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Weak XXIV

11 June 2012

No. 142 (cartoon)

Why?

Because.

Why not?

12 June 2012

A Toilet Shaped Like an Ear

My dinner with Dahlia wasn’t over by midnight, so I spent the night in her guest room. I tried to be as quiet as possible when I used the bathroom in the middle of the night, then thought about a different approach. (For reasons I do not understand, I have my best ideas whilst sitting on a toilet.)

I imagined a toilet shaped like an ear, with every sound magnified by orders of magnitude. A stream of urine would roar like Victoria Falls, a puff of gas would thunder, and anything dropped into the toilet would boom like thousands of tons of ice breaking off of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Over breakfast, Dahlia declared that my ear toilet piece was probably my worst idea ever. That pleased me; a visceral repulsion is often a sign of promise.

13 June 2012

Gratuitous Photo of the Weak: Last Supper

Rats are chewing up everything in Enrico’s basement, so he decided to kill them. That really didn’t seem like a case of the punishment fitting the crime, but I didn’t criticize his morality lest he should return the favor. He bought walnuts for bait; the brain-shaped fruit would be some rodent’s last supper. I photographed one of the walnut halves for no good reason, which is perhaps the best reason. I could have eliminated some of the cosmetic blemishes with my computer, but who cares? Not me, and certainly not the rat.

14 June 2012

Monster in the Park

I saw a monster at dusk tonight in the park. At first I thought it was some sort of knuckle-dragging primate, but when the creature entered a clearing I saw that it was a squat reptile with stubby legs. It was too dim to see clearly, but it had a short, glistening snout, perhaps a dozen crooked fangs, and narrow slits where I’d expect to find eyes. We made eye contact—if those were eyes—for a couple of seconds before the creature disappeared into the dense foliage. I have no idea if the beast was responsible for the lingering, sulfurous stench.

Nah, just kidding. Nothing like that happened; nothing like that ever does.

15 June 2012

Jean Cocteau’s Amazing Day

Today is Jean Cocteau’s Amazing Day, a celebration of his perspicacious observation, “Stupidity is always amazing, no matter how used to it you become.”

In previous years, I’ve used the occasion to cite egregiously stupid behavior. Today, though, it’s time to recognize Carlo M. Cipolla’s laws of stupidity.

1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

2. The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

I’m sure that there are more than five laws of stupidity, but I’m too stupid to identify them.

16 June 2012

Iranophobia?

Abbie said that some Iranians have strange ideas about sex, but I’m not sure that I agree. For example, she said that the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared, “If a person has intercourse with a cow, a sheep, or a camel, their urine and dung become impure and drinking their milk will be unlawful.” I wouldn’t have thought their urine and dung was pure in the first place, but what do I know about life in Iran and/or on the farm?

She also expressed shock that Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the first post-revolutionary president of Iran, noted that a woman’s hair generates sexually arousing rays. I don’t know why Abbie thought his citation of that well-known scientific fact was remarkable. I’m reticent to say this, but I fear Abbie may be an Iranophobe, if there is such a thing.

17 June 2012

Forty-Nine Cheerios

I recently saw Mario eating a bowl of breakfast cereal (is there a lunch or dinner cereal?) in the afternoon. I wondered what he saw in the cereal, so I had a look. Upon close examination, Cheerios—the brand name of the roasted grain rich in sugar and chemical additives—aren’t really little circular tubes at all. Despite being mass produced my machines, each of the cheerios in Forty-Nine Cheerios is different.

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©2012 David Glenn Rinehart