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Weak V

30 January 2022

No. 4,345 (cartoon)

I wonder what’s wrong with me.

No one else does.

31 January 2022

Stu, Not Hasenpfeffer

Colleen said her kids were raising a rabbit named Stuart for an experiment.

“Why did they name him Stuart?” I asked.

“Because they can’t spell hasenpfeffer,” she explained, “but Stu’s easy.”

I didn’t ask what the project was; poor succulent Stuart ...

1 February 2022

Popsicle Sticks versus Ice Cream Sticks

You wouldn’t believe how far behind I am in reading some of my scientific journals. Or maybe you would believe it if you saw the towering stacks of periodicals that may one day fuel my premature funeral pyre. That doesn’t matter; I don’t care.

I just got around to reading Journal of Dairy Science, vol. 85, no. 2 ... from twenty years ago. Sudarat Jiamyangyuen, Jeannine Frances Delwiche, and W. J. Harper studied a question we’ve all had at one time or another, The Impact of Wood Ice Cream Sticks’ Origin on the Aroma of Exposed Ice Cream Mixes.

I was very disappointed after reading it carefully. There wasn’t a single mention of popsicle sticks! It has no relevance to my 2007 piece, Eleven Popsicle Remnants, so the august and irrelevant journal is headed to the recycling plant.

2 February 2022

Kim Jong-il’s Back!

I saw an intriguing headline in this morning’s Washington Post: Wandering chicken seized near Pentagon.

Wha-wha-what?! Wandering chicken seized near Pentagon?!

I keep imagining possible explanations of why a chicken sauntering around one of the most fortified structures on earth would merit a news story. I didn’t read the article; why would I? I’m sure a literal description of what happened is of no interest, whereas I’m fascinated by my theory that the chicken was a kamikaze robot inside the body of a bird. I have a dozen more explanations, each more farfetched and entertaining than the rest.

The most plausible explanation I’ve come up with was that Kim Jong-il’s brain was transplanted into a chicken planning on an anthrax attack. None of the toadies at the Washington Post are going to report that, so that makes the Korean connection the most plausible explanation, no?

3 February 2022

Creative Recycling

I had two problems when I finished a liter of Scotch: I was out of whisky and I needed to recycle the empty bottle. I addressed both concerns with a trip to Trader Joe’s, a nearby supermarket. I hid the empty bottle in the store’s bathroom behind a rubbish bin, bought another liter for ten dollars, then headed back to my studio.

I’ll do it again when that bottle’s empty even though I have no idea how my juvenile little prank will play out since I don’t know anyone who works there. Maybe the management will launch an investigation to find out how customers are drinking all that whisky unobserved. Conversely, an outside janitorial service may clean the toilets and take away the bottle along with all the other trash without mentioning it.

I’ll probably do this little stunt again, but I’ll never know what happened. That’s fine; that’s the point of such pointlessness.

4 February 2022

Coconut Oil Lake

I know where this tiny little lake is. Of course I do; I created it after Colin asked me to help him clean his kitchen.

He told me to trash a liter of ancient coconut oil. I hate to throw food away, even if it’s a rancid coconut oil cholesterol bomb, so I slipped it into my backpack instead of sending it to the landfill.

I heated the viscous oil until it liquified, then poured it into a small lake bed I dug outside of my studio. By the dawn’s early light, I saw that had again solidified; that’s when I made Coconut Oil Lake.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart