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Weak XLIV

30 October 2024

No. 1,214 (cartoon)

Why are you so upset?

You just hit me!

You’re the one who told me to stop making microaggressions.

31 October 2024

Gutenberg’s Curse

I was reading an article about witches I was when I was struck by this observation.

While these ideas might seem bound up in fantasy, they were—by the height of the great witch-hunt, which reached its peak in the late 1500s and early 1600s—spreading like wildfire, creating widespread yet irrational fear. This was in part due to the invention of the printing press.

That example from nearly half a millennium ago sounded familiar; here’s a press account of a contemporary witch-hunt.

Democrats, aided by Hollywood and a group of “global elites,” are running a massive ring devoted to the abduction, trafficking, torture, sexual abuse and cannibalization of children, all with the purpose of fulfilling the rituals of their Satanic faith.

This paranoid idiocy has spread in part due to the invention of the Internet. A few decades ago the relatively small number of people who owned printing presses and broadcast stations controlled the dissemination of words, images, and sounds; crackpots had to staple mimeographed manifestos to telephone poles to publicize their idiocy. And then everything changed.

Today, any halfwit with a spare fiver a month can disseminate infinite amounts of unedited inane twaddle and flapdoodle. I know this to be a true fact—as opposed to any other kind—because I’m one of ’em.

Those of us in the global elite are grateful to Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, et al; hail Satin!

1 November 2024

Día de Los Muertos, Flint Stylee

The Flint Institute of Arts presented a Día de Los Muertos program tonight. Ordinarily I’d never consider going to such an event, but I did attend for several reasons: it’s a five-minute walk from where I’m staying with my mother, no money was involved, and the organizers promised, “traditional foods to sample.”

The event seemed to feature children getting their faces painted and a couple hundred people sitting around eating every type of Mexican food you can imagine, as long as you imagine that Mexicans eat nothing but tamales, the only food on offer.

I found nothing of interest there, so I grabbed three types of tamales and brought them back to my mother’s place to eat. They had no seasoning at all, presumably so as not to offend midwesterners’ penchant for bland food, and despite the “variety” they appeared to all be filled with the same kind of dog food.

I’ve had better tamales microwaved at a gas station, but if you think I’m whinging you are, for once, mistaken. I smothered them in a deluge of salsa and poured cold ale down my gullet until I was sated enough not to bother with eating anything healthy and/or tasty. It was a free meal and almost worth it; gas station tamales are expensive.

2 November 2024

Intercontinental War of Words

I just tuned into a silly debate—my favorite flavor—about how many continents there are.

They learned me in school that there are seven continents; everybody agrees on that. Except for the experts who argue that there are only five. Or two. Or six. Or four. Or even eight. At least no one is asserting that there are three. And to muddy up the international waters, said experts can’t agree on whether a continent is defined geologically and/or culturally.

These passionate squabbles are infinitely entertaining. On closer examination, I suppose that’s not true. The toothless war of words should be resolved in two hundred and fifty million years or so once the x continents merge into one, Pangaea Ultima.

3 November 2024

Crazy and Sex Sells

Stories of Vincent van Gogh’s life have devolved into a string of hoary clichés over the last century. My favorite is, “I’ll be discovered and recognized after I die.” This is how crappy artists explain to themselves why no one is interested in their crappy work; it’s the art world equivalent of the belief in a perfect afterlife after a wretched time among the living.

And then there’s the hacking off the ear thing, which leads idiots to conclude that genius comes from madness, which provides them with a simple explanation of why they have neither.

I just read a great little essay by Jonathan Biss, The Myth of the Mad Artist Is Harmful. Here’s my favorite bit:

This is a myth, one that has been useful for the promotion of artists—crazy, like sex, sells—but deeply damaging to the artists themselves. It is a myth that renders the artist simultaneously superhuman and less than fully human.

What a brilliant observation! Crazy sells, sex sells, and combining the two is marketing platinum. One of the presidential candidates knows this; the mentally ill sociopath has parlayed a life of misogyny and sexual abuse into a lucrative freakshow in politics.

I predict that some artist, musician, or writer will figure this out within my lifetime, which ain’t that long. I’m not paying close attention, though; when s/he does I’ll see it in the headlines every day.

4 November 2024

Stump Diptych (Arial View, Goudy View)

Stump Diptych (Arial View, Goudy View) was easy to make; I just poked my head out of my bedroom window at my mother’s place, made a quick photo with my Leica using the lens I’ve been using for fifty years, then added the typography.

It’s a simple play on words, which are illegible on the small Internet reproduction. If you’re in a hurry, note the spelling of “Arial.”

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart