Muse

And I'm going to take tea and take a sip of it and spit it into each and every one of your mouths. Oh, it'll burn me, but it'll burn you twice. Burn me once with tea, shame on me. Burn you twice in your own mouth, shame on everybody involved. TBTL!

Well, well, here we are. I want to congratulate you for being on time

I'm not handling this well I don't feel competent, I'm depressed

I'm just trying to figure out why you would do this Why anyone would do this The reason anyone would do this If they could, which they can't Would be because they could, which they can't

Laughter, a sure sign of a good time And now I'm going to fill this silence With the words I'm saying Right now

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

This is not only a huge step for our company, but for the entire global media industry.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Give it up for me! Luke Burbank! Coming to you from the Riverhouse studio perched just above the mighty Columbia River,

river where um oh ma pa it's just beautiful the weather is medium right now the river is

for always quite majestic and beautiful to look at the house that i am in right now which i'm in the midst of trying to remodel is extremely dusty so i'd say there's a 70 chance that i will start sneezing during the show i am up here uh this week working with my dad on the remodel project and by working with my dad where's my royalty i mean my dad is actually doing the work and i'm watching him because i don't really know what i'm doing i do try to sit out in the this garage that we're turning into tbtl central i'll sit out there with my laptop and try to I don't know, act supportive or something. Except for this couple of hours when I'm in here recording episode 3777 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Ooh, triple sevens. Could be a handsome payday if you're playing three-card poker. We have an exceptionally entertaining Thursday show for you today, including maybe the first video game that I have seen in ages, maybe since the 1980s, that I'm interested in playing. You play to win the game. It is a musical game involving a trombone. It's kind of, we have tape of this, it's kind of annoying, but also kind of fun.

It's like someone punching your brain, but in a weirdly satisfying way.

Also, they have identified, or I guess you could say counted. Counted is the wrong word because nobody went out and hand-counted this, but they have come up with some sort of formula, equation, for how many ants they think exist on planet Earth, and it is a truly shocking number. No way, Jose. Give you some ant facts coming up. And also because it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day. We'll do the Blur's Day messages as well. Plus, we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is so many things to me.

He's my devil, my dark lover, my alter ego. Sometimes I think he's my conscience.

Not to mention good-time boy. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now once again from Bend, Oregon.

Good morning, my friend. That's right, Luke. I am getting bent. Do they have bumper stickers? I have not seen a bumper sticker that says, get bent. And I feel like that's something we should start in Bend, Oregon. If you're enjoying Bend, you're getting bent. Would it be B-E-N-D and then a T? I've literally been thinking about this. This isn't just popping out of my head right now, unfortunately. Although I didn't plan on starting with this pitch. I don't have a deck set up or anything, but that is kind of where I keep getting a little bit tripped up. Is it Ben? I think you've got to go with that. B-E-N-C, then I'm out. And for that, I'm out.

Because if you just go with B-E-N-T, then it just seems like you're being kind of rude. Yeah, it is rude. For no reason. Like the people who I saw somebody when I was driving up here from Portland the other day, just with a mask.

massive flag that just says f joe biden but it's the full word and there's driving along interstate five the full word being bideninski uh-huh yep asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk asterisk bideninski bideninski i use his name andrew because it matters um and now just i know we've talked about this so much lately and i apologize it's getting tedious at this point even for me but But I just think, I don't think, and I don't think I'm a prude, but I don't think that we need to subject everyone anywhere near us to the full-on F-word. Like, I just feel like there's a way to express your displeasure over a topic or person or whatever without resorting to just the full-on F-word. Again, I'm not trying to, you know, be be too puritanical with it, but it just seems like if somebody had that same sign and it was referring to Donald Trump, I would also think, yeah, there's a better way to tell that story.

Well, it's interesting. And listen, I'm not here to try to defend the violence in the messaging coming from the far right these days. we've talked about it a lot lately and like you say i i don't have anything good to say about it and i've already said the bad stuff a million times so we'll move on but i will say that like i'm just trying to catch myself or ourselves in double standards i i mean not that i listen to this song a lot but remember uh yg that that oh yeah you know he had f donald trump and i i don't remember people like kind of grabbing their pearls over that or clutching their pearls over that it It was more just like, yes, you know, this is the time that artists come out to speak out against the the terrible things that we see in American culture and politics. And you end up with songs like F Donald Trump, which was, you know, certainly celebrated by some. So, again, that's never been on a playlist that it's also very much on the nose for me. Like, it's not a very clever message.

I don't think it's even in the top 10 of YG's songs creatively. No, no, no, no. The only difference – the difference I would point out there is I would say if somebody wants to listen to the YG song, F Donald Trump, that's great. If somebody was playing it at full volume as they drove down the street and then blasting it out so everyone in the immediate area had to hear the F word, I would say, eh, why don't we not do that? And I think that's the closest analog to pulling a giant flag behind your truck. Like, you can opt in to listening to that YG song. you don't really get a chance to opt out of seeing someone pulling a flag with the f word on it

you know i can i just only because it's thursday and we won't get to emails until again on monday pardon me i'm not crying i was just clearing my throat um it's also dusty and bend oh i did or again much like where i am that's what i was going to tell you by the way um i've already penciled in the title chekhov's sneeze for this episode so you better sneeze at you should see

Me and my dad this morning at, I don't know, like 8 when we were sitting here.

Where's my royalty?

He's on his iPad figuring out if he can actually watch The Amazing Race tonight, which he tried to watch last night for its season debut, but they were, you know, if you're streaming it, if you're watching it on CBS.com, you've got to watch it the next day. So he's sitting here doing that. I'm sitting here preparing for tonight's Livewire. By the way, please, everyone, come out. Alberta Rose Theater, Sonam of Sessi and Ginny Hogan, Marcella Arguello. Great show. Tonight, Live Wire, Portland. See you there. But we are just having, it's like dueling banjos of sneezing. Like just me just going, ah, choo. And then my dad just waiting a while going, ah, choo. It was just like, I mean, just two old guys sneezing it up in a dusty mid-construction house. It was quite a morning.

um i now i've had several tangents that i want to go off on here um go off go off co-host um i just okay let me let me just summarize because i kind of don't want to bring it back to this conversation we've been having it so much lately i know i'm sorry that's on me i did set this up and this is like chekhov's gun here i want to come back to chekhov's gun because i learned something about that today by the way that i actually find interesting and maybe better than returning to this topic but i will say we got a email from our listener candy who i believe i believe is a new york state although i'm not 100 sure on that these days but lives in kind of we actually have

a few listeners named candy which is which is interesting because it's not the most common name

well okay two is still a lot for me anyway we have a listener named candy who lives in a beautiful rural part of the country uh somewhere i believe in upstate new york anyway she likes to go on walks and enjoy the beauty and and somebody moved into a home some kind of big old nice home along her walking route recently and put a flag out that says Trump 2024 and and then the and then F Biden and they're both spelled out with audit. automatic weapons with images of automatic weapons and so anyway um candy says i couldn't help myself so so i wrote an anonymous note on a lovely card welcoming them to the neighborhood while also agreeing with their right to free speech etc but pointing out that there is a difference between free speech and poor taste i told them that i found the flag to be aggressive and inappropriate and reminded them that they have many small children as neighbors i'll never know what their reaction was to this but was this a waste of time candy wants to know from us

i don't think it was a waste of time at all because i think one of the things that's uh that's frustrating about that sort of a scene is a feeling of powerlessness i think a lot of us again i don't just constantly descending into political talk but i think there is a real feeling of powerlessness about this very sort of like you said aggressive rhetoric and um complete uh sort of detachment from the objective facts of the world etc and that's one of the worst feelings and so whether or not the note bears any fruit at least the leaving of the note probably felt like something that was proactive for listener candy and that i think hopefully will give candy back some sense of agency in the whole thing yeah and you have two people use you know

exercising their right to use language to tell people how they feel and in one case they're using abusive language which i use that word somewhat jokingly sometimes we'll say abusive violence you know violent language using guns uh and and and putting that out there publicly and candy used you know some nice language to say welcome to the neighborhood but also i find what you're putting out there to be inappropriate for the neighborhood will it do any good in the long run i don't know how do you define good i doubt the flag will come down but um certainly didn't do anything wrong there um well they probably feel like they're not being uh inappropriate

because it's not the actual f word which is a very funny kind of logic they're like well i'm only writing it in killing machines yeah right yeah like because this is the thing too with the person who's pulling the flag up i5 i would bet you uh dollars to donuts that and this is something you referenced last week when i was in tennessee i bet you anything that the person who has that flag with the f word on it thinks of themselves as being a moral person it may even be i don't know they're you know i don't want to assume too much but may even be someone who identifies as a quote-unquote christian person so that's something like that is so out of step i think with considering yourself to be somebody who is sort of you know in the like morally superior to other people and yet you're doing this thing that's just kind of like just in poor taste and kind of a bit crass and like but then the other logic which is oh no no like this person probably wouldn't i'm just totally guessing here but i'm guessing the person in candy's neighborhood maybe wouldn't actually fly that same f joe biden flag because they might think that the actual f u ck word is in poor taste but if you write it in ak-47s it's fine it's clever it's a wink and a nod we all know what you're saying but guess what i i'm not swearing i'm just representing a swear word with violent killing machines that are tearing this country asunder in other words

that's what jesus would do there's a town can we get a wwjd made out of bump stocks there's a um there's a town outside of bend and i i think i have this right i think it's this town prineville that our friends were telling us about the other day and uh i don't know if we were talking about it on the show but maybe you and i were talking about it before the show yesterday that bend is an interesting place because it's um like a lot of places but an extreme example of population growth over the past few years it's a beautiful place with a lot of outdoor recreation of course it's got um nice weather uh most of the time so during the pandemic especially people there was already a growth spurt here right but then during the pandemic a bunch of people were moving here um and uh buying places and then working remotely for their companies in portland or Eugene or what have you and so anyway because of that like any town that's growing very quickly it's experiencing some growing pains and some shifts and there's another town outside of Bend that is called I think they were talking about this town of Prineville I don't really know this area that well but Prineville is concerned about becoming the same thing it's also a very small town right now and it doesn't want to you know create any policies that would encourage the population growth that people are seeing here in bend and changing some ways of life and anyway all of this is to say apparently there are bumper stickers you're not going to believe luke you are not going to believe that this was the build-up for this bumper sticker but apparently there are bumper stickers that say don't bend prineville which is a way of saying don't turn prineville into bend and i did feel like that was a good play on word

Using the idea that bend is a verb

Thank you. So that's where I was going with all of that I think, but here's my question about the efficacy of that bumper sticker is Is that a way of trying to create solidarity among Prinevillians To repel the, you know, folks By the way, I don't know if this is how it is in the east Or even east of the Mississippi But I spend a fair amount of time traveling around the West. And that would be, you know, Idaho, Montana, even recently North Dakota. Every single state west of the Mississippi thinks that everyone from California is trying to flood their state. it is like you know you can just set your watch by it everywhere i've been where there are people that have lived there for a while and kind of like the pace of life and the affordable prices and the whatnot will tell you well we've got a huge influx from california everybody thinks california i would be really curious to see what the actual data on that is like because since i was a kid living in seattle i remember hearing adults complaining about all the people from California oh yeah they just want to make this into California up here um and I'm my guess would be that the people in Prineville think that a bunch of people want to come up from California and turn it into Bend but I guess my question is I agree with you it's a it's a relatively clever play on words but is it is it telling people from other places to not come to Prineville or is it telling the people in Prineville that we need to make sure this doesn't happen I think it's a

reaction to a very specific project like I don't know what the I don't know if this is going forward or or if it's been stalled or what but it was some um kind of mountain bike hiking trail proposal through some beautiful area that was like i think like 50 or 75 miles or something you know like a significant outdoor recreational project that um citizens of prineville or some citizens of prineville don't want like you'd think most communities you'd think that sounds amazing right but they're saying don't create this thing because if you if you build it they will come and They don't want people coming into their community.

If you build it, they will ride it. Yes, exactly. On their specialized mountain bikes. I have a question I think that's on the minds of all Americans, Andrew, which was, how did your film project go yesterday in Bend, Oregon?

You know, based on the fact that I'm in Bend, and you would think I would find some very beautiful place or funny place to record a video.

I thought we had settled on a McDonald's parking lot.

Yeah, I didn't do that because, you know what, I was going through the Hey Dummies questions. um for to for today's video or i guess this friday's uh hey dummies video that you can find in the newsletter and i saw that somebody had written in with a question specifically aimed at the type of thing i was doing right now which was what does your on the road go bag slash technical setup look like and so as i'm going through the questions i'm like oh this would be the perfect one because it's set up all around me right now so i actually just stayed in this you know somewhat chintzy airbnb and just sort of like um which is you know less it's less exciting than a mcdonald's parking lot or certainly a a beautiful bluff of some sort with prime villains riding their bikes behind me because they have no trail in their own town um but instead it was just me in this airbnb kind of showing how i set up with my road gear which is a little bit more than yours because i don't have like you have this nice little piece of equipment that i used to have but it's broken now that allows you to kind of do a very sleek setup from your place with just like one computer and one little box and you can talk to me whereas I've got a couple of computers over here and some some doohickeys anyway watch the video but that's what we ended up doing I'm afraid for this conversation I've let you down though because that's not a very

interesting answer no I mean it's the it's the honest answer I will tell you this there somebody asked me a question for hey dummies i think it was a listener denny tweeted at me and you know the interesting thing about the hey dummies videos um we put them in the newsletter hopefully that is somewhat interesting for the folks we've already talked about how uh between my uh combination skin and adult acne and your uh you know overwhelming handsomeness slightly bedraggled appearance at times we are really not the people that should be making videos and foisting them upon the internet but i don't know this somehow many years ago was decided by us as something that might drive hashtag engagement with the newsletter so here we are and uh you know sometimes they're kind of fun sometimes they're we kind of you know there's a range of how kind of entertaining they are etc but i am legitimately excited about answering denny's question in next week's newsletter and it was basically how do you deal with your running shoes and running gear when you are traveling and this is something that i have dedicated many hours of thought to andrew so I actually tweeted back at Denny I've been waiting a lifetime to answer this question

I feel like it's already a stinky video I already feel like if I hit play on this video that hasn't been created yet I need to hold my nose a little bit because we have running shoes and bags but anyway no spoilers

but see Andrew that's exactly the thing that I'm answering for Denny

it stinks

so yeah for once I'm already looking forward to making not this week's hey dummies that's you in bend surrounded by audio

equipment but next week's one thing that i'm going to come back to i can't believe that i'm actually going to be able to not that any of these were worth tying up on my end but i'm actually going to tie up all the loose ends i had i wanted to mention the the bend bumper sticker primeville thing um i wanted to read uh candy's note once i had kind of started that conversation the third thing that i wanted to say and is this appropriate for me to bring up here is it necessary do we have better things to talk about i don't know man that's for the listeners to decide but today when you mentioned the vote with your feet and vote with your ears when you mentioned at the beginning of the show that you were about that we're going to hear a sneeze it sounded like i heard that as a promise like if you if you raise the scepter of a sneeze at the beginning of the show much like

checkoff's gun i feel like inspector but yes what did i say scepter like oh yeah inspect i you come You come into my chambers And I raise a stick And then it just sneezes at you Which would be a freaking cool stick to have And then it turns into a snake

But anyway, yeah, sorry, thanks for that But I was, what was I saying? When I raised the spectrum of the sneeze I was like, oh, that's like Chekhov's gun Which I always just, I've said that a million times We've joked about it It's a very, you know, kind of low-hanging fruit I think as far as like moderate literature references

And it's, you know, there's always the principles It's what I would describe as being exactly in my personal wheelhouse, which is something that sounds kind of smart, but is actually extremely well-known and broadly accepted as a thing. I'm not going to make a deep Kierkegaard reference because I've never really read that, but I can get in with a Chekhov's gun idea.

Well, and I've always taken it sort of at face value without exploring it much, just that, okay, if you see a gun in act one, you know it's going to go off in act two or three. or I that's like I'm such a bad paraphrase of it but it's something like that and that's how at least that's how I always understood it to be right and then in looking up just making sure I'm spelling Chekhov right I threw it in the old Google earlier today while we were talking on the show and and I ended up on the Wikipedia page for it and I kind of it makes tons of sense but I didn't realize that it's not just about that specific instance but you extrapolate from there And the whole thing, it's a theory by Chekhov that you don't introduce any element of a story that isn't going to pay off. Right. Like whether it doesn't have to be a gun, it could be a character, it could be a conversation. If it does not end up serving the plot in the ending, it's extraneous and you don't need it in there, which I was like, oh, yeah, of course, that that makes sense. I kind of didn't realize that that was kind of what was the underlying principle of it or that you would extrapolate it that way. But then I also went on to read that Hemingway famously sort of mocked this. And that makes sense because I didn't read a lot of Chekhov, but I read a lot of Hemingway in high school. And, of course, one thing I loved about Hemingway was he would – things did not start neatly and they never ended neatly, right? There were just – things would come and go and they always had a sort of a sigh, S-I-G-H, sort of a sigh of life about them as I used to try to describe Hemingway. Like a character would come and meet and then move on. And sometimes it would have meaning and sometimes it wouldn't. And sometimes the stories would just sort of end mid emotion because that's how life is. You don't always end up with a very clean ending. And I think it's sort of interesting that that Hemingway and Chekhov had such different ideas about what belongs in a story.

I guess I'm trying to, I mean, I don't think, I haven't read either person or seen a lot of Chekhov's, I mean, like, The Seagull, right, that's probably, that's sort of Chekhov's maybe most famous work, I probably read it at some point in college, and then I think I read, like, For Whom the Bell Tolls or something, so I don't have a lot, what's that? I've never read anything, so I can really tell you. Well, no, you said you've read a lot of Hemingway, and isn't For Whom the Bell Tolls a Hemingway? Oh, Hemingway. Oh, sorry.

I thought you were talking about Chekhov.

I was comparing. I see what you're saying. I guess what I was – yeah, sorry. What I was trying to say is I haven't read a lot of either of these folks. I probably read like one piece by both of them. So I can't do a ton of comparing, but it is interesting what you're saying, which is like if one person had such a – it sounds like kind of economical approach to like Chekhov saying don't introduce things that aren't going to pay off. You don't need that. And then you're saying Hemingway was much more—I like that, by the way, the description of kind of a sigh. Like, I can't picture the exact passage from Hemingway, but I can— can definitely imagine that feeling that you're describing um did you also see this piece in the time the new york times this week about all of this stuff that i think they found in this bar this is what the headline is what hemingway left in sloppy joe's bar 80 years ago no this is a piece by uh robert elder a trove of items deposited in key west are now part of a new archive at penn state they include four unpublished short stories drafts of manuscripts and boxes of personal effects So basically, I think that Hemingway, who kind of famously really loved Key West, had just had left a bunch of stuff down there. And they've now, you know, uncovered it and are going to put it on display at Penn State. But it's just like that guy was really prolific for also being a raging alcoholic. Yeah. I always find that personality type as a as a I'm calling it a personality type. it's probably more like a dsm diagnosis but like i i just i i cannot be as drunk as hemingway was and be as like i have to pick one or the other i'm either going to be productive or i'm going to slowly descend into being soused these people like hemingway that were both drunk all the time and just writing so much stuff that they're now finding things that were never even published in Key West. You send me to Key West and you give me a bottle of rum. I'm writing nothing. There is nothing. Luke Burbank left behind zero things except for a couple of tweets that he might have deleted if you have me down in Key West with smoking a cigar and drinking some Havana rum. Yeah, it's embarrassing

to say, but I mean, that was the dream for me, and that was what I kind of, when I talk about like having tons of notebooks that I would keep in college that I would eventually throw away as an adult, and it was the best decision of my life knowing that I'm not dragging them around behind me as I move from city to city just thinking I will never look at these they're too embarrassing and then someday I will die and somebody else will look at them screw it throw them away but like I used to love I would I mean that's what I that's how I spent my college and again it's kind of embarrassing to say because I think I also fit a very stereotypical kind of college student who like read a bunch of very masculine shit like Hemingway and Bukowski and all they did was drink and write and I could drink and write and like that was the dream and I would say like pre this is before i had the internet but i did have a computer not to brag it's like i'm in college so the years are like 1995 through 2001 yes i took a year off um but like i had a computer in my in my little studio apartment but no internet so i mean that's all i did was just like drink and write and drink and write now i'm not sitting here telling you that it's good and when i read that stuff i get i don't know some some of it's not as bad as i you know there's some stuff that I kind of would maybe spend more time with but they're as embarrassing as it is to talk about I don't have a lot of regrets about spending the time doing that because I got to say I really loved doing it I loved writing these stories and I was very much just ripping off the writers that I read like trying to use very economical language and try to get as much emotion with as few syllables as possible and dialogue like crazy but anyway that that's what i did and i think that's the dream for some people but i think the type of writing and work that you do is so much different like i don't think i mean i'm sure dan harman might drink while he would write a piece for cbs but i just think it's a it's a very different type of thing i think right they were they were chasing after something different i think i'm i'm looking i'm scrolling

down in this new york times piece and there's this kind of great photo of uh i guess hemingway's uh wife when he passed away his fourth wife mary welsh hemingway they go down to this bar sloppy joe's in key west and they're just going through all of this stuff and she's sort of handing it off to these uh longtime friends who i think were the people that eventually or their estate presented this to like penn state but what i think is great is that he had four wives andrew which means i'm only halfway through my journey and when i get to my fourth wife that's when my literary career i think is really going to take off so even if i could have known that's like when

i see a sport like some athlete who's like who's like one year older than me i'm like oh i still

have time to become an nlb pitcher i call it hemingway's divorce if you if you get married in the first act you better be divorced four times by the final act or it's just considered a waste of everybody's time uh okay let's uh let's stop wasting everybody's time and uh take a quick break and then when we come back i do want to talk to you about this i andrew i'm not kidding you i tried to download it i tried to purchase a video game yesterday you tried when when i like a bowling alley i almost purchased a video game yesterday andrew so i want to tell you about that when we come back here on tvtl All right, let's thank some daily donors. These are the wonderful, generous folks making TVTL possible today with their monthly financial support. Talking about Zach Rouse in Flushing, New York. Thanks, Zach. Appreciate you. Molly Huff is in Wheaton, Illinois. Is that where Wheaton College is as well? Or is Wheaton named for somebody named Wheaton? Wheaton's a Bible college. But I think it's named for somebody named Wheaton. No, it is.

Wheaton, Illinois. Wheaton College. My apologies. I thought that was an East Coast institution.

Do not test me on Bible colleges. I'll throw down Multnomah. I'll throw down Dort. actually I don't know if Dort is I know Dort is in Iowa and I believe they play in the same division as Wheaton and Grinnell Grinnell is not a Bible college to my knowledge the reason that for a period of time I sort of knew about Bible colleges was because when I was at Jesus Creek most of the visits we got from colleges were from Bible colleges

well what we without having to play this thank you music too many times during this segment what is the difference between a Bible college and just any christian college or college associated with you know a christian church

well i think bible colleges their emphasis is on ministry and thing all things bible related as opposed to like seattle pacific university uh in seattle is a christian college we've got a lot of i think alums that listen to this show um and but you can get a degree in all kinds of things from Seattle Pacific. Oh, I suppose.

Meet in college, you're saying that that would be focused on somebody who wants to go into ministry.

I think mostly. Now, I know there's Northwest Bible College over in Kirkland. That one, I know you can get, I think, a nursing degree from there because one of my cousins is currently enrolled in the nursing program there. So I'm not saying that if you go to a Bible college, the only thing you can get a degree in is some kind of biblical studies, but I think it's The majority of the emphasis of the school is on things related to that, whereas you have colleges that are Christian that are not—that's not the sole focus. I think that's where the Bible aspect comes in. Now, I will say this. I had—I knew somebody that played basketball over a place called the Master's College, I think, which is—and that master was not like, you don't get your master's. They were talking about God. He is the master. And there was a kind of a strata of high school basketball player from this kind of small—it was called the SeaTac B League that we played in at Jesus Creek, which was, like, I think maybe the smallest division, like smallest size school division you could play in. And so there was nobody from our little world that was going to go play Division I basketball. But there were, you know, some of the better players could go play at a Bible college. And I swear, I was so crazy about basketball and delusional about what my possible chances of becoming somebody in basketball were that had I been approached by a Bible college and they said, hey, do you want to play two guard? I probably would have gone and tolerated the Bibleness of it just to get to play college basketball. So thank God nobody did that, because right now, Andrew, this would be a Bible study, not a podcast.

And would I be part of this? Probably not. Jesus would be your co-host.

Only if you went to Wheaton. Yes. Jesus is my co-bro, maybe best known for turning water into wine. Thank you, Molly.

It's grace and it's beauty.

Thank you, Molly, in Wheaton, Illinois. Thanks also to Christian Stanley in Hadley, Massachusetts. We want to thank Todd Tinker As well you know where he is Andrew Is he on something I would say he's on Bainbridge Island We should I know we also received some feedback On that topic I really I apologize I really got us into a pickle Last week with that whole thing Because I was complaining about People that say I'm on Cape Cod But then I was describing it as Martha's Vineyard And I just confused the living Tweedle out of everybody associated With the show so I'll just leave it There and say thank you to Todd Also thanks to Ariel Dierdorf On San Francisco California

Thanks Ariel Actually you would say on Alcatraz Wait hold on I'm not saying that Ariel is on Alcatraz I'm just saying You'd be on Alcatraz but in San Francisco

That's right

uh thanks ariel uh if ariel had been on alcatraz it'd probably be because ariel is part of that uh cold water swimming group that i spent a little bit of time with that uh wow like having been in that water for eight minutes and having not even gotten out of the little cove that we were in it truly shocks me that these folks can actually swim to alcatraz i mean it is that's really quite an accomplishment anyway it's also quite an accomplishment to support this podcast so we thank ariel for that and then rachel and matt g are in bellevue washington and even further swim to alcatraz so i wouldn't attempt it rachel and matt you have to go basically from bellevue you're going to have to well you'll have to drive to seattle to get into puget sound to work your way uh well you have to get into lake union swim through the ship like the shipping channel go through the locks i don't know they even let people they don't they let humans go through the locks sawn's boat at this point you're got you got to be already pretty winded and then you go out into shill shoal now you're in puget sound okay now you're now you're getting close and now you can kind of work your way i guess you're gonna have to go north and go all the way around the olympic peninsula like up like where they you know filmed twilight and now you're at least in

the pacific ocean and you're i mean at this point you're you're you're covered i mean not to be gross here but you've met many sea lions you've made friends with them but you're you're probably covered in like whatever whatever oil debris boats leave behind as you swam through the locks and the channels and then all of the animal dung. I mean, you're in rough shape at this point.

And you've had to go, again, you've had to really go north to get up and out of the Puget Sound and then whatever other waterways that leads to. You've really, it's not direct at all. It's not how Waze would tell you to do it. And then you get out into the Pacific Ocean. And you're basically in Canada at this point. And only now do you begin the process of swimming down the western coast of the united states towards alcatraz where listener ariel is hanging yeah and it just it that's a tall order i'm not gonna lie that's why i i would just say just

don't do it i would just say reconsider at this point maybe just maybe just don't don't swim it

has somebody done that has anybody i don't mean like swam from seattle uh doing that route i describe but i wonder if somebody has open water has has sort of uh swam swam or swum i don't think swum is a word swung if somebody has gotten bend it enough that they have i wonder if anyone i mean you'd obviously it'd have to be one of those things where you have a boat you know someone is is is is driving a boat that's in front of you and then when you get tired you get on the boat You sleep there at night, you get out the next day, and you continue your project. But I wonder what the furthest distance somebody has done in that kind of context out in open water. I mean, people will go from Cuba to Florida, speaking of Hemingway and Key West. That's happened. People swim the English Channel. People do swim across pretty long sections of open water. But I wonder if anyone's endeavored to swim down the entire western coast of the U.S. That would be quite a task. They call it Nyadding. Uh-huh. They sure do. We had her on Livewire some time ago when she wrote that book, and it turns out she's quite the polished radio professional, that Diana Nyadding.

Would you say that she's savvy? Did she host the Savvy Traveler? Yeah. I mean, she was. I don't think she was the primary host. She'd take over for Rudy Maxa? Maybe eventually she did, but she was the main second voice on that show back when I listened to it. I mean, we are making public radio references now that are decades old. I mean decades old when we talk about the Savvy Traveler.

Oh, but God, I've got such a soft spot for Rudy Maxa and the Savvy Traveler. I loved it so much. All right, thanks to all. We love you so much, Donors of the Day. Thank you for keeping this show going. We would not be here without you.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

Did you happen to see this kind of I would I don't it's not quite memed yet, but basically this story that was bopping around the Internet yet yesterday about something called trombone champ.

No, this I saw it in your show sheet today, but I don't know what it is. I know that it would probably appeal to our listener Gus, who is a trombone champ in IRL.

It might be too easy for Gus. This is from pcgamer.com, which, you know, I obviously take home delivery of, Andrew, as both a gamer and a PC enthusiast.

The world's first trombone rhythm game is instantly a game of the year contender. I just want to say this is a really well-written piece by somebody named Christopher Livingston. This guy, Christopher Livingston, happened upon this trombone champ game and got really into it and, in fact, even recorded himself trying to play the game. Now, just imagine Guitar Hero, right? But on trombone. And what really sells this is the video that he included in the audio of him trying to play Beethoven's Fifth on trombone in this game. Let me just play you a little bit of this, okay? i love it so like you know again we all know what guitar here looks like it's that same thing where you've got these little like kind of flashing indicators of lines and dots that you're trying to match with your i guess mouse so as to hit the notes for this song and you know with predictably difficult results. And that's the clip that Christopher Livingston included.

And so is this, you know, I've never played guitar here. I think I've seen, I've been in the room when people are playing it, so I can sort of picture it. But you have a special tool for that, right? A plastic guitar with various buttons. This, I assume you don't have like a plastic trombone-esque toy.

You move the mouse up and down to try to basically mirror what the notes are that are coming your way. I mean, that would be maybe that'll be on like the next version that that would actually take this to the absolute next level. If there were some kind of plastic trombone that you could try to play along with the game. I mean, that would that would become my new favorite thing to do when I had people over and there'd been a few drinks consumed is break out the plastic trombone for the game trombone champ. This is a really like I said, a really good piece of writing from this Christopher Livingston person. So he includes that the gif, or I'm sorry, the gif of him trying to play the game. And he goes, you can see the clip in the gif above, so long as you promise to turn on the sound as high as it'll go. Yes, my performance was terrible. And if Beethoven wasn't rolling over in his grave, it was only because he'd already burst out of it, staggered around shrieking, and then vomited. but in trombone champ playing the trombone badly is just as much fun as playing it well which is one reason why i love it in fact since trying out trombone champ for the first time this morning it's become and this isn't a joke a serious game of the year contender for me it's a blast

or rather it's a toot you know the the last game that we talked about this is going back a little ways now but the last game that we talked about that was sort of a viral sensation that was kind of a you know me i love a good putter about game right and these ones that kind of go viral you know that they're not going to be your new favorite video game forever but i did end up downloading the um remember the goose game the the goose that would go around and menace neighbors or whatever i did download that i mean people were talking about it we talked about it on the show and i think it made me want to play it so bad that as soon as we were done with tbtl i think i downloaded it um but i gotta say that was not sticky for me at all if i'm using that if i'm using that um computer slang properly like i i played it a little bit it just didn't it didn't scratch whatever itch i'm looking for in my video games i found it somewhat frustrating i wonder if it's

because wasn't it called like disruptive goose or something something like that it was i feel like the games that you have described liking are taking disorder and moving it towards order sort of reverse entropy like you know minecraft there's nothing here now let's make something here and this it seems like incorrigible goose or whatever it was called untitled goose game that's what it was and it would just go around bugging people like which is kind of creating chaos as opposed to eliminating chaos which i think seems

more like what you find stimulating i think it was more the gameplay itself it wasn't like i had gotten the things that i like are a little bit more open worldy where you get to choose what you're doing this is a i i know i'm now not probably talking to you luke but more to like the listeners because i know that there's like these games like farmville and animal crossing that are very very popular animal crossing had like kind of a big update during the pandemic and it was long it was around long before the pandemic but i know that it really blew up for a lot of people during the pandemic and i've messed around with those a little bit but i find them after playing games like you know minecraft or i don't even like even grand theft auto which i told you i messed around with back in like the the mid 2000 teens or whatever um there's this sense of yeah there are some missions you can go on but you are really in control and you can go wherever you want whereas the goose game was kind of like you had to sort of figure out what the game wanted constantly or or some of these other games you have to complete these you know very kind of strictured missions that i didn't find as satisfying now some listener i believe sent me somebody sent me a link to a trailer of a video game that was very tempting to me last week i think it was 20 and genevieve said for 20 we could put that money towards a real power washer as opposed to you buying a power-watching video game.

Do you know what I have in my notes?

No. Did you put that in the notes you sent me?

Do you understand that I texted – two days ago, I texted myself something, and it was – I was listening to – Sam Sanders has a new podcast called Into It. It's very good. If you like pop culture, I highly recommend it. And they do this thing called Culture Geist at the end of the show, which is basically what thing in pop culture is haunting you right now and one of their staffers said i'm obsessed with this pressure washer power washing game and as this person was describing how satisfying it was i was like this is the game for andrew and i texted myself to remember to bring it up with you and i was if this trombone champ conversation petered out i was going to say Andrew I have the game for you

But you already know about it yeah I was watching the videos Of it it's I mean it looks like a lot Of fun like basically it's just a virtual Pressure washer you're a little Character you go out you can pressure wash your driveway If you want to but then there are bigger and Bigger things I don't know if you have to earn the rights To pressure wash these more Fantastical things not fantastic Powerful Tom Sawyer

Vibrations coming off of that

Build your way up to At some point I saw The character was pressure washing a fire engine and then eventually like an entire like train but then i saw there are also modes where people are like using a pressure washer to like bounce a ball back and forth or or actually i think i saw somebody creating havoc in the game with a pressure washer as well but it sounds like it's one of those things where you can just like hey all right i want to just sit here maybe listen to a podcast behind my pc or what have you i assume it's a mobile game as well and just sort of pressure wash this thing in front of me like it's very tempting it seems very satisfying

The only thing about the game, if you are somebody who is, let's say, a homeowner, is you could also be legitimately – like if you live in a smallish apartment that you're renting, then I could see just loving just zoning out and watching or I guess participating in this virtual pressure washing. but it's like if you actually have things that could really be pressure washed at your house it seems kind of interesting to me like you could go outside and pressure wash your driveway and your driveway would look super nice IRL after that at 10 o'clock at night during your video

game playing that's not when you do it I mean I just sort of feel like it's it scratches a different itch and it's right it kind of misses the point of video games I think like you're right that sounds good but the reason I think somebody sent this to me was because you and I were talking about pressure washing and you were talking about what a project it was around your pool and that yes it is satisfying but also there's a bunch of muck at the end and your shoes are wet and you're you're I think this is the type of thing where you're relaxing at the end of the day you're not going to be like hey I can do one of two things play a game on my laptop or my iPad or I can go outside fire up a pressure washer at 10 o'clock at night and start pressure washing in

the dark um by the way that's a great nitty-gritty dirt band song pressure washing in the dark yeah It's a little pressure washing in the dark.

I feel like I think it's about sex. It doesn't sound. I think there's a lot of double entendre in there.

If you read, speaking of entendre, Andrew, one of the other great things about Trombone Champ is the little messages that the game gives you based on how you're doing. So if you're nailing it, if you're hitting the notes, it flashes you words like perfecto or nice. And if you're not doing well. it'll flash you a meh or sometimes when you really don't hit a note the word it says is nasty oh yeah i saw that in the video which for some reason is the funniest way to describe a trombone note it's like nasty nasty nasty it's like so it's like got so much more uh character it's got so much more personality than you know than it should for just describing that you didn't like hit the hit the trombone note this is more from christopher livingston's piece in pc gamer which again i

wanted to download this game yesterday andrew but i don't have a pc oh oh it's not for you can't

download it did not i did not see any kind of a link i was willing to i think it's i don't know it's 10 bucks 15 bucks i was literally because what i wanted to do was buy the game and then try to do my version and then record it and then play that for you but it appeared to me anyway that you needed to be on a PC or, I don't know, maybe an emulator or something.

I think I'm looking at it now. It looks like it's a game that's available through Steam, which is a platform. That's how most like kind of computer video games, if you're going to be playing on your laptop. And I'm not sure. I assume that Steam is available for Macintosh. But like, for example, like I play a game. Genevieve plays the video game version of that birds game we like, right? Birds, actually, or Wingspan. And I play a game called Civilization VI. And I think the Goose game I got through Steam. And, like, we have one login for Steam, almost think of it as, like, Spotify for video games, and then you download the games through that thing. And I'm pretty sure they have that for Mac. I could be wrong, though.

I'm sure. I mean, this is where my just lack of experience and imagination becomes so obvious. Like, of course, there's some other platform that's independent of – it's not held by the bounds of PCs and Macs. It's living in a whole different reality that I could just download that and do whatever I want. But I don't know how to do any of that stuff I do know how to continue reading to you from this article Which is really great He's describing The various elements of this game He says you're graded at the end of each song And each time you play a song you earn toots Which can be spent on sax Which contain tromboner cards I first assumed these cards were just a joke Some cards display famous trombone players And musicians and contain facts About how many hot dogs they could eat in one sitting While other cards feature things like baboons or a trumpet which is described wonderfully as the coward's trombone a trumpet being described as the coward trombone uh this is uh continuing from this piece but these cards eventually have a function one that i stumbled on accidentally by clicking something that perhaps should not have been clicked did i summon a demon in trombone champ i may have summoned a demon in trombone champ look i'm not going to explain the whole thing because there's far more to trombone champ than just honking out notes to a beat there's also dot dot dot lore

you know i the one thing that i was sort of thinking here is because you mentioned the power washing or the pressure washing thing and like you could just do that at home that's the funny thing is i don't really have that attitude towards video games but you would think if any video game would lend itself to it it would be something like guitar champ or maybe even this trombone thing like to me that i mean listen if you're at home at 10 o'clock and you share a home with other people you probably don't want to be trust me i used to play the trombone and i know that i had a family that did not want to listen to me playing the trombone so i get that but like especially like guitar hero or something those are ones where i'm kind of like boy it seems like if you're going to put in those kind of hours it would be more interesting just to learn how to play you know you're physically sitting there with a plastic guitar you're emulating the actual like physical experience of doing it but again i know that there are still arguments i know it's not the same exact thing but i do feel like that those types of video games get closer and closer to the real world experience that you start to think couldn't you have a guitar with headphones on

i mean see the funny thing is i have the complete flipped notion like whereas the pressure the power washer game pressure washer game to me was like well you could actually just be doing that and getting some work done and you're like no no that's not the point for some reason something like guitar hero i totally get because it's like so much easier than really learning how to play guitar and you can be stoned at 10 p.m. I guess you can be stoned at 10 p.m. and play real guitar

too. I don't know if anybody's been stoned and played guitar before but it seems like it's

possible. I'm not I don't I'm not a pot guy so I just don't know. And I'm not a guitar guy so I don't know. Neither of us really know very much about how to do this I guess but um uh yeah I I would I greatly enjoyed the audio of this and I greatly enjoyed the idea of if someone hits a wrong note just saying nasty for that and again i was very excited to tell you about the pressure washing game but you my friend you were way ahead of me on that the other uh article that i thought was kind of interesting today was it was i'm reading a summary of it in the washington post by dino grandoni um scientists have Okay. how many ants are on earth and the number is so big it's quote unimaginable a new estimate for the total number of ants burrowing and buzzing on earth comes to a whopping total of nearly 20 quadrillion individuals that's the same andrea as 20 000 trillion i just stepped on one so okay can you subtract 19 do you know how bad i am with numbers and math that i don't even know what 20 trillion minus one is nor do i don't that would be i don't want to let's try it let's try it

you know what what i was about to say was i don't want to not do that so good

19 i don't want to not do that okay so so okay 20 trillion minus how many zeros are trillion i don't even i don't know there's there's actually only four well there's four zeros in the twenty thousand but it relates to a trillion so twenty thousand and then a trillion it's probably the number of zeros goes to the moon and back or something but let's just see we could probably do this so what what do we get before a trillion is a billion right so is a trillion a thousand billion i don't know or is a trillion a trillion would have to be a thousand billion okay so think about this a thousand millions is a billion so presumably a thousand billions is a trillion so if you're going down from 20 000 trillions you'd have 19 trillion it says here 19 hold it 19 trillion 999 billion 999 990 million 999 thousand, I think. Where's my bell? God, I have a beautiful mind. Am I Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting right now? Did I just solve that equation that no one could solve? Yes. My question is

how do you tip on that? That's my question. It says here that, this can't be right, it says that a trillion is one million million or 10 to the 12th power oh god okay so i'm so i don't know

that i don't know that you necessarily ask what ask what 20 trillion minus one is oh okay yeah

i was look i was i wanted to know how many zeros because i was like i'll just use a calculator just like i was in eighth grade again but like how much is a trillion minus no 20 trillion oh sorry

It is. Oh, Andrew, it's so easy. It's two, the letter E, a plus sign, and 13.

That's what I was going to say. Dude, I didn't want you to look it up until I had a guess. Two E plus 13.

It's like not even numbers. I mean, it is. But it can't even be written. Carry the G. Great Built to Spill song, by the way.

It's dirty.

It's about sex. So this is, I mean, of course, this is the kind of thing that is a very educated guess This was in a paper that was released this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences It was a group of scientists from the University of Hong Kong And here's what they did They analyzed 489 studies and concluded that the total mass of ants on Earth Weighs in at about 12 megatons of dry carbon Which I learned in this article Is the standard way of measuring animals biomass

How much they weigh as dry carbon

So like I guess if we were trying to figure out How much do all humans weigh It would be how many megatons Or how much dry carbon do we add up to That would be how you measure the biomass of an animal Well I'll tell you how much

Too much dry carbon over here i'll tell you that much right now we're working on that though we're working on that

so this is um this is another way to think about it and this was the one that that got to me if all the ants were plucked from the ground and put on a scale they would outweigh all of the wild birds and mammals on earth put together whoa so that's all mammals on earth including us and all the wild birds so i for some reason reptiles are left out i don't know why i guess maybe because that would have kind of ruined the scales yeah it wouldn't have been as entertaining but all think about this if they're you know if they're right on this all mammals on earth which is what that's everything that's not a reptile and then the birds of the air are we leaving out any other species that i can't think of i mean i don't well and i just feel like we keep on going

to areas today. Invertebrates, I guess. I mean, a mammal is something...

Mammals?

Mammals give birth to live young, and they lactate.

And they lactate. That's what I was going to say. I thought that was the killer app for a mammal, is that it feeds its young through its milk. Warm-blooded fur. What?

Warm-blooded fur, live birth, lactate.

Can you hear this? Okay, yeah.

Yes, warm-blooded fur, live birth.

Okay, there you go. I got fur, so I'm a mammal.

Yes, you are. You are a mammal. That's just wild, though, to think about that. That's what's weighing. I mean, that's the thing that weighs the most on this planet, I guess.

Yeah, because, I mean, that's all the, as you and Vee's like to talk about charismatic megafauna, you have, I mean, you have hippos, you have elephants, you have giraffes, which that might be my mom's favorite animal. Oh, shoot, that might be a security question on one of my computer logins, but I'll cut that. I'll beep that out. But, yeah, I mean, adding all of those together and the ants still weigh more.

Right. And in fact, for every person – again, this is all just – they're just trying to make their best guess at this. For every person, there are about 2.5 million ants. For every human on the planet, there is 2.5 million ants, which explains how it is that they're outweighing all the mammals on the planet and the birds of the air. um uh it's unimaginable says patrick schultes the lead author of the study who's now a researcher at the university of wurtzburg in germany he said we simply cannot imagine 20 quadrillion ants in one pile for example it just doesn't work now what i think is also very interesting about this is that uh well one thing do you know what a or somebody who studies ants is called i didn't know until i read this article in in uh anthropologist oh that's actually a pretty good guess no it is called a myrmecologist m-y-r-m-e-cologist uh or a myrmecologist i don't know how they pronounce it but eo wilson who i'd seen eo wilson's name many times in fact i think i heard him interviewed on public radio but i didn't really retain it eo wilson who passed away recently was kind of considered maybe the world's leading mermocologist and you know these folks that were doing this project at the university of hong kong they had a lot of new data and they were able to pull in from a lot of studies and you just i just think things are so much more knowable now in 2022 than they would have been 40 years ago because of just again how easily data is available and how we communicate and all this stuff. E.O. Wilson back in the 1990s ventured a rough guess at the Earth's ant population. He did this with a fellow biologist, someone named Bert Holdobler. Their estimate was 10 quadrillion, which is considered to be within the same order of magnitude as the recent and more rigorous estimates published Monday. In the case of E.O. wilson he was simply a very smart man schultz weiss said he knew an awful lot about ants and had a gut feeling basically it was back of the napkin the fact that eo wilson and his homie back of the napkin this to within an order of magnitude of it is pretty pretty amazing yeah

just like probably maybe not drunk but having drinks and just watching an ant crawl across the floor and be like hey how many of those how many of those how many of those you think

they're down with hemingway they're down at sloppy joe's tossing back a gimlet and uh and just eyeing an ant that crawls across the bar now i this also shows my just how unbelievably bad i am with numbers i don't understand how 10 quadrillion is considered pretty close to 20 quadrillion because that seems like half of the number yeah it does seem like it that seems like that's about half as many as they now think there are but they're giving him props for getting even to 10 quadrillion and it is i guess the fact that he knew it was in the quadrillions yeah is is the accomplishment i would have said it was like a thousand or something i would have said more than a hundred

certainly there's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll you can't just listen to your soul Just remember that life is number one You can be having so much fun Just remember that life is much fun You can be nothing but one

All right, let's do some Blursdays here, Luke. This is people saying happy birthday to the people in their lives. I only mentioned that because I had to sadly turn away some folks celebrating anniversaries and other milestones again this week. And congratulations to everybody involved.

Those are the annablerzeries. and those are usually on Fridays. Yeah, don't even say that. It'll confuse people. But yeah, so anyway, these are the Blur's Days for this week. Thank you, everybody, for writing in. Like Sarah, who said, please wish Daniel in Portland a happy birthday. He's a wonderful partner, and we love you very much. With love from T-Tron and the Cuckoo Birds.

Nice. See y'all at Livewire tonight. Adam says happy Blur's Day to my lovely wife, Lindsay. This year, Lindsay became a new mom, is starting a new job, and is uprooting herself to move with this weirdo, yours truly, to the land of Wisconsin. She's an incredibly kind and nurturing mother, in addition to being an all-around badass. There is no better partner for me through this crazy journey we call life. Nice. Aw, sweet.

Are you thinking that's Adam Levine? No, Levine? Oh, my God. Levine.

you really i mean are you really am i are we trying to go there because these are the conversations i feel you and i can't have because it is levine by the way it is because i spend far too much time in the grubbier corners of the internet where people uh you know speculate on like adam levine's uh sliding into dms but that's the kind of stuff that usually when i bring it up on the show it's a little bit of a blind spot for you and i mean that by the way as a compliment i knew you

I happen to see it trending, so I know some of the broader points of that story. But here's, for me, the takeaway of it. And this is very much, this is how you know it's really me. As I'm reading that tweet, whatever the first tweet I saw, that was somebody joking around about these Adam Levine sext messages. I'm just picturing Adam Devine the whole time. And I'm like, oh, my God. And I'm just trying to picture it. From Workaholics, I'll mention. From Workaholics. He plays Adam DeVamp in Workaholics, and he's in the singing movie that everybody loves where people stack pops.

Glee, he's also in The Righteous Gemstones.

Yeah, exactly. And so I'm just like, what did you get into? And then, of course, I Google it. I'm like, oh, no, no, it's the Maroon 5 guy. But, yeah, that's my take on pop culture. Jules says, I'd like to wish the extra happiest of Blur's days to Nancy in St. Petersburg, Florida. Although when she hears this, she'll be celebrating with me in Washington, D.C. I hope you have an amazing Blur's Day seeing the sights of our nation's capital. Happy Blur's Day to Nancy.

Yeah, absolutely. Michael in Spokane, our friend. Oh, Michael in Spokane says, I want to give an East of the Cascades Blur's Day shout out to my first and best in real life 10 friend. Anne in Roslyn Proprietor of Yarnfolk In Ellensburg, Washington Of course She's had so many mentions And voicemails on the show recently I think maybe we should share my associate producer credit Happy birthday, Anne The beauty of associate producer credits

Is you can just sprinkle them about We use that in lieu of actual payment Exactly, I was that associate producer For a big chunk of my career Happy birthday, Anne And finally, this from Laurel, which is actually pronounced Yanni, apparently.

That's why I'm hearing it differently.

Happy actual Blur's Day to Tanya T. I forgot the term we use when it's somebody's Blur's Day on an actual Blur's Day. I think that means it's a golden Blur's Day. So today's actually Tanya's birthday. Golden hen. Let's make good on those plans to get together before your next Blur's Day. Sounds good to me. I sign off on that. Happy Blur's Day. Tanya, from me, Luke, and, of course, Yanni.

Well, happy Blur's Day to everyone. Yes, indeed, we do. And I think that's going to wrap things up here on this Thursday. So you're driving back now. I mean, when this is done and this show is posted, you're hightailing it for Seattle. So that's not a short journey.

Nope. Should be about six hours without stop. So, you know, we're counting on about maybe seven hours. The nice thing is here we're going to be hitting the road around noon, so we should be missing the majority of rush hour, hopefully, if I do this right. Actually, that doesn't really – that doesn't make sense. I'll be hitting the Seattle and Tacoma areas right as things are getting bad. So never mind. I live in Bend now. Get Bend.

I get Bend. I'm still working on it. All right. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for all of y'all. Until then, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. Be safe. And please remember, no mountain too tall. Could you just sneeze, please? You Chekhov sneeze. I'm carrying it over to tomorrow. Consider it a forward promotion for tomorrow's show.

That's how I get him back, Andrew. Chekhov would be so upset. All right, fine. Good luck to all.

I am so sorry. What a bad timing. I'm having bad allergies. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

I can't!

Oh, boy.

Power out.