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Weak XXXII

7 August 2026

No. 2,422 (cartoon)

This is the first day of the rest of my life.

You’ve never been closer to death than you are now.

8 August 2026

Overflowing with Hyperbole

I was tempted to get the relatively new Nikon Plena lens until I read the disturbing critical reviews. One commentator raved that it was “overflowing with imagination,” and another critic described it as “overflowing with radiance.”

Pass.

No matter how stellar the Nikkor’s optics are, the lens is clearly too messy for practical use.

9 August 2026

Dull, Boring, and Bland Day

Today is Bland, Boring, and Dull Day, an international celebration of all things uninteresting, between the sister cities of Bland, Australia; Boring, Oregon; and Dull, Scotland.

That got me to wondering, it did, whether Flint, Michigan, has any sister cities, so I asked my brother who lives there. He said Flint has a dozen such reciprocal relationships, and sent me a list.

Flint, Georgia
Flint, Idaho
Flint, Illinois
Flint, Indiana
Flint, Kentucky
Flint, Maryland
Flint, New York
Flint, Ohio
Flint, Oklahoma
Flint, Texas
Flint, Washington
Flint, West Virginia

I was impressed; sister cities don’t get more duller, boringer, and blander than that!

10 August 2026

An Ounce of Perception

I enjoy coasting through my simple days with fuzzy thinking. (And that’s on a good day.) And so, I tip my dunce hat to Bret Stephens; he succinctly described something I’ve been unable to convey, in large part because I never tried.

What, uniquely, does writing do? It compels thought. It compels thinking in ways that silent contemplation or spoken language rarely can. It compels us to subject our thinking to the effort of articulation, the rigor of grammar, the tests of intelligibility and coherence, the inspection of others. In doing so, it also enjoins us to be clear, logical, accurate—and accountable.

I’m not convinced that writing makes my thinking clear, logical, and accurate. And thanks to my artistic license, I’m certainly not accountable. And “the rigor of grammar?” That’s a hoot!

The reason I write is to give the meat between my ears enough exercise to delay the inevitable decrapitute. Or, as Stephens puts it, I’m avoiding “an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs.”

Or, as I put it when I was a wee lad in my twenties, “An ounce of perception is worth a pound of obscure.” Nowadays, though, I enjoy a balanced diet that includes both.

Did I make everything entirely clear? I should hope not ...

11 August 2026

Albumen Flower

I was making egg salad for my mother, and one of the chicken fetuses broke out of its shell after being dropped into boiling water.

It didn’t have a chance.

I photographed the aftermath of the futile escape to make Albumen Flower. I’m not sure if this might be considered to be an albumen print, since it contains no chicken molecules and it may never be a print.

Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard invented real albumen prints around 1850, and they were the most common photographic process until the end of the century. Also ...

Nevermind; that’s quite enough history for one day.

12 August 2026

Total Solar Eclipse

People are flocking, jetting, and doing whatever it takes to get to Greenland, Iceland, and Spain to experience a total solar eclipse for a few minutes. Dave Barry described the occurrence brilliantly a couple years ago, so I’m not even going to try.

[A total eclipse is] a rare celestial occurrence in which the earth, sun and moon align in such a way as to cause a large number of people to deliberately travel to Indianapolis. Huge crowds in the path of the totality watch excitedly as the sky gradually turns completely dark—a spectacular sight that most people will never witness again in their lifetimes, unless they’re still around at sunset.

Except for a memorable July week spent on the Lofoten Islands above the Arctic Circle in 1993, I’ve experienced a total solar eclipse that lasts for hours, not minutes, every day of my life without trying.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2026 David Glenn Rinehart