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Weak VI

5 February 2023

No. 6,055 (cartoon)

Imagine how great it would feel to be in love again.

I can’t imagine that.

You are one lucky bugger.

6 February 2023

A Nasty Little Review

I’m rather chuffed with this nasty little review I wrote even though it’s only twenty-two words long.

It looks like the work someone who worships at the feet of Mediocrities—the Greek god of mediocrity—would produce. And has.

There’s only one little problem, and it’s so tiny that it’s probably not even a problem at all: I don’t know what I’m reviewing yet (but I will soon), as I shall ’splain of the conclusion of this runaway run-on sentence.

I stopped looking for good art work a long time ago. I used to go to the library and look at art magazines, but I can’t remember the last time I found anything of minor interest let alone worth plagiarizing. Similarly, about the only thing I found mildly interesting in galleries was the watery wine served at openings, but I stopped going since that was even worse than the three-dollar-a-liter swill I drink in my studio.

Good art is hard to find. Bad art is different: it comes looking for you and assaults you even if you were just minding your own bidness.

That’s why I’m glad I have my nasty little review in my conceptual pocket. I’m sure I’ll be able to attach a name to it very soon.

7 February 2023

Sic ’em, Bob!

I saw an interesting headline in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, “Officials Baffled by Disappearance of Local Populace.” When I got past the poorly written headline I discovered that police have recorded a five-hundred percent increase in missing person reports since last summer.

Let’s see, wasn’t it last summer when the local chain of Fuzzy Furry Friends stores started selling “human grade” gourmet pet food?

Want another clue? McDonald’s outlets in England are advertising McCrispy “chicken” sandwiches next to crematoria. This whole racket looks like one of those international things.

I know Bob Woodward reads this notebook, so connect the dots and sic ’em, Bob!

8 February 2023

The Indecisive Moment

There I was, cycling into the dawn half a meter about the desert sand when it occurred to me. And now, I shall backpedal in order to forwardpedal.

Ever since time immemorial, i.e., since I was born, I’ve always thought of a photograph as something printed on paper. Sure, you can look at a photograph in a book or a billboard, but I always thought of such images as reproductions and not really photographs. I don’t know why it took so many decades to imagine this, but for the first time I wondered if a photographic image on a carefully calibrated high-resolution computer monitor could be a real photograph.

Art, even.

Even though I haven’t made a print in decades, I’ve always been working on the assumption that someday I’ll translate the best images on my hard drives into ink on paper. (That’s why I use real cameras instead of phoney ones.)

Does “real” art need to be a physical object signed by the artist? Or am I conflating capitalism with art? In the case of photography, can it be the image the artist created “fabricated” by others, e.g., gallerists, curators, and publishers, on an electronic monitor or maybe even paper? The answer to those questions may affect how I spend the rest of my life.

All this thinking makes my neurons ache. I’m going to take a break from all this cogitation and enjoy some mild relaxation inebriation procrastination.

9 February 2023

No Nightstand

I told Buzz that his little misunderstanding with Annie was something we could all laugh about.

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” he grimaced.

Buzz confided that when he asked Annie what he could bring to dinner at her place as a housewarming gift, she said the only thing missing was a one-night stand. Buzz reasoned that it would be rude to decline an invitation, so he showed up with three bottles of wine and lascivious intent.

After deciding that sharing over two and a half bottles was adequate foreplay, he began to demonstrate his unambiguous desire for physical intimacy. She recoiled and asked him what in the hell he was doing (or words to that effect).

Do you know the word for simultaneously apologizing and protesting? Neither do I, but that’s what Buzz did when he politely reminded her that she’s the one who had suggested the one-night stand.

She denied it, and told him she needed a nightstand for her bedroom. And so, it was all just a funny little misunderstanding.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

10 February 2023

Superstitious Vegetables

I invited Wanda and Joel for dinner with some trepidation and no other plans. They both have such ridiculous diets that there’s not much I can offer them except beer and unsalted unblanched kosher peanuts that hadn’t been genetically modified without first confirming that it’s acceptable. There’s certainly nothing wrong with peanuts and beer any time of the day, but I was thinking of something a bit more ... a bit more something else.

I decided to play it safe by making a nice salad, baked potatoes, and artichokes. Wrong move, and then some.

I didn’t peel the potatoes, and Joel refused to eat anything that was cooked with its eyes still intact. (Potato eyes?!) Wanda wouldn’t touch the artichoke because it was one of the superstitious vegetables; “it just makes sense.” And neither of them would eat the salad because I couldn’t vouch that all of the greens had been humanely harvested.

Feh.

We ended up dining on beer and peanuts. After tonight’s fiasco (potato eyes?!), that’s all I’m going to offer them in the future, whether or not they like it. At least I know that I will.

11 February 2023

May the Window Stay Unbroken

There I was, just making up malarkey and poppycock then writing it down, when a shaft of sunlight tore across the room, through a bottle of twelve-year-old Bunnahabhain, slammed into a twenty-year-old computer, then bounced off and wrapped the studio in gold.

The light passing through the bottle reminded me of Luis Buñuel’s martini recipe—as described in his autobiography, My Last Sigh—that’s always served me well over the decades.

To provoke, or sustain, reverie in a bar, you have to drink English gin, especially in the form of a dry martini. To be frank, given the primordial role played in my life by the dry martini, I think I really out to give it at least a page. Like all cocktail, the martini, composed essentially of gin and a few drops of Noilly Prat, seems to have been an American invention. Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggesting a ray of sunlight shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin. At a certain period in America it was said that the making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, for, as Saint Thomas Aquinas once noted, the generative power of the Holy Ghost pierced the Virgin’s hymen “like a ray of sunlight through a window—leaving it unbroken.”

After admiring the tableau in front of me, I especially appreciated the twenty-to-twelve ratio; that’s phi. Only the addition of a golden shower could make this description of a filthy computer screen more convoluted.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2023 David Glenn Rinehart