Podcast 130 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 130: ...And Special Guest Star Robocop Is Bleeding (2017-06-30).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Transcript

Cortex 0:00 Are you guys ready to go, everybody? Welcome to our show. I gotta look up

Cortex 0:14 Josh, just man where the best of the web is

Cortex 0:30 Hey, welcome to episode 130 of the metadata monthly podcast. I am Josh Maillard aka cortex.

Jessamyn 0:39 I'm Jessamyn

Drew 0:40 I'm Drew

Cortex 0:41 Drew is with us that aka Robocop is bleeding is going to be our guest on the show today, we're getting back to get your kid

Jessamyn 0:49 have a metal filter account.

Drew 0:51 My kid does not yet have a metal filter account.

Jessamyn 0:54 It's just been a nightmare since GMAT left.

Cortex 0:56 It's just a it's just a placeholder metal talk thread until he comes of age.

Drew 1:01 All right, pretty much.

Cortex 1:03 But yes, Robocop is bleeding. Has a Metafilter baby and so far has it got mentioned on metal filter when it happened with your wife? Benjamin the pork?

Jessamyn 1:14 Yes. And now you guys didn't meet? I met a filter. Right? You knew each other already? No? No, yeah, we

Drew 1:19 met the same library. Nice.

Jessamyn 1:23 Because it's also a librarian, as you should all know, because that's, I think the first reason that I knew you. I mean, I knew you because of metal filter, but the metal filter librarian posse.

Cortex 1:35 This is the podcast in which I'm outnumbered by librarians.

Jessamyn 1:40 I'm appalled that it's the first one actually, I feel like we should get in librarians all up in this. In fact, just even the Boston area librarians. You know, we could have them in every week for for months, basically.

Drew 1:54 Pretty much or just getting old a room they could all shout at you make you feel bad about not borrowing enough books.

Jessamyn 2:00 Yeah. Great. Great. Yeah, discourse marker, Horace Rumpole banjo and the pork, others. In an applet. There's others I'm sure I'm forgetting. But there's a there's a hefty, hefty number.

Cortex 2:14 We could do. We could do an all librarian Colin show sometime.

Jessamyn 2:17 Dude, there's at least 200 Plus, like librarians, library workers, former librarians, I keep adding people to my colleagues list. And for those who don't know, anybody, anybody who's marked as my colleague and my friends link, whatever texts is? Well, it's like it doesn't say count, does it?

Cortex 2:38 I don't know if it doesn't appear. But we call it contacts consistently, but I'm not sure it actually says it on the profile page. The I mean, I don't work here. Yeah, the links to someone needed you. Someone just asked about that. And that's interesting. I think we don't use the phrase contacts a whole lot other than on the actual page in the URL. So like, if you look at my, that's the wrong window. If you look at my linked to that it says cortex has context right up top. But it's the context tab on that page. And but we may not use the words anywhere else on the site. Like I don't think we have it in the FAQ anywhere. Someone was just asking, like, how do I do this? And

Jessamyn 3:19 you were like, go to the context. And they're like, What the hell? No, no, I Well, we call it friend.

Cortex 3:23 I explained it clear enough, because I realized I was laying it out. But yeah, it is an interesting thing. I think that might be a bit of UI that just sort of got so part of the community understanding that we didn't actually document it anywhere at all ever. So maybe something to get back to.

Jessamyn 3:39 Yeah, that's funny. Well, at any rate, I checked, because I could figure it out all the time. You were talking and I linked to 350 metal filter members who are all library

Cortex 3:52 adjacent, and their listeners colleague.

Jessamyn 3:55 Yeah. And everybody's listed his colleague, and there's also the mark library and contributions, like Greasemonkey script. I don't even know where that went. Where you can have a little book that appears next to your name. If you're a kalo Right. Right. Mine. I keep forgetting about that. Because I don't think I've used it in a while. Yeah, Mark library and yeah, on the userscripts mirror. Oh, I'll drop it into our little box.

Cortex 4:22 Yeah, well, hey, you gave me a ride once. So if anybody's wondering how you get on the podcast, you give me a ride. sometime? Yeah, I was on.

Jessamyn 4:31 And I gave him a ride after that.

Cortex 4:34 Yeah. Yeah. That was

Drew 4:36 the Great Bear up in Portland. Yeah.

Cortex 4:40 And there was a very large grilled cheese sandwich burger there, which was a burger with two grilled cheese sandwiches for buns. It's like the grilled cheeses or something. Yeah.

Jessamyn 4:53 Very vaguely remember that. That was fine.

Cortex 4:57 It's great. It's a good time. So yeah, it's good talking to you again. All right. Good show. All right, thanks. I just wanted to say thanks about that. Right.

Jessamyn 5:09 Well, and one of the other things about Drew is that drew is active on many parts of the website. I will remember forever comments drew made about the birth of his child in AskMe Metafilter. And as well, you do a lot of stuff in the metal filter store and sort of consequently also in project so like, not only are you a librarian, but you also have like a whole side, hustle, your side sells, right your side hustle, I love your side hustle.

Drew 5:38 You could actually follow the development of my side hustle through my ask me questions were.

Jessamyn 5:45 How do I make a lady's t shirt? I remember that one.

Drew 5:48 Yeah, that one. That one's still oh my gosh, oh, we can get into that in a bit if you want. I would like it super difficult. So I started just trying to find a hobby to do something new after work. So you can see the by one of my first asked me questions of, hey, married semi adult couples, what do you do to pass time on a weeknight? And a lot of the answers there were go find a hobby. So then it took several years to sort of narrow down a hobby. For a while I was making Orgonite crystal necklaces, which is a very, very select

Jessamyn 6:20 Orgonite a real thing. How long do we have? It's Tony, you got man? Yeah.

Drew 6:31 If it's real if you believe in it, and you're willing to pay 3995 for Orgonite crystal necklace that will help clear the chemtrails from a director.

Jessamyn 6:40 Oh, it's one of those things. Oh, yeah, I get it.

Drew 6:44 So I started making those kind of lost interest with it. Then, a couple years later, I went to Comic Con for the first time and I bought a really cool t shirt. A T shirt. It was a Lovecraftian woodcut of Shep Nicorette the the black coat of the woods. And I really liked this t shirt. Unfortunately, it was a crappy Gildan t shirt, and it kind of immediately ripped. And rather than trying to track down how I could buy this shirt again, I said, You know what, I think I can make this myself and knowing absolutely nothing about wood cutting or wood carving. I pulled out my dremel and a plank of wood in the basement and went to work and made something that looks like you know, you'd be proud if your third grader did it. Maybe with a Dremel and also on a piece of wood. A third grader could probably draw better than what I would I

Jessamyn 7:39 trembles really the best though. No, they're I love them.

Drew 7:43 I don't know, their quality has declined over the years. Let me say, oh, yeah, I know. I lost my skill saw recently and it's it's it's a void in my heart.

Jessamyn 7:52 What do you mean you lost your skill set? It broke? Why internal

Drew 7:56 the internal mechanism that makes the skillful part of the solid move snapped on the inside. And so I could go get it repaired, but it would cost more to repair it than to replace it.

Jessamyn 8:08 I mean, like don't they have lifetime warranties? or No no,

Drew 8:14 no? Drama. Yeah. Jeremy Grant brand Skilsaw so I replaced it with this other table tops on that one barely working out. So I don't know. I'm I could go on.

Jessamyn 8:25 Okay, I'm super confused. Rumble make saws. Oh, yeah. trembles.

Drew 8:30 Oh no. Dremel makes the rotary tool is what they're known for. But they've branched out. I did not know that.

Cortex 8:38 I had always just saw Dremel was like the generic term.

Drew 8:42 No, no. Dremel is the brand and rotary tool is the generic term. So they've got like, you know, get like little oscillating tools you can get

Jessamyn 8:53 do you mean vibrators? Yes, yes. vibrators

Drew 8:55 Yeah. With with these horrible horrible snaggletooth blades on the end so you have to be very very particular about what box you click on Amazon when you're making your order otherwise just

Jessamyn 9:06 because it's not my thing

Drew 9:09 in for a long night

Jessamyn 9:13 so your scrambled bread because I thought skill saw was a brand

Drew 9:20 skill saw as far as I know skill saw is just that sort of very thin blade that like it's like a jigsaw that just vibrates up and down a whole lot

Jessamyn 9:32 Okay, that's not even what I think is skill saw is this is fascinating. Yeah,

Cortex 9:36 I think skill saw is like a inch radius. Blade,

Jessamyn 9:42 circular saw. Yeah. Like this.

Cortex 9:46 I think skill is also a brand like Yeah, our skill

Drew 9:50 skill like with one L in like two W's and yeah,

Cortex 9:54 we are learning a lot. backhand shot

Drew 9:58 method I'm probably completely wrong. Long and hopefully the metal talk thread is already not only library and I'm also

Jessamyn 10:05 you know less than we

Cortex 10:06 did so Dremel is a brand skill is a brand Dremel.

Drew 10:11 People think I'm a hobby, yes as a hobby. And so I stopped doing it trying to do stuff on wood, tried to start carving like linoleum with a gouge, ended up like jabbing myself on the side of the hand a lot, but I was able to sort out the technique. But then I decided to start printing what I was carving on to wood and printing linoleum on two sheets of eight inch thick plywood doesn't really work out because the linoleum is very, very flat and the plywood is always slightly bent. And unlike paper, which you can sort of drape over a flat firm surface. If you try to drape a lace a semi firm piece of plywood over that you're gonna get all these smudges and all that. So I needed a surface that could conform to the plywood more. So I ended up using this stuff called EZ carve, which is like this giant pink eraser block almost.

Jessamyn 11:10 Oh yeah, that's like art class. Oh, yeah.

Drew 11:13 Because I like these like these giant like I was like foot, square foot sheets of it. Yeah, the current my stuff. And so I use that to make all the Lovecraftian and UFO medieval styled images you could possibly want. A carved hand carved around the corner from where Gauss quarry was crushed to death or press today? Yep. And then

Jessamyn 11:40 we may have not mentioned you live in Salem, Massachusetts.

Drew 11:43 Yes. I live in Salem. Everything here is either fish fishes are witches. So I figured my best bet for doing something spooky. Yet unique was to focus on either Lovecraft Salem being a city that Lovecraft held, dear. This is what Arkham from like Arkham Asylum and

Jessamyn 12:03 sure which he fishes. It's perfect. Yeah.

Cortex 12:06 It's that what what what diner in Salem serves the best fish which

Jessamyn 12:12 that's not a thing either. That's a McDonald's thing.

Drew 12:15 Yeah, that's

Cortex 12:19 McDonald's, that's fine. I'm not.

Jessamyn 12:22 Are you from there originally drew or did you come from elsewhere? Oh,

Drew 12:25 oh, I actually I'm from a place in Maryland called Crofton home have to remember what that that snakehead fish thing from, like, 20 years ago?

Jessamyn 12:34 Sure. Yeah.

Drew 12:35 So that was my town. That was our main claim to fame until this is also the town that Edward Snowden was from.

Jessamyn 12:44 Oh, for God's sakes. Did you know him? No.

Drew 12:47 No, we went to elementary school the same time my little sister.

Jessamyn 12:51 That's amazing. Sorry, my streaming now.

Cortex 12:55 That's a part of the value of the podcast as you're getting excited. Yes.

Jessamyn 13:00 snakehead fish incident? I'm reading all about it again. All right. I'll just drop it into the links here. Fascinating. And you bet you you were you were there when that happened? Yeah. Yep. You were gone and stolen after Snowden.

Drew 13:12 Snowden. I was after Snowden. Snowden. My sister knew him. Didn't really like deal with him a whole lot. Although I know that the the career track that Edward Snowden went on, I had the opportunity to do it. So where we grew up, we are very close to Fort Meade, where the NSA and all this is based out of and there was a program you could have to like work there after school. Except if I was going to work there after school, then I'd have to get a ride with this dude named Brad who was super obnoxious. And I didn't want to do that. Also, that was like kind of the year I discovered girls and the drama clubs. So like, Okay, well, my priorities are, are kind of set so I'm gonna not not take the NSA up on their offer to go like be their intern or whatever. Although after hearing about how much Edward Snowden was earning while he was living in Hawaii, when he finally left I was like I chose poorly. Hawaii is

Jessamyn 14:11 overrated, I earn a lot of money not a lot of money working in Hawaii, so whatever. You can always go make a lot of money. You decided to be a librarian.

Drew 14:22 I decided to be a librarian and make the medieval UFO abductions so I know that my my earning potential is definitely has a hard cap.

Jessamyn 14:31 library school do you

Drew 14:35 went to Simmons? is surprising.

Cortex 14:39 That's the thing that library people would know about. Yeah, it's

Jessamyn 14:43 Oh, sorry. Well, I mean, you went to what RPI or whatever? W Yeah.

Drew 14:52 That's in Cincinnati, right? Yeah.

Jessamyn 14:56 Cincinnati, W RPI no seven Just like the big library school in Boston, so that would explain how he got to Salem. Yeah. Thanks.

Drew 15:08 moved up to Salem. Because we lived in Somerville. And when it came time that we wanted to buy a house, we're obviously very quickly priced out of Somerville. And Salem was looked like it was turning into the new Somerville. And so we bought up here when they were back in the good old days when they were giving you $10,000 to buy your first house.

Jessamyn 15:26 Nice. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I think you met my Salem living friends at whatever that Salem meetup was. You met Dave? Yeah.

Drew 15:37 Yep, we met them. We see them around every so often, and like Miko, I don't think she's up here anymore.

Jessamyn 15:44 She got a great gig running big museum in Newark. And so her and lipstick thespian now live down in New Jersey. And so they're close to, you know, her family and stuff like that. But yeah, too bad. They're not around anymore. Yeah. So back to your art career.

Drew 16:05 So I am now a vaguely successful artist. I actually have to worry about paying taxes. And you know, how much saving receipts to write stuff off? I think that's how you know if you made it with your side hustle. When you actually have to save the receipt? Do

Jessamyn 16:20 you have a tax person that you like? Because that's an important part of that whole thing?

Drew 16:24 Right now, it's me clicking blindly and trusting the fact that the IRS is to underfunded to really, really crack down on things.

Jessamyn 16:32 I think that's gonna work for a while, actually, but the state of Massachusetts may not be

Drew 16:37 yes, the state of Massachusetts the one that I'm actually more scared of, so I pay my sales tax religiously and navigate their their crazy system. But no, I feel like I've been doing pretty well. I want to say that I sell one to two things a week off of Etsy, which is pretty much the amount of like, that's the level I kind of want anything more than that, then I don't have any free time because I'd be constantly printing Jen banjo in the pork my wife is already maybe it let's face it, she's very patient with her lack of access to the kitchen table. You know, it is what it is.

Jessamyn 17:20 You don't have a shop a workshop, you have a kitchen,

Drew 17:23 I have a I'm actually sitting in my workshop right now.

Jessamyn 17:26 It is aka the kitchen or somewhere else.

Drew 17:29 Now this is actually it's the library, or what we call a library. It is currently covered with books and laundry and crates full of the T shirts and I have yet to sell. So there's actually not enough space to work up here. Because I filled it with too much stuff. That's okay. Do

Jessamyn 17:47 you have a problem? Are we going to see you on some sort of TV show? Oh, I hope so.

Cortex 17:56 That's it. I mean, I don't know I've been I've been painting the last few months. And I've had basically the same problem. As it turns out, if you keep making stuff, you have to put that stuff somewhere, yet. So there's just that stuff in a lot of places. And it's managed to work out of my little home office that I'm recording, but like, you know, one quarter of the room is taken up by this giant easel I built and then there's paintings stacked everywhere. And yeah, it's it's it's sort of a it's sort of a thing figuring out

Jessamyn 18:21 and you've already given them away to friends and family. Have you have you thought about it at work?

Cortex 18:28 I should know I've started formally speaking selling them but I don't really have a sales strategy yet. So I gotta keep working on that. Get them out there but

Jessamyn 18:38 seven attic basement.

Cortex 18:40 We've got a we got a second story that is it's a converted attic. So they threw in some dormers. So instead it's actually got a couple rooms. And then we've got a basement and the basement is basically where I'm going to work on storm and there's an

Jessamyn 18:51 attic above like the second floor next to the second floor. The second floor of that orange room.

Cortex 18:59 Yeah, that's that's a dormer that. I

Drew 19:00 really love the visual element to this podcast.

Cortex 19:04 Everybody close your eyes and imagine. Imagine that a frame.

Jessamyn 19:08 Seen Josh's crazy Starburst room?

Cortex 19:11 Oh, the other bedroom. I'll find some pictures somewhere. I'll bring it back around here. But all right. Let's see. Yeah, so have we said it's good radio, said the phrase Cory press yet. That's like the actual name of your thing. Yeah.

Jessamyn 19:27 And that's from the guy who got squished. I get it. It's a joke. Oh my god, Dad humor. So sorry. I missed that until this moment, but maybe other people could, you know, go enjoy it around with me. It's local, subtle humor. Do people like it? Or do they think it's tasteless because they're from Salem and weird.

Drew 19:48 There's so many people making so much money off people coming to gawk at what happened to the folks in the witchcraft hysteria that really nobody has a leg to stand on. The only person that I've ever gotten sticks Rahm is the town Archivist for a town for the town of Danvers, you know, Salem Village where all the victims were actually from. Which is awkward because I work with him. But yeah,

Jessamyn 20:13 those dicks Jim grew up in Peabody. And so Danvers was always I mean, he went to high school in Danvers, almost always like those guys.

Drew 20:21 Danvers is a lovely place. And I love working with the community at my library. Library of dampers. Yeah. But no, he's the only one that's ever really sort of cared about that. But then again, he's also one of the guys that like, led the charge against the Samantha Bee witch statue. That's in Salem. Really? Yeah, he's

Jessamyn 20:43 just like that. He's an old person.

Drew 20:46 He old school. He's like, No, this is a serious matter. You know, this is a this is a big deal. Which is fine. But also he like he'll, anytime that he buys something cool. relating with the trials, he'll, he'll let me know because I think I'm the only other person in the library that's willing to geek out on stuff as much as Nice nice.

Jessamyn 21:05 Nice, nice Nice.

Drew 21:22 Sweet. Yes, it's all about finding those bridges.

Jessamyn 21:40 Right, exactly as we know. So that's right. I keep thinking you work at Bunker Hill. But you've worked there in years now. Right?

Drew 21:46 No, it's It's tough it Yeah, I made the jump from academic libraries to public libraries about EU seven years, six, seven years ago, something like

Jessamyn 21:57 trade because I have a good friend who works at Suffolk now, but you guys didn't overlap. And so it's still kind of on my radar and desk. Confusing. Nice. Are you happy in the world of Publix,

Drew 22:09 it's a big change. I like dealing with a community that actually selects what they want to read. Because in the academics, it the students who come into the library, they have no choice in what they're reading, like they've been told, you have to look up this topic, or here are the five books on my reading list, go find them. So they're not even really control of their interaction with the library, and the library just becomes like middlemen of the faculties will.

Jessamyn 22:39 But you have to go here because

Drew 22:41 and you know, even if you're like, Oh, you have to research one of these 20 topics, so much choice after you've been there for a little bit. Those, you can see those 20 topics coming, faculty aren't very likely to update their lesson plans to make them, you know, super crazy year after year. So once they get kind of locked into their pattern, then you know, okay, well, it's November, that means professor so and so is going to be doing something about the Civil injustice. So we know we have to have those books ready. And here are the top five books that he seems to like so we'll just push those to the students when they come in.

Jessamyn 23:17 Which is great if you want to kind of coast through whatever but probably not so much if you want to engage people and talk about books and enjoy them together.

Drew 23:25 That's right. At the public library, I mean, it's been a little bit of a discovery, just learning that the books that I like, which are basically books about wizards that are also detectives are not not super popular with the 60 Plus set, which does form sort of the bulk of the circulation of the library.

Jessamyn 23:45 So what's your favorite wizard? That's also Detective Detective book.

Drew 23:51 I want to say that the Felix Castor books were good. The Harry Dresden stuff is kind of like the 600 pound gorilla. But it they they just went off the rails. Sandman Slim is honest for what it claims to be, which is just basically a wizard who escaped from hell and now solves crimes on a motorcycle, like, yeah, all right. Good old two fisted pulp style action. See what else has been good recently?

Jessamyn 24:21 See, I don't know anything about this genre. So it's fascinating for me to listen to you just rattling off a bunch of stuff in a genre I didn't actually know was the genre. So that's super cool. And

Drew 24:31 there's varieties of this genre because the the cousin or sister of this genre is the women with back tattoos that you've seen, like the covers of and people complaining about how the covers are exactly the same. So you'd like to slide into like a Anita Blake or there's like at least 15 different series about women who are cops that also love werewolves. Which

Jessamyn 24:53 No. Series? Yeah,

Cortex 24:57 there's like a whole supernatural right romance novels,

Jessamyn 25:01 because I'm really not in the supernatural. Like, it's just not my thing, right? Like, I appreciate it. It's other people's thing, but it's really not my thing. And so whatever is happening in that sub genre I have missed guaranteed

Cortex 25:15 secretary gave a couple of shots a couple of years ago. And I think she had just sort of said, Okay, grabbing blindly and then translate well, those words. Like, is it because there's nothing in this genre? It could just be because you literally picked two random paper books. So I don't remember

Jessamyn 25:30 what you need a librarian to help you. Well, I

Cortex 25:33 think was more one thing, but yeah, she ever decides to try and fine tune that. That'd be

Drew 25:38 like, well, there's also the librarian problem of if you know, the series, and you're going to be honest with someone you're like, Okay, you're gonna want to read say the first skip the first book, because they didn't know what they were doing. Then read like the second through fifth, skip the sixth. Come back to the seventh and then stop reading by the time you hit 10. Because these books, these series all go to like at least 12.

Jessamyn 26:00 Oh, and it's hard if you're in a series rate, because somebody tells you like, don't read the last two, and you're like, but, but like, I read other detective series, you know, and there's some of them where it's like, God, I really wish I had skipped number seven. But if you would told me to skip number seven, I would have felt weird about it, you know? Because there's such a compulsion to just be completionist.

Drew 26:21 Yeah, you want to be fair, though, there was there was that time that neuro wolf went totally off the rails, and there was that weird sort of coked out book, where he like killed a big or something. That was like seven or eight, right?

Jessamyn 26:33 Wow. You know, I don't know. But like, I read the Maisie Dobbs books, and there's one where like, there's like three sentences like, oh, and then she had a baby, and then her husband died, or dad or husband died, and she lost the baby and whatever. And you're like, why this should have been five novels worth of detail. And instead, it's dismissive. And I just figured, maybe the lady, maybe something happened to her that made this book like it, and I could have just skipped it, because then it all got kind of back to normal, almost back to normal by the next one.

Drew 27:02 You know, there's a lot of time where authors will introduce something especially like a longer series, they'll try to make a twist, and then they'll realize that the twist didn't work out. But there's so much money behind it, that they can't they can't stop and you're just like, Mendel, like maybe that Oh, that was that was a special trilogy, and then a new trilogy will start or something

Jessamyn 27:22 like the whole like Pucci thing we've introduced this character Scooby Dum or whatever the little

Cortex 27:27 grabby, grabby, do

Jessamyn 27:31 scrappy, whereas in peanuts, I enjoyed it when spike showed up for a while because you knew he was going to wander off and go away again.

Drew 27:41 The series better a beagle spike was the cool dog. And Scooby Dum was actually a dog as well. Who was it? He was? Yeah, he he was he was Scoobies let's say differently intelligent. Southern cousin.

Jessamyn 28:00 How could you be dumber than Scooby Doo really?

Drew 28:03 Well, Scooby Doo knew enough to run away from the bad guys, Scooby DOM not so much. Which explains why he did come around after a while.

Jessamyn 28:09 Oh, God. That yeah, okay.

Cortex 28:13 This is making me realize there's probably an exhaustive Scooby Doo lore post waiting to be made at some point. Or someone made one in 2007. And I didn't know about it.

Jessamyn 28:23 I told you guys right. Are you Josh that like there's a magical mystery van around here? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the basically down cuz I live right by Fall River, which has its own lore about Lizzie Borden, but it's a little bit more recent. So it's kind of interesting. And there's a lot of like, weird abandoned Mills, and sometimes they've got kind of like half assed businesses in them. And there's one half assed business called frugal francs, which is all like kind of dented food, kind of, but the guy Frank who runs it is like this kind of like, short dude with kind of long hair. He looks a little like Jim actually. And he's like a classic car collector, but not like a classic car collector. Like, oh, look at my old Corvette, like, like, he's got some old like Bentley's and like, really weird, interesting, expensive cars that he kind of keeps in a backlot and I assume the whole business is just so he can own the building and then keep his fancy cars there. But he has a magical mystery van that's like cherry it looks really nice. And he you know, he drives around with a stuffed Scooby Doo in the passenger seat and every now and again you'll see him driving around and I always have to double take because it looks like Jim driving the fan Yeah, but it's really cool looking and you know I consider myself lucky to have to have gotten to see it driving around

Drew 29:45 oh we have up here in Salem obviously every October weak become thick on the ground with Actos one. Sure.

Jessamyn 29:55 Wait, what do you mean Sure. What is that

Cortex 29:56 because Ghostbusters mobiel Ghostbusters car which is which is I technically reverse even though I've always thought of it as a hurts I know it's not.

Jessamyn 30:03 Is it an ambulance? What

Cortex 30:04 is Yeah, it's like an old ambulance.

Jessamyn 30:07 I told you I grew up with an old ambulance in my side yard. Right?

Cortex 30:10 I think you've mentioned that. Yes. Probably.

Jessamyn 30:12 Okay, good. All right, next one go on.

Drew 30:15 Yeah, we got all these that we get like the actual echo ones. And then we got the, I guess the actual model of car that had to one is built from it's very hard to get and very expensive. So people would do other stuff like turn their minivan into an actual one. And they'll call eco two. And so they'll be a bunch of these sort of derivative Actos out there as well. There are at least a half dozen competing different, like Ghostbuster reenacting organizations that will all come in to Salem. And I think they compete with each other. I don't know how they compete other than, like, who is like, who's the who's the better stance, but I know who's willing to dress up in the Ghostbusters two, slime gun uniform. The alternate stuff. It gets out there.

Jessamyn 31:06 It's so is it. Is it cool for you now that you're kind of a merchant with a specific role in like Salem? Halloweeny time or what did you do before you were like a guy with stuff to sell? Or what do you still do? Like, Well, do you guys have a thing?

Drew 31:21 Like most people in Salem, we get out of town?

Jessamyn 31:24 We rent out your house to strangers. Oh,

Drew 31:27 yeah. That involved cleaning it God no. So what we do is like, since we have the kid, October is a magical time for him because he trick or treats I'd say three to four times over the course of that month. So it means he has a rotating costume wardrobe.

Jessamyn 31:45 And how does he know?

Drew 31:46 He is turning seven next month. Nice. Yeah. So he's, he's super excited about Halloween. He'll get a little dramatic about the various Dracula's and Frankenstein's that will be on Essex street that he has to walk past on the way home from after school. But like

Cortex 32:04 he's concerned about them or he's just like, pedantic about them.

Drew 32:08 He's He's theatrical about?

Jessamyn 32:11 He was out during the day. Yeah, he's,

Drew 32:13 he'll say that he's like, I've seen that guy without his mask on. But still, if the if the Dracula like points that out, he'll get nervous. That's yet everyone should come up to Salem for Halloween. At some point, I'd recommend coming earlier in the month, when you can actually walk around and do things. As a merchant. I found that later in the month people will come up to Salem for the experience not to like shop. So for me it actually gets a little bit harder to sell stuff. You know, like on Halloween people up here too. Alright, we're gonna do we're gonna get drunk and we're gonna go to a party.

Cortex 32:53 I buy some letterpress Yeah,

Drew 32:55 I'm gonna carry around this carry

Jessamyn 32:57 something around. Yeah.

Drew 33:03 But I've I've lucked out recently I actually have my stuff in an actual shop now. We could good books up here in Salem. Awesome.

Jessamyn 33:12 Picture that did you put a picture

Drew 33:15 up on Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff. So that stuff's up there. Hopefully I will have a I have a restaurant that I think I've staked out my my claim to for hanging my stuff on the walls there. So people can have a couple beers and then buy my stuff. I found that that worked out pretty well. Especially when I have things like my crazy lychee board people. sober people never buy that thing. But you get a couple beers and someone and they're like, Yeah, that's what I need.

Jessamyn 33:48 Why do sober people never buy the wheaty board? That's my favorite thing you make? It's expensive.

Drew 33:54 It's lovely. It's 60 bucks. It's not. It's not super. So it's not an

Jessamyn 33:59 impulse purchase, but it's not. It's not. Yeah, yeah. Well,

Drew 34:03 the way it's, it's one of my more attention grabbing pieces. So whenever I set up a tent somewhere or a stall or a booth, I'll always have an up out in display. And I can see people as they noticed that as they walked by like with a lot of my stuff. They'll walk be walking by someone will be they'll have a conversation. Someone will look over at what's in the tent, and we'll slow and then the other person would like to to booths down before they realized that their friend has turned around and walked and started looking at my things. But the conversation about the Ouija board is always like, oh, we should get that. And then whoever they're with always says no, no way. I'm not allowing that thing in my house because they still believe that you know which boards are the gateways to the devil or not a piece of cardboard that was actually made again here in Salem down.

Jessamyn 34:53 Are you serious people have like issues with wakeboards because they're

Drew 34:57 because they're evil. Yeah, very much You're

Jessamyn 35:00 in fucking Salem thinking these thoughts well

Cortex 35:02 it's not like Salem has a perfect track record of not being you know a bit hazy about supernatural.

Jessamyn 35:09 But you know what I mean? Like, what would you be doing like dicking around in Salem if you really thought that kind of stuff.

Cortex 35:14 There's all kinds of people everywhere I figure you know, you're gonna get you're gonna get skeptics in Salem, you're gonna get you know, liberals in Texas, etc.

Drew 35:26 But even like, I went to a ghost hunters convention or a paranormal convention that was here in Salem, back in April, and they had what the dudes from the Haunted Collector, which is on I'd forget which channel it's on. Including the basement giving. Yeah, okay. It was like a&e or discovery or whatever.

Jessamyn 35:46 Ghosts are they collect haunted

Drew 35:48 stuff. haunted objects.

Jessamyn 35:51 Like the librarians only shitty. Well, you like her librarians Drew?

Drew 35:56 I know I don't once they lost no Wiley. I said not for me, sir.

Jessamyn 36:02 Oh, wait, have they lost him? I still see him coming back. Really? On the t shirt.

Drew 36:08 Yeah, the TV showed because he was in the library and movies. Right? And that was a little bit like all that stuff was just a little bit too rah, rah librarian. But then he left and like was replaced by someone else? I don't know. I haven't followed up on it. I know that the Solon dude from leverage ended up there and John Larroquette ended up there. So help I hope that's that's working out.

Jessamyn 36:34 While he's probably on like one of every three or four episodes but he's a dick. But at any rate, okay, so I liked that show, but it's fine if you don't like that show. Maybe it didn't. It's my sort of cheesy guilty pleasure. So gardeners in the basement.

Drew 36:54 Yeah, but also in the basement. So we have this guy Peter or something another he is the nephew of Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Oh yeah. demonologists rural. Yeah. The demonologists

Cortex 37:09 there's been a couple of recent films based on their life and work.

Drew 37:17 Annabelle The Conjuring The Conjuring to Annabelle to

Jessamyn 37:23 be part of this conversation. No, no. Well, this is like Josh listen to us talk about the library. So you know,

Cortex 37:28 it's a revolving door. It's it's a series of trade offs. Yeah. Anyway, so So this is a this is like a scion of the Warren clan? Yes.

Drew 37:37 And he also say like, Oh, I'm not going to truck with lychee boards. And you know, I'm not going to deal with all this stuff. Meanwhile, like everyone in the room has a ghost detector or ghost meter. Upstairs in the vending hall there are people selling like lasers that only will will trip if ghosts walked by them or you know, all this other stuff. But he's like, Yeah, we should board a Ouija board. That's a little bit too much. But you know that $600 You know, ghost detecting flashlight. That's fine. That's fine. So it's just it's crazy about the amount of sort of I don't know lasting animus people have towards this Ouija board which was spooky and what the exorcist I think that's what got its start as being a scary thing and to play with as opposed to before where it was just sort of grew out of the old spiritualist movement of the 1900s 1800s.

Jessamyn 38:33 I feel like there may have been like some kind of creepy sleepover before the exorcist though. Maybe not. Maybe the exorcist is older than I think, too.

Drew 38:40 I collect old paranormal, like mass market paperback books, so we're talking like 50s through 80s or so. And there's definitely a genre of all me and my friends. We started fooling around with this we'd be bored at all, you're not gonna believe what happened.

Jessamyn 38:59 Last one, I just read a book that had a Ouija board and it is kind of a central. That's how the, one of the people talk to the dead person, like in a good way. It was here, her fear of the her fearful symmetry, the Audrey Niffenegger book. Part of it takes place in the cemetery, and there's a whole like, spooky aspect to it, and there's twins, but like there's a person who dies and they can use the Ouija board because the person who's dead is like, kind of a spirit, but not a very strong spirit. But they could push the Weijia plantain around. And so that's how they talk.

Cortex 39:38 I just want to note for the record that I went to try and remember some details about the Ouija board seeing an exorcist 1973 By the way, if we want to date that, Okay, Lord, but

Jessamyn 39:48 how old are you?

Drew 39:49 I am. I was born in 78

Cortex 39:53 Oh, you're an old man. Okay. 79 I'm a spring.

Jessamyn 39:56 I was born before this movie. I was glad to see this movie. Okay,

Cortex 40:01 so the weedy board. Captain howdy was Reagan's friend who talked to her through the with the board I'd forgotten about Captain howdy. But what that was just what she called him she called him Captain howdy was the name of Satan, her invisible friend with a Ouija board. But in theory, maybe Captain howdy was actually presumed to I found a page, the paranormal.me that has a blog post about this pointing out that actually, it's presumed not Satan. And also here's some details about Pazuzu. And beyond that, there's comments saying, hey, definitely bad things happened during the making the exorcist because of stuff. Because, you know, hey, and someone else is also saying speaking as a witch never worked with this entity, which is like a Yelp review for Bizu. Yeah, like one star

Drew 40:49 would not. That's right. Yeah, it's not great. It's when he changed his branding. If you look up Zozi ozio, that's the new Zuzu Oh, nice. So Zozo has his own stuff by him. Actually, I have the Zozo book right now that I'm slowly reading my way through

Jessamyn 41:05 a real thing. I mean, obviously, books but yes, anything paranormal? Yeah,

Cortex 41:11 it's really a 2012 Thriller Horror film. directed and written and shot by Scott de Lala, this turning into an episode of a horror movie podcast.

Jessamyn 41:26 I did see get out. Finally, though.

Cortex 41:28 I still haven't no spoilers.

Jessamyn 41:30 Yeah, I haven't seen I would never, I would never. But I recommend what everybody says you should really see it. It's good. Yeah.

Cortex 41:38 You know, I wanted to ask you actually drew about just sort of the woodblock process real quick. Because I have not followed it carefully enough to already know this answer if you've explicated it, which probably have somewhere on a blog entry or something. But hey, so you're doing these wood blocks? And are these based? If I'm remembering right off? It's basically sort of like, alterations or, you know, riffs on existing wood cuts is the idea.

Drew 42:04 Yeah, usually I it's Photoshop the hard way. So what I tried to do is use an existing medieval wood block or wood wood cut. And then I will make some alterations to it, or use aspects of it in a in a larger piece. So obviously, there aren't well, actually there are surprisingly, there's a quite a few would cut depictions of horrible tentacle monsters and stuff, like so you can sort of alter them and insert them into wherever you want. But usually, it's the people running away from old things that

Jessamyn 42:39 are like running away from real things like a lion or something. Right, right. Pardon the creepy.

Drew 42:44 Yes, yeah. So most of the weird stuff is all hand drawn by me. And then for the other stuff, I take that image and I have to sort of trace everything over onto tracing paper, and then use that to sort of press on to that pink stuff, which acts kind of like silly putty and will lift the lid off of

Cortex 43:05 it. Okay, so your pencil and then transfer, yeah,

Drew 43:07 Draaga transfer, and then carve out anything that the pencil hasn't hit. Do a couple proofs, fix everything that I messed up, or that I didn't mess up too badly? Because there's really no going back if you royally screw something up. And then

Jessamyn 43:23 there isn't like, there's no way to do like weird fill in or little plastic or No,

Drew 43:28 no, because if I put in the if I tried to like glue a piece back in the glues can be stiffer than the material around it. So that will cause some weirdness, you won't be able to get it perfectly flat on there anyways. So you're getting you'll have problems with the ink transfer and all that. One of the things I like about printing, pressing on to wood, is the way that the ink and the wood grain kind of fight each other. So everything kind of ends up. You know, every piece even though it's a printed thing, it's supposed to be the same every single time will always end up different based on the woodgrain. So you'll have like the ankle take better in some places, or the grain itself will actually enhance the picture some. So I've had some where, because of a nice placement of the grain, it looks like the bit flying saucer that the people are running away from actually has this sort of woodgrain weight behind it, that when I seal it, the polyurethane that really makes that sort of grain pop out. So it really kind of in the picture. So it's a lot a little serendipities in that. So that it makes a little bit more interesting than just kind of doing it onto paper over and over again and running things through the press and all that

Cortex 44:38 you get that sort of element of chance of variation from piece to piece. That's

Drew 44:42 really Yeah, doesn't mean that like one in six pieces, though, was just a straight up, come out and be like Well, that didn't work and that that kind of get used to that idea of just sort of chucking the thing aside, yeah, into this woodpile downstairs in the basement of things that did not make it but that's a nice thing about printing. is painted

Jessamyn 45:00 wood you can sell those to strangers

Drew 45:05 so some of the less fortunate stuff might end up in my booth I'm not gonna you know commit to that but if there's stuff that you can have like an audience

Jessamyn 45:12 box you know like tools of the trade sell everything for $1 I'm a big fan of having $1 box

Cortex 45:18 free firestarters you know ya know they got paint all over them what's what's a little bit of toxic? Well, should we should we do some nominal medical podcast actually, we talked about metal filter a bit Do you guys want to

Jessamyn 45:54 because I could throw out a couple of things. Well excellent. So you've been you've been on metal filter for how long do it seems like always but maybe not.

Drew 46:04 I'm one of the April 2002 Kids the April Fool's thing where the you know the 10 person cut off didn't happen and like 200 of us snuck in before Matt shut everything down.

Jessamyn 46:17 See I love the stories like everybody's got like some way that you know they like I mean a lot of the early metal filter that they snuck in it like various times that are only kind of Lord nowadays

Cortex 46:28 the K five process was a whole thing

Jessamyn 46:33 right or the 70 carriers or the yeah God that's funny yeah. And banjo your wife like did you guys both get in at about the same time or like one of you drag the other one kicking and screaming

Drew 46:48 we both since we were down the hall from each other when that was going on I ran out like all we can get all we can get on and I actually reserved the reason why she's banjo underscore underscore like underscore and underscore the pork is because I got banjo and the port with no spaces for her but she reserved like we would have the same time so accidentally you know is our facial Alger story of got her that got her that nice comb for her hair or whatever. But she'd already yeah,

Cortex 47:21 there's also a banjo and the pork with spaces and an exclamation point account in the database there too. So

Jessamyn 47:29 banjo went up.

Drew 47:32 Vitamin me Yeah, that might have been it

Cortex 47:38 but yes, an old schooler. Yeah, I mean, not like not not like me adjustment not like old school, you know? No, yeah, there's

Jessamyn 47:46 no need for that posture.

Cortex 47:48 Yes, well, it's fun. Yes, let's talk about the methods What did you like from metal filter? Drew, tell us about it.

Drew 47:56 What kinds of things number one best thing this month has been inspire robot like us?

Jessamyn 48:03 Here's an inspiring thread. I've been enjoying it other places on the internet I keep forgetting to come back to Metafilter and look at those things you gotta do it ya know and post the link if you have it into the into the Skype chat if you

Cortex 48:16 are you even talk about it and track it down.

Drew 48:19 It's it's like inspiral bot.com And this one because it's it's big enough. But just the sitting there and clicking it and getting the this the weird synchronicities of the image and the text. I wish I should have saved some of the good ones. But again, since it's half visual, I don't know how how good listening that would be

Jessamyn 48:40 right you're like it says you should be a lemon on a picture of a beach.

Drew 48:45 Like ever. Good things come from dark places. There's a picture of a ladies but you know like Right. Yeah, that was

Jessamyn 48:56 that was one of my favorites. Yeah, I assume the thread had a lot of grab Asri in it. Yeah, yeah, it was

Drew 49:01 one of those threads that just kind of like oh, and I did this thing and I did this thing and I linked here and so you could sit there and go through the thread and yeah, what other people discovered Yeah, I

Cortex 49:10 wouldn't even say grab asked for it. Really. It's more of the listing the good ones you found like it's not so much a roughing thread as it is just everybody be like, Oh, well check this one out, you know,

Jessamyn 49:19 well and did anybody kind of delve into I mean, do people know who does inspire robot

Drew 49:27 I assume it's just became self aware and came online. Best is like I'm living my dream and then

Jessamyn 49:35 because me and a bunch of friends we're kind of like this isn't random This is it didn't even seem to me at least to be that crazy stuff that Josh does with pretend words.

Cortex 49:46 See, it feels very similar in terms of the construction process like like they're doing templates rather than like Markov Starcom.

Jessamyn 49:53 See now that we're talking to Drew I'm like it's an Arkham

Cortex 49:57 Markov. So this is not that this is definitely More. They're using a set of like word lists and placeholders in some fixed templates. And then matching that up with some fonts and some stuff. But it's the same basic principle doubles come

Drew 50:10 up. Yeah. Other people,

Jessamyn 50:13 like doubles of the total phrases or doubles, some

Drew 50:17 phrase and image. So I'm wondering if there was a bunch of stuff that was pre generated. And then when you're selecting, you're just getting a random pull of one of the pre.

Cortex 50:26 It could be two. Yeah. Yeah, I actually thought about doing that with a couple of random generators. But that's like, you know, I'm not going to have to deal with enough traffic that I actually need to fake out the performance like this, so I'll just run with it. But yeah, that would totally work.

Drew 50:39 And now new season of X Files has been announced you gotta get back to work.

Cortex 50:43 That last one did not do well by me. I am. I did not expect I would ever be this unenthusiastic about more X Files coming down the pipe. But those last six episodes, were just such a pile a turd.

Drew 50:57 What do you mean, there was one good one?

Cortex 50:58 There was one good one, but that doesn't, you know, like that. And if it had just been that as a weird goofy one off Rando Sure. But the others were all bad. They were all May. They're bad and like old fashioned Chris Carter being bad at writing. Like, marks way like not even just sort of lazy bad. Just like you're still trying to do the thing. You were bad at even when you were having wild success with this thing.

Drew 51:21 Like all these years later, you still you still think that's a good idea. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. But imagine how awesome would have been if the the Lizard Man one just came on Fox One day, like no announcement, no, nothing. Just people are watching. They're like, Oh, and that makes up the X Files. Like the internet would have just exploded? And then they could have followed up with the rest of the stuff and nobody would have cared. Yeah, because they'd be like, Oh my God. Did you see that? Yep.

Cortex 51:46 Yeah, sorry. Turns out I'm pretty bitter about that. I carrying around a lot inside me there. But yes,

Jessamyn 51:55 I can't find this inspire robot thread. You guys I posted

Cortex 51:58 in the posted in the chat. It's what the chats there for Jesus Christ.

Jessamyn 52:05 Why isn't there an Inspire robot?

Cortex 52:08 I don't know what the deal is. I you know, I liked there was a couple projects, things I liked. Wanted to mention. One is three generations of tools photographed, which is a project by never calm. And it's just some really nice photos on an Instagram account of tools from his family, you know, a bunch of, you know, non power tools like, you know, hammers and manual drills and augers and pliers, and, you know, snips and so on. And it's just like, it's nice tools, it's nice photographs, and it's exactly you know what it says on the tin, it's great.

Jessamyn 52:43 I should send it to my cousin, the woodworker. Should this beautiful? Oh, look at all this stuff. That's great.

Cortex 52:53 But please proceed.

Jessamyn 52:59 A pair of posts that I really liked, are these two about the post office, which essentially is near as I can tell, are just excuses to talk about the post office. So the first one is the last genius of the post office by Kevin Bell, which links to a political argument about a political article about the post office. But then Kevin does mention later in the thread, he really just kind of wants to talk about the post office, which we did. And it was great. And I signed up for informed delivery. So now I get photographs of all the mail that goes into my box, which is very interesting and free. And then the other one was hippie bears Total Eclipse of the post office. Well, it's not what he called it, but it was a missed opportunity about the Eclipse stamps, where if you touch him with your warm finger, it's a picture of an eclipse, but you can see the moon it uses like mood ring, nice chemicals in ink, which drew you should know about because you are a man who works in ink. I mean, Josh, you're a man who works in paint, but I don't know if it's exactly the same. But they're cool stamps. And I basically went to the post office and tweeted something about talking to the guy at the post office about these cool stamps. And then somebody was like, Dude, there's some Metafilter thread. And so then I told my story in the Metafilter thread about going to the post office. Josh to mail something to you. Yeah, full circle. Call back.

Drew 54:23 So I think you guys go to the post office a lot and starting in December, I realized that a woman I went to high school with is in a poster for the post office. Every time I go in, oh, there's Liz and I just it they're still up. I don't know how long those things stay.

Cortex 54:41 It's not like the FBI poster, right? No, no, no, you don't want to

Drew 54:46 shoot No, no, we went to the good high school Okay. Snowden level crimes

Cortex 54:58 another photo probably magic thing. Kamara Kamara has a book of photography out called to use photos. Yeah,

Jessamyn 55:06 I've seen that around. Yeah. Like I met a filter and Elswit, he is such a talent.

Cortex 55:11 And a match. Super nice guy. Not not like those asshole talented photographers. I hate those ones, those ones.

Jessamyn 55:19 I know, as whole photographers, don't you? Oh,

Cortex 55:21 yeah. No, I just, I wasn't sure where I was going with my. Yeah.

Drew 55:24 So you've seen my snapchat

Jessamyn 55:28 waka waka.

Drew 55:30 Dan, I attended that. One thing I've been really happy about this past month is sort of the psychic shockwave that Wonder Woman movie sent through metal filter. There's been a bunch of bunch of good posts in the blue mostly from our W about Wonder Woman, but just that the way that she keeps coming up throughout the entire month, is one of those nice things like Rios. This was supposed to be like, Yay, June or whatever. So that was one of the happy things that I took from this month is just seeing Wonder Woman coming up in a positive way. Again, and again and again. It's been been nice for me. I don't know if you guys have seen the movie or all that. Now. We, my wife and I went to go see at the local Salem cinema right after I had been at the Salem Arts Festival in a booth for like 12 hours. And she was she really wanted to see this movie when it came out. And I was like, okay, we can do this. We can do this. And like I barely got us in the door and like the last 10 minutes and she was so unhappy about almost being late. It was it was a stressful time. We've had a lot of payoff. So that was great. Excellent.

Jessamyn 56:42 Yeah, I have not seen it either. No.

Drew 56:45 I was hoping that would prompt discussion but

Cortex 56:47 sorry. No, I haven't been doing good at getting out to the movies. Mostly just been watching.

Jessamyn 56:51 Get out. I thought I was doing pretty okay.

Cortex 56:56 We went and saw you know, I recently watched stalker, but that was just because it was showing it a local art theater.

Jessamyn 57:02 Stalker.

Cortex 57:04 Old Andre kowski film. guy made Solaris and a bunch of other stuff. It Oh, yeah.

Jessamyn 57:14 I like Solaris. So it's it's

Cortex 57:15 kind of it has a similar sort of feel and pace as Solaris. You know, it's the same director doing that same like long languorous, meditative filmmaking thing. And the thing is, stalker is something that I'm aware of, mostly through the video game series, inspired significantly by the film. And the film is nothing like the video game series, which is fine. But it gave me like, the opposite. Like, like, like, I didn't just go in like not know anything about the film. I went in, like, actively Miss knowing things about the film to the extent that I had any pop culture associated with it. So it's really interesting to watch. And I really enjoyed it. But, but yeah, it's also not really topical. So this was not a good jaunt on my part to try and make the guess

Drew 58:04 about horror movies again, there's Babadook as queer icon.

Cortex 58:08 Yeah, that's been a lot of fun. Did you ever see, Jasmine?

Jessamyn 58:12 I did not. I've heard about it. I have kind of a pop culture level of knowledge about

Cortex 58:16 good film. Yeah. And it's got the woman who plays Friday fissure in Miss Fisher's mysteries is,

Jessamyn 58:22 I've been watching Miss Fisher's mystery. So you know, she is

Cortex 58:25 she's the mom in that film. Playing a very different character. But

Drew 58:30 yeah, yeah. Although it would have been awesome to see Frannie.

Cortex 58:34 There, Bob would have to, you know, I'm not putting up with this. It'll be a prequel set in the flapper times. Ya know, that, that that whole thing was a lot of fun. i The Babadook has turned out to have a lot of legs just in general. It's, it's, uh, it's making it work. I kind of thought it was gonna be a one and done sort of horror movie thing. But I think maybe just the relative blankness of the Babadook as an entity in the film, like, it's, it's so much of it is just implication and sort of lurking around the edges, rather than like, you know, it's not a Freddy Krueger situation where there's, you know, the increasing one liners as you move throughout the franchise. It's like, just kind of a glimmer of the Babadook. And so I think maybe that's part of why people are like, able to work with it a little bit better. But yeah, I liked that. I liked that. Yeah, that was a good thing. Good.

Jessamyn 59:28 Good. Moving on a couple other metal filter things. I enjoyed the which video game character would make the best roommate. It's just like a goofy video from Kotaku. But the video itself is kind of short and adorable. And then, of course, lots of people in the thread, talking about what video game characters would make good roommates.

Cortex 59:50 I totally missed this.

Drew 59:52 Did you have your pick? Jessamyn?

Jessamyn 59:54 No, I couldn't actually think of one like I'm not. I'm like kind of a classic. Do gamer you know where you play like the submarine, or the tank, or, you know, the ball in the pinball game like I just I had a really difficult time conjuring individuals that I thought would be good roommates. Plus, you know, the best roommate I always feel is no roommate most of the time. So it was challenging. I mostly enjoyed reading what other people had to say about it.

Cortex 1:00:23 I'm glad to see someone well contemplated Pyramid Head at least get him in the mix.

Drew 1:00:29 I think like if you like that, then like Super Mario would probably be pretty good, provided that your apartment has two bathrooms. Because he had I guess we just disappear into one of the bathrooms one day, and then you would be essentially alone.

Jessamyn 1:00:45 All right, I can see that I can see. But at any rate, this is just a nice kind of fun, classic, classic sort of metal filter just getting to sort of talk about stuff Yeah, it's great.

Cortex 1:01:11 To be in those you can lose gain or you can lose your soul.

Cortex 1:01:37 I will mention another project I like which is a goofy little thing called mu dot party. This was built by suit anvil. And it is there's so there's it's an ASCII cow talking. Or actually, it's an ASCII cow conversation that you can create. Where it's just these talking cows, and it's this, it's like it's got an old school Unix turnable look, because the mu thing is an old school utility thing where you could like make, you know, a cow show up in a, you know, terminal text screen, which at the time was very exciting, you know. And there's there's links in the actual projects posts to Kousei as the original party. Original program, but, but yeah, talking cows. So it's like you can easily make talking cow conversations. This was posted into the blue as well. But yeah, it's just a just a charming little Unix II thing. And I find it kind of delightful. Because cows.

Jessamyn 1:02:42 Here's another nerd question that I really enjoyed from AskMe Metafilter, which is basically somebody who liked to enjoy Magic the Gathering. But then there were jerks he played with. And then what he wants to do is actually find a place to watch people play. And I don't really know that much about Magic the Gathering. There's a local Magic the Gathering, gathering in my town. But I didn't know this was a thing you could like watch on the internet, watch other people play and the first. The first comment basically is exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. I am watching magic on my phone right now. So there's not a lot of comments, but the comments really are. You know, super helpful and neat.

Drew 1:03:28 Finding a good magic group is super hard.

Jessamyn 1:03:32 Like, were you like a magic guy? Oh,

Drew 1:03:34 yeah, I can reach out and touch a giant milk crate full of magic cards right now from where I'm where I'm sitting. Basically, after I played magic back in high school, gave all the cards away before I realized that they were going to be worth any money. Then got backed into it as a, you know, sitting around with friends like reminiscing about, oh, yeah, we just play Magic back in high school. Hey, we should do that again. And then we started doing that again. And then it became you know, serious business very quickly. And then trying to go out to actual local events. And then just the I know, the tonal shift between playing with friends in sort of a casual environment with a couple beers around, as opposed to the basement of some game store with a like, a 13 year old where this is the only thing he's been looking forward to for the past week is just it's just too much of a too much of a jump for us.

Jessamyn 1:04:37 Difference in Yeah, yeah. So

Drew 1:04:39 we tried to get together for like, you know, maybe once a year, clear the schedules of wives and kids and all that get together and play Magic again. But even then, it's just we were so far out of the game that half the time is spent just staring at cars we like they couldn't do that now. I don't understand

Jessamyn 1:04:59 this a game too. Ah, I don't know that I mean, I really know about magic but not a lot. It's a game of

Drew 1:05:05 evolves over time, not only with the sort of the standard rule set where you're playing with only like the most like two years worth of recent cards. But different formats have developed over time, the one that we really sort of glommed on to was Elder Dragon Highlander, or now it's called commander, where you're playing with a deck that can only have one of each car of any given card in it. So you're not going to try to break the bank trying to get four of the most powerful cards. Like if you have one of them in there, that will be helpful, but it's just sort of big multiplayer type thing. Where if you play with the same group for long enough you kind of learn everyone else's playstyles and it becomes almost like diplomacy in a way where you can say like alright, well I'm gonna I'll team up with you to be bring this guy down but one of us we're gonna stab each other in the back before too long How can I prevent myself for being stabbed and all this it's it's good fun.

Jessamyn 1:06:05 Nice job for you ever. Magica?

Cortex 1:06:08 I was back in the day I got in right around when revised was coming out, which at the time probably sounded like a, you know, modern name for a set. Right. Now, it's been like another 20 years, and they've had to, yeah, but there were Yeah, I was I was there right when it was starting to sort of get its feet really getting a little bit more popular research, like insurgents, I guess. And so I played it in high school with friends and we played with cards that were not the original like first year or two that were in retrospect, immediately super valuable, but stuff that like has since like, taken on some value, just for being Alright, not that I kept any of my stuff in good shape. So I still got a couple of my decks but they're like beat to shit. I built a man a flare deck at one point in like 1996 as my personal gimmick and was like man of flares and howling mines, and a few weird random producers and then like ship and dragons and worms and fireballs, and oh, it was a stupid deck, but it was a lot of fun. It would always end with me completely blowing someone up or me just getting unceremoniously destroyed. There were no sort of like slow careful middle ground tactical games with that one.

Jessamyn 1:07:16 Just you're losing you want I

Cortex 1:07:19 was the guy who ran into the room with a grenade with a pin already pulled and like one way or the other something that's gonna happen real quick.

Drew 1:07:29 I like the more control oriented decks. I had this one tax man style deck where just pretty much anything you do is going to cost you some life. I'll just sit here behind my wall. Since I mainly play multiplayer it makes me like I'm not a threat. Look, you know, I'm not I don't have anyone that's gonna be attacking you. I'm not gonna swing at you.

Jessamyn 1:07:48 It's just that he would just stay alive.

Drew 1:07:51 Yep, I stay alive at anything you do. I just where's the game down? And so I'll I'll just what now that everyone knows my tactic, though, they just take me out. So I have to like, occasionally switch to the I'm just blown up everything. I'm a crazy guy who's going on type tech, but good times. If you have that watching the magic magic itch. Twitch and Hearthstone is your friend there. I think that the way that Hearthstone which is basically just blizzards version of online magic that they really amazingly beat Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro to actually bring out and making fun and engaging online. That's the thing to look for. Because you'll get the sort of the same thing people talking about their choices, people playing each other and then once you kind of learn the game, it's actually I think, more interesting than actually playing the game at this point. At least for me

Jessamyn 1:08:48 on those things where if you know somebody who's really good at it, you know, watching somebody do it masterfully. It's like you know, watching a chess game is interesting playing a chess game for me. It's just stressful and really, really hard. Yeah,

Drew 1:09:01 yeah, like all this diplomacy games, I met a filter that I immediately fail on after say like the first year after cortex stabs me in the back. How computers would write these funny stories anymore. It's because I can't open this thing without feeling depressed.

Cortex 1:09:19 I did record you. You wrote lyrics and it recorded a song about me stabbing you in the back. That was a good time.

Jessamyn 1:09:27 Are you guys serious? Yeah, no,

Cortex 1:09:29 no, I'll look it up. I'll go grab the link.

Jessamyn 1:09:32 So the stabbing the backstabbing happened, then there was a song?

Cortex 1:09:36 Yes. If I remember, right. I stopped using fish tempers

Drew 1:09:40 temptress?

Cortex 1:09:42 Yes. Diplomacy game. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So we're playing with other mefites Here we go. Here's the link to it. I mean, don't listen to her right now. It's, it's a very well, not. It's a pallid cover of a Stevie Wonder. Song.

Jessamyn 1:09:58 I did something to my fire. Firefox, so I don't see the little play button anymore. That's where it's gonna music without opening Safari, you're gonna mess around with AdBlock or

Cortex 1:10:08 it could be. I'd say you could be blocking flash, but it should be doing html5 native. And actually,

Jessamyn 1:10:13 yeah, no, it should be and it was working until like a week ago. So I think some plugin updated. Yeah. Which I know because Jim and rangefinder did a little music thing, which is very short, but really cool.

Cortex 1:10:27 And it's great. That's on my that's on my Mefi Music Minute list, actually,

Jessamyn 1:10:32 hey, oh, that's yeah, I did too. And it's hard because like, Jim, and I both like a lot of the same music, but he likes a lot of different kinds of music. And the kinds he chooses a lot of times to create are not always the kind of thing I like to listen to. And it's hard, right? Because you have a partner and you want to be supportive, but I think his stuff gives me heartburn. You know what I mean? Like, I really think it's causing internal damage to my organs. And so I tried to be like, Oh, I really like how you have the harmonica part. But like this song I really like and so it's nice to be able to be very enthusiastic and being like, but I can see why he likes it. Also, it has parts of what it's not just like, he's pandering. It just has parts of, you know what I liked what he likes. So I was I was happy, happy for all of us, because I was like, Wow, that sounds awesome. And I can tell by how he was excited about that. That clearly. That is not the response he expects to get for me, which that's bad for morale. It's tricky.

Cortex 1:11:35 You know, we've been going back to the finding place to put stuff one of the things we did with the paintings piling up is high hanging some around the house. Nice, which is which is fun is like as nice as hey, I live here I can pull whatever. Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll put my thing there. But But Secretary did establish a hey, in most rooms, let's maybe like, I just want this room to be a sponge free room. Can we just not put any Menger sponge paintings? That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. Fair. So yeah, it's gotta be hard, right?

Jessamyn 1:12:09 I mean, is she, like a visual artist at all? Like, does she have stuff? No,

Cortex 1:12:15 she does. Like she's, I mean, she does like textile craft stuff. But she hasn't. She doesn't like draw much

Jessamyn 1:12:21 stuff that would like go hanging on the wall. Yeah, not so much. What's What's your space?

Cortex 1:12:26 She does, like, crocheting. And, oh, nice. She's done. She's filled with some other stuff, too. But crochet tends to be the main thing.

Drew 1:12:37 Now, Jen doesn't really have much artistic like opinions when it comes to what hangs on our walls. So I've been lucky that I can get away with covering pretty much every surface, although,

Jessamyn 1:12:49 although she has her own things that she also

Drew 1:12:53 that she likes

Jessamyn 1:12:54 to know that she creates. Does she have a creative

Drew 1:12:56 outlet? No. I mean, not that on the wall. Yeah. And that's not that hangs on the wall. She did go through a fanfic period for a while and she was writing a what if Captain America and Bucky were women who fought in World War One. Love it, love it, that she was very proud of it was actually pretty good. And I'm not just saying that. But for the past couple months least since the the election stuff she's been consumed with activism and stuff like that. Yeah. So all the all the meetings, all the marches, all the protests, yeah. Should I do that?

Cortex 1:13:36 That's a good use of energy.

Jessamyn 1:13:38 Yeah. Are you involved at all? Drew with the, the sort of local mefite Slack channel?

Drew 1:13:45 No, I, I admit that I don't even really know what slack is, like, as far as I know, it's IRC. It's something where people talk chat, pretty much

Jessamyn 1:13:55 all the local folks that you know, now that I'm saying this, I'm like, maybe they didn't

Drew 1:14:04 talk about you behind your back there was that there was a gathering where I did just trying to drop my pants, but I think we're all good.

Jessamyn 1:14:11 The thing that made me think of it as there's definitely an activism channel, where they talk about sort of local activism things and so my guess is she has no dearth of people to hang out with and do those things with but if she was interested in other mefites, doing that stuff, well, hey,

Drew 1:14:26 yeah. Like she's a member of multiple secret Facebook groups. She, she for until recently was running for office here in Salem. But the meeting schedules just just did her in shot the, I think there was the time where she was walking west home. And he asked her if she had a meeting to go to that night and she said no, and he was so happy that mommy was going to be home for the evening. That just did arrange like I can't, I can't do this anymore. Maybe? No, I'll pick it up again in a couple of years. I'll keep going meetings and things like that. But I can't do the candidate level time investment that would be required. Sure.

Jessamyn 1:15:06 Let alone what happened to be involved. Yeah.

Drew 1:15:11 Yep. So that's that's what we're doing now. The Salem is in an interesting place right now where we've got a mostly progressive kind of city council, except that we have one of those sanctuary city ordinances that Oh, really?

Jessamyn 1:15:33 Those are controversial. Yeah, I think we're a sanctuary state or something like that in Vermont, but it's a little easier in Vermont, because there's only 11 people that show up, you know, a lot of the meetings so it's easy.

Drew 1:15:44 Yeah, no, here it's there is a definitely an old guard that wants to like dial back the clock of Salem to the nostalgia of the 1950s. That never actually existed. Back then there's just been gumming up the works and stuff like that. So we went from the City Council passing a sanctuary city ordinance to now we actually have to vote on it. Come November, November. Yeah. Which is unfortunate, because you should not get to vote on whether or not people get to feel safe in their own homes and stuff like

Jessamyn 1:16:16 that. Of course. No, wow. Interesting.

Drew 1:16:19 Yeah. Like, I'm pretty confident that they will pass, there was a little bit shady with how their thing got onto the ballot in the first place. But we're not gonna we're not going to delve too deeply into that. Because

Jessamyn 1:16:29 when do you think it's likely to pass? I mean, is it one of those things that it's kind of Proform? It's just wastes everybody's time and money? Or do you think it's actually going to be a fight?

Drew 1:16:37 Given the way the last presidential election where everyone's being like, well, we're all reasonable people here, right? Yeah. So

Jessamyn 1:16:46 I mean, you know, yes, and no, right. Like, you know, my town still voted, okay. And since this is local enough, I didn't know if you had a sense.

Drew 1:16:55 I think it will pass once it's actually in there. It's all about just getting the information out to the voters and being like a, this is not actually a policy change. It's just codifying things so that if a immigrant who might not have all their papers complete, sees your house on fire, they feel comfortable calling 911. So your house doesn't burn down. You know, like there's just the way that I always put it when people ask me is like, you know, I don't care where someone's from, I don't want them to feel safe when they call the cops because I'm in danger. Like the most so

Jessamyn 1:17:28 are there cops, you know, and our cops there's an interesting meta filter thread about or meta talk thread about the cops going on right now. But in there for everybody. Realistically, they, you know, protect people's property rights. And they shouldn't be shooting at people or sending them off to go back to their home country. That's not going to be nice to them. Right. Interesting. Well, I didn't know that about Salem. I wish you guys luck with that.

Drew 1:17:55 Yeah, we're fingers crossed, I think I think we'll be okay. We had our pride fest. Last weekend,

Jessamyn 1:18:01 I saw the pictures.

Drew 1:18:04 And you see that the pictures of what they did in Salem, we get the preachers that show up and stand up literally stand on a soapbox with a megaphone and just yell Yeah, so this year what happened is a bunch of people just showed up with flags stood in front of them with their flags held high so you couldn't even see the guy angry and angrier and then the I should have taken a video of this but when I saw it on the common speech people standing on the preacher blocking him him trying to shout me like you can't obscure the truth and then the that track trawler from Lost in Space this sort of bubble cruiser thing Do you remember that at all? It's like a tank with a bubble car on it. We have one of those in Salem and it just kind of drove past in the background it was just so beautifully Salem surreal that I really wish I had my my phone out to this picture of it would have happened.

Drew 1:19:34 Oh so I have an asked me that I wanted to bring up do it. Yeah, please. So my username on June 2. Daughter lost a cuddly toy and how to replace it with a perfect replica

Cortex 1:19:46 cheeses. Yes. Yeah. Like

Jessamyn 1:19:48 every so often, right?

Drew 1:19:51 It's it's so what

Cortex 1:19:52 happens if someone loses the old one and then then we try and replace it with a perfect wreck? What? Because it's like it's It's like it's my autonomy or no not autonomy. It's whatever I don't have. Anyway, yes

Drew 1:20:11 but it's going away it's been replaced by a perfect NuTonomy ad who's been teaching you these words Uncle Josh again. But like, this is a true, like worry that I think all parents have, where of all the like his kids when they're when they're little, like you've got relatives from all over just essentially throwing stuffed animals at them. Grab one of them. Yeah. One of them will become the beloved one, and you don't know which one it is. So anytime that a stuffed animal is given to your kid, you're like, oh, like, is this gonna be something that's gonna be loved for a weekend and then go we'll go sit in a pile or this is gonna be like the Forever one.

Jessamyn 1:20:54 Well, and for all you know, it came out of a McDonald's Happy Meal, right? Like, it's not necessarily a thing you can buy in a store, or, you know, it may have just been a random thing. They got it a Wawa when they were driving through New Jersey, right,

Drew 1:21:05 right. Like West I got a bamboo stuffed bunny. So like is this like all natural type thing from the crunchy huggy toy shop here in town that is now since gone. And that became the his beloved butter. And that bun did not serve that bun. It did not survive through the first two years of his life that was just too dirty and damaged and all that. And of course, the toy had been discontinued. I had to order course. Yeah, replacement. So I got three of them from Australia was the only place I could find them. It cost a lot of money. But we've gone through two others of them now. So I think when he I don't know when he gets married, or when he has a kid, because we saved all the past bananas. We're gonna have to like give it to him. As an adult.

Jessamyn 1:21:56 It's a dirty bag of hair.

Drew 1:22:00 Dirty bag of anybody? Oh, oh, no, never hear oh.

Cortex 1:22:12 Well, please continue.

Jessamyn 1:22:16 Well, the last thing I said was dirty bag of hair.

Cortex 1:22:17 Yes. Oh,

Drew 1:22:19 they said I don't know if anybody.

Jessamyn 1:22:21 I don't know if anybody noticed in the picture of the dog that my username, which is the username of the user. See, when you said this true. I thought you were like it's my username. And I didn't know why you were using that. If it was your question, but now I'm reading it, the user's name is my dash username. And they have a picture of this stuff to have a ball. And it's with another stuffed animal and they've blacked out that other stuffed animals as if they consented to be in this picture, which is hilarious. So just I wanted to point that out. Well, please, why username.

Drew 1:22:57 The stuffies are serious business like you don't you don't mess around with it. We don't mess around with West's banana. Like, if he's bad, there'd be threatened to take away a lot of stuff. But banana is a line that we will never ever, ever ever cross. You know, it's just, that's that. That's his comfort animal. Like these things? Yeah.

Cortex 1:23:17 I've got friends who I think maybe they had the same basic idea and it got out of hand where they have multiple of their child's favorite animal but he has all of them. So he just like he carries like five of the fuckers with which is happened he talks about him and he's just a little kid like just mobile enough to like, you know, schlep around five stuffed animals or whatnot. But yeah, I kind of wonder like, how is that going to be different? Like, if he's got the five with him? If one gets damaged is it going to be as catastrophic as like, if the one

Jessamyn 1:23:53 you're gonna be there and be like, dammit, kid, you have four

Drew 1:23:55 of them. Yeah, that that will matter a B that the one that's missing is the only one that he wants. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:24:01 right or there needs to be five because that's how many seats there are the T sat or whatever it is. Yeah.

Cortex 1:24:07 Or is it gonna be continuing to acquire more he's gonna end up with like 30 by you know that you know? Because I saw this kid like last summer maybe the summer it's grown maybe it's

Jessamyn 1:24:15 he gets when every year. Well, and then once people figure out you like him and you get older then that's all you get for presents, right? It's like God forbid you tell anyone you like Al's. Yep, yes. Or whatever. Whatever the thing is, I like the color orange. So that's pretty easy. And now Josh actually has that too. So

Cortex 1:24:34 if either of his gets something orange that's like, No, we can like you know, pawn it off.

Jessamyn 1:24:38 You'll probably like this. Yeah,

Drew 1:24:39 really? Just orange as a thing because I could think of like, actionable orange thing. Oh, sure. But another traffic cone.

Jessamyn 1:24:48 objectionable orange thing a pumpkin? No, they taste good. You can carve them. Josh, there is a pumpkin in the back of the box of crap that I sent you like a real pumpkin.

Cortex 1:25:02 I actually I just don't like the the interior of pumpkin. It has a lot of stringy squash texture. I've made my I've gotten on good terms with pumpkins otherwise at this point

Jessamyn 1:25:12 that's as bad as oranges to you.

Cortex 1:25:16 Well, I don't know, I was just trying to think of something problematic. I mean, we're trying to think of the worst orange thing or playing like what's the worst orange? Now the worst Orange?

Jessamyn 1:25:24 Orange like my last question, but I mean, that's fine.

Cortex 1:25:30 Game over those quick.

Jessamyn 1:25:33 Second worst.

Cortex 1:25:37 Yeah, wanted to mention a couple other medical posts just in passing to get a few more links in

Jessamyn 1:25:42 Okay, wait, I have one more that segues into this one.

Cortex 1:25:45 Do I know how much I like a segway. I know how much he

Jessamyn 1:25:49 likes saying that word that sounds like the word I'm saying. Yep, that isn't. This was just something about dogs that do the dance by Johnny wallflower. And apparently Kiko pup is a thing everybody knows about but I didn't know about it. And it's adorable. hard luck, dogs learn to dance. That's That's it for me the end. That's awesome.

Cortex 1:26:10 I liked Woods swimmer which is a time lapse video that bond Cliff made a post about he's been doing some woodworking of his own. So you know, he's Oh, God, I saw this. It's so cool. And I'll just say go watch it because it's rad. It's it's a stop motion video made by progressively standing away small layers of wood so that the grain animates and it looks awesome fan fucking tastic

Jessamyn 1:26:37 Yeah, it's been interesting knowing bond Cliff all this time. And knowing him before he was like a real kind of serious woodworker and then watching him kind of take up and kind of Master I mean, not master, I guess you're never a master, but like, really get good at the stuff that he's been doing. But it also includes a lot of kind of hobby and interest in tangential parts of woodworking to

Cortex 1:27:01 that. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, that's very neat. I wonder

Drew 1:27:04 if that's just something of becoming a certain age where it's the, you know, couple, like, two decades ago, I'd be building model train sets in the basement where there's just something in you that like the switch flips when you were a guy that's reached a certain age or like,

Jessamyn 1:27:19 right, you're almost 40 Here's your hammer.

Drew 1:27:21 Here's how to build your nest, old man go, Okay,

Jessamyn 1:27:27 your basement nest,

Cortex 1:27:30 nest of canvases. I was delighted by this video of Japanese Sumo robots. And there's a fun thread about it.

Jessamyn 1:27:38 Everybody was talking about these on the internet. I did not see that

Cortex 1:27:41 should just take take five minutes and watch it. It's great. They're like little it's, it's like BattleBots without any of the pretense sped up. Yeah, no, they they are very fast moving. And they're they're clearly like programmed, autonomous or semi autonomous. There's like two different weight classes along those lines. And they just really rapidly do a little sumo battle and it's fantastic. It's a lot of fun. And wow, go watch it.

Jessamyn 1:28:04 I'm watching him. They don't even have little arms. They're like,

Cortex 1:28:08 although some of them do. I think they're they're very simple little boxes is what they are. And it's you know,

Jessamyn 1:28:16 it's like watching typewriters fight. Hmm. Interesting.

Cortex 1:28:19 Another thing I want to throw out is this collection of intentionally bad designs for volume sliders. Like like, you know, for adjusting the volume on your computer, or your phone

Drew 1:28:33 or sort of a slider you got like, Oh,

Jessamyn 1:28:35 I was thinking volume like mass.

Cortex 1:28:38 No, no, no, no, no audio volume. You know, things like yeah, no, it's it's great. It's just a bunch of bad design jokes and speculation essentially and I really liked it.

Drew 1:28:51 If you want to get like if you want to get like for for goofy stuff, the lightsaber duel from the end revenge to people like that, that works surprisingly well like and also then people started applying that song to other fights. The Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon one also worked very, very well. I'm a finding that was just a fun.

Cortex 1:29:14 I'm finding the post by searching here. Because I remember a mere suggestion. Yeah. Oh, and one other thing I'm going to mention it's a post that I made but it has nothing to do with me other than my enthusiasm for this guy's work. A new might be naked guy knew floppy naked guy video from the creator of going to the store and Late for Meeting makes me uncomfortable. That's kind of the thing like it's it's a weird disconcert. It's not uncanny valley so much is just uncanny. And I just love it. I don't know something about the bizarreness of this aesthetic just always always.

Jessamyn 1:29:53 Posting us to is video this time around. Did you fire all your copy editors?

Cortex 1:29:58 I think this is kind of a video store. Yeah,

Jessamyn 1:30:00 that's right. Yes, yes. That's fired you news team?

Cortex 1:30:06 Yep. I spent a lot I spent a lot of my texts time this month dealing with pain in the ass threads basically, like I don't want to, or you know, just like, you know, politics stuff and other grumpy stuff, you know, not necessarily stuff without value, but nothing that I'm like, oh, you know what I want to do right now we're having such a good time talking with Drew. And let's let's revisit a really difficult discussion about something. That's not where my head is. So let's watch the television. Let's watch the fun videos.

Drew 1:30:33 I find that that's happens a lot, I guess, like this week, where or this month where we've been trying to focus more on sort of like happy stuff. I've been purposely staying away from, like the political threads and sort of the dour news things. It's very hard to build a discussion on a like a video. So someone will post something and be like, here's a cool video. And then it's usually like, hey, that's cool. And you can say about it. So you can't you can't argue about like, well, I guess you can argue about its medicine.

Jessamyn 1:31:07 If we can pull it out there. What do you say?

Drew 1:31:10 Yeah. Okay, so I'm coming down to is y'all fuckers been slacking, you need to get to work. start arguing about you know, that bunny thing about too many bunnies around Massachusetts. That was not enough bunnies. Right. And that's true, though, that there's a recent one about the why there's so many rabbits. It it's, I go for a walk every day along the rail trail here and up in Danvers. And I started to a, you know, I see rabbits every time and I started a rat, a baby rabbit on the path once I feel really bad about this, because he got so surprised about a person walking up on it, that it ran off the past, but it ran off the wrong way towards that gully where there was a pond. So I saw this thing scrambled and heard a distance. So I hope baby rabbits can swim because I think I accidentally killed one. I've been carrying that with me now for a couple of weeks. I'm glad I can finally get my chest.

Cortex 1:32:07 If you just do a memorial woodcarving about it

Jessamyn 1:32:12 that's a good idea. Because you'll never know. Right? Right. You

Cortex 1:32:16 know, dude, like three or four plates, you know, you retell the event and then you know, a sort of stillness and the implication of death and then it rising from the and then like hunting the countryside. You know,

Drew 1:32:26 I probably I probably just do a fairly occult looking rabbit. And then I'll just put it on a post and nail it into the point. I let other people wonder about

Cortex 1:32:39 it that way. Yes,

Jessamyn 1:32:40 that's a good idea. Well, I told I don't know if you guys saw it, but like there's a picture that I took of one of the hiking trails near me that just has a completely like a sign, like a piece of wood on top of like a pole, and it's completely blank. And I don't know if it used to say something or it maybe had a piece of paper on it that went away but it's completely blank. And now I totally want to go back in the woods and write something on it. But I'm not sure what I want to write.

Drew 1:33:10 So every year for Father's Day, we go on a hike. I will try to bring with me something to hang on the woods when we go out nice. Usually it'd be like a like an old baby doll with something written on it. It will be hung upside down from a tree and twine. So yeah, that guy probably worked it out totally that guy. I even have my son doing it because we always tell the story of Mr. Tatar bones, who is a wooden skeleton that lives in the woods, who wants to be a real person, but he can't get the leafs to stick to be his own skin. So he will hunt you down for your blood because that's the only thing that will make the leafs stick and we'll both start telling stories about Mr. Tatar bones in order to freak out Jen and so that usually cuts the hike short so baseball is here and then we turn around and be like go back to the car it's nice.

Jessamyn 1:34:01 Oh Good gracious, we should probably just end on that I don't know where we can go from there.

Cortex 1:34:05 I'm going to do a quick meetup I'm music minute just to get some names out there for the stuff I'm going to use in here. So we mentioned in passing rangefinder 1.4 and not on displays collaboration on when the curtains of night which is just lovely, you should go listen to it. But there is also from AJ Ryan a cover I guess of a song called good so bad. It's just a fun little sky thing and it's got kids singing in the background which is like a theme from last month so you know continuity there is won't take long which is a cover of Rolling Stone song that I don't even know but I really liked infidel zombies take on it. It's pretty fucking rad. There is a nice cynthy thing from soccer shot first on an OP one which ties back to I think last month I mentioned post by a friend of or post about some op one synthesizer stuff by friend of soccer shot first. So this is once again the madness. And then finally a goddamn avalanche by existential dread, which is just a throw the horns high sort of medley proggy thing and it's good. So there you go. There's some music that you will have had heard most of already at this point in this recording listener. Maybe. Maybe I could just save it all till the end. I could really fuck with people all at once that would teach them. But yeah, okay, well, that's good for me. i

Jessamyn 1:35:42 Good for me, Drew. I'm so glad we got a chance to chat about all this stuff.

Drew 1:35:45 Yeah, sorry. I rambled. No, no, no.

Jessamyn 1:35:49 No, that's exactly what you're supposed to do. You did everything perfect.

Cortex 1:35:52 Yes. Oh, great. Rambling is what we want.

Jessamyn 1:35:55 Yes, otherwise, it's just Josh and I rambling and everybody's sick to have us and our inside jokes and our bickering. We've done

Cortex 1:36:02 a bit of that we've we've covered that ground pretty well. So yeah, no, thanks so much for Come on. This is this was awesome. This is a lot of fun. Yeah,

Drew 1:36:07 this is fun. I actually got my new podcast set up so if anyone wants to come on and just have me yell about like the shaver mystery or the secret space program, I could probably fill another hour,

Jessamyn 1:36:17 Josh. He should easily be on his podcast. You guys talk about horror movies. Totally. Yeah.

Cortex 1:36:23 All right. Well, hey, podcast, podcast. We did

Jessamyn 1:36:28 you guys. Great. Thank you.