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5 March 2020

No. 2,881 (cartoon)

You’ll always be with me.

No, you’re thinking of cancer.

6 March 2020

Meanwhile, Back on Earth ...

Imelda chastised me for being a slave to “reality-based reality.” I respectfully told her not to impose her opinion-based reality on me. We were nose to nose, but we couldn’t see eye to eye. (That’s neither figuratively nor literally true, but I couldn’t resist using such a hoary cliché for the first time.)

I don’t know much about science or anything else, but I can and do read headlines, and was thus aware that Freeman Dyson died a week ago, but possibly only in one of the one hundred and ninety-six thousand eight hundred and eighty-three dimensions he identified.

I pointed out to Imelda that if we were to go down a list of that many parallel worlds that might keep us occupied until well into the evening, so I proposed a compromise.

“Would you not concur,” I asked, “that any reality is just a crutch for people who can’t deal with alcohol?”

She didn’t have to consider the proposition for very long.

“I’ll drink to that!” she agreed.

And with that, we again found ourselves on common terra infirma.

7 March 2020

Expert Opinions

Nora loves to complain about anything and everything; at the moment she’s whinging about an article in The Annals of Teen Angst.

In fairness, I can see why she has a problem with the piece, Too busy to kill yourself? Seven hot suicide substitutes. She didn’t have a problem with the editorial content; she declared that the author was unqualified to write about the topic. She maintained that a suicide expert is an oxymoron since everyone who’s done it successfully is too dead to discuss it.

I think the real problem here is that she’s clearly reading the wrong periodical. The Annals of Teen Angst?! Not only should she be reading The Journal of Midlife Crises, she could also be writing and editing the rag as well.

8 March 2020

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur on 8 March 2014 and then ...

Six years later no one knows what happened to the huge jet. I’d say it’s a safe bet that the hundreds of people aboard are dead, but the best and the brightest haven’t been able to find the massive aluminum coffin. A tragedy is, by definition, a tragedy, yet I still marvel at the unsolved disappearance on such a thoroughly surveilled planet.

I’m not a gambler, but if I ran a casino I think it would be most lucrative to let people place wagers on when the aircraft will be discovered. I wouldn’t put any money down since I’ll probably be dead by then.

9 March 2020

Nowruz, Insects, and Cancer

Nowruz is almost here, and that means aush reshteh, kookoo sabzi, and shekar polo, and other Persian yummy nums.

The spring equinox means something else to the proprietors of the local garden supply store: bugs. They’ve dedicated a wall of their store to a variety of insecticides, poisons, and toxins ... everything needed to make a oncophiliac’s dreams come true!

I have of course been bitten, stung, and otherwise attacked by the nasty little arthropods. I’ve also seen friends in the cancer ward burned by radiation and poisoned by chemotherapy, and that would appear to be many orders of magnitude horribler.

Having established that there’s no relationship between the Persian new year, insects, and cancer, it’s time to hang up my computer for the day and think about writing something cogent—or at least nominally coherent—tomorrow.

10 March 2020

Devolution Revisited

Here’s the headline from a recent piece by Katherine Fenz: Research on soldier ants reveals that evolution can go in reverse.

The author is employed by Rockefeller University, but she apparently ain’t no scholar; the institution describes her as, ”Media Relations Manager.” That’s a young person’s job, so I suppose she can’t be faulted for being unaware that devolution (deëvolition?) isn’t news. I doubt she was even conceived when members of the musical ensemble Devo explored the idea almost half a century ago, a concept that was well established long before they ran with it.

I admire academic researchers because they’re so creative. Imagine that: getting a fat, juicy grant to examine reverse evolution in soldier ants when they probably could have found all the empirical evidence they needed and more without leaving Rockefeller University’s administration building.

11 March 2020

Belly Buffet

Iris smiled when she saw the label on my bike helmet: David Glenn Rinehart = Organ Donor.

“Maybe you can feed my dogs someday,” she laughed.

I protested that I’d offered to take care of her canine rodents when she was traveling, but she always turned me down because I wouldn’t sleep with the drooling pests. And that’s when she set me straight.

Iris began by presuming that I hadn’t read the entire contract when I volunteered to be an organ donor. It was a safe assumption based on the bountiful human harvest at the hospital where she works. She reported that after the doctors have claimed all the organs they need for transplants, the remainder is shared among the employees who are members of the clandestine Used Meat Club.

For Iris, that means free dog food in the form of human kidneys, with the occasional liver thrown in if it’s not too contaminated. She says that since I ride a donorcycle—her slang for both bicycles and motorbikes—I just may end up feeding her canines when I’m dead meat.

I can’t say that I understand dogs or other parasites, but I now have a new insight into the glint in their beady little eyes as they size me up for a belly buffet.

12 March 2020

Working from Home

Derek’s corporate overseers ordered him to work from home to prevent the spread of communicable viruses. I find that amusing for a couple of reasons. That’s a good idea, mainly because it may inhibit the spread of all the cooties thriving in his fetid apartment. The funny part, though, is that the very same bureaucrats have been telling him for years that it would be impossible for him to work anywhere but inside the claustrophobic office.

One of the great things about the current pandemic is that it’s revealed that offices are generally unnecessary. Offices are places where young people go to have sex and old people go to die. Sometimes people actually accomplish other things there, but that may be just a coincidence.

Old men erect large office buildings because that’s about all they can muster. They hire thousands of employees to populate them so that they boast about the size of their enormous staffs. And that’s more than enough Freud for the twenties ...

The virus is killing thousands of people and it’s just getting started. I hope that when all the corpses are identified that the concept of the office is among them.

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©2020 David Glenn Rinehart