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Weak XV

9 April 2024

No. 6,415 (cartoon)

I’m terribly disappointed. That’s all there is?

Happiness is not for everyone.

10 April 2024

Wrong Question

“Did you find everything you were looking for?”

That’s the question the checkout clerk at my local supermarket always asks me when I buy more brown rice and whisky. So far I’ve resisted the temptation to reply that I’m still looking for world peace and universal love. Instead, I tell them that the employee handbook has the wrong question and that they should ask the most important one: did you get the item you came here to buy?

I can’t remember how many times I’ve come back from grocery shopping and realized that I bought everything needed for a great dinner except the critical ingredient, e.g., preparing a great pasta dinner and then realizing I was so smitten with the wine and cheese that I forgot to buy any pasta.

Nothing refreshes my memory of what I needed from the grocery store like getting home from the grocery store.

11 April 2024

Packed Like Sardines

Every so often I turn off my autopilot and marvel at the everyday miracles I take for granted. My thermos has no electronics, moving parts, or sensors, so how does it keep hot coffee warm and cold wine chilled?

I had another such moment when I opened a can of sardines and wondered how the diminutive fishes could fill the can so full that there was almost no room left for olive oil. It was as if they were packed like sardines, which, of course, they were.

Last night after a drink, or perhaps more than one, I asked the Internet how all them wiggly little buggers ended up in a tiny can. Much to my amazement, I was presented with an old film showing dozens of women stuffing the headless snacks into moving tins on an assembly line!

When I asked the Internet the same question this morning, I got a very different answer: a Hermasa Canning Technology machine “designed to perform the automatic deheading, evisceration, washing, and packing of sardines or similar species.” Here’s the sales pitch ...

When the fish is positioned in the buckets, designed and patented by Hermasa, the machine cuts off the fish head and tail using blades and carries out evisceration using suction from a vacuum pump, then washes the fish and employs a mechanical system to transfer the fish to the can ... attaining speeds of 200 cans per minute.

Ah, now that’s more like it. Some people may lament that we live in an automated, soulless world, but I’m glad that all those Portuguese (Spanish?) women now have better things to do than canning sardines all day.

12 April 2024

Dummkopfs Über Alles!

Administraitors at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich recently mounted a show, Glitch: On the Art of Interference.

Oooh, how novel and edgy!

Nah, just kidding again. The curators didn’t have the collective brainpower of a kilo of sauerkraut. One of the participating artists, a museum technician, may spend a couple years in prison for taking the initiative to hang one of his paintings in a gallery in the middle of the night without going through proper channels.

I’d call that a glitch; who wouldn’t?

The dummkopfs at the at the museum, that’s who. A Pinakothek spokesperson wouldn’t talk about the incident to avoid “encouraging copycat pranksters.”

I did the same thing thirty-five years ago along with other artists since then, and even in 1989 I was plagiarizing someone else’s work when I made International Exhibition.

The idiots in Munich are that clueless about the last forty years of contemporary art, and that ain’t no glitch; stupidity über alles!

13 April 2024

Rinehart Engineering

Just the other day I spotted an accident waiting to happen in the middle of Genesee Street. A heavy iron storm drain had sunk deep into the asphalt and created a nasty hole that could wreck a speeding car or kill a sloppy cyclist. That looks a difficult problem to fix, and would probably involve tearing up the roadway and shifting gigantic pipes, no?

A conventional engineer would conclude that repairing the street would take a lot of skilled labor, heavy machinery, and dozens of bushels of cash. That’s the sort of unimaginative traditional thinking that makes my innovative, cost-effective approach to engineering the acme of inventiveness.

I call it Rinehart engineering, but it’s not a business enterprise nor is it a unique skill. I see that another creative mastermind used my approach and eliminated the hazard by simply dropping a bright orange traffic cone into the crater.

Problem solved!

14 April 2024

Chechen Apparatchik Beatniks

The Ministry of Culture in Chechnya decreed that in order to “conform to the Chechen mentality and sense of rhythm,” all music played in the Russian republic must have a tempo of from eighty to one hundred and sixteen beats per minute.

I’m taking this opportunity to let the Chechens know that they can still listen to my music, all of which is recorded at one hundred and sixty beats per minute, on the Internet.

For free, even.

I can’t recommend it aesthetically, but I think it would make a darn good soundtrack for overthrowing the Ministry of Culture apparatchiks.

15 April 2024

Bucatini no. 15 Time Lapse (Diptych)

I prefer pseudolinear Bucatini no. 15, but the boiled and flaccid pasta also has a distinct albeit diminished visual appeal. That’s why I made Bucatini no. 15 Time Lapse (Diptych).

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart