Too Many Books

We ended yesterday talking about how Voss states that the federal investigation into the death of John O'Keefe "ultimately went nowhere." Anyone who has watched the second trial knows this not to be true. Information used in both trials came from the federal investigation. Witness testimony from the federal grand jury was addressed in cross examination. Changing stories (and outright lies!) came from the federal investigation and were discussed at trial. Even if the public or the jurors didn't know this type of information was gleaned directly from the feds - since it wasn't allowed to be directly discussed - it did, and it was. So, the federal investigation did, in fact, go somewhere.  Of course, the federal investigation lent legitimacy to Karen Read's defense. This is a no-brainer. But public perception and the presentation to the jury are two different ways in which it did so. Voss now gives us a salacious tidbit - the Hos Defendants (I can no longer refer...

 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. (...

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...

 One of the things I've missed most about blogging is my weekly over-share, entitled TMI Thursday. I figured, being as it's Thursday, there is no time like the present to revive the embarrassing, the degrading, the mortifying. It's time to get back to the cringe, the delicate details, the scandalous stories... the compromising confessions. In the interest of full disclosure, I turned 40 in 2021. Thanks to COVID, it sorta felt like a time loop or something - as if it didn't really happen. We did spend a couple of nights at a casino, which seemed even more thrilling, in that it felt pretty irresponsible. We survived - we masked up, and I held my own at the poker table. We didn't get sick. But I digress. Now, as the mom of a 12-year-old, I have been struggling with something for over a decade now. (Several things, actually - and thanks for pointing that out.) IYKYK - it starts out innocently enough. You laugh. You sneeze.  And you do the move - you know the one- you cr...

I am Plath,  pre-heated.  I am a Poe of propotions. Charlotte painted my yellow walls; aunt Jennifer's curtains sewn. The outside is terrified when I'm loose. Jackson's state lottery will  never grant me winning numbers. No society of dead poets would allow me in.  No tokens No charmers  No charms.

  I've always been a fan of that verse in the bible that talks about working out your own salvation, with fear and trembling.  While I'm admittedly not a fan of fear, nor trembling, I think the verse speaks to me in a time when So Many People are worried about Other People's sin.  (Don't Be Gay.) (Have All the Babies.) Etc. After spending my teenage years as an Evangelical, I've joined in with the millennials and I am ALL about deconstructing: unpacking the emotional abuses and trauma of everything from Altar Calls to consistently being reminded that I have Sinned and fallen short of the glory of god. That I was born a sinner: I was never good enough.  I stopped going to church around the time I aged out of youth group. I can remember being newly 18 and losing my virginity, thinking of what I'd been told - I was now damaged goods for my future spouse. Yet, being intimate with my boyfriend felt right. Now, I'm in a second marriage, and if my husband and I had...

Dang! I've just missed celebrating my Blog-iversary with you guys.  On September 5, 2009, I typed out my first Blog post. Just over 14 years ago today, I became completely enamored with the community the faceless friends I found. Of course, I gravitated toward the hopeful authors like me: Sierra Godfrey, Elana Johnson, Roni Loren.  We would read, and comment on, each other's posts. We'd hold silly contests with silly prizes.  We would do Ask Me Anything well before AMA's were a thing. We would encourage one another. We would share our writing. And sometimes we would share more.  I can full-on remember that weekday. I worked as a Head Teller, and my bank branch location was close to home. Before lunch, I'd been talking with my coworker Molly about some... things I was noticing in relation to a missed deadline... no period. I didn't have the language for it at the time, but WTAF.  So, I ran to the grocery, bought a two-pack of tests, and swung by my house to pee ...

I’ve never been “good” at having Bipolar Disorder. (I’m pretty sure that’s not even a thing.) For the record, I really loathe the term “bipolar.” I’m sure that’s likely because of the connotation, but still. Manic Depression was just fine and explained it well, so I don’t get why we needed to change it. But, I digress. If you’re new here, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder circa early 2005, when I stayed up all night after my Poker Home Game contemplating what I should “do” with my life other than waiting tables, staring at my college diploma dated May 2003, and smoking weed. Then I just kept on staying awake. For days. You might say I was lost. Languishing. You would have been right. I mostly held it together over the years, but every time I got recognizably manic (2005, 2008, 2019) I ended up needing inpatient treatment for a week. Those stays went from terrifying to intriguing. I really meshed with the addicts more than the others there for “regular” mental health help. (I’m not ...