Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 304: Signs of Cannibalism

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

This week...we're going back for more Ethicist Support our show on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

There it goes It's working now On the show this week We have Bob Zombie Mr. Bob Zombie Director of House of a Thousand Corpses The remake of Halloween

How do you feel about that remake? Why don't you do Bob Dylan Zombie Bob Dylan Zombie? Yeah Why don't you do Bob Dylan Zombie? Bob Dylan Zombie? Yeah. So he's pitching House of a Thousand Corpses. What's the premise of that movie? There's a thousand corpses in the house?

Well, they stop by a roadside attraction to get gas, and then they're looking for a real thrill, and then they get sent to a house full of hillbilly crazies. Oh, is that the subtext of that movie, is that there's hillbillies? Yeah. Rob Zombie's usually into hillbillies. That is a common horror trope.

I feel like The Hills Have Eyes was also kind of like that. Anti-hillbilly, right yeah well i mean let's peel back like the layers of horror here like what is it about the hillbilly what is it about the noble scots irishman that that is so scary i get so many frightened is it the authenticity thing is that what it is Just too real for this world. Is this too real? Yeah. So it's like...

It's all about he'll be like authenticity. Like when they roll up and they're like cracking skulls and eating people and stuff. So it's too authentic. That's just too real for some. This goes back to what we were just saying,

talking about at brunch. I think the most horrifying thing of all to Americans is that it is actually meeting the authentic like like the thing is this is why this this is this is ultimately why americans love things inside of things we love jelly donuts we love um gushers uh reese's cups we love things inside of things it's like we like to bite in and juices run down our chin yes we it's americans are so obsessed with the commodity form it's like we have to physically metabolize the sort of mystified shell the mystified form of

the thing we have to know that we're getting something else too yeah like so like we're getting the donut but we also have to know that we're getting the jelly inside the donut or we're getting the peanuts but we don't want normal peanuts we want them covered in a chocolatey shell exactly everything has to have an outer shell that then you... It's like trying to trick kids into eating vegetables, you know. That's what America's like. It's the same reason why we're all obsessed with fried food.

Because like fried, when you fry something, you're adding a layer to the outside of it that you're then getting to. And I think it's because Americans can never have enough. and i think this is why we're constantly searching for the authentic but we'll never actually get it because we know deep down that if we finally do get it it'll be horrifying to us we can't handle it it'll be a

guy who's a plumber who his entire vocabulary his entire cultural vocabulary is completely slotted in with quotes from movies all he's doing is uh he loves the band yes pinching his buddies on the arm and say if you're not first you're last he's quoting weddingers. He's giving his friends titty twisters. That's authentic. That's the real America, dude. Yeah, yeah, dude. He drinks Crown Royal, not bourbon. Like, this is the thing.

He drinks, like, fucking black velvet and shit like that. What's black? Is that bourbon? We used to have a bootlegger named Trigger. He would get cases of Natural Light, and he'd sell them for a dollar a piece, a dollar a beer. This was before we were wet, so you would have to drive pretty far to get booze. Trigger filled the gap and the need in the community. If you wanted the hard stuff, he had Black Velvet.

It was like one of those blended Canadian whiskeys. I think it was a Canadian whiskey. I can't remember. It was like when I was blended Canadian whiskeys mmm think it's a Canadian way I can't remember it was like a shitty boy real authentic people love blended Canadian whiskey right yeah love it yeah Canadian Club Canadian club yeah there's a bunch of CC a bunch of stuff in that yeah Crown Royal is like the higher end of that when I was growing up i remember my parents buying a bottle of crown royal and like i remember being treated around the house like it was christmas day because it came in the bag they had a big velvet i mean dude i what i'm getting at here is that what americans truly fear more than anything it's why we're constantly invoking it it's why the conservatives have fetishized it in the form of the ginger guy who's going to blow

his vocal cords out in a few weeks we're constantly searching for the authentic all right dude he's gonna have nodes all over them bitches because all he's doing is yelling. Like me. Yeah. Chris, I've convinced myself that I've got vocal nodes. He's got nodes, bro. Did you hear me last night? I couldn't talk. Dude, I'm losing my voice.

Harry Nilsson had them. That's what killed him. Harry Nilsson died from nodes? He died from vocal nodes? Yep, that killed him. Harry Nilsson died from notes? He died from vocal notes? Yep, I killed him. Harry Nilsson died from vocal notes? What, did they get infected? And then that's how you die? Or you just get so depressed

because you can't talk anymore to your friends? I'm going to be honest with you. I read that on the bathroom wall last night. I just ran with it without any sort of verification. Oh, okay. That makes sense. That's how we do things around here. The hillbilly, as invoked in House of a Thous. Okay. That makes sense. That's how we do things around here. The hillbilly as invoked in House of a Thousand Corpses,

what makes him so terrifying is his authenticity. Right. It's his banality. Well, I wouldn't call him banal in that context because he is a hideous inbred. Yeah. Yeah. I'm fascinated with cannibalism. That's not my words. That's how the world would view it. as a hideous inbred. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm fascinated with cannibalism. That's not my words. That's how the world would view it. That's how the world would view it. I'd view him as one of my brothers. Right. I mean, honestly, there's nothing more authentic than cannibalism.

Nothing more authentic than inbred either. Eating your fellow man while being inbred. Think about it, bro. Yeah, think about it. This is how we got, we all got here because of,

like, shit had to pop off somehow we were living in the moment fucking our sisters and eating each other that's all we didn't want it that way but we did it to provide a better future you know that do you think it's a selfless act it was a selfless act do you think think that when people are in scenarios where they have to eat each other, do you think it's kind of like a bit, though? Do you think they're kind of like, oh... Does the impulse for irony kick in when you have to indulge in some cannibalism? Like if we were part of a rugby team that crashed in the Andes, and the three of three, hypothetically,

I don't know if anything like that's ever happened or not, and then we're sitting there, like, would we be cracking jokes about eating each other's ass? And then, like, in a couple of days, there's going to cease to be jokes. But would you still be joking? I'd hope we would hold out for a long time. Well, no, I would hope that we would still be able to joke about it while we were doing it. Yeah.

Like, ha ha. I'm cracking your femur open. I'm drinking the marrow out. I'm drinking the marrow out of you, bro. This was on you a second ago. Now it's my food. I'm just saying that... That wife is crazy, man.

Like, a second ago I had a leg and now you guys are eating it. It's fucking wild, isn't it? man. Like a second ago I had a leg and now you guys are eating it. It's fucking wild. I'm just saying like you joke about things to make them a little easier to digest. You know, no pun intended.

But that's what that is truly I think. And I don't want to say this and sound like one of these like you can't say anything anymore but the humorless, joyless sort of strain of, like, nobody getting humor anymore. About cannibalism?

Or anything. We should be able to talk about cannibalism. We should be able to talk about cannibalism freely. That it's a funny thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Yeah.

I agree. I think a lot of it is, like, you use humor and even dark humor to deal with things. Mm-hmm. We've not properly worked through a lot of our, everybody you use humor and even dark humor to deal with things. We've not properly worked through a lot of our, everybody likes to throw around the world traumas, but you won't let me joke. You know what I mean? About eating you.

Yeah. Yeah. You won't let me joke about being inbred. You won't let me joke. Which is probably my lived experience if you go back far enough. So that's the horror. That's the horror that, like, we're grotesques. We're grotesqueries, all of us.

Uh-huh. We're all getting ready to go back to the dirt. We're from whence we came. See, I referenced this last night, but this TV show I was watching, The Terror, it's based on a real historical thing uh these two ships the hms hms arabus and the hms terror departed from england i think 1840 52 to discover a northern passageway through the arctic because like they were all about that

right like after they realized like you couldn't just go straight west and hit India, they were like, fuck. That sucks. You gotta go around this whole shit? That sucks. God damn it. I was hoping we'd just fall off one day. Yeah, I mean, honestly, think about how big of a, I mean, obviously the Europeans were,

you know, raping, pillaging greedy spreading disease yeah but so they probably in a way relished finding the north and south american continents but if you were a guy for efficiency it probably was a pretty big annoyance if you were the logistics if you were the logistics guy. God damn. If it isn't one thing, it's a fucking other. We're going to have to sail around the fucking horn of Latin America now, boys. Fuck.

Thought we was just going to be able to get it straight, boys. Just sitting down and exhaling the biggest sigh you've ever had yeah so wait you're telling me you you put you rub the bridge between your eyes there's an entire land mass that we now have to get around who who's on cartography who's's doing cartography? Jeff. God damn it, you had one job to do.

Like, yeah. And then it's complicated by the fact that your boss then says, yeah, well, there's also a lot of people living on it. And then you have to say, so now you're telling me we have to do public PR too? Well, boss, we have blankets. No, no, no, no, no. We're not going to go that round. We're not doing

the smallpox blankets. I know it was introduced in a quirky Shakespeare play a few months ago, but Yeah, we're not doing that. We're not animals. But then six months later he's like, we're animals. And it turns out we're animals. Turns out we're

a house of a thousand corpses as a nation. Turns out we're a bunch of goddamn Spanish hillbillies. That's what it turns out. A bunch of compasinos. They're like, okay. These two ships departed. So, like,

I've also got this book called The Worst Journey in the World by this guy named... That'd be the inner journey. For any man. The emotional journey. The emotional journey. It's by this guy named absley cherry gerrard he was a 10 times five yeah what his first name was absley

i don't see the former captain liverpool yeah that was stephen gerrard stephen gerrard yeah Gerard, yeah. He was a part of an expedition to Antarctica in 1912. And his expedition got stranded there, and then he had to go back to England. He managed to escape with his life and then managed to go back to antarctica and find his dead comrades you know what's wild is there's very few circumstances in modern life and i feel like we've hit the very few circumstances in the last year where a man escapes with his life escapes with his life well that used to be fairly normal yeah Yeah, that was like a formative experience. A harrowing escape was just a rite of passage for a boy. Right, like you have, now we have like, you have pimples.

You stand up and you got a boner in class. Yeah. You walk to the front of the class with the boner. All your friends see the boner. Yeah. Everybody talks about it for a few days. There is a boner incident. On the Wikipedia page of your teenage years, there's a... the boner everybody talks about it for a few days there is a boner incident on the wikipedia page of your teenage years there's a the boner incident of 01 who could have forgot who could have forgot no one's forgetting

it's someone's writing in your year end yearbook say hey you've come a long way since the boner incident of 01 yeah i tell you what i remember my last boner incident was a few days before 9-11 and rick adams class and i'll tell you after that day i didn't have any more no one no one remembered the boner incident right yeah like hey and thank god for that thank god 9-11 happened right i've never lived that shit down some kid who has the most embarrassing experience of his adolescence two days before 9-11 like man no one will ever fucking no one will ever forget this and then kills himself on 9-10 if you just hung if you just hung around until 9-11 just hung in there one more day or you know you you do hang in there till 9-11 just hung in there one more day or you know you you do hang in there and like you're the one guy who's like thankful for 9-11 you're like fuck yes yeah like you don't want to

admit like it's like the guy that was like 2020 was the best year of my life uh-huh i hate to admit it but it's like yeah they bailed me out of a lot of bailed me out a lot so like that's the comp that's the average experience now for adolescence but back then it was a harrowing escape with your life so like the uh this guy he wrote an account i was i was reading this book because like currently i'm like in a bit of a no man's land in terms of, like, reading. Like, I really don't want to read heavy theory or anything or history. I also don't want to get back into fiction because then I have a problem. Because once I start reading fiction, I want to start writing fiction.

And that's bad because it's a waste of time. Because I suck at it. And I just, like, so it's like I have to. I can't enjoy it without wanting to i can't i can't enjoy it without wanting to do it i can't enjoy that one do it which sucks it's a curse because i'm very mid but the thing is it's like what i need to do is i started i need to start reading like memoirs but not just any memoirs memoirs of like explorers from the 19th century like like clear liars all of them yeah yeah yeah yeah because back then they couldn't have foreseen a global encyclopedia that kind of blows your spot up

and there was really no fact checkers no fact checkers you could say whatever the hell you wanted to say unless other people from your um trip survived in which case you would have to go one by one and murder them yeah so that like you have the only surviving story of what happened yeah i was the only survivor and that also bolsters your legend too if you're the lone survivor also actually your whole party survived but you just shot them in the middle of the night so you could write a memoir. A self-aggrandizing memoir.

Well, also because they turned you out the night before. They turned your ass out. They passed you around. All the entomologists and zoologists on your scientific expedition turned your ass out. You were the Chip Bussey. I mean, I don't know.

It's like I said to you guys last night. I don't know if I have it in me to spend, like, three years on a ship with nothing but dudes. Listen. Also, dudes who are going crazy from lead poisoning, because they on the Arctic expedition,

they tried to solder the tin cans with the food provisions, but some solder got into the cans, so everybody was getting really bad lead poisoning. Can you imagine being on a fucking ship with no potable water, really? You've got to filter it out of the ocean or whatever. The boner incident on this ship is much different than it is in high school plays.

You know this new film, The Maiden Voyage of the Demeter? Yes, the Dracula. The Dracula origin story? Yeah. That was a true story yes he got lead poisoning scurvy and there was a boner incident and all of a sudden the monster that lived inside became the monster that was on the outside that's right that's right as a man can only take so much yeah so there's like there's ties here because um

the arabists and the terror were actually sent sent to Antarctica first, before they were sent to the Arctic Ocean. Before they got lost in the Arctic. This is very bizarre. I just researched all this in the last few days. So the Erebus and the Terror were sent to Antarctica. There's two volcanoes named after them. There's a Mount Erebus and a Mount Terror. Mount Erebus and the Terebus into Antarctica. There's two volcanoes named after them. There's a Mount Erebus and a Mount Terebur. Mount Erebus is an active volcano. It emits gas-like fumes that have gold flakes in them. It's like Goldschlager Volcano, bro. Do you remember that when everybody was drinking Goldschlager?

And everybody would tell you, it's got little flakes of gold so it like cuts a little bit and gets you drunker that was what everybody said which i'd never which was insane like could you imagine going back in time with one of those things like going back to like the 16th century spain like you have of a huge jug like gallon jug of goldschlager and you walk into the spanish court like i found the fountain of youth they're like oh my god they're all getting fucked up with you on goldschlager because they're drinking gold and they're like i bet the way this works is it cuts your throat

and the alcohol gets in there quicker and then it cuts your pee hole when you're peeing it out so you get drunk twice. Yeah. It just shreds your kidneys. Yeah, like that. Does Goldschlager actually have gold in it? Honestly, dude, I think it does, bro. That seems like one of those things, like,

remember when everybody said Jagermeister had deer blood in it? That would be, what if it was just like aluminum that they painted gold and they put it in the Goldschlager? Yeah. Marrow Erebus spews gas that has gold flakes in it. It has caves on it that are of extreme interest to astrobiologists

because it has bacteria in it that eats rocks. This is the interesting thing about life on other planets. Is that like, there's probably... Finally, give us a break. Some bacteria that eats other shit.

Imagine that's your life. You're like a little benthic, like a vent bacteria. Yeah. And you just feed off of fucking rocks. Yeah. Like that's... Honestly, of all the...

Like, we talk about paleo diet. Yeah. Has anyone ever talked about rock diet? Mm-mm. Rock and Goldschlager? That's your diet? Very Spartan diet. I survived 400 days off nothing but rocks and rock and gold schlager

but like here's another weird tie and as new zealand commercial flight or passenger flight what do they call that when you just get on the plane and go somewhere is that a commercial flight or is it a passenger? I don't know. I guess all flights are passenger flights. Anyways, a New Zealand plane went down on Mount Erebus in the 70s. I did not

word that well. It did not perform oral sex on the mountain. It puts its nose into one of the caves i swear to god i'll never not be 13 years old it just kind of came down smooth and stuck its nose in the in the cave goes vibrates up and down yeah like but passengers this is your captain speaking. We are trying to stimulate the clitoris of this mountain. Jamaica's mountain blow. We are trying to...

See, there's a common misconception that you have to start off rough. You have to actually work your way around the pussy lips. There's other parts besides the... There's a common misconception that you have to start off rough. You have to actually work your way around the pussy lips. There's other parts. There's other parts. You have to pay attention to the whole vulva, the entire vulva. What we're going to do now, everybody on plane is just hitting the oxygen mask. The Goldschlager oxygen mask. Anyway, a plane crashes into this mountain.

A plane crashed into Mount Erebus, and, like, 200 people died. And they blamed it on the pilot. Like, the airline and, like, the New Zealand government. Heavy's the head that wears the crown. Yeah, they said it was, like, the pilot's fault. But, like, it turned out that the government and the airlines and everything covered up this massive... There was a change in flight plans the night before, and the captain had no idea that he was flying into the mountain. It wasn't his fault at all.

They just pinned it all on this one poor bastard. Oh. I don't want to make jokes about that because 200 people perished. This was a huge scandal in New Zealand, like in the 70s and 80s. Crazy, right? Anyways, to tie it. I guess enough time has elapsed. Enough time has elapsed that we can make jokes about the plane going down.

I really just wanted to make sure it didn't happen last week or something. But to tie it back to the Erebus and the Terror, the actual ships. So they went through, tried to go through the Arctic. Wait, where's Mount Terror at? That's in the Antarctic. Is that in Kings Island? That's also in Antarctica. That's close to Mount Erebus, but it's an inactive volcano.

Okay. Whereas Erebus is active. It's got a lava lake in it actually, bro. Erebus, you can see it from space. You look down in there, it's just a little lava lake. Damn. A lava lake.

Spews gold, lava lake. A lava lake's kind of a crazy concept. Just a bunch of melted rock and shit. Yeah. It's really hot. Damn. Yeah. The Erebus and the Terror,

they tried to, and again, this is, there's a TV show based off, like, it kind of is like a speculative thing, like, what actually happened? Because no one knows. No one knows what happened to this crew, the crews of this ship. They found, like, later, like, bones from the survivors that had, like, marks on them, and that's how they deduced that they had resorted to cannibalism god man you just can you imagine like you've just withered away to nothing and you're gonna die if you don't get some nourishment soon you're like god damn uh-huh i know what the history books are gonna say that we resorted to cannibalism like that's what i'm saying like how self-conscious are you when you graduated from princeton summa cum laude i did this i did that but all anybody's gonna remember me for is the

cannibalism the fucking cannibal the cannibalism incident he just stays up all night just dealing with that like god this is worse than the boner incident when i was in high school thank god another tragedy happened then obscured it just like the brightest minds of a generation that went through yeah cambridge and oxford and everything resorting to cannibalism that's what i'm saying like how self-conscious are you when you resort to cannibalism just like ah we're doing the thing guys hey we're doing the thing, guys. Hey, we're doing the thing. I know you go on Instagram Live with your last memory, and you're like,

I did a thing. You got blood dripping down. Your friend just crawling on... Just leaving a big trip. You've got a hot dog bun, and in the middle is like... All kinds of viscera. An arm and a hand.

Yeah. I'm just, you know. Anyways, what I find most fascinating about the Erebus and Terror, the ships, not the volcanoes, is that they didn't even find these ships until 2014 and 2016. They found them in pristine condition. Like sitting up on ice, basically in the arctic that's how like unexplored the arctic is they found these ships in pristine condition they were up there the whole time the crew were not in pristine condition i take it based on what you said this is not like the titanic it's not like the fucking earth quest

or whatever the fucking name of that crew was that went to go after the titanic these ships were up on land pristine condition from 150 years ago damn that's longer than the titanic that's crazy well yeah so untouched untouched just like they found noah's ark just like they found noah's ark yeah on mount what was the name of that mountain that they said no error at was it error or was that where jesus was where he had to wrestle with the devil oh there's so many mountains in the bible because there's the mountain where jesus has the argument with the devil they get into like if it was a youtube video it'd be like jesus eviscerates devil yeah jesus eviscerates devil devil offers jesus the world and jesus jesus response response eviscerates him. That happened on a mountain.

Then there was the mountain that they put the Ark of the Covenant on, right? Then there was a mountain that they said the Ark, Noah's Ark, was on. Yeah. Then there was a mountain where Jesus was crucified. Although that sounded more like a hill. That was Golgotha. Yeah, that was a hill. Mount Calvary.

Yeah. That was more like when you live in a small town in like mississippi and there's a hill that raises up like 200 feet and everybody calls it a mountain but it's just a big hill yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah a lot of hills in the bottom yeah is it ethical to call a hill a mountain uh we should ask the damn i have um oh that's why i was buzzing because i was touching the computer and the computer is plugged into the wall are you grounded grounded? We're going to find out, aren't we? Yeah. I wanted to read you something this week from The Ethicist.

Okay. Oh, okay. Oh, man, there's some great new ones. We haven't covered The Ethicist in a couple weeks. Is it ever morally acceptable to visit a Confederate historical site? Dude, I'm already... Topical. I am already...

Dude, I am telling you. Like, there are motherfuckers who, like... And I'm one of them. Like, you know, can't so much as touch a fucking pill without, like, then just spending three weeks, like, binging and just being like, all right, I'm off the wagon. And then finally accept it three weeks later. Yeah, finally accept it three weeks binging and just being like, alright, I'm off the wagon. And then finally accept it three weeks later. Yeah, finally accept it three weeks later.

That's how I am with The Ethicist. I open it one time, and I suddenly You're in rap. I need to read all of them, dude. I am addicted to moral quandaries. As represented on the pages of the New York Times times to the ethicist hit me with

hit me with that one again which one the confederate monument yeah is it ever morally acceptable to visit a confederate historical site what is a confederate historical site that's an interesting um you could say the entire south is a confederate historical site yeah we are sitting in currently a confederate historical site yeah the question is i recently moved back home to billoxy billoxy mississippi billoxy billoxy billoxy i've never known how to say it. And I'm wondering about visiting the lavish grounds of Beauvoir, the historical site and home of Jefferson Davis.

I abhor everything the Confederacy stood for and was proud when Mississippi changed our state flag a few years ago. I abhor everything the Confederacy stood for. Uh-huh. Except the main dude's house. It seems pretty bitchin', gonna i'm gonna see what's happening down there i'm gonna see the granddaddy's quarters like i'd say i afford everything nazi germany stood for i really want to see where hitler hanging out, though. Yeah. Taking dumps. Yeah.

I also enjoy history and historical sites, however, and Beauvoir is the biggest one in the area by far. This little fucking dandy motherfucker name is in his estate, Beauvoir. Beauvoir. Also, Kentucky. My problem is that the site charges an admission fee. The property is owned by the Mississippi Division of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. See, there's the fairness. That's the rub.

There's the rub, buddy. No, man. You're going to have to forego that. Or break in. Because you're trespassing on the grounds and just looking at stuff. They find you. You're looking around. I just needed to see it.

I accidentally did that at William Faulkner's house one time. Damn, really? I didn't break into his house. I just kind of did the tour and forgot the part where you play it first. I was like, oh, yeah, here's. Yeah. It's not really a story anyway i went i went to uh hank williams childhood home in um somewhere in alabama yeah i can't remember the name of that town but um we walked in it was open i was with

some friends of mine we walked in it was open there was no one up front we were just standing there we stood there for like maybe five ten minutes and started looking around the rooms and everything eventually this very old woman walks in from the back of the house and she says i'm sorry i was out back watching the train cars pass this muggy november weather gives me a case of the horrible just watching the train cars fast Just watching the train cars. Just watching the train cars. You do a lot of that in the South. You just kind of find something boring to do.

And you just watch it. And just watch it and contemplate. And think, how can I quit from killing myself? The ethicist says, What can you say about the sons of confederate veterans not long ago the group exhumed the remains of nathan bedford forest and had them ceremonially reburied in columbia tennessee where the csv owns and operates the national confederate museum um alcatel dude that is really some that is some like mystical racist shit. Like exhuming the remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest and like relocating them to a place where you think they'll be saved.

The only word to describe that is hated. Yeah, dude. That's some bad stuff. Yeah. Where his bones consistent with cannibalism. That's my question. Oh, dude, I think we have a non-profit ethicist question okay um the previous columns question hold on let's go back here my salary is too high is it wrong to

stay in my job this is a non-profit oh that's buddy. Ethical question, bro. Oh, buddy. Less than a year ago, I switched from a job at a non-profit whose mission I was deeply passionate about to a more senior role at a non-profit in a different sector. I was very underpaid previously and nearly doubled my salary in this new role. Because this role is outside my field of expertise, however, my job satisfaction is not nearly as high as it was in my previous job. Outside my field of expertise, however, my job satisfaction is not nearly as high as it was in my previous job. What worries me is that my salary is about 20 or 30% higher than comparable jobs at similar prices. Oh, all right, fucking Dudley Do-Right. I'm worried I'm getting paid too much.

I'm worried I'm taking other people's money. Though my employers hired me for my years of experience, it's now clear to me that the job doesn't actually require my level of experience. That's a hilarious realization that everybody eventually comes to at a non-profit. Yeah, it's like, yeah, the thing you want to do when you work a non-profit job is you want to take advantage of all the benefits of that, you know what I mean, the flexibility and whatever, but the thing you don't want to do is play hooky too long till your betters figure out

everything runs, hums along fine without you. That's probably good advice at any job, but at a non-profit. Yes. You know. Yeah. It's more easy to see.

Yeah. What worries me is that my salary is... Oh, I already read that. This non-profit could easily pay a significantly less experienced person significantly less money to do exactly what i do this leads me to the part i am culpable in i do not need to work 40 hours a week to do my job well and i don't i meet every deadline attend every meeting reach every goal but i also take long breaks and sign off early in my previous jobs my passion for the field made me take on extra tasks and work extra hours but because i don't

feel the same about this job but i do not go above and beyond am i doing am i doing wrong by using up extra resources at a job where i am not willing to go above and beyond should i tell them they created an incorrectly scaled position wait a second wait. Wait a second. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Did the ethicist weigh in on either of these two? Yeah, he weighed in on this. Are we circling back to the... To the Confederate one? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, the Confederate one, that was it. That was... What did he say about it? He said... He said... Part of the standard myth of the lost cause he just kind of goes and talks about how it's kind of fucked up to give the sons of the confederate veterans money okay good okay now this one yeah sorry i jumped i jumped ahead i i saw no i'm telling you i have

a problem you have to have a problem you gotta catch them all i get i can't even i can't even go about them coherently anymore i just like i see non-profit ethical thing and i i like i go to it like spotting a line of coke across the room like flies on pie amazing anyways the ethicist was right about that don't give the sons of confederacy your money they also the sons of confederacy gets a fuckload of money from the Tennessee... You know, from the state legislature. Probably from the state legislature. So, I don't know. What's your

ethical answer to the salary worker? Or to the non-profit worker? I wouldn't even say a word. I'd smack him in the back of the head. Shut the fuck up. If you spot somebody's tail, you don't say a word i'd smack him in the back of the head shut the fuck up somebody's tail you don't say a word you know yeah it's like why um the the line that got me the most was this is the type of motherfucker that finds a wallet with two thousand dollars in it turns it back in they give him a stick of bubble gum for it right Right, like, the thing you do is you take the $2,000

and you give the wallet back and you say, I just found it, like, there was no money in it. Yeah, there was no money in it. Look, there's nothing wrong about that. And then you say something about, you can't trust anybody these days, can you? And you start hand-wringing about, like, woke-ism.

Yeah, you talk about crime. Okay, well, thanks for bringing my wallet back. Then you just start talking about how everything's going to hell in San Francisco. You know how, like, people are guilty as hell trying to throw you off the scent by over-correcting and over-sharing? Crime is outrageous. It's outrageous. Am I right, brother?

Yeah, it's insane right now. It's outrageous. Am I right, brother? Yeah. It's outrageous right now. The line that gets me is, this nonprofit could easily pay a significantly less experienced person significantly less money to do exactly what I do. Another thing that he's doing is he's kind of like, he's kind of fucking it up for everybody. That's exactly what I was going to say.

It's like, you don't need to say that. Don't say that they should pay another person less money. People in nonprofits already get paid shit. Yeah. Granted, this is probably an executive director or something. That's Ben Jalus of the Sierra Club saying that. Yeah. The ethicist says,

It's a decent impulse to think about whether you're providing your employees with the best value for their money, but let's, your employers. Hey, the ethicist is like walking the line here. He's like, but,

I mean, me for example, I earn my salary every week with this column. Like he probably does get paid like $100,000 to answer, to field ethical questions. That's my dream job. My dream job is people... Do you want to be that? He needs to watch his ass

because you're on his heels. I'm hot on his heels. Nah. I love that he says it's a decent impulse to think about whether you're providing your employers with the best value for their money. Never do that. If you're a worker, never consider whether you are providing your employers with the best value for their money. Their money is your money, my friend.

The thing is, if they're not giving you 100% of your money, I hate to break this to you. They need to be considered whether they're giving you bang for your buck. He said, let's put the issues you raise in perspective. First, your job apparently makes a meaningful contribution to the work of a worthwhile organization. You're not marketing Marlboros.

Your organization has a mission that though it isn't close to your heart, represents a social good. Second, you're doing your job well. It doesn't take you 40 hours a week to do so, but that must be true for lots of people. Third, salaries for occupations are distributed around an average, and it's customary for those with more experience to be paid more. The real problem is that you're not as excited by this job as you were by your previous one,

so a big question is whether you could reconfigure your work to make it more rewarding, both to you and to the organization. You think your employers would be better off hiring someone else to do what you're doing for less money? That's true only if you take the jobs remit as fixed. One way to contribute to an organization is to shape your job around your talents.

Good managers know this. Thanks, ethicist. Thank you, ethicist. People did weigh in. Readers responded to that one. They had a lot of thoughts. They said, uh... They said, I disagree with you, Ethicist. The salaries

of non-profit executives are published on Charity Navigator, and I have discontinued supporting non-profits that pay excessive salaries. Be a hero and offer to take a pay cut if you deem your salary is excessive. Dang. Interesting.

So people are firing back at the brass. They are. Yeah, the ethicist, he opened, he... Just opened a can of worms. He did. He really did. What else do we got on the... I dated a celebrity. Do I have to tell my wife?

Huh. Depends on the celebrity, dude. Jesus Christ. It's like this is, I love when these like turn into humble brags. Hey. Yeah, I bagged Selma Hayek

in the 90s. Is that something I should disclose to my employer? And I will say to them what Jesus said to the Sanhedrin Council in the Bible. The people that would, you know, go and make a big show of their prayers and their piety. You have your reward.

I've been married for nearly 40 years, and for no particular reason, neither my wife nor I felt compared to share much about our prior love lives. There was nothing much noteworthy to share on my part, but that changed about three years into the marriage. A young woman with whom I had a summer-long relationship as a teenager was beginning to make waves in the music industry. Waves that would continue to the point... Oh, I thought he was like, three years into the marriage, I had an affair with Mandy Moore. with uh I had an affair with Mandy Moore

three years into our marriage I traded my wife in on a newer model that newer model uh pop burgeoning pop star

Stacy D'Orico was she Christian yeah you remember she was she had like one kind of crossover she had a crossover hit. Waves that would continue to the point where her music is now instantly recognizable to most people.

This is a humble brag. Yeah, I made every girl I was ever with squirt. And then, you know, but I never told my wife. Should I tell her? Should I tell my wife that women the world over consider me a fantastic lover? I left a trail of squirt behind me for 20 years. Everywhere I went, there'd be squirt. Let's go.

Just a humble brag. I love it. I'm in the habit of playing this artist's music, in part because of the personal connection and memories it evokes. Dude, what? Dude, like. This is absurd. I'm not going to judge anybody,

but you're dangerously close to the Jonathan Safran forward territory there. Dangerously. Not long ago, my wife remarked that I am a, quote, big fan. I smiled, nodded, and changed the subject. This guy's such a cornball. My fear is that sharing this connection with my wife would jeopardize my continued enjoyment of this artist's body of work. Bro, she's literally not going to give the first shit. She's just going to be like, damn, that's crazy.

I love, though, that the choice. But, like, also, this guy's, like, 35 and, like, losing his hair or something. I want you to think about what choice he just set up here. I don't think he realizes it. He's like, there's only two ways out of this. Either go two ways in my marriage of 40 years or continue enjoying this artist's music. I know it's probably Ariana Grande, though.

Not she, like, mandates a bunch of dates. Well, he says I've been married for nearly 40 years. This is the guy. You have to triangulate it to 40 years ago. Like, who were some burgeoning artists 40 years ago 40 40 is what he says i've been married for nearly 40 years 40 40 yeah well okay i don't something i'm not understanding here so like mid 80s madonna it could have been wait hold on a second hold on a second hold on a second that changed how many years ago three changed three years into his nearly 40 years marriage.

Oh. So this was, yeah, this was someone in the late 80s. The time to say that was when, yeah, like when that song first came out, I was like, damn, you know what's crazy? Like we dated briefly in high school. Can you imagine like being 40 years been like listen i have something i have to tell you as i have hated keeping this secret from you for so long but but yeah i did date pat benatar for three weeks in my teen years like the secrets people hold on to and that's his secret that like he

kylie minogue looked at him one time on the subway he's like yeah i fucked her but i can't tell my wife listen we met eyes and we had a connection oh man he says no jealousy i'm sure just gentle ribbing i could do without an ethical omission okay so the ethicist responds so for decades of married life you never mentioned your summer with well readers can fill in their fave from the category of famous female pop singers who emerged in the mid-80s this is surprising and yet the liaison doesn't have the kind of inherent significance that would make its disclosure obligatory. Every couple develop a cultural microclimate, their own set of expectations, conventions, values.

Whether your failure to mention this relationship is ethically troubling depends on the norms of your microclimate. Some couples believe in telling each other every detail about their past. You and your wife have settled into a different habit. Not me. There's many things. I just want to keep buried so the question is whether your wife would feel betrayed and hurt by your having kept silent about this summer of love or whether as he suggests he simply would be amused assuming your assessment is correct you could offer her a deal tell her your tell her you'll explain why you're fond of this music,

but only if she promises not to tease you about it. If that doesn't strike you as a good plan, well, you can carry on without much remorse. Plenty of people would have long dined out on such a connection. It's possible to admire the fact that you've never been tempted to do so. Listen, honey. Listen, honey. Don't fill his head with that.

That's bad advice. Listen, baby, there's something I've been meaning to tell you, and I'm sorry. I feel I've betrayed you over 40 years, but I did go watch Return of the Jedi with Sheila E. Just like, I feel utterly betrayed, Stephen. This marriage is over. This marriage is over. This marriage is over.

It's over. What the fuck? Oh, you want to go live the glamorous life with her? Fine. Here's what you've thrown away. 40 happy years. What a bozo. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Not a bozo, just a cornball. Let's see jesus um my best friends are taking ozempic can i share my disapproval my wife lives in it oh wait we've covered that one we have a taylor swift concert crisis how do we solve it oh boy can i resell my taylor swift concert tickets for thousands of dollars look at all these fucking taylor swift ethical dilemmas um well that is a that is a uh a topical question because you know a lot of people are taylor fevers in the air yeah dude you know it is ethical dilemma it an ethical morass. Isn't that what they call it? A quagmire?

A quagmire. A morass. A morass, even. A thief returned my stolen bike. Do I owe him a reward? My 25-year-old son was using my mountain bike for his grass-cutting business when it was stolen. He felt bad. I was mad.

I ran an ad. He felt bad. I felt was mad i ran an ad he felt bad i felt mad i ran an ad bike oh my god they didn't they didn't mountain bike stolen 500 reward no questions asked to my surprise i got a response from someone and we set a time to meet then i became worried that i was being set up to be robbed so i called my son next thing i knew there were six hulking 20 somethings tagging along with me in the minivan i don't laugh at this is going at the agreed upon meeting spot the guy appeared with my bike in hand i got out then the six big guys got out and while i'm looking the bike over they said in no uncertain terms that it was not necessary for me to pay for the bike. The guy looked scared and I wanted things to end safely.

So I peeled off half the stack. How about $2.50? The guy took the money and ran off. Should I have instead given him... Peeled off half the stack. Isn't that a quarter of a stack if it's $2.50? Peeled off about half a rack. The reason I love the ethicist is because it offers an insight into the minds like the neuroses and anxieties and problems of the type of person that

actually bothers to write into this the type of person who okay doesn't know that a stack is $1,000. Who doesn't know that, like, who... By his calculation, Andre 3000 would be Andre's six stack. Who, in a situation like this, would get his son's football buddies to back him up as bodyguards. Boys, hey, listen, I need three to six street toughs to hop in the van with me we're gonna go we're gonna go shake this guy down just the squarest people on the fucking planet i guess is what i'm saying oh my god the practice the ethicist

responds the practice of offering no questions asked rewards can be a useful one the victims get their goods back for less than it would cost to buy replacements. The thieves get some money and pay no penalty, whereas simply putting the goods on the market may put them at risk of exposure and punishment. Win-win. On the other hand, the practice may itself promote petty theft. An opportunistic thief can think, hey, maybe they'll offer me a no questions asked reward.

This is why many governments are reluctant to pay off hostage takers. Leary of encouraging more of the same. The stakes are far smaller in cases like yours, but the same logic argues against honoring the practice. It's also relevant that by your account, your six-man football team wasn't threatening violence. It was convened to prevent it. Yeah, I don't... Notice that these arguments aren't about

the rights and wrongs of a particular case. They're about the merits of having a rule. A rule that says you'll honor this practice or that you won't. So-called rule utilitarians. This is why I would make a good ethicist. I'm not going to throw anything at you about so-called rule utilitarians. You're not going to get anything

of that from me. How would you approach this question? I think That So There's several things you gotta do First You just killed him

Well Dave You feel big Like a big man now That you and You and your Band of thugs Cracked some skulls For this

For this buck Belittle him And condescend to him Yes And then what's hilarious You feel like a big man now? He's like, I'm not giving you,

I'm not meeting your demands, what you asked for. I'll meet you halfway. Like, yeah, like, in the end, like, why bring all those football dudes if you're still gonna give them 250 bucks? Like, be consistent about it.

If you're gonna shake them down. If you're gonna use gangster rules about tag teams. Yeah, like, commit to it. If you're gonna shake him down... If you're gonna use gangster roots about tactics... Commit to it. It's like Jack in Breaking Bad when he shoots Hank. Sorry if you've not watched that. Oh, shit. You just spoiled the whole show,

bro. Well, Hank doesn't die. He just gets a little owie. Yeah, he gets a little fouchy. Ew, I shirt you show. I guess the way I would handle this is, yes, you're right. You came to me with an ethical question about the thief, but I am going to turn it back around on you.

Was it ethical to enlist those 20-somethings in a potentially... Those 20-something football players in a potentially violent situation? What if the thief came armed and he mowed all of you and your sons and his friends down? Is that responsible? Or what if Donald Trump was the back thief?

So you got six beautiful boys in uniform, right? No, you gotta... They all look great. You look like shit. They all look great. Big muscles on these guys. And then all of a sudden,

Trump turns them on you and they just beat the hell out of you. Yeah, he's able to manipulate them into thinking you're the bad guy. This could have gone so many different ways and I think that's irresponsible on the part the part of the bike owner oh man i mean to me you gotta take matters into your own hands to me this is like death wish go buy a fucking gun like a man yeah when you walk up to him in the park blow his his fucking head off, and then take your bike and your $500 and go home.

I wonder if anybody's ever confessed to a murder in the pages of the ethicist. Like, kind of coded. Dear ethicist. Hey, dear ethicist. My cousin Chuck took care of the thing that time, uh and what if that thing was who knows i mean nobody knows who right what it could have been me and my friends back in 1988 one of which went on to become a mob boss in the greater boston area yeah while i became a meager laundromat owner under his auspices, we committed a murder.

We committed an act of extreme violence that rent apart a community. You're just describing the plot of Mystic River. That's what I'm... The Sean Penn movie. Yeah. Mystic River. Yeah. Dear Ephesus, me and some friends of mine started a prison football team. With Burt Reynolds. uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh

uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh

uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh The headline sure is great. I've hidden my trust fund for 15 years. Do I finally tell my spouse? I have strong feelings on this one. I did see this one. I am a 44-year-old man and have been married to my spouse for 10 years. We've been together for 15. Unbeknownst to my spouse, I have a trust fund that provides me with a monthly income of twenty five

thousand dollars jesus that's half of what i make in a year for all of those that's actually more than half of what i'm making here for all of those wondering if i'm please up your patreon those of you wondering if i'm rich off patreon when we first met i said that i worked as a consultant and they have never questioned this. My spouse, a dedicated doctor, works long hours and doesn't like to discuss work. I hate to break this to you, but if she has half a brain and you say I'm in consulting, she already knows you don't have a job.

She just doesn't want to hurt your feelings. Every rich dickhead I've ever met, and you ask them when they do this, I'm in consulting. Over the years. Over what? Yeah, a little this, a little that. You're either in the mafia

or you're fucking got a dress right. How much money is that a year? What is 25 times 12? 300,000, right? That's incredible, dude. Holy fuck, man. 25,000. Life sucks so bad.

Imagine if you had a trust. Imagine if you got $25,000 just dropped in your lap every month out of the air. I know. I'd be so sick. The ethical dilemma here is not telling your spouse. It's whether you should have a trust. Whether you should jump off a fucking bridge for doing nothing. For basically being a layabout.

Over the years, I've repeatedly assured my spouse that they don't need to work as my income is secure and stable. They are, however, passionate about their career and have chosen to continue working. Yeah. I just went to school for eight years just to fucking, yeah, just to, what, hang out with you all day? Yeah. I actively serve on various boards, but i have never held a full-time job and don't plan to this guy rules like i'll be honest with you i love this gravy train i don't plan on stopping it anytime soon our lifestyle is comfortably upper middle class and i am content

with it my dilemma is whether i should comfortably upper middle class i don't know how you do this okay my dilemma is whether i should reveal the truth about my trust fund to my spouse. My family... To my spouse. My spouse. My family members have always advised against disclosing our financial situation. But the weight of this secret is becoming difficult to bear. Why...

He doesn't explain why he's kept it a secret. Why... She's a doctor. Why would she give give a fuck why is he keeping this a secret also too here's my question is like do you think she's going to respect you less i mean she probably will if she kind of knows the trick but she probably suspects it she probably already thinks you're dirt she i mean like you're probably just a placeholder like while you know what i mean if you're a consultant layabout who makes 300 000 a year because your dad owned like exxon mobil also here's the here's the litmus test here's what i would tell this guy okay kind of be a fly on a wall at a party sometime uh-huh when somebody asks her what her husband does and if she's on skates then you'll know but if she just says full-throatedly oh he's a

consultant and you know uh-huh nothing to nothing to disclose yeah my husband's a little bitch yeah that's his job he's a little bitch, my husband's kind of a pussy boy. He poops all day. He just poops all day and plays video games. He's a little bitch. She says that with a big smile. Meanwhile, I save lives. Yeah, like why?

This is what I'm saying. She probably already looks down on you. She's a doctor. She probably has an inflated sense of her own self-worth all right you probably don't even really factor into her world in any way she looks at you like a bag of meat she wants to cut open she's gonna practice on you and then one day they're gonna find your bones i was like i don't what i'm not understanding is why he can't tell her. I mean, I understand that he can't tell her.

But why? I like that the guy has shame about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? At least he has some shame about being a fucking layabout. Well, and what level, what degree of blood like blood money culpability are we talking here because if it's a trust fund you have to assume that like he's an heir of some like corporate uh lineage i would assume like he's like a very minor rockefeller or something right right right

a third cousin he's like a third cousin twice removed of J.D. Rockefeller. So it's like, yeah, how much blood are we talking that is he being bought off with? I don't understand why he can't tell her. I don't understand why he thinks that a doctor would be opposed to that in any way. You know what I'm saying? Here's my hunch of how this is gonna happen. He goes to her, Honey, I gotta tell you something.

I have a trust fund, and I don't really do anything meaningful for society. And she's gonna be saying, How'd you get the kids at three? Oh, shit! She'll forget about it by dinner time. I kind of figured you just did something.

Right, because she knows you're too big of a pussy to be in the mob. She's like, my husband's not out there like shaking people down and like cleaning up, you know, dissolving bodies in like tubs of lye. My husband's not doing that. You know what I mean? The ethicist

says, avid moviegoers are familiar with men who, like you, only pretend to have jobs. Think of Laurent Conte's timeout, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata, or John Wells' The Company Men. Unlike those fellows,

you're not hiding a hard luck story, rather the opposite. You're a little luck story rather the opposite you're a little bitch rather the opposite but you must be aware that the normal understanding of marital intimacy includes transparency concerning the basic facts about your economic life you won't be surprised then that's a fancy way of saying baby i'm not lie to you. I don't have a goddamn pot to piss in. I don't understand how they do taxes together. Like, wouldn't you find out that way? Is this like, he's getting-

Maybe they file separately or- I guess. I don't know. You won't be surprised then to hear me say that your spouse is entitled to know you have a large private income, no job, and no inclination to get one. I think that's fair. I think that's fair i think that's fair like why i don't understand like there there's so many other things going on in this relationship what's the that thing you can't hit me i'm just i'm just a little boy that's what i would do if i was him yeah Yeah. I'd say, yes, I have a large income I've been hiding from you. I don't plan on changing that.

This is how I'm going to live. Don't be mad at me. I'm just a little boy. I don't understand. There's clearly some things going on in this relationship to where, like, if he has no job but is getting a lot of money from somewhere, why hasn't she asked yet? Why is she not curious? Yeah. Or is she?

Like, why, you know, has he lied about it? Has she ever asked? Like, where do you get, how do you get in, well, I guess what I'm saying, how do you get into a long-term marriage? I wish I was a Scouts friend and I kind of knew from the identifying factors I would go to her and be like, listen, I won't

tell you anything, but Dave's in the mafia. He's going to tell you that he's got a trust fund. He doesn't. He doesn't. There's no trust fund. No, he's gonna tell you that he's got a trust fund he doesn't he doesn't there's no trust no he's in murder fryer murder yeah he's a part of murder i hate to tell you this you're married to a bad dude she looks across the room and he's like playing dominoes and it would be the biggest favor you ever pay this guy he's just like a Yeah, you would instantly become more attractive to your wife in that moment. She's like, fuck, I gotta fuck with you.

And he'd be like, man, she sucked my fucking dick so good last night. And I would be like, you're welcome, bro. You're like, what? Oh, I told her you're an organized crime. She thinks you're cool now, actually. Yeah, I saw him one time. He murdered three men in a Russian bathhouse with his bare hands while he was naked. It was crazy.

If you've seen that movie, Eastern Promises, it was just like that. Well, it's Viggo Mortensen. No, it's not Viggo Mortensen. It is. Yeah, Viggo Mortensen. Maybe a first date wasn't the right moment to bring up your trust fund still by the time things got serious with this person you should have certainly fessed up as i've remarked before secrets tend to grow more burdensome the longer they have been

kept facts that one could have casually revealed on day five of a relationship can become shattering on day 500 let alone day 5000. So you can compare this one to the very first one we read about the guy who had a fling with Whitney Houston in the summer of 1987. That's what I said. Honey, listen.

I wanted to dance with somebody in the summer of 87. I wanted to feel the heat with somebody. Which one of those two? With somebody like Whitney Houston. Which one of these two men is the bigger bitch? Because both of these are secrets that are so inconsequential in the confines of the relationship.

You would assume, I guess, unless your doctor wife is just like, I fucking hate people who have trust funds and sit on their asses all day. That would be funny if he was like, getting ready to tell her, and then she just comes on and is like, listen to what Melissa at work told me. Can you believe this?

She was dating this guy for like 10 years, and he had a trust fund that didn't tell her. Like, I would kill somebody. He's like, oh, yeah, that's bad. What kind of asshole does that? What kind of asshole would do that? Goes to the garage, stupid, fucking stupid. You should have just told her on day five you're fucking loaded bro imagine having that as your secret you're secretly wealthy as fuck

you can't acknowledge it like you can't benefit from it it's its own prison like you can't you can't imagine being rich and you can't even floss what the fuck are these people dude well the funny the thing about it is is he has ostensibly been telling her a lie for many years that he is in consult he's not like it isn't like it is a deception it is you're right you know that is true he has been lying oh man how long have they been married did he say 15 they've been together 15 years married for 10 oh that's tough a 15 year lie about what you do i had a cousin one time that

lied about having a job for two years, and he was just going to the casino every day and playing cards. You can keep that up for probably two to three years. Yeah, well, eventually he had to come clean. It was the most humiliating thing in my life. Because it's one of those things, like, if I would have told her after a month, it would have been fine. Right.

After two years. We had to work through that a little bit. Well, after 15 years. You just look up one day and, well, I've been living. Well, she probably knows. It's kind of like if the ethicist received a letter one day that was like, if um the ethicist received a letter one day that was like so i am a prominent civil rights activist in the greater spokane washington area i sit on the board of the naacp i am a vocal uh you know militant activist for the rights of black people in this country.

The problem is that I've been pretending to be a black person for the last 15 years. It's like Rachel Dolezal writes a thing to the ethics. But that's the thing. Everybody knows the answer. Everybody knows already that she's not actually black. It's kind of

got to be the same thing with this, right? Come on, Steven. We've known for years yeah you could have just told us you were rich yeah you could have been living it up you could have had a yacht he's like going out of his way this guy is actually wasting his precious time on earth just like trying to prove he's not rich right oh man this just says you shouldn't wait any longer it will only be worse if your to prove he's not rich. Right. Oh, man. It says, you shouldn't wait any longer. It will only be worse if your spouse stumbles

on the situation later, but don't expect an easy ride. Your spouse will have reason to wonder what else you have been hiding and why you didn't feel you could trust them with the truth.

And then you'll both have to reflect on how your deception was eased by your spouse's apparent lack of interest in how you spend your days. Exactly. It might help to take these issues to a couple's counselor in a movie version the third act reveal might be that your spouse too has a pretend job but in real life she's not really a doctor it's like i'll have something i have to tell you she's like i'm not a medical doctor

i'm a doctor of philosophy i have a a doctorate and a PhD in philosophy. When you drop me off at work, you drop me off at the hospital, and I wait until you drive off, and then I walk to the university. I'm a doctor in sociology. But in real life, I would anticipate hurt and confusion, not comedy. One way we violate the tenets of a trusting relationship is by failing to extend trust in the first place. Oh, shit. Well, that's the ethicist.

I think that brings us up to speed on all the most recent ethicists. The readers responded to the bike thief. Bruce writes, Two wrongs don't make a right. If you promise to pay, then pay up. If you don't want to get involved with criminals that don't agree to meet them. Oh, man.

If you are afraid you'll be assaulted, then spend the money on a new bike and write the situation off as bad luck. Yeah. Also, it's like... Bruce is right. If you're the guy that can just peel off uh well what you call a half a stack but it's really a quarter of a stack you're the type of guy can just go buy a new trick you know that's

right if a person promises a reward jerry says if a person promises a reward they are obligated to live up to their word not doing so is dishonorable and suggests that both victim and thief lack integrity i think that this issue of integrity is a matter separate from whether the thief theoretically deserves to be rewarded for stealing and returning the bike i do agree that if you say you're gonna pay the thief you don't get to go there and then retroactively be like oh yeah fuck you i got my sons muscled up hot boys in the back of the car now i'm gonna give you two half you don't get to go you don't get to decide in the moment if you if you said up front you were

gonna pay him 500 yeah you should have made that decision you should have said we'll see when we get i got the muscle boys so i'm gonna i'll tell you what i'll give you half now scram and then the guy's just like oh fuck that's a gum up oh man i've got no overhead in this venture right now yeah i don't know imagine the bike thief's just like very confused he probably didn't he probably wasn't even a thief he probably found the bike yeah just wanted a 500 buck reward yeah and then was like oh my fuck i'm gonna get my ass kicked for doing the right thing i don't know do you have any thoughts of advice for our i think that about yeah no i guess that about covers it there's others my friend is mistreating

her nanny should i say something does my fiance love me or does he just want U.S. citizenship? Can I use chat GPT for the tedious parts of my job? What's the Taylor Swift concert crisis? Let's just see real fast. Let's just dip our toe in real fast. I have a problem. You're going to have to take this computer out of my hand. I think I'm going to have to pry it out of my hands.

You're going to have to pry it out of of my hands. I think I'm going to have to pry it out of your hands. You're going to have to pry it out of my hands. We have a Taylor Swift concert crisis. Three friends and I were able to buy only two tickets to the Taylor Swift Heiress Tour. Resell tickets are now absurdly expensive. Our dilemma is how to decide which two friends get to go to the concert. Whoa. Although all four of us would love to go to the concert, one friend and I are arguably the biggest Swifties of the group.

How do you quantify group. How do you quantify that? How do you quantify how big of a Swifty you are? That said, I already attended an ERA's tour concert last month with my family. I would still love to go again, but maybe I should recuse myself, given that my three friends haven't been. It's also

worth noting that there was an unequal effort put into procuring the tickets. For example, two of my friends didn't submit to be entered for registered fan status which could have improved our odds of getting tickets is there a fair way to divide the tickets or is the best option to choose a random number generator here's what i say i think again i have to go back to scripture i think what you need to do is the two friends that helped the least need to cut themselves in half. Down the length of their body or at the waist? Right.

And then everybody, the four of you, half of everybody gets to go. Gets to go and do errors. You combine the two halves. Yeah, right. That's the only democratic way to do this. The Bible honestly had the best...

Yeah, it was like cut off your hand. Common sense solutions for a changing world. That's what the Bible's subtext should be. Or the little... Oh, man. That's incredible. Well, okay. I think that about covers it for us.

I'm going to do the right thing now i'm i have control over this it does not have control over me the ethicist i have control over the ethicist i can stop whenever i want sure you can i can stop whenever i want i know you can so i'm gonna go ahead and stop it right now uh thanks for listening, audience. If you would like to hear more of this program, Tom and I, you know, we had a strict policy of not discussing the Neo-Confederate

Dobro player in the woods on the main feed because we want to keep that on Patreon. You have to pay for those takes. Yeah, you want that shit, you're going to have to pony up for it. Why should Oliver Anthony be the only one to profit off his ascent i did see a tweet oh i think it was the saving country music dickhead who was like now everyone will jump in and profit off of you know get their own take in and profit off of this viral moment and everybody in the comments was like like you're doing right now. Like you're doing.

Well, I was doing it before anybody else was doing it. So, my, my. It's like, yes, dude. That is exactly what I'm going to do. Who fucking cares? That's the whole, that's the economy we're in now, my friend. Oh, boy.

So, anyways. Before we go, I would be remiss not to mention Eggos Brunch in a Jar. Eggos, for those of you that might not know, but maybe you'll know by the time this airs, is getting into the booze space with a thing that's a mason jar where they apparently put some sort of boozy beverage in there. It looks like eggnog. Yeah, I think it is. And you can garnish it with epic bacon.

You can put bacon in it and an orange. Doesn't it have an orange? Or no, a waffle. A waffle. A waffle. But one of the first flavors that are rolling out is called Appalachian Sippin' Cream. Okay. I have a lot of questions about this.

Obviously, I am not native to Appalachia. Lived here for over a decade. Don't you forget it, pal. Never have encountered anything called Sippin' Cream. Oh, you know, everybody's got their Sippin' Cream. Outside of a gay bathhouse, of course. Everybody's got their sit outside of a gay bathhouse of course everybody's got their sipping cream that's all we do is we sit on the porch and sip our sipping cream sipping cream pies appalachian sipping cream pies we're sipping cream i don't know what what is sipping cream I have no idea is it like churned butter

like we made boozy butter you can just drink it it'll give you a heart attack in two years what the fuck is sipping cream that you can put bacon in and a waffle oh my god

and get shit faced in the morning I'm gonna say this right here I'm gonna say this right here right now and this is the last word on it the last word we have to stop this right here. I'm going to say this right here, right now. And this is the last word on it. The last word? We have to stop this shit.

We have to. We have to stop. If we got to stop making country music, that's just the price. That's just the cost of doing business. What we have to do is we have to stop this grotesquery, this fetishization of something that's not even real to begin with. It was just designated like, you know, 80 years ago or something. It is funny.

It's the same side of the coin that Matt Walsh invokes about authenticity. Yeah. It's all consumer-driven. Authenticity is itself a fetishized commodity. It's not real. If they wanted real Appalachian sipping cream, it would be like buttermilk with cornbread in it, like we used to eat when I was a kid.

It would be like everybody would... Be soggy as fuck. Yeah, you wouldn't want that shit. Also, I can't imagine a worse way to start my day than getting shit-faced on some Appalachian sipping cream and bacon just like 11 a.m runs rolls around and you're just fucking hammered because you've drank an entire pint of appalachian sipping cream from eggos that's a hot day i'll say i can't honestly think of a worse... Yeah, there's not a worse way to start the day.

There's certain things I think of, like drinking Southern Comfort. Oh, yeah. Like I can still taste it and feel the gag coming. You know what I mean? Because it's disgusting. Well, that's the thing. You're not drinking Appalachian Sipping Cream at night. No, that's a day pursuit.

That's a day Well, it's called brunch in a bottle. Y'all. There it goes, y'all. Basically, it's marketed specifically to alcoholics. It's like hair of the dog.

Yeah. El pelo de perro. Do you need a socially acceptable way to shit face at 11 a.m we've got you fam we're just we got you just look at us we just did a simple waffle company no harm can come from that but i'm serious though we need to put a moratorium on country music college football just till we get this sorted out it's bad dude, dude. It's all bad. It's gotten so bad.

It's gotten out of control. It's reached a fever pitch, you might say. It has. When some dipshit named Oliver Anthony is trending over Maui fires. Dude, that's true. That's how you know it's bad. That is true. Some guy, nobody gave two shits about

three weeks ago you're right like matt the the fires in hawaii literally got like second or third place trending yeah to that it's gonna be so i kind of feel bad for this guy because when they're on to the next thing here in a few weeks like he's gonna have a severe identity crisis you know what i mean i've wondered i don't think he's gonna land on his feet as well as the yodeling kid i've wondered that though the yodeling kid though the yodeling kid i put out a record not long ago the yodeling kid's not tied to any political uh affiliate right like so he can do he can do prog rock and like that's a good marketable man hey

that man is look come watch the yodeling kid do an 18 minute like flute solo song yeah watch watch the yodeling while robert frip noodles over yeah watch the the yodeling kid cover cans togo mogo in its entirety you can do that but that guy's pretty hemmed in. What he does have going for him, though, is the whole right wing. Just look at all the mediocrities that get pushed to the surface in that world. Like Kyle Rittenhouse is now famous for murdering two people. This guy will probably get a nice sinecure. Is that what they call it? Is it sinecure or something?

Is that like a job? Is it like tenure? I think so. That's one of those words I always come across and I'm too embarrassed to admit I don't know what it

means. Same. Same. I would look it up but if I open my computer again I'm going right back in French.

I can't open my computer again. We might need to take that. That's a laptop boy. Oh man. All right.

Go check out the Patreon. Hey, go check out the Patreon. What was the video that Cicada was watching this morning? Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man.

That was good. All right. Well, go check out the Patreon. We'll see all y'all later. We'll see all y'all later. We'll see all y'all later. Bye.