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Weak XXXVII

10 September 2018

No. 7,461 (cartoon)

I love you; do you love me too?

I wonder why “I” is capitalized and “me” isn’t?

11 September 2018

Remembering Nine-Eleven

It’s the anniversary of the terrorist attacks and that means it’s time for sanctimonious pontification. My favorite so far is some fireman saying, “I’ll always remember 911.”

Of course he’s going to remember it: not only is it just three numerals, it’s also his phone number.

12 September 2018

Write What You Know

It’s unclear whether Nancy Crampton Brophy followed the old advice, “Write what you know.” The author of The Wrong Husband, How to Murder Your Husband, and other such pulp fare was just arrested for a crime straight out of bad litterature.

She murdered her husband.

Since she didn’t get away with the crime, I’ll leave it to academics to conclude whether she wrote about what she knew. The scholars probably don’t have anything better to do.

13 September 2018

Ig Nobel Prizes

Dang, I sure did learn a lot today! Humans and chimpanzees in zoos imitate each other, an expert oenophile can smell a single fly in a glass of wine, human saliva is a good cleaning agent, human meat provides fewer calories than the flesh of other species, and a self-colonoscopy is a real thing.

I am wiser in the ways of science than I was yesterday thanks to the recently awarded Ig Nobel Prizes. My only disappointment is that they don’t give awards to artists; I’ve done some really ridiculous things in my life with lots more in the conceptual pipeline!

14 September 2018

Carlos at the Pinnacle of his Trade

Carlos has been working for the same company for over a decade; that’s over twenty thousand hours of his life. Over time he’s risen to the pinnacle of his trade, but so have a hundred thousand other forklift drivers.

I asked him if he was proud of his professional expertise, but he didn’t seem to make too much of it.

“It’s a living,” he replied.

I’ll never understand why people use “living” and “jobs” as synonyms when they’re antonyms.

15 September 2018

Smiling Like a Pencil

Herbert said he and Wilma are going at it again. I didn’t ask what “it” was; I didn’t want to know.

“I came in last night and you know what she was doing?” he asked.

“I’ll let you answer your own rhetorical question,” I replied.

“I walked into the whole fiasco, and she was just sitting there, smiling like a pencil, just completely oblivious,” he explained.

Wow, smiling like a pencil! That’s something else, but I don’t know what “something else” is either.

16 September 2018

Freddie Oversteegen

I’m a peaceful person. I agree with Gandhi, King, et al that nonviolent direct action should be the first resort; history shows it’s often quite effective. And so, I’m having a hard time reconciling that belief with a celebration of the recently departed Freddie Oversteegen.

She was an accomplished saboteur and assassin. Here’s an excerpt talking about her, her sister, and a third member of their clandestine resistance cell during the Second World War.

The three staged drive-by shootings from their bicycles; seductively lured German soldiers from bars to nearby woods, where they would execute them; and sheltered fleeing Jews, political dissidents, gay people and others who were being hunted by the invaders.

All this began when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands; she was only fourteen. Killing Nazis during a bona fide war is different than other places and times, plus she got the bonus of killing pedophiles as well.

I think it’s almost always wrong to celebrate killing another human being and blowing up railways and bridges, but I’m going to make an exception for Freddie Oversteegen. And with that, I’m going back to citing Gandhi and King.

17 September 2018

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Avast, ye scurvy scumbag. Arrrgh, tomorrow be Talk Like a Pirate Day, ye landlubber. Drink yer grog smartly and alert the bilge rats and wenches. Yo ho ho!

Having just exhausted my entire pirate vocabulary, I’m as prepared as I can possibly be for tomorrow’s genteel observance. That’s why Talk Like a Pirate Day generally lasts less than a minute.

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart