Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak

Weak IX

26 February 2016

No. 2,151 (cartoon)

My spouse is an angel.

You’re lucky; mine’s still alive.

27 February 2016

Don at Ninety-Four

I called Don, my late father’s brother, on his ninety-fourth birthday today.

“What’s the secret of a long life?” I asked.

He paused to consider my query.

“Cheap booze,” he finally replied, “that’s the only thing I can think of.”

I don’t really want to live that long, but I think his strategy has some merit. After all, it’s worked for me so far.

28 February 2016

Kook, No Travel

I wasn’t surprised when Joey told me he may have found the ideal woman for him; that happens with some regularity. He saw that a beautiful Asian woman posted a photograph of herself on the Internet with a five-word caption. “I like kook and travel.”

“I wouldn’t get too excited,” I advised, “I don’t think she’s a good fit. After all, you don’t like to travel.”

“It could work,” Joey shrugged. “After all, I sound like who she’s looking for except for that.”

29 February 2016

The Secret of Finding Happiness

Katia constantly seeks happiness; who doesn’t? The difference between her searches and everyone else’s is that she usually finds what she seeks.

Happiness is her dog’s favorite toy, a chewed-up tennis ball caked with dried saliva. She explained that most people never find happiness because they’re looking for something undefinable—and thus unattainable—like true love (or at least the best sex ever), more money that they could ever spend, the absence of cares or concerns, et cetera. Conversely, she can usually find happiness in the narrow space between the stove and refrigerator.

Katia knows an undefined problem is insoluble, and by combining precise linguistics with expectation management she has found true happiness.

1 March 2016

Michelle’s Cave

Poor Michelle is predictably miserable; she suffers from a paralyzing combination of panophobia and panphobia. She’s too scared to live, not ready to die, so the best she can do is to merely exist in a state of constant anxiety and torment. Her parents raised her to loathe herself, and succeeded completely.

I’m most fortunate that I had the opposite experience. When I was a boy, every day I saw the picture of Theodore Roosevelt my mother had on the piano featuring a quotation. “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” Sounds a bit hokey, but, having read it every day for years on end, it stuck with me.

Henry Ford, author of The International Jew, The World’s Foremost Problem, was reprehensible in many ways, but he was nevertheless correct when he observed, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”

2 March 2016

The Museum of Spoiled Dairy Products

Andy is the curator of The Museum of Spoiled Dairy Products; he modestly refers to his collection as “my refrigerator.” Whenever I visit his studio, I always take a gander inside his icebox to see the latest exhibit.

I’m never disappointed. He has a collection of cheeses covered in an amazing palette of colors and textures, sour cream that’s congealed and dried into a block of blueish fat covered in intricate cracks punctuated with deep crevasses, and cartons of milk in various stages of gestation.

Over drinks this afternoon, Andy announced that he was taking down the current exhibition to start with a blank reefer canvas for a new show. I was sorry to see it go, especially since I knew today would be the last time I’d see my favorite piece, BEST BY 09 SEP, the quart of milk he acquired last August but never opened. The sides of the container were no longer planar; they bowed out hinting at the slow-motion biological agitation inside.

And that’s what makes BEST BY 09 SEP so wonderful. It doesn’t flaunt its beauty like the gaudy technicolor cheeses, it merely hints at what’s going on inside. That leaves everything to the imagination, my favorite flavor of art.

3 March 2016

Tragic Human Machines

I spend a lot of time at my computer; that’s how I write and make photographs, films [sic], music, cartoons, and more. I love distractions, and before I’m done typing these few paragraphs I’ll probably take a break to go to the market a few blocks away for some jalapeño peppers, charge my camera battery, look out my window to see if the the promised rains have arrived, or any other activity that will divert me from being an efficient automaton.

My lackadaisical approach works well for me as a human being. On the other end of the spectrum, some programmers attempt to emulate their computers by becoming meat appendages of their machines. In order to become one with their tools, they spend as little time away from their monitors and keyboards as possible. This involves drinking “meal replacement beverages” through a straw, leaving their hands free to type instead of grasping utensils or a sandwich. I’ve heard apocryphal stories—my favorite genre!—of programmers using catheters and diapers to eliminate wasteful toilet breaks.

And now there’s Joule, a silicone bracelet under development with a guarana extract patch that releases caffeine directly into the bloodstream. Combine that with a nicotine patch, and the dedicated programmer can eat, drink, caffeinate, smoke, urinate, and defecate without getting out of her or his chair.

These people get paid a large amount of money for what they do, but I can’t imagine any amount of money is adequate compensation for giving up one’s humanity. What makes their behavior so pathetic is that they’re writing in disappearing ink: no one will use the programs they’re creating in a few years.

I’ll stop there, fire up a couple of quadruple espressos for Andrea and me, then savor how very rich I am in the currencies that matter.

4 March 2016

My Mother at Eighty

My mother celebrated—or, more accurately, grudgingly acknowledged—her eightieth birthday today. Even though she’s in great health and looks remarkably young for her age, the numerals two and nine on her cake ain’t foolin’ nobody.

I can empathize with her to a degree; I’m having a hard time believing her chronological age as well. I subtracted 4 March 1936 from 4 March 2016 and came up with eighty, so I suppose it’s true.

Happy birthday, mom!

Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak
©2016 David Glenn Rinehart