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Weak XXV

18 June 2025

No. 7,416 (cartoon)

That’s a really bad idea.

Bad ideas often lead to good times.

Brilliant repartee! Let’s go!

19 June 2025

Smarter by Design

Andy took me aside after I introduced him to Andrea at his studio party tonight and exclaimed that she was brilliant.

Of course she is.

All my friends are some flavor of smarter than me; that’s by design. I make ’em look good when we’re together, and I occasionally learn something, although not as often as I perhaps should. I like being the dumbest person in the room; it makes for an entertaining and interesting life.

20 June 2025

Jaws at Fifty

It’s been exactly half a century since Jaws premiered. (I have yet to see it; I’m waiting until I’m old to watch movies.) I haven’t read Peter Benchley’s novel on which the film is based either, but I have a passing association with the author who worked with an alleged environmental organization that hired me way back when I was a propaganda mercenary.

Benchley was trying to atone for demonizing sharks, that, as I noted in a recent cartoon, have been around longer than trees. Jaws may have contributed modestly to their possible extinction, and he regretted publishing the book.

And speaking of macabre, ’twas Edgar Allan Poe who said, “Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge!” Thusly inspired, I shall do my small part to contribute to Shark Appreciation Month by promulgating some positive sharky knowledge ...

Sharks are only found in two places on earth: the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere.

21 June 2025

Burrito Time Revisited

I’ve understood the basic theory that all physical phenomena are based on time plus the three dimensions of space, or spacetime. Seems pretty simple to me: the leftover burrito that was in the reefer yesterday isn’t here tonight because it was today’s lunch. And now some eggheads from the University of Alaska suggest I have it all wrong. Gunther Kletetschka at the school’s Geophysical Institute explained that the theoretical soup in which we live is actually three-dimensional time.

“These three time dimensions are the primary fabric of everything, like the canvas of a painting. Space still exists with its three dimensions, but it’s more like the paint on the canvas rather than the canvas itself.”

I have a high school diploma, so I’m familiar with the three dimensions of time: past, present, and future. I casually perused Kletetschka’s paper in the 21 April edition of Reports in Advances of Physical Science, and was surprised to discover that he had a very different understanding of three-dimensional time. He may be one of those physicists who’s so brilliant he skipped high school.

I’m quite skeptical, but I think I’ll examine his theory more closely. It sure would be a tasty scientific treat if my burrito’s still there in two other dimensions of time.

22 June 2025

The Drunkards Are Revolting

Oops.

I should have used a less ambiguous title, but life’s too short to rewrite something I’ve already typed. I meant “revolting” as a synonym for “rebelling,” and certainly not “causing intense disgust.” I’ll also add that I’m not talking about all drunkards, I’m referring to a certain subset: the six to sixteen million (depending on who you ask) members of the Drunkards Association in Ghana.

The Ghanaian drunkards have a problem they want to address in one step, not twelve. Alcohol is getting too expensive, and ... well, that’s about it. These are not your run-of-the-gin-mill angry drunkards, these tipplers are organized and have demanded that the government lower alcohol prices within the next three weeks.

Or else.

And that’s where the story gets murky; the drunkards aren’t quite sure what to do if the government doesn’t meet their demands.

I don’t know anything about Ghana; it would take me a while to find it on a globe. Still, I have a good idea of how the government will handle the revolting drunkards: let ’em keep plotting and drinking until they pass out.

Works every time.

23 June 2025

An Improbable Heist

Someone nicked a couple of Daniel Winn’s sculptures. Gumshoes recovered the pieces, but the perp got away. Them’s the facts; these are the details.

The thief didn’t slip the artwork under her/his jacket when no one was looking, and there was more than one crook. If you’re unfamiliar with his work (and I hope you are), his sculptures are the garish, bombastic, kitschy bronze and steel abominations one would expect to see in the lobby of a pretentious Chinese restaurant. One of the pieces stolen from a warehouse in Anaheim Hills is over two meters tall, weighs a thousand kilos, and usually requires a dozen people and a couple forklifts to move.

No one can explain why the burglars snatched his work and ignored valuables that would have been easier to grab and fence. I don’t know either, but I’m intrigued by the possibility that it was an inside job.

As Art Recovery International founder Chris Marinello noted, “You can’t sell sculptures of this magnitude on the market.” Normally the haul would have been melted down for a quick profit, yet the sculptures were found parked in a residential driveway a week later. It might have been an insurance scam, but I have a more interesting possibility.

When you spend seven figures on a sculpture, you’re buying more than art, you’re also getting the signature and the provenance. Now I ain’t saying this is true—and I ain’t saying it ain’t—but such a mysterious theft and recovery story would almost certainly increase the retail price of the work.

Just sayin’ ...

24 June 2025

Tough, Thorough Thought

Elaine’s a recent immigrant, and I’m chuffed that she’s a new friend. She’s understandably frustrated by how difficult it is for her to learn English, so I sent her a supportive note to reassure her that she’d eventually get it sorted through tough, thorough thought, though it wouldn’t be easy.

She hasn’t replied yet; I guess she must be busy.

25 June 2025

Twenty-Four Hours of Unrealized Urine

The friend I most admire as an artist by an order of magnitude or two needs a new kidney. I happen to have a spare on me, so I offered it to her. I’ve received a lot of praise for the move, but it’s the easiest decision I’ve had to make since the birthday party very long ago when I had to choose between accepting either a liter or a magnum of champagne as a gift.

I’ve gone through batteries of tests over the last three months, but a perfidious administraitor at the University of California San Francisco’s Medical Center had a problem with my insurance company, and had to choose between tidy paperwork and preventing a premature death. S/he chose the easiest bureaucratic route and booted me from the donor program. If I ever meet those soulless, treacherous scumbags I’ll wear my “Free Luigi Mangione, He Deserves Another Shot” t-shirt.

That outrage left me with two laboratory-grade three-liter personalized plastic jugs that I was to have used to provide twenty-four hours of urine as part of the testing regimen. I thought of making an art piece, but not for long. Chris Burden’s Five Day Locker Piece is the acme of urine art, just as aesthetic feces don’t get better than Count Meroni Manzoni di Chiosca e Poggiolo’s Merda d’artista (Artist’s Shit).

And so, I made a piece about not using urine, Twenty-Four Hours of Unrealized Urine.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart