Too Many Books

Here is a nearly sentence-by-sentence reconstruction of Brett and Alice's most recent episode of their podcast "The Prosecutors" - titled Adnan Syed is Guilty. I will not be utilizing the strikethrough in every sentence but will do so when I am compelled and will try to bold sections I've added. I've highlighted some of my favorite and most poignant edits.  I've tired and failed to stay away from a bit of snark. This endeavor was exhausting.  My work will illustrate how Brett Talley and Alice LaCour use narrative spin to bring you their version of events that they want to, for whatever reason, call "facts." I start just before the 4 minute mark.  Transcript So,, Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee dated for quite some time  when they were in high school, starting around March 1998. They’d stay together for the next 9 months or so, though they broke up twice during that period.   They were on-again off-again until around Halloween and broke up for good before...

"There's more than one answer to these questions  Pointing me in a crooked line And the less I seek my source for some definitive  (The less I seek my source) Closer I am to fine."     - Emily Sailers, Indigo Girls God, dear lord, this song moves me. It took me an instant to give up Christianity, but it's taken me a couple of decades to wrap my arms around that loss.  We are humans. We live, and we die. Our sons and our daughters live on. And they die, and their sons and daughters live on, and we, as a species, ideally -  have eternal life.  But there's no ME in that scenario. I'm a cog in the wheel. I'm dust and decomposition. I'm the roadkill the crows would be pecking at, were it not for embalming or caskets or cremation.  And I don't want to be nothing. I don't want to have no consciousness. I want to know what happens next. I want more than what I'll likely be given - 100 years or so on a planet, as a fairly evolved mammal - evolved en...

 Man, Twitter's a rough place. Between the backward Kentucky parents who are terrified of their children hearing that it's okay to say Gay and the "Adnan is guilty" camp, it's been a rough week.  At least it's Hump Day.  I'm sure someone's panties area in a wad because I said HUMP. So, panties are very twisted all over the country as a concerted effort began - what, a year ago or so? - to TAKE OUT the secular man, the Humanists, the writers down of words and ideas.  And, it's really shitty.  I understand that parents want to decide what is age-appropriate for their children to read. The same goes for television, movies, social media, and hell, you probably even have a major news outlet that you prefer. So, yeah - you want to know what words, images, and ideas are entering your child's impressionable brain, so that you can gatekeep out all of the "bad." And what "Bad" are you keeping out? So far, it seems to be the blowjobs a...

 My mom is 65 and retired just before Covid 19 came on, escaping that banker's life just in time to avoid dealing with all the protocols. Later during the pandemic, I followed suit. I'm too young to say that I retired early, but I did leave my career behind in favor of dialing it back. (Thanks: remarriage. Thanks: privilege.) I essentially pressed pause for all of 2022. Leaving the workforce was, for me, a crisis of conscience, and existential exercise of Who Am I Now? I did know who I was then. And I didn't even know how to find out. I didn't know where to start. I spent the better part of 2022 on the couch. I listened to all my favorite True Crime podcasts, played Tetris on my phone, and waited for my husband from nine to five every day, looking forward to that basement door opening - he was only downstairs all day, in his home office.  On Tuesdays, I would trek to the grocery and try to get it together enough to buy ingredients and cook a couple of times each week. (...

Hallelujah and Praise Be to the god of sleep, Hypnos and Somnus.  I googled those. It's not like I knew them offhand. Don't be impressed. After a weeks-long battle with the cool-side of the pillow, the dams have broken wide open. My active brain FINALLY told itself,  "Self?! Your Host Body is getting very sleepy. She's getting veerrrrrry sleepy." It was in the Car Rider Line at the middle school on Friday afternoon when this sweet symbiosis between body and mind took place. Now, even being there at all was a bit happenstance - my 7th grade daughter ordinarily has volleyball practice and doesn't need a ride home.  But Friday. O, sweet redemption day and song of my Soul.  Friday, practice was cancelled: Coach Leah was moving! She's a Prophet! An Annointed one! We particularly feel this way about her when she gives us ample playing time. So, since I live in Suburbia, there are 4315 moms in line pricking up their kids after school, and sometimes I'm one of...

 TGIF, world. If you're new here, you might not know this, but - I have bipolar disorder. Hell, you might not know that either way. It's something that's really hard to discuss. There's the stigma at large, and there's the stigma we place on ourselves. And by "we" I mean "me." I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in early 2005, so basically Diagnosed Bipolar Me is now old enough to vote, serve our country, and/ or buy a lottery ticket.  I'm sure that this Mental Illness comes with different strokes for different folks... but, for me, it's the manic side of things that tend to spin out of control. Depression is like a wam blanket for me - familiar, and maybe even embedded in my DNA to the very core of my being. I'm sad - I'm often in existential crisis - but "baseline" me can handle it. I can cleanse my emotions with a sad movie or song.  I can always get out of bed. Manic me - my own Weird Barbie - feels an urgent and i...