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Weak XLIX

3 December 2017

No. 6,425 (cartoon)

Don’t call me mediocre.

I never said that.

I said that you should aspire to mediocrity.

4 December 2017

Modest Progress?

There’s almost nothing about which to be positive as we continue the grotesque slide into devolution, so this grim headline provided the only scintilla of a vaguely positive development in today’s news: “Cocaine deaths among blacks on par with opioid deaths among whites, study finds.”

I’ll almost certainly never see the day when Martin Luther King Junior’s dream comes true. (”I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”) This rare occurrence of racial parity if not equality will have to suffice as progress. Or not.

5 December 2017

Finnograph

Roxanne sent me a photograph of Finn, her feline roommate. She used the wrong lens, using a strobe on the camera is always a bad idea, and the composition is atrocious. And yet ...

I’ve never seen a better feline photo, and will probably never make one that good. I’m forever partially handicapped by my knowledge of what a fine photograph is supposed to look like; I’ll never have Roxanne’s visual innocence that serves her—and Finn—so well.

6 December 2017

Ticklish Giant Swimming Cockroaches

I wasn’t at all alarmed when I read about “giant swimming cockroaches” on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. That’s a good place for a repulsive critter that’s bigger than a loaf of bread. I suppose fascists and tyrants wouldn’t bother me much if they were also at the bottom of the ocean. Come to think of it, that’s a darn good idea.

I wouldn’t want to see these prehistoric beasts in my bathtub, but I can relax since I don’t have one. I am, however, having second thoughts about being buried at sea, even though I’ve never had first thoughts. I know logically that I’d be dead dead and couldn’t possibly feel a thing, but the thought of all those legs crawling on my carcass as they devour me makes me terribly ticklish.

7 December 2017

Will Unclog Later

Imogen’s toilet isn’t working. At least I assume it’s not. She taped a handwritten sign to the closed lid, “Will unclog later.”

Brilliant! There can’t be that many problems that can’t be addressed with, “Will unclog later.”

8 December 2017

Camels on Machu Picchu

Gertrude is looking for her next true love. On the Internet, of all places. I suggested that if any of the matching algorithms and formulae on those courtship forums actually worked, no one would spend more time there looking for a romantic partner than he or she would buying new widget.

Gertrude pooh-poohed my pessimism, and assured me that she knew how to spot the right woman for her.

“Half the women I find attractive are on a camel, and half are visiting Machu Picchu,” she explained. “All I have to find is spot a beautiful woman on a camel in Machu Picchu and there’s my gal!”

I suppose that’s as efficacious as any other purportedly logical system of finding romance.

9 December 2017

Truthfully Funny

I declined Cordelia’s offer of dessert after a lovely dinner.

“No thanks,” I explained, “I’m driving.”

“But you don’t have a car, and anyway, you’re home,” she protested. “You just lied to me.”

“It wasn’t really a lie, it was a joke,” I explained.

“You shouldn’t tell jokes that aren’t true,” she admonished.

Now that’s funny!

10 December 2017

Time Travel

Rosaline celebrated our tradition of sharing a bottle of wine or several on most visits when she dropped by my studio this afternoon. Predictably, we chose a bottle of cheap wine for the occasion.

She showed me some old snapshots of her late mother, and I remarked that I loved the time travel aspect of photography.

“Drinking wine is time travel too,” she noted. “One takes you backward and one takes you forward.”

And with that, we forged ahead into the unknown, one sip at a time.

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©2017 David Glenn Rinehart