Muse

We only have to make small talk for...

Eight minutes and 45 seconds.

We better keep it impersonal. Acceptable topics include what constitutes a grain, the Hubble Space Telescope, orchid varietals, the birth of the transistor...

We only have to fill eight minutes.

Sure, but think about it as 480 seconds, and you'll see why I'm concerned.

Oh, my God. T! T! T! T! B! T! M!

Guess what day it is! Guess what day it is.

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. Jalapeno!

She's buying, right? Because I will be ordering a bowl of soup as an appetizer, not a cup. Chuck, I know people say I'll fill up, but you have no idea how my body processes soup.

Too much info... One man's too much information is another man's too little information. T.L.I. and one other man's J-E-I. Just enough information.

Hi, I'm sorry I didn't see you there. I was too busy blocking out the haters.

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

That's a tuna, bro.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Give me that.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's an absolutely beautiful day, I am, unfortunately, still a bit under the weather. My recent symptoms include...

I get dizzy spells, lajea, cold sweats, hot sweats, involuntary trembling, dead hands, numb lips, fingernail sensitivity, pelvic discomfort.

All of the above. So we'll see how long we go today here on episode 4,333. in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

If I can tough it out, we do have a lot of news to talk about with you. I've got lots of news. In the monkey department. You've been living in the monkey house. Including escaped monkeys in South Carolina and questions as to if those monkeys and many other could write the works of Shakespeare or not. It was the best of times. It was the blirst of times. All that, plus this guy Longest running co-bro of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships He shared something very personal with me Right before the show You know I'm like part psychic And by part I mean the whole thing He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now Good morning my friend

Good morning First of all I'm sorry that you are Playing hurt today To bring a little sports I'm trying to be more sporty To bring some sports talk into it Not all heroes wear capes Andrew

Some of them wear Patagonia. I do like that you and I usually try to dress reasonably well for this thing that's mostly just audio. But I am not feeling great today. And I thought, well, I'm going to treat myself to wearing this zip-up Patagonia thing.

Looks cozy. Looks cozy. I'm going to feel cozy. Just for the listeners, I'm wearing something similar, not the actual thing, to what Madonna wore in the Vogue video.

I don't know if you're familiar with a human chair but that's kind of the vibe that Andrew is going for today

Do you know what I'm doing later today? You might be interested in this. I want to tell you this because I couldn't remember exactly where it was or what it was and I was googling around frantically and I got to the answer right as you introduced me Have you ever heard of the Great Junk Hunt? And as I say that out loud I realize where you're going to take that

Oh no, I killed him I learned well Please don't say Great Junk Hunt. I did not. You know what? You know what? I literally did not even think about how that was. You can go around talking about the Great Junk Hunt all you want. It never occurs to you until you say it to Luke Burbank.

I used to play Great Junk Hunt when I was a kid, and I would hold the gun right up against the screen, and I would get, like, high score.

Anyway, I'm taking it. You haven't heard of it. I have not heard of it either. It's something that is going down at the Washington State Fairgrounds, a.k.a. do the Puyallup. Only it's not the Puyallup Fair, but it's the Great Junk Hunt. I guess it's a huge, huge rummage sale situation. I'm supposed to head down there later today if I can get all my work done in time. You and Veeves, presumably? Me and Veeves and a friend who, here's the truth. Genevieve told me about this on like Monday and she said, do you think, you know, do you think you'd be able to join us? Because we're going to we're supposed to leave in like the late afternoon. I'm like, it really depends on my Friday goes. But she's she said, I'm going down there with somebody and I can't remember who it is. I don't know if it's somebody who listens to this show or not, but either way, Genevieve is going with a friend and I may or may not.

along depending how something else goes in my life which is what happens when the furnace repair person gets here later today because i have been having a situation how do you like the thermostats in your house luke do you have a good relationship well i don't have any thermostats oh yeah right

uh the this house when i bought it had no like decent hvac yeah to speak of it had like a little built-in wall heater in a couple of different rooms that were both a fire hazard and relatively ineffective so i've put a mini split a heat pump as they call it in the living room and i'm going to put smaller versions of that in in other places in the house but then how do you i don't have a furnace how do you control them well there's a remote control and uh and they're they're

quite uh efficient you just like choose a you just choose a temperature and you can do that or you You can probably set it for different times of day to do automated things.

You can do, yeah, you can set it, you can automate it, you can choose if you want it to make the house cooler or warmer. What's really interesting is the way that it works is, let's say it's a hot day, it actually is pulling the heat out of the house and replacing it with cold air, and if it's a cold day, it's pulling cold air out of the house and replacing it with warm air. So when you walk by, so the actual unit is outside. It's under the deck. And when I'm running the heat and you walk by this thing, it's blowing freezing cold air. Outside, yeah. Outside, because it's pulling the cold air out and replacing it with warm air and vice versa in the summertime.

So when you say that the unit itself is under the deck, so what are you aiming the remote control at? Like, what is the unit that you're using inside?

there's it's kind of a large like rectangular thing that has little vents on it and it's it's basically like where the you know warm or cold air is coming into the house so that thing is mounted on the wall i see so and then the thing that's actually doing the the heating and cooling is like screwed into a cement little platform outside gotcha gotcha um but you all have a furnace we

just have a furnace yeah and here here's the thing a little a little bg on me is the last two places i've lived so this place here and my previous apartment i've had a very um i'm gonna say um i don't know tough relationship with my thermostats i don't remember the thermostats that came before and that is kind of to their credit like you know like i don't remember having issues with thermostats because they weren't a problem because they weren't a problem it's just like i don't know you just put whatever that temperature in but these i think both of these are probably either somewhat antiquated or maybe just somewhat low quality but modern like honeywell brand little thermostats that you can like program for it's not even that complicated it's not like different zones of the house we're talking about a small house and before that a smallish apartment but um just like hey you got to set it so that it's 6 a.m for your wake-up time you know you want it to you know be at 68 degrees but then when you go to bed at night you can knock it down to 65 you gotta pre-program all this stuff which is like that stuff is not beyond me like i could read the instructions and do it which i've done many times but like there's something about the interface that is just so clunky and um just difficult difficult difficult lemon difficult and i've just i hate both of them and so i've had a long-running plan to replace the thermostat upstairs with a um i think a google home brand like you know smart home thermostat my dad sent me one that is like gently used um because he had upgraded his system or something i've had it in the drawer all i think for like a year now i was nervous to do it last year when it was cold to install it because i'm like what i don't know what i'm doing here if i break the whole system i don't want it to be in the middle of winter i was going to do it this summer the summer sort of passed me by and now here it is wintertime again and we're using our old thermostat but worse than that is it took me a long time because of because of what I think of as the jankiness of this thermostat I think it the furnace has probably been broken for a week or two it just has not been working right but I've been chalking it up to me not knowing how to use this stupid thermostat right and so I've been sort of like like I keep on setting it to 70 but it's only like staying up to 65 or 66 at some times like i just it's and i you know how you just know the sounds of your house like you wouldn't even realize it until they change but like the the furnace itself when it kicks on it's making a slightly different sound it sounds like it's struggling a little bit and like i've just been like i don't know sort of thinking like yeah i gotta get to the bottom of this but then in the past couple of days i've realized like we woke up freezing yesterday and we're like Like, there is something wrong with this. Like, I know I have everything set right. Like, there is something wrong probably with the furnace. I called one company. They said we can have somebody out there in two weeks.

They were very, very nice, but I was like, two weeks seems like a long time to be this cold. So then I found another place that was like only for a little bit more money. It said, oh, well, we'll be out there by noon tomorrow. And I'm like, well, that is fantastic. And so somebody is coming out. But here's where it got a little bit psychological for me is Genevieve was out with a friend last night. I don't know what they were doing. I don't ask questions. But I was home alone, and it was cold here. I kept turning up the thermostat, but the furnace wouldn't go on. I would turn it off and on again. It would turn on for a second before dying out again. I'm using Genevieve's space heater while I'm playing my stupid video game. And I'm even texting Genevieve. I'm like, just so you know, it's really cold in the house. When you get home, I got the space heater going on downstairs. um but then around i don't know 10 o'clock at night or something i just kept messing around with the thermostat and i don't know what i did at 10 o'clock maybe i just turned it up to like 77 and just said let's let's thermostat around and find out like i don't know what happened but all of a sudden last night it just seemed to start working again like the house got warm seemed to be like it seemed to be reading the proper temperature in the room and responding correctly and so i did sense that you had already scheduled the repair it knew dad was coming home it really did and so like i honestly had a bunch of sort of like half-baked bad stress dreams last night about like trying to explain how the how the furnace wasn't working before but it is working now but i still think it's broken and i don't know if it's the thermostat but it's probably the furnace and like i have just been at well you you just heard my internal dialogue about this which was much longer than it needed to be. But I really was psychologically effed in the head all last night because I was just like, how have I been dealing with this for weeks and now suddenly it's working literally hours before somebody shows up? I was kind of thankful today, therefore, when I woke up and I saw that it's acting janky again. And so I think it's good and broken again, and so somebody's going to come over here and tell me how many thousands upon thousands of dollars I need to pay to fix it.

Is he also going to walk you through putting the Google product on your – because you haven't set that up yet, right? No. How do you know it's a he?

You know what? The doctor was a woman. It is a he. His name is Michael. But still, how did you know? The doctor is a woman.

I shouldn't miss.

Based on various commercials starring Marshawn Lynch, I've noticed he's mostly tackling dudes in these commercials that relate to furnaces.

What if Michael, the furnace, the furnace repairman comes over here and just pulls, reaches in my furnace and pulls whatever that, is it a purple squeaky ball that Marshawn pulls out of a sink or something in that commercial?

It would be a really different thing if Marshawn tackled a female technician.

Yeah, it would. That would be a. Or a child.

Or a child. But anyway, your question is a good one. And thank you. And this is another thing where it's just like, I don't know why I get like I get like quite honestly, like socially anxious about this stuff because I have been rehearsing in my head what I'm going to say. And clearly based on the conversation and just the absolute dump of my new detail I just gave you, I'm still not fully ready for this conversation because I keep telling myself, like, describe what has been happening with this. don't jump ahead to the fact that you plan on replacing the thermostat but at some point bring that into the conversation like i've been trying to because i do want to sort of know like what is the lay of the land here and if any of these issues have to do with the thermostat well then definitely like i have one right here in the drawer let's if you're going to be installing anything like that i have i have one that i would like to use but my guess is this is actually furnace related so that's going to be a whole thing in and of itself now if it's a if it's something that is fixable today and it's like oh yeah i have the part in my van and we can do this i would like to then say okay by the way there's another little project that i've been working on is it like is it within your scope and how much would it cost us to have you install this properly because honestly the thing with the thermostat that i want to install it's not even the wiring like weirdly i'm nervous about that but i feel i can figure it out i i don't know how to mount things on walls like Genevieve all I'm so in I'm so infantilized on that because Genevieve does all of that like whether it's you know like hanging a clock or a or a you know a painting or whatever like she does all of the wall mounting around here and I'm just sort of like nervous about that part of it as well so if I could just end up like kind of sliding this into the work

order that would be awesome I'm sure that they do this a lot by the way yeah like I mean lots of homes are probably switching over to the smart technology.

Does this Google product, it seemed like you have to actually hook wires into the back of it, or does it just somehow sit atop your pre-existing system?

No, it's a wall unit that would replace the thermostat wall unit right now. So if you can picture, I got something about the size of, I don't know, slightly bigger than a deck of cards.

Is it a Google Nest thermostat?

It's a Google Nest, but it's not like whatever the newest generation is, because I think my dad had this in his home maybe. I don't know. He sent it to me last year. He probably used it for five years or something. So, you know, it's probably a five- or six-year-old piece of technology, but it should still be workable. But, yeah, I need to, like, replace – again, it probably is not that big of a deal. I know there – I started watching a YouTube video on how to do it. It's probably just, you know, like, remove these wires, then re-hook them up MacGyver style.

Yeah, I'm watching a video right now on YouTube. Can we hear it? Sure.

We're going to show you how to install and set up your Nest Learning Thermostat. Everything you need is in the box. Nice. The installation guide, screwdriver, screws, and a trim kit to cover.

Do you have all of those things?

I'm looking for the trim kit. Did Bob send all of those things? You know what, dude? Like, in all seriousness, like, yes. I don't have the box in front of me right now, but you will never.

Somehow I intuited that Bob would send you all of the things, including the trim kit.

Whatever meticulousness you think I bring to certain aspects of my life, obviously not my personal appearance but putting that aside like my dad actually over the apple did not fall far from the tree i think i have here so he sends me a box he sent me a but like in the original box which he when he gets a piece of equipment like this he puts it in storage somewhere you know like and like keeps it's like clean so he sent me this thing that unless there was cellophane on it that's the only way it could have looked more like factory direct like he sent me this thing packaged up every little thing and what i'm holding right here are emails that he sent back and forth he's got a nest support number this is an email printout i have here

from november 15th 2021 have you considered having your dad talk to the furnace guy yes he comes to

your house he has printed out an email he got from somebody named kevin at the google nest customer care team in 2021 thanks for reaching out to the google nest customer care team to verify so anyway like he he took the email from kevin and printed it out in case i need that to install this he's got his own handwritten um he's got awesome handwriting he's got immaculate notes and he saves all of this stuff so yes trust me like somehow he sent me more than i need probably in that in that google nest kit including the there must there must be some sort of dad dna

that involves saving the manuals for things i mean i am technically speaking a father but i didn't get this uh you know passed down to me my dad uh is like obsessed with reading the directions for everything and you know we've been speaking of which like the mini split the the the heat pump thing that i have in my house uh when he helped me install that like i just throw the directions out as soon as i get them because i figure i'll just i burn them yeah i just take them and i burn them i burn them i drive the ashes somewhere outside the city and scatter them to the wind uh i just figure you know the internet will tell me how to do this like the idea of like a printed instruction guide or user's manual is so antiquated to me and yet there have been so many times uh at this house and with this project that i've been doing with my dad where we hit some sort of like confusion and he goes well where's the where's the you know manual for it or whatever and he digs it out of like the box and then he reads it front to back and then he somehow knows how to fix whatever is like whatever's not working about it like that's a that's a real dad move it's weird

like i'm i i guess maybe i'm somewhere between you and your dad on that because my instinct is exactly yours i hate instruction manuals i always have there's it's almost like a it's almost like a feral instinct but clearly you know me i'm also a troubleshooter so when it comes to like computer stuff like i get frustrated about something and i will go i'll go digging and digging and digging but the thing is like i am more likely to go digging and like do like you know like search for a certain word in a long reddit thread of somebody who has an issue with something before actually sitting down to read the instruction manual that honeywell or google has sent along with it like there's something in my brain that is sort of broken about manuals i will say this and this is something i've stated on on other podcasts so this is unfortunately not a tbtl you've been seeing other podcasts i have been yeah this is not an exclusive this is a little bit of reheated content for you but i honestly think i don't know if you know this the internet changed a lot of things about how the world works um the thing that i think i am most grateful for is the fact that we don't have to save our manuals anymore so even if you use your manual like when you first get it.

There was I for years and years in my adult life had about two or three manila folders that were overflowing with old instruction manuals from toenail clippers to dishwashing dishwashers, you know, just like and they're never the same size. They're falling out and you're just like, but I can't throw this away because someday I'm going to need to know how to fix this thing. First of all, I never used those anyway. And now they are all online, like almost literally any appliance that you are still using in this day and age. You can find the PDF for it somewhere online. And so you don't need those folders anymore. And that, my friend, is the blessing of the Internet.

Or if you're a slow learner like I am, you can find somebody who made a video in lieu of the manual. Better. Which is that's that's how I tend to absorb the information. Yeah. I want to say one quick thing. I think you should lead with the Google nest. OK, because listening, because I feel like let's let's imagine that you go you you sort of unspool this information for the technician in the way you have planned. In other words, he shows up and you say, furnace is being weird, et cetera, et cetera, and then he says, oh, well, it's this wiring to the whatever, and then later you go, oh, by the way, I would like to put an entire new interface on this. Don't you think you should start with the new interface because then he'll say, oh, well, if I'm unplugging that or whatever, that might just fix the problem? I feel like introducing the Google Nest 70% of the way into the troubleshooting, it seems like a weird time to introduce it. It feels to me like it should be the primary thing.

It definitely shouldn't be the primary thing. I don't think the primary thing is getting heat back in the house, and I truly do not think it has to do with the thermostat. And I mean, I think you know this, but like the furnace itself is out. I don't think the pilot light is out, but I think there might, because I did just the tiniest, tiniest bit of Google. I mean, like, literally asked Google, why would my furnace stop working, like, while I was walking up and down the stairs with laundry or something and read, like, the top AI responses.

People also searched for, did Joe Biden drop out?

Right. Exactly. Why is everybody so sad? But anyway, but I did see that for, like, gas-powered furnaces or something, there can be some buildup. There can be stuff that, like, prevents the gas from flowing properly. And based on what I'm hearing, I'm hearing the furnace start to kick on, and then it tries, and then it kind of kicks back off again. I can't explain it. There are different sounds that I never separated out before they started changing on me, but there's definitely some sort of a fan system that's working in there. But then when I hear it, I'll hear a pilot light go click, click, click, this sort of almost gassy sort of sound, which I'm competing with the furnace on. But usually it just kind of goes, and then it stays on for a while, and the house gets warm. and then it cuts off i'm hearing the furnace go click click click and then shut down again and then click click click and then shut down again and so i think it's trying something three times in a row and then failing and so just to be clear like our furnace is a whole unit that is down in the basement kind of behind these sliding doors it's yeah it's like a gas pilot light type of situation and um and yeah and then the thermostat itself it's just a little device that is upstairs in the living room that talks to it so you know unless he immediately is that like that it's not

it sounds like it's not pumping enough it's it's cutting off the gas for some reason some for some

reason it's not getting what it needs and i think the little guy is trying and trying and giving up and so anyway i do think you're right maybe i'm not going to spring it on him like as he's like loading up the van at the end and just say excuse me sir one last thing i don't know why i'm getting sexy here on michael but um i what i'll do is i'll just tell him what the problem is because he's out here specifically for a diagnostic you know check-in to see like why my why my furnace isn't working but I will maybe say in my introductory remarks which I'm now rearranging as we speak also side note I have been planning on installing this you know gently used new thermostat so if there's an issue with the thermostat I have another one here that we can maybe look into

replacing so i'll i would definitely yeah at the very least have him install the the new one because i'm sure again this is something that he does constantly and yeah he'll do it uh right um does he need this email from kevin do you think i mean it can't hurt definitely uh make sure you're

holding the kevin email when he shows up let's see here is genevieve happy by the way that big gas one in our state by the way and i don't want to um i'll answer that in a question i'm not avoiding it i really don't because i i have mad respect for my dad for having all these meticulous notes and stuff but he wrote um on this is his handwritten note spoke to kevin big help good guy i'm just looking at that i love it i know that i have made similar notes like that before in my life too um did i tell you a creditor a debit a debt collector is on my ass did i tell you about

this oh i'm in all kinds are you telling me this phone call is is an attempt to recover a debt and

it's being recorded i know how those work i um yeah no i am i am furious i've been fighting all kinds of people this week uh no i got this again well sorry i'm all over the place i gotta i gotta a bill i'm you're being strong for both of us yeah that's right you're you're a little i'm a little under the weather today we're supposed to be wrapping up i said that before the show i'm like you're sick we should just do a half hour now i will not even let you talk i'm just like i put a quarter in you i'm just gonna like what do you want to talk about the great junk hunt my furnace whatever but no let me tell you about this so you know i started getting a lot of bills earlier this summer as i was going to the doctor a lot as i was trying to like kind of to diagnose like what was going on with me not unlike my broken furnace i'm carrying around a

broken body kevin emails that you brought to the doctor and i was getting like medical services

from all different kevin's a good guy what do you think why are my wrists swollen um kevin will i be like this forever uh but uh you know i was seeing various people from who are associated with various you know medical um outfits right like i go to see my doctor i get a bill for that I go downstairs in the same doctor's office, get blood drawn. I get a different bill from a different company from that because that's a different company. You know, I had tests. I'd all kind of – so whatever. There's like a handful of probably five or six different like bills coming in. And I get this bill this summer that says I owe $60 to some company named Breg, but it doesn't say what for. And I'm just like, oh, this is for. So I sort of ignored it for a little bit. Then I get like my second one or third one. I finally call them. I'm like, who are you? Like, it doesn't say, like, Breg medical equipment. It just says Breg, Inc. You owe us $60. I'm just like, how about an itemized bill, Breg? So I finally, out of frustration in August, I call them. I'm just like, who are you? Is not to Breg a show title? Yes. It's my only contribution to the program today. I literally said, like, who are you guys, and why do you say I owe you money? Because I was just sort of irritated by, like, just the whole thing. um and they said oh we're a medical supply company you know your doctor gave you two you know remember those wrist guards or wrist kind of splints or whatever that i'm supposed to wear at night i've kind of stopped wearing those but um i got those when i was first just diagnosed with carpal tunnel when we thought it was just that so anyway i got these things i'm like oh okay that makes sense i think i had a sense of that anyway i was just irritated with these people and so i'm like fine i'll pay it now on the phone and so i paid it using my you know hsa debit card or whatever and then i got another bill for from bregg for about the same amount i'm like oh okay well i paid by phone this was probably just in the mail you know probably our wires just crossed and so anything that i got from bregg after that i started ignoring until i got one from a goddamn collection agency in new hampshire thanks danny yesterday um or a couple of days ago

saying i own the good of what's the use of having 11 lawyers named danny when yeah exactly Greg is sending you the collections.

The good thing about Danny being our listener in New Hampshire, I don't know, I think we have more than just Danny, but I think of Danny is, Danny, the good news is you get all the credit for anything good coming out of New Hampshire, but you also get all the blame for any errant bill collectors coming my way. And so I call them up, and I leave them a voicemail. I'm like, I don't know what this is about, but I paid this, whatever. Of course, I did not. See, back in the day, I would have been exactly like Bob Walsh. I would have had some sort of a printout. but I would have had the bill from Breg with a confirmation number written down and who I had spoken to, and I might have even written Kevin, good guy. Like, seriously, I would have had that back in the day, and I'd have it in a manila folder. But I've gotten so used to thinking, like, all this stuff is done online. Like, nobody's challenging me on what I've paid and haven't anymore. Like, there's a digital record for everything. So I must have thrown the paperwork away. That is my only proof that I paid this thing by phone, right? But I go to my old HSA account, which is now closed down. I shut it down because I had used up all the money, but luckily my records were still there, and I saw an itemized thing, Bregg, $6.20, August 7th, 2024, talk to Kevin, good guy, it didn't say that part, but that's not enough proof, right, so anyway, so I'm like, I'm calling the debit place, they don't answer, which is so weird, like, debit place, like, I get so many calls from debt collectors trying to reach somebody who is not me on my phone over the years, like, how are they not picking up the phone? They should be like just holding out. First ring. Just like fish are jumping in your bucket. Just like, geez Louise. So they don't.

Like you should be so stoked somebody called you. Most people are ducking you. Yes. This is a person who's trying to settle this up with you. You need to pick it up. on the first ring so I leave a voicemail and then um and saying I don't know what this is and then I actually call breg themselves I talked I have that really sometimes I get a little bit shirty with customer service people who probably don't deserve it this guy's just doing his thing I didn't yell at him or it wasn't nasty but I definitely was not anxious to cover up the awkwardnesses in the awkward moments in the conversation like he was just like on a muffled line not the best communicator I couldn't hear him that well like the whole thing I'm just like

i paid this bill and he's not to mention that this isn't your fault like usually when a debt collector calls me it's because i did something yeah you actually like this is undeserved so i can't even tell you how surety i would be if i ever got a call from a debt collector about something i had already paid and now keep in mind this is me i've i've called the debt

collector i've left a voicemail now i'm calling bregg themselves the actual company that i paid that that then sicked this debt collector on me i'm furious at which by the way could be bad for your credit report that's what i mean like credit rating every over sixty dollars right so if i need to buy a new furnace i might need to borrow money from you and finance that's uh yeah i've recently

come into um an inheritance so i'd be happy to uh set you up do i have to send do i have to send

you a little bit of money to unlock it though in order for you to send well yeah because that's

sort of the deal i didn't realize this but there is a nigerian prince who's taking an interest in

me okay this is yeah this is how it usually works that's good that's that's all a good sign thank

And so if I could borrow a little money from you so I can unlock that money, then I'll have the money and then I can share it with you for the furnace repair.

Honestly, I would be less trustful if that weren't the process. So thank you for this. But anyway, so I'm on the phone with the actual supplier, the actual medical supplier, and the guy gets my birthday wrong. It just feels like everything is – I'm already furious because I paid this by phone to somebody who is also kind of just sounded kind of disinterested in doing their job, which I kind of can't blame them. I'm sure it's not the most fulfilling work in the world, but you know, back in August and now I'm like, they've just messed this up from day one. They're sending me bills without explaining what it's for. I'm just like furious at this company. So I'm on the phone with this guy forever. And then he's like, yeah, no, you're not, it's not paid. I'm like, it's paid. I paid it by phone. Oh, you paid it on phone. I'll put you back on hold. And the, I almost want to call Greg right now on the, on the show. So you can hear the hold music. Like I know we've talked about this before, but they are doing they're trying to get to me they're trying to break me it literally was maybe a 15 second loop that just ended in the middle of a note and it kind of in like not even soothing music it was very weird it was just like this loop that was not a clean loop of music that would just end in an awkward spot i don't understand what these companies are doing are they trying to make us as angry as possible before we talk to a human that's not good for the humans um so anyway after like a half hour on the phone with this guy who is not like winning any mensa awards is he's finally like oh we've created a duplicate account for you um and that's essentially like what the problem is apparently they created two accounts and i paid one of them but they keep on saying that this other one is unpaid but like that's not my fault and so he says okay i'm gonna um send this to our escalation team because of course an escalation team is like what the what you know the billing department they send stuff to the escalation team and then the escalation team six the debit there are the debt collectors on you so i'm like he's like i'm gonna escalate this to the escalation team and i'll we'll put a we'll tell the uh the the agency to to put a hold on this for now i'm like don't tell him that i said don't tell him to put a hold on it i said tell him to stop it tell him that i paid you he said well we're gonna tell him to put a hold on i'm like just just to be very clear about something because i think i understand this none of this was my fault correct that's correct there are two duplicate accounts and that was something that you guys made a mistake of yes so then you should call the debit agency and tell them that you made a mistake and to take my name off of their list now well we're going to tell them to put a hold on it until the escalation team can investigate like investigate this dude um so anyway that's where we've left things i'm writing you down randy not good guy yes and then so then i get a call back the next morning they leave me a voicemail from this you know this new hampshire debt collection agency and um and they're like hey this is like what was her name dj this is dj or something with blah blah blah give me a call back later or one of my uh one of my you know colleagues or whatever we're gonna she didn't even say what it was about she just

said give me a call back right so i call this number back for the debt agency and the person picks up the phone and says hi i'm calling for andrew walsh from a debt agency and i'm like no i'm calling you that was the literally the first thing i had to say to this guy is he must be in a phone bank somewhere and he doesn't know if the phone calls are come incoming or outgoing and so like all this time I'm trying to like just was sixty dollars that i paid and i'm just i just feel i'm i'm so indignant i'm so indignant and just like kind of angry at everybody i'm like if you're coming if you're ruining my credit and coming after me from a bunch of mistakes that other people made you better know whether or not i'm calling you or you're calling me there's incompetence all the way down that is so frustrating i mean so what's the latest yeah no nobody's calling me back they're like this guy's rude wrote down andrew not a good guy no i wasn't i wasn't like outwardly i want to be clear i the rage you're hearing from me right now is not the rage that i unleashed on any of these people me i've done nothing to you well luke absorb it in that in that polar fleece no i don't know like i honestly just for what it's worth i'm not somebody who yells or berates or dresses down people on the phone and that's obviously disgusting behavior i will say for the guy at bregg i was not going out of my way to offer niceties or to cover i did not meet him in the middle i was just mostly quiet and very succinct with my answers as we tried to get to the bottom of this um but uh now nobody's nobody's calling me back so i i don't know maybe it's all fixed or maybe the maybe i'm going to be in debtor's jail by the end of the weekend thank you for being a

hey let's thank some donors these fine folks are donating voluntarily we didn't have to have bregg call them or andrew not good guy or any of that these folks just stepped up and said yeah i'm gonna donate some of my hard-earned money to tbtl so that this thing can keep happening

although and okay I am willing to take on the role of debt collector if anybody decides that they want to withdraw their donations to the show after you would be absolutely the worst at that

job and I mean that as a high compliment again I can't even tell you how many debt collectors I have dealt with in my life fortunately fewer like let's say in the last 10 to 15 years because i finally learned my lesson would you just pay the stupid parking ticket or gas bill or whatever it is because it's only going to get worse you know um but in my younger days i just dealt with so many people that worked in collections and i have to say this and maybe we have listeners that work in collections obviously everyone's got to make a living but i do think that is the one job where you are allowed to be shirty with them because i do think it's predatory in a way you know like the way that that like sort of debt is is is bought and passed around yeah and and sort of uh i don't know if commoditized is the word but like it's a gross part corner of finance you know in this country and i think it disproportionately hits people of color and people who are sort of marginalized economically it's a very predatory thing i think if you are going to be maybe not the breg person because they just work at some place but i do think you're allowed to be rude to a debt collector although that's my personal opinion the weird thing is i'm more

well i don't think this is the weird thing this is just sort of a counterpoint i guess because i really love debate radio but like i'm more angry at bregg like it's the debt collector the debt agency or whatever you want to call them right now are just doing their job they were hired by somebody who says this person owes us money and your service that you provide is to get money from people who don't pay and so these people are like they didn't make any mistakes they're just doing their job based on the information they have from their client. It's their client who are absolute, and I use this word very advisedly, absolute bozos. Just absolute bozos over there,

Greg. That put me in this position in the first place. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's absolutely maddening. But the other side of the coin is that people like Robin Schmidt in Fall City, Washington are supporting TVTL, Andrew. So as frustrated as you are with that whole situation, I would say You're probably equally chuffed about folks like Robin, folks like Josh Thompson, who's in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Yes, indeed. Thank you both.

How about a check-in from my close personal friend, Amelia Ireland, in Bellingham, Washington, the Bay City? A couple of Bellinghamsters cutting it up. The City of Subdued Excitement, or whatever it's called. Amelia is the one who once gave me tickets to see Built to Spill at the Wild Buffalo. Oh, nice. How was it? What a night. Oh, so good.

It would be weird if you said terrible. Terrible evening. All around.

Thanks, Amelia. I really appreciate it. So nice to see your name here. Hope you're doing well up there. Hope you're still visiting my old swimming pool with your children. Because that was a fun summer hang that we did. And Alexander, hey, it's our buddy Alex Strawn of Seattle, Washington. Alex is an OG10. Thank you, Alex.

talking i alex we did some sort of tbtl event in the basement of cairo once this had to be before your time because we would still be at cairo i can't even remember what the basement or was it

that outside little area that had a little half shell where musicians would play sometimes no it

was the basement and i don't know what we were doing down there because you know that basement is very soulless yeah very just like very very just kind of like uh unremarkable and then you have like zach's engineering office where he's just vape porium exactly i was gonna say he's just disassembling telos's and vaping like his life depends on working on his rig but i remember hanging out with alex in the basement of cairo alex get at me if you remember what the context of that was i have a very vivid memory of standing in the basement of cairo with alex or i was parallel parking in front of one of the two things was happening thanks alex also thanks to jonathan clark who's in chicago illinois love that city one of my favorite places to dress up like guy fieri yes absolute top of the list for me thanks jonathan and then amalia talty is in delmar new york we've got an amelia we've got an amalia we've got an emoluments we probably do have emoluments violations on the horizon gosh anyway thanks amalia uh really appreciate you thanks to all of our donors today for making tbtl possible we couldn't do this without you hello and welcome to top story uh can i play something real quick for you andrew from our friend television chris hayes uh televisions chris hayes's program last night yes um i said yesterday on the show that i had been kind of taking a step back from just like mainlining political news because obviously the outcome of the election is very depressing um but it just so happens that uh i did uh dip back into chris's show last night and i was really happy i did because he said something that i think was very it was heartening to me and it had to do with And, like, the future of this country and this feeling that I think a lot of us have, which is, like, the bad guys won, and they have, like, such thorough control of things now. Although, by the way, Marie Glusenkamp Perez.

That is, that, given.

Victorious down here in southern Washington. I was part of it. Congratulations, given. Here, look. I've got my sign. There it is. I knocked my headphones off, so I can't hear anything I'm saying.

we all thanked you for we all thanked you for being the hero that you are i am gonna i would say that i'm very surprised that um the way everything else went that that particular seat stayed with perez with glues and cam perez like that is that that really speaks well i guess to

her campaign yeah i think i mean again and you know there are people that have their their sort of problems with her because she's a very she's sort of the joe mansion yeah down here yeah um and in fact like wouldn't actually even i think officially confirm if she was voting for kamala harris or not which is you know yeah pretty troubling yeah definitely from a democrat but

also her campaign ads were dissing biden when biden was still the candidate saying like i took

on the biden administration on but again i would take her over joe kent and somehow she's managed to um but anyway uh so the question of like is america screwed you know like permanently and forever and what Chris basically said was no like this was actually a very close election like what we basically had was a hundred thousand people or maybe a couple hundred thousand people decided something like they decided that they wanted they thought that they had figured out the way to have lower gas prices or whatever but that does not mean that like America is a 90 percent Donald Trump you know supporters now anyway let me just play this tape from Chris it was not a landslide

it wasn't a walkover, okay? We've had those in American history. We are not looking at Reagan in 1980 or Nixon in 72 or even Barack Obama in 2008. It was a toss-up race in a bad environment for incumbents in a 50-50 nation that was previously ruled with a narrow but durable pro-democratic majority. I think it still has a pro-democratic majority in which a certain sliver of those folks just voted on other stuff. America didn't give itself over to Trumpism. We got this outcome because three out of 100 people switched their votes in a nation that weathered a global pandemic and global inflation pretty well, but not well enough. And it's disappointing as hell. But it's plenty to build a movement on going forward. So there you go. That was heartening to me. Yeah.

I saw you guys texting last night, of course. I don't have cable here, and so I saw you and Chris texting about his show last night, and I heard you say something about it being heartening, but I didn't know what it was, and I wanted to go on the gray web this morning to see if I could get some sort of that illegal leaked content to figure out what it was. Fubo, my boy. Or TBTL. Maybe this is how I mainstream. You just filter what I need to hear from cable news, including Chris's show, and just share it with all of us

here I did take comfort in that because there is this it's also man it's been so weird like where I live like I went to the grocery store yesterday and it I just feel I I feel personally violated by everyone who has either pulling giant uh American flags on their truck which is a big thing out here or they're like a guy had a Trump hat on in Safeway and I just like I was like I have to i have to figure out how i'm going to relate to this information for the next four years and by information i mean people just having like trump shit on their cars because when we were still in the election cycle i thought you guys don't even know you're dead you don't even know it you've been dead the whole movie that was how so it didn't bother me because i was like you morons like you got all this trump stuff going on but it's going to be we're all gonna have a good laugh when he's going to jail and now it's like so I was able to just kind of like compartmentalize it and not take it very seriously and now it's like oh my god like you won like and it just feels so much more threatening to me now like I didn't think in a weird way I didn't think that all this Trump stuff this MAGA stuff could be more threatening to me but it is now much more threatening and I live in an area where it's everywhere would you say that you took

them literally but not seriously the trump supporters around you yeah i think that accurately

describes it but i'm gonna have to like like for real like you were talking the other day on the show about like our media consumption you know for the next four years and how we're going to do all of it and again i think what what i'm going to try to do is make sure that i'm aware of the stuff i need to be aware of but also not just obsessively monitor it in a way that's not good for me like you know know enough that if i need to mobilize i can but not like you know not in a way that's unhealthy for me but really what i'm gonna have to figure out out here is like how am i gonna manage my emotions around all the like trump shit that's everywhere that now feels really threatening to me yeah it didn't before the election i i've seen a lot of other people kind

of sharing this sentiment on like the the seattle uh subreddit and um i had something i wanted to ask you i i feel like i've really kind of taken the show in a lot of weird turns today i don't mean to dominate it so but i was just going to say i can't believe that you've made it impossible for us to discuss monkey news actually the way when you put it that way i i do have a lot of regrets about that but um i've just been seeing a lot of people um saying i'm just the one thing i'm very happy about right now is that i at least i live in seattle and like these are my people and like you know there's all this there's all this negative talk about living in a bubble but honestly I am so grateful for my bubble. I am so grateful. You know, like I went to grab lunch on Wednesday. And of course, I was, you know, feeling a lot of feelings and feeling low. And I went to this like restaurant that's kind of near my house. Like usually if I'm going out to grab food on a weekday for lunch or whatever, I'm almost always going to like a teriyaki joint or some pho place that is like, you know, you can sit down in there. But it's kind of a colder sort of sometimes literally colder and just like, you know, not a super like kind of nice environment. And I was just like, I just want to go someplace that is a restaurant where a server will come over to me and give me a bowl of soup as a warm up to my main course. Like, I just need to sit someplace where I don't have to wear my jacket the whole time. And somebody is going to come up to me and serve me warm food. This is what I need today. This is my self-care. So I go to this restaurant near my house that I'd never been to before. Ironically, they were having issues with their HVAC, and I did have to keep my jacket on the whole time, but aside from that, it was mostly what I wanted.

Sir, can I refer you to Kevin, good guy?

Yes, exactly. For all your HVAC needs. But I was surprised that it was a – this is a restaurant, but it's got a big bar area, and I sat down in it, and the server came over to me, and I was kind of surprised. It was very busy. It was all busy with people. I was like the youngest person there, So I don't know what the clientele of this place usually is. But on a Wednesday for lunch, it was, like, pretty busy with a bunch of people my age or older. And I mentioned to the server, I'm like, wow, you guys are really busy. I had never been to this place before, so I was kind of surprised. And she said, yeah. And then she kind of said it quietly. It's kind of sort of a vote show to me. She's like, everybody's, you know, drinking their feelings or whatever or something like that as a way of sort of saying, like, yeah, we're all sort of in this together. And I had a thought. I'm like. Like, you don't know where I stand on this stuff. You've got to be careful, don't you? I didn't say this to her, but I'm just sort of thinking, like, you assume that. Then I'm like, oh, I'm wearing a Castro hat. Like, you can probably figure this out. But anyway, there's something about it. Yesterday I saw a neighbor who has done work on our house before. I've mentioned him, Seth, and he was doing some work at a neighbor's house yesterday. I went over to say hello to him, and it occurred to me. I have no idea what his politics are. I know in citywide stuff, I bet you a million bucks he's a little bit more conservative than me on stuff. and so he said how are you doing i said you know pretty good and then i was like oh do i even bring up that we're all feeling shitty do i know that he's feeling shitty and then he kind of brought up the election thing and of course we are in the we are on the same page with with trump stuff because i live in my bubble and you know what i fucking love my bubble yeah don't pop i'm really jealous of your bubble yeah sorry i keep on i'm babbling so much today i'm sorry no no but

yeah yeah i've been thinking about this a lot like even when i was looking at i was reading the seattle times and it was the breakdown of the various washington state races and it was it was related to the marie gluzenkamp perez race and they were showing the places where she was getting the most votes and the least votes and one of the places she's getting the least votes is where i live oh really howlitz county yeah she got all her votes in clark county the big city of vancouver washington right um ma i'm gonna go down to the big city and make something of myself vancouver yes but uh the gateway to ridgefield but anyway she's getting all her votes down there and like there was something about seeing the county i live in and that it's deeply red yeah and i just felt totally dislocated from life i mean again we're all fragile this week yeah um but it just was like yeah it was i was like huh this this really is gonna suck for the next four years because because again it it feels threatening to me in a way that it that it wasn't before and it's kind i didn't notice how everywhere it was out here until until i became until i

started feeling threatened by it it's like i don't know if you have do you use google maps you use ways right for a mapping for driving yeah i don't know what the color schema is like on ways these days but on google maps like you know if there's no traffic i think the line is just blue or green or something like that and then when there's a lot of traffic on especially like on a highway you'll see that it turns red right to indicate that there's going to be a slowdown ahead or if you're right in the middle of it but then sometimes i don't know if you've ever seen this there are slowdowns that are like ox blood red like it's just like the the deep red of vampire hell or something like that it's like that's when you just know like you need to just get out of your car and just start walking um like in that in that french movie that i'm i'm blanking on but

um green card what's that i think of the worst french movie that's a gerard depper do uh andy

mcdowell vehicle i believe it's driving me bananas though and i don't know if you can help me with

this and you've bailed me out of there is a movie where there's a french movie is it old is it band

Band of Outsiders? It is not Band of Outsiders, but it is. So do you remember there's an REM video based on the opening scene of this movie where it's all black and white and people are in their cars and you can see what they're thinking. You can see what everybody is thinking. And then I believe the REM video Everybody Hurts is based on this movie. It's a very, very famous. I'm not that much into French cinema. I always think one of these days I'm going to be. If I ever break a leg or anything, I'm just going to lay in bed and watch a bunch of French movies that I should have seen. I'm trying to Google this

and figure out what the video Everybody Hurts is based on. Yes. Oh, it's Fellini. It's eight and a half.

It's eight and a half. That's right. That's right. It's eight and a half because it's about that director. So I believe it's probably Italian, right? Oh, oh, oh, you're right. I'm sorry. I've been saying French. Well, that didn't really help, did it? I was still going to say green card. Even if you said Italian movie. Now, I do want to just say one thing to go back to what we were saying kind of about, like, you know, how we're feeling, our media consumption and all this. I have a question for you because there's a phenomenon going on in my online life that has taken me a little bit by surprise, which is related to, Luke, yes, your favorite topic, my Blue Sky account. So when a bunch of people stopped using Twitter, they started using other Twitter-like, you know, platforms. I know a lot of people are on threads. I think you're on threads, Luke, which is like sort of a kind of an extent, a Twitter like extension of Instagram. And then there was like that Mastodon. I mean, of course, I signed up for all of this stuff, not knowing what was going to stick. But Blue Sky was the one that was the most like Twitter. It was made by one of the original Twitter dudes. And I signed. And it's the one that I kind of check in with. But but traffic there has been very, very sparse over the past couple of years. I mostly wanted it because I wanted to find more Mariners fans, because if I wasn't on Twitter anymore, I needed other people, you know, online that I could share my, you know, woes with during bad Mariners games or whatever. That's a huge part of Twitter for me. So I found a few Mariners people is kind of weird that Blue Sky had such little traffic early on that small little communities of people who didn't know each other sort of grew a little bit based on like one interest, like Mariners dumb Mariners fandom. But I I have you seen anything in the mainstream news or on your other social media sites where people are saying, I'm leaving Twitter, I'm leaving. There's a huge wave of people. And I mean, a huge wave of people that I'm suddenly seeing on Blue Sky. I'm seeing new names. I'm seeing people from the Levitard show saying, OK, I'm back here now. We're going to try this again. And I got about 50 new followers just the other day because somebody to round up of, like, people on Blue Sky who are, like, kind of Mariners gang. And I guess I'm in that now, which is awesome. So I got, like, all these follows of people who want to be prepared to, like, talk Mariners shit. Like, and I just, I have not seen this. So have you caught any wind of this outside of the Blue Sky-averse?

No, but I'm here for it. I just, by the way, signed up for a Blue Sky account. Turns out at Luke Burbank was not taken.

Oh, nice. Fantastic, yeah.

And I now have a Blue Sky account.

I think it's a happening, like, for real. That's great. Yeah, and I just didn't like threads because of the whole meta of it. Maybe that's it, too. Like, people are sick. Musk, obviously, like, I left Twitter because of Musk, but maybe the latest with the election, it was too much for people to keep on using his platform. But then maybe you combine that with Zuckerberg, too. Maybe people are just sick of the oligarch. i don't i don't know what it is but yeah everybody's moving over to blue sky and it seems like it might be it might be becoming legit i don't want i do i say that a lot like

i'm so you know i'm so ready to have something fill the twitter shaped hole in my heart and yeah i'm i'm i was all jazzed about threads you know the first time i signed up for it but yeah it doesn't really work the same way for whatever reason although what i realize is every time i post something on instagram it auto posts it to threads i noticed that you've been posting the

threads a lot lately uh but i'm not i'm posting to instagram and it's just you that's a kind of

you must have a setting because i don't it's mirroring it to threads but it's i'm not intentionally going to threads yeah but um i would love it if something twitter-esque where there was a lot of engagement but less uh what's the word nazism less open you know nazism uh misinformation et cetera was uh being allowed yeah yeah i'm i'm looking at it now like i can't explain it like

blue sky was just sort of you know like when i first came the hardest thing was what are my

interests it's asking me what did you put for your interests i don't think i probably filled that i probably just skipped that um software dev i see it was a software dev guy yes nazism

i was like oh you're on the wrong site i am no i uh but um yeah but like it was just sort of a trickle of things but now i'm just seeing and i don't know if these are people who i've started following recently or if they're just like they're just more active again but like you know 10 minutes ago drew mcgary posted something and the new york times is posting here regularly now and um you know just like it's just did you notice you have 150 followers because i just started following you oh is and am i up i don't have that many followers do you got the coveted luke burbank follow nice i have not gotten that update yet but i will follow you back as soon as Have you uploaded a profile pic yet? I will not follow you if you don't know.

No, because I don't have anything good on my computer. But I'm enjoying this already. I'm looking at you roasting Danny West neat.

That was me tweeting, retweeting this. It was a friend of mine, by the way.

How dare you? I see your garbage posts.

That was an accident. I have two Blue Sky accounts, one called Andrew's Garbage Anxiety, where I every week post photos of my garbage.

Think about it in the abstract. I've never actually gotten eyes on this garbage.

This one was one I accidentally posted it to my mainstream account. And what did I write? Here, this is from two months ago. Wednesday evening, 720. We call non-recycling days small garbage days. Happy Small Garbage Day Eve, everyone. And there's three photos of my little bins so that if Seattle ever gives me extra charges for extra garbage pickup, I can contest it. I love the Jake Browning discourse. I think that was a meme that I sent to you guys. I don't even remember what happened, but I think Jake Browning finally got to play in the NFL. Didn't he like Indianapolis Colts or something? And didn't he like cook or something? This was like, this was exactly, almost exactly a year ago. created my own meme from the usual suspects

The controversial Kevin Spacey

Stop normalizing Kevin Spacey, sir And I edited it to say the greatest trick Jake Browning ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist Anyway, yeah, welcome to the club, my friend

Dude, I'm excited, you know what? When we're done here, I know I already did this once this week but I am going to go get back in bed

Yeah, you should, I'm keeping it too long

I'm going to get a bitchin' photo for my Blue Sky account, and let's see how many followers I have by Monday. Will you please come follow me on Blue Sky, listeners?

And also, Luke, one thing, the hardest thing I found about Blue Sky, especially because it's sort of a new platform, is finding the people to follow. I don't know if it suggests things the way Twitter does, but what I would do is you can maybe start by looking at the people I follow. you'll probably be interested in some of them and then like kind of like kind of just if you're just laying in bed maybe start just like looking at the people who you like to follow see who they're following and then you'll sort of figure out what your options are out there because it is still just it's I feel like it is just beginning but I got two follows today from tens so I think Nigel started following me maybe I think Farron started following me so I think there's some sort of headwind no headwinds are bad or I don't know I think something's going on here though I am

going to start following the onion i'm following two things you and the onion the onion posting

today god wondering how far he could throw earth yeah solid yeah what do we call it a blue

a solid blue sky what do you call the act of posting on blue sky when this thing was brand

new like a year or two ago they did have a word for it and everybody was like we're not using that word like i don't know who came up with it but it sounded vaguely blew myself it wasn't quite it was like yeeting or something like that and whatnot tweeting it was rough so anyway i just we can all just say post we live in a social media world let's just call them all posts now

i'm excited to uh jump on this blue sky thing and uh and start posting nice all right uh that's going to be the rest of my friday and the rest of my weekend um so uh yeah we should probably wrap things up here uh thank you everyone uh for listening sorry i was a little spaced out today um but uh i'll be right as rain by monday morning i promise you that and as will this nation i think everything will be probably fixed by monday it just is going to take a few expert blue sky posts

from me has this whole thing just been like a dream inside of a snow globe and on monday i'm

gonna wake up would would that it was my friend uh all right thanks for listening everybody thanks for hanging out with us this week um and you know it's obviously been a pretty tough week but um it it has felt more um survivable because of all of the tens and and again andrew because of our friendship you know your yours and mine and everything so i feel really lucky to get to be here this week even uh when things are really shitty so anyway thanks everybody uh we'll be back here on monday with more imaginary radio for you please do join us for that in the meantime have a good weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good

luck to all power out