Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 229: Reading The Small Print

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

We've got a double episode for you today as recompense for missing last week's episode. We talk Balzac, media, the benefits of edging, Bette Midler, crossing the rubicron, Bishop Sycamore updates, and smelling Christmas hams Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

shit and fardin man it's part of love yeah it is you accept one shit and fardin you've you've found a winner yeah or rather one that can accept your shit and fardin right oh man you know ibs is a classic game of Be careful what you wish for Yeah Yeah because one minute you'll be wishing I wish I could just take a shit And then the next minute you'll be like No mas

No mas Throw in the towel No mas Yeah it's early morning hours We've been hitting the extremes lately just like ibs uh had a late night episode last night early morning episode this morning tom's neighbor just rung a gong for 10 a.m man for the victims of sars cov2 victim 19 the novel coronavirus as promised i said we would have a whole episode about honore de balzac

so let's get right into it let's get right into honore de balzac one question i have though about the novel coronavirus before we're going further at what juncture does a novel virus stop being novel like at this point like i feel like it's lost its novel status um we're we're well acquainted at the point it tries to write its second novel yeah well at what point does it stop being a novel the set the sophomore effort is always the hardest that's what they say your second book is always your hardest you had your whole life to write your first one and now you have 18 months to write your second one well this thing is not wasting any time because like you were telling me something last night about like the reason the prc tests like don't pick up omicron is doubles too quick like within two or three days so by the time you get your pcr results back like you could already

like have been infected or you might have just missed the window did i say prc people's republic of china oh dude that's pretty suspicious people's republic of china i don't know bro but it's well are you an agent in beijing dude i wish it i mean i don't want to spend too much time on this but it is pretty hilarious they skipped g in the naming of the variants because of the implications of that yeah you sent me that i was like yeah man that's pretty great i can understand why they wouldn't want to do that. It's like if Biden, like, could you imagine, like, if Biden was a Greek letter or whatever to, like, I imagine, like, the WHO, the WHO wouldn't want to call this strain. Pete Townsend's band.

The WHO don't want to call this. The Biden strain. Because of the implication. oh shit man yeah um so i was reading this book everyone should have to read this book if you're in like the media everyone should have to read this book by balzac It's called Lost Delusions Lost Delusions by Balzac By Balzac It's about a young provincial Who moves

Not dissimilar to ourselves Not dissimilar to ourselves Who gets in with like a libertine aristocrat In his small rural town In France What does that sound like and she she like promises him like um like he's the best poet ever like he's very good looking and handsome everyone's always talking about how beautiful he is he's like a great godonis and everyone's like talking about

how beautiful he is and he's like gonna be a great poet but but he's lowborn. His father was just a chemist, unfortunately. But he does have some claim to aristocratic title on his mother's side. So the libertine aristocratic woman promises him, move to Paris with me. We will get you a title, and you'll become a great poet. And so they move to Paris together, and she's like 20 years older than he is. I forgot that part, too. And so they moved to Paris,

and when they get there, she realizes, like, oh, I don't really want to hang out with this guy. Like, he's, you know, he's a backwards Rue, but... He's a vulgarian. A coal smudge. Yeah, he's...

Cramping my style. He votes for Joe manchin and shit he votes against his own interests right so like they so she kind of like starts distancing herself from her she starts distancing herself from him and he meanwhile kind of starts distancing herself from him. And he, meanwhile, kind of starts distancing himself from her because he's, like, noticing all the hot babes in Paris. Because, like, in a small rural town, like, you know, any... So they're kind of silently growing apart from each other. Yes.

One, because she finds him vulgar. And two, because he's noticing there's some good-looking trim in Paris. There is. Like, it's like every small-town guy knows. Like, it's what you always tell your buddies, too. Like, man, you wouldn't believe. and there's some good-looking trim and parents. There is. It's like every small-town guy knows. It's what you always tell your buddies, too. Like, man, you wouldn't believe. I've been living in Austin for one year now.

I'll get laid all the time. Your friends will be like, no, you're not. Yeah, I'm sure you are, buddy. No, really, man. It's like a buffet. Right. Every Eastern Kentucky guy goes through that. Man, I don't know what it is, but Luxton has the hottest chicks. And it's like.

I literally heard that when I first moved to Whitesburg. People were like, no, dude. No, dude. Like, you can go to New York City. You can go to Miami, L.A. But Luxton, Kentucky has the funnest bitches. And I would be like. It's like, how many of you motherfuckers have been to Miami and L.A.

and did the survey of this? Yeah. Miami, dude. Lexington, dude. Lexington. Yeah, the juggernaut's a good-looking pussy. Miami, Florida, Los Angeles, California, and, of course, Lexington, Kentucky. Like, yeah, I'm not going to deny it.

There's some good-looking people in Lexington, but, like, come on. Well, I mean, that's not even my point. My point is just, like, you know, like... There's also just more people in Miami and LA. Right, exactly. What is the argument? That the per capita hotness is greater in Lexington? My hunch is there's nothing scientific about the approach here.

But it's just anecdotal i think what it is it's like if you're from a small town and you're used to seeing like the same 10 or 15 it cuts both ways let's not be misogynistic about it but it's like oh yeah yeah you're used to seeing the same 10 or 15 people you're like yeah well it's the concentration it's like because like when i remember first going to a party at Texas Tech, like after high school when I moved to Lubbock, and it's like the concentration of hot people, you know? It's not just like you don't just see a random one here and there.

But that's a very bold claim and a very funny statement to make. Frankfurt, Kentucky, man, got the finest fucking bitches. Buddy, you could travel the whole world 30 times over, but you'll never find better looking pussy than in Fayetteville, West Virginia. Interesting. Yeah, like, all right.

So they moved to, and there's a wild card here, I should say. This book is very complex. It's like 700 pages long. As we talked about on the last episode, or the, I don't know what order these episodes will be coming out, but regardless, Balzac's writing style, in addition to having the greatest name of all time His writing style Was he would

Or his writing method His process He would like masturbate but never come Like he would always work himself up Right before coming And he thought that that was like the Sublime State to like write in Like that put him in the kind of the literary version

of like a uh cow boxer won't have sex before big five like raging bull yeah just to work up all that anger and frustration to take out on works it up and then pour his cold water on it we've not talked about the homoerotic dimensions of that but that's for another time dude that is interesting i'm not gonna i'm gonna i'm not gonna waste my seat on a common harlot i'm gonna waste it on ray olivera the middleweight champion i'm gonna blow my load on oscar de la jolla this saturday night yeah this saturday night he's got the biggest blue balls this side of Oscar De La Hoya. This Saturday night. Yeah, this Saturday night. He's got the biggest blue balls this side of the Mississippi. Tune in live.

Caesars, Las Vegas, Nevada. These two heavyweights. These two heavyweights haven't came in 14 days. This Saturday night. The graphic card for the preview is like, instead of a wrecking ball hitting a brick, it's just a blue ball. Yeah, and it's not like,

instead of like hitting somebody in blood flying off, it's just that you hit them with like a big nut. They just blow a big load. This Saturday night. This Saturday night. low big load in their pocket this saturday night this saturday night um okay so there's a wild card here like the reason they moved to paris in the first place it's not the reason but there's this um there was this baron who moved to their small town. There's always a baron. There's always a baron. Barons historically love small towns.

They do. They like the opportunity for exploitation. They like to be a big fish in a small town. So this baron moves to town. This baron was Napoleon's daughter's tutor. And so he's like... So there were like clout sharks even in these days. Oh, yes. Right yes right oh it gets so much more bro i was napoleon's pool guy in paris you'll believe us this guy's name is

baron du chatelet you wouldn't believe what he's like in real life he moves nice guy he moves yeah he moves to this town and he like notices the like he has his eye on the aristocratic libertine and he notices this like young upstart who's his rival and he's like determined to pry them apart and so like he starts all these rumors in town and people um that like the the old aristocratic libertine and the young upstart are fucking. And so it becomes a scandal in town. Sort of like Topics. It's like a Topics thing.

Like everybody's talking about it. Because like she's from, you know, it's a scandal because like she's from the upper class and he's like a middle, he's the son of a chemist. Okay. And so specifically this one guy starts spreading rumors that they're fucking and so the wait the spreaders the baron and her fucking that the aristocratic lady and the young adonis poet are fucking okay um and so she catches wind that this guy's spreading rumors and she makes her husband because she's married by question, question. The young Adonis poet, is he spreading this himself, or the Baron spreading it?

The Baron is spreading it. Okay. Right. The young Adonis poet is totally oblivious to all this. I mean, he's not oblivious. He knows what's going on. You're probably going to tell me this, but does he get implicated in the rumor spreading?

Does she confront him and say, why are you spreading rumors that we are making love? That we are making love. She does not actually, she does not put it together that the Baron is the one spreading all these rumors. So she's also married, I forgot to say that.

Her husband's like 30 years older than her. Okay, so here in the pic, I don't mean to interrupt you, I'm just trying to keep it all straight. I'm telling you, it's complex. You got like the 68 year old old codger that's the husband. She's probably like 45. She's like 39. Borderline cougarish.

Yes. Yeah. And then you've got the young. He's like 21. Yeah. And then the baron is like 35. You know, the weird thing about being into older women is as you age is like the goalposts shift. You know what i mean

and it's like you're more or less the same age of like you know the milfs you used to jack off you know what i mean that's a weird experience what that what is what about that like dazed and confused quote but it's in reverse like that's the thing i like about these uh retirees man they keep getting older so she catches wind of the rumors and she makes her husband duel this guy because like that's how you settled scores back then like yeah for everybody that talks about modernity having like this toxic masculinity and all this shit consider that 300 years ago a minor affront resulted in a pistol duel a pistol so i don't really hear about all that shit like we've come a long way yeah um barry lyndon i was talking to was telling you about last night

There's a lot of duels in that movie That's just how they settled scores back then So anyways there's a duel The woman The madame Her name is madame de Bargeton She's the libertine Yeah

Her husband Wounds the guy who's been talking shit he fucking blah blah but not mortally not mortally no i just mistake bro just like through the neck if you're gonna pull a gun on a man yeah you better make sure you finish the job if you came to bangkok yeah don't come to bangkok unless you're playing the bang um uh he might be okay because the guy's a poet but in an if if the guy was even like a i don't know even just some sort of commoner some plebe he'd been in trouble yeah oh yeah definitely yeah definitely but you know so like this happens and it you know like there's all these rumors spreading

her husband just like blah blah got this dude like the opera yeah yeah you got non non-fatally in the neck right and um and so she's like all right i gotta get the fuck out of tanley we've been talking about moving to paris but your career will take off in paris so then they moved to paris that's all that's all the backstory of why they moved to Paris. So then that's the whole first part of the book, small town France. Second part of the book is they moved to Paris. And, like, I was reading this book and I was like, okay, all right. I like this story.

I like where this is going. And then it was, like, the sudden realization that this book is about not only just me, but also my line of work and the industry and world that I have found myself in, in my mid-30s. Is it about podcasting? It's about podcasting. Balzac had some vision. It's literally about podcasting. It's fucking hilarious. So they move to Paris, and they start growing apart, like I said.

She's like, I don't want to be with this upstart. He dresses bad. He doesn't really understand the norms of high society in Paris. And the upstart's like, I don't know. There's a lot of finer young chicks around than I could fuck. It's like Jim Carrey at the MTV Awards. Right. Yes.

Yeah. But they go to this opera, and she treats him like shit, because all of the high society Paris people are treating him like shit, because he's like a pleb, basically. A hillbilly. Yeah, basically, yeah. I'm imagining, I'm curious about this. I imagine this guy's kind of an Elvis Presley figure.

Yeah, he's got a lot of... Backwoods, rough home, but good looking, talented guy. And has a lot of class anxiety. But their class anxiety is always under scoring everything. Definitely. And so he has this really embarrassing experience, and all these high society Paris people basically laugh him out of the room.

So he's down on his luck and he has to go live in the seedy quarters of Paris. He's now entered the underworld of Paris. Now he's trading sex favors for cigarettes.

There's no shame in it. Right. That's what he's doing. He's drinking a lot of non-potable water and eating a lot of... I don't know. What did you eat back then in the 1820s? In early 19th century Paris.

This takes place in the... I forgot to say the setting. This is Restoration Bourbon era. So this is after Napoleon comes back from exile in the 100 days or whatever and fails. And they restore the Bourbons to power. So like the Royalists are in power. Nobody ever talks about this. Nobody ever talks about this.

Out during the Jacobin era. Yeah. It was all fun and games. We're cutting heads off. Guess what? Came back. The chickens came back to, came home to roost.

Um, so the Royalists are in power and the libs are like the opposition. And, um, and, but they have, you know, they have the press and everything too.

And so Julian, who is the poet, that's his name. He just really buried the leaf there. I should have just said it. Our beautiful boy. You're talking like Trump about his physique. Our beautiful Adonis poet. He's our beautiful boy, folks. He's the boy wonder.

Gorgeous body. Look at him, folks. He has a gorgeous body. That's all anybody talks about is how hot he is. How beautiful he is. All the middle-aged men, they put on their monocles and check him out.

Yeah. You're good in locks. How do you say? Chiseled beacons. Chiseled beacons. Nine-inch finesse. How do you say... Jizzle B-cut. Jizzle B-cut. Nine-inch penis. Well, the Greek... Let's be clear.

The Greek Adonis was lacking in that last part. It's tricky fun. Or in Greek society, he was well endowed. Maybe. We don't know. In Greek, yeah, maybe that was hung like was well endowed. Maybe. We don't know. Maybe that was hung like a fucking mule. My God, this guy's got a five and a half inch cock.

A meaty five and a half inch cock. Three and a half inch girth is so meaty, people. Yeah. It's just a matter of perspective. Yeah, man. So he moves. So, like I said, he has to move out of his living quarters. I've really buried a lot of the lead because he he got the money to move to paris in the first place from his soon-to-be brother-in-law who is a failed print shop owner like a good 30 minutes of this book is about like how print shops worked in the early 19th century

like you could reading this you could see how marx and engels were huge fans of balzac they were big fans of balzac like They were big fans of Balzac. Big Balzac guys. They were big Balzac guys. I guess now we are, too. Yeah. Because a lot of this book is about, like, the political economy of the printing press and, like, the printing industry in 19th century France.

And so, like, his buddy David, like, floats him this money. Sue or Franck. I don't even, whatever the fuck. It's a little diversion here, but have you ever met a gay boyfriend not named David?

A lot of gay boyfriends not named David. There really are. There's something I've noticed over here. If you want, if you're one of these parents that wants your kid

to be gay really bad, which I kind of do so i made my kid david just hit the odds instantly go up right 20 like think of how much i don't know you probably be spared a lot of angst anxiety if your kid was gay maybe but maybe maybe they had i could hear someone listening to you oh my god consigning your son to a lifetime of bullying yeah yeah anyways his his gay friend david it's not even his gay friend he He marries Julian's sister. David marries?

Yeah, David marries Julian's sister. And so him and his sister work hard to give him this money so that he can move to Paris with the Libertine. Yeah. Madame. And so... I got a question. I always thought Madame was sort of honorific in the underworld,

like as somebody that runs a brothel right right but like it was it's i guess that's probably just colloquial like madame was probably just like a i think it well i think at that time because there's also just the equivalent of like sir and ma'am i think so because there's also madame was, yeah. So it's like abbreviated. Enchanté. Enchanté. I mean, it's weird. It's like this is aristocratic French society, but it does mirror our society in many ways.

So he's down and out in Paris, has to like move into the city underground. One more, I swear I'll stop doing this. No, ask as many as you want. We got an hour to eat up. I swear I'll stop doing this. No, ask as many as you want. We got an hour to eat up. I swear I'll stop doing this. I'll let you get down the road with it. But in a similar way, there's a lot of gay David boyfriends.

There's also many poets that died or ended up broken penniless in France. Oscar Wilde died broken penniless in France. You're right. Poet. Also a gay boyfriend not named david did battle laird did he die young and feels like most of those guys either died from alcoholism or some sort of like tertiary syphilis infection it is funny how america tried to have its own version of that with Edgar Allan Poe.

Like we tried to have like a dandy... Seedy like... Yeah. Like the gentleman poet that was like consumed by his appetites. Right. Yeah. Poe just a little too creepy for...

to really fit the Baudelaire wild mode. B bill de la he my man bottle air was a long time user of laudanum so yeah that's if you want to talk about the first opioid crisis let's talk about laudanum in early 19th century France. Seriously. Maybe you need to bring it back. Maybe like opium dens. Maybe we just need to dial it back a little bit.

Let's start smoking it again. Smoking opium again? Yeah. I've always wanted to. I've always wanted to smoke opium. Really? Me and my buddy Tim one time tried to find some in Hobbs when we were like 19. I just had to stand out in front of the quickie mark and just say,

hey, man, you know, we're going to score some opium. Yeah, we like called a lot of people. And then people were just like. People were like, hey, man, I really don't think you guys should be doing that. Like, I think that's a bad idea. Here as an alternative, why don't you just snort hydrocodone? Why don't y'all just snort hydrocodone like normal people?

Right. That's the thing, dude. When you're like 19 or 20, like you really do fancy yourself like kind of a, and if you've got like, or even 18, like I remember in high school

reading like Dharma Bums and stuff. Like if you've got even a little bit of awareness of like literature or like high've said it before i've said it before but you have uh jack kerouac and hunter thompson are on the hook for that mentality amongst young american men that you know have read two books and they happen to be like on the road and and uh I've read two books, and they happen to be on the road. What was Hunter Thompson's? The Rum Diaries or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or whatever.

You know, it's funny. I've read all of them. Did you used to be that archetype? Yeah, I did. Did you just want to do drugs and hang out on the road with the boys? Definitely. I mean, who wouldn't want that? So, like, our young upstart, Julian,

he's down and out in Paris, and he doesn't know what to do with himself. Like, he's a good writer. He's a good poet. He's got a book of sonnets. Sonnets? A little too Anglo for me. Well, that's the funny thing. It's like that's part of it.

Well, stick a pen in that. So he's got a book of sonnets, and he's got this historical novel he's written about, like an archer of Charles the Ninth. And he's hanging out in all the places where he sees writers hanging out with. And he gets in with this group. Coffee shops. Coffee shops. Hipster coffee shops.

Hipster coffee shops. Cafes. And he gets in with this group of young intellectuals. It's kind of, I don't know if this is. In Paris, didn't they call that a salon? It was a salon. He hung out around the salon. Monet.

Yeah. a salon he hung out around the salon my name yeah and he like gets in with this group of young intellectuals who like mostly balzac was weird because he was kind of um he believed in like an enlightened despot he was kind of like voltaire he believed in like a absolutely like a stalinist maybe i guess so but like he wasn't a liberal not in this like this since i don't think he supported napoleon um but uh he just thought there was gonna be a principled strong man come along at some point yeah yeah yeah sort this all out so he like paints these characters sympathetically which is interesting because he doesn't agree with their politics but it's like a group of young intellectuals who are like scientists one of

them's a scientist one of them's a painter one of them's a writer and and uh they take him in under their wings and they're like oh young julian he's so hot like he needs our help and um so they're like you know trying to give them advice in life like how to you know like if you want to get published this is what you got to do you got to you know do this that and the other at the same time though he starts hanging around this specific coffee shop and he meets this guy named lustre this uh i forget his first name emil or something like that oh etienne etienne etienne lustre and this guy's a journalist he's a journalist and might as well write spy on his passport yeah like he

and like it's funny because like the group of young intellectuals like they're kind of like the young hegelians i'll even sort of wonder if that's what he was kind of aiming at they are kind of like that the group of young hegelians, they look down on journalism because it's like this world where nobody believes anything that they write or say. That it's all a game of who can denounce who and who can support who when they need it. And it's all like... This is podcasting. It all takes place in this world where it's basically Twitter. What he's outlining is the 19th century version,

French bourbon restoration era version of Twitter. So all these journalists and writers hang out at these bookshops and publishing houses, and they all secretly fucking hate each other. And they're all writing articles secretly fucking hate each other yeah and they're all writing articles denouncing each other's books in the press and everyone knows who wrote what article but it's actually good because the denouncements actually give them press for their books like like you actually want someone to negatively review your book it's kind of like getting like uh like we'll talk about it probably at some point

but like the bat meddler west virginia it's like by quote tweeting somebody trying to dunk on them so many times you actually get a perverse amount of press for exactly it it actually raises your profile probably like everybody i mean present company included everybody denouncing jd vance probably made him a lot of money. Yeah, dude. Yeah. I mean... Like, really, if you really want to slot somebody, you have to ignore them. That's really it. You have to ignore them.

But that's the thing. Like, in this world, nobody wants to ignore anybody because it's good money for everyone. Like, there's money to be made. So they're kind of all in on it. It's like the price-fixing episode of King the hill where like all the propane cartel gets together and says let's just all jack our prices it is everyone's pretty much in on it but everyone has their own egos and stuff

like they think their writing is the best and there's also factions that like the political factions because like at this time the newspapers were owned like weirdly enough like we see today's modern era of like media conglomerates owned by like political factions as like deviation but like actually that's the norm for most of the press the history of the press in the western world the press was owned by political factions so there would be liberal newspapers and royalist newspapers yeah like that whole objective media thing was just a blip in the middle of the 20th century you know what i'm saying like for the most part the press was owned by these like political factions and it's always been that way let's be clear right right and so like lu uh julian actually i think

his name might be lucian no i think about it It is Lucian I fucked up Okay just Editor's note Julian is not a character in this His name is Lucian Let's just go back to calling him To the beautiful young Adonis poet I'm a close reader

So he Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a close reader. Whatever, you know. So he, when he matriculates into this world, when he meets Etienne Lusteau, like his young Hegelian friends are telling him like, do not get into the world of journalism, my friend. It is dirty. It's like, it's just below you you you know like you you don't need it like you're you're gonna find out that you sell out all of your virtues and principles and

beliefs and values if you get into this yeah and he's like but i gotta eat i gotta i gotta eat like it's easy money and they're like no i'm tired of rummaging through the trash right for like black into bread softened with water yeah Which is what they would eat sometimes. Yeah. I've had the bubonic plague four times, man. Let me in the game. And his friends are like, no, like, we'll support you. His young Hegelian friends.

They're like, no, we'll support you. Like, we will even go out and work harder and give you our money so that you can continue being a writer and a poet we'll support you because the most important thing in life is friendship and he's like gives him the larry david and so he he's like well maybe i'll just try it out and so he starts hanging out with the journalism the journalist crowd and go into like the theaters because like the theaters is where they all like sort of like go and congregate because like it was a sort of similar principle back then as podcasting it's like if you wanted your show to be a hit you buy out all the tickets like a liberal newspaper would buy out

all the tickets in the audience for the theater and pack it with like supporters of yeah yeah yeah supporters of that we tried that we just couldn't find any plants we bought all the tickets at our shows and nobody came none of them else snubbed us this podcast is the most successful podcast in the south right now but no one's at their shows. The ticket sales are amazing. Interesting. So they like, yeah, they,

you know, things happen. He goes to the theater and it's kind of supposed to be an inversion of his earlier experience at the opera when he got laughed at by the aristocrats. Now he's at the theater among like the plebs and the Bohemians and the intellectuals. And, and like they, um, he's like he's like taken in

by how like cutthroat and like fast-paced this world is like it's like a david mamet he kind of likes it though he's kind of intoxicated by yeah he's intoxicated by it and especially because this like hot busty bosomy young actress named cor Coralie wants to suck his dick. She keeps... She's telling everybody how hot he is and how much she wants to suck his dick. And she's got a suitor... This is the wages of Balzac's edging.

While it was the best mind frame to work in, he was also horny as a jackrabbit. He really does. He really stresses how, oh man, this is great, but... for him to work in he was also horny as a jackrabbit he really does it's like he really like stresses how oh man this is great but um so horny you know like he wants to suck his dick like he really stresses how much she wants to fuck him and um but like the the thing is her name is coralie and louisou has his own like actress uh mistress named florine and both coralie and florine have like daddies sugar daddies like these men who are in their 60s who are like capitalists basically like they're not in the

aristocracy either because this is like early capitalism you know like they're they're still like grubby merchants they're rich as fuck but they don't have like the same acceptance into the world of the aristocracy and so they're just like sugar daddies and they don't on their like basically nft guys pretty much yeah nft big dogs the guys that like yeah right guys say and so like he's taken in he's taken in by this world and just like like i said how like fast paced and sort of cutthroat and like witty everyone is and like cutting and and everything um and so he starts like writing articles for the newspapers it's like at first it's like little local color pieces like like just things that's going on in his neighborhood like i don't know having a podcast

about your town like omahatton's uh article in the mountain eagle it's just like yeah yes community correspondence delmer's got cancer now i hate to hear that but exactly yellow jackets topped the cavaliers 2117 last, like, he starts writing those, and then his, like, friends in the newspapers are like, nah, all right, you've worked your way up. We'll let you in with the big dogs now. You can run with the big dogs now. What you're going to do...

Did they put him in the middle of a pile of push around? Who, who, who, who? Who must protect his house? Who, who, who? Who's the big dog now? Who, who, who, who, who? So they, like, they're telling him, like, Who must protect his house? Who's the big dog now? So they're telling him, all right, so you can run with the big dogs now,

but what your first job is... I really hope I read this later and the Balzac's exact translate from the French is, you can run with the big dogs now. So they tell him like you can um yeah run with the big dogs now but if you're gonna run with us um meanwhile keep in mind his young alien liberal radical friends are like they're they're they're seeing them they're losing their their young lucian julian adonis like they're like they're losing him to the journalist crowd and they're sad about it um because like they said it will steal your you know you'll sell your soul basically and so his journalist friends tell him like look what look, what you're going to have to do, you're going to write an article for us taking down this book by this guy named Nathan.

And Lucian read Nathan's book and loved it. He thought it was a masterpiece. Magnifique. But I love Nathan's work. He is, how do you say, iconoclast. He is brilliant. Sublime. I cannot take him down. Right. The iconoclast is brilliant. Sublime.

I cannot take him down. Right. And they're like, no, this is how you're going to do it. The funniest fucking thing. And then he says, you want to be a big dog or not, pussy? Ho, ho. It really is like the suit in training day. Yeah. He's like, you like to get wet? I didn't know you like to get wet yeah you like to get i didn't know you like to get wet

yeah they're setting him up with a bulletproof vest and they're gonna fucking shoot him it's like um so they're like nah this is what this is what you're gonna do and like i said like he was like no but i love that book i cannot write a critical review i love the book and they were is the best thing i've read in my life and they're like no look it's not hard this is how you do it and it's funny because like then volzak goes into this like long description of how to take like the perfect takedown article like how to take someone down and he like goes like he'd thought about this a lot oh yeah yeah and he himself was probably was he a hater you think definitely well it's funny to think because like mark's got his start

in journalism yeah and at the same time you know what i mean like well not not this exact same time maybe about 10 years after but was journalism always kind of looked at as like in the same way we would look at investment banking or pimping now? Yeah, I think so. I remember reading like Ambrose Bierce was like a journalist and everybody, like he himself was like really ashamed of that. Yeah.

Like I apologize. Yeah, like lawyers do that too. It's like I apologize for that deficiency up front it was a dishonorable profession i feel like it still is probably to some degree um it is funny to think about yeah because like in the last five years it's become this valorous profession where like you know like trump's attacking the press like yeah this is attack on the free press and really and truly it's like translated through the lens of balzac you might as well been saying trump's attacking uh

pimping right yeah so like he goes through like how to take down like if you like someone's work like the way that you go through it. And it's so fucking funny because he's talking about how you start out with a brief review of the piece in question. And then you pick apart a few things here and there. And then you carry one part of the argument further. And then you throw a little bit of bait to the audience and flatter your readers like say like oh you're you're above this i mean it's just like it's the exact same thing that we would do now as a podcast about like

i was reading this right around the time that we read that dumb ass uh the other white uh voters or whatever the fucking white people right right right it's like we did that like it's like woodcock johnson my woodcock johnson it's a rubric honestly it's like it's just like yeah you want to take down something it's like it's you can just do it basically like you're um flipping pancakes or something you know it's like a sort of mindless activity almost um so he does it he writes the article and it's a huge success people fucking love love it they're like fuck this nathan guy like this you know like this is a great review this is a great critical article and there's all these hilarious like um less asides in there about like how the great

works are like will always be remembered like books will always be remembered but like no one's ever going to remember an article like that's like that's a line in there it's pretty fucking funny like oh that's true there's only like three articles i really remember right right you know but it's like but that's the thing like he gets he gets caught into the allure of thinking that that's like fame and success and stardom that like he gets laudatory um uh praise for like these like little articles like taking people down um and so like he even runs into nathan later at the theater and nathan like shakes his hand and he's like you know uh thank you for raising attention to the book

like i'm i'm gonna eat well now like because he like a negative review is better for you than a positive review like and the actresses know this too like nobody wants a positive review because if you get a positive review like everyone just forgets about you and moves on right right i guess this is probably the genesis of like there's no such thing as bad publicity right there's no such thing as bad publicity um but like in this whole uh process he like starts to see sow the seeds of his own destruction. He's like he That's the down shot to this business. Yes. He's like young and he's hot and it causes all these like grizzled journalists

like all this jealousy because he's like getting fucking theater pussy and like they're getting fucking pissed. Who thought all you gotta do is write a negative review about a book and you just drowning in pussy all of a sudden. The Halcyon days. The Halcyon days the halcyon days like and he's also like um because he's written all these reviews and and little think pieces about his hometown like or about paris life like he's also started to attract attention from the publishers so he might get his sonnets published and there's like a really funny aside that like nobody reads fucking poetry anymore like it's like which is funny to hear

it's like even nobody was reading poetry yeah like even back then like everyone's like no poetry no one reads that like um but so like his star is rising and he's like i'm gonna use my fame to take down those fucking aristocrats that made fun of me at the opera and so he starts like turning the big guns on them and and so and um but then word gets back to them that they're really heartbroken and sad about this and he feels remorse he's like oh man maybe i was went too hard on them and so they invite him to their parties and they're like no we're gonna give you your your title you're gonna get to become a marquee or whatever the fuck account or something viscount a visc yeah v count yeah and um and so he's like oh okay but they're like but for you to do this you have to start writing for the royalist presses like you can no longer

write for these liberal newspapers you have to turn writing for the royalist presses and he's like all right okay i'll do it and so he starts like getting back into the world of the aristocrats and it just provides further ammo for all the people that he's pissed off in the journalism world oh boy and so they like basically arrange it like meanwhile these aristocrats have no intention of giving him his actual title they just want to humiliate him again because he humiliated them in the press and so it's like it's all building up to this point where like he thinks he's gonna get the title he thinks he's gonna be accepted into the ranks of the aristocrats in the royalist press but meanwhile he has no none of the liberal publishers are going to publish his

books or articles or anymore and so he's and meanwhile they also ruin his his busty uh actress coralie they've ruined her like they've like gone out and like slandered her name in the press as well as an actress and she can't get work anymore and so they're both down on and out on their luck and they're fucked and that's where the second book ends and presumably i guess he has to go back to his hometown um like a thomas wolf deal you can never uh go home again except maybe he does go home again yeah i don't know i've not finished it yet but i'm just saying i was reading this book you know that there's that meme of the guy? Like, you know, he's, like, looking happy. And then he's, like, you know what I'm saying?

Like, his face drops, and he's, like, oh, man. That's how I was reading this. I was, like, yeah, this is a good book. Oh, man, this is about me. Oh, yeah, just like, yeah. This is about my line of work. about me yeah just like this is about my line of work man this is yeah it's like just feeling like oddly prescient the whole time and you're like oh like that's why yeah yeah well this is it's the same it's just it's such a funny thing it's like nothing new under the sun like the more things

change the more they stay the same like it's like it's just been the same shit for so long like yes it is so funny man it's like humans are still prone to the same like petty squabbles of from a long time ago yeah you know like there was a twitter basically in the 1820s in france and i'm sure even in america maybe and even in the future like everybody's like oh the metaverse and this that and nfts it's like bro did you have you not heard of uh confederate notes have you not heard of twitter are you talking about a metaverse and it's like we got it it's called twitter we already have it it's like you can dress it up and you can sell headsets and all this kind of stuff but it's the same ideas you know it's like cryptocurrency it's like you can dress it up and you can sell headsets and all this kind of stuff, but it's the same ideas. It's like cryptocurrency.

It's like, oh, well, yeah, there's people that have been trying to subvert main currencies for a long time. Yeah. Well, it's a pretty funny thing. And that's the thing. That's why it's called Lost Illusions. It's like he has all these illusions about how life in the countryside is versus the city. And then he moves to the city.

And then he has all these illusions about how literature and art work and what makes a great work of art. And then he realizes that it's all petty squabbling and triangulation among egos. And he realizes that there really is no great work of art. It's all about what people bestow upon it. Upon it, yeah. Or what they think about the person personally. Or what they think about the person

personally. Usually when I shit on something, it's not a value judgment on what I feel about it. It's like, I think this person, I would like this person in real life or not. You know what I mean? Or just jealousy. That is another factor. I am consumed with jealousy frequently because God's given me so, everybody so much and me so little. But I do really think, I do think, sort of talking about what we were talking about last night,

what we were talking about last night i do genuinely think though that the gradual financialization like we i think we think that art is this thing that's existed for thousands of years and of course like there's problems with it it's been you know um patronized by the rich and the wealthy, and they're the ones who commission a lot of paintings and visual arts and even highbrow literature and stuff like that. Maybe literature for a time had this sort of mass potential. It's interesting, though, because art, it's like, what's the J's or the biggie lines? It's either you got a, you can, basically you can rap or you got a good jump shot you know i mean it's like also

like art while being patriot like you having to be a patron of the wealthy to actually make it it's like also one of the sort of um ways to facilitate your upward mobility if you're from the underclasses traditionally yeah yeah yeah you know what I mean? Yeah. Because there's good money in it, there's fame, whatever, whatever. Well, it's just this thing that you know, just to kind

of thread the needle through what we were saying last night, eventually, because this is what I struggle with when i say like all literature now sucks because it mostly does because it is it's not like you go back and you read like balzac or dostoevsky or george elliott and stuff like this is um a lot of this was serialized in the newspapers and stuff right like parts of this would come out like a television show, basically. But still, it had character development,

it had plot. It wasn't formulaic. Not that MFA writing is. MFA is actually probably the opposite. I'm gonna read this piece if LeSean becomes a big dog. Can he run with the big dogs? Stay tuned. But it definitely seems like there has been a shift

more towards the aesthetic potential of literature in the last 15, 20 years than a focus on maybe themes or trying to dig into, you know, the impossibility of human existence, how scary it is, how difficult friendship and relationships are. It seems more like we've sacrificed those things, which is what the greats used to write about,

in favor of, of like flexing our nuts just pretty sentences i guess yeah yeah yeah which i like pretty sentences i'm a writer and i like to write a sentence where i sit back and go yeah that was good that was good that was good but like i i guess but at what at the cost of plot and whatever character development etc yeah and i i don't want to offer any examples because i'm a pussy and i don't want to get any piss anybody off well i mean but there really is i mean it's just like a lot of people that get published fiction wise you know are just like you know we're the best of their best at whatever prestigious MFA program and all that kind of stuff.

And it's just not, I don't want to say something trite, like it's formulaic or whatever, but it's like you could tell MFA writing from like non-MFA writing, I feel like. Well, dude, if you actually go back and like read the patient zero of this stuff, wallace stegner for example yeah yeah it's unreadable so we can't you know overlook the cia ties here yeah to the mfa programs right you know it's unreadable citations needed did a really good episode they did but so that's the thing it's like when you sit here and you talk about how bad culture sucks now

it's like i really don't think it's crankery because at a certain point either the the nat sec state's involvement in the creation of art either that or the capitalization and like financialization of the whole thing we're eventually going to create a a situation where these products these cultural products these art products work are completely vapid and there's nothing really there you know what i mean like like you were saying last night like the marvel movies like them just wanting a sort of return on investment and everything it's like that was just the natural extension of like market logic in the realm of culture like that was going to happen eventually yeah it's a it's amazing that it

didn't happen sooner it's amazing that it it seemed like there was a moment in the 80s where that almost did happen yeah where you started just churning out purely like like mindless blockbusters that hadn't there was a lot of that in the 80s and 90s I re-watched Indiana Jones Raiders of Arcane Temple of Doom this past week and it's just like there's nothing here it was nothing new under the sun it's the same thing what happens is

I heard John Carpenter talking about this the reason they do this is because the studios the reason why there's all these reboots and this sort of nostalgia craze it's cheaper for the studios to reboot a proven entity that people can draw on. It's the same thing with like... It's not a risk. Right, it's not a risk.

Like, oh, we can drop a lot of money on this because we're going to make money on it. it but if you were to make like a yeah like a 40 million dollar like standalone crime story that's like not part of a franchise or anything else that's a much bigger risk dude honestly you do four million at the box office all of a sudden you lost 30 something million well and the crazy thing about this is like from a common sense perspective you might look at this and be like these these studios make bajillions of dollars why wouldn't they be willing to take a risk every now and then and i'll tell you why the rate of profit has been going down yeah like that's got to be a part of it right yeah i don't think so i don't know i think that they're they're they're looking at their outlays and predict you know

predictions for the next 10 20 years and saying like yeah how can we squeeze as much out of this situation before it all fucking i wonder like i mean record labels it kind of works in a similar fashion i mean it used to be the case you take like a label like sub pop or something like that and i use that because uh you know like we have a friend that was signed to sub pop and it was like and what he said to me once was well like father john misty floats and slater kenny like float other people like him or yeah whoever you know and it's like the studios used to be like that it feels like but it's not you know what i mean there's no like new line cinemas or right you know whoever else is like

you know sort of pumping out the you know ever just everything right damn you get marvel movies or you get 820 a24 like you know indie darlings right and that's like and neither the twain shall meet, really. Right. I don't know, man. Anyways, well, Balzac is, you know, you can't take that away, at least. The classics. You can go back and read the classics. The edging classics. Edging classics.

The classics of edging. There was, like, an article I read about, like, other writers that kind of had a similar process and approach or something like that. Like other writers like would. Okay, here it is. It was on Slate. How the French novelist used masturbation to fuel his writing process.

So this was a technique that he honed and like other people started doing it i guess so where he gets around you know now listen what balls yeah you wouldn't believe it what speed is he taking up his yeah well yeah a lot yeah of course but what else he does is he beats it right to the point of climax and then stops they're killing it to basically edging edging a bit thomas wolf one evening in 1930 as he was struggling to recapture the feverish spirit that had fueled his first novel look homeward angel which i tried in my mind i was thinking tom wolf tom wolf yeah i tried to read that book by the way thomas wolf's look homeward angel we read it in high school really yeah my senior year of high school we

read it i tried to read it i couldn't really get into it i went he's from like ashville i think right north carolina um it's like appalachian authors thing right right he decided to give up on an uninspired hour of work and get undressed for bed but standing naked at his hotel room window wolf found that his weariness had suddenly evaporated and that he was eager to ride again returning to the table he rode until dawn with he recalled amazing speed ease and sureness looking back wolf tried to figure out what had prompted the sudden change and realized that at the window he had been unconsciously fondling his genitals a habit from childhood that while not exactly sexual his quote-unquote penis remained limp and unaroused he noted in a letter to his editor

i've had this writing block but you won't believe what's happened to me why is he writing it dude i was just playing with my cock not like in a sexual just like you know kind of how like babies just like sleep with their hands over their nuts kind of like that a vestigial organ from childhood but as it turns out it cured my writer's block so we're ready to go man it is so how would you share that with anybody oh he said that he told his editor that it fostered such a quote-unquote good male feeling, a good male feeling, that it had stoked his creative energies. From then on, Wolf regularly used this method to inspire his writing sessions, dreamily exploring his male configurations until the sensuous elements in every domain of life became more immediate, real, and beautiful.

Wolf wasn't the only novelist to stick his hand down his pants while working, and then it talks about, like, Flaubert renounced masturbation. Oh, I could see Flaubert being a big jack-off guy. Oh, definitely, definitely. When he was 22. But apparently the ban didn't last long. Flaubert did the thing that we did when we went to church camp. I'm never going to masturbate again, I swear to God.

And then, like, three three days later you blow the biggest that's why that's why i think i've discovered why we suffer from depression and anxiety because every when we were younger every time we'd jack off which for a man is going to be a young man is going to be frequently you know right it just resulted in a depression because we thought we'd failed god or something. You're right. Then I got to know him. I just didn't care about that anymore. While struggling with the novel The Temptation of St. Anthony, Flaubert wrote to a close friend,

There are moments when my head bursts with the bloody pains I'm taking over this. Out of sheer frustration, I jerked off yesterday, feeling the same bleakness that drove me to masturbate at school when i sat in detention he pocket pulled he pocket pulled pocket pulled detention bro at least go to the bathroom i like it i like how um a that there was france at that time but you just kind of shit and threw it out the window i like how there was detention in like 1830s france but also i like how they used the term jerk off. No. Okay, then there was Balzac, who's been coffee binged.

Coffee binges were notorious. He wrote, in masturbation... Oh, wait, D.H. Lawrence. Okay, D.H. Lawrence, this makes total sense. I read... Did you ever read D.H. Lawrence? I read SonsH. Lawrence, this makes total sense. I read, did you ever read D.H. Lawrence? I read Sons and Lovers when I was in college, and I liked it.

I thought it was pretty good. Wasn't D.H. Lawrence gay? Maybe. I don't know anything about D.H. Lawrence. I thought he was. I do know he died in New Mexico. He moved to Taos At a certain point Which is interesting

Anyways I don't want to speculate Maybe I'm thinking of Ian Forrester Ian Forrester was gay right? A lot of those like British writers were all That's a decent chance

Okay I wonder if like The women writers women writers, like, particularly the famous, like, southern women writers, like, was, like, Eudora Welty, like, riding a Sibian machine to, like, fucking, like, inspire her work? You know? Like, just total closet freaks, but, like, sort of buttoned up and proper. Maybe. Did you ever read Elizabeth Bishop, that poet? She got that poem, One Art.

Dude, I love Elizabeth Bishop. I don't know. But fellow asthma sufferer. That's why I fuck with Elizabeth Bishop. Me, Che, Elizabeth Bishop. The bad asthma. Can't breathe I lost my fucking article Where'd my article go

Balzac Masturbation Balzac agreed With Balzac at least when it came to self-gratification. He wrote, oh wait, Balzac didn't let himself go beyond the sweet spot

because he thought that each orgasm depleted his creative energy. D.H. Lawrence. He's kind of like Trump, like with exercise. Yeah, he's got a finite amount. There's just a finite amount of creative energy and if you jack off all the time,

that just dwindles. D.H. Lawrence wrote, in masturbation there is nothing but loss. is no reciprocity there is merely the spending away of a certain force and no return the body remains in a sense a corpse after the act of self-abuse there is no change only deadening i don't know i don't know man it saved me a lot of heartache on a number of occasions i like this other writers took the exact opposite point of view john cheever for instance placed a high value on the salutary effects of erotic release he thought that his constitution required at least two or three orgasms a week and he believed that

sexual stimulation improved his concentration and even his eyesight with a stiff prick i can read the small print in a prayer in prayer books but with a stiff prick, I can read the small print in prayer books, but with a limp prick, I can barely read newspaper headlines. You know, he said that in like an old time radio. With a stiff prick,

I can do anything. Go to the DMV, I can read the bottom line on the eyesight chart. I got a optometrist with a stiff prick. Like, sir, why are you fondling your brick? Want to be able to drive, you know?

Man, Cheever was... That's about a healthy attitude. Yeah. I mean, I don't know about the whole, you know going to the dmv with stiff prick thing but like two to three times a week is like that's like a good amount without like yeah being a fiend you know what i mean i've been too fiendish in my day yeah yeah yeah yeah um no i mean that seems like a very healthy mind that that's about. Two or three times, definitely, yeah. The Belgian novelist Georges Simonon. I've always wanted to read his books, but I never have.

He wrote a lot of, I think, crime fiction. He wrote clockers. He wrote clockers. He needed much more than two or three orgasms a week. His astonishing literary predictivity, he published more than two or three orgasms a week his astonishing literary predictivity he published more than 400 books in his career was matched or even surpassed by his sexual appetite most people work every day and enjoy sex periodically patrick martin him writes simon had sex every day and every few months enjoyed work periodically

that's that's about my mentality he did yeah he had sex every day and every few months indulged in a frenzied orgy of work when living in paris he frequently slept with four different women in the same day he estimated that he bedded 10 000 women in his life his second wife disagreed putting the total closer to 1200 okay like wheelchair you know that's the guys that like like swear they had an astronomically high number are always hilarious to me yeah like i like i think they parsed out wilt chamberlain's like famous claim he slept with 20 000 women and it rounded out to about because he died in his 50s or something like that it rounded out to about like 5.3 or so i forget what it was but jesus man absolutely crazy um what about female artists earlier um let's see george sand used to slip out a sleeping lover's bed to write in the middle of

the night but that is pretty tenuous and tame um blah blah blah doesn't say anything about eudora welty and doesn't say anything about eudora welty in the simian eudora welty on the howard stern show planary co-connor just getting like railed out by like eight dudes oh man that's an interesting thing though like in this book lost illusions like there's a character based on either george sand or george elliott because like women writers back then took men's names they had to take men's names but like he talks about i think he uses the word androgynous or i think that's the word he uses like because they would dress like men too right yeah um which is uh i mean george elliott rocks uh middle march

i fucking love that book man yeah that's one of those that i've uh bullshitted my way through a number of conversations about loved it Loved it, man. You know who was one of my favorite writers? It was always James Salter, because he was the king of the short, horny novels. Yes. He wrote short, horny novels. Yeah. I found out about James Salter through that dude, Teju Cole. Remember him?

Yeah. I remember him. He put a list out of his favorite writers writers and George Salter was at the top and I was like, who the fuck is this? Went back and read like three of his books. Sporting a Pastime. I mean, extremely horny books. All That Is.

But good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a great writer. Was it James Salter? Did I say George Salter? James Salter. Yeah. Damn, dude.

Literary Hour. Fucking goddamn True Billy's Literary Hour. What else is going on? I feel like we should do a little news wrap up just because. Yeah, I don't even know when this is coming out. If this comes out before the Patreon, just know that we recorded the Patreon episode first after dinner very late at night right so just chronologically just keep that in mind yeah uh i don't know when this is coming out but let's

just say for the sake of argument that this is coming out on christmas eve yeah thursday or wait let's put it out tomorrow because people be doing their own shit Christmas Eve. Okay, let's say for the sake of that, it'll come out tomorrow. So what's going on? So there's the mansion stuff. There's Bette Midler saying that Joe Manchin is trying to turn America into West Virginia, which, hey, I fucking love West Virginia. If every gas station in the country had pepperoni rolls yeah it might not be such a bad thing nebraska montana these places could use a little west virginiafication yeah that's what

i'm saying that's what i'm saying bro let's turn a fucking let's turn america into west virginia unironically bitch um well according to honore at balls like Fayetteville West Virginia has got the best looking trim in the nation so you could be worse

they had the dreadlocks and they like to climb on how do you say the armpit hair is like Paris said me

nothing since they listen to bands the song lengths are 18 minutes long Oh shit Rising Appalachian Some of my favorite bands are

Appalachian Rising Appalachian So okay There was a few things Okay there was a few things I had planned for this episode. Let me piss real quick. And I totally forgot.

I've been holding it there in the whole balls. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, why don't you go ahead and piss? And I'll pull... Why don't you go ahead and piss? I'm going to pull up this article that I wanted to read on the show that was an update on an older trail Billy's episode.

And, but before that, let me go to my Twitter page, the Achilles heel of Biden's climate plan, coal miners, climate plan coal miners the new york times the achilles heel of biden's climate plan is coal miners unions representing other workers affected by climate legislation have struck deals but opposition from coal miners has persisted complicating the path to enactment. That's amazing.

That all-powerful political bloc in American society, the coal miner of which there are about 16 of. Seriously. And they're all dying. Literally, both literally and figuratively. Well, the big news on the day that we're recording this is like the White House... Okay, so we're recording this on Tuesday the 21st, and the White House is about to make some kind of statement today.

But they did release a statement on their website the other day. So here I quote, We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated. You've done the right thing, and we will get through this. For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm. Just like, it's fucking... Taking a decidedly macabre tone.

Dude, it's crazy. Like, did no one think that like children like most children are still unvaccinated like no one listen here you little selfish five-year-old piece of shit you're the reason your family's gonna die this winter there's gonna be kids traumatized that they like caused their like family members to die or something dude i mean it's just astounding i'm a little disease factor it's like been pointed out but it's completely astounding how unprepared and how just how much they don't they just don't give a shit they just don't give a shit they they they were they it is a classic example of hubris they thought everything would

be fine oh yeah now that things aren't fine and they don't have a plan and they have nothing here's the thing here's the thing about that is how do you release a statement like that i mean this is like just i mean like the continuing pattern of shifting uh responsibility on the person like individual versus like and like government punting for example but how do you release a statement like that on the same day that you say you were blindsided by like kamala harris and joe bava oh we were blindsided like that's been sort of their word right week they were blindsided by joe manchester they were blindsided by omicron we were blindsided by delta you're right like the number one word you don't want to hear leadership say is blind don't like that and of course george bush played probably played that on 9-11 even though we know

that wasn't blindsided right dude that is so funny you're so fucking right yeah well we didn't see this coming we didn't and also this sort of like teacher's pet bullshit of everybody that got back oh you did the right thing you did the right thing and you're like riding the money and to all you unvaccinated pieces of shit including those under age five well get fucked you're gonna die this christmas oh man well it's all and i'm not saying listen, I mean, I'm kind of of the opinion that, you know, again, like the shit about the vaccine being unsafe is kind of an op in a way or whatever. Like, I don't, you know, but still, it's like none of that is helpful regardless of where you land on that question. Right. Jesus Christ, bro.

This is so bad. Yeah. So, the blind side. Yeah, all you little unvaccinated fags, you're just going to unwrap your gifts and the Grim Reaper's going to pop out and just cut your whole family's heads off. Damn.

Dude, it's so bad. mean it really does um because like the context of all this like the ambient background noise is like everybody i know like i had a good buddy who lives in new york city just texted me the other day like dude everybody i know has fucking omicron vaxxed or not it's fucking this thing it's everywhere yeah and the thing is you can't keep up with it with the testing like we were talking about earlier it's like the the pcr is like the window to get your results back is too long and then the rapid tests you know are varying levels of accurate you know? Well, it got me thinking, dude. It does seem to be the case that if you're vaxxed,

you still won't experience Omicron. You won't experience the worst aspects and side effects of it. It seems like that's the case. But it did get me thinking that, can you imagine how completely deranged and unhinged the libs will be if there is a variant that is completely evasive like is completely what if like if omicron is like what we think it is right and it's like spreads easily but it's fairly mild in terms of what disease it causes what's how far away are we from the one that spreads rapid and is deadly? Right, and is able to get through the defenses of the fucking vaccine.

I mean, we've watched the politics of this thing just whiplash back and forth so rapidly over the course of the last almost two years now. Well, you said something last night that I thought was interesting, and I didn't follow up on it, but I meant to because I was leaving. But you said that we're on the brink of what could be like a new turn in the culture war, R.E. that stuff. If that happens, because that will effectively, what it means is that the libs will have a choice. They can either dig in, which is probably what they'll do. They'll just like dig in and say no vaccines are still the best way to go or they will actually do the bombing post offices things because they will be so disillusioned because like this this to me is like their rubicron rubic cross that god damn it

that thing they're gonna cross the precipice i'm surprised that the white house hasn't used that yet we've crossed the rubicron the rubicron man man we've like much like that episode of happy days where fonzie jumps the shark well that's where we're that's where we're at like that's the thing like they it is interesting to sort of game that out. Like, can you imagine a variance that is able to evade the vaccines, and there's breakthrough cases that result in just as many deaths in the unvaccinated? Like, what that would do to the liberal psyche.

We did the right thing, though, but we're still dying in the same numbers as whatever. Well, you see this. I don't want to prognosticate that or speak that into existence. You know, but like, that is something that if we're talking about a leadership that claims they were blindsided by Omicron, we probably need to be like preparing for that or thinking about that. I mean, it's pretty fucking crazy it does seem like in the last couple days i have seen more variations on the whole like getting uh not getting vaccinated is not a moral failing like your health isn't a moral failing and it's like damn weren't there some tone reversal from three

exactly weren't there some of us saying that several months ago and like the where the debate was at was so stultifying and rigid that if you even floated that you were like sympathizing with the unvaccinated you were crying exactly you were no better than interesting paddling interesting how that works it's just it's just it's just like my point is like the way like, the sausage gets made of the sort of ideology, like, it gets rapidly churned out so quickly now that, like, there could be a complete reversal of roles. If it turns out that there is a variant that the vaccine can't address, then, like, what if the libs suddenly become the anti-vaxxers? And then it just switches back around well i mean you saw that happen in in like the sort of uh health sphere you know i mean like the people that were like it's not like we're conservatives that are like chronic lyme people or anything like

that and again i'm not again before we go down that stir that hive i'm not making a judgment call or rejecting your experience at all all i'm saying is that people that you know like suffer from what they believe is a chronic lyme infection don't tend to be like cuban on nuts they tend to be liberals you know what i mean it's same thing with like uh um there there is just as much sort of like liberal leaning sentiment in the anti-vax world i think that doesn't get talked about and it is among like sort of the fitness influencers and stuff like that right that world it's just a different block but it's not it's not 100 just like nutty conservative people well it did make me wonder that if if we have a surge of deaths that the vaccine can't even grapple with if if that becomes the case um like how the

politics of this again might shift because like you could maybe see a situation where two years down the line everybody's blaming joe biden for how bad this got and like the crimes of like the trump inaction and everything which by comparison actually don't even look that bad i mean it's just like that's how fucked up it is well here's like when you're looking at trump's reaction i don't know if you've noticed this but in the press lately even the paper's record and all that kind of stuff there is this like attempt to tie this back to trump because there's been a never-ending like stream of stories about the trump administration's failures on covet 19 right because biden's record by the day looks worse and worse and worse and

worse on this dude it's fucking crazy um it what what's so astounding to me about this is that for all of trump's you know um mistakes let's not let him off the hook no no no no drink bleach this is i mean the reason it's so bad and embedded so deeply in the population is pretty much his fault right but they never had hubris it seemed to me fauci did because fauci is completely self-centered and obsessed with himself very obviously but it seems to me like in the aggregate they weren't operating from a position of hubris they were more operating from a position of like we don't really know what the fuck's going on because they're idiots they're all just fucking con artists and scam artists and everything but like the biden people had hubris on their side they've had it

since fucking june july whenever joe told us to fucking go barbecue and stuff listen if you don't yeah that's like yeah yeah and that is so deadly it's so fucking it's just like um because any normal person's not going to drink bleach right right? Right. Even if the President of the United States says, hey, like, have we tried that? You know, whatever. Injecting bleach. Whatever it was, he was like floating there. But, like, if the President says you can take your mask off and go enjoy the barbecue now. People are going to do that, yeah.

More people are going to do that than inject bleach. You know what I mean? I feel like most people understand i saw dude it's hubris versus just insanity it's weird i saw like the philadelphia like um health department like scolding people on twitter for um like they basically made a statement like don't gather with your families this holidays and And people were like, well, why the fuck do we have to go to work, but we can't gather with our families? And they were like, well, it was like they were scolding people for pointing that out. If you look at the numbers, the surges are actually at large gatherings, stuff like that.

People are getting... If you go to work, you're immune from it. Exactly. There's a magical force of whatever. But when you get it at, but like usually it happens at home. And also the other thing is there's no fucking way to tell where somebody got it from.

I know. At this point, there's not. Yeah. Early on when it wasn't completely profligate, like when it was just completely everywhere. But now, yeah. How the fuck can you contact trace when everybody's fucking got it? Right, yeah.

Yeah, at a certain point, it's like you can't really account for when and where and all that stuff. Except Herman Cain. Herman Cain definitely got it from the Trump route. Yeah. You can draw a straight line to where herman can't got it from god rest his soul fact of the matter is the libs were completely hubristic they were completely assured of themselves they had no fucking plan kamala harris is telling the truth when they said they didn't see this coming in the sense that like they didn't want to believe that it

was going to get bad again no because this is this was pull and pray but covet edition really i really was like let's just hope for the best and that's somehow going to wheel this in the and and that to me is criminal like that is fucking malpractice my friends if you want to talk malpractice dude yeah that's criminal that's like nero fiddling while rome burns that's like pick any uh example of an executive uh basically standing by if you want to be perfectly honest i think i mean there's probably a number of reasons why joe biden's not met any of his campaign promises but i think in part part of the like, not only are we not going to like pay off any of your student loans, but we're also going to restart payment starting in January. Right in the face of what's going to be probably the worst outbreak, hopefully with more mild disease that we're talking about.

But what's going to be the worst outbreak since that first outbreak that happened in New York that killed so many people. Right. That they had like bodies on a boat in the harbor and shit like that uh we're going to restart the student loan payments and all that stuff i think part of that is like if they could just ratchet up the austerity and the misery it kind of dwarfs the covid problem in some ways jesus because they tried i mean they tried like you know yeah well they didn't really try prosperity or anything like that to try to overshadow it or anything like that but it's like it's like if someone it's like if you have a bullet wound in your left hand and someone puts

two bullet holes in your right hand suddenly looks not bad they're like see we helped right and that's and here the sick thing about that is, is I'm half joking, but that's like a charitable reading of why they're doing that. Because it makes no sense. It's very exceedingly unpopular. Most of these student loan services are like bonafide, like pyramid type schemes. Not pyramid schemes, that's not the right word, but like there are schemes. Junk financial products and all that stuff.

No different from buying a used car from some guy named Honest Bob or something. Uh-huh. And, yeah, I don't know, man. Just the mean-spiritedness of all of it is off the charts. So either they're out of touch or it is like a deliberate knife twist. Right. off the charts so either they're out of touch or it is like a deliberate knife twist right i'd say um it's uh yeah it's hard it's always hard to know it seems like it probably is just joe biden trying to earn that ing direct windbreaker that some guy gave him in 87 and it's like you know oh you want i'm gonna fuck over my whole generation i'm

presiding over because like you know uh lloyd blank fiend is a long time friend well i think it's several things it's like their number one priority is making sure that the that the left like the people on their left flank don't in any way get any traction and so it's this constant game of triangulation with them because they are very out of touch obviously but they also like their main objective is to like i've said before the last thing they want on their hands is like an almost kind of like latin american style mass movement like mass popular leftist movements they they don't want that and yet they're creating the conditions more and more by the day you would think the hedge against that

well i know what it is with people are in complete misery and completely immiserated and have to work whatever job they got to work and like these days three and four of them to string together anything approaching uh not even a dignified existence but like a just making an existence like maybe that is just as good as keeping everybody fat and happy for squash and descent well they don't even have to really worry about it because until like the constitutional system has like there's no way for there to be a vehicle for that sort of mass popular movement so they actually they're set they don't have to fucking do shit they can just keep doing what they're doing yeah i mean that's probably more accurate it's like they understand there's no

mechanisms in place to really challenge them in a big way and like they can just half-assed it yeah if the energy harnessed after george floyd's murder didn't sort of do the trick then they can outlast right you know which is a bunch of pissed off uh right you know uh people that owe a bunch of student loans. Which means that it is entirely possible that the way, like something's got to give eventually, right? Yeah. So that means that it is entirely possible that the way in which it gives isn't a sort of mass organized movement like that.

It is like the burning down, not just of a precinct this time. Fucking Congress or something is going to get burnt down like if they're not fucking careful i'm not saying this is not a threat this is not actionable i'm not saying i'm well i mean but i'm just saying they kind of but they kind of showed their hand as to why that is because you know how like think how sensitive they are about january 6th yeah nobody nobody on their side died you know what i mean i think it was marina oswald had a good tweet about this i think that's let me find that real quick because i saw that and i was like yeah that's an exceedingly good point uh damn the tutors the tutors is hidden your boy's got that salt drows uh that sodium hangover yeah that's where like my heart's

kind of like irregularly beating and like my stomach is tutors you know damn bitch well the tweet was the coolest part about january 6th is that nobody important was heard or anything so they have to say well something really bad almost happened. Like if on 9-11 the planes missed the Twin Towers and just landed safely at LaGuardia. But, you know, that's a national holiday, like a day of remembrance now. Dude, that's crazy. And I'm going to take that day off and I'm going to, like, celebrate the fact Nancy Pelosi was at least scared for a little bit. It's a national holiday?

Yeah. How the fuck are conservatives going to celebrate that? Or do they celebrate it like I think they're just like yeah, yeah, yeah because they don't want to implicate it.

Like that one guy they're like throwing the buck at right now. They're like coordinated with like the people. Ay, ay, ay, dude. I can't keep up. This is why

I told you earlier today talking about politics and I can't keep up with it anymore. It's like it moves so fast, and it's so incomprehensible. I mean, I'm not saying that I don't have anything to do with what's going on. I'm just saying that, like,

in this commentary world, part of the game is, like, being able to see, like, what's coming down the pike, and there's no way to know. Yeah. Because at any moment, we've seen everything's flip-flop and turn upside down at a moment's notice at several different junctures yeah and so it's it's just um you're basically

flying blind yeah yeah well last week it was like i feel like there's a you said something to me the other day you said like you know in the same way that like if me and you're talking about like underwear then like we'll get on instagram in a second there'll be an ad for like men's underwear right now if we talk about something somebody'll have a tweet about it it's like almost like it's tweets are like sponsored content yeah yeah yeah well last week what was it the one thing we were mad about is like that uh tv rider that said that i see i can't even remember it's about the oh kentucky and the tornadoes yes it was like i'm sorry kentucky you didn't you voted for you didn't vote for sergeant colonel amy mcgrath so go to hell, whatever. Well, this week it was Hold on one second. Let's bring it up here.

She's getting quote tweeted out of I think she deleted her tweet. Or wait, is this a different tweet? No, I'm talking about the Bette Midler tweet. The Bette Midler tweet. Oh yeah, she deleted it. No, she didn't. So, this week's contestant, and what should we call that

like stephen king stephen king during the texas ice out was like he was kind of like i mean we should almost do like donkey of the week or something yeah because i hate wasting too much time on these people but like if it's appalachia centric i felt we have we're duty bound yeah yeah yeah it's amusing to me at this point i used to find it offensive but at this point it's amusing this way it's just like it's just funny how predictable it is you're right it's yes right uh so bett miller tweeted for those not like last night what hashtag joe mansion comma who represents a population smaller than brooklyn has done to the rest of america who wants to move forward, not backward, like his state, is horrible.

He sold us out. He wants us all to just be like his state, West Virginia. Poor, illiterate, and strung the fuck out. Joe mentions the plug. He wants us all doped up. He wants us all doped up, baby. Also, Bette Midler looks like she's no stranger to a glass of Pinot and a Xanax on a Sunday afternoon.

So she ain't got no room to call anybody strung out. But it is just funny, and I think indicative of this idea that I was telling you about earlier. It's like nobody's making like bruce springsteen anymore where it's like lifting up the working man and his plot and his stories it's like capitulate to a celebrity culture where you know now everybody wants to be relatable to the celebrities like that's why i'm trying to you know get 10 000 100 000 instagram followers or right whatever the case is.

It's true. We're all aspirational to them now. It's not like they were aspirational to us. It's not like Bruce Springsteen wanted to go back to the factories. I don't even think he probably worked. Maybe his dad did or something. But I think the point was, it was just from a,

uh, a cost benefit thing. Like who's in my audience, working people, who's going to in my audience? Working people. Who's going to buy my records? Working people. So I'll just write about things. Talk about their lives.

Yeah, things that are relevant to their lives. But like, that's not... Now they expect us to like, sort of like, be aspirational to their existence. And I don't know if that's because they're out of touch or if it's because like,

record executives have just determined that like, that's too charged. Nobody wants to hear about mill workers anymore, but everybody wants to know what it's like to have a pool house in Beverly Hills or whatever. I guess that's what it is, right? It's flipped. It's like culture has stopped trying to relate to us and has just become aspirational and that's

i guess why the main mode modality of like films is the marvel stuff because it is aspirational it's like what if you could just be a superhero and conquer all your problems man your life sucks but what if you could shoot spider webs out of your wrists and like swing around big buildings pretty tight no jesus christ that's bleak yeah but oh my god that's pretty bleak man uh yeah i don't even know what to even say about stuff like that anymore it doesn't even phase me like it used to no i mean it just is what it is um i don't know i'm trying to do my part i'm doing my do my part. I'm doing my part. I got vaccinated. I'm doing my part.

Well, I mean, like, culture-wise. No, I'm joking. I'm trying to create some culture, I guess. Yeah. Here's the thing, too, about, like, she's been quote-tweeted 5,230 times, and it's like, man, like, my instinct now is almost just to ignore these people yeah you know i mean it's like i it's like you don't want it like jd vance effect you know i

mean we're like this guy probably just went quietly in the night if he we didn't if the outrage industry that we know we're on the hook for well the thing is man the thing is, man, the thing is, there's a lot of things that doomed us in this pandemic that just were, you know, think we're going to make sure that we were just completely fucked. But the thing that's most maddening to me is the personal responsibility thing. Yeah. that's most maddening to me is the personal responsibility thing yeah and so it's like when you talk about the vac stuff and when you talk about like these people who say this shit about like people who are killed in tornadoes and stuff it is inconceivable to them that these people would be in a situation not of their own choosing like that that's a fine line to walk though because at the same time you don't want to take

away anybody's agency but you have to realize that people have no power over their circumstances in a material way there's no like me and you and only by sheer confluence of circumstances is bett miller a rich famous person exactly you know what i mean right so it's like even what they do but in terms of not getting vaccinated or not voting for the people that they don't like even that's a drop in the bucket it has no real um like maybe it gets thrown into the centrifuge with all these other factors and stuff but to me it's it's a trite point but yeah like um you know, who is holding the levers of power in society? The outrage about Joe Manchin is so fucking laughable, too. Because if Joe Biden's going to say he was blindsided by Manchin's crawfishing on this,

it's like, motherfucker, you can't call somebody out for, like, stabbing somebody in the back when you just made all these goddamn promises and didn't keep a fucking one of them. I know. You know what I mean? It's just like you have no moral high ground. Yeah. Like, you're both swine. That's what I'm trying to say.

Yeah. If only there was someone who could call that out. Yeah. Oh, well. Oh, well. In any case. This is what it is yeah i was reading this walker percy booker here side posting the strange land and when you talk about no power of material circumstance he writes about when he moved to outside new orleans and he was like i've chosen to do something

that most people in louisiana don, and that is live in Louisiana. And it's not because Louisiana's a bad place or anything like that. It's just people are born into the circumstances they're born into, is the point he's trying to make. And, like, most people don't have the upward mobility to escape that. And, like, in Bette Midler's mind, your chance at upward mobility happens at the ballot box. Right.

You know what I mean? Like, if you had just voted a certain way, and it's like well we've done that before right it's like the david axelrod tweet this week did you see that he was like when we were trying to pass the aca we had huge majority in the house and we still had a hard time getting that through and it's like yeah it's like you're kind of giving away the game there like you cannot outvote the will of the elite classes. Right. You just can't. You can't do it.

You have to take it from them. Right. But, you know. Yeah. How and what that looks like I think is an open question. Yeah. Well, we're at an hour and 38 minutes. Almost feels like we should carry on.

Keep going for two hours? For 20 and just put it on the double. If you want, I got to pee. I got to take a quick break. We're going to do that. Go for it. I'm going to pause and take my drugs real quick. All right.

So there was something else I wanted to cover. This is an update on an older episode. Many of you will remember a classic, Premium 169, about Bishop Sycamore. Did you see this big thing in the New York Times? I have not. So the New York Times wrote a big thing about Bishop Sycamore. And there's not a whole lot of new stuff stuff in there like stuff that we didn't already know from previous things written about it that we found while we were recording that one and

sort of researching it but some things were um pretty interesting um like for example at one point like all of the so for those of you who don't have Patreon, I think it's still on the Patreon, but if you want to go back and listen to it. Premium 169. This team, this school in Ohio called, like, Bishop Sycamore. Scare quotes around school. They were a feg school who fielded a football team, and they scammed these young football players into thinking that if they came and played for their team they would have a better shot at like getting um college to college get college scholarships and everything and yeah they scammed them it wasn't a real school there wasn't real premises um at one point like it says right here for a while the players were wedged

into a coach's girlfriend's house with one shower for 40 boys a coach's girlfriend's house like it's it's just like it's stuff like that like they they they got a lot of these guys to like leave the bronx and move to ohio for this like fake sleep on a the floor of some guy's girlfriend's house yep but the way they got caught is like... Other than they were going to school at the public library and doing nothing. Other than that, they had this big football game on ESPN

against IMG Academy, which they got their shit kicked in. They lost by 58-0. People were like, how did this team get on here? The commentators were like, this isn't a fair game. Someone needs to look into this. This is embarrassing. Yeah.

So people started looking into it. It brought a lot of unwanted attention on them. And so we talked about the coach who was also like the Academy's founder, or maybe he was just the Academy's founder. I don't think he was the coach. We differentiated between the coach and the Academy's founder in that episode. But check this out, dude. In an interview, Roy Johnson, the Academy's founder,

said he could not discuss much because he had sold the rights to the story to Michael Strahan, the television host and former football star who was producing an HBO documentary. Dude! So this guy's getting paid twice. He's getting paid twice! He scammed all these young men, disproportionately young black men, from

different places all over the country. And now he gets to license the rights to the story! And now he gets to license the rights to the story. And now he gets to license the rights to the story. I mean, this is America, though, dog. It's like the Joe Dirt thing, where you stick the firecracker up the bullfrog's ass. You're the veterinarian and the firework salesman. You get paid twice.

It's like fucking... Oh my God, that's obscene, dude. It's pretty crazy. I can't say much because I've sold the story that I have engineered myself. What's even funnier is because on that episode we joked about us getting the licensing rights for that. Oh, really? Yeah, we were talking about like... Strahan beat us to it.

Strahan beat us to it, dog. Damn. It's really sad, though. One of these guys wound up in a psychiatric ward. You know, it's just interesting. Some of this stuff is interesting, though. So, like, IMG Academy, which is, like, the big name in this world, right? One of the big, like, sort of...

I don't know if you would call it prep school or whatever, but it's in Bradenton, Florida. And I know they produce a lot of athletes, high-talent athletes, but their tennis academy produced in the 80s, produced Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi and Jim Curry and all these tennis champions. Uh-huh. Well, did you know, i didn't know this they're owned by endeavor group holdings which is a holding company for talent and media

agencies yeah because in img a modeling agency too i guess so i didn't know i guess i didn't put two and two together they were the same method how dark is this like this is all completely above board like what bishop sycamore did is they just got sloppy. But other people do this stuff, like, they jump through the proper hoops and go through the proper channels. But what they're doing isn't really substantively any different. No. The thing about Bishop Sycamore is they just didn't provide the athletes with anything. Yeah.

Like, with food or lodging or anything like that. But all these other fucking schools and companies do the same shit. And it's crazy when you've got when you've got a media talent

company owning like a school. A school. Ostensibly. Like a for yeah because IMG

International Management Group is a global sports events and talent it's kind of just like a farm system. A farm for like young beautiful and or talented Yeah, because IMG, International Management Group, is a global sports events and talent. It's kind of just like a farm system. A farm for young, beautiful, and or talented people. That's fucking nuts. For them to like, yeah.

And I guess the devil's bargain is we will set you on that path to whatever it is you want to do. Play sports, be a model, be an actor, whatever, whatever. That is crazy if you just come here and you know it's so wild um well i mean anyways that there like i said there wasn't really much more in the um new york times article that we didn't already know but i don't know i just think it's interesting um especially because ron johnson is getting paid twice oh my god dude that's depressing i i guess that's what that means i mean you could go like basically fuck with these young men's lives and then just go get paid by making selling their rights to make an hbl thing about it like why are they his rights to sell i don't know you know i guess if

someone why do you have to go get the rights from him to do that i guess if someone's making something about your life i guess i think if i was straight i'd probably try to go through one of the kids like the kid that ended up in the side yeah exactly that's the thing let him tell his story tell it through his right right right exactly yeah stray hand what's the stray hand on kelly ripa's show stray hands oh my god i don't have any stray hands just you know bread dough right right yeah it's got a you know daytime talk show with kelly i don't know it's whatever. Right. Well, anyways, Bishop Sycamore, I thought that you would like that little update. Here's an update, though, on what's going on in the world.

The expert ham sniffer of Spain smells 800 hams a day during the Christmas season. He is strained, he said, at the limit of human possibility. Man, I understand that plot. Now imagine if that guy gets COVID-19 and loses his sense of smell. Oh, fuck. He's out of business. Can't sniff the hams. Where's his PPP long?

Cannot sniff the hams. Damn, dog. Perfumers? We've not thought about perfumers during this time. Yeah. Or the guy that, you know, tested Fidel Castro's meals for poison. Anybody thought about that guy? Let's bring back the old professions.

I wonder if the Winehouse has a poison taste tester. I wonder. And also, like, how do they do that without, you know what I mean, dying? There used to be some professions, and not that long ago. I'm thinking about kamikaze pilot during World War II. You know what I mean? Like, didn't really have a whole lot of upside to them. Dude, I want to be a kamikaze pilot.

There's, like, isn't there, like, guys that are still alive that were kamikaze pilots i think so yeah like like are you just immortalized as a coward depends on if your side wins or loses and who gets to write the history i guess because you could easily become a hero yeah like that guy he was a pussy yeah like and that's a sad, in an aggrandizing way, like, this is the greatest pussy of all time. The most glorious pussy, the most glorious coward ever. Did he have a lot of metal? Well, no, but he lived to tell the tale.

Oh, fuck. Yeah, I don't know. Anything else going on in the world this is all fucked up now because like we recorded three different episodes all of which are in the most fucked up order yeah and i'm freaking out because i don't even know i'm worried that i like recorded over last month don't know the one we just did the good one oh no i'd say no because you just i hope not i fucking hope not um but i don't know what else is going on bro shit man i'm just stealing myself for the holiday season you know um it's uh it's tricky it's uh what do you do during all this you know well i've seen several omens in

the past few weeks um coming back from columbus a few weeks ago i saw a dead bobcat on the side of the road any any sort i know we have a lot of stem people in our listenership but i'm sure we have plenty of occultists too. So if you could make sense of any of this, much appreciated. Yeah, that was pretty fucked up, like freshly dead. And then the other day I saw a dead heron,

like in the road. Well, it was off to the side, but like that's... You don't see too many herons crossing the street. Nobody says, why did the blue heron cross the street? You know? Very weird circumstance. Famously not the subject of many jokes.

Right, right. So I don't know, man. Just majestic river birds that you just observe from a distance. You know, picking minnows out of a stream with its long beak. Yeah. Not one that really gets up on the road. It felt ominous, is all I'm saying. Yeah.

It felt pretty ominous. So, I don't know, man. Is that why you had such a visceral reaction to my neighbor banging the gong? Banging the gong, yes. Wait, wait, what? Yeah. Is that the fourth vial in the book of Revelation

being poured out? That's why I was so freaked out about the tarot card, the catastrophic tarot card, and why the other night I was having a meltdown. I was like freaked out about the tarot card, the catastrophic tarot card, and why the other night I was having a meltdown. I was like, it's all happening. And also you're getting ready to go to the airport. And I bet you're getting ready to go to the fucking airport. Dude.

See, this is how I live my life. Constantly live my life this way. Why don't you just throw a monkey wrench in this? I don't know. Maybe the plan knows that. I was like, why don't you just bump your flight to later today, if possible. I was like, why don't you just bump your flight to later today, if possible.

But maybe then whoever the Grand Joker is behind all this just says, well, I thought you would do that, Mr. Roo. And you go careening off the... Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You just got to play them as they lay though that i i don't know life would be so much easier for me if i could just learn like they need a duolingo for like idioms and expressions you know what i mean like you could learn witty just witticisms and sayings and stuff yeah that's what you know what I mean? They need that.

They need an app for that. Also, just to, I mean, since it's the holidays, let's get to the bottom of this. Do you know what Yuletide, Yulelog, and or Figgy Pudding are? Seriously, I've been singing about Figgy Pudding for years. I've never had it. I don't know what it's about. The Yule stuff is a question for Tanya.

Isn't she into Yule and shit? Isn't Yule the ancient pagan version? Yule. Yule log. Yule is a festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples. Oh, interesting, Tanya. You're German now. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt,

the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Madrenit. Later departing from its pagan roots, Yule underwent Christianized reformulation resulting in the term Christmastide. Huh. So Christ's birthday is not actually December 25th. Actually, yeah. Today is the first day of Yule. Tuesday, December 21st. First day of Y Actually, yeah. Today is the first day of Yule. Tuesday, December 21st. First day of Yule.

Bitch. Bitch. Huh. Yeah, dog. Who is this fucking Muldrenit? Night of the Mothers was an event held at what is now Christmas Eve by the Anglo-Saxon

pagans. The event is Christmas Eve by the Anglo-Saxon pagans. The event is attested by the medieval English historian Bede, or Bidet, in his 8th century Latin work, De Temporum Rationae. It has been suggested that sacrifices may have occurred during this event. Whoa! Scholars have proposed connections between the Anglo-Saxon modernet and events attested among other Germanic peoples. Dog, the fucking pagans were savages. This is crazy.

That's funny about that. Everybody in the witchcraft is like, you know, Christianity is so brutal. Like with the crucifixion of Christ and whatever. It's like, you know what our bog trotting celtic forebears were doing right they did love a good bog yeah damn well um good good um happy yule to all of you out there make sure you go out and find a good Yule hog or log or whatever. Yes, do both of them. Put it in your ass or your pussy.

Start a fire. Yeah, start a fire. Whatever. Whatever you need to do. Thanks for listening. If you would like, I have no idea what we're going to do with all these episodes, but if you would like to see what happens, go to Patreon and support us. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash

Trillbilly Workers Party. We'll be there cranking out the hits. And we wish you all a Merry Christmas. I'm about to get on an airplane, which is probably ill-advised. Given the pull of the card. Good God. But, you know, we've crossed the Rubicron, so what are you going to do?

No coming back from the Rubicron. No coming back from the Rubicron, that's right. All right, well, we'll talk to you later. Thanks for listening, everybody. Bye-bye.