"a yawning, neutral god with a relish for disinfectants"

"'It's true enough," said Crowther-Mason. 'The concept of sin seems to be dead. It's been expelled from the Garden. Freud and Marx hold up their flaming swords. But surely it's a good thing?'

'It's an atrocious thing,' said the Vicar. 'It's killed both kinds of good living. It's removed a dimension from our lives. We've all lost that incense-laden thrill we used to get from the exciting knowledge that, if you pulled up the floor-boards, you would find a deliciously bottomless pit. What have we instead? Right and wrong, with their interchangeable wardrobes, and the police-courts, temples of a yawning, neutral god with a relish for disinfectants.' With a pleasant smile he raised his brandy to his lips, as with a relish for it, as in a silent toast to sin. But he spluttered with shock, and all gasped with surprise, as the French-windows were shiveringly pushed open and Ambrose entered, nearly dead on his feet, paper-faced, trembling with terror, saying:

'Give me a drink, for God's sake.'"

-- Anthony Burgess, The Eve of Saint Venus

"time rushes by drying up or rotting"

"These memories made me think how the words 'That person has changed' are completely useless in some cases; it finally occurred to me that to expect someone to always be a certain way or consistently do a certain thing can be a huge burden on them.

When life becomes something one just lives through, when the demands of survival take up all of our time and effort, leaving no strength for any other demands, and when time rushes by drying up or rotting whatever we have had to neglect, expecting someone to carry on being the same is truly too much of a burden."

-- Baek Sae-hee, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Deokbokki

Sunbather

Princess Mandu will let you pet her now.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chingu wishes you a great day!

"It's biological."

"'I have an idea,' I say. 'Since you're attracted to me and I'm attracted to you, why don't we go to my house and have sex and see what happens next, no strings attached?'

'That would be a betrayal of Marc.'

'You could call it that, or you could call it adding another gradation into the field of your trustworthiness.'

'Having sex with you would turn me from being trustworthy into being untrustworthy.'

'Not necessarily' I say. 'If we sleep together once and it's not incredible, you'll be more trustworthy and committed to Marc from that point on, because when you see my muscles through my T-shirt and feel attracted to me, you'll think, I've already had sex with Lincoln and it wasn't that great, so who cares about those muscles?'

'You're cloaking your lust in logic.'

'My lust is logical.'

'Lust is never logical," she says. "It's biological.'"

-- Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

Life's Rich Pageant

I'm at that advanced age when finding good kitty litter that clumps and doesn't make my house smell like chlorine is a win for the month.  Maybe year.  Anyhow, thank you Arm and Hammer and please don't raise your prices anytime soon.

Meh, I Say

I finished Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, a sequel to one of my favorite books A Visit from the Goon Squad, and I was disappointed.  It felt like short stories, which is fine except the main idea of the book is never fully explored.  There are some great moments of course (she knows how to end a novel, that's for sure) but overall I can't recommend it.

Bugonia: Wut I Thunk

This was marketed as a comedy for some reason because I guess Americans aren't as fond of films labelled "Greek Tragedy."  (Important tell: a significant plot item is named "Creon.")  Stone and Plemmons are both good on their own, but positively electric when together on the screen.  The premise of a powerful female executive who obviously must be an alien to have achieved so much works well, even when the film seems to indicate that the fantasies of the two main characters are utter crackpot nonsense.  Lanthimos goes for schtick towards the end which may keep it from ranking among his best films (The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deer) but still, this is among his better work.

Four ritually slaughtered oxen out of five!

Important Life Update

For some reason my YouTube feed is nothing but Nazi documentaries and prison cooking clips, things like five course meals made from ramen and ketchup packets.

I might be living the best life, or maybe not. Honestly not sure.

"On any given afternoon, they all converged on the nearby playhouses"

"Norton Folgate was a decidedly mixed neighborhood, though by no means as mixed as the adjacent parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, with its high crime rate and heightened susceptibility to plague. Still, it was insalubrious and crowded enough, and it undoubtedly saw its share of the dubious characters who trolled many of the streets of London. These characters in Marlowe's time had an array of colorful names:  'Anglers,' thieves who carried hooked staffs with which they could snare linen hanging from upstairs windows; 'Abraham Men,' beggars who pretended to be mad, along with 'Counterfeit Cranks,' who feigned falling sickness; 'Cony-Catchers,' con men on the lookout for easy marks; 'Priggers of Prancers,' horse thieves; 'Rufflers,' former soldiers who showed their real or pretended wounds in order to compel charity; 'Bawdy Baskets,' 'Walking Morts,' 'Kichin Morts,' and other names for women who worked the sex trade. The likes of these, together with cutpurses, pickpockets, and all the rest of London's lower depths, rubbed elbows with the street hawkers, fortune tellers, tinkers, tradesmen, maids, apprentices, porters, bailiffs, sailors, perfumed courtiers, idle gentlemen, fashionable ladies, and on occasion, as in the case of Marlowe, poets and playwrights. On any given afternoon, they all converged on the nearby playhouses, those large wooden O's that had room for all of them."

-- Stephen Greenblatt, Dark Renaissance

Cat Life

Miss Mandu is ready for winter.