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Weak XXXIX

24 September 2018

No. 4,222 (cartoon)

You should get a few dogs.

I don’t want the responsibility.

It’s cheap meat!

25 September 2018

That Wobbly Feeling

If you’re sober but still feeling wobbly, you have only yourself to blame. You, and every other human on Earth. Yep, we screwed up big time.

Again.

When you notice that the planet getting a bit shaky, you probably reflexively blame isostatic rebound. After all, that’s what we all learned in first or second grade. But if you want to find another culprit, just have a look in the mirror. Walt Kelly got it right when he said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Melting glaciers in general and in Greenland in particular are making the earth’s rotation all wonky. And who’s melting the glaciers? The same people who killed the Kennedys: you and me. Who’s responsible for the carbon from the last time you drove your car and the methane my burrito generated? Yep, we screwed up real big time.

Have another drink. There’s an infinitesimal chance that one wobble just might negate the other.

26 September 2018

Yawning About Pencils

The Washington Post ran a story on pencils today. I guess it’s a slow news day. The article featured the Dixon Ticonderoga Company; it’s been making pencils since 1795. It’s a classic American company; it now manufactures almost all of them in China and Mexico. That hasn’t stopped the firm from demanding and receiving millions of dollars of government subsidies for being “victims” of unfair foreign competition.

But that’s just business as usual. What is news is this alleged statistic buried near the end of the story.

U.S. consumers spend about $557 million on pencils annually, according to NPD Group, a firm that tracks market trends.

Every American woman, man, and child spends over a dollar and seventy cents a year on pencils?! That sounds most improbable. I haven’t seen anyone use a pencil in a decade or two; I haven’t even seen a pencil in years.

And that’s more than quite enough about pencils for this millennium.

27 September 2018

A Real Artist Until Eleven

“I think I was a real artist until I turned eleven.”

That remark by Liana Finck resonated with me, although few real artists make it to ten. The New Yorker cartoonist was fortunate to turn eleven before the dream police told her to wake up.

I’ve never met anyone under the age of six or so who didn’t consider her- or himself to be a successful artist, musician, actor, dancer, et cetera. Soon thereafter, alleged grownups warned the ignorant children that those creative pursuits require extensive formal education and that it’s time to grow up and realize they won’t be a real artist, musician, actor, dancer, et cetera until then.

Finck overcame the brainwashing and so did I. I feel sorry for people who can’t do better than to live the lies and lives they were fed.

28 September 2018

Have You Seen the Little Piggies?

Apple Records announced that the multinational conglomerate will be releasing a fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Beatlles’ White Album.

It’s about time! Even after half a century, the work remains full of vitality and not a dusty relic of a time and place that’s more mythology than reality. I can’t believe it took so long for corporate swine to revisit the original recording’s vault, add all the scraps from the cutting room floor, and peddle the aural sausage to a new generation of sixties nostalgiacs.

In their styes with all their backing
They don't care what goes on around
In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking.

George Harrison was most prescient when he wrote that. I can already see the Apple porkers clutching their forks and knives to carve up another Beatlles’ cash grab.

29 September 2018

Real Purdy?

“Devorah is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Luka declared.

“That’s what you say about every female of the opposite sex with whom you’re infatuated,” I reminded him.

“This time I really mean it,” he protested. “One glance at that face, those eyes, and that body would bring a snake to its knees.”

Hmmm, with over the top praise maybe she is real purdy. Nah, given his history I’m sure Luka’s just enjoying one of his recurring hallucinations.

30 September 2018

Nope, Just Stupid

Niklas is in big big trouble, and rightly so: he was caught red-handed, crimson-handed, scarlet-handed, ruby-handed, and every other color of the guilty rainbow. You can’t keep a determined idiot down, and, predictably, he’s come up with a cockamamie scheme to avoid justice.

He concocted a simple plan worthy of a simpleton. He lied and cheated his way into this disaster, so he is going to cheat and lie his way out.

“Pretty clever, eh?” he concluded.

“Pretty idiotic,” I replied.

“No, David,” he protested, “you’re supposed to say, ‘That’s just insane enough to work!’”

“Negatory, Niklas,” I repeated, “it’s is just stupid.”

“We’ll just see about that,” he harrumphed.

I know exactly what we’ll see; we’ve seen it many times before.

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart