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Weak XXXV

28 August 2022

No. 2,193 (cartoon)

Total honesty is my biggest fault.

I think truth and openness are admirable qualities.

Piss off; I don’t care what a moron like you thinks.

29 August 2022

Safe Cycling Advice

Annalee offered me a cold beer when I showed up a tad on the sweaty side at her place after a vigorous bike ride. She said she’d cycle too if it wasn’t so dangerous.

I explained that bikes are safe if you know what you’re doing. It’s true that I did have an accident that broke a bone in two places, but I’ve been fine ever since I learned to avoid those two places.

30 August 2022

Long Live Gorby

Mikhail Gorbachev is dead but I’ll always have my blotchy memory of him. Some thirty years ago the publishers of SPY magazine distributed a temporary water tattoo of Gorbachev’s birthmark. I still have one, complete with instructions ...

Here’s Your Gorby Lick ’n’ Stick Tattoo!

Put on a boxy gray suit, white shirt and tie; expose and lightly moisten right side of forehead.

Correctly position, then firmly press official birthmark decal against right side of forehead.

Remove decal; greet astonished passersby!

Mikhail Gorbachev is dead, long live Gorby!

31 August 2022

The Worst Hailstorm

Oscar Wilde was only partially correct when he wrote, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” When it comes to hail, it’s usually a bragging match about whose hailstones are bigger, e.g., hailstones the size of golf balls versus hailstones the size of golf clubs. And then there’s the corollary squabble about which hailstorm caused the most damage.

Last night a hailstone in La Bisbal d’Empordà, Catalonia, killed a twenty-month-old girl. The only good thing to come from this tragedy is that it should put an end to the “my hail experience was worse than yours” quarrels until two people die in the same hailstorm.

1 September 2022

Pumpkin and Train Surfing

Duane Hansen floated sixty kilometers down the Missouri River on his sixtieth birthday. I didn’t think that there was anything out of the ordinary about that; what else is there to do in Nebraska after you’re done watching corn grow?

What did make Hansen’s trip remarkable was that he sailed in a Brobdingnagian hollowed-out pumpkin, and in doing so set a new world record for such an aquatic journey in a pumpkin. Yep; Guinness World Records keeps track of voyages in a large gourd. (I know that must be true since I read about it on the Internet.)

I’m not interested in novelty acts; I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to stupidity. I was reminded that some inanities will never go out of fashion, including train surfing. I’m sure the tradition goes back to 27 September 1825, the day after the first public railway line opened.

Oops; I got a bit ahead of myself. I should have mentioned that “train surfing” is when one runs up and down the roofs of moving railway carriages, leaping from car to car. This is a common trope in old films and cartoons, and, as Wile E. Coyote can attest, usually ends in tears before bedtime.

Subway surfing is enjoying a resurgence in New York, where the tradition goes back to 1904. A new generation of young male drinkers is embracing the stupid tradition, with a large number of them maimed and killed. New York, New York ...

I wonder why Charles Robert Darwin FRS FRGS FLS FZS JP never mentioned train surfing; he certainly would be familiar with it since he didn’t die until 1882.

2 September 2022

Midjourney Blue Ribbon Art

Jason Allen produces blue ribbon art. I know this is true because he won a blue ribbon for a print he submitted to the Colorado State Fair. As in the case of so many artists, his assistant did almost all of the work. What’s unusual was that his assistant is Midjourney, a computer program.

When you use a computer to make art you have a great set of tools. When a computer makes better art than you can, you have a problem. And when you make art to win prizes at a fairground, that’s a cry for the kind of help a computer can’t provide.

(Yet.)

Nevertheless, I think Allen shows promise. He titled Midjourney’s work Théâtre D’opéra Spatial. Unless the computer generated that as well, anyone who can come up with a pretentious title with three diacritics has a promising future at county and state fairs around the country.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart