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Weak XXII

28 May 2024

No. 8,923 (cartoon)

Your words carry no weight.

My pistol weighs nine hundred grams with a full clip.

That’s different.

29 May 2024

Dad Jokes (Not)

In recent months, I’ve become increasingly disturbed that my alleged humour has been dismissed as “dad jokes.” Even worse, my friends—intelligent people who really should know better—are making these spurious and unfounded accusations.

I’m most reticent to get all scientifical on you here, but these accusations are demonstrably false. Over the last many decades, I’ve spent dozens of dollars on birth control, contraception, and safe sex accouterments. This has turned out to be my best financial investment ever, for I have nothing to show for it: no cooties, no parasitic progeny, and no related concerns. Win-win as the Californians say.

And so, let the record show that I am physically incapable of telling a dad joke.

So there.

The end.

30 May 2024

Felon Caught Dainty-fingered

Donald J. Drumph is sullen and depressed, but it’s not because he just became a felon after yet more convictions. No, he’s reportedly enraged after seeing the cover of the 10 June edition of The New Yorker.

The artwork by John Cuneo shows the perp with outstretched arms about to be handcuffed. Again, the problem isn’t that he’s been found guilty of more crimes; that’s his brand. No, he’s seething because of how the artist depicted his hands: minuscule, like bonsai hands.

This all goes back to 1988, when Graydon Carter, the editor of Spy magazine, described him as a “short-fingered vulgarian.”

“Like so many bullies, Trump has skin of gossamer,” Carter observed.

(I thought that was an amazing sentence, not because of the spot-on remark, but because I’ve never heard anyone except for bad poets use the word “gossamer” before.)

The “short-fingered vulgarian” pronouncement clearly hit a central nerve. After that, Drumph sent photos of himself to editors bragging that he had long fingers. (He didn’t and he doesn’t.) He’s also had publicity photographs digitally manipulated to lengthen his stumpy digits.

SAD.

Hats off to Cuneo for packing that much schadenfreude into a single drawing, one that will be reproduced over a million times.

31 May 2024

Oatmeal Buttermilk Muffins Recipe

Imelda is making oatmeal buttermilk muffins using the recipe on page sixty-eight of Carole Clements’ The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Baking. She’s a darn good cook—a darn good cook indeed—as her recipe book will attest.

The crusty pages are stained with oil and a patina of flour from many previous breakfasts. It was so photographically photogenical that I had no choice but to take the visual bait.

I’m usually reticent to undertake an ambitious project, but on first thought photographs of my friends’ cookbooks would make an interesting collection. I already have the second image in mind.

I’m having lunch tomorrow at Nora’s studio. She’s a great artist, but when it comes to cooking she can barely boil water. She displays a pristine copy of The French Laundry Cookbook on her bookshelf, and I’m all but certain that the weighty tome has never made it past the kitchen threshold, and that she’s never glanced at more than a dozen of the three-hundred-and-thirty-six pages.

On second thought, the work-to-reward ratio is completely risible, so Oatmeal Buttermilk Muffins Recipe will remain the first and last image in a series of one.

1 June 2024

An Analog Night at the Airport

I generally don’t like to revert to bifurcation or simplistic formulae, but that’s zackly what I’m agonna do right now right here.

When it comes to time and money, everyone has more of one than the other.

Despite my biological clock winding down toward the inevitable denouement, I still hallucinate that I have more time than money. That’s why I’m saving a couple hundred dollars by sleeping at the airport tonight in order to catch a cheap flight that leaves at five in the morning.

After going through the (in)security checkpoint charade, I found a nice, quiet corner in a closed restaurant. I pulled out the first little bottle of travel whisky, but, because of an extenuating circumstance, I didn’t turn on my computer.

That’s because I forgot to pack it.

I experienced this first-world tragedy fifteen years ago, so I knew what to do. I went from gate to gate until I found a printer, then grabbed a few sheets of paper from the tray and a spare pen from the gate agent’s desk, then returned to my hidey-hole to write.

Writing by hand is a tedious, frustrating experience, so I’m stopping here. I will type this into my computer when we’re reunited, but for now I’m calling it a day and a night.

2 June 2024

Independent Order of Odd Fellows Oceanview Lodge, Number 143

This morning I found myself at the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge in Half Moon Bay. (It was easy to find myself there; all I had to do was look down.)

I photographed the print on the wall illustrating the organization’s commitment to friendship, love, and truth. I have to agree that that is indeed odd in these modern times. The elaborate print illustrating who knows what was pleasantly surreal. It didn’t come close to Hieronymus Bosch—nothing ever has—but it wasn’t bad at all.

The floating eye above the obscure imagery was the icing on the conceptual cake for me; that’s why I made Independent Order of Odd Fellows Oceanview Lodge, Number 143.

Iceplant, Wavecrest, Half Moon Bay

I was having me a nice stroll along the ocean cliffs this morning with Noreen, oh yes I was, when I was struck by the strange perspective of a promontory covered in iceplant that appeared to be jutting into space far above the beach and waves below. That was one of the few times I couldn’t visualize how that would translate into two dimensions, so I pulled out my real camera and photographed it.

I quite like the resulting image. Or do I? Will anyone else read the image of floating ice plant, or does it just look strange to me because that was the way I originally perceived it? What I do know is that the distinction in focus is all but imperceptible on a tiny monitor.

I decided to file this as a notebook illustration instead of art, never to be seen again. Even if I later decide that it merits going in the art folder, who needs another good nature photograph?

4 June 2024

Writing on The Hebrew Bible

What I’m writing at this very moment is based on The Hebrew Bible. For all you Talmudic scholars out there, not to worry; I’m steering clear of your turf with this little secular piece.

There’s a heat wave in San Francisco, so I’m staying with Bill on the coast in the fogbelt to avoid melting or worse. My laptop computer is uncomfortable sitting on my legs, so I used a three-volume set of The Hebrew Bible to elevate the monitor to an ergonomically correctish height off the table.

And that concludes the entirety of my writing on The Hebrew Bible.

Mazel tov!

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart