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Weak XXI

21 May 2024

No. 8,227 (cartoon)

Here’s a word to the wise ...

Wrong number.

22 May 2024

Mountains on the Telly

The National Park Service bought an ad at the airport in Los Angeles informing travelers that the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area made at least one television appearance. “As seen on TV” is an important currency in Southern California, so perhaps this will convince more people to recreate there.

But I doubt it. Or maybe Angelenos really are that dumb. In any case, I still don’t understand why anyone in California would want to travel south of San Francisco regardless of whether the location’s been spotted on the telly.

23 May 2024

Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity

I asked Chat GTP, an “artificial intelligence” computer, to comment on what I wrote yesterday, and here’s what I got.

That's a humorous and slightly sardonic take on the situation. Here's a refined version for clarity and flow:

The National Park Service bought an ad at the Los Angeles airport informing travelers that the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area made at least one television appearance. “As seen on TV” is an important currency in Southern California, so perhaps this will convince more people to visit.

But I doubt it. Or maybe Angelenos really are that impressionable. In any case, I still don’t understand why anyone in California would want to travel south of San Francisco, regardless of whether the location has been spotted on TV.

I was relieved that the program had the “intelligence” of, say, the editor of the Arlen Bystander, who converts copy into plain, bland paragraphs like a parent feeding a finicky kid with an ulcer. I figure I won’t have any silicon competition until some clever geeks come up with artificial stupidity.

To spare you going back in time all the way to yesterday, here’s my original copy ...

The National Park Service bought an ad at the airport in Los Angeles informing travelers that the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area made at least one television appearance. “As seen on TV” is an important currency in Southern California, so perhaps this will convince more people to recreate there.

But I doubt it. Or maybe Angelenos really are that dumb. In any case, I still don’t understand why anyone in California would want to travel south of San Francisco regardless of whether the location’s been spotted on the telly.

24 May 2024

That’s Flawsome!

Many decades ago Mary had one of those crappy teenage waitress jobs in a dingy, crappy restaurant serving crappy customers crappy food. I can’t find my thesaurus, so I’m not sure if the situation could be best described as “crappy,” but that will just have to do for now.

When presenting the check to a particularly rude and abusive diner, Mary smiled her prettiest smile and quickly said, "Fuck you very much." No one complained because everyone heard what they thought they had heard every time before.

I learned from that.

I have a new response when people show me their crappy art or play their crappy song (where can my thesaurus be?) for me. I no longer use polite phrases like, “It addresses aesthetic concerns with which I am unfamiliar” or “You have a unique perspective; I would never have thought of it that way.” Instead, I tell them what they want to hear, sort of.

That’s flawsome!

They hear “That’s awesome!” and walk away satisfied. I’m pleased as well since I told the truth. I’ll be in an uncomfortable situation if anyone listens carefully to what I say, but that happens so rarely I’m not concerned.

25 May 2024

The Floot Floot Did a Boom Boom on the Jim Jam

I was going to write “I clearly remember,” but that’s as meaningless as saying, “The floot floot did a boom boom on the jim jam.”

My memory is worse than failing. The problem isn’t that I forget things; if I remember that I forgot something, that means that I can still recall it, sort of. No, my predicament is that I have clear recollections of events that never happened and things that never existed.

A week ago I referenced the origin of the Nobel Prizes after I was shocked to discover that I’d never mentioned that here before even though I “knew” that I had. And yesterday I was going to repeat what I wrote about the word “awesome,” something like, “What’s a kid who uses ‘awesome’ every two minutes going to say when s/he sees demons with crimson eyes covered in flowing blood riding atop pillars of sulfury flames thrusting into the heavens from steaming, acrid crevasses from the bowels of hell?” Nope; I never wrote anything remotely similar.

In other situations I might cite sloth to explain the disconnect between memory and research, i.e., perhaps I just overlooked a previous entry. I can rule that out, since I can search each of the previous ten thousand three hundred and seventy-two notebook entries in literally less than a second because they’re in a database.

I’m not worried, although perhaps I should be. I’ve just recognized my hallucinatory memory as one of the first subtle(?) indicators of a slow descent into decrapitude, not unlike my inability to carry a twenty-five-kilo backpack twenty kilometers through steep mountain terrain.

Or maybe there’s a more positive conclusion: perhaps my recollection of having better recall is just another false memory.

26 May 2024

Free Guff

Annette gave me some guff, hoo girl did she give me a mess o’ guff. But I’m not complaining, no sirree. Most people have to buy their guff retail, a few know a wholesale distributor, but Annette gives me as much guff as I need and much more for free.

Good times!

27 May 2024

In-the-Garden-Da-Vida

Death can be both enlightening and amusing. Personally, I have yet to die, but when someone else does, a good obituary can be a positive experience for the alleged living. Doug Ingle is today’s example.

Ingle cofounded Iron Butterfly in the sixties, and wrote the band’s most (in)famous song, In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida, with its gratuitous, interminable drum solo. I never paid any attention to the nonsensical title; I figured it was one of those things that a hippie on acid created.

Nope; it was red wine.

Ingle slurred his speech after drinking a gallon of it and In-the-Gardon-of-Eden came out in song as In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida. (A gallon of wine was so sixties; he probably wrote it under a black light wearing a dashiki reeking of patchouli oil.)

I too drank wine by the gallon fifty years ago, but my creative pursuits and life in general improved markedly after I discovered wine distributed in five-liter boxes, complete with a free spigot. Instead of having to unscrew a bottlecap, pour, and reseal it, I could enjoy another glass of wine just like [snaps fingers] that.

It’s foolish to wonder “what if” about the past, but, since I’m a fool I will. I wonder what In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida would have sounded like after five liters of wine?

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart