Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak

Weak XIX

7 May 2018

No. 2,847 (cartoon)

I’m seething with hatred.

Don’t waste it on anyone else; you deserve all of it.

8 May 2018

Bad News: Eggs

I’m appalled at what currently passes for news. I’m thinking about the woman who had a cockroach in her skull for nine days. Or, more accurately, parts of a cockroach.

Katie Holley felt something burrowing inside her ear and managed to extract a couple of cockroach legs. Her husband pulled out a couple more, but the critter had tunneled in too deep to continue. Doctors at the emergency room pulled out the rest, except they didn’t. It wasn’t until nine days later that a competent medical professional extracted the body of a rather large cockroach, or, as they’re genteelly referred to in Florida, a palmetto bug.

A bug in a skull isn’t news. Medical incompetence isn’t news. Even worse, it’s a boring story.

I try not to disappoint, so here’s a good bug story. I didn’t write the tale; it’s one I remember from when I was a boy. A woman was strapped to a hospital bed screaming in unfathomable pain because some flavor of insect was chewing its way through her brain. There was nothing the doctors could do except to wait for it to come out of the other ear.

The good news: it took almost three weeks for the wriggly beast to emerge, but it finally did and the woman was finally relieved when her horrific ordeal was over.

The bad news: it wasn’t; the parasite laid eggs.

Now that’s what I call a most wonderful creepy-crawler story!

9 May 2018

Apocalypse Illustrator

I’m so glad that Interlochen—the “fine arts” (ha!) boarding school I attended—never had a career day. As I understand it, on such an occasion a teenager only a few years into puberty is presented with a dismally small choice of options about how s/he’d prefer to spend the next half-century as a wage slave.

Watch out kids; it’s a lethal trap!

I’m glad I never had a job job since I was a teenager, but if I had to choose one I just found one that’s not on the menu: apocalypse illustrator.

Ladies’ Home Journal commissioned Byron to provide images for a story on the latest scenario for how the sun will die. Current computer models suggest that my favorite star won’t fizzle out; it will explode into a massive planetary nebula our neighbors in the Andromeda galaxy will be able to admire a couple million (light) years after its expiration date.

Byron can come up with any fantasy he wants and no one can possibly argue. The sun will get hotter and boil the oceans away billions of years before the grand finale, so there’ll be no critics around to trash him. And anyway, he’ll have cashed the Ladies’ Home Journal check and spent the money long before then.

10 May 2018

The Kitten Rule

Cecelia met a new fella. Maybe they’s a-courtin’ and maybe they aint’. Maybe even some sparkin’ but that ain’t none of my business.

“What’s the hombre’s name?” I asked.

“Think kittens,” she replied.

I knew exactly what she meant. Inamoratos are like newborn kittens; you don’t give them a name until they’ve survived a couple of weeks.

11 May 2018

Floating in the Forth Revisited

A decade ago Scott John Hutchison recorded a song, Floating in the Forth, and last night he did. Float, that is, in the Firth of Forth.

The lyrics could have been written by a freshman taking the Foreshadowing 101 class:

And fully clothed, I float away
(I’ll float away)
Down the Forth, into the sea
I think I’ll save suicide for another day.

He never made it to the North Sea; his body ended up in the Port Edgar Marina near the Forth Road Bridge. It’s too bad he never made it to the coast and beyond as he described in another song, Swim Until You Can’t See Land.

What a tragedy: mental illness as both a muse and a killer.

12 May 2018

The Great Toilet Paper Alignment Debate Revisited

Oh dear, things are really hottin’ up at Cedric’s party tonight over the latest skirmish in the great toilet paper alignment debate.

Antoinette insists that “anyone but a damn fool” knows that the end of a roll of toilet paper should hang over the front after it’s mounted on the wall. Conrad, never at a loss for witty repartee, replied that she’d know that was wrong “if she was as smart as a bag of rusty nails.”

Cedric, who’s all too familiar with the consequences of their lack of magniloquence, stepped in to prevent fisticuffs. He told them to come to the bathroom to see what compromise looks like. In this case, the compromise was a roll of toilet paper standing in a malodorous puddle in front of the toilet.

We all went on to enjoy a peaceful evening, and even Antoinette and Conrad could agree that Cedric’s bathroom is disgusting.

13 May 2018

Happy Mother’s Day!

I had a nice, long chat with my mother yesterday. She was expecting my call since she knows I avoid everything to do with Mother’s Day, as did Anna Jarvis, the woman who created the ersatz holiday.

“A maudlin, insincere printed card or ready-made telegram means nothing except that you’re too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone else in the world,” she wrote.

Jarvis spent the last decades of her life trying to destroy Mother’s Day, but it killed her instead.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Today’s notebook entry was made possible through the generous support of the Fine Chocolate Industry Association, the Greeting Card Association, and the Society of American Florists.

14 May 2018

Not Exhibiting

Angelina and I saw the usual at yesterday’s open studios: a few pieces of excellent work and lots of dreck. The latter wasn’t as objectionable as it might have been since the mediocre artists all offered cheap wine in the hope that some visitors would get drunk enough to like their tedious work.

One of my favorite exhibits was a paint-splattered cart that wasn’t an exhibit at all. I knew that was true because it had a sign on it:

Not Exhibiting
Please Don’t Touch

(The anonymous artist underlined the word “Not” three times for good measure.)

I liked the random paint splotches better than anything else I saw that afternoon, and my glass of wine was safe beside the Please Don’t Touch warning.

Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak
©2018 David Glenn Rinehart