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Weak XXVIII

9 July 2019

No. 6,358 (cartoon)

Everything means something.

Sometimes it means nothing.

Nothing means something.

10 July 2019

El Chapo and El Cheapo

I can finally relax now that Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera is behind bars. It’s nothing personal; I’ve never met the guy or any of his business partners. The problem has everything to do with his nom de dope, El Chapo.

Over the years, police and investigators have interrogated me about my cartel. I don’t have one; big business is a big bore. I am an organization of one, or perhaps a disorganization of one, technically speaking. I suffer from a simple case of mistaken identity. Many years ago, some gumshoe misspelled the perp’s name as El Cheapo. The typo was never fully eradicated, hence the bureaucratic confusion.

Now that El Chapo is spending the rest of his life plus eternity behind bars, no one’s looking for El Cheapo—that would be me! In other words, I got away with everything as long as I can keep a low profile until the statute of limitations wipes my record clean.

11 July 2019

Minimalist Pizza Box

Good food is hard to find in Flint, Michigan, where I’m visiting my family. Naomi and Boulaye know this; that’s why they bought a delicious broccoli and cheddar quiche in Toronto—a real city, eh?—then drove four hundred kilometers to deliver it to me in Flint.

The quiche was predictably great; what could go wrong with eggs, cheese, and butter plus a little bit of vegetable matter to negate the fat?

The quiche was predictably delicious, but the box was extraordinary. It was a simple square cardboard box, with a crude graphic of a slice of pepperoni pizza beneath the numerals denoting the size of the box. Almost every other item of food packaging is entirely covered in ink, so the austere minimalism of a scrumptious quiche in minimalist pizza box was a treat for my eyes and my palate.

12 July 2019

Airpower(less)

I’ve successfully avoided getting on a jet for a long time, but recently my luck finally ran out. I was prepared for a miserable time, and I wasn’t disappointed.

I found myself wedged between a manatee and a warthog. My blood circulation wasn’t entirely cut off, and at least the manatee didn’t snore. So far so good!

I was concentrating on survival when I discovered the first progress in commercial air travel in decades: even the passengers in cattle class have a power supply! Finally, I wouldn’t have to dim my computer screen to the darkest brightness and turn it off between thoughts.

The system wasn’t designed very well; I had to bend down and almost put my face in the warthog’s lap in order to reach the socket. And when I turned my computer on ... nothing. No juice, no lights, no nothin’.

I asked a flight attendant if I needed to do something to turn on the power outlet.

“No,” he replied, “they usually don’t work.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I continued.

“I suggest relaxing and taking a nap,” he advised.

Air travel just doesn’t get any better than this!

Alas ...

13 July 2019

And a Rattlesnake Too!

The United States is a nation of namby-pamby sheep. The west is the worst; it was colonized by crazy yokels who’ve degenerated into a mass of submissive, wimpy sissies. But not entirely!

I’m talking about Stephen Jennings. Oklahoma police arrested the forty-year-old former felon after they pulled him over driving with a gun, an open bottle of whiskey, uranium, and a rattlesnake for good measure—in a stolen car!

Bravo, Jennings! I’m glad someone’s keeping up the good fight against the wimpification of the American west!

14 July 2019

Dead Man at Deadman Campground

Timothy Edward Smith is my favorite kind of would-be rapist: dead.

Smith broke into a couple’s tent in a Tuolumne County campground and got on top of a sleeping woman. The news account I read a report that her boyfriend sleeping next to her heard her scream—who said great reportage was dead?—then shot and killed the intruder.

This just happened at Deadman Campground.

Of course, where else?

15 July 2019

Bad Dogs, Oy!

I’m agnostic, but I appreciate many secular aspects of Judaism, not just the food. For example ...

In El’ad, twenty miles from Tel Aviv, Mordechai Malka and every other Sephardic rabbi in town signed a proclamation stating the obvious: all dogs are bad.

“We have heard and have seen that lately, a serious phenomenon has spread in our city El’ad, in which young boys and children walk around publicly with dogs,” the city’s chief rabbi wrote. “This is strictly forbidden. As explained in the Talmud and by the Rambam, anyone raising a dog is accursed ...”

Avraham Yosef, the rabbi of Holon, wasn’t about to be outholied. “I do not find any grounds for permitting any dog whatsoever in any manner.”

Israel certainly does sound like the promised land! I’d almost consider moving there to be free of accursed canines except the climate is intolerable and I’m too old to learn Hebrew.

16 July 2019

The Cure for Writer’s Cramp

I’ve never really heard of writer’s cramp, perhaps because I’m not really a writer. Or maybe it’s because it’s one of those medieval maladies that only afflicts writers who use manual graphics generators, e.g., pens and pencils.

Sung-Chul Lim, Joong-Seok Kim, Jae-Young An, and Sa Yoon Kang from the Catholic University of Korea—of all places!—came up with another possibility: I’ve been unknowingly inoculating myself against the ailment for decades. Internal Medicine published their paper, Alcohol-Responsive Writer’s Cramp, in which the authors posit, “... alcohol might reverse the pathophysiologic changes in the entire basal ganglia circuit in patients with writer’s cramp.”

If that’s true, I’d say my entire basal ganglia circuit is in great shape!

There’s yet one other likely explanation why I’ve never suffered from writer’s cramp that has nothing to do with bourbon: writer’s block. Come to think of it, I feel like I’m coming down with an attack right now ...

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart