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Weak XLIX

3 December 2024

No. 436 (cartoon)

Don’t you psychologize me.

I’ll psycho anything I want.

I’ll psychoticize you worser.

4 December 2024

Graduate-School-Level Stupidity

It’s hard to amuse Stewart, so I couldn’t resist telling him about Veronica’s newest inane scheme. (It’s dangerous and probably illegal as well, so I won’t repeat it here.)

“You certainly have some interesting friends,” he opined.

“That’s Veronica!” I agreed. “She never graduated from high school, yet she has graduate-school-level stupidity.”

5 December 2024

Discussing Krampusnacht

“Happy Krampusnacht!”

That’s how I greeted Brandon and Anita when they arrived at my studio this afternoon. Neither of them had heard of Krampusnacht before, so I explained today’s holiday precedes the Feast of St. Nicholas on the sixth of December.

Brandon recalled that Krampus was the German version of Santa Claus, but he was completely wrong. I explained that Krampus is a half-goat half-man who puts bad children in large canvas sacks and beats them with Birch branches. (It’s one of those enlightened Teutonic things no one else fully understands or appreciates.)

Anita said the celebration is unique to one small village in Germany, but of course she couldn’t remember which one because it wasn’t true. Brandon claimed it was actually a Scandinavian tradition, an equally facetious proposition.

What a great conversation! No one ever suggested asking the Internet about Krampus, so we enjoyed a spirited discussion over bottles of wine untethered by vexatious facts.

6 December 2024

Jupiter, the Sun, and Their Barycenter

In 1633, Pope Urban VIII put Galileo Galilei on trial for daring to discuss that the earth revolved around the sun. In case you may have forgotten the verdict, here it is.

“We order that by a public edict the book of Dialogues of Galileo Galilei be prohibited, and We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure.”

The astronomer and physicist spent the rest of his life under house arrest, so history teaches us an important lesson: don’t mess with Catholics.

Pope Frankie the Uno, who’s been credited with reducing pedophilia among priests to acceptable levels, seems like a reasonable hombre. Nevertheless, I’m not one to take unnecessary chances with a guy who controls an army of inquisitors, so I have a planetary statement to make, one that’s sure to interest everyone in our solar system.

Jupiter does not orbit around the sun.

Jupiter is just too dang big to orbit around the sun, so they orbit around each other. Except that they don’t. Given my minuscule knowledge of heavenly bodies, I’m somewhat reticent to say this, but, they both orbit around a conceptual point called the barycenter.

Barycenter: that’s the way the solar system spins.

7 December 2024

Secreting Aboard a Vessel

Svetlana Dali hopped on a commercial jet and flew from New York to Paris the other day; it happens all the time. Dali took an innovative approach, though, and did so without a ticket or a passport. It seems that’s illegal, and now she might be looking at five years in prison.

Is she being charged with not paying the airline? Nope. Entering France without a passport? Negatory. She’s being charged with “secreting aboard a vessel.”

I’m not interested in how one avoids passport control and stows away aboard a transAtlantic Jet. No, all I can think about is the mysterious concept, “secreting aboard a vessel.”

I don’t want to discuss my personal life in general or my secretions in particular, but I’m intrigued by the possibilities of secreting aboard a vessel ... so many secretions, so many vessels.

8 December 2024

It’s Not Real But It Happened

Eric’s back from some sort of ten-day spiritual retreat where he paid a lot of money to remain silent and eat crappy food in the hopes of getting a better glimmer of enlightenment.

I don’t get it. Bad food isn’t expensive, and I can keep my mouth shut for free, although I rarely do. Given my ignorance, I couldn’t discuss his program so I teased him about it.

“Did you discover the sound a tree makes when it falls in the woods with no one around?” I asked.

“It is the sound of one hand clapping,” he replied solemnly.

“Have you heard either?” I continued.

“You can’t understand,” he responded. “It’s not real but it happened.”

What a great line! I shall steal it and sound vaguely enlightened too, but without all the time, money, and work.

9 December 2024

Getting Away with Murder

Luigi Mangione sounds like the name of a Mafia hitman from a Woody Allen film, but that is indeed the handle of of the man who may have bumped off the head of UnitedHealthcare, a behemoth health care [sic] insurance company. The corporation raked in almost four hundred billion dollars in revenue last year, in part because of the savvy business practice of refusing to pay about a third of the claims of the people it nominally insured.

The slaying came a few days after Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, another monster insurance company, announced it would refuse to pay for anesthesia if the operation took too long. I could go on, but anyone who’s at all familiar with American culture will recognize the corporate health care [sic] parasites* bleeding the system dry.

Henri forwarded a relevant post on the Internet, “When you shoot one man in the street it’s murder. When you kill thousands of people in hospitals by taking away their ability to get treatment you’re an entrepreneur.”

My biggest surprise about the violent rage against the perfidious insurers is that it didn’t begin decades ago.

I’m not going to preachify and pontificate, but I will note that murder and violence have never changed anything, if you ignore virtually all of human history.

I’ll let Clarence Darrow wrap this up: “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

*I had no idea that Mangione called them parasites when I wrote this. What a nutty little coincidence!

10 December 2024

The Din of Weeping and Gnashing Teeth

It’s been five weeks since the elections, and the din of weeping and gnashing teeth is growling louder and louder. And the horror show hasn’t even started yet.

Dan Piraro is one of the most thoughtful people I know. I don’t even know him, but I am comforted by his perspective on the simmering fiasco. “I generally find that immersing myself in politics can be toxic—like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.”

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart