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Weak III

15 January 2025

No. 3,665 (cartoon)

Doing nothing is doing something.

How? What’s the result?

A better kind of nothing.

16 January 2025

Not Playing the Life Coach Game

Once upon many times I was at a party, and on one occasion I met a woman who claimed that she was a “life coach.” After chatting for a while, I asked her what she might do for me professionally.

“I’d take you out of the game,” she replied.

My second encounter with a life coach was when I saw “the world’s leading life coach” and “bestselling author” Martha Beck’s name on several Internet sites. She and her public relations hacks are hyping her latest book promoting creativity to combat anxiety. Here’s how one publication summarized her spiel: “Anxiety and creativity have an inverse relationship. Turn one on and the other turns off.”

It’s a tidy, neat little formula with a critical problem: it’s nonsense. Creative pursuits make me anxious and nervous. Even though I’m halfway through today’s notebook entry, I’m uncomfortable since this is the third time I’ve failed to wrap it up. All I know with certainty is that life coaches are worse than useless.

17 January 2025

Brightsiding

No good deed goes unpunished.

I know that’s a cliché, but clichés come from somewhere. In my case, I sometimes describe myself as relentlessly positive. No matter how grim things are, I can usually point out an encouraging or supportive aspect of any situation. I recently learned that this can be called “brightsiding” and “toxic positivity.” Instead of being the good humor man, I should should say something like, “I feel your pain.”

I personally think that’s bollocks, especially since Bill Clinton ruined that line for the rest of us. I’ll close by brightsiding the critics: I’m sorry that you’re so silly, but I shall wallow in my toxic positivity by noting that at least you’re just a tad amusing.

18 January 2025

Red Dye No. 3, Walter Cronkite, and the Maraschino Cherry Industry

The Food and Drug Administration banned Red Dye No. 3, something about it being carcinogenic. That final(?) decision has been under consideration for decades.

I try not to repeat myself, but I don’t try too hard. Here’s a paragraph from ten years ago.

[Walter] Cronkite reported that a government agency had banned the use of red dye number something-or-another. That resulted in the predictable protest by the companies peddling carcinogens, and Cronkite lost his composure and giggled when he read that the move, “could destroy the maraschino cherry industry.”

And now, here’s something I thought I mentioned previously but have no record of it.

Cronkite loved to sail on his boat Assignment. When he went on vacations, his replacement newsreader would report that his boss couldn’t be there that night because he was “on assignment.”

Two anecdotes for the price of one! Am I good entertainment value or what?!

19 January 2025

My Stomake Wambleth

There I was, all nine fingers headed toward the keyboard with the best of intentions when I heard the wambling. The rumbling in my stomach demanded that I take a lunch break before I started working, so I did.

There’s a simple explanation for the coincidence: wambling is a synonym for growling in the stomach. “Wamble” is a recent addition to my vocabulary, but it’s been around since at least 1516, when John Skelton wrote, “A, howe my stomake wambleth! I am all in a swete.”

(I wish I had a program that translated contemporary English into Olde English.)

I know three and a half paragraphs is a very skimpy notebook entry, but I’m not going to swete it.

20 January 2025

Four More Years of Recrudescence

Here we go again, oy ...

This is almost the worst political climate I’ve experienced in my life, although not as bad for me personally as when I feared being drafted and killed in View Nam along with tens of thousands of other young men. At the risk of brightsiding, I’m reprinting a letter from those dark days to perhaps provide some historical perspective.

North Brooklin, Maine,

30 March 1973

Dear Mr. Nadeau:

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Sincerely,
E. B. White

21 January 2025

Salutations

One of the jillions questions of the day is what kind of salutes Elon Musk gave at Drumph’s inauguration yesterday: were they homages to fascism or Nazi tributes?

Musk claims that they were “Roman,” i.e., Mussolini, i.e., fascist. On the other hand, I’m something of an expert on WWII after watching all one hundred and sixty-eight episodes of Hogan’s Heroes, and I know a Heil Drumph salute when I see one.

Two days in a row of grim politics is two too many, so it’s back to the studio to remind myself why this is called An Artist’s Notebook of Sorts.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2025 David Glenn Rinehart