Hello, Welcome. I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. Musing Interruptus is a podcast for sharing thoughts and stories and enjoying idiomatic phrases. You can read along; the transcription is in the description of this episode; click on continue reading to open a Google Doc with the complete transcription. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, follow and share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Drop a comment with your answers to today’s questions! I love hearing from you! The background music is called Judie Grange by Blue Dot.
Have you ever wondered what is behind choosing a job? Granted, there are cases where you take what is available. However, there are some jobs you know need to be selected. For instance, who would want to grow up to become a cartoon character? This question has been circling my mind for the past few… minutes. If I think of it too much, I won’t get past writing the title, so I will try to get this out in the most expedited way possible. 
I’d like to interview Bugs Bunny. He is self-assured, calm and collected, a strategist. He gets away with everything; he dates Lola Bunny! Rabbit season comes and goes, yet he is unperturbed and alive. The ultimate trickster. I bet he has the best eyesight on account of all the carrots he eats. What a great thing not to worry. I wonder what a real-life Bugs Bunny would be like. Could there be a human that embodies that persona? Furry tail and all. What about becoming a cartoon? Would anybody out there in the Musingverse like to become a cartoon character, either of themselves or perhaps a Mickey Mouse? Is seeing stars a perk of being whacked in the head when you are a cartoon? What about elasticity and free falling and going -splat- like a pancake only to be pumped up with air like a balloon? As a cartoon, you get to undergo a series of transformations that needn't be permanent. 
In the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? We see the interaction between cartoons and humans. There are rules and nemeses. Cartoons can kiss humans and conk them on the head,  slap ‘em in the face. They coexist. The story is fun. I especially liked how the cartoons go to a set, act in movies, and put on shows. What do they get in exchange for this? What is the economics of cartoon work? Is it exploitation? If it isn’t,  what motivates them? This was obviously not written from the cartoon's point of view. Then again, there is something addictive about show biz. Is that enough for a cartoon? If cartoons have a sense of humor, do they have all the other senses? How was this determined? 
In Cool World, movie not song, the character played by Gabriel Byrne draws a cartoon realm from inspiration from dreams, ends up in the cartoon world, and has sex with a doodle (that is what they are called in the story), transforming her into a human (at least temporarily). That’s a special kind of superpower, isn’t it? The desire to materialize what we have imagined is not new, nor is the fantasy some men have about making a woman -complete-. I’d ask the Kim Basinger character, who plays the sexiest doodle, why she would want to be real. Although a completely different situation, I’m reminded of Cassiel, the angel that falls to Earth in the movie Far Away, So Close! The answer in that movie is about sensations: taste, smell, touch, hearing, and experience. That is what makes it worth it. Back to cartoons, how interesting that our creations would want to be with us and like us. I guess that speaks well of humanity. If anyone is keeping score. There are a lot of great things about being alive.  Continue reading