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- 1 January 2003
- No. 6,634 (cartoon)
- What is this, some kind of joke?
Is that supposed to be clever? 
- 2 January 2003
- A Good Year for Procrastination
- This is turning out to be a good year, so far.
Yesterday, I considered making a photograph a day, as I did in 1999. Although I didn’t like the results of that experiment, I thought I might achieve a different result this year by using a digital camera. When I awoke this morning, though, I realized I didn’t make a photograph yesterday. As a result, it will be impossible for me to waste my time making, processing, and publishing a photograph a day. This year promises to be another good year for fruitful procrastination.
- 3 January 2003
- Working Odds
- I’m going to repeat a story that may not be factually correct in every detail, but that doesn’t matter.
I listened to an interview with the musician Bryan Ferry, in which he described how his father worked in the mines near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. His father took care of the horses that labored in the chilly, dank tunnels. Ferry saw how hard his father worked, and decided early in life that the artist’s life was the life for him. I don’t remember my father working very hard. I do recall, however, that his employment was joyless and sometimes stressful. And I clearly remember the many times he described how his father’s years of grueling factory work at the Timken ball bearing plant in Canton, Ohio, wore him down and killed him. Albert Rinehart died before my first birthday. Tom Stoppard knows how the world turns. “What is an artist? For every thousand people there’s nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who’s the artist.”
- 4 January 2003
- An Unpleasant, Alliterative Meal
- Last night, I dreamt I was eating a meal of orca and okra served on an ochre plate.
- 5 January 2003
- Entartons! Entartons!
- Ranger Dave and I were discussing pies and pieing. I couldn’t remember the slogan of the guy who pied the richest man in the world, so I decided to look it up in my notebook. I looked and I looked, and then I looked some more. After using every database query I could imagine, I finally concluded that I hadn’t saved the entry I clearly remember writing.
I quickly found the information I sought on the Internet. “Entartons! Entartons!”
(“Let’s pie! Let’s pie!”)
“Let’s pie! Let’s pie the polluting lolly!”
“Let’s pie! Let’s pie! Nincompoop guys!” Noël Godin, the fifty-two year old Belgian author of Cream and Punishment, wrote those stirring slogans. Godin takes a simple creme pie in the face much too seriously; his jingles are the highlight of his work.
- 6 January 2003
- Elementary Physics
- “Why did that happen?” I asked Debby.
“Why does anything happen?” Debby replied. “Nothing happens unless it involves money and/or sex and/or ego.”
- 7 January 2003
- Birthdays and Deathdays
- The first thing I remember about today’s birthday is dreaming about Jim Alley. Jim was sick, very sick; he was about to die. I was very upset as I steeled myself for what would certainly be my last visit with him. When I awoke in the early morning darkness, I remembered that Jim died a year and a half ago.
I suppose thinking about deathdays is an integral part of thinking about birthdays.
- 8 January 2003
- Facts and Truth
- Freddy was going on and on about some philosophical nonsense, something like, “small pebbles on the path are facts, but the boulder that blocks your way is truth.”
“Sounds like rubbish to me,” I opined. “Let me put it in practical terms,” Freddy continued. “The pores in your garments that allow you to perspire are facts, but the zipper that allows you to urinate without wetting yourself is truth.” “I’m afraid I’m not very interested in philosophy,” I admitted, “especially when it comes to irrelevancies like facts and truth.”
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©2003 David Glenn Rinehart
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