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Weak XV

9 April 2026

No. 8,466 (cartoon)

Can’t you see that you’re going nowhere?

I’m never late.

At least you’re punctual.

10 April 2026

Dewfall

I need to constantly entertain myself like a shark needs to swim. That’s a completely useless analogy since there’s absolutely no parallel, but I’m too lazy to come up with a better one.

I recently discovered Scrabble on my slab computer, and it’s a great way to squander the few hours I have left. It’s quite amusing: the machine knows every English word in its dubious dictionary, and I cheat enthusiastically, so it all works out quite nicely.

The machine uses rare, archaic, technical, and obscure seven-letter words like clavate, estragon, kinases, ligroin, paleocon, petiole, sabaton, smritis, snathes, taeniae, and theelin to score a fifty-point bonus, but today it surprised me with “dewfall.”

What a wonderful word!

The Internet reports that Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, includes some 470,000 entries. I report that I have no idea how many words are in my vocabulary.

Dewfall is a perfect example of the love-hate relationship I have with the English language. I love all its wonderful words, but I hate being overwhelmed by so many options and so few opportunities to use some of the great ones. I shall try to remember dewfall (good luck with that!) should I ever experience one again.

11 April 2026

The Second Best Time

Samantha told me that she likes “the stupid stuff” I write. I thanked her for the rare compliment and replied that, after over eleven thousand entries, it was almost inevitable that there’d be an edible hors d'oeuvre among all the droppings. (As a relative aside, the sun will probably explode before the monkeys and typewriters and Shakespeare thing happens.)

She lamented that she hadn’t started a long-term project thirty years ago. I agreed that would have been the best time, and added that the second-best time was tonight.

You’re never too old to try something new until you’re dead and have to reëvaluate your priorities.

12 April 2026

The Foe of Cohesion

Katia and I were enjoying trashing a particularly bad painting at an opening tonight. She said it reminded her of a Frank Zappa quote, “Symmetry is the foe of cohesion.”

When I told her I was glad to hear a Zappa line I’d never heard before, she laughed and explained that I couldn’t have heard it before because she just made it up.

That’s one of the great things about dead people: you can put any words in their mouths, and they’ll never object. Or, as Zappa never said, “That’s the crux of the muffin.”

13 April 2026

All There Is to See

“We must beware of falling into the fatally common error of supposing that what we see is all there is to see.”

What a great art line! Inspirational, even. I’d never heard of Charles Webster Leadbeater before; I assumed he was one of the zillion great artists who never made it into the claustrophobically small pantheon of purportedly great artists. I was thusly surprised when the Internet told me he wrote about the occult. And that got me to thinkin’. This is a stretch and then some, but what are the differences between the occult, conventional religions, and art?

Pass.

Ask a stupid question, win a stupid prize.

14 April 2026

Lomography Nour Triplet

I’ve experienced love at first sight and infatuation at first sight. It’s a fine line, and I still have great difficulty trying to differentiate between the almost identical twins. And that brings me to the Lomography Nour Triplet lens.

It’s a beautiful brass lens that looks like it slipped through the space/time continuum from 1853. I’ll spend two or three thousand dollars on a lens because it has virtually no spherical aberration. The Lomography Nour Triplet’s calling card is its uncorrected spherical aberration, which, in the words of the manufacturer, result in “alluring soft-focus, classic diffused backdrops or powerful soap bubbles.”

I was about to buy one for five hundred dollars—spare change these days—when I realized I could recreate spherical aberration in my computer. That’s when I had a moment of clarity and realized I had no desire for “powerful soap bubbles.” Nah, I just wanted a shiny brass lens.

Stooopid.

15 April 2026

Pinhead Distortion

Joey Ramone died twenty-five years ago today. Gabba gabba hey, nothing more to say about that loss, so I’ll move on.

I can’t remember the woman’s name, but I can remember reading an interview with a musician who said she found listening to recorded music difficult because she kept thinking about technique, e.g., what kind of snare mic did they use? (At the risk of giving myself a rotator cuff injury, that’s a dang good run-on sentence.) I had a similar experience when I saw a photograph in a corporate lobby.

It wasn’t a bad photograph, but it certainly wasn’t a very good one either. The print was flat and muddy; the highlights weren’t high, and the blacks weren’t black. B- freshman work.

The photographer was trying to channel Mondrian by photographing several stories of the side of a building, but it didn’t work because s/he didn’t know her/his craft. The squares weren’t square; the lens had uncorrected pincushion distortion; all the sides were squished in.

There’s a very good chance I’m the only person who noticed the optical defect. Oh well, at least I’ve never wasted a second of my too-short life pondering snare drum mics.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2026 David Glenn Rinehart