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Weak XXIV

11 June 2022

No. 9,482 (cartoon)

I’m sorry.

I deserve more of an apology than that.

I’m sorry you’re so stupid.

12 June 2022

Dishwater Cocktails

I’ve been traveling a lot in recent years, and everywhere I go there’s an excellent, dependable dishwasher: me!

And then there are the crappy mechanized dishwashers too, unreliable machines that take no pride in their work. I was reminded of that sad state of hygienic affairs when I opened Brian’s dishwasher [sic] and found two small glasses of milky dishwater sitting upright with thin layers of sediment at the bottom.

I made a snapshot of the ersatz cocktails; the photo looked like bad student work. I kept the photographic tour de farce, though, since I’ve never seen a photograph of dishwater before and hope that I never do again.

13 June 2022

Come & See

I have a couple of friends who teach photography courses, so I photographed a vinyl banner on a lawn with “Come & See” and “Begin” printed on it for them to utilize in one of their slideshows. I’m sure they’ll never use it, but it was a good excuse to photograph the futuristic golden spires in the background. I’m grateful to Mormon architects for keeping Buck Rogers architectonics alive well into the twenty-first century.

14 June 2022

Listening to Photographs

Annette has a zillion phonograph records, give or take a few oodles. She describes herself as a record collector; that’s a smart way to avoid being clinically defined as a hoarder.

I was amused by one of the disks in her library, Ways of Seeing. Who would ever listen even once to an audio recording of members of “The Advisory Council” jabbering on about photography? Annette clearly hasn’t; she’s preserved the record’s delicate grooves by never unsealing the plastic wrapper.

I was inspired by the idea of listening to photographs and thought about making a series of prints, Looking at Music. I didn’t think about the idea for long before I realized I had already done that over fifteen years ago when I made, Nineteen Recordings I Enjoyed as a Teenager.

15 June 2022

Jean Cocteau’s Amazing Day

This is the fifteenth day of June, time to again observe Jean Cocteau’s Amazing Day. It’s a joyous celebration of his profound and timeless insight, “Stupidity is always amazing, no matter how used to it you become.”

I’ve been getting junk email ever since I figured out how to use the medium late in the previous millennium. (I’m reticent to call the dubious offers spam, since the cans of compressed pig byproducts of questionable provenance are less offensive than all the get-rich-quick scams and digital snake oil.)

Today’s mail holds out the promise of love and/or sex with buxom young Russian women in skimpy lingerie who really want to be with me, oh yes they do! All I have to do to meet “hot Russian babes” is to share my credit card number. It’s as if the scammers are unaware that the United States is at war—albeit a proxy war—with Russia. Amazing stupidity indeed!

I should clarify that I don’t think the grifters are stupid; they’re obviously running profitable cons or else the scams wouldn’t have been around for decades. No, idjits who’d certainly amaze Cocteau are the fat, balding Americans who are vain and imbecilic enough to believe that some beautiful young Russian is going to give up her modeling career to marry a dull, pudgy forklift driver in North Dakota.

Hope, scams, and stupidity spring eternal!

16 June 2022

The Land of Regrets

I hadn’t seen Imelda since December, so our lunch today was the first chance I had to ask her about a remark she made in passing months ago: “I live in the land of regrets.”

What regrets? I know her fairly well, and don’t recall her ever showing any remorse. She seems to enjoy an improbably charmed life as do I, so I was a bit uncomfortable asking her about life in the land of regrets.

Her reply did leave me quite disconcerted: she insisted that she never said that. When I got back to my studio, I searched my computer, which contains almost every email and text message I’ve ever received, and discovered that not only did she never use that phrase, no one ever wrote that, or any similar variation on “regret.” I can’t imagine ignoring a remark like that in a conversation, so I’m completely befuddled.

I haven’t been around anything that might cause hallucinations since the last millennium. Did I dream that? Conclude that from an entirely different remark?

Although that incident was relatively trivial, I wonder how much of what I “know” is completely untrue and never happened? There’s no dementia in my family, so I’m not concerned. On the other hand, it has to start with someone!

17 June 2022

The Snark Seems to Flow

“Don’t be such a Negative Nellie!” Nora chided me.

“Whoa, Nellie!” I replied. “No more Nellies!”

How’s that for witty banter?

I love my trusted friends for a jillion reasons, one of which is getting a good talkin’ to when I need one.

Nora was chastising me for the snide, cynical remarks I recently made about a couple of large museum shows. She cited a recent piece by Tom Sietsema, a name I’d never heard before. Of course I hadn’t; he’s a restaurant critic! Here’s an excerpt from his piece.

“Any critic will tell you the easiest reviews to write are rants and raves. [They] have a way of sending fingers to the keyboard, where the words seem to flow.”

That’s a great argument against being lazy and unimaginative. From now on I’m not going to trash anyone unless I’m too lethargic to say anything nice, unless it’s time to get on my high horse and go for a gallop, or unless it just feels good to take a cheap, easy, and nasty shot.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2022 David Glenn Rinehart