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I had a gut reaction when reading this headline. The covid conspiracy crowd has often abused injury program forms and statistics to create disinformation, and that is a part of this story, but there's more to this story than just that.

Summary:

A five-month-long Global News investigation of the Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP), involving more than 30 interviews with current and former Oxaro employees, injured claimants and their attorneys, uncovered allegations that the company was unequipped to deliver fully on the program’s mission, questions about why the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) chose this company over others, and internal documents that suggest poor planning from the start.

Other excerpts are copied below, please see the original article in case I introduced any biases while picking out excerpts:

The federal government has launched a compliance audit to determine if an Ottawa consulting company is mismanaging the Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP), and Public Health Agency of Canada officials made a surprise visit to the firm’s offices in mid-June, Global News reported on July 3.

There have been 11,702 reports of serious adverse events following a COVID-19 vaccination, according to Health Canada.

That’s equal to 0.011 per cent of the 105,015,456 doses administered as of December 2023.

Note the "per cent". So that is 11702/105015456 = 0.0001114...

“The government stepped in and gave Canadians an assurance that any injuries or death, as a matter of fact, that were caused by the vaccines would be fully compensated by a program that was accessible. I would say that the program that the Liberal government did finally implement is failing Canadians utterly,” said interim NDP Leader Don Davies.

Then-prime minister Justin Trudeau announced the Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) in December 2020.

The effort, which began six months later, aimed to support people who have been seriously and permanently injured by any Health Canada-authorized vaccine administered in the country on or after Dec. 8, 2020.

Approved claimants could receive lump sum injury or death payouts, ongoing income replacement, and reimbursement of medical expenses.

But instead of the government operating VISP, as is done with similar programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, Canada elected to outsource the work.

In March 2021, the government hired Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Consulting Inc. — now called Oxaro Inc. — to administer the program.

The challenges began soon after it launched.

In response to a 15-page list of questions, the company said, “The VISP is a new and demand-based program with an unknown and fluctuating number of applications and appeals submitted by claimants.”

“The program processes, procedures and staffing were adapted to face the challenges linked to receiving substantially more applications than originally planned,” Oxaro added.

“Timelines for a determination of eligibility and support will depend on the nature and complexity of the claim. All claims will be individually assessed by medical experts. The process will include a review of all required and relevant medical documentation, as well as current medical evidence, to determine if there is a probable link between the injury and the vaccine.”

[Kerry] Bowman [(bioethicist at the University of Toronto)] said the situation would only make vaccine hesitancy worse.

“The public will see, not only are some people pushing back on vaccines, but even if something goes wrong, you’re not going to get support I would argue that it’s going to feed into growing trends of vaccine hesitancy. That’s very problematic for all of us,” he said.

Both Strauss and Davies drew comparisons to the ArriveCan app program, which has faced scrutiny over the costs and contracting for the pandemic-era app.

Davies also cited the ArriveCan app as an example of what he described as a larger problem.

“I think this is part of a much broader problem that we’ve seen with the Liberal government over the last decade, really, which is an explosion in the use of outside consultants,” he said.

“I’d like to see the ministry take over this program. They’re at least accountable directly to the minister and to taxpayers. If the outside consultants can’t do it properly, it should be done by public servants who are in the ministry of health.”

My Carmine Jewel sour cherry tree outdid itself this year.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is, at the very least, ambitious.

Is it good? Debateable.

It suffers from what I like to call Poochie syndrome. If you don’t know what that is, it’s when a franchise tries so hard to be cool and edgy that it ends up alienating everyone. Poochie was a character on The Simpsons added to The Itchy & Scratchy Show to make it more “youth-oriented.” It backfired. Spectacularly.

This game is the Poochie of Ninja Gaiden.

You play as Yaiba Kamikaze—an undead ninja who got sliced in half by Ryu Hayabusa, then resurrected as a cyborg with a robot arm and unresolved anger issues. The story? He wants revenge. Also, zombies exist now.

So yeah. Not your typical Ninja Gaiden.

This isn’t a tight, serious action game like the NES classics or the 2004 reboot. This is a loud, cel-shaded beat-’em-up where you chain combos, dismember clown zombies, and occasionally say things like “BOOM, baby” while swinging from grappling hooks.

It’s ridiculous by design.

But weirdly, it’s not that far off from the original arcade Ninja Gaiden, which was more of a side-scrolling brawler than a precision platformer. In that sense, Yaiba feels like a spiritual detour—not a betrayal, just a case of missed execution.

And to say this game wasn’t received well is an understatement.

Critics hated it. Players hated it. Metacritic slapped it with a “generally unfavorable” rating. Polygon gave it a 3. The most common complaints? Repetitive gameplay, terrible camera, sloppy controls, and painfully unfunny writing. Fair.

But I’m going to make the case that Yaiba isn’t as bad as people say. It’s just weird. And weird games don’t always land, especially when they carry a legacy name.

Spark Unlimited handled the development. They weren’t exactly industry royalty. Team Ninja helped out. So did Keiji Inafune—yes, that Inafune, the guy behind Mighty No. 9. He designed Yaiba and pitched the whole zombie-cyborg-ninja concept. The idea was East-meets-West. Japanese combat with American humor. The problem is: it leaned too hard into the West part.

The visuals are the one thing that really works. The cel-shaded “living comic book” look still holds up. Blood flies in huge red arcs. Enemies explode into color-coded gore. Yaiba himself looks like a pissed-off character from a graphic novel you’d find in a Hot Topic clearance bin. I mean that as a compliment.

Unfortunately, once the game starts, the wheels start coming off.

Combat is fast but shallow. You get a sword, a cybernetic punch, and a few environmental executions. There’s a rage mode called Bloodlust that lets you tear through enemies, but it takes forever to charge and burns out too quickly. Enemies come in waves. Then more waves. Then more. It doesn’t evolve.

There’s an elemental system layered on top—some zombies explode, some zap, some poison. If you get two types near each other, you can cause secondary effects like electric tornadoes or poison crystallization. It sounds cool but plays like a checklist. The game doesn’t reward experimentation. It just wants you to solve the puzzle its way.

Boss fights are worse. Giant sponges. They kill you in three hits, and you fight them in arenas where the camera actively works against you.

Speaking of: the camera. It’s fixed. You can’t control it. It’s bad. It hides enemies behind geometry and cuts off parts of the screen during fights. No lock-on. No recentering. Just vibes.

Also, the platforming. There isn’t any. You don’t jump. Seriously—there’s no jump button. Movement sequences are QTEs. That’s it. No room for improvisation, no exploration, just press A when prompted.

PC performance is another mess. The game is hard-capped at 62 FPS, and if you try to lift that cap by editing the config files, the game starts breaking. Physics glitches. Soft locks. Entire levels stop working. The framerate is literally tied to game logic. You’d think someone would’ve caught that.

Controls aren’t much better. Dodge is mapped weird. Block is inconsistent. Inputs sometimes just don’t register. It feels like you’re fighting the engine more than the enemies.

There’s a skill tree, but it’s shallow. You unlock new combos and passive buffs, but nothing that dramatically changes the way you play. Some users even reported skill points not saving properly unless you exit the menu a certain way.

And then there’s the humor. The writing aims for B-movie irreverence and lands somewhere between 2007 YouTube and straight-to-DVD energy drink ad. It’s all juvenile innuendo, “cool guy” one-liners, and grotesque slapstick. One scene has a truck fly through a pair of giant mannequin legs. Another has you beating zombies to death with their own intestines. And Yaiba himself? He never shuts up. It gets old fast.

But I’ll give the game this—it commits.

It doesn’t half-ass the tone. It full-asses it. The voice acting is bad on purpose. The plot makes no sense. And every single thing feels like it was made by someone yelling “more awesome!” into a headset. That kind of confidence, even when misplaced, is rare.

Length-wise, it’s short. Maybe 6 hours. Eight if you’re bad. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is honestly a blessing.

There are bugs. Tons of them. Cutscenes sometimes run at 30 FPS even if gameplay is smooth. Loading screens are long and repetitive. Collectibles bug out and vanish. Some levels don’t load properly if you die in the wrong spot. There’s a DLC where you can play as Beck from Mighty No. 9. It adds nothing.

So yeah. Yaiba is janky, shallow, crude, and annoying.

But also: kinda fun.

It’s not a good Ninja Gaiden game. But it’s not trying to be. The problem is it shares the name. If this had just been called Yaiba: Zombie Slayer 2099 or something, I don’t think anyone would’ve cared. The expectations wouldn’t have crushed it.

What you get here is a loud, dumb, cartoonish splatterfest with a lot of rough edges and a couple moments of actual brilliance—mostly in its visuals and sense of identity. When it’s not glitching out or annoying the hell out of you, it can be strangely entertaining.

Buy it on sale. Don’t take it seriously. And absolutely don’t go in expecting Ninja Gaiden.

It’s not good. But it’s definitely not boring.

Junkhouse was a considerable force in the 1980s-1990s Canadian alternative rock scene, but disbanded in 1998, but have been sporadically active throughout the last few decades. Wikipedia has them listed as currently active, although there has not been any new songs since 1998.

A good portion of the band has passed away. In a most Canadian fashion, the second guitarist Dan Aachen actually passed away from a heart attack while playing hockey.

See Spot Run is from Montreal, Quebec. Their music features both French and English lyrics/titles, from all throughout their over 3 decades of music making -- since 1993.

The band is seemingly still active, but their last new music release was 9 years ago, in 2016.

So I was rewatching the episodes listed in this video of Randy clips from season 1 -5 while researching my "Evolution of Randy" topic.

Matt and Trey say they hate Season 1-4... But they contain a lot of the world building and character development that we all love. Perhaps they feel they could do better, or wish they'd written the south park world differently?

The early seasons were more about life in south park, versus life in america. The lot of character defining events and backstories take place here. The boys, their parents, and their relationships are all defined in these early seasons. Jokes and tropes leaned towards relatable every day things instead of current events.

A lot is said about the newer seasons but, I'd like to hear peoples thoughts on the older seasons. Characters and backstories that tend to be forgotten. Or tidbits that people might have missed.

....

I'm anticipating my next post will focus on Randy & Sharon's relationship background. We saw in the recent, "Not Suitable For Children" that the two of them clearly have an inseparable bond; broken only by alternate timelines (Post Covid: Covid Returns).

I have some more research to do on that. Any comments related to them in the first seasons will certainly be food for thought.

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Cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.

Cartoon by Clay Bennett.

Image from https://x.com/HelldiversAlert/status/1945069839057289284