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Weak XXVIII

9 July 2016

No. 1,863 (cartoon)

I still feel your love.

That’s not love, it’s herpes.

10 July 2016

First Unitarian Church of Kensingtoned

Yesterday was another remembrance gathering for one of four friends to die within the space of a couple of months. Dozens and dozens of people from Nancy’s extended family gathered with lots of food and wine—both of which she would have appreciated—at the Unitarian church in Kensington. Church leaders erroneously claim that they’re based in Berkeley. I know very little about organized religion, but I’d heard Unitarians were supposed to be liberal, so I have no idea why the acronym for First Unitarian Church of Kensington lead them to fib about their geographic location.

Nancy had a wonderful sense of humor, and would have liked that. I wish she knew that I grabbed a couple of leftover bottles of wine to share with a mutual friend of hers when she gets back from Italy. Despite the cancer that killed her, she was always looked forward to the future until there was none.

11 July 2016

Pluto, the Icy Dwarf

I don’t follow astronomy, but I do recall that the people who decide such things declared that Pluto isn’t really a planet. It wasn’t until today that I learned that it’s one of hundreds of icy dwarfs.

Pluto, the ruler of the underworld, is an icy dwarf. Imagine that!

Hades is supposed to be hot as hell, so I suppose having an icy dwarf run the place makes a certain amount of sense, or at least as much as any other fairy tale. In any case, Pluto is a much more interesting character than Planet RR245—the icy dwarf in today’s news—that takes seven hundred of our years to orbit the sun.

And that’s more than enough said about icy dwarves for this lifetime.

12 July 2016

Not Reaching Out

Sally asked if she could invite Julian to come with her to my studio this afternoon. After I reminded her that any friend of hers is welcome here, she said she would “reach out” to him.

There are many perfectly accurate words to describe contacting someone, including “contact.” You might also use a number of other short verbs, such as call, email, text, fax, or even telex. I have no idea why young people use this ridiculous expression of “reaching out” to someone.

If someone is alone, desperate, and considering suicide, then I would certainly reach out to that person. If I lose my balance and am about to fall over, I’ll reach out to someone. Otherwise, I’ll avoid such a trendy phrase that I hope can’t last that long (even though I really should know better).

I’m quite enjoying this little semantic hissy fit; the path to being a curmudgeon is a lovely one indeed!

13 July 2016

Seventy-Five Hundred Days Later

My, how time flies when I’m having fun. I started making these daily posts at the end of 1995, and seventy-five hundred days later this is my seventy-five hundredth daily entry. It’s not much of a coincidence when one thinks about it, or even when one doesn’t.

It wasn’t really all that hard; Kurt Vonnegut understood how writing works.

Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale’s department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.

Seventy-five hundred days really isn’t that big of a number even though that’s over a third of my life to date. I won’t hit five figures until my ten-thousandth entry on 18 May 2023. And that’s if I’m still alive and writing then, one of many ifs I don’t waste time thinking about.

14 July 2016

Enervated Dada

A century ago today Hugo Ball issued a manifesto to “get rid of everything that smacks of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanised, enervated.” That was Dada, and that was a long time ago.

Dada’s was long gone for many, many decades before I made my 1994 piece, Dada Dead. That hasn’t stopped a passel of opportunistic arts administrators from trying to squeeze lots of money from Dada’s desiccated corpse. Not surprisingly, they’re going about it in the most unimaginative of ways, by trying to make Dada journalistic, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, Europeanised, and enervated.

Feh.

A pesky, pustular pox on the cretins and their aesthetically bankrupt institutions. André Breton was absolutely right when he predicted, “Dada will survive only by ceasing to exist.”

15 July 2016

Van Gogh’s Pistol

It was a messy suicide, even as incompetent suicides go. In 1890, Vincent Van Gogh walked into a cornfield in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and shot himself in the chest, point blank. He used a seven-millimeter pocket revolver, a Lefaucheux à broche. The bullet ricocheted off his rib and into his abdomen. He suffered for thirty excruciatingly painful hours before he finally died.

In 1960, a farmer found the corroded remains of the gun Van Gogh almost certainly used to kill himself. I’m a bit hesitant to reproduce a photograph of the weapon in case some idiot decides to mimic Van Gogh’s death as well as his paintings.

Conversely, I suppose it’s better than a photograph of a Glock 20 Gen4, a weapon designed for immediate gratification when it comes to murder, suicide, or any other of your firearms needs. And if you aim it well, it will even remove your ear quicker than any straight razor ever could.

16 July 2016

A Ten O’Clock Misunderstanding

I invited Sandra to over to share a bottle of wine with me at ten tomorrow. She demurred, and suggested that was a bit late for her. I replied that a couple hours after breakfast and a couple hours before lunch seemed like a good compromise to me.

It was all a silly misunderstanding; she thought I was talking about ten in the evening. Why everyone doesn’t use a twenty-four-hour clock, this I will never know.

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©2016 David Glenn Rinehart