Charles Kowalski

I have a joke about Hephaestus, but it’s kind of lame.

Ah, too bad.

Solid light? So when can we get our lightsabers?

When Republicans call themselves “the party of law and order,” do they mean “We’ll break any law if Trump gives the order”?

Or, as my teenage son calls it, “Peak-dor.”

Thank you, Pope Francis, for being a touchstone of truth in a topsy-turvy age when so many claim the mantle of Christians while standing up to be counted with the antithesis of everything Jesus taught. You went home too soon. Peace be upon you.

(Hang on a minute…if it’s underwater, is it still a “torii”? Or does it become a “sakanai“?)

🎵Under the sea, under the sea,
It’s so divine here, we got a shrine here
With a torii…

When he said empathy was the fundamental weakness of Western civilization, I kind of took that to mean he didn’t want any.

Ah…getting paid in exposure? May he get a generous helping of “exposure” from a Yuki-onna.

He’s making money off your work. I missed the part where it’s “mutually beneficial.”

Or (at least where I live) “Equinox Flower.” It blooms around the equinox, which is also a time to remember the departed.

"When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order."

—Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Laureate

Still, we know what happens to long-serving inanimate objects that feel unappreciated.

And preventing them from coming back to haunt you as tsukumogami?

If You Want to Drive Away Demons, Don’t Forget the Beans The author of Simon Grey introduces the Japanese festival of Setsubun, and explores why demons are so easily driven away with beans.

Happy Setsubun! This is Japan’s version of the Chinese New Year, when people ensure good luck for the coming year by casting out demons with beans. (Traditionally by throwing them, although some have come up with more innovative methods.)

simongreybooks.com/2020/02/04/i...

✨News!!✨My Yōkai Oracle Deck is coming out later this year🎉. I gathered all the wise words, proverbs, idioms, phrases, & other distinctly Japanese adages that I've fallen in love w/ in my 35+-yrs of living in Japan & paired them to a yōkai whose soul matched that vibe.

#preorder

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Thank you!

Takiyasha-Hime: Wicked Witch or Freedom Fighter? An exclusive interview with the ghost of Takiyasha-hime, the sorceress controlling the giant skeleton in Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s famous painting.

For an exclusive interview with Princess Takiyasha: simongreybooks.com/2024/07/10/t...

Republicans are the party of law and order, all right. They’ll break any law if Trump gives the order.

Those who say it can’t be done should never get in the way of those who are doing it.

One bishop, in one church, literally just asked the president to be nice and him and everyone in his circle been melting down for a week.

These aren't strong people. They're very, very weak people. They can be beaten.

If your Christianity causes you to be offended by someone asking the most powerful person in the country to be merciful towards the powerless, then you have profoundly misunderstood the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Her atlases of Middle-Earth and the Dragonlance world were part of what inspired me to build my own fantasy worlds. Thanks, Karen! (How’s your Atlas of Heaven coming along?)

But apparently, there are no money-changers in heaven.