Ponder it at least. At LEAST please.

Hello everyone. I am sorry to be the barer of bad news, but I was just handed a card with the news on it. And I am afraid it is official - it turns out that the thing gnats with slightly too much access to their local garden center's upper management Salvation Army fundraising dinner coffers would think if they fantasized about gaining slightly too LITTLE access, has been revealed, and is as follows...

'I'm not sure if TOO many gullies are named after ferns. Or not enough are named after bastard children of cave dwelling hypoglycemia smelling souls of leather shoes. But either way. STOP IT!'

Everyone here at the show wishes you the best in dealing with this news.

PS. We don't fucking know how the gnats got slightly too much access, do we look like we're in fucking in charge of coffers?

PPS. Sorry again. A gnat had a gun to our heads and made us say that.

PPPS. Still makes you think right? And that's something I think we can ALL think about. 

Cunningly Expetational Shrewdicitiy - A Poem

Her smile was wet...
Her soul slippery...
Her clothes made of porcupine inards...
Where the porcupine outards were who could tell?
In her?
Perhaps...
It would explain why she sporadically experienced uncontrollable seizures which in part manifested themselves in the haphazard shooting of blood covered porcupine quills from her neck...
But it wouldn't explain why anyone would dress in porcupine innards and consume porcupine outards, now would it?
Unless of course she was worried about blood covered porcupine quills shooting INTO her neck!
And who the hell isn't?
No one.
That's who...
Yes she was a shrewd one this one...
Not much of a looker...
A tad full of holes and covered in blood for my taste...
Perhaps that's just the price one must pay...
For a sweet, sweet porcupine innard outfit inspired wet smile.

Chapter Two. Innocuous. Unless you’re indignant. In which case SUPER oculus.

 
 Pinky-Von-Sox and the Cave of Squawking Mumbles

Chapter Two

It was a few months earlier when my best friend, Leaves, had originally asked me if I 'wanna go on an adventure with him'.

His voice was excited, warm, joyful, friendly, voicelely, seemingly defecating delight in a way which bathed the third eye, and yet I still knew exactly what he meant. This was Leaves. That meant by ‘an adventure’, Leaves meant he wanted to go out somewhere local do something violently unadventurous.

You see Leaves, despite being my best of bestest friends, is unfortunately just a really, really, super, really, super, totally, super, ridiculously really super boring guy. 

Named for the first thing his mother saw looking up after pushing him out of her, Leaves was born in a small tree house home in the suburb of Mexico City, in the city of Mexico City, in some unnamed country in Central America. With a Swedish mother and a pre-US State Era Alaskan father who himself had one Belarusian parent and One Sri-Lankan parent. They were part of a popular religion at the time, the Treechrisinas, a group who believed that Green Tree Frogs had sweet lives, shiny bodies, and were a fun color, and wanted in on it. 

Leaves parents had been sent to Mexico City by the Great Froggington, the religions leader, to live in the only two trees left in the entire urban sprawl, figuring 'we get those two trees we'll have a monopoly, and according to the board game The Game Of Life, having a monopoly will make you rich, and get you a $10 prize in a beauty contest, and what’s the point of craving shiny green skin if you cant win a prize?’

Yet Leaves wasn’t as enamored with tree life as his parents were. In fact from an early age he was mostly fascinated by a local dirt-runway airfield that was hidden behind those two trees. The planes were exciting, adventurous, flying, and planeyey, and seemed to betroth airborness in a way that soaked the fourth mind. 

‘Where do they go?’ he’d think. ‘Where do they come from?’ he’d wonder. ‘Why do my parents make me eat flies with my tongue?’ He’d ponder. ‘How come despite my exotic genetic background I look like just a regular Mexican, like a young Chong, or Cheech, which ever one was the Mexican one?’ He’d contemplate. ‘If I went somewhere on one of those planes could I be someone else, perhaps even anyone I want to be, like even some non-frog freak?’ He’d muse. 

One day he asked his parents these questions. It didn't go well. 

‘Your mother slaves in the kitchen all day to serve those flies for you, stop being so ungrateful you little shit!’ his dad screamed in response. 

So Leaves ran. Ran straight for the airfield. Found a small Cessna parked next to the Churro stand, and snuck onboard while it’s pilot flirted with a roller-skate wearing waitress. By the time the pilot had watched the object of his affection get caught in a gust of wind and roll away into a marsh, and climbed back into the cockpit, Leaves had crawled into a small crevice under the steering wheel, where he got trapped. 

Too embarrassed to say anything, seeing as his Spanish was affected by a Swedish accent his mother gave him (just like Cheech, or was it Chong with the Swedish accent?), that he thought made him sound like a French person doing a mocking impression of a Chilean trying to learn Norwegian, which was a popular Vaudevillian trope at the time. So Leaves just stayed put and stayed quiet. And for the next four years he stayed put and quiet here full time. 

It turned out that this particular Cessna was a drug, alcohol and exotic bird smuggling plane. And for the next four years Leaves would stay trapped in this tiny space as this plane circumvented Central America, South America, North America, and even dabbled a bit around West America, East America, South East America and America Samoa. 

Luckily for him the pilot of this plane, Juanosa, was addicted to buffalo chicken sauce so would buy wings by the bucket load, lick off all the sauce, and jam the left over chicken into the gap behind the steering wheel figuring that they'd eventually find their way out the landing gear, and he wouldn’t have to deal with parrots looking at him sitting next to a bucket of bird bones with fear and suspicion. And so that's what Leaves ate for four years, himself shoving the bones out through the landing gear whenever they arrived somewhere. He’d drink the water from the windshield sprayers to quench his thirst. And he'd shit and piss into the engines and imagine his excrement spraying over forests and gardens and fertilizing the world. It was a more than satisfying way to survive.

Sometimes Juanosa would call his girlfriend on the radio and describe what he was seeing, and Leaves would dream around these descriptions:

'I'm over the ocean, what do you think I'm seeing fucking goat herds?' 

Or,

'I'm over the desert, what to you think I'm seeing fucking whale herds?'

Or,

'I'm over the city, what do you think I'm seeing fucking goats herds fucking fucking whale herds? 

It all sounded magical to Leaves. 

Other times Leaves would catch the tiniest of glimpse of some remote airport runway or another as he'd be sticking chicken bones out through the landing gear gaps. 

It was a glorious, fantasy filled life. 

Tragically though, one day Juanosa discovered that you could just buy bottles of the buffalo chicken sauce he loved so hard at the grocery store, and he didn't actually need to buy the chicken parts, he could just smash the bottle onto his face and lick it right off himself, and Leaves food source disappeared.

So at the next stop he climbed out of his happy home, and found himself on a small Argentinian Island of Vanitjua. Temporarily blinded from seeing more than a crack of sunlight for the first time in years, he was kidnapped by Pirates, and by the time his eyes had adjusted to the sunlight the pirates had circumnavigated the globe and sold him to a Melbourne, Australia based Malaysian family who needed a new delivery boy for their Chinese restaurant. 

Eventually they would learn to love him as a real boy, and adopted him. And that's when I met him, delivering food to my house one day, and we became firm friends. 

He was mostly a great guy, but he did have flaws. Like for example he was always threatening to leave me. 

'I don't know, something inside me makes me yearn to see the world, I have no idea what or why, but I just do?' He'd say to me when we were hanging out. 

'Fine, go you dick, I don't need you' I'd reply, my feelings hurt. 

'Come on Pinky' he'd plead 'don't be like that, it's just a yearning I have, you know like your yearning to be funny?'

'Hey I don't yearn to be funny, I just am funny, and if you say something like that again I'll cut off your fanny! And see, that's funny, because a fanny is a vagina, and you don't actually have one, that's what makes it perfect comedy.'

'In some parts of the world a fanny is your bottom, and I do have one of those.'

'You are such a dick. Ok then just go, disappear. Apparently your yearnings are more important than me getting my Honey Chicken and Nasi-Goring whenever I want it' 

'Don’t worry Pinky, you know I’m not going yet, I'm not going anywhere till I can do it RIGHT, you know, something inside me makes me feel like I'm ready to travel in a way designed to really SEE stuff, I have no idea what it is, it's just a yearning, you know?'

'Like a monkey yearns to be a wrench?' I'd say, as another perfect joke, ‘that’ll burn him, BURN HIM LIKE A LOG I DON’T SEE EYE TO EYE WITH’ I’d think to myself manically, seeing as I’d compared his yearning to monkeys wanting to be wrenches, when in actual fact they often DON’T want to be wrenches. I often use hilarious burns like this to break the tension, and cover up that I am again not tipping Leaves for his latest food delivery. I don't want him to get enough money to afford his big travels of course; real friends keep them as close to them as they can.

Still the point is, obviously, Leaves is a boring friend. He'd made a pact with himself that he refused to go anywhere that wasn't in his new parent’s restaurant delivery area until he could get enough money to do it right. And Leaves’ pacts were usually tight, staunch, ironclad, pacty, seemingly leaking enchantment in a way that wet sponged the fifth cognizance. So within these few dozen blocks was where we spent all our time, and there is very little fun to be had in these few dozen blocks. 

Yep ‘wanna go on an adventure?’ Leaves asked. Who would ever have imagined that the boring thing he had planned would ultimately lead to something that would cause change. And this change would be in a really, really, super, really, super, totally, super, ridiculously really super amazing way! And this amazing thing would change the entire world. Superly. Even a fearful and suspicious looking parrot hostage would tell you that.

Chapter One - Inaudible. Unless you're close. In which case SUPER audible.

-->

Pinky-Von-Sox and the Cave of Squawking Mumbles

Chapter One

I climbed over the precipice. And what a precipice it was. Angular. Rugged. Toned. Gaping. Rocky. Precipiceyey. Seemingly sweating out rich oils that made it glisten in the sun. I could barely take my eyes off it. I don't know if you people know just how much diversity in there is from precipice to precipice, but it's a lot, and I've seen a precipice or two in my day. So I know a good one when I see it. And this precipice was magnificent. 

So magnificent that I didn't even notice that Leaves had found the entrance to the cave. Yes THE cave. The very cave that we were seeking. A cave so sought out that thousands before us had sought to seek it for eons. And we had discovered it. 

By the time I looked up Leaves had begun to make gross 'entrance' jokes at my expense knowing that I wasn't really paying attention. If Leaves wasn’t my best friend and companion on what had already been a monumental journey, I may well have hurled him off the precipice for the disgusting joke he had concluded with:

‘What’s the difference between Pinky-Von-Sox and an Entrance? When you see an Entrance you DON’T laugh if it’s stepped in poo’. 

Ok. So maybe I’ll admit that this joke was actually hilarious. I mean how could an entrance step in poo? For starters I don’t think they even MAKE shoes in entrance sizes. Still the joke was at my expense, and when I am burned I have to have retribution. 

‘Hey check it out, a rock’ I was about to yell at Leaves. But here is the thing. The place I was planning to point was not going to be a place where a rock was. So he would look and realize that he’d been tricked ‘That’ll burn him, BURN HIM LIKE A WITCH!’ I thought to myself manically. 

My plan was all set to go, I just had to find a spot on this rocky cliff edge on the side of this rocky mountain without a rock, which turned out to be actually slightly challenging, and before I’d succeeded, I'd too seen the cave entrance.  

And Wow. What an entrance. It was Rangy. Jagged. Pointy. Cavernous. Rock-strewn. Entranceyey. Seemingly sucking in rich oils that made it absorb the sun. This was definitely IT. The Legend. The mystery. The myth. The folklore. This was the very entrance that had inspired all those academic studies, witty single panel cartoons and even folk songs. But until now no one was even sure that it truly existed. 

However the engraving on the plaque could not have been more clear: 

WELCOME: YOU HAVE REACHED THE CAVE OF SILENCE SO SILENT THAT IT SQUAWKS LOUDLY LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN OR PERHAPS EVEN SOME SORT OF HEAVY MACHINERY LIKE A GIANT ROBOTIC LAVE. WAIT A LAVE IS A THING RIGHT? THEY SHAVE WOOD AND STUFF? THAT’S PRETTY COOL. WELL THIS ROBOTIC LAVE SOUND IS SO LOUD THAT IT’S LIKE A SQUAWK ONLY THIS SQUAWK IS SILENT LIKE A WHISPER. A MUMBLED WHISPER.

Wow. This was the cave known in The Secret Society of Seekers simply as - The Cave Of Squawking Mumbles. And we had discovered it. 

I couldn't help but break out into song. Somehow remembering the lyrics to Bob Dylan's classic folk song of the folklore of the fossils apparently inside here. I'm sure you all know the one...

'Apparently there may be fossils in that cave

And fossils are becoming all of the rage

Especially when you've got fossil plague

Maybe you should scrape it off with a Lave

Yep it's the cave of Squawking Mumbles

I bet if you found it you’d get tummy rumbles

If you capture its secrets don’t get the fumbles

That’s why I never trust precious artifacts to idiotic bumbles’

'Yep, no wonder Dylan won a Nobel Prize for literature' I thought to myself after I sung it. But if he won a Nobel for singing about this cave, then what was I going to get for being the first to finally discover it? 

I looked over at Leaves. I imagined myself cloaked in glory. Then I looked back at Leaves. Only one of us could be the first man inside.

‘Hey Leaves, look, a rock’ I yelled while pointing. Leaves lit up with the sort of glow that can ONLY come from finding a rock on a mountain, and like a dog chasing a stick, he jauntily skipped over to play with it. 

Sure I had actually pointed at a rock. This was no time for trickery, even if said trickery would earn a sweet burn. There was more at stake.

Leaves began to happily rub his face on the rock, claiming ownership, like a cat rubbing its face on the leg of its feeder. And as Leave's cheeks began to rip up and secrete blood, I slowly walked towards the entrance. 

So slowly that it was fast, fast like a freight train, or maybe some sort of fast machinery, like a robotic tree trunk flinging catapult. That’s a thing right? Flinging wood and stuff. That’s pretty cool. Only this flinging tree speed was slow. So slow it was like a whisper. A mumbled whisper. 

And then, after just an eon of a tiny amount of time... I was inside. 

And inside I was about to discover secrets that would literally change the way literally every human thinks about literally everything.

And yet I was to regret being the first man inside. 

Because it turned out the entrance HAD stepped in poo. 

Gross poo. 

Yuck.

Can you see it?

Welcome to 'Ok, intriguing: Hell Yeah! Fleeting forever'!!!

This is the show where we're intrigued by things, oh hell yeah we're intrigued, intrigued by all SORTS of things, but especially awesome things, and especially, especially the things that are SO awesome they'll last forever! Or even the things that are so awesome that we love them in the fleeting moment that we encounter them. So to make it clear, are we intrigued by things that are either fleeting or lasting forever? Hell yeah we are!

On today's show - we're intrigued by the seemingly invisible yet in hindsight obviously purple glow let out by the amazement found in a realization of glee. Which means, you know what time it is? It's time to play another exciting game of - IS THAT A THE SEEMINGLY INVISIBLE YET IN HINDSIGHT OBVIOUSLY PURPLE GLOW LET OUT BY THE AMAZEMENT FOUND IN THE REALIZATION OF GLEE?'

Let's play...

'Is it a shoe?'
'Yes!'
'Then it's NOT the seemingly invisible yet in hindsight obviously purple glow let out by the amazement found in a realization of glee'.

Hell Yeah.

We've just played - IS THAT IS THAT A THE SEEMINGLY INVISIBLE YET IN HINDSIGHT OBVIOUSLY PURPLE GLOW LET OUT BY THE AMAZEMENT FOUND IN THE REALIZATION OF GLEE?'

Join us again next time where will we see if we can be intrigued by 'things making at least some sense?'

Hell Yeah we might be. Also monkey cryogenic gum trail!

Thanks for joining us. Cya then.

The jeannie is out of the bottle and she has a whole lot of being cooped up to shake from her noggin' so she's gonna dance till the caps of the highest knees touch the ice crisp sky

Oh, hey, um, I just saw you look down, are you noticing that my jeans have holes in them?

It's not what you think…

Like I am not trying to be cool or anything…

It's just that, well, I hate to admit this, but I got the holes today just because…

Well I got into a fight with a dog today...

And and and, you know, I hate physical fights; you know that, so obviously I had to make it a verbal fight…

Obviously...

And that is always difficult for me, because I only have strong to very-strong opinions on around 17.2% of issues that affect dogs personally. So finding an issue in which we both have strong-very strong opinions on, and one which those views are opposing, can be a tad difficult….

You know?

Like this one time tried to get into a verbal argument with a Collie named Simon, on leash politics, which we both agreed we had at least strong-very strong opions on, and so a verbal fight seemed certain, but we ended up being SO in agreement that we instead became friends, and even later mutually found an online profile for the greens keeper of a local 'leash only' park, and we trolled him so bad, that he eventually volunteered to spend three weeks in summer dominatrix camp to try and learn our point of view…

Which I guess was a positive outcome, yet we later felt so guilty about our methods that now we struggle to even like each other's instagram posts without following it up by liking a bunch of posts by our favorite charities to ease our guilt…

Today, however, I had none of those issues with Hannah, the Blue Heeler, as we had issues with each other immediately…

Strong-very strong issues even…

Like, for example, I was adamant that seeing as I had learned a conversational level of barking, that she should have learned more English, and she was adamant that ‘roof, roof, roof, roof’. Which I found childish and maybe even in poor taste, given recent newspaper articles on hurricane relief issues in some poor Caribbean nations, but then she pointed out that ‘bark’, and I had to agree that if you make most of your roofs out of bark then you are asking for trouble…

But that still didn’t make it ok to joke about…

So this of course, of course, opened us up for some long and passionate debate and discourse about the socio-economic struggles facing third world nations, and despite neither of us agreeing on the right methods or action plans that should be implemented to achieve what we felt were fair and necessary results for both rich and poor nations, we DID both agree that at the core of the issue was the first-worlds responsibility in lifting the ‘glass ceilings’ so to speak, to which Hannah added ‘roof’ and we both laughed and laughed…

In fact we laughed so hard that certain well placed sections of my jeans just evaporated. So now they have holes in them. I guess that’s science for you. You know? Anyway, I look cool now, wanna be in my band?

In between the middles

The man was pissed off.

But he wasn't pissed off for any illogical reasons.

No fucking way.

Illogic was for fucking assholes.

And he was NOT an asshole.

Fuck you if you even thought he was.

No. Chance.

But he WAS pissed off.

And the reason he was pissed off was because his parents had named him 'Illogically illegitimate'.

Which obviously was annoying as being an 'i' name both first and last, meant that no matter which way the alphabetical order was administrated he'd end up middling.

Plus he found math weird.

I mean if 2 + 2 was 4 then how come there were always at least 7 barnyard animals in his parents illuminate orgies?

And also why do icebergs not get frost bite? Or frost lung? Or even black lung? Are they racist?

And also if he was pissed off then how come iceberg lettuce was calm?

Yep, the man was definitely pissed off. In retrospect it was actually probably mostly from seeing that mule do 'it' to his mother.

And by 'it' I mean tell her she'd be kicked out of the illuminate if she didn't get her kid naming skills up to scratch.

Which he obviously said to her while fornicating with a candle medley shaped like a pentagram.

And if that's not logical then how come lettuce rarely holds press conferences to talk about recent changes in coal mine straw testing parties?

You know what, let's take some questions now, wait, how should we do this, um, I no, let's go alphabetically.

Aaron Zelcher, you're up first!