Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak

Weak XVI

16 April 2015

No. 6,259 (cartoon)

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Do you have a better idea for getting rid of it?

17 April 2015

A Maggot in the Big Apple

I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Byron today; I hadn’t heard a peep from him since he moved to New York over a year ago. Usually when people emigrate there, they disavow their contacts here in the provinces.

Byron shocked me when he told me that living in New York had taught him a lot about the real value of restraint, empathy, and tranquility.

“That doesn’t sound like you at all,” I said.

“It’s not, you knucklehead,” he replied. “That crap is for losers who sit around eating brie and drinking Chardonnay all day.”

Ah, to be a maggot in the Big Apple! Better him than me.

18 April 2015

Double Down Dog

I’m fascinated with the macabre, the grotesque, and the repulsive. And so, I’m captivated by the latest offering at Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants: the Double Down Dog. The culinary abomination is as simple as it is disgusting; here’s the formula.

Start with a generic hot dog: a pseudo sausage made from anything scraped from the slaughterhouse floor. Put it in a cardboard-flavored flour bun, then drizzle with a stripe of anemic mustard. All you need to do to turn that suburban staple into a Double Down Dog is to replace the bread with a piece of greasy deep-fried chicken and top with cheese-flavored oil instead of mustard. How simple! How repulsive!

Why did it take millennia to concoct such a high-cholesterol atrocity? And where can I get one? (They’re not sold in California.) I wouldn’t eat it, of course, I’d just admire the vomitous monstrosity for the loathsome work of art it most certainly is.

19 April 2015

Cedric’s Mirror

Divorce is never easy. Except, of course, when it is.

Cecelia explained that Cedric made it easy for her to divorce him. He started by having an affair when she was a few months pregnant, lied about it when she found out, then lied about ending the relationship. After their son was born, he announced that he’d decided to openly carry on the affair.

He tried to clarify the attraction to Cecelia as she was changing their son’s diaper.

“I love you,” he began, “but she holds up a mirror to me that I can see myself in.”

“I had no idea you wanted that,” she replied. “It’s probably too late to change our relationship, but here’s a mirror you can admire yourself in.”

She held up a diaper dripping with greenish yellow baby diarrhea.

It wasn’t too late for her to change her relationship with Cedric after all. He stalked out, and she started divorce proceedings soon thereafter.

The End.

20 April 2015

No Idea

I grimaced when Antoinette told me about her latest deranged scheme.

“Do you have a better idea, Mister Smarty Pants?” she demanded.

“There are times when no idea is a better idea,” I replied, “and I think this is such an occasion.”

She harrumphed a definitive harrumph, and that was that. I have no idea why she was so irritable.

21 April 2015

A Waste of Capers

Conrad told me that capers scare away moles. That’s useless information; who would want to scare away a tiny, double-thumbed critter? Conrad was even worse than useless; he had no idea how to attract a mole. And even worse, he seemed rather proud of his ignorance.

Why would anyone waste capers terrorizing miniscule mammals instead of combining them—the capers, not the moles—with salmon, pasta, and a little olive oil for a delightful dinner?

22 April 2015

Booting Themselves Up by Their Pull Straps

I’m reticent to use superlatives, but Angelina just brewed perhaps the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever had in San Francisco. It tasted like autumn mud, with a hint of motor oil and sawdust overtones. When I asked her where she got the alleged coffee beans, she said it was from some sort of do-gooder organization.

“I think they grow it in some Nepalese village in Africa,” she explained, “or something like that.”

“There literally can’t be any Nepalese villages in Africa,” I replied.

“I meant a figurative Nepalese village figuratively in Africa, the kind of place where people are booting themselves up by their pull straps,” she continued. “It doesn’t really matter, it’s for a good cause.”

I made an implausible excuse then headed to Priscilla’s Cafe, where Priscilla herself made me a large cup of very strong coffee. The one thing she and I have in common is that we share a strong belief in the same good cause: making great coffee.

23 April 2015

(B)Light Whiskey

It’s not very difficult to make pretty good whisky; the Scots have been doing it for centuries. Just follow tradition and proven formulae and the water of life will flow.

It takes immense stupidity—the kind of idiotic creativity about which I can only dream longingly—to make atrocious whiskey, but some imbeciles in Genoa, Ohio, have done just that.

They started by making diet whiskey, Thinn Light Whiskey. Or at least that’s their marketing ploy; they offer no evidence to support their specious claim. A few weeks ago I despaired over calorie labels on whisky, and now there’s more of this caloric nonsense.

If you’re overweight, it’s probably not because of whiskey. And if it is, then you have a much bigger problem than your distended belly. And so, low-calorie whiskey is a solution without a problem.

I don’t know with certainty how it tastes, but “light whiskey” has to taste, well, light. And tasteless, just like the people who make and market it. And if that’s not bad enough, the Thinn chemists also make blueberry and cinnamon flavored versions of their disgrace.

Oy, I despair.

Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak
©2015 David Glenn Rinehart