the Queen of England's toe-nails.

They are a simple agrarian society who lead very boring lives. Hockey is the one saving grace that they can hope for. Hockey represents the golden ray of hope that every illiterate Canadian huckster can become a multi-millionaire.

Forget just millionaire, it's a way for an illiterate man to be appointed to government and live off tax payers money. For example, take Jacques Demers who is 100% illiterate but was appointed a senator and is now an official in the Canadian government. What other country on earth could you be both illiterate and a government official? Wow what a place!

The image the NHL is going for...is the Super Hoser image. The prototype is the illiterate good ole country boy who rose against all odds and made a million bucks and got his name into the hall of fame. You can do it too! Your illiterate in-bred son who drinks paint all day can have his name in the hall of fame too!

Now, P.K. Subban is the furthest thing from an illiterate in-bred country boy. Some might say he's even breaking the mold and adding a real urban flavor to the NHL...and most if not all hard-line traditionalists don't like this very much.

NHL: Time to Catch Up?

Look, there are seven big huge sports leagues in the Americas and their popularity and revenue go in this order:

1. NFL
2. MLB
3. Formula 1
4. NBA
5. PGA
6. CONMEBOL (South American Soccer League)
7. NHL
8. PGBA (Professional Girls Badmington Association)

The popularity of the NHL in the Americas is over-estimated at best by its fans. A new image really wouldn't hurt a silly ass league that makes a fuss about low-fivin'.

The only thing that sells the league right now is the fighting. If they took fighting out of hockey no one outside of 5 cities would ever go to any more games.

I've seen the NHL referred to on the internet as "furpuck" lately. It seems people are implying that if all sports were porno genres then the porno genre most comparable to the NHL would be a disturbing niche porn like furry porn. It's mean and I would never compare anything, even my worst enemy to furry porn (which is an abomination to the eyes and brain)...but I just want to point out that most people view the NHL as being super lame and with good reason.

I found the MLB's reaction to Lastings Milledge's rap album as being way over the top and silly...so I have a hard time understanding a league like the NHL who can't even handle "low fives" without getting their panties in a knot...it is almost unheard of to even think about how that's even possible.

In Conclusion

Now, this is a story all about how

Triple Low Fives turned the NHL upside down
And I like to take a minute
Just sit right there
I'll tell you how P.K. became the prince of the NHL

In west Ontario born and raised
On the playground was where he spent most of his days
Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool
And all shootin some slaphshots outside of the school
When a couple of guys
Who were up to no good
Startin being super lame in the neighborhood

I whistled for a cab and when it came near

The license plate said fresh and it had a CH in the mirror
If anything I can say this cab is rare
But I thought 'Now forget it' - 'Yo homes to Montréal'

I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8
And I yelled to the cabbie 'Yo homes smell ya later'
I looked at my kingdom
I was finally there
To sit on my throne as the Prince of The NHL

A little bit of freshness never hurt nobody. GO HABS GO! 

A Critique of Three Canadian Neuro-Scientists and why Their Respective Findings may have been of the Jabroni Variety

On June 7th, of 2011, I wrote a blog about how I sometime think about my brain:
(https://writingsonsubjects.blogspot.com/2011/06/thinking-about-my-brain.html)

I think about my brain a lot when I have the time, and like I said in the above blog post, I'm not a scientist or anything but I still think that because I have a brain, I am thus qualified to think about it and maybe even have some ideas about how it functions.

I am still unconvinced that there are "left-brained" and "right-brained" people, and I am still unconvinced that the findings made by neuroscientists in the last century were conclusive findings. I will try to elaborate a little further on why I believe this and try and argue my position a little more.

Wilder Penfield? The Legend or the Jabroni?

If you lived in Canada in the last few decades then you probably remember seeing this...

 

from: https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/wilder-penfield

Ya, ya, ya..."greatest Canadian alive...", ya, ya, ya.

It might be best to start off the critique by telling you that Penfield wasn't even Canadian, let alone the greatest one of all time. He was actually born in Spokane, Washigton and lived in the USA until leaving to study in various European countries. Penfield only arrived in Montreal at the age of 37...I'm sure if you asked him he'd probably tell you he was American. Right off the bat you know this video is not necessarily accurate.

Penfield and his fellow "Canadian" neuroscience counter-parts of the era, Willie Beecher Scoville (also of American extraction) and Brenda Milner (actually from England) did indeed like to poke people's brains with things and observe their responses but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

The previous era of neuro scientific research was led by findings by Carl Wernicke and Pierre Paul Broca, who tried to isolate which portion of the brain did what. These two men used pigeons or mice as their test subjects. They'd cut off pieces of the their brains and then see what the effect was on the critter. They made some findings and then named portions of the brain after themselves. If cutting up birds and mice and then naming parts of the brain after yourself sounds vain...well it's because it is. At least they were only using critters though. Penfield, Beecher, and Milner were not using critters...

As you can maybe guess from the above video, our three "Canadian" scientists didn't use critters...they used humans as test subjects. Normally, what would happen was a person would come in to their office complaining of epilepsy and then our intrepid heroes would just go to town on the person's brain.

Henry Molaison...poor guy.

One example is the case of Henry Gustav Molaison. In 1957, Henry came into Willie Beecher's office in Hartford, Connecticut complaining of epileptic seizures and requested help from the surgeon. Beecher called up his friends Penfield and Milner in Montreal and the conversation which ensued must have went a little something like so...

Beecher: "Yo, what's up Penny! I got a dude with fucking seizures up in here!"

Penfield: "Oh shit son! That's fucked up bro!"

Beecher: "What should I do to fix this shit?"

Penfield: "You best cut his fucking brain apart dude!"

Beecher: "For real!?"

Penfield: 'Straight up! Just get up in his nose with a drill or cut open his fucking skull and then just rip some of that shit up, or pull some of that junk out...it'll fix him swell, I garuan-fucking-tee it!"

Beecher: "Ok, cool homey...talk to ya later...bye."

Beecher did just that, he went up into Henry Molaison's nose with a nice long drill and fiddled around in there, and then he cut open his skull and took out a few brain chunks here and there of poor Henry's brain.

Molaison's seizures seemed to get a little better in the following weeks, yet a curious thing happened as a side effect. It seems Molaison got really fucked up after Beecher cut parts of his brain off...now who would have thought that would happen? Henry, after the surgery was not able to record any more information to his long term memory.

Beecher was very fascinated by this and called Brenda Milner over to Hartford to help him study his new critter specimen. They interviewed their critter at length and recorded everything he said, and then published their amazing findings and became rich and respected neuro scientists. Good for fucking them. Their paper was titled "Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions," though a more accurate title would have been "We cut off pieces of a dude's brain and were really surprised that he had trouble remembering things after."

Monkeys...

I would like to point you, at this juncture, to another really odd and gruesome neurological study, just to emphasize my main point a little. It's not related to work by Penfield, Beecher, or Milner but it will give you another glimpse into the wonderful world of neuroscience.

I can tell you right now that removing a dude's brain will fuck him up, I don't need to do immense research into that in order to prove it. Why? Because it is obvious to anyone who is not a complete moron that ripping out pieces of a dude's brain will fuck him up. You don't have to rip off pieces of someone's brain and observe him acting fucked up to figure out that it's true, because it's already common fucking sense.

This next case falls under the same principle. Edward Taub was a guy who wanted to prove that ripping out pieces of monkeys brains would fuck them up.

Well, Ed gathered up 17 cute little macaque monkeys, and for the next 11 years, he ripped out parts of their brains, tied them to torture chairs, and did all kinds of sick depraved Josef Mengle-esque horrible things to them.

(see: Silver Spring Monkeys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Spring_monkeys)

Another case with cute little monkeys, is that of Thomas Gennarelli of the University of Pennsylvania, who's research into concussions back in 1983 was similarly as unnecessary. Gennarelli wanted to see what effect hitting monkeys with a hammer would have on their brains.

If I was the guy giving out research grants at U of P that year, I would have said something along the lines of, "you know Tom...I think hitting a monkey in the head with a hammer will fuck it up. I'm not sure you need a few hundred thousand bucks and lab space to test this stupidity out."

Tom got his grant, and for the next two years, he hit monkeys in the head with hammers, and then noticed that, it did indeed fuck them up. Wow, way to go you fucking moron.

A guy named Alex Pacheco got his hands on footage shot in the University of Pennsylvania's lab from researchers working for Gennarelli and made a video cassette out of the footage. You can now view this on youtube (if you are not faint of heart that is). I don't want to embed the video but you can just google Unnecessary Fuss if you are interested in viewing "researchers" hitting monkeys with hydraulic hammers and then coming to the brilliant conclusion that...yes, hitting monkeys with hammers fucks them up or even kills them.


Are All Brains Different?

In the article I wrote on June 7th, I ventured a guess that every brain wired itself differently during the rearing stages of life and each brain may have individual quirks that may vary from person to person. We are born with billions and billions of brain cells shooting around up there in that noodle and all of them are eager to co-operate and meld with each other to form eletrical synaptical synthesii. The cells might process the information as it comes and make patterns and inter-connections on the fly. I think it is on a first-come first-serve incoming basis, and the chemical reactions between brain cells and receptors are going to be set up differently for every person during the "set-up" phase of their brain's life. As the brain develops from a baby brain into a set-in-their-ways adult brain, the interconnections between cells will not be identical for anyone.

If you want, you can go and chop up a dude's brain, keep him in a home like a guinea-pig, see how fucked up he is, and then name a part of the brain after yourself. But honestly though, that is really messed up and completely unnecessary. For that reason, I do not believe that Penfield, Beecher, and Milner are heroes and certainly not the "greatest canadians alive" as that silly video insisted. I believe their findings may have even been jabroni-esque in nature.

Now, again, I'm not a neuroscientist and I don't really have any evidence for my silly theories. I would like to point out though that scientists have tried to recreate the findings of Penfield, Beecher, and Milner...and they were unable to come to the same conclusions. Poking one person in a certain part of their brain will not lead to the same result as poking another person in the exact same part of their brain.

Edit (Nov. 12, 2012)

I'm not saying neuroscience is a jabroni field. I'm just saying that some neuroscientists were jabronies, that's all. The field itself is very interesting and important.

There's been many many good ones over the years. An example of a good neuro scientist in history would be Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who you can read about here.




(This one was a little over-the-top this one. I was too hard on the people ... I think I just didn't like that burned toast commercial ... I think that's the main thing.

I issued a retraction to this article too: https://writingsonsubjects.blogspot.ca/2013/04/a-small-retraction-of-statement-in.html )

Canadian Election Super Power Rankings Mark II

The Incumbent Champion: Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Harp is the first Prime Minister who has ever hailed from the West and is the first Prime Minister who really gave more to the West than the East...and thusly he gets a lot of votes from the West.

Eastern Prime Minsters have messed with the West for many years. For instance, that jabroni Trudeau had a great chance with the Alberta oil sands in the early eighties when an American firm was going to come up and pay for all incurred expenses. This would have created the same job boom that occurred in the West under the Harper administration yet with a HUGE difference...all the jobs and economy boost but NONE of the expenses. To process that shitty oil from the sands has exceeded expected costs astronomically...the boom is already over out there and it was a very costly operation. Think about it though, if we got the boom, the jobs, and the work, but the Yankees covered ALL the costs and how great it would have been (not only for the West but all of Canada)....if only that little fucker Trudeau didn't pretend Canada was a glorious nation that didn't need help from anyone. Trudeau and the National Energy Program placed a ban on all foreign companies from developing oil fields in the "Crown Land." The worst thing about it is that a lot of Canadians knew this was a sure thing and put their life savings into the American firm, and when that shitty Trudeau pulled the plug at the last second he flushed the stock down to pennies in a matter of seconds and many peoples savings along with it. ("Developing Alberta's oil sands: from Karl Clark to Kyoto" By Paul Anthony Chastko is a good read on this era, specifically the "Lost Decade" portion of the book if you are interested in further reading on the matter).

Shit....cool lake bro!

I can see why Western Canada embraces Harper after having to put up with years and years of Easterners fucking with them but I don't think that gives them the right to keep this guy in office for another term. There are hundreds of sites out there devoted to his sins and failings so I don't think I need to get into them. I will bring up my favorite though which is the Fake Lake scandal which is so stupid it's funny. He wasn't thinking of the thousands of people who were going to riot in the streets but was more concerned over giving foreign press a nice backdrop (in a nation with enough lakes as is)...the press got a nice backdrop alright...cops beating kids in the streets. Haha.

Overall Score: 0/10


Michael Ignatieff

Whatchu thinkin' 'bout?

This is a fine young academic ninny and fiction writer from Harvard who thinks he has the chutzpah to be Prime. I feel he preformed the worst in the debates...just repeating his campaign ad over and over and answering softball pre-recorded questions from "concerned citizens" where he got to repeat his ad a few more times. I have the least to say about him because he is the blandest by all means (even more so than Harper).

He reminds me of class elections in school where we got to vote for one kid to be "president," I have a feeling this guy was voted as such as a youth for some reason and I bet it was on a "chocolate milk in the cafeteria" type of platform.

Overall Score: 0/10


Jackie Layton

take it RIGHT as I sign it!

The champion of the youth! Yay! All the university kids love this baldy with all their hearts. He's the "Left" guy, which means he's not "Right"...so that means he's the best. I guess.

I remember being at a David Suzuki talk at a university once and another man was on the docket that evening...a nice man named Albert Gore. The university kids went absolutely batshit buck nuts insane for Al Gore. Why?

Albert Gore is the wife of Tipper Gore (who put some rock and rollers on trial for anti-Christian activities in the eighties), and then he gained notoriety for attempting to become president of America this one time, and at some point he apparently took the initiative to invent the fucking internet. He faded into obscurity after losing the election but resurfaced years later when he felt compelled to make a slide show about pollution which not only won the hearts of some ninnies in Finland who awarded him the Nobel Piece Prize but also idealists around the world who fell in love with him.

These Gore-Groupies are the same ones who think they are saving the world by voting for Jackie Layton. Let's be serious for a minute though, okay? Jack Layton's main shtick is to further "socialize" the country, and make us pay more taxes. We pay a lot of taxes in Canada...we pay taxes on every single dollar we earn, we pay taxes on every single good or service we purchase, and then in April we pay some more taxes, and then we have some armed soldiers running around with a ticket quota taxing us for small infractions we make...and so on...and so on. Then the bureaucracy takes this money and builds fake lakes with it, or uses a few billion of it to hold an Olympiad during a worldwide depression, or pay some crooked mobsters ludicrous amounts of money to do small construction projects, or in the case of the Quebec's Caisse de dépôt in 2009...flat out lose 40 billion of it. The Canadian bureaucracy also features a cute little branch called the Senate, where super smooth rich guys who lived a sweet life or coached hockey for a few years are given large sums of tax payer money to chill out and continue being rich. This is one of the world's biggest and corrupted bureaucracies and anyone suggesting that they need more tax collectors to vacuum up more funds into this bureaucracy is 100% out of his/her mind. For those who insist that Layton is "different" should get real, a bureaucracy of this size has no chance of not being corrupt for it far too large in nature.

Overall Score: 0/10

Gilles Duceppe


For those who insist that he has no place in a federal election because he only represents a geopolitical/linguistic region of Canada must consider that Harper also represents only a small geopolitical/linguistic region of Canada as well. In fact other than Layton who has cute little idealists spread out on all 4 corners of the Nation, every guy in this election represents a balkanized geopolitical region of Canada (Duceppe = Quebec, Ignatieff = Ontario, Harper = Alberta/Saskatchewan) and thusly that argument is false. He has every right to be in this election and similarly he has every right to be as bad as the rest.


Overall Score: 0/10


Conclusion


People always get mad at me when I say I'm not gonna vote, or I'm gonna vote on the back of the ballot for someone more better, but hey...what can you do? They say vote for the lesser of all evils but what if all candidates are equally awful....then what the hell do you do? Who should you vote for?

Honestly, it's a big joke these things but at least in the American ones they got groundbreaking fun stuff going on like getting a black dude or a chick to be president. Look at these bums in Canada, why are they all white men in a nation that is one of the most mosaic in the world? Where are the black dudes, the chicks, the Native Canadians, the Chinese people, can't we get a more inclusive election going one year? Seriously, why is it only these rotten old honky-zombies who get a chance to be Prime Minister?

You wanna know how to get a better voter turnout next year? Do what the Americans did, get a pretty milfy woman who makes the men interested and the women all jealous...and run her against a charismatic black man. The Conservatives have one in stock already, that saucy little Rona Ambrose, and the Liberals can continue their act of recruiting old retired athletes and get in contact with baseball Hall of Famer and Canadian...Ferguson Jenkins. I guarantee a Jenkins vs. Ambrose election will raise voter turnout by upwards of 20 percent.

 *** Election 2012 ***
(that Rona looks like such a bad girl sometimes...)

On Human Oddities (as such)...

----------------------------------------------
Olden Times
----------------------------------------------
There are two polarized views on human oddities, one side thinking that putting these people on a pedestal for all to see is demeaning and horrible, while the other side thinks putting these people on a pedestal is simply celebrating their uniqueness and individuality.

The advanced political correctness of modern times has deemed this as demeaning and eliminated the "Freak Shows" of yesteryear for the most part. The most popular circus, Cirque de Soleil, does not even have one human oddity on its roster of performers. That brings up a very obvious counter argument right there... where do these folks work now? Most of these folks in question's handicaps make it difficult for them to find gainful employment, and unless they were born into a rich family and able to secure a large inheritence then chances are most of today's human oddities only income is through their respective government's relief programs.

I think they represent a very important cog in the human machine, I believe their personal oddities are actually the height of individuality and should indeed be celebrated. In the back of all our minds we can probably picture a world where everyone is the exactly the same and it's actually scary. A world where everyone looks the same, acts the same, walks the same, talks the same, and behaves the same. The pros of a world such as this would be many obviously, we'd get a lot more stuff done and more efficiently if we were all on the same page I guess, but wouldn't it be fantastically fucking boring though? Can a frightening society as this ever really exist? Can the great big combine harvester of human conformity really meld us into being one and the same? Or are there people who exist out there who are so different that conforming them would be a physical impossibility? Human oddities are indeed those people and they represent the burden of proof that hopefully a society of fully conformed humans will never ever be able to exist.

We've tried over and over to rid the world of these human oddities, most people are aware that Nazi Germany was big on this...they rounded up many people and had them weeded out of the human gene pool with hopes of "improving" it. Most probably don't know that every nation has had it's turn attempting to kill off these offshoots of humanity. Winston Churchill's Britain had tens of thousands of oddities and mentally handicapped individuals sterilized or lobotomized. In Canada, each province had mass sterilizations, the Alberta Eugenics Board was the most fervent in it's attempt to weed out these people (see wiki: Alberta Eugenics and google Canadian eugenics for other data).

Get away from Hans you lascivious howler you!

A great 1932 film entitled "Freaks" (available for viewing here: I mean here) made in the height of the eugenics fervor attempted to show that they were in fact humans with personalities and emotions of their own. It details the plight of a German dwarf named Hans who is in the process of being duped out of his family fortune by a beautiful acrobat, yet before she has the chance to poison poor lil' Hans and kill him, Hans' Freak brethren and sistren corner her on a stage cart and horribly mutilate her...turning her into something she reviled most...a freak herself. It should've been called "Revenge of the Freaks" or "Take that Eugenics" in my opinion, but it is a really good movie nonetheless and it has that Indian parapalegic guy in it too.

----------------------------------------------
Modern times
----------------------------------------------

One of the main reasons I love the Howard Stern show so much is their attitude towards the human oddity, they take the latter stance and celebrate these individuals and make them incredibly famous and rich. They love the individuality of oddballs, whackjobs, the criminily insane (see: Elegant Elliot Offen), and for and foremost phyisical human oddities. You've had your dwarfs over the years such as Kessler, Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf, that little shitball Eric the Midget, but one stands head and shoulder above the rest...the great Beetlejuice.

Lester "Beetajuice" Green (background peice) is a microcephalic dwarf who may be the most iconic and beloved human oddity in history and with very good reason. Microcephalic basically means that he has a very tiny misshapen skull.

They're Children!

Three microcephalic dwarf girls appear in the 1932 film "Freaks" as well, they are actually in two of the most poignant scenes of the film. In the first scene we see them, they are running around and playing and laughing and singing outside when two men happen upon them and start telling them that they are "monsters!", their teacher responds by yelling back that they are simply "children!" In the second scene the strong man of the circus is telling one of the girls that he is going to Paris on a trip and that he's going to bring her back a present, and while she's all smiles he follows up with "...yeah! a big old hat! hahahaha!" He makes you want to jump in the screen and beat the shit out of him.

They tried to stop people like this from existing for so long and fervently, yet over seventy years later there are still microcephalic dwarfs and they are living life large. I'm kind of an opponent of organized religion yet I like seeing Jewish people being Jewish because I know from reading history that a powerful group of horrible Nazis tried to kill every Jewish person just for being Jewish and thusly when you see a Jewish person proudly being Jewish it represents a testament to the determination and perseverance of the human race. Similarly, after all the sterilizations and lobotomies and attempts to weed out microcephalics from the gene pool, it is very uplifting to know that there is still at least one out there and he is living life as large as can.

Yeah...you.

Is Beetlejuice that cog mentioned before in the human machine that is impossible by any means to conform? No matter how hard any person, combinations of persons, or streamlined collective subconscious rule system tries...people like him can never be successfully conformed. Does he represent a golden ray of hope that a totally homogenized society can never truly exist?

Is Beetle the best? Yup, and he knows it too...