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Weak XXXI

30 July 2018

No. 3,241 (cartoon)

I despise, loathe, and hate you.

I find your mixed emotions tedious.

31 July 2018

Dog Oil

I love my stellar friends and dread dog oil like the plague it is. The problem—and it really is a serious problem—is that said friends pooh-pooh and pooh again my fear of dog oil. I marvel at how said learned friends can simultaneously be so wise and yet so ignorant at the same time.

Let’s take an average dog. Better yet, take all of them. Far, far away. The cur cheerfully walks through the puddle of urine it created then sniffs and licks every canine anus it can find. So why do my friends protest when I wave my knife at the foul beastie when their pathetic Fido wants to jump on my lap and lick my face?

I still have all of my hands and feet. Sadly, that’s something Greg Manteufel can’t say. The poor guy lost his hands and feet after a lick from a dog infected with Capnocytophaga canimorsus resulted in sepsis.

It’s like my father never said, “Son, when it comes to licking, keep your brains on.”

I’m sorry about Manteufel’s tragedy, but maybe that’s what it takes to get more people to understand the grave dangers of dog oil.

1 August 2018

Incompetent Astronomers

“You must look at the sky tonight,” Selena wrote last night, “Mars will never be this close to Earth again until 2287.”

Even though I know little about what goes on outside of my immediate neighborhood, that seemed most improbable. I looked at her source, an Internet site that claimed to be, “the premier source of space exploration, innovation and astronomy news,” and there was the breathless headline.

Mars Is At Its Closest to Earth Since 2003 Today! It Won't Be Closer Until 2287!

I went outside to have a gander; it was quicker and easier than arguing with her. I spotted a tiny patch of fog that was perhaps a few lumens lighter than the rest of the opaque cloud cover.

That had to be Mars. Mission accomplished!

Today, I checked the factual accuracy of what I wrote; that’s something I routinely do every time Mars is closer to me than it will be for centuries. I returned to the Internet site I cited as the source and found an embarrassing update.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on August 1 to correct the year in which Mars will be closer to Earth than it was July 31, 2018. It is 2035, not 2287.

Some editor.

Again, I know very little about celestial matters let alone what goes on within a kilometer of here, but I would have thought that two hundred and fifty-two years is well outside any accepted margin of error for even the most incompetent of astronomers.

2 August 2018

Censored by Idiots and Morons

Clarissa needed to go to the hospital for some routine pokery, so I volunteered to accompany her and hold her hand, figuratively and literally.

I’d never want a job job anywhere, especially in a hospital. The place was full of sick people of all flavors and was devoid of a scintilla of cheer. I decided some invigorating musing was just what the grim environment needed, so I connected my computer to the medical center’s Internet network to listen to my favorite musical ensemble: mine.

It didn’t work. Instead of the dulcet tones of uplifting music, I was greeted with a digital roadblock.

Sorry [sic], you don’t have permission to visit this site.
Website blocked
Not allowed to browse Nudity category
Your organization has selected Zscaler to protect you from Internet threats.

Nudity?! There’s not a single image on any of my band’s pages except typography. The incompetent idiotic and moronic censors at Zscaler Corporation couldn’t program an egg timer; feh.

Ironically, my problem isn’t censorship; it’s the lack of censorship that bothers me. I agree with Mae West, who wrote, “I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it.”

3 August 2018

Segment of the Original Internet, c. 1969, Notarized

No one knows more about the Internet than me. Correction: no one knows more about the Internet than Vint Cerf and me. (Vint’s the hombre what came up with the packety thingie that’s allowing you to read this even as we don’t speak.)

Cerf just signed my documentation for my piece, Segment of the Original Internet, c. 1969, so now even the doubters and naysayers have to admit that ’twas I who researched and published the true story of how the Interthingie came to be.

4 August 2018

Deader Than Ever

From today, painting is dead.

The painter Paul Delaroche allegedly said that a hundred and seventy years ago or so after seeing his first daguerreotype. He was, of course, wrong wrong for the obvious reason: what else are wealthy people going to put on the walls behind the couches except paintings?

I quite like Wim Wenders, but I respectfully disagree with his specious obituary declaring that photography, “is more dead than ever.” He reasons that no one sees the kajillion photos people make every hour with their phone’s digital camera. “Even the people who take them don’t look at them anymore, and they certainly don’t make prints.”

He is, of course, correct that the distribution technologies and curatorial resources don’t exist to disseminate that many images, but I reached the opposite conclusion. Photography may be deader than ever, but what better time to use it as a purported creative medium?

Wenders hasn’t given up, though.

“I’m in search of a new word for this new activity that looks so much like photography but isn’t photography anymore,” he declared.

’twould appear the poor guy doesn’t have a thesaurus. If he did, he could start by considering balderdash, baloney, bilge, blather, bunk, bunkum, claptrap, crap, dross, garbage, hogwash, nonsense, piffle, poppycock, rubbish, shit, and twaddle.

5 August 2018

Palak Paneer

I didn’t hesitate to answer Charlie when he asked me if I had a favorite food. Leftovers!

That’s when he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl of green goo. I happily accepted his offer after ascertaining that the white blobs floating in the slime were cheese, not mold. He heated the gloop until a thin layer of grease covered the surface; that’s always a good sign.

“I can’t believe you’re eating all that fat!” he exclaimed.

“What is it?” I asked. (Eat first and ask questions later; that’s what I say.)

“Indian leftovers,” he replied. “It’s palak paneer made from cheese and spinach.”

I was appalled by his ignorance of the basics of nutritional science; everyone knows spinach negates oil. Everyone except Charlie, I suppose.

6 August 2018

Mark and Susan Institutionalized

Mark reported that he and Susan were put in an institution on a recent trip to Quebec. The geography was irrelevant; the transnational institution provided no tourtière, pâté chinois, or even poutine. No poutine?!

I have no idea whey they didn’t do it in their backyard or even in the road, but they traveled all that way to enter into the institution of marriage. I feigned disappointment that I couldn’t make it, but I was glad this is the second time this year that I skipped friends’ weddings to avoid the humiliating abasement of airports and spending hours as a contortionist in passenger seats built to accommodate premature babies.

Mark and Susan’s archetypal wedding photographs showed beautiful women and handsome men in nice clothes eating fancy food and drinking out of ridiculously tiny little glasses that probably couldn’t hold more than an eighth liter of wine. I read Mark’s entire account of the celebration; there wasn’t a single hint let alone explicit mention of scandal, debauchery, lasciviousness, or even embarrassment.

I felt sorry for them when I heard what I boring time they had; maybe I should have joined them instead of being so selfish.

Nah ...

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart