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Weak IX

26 February 2015

No. 6,505 (cartoon)

You’re opening old wounds.

I’m sorry; I’ll make fresh ones!

27 February 2015

Socks née SDSS J0100+2802

Astronomers have discovered a new object, SDSS J0100+2802, a black hole inside a quasar some twelve billion times the size of our sun.

Or have they?

Let’s do the math. SDSS J0100+2802 is almost thirteen billion light years away, so we haven’t received a postcard from anyone there in quite some time. And who can say with certainty that SDSS J0100+2802 is still there? No one, that’s who. SDSS J0100+2802 could have gone bankrupt or have been bought by an even larger celestial object ten billion years ago, and no one here would ever know for the next three billion years or so.

SDSS J0100+2802 is a needlessly convoluted name. I propose we just call it, “Socks.” With that kind of mass and black hole suckage, SDSS J0100+2802, or rather, Socks, must be where all of the world’s missing socks have gone.

There’s no other possible explanation. Or, if there is, no one will know for billions of years, and I’ll probably be long dead by then.

28 February 2015

Leonard Simon Nimoy, Marketing Genius

I’ve never understood the obsessive devotion some people have to fictional television characters, or real ones for that matter. I’m thinking of Leonard Simon Nimoy, who was cast as Doctor Spock in the endlessly rehashed series of Star Trek television shows and movies.

Nimoy is in the headlines today after pulling off a once in a lifetime publicity coup: he died.

I have no opinion on Nimoy’s thespian abilities, or lack thereof, but I admire him for perhaps his most unappreciated accomplishment: marketing. Nimoy, who thought of himself as a film director, poet, and musician as well as an actor, chose I Am Not Spock as the title of his first autobiography. That upset a lot of people suffering from Reality Deficit Disorder, so he then published his second autobiography, I Am Spock.

Brilliant! One his autobiographies resonated with either the “he ain’t,” or the, “he is” faction. I shall plagiarize Nimoy’s clever merchandising strategy and call my first two autobiographies, I Am Idiot, and, I Am Not Idiot. I wonder which one I should write first?

1 March 2015

Seven Thousand Days in a Row

I told Duane that today was the seven thousandth day in a row that I’ve been publishing these daily notebook entries. I added that I was fairly happy with the results, since if you do anything seven thousand days in a row you get pretty good at it.

“No, that’s not how it works,” he replied. “You have to do it for ten thousand days in a row.”

Thanks, Duane; thanks for ruining my meaningless milestone. Dang; it looks like I’ll have to wait until 18 May 2023 to get good at this flapdoodle.

2 March 2015

The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog Revisited

Political and legal opposition to the prohibition against marijuana continues to swell, so federal government apparatchiks who want to retain the status quo reached into their conceptual hat and pulled out ...

A rabbit! A confused, drug-addled bunny, but a rabbit nevertheless.

The prohibitionists’ reasoning—although that’s certainly not the right word—goes like this. If marijuana is legal, rabbits will overrun marijuana farms, creating a zillion cuddly little drug addicts.

Just ask Matt Fairbanks, a Utah Drug Enforcement Agency agent on Utah’s Marijuana Eradication Team. He provided evidence—or rather an anecdote—before a hearing on medical marijuana. “One of [the rabbits] refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone.”

Yikes! Oh well, at least he used rabbits instead of racism for his specious argument. Harry Anslinger, a leading proponent of marijuana prohibition, gave appallingly racist testimony before the U.S. Congress in support of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the Unites States, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.

Some law enforcement officials use the drugs they confiscate. I’m certainly not suggesting this happened, but what if Agent Fairbanks smoked quite a bit of very strong marijuana, the kind that makes you paranoid about everything including adorable little bunny rabbits? And what if he then watched the film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and still suffers horrific flashbacks from seeing the gratuitous violence in the scene with the killer rabbit of Caerbannog?

Although I don’t advocate marijuana use, I nevertheless think it should be legalized. Rabbits have always used it and will continue to do so, so it’s best if it’s regulated and safe.

3 March 2015

Iggy the Curator

A few months ago I wrote about excerpts from Iggy Pop’s only lecture to date. (I hope he stops while he’s ahead.) Today I listened to a recording of the entire talk.

One thing I learned was that he now has a radio show, and that listening to so many recording has made him reticent to make any new work of his own since there’s so much good music out there already.

In one way, he’s right, but only if you accept the premise that the purpose of creative activity is to make something better than and/or different from anything any other human has done. If my desire was simply to bring great art into world, I’d curate and publish the wonderful work that already exists. If I did, I’d no doubt find work that’s “better” than mine, but making art is not a competitive enterprise.

I blah blah blah blah blah blah ad nauseam. I’m being too annoyingly serious, so it’s time to stop.

4 March 2015

Nondescript

Amanda told me she was feeling nondescript, so I offered to loan her my thesaurus. She was annoyed by my generosity for reasons I can’t begin to imagine. Perhaps I should have given her a dictionary?

There’s just no pleasing some people, and Amanda may be one of ’em.

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©2015 David Glenn Rinehart