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Weak LII

24 December 2024

No. 5,892 (cartoon)

Pour me another cocktail.

A strong drink does not compensate for a weak mind.

Less Zen and more Scotch, please.

25 December 2024

Imaginary Gifts

Niklas ain’t no saint, yet he persists on observing xmas as the pinnacle of consumerism, which I admit makes more sense than the zombie virgin birth myth. We have the same friction every year at this time: he wants to exchange gifts, and I have everything I need that money can buy.

We compromised on giving each other imaginary presents. This year I gave him a nonexistent seasonally ugly sweater and he gifted me a make-believe air pressure gauge for my bicycle tires. He rejected the sweater because it wasn’t big or ugly enough, and I couldn’t use the gauge because it didn’t work with presta valves.

Swapping gifts didn’t work out; it never does. I’ll conclude on the positive note that it was only an imaginary failure.

26 December 2024

Genital Penetrations in Review

“News” sites on the Internet are easily predictable on the last weak of the year: lots of recycled stories from the rest of the year. Those We Lost in 2024, Top 2024 Trends, Best Games of 2024, et cetera. Cut and paste journalism, such as it is.

That’s why I’m grateful to the Defector editors who published, What Did We Get Stuck In Our Rectums Last Year? The article took me back some thirty years to the beginning of the illustrated Internet, when I saw an x-ray of a huge artillery shell lodged in someone’s intestine. If memory serves—an increasingly dubious proposition—the bomb squad was involved. (And speaking of dubious, I will never forgive the lazy Esquire editors who abandoned the magazine’s annual Dubious Achievement Awards.)

“So,” you inquire, “just what did people put up their recta this year?”

Glad you asked!

Here’s what the editors discovered in the Consumer Product Safety Commission database: a xylophone mallet, a baby shark toy, darts, and forty-three more. I noted that there wasn’t a single artillery shell on the list; that shows what a great educational tool the Internet is.

Defector staff could have called it a day, but as an end-of-the-year bonus they also mentioned vaginas (curling iron, bag of soil, and twenty-five more) and penises (plastic fork, phone charging cable, and fifteen more).

That’s just the kind of year it was ...

27 December 2024

Sex Pistols in the News

I just learned that the Sex Pistols are performing again. Anything I haven’t heard before is, by definition, news, and this news is from 1996. I’m not surprised that I didn’t discover this until now; it’s such a stupid idea that it deserved to be unrecognized.

The Sex Pistols without John Joseph Lydon dba Johnny Rotten is what’s known in the business as a “heritage act” comprising some musicians who weren’t even conceived before the original ensemble formed. I haven’t heard the reformulated Sex Pistols, but it sounds like a bad joke, just like the Dead Kennedys without Jello Biafra and Peligro.

It’s good to know when to stop. There’s no Motörhead after Lemmy’s death, and the musicians in Queen had the good sense to disband after Freddy Mercury popped his clogs.

And the beat goes on, albeit somewhat unconvincingly.

Postscript from the future: Dr. Palmer informed that the musicians in Queen did not have the good sense to disband after Freddy Mercury popped his clogs. Looks like there’s lots of dosh in them heritage bands, sigh ...

28 December 2024

Peanuts

I eat a small packet of salted peanuts and wash it down with a can of cold, strong beer almost every day. My friends find my practice unusual, but not because of my blue-collar/white trash cocktail hour. No, they know I’m parsimonious—a fifty-cent word that’s much more polite than “cheap”—and can’t figure out why I buy my roasted seeds of a South American plant by the twenty-eight-gram packet instead of in bulk.

I continue to be amazed by the explanation for my packet-of-peanuts-a-day habit: it’s because I’m cheap, er, parsimonious.

I don’t know how peanut magnates came up with this scheme, but it’s less expensive to get peanuts in little pouches than it is to buy them by the kilo. I don’t worry about all the landfill waste I generate; I appreciate that less goes to waist with this arrangement.

Another postscript from the future: When I wrote this, I had no idea that Jimmy Carter, the world’s most famous peanut farmer, and who’s been in hospice long enough to be Keith Richards’ father, would finally die tomorrow.

29 December 2024

Jet Odds

A South Korean passenger jet just crashed killing all but two of the hundred and eighty-one people aboard. Did birds bring it down? No landing gear and a concrete barrier at the end of the runway certainly contributed to the disaster. Or perhaps it’s yet another example of Boeing engineering in action, er, inaction.

I’ve never been apprehensive about flying; I know I’ll get from here to there safely or die quickly. Statistically, it’s the safest way to get from there to here. Even the horrific sight of people burning to death after a rare horrendous accident doesn’t alarm me, because I know what the greatest danger of jet travel is.

Missiles.

I figger as long as I don’t fly near any conflict zones with trigger-happy combatants with surface-to-air missiles I’ll be fine. So far so good, and that’s as good as it gets.

30 December 2024

Fifty-Seven Bucatini no. 15 in Nineteen Breeding Cylinders

I just started breeding bucatini. I’m no Gregor Mendel; I’m just working on saving money on commercial pasta. I documented my little pasta plantation when I made Fifty-Seven Bucatini no. 15 in Nineteen Breeding Cylinders.

It takes three bucatini to make a bucatino. I’ll do the math for you: they’re trisexual.

31 December 2024

HAPPY New Year!

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a Thing. Or so I’ve been told. Holli-Anne Passmore, a psychologist at Concordia University of Edmonton in Alberta, headed a study that concluded that freezing in the winter gloom ain’t so bad if you take time to appreciate the seasonal differences: the pattern of frost on the window of your frigid apartment, footprints of wee critters in the snow, the spectrum of dark blues and purples in your frostbitten fingers and toes, that sort of thing.

In other words, she “discovered” one of the most basic of Buddhist concepts, mindfulness. (I know almost nothing about Buddhism, but even I have heard of it. She may have gleaned it from a Clifton Hillegass book on the subject.)

L. Ron Hubbard may or may not have said, “The best way to make money is to start a religion.” I figger the second best way is to come up with a new, brand-name therapy.

Scamalicious!

Introducing HAPPY, Helpfully Appreciative Pondering Peripheral Yearning. With HAPPY counseling, you can learn to appreciate the morbid beauty of the dark stumps that used to be your pink, throbbing digits. And more!

Admittedly, HAPPY is just lightly refried Buddhism, but with the right marketing spin, it could be a big money spinner. I think spinning wool is more interesting, so I’m putting HAPPY in the public domain.

HAPPY new year!

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart