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Weak XLI

9 October 2011

No. 1,808 (cartoon)

Water, water, everywhere.

Let’s have a drink!

10 October 2011

Nuclear Free Berkeley?

Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak wants to repeal, or at least eviscerate, the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act. I agree; there’s no point having a law that’s ridiculed and ignored. For example, signs on major thoroughfares into town indicate the border of Nuclear Free Berkeley. But are there any bins into which one might deposit a forbidden nuclear weapon? There are not, not a single one. No one’s ever been charged—let alone prosecuted—for possessing a hydrogen bomb. Most Berkeley households have at least one nuclear hand grenade; everyone knows that.

I agree with Wozniak. Berkeley’s not a nuclear free zone, and there’s no sense pretending otherwise.

11 October 2011

The Museum Size Thing

Jonathon Peterson, the executive beggar [development director] of the San Francisco Mausoleum of Modern Art, gave a little pep talk today. He boasted that his organization was expanding, and would soon be larger than the real Museum of Modern Art in New York. (Of course, he didn’t use the word “real,” it was implicit.)

I’m so glad I never studied psychoanalysis in general or Sigmund née Sigismund Schlomo Freud in particular. Had I done so, I think I would have found Peterson’s fanfaronade even sadder and creepier than it was.

12 October 2011

Toothpaste Shirt

“What’s with the stain on your shirt?” Carlos asked.

“The taco stain or the toothpaste stain?” I replied.

“Exactly my point!” Carlos explained. “Do you see any toothpaste stains on my shirt?”

That turned out to be a rhetorical question. Carlos went on to explain that he drools as much toothpaste as anyone, but it leaves no trace because he carefully matched the color of his toothpaste with the color of his shirt. He went on to explain that even though he’d be wearing the same shirt for three days in a row, it still smelled “minty fresh.”

The shirt did indeed have a distinct odor, a scent that I wouldn’t describe as either minty or fresh. I thought it smelled more like a jet lavatory after a transpacific flight, but I didn’t say so. His olfactory senses are as unrefined as mine, so I changed the subject to a discussion of how to camouflage taco stains.

13 October 2011

Gratuitous Photo of the Weak: Bella

A couple of weeks ago I decided to make a photograph a week. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was so excited by my new project that I completely forgot about it until today, when I needed some filler.

This photograph of Bella was the first photograph I made with my new camera. There’s a good reason that technical discussions are irrelevant and distracting when it comes to aesthetic endeavors: they are. Having said that, I can’t resist noting that I made this fifteenth of a second exposure with a three-hundred millimeter lens and no tripod. I could not have done that without the new technology.

Yawn.

I suppose it’s not a bad photograph, but, since it’s impossible to take a bad photograph of a cat, that’s not saying much. Everyone knows cats are visually interesting, so I haven’t said anything. The only reason I made the image was because I knew Bella’s human would appreciate it.

14 October 2011

The Colossally Ginormous Brobdingnagian Very Very Very Large Array

Fred Lo, the director of the Very Large Array National Radio Telescope, is soliciting advice. Specifically, he wants to rename the device, presumably to exceed the hyperbole of competing institutions, such as the Extreme Large Telescope and the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.

I anticipated the need for more ridiculous name over a year ago, so I suggested that Lo call the contraption the Colossally Ginormous Brobdingnagian Telescope. I then leaned that the name has to end in “Very Large Array,” so the Colossally Ginormous Brobdingnagian Very Very Very Large Array it is!

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©2011 David Glenn Rinehart