Rakes

2026-08-23 8:19am

Tak­ing anoth­er hike to clear my head and then…

Siri says, “Good morn­ing. You’re at the begin­ning of your day. You’ve done 1% of the hike. You’re at 0% of your goals. Let’s make the most of this day.”

There’s an old scene (The Simp­sons, Sea­son 5, Episode 2, “Cape Feare,” 15:15–15:49 on Dis­ney+) in which Sideshow Bob is try­ing to mur­der Bart again, so the fam­i­ly relo­cates under wit­ness protection.

Strap­ping him­self under the car, he fol­lows the fam­i­ly, gets bat­tered by speed bumps and scald­ed by cof­fee Homer dumps out the win­dow, with a put-out “Oh, this cof­fee’s too hot.”

Homer then calls an impromp­tu vote on tak­ing a detour through a cac­tus field. Bart and Lisa vote yes. Sideshow Bob votes no. Homer tal­lies the vote, says, “Well, two against one,” and dri­ves through the field, drag­ging Bob beneath the car.

They arrive and Bob crawls out from under­neath the car into an area lit­tered with rakes and imme­di­ate­ly steps onto one, caus­ing it to pop up and slam into his face.

He lets out this low gut­tur­al expres­sion of what I think is frus­tra­tion, anger, sheer annoy­ance at self, Homer, the world, before tak­ing anoth­er step and imme­di­ate­ly being popped in the face by anoth­er rake.

He takes anoth­er step, pop, grr.

This is repeat­ed for what feels like a full minute. After eight rakes, the cam­era moves on. The ninth rake to the face is heard off­screen, unseen.

I’m sure in a small room in the mod­ern art sec­tion of MoMA, this clip is being played on an infi­nite loop. Next to the video, the artist state­ment reads: [left inten­tion­al­ly blank].

Siri says, “Anoth­er one in the books! You’ve com­plet­ed 4 miles! You’ve com­plet­ed 32% of your move ring! Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!”

[Coda]