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11 December 2020

No. 7,343 (cartoon)

Sue was cidal.

I can guess the rest.

Happy ending!

12 December 2020

Kissin’ an’ Such

Viola walked into my studio, took off her heavy winter coat, and produced a bottle of bourbon seemingly out of thin air. (She actually pulled it out of a brown paper bag, but that’s no way to start a story.)

She announced that we was havin’ us a hootenanny, and commenced to playing Levon Helm’s Poor Old Dirt Farmer on her music box. What lyrics!

Now the poor old dirt farmer
He’s left all alone.
His wife and his children
They’ve packed up and gone.

Well the poor old dirt farmer
How bad he must feel.
He fell off his tractor
Up under the wheel.

And now his head
Is shaped like a tread
But he ain’t quite dead.

Brilliant!

“Listening to woebegone tales like that makes me wish I had a sister to marry!” I enthused.

“Don’t be disgusting!” Viola replied. “You marry your first cousin; sisters are just for kissin’ an’ such.”

I thought about her and her creepy brother and changed the subject.

“Why are we drinking bourbon instead of moonshine?” I asked.

“Because you can’t get proper moonshine west of Appalachia,” she explained. “But at least this will take the enamel off your teeth.”

Excellent point! Why didn’t my dentist tell me about such an efficacious and pleasant way to remove plaque? It must be some sort of conspiracy or coverup by the American Dental Association; there’s no other possible explanation.

13 December 2020

Anyway You Slice It

Cynthia invited me over to her place to play chef. It was a ruse: when I got there I discovered she wanted to use me in a kitchen experiment. She’d just had some of her knives sharpened by an itinerant knife grinder and wanted me to do a blind test to see if he did a good job.

She took me to the cutting block in the kitchen and showed me the knives and blindfold I’d be using.

Blindfold?!

She told me that knives had identical handles and she wanted an objective opinion, hence the blindfold. I told her that I only had nine fingers left, hence no blindfold. We agreed to disagree the way true fiends do.

I got me to slicing up some onions, I did, but not for long before I screamed an expletive so unimaginatively banal I won’t repeat it. The knife sharpener did a great job; the razor-edged blade sliced a couple of millimeters off the end of my thumb.

Cynthia surveyed the bloody onions with satisfaction. She explained that a knife that glides through flesh was ideal. A knife that cuts through bone was too sharp, but she was satisfied with hers since my nine surviving digits were still intact, mostly.

The bloody cut didn’t hurt at all, but I feigned pain and dizziness and sipped cocktails by the fireplace while she prepared a delicious dinner.

That’s certainly a satisfactory knife, any way you slice it.

14 December 2020

Going Apace

Clint gave me a brief bovine semantics tutorial after I sent him a note saying that I was glad to hear that things were going apace at his job job. He began by explaining that he said “a pace,” not “apace.”

“A bunch of asses is called a pace,” he continued. “A herd of cows is a kine unless it’s a dozen of them; twelve cows are a flink.”

“That’s very interesting,” I lied.

The sound waves carrying my words were still traveling across the room when I realized that I was experiencing one of those all too frequent “I can’t believe what an idiot I am” moments. I inadvertantly gave him the green light to prattle on with his barnyard monologue, and that’s of course what he did.

“A cowardice of curs ...” he resumed.

“Whoa!” I interrupted. “You’re going too fast for me to keep up with your pace.”

That was the end of Clint’s little lecture. I was relieved when he didn’t ask me which definition of “pace” I meant.

15 December 2020

The Disappeared

Alton Glenn Miller has an interesting bio:

Born: 1 March 1904
Disappeared: 15 December 1944
Died: ?

Yep; ’twas seventy-six years ago today that Miller and his trusty trombone headed into the wild blue yonder and were never seen again. He’s probably dead, but I like to imagine the infinitesimal possibility that he bailed out over rural France and has been living as a recluse in his château ever since.

And then there’s Jimmy Riddle Hoffa. Or, more precisely, there ain’t: he also has “disappeared” on his curriculum vitae. With Riddle as his middle name, everyone saw that coming. Everyone except Jimmy, that is.

And speaking of everyone, everyone knows what really happened to Hoffa. And everyone’s story is different. Sorry, Glenn, but mysteries don’t get any better than that.

16 December 2020

Remembering Ludwig’s Gal in Kalamazoo

Ludwig van Beethoven was not born a quarter of a millennium ago, and don’t let no one tell you no different. The übercomposer was baptized two hundred and fifty years ago today, but no one knows when he was actually born. (Talking about an uncertain birth seems like a nice albeit tortured segue to move on from yesterday’s observations about uncertain deaths.)

I have only two things to say about the hombre that haven’t been said in the last couple of centuries, and today seems like a good day to reveal ’em.

A friend of my late Uncle Don’s played trumpet in Glenn Miller’s ensemble, and revealed that Miller had scored Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony for his big band. He was flying to Paris to premiere the piece when he vanished along with the score.

I hate to be so predictable, but I saved the best for last. Miller discovered Beethoven’s score and libretto for (I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo when he was doing his student research at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. He stole the originals and claimed the work as his own.

Roll over and tell Tchaikovsky the news!

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©2020 David Glenn Rinehart