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Weak XLIX

3 December 2019

No. 2,448 (cartoon)

Living longer has no appeal.

I never knew what you saw in it.

4 December 2019

The Triumph of Mono

In the beginning of recorded sound, there was monaural: one speaker. And it was good. And many decades later, they, whoever they are, invented stereo. And it was better. And then there was quadraphony, and that never quite worked out. I’m not sure if it was because four speakers for two ears wasn’t a good match, or because that’s too much audio equipment for a small apartment, or because the whole point was just to sell more electronics. In any case, quadraphony proved to be more phony than quadra.

One speaker per ear seemed like the optimum arrangement for decades, but lately I’ve noticed a curious development: lots of my friends now have only one speaker that’s connected wirelessly to their digital music machines.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they chose convenience over quality when it comes to listening to music. After all, that’s what many of them have done with everything from food to romance. That’s progress!

5 December 2019

Camera Shop

Santa Fe has lots of retail shops hawking consumer goods rich in quaintness. I was used to the usual offerings of pseudo cowboy kitsch, cacti, and that sort of thing, when I saw something I thought had completely vanished: a camera shop.

Or was it a camera shop? The store was closed, and all I could see inside were postcards and calendars. They had old, faded Nikon and Polaroid stickers in the window, but that doesn’t mean there were any cameras inside. After all, I think Polaroid has been out of business for years.

I nevertheless liked the novelty of a photograph of a camera shop, although such visual documentation means nothing these days. I could have easily used my computer to make a photograph of a bakery look like a camera shop.

And that’s more than enough quaintness for this year.

6 December 2019

Shower Curtain

I decided to make a photograph that was different than most of the other photographs I’ve ever made. I succeeded when I made a photograph of a shower curtain with a wet screen in the background. I’m not sure whether I like it or not. I suppose that was the point of the exercise.

7 December 2019

Shrouded Dreck

Even though I’m remarkably unperceptive for someone who purports to be a visual artist, I recently noticed something I find interesting: all the good art I’ve seen recently wasn’t intended to be good art.

Perhaps ironically, I saw good art in the last place I’d expect to find it: in an art school. An unfortunate series of events led me down the hallway of a university art department. That’s where I spotted three small platforms mounted on ... dang; I don’t know what they were mounted on. Here’s the best I can do: some sort of spindly, four-legged thingie on wheels that Theodor Seuss Geisel might have designed. I give up; I can only hope you’re reading the illustrated version of this drivel.

And now it gets better.

Each platform was topped by a crappy sculpture, the kind of dreck one only sees in art schools and “fine art” galleries. Someone had covered them, thus creating new, plastic-wrapped objects. I photographed the ephemeral works because it won’t be long before someone destroys the wonderful creations by removing the plastic shrouds to reveal the tortured clay underneath.

8 December 2019

The Point Reyes Filling Station

Alina told me there’s a taco stand in Point Reyes, California, named after me. Well, sort of, but not exactly.

She explained that her brother Jacob read my 7 October story, Air and Door, and discovered “filling station.” Apparently only an olde person would call a gas station that; he’d never heard it before. He liked it, and called his new business venture, The Point Reyes Filling Station.

I hope he succeeds in his new enterprise, but I can’t really recommend it since I’ve never dined there. Point Reyes is a long way away from anywhere, and there’s no salsa bar at The Point Reyes Filling Station.

No salsa bar?! What was Jacob thinking? Not much, obviously.

9 December 2019

Safe Travels?

When I told Nico that I was flying from here to there, she replied, “Safe travels.”

I love Nico, but I’ll be danged if that wasn’t a really stupid thing to say. What am I supposed to do to ensure safety, make sure the pilots are reasonably sober? Confront someone trying to hijack the plane? I haven’t even heard of anyone attempting that in over a decade.

No, I think a more appropriate sendoff would have been, “Good luck.” Good luck getting through the airport insecurity checkpoint without a squadron of Keystone Kops spending almost an hour trying to ascertain whether I might have explosives inside a sealed package of coffee. Good luck having enough room to use my computer. Good luck not sitting next to a snoring human walrus whose blubber spills over into my seat. That sort of thing.

. . .

Later: I ended up having a lot of luck on my trip, most of it bad. It can’t be that hard to store screaming babies in the cargo hold, can it?

10 December 2019

Dangerous Drinking in Japan

Josephine sent me an article from Science Daily, “Even light alcohol consumption linked to higher cancer risk in Japan.”

I didn’t read it.

I didn’t need to go past the headline.

If it’s dangerous to imbibe in Japan, then I’ll continue to safely enjoy my drinks here. I haven’t been to Japan for over eight years; it’s an easy country to avoid, and I shall continue to do so.

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©2019 David Glenn Rinehart