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Weak VI

5 February 2022

No. 8,021 (cartoon)

You are incredibly beautiful.

Thank you.

I was talking to myself.

6 February 2022

Efficacious Delusion

R.E. Hawley wrote a nice little essay explaining why he likes his writing better when using the Garamond typeface. I especially appreciated, “... creative output of any kind depends upon a steady stream of tiny self-delusions—guardrails to keep yourself from veering into a pit of self-doubt and despair.”

I’m a proponent of self-delusion; deluding anyone else is just too much unnecessary work. All I have to do is to delude myself and I’m a success! I find myself once again thinking of Charles Horton Cooley, the hombre who rightly concluded, “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.”

7 February 2022

Your Mind and Your Health

Ai Weiwei gave an interview to promote his new show in Cambridge, England. The most interesting line from the piece was the lesson he learned from his father when his family was exiled to the China’s “Little Siberia” in the Gobi desert: “This time was a training in understanding that nothing belongs to you except your mind and your health.”

I appreciated hearing another artist talk about things that are so much more important than art; first time for everything!

8 February 2022

Talking Like an Oldetimer

Jerry’s daughter Megan told me her father “has a pow’ful hankerin’ to talk like an oldetimer.” I asked her how she dealt with such a ridiculous request, and she explained that she had a simple response that worked just fine.

“Shut yer crusty ol’ pie hole, y’durn fool!” she replied.

That proved to be plenty of talking like an oldetimer for both of them.

Well played!

9 February 2022

Hot Knickers

Suzette’s dealing with the privations of Coronarama by enjoying the simple things in life. For example, she said how amusing it was to pull a pair of underwear out of a spinning clothes drier and put them on while they were still hot.

“What’s funny about that?” I asked.

“Looking around the laundromat to see whose knickers I’m wearing,” she replied with a guffaw.

Ah yes, bad jokes are certainly one of life’s simple joys.

10 February 2022

One for Your Neck and One for Your Wrist

Leica Camera AG used to be a camera company before business school graduates took over and turned it into a jewelry enterprise selling twenty-thousand dollar cameras that serve as ostentatious necklaces for those living in the lapse of luxury. The problem with that business model is that only photographers who actually make photographs use more than one camera, and those people are no longer in the Leica demographic.

Is the solution to make better cameras? Of course not, didn’t you just read the first paragraph?

Nope, Leica now makes watches too, so you can now wear a twenty-thousand dollar Leica on your wrist as well! That leaves the other wrist available for a great watch connected to the Internet that keeps perfect time—including leap seconds—without winding.

11 February 2022

A Hill of Freeze-Dried Beans

Dastardly zounderkites have claimed that my work doesn’t doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Them’s fightin’ words, so I made A Hill of Freeze-Dried Beans, a stinging visual refutation of the philistines’ groundless and beanless assertion.

I believe I acquired the sealed number ten can of beans over forty years ago for a pointless trip to Utqiagvik née Barrow and beyond into the Beaufort Sea. They’ve been sitting around waiting to be served at a post-earthquake banquet until now, when I decided to replace them in the fallout shelter with freeze-dried sashimi and nachos for my emergency rations.

I photographed the beans before I composted them, and was surprised to see the relatively ancient beans look like cigarette butts; the resulting image almost looks like an overflowing ashtray.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart