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Weak XL

1 October 2016

No. 4,614 (cartoon)

You’re hopeless.

You’re clueless.

Less is more!

2 October 2016

(Not) Photographing Julie

I had a wonderful visit with Julie today. It was the first time I’ve seen her in a long time; she’s as lovely as she was forty years ago, albeit a different flavor of beautiful.

I rarely photograph my friends since I prefer to think of them with a collage of images rather than a few static photographs. I’m not sure whether beers on a hot day were involved, but I couldn’t resist making a snapshot of her in her living room. I didn’t include her face; that seemed like a good compromise between photographing her and not photographing her.

3 October 2016

Where Car Accidents Always Occur

Joyce told me she was in a car accident, and that she expects a full recovery.

“Where did it happen?” I asked.

“It happened in a car,” she replied, “where do you think it happened?”

Oh well, at least her sense of humor, such as it is, wasn’t affected.

4 October 2016

National Poetry Day

Organizers claim that today is National Poetry Day. Oh, if only that were true, with poetry limited to only one day a year. Instead, mediocre poets spew their wretched rhymes and worse every day—and every night—of the year.

Feh. (Rhymes with bleh.)

5 October 2016

Senescence

How long can humans live? I can’t believe that scientists are getting bajillions of dollars to look into that question when the answer is obvious: they can only live until they die.

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York figure that human biology is only wired to last around a hundred and fifteen years or so. The very rare person might be able to squeeze out another decade, but who’d want to at that point? I’m as sure I can be about such speculation that Jeanne Louise Calment, probably the oldest person ever, was ready to check out after she saw one hundred and twenty-two candles on her birthday cake.

I have a very low entertainment threshold, so reading the report wasn’t a complete waste of time. I learned a new word, “senescence,” which is the polite way of saying, “decrapitude.”

6 October 2016

What Are the Odds?

Everyone’s looking forward to the election next month with fear and loathing, or at least antici ...
 
 
 
 
 
 
... pation.

I’m worried about whether She’s a Liar! or He’s a Liar! will win. What’s the probability that things will happen according to the odds?

7 October 2016

Kamikaze Questions

Sophia showed me a photograph of five teenage kamikaze pilots. The anonymous photographer made the image on 26 May 1945, the day before Tsutomu Hayakawa, Yukio Araki, Takamasa Senda, Kaname Takahashi, and Mitsuyoshi Takahashi went on their suicide missions.

“The obvious question here,” she said, “is why are they holding a puppy?”

“The obvious answer is lunch,” I replied. “And for me, the more obvious questions is why are kamikaze pilots wearing helmets?”

Most inscrutable. Tora! Tora! Tora!

8 October 2016

Internet Archive Eruv (sketch)

I can’t succinctly define what an eruv is, so I’ll let the Oxford English Dictionary do so; that’s its job description.

Any of various symbolic arrangements which extend the private domain of Jewish households into public areas, thereby permitting activities in them that are normally forbidden in public on the Sabbath; spec. an urban area within which such an arrangement obtains, and which is symbolically enclosed by a wire boundary.

I’m agnostic and not Jewish, and the Internet Archive’s building isn’t a public area, so it’s quite a stretch for me to call my latest piece an eruv. But, since my artistic license allows me to do whatever I want, I’m calling it Internet Archive Eruv (sketch).

My original plan was to string fiber optic cable around the periphery of the Internet Archive’s Really Really Great Room, thus incorporating the space into the Internet. (There’s already enough wireless Internet connectivity in the room for fry DNA, but that’s neither there nor here, figuratively speaking.)

Instead of cables sending TCP/IP packets between servers, I instead installed a monofilament nylon above the ceiling; that’s why I called it a sketch. I’ll probably never fabricate the real thing, but I don’t care. When it comes to art and so many other things, it’s the thought that counts.

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©2016 David Glenn Rinehart