| | - 2 April 1997
- Paula Sharp (binhexed)
- It's been decades since I've seen Paula. I'm not really sure I remember what she looks like; I don't think I ever photographed her. I ran across a picture of her, but, predictably, it doesn't look like I remember her.
(This piece is also available in PDF format where it reads better; the usual technical caveats apply.)  - 3 April 1997
- The Seventh Law of Communication
- The better you have to say the less good you got to say it. We are all too hoo-hoo!
- 4 April 1997
- Great British Potatoes
- Great British potatoes are only part of great British potatoes. The other half--sometimes more--is fat. Great British potatoes without oil aren't great British potatoes at all.
- 5 April 1997
- Party Out of Control
- My party's gotten way out of control. That's happened before, of course, but this time people are drinking my photo chemicals out of the refrigerator. That's a new twist.
Alex is drinking a bottle of my homemade Dr. Beer's developer--metol, sodium sulfite (dessicated), sodium carbonate (monohydrated), potassium bromide, and hydroquinone--even though there's plenty of real beer still left. (I once drank some Dr. Beer's by mistake from a resealable beer bottle; it tasted horrible.) Sue's drinking a vodka/rapid fix cocktail, and Juliette has sprinkled twenty-eight percent acetic acid on her tomato salad. Brett is drunkenly boasting that selenium toner and whiskey will make him archival, but I doubt it. This is crazy! Sam told me not to worry. "Just have another espresso and relax; everyone's having a great time!" More coffee at this point will only make it harder to wake up. - 6 April 1997
- Thousand Day Thousand Year Debate
- It's a thousand days until the year 2000. That much is certain. What's not so clear is when the next millennium begins: is it 2000 or 2001? I'm sure I'm going to hear endless semantic, astronomical and religious debates during the next 1,000 (or is it 1,366?) days. I'm approaching the ordeal stoically. After all, it will probably take me that long to learn to spell millennium.
- 7 April 1997
- Freudian Field Day
- Someone in the library had left a copy of the book 20th Century Masters of Erotic Art on the table. I thought it very likely that a book with a silly title would probably have silly contents ... and I was right. There are too many examples to cite, but I don't have to. One hilarious line towered above the rest:
"Few artists in any country have been able to paint eroticism with the depth of Vienna's Dr. Ernst Fuchs."
- I think poor Dr. Fuchs and his pathetic painting would be a Freudian psychiatrist's field day.
- 8 April 1997
- Sound Financial Advice
- I rarely read the newspaper's finance pages. This may be because I don't have enough money to worry about, or, conversely, I may not have enough money to worry about because I never seek any good financial advice. I never spend much time on these chicken and egg questions. (Or, as a Russian friend translated, "a sturgeon and caviar question.")
I inadvertently ran across the sort of thing I expect fills the financial section of newspapers and magazines. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Abdulaziz Al Saud advised "I've got one rule of thumb: anything that's worth $4 billion and costs $1 billion--buy it!" Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Abdulaziz Al Saud started out with just $15,000 and now he's as rich as, well, as rich as a Saudi Prince, so I guess he knows what he's talking about. I can see I've been going about it all wrong. For decades I've been looking in pawn shop windows for underpriced Leicas (I only found one), when I should have been looking for anything priced at a billion dollars that was really worth four billion dollars. Regardless of the financial consequences, any advice that compels me to broaden my horizons is good advice.
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©1997 David Glenn Rinehart
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