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Weak XXX

23 July 2022

No. 4,108 (cartoon)

There’s nothing I could’ve done to prevent it.

You didn’t have to pull the trigger six times.

Well, if you wanna get technical.

24 July 2022

Happy Birthday to Me!

I feel sorry for people who don’t take the modest initiative to have more than one birthday a year. I have a big one coming up on 7 September—stay tuned!—but today I’m celebrating being thirty-five million seconds old.

Happy birthday to me!

25 July 2022

New Dimensions in Chess

Magnus Carlsen has won five world chess championship matches in a row, but he won’t hold the title a year from now. I ain’t no Michel de Nostredame; I say that with certainty because he’s going to let two other players battle it out for the crown.

He claims he wants to be “the best in the world” and that he doesn’t care about his ranking, but I know better. He’s afraid of new developments in chess.

A chess-playing robot recently made a brilliant move that’s never been played in the history of the game. The clever machine was matched against a seven-year-old boy, and, in a display of what would appear to be evidence of machine sentience, had had it up to its silicon keister with the cheeky young ’un. It dispatched the insolent little challenger by breaking the kid’s finger.

Carlsen will destroy you if you try the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and annihilate anyone foolish enough to play the Traxler Counterattack, but he’s going to lose to even the greenest novice who crushes all of his fingers.

Anyone who thinks robots are friendly and submissive is headed for digital distress, just ask Carlsen.

26 July 2022

Risotto Logic

Ferdinando Scianna is another one of those famous photographers I’ve never heard of before. I’m not surprised; that’s what I get for living in my little bubble breathing my own fumes for decades. I like his photographs, but what I appreciated most was his theory of the three risottos.

“If someone has never eaten a risotto in his life—and if they have never been to Sicily, they certainly never have eaten a good one—the first time they taste it, they can only say if they liked it or not. The second time, however, they can argue that it was better or worse than the first one. Only from the third time on can they have their own theory of risotto and, if they want, give advice on how it should be cooked.”

I thought that was a great observation, and I don’t even like risotto that much. Perhaps I should make my first visit to Sicily one of these years ...

27 July 2022

With Apologies to My Mother

About the only thing I know with certainty is that everything I know may be wrong. Here’s a tasty, mouthwatering example ...

With apologies to my dear mother, chewing with your mouth open is a good idea. If a bunch of pompous, stuffy researchers at Oxford University say that’s true, then, in this particular case, that’s good enough for me.

I know almost nothing about taste—ask any of my closest friends!—but it seems that chomping like a barnyard animal allows the aromatic bits of your vittles to reach the back of your schnoz thus increasing the flavorocitiness.

Or something like that.

All I know is that the next time someone who has better manners than I have, e.g., pretty much everyone, chastises me for my disgusting mastication, I’ll be able to scientifically refute them. They’ll still be annoyed and appalled, but at least we can call it a draw ... unless, of course, it’s my mother.

28 July 2022

Opossum and Traffic Cone

There’s an unusual dead opossum in the road on Central Avenue in Alameda, California. The po’ ’possum ain’t playing dead, no madam and no siree. It is in fact devoid of all of its life juices, some of which can be seen on the pavement. The surprising thing is that the poor critter hasn’t been reduced to a two-dimensional splotch of fur and meat by passing cars. That’s because someone put a bright orange traffic cone blocking it from the oncoming traffic.

Was it a nearby resident who didn’t want her or his car splattered with marsupial bits? Perhaps it was a lazy city worker who decided it was quicker and easier to just block the corpse from oncoming traffic than it was to fill out all the paperwork needed to properly dispose of it? Or maybe the poor critter decided that was a good place to die after being mortally injured.

That concludes today’s little mystery; happy pondering and conjecturing!

29 July 2022

Park Webster Condominiums Fish

Most fishes don’t have a street address, but you’ll find* Park Webster Condominiums Fish at 1321 Webster Street in Alameda, California.

*Unless a raccoon reads this first.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart