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Weak XXVII

2 July 2013

No. 6,638 (cartoon)

I’ll never speak to you again.

I don’t care.

But I will scream at you.

3 July 2013

The Tiger’s Stripes

Alexia told me that tigers have striped skin underneath their striped fur. I found this information rather disturbing. I have no problem with striped skin; homo sapiens spend a fortune on tattoos only to get decidedly inferior results. I’d much rather have stripy skin, but that wasn’t the biological hand my parents dealt.

The problem I have with the tiger research is this: what kind degenerate researcher goes around shaving tigers?

4 July 2013

The Singularity

I was more than skeptical when Hubert told me that “the singularity” had occurred. (In the very simplest of terms, the singularity is when our technological creations can outthink us because they have superhuman intelligence.)

“I don’t see any evidence of that,” I said.

“That’s because you’re starting with the wrong assumptions,” Hubert replied. “Must humans aren’t more intelligent than a remote-controlled garage door opener or an electric toothbrush. The singularity happened at least forty years ago. Unlike us, our machines have been getting smarter since then.”

I thought about it for a while, and was pleasantly surprised when I found myself agreeing with him. None of my technology has turned on me yet; it looks like I survived the singularity.

5 July 2013

Toddlers versus Terrorists

The American government continues to make a mockery of the country’s constitution by building massive databases with records of phone calls, Internet use, travels, automobile locations, even surface mail of almost everyone in the country. Still, there’s one group of dangerous individuals who’ve eluded the blanket surveillance. They almost never use phones or computers; they don’t buy airplane tickets, and they don’t drive automobiles. They do, however manage to kill more U.S. citizens than all the domestic terrorists combined.

I’m talking about toddlers.

It’s easy to kill people; ask any small child with a gun. The reason terrorists don’t kill many people is that there obviously aren’t that many terrorists in the United States. So far this year, thousands of Iraqis have died in internecine attacks. Two idiot brothers in Boston killed four people with crude bombs; that’s it.

If one were to be so macabre as to keep score, the domestic kill tally for the first five months is toddlers with guns: eleven, terrorists: four. I think the National Insecurity Agency should be looking for derringers in diapers and not collecting and analyzing ineffectual diatribes like this.

6 July 2013

What Mothers Do

My mother will be calling me in a few minutes. I know this because a Korean airliner just crashed at the San Francisco airport.

It doesn’t matter that I haven’t been to Korea in years. If there’s any sort of major accident in the region, my mother will call to make sure that I wasn’t involved. I stopped trying to make sense of her illogical concerns; that’s just what mothers do.

7 July 2013

Playboy

A friend’s information technology project was recently profiled in Playboy. He showed me the magazine; it was like opening a time capsule and gazing into a pathetic, sexist world I thought I’d never see again. Yes, this is still a sexist, racist, ageist, thisist, and thatist world, but contemporary society has made a modicum of progress since the vulgar periodical hit the newsstands sixty years ago.

The world has changed; Playboy has not. It depicts a world run by old men where women are relegated to sexual objects doing menial jobs. Is this 2013, or is my calendar broken?

Here’s one of the featured jokes: “What’s the difference between Iron Man and Iron Woman? One is a superhero, the other is a simple command.” In another cartoon, an elderly, fat white guy—presumably the publication’s main demographic—is sitting in his office chair. He assures an attractive young woman who’s apparently his secretary that she’ll be paid overtime for her work. She’s on her knees, nude, with her head between his legs.

Playboy isn’t funny and it certainly isn’t erotic; it’s a pathetic anachronism. I can’t believe the intellectually bankrupt business isn’t financially bankrupt as well. Perhaps society hasn’t changed as much as I thought it had.

A pox on sexist pigdogs everywhere. Feh.

8 July 2013

Gratuitous Photo of the Weak: Rose Garden

I was pedaling through the rose garden in Golden Gate Park when I spotted a woman in an electric wheelchair looking at the rosy panorama on a sunny morning. I marveled at how perfectly still she was for minutes on end until it occurred to me that she was probably paralyzed to some degree.

I wonder what that’s like? I hope I never find out.

(This photograph doesn’t reproduce well in a small size. I intentionally made most things out of focus, it’s hard to see the small areas that are sharp. Photo of the weak indeed.)

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©2013 David Glenn Rinehart