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Weak XIII

26 March 2021

No. 7,832 (cartoon)

You should think for yourself.

I never thought that.

27 March 2021

Stop Worrying About Apophis

Apophis, a huge asteroid the length of three football pitches, has been on everyone’s list of frets and fears for most of this millennium. Unlike some of my other spurious claims, that one would actually be true if everyone was worried about every asteroid on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s risk list.

And now it’s not!

The plucky space boffins eyeballed the massive chunk of interplanetary flotsam after cleaning the lenses on their massive telescopes, whipped out their slide rules, and concluded that it ain’t gonna smash into earth in 2029, 2036, or any other year for the next century.

I am relieved, since I only worry about things about which I cannot affect let alone change. I probably should be concerned about the failing brakes on my bike, the backlog of correspondence that will take days to answer, and a refrigerator full of mostly moldy food, but since I could solve any of those problems anytime, why worry?

28 March 2021

Bob Dylan at Eighty

Give Bob Dylan a hand. Better yet, two of ’em: debilitating arthritis has left him unable to even hold a guitar. He’s also lost his voice; I’ll let critics and scholars debate if he ever had one.

But that hasn’t stopped him from performing. According to a recent article by Neil Spencer, “... onstage he plays, and is propped up by, an electric piano. His voice ... is in tatters, obliging him to abandon singing altogether for gravely, dramatic declamation[s] ...”

I’m not sure what to make of this. I have to admire someone who continues to make new work a month shy of his eightieth birthday, but is it new work? He’s renowned for both his promise when he was young and for his subsequent wholesale plagiarism, as I’ve mentioned before. His paint-by-numbers versions of famous photographs are even more laughable when he describes them as “firsthand depictions.”

Nevertheless, I still feel sympathy for the old thief. He just banked three-hundred-million dollars after selling the rights to his work, but I’m sure he’d trade it in a second for the use of his hands again. On the other hand, perhaps his shredded vocal cords aren’t such a loss after all if his dramatic declamations are better than his singing.

29 March 2021

Chinese Running Dog Nostalgia

I find it hard to recognize China today. I can still find it on the map, but I miss the Red China I once knew under Chairman Mao. What kind of “Communist” party embraces capitalism and global geopolitical machinations? Some traditions like authoritarianism and human rights abuses haven’t changed, but the buffoonish rhetoric is long gone.

Except that it’s not. I was amused to hear Li Yang, a Chinese “diplomat,” sounding like one of the Red Guards when he denounced Canada’s prime minister.

Boy, your greatest achievement is to have ruined the friendly relations between China and Canada, and have turned Canada into a running dog of the U.S.

Boy?! Why, that’s plantation talk! And I haven’t heard “running dog” since Garry Trudeau used it in the Doonesbury comic strip.

Smash the Gang of Four! Let a hundred flowers bloom!

30 March 2021

A Cheesy Joke

I promised not to tell a single person Stephanie’s secret recipe for cheese pasta, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll tell everyone: cook x grams of any kind of pasta and suffocate it in x grams of any kind of melted cheese. Serve with rivers of red wine to prevent arterial blockage.

She’s a temperamental genius in the kitchen, but without the genius part. Even though I knew that it was going to end in tears before bedtime, I agreed to help her with tonight’s dinner. After all, neither I nor a good guest could turn down such a reasonable request.

“I thought I told you to boil some water five minutes ago!” she barked.

“You wouldn’t appear to be pregnant let alone about to give birth, so what’s the big hurry?” I asked.

“Get out of my kitchen!” she ordered.

Poor Stephanie doesn’t appreciate my sense of humor, but, come to think of it, none of my friends do either. Oh well, that’s probably their loss, but probably not.

31 March 2021

My Undeveloped Theory of Love and Obnoxiousity

Colleen asked rhetorically why people have such obnoxious dogs. I didn’t hesitate to jump into an inane discussion, especially since I had no idea what I was talking about.

“People have obnoxious dogs for same reason they have obnoxious friends,” I declared, “love.”

“You’re an obnoxious friend but I don’t love you,” she countered.

“I love you as a friend even though you’re not obnoxious,” I replied.

“I think you just confirmed that you have no idea what you’re talking about,” she declared.

She had my incisors to the grindstone, so I decided to counter logic with sophistry. I pointed out that researchers are still working on Einstein’s unified field theory, so it’s unrealistic to expect me to come up with a bulletproof universal theory of love and obnoxiousity after only a couple of beers.

1 April 2021

Silent Fools

One year into the pandemic and almost three million deaths later, I haven’t heard of a single April Fool’s joke or prank today that would elicit the slightest smirk let alone a hint of a smile. It’s funny that this is the first Saint Stupid’s Day without a laugh, but I suppose that’s not funny either.

2 April 2021

Improved Packaging for Large Hollow Chocolate Bunnies

Deirdre asked why I was reading a paper by Gerald W. Greenway and Raul Enrique Garcia Via, Designing and Testing an Improved Packaging for Large Hollow Chocolate Bunnies. I corrected her: I wasn’t interested in the words, I was just leafing through a 1977 copy of the TAPPI Journal to find imagery to steal, er, “appropriate.”

Perhaps I should be more open-minded, but I’m not really interested in the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry. Instead, I appreciate the technical illustrations made with no attempt to look like art; that makes them better art than most of the alleged art I see these days.

Take the bunny in a box. The wabbit has the torso of a snowball, holds a carrot like a religious relic, and has the beguiling smile of a would-be suitor. It bears no resemblance to a chocolate rabbit, hollow or otherwise. Each side of its box is numerically labeled, with a huge arrow indicating that the bunny is facing you.

Brilliant! I can work with that, and will!

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