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Weak XXXIX

24 September 2013

No. 3,788 (cartoon)

You promised to love me until the end.

This is the end.

25 September 2013

Spare Body Parts

Good body parts like hearts, lungs, and kidneys, can be hard to find, especially if you’re looking for functional ones. On the other hand, relatively trivial appendages are easy to find. Just ask anyone in Dawson City, Canada, the home of the sourtoe cocktail.

The recipe for the sourtoe cocktail is secret, but I can guess the formula: cheap vodka and a human toe. The Downtown Hotel has served up over fifty thousand sourtoe cocktails over the years, but not without some predictable problems.

The problem with dealing with inebriated people is obvious: they’re drunk. And so, periodically one of the legless patrons swallows the toe garnish as well as the alcohol. When that gets publicized, the Downtown Hotel receives dozens of big toes from anonymous sources.

I don’t know why the sourtoe cocktail is so popular. More to the point, why doesn’t anyone talk about the Dusit Thani cocktail served in the Dusit Thani hotel in Thailand? The proprietors even publish the recipe: 200 milliliters of absinthe with an aborted human fetus as a garnish. No one’s ever swallowed the fetus. I suppose that’s yet an other example that Thais have better manners than Canadians, eh?

26 September 2013

Something You Should Know About Crows

All crows are revenants, but not all revenants are crows. That’s something you should know.

27 September 2013

Too Old to Die

“Too Old to Die” is a great title, but for what? A novel? A film? A musical? A photograph?

I’ll never write a novel (who’d want to ramble on about the same damn things for too long?) or compose a musical (ditto), so I’ve put “Too Old to Die” on my very long to do list in some other medium.

28 September 2013

New Iranian Technology

In my personal experience, it’s not that hard, not that hard at all, to lose a finger. When I was ten, I put my right index finger under a descending sledgehammer and kerblam! Kapow! All I saw was a mushy puddle of what appeared to be oatmeal and ketchup where my finger used to be.

Again, not that hard at all.

And so, I was surprised to learn in a dispatch from the INSA news service in Iran that bureaucrats in Shiraz were using a new machine to amputate criminals’ fingers. When I read the story, I guessed it might be a Japanese contraption developed by the yakuza, but then I saw the photos. It definitely wasn’t designed in Japan.

The device is crude, sort of a cross between a rotary saw and a guillotine. Iranian adulterers beware!

Why the Iranians didn’t just use inexpensive, proven technology like a sledgehammer, this I do not know.

29 September 2013

Heinz 57

I took fifty-seven packets of Heinz 57 brand ketchup and put then in between two sheets of rag paper. I put the assemblage inside a plastic bag, then drove a steamroller over them.

I still made a satisfyingly big mess: Heinz 57.

That’s close enough to art for me!

30 September 2013

Gratuitous Photo of the Weak: Fair Use

When it comes to enforcing copyrighted imagery, there’s no more aggressive and sadistic organization than The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Nevertheless, the folks at Wikipedia have reproduced one of Ansel’s most famous cash cows, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, without permission. Here’s their “fair use” rationale for publishing the photograph.

This is a historically significant work that could not be conveyed in words.

Inclusion is for information, education and analysis only.

Its inclusion in the article(s) adds significantly to the article(s) because it shows the subject, or the work of the subject, of the article(s).

The image is a low resolution copy of the original work and would be unlikely to impact sales of prints or be usable as a desktop backdrop.

An equivalent free image is not available and cannot be made.

That sounds like fair use to me. I wonder if it will still be publicly available if The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust ever notices it?

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©2013 David Glenn Rinehart