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Weak XLVI

12 November 2020

No. 8,643 (cartoon)

I’ve never been so debased, so demeaned, and so degraded.

You say that every time.

13 November 2020

Playing the Violin Again

As you read this, please don’t let my feeble grasp of facts in general and my ignorance of history, science, and biology in particular distract you from mindlessly enjoying a few seconds of mindless entertainment.

This morning, I got inoculated against the virus that’s killed so many people. I’m not talking about anything to do with Coronarama; the only vaccines for today’s killer at large are hallucinatory, wishful thinking, or worse. People a century from now will be getting poked to prevent them from covid injections; today I’m trying to avoid the influenza that’s been around since the 1918 pandemic.

The doctor jabbed the jab, then warned me that my shoulder might be sore for a day or two.

“Will I be able to play the violin on the third day?” I asked.

“That won’t be a problem,” she assured me.

“That’s amazing!” I replied. “I’ve never touched a fiddle in my life!”

The doctor laughed; she was obviously too young to have heard the joke my father told at least eighty years ago long before passing it along to me. And now I’ve given it to a new generation without dealing with the torment of parenting.

I wonder if it can be that hard to saw on a fiddle? Hillbillies do it all the time; maybe I should get me a jug of corn whiskey and give it a try.

14 November 2020

Creative Life Drawing

Juliana is taking a life drawing course at her local college. Sort of. The campus is sealed up like a sarcophagus. That’s ironic since the dead bodies are now entombed elsewhere, but that not today’s story.

We’re talking about nekkid men. Or, more accurately, men who should be but aren’t. The school doesn’t have proper art classes, what with The Thing and all, so the teacher mailed a photograph of a male model sitting in a chair. And that’s your first problem right there: that makes it a drawing-from-a-photograph course, and nothing to do with working with a live model.

But that wasn’t Juliana’s biggest gripe. The nude model wasn’t; he was wearing his bright, white knickers.

“How am I supposed to do a life drawing of a man from a photo if he hasn’t even got a bloody willy?!” she asked.

“Use your imagination,” I suggested.

She ignored my advice—that’s usually a good move—and asked the Internet to show her photographs of male genitalia. She was directed to pornography sites; no surprises there. After viewing the blue ribbon winners from county fairs across the country, she finally found one for her assignment.

She submitted a hand-drawn copy of the photograph with a notable difference: the model had an erect penis over half a meter long. And that’s where this stupid story finally got amusing. (Or perhaps not.)

The instructor told Juliana that he was giving her a failing grade because of her foundering grasp anatomical proportions. She replied that she’d be happy to take the dispute to the academic appeals committee if he wanted to argue that small penises are normal.

He caved and gave her the highest grade. She didn’t learn a single thing from the class. That’s what I call arts education!

15 November 2020

Frolicking Platypuses All Aglow

I love starting the day with a good headline, and today there’s a great one in The New York Times:

Platypuses Glow Under Blacklight.
We Have No Idea Why.

On the face of it, the discovery appeared to have little value or relevance. Upon further investigation, though, it turned out to be completely worthless.

Or maybe not. I’m thinking of Vladimir Nabokov’s unanswered query, “Does there not exist a high ridge where the mountainside of ‘scientific’ knowledge joins the opposite slope of ‘artistic’ imagination?”

If there is such sublime real estate, I know what I’ll find there: frolicking platypuses all aglow in a shimmering blacklight sea.

16 November 2020

My Vexing Gift

Claudio asked me how long I’d been making my, “loathsome cartoons.”

“Ever since I started, I guess,” I replied.

“No,” he continued, “what year?”

I paused for dramatic and farcical effect.

“I suppose that would have to have been the year I began,” I concluded.

“Are you going out of your way to be annoying?” he asked.

“Of course not, and I’m sorry if you got that impression; exasperating people comes naturally to me,” I explained. “It’s a gift.”

I hope Claudio won’t bother me again about pesky facts after my burning and dodging. If he wants history, the Internet has every flavor there is and then some.

(And since I really am a nice guy, I’ll close by mentioning that I published my first cartoon on Ansel Adams’ hundredth birthday, 20 February 2002.)

17 November 2020

The Ask-a-Scot Hotline Ain’t

After reading my recent notes on Sean Connery, Zelda asked me how to contact the Ask-a-Scot hotline. I had to confess that that unique tartan resource is my friend Fearghas’s private line and not to be shared.

Many people have tried to launch the Ask-a-Scot hotline as a commercial venture; here are the first four questions everyone asks ...

Do Scots wear anything under their kilts?
Why ask when you can look?

Do Scots really eat haggis?
Of course not; gullible tourists eat haggis.

Do all Scots drink whiskey?
No; we all drink whisky.

Does the Loch Ness Monster really exist?
Loch Ness is on every map; it’s not imaginary.

That’s all good and well, but that’s as good as it gets. As soon as someone has the answers to those four questions, almost all of them have no reason to return to the Ask-a-Scot hotline. In short, the only way to make a small fortune on a commercial venture like the Ask-a-Scot hotline is to invest a large one.

18 November 2020

Hektor’s Morbid Happy Ending

Hektor called and reported that he’d just returned from a miserable trip to the hospital to visit his injured cousin. I commiserated and noted that the only positive trip I could think of is one where you watch a life arriving rather than leaving.

“Oh ye of little imagination,” he chided. “A few weeks ago I had a great time seeing Edgar in the goner ward getting palliative care for his terminal lung cancer.”

“You visited Edgar?!” I replied. “I thought he swindled you out of twenty-thousand dollars when you were business partners.”

“That’s correct,” he confirmed, “and he got away with it. That’s why I enjoyed telling him I was pleased to see him dying a slow, painful, and horrible death.”

Hektor said Edgar didn’t reply; he couldn’t with all the tubes down his throat. He thanked him for finally providing closure to their business relationship, grabbed Edgar’s Rolex off the nightstand and left. He sold the watch, “for twenty-five thousand dollars and a happy ending.”

I wouldn’t call schadenfreude and revenge a happy ending, but everyone writes their own story.

19 November 2020

Thank You, Eggplant Anti-Defamation Council

“I hereby retract my assertion that eggplant tastes like recycled condoms that have been processed in industrial solvents. I regret my erroneous statement.”

There, I said it. Now for the foreplay after the fact ...

I received a very nasty lawyergram—is there any other kind?—from the Eggplant Anti-Defamation Council demanding that I retract my “slanderous, calumnious, and malicious proclamation” about the organization’s rubbery raison d’être.

I agreed with the editorial suggestion, so I didn’t bother reading the rest threatening lawsuits, a potential eight-figure judgment, et cetera. Why didn’t the defensive, litigious, and paranoid self-appointed guardians of the mediocrest berry (by botanical definition) in the universe just tell me I published a poorly-worded sentence? Too many lawyers and not enough brains is my guess.

Having disavowed a sentence that should have been aborted at first thought, here’s what I should have said ...

Eggplant tastes more repulsive than recycled condoms that have been processed in tenderizing embalming fluid.

Thank you Eggplant Anti-Defamation Council; everybody needs an editor!

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©2020 David Glenn Rinehart