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Weak XXXVIII

18 September 2022

No. 5,826 (cartoon)

I lied when I said I loved you.

I lied when I said I loved you too.

We couldn’t be more perfect for each other.

19 September 2022

Worthless Degrees

The cashier at the grocery store was wearing a University of Chicago sweatshirt, so I had to ask her the obvious question.

“The University of Chicago’s a great school,” I said. “Were you an English major?”

“How did you know that?” she asked.

“Just a lucky guess,” I lied.

Everyone knows a degree in creative writing will land you a job in a grocery store, just as a degree in theatre will prepare you for a life of waiting tables.

20 September 2022

Visualizing Ants

Ten years ago I wrote that all the ants on earth weigh more than all the humans, then last year I wrote that the opposite was true. And now researchers at the University of Hong Kong have compiled almost five hundred ant studies from around the world and guesstimated that we share the planet with twenty quadrillion of the industrious insects. That’s around two and a half million ants for every human.

But what about the weight?

It looks like the “which species weighs more” debate is over. Two and a half million morbidly obese ants would only weigh around ten kilograms, so anyone who tattoos “We Weigh More Than Ants” on her or his forehead will always be right.

The myrmecologists who did the study claim twenty quadrillion is an “unimaginable” sum. That line must have been written by an innumerate flunky at a public relations agency who didn’t know anything about ants. Twenty quadrillion of the wee insects are easy to visualize.

Take five hundred ants and squash them into a little insect cracker a millimeter thick. Now put each ant cracker against another like books on a shelf, then line them up along the equator encircling the planet, and there’s your twenty quadrillion ants right there.

See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

21 September 2022

Poor Brad Pitt

Poor Brad Pitt, figuratively speaking. He will always be known as a famous film star, although if the rave review I read is at all correct, he’s also an accomplished sculptor. It’s too bad that no matter how good his work is, it will always be seen as art made by a popular actor.

It didn’t have to be that way.

I’m thinking of my friend Flynn O’Brien, whose first book of poetry was praised in a respected rag, the Boston Globe. No one except her friends has congratulated her, though, since her name isn’t Flynn O’Brien.

Had Brad Pitt used a nom de art like Oswald von Wolkenstein, people wouldn’t be thinking much about the artist when they experienced the work. But then there’s the catch sixty-nine: a gallery exhibiting work by celebrities probably wouldn’t have included Oswald von Wolkenstein in a show along with Nick Cave.

22 September 2022

Outcrazying the Iranians

Iranian militias are killing protesters holding anti-government rallies after the morality police detained and murdered a young woman whose attire offended them. That certainly sounds immoral to me, but an American would say that, wouldn’t he?

Maybe not.

When it comes to patriarchy, brutality, and misogyny, a disturbing number of legislators seem determined to outcrazy the Iranians in the race back to the dark ages by controlling what women can and can’t do, especially when it comes to terminating an unsustainable pregnancy. Here are some excerpts from a recent article:

In Texas, five male lawmakers authored a bill last year that would have made getting an abortion punishable by the death penalty ...

[Louisiana politicians] were adamant that a woman who receives an abortion should receive the same criminal consequences as one who drowns her baby.

And a male Kansas lawmaker proposed a bill that would amend the state’s constitution to allow abortion laws to pass without an exception for the life of the mother.

The zealots want to ban all abortions, even if a thirteen-year-old girl is pregnant with a grossly deformed fetus after being raped by her father and the pregnancy would kill her.

Somewhere in Tehran a group of mullahs is coming up with new strategies for outcrazying the Americans. Oh well, I suppose that’s better than working with them to launch an international war on women.

And with that, I’m putting my soapbox back in storage; it’s time to make me some new art.

23 September 2022

Gone Without a Bang

The grande finale of Lizzy the Deuce’s final show went off without a hitch or an explosion. I’m not talking about an IRA bomb, a Real IRA bomb, or any other IRA bomb. No, the good news is that the queen didn’t explode. Or, if she did, none of the spectators could tell: she was sealed in a lead-lined casket that required eight pallbearers.

Dead people no longer need to worry about radiation; she was buried in the leaded coffin to avoid repeating the farcical sepulture of William the Conqueror. His carcass had rotted so much that ...

Kablooey!

... it exploded when the monks tried to cram it into a budget coffin that was a size or two too small. According to one monk’s account, ol’ Willy the Conqueror’s “swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the bystanders and the whole crowd.”

Oopsie!

I’d like my body to be laid out in the desert and have someone make a timelapse movie of my meat disappearing until only my skeleton remains. Just my luck that my body would become desiccated instead of exploding, or that my last big bang would happen in the middle of the night. Maybe the filmmaker will keep me lit all night; that’s just one of a seemingly infinite number of things I’ll never know.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart