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Weak XVI

16 April 2013

No. 2,276 (cartoon)

Grey is the number, and seven is the color.

What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

17 April 2013

Prospicuitously So

I can’t think of anything lazier to do than to copy and paste excerpts from today’s email, so that’s what I’m going to do.

“My courtship with Rhonda is progressing quite prospicuitously.”
—Roscoe

“Prospicuitously ain’t a word; did you mean perspicuously?”
—Me

“Prospicuitously is a word because I said it is.”
—Roscoe

“Saying something doesn’t make it so.”
—Me

“If you can put a chicken from a grocery store in a hole in the ground and call it art, I can string together vowels and consonants and call it a word.”
—Roscoe

Roscoe won, and that’s prospicuitously that.

18 April 2013

Flipped It and Died

“Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”

That’s the last thing Pancho Villa née José Doroteo Arango Arámbula allegedly said. It’s probably not true, but who cares?

For people who are unimaginative enough to demand reality, here are Alexander Heit’s last words: “Sounds good my man, seeya soon, ill tw”

Heit typed those words on his telephone’s miniscule keyboard while he was driving when should have been watching the road. When he finally looked up from his phone, the first thing the first thing he saw was a car heading straight at him; he’d steered into oncoming traffic. He lost control of his car when he tried to avoid a collision, flipped it and died.

What a way to go: dead at twenty-two with typos comprising your final words.

19 April 2013

What a World It Is!

I look forward to sleep, but not in the same way that many people do. Like everyone else, I sleep when I can no longer stay awake. No one can resist sleep’s demand; ask any dead pilot who fell asleep in the cockpit. I sleep not only because I must, but also because I enjoy life on the other side of consciousness.

When I’m lying in the dark, I relax and wait for the approach of sleep. I know it’s almost here when the first irrational thought enters my mind. If I’m thinking about how to execute a new piece, I know I’m not falling asleep. At the first whiff of surreality, though, I know I’m about to enter another world.

And what a world it is!

I never know what I’ll find there. Sometimes I can will myself to float a hundred meters into the air and drift above the pines and oaks, or perhaps just will myself to hover near the high ceiling of the banquet hall. (For the first time, it just occurred to me that no one in my dreams has ever flown except me.) And then there are the other wonders I’m too embarrassed to mention.

And then there are the anxiety dreams. Sometimes I’ve lost all my cameras, in other dreams I have to move out of my apartment by midnight and make it to the airport that’s hours away. The problem is that I don’t have enough time to get everything packed or catch my flight. (I’ve spent more time haggling with airlines in my dreams than I have while awake; I’m not sure whether or not that’s the right ratio.) In my worst dreams, I’m able to recognize that I’m dreaming and realize that I can escape my predicament by deciding to wake up.

I have a good idea what tomorrow will be like, my days are as predictable as they are delightful. Before I can get there, I’ll have to pass through the other world where I spend a third of my life.

Pleasant dreams!

20 April 2013

Twenty-Two Pudgy Little Fascists

The Internet Archive is an otherworldly place, a sea of warm electromagnetic radiation with an espresso machine that’s always eager to please. That’s why I was shocked to discover an abomination at the snack station: Kraft Jet-Puffed Gingerbread Mallows.

The wretched atrocities contained neither ginger nor bread, just corn syrup, sugar, modified cornstarch, dextrose, water, gelatin, tetrasodium pyrophosphate, artificial color (yellow five, red forty, blue one), natural and artificial flavor. Even worse, the puffy little monstrosities were shaped like little people giving a fascist salute.

I decided to photograph the little pieces of poison because they were so attractively repulsive. I had to drink whisky while making Twenty-Two Pudgy Little Fascists; the peaty vapors masked the chemical stench. I sent the poisonous monstrosities to the landfill when I was done, then took a long shower.

Yuck.

21 April 2013

Blood Vessels Around the World

I hate to mention this alleged fact since someone might try it, but the blood vessels in a human body could be wrapped around the equator two and a half times. In theory, at least.

In practice, it would take twenty-five hours to lay the biological cable from a jet flying at four-thousand kilometers an hour. I imaging that the first few thousand kilometers would decompose or be eaten by fishy fishes before all the blood vessels were deployed.

I think the project couldn’t possibly work, but I may nevertheless will my body to a research lab for that purpose to keep scientists and engineers amused.

22 April 2013

Saccharine Green Codswallop

Today is Earth Day, and I think I’m going to hurl organic, green globs of vomit. Decades ago, when the word “environmentalist” was used as a pejorative, I suppose the event made a modicum of sense. Now, however, scalawags, scoundrels, and nefarious ne’er-do-wells are piously proclaiming their love for the planet.

Brian invited me over for dinner; he’s cooking blue whale steaks on a redwood fire. Blue and red is the perfect antidote to all this saccharine green codswallop; yummy!

23 April 2013

Goodbye Portyanki

Garry Trudeau came up with one of my favorite Taliban jokes. There really wasn’t a contest; it’s my only Taliban joke. One of the characters in his comic strip accidentally shoots down a helicopter at an Afghan wedding while shooting his Kalashnikov into the sky in celebration. When his mother hears the news reports of the fiasco, she asks if the Taliban have helicopters.

“The Taliban don’t have socks,” her husband replies.

Thanks for the great punch line, Garry!

Well, it seems that Russian soldiers don’t have socks either. Even before the Seven Years’ War in 1754, Russian soldiers have worn portyanki instead of socks. The soldiers have wrapped their feet in squares of cloth: cotton in the summer, flannel during the winter. But no longer, Russian conscripts will finally get to wear socks.

That’s one small step for a Russian soldier, and one great leap for the Russian army.

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©2013 David Glenn Rinehart