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Weak XXI

21 May 2026

No. 5,266 (cartoon)

Life is like a helicopter.

I have no idea how a helicopter works.

Neither do I.

22 May 2026

Toilet Time

Here’s my favorite headline d’jour:

How often should you go to the toilet?

Who would need that question answered? I suppose someone who visits the toilet ten times an hour with no desire to urinate or defecate might wonder if the trips need to be that frequent. Conversely, someone wearing pants soaked with urine and caked with feces might be interested in knowing if using the toilet more than twice a day would be advisable.

Perhaps I’ve misunderestimated how stupid people can be. Maybe the article—which I never even glanced at—might be of interest to the person who just learned something new by reading the feature on how to boil water.

Here’s the punch line: that headline is from The Washington Post. The once respected newspaper has become something of a pathetic joke, and Jeff Bezos is laughing all the way to the bank.

23 May 2026

Fearghas in Loch Voil

I was a bit relieved to hear that my late friend Fearghas is in Loch Voil in Scotland. Or rather, his ashes are.

After he died on the first of October, there was talk of burial. No one I know has been buried in a casket since my grandmother Beulah literally went to her grave in 1988. For reasons I can’t explain, I didn’t like the idea of Fearghas’s body put in a crate and buried. Whatever made him who he was vanished from my material world when he died in October, and whether his mortal remains were bones in a box or ashes shouldn’t matter.

But it does, so I’m irrationally glad I’ll be able to know where “he” is using a map of Scotland rather than a cemetery chart.

24 May 2026

I’m Too Thin

It’s funny how I’ve sailed through life for decades and then discovered that my friends aren’t who I thought they were. I know they meant well with lines like “looks like you’re developing a bit of a power paunch” and “you lost your girlish figure in your thirties,” but I now know they were just telling me well-intentioned lies to shield me from the truth.

My mother loves me, and she’s earned my trust by always being honest with me, including this morning when she told me the brutal truth: I’m too thin.

It was painful to hear, but I didn’t sink into depression. Instead, I realized that I needed to turn my life around. I went to the grocery store and bought two kilos of crisps and four cases of beer. I ordered a copy of Magnus McKay’s cookbook, 365 Grilled Cheese Sandwich Recipes. My new health regimen involves eating three of ’em a day, but that should get me through the first four months.

I may be overly optimistic, but if I rigorously stick to my demanding diet and bulk up, no one will ever call me too skinny again. It’s only six months until Thanksgiving, and by then I bet I’ll be able to devour half a turkey!

Thanks, Mom!

25 May 2026

Eye to Eye

I’m usually quite comfortable with my chromophobia, but I had to admit that I like my optometrist’s image of my huge orange eye the size of a basketball, or thereabouts. My eyes are not atrophying faster than the rest of me, so I’m going to call that good news.

26 May 2026

A Hilarious, Colorful Story

This has to be one of the most amusing developments in photography (no pun intended) since Mike Mandel published Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards.

James Danziger, the eponymous owner of the Danziger Gallery, is selling a print of Ansel Adams’ Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico at The Photography Show in New York. No surprises there since the event is organized by The Association of International Photography Art Dealers, the chumocratic cabal of high-end photography galleries.

Now here’s the kicker. This wasn’t just another six-figure vintage print signed by ol’ Ansel himself; Danziger was selling a colorized version he claimed he worked on for months using AI. (His claim sounds suspicious if not dubious since an AI computer can generate a hundred iterations in an hour or two.)

Danziger did his legal homework, and provided compelling evidence that Moonrise is in the public domain. And that brings me to my favorite part of the story: the greedy, litigious parasites who run the Ansel Adams Publishing Right Trust were apoplectic with rage that they’re not making a penny off of Danziger’s sales. They feigned moral indignation because their lawyers couldn’t stop another dealer from setting up shop on their turf.

Ha!

I saved the best for last. The editors at the Internet site where I learned about the clown show claimed they could reproduce the colorized Moonrise freely since “As it is AI-generated, it is ineligible for copyright protection.”

Ha redux!

So if Danziger had used watercolors and a fine brush to colorize the print, it would have been his creation, but since he used a computer to do the same thing it’s AI-generated?

Ha threedux!

I’m up to my neck in cans of intellectual property worms. I can’t stop laughing, so it’s time to stop writing.

27 May 2026

Aircraft Windshield Factory, Flint, Michigan

Everything comes from somewhere. When it comes to cheap food, I try to remain as ignorant as possible. And then there are jet windshields. I assume that they have to withstand the impact of hitting a turkey while flying at eight-hundred-kilometers an hour; that takes a lot of engineering prowess.

I’m in Flint, Michigan, and on my bike rides past the burnt-out houses I pass by a nondescript red brick building. It’s not abandoned; I can hear workers and their tools inside. The building was a mystery until today when I asked a guy smoking outside what goes on inside.

You know from the foreplay what he said.

I might make prints of the windshield plant to give to the pilots who fly me from thither to yon and back again. I wonder if they’d be concerned or relieved to know where their windshield was manufactured.

I figure the Flint workers are better building airplane windshields than cars; I’ve never heard of one cracking, let alone breaking, no matter what sized turkey bounced off it.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2026 David Glenn Rinehart