Too Many Books

 Voss opens her politically motivated hit piece on Karen Read, Adam Deitch and Aidan Kearney with a strong statement of opinion in her lede paragraph: it wasn't a movement of true believers. The "it" calls back to the title - the "it" is "the campaign that acquitted Karen Read." So, according to Voss, the Free Karen Read movement - thousands who donated and spoke out and wore pink - and asked for the truth - were the equivalent of little December children who didn't really believe. (But unlike the kids who aren't "True Believers," we didn't get coal in our stockings. On June 18, 2025: we got an acquittal for Christmas.) Let's look at the Voss article piece by piece, to unwind the spin until it's threadbare. We open on the Lacrosse game, where "blogger" Aidan Kearney (not journalist, of course - just a "blogger") has a ten-minute interaction wherein Jen McCabe smiles uncomfortably, and Matt McCabe doesn...

A blog I haven't used in 2 years seems to be gaining traction again (presumably thanks to the Anti Karen Read crowd) so what I'm hearing is that you, XTwitterverse, may want to hear from me.  Let me tell you a moderately long-winded story about how I came to engage with the elephant in the room - the utter circus of the investigation into the death of Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe.  I know there's been some controversy around the Crime Junkie podcast, but it's one that actually changed my life. I'd never listened to a single podcast before 2018, when my friend Miranda recommended it. I listened from the first episode up to the, I don't know, the 40th or something. Host Ashley Flowers said, "If you haven't listened to the Serial podcast yet, turn this off. Run over there, listen, and come back."  And so I did.  For the next several years I deep dove into the case against Adnan Syed and tried, with other internet sleuths, to figure out who k...

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. (...