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Weak XXXVIII

18 September 2024

No. 1,810 (cartoon)

That looks horrible on the face of it.

How ’bout the derrière?

19 September 2024

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Ahoy, me hearties! It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Avast! I figured out a way to strip off the copy protection from a huge online music library run by some bilge-sucking corporation; that allowed me to download thousands of recordings to my computer for free.

Blow me down; that’s me plunder!

(I know that’s piss-pour pirate talk, but I haven’t been to sea in decades so talking like an intellectual property pirate is about the best I can do.)

20 September 2024

Here Come the Porphyrion Jets

Here’s the news summary that caught my attention: “Astronomers have spotted two record-breaking plasma jets blasting out of a supermassive black hole and into the void beyond its host galaxy.”

About the only thing I learned is that astronomers estimate that the Porphyrion jets are twenty-three million light-years long, and certainly not built by Boeing. It’s pointless to whinge about shoddy “journalism,” but that’s what I’m agonna do anyway.

Are the jets manned, er, Porphyrioned? And where are they headed? If it’s here, how long will it take them to get here? We’re seven and a half billion light years away, but any beings that can build a jet that’s a hundred and forty Milky Ways long may have also figured out how to travel faster than the speed of light, found a shortcut through a space hole or time warp, that sort of thing.

I’m not particularly concerned given my life expectancy, but if you look up and see a jet dozens of light years long overhead don’t say I didn’t warn you.

21 September 2024

Barking Pandas

Pandas are pandas are pandas are pandas, unless you’re at the Shanwei Zoo in Guangdong province. The pandas there are genetically different than any other pandas on earth, or any other planet. Even better, you don’t need to edit a DNA sequence to appreciate the difference.

You’ve almost certainly never seen a panda with a long tail that pants and barks unless you’ve been to the Shanwei Zoo. Perfidious administraitors dyed a couple of chow dogs and exhibited them as pandas. One might consider this scandalous, but I think it’s great.

Seeing a real panda is like seeing a half-goth Buddhist bear meditating on bamboo shoots: boring. The Shanwei panda dogs have to be more interesting than that. I shall definitely pay a visit the next time I’m in that neighborhood of China, and check out the whinnying zebras as well.

22 September 2024

No Roadworks

I’m looking at two sheets of black mat board and three little travel-sized tubes of toothpaste. Everything is in pristine condition, which is a bit of a disappointment.

For the last twenty years, my friends at Center for the Book have brought in a steamroller to use as a platen for making huge prints. They also allow me, as the token crazy artist, to crush things for my personal work, including mobile phones, hard drives, hamburgers, and more. I’ve documented everything on my poorly-designed site (I did it myself!); good luck finding it.

This year, they concluded that two decades was a good run, and that they’re done with steamroller printmaking, and thus so am I. It’s good to quit on top rather than running it into the ground. With a steamroller, even.

As Peter Wolf sagely observed, “Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.” I’m glad they pulled the plug. In recent years coming up with a steamroller piece has felt more like an assignment than an opportunity, so I’m glad they terminated the project since I doubt I would have ever taken the initiative to quit while I was (barely) ahead.

23 September 2024

Rispin Nascent Aperture

I like walking on Rispin Drive; it’s just under half a kilometer from one end to the other and back again. Recently, I’ve especially enjoyed watching the repaving process; it’s been a rare glimpse into the land of grownups with huge machines.

First workers made cryptic markings with spray paint over every opening in the road; I have no idea whether they were for electricity, water, gas, or some other utility. Then they covered up the holes with gravel. Then they used a huge, noisy contraption to shave maybe twenty centimeters of ancient asphalt off the entire roadway, leaving a rough, even substrate.

But wait; where did all the connections go?

Then they used a huger, noisier contraption to lay a smooth, thick coating of asphalt over the drive.

But wait; where did all the connections go?

Today, the blank canvas of Rispin asphalt was no longer blank; anonymous workers had used yellow chalk and iridescent red paint to indicate the presumably precise locations of all the missing connections. I don’t have the desire or technical knowledge I need to make an excellent color photograph, but I thought the photograph I made was close enough for a postcard.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart