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Weak XLII

15 October 2019

No. 5,247 (cartoon)

You promised you’d never lie to me.

Ah, you remember the first time!

16 October 2019

Dog Years

My friends tease me about my subscription to Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality And Outcomes. It’s true that most subscribers only look at the open-heart surgery centerfolds, but I do read almost every article. That’s how I learned about a recent study that suggests people who live with dogs have longer lives than sensible people.

I found the authors’ arguments very unconvincing; they failed to cite the most obvious reason. It takes a lot of energy to deal with all the beasts’ drool, the feces they leave on the carpet after dragging their wormy bottoms across it, as well as the urine-soaked fur and all manner of rancid garbage they gleefully roll it. All that cleaning provides more exercise than sane people would normally get, so even I must admit that the curs aren’t completely useless.

Also, in the case of a natural disaster that leaves someone stranded with no access to food, someone with an ample supply of fresh dog meat is obviously going to survive longer than someone starving to death.

My favorite hypothesis, though, is that dog owners don’t actually live longer, the misery and tedium just make it feel that way.

In conclusion, the paper I mentioned was useless unless used to wrap dog droppings. I’m still glad I subscribe to the august periodical; the double-truck close-ups of a coronary artery bypass graft operation on a morbidly obese patient were incredible!

17 October 2019

The Only Architectural Curve in Dedham

I’ve been wandering around Dedham, Massachusetts, for days, and I’m getting a horrible visual headache from the relentlessly rectilinear houses and buildings. Gomez explained that it’s an architectural hangover from the Puritan aesthetic, where the sight of the slightest curve might suggest breasts and buttocks, a demonic hint that was bound to lead to public inebriation, fornication, and worse. (Or better, depending on your perspective.)

After walking well over ten kilometers through various neighborhoods, I was amazed to discover a portico with a curved roof. The “stately” columns were scrawny and the roof showed no evidence of good carpentry, but there it was: the only curve in Dedham.

It wasn’t much to look at, but neither is a cup of tepid water in the middle of a bleak desert. Whew!

18 October 2019

Farm Fresh versus Factory Fresh

Carlos complained that Herbert served him an almost inedible dinner last night thanks to a combination of his culinary incompetence exacerbated by his choice of “farm fresh” ingredients. The broccoli was picked weeks ago and left to shrivel and wilt, and the chicken was malnourished, stringy, and wiry since it was left to forage for itself. That’s life on the farm.

Contrast that with a factory fresh chicken that’s been pumped full of steroids and growth hormones then slaughtered at a very young age before it’s old enough to develop muscles let alone sinew. As for the animal welfare aspect, the feathered meat machine’s short life span meant it didn’t live long enough to suffer much.

Dr. Atwell worked on a farm when he was a teenager, and will not touch a kernel of corn to this day because he saw how it was grown and processed. My theory is that no one would eat anything with a known provenance; that’s why I’m an omnivore except for the things I won’t eat.

19 October 2019

C U I N

I saw a cryptic sign on Genesee Street this morning ...

C U I N
Please watch out!
Glass door is
TRANSPARENT!

The message, unlike the door, wasn’t clear at all.

The amateur typographer had (not so) cleverly chosen to print three characters in red ink that quickly faded, resulting in “C U I N” instead of “CAUTION.” The message wasn’t very well thought out. A photograph of a kitten would have commanded more visual attention with its placement pointing out the existence of a door and making the statement that glass is transparent redundant.

I nevertheless appreciated the botched communications exercise; it was much more entertaining than slick corporate signage that blights the urban landscape.

20 October 2019

Practicing in Theory and Practice

I’m generous with my friends in every way including my time, so when Tracy invited me to attend a performance tonight of the jazz trio she was playing in, I enthusiastically said yes even though I was anything but excited by the prospect of sitting in a small club with nowhere to hide and no escape route.

I can trace my reticence back at least a dozen years ago when she and I shared a studio overlooking San Francisco Bay. I’d occasionally hear her squawking on her tenor saxophone; that was my aural cue to take a long walk. I remember that it was pretty bad, but not atrocious enough that I couldn’t bear to squirm through a couple of forty-five-minute sets tonight.

My, she certainly had improved over the years, and I actually enjoyed the performance. I never thought I’d say that I appreciated jazz, but Tracy was great. She improvised almost constantly, and I never heard her repeat herself.

Her reaction surprised me when I told her how much better she sounded than when she was practicing so long ago: she laughed.

“You’re supposed to sound bad when you practice!” she explained.

That made perfect sense; I suppose every competent musician knows that. And that explains why it was news to me.

21 October 2019

Work. Work. Work.

Dr. McMullen has a quote of Barry Moser’s posted on the wall of her studio.

“The best advice I could possibly give you, and forgive me if this seems glib, is to work. Work. Work. Work. Every day. At the same time every day. For as long as you can take it every day, work, work, work. Understand? Talent is for shit. I’ve taught school for nearly thirty years and never met a student who did not have some talent. It is as common as house dust or kudzu vine in Alabama and is just about as valuable. Nothing is as valuable as the habit of work, and work has to become a habit.”

Instead of working on today’s notebook entry, I’m just going to cite Moser’s observation. I can imagine what he’d say about that, but I don’t care. After all, I’m very talented.

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart