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Weak IV

22 January 2019

No. 146 (cartoon)

My spouse left me.

That must be sobering.

Quite the opposite, actually.

23 January 2019

GiGi Wu GoneGone

GiGi Wu, better known by her nom de hype, the bikini hiker, died a couple of days ago when she fell into a ravine in Taiwan’s Yu Shan National Park. I’d never heard of her before, but who could resist a story with the slug, “Bikini Hiker Dies from Hypothermia.” And who could have seen that coming?

(There’s nothing funny about the death of a thirty-six-year-old woman in a bikini who died during a winter storm, so let’s all stop sniggering and show a little respect.)

“There’s no way this tragedy could possibly have been prevented,” said a local man, “unless she’d dressed appropriately for freezing weather and shown even a modicum of common sense.”

I’ll leave the last words to Socrates, who never said, “Live by the publicity stunt, die by the publicity stunt.”

24 January 2019

More Prowessy

Buzz played me his latest recording when I visited his studio, and it was, well, it was something, maybe even something else. He assaulted my eardrums with a bombastic cacophony of brutally deafening, dissonant, unmusical music.

I loved it and told him so.

“My noisemaking prowess is getting more prowessy,” he bragged.

Or maybe he didn’t brag; it ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.

25 January 2019

Burns Night Fence

It’s Burns Night in Scotland and a number of other places as well, but something’s not kosher with the preparations for this evening’s celebration in Golden Gate Park.

Park Police erected a chain link fence around the perimeter of the Burns statue here this morning, but why? Maybe English terrorists opposed to Scottish independence want to blow it up? I doubt it. One sign warns, “Danger, do not enter without wearing hard hat.” That’s not much of a clue, especially since there’s only sky overhead.

My guess is that it’s a cage meant to confine those honoring the great bard by drinking liters of whisky. That way they won’t vomit on passersby, wander into traffic, or cause all the other messy problems traditionally associated with this most famous of all literary celebrations.

26 January 2019

Hedgehog Love

The American government is officially closed, but that hasn’t stopped selfless bureaucrats at the Center for Disease Control from sounding a new public health warning ...

Don’t kiss hedgehogs, don’t even snuggle with one. The press release was rather poetic; I guess none of the editors were on duty.

“You may think you’re making love with the hedgehog, but does anyone really know what love is? Most hedgehogs haven’t a clue what true love is, but while they go through the motions, humans are the ones coming down with salmonella from the unprotected, unsafe physical intimacy. Don’t do it!”

You gotta love hedgehogs, but, better yet, just don’t.

27 January 2019

David Glenn Rinehart, Rotter

What happens when you die? People over millennia have pondered that question at length, but not me. I like the simple, obvious answer: you rot. Or, more gently worded, you decompose.

I am not the only person to make this empirical observation. Jamie Pedersen, a state senator from Seattle, Washington, is promoting legislation to allow people to compost other humans, presumably after they’re dead. That would make that state the first place in the world where that’s legal. It’s about time!

I haven’t been in that part of the world in over fifteen years. Even though I have dear friends there, I have no plans to return. I also have no plans to die; that always takes care of itself. Maybe I can combine the two and have my body shipped up north when I pop my clogs. Workers can just toss my carcass on the compost heap, maybe with espresso grounds and some yummy food scraps.

Problem solved, not that there ever was a problem in the first place.

28 January 2019

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats died eighty years ago today in Cannes, France, where any sensible Irish person would go to live and die. I know nothing about the great writer except that he’s purported to be a great writer. I’ve only read one sentence he wrote.

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”

That’s a really great sentence, and that alone is enough to convince me that he is, in fact, a great writer.

29 January 2019

Red or Green?

If you want cheap art, there’s no need to look any further than D’Anne Gastorf Weber’s canvas prints of “sports paintings and city photography.” I wasn’t familiar with her work until I spotted one of her “limited edition numbered prints” hanging outside the toilet in a large department store, “framed art $89.99.” As the package also notes, the work appears on “canvas enhanced with durable coating” on a “hardwood frame [that] maintains tight stretch.”

And of course, the crowning achievement is the easily digestible image of red and green chili peppers hanging from a beam with “Red or Green?” painted on it. Again, the paint and brushstrokes make it art.

I answered the silly color question by converting the undistinguished illustration—I was just joking; it certainly ain’t art—to black and white. And so the answer is, “Grey!” It usually is.

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart