Inappropriate Conversations

236: 42 Questions

"Each juror who is seated in the jury box will be asked to answer the following 42 questions." Well, what would you do if called to answer these questions? That can be answered. What I don't know is whether my answers would have kept me in the jury pool or not. 

Different Drummer: S. Epatha Merkerson

#IC 113: Raised On Robbery

235: Transactional Friendship

In 1986, I wrote an essay in a letter exchange with a friend. I haven't shared it here. Reasons why aren't important. I called it "Love and Contemporary Inter-Sexual Friendship" and many of the concepts noted in this podcast -- and, to be fair, other past podcasts -- reflect the same ideas as that essay written almost four decades ago. These thoughts are both conscious and subconscious, which will be obvious from this dream scenario. 

I do not view friendship as a give-to-get concept. I don't keep score, or I try not to. My beliefs are focused on creating better relationships, a better sense of community, and perhaps a better world. 
I saw a quote by the poster of an online video about the different drummer this week that sums this up quite well: "She heals things she didn't break" (Aranez). We need more of that, in the midst of far too many people who are cynical about it. 

Different Drummer: Taylor Swift

Talkback: Walk The Earth 49

Perhaps without thinking it through, the Alabama supreme court has taken conservative pro-life arguments about "personhood" to a logical extreme. The initial result was banning all in vitro fertilization procedures in the state, their jurisdiction. The Alabama legislature may believe they have "saved the day" by quickly passing a law to shield those using IVF from prosecution or consequences, but they've done so by deciding which "children" in their state can be killed with impunity. If the hastily passed legislation doesn't sound sufficiently pro-life, that's because it is not. 

All of this ignores the core question the Alabama justices got wrong: do we really believe frozen embryos should be viewed the same as children with full personhood, etc.? This past Walk The Earth question is worded more directly: 
Whether you would let a dozen people die to save a thousand frozen embryos?

Tomorrow's Edition

As a journalism student in 1983, I already knew that I had no interest in television news. I could see the direction cable "24 hour news" networks were going, and I didn't like it. Perhaps there were signs I wasn't happy with a newspaper career path either. It wasn't clear to me then, though, how much truth gets revealed through fiction.

Make Up

Surrealism or Dadaism can be as simple as having a strange dream and writing it down, or close to it. 
Apologies, pun intended, if "Make Up" is merely that simple. I won't try to make it something more with compromise or cosmetics.

Sounds Like a Serious Offense

"Sounds Like a Serious Offense" has not come up before in poetry-focused episodes of Inappropriate Conversations, and that's mainly due to the use of rape as a literary comparison. It's uncomfortable, and I would never want to dilute the meaning of such a heinous crime. Having said that, I've had conversations with people of both genders who have been used, manipulated, and socially shunned. This is how they feel.

A Belated Happy Birthday

Accepting the notion of Eternal Now from Boethius and others, we have known the people we love most deeply for much longer than we acknowledge or understand.
"A Belated Happy Birthday"