MAID Service

DON’T CUT ME OFF!

1Jaded1 recently asked about local views, and my opinion and views, on medically assisted suicide.  There’s very little mention, or pushback, here.  After all, we’re safe, sane Canada, not the Bible-thumping Southern Excited States.  Do whatever you please, just don’t scare the horses.

The issue does exist here.  Locally, it’s been given the cutesy acronym MAID – Medical Assistance In Dying.  I don’t know how far that label extends.  The very day she asked this question, an Op-Ed letter demanded that “death with dignity” access should be legally guaranteed, as a right.

I stand foursquare behind that.  I believe in the maximum of personal freedom.  I don’t feel that my bodily autonomy, or anyone else’s, should be violated by some do-gooder’s trumped-up morals.

HOWEVER!!!….

Be (VERY) careful what you wish for.  I can appreciate some people’s worry about the thin edge of the wedge, or the slippery slope.  Two days later, another Op-Ed letter arrived.  17 years ago, a man’s family and doctor fought him tooth and nail, to prevent him from accessing MAID.  With medication and psychotherapy, he is now a reasonably-functional citizen.  He was never promised that he would recover, but he now has hope.  He admits that he really didn’t want to die, he just didn’t want to live his nightmare any longer.

I am all for informed personal consent, but to ensure that cases like this do not occur, is going to require some administrative oversight. – a three-doctor panel?  This is where the bigots and the bureaucrats get their hooks in, and have a field day ruining running other people’s lives – as they see fit.

The same applies for gender-reassignment therapy.  INFORMED personal consent is paramount.  If little 8-year-old Billy wants to grow his hair down to his shoulders, and wear hair-bows, nylon panties and dresses, and call himherself Suzie – let IT!  Even non-bigot observers are rightly concerned when WOKE parents are authorizing treatments for pre-pubescent children.  You’re not even supposed to get a tattoo until you reach the age of majority – the age of informed personal consent!

Let Billy/Suzie live with the public fallout of the temporary decision for a while.  If he/she/it/they are still determined to go ahead, we can be reasonably assured that the choice is valid and duly considered.  Both these decisions have offices on a one-way street.  Once you start down it, there’s no turning back.  Considerable contemplation should be displayed, before a doctor is authorized to prescribe an overdose amount of Nembutal or Propofol, or before they lop Billy’s wiener off, and start pumping hormones in.

Pragmatically, especially on the suicide issue, I say go ahead – unless they’re directly related to me.  Earth’s population is now over 8 BILLION!  The overcrowded rats are beginning to nip at each other.  I can see you, Vladimir Putin.  I fear that a drastic reduction in population is going to occur anyway.  I can see you, COVID19, and all your mutant cousins.  A bunch of suicides might help reduce the social pressure by eliminating the emotionally inadaptable from the gene pool.

A lad from Montreal committed suicide on his 16^th birthday.  On the next anniversary, his distraught mother also committed suicide.  On the third anniversary, his bereaved father also committed suicide.  I don’t wish to appear hard or uncaring (Oh, go ahead) but, apart from cleaning up the mess, and the confusion and sadness of friends and relatives – perhaps we are all better off without their contagious weakness.

A representative of the Council of Canadian Academies wants all levels of government to do something about the profusion of scientific misinformation which has caused many preventable COVID deaths.  In addition to regulating social media platforms and private messaging apps, Ottawa needs to support the production and distribution of science-based, factual information.  Science communication is facing an uphill battle.

This is one of the things that most irks me most about some Christian Apologetics debaters.  They ask, “Even if Atheists could prove that there’s no God, (That’s not our job – or our aim!) what’s wrong with believing something that’s false?”  Because it can get you killed!!  Worse yet, you can take your family, your neighbors, your friends, and even ME along with you.  I see you, Jim Jones, and David Koresh.

That’s when and why I begin to care – deeply, strongly!  In the movie, Spy Game, Robert Redford played an old agent, training a new agent.  At one point he advises, “If it comes down to between you and him – Send flowers.”  I’m sorry that you are so dumb and gullible that you will believe internet/religious conspiracy theories.  Please accept this lovely bouquet of Chrysanthemums.  We’re all probably better off without you.”

Despite those who see only in black and white, there is no perfect world, and there is no one-size-fits-all, perfect answer to either of these problems.  We’ll just have to live (or die) with imperfect humans – and keep your nose out of other people’s business, lest someone use it as an exclamation point.  😳

Substitute Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 said thanks to Marla for providing our words last week.

What do you think these are/mean?

1. Bumfuzzle

It’s a great word to describe some of the more inept police officers.  The type who drops his doughnut in the car park, and then drives off with his paper cup of coffee on the roof.

2.  Gardyloo

With two Scottie dogs, and two cats, we have to latch the WC door during periods of constipation contemplation.  It’s difficult to concentrate on the business at hind, with two pair of beady eyes staring at you, or trying to Stand and Deliver with a cat stropping your ankles.

3.  Taradiddle

When I should have been doing research to find the meaning of this word, I was busy not cutting down the cherry tree, and I was attacked by a purple Koala with a kumquat.

4.  Snickersnee

This is the new roller-coaster ride at the Brighton Beach amusement park.  After a huge loop-the-loop, you go through a dark, tunnel section where they spray you with nitrous oxide – laughing gas.  You come out scared shitless spitless, but giggling your face off.

5.  Bumbershoot

That’s a good feed of albino asparagus – with cheese sauce.

6.  Snollygoster

Luckily, it was a type of extinct (If you’ll excuse the expression) flower.  Historical records indicate that its aroma was enough to make a corpse plant pull up roots and leave the neighbourhood.  The last example was crushed by a charging hippo in Mali, in 1874, and the only people who miss it are etymologists.

7.  Brouhaha

That’s when you think that you’re absolutely hilarious after a dozen beers, but no-one else does.  It’s not wry wit – more like rye wit.

8.  Wabbit

I was researching Scottish dialect, to try to get some inspiration for this word, but I just got so tired.  I was absolutely exhausted, so I lay down for a little nap, and by the time I woke, it was time to publish.

9.  Pandiculation

The batteries in my hearing aids went dead, but I think they’re talking about a Heinz catsup/ketchup commercial from the ‘70s.

10. Borborygm

Borborygm was the tribe of natives in Mali where that last snollygoster was found.  They were a strange people, dressing in feathers and flowers, with lots of strange makeup.  Elton John is said to have purchased the rights to their story.

I Am Crabby

What better treat to sweeten up a Grumpy Old Dude like me, than some lovely Crab-Apple jelly?

As an occasional treat, on nights that I post a blog, I have come to like a couple of Costco croissants, warmed in the toaster-oven, with crab-apple jelly and a mug of hot chocolate.

Several times in the course of our marriage, I have helped the wife make a batch of crab-apple jelly.  She initiates it, organises it, and gives directions, while I do most of the donkey-work, since I am so admirably qualified.  With a little luck, and some greed, I often get all or most of a batch.  It’s okay.  The wife prefers strawberry or red currant.  With some self-control and rationing, a batch lasts me several years

Crab-apple jelly is almost impossible to find in a grocery store, and when you do, it’s three or four times as expensive, because of shortage of crab-apples, and extra labor.  Near where the daughter once lived was a Mennonite church.  On the boulevard of the side street, they had planted four crab-apple trees.  At harvest time I just went over and picked enough.  A couple of years later I returned, to find that the city had widened the street, and destroyed the trees.

The home the daughter moved to, backs onto a community trail.  A block away, one house whose property also edged the trail, didn’t have a back fence – but they did have a crab-apple tree.  The owner graciously allowed me to harvest all I wanted – because then, he didn’t have to pick them all up.  A couple of years later I returned…. to find that the Region had widened and paved the trail, and removed the tree.

An occasional Mennonite at the Farmers’ Market MIGHT have a few six-quart baskets of crab-apples, if you get there at the right time, (I only had four baskets, and I sold the last one an hour ago.) but I might as well be paying for black truffles.  Two women offer jams and jellies of many flavors.  The wife bought a jar of red currant – which included some of the little twigs that the currants grow on.  I passed on their apple jelly.

Another man also offered a wide variety, including crab-apple jelly – at a merely outrageous price.  Real crab-apple jelly should be so clear, that you could read a newspaper through its red/gold beauty.  This stuff was more apple sludge, full of unfiltered apple fiber.

This is the cost of old age – having to live in the big city, close to all the medical support.  I’ll bet if I lived in my small home-town, I’d know someone with a crab-apple tree or two.  How about you??  Do you have a particular treat that you like?  Is it readily available?

***

Chapter 2

Almost 20 years ago, when we first moved in, at the back of my property were a spruce tree, and a lilac bush, for added privacy and noise attenuation.  Back then they were barely as tall as the six-foot sound-berm.  Now they both tower 15/20 feet.

This summer, I was mowing the lawn, and stopped to catch my breath and look at the lilac…. and I lost my breath again.  There were crab-apples growing on my lilac.  WTF!!  Close inspection (the lawn can wait) showed that two of the lilac’s trunks (?) were actually a crab-apple tree.  This is the first year that it has produced fruit, so I’d never previously noticed that the two were intertwined.

How did it get there??  A squirrel burying an apple??  Some idiot in the neighborhood puts out peanuts for them.  We find peanuts buried in our planters and flower beds – along with dead flowers from the digging.

I’ll be discussing Theology with Saint Peter before this tree matures.  There are only half a dozen bunches of apples this year.  I couldn’t get six quarts/liters.  I will do well to get six cups this fall, but the wife says that she/we can make a mini-batch of one or two jars for me.  I’ll still be grumpy – just better fed.  😀  😎

Flash Fiction #182

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

A THORNY PROBLEM

Sure I know what day it is. It’s Thursday.

What else??…. Well, it’s the 14^th.

Annnd…. What? Valentine’s Day??! Damn! How can it be Valentine’s Day already? I just paid off the Christmas bills.

A Rose by any other name, is going to be a little prickly, if I don’t get her something. I’ll bet the chocolates and flowers are all sold out by the time I get off work. What to do??

Wait! That pretentious boutique in the mall has glass roses. A half dozen of them aren’t much more expensive than six real ones.

“Love ya, Honeybun!”

(Saved!)

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #136

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

CONDEMNED MAN’S HEARTY MEAL

Come on! Give it a try.  You said you agreed that we eat too much artery-clogging meat, and were willing to give a healthy vegan lifestyle a try.

Yeah, but when I agreed to that, I envisioned potatoes and beans, perhaps broccoli and cauliflower – possibly lots of salads, with iceberg or romaine lettuce, radishes, cucumber and green onions – even ovo-lacto, with chopped, boiled eggs and bits of old cheddar cheese. I never imagined eating flowers.  What kind of dressing do you put on them – Kim Kardashian’s perfume??

I can’t wait to put this meal on Instagram. No-one will believe it.  🙄

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #124

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

THERE’S MANY A SLIP

It wasn’t much of a fall, almost artistic, like a failed ballet step.  One little icy sidewalk patch – and suddenly he was down on his ass, examining it close-up.  He even got an ambulance ride to the hospital – and a $75 invoice.  A taxi would have been cheaper.

Tests, tests, and more tests! X-rays, CAT-scan, MRI….he almost glowed from all the radiation.  A couple of days recovery, and he would be allowed to hobble home.

He hadn’t thought his brother would even bother to visit. Someone needed to teach him flower protocol.  Lilies are not appropriate for a bad sprain.

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

 

Smitty’s Loose Change #2

NEWSPAPER HEADLINE

Caller to distress line gets recorded message

SUB-CAPTION

‘It’s fortunate I wasn’t in crisis’

Then why in Hell were you calling the distress line? To find the time of the next bus??!  When I saw the headline, I thought it referred to the 911 line.  When I read it, it turned out to be a suicide prevention hotline, and I cut a little bit of slack.

Still, like idiots who overload the 911 line with complaints that McDonalds didn’t put onions on their Big Mac, if you call a suicide hotline when you’re NOT in crisis, somebody with a bottle of pills, or a car running in the garage can’t get through, and gets the recorded message that you complained of.

***

RECENTLY-READ BLOG-POST OPENING

“If Batmans parents are died how can he be here? The writers didn’t think this threw.” With a picture of Superman, that he’d captioned, “I got to get out off this planet.” (signed) Capt. Darkfeir

Well, if Superman’s going, I’m going with him. I know that this is probably a gamer-boy, still living in his mom’s basement, but, if we’ve got people so lazy and dumb that they can’t/won’t read the back-story to a comic book, society is doomed.

It didn’t occur to him that Bruce Wayne was already 10, when he witnessed his parents’ murder, but he believes himself so smart that he’s spotted a contradiction that no-one else has noticed for 80 years.

I almost left the planet when I saw his ‘parents are died’ construction, and ‘threw’ for ‘through’ usage.  The Superman caption needs some work, although maybe he wants to be Capt. Darkfeir, instead of ‘fire.’

***

A local man is a powerful bicycling proponent. He rides his bike everywhere in the city.  Recently, his 18-year-old daughter was on her way to school.  She rode her bike without a helmet, on the wrong side of the road, and failed to stop at an intersection.  She was struck and killed by a turning car.  Now he is demanding that some level of government ‘train all young cyclists in bike safety.’

Another man took his 3-, and 5-year-old sons into a busy Tim Horton’s Coffee Shop and ordered a tea. The clerk placed it on the counter in front of him.  Too distracted to pay attention to either his tea or his kids, the tea somehow got knocked over onto the 3-year-old, severely scalding him.  Now he’s whining about, “Why did Tim’s make the tea so hot?”  After that dumb bitch cooked her crotch some years ago, see warning on all cups, “Caution! Contents may be hot.”

When, oh when, will asshats like Bicycle Bob, and Koffee-Shop Klutz, take responsibility for their actions and offspring, and not try to palm it off onto government or business?

***

Last year I mentioned that there was about a 200 square foot portion of my back yard where the grass had been supplanted by millet, from seeds that birds had spilled from a feeder. The above photo shows what that section of lawn(?) looked like, just before the first mowing this spring.

***

That’s all the random rants for the moment. We now return to my regularly organized confusion.  😉

 

Flash Fiction #89

PHOTO PROMPT – © Ted Strutz

I DON’T GIVE A SHIT

Danny’s bunch of guys were a good crew. Many of them had been with him since he started his own little construction/renovation company.

With a little ingenuity, a discarded toilet, and an old trailer, he provided a Porta-Potty for the men at work sites. He had it emptied every week, and definitely before he parked it in his driveway between contracts.  Still….his wife complained of the odor.  “If you don’t correct the problem, I’ll do something to make it smell nicer.”

And so, he came out to find this.

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Flash Fiction #84

PHOTO PROMPT © The Reclining Gentleman

BEAUTY BLOSSOMING

In Great-Grampapa Bollini’s village in Italy, everyone grew much of their own food. In the mountain passes north of Milan, every available square metre was treasured and planted with vegetables and fruit.

When he came to America, he declared, “Food is for the belly, but the soul needs feeding too.” He manages to grow grapes, as well as zucchini and beans, but beside the driveway out front, his daffodils trumpet the coming of spring, and urge the tulips to rise from the warming ground and spread their beauty for his eyes and ours.

Our souls rejoice when we visit him.

***

Got to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

Show Me The Money

A student’s request for extra money

A student called up his Mom one evening from his college and asked her for some money, because he was broke.

His Mother said, “Sure, sweetie. I will send you some money. You also left your economics book here when you visited two weeks ago. Do you want me to send that up too?”

“Uhh, oh yeah, O.K.” responded the kid.

So his Mom wrapped the book along with the checks up in a package, kissed Dad goodbye, and went to the post office to mail the money and the book.

When she gets back, Dad asked, “Well how much did you give the boy this time?”

“Oh, I wrote two checks, one for $20, and the other for $1,000.”

“That’s $1020!!!” yelled Dad, “Are you going crazy???”

“Don’t worry hon,” Mom said, kissed Dad on the on top of his bald head, “I taped the $20 check to the cover of his book, but I put the $1,000 one somewhere among the pages in chapter 15!”

***

Who is the Winner?

The father of five children had won a toy at a raffle. He called his kids together to ask which one should have the present. “Who is the most obedient?” he asked. “Who never talks back to mother? and “Who does everything mother says?”
Five small voices replied in unison. “Okay daddy! You get the toy.”

***

The Joy Ride

Bob was 16 and finally got hold of his driver’s license. In order to celebrate the special day, the whole family went out to the driveway and climbed into the car to enjoy his first official drive. However, dad went to the back seat, where he sat right behind his boy.

When Bob saw his dad he said “Dad, you must be fed up of the front seat after teaching me how to drive all these days Right?”

“Nope!” came the quick reply from the dad. “I’m going to sit back here and kick the back of your seat while you drive, just like you’ve been doing to me for the last sixteen years!”

***

Magic Penny

After putting their three-year-old child Brian in bed, his parents heard muffled sobs coming from his room one night. Rushing back in, they found that the child was crying hysterically when he saw them. He told his parents that he had accidentally swallowed a penny and was sure that he would die now. The father, in an attempt to sober him down, took out a penny from his pocket and pretended to pull it out from Brian’s ear. The child was really thrilled and stopped crying at once.

In a flash, he snatched the penny from his dad’s hand, swallowed it, and then cheerfully demanded, “Do it again, Dad!”

***

CLINIC’S NAME

Two elderly couples, (I’m not saying that one of them wasn’t The Archon and Mrs G.O.D.) were enjoying friendly conversation, when one of the men asked the other, “Fred, how was that memory clinic you went to last month?”

“Outstanding!” Fred replied. “They taught us all the latest psychological techniques – visualization, association – it made a big difference for me.”

“That’s great. What was the name of the clinic?”

Fred went blank. He thought and thought, but couldn’t remember.  Then a smile broke across his face, and he asked, “What do you call that red flower with the long stem and thorns?”

“You mean a rose?”

“Yeah, that’s it!” He turned to his wife and said….”Rose, what was the name of that clinic???”

***

BTW!
This is the second time I’ve used this picture of American money, but the first time I’ve noticed that the photo includes a $2 bill in the lower left.  The featured President is Thomas Jefferson.