Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak

Weak XLVI

12 November 2022

No. 9,599 (cartoon)

It’s remarkable that you remark on something so unremarkable.

That’s weasel bollocks.

Thus you agree that it’s remarkable.

13 November 2022

Sunday Swimmingly

I started the day with too much espresso, i.e., just the right amount, as usual. Things got even better when I got around to reading a great profile of Patti Smith at seventy-five. Here’s my favorite line: “When people ask whether I’d like to be called a singer, songwriter, artist, or poet, I say: if you call me a worker, you’ll encompass everything I do.”

That’s a great corollary to Noël Coward’s bon mot, “Work is much more fun than fun.”

It’s a sleepy Sunday, so I’m going to take the rest of the day off having quoted two people who are smarter than I’ll ever be and work harder than I’ll ever try. (Cause and effect?)

I can’t use the keyboard anymore anyway when I’m toiling away in the field of art with a beer in one hand and a burrito in the other, so it’s all going swimmingly.

14 November 2022

Bucket Listless

Some of my friends have a “bucket list” of things they want to do before they die: climb the Eiffel Tower, launch an intercontinental missile, loot the Titanic (if anything’s left to pillage), that sort of thing.

Charlie told me he wanted to visit Monaco and see where Princess Grace was buried. I didn’t want to puncture his dream bubble, so I didn’t mention that I’d been there and admired the “tasteful” vending machines by her grave.

I don’t understand why he was so incredulous that there’s nothing new I want to do. I spent decades getting to where I am, conceptually speaking; there’s (almost) nothing missing.

He insisted there must be something new I’d like to do before I die, so I humored him by saying that I’d like to learn how to fly and land a commercial jet or make my first parachute jump if everyone on my flight except me was killed by alien death rays.

He protested that I must want to do something that was “more practical.” Instead of debating whether avoiding death in a plane crash was commonsensical, I came up with a corollary: just before I die I’d probably want to scream for help.

He gave up interrogating me and went back to his wish list, adding that he’d like to see Princexcess Die’s burial site in West Northamptonshire.

I didn’t ask about his fascination with dead princesses; there are a few things I’d rather not know.

15 November 2022

Leg Story

I think people generate their own reality. Someone who just won a kajillion dollars in the lottery might despair that s/he’ll never be able to trust anyone again. Another person who became paralyzed might see that as a great opportunity to finally write a novel. The guy I saw at the Albuquerque airport this morning was somewhere in between those extremes.

It’s hot here in the desert, so he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. I was initially puzzled by what was printed on his shirt: “LEG STORY: $20” until I glanced at his legs and saw one was made from meat and the other from metal.

I didn’t engage him; I got my leg story for free. I’m not interested in how he lost his leg; I’m sure I can come up with a dozen yarns that are better than what really happened to him without breaking a sweat. I’ve had decades of experience concocting tall tales about my amputated finger, so fabricating amusing, grotesque narratives about a missing leg would be a walk in the park, figuratively speaking.

16 November 2022

Hurley Hospital Viewed from McLaren Hospital

Hurley Hospital Viewed from McLaren Hospital could be part of a series, but I hope it’s not.

17 November 2022

Pornography from Outer Space

Mary McIntyre posted a video that some viewers found undeniably erotic, and with good reason. It showed an irresistible visitor from outer space that couldn’t be stopped as it plunged through layer after layer of inky darkness that yielded to let the thrusting, white-hot traveler enter. And then, in a blinding flash of light and a searing explosion, it ended just as quickly as it began. The intimate incident would have gone unnoticed if Mary McIntyre hadn’t filmed the entire encounter and posted it on the Internet.

The twits running the server were offended, booted McIntyre off the site, and blocked access to the now forbidden titillating video.

The Oxfordshire astronomer protested that her video of a meteorite was done tastefully and discretely. After a three-month international campaign to clear McIntyre’s name, Elon Musk, whose official title is Chief Twit, relented, restored her account, and put the lewd video back online.

(Unconfirmed reports suggest that Musk was erotically pleasured after viewing the smutty sequence repeatedly, but who believes such scandalous gossip?)

18 November 2022

Untitled, Flint, Michigan

I was surprised when most of my friends couldn’t “read” the straightforward, unmanipulated photograph I made yesterday. That pleased me, so I abandoned the idea I had in mind and entitled it, Untitled, Flint, Michigan. I know the title Untitled is an oxymoron, that’s why this is the first time I’ve used it. I’m going to stop now before I get sucked down that semantic hole of worms.

19 November 2022

Eight Billion and Counting

Two or three days ago—or was it four?—a fetus was yanked gasping and screaming from its mother’s womb, and that, in an oversimplified nutshell, is how the earth’s population of human beens reached eight billion, up a billion from only eleven years ago. In another fifteen years or so there should be another billion of us.

Where do they all come from?

A lot of serious people are wringing their knowledgeable hands in despair, but not me. There’s no point in complaining; if it gets too crowded here I’ll just leave.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak
©2022 David Glenn Rinehart