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24 December 2018

No. 3,811 (cartoon)

How can I ever thank you?

First, put on the blindfold ...

You’re so sick.

25 December 2018

An Ambrose Bierce Xmas

Ambrose Bierce was a brilliant writer who lived here in Sans Frisco until he mysteriously vanished one hundred and five years ago this month after traveling south to gain firsthand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He’s gone, but his words are still around, including in one of my favorite books, The Devil’s Dictionary. Here are three examples:

POLITENESS, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.

SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.

SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

He also penned the best description of Christmas I’ve ever read.

The day is associated with the barbarous custom of present-giving, present-taking and present-expecting; the solemn family dinners, hollow civilities and meaningless salutations; with the deception of children and downright lying; with mawkish editorials in the newspapers, warmed over from last year; with mental distraction relieved with flashes of physical prostration. Christmas, as observed in this country, leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and as a relaxation is not noticeably superior to a shuddering drunk. I have experimented with both, and I prefer the drunk.

What an hombre!

26 December 2018

Satan’s Rejoinder

A police department in rural Alabama—you already can see where this is going—posted a public service announcement on the Internet. The Opp police used the ASCII equivalent of screaming to sound the alarm after two murders in two days.

“THESE MURDERS HAVE BEEN DONE BY OUR YOUNG PEOPLE. THIS IS HAPPENING BECAUSE WE HAVE TURNED AWAY FROM GOD AND EMBRACED SATAN. WE MAY HAVE NOT MEANT TO DO SO BUT, WE HAVE. IT IS TIME TO ASK FOR GOD’S HELP TO STOP THIS ...”

Translation: don’t count on the police.

A spokesperson for the Devil denied any involvement in the homicides. “The Prince of Darkness doesn’t waste his precious time on petty fools.”

God did not return calls by press time.

27 December 2018

My Twenty-Three Thousandth Birthday

I find the common practice of only having one birthday a year rather unimaginative. I have an annual birthday like everyone else, but why stop there? In a few years I’ll be two-thirds of a century old; I’m quite looking forward to the bacchanalian indulgences.

I can’t ignore the improbable(?) possibility that I may not be alive then, so I’m celebrating today’s birthday: I’m twenty-three thousand days old! This auspicious occasion calls for an exuberant celebration, as does every other day if you do it right.

28 December 2018

Shelly’s Dictionary

I went to a lovely party at Shelly’s place a few days ago and had a predictably wonderful time. It was such a marvelous soirée that I forgot about her dictionary until I developed my binary film.

Ah, now I remember the dictionary; I was amazed!

I don’t have a single dictionary; I have several of ’em—including a pirated copy of the complete Oxford English Dictionary—as well as a few thesauri. I take them everywhere I go; they’re stored in my computer. I could never understand why anyone would want reference material on dead trees until I had a minor revelation during the course of the Saturday night debauchery.

I can find the definition and etymology of any word in a few seconds on my ’puter. I discovered that strength is also a weakness: in going directly to my destination I fail to see all the other words I might have discovered along the way. Shelly keeps her dictionary open on a pedestal, as is appropriate. Each time I turned the page I discovered a fresh tableau of dozens of words in addition to the one I was seeking. The inefficiency and distraction are both the paper dictionary’s weakness as well as its strength.

Productivity is not only overrated, it can be downright dangerous. We are humans (apologies to any robots reading this) and we’ll never be as good at being a machine as a machine; ask anyone who lost their job to automation. The quest for efficiency always leads down the wrong path.

I’m trying to avoid ending with a hoary cliché, but can’t find another of saying that the most rewarding life is a journey, not a résumé of dubious achievements.

29 December 2018

Boredomforum and Boredom in America

Whilst wandering around Santa Fe, New Mexico, I found myself in need of a resource that’s never been digitized and thus unavailable through any electronic gizmo. What with the Interthang and all, I rarely find a reason to visit a public library, but the local one had exactly the resources I needed.

After I was done with the toilet, I wandered around for a while and came across the magazines on display, arranged alphabetically. I grabbed the December editions of Artforum and Art in America. I leafed through both periodicals and didn’t see a single engaging thing. (In the interest of fairness and accuracy, I didn’t make all the way through both; I abandoned Artforum after the first two hundred pages.) I wasn’t surprised that the publications were boringly tedious and tediously boring; that’s why I gave up wasting my time on them a decade or two ago.

About the only difference I noticed was that there were a lot of articles about performance artists in addition to the familiar advertisements for expensive wall coverings and statuesque ornaments targeted at people with more money than taste. There’s not much to say about say about such tedium, so I’ll close with an anecdote.

Once upon a time, Lorenzo asked me how many performance artists it took to change a light bulb. I replied that I hadn’t heard that variation on the antediluvian joke. He admitted that he didn’t know the answer either because he walked out of the gallery after the first two hours.

30 December 2018

Egotistical Art

It’s the end of another calendar year, and that means it’s time to archive everything I’ve done in 2018 to secure, long-term storage where it will never be seen again. I store everything in a single collection of my entire output; that will make it easy to delete it all in a few seconds when I reach my expiration date. Meanwhile, back at the winter cleaning ...

I have a cheap camera in my phone, or perhaps it’s a phone in a cheap camera; who can tell these days? I often make accidental exposures and saw one I made a few months ago that I liked. The composition is wrong, the focus is wrong, the exposure is wrong, everything about it is wrong wrong; perhaps the reason I like it.

If I was only interested in making interesting photographs, I’d have a friend lead me around blindfolded while I made hundreds of images with a fully automatic camera. I’ve never done that because that would negate the primary and perhaps only reason I engage in purportedly creative pursuits: ego. I’d rather publish unremarkable work that’s all mine (even if I plagiarized some of it) than randomly generated work that’s superior.

It’s funny—or perhaps not funny at all—that I’ve never consciously realized that until just now. I know I’m a slow thinker, but this is ridiculous, even for me.

31 December 2018

Living Longer Than I Expected

Everyone from schoolchildren to folks in their dotage agrees that time seems to go faster as one ages. Summers that just wouldn’t end when I was a boy are now gone in the blink of a drink. As is so often the case, perception is different than reality.

Portia told me that the days have actually been getting longer ever since the Precambrian era at the rate of seventy-four thousandths of a second annually. Scientists predict this trend will continue for millions or perhaps billions of years, depending on which alleged expert’s calculations you believe.

I find this news curiously reassuring. Since I actually have more time than I thought I had, I’m going to take the rest of the year off and get back to work in 2019.

This calls for champagne; what doesn’t?

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart