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Weak XXXI

30 July 2016

No. 6,033 (cartoon)

I’m stuck in traffic.

You are traffic.

31 July 2016

Relentless Haunting Things

Selena, who has an unfortunate flair for the ridiculously dramatic, just told me, “Depression and hopelessness are relentlessly haunting me, like two relentless haunting things.”

That proved to be the wrong thing to say. Even though I pride myself on being a supportive friend, I was laughing too hard to maintain the appropriate appearance of somber concern.

1 August 2016

As High as an Elephant

Fentanyl? Feh; that was last season’s high. Prince Rogers Nelson has been dead for months, and thus out of fashion. Carfentanil is the current opiate of choice, and why not? It’s a hundred times stronger than old-fashioned fentanyl, which is a hundred times more powerful than heroin. Ask any elephant or zoo veterinarian: that shite is the real phazzits!

John Bonham choking to death on his own vomit after drinking over a liter of vodka seems almost quaint. (As an aside, I suppose that’s marginally better than choking to death on someone else’s vomit.) That’s the great thing about killing yourself with today’s popular intoxicant: you don’t live long enough to see it go out of fashion.

2 August 2016

He Didn’t Want No Retro Spective

The de Young Museum advertised free admission today, so I decided to have a look at the Ed Rusha exhibit. When I got there, the attendant asked me for seven dollars to get it. When I pointed out that today was supposed to be a free admission day, she said—and I’m paraphrasing freely—that only the usual crap was free and that I’d have to pay to see the rather good Rusha show another institution organized.

I wasn’t particularly disappointed since I expect disappointment from the incestuous administraitors who pay their cronies hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also, I think missing the show was appropriate in the context of Rusha’s 1979 piece, I Dont Want No Retro Spective.

3 August 2016

Editing Photographs

I was surprised to read that today is the twelfth anniversary of Henri Cartier-Besson’s death. My, how time flies when you’re dead. I also discovered something about his practice that I didn’t know: he looked at his contact sheets upside down in order to judge the composition removed from the context of the narrative.

This may or not be something of a corollary, but I recall Garry Winogrand waited a couple of years to develop his film so he wouldn’t be emotionally connected to the images. He made a quarter million photographs that he never saw before he died in 1984.

All that editing seems like much too much work. I find it easier to work slowly with a tripod; that allows be to do my editing before I make my single exposure.

4 August 2016

Anonymous Naval Hero

A worker fell down a hole in the U.S. Navy Ship Guadalupe today. The ship was in dry dock, so San Francisco firefighters rescued the man.

He obviously deserves a beer and a medal, but reporters from the local publication who hallucinate that they’re journalists didn’t bother to publish his name. Had the anonymous laborer not discovered the huge puncture, the ship would have certainly sunk after it returned to sea.

5 August 2016

The Winter Summer Olympics Scam

The alleged summer Olympics opened today in Rio de Janeiro. What a scam; it’s winter in Brazil! But perhaps it’s all for the best; the feces the rowers have to endure won’t be quite so hot and steamy.

6 August 2016

Bitter Melon Torture

A few months ago I discovered the first food I found to be inedible, bitter melon. The staff of the Chinese restaurant that served the wretched slime implied I was an ignorant person of noncolor—or honky if you will, or even if you won’t— for not enjoying bitter melon, “the Chinese superfood.”

I’m not sure if I’ve ever had occasion to say this before, but maybe I wasn’t that stupid after all. I read that sadistic managers at the Leshang Decorations Corporation in Chongqing, China, torture underperforming employees by forcing them to eat raw bitter melon on stage in front of their coworkers. (The vile gourd apparently tastes even worse before it’s cooked.) If one of the workers literally can’t swallow the punishment and spits some bitter melon out, the overseers force them to eat even more.

I’ve never seen bitter melon on a Chinese restaurant’s menu. If it’s ever foisted on me again, I’ll offer to bet the server double or nothing on the tip that s/he won’t eat the vile vegetable while I watch. Even if I lose the bet, I’ll still leave with a clean plate.

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©2016 David Glenn Rinehart