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Weak IV

22 January 2024

No. 2,413 (cartoon)

I spent my twenties and thirties trying to find myself.

Did it work?

Not really; I wish I’d found somebody else.

23 January 2024

The Holy Free Wine Scam

The Catholics run a really big shew, but it seems like even after all these centuries they still have a lot of organization problems. I suppose that’s to be expected when you try to get over a billion people to read off the same page.

I was reminded of that after reading that the pope declared that wine “is a gift from God.” That sounded heavenly enough for me, so I headed over to Bus Stop Liquor for a bottle of divine intervention. Sal, the owner, wore a ridiculously large silver cross around his neck big enough to crucify a large gerbil, so I figgered that he was a popeboy.

Once again, the devil was in the details.

When I tried to get my holy gift, Sal explained although the man upstairs may give wine away, the booze business is run by “a bunch of shysters and nogoodniks,” all of whom take a cut or a markup, so I still had to pay three bucks a liter for cheap wine.

Vatican City, Catholic central command headquarters, has the highest per capita consumption of wine in the world, and now I know why: they get it straight from the manufacturer.

24 January 2024

The Evolution of the McIntosh

Steve Jobs introduced the Apple Macintosh computer forty years ago today. Jobs was the showman, but, according to what I’ve read, Jef Raskin conceived it five years earlier and named it after his favorite apple, the McIntosh.

You see the problem here, don’t you? When, how, and why did “McIntosh” become “Macintosh?” (Three questions in one, not bad!)

Maybe someone at the advertising agency misspelled McIntosh. (That’s not as improbable as it may sound; I once saw an ad for an Apple computer that boasted about its “firey performance.”) Maybe the focus groups preferred Macintosh over Macintosh. And of course there are always the lawyers.

I suppose I could research it, but one of my friends will probably ’splain me after reading this. And anyway, I like the small mystery about the worst computer in history except for all the rest.

25 January 2024

The Bulgarian National Bank

The Bulgarian National Bank was founded one hundred and forty-five years ago today.

“So what?” you say.

That’s a tough question, and one for which I have no good answer. It’s just that that anniversary seemed more interesting than writing about haggis, neeps, tatties, and archaic poetry on Rabbie Burns Night as I have been doing for years if not decades.

26 January 2024

Another Divine Scam

A Colorado minister and his wife bilked gullible members of his religious community out of millions of dollars and pocketed most of it. (I’m reticent to call him a Christian; I’m fairly certain that Jesus never ran a cryptocurrency scam.)

“The charges are that me [sic] and Kaitlyn pocketed $1.3m,” Eli Regalado admitted. “I just wanted to come out and say those charges are true. A few hundred thousand dollars went to a home remodel the Lord told us to do.”

He also siphoned off hundreds of thousands of dollars for his Internet-based Victorious Grace Church. He again played the deity card, explaining that, “We took God at his word.”

According to the news report I saw, God, Author of Our Eternal Salvation, Our Lord, Heavenly Father, and Creator did not immediately respond for confirmation that he commanded the Regalados to embezzle money for jewelry and luxury renovations to their home.

27 January 2024

Morons at High Noon

Andrew chastised me for ridiculing Kentuckians just because an idiot politician there drafted a bill legalizing incest. I admitted that I was perhaps a bit unfair in singling out Kentucky, so today I shall ridicule Missourans just because an idiot politician there drafted a bill legalizing dueling to solve political disagreements between senators. Nick Schroer’s original text is much more hilarious than any snarky summary I can come up with, so here it is ...

If a senator’s honor is impugned by another senator to the point that it is beyond repair and in order for the offended senator to gain satisfaction, such senator may rectify the perceived insult to the senator’s honor by challenging the offending senator to a duel.

The trusted representative, known as the second, of the offended senator shall send a written challenge to the offending senator. The two senators shall agree to the terms of the duel, including choice of weapons, which shall be witnessed and enforced by their respective seconds.

The duel shall take place in the well of the senate at the hour of high noon on the date agreed to by the parties to the duel.

The idjit saved the punchline for last: the shootout takes place inside the senate. At least the avengers of yore knew to do their shootin’ outside.

Schroer’s dueling proposal seems almost quaint after witnessing an insurrection that failed to overturn a democratic election. I predict we’ll see more violet suggestions from politicians frustrated by their inability to debate or outwit their bureaucratic opponents. Kidnapping, lynching, assassination, that sort of thing.

28 January 2024

Life Imitates Art

Four months ago I made The Death of Charles Shaw (Diptych), a wine bottle crushed to Smithereens with an antique steamroller. I saw a variation on that this afternoon whilst cycling on a back road: a crushed whiskey bottle on the asphalt shoulder. My work was intentional, but this was another case of life imitating art when some inconsiderate drunk threw the empty bottle out the window.

I’m wondering if I like the found object better than the version I made. It doesn’t matter: I photographed both, so they’re both mine.

29 January 2024

IF THERE IS SOME THING

There’s more than one story behind this image, and I’m not going to share any of them.

Gosh, even I’m not so lazy as to call that sentence a notebook entry, so I’ll add the most oblique of hints: IF THERE IS SOME THING has nothing to do with Shakespeare.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2024 David Glenn Rinehart