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Weak XLIV

30 October 2025

No. 8,823 (cartoon)

Why do I always end up with a pervert?

Crazy bait, crazy fish.

31 October 2025

Dead Kennedys on Halloween

I never heard of Julia Fox until she wore a newsworthy Halloween costume. I’m not talking about one of them slinky, transparent numbers that reveal every detail of the genitalia in clinical detail; nah, that’s your basic Hollywood attire. She wore something ghastly, ghoulish, and frightening, a rare example of keeping the true Halloween spirit alive.

She put on a pink dress.

This wasn’t just any frock; it was a recreation of the blood-splattered outfit that Jackie Kennedy wore when Jack was assassinated. It was disturbing, perhaps even disgusting, but that’s Halloween for you, and that’s the point: it was a graphic reminder of the political violence that’s making a resurgence. It’s the same idea a group of musicians had in the seventies when they formed a band called The Dead Kennedys. If you’re looking for a great Halloween 2026 ensemble, browsing the DKs’ song titles and lyrics—such as “God told me to skin you alive”—might be a great place to start.

1 November 2025

Asteroids Then and Now

Friends introduced me to Atari’s Asteroids video game in a DC bar in 1980 or so. I was mesmerized. And I was also too cheap to pump quarter (about one 2025 dollar) after quarter into the machine. Later, Atari developed a home video console that would allow me to play Asteroids for free on any television.

That’s how I got interested in all this digital malarky; from there it was a slippery slope into computing and worse. That’s why I was intrigued when I learned that Atari was releasing Gamestation Go, a handheld console on which I could again play Asteroids and two hundred other games.

I bought one as soon as I could. (And now I’ll interject a bit of foreshadowing: this story does not end well for either the device or me).

The Gamestation Go was probably the worst piece of computer equipment I’ve ever touched. It felt flimsy and cheap, and when it did work, it was buggy with a horrible user interface.

That’ll learn me to keep moving forward without a dead-end detour down memory lane. And as for Asteroids and asteroids, I shall leave them encased in golden digital amber on a shelf in the virtual attic.

2 November 2025

Better Safe than Sober

I noticed the wine on Bettina’s porch when I showed up at her place for brunch. I’m not terribly perceptive, but five cases of wine stacked by her doorway were too obvious to miss, even for me.

“Looks like you may have enough wine to last until the end of the month,” I predicted.

“Better safe than sober!” she replied.

She pulled out her corkscrew, and that was unambiguously that.

3 November 2025

I Don’t Understand Stadium Concerts

Gabriel just got back from a concert on Saturday in Perth; he flew all the way to Australia just to see Metallica perform in a huge stadium.

I don’t get it.

I’m not talking about the geezer music (Metallica has been around since 1981); I don’t understand why anyone would spend hundreds of dollars for a ticket to crowd into a huge stadium with seventy thousand other people to try to “see” a band on a very distant stage through a forest of glowing camera phones waving aloft.

Gabriel explained the concert wasn’t about the concert, it was about “experiencing the energy.” And anyway, he didn’t watch the stage; he looked at the performers on gigantic video monitors. In other words, Gabriel spent thousands of dollars to jet halfway around the world so he could watch an unedited video that wasn’t synced with the sound because the speakers are so far away.

I still don’t get it. Kids these days ...

4 November 2025

Translate Before Quoting

When you’re quoting something in another language, it’s helpful to know what the message is. I mentioned that years ago, when I repeated Pearl Harbor’s anecdote about seeing a generic Japanese family in Tokyo walking down the street with their five-year-old kid wearing a shirt emblazoned with “Eat My Fuck.” I’m guessing they didn’t know anything about the English language.

And I’ll bet that Galen Shelly didn’t know any German before he got his first lesson recently. He appears to be one of those artisans of little imagination, so he grabbed a photograph from the Internet and made a sculpture of cemetery gates for a parade float.

Oooh, spooky!

It really was a sinister piece, with “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Will Set You Free) above the cemetery entrance. Yep, he reproduced the entrance to Auschwitz, Dachau, and other concentration camps.

At least he was smart enough not to use a swastika, the ancient symbol used in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The Nazis stole it and made it part of their visual identity, making it unusable for the next century or three. Similarly, I will never be able to say “Work sets me free,” no matter how relevant that is to my creative pursuits.

Feh.

Nazi punks, eat my fuck.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart