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Weak XXIII

5 June 2026

No. 7,926 (cartoon)

I’m going to drink myself to death, or die trying.

Alcoholism is so passé.

I’ve never been a slave to fashion.

6 June 2026

Land of the Paranoid

Here’s my favorite headline d’jour:

Dead but deportable: US immigration judge signed order to deport teen murder victim

Xenophobia. That’s the only way I can explain why a nation of immigrants is so fixated on deporting anyone—dead or alive—who came to this country after they did.

Fear of all things foreign has even expanded to school lunch programs. The government will only fund “American” food, so no more bananas in the cafeteria.

Beelzebub bless America, land of the paranoid and home of the morbidly obese. That would be kinda funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

7 June 2026

Corpulent Cremains

I’ve been wondering about the cremains—cremated remains—that morbidly obese people leave behind. When they were waddling around, corpulent people might have been one or two hundred kilos overweight, but after cremation would their bag of ashes be that much heavier than a healthy dead person’s dust? My guess is that the crematorium is the great equalizer, and that most of the excess weight was fat and bloated organs that burned completely.

I could find an answer by asking the Internet, or I could find the correct answer by asking Stephanie; she’s worked in mortuaries for years. Instead, I’ll savor the mystery until something more interesting commands my attention; that shouldn’t take long.

Hmmm, those two paragraphs don’t represent the great entertainment value for which I’m not known, so here’s a little bonus. Some corpses are so fat they cause grease fires in crematoria; that’s why the worst cases are sent to a facility that cremates horses.

8 June 2026

Ariana Grande

The only typefaces I’ve used this millennium are Futura Extra Bold, Gill Sans, Goudy Old Style, and Tekton. (I used a fifth one forty years ago before I realized that Avant Garde isn’t.) I wanted to try something different for a new piece, so I called Deirdre since she knows more about typography than any other friend.

I told her I was looking for something traditional but experimental, authoritative yet casual, and intellectually jocular. She asked me two or three questions, then told me that I needed Ariana Grande. One-stop shopping, perfect!

I went to a few type foundries I was familiar with, and the nearest face I found was Lucida Grande. I gave up after another half hour of Internet frustration and asked Sarah, an accomplished graphic designer, where I could find Ariana Grande. She laughed, and told me I’d been pranked.

I may be the only American with an Internet connection who didn’t know this, but Ariana Grande is a popular young musician. And like all the other women who fit that description, she’s incredibly beautiful and lithe. If Janis Joplin was born twenty years ago, I doubt she’d be performing in a venue larger than the Purple Onion Club today.

9 June 2026

Duane Michals

Duane Michals is dead at ninety-four, a very good run indeed. I always admired him, especially since he never stopped working.

Here are a couple of relevant quotes I found in his obits.

The only regret I will have when I die is that I will miss all the work I haven’t done.

Dreaming is magical. We die every night. We don’t exist when we’re in dreamland.

(As a personal aside, I want to die like my father did: go to sleep and wake up dead.)

Michals was already in the pantheon of great photographers when I discovered the medium over fifty years ago, so I was surprised to learn that his work was originally dismissed when he first showed it because the prints didn’t look like good photographs, i.e., they were different from all the other “good photos.”

I have no idea whether he ever met Miles Davis, but I’m sure he’d agree with him: “Dumb, insensitive critics have destroyed a lot of great music and musicians who just weren’t as strong as I was in having the ability to say ‘Fuck y’all.’ ”

10 June 2026

Zugzwang

Russia’s war plan for invading Ukraine was the same as almost every other one throughout history: a quick victory. And, as is tradition, things didn’t go according to plan. Today, the war in Ukraine has been going on for as long as the First World War.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that I learned a new word: zugzwang. It’s a German expression from the chess world that means “compulsion to move.” Putin has to keep making new moves even though he doesn’t have any good options.

I doubt Pootie-Poot will ever heed my advice, but he could do worse than to follow the example of another losing megalomaniac in Berlin: retreat to his bunker, then put a bullet through his head. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving fella, except perhaps several.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2026 David Glenn Rinehart