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Weak XXXVIII

18 September 2026

No. 482 (cartoon)

You think with your mouth open.

You think with your pants down.

Brains are vastly overrated.

19 September 2026

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Ahoy, me hearties, it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

And with that, I’m done feigning excitement over the futility of trying to use a vocabulary of maybe a dozen words and phrases for twenty-four hours. Where did all this hornswaggle come from, anyway?

Pirates have been plying the briny deep for millennia, so I limited my etymological research to the English language. After almost three minutes of relentless scholarship, I traced the origin of most of the pirate lexicon all the way back to Robert Newton. I doubt he ever set a peg leg on a proper pirate ship; the scurvy dog ran a rig on us.

Newton was an undistinguished actor renowned for his heavy drinking, and for playing Long John Silver in the 1950 movie Treasure Island, a Walt Disney piss-take of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel. Yep, pirate talk goes all the way back to Hollywood.

Well blow me down!

That’s all until next year, me buckos, yo ho ho!

20 September 2026

Nonalcoholic Beer and Wine

Nonalcoholic beer and wine confuses me. I understand the concept: a pilot might need to be sober to fly a planeload of passengers from Buda to Pest, brain surgery can be especially tricky if you’re drunk, that sort of thing. But ...

Wouldn’t anyone who identifies as an alcoholic need to drink beverages that don’t contain alcohol? And wouldn’t someone who could handle her or his liquor want a drink with booze in it? In other words, the labels are backwards. Alcoholics should have drinks for alcoholics with no alcohol in them, and people who don’t have a problem with drinking can enjoy nonalcoholic ninety-proof bourbon.

Even though no one can peck at my impeccable logic, I imagine that the status will remain quo since redesigning and reprinting billions of labels would be prohibitively expensive. And so, nonalcoholic beer and wine will probably remain in the oxymoronic lexicon.

21 September 2026

The Crocodile Olympics

Here’s my favorite headline d’jour:

Crocodile-inhabited river approved as Brisbane 2032 Olympic rowing venue

Now that’s more like it! The only thing boringer than Olympic rowing is Olympic curling, so I’m glad organizers have made some welcome changes to address the tedious event. Will there be a penalty if a rower bonks a croc on the schnozz with an oar? If a boat tips over, will clowns show up to distract the savage reptiles as they do at rodeos? Will the threat of being eaten alive motivate athletes to set a new speed record?

Hmm, the Olympics just might be interesting after all!

22 September 2026

Art Studio 77

Art Studio 77 is a couple doors away from me, but I’ve never been in there. One peek inside was all I needed to confirm that the stuff on the gallery walls was of no interest to me. (I’m not being especially harsh or unfair; I could say that about almost every gallery and museum in the world.)

Conversely, the joint looks great standing on the sidewalk, so that’s where I planted my camera on a tripod and thought about Eugène Atget when I made a documentary photograph of the front window.

23 September 2026

Minumental Bucatino No. 15 San Francisco Bay Grande Arch

San Francisco is a little city with a big inferiority complex when it comes to the arts, so arts administraitors are dealing with their low self-esteem and insecurities by creating The Big Art Loop with “Monumental Works.”

Oh dear; it’s the size thing again, innit?

I think it’s beyond silly—and much worse—to shout, “Look how big mine is!” Even worse, The Big Art Loop doesn’t exist; it’s a “public art initiative” that’s millions of dollars away from reality.

I make art, not excuses, so I decided to help the poor buggers with my public art contribution, Minumental Bucatino No. 15 San Francisco Bay Grande Arch. It’s amazing how much one can accomplish quickly just by avoiding proposals, committees, bribes, focus groups, endless meetings, towers of paperwork, and all the other trappings of the anti-art world.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2026 David Glenn Rinehart