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Weak XII

19 March 2021

No. 3,317 (cartoon)

Thinking and dreaming will get you nowhere.

Thinking and dreaming made me who I am.

Exactly.

20 March 2021

The Ants of Spring

When I went to sleep last night it was winter, and when I awoke it was Nowruz. At least that’s what the astronomers and the Persians say, and that’s good enough for me.

Empirical evidence suggests that the ants are on the same planetary calendar: I just saw my first fresh anthill of the year this morning. In terms of visual and global interest, that doesn’t amount to a tiny hill of sand. Or rather it does; that’s all it is.

I only mentioned that observation in order to also mention the well-known fact that all the ants on earth weigh as much as all the humans on earth. I asked the Internet to confirm this, and discovered that that’s one of those facts that isn’t a fact, although it probably was a couple of centuries ago. There are billions more humans now, and rather fat ones at that.

Fear no ant.

21 March 2021

Jerry Wellman and Nina Mastrangelo

Nina needed a high-resolution photograph of one of her recent paintings, and I was happy to oblige. I was making some calibration photographs and accidentally made a nice portrait of her and Jerry, who was holding up one side of the canvas.

I was about to convert all the colors to grey when I noticed the palette on Jerry’s shirt was exactly the same as the painting. Leaving that corner in color seemed like a good compromise for a chromophobe.

22 March 2021

Singing Like Edith Bunker

Amanda is a generous friend, especially when it comes to unsolicited advice. She took time out from her busy day to tell me that my writing was, “tired, tedious, and pedestrian,” and that I needed to, “breathe some life into it and make it sing!”

We had a nice chat. She said I should make a sexual reference at every opportunity. She claimed that people led boring lives, and yearned for new horizons. She maintained that with a little imagination, I could invigorate even the most tedious paragraph.

It would be impolite at best to ignore her earnest suggestion, so here’s what I came up with after a bit of editing ...

We had a nice chat in bed. She said I should talk about red-hot nooky at every opportunity. She claimed that people led boring lives, and yearned for bumping steamy uglies. She maintained that with a little imagination, I could titillate the naughty bits in even the most tedious paragraph.

Oh well, at least now I can claim that I tried, even though I didn’t. And since I’m generally relentlessly positive, I’ll conclude by saying that the whole (lack of) exercise has given me a new appreciation of the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award.

23 March 2021

Forty-Two and Sixty-Nine Revisited

Douglas Noel Adams died of a heart attack some twenty years ago, and it’s only now that his archives are being edited and widely disseminated. Here’s my favorite excerpt:

Today I am monumentally fed up with the idea of writing. I haven’t actually written anything for two days, and that makes me fed up as well.

Yep, that’s the classic Catch 69 of writing. (Alas, Adams died in his forties, and didn’t live long enough to coin “Catch 69,” but I did ... unless I inadvertently plagiarized it.)

24 March 2021

All of My Sources

Theresa was more than skeptical when I told her my anecdote about Alberta Hunter, Eubie Blake, and their younger lovers. She asked me to cite my sources, so I did:

1. I read it somewhere.

2. I heard it somewhere.

That’s all, folks.

Those are the only two footnotes I’ve needed in decades. It’s wonderful to be an artist, free from the pesky constraints of academia, journalism, and all of the other tedious limitations of so-called reality.

25 March 2021

Works Art Cold

Cheryl said I didn’t go far enough with my recent piece, Six Creations of Biblical Proportions. She pointed out that had I used the next eleven words in Revelations following the last Creation in my series, I could have had Jehovah as a witness on my résumé.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.

I have a couple of problems with that. First, I don’t have a résumé, why would I? I know I’m skating on thin theological ice when I disagree with a brand-name deity, but my art is rather cold, so the heavenly recommendation is worse than irrelevant.

Lord knows what lord knows, but apparently he/she/it doesn’t know she/it about my works.

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