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5 March 2016

No. 6,454 (cartoon)

Do you smell something cooking?

No.

Neither do I; make dinner.

6 March 2016

Elaine’s Punctuation

Elaine has mystified Kurt again; it doesn’t take much.

“She gets kinda weird when she has her punctuation,” he explained.

“Punctuation?”

“You know, full stop and all that.”

“No I don’t know; what in the hell are you talking about?”

“Aw c’mom, don’t make me say it.”

“Say what? Speak English!”

“It’s just that time of the month, that’s all.”

“Why didn’t you just say that she’s menstruating?” I asked.

His face turned bright red; how ironic! He was speechless and, to be merciful, so was I. I will never understand how men who purport to love women find the most basic biological realities problematical.

7 March 2016

An Unfortunate Coincidence

I have a confession to make. Actually, it’s not much of a confession at all, since anyone who knows me won’t be at all surprised: I plagiarized the story about the tennis ball called happiness. An Internet Archive contributor I only knew as f6664 mentioned in passing that happiness is the name of her dog’s tennis ball.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a list of over a hundred fictional names I use in the same order every year. When it came time to talk about happiness, it was Katia’s turn. Had it been an earlier or later entry, it would have been Joey or Michelle as it has been for years. (Of course, the names aren’t fictional, but there’s no one named Joey, Katia, or Michelle in my life.)

I sent f6664 a copy my 29 February entry; I thought she’d be chuffed that I took her idea and ran with it. I can’t think of a higher compliment than to have someone appropriate my work, as long as they don’t make any money off it.

Alas, one size does not fit all.

f6664 sent me a terse reply saying that she found it creepy if not worse that I’d discovered and used her real name, Katia. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t have possibly figured that out; anonymous visitors are exactly that. And anyway, I’ve never even met anyone named Katia. I gave her examples to prove that I’ve used that name once a year for over a decade, but she didn’t reply. I haven’t heard from her attorney, either, so I’ll limp through to my next fiasco.

8 March 2016

Chinese UFO

Dr. Rosen took me out for lunch for the best of reasons: I was hungry. We went to Celestial Flame, a Chinese restaurant that just opened a dozen meters down the street from the Internet Archive. I was somewhat disappointed when I saw my meal. It reminded me of an overgrown aquarium: some fish hidden in thick vegetation.

I didn’t recognize the vegetables—or should have I said vegetable since there was only one kind? (It’s times like this I’m glad I’m a recreational writer and not a real one so I can relax and make grammatical mistakes with reckless impulsiveness.) It seemed improbable that I’d discovered an unidentified fried object, or, to use the common acronym, UFO, since I’ll eat anything except for a living monkey’s brains fresh from the skull and that sort of thing. It didn’t take me long to deduce that the UFO was one of the many mysterious flavors of vegetables I routinely walk past in Chinese markets.

The waitress was surprised I hadn’t tried it before. She explained that the inedible green was bitter melon, “the Chinese superfood.” She claimed that it prevented and/or cured a host of ailments. “Tastes wonderful” wasn’t among the many attributes she cited; she admitted that for a person of noncolor, “it might take a little getting used to.”

I’m not disappointed (how could I be unhappy with the elusive free lunch?), just the opposite. Today was a most unusual day: I discovered that there actually is something I won’t eat, and thus had a once in a lifetime experience.

9 March 2016

Dream Come True

Last night I dreamt that the front tire of my bicycle got a flat, and this morning it did. I’m certain that it was just a coincidence.

Some people would love to be able to foretell the future through their dreams, but not me. Most of my nocturnal experiences are nightmares and anxiety dreams. I suspect that’s because I almost never experience traumas or terrors whilst I’m awake. I’d hate for most of my sleeping dreams to come true; they usually involve missing my flight, losing cameras, computers, and even clothes, et cetera.

Even my flat tire nightmare turned out to be more trivial than traumatic. I really do enjoy an improbably charmed life; my tire went flat near the Internet Archive as did the two previous punctures. There, I could and did easily solve the problem by extracting an improbably large screw and using a fifty-cent patch.

10 March 2016

My Day in Court

The wheels of injustice grind slowly albeit inexorably, and one hundred and fifteen days after I fought the law and the law won decisively, I finally ended up in front of a judge to pay for my crime: pedaling past a stop sign at an empty intersection.

This was my first time in court since I was arrested for trespassing whilst photographing toxic waste devastation at Love Canal, and I had no idea how the system works, or doesn’t. I read and heard all sorts of apocryphal stories, so I decided to see how my fellow miscreants dealt with the bureaucracy then act accordingly.

Like so many of my strategies, this one didn’t work well at all. I was the second person to see the judge, and the first person was, at best, a cautionary tale.

“Anthony Jefferson, your honor, but you can call me Clevva T,” he began. “All the ladies do, you know.”

“And may I say, your judgeship,” he continued, “that you have reawakened my keen interest in finding out what you got under that silky black robe.”

[Let the record show that the judge was indeed a very attractive woman.]

“How do you plead?” the judge asked.

“Guilty of wishing you didn’t have that big-ass rock on your finger,” he replied with a lewd smile.

“You’re not going to get what you’re after in this court, Mr. Jefferson,” she replied. “I’m leaving your fine at five hundred and ninety-seven dollars and adding a one hundred and thirty-eight dollar chutzpah fee.”

Clevva T wasn’t very clever at all.

I’d originally planned to argue that my father fought in WWII so that his son could ignore irrelevant stop signs in a free country, but I changed my mind after seeing that the judge was as stern as she was beautiful.

When she asked for my plea, I told her that I was in fact guilty of blowing through a stop sign on my bike but that I was innocent of being a sexist cretin.

“I’m reducing your fine from five hundred and thirty-eight dollars to one hundred and fifteen dollars, Mr. Rinehart,” she declared. “Have a nice day.”

I was about to tell her that no one tells me what kind of day to have, then quickly changed my mind. Instead, I just winked at her and wondered what to do with my four hundred dollar and twenty-three dollar windfall.

11 March 2016

Two-Dimensional City Birds

It would be an understatement to say that I don’t get many commissions. In fact, I’ve never solicited or wanted one, and thus I’m not the least bit disappointed that I’ve never received one. Or have I?

Alphonse likes to send his mother photographs of dead birds, and has asked me to send him images of deceased avifauna I’ve figuratively run across. I’m not talking about images of fried chicken, bloated baked turkeys, or other poultry pornography. No, his mother likes to see pigeons, seagulls, and other two-dimensional city fowl. (Are there any other urban birds except for the odd parrot?) And so, whenever I spot a bird that’s gone from four dimensions to two, I make a snapshot for him to send to his mama (his word, not mine).

I like his mother. Although I’ve only met her in passing a couple of times, I aim to please, so I took a bit of time to colorize the innards of a squished pigeon I spotted outside a petrol station this morning.

I never try to satisfy with my alleged art—exactly the opposite—but postcards for a friend’s lovely mother are a different proposition entirely.

12 March 2016

Who You Gonna Believe?

I usually start the day with lots of coffee, then use the Internet to scan the headlines from five news sites, read five comic strips, and look at the weather forecast. The latter activity, like most of the other things I do, is a waste of time, since the climate is fairly consistent and predictable most of the year. This week is is rather unusual, though, since a number of big Pacific storms are blowing my way.

San Francisco has a number of microclimates, and the weather program I use purports to predict the weather within half a kilometer of me. I was glad to see that the forecast was for dry weather; that meant I could leave my rain gear at home when I went on a bike ride.

I decided to get a second opinion, so I looked out my window and saw what appeared to be precipitation. That called for a third opinion, so I stuck my arm out the window and felt water droplets beading up on my skin. I went back to my computer and asked for another report and was relieved to discover that it was, in fact, dry out.

The episode reminded me of Chico Marx’s rhetorical question (falsely attributed to Groucho), “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

If you can’t believe what you read on the Internet, then there’s really no point in philosophizing about truth and so-called reality.

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©2016 David Glenn Rinehart