Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak

Weak XXXIV

20 August 2010

No. 2,300 (cartoon)

Your mother should have swallowed you.

Your mother should have spit you out.

And yet, here we are!

21 August 2010

Long Distance Relationships Never Work

Toni's giving Anastasia the worst kind of romantic advice: unsolicited.

"Trust me," Toni said, "That guy in Bozeman's going to break your heart."

"How can you say such a ridiculous thing about someone you never met?" Anastasia replied.

"It's got nothing to do with him," Toni explained, "it's just that long-distance relations never work. There's no time for the necessary stage of getting sick of each other."

I thought that made a modicum of sense, but I kept my mouth shut. I don't want to get involved in someone else's inane argument; I'd rather start one of my own.

22 August 2010

More Silly English Names

England's not good for much, but even I acknowledge that the miserable country is rich in silly names.

I can add to my recent discussion of pub names by noting that, "The Bull and Goat" is an easy-to-spell version of, "The Bologne Gate," and that, "The Bacchanals" devolved into, "The Bag of Nails."

But enough corrupted English pub names, at least for this year. And so, it's on to silly English city names. Huzzah!

The good people of Shitterton tired of replacing stolen signs, and so they carved the name of their fine town into a fifteen-hundred kilogram slab of marble.

And that brings us to Nottingham. Nothing funny about that except this: the city was originally called Snottingham. I wonder why they changed the name? I suppose I could find out, but who cares?

23 August 2010

Chess Boxing

Gabriel asked me if I was planning on writing about chess boxing.

Chess boxing is, not surprisingly, a combination of chess and boxing. One round of chess. One round of pugilism. Another round of chess. More slugging. And so on. Dumb dumb dumb, really dumb dumb dumb.

"No," I told Gabriel, "I will never ever write anything about chess boxing."

And that was this, and that was that.

24 August 2010

Bearly Dead

Brent Kandra, a worker at an Ohio wild animal park, died after the bear he was playing with killed him. I've always heard that cavorting with wild carnivores was a very bad idea indeed; there's a reason for that.

I'm fairly sure Kandra would agree.

"I loved Brent and will miss him," Sam Mazzola, the owner of the complex, said. He should have stopped there, but went on to add, "but it's what he wanted."

I doubt Kandra would agree with that, but no one will ever know with certainty.

25 August 2010

My First Night on the (Catless) Boat

I've been fortunate to live in some interesting places in the last two decades. I have good memories—mostly—of my time at the lab and, until recently, the fort.

And now I'm living on a boat in San Francisco Bay. It's the first time I've lived alone for twenty-some years, and I quite like it. All that's missing is a cat. (But then I wouldn’t be living alone, would I?)

I wonder why sailors in general and pirates in particular were known to fraternize with parrots and not cats? Cats make so much more sense; parrots don't eat rats. A cat on a boat surrounded by a sea of fish, what could go wrong?

I need to think about this.

26 August 2010

Dogs and Smokers

I had a pleasant dinner with Dr. Delman tonight to after kitty-sitting her wusses. I told her the most remarkable thing to happen during my stay—in addition to the cat tales—was running into a particular woman and her dog every fourth time I entered or left her apartment building.

"That's because she smokes cigarettes," Dr. Delman said.

She went on to explain that it's verboten to smoke in her building, so all the smokers need to go outside to feed their addiction. The dog owners need to take their beasts outside to urinate and defecate. (Cats figured how to live indoors millennia ago; dogs stopped evolving long before that.) As a result, the most visible people in the building are smokers with dogs.

I'm glad I don't have dogs or smoke; I enjoy being invisible, mostly.

27 August 2010

An Eighteen-Hole Cry for Help

Dr. Thomas Hess is in big trouble, another instance of, "no good deed goes unpunished."

Hess discovered Erica Blasberg's lifeless body in her car. She had a plastic bag over her head and a bottle of pills nearby. Hess hid that evidence—as well as a suicide note—before authorities arrived to investigate.

"I know doing that was stupid, but I was trying to save some embarrassment for her," Hess told officials.

That sort of thing happens every day, but here's the tragic part of the story: the attempted coverup was pointless, for Blasberg had been all but broadcasting her intent to end her life for years.

The twenty-five year old woman was a professional golfer. If playing golf for years on end isn't a public declaration that one's life is empty, meaningless, and all but over, then I don't know what is.

Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak
©2010 David Glenn Rinehart