Five years!

Much to my amazement, and consternation I might add, today marks the end of five years of Morialekafa. When it began I had little idea even what a blog was, and I certainly never dreamed mine would continue for five years. I just knew that “everyone was doing it,” and that it might be both fun and interesting. It has been both of those things. Of course no one had ever heard of Morialekafa. Those I told about it, counted easily on the fingers of one hand, read it initially but I think soon gave up. I doubt there are more than two or three regular readers even now. I don’t get many hits. I especially don’t get many looking for Morialekafa per se. But what I find the most interesting are the hits I get from literally all over the world. These people are put on to Morialekafa because they have googled some subject I have written about or mentioned, and get directed here. Peculiarly enough, I think, is that I have received more hits for an essay I wrote on “Being an Only Child” than anything else. But this is followed closely by, believe it or not, by the subjects of sardines and pickled pigs’ feet. There are others, of course, but not with the frequency of the above. If nothing else this has filled me with a genuine sense of awe about the internet. The fact that it literally reaches people even in the far corners of the world remains a wonderful, even magical phenomenon for me. I don’t understand it but I love it.

Morialekafa was not started to be particularly political, but over the years has become quite political. This seemed to be inevitable, as I first watched with disbelief at the Bush/Cheney administration, then with disenchantment, and finally with utter disgust. This has led me to rant and rave sometimes with increasing emotion. I doubt anyone cares, but it does keep me from kicking my cats, beating my wife, and yelling at my son. I remain totally upset about what has happened to our country and I fear I will expire before I see justice done to the war criminals responsible for bringing us to the abominable condition in which we now find ourselves.
For anyone who might be interested, I have compiled a list of basically non-political topics Morialekafa has published over the past five years. These consist of brief essays, short stories, and comments on books and movies. I hope you might find something of interest.

Essays (of sorts)
On Deodorant 7-31-04
On Knitting 8-07-04
Beliefs 8-14-04
Movie and TV Ratings 8-21-04
Journalism 8-28-04
Wisdom Teeth 9-04-04
On Names 9-11-04
Human Universals 9-25-04
On Being an Only Child 10-02-04
Divorce 10-17-04
Cats 10-24-04
On Cute 10-31-04
Advice 11-7-04
On Anxiety 11-13-04
Things I Was Told as a Child 11`-21-04
On White 11-28-04
Death and the Mechanical Model 12-09-04
Holidays 12-21-04
Valley Girls in the Kitchen 12-24-04
Wearing Glasses 1-01-05
Men and Secretaries 1-11-05
On Perversity 1-22-05
On Chewing 1-28-05
Tennis Shoes 2-05-05
Turkey Breasts 2-13-05
Black Hats 3-04-05
Exercise 3-10-05
Frozen Potatoes? 4-14-05
Government Waste 4-25-05
Women and Ice Cream 5-09-05
Put the Seat Up 5-13-05
No TV and Manners 5-20-05
Cell Phones 5-22-05
Wuthering 6-09-05
School Plays 7-14-05
The Church of the Great Mystery 8-03-05
Pickled Pigs Feet 8-14-05
Women and Telephones 8-26-05
Fast Food 9-16-05
A Lesson from the Gila Monster 10-21-05
Bathrooms 10-24-05
Travel is Educational 11-08-05
Gadjets 11-23-05
Save Them 12-18-05
Payments 1-25-06
All You Can Eat 2-12-06
Ask Your Doctor 3-17-06
Reflections on Toilets 5-26-06
Round Up the Usual Tripe 7-01-06
The Vast Storage Epidemic 8-27-06
Never Satisfied 9-29-06
Useless Words and Phrases 10-06-06
On Jokes 10-21-06
Themes of Culture 11-22-06
Why Chickens 2-04-07
Sex, Diets and Chicken Breasts 3-18-07
Milestones in Growing Old 4-21-07
Sins and Virtues 5-10-07
Women and Cookbooks 6-09-07
Themes of Culture 8-01-07
The Concept of the Soul 8-07-07
Drugs 8-17-07
Lutefisk 5-01-08
On Bullshit 6-02-08
On Truth 6-04-08
Real People? 7-03-08
Dining on the Road 7-09-08
The Slave Ship 7-27-08
The Fifth Great Blow 8-29-08
What (or Who) is a Dork? 9-01-08
Seven Deadly Sins 9-13-08
Vienna Style 10-22-08
Greatest Movies 11-24-08
Life in the Land of Plenty 1-17-09
Nacirema Revisited 2-02-09
Addiction 2-24-09
On Hobbies 3-07-09
On Google Recipes 3-21-09

Short Stories
Huckleberries 1-14-05
I Remember Bernard 1-30-05
Frenchy Don’t-You-Know 3-12-05
On the Konigstrasse 4-04-05
Quentin III 4-21-05
Welcome to Southern California 4-30-05
Ugly 5-29-05
Reunion 6-25-05
Charlie the Hook 7-21-05
Flowers for Armando 7-31-05
Old Man 8-21-05
The Billiard Room 9-07-05
By the Waterfall 12-02-05
Yosio 1-11-06
Donkey 3-04-06
A Passion for Liverwurst 5-18-06
The Goatherd 7-12-06
Delivering a Mattress 5-29-07
Bird on a String 7-20-07
The Last Duck 5-09-08
Dawdle 4-29-09

Comments on Books/Movies

For Whom the Bell Tolls 7-02-05
The Lost One 1-07-06
The Godfather – comments 3-14-06
Cannibalism 6-16-07
The Devil in the White City 2-16-07
Apocalypto 8-14-07
Blood on the Wattle 8-16-07
A Long Way Gone 10-27-07
Two Books 11-10-07
How Soccer Explains the World
How Soccer Explains the World
Columbus and Other Cannibals
Murder in Amsterdam 11-19-07
East of the Sun 12-01-07
The Old Way 11-15-08
The Devil Came on Horseback 4-20-08
Casablanca 1-03-09
My Life in France 1-30-09
Big Trouble 2-26-09
A Thousand Splendid Suns 2-28-09
The Forever War 3-14-09
The Man With No Face 3-20-09
Dorothy Parker 3-28-09
Mencken 4-14-09
Crazy Good 4-24-09
Pablo Neruda 4-30-09
A Land So Strange 5-17-09
Armenian Golgotha 5-25-09
The Devil in the Kitchen 5-31-09
Columbine 6-07-09
Go Down Together 6-14-09
Corelli’s Mandolin 6-28-09
The Great Mortality 7-12-09
The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair 7-19-09