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Weak XXXVII

10 September 2020

No. 914 (cartoon)

I wish I knew then what I know now.

What’s that?

Nothing.

11 September 2020

A Failure of the Imagination

Rosaline tut-tutted me when I showed her the tube of cheap Shurfine Mayonnaise I was going to squirt on desert plants then photograph the results. She told me that she couldn’t possibly imagine anything more stupid than that.

Her remark made me quite sad because I knew she was telling the truth. I felt sorry that her creativity was so uncultivated and undeveloped that she literally couldn’t envision something much more idiotic than a relatively conservative art project. When I came up with the mayonnaise idea I was just starting to pick up speed accelerating down the slippery slope of foolishness to explore the rich bowels of inanity.

12 September 2020

Descent English

Emilia sent me to an Internet site to listen to a recorded Kids These Days story about entitled, spoiled children in their twenties whining about the aggressive behavior of their elders. The precious darlings regard the receipt of a message with the correct use of spelling, grammar, and punctuation as a hostile act.

That’s too ridiculous to ridicule, so it’s on to another subject to scorn ...

I had two options to learn about the stupid kids: I could listen to a four-minute recording of someone reading the report aloud or I could read the same seven hundred and thirty-seven words myself in well under two minutes, and much less time if I skimmed over the fluff and filler.

Having someone read to you makes perfect sense if you’re illiterate, and perhaps if you prefer to listen to news updates whilst perambulating instead of taking in your surroundings, but otherwise it’s as much of a waste of time as trying to convince an aggrieved ignoranus that s/he shouldn’t feel threatened by decent English.

13 September 2020

Hearing Music and Seeing Cameras

I’m not going to hallucinate that there’s anything about me that’s unique among the almost eight billion people who inhabit the planet with me. Having said that, I doubt many people share my particular and perhaps peculiar flavor of synaesthesia.

I understand that some forms are fairly common, such as listening to music and seeing the colors it generates, but my curious variation is that I see cameras when I listen to some recordings. Depending on the music, it could be an old Leica, a huge view camera, an underwater Nikonos, or any of the dozens of cameras I’ve used over the decades.

I know one of my learned friends is going to get all technical and point out that’s not really synaesthesia at all and that I just have historical associations between old songs and the photographic equipment that I was using at the time. Fine. In that case, I have delusions of synaesthesia. I’m sure that’s just as rare as hearing music and seeing cameras.

14 September 2020

Evasive Desert Maneuvers

I was cycling down a barren stretch of desert road this afternoon when I heard the sound of a small plane flying erratically. The engine was revving then cutting out, not the normal drone of a plane flying from yon to thither.

Perhaps the pilot was testing the aircraft’s handling and performance. Or maybe s/he was flying erotically whilst renewing membership in the thousand-meter-high club. These things are hard to tell from the ground, even with my expertise in aeronautics.

Or maybe the flier was suicidal and wanted a cyclist for company on the long journey to Valhalla or some other final destination. I started to consider escape strategies in case the pilot was headed for a kamikaze climax. After evaluating several scenarios, I determined that the plane posed a minimal threat because of the relatively low mass. I could zig and zag behind the scrawny trees near the road. They’re not very big but they’d stop a light aircraft.

I took evasive action on my ride back by occasionally braking suddenly and making random sharp turns while always noting the distance to the nearest tree. My diligence paid off and I arrived back at my studio safely. And that concludes my tale of the most excitement I’ve had here in months.

15 September 2020

Great Sex Alone

Duncan makes a lot of money counseling couples with difficult if not dysfunctional relationships. Even better, he comes away with some great stories, some of which he passes along to me after anonymizing them.

He says it’s easy work since almost all of the problems are in some way related to sex or money. As for the former, here’s a great reply he got when he asked one of his clients if there were any problems in the bedroom ...

“We have great sex but only when I’m alone.”

I still think having a job job is a bad idea, but I have to admit that being paid a couple hundred dollars an hour to listen to other people’s tawdry and amusing stories does have a certain appeal ...

16 September 2020

Midlife Crisis? Perhaps Not

Malcolm told me that he was going to celebrate his fiftieth birthday by giving himself a most ridiculous present: the most ginormous German motorcycle money can buy. He might even spring for the option of having a Rheinmetall RMG.50 machine gun mounted on the handlebars in case he ever wants to annex Austria someday.

He bragged that the brute has ten—or was it twelve?—cylinders, can cruise at three hundred kilometers an hour, and is able to easily tow a small house trailer should he ever decide to get one.

I pointed out that he was barely able to ride a bicycle, and that there are a lot of simpler and less expensive ways to maim, cripple, or kill himself. I suggested that he should consider a more traditional response to his midlife crisis such as making a fool of himself with the help of a scandalously young, vapid, golddigger.

He pooh-poohed my pooh-poohing with a clever bit of sophistry.

“If you’re right and I do end up taking my life with the beast,” he replied, “then it won’t be a midlife crisis, will it?”

I couldn’t argue with that, so I instead politely suggested he review his will and confirm that he’s leaving me his Heckler & Koch P7 semi-automatic pistol. It could come in quite handy someday after he pops his clogs.

17 September 2020

The 2020 Ig Nobel Prizes

Once a year the plucky researchers at The Annals of Improbable Research give me a day off from trying to find anything of interest to say, and today is that day! The editors of that august periodical have just announced the winners of the 2020 Ig Nobel Prizes. Here’s one of my favorites, lifted directly from the press release:

Ig Nobel Prize for management ... five professional hitmen in Guangxi, China, who managed a contract for a hit job (a murder performed for money) in the following way: After accepting payment to perform the murder, Xi Guang-An then instead subcontracted the task to Mo Tian-Xiang, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Kang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Guang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Ling Xian-Si, with each subsequently enlisted hitman receiving a smaller percentage of the fee, and nobody actually performing a murder.

I suppose that’s what the Chinese get for allowing capitalism to corrupt the Marxist-Leninist efficiency of The People's Republic of China.

Did I mention I’m taking the day off? I’m not going to even bother completely citing other stories about “a female Chinese alligator [bellowing] in an airtight chamber filled with helium-enriched air,” “trying to quantify the relationship between different countries national income inequality and the average amount of mouth-to-mouth kissing,” “showing that knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work well,” et cetera.

Good night.

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©2020 David Glenn Rinehart