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Weak XVI

16 April 2019

No. 3,468 (cartoon)

Things aren’t as terrible as you imagine.

I’m relieved.

They’re much much worse.

17 April 2019

Proof Negative

Proofing these notebook entries always goes the same way. I run a batch of ’em through a couple of computer programs that catch the most egregious mistakes, then reread everything until it looks almost good enough post. I have no idea why this is, but I then print a copy since typos are easier to spot on paper.

This is where it gets really stupid. I always start the “final” proofing session with the assumption that everything will be perfect. That’s never happened, yet I always have to stop reading and search for a pen when I find my first edit. This happens each and every time, yet I’m nevertheless surprised to discover my writing needs more work.

If you’ve been waiting for the punchline, here ya go! My writing always needs more work for three reasons: I’m not a very good writer, I’m not a very good editor, and I’m not a very good proofreader. Every time I reread a batch of entries I find another correction or several until I finally get too bored to continue and publish my typo-riddled dreck.

You’re welcome.

18 April 2019

The Restroom in His Pants

Brett works in the dementia ward of the local hospital. It’s challenging work, dealing with everyone from violent, deranged people to charming four-year-old minds trapped in ninety-year-old bodies. It’s a very demanding job, but not without its rewards.

This morning, a Vietnamese woman brought her elderly father in for an exam. She explained that one of the symptoms of his deteriorating mental state is, “sometimes he goes the restroom in his pants.”

The restroom in his pants; what a spectacular concept!

19 April 2019

Bicycle Day

Ah, it’s Bicycle Day again, the seventy-sixth anniversary of Dr. Albert Hofmann’s memorable experience of being the first person to ingest rather a lot of lysergic acid diethylamide. And in the middle of a world war, imagine that! I can’t.

I met up with a number if the usual suspects celebrating the occasion in Golden Gate Park. I can’t exactly recall what happened, but we had a splendid time. I can’t be sure, but I think bicycles were involved.

20 April 2019

No Tortillas on Cerrado

Deirdre promised to bring tortillas to go with the dinner I cooked tonight, but instead showed up with a pathetic excuse.

“There was a sign on the Meximart door that read Closed Cerrado,” she explained. “I don’t speak Spanish; how was I supposed to know today is Cerrado?”

I didn’t want to spoil a great dinner by embarrassing her. I waited until now to do that; she’ll discover that “cerrado” means “closed” when she reads this.

21 April 2019

Stop Press: Americans Died

As Tom Robbins repeatedly noted in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, “The international situation is desperate, as usual.” And that brings us to the headline in today’s Washington Post, “More than 200 killed in bombings in Sri Lanka; Americans among dead.” In other words, the fact that a few Americans died along with hundreds of Sri Lankans made the carnage newsworthy.

That reminded me of another famous headline in the Aberdeen Journal, “North-east man lost at sea. 1,500 perish in Titanic disaster.” I asked the Internet to give me the exact wording in the provincial gaffe, and that’s when the Internet told me something I didn’t want to hear: the headline never existed.

Drat and tarnation!

Oh well, at least the Washington Post headline is equally stupid, and real, too!

22 April 2019

Chamomile Chester

There’s a very good reason I’ve never seen chamomile blossoms on a horse before, and that’s because I never met Chester until today. Chester loves to roll in chamomile fields. That strikes me as a very sensible thing to do, especially for a horse.

23 April 2019

The Peruvian Flute Band Heist

I have a number of crazily wonderful friends, and Sarah may be one of the weirdest by far. She reads books, words printed on paper pages that are useless without an auxiliary lighting system. Crazy daddio!

Here’s an excerpt she sent me from David Sedaris’s Reading When You’re Engulfed In Flames.

It is now official: there is no place on earth where you will not find a Peruvian band. Leaving Tamachi Station last night, I heard the familiar sounds of Simon and Garfunkel’s “El Condor Pasa.” Up the escalator, and there they were: five men in ponchos, blowing the pipes of Pan into cordless microphones. “Didn’t I just see you in Dublin?” I wanted to ask. “Or, no, wait, maybe it was Hong Kong, Oxford, Milan, Budapest, Toronto, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

That led me to play junior detective, and it wasn’t hard. Sedaris’s publisher released his book on 3 June 2008. On 22 October 2008, the South Park kids aired the first of the two Pandemic episodes about the epidemic of Peruvian pan flute bands.

I’d wager the South Park folks stole the idea from Sedaris, but who cares? It’s like Picasso and/or Miles Davis said, “Good artists copy and great artists steal.”

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart