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Weak XLVI

12 November 2019

No. 4,173 (cartoon)

Can I count on you?

Up to zero.

13 November 2019

Another What?

Dr. Wiles is reputed to throw memorable parties that no one can remember. I couldn’t attend last night’s soirée, so I sent him a polite note to excuse my absence: Sorry, but I’m not going to be able to make it to your party last night.

He responded with a typically enigmatic reply: Not a problem a good excuse to make another one.

Make another what? Another party? Another excuse? Another problem? I shall give this the attention it deserves sometime, perhaps yesterday.

14 November 2019

Crisis? What Crisis?

This month’s edition of New Scientist features the disconcerting headline, “Cosmological crisis: We don't know if the universe is round or flat.”

Crisis? What crisis?

I doubt I’ll ever get more than ten kilometers from the surface of our planet, so I’m not going to waste a lot of time wasting a lot of time wondering about the shape of the universe.

I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if I did I could easily imagine myself sitting at a cafe on the Mediterranean sipping retsina two and a half millennia ago. That month’s edition of Olde Scientist features the disconcerting headline, “Planetary crisis: We don't know if the earth is round or flat.”

I’m going to do now what I would have done then: pour myself another glass of wine.

15 November 2019

New Mexico Light

“Isn’t the Santa Fe light wonderful!” Niklas enthused.

I didn’t reply, since Santa Fe light is a belief, not a fact. Daylight is daylight. Someone escapes the Los Angeles smog, gets off the plane in Sans Frisco on a clear day, and raves about “the San Francisco light.” Rajiv arrives in Rhodes from Mumbai and goes into raptures about “the Aegean light.” And of course Niklas is waxing lyrically about over “the Santa Fe light” after escaping grey Helsinki.

It’s too bad that sunlight unfiltered by pollution is such a novelty.

16 November 2019

Furtwängler Revisited

“Who’s it by?”

That’s what Thia asked when I told her that we were listening to Beethoven’s Third Symphony. I thought that was a curious question since a lot of people composed three symphonies, but it’s quite obvious who wrote Beethoven’s Third Symphony. After a bit of backing and forthing, I finally figured out she wanted to know who was conducting it.

“Furtwängler’s the hombre behind this recording so rich in testosterone,” I explained.

“Furtwängler who?” she asked.

“Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler, if you want to get technical,” I replied.

My words were still hanging in the air when I realized my faux pas. Thia fancies herself a know-it-all, which she surely ain’t, and I inadvertently pointed out that she’d never heard of one of the world’s most notable conductors.

I was relieved when she responded, “Oh, that Furtwängler.”

Thia’s pathetically incompetent when it comes to lying; that’s one of the reasons I enjoy her amusing company.

17 November 2019

It’s Lard!

Lily makes the most extraordinary cocktails. After sampling several of her favorites, I asked her what the mysterious common denominator was. She wouldn’t tell me until she’d served us several more. After things got slippery, she couldn’t help boasting ...

“If I tell you the secret, do you promise not to tell anyone?” she asked.

“I promise I won’t tell anyone; I won’t share it with a single person,” I replied.

“It’s lard!” she exclaimed.

?!

She explained that she used lard when she made her ice cubes. Aha, that explains the subtle overtones of rendered pig fat that makes her drinks so extraordinary, albeit not in a good way.

Postscript: Let the record show that I kept my word about her secret formula. I didn’t tell anyone, I told everyone. It’s also true that I didn’t tell a single person; I only told everyone who just read this.

18 November 2019

Point Taken

I think it would be fair to say that Elias was underwhelmed by my new work.

“It’s pointless,” he opined.

“You got it!” I agreed, “That’s the point!”

“Point taken,” he replied.

And that was that.

19 November 2019

More Geniuser Than Usual

Sophia asked me to come up with a better title for her book on eighteenth-century Welsh poets. At the risk of giving myself a rotator cuff injury, I’m rather good at that sort of thing, so it didn’t take me long to come up with a great one.

“From Samoa to Krakatoa: the Salacious Musings of an Itinerant Particle Physicist,” I suggested.

“But that has nothing to do with the eighteenth century, Wales, or poetry!” she complained.

I politely ignored her ingratitude.

“Zackly!” I agreed. “The eighteenth century is tedious, Wales is mind-numbingly dreary, and poetry is monotonously putrescent. That’s why the title I generously gave you is even more geniuser than usual.”

“Thanks,” she replied, “but I’ll stick with the original title you pooh-poohed.”

She huffed off in the way that bad writers always have.

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart