454

thinkin’ ’bout god

23Jan2025

What’s on my mind, you ask? Well, since you ask….

Proselytizing religious folks. Super-judgy religious types. You want to tell me how to worship? You want to prescribe the rituals and words, the intentions and manners? You want to control how I express my relationship with god?

Why would you want that? Is it the case that you don’t trust your all-knowing, all-powerful god to KNOW effortlessly what is in my heart and in my mind? You fear that I’m doing it all wrong and god won’t know?

You don’t trust the power of god?

You. Don’t trust god?

You?

You, sad little mortal that you are. Dare to pass judgement on how god handles his own affairs.

I won’t go into any further details of the implications of this line of reasoning. If you can’t figure it out, I won’t be able to dumb it down enough for you.

But all the rest of you out there, I wish you could experience the day you deserve. You probably won’t, but I sincerely wish you could.

1190

Review – An Elderly Lady

09Nov2024

Here is another set of short stories in translation. This one features an octogenarian serial killer.
An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good – 171 (small!) pages; published 2013-2018, translated 2018
An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed – 255 (small!) pages; published 2020, translated 2021
Written by Helene Tursten; translated by Marlaine Delargy

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1233

Review – The Kamogawa Food Detectives

08Nov2024

I just finished a curious little book. More of a collection of short stories, and rather more fiction than “mystery” as the library has cataloged it. But still…interesting.
Hisashi Kashwai – The Kamogawa Food Detectives
200 pages; US translation published in 2023; original Japanese publication in 2013
A retired detective turned gourmet chef recreates the virtually impossible from the least memory of beloved food experiences.

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938

Existential Affirmation #1

08Jul2024

Those who read here more than once should get the sense that I tend generally to trade in existential crisis. Tales of nameless dread, nightmares, heightened reality. The absolute certainty of the pointlessness and uncertainty of the human condition. But I am more than the sum of my neuroses. I am, after all, only human myself. More or less.
(Perhaps we’ll touch on that later, but don’t count on it.)

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865

Is this growth?

10Nov2023

It just occurred to me.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if, as I’ve aged, I’ve been ossifying, becoming less resilient. I have had more and more trouble accepting and handling the difficulties that life throws at a person. From daily challenges of a more or less petty nature all the way up to my responses to reporting on global catastrophes that have absolutely zero bearing on me.

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