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Weak XXXVIII

18 September 2021

No. 4,525 (cartoon)

Love will find a way!

A way to what?

Destroy you.

19 September 2021

Escape Mechanism (Hemingway House Installation)

This was my high school mailing address:

Interlochen Arts Academy
HU5
Interlochen, MI 49643

I’m pleased that I can still remember the postal code from the last millennium; that suggests I don’t need to worry about dementia at the moment. Or maybe being unconcerned about dementia is an early sign of dementia; that’s not of any interest at the moment. (Or maybe it should be; I just repeated “at the moment” twice in a single paragraph.)

I see that Housing Unit Five is no more; HU5 is now “Hemingway House.” That’s too bad; I thought the simple, declarative name was a good fit for the grey, austere cinderblock building with only a taxidermically-preserved swordfish for decor.

Let’s see; if I have my litterary folklore correct, Ernest Hemingway was a pretentious, arrogant teenager with delusions of adequacy who drank a lot. That’s a harsh but not very inaccurate description of my classmates and me, so maybe Hemingway House isn’t a bad way to put lipstick on a homely, grim structure.

I have nothing to do with Interlochen these days, but in the hallucinatory possibility any of the conservative toadies running the show there axed me to contribute an art piece I’ll be ready to do an installation piece at Hemingway House.

Escape Mechanism is a loaded W. & C. Scott & Son double-barreled shotgun inside a glass display case with the words, “Break Glass In Case of Emergency.” I’m undecided whether to incorporate a small sledgehammer as part of the work.

20 September 2021

Peanut Butter and Carbon Dioxide Physics

We humans have totally bolloxed things up and we’re hastening our own extinction. I don’t think that will be much of a loss, so I don’t pay much attention. I was curious, however, when I read that burning a liter of gasoline generates over two kilograms of carbon dioxide.

How can that be?! A liter of petrol weighs about a kilo, so how can burning a kilo of anything generate kilos of waste? That one’s a real head-scratcher, that one is.

I’m sure it’s not mysterious or counterintuitive to anyone who knows the basics of science, but I am not that person. Probably any of my friends could dispel my flummoxation in less than a minute, but I’m not going to ask. Instead, I’ll just marvel at the miraculous phenomenon of a liter of liquid doubling its weight when burned in the same way I’m always astonished that an open-faced peanut butter sandwich always lands on the floor with the bread side on top and the toppings mucked to the ground, even though it happens every time.

21 September 2021

Now With Less CO₂!

Dagnabbit anyhow; no sooner do I get done writing about carbon dioxide than it’s time to write about carbon dioxide again.

As you may have noticed if you were recently flooded and/or choking on the smoke from massive fires, too damn much carbon dioxide has resulted in painful climate changes.

Meanwhile, England is suffering from a carbon dioxide shortage that threatens the supply of beer as well as inconsequential fizzy drinks. And the miserable Brits may be stuck with wet ice too, since dry ice is just frozen carbon dioxide.

Cleverly defended the latest failure. (And for once, that’s not a typo of mine; I’m referring to James Cleverly in the Foreign Office.) The minister calmly explained that the reason they were were running out of carbon dioxide was because they’re also running out of natural gas and electricity. (He failed to add that they were running out of food as well, but since everyone’s seen the empty grocery store shelves that was unnecessary.)

Cleverly on top of things, I’d say! The English Tourism Board was too, and cleverly added, “Now With Less CO^₂!” to the famous slogan, “A Holiday You’ll Always Regret!”

22 September 2021

Twenty-four Thousand Days Old on the Equinox

Happy birthday to me!

Someone had to say it and no one else was going to mention it, so, yep, today is my birthday. I’m twenty-four thousand days old today; let that sink in!

And now that it’s sunk, I’ll also note that the autumnal equinox occurred at 21:48 Coordinated Universal Time. I love major calendar events like these. On days like today, I can write about such predictable occurrences without coming up with something interesting to say, then take the rest of the day off after only two or three paragraphs.

23 September 2021

Birdbrain Solution

A few vocal New Yorkers who prefer their birds live instead of gently sauteéd in butter and garlic are in a collective righteous huff because they found hundreds of their migrating feathered fiends on the sidewalks at the base of tall buildings. They blamed the skyscrapers for the birdbrains’ deaths, but I’m not so sure.

What if they jumped? I’m not sayin’ they jumped, and I’m not sayin’ they didn’t jump. I’m just sayin’ that when you don’t repay a loan to certain people, well, accidents happen. Ya know what I’m sayin’?

The keyword here is “migrating.” These birds were probably from South Podunkville. They come into town like they just flew off the turnip truck, winged their way into the wrong part of town, and, well, accidents happen. Ya know what I’m sayin’?

Let’s say that the clear glass windows are a problem for the baffled budgies. If so, then the solution is simple: just mandate that every business with office space above, say, twenty meters must house a free-range resident office cat for every hundred square meters of floor space. Birds aren’t going to fly toward a hungry cat’s gaping maw if they know what’s good for ’em. Ya know what I’m sayin’?

And dat’s dat.

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©2021 David Glenn Rinehart