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Weak XXII

28 May 2010

No. 6,867 (cartoon)

I’m not your three.

I’m not your seven.

It all adds up.

29 May 2010

Ménage à Cat

Imelda was admiring Nora’s kitty, and wondered aloud, “If I kiss the cat, maybe it will become a prince.”

“Give it a try,” Nora suggested. “If you’re really lucky, maybe you’ll become a cat.”

30 May 2010

Two Decades Without a Car

Twenty years ago today or so, I was driving my car down the ramp leading from the Golden Gate Bridge, when: I hit an oil slick and went out of control. I smashed into one oncoming car, spun around, and got slammed by another one. Final score: three automobiles damaged beyond repair, and no one hurt.

I’ve always been lucky. And lazy, too. I’ll probably get another car soon, but haven’t gotten around to it just yet.

Don’t let anyone tell you different: procrastination pays.

31 May 2010

Honey Renders a Precision Instrument Inoperative

Years ago, Karen gave me her old camera for the piece I’ve wanted to do since at least the last millennium, Honey Renders Precision Instruments Inoperative. Some time later, I brought an old rotary-dial phone back to the studio. And that was as far as I got in my collection of expendable precision technology.

I decided I was too slothful to ever assemble even a modest inventory of things to immobilize with honey, so I decided to photograph just the camera. It didn’t go very well; I couldn’t disassemble much of the body without a hammer, so I didn’t have much real estate to photograph. And even with globs of honey, it was barely visible. I never have been good at photographing transparent fluids.

On a positive note, I was amused to finally notice the camera’s brand name after I made the last photograph. It’s a Honeywell Pentax; I suppose it’s now a Honeysick Pentax.

Honey Renders a Precision Instrument Inoperative feels like a sketch for the piece I wanted to do, but never will.

1 June 2010

A Secret Kept!

“Can you keep a secret?” Iris asked.

“Of course,” I lied.

“So can I,” she replied.

And that concludes today’s (lack of) gossip, in all its rich juiciness.

2 June 2010

Drinking Uruguayan Wine

I’m drinking a glass of Uruguayan wine. I’m surprised such a thing exists: didn’t some large country buy Uruguay long ago? Or was it absorbed in a massive South American merger or acquisition?

Apparently not. I just checked, and it’s still there.

It’s a curious county, in that the president doesn’t seem to be very astute at self enrichment, let alone kleptoparasitism. Jose Mujica ostensibly has no bank accounts; he formally stated his net worth as a 1987 Volkswagen worth less than a couple of thousand dollars.

I’m skeptical. If that’s really all he owns, what does he wear? Or maybe he drives around nude in his car. Who knows what goes on in Uruguay? Who even knew that the country still exists?

3 June 2010

Pirkle in a Bag

When I visited an anonymous friend at his studio last month, I spotted a plastic bag labeled “Pirkle” on his bookshelf.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Pirkle,” he replied.

He went on to explain that he was one of a number of people who’d taken some of his late friend Pirkle’s cremated ashes to be scattered “in his favorite haunts.”

I liked the way he used the word “haunt” as the destination for his late friend’s remains, without a trace of humor or irony.

4 June 2010

That’s English!

I mispell words all the time; such mistakes are an integral part of the English language. I’ve learned to love my typos, since I can’t seem to eradicate the pesky buggers.

Who can remember all the grammatical rules, let alone the spelling formulae? I’m thinking of, “i before e, except after c, e.g., beige, cleidoic, codeine, conscience, deify, deity, deign, dreidel, eider, eight, either, feign, feint, feisty, foreign, forfeit, freight, gleization, gneiss, greige, greisen, heifer, heigh-ho, height, heinous, heir, heist, leitmotiv, neigh, neighbor, neither, peignoir, prescient, rein, science, seiche, seidel, seine, seismic, seize, sheik, society, sovereign, surfeit, teiid, veil, vein, weight, weir, and weird.”

Weird indeed. That’s English!

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©2010 David Glenn Rinehart