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Weak XXVIII

9 July 2018

No. 8,718 (cartoon)

I’m not fit to lick your boots.

Don’t move and do it anyway.

10 July 2018

Majestic Splendor

I live in a bubble breathing my own fumes, and I never hear about some events in the purportedly real world. For example, I never heard about Lee Bul until now, even though she’s a very good artist.

I normally don’t like artspeak, but I think it’s fair to say that her work is fiery and explosive. I’m thinking of her piece Majestic Splendor; she made it by packing rotting fish covered in sequins in potassium permanganate. It exploded and burst into flames at the Hayward Gallery in London, England, at the end of May.

Hot!

Again, I don’t like the inbred critical language, so I can only describe Majestic Splendor in straightforward English: it’s a good start! I look forward to more of the South Korean’s fiery and explosive work.

11 July 2018

I Am Not A Terrorist

The Department of Paranoid Hysteria, also known by its formal name of Department of Homeland Security, issued a warning yesterday to beware of terrorists making photographs, “taking pictures ... in an unusual or covert manner.”

Dang, those are the only kind of photographs I make! I wonder where I can get a shirt with “I Am Not A Terrorist” emblazoned on the front and back? On the other hand, would anyone but a terrorist wear such a shirt? And since the president of the country is a shameless racist, psychopathic terrorist does it matter?

12 July 2018

Led Zeppelin and Chips

Oh dear, more hippy crap. The musical ensemble Led Zeppelin formed half a century ago, so now the nostalgia factories are cranking out more merchandise to peddle. In addition to the obligatory coffee table book, Jimmy Page will continue to re-re-re-remix recordings of long, self-indulgent guitar solos he twanged over half a lifetime ago.

Robert Plant, his fellow bandmate, continues to live in the present. He’s making new music and has turned down countless millions of dollars to perform in historic reenactment performances. Better yet, he did manage to annoy the annoying people clamoring for such a concert.

“Only in a chip shop in Camden Town,” he lied. “I think that’s about as close as we will get to it!”

Actually, I think that’s a brilliant idea. Anyone bored with such reminiscences could at least get some tasty, greasy fish and chips.

13 July 2018

Five Conservatory Panes

The Conservatory of Flowers is a lovely greenhouse in Golden Gate Park. Or perhaps it’s not a greenhouse since it’s painted white. In any case, I’ve admired the way the paint is peeling from the glass for years and finally got around to photographing the abstract patterns.

I was going to call the series Five Panes of Perception after Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. I initially liked the name because it was a clever reference to the Windowpane brand of Lysergic acid diethylamide. And soon thereafter I disliked it: even if it wasn’t too clever by half, it certainly was pretentious.

Photographers have been photographing peeling paint since the medium was invented, thus Five Conservatory Panes is an appropriate title for these conservative images.

14 July 2018

Pussy Riot

A jaguar at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans escaped from his jail pen and killed an alpaca. Then he killed another alpaca. Then he killed another alpaca. Then he killed another alpaca. Then he killed a fox. Then he killed an emu.

Jaguars are very territorial, and the poor kitty was obviously distraught at being imprisoned in what for a jungle feline are inhumane conditions. The cat’s jailers sedated the puss and returned him alive to suffer jaguar claustrophobia; I have no answer to the obvious “better off dead or alive” question.

15 July 2018

Where’s Croatia?

I don’t follow sports, but I can’t ignore headlines. That’s how I know that the World Cup football games are over, and France beat Croatia in the final match. That’s too bad for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t want any country in particular to win, but there are those I like to see lose, and this year, as usual, England didn’t fail to fail. And then there’s France.

The French blew up the Greenpeace boat I used to live on rather a long time ago. The French foreign intelligence services’ Opération Satanique sunk the ship thirty-three years and five days ago, but who’s counting? And so, I was disappointed when the French football players, none of whom were alive then, defeated the Croatians. And now, I’m no longer motivated to find out where Croatia is.

16 July 2018

Wineberry Archipelago

Some time ago I finished drinking a glass of wine then poured a bit of water into the goblet to prevent to grapey residue from bonding to the porcelain.

Washing up is one of my many pianissimos; I forgot about the glass for a week or two. When I looked, I discovered that an archipelago of wineberries had grown on the surface. I wonder if I’d have been so pleased by all the floating fur if I’d ever seen a Petri dish in school? I also wonder if Julius Richard Petri got the idea from a dirty wine glass?

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©2018 David Glenn Rinehart