Go Retire Psychiatrist

Ivermectin Bill Looks Like It’s Dead-For Now

This is a quick followup on the progress of Governor Reynolds MAHA bill which included a piece endorsing making Ivermectin available over-the-counter in Iowa. I just read a story about what looks like the disappearance of the ivermectin from Reynold’s bill. The story, written by Laura Belin, comes from a webpage called Bleeding Heartland: An independent website about Iowa politics.

I don’t follow politics avidly (putting it mildly), but I think I understand a short paragraph from Ms. Belin’s article”:

“The Senate didn’t advance the governor’s bill. Instead, Senate Health and Human Services Committee chair Kara Warme introduced her own “health-related matters” bill, which got through committee and is eligible for floor debate. That legislation (Senate File 2367) incorporated the governor’s proposals on nutrition education, certificates of need for health care facilities, federal food assistance, and food dyes in schools, but left the ivermectin language on the cutting room floor.”

It looks like another anti-vaccine bill bit the dust—for now. I would cheer, but I know better. I expect somebody will resurrect it at some time in the future. I hope Dr. Austin Baeth is still around when it happens.

OK, Why is Nobody Talking About Friday the 13th Today?

Nobody but me, I guess, is talking out loud about Friday the 13^th today. I don’t remember anybody mentioning it last month when it occurred either. And it’s going to happen again this year in November. That’ll make 3 times Friday the 13th happens in a single year. And tomorrow’s Svengoolie movie is “Friday the 13^th.”

Nobody in state legislatures or the U.S. Congress is doing anything about making Friday the 13^th illegal.

There’s phobia of Friday the 13^th that everybody knows exist but that everybody (including me) always forgets, mainly because the name is very long: friggatriskaidekaphobia. There’s an alternate name: paraskevidekatriaphobia. Frigga is the name of the Norse god for Friday and if you’re partial to Greek, Paraskevi is the god’s name. The rest of the name means fear of the number 13.

I don’t remember anything unlucky about February 13th last month. In fact, I didn’t even think about it until well after the day passed.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed today.

Rash of Bigfoot Sightings in Ohio, So What About Iowa?

Actually, I should refer to the multiple sightings of Bigfoot as a flap. That’s proper terminology. The news story shows a video with the cryptid on it although I think it looks more like somebody smeared a chocolate bar on the camera lens.

There’s an organization called Bigfoot Society that is tracking the story. The Bigfoot Society Podcast by Jeremiah Byron of Earlham, Iowa posts weekly about Sasquatch sightings and lore. Here’s one about Iowa. There are a lot of ads periodically, so be patient.

There’s one thing I couldn’t find on the web and that’s the Iowa Bigfoot Information Center. There was a guy named Kevin Cook who was the head of it, but that was back in the late 1970s, which supposedly is when there were a lot of Bigfoot sightings. I found a really short article from September 24, 1978 published in the Des Moines Register about him.

I did a little digging and Kevin Cook partnered with another Bigfoot researcher named Clifford Labrecque to start the Iowa Bigfoot Information Center. Jeremiah Byron’s full YouTube presentation is sponsored by the Bigfoot Society Podcast and, unfortunately is available to members only. But there is a short teaser.

In the teaser, Byron interviews Kevin Cook and, although I can’t tell exactly how recent it is, I believe it was done shortly after Labrecque passed in 2021. The discussion mentions a prominent scientist, Dr. Jeff Meldrum, who has been interviewed on TV about Bigfoot. Unfortunately, he also passed in September of 2025. He was a full professor of Anatomy and Anthropology in the Dept of Biological Sciences at Idaho State University. He was a guest on some popular TV shows about Bigfoot (one of them misidentified him as being on faculty at Iowa State University). People are always getting Iowa mixed up with either Idaho or Ohio.

I’m reminded also of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), which keeps records of Bigfoot sighting around the country and they also sponsor annual Bigfoot hunts in Iowa. They had one last year, but I couldn’t find out how that went. There’s 2026 Iowa BFRO Expedition, which starts next month, April 30-May 3. Details are available below the announcement. Guns and dogs are not allowed.

Sena and I have done our own Bigfoot expeditions and one of them is below. No need to thank us; it’s our pleasure to contribute to the scientific endeavor.

CDC ACIP Meeting Scheduled for March 18, 19 2026

It’s been a while since the last CDC ACIP meeting. It’s scheduled for March 18, 2026, 8 AM to 5 PM EST and March 19, 2026, 8 AM to 5 PM EST, according the notice on the Federal Register.

There are over 1500 comments and the one I thought was the best was by the Vaccinate Your Family (VFY) organization, which you can read on their website.

According to the notice: “The agenda will include updates on ACIP Workgroups and discussions on COVID-19 vaccine injuries and Long-COVID and ACIP recommendation methodology. Recommendation votes may be scheduled for COVID-19 vaccine injuries and Long-COVID and ACIP recommendation methodology. Agenda items are subject to change as priorities dictate. For more information on the meeting agenda, visit https://www.cdc.gov/acip/meetings/index.html.

Meeting Information: The meeting will be webcast live via the World Wide Web.”

Thoughts on House Finches

This morning, I got a snapshot of a male house finch sitting on the back porch fence post. He’s a proud looking fellow. I saw the female a minute earlier but could not catch a picture of her.

It’s spring; they’re probably a mating pair and we saw them last year. So, there will soon be eggs somewhere out in the woods past our back yard. There will probably be chicks soon.

Maybe the chicks will survive. I remember during the month of May in 2019, I was keeping watch on a nest of house finches just outside of my office window. I would go out every day to a skinny little juniper tree, part the branches, and snap pictures of the eggs and later, the squirming hatchlings.

One day, I heard a noise like the flapping of big sheets outside my window. When I finally looked out, I saw the biggest crow I’d ever seen, just taking off with all of the nestlings clenched in its beak.

The mother house finch arrived minutes later and searched frantically for her chicks for over half an hour.

It wasn’t until then that I learned I was at fault for exposing the hiding place of the nest in the tree. I went there daily and spread the branches, probably while the crow watched me from high above in the sky.

I thought I learned my lesson, but I didn’t. In May of 2024, a mating pair of house finches built a nest in our artificial Christmas tree right on our front porch, a step away from the front door. The ruddy male would feed the female, who had laid 4 eggs.

I set up a critter cam on a tripod and filmed them for days. Every time I hustled out there to get the camera to download the videos, I scared the birds off. We watched for 17 days. The typical time to hatching is about 14 days. I finally tossed the whole thing out in the back yard.

There are a red tail hawks, turkey vultures, and crows all over the sky. I hope the house finches know better than to build a nest in any of the big pots on our porch. I know better than to draw attention to them now.

Upcoming Sven Squad Movie “Friday the 13th”

The upcoming movie with the Svengoolie Sven Squad this Saturday the 14^th comes a day late. It’s the very first “Friday the 13^th.” I’ve never seen it, but I think I’ve seen a couple of the 35 sequels. I always have to stop and think about how to distinguish the 1978 slasher “Halloween” from the 1981 slasher “Friday the 13^th,” which I think I saw.

I can’t, but that’s OK because I’ve been too busy trying to figure out why the name of the star of the first Friday the 13^thfilm sounds familiar to me. You’ll be thrilled to know that I finally remembered it’s Betsy Palmer from the old 1960’s TV show “I’ve Got a Secret.”

I think she wanted this movie to be a secret until it started making some real money.

Anyway, the movie starts with some guy in a hockey mask slashing various people who then hire a guy in a fancier mask to slash the first guy so they can go back to having casual you-know-what-kind of relations and shoplifting candy cigarettes from K-Mart, which by the way used to be Kresge’s which I am old enough to remember although I never shoplifted anything I swear. What happens next is that Slasher 1 and Slasher 2 meet on the street at high noon and threw samurai swords at each other, often missing and breaking Kresge’s windows until this wakes up Chuck Norris who is pretty annoyed and roundhouse kicks both Slashers into Saturn’s orbit although they manage to hitch a ride on one of those newfangled UFOs which resemble orbs, the extraterrestrial pilots of which hit the warp drive and shoot through a wormhole portal sending them backwards in time to 1977 and boy does that ever mess with the gyroscopes and scorch the spark plugs making it necessary to jettison a load of poorly mixed nuclear grade molten metals into a field in Council Bluffs, Iowa which for some reason did not lead to that fine community becoming a major tourist attraction, so…well, the film probably doesn’t go exactly that way but then I’ve never seen it so it doesn’t hurt to speculate a little bit.

Svengoolie Show Movie: “Son of Frankenstein”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

Last night I thought I was going to see the movie “Son of Frankenstein” again because I saw it a year and a half ago.

In fact, while watching it I thought I either fell asleep during most of it the first time or it was a different movie. Because Svengoolie mentioned that it was a longer version of the film, I’m pretty sure it was the latter.

I didn’t write a review of it in 2024 and I also mentioned that I hadn’t read the Mary Shelley’s novel. “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.” So, today I actually read the Gutenberg Project version of it (OK, I don’t know if it’s the 1818 or the 1831 edition and this was not required reading in my college literature class), which was devilishly difficult to read because of the page setup.

Despite the archaic diction, I thought it was a great book and it confirmed my thought about one of the major themes in it—revenge.

I think one of the most interesting things about Shelley’s book is the connection to Prometheus. So, Dr. Jenny Lind Porter taught my English Literature class at Huston-Tillotson College (now H-T University) in Austin, Texas and she assigned the paperback edition of “Mythology” by Edith Hamilton back in the mid-1970s. The original copyright year was 1942, renewed in 1969.

One of the interesting stories about Prometheus is that he cooked up a fake steak dinner for Zeus by tricking it out with a lot of fat, bone, and gristle and gave fire to men so they could barbecue the best cuts so Zeus took revenge on Prometheus by tying him to a rock where a huge eagle snacked on his liver every day which regenerated making the torment a regular thing. Prometheus also cautions against the threat of unrestrained scientific progress and hubris (overweening pride).

Anyway, “Son of Frankenstein” is a 1939 Universal Films movie starring Basil Rathbone (Baron Wolf von Frankenstein), Josephine Hutchinson (Elsa von Frankenstein), Donnie Dunagan (Peter von Frankenstein), Boris Karloff (the monster), Bela Lugosi (Ygor), and Lionel Atwill (Inspector Krogh).

The theme of revenge is strong in “Son of Frankenstein.” Ygor takes revenge on the two living council members who hanged him after the elder Frankenstein first let the monster loose. Lugosi is both creepy and funny at times. I think the makeup job on his neck made him look like he has a chicken bone caught in his throat when viewed in profile.

I was pretty impressed by Frankenstein’s gradual transformation from a gentle husband and father to a high-strung, sarcastic, and extremely irritable and driven mad scientist.

The dart game between Inspector Krogh and Frankenstein are almost surreal, occurring at a time when the mood is very tense when the action going on elsewhere in the castle is dire enough to demand their attention to something else other than playing darts. I got the sense Frankenstein threw darts because it’s cheaper than therapy.

The monster’s behavior varied from being a dumb randomly violent beast to a calculating criminal methodically setting up one of his brutal murder scenes to make it look like an accident.

I think this movie is pretty good and I give it a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 4/5.

Iowa Flags at Half Staff in Honor of Two Iowa Soldiers Killed in Kuwait

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has ordered all Iowa flags to be flown at half-staff until the final day of interment in honor of two Iowa soldiers killed in Kuwait: Major Jeffery O’Brien, 45, of Waukee, Iowa and Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa.

Michaud Toys in Canada Clears Tariffs

Remember that issue with Michaud Toys in Ontario, Canada four months ago about their charging a stiff tariff and an extra shipping charge on cribbage boards?

The tariffs and extra charges were dropped. I just checked today. I’ve been looking occasionally to see whether or not they were still on. Michaud was charging a 35% tariff and a 25% UPS brokerage fee—and then they just stopped shipping to the U.S. altogether.

It was disappointing because we were interested in the jumbo Cribbage Rumble board, which is essentially the same as Cribbage Wars although it’s designed differently so that it fits on a regular large cribbage board instead of a rectangular one, like the one we bought from Ebonwood. Michaud called it Cribbage Wars until about a year ago when they changed the name to Cribbage Rumble.

So, because the first jumbo cribbage board we bought from them 6 years ago is starting to show a little wear (especially since our last move), we ordered the newer model as well as Cribbage Rumble.

Michaud Toys got started in 1984 (there’s a little history on their website) and we’re pleased with their workmanship. They’re in Jarvis, Ontario, Canada, which is only an hour and a half drive from Niagara Falls—not that we ever drove there.

I don’t know how to pronounce Michaud. Phonetic guidance on the web gives different answers: mih-SHOW (French), MIH-shoo (anglicized), Mish-awd, Meh-shood, and JONES.