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Weak XXII

28 May 2026

No. 4,971 (cartoon)

You couldn’t be more stupid.

I accept your challenge.

You win.

29 May 2026

Drinking in the Summer of Love and Haight

One of the few minor annoyances I experience living in Sans Frisco is the nostalgia industry built around the Summer of Love/Summer of Haight. People who weren’t even alive then talk reverentially about how wonderful the sex, drugs, and music were, but rarely ever about tens of thousands of young men sent to die in Viet Nam.

I just discovered another big crack in the sanitized, amber facade: women weren’t allowed to work as bartenders. Yep, from 1947 to 1971 it was illegal for a woman to pursue that profession in California.

I’m not as surprised as I might have been, since discovering historical corrections, revisions, and revelations is common. I never would have heard about that from a bartender of any gender, though, since I haven’t been in a bar in decades because the drinks there cost many times more than the hooch I drink in my studio.

30 May 2026

Feed Your Head

Here’s my favorite headline d’jour:

The Brain Is the New Belly

I’m always amused by “This is the new That” proclamations, e.g., Pepper is the new Denim, Bourbon is the new Chocolate, Clouds are the new Ripples, et cetera. Here’s my latest contribution to the English language: Slop is the new Slack.

Grace Slick was enjoying a lysergic acid diethylamide holiday when she wrote “Feed your head” sixty years ago, and now Frank Bruni has recycled it.

As a high school graduate, I’m smart enough to differentiate between my brain and my belly. My head is so full right now that I’m afraid it might start to leak again, so it’s time to send another burrito down the ol’ stomach hole to balance my ballast.

Bone appetite!

31 May 2026

Art Attention Spans

Once upon a time, Beryl spent time in galleries studying how people interacted with art. She wrote about what she observed; that’s how she became Dr. Beryl. I thought I knew all about such statistics, but, as is so often the case, I was wrong.

Other academics made similar studies and concluded that a viewer typically spends twenty-seven seconds viewing a piece. Twenty-seven seconds?! Heck, I can blow past dozens of uninteresting pieces in less time than that. I might spend twenty-seven seconds taking in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but I can’t say that with certainty since I’ve never seen one.

Perhaps I should feel guilty for my short attention span, but when it comes to uninteresting art, it’s always served me well.

1 June 2026

Mukbanging

Theresa called after reading my story about a restaurant that charged a vomit fee for customers who overfed themselves and then some. She thought the owner should monetize the grotesque spectacle with a pay-per-view mukbang site on the Internet.

Mukbang is the Chinese practice of eating preposterously large quantities of food to entertain others. I just learned about the fad when I read that a twenty-four-year-old former waitress turned professional mukbanger died while being filmed shoving a lethal amount of food down her throat. I’ll spare you the details from her autopsy.

I’m sure there are a lot more horrific fads out there; I just hope I don’t hear more macabre stories about people literally dying for attention.

2 June 2026

11,111

I will note that today marks 11,111 daily notebook entries. I’ll briefly observe the occasion, since I’ll be long dead before 22,222.

I thought that 11,111 might be a prime number after dividing it by nine and getting 1,234.56 ... a tad mathematically inaccurate but numerically cute, no? I later discovered that it can be divided by 41 and 271.

In conclusion, 11,111 is not a prime number, which kinda makes sense since I’m not in my prime either. And on that note, it’s time for a nap.

3 June 2026

Ten-hut! Joke Time!

When is a press office not a press office? When it’s a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.” You can thank Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez for the joke after the United States Department of Defense barred journalists from its press office because they are “security risks.”

I don’t know any professional comedians, but I’ve heard that one of the most difficult aspects of a performance is telling a hilarious gag with a completely straight face. And yet, military propagandists around the world have seemingly mastered that craft.

That’s pretty darn funny if you like Orwellian 1984 humor. And that concludes my report from my secret undisclosed hidey hole since I sure ain’t gonna be reporting from a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.

4 June 2026

Epicurus and Me

I was ready when Cheryl asked me if I believed in a completely powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent deity. I acknowledged that that was a hotly debated and complex philosophical question. I added that the answer was no.

I didn’t figger that out; Epicurus did. He’s now known for his Internet recipes site, epicurious.com, but back in his day (341-270 Before Christmas) he was a renowned philosopher. Here’s his impeccably rational rationale that I pirated from an Internet translation.

If a god knows everything and has unlimited power, then it has knowledge of all evil and has the power to put an end to it. But if it does not end it, it is not completely benevolent.

If a god has unlimited power and is completely good, then it has the power to extinguish evil and wants to extinguish it. But if it does not do it, its knowledge of evil is limited, so it is not all-knowing.

If a god is all-knowing and totally good, then it knows of all the evil that exists and wants to change it. But if it does not, it must be because it is not capable of changing it, so it is not omnipotent.

Epicurus and I concluded independently that the ideal life is to be surrounded by close friends and self-sufficient. That may be contradictory, but I ain’t a real philosopher so I don’t care.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2026 David Glenn Rinehart