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Weak V
30 January 2021
No. 9,689 (cartoon)
You’re a clown.
Get out of my circus!
31 January 2021
The Seeds of Winter Joy
“You did err in your information [two weeks ago] about the metal detectors in DC,” Dr. Palmer wrote. “The entrances to the capitol building have had metal detectors for many, many years (although staff and members can usually skirt them).”
I briefly considered correcting that entry before leaving the erroneous story as I wrote it, but decided to distract him instead of admitting that.
“You cannot water the seeds of winter joy with buckets of summer tears,” I replied.
I think I made the right decision to let my error stand. Correcting one falsehood might lead me to put right another, and that’s a slippery slope that could result in truth and accuracy. Where’s the joy in that?
Nope, I’m sticking with the sloth and ignorance that got me where I am today. I’m proud to say that I started off with nothing and that I still have most of it left.
1 February 2021
Dead Rabbit
I saw a rabbit near the edge of the pavement whilst walking down a desert road yesterday. S/he looked asleep, but I think it was a permanent nap after an unfortunate encounter with a motor vehicle.
It was a familiar sight. I’ve made a lot of money over the years making wildlife snuff photographs. Shots of Club Seal associates taking the no longer needed coats off members of the Phocidae family were bloody lucrative indeed.
I wasn’t interested in making another good photograph of a dead animal, so I instead decided to make a bad one. I set up the camera so its shadow on the tripod became the main subject; the wee wabbit is hard to see, by design.
I like the image, but probably won’t show it again since it’s essentially a novelty photograph.
2 February 2021
Not Doing Nothing
I can only sit at a computer for so long—an interval measured in hours and days, not minutes—before I am compelled to get out and Do Something. I called Walter this morning to see if he was up for some flavor of rendezvous, and was pleased to hear him say that he was planning on doing nothing.
He turned down my lunch invitation, and pointed out that I wasn’t listening. He reiterated that he was doing nothing, and asked if I knew what that meant.
I got me a genuine high school diploma I do, so I knew what he was talking about in theory. The problem, of course, is the disconnect between theory and practice. It’s like Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut said, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”
I can’t imagine doing nothing. If I’m visiting a friend who pops into the loo, I’ll grab the nearest electronic doodad (I always have at least two with me) and plonk away until she’s back. The closest I get to meditation is contemplating different, substitute, replacement, and alternate words in a thesaurus.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m rather pleased with this shortcoming. I might shake a righteous finger at someone who boasted about her or his failure of the imagination, but my deficiency has served me well.
(But I would say that, wouldn’t I?)
3 February 2021
Que Será Sarah
Sarah has a thing for Spaniards. (”A thing” is her phrase, not mine.) That explains, in part, the noms de courtship of her two current suitors, Spaniard Number One and Spaniard Number Two.
But, at the risk of being repetitiously redundant, that’s only a partial explanation. A potential romantic partner is like a newborn kitten: you don’t give it a name—and, in the case of felines, a gender—for the first month in case it doesn’t survive.
I’ve heard good things and bad things about both of the hombres, so my only preference is Sarah’s happiness. Having said that, I hope the guy she chooses doesn’t have a name that would require me to roll an “r” until my tongue hurts.
Que será Sarah, or something like that.
4 February 2021
The Infernal Condition
I don’t know what got into me; I really don’t. I’m tempted to fall back on a cliché like, “The devil made me do it,” but such superstitious malarky has no place in a secular screed like this.
Any old hoo, I was innocently walkin’ down the road mindin’ my own business when this infernal idea popped into my noggin to do a text-based piece. I did lots of them a millennium ago, and still like most. That artistic(?) vein dried up and atrophied long ago, but then along comes this straggler decades later.
The Infernal Condition is meant to be printed and viewed, but who does that these days? And since almost no one is going to bother to look at it on a large computer monitor, I suppose it’s is an exercise in aesthetic futility, but that’s art, innit?
If you want to know the concept without bothering to look at the original work, you’ll have to look at the explanation below ...
... lower ...
... further down ...
... keep going ...
... almost there ...
... and here ya go!
The Infernal Condition comprises six hundred and sixty-six words that begin with the letter “d,” one of which is not “details.”
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