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Weak LII

24 December 2022

No. 7,106 (cartoon)

You’re a freak.

No, those are my special effects.

25 December 2022

Anticipating Xmas Obits

W. C. Fields, Dean Martin, and James Brown died on Christmas, and last year it was Wayne Thiebaud’s turn. I wonder who’ll pop their clogs today? I suppose I’ll find out when I read the newspapers tomorrow ...

I know there’s no Xmas curse; every living critter including me has an approximately one in three hundred and sixty-five chance of dying on the twenty-fifth day of December, but macabre conjecture is one of the few things I find entertaining about this bloated, shabby day.

26 December 2022

Boxing Day Rerun

The last weak of the year is a quiet, lazy time. As are the other fifty-one. I don’t need a pretext for sloth, but this is a good excuse to rerun something I wrote twenty years ago today.

It just occurred to me that I never mentioned in any of my previous nine thousand eight hundred and fifty-six (updated from two thousand, five hundred and fifty-one) notebook entries why I chose the name “stare” for my Internet domain name. The name comes from Walker Evans’ admonition.

“Stare. It is the only way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”

27 December 2022

The Russians Are Falling!

It’s been a rough year for Russian oligarchs and their cronies.

In April, Vladislav Avayev, formerly with Gazprombank, was found dead in his Moscow apartment with his wife and daughter. A few days later Sergey Protosenya, formerly with Novatek, was found dead in Spain along with his wife and daughter.

In September, Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Lukoil, died after falling out of his Moscow hospital room.

And just the other day, Pavel Antov, the sausage potentate, died after falling out of his hotel room in India, a couple of days after Vladimir Bidenov, his traveling companion, was found dead in the same hotel.

I haven’t done any serious research, but some if not all of the men who died improbable deaths had previously criticized Putin’s barbarous invasion of Ukraine. Probably just another one of those nutty coincidences.

Just in case, I’m not taking any chances. I’m not getting within ten meters of any tall building that might have an ill-fated Russian inside.

28 December 2022

Monopolizing My Time Revisited

I enjoy playing Monopoly on my computer. The copyright notice reads 1991; I’ve probably been using it for three decades.

I appreciate the chance, probabilities, improbabilities, and meaningless statistics. For example, the face value of Monopoly money in a physical box is twenty-thousand five hundred and eighty dollars, yet at one point I had over a hundred million dollars in Monopoly money from playing the computer in a stalemate that lasted for a week or two. (That was intentionally absurd; most games are over in less than ten minutes.)

My longest winning streak was twenty-two games; I did that twice in the same week over three years ago. Since then, I’ve never managed to win twenty-three games in a row.

Until today.

After I finally broke my record, I kept playing and winning again and again and again until I played thirty-four times without a loss. Given that I never broke twenty-two in decades, I’ll probably never do better than thirty-four. I don’t care; only losers keep score.

The next time someone accuses me of never having done anything with my life, I’ll look ’em in the eye and say, “I once won thirty-four Monopoly games in a row.” That’ll shut ’em right up fer sure!

29 December 2022

Fathomable Buffalo Snow

I’ll end the year on a whiny note after an alleged journalist referred to the “unfathomable” amount of snow that covered Buffalo, New York, after the recent massive blizzard. In those memorable words of Bugs Bunny, “What a maroon!

A fathom is a unit of measurement; it’s just under two meters long. What kind of idjit can’t figure out how many fathoms tall or deep even the biggest snow drift is?

For the purposes of discussion, let’s say Buffalo gets buried under half a light-year of snow. In that case, I’d agree that the amount of snow is indeed unfathomable. On the other hand, anyone who can’t measure the depth of urban snow in fathoms should probably choose a job in fast food preparation instead of journalism.

30 December 2022

We Shall Overcome, in Our Housecoats

There doesn’t seem to be much social progress these days, so I’m grateful for this tiny little advance: jaywalking will be legal in California in 2023.

I can’t describe the “Freedom to Walk” act as a small step forward, a great leap ahead, or any other pun, since I had no idea jaywalking was illegal. The law seems like one of those curious relics from another time.

I’ve always done well by following Moms Mabley’s pronouncement, “Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain't never killed nobody.” (Nice triple-negative there, Moms!) I’m certain that the last thing a large percentage of dead pedestrians saw before walking into the path of a speeding car was the traffic light turning green.

This is no time to rest on our laurels. We still have a lot of work to do; it’s still illegal for women to wear a housecoat while driving.

We shall overcome, in our housecoats. Or perhaps not ...

31 December 2022

Titles I’ll (Probably) Never Use

I’m going to take Samuel Goldwyn’s apocryphal advice, “I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead.” Having said that, I enjoyed coming up with titles for a tomb tome I’ll never write. Here are a dozen of them in alphabetical order ...

Am I Done Yet?

Here Lies David Glenn Rinehart

I Can’t Believe I Did That

I Should Have Known Better

I Was Afraid This Would Happen

I Was Just Joking

I’ll Never Do That Again

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

So Far So Good ...

(They Told Me But) I Didn’t Listen

Time! Last Call!

Unbelievable

And that’s quite enough of that. The whole exercise reminds me of someone who doesn’t know which end of the drumstick to hold coming up with great names for a band that will never exist.

Just as well that I don’t have to create a real title; I doubt I could even imagine anything a fifth as wonderful as Oscar Levant’s The Memoirs of an Amnesiac.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart