Soundblog Post 3

Split a Gut:

Julian McCullough, a comedian, tells a story about his ruptured appendix. Although the injury is serious, being a comedian, he manages to make you laugh throughout the entire story. However, there are still parts that put that knot in your stomach that comes with hearing others' pain. This blog posts' stories are from This American Life. If this was an interview and I had to ask some questions to get the answers that would make this story, I would ask:

• Where did you start feeling pain? When did you start feeling it?
• Did you have healthcare? What did you do?
• Did you feel any addicting sensations from the morphine shot?
• Since you didn't have healthcare, how much did you have to pay for a bill?
• Did your friends help you out?

This story was very funny. I think this helped to make it successful as it put me at great ease on a subject that would normally be something to become queasy over. He still added details that would from time to time make me sick, but he also put jokes on it that made me laugh so loud the rest of the house heard me. Those details were: That his family's cure for problems was to "wait a few weeks", that he described the doctor as "the man who decides who gets to live" which I found to be hilarious in spite of the issue in the story, the complication with his past drug addiction problem in relations to the morphine shot, his description of how doctors should send the hospital bill in comparison to how they do now, his friends' solution to the money problem, and his solution that he came up with: $20 at a time.

Don't Make Me Separate You:

Steve and Dorris Darst divorced when one of their daughters, Jeanne, was 16. For a very long time, even though they were divorced, they didn't live together, but always near each other and joined each other for various occasions. They practically dated each other. This story is Jeanne's description of their relationship. If I could ask some questions to make this story what it is now, they would probably be:

• Can you describe your dad for me?
• How would you describe your parents' relationship?
• Did your mom ever go far away from your dad or vice-versa?
• Can you tell me some stories about your parents being together after they divorced?
• What do you think caused your fathers' asthma attack?

This story is kind of funny as well, but in a more dry sort of way. The details that make this story work are: the Christmas story in where she provides character to her mother and father as individuals so that we can see how they might have broken up based on their personalities and quirks; the Birthday story, where we see one of their fights in more detail; the part where she describes her mother's trip to Florida, which shows that the parents are incapable of leaving each other; The scene describing various fights they had in detail including the one time when they decided to live together for a short while, including the mention of how long they had done this fiasco; and finally, the part where her father says that their divorce "just didn't work out", which is a slight joke on the saying because it is usually used to describe a failed relationship rather than describe a failed divorce.