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Weak XLII

15 October 2021

No. 3,970 (cartoon)

Why are you crying?

I thought “bored to tears” was just a phrase before I met you.

16 October 2021

I’m a Time Millionaire!

Lina called me a no-account artist and I suppose I am, at least technically speaking. I’m a millionaire enjoying a simple life, so I rarely bother with accounting. And as everyone knows, there’s no accounting for taste.

Some of my friends think I’m lying (?!) when I say I’m a millionaire, but only the less creative ones who can’t imagine any currency other than money. All my compeers of a certain age have a million dollars or bhat or euros, but what good is that?

I’m rich beyond physical assets, I’m a time millionaire and then some!

In fewer than a thousand days—nine hundred and seventy-five to be precise—I’ll have accrued one and a half million minutes. (If I’m around then, which is never a given.)

It’s the quality, not the quantity, of minutes under my conceptual belt that I treasure. I’ve fended off most attempts from would-be employers to faux friends to waste my priceless minutes on their selfish interests. Instead, I’ve enjoyed the life of an itinerant flâneur, a great way to spend my most valuable albeit ephemeral asset.

Hmmm ... I just reread that and it sounds smug and preachy. I should probably delete it, but instead, I’ll stop at the first draft and use the minutes I would have needed to rewrite it to head out for some wine and cheese.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock ...

17 October 2021

Wine Cellar on High

Noah didn’t do a very good job of hiding his disappointment when I accepted his offer of a glass of wine.

“I guess I’ll get the ladder, then,” he said resignedly.

You see, although you couldn’t possibly see from there, Noah doesn’t drink alcohol. But yet—and yet—he feels obliged to have a wine cellar since that’s what sophisticated guys do. He doesn’t have a basement, though, so his “cellar” is a wine rack on top of the tallest kitchen cabinet, hence the ladder.

He has two bottles of wine and a bottle of champagne; the latter is for a wedding or new year’s eve, whichever comes first. From my perspective it’s not enough to host a long evening with guests, but for him it’s a lifetime supply.

18 October 2021

Falling in No Love

Alina confided that her courtship with Jacob is a complete disaster; she said she was, “falling in no love.”

Oh dear, doesn’t get much worse than that.

19 October 2021

Question One

I’m wandering around Portland, Maine, and seeing lots of signs urging the electorate, VOTE NO ON QUESTION 1. In addition to wandering, I’m also wondering: what’s on the ballot? I can’t even ask anyone what the campaign involves, since there’s a good chance they’d vote against my first question.

20 October 2021

The Most Brilliant People on Earth

Sam Anderson penned a great profile on Laurie Anderson recently. (Or perhaps he typed it; doesn’t matter.) Dang, she’s brilliant and then some! I shall reread it the next time I feel an attack of delusions of adequacy coming on.

I don’t like to repeat what I’ve written here in the last twenty-five years, but I have nothing to add to or subtract to what I wrote about the better artists on 26 May 2003. Here we go into my private Wayback Machine...

Although I generally dislike hierarchies, I must admit that there are two types of people who are better artists than I am. (And better than you are, for that matter.)

First, we recognize that we could be as accomplished as some of the people we admire if we just worked a bit harder, slept a bit less, did all the things our parents admonished us to do, that sort of thing. We also know that will never happen.

And then we have The Most Brilliant People on Earth. In this case, we recognize that these people do things that are simply beyond us.

And then we die.

21 October 2021

The Typo of the Millennia

On 24 April 2000 I photographed the facade of a chip shop in Newcastle, England, Millenium [sic] Take Away. As I remarked at the time, “If you’re going to make a mistake, make it decisive, make it memorable, make it huge. And, if the opportunity arises, use neon.”

The proprietors of the Millenia [sic] Nails and Spa, 669 Forest Avenue, have perpetuated the typo of the millennia. I was rather harsh with the Brits who had two thousand years to figure out how to spell “millennium” correctly. I’ll be a little gentler with the Mainers since there’s only been more than one millennium on their calendars for just a couple of decades.

Also, I hear they sniff a lot of nail polish and paint stripper in those salons, what do you hear?

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©2021 David Glenn Rinehart