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5 November 2016

No. 9,138 (cartoon)

The smell of the sheets reminds me of my dead partner.

Of course, they’re covering the body.

6 November 2016

Service With a Sneer

If there’s anyone lower on the creative food chain than an artist, monetarily speaking, it’s an actor. At least that’s what Luciana assures me.

She works in Trader Joe’s, a national chain of grocery stores I patronize. (Cheapest wine in town!) She says most of her coworkers restocking shelves and working in the checkout lines are “theatre people,” i.e., unemployed actors. A recent news story underscored the critical role thespians play in the service industry.

The article described how the manager of a Trader Joe’s store in Manhattan fired a worker for not smiling sincerely. Of course he wasn’t smiling sincerely; no one working in a menial job does. A trouper can convincingly fake a smile, and once you can fake sincerity the world is your clam.

Luciana told me that she heard the real story, which was much more interesting. When a customer berated the sincerely unhappy stock clerk, he just sneered and turned to walk away.

“I can have you fired,” the customer threatened.

“I can have you tortured and maimed,” the laborer replied with an even bigger sneer.

The former employee was, of course, a disgruntled musician. Since there are virtually no gruntled musicians, Trader Joe’s has put a hiring freeze on musical performers.

7 November 2016

Suicide Party

Nell knows a number of people voting for He’s a Liar! who claim they’d rather die than live in a country where She’s a Liar! is president. And vice versa. She invited all of them to a suicide party tomorrow night to follow the election results.

She asked guests to bring guns, poison, knives, rope, or other means of killing themselves should their candidate lose. She also offered to provide a one-way ride to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge.

No one accepted her invitation. That’s politics: all hat and no cattle.

8 November 2016

Some Glorious Day, Good and Hard

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

H.L. Mencken wrote that in 1920, how depressingly prescient. That’s the kind of hombre he was; he also noted, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

9 November 2016

History Repeats Itself?

Germans are very reticent to compare anyone to Adolph Hitler for a variety of good reasons. Recently, though, a number of prominent Germans are making an exception for She’s a Liar!

As Friedrich Brockdorff, editor and publisher of Die Volkszwiebel, observed, “If history repeats itself, I fear that we can expect the same thing again.”

10 November 2016

Discovering Leonard Cohen

There’s a lot to be said for death, especially when it comes to creative pursuits. Since I live in a bubble breathing my own fumes (by choice), I often don’t “discover” someone’s work until they pop their clogs. That’s certainly the case with Leonard Cohen, who died on Monday.

It’s rather ironic that I’ve just started paying attention to him since I have ten dozen of his songs in my library. I copied them while housesitting for friends, but never got around to listening to them.

Dang, he is, or, was a brilliant writer.

Here’s just one sentence I would have loved to plagiarize had the author nor been so famous: “Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore.”

And then there’s this: “The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”

Alas, he was right.

11 November 2016

Pickling Nell’s Interest

Nell sloshed into my studio appearing rather—what’s the phrase I’m looking for?—sloshed. She produced an almost empty bottle of MacDhùnShléibhe Scotch and described it as, “a nice little number from Islay that pickled my interest.”

And, from all appearances, the rest of her as well.

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©2016 David Glenn Rinehart