Friday Flames | 6.30.23
A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about affirmative action, spy novels, colachup, and eggcorns.
We promise not to turn Friday Flames into a weekly diatribe against whatever bull💩 the supreme court gets up to. But damn, if this conservative supermajority isn’t completely on brand for what our podcast is about. We certainly did not think we’d spend our 50s wondering how many federal protections we’d known since childhood would be stripped away.
This week, the Robed Warriors ended affirmative action (for “everyone but white people”), presumably to declare that “we’re all colorblind now because we said so.” As Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent: “The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist so long as it is ignored.”
We’re paying attention to many opinions like this from people of color, such as Stacia L. Brown’s piece about her experience at a Minority Serving Institution (MSI). We also have data from Michigan, which banned race-based admissions in 2006. Since then, despite avid and expensive recruiting efforts, Black enrollment at U of M Ann Arbor has dwindled to a “minuscule” 4%.
(Are you out there, Akil? We’ve got to have you on again, soon.)
Missing Uncle Tim
Yesterday should have been Magda’s uncle’s 71st birthday. Instead, he died of organ failure in 2016, after 42 years of heavy drinking. In case you’re wondering, yes: organ failure is a real bitch. It sneaks up on you until your body can’t undo the damage, and then you're just waiting around to die.
Uncle Tim spent most of his life self-medicating with alcohol because he was so terrified to accept love and care from others. If this sounds familiar, you're not doomed. None of this is predestined, and the door of the cage isn't latched. Ease it open and let somebody in a little. Next week, a little more. By and by, you'll be free.
Lollygagging on the launch pad
If your child hasn’t happily gone off to college and finished in four years and landed a great job and validated what a truly outstanding parent you’ve been, you’ll want to hear what Dr. Erin Hunter said in Episode 7 of the podcast. She works with many young adults (and parents) coping with an educational system that had been falling apart long before the pandemic blew it to smithereens.
Parents our age need to start working ourselves around to understanding how much this system has changed since we left high school, because our attempts to guide our kids based on our own experience might not be helping as much as we think.
Culinary Crime of the Week
The Detroit sports scene may be circling the bowl, and it’s been many thousands of days since any major Motown sports franchise won anything. But! Over July 4th weekend, Detroit’s Comerica Park is one of only four places where you can get a hot dog with Pepsi-infused ketchup! So we’ve got that going for us.
They’ve named it “colachup,” presumably after the sound you make when you try to digest it.
From the eggcorn grows the mighty oak
Did you know there’s an actual, codified term for all those misheard, homophonic phrases like “for all intensive purposes” and “it’s a doggy-dog world”? They’re called eggcorns, which are not to be confused with malapropisms, mondegreens, or folk etymologies. (Warning: If you’re a particularly sensitive grammar/usage nerd, watching that video all at once may paralyze your brain stem. Proceed with caution.)
Currently watching
One of the key elements of the Long Summer Car Trip with Doug and the boys is an Audible spy novel. Last year, Charles de Gaulle was nearly assassinated in Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, and next month we’ll listen to Eye of the Needle. In keeping with all the cloak-and-daggering, we’ve just finished the first season of Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas. Five stars, do recommend.
Magda is still plugging away catching up on Days Of Our Lives (only 160 episodes to be current). Why do Salemites still think kidnapping is a good way to make fast cash? And when will Rafe find real love? All of this comparatively wholesome drama is a great palate cleanser after enduring the real-life degeneracy of the IBLP and Evangelical churches in Shiny Happy People.
Currently reading
Magda is reading George Michael: A Life, by James Gavin, about another man who died of trying to self-medicate his loneliness. Yog would have been 60 last Sunday.
Doug put a library request in for the Slow Horses source material, Mick Herron’s novel, back in February. And as soon as we cued up the show, the book topped his reserve queue! Sort of weird to read along with the dramatization, but there are seven more novels in the series. And since Herron says he is “interested in incompetence” for his book plots, he already has enough material for about a billion sequels.
Big news, and a bigger thank you
The podcast is off for the holiday week, but we’re very excited to report that, after just a couple of months, you listeners have elevated our podcast to among the top 20% in the world! We really love podcasting as a medium, and we’re very grateful to learn that many of you are as contextually perplexed as we are.
Thanks for reading, and for not taking our civil rights for granite.
Magda and Doug