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Weak XXXIII

13 August 2017

No. 8,759 (cartoon)

Show some restraint.

No, not the handcuffs again.

14 August 2017

Moon Maid

Science Advances reports that the moon’s magnetic field was around for over a billion years longer than anyone ever suspected before it vanished.

Sonia Tikoo, a Rutgers University planetary scientist, along with her colleagues from the University of California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, concluded, “the moon had a magnetic field about a tenth as strong as that of the Earth, at five microtesla.”

Boring and irrelevant? You betcha. So why did I even read the tedious report? The answer, in a word or two, is Moon Maid. The Science Advances publishers hoodwinked me by using an image of Moon Maid to attract me to the irrelevant research. Well played, earthlings!

Moon Maid was a friend of Dick Tracy’s. I met her when I was very young; Chester Gould’s illustration, “Moon Maid may be too hot for earth,” was published on the eve on my eighth birthday. I finally have my Dick Tracy watch, but Moon Maid died long ago, alas.

15 August 2017

Sausages and Alcohol

Keelan Maguire, an Irish opportunist who owns Maguire Meats, is marketing sausages infused with rum and vodka.

Yawn.

I was eating sausages and alcohol when I was a very young boy. I’m talking about a chain of “restaurants,” Lum’s World Famous Hot Dogs Steamed in Beer. I thought the cheap beer my father drank tasted disgusting (and I still do), but the idea of eating hot dogs steamed in beer seemed like an incredibly sophisticated thing for a five-year-old boy to do.

Lum’s is no more; the brand died when the last of Lum’s four hundred outlets went out of business a couple of months ago. Lum’s, which was born the same year I was is dead, but I’m still around at last report.

Combining food and alcohol is a perfect match. Humans will continue to do so until we’re extinct (which can’t some too soon), or when the sun explodes in a few billion years. There’s no need aside from silly marketing to infuse food with alcohol; a glass beside the plate remains the perfect solution as is has been for millennia.

16 August 2017

Gio’s Panini

I was reluctant to accept Clarissa’s invitation to meet her at Gio’s Delicatessen until she added that she’d treat me to lunch. I’m nothing if not flexible.

I was reminded of my reticence to go there as soon as we walked through the door. Fourteen dollars for a Panini sandwich?! And why oh why did they name one of the items on the lunch menu after a Hindu Sanskrit scholar who died two and a half millennia ago? Although Panini was way ahead of his time intellectually, I bet he never even tasted a grilled pastrami sandwich.

17 August 2017

Jesus Has Lifed Me

I know very little about Lutheran sex or sects and nothing at all about Canaan Lutherans. Thus I am confused by one of the local believer’s statement, “Jesus has lifed me.” I was tempted to knock on the door of the church and ask, but feared that I might get an aggressive sales pitch or even worse: lifed.

18 August 2017

Seven Chicken Thigh Meat, Bone, and Skin Diptychs

I make vegetarian dinners for my vegetarian friends, but when Charlie requested a chicken dinner I headed to the grocery store. I aim to please, and usually do.

I bought some chicken thighs and removed the skin to avoid a cholesterol overdose. I was struck by the grotesqueness of pulling apart a dead bird. Meat is an obvious subject to photograph, so I did. I like Seven Chicken Thigh Meat, Bone, and Skin Diptychs in part because of the title: three subjects in a diptych.

19 August 2017

Photographing the Eclipse (Or Not)

Lots of people are eagerly looking forward to photographing the solar eclipse on Monday for reasons I cannot possibly begin to fathom.

Photographers often group in gaggles to photograph sporting events, press conferences, that sort of thing. Even so, one photographer can make a very different from the person a meter away depending on camera angle, exposure, and timing. That’s not the case when photographing an eclipse, though.

Let’s say we’re both photographing the solar eclipse. I’m here and you’re a couple of thousand clicks away on the same trajectory. We both train our thousand-millimeter lenses on the silhouette of the moon in front of the sun. Our photographs will be exactly the same, the odd solar flare notwithstanding. Such predictable repetition is the celestial equivalent of photographing beautiful young women: why bother?

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©2017 David Glenn Rinehart