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Weak XVII

24 April 2020

No. 3,598 (cartoon)

You’re the most!

The most what?

How much time do you have?

25 April 2020

Wine School Graduation

I’ve always abhorred formal education; I felt like an inmate in a penal institution where well-meaning guards told me what was supposed to be important, what I should learn, and how I should learn it.

Or else.

Despite the claustrophobic academic constraints, I did have many great teachers, including Richard Gull. He once revealed over several bottles of wine that formal education is meant to prepare students for the rest of their lives.

“If we can make you tolerate being a student,” he explained, “then someone else can make you tolerate being an employee for the best decades of your life.”

It’s a system.

That system, like most of the others in the age of Coronarama, is breaking down if not shattered.

The New York Times, of all institutions, has stepped into the void with its own education system, complete with its own oenophile academy. Here’s the entire syllabus: “Our wine school has two simple rules: drink wine, and remember how it made you feel.”

A complete course in only nine words! Now that’s more like it!

Now that I’m a bona fide graduate for the first time in many decades, it’s time to hop on the computer and crank out a prestigious diploma.

And with that, I’m off to search through my digital libraries to find the Fette Fraktur typeface ...

26 April 2020

Odd Egg

Eggs are eggs are eggs. They’re all the same; they look as if they came from a factory. That’s because they did; there’s a reason the camps in which egg dealers concentrate chickens are called factory “farms.”

I was surprised to discover an egg that wasn’t shaped like it came from the same mold as all the others. It was elongated and relatively slender, as if it had been squeezed coming out of the birth canal. (If chickens have a birth canal, and if laying an egg is giving birth, that is.)

I wondered what to do with such an usual specimen, and could only come up with two ideas: photograph it and eat it. So I did and I did.

That concludes this morning’s breakfast musings. As for lunch, I’m sure this salmon is fine even though I found a mouse head staring at me when I opened the can.

In summary, people worry too much about what they eat.

27 April 2020

Alternatives to Unnatural Acts

Email takes more of a time commitment than most people can muster; it’s been largely supplanted by text messages sent over telephones—if that’s still the best word to describe the slim little pocket computers we use.

Typing on the minuscule glass keyboard is an unnatural act. I’ve found that some unnatural acts come naturally, but not typing with my thumbs. (And to avoid any misunderstanding, I think anything one does with her or his keyboard is fine as long as it’s consensual.)

My older friends and I usually avoid such unpleasant typing by dictating our messages to the machine, which transcribes our words with unpredictable degrees of accuracy.

I told Toni that one of the unfortunate side effects of this practice was to talk over the phone as if we were talking to the transcription doodad period

quote Oh comma I think you’re right exclamation point unquote she replied period

I suppose it had to happen comma alas ellipsis

28 April 2020

A Little Dose of Reality

The coronavirus is killing people faster than the living can cremate or bury them. I told Anastasia that the solution was obvious: reusable, composting caskets. That would get rid of the backlog of bodies and provide fertilizer to help with the upcoming food shortages.

She didn’t like my idea. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that she didn’t like it one teensy-weensy little bit.

“I’m not going to even call that a harebrained idea since that would be an insult to bunnies everywhere,” she harrumphed.

“I think you could use a little dose of reality, mister,” she added.

I told her that I knew that she meant well. So did Pol Pot, but I diplomatically chose not to say that.

I knew better than to take her self-destructive advice. Sure, a little bit of reality never hurt anyone, but it’s a slippery slope. A little today, a little more tomorrow, and the next thing you know you’re stuck there. I’ve seen the miserable soulless souls trapped in reality; it’s a more horrific vision of hell than anything Hieronymus Bosch ever imagined.

I’ll be in a composting casket before that happens to me.

29 April 2020

Very Clear, No Clouds

Many decades ago, back in the days of silver halide film, I made a few cyanotypes. The process is the same as making an architectural blueprint. Just blend a liter of light-sensitive emulsion from the ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide in the kitchen cupboard, coat it on watercolor paper, then make a contact print using the light from any nearby sun.

I sold the last of my large format view cameras years ago, so I never thought about making another cyanotype until today. It occurred to me that I could print a negative image from my computer onto a large, transparent sheet; no huge camera needed.

New Mexico is lousy with incredible clouds that would be a perfect match for cyanotypes. It would be easy to make lovely cloudographs; nothing could go wrong.

That’s why I abandoned the project before I even began. Easy? No possibility of mistakes? Where’s the fun in that?

And anyway, everyone with half an eye knows that clouds are fascinating. Only an idiot would spend any time at all proclaiming that beautiful, interesting clouds are beautiful and interesting. (I may be an idiot, but not that flavor.)

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©2020 David Glenn Rinehart