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Weak XXXI

30 July 2022

No. 8,493 (cartoon)

To be or not to be?

Who said that?

I just said it.

31 July 2022

A Star Is Born

According to his resumé written c. 2062, George Jetson was born on 31 July 2022. I can do the math on that one in my head: that’s today!

Happy birth, George!

(I was too lazy to find a current image of him, so I’ve included one I used on 1 June 2020.)

1 August 2022

Better Than True

I often righteously kvetch about shoddy “journalism,” but The New York Times (or is it the New York Times?) done good with this subhead: The Baseball Reliquary in Los Angeles took its share of blows, but is set for a comeback. Its artifacts remain as real as your imagination.

About all the writer had to add to that were a few specifics and a great quote from Ron Shelton: ”I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s better than true.”

Sounds like art to me!

2 August 2022

The Currency

Say what you will about Damien Hirst and don’t say what you won’t, but I like his piece, The Currency.

Now get this: six years ago he produced ten thousand unique oil paintings. They all look like lotsa Ben-Day dots, although I am reliably informed that Benjamin Henry Day Junior had nothing to do with them. I’m sure he used automation, as did Brian Eno with his work, 77 Million Paintings. (Art can’t be quantified and measured, so it’s just a coincidence that I like Eno’s work seventy-seven hundred times as much as I like Hirst’s.)

Hirst sold the physical paintings as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. I have no idea what an NFT is, but I think it’s some sort of digital file documenting that you own something you don’t possess.

Hirst recently gave the ten thousand people who bought his dot paintings an either/or choice: they could either own the NFT or the original painting to which it was linked, but not both. Hirst is going to burn all the paintings paired to an NFT, so collectors will own a high-tech certificate proving that they own a lot of carbon that came from an oil painting.

The currency of art isn’t art, and all’s well with the world.

3 August 2022

Free Dog Poison

Evelyn’s back from the park with a story to tell, so here we go ...

She spotted a handwritten “Free Dog Poison” sign taped to a trash can with a puddle of bright blue liquid in a plastic bowl beneath it. The installation also included a manifesto—actually, more of a rant—about irresponsible dog walkers who let their bowsers run willy-nilly and cause cycling accidents, as happened to the upset author.

I’ve been chased on my bike by a snarling cur before, but I don’t blame the dogs. Instead of offering free dog poison, the aggrieved protester should have set up a bar under a banner, Free Cyanide Cocktails for Irresponsible Dog Owners. S/he might even get it sponsored by a canine rescue organization that would provide good homes to the newly orphaned pooches.

4 August 2022

Shower Anemone

I told Alexia that I made Shower Anemone in her bathroom and showed her the photographic evidence.

“Do you think it looks like an anemone too?” I asked.

“It certainly does,” she agreed, “unless you glance at it.”

I wrote off her remark as constructive criticism, then forgot about it entirely after she poured me another drink.

5 August 2022

Anchovies with Jarlsberg

Jarlsberg cheese helps women preserve and regenerate the health of their bones. I know this because a study said so. If that sounds like cod bollocks that’s because it is.

The “research” involved sixty-six pre-menopausal women in good health. The faux researchers didn’t bother to monitor their diets, they just noted that the women who ate Jarlsberg cheese were a bit healthier than those who didn’t. Tine, the nefarious Norwegian company that produces Jarlsberg cheese and funded the project, got the results for which the corporation paid.

The only surprising thing about the pseudo-scientific marketing campaign is that it’s not more common. Why hasn’t some shady hustler milked anchovy magnates for a paper showing that the calcium in the salty wee fishes prevents osteoporosis?

6 August 2022

Proxima Pork Centauri

I don’t know what’s gotten into me these days. On Monday I praised The New York Times (or is it the New York Times?) and today I’m tipping the ol’ chapeau to a Frenchie.

Socks le bleu!

(Did some nefarious “friend” replace my stash of snark pills with nice pills?)

Etienne Klein published a photo of our nearest sunny neighbor, Proxima Centauri, made with the fancy new spaced-out telescope. The image showed details of the star no one’s ever seen before. The discovery initially left many jaws a-waggin’ ... and that was even before a subsequent revelation sent convulsions through the jabbersphere.

The rascally rogue announced the object in the mesmerizing image was in fact a spicy dead pig processed into Spanish chorizo sausage.

The physicist’s delightful prank was intended to remind stupid, gullible people that they are indeed both gullible and stupid. Even though I admit that I’m more stupid and gullible than I’d care to admit, I received a different message: the universe is what you make it.

I’ll procrastinate for a while before I pay the scalawag the ultimate compliment by plagiarizing Pork Centauri.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart