End Times and Kinsey Millhone

I saw a decrepit old white man on the internet, a self-proclaimed vendor of Holy words for profit, and as his head bobbled around, his skeletal jaw flapped out the truly Christian response to the illegal horror of the Russian invasion of a sovereign Ukraine: God compelled Putin to attack Ukraine so as to bring on the End Times. *

And here I thought the End Times were part of the Gay Agenda all along.

But I’m not too worried about Pat Robertson shuffling off the mortal coil before the Kingdom of God is restored on earth, and besides, he’ll probably miss the event unless he moves to Pigeon Forge. However, the sight of that bag of delusional bones made me recoil from the thought of becoming a wobbly drooling zombie reduced to Books-On-Tape and forced to watch reruns of Queen-For-A-Day. What if I don’t like strained peas?

I start contemplating death now because I realize that I have lived most of my active life and whatever remains is just rounding error. My back, which was only supposed to hold out until I was forty-five, is giving out and I envision a wheelchair in the near. future. I’m undergoing many tests to ascertain the real reasons for my bodily decline and operating on an unacceptable level of oxygen seems to be the culprit. I’ve slept with oxygen bleeding through my Bi-Pap for years but now I may be placed on oxygen all day long. Since I tend to sit hour after hour reading at my desk, I’m a good candidate for this therapy but the image of a white-haired old man slumped in a wheelchair with a face mask pumping oxygen from a torpedo-tube strapped to the chair is at best, sad.

But I’ll be able to sit here, reading book after book, making little comments on my weblog, and wondering if my catheter bag is getting full. Then one day …

But until then, I am truly enjoying most of the books I am reading, even the detective novels. For March I’m starting out with this list:

1. A Man of the People — Chinua Achebe
2. The Year of the Flood — Margaret Atwood
3. The Wild Asses Skin — Honoré de Balzac
4. Manchild in the Promised Land — Claude Brown
5. Floating in a Most Peculiar Way — Louis Chude-Sokei
6. The Divine Invasion — Philip K. Dick
7. The Last Thing He Wanted — Joan Didion
8. The Adolescent – Fyodor Dostoevsky
9. “E” Is for Evidence — Sue Grafton
10. The Ministry of Fear — Graham Greene
11. Travels With Herodotus — Ryszard Kapuscinski
12. Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear — Javier Marías
13. Sweet Tooth — Ian McEwan
14. Swimming Lessons — Rohinton Mistry
15. The Bone Clocks — David Mitchell
16. The Bat — Jo Nesbø
17. The Gravedigger’s Daughter — Joyce Carol Oates
18. Bewilderment — Richard Powers
19. Madame Maigret’s Friend — Georges Simenon
20. Brazil — John Updike

As time permits, I’m considering reading (or at least starting) Ken Follet’s Kingsbridge series in my endeavor to chip away at my Bucket List:

• The Pillars of the Earth
• World Without End
• A Column of Fire
• The Evening and the Morning

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• For those who enjoy wrapping their brains around logic puzzles, try completing this sequence:

• Pat Robertson: The re-election of Donald Trump will bring about the end Times.
• Donald Trump lost.
• Pat Robertson: Putin was compelled by God to attack Ukraine and bring about the End Times.
• ?????