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Weak XIV

3 April 2021

No. 5,417 (cartoon)

Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?

Obviously not.

4 April 2021

Beware of the Ether Bunny!

I’m warning all of my friends about the Ether Bunny. Most people can’t differentiate it from the Easter Bunny until it’s too late—with unspeakably horrific consequences—so I’m sounding the alarm. I’m generous that way.

Ludmila told me not to worry: she’s Orthodox and today is not her Easter. I wasn’t concerned about the theological implications, but the semantic considerations made my head hurt.

Let’s see, since I am unorthodox in that I am not a believer, and since this is not an Orthodox Easter today, do two negatives make a positive resulting in an orthodox day for me?

I left the irrelevant question unanswered. I never bothered with orthodox thinking before, why start now?

5 April 2021

Damning with Spraint Praise

Brett wrote to tell me that otter feces is called spraint, “from Old French espreintes, from espraindre (squeeze out), based on Latin exprimere (to express).” He concluded his brief note with, “Although you may not find a use for this in one of your notebook entries, I thought it was something you otter know.”

What a maroon! Even a third-grader would find a stupid pun like that embarrassingly immature. Oh well, everything’s material when you have a space to fill, so I’ll use it anyway, squeeze this out, and call it a day’s work, such as it is.

6 April 2021

Know What I Mean?

A few petty things really annoy me; know what I mean? Of course you know what that seven-word sentence means, hence my annoyance at the unnecessary question that all too many people append to the end of a simple sentence. (In this case “too many” equals “greater than zero.”)

I wouldn’t mind if someone said, “She straightway dight her robe; know what I mean?” That sentence is nearly half a millennium old, and asking me if I understood would have saved me a trip to my dictionary to look up “dight.” Instead, the usual inane question goes something like this: “Looks like a lotta rain next weekend; know what I mean?”

I wish I was erudite enough to reply, “I believe you are informing me that during the period from approximately Friday evening through Sunday evening, a large volume of moisture condensed from the atmosphere will fall visibly in separate drops, correct?”

Even if I could talk like that extemporaneously it wouldn’t make any difference. The annoyers are oblivious to the annoyance they inflict on the annoyees. Trying to correct them is as pointless as trying to resurrect last week’s biscuits with yesterday’s gravy; see what I’m sayin’?

7 April 2021

Ignorance is Bliss

Rhonda was taken aback to find me in an atypically great mood when she showed up.

“You must have swallowed a handful of stupid pills to get an idiotic smile like that,” she declared with her usual diplomacy, “what are you up to?”

“The same nothings as usual,” I replied.

“Then what’s with the ear-to-ear smirk?” she asked.

“Ignorance is bliss,” I explained, “and that’s that.”

My gambit worked. I was fairly certain she would never argue that I wasn’t that ignorant, and she didn’t.

Ignorance is also useful!

8 April 2021

My Father’s Culinary Gift

I’m thinking about my father Glenn on what would have been his hundred-and-first birthday. I learned almost everything I know about food from him, which admittedly ain’t much.

First, there’s portion control. Ha! No, there certainly isn’t. He was a cook in the navy, and the smallest batch of anything he ever made served at least a dozen people. I’m the same way, although that certainly wasn’t inherited and I don’t ever recall him suggesting that I do that. It just makes sense: it doesn’t take that much more work to make ten servings than it does one or two, so I spend less time cooking.

Since I haven’t cooked for the crew on a ship since my Greenpeace days a millennium ago, that results in lots and lots of leftovers. That’s not a problem because of the other thing he taught me about food: never waste it. He learned that the hard way growing up in the depression; I learned that the easy way: by being cheap, er, frugal.

I know what he taught me about food wasn’t very profound, but neither was he, and neither am I. Profundity is overrated; love cannot be underrated.

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©2021 David Glenn Rinehart