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Weak XXIV

11 June 2013

No. 5,912 (cartoon)

You’re in an alcoholic state.

California?

No, the other one.

12 June 2013

Japanese Rites of Spring

I find some Japanese customs curious, and others endearing. The one about the sumo wrestlers and the babies is both.

Every year, sumo wrestlers and infants—children who haven’t had their first birthday—gather at the Sensoji Temple in Tokyo for the Naki Sumo contest. Two wrestlers each grab a wee bairn and face off against each other. Each wrestler then tries to make the other wrestler’s kid cry. This has been going on for over four centuries; it has something to do with spring. I think. Something like that.

But what if the baby doesn’t cry? The referee puts on a scary mask and terrorizes the infant until the tears and screams are flowing. (I’m almost certain that the stories about the wasabi diapers are false.)

I think that explains a lot. About what, this I do not know.

13 June 2013

Whole Hearted Roasted Monkey Nuts

If you’re headed to England in search of Whole Hearted Roasted Monkey Nuts, don’t. The peculiarly named delicacy has been recalled; it ran afoul of Food Standards Agency regulators because there’s no warning on the package that Whole Hearted Roasted Monkey Nuts contain ...

Nuts!

I don’t know the whole story; I wonder if someone suffered a sever allergic reaction after consuming what he or she believed to be primate testicles? That sounds unlikely, but no more so than someone buying some sugary fodder called Whole Hearted Roasted Monkey Nuts.

14 June 2013

Buried Treasure

I read Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island when I was a boy. Pirates, murder, mayhem, and buried treasure. That was as good as life got before I discovered art, women, and Rainier Ale.

A few months ago I buried Harriet in The Grave of the Unknown Chicken. I looked at the deep trench as something of a blank canvas for an untalented conceptual artist, and decided by bury treasure there as well.

I don’t have any platinum, gold, gems, et cetera, so I buried ten million dollars. Ten million dollars in currency is unwieldy; ask any drug dealer. And so, I buried a blank check for ten million dollars. Anyone who found it could have cashed it at my credit union and walked away with enough money to live comfortably in San Francisco for a few years.

No one did, and now it’s too late. I wrote on the check that it was void after a hundred days, so now the 25 February check is valueless. Buried Treasure, like every other piece of alleged art I’ve concocted, is both priceless and worthless.

15 June 2013

Staying Creative

People who aren’t very creative think those of us who are have a secret we’re not sharing. Well, we do.

Recently a reporter asked Lou Reed to reveal the secret.

“How do I stay creative?” he replied, “I masturbate every day. OK?”

Don’t believe him; that’s not really the secret. And I’m not saying what it is, either. Ha!

16 June 2013

Gratuitous Photo of the Weak: Cat Calendar

Photography was invented to make pictures of cats and kittens; any other use is purely gratuitous.

17 June 2013

Digging for Sausage

Everyone who lives in Michigan knows how to get free excavation on their property. Need an old swimming pool removed? Tell the authorities Jimmy Hoffa is buried underneath. Mission accomplished!

Hoffa, the president of the Teamsters union from 1957 to 1971, hasn’t been heard from since 1975 when he headed out for a restaurant meeting with another Teamster leader and an alleged organized crime boss. Investigators are still looking for whatever may be left of his remains, hence their willingness to dig up anyone’s property at the drop of a tip.

Everyone in Michigan knows what really happened to Hoffa, but no two stories are the same. When I was sailing the inebriated seas with Greenpeace in the eighties, one of the shady crew members on the Rainbow Warrior told me that some of his sinister associates on the docks reported with absolute certainty that Hoffa was ground up into sausage meat and consumed within a year of his disappearance.

That’s why I never eat sausage: one never knows what’s really inside the glistening, stuffed intestines, especially if it has a “union made” label.

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©2013 David Glenn Rinehart