A Wrinkle In The System

Wow. This is pretty sad. In the U.S., if you have a suspicious mole you’d like looked at by a dermatologist, you’ll have to wait 3-4 weeks, but if you want Botox, you’ll get in right away. In Canada, it wasn’t clear how quickly you’d get in for Botox, but one thing was clear. If you had a suspicious mole you wanted looked at, expect to wait 6 weeks. but over 100000 people managed to get injected with Botox in 2005. It’s not looking good.

With skin cancer being one of the most dangerous cancers, it’s a pretty sad statement that investigating potential cancer gets pushed back in line behind oliminating wrinkles for the vane and rich among us. I wonder how the vane and rich would feel about losing all their hair and looking very dead.

Left-Brain? Right-Brain? Ah It Doesn’t Matter, I Get By With No Brain

Here’s a helpful tip for ya. If you need neurosurgery, don’t go to Rhode Island to get it done. They have one of the highest occurrences of doctors opening the wrong side of a patient’s head. The latest cocky brain surgeon thought he’d rely on his memory instead of a CT scan, opened the wrong side, closed it up, opened the side he was supposed to, fixed the problem, and the 86-year-old patient died, and they don’t know whether opening the other side of his skull contributed to his death. Anybody wanna take bets?

My Criminal Mind Is All I…Need to Get Locked Up Forever.

I really don’t know how to feel about this story. I’m completely conflicted. Michael Monyelle, 30, is being labeled as a sex predator, which means indefinite commitment. This is not for things he did, but for thoughts he has.

I get that they were deviant thoughts, and it was to do with children, so in that case I agree. But like his lawyer said, it’s going to make pedophiles and the like less likely to tell their probation officers about thoughts they’re having, so that may make them more likely to reoffend because they’re perhaps not getting counselling for the thoughts they’re having, or the probation officers may not have any warning that creepy Bill is thinking bad things about little Suzy before it’s too late, and creepy Bill would have struck again.

I guess, if they keep this ability to lock someone up for thoughts they have to child sex offenses, I can live with it, but I’m afraid it will spread to other crimes. What if someone was thinking about robbing a bank and told someone that. Would the police go grab him? Isn’t that a bit of a slippery slope?

It’s My Service Chihuahua! Really!

Ok, this pisses me off. In the states, the ADA has made it really easy for douchebags to bring their precious little pet fido wherever they please, and more and more douchebags are doing just that.

Why has it made it easy? The law states that a merchant cannot under any circumstances ask what tasks the dog performs for the handler because it might make the handler uncomfortable. Here’s a news flash, mr. uncomfortable handler. If you’re going to get a dog, when you come home, you’re going to have to deal with questions. That’s the nature of the beast, and the nature of having a beast, I guess. Even I get asked what exactly Trixie does for me, and it should be pretty obvious why I have her. If you have a psychiatric dog, you’re really going to be asked why you have a dog because there is no obvious physical reason why you have a dog with you. It sucks, but that’s just what you’re going to have to deal with. I hate to be so harsh, but if you don’t want extra attention, maybe you should have thought about that before you got a dog, because having a dog with you is going to bring it, and bring it bigtime!

The law also states that venders of vests and patches that say service dog, or issuers of assistance dog tags cannot ask the person to prove that this is a service dog. Why the hell not? Would you give out ID cards without making sure the person is who they say they are? My question is why are third party companies selling these things? If you get a dog from a school, you’ll have stuff the school gives you to identify the dog’s working status. I guess, if you can train a dog yourself, you need something to signify that the dog is working, but I think some kind of body should be set up to issue these things, not just some store.

So now, Joe Shmo who thinks it would be nice to bring Sparky with him everywhere he goes can get tags, vests, and patches and falsely claim that his dog is a service animal. Then, when it misbehaves, people wonder why these animals are given special privileges, and it hurts the ones who really need the dogs. Here’s another good one. In California, it is a crime to falsely claim your dog is a service animal. Great, but how does anyone enforce this? If no one can ask any questions, how do they figure it out?

I have no problem answering questions if a business owner asks me what my dog does. Why? I have proof that she is a service animal. I have an ID card from the school. I have a card from the Attorney General. I have a tag from the school. I can prove that she is trained. But all of this might not be worth anything if anyone can go out and get fake proof that their dog is a working dog.

Here’s another message for the Joe Shmo’s who want to bring their pet dog with them everywhere they go just for the hell of it. If your dog, or my guide dog, or anyone’s dog is unclean, puts others at risk, or is aggressive, the business owner can ask the dog to leave. So just because your dog got in under false pretenses doesn’t mean he gets to stay. Ug why do people want to take advantage of anything they can?

OU…CH!!!!

Every time I think about this story, I shiver, and I don’t even have balls. Here’s the short version. If you’re going to Oklahoma, don’t wander into a bar wearing a Texas University shirt, or, or…! Shivers again! You might leave in a lot of pain. At least that’s what happened to Brian Thomas.

After enduring a lot of verbal abuse from another guy in the bar, Allen Michael Beckett, he went to leave, and Beckett grabbed his crotch and wouldn’t let go until…there are those shivers again! Thomas heard his scrotum tear and felt blood run down his leg! Convulsive shivers! Now there’s…what exactly? An insane fan? A lot of pain? All of the above? Ug. I don’t know what else to say. I could talk about the more than 60 stitches that Thomas needed to…how did they put it…close the wound? Or maybe there’s the constant pain that Thomas says he’s in ever since. Um, no shit! Damn it, those shivers won’t stop!

Duck Hunt!

Wow! Who knew what I’m about to describe would be so cool? Remember Super Nintendo? Remember the gun? Remember Duck Hunt? No? Damn I feel old! Well, if you do, and you’re blind, you can play Duck Hunt again, only this time it’s on your computer!

Liam over at L-Works has created the computer game Duck Hunt. He grabbed all the sounds from the original game, complete with the dog who laughs at you when you miss a duck, the little bastard. I don’t know what’s so entertaining about that noise the duck makes when it falls down, but man, it’s satisfying. Every time I play this, I feel like I’m a kid again. I’m half waiting for my friend to ask me if I’m done playing yet, and wondering where the gun went.

Look Out Everyone, Now I’m Seeing A Red Mist!

I can’t speak. I’m too angry. In England, apparently, if you have “good character,” you can go ahead and clobber your wife without fear of going to jail. You can just compensate her with a few bucks because apparently the damage to your reputation is punishment enough. This guy said a red mist descended over him and that’s why he started beating on her as she lay in bed, then dragged her from bed, threw her to the floor, punched her 24 times and then fled the scene leaving her to crawl to a phone to call for help. And this is an acceptable excuse and makes it all better?

And it gets even worse. There have been other lenient judgments lately when it comes to domestic violence. Another man branded his wife with an iron because he didn’t like the way she ironed his shirts. Then maybe you should iron them yourself, asshole. He also slashed her because she forgot his lunch. And this guy got a fine and no jail time because of lack of a previous record. I don’t give a flying fuck if he served soup to the homeless for 20 years. AS soon as he started branding and slashing people, his record goes out the window and he goes to jail! No questions, no maybe’s, he goes to jail!

Are we going back in time? Do women not matter anymore? I’m starting to wonder if these judges beat their wives, and that’s why they see these crimes as not such a big deal.

Help Me Understand This One

This doesn’t make any sense. Not one bit. Apparently, a 72-year-old man was assisted off a plane in a wheelchair, and then just left by the curb for 3 days. And it wasn’t just any curb, it was a curb where people come to get cabs, etc.

Ok, I can see where someone could get forgotten by busy staff. Hell, it happens to me all the time on buses, trains, anywhere where I say I need a little help finding a destination and they get distracted. But that’s when you get someone else’s attention. You don’t just sit there whistling a happy tune, thinking dumb-dee-dumb-dee-dumb, they’ll come for me. You get the idea that they’ve forgotten, and you stand up, wave, catch someone’s attention, anything.

Even if this guy couldn’t yell for help or signal for help, which would be pretty unlikely, wouldn’t cabbies, airport personell, somebody, notice he’d been sitting there an awfully long time? He’d start to look like a fixture of the landscape, except this one had soiled himself.

Now the family is saying he suffered a stroke because of his time in the sun, or something to that effect, and the airport staff are as confused as I am. Hopefully someone can make this make sense somehow.

As Long As You Don’t Teach Them To Kill, We’re Cool.

I always thought that teachers were supposed to be role-models. Even outside the classroom, their behaviour was somewhat scrutinized. But according to a court in Montreal, this is no longer the case. Apparently, a teacher can be a convicted killer since that has nothing to do with the subject he’s teaching, which in this case was electronics. So, he cannot be fired when they find this little tidbit that he did not disclose, and he must be rehired.

I know this teacher was teaching adult students, but it still seems odd that a court is forcing the board to bring this guy back. Will this extend to teachers of kids? Whatever happened to police checks? And when was murder something that entered into a lesson plan anyway? Well, there was that case of that teacher who got his drafting class to write an essay on who they would kill and why, but that was a weird story. In any case, isn’t it a comforting thought that convicted killers can teach now?