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Weak XLI

9 October 2018

No. 3,465 (cartoon)

I’ve run out of creativity.

That’s ridiculous; the more you use the more you have.

10 October 2018

The Finnish Road to Satisfaction

Forget lagom and to bloody hell with hygge, kalsarikänni is the Scandinavian concept you should embrace. It’s what you need. Trust me. After all, I am an artist.

For those of you who don’t speak Finnish fluently—and you know who you are—kalsarikänni translates into English as, “drinking at home, alone, in your underwear.” What could possibly be better than that? In a word, nothing. In two words: no thing.

We’re not talking about the downward spiral into alcoholic oblivion. Despite the translation including the word “alone,” one can enjoy kalsarikänni with one’s partner(s) and/or mate(s). I suppose nudity is the lowest common denominator, but wearing only underwear has to be a close second in this repressed society.

Having stripped down with your mate(s), the next step is to grab the adult beverage(s) of your choice and some chips, dips, cheese, and so on. Not unconscious enough yet? Watch some mindless video entertainment and Bob’s your uncle.

What could go wrong? Nothing! Ask any Finn who’s not encumbered by pesky pants!

11 October 2018

Chicken Odds

I didn’t eat the hard-boiled egg that Sophia brought for our brunch today. Instead, I put it in the planter outside my window to incubate. I know it’s most unlikely that a chick will ever emerge from an egg that’s been refrigerated, boiled, and then refrigerated again. But, if it does, it will have the most valuable chicken DNA in the history of chickenhood.

Oh well, at least the odds are better than playing the lottery.

12 October 2018

Forty-Six Archival Pitabites

As a visual artist, I have a keen grasp of the obvious. Thus I wasn’t surprised when Dr. Kahle asked for my aid in helping lay people understand what a petabyte of storage is; the Internet Archive has forty-six of ’em.

I could appreciate his problem. A single petabyte is a thousand times more data than I have in my portable computer; who can imagine a ton of metal?

I decided to simplify things by using an analogy, a pita bread cracker. A Pita Bite from Trader Joe’s to be precise. Each cracker weighs an average of 2.71 grams. Thus it’s easy to visualize how much data one contains: one byte—not to be confused with bite—weighs two hundred forty trillion, six hundred ninety-six billion, three hundred fifty-one million, seven hundred thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred thirty-five hundred-octillionths of a gram.

I was quite pleased with Forty-Six Archival Pitabites. Most atypically, this is the first time Dr. Kahle didn’t thank me for my work. Evidently, my brilliance left him speechless.

13 October 2018

Seder-Masochism

Nina Paley showed her most recent film, Seder-Masochism, in the auditorium across the hall from my apartment tonight. I figured it was worth a ten-meter walk to see it, so I did.

I was amazed by the brilliant animation for eight minutes or so, then I returned to my studio when I realized the remaining seventy minutes were going to look more or less the same.

I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned from that, but I’m not sure what it is. Is it that a great thing repeated is no longer a great thing at some point? Or perhaps my short attention span is a problem? That’s all too much to think about as I head to bed, so I’ll just conclude with Frank Zappa’s one-size-fits-all explanation, “Anything over a mouthful is wasted.”

14 October 2018

Lawn Mower versus Chainsaw

Speaking of brilliant headlines, even though neither of us is speaking at the moment, here’s a great one I just saw: “Man run over by lawn mower while trying to kill son with a chainsaw, police say.”

Upon reading those words, the first question that came to mind was the same one any of my learned friends would ask: where did this happen?

My first guesses were Alabama or Mississippi, or perhaps Oklahoma or South Carolina. Or maybe Kentucky? No, negative, nope, nah, and nay; the redneck duel took place in another wretched wasteland, Tennessee.

Teehee; I should wake up and smell the moonshine!

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart