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Weak XXXVII

10 September 2026

No. 1,290 (cartoon)

The vet euthanized my dog yesterday.

What was wrong?

Putting it out of my misery was the only humane thing to do.

11 September 2026

Skydiving Without a Parachute

Twenty-five years ago today, well, you know at least one thing that happened when some guy atop the World Trade Center had to choose between being cremated alive or skydiving. (You don’t need a parachute to go skydiving; you only need a parachute to go skydiving twice.)

The photograph of him in midair, seconds from death, is one of those ineradicable images I’ll never unsee.

It’s more than macabre interest; it’s one of those (probably) unanswerable either/or questions, one that recently came up regarding programming a self-driving car. Your car—not you—is driving down a steep, narrow mountain road when it comes around a sharp blind curve where a gaggle of children is in the middle of the road. You don’t have to decide whether to plow through the kids or make a suicidal turn off the cliff; the car will make that choice for you.

Surprise!

I wonder if my fascination with improbably horrific scenarios is yet another way to avoid thinking about the mundane decisions I should have made days ago. I’m not going to admit guilt, but it really is time to wash the dishes from last night’s dinner party.

12 September 2026

More Spider Sex and Train Wrecks

I insincerely apologize for including “Train Wrecks” in the slug; I have nothing new to say about Sylvestre Matuschka. And with that, it’s on to the spider sex.

Here’s my favorite headline d’jour:

Male redback spiders invite cannibalism through a “self-sacrificial somersault” during sex—but why?

I think that begs the larger question of why anyone does a self-sacrificial somersault during sex. (I briefly considered it when I was a teenager, but it seemed like too much work even way back then.) And that impetrates the Brobdingnagianer question: why does anyone have sex?

Philip Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, claimed that he never received a convincing rejoinder to his apocryphal proposition: “Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.”

13 September 2026

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Every morning I put my coffee grounds in a flimsy, green, biodegradable compost bag that the binmen collect weekly along with the trash and recycling. Very responsible, no?

No.

I just read that the expensive compostable sacks are considered “contaminants” because they glob up the sorting machines, so they’re removed and shipped to the landfill. The reason that this is news to me is that the composting company concluded that it’s more economical not to publicize that the expensive biodegradable bags are just trash and end up in the same hole as the unrecyclable “recyclable” plastics, since almost no one would compost food waste if it involved sloppy buckets of decomposing scraps.

Bear with me/beer with me for a moment ...

Workers completed the O’Shaughnessy Dam in 1923 to create the Hetch Hetchy reservoir that provides San Francisco’s wonderful tapwater. Too bad about the canyon we lost.

I think we should do the same thing with the Grand Canyon. Let’s get rid of the sham recycling and composting charades, dump all of our unsorted waste in there, then pave it over. After that, we’ll still have at least a couple of oceans to fill.

As for me, I’m just going to throw my apple cores out the window for critters unknown to eat.

14 September 2026

Carnivorous Photographers

Photography has always been a challenging, if not impossible, medium for vegetarians and vegans. As I mentioned last month, albumen prints were popular until the 1900s, when they were supplanted by silver nitrate suspended in gelatin from animals.

I don’t care about anyone else’s diet, but I used to enjoy responding to self-righteous sermons from proselytizing animal rights crusaders by pointing out that there wasn’t any vegetarian film. I thought those meanspirited little asides were behind me after everyone digitized themselves, but once again I failed to consider Kids These Days.

I used to say that I had no idea why anyone would use film and a darkroom in 2026, but now I may. Could it be that silver-gelatin photographic processes have a subliminal carnivorous appeal?

15 September 2026

The Oldest Joke in the Book

I am frequently accused of telling “one of the oldest jokes in the book,” but those allegations are without merit: I’m innocent as usual.

A melody of harpists.

That’s the oldest joke in the book, from one of the oldest volumes in the world, The Boke of Saint Albans, published in 1486. What’s so funny about “A melody of harpists” is that Dame Juliana Berners just concocted that and over a hundred other fictitious group names, e.g., an unkindness of ravens. In contemporary English, she was talking bollocks. A few of them, like “a pride of lions,” have made their way into regular use, but “a melody of harpists” only exists as one of the oldest jokes in the book.

So much for the book, but what’s the oldest joke in the world? That’s obvious: it’s the first thing anyone said after humans discovered flatulence.

16 September 2026

Not Enough Stomachs

I accepted M’s invitation to lunch at her place today with the slightest hesitation; I have a problem with her cooking. The issue isn’t that she’s an unremarkable cook, just the opposite. She’s supersuperlative in the kitchen, and every bite of every one of her dishes tastes as if an angel defecated on my tongue.

I always leave gastronomically satiated but biologically frustrated. I wish I had four stomachs like a cow, so I could save three great meals for later.

17 September 2026

Jane’s Album Cover

After volunteering to photograph Jane for her new album cover, I explained that this wasn’t our project; it was her creation and I was just her pro bono photo photographer. Having dealt with too many amateur bonos over the decades, she cheerfully agreed.

I liked the arrangement too; it was a relief to be her humble servant. (I’ve got a lot to be humble about.) I let the camera do most of the thinking. She was satisfied with the results and so was I, especially since I had the pleasure of working with a brilliant, charming musician, and didn’t suffer from any of the headaches that are the labor pains of making my own alleged art.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2026 David Glenn Rinehart