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Weak XVII

24 April 2014

No. 6,270 (cartoon)

Looks like it’s either sink or drown.

It’s good to have options.

25 April 2014

Fingers and Teeth

Someone needs to proofread the Internet; it’s full of grammatical, typographic, and factual errors. For example, here’s a statement that appears on myriad sites: “The tooth is the only part of the human body that can’t repair itself.”

What hooey and phooey! Forty-some years ago I lost most of my right index finger in a little accident. It didn’t repair itself, which proves that fingers and teeth are the only parts of the human body that can’t repair themselves.

The Internet needs more scientifically astute people like me editing and correcting this dross.

26 April 2014

Looking a Corpse in the Eye

What happens to you when you drown? You die, of course, but then what? Divers exploring a sunken Korean ferry are finding out.

The MV Sewol sank ten days ago with hundreds of teenagers aboard. Divers have been recovering the over three hundred entombed bodies ever since; here’s how it works. The ferry is completely submerged upside down; divers have to smash windows to get inside. The water is murky with sediment; there’s less than half a meter of visibility, even with virtually useless flashlights. The divers “see” with their hands; that’s how they discover some of the victims.

The corpses are floating because of life [sic] jackets or decomposition. The expressions on their faces provide a graphic record of their last moments. Some bodies are locked in a final embrace. The divers guide the decomposing bodies through an open window and let them float to the surface for recovery. At the current rate, they’ll be doing this for weeks.

For someone with a fascination with the macabre, it doesn’t get much better—or worse?—than this.

27 April 2014

How to Make Bad Art

There are all sorts of cockamamie schemes and ludicrous formulae for making good art, none of which merit a mention. Instead, I’m going to share a foolproof system for making bad art.

First, familiarize yourself with critically acclaimed great art. Next, make something that looks almost exactly like it.

And that’s it: bad art, guaranteed!

28 April 2014

Isolation Chamber

I want to a boring event at the opera house tonight. I sat in a dimly lit balcony with a pen and paper thinking about anything and everything except the event I was ostensibly there to see. I didn’t have any electronic devices with me, so I was effectively in a comfortable isolation chamber.

It was great!

With no Internet or audio distractions, all I could do was let my mind wander. I walked away with dozens of notes that I ignored once I returned to all the pleasant diversions in my studio.

29 April 2014

The Los Angeles Times of Wrath

I have a very short attention span. I don’t think that’s a problem; I think it’s the human condition. That’s why I enjoy a headline that’s so thorough and complete that the accompanying story is redundant.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times featured just such a headline: Why celebrate The Grapes of Wrath? It’s bad fiction and bad history.

What a relief! I thought that The Grapes of Wrath was great literature with which I should be familiar. I may have read it, but I can’t remember a word of it. (Well, maybe one word: Okie.) I’m glad that the Los Angeles Times reviewer pronounced The Grapes of Wrath as forgettable; now I’m relieved that I forgot it.

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©2014 David Glenn Rinehart