Shaun Newman Podcast - 2'sDay Mashup #87

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

222 Minutes hops on to discuss this week's headlines which include EV's getting the push, CBC drops NYE countdown, firefighter suing city of Fredericton and a woman who's attracted to a tree...seriously. This week Major Sponsor is Cactus Environmental For more information call: 306-821-7541 or Email [e-mail] Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:⁠⁠https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast⁠⁠ E-transfer here: ⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠m Website: ⁠⁠https://silvergoldbull.ca/⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠ Phone [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

Cookies are fuck. I don't understand them. I don't get them. Why? You start off with cookie dough and it's beautiful and it's delicious and it's wonderful. It's tasty as hell. And then somebody said, what if we could make it suck a little bit? We could get a little bit more portability, sure.

But at the expense of 90% of the deliciousness. I can't for the life of me understand why you would ever want to cook cookie dough. My wife would agree with you. My wife would agree with you. Cookie-Doo is, well, that's... I mean, you steer your kids away from it, but, I mean, who doesn't like a good thing of cookie dough, you know? Why would you steer your kids away from it?

I don't know. You're always like, no, no, no, you can't eat the dough. You've got to wait for it to be cooked. Isn't that what happens? No? You're not allowing them to take big mittfuls of cookie dough. I encourage that. Do you?

Okay. Yeah. Well, there you go, folks. Go over to Toos House, where you get mittfuls of cookie dough. Mashup 87. Happy New Year, everyone. Happy New Year. 24.

I'm sitting in Wisconsin. Tews, Alberta. And we're bringing you mashup Sidney Crosby, hey? Sid the kid. 87. You, so hold on a second here. I have week 88. No, I changed it.

I changed it. We did Festivus. You don't change. Festivist doesn't count. Festivist doesn't count. Did it count last year? No. So we're actually, this is Mashup 89.

Possibly. And we completely skipped over, what's his name? Eric Lindross. Yes. No, 88 is next week. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You can't skip over 87.

You can't skip over 80. You can't skip over, sit the kid. He's arguably the greatest hockey player of all time. It would have been great to have the Festus mashup B episode 88. because then we could have just drank till we were as smart as him. Well, drank till we were concussed. We can talk all about next week.

All right. Mashup 87. Who's the Crosby guy, though? Said the kid. He's arguably the best hockey player of all the time. At what age is he going to lose that moniker? I don't know, because he still looks super young. That's just compared to us.

Well, that's true. Mashup 872 is brought to us today by Alan Hucco Cactus Environmental. You know, I met this guy. The first time I ever met Alan was in Nealberg, Saskatchewan. Nice. And we were just talking about Nealberg a couple weeks ago. At protest in the middle of COVID.

That's how I met him and got introduced to him. So shout out to Alan. You wanted in on this last year. So he was the first company to jump on for 2024. And so he is a cactus environmental. They've been in business for 30 years, providing environmental. consulting, assessment, and monitoring for pre-construction, construction, construction, reclamation, and spills.

And they're also a supplier for EM surveys. That's electromagnetic. Magnetic. Yeah, that's right. As well as phase ones, two, three. I'll put the contact details in the show notes for people on the podcast, but you can get a hold of them, 306, 821-7541. I know everybody just jotted that down real quick.

But anyways, Alan Hucco, he's a beauty. It's nice to have 306 numbers in the podcast. It is. Yeah, a little sasky boy. And yeah, he's a gentleman and a scholar. I enjoyed meeting him. And the fact that he jumped on for the first one here. You got Sid the kid, Alan.

I mean, that's a pretty good start to the year. I mean, unless you're goalie. I just want to pat myself on the back just for a second, okay? To start the year off, we had a New Year's Eve wedding. I've never been to a New Year's Eve wedding. It was a ton of fun. Great DJ. Fantastic DJ.

Congrats to Miranda and Joe on their wedding. And instead of driving back today and taking four hours of being, like, tired and, like, oh, and racing back, I just told Malamak, we're getting another hotel room. Like, we're just going to spend a night. Everybody's going to be racing to get out of here. I was telling you, before we started, in this hotel, we're at 3% capacity. We're like one of 10 guests in the entire hotel. It is empty. And I'm quite excited about it.

you should have asked for an upgrade. You'd be like, well, look, if everything is empty, I'm here with my lovely wife. I would love the presidential suite. If you guys have one of those suites with a pool in it or like a lotus pond maybe or like a scale model of the Eiffel Tower in the lobby of the room that we're staying in, something like that. You could just, you know, I would have no issues with you, you know,

bumping things up. Because if you guys are slow and bored, why not? All right. Well, that would have been a great idea. Instead, I just got access to the free coffee. Free coffee. I was quite pumped about that. That shows what it takes to please shot today.

All right. Let's get into it here. We got MASHAP 87. Let's go. CBC gives EVs a much needed push. You get it because you need to push them. A government report's suggestion. federal incentives for used electric vehicles could be in the words as Ottawa pushes to phase out gas-powered cars.

Canada's latest emissions reduction progress report says the federal government will explore the potential to expand incentives for zero emission vehicles program to include used vehicles. But the three lines in the report don't offer much detail. In a media statement, Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez's office pointed to his most recent ministerial mandate letter, which comments, commit, sorry, the minister, to improving the affordability and accelerating the adoption of zero mission vehicles, including used vehicles by Canadian households and businesses. During a news conference on Tuesday, Gilbo seemed to be unaware that the government was considering this move.

Quoted, right now, the purchase incentive is five grand. That's the plan we have moving forward, he told reporters, what will happen in the future, will we change it, will we adapt it? I don't know. The federal government announced last week, finalized new regulations requiring that all new vehicles sold, cars, SUVs, and some pickup trucks be fully electric, plug-in hybrid, or fuel cell electric by 2035. The government electric vehicle sales mandate regulations, which include a national target of 100% zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035. So.

So they're not getting all of this. So this is, we've been talking about this as it unfolds, this big push to get rid of all the gas powered vehicles by 2035. And it's interesting, the second article from CBC, they, they, well, they're shady. But some of the things in there, they said that the numbers worked out too, that EVs are about 15% more expensive than an equivalent gas power vehicle right now, including the existing subsidies, which they're kind of trying to say need to get larger. and that the price of EVs has to come down by a third or even half. Well, they were saying in the report, $70,000 for a brand new EV. $73,000 versus 66 for. And one thing I thought was kind of funny.

So they had recent data shows a growth in electric vehicle sales. They're talking about at the start of this, how large the growth in year-over-year sales has been. been and it's it's funny because all right let's say you have one cent to your name okay you have one penny and then you're walking down the street and you find another penny and you pick it up your net worth has gained 100% over a very short period of time but you only have two fucking cents and that's basically what evis are in canada right now recent data shows a growth in electric vehicle sales, according to a Statistics Canada report this month, new zero-emission vehicles,

which is a bullshit name, made a 12.1% of all new motor vehicles registered in the third quarter. This represented an increase from third quarter of 2022 when zero-mission vehicles were 8.7% of all motor vehicle registrations. So they're trying to actually slow play this because they talk about new vehicles in one side of this sentence and all. vehicles in the other side of that same fucking sentence because this is what we pay one point three billion dollars for is this hard-hitting fucking journalism that conflate shit they talked about uh this um poll that auto trader dot com did and i think it was auto trader dot ca maybe whatever anyways point is they they talked about this poll and about some of the apprehensions that people have

with zero mission vehicles. The appetite for them has gone down by about 30% year over year. Like there was something like 68% of people who were interested in getting one last year. And now it's down to 53%. So 47% of Canadians say, I'm not fucking interested in this at all anyway. And then they listed a few of the things that people would have issues with. and one of them was not, it didn't, if you actually read the whole auto trader thing,

it didn't get into what the options were, which is suspicious. Anytime you get a survey that doesn't show you all of the data, throw it right the fuck out as far as I'm concerned. Because it said that it was price, inflation, and nowhere on that was, am I going to get stuck in the middle of nowhere and freeze to death? Like, was that an option on it? is when the battery dies, it's going to cost more than replacing the entire fucking vehicle.

Was that even an option? Was that in the survey? We have no way of knowing because it's garbage. And CBC just pouts it like it's fucking well done. Well, and I think we should put to the listeners too because Daniel Smith was on the show talking directly about this. And it says it will start with 20%.

So they're setting up a system which every automaker will have to show that a minimum percentage of vehicles they offer for sale are fully electric or longer range plug-in hybrids. It will start with 20% in 2026 and rise slightly to 23% in 2027. After that, to share of VVs will begin to increase much faster so that by 2028, 34% of all vehicles sold will need to be electric, 43% by 2029, 60% by 2030, and 100% by 2035, right? So what you're going to start to see from a consumer standpoint is you're going to go to the lot and there's going to be less just straight on. Yeah, that's right.

It's going to be like, buy this or. And they know exactly that's what they're doing. They're trying to push it. Meanwhile, yeah, meanwhile, they're like, well, we pretty much need to find a way to make them cut the price by half, which means right now government subsidies are going to have to go up on these suckers. Yeah, so it's currently $5,000. And it's going to have to go up to something like $35,000.

Correct. Which means that every time somebody in Canada buys a vehicle, Canadian taxpayers pay $35,000 to the car manufacturer. Correct. Correct, you are. Now, we got a couple comments coming in. First, it's Andrew McKay saying zero mission vehicles. He laughs. They probably believe Christia still rides a bike.

The thighs say otherwise. That's pretty true. Also, she does have that lead foot. And then Matt Dejean, I don't know about you guys, but my electric bill is high enough as it is. Can't imagine it with trying to charge a car plus having to install a charge of which I'm guessing they don't do for free. Seriously, if Canadian utility bills get any higher, they're going to have to start going to safe injection sites. Firefighter fights firing with fire. A former Frederton firefighter who resigned because of COVID-19 vaccine policy for a city employees is suing his former employer.

claiming he was wrongly advised he'd be entitled to severance pay and pension benefits, even if he quit. Gregory Billings is now seeking $280,000 for pay in lieu of notice of termination, as well as damages for loss of pension earnings up to his expected retirement at the age of 65. Billings also alleges the International Association of Firefighters Local 1053. His former union failed to properly represent him by not grieving his wrongfully induced resignation. The plaintiff relied on misrepresentation of the city of Fredericton that the retirement was being offered to him and suffered damages as a result through loss of his severance, pay and a loss of portion of his pension.

States the claim filed the Frederick Court of King's Bench by Jonathan Martin, the lawyer representing Billings. Then the paper, the article, walked through like the entire story, but I mean it's a story we've heard over and over and over again across all these different professions. would say that this one may be a little bit, probably not unique, but part of a smaller subset, I would say where they basically lied to him to get him to quit. And then we're like, oh, no, no, that's not happening. No, you don't get any of that. You're out. You quit. You quit. You quit. You're gone. I've seen this happen a couple times in workplaces where not this, But have you ever seen where people tend to over believe in themselves and their level of performance?

And then they'll just be like, look, here's my two weeks notice. And if you want me to stay, you're going to have to pay me more money. And I've seen it happen with two people who were different companies where they were really, really bad at their jobs. and the managers took it and were like, oh, thank you. And they're like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, you're not going to, you're not going to make me an offer? No, no, you've already quit. Well, don't you want to keep me?

If you're not happy, I guess that's what it is. Right. Now, this, though, this is, this is, this is a guy who gets in trouble because he's not wearing the mask, not doing the testing. Then he comes back to work, starts doing it. and they just slowly crank up the temperature and say if you're not vaxed by this date. And so then he goes, well, what can I do? He's got office.

And they say, okay, well, you can do this, this, this, this and this. And he says, okay, well, I can live with that. And then they're like, psych, idiot. And I like the fact that he's going for the whole thing. Although, to be fair, to be fair, I'd say that this could be a pretty good lesson for a lot of people where if they want you to do something, you make them. pull the trigger on it. You don't be like, hey, look, like, all right, if you guys, if you guys say that I can't work here anymore, I'm not quitting. You have to fire me. Yeah, it's a game of chicken is what you're playing. Yep. Yep. Right. You make them do the dirty work

because now, yeah, like, it'll be interesting to see. Hopefully we get to follow along with this one as it plays out more and more and see where it ends. Probably over years, but yeah. Smith taking health care to the mattresses. There's a new Alberta Health Services Board. Top AHS execs have been axed, but it's not over. It's far from over. In fact, it's just begun. Quoted, I'm trying to fix health care.

I inherited a lot of problems, says Smith. There's been a lot of promises made. Just give us more money and we'll improve care. That's what we've been told for over a decade. We have given more money and care has decreased. We're going to make things so much better. The layers and layers of middle managers has been the problem. Smith says Alberta Health Services has been underperforming almost since the moment it was

created, and that was in 2008. Quoted, if I'm successful by the time we go to the next election, everyone will have a family practitioner, whether it's a doctor or a nurse practitioner. Quoted, we will have enough spaces for seniors care that people will be able to choose the type of seniors care for their loved ones and no one will be languishing in the hospital. We'll have our hospitals operating efficiently so ambulances are not waiting to drop off patients. They'll be able to drop them off and get them on the road. She continued, the fact that we have managers who are hearing these problems and have not, and not solving them, I can tell you, Andrea LaGrange is now highly motivated to start a hospital

tour. She's told me she's going to be starting in the new year. She's going to listen to frontline workers. She's going to find the problem on the front line, and she's going to fire managers that haven't been solving them. That's what our focus is. It's firing managers who have been paid to solve these problems, and they've allowed the problems to perpetuate.

they've been done and done nothing about them. If you're seeing patients, we're going to be supporting you. If you haven't seen the eyeballs of patients in a number of years, you better demonstrate your value. There's Daniel Smith. So the problem with management in healthcare is that it's the same methodology as the Indian Affairs Bureau in Gatno, Quebec. Pardon me, Gatno fucking Quebec.

It's a new year. we got to still keep traditions though. And we're, okay, we're going to hire you to solve this problem. Okay. So that means that as soon as I solve the problem, I need to worry about finding my next job. So what if I just don't solve the problem? What if I need a bigger budget? What if I need more people?

What if I just need more resources and I keep asking for it? And because money is always the scapegoat every year with these guys. I mean, we could solve this thing if we just had more. money. We're underfunded. Bullshit. It's something like a quarter of our fucking provincial budget goes to Alberta Health Services. It's insane. And on the negative side to Daniel Smith, though, I would say that it's an easy cop out. She's definitely scapegoating the management who deserve a lot of this flack. But Alberta healthcare is never going to be fixed until you legalize it. like Tim Bowen likes to say, where you give people options where they can say,

okay, well, you know what, if I want to hang a shingle, and if I want to look at people's, I don't know, spleen's, and I'm qualified to do it, I should be able to do that. And then there's that much less spleen surgery and whatnot on the system. That's going to eliminate it. But the big one is unions. And there isn't a single political entity in Canada willing to take on the big unions, no matter how conservative they pretend they are.

When have you ever heard Pollyev talk about unions? When have you ever heard Daniel Smith talk about unions? Because it's political suicide. You're right. You're absolutely right, but they're never going to say it. Maddie says give to some of that budget and maybe we'll get it fixed. I could live with that. $20 billion a year.

You know what? The thing about it is is that you probably could. If you just gave somebody a whole shit ton of money and told them to set up something completely separate. Here's a billion dollars go set up a system that we can start transitioning to. Like really, number one, we're not going to unionize. And number two, we're going to try and keep it lean. Number three, we're going to look for as many good ideas as possible.

Like Stettler is one of the only municipalities in Alberta. I think there's like three of them that have their own independent ambulance. but they get a bunch of funding from Alberta Health Services, which means they're beholden to them. So, we'll call them up, be like, hey, we need you to transport a patient. So use that ambulance that we paid for.

Like, yeah, we kind of need it here, though. And they're like, we don't give a shit. We paid for it. Do what we tell you. And they're like, but it's not even a critical patient. Like, we could literally just put them in a car and drive them there. No, it has to be the ambulance. And so like, Stettler actually, they built.

Can you imagine starting up an alternative system more good ideas were promoted. Hey, we would like to, we would like to solve some problems. That, that'd be interesting. It's the Elon Musk approach. We're like, okay, well, look,

if something sucks, why don't we stop doing it? And if something seems like a good idea, why don't we try it? Which, if you try and take that approach to a government job, they will fire your ass. CBC drops

in New Year's Eve broadcast, sevens of people affected. If this is, isn't the truest headline you've ever written. I don't know what is. Um, like, you know, it's funny. I, before I get into this story, I literally had this thought last year on New Year's Eve, but I argue with myself if I actually wanted to work on New Year's Eve that you know how Tuesday and I did, um, uh, media election, you know, like the Alberta election, like we should do an, like a New Year's Eve ball drop. We could probably have a ton of fun with that. A live show where,

Well, I mean, and you could bring a ton of guests on. You get, just have a ton of fun. And what else is people doing on that night? I'm like, but do I want to work on New Year's Eve? That's a good question. Yes. That's a really good question. I don't know.

You say yes. I'm, it's a great idea. I think, you know, two. And just told everybody we were coming live. I don't know. People know. People know.

Anyways. I mean, I don't think they'll know. But they're not going to have that idea. It'll just be, it'll just be some crazy conspiracy theory. and it'll be like, well, they said that they were going to do this. They have videos on the internet of them saying that they're going to do this.

And then they went ahead and do this. It did this. And we can say, no, no, no, that's just a conspiracy theory. It's the WF approach. That's right. Do it in blatantly, blatantly obvious, but nobody will believe it because we said, oh, no, no, that's not right. But the reason I had the thought is last year I'm literally watching the Rick Mercer, Canadian. I'm just like, how can Gannon be this brutal?

This is brutal. Sucks. Just sucks. What if we, okay, I think we should. What if we did a New Year's Eve ball drop, it didn't suck? Yeah, exactly. Also, the next time you have an idea like this, you should probably share it with the other people in this production.

We got a full year to figure it out. But you could have, seriously, it's January 1st. If you'd have shared this idea like three days ago, we could have probably put together something really fun. I was dancing at a web. You know what? That's what I did last thing. Great DJ. I was out there dancing, folks. Okay.

Here's the story. Can I get into the story? CBC drops New Year's Eve broadcast sevens of people affected. Unfortunately, CBC is not able to produce a live New Year's special this year due to financial pressures. We're to statement obtained by CBC News from CBC spokesperson Chuck Thompson and Kerry Kelly, Senior Manager of Public Relations English Communication. That's probably a title that needs to be toast again. This year, CBC. Ah, went on.

What else do we need to, what else do we need to know? I mean, they cut the New Year's Eve broadcast. Why? Because it sucked. No, right. No, they cut it specifically because it's financial pressure. Correct. But you know why nobody's freaking out because it sucked?

Well, because nobody even watched it. You're like, oh, oh, they still do those things. Like, I was surprised that it's, it didn't even occur to me that they would do that every year. I'm like, oh, oh, this whole idea is interesting and fascinating. because the last time I turned on CBC would have been well over a decade ago. Well, I tell you what, you want ideas. Look at all the big days in Canada, right?

And you could take... Like St. Patrick's Day. Well, I was thinking, New Year's Eve is a big one. I was thinking Canada Day is a big one. I'm thinking any election is a big one, right? Those are national things that all suck. Our coverage of them all sucks. It just sucks.

So, like, two, right away, you could, it's like, whoa, we could do, we could do something on July 1st. So we apply the matchup model to all these things. Sure. Why not? Which is, what if we did this specific thing, but in a way that didn't suck. Right. And all of a sudden, you do, you have some fireworks show on July 1st and you have it, you know, and you broadcast it. And you bring on guests and you have a ton of fun with it.

It's like, it. Damn, that's beautiful, man. And, you know, the thing about it is, we wouldn't even have to pay for fireworks. Maybe we could, you know, help, oh, you know, the respective communities with some of their fireworks. be like, hey, you know what, if we, if we throw you guys a hundred bucks worth of whatever, zip zongers, do you guys mind if we film it and live stream it? I'm sure there'd be some community out there, it'd be like, we would gladly have you guys come televise it. It's a great idea.

It's just, it requires work. You know, it doesn't, as we know from doing the election coverage, it's not like you just show up and everything goes smoothly. There's a ton of work that goes into that. But we've also learned a lot of lessons. But yeah, anyway, so, yeah, they cancel this thing that nobody even knows about. Well, I mean, it's just a blimp. Nobody cares. Well, that's the thing is that they're the people. This is the exact same thing I was talking about with the underperformers who put in their two weeks notice and get their bluff called.

They're like, oh, we need more money. We don't have enough money. Oh, well, you know what? Canada, those things that we've been doing, we're just not going to be able to do them anymore until we get more money. And meanwhile, everybody's like, oh, you're still, you're, you're, you're still doing that thing? And so it's, this is totally going to backfire on them. This is, if I'm guessing right, this is them trying to play chicken. And they're going to start pulling more and more things.

They're going to be like, look, we don't have the money for this. We don't have the money for that. And everyone's going to be like, so what? And I hope they keep trying it. Nobody, nobody cared about it. Like, maybe there's, somebody should comment. Did anyone care? Does anyone care about the Canadian ball drop?

I tell you what you do that entire night while you're trying to watch Canadian ball drop. You're trying to figure out how you actually see somewhere else, anywhere else. You just want an option to see something else that actually doesn't suck. Because the Canadian one, sorry, folks, it sucks. They have, they hit, like, five years in a row. I'm like, why can't they figure this out? This isn't that hard. Like, this is a simple idea.

you've got so many great spots all across Canada that would be great to have a like a ball drop and have tons of fun with it and every year they just they just suck okay the just real quick comments if you want

light up my DMs on Twitter the text line if you think that the New Year's Eve thing would be good and maybe Canada Day 2 I don't know I've never really up until after the convoy I never really gave a whole lot of shits about Canada Day, although I remember being really dependent. Well, yeah, but you could do that instead of Canada Day, you could do convoy days.

And you could have a whole bunch of stuff. An anniversary of the convoy. Sure. I mean, uh-huh. Well, think about it, you know, the entire group to talk to. And you just bring on some sweet Canadians. And all of a sudden you got, like, everyone's like, you know, get around your bonfire, have people over, celebrate, you know, whatever, January, like end of January.

Should we do something like that? Do some sort of like an anniversary of the convoy celebration? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I'm more like that to me makes a ton of sense. I'd rather do that together today. Convoy days. All right.

Why not go from something so like, oh, that's a great idea, to trans awarded for defunding rape shelter, you cannot make this up. A transgendered activist, And actually, while I talk about this, why don't I just bring up the picture? Here we go, okay? Here, here, here. Let's make sure we get that in nice and tight. Which one's the tranny?

A transgendered activist who had city funding stripped from Canada's oldest rape shelter has been awarded a medal as champion of diversity. Morgaine, I don't know how to say it, ogre. A tr- Is it, Roger? Oger? I don't know. Well, so, you know, all I can think of is Henry right now. When I butcher her name, anyways, Morgaine, Oger, Ogre.

Let's go with Ogre. Let's go. A transgender woman. Let's just call it how it is. And for anybody listening rather than watching, it's an app name. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Okay. A transgender woman was given him a meritorious service medal by Canadian Governor General Mary Simon on December 7th.

Official photos show her receiving the award alongside dozens of other Canadians honored for their exceptional deeds. Ogre said she was feeling so grateful to get a medal for furthering the legal protections of transgendered Canadians. She was chosen for the award in 2018 and it's unclear why it took five years for her to actually receive it. And at that time, she was spearheading an effort to strip Vancouver rape relief of city funding because it refused to shelter transgender women. Vancouver City Council in March of 2019, Pulitzer, Canada, a $34,000 a year grant from 2020 unless the shelter, the oldest in Canada that began in 1974, changed its policy. Transwomen are women and sex work is work.

Trans women and sex workers deserve care and protection. Counselor Christine Boyle said at the time, I can't support organizations who exclude them, so I won't be supporting city funding for Vancouver rape or leaf. And counselor Sarah Kirby Jung said they have done fantastic work in our valuable service, but we wanted to make sure they extended it to everyone. If we were giving public funds, we need to give it to organizations that are inclusive. So there she is getting her medal,

and at the time she was, yeah, yeah. She looks like a cartoon lizard in a fucking wig. And then, yeah, so it's a meaningless award. And this is coming from an award-winning podcaster. just call it Shrek. It's a man, man. Yep. That's exactly right.

And of course, unless there's something that's changed that I'm not aware of, all of those medals that Mary Simon has are strictly, I don't know, window dressing.

None of them are for anything substantial. Correct. Did you see the Dave Chappelle? Oh, that thing about Jim Carrey? Somebody just sent it to me, and I watched it real quick right before this, and I was like, oh, my gosh.

So if you haven't, folks, you should go to Twitter and just search Dave Chappelle. Or actually, I think it's on Netflix, right? It's his new special. I think it's a Netflix special. There's only one comedian. There's only ever been one comedian. I watch everything he does.

Dave Chappelle is it. And he has a bit on the transgender thing. And Jim Carrey, meeting Jim Carrey when Jim Carrey is playing Andy Kaufman. And everybody, I think, knows that when he played Andy Kaufman, And he became Andy Coppin for the entire thing. Daniel Day Lewis type situation. Yeah, yeah.

And he has a great thing about that. And I mean, if you haven't seen that, that sums up. What's going like, you totally blindsided me and you shouldn't tell too much about it. Okay. Well, there you go go see. Go watch Dave Chappelle. You can find it on Twitter. It's like it's just blown up today.

It's everywhere. Okay. What else we got going on here? So anyway, yeah. I'm curious, though, what the other people who, because alongside dozens of other Canadians honored for their exceptional deeds, like I'm guessing the dude who decapitated somebody on a Greyhound bus, probably got a ribbon of some kind. And, you know, maybe if there's somebody who, I don't know, kicked of several different

puppies, they might be getting some type of a crown. And maybe there's some sort of a metal for, I don't know, probably some sort of. those people who burn down the fucking forest this summer. Look at the... None of those are serious-looking people. You've got Mario and Luigi in the front row. And, yeah, I'm guessing... I don't know.

It's hard to tell. You can't really tell from a picture. But, yeah, I don't think there's anybody who's... I don't know. It's just... Pulled someone out of a burning building or something. From trans to breaking, Epstein may not have killed him, Republican Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican touched on Congress's hesitance to release the flight records of Epstein's Lelita Express, allegedly used to shuttle young women to the financiers' private island and homes throughout the country and world.

Quoted, too many of my colleagues, I'm afraid, are compromised in this area for whatever reason. Mr. Burchett told Newsmax this week, somebody whispered in their ears saying, hey, you don't want something to come out on something else. you better keep your mouth shut on this. That's exactly what they've done. Numerous politicians, actors, and public figures were reportedly on Epstein's plane, including former presidents Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Prince Andrew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I should say, Prince Andrew, billionaire, Bill Gates, an actor, Kevin Spacey.

And, yeah. Oh, Kevin Spacey, the guy who, it came out that he was, like, raping a bunch of people, like a bunch of dudes on set. Correct. And then he did a whole bunch of movies with Brian Singer. Like he did Superman Lives and then usual suspects, which was a phenomenal movie until the whole thing just sort of. Yeah.

And Brian Singer who more or less just had his own casting couch, but for underage boys, that Kevin Spacey that hung out with him and did a whole bunch of stuff together. Correct. Ended up going to this island. Go figure, right? None of these things are going to be surprised. It's just interesting how far the links have, the links people have gone to to just not have these released.

Right. Because, I mean, I don't think there's going to be a single name that's going to be a surprise on there. It's not like people are going to look at it and be like, the Pope? I thought he had his own plane. Weird. Right. There's not going to be. It is, it is interesting because this falls, all this is coming up as the announcement that New York courts intend to release the names of 177 of Epstein.

Steen's Associates early next year. Like that should be coming out here like, you know, any day now, right? Yeah. And so you go, well, I'm curious to see the names. I mean, I mean, I just, I just want it out in the open. No speculation. Anybody and everybody's on this list, whether you thought they were awesome or horrible before. And then I want to see the hoops that people are going to be jumping through to be trying to justify why their guy would be going to rape island.

Yeah, honestly, yeah. Okay, if you didn't think it could get any stranger, from trans to Epstein to now, tree hugging leads to tree sex. Yes, so Vancouver Island is a different sex island. Here you go. A self-describe ecosexual living in Vancouver Island has opened up about her relationship with an oak tree. Sange Sanya Semenovia, a 45-year-old nature lover and self-intimitimacy coach, says she discovered her infatuation with nature after confronting what she was missing from human relationships. She was doing some soul searching during COVID walks during the lockdown when she realized

that she had been going about finding intimacy all wrong. One realization was that she'd had been craving the rush of erotic energy that comes when you meet a new partner which is not sustainable. During daily walks past a marsh swamp near her house. She wants to feel that burning fire. which led to a grove of trees where she soon to be found, her soon to be found companion stood. One particular, quote of one particular tree in the grove called to me. So I began to stop daily at this particular grove. She met it on Tinder. She walked to get it Tinder.

She would take to the walk five days a week in the winter of 2020 and began having erotic moments with the tree in the summer of 2021. I began to lean against it, to hold it, and feel held by it. I noticed that I was experienced erotic attraction. Yeah, she likes the hardwood, I guess. Yeah, did you imagine just like, I don't know, seeing that woman and finding her fascinating and in some grocery store line up and just being like, hey, how's it going?

And then she just says like, you're barking up the wrong tree. How is this Canadian news? Because it happened on Vancouver. Island. And you know, the funny thing is, is like, there's, there's a lot of big old trees there. There's one in particular, I remember going to see that it's, it predates Columbus. It's older than the, the European discovery, well, the second European discovery of, of North America. And so, yeah, and oak trees take forever to grow. So obviously, she's into the older side of things, right?

which I mean it's not too bad I feel like you know if she's going to her own personal sex island and chasing after saplings we might take some issues with it but as a tree how do you consent to this you can't because I mean everything's all like well and not wrongly but you know

you want to have clear consent for for things of this nature but how does a tree actually let you know that it wants you to leave it alone. Because you're just having your way with it. You're just grabbing it by the acorns and saying, here we go.

Argentina begins making small changes. The administration of Argentina's new president, Javier Malay, said on Tuesday this government won't renew contracts more than 5,000 employees hired this year before he took office. This is like music to Tuesday, I might add. The move was part of a sweeping plan of cutbacks and evaluations announced by the right-wing libertarian since he took off.

I love how they put that rate in the article. He's politically neutral libertarian. To transform Argentina's struggling economy. With inflation expected to reach about 200% by the end of the year, Malay has pledged to reduce government regulations and payrolls and allow the privatization of state-run industries as a way to boost exports and investments. The goal is to start on the road to rebuild in our country, return freedom and autonomy to individuals,

and start to transform the enormous amount of regulations that have blocked, stalled, and stopped economic growth. I just wish we could have one in Canada. And I know that what's his face? Bernier is probably going to be trying to get on this whole bandwagon. He's going to be trying to say that he's just, he's the Canadian version of this guy. But I think the difference between Bernier and this guy is that this guy actually wants

to win. He just doesn't want to, he doesn't want to just be the center of attention. But this is exactly what Canada needs. And it's, I would say, it's what the states needs. It's what probably just about every country in the world needs, with the exception of possibly Sealand. Although pretty much everybody there works for the government. So maybe they need that too.

Do you know what, do you know what Sealand is? I'm muted. I've got my entire audio just went to, so I have no idea what you said. Oh, okay. And it won't let me buzz you. So, that I... So you just buzzed me without even hearing what I was saying. Correct.

I was like, it's time to move on. No, I'm kidding. I heard the end of it. Okay. All right, because that, I would have been okay with that. I would have been okay with that. Like, I don't know. I have no idea what he's saying, but I'm sick of it.

D. Okay. Happy news. Happy news? Or you want two's live tonight? We didn't talk about this right at the start. Okay, all right. Well, okay, so yeah, if you happen to be in Calgary and you're watching this right now,

by the time it gets put up on the internet tomorrow, it'll be too late. Well, for all the people tuning into the live stream, right tonight, at the comedy cave with the boys. The Danger Cats. The Danger Cats. Tews is opening up for him. So Tews on the big stage, you know, this big night. Tell a few jokes.

It's, uh... How long do you got Tuesday, do you know? I got told seven to nine minutes. I'm going to push it a little bit because I think that, I don't know, it's interesting. I'm not sure that Uncle Hack knew what he was getting into. And it's funny because I even sent him the audio clip from the show I did in Lloyd. And I was like, well, I mean, what did you think?

And then he paused for a second. I'm like, you didn't listen to it, did you? He's like, well, I'm going to. And I'm like, bullshit, you're not. It's okay. Just admit it. And he's like, yeah, I'm probably not going to. right so like okay well if you're so he just apparently was like oh yeah you you you want to get up and tell a few jokes have at her and had no idea what it was going to be by the time he agreed to it so yeah anyways i'm gonna try and push the time just by a minute or two it's going to be hard to get through as much as i wanting to i'm gonna tell a few jokes about it will be on x no it will not be it's just a live comedy show just like live comedy show anything it yuck yuck

or the laugh shop or anything like that, right? Does she have splinters in certain places? I'm guessing. I'm guessing that she's worn that part of the tree pretty smooth by this point. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. It's probably like just a, it's probably just like a well-lint-seated axe handle from old-time days. Yeah, so that's, that's it.

And then here, man visits state park and finds 4.87-carat diamond. Hey, this guy's a fucking idiot. All right. Man from Lepanto, Arkansas, you know it's illegal to say, pronounce Arkansas incorrectly in Arkansas? Like if you say Arkansas? That's illegal.

That's illegal? What are they going to do? Well, deport you? Honestly, what are they going to do? Deport you? I don't know. Maybe there's jail time. I don't know what the punishment is.

Anyways, he goes with his girlfriend. to the renowned crater of diamonds state park in Murfreesboro, which I'm guessing is a fucking place. It sounds made up, but whatever. Anyways, he takes his girlfriend to the diamond park where people just find diamonds lying around and pick them up. And he finds one that's almost five fucking carrots.

So now, regardless of how well things are or aren't going, it doesn't get into it. This guy is pretty much morally obligated to get that thing cut into a shiny stone, put it on a ring and put it on her finger. Like, if you're going to go to a place where you could scoop five-carat diamonds up off the ground, you don't go with your girlfriend. It's awesome that he found it. It's great.

It's probably quite valuable, I'm thinking. I would think so. Dude, know your audience. Nine minutes is eight and a half minutes longer than twos has ever lasted. Andrew McKay has been kicked off this show. That's going to do it for Mashup 87. So if you're in the Calgary, I want to see Two's alive with the Danger Cats tonight, you can do that at the Comedy Cave.

The other thing before we hop off, I don't know if anybody's been paying attention on Twitter, but tsunami and earthquake has been trending. I was like, what the heck is that about? Looks like Japan got smacked with a giant earthquake. I don't know if anybody's been watching any of the videos going down there. But look at the water rolling here, Tews, on the going back at four slides. And there's a whole bunch of videos. videos from like people on their houses and like don't go.

Oh, wow. Yeah. It looks like one of those plus size passenger planes touched down over there. High calorie human. High calorie humans. All right. Mashup 87 in the books. I'm live from Wisconsin today.

And twos, of course, back home in Alberta. We will catch up to you next week when we enter Eric Lindross, dazed and confused. and we look forward to that. Thanks to everybody for tuning in on a New Year's Day MASHR live and 87. I appreciate that, everybody who didn't seem to have anything better to do because we didn't even announce it ahead of time. No, no, no, no.

And we just... Yeah, yeah, we're just like, surprise, motherfuckers. It just caught anybody who happened to be online, but it was a good turnout. You got any... Before I let you out of here, I was asking Jack on first half, episode of 2024. If there was any goals or anything like that, you got anything on the books for 2024s?

Yeah. I'm putting you kind of on the spot. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, a couple financial milestones I want to hit. And then some stuff with the podcast, again, for fuck's sake, Sean, that I'll be rolling out later on this year. And, yeah, those are, those are kind of the big ones, you know, as far as being very quantifiable, easy, easily measurable. And then sort of just a generic, I don't know, things are on a pretty good trajectory in a lot of ways. So keep with the forward momentum.

How about you? Well, you know, I look at 2024 and. Well, did you have any big goals for 20? 2023 real quick. 2023, we wanted to hit a million downloads and we hit it. What day did you hit it on? December 31st. Nice.

I was like, yeah, we're going to hit it. We're going to hit it. Did you have to take time zones into account to give yourself an extra hour or two? No, I'm like, we're going to hit it. We're going to hit it. We're going to hit it. And yeah, we took the full year, man. We took the full year.

But, you know, moving into 2024, you know, having, Jack editing and all the social media push and everything else we've been trying to do and get more active on. We're going to try and get to 2.5. So that's, you know, like I look at that number and I'm like, that terrifies the living crap out of me. But we're going to, you know, you got to set these milestones to see if you can push because if you don't look towards something, you know, you're kind of like where are you going towards. So on the podcast side, you know, I in the process of creating the war board, because I think it's really important. important to have, you know, like, we could signify all these key dates. You know, we got a Saskatchewan election coming, which me and you are going to do live

election coverage. We're going to take our second crack at it and do a live election coverage for Saskatchewan. I think that's going to be, I think that's going to be, you know, from a podcast standpoint, the mashup standpoint, I think that's going to be really interesting because we've had our first crack. We know what's going to work. We just have to fine-tune it. We came away with a lot of good lessons learned. You knew exactly what worked, what didn't, and so there's this very clear path forward in terms of making it better. Correct. And so it was already a big success.

So from a mash-up standpoint, I have, I have, you know, like I think I have two goals. One is to do that one exceptionally well, because I think if we can get that, you know, we had, what was the number off the Alberta one? It was like close to 10,000. Oh, it was like 15,000. We had like 15,000 people with no advertising budget. No advertising. And we bungled it. On a non-existent YouTube channel.

Yes. And the CBC one got like 60. Correct. And we bungled it over and over again. We couldn't get things to work and everything else. So we're going to make sure that the second time around here, as we lead up to the SaaS collection, that that one is going to be a success. and we're going to have it to make sure it doesn't have any cutoffs.

Because you remember, like, we had 15, but then we had to cut it and restart it, and we lost some of the steam. And yet people still loved it and had a ton of fun with it, and as much as it was annoyed. So I got two things. One is for the mashup, that we do it extremely well. And two is to, you know, we record live on Monday nights at 9 p.m. And I think we both know I've been talking a little bit more,

directly about hopefully getting that to the daytime hours. Yeah, and trying to get to, you know, a sharp twos, and maybe a sharp shot for that matter too, for all of the people tuning in and watching, it'll be at a little bit more reasonable of a time. You think if you're on the east, you know, we have people who listen to us from Ontario and further. Nobody's too.

Yeah, they're listening to the middle of the night. Yeah, nobody's wanting to tune into a live show at 11 at night, right? like so we could just push that a little bit earlier and get it so it's a little more reasonable time. I think it bodes well for us across the board. So that'd be my two big ones for this show in particular and, you know, and see where the rest of the year goes. 2024, folks, looks to be a wild year on a lot of different fronts. I'm pretty optimistic. I'm also really at the same time looking forward to seeing how many cool and

interesting ways that society just devolves. Continues to eat itself alive? Yes. No kidding. Well, there you go, folks. 2024. We look forward to being here, episode 88 coming at you next week. And we're going to have some fun this year.

And hopefully a couple new faces will hop on. I don't know. We've got to take a look at the guest list. Next week is Terrick Alnaga. Ooh, boy, here we go. All right, fire it up. We'll catch you guys next week. Terrick on the show and episode 88, mashup 88, coming next week.

Thanks for tuning in on a New Year's Day live stream. And, of course, to all the podcast listeners catching up to us on Tuesday. We'll catch up to you next week. Tews, as always, next week. See you there. Thanks, buddy. Thanks, everybody.