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Weak VIII

20 February 2019

No. 6,836 (cartoon)

The same will never be the same.

Then the same will never be?

Same thing.

21 February 2019

Melvin Edward “Slappy” White

Slappy White was born on 27 September 1921 and died on 7 November 1995. That isn’t news, that’s not even old news, that’s history from the previous millennium.

So why am I writing this? I just wanted an excuse to write, hear, and say the name Slappy White. It’s too bad that I’m too old to adopt a nickname and have it stick; Slappy Rinehart has a nice ring to it.

22 February 2019

Bad Doggies!

You may think that you’re playing with your dogs when you wrestle with them, but they’re not playing with you. They’re assessing your strengths and weaknesses. They’re figuring out how to kill you. Don’t be fooled by the drooling smiles; they’re all murderers.

Nancy Cherryl Burgess-Dismuke found that out the hard way. She was tussling with two of her mongrels when they finally maneuvered her into her most vulnerable position in order to eat her alive. One ravenous beast gnawed on her left arm while the other one chewed on her right arm. She screamed for help, but the others in her trailer park—this obviously took place in a trailer park—arrived too late to save her life. They beat the canines with lumber, but the killing machines didn’t loosen their bloodthirsty grips until a neighbor with an ax arrived and started hacking at the curs.

It was too little too late; Burgess-Dismuke bled to death. Bad doggies!

The next time you see a dog’s beguilingly slimy grin, remember what those fangs are for: ripping through your tasty flesh.

Bone appétit!

23 February 2019

Xin Xiaomeng

I have seen the future, and her name is Xin Xiaomeng. Actually, she’s not really the future at all, but that sounded like a good line. (A serious writer would know that anything that sounds like a good line probably isn’t; that’s one of the reasons I’m glad that that I’m not a serious scribbler.)

No, Xin Xiaomeng comes from today, specifically from today’s artificial intelligence technology. “She” is a computer-generated broadcaster for Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency. I’m mostly ambivalent about advances in technology, but I like Xin.

Xin is conceptually coherent. As a nominal Communist, she’ll never deviate from the party line du jour. She’s perfectly beautiful down to the last pixel, so advertisers will make a fortune selling snake oil to women trying to look like they also just walked out of a great algorithm. And she doesn’t purport to have an opinion or even a brain; she’s just a newsreader and she does it perfectly.

One can say a lot of horrible things about the English, and I’ll never live long enough to say even half of them. Having said that, at least they have the integrity to refer to the attractive person reading a script about recent events on the telly as a newsreader, not a journalist.

The future is Chinese, but I’m not concerned because I’ll be dead before the future becomes the present.

24 February 2019

Devil Worship

Juanita wondered aloud whether the Catholic Church is a religious organization with a pedophilia problem or a pedophiliac organization with a religious problem. I told her that she was being too narrow-minded and that she should remember all the poor nuns kept as virtual sex slaves.

The latest scandal involves Cardinal George Pell, who’s on trial for molesting boys. His lawyer argued, “This is no more than a plain, vanilla sexual penetration case where a child is not volunteering or actively participating.” The argument that the long tradition of sodomy isn’t really a crime didn’t convince the judge; Pell’s going to prison for a very long time.

I told Juanita that I was darkly amused by Pope Francis’s explanation from medieval times that the horrific sexual abuse by the clergy is, “the work of the devil.”

“Thank god for the devil and their codependent relationship,” she replied, “without it, the religion industry would collapse.”

Amen.

25 February 2019

Robert Burns Plinth

A month ago, on Burns Night, I speculated why civil servants had erected a fence around the statue Robert Burns in Golden Gate Park.

My guess is that it’s a cage meant to confine those honoring the great bard by drinking liters of whisky [on Burns Night]. That way they won’t vomit on passersby, wander into traffic, or cause all the other messy problems traditionally associated with this most famous of all literary celebrations.

I was completely wrong; it happens all the time.

The wimpy fence was an incompetent attempt to thwart thieves that failed spectacularly: the statue has disappeared. I’m guessing the evildoers flew here below the radar and under cover of darkness in a heavy utility helicopter, most likely a CH-53K King Stallion. They probably dropped a heavy steel cable from the chopper, wrapped it around the old guy’s torso, and flew away.

Snap, crackle, pop, done!

I bet the Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race is shivering his brass bits off in some claustrophobic pub in Glencoe right now. That’s not my problem, and I’m certainly not going back to Scotland to investigate.

The more I think about it, the more I like the unoccupied Robert Burns Plinth. I hope the miscreants get away with their crime.

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart