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Weak XLV

5 November 2017

No. 7,133 (cartoon)

Part of me wants to be with you.

Amputate it.

6 November 2017

Hitting the Tennis Wall

I like to play tennis but I don’t seek out opportunities; that’s why I only play a game every five years or so. And even then, it’s not really a game since I try to volley back and forth with my nominal opponents, not hit the ball past them.

I thought about playing tennis as a competitive sport when I was a teenager. I considered it for perhaps fifteen minutes; that’s when Alina, who was well on her way to becoming a professional tennis player, said that I’d never be very good at the game.

“Given your physique and lack of coordination,” she observed, “you’ll never play as good as a wall.”

That was around the time I discovered the myriad joys of being an artist. I don’t like rankings when it comes to creative pursuits, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m a much better artist than most walls.

7 November 2017

No Sex Before Fighting

Anderson Silva and Kelvin Gastelum are going to have a fight. I don’t appreciate the aesthetics of the pugilistic arts; I only know about the event because of the headlines in the popular press.

Both fighters announced that they would not have sex before the fight and that they would save their strength to pummel each other to a pulp. I have no idea why any editor would find this newsworthy. If they dislike each other so much that they want to cause grievous bodily harm, it’s obvious there’s not enough warmth between them for even the most casual of intimate encounters.

8 November 2017

Chocolate and Miracle Meat

Human flesh is perhaps the healthiest meat one can eat. Thigh and calf muscles are high in protein, low in fat, and rich in vitamins. In short, humans really are the miracle meat. I know this must be true; the findings are the result of a study.

Or maybe not.

I discovered that the research was funded by a grant from the California Cannibal Commission, so its finding should be taken with a grain of salt and a magnum of red wine. To use a popular phrase I abhor, the corporation had some skin in the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if caffeine conglomerates funded all the investigations that concluded coffee and tea provide countless medical rewards.

I don’t have to hypothesize about chocolate experiments; journalists have documented that behemoth candy companies have spent millions of dollars on chocolate studies. Thirty-five years ago, Mars Inc. created the Mars Center for Cocoa Health Science. Over one hundred published research papers later—ninety-eight percent of which concluded that chocolate provided all sorts of health benefits—it seems that the general consensus is that chocolate is good for you.

I eschew such biased research and prefer an honest and straightforward message: It’s bad for you; enjoy it! And with that, it’s time to figure out what I did with my corkscrew ...

9 November 2017

Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Wife’s Fourteen-year-old Daughter

Alabama pedophiles are coming out of the woods—figuratively and literally—to defend a political candidate after a woman who was fourteen at the time said he sexually assaulted her. Three other women told similar stories.

Roy Moore made a name for himself by refusing to remove a statue of the ten commandments he commissioned from the Alabama Judicial Building; that’s obviously something in which he strongly believes. Old sexual predators stalking prepubescent girls cite god hisself, who said, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” They note that there’s no commandment against coveting thy neighbor’s wife’s fourteen-year-old daughter.

Others cite Jesus’s admonition, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them ...” The lecherous pseudo-scholars postulate that the reverse is also true, and that coming to the little children is a righteous pursuit.

The pious pervert is the founder and president of the Foundation for Moral Law. I don’t follow politics closely, but I hope the supporter of neo-Confederates and white nationalists keeps his job and that his malicious anti-homosexual and anti-Muslim venom is mostly quarantined to his execrable states of ignorance and Alabama.

10 November 2017

Well-Read in Norwegian

Internet Archive visitors from the National Library of Norway told me that they’d digitized every book in the Norwegian language. I was delighted to hear this news. I’ll soon be able to have a copy of Thor Bakke-Jensen’s masterwork, The Joys of Lutefisk, with me at all times. In the original Norwegian, even.

In addition, I can now truthfully say that I’ve read every undigitized book written in Norwegian. This improbable fact will look great on my résumé in the most unlikely event that I ever concoct one.

11 November 2017

Nice Easels!

Jacob and I went to the opening of the San Francisco Art Institute’s new facilities on what was and may still be Pier Two at Fort Mason. The architects did a great job renovating the old building, and the views overlooking San Francisco Bay were predictably rich in traditional maritime stereotypes.

The gala opening consisted of a couple of trucks outside the entrance selling ten-dollar burritos and seven-dollar beers. Feh. Once inside, things got even worse. The federal government owns the pier, and apparently there’s some damn clause in the lease or some Byzantine insurance nonsense that forbids the students from offering food or drinks. One rebellious undergraduate provided a bowl of stale, crappy pretzels, and that was it.

And then there was the work. Good artworks were as rare as free drinks, i.e., there weren’t any. In particular, the photography was amazing. Cameras, lenses, and printers are increasingly sophisticated these days. It’s nearly impossible to make a technically bad print, but these kids pulled it off. In order to find out how to do that, I suppose I’d have to pay a hundred and sixty thousand dollars to get a piece of paper proclaiming that I’m an institutionally-approved artist. I can’t think a better way to start a career of working in a coffee shop.

The event wasn’t a total waste, however. The only things I saw that were of interest were three very nice easels with seemingly random paint splatters. A faculty member probably created them.

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©2017 David Glenn Rinehart