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Weak VIII

20 February 2018

No. 1,818 (cartoon)

I hate waking up alive.

How do you know you’re not dead?

Stop trying to cheer me up.

21 February 2018

Bad Dog Food

If you have a bad dog, I suppose bad dog food is only appropriate. Yep, that’s a double entendre: dog food that’s bad and it’s also food for bad dogs.

I’m thinking about canine fare brands such as Kibbles ’n Bits and Against the Grain. The Food and Drug Administration recalled the dog food because it contained sodium pentobarbital, a drug frequently used to “put down,” i.e., execute, wretched curs who may or may not deserve it.

Jerry’s daughter Megan said she’d never buy Kibbles ’n Bits or Against the Grain dog food.

“I’m not going to use that commercial swill to kill one of my dogs,” she swore. “When it’s time to murder a mongrel, I personally poison ’em with Megan’s Last Supper Buffet. After a few bites of my special vittles they’re dead before they can either vomit or defecate. Very tidy!”

“You’re sitting on a gold mine,” I suggested. “I bet the scumbags who market Kibbles ’n Bits, Against the Grain, and all those wimpy euthanasia meals would pay a fortune for the recipe for Megan’s Last Supper Buffet.”

“Not for sale,” she replied. “No one slays ’em like I do!”

I appreciated that; pride in one’s craft is so very rare these days.

22 February 2018

Easy Headlines

I’m glad I don’t need any more money than the relatively modest amount I have and ignore. If, hell forfend, I ever needed more money, I think I’d get a job writing headlines. That’s because no one ever writes a headline; they just recycle, repurpose, and rewrite them.

Here’s a headline from today’s Washington Post: “The world sits by as another massacre unfolds in Syria.”

I could do that! All I’d have to do is work on my alleged art projects sipping gin until I got another writing assignment. I’d simply replace “Syria” with the location of the atrocity du jour. Done!

And then there’s America’s Finest News Source, The Onion. Every time some deranged monster with an assault rifle slaughters scores of people, their headline “writers” use the same headline for years on end: “No Way To Prevent This,” Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.

Easy money is boring, as is most money.

23 February 2018

Eleven Pineapple Perspectives

Most people don’t see what’s right in front of them, including me. That needn’t be the case. It’s worth repeating Yogi Berra’s insight, “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

It’s been almost a decade since I made Ten Pineapple Rings on Maui, so I decided to have another look at Ananas comosus with the aid of my Micro-Nikkor. I’m rather pleased with the result, Eleven Pineapple Perspectives, especially since I probably won’t have to deal with the prickly, sticky fruit until 2028 or so.

24 February 2018

Good Health Is No Secret

I know the secret of good health. Actually, it’s not a secret because I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: only read medical articles that conclude that your preferred diet and behavior is optimal.

For example, I ignored recent nonsense about a purported link between alcohol and cancer. That’s obviously poppycock and balderdash. I paid no attention to the nonsense and didn’t read more than the headline. Had I done so, I probably would have discovered it was pseudo-science propaganda pumped out by the milk marketing board.

And then there are the useful studies, news I can use. University of California neurologists determined that having a couple of glasses of beer and/or wine daily will increase the odds of living over ninety years and decrease premature deaths by a fifth.

That was all I needed to know to reach for my corkscrew. I didn’t examine the study to see how much I’d need to drink to see my hundredth birthday. Three more decades is more than enough time to continue enjoying doing nothing new.

25 February 2018

The Doping Lady Doth Protest Too Much

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Ever since Queen Gertrude said that in Shakespeare’s Hamlet half a millennium ago (give or take a few milliseconds or so), a public declaration of innocence before being presented with evidence to the contrary has always meant being guilty, guilty, guilty. Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon is an obvious relatively recent example.

And now there’s Nadezhda Sergeeva, a Russian bobsled pilot at the Olympic games in Korea. She gave an interview wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “I Don’t Do Doping,” so it’s a waste of my digital breath to report that she was ejected from the competition for doping.

I think the ban on athletes using drugs is as pointless as it is futile. I think the officials should allow them to use the best drugs they can get their shaky hands on. Now that’s what I would call an interesting competition!

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart