Stare.
 
2005 Notebook: Weak IV
 
  
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22 January 2005
No. 4,005 (cartoon)
I don’t want to live.

I don’t want to die.

One of us needs to change.

23 January 2005
Funky Porcini’s Amazing Guarantee
I’m staying at a friend’s house while she’s up to some sort of mischief in Japan. I came across a recording by Funky Porcini whilst investigating her extensive music collection, and that’s when I discovered Funky Porcini’s amazing guarantee for the volume, “Hed [sic] Phone Sex.”

“If you are not completely satisfied with this CD, listen to it again and then realize you have wasted your money.”

In the unlikely event I should ever decide to warranty my work, I shall use some variation of the Funky Porcini approach.

Scorchio!

24 January 2005
The Dreariest Day?
I like scientists; they keep coming up with projects so breathtakingly useless that we artists look like relatively productive members of society. Today’s example is, well, today.

Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University has come up with scientific proof that today is the most wretched and depressing day of the year. According to the news account I read, he reached this conclusion, “after using an elaborate formula expressing the delicate interplay of lousy weather, post-Christmas debt, time elapsed since yuletide indulgence, failed new year resolutions, motivation levels, and the desperate need to have something to look forward to.”

I think Arnall’s theory is complete rubbish. I’m glad the hollowdays are over, the weather in San Francisco is just fine, and just the thought of being far from grey, miserable Cardiff is a source of some satisfaction.

25 January 2005
The Last Laugh
Ritch knew he was going to die, so he left a fairly detailed will. He included precise instructions about where his ashes were to be scattered, something about an island beach below a garden looking across a strait to a monument of some sort, something like that.

After Ritch died, his partner spent days looking for the site without success. It wasn’t until weeks later that a friend correctly suggested that the site didn’t exist. Ritch had the last laugh; I have no idea where his partner scattered the remains.

Dead people always have the advantage.

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26 January 2005
The Distant Past
I don’t know why I find this bit of a priori knowledge surprising, but people were much younger in the past.

27 January 2005
The Obvious Solution
A dear friend of mine is in trouble. Big Trouble.

“If there was a way in, then there’s a way out,” was the best advice I could provide.

That turned out to be all she needed to hear. I’m always pleasantly surprised when my advice works; that’s rare.

28 January 2005
April’s Scars
I asked April about the scar on her shoulder; that’s when she corrected me.

“That’s not a scar,” she explained, “it’s a story.”

Of course. I forgot that I knew that. A few years ago, I thought about photographing friends’ scars, then abandoned the nascent project when I realized that I was pursuing a cliché.

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29 January 2005
Alien Communications
Eileen claims that “visitors from outer space” communicate with each other with paper towels.

“Look at the patterns!” she explained. “No one needs that level of detail for cleaning up a spill. I think the perforation marks are the key; have you ever noticed they’re all different?”

Eileen seemed relieved when I admitted that I’ve never paid any attention to paper towels.

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©2005 David Glenn Rinehart