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Weak XXI

21 May 2010

No. 950 (cartoon)

Our love is growing.

Like a cancer!

Like a virus!

22 May 2010

Thither and Yon

Amy wrote to tell me that I’d made yet another mistake by writing, “thither and yon.” She insisted that I should have used, “hither and yon.”

I reported to Amy that the Internet provided some 467,000 instances of “thither and yon,” about 211,000 uses of “hither, thither, and yon,” and only 156,000 or so cases of “hither and yon.”

Amy was not impressed. She explained that most people were idiots, and the fact that most people agreed with me cast me in a most unfavorable light. I thought that was such a remarkable piece of totalitarian logic that I didn’t bother responding.

23 May 2010

Goodbye, Jane

John told me that Jane took her last breath at 15:31 this afternoon. He was by her side. Jane had been fighting cancer for a very long time. As she told him a few days earlier, “It’s not like we didn’t all know that this was coming.”

I hadn’t seen Jane since last summer, so I can’t really call myself much of a friend. Or relationship mainly involved chatting at parties and occasionally fixing her computer. A couple of days ago, I agreed to be one of the many people who’d provide her continuous care during her final days. It turned out that her last hours were fewer than expected, and my turn to be by her side never came. I’m glad my last visit with her was full of light, joy, and great food. And perhaps some degree of inebriation.

Jane had lots of time to prepare for her death, and did. Her life ended in her home, on her terms, and mercifully quickly after the final decline. When fighting an overpoweringly strong enemy like cancer, that’s about the best one can do.

(And Jane, if you’re reading this, forget about the case of wine you offered me. I bought one myself, and put your name on it.)

24 May 2010

Babies, a Corpse, and Mayonnaise

Brian didn’t do very well on his trip with Annette to attend her grandfather’s funeral; the visit was a bit of a catastrophe.

“He had a meltdown when simultaneously confronted with babies, a corpse, and mayonnaise,” Annette reported. “He drove home without me a couple of hours later.”

We all have our personal phobias, but Brian’s seemed a tad peculiar. Human babies have been around for innumerable millennia, and human corpses almost as long. I don’t know about mayonnaise; I never have and never will.

Annette didn’t describe the particulars, and just as well. I’m imagining a bunch of infants crawling over a cadaver lathered in mayonnaise, but that’s just macabre speculation and morbid conjecture. How people in the Carolinas go about their rituals is their business, not mine.

25 May 2010

The Tenth Towel Day

Today is the tenth annual Towel Day. Having written about Towel Day a couple of years ago, there’s really nothing more for me to add. By admitting my dearth of imagination (at least when it comes to writing about towels and towel culture), I’m admitting the obvious: Douglas Adams is a much better writer. Or, rather, he was before he died.

It takes a great mind to write a compelling story about a towel, and such brains are rare. I’m thinking of Trey Parker and Matt Stone; the recent episode of their cartoon featuring a towel was by far their worst creation ever.

Still, there are many more important things in life than writing. Life, for example. I’d rather be me than Douglas Adams; he’s dead and I’m not.

Yet.

26 May 2010

Pretentious Umlauts

Roscoe asked me why I used umlauts when I spelled “naïve,” so I told him.

I’m pretentious.

(I think Roscoe’s great, but he lacks a keen grasp of the obvious.)

27 May 2010

Still Stupid After All These Years

“We were young, good-looking, and stupid,” Mick Jagger recently announced. “Now we’re just stupid.”

That’s the difference between Jagger and me: I never was good-looking. We have myriad other dissimilarities, of course, but there’s no need to enumerate them here.

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©2010 David Glenn Rinehart