A moth podcast and a lizard

I will talk about some of the podcasts I listened to after all.

The Moth Podcast

I came across this podcast at the Lapham's Quarterly site. (Or least, I think I did.  Looking at the LQ site, I don't see the podcast link, but it is in the title).  The idea of the podcast is that people tell stories, without notes, and the best tellings are presented in the podcast.  I have downloaded the five latest Moth podcasts and found them interesting, but somehow lacking something.

The first podcast I heard was Lost at Sea by Deborah Scaling Kiley.  Kiley talked about how much she loved her sailing lifestyle and hanging out with Sailor Dudes.  In her story, KIey recounted how after not listening to her mother, she became a crew member on a boat that was run by very disorganized and irresponsible people.  They for instance didn't maintain discipline and they got drunk -- and they seemed like people who would consider people like me to be "too uptight."  The journey with this bunch, puts the women in a life-or-death situation, and in fact some of her crew mates died.  She survived and thanked God for giving her the strength to survive.  She is writing a book about survival for the benefit of others.

I found the story very off-putting because really it was an anecdote of irresponsibility, and I couldn't care less if the people survived or died.  It was this irresponsibility and  a lack of planning ahead (that looked-down-upon bourgeois habit) that put them in their predicament.  That people had to die was terrible, but their suffering wasn't at all noble.  The ending was presented as a sort of redemption for her, but it wasn't a redemption I found inspiring or educational.  Kiley should have been penitent in the end, thanked God for not dying, and realized that her mother, with her boring bourgeois sensibility, was wiser.

Lizards

Listening to Radio Derb, I heard that a lizard with two penises has been discovered.  All of the lizards in Wuxi Pubs, I assume, only have one...  Or something like that.  The play I was to make on the words seemed more clever when I thought about it last night.