Ragnarok and Whale

I'd basically forgotten that I'd put a hold on this book from my library app. It was "The Wolf in the Whale", and I was intrigued by its mixture of Inuit history and Norse mythology. I don't recall if I knew that it was by a familiar author when I reserved it, but when it came up for me, I looked at her name and remembered my middling experience with her previous writings about Greek gods in modern times, another concept  I love. I thought I'd give her a chance on this one, though I didn't have any certainty about finishing the book. But it grabbed me somehow. I think I might have been more liable to bounce off the previous books because of the fairly clinical disposition of the narrator, but "Wolf" is seen through a more earnest and open lens. Somehow, that's enough to make it resonate more when all else is relatively equal. This novel's getting devoured.

Bonus Question!

Best whale song?

"So Long and Thanks for All the Fish".

Putting the Camp in Camp Half-Blood

I didn't even know that there was a Percy Jackson musical till I saw a poster on the subway a few weeks ago that announced its one-week engagement in Toronto. I decided on the spot that I basically had to give it a look.

And hey. It was a time. It almost felt as though it was made by people who just got thrown together and wrote the whole thing in order because it really got progressively better as it went on. Everything got tighter and more decisive, but it never dropped that bathetic whimsy, which so heavily defined the books. Honestly, I'd put it around the level of the movies, but its strengths and flaws were wildly different. Still. A good time. And the kind of thing I basically had to do.

Bonus Question!

Movie Grover versus musical Grover!

Each was a divergent take on the character, but musical Grover felt closer to Ned from "Spider-Man: Homecoming" with an undercut, and that did a lot to endear him to me.

Third Eye Anxiety

You know that origin story about Ganesha's elephant head? Little guy was a pretty normal little god baby, and Parvati was a proud mother. But Daddy Shiva was standing there, and he didn't know how to be a parent at all. Dude was a volatile force of cosmic artistry. What did he know about raising babes? Speaking as someone who isn't a father, I can relate.

He was just standing there and looking at his newborn son, getting more stressed by the moment. That stress built up and reflexively shot forth in a gout of flame from Shiva's third eye, blowing Ganesha's human head off. At Parvati's understandable panic, Shiv got flustered and found the nearest animal head to fix his son's accidental decapitation. Ganesh grew into it.

But anyway. That's basically how that kind of obsessive anxiety thing I do sometimes feels when it manifests. Apart from the elephant part. I'm focusing on a thing. The thing and the type of attention don't even matter. Maybe I'm just looking at my hair. Then that third eye opens up, envisions a problem that might not even have a trace of actual existence, and blows it right up into a catastrophe.

Sometimes dancing helps. Maybe that's why Shiva took it up.

Bonus Question!

Shiva's known as the destroyer and the transformer. What are your favourite things to destroy and transform into?

Myself in both cases.