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Weak II

9 January 2023

No. 7,001 (cartoon)

Let’s do something wild.

I suppose it couldn’t hurt.

You supposed wrong.

10 January 2023

The Everything Curse

“May this year give you everything you ever wanted.”

I’m only starting to think through Melanie’s new year greeting, and I can’t figure out whether wanting nothing would be enlightenment or a hellish episode of The Twilight Zone that Rod Serling never got around to making.

I’ve been noticing that literally—and I mean that literally—everyone I know is always looking forward to their next acquisition, whether it’s a romantic partner, that house on the ocean, or, in my case, a couple liters of Scotch. And once someone has the new romantic partner and/or the house on the ocean and/or the Scotch, then it will be on to the next thing.

Absolute enlightenment is a scam, so I’ll have to ask Melanie why she wished such a curse on me. Maybe she still hasn’t forgiven me for the little mayonnaise incident.

11 January 2023

Geoffrey Arnold Beck

I’ve known about Jeff Beck since even before I learned to distinguish between a Stratocaster and a Stratofortress at a very young age. He’s one of the architects of modern civilization as we know it, at least when it comes to music.

Or rather, he was ...

I can’t explain my motivation, but after I saw the headlines about his death I read almost a dozen biographies and obituaries. But before I continue, let’s take a refreshing semantic break.

The logical combination or contraction of biography and obituary is biobituary. When I asked the Internet for examples of “biobituary” in print, it said there were none. There are at least a couple of products called Biobit (recycled asphalt and an insecticide), but apparently I may have just coined a word. That seems most improbable at best, but it doesn’t matter. Even if I’m the first person to have ever used biobituary, a famous person will be credited with inventing it. There’s nothing dark or cynical about that observation; that’s just the way history works.

We now return to our originally scheduled programming.

I gots nothing to say about Geoffrey Arnold Beck (born 24 June 1944) that hasn’t been said better before, so I’ll just repeat a couple of anecdotes.

When members of the Yardbirds musical ensemble joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Beck looked back and remarked, “They kicked me out. They did. Fuck them.” Rock doesn’t roll better than that!

I still remember the liner note on his Beck-Ola album I bought when I was a teenager: “It’s almost impossible to come up with anything totally original. So we haven’t.” I’ve always appreciated that freedom from the tyranny of alleged complete originality.

And speaking of great advice, I’ll conclude with my favorite Jeff Beck quote: “Interesting things happen when you’re open to trying something different.”

12 January 2023

The Washington Post Is All Wet

I hate to be so lazy, but ... I’m not fooling anyone with that line. Most importantly, I’m not fooling myself; I’m not even trying. I’m eternally lazy, and ridiculing ridiculously ridiculous articles in the popular press as complete ridiculousness is just too easy to resist.

The Washington Post published a facetious assertion posing as a question: “Why do we get our best ideas in the shower?” It’s as if the sloppy editors asked why the sun rises in the west.

Showers are for destinkitizing and that’s it. Anyone who comes up with more than a dozen ideas a month knows they come from the meditative state that can only be achieved from sitting on a toilet. All the accomplished artists, musicians, and writers I know wouldn’t waste time going into a bathroom without being ready to take contemporaneous notes.

Almost no one documents his or her thoughts in the shower, but that’s beside the point. Almost no one showers more than once a day, but anyone who doesn’t invest at least a dozen sits on the porcelain muse a day isn’t drinking enough.

The more you drink, the more time you’ll have for contemplation with your notebook at your side. Probability and chance are your friends, so encourage them. The Washington Post won’t print that, so it’s the safest of bets to say that you read it here first ... ideally whilst sitting on the toilet of your choice.

13 January 2023

Paraskavedekatriaphilia and Paraskavedekatriaphobia

Today is Dr. Arnold’s birthday; he too is now exty-ex years old. Today is also Friday. And as if that wasn’t enough excitement to cram into twenty-four hours, it’s also the thirteenth day of the month, an auspicious and suspicious alignment in some superstitious circles.

But enough about numbers. I’m neither a paraskavedekatriaphiliac nor a paraskavedekatriaphobiac when it comes to that sort of thing. Or perhaps thirteen of those things. And speaking of things, I know a thing or two about numerology and prefer to be numerilliterate.

14 January 2023

Add It to the List

Richard Sima wrote a piece I’ve been meaning to read since it came out a week ago, “What causes your brain to procrastinate and how to face it.”

“I’ve been meaning to ...” is the phrase I use to preface something that will never ever happen. When it comes to digesting Sima’s article, I’m reminded of a line from Look Out!, a lovely song written by Niklas Almqvist dba Randy Fitzsimmons: “Just add it to the list of things that I ain’t gonna do ...”

I may have myriad minor faults and shortcomings, but I’m certainly not listless.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2023 David Glenn Rinehart