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Weak XL

1 October 2020

No. 4,248 (cartoon)

I want to bury the hatchet ...

I’d also like a truce.

... between your eyes.

2 October 2020

National Schadenfreude Day

Beatrice called to say that she was saddened to learn that Covid Nineteen was diagnosed with a horrible Drumph infection, only months after suffering a serious case of Boris. She said my thoughts and prayers should be with the virus and its family, but I haven’t got a prayer.

This seems like an appropriate time for a rerun from 2 May 2007, and here it is ...

Thirty-five years ago today, my high school physical education teacher walked into the locker room to make a solemn announcement.

“John Edgar Hoover died today,” he reported gravely.

Most of the lads were indifferent, but not me. I clapped. I cheered. I expressed unrestrained glee after hearing about the demise of a nasty, little dictator.

“That’s not a very Christian attitude,” my instructor chastised.

I just smirked a teenage smirk, since I knew that would bother him as much as his reactionary, moronic politics irritated me. Too bad I didn’t know then that Hoover was a cross-dresser; that would really have thrown a succulent glob of trichinosis on his moral bacon.

. . .

Meanwhile, back in 2020, Dr. Seiden has declared that today in National Schadenfreude Day. I’ll drink to that!

3 October 2020

No Loss of Smell

“You smell like a polecat that just swam through an overflowing latrine then rolled in rotting fish.”

That’s how I greeted Vencentio when he arrived at my studio this afternoon. We’re honest with each other like that; candor makes for strong friendships.

“You don’t smell like no buttercup daisy yourself, so I guess we’re both healthy!” he replied cheerfully.

?!

He explained that he read that a loss of smell was an indicator of a virus attack, so he stopped bathing. That was so delightfully stupid that the olfactory annoyance was a small price to pay for such an amazing show of ignorance.

Or maybe, just maybe, it might be a good idea. A placebo is the most effective drug there is, and reality is what you make it, so I figger Vencentio will stay healthy, the stench of decomposition notwithstanding.

4 October 2020

National Poetry Day

It’s time for bed, and I am quite chuffed to report that I haven’t heard a single poem all day. That makes this the best National Poetry Day ever!

Apparently, everyone else is ignoring the faux holiday too. I think that’s the best possible outcome since, like herpes, it’s not going to go away. Sure, there’ll be outbreaks of wretched poetry here and there from time to time, but since I’ve always been careful about such things I should be able to continue to enjoy my wonderful life free from herpes and poetic dreck.

5 October 2020

Edward Hopper’s No Athena

Edward Hopper was a dang good artist; on this almost all nighthawks agree. But now there’s an academic kerfuffle, the worst kind ...

Here’s the scoop: an art historian discovered that Hopper made a couple of paintings that were copied from a periodical for painting dilettantes that even included step-by-step instructions on how to duplicate them.

Quel scandale!

I found the whole brouhaha most amusing. Hopper made the paintings when he was a teenager. The only reason anyone would be shocked by an immature artist making derivative artwork is the classic myth that great artists are fully developed at birth, like Athena born from Zeus’s skull completely formed. And wearing formed a full set of armor, even.

So Hopper made a few crappy, forgettable paintings before maturing and creating lots and lots of work that was dang good if not better. So what? That happens all the time, except for the part about creating lots and lots of dang good work.

(Modesty forbids me from mentioning that the photographs I made before my twentieth birthday are generally considered to be some of the finest works of art created during the last millennium.)

6 October 2020

Shelf Queens

The Nikon F6 is dead.

For those of you who enjoy what’s colloquially called “a life,” that means Leica Camera AG is the only company still manufacturing cameras that use thirty-five-millimeter film.

It feels strange to witness The End of The World I Knew while I’m still alive. (I suppose that’s not as weird as observing it after I’m dead, but how would I know? I may or may not report back on that later.)

I remember the “I got a Nikon camera” line from Paul Simon’s annoyingly unforgettable song, Kodachrome. I first heard it when I was in high school. Kodachrome is long gone; it’s been almost a decade since the last roll of Kodachrome was developed (on 18 January 2011 by Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas, since you asked). And now nobody ain’t got no Nikon to use it in.

I’m having a little flashback. The Encyclopædia Britannica hasn’t been published on paper in a decade as well, and I was tempted to buy the final print edition to put on a long bookshelf. I thought better of it since I didn’t have a big enough display area. I’m tempted to buy the last Nikon film camera to display on a shelf without ever putting a roll of film through it, but after a fifteenth of a second of thought I decided to avoid that shelf queen as well.

Although it wasn’t a conscious decision, my quality of life has improved since I jettisoned shelves.

7 October 2020

Carrots on Mars

When it comes to great yentas, I am not. I’ve been trying to get Elon Musk together with Olivia, and, well, well it’s not going so well. Elon hasn’t returned my call. I think there may be a misunderstanding; there usually is.

I’m not trying to get them together for romantic reasons; that’s not the case. I’m not that kind of would-be yenta. No, I’m thinking about carrots on Mars.

There’s no evidence of rabbits on Mars, so it follows, scientifically speaking, that there probably aren’t any carrots, either. Elon wants to colonize Mars, so he’s gonna need carrots. (Anyone at all familiar with the works of Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, Sterling, et al, knows the first thing settlers do after landing on a new planet is plant carrots.)

Olivia has been growing carrots here in the New Mexico desert. She hasn’t been to Mars and neither have I, but raising crops in sand and gravel here can’t be very different from gardening on Mars since the sterile dirt and extreme temperatures of scorching heat during the day and deep freezes at night are quite similar.

Growing carrots in the desert is like teaching a bear to ride a bicycle: it can be done, but it ain’t natural.

After spending hundreds of dollars on imported soil, fertilizers, and feeding her wee seedlings daily doses of organic compost, she finally harvested her first carrot this morning. I was happy to oblige when she asked me to swing by with my portable photography studio and make a formal portrait of her firstborn.

It was the scrawniest carrot I’ve ever seen. I’d guess it was skinnier than a pencil lead except that I haven’t been to the Derwent Pencil Museum in decades. I wish I would have brought my sensitive laboratory scale to conform my suspicion that Olivia has created the first fully matured twenty-four-carat carrot.

8 October 2020

A Meal I Enjoyed

I decided to make a series of photographs, Meals I Have Prepared and Consumed. The premise was simple, as usual: photograph the plate or bowl from which I ate something yummy before I cleaned it.

Yesterday I made a nice soup, ramen in vegetable broth with green bean, peas, and spinach plus a big ol’ habanero pepper for octane. It was predictably tasty, so I ate it out of the pan for immediate gratification and to avoid washing another dish.

I was pleased with the photograph of the pan, so I grabbed my camera and tripod and went to work photographing this morning’s breakfast plate. I looked at it this way, that way, and the other way too, and then I came to the obvious conclusion: the concept is too stupid and boring, even for me.

Or maybe not stupid and boring enough. Doesn’t matter. And so, I have yet another 2020 “series” that ended after the first iteration.

That’s what I call art!

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©2020 David Glenn Rinehart