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Weak XIV

3 April 2022

No. 9,052 (cartoon)

Nothing is going right.

Go left.

Right.

4 April 2022

Twenty-Dollar Toner, Ten-Dollar Anecdote

Duane bought a couple of toner cartridges from a dealer on the Internet for thirty dollars, but only one of them worked. The company boasted in the enclosed brochure about its commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, and that anyone who was in any way dissatisfied should contact corporate headquarters:

hai yi fan xin ke ji you xian gong si
nanpingkejigongyeyuan pingdongsilu13hao
yanfalouyilou101
zhuhai
guangdong
519000
CN

No Internet site, no email address, what a great way to all but eliminate customer complaints! Ironically, Duane was a reasonably satisfied customer. He concluded that he paid twenty dollars for the toner and ten for the story about the empty quality pledge and the all but incomprehensible address.

I declined Duane’s suggestion that I plagiarize the Chinese company’s customer satisfaction program. I have no customers, and trying to please a nonexistent audience seems like a perfect formula for creative suicide.

5 April 2022

Respiratory Airway Secretory Cells

Scientists have discovered ...

Hold it right there. I know that’s the most generic of introductions, but who needs specifics? Let’s start over after a trip to a thesaurus ...

Researchers have found a previously unknown flavor of biological thingies—respiratory airway secretory cells—deep within the bowels of the lungs. Do they generate endorphins? Are they pleasure receptors? Will they eradicate cancer?

No, no, and no. The cells help us breathe, which all of us do until we don’t. Yawn.

Nothing to see here folks, move along ...

6 April 2022

Dead Cyclists Don’t Wash Dishes

I’m looking at an atypically busy day; I have two different things to do. Almost every article of clothing I have is dirty, filthy, or worse. I fear disinfecting and cleaning all of my clothes may even require two loads. I also have to wash a huge backlog of pots, pans, and dishes voluntarily before the city health department forces me to do so.

I thought I’d get my onerous chores out of the way so that I could enjoy my daily long bike ride without dreading what I’d need to do upon my return.

And then I thought better; that doesn’t happen very often.

I’m going to go on my ride first. I’m a safe, conservative conservative cyclist, but if some idiot in a car murders me, then I won’t have to do any cleaning ever again.

Relentlessly positive, that’s me!

7 April 2022

Ignorance Tastes Good

Amanda asked me if I wanted to go to a cafe for lunch, but I suggested that we stay at her studio instead since the covid cooties is still a Thing. She said that she didn’t have anything to eat, but since she has a refrigerator I knew better.

I pulled out a large plastic tub, but before I could ask her what it was she made the contorted face of a Florida panther who’s just licked an unsavory bit of its genitals.

“Toss it!” she ordered. “That soup has to be two weeks old!”

“It’s fine if I just skim off the floating furry bits and bring it to a boil,” I assured her after a cursory inspection.

“Poison yourself if you want to but include me out,” she harrumphed.

Undeterred, I rifled through a couple of drawers, opened a couple of containers, and came up with makin’s of a nice salad.

We enjoyed a pleasant lunch, in part because I didn’t point out that only one of us was eating living microorganisms. Everything in my soup was as dead as a floornail, but the blue cheese she added to her salad contained living spores in the blue mold.

As always, food usually tastes better if you’re unaware of everything in it.

8 April 2022

Distressed Window

I call this an artist’s notebook of sorts, so I suppose it’s about time to take a break from talking about galactic and gastronomic concerns and look at (alleged) art.

Distressed Window doesn’t have traditionally “good” composition, and I both like and dislike it for that reason. I find the confusion stimulating.

Or maybe I just like it because of the almost hyperreal level of minute detail and sharpness that no one but me will ever see unless s/he’s looking at my computer monitor or viewing a large print I’ll almost certainly never make.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart