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Weak XLII

15 October 2020

No. 9,698 (cartoon)

I loved you once.

I’ll never forget it.

I won’t either; that was the worst minute of my life.

16 October 2020

Cat Scanning Text

I was happy to accept Sylvia’s invitation to spend the weekend at her compound to help her with a special project. She wouldn’t tell me what it was, just that it was a surprise. I packed my toothbrush, corkscrew, computers, and cameras (in that order, first things first) this morning and headed over.

She greeted me with a huge mug of cold beer; nice! I was only halfway done guzzling it down my gullet when she revealed the surprise project: me.

We got off to what might have been a bad start when she told me that she needed a specimen to analyze. I was taken aback, but told her I was ready anytime because I followed my mother’s advice to always wear the cleanest of underwear in case I ended up in an ambulance. (Thanks, mom!)

She rolled her eyes, as is tradition, and told me she wanted a writing sample. She claimed she’d telepathically trained her cat, Brunswick, to sniff out typos.

I didn’t roll my eyes; that’s why we’re still friends.

The cat had a gander at a few paragraphs, glanced at Sylvia, then sauntered away.

“What’s the verdict?” I asked.

“Brunswick says it’s cat box liner,” she replied.

Well I’ll be, that cat sure knows his litterature!

17 October 2020

A Cat is Not a Vegetable

“I want you to come see what you’ve done!” Sylvia demanded before were even halfway through the second bottle of brunch champagne. She pointed at her cat poking his head out from beneath a heavy blanket.

“You scared Brunswick with all of your jabbering about the killer Arctic cold front headed this way that’s going to annihilate everything in its path,” she complained.

“You know that I was talking about that weed patch you call a garden,” I protested.

“That doesn’t matter,” she replied. “Apologize to Brunswick and explain that he’s a kitty and not a vegetable.”

Should I try to reason with a paranoid scaredy-cat or pass on the rest of the champagne and leave early? I contemplated my options for a seventeenth of a moment, then grabbed the burly moggie, cradled him in my arms, and brought him back to the patio before the drinks got warm. I took my time describing how any animal, vegetable, or mineral with lots of hair and no leaves needn’t fear the freeze until Sylvia finally popped the third cork.

No one died, so we ended up having a good visit. I left as scheduled later that afternoon covered in a pleasing patina of cat hair.

18 October 2020

The Felinosecond

Beware of any article that begins with weasel words like, “Scientists have ...”

Today’s dubious headline claims, “Researchers have discovered the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule.”

The alleged new record: two hundred and forty-seven zeptoseconds. (In case you just fell off the rutabaga truck that pulled into the so-called farmers’ market, a zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second.)

Tarnation, I can come up with a unit of time shorter than a decimal point followed by twenty zeroes and the numeral one. All I have to do is add a zero, or perhaps a quadrillion of them, et voilà! The davidosecond!

That’s a loser’s game, since about a dozen davidoseconds after I do that some other idiot will insert a few more zeros.

Instead, I just invented the felinosecond, one zillionth of a zeptosecond, or the length of time it takes for a cat to change its mind about going through a doorway. Anyone can concoct an imaginary unit of time, but, based on the extensive testing I’ve done in my laboratory, one felinosecond really is the shortest measurable unit of time.

So there!

19 October 2020

New Frontiers in Drooling

Doctors May Have Found Secretive New Organs in the Center of Your Head

That’s the atypically sloppy headline in today’s New York Times. Are there or aren’t there new organs in my noggin that have somehow been overlooked for millennia?

Matthijs Valstar from the Netherlands Cancer Institute announced, “Now, we think there is a fourth [set of salivary glands].” What does he mean, “thinks there is?” All he has to do is grab a handy corpse (there are lots of ’em piling up these days), saw off the top of the skull, then start chopping and slicing and see what’s there. It can’t be harder than dicing up a cauliflower to roast; I do that several times a month.

Valstar sounds like more of a philosopher than a scientist, but saliva glands at the junction between the nasal cavity and the throat do have some interesting theoretical possibilities. If all the people who drool when they sleep could do so in the center of their heads instead of leaking out their mouths, the world would have far fewer crusty and discolored pillows.

I do hope the editors at the Times stop drinking rotgut booze and go back to the good gin so they can once again differentiate between science and speculation and restrict the latter to the opinion pages. I’ll probably discover another organ before that happens, although I doubt it will be anything nearly as wonderful as a Hammond B3 with a Leslie 122.

20 October 2020

Passing the Bar, Not the Liquor Store

Most parents continue to worry about their progeny even when they’re adults; Sebastian certainly does. He confided that Curtis, his son who moved to Alabama, can’t pass the bar. I know better than to offer unsolicited advice—although sometimes I can’t resist—so I simply told him that I was sorry to hear that.

Now here’s what I didn’t say. Of course the kid can’t pass the bar. I know a lot of people who have problems resisting alcohol, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect anyone to tolerate living in a failed state like Alabama without some degree of inebriation.

I hate to brag, even though I’m about to do just that, but I passed the bar on my first try. It’s not that I don’t like me a good tipple now and then, but, since I’m frugal and then some, I’d rather buy a couple of bottles of cheap wine at the store for less money than a minuscule glass in a bar costs.

Sebastian told me he’s thinking of hiring a consultant to help his son pass the bar; apparently that’s a lucrative field. Unfortunately, even I am not verbose enough to elaborate on “don’t waste your money” for a ninety-minute session.

All this thinkin’ sure is bringing on a powerful thirst; glad I didn’t pass the liquor store!

21 October 2020

Paul McCartney III

My friend Jill’s not one to drop names, but she was rather chuffed indeed to report that Paul McCartney spurned her. Move along if you’re looking for tawdry gossip. The snub was purely professional; she works at the London advertising agency McCartney hired to design and promote his latest album, “Paul McCartney III.”

(Personal aside: Jill’s too young to recognize that McCartney’s latest aural excretion is a bitter old man’s pathetic response to his musical nemesis, the late Johnny Winter, whose 1974 magnum opus, “John Dawson Winter III,” featuring a John Lennon composition written for Winter, is critically praised as a masterpiece contemporary music.)

She got off to a rocky start, then went downhill, and ended up pear-shaped. With her thick Dutch accent, she pronounced the upcoming release as McCardney da turd. The formerly cute Beatle was not amused, and became livid when she showed him a mockup for the campaign. It featured the star hisself covered in thick globs of soap suds with the tag line, “All Washed Up.”

Jill argued that was probably the most positive thing to say, especially since John Lennon has released a good new album more recently than Sir Paul. She was taken off the account but kept her job thanks to the rave reviews she got from another client.

Last month she was asked to come up with the imagery for another project, “Nick Cave’s Greatest Hits.” She proposed using a photograph of a dartboard in a seedy pub after a game, but with hypodermic needles instead of darts. Cave told the owner of the agency that he loved the idea, so she’s still working there despite the McCartney debacle.

Postscript: Don’t bother looking for “Nick Cave’s Greatest Hits.” Cave won’t allow the collection to be compiled and released until he’s dead, otherwise how could anyone say what his greatest work was?

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©2020 David Glenn Rinehart