Muse

So, what I'm doing first of all, with my right hand, I'm doing a lot of what I call a paradiddle-addle-uddle. And that basically goes left, left, right, left, left, right, right, right, left, left, right, right, left, right, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, right, right, right, right, right, right, left. Put that together with the foot pattern, which is exactly the same, but a measure later. So, it looks a little bit like this. Right, right, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, right, right, right, left, right, left, right, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, right, right, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, left, right, left, left, left, left, left, right, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left, left

I start nodding my head like I'm singing, yes, to every beat, yes, yes, yes, this rocks. And then sometimes I switch it up like, no, no, no, don't stop her rocking.

Tuck in your blouse, eh? We're not in Saskatoon anymore, mom. People in Toronto don't tuck in their blouses. They want to dress well here, and I want to fit in, you know? And then I would sew in bits of Egyptian artifacts that were thousands of years old into my costume and gather some onyx or tourmaline or something that was meant to have vibrations,

and who knows if it works or doesn't man if i had a nickel for every time i heard a guy say that

i'd have eight nickels i'm gonna make you work for your dollar say something with that great radio

voice well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live first of all you must wear pants for this my name is luke burbank i am your host here's my sweet stash let's freaking party coming to you from the Riverhouse studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia River, where we are once again in the midst of all kinds of construction banging happening.

Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?

That may show up on the recording, although to be honest with you, if I'm being totally honest with you, that sound, that sound of things happening here.

It does not bother me. In fact, I kind of like it because I know there's somebody around.

It's music to my ears because it means there's some progress being made on the project. Speaking of long-running projects, here we are at episode 4,011 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

Lots of animal-related news on the show today. How about, like, pranking an animal? There are two companies in western Washington that scoop dog poop. Poop-ditty-scoop-whoop-true. And one was suing the other, saying that they were infringing on their name, which literally sounds like this line of music. Rival dog poop scooping companies in the news, we'll talk about that, also down in South Florida on the outskirts of Miami.

The Miami Meat Tent.

They have an issue with too many amorous peacocks. And so what are they going to do? They're going to perform vasectomies on some of the male peacocks.

I know you're nuts, sir. Who's laughing?

See if they can kind of slow down the population of peacocks down there in South Florida. So we'll get into that, too. And we'll talk to this guy, longest-joining co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's always out there peacocking at various bars, wearing lots of flair, and just, you know, using most of the techniques laid out in the book The Game, by Mystery, the professional pickup artist. Are you sure? That's what they said on Ask Jeeves. He's also the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Speaking of the game, sorry, good morning, Luke.

Good morning, my friend. Speaking of that reference to the game, one of the many awkward moments I had a couple of Saturdays ago at Genevieve's big summer party here at our house was when the house was first starting to fill up with people And you're starting to see a lot of faces Some of whom you had to be kind of quick One would have to be quick on their feet One being Andrew would have to be quick on his feet To be like, okay, yeah, this person's from here This person's from here I don't know, I just feel a lot of social pressure in those moments Even if they're people that I know super, super, super well I just like, I start thinking Oh, I have to introduce all these people I'm going to flub a name I don't know, I get I was more nervous at that party than I was on stage The previous Saturday at the 4000th episode So I don't know if that means I don't care about my job

Is it because there were just so many landmines for you in a party like that?

Yeah, actually, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah, and I don't know that I—I don't know that—I feel like I'm the one who's maybe laying them by being so in my head about it. It's not—

you know other people can navigate this stuff fine but I just was very um I don't know kind of anxious and um at one point I kind of turned around I'm like oh wow there's kind of a lot of people here and I saw standing kind of in the near the table by the food by the sandwiches that Genevieve had bought um a few people that I had not seen in a long time um and I think they kind of know each other but I have individual relationships with each of them and I saw one of them like oh my god you're here and I and I shook his hand and then I saw another person I said oh my god you're here too holy cow and i gave him a big hug and then i had to like then i had to kind of step back and like address the fact that i hugged one person and shook the other person's hand although there was no real reason you know there's literally no reason and then of course then i had to make a joke out of it which then made everything awkward then i said i'm sorry i'm negging you like that book and then i couldn't think of the name of the book the game so then everybody at the party to this turn off the music for a while and everybody they're like what book Because Andrew, referencing, I don't know, we can figure this out. Then eventually, about ten minutes later, or maybe it was an hour, they were like, oh, he was referencing the game. And then everybody was like, should we all just go home now? And they did. Was it weird when you picked up that baby and it started crying because it knew you used to be a real piece of shit? Luke, I'm just scared that the baby doesn't think people can change. And that's what...

You think this is slicked back?

This is pushed back. Hey, listen, you can order a steak and a glass of water.

Or another place we could have taken that Another Sort of esoteric corner of our experience Where I could have Of our pop culture we like Which of course that's a reference to I think you should leave The sketch show we never stopped talking about on this program It could have also mentioned that Somebody showed up at the party and said that They were sorry they were late Their babysitter just completely fucked up And then it just gets more It involves a car crash And people losing their lives but then the police aren't looking for the people because they're just like, they just don't matter.

That was season one, I want to say, right?

That sketch gets weird and dark. Yeah, it really does.

It really does. Yeah, a lot of, I mean, there's definitely how many different settings do you think there are with the exception of a couple of outliers, but like in, I think you should leave there are. It's generally workplace event. Like office workplace. Office workplace. Parties, like often just the awkwardness of parties constantly somebody took too small of a slice of toilet paper yeah that's a party yeah they got on their hands and if you count the sort of conferences as being part of the or the hr like there's several like kind of hr presentations or various kind of but i i kind of group that into like the kind of the the office workplace culture so there's parties office workplace game shows and that most and then garfield houses and then garfield houses Those are the four basic food groups right there.

You know what my main food group is right now, Andrew? Water. Bubble water, specifically. Oh, like fizzy water.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, fizzy water, like seltzer, but flavored.

And this is because- For a second, I thought you meant bubble tea. I'm just like, man, when it's really hot outside, I just love to slurp on a giant straw with pudding.

I would love to have some amount of tapioca lodge itself in my windpipe. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry. it's been you know uh it's been it's been real hot around here um and the i can't remember if i mentioned this on the show the other day or i meant to but the last two afternoons like the i guess the probably the the peak temperature might be around four or five but then and i'm not sure how it's been for you in seattle but what's kind of interesting interesting is one way to put it what's what's weird is maybe the temperature is not it's as at say 7 p.m it's not the hottest it's been but it feels the hottest it's been maybe because everything's just been

absorbing the heat all day heat radiating out from the earth something where like so the what

the sun is doing the sun has now done its work but now everything else is just kind of like the most uncomfortable moments for me the last few nights here in this house with no air conditioning or real anything other than opening the windows by the way it's very sweet my neighbor brian yesterday texted me like are you okay over there oh you need to come in he's opened a cooling center

in our neighborhood called his house does he have air conditioning or just oh yeah yeah they have

a block of ice big beautiful home um that i look at with much envy because now i understand how hard it is to and they built it from the ground up it used to be a horse pasture this house that i own used to be on like it used to own the people that lived in this little tiny cottage used to own this whole neighborhood it was all just kind of you know farmland or something or whatever And they built that house from scratch. It's, again, a very beautiful home. I'm sure it has great HVAC. But anyway, it was nice of him to reach out. I was busy biting my nails right down to my wrist watching the Mariners and trying not to.

expire from the heat but anyway what i've been doing at about six or seven in the afternoon is just getting in the kiddie pool and it's running the water over my entire body and i'm wearing one of those big floppy hats that like are very popular at football training camp now oh yeah isn't it kind of a bucket hat it's not quite a bucket though because a bucket hat goes down like a bucket this one has that wide brim that kind of goes more out and it's got like a little drawstring that goes around your neck you know whereas like a bucket hat would be like what gilligan would wear or something is my is my opinion i don't know what this thing is i have

like the one that was sent to me um by bill that is a hat that like the the um canadian poster postal workers wear i think is what you're describing it has the drawstring and i i call it a bucket hat but you're more sartorial than me so i don't know what the name for well when i'm

googling it and again this is this is not the this is not the hat that i want to die on but i'm seeing something let me put it this way there's something that the north face sells called the north face horizon breeze brimmer hat that's so funny oh you and i just did the same thing yeah and that's exactly what i'm describing and then to the right of that you'll see bucket hats but

bucket hats have less of a brim oh these tiny little guys that look like yeah no oh like yeah gilligan i always thought the bucket hat were the ones with the wider brims i didn't really so maybe i've been using bucket hat wrong when i say bucket hat you mean you say bucket hat when i say bucket you mean a breeze brimmer yeah i guess i've been talking about breeze brimmers i'm gonna go down to uh where is it kent where did the seahawks practice oh yeah uh like yeah i guess renton renton vmac i'm gonna go down to the vmac and renton and ask everybody about their breeze

brimmers anyway go ahead i'm sure that's the term i picked this one up at the home depot like one or two summers ago and i think i told this story on the show because i've been watching so much hard knocks at the time and all of these like incredibly athletic handsome generally kind of just like a certain kind of physicality guys are wearing them and i think they look kind of cool i got one and i thought maybe i look kind of cool like that and then i thought maybe this will be my new look in the summer and then becca came over and she was like that's an interesting hat choice yeah i remember that she's very supportive by the way so when she says something that's even mildly like huh okay yeah cool i'm glad you enjoy that hat when you hear that from her you're like okay that means this is not a great look i just imagine me sitting in the kiddie pool wearing my breeze brimmer hat andrew just pouring the hose is just going full blast over the hat i'm wearing a t-shirt in the pool because i don't have any sunscreen and i don't want to get sunburned and i'm just sitting in there with just running the water over me that's what i was doing the last couple of days but when i'm not doing that i've been just power using um uh sparkling water because when I was driving home from Portland on Sunday, so I'd been in town. We were celebrating Becca's brother's 45th birthday. Shout out to Scott. Happy 45th. I was driving back up here on Sunday, and I just pulled into this New Seasons. It's kind of Portland's answer. It's really right in between Trader Joe's and Whole Foods on the kind of fanciness spectrum, if you will. It's not quite as fancy as Whole Foods, but it's also not quite as affordable as some other places. But I like it, you know, it's local. And I walk in there, and there's a buzz. There's a palpable buzz in the building, Andrew, and I don't really know what's going on. I see a couple people coming out of the building on their cell phones, talking to people, telling them about something that's going on at the store. And, by the way, I was one of them within five minutes when I found out what was going on, which was all sparkling water, half off, all of it. anything like a two liter bottle of pellegrino half off a half rack of la croix half off if it's but if it's carbonated water and it's in any kind of a vessel it's half of the normal price i bought about two hundred dollars worth of sparkling water andrew you want to see some white people lose their shit you bought two hundred dollars worth for 100 or you bought I got $200 worth of sparkling water for the price of $100 for a cool hundo. And also, boy, this is classic me. I had one of those tiny shopping carts. I love those, by the way. They need to get more of those.

Oh, God, yeah, the top and bottom.

The top and bottom, but the small one.

Yeah, of course.

For a single gentleman of age, I'm not single, but for an unmarried gentleman of 47, that's the size of shopping cart that I need.

I mean, I live a very blessed life, obviously, but one of one of the worst things that can happen in any given day is I get to the grocery store and they only have the big old fashioned carts that feel like I'm driving like some sort of a El Dorado or I don't know what's a big car. I don't know. I don't know. Exactly. A country squire station wagon. Yeah. Huge car through these tiny aisles. I'm just like, I just want the little two decker. cart and they don't I feel like they don't have enough of those most of most places those are like however many of the jumbo shopping carts they have there's like maybe only 50 percent of the carts at the place well that would be roughly half point is they need to get more of those little ones so I was lucky I snagged a little one I'm feeling good then I get in there and I realize oh half off bubble water but instead of going and just getting like a regular size shopping cart i proceed to absolutely max that little thing out there's just and i'm also so haphazard see at first i thought oh this is just a sale on um i forget even the specific brand that i was grabbing waterloo or something like this is i am the person when they talk about end cap design at grocery stores are you familiar with this terminology yeah of course i'm the person that they're doing it for because i don't i'm like a i'm like a crow i just see something shiny when i walk in and i don't like go well let me go back to the actual aisle where the sparkling water is and then let me assess the situation i walk in and i just see an end cap that's like hey it's half off of this stuff and i'm like let me do that right now and these were eight packs of bubble water so let's say they were normally six bucks in the store they were three bucks so i just start filling my cart up with these eight packs it's not until i get further back in the store and get to the actual aisle where i realize oh it's not just that thing i was just at it's all like a 12 pack also half off therefore you are saving more you are spending more but you are saving more so then i'm starting to put a bunch of 12 packs on this already overburdened cart then i realize oh guess what the like six packs of like plastic bottles which arguably are a better choice i mean i don't know what the plastic situation is but as far as me reusing these things that's a better

choice for me plastic bottles with sparkling water those that's like with sparkling water

usually or something yeah or um there's another brand that i'm spacing on right now but like it might be polar even oh yeah i can picture that okay the plastic bottle with the sparkling water is a better thing for me because i can open it have a few sips and then close it and put it back in the refrigerator you know once you open one of those cans you're kind of committed the thing is i like the feeling of the cold can in my hand i wish that they made those plastic bottles out of aluminum or something because it's not as satisfying for me i also don't have a good ice situation oh andrew i forgot to talk to you about hot dog ice i don't have a good ice situation here so all of that is to say i am currently sitting on so much sparkling water and i i mean i texted becca and i checked up on it i was like the sales over on the 15th yesterday i called her like have you gotten in on the sparkling water and she's like i'm going today it calmed down like it i've never been as excited about a sale or a deal in my life andrew i was

gonna say christmas came early i'm having oh that elf must be one that mean bastard okay the rest of the show is just us yes mutilating i think you should leave quotes um but yeah this is i'm trying to think if i've seen this side of you before because you're you you're not usually somebody who is looking for the best deal for something you're looking for expediency and you're looking If it's some sort of like if it's some sort of a product that you're going to keeping that you're going to keep for a long time, an electronic device of some sort, let's say something involving lasers, you're probably just going to like go and buy the nicest one. Usually this is very Susie Burbank energy here.

Well, because it was it really fell into this sort of perfect overlap of things for me. First of all, something that I buy almost every time I go to the store, which is like a half rack of bubble water. so it's it's not like it's i have a i have a sense of kind of how much it costs i have a sense that it's been getting more expensive over time because i buy it a lot and then also a very easy to follow it was i didn't have to qr code a coupon i didn't have to sign up for a loyalty club it was just like hey you know how two days ago this thing you were going to buy is six dollars today it's three and you can get as many of them oh by the way it's also shelf stable yeah you could just keep you know keep those around forever it was just i don't even understand i don't understand what the business model is of this whole thing like i don't get how you can just take something that i was totally ready to pay six dollars for and now i only have to pay three dollars for it and i'm going to get as much of this as i can whatever profit you were making new seasons i feel like for this five days of this sale uh i'm guessing those profits are kind of gone or something well

yeah it's it's strange to have a type of product across the board slash across brands yeah exactly because um it's like oh all soap that we carry is 50 off like how does that work like you're not getting a deal from the supplier most likely if this is a bunch of different brands but i'm wondering if it's i mean is this just like crazy like a fox marketing here like is this a total loss leader. It's the middle of a heat wave. People have sparkling water on their brains. You said that people, I mean, I hope nobody actually has sparkling water on their brains. If they do, please, please, see a specialist.

Hydronutremia, I think is what that's called.

That's bad. But if you have boba tea on your brain also, see a doctor. Get rid of it. Anyway, no, but I wonder if they're just like, you know what? People are going to start. They're going to come in here. They're going to see the end cap. They're going to see the sale. They're going to call their cousins. They're going to call everybody on their contact list, and then they're going to come in. People are going to buy the water, come for the water, and then also buy their steaks and snacks.

I'm telling you, if they were trying to create a whisper campaign, it worked. I immediately texted back. I told my brother-in-law, Jason, yesterday all about it when we were unloading all that lumber. By the way, you know what's also a really good plan, Andrew? If it's ever touching 100 where you live, what you should try to do is in about the middle of the day also unload by hand 4,500 pounds of decking while wearing basically Crocs, which was how I spent my afternoon yesterday, me and Jason. But I just kept bringing him bubble water after bubble water, and I was like, buddy, these are on me. I got these for half off at New Seasons. I was like, you should hit it on your way out of town. Sale ends today. Like, so to the degree that they were looking to just create some buzz and get people coming into the store, it worked on me. I couldn't stop talking about it.

Okay, a few things. Yeah, I need to get through a few of these things, but let me start with this one. It's funny, like bubble water, I enjoy it from time to time, but when I'm really thirsty, like working out in the yard, like thirsty, thirsty, like I don't want bubble water. I can't guzzle it as fast. I guzzle it, then I get kind of a pain in my sternum or stomach, and then I have to belch. like when i'm really thirsty like that like my favorite thing is gatorade of course there's sugar in that um my favorite thing is gatorade but it barring that just like my water bottle

with like still water and ice cubes i actually agree with you and in fact yesterday as out of one side of my mouth i was bragging about this amazing deal that i got out of the other side i was saying to jason i'm sorry i don't just have any like regular ass water because you're right when you're really thirsty and really dehydrated it's like i don't actually think bubble water is the best thing to slake your thirst it's just what you had though okay it's just what i had but here's the other problem and um right now up here well we've got a lot of problems but one of them is that you know i have one of those well first of all the refrigerator that was part of this house when i bought it which i've mentioned is on the porch um it has the setup for like you could run water out of the door of it but there's no water there's there's like no pecs going that's like a water tube thing there's nothing going to the refrigerator right like it's so you can't use that also that's why the ice maker doesn't work yeah so i have this brita like a tank right that i that i had in my refrigerator at the old place it doesn't fit in this new for how giant this you have a giant refrigerator that won't hold your water tank it's a it's an honestly a metaphor for everything about american life right now andrew like it's this big huge refrigerator that's too big to fit in the kitchen but if you want to put a tank of refrigerated filtered brita water in there you can't it does for somehow the stupid shelving does not adjust to allow for this Brita thing and so anyway I don't what I need to do is go buy some more um bottled water I guess for the time being but I'm with you I don't think that the sparkling water is the best thing for the job but it is what I have and it is what I've been consuming just mass quantities of what's truly shocking is I think I'm probably down to like I could actually go look right now but I want to say it's like one two three of my i may have drank i may have consumed i don't know 50 dollars of sparkling water in the last three days like there i have this huge pile of 12 does that mean you

you drank 25 dollars worth of what you bought or i haven't already actually drank a hundred dollars

well the first can felt like two cans but the second can't felt like water story was going to be so confused i had a i had a stack of these you know like i said la croix and polar and that was the other thing i was just like buying any i would just see one big oh i really like waterloo's lime flavored sparkling water it feels limier to me if i ever and it's a little more expensive i don't know how that works i don't know if they're using higher quality lime flavoring but i saw that they had some waterloo some lime oh by the way the actual aisle where this stuff was was mostly bare it was like the pandemic with toilet paper and a very nice employee from new seasons came in and literally addressed the crowd that was standing in the sparkling water section and she was like clearly you know huffing and puffing she'd been running back and forth she goes if you have any specific requests any specific flavors you want let me know i can go try to get them i'm sorry i'm just running behind because like most of the different amount like most of the different different boxes of sparkling water were gone it was mostly bare on that aisle so maybe i was smart

for grabbing that end cap is this like a thing is there a chance that this is like a tradition like

no other that they do every year or something i mean it's the first i've heard of it but i hope it becomes a tradition because i this is the kind of thing that i will i mean next year i'll rent a cargo van like you and i did and i'll go down there to portland and i'll buy like a year's supply of bubble water like why wouldn't you again you know me i'm not a wheeler and dealer with this stuff but here's the other thing now this is this may andrew have have started some kind of chain reaction in my brain that is another thing that i realized and i feel actually very embarrassed saying this because this just feels like such a first world way of looking at things and it just speaks to my immense privilege i had sort of half forgotten that if you want to take your cans in you can take your cans in and get 10 in oregon 10 cents per can that's the redemption value that's part of why the bubble water and stuff is in the can is not cheap is because you're paying a deposit on those cans and you see lots of folks in oregon particularly folks that are experiencing homelessness will be collecting up lots of cans and things it had kind of escaped my mind that all these cans each one of them actually had like a redemption value And as I was sitting here looking at these boxes and boxes of aluminum cans that I had purchased, I thought, you know, one of these boxes with 12 cans in it, that's $1.20. If I want to just, first of all, is there anything more fun than can crushing? Like getting one of those can crushers?

Oh, yeah, we have one of those. Eve's got one of those. You have to find a truly load-bearing part of your house to stud to attach it to because it has so much torque.

Yes, exactly. But, like, I just thought, wow, I could set one of those up in this kind of, like, entryway where the refrigerator currently resides and just set up, like, a good container with, like, and get – one of the things I also like is acquiring things. So there's a bunch for me to acquire here. I think you're probably supposed to take the cans in clear plastic bags maybe. I think they weigh it maybe, but they want to make sure it's all cans. I don't know. I feel like I see a lot of people with clear plastic bags when they're taking the cans in. But I just thought, maybe I can become the kind of person who like, you know, after a long day of chugging soda water, I could just go into that little area. This feels very Andrew to me. And just kind of like crush up the cans, throw them in this, you know, I kind of imagine it being like one of those, like a sturdy white cardboard box that you can put a clear, big, large, clear plastic garbage bag in. and then you just toss the cans in there and then you know every i don't know few weeks or month when the thing gets filled up throw it in the back of my car and i go recycle the cans and i walk away with a cool 15 dollars i mean do you know what the laws are in washington you were

mentioning oregon so i wasn't sure if um because i think it does go state by state because this is you're you're you're making quite the compelling argument why am i not doing this i don't drink as much water but i drink something that is water like called yes beer and the same deal like water It's like water that makes you It's like water that does something But I crushed some of the cans I want you to know I was laughing at that But I was also drinking my coffee It's like useful water Now that's a show title Useful water But anyway But I just recycle them all But that's a good point I mean I could even kind of say Hey I make that my little project And then I put that money aside And donate it or something

I mean, that would be cool. Yeah. Yeah. I believe that it is. I believe that it is the Oregon Redemption is is more. I think it's 10 cents a can. I think it might be like five cents in Washington. But you're closer to you're close to Oregon. So you could also I bought these cans in Oregon.

So I do feel that it would not be inappropriate for me to return them in Oregon. What does the interstate commerce law say about that?

Well, Andrew, if you think I didn't have a conversation about this at the Portland Pickles game with my friend Jules, who literally runs, is in charge of, and I believe founded, the main can and bottle redemption company for the Portland area, you'd be wrong. I actually was talking about this with him. He was the guy that, while we were talking about TBTL, whipped out his phone and just donated to the show. Oh, wow. Thanks. Yeah. I was mentioning this, I don't know, a few weeks ago or a month ago after going to this Pickles game when I saw Buff John Ryan.

Oh, yeah.

But anyway.

Not the KUW reporter.

No, although he's also looking, he's keeping it tight. This was former punter and, I don't know, majority owner, minority owner of the Portland Pickles baseball team who's now just absolutely jacked. Jules was saying that. I do think that they probably discourage you, and this makes sense, from buying cans in Washington and then bringing them into Oregon to recycle them because you've paid one amount of deposit in Washington. So it would be kind of – that would be immoral to then take it to Oregon and exchange them.

You know what I didn't kind of realize is, so, I'm reading into this right now, so I could be wrong, but, oh, this, I'm on KUOW, the website for KOW, the local public radio station, this piece written by my friend Dyer Oxley, the guy that I believe I hugged when I didn't hug my friend, the next one, this is literally the person I was referring to who was at my party this weekend, or Genevieve's party this weekend, sorry for the confusion there. Um, Dyer wrote this, uh, for KUOW, um, in January saying that Washington state is, was considering legislation at the time to bring a, um, bottle, the bottle and can deposit law to the state. So there isn't one in Washington state right now. And if you were to implement it, you would add, like you would add 10 cents to every can and bottle of soda, and then that's considered the deposit. And then it's up to you, the consumer to then return it and get your 10 cents back. So it's interesting if it were to come to Washington, you're you're paying you just be paying more and then it's up to you to return the cans and bottles. If you were to do that in what if you were to buy these things in Washington now and then take them to Oregon, that's a real screw for Oregon.

And this is what Jules said to me. And as I reflect back on it, I am wondering if he was if he was pulling my leg, if he was joshing me. but i actually didn't realize as i told you i only recently came to the realization that i could even do this in oregon but um i i said something about or maybe somebody else was in the conversation was like well but what if someone buys the stuff in washington and drives it across the border to oregon and he said we have actual lookouts we have people positioned along i5 looking for people because one of the main like like can recycling things there's one right on the oregon side it's right in what's called like delta park and i know about it because it's also where the guitar center is andrew the guitar center that every time i go there i have like a week's worth of shows just about the madness the lawlessness of the guitar center environment these days but right next to that is a place where lots of folks line up to recycle their cans and stuff and what jules said to me was we have um spotters that are checking to see if people are coming across the border to recycle their cans and he said because honestly if we just catch one person a day doing this it pays for the the hourly of the spotters which i was like wow that's an incredible that's incredible that that's what you're doing and then but now that i reflect on like how could they even do that like i mean couldn't you have a van with stuff in the back like it's not like everybody bringing cans across has them tied down on our pickup truck like they're the beverly hillbillies moving west to to beverly hills like how would you how would that even really work as a thing so i don't know if he was saying that because he was just being funny or if if that's the company line because they just want to try to um i'm reading this kind of as we're talking i'm i'm kind of reading a couple articles too from like the willamette week and other places there's some speculation that maybe there's some kind of a code on washington cans that would uh that would somehow i don't think that would be possible that'd be too complicated to to um administer because i mean think about it you're like a distributor and you're dropping a bunch of stuff off at the safeway in um woodland washington and then you're dropping it off in the safeway in portland it's like you got the special what code in the ones that are in washington that

just seems too complicated this is um i'm on linkedin right now i am looking at the job they were looking at some point they posted a couple of weeks ago they're looking for a spotter recology Oregon, Recology being the department or the organization that handles all the recycling for the state, was looking for a spotter-traffic control.

Wow.

It's a little bit of this website. I don't love LinkedIn, and I don't have a LinkedIn sign-in, so I'm only seeing parts of it, but it looks like this is, you can become our spotter. I can't get a good description of it. This, by the way, I feel like would be a great radio story.

like follow these spotters around for a day maybe we can get anna king on the case yes anna um yeah so uh all of that is to say i i don't know if i don't know if i'm gonna actually go through with my can recycling plan but i'm just saying something about getting all the sparkling water for for cheap and then um and and like just thinking like wow i just saved a bunch of money that's just that's a hundred dollars that i didn't spend on something and i'm gonna really enjoy these. And then I could even, I could just continue the circle of life. I could crush. these which would be kind of a that's just a very satisfying experience and then i could go online and find a cool can crusher i don't know maybe like a seahawks can crusher or something like you know what i mean like eight ball something just get like a cool like i get to i get to do a search for the can crusher like you said i get to pick the particular wall where it's going to go i get to figure out the container that i'm going to throw all the crushed cans in like there's so many different things so many elements to this that could lead to a very satisfying moment where i'm just out there crushing cans tossing them in there smoking a heater i don't know why i'm smoking in this particular yeah maybe it seems like a thing this feels like a very like 1980s garage activity that someone's dad would be smoking while doing yeah definitely and listening

to an am radio that probably has like the black crows playing on it i'm also considering becoming

an am radio guy again up here andrew because where i lived in portland it did not get great reception i could never find the mariners but i did bring my transistor radio up here and it very much fits in with this whole lifestyle the junky one though that terrible little one that doesn't

make good sound the one that you and i both bought the same one on amazon because it looked like something that would appeal to us but in reality it's like the worst radio we've ever owned or did

you buy a good one i didn't buy a good one so maybe it's still that but i was having reception issues more than more than for me the sound quality was that it just wouldn't even get couldn't get cairo radio on there so um i well actually no the issue is more that nobody in portland plays there's not a like a station there an am station's like hey you know what we'll just rebroadcast the mariner games like we'll be part of the affiliate network and i don't know why they wouldn't it's very strange seems like it would be a popular thing compared to whatever else they'd be putting on an am radio station in portland at seven o'clock at night seems like you'd be smart to carry the mariners but nobody does it they also don't have them on tv and this is of course how life works right when i was leaving the neighborhood of portland where i lived which was kind of called like sullivan's gulch i found two things that would have totally changed the game for me i wouldn't have stopped me from moving but i could have used this information um i don't know eight months ago first of all there was an indian place like a buffet that i had been avoiding because one time i tried to go there and they were sort of half open And then I realized it was – and this is like a block from my old house. Then I realized also it's a buffet. It's all you can eat for $20. So like if you wanted to sit down and like if you by yourself or with a friend were like, hey, let's just go like really go chow down on some Indian food, this would be a great place to go. But that's not usually my move. It's more like I'd like to order something, pick it up, and take it back to my house and eat it while watching television. But the other day before I moved, I was just desperate and I was really jonesing for some Indian food. So I was like, let me just see what's going on with this. So I went in. The guy was so nice, the guy that runs the place. And he was like, yeah, it's $20. But, like, I filled up. I got so much food. And he gave me an extra container of rice. And when I first brought my little tray back, my little to-go thing, he goes, you've got to put more in there.

That's the thing I said to me the first time I went to Costco. I was being bullied and putting more things into my cart by the people who worked there.

And the only thing I'd say about this is It was going to cost me the same amount of money So this was just generosity And also you get two garlic naan I'll give those to you It was like I got so much Food for 20 Like so much more than if I would have called A typical restaurant and said I'd like to get the Sagh paneer which I'm a sucker for And a couple of garlic naan and a raita He didn't charge me extra for the raita Which is that kind of white yogurt based sauce on the side which is honestly the whole reason i'm into the indian food game i was like i was sitting there at home eating this amazing bounty of indian food all of which cost me exactly twenty dollars and i was like i can't believe i wasn't going to this place more that might be a blessing

though you might have become that guy he's oh no he's coming again put out the closed sign put out the closed sign they see you coming like you're you're carrying your your white box that you bought For can recycling But now you're just Filling it up With takeout food I've smuggled it Across the border You're smuggling it Yeah Okay listen We gotta get to A couple of other things here What's going on With your hornet situation

Oh Andrew I've got it under control Yesterday I got I actually had A surprising amount Of hornet remediation stuff Here at the house I guess probably From last summer So I had an unused trap And I had um hornet spray have you ever used hornet spray i think it's a fascinating intersection of of of technology and poison is it the stuff that comes out as a really hard stream yes and i love that this is how it's designed because they're like you're probably gonna be spraying this at something that you don't want to be very close to yeah yeah so it has like it's the most it is like the most uh i don't know if that's was our fluorocarbons whatever it is that it's the propellant of those things it's like if a normal thing is on like a five this is on a 25 and it's it's i love that i don't know why it's a it's a feeling of real power for me um so i had one of those uh cans and i went out on the scaffolding and i sprayed it up under the shingles where i had been watching hornets all of yesterday go with carrying long pieces of grass and i just sprayed it all around no one came out by that i mean no hornets came out or no yellow jackets is really i think what they were so that was a relief actually which are the ones that have the long body i guess it's more like a wasp i guess that was more like a wasp you know yeah i don't know the difference between a hornet and a wasp i think a hornet i feel like is more of like You have a honeybee, right? And then you have, I think, hornets that look like honeybees, but they don't make honey. And they're the ones that are swarming you at a typical barbecue. I think that's a yellow jacket or a hornet maybe. And then you've got a wasp. And wasps, also known sometimes as mud daubers, are kind of more elegant looking. They're longer. You can tell kind of a differentiation between sort of their upper part of their body and the lower part of their body, if that makes any sense. those were the things those waspy things were what were going into the house so i sprayed it all down i haven't seen any today and then i hung a a trap for them have you ever have you ever put one of those traps together like they're like it's like a yellow kind of longish tube that has this cone that fits in it and has a an attractant that you spray on a cotton ball no oh my gosh i think that i think it's a i think it's such a fascinating thing because you you have this little so it comes it's this like i said it's i'll just take a picture and send it to you but it's this plastic tube that you hang and the hornets they come because you've sprayed a what seems like a shockingly small amount of this little liquid goo onto this cotton ball but they can smell it from like miles around and um and then they get in the trap because they want to get near the thing and then they get stuck and then they die now what's fascinating about it is every time that i've tried to do this you have to cut open this packet of a of attractant i always get some of it on my hands

and then i i'm walking around the world thinking i am now a human hornet attractant like if all it takes is like five drops of this on the cotton i'm watching right now i'm watching like i don't know 20 of these things expire in the trap i got at least that much on my fingers so then i start washing my hands furiously trying to get the smell off which you can't because it's some like super duper intense you know distilled whatever it is pheromone of some kind that they like and so I spent most of yesterday being worried that at any moment a passel of hornets was going to descend on me because I had gotten the attractant on my hands which must happen all the time because you have to hold the tube to cut it and then it squirts everywhere that's that must

be a common experience seems like the kind of prank they would do on um jackass jackass yeah they would like spray one of their friends down with the pheromone then just like send them out into the woods the whole time you were spraying were you singing there's some hornets in this house um sorry that song hasn't been in my head since you said the word hornet for some reason

i'm also watching um some kind of a road crew come down and like i don't even know what they're doing there's a lot of gravel roads around here and there's the whole road situation of like of the times they come out this there's a guy here sorry i have to turn away from the mic I think he's kind of I don't know what he's doing It's not quite a street sweeper It's something road related But I don't really know what he's doing It's a big giant piece of equipment With a big cleaning brush on the front of it But I can't imagine that they're out Street cleaning in this part of the world It must have something to do with They just chip sealed the road Which is this whole thing Where they put down loose gravel but then there's some other kind of like liquid that they put on it and then they drive over it a bunch it's not like what you have in Seattle it's not one of your fancy Seattle streets that's like concrete and such it's some it must be cheaper to do it's like it's it's better than a gravel road but not as nice as a full-on like concrete road like you'd have in Seattle well

I'm guessing that the technology has come a long way but holy cow you totally triggered a nostalgic summertime um kind of kind of like ritual where we grew up not ritual that's the wrong word but i forgot i think it felt like every summer again growing up out in the country in medina county ohio um all of the roads were like that and so they would lay tar it would be like kind of a two day i feel like it would be like a two-day process they would lay tar one day and everything would you smell like tar everything and then the next day they would like come with those trucks and just or maybe it was all in one day i don't know i was a child it was summertime i had oldies to listen to and archie comics to read but then they would drive another truck down and it would just dump loose gravel all over the tar and then i am assuming seal it down somehow but then for like a month after that every time you'd pull out of your driveway you would hear that of the little gravels that would go up into your parents car as they were driving on these freshly graveled roads. Yes, I believe

I'm looking it up. I think it's chip seal is a pavement surface treatment that combines one or more layer of asphalt with one or more layer of fine aggregate. Yeah, asphalt, not tar. That makes sense. Chip seals are typically used on rural roads carrying lower traffic volumes and the process is often referred to as asphaltic surface treatment. So that's what's been, that went on like months ago here, but now they're out just doing some kind of a situation on it. I'm trying to maintenance.

Wow, that takes me back. I forgot about that. Hello, and welcome to Top Story.

All right, our Top Story. You actually found this today, Andrew, in the Seattle Times. The lawsuit between rival Washington dog poop scoop companies is voluntarily dismissed. I don't actually have the byline. I printed this out, but it was a piece in the Seattle Times. Props to whoever wrote this Might be Dyer Oxley again Probably Dyer Oxley Why don't you hug him What's your problem Oh it's Paige Cornwell Oh yeah thank you I see Paige's work in there a lot actually Yeah me too So there was apparently A fight between two Dog pooping Dog poop scooping business One based in Linwood Called Pooper Trooper And one based in Spokane Called Scoop Troop And the lawyer for Pooper Trooper Has said that they have resolved This matter on amicable terms Pooper Trooper sued Scoop Troop, accusing them of copyright infringement and unfair competition, among other allegations related to Scoop Troop's name and services, which Pooper Trooper said in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington lawsuit, the names were too similar. The lawsuit was dismissed this month. Scoop Troop will, quote, prospectively cease the use of Scoop Troop as their name, said Pooper Trooper Lawyer. Its new name will be Scoop Swoop, with a new website and truck wraps launching by the end of the month, according to the owner of the company, William Milliken, who noted the company was in the process of rebranding before the lawsuit was filed. Not much will change for the soon-to-be Swoop Scoop, other than a few letters in our name, Milliken wrote in an email. The company plans to open some new Pacific Northwest locations soon. So let me just see if I'm following all this. So this company, Pooper Trooper, didn't like that there was a company called Scoop Troop. I guess probably because of Troop, right? Scooper Trooper and then Scoop Troop. So they made Scoop Troop change their name.

Well, wait, one of them is Pooper Scooper, and the other one is Scoop Trooper. Pooper Trooper and Scoop Troop.

But I'm saying Pooper Trooper was mad that Scoop Troop was, my guess is that they were using Troop. Both companies were using the word T-R-O-O-P in some fashion.

I mean, the only reason we're even doing this story is so that we can have all these drops of you saying this later. Like, honestly, that's the only thing.

Poop, diddy, whoop, scoop.

Poop.

I mean, also, surprisingly close to that drop that we play. I know.

That's what I said in the email. It's like, I don't know if there's enough here for an actual top story, but I mean, look, we're changing our name from Pooper Trooper Scooper Dooper to the looper of the Scooper Dooper Drooper. I'm just like, this is the drop.

Yeah, Pooper Trooper sues Scoop Troop for their name being too close. Scoop Troop then agrees to change their name to Swoop Scoop. So now the companies will not both have Troop in their name. That seems to be the major improvement, although Scoop Troop, now known as Swoop Scoop, claims they were already changing their name. I wonder if they were, and I wonder if they thought Swoop Scoop was a better name anyway than Scoop Troop.

Swoop, what is it? I don't have it in front of me. What is the new one? I've got it right here.

Swoop Scoop, poop.

What is the new one? The new one, Andrew, is Swoop Scoop. See, that does not immediately evoke what they do to me.

Yeah.

The other ones, you hear that and you're like, oh, that's probably about poop.

So you thought Scoop Troop was probably, if you're a customer, if you're somebody who's trying to deal with a dog poop situation, you would be, if you heard there was a... company called scoop troop you'd be like i know what they do but if that same company was called swoop scoop you would be less informed as to what their sort of business i mean i know that they both

have scoop in there i think the swoop is little is a little confusing i feel like swoop scoop it'd be oh that what is that some sort of industrial uh-huh foaming agent i mean i don't know i don't know why i said that but um i it doesn't i do think that scoop troop i'm like oh

those people go around scooping up poop i this is one of those things where um i am for somebody who can get a little behind in my housekeeping duties uh so to speak i have been throughout my life militant about picking up the dog poop in my yard when i've had a dog like i can't it's i i feel emotionally unwell like back when i was you know living in bellingham with rudy if rudy if if like it was four in the afternoon and i had a done a quick you know quick sort of like um i don't know what you call perimeter check of the yard to get all any and all dog poop up i would honestly feel like not really super okay like there's something about going out there with those poop bags and making sure that every single you know and and the other thing is when you stay on top of it you're not having to pick up like 20 piles you could be picking up one basically maybe two piles a day or something like that for some reason was a huge thing to me and i think it's because when i was a kid and we've you know this has come up on the show a lot my childhood was marked by a lot of stepping in dog poop or a lot of dealing with having stepped in dog poop or someone's we're in the car and what does that smell somebody stepped in dog i feel like dog was just a really big part of my life as a child and as an adult the idea of there being dog poop in my yard that is undealt with there being landmines the fact that you couldn't just kind of run you know go run a pattern have someone throw you a nerf football without worrying about what you're standing on stepping on that's always been very very like unsettling to me to the point where like i was that was the one household job that i was very on i i know that i've been talking about the party a

lot this show but i believe i stepped in some sort of a huge dookie i believe during the party

um all i know yard luke i don't know i all i know this was not in the initial debrief yeah right how did it not come up sooner what this is that's a game changer if you're hosting a party and you also stepped in dog shit i mean all i know is this is probably

you know i'm gonna say it's like maybe 10 o'clock at night at this point let's see i discovered it you know i need phyllis to tell me when this was because i know that phyllis was just getting ready to to take off at this point and they'd been there for a while phyllis and her husband josh so i'm thinking that like um this is probably around 10 30 at night or something so you know i've had some beers and like i say i sort of had this kind of weird manic energy all night uh just kind of flitting around and trying to trying and failing to be my best self and then um we're standing around in the basement and there's some people playing darts i'm over talking with genevieve and phyllis and josh and i think one or two other people and all of a sudden i look down and i look at like kind of the inside of the i'm wearing a tennis shoe right now like sort of look at the inside like in the arch of of my shoe and i see that there's like what i think is mud like a lot of mud cake down there you know and then like i kind of lift up my shoe and i look down and I see oh there's a couple of chunks of mud on the ground and I pick them up like small little chunks and then I realize oh I'm the one carrying this around and I think that it's just mud on my shoes and then I lift up my shoe and there's a way of just seeing that like there was there was clearly something that was above the ground that I stepped in in other words this wasn't like my shoes were muddy because I stepped in a puddle or my shoes were muddy because it you know and it had been raining outside so initially I'm like oh I stopped in some you know not heavy rain but it had been kind of drizzling all day um and so i'm like oh i must have just stepped in some some mud but the way you know like if you have a mound of something on the ground and you step in it the mound whether you're talking about mud or poop or whatever it's going to kind of go up around the shoe and and it and the this big thing of mud or poop that was on my shoe did not go all the way toe to heel it was right in the middle as if again like you there's a mound of poo and you just stepped in it went up around the sides and everybody and josh is like look at that that is he's like smell that that is not mud that is poop i'm like i'm not smelling it i think you're right i can use my eyes here and this was clearly me stepping in a mound of something and i immediately took them off took them outside i ended up just throwing them away they were really old shoes they were on their way out anyway i was really glad actually i was tempted to throw away those shoes a few weeks earlier because they were developing little holes on the top.

But I'm so glad that I didn't throw them away. There's some holes on the top.

There's some holes on the top.

Because if I had thrown them away, I would have been wearing a newer pair of shoes that would have been destroyed by this. So anyway, I take the shoes outside. I throw them somewhere, and then I threw them away the next day. But here's the one thing that belies all of this, Luke. You don't own a dog. Well, that. But there was a moment, and this definitely happened not too long before I came inside and made this awful discovery. I had taken a couple of people out sort of into the street area to show them how wide this crazy hedge is in the back of my house. And you don't you don't get a good perspective on that in the yard. So we went kind of out the gate, down the driveway. And yeah, this is why people should come to parties at my house. I'll show you my hedges. But anyway, so I feel like we were sort of standing in the street slash like kind of tree lawn area, me and a few friends talking about hedges and plans to trim them and what have you. And so I'm assuming that this is where people constantly are walking up and down my street with their dogs. I'm like, well, that would have been exactly where I stepped in it. However, Luke, and this is the thing that belies the whole thing is we made this discovery inside in a pretty, you know, low ceilinged environment. I'd been standing there talking for at least five minutes like I feel like this would have been reeking even when I took off the shoes and I didn't put my nose to it. But I did not smell what I think would have been an intense smell in this circumstance. I totally agree. I don't think it was poop. I can't imagine what it was. Definitely a mound of something. This is why I'm confused. I didn't step in a puddle. You know what I mean? You have any mole situations?

And that's a real question because I've got a lot of that going on around here.

Luke, no. Luke, rabbits. Rabbits? Want to add a few comments regarding your mole situation? rabbits had been creating warrens in the yard because we have so many and genevieve even pointed out a couple of days ahead of time like oh wow they really made this long tunnel from one place to another there's a chance that i was staying maybe i just stepped in a big pile of mud that a rabbit had made while you know making one of its tunnels i bet you that's what it was

because you're right the thing about stepping in dog poop is it hits your nose before it hits your eyes yeah like that's always the giveaway it's like what oh god wait somebody what happened everyone check your shoes like that whole move the fact that that wasn't how it i'm also really relieved because when you threw in the part about you picked some of the dirt up well now i mean i grabbed the paper towel or whatever yeah sure but but i'm talking like little crumbs you know tiny bits but yeah yeah um that i bet you that it was i bet you it was more rabbit related because again the smell that the smell thing to me is is telling as to what its origin was i definitely that was

you know I'm glad we had this conversation Luke finally this show does something good because it had been sort of bedeviling me like again the shoes needed to go away anyway I threw them away it was a quick moment I'm just so relieved that I can't believe I didn't track it more all over the house because we weren't even standing by the doorway to the outside and there was just like one footprint that I tracked down later where I first clearly walked into the house that vacuumed up easily and then I couldn't believe that I wasn't like tracking this all over the place but yeah the smell I've been thinking about I'm like, why was that not reeking? And I'll bet you maybe it was a pile of mud after all.

The other animal story I want to tell you about quickly here today, Andrew, takes us to a suburb of Miami called Pinecrest, Florida. This is a piece in The New York Times by Patricia Mazze and Alfonso Duran talking about the peacock. I don't want to say infestation but the peacock population these birds are so beautiful Andrew and you know I grew up I didn't grow up in a place where there's wild peacocks just living so I'd see them at the zoo and I thought they were pretty cool these photos from this New York Times piece are amazing I mean this like the brilliance of the colors of the plumage on these peacocks that are just wandering around pine crest is amazing I mean they are really truly stunning animals turns out they're not native to florida though and they're also very annoying uh they like to um the birds um are not to their new neighbors likings they scratch roofs of stately homes they peck off the paint of fancy cars and they defecate on manicured driveways their piercing squawks ah ah often wake residents before dawn boy lynn is busy today so the p the residents of pinecrest have devised a novel plan peacock vasectomies so they hired this veterinarian to come in and well basically what happened was there was an open there was a there was a submission period where just people in town could give suggestions for dealing with the peacock situation and the suggestion that one was trapping anesthetized

performing a vasectomy on a male peacock and this veterinarian who's cited in the story, Dr. Don J. Harris, who's going to be running the whole thing, says he thinks for every male that they put a vasectomy on vasectomize? I don't really know how you conjugate that. It will lead to seven females not having their eggs fertilized. Females known as peahens. Dr. Harris says peacocks are bonafide polygamists. We're going to catch one peacock And probably stop seven females from reproducing It's going to have an exponential benefit One of the things that's so interesting though Is they're not Catching these male peacocks And then like Castrating them They're putting them under and giving them a vasectomy

Yeah so that they can still have sex That's interesting And I did not read this one

They can still be their peacocks You know what I mean Because this is something everybody probably knows But, you know, the more kind of fanciful looking peacocks are the males because that's what they use to attract the females.

Oh, so they wouldn't even do all of that with their feathers and all the showing off or whatever if they were completely, like, fixed the way we fix our pets. That's, I think, what the implication is.

Yeah. So they don't want the peacocks. They don't at least there's not public support for taking away the essential peacockedness of a male peacock, which is him strutting about with his feathers out looking all like a dandy um so they're not so they don't want him to know that he's shooting blanks yeah basically um i mean it's also kind of wild because and and you know me i'm a pretty animal forward person but um it's you know they're going to the trouble of capturing these peacocks it's like they what there isn't is the sort of political appetite for just like um euthanizing these peacocks like the same it's costing let's I mean, as you might imagine, Andrew, it's not a cheap thing. It's about $15,000 to get the veterinary equipment to perform the vasectomies. Pinecrest is budgeted $7,500 a month to implement the plan. Because catching a male peacock, as they point out in the article, because of their sharp talons and beak is pretty hard. And then you have to anesthetize them, and then you have to do the surgery, and then you have to bring them back up to consciousness, and then you have to kind of watch them for a while and let them go. So it would be much easier to catch it and just kind of take it out to the pasture and say night-night to this male peacock. That would also, by the way, save seven female peahens from being fertilized if you just straight up did away with the male peacocks. But nobody wants that. Well, some people want it, but they don't want to say they want it. So for now, the plan is to give them vasectomies, let them back out on the world to think that they're being all cool and peacocky, even though they're actually shooting blanks, like I said.

I've heard commercials for this procedure. It ends with the announcer saying, oh, and guys, the peahens will love it, too.

There is a guy in the article who I have a difficult time generating a ton of sort of sympathy for. It's a guy named David O. Marcus, longtime Pinecrest resident, who calls the peafowl a plague. A peacock attacked his Tesla, leaving it scratched. The males are thought to see their reflections in the paint, misidentify them as rivals, and peck away. I mean, I don't want to make too sweeping of a judgment, but, like, somebody living in what I assume is a pretty tony part of South Florida.

Certainly. Before we even got to the Tesla part, I was like, oh, yeah, because this is a very rich area, and they like having their peacocks strutting around. Like, what's fancier than that, right? And then they're going to invest community dollars into making sure that we can keep these peacocks peacocking.

It's like you've got the, yeah, it's kind of an exotic thing. They're walking around. You're living in your South Florida dream life. You've got your Tesla, and you're calling them a plague because your Tesla is so shiny that a male peacock sees it and thinks it's another peacock that he needs to fight. So he goes over and pecks your Tesla. That feels to me like nature batting last. Although, I mean, ironically, a Tesla is less bad for the environment than, say, a big diesel truck. So I guess at least there's that. I mean, Teslas are much better for the environment than a regular car, but much worse for the culture as far as I'm concerned at this point, right?

Well put.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

It's emails and V-mails time. Yeah, I got a couple of voicemails I'd like to play for you, at least one if we only have time for that, but we'll see what we can get through here. But I will say this. I know that we talk on this show a lot about my obsession with finding money. Not that I find a lot of money on the ground, but that I'm obsessed with the idea of finding money. But it really is a topic that must ring in some way with the list.

Because we just get inundated with all kinds of stories about lost money, found money, etc. And this one came in from Stephen just the other day. And he's telling us a story that happened to him just the day before.

Hey Co-Brothers, this is Stephen Port Orchard. How do you like that Co-Brothers thing?

I dig it, yeah.

Hey Co-Brothers, this is Stephen Port Orchard. This happened yesterday. I wanted some cash, so I went to Safeway, and I bought a couple of things, and I punched in the thing for $40. And it was in the self-checkout line, and I put the groceries in the bag. I grabbed my receipt, put the receipt in the bag, and I walked away about 20, 30 feet, and I realized, oh, I forgot my cash. And so I went back to the register, and it was gone. And I worked with the store people there, and they looked at the security footage. And I suspected it was the guy next to me who I hoped would spend the money on deodorant. But it turned out it was a couple of kids, young people. And they said to call the police and file a report, and then maybe I'd get my money back. And so I did that. And the police officer said she would probably get back to me within about a week with the end of the story, basically. And she called later that day. She called later yesterday and said, we've got your money. We can bring it to you. So they were going to deliver the money to my house. And as it turned out, and so I asked her if she'd tell me the story when she got back, and she said she would. And sure enough, the video footage did show these kids taking my money and walking out. But they also had video footage of the parking lot, and they saw the car that the kids left in, and they tracked it down to where that car was registered, went to the house, and these kids had to speak to the police in front of their parents. and they confessed right up and just thought it was like found the money sitting there in the cash rich, sitting there in the money dispenser. It ends happy for me. I'm not sure what price the kids had to pay for having to have a conversation in front of the police, in front of their parents, but I don't think that's a place. Personally, I don't think it's a place for a $5.40 that I would be thinking, oh, yay, bonus. Anyway, just thought I'd share that. Thanks.

Okay. Wow. Now, here's the thing that this is going to make me sound like Mr. Moneybags. And I know that that is an image that I try to, like, sort of put out there on this show.

Yeah, you're always judging those beauty contests and holding up babies and wearing stashes and things.

I have a sash. i have a sash that says mr money bags money bags people come up to me they say is there a mrs money bags um but luke for real like okay first all like to the point of this story i agree like if i were to find money quote unquote find money in one of those like money dispensers at the grocery store at the self-checkout i would not consider that found money i would give that to somebody often you can see the person walking away and i've done this before i've chased people down said hey you left her money um uh as a young i don't know how young these kids were but if i was like let's say 21 or younger i could totally see myself and being like whoa free money like i think that perspective changes those things but this is what i don't get about this whole thing is this was 40 the store helped him contact the police who then reviewed footage from two different scenes to track down a license plate number to then find them get the money from the kids at their home then deliver it to steven for four how much money did we did as a society put into getting this 40 back i'm not trying to say that you know i'm glad that steven got his money back

but like what i think the difference is you live in seattle and steven lives in port orchard i think he said uh okay yeah i think this has to do with the size of the city that you live in i would imagine that if this happened in seattle it would um let's just say you would not receive the the white glove service that uh was uh received uh if you've ever had a property crime happen to you in seattle yeah during my time there there's nothing that makes you feel like your pioneer stereo that was stolen from your car or whatever is a sillier thing to be worried about than when the police finally come out two days later take some notes uh brings us back to what's the scene that you

always reference i was a good well thanks for saying that's about to reference it again from the big lebowski when he like when somebody steals the dude's and then they find it just totally destroyed in the impound lot and Lebowski turns to the cop and says like do you guys have any leads and the cop just starts laughing his ass off and says yeah the boys at the lab have the best guys on it or something like that

right I think this has probably to do with the size of the city I mean it's amazing to me that all these systems actually worked that like the security footage you know was actually saving to the hard drive I find those those cameras to be just so absolutely invasive because they first of all are just humiliating like just the the resolution the angle you could feel like on a day you could be like you know what i'm having kind of a cute day i'm feeling okay about this whole thing and then you see yourself on the like self-checkout security camera and it's just like oh dear goodness this is okay that wow i didn't know that's what we were dealing with um it's amazing that those cameras all work that somebody at the grocery store those places are understaffed now hence them making us all do our own self-checkout was able to go back and review the security footage the fact that there was enough police that someone could actually uh the officer could um show up for a call that involved forty dollars that that they went and figured out the license plate from the other security footage it's amazing that all these systems actually worked out i mean i'm very glad for listener steven but i would have given this a less than five percent chance of actually going the way it went i would

Yeah, I mean, again, I guess I just don't know Port Orchard, but I would give it a less than 5% chance that the cops would even take the call, you know. So, again, that must just be my unfamiliarity with that community because that's just like, again, like you could have a $2,000 bike stolen and the cops are just going to be like, well, what do you want me to do about that? We drove through Port Orchard, by the way, when we were going to retrieve the stuff from my parents' house. Oh, okay. So it's on the other side of the sound from me?

Yes, it's over kind of by near where they live. And so when we got off that one ferry, I think we worked our way more or less through through Port Orchard. But, yeah, that's that's incredible to me that that worked out. Go surveillance state.

OK, let me play one more quick voicemail only because it's on the same topic, sort of. And, you know, we'll have Blur's Day. This is the perspective of the high school. This. Yeah, we got it. Well, I don't know if these are the same kids, but we did get a voicemail from three young people here who said they found forty dollars. that was really going to get them out of a few jams, and now they're going to turn to a life of crime instead, and everything's going to fall apart for them. No, this is from a listener, Rachel, who, again, this is related to finding money, but we got a cautionary tale from a listener a few days ago, I think, saying, hey, listen, I went to pick up a dollar bill when I was visiting my friend or family member on campus somewhere, and they said, do not touch any money you find on the ground around here. Poop dollars. You know, the college kids. I'm sorry, scoop dollars.

Poop-dee-dee-woop-scoop.

whoop poop swoop dollars they call them no they said there's a prank where they'll like you know somehow like trick you into touching poop if and by making it seem like there's money on the ground but there's something hidden in that money anyway we got another tale of warning from listener

rachel in case we ever go overseas hi andrew it's rachel from maine um first luke i just want to welcome you to rural america um it's a great place to live in spite of the let's go bridge flag. So stay strong, my friend. I wanted to offer another warning about found money. I used to live in Ukraine before the war and everything. And it's a wonderful, wonderful place. But there used to be this scam that people would perpetrate, that if you, they would leave some money on the ground. And when you picked it up, they would come and say, Oh, hey, that's mine. And then we say oh no i just found this they would create a big stir and they would get their friends who's a cop to to come and um they would say this person stole from me and then it would be this whole thing where you have to grab the cop and give the money back so um i don't know for that reason i'm always scared of picking up money especially if it's like a large amount on the ground um anyway um hopefully there's no poo under anything uh power out hopefully hopefully

there is no poo under anything i agree with that put on my family dress and if you use swoop troop

andrew there won't be that's that is right please that's an see that's an interesting scam to run because it sounds like well first of all you are putting a certain amount of money in play yep so you're kind of risking that and then second of all i guess the way the scam works is you're holding this money so then they can yell at you that you're holding their money like it seems like a lot it seems like by the same nature you could just walk up to somebody who looks like a tourist and go you stole my money and then if you have a crooked cop in on it they can just run over like it somehow the the step of putting the money on the ground and then waiting for someone to pick it up and then running over seems kind of like an extra step almost yeah process if it's just fully a shakedown

if it's yeah exactly if it's completely a corrupt shakedown it does why do you need that but i don't know, maybe it gives them a little bit of cut.

I told you about when I got, I mean, luckily it wasn't for very much money, but I got scammed. I basically, when I was in, I'm pretty sure it was Italy, this would have been almost 20 years ago, I, for a brief moment, thought that the laws of physics had been suspended. Did I ever tell you about this? I don't remember this. Lots of money on the deal? I don't know. I don't remember the physics part. Back in those days, when you would be walking through Venice or something, there would be folks that had set up all kinds of little stalls and stands and and and blankets and things and this one guy had this setup where it was like he had a boom box it was playing music and then standing next to the boom box was this paper like cut out of mickey mouse that had these long kind of like string legs or something they went down to these feet and it appeared to be dancing on its own to the music and i i remember just thinking this and i couldn't i was looking was there a fishing line i couldn't see any i couldn't see how the scam was working and i think i i think it was so i was so intrigued that i even like asked this person like how does this work and this person gave me i think through you know probably english not being their first language some some explanation that was apparently satisfactory enough to me that i bought two of them literally thinking and like these these were like these were things that should not have been able to stand on their own or move and it was something about the sound wave was moving them or something i mean it was just a very cool intriguing arresting looking thing and i bought these two things for i don't know 10 bucks or something and thought i can't wait to wow my friends with this thing that defies everything we think we know about physics i got them home and just like just a couple pieces of paper with some string legs on them that didn't do shit and it's just clear that there was some kind of a they had something figured out where it was like you know it looked magical but it was in fact just a scam and they knew that somebody like me wasn't going to figure out that I just bought some magic beans until I got home probably to the US and there was going to be little repercussion except that I would bring it up on my podcast 20 years later so who's laughing now? You should call the Port Orchard police is what you should do

that you know you have told me that because now I was in my defense a child but I was at the medina county fair as a kid and there was one i mean it seems like a scene right out of the music man in my memory of it there was somebody uh you know you can picture a fair there's like um elephant ears over here and you know rides and there's just like kind of i think we're like honestly making our way to probably like the demolition derby or something and there's also like little stands where people are selling things or showing off products or what have you and there's this guy and i mean it just seems like a straight up flim flam man like probably literally probably wearing a styrofoam hat he's giving this demonstration of a magic mouse it's funny that yours is mouse related as well this one though was not like mickey mouse it was just like this small little mouse that seemed to kind of crawl all over him he's moving around and the mouse just seemed to i mean it was amazing it was a sort of toy mouse that would just like uh he had total command over um and it was just a little like piece of felt or whatever uh and i remember like kind of begging my parents I'm like are you watching this are you this is we have to buy one and then you know they bought one for me for some you know again not very much money I'm sure uh and then that was like a real life lesson for me when it was like yeah it was this mouse with a string on it that if I were to take the time I could maybe fool people the way this guy fooled me you know by making it seem like a magic mouse but the whole thing was just like it was just an illusion, Michael.

I'm looking at something on YouTube called Dancing Magnet Paper Puppet Scam. And it's exactly, except it's been updated, so it's like a Pikachu and a Donald Duck, but then on the ground, Andrew, are like next to the boombox, and this isn't even, I don't think this is even in Italy or whatever, this is just somewhere, on the ground next to the boombox are literally the same Mickey Mouse puppets that I probably purchased. I'm going to send you this picture. We could use it for a show pic, baby. it's so funny to see that after all these years and realize like that's that was absolutely let's just find out what what music they were playing really fast and then then we'll be done with the uh with the show so there's somebody just shooting this on their phone they're walking up to this cool scene of these little dolls dancing

i don't know what it is what's up do you see the wire i didn't see it yes it is oh there is see just watch your head go in and reach for it see just watch your hand

anyway um i'm glad to know that i was not the only person who was scammed by the what is it a magnet though dancing magnet paper puppet scan what i really need to do is figure out how the

scam work yeah because that's the difference i feel like what was ended up being sold to me and my family like yes it was a bit of a scam because it was like hey look look at how magical this mouse is but then what they sold us was it was like selling a

a deck of magic cards to a kid right like it came with a string it came with the string and it was like oh now you can wow your friends if you want to learn how to do this which i did not want to

do i wanted a magic mouse um right exactly and i was what was sold to me was this is magic this is

literally a magical thing but like you didn't like you weren't even sold like the stuff that would allow you to create the same illusion to another unsuspecting person and wow somebody at party like it was a straight up like that's what makes this an actual scam versus this guy who i don't think was probably doing anything illegal other than being like i say sort of a flim flam

man yeah exactly um all right well i sent you that that photo andrew so now you can gaze upon its majesty and and see what i was talking about is there anything else we need to do before we

get out of here today i think that's good for me did you um well oh here i don't see this magic mouse thing so uh is that exactly how you expected it to be no that's so funny so it's much smaller than i imagined okay so it's about the size uh it's about as tall as the the little boom box i see interesting yeah huh anyway i hope you still have that somewhere it's gonna be worth a lot of

money someday it is amazing the things the actual important things in my life that i no longer have that i'm realizing as i sort of go through and unpack like a big part of it is i'll realize oh I need this that or the other oh I need something that does that and then I'll think about the maybe three or four different things that I've had through various divorces and moves that did that exact job in other words whether it's a home appliance or just I don't know just something when like when you get divorced about every six years and move it really puts a dent in your sort of overall kind of like household item list and so I'm realizing that so all that is to say I don't I think Mickey made the trip from, let's see, Seattle. The house that I lived on in South Beacon Hill in the sort of late 90s, early 2000s would have been probably where Mickey and the other paper puppets met their final rest in place. Well, rest in power, Mickey. R.I.P. R.I.P. Rest easy, Hutch Rimes.

Sleep easy, Hutch Mouse. All right. Bad, bad, bad, bad. Let's get out of here.

Okay. Thanks for listening, everyone. we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you until then have a great Wednesday try to stay cool consider sitting in a kiddie pool running water over your bucket hat that's been working for me see you tomorrow until then please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Transcription by CastingWords and at which point I resumed crushing it full-time.

Power out.