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Weak XLIII

22 October 2025

No. 1,547 (cartoon)

I can take a hint.

No, take a walk.

23 October 2025

World Standards Day

Happy World Standards Day!

In the United States, that is. The rest of the world celebrated World Standards Day nine days ago. That’s the marvelous thing about standards; there are so many from which to choose.

24 October 2025

Cockamamie Fabulations

Forty-three percent of all statistics are fictional, possibly including this one. Similarly, nine of seventeen facts are factually factual, fractionally speaking. One can’t make this sort of thing up, but yet I do.

25 October 2025

Revisiting Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail was released half a century ago, except in Norway, where the film was banned because it might be considered blasphemous.

And that reminds me of Uncle Bob, women, and men. I do have a point to make here, and I will. Two points, actually.

So I will.

I think most of the differences between men and women are the result of nurture, not nature, with a few notable exceptions. The one that comes to mind at the moment is that lots of men seem to have memorized almost every line of every Monty Python movie and skit, and women are just plain smarter than that.

And then there is, er, was my Uncle Bob. Once upon a time, long, long ago, I introduced him to Monty Python and the Holy Grail when it was on the telly. We laughed and laughed, and I told him I was glad he was enjoying the film. He said that it was the dumbest thing he’d ever seen, and he was laughing at me for enjoying something so stupid.

Oh well, fifty years on, Camelot is still a silly place. Neeeow, wum, ping!

26 October 2025

Schools of Mines and Yours

The Colorado School of Mines has been in Golden for over a hundred and fifty years. The New Mexico School of Mines is no more after bureaucrats in Socorro rebranded the school; it’s now The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Other states may also have schools of mines, but that was all the research I wanted to do today, except for this ...

From what I could figger, ’twould appear that there’s not a School of Yours anywhere, just mines.

27 October 2025

Paradoxical Insomnia

I’d say this happens to me perhaps once a year or so. I’m relaxing and feeling rather sanguine if not tranquil, when a friend admonishes me to stop snoring. I protest that I couldn’t have been snoring since I was completely conscious and awake, but she insists that she knows snoring when she hears it.

This hasn’t been a serious problem for me, just a curious paradox: how could I be awake and asleep at the same time?

Today I read a long article about the condition, and I was right: it’s a paradox. Or, to use the clinical name, Paradoxical Insomnia. It’s also called Sleep State Misperception, and that also makes sense. I know that I have Awake State Misperception, so it follows that I may have Sleep State Misperception as well. (It’s also known as Fausse Insomnie, Subjective-Objective Sleep Discrepancy, and more, but I’ve had more than enough labels for today.)

I’ve never been bothered by Paradoxical Insomnia, and now I recognize the altered state of consciousness as a gift. And with that, I’m off to take a recreational nap.

28 October 2025

Artdidn’twork

Jovita asked me if the piece of cardboard on the floor, covered in paint and pasta (Painted Bucatini Failure from 12 August), was my artwork.

“No, it’s a piece I made that didn’t work,” I explained.

“Ah, so it’s your artdidn’twork!” she replied.

I was delighted with the new word in my aesthetic vocabulary; I fear it will be quite useful, alas.

29 October 2025

A Portrait is Not a Likeness

I saw a new book on Anastasia’s desk, A Portrait Does Not a Likeness. That was such a great title, I never looked between the covers.

I later discovered that I was a victim of my sloppy typing. There’s no such book, and when I was searching for it, I discovered a new—new for me, that is—Richard Avedon quote.

I could say it is the nature of art to make such assumptions but there has never been an art like photography before. You cannot make a photograph of a person without that person’s presence, and that very presence implies truth. A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is truth.

I gave up looking for the mystery volume. Avedon’s dense remarks taxed my tiny attention span, so I was pleased when that discovery was a more pleasing outcome than finding a book I’ll never read.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart