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Weak I

1 January 2016

No. 9,466 (cartoon)

Can you explain Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle?

I’m not sure.

2 January 2016

Twenty Years of Data

Here’s what I wrote a decade ago on 2 January 2006, with the numbers updated.

. . .

As of yesterday, I’ve now been concocting this daily notebook for over a decade two decades. (Please note I used the word “notebook” and not “blog,” since latter word didn’t exist ten twenty years ago. The contraction of “weblog” is a sloppy bit of slang that needn’t exist today, but that’s another tirade for another day.)

My computer tells me that, since I began, I’ve typed 2,577,977 4,940,906 characters. Two and a half million Almost five million struck me as an improbably large number until I calculated that only required an average of less than a thousand daily tippety-taps on the keyboard. I only typed 450,319 870,923 words, though. If I’m going to reach a cumulative total of a million words in another decade, I shall have to use lots of allegorical, clarifying, comparative, corroborative, delineative, descriptive, diagrammatic, emblematic, exemplifying, explicatory, expository, figurative, graphic, iconographic, illuminative, illustrational, illustratory, imagistic, indicative, interpretive, metaphoric, and revealing words.

Or, in lay terms, padding.

Of course, many of my learned friends argue that precisely 3,653 7,306—or thereabouts—days of tedious notebook entries constitute little more than fluffed stuffing and stuffed fluff. And, when they do, I don’t disagree.

. . .

And here I am back at today. At just under one hundred and twenty words a day, and based on twenty years of data, I won’t have written a million words here until 18 December 2018. I shall revisit this statistical silliness then.

3 January 2016

Fab on the Slab

I don’t answer telephone calls from unknown numbers, so I inadvertently ignored Molly’s call from the morgue where she works.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t answer your call,” I explained later, “but I didn’t recognize the phone number.”

“That’s good!” she replied. “If you did, you’d be fab on the slab here.”

That made no sense when I thought about it for a few seconds, but I didn’t complain. Molly likes to say “fab on the slab” every chance she gets, and, like all the people she processes at the gate to the ossuary, I’m not going to complain.

4 January 2016

No Other Possibility

My mother’s almost eighty, and at the age where she occasionally needs to go the hospital for a tuneup and minor repairs.

My brother called to report that he thought today’s procedure would go smoothly.

“Don’t worry,” he assured me, “she has the best surgeon there is in her price range.”

I appreciated his stupid joke; I appreciate everyone’s stupid jokes. If only they appreciated mine ...

I’m sure my mother will be fine until she’s not; there’s no other possibility.

5 January 2016

Ailurophilia

I’m an ailurophile, as are most of my friends. I remarked that most of my friends and I love cats in order to use the word, “ailurophile.” I decided that once a week I’d use a word I hadn’t published in the last two decades, and ailurophile was an obvious choice.

Having just implemented my idea, I’m now abandoning it. I seems like featuring a word I haven’t used before is just filler, and gimmicky filler at that. (Although I suppose my alleged cartoons are also filler, I’d like to think that they’re quality filler. As to what quality, well, I couldn’t possibly comment.)

And that concludes today’s stuffing, er, notebook entry.

6 January 2016

Ten Sexennia Later

Tomorrow will be the beginning of my eleventh sexennium, and, since eleven is a prime number, I think it’s fair to say that I will soon in my sexennium prime!

Again, huzzah!

7 January 2016

LX

It was easy to make the announcement for my sixtieth birthday; I just more or less duplicated my thirtieth birthday announcement.

8 January 2016

Archived at the Archive

I’m enjoying a great year, especially with Nuala Creed here at the Internet Archive for the last few days. Watching her tirelessly packing tons of her clay sculptures made me especially glad that I’m a lazy conceptual artist. I quite enjoyed talking with her while I made a couple of photographs of her sculptures broken down for shipping. Nuala agreed with my suggestion that since they’re essentially containers with a lid, they’re make an ideal repository for one’s remains.

I’ve always said they’re going to need a box to get me out of here, but now it occurs to me that I—or at least my ashes—may never have to leave this wonderful place.

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©2016 David Glenn Rinehart