The Harland Highway - NEW HARLAND HIGHWAY #16 - Getting GHOSTED and being WOKE!

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

Harland tells a terrifying ghost story about being GHOSTED. And, getting into the WOKE movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're riding down the Harland Highway All right, hold tight on the Harland Highway Show Harland Williams Uh-huh, mm-hmm Well, now that's right Now, I'm going to say it again now I'll say, well, now that's right You are here

ladies gentlemen mutants formaldehyde children from meldehyde bottles and laboratories onion farmers sea cucumber collectors whatever you do

whoever you are you're here on the Harland Highway put down your sea cucumbers put down your cherry picking apparatus whatever you're doing roll up your Walmart sleeping bag whatever the hell you're doing uh pause that pound puppy because you are on the harland highway podcast and before i start spewing agots to ask y'all of favor now uh if you see the little subscribe button right there in the in the cornea i know it's pronounced corner but

But Cornair sounds a little more, like it has more panache to it, you know. So if you see that little subscription button in the Corn Air, just hit it right now. Ding, smack, boom. Want y'all to subscribe so you're all part of the club. We're all under the same roof when the lightning and the storms and the giant 400-foot trolls come. I want us all to be huddled together, holding, touching, our heads pressed together, our hands clasps, singing kumbaya, and maybe heard it from a friend by Ario Speedwagon, just songs that bind people together and keep them close and tight,

just the way things probably are in Donny Osman's underpants, just tight and, you know, just tight. I want us all to be tight. Also, before I start spewing, like I haven't started already spewing, please tell your friends about the Harlan Highway podcast and leave comments. If you want to leave some comments, I read all your comments and I like your feedback, any suggestions for topics or shows or just anything at all. If you think I look like a mentoid from the fifth dimension, you can say it.

I got a thick skin. If you want to say, good God, Arland, I like the show, but do we have to look at you? I mean, could you put a block of cheese up there? Or maybe one of those formaldehyde babies that I talked about just a minute ago. So, yeah, let's all do that. And now that that's out of the way, boom, bing, bbang, bambang, bong. No, that's not an old lady falling down basement stairs. that's me kind of giving a little drum-roly type thing to start the show.

And do you like to be scared? I'm going to start the show with a ghost story. Who doesn't love a delicious ghost story? I mean, just when I say delicious, this thing might as well be marinated with Alfredo sauce and teenagers acne cream. I mean, it's just, this one's, I don't speak Italian, but I'm going to, I think this is Italian. This ghost story is El Deliccio. So, let's get into it.

And many of you might have experienced this same ghost story. Here it is. Recently, yours truly, and this is funny because you're probably thinking it takes place in a creepy old house or down behind a boiler and an old factory, you know, Freddie Kruger country, there's little pieces of black and red thread from his demented rugby sweater, like Freddie Krueger played rugby. I mean, can you imagine throwing a rugby ball to a guy with knives on it? Hey, over here, you know, the ball would just explode right on his. Anywho, this is a ghost story that involves a.

modern day device known as our smell phone. And I call it a smell phone because, let's face it, they stink. I mean, they do a lot of good, but they do a lot of harm, right? They preoccupy our time. We don't go anywhere without looking into them. Our heads are always bent down looking in them. We can't go three, you can't get on an elevator and go on an elevator for 40 seconds, up seven floors, without, look around the elevator, everyone in the elevator, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, everywhere. If you're basically not like, you know, making a clay sculpture and using your hands, like, you know, make kneading the clay and then shaping clay, if you're not doing something, you know, meticulous with your fingers, you got your phone in your hand.

Trust me. Many of you right now probably have your phone in your hand. But this is where the ghost story originates. So I met a gal, and there was like a really good connection. And there was some chemistry. And it was like, you know, one thing led to another was like, hey, do you want to exchange phone number areas? You know, there was no physical contact. There was no romance as of yet.

But there was that promise of romance in the air because when we met there was this kind of unspoken attraction. I think we've all had it. You can feel it. You can read it. It's like an invisible energy. It's like a mist in the air that you inhale and you go, wait a minute, who's that hot mama? Or in her case, wait a second. Who's that walking slab of fresh beef?

Or not. So anywho, we exchanged the new barrows and kind of this back and forth that's going for a couple of days where you know you're sussing people out and you're feeling them out and you're saying this and that and oh yeah, this is what I like and this is where I've traveled and these are my hobbies, you know, general back and forth to get a respectable feel for one another. and you can kind of tell if there's a flow, if there's a chemistry. And in this scenario, definitely. Oh, definitely. And I was happy about that. I was like, okay, this is good. And then all of a sudden, gone, vanished.

And you know what the term for that is, don't you, gang? Don't you, my 21st century tech savvy, Freaks. Sorry, I got a little amped up there for a second. It's called ghosting. Okay, I was ghosted. Just flat out like I didn't exist. One minute I was there and it's like I might as well have been in a plane crash

or I was walking through the giant redwoods in Northern California just whistling and humming through the forest and a big hairy arm from Yeti or Bigfoot. as we call them, came around a tree and just pulled me back and took me back into the redwoods and ate my bones and slurped down my intestines and just cannibalized me. I was gone. I didn't exist. No DNA, no footprints, no scent, no sound, no hair fibers. Not even CSI could have gone in and found a remnant of yours truly. Old, Daddy beefsteak.

Gone, ghosted. That's the term. You know it. And not the friendly type, not the Casper type. Not the, oh, hi, stuffy buddies. I'm Casper, the friendly ghost. Nope, none of that friendly, smiley ghosty stuff. This was like vanishing act.

Like this, I was gone as if David Copperfield himself walked up to me with one of his magic hankies or magic bed sheets, put it over me, snapped as greasy, curly, fucking tonsillitis riddled fingers. Boom. Remove the hanky and I'm gone. Don't exist. It's like my parents, and I hate to talk about this, it's as if my parents never even copulated. It's as if the eggy, inside of my mummy was never touched by the spermy from my daddy. And the reason I'm adding the whys on the end, the spermy and the daddy and the mummy is because that way it doesn't make it feel real and I don't have to think about my parents doing, you know what.

So cut me some slack, and if you cut me a long enough piece, I'll tie it to the barn rafter and hang for you. Uh-huh. Well, now that's a right. So I was ghosted. And I know many of you have been ghosted. I'm just looking into the crowd here, and I'm seeing a lot of faces,

a lot of empty hollow eyes staring off into the sun trying to blind yourself. This painful ghosting experience, you're like, you know what, I have no reason to ever see another man or woman. I shall stare into the sun and melt my, corneas. I will stare into the sun so long that my corneas actually melt into my eyes and I just have black eyes. And it's painful. It's frustrating. It's mysterious. It's all these things. It leaves one wondering what happened. What did you do wrong? What did you, did you say something? Did you,

did you trigger something? What happened to this chemistry, this thing that was occurring and just boom, gone like a fart inside of a kids blow-up house or a bouncy house, whatever they're called. And so there you're just standing like empty. It's like someone pulled up at the airport to pick you up and you're like, hey, how are you?

And you watch them just drive away. It's like, wait, it's me. You came all the way here to pick me up. I got my bags. I was ready to jump in and give you a big hug and a kiss and tell you all my stories and come back. That's what it's like. So it's not your traditional ghost story, or is it?

Because like many of you, nobody likes to be jilted myself included nobody likes to be sort of canceled especially without a reason without just cause as they say in the courtrooms across America including the OJ courtroom where he put a glove on his hand and I don't even know why I said that I don't even know why I referred to him putting a glove on his hand, but I did. And some of you can fill in the blanks. I don't know what they are, but fill them in.

And so none of you like to be jilted or left alone. And so you decide, wait, did I deserve that? Did I deserve to be ghosted? I don't even know what I did. And then you start thinking, does this person have another life? Do they have a secret life? Are they dating? Are they married?

Are they engaged with someone else? Was this just all a game for them? Was this just a test? Was this to stroke their ego to see if they could get someone to participate in some kind of dialogue? It's like, oh, you're really cute. You're really cute too. I think your pants are really sexy. You know, is that what it was?

Were they basically using you just to puff up their ego? And you don't even know the answer to that because you're a ghost. and what do we know about ghosts? They're invisible. And so in this competitive world of money and power and romance and everything we do, there's an edge of competitiveness to it. Don't say there isn't. Don't think there isn't.

Everything we do, even with your friends, within your family, there's always an edge of competitiveness. And that's good. That's what makes humans drive. That's what puts us into gear every day. And, you know, we want to do things for ourselves, but everyone also wants to, you know, hold themselves up against others

and not in a malicious way. We're just competitive. We wouldn't be where we are if we weren't competitive. The human race would not have achieved all its technological milestones and all of the things that we've done, us crazy humans, good or bad. A lot of it is derived. from competitiveness, and I probably should have competed better in speech therapy,

but apparently I can't, and that's why. So I thought, okay, the ghost game. I can play. I can play the ghost game, okay? And so Daddy Poltergeist here decided to do a little research. search and go through our many texts and put the pieces together and let's just say old Sherlock Combs here found out where the lady that dumped me lives yeah track down her abode the lady who ghosted me and now I got her Addie and that's short for address for those of you

that I don't know short stuff. So I went to work. I went to work and thought, okay, you ghosted me, and now it's my turn to ghost you. But I turned to more of the traditional American horror story method to do my ghosting. And so late one night,

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With the crickets chirping out in the darkness Okay, we get it. We know what a cricket is. Okay, well, how about this? Maybe there was a moose out behind the crickets out in a swamp. See, you give me attitude, I throw in a moose. Yeah, does this story take place in a city? Yeah, Los Angeles, yeah.

But if you're going to give me blowback on some freaking cricket sounds, like if you're not going to give me the leverage to do this and add a little ambiance to my story, you're getting moosed, bro. Papa don't preach. I'm keeping the baby. Fuck the baby. I'm bringing in a moose.

Mee. Are we clear? I mean, are we straight procephioshes and brocephiatias? That's the girls. So don't give me any more attitude. I was ghosted. I'm a hurt-damaged human being. And if I need some cricket SFX, again, that's sound effects for those of you that don't like condense things.

Then PowerPlayer, I'm going to drop. I'm going to drop some crick. Okay. And if you don't think that adds atmosphere, you might as well go get your vacuum, turn it on, take your clothes off, stick it to your face and suck yourself dry. And I say that with a lot of love and a lot of sincerity, and I really hope you suck all the moisture out of your body, all the salts, all the minerals, all the vitamins until you're just like an empty,

dirty husk, like I want a pumpkin rot. That's what, so don't just leave me in the crux. crickets alone. So anyways, it's a starry night. The crickets are chirping. And of course, that day, during the day before the black velvet of night surrounded us, yours truly, who always has a plan, you know that. I methodically mapped out my ghost story.

I went to bed, Bath and Beyond. And I went in, and part of that name, bed, bath, and beyond, had something that daddy needed. That's right, a bed sheet. I went in, and I bought a big, long, white bed sheet. Oh, as white as snow whites, pasty, powdery, albino skin. I bought myself a big old, pure white. bed sheet and I didn't buy anything in the bath section and I didn't go into the beyond I went to the back of bed bath and beyond and there was a door there and I don't know if it was the janitor's closet

I don't know if it was the staff bathroom but something tells me that that door and I put my hand towards the knob I almost went for it I have a feeling that behind that door at the back was the beyond. I feel like if I pulled that door open, there just would have been a like a black swirling void, and I would have seen a thousand million galaxies and meteors going by and Satan riding a unicycle and Jesus surfing on a surfboard and Carly Simon riding a horse with clam chowder dripping from its eyes. I mean, who knows what's in the beyond?

And who knew that, you know, somehow when we needed bath materials and bed materials, the next thing in line was the beyond? I mean, how strange is that? There doesn't seem to be the connectivity to the depth. It's like, okay, I need a fluffy new pillow, and I need some new dishes. and some salad tongs, and then I need to go into the nether world, into the grape beyond, and see all my deceased ancestors

and touch the face of God, just stroke his face and feel the softness and ask him what the meaning of life is. And he says, why would I tell you, you've been bad, you're going down to the red place, You cheap chimpanzee sucking whore. And these are the things he might say. You've got to be prepared. But I'm drifting away from my ghost story. And I know I had you right at the edge of your seat.

So let's steer the canoe back. Jump into your birch bark canoe that you meticulously crafted by peeling birch bark from your little island you go to when no one's around. and you illegally peel birch bark from endangered birch trees, and you make canoes. And some of you, some of you, stand your canoes up in your toilet, just straight up and down in your toilet, you jump in them, and I don't want to say this, but you know who you are,

you paddle to diarrhea River. Why, I don't know, but some of you do it. So I'm at bed, bath, and beyond. I refrain from opening the door to the next portal. I was tempted. I might go back, and when I do do it, I will tell you, if I return from the beyond. But I get back home.

I get my white sheet, my beautiful white sheet. Like this sheet was whiter than the white keys on Paul McCartney's piano. and not even his dirty, oily fingers that, you know, he probably has a garden where he plucks carrots and, you know, the tortoise rinds from dead tortoise, and he just plays with his piano. So I get this beautiful white sheet, and I put it over my head.

You see where this is going? I drape it over my head. I get a pair of scissors that I bought at staples, and I'm not even going to go into I'm not even going to I'm not even going to go into what I saw on Isle 7 at Staples where the inkjet cartridges are. They have a big aisle just full of inkjet, ink replacement cartridges. And am I going to divert again and tell you I went into that aisle

and saw an octopus in a trench coat, shoplifting ink cartridges because what maybe octopi run out of ink sometimes too if they get to squirt in too much maybe one too many shark assaults or a seal coming at them looking at them as a food source and these poor octopi these eight-legged tentacled freaks

have to squirt their ink into the ocean and use up the supply, drain it, and then it's gone? And now they're defenseless? Yeah, you bet your ass if you're an octopi, you're going to get into staples with a long trench coat on and probably do a little shoplifting. And you got eight freaking hands. You're a good shoplifter.

I mean, you could be grabbing something over here while you're grabbing something there, grabbing something. I mean, you can... I mean, probably the best shoplifters on planet Earth, an octopus. I mean, imagine the ink they crawl out of that place with. And what's great about them, they don't even go out the front door. You know what they do? They're so clever.

I've seen them do it. I watched this guy in the trench coat. He didn't go out the front door where the little alarms would have gone off. Beep, beep, beep. Octopus shoplifter, octopus shoplifter, drop the cartridges. Nope. This octopi went into the bathroom at Staples. You know where this is going?

Shed the trench coat, jumped in the toilet, reached up with one of his big, greasy arms, flush, right back, right back into the ocean. Scott Free, no video footage of the theft, nothing. Just gone skis. This Octopi was back in the ocean, sucking down in cartridges, filling up his ammo belt, if you know what I mean. And I wouldn't doubt if he even went looking for a great white.

It's like, come at me, bro. I'm fully loaded. You want a party? You want to party with old tentacle tits? Let's rock and roll. I just made a trip to Staples. How would you like some ink in your face? and maybe I'll do an underwater fart bubble

and put some stink in your face too. But again, we're drifting away from my ghost story and you're making me because what I know about you folks is you like details. You need details to help you fill in the blanks. For these stories to work, you need details. And I'm willing to give them to you. But what happens is we get off on the blanks,

these little detours, and it takes, you know, a four-minute story ends up stretching into an hour, and that's on you. Let me moisten my epiglottis. Oh, drinkin's always better when you make that gulping sound. I don't know why, but just a... Sounds like a baby crocodile looking for its mother. Anyways, I got the girl's address who ghosted me. I got the white sheet, okay?

And I go into my house, I got my scissors from Staples. I cut out the eyes. I don't do them, you know, I don't. There's no copyright infringement. I don't do the tears drop-shaped eyes like Spider-Man, if that's what you're wondering. I'm not some kind of creative thief. I'm not going to steal Spider-Man's eyes and make them mine.

No, I did simple circles. And if anyone owns the patent of circles, why don't you go dig a big round hole and put some hair around it so it looks, like Donnie Husman's asshole and jump in. Because circles belong to all of us. Even the outer space people come here and make circles in the corn. Corn, yummy, delicious corn circles.

So now I've got, for lack of a better term, my ghost. You see where this is gone? I've created a ghost costume. I've taken ghosting to the next level. okay so now the sun has gone down the moon has come up we got our crickets here's me sneaking down the street right i rented a van i rented a van so no one could track my vehicle no one could see my license plates i rented a van from larry's midnight van rentals on Melrose and I parked about, you know, seven blocks away because I,

you know, I had to watch hours of forensic files to get all the tips on how to commit the perfect crime. I mean, isn't that why we all watch forensic files all night long? You can come home from a party and it's midnight and you watch one episode of forensic files and then you watch two and then you watch seven and then you have next thing you know it's four in the morning and you actually do want to murder someone because you're so zomified but you watch these shows and you start learning all these little methods for your capers what works what doesn't work how to trick law enforcement and so i put all that knowledge together into my ghosting And I snuck up, snuck up to this woman's house, and I had a screwdriver, and I got it in the window.

And I was like, just glass falling everywhere. I broke the window. And yes, I know it was stupid. of all the windows I tried to go into, she had a giant stained glass window from a church she had imported from Europe. Boy, dumb move. You know, there was a little side window,

there was a moderately sized window. I could have got through easily. I probably didn't even have to break it. I could have just shimmied it open. But me, here I go. Maybe my first misstep. Maybe this is something I didn't see on forensic files. Never go for the giant,

25 foot high stained glass window with images of Jesus and angels and Mother Mary holding a heart. And I felt bad. I destroyed a beautiful piece of glasswork. But folks, I was ghosted. I'm on a mission. I'm on a mission, not of revenge, just to set the table straight. I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to cause anyone any damage, but I do need to bring the balance back to the world. Because the ghosting of yours truly just set the scales. I mean, they're flying around like a kid with a nostril problem on a merry-go-round at a mall, like a kid who somehow, when his father was celebrating the birth of the child, the cork blew off and went up the kid's nose and just stretched one of his nostrils out, so it looked like, you know,

Donnie Osmond's fucking asshole on a Saturday night. I mean, so here we go. I smashed the window, and as fate would have it, she didn't wake up. And so now, now I'm in the house. I'm on the floor. I put my ghost costume on, okay? and I'm creeping across the floor like a phantom. I'm almost drifting like a breeze,

but the problem is she's got those old wooden floorboard. So now this ghost, this, this wisp in the night, is now sounding like a bunch of mice eating cheeseburgers in a shoe box. The floors, it's like, and I'm creeping across the floor, and I get to the stairs, and I start up the stairs, and the same thing. Every third step is like creeds, like, and the ghost is stopping.

And I thought, maybe I should make some little ghost noises, because, you know, the creaking is causing anxiety. So I kind of went, ooh, ooh, you know, just to add some flavor to being a ghost. I figure that's the noises they make. And I thought, I'm not going to make it on my own. But if the creaking creates anxiety and raises, maybe that's a good release to go, you know, when tennis players hit the ball and they go, oh, they groan, they say the coaches encourage them to groan.

They say that release actually helps with their. the stroke of their of their tennis racket. You just thought they were randomly groaning? No, they've been coached to actually, that release is part of the conditioning. Ugh. And so as a ghost, creeping through a strange house with creaky floors, I'm like,

and it's helping me get rid of some of that anxiety. Because look, I'm not used to breaking into homes. I've never done it. Here I am. I'm breaking the. law, I'm breaking in, but she broke an unwritten law. She ghosted me, and that's damaging. That should be a crime, perhaps. And so tit for tat, crime for crime, you do the crime, you do the time. And this lovely girl was about to do some hard time with old poltergeistio in the

house. So now I get up to the floor, the hallway, and I see her bedroom door. And I start creaking. I get to the door. I listen. Not the ghosts have ears, but somehow they hear. They don't even have noses or mouths, really. Just the eyes. But who cares? You're dead. You don't deserve other senses. And then I get to the door and I slowly push it open. I'm like, I'm like, and I'm like, damn, that door needs some oil. I'm like, crick, don't you know I'm a ghost? I can't be making these loud noise. Can someone, is there some WD40 around here? Beotch? But to My delight, this goaster woman, I guess, was a heavy sleeper.

Maybe the only thing she did better than ghosting a human was sleeping. And so I was able to creep across the floor, almost gliding. I get right up beside her. I get right up beside her head. I bend down. Here's her head. and here's my head I get right beside her head

and I whisper in her ear Carmella Her name was Carmela Carmelah Wake up Carmelah And she slowly rolled over And she opened her eyes And I tore the sheet off my head

And I said And man, you ever hear that term somebody shit their bed? I mean, this chick, she might as well have turned on a shit sprinkler. I mean, this shit, boom. Her bed turned into a chocolate display at the Hershey factory. I mean, holy God, I scared that her eyes flew out of her. head hit the roof the ceiling fan shot them around the room they're bouncing and went right back in her head i mean this chick's mouth dropped so wide i saw a raccoon come through the bedroom window

go in and make a nest in her fucking mouth and give birth to five little baby raccoons i mean this chick's my scare her hair stood up so high and not just the hair on her head The pubic hair on her, you know what? So her hair on her head went up, and the pubic hair from her crotch went up right up to her face. I mean, this chick, I've never seen someone so scared. And when everything kind of went back into place, I just looked at it, I said,

you've been ghosted, player. And I threw my lily white, now brown sheep, at her and I just creaked on out of there with my chest house like crawled back out through the shattered stained glass window looked down I said sorry Mother Mary and Jesus their glass faces staring up at me wondering why I ever existed I crept back down the sidewalk under that starry moonlit night. And the crickets mysteriously gone, but now cicadas. E, ye, stinging into the darkness.

And now aren't you wishing I had the crickets back after you had to sit through cicadas? So you see, be careful. Just be careful with your insects. Because at the beginning of the ghost, you had the harmonic, soothing tones of the night crickets. And on the way out, right after Mother Mary and Jesus, what did you get? You got one of God's creations that you probably didn't want to hear

the smoke alarms of the insect world. Cicada. Oh, guess what? What? You've been cicaded, be itch. And I threw a neck muscle out with that one. And so I got into my dirty van that I rented, chocolate bar wrappers on the floor,

donut icing on the ceiling, creamsicle stains on the seats, Funyan wrappers, a wig, there was a Chinese wig in the back, some teeth, there was some weird discolored teeth on the floor, and a femur, a femur from a zebra. Somehow maybe this van had made around at the zoo or something, but there was an actual femur with marrow still in it. I picked it up and I could hear the bone marrow sloshing around and I'm going, God, if I was a hyena right now, talk about a midnight snack.

Snap, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug. A hyena's number one treat for a hyena. Zebra bone marrow. Ask any hyena of me. They'll probably won't even laugh in your face. Just they love it. So I drive back home. I crawl into bed.

and I just kind of laid there for about two or three minutes with a very content smile on my face. I was just like, you ghost me. You get ghosted back. Play, yeah. So there you go. Little ghost story. And I hope I didn't start you too much.

I threw in the old scare tactic just to keep you guys honest, just to keep you on your toes. And I hope you enjoyed that juicy, juicy ghost story. And the moral of the ghost story, not that you often hear that. You know, you rarely hear. And the moral of this ghost story is, but I'm going to tag one on here. Try not to ghost people. it's a very kind of cruel and unnecessary thing that's happening.

There's no harm in doling out a little honesty and just maybe texting someone and going, you know what, I enjoyed talking with you, but I don't know that it should go any further. I'm not feeling anything more, or you could write, I'm not ready for something like this, or I'm not interested, or, you know what I mean? Like, show a little civility, show a little decency and a little compassion.

You know, remember there's someone at the other end of your little ghosting, okay? So just be considerate of maybe their feelings and how your ghosting might actually be upsetting and hurtful? Does it take all that, can you send one last text where you just go, hey, you know, I'm just, I enjoyed talk, but this just isn't working out. Or, you know what, I'm going to step away. This isn't right for me.

I'm not feeling it. And that can be painful too, but at least, you know, do you really want to leave another person dangling, wondering? At least in the Arab world, before cell phones, I always found that when you broke up with a person, there always seemed to be a lot more communication because you had to meet people in person or you had to phone

them. It wasn't this kind of just instant vanishing. And the other reality of, you know, decades back is you didn't have as much access to people. Now through your phone, you have access to an endless chain of prospective dates or partners. And I think that's where ghosting originated from. It's like people are like, why am I putting all this emotional input into this person when I've got 50 other people here, or I could go on a dating app, or I could go on Instagram, or I could go on this, I could go that, I could go on Facebook and start talking to 70 new people.

So instead of investing any more emotional energy into this human being, let me just completely make them not exist. And I'll dig into this new bundle of treats. So just a little word, little word of human compassion, of human caring. Be careful of other people's emotional needs and their feelings. because it could be happening to you.

Do unto others as thou would have done unto thyself. And I know that inscription because it was on the stained glass window that I smashed at Mary Ellen's house. What was her name? I don't know. Who? She's ghosted. Who even talking about?

What? What? What girl? Ghosted. Hello. Goodbye. So there you go. I hope you enjoyed that little ghost story, my children. Did I get you?

Did I frighten you? Ooh. All right. And before we go any further, how about a word from our sponsor today? Better help. Yes, indeed. The sponsor today is Better Help. How well would you take care of your car if you had to keep the same one your entire life? Well, that's how our brains work.

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Oh, well, here we are. Here we are. You know, speaking of ghosting, I want to, before we go, I want to touch on one other term that is just so prevalent these days. You hear it all the time, and it's annoying, and it's disheartening. It's probably one of my least favorite words

that's come out of the American vernacular recently. It's called woke. Do you know this term? You're so woke or he's woke or she's woke or they're woke. I don't think you're allowed to say he and she anymore. But because if you do, then you're not woke. But I just, I abhor this, this term, woke. And sometimes you hear people.

People use it, you know, disparagingly or negatively. But I've always wanted to say to people because it drives me nuts, but you kind of can't. But I've always wanted just to, you know, obvious woke people. I've just wanted to walk up to them and go, you are so woke. You know, you are so woke. You know, my voice just dripping with dislike. You are so woke.

And so I started to realize that because there's so many woke people in society now and I'm not able to get rid of this energy, you are so woke energy, because it'll lead to a fight. You go up to someone who's clearly woke and go, you are so woke. It's going to be, oh yeah, what do you mean? Do you have something to say to me? Because if you do, maybe, you know,

I'm going to get you canceled and this and that, you know, this is the world we live in. So now I've got all this animosity in me that I need to get out of me because it's not healthy to carry it around. I need to say to people, you are so woke. You know, it just drips out. And so because mental health is important to me, my mental health and my spiritual health, I realize that I have to get this out of my system. And because I don't want to confront people and have a confrontation, this is what I do. Late at night, I will sneak into hospitals around the city

when I'm feeling the urge to get rid of this angst. I will sneak into hospitals, I'll go up the elevator, I'll look out, I'll make sure there's no nurses and doctors, I'll run down the hall, and I find the coma wards. I find the coma wards where multiple peoples are laying in this vegetative, vegetative state? Am I staying that, am I staying that right? Vegetative state, you know, a coma where people have kind of transitioned into this netherland where they're neither awake or dead or they're just kind of they're comatose and it's unfortunate and it's it's awful it's not a place i'd want to be

but many of them have been in comas for a long time some of them for 10 15 years prior to the whole woke movement. Yeah. So they have no knowledge. They are not privy to the term woke. And so I sneak into these coma wards and I'll stand there in the shadows hidden behind a pillar, a beam, or a divider. And when the medical staff leave at night, I just stand, I hover. I hover over the bottom. Sometimes there's 20 or 30 comatose bodies. And I'll just stand there, very alert, watching for movement. And every few weeks I get so lucky. All of a sudden I'll see a finger twitch and then an arm

and I rush over to the bedside. I'll look at their chart. Oh, this person's been in a coma for 22 years. And, you know, pre the whole woke movement and I see that they're coming out of it. and I stand there over them in anticipation, just my eyes growing wider as more of their body parts start to move and their eyes start to blink and then slowly their eyes pop open for the first time in 22 years. They've been in this perpetual sleep and there I am waiting for them and I just look at them

and I say, you are so woke. And they sit up and they go, what? What the fuck do you mean? What are you talking about? I said, oh, look at you. Look at you. You are so woke. And they're like, how long have I been out?

And you're like, oh, oh, don't even start. You are so woke. Get over yourself. And I can do this because they don't know. They're not privy. to the whole woke movement so I can expunge all this toxic energy inside me, all this vitriol at the woke movement, and I can just dump it on them.

And before they have time to know what it is, I'm out the door like a whisper, almost like a ghost. And they're sitting there, their eyes glazed over, and they're just confounded and lost. And some of them actually are so disturbed to see me. when they first wake up, they decide to go right back into the coma. They realize it's nicer in there than to have to look at my face. And there you go.

And when I say, there you go. I think there we go. I think we covered it. You know, I always have way more topics to get to. I really do, gang. You know, I usually have seven or eight topics I want to. rifle through, and because you are such sticklers for details, I have to go down all these different pathways and fill in the, you know, provide the color for the story.

It's like when you're watching a football game and the two color commentary, there goes Johnny Paycheck, Johnny Paycheck, passes the ball to Smith Watson, Smith Watson, he's running down, he's running down the field, 30-yard line, 20-yard line, oh, his legs have snapped. Oh my God. Where are his legs? So I have to fill in a lot. And because of you, I can't get to all my topics. And so today we only covered two. We covered ghosting and being woke.

And I know most of you are probably asleep anyhow. But we've come to the end. We can't keep going on. I mean, we're at the hour mark, and we've got to just put a lid on it for today. But before I go, don't forget what I said at the beginning. Please subscribe to the show. Tell your friends, leave some comments. And if you want to get more bonus material, I have what's called a Patreon page.

Patreon is a digital platform where artists and creators can post videos and photos and audio clips and all kinds of stuff. And so what I do on my Patreon page is I post audio clips of various characters that I do that I think you'll get a big laugh from. I basically interview other characters over the phone, people like George Michael from Wham, my Aunt Ruthie from Rochester, New York, Tom Dowdy, he's a military expert, all kinds of crazy characters that I've made up. and you can listen to these bonus interviews, you can see bonus video,

you can get a look at my t-shirts that I draw ahead of everyone else, and if you really love this podcast, when I can do it, which is usually most of the time, I post these podcasts a few days early so that you're getting them before the rest of the world does. Sometimes three, four days early, sometimes two days early, but if you're a junkie for the Harland Highway, which I know you are,

you get to enjoy them ahead of everyone else and have some fun. So there you go. That's all I got. I'll take one final swig. I know many of you ladies who watch the show love to watch my Adam's Apple go up and down. You like to watch it undulate.

And so let me just give you one last kind of really sweet undulation if you want to just watch. And I'll do the glugging sounds. Here we go. Hey ladies Then I do I do sexy face Watch

Oh yeah Somebody fine apple juice Dripping down my throat going to stomach down and vomit on cue okay gang that's it we've i've clearly lost it and my special guest t rex was here today uh anything to say okay cool um that's it uh thank you for being here in all sincerity this is a wild uh project i'm doing I'm going to have some really cool guests coming up, some people you know, some funny people, and I look forward to interviewing them for you real soon.

So be cool, have a great summer, and until next time, this is yours truly saying chicken, chameen, baby.