Muse

I'm Floyd Brown. I'm the executive director of Young America's Foundation.

I'm Diana Ho, and I was one of the founders of the media division of the American Psychological Association.

My name is Kevin Beacon. For those of you who need an introduction, I am an award-winning journalist. I've won a local Emmy. But in truth, I'm just a gypsy tumbling around the globe chasing truth, which is, as you know, Quicksilver. The more you try to grasp it, the more it slips through your hands. News, because I am the face of it in Spokane, Washington, is my life, my lover, my mistress, my best friend, and I will fight to the death to defend it. And with that, I relinquish to you, Mr. Chair. TBTL!

There is something about the soul of a snake he's a hot tomato well you could say that i mean i think he i don't know what a hot

tomato is was my underwear showing when i was climbing down the tree i wore my thursdays because my saturdays had a case of the mondays if you know what i mean you need to get back on the man

horse right because i think i know a certain horse man that might want to take you out for a trot Are you seriously hitting on me right now? No, I'm not. That was my horse impression, saying no.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

That's a tuna, bro!

Coming to you from high in the sky above Portland, Oregon. and the Nest Broadcast Center, where it's a bit of a damp, not quite wet, but not quite dry. It's more in the damp category Thursday morning. I wouldn't call it moist. It's because it's one of the most upsetting words you can use, and probably we should just ban it. But it's damp out there on the streets of Portland. But it's warm and dry here inside the podcast that has reached episode 3,532 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I am excited and a little nervous. I'm returning to in-person live radio performance tonight.

I've been waiting for this moment for months, and it's finally here.

We are doing Live Wire live at the Alberta Rose Theater for the first time in like 18 months or something tonight. So that's exciting. And if I seem a little distracted today, it's because, you know, we got that on the brain. But I'm still very focused on today's top stories, including the world's worst video game. You play to win the game. I mean, a game that was designed to be especially bad and is apparently. We're going to hear about that. Also, we are about to enter an era of a bunch of firsts in space. Otters cannot travel through the vacuum of space. Because it's not affordable, obviously, but it is doable. They're letting a lot of people go to space who would have not passed NASA's stringent requirements. And so we're going to get the first of a variety of people in space. And how much should we care about that is something we'll talk about coming up. And because it's a Thursday, a.k.a. a Blur's Day, we'll do the Blur's Day messages as well. We'll do all of that with the help of this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's a soulful rocker from New Hampshire.

Oh, you've garbled your last ghoul.

He is Andrew Walsh. He's getting into the spooking season as well. And he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Hey, that's actually a pretty good little segue. Good morning, Luke. And do something that I actually wanted to talk to you about this morning. Spooking. Stephen King. He's always ready for the... Do you say spooking or spooky? Is it both?

I said spooking season.

Okay. I'll go with that. So here's the deal, Luke. Sorry, I kind of don't know where to begin this story. Because it actually led to an earnest debate between Genevieve and I today before we even got out of bed. Wow. Regarding the work of Stephen King? Yes. Yes. And this is how it came to me. This is how the whole thing started with a tweet from the absurdist comic that we love on Twitter, OldFriend99. Josh Letterman? Formerly known as Josh Letterman, now known as Fiendlord99 or at OldFriend99. He will often, again, if you're not familiar with this fellow's work or the other.

this person's work it just absurdist things on twitter you're not supposed to take any of it seriously there's not even usually a hint of truth in any of it except today it turns out i think there is or i'm getting as levitard says i'm getting tricked by the internet so old friend 99 tweets out today please stephen king what does this mean it includes a screen cap of um you know of a book and this is the sentence and by the way i've done a little bit of digging this is from a story called I Am the Doorway, which is a short story originally published in 1971 and included in the 1978 collection Night Shift by Stephen King. The sentence is this, My hands flew up, flew over my head in a screaming orlesque gesture, the fingers reaching to the only familiar thing in this nightmare world, reaching to the clouds. It's a very descriptive sentence. The problem is, orlesque is not a word. O-R-L-E-S-Q-U-E, an orlesque gesture. That's simply not a word. It's not even like a, it's not like a misspelled word. It's like Stephen King just made up a word here. And I'm like, okay, this is just a joke by old friend 99, like kind of photoshopping this, making it seem like Stephen King is a goof. But if you Google the word Orlesque, you will find other chat rooms around the Internet, like on Reddit, people saying this is just a made up word like it doesn't exist. And I mentioned this to Genevieve thinking that she's Genevieve has a love hate relationship with Stephen King. She reads, I think, almost all of his books, but also he's a very flawed writer in a lot of ways, especially in his in his later works. And she just said, well, that's the least that's the least of his sins. I'm like, yeah, but aren't you angry about this? Like, you can't just make up words. It's one thing if you're messing around and you want to combine two words. What do we call that again? Portmanteau. Portmanteau. Genevieve and I call it an egg sandwich for reasons we don't have to get into. Did you learn that from guitarist Joe Perry? The time she taught me what a portmanteau was, she used some example that I can't remember. We were at breakfast or something, and then I just said, oh, so portmanteau is egg sandwich. And now I just think when I'm trying to think of that word, I can only think of egg sandwich. I'm broken. But anyway, it's not like a portmanteau. It's not a play on words. It's not fun. It's not clever. It's just Stephen King in 1971 thinking Orlesque was a word and writing it and never being held accountable for this. Like, I'm sure I've done worse. Until now. I can't believe that Genevieve is just so. Old friend 99. And I kind of appreciate this. But Genevieve is the type of person who, like, spends so much time being angry when people say irregardless, which is not a word, right? But regardless is a word and irrespective is a word. And then over time, people just started saying irregardless. It's not a word. But now it is a word because people have misspoken for so long. That's the type of thing that usually drives her crazy.

Yet she's giving Stephen King a pass on Orlesque simply because he's problematic in other ways.

Right. He's benefiting from the other things that he's written that she doesn't love. I will say I think Stephen King's book about writing, I think it's called On Writing, is really good. Like, if you're trying to be a writer, the entire book is Orlesque. I mean, from start to finish. The question is, what was he trying to say? What comes to mind when you hear the word Orlesque or the non-word Orlesque? I think of the hands being in a claw. Oh, that's interesting. My hands flew up, flew over my head in a screaming Orlesque gesture. Imagine me with my hands above my head, but my fingers are kind of in a claw-like thing. That's what Orlesque brings to my mind. Raising the question, if this made-up word by Stephen King helps me picture what this person was doing, does it matter that he made up the word? Like it's almost like onomatopoeic in a way, or maybe that's not the right way to describe it. But it's like Orlesque brings to mind a thought. It brings to mind something that's like ogre-like that's sort of – to me, it's twisted. It's – you know what I mean? It's kind of – that's what Orlesque makes my brain think of.

And see, this is really interesting. And this is maybe what you get when you have made up words is everybody can imprint it in their own way. Your description of that is great. And now that you say that, that's what I picture. I pictured a little bit more of a almost a questioning gesture, like you throw your hands up to the sky. I actually like yours better. I'm not arguing that mine is better, but when I first read it, I thought it was like kind of more of a pleading sort of like you're reaching up to the sky, like you want to grab something that is not there. Genevieve had a more, I don't know, she said something like it seemed almost like a fleeting gesture or ephemeral gesture, which I don't exactly know what that means or what she's picturing. I actually like your description of it, but we all kind of had different descriptions.

in our head immediately.

Right, but is Stephen King then doing us a favor? Right. Where he gives us something that we can all, it's basically like, you know, it's something that we can all put our own little spin on. We can imagine it however. He's not actually telling us how to imagine the shape of this person's hands because he's described it with a word that doesn't exist.

We get a lot of, and I'll leave this here because I don't want to belabor this, which I think I've already done, but I think I belabored it before while I was talking to Genevieve before I even cracked my mic but um you know we get a lot of questions for the hey dummies videos like if you could interview one person in the world living or dead who would it be and I'm never good at that because first of all I don't have a huge desire to interview people honestly like um I like our job because our job isn't a lot of interviewing you know it's like talking and uh so I always just kind of pass on that question but now I have an answer to it which is I want to interview Stephen King and I want to just bird dog him on this I I just don't – I only want an answer to, like, what were you thinking? What does Orlesque mean to you? At what point did you learn this wasn't actually a word? I'm assuming you're not hearing it right now. Why have you not addressed the questions from the community about this made-up word? I just want to do a whole interview about the word Orlesque.

How did it get past the editor? I mean, I would have – if you didn't explain this whole thing to me, I would have just assumed Orlesque is a word that I just haven't heard before. Me too. Were I an editor? also the question arises at what point this is a short story an old Stephen King short story I wonder where Stephen King was in his career at this point because one of the things he talks about in his book about writing is how you know he was I believe like a custodian at a at a school like I don't know it was like a high school or something and he would get up you know kind of do that famous sort of John Grishamy thing where he had like would write in the laundry room of his trailer in is it new hampshire is that where he hails i think so somewhere yeah or wait he would is he maine or new hampshire he might maybe maine yeah yeah he would be up you know and and he uh talks about you know basically having this dream of having a writing career but having to pay the bills through other work and so i'm wondering like was he was this young stephen king just starting out was he writing this in the laundry room in his trailer you know before his shift at the high school um and just reaching and just thought or less was a word or was this stephen king in you know his like you know post carry where like oh no this is 71 this is this is early

this is published in a magazine wow so this is before he is the author that we now think of as stephen king yeah this is 1971 originally published in cavalier magazine and then in the collection night shift which came out in 1978 which was a collection of his shorter story so if you're publishing for magazines at this point this is pretty early i mean i don't know if this is like Before anybody's ever heard his name But 71's pretty early

Yeah it must have just been an editor Who was overworked And just kind of you know doing a sort of Quick scan of it and thought Oh that seems like a word And somehow it got into the magazine Stephen King is also responsible for what is For me almost a Like phobic thing Which is I am deeply worried About being hit by a car While I'm jogging Not if I'm on like a normal Portland street like if i'm on the sidewalk but if i am ever out in a rural area and like i'm running on the side of the road where there's you know they're not curbs it's just kind of a shoulder i am irrationally afraid that a car is gonna hit me because that happened to stephen king he was on a walk and a truck hit him i believe and it was obviously a very serious injury took him a long time to recover and that is somehow embedded itself in my brain to where i just really do not like running out on like country roads because i just and becca and i were running out by her house and it's country out there and like she was running like two steps in the road and i was like you gotta get over here on the shoulder and it's like we could see up four miles ahead there are no cars but i just and you know what it's also now kind of grown into i as has been clear on the show i don't want to say i have a resentment of cyclists in portland but i'm highly aware of them and i'm highly worried about having a collision I almost had a collision this morning on my jog actually so maybe all my fears are somewhat founded there are just so many people on bikes in Portland and they're going pretty fast and like if you're out on this this little path that goes along the Willamette River that I use most mornings if I have headphones in and if I like change lanes like if I have a bike coming towards me or someone jogging towards me I'm trying to give them room I'm always like, I'm checking my blind spot Like I'm driving a car Like I will not even move a foot over Without looking over my shoulder And making sure there's not a cyclist coming Because I have this weird thing I've never been hit by a bike, by the way But I have this weird fear that it's going to happen And today, interestingly enough I was about to change lanes And I just looked over my shoulder And there was a cyclist So I was like, I guess that's why you check your blind spot yeah i'm doing that constantly whether i'm walking or driving and there's as you know there's like that protected bike lane right on the street that i live on and i'm constantly like if you're if you're going to take a right hand turn off of this one-way street like you have to like make damn sure there is not a bike speeding because the bike lane is on the right hand side yeah like when you're making a right hand turn as an automobile driver you don't usually have to be worrying about another lane of traffic to your right right with a bike lane you certainly do and i am so careful about this i think i've said this to you once before like there is a moment that um that haunts me to no end luke i think about this all the time i was doing exactly what i'm describing to you i'm taking a right off of my own street i am always super cautious to look for bikes i come to a full stop in this instant there's no bike coming but there's some

people who are crossing in the crosswalk just pedestrians i believe they were older folks they were moving very slowly which is fine I wait for them to cross the street and by the time they are done crossing the street for some reason my brain just blipped out for a second and I didn't check the bike lane again because I'd been sitting there for maybe 20-25 seconds and I go to take a right and I just start moving and I suddenly and I don't remember if I heard him yell or if I noticed him in my mirror or or maybe I was turning and looking over my shoulder at the same time I don't know what it was i didn't come close to hitting somebody but there was somebody zipping down and i it was one of those moments where i slammed on the brakes and i know for a for a fact that i scared the daylights out of this person and my window was down this was a couple of summers ago and i remember i just yelled at the top of my lungs i'm so sorry like i because like i am i take that shit so seriously especially with the you know especially with these designated bike lanes and everything like i don't know i'm just driving this hunk of this you know this hunk of metal that is a killing machine if you're not being careful and if i was a biker i would be so mad at me i would have smashed i would have smashed my car up like out of vengeance i see i

think that's a listen i i'm i'm not trying to sound anti-cyclist but it is tricky to coexist with those of us that are driving these hunks of death metal and those of us who are riding on these uh you know these bikes and i'm just looking at this street that i look out on in portland at least that i'm gonna look out on for the next few weeks and there's just tons of you know there's a bike lane running down it but it's that exact thing you're describing which is it's very if you're in the car it'd be very easy to take a right into somebody that's coming on a bike and i guess what my point is is i think the bike has the right of way there because like this the light is green they're driving on the street but i also think that the cyclist if i was on a bike and i was riding down that lane on your street and i saw a car that was about to take a right i would be very mind i'd be very aware of what the car was in other words i'd be practicing defensive driving on the bike now that's maybe not fair maybe the bike shouldn't like have to do that because they have the right of way but out of self-protection i would be very much trying to note if the cars were noticing me senpai you know what i mean like i guess i just feel like

i'm sure they are though i mean i'm sure this guy saw me a million miles away and was kind of like i mean maybe he has you know this all happened for me in a flash of a second as he goes by i'm sure his hands i'm sure instinctively a cyclist hands go to the break when you're coming up also just a quick note like as you know like as i think you know um you know exactly this bike lane i'm talking about is like this nice long smooth um casual downhill on our road and so i can just imagine like cyclists who are out for a longer ride they finally are on that stretch of of road where you can rest a little bit and like it must be a a very nice part of the ride if you don't get hit by a car so and it's a really busy you know area with traffic so my guess is anybody who's riding a bike like that they see a car about to take a right up there you're putting your hands on the brakes wondering if this dingus is about to cut you off but it is asking an unnatural thing

of you the driver which is to take a right but to make sure there's not something to your right when you're taking a right and of course we need to do it because we want to try to keep everybody safe but it's not there's there are no there's no car equivalent to it there are no lanes where your job is to be in the left lane and take a right across the right lane of traffic and check that. You know what I mean? That's not how car traffic works generally. This is a relatively new thing that we've added these bike lanes, which again, I think are good. And thank God people are riding their bikes. It's helping the planet in some way. But you know what I mean? It's asking you to learn a new skill that you didn't learn in driver's ed because there's not a time where you're taking a right and you have to check on your right and make sure there's not a car coming because you would be in the right lane normally when you're taking the right.

This isn't interesting for, like, people who can't picture the bike lane I'm talking about, but now I am curious. I wonder why the decision was made to put the bike lane in this particular place on the right-hand side, since it's a one-way road especially. You know, it's a two-lane, one-way street. that I live on, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't have made sense. I mean, there must have been something, obviously, before you put in a protected bike lane like this, which is, you know, like it's a real piece of infrastructure, this thing. I'm sure a million studies went into it, but I wonder why the decision was made to put it on the right-hand side, because it does seem so much more dangerous than having it on the left.

If I can quickly just favor you with a couple of Old Friend 99's other tweets, along with The one to Stephen King. For people to just kind of get a sense for what this guy's or person's, I don't actually know their gender, what this person's kind of tweet style is. You. I'm worried about global supply chains. Me. I just get everything right from the store. Sunglasses emoji guy. I have no problem with people using found footage. Finders keepers. How about, I love how songs go.

That is perfect old friend 99 right there That is perfect

I love how songs go I don't know why You're generally You're more into I think edgier comedy than I am Like when it comes to film and things like that And a lot of that stuff is over my head But this guy kills me And I don't know why Because again I'm usually very I need my jokes really spoon fed to me But yeah This old friend 99 is worth the follow I always feel better after popping a wheelie. I am going to bully the Walt Disney Company.

You know, I had forgotten that we call it popping a wheelie, you know? Of course. I mean, I guess there's no other verb that can precede what you do with a wheelie, right? I achieved a wheelie. No, you only pop wheelies.

Yeah, you got to pop a wheelie. Popping a wheelie was a really big part of my childhood. Yeah, absolutely. Like we would get these – like we would have these contests of like how far somebody could ride a wheelie, how far you could pop a wheelie. Now you see these kids on like TikTok and other places who can literally – like a lot of them are actually – it looks from the backdrop like they're in New York maybe. And they're just – they can ride a wheelie for like 10 blocks and do all these crazy tricks and stuff. And they're just like – it's a bunch of these kids. The videos I've seen, they're primarily black kids, and it seems like it's a whole bike culture for them. And these bikes are also really cool. They're sort of like something in between a mountain bike and a BMX bike, and these kids have just thoroughly mastered the art of riding these wheelies. It's just like the most cool thing to watch. People who hate kaleidoscopes, have you tried rotating them?

I retweeted that one just now from a few days ago.

Oh, we could sit here and read someone else's Twitter feed all day. But we have to take a break so we can thank the people who actually pay for this to happen. So we'll do that, and we'll do our top stories and the Blur's Day is coming up here on TBTL. All right, let's thank some donors of the day. These are the generous people making a donation each month, which is how we're able to keep doing this five days a week. Karen Jenkins is in Kenmore, Washington. Thank you, Karen. Andy Zolinskis is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm sad now, Andrew. I was going to pop into Minneapolis for a hot minute. We're really St. Paul, technically, but then the lawsuit related to the Philadelphia Phillies ruined my trip. I was excited to see the home office. I also created a massive access situation at our work where 30 people were debating if I was allowed in the home office or not.

Is that the one where I got hollered at during an all-staff meeting? Yes. Because you didn't get your problem. How'd today's all-staff go, by the way? Any hollering? It went pretty well. They asked me if I had anything I wanted to present about what's going on with TBTL, and I said, hmm, if you have anybody else that's got anything more burning, go ahead. But that happened yesterday. And then the people that did talk bragged about how great their shows are, which made me feel like I should have bragged about how great my show is.

Did you say it's been over three weeks since Luke tried to illegally enter the home office? So take that, Lily.

I said it's been over three days since we've had a workplace accident.

Yeah. That's why I wear this hard hat when I'm doing this show. Scott Crane is in Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Scott, for supporting TBTL. I met a Scott this weekend who is a listener. I wonder. There's a lot of Scots in Seattle. But anyway, thanks for the donation, Scott Crane. Krista Gilbert is also in Seattle. Thank you, Krista, for making TBTL possible.

Uh, Richard Kimmel is in St. George, Utah. And then Aaron McNamara is in Westmont, Illinois. Uh, thank you so much to all of our donors, uh, all year long, but especially on this day, those folks who are making this particular episode possible. Couldn't be here without you. All right. Thank you, baby. hello and welcome to top story by the way andrew i told you yesterday that i was going to interview nicky six from motley crew oh yeah live wire and i said he's either going to be like super nice or very like rock star and he was super nice which you predicted yeah i was gonna i was even as you

were starting that sentence i was just now i was thinking i'll be surprised if you say that he was super aloof that might make better tbtl material but it makes better live wire material if he's

nice he was incredibly nice and he was all done up though like because uh it wasn't a junket but my guess would be that he was probably doing a few interviews that day and so he had it was like fully like his full hair and everything and like he looked really good everybody all the staffers on the live wire chat were like what is his skincare routine because he's like 62 years old um and then we have to do this thing where we basically to get the local recording of the person this is very boring but you'll find it two percent interesting andrew which is really the point of doing the show is entertaining you um so what will happen is like i'll be here in portland and i'm recording myself in portland and then we have the person who's being interviewed record themselves wherever they are he was in los angeles but a lot of people don't have like a podcast set up so what we do is we have them record themselves on their phone typically their iphone so they have to like hold their phone the like voice memo function has to be on and they have to be holding their phone kind of close to their mouth and there's always this mildly tense moment because nobody wants to sit there for a half hour holding the phone by their mouth they want to put the phone down on the desk or something and our technical director our incredible technical director molly pettit who is just like so smart and also so good at like getting people to do things that are better for the audio of the show without seeming like a nudge it's her she has the unenviable task unenviable task of sort of trying to get these people sometimes very famous people to hold this phone in a kind of awkward manner and so he was all done up and they looked all good and then he had like he's i got my phone it's right here and then they were like oh can you hold your phone by your face and he was like yeah no problem like he was like the most compliant person we've tried to get to do this for a long time so anyway i just wanted to tell everyone that nicky six is a also by the way a roosevelt rough rider no shit really half of the book takes place in your neighborhood and oh no kidding like where the westy is now oh nice strange right yeah unexpected Anyway, that is not actually the top story. The top story today comes hot off the presses from July 9th of 2013, a piece by Simon Parkin in The New Yorker. Desert Bus, the very worst video game ever created. You sent this to me. Did you get this from like Ars Technica or something?

That's really funny. Maybe somebody just tweeted it out. I didn't realize it was 2013 until you said that. You know where I saw it was I have this App called Pocket I think that might be Where I saw it but although now I'm a little Confused I'm not sure I do think that this is It's kind of Revolves around an annual event Now that takes place in October so maybe Late September early October so maybe Somebody retweeted it because of that Oh that's interesting though this thing was written in 2013 Yeah but it's

This I had never heard of it this This video game that of all people, Penn and Teller, yeah, the magicians, Penn and Teller and a friend of theirs, came up with this video game as more or less a protest against Janet Reno and other people who thought that video games were leading to violence among young people who were playing them. And so they came up with this idea for basically the most boring, tedious video game that could ever exist. And I guess the message they were hoping to send was this is what it would be like if games didn't compress time and you didn't get to shoot things. Right. Is that kind of your takeaway from this? Yeah. That's how this was a protest statement.

It definitely the the the way this was a protest is the most confusing part of the story to me.

But I do think that I reread it like four times to try to wrap my brain around it.

But essentially, yeah, if you had a bunch of folks who were, you know, kind of slamming video games and looking for more regulation, I guess Ben and Teller wanted to say, OK, well, then here's what a video game looks like when you don't incorporate violence.

action how about you're just a bus driver and you have to take really boring bus routes now not to skip ahead too far in the story here but just to um just to paint a picture and i tested this out i found a copy of this game i'm gonna see if i can even play this in the background but does it have music it has like i think um it has uh i think it just has the sound of a bus before Before I start playing it, though, it automatically wants me to use the name Jocko. I can write in Andrew, but for some reason, the default name is I'll just be Jocko. Try that on for size. And the thing is, it's like you got it. What does it say? Do you have in front of you what the first leg is? I think you're going from somewhere to Vegas.

I think Tucson, Arizona, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. Oh, yeah. Here it is. It's an eight-hour drive, and the top speed you can go in the game is 45 miles per hour.

and it's 360 miles and it's literally an eight hour drive now you might be picturing oh okay so that means there's going to be other cars on the road that you have to um kind of avoid or it's like spy hunter is somebody laying down an oil slick right or even if it's just more casual there's going to be something you can't just like run off the road which i guess technically you can't run off the road but nothing happens even if you run off the road it just slowly comes to A stop well and then you have to start over

Yeah something very critical happens You have to start the game over Right because like The deal is you're driving this was I'll just read From this from this piece finishing A single leg of the trip requires considerable Snabbina and concentration in the face Of arch boredom the Vehicle constantly lists to the right So players cannot take their hands off The virtual wheel swerving from The road will cause the buses engine to stall Forcing the player to be towed back to the beginning The game cannot be paused. The bus carries no virtual passengers to add human interest, and there is no traffic to negotiate. The only scenery is the odd sand-pocked rock or road sign. Players earn a single point for each eight-hour trip completed between the two cities, making a desert bus high score perhaps the most costly in gaming.

Like eight hours. So here, I'm in the little setup screen right now. I'm punching in. This is the music they have, too, which I also think that they chose especially, like, annoying blues rock music. So I'm in the little punch clock room right now. I'm punching in as Jocko. And now the bus takes a while to start. There's nothing to do. It's just doing this automatically. Luke, the scenery is like driving across the Outback, like we did. There's nothing. There's literally nothing, there it goes, to recommend this game. I'm going to get going here. It's just an empty, dead road. There's a little sign above me that says your driver's name is Jocko. And the only thing that moves, you can sort of see the steering wheel. If I don't steer to the left every now and then, Luke, it'll just slowly drive off the road. But even that isn't exciting. It doesn't drive off the road and crash. It just slowly, slowly slows down, and then it stalls out. Like, there's nothing. I mean, you know me. I love a tedious game where nothing happens, but it's just this for eight hours. Oh, I'm gearing off. I've got to move to the left a little bit.

So this game was never released. It was actually part of a suite of games that Penn & Teller were sort of curating for, like, Sega. But by the time they actually built the games, nobody was using that particular generation of the Sega or this plug-in to the Sega that it was designed for. so this game just became kind of like just kind of this legendary thing because they basically had, there were some copies of it that were like created to send out to like video game reviewers or you know magazines or whatever but the game wasn't something you could go down to like GameStop and buy for your Sega I find it amazing that at one point the world record for this was five points right? Like because five points meant somebody or somebodies because After you complete the route My guess is after you do your initial eight hours You just have to keep going You can't like, you can't pause the game You don't like get to start You don't get to like take a break You have to have people continuously Handling this game For eight hour stretches To get a point So like at some point there was going to be something where Penn and Teller, the original idea was that if anybody got A hundred points in the game They were going to give them an actual free trip to Vegas I think they were going to come pick him up in a limo or something. Like, there was going to be this whole thing. I mean, 100 points would be, what's the quick math on that, 800 hours? Yeah. 800 straight hours? If you get through that, the gift should be Las Vegas. Like, you own Las Vegas now. You're the new mayor. You're the new Oscar Goodman.

Yeah.

Sorry.

I mean, this is just, even me, again, like, I can't stress enough, I'm reading this article, and I'm like, well, I like tedious things, let me just check this out, and even me, after five minutes, like, the only other thing that moves is there's a little odometer, and that's almost maddening, like, everything about this is maddening. Like, the odometer moves so slowly. And I've just got this floored right now. I mean, it's very much. I compared this to the trip in the Outback as far as the scenery is concerned. But really, this is more like the trip in the Delica because it only goes 45 miles an hour. You're just, like, slowly. We reenacted Desert Bus.

Yes, we did. Now, unwittingly.

I guess the one thing is, like, one thing I can do is I can virtually, like, move my head around sort of. You don't actually see anybody's head. But I can look into the back of the bus and see that I don't have any passengers. I almost drove off the road there because I was looking around. But I think on different legs, eventually you start carrying passengers. But this first eight-hour route, it's just you alone. I think they might have, because I thought I read in the article that at one point, one of these legs, you have to carry a band. Like a band, maybe from New Orleans to somewhere else. I don't know if that's fun.

Well, that sounds true or not. I mean, that sounds like a real thrill ride. Yeah, right? Compared to the other things happening in this game. Now, what's kind of a cool outcome of this is that some folks have gotten their hands on this over the years. And this started basically playing the game online for charity. Like raising money by playing this incredibly tedious game and seeing how long they could do it. I'm trying to find the name of the... Well, you look for the name. I can see. I know what the organization does.

is I think it raises... Desert Bus for Hope, by the way. Okay, gotcha. And doesn't it raise money you have in front of you for kids to get them, like for kids who maybe don't have access to any kind of digital entertainment

or video game type of stuff? Yes, I believe so. And they've raised now, since they've been doing this online every year, over a million dollars.

Yeah, that's quite a bit. And they didn't even ask Penn and Teller to be a part of it either. But I think that Teller found out about it somehow.

Right, and they were like sending them food. and supplies so they could keep going this was like maybe in one of the first years of them doing it so now it's this cool thing desert bus for hope where you can go watch these people deal with this madness and kick some money towards a worthy cause so that's all kind of interesting i hadn't heard much about this before and i'm i'm not a gamer obviously so i'm my ear is not to the ground of these sorts of things but what really intrigued me uh yesterday andrew we were talking before the show was you said this led you into a whole other situation it did which i'm dying to

tell you about except i just tried to go full screen on this so i could take a screen cap and it crashed my computer luke nothing is responding i can't nothing is responding to my computer i got a hard reboot my computer god damn this game thanks to desert bus more like

desert bus for nope i yeah how about that write that down i because i am i i'm a whole i'm literally

holding the power button down on my computer right now you don't hear the bus anymore because I just took it out of the mix because it was driving me crazy. I'm having to do a full restart on my computer because it's a goddamn game.

Well, what part of the dark web did you have to go to to get Desert Bus, the unreleased Sega game from 1995? I mean, that's got to be kind of kludgy, right?

Yeah, well, I'm glad you asked because that's actually part of this next step of this story. So, and I'll, again, this is like maybe 2% interesting, Luke, but coincidentally, I had just talked about this aspect of my life on the last Hey Dummies video, which was excruciating to watch. It was like last week's Hey Dummies video, which you can see if you sign up for the TBTL newsletter, was like. Please do that, by the way. It's very good. But, yeah, and they're going to get better. Like, don't worry, because last week's Hey Dummies video was like the desert bus edition of Hey Dummies. Like, I showed everybody this video game that I play. I told you a long time ago that sometimes during TBTL and other times. Exactly. Hex Empire is like this very, very basic, they call it a flash-based game that I play. It's kind of like picture risk only way, way, way stripped down, right? And it's like something that I, when I'm talking to you sometimes or if I'm just like waiting for something to upload and I want to clear my brain, I'll play a game of Hex Empire. The way some people maybe back in the day would play like Solitaire on their computer or FreeCell or something. So I was showing people that and how I've been obsessing over it lately. Well, I don't know if you'll remember this part, Luke, but I think I told you about that game because essentially the technology that allowed me to play it online was going away. It's a Flash-based game. And for reasons I don't fully understand other than knowing that it was kind of a security risk and an unstable thing, a lot of browsers, including Chrome, stopped supporting any kind of flash.

Flash-based games or what have you about a year ago. I think it was at the beginning of this year. And so my game went away. But a listener sent me a link that said, well, you can still play almost all these Flash games. And again, a Flash game means it can be anything like my Hex Empire or it could be like somebody who's learning programming can literally, like, put together a game. I was playing one the other day where two stick figures have a shootout. But they're literally stick figures. Like it's just like some of these are the most basic games you can imagine. Others are a little bit artier, but it's all still a pretty basic kind of format. And so somebody said, hey, if you miss your Hex Empire, go here and you can download this program. I don't even understand. I don't understand what it is. I don't know what it's called, but I downloaded it and it has thousands and thousands and thousands of old Flash games on it. And I don't think I'm not going to say what it is because I don't know. I'm not being cagey here. I don't think it's illegal. I don't think I'm, like, hacking something. Maybe I am. Maybe there's some intellectual property right issues here. But I think it was just like, here, this stuff is going away. So here it all is bundled up. And I've only used it to play Hex Empire. And then I read about Desert Bus. And I came to my computer. I'm like, can I find a version of it online? And I couldn't. But then I'm like, what about that weird program I have that has thousands of games on it? Is Desert Bus on there? And it was. Wow. And that's when I started playing it. And I can't tell This one says Desert Bus 3D I think they made a couple of very small changes Maybe to avoid a copyright issue I'm not sure about that But then once I was in this thing I was like wait a second Why have I not messed around with any of these other games Like there are so many other games And then I was like what is this one And I clicked on one It was some game out of Asia based on the characters That I could see like I mean the written characters You know it wasn't in English And that was one where it was actually a weirdly addictive Shootout game between two stick figures. I was like, wow, that's the thing about these games. Some of them are super janky, and then you start playing them, and you're like, oh, but there's some stickiness there, right? Then I found, Luke, a game called The Waitress.

Okay?

Carol, hold my calls, because I am not, I cannot stress to you enough, what day, today's Thursday, right? So it was Tuesday that I got obsessed with this game, where you are a server in a diner there are four tables it sounds so easy and oh luke it does start off easy you have four tables and customers will start coming in and you have to first take their order and then you have to fulfill their order by going to the kitchen and getting you know like saying i need pasta or you tell the cook i need pasta or i need chicken or i need steak and they spell steak wrong for some reason i don't know if that's a joke how do you tell them it's like a keystroke okay yeah i mean i i can't even i can't even begin to describe this so i'm playing all of these on my computer right so it's basically just i think with this you just use your arrow keys to move back and forth you're just moving left to right on the screen left to right left to right back and forth to describe this luke picture yourself watching an episode of the simpsons or futurama or something right and one of the characters is playing a game like they're making a joke about a a mundane video game this is what it looks like it looks like what the simpsons would draw as a video game called the waitress in one of their cartoons if that makes she have blonde hair and a red shirt i don't know she has a red shirt i think her hair is in a ponytail yeah are you seeing screen caps i'm looking some images of this yeah okay good so people people know about this i wasn't sure if this was a going concern i never took the time to research it all i know is it starts off really simple usually one customer will come in sit down at a table. I would like a Coke and a steak. Okay. You go over to the kitchen area. You have to tell the cook, I want one steak. Yeah. It's a kind of a keystroke. I think you click on it. Maybe you do use your mouse. You, you right click or you click and it says, what do you want? There are four options like pasta, steak, fish or something else. I don't know. Omelet is one of them. You say, okay, I want a steak for this customer. Now, while the chef goes and makes that, there's a little cooler. You grab a Coke, a cola out of the cooler. You put that on your tray. Then about the time you get that cola the the orders up you grab it off of the the counter and you take it to that table the thing is the cook can only make one thing at a time the cooler can only hold 10 cans of each flavored soda so eventually as you're running low on that you got to call on the bus like the busboy or something to come out from back and fill it up again you have to then clear the dirty plates but the key is and this is what they don't tell you you can only hold four items on your tray at any time it can be two dirty dishes and two new things of soda it can be one dirty dish and one omelet and two coffees but all of these things take time and you can only hold four things at a time so you're constantly running back and forth and playing this game of, okay, I've got to ditch this now, I've got to pick this up, and it gets so intense. I started just playing a little bit, but by the time I got into it, I played one game up to an hour until I finally just couldn't keep up anymore. They just keep on turning the heat up

on you until it is impossible to catch up, and it becomes like a strategy game about that riddle of, okay, I've got to get this bag of salt across the river, but there's a scorpion on the other side or i think i might have gotten that slightly wrong um but it is it was so addictive and i just i played it all night long now i didn't touch it yesterday yesterday during my work day i was thinking oh i'm gonna play some of the waitress tonight and then i didn't and if i avoided it now it's sort of like the addiction has worn off a little bit i could probably turn my back on this game but it's one of those things where if i start playing it again and again i think it ties into my I think I have some like OCD tendencies Or something or maybe ADHD Tendencies or something and it's just like I get obsessed with it and you would think like Oh well you play it while you listen to A podcast you're doing something else But in this case I don't I listen Because I need to hear the sound you can hear The sound of the customers drinking anybody Who has that We talk about it a lot Synesthesia that's not it what is the no That's the color thing right what's the thing where you don't Like the sound of people eating and slurping

By the way, I'm doing a game right now. I just got a guy a coffee and some pasta.

Oh, you can play that online, huh? Even without my hacked flash drive thing.

This is a guy with a ponytail and sunglasses and, like, lamb chop sideburns. Do you know the dude? Oh, I know this dude.

There's only, like, four characters, I believe. Oh, okay.

I did the coffee, but not the pasta. Oh, shoot. Okay. See?

I did the pasta. Yeah. And eventually you're going to run out of coffee cups. You're going to have to get that guy from the kitchen to come out and refill that. Uh-oh. Oh, and if you try to do too many things at once, you get that air horn. Oh, interesting. It's like a little warning. Like, hey, man, you got to finish one thing. There, you just put something down. Just put the soda down. You're making coffee now, right?

I'm getting coffee. Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing because I got to go back to this guy and try to give him his pasta. He seems ticked. I'm in like level .005 of this game.

And the thing is there's a little happy face above the customers, and the longer they wait, those happy faces turn sadder and sadder and angrier. And eventually, when you're overwhelmed, they start walking out on you. And when one customer walks out, you lose a life or whatever you call it. And you have three chances.

I'm so hungry for pasta and coffee.

I know. Some of the orders are interesting.

Now, here's the thing that's so – I think you're right, though, by the way, that this is something that's – like it's more sort of – I don't know if I want to use the word soothing. I don't want to try to explain how you feel or experience things. But that was fun. I was kind of curious about it, but in a trillion years, I would never – I could never see myself getting sucked into that. Oh, yeah. So it's interesting to me that that is a thing, and other games that are similar to it are things that really like – but I could spend three hours on TikTok. And I have the thought sometimes – I haven't been on TikTok a whole lot of late, but I would have that thought sometimes. You know what? Tonight, I'm going to get all my stuff done, and then I'm just going to like spread it on the couch. I'm going to have the Mariners game on and I'm going to be scrolling through TikTok. And I'm like looking forward to it because what it really means is my brain will be shut off. The voices will get a little quieter for a few minutes. But it's like that's what my brain needs for self-soothing. Yours could do something like this waitress situation.

Now, at least yours, even if some of the content is ridiculous, at least yours, you are learning or taking in information in some way, right? Like I have nothing to show for after this. Like, you could spend, let's say I play this game for an hour. You could have, you could be like, well, at least I saw this thing, or at least I saw something that I can talk about on TBTL. No, I guess, ironically, we are talking about this on TBTL. But, like, you could say, like, okay, well, I have this gabagool drop I can play now, or what have you. You know what I mean? You're still part of the world. For me, this is definitely, like, shutting down. Like, I just, like you said, it quieted the voices. It just shut me down. And, like, I didn't listen to Levitard when I was doing this. I just listened to those Slurpee sounds because I got to know that, like, when after so many sips, it means that they'll finish their soda and crumple up the can. And then I can go grab it and get rid of that before the next person comes in because the next person is always right around the corner. And sometimes they come in with two people. If they come in with two people, then you've got to get four things. It's a real strong I Love Lucy vibes.

Yes, it really is. Conveyor belt of chocolates. I think it's fast. See, that also – see, the other thing that's interesting about that is it seems like it would make me feel anxious, but it actually makes you feel relaxed.

Weirdly. And these puttering games are so close – if I'm not doing this game, I'm basically doing the same thing IRL in my kitchen, right? Like I'm – oh, I've got to grind the coffee. Okay, did you finish grinding the coffee? Yeah, but I'm going to need to make these ice cubes. But the ice cubes are – the water is going to spill all over the place, so make the coffee first. But where's the coffee brush? I've got to brush.

shot the coffee grinder thing okay you know what i mean like i just yeah there is something going

on with me that might be getting more intense with age interesting do you think could you foresee a time where you have to kind of sort of restrict yourself with this game the way you have with

minecraft well like i say i think minecraft had a similar addictiveness although although with minecraft you didn't always the heat didn't always get turned up on you you know that's a little bit more about choose your own adventure you can find yourself in situations but you can also say you know what i'm not going to deal with monsters or mining today i'm just going to tend to my pumpkin

patch and you know oh i see so within the game you have choices where you're hanging out you don't have to go to mount doom every day sometimes you can be in the shire exactly right and so but other

days you might say hey i want to go look for gold but that means i'm going to encounter some spiders so i should be ready to fight like i kind of like the fact that it's kind of like you can really choose your own journey with Minecraft but it is like with both of these things it's like it'll be addictive for the moment but honestly like if you just give yourself a day you stop thinking about it like it's not like you know what I mean like it's just I can't explain it like when you're in the moment it that's the only place you want to be but then if you stop it drops off for me pretty

quickly right now are you also going to investigate the 999 other games that that are available to and that trove well some of them are

like so there's a charlie sheen game on here like i don't yeah there's this game called winning the charlie sheen game should i try to even call that up it looks like you're driving or i mean some of them are just so here winning the charlie sheen game let's see what do you say winning oh my gosh you still have that you camaro kev reminded me that you actually went to yes sheen event when he was on his winning tour the um i am on a

drug it's called charlie sheen uh it was the violent torpedo of truth tour i believe it was called and it was just it was uh as as bad as you might imagine um it was at this it was at the like comcast center in everett and first it was just like a guitar player just jamming like literally just like a guy jamming heavy metal riffs for like an hour and then finally charlie sheen came out and he just sort of paced the stage and just talked about nonsense and it was like once we all realized okay we're actually here we're actually seeing this this is

happening it got so boring so fast yes i believe it but you were there for an important moment in history so it looks like you're just supposed to drive this car by the way i'm gonna go with um i don't know easy yeah this is now this looks like an 80s video game going left to right i'm in a car i'm avoiding pedestrians and trying not to hit spikes on the road oh but if you hit pedestrians they just blow up into blood it's really kind of gory and gross uh now i want to

mention if people are if you're intrigued by desert bus but you don't want to actually like go on the dark web and download it and try to play it or lose your life uh you know your connection to uh the rest of humanity by sitting there for eight to eight hundred hours there are people who have played through the entire game on youtube really you can go watch this is somebody named alex and uh this is this video is eight hours and seven minutes so that's just one leg that's one like this person got one point so if you want if you if you want this sort of like i don't know what we'd call if you want this droning to sort of uh help put your brain to sleep and you want to watch someone play this game for eight hours but you don't have to actually do it it is on YouTube. It's from something called Nintendo Complete. My guess is this is just a YouTube channel where people just finish Nintendo games. And you know what? I actually would be very curious to watch the Mike Tyson Punch-Out version of this, and also the original Super Mario Bros. version of this.

My, how things come full circle after being the world's preeminent Twitch commentator. Or enemy of Twitch.

Enemy of Twitch number one, yes. Yeah, exactly. It's all come back around, I guess.

All right, time for some Blursdays. Sally says, wishing my oldest five a happy 22nd birthday. How can these fives, they grow up so quickly. They really do. She is wickedly smart, fun, and creative. Wait a second, is there no name here? Sally says, wishing my oldest five a happy 22nd birthday.

22nd birthday she is wickedly fun smart and creative she just moved to denver and started her phd program in applied chemistry at the colorado school of mines you know who went to

the colorado school of mines no george saunders the writer no kidding yes that was his his initial career that's actually quite a um well regarded that might be the harvard of mining schools now

do you think some people go there thinking it's the colorado school of mimes and then they're really sad when they realize you have to look at the fine print definitely look at the fine print on the website Sally says I'm the proudest mom in the whole world she also believes that Professor Bananas is the best name ever for a cat I would have to agree

so true that I had to rip you off on wait wait don't tell me and make a Professor Bananas joke once that's right and of course we're ripping off 30 Rock so there you go Sarah on Bainbridge says happy Blurs Day to me After listening a long dang time I am finally getting over myself And wishing my own damn self A ding dang happy happy It's such language I love it Sarah Sarah do you know that my niece Maddie listens to the show By the way this is how My niece Maddie listening to the show Is how my sister Hannah finds out what's going on in my life There's a message I heard you're moving Maddie heard it on the show Is everything alright Yes everything's fine I'm 59 this year Which let me tell you Sounds like a fronk of a lot older Than any of my prior blurses So I'm pulling out All the stops And then she says sorry Maddie That's right I hadn't read to the end of that message

That question answers itself Happy blurs Sarah on Bainbridge Kate in Minneapolis says I'd like to wish myself a happy 28th Blurs Day Since I don't know any real life 10s But maybe that'll change this year. TBTL has been a wonderful companion for the past three years. Am I still a new listener? Yes. Yes. Just a wee babe in the world of TBTL experience. And I've been so glad to connect with this community. Thanks for all you do. And thanks for the great Minor League Baseball Hey Dummies video, Luke. Oh, yeah. I am.

That's not really the sound effect for that, but I just felt like doing it again. I need to be clear with the people who watched that Hey Dummies video. And I don't know if you had a chance to see it, Andrew, or not. But I do not know off the top of my head all of the teams in the Minnesota Twins farm system. I printed that out, and I taped it to the thing. It was just so I could have it for reference. But then I realized after I submitted the video that people might think I was trying to surreptitiously kind of look down and check my notes. That was never the intention I want to be very clear I do not know the entire Minnesota Twins I was not trying to pretend that I did Do you know it now though?

Did you commit it to memory since?

Well the St. Paul Saints are the next ones down Famously, they're triple A And then there's No, that's where it gets There's the wind Windhammers There's like the Somewhere wind something The Wichita Wind Surge The Wichita Windsor I'm just looking this up And then you've got There's a team in South Carolina The shrimps It's a sea creature, right? I like that

A shrimp I'm looking this up here You have the Mighty Muscles Mighty Muscles Yes, yes, yes

The Mighty Muscles And they're in South Carolina, right? Fort Myers Okay And Fort Myers, Florida or South Carolina? That's what I'm trying to figure out here I don't know Where'd my Florida Florida, Florida, Florida. Florida, okay. So, yeah, that's what I can tell you about that.

Yeah, and you got the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, the Rochester Red Wings, and the Cedar Rapid Colonels.

Ooh, that's cute. Yeah, the Cedar Rapid Colonels. Wow, a couple of those. I didn't even have a couple of those in there. So, Kate, you might need to retract your nice compliment about me getting those teams right. Because two of those teams I haven't even heard of.

No, I'm glad that you did that because I – you know what I was going to do is I was going to get Durs on the line to do the minor league hay dummies because I was like, I don't – I mean, I did not feel confident in my ability to explain the AAA system.

You know more about baseball than I do at this point, Monfrere.

I don't know if that's entirely true. I knew more about the 2021 Mariners at the beginning of the season, but that doesn't mean I know more about baseball. But anyway, no, I got good feedback on that video. So thanks for doing it. And let's see. Happy Blur's Day to Kate.

Yeah. Kayla says, happy Blur's Day to Christian, the greatest son a mom could ask for. Aww. My name is also Christian. Mm-hmm. I'm yet to get a blurs from my mom on the show. Pointing that out. Was that true? You're the coolest kid I've never seen. That's not a typo. You make me so proud every day, and I can't wait to see what amazing things you do this year. Love you 3,000 from Kayla to Christian. Love it. That's sweet.

Aww.

Kayla texts into the show quite a bit. If I got the right Kayla, assuming this is the same Kayla, But I think she's maybe in Northern California, maybe. I'm not sure. Either way, good to hear from you, Kayla. And happy Blur's Day, Christian. Happy Blur's Day, everybody. That's right. Kind of a light load today, huh?

Yeah. You know, that's good, though. Sometimes we, you know, sometimes it's nice to not have to do, you know, like 40 people. Because then I feel like we rush through it. We don't take our time. So it's like if you're lucky, you were born on a week when not a lot of other tens were. And then we just really spend some quality time analyzing your Blur's Day message versus just ripping through them.

Exactly. So if people are planning on having kids, it's just something to think about as you type it. This is kind of a shoot to have the kids.

I bet you Lynn has a chart of the weeks that are – Lynn, I am not tasking you with this. Please do not do this, my friend. And I hope I see you tonight at LiveWire, by the way. But I'm sure somebody out there has a chart of the weeks out of the 52 weeks which Blur's Days have the most people and which ones have the fewest. And so if you're thinking about making Whoopi, try to do it nine months before a week where we don't have so many Blur's Day messages.

Luke, I have something that I want to explore with you that I'll also filibuster here for a second and leave it up to you to choose an end-of-the-show song, if that's okay. I don't know if we have anything bus-related or whatever. But there is something that I was, While I'm going to tell this incredibly boring little story, and I want to know if listeners agree with me or not and whether or not you agree with me or not, but I'm also just doing this to buy us some time. But I was thinking about months in the shower the other day and what constitutes, like, let's say your average 31-day month. I was trying to think of, in my brain, whether it makes sense or not mathematically, what do I consider to be, let's just use October as an example, what do I consider to be early October? What do I consider to be mid-October? And what do I consider to be late October? And here's how it breaks down for me. I say early October goes through the 11th. If it's October 11th, it's still early October. But by the time October 12th rolls around, that's mid-October. And I think mid-October goes to about the 15th or 16th. Let's say the 16th. And then once the 17th rolls around, boom, you're in late October. No. No. Late October is in the 20s. What? You think October 19th is mid-October?

October 20th is late October. We have now only 10 days left of October. You think late October is on the 17th?

Well, I guess the question here is you consider October 19th to be mid-October still.

See, there's some of these days that are just kind of – The problem is we need some sort of connective – we need some cartilage, some connective tissue because if it goes from this is early October to this is mid-October the next day, it doesn't really make sense. It's like there have to be a few days that are both at the same time. This is Schrodinger's calendar. They are both early and mid-October at the same time. There's like four or five of those days or there's – you reject that?

I reject like because I was thinking – and again, like I was – it was a long shower, my friend. I was thinking, OK, let's say I'm in a meeting. Let's say I'm in a professional business person meeting with other business people, and we looked at it, and it's October 18th. And I look down at my calendar, and I say, wow, it's already blank October, October 18th. Is that mid-October to my colleagues? Am I saying, hey, well, here it is, guys. It's already mid-October because it's October 18th, or does that feel more like, hey, guys, it's already late October. It's October 18th.

That feels like the middle of October, even though there's not technically 36 days. The 15th feels like mid-October because it's literally the middle. But what I'm saying is there are these days, there have to be some days like the 19th, 20th, and 21st that are both, they are simultaneously mid-October and late-October. So they ease you into late-October. Because then when you're on the 25th, you're very definitely in late-October. But on the 17th, you're not in late-October yet.

No, 17th, I think, is – that's why I think the cutoff is – I can't remember exactly what I said before, but it's somewhere either the 18th or the 19th. I think the 18th is still mid-October to me, but the 18th is the last day of mid-October.

You know what I know, Andrew, for a fact? Our listeners will have thoughts. I know. So go ahead and email us. This is what I love about our listeners. They will have thoughts on this.

So let's hear what they have to say. I feel like I always suggest this when the bus comes up, which is the replacements on the bus because I love that song.

Oh, of course. No, that's good. That's perfect.

We haven't played that too recently. That's perfect. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Kiss me on the bus.

Yeah. That's how we'll wrap it up today. Thanks, everyone, for hanging out with us. God, it's already Friday tomorrow. Amazing. So we'll do a Friday show for you then. So please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Thursday. Sorry. Take care of yourselves.

I didn't know what was going on. I was like, this sounds so weird. I still had Blur's Day music going in the background.

I thought you had Charlie Sheen's video game maybe going in the background.

Well, that's what I was doing. I was like going through all the tabs. Sorry.

All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

Okay, don't say hi there. Your tongue, your transfer, your hand, your answer on the bus. Everyone's looking forward On the bus I am looking forward And it really ain't okay I might die for Monday

They're all watching us Kiss me on the bus

Kiss me on the bus

Oh, if you knew how I felt now

You were next for a dog now Hurry, here comes my star On the bus Watch our reflection On the bus I can't stand no real detection Come on, let's make a scene

Oh, yeah, don't be so rude

yeah this generation is all hacky sack and video games ain't that the truth power out