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Weak XLIV

30 October 2012

No. 6,991 (cartoon)

You’re ugly and stupid.

Just the opposite.

Alright, stupid and ugly.

31 October 2012

New Bike!

My parents bought my first brand new bike for me when I was ten. I bought my second new bike—straight from China!—yesterday. As soon as I rode it, I realized that all the money I’d saved by riding used bikes represented false economy. All the gears work on my new bike, and even though the wheels are only seventy-six millimeters wider than usual, the difference makes a huge difference when I’m riding.

Is it the longer wheelbase? The different gearing ratio? The angles of the spangles? I could probably find the answers to those and other irrelevant questions on the Internet, but I’m not going to bother to do so. Instead, I’m going to have another glass or two of wine and go for another ride!

1 November 2012

Psycho Raving Bonkers Mad

Long ago, a Florida judge sentenced John Ferguson to death for murdering a number of people in 1978. Ferguson’s still alive because some thirty doctors have independently concluded that he’s an insane paranoid schizophrenic. In lay terms, he’s as deranged as a sack full of rabid gerbils on methamphetamine. And that’s a problem for the executioner, since it’s against that law to kill a certifiably crazy person. The only solution to this conundrum is for penal officials to restore the prisoner to mental health in order to kill him or her.

David Glant, a Florida judge, recently ordered Ferguson’s execution in spite of the overwhelming medical evidence that he’s psycho raving bonkers mad. (That was a reference to the prisoner, not the judge, although the news report I read wasn’t entirely clear.)

The condemned believes that after he’s killed he’ll rise from the dead and enjoy a heavenly eternity. Glant noted that Ferguson’s beliefs are not, “so significantly different from beliefs other Christians may hold so as to consider it a sign of insanity.” I wonder if a claim by Ferguson that he at the flesh and drank the blood of the son of god would have made him more or less eligible for the firing squad or the electric chair or rat poison or whatever it is that Floridians use to dispatch prisoners?

2 November 2012

Gratuitous Photo of the Weak: Taped Sony

I borrowed the Internet Archive’s six thousand dollar video camera for a simple project. A camera that expensive should have all the basics, right?

Wrong.

When I pointed the camera at the floor, the lens didn’t remain at the settings I’d selected. Instead, gravity pulled the front elements of the poorly designed zoom lens to its maximum focal length. There are few mechanical problems that can’t be solved with a lubricant or gaffers tape; I used the latter this afternoon.

I’ve never needed tape to use a camera before. And if I continue to avoid Sony products, I will never need to do so again.

3 November 2012

The Home of Great Testes!

There’s a great new taqueria on the corner of Arizona Street and Seventeenth Street in San Francisco; I look forward to eating there soon. I can tell it’s going to be good food because of the restaurant’s service mark: “The Home of Great Testes!”

That tells me that English isn’t the proprietors’ first language, and also that they’re relying on the quality of their food instead of slick marketing. What other explanation could there be for misspelling, “The Home of Great Tastes!”

Having said that, if I see “burrito testículos” on the menu, I’m heading back to Quemando los dos Extremos instead.

4 November 2012

Mongolian Targets

Clarissa told me an incredible story after returning from Mongolia: indigent Kazakhstan refugees are selling their corpses to be used for target practice. She reported that shooting ranges can command extraordinarily high fees by providing frozen humans for target practice.

She showed me macabre photographs of the human targets. They’re barely recognizable as homo sapiens; the parts of their frozen bodies that have been blown away in previous session have been crudely replaced by a crude amalgam of reindeer fat and rice.

Clarissa told me that she perversely enjoyed the target practice until the bullseye in here rifle’s scope twitched. That’s when she discovered that the frozen corpses on the firing range were neither really frozen nor corpses. Some of the targets have been used for over a decade.

I’m tempted to sell my body when I’m done with it, but can’t find a buyer.

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©2012 David Glenn Rinehart