The shadow that stalks

Originally published at Крадущийся песец, затаившийся енот. You can comment here or there.

The world that I just happen to live in continues to deteriorate. I really, definitely am looking for trends that would make it back to at least half-normal before I am eighty, even if that is posthumous. Sadly, I don’t see those. I was hoping this little Internet thingy is the cesspool where every refrigerated fast-food of a soul goes, but it has probably overflown into a real world some time ago.

P.S. Well, actually this is about that guy that at least seemed to care about the right thing, and who died in a car crash with his family just recently.

The long, the short and the thick

Originally published at Крадущийся песец, затаившийся енот. You can comment here or there.

Somehow I find now that it is much easier to express myself in English. As I’ve said to er… virtual world acquaintance that we have a longstanding disagreement on some political values, Russian language often requires Dostoyevsky-style drama to express simple things, and a lot gets caught in during the process. Those subtle innuendos, second-grade allusions, unnecessary (dis)qualifications that are caught in nearly any Russian language half-sentence. English is just much more direct. And at the same time English is just that tiny huge bit more hollow, so that you don’t have to look into deeper meaning, when there is no deeper meaning. All deep meanings are expressed specifically, you don’t have to call shallow writer deep just because you don’t understand what was that crap he tried to bring you under the guise of chocolate chip vanilla sundae.

Addition from my comment elsewhere: The problem may not be entirely linguistic, but linguistic approach makes sense. You see, when writing or speaking or reading another language you suddenly have to make conscious effort to interpret it correctly, what you do not do, while reading, speaking, writing or listening your own tongue. And you know, idiots rarely speak other language but their own, especially with eloquence. Idiots may have high education or even a very broad knowledge regardless of education, they can even know a couple or more foreign languages. But, being automatic in other language is much harder than in your own. And I mean much with a capital M.

Fermenting the fish

Originally published at Крадущийся песец, затаившийся енот. You can comment here or there.

What would you think of relatives holding a church funeral over a deceased atheist? Well, I believe it is a disrespect to their loved one’s memory, and I’ve witnessed it a couple of times. But this shows with eye-popping clarity that all death-related rituals are not for the dead or their memory. It is for the living, so that they may find some peace. And well, if there is no other way to calm down the grief, funeral is okay in my book. I wouldn’t protest it from my coffin, would I? Of course, I may put a special request in my will not to hold any church ceremony, but why would I bother? Go ahead, play your games, too bad I couldn’t stop those games while I was alive. I wouldn’t go haunting you.