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Weak XVIII

30 April 2025

No. 7,229 (cartoon)

I’m very considerate.

Then stop torturing me.

It’s unlikely, but I may consider it.

1 May 2025

Forty-Five Games in a Row Revisited

It’s been a year since I won forty-five games of Monopoly in a row. Twice since then I’ve come within a game or two of that meaningless record, but never equaled or surpassed it. I know that report is sixty-nine points past stuporific on the boredom scale for any life form more sentient than a maggot, but I find the probability and improbability endlessly fascinating.

Thanks to my incredibly low entertainment threshold, I marvel at my almost unbelievable winning streak given that I rarely play ten games without being defeated. That’s in large part because the outcome of games like Monopoly and Scrabble depends on chance and luck. (Chess involves only skill, so I’m sure I’d never beat Magnus Carlsen even if we played ten games a day for the rest of my life.)

Oy, I’m even boring myself writing about Monopoly, so I’ll stop and play a few more games.

2 May 2025

Solutions over Slogans

The election to become the mayor of Oakland was over weeks ago, but for some reason I’m still seeing posters for Loren Taylor all over the neighborhood as if his supporters haven’t heard that he was defeated.

It’s easy to see why he lost after a cursory glance at one of his “Solutions over Slogans” signs. The defeated candidate offered only one slogan and not a single solution, so it’s obvious why the electorate took his advice and voted for someone else who claimed to have solutions.

Loren, if you run again, here’s some free advice for your next campaign: Vote for Loren Taylor; he has solutions, not precipitate.

3 May 2025

It Depends

It’s a slow news day, so it’s once again time to whinge about the lamentable state of what’s fobbed off as journalism these days. Here’s a recent slug and subhead from a popular periodical.

Is muscle soreness after a workout good or bad?

When it comes to workouts, how much pain—specifically, how much post-workout soreness—is actually a good thing? The answer: it depends.

“It depends” is the answer to almost any question, so why waste a reader’s time and digital ink writing about something everyone knows? Oops, that’s what I just did too, so never mind. In my anemic defense, I’ll close by noting that I never claimed to be no journalist; they can’t use double negatives but I can.

4 May 2025

A Possum Won’t Do

If you’d like to have some fun (and who wouldn’t?), make up a nonsense expression and ask your “intelligent” computer what it means. I asked mine to explain, “When the aardvark is gone, a possum won’t do,” and this is what I got.

The saying “when the aardvark is gone, a possum won’t do” is a playful way of saying that something of greater value or importance is missing and a substitute, even if similar, isn’t a satisfactory replacement. It highlights the need for a specific solution, as opposed to settling for a lesser alternative.

I was so delighted with that answer that I asked it, “How long should I boil bread?

You don’t boil bread to make toast; instead, you toast it by applying heat in a toaster, toaster oven, or under a broiler.

Ice?

Boiling ice is not a standard process, as ice is water in a solid state and will melt when heat is applied, not boil.

Steak?

Boiling steak is not a common or recommended method for cooking steak, as it can result in a tough and dry steak.

Swiss cheese?

You shouldn’t boil Swiss cheese; instead, you’ll typically melt it for dishes like fondue or sauces, which takes about 5-15 minutes, stirring constantly, over low to medium heat.

I would never make fun of a stupid person (except when I do), so it’s a joy to ridicule my “artificially intelligent” shit-fer-brains ’puter.

5 May 2025

Seven Severed French Green Beans Separated by Seven Bucatini no. 15 Segments

For at least a decade, “105mm gap” has been on my to-do list. The premise was simple: cut long vegetables—carrots, celery, et cetera—in half, then photograph them with a hundred and five millimeter gap between them, but I could never figure out how to make it work visually. I even bought a flatbed scanner a few years ago for the project and never used it.

Fortunately, the Bucatini no. 15 muse paid a visit; that’s where Seven Severed French Green Beans Separated by Seven Bucatini no. 15 Segments came from. The image was very difficult to make, so I abandoned the idea of a series and called it a night.

6 May 2025

Raccoons on Meth

There are many good reasons that raccoons aren’t good companion animals, including snitching. And here’s another one: they’ll smoke your methamphetamine. Victoria Vidal discovered that the hard way after the police stopped her for driving with a suspended driver’s license and an active warrant.

When the cops returned to her car they saw Chewy, her raccoon, sitting in the driver’s seat sucking on a meth pipe. This led the astute officers to conduct a thorough search of the vehicle, and they found “a bulk amount of methamphetamine.”

I found the story quite enlightening. I always wondered how raccoons stayed up all night, and now I know.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart