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Weak XVI

16 April 2016

No. 8,446 (cartoon)

You’re chaste.

I was never chased.

17 April 2016

The Bakery and the Sheep

Iris is making lots of money with her new business, The Ironic Bakery. She’s selling two kinds of doughnuts in the shape of a doughnut, two kinds of pies in the shape of a pie, and two kinds of bread shaped like a loaf of bread. The only other thing she offers is coffee; milk and sugar are the only options.

Her pampered, nouveau riche clients discuss how many of layers of irony are involved while they’re standing in long lines to pay five dollars for a run-of-the-mill doughnut. Although the bakery is phenomenally profitable, she’s planning on selling it soon. She knows the sheep will soon flock to greener, trendier pastures, and, when they do, she wants to be ready to fleece them again.

18 April 2016

Killer Earthquake

This is the first annual remembrance of the 1906 Sans Frisco earthquake with no survivors present. And so, that’s irrefutable proof the massive tremors really did kill everyone there.

Eventually.

19 April 2016

Epidemic!

Gary Herbert, the governor of Utah, has sounded the alarm about an overlooked public health crisis: pornography. He didn’t explain in detail why the medium that’s been popular for millennia is an emergency. Perhaps people are getting irradiated spending too many hours staring at a computer monitor?

“This isn’t just a religious moral issue,” claimed Todd Weiler, the state senator who sponsored the religious and moral declaration.

Weiler, like over half the people in the godforsaken state of Utah, is a Mormon, and thus no stranger to some curious beliefs. God dwells on a planet near the star Kolob, although no one knows where in the hell Kolob is. God cursed people with dark skin, but not to worry: all they have to do to become “white and delightsome” is to be righteous. In that context, seeing the plague of pornography as a public health crisis makes as much sense as any other nonsense.

“No boy or girl needs to see those images to learn how families are created,” declared Weiler.

He does have a point there. No one’s ever going to figure out how to make a baby by watching a film of someone bound and gagged making love with a gerbil and a pony, especially since they’re probably just actors who aren’t really in love with each other.

20 April 2016

BTUs versus ATUs

Derek finally explained why it’s impossible to get excellent fish and chips in this country: it’s the oil. More specifically, Americans use the wrong heat.

I initially disagreed with him, since it should be easy to calibrate a deep fat fryer to x degrees. The Mancunian argued that it wasn’t just the temperature of the grease; it was the kind of heat. He pointed out that each and every chippy in England heated the fat with British thermal units, and we use American thermal units. He advised me to abandon hope of enjoying great fish and chips unless I returned to that miserable, grey little island.

That’s too high of a price to pay, so I had a burrito instead.

21 April 2016

A Sporting Chance

Isabella seemed a little the worse for wear and tear around the edges, so I asked her how her battle with alcohol was going.

“Just fine!” she reported.

“It sounds like you’ve turned the corner,” I replied skeptically.

“Well,” she admitted, “I occasionally let the booze win a round or two just to keep things interesting.”

As always, it’s not really about winning or losing; playing the game is the important thing.

22 April 2016

Prince Rogers Nelson

“The internet’s completely over.”

Prince Rogers Nelson said that in 2010. Today the Internet said that Prince is over, dead at fifty-seven.

And that’s the last word on that.

23 April 2016

Love her think forgeries (pluck the pelf)

It’s been decades since I worked with William Shakespeare; we collaborated on our piece, Love her think forgeries (pluck the pelf). I’m thinking of him at the moment because this is the quadricentennial of his death.

I’ve never had the patience to suffer through his interminable works. Everybody needs an editor, so I’m grateful to the anonymous person who deleted the chaff from his writing and passed along Wily Willy’s best insults.

“You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!”

“Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!”

“That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey Iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?”

“You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish—O for breath to utter what is like thee!—you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!”

And with that, I’m done quoting the boring bard for the next hundred years. Peace, ye fat guts!

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©2016 David Glenn Rinehart