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Weak XI

13 March 2020

No. 853 (cartoon)

I have it all!

Even the new virus?

I was afraid that I was forgetting something.

14 March 2020

The End of Italian Civilization

Civilization is a thin façade; all it takes is a little crack in the illusion to let the wild beasts among us run rampant. Or something like that. For example, Italy’s been a civilized country for millennia. They have great food, cheap wine, beautiful women, handsome men, and ... well, that’s more than anyone really needs right there, innit?

Now they have plenty of something no one needs: the coronavirus. In what appears to be a futile attempt to slow the growth of the pandemic, authorities have put the entire country on lockdown. The Italians are acting like the trapped animals in cages, which is exactly what they are. A visitor, of which there aren’t any during the quarantine, would find them eating until they pass out, drinking until they’re legless, and copulating with anything with a pulse. In other words, normal life continues as usual. But in an act of unthinkably sheer barbarity, Italians are flocking to their balconies to shriek and caterwaul their way through the pandemic, banging on pots and pans, and otherwise inflicting grievous aural harm on each other. The worst of them are the faux musicians who call themselves musicisti giradischi, or turntablists. That’s how far they’ve descended in only a day or two.

I don’t mean to single out the Italians; they’re just the rats in the coalmine, or canaries in the coliseum before the lions are freed, or something like that.

I’m stocking up on earplugs and military-grade sonic earmuffs. I hope that will get me through the impending apocalypse, but, having learned from the sonic carnage in Italy, I have a couple more stacks of amplifiers on order in case I need to fight noise with even noisier noise.

15 March 2020

Postponed Before Even Being Poned

Here’s news from today’s mailbox ...

As you know, the coronavirus outbreak has affected much of the world, and the United States is no exception. San Francisco and the Bay Area are on high alert, with many cases reported in the region. Residents are being advised to avoid crowds and minimize risks. It is in this context that the Kahle/Austin Foundation has made the extraordinary and unprecedented decision to postpone the awards banquet for your grant indefinitely.

What’s wrong with that? To begin with ...

First, the entire banquet would include fewer than ten people, including the entire staff of the foundation, the caterer, and me. That’s still legal.

And postpone?! They never even poned it! It’s been over three years since I received the grant, and no one at the prestigious foundation even scheduled the extravagant gala.

I’ll stop there. I’m not going to complain about anyone taking advantage of the current crisis; I’m going to milk the virus for all it’s worth to justify my ongoing sloth and indolence.

16 March 2020

Lifetime Achievement Awards

I believe that Attention Deficit Disorder isn’t a malady at all; it’s the natural human condition. And that’s not lost on Kim Jong-un, the porcine little Korean tyrant. He’s been having a great time testing large missiles while the rest of the word is solely focused on another lethal threat, a tiny little virus.

He’s also been busy handing out lifetime achievement awards, which, like everything else in North Korea, are rather different than one might expect. In this country, the recipient of such an alleged honor receives a tacky, generic plaque and perhaps a cheap, gold-plated watch for exemplary corporate servitude. Yawn ...

The North Koreans don’t put old people out to pasture once they’re no longer productive. The apparatchiks in Pyongyang enforce a lifetime achievement award with great efficiency: the beneficiaries are executed at the end of the honors evening.

I suppose that could be considered barbaric (because it is), but noted North Korean apologist Dennis Rodman had an interesting spin on the carnage: “At least they’re not waitin’ around for some damn germs to kill ’em up their nose.”

17 March 2020

Send in the Taco Wagons!

In one of life’s fat little ironies, chubby Americans are worried about having enough to eat during the crisis de l’année. It’s as if the current food distribution bottlenecks might actually deprive them of the freedom to be obese, so they may be right.

The New Mexico Department of Emergency Relief has been prepared for this calamity since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Governor John “Jack” Moren Campbell commissioned almost a hundred thousand taco wagons to provide the populace with some real good eatin’ during a nuclear Armageddon. Almost sixty years later, authorities have pulled the cold war relics out of mothballs and distributed them strategically across almost three hundred and fifteen square kilometers of desert.

The feeding stations offer government-issued burritos, tacos ... and hot dogs?! The menu goes back to the politics of the era when people of noncolor felt their culture was threatened by the peoples whose lands they stole fair and square. The governor’s brother, Cedric, owned the Mr. Polish franchise for the entire state, and that’s why today the menu offers Mr. Polish hot dogs (jumbo, spicy, and regular) instead of tamales.

I’m not complaining about the tubular pork waste from the slaughterhouse floor being passed off as food. I wasn’t expecting the pandemic to be a picnic; I’m just glad that it’s being catered at all.

18 March 2020

Unconventional Progress

Isabella is delighted that she won’t be going to the Underwriting Expo conference in Chicago next month after all. She will instead be forced to watch the tedious presentations on her computer, but at least she won’t have to suffer the pain and humiliation of commercial air travel and stale hotels. She complained about the videos, too, noting that it would be much more efficient if she could simply read a transcript of the talk rather than suffer through listening to someone with no oratory skill mumbling on and on in a soporific monotone.

She claimed that the whole convention trade was a scam foisted on us by the hospitality-industrial complex and old men who felt the biological imperative to procreate widely, or at least attempt to go through the motions. This isn’t 1870; there’s simply no need to travel to hear someone talk.

At least one positive result of the viral meltdown is that the meetings flimflam has been exposed. I think this is going a bit far, but Isabella maintains that the tens of thousands of people who’ve died from the virus will not have done so in vain since it forced conference organizers to make the tacit admission that they’re useless.

I don’t share her optimism. I’m sure the charlatans and swindlers will find a way to put the genie back into the toothpaste tube. Or maybe I’m missing the point and Isabella was right when she posited than conferences have everything to do with vacations (with or without sex) and that conveying information is incidental if not irrelevant.

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©2020 David Glenn Rinehart