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Weak XXXVIII

18 September 2023

No. 2,017 (cartoon)

Where did all this gunk dripping out of my nose come from?

It must be coming out of your nasal cavity.

Don’t try to biologize me, insolent pedant!

19 September 2023

Missing Jet (Public Service Announcement)

Oh dear; there was a “mishap” (that’s a technical military term) that led a pilot to eject from his hundred-million-dollar plane. As a result, the Pentagon started a campaign to ask anyone who’s spotted an abandoned Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II fighter jet to kindly report it to the nearest base.

It’s clear the folks running the program have no experience with public service announcements; they didn’t even include an artist’s sketch of the missing aircraft. How am I supposed to know if the jet I spot on my walk is the missing plane or just another F-19?

That’s why I’m passing along the Pentagon request as well as drawings of the missing fighter. That concludes today’s public service announcement.

Now that I’m done with my civic duty, I wonder how such a thing could have happened. I have a twenty-five dollar doojie in my backpack that allows me to find it anywhere. I thought all modern warplanes were bristling with electronics (another technological description), so why do I have better tracking resources than the Air Force?

And whatever happened to pilot training? One of the first things I learned in flight school was to always take a photograph of your plane after bailing out so you can find it later.

20 September 2023

Take the Money and Run

Dr. Roberts, who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, once told me that you don’t get justice when you go to court, you get law. Jens Haaning knows that too after a Danish court ordered him to repay a seventy-five-thousand dollar commission to the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg.

Museum administraitors rejected his work, Take the Money and Run: two blank canvases. Apparently the curators know fuckall about modern art; I’m incredulous that they were seemingly unaware of the practice of biting the hand that feeds you. I’m thinking of some of my favorite artists like Hans Haake, who jackhammered the marble floor of the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale thirty years ago, and Mark Pauline, who’s been blacklisted by almost every fire department in the known universe.

The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art’s lawyers sued to get the commission returned.

“The work is that I have taken their money,” Haaning replied in his defense. “It’s not theft. It is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work.”

It’s a familiar story that amuses me every time. A curator decides to have a show by one of the bad girls or bad boys, then is shocked and outraged when the artist does something outrageous. I remember the nincompoops at Artpark in Lewiston, New York, canceled a Survival Research Laboratories performance after Pauline asked people from across the country to mail bibles to Artpark to be expelled from a giant robotic vagina and burned. What were the idjits expecting, tea and crumpets?

Regardless of who gets the money, Haaning and the museum both ended up with lots of publicity, the other currency of modern [sic] art.

21 September 2023

A Fly That Ain’t

South African dipterologists discovered a fly that can’t fly in Lesotho. I’m more interested in etymology than entomology, so I’m confused. I’ve always called a fly that can’t fly “dead,” but this flightless fly is very much alive.

What to do?

After a very long and ponderously ponderous ponderation I’ve come up with an elegant solution: never go to Lesotho. Problem solved!

22 September 2023

Energy Drinks

For reasons that are too irrelevant for even me to mention, I ended up at Max’s Maximart this afternoon, in part because of the promise painted on the awning, “We guarantee fast service no matter how long it takes.”

“Excuse me, do you sell rum?” I asked the clerk.

“Sure thing, buddy,” he replied. “Aisle seven, energy drinks.”

I walked away with a bottle of high-octane dark rum and a new pal at Max’s Maximart; good times!

23 September 2023

No One Cares

I met Sonja at a coffee shop in a neighborhood rich in insalubriousity. We’d been sitting outside for fifteen minutes when I noticed a pretty goodish photograph that was easy to make, so I did by photographing the graffiti scrawled on a dilapidated building across the street: No One Cares.

Yep, another photograph and no one cares, including me. On second thought, it might make a nice acidic greeting card.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2023 David Glenn Rinehart