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Weak XXV

18 June 2018

No. 5,821 (cartoon)

You cut me intentionally.

You have a keen grasp of the bloody obvious.

19 June 2018

Arson Art

Last Friday night the Glasgow School of Art burned again for the second time in four years. I’m not sure what to make of that. A burning art school is definitely art, but repeating oneself is not. And anyway, Ed Ruscha already did it a half-century ago with his painting, The Los Angles County Museum on Fire.

I suppose I should be more sympathetic, but I can’t see that art schools serve any purpose other than facilitating romantic liaisons. Turpentine is a wonderful and underappreciated aphrodisiac as well as efficient fuel for an inferno.

20 June 2018

Aztec Pozole

It depends.

That was my response to Annalee when she asked me if I’d like pozole at her place tonight. I was playing it safe; “it depends” is usually a pretty good answer to any question.

I explained that I’ve never had authentic pozole and that I didn’t care much for the contemporary variant that tastes like the bland corn gruel it is. It used to be significantly different back in the Aztec days.

The signature ingredient that’s missing is meat from human sacrifices, so I’m not sure I’d prefer that version. There are a number of people whose obituaries I look forward to seeing published, but they’re all so vile that I’d imagine that their flesh would be as disgusting as they are. Conversely, I wouldn’t want to see the beating hearts ripped out of any presumably tasty humans.

“You can stop right there,” she interrupted, “we’re having grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.”

Perfect!

Although “it depends” is generally a good answer to most queries, there’s no better response than “grilled cheese sandwiches” when it comes to menu inquiries, the odd vegan notwithstanding.

No homo sapiens were harmed whilst researching this dissertation.

21 June 2018

Like Yulin Dogs

The solstice is here, and that means it’s time for hippies to come out of their holes and do their pseudo-tribal schtick. In Yulin, China, though, it’s time to wok the dogs. Yep, it’s time for the annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival; the name says it all.

The celebration also involves killing and eating cats, so I’m of course disgusted. I am not, however, morally indignant. I am reminded of the time I spent on the Lofoten Islands in Norway photographing whalers and whales, including the slab of minke sashimi on my lunch plate. (People who say that they don’t like whales probably haven’t tried them with wasabi and soy sauce.)

I found the Norwegian whalers I met to be considerate and rational, not the bloodthirsty savages caricatured in animal rights propaganda. They pointed out that the relatively small minke whales they hunted weren’t even close to becoming a threatened species, let alone endangered. They argued that they were humane when it came to killing them: it generally took well under a minute for a whale to die after getting shot in the head with an explosive harpoon.

They resented Americans—who eat more meat per capita than any other nationality—lecturing them on the morality of their diet. They maintained that a culture that tacitly approves of killing over a hundred million sentient creatures such as pigs and hogs annually after raising them in inhumane animal torture centers certainly wasn’t on the moral high ground.

Similarly or not, the Chinese are holding whimpering, scared dogs in cages and the American government is holding thousands of immigrant children who’ve been stripped from their parents’ arms in cages too. Like Yulin dogs.

The world may be running low on clean air and water, but at least cruelty is as abundant as ever.

22 June 2018

She Really Doesn’t Care

Malaria Trump, stage wife of the rabid dotard occupying the White House after receiving over three million fewer votes than his opponent in the last election, received a rare assignment today. Her role du jour was to travel to one of the concentration camps holding alien children and feign compassion.

She’s a crap actress and it showed; she blew it.

It started out with her minions in the wardrobe department. They gave her a jacket to wear with “I Really Don’t Care” painted on it. Wearing your heart on your sleeve is one thing; wearing your true thoughts displayed in large letters on your back is quite another.

The staged photo opportunity didn’t go well; she seemed unmoved as if she couldn’t comprehend the message children crying in Spanish were conveying. Later she complained that she couldn’t understand why she received so much criticism; doesn’t everyone know that brown-skinned kids can’t feel pain?

In short, business as usual.

23 June 2018

Proper Death Threat Punctuation

A couple of years ago an actor ad-libbed a speech in a New York theatre after learning that a senior politician was in the audience. He urged the government to, “ ... protect us, our planet, our children, our parents ...” and other propositions that might be seen as radical in the contemporary political climate.

I can’t believe anyone could be so deeply angered by an actor’s lines, but Brandon Victor Dixon received hundreds of death threats in response. On a positive note, he recognized a bad script and suggested that his would-be murderers learn to, “use proper punctuation to threaten to kill somebody.”

Your English teacher really was right: good grammar is important! I wish I’d paid more attention ...

24 June 2018

Not Quite That Smart?

Jason was in a bit of a conceptual pickle, so he called his partner Rachel. She assuaged his immediate concerns, so another happy ending, at least for the most recent chapter.

We agreed that he’d partnered wisely with a very smart woman. Perhaps unusually for an hombre, he was astute enough to be grateful and appreciative.

“What I’ll never understand,” I remarked, “is why all intelligent women aren’t lesbians.”

“I guess she’s not quite that smart,” he replied in what may or may not have been a relieved voice.

25 June 2018

Kiliaen’s Joint Effort

Kiliaen’s doctor recommended that he use marijuana to address a minor health concern. She gave him a prescription for some cannabis oil to fill at one of the relatively new legal dispensaries.

Kiliaen wasn’t having anything to do with the newfangled methodology and decided to use the approach that served him well fifty years ago in college: smoking a marijuana cigarette. The problem is that his prescription was useless for that, so he put in a call to Sid, Gerrit’s black market dealer.

Sid dropped by an hour later with ten grams of “the strong shit,” with no annoying taxes or regulatory surcharges. That’s when Kiliaen realized that he couldn’t remember how to roll a “joint.” (A “joint” is olde people slang for a marijuana cigarette.) He knew the answer must be close at hand, so he asked the Internet for help with his project.

Poor Kiliaen ended up being a victim of fake news: The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. He spent an hour digging through a thick forest of documents and the closest he came was an obscure paper, Multidimensional family therapy in Europe as a treatment for adolescents with cannabis use disorder and other problem behaviours. He couldn’t find even a cursory description—let alone an illustration or video—of how to roll a joint.

In frustration, he poured himself a large tumbler of bourbon. Problem solved!

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart