Inappropriate Conversations

Stranger Than Fiction, After The Wedding, The Lives Of Others, Children Of Men, among others.

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, Nanook of the North, Haxan, among others.

Whether Christians should reject atonement because it is unfair to all who lived and died in the distant past without being washed in the blood of the Lamb?

No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Once, among others.

The Kid, The Phantom Carriage, Destiny, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, among others.

I suspect we know few, if any, people who have directly caused inflation. When it comes to pushing the button that raises prices in hundreds of stores, though, I am that exception. Whether economic pundits on talk shows want to acknowledge it or not, my reasons were simple and obvious. It was crucial to update prices in stores to cover the cost of tariffs, the kind of "across the board" tariffs that one presidential candidate is proposing to impose (again). Just because something is regrettable doesn't mean it wasn't necessary. Different Drummer: Joseph R. Biden

Waltz With Bashir, Milk, Synecdoche, New York, The Dark Knight, among others.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Mark of Zorro, Way Down East, The Scarecrow, among others.

Up, The White Ribbon, A Serious Man, among others.

The next podcast I post will be a new short-form considering movies by year. I'm not replacing Inappropriate Conversations or Walk The Earth, just adding something new. The starting point will be Film Year 2009. Different Drummer: Charles Tashiro Note: the first half of this episode raises questions about the consequences of a recent Supreme Court decision, and I don't know the answer for how this will impact governing in the United States. By my reckoning, things certainly could get very ugly. Consequences are not bound by our lack of accountability.

Whether reaching out in love to LGBTQ+ people is following Christ? Past episode: Walk The Earth 54

Is "Shut up and kick" the correct response to recent statements by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker? Was that the correct response in recent years to USA soccer star Megan Rapino? That, and the "Shut up and dribble" replies to Lebron James, were just as wrong regardless the type of questions or comments being spoken into microphones. Having said that, it is completely unacceptable to suggest that counter arguments to ideas raised in a public speech are out of line. If a celebrity like an athlete wants to start a conversation, then shutting down that conversation as contrarian push-back is, at the very least, hypocrisy. Only one instance of free speech is being defended in that situation.  Granting that commencement addresses are among the worst forms of public speech, let's have an inappropriate conversation about ironic notions like "staying in your lane" and extend it a bit. I'll bet we can take Butker's commitment to boldly challenging false assumptions in a direction where his supporters would

Feeling challenged in more than one way, I'm recommending the 2022 movie Close as one of the best films in years. It directly reminded me of a past Inappropriate Conversations podcast with Mark Greene as the Different Drummer. His work, and the director of Close, directly refer to this episode's Different Drummer, too.  I was reminded of my childhood, at the same age as the central characters in the film, and a sense of disconnection that came from a change in school districts. I also was challenged by how our defense mechanisms seem to presume something inappropriate (directly or indirectly incestuous) might make an unwanted appearance in the plot of a film like this. I don't blame the filmmakers. It's more the way our society is driven to sexualize, seemingly, everything, even when nothing of the sort is going on.  Different Drummer: Niobi Way The Project for the Advancement of our Common Humanity

"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

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

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?

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.

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" 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.

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"