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Weak XXII

28 May 2012

No. 5,547 (cartoon)

Give me champagne.

No sham pain for you.

29 May 2012

Gratuitous Photo of the Weak: The View from Schulman Grove

Isabella spotted a particularly photogenic tree while we were hiking in Yosemite yesterday. She asked me to photograph it for her; that’s when I discovered that my camera’s dead battery had turned it into a glass and plastic Japanese brick. Very Zen, very useless.

I was glad when Isabella declined my offer to return to her automobile and fetch my backup camera. I’ve never felt sappy trees were fetching.

“The tree’s not worth it,” she declared.

I agreed. And although she never asked, I sent her home with a nice Sierra snapshot I made today while I was working on an unrelated art project at the Schulman Grove.

30 May 2012

Bishop Dining

When it was time for dinner in Bishop, California, Bernie explained that we really had only two options: the airport or the bowling alley. Thai Thai Restaurant is the only restaurant at the airport, and serves very good food. Cooked by real Thais, even. And then there’s the Back Alley, the only restaurant in the town’s only bowling alley. I suggested that we go to the Back Alley, since every Wednesday is infinite spaghetti night. Yep, all the spaghetti in watery tomato sauce one can shove down one’s gullet!

Bernie vetoed my preference for the carbohydrate overdose in favor of good food, and I’m glad he did. If we’d gone to the bowling alley, I never would have seen this sign above the airport’s only urinal.

Please! Avoid spillage on ramp when draining sumps. If equipped with short stacks, or if experiencing low manifold pressure, taxi in close and hold short.

I needed to put on my reading glasses to read the line below, which was printed in the fine print normally used for legal disclaimers.

If you can read this, you may be standing close enough.

The notice wasn’t quite as good as the one I saw above the urinal in Jersey last year, but it was nevertheless enough to make the loss of infinite spaghetti no loss at all.

31 May 2012

Stereo née Mono Lake

I made a couple of photographs of the alkaline body of water formerly known as Mono Lake. As a result of the diptych I made, the inland sea has now been renamed Stereo Lake.

By me, who else?

1 June 2012

The End

The Allure of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, plies the Caribbean filled with thousands of tourists who travel there to enjoy the warm climate. The huge vessel moves about three or four centimeters for every liter of diesel fuel it burns, and is thus helping to warm the environment with its massive carbon emissions.

I wonder if climate change is part of the business model? If travelers want their tropical islands hotter, then the Allure of the Seas is doing its part to help. On the other hand, if northern cities continue to get warmer, will people still pay lots of money to travel to the Caribbean?

I don’t bother speculating about the fate of our planet since it’s all but certain. In about seven and a half billion years, give or take, the sun will enter its red dwarf stage, and expand to such a size that it will literally swallow the earth. Well, figuratively literally at least.

The end.

2 June 2012

Hopefully

Hopefully, I now have one less semantic problem. Or is it one fewer linguistic problem? I really don’t know. The English language is terribly confusing; that may or may not be its raison d'être.

The Associated Press Style Guide is one of those reference volumes that determine what is and what ain’t proper English. The editors of that august volume recently lifted (rescinded?) the fatwa on the word “hopefully,” so that it can again be used with impunity.

Decades ago, E.B. White, Theodore Bernstein, and other grammar police heavyweights led an assault the (mis?)use of the word. T. Harry Williams declared it, “the most horrible usage of our times.” I never understood what all the kerfuffle was about, but I avoided using what appeared to be a perfectly good word lest I should be accused of using a free-floating modifier, whatever that is.

I’m reintroducing the word into my limited vocabulary. Hopefully, that will annoy the grammar bullies.

3 June 2012

The Skinny Organ

My skin—and, I suppose, yours too—is, technically speaking, an organ. That doesn’t seem like particularly useful information, but thought I’d nevertheless make a de facto note of it by noting it in this notebook. This skinny fact could be useful when the subject of organ transplants comes up, as is so often the case.

4 June 2012

Six Thousand Entries

As of today, I’ve made exactly six thousand of these notebook entries, more or less. As has always been the practice on such big, round number occasions, this is enough of a reason to take the day off, as if I’d actually done or said something.

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©2012 David Glenn Rinehart