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Weak XXVIII

9 July 2023

No. 9,418 (cartoon)

I hate who I’ve become.

I do too.

Even more than I loathed who you were.

10 July 2023

Never Too Late

I’ve been staring at a blank page for over an hour at the beginning of another writing weak and all I have to show for it is this miserable little sentence.

Feh.

It’s never too late to not get started, so I’m going to procrastinate now and get it over with.

11 July 2023

You Might Be Cleaning Your Toilet Wrong

Some days the New York Times reaches the pinnaces of adequacy, but last Sunday was not such a day. I’m talking about this headline: You Might Be Cleaning Your Toilet Wrong.

The slug provides no useful information; it’s standard tabloid practice to play readers like a cheap fiddle and lure them to visit a different page on the company’s site to generate more advertising revenue. (The corporation made a fraction of a cent for every reader who was curious about bathroom hygiene and took the tacky bait.)

I bet some middle-manager noted that the wrong toilet article was seven times as profitable as, say, China and Belarus Agree on Military Aid Package. I won’t be surprised if the next New York Times article I see is something like, Is It Time to Trim Your Fingernails?

The money people usually win; that explains a lot.

12 July 2023

Anchor’s Away

There really was a year numbered 1896. (Look it up; it’s right after 1895 and just before 1897.) That’s the year when Anchor Brewery started making beer here in San Francisco. It survived the 1906 earthquake and Prohibition, but Sapporo mismanagement proved fatal: the Japanese company that bought Anchor in 2017 just shut it down.

Apparently “good beer” didn’t translate well into Japanese. Sapporo sells watery, beer-flavored water in the Japanese market, and its executives were unfamiliar with even the concept of good beer. The Japanese managers concocted and sold froufrou crap like Blackberry IPA and undrinkable swill like Lemon Lager, then pored over spreadsheets trying to figure out why sales plummeted. As if converting a venerable brewery into a fruit juice company wasn’t bad enough, the administraitors started to charge admission to the tours that used to be free, a proven way to lose scores of dissatisfied customers.

That’s business for you; Anchor’s away!

13 July 2023

Preferring Positive Possibilities

The electronic device attached to my wrist monitors me all day and all night. (I suppose that’s why it’s called a watch.) I wear it for entertainment. I don’t trust the accuracy of the data it collects; the discrepancy between perceived and recorded sleep is a good example.

I told Fiona that I wasn’t sure if I slept fitfully last night because I remember long periods of tossing, turning, and trying different sleep positions, yet my electronic eavesdroppers insisted that I’d slept almost without interruption.

She suggested that I should always prefer the positive news, so I tried to convince myself that I’d slept well. It worked; fifteen minutes later I was napping in a parallel dimension. Nice little trick, that one.

14 July 2023

Theatre for Stupid People

Minnisha said she watched a documentary about life on Earth as it never was. She especially appreciated learning that the Greeks, who invented theatre, then went on to create sports, or theatre for stupid people.

Maybe I’ve been too harsh in dismissing the telly; that little thing about the Greeks is worth remembering. Go team!

15 July 2023

Vaydeer Undetectable Mouse Jiggler

I’m usually pretty good at ignoring Internet ads, but today I was struck by a pitch for the Vaydeer Undetectable Mouse Jiggler. I had a good idea—G-rated, even—that a mouse jiggler had nothing to do with rodents. I read the spiel, and it is in fact a device that keeps an unattended computer mouse in motion, giving the electronic plantation overseer the impression that a human in a cubicle is diligently working away instead of skiving off.

It shouldn’t be too long until some management supply company offers the Undetectable Mouse Jiggler Detector which will soon be followed by the Vaydeer Totally Undetectable Mouse Jiggler Pro.

I remember this cat-and-mouse technology game from decades ago, when motorists kept buying better and better radar detectors and the police kept buying better and better radar guns. I haven’t heard about radar detectors in a long time. I wonder if that game is over, and if so, who won.

I can’t imagine how terrible a job must be if someone needs a mouse vibrator to keep the bosses at bay. Or perhaps s/he’s just “working from home,” i.e., skiving off.

16 July 2023

Parachutist Without a Chute Revisited

A few days ago I righteously kvetched about New York Times headlines that have everything to do with generating advertising revenue and almost nothing with journalism. But after a recent gander at the Los Angeles Times I now appreciate things could be—and are—much worse. Here’s the slug: Trending Today: Parachutist Dies When He Jumps Without a Chute.

I had to look. In addition to the macabre appeal, it also piqued my semantic curiosity. Is someone who jumps out of a plane without a parachute still a parachutist? The piece didn’t address that question, but it did contain one bombshell: the article purportedly “trending today” was over forty-five years old!

If this sort of bait-and-switch chicanery catches on, it shouldn’t be long before the editors of the New York Post recycle one of the most famous headlines of the last millennium, Headless Body in Topless Bar.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2023 David Glenn Rinehart