Iowa Legislature Offering Cheese and Crackers on the Bill of Fare

I heard a song entitled “Cheese and Crackers” on the Big Mo Blues Show last night. I’ve heard a few times over the years, but I never looked up what it meant until today.

The song was originally written by a rockabilly singer named Hayden Thompson, although I’ve only heard it sung by blues artist Roscoe Gordon. According to a Reddit social media thread, “Cheese and Crackers” was the B side of a record by Thompson and the A side was “Shoobie Oobie.” Thompson couldn’t find anyone to arrange the “Cheese and Crackers” lyrics at a recording studio and left in a huff, leaving the lyrics on the piano.

Roscoe found it and put it in an R&B arrangement. Billboard magazine called it the strangest new release of the week. The song is about a guy repeatedly being offered cheese and crackers although he doesn’t like or want them. According to a Wikipedia article, the term “cheese and crackers” is a kind of mild swear word chilled down from “Jesus Christ.”

That’s funny, because that’s how I feel about all the anti-vaccine bills coming out of the Iowa Legislature this year. One of them is SF 2095, which seeks to penalize private postsecondary colleges and universities if they don’t accommodate students who want to be exempt from all vaccines for any reason and to find clinical training programs who will accept them. An excerpt from the bill:

“A postsecondary school offering a degree requiring a clinical rotation shall, upon request of a student enrolled in the degree program, identify a clinical rotation placement where the student will be permitted an exemption from any vaccination requirements imposed by the placement location during the duration of the student’s clinical rotation.

A postsecondary school not in compliance shall not qualify as an eligible institution for the purposes of Iowa tuition grant.”

The other punishment could be a fine. Unless I’m looking on the web in the wrong place, I don’t find any such facility anywhere in Iowa. That would mean the postsecondary private school would be punished for something it can’t control. I’m pretty sure that would be called unjust—or maybe tricky if the goal is to coerce clinical training program leaders to loosen up their vaccine exemption policies. Right now, the only exemptions are religion or medical.

This sounds like the Iowa legislature is offering us cheese and crackers. No thank you.

Update to the Anti-Vaccine Bills in Iowa Legislature

This is just a quick update to the Iowa legislature anti-vaccine bills as far as which ones have passed what is called the first funnel. Here’s a link to the definition of a funnel.

Which bills got past the first funnel:

SF 2095: This bill is about private colleges or universities that would be punished if they don’t make accommodations for students in health care education program who want to avoid getting vaccines.

HF 2171: This bill would remove the requirement for children in primary and secondary schools to get vaccinations. I think this bill is dangerous and unnecessarily puts children at risk for infectious diseases including diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, rubeola, rubella, and varicella.

Which bill didn’t get past the first funnel:

HF 2287: This was the bill that sought to make vaccine manufacturers who want to sell their products in Iowa give up their immunity from lawsuits under the Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.

I couldn’t find out where the ivermectin over-the-counter bills (HF 2056 and HSB 694) were in the funnel as of today.

That make 5 bills in the Iowa legislature that are anti-vaccine-5 bills too many.

Iowa Legislature Bills I Could Live Without

I should stop reading the news. I’ve just found a couple of other Iowa Legislature bills that are anti-vaccine.

One of them is the HF 2287 I mentioned yesterday that would make vaccine manufacturers steer clear of Iowa altogether.

Another two I just discovered today:

HF 2171: This one which seeks to make vaccines for school age children voluntary. No child in elementary or secondary school in Iowa would have to be vaccinated against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, rubeola, rubella, and varicella. This is not safe for anyone.

SF 2095: This one seeks to exempt students from vaccines in medical, nursing, or other health care-related degree programs.

There’s a news article about SF 2095 which makes it clear what it is about. I don’t understand why a person studying medicine or any other health care-related degree program would not need to get vaccinated against communicable diseases. This bill would require private schools to provide some other alternative training program instead of those that require vaccinations. If they don’t, they’d be penalized, either by losing access to the Iowa Tuition Grant Program—or getting fined. None of that makes sense to me. If you’re in training to be a doctor, you should get vaccinated. If you don’t understand why vaccinations are vital to practicing medicine, you shouldn’t be in medicine.

If I sound like a curmudgeon about all this, so be it. I’m a retired doctor and I graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine in 1992. I spent my career practicing consultation-liaison psychiatry, so I was always at the interface between medicine and psychiatry. It was always a challenge for me to balance the art and science of medicine. And I didn’t always do it very well.

But I’m puzzled by what looks like an awkward imbalance in the view of medicine today. I’m a little cranky about it, and I like to think my age entitles me to react that way sometimes. I could add a quote from William Osler here, but I’m more prone to jokes as a I get older, probably because I know I’m no wiser than anyone else.

Did you hear Chuck Norris got the Covid vaccine? The vaccine is now immune to everything.

Iowa Vaccines and Legislature Proposed Bill Deja Vu

I see we have yet another bill introduced in the Iowa legislature seeking to make vaccine manufacturers liable for “design defects” resulting in injuries related to vaccines. This feels like déjà vu. Last year HF 712 targeted the Covid 19 vaccine. The bill died in the funnel. This year, the same sponsors introduced HF 2287—which is a similar bill that would target all vaccines.

One news story indicated that the sponsors were open to adding an amendment that would allow vaccine manufacturers to distribute vaccines in Iowa as long as patients sign a form that waives their right to sue the manufacturer as long as they are informed of the risks. I’m not sure how the forms would be made available to the public.

I thought patients, under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, already have access to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). Even if they don’t get compensated through that program, they can still sue the manufacturers.  I thought the “design defect” issue had been dealt with.

This new bill broadens the products in that it looks like it includes all vaccines, even those children typically get. There are already many parties have gone on record opposing HF 2287, including but not limited to:

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America

Iowa Medical Society

Iowa Pharmacy Association

Iowa Association of Rural Health Clinics

Iowa Public Health Association

Iowa Chapter-American Academy of Pediatrics

I think vaccine manufacturers will avoid Iowa if this bill becomes law. It could lead to an uptick in the communicable diseases burden, as though we need any more of that.

Finally Saw the Movie “The Day The Earth Stood Still”

We watched the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” today. It was made in 1951 and I’d never seen it. Sena thinks she did a long time ago. You can watch it on the Internet Archive. Similar movies didn’t make much of a splash, some of which you might remember:

“The Sacking of Punxsutawney Phil”: An expose of how the groundhog gets fired because it can’t reliably predict when spring begins.

“The Loser Always Pays the Bill”: A delightful comedy about two guys who play Rock, Paper. Scissors 30,000 times to decide who pays for lunch.

“Let’s Get Stewed to the Gills”: An experimental film in which 3 college freshmen find ways to cope with higher education by pouring beer in everything they consume.

Anyway, the movie is about an extraterrestrial named Klaatu and his robot Gort who land in Washington, D.C. to warn everybody that it’s best not to blow up Earth and other nearby planets with nuclear weapons unless you want the robot cops like Gort from Venus to spank everybody in sight.

I can’t poke fun at this movie like I do with all the Svengoolie films. The story is fascinating, the acting is superb, and it’s been called one of the 12 greatest science fiction films of all time by none other than Arthur C. Clarke (according to Wikipedia). The cast includes Michael Rennie as Klaatu, Patricia Neal as Helen Benson, and Sam Jaffe as Professor Jacob Barnhardt.

It was based on a short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, which you can read in its entirety on the web because the person who posted it says there’s no record of copyright currently on file.

I read “Farewell to the Master” and I can say I’m glad the movie used the name Gort instead of Gnut for the giant robot.

Now that I’ve seen the movie, I’m still inclined to speculate that maybe Frank E. Stranges got the idea for his book “Stranger at the Pentagon” from it, but there’s no way to prove it.  If you google the name of the character Valiant Thor in Stranges book, you’ll get photographs back of a man who happens to be an Australian actor named Cody Fern who was on a TV show I’ve never seen, “American Horror Story.” He played Valiant Thor and this contributes to the lore surrounding a fictional character and tends to give it a sort of semblance of reality. Stranges contributed to the mystique by presenting the events in the story as historical fact.

But the importance of the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is the warning to the leaders of the nations of the world in the early days of the Cold War (and even today) that playing with nuclear matches is a bad idea.

Pelicans on Parade!

The weather was superb yesterday and we visited our favorite walking trail out at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area—along with a lot of people who had the same idea. It was around 60 degrees and not a cloud in the azure blue sky.

The highlight was the big flocks of white birds with black markings under the wings sailing over Sand Lake. Observers we encountered had different opinions about what species they were.

At first, I thought they were pelicans, which are frequent visitors at the park. On the other hand, a few thought they were storks and for a while I took their side. The further we walked and the more video I got, and the more people we talked with, the less sure we were about these very large white birds. Many people were very sure they were pelicans.

After we got home, I looked on the internet for education about how to tell the difference between storks and pelicans—and was convinced that the birds we saw were pelicans. I was able to enlarge a picture I pulled from one of my video clips which showed clearly the large bill.

I guess this is a good place for Dixon Lanier Merritt’s 1910 limerick about the pelican:

 “A wonderful bird is the Pelican.

His beak can hold more than his belly can.

He can hold in his beak

Enough food for a week!

But I’m darned if I know how the hellican!”

Despite the tall tales about storks bearing babies, the fact is their beaks are narrow.

So, this actually takes me back to the one person on our walk who was convinced that the large, wheeling birds were storks. She joked around about the idea a little and asked Sena if she knew the story about how Dumbo was born. It just so happened was lost on us because we’d never seen the 1941 Disney film Dumbo and it turns out that a stork brought Dumbo to the train dragging a car full of elephants, one of which was Mrs. Dumbo.

And there’s a very complicated explanation of the stork myth about them delivering babies to mothers—although not in their beaks but in a bundle.

Aside from the pelicans, we saw many signs of spring, including buds on the trees, the ice melting on Sand Lake, and people gazing at the sky-waiting for spring.

Svengoolie Show Movie: “Dracula”

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

I’ve never seen the 1931 Universal production of Dracula and it was a film to marvel, mainly to marvel at Bela Lugosi’s ability to contort those famous hands into spell-binding patterns while commanding hapless victims “I command you; come here!” He didn’t say “bluh, bluh” even once.

I tried to mimic Dracula’s hand gestures and ended up going to the ER to get them unraveled.

Instead of Jonathan Harker (David Manners) traveling to Transylvania according to the Bram Stoker novel, it was Renfield (Dwight Frye) who was the real estate agent making preparations for Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) to rent out the Motel 6 room (“We’ll leave the spider snacks out for you!”) in London.

Renfield is Dracula’s first victim shortly after his arrival at the castle in Transylvania. You never see fangs on the vampires in this movie, which is pretty refreshing actually. Fake fangs interfere with delivering one’s lines, such as when Dr. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) holds up a mirror to Dracula (which shows he has no reflection), who then smacks it out of his hand:

Dracula: Tho thorry, Doctor Van Helthing. My humble apology. I dithlike mirrors.

There’s this ongoing debate about why wolfsbane instead of garlic was used to ward of Dracula. The explanation is pretty simple really. Nobody could find enough garlic to use because most of it was in the spaghetti sauce often served to the actors for lunch.

There is a little humor in this dark movie. Martin the asylum nurse (Charles K. Gerrard), who’s always chasing after Renfield and taking away the dead chipmunks he insists on eating, has a funny exchange with one of the maids when they’re talking about someone else in the house:

Maid: He’s crazy!

Martin: They’re all crazy except you and me. And sometimes I have my doubts about you.

Maid: You got something on your face, dude!

I think right after this is when Dr. Van Helsing hires Count Chocula with a plan to arrange a cage match with Dracula.

It’s not very well known, but if you noticed that most men in the movie have their hair styled in a way which makes them look like they’re wearing helmets, that’s because they were all using Brylcreem, which was invented in 1928 in Birmingham, England by County Chemicals at the Chemico Works which was shipped to California with the warning label “A Little Dab’ll Do Ya” which Universal obviously ignored.

I think this is an OK movie and I give it a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 3/5.

Update to the Iowa Legislature Bill to Make Ivermectin Available Over the Counter

Pursuant to my previous post about the debate in the Iowa Legislature over a proposed bill to make Ivermectin available over-the-counter (OTC) in Iowa, it looks as though hydroxychloroquine was recently dropped from the bill. Although few people say it out loud, in my opinion, it’s no secret that the main reason for the bill is to make ivermectin available to those who want to use it to treat Covid-19, despite there being no convincing evidence that it’s effective for that.

However, yet another bill was introduced by the governor which has its own ivermectin promotion section; so, there are now two ivermectin bills. They look the same.

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy is opposed to them because the language obliges them to comply with dispensing ivermectin to patients even if it might potentially harm them.

Although the bill removes penalties for dispensing ivermectin, there seem to be no specific penalties to pharmacists for refusing to do so. About 3 years ago, a pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for ivermectin that was intended for treatment of Covid-19.

A similar bill in Utah was not passed about 4 days ago. Supporters of the bill appeared to be engaging in passing misinformation about ivermectin for Covid-19, claiming there was “plenty of data” supporting its effectiveness for it. In fact, the FDA has not approved its use for treatment of Covid-19.

I wonder if there might be a justification for a kind of civil disobedience by pharmacists by refusing to give OTC ivermectin to patients. The other question is what does the Iowa Board of Medicine think about this? Is it right to leave physicians out of the loop in this situation?

It seems ironic that a legislator who is an internist, Dr. Austin Baeth, is on the right side of this debate by opposing the bills, yet the state medical board seems to be silent. Would it be appropriate for the state medical board to take a public position about this issue as the pharmacy board has?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pentagon

So, just for laughs I sometimes watch Ancient Aliens (you know, the UFO show with the hair dude). Last night, they were talking about some guy named Valiant Thor as if he were a real person. Maybe some of you know about the book, “Stranger at the Pentagon,” which you can read for free on the Internet Archive. I just quickly clicked through the pdf of it and it’s pretty interesting. The one I saw had sections about Men in Black (MIB) in it, which of course means Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are even older than we think.

It was written in 1967 by Dr. Frank E. Stranges and it’s supposedly a story of an extraterrestrial named Valiant Thor who presented to the White House in the 1950s and spoke to President Eisenhower and others, giving the urgent message that Earthlings need to shape up or the planet would be destroyed.

OK, the spoiler is that there’s no evidence this ever happened, although many people, like Fox Mulder, want to believe.

I want to believe, too but there’s no official record Vai (as Valiant Thor is sometimes called in the book) ever lived at the White House, although maybe he snorted something you can sometimes find in the White House but nobody officially will admit that ever happens either.

One person stated that the idea for the book might have come from the 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Artificial Intelligence (who always butts in to my web searches) doubted it’s ever been on the Svengoolie TV show, but I found a Facebook post from 2025 which called it a “Sven fan favorite.”  It’s probably never been on Svengoolie because it’s far too classy. There’s an interesting article about it on Turner Classic Movies but I don’t know if TCM ever showed it.

As near as I can tell from just from what I’ve read on the web about this movie is that it was made in the early Cold War days and it’s really sending a message to mankind warning them away from killing everybody and the planet and instead strive to establish peace in the world. It’s long been regarded as a cinema masterpiece.

Did it influence Dr. Stranges to write the book “Stranger at the Pentagon”? I don’t know, but some people think so, judging from one social media comment. I think that person might have been put off by the attempt to make it sound like it was historically accurate, which is what many people seem to think.

In my opinion, the whole yarn about Valiant Thor is fiction that, while not historically accurate, is compelling enough to make you think about how important it is for national leaders and people who live on the planet to try and clean up our act. Efforts to make this story seem like it actually happened backfires and misses the point.

By the way, none of this has anything to do with Bigfoot.

One Anecdote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr is Nothing to Sneeze At

I’ve finished reading both biographies of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (the one by Jonathan Eig and the autobiography edited by Clayborne Carson).

Both books were fascinating. Many of the accounts of King’s life were familiar to me mainly because I had seen them written about in other books and articles. Some of them are a strange mixture of pathos, terror, and even a little humor if you can imagine it. For me, one of the most touching anecdotes was the one about the white girl who wrote a short letter to King after he was stabbed by a demented black woman on September 20, 1958. It was in both biographies.

 He was at an event in which he was autographing one of his books. A black women pushed through the crowd and asked him if he were Martin Luther King. He didn’t look up and said simply, “Yes.” The woman stabbed him with a letter opener. The blade stopped very close to his aorta and the doctor who treated him said he could have exsanguinated if he had just sneezed.

Dr. King got a lot of kind letters from people about that, but the one that is most memorable to him (and me) was from a 9th grade high school student who wrote that she was a white girl and said “I am so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

Later, King would use the phrase several times in his final speech (“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”) which he delivered at the Bishop Charles J. Mason Temple in Memphis before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel there in April of 1968.

Both of the biographies are riveting documents of the life of a preacher devoted to the principle of non-violence. We can still learn from him.