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Weak VII

12 February 2014

No. 2,609 (cartoon)

Are you bored with me?

Which one?

13 February 2014

Stupid Hat

Yesterday Pat McCrory, the governor of North Carolina, warned folks that atypically snowy weather was a-headin’ their way and gave them some sage guidance.

“Don’t put on your stupid hat,” he advised.

“When should wear one’s stupid hat?” asked a reporter from the New York Times.

“That’s a Yankee question, son,” the governor replied. “That’s what you’d wear to your Aggies, Blue Devils, and Tar Heels games, your NASCAR races, hunting and fishing ...”

The governor paused, then concluded that just about anytime except a blizzard was a fine occasion for a proud North Carolinian to wear her or his stupid hat.

14 February 2014

Lupercalia!

Ah, Valentine’s Day, a celebration of insipid greeting cards, overpriced candy and flowers, and, above all, hopelessness.

Feh.

It wasn’t always this way.

Valentine’s Day is a perverse distortion of the three-day Roman holiday of Lupercalia. In the good old days, men sacrificed a dog and a goat, then ran around as naked as the day they were born whapping eager young women with the dead animals’ hides as part of a fertility rite. (Why anyone would want to make babies remains an eternal mystery.)

Pope Gelasius I combined St. Valentine’s Day with Lupercalia to appropriate the pleased pagans’ bonhomie. I’m not really sure about this, but I think that Catholics probably invented marketing.

Folks still celebrate Lupercalia here in Sans Frisco, but that’s not of interest to me since I don’t endorse killing goats or dogs (even the ones that deserve it), and human reproduction is clearly a bad idea, even though that’s why I’m here.

15 February 2014

Discovery and Fabrication

I’m looking at oodles and oodles of rubber bands and thinking about the difference between discovery and fabrication. The hardest part of art is discovery; that takes almost forever. At least, that’s the way it usually feels.

It took me decades to notice that rubber bands are visually interesting. At the moment that’s just an idea, arguably the purest form of conceptual art. I’m not that pure, however, so it’s time for fabrication. In this case, that means going through the tedious process of making monotonous photographs. Or is it the monotonous process of making tedious photographs?

There’s only one way to find out. As Chuck Close wisely observed, “Inspiration is for amateurs.”

16 February 2014

Oblivion Pills

Katia was depressed, so her lazy and/or incompetent psychiatrist gave her a bunch of pills. I don’t like to be judgmental, but I’m horrified by the prospect of needing to take drugs daily to feel well, especially if “feeling well” means having my feelings masked.

I was initially relieved when Katia told me she disliked the pills. She went on to clarify that she didn’t have a problem with the medication, she just wished the pills were very tiny so that she could swallow them by the handful.

I’ve learned to be concerned—but not alarmed—by suicidal remarks. All of my friends who said they were considering killing themselves are still alive, and all my friends who committed suicide didn’t even hint at it before they died.

17 February 2014

No Lesbians?!

When it comes to sexuality and most other things as well, I’m not very complicated. My late friend Paul Raedeke accurately described me as, “hopelessly hetero.”

Bureaucrats at Fecesbook—the antisocial notworking Internet site—deal with people who have a more nuanced sexuality. As a result, they came up with dozens of other categories, including agender, androgyne, androgynous, bigender, cis, cisgender, cis female, cis male, cis man, cis woman, cisgender female, cisgender male, cisgender man, cisgender woman, female to male, gender fluid, gender nonconforming, gender questioning, gender variant, genderqueer, intersex, male to female, neither, neutrois, non-binary, other, pangender, trans, trans female, trans male, trans man, trans person, trans woman, transfeminine, transgender, transgender female, transgender male, transgender man, transgender person, transgender woman, transmasculine, transsexual, transsexual female, transsexual male, transsexual man, transsexual person, transsexual woman, and two-spirit.

What, no lesbians?!

It’s called Fecesbook for a reason.

18 February 2014

Forty-Nine No. Sixteen Rubber Bands

After lots of procrastination, I finally photographed Forty-Nine No. Sixteen Rubber Bands. For those who aren’t au fait with rubber bands, a number sixteen rubber band sixty-five millimeters long.

19 February 2014

What Drought?

I ended my phone conversation with Michelle by telling her I was going to enjoy a long bike ride on a predictably lovely day. She feigned surprise that I didn’t preface my remark about the weather with a pro forma, “Although it’s too bad about the drought ...”

I told her that not only was I not going to pretend to be concerned about the lack of rain, I was going to take a very long shower when I returned. As long as there’s enough water for unsustainable development and enough water to grow rice—the most water-intensive crop—in California’s arid regions, there’s no water shortage.

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©2014 David Glenn Rinehart