The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - mystery!

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

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Thank you for listening to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. If you'd like to listen to bonus episodes, go sign up to the Patreon. That's patreon.clom. Clom? Ah, we f***ed it. Anyway, look, you'll find a way. Catamaran Home! and I'm here to tell you about the new Google Pixel 9 powered by Gemini. Anyone who knows me knows the Pixel has always been my favorite out of all the phones I've ever had. Now, with Gemini built in, it's basically my personal AI assistant. Since I'm truly terrible at keeping up with emails,

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Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. It's a very exciting day for James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan lovers everywhere. For I am thrilled, absolutely thrilled, I'm thrilled to announce the launch as of right now of James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan Mystery Merchandise. James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan Mystery Merchandise.

James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan Mystery Merchandise. James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan Mystery Merchandise. This is such fantastic news. Oh, yes. Very exciting. Mystery merchandise. This is the first merchandise that we've done to the general public on the James Donald Forbes McCann catamaran plan. There's things if you sign up for the Patreon at various times,

various amounts. Various levels on failure on my part in getting that stuff out and on time. This is, hey, you're just a normal person. You don't want to sign up to a Patreon. You want to buy some merch for the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. Well,

now you can on the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan merch store. Link below. It's, what is it? It's,

it's, got to have this on hand, Jimmy. It's jdfmccann, m-double-c-a-double-n-dot-com forward slash merch. M-E-R-C-H. And you can pick there how expensive you want your mystery merchandise to be. Now, I bet you're wondering, and I bet you're asking yourself,

Jimmy, what is the mystery merchandise? Well, every piece of merchandise on the James Donald Forbes Cadmiran plan mystery merchandise thing. Sweepstakes, window, limited time only. I don't know what we're calling this season of life. It will be unique. It will be. Hold on a minute. Let me tell you how I thought about it.

This is why it's my breakthrough. I think it's a huge idea. So I noticed that a great many podcasts have merchandise. This seems to be one of the normative ways that you make money having a podcast. And since this is a podcast about me raising enough money to have a boat, it was a glaring omission that I didn't have merch. I've been looking into it. There's not great options out there. So one thing you can do is you can just manufacture a lot of merchandise yourself. Perhaps you contract a sweatshop or my friend Margo, whoever it is that you need to get. And you just, you make all the merchandise and then you put it up for sale

and you try and sell it. And this is fraught. You've got to pay all these upfront costs. And this is fraught. You've got to pay all these upfront costs. Whatever you don't sell, you don't get money from. Silly. And it's an old school way of doing it. But then the new school ways of doing it are just equally horrible. There are these, you know, you make a logo and you put it on a website and they print on demand.

Which is what they do for the Amazon book, and you get a reasonable deal on books, but on shirts, you know, you're saying $30 for a t-shirt, well, the child in the sweatshop who's made the shirt, they're getting the same amount, they're still getting a dollar, whatever, I don't want to underestimate or overestimate, I don't currently know what the children in the sweatshops get. I'm not trying to virtue signal here. I would feel a little more comfortable if we weren't using the sweatshop labor. Now, a lot of people will cry out, James, those kids want to work. Why are you making life even harder for them?

Don't you know that sweatshops in these countries are the only thing that keep them moving forward? Regardless, I would rather, uh, ethical, you know? I'm not ethical in my purchases, certainly not. Everything I'm wearing was made by slaves, but I would love to be ethical in the thing that I'm making, you know? Change starts at business. Isn't that what people never say? So, uh, yes, the drop shipping, it's not great. What. What you do, you know, so it's like $30 and the child gets a dollar. And then the person on the podcast, they get whatever, $4. And then the remaining, struggling with the maths here, $26 minus postage. That just goes to the dropshipping company.

It's not a good deal because the dropshipping technology is quite advanced. This is not a thing that you can just easily replicate in your garage. It's a whole drop shipping operation. So I didn't want to do that. And I'll say, I think the other problem is with the drop shipping thing is I think most people who are buying merch for a podcast, yes, you probably want to wear it. It's nice and fashionable, but a lot of the time you're buying it because you want to support the podcast and you like the work that they're doing and then so you know you get a hoodie and you've paid 50 and but the person you're actually supporting is someone who owns a drop shipping company and to a lesser extent his child slave subcontractors shouldn't say his

women are just as capable as men of subcontracting to the managers of child slaves. So I want you to get better. Here's number one. I want you to get something better. Here's number two. I don't want to be financially on the hook if this goes wrong because I've got nothing. I went on a greyhound bus yesterday from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. Everybody told me it would be terrible. I did not believe them. I thought I've been on the bus in Australia from state to state and people told me that was pretty rough and I say it's pretty rough and we all play it up. No, it's fucked. Wow. There's some stuff going on in the underclass of the United States. That is, we'll talk about it later. Shocking. Spitting on the floor of the United States. That is, we'll talk about it later, shocking. Spitting on the floor inside the bus terminal. Piss on the wall. Ah, well, excuse me. I've got to brace, I've got

to catch that bus again tomorrow. So let's, it's not so bad. It's not so bad to see a child being dragged around by the hair, it's not so bad, just people doing drugs right there in front of you, okay, it's so, it's so bad, that a woman tried to give me a free phone, this like, I don't know, South American woman with a weird hat was like, do I own a free phone, And I said, no, I'm good. I mean, I should have said yes, because it would have been great to just have that phone and hock it. But enough insane things had happened that day that I wasn't about to just start accepting free phones from women on the street or at the bus station as I was trying to read Emma by Jane Austen that potentially did mark me out as someone

who shouldn't have been there. And she said, no, no, no, it's a free phone. I said, but I don't need the free phone. And she said, if you're on government assistance, you get the free phone. I said, I'm not on your government assistance. And I was thinking internally, I'm an alien of extraordinary ability. And then I thought, I wonder how many people on the very fancy visa i'm on are in a financial situation where they've had to catch the bus and she's oh but look more to the point more to the point isn't it odd that there is a mode of transport at the terminal of which well nexus point because you can start there as well which is what i was doing it's just assumed that you're on government benefits it's just assumed it's not assumed that you're afraid of

flying and the tv is just on and loud in all these american spaces you go to a pub you go to a bar and the tvs will be on and you know what? If that's sport, that's fine. Don't mind that. But you know, in the bus terminal, it's Maury Povich and it's letting me know that Judge Judy's coming up next with a young Sheldon marathon in the evening. I mean, people, that is not for a public space. Okay. Excuse me. I'm talking about the merchandise. All right. a public space. Okay, excuse me, I'm talking about the merchandise. Alright, so the mystery merchandise. Woo! Ah, I had a great time in Pittsburgh. Had a great time in Pittsburgh. So my, ah, alright, we'll tell this story and then we'll get back to the, excuse me, we'll get back to the mystery merchandise in a moment. So I was going to hire a car

to come to Cleveland, which is where I am now, the beautiful city of Cleveland. And it really is beautiful. It's very opulent. It feels a lot like Adelaide in terms of its size and some of the architecture that they've prized, except the architecture is more opulent and there are more dead homeless people on the street that you have to stand over. It's something I've never seen in my country. I mean, very, very seldom you'll see a steel blanket. But out here in Cleveland, boy howdy, boy howdy, wowee, wowee. Very seldom you'll see...

And I saw a young gang of street toughs kicking one. That was something. And then I saw two blocks later, we all kept walking together, and then some young ladies were very keen on the street toughs, and one of them had a trombone. And I thought, don't throw your life this this boy just kicked a dead homeless guy your parents are paying for you to have a trombone lesson not a tromboner you know whatever whatever it doesn't matter uh i'm in cleveland so i was in so my ah i tried to get a rental car it didn't work. They said they

needed a credit card. I said, this is a credit card. They said, it says debit card. And I said, yeah, but it works as a credit card in America. They said, but it has the word debit card on it. So I, I realized I would not be able to get the, I think it was a Honda that I would have, um, just smoothly and politely driven over. Instead, my friend Mark drove me in the opposite direction to Pittsburgh, where I met a lovely man. I was hanging out on the street and I bummed a lighter off of him. And we spoke for, man, it was like three hours until the bus got there. It was like three hours until the bus got there.

We spoke for many, you know, I don't know, two and a half hours about God and about his life and about table tennis. And we called his family. That didn't go very well. And it was very, very beautiful. We ate together. And now I will say I was 20 to 30 percent thinking I was going to get jumped and that sort of diminished but uh you know this guy living on the street and I just thought oh I've seen enough movies to know that people are polite to you and they're nice to you and you can really really be taken in and then you get jumped and then he's just a tremendous man who's living on the street and we had a great

time together and i love him and i'm praying for him it was a really very moving beautiful i mean that trust in the fellow man rapidly fell apart when i was then at the bus station and i met everyone at the bus stations like oh a lot of these people would want to jump me. Hey, that guy's got a boom box. Wonder if he'll be DJing the trip. Oh, over there, a man's being kicked off the bus for calling the bus driver a bitch. She was tough. She was tough, but fair. I liked her a lot. But yes, he muttered bitch. And she was like, oh no, you don don't you getting off of my bus it was a very exciting moment and i frankly i felt a lot safer for having her on the bus one lady just started shrieking uh just as we were passing outside of pennsylvania and she this lady you know she came over the speaker she said

who is that making that noise do we have a problem and her partner said she got nightmare she got nightmares and the bus driver was like oh all right i mean i've never had such a just bus driver so he's so good at sorting out quickly who is a problem and who is not and you know when i got on the bus and it was just after she very aggressively kicked somebody off the bus who really didn't want to leave, and I said, thank you. And she just, ooh, she switched into, you're welcome, honey, so quickly. It was so... When you see someone who's great at their job,

it doesn't matter what that job is. It could be street sweeping, could be serving pizza, could be driving a bus, could be a magistrate, could be the prime minister. Gee, it's beautiful to see a thing done well. Oh, there were a lot of things not being done very well on the bus. I mean, I got there. Holy dooly goodness gracious. I mean, I've just, I'm walking around and I've finally woken up in the find out section of the fuck around experiment. It's so, listen, it's so bad is the poverty in America compared to Australia

that it now makes sense to me of affectations that rich, I'm going to say white mostly, but like there is that, you know, when people go white America, what they mean is like, no, excuse me. I'm going through here. Thank you, sir. Like, closed. Like, when I was flying in New Zealand, I didn't have enough money on my... I didn't have a card to pay for my extra bag, but I had cash.

And I asked an American, you know, an obviously nicely presentable, like, rich American. I said, I'm sorry, can I pay you cash and can you use your credit card to get my bag? And he said, I don't know if I told this on the podcast, but he said, I would feel uncomfortable doing that in case you got arrested. Because I might be liable. And then his ugly girlfriend said, well done. To him. And at the time I was furious. But now, to be fair,

now that I've been the cheek by jowl with the poverty, I'm like, oh, that's okay. That's a reaction. That's a scab. That's a scab that's formed from the wound of having very, very poor people. And it's sad that that's been the reaction

rather than doing something about it. But then sometimes poor people, you go, I don't know what could be done for you in this situation. I mean, you say, oh, no one should have to be in poverty in a good society. And then you go, well, that guy's very violent and he's using a lot of drugs and he's choosing to do those things.

So, what's the course of action here? That's the world he wants to be living in. Who are we to alienate him from his freedom, eh? Yes, not that his freedom hasn't been lots of difficult... I just wanted to... I just... What can you... Just set up a big house that people could come to that would be clean and beautiful.

And give everyone a snack. I feel like I'm in a 19th century novel. I wish I could give the world a snack. Here's a poem that I won't be working on. Anyway, look. Sorry. What was I talking about? Oh, hold on!

Enough of your bourgeois squeamishness. We insist that you continue talking about the mystery merch. Here's how the mystery merch is going to work. So you pick how much you want to spend on the merch. I've got a bunch of options on the website. $20 merch. $50 merch. $100 merch.

$250 merch. $500 merch. $1,000 merch. I'm just sorry, I'm conscious now, I'm conscious now between the similarities between myself talking about my fresh new way to do merch and a schizophrenic person on the bus telling you all their theories. you all their theories? I hope I have a purchase on reality. Okay. So usually you buy someone's merch and it's like a boring thing. It's like a shirt or a hat or whatever. My merch, it's mystery merch. You know, also you buy their merch, whatever you pay $20 merch, it's a $3 t-shirt and they've huge amount of money for the drop shipping and a little money for themselves, I'm fixing the system. Half, half is my merch idea. That's my mystery merch idea. So you pay $20, you buy your $20 merch, you will receive something that I've

bought with a rough recommended retail price of $10. It's going to be half. Then I will customize it, turning it from a $10 thing into something priceless. And by priceless, I mean something you've paid $20 for. And then there will also be a thank you note with a hand signature. And so $50, I'll buy you $25 worth of something. $100, I'll buy you $50 worth of something. All the way up to, you know, how much, if you want to buy multiple thousand dollar pieces of merchandise that I get $500 from each one and I'm sending you signed silver bars in the mail, I'll do it. But that's my mystery merch idea. Maybe this is not a good idea. I think it's okay. I mean, it won't work if it's too successful. So I think I can only, because I just wouldn't be able to do enough individual good product buying. But at my current

level of crayon bus success, I do feel it's within my competency to do this as a result you'll get what should be a more expensive piece of merch right because you know when you buy a $25 shirt again it's like a $3 shirt and a $1 slave and a whatever it's all these people i'm just i'm buying a finished beautiful beautiful thing whatever that is at the price range. So it should be more lux, more bang for the buck. And then also, I get more money for a boat because I know people listen to this podcast so that I can buy a boat. Goodness knows they hear me complain enough about other methods of transport. It's all I do.

Mystery merchandise, it's out now. JDFMcCann.com slash merch. Select however much you want to spend on mystery merchandise. I will take half. After postage. I will extract postage from my half. But I will take... By the way, this is all in Australian dollars on the website.

Because I'm still in an Australian dollar system. So the good news is for Americans, hey, that merch just got roughly half as expensive. Some bad news for Americans. That merch just got roughly half as good. So I've made you just pay more requisite to your currency to get the appropriate merchandise. I'm going to start sending that out. I'm starting it now.

Maybe no one will want it. Maybe no one will. Maybe people will say that's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. When I order a hat, I want a hat. You know, I don't want $20 and a lollipop, a pair of sandals and a newspaper. All of which that you've, you know, drawn on or something, signed, but maybe you do, maybe you do want the mystery merchandise pack, maybe you do, I am a schizophrenic on the bus, I'm still on the bus, I haven't woken up, James Donald Forbes McCann mystery merch out now

on the James Donald Forbes McCann website. Let's see how it goes. If the orders, if there's too many orders, I can't imagine this will happen. But if there's too many orders coming in, I'll shut it down. If there's not enough orders, I'll make an ad. The mystery merch.

I don't, I don't, I don't know. Well, I'm doing these gigs in Cleveland. That should make enough money for the bus fare. Still don't have a social security number. I do have a car that I will be able to drive soon in Cleveland. Anyway,

it's all coming together. And I'm hoping that the mystery merchandise really does facilitate smoother locomotion toward breaking America. Which, again, I must say, and I'm very proud to announce, is going tremendously well. Podcast, it's going to be well over a double previous month. The Patreon has almost doubled. We're doubling in a month. It used to take us a year to double the podcast. Now we're doubling in a month. It used to take us a year to double the podcast. Now we're doubling in a month.

And if we keep on that trend, I haven't done the math yet on when I'll be able to afford a boat. But it's coming up soon. But I think certainly, man, my dad had a conversation. My dad's with us. Not in Cleveland,

but where we're staying in Steubenville. And he said, James, you're going on a lot of these big podcasts and you know, things are going well in the comedy career and I hope you're remembering to stay humble. I do, Dad. Boy! Hey, thank you for tuning in to this episode

of the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. I'll just say this. I watched the back half of Man on Fire last night. I, uh... I, uh... Yes, I came back. I'm opening for Sam Teller in Cleveland. That's the city where I'm at.

I think I'm about to do his podcast. Wouldn't that be a joy? And we popped on the television when we came back after the gig. And we watched the back half. We hadn't seen the first half. Sad not to see as much Dakota Fanning. I'm told there's more Dakota Fanning in the first half. Gee, she was a good child actor.

And it's just sort of Denzel Washington killing people for a long time. But the editing was so over the top. It was like a really ridiculous level it was way too much editing and i could tell that they were being clever and i thought it's just a it's like slumdog millionaire was maybe the top point of there being too much of this mtv music video style editing in a film it was dreadful the editing rendered most of the film unwatchable well i watched it but i was... I was in a vulnerable state, I think, usually.

Well, also, Denzel Washington's great. Denzel Washington's great. Watching people get exploded is a lot of fun. And the little bits I had of Dakota Fanning was great. But, you know, maybe I'm wrong

and maybe watching the start of Men on Fire will make sense of it. Who was the man on fire? There were a lot of men on fire. But maybe it did make me think that maybe there's... Well, maybe there's too much or not enough editing on this podcast because I like doing the editing and there's a lot of that.

You know what? Here's, I think, why it's okay is no one else is doing the editing. So, I mean, that movie came out and there was a lot of things being edited like that when did it stop when did people stop you know what i mean it's like shaky camera the frame rate's slowing down there's text on the screen like whatever that woke minimalist sad feminism i'm you, it actually made me sort of happy that we started focusing on.

Look, I don't know. Is my podcast the equivalent of bad 2004 to 2009 way over the top editing? Am I a schizophrenic man on the bus who hasn't woken up yet? James Donald, Forsbacan, Catamaran, planned mystery merch. Out now.

I might go and have breakfast. Here's the other thing. I'm staying in a really nice hotel. Like, I've had all those things. And I've come to do these gigs. And the gigs are incredible. Giggling in Cleveland's great. I mean, it's a beautiful hotel.

But, ah, I have to enjoy this. Life won't be like this. No one can exist in this liminal state of squalor and opulence simultaneously. I don't know anyone who's done that. It will be decided one way or the other that I have enough material provision. At some point in the future, I will either have way too much or not nearly enough. I believe this to be true, but may I just say that at this point, just living, I don't know, just living day to day, week to week. I don't know what I'm doing in a couple of weeks time. I'm loving it. I'm like Finn Taylor just started

following me on Instagram. Go follow Finn Taylor. I love Finn Taylor. I couldn't believe it. Go follow Finn Taylor. I love Finn Taylor. I couldn't believe it. Dreams come true. It's a beautiful world. I think I'm going to get to eat Chick-fil-A today. James Donald Forbes, we can.

Mystery merch, out now. Also, I have a new EP. I recorded four new songs and put them on Spotify. It's called Falling Onto a Bridge. Hope you enjoy that. I'll play you a song. I'll play you a song from that. The song is called,

what did I call it? By recollection, I think it's called The Emoji of Two Gay Dads with a Boy and a Girl. God bless you. This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. I'm Jessi Cruikshank. I host the number one comedy podcast called Phone a Friend. I also have three kids. I need help making every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant. Gemini can help you summarize your unread emails,

suggest what to make with the food in your fridge, and it helped me achieve a family photo where everyone is smiling at the camera. I didn't think it was possible, but it is with Google Pixel 9. Learn more at store.google.com.