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24 December 2021

No. 681 (cartoon)

How can you just sit there and watch me suffer?

I got tired of standing.

25 December 2021

Unattractive and Unpopular Men

The Revolutionary Alliance of Unpopular Men has taken to the streets of Tokyo to “crush” Christmas and other romantic holidays. The movement, such as it is, really hasn’t caught on. Photos show the same dozen guys with bullhorns and signs year after year.

I may be mistaken—first time for everything!—but I believe the organization used to be called The Revolutionary Alliance of Men Whom Women Find Unattractive when I wrote about them five years ago. It could be the same Japanese words translated different ways, or perhaps the unattractive men decided not to call attention to that and instead describe themselves as simply unpopular.

In any case, I applaud their quixotic campaign. Everyone complains about this wretched holiday, but at least they’re trying to do something about it.

26 December 2021

The Unnamed Desert

Stephano came over to my studio to ignore Christmas with me yesterday. I knew exactly what he’d say when he walked in the door, and he did.

“Does this desert have a name?” he chuckled.

I may have thought of that as a novel way to ask for a drink the first time he said that, but that was many years ago. Now it’s just mildly annoying. Shticks can be that way.

27 December 2021

Licking the Television Habit

Do you really love your television? Enough to lick it?

Homei Miyashita, a Japanese professor, is betting that you do. He demonstrated his contraption that sprays a combination of ten different flavors on a television screen covered in plastic. The viewer then licks the television for, “a multisensory viewing experience.”

He may have got the idea from my friend Ted Nelson, who, way back in the eighties, jokingly proposed lickable screens when his colleagues were trying to make email more like postal mail.

People have been isolating with their televisions more than ever after the arrival of Coronarama, so developing a more intimate relationship with their glowing screens strikes me as quite logical.

I haven’t owned a television in decades, and I’m certainly not going to get one to lick. Still, I think it’s a great idea. I have no interest in watching television, but I would love to see people licking their televisions; that has to be better than anything being broadcast these days.

28 December 2021

Wayne Thiebaud

Wayne Thiebaud lived a hundred and one years before his time ran out on Xmas, just like W. C. Fields and James Brown. Don’t let anyone tell you different and say it loud: Christmas kills.

He left too late to make the Those We Lost in 2021 list, and a year from now everyone will have forgotten: that’s the way death and history work.

His great paintings were unmistakably notable, but he wasn’t that quotable. I poked around the Internet and only found a couple quotes, including this one.

“Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus.”

Gosh, I wish I’d known that a long time ago. I steal most of my art from ne’er-do-wells in insalubrious places. It’s never too late to change (until it is), so if you too want to follow in Thiebaud’s footsteps and raid Mount Olympus here are the coordinates:

40º04'59.93" N 22º20'59.78" E

I think the lack of clever lines is a great de facto obituary: Thiebaud wasn’t a pundit, he was a painter.

29 December 2021

Time for Lunch with Susanne

Susanne is my favorite first-grade teacher, and not just because she’s the only one I’ve ever met since I was in first grade.

She takes a very professional approach, and never shows up in pajamas as do some of her colleagues. If a kid ever calls her by her first name, she politely informs the student that he—and it’s always a boy—can address her that way when he’s old enough to buy her a glass of wine.

And that brings me to my confession.

Over lunch a few days ago, I admitted that I was a student of hers a few years ago, and told my parents what a huge crush I had on her. My mother, who works on continuum research at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, arranged to have me sent back in time fifty years and grow up under an assumed identity. As a result, I was able to pour her a glass of wine with her salmon.

I waited for her shocked reaction, but I was the one who was astonished: she said “my little trick” not all that unusual with first-grade teachers. She added that she always knew I was trouble.

We went on to enjoy the good kind of trouble.

30 December 2021

Beyond Golden Brown

I’m looking at a recipe that concludes, “bake until golden brown.” I’ll stop there, since anyone who knows me knows I’ve never read a recipe in my life. In fact, I’m too lazy to cook tonight so I’m heating some frozen spanakopita in the oven, “until golden brown.”

Why do all food writers always say, “golden brown?” Haven’t any of them seen a color chart? No thesaurus? Maybe the spanakopita would taste better if it was baked to harvest gold brown? Or maybe bronze brown, copper brown, goldenrod brown, sandy brown, sienna brown, tan brown, taupe brown, et cetera?

I suppose it doesn’t matter for a peasant like me. I wasn’t paying attention and left the triangular pies in the oven until they were charcoal brown, mostly charcoal. I scraped off the burnt layers before washing down the scalding hot innards with glasses of icy retsina.

As a public service, I’m putting the recipe I just invented in the public domain, bone appetite!

31 December 2021

My New Year’s Resolution

Benedict asked me if I’d made any new year’s resolutions.

“I resolved not to make major decisions about my life based on random calendar dates,” I replied.

“Sounds wise to me!” he replied.

It certainly is wise; I’ve never gone wrong by quoting Dilbert.

And with that, time to have a few drinks with friends to prepare for 2022, a third year of Coronarama.

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©2021 David Glenn Rinehart