Trillbilly Worker's Party - **UNLOCKED** If It Sucks Ass It's Real

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Well folks, it's been a long week of sickness, natural disaster, and general holiday stress and insanity here in the state of Kentucky. So unfortunately there will be no free episode this week. We will however be releasing the most recent Patreon episode, and encourage you to go through the back catalogue to listen to your favorites. Our sincerest apologies, and please don't hold it against us. There are many support/mutual aid funds helping the victims of the tornado. Here's a list of various organizations and individuals helping out: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YTzQFT4ANDcChivFDfUW9oC0gJWDyT9FHoDrAD2VA7A/htmlview

some people are calling squid game an unflinching portrayal of the wealth gap what do you call it have you have you watched squid game yet no i've not watched it yet i i love the uh here's what i here's what I strive to be. I want to be one of those guys that's like several months late to a cultural moment, but I'm unaware of it, but I go around telling people, hey man, have you watched that Squid Game on Netflix?

I thought about doing that with like... You pick something, like the best example would be like the Carole Baskin thing. I never watched it at the time or got into it, but like getting into it right now, like. Bringing back the Carole Baskin memes. That was like at the very beginning of the pandemic, wasn't it? Like last year?

Do you remember when they were, like it would be like something bad would happen because in those days, every day something bad happened. It'd be like the meme would say, it's because of that bitch Carol Baskin. Carol Baskins or whatever her name was. We should have known. We should have known. There was so much optimism early on in the pandemic.

I remember thinking like oh you know this could be a reset this could be an opportunity but i should have known when that was what was like floating around in the ether that there was no hope we never had you it's funny because like now you know like now there's like an established amount of time that things feel retro quote unquote retro or whatever yeah but it's weird that was only what about two years ago now uh-huh the early pandemic feels very like mid-2000s to me for some reason does it like in terms of in your mind like the sort of spatio temporaltemporal location in your mind? What I'm saying is Tiger King feels like it came out in 2007.

Yeah, you're right. You know what I mean? It definitely had a 2000s reality show. I mean, but it was a documentary, wasn't it? I never saw it. I've got to confess, you're making me quit watching it after like three episodes. I've got a confession to make I quit watching it after like three episodes I had a friend

Who was like no you know You know who was like Trying to convince me to watch it And I was like no I'm gonna Stay the course on this I don't always call things right Alright I make a lot of mistakes It's not always a home run for

T-Ray But every now and then I call him right and that one i said no hold the line i know where this is going stay away from the tiger king because you're going to make a lot of bad jokes about it yeah and then and then a year's time you're gonna feel silly that you ever watched it to begin with yeah and you And you know, that's the thing. It's so funny, man. The other night, so I have two computers, one that I use for the show

and one that I use for writing. My writing computer is old as fuck. I've had it since 2012. Is that the one when you had that bad trip you told me to erase all your early writings on? That's the one, baby. You gave me all your passwords. You said, make sure my brother, Cason, gets my estate.

I said, what about Braden? You said, no, just Cason. Or maybe I got that backwards. Yes. For the sake of your brothers, listen, I'll let them wonder who it really was. But just know, just one of the Ray brothers got the estate. Yeah. It switches daily.

It does. You know, it's funny because I was actually thinking about that the other day, too. And it's like every winter for me is like trying to land a plane with one wing or something, one functioning engine. Like, it is constantly, every winter it's a game of like, will I have a psychotic or nervous breakdown by the end of the month of December. And it's like, and I almost like, there are multiple times every winter where I'm like, I'm doing it, baby. I'm doing it. Here we go. Here we go.

Here we go. And, you know, but then like that year, we came down to literally the last day of the year. And I was just like, ah, just completely fucking lost it. Well, think about what a harbinger this was, okay? Because we were going to go see Unknown Henson, who just a couple of months later would be canceled for saying BLM's a domestic terrorist group and Dolly Parton's a big-tittied freak

or something like that. You're right. So he kind of went away. So that was like an early 2000s thing, the cancellation of Unknown Henson. At the same time, yeah, man, what a weird time. That happened just a few months before the world fell apart, too. Yeah. That's the weird thing about it, man.

Like, you think you're playing things correctly. And, you know, you look at your life and you're like, oh, you know, like, so far I made some bad choices and some mistakes. But I also made some good decisions and they've paid off further on down the line. But then you look back in hindsight and you're like, those good decisions I made were like the smallest decisions, like the most imperceptible things. So it's like then you start overthinking and you're like, what am I doing in my day-to-day life that I'm laying the groundwork for future misery and pain? Am I doing it right or am I doing it wrong? It's this constant like, you know? And you can never truly know in the end. No. It's constant, like, you know? And you can never truly know in the end.

No. It's weird. Like, it's crazy how much of life comes down to just luck and chance. I see now why you're into gambling. It's pure. Sometimes the way to navigate it without getting to the December 31st breakdown is just wagering on everything constantly making that calculation in your head what's the over under here man i don't even do that when january 1st

rolls around i just pretend it's december 32nd that is the beauty of being at the end of history is there's not really sort of a demarcation between like, you know, what was and what is to come anymore. It's just all a perpetual cycle of, well, trying to squeeze some moments of happiness and clarity out of, you know, what can only be termed as, you know, hell. you know, hell. So I wonder if people, if there is a hell, if people there are like,

kind of manage it the way we do winter. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're going to be there forever. Yeah. Might as well make the best of it, I guess. That's kind of how I feel. Like,

I don't know like i've recently i've been asking myself like is it gonna be like this every winter for the rest of my life oh dude and the answer sadly probably is yes to that unless you let me ask you a question did you get like this when you were growing up in the desert when the winters weren't Did you get like this when you were growing up in the desert when the winters weren't as stark? No, but here's the thing. I'd say like 90%— But then again, I guess in the desert, every day is winter in a way. Everything's dead already.

You have that baseline ubiquitous death around you at all times which is very helpful yeah it helps you not to get above your raisin i guess yeah yeah dude i don't know the no the thing is is it's all like conditioning like every bad thing that's happened to me in my life has has generally occurred between the months of September and December. And so that's what I mean, like, by the time December comes around, you've been conditioned at this point. You know what I mean? You expect the bad things to happen because they have, you know, statistically, traditionally happened this time of year. And I don't know how you control for that i don't know

how you deal with it i don't know either man i think i think you just have to i you know i've never really understood his acceptance because people like well you just got to accept it and like i've read things about people that like get horrible diagnoses and stuff like that. Diagnoses, whatever. And it's like, you know, like how do you keep a, I guess a sound mind, or as close to a sound mind as you can when you know that something bad is happening and then i heard somebody read i read heard somebody say one time that we're all terminal it's just a matter of how much time you got left you know what i mean yeah so for somebody that could be six months for another person that could be 60 years but the point is we're all sort of making our matriculation to to the dirt

but i don't know i don't know well i mean yeah, acceptance, but there's mindfulness, obviously. You take everything as it comes, and you try to be intentional about the ways you show up in the world, obviously. That's true. I don't know. I feel like what passes for mindfulness, or what we call that is maybe helped me out definitely in a few occasions on a few occasions but it definitely seems like in typical 2010s 2020s fashion we've now made that basically the solution to everything like um is your life a living hell and you're addicted to a substance and in jail in and out of jail etc etc for your own failings well just try mindfulness like it's crazy to me the extent to which that gets peddled as a solution to a lot of it's amazing

and it's and also on just on its own merits, mindfulness is... I won't say it's horse shit necessarily, but it's... It's something approaching horse shit. You know? There are a lot of things in this world... Listen, if these people won't let me bash science, I'm going to bash pseudoscience, okay? This is how I deal with the winter times, people. Deal with it.

There are things that are definitely horseshit and things that are approaching horseshit, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Okay, let me ask you this. Mindfulness and chiropractic what do you put them on the same level of approaching horseshit like i need to know

i need i think i think chiropractic is approaching horseshit by virtue of its lineage as a philosophy that was dictated to somebody by a ghost is it more horseshit the reason it's not full-blown horse shit is because whether placebo or not at least some people get some relief from it so you can't really call it quackery yeah you know um that's the thing man here's my thought on that and it's kind of ties back into our discussion last week about like you know science in the time of isaac newton versus now and all that kind of stuff is is like the guy that invented chiropractic was probably i mean probably was happening at a time when spiritualism was big and to like really you know get some steam he was like well i want to say that a spirit from beyond the grave

dictated these techniques to me. Because that's the only way people understood things. That was a marketing. This is the time of Edgar Cayce. Yeah. Actually, that's true because a lot of people will say that about now. I mean, a lot of advertising probably does appeal to that more kind of mystical tarot. I know it's very popular right now and astrology

and everything and so like but you're you're on thin ice with what you just said just choose your next words carefully no i contrary to popular belief i like astrology i mean i'm um i'm skeptical of it, but I do like to read it, and I do find myself using it a lot. I do find myself wondering what that person's sign is, even though I don't put a lot of stock in it. So you go around telling the boys it's Virgo moons, really, giving me a case of the horribles? So, guys, yeah.

What the fuck has gotten into him you imagine going talking to the boys about astrology i'm gonna start it i'm just i'm just gonna be out and proud and say i like it i'm into it and i'm just gonna when i go hang out with y'all i'm just gonna say boys i'm gonna be honest with you uh or you know something about the Virgo moon or Mercury being retrograde. Throw it into the gas station, man. See what happens. I'll build off. I got your back.

Yeah. I'll have your back if you do that. Nothing else we can drive mat nuts with. Yeah. Well, here's the, but, like, two weeks ago, someone read my tarot card and it was like catastrophic. It was like the worst possible thing is heading your way, basically. Like that's, like and what are you supposed to make of that?

You know, it's like even if you suspect. Also, let me ask you a question. Who was the practitioner? It was one of Nicole's friends. Oh. Why would they do that to you? If somebody drew a horrible card, I would just be like, I mean, well, you know.

You can see the card, though. Like, you know, you flip it off the top. Oh, yeah, that's true. I mean, I don't know what the cards mean. They should have just said, like, everything looks great, man. Yeah, they could have told you anything. Everything's great. And then when you left, they could have just been like,

oh, my God, this guy's a goner. I'm walking around completely. That's the worst draw I've ever seen. Just completely blissfully ignorant. Yeah. There's value in that, I have to say. There's value in that. I have to say, there's value in that. Well, maybe they read it wrong.

Maybe the card was a positive thing, and maybe they read it wrong to me so that I would set my expectations low. Do you know what kind of deck they used i don't man this is like there's all kinds of styles now like i saw an article in the new york times the other day about how popular this is getting and how there's so many different like artisanal tarot card makers out there right now that's just a sign of how bad things are interest interest in spiritualism there is a symbiotic relationship with how bad the material

circumstances are with the interest in spiritualism yeah i mean what was the last big thing like 19th century right yeah i mean but also too i mean uh you know like in the 60s and 70s when there was all these riots breaking out in newark and race riots in like newark and detroit and different places like i think ouija boards sold more than monopoly for the first time in history yeah and i'm willing to bet ouija boards are probably outselling Monopoly today. I've not looked at that. Can we get a number crunched on that, intern, somebody? Would be something interesting to look into.

Speaking of interns, where I was going with my laptop earlier was you know I'm constantly playing this game much like with my mental health I'm constantly playing this game with my physical hard drive memory where on this one computer where it's constantly like getting close to being completely filled and I have to go back in and delete a bunch of shit, so I sat down Friday night and I was stoned and I was like, well, tonight might be a good night to go and just clean a bunch of shit out of here. Um, so, you know, I did that and like, it's always, dude, it can put you in such a good or bad space, like quote unquote nostalgia, like looking back at the past, looking back through scrapbooks, photos and stuff. But I put on an old episode of digital bedroom just me and you cutting it up when i was

like 26 and you were like 28 or something we should put one of those out and see what people think we were in our 20s and um and uh it was like on one level i was like, on one level, I was like, damn, this isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. But on another level, I was like, damn, we've come a long way. Well, I mean, there is sort of one episode I remember. Also, in another way, it's like the show is kind of the same as this one is in some ways. the show is kind of the same as this one is in some ways so i read the episode we did about the guy what's the guy that washed up with the mysterious thing sewn in his shirt in australia oh to mom should yeah the um yeah yeah the to mom should case i think is what it was called yeah yeah might be a good that's it courage something. Man, we could have just been a...

If we would have actually just been doing podcasts instead of radio that mostly went out into the ether, I only have like six episodes of that whole show. We did that shit for... We did it for what? Two or three years? Three years, and I have six episodes. You know, like that's...

Yeah. Because I didn't want to... There is no point in recording any of them. But every now and then I'd be like, yeah, I'm going to turn this into something I never did. Vanish to the dust, man. Yeah. I don't know why, I don't even know why I brought that up, what we were talking about even before that but i guess just like winter time and uh i don't know like looking at your past self and how your past self coped with various things versus now you know yeah like we were so confident

bro me and you in like 2014 or 15 50 this this specific episode was from 2015 that like the rise of bernie sanders was a sign that like people were waking up i'm saying it's so cringe for me to even say that out loud we were young guys i mean come on man young young and stupid but it's interesting right Like we were optimistic Like that was our modality Like our sort of default state Then we went back to that In 2020 For that election

The lead up to it anyway Yeah I don't know it's just interesting Yeah God man Um Well yeah god man um well um I don't know I guess

so you know I was really nervous about doing the show today like how do you talk about something like uh an insane like weather event, you know? Like this is, it's awful.

It's like defies comprehension, really. You don't know what to say. That's crazy. And I guess first off, just a shout out to everybody that sent us messages that checking on how we were were doing if we're okay and everything i i went to bed the other night and like this was like and this is what you do with storms right we don't really even when i was a kid and i like believed you could like pray for storms to stop and stuff like that i didn't really want them to just go away i just kind of want

didn't really want to dissipate i away i just kind of want didn't really want to dissipate i just kind of wanted to push it around you know what i mean as long as it's over there it's gonna be fine you know uh as i went to bed and then i was like oh well this is you know this is pretty far out of our path or whatever and then i get woken up by what sounds like somebody just pulling like really hard on my front I got like french doors and they were just like pulling on those doors and like shaking it really hard and I was like what the fuck and I like just kind of popped up I was like what the fuck and I thought I was going to fight somebody or something and it just turned out it was just like you know

by the time the storm I guess had cut through western kentucky where it did the most damage and was headed like around the louisville area we got some pretty pretty gnarly storms from it that were you know i mean it's it defies comprehension dude it is so like it covered like 200 miles just in kentucky like stayed on the ground for hours that which is because you know like tornadoes touchdown you hear of tornadoes touchdown and they're on the ground like 10 15 and they do damage you know what i mean like the one that hit west liberty i guess probably around 2009 2010 something like that well this was like flatten that whole downtown and it was like nothing compared to this it was like a whole storm system because like tennessee had like 18 different tornadoes alone

like yeah what the fuck dude it defies comprehension and it's so terrifying also that it took place at night and i think that was part of what made it so awful. And, you know... And in December. In December, really, is what is so mind-blowing about it. I read something in the New York Times, like... You know, the New York Times coverage of this has been interesting. I'll talk about that more in a little bit.

But I saw this thing on one of their articles that said that, I guess climate scientists, they're not sure whether there's a link between climate change and the frequency or strength of tornadoes, in part because of limited data. But researchers say that in recent years tornadoes seem to be occurring in greater quote-unquote clusters and that a so-called tornado alley in the great plains where most tornadoes occur appears to be shifting eastward um so that's that's wild uh but especially when you look at the path of this thing,

like you've got this regional thing. It started out in like Arkansas, you know, went up through Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois. I mean, it is, I guess what I'm driving at here is like, at what point do we start naming these things like we do hurricanes? Like this is phenomenal. There's no other word for it i keep thinking about the vastness of something that's the big one that's 35 000 feet tall and a mile wide and was just on the ground for hours yeah well i think about all the... I think about, all the time, I think about, like,

that article I think you'd sent me in the New Yorker, maybe seven or eight years ago or something like that, about the big one, about the big earthquake that's supposed to actually detach much of the Pacific Northwest from the coast. And, like what what are and it and it like most scientists believe it's actually not a matter of if but when with that one yeah and like what what does this mean for the future is it like to not get too far into some sort of weird cosmic reasoning or worse, like these shitty fucking liberals

that think if you would have just voted for, you know... Literally Amy McGrath. Pete Buttigieg for Alderman or whatever. Literally Amy McGrath. Like, if you really cut out the bullshit, what they're literally saying is if you would have voted for amy mcgrath this never would have happened this never would have happened somebody that said that mitch mcconnell's not pro-trump enough for her it's just like you

know what i mean like let's just assume you have a point for a second it just falls apart under scrutiny you know what i mean when you have your your net your your bulwark against the the climate catastrophe is oh mitch mcconnell's not pro-trump enough for me i'm gonna be the most pro-trump democrat in the senate dude and also i did 9-11. You know, I gotta eat some crow on this one because on our most recent free episode, I said that liberals don't really say stuff like this anymore. In my defense, I was kind of talking more like elected officials. I'm not sure if they ever really did say anything

that brazenly genocidal, but I feel like it was implied in a lot of their statements and it even still is in a lot of like Nancy Pelosi statements and stuff right um but uh no there really is still a cottage industry out there for this kind of stuff it did it does seem that like the people who made statements like that pretty much got shouted down and and uh you know conceded that what like how absolutely an insane statement that is but uh no i mean it's it's wild i guess i guess fundamentally what's so striking about it to me and this is actually kind of like touching on what we were talking about on that most recent free episode.

The thing that makes the liberals and the post-left basically the same, or very similar anyways, cut from the same cloth, you know, grown from the same petri dish, is because they are both racist, but in different ways. So like when I see a liberal say something like that like fuck you georgia fuck you kentucky like this is what you get for voting for mcconnell that is a racist statement to me they like are refusing to engage with some very um long-term long-standing structural issues with the South. And they basically are consigning all POC communities in the South to basically death and destruction because the other people in the state, the rich people in the state don't vote, they do.

So it's just a racist statement to me. I would have thought this genre would have went away after like like you saw like stephen king and some of these other liberals talking shit about like you know when the winter storms hit texas and the power grid went down and things were really dicey there for a while like you know like oh that you you know, like the subtext of those type of tweets are it's like this is like some sort of like cosmic karmic justice for not voting for Democrats or people that would lead on climate policy or whatever. And then what's the funniest part is like they got their way. Joe Biden won and kids. Nobody talks about kids on the borders now.

Right. and kids nobody talks about kids on the borders now even though we know even though we know like he's not closed those camps down or anything like that not made any real progress in that area in fact I think deportations have skyrocketed right? I don't I don't know that to be a fact

but every once in a while you'll see like a little infographic floating around like AJ Plus or something that says that but yeah I would have thought that to be a fact, but every once in a while you'll see, like, a little infographic floating around, like AJ Plus or something that says that. But, yeah, I would have thought that, you know, this genre of analysis would have died off, you know, but no. Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, like, I guess I can see in their minds how they think that would be a slam dunk. Like, I guess I can see in their minds how they think that'd be a slam dunk. Like, I guess,

I mean, I'm just trying to like understand this, but I guess there are people who are sociopaths of course, and they want a lot of people to die. But then there are people who are like ignorantly sociopaths who they like, they think that they're being, they think they're making some sort of profound or revelatory statement when in fact all it reveals is how insane they are, you know?

Yeah. Here's some tough medicine, Kentucky. It's like, it sounds like you're just a fucking lunatic. Yeah. No, I mean, no. It's a cottage industry for a lot of different reasons but it does kind of say what people like mcgrath probably feel privately deep down like they all that they're talking about is that they just wish that the rich people in these southern conservative states

voted for liberals like they don't give a shit about poor people they don't give a shit about black people they don't give a shit about immigrants or any anybody else they just they just don't they dislike how the elites in that state vote it's just it's just a fucking like in it's really it's sort of like an inter-class conflict you know what i'm saying like among the elite like those rich liberals are pissed off that these rich people vote for conservatives right yeah it is it's like it's like when you see that stuff it's almost always i think that this person that said like the latest dust-up thing which is i'm even ashamed for even engaging with it because the same shit happens every time somebody says

something uh genocidal that they think is some sort of revelatory own on people that quote unquote vote against their own interests and then we just it's just a never-ending stream of quote tweets dunk it on this person again whatever whatever right but it's almost always like i feel like i think this person was like a screenwriter for like a bunch of different movies and tv shows like even i think she wrote for the simpsons and like fraser and wrote twister she wrote the hit did she write that would that would have been nuts there's like a character my research from the uh-nominated Twister. Bill Paxton vehicle Twister.

Hey, Philip Seymour Hoffman was great in that. A good character. If they make those movies, dude, the 90s rocked. And then Helen Hunt, remember? Helen Hunt was in there, yeah. That was like her first turn on the silver screen after being like, what was she, mad about you? Mad about you.

If they reboot that movie they won't because they don't do disaster movies like that anymore but if they do they need a character in there who's like a liberal from the northeast whose brain is poisoned from too much joy and reed to say something like insane you know how i would cast everybody in the path of the twister steven king in there playing himself right he's like he's like writing a book about a super storm or something like that and it's like he's doing this for research and then like he has to see up front like and then he's just like disgusted with like every like person he meets in a diner with a trump hat right he thinks they deserve to die yeah from a tornado in the end like one of

those guys pulls him in like pulls him in his basement shelter right before he gets sucked into the eye of the storm and saves his life and then he's like you hillbillies are all right or whatever right dude it's astonishing there's um know, and let me just say, like, this is also kind of on the back of my mind. You don't get to talk shit about that person who made that dumbass fucking remark about how people in southern states deserve to die because they have conservative senators or whatever. Well, actually, it actually isn't the same thing. I was going to say that if you if you say that you don't get to talk shit about people that take ivermectin and i do i do pretty much think that but it also does seem that like tornadoes kill a lot more people whereas the ivermectin

thing was like a just a very specific like demographic the ivermectin thing is going to be like tiger king so yeah you're right you know it was very cringe though people people like dressing as ivermectin for halloween like god dude come on it's like man two years ago man i went as a tube of medicine for halloween ah bro it was pandemic times, man. It was a different time. They're like, oh, that makes sense, pandemic medicine. Like, no, you don't understand. Yeah. It is funny that, you know, I was talking to my cousin last night. I went to a Christmas party in Cincinnati,

and we were talking about, well, his opening salvo was how much he hates taxes and I was like hey man you know what before I couldn't agree with you but now it's like what do we really get for it he goes I know and then I keep trying to push him down to like our taxes should be diverted away from military and police and into like infrastructure schools health care whatever whatever but he just keeps like just floating back to well you know like the other thing is is man it's like all the everybody that's like making money just like gets fucked i was like okay well right but we're talking and we're because he kind of uh he works with the guy like a guy works for him that's like a Q guy. Uh-huh.

And they had made a bet that, my cousin was like, the guy comes in and says, I bet you Joe Biden won't win eight states. And then my cousin's like, okay, I'll take that bet every day. You know, whatever. And he comes back after the election, and he was never going to make him pay or whatever, but he was just fucking with him. He's like, you got my money? You got my money?

He's like, Joe Biden didn't win. And then he's relaying these ideas to me. He's like, man, we really are kind of at this end of history. Everybody lives in their own reality thing. Because he was not even saying that from a position of objectivity like he truly believed joe biden was not the president of the united states that like that trump was going to swoop in and set this right any minute you know uh-huh and uh we were kind of talking about how like you know every decade leading up to like even the 2000s had its own

distinct character you know influenced by cultural movements and like even disasters and political things that happen and whatnot and now it's like shifted to where like culture feels stagnant and like the only thing that characterizes times now are the bad things that happened. Yeah. Oh, dude, absolutely. It's just disaster that like marks that like you could not decipher 2020 from 2007 if there was not a pandemic. Yeah. You know, I mean, actually, a good way to kind of gauge this is with that movie Twister.

Like disaster movies were so popular in the 90s. That was the whole point. That was what these movies, these superhero movies are now. That's what our superhero movies were in the 90s. They were like Dante's Peak, Armageddon, Twister. Like the whole thing was like the planets independence day all of them were like take your planets in peril yeah arachnophobia remember that one uh and even the big ones you know the big ones like uh day after tomorrow and all these yeah different ones yeah it's just um

that was the that was it and and now i don't know why, if it was because there was this, if it was entertaining or if that was just a sort of like cheap and easy way to. But by the way, Twister is a really good anti-divorce movie. It's the Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton in the characters in that movie, if I remember correctly. I think that they're getting a divorce. And at every point, like they're trying to sign the divorce papers like a twister comes and blows it away yeah yeah it's it's probably kanye west's favorite movie right yeah it's like the guys that like stay together for the kids like family's number one like they love twister totally totally is that but that was the thing it was like sometimes the disasters

are for good yeah but no i mean but now like we don't have those anymore because like we just want to pretend that that isn't a thing or whatever we don't find it entertaining anymore so it's yeah it's become superheroes and then like the i don't know it i don't know it's weird yeah as i was listening to uh there's a horror movie podcast called post-mortem with mick garris i like to listen to it once when i was listening this morning and he was talking about basically and it wasn't like a shot at like the new Halloweens or anything like that. But he was basically saying that like studios are like if you're in the horror genre specifically, like the reason like A24 has had such success and like Spectre Vision and a couple of the others that are still putting out like standalone non-franchise genre films

is because all the big studios only want reboots because they don't have to spend money promoting the next Freddy Krueger movie or Friday the 13th or whatever because it's already built in, right? They can just play on that nostalgia. And that's, that's the reason that shit is an overdrive. That kind of made sense to me. It's like, it's like the reason that we're so subsumed by nostalgia has less to do with the idea that like things were better at a certain period of time that made that, there

might be elements of truth to that, but I don't think that tells the whole story. Yeah. But rather what it is is these companies, it's easier to sell you stuff based on your memories and experiences and what gives you the warm fuzzies. Rather than putting money behind a new thing and trying to create new cultural products or whatever the case is. Well, and I also think that there has become this definite aversion to taking risks, at least when it comes to art. You know what I'm saying? I mean, granted, that comes with a whole other

sort of load of assumptions, but it is definitely true that, you know, a lot of art out there is not, mean i don't know i mean i guess it's genre i guess you can write it off as like lowbrow at the end of the day but i don't know man but you know that's kind of a new thing though if you think about it because like like comedy movies for example like take some like shampoo in the 70s like comedy movies weren't like take some like shampoo in the 70s like comedy movies weren't genrefied the way they are now like in the 70s like you could have cinema that was funny you could have cinema that was scary uh-huh you know what i mean but now like everything's so genrefied that it has to be like

a oh this is a judd apatow vehicle this is like a you know what i mean it's like fits in this like little but like whereas like a hal ashby movie in the 70s could be hilarious but it was still cinema yeah well not even apatow gets to make movie any any more though right that's no shade at apatow either or anything like that it's just it's just how things are i think like like there aren't comedy movies anymore though like all comedy now has just been put into those Marvel movies. Like, if you want to see some people, like, campy and have some dialogue and stuff, like, you go see Thor. And, well, it's fine. I like Thor Ragnarok.

I thought that was good. But, like. One of, like, maybe two or three good comic book movies. Yeah, exactly. But, like, it's, those, that's the most comedy you're getting at the movie theaters these days. Right. Yeah, that's true, exactly. But, like, it's... That's the most comedy you're getting at the movie theaters these days. Right, yeah, that's true, man. Like, Apatow doesn't even get to make a Seth Rogen vehicle anymore. You know what I mean?

Yeah. That is true. There are a few here and there, but they're few and far between. It's not even a genre that they employ anymore. Because it would require taking risks because that's what comedy is. It would require taking risks and maybe offending some people.

That's way too hot water. You know what I mean? They don't want to touch that. Everything has become really hard. That is true. You couldn't, and'm not not to be like we're cancel culture guys or anything like that but like yeah you it would be tough to even make something like old school or any of those like you know what they called the frat pack movies

from like the early 2000s or anything like that you know and i'm not saying that's a good thing bad thing or otherwise i'm not making a judgment call on it. But you're right, it probably would be tough. Or a little tougher, anyway. Yeah. It's weird. I think, I mean, this is not an original point, but I think they think that people watch comedy movies and internalize the values of them,

and they don't want that. Yeah, that's true like it it weirdly enough they have this weird they feel like they have this responsibility to like mold the values and virtues of the plebs they like it's weird like they don't give a shit about our material circumstances they'll let you go to work at 7 p.m. on a Friday night working candles like overtime for the Christmas holiday rush in the line of a tornado. They'll let that happen. But it's weird. Like, they have taken on this really weird responsibility of, like, now you can't do this and you can't watch that.

Like, you might become a bad person. So, you know what I mean? Like, it's really bizarre. Yeah. Yeah, that's true yeah you might become a bad person if you do yeah that's that that to them is unfair like i mean because they're not going to relent power and so i guess that they think that's how like we solve what they probably still call race relations you know yeah i guess like what i don't understand what their obsession with this is like yeah i don't know man it's uh certainly bizarre yeah i don't know anyways i don't even know how we got down that road but um

Twister. Disaster movies. Oh, we were talking about the lady that wrote that tweet, and she was also a screenwriter. No, she did not write Twister. We should just put that out into the ether, though. You know what the ironic part is? It's that person that wrote Twister. She wrote the movie.

It's like she willed it into being right how much of that stuff like listen how much of that stuff do you believe in do you think i'm not saying like you could speak a tornado into existence but like you know if our consciousness and thoughts are causative it is pretty weird that we made all these big budget disaster movies in the 90s in the early 2000s and then all of a sudden that stuff is happening that probably has more to do with you know well we know climate change is coming and it's actually accelerating much quicker than we even thought rather than like we just spoke uh tornadoes into existence. You know what I mean? Well,

one that we haven't, one that we haven't gotten yet is Independence Day. So, I mean, no one's blown up the White House with a massive laser yet. And honestly, what the fuck? What the fuck are you waiting for?

Now's the time. it's right for it yeah dude well this this whole thing is very dark i mean um and it's really hard to talk about and to feel any levity at all because the fact of the matter is is that a lot of these deaths could have been prevented from i mean tornadoes are going to happen that's just unfortunately part of life on earth like natural disasters do occur i think we are making them worse by pumping or hastening them certainly yeah it's certainly there is an element of maybe we should have left the fossil plankton in the ground. Yeah. But these things are going to happen regardless of the severity. Yeah, and it is just true that...

So this tornado went through Mayfield, Kentucky, and it completely tore apart this candle factory there. And I don't know what the death toll is from that one candle factory but i think it's something like 40 or 50 people say i think 70 now is what they're saying yeah and i could be wrong though so they were not only like at work it partially happened because they were trying to meet demands for christmas like yeah you know you burn a lot of candles at christmas or some shit i don't know regardless the point being is that partially what's to blame here is capitalism obviously and it's the same thing as amazon um that amazon warehouse in what was it

southern illinois i think it was southern illinois yeah that there was a couple of yeah and i read a lot of the like firsthand accounts of people in those warehouses and i won't read them because they're extremely fucking dark and traumatic and awful um but it is just insane to me that you've got an emergency weather event coming and you don't have something like, I don't know. I granted, I don't really know the case with the Amazon warehouse, but the candle one, I'm pretty sure that like they were being worked overtime and weren't able to like get to their phones to like know that this was on the way and i think it was like too little too late like by the time it got there and so a lot of people were sheltered inside of it and that tornado completely tore that town apart yeah yeah absolutely destroy it and you know you you talk about you know meeting the demands of the christmas

season or whatever and like one of the ways that particular facility was meeting those demands too, was using prison labor. You sent me the thing. Yeah. There were people from, I can't remember what County that is. Maybe Murray County or something.

Uh, Mayfield is, I can't remember, man. I don't know if it's Fulton it's not one of those western kentucky counties i'm not well regardless the the um the county jail was like just right across from the candle factory graves county graves county yeah it's graves county yeah no that candle factory was right across from the county jail and they were using jail labor and there was even one report

that i saw that said that prisoners you know people held inside the graves county jail were running over to the candle factory to help dig people out. And, like, these people, as they noted in the report, like, could have run away. They could have used the opportunity to get the fuck out of there because they were in jail. And they went and helped out and tried to rescue people from the collapse of the candle factory. I mean, it's just stuff like that that you just, I don't know, man.

You just can't help but think, like, again, this was preventable. This did not have to happen. Granted, it's just like we just, I hate this country. We just make it so much harder to deal with bad things when they happen. Like, obviously, COVID is the best example of that, but we just make it so much more difficult to deal with bad things. And it's enough to drive you absolutely insane. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's ever toward the goal of keeping those wheels churning. You know, it's funny. When I was telling you earlier that I was talking with my cousin, and he was talking about all the things he hates about taxes. You know, every once in a while, you probably see this if you talk to your dad or somebody. You see a little gleam of, like, keep going with that. You know what I mean? And he was talking about some sort of something in the tax code to deal with social security.

Maybe it's a social security buyout or something. I forget what it is because i'm ignorant of financial instruments but he was but he the very next thing he said to me was like it's geared to force you to work for at least 30 years uh-huh and i was like yeah and and you know and then he kind of got off the rails a little bit but yeah but it is it is weird that like we are coerced by this by the the system you know i hate to say that because you sound so hacked but you are coerced by all these various suppositions in the system that are geared toward forcing you to sell your labor for at least 30 years. You know what I mean?

It's like defined that way. It's weird there's a retirement age, an accepted retirement age. You know what I mean? For example. Yeah, and not only that, but like you're completely disposable at any moment it's at the at a moment's notice it's like amazon making these fucking statements like our heart goes out to the work like you don't give a fuck like the the dude literally your dude your guy flew into space and said thanks for all my workers like that they don't give a fuck about these people.

Like, it just, dude, it makes it so surreal. Just like, shut the fuck up. Just don't say anything at all. All my workers, they let me live my best life. While theirs are falling apart and immiserated. Dude, yeah. Man. There are many others, I shouldn't say.

Yeah. You know, I shouldn't say. Yeah. You know, I don't know. So, anyways, I was looking for that statement. I couldn't find it. It is so, it is just really surreal, though. Yeah, we're deeply saddened by the news that members of our Amazon family passed away as a result of the storm in Edwardsville, Illinois. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their loved ones, and everyone who had been impacted by the storm's path across the U.S.

And then someone responded and said, I'm an Amazon worker in Kentucky. Tornado hit two miles from my house and I physically couldn't get to work for my shift. hit two miles from my house and I physically couldn't get to work from my shift. The ERC team told me that they had no record of tornadoes in Kentucky and couldn't help me with not getting attendance time reduced for today. So yeah,

they don't give a fuck. Yeah, they care about their workers so much they deny the existence of extreme weather events. Yeah. For work purposes. It's insane, dude. You know, this is probably the only area you could get by with that, too. I'm not saying, like, all these captains of industry

and their sort of foot soldiers and minions and stuff haven't been fucking over workers forever, but this is probably the first era in American labor where, like, the interpretation of reality first era in American labor where like the interpretation of reality can be bent to whatever's most advantageous to you. Oh, there's no tornadoes. You can come in.

Yeah. And get by and pass that off with no repercussion. You know what I mean? Yeah. No. They'll get nothing. Nothing will happen to them as a result of this. This is a weird... It's almost like the evangelical belief in speaking things into existence. This is the era we're in. We're in the name it and claim it era.

Because it's like anything we say is real. Whether it materializes or not, it's real. We have phrases like living our truth. And that is our truth i heard somebody say like in reference to the murder of biggie somebody had given this testimony and this guy disagreed with it but he was like well you so you don't think that happened you think he's full of shit and then the guy said no i think that's his truth you know what i mean like it's a weird period we're in where like we validate every sort of thing and i'm gonna tell you something not for nothing like the liberal world has some culpability in that you know what i mean yeah well i mean it's weird it's like

i don't know i guess it's weird. It's like... I don't know. I guess it's like a philosophical discussion that goes really far over my head. Because... Yeah, I mean, it's going to be like the splitting atoms discussion last week. You know what I mean? Because you could just riff forever, but I keep on splitting them. Right. Well, that's the thing, because ultimately all reality is your own experience,

right? Like, right. And is there even an objective reality? Like obviously, but yeah, there is because like, I don't know.

Let me ask you this. Let's say that you, here's an example I like to use. And I used to just use this to like, try to own my mom and people in Bible discussions. So there's two accounts of the death of Judas in the Bible. And one is the most popular one we know. He betrays Jesus with a kiss.

He gets 30 pieces of silver. He takes the silver back, throws it on the ground, and goes and hangs himself. That's kind of the most accepted one. But there's another one in the other. I can't remember if maybe it's in luke but it's not but in that one judas runs off and stumbles down a stumbles in a field and disembowels himself and like i remember people i bring that up to church people and they tell me, well, it just depends on your perspective. I was like, well, those are two very different deaths, though. That's like saying one newspaper says that this guy drowned and the other newspaper says he died in a car wreck.

That's two very different deaths. You know, which is it? Well, I think the underlying, it depends on what lesson you want to draw from it because if he hung himself then he realized his shame and he accepted it like uh a brave he accepted it with bravery and courage at least but if he ran away and disemboweled himself in a field he was cowardly you know what i'm saying so like depends on how you want to see judas was he like noble in the end or was he a coward i mean right yeah i guess i mean i guess that is the distinction but regardless of what you believe in terms of like how reality is set and who gets to make

reality and like whatever whatever or you know to the degree that there is an objective reality that we all share in versus not like it it is maddening you know what i mean yeah i i whatever you believe about it it is like we're living in a period that is like very maddening so i don't know maybe that's one way to tell that there is an objective reality i suppose if it sucks ass it must be real if it sucks ass yeah that's here's yeah here's the ray test right if it sucks ass it's real if it's cool it's an apparition exactly a mirage a mirage exactly yeah oh shit that's ray's life that's ray's second law that's ray's second law right is what was ray's first law ray's first law is that anything literally anything is

has happened at least once anything is is pop has happened at least once anything is possible and has happened at least once it's kind of like taking murray's law like a step further i think what's murray's laws like anything like what is it anything that can happen has happened or something like that yeah like no i you. The classic example of Ray's Law was there has been at least some human being on the planet who dug up their father's corpse and fucked it. You know what I mean? Like that was. That's the classic. That's the one that's taught in universities.

That's the one that's taught in universities. Yeah. But that's like, that's a, you know, a crude example. Yeah. I mean, but that's like that's a you know a crude example yeah i mean but that's the funny thing it's like you know that that is me saying that out loud it's like of course that's happened but then you say of course that's happened yeah but i and i you know back when you said that i was like i i said no that's not but i that was just because i didn't want it to be real you know and that's that that that gets to a whole other discussion about reality truly because there's things you don't want to be real but

they are real my friend i'm sorry to tell you there is two there is one good thing that happens when you have like a horrible dream and you wake up and realize it's just a dream or when you have a horrible reality and you wake up and then you're like, oh, wait, that wasn't a dream. Right. That is the worst. That's a horrible feeling. That is a terrible feeling. Damn.

Well, there's also friendship, and friendship is real, and there's love, and love is real. But the thing about love is it's really complicated because you can do things out of love that are also in your own self-interest and plenty of like father son mother daughter parent child relationships have been very fraught with that very basic um premise with that very basic particularly the people that are the subjects of ray's law the most popular example of race law that's we ain't gonna go there but exactly oh man so yeah i don't know i guess you can hold on to those things love however ill-defined friendship and misery yeah well i think the best piece of advice i've ever gotten okay and this came to me when i was going through a traumatic breakup and

a lot of you know just nothing was going right and it's in the moment that stuff feels earth-shattering because it is. The severing of the familial ties you've built in a romantic relationship, or even if it's losing a parent or whatever it is. That is always going to be painful. But if you're blessed enough to get through that with the benefit of hindsight, in a way, you can kind of be thankful that you have experienced the whole breadth of human emotion and experiences dude it's true i mean and i and

i believe that's true because you know i have had that experience of i'm thankful i went through it but god damn when i was going through it i haven do anything to avoid it you know well yeah um it's like what was jacomo's what was jacomo casanova's last words um like i could i can say he was digging up as he was digging up his dead father he said he uttered this i think it was something along the lines of i lived or something yeah jesus i lived bitch you know well i yeah i don't know man it's a very complex thing. You're right. I mean, yeah, you go through something really hard and you say, and it does make you feel a little more enriched on the other side. But at the same time, you want to create a world where, like,

those hard times are not made so bad that your psyche completely shatters. Shatters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To be clear, yeah in in a healthier world those things would be a lot easier to deal with i think yeah and also the other thing too is there's there's no nobility and suffering either so what i'm what i'm saying is yeah that's just some solace you can take if you have to go through those things but you should try to avoid those things if you can right because they

can shatter your brain and they can make you uh you know go build a god machine or make you think you're a egyptian deity from antiquity yeah whatever yeah um i don't know life is a very complex thing it's a very complicated thing um but uh yeah man i had i had something i was gonna say and i totally forgot something about Casanova. Ray's Law, perhaps. What was Ray's second law? Yeah, if it sucks, it's real.

It exists in the real world. Yeah. If it sucks, it's real. Okay. Well, that's about all I have to say. I know that there are, like, funds. There are, what's the word I'm looking for? Crowdfunding?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Support and relief funds. Dude, I'm sorry. My brain is firing at least one, on at most one cylinder today. I feel you, man. I spent last night trying to convince some parents of two children that their Elf on the Shelf was fucking weird, and no adult should be engaged in that behavior.

What is Elf on the Shelf? Glad you asked, Terrence. Elf on the Shelf is, a lot of people already know this, but for the uninitiated, something that's gained popularity in the last 10 or 15 years, Terrence. Elf on the Shelf is, a lot of people will already know this, but for the uninitiated, something that's gained popularity in the last 10 or 15 years, I guess, where parents will put an elf, and they all have different names, like Winkle Bottom and, you know, even some simple names like Edgar.

Right. But usually something weird and dramatic. And then the parents will move the elf at different times. And what's funny is I didn't think anything about this because my sister did this with my nephew. And when he was young and stupid, it would just be so funny to see him say, Winklebottom moved.

And just have this goofy goofy ass smile on his face and in my mind I'm thinking you poor bastard somebody's going to break your heart and something bad might happen to you in the future but embrace this right now while you're here so I don't want to take away that childlike joy but you know what I mean

but like here's the thing it's the same with like cokes and booze and cigarettes. If you never know those things, you might not know the pleasure you can get from them. And I think it's incumbent on our parents to buy a shelf on the shelf. Because it moves, man. And then it says, you know what I mean? If it doesn't move, it's indicative that you've been a bad kid.

Really? So if you fuck up one day and just leave the elf for like for three days in a row that kid's gonna sit there and think that like what did i do to draw the hour of santa claus oh bro okay and okay shatter his psyche way earlier than maybe normal yeah yeah um okay so imagine what it'll do to that kid. Now imagine what it would do to a kid for about eight years of his life from, oh, I don't know, age 13 to 21. But the elf on the shelf isn't an elf. It's God. Yeah.

Thinking you are constantly disappointed and failed God. That's true. By comparison, Elf on the Shelf might be way healthier for a child. Yeah, you're right. I don't know, though. I don't know. I guess there are demonstrable effects, and it's not all left up to interpretation. Like, that'll really fuck with you.

Yeah. Like, never knowing for sure if you've fallen out of god's graces yeah that's true which is something i'll even be pondering on my deathbed did i do enough am i going to get in is this even real and it's like oh man we're just we're just fucked as a species. Just make the best you can out of it. This is December, man. I mean, if you're not talking like this in December, I'm very jealous of you. That's why I have to tell everybody,

like, if you feel insane, trust me, just let this fucking month pass. Just, you really gotta weather the storm, though, man. You really do. Yeah. It's crazy. You've got to stay in the pocket and just get through.

All right. Really, just, yeah. I mean, why? Do what? Yeah, I was just, that was it. I was trying to correct them by the elf on the shelf and trying to tell them, like, why is the

most festive holiday one where a guy goes down a chimney while you're sleeping and leaves gifts and takes your milk and cookies and then now we've added a little flourishes like the elf on the just it's not it's not okay um yeah there was a link i saw i have no idea see this the thing like every time i get like something bad like this happens and i look for like places to like give to or whatever it's like how do i know this isn't someone just like exploiting this situation anyways i know the university of kentucky College of Medicine has a GoFundMe. I think that's probably pretty legit. And then, yeah, I know Coach Cal, who's in hot water after losing to Notre Dame yesterday, is doing a telethon on Tuesday.

So if that's more your speed, whatever. yesterday is doing telethon on tuesday so if you that's more your speed whatever but yeah that you could you could find sources uh out there i would i would think that the gofundme for the uk college of medicine is probably best bet i've heard uh sordid tales about the american red cross so i don't know i'd probably err away from anything like that but right i think i'd have to agree um all right well we can look into and update people this week on the main feed and stuff but i think yeah if you if you have the urge to give right now i think that uk college of medicine go fund me is pretty legit good idea tom good idea um thanks for sticking with us folks and having patience you know

it's just one of those days and I was like how are you going to record how the fuck are you going to do this I don't know it's just a really bad day for the state and for this area hard to add any levity or humor

into it but we tried our best we tried our best so um just be good to each other try to uh help out as much as you can without actually going there um it seems like a lot of the things i've seen have said like don't go you know i mean who knows man we live in such a fucked up reality now where i don't even every statement or something like that that comes out of somewhere i'm just like where did this come from like who was saying this why are they saying this like you know it's just so you just got to keep your head on a swivel and do good use your best judgment use your best yes that Ultimately, that's just all you can do.

There's plenty of you that that's a dicey concept for present company included. Maybe get a second opinion on what your best judgment is. In any case, I think. Never a bad idea.

Alright. Thanks for listening this week everybody uh we'll be back on the main feed later this week and until then be well we'll see you next time