Lunatic Writer's Blog

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari: a review

2/21/2022

The author of Homo Deus is clearly an atheist and I am not, but that does not prevent me from finding his analysis of the human condition fascinating and very insightful. Here is what he writes on pg. 234-235 of his book. (The first paragraph describes quite well the mental world I live in and marks me as "premodern". So be it.)

Many of you will probably be more comfortable describing yourself as "modern". Your world view will be described in the second paragraph. However, if you're feeling smug about being "modern", don't neglect to read the last paragraph:

"In exchange for giving up power, premodern humans believed that their lives gained meaning. It really mattered whether they fought bravely on the battlefield, whether they supported the lawful king, whether they ate forbidden foods for breakfast or whether they had an affair with the next-door neighbour. This of course created some inconveniences, but it gave humans psychological protection against disasters. If something terrible happened — such as war, plague or drought — people consoled themselves that ‘We all play a role in some great cosmic drama devised by the gods or by the laws of nature. We are not privy to the script, but we can rest assured that everything happens for a purpose. Even this terrible war, plague and drought have their place in the greater scheme of things. Furthermore, we can count on the playwright that the story surely has a good and meaningful ending. So even the war, plague and drought will work out for the best — if not here and now, then in the afterlife.’ "

The Modern World View: Shit Happens [my title]

"Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer — and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more. Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ’shit happens’. On the other hand, if shit just happens, without any binding script or purpose, then humans too are not confined to any pre- determined role. We can do anything we want — provided we can find a way. We are constrained by nothing except our own ignorance. Plagues and droughts have no cosmic meaning — but we can eradicate them. Wars are not a necessary evil on the way to a better future — but we can make peace. No paradise awaits us after death — but we can create paradise here on earth and live in it for ever, if we just manage to overcome some technical difficulties. If we invest money in research, then scientific breakthroughs will accelerate technological progress. New technologies will fuel economic growth, and a growing economy will dedicate even more money to research. With each passing decade we will enjoy more food, faster vehicles and better medicines. One day our knowledge will be so vast and our technology so advanced that we shall distil the elixir of eternal youth, the elixir of true happiness, and any other drug we might possibly desire — and no god will stop us.

The modern deal thus offers humans an enormous temptation, coupled with a colossal threat. Omnipotence is in front of us, almost within our reach, but below us yawns the abyss of complete nothingness. On the practical level modern life consists of a constant pursuit of power within a universe devoid of meaning."

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Dead Crow & the Spirit Engine by Sean Arthur Joyce

10/30/2020

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The first thing that strikes a reader upon opening Dead Crow is just how beautiful the book is. The layout, the font, the photographs, the illustrations, are all of the first order and a treat to the eye. How exciting to discover that the written content is every bit as beautiful and haunting, an evocative search for “meaning at a time when we’re being told all is meaningless.”

Author Joyce steeps the reader in rich imagery and myth, delivering a message that, at first seems painfully apocalyptic, but on reflection, is more than that. The vision is larger and redemptive. Joyce’s poetry looks at the history and fate of humankind from its very beginnings to its far future, and straddles the distances between quarks and galaxies.

In its general structure, Dead Crow is a series of linked poems, but to describe them as “linked” does the book a disservice. They are not linked in way raindrops are linked, each resembling the other in kind, but with no sense of an evolving narrative. By contrast, Joyce’s collection is like an approaching thunderstorm. It gathers momentum as the reader delves further into the book. The reader is immersed in a developing drama, ripe with rising tension and memorable characters. Throughout, our spiritual guide is Dead Crow, the “loner”, the “watcher”, the often hilarious “changeling with a bad attitude.” His voice is supplemented by numerous characters from myth, history and imagination, such as Don Juan and Dawn Crow (the love interest) and the wise, but cantankerous, guru, Grandfather Raven.

Here is a small taste of Joyce’s eloquent fusion of language, science and myth (from Dawn Crow: Mission.)

I won’t tell you who or what we found
In eons of wandering, only
That the energy of souls is rare. So rare,

The only appropriate response
Is awe. To allow arbitrary genes
To shape a body, to take on matter—a mind,

A heart, is to invite pain. Let me tell you,
Darlin’, not many in White Crow clan
Were tempted to take on flesh.

We’re content to roam, rootless
Urges and synapses—anxious
To find spirits awakening from the sleep

Of matter, anxious to find eye
Roaming to meet other eyes--
Waking eyes, dream eyes,

Past and future eyes.

If you're anything like me, you don't often visit the poetry section of your bookstore, but in this case, you would be well advised to make an exception. In Dead Crow you will find some wonderful writing and a wonderful concept, both executed to perfection (or close to it).

It's enough to make an author crow.

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Ars longa, vita brevis

7/7/2020

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In the Western World at least, we live in a blessed age. We have antibiotics, vaccines, science-based medicine, and generally we do not expect to die from contagious diseases. So our present circumstances strike us as unusual, even unique, but are they?
Today we are experiencing the world, and our own fragility, as most of human history has always known it. Let’s just look at the life of the world’s greatest writer, William Shakespeare:

He was born in 1564, a plague year. One third of the population of Stratford died this year, but not the infant William.
In 1592, just as the playwright’s career was beginning to gather steam in London, the theatres had to close because of the plague. They reopened briefly that winter, then had to close again the following spring and for most of 1593. Sound familiar? Eleven thousand deaths were recorded in London over this period—at its peak, one thousand a day. Most of the deaths occurred among the poor. Does this also sound familiar?
In 1603, King James I had to cancel his inauguration parade because of the plague. Again the theatres closed.
In 1610-11, another outbreak hit the city. No doubt, this must have figured in Williams’ decision to return to Stratford for good.

In this uncertain world of political upheaval and capricious death, Shakespeare managed to produce masterpiece after masterpiece which still resonate in our times. His fellow actors rushed back to the stage just as soon as they were allowed to re-open. From the Globe they shared with the world the wisdom of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and so forth.

Who knows what other works of genius the Plague forever deprived us of?

Ars longa, vita brevis.

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Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

6/16/2020

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Kim Stanley Robinson is the Leo Tolstoy of science fiction. In his ground-breaking book, Red Mars (which I have finally got around to reading—shame on me), he takes away the reader’s breath with his genius for world-making. Not only does he give the reader a Mars of exquisite geographical detail (all scientifically-based), but also explores in detail the motivation and thinking of the planet’s first colonists. One of the great questions he visits is the ethics of development. Do we have the right to develop another world—to make Mars another Earth? There are no simple answers to this question, and Robinson creates characters who are passionate on both sides of the debate.

In Red Mars Robinson combines complexity and beauty in equal measure, creating an experience more powerful than any 3D rendering possibly could—and all this accomplished back in 1992!

s a boy, I grew up dreaming I might be just the right age to become one of the first astronauts to visit Mars. Fifty years later, Robinson has—for all intents and purposes—actually taken me there.

The author’s range of expertise is mind-boggling, crossing many fields: geology, astronomy, biology, psychology, sociology—there is no aspect of colonizing Mars that he does not explore in wonderful depth. One of the main characters in this book reflects on the shortcomings of Earth economics:

“That’s a large part of what economics is—people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven’t just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful.”

This is just one small tidbit of wisdom and insight that permeates this wonderful book. For a scifi fan, Red Mars is a must; for those not immersed in the genre, it may convert you.

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English’s Most Dastardly Prefixes: Sn & Sm

4/7/2020

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Working on a writing project the other day, my eyes fell upon the page in my thesaurus which listed synonyms starting with the blend “sn”. I did a double-take. Almost all the “sn” words had very negative connotations in English. Let me count the ways:
Snafu, snag, snake, snarl, snare, snatch, sneak, sneer, snide, snigger, snip, snivel, snob, snoop, snooty, snub and snuff.

The composition possibilities are endless: “The man sneered and sniggered as he snatched the snarling snake from the snag.”

A few “sn” words are neutral e.g. “snack, sniff, snout, snow,” and there is one that is downright lovable—“snuggle”. It just about makes up for all its negative and violent cousins.

Words starting in “sm” don’t fare a whole lot better. We have: “smack, smarmy, smash, smear, smelly, smog, smoke, smother, smudge, smug, smuggle and smutty.”

The “sm: words are better balanced with some positive representatives such as “smart, smile” and “smitten” and a few neutral ones such as “small” and “smooth.”

In general, however, if you wish to express something in English which has a negative (or even violent) tone, look first to your “sn” words, secondly your “sm” words. In fact, all consonant blends starting with “s” may be fundamentally suspect. “Don’t forget words like “slimy, slither, scoff, sting, stench, strangle, spit, squash, squirm, stagger, scar, scamp, scandal, scare, scowl, scrap, scruffy and scum.”
Isn’t the English language just “scrumptious”?

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Movie Review: 1917

2/8/2020

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A few nights ago, I left the theatre quite convinced I had just seen a cinematic masterpiece. These words do not slip easily from my lips. I am no fan of pronouncing new releases “instant classics” or any such nonsense, but after having watched the movie 1917, that seemed the only appropriate description.

Let me also say that I am no great fan of war movies as a genre. Watching bullets fly on the big screen is among my least favourite past times. But 1917 was different. Given the subject matter-- World War I trench warfare-- one had to expect scenes of horror and they were there—it was unavoidable, but also there were scenes of sublime beauty. I will never forget the scene where our protagonist, on his very last legs, stumbles upon a regiment sitting silently in the thick woods while a single soldier stands and sings a capella—except for the singing, there is not a single sound. These sweet notes may well be the last beautiful things these men will ever know before climbing a ridge and into the range of German machine guns.

Also seared deep into my heart is the extended sequence where our weary and wounded protagonist runs for his life through a bombed-out French village at night. Only the village is lit up by flares, artillery, and fires. The light is unearthly, beautiful, haunting. It makes me think of paintings by Goya, Picasso, Fuseli. It is both Hell and Heaven somehow fused together, unforgettable.

All I have said so far might make 1917 a very good movie, but there is much more. What is truly unique about this piece of cinema is the way director Sam Mendes has shot it. It “appears” to be one continuous shot—that is, it seems as if the camera is never put down, never set up for a different angle. It looks as if one vast set has been constructed many miles long through which the actors travel in real time without a break. No sleep, no pee breaks, no stoppage of any kind. Which is, of course, impossible. But that’s how it seems. It seems as if you are the mute companion of two British soldiers, following just behind them, or in front, or beside, but always within easy reach.

Until you have experienced this yourself, I’m not sure I can communicate how intimate an experience this becomes. I am not one for calling out loud during a movie but, on three different occasions, I yelled out loud “NO!” when there was a sudden surprising turn in the plot which endangered the protagonist and me, because “me” and the protagonist had become pretty much the same person.

1917 is a movie that gives “immersive” a new level of meaning. And what a gloriously seamless union of style and story. It’s a most engaging tale—celebrating courage, duty, even tenderness—and a story with strong performances but, most brilliantly of all, a story told in a way which will set a new standard for how such stories need to be told from this point on.

I felt very similar in 1968 after just watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Wow, I kept saying to myself. It’s like I was really there! Five big stars for this one.

For a taste of this wonderful movie, check out the trailer:

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How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

6/7/2019

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I first became a fan of Matt Haig after reading his novel, The Humans, a favourite of mine.

How to Stop Time is not a sequel to his earlier book but a most worthy successor. Here Haig continues in his quest to explore the human condition in his uniquely sweet and delicate way, once again through the eyes of a vulnerable character who is thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

The protagonist of How to Stop Time is named Tom but his name hardly matters for he has had to change it frequently over the centuries—that’s right, centuries, because Tom is over four hundred years old.

Very early on Tom urges the reader not to think of him as a vampire or something so ridiculous. Instead he “suffers” from anageria, a condition where the aging rate is dramatically slowed. There are others like him, though probably not many and, for the most part, they have decided to keep their identities (and especially their condition) secret. After a while, people start to notice when you don’t seem to age. You may get branded as a witch if you live in Elizabethan times (which Tom did) or you make be regarded as a valuable asset for bio-engineering companies in the 21st century (which Tom is).

To avoid attracting too much attention, people like Tom (called albas in the book), general move to new a location every eight years or so and adopt new identities. They can never really settle down and establish roots. Their strangeness, by association, becomes a danger to those who are close to them.

Well! What a premise! As old as he is, Tom has personally known William Shakespeare, Captain Cook and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He has seen history make all its banal mistakes over and over across the centuries. At the same time, like any human, Tom longs for love and human connection, but is it really possible for someone like him? For someone who will not seem to age while his friends, colleagues and lovers do?

If you want to survive, a fellow alba says to him, “The first rule is don’t fall in love.” This is a strategy Tom has reluctantly chosen to follow.

In this book, Haig gives himself full license to comment on the foolishness of human behaviour over time, but he also writes about the parts of human behaviour where the universe can be contained in grain of sand, where a person can, in the only meaningful way possible, “stop time”.

How to Stop Time starts with a premise that might make you think you are reading a piece of science fiction or fantasy. In fact, it is mostly a story about courage, love, and celebrating the present moment.

In his acknowledgements at the end of the book, Haig writes, “I have never had as much fun writing a book.” It shows, and the reader is a great beneficiary of this fact.

Excellent read! Thank you, Mr. Haig!

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Movie Review: First Man

10/30/2018

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As a self-professed Apollo program aficionado, I feel more qualified than usual to comment on the movie First Man. In short, I would say it was a good movie, and a welcome companion to Apollo 13. The latter movie did a splendid job featuring the teamwork aspect of the Apollo missions. It celebrated the extraordinary feats humans are capable of when they work together towards a single goal.

In stark contrast to Apollo 13, First Man focuses deliberately on the story of one man, the “first” man, Neil Armstrong. Few astronauts were as taciturn as Armstrong, few so anxious to avoid the limelight and yet, somehow it was he who chosen to be the first human to step foot on another world. How did this come to be?

The movie opens with a bone-rattling view from the cockpit of the X-15 rocket plane which seems out of control. For a few brief moments the rattling stops, the tension abates and Armstrong is staring into the black on the edge of outer space. But the euphoria is short lived. Soon he is plummeting back into the atmosphere desperately trying to keep his aircraft in one piece.

So, almost at once, we see Armstrong as a man accustomed to living on the edge. He is a test pilot and a first rate engineer. Many of his colleagues have died doing what he does for a living. High stress is part of his life and he seems to cope with it well; he is a disciplined problem-solver and this goes a long way in explaining how he has survived so many perilous situations. But none of these talents help him with his personal life, in particular with his dying daughter. There is nothing he can do to save her, and though he never speaks about it, her death haunts him for the rest of his life.
Not long after his daughter’s death, Armstrong joins the astronaut corps. He is not among the top tier of candidates, but circumstances change—the death of two fellow astronauts in a flying accident and the incineration of the three slated to fly the first Apollo mission bump Armstrong up the tier.

In a desperate effort to catch up to the exploits of the Soviet space program, NASA announces its intention to land a man on the moon. The Gemini program is the first step in reaching that goal. For the most part, the Gemini missions are wildly successful—until Gemini VIII. Ground control is overjoyed as Armstrong performs mankind’s first successful space docking but, soon after, the spacecraft begins to tumble wildly. Armstrong manages to regain control only seconds before the two Gemini astronauts would have fallen unconscious due to the accelerating spin. The public is not privy to how close this mission came to disaster but NASA officials are fully aware of how much they owe to Armstrong’s steady hand. Later Armstrong does it again, by ejecting from an out-of-control Lunar Lander trainer, just before it crashes to the ground, again saving NASA from a public relations nightmare.

Clearly Armstrong is a gifted pilot and as cool under pressure as they come, but none of this helps with his family relations. He never really seems to share his feelings with his wife and, only at her unwavering insistence, does he say a proper goodbye to his two young sons before heading off for the launch of Apollo XI. I am left wondering if it’s unavoidable tradeoff: to be a great test pilot, do you have to be a mediocre father?

Regrettably, the Command Module Pilot of Apollo XI, Michael Collins, gets very little to say or do in this movie which is a shame because he was a very interesting personality. He wrote a very engaging book about his role in the moon landing called Carrying the Fire—I highly recommend it. The movie gives us a nice—though brief—portrayal of Buzz Aldrin, the second man to land on the moon. Buzz comes off as the odd man out—politically incorrect, almost pompous— repeatedly ruffling the feathers of his fellow astronauts, but, as I said, this movie focuses on the story of one man, the “first” man, which is very defensible since we knew so little about him to start with.

The attention to technical and historical detail is quite good in this movie. I recall one scene in the Armstrong living room where we can see the TV in the background; a newscast shows a Vietnamese mother sobbing—there is no sound. This a reminder of the raging war in southeast Asia at this time—subtle, nicely done. To a man, the NASA astronauts at this time were so focused on their training and missions that that’s what the Vietnamese War must have seemed to them—a silent picture in the background which they did their best to ignore.

Perhaps the most beautiful moments of the movie are the silent ones: Armstrong and Aldrin’s first closeup look at the backside of the moon and its stark and threatening craters. Later, those first seconds when they look out the window after landing on the moon’s surface. No words are needed. It’s miraculous—they made it!

It would be a mistake to think, however--as the movie is danger of suggesting--that Apollo astronauts had much time for reflection. Their activities were scripted from second to second and Mission Control was continually checking on their progress. Only when they were orbiting behind the moon did they have any relief.

Also there were moments when the movie makers felt compelled to give us the sound of rocket engines when no sound would be heard in the vacuum of space (my biggest beef with the Star Wars franchise!) There would be plenty of vibration inside the spacecraft but no engine sounds.

Also the landscape just before landing looked much rougher than was actually the case for Apollo XI where they made every effort to find the smoothest landing area possible. There is also a scene, late in the movie, where Armstrong is standing at the edge of a crater which is much bigger and deeper than anything he actually saw during his lunar excursion.

But these are minor quibbles. I left the movie with a much deeper understanding of the man Neil Armstrong, and why he was almost uniquely qualified to be the “first man”. I was also left with a sense of the tragedy of his personal life and the sadness that always seemed to hang over him as he recalled the death of his own young daughter and his many flying companions.

The quirks of history and circumstance made Armstrong mankind’s representative as he took his first step on the moon: “one giant leap for mankind.” But, in his heart, he fully knew that it was also no more than “one small step for an [imperfect] man.”

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October 02nd, 2018

10/2/2018

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Book Review: BIG LEDGE by Brian d'Eon

10/2/2018

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Nascent Poet or Hotheaded Murderer?
by Sean Arthur Joyce

Big Ledge by Brian D’Eon is that rarity in historical fiction—a story that combines historical veracity with narrative fluency and a deep poetic sensibility. D’Eon starts the tale from its endpoint, with its protagonist Robert Sproule sitting in a jail cell telling his story to a priest on the eve of his execution in 1886. Sproule is well-known to readers of Kootenay history for having been convicted of the murder of Thomas Hamill, with whom he had a dispute over ownership of the Bluebell mining claim on the east shore of Kootenay Lake.

The author captures well the colloquialisms of late 19th century speech, adding to the tale’s believability. As any skilled writer knows, dialogue is a prime vehicle for storytelling, not just for revealing plot points but quirks of speech and character. D’Eon effortlessly masters the technique, easily drawing us into the tale. He also appreciates the value of including other sensory information in the narrative. Sproule’s confession to the priest is laced with his memories of the “pristine” Kootenay country—not just its visual grandeur but its smells: “…the firs and cedar, the black earth, the wild strawberries, even the smell of the lake—each has its own smell you know—that’s how salmon know where they’re going.”

The poetic dimension enters with a secondary set of characters, the Archangel Michael and Hindu goddess Parvati, heavenly eavesdroppers whose wry asides add a funny, philosophical dimension. Poetic quotes from Blake, Shakespeare, the Bible and others are woven seamlessly throughout Sproule’s narrative, though it’s uncertain what level of education he possessed, or whether he would have had quite the broad vocabulary D’Eon imagines. The dialogue between Archangel Michael and Parvati is often laced with humour, as when Michael wonders what it is that attracts mortals to tobacco. “Ah,” Parvati answered, happy to explain: “A native custom, and a most clever means of revenge against European invaders.” The celestial pair function as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting from the wings as they debate whether Sproule is an unjustly accused prospector with a poetic nature or simply a hotheaded murderer. In so doing, D’Eon skillfully engages one of Canadian history’s great mysteries, one that—given the contradictory historical accounts—may never be solved.

Adding to this narrative of multiple perspectives is C.J. Woodbury, a reporter who wrote several accounts of the Sproule-Hamill trial. Speaking to his fiancée Kate Buchanan, Woodbury makes an observation that could serve as the book’s basic premise: “It was striking the way people could so quickly judge these things. As if there could be no doubt about the matter. Label someone and you no longer had to think about him as a person.” With explorations of Woodbury as well as William Baillie-Grohman, D’Eon sidesteps the trap of investing too heavily in his protagonist’s point of view.

D’Eon successfully applies the techniques of the novelist to flesh out what would otherwise be—at best, given what we know of Sproule and Hamill—a very short story. One of the writer’s primary tools is a sense of empathy for a story’s characters, even those with an unsavoury nature. D’Eon clearly identifies strongly with the version of Sproule he has created, and his characterization is highly appealing. For many readers, it will raise serious questions about Sproule’s guilt and the “justice” meted out to him.
You can almost smell the smoke of a miner’s campfire, curling up into a night sky not yet crowded with satellites and air pollution, lake waters lapping meditatively as the tale unwinds. D’Eon has written a historical novel that ranks with the best of them.

One of the story's principal narrators, the Hindu Goddess, Parvati

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Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari: a review

The Modern World View: Shit Happens [my title]

Dead Crow & the Spirit Engine by Sean Arthur Joyce

Ars longa, vita brevis

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

English’s Most Dastardly Prefixes: Sn & Sm

Movie Review: 1917

For a taste of this wonderful movie, check out the trailer:

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Movie Review: First Man

October 02nd, 2018

Book Review: BIG LEDGE by Brian d'Eon

Nascent Poet or Hotheaded Murderer?
by Sean Arthur Joyce

One of the story's principal narrators, the Hindu Goddess, Parvati

Author

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The Modern World View: Shit Happens [my title]

For a taste of this wonderful movie, check out the trailer: ​

Nascent Poet or Hotheaded Murderer?by Sean Arthur Joyce

One of the story's principal narrators, the Hindu Goddess, Parvati

​Author

Categories

Archives

For a taste of this wonderful movie, check out the trailer:

Nascent Poet or Hotheaded Murderer?
by Sean Arthur Joyce

Author