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Weak XII

19 March 2019

No. 9,549 (cartoon)

I gave you everything I had.

Chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, trichomoniasis ...

You’re welcome.

20 March 2019

Advice Taken, I Promise

Amanda was grimacing like nobody’s business, but I asked her anyway.

“Don’t menstruate, David,” she advised.

“I promise I won’t,” I replied.

Glad I asked!

It was a rare opportunity to unhesitatingly take someone’s advice while making a promise I knew I would keep with absolute certainty. Win-win, as the Californians say!

21 March 2019

Springtime on Everest

Ah, spring is here in the northern hemisphere and the smell of dead climbers is in the air!

Some three hundred mountaineers have died climbing on Mount Everest since the first attempt to scale the peak almost a century ago. Many of the bodies were entombed forever in ice sheets and glaciers. Well, not quite forever given recent developments.

The ice on Everest is melting; welcome to the exciting world of climate change. As a result, climbers’ cadavers are exposed and need to be removed along with the over twelve thousand kilograms of feces living mountaineers leave on the slopes every year.

Everest must be so magical in the spring!

22 March 2019

Country Music Kills (Again)

I have no idea how there can still be a genre of music called “country” when there’s virtually no true country left in the entire country. Even though I generally eschew labels, I think the aural swill should be called sister-kissin’ music.

Justin Carter is a poster boy for contemporary “country” music. I saw one of his videos; it’s a combination of pathetic and hilarious. The clip features the chubby singer prancing around with a doleful expression wearing an oversized cowboy hat that may once have been a prop for the Village People. It’s a perfect example of what the Texans call, “all hat and no cattle.”

His next video didn’t go well; it didn’t go at all. Carter got a gun to use as a prop in the next production and somehow managed to kill himself with it while he was at home. That may not be as bad as it sounds; I shall ’splain.

Do you know what happens when you play country music backward? You get your truck back, you get your girl back, you get your job back, et cetera. Maybe Carter can use music to get his life back? Nah. On the other hand, it’s almost certain that another “country” musician will try to cash in on the death by writing yet another crappy ballad.

23 March 2019

Boone Times

Mary Boone is closing her business hawking art and moving to a new venue: prison. She’s not headed to the slammer for selling bad art; that’s not a crime. If it was, the penitentiaries would be even more overcrowded than they are now. No, Boone tried to illegally evade paying more than three million dollars in taxes. She made the worst mistake possible for a criminal: she got caught.

I know nothing about her or the purported art world, but I do remember Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno’s brilliant critique of her gallery. Once upon a time he put a piece of dog shit in an envelope and slipped it through her door with a note, “Why don’t you show the real thing?”

See ya in a couple years, Mary!

24 March 2019

A Blueprint for Life

Once upon a time, I had an artistic blueprint for the rest of my life, at least for the resources I’d need. It’s literally a blueprint: blue ink on a small, frayed, twenty-three by fifteen-centimeter piece of stained paper. I must have done this over forty years ago, not only before I ever touched a computer, but even before I started to type.

The diagram showed all I’d ever need between then and the crematorium was a Leica camera with three lenses, twenty-some different pieces of darkroom equipment and ten different chemicals. I think it clearly illustrates the folly of charting a roadmap in ink instead of pencil or pixels. One of the many things I’ve learned since the olde days is that I need to revise the plans for the rest of my life every other year or so.

After looking at the ancient illustration, rereading what I just wrote, and glancing at the calendar, I see it’s again time to edit my script. Oh dear; here I go again ...

25 March 2019

Innovations in Travel Misery

Have you ever headed out from London for Düsseldorf and ended up in Edinburgh instead? Who hasn’t? No one, actually, until just the other day. Twittish, er, British Airways claimed the distinction by accidentally pioneering the route from London to Düsseldorf via Edinburgh. It wasn’t particularly efficient; the passengers landed in Germany over five hours late with full toilets and empty fuel tanks.

I’m not surprised at the debacle. Commercial airlines are always looking for new innovations in travel misery, and Twittish Airways has just struck a rich vein.

Traveler beware.

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart