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Weak XV

9 April 2013

No. 5,241 (cartoon)

I’ll love you forever.

I’ll love you fornever.

10 April 2013

Elephants versus Chihuahuas

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about inept shooters who use the largest mammals they can find for target practice. The other day it was a fin whale; today it’s an elephant.

Some idiot(s) drove by the visiting circus encampment in Tupelo, Mississippi at two in the morning and shot an elephant. That’s the same time that the bars close in that sad state, I wonder if there’s a correlation? Fortunately, the pachyderm barely noticed yet another annoyance in his miserable existence as a circus slave.

I think this advice is worth repeating: stay away from large animals exclamation point

When I find myself in a dog park, I avoid the company of Great Danes and German Mastiffs; the big, slow-moving mutts are obvious targets. Instead, I hang out in the Chihuahua ghetto. The overgrown rats are almost impossible to hit for anyone who’s not an expert sniper, and certainly less valuable than even the least expensive hollow-tipped bullet.

11 April 2013

Tight-Fitting Pants and Frilly Frocks

School administraitors in Petaluma, California, have issued a dress code edict forbidding girls, er, young women, from wearing tight, form-fitting pants. The irrational rationale? Such attire is, “distracting to teenage boys.”

Dumb, dumb, dumb; it’s not going to work.

When I was attending high school at Interlochen in Michigan, we had to wear uniforms. We all wore light blue shirts; the boys wore dark blue corduroy pants and the girls wore short blue corduroy pants that ended at the knees. The premise of the uniforms were that the rich kids and the poor kids (that was/is me!) dressed the same. Also, the girls could spread their legs to play the cello, throw pots, or engage in other creative pursuits. And finally, since the young women weren’t wearing dresses or skirts, the young men wouldn’t have lascivious thoughts.

Wrong wrong wrong!

If the women in Petaluma high schools are forced to wear fluffy dresses, I can guarantee that there’ll be a generation of Petalumian hombres with a hankerin’ for women in frilly frocks.

12 April 2013

Camel Etiquette

I don’t know much about Mali, but after a couple of minutes of research ’twould appear that it’s been in some flavor of civil war ever since the end of colonial occupation. Colonialists are sort of like herpes sores; they always reappear from time to time. And so ...

Recently the French military stepped in on behalf of the Malian government. Mali bureaucrats expressed their appreciation by giving French president François Hollande a camel. Hollande’s minions were slow in picking up the gift from the folks in Timbuktu who were holding it, so they turned the present into stew.

The faux pas could have happened to anyone. Does any foreigner know with certainty when a Malian camel has outstayed its welcome?

The story has a happy ending, except, of course, for the camel who dreamt of sauntering down the Champs-Élysées spitting at the French but ended up as dinner. The Malian government presented Hollande with, “a bigger and better-looking camel.” I have yet to hear whether said dromedary is tripping the light fantastic or has been transformed into a bigger and better feast.

13 April 2013

Basic Wildlife Photography

Nancy told me the sad news about a wildlife enthusiast in Belarus who was killed by a beaver. When he approached the wild beast to make a photograph, the critter bit him repeatedly and severed an artery. (The man’s artery, not the beaver’s.) What a preventable tragedy!

I learned a lot last year when I collaborated with Jimmy Audubon on an art project. Audubon taught me that that the trick is to first shoot your subject. Once it’s dead, you have as much time as you need to create the image you’re after.

Wildlife photographers aren’t that bright, so I’ll repeat the lesson. Always shoot twice, first with your rifle and then with your camera.

14 April 2013

Gratuitous Photo of the Weak: Crack

I was pedaling through Berkeley when I noticed a huge crack in the road. The fissure was hard to miss; city workers had outlined the gap with white paint. How economical! That had to be quicker and less expensive than repairing the road.

15 April 2013

Skin-Deep Beauty

Brett can’t stand looking at images of nude men and/or women. He’s not prudish; he just has a problem with the human stomach, even though he has one of his own.

“Did you know that stomach has thirty-five million digestive glands?” he asked. “The stomach would digest itself if it didn’t produce a new layer of mucus every other week. How can anyone not be sickened by that?”

I think being disgusted by the human body is much worse than any amount of mucous and any number of digestive glands, but I’m not going to argue with Brett. Skin-deep beauty is fine with me.

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©2013 David Glenn Rinehart