"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
--G.K. Chesterton
"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.../Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you."
--Walt Whitman
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According to the Buddha, right speech is a statement that is timely, true, kind, helpful (connected to liberation), and spoken with a mind of good-will. Let us all try to observe this precept.
Helping you make the most creative use of your embarrassment, the website Texts From Last Night invites readers to submit text messages that were sent under the influence of judgment-impairing substances. This 21st-century update on drunk-dialing could be a fruitful source of writing prompts. Imagine beginning a short story with any of the following:
"then i got kicked out of the bar for trying to pay my $30 bar tab in sacajawea dollar coins"
"Hands down the best time I've ever had barfing".
"I never thought that I'd ever use the phrase "and the resulting ice cream explosion" seriously at work... "
"we couldnt find her phone in the morning so i called it and found it under the bed. my name came up as 'regret'."
"I just woke up in my car with half the wedding cake next to me. This will not end well."
"The only reason why I invited him to my party was because he is suicidal."
Other texts are aphorisms worthy of Dorothy Parker ("you're putting all your eggs in a very hungover basket") or brief but telling observations about human relationships ("i love how people use prayer to talk shit about eachother in a 'holy' manner"). How true it is.
