A cup of coffee with my mom.

Hi, guys.

Hello.

I tuned in just in time to hear my mother talking about finding a dead body in the street.

What did I miss?

Oh, well, you missed the actual fact that the body is not in the street.

It's under the Christmas tree in the living room.

The dead body.

The dead body with a big knife sticking out of the chest.

Yes.

It's a book I'm reading.

It's a story I'm reading.

You know, how I have such a pension for violence and crime, mayhem.

It's a great Christmas story, sounds like.

It is, Chuck, and it's funny.

My mother has, like, kind of a righteous standard with regard to violence, you know.

I mean, she really, really is put off by war films, violence in general.

And to her credit, unless it's like murder she wrote or some Miss Marple thing or some midsummer night murders.

And, you know, how did they do that, Mom? How did they suck

you in to this ultra-violent world? Did they simply just round off, you know, the ugly edges of it

to make murder entertaining for you? You know, Mike, I blame it on your father.

I'm a writer.

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