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Weak VII

12 February 2026

No. 865 (cartoon)

I’m frightened; my therapist said that all of my problems were imaginary.

What’s your predicament?

I don’t have a therapist.

13 February 2026

Athletes in a Crappy monastery

Do you know what great Finnish wine tastes like? Of course you don’t, and neither do I for a simple reason: there ain’t none. And do you know the tax in Finland on an imported bottle of wine? The last I heard it was over three hundred markkas, more or less. And so, why should anyone be surprised that when Igor Medved, a Finnish Olympics coach, got to Italy—a country known for unreliable cars and good, cheap wine—he drank some, and then he drank some more, as Finns are wont do.

This did not sit well with Janne Hänninen. Apparently, the Finnish Olympic Committee official cited a “no alcohol policy,” and sent Medved packing for Finland “to ensure peace of mind for the athletes and the coaching staff.” Oh, the poor, delicate skiers; being in the presence of alcohol must have been all too much for them.

What a bunch of wimps! That’s why I never participated in any Olympics games; they’re all a bunch of teetotaling dullards.

And it’s not any better back here. The Philadelphia professional baseball team severed a hundred-million-dollar contract with Nick Castellanos after he was caught drinking a beer in the dugout during a game. Drinking beer on a hot day, watching his mates play ball? Outrageous!

It never used to be that way. Riders in the Tour de France in the fifties used to relax with magnums (magni?) of wine at night before hopping back on their bikes in the morning to complete the next grueling segment of the long race. And in 1970, Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter after taking lysergic acid diethylamide, popularly known as acid.

Today’s athletes may generate better statistics, but at the price of living like monks in a crappy monastery.

14 February 2026

Frida Kahlo VD Cards

A friend of mine works at the Georgia Totto O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, where the focus is on the art, not the artist. You won’t find any merchandise featuring her countenance. And then there’s her contemporary, Frida Kahlo, whose works are plastered everywhere after they entered the public domain last year.

I wasn’t surprised to see someone was selling Kahlo greeting cards featuring one of her self-portraits, with one of her quotes underneath: “It’s good to have sex, even if one is not in love.”

Happy Frida Kahlo VD!

15 February 2026

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha!

“The trouble is, you think you have time.”

That’s a line I saw at the Fake Buddha Quotes Internet site. Apparently, sticking words in the late Buddha’s mouth is popular enough to provide lots of content. The editors suggest the quote is actually from Jack Kornfield’s 1994 publication, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book.

That may or may not be true, but I’m thinking of lines from Carlos Castaneda’s 1972 book, Journey to Ixtlan.

There is one simple thing wrong with you—you think you have plenty of time … If you don’t think your life is going to last forever, what are you waiting for? Why the hesitation to change?

This where I get off the bus. Playing “Who said it first?” is a loser’s game, and I have better games to lose.

16 February 2026

The Museum of Scams

I’ve written about a couple different museums dedicated to failure, but the one I’d love to see is The Museum of Scams. Why, Drumph alone could fill a wing with Trump Casinos and Hotels, Trump University, Trump Magazine, Trump Airlines, Trump Beverages, Trump “The Game” (board game), Trump Mortgages, Trump Steaks, Trump Travel Site, Trumpnet, Trump Tower Tampa, Trump Vodka, Trump Fragrances, Trump Mattress, Trump Network, Tour de Trump, Trumped! (Trump Radio), et cetera.

But that’s just low-class cheating and swindling. I’d like to see more creative scams like the “World’s Littlest Skyscraper,” the Newby-McMahon Building in Wichita Falls, Texas. It was built during an oil boom in the early twentieth century, and J.D.D. McMahon convinced investors to put the equivalent of seven million 2026 dollars into the skyscraper that would be four hundred and eighty tall.

He kept his word and built a structure that was indeed four hundred and eighty tall. Four hundred and eighty inches, that is, just over twelve meters. McMahon’s backers sued, but the shyster was long gone, and the judge pointed out that the blueprints did specify four hundred and eighty inches, not four hundred and eighty feet.

The Newby-McMahon Building is featured in the National Historic Register. Now that’s what I call a museum-quality scam!

17 February 2026

The Difference Between Photography and Cinematography

I see that Zeiss has introduced a line of new lenses for cinematography. The company’s flacks claim, “the set draw [sic] inspiration from classic Planar, Distagon, and Sonnar photo lenses.” Translation: they’re just recycling old designs.

If twenty-some thousand dollars for nine lenses sounds like a lot of money, that’s because it is. Having said that, I have several lenses that cost over two grand, so it’s not that unreasonably priced.

And then I looked at the press release again: each lens costs twenty-some thousand dollars. That’s ridiculous, but I immediately understood why. In case you don’t know the difference between photography and cinematography, I’ll ’splain it to you.

One decimal place.

When any photographic supply is marketed to filmmakers, sellers bump up the price at least ten times, the same way a hospital will charge at least ten times more than your local drug store for the same wrist splint. Slap a Zeiss logo on an unremarkable lens, then cha-ching! Marvel at the magic of cinema all the way to the bank.

18 February 2026

Symphony for Beyond the End of Time

I had another stupid idea this morning; I’m lucky that way.

I’d take every note from Beethoven’s Symphony Number Nine in D minor, Opus 125, then rearrange them in every possible sequence to make my first piece for orchestra and singers, Symphony for Beyond the End of Time. I just may have lifted the concept from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (Quatuor pour la fin du Temps), but who am I to say?

Messian was too modest in his ambitions, that’s why I’m shooting for beyond the end of time. I’m not sure if Brian Eno was thinking something like that when he made 77 Million Paintings; I’ll have to ask him the next time I see him.

I’ve done this sort of thing before when I made The Library of Babel II in 2011, so I was comfortable doing something so ridiculous ... until I hit a snaggy snag. I asked the Internet how many notes Beethoven penned in the score of the symphony, and here’s what I got.

Beethoven's 9th Symphony consists of 2,617 measures in the full orchestra score, containing an estimated total of roughly 30,000 to over 50,000 individual musical notes across all instruments.

This is a great example of AI, or Artificial Ignorance. My forty-year-old word processor doesn’t estimate the number of words in a piece I’ve written; it gives me an exact count. And now that our amazing new supercomputers are purportedly on the verge of becoming sentient beings, I get wildly varying estimates of the number of notes on a printed page.

It may be beyond the end of time before I get my answer, so I’m going to grab my camera and photograph poison apples.

19 February 2026

Remembering Paul Brainerd

I won’t go into the tedious details, but before 1985, getting anything printed on a real printing press was hard, tedious, and exasperating work. (Hint: it involved hot wax and photography chemicals. Yes, really.)

In 1985, I had an eight-thousand-dollar* Apple computer I bought to use one specific program: Paul Brainerd’s PageMaker. I spent twelve hundred dollars for it; and the setup paid for itself in a couple months since I could afford to underbid other graphic designers and still make stupid amounts of money for relatively little work.

But that was a long time ago, before I concluded that working for money was a stupid waste of my short life. Still, I was saddened to learn that Brainerd recently died at a relatively young age, i.e., he was less than a decade older than me.

Adobe bought PageMaker for a zillion dollars, then killed it; that’s the way monopolies deal with competition. Brainerd used his windfall to leave a second legacy as an environmental philanthropist, what an hombre!

Thanks, Paul; it was fun while it lasted.

*In 2026 dollars

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2026 David Glenn Rinehart