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26 June 2017

No. 2,404 (cartoon)

I’ve never been so humiliated!

We should have met sooner.

27 June 2017

It’s Never Too Late

Alexia is distraught after another romantic relationship ended in a farcical disaster. Or was it a disastrous farce? It’s hard to remember; all her stories are very similar.

“I guess it’s just too late in life to fall in love again,” she lamented.

“It’s never too late to fall in love,” I replied, “as long as you abandon your standards and desires, settle for absolutely anyone, then call your misery love in order to avoid dying alone.”

“You really know how to cheer a woman up, don’t you?” she asked.

I’m not sure if she was being sarcastic; some people are just plain ungrateful.

28 June 2017

A Lucky Flight

An elderly Chinese woman departing on a flight from Shanghai Pudong International Airport decided to throw a few coins for luck into the nearest receptacle: the jet engine of her plane.

I’m not at all superstitious, but her offering could have been most effective had not a fellow passenger noticed her attempt to change the fate of the journey. Imagine the surge of adrenaline when turbine blades started to slice through the jet engine’s cowling and rip through the fuselage. That would certainly be empirical proof of the coin’s luck!

That would of course have been very bad luck indeed; why do people almost always assume that luck is always good luck?

Happy ending: everyone arrived safely albeit five hours late after mechanics removed the lucky coin from the jet’s innards.

29 June 2017

A Cautionary Tale for Old, Fat, Bald Guys

“My husband left me for a younger, skinnier, less talented singer.”

No one would look twice at that headline, but this one above a photograph of a balding, overweight man caught my attention: “My wife left me for a younger, skinnier, less talented singer.”

It’s the oldest cliché in journalism: “Dog Bites Man” ain’t news, but “Man Bites Dog” is.

Steve Earle is the complainer in question. He’s apparently quite famous, but I’ve never heard about him. Again, no news there. And imagine a woman who’d prefer the company of someone who’s not a great singer over that of an old, fat guy with a shiny dome! No news there either.

I like Earle in spite of his self-pity, if only because of his assessment of contemporary country music (if that’s not an oxymoron).

“The guys just wanna sing about getting fucked up. They’re just doing hip-hop for people who are afraid of black people.”

That’s a great cautionary tale for all of you obese old guys out there who are losing your hair. But you knew that already ...

30 June 2017

Six Hard Drives Cubed (sketch for Sixteen Hard Drives Cubed)

The Internet Archive has two kinds of hard drives: those that will die someday and those that already have.

I have thousands and thousands of the latter here, so I came up with a proposal to weld four thousand and ninety-six of them to make Sixteen Hard Drives Cubed. I even came up with a white paper for the work, if only because it’s the only color of paper readily available.

My proposal was vetoed by some Philistine who pointed out that none of the Archive’s forklifts could move two and a half kilograms. A pox on pesky reality.

That’s why I decided to make Six Hard Drives Cubed (sketch for Sixteen Hard Drives Cubed).

If nothing else, the work proved that I’m not a two-bit artist. As empirical evidence shows, I am, in fact, a three quadrillion, seven hundred ninety-nine trillion, nine hundred twelve billion, one hundred eighty-five million, five hundred ninety-three thousand, eight hundred fifty-six bit artist.

So there!

1 July 2017

È il Colore del Gatto Che Corre

Alberta said she saw a huge cat sprinting through the redwoods in Golden Gate Park at dawn.

“What kind of breed was it?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” she replied.

“What color was it?”

“È il colore del gatto che corre!”

“What’s that?”

“The color of the running cat, of course.”

Of course!

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©2017 David Glenn Rinehart