Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak

Weak XXXVII

10 September 2019

No. 3,685 (cartoon)

I have a great marriage.

Is that how your spouse sees it?

Who cares?

11 September 2019

Know Your Groceries

Randall wrote, “into it hundo p bae”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked Rebecca, another young person, to translate it into standard English.

“He’s committed one hundred percent, before all else,” she explained.

“Man, you really know your groceries!” I replied. “I need to keep my claws sharp.”

She had no idea what I was talking about because I was speaking in a dead language, beatnik.

Randall and Rebecca reminded me that every generation creates its own language, with very few words living more than a generation or two. Jean Cocteau wasn’t talking about language when he said this, but he could have been: “Fashion is everything that goes out of fashion.”

12 September 2019

Rhymes With Hell

As is so often the case on a Thursday morning, I found myself thinking of one of the Jungle Haikus.

Mile Roselle,
rhymes with hell,
lives in the gutter,
’cause he knows it so well.

In what passes for reality, he lives in West Virginia, but that might just be a semantic quibble.

I asked Dr. Roselle why he lived there since he’s not married to his mother, sister, or even a first cousin or two. He told me that even lowlifes like us could afford a comfortable rustic cabin on a creek, something most people in Sans Frisco couldn’t imagine.

“If I had a lot of money,” he explained, “I couldn’t afford to live as well as I do.”

Well, I’ll be, a rational reason for living in the third world. Dang if that don’t beat all!

13 September 2019

Research Comes First

Plagiarism isn’t as easy as I make it look; there’s actually quite a bit of work involved. I’ll begin with an example of something I found that looked worth stealing.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

I didn’t take the bait. Had I done so, one of my perfidious colleagues would have snarkily pointed out that was a line from a formulaic Hollywood movie that premiered a third of a century ago. (I never saw it because popular movies are unpopular with me.)

Never hire a thief to do an assassin’s job. I took that from Sonja, but since no one but me knows she said it first I’m taking credit for it. I’ll add this to put the icing on the conceptual cake: ©2019 David Glenn Rinehart All Rights Reserved

Plagiarism is not a crime unless you’re caught, so remember this: research comes before larceny.

14 September 2019

Seems Like a Good Idea to Me

Here’s the scenario: Mr. Wu and Ms. Ma got involved in a simple project then found themselves in severe financial trouble. Faced with mounting debts because of the expensive upkeep on their joint venture, Ma sold their combined assets for nine thousand dollars, paid off the debt, and had enough money left over for a shiny new phone.

Smart, right? I certainly thought so, but Chinese authorities strongly disagreed. Wu and Ma may now go to prison for selling their twin babies.

I don’t see the problem in a capitalistic society when a seller and a buyer willingly agree on a sale. Wu wanted nothing to do with the children he fathered until he discovered they were a valuable commodity, so their unwanted offspring certainly went to a better home, unless they were being used for organ harvesting.

Despite the financial benefits, I do hope the idiots invested some of their windfall in birth control. On the other hand, I suppose they won’t need it in the hoosegow.

15 September 2019

The 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes (Yawn)

The 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes are here, and, for the first time in years, I’m slightly underwhelmed. There’s a diaper-changing machine, an amusing device that changes human diapers, but that’s of no interest since that’s something I’ve never done and will never do. In other news, we now know why dead magnetized cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches, but I haven’t seen either flavor in over thirty years.

The only new discovery that I found personally interesting addressed the perennial question, does pizza protect against cancer? The answer appears to be yes, but only if the pizza is made and consumed in Italy. Even so, that’s a lot less expensive than a trip to the cancer ward and infinitely tastier.

16 September 2019

Scoundrel Alert!

I saw a fascinating headline today, “Colonel Blood, the scoundrel who tried to steal Great Britain’s crown jewels.”

I don’t care about inbred Brits, jewelry, or a crime almost half a millennium ago. Language, however, is another story figuratively and literally. I got excited at rediscovering the word, “scoundrel,” for I was certain I hadn’t used it once in the twenty-some years I’ve been penning these notebook entries, albeit without a pen.

I checked my database for confirmation and discovered I was right: I didn’t use it once; I used it on nineteen different occasions. My faulty meat memory doesn’t bother me, quite the opposite. By letting my computer keep track of meaningless data, I can use my dwindling brain cells for other pursuits, although I can’t think of any at the moment.

17 September 2019

Representatives Not Wanted

My friends love me and I love them or else we wouldn’t be friends, would we? They’re very generous with drinks and dinners, as am I. Unfortunately, some of them are not shy in magnanimously telling me how to run my life.

The most common bit of unsolicited advice I receive is to make a lot of money by selling my artwork. I am repeatedly assured that my creations would sell for large sums, and that all I have to do to realize this huge windfall is to get galleries to show my work. This is based on their misguided belief that I need more money than I already have, even though there’s nothing I need or even want that dollars or euros can buy.

I’m polite, so I never ask how they could be so insane as to suggest I spend my time as a huckster going door to gallery door trying to sell the inventory I wasted thousands of dollars and weeks and weeks to create. Giving up my life of creative indolence to become a harried businessperson has negative zero appeal if not less.

Instead of being brutally honest, I instead follow the example of Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband: “I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”

I thank them for sharing their business acumen, then make them an extraordinarily munificent offer: they can sell my work, and I’ll give them half of all the money they bring in. What a deal! I assume all the production costs, and they get an unheard of lavish commission.

No one has ever accepted my extraordinary offer. I’m not surprised: it’s easier to recognize a stupid idea when it’s not coming out of your own mouth.

Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak
©2019 David Glenn Rinehart