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5 March 2018

No. 4,736 (cartoon)

I believe in no one.

The feeling is mutual.

6 March 2018

That’s No Drunk, That’s Just a Canadian

Sporting news travels slowly, or at least it does for me since I ignore it. And so, I had no idea that the United States curling team won a gold medal at the Olympic games. I also had no idea that anyone even considered curling to be a real sport; I just thought it was some skating game played by Canadians who were too old and/or too drunk to play hockey.

Joey told me there’s an element or two of truth in that stereotype. The Canadian curlers performed improbably poorly at the Olympics. The stress and disappointment affected Shawn Germain, or did it? The husband of Canadian curler Rachel Homan was spotted quaffing at least four beers before nine in the morning as he watched his country’s team flail in defeat.

Germain protested that the photographs showing him with a beer in each hand were misleading, eh?

“I’m not a drunk,” he insisted, “I’m just Canadian.”

Why oh why oh why is there no Olympic beer drinking competition?

7 March 2018

Louder and Faster Silence

After seeing my piece, Noise After Silence (Diptych), CR told me that his partner was the vocalist in the musical ensemble, Savage Towels. The group performed John Cage’s 4’33” [of Silence] with legal impunity. That may be because they played a punk version of it: fifteen seconds long and much, much louder.

Gabba gabba hey!

8 March 2018

International Women’s Day

Katia is always kvetching about something; today it’s International Women’s Day.

“What could possibly be wrong with International Women’s Day unless you’re a sexist pigdog?” I asked.

“It’s too elitist,” she protested, “I feel left out.”

“Left out?” I continued, “You don’t have a Y chromosome you failed to mention before, do you?”

“I’m talking about the name, International Women’s Day,” she explained. “I’ve never been outside the United States, so I’m not an international woman.”

That’s another good example—not that I needed another—of why I eschew definitions.

9 March 2018

Zombie Slug

Michelle turned up her nose at the cheesy abomination I concocted.

“My body is a temple,” she sniffed.

(Where’s Cartman when I have to deal with hippies?)

“My body is an amusement park,” I replied.

“It really is true that you are what you eat,” she countered. I was disconcerted to find myself in rare agreement with her.

I’m thinking of Sam Ballard, who was nineteen when a friend dared him to eat a live slug. So he did. (It’s needless to say that was after a few drinks, so I won’t say it.)

Ballard became sluggish, so his so-called friend rushed him to the hospital. That was eight years ago. He went into a coma that lasted four hundred and twenty days; he’s been a quadriplegic ever since.

The slug had evidently enjoyed some fine dining on rat shit before the teen ate it for a snack. And that’s how he got rat lungworm, an inappropriately named parasite that loves brains. The moral of this tragedy is this: the next time you have food on your mind, make sure it doesn’t contain rodent feces.

My visit with Michelle went well. She gnawed on carrots and celery while I enjoyed noodles smothered in cheese, garlic, and onions. I felt sorry for her; she’s going to feel really stupid when she’s old and dying from nothing.

10 March 2018

Exiled from San Quentin

Andy moved in with his sister Andrea “for a while,” but she told me it’s starting to look like a one-way trip.

“Can’t you set a reasonable limit on his stay and help him find a new place?” I suggested.

“It’s not that simple,” she explained. “The authorities forcibly separated him from his friends and the only community he’s known for the last twenty years. He doesn’t know what to do or where to go.”

“What authorities?” I asked. “Forced relocation? What happened?”

She told me that the bureaucrats running San Quentin State Prison had no choice but to force Andy to leave after he’d served his entire sentence for wire fraud. Andy would like to go back, but the technology has changed so much during his incarceration that he has no idea of how to return to a life of crime except to hire Russians, something he can’t begin to afford.

It appears that Andy and Andrea will be together for rather a long time. What a damning indictment of the American penal system!

11 March 2018

Daylight Savings Crime

Henry David Thoreau died over fifty years before the Germans came up with Daylight Savings Time to conserve energy during World War I.

Thoreau is the hombre what wrote, “I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.” That’s what he said, so I’m glad he’s dead and doesn’t have to endure the injustice of this twenty-three hour day.

Feh!

Government regulators promise to return the missing hour in late autumn. For once, I believe them since they always have, but they always give it back without interest on the involuntary loan. Typical.

I’d protest by organizing a public clock burning except that no one has a physical clock anymore. And, as Elaine sagely observed, I couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery. (That phrase sounds a lot better with her charmingly abrasive cockney accent.)

12 March 2018

Here Lies David Glenn Rinehart

Once upon a time, Richard Avedon quipped that he’d title the autobiography he had no intention of writing, Here Lies Richard Avedon. Since Avedon never used it, I may. Here Lies David Glenn Rinehart has a nice ring to it, no?

I doubt I’ll ever write an autobiography, but if I do, I’ll take Samuel Goldwyn’s advice. “I don’t think anybody should write his autobiography until after he’s dead.”

The end.

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart