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Weak XXVII

2 July 2018

No. 8 (cartoon)

How can you complain while millions are starving?

They’re lucky; their misery won’t last long.

3 July 2018

Backwater Burlingame

It’s a long story that doesn’t merit repeating, but I ended up in Burlingame the other morning. It’s a sleepy city south of Sans Frisco. I know “south of here” isn’t a very precise geographic description, but that’s how I think about everything from the city’s southern border to Tijuana.

Burlingame has no reason to exist as far as I can determine; it’s a quaint suburban melting pot populated by honkeys of all races and colors.

4 July 2018

Thirty Thousand Sunken Ships

My father and his brothers fought in World War II. In my father’s case, perhaps “fought” isn’t exactly the right word. He was a cook on a troop transport ship and only saw one person killed in all those brutal years. Nevertheless, I’d like to imagine that there’s a genetic basis for my naval genius.

I recently sank my thirty-thousandth ship without hurting anyone. My fleet is made from pixels, not steel, and thus impervious to the salty ocean air here in Sans Frisco. My boats are also good survivors. In some games of Battleship the enemy never managed to hit a single ship even once.

This is no time to rest on my laurels, though: time to grab another case of beer and head back to sea!

5 July 2018

Too Many Menus

My first camera only featured three ways to affect image quality: an adjustable shutter speed to control the amount of light hitting the film, a lens that focused, and an aperture in the lens that limited the quantity of light entering the camera as well as managed the depth of field. I’ve never needed more than that in the forty-some years I’ve been taking and making photographs.

It’s obvious why I’m not a Japanese camera designer. My wonderful Japanese digital cameras have literally hundreds of options on their electronic menus. Not only do I have no idea what most of them do, I haven’t even glanced at all of the possibilities.

I’m visiting my mother in Flint, Michigan. There’s not much to do in this post-industrial wasteland, so I opened a book that came with a used camera I bought, Mastering the Fujifilm X-Pro1 by Rico Pfirstinger, to see if I was missing anything.

Here’s the short answer two hundred and sixty-six pages later: nope.

6 July 2018

Creative Snake Oil

I don’t care much for anything David Lynch has done since Eraserhead, but I did like his recent observation about ideas.

“They’re like fish. If you get an idea that’s thrilling to you, put your attention on it and these other fish will swim into it. It’s like a bait. They’ll hook on to it and you’ll get more ideas. And you just pull them in.”

Ah, just sit back and reel in the ideas! So that’s how it works!

Of course that’s not the secret formula; there is no secret formula. That never has and never will stop stupid, lazy people from buying creative snake oil; humans are like that.

7 July 2018

Sitting Out the Tour de France

The Tour de France starts today, and once again I’m not in the race. This puzzles a number of friends who are mysteriously impressed that I cycle an average of over ten kilometers a day. (I think most people will agree that ten kilometers sounds much better than six and a half miles.)

I simply don’t have the discipline to be a contender. I could probably ride all day from bar to bistro if I was fueled by rich, fatty cuisine and champagne with an occasional absinthe booster, but that’s not enough to join the ranks of the planet’s most elite cyclists.

I’ve never really trained seriously; that’s why my mind and body can’t handle the massive amount of pharmaceuticals required to join the peloton of the world’s fastest riders. Some folks complain about the performance-enhancing drugs, but I’m not among them. A bicycle race without doping would be as boring as the morning commute here.

8 July 2018

The Eppleton Hall

Once upon a time, I lived in Newcastle upon Tyne. I still know some lovely people there and thought it would be nice to visit them. Since I don’t want to get on a plane again anytime soon after visiting my mother (who’s wise enough to avoid airports altogether), I came up with a cunning plan.

The Eppleton Hall, built in 1914, is the only remaining intact example of a Tyne-built paddle tug, and it’s docked right here in Sans Frisco. I planned on provisioning the ship’s freezer with burritos, stowing a few barrels of wine, stealing aboard at three in the morning, cutting the mooring lines, then setting the autopilot for Newcastle upon Tyne. I could relax until I smelled the scent of fish and chips wafting out over the North Sea from the coast.

What could go wrong? Plenty as it turned out. The Eppleton Hall has no freezer or autopilot. Even more critically, it has no paddlewheel. And so, it looks like I shall remain in Sans Frisco for the foreseeable future.

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart