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Weak XVIII

30 April 2015

No. 7,113 (cartoon)

I feel like my old self again!

That’s wonderful!

Not really, I’m rediscovering the joys of alcoholism.

1 May 2015

The Life of Riley

“I am in home hospice care at my residence in Las Vegas. Thanks to all for your well wishes and prayers.” That was the last most of us will hear from Riley B. King, who’s more commonly known by his stage name: B.B. King.

King will quietly die during his sleep from diabetes complications in a couple of weeks. I’m not clairvoyant; I can say that because I don’t write in real time, or even in reality.

I have no idea how I’ll die; I’m looking forward to my final surprise. I hope I get to say a quick goodbye to everyone as King did. And if I don’t, well, I suppose that won’t bother me, which is one of the many great things about being dead.

2 May 2015

The K-T Boundary for Idiots

Whenever I have trouble sleeping, I reach for The Geological Society of America Bulletin. The current issue features an article by researchers at the University of California who hypothesize that the violent impact from a massive asteroid resulted in thousands of volcanic explosions around the world. The scientists speculate that the resulting global conflagration happened some sixty-six million years ago.

According to the piece I read, “Those dates span a time known as the K-T Boundary, the time between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, when three-quarters of all life on Earth, including the dinosaurs, vanished.”

I hate it when writers and editors talk down to me: is there anyone more intelligent than a rutabaga who doesn’t know what the K-T Boundary is?

Exactly! I rest my case. Sheesh ...

3 May 2015

Jonathan Basile’s Library of Babel

Once upon a time (1941, more or less), Jorge Luis Borges published The Library of Babel, a short story about a library comprising every possible book in a particular format. In 2011, I published a physical book from my collection, The Library of Babel II. My version is larger than the original (29^1,312,000 books versus 26^1,312,000 books) because it uses the twenty-six letter English alphabet; Borges used a twenty-two letter alphabet.

I’m not sure which alphabet Jonathan Basile is using, but he’s creating a virtual Library of Babel. So far he’s published 104,677 books on the Internet. He calculates that if he can produce one book a second, he’ll have completed the project in 104,668 years. I think that’s rather optimistic, but I’m too lazy to do the math.

I’m glad that I was sensible enough to stop after one book; I have better things to do for the next hundred millennia.

4 May 2015

A Bear in Her Underwear

Alexia wrote that she photographed a bear in her underwear while hiking in a Sierra heat wave, but the image quality was so poor that she discarded the blurry shot. I don’t really care about missing another bad wildlife photograph, but I do look forward to finding out why there was a bear in her underwear.

5 May 2015

Not a Practicing Alcoholic

After the fiasco at Hubert’s party last night, I told Toni that Anastasia seemed like a practicing alcoholic.

“I don’t think it’s fair to call her a practicing alcoholic,” Toni replied, “I think she’s got it down.”

Oh dear; I’m afraid she’s right.

6 May 2015

Child Obesity Begins Here

Willy has an atrocious diet that’s rich in fat, salt, and chemical additives. A Banquet Turkey Pot Pie is a paragon of such cuisine. Perhaps to compensate for its dubious nutritional and culinary appeal, ConAgra Foods advertises “Child Hunger Ends Here” on the box of its seven-ounce frozen fat pill.

I suppose that’s true: any young boy or girl who ate a Banquet Turkey Pot Pie’s worth of calories and saturated fat would no longer be hungry. And from a marketing perspective, “Child Hunger Ends Here” sounds much better than “Child Obesity/Diabetes/Heart Disease Begins Here.” Marketing prowess like that belies the con in ConAgra.

I asked Willy if he thought a Banquet Turkey Pot Pie would be a good meal for a kid.

“You have to be kidding!” he replied as he pulled a steaming “pie” from his microwave oven. “I wouldn’t feed this crap to a dog.”

And with that, he opened a couple of cans of Rainier Ale, passed me one of them along with a bag of cashews, then tucked into his noxious lunch.

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©2015 David Glenn Rinehart