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Weak XXIX

17 July 2014

No. 6,448 (cartoon)

You cheated!

If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.

18 July 2014

Drunks With Missiles

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur never made it; Russian mercenaries shot it down. This needless tragedy—as opposed to a needed tragedy—is yet another reason why one should never give drunk cretins powerful surface to air missiles.

On the bright side, at least everyone knows where the wreckage is. In March, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing simply vanished en route; no one knows what happened to a huge jet the size of a huge aircraft. Why the airline’s publicists are lamenting the loss of two jets without pointing out that only one plane remains unaccounted for, this I do now know.

Given the company’s recent improvements, I wouldn’t hesitate to be a passenger on a Malaysia Airlines flight, if someone paid for my ticket.

19 July 2014

Dinner With Honey West

I enjoyed a lovely dinner tonight with Craig, Kimberly, and a feline Honey West. I know that reference may be confusing for anyone who wasn’t watching television fifty years ago, so I shall explain. Or perhaps not.

Honey West was a fictional private detective who plied her trade with the help of Bruce, her faithful ocelot. I find it most curious that no ocelot of note has appeared in films or television shows since Bruce; it must have something to do with the Film Actors Guild’s arcane regulations and rules. Or perhaps Bruce was simply the proverbial tough act to follow.

It’s important to note that Anne Francis, the actor and/or actress who portrayed Ms West, was not at the dinner table. That’s just as well, since she died over three years ago. Bruce, her ocelot, wasn’t there at the request of feline Honey West. Honey the cat is mostly feral, and doesn’t dine well with other pusses.

None of us had any need of a private investigator; we all enjoyed a quiet evening.

20 July 2014

There Be Aliens!

In big round numbers, as many as a billion planets in the Milky Way alone may support life. That’s in part why a group of scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration mostly agreed that humans would bump into (figuratively speaking) extraterrestrials in the next couple decades.

“We believe we are very close in terms of science and technology to finding another Earth, and signs of life on another world,” predicted Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I’ve head this sort of thing before; scientists are always overpromising and underdelivering. All the experts will be long dead before anyone can check out a billion planets, so no one will prove them wrong while they’re alive.

And then there’s the line about “signs of life.” All the stellar explorers have to do is find an unexplained blotch somewhere and posit that the anomaly must be evidence of life, and it’s mission accomplished!

Even if they do find alien life, it’ll probably be some accursed half-celled amoeba critter that lives on a few atoms of space dust. That’s not the kind of creature we earthlings are expecting. We want—no, we demand—an alien that has an evil, demonic presence. It should have creepy reptilian features, or at least be ominously slimy and blobby. In any case, it simply must have beady, demonic little eyes, the more the better. And sharp, pointy teeth—again, the more the better—that can shred titanium and chew diamonds.

Of course, that’s not the way it’s going to happen. When aliens from an advanced civilization get here, they’re going to enslave us or kill us; that’s the way it always works.

21 July 2014

Done!

For the sake of brevity, I shall be brief.

Done!

22 July 2014

Thirteen Cans of Tuna Captured by Gravity After Being Flung from a Great Height

Look at a can of tuna fish, and the first thing that comes to mind is the structural integrity of the can: would it withstand a drop of, say, sixteen meters? I enlisted the help of my learned colleague Antoine to answer this question.

I instructed him on the proper way to launch the cans into space; I told him to fling—not toss—them from the Internet Archive roof. (Should he ever have the misfortune to be in England, I didn’t want an unfortunate “tosser” misunderstanding.) Each of the cans began a promising ascent into the atmosphere before succumbing to planetary physics and crashing to the Archive’s cement patio sixteen meters below.

The title of the resulting piece, Thirteen Cans of Tuna Captured by Gravity After Being Flung from a Great Height, pretty much describes the resulting images.

None of the cans ruptured; this proves that canned tuna a great source of protein and mercury for mountaineers everywhere.

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©2014 David Glenn Rinehart