overshell-ish
Collin was on a boat. Brandon is the terror that flaps in the night. Hank gets into a situation.
Collin survived travel
Car UI
IDs are stupid
Brandon’s feeling things out
Bells…how do they work
relentless march of those terrible bells
Darkwing Duck: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101076/
Chapter 21 - Marco
Mark Twain Quote: The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
Brandon’s Haiku:
A new door opens
Demons surface from the past
Peace in unity
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
PROVIDED BY OTTER.AI
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, weird, good, chapter, day, talking, money, shelling, pay, wages, real, drive, prices, expire, license, happening, dollar, bad, understand, remember
SPEAKERS
Collin
Collin 00:04
Music. Welcome to Oh brother, a podcast where we try to figure it all out with your host, Brandon Collin, on this week's show over shellish, Ahoy, ahoy. Oh goes. It pretty good. How are you recovering time you get back from being away for a while, you know, you got to get back in the swing of things and convalesce slightly, right?
00:33
Yeah,
Collin 00:34
it kind of feels like I just stumble out of things and now in in, you know, I stumble out of the out of the trip back into the real world. It was not a graceful reentry. But here we are, you know, we're doing things. I wasn't feeling sick until, like this afternoon, and then I was like, Oh no, no, no, did I? Did I pick up a bug, or is this just like the normal, like traveling sniffles thing, you know, like, where, yeah, you're stressed and you're not getting sleep, so your immune system's already a little bit compromised. So is that what this is or, or is it like the full blown, like illness that two of my employees have? And I'm like, No, it's not that one. Yeah, not, I vote not that one, please. That doesn't sound very fun. Let's not do that. Rather not. But yeah, so we're back. We survived. We are in trying to get the house put back together. And first thing we did was we came back home and we ripped up the the sunflowers that had fallen over and started gardening. So that's, that's where our where our priorities were. Well, all right, that is a crash landing right back into the real world. Like, yes, gardening, you know what I like to do after your next vacation? Dig holes in the yard. Let's go, yeah. I mean, I mean work trip. Work trip, that's what I'm gonna say. Work trip, obviously, obviously, yeah, yeah. Work trip, yeah. Not vacation, bed, work trip. To both. It was we survived. It, you know, I it was no, it was good. I had been hearing one of those things of I've been hearing of sorry, I hit a button on my computer, and I Oh, no, I just made something. I just made the text bigger. Uh oh, uh oh, no, there we go. Oh, it's weird. Oh, it's the opposite button you can hit. Yeah, it is. Well, I had to remember what key combination that I had hit. And I have a Mac, I hit Command plus, and it made everything bigger, automatically zoomed in. Did it? Oh yeah, did it my text window, so I can text from my computer to people, and I had never zoomed in on that text there, and it made it look really weird. So anyway, I've been hearing horror stories of travel things. And you know, you always get that mode of I never really pay attention to travel things until I'm getting ready to travel. And then that's, you know, obviously, the more you closer you pay attention to things, the more just bad news you hear, and you kind of drown out the all the other times where you didn't hear anything about it. So, but we, we, we survived without any delays. I still, I still really, like, flying out of the Springfield airport. It's a, it's, it's one of my favorites. Yeah, it's so, like, simple, right? It's just like, hey, you're gone. There you go. That's it. And you're great. Here. You don't have to tramps anywhere. You literally just like, it's a straight line in and it's, yeah, yeah. And it's really nice, because everything is just so streamlined. It's like, check desk, security, boom. And like, it's, it's not a big deal. Like, you know, now I can foresee that, with the growth that the area is having and they're expecting another like, I think, what did I say? Like, they had a 10% year over year growth, yeah, for the industry, for the area. Like, if that happens, like, that industry is that Airport's not going to stay, stay small for long. True, it's already in a new terminal, though, already, yeah, they already had, well, I mean, yeah, but that was eight years ago that they moved, I know. But like, what I'm saying is, like, it's newer than the one that I remember right. It's like, pretty, yeah, I don't know how much growth it can handle, but it's definitely not, yeah, it's definitely more efficient looking than the old one. Like, well, it's definitely, I think what they would just do is they would increase. Flights to it before actually changing. Yeah, I think you can add maybe a little bit more on the end too, or something I don't know, right? You can go straight out and have them go around, but just increasing the number of flights like, and I know airlines are always just trying to be efficient anyways. But like, we had four flights for this trip, none of them had more than five seats open in the entire plane. Yeah, that part is getting worse, right? Yes. Like, because, well, a myriad of reasons, but like, yeah, it used to be that you could, that you would fly on planes, and it would be like, 12 people on the plane, uh, huh. And that was, like, fairly common. I remember. I mean, not that we flew a lot, but I remember flying up and like, oh, you can just, like, change seats in the middle of this, because no one's here, yeah. Yeah. Like, that's not really a thing, God, especially domestic flights, right? They seem to be really cramming them in there. International flights sometimes are because, like, only so many people are going to a certain place right now, if you're going to a hub like London, well, that one's probably pretty full, but like some other ones, it's a little better because, you know, but still, then it's a whole other thing. But, yeah, it is weird how it's just like crammed all the time. That's what. Last summer, every single flight we were on was like, 100% full. Like, Oh my gosh, what in the world. So I that's obviously new experience for me to have that. But it wasn't bad, and we the the whole idea behind us was we were just going to we were only taking a personal item. We didn't take a personal and a carry on. We did not take a carry on. It was one personal item. And I will say that initially I was very stressed, because, I mean, just, I mean, I'm generally stressed about a lot of things in life, mostly like, are we going to be able to fit everything? Like, how can we pack, I mean, family Four for five days in just little, tiny, tiny backpacks, yeah, can we do this? And, you know, the kids are old enough they don't need very much accouterments to, you know, to keep them occupied. They're not, you know, babies that have the diapers and stuff like that. So, yeah, that super simplifies this a lot. And, you know, we, we pulled it off. And I will say that because we just had a personal item which is supposed to sit in the seat front, you know, in front of you. It doesn't really matter what group you're in. Just now, right? Like, I didn't really, like, think through all of this until we were there, and I was like, oh, man, we're group six because I messed up my tickets. Man, we're going to run out of space. No no, because they no way. We don't need any space. They don't fill they don't fill the seats in front of you with other people's stuff. And so that made it less, like, Whatever, man, whatever we'll get on. And, matter of fact, I was like, Oh, actually, being in, you know, in group six is awesome, because I don't have to sit on a stinky plane with a bunch of people. They're true. So this is actually nice, because I can just I can rove around a little bit more. I can go check out the shops. I can, you know, people watch. So that worked out well. And getting there, we then rented a car, and I had Megan said, I want the most fuel efficient car because I don't want to have to buy gas. And I was like, oh, one better. We just get an electric car. Worry about gas at all. So do that. So we were supposed to have, okay, so this will all be in past tense for a moment, but we were supposed to have a Tesla because, again, we had to drive an hour south, and then we were basically gonna park the car and not really use it a whole lot, because, yeah, I did have to drive 10 minutes away from our hotel to the conference and then back, but I was only doing that like three times, and then, other than that, nothing. So, yeah, it was pretty negligible. Pretty negligible. Well, we get in and I can't get the first off. It was very exciting, because I popped the frunk, which the kids wanted to put their bags in, because and why not? And a frog jumped out, no. And it was like, Aha, we it is, uh, it is Florida. And yes, being as that is Florida, that's the best option, right, right? Could have been of the things, of the things that could be that this couldn't frog is the best, right? And. So we get it settled in, and we get in, and I get the car in, and I know that what you're supposed to do is you just take the card and you put it in the center console to activate it, and then you just tap the stock and you go to Drive, and you pull out right there's no Start button. That's one weird thing. There's zero Start button, but it won't let me put it into Drive. It just won't. And then all sudden, it starts flashing. It says, passenger, restates, restraint, system failure, service required. That doesn't sound good. Oh, her, here we go. So I took a picture of it, and I walked over, and at first the person was like, oh, what's it saying? They were really confused. And I told them. And then they were like, well, hold on. And they're like, Oh, well, no, you can't leave with that here, let me see. And they end up putting us in a Ford mock a Ford Mustang, Mach E, so the electric thing, Ah, okay. Because they were like, well, you want to stick with electric. And I was like, I honestly don't really care, but sure, as long as I have passenger restraint systems operational, I would like to, I do, I do, enjoy my wife. So yeah, if we could keep her safe, we could keep her around, that would be excellent. And right away, it's immeasurably better, because it works and better in every way. And I also will say that what they did, they don't need to do this with an electric car. You don't need this. But there is a start button, okay? There is a button that you press, and it kind of like makes a binging sound to like, Oh, I'm I'm on, yeah, that's what I am sure like, other electric things start right, like my laptop, I had to push a button and it came on right. Like, it didn't just like, go, oh yes, here I am working. That's not how it works, right? You got these, right? So I this was, this was wonderful. I didn't. I did, in fact, like this a lot, because it was like, Oh, this is and there's just a little turn button thing. I do not like turn button gear knobs or shifters. Oh, yeah, me, neither I it. They're just, they're confusing, because we have one, right? Don't worry, you do, yeah, and it's totally weird sometimes, like, it's not usually a problem, but every once while, you're like, let's see, there's like, four knobs here. One's the volume, one's the how much air you want in the car. One's the radio station seek. One's the gear shift, like, ah, yeah. Not a no, not. Okay. Now on we have one, but it's to select, like, what traction level you want, like snow, gravel and stuff in our jeep. But this is just like, left Park, yeah, reverse and neutral. It's not intuitive. I do not like it. It's in a weird spot. Other than that, this is a fantastic car. This is not a car program or a car podcast, but except for all those times when it is, except for, including right now, I, I will say that as far as like, drivability, and except for the turning radius, the turning radius on this thing sucks, and that comes into a big moment here in just A second. Oh, but, um, the panoramic, roof, sunroof, thing that they have. It's all like at your fingertips. Lots of there are still dials and things to move and touch and feel. That's that's good they did. They really got that nailed down for this. Now, the turning radius we drive our hours south and in the parking lot of the hotel that we're staying at, all of these spaces are labeled compact. Oh, well, now the Ford Mustang Mach E is not a large vehicle, but it is also not in contact. No, this is especially made more difficult when there was another conference going on at our hotel. So we were at one hotel our The reason I was there was at a different hotel, and we stayed at this one for various reasons, but more family friendly and whatnot, but like, there was another convention going on at this hotel. It was also going into the weekend, yeah, so, and there was like a wedding on premise, and so, like, Oh, my, I was parking next to, like, in between, there was like a Range Rover on one side and a full Cadillac Escalade SUV on one side, on the other side, compacts, yes, the the quintessential compact when, if you go to the escalator, yeah, straight out of a 2002 music video, the Escalade the most compact. Of course, most compacts. Um, when viewed from all of the incorrect angles. So stunting from the back left, I quickly, um, turn into somebody who backs into spaces. Oh, no, right? I had to. I, I had to in order to survive. I'm not proud of this moment. I am not, but when one of the hotel workers had to move okay, had to move a sailboat to make more Florida problems, desperate times, calls for desperate mentors park, but they just sailboat in my way. No, seriously, seriously. There's a catamaran, I believe, two spots, of course, and he had to shove it over. It was ridiculous. It was, it was absolutely ridiculous. So that was, that was, that was immeasurably fun. But so, yes, I this, actually this vehicle. I we're not in the market for a new vehicle. But I was like, oh, okay, this is actually way more pleasant because it's an car, it's a car, but It's electric. It's and that is the the weird thing that car makers have tried to do is like, like Tesla, where they went, what if it's not car? We don't even want you driving this in 10 years. So I'm not going to make it like I'm not even going to make this drivable for you. It's not going to be intuitive. There's not going to be things for you to touch, grab or feel in this can be completely disconnected from that. Other car makers, more traditional car makers, are trying, at least in some instances, are trying, to maintain that gap, bridge that gap a little bit between, hey, I'm not convinced that Elon Musk knows how to drive a car, so, like, he may not know actually how a car's supposed to work. You know what I mean? I think he's, at this point, he's so out of touch with everything that he's just like, Yeah, I think people drive him around. And so he's like, I just want my car to drive me around so I don't have around so I don't have to hire a person. I think that's really what's happening. No, he just, he just envisions a future where robots, so he needs to make a car that robots can drive. Yeah, that's all this is. There's 100% what this is. So I am, I just, I feel like that's just really important if you really are looking for more adoption, and there are legitimate there are tons of reasons that electric vehicles aren't the be all, end all solution to lots of things, and they are problematic in many, many, many ways. But if you are looking to make people, make them more accessible to people, or find more ways for them to fit in, you have to make them more user friendly. You have to make it so that people will actually want to drive these things. Yeah, you have to make it usable, right? Like, that's yes, that's very important. Yes, user interface and usability is just like, I don't understand why you would want to take that out of a car. That doesn't make any sense at all, right? Like, what are you doing? So, you know, I understand, again, I understand car UI and usability, like you said, like, these are hot button topics that people will go round and around about. And at the end of the day, we're still human. I still, we still live in a meat world. It needs to make sense to meet like, basically, yeah. And so I will hand it to Ford in this instance where this was a good car I really did, just without, with, with it being as small as it was, and it really wasn't even that small, but like, man, turns out, not having an engine in there, tons of room opens up. Like, yeah, wow. Could have guessed who knew that, and you'd actually make it big. So kids really enjoyed it. We had a lot of fun when we did drive, it just parking was not, not pleasurable, in the least fair, but nope, we got sold in we did our conference thing. I had a really good talk. It was very emotional. I guess I don't know. It was a weird, no, it was weird because I was talking about fear and so, oh, right, right, right. So I had this idea where I was, like, I was gonna walk through scenarios where I was afraid of my personal life. I was gonna, you know, then I launched into talking about the fear pathways of biology and the role of the amygdala, and how, like, we don't really control that, because the fear pathways are meant to keep you alive and away from pain, and those are very important, and you don't have a split second to second guess that, like, you only had, you only have to get that wrong one time, and you're dead, so, like, you're not interrupting these pathways. It's the higher level stuff that we've got to take care of and, like, learn about. And so I did. I did have a joke where I was talking about this quote where somebody had said, you know, they can't eat you, right? And this is the of us, as we learn about the possible impacts or possible outcomes, what we realize is that they're not as scary because we're not being eaten, right? So then, all of a sudden, that that differential between expectation of pain. Actual pain gets really small because we understand it more. And then I took a pause, and I said, but this is Florida. And I clicked the button, and this giant picture of an alligator showed up on the screen behind me. And then I was and then I before this, I had done a quick Google search, and it was just like, wait. I had Googled ways Google can kill you. And so I or ways Florida can kill you. And so I, I posted like five of the headlines of, like Top 10 animals and like 10 dangerous ways, and 25 ways I was, I was also presenting to a Florida audience. So we need to make it local and relevant to that about what they were facing nice. But I will say, I will say the best part of it came from when I don't know if I told you this, but I was going to reach out to people in the industry and ask for what they were afraid of. And Did I did I talk to you about that? I don't know, I don't know what I remember the alligator slide part, but I remember, okay, cool, right? So what I had done was I had reached out to some pretty big names in the industry, like big time coaches or just people who are really interactive on tons of Facebook groups, because I wanted to get people who they could connect with and recognize. And I asked them, I said, this is going to be a weird ask, and it's okay if you say no, I won't get hurt. But I'm putting together this talk, and it's about fear, and I'd love to help people relate to this and know that they're not alone. If you feel comfortable, I would like to know a personal fear or a fear in business that you deal with, that you're comfortable with me sharing, and I can make it anonymous if you'd like great response from this. And so I'm going through the PowerPoint, and I keep taking these breaks to like, you know, have a moment of levity, or have a moment of this or and I take this break and I'm reading this thing off the slide, and people were, I think they were expecting it to be like, just another point that I was making of, yeah, we all fear of in the thing called imposter syndrome. And then I click my button and the person's name pops up next to it, and there was like, Okay, I was proud of this. There's an audible gasp from people who are like, what like that person, that person as an eight figure, business, like eight figure, and he still feels like this, like, what like, ha, ha. Now you understand people, that's what this is all about. So, so don't finish the presentation. Went best part of the time there is we had booked a time to go sailing and shelling. So, so we okay, this was our one, like, Boys in the Boat. No, my like, yeah, they're tying, yeah, Boys in the Boat. So this was our like, one, like, we're gonna just splurge on this experience, because we want this, yeah, like, we're gonna splurge on this. And I will say they know how to make you feel special, because that's their whole thing, right? They want to make you feel like, yeah. So it was a, it was a private sailing and shelling Tour, where they brought the catamaran up to the beach where we were staying nearby. So we walked out onto the beach, and the captain pulled straight up onto it so we could climb up on board, and then they would turn, they turn around, and we sailed off and away on our adventure. That nice. I now I could get used to that kind of life. Captain come get me. And she was the most fascinating Captain she has been doing. This is Bert Ben, her only gig for 17 years. Whoa, really, yes, wow. This is her sole employment, is to do this for people. And Shannon was like, what? And she's like, Yeah, I, uh, moved here to kind of, you know, get resettled. And I've been doing this for 17 years, and my, my brain broke, as far as, like, you meet, like, I was like, Well, surely this person is going to have, like, an other job, or, like, do others? No, she only takes people on sailing adventures. Most of them are for shelling, some of them for, like, sightseeing of just like, they want to see the area, so she'll take them sailing to go do that. And she can typically fit in like two a day is max, but most time it's just one a day, sometimes it's none a day, and that's just her entire gig. And I, I was like, dang it. I want to be a boat captain sober. I can't I want to take people sailing. I want to go see shelling every day. Like, that's fantastic. And. To see dolphins by our boat, just we're on a catamaran, so that's got that little front part where you can just lay on, yeah, a wedding stretching that, yeah, we were just watching dolphins. The loggerhead sea turtle surfaced nearby, and we're just doing our thing. And then we got to stop and shell on a beach that she just found and pulled up to, and we shelled for 45 minutes, and then went back to exploring and stuff. And that was, that was pretty cool. I would that is cool have no money if we did that on a regular basis. Very, very nice so, but then we came back home, and then I panicked, because I realized I had, had been so busy researching on where to pick up the rental car, hadn't done no research on how to return. Said, which is, yes, very dramatic, very important. So like the whole we've got an hour drive to the airport, and I'm just like, I think, I don't know, surely, I mean, I'm like, but I'm like, Okay, I'm not the only person who's ever returned a rental car. I'm sure there'll be at least one sign, and I'll just, I'll just ask somebody nicely if I really need help. Yeah, fine. Yeah, yeah. It turns out I just need to follow the signs. And then we were fine. They usually have them on the when they you come into the airport, or whatever, or wherever you rent it from. There's just like signs for the airports. There's just like a bunch of signs like, Oh, here's Avis, here's other rental car places I can't think of right now, like enterprise, or whatever it's like. Here it is okay, bye, right? And, and because they're an airport, and because they do this, they had an attendant out there that was like, waved us through the pull through line that we stopped and got everything out. He came over and was like, Okay, you're good to go Bye. Have a good day, right? Like, very simple, but of course, in my head, it was like I didn't spend 11 hours researching dying. I will immediately fail, because that's how my brain works. But the biggest, the biggest struggle, was actually beyond just me freaking out about knowing where to park the rental car in a place that does that a million times a day, was actually getting all the seashells packed into our bags, because that would be the problem. That's the problem with the only one item right. Like if you get stuff returning, is problematic, right? Like, potentially, not all but like, potentially the return trip. You can be the return trip. You can have more things than you left with. So, yes, yes. So no, here's where, just, like, I'm just gonna stuff your pockets, all right, just don't, don't look in here. It's fine, because we gotta be real confused. We're just gonna be emptying seashells from our pockets for about 11 minutes. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Um, no, because we had excrete like agonized over the essentials of exactly what we were going to take and how they were going to fit and how they were going to pack. In order of operations, our bags were not actually crammed full on the way down, ah, but some space, when all of a sudden, I am now faced with packing a large like we had a big plastic to go container because we were so over shellous. Are we over shell I we had done some shelling on a beach, and then we had turned and there was just a restaurant right off of the beach, so we just walked to the restaurant, but we're holding all of these shells while we're sitting down to eat. And the guy, who's it's not his first day, right? And just like, nonchalantly sets a goat container on our table before we've even eaten food. And Megan kind of looks at me, and I'm looking at her, and then it dawns on me, and I'm like, put the shells in there. Yeah. He knows what's up. He knows that's their biggest export out of Florida. They say it's oranges, but we all know, actually just seashells, seashells. So we had to get that packed, and that was obviously like agonizing, because then we did have to make some decisions about ones to leave behind. They weren't quite perfect, right? And we were like, but also like, I don't have that much room. And I also, like, we collected like, 10 sand dollars, and so I have to wrap those. And then when you wrap them, you lose space. And then, yeah, cool thing so that actually, at the end of it, in the final analysis, was. The most terrifying part of the whole thing was packing away seashells to return home. But they all survived. Pink one one didn't so pretty good ratio. Good, I think so. I shells to TSA. I feel like that's a pretty acceptable ratio. Oh. My gosh, I look I so this, this the a nightmare I saw in one of my personal nightmares unfold in front of me at TSA. The man had traveled and was now needing to go home. But what had happened in the meantime, his driver's license had expired. Oh, oh, and he's problematic. He's out of state. Yeah, now there are ways to renew online if you have everything okay, and in your you have systems that can do this, but you cannot do that while talking to a TSA agent. No, this does, in fact, take time and more, more than they would, a lot for you to hold up the line. And I, I'm serious, like, before we traveled, I like, I stared at my my driver's license and Megan's many for many hours like this is not gonna expire. It's not June, I know that, but it's not going to expire. Not going to expire. Same thing with like, debit cards or credit cards like these don't expire anytime soon, so we're going to be fine. Oh my gosh. I was just like, oh, it's real. It's happening. It's right over there. And he's very angry about so never thought about that before. Really, you've never oh my gosh, no. Like, that's Oh, that's up there with many of my other anxieties. They're all number one. That's what they're all number one. Big, number one. Number one. Big. Lots of things. Yeah, you know, I never thought about, I know that, like, the passport thing, that's a problem, yeah? Like, I never really thought about my driver's license expiring, probably because it does so in so infrequently that I'm like, What is it this year? When is it happening? I don't know. Like, Oh, well. And the other thing was, is that by like, if we travel again next year, we will have to have, because we don't have, don't have this, the super special driver's license. No, stupid Missouri. What's the matter? So, because I went in, because I lost my wallet and I needed to do a you just get a new one. And they said, Oh, do you want to do the super special one? I said, Absolutely. And they said, Okay, great. We will need, um, yeah, like, a litany of things, mail, like, could you give us something, a utility bill, and that has your name on it and your address. I was like, oh, yeah, well, here, I don't get paper billing. Everything's an email to me, yeah, they don't accept those fun and so I went, Oh, I don't have those. And they went, Oh, well, then you can't get it. And I'm like, so what you're telling me that I have to get one. That's the lesser one, even though I know I'm going, it's going to be required, it's going to be necessary, but I just have to wait for mine to expire again. Oh my gosh. And they're like, yeah, yeah, so and I'm just going to say this, everybody, I'm just gonna say this. There's nothing stopping you from downloading your utility bill and then, using, oh, I don't know, a PDF editing software to change the name on it, and then, boom, there you go. Like, very well, special about this. I feel like, yeah, I feel like, I think last time I just took the notice that of the thing that they sent me that my driver's license, was like, here, you mailed me this. How's that for? Yes, and I think that that does qualify for an appropriate and so if, and that was the problem is I didn't get that notice. Because I just don't get those notices at all. And it doesn't, it doesn't matter. I don't get them as well. Ours doesn't always send them. So, yeah, so Megan, that's the fun part. Like, they didn't send our car tag one this year, oh, see. And then like, oh, last year they did, or last time they did, or whatever. But this year they're like, Oh, didn't you get the notice? You're like, No, you didn't send it. Like, it's a Bible. But yeah, Megan has the notice that her thing is expiring, and so she can take because if she renews her license before her license expired, this is okay again, you, yeah, that's why I haven't done it yet, because I was just waiting for my license to expire because, like, no, here's the thing. I. If you go in before it's expired, you can use your existing unexpired license and the notice saying that you're about to expire, and those qualify for your your points of confirmation. And you can get the super secret one, if you wait for your your license to expire, that you can't use your expired license, they won't accept that as a form. I never go. I never wait till it expires. Expires. But it's like, the same month, right? Because you can't, like some when you get it, like, in a weird time, it like, is not it messes things up, and it's not worth it. But like, Oh no, yeah, yeah, you can use your Yeah. It is weird when they're like, I need a government ID. Like, You mean, like, this one, this one here that you gave me. How about them apples? Could we do that? That'd be fun. Oh, it's so bad. It's so dumb. Yeah, I this is where, like, I just can't put up with the fear mongering anymore, right? They're like, Oh my gosh, everyone needs, like, a super special ID. Like, I remember when you just walked in the license office and they just went, here you go, thunk, and they printed it off for you. Like, here you go, bye. Oh, done, done, right? Like, I don't know, I don't know what world we live in that, like, every single person's ID is fake and like no one is doing, like, what, what are you talking about? What reality Do you live in where this level of identification security is like a necessary thing, like, what? What mind space are you inhabiting that this is a thing that we need to worry about. Like, what are you talking about? Like, oh my gosh. What? What? Yeah, what is going on? Why are we so focused, hyper, focused on your ID. Like, that's just the way. That's the thing that we've just, like, said, no, no, well, I have to be a thing, and you need it for everything. Like, I don't what, what I know, because I don't know. I don't know. Again, I'm not an expert in this, but I believe it's because there's this idea this, there's this, this nostalgia for when your social was the be all end, all, right, like you used to use your social I used to go on your your driver's license. You used to go on your ID at college, like you used to go on everything. It was your one thing that you had, that you knew, and apparently everybody else did, and it was a little card that you couldn't laminate, alter or change in any way for your entire life. But also don't lose it or make or just have it destroyed, because then your entire life is ruined. Yeah, I see people who really want something like that, where we can just like this. This is the one truth of all things, and it's really stinking annoying. It is really weird, right? Like, I don't understand the obsession. I don't get it. Like, I like, you have to prove who you are. Like, I are a lot of people lying about who they are. Like, is this a thing that's happening? Is this? Is this real? I don't even know. This is reality. These must, right? Like, I don't. Must be because, like, Yeah, this is really, like, obsessive thing with, like, identification, right? And, like, all this stuff, which is weird, because a lot of this comes from the people that are like, the government should know who you are, and then they're like, but you have to have this idea to function like, you know, you don't make any sense, right? That those two sentences are incongruous. Like, what do you what do you mean? Absolutely stop talking. Ah. Uh, so yes, I I'm not excited about this. I do. I think I just need to carve between one and seven hours out of my day and go and take care of this. It's not that big, it. Susan did it last year when hers expired, and she said it was fine stuff. And they're like, Okay, here it's just, like, way more money, which is also stupid. Like, wait, you're telling me I have to have this. But, like, in order to have the super secret special thing you're gonna call charge me, like, $100 like, What are you talking about, huh? No, certainly it's, it's definitely not a money making scheme. It's definitely, it's definitely your safety, yeah, definitely for your safety, yeah. So you want, you want people to be living in bunkers in Montana. This is how you get people living in bunkers in Montana. All right, tell them they have to have an idea. Can and have to pay on dollars worth guys, what are you doing? Yeah, that sounds like way more government overreach than they're going to be happy with, and they're not even happy with what's going on right now. Yes, again, the same people that tell you the government has too much reach are going, No, no. We love ID, like, what we mean, like, just normal. Stop being so strange about this. What do you talking about? We just not be weird. Not be weird, yes, not being weird about it. Just be like, Yeah, okay, here you go, boom, like, also, they're like, no fingerprinting and retinal scanning are too invasive. Have this $100 identification card on you at all times. Can be fine if you don't have this. That's the thing that annoys me, right? Like, if you're going for a stroll, yeah, right. Like you go walking somewhere, and the police just roll up on you because walking is illegal, because if you're walking, they think you're poor. And people, the United States government does not like poor people, right? That's not allowed. And so they'll be like, show me your ID. Like, I don't have one. They get real mad at you, like, hey, what do you mean? I'm just standing here. You came over here to accost me, and now you're mad at me because I don't have the thing that you want, that I don't need because I'm not driving. So, like, I don't know it's called a driver's license, and I'm not driving, and so you're mad that I am not in possession of it right now, I don't understand. Yeah, the problem, guess what? I'm also not doing driving, right? Like, yeah, walking, or, yeah. Like, oh no. You don't have your ID. Like, why do I need it? Like, is this high school to have to wear it on my neck all the time? Like, what's going on? What is this? Where's your lanyard? Stop it lost your lanyard. $12 replacement lanyard. That's what you need. It's so wonderful. Don't tell the US license office, I just said that out loud. They're going to institute mandatory lanyards now, dang it. Yeah, so that's so after we we made it back, and now we're just trying to get back into the groove of things here, which is fun, yeah, fun. We survived again. We had a lot more to do in our business to get it ready for us to in many, many years of running, we've never actually fully unplugged, like had our phones off and not near us, yeah. And so when we were like, Oh well, um, for like five hours, I not gonna have my phone on me, because I would be in the air and and I know people will be listening to this, going, we'll just buy the Wi Fi. Well, haha, jokes on you. No first place, neither. Two flames. How do I fight on them? So there you go. People just, just know that, like, I wasn't even an option in the year 2024, what is this? Yes, the one, the one Granted it was the one out of Springfield. And they could say, you know, they were, basically they gave it, like a three minute apology announcement about not having it. So it's like, even it okay, that's not reliable. I can't say I will always have internet access. I just can't, you cannot do that. And so we had to elevate people and say, Okay, you're the point of contact. You're this point of contact, and you do this, and you're doing this, and here's the keys to the kingdom. And have fun, right? Like that went well. So I think we need to do that more. That was our that was our lesson. But, yeah, when did you say you pointed them to some sort of special Executive Office of the week, maybe biweekly rotation? Perhaps, somebody say, so, oh my, how's your semester, your school year? Soft to good start. Uh, yeah, so far so good, right? Just, uh, still kind of feeling out the children's right? They're very strange at the beginning of the year always, so like just kind of getting through some of the normal beginning of the year stuff. So we did this end of week two, or this will be, this is week two, right? It's only Wednesday, so yeah, it's going pretty good. So far, right? I have learned right, importantly, that this is not about children, but school building in general. Apparently, did you know that a the bells in a school are the most like fragile thing in the history of the world, and we'll just, like, stop working randomly, and you just don't have them for extremely long periods of time. Like, I don't know, ever since we came back to school, just like me, they're broken. Why are they broken? I don't know. Can you fix them? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't understand how complicated this system is like, I don't I actually don't know what controls them, right? But whatever it is, we need to throw it away and get like, an egg timer, because that would be the better thing. It's so bad. They do this. Ours do this all the time. They're just like it, nope, gone. Now, see ya. I don't know if it was like that weird. I think, I think this is related somehow to the power outage that we had on the first day of school, right? So like, like I said, we the power went out for like, 20 minutes of the first day of school, randomly, I don't know why. And ever since then, all the bells and everything was just like, No, not gonna work anymore. So I don't know if the power going off, like, broke them in some way, right? Because they were working on the first day there was a beginning of school they built all the days leading up to that for like, teachers in service, they were going off during the middle of the day, school starts, nothing go, oh, power surge. Like, was it broke? Was it sabotage? I don't know about the whole, I don't know. Maybe, like, Oh no, the bells plan, look the one, one thing we can Yeah, yeah. Turns out you can stop the relentless march of those terrible bells. Just flick the power on. These can't work anymore. I unplug the wire. Unplug the wire.
47:29
Gonzo,
Collin 47:32
other than that mild annoyance, right? Because it's like, oh, it's time for school to start. Is it time for school to end? Uh, yes. Now it is bye. Like, just like, hmm. Doesn't really matter for us, because we only use the bells, like, two or three times a day anyway, but it is kind of it's annoying and strange that they're not there still. Like, I'm sorry. My brain is just caught up. You made a Dickens reference there. I did. Yes, I did. You're welcome. Sneak him in there, right? He's got. You said that. And I was like, oh, yeah, that would be, that was funny. That's equipped. And then I was like, Wait a minute. Wait it, wait, heard that before it's coming, it's here, it's it's there, it. Glad you caught it. Are you? Um, yeah, I'm back on this earth. Okay, yeah, oh, that would pretty good just soldiering through the first little unit, like the first unit of my science, I kind of so there's this concept in teaching called, like, the first 20 day. Oh, and there's, like, all these books written about it and stuff and blah, blah. And it's really people overthinking it, but it's like, you, it's like, how do you introduce concepts and things in the classroom like that you need for the whole school year, right? Because you can't do it all in like, one day, right? Like procedures and things like this, right? So 20 days is too long for me. I can't be bothered with that. So the first, like two weeks, like my, my first unit is just like a couple weeks. It's not very long. It's just like a brief little introduction to, like, science, scientific method, stuff like that. Boom. So it's like, I use it as my like, quote, first 20 day kind of plan, right? So it's like, Okay, here's where we're gonna take some notes. It's like, real short, but it's like, we talk about the binder. We talk about where the binder goes. We talk about how to write in the binder. We talk about all this kind of stuff, right? We talk about, you know, class participation. And we talk about respectful classrooms. We talk about assignment trays. We talk about how to turn in assignments. We talk about tomorrow. We're going to talk about the Google Classroom stuff. We're going to talk about signing into that. We're going to talk about how to use that. We're going to talk about we do some experiments so we can talk about, like, you know, experiment procedures and group work expectations, and like all these things, right? So I it's kind of like, my little this is how the class works lesson. So the secret we're really actually just teaching about how class works in sixth grade. That's what we're actually teaching. But there's, like, also science, uh huh, yeah, well, because in order for science to be taught, you have to function in the classroom. Yeah, we ought to be on the same page about this, right? To be very clear, like, these are what we want. This is what's happening. This is how we're going to be successful, right? So, tomorrow and Friday, we're doing some just little experiments, right? Nothing like very drastic. But it's about like again, data sheets doing the procedure group work, we get to talk about triple E balance scale. So that's fun and exciting, right? Everyone loves that. So because some of these kids have never used a balance scale before, Oh no, what a terrible tragedy. So we're gonna use that and do all those things. So that's kind of the oh and then, like, we're gonna do a quiz, but it's like a short first quiz. But again, we talk about the quiz procedure. We do the here's the study guide, here's the review stuff that we do, here's the quiz. Here's how we do quizzes. These are the quiz expectations. Like, all these kind of things, right? Like, so it's all kind of wrapped up in there, and then we just blast onto rocks and do geology forever and good times. But that's kind of the first, like, beginning of the school thing, right? Like, just kind of, here's all the stuff. And, like, where are things in the classroom that you'll need? So, like, you know, we're doing some project like, Oh, here's where the rulers and stuff are. Here. They are over here. You can use them, damn, like that. So like, seating expectations, all these kind of things when they sit in the alternate some of the alternate seats, like, Oh, here's what I expect. Here's what you do. Stop sitting at each other. Weirdos. Would do that. Like, off, yeah, stop that. Why are you talking so loudly during independent work times? That's weird, like, so stuff like that. So just kind of getting in the groove, getting them in the groove, getting them to know what we're all about here in sixth grade land, yeah, and doing little science intro stuff, so which is kind of basic level, like science, like, it's just like scientific method and like, little stuff like that. So the quiz basically is like, hey, which one's the independent variable? Like, like, what's a science How do you ask a science question? The hardest thing in actual science, because you have to measure something. So we talked about that today, like making that leap from normal question asking is, like, why doesn't that work? Too? What's making it not work? Now we're sciencing, because we can measure something with air, right? Does this, you know, can I does this? Need this to happen? Ooh, I can test that. Ooh, yeah, let's go. Like, now we're cooking. Now we're going. So, yeah, it's not pretty good, just kind of moving, doing stuff some they're a lot quieter than life. They're not they're a lot less shouty than last year, so my ears aren't bleeding the end of the day. That's handy. Uh, it turns out that makes a big difference for a classroom and classroom management, yeah, when they're just not like, at maximum volume all the time, just like, classic, normal stuff. Like, oh, I'm just going to talk always like, Excuse me. No. Or like, you know, I don't need you to comment on every sentence that I say, right? I don't need your running internal monologs spoken out loud. But that's not a thing that we need to have happen in class. It's really good. It's not though I'm really funny. It's just like, the same two comments over and over again. It's not funny. No one's laughing at you. Be quiet, stop it, such as middle school, right? Like, there you go. So, yeah, yeah, pretty good. So far, right? It. So just print it off stuff for experiment tomorrow. Get Data Collection, you know, fill out a data sheet, yay. So we'll need those later. So that's good. Grandparents Day is messing my life up, though. Oh, because this year grandparents, they're like, Oh, the sixth grade needs to, you know, be part of Grandparents Day. Like, do we really like? Because, again, we're like, technically, the way our building is split up, we're in the elementary part, right? And like, elementary kids love Grandparents Day, but those are, like, eight year old. So their teachers do like crafting and like coloring. So I don't know what to do if a grandparent shows up in my room, because, like, I told the kids, I was like, I don't know if he knows about me. I'm not, like, a crafting person. And they just laughed. They're like, yeah, we kind of figured that out. Give them a rock, yeah. Like, the problem is, problem is they, they want to do grandparents next, next Friday, next Friday was going to be quiz day. Oh, right. And so I don't, can't have grandparents and a quiz day that won't that's not fun. It'll work properly. So unfortunately, I think I'm gonna have to do one of my experiments after the quiz, right? So if grandparents come, they're like, Hey, look at this data log. Grandma Isn't this cool. Look at my hypothesis. Yeah, yeah. You could show something off, yeah, absolutely. I think it's what we do. Okay? Because I have nothing else to do and I don't want to like cutie I can't do like cutie things. That's illegal. So no, you could have data that turns out to be graphed in the form of a flower, and then you could give them that, yeah, ah, I may graph the data. I think this year I'm gonna It's okay. So this, again, this is not an exciting experiment, okay. This is not like, oh my gosh, my life has changed forever. That's not what we're doing here. This is how to run an experiment, identifying variables and data collection. Yeah. Okay. So the experiment is, how fast do Skittles dissolve in water, right? And how does water temperature affect the dissolving rate? That's the, that's the, that's the goal here. So we have cups of Skittles and or cups of water and Skittles, and we drop them in there, and we time them. That's it, and we write it down on our daddy, and that's it. But I think this year because of time, and because it takes the Skittles a very long time to dissolve in the water, right? Like this year, like normally, you're supposed to have like hot water and cold water. As you can imagine, Skittles do not dissolve in cold water. It takes like, 25 minutes. Yeah, right. So this year, I think we're gonna have hot water and hotter water. This is planned. We're gonna have like, warm water and like hot water because, because dad decided that I needed he bought me a tea kettle. So there you go. So I have a TKT, and so now I have a way to actually heat water, yeah, so this is exciting. So now we're gonna have, like, real hot water and just like, normal hot tap water, yeah, so that might speed it up a little bit. I'll take some average temperature readings, and then I'm think I'm going to do some graphing on the board so they can see our results, because normally we just like share them and talk about them. But I think I'm going to attempt to attempt to do some like maybe at least average may graph the averages in a bar graph, right? I think I may do that take some average times and bar graph them to show them the results they got somebody this year. Yes, yes, bar graphs. More bar graphs, because they're going to graph later. So showing them a graph right now probably a good start, right? Because we will graph later on. Because that's a big thing. Reading graphs is big, important science thing. So I think I'm gonna do that this year. I think I just said. That right now. So that's what write it down. Hey guys, graph arena, yeah, so that's pretty much how it's going. I'm pretty good so far. Not too bad. Just kind of normal. Just do to do, to do, doing this. It is. I have been bombarded, however, very already, early in school year, right? I forget how early in the school year, all the clubs are like, Oh yeah, by the way. Do you remember that we sell things like, oh no, oh no, oh no. It's like, second week of school, they're just like, and bam, can I interest you in buying things from the FFA? Like, I really don't want to buy overpriced things from the FFA, but I don't really want any of this. But okay, I don't really need a box of beef jerky in my life. It's really not something I want, but maybe there's something else in here that these will only dig, though we keep digging. Yeah, that is a I always forget about that. I forget about how quickly that stuff starts, yeah, and there's like, hey, remember selling things like, I did not remember that. Dang it. Why? Unfortunately, what? No, I was hoping you forgot about that. Ah, I've been hiding, dodging them, like, Oh no, I bought one already. Sorry, sorry, God, already got me. There you go. Can't do Oh, yep, already full up on my beef jerky. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was, that's it, hiding from sales and doing science experiment. I know, I'm sure worst things have happened. So, yes, oh, good. Oh, the other thing happened earlier. I'm telling myself here I my other anecdote. Sorry, before we move into our stuff, here is, I was talking about throwing random quotes into a conversation. I don't even remember what we're talking about. We're sitting on the couch eating dinner, right, talking about stuff. And, you know, I'm mouthing Susan, this is what I do, right? Just I do it, that's just happens. And she said something. She's like, she said, like, I am blah, blah, blah. And she goes, who do you think you are? And for some reason, the next words out of my mouth were, I am the terror that flaps in the night. And I thought she was going to not make that's a that's a pull and a half. She's like, What tried to explain what that was, obviously, but like, oh, yanked that out. My goodness, just through good old dark pink duck reference in Yeah, that's a solid one. I don't know why that was the first thing. They just jumped into the deep recesses there. But yeah, you know what's crazy about Darfur duck? It was only on for a year. Do you know that's so good? I know it's it just it holds. It's one of those little bits in my brain that just holds an inordinately, like, large amount of gray matter, as far as, like, relevance and importance in my life, and knowing, like, Nope, it was just another thing in the early 90s that only lasted a year or less, and everybody saw it. And so, oh, you know, pretty sure I can still theme Sing me a theme song. So that's, I won't do that right now for, you know, like, I've All right now, yeah, it was, it wasn't down that long. They, like, played it. They played all the reruns, a lot, sure. But like, yeah, it wasn't like, a long running series, which is weird that happened a lot of times. Like these very, like, Pivotal, monumental things that I love are, like, there's 27 episodes. That's it. That's all there. Like, what, what do you mean? How did that happen? Why did I latch onto this? What's going on? Yeah, what does that say about me? If I think this is really important and really, really pivotal to to a ham, to an individual, just timing, I guess, right? Like, just, yeah. But still, it is weird. Good pull on that. Good. But yeah, she, I thought she was gonna fall right off. Yeah, I didn't, I mean, she would have been warranted, yeah, the lack of context or, yeah, just pulling that out somewhere with no context whatsoever. Was kind of rude, but I just say go also, just like I remember always liking the because after that line, he always say something like, really weird and random, like some other metaphor. It's like, slightly threatening, but, like, not really, oh, yeah, I know. Like, if we're not about it, for an instance, dude, like, like, that's like, that's weird. It's like, I the mouse that sneaks away with your cheese. You're like, What? What? What? What does that mean? Yeah, that's weird. I don't actually, that's actually worrisome as much as it is confusing, and I don't know about this, yeah, I don't know. I am the snag on the toe of your sock. Right? What? Catch braces from dark wing duck. They go right, yeah. There's some daisies in there. Like, oh, well, yeah, let's get serious. Let's get danger. Let's get dangerous. Oh, he said, apparently, a lot of things, yeah. He said, Let, let's get dangerous. Was the big one, yeah, let's get decories, apparently, in the and then he play on him all the time, some sort of like play on the theme. It was very clever. It was very clever show. It was very, very cleverly written. Oh, yeah, yeah. I am the terror that flaps the Knight and the jailer that throws away that key. I am, yeah. Anyway, yeah, I'm the switch that derails your train. Yeah. I see, like, what? No, and the fact that you pulled the I'm a mouse that eats your cheese. Like, that's a real one. Like, that's a real one. People like, oh yes, it is this. I am little mouse that eats your cheese. They go, I'm the combination lock on the vault of justice. Oh, oh, that's good. These are actually, oh, that's a good one. I i I am the icky bug that crawls up your trouser leg. I don't need an appointment. Okay, so some of these are kind of weird. Anyway. Anyway, this is includes, oh, and of course, there's a dark ring duck tops fandom. So there's, of course, poor fire there better be disappointed if there wasn't money. Yeah, there's a whole section dedicated to just, just catchphrases. Yeah, there we go. Okay, witty. Oh, good. Oh, my gosh, I completely forgot about bushroot, what and the what. How you gonna go, forget about, yeah, the side characters that show very strange, very strange. Again, it's like, like, yeah, we saw Batman once, and then, like, it's a plant dude, and somebody tried to describe what was going yeah. And then there's the liquidator anyway, oh yeah, yeah, the clever See, there's the electricity dudes with the plug hat thing, right? That's a thing that happened. It's like sad looking Devo cosplay is actually, oh and the nega duck, yeah, anti Dark Queen deck, yeah, that was a good character I did Like Milot, yeah, when there's trouble you call DW boom. Yeah, okay, maybe that means another, we may need to have another challenge where we come up, where we find the best catchphrases of Oh 90s, oh Valerie, it's all dark. We've got, actually, it's just, it's just top 10. We do. We do need to do that 90s cartoon draft that we talked about that one time. We pull that out there. Yes, at some point it's not now, but like, no future, keep that one in the vault. Like, I think, I think I don't know if I told you this out loud, or maybe if I just thought this one at some point, we also need to do, like, need to do, like a 90s movie thing. But I feel like it needs to be in two parts, right? We definitely need to have like a 1990 to 19 like 94 and then like a 95 to 99 section, because I feel like those are two extraordinarily. Different times, right? I feel like that's like we should do that we but we should do it in like half, right? I feel like that would be good. Yes, I definitely agree that the the later half of the of the 90s is a completely, completely different take on lots of things. And I think that just really is animation styles and stuff as just people were using more computers or trying to at least for various things. Obviously, that stayed off until early 2000s but you can really start seeing the influence of that in the late 90s, early 2000s it just changed, you know, the style that way, and then they told different stories because of that. So, yeah, that's all, but it's way it feels, feels much further away from 1993 than, like, five years right? In some of that stuff. It's very strange. So I just even with like, normal movies too, like the advent of like, Oh no, what if we did CGI? And then there was a lot of like, Oh no, you did see oh yeah, in the formative years. It was not the greatest, right? But you look at something that came out in the late 90s and then versus something that came out in the early 90s, or, like late 80s, with, like, something like, we were talking about this the other day for some weird reason, honey, I shrink with the kids, right? Like, just the vibes are way different. It's a little more intense, yeah, and all the effects were basically practical effects where that, like, just adds, it just makes a different vibe to the whole thing, right? Like, with a giant Lego brick and huge Cheerios, like it's I put that on the list of things to do. Gotcha. Well, do we want to march forward here with the little bit of time we have left. Yeah, we can go through these real quick. Some of these, these chapters, pretty much all go right together. So I think, yeah, probably just blitz through this really quickly. Here. This isn't too, too bad of a thing, right? So we are on chapter 21 is that true? Is it? Marco? Yeah. Marco, Marco, yeah. So we're getting close. We're getting close to the end here, too much further to go really. Few more weeks, we'll be out of this. Yes, yeah, we, we find a Marco. I did, I apologize. I did read this a long time ago. I was just actually going to make the same caveat that I read this before my trip. So yeah, I think we didn't do it last time, right? I think that's I read it for last time. So I, like, personally, like, reviewed a little bit. And so I may be missing some things here, but, like, basically we are. They're still traveling around, right? And so they're trying to see again, we get off track here very quickly, but, like, his goal is to, like, see the kingdom, right? That's what he wants to do. So he wants to see the kingdom and this. And so he he meets some people, and he's like, talking to them, and there's like, coal burner guy and some stuff here, and he decides that he these are people he's going to talk to and, like, hang out with, right? He wants to, like, eat with him, right? Just accurate, am I remembering correctly? So this, this whole part here, is just sort of him, like, kind of seeing what's going on. And like, saying that. He like, yes, yes, I will, you know, we're gonna do this. And he's like, introducing himself to these people. And like, we want to tell him that he wants to meet with him. And then he's like, oh, yeah, no, we're gonna do this. It'll be fine. Let me, I will, you know, I know I understand. Like, his big thing here is, like, he, he like, this is where it already gets confusing, right? Because he's like, we're gonna be we're gonna meet the common people, and we want to meet, we want to see what the kingdom's really about. And then he's like, Oh, no, I understand the financial strain that inviting all of these people to your house is going to put on you. So I'll pay for it. Don't worry about it. Everything's fine, yeah. Well, because before this, there was quite the discussion. I think this is where they were talking the discussion about, like, basically the wage gap between the North and the South. And how this was a great concern, yes, about that, and, like, why that was, and, yeah, and he, like, he does do some talking about, like, the he relates it to, like, the north and south of the United States, like, post war, right? With, like, the Confederate dollar and all this stuff, right? Yep, this is not the only economic lecture we're going to get in these chapters. This is the setting the stage, right. Like, ooh, here it comes. Yeah, he's talking about that. And he's talking about, like, valuations of property stuff, and then I think that's one of the reasons he brings it up later. He's like, no, no, don't worry, I'll pay for everything. It's fine, because, you know, he realizes it, because, like, he met all these people, and he's like, I'm gonna invite like, he kind of feels slightly bad that he invited himself and at least two other people to Marco's house. Yep, yeah. It's like, it's like him and the king, and then like, two other random dudes. He's like, Yeah, Marco, we're gonna come eat at your house. And Marco's like, what? Hold on. And so he's like, oh, yeah, don't worry. I'll, I'll, I don't want to put you out. I know that it's going to be a big thing, but don't worry. I'm, you know, he's a farmer, yeah, farmer. And I'm, you know, I work for him, so don't worry, everything's fine. We'll, uh, we'll pay the expenses so that we just want to enjoy time together, right? That's basically this whole chapter. It's like we've introduced to Marco and these other people, and we're gonna go see what happens next. That's kind of this, though. This is just like a setup for the next chapters. Yeah, yep. It really was different. So it's not like, super exciting, except for like this they like, see, is this the chapter where they're like, in the there's like, kids, like, pretending to, like, Hang somebody in the woods. That's like, was it the mob of kids? Yeah, started off, you're
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like, What in
Collin 1:17:02
the world? What the heck are you doing? Like, where did this come from, right? Like, yeah, that's in there. So it's like, okay, what? But yeah. So anyway, that's what happens here. And then in the next chapter, uh, now we get, like, some about, like, he's he's really showing off about how much stuff he bought to be sent to Marcos, yeah, does it? It doesn't really vibe with the first chapter where he's like, Oh yes, we're inconspicuous, just common men traveling about, and he orders, just like, an obscene amount of things from this like grocer thing or whatever. Like, yeah, it starts off by saying, well, when that cargo arrived, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting, yeah, because he's like, Don't worry, it's fine, everything's fine. Then he just, like, orders, like, he like, plays it off, like, it's not a big deal, and he just buys, just, there's actually a list of things here, right? Did you have the list in your book? I did. I did. He said that he had bought a lot of extra, quote, unquote extras for the future comfort of the family. So he's also, yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah. So those are all of the things that he Yeah. There's like, two pounds salt, eight dozen pints beer, three bushels wheat, two pounds fish, three hens, one goose, three dozen eggs, one roast beef, one roast mutton, ham, one ham, one suckling pig, two crockery sets, two men's suits and underwear, one stuffed and one Lindsey, Woolsey gown, eight wood and goblets, various table furnitures. One table, eight stools, two milliner guns, which is something of his own invention. Honestly, this is just like, the most insane thing of all time. Yeah, he's like, Oh yeah, I bought him some clothes, and they didn't have a table, so I bought him a table. And, you know, I didn't think they had enough, like, crockery, so I got him some cups and stuff, right? I bought him, like, table service, right? And it's just like, it's a lot going on here. It's just a lot. You can see how it would be very overwhelming, especially when somebody has had no prior connection to that lifestyle. Like, if you don't have, like, he goes on, like, about the clothes and stuff that he's he's purchased them, it's like, yeah, if he didn't have these kind of clothes, it would be very off putting to have that, yeah, and like, he it's the part here that's just bizarre is, like, before this, he's talking about, like, Oh yeah, you know, I just wanted to show off a little, right? Like, he's like, if they if I'm gonna do a thing, I'm gonna overdo the thing, and I'm gonna enjoy watching people's responses to the thing I'm doing, which is, like. Totally the antithesis of what he was said. He was doing anyway, was, I'm just gonna observe the common man. What he really means to say is, I'm gonna observe the common man Bask in my glory, right? Yes, because there's this whole ordeal afterwards where he's talking about, like, you know, the person who's like, bringing him his bill is like, stuttering because it's such a vast sum. And he's like, yeah, just give me the total. It's fine. And they tell him that it's, uh, was it 39,150 mil raise? And the dude, like, faints. Like, if the other guy at the table is like, not, there. They cannot comprehend this. And he's just like, and the guy is like, oh, apologies. Like, you know if I if you can't pay now, they said you can pay some. And he's like, yeah, here go, boom. And just like, throw the money. And he's like, and you can keep the G hits with the you could keep change. He's just like reveling in how in awe they are of him to be able to do that. And it's like it's so ridiculous. His attitude here is just like, the weirdest thing ever. Like, he's just like, yes, yes, I'm just gonna show off. So this chapter is just him, like, showing off and flexing, right? This is the MTV Cribs chapter where he's just like, flexing, like, how much money he has, and like, he's basically like, oh yeah, see, look, I'm just blessing you with my presence. Everything is fine. Blam. It's really weird. Like, and again, I just think it's really weird, because this is like, not what he said he wanted to do, and like, he was here to observe the common man and the needs of the kingdom and how people live their life. And he can't help himself, but just like, you know, and it is very interesting. I just, you know, I review, remember, refreshing my mind on this of him, yeah, he he's talking to think that just the chapter before, he is talking about wage gaps and fairness and what that means to people and how he's now, what's also very interesting, through this whole thing, what device have they used to make the king unaware of what's going on? He's sleeping a lot, yeah, yeah. He's just so he's tired of dreaming about invading Gaul as one does. Yes, absolutely, as one does, but just how, you're right, it seems this seems exceptionally antithetical to everything that we've been doing up to this point, how he's been angry that he's been found out along the way, that he couldn't even hide in a cave because there was a telephone repeater there from his own setting up. And how, for some reason now he decides to drop all of this on this one family, right? Like, I, I don't know where this came from for him. Like, as a as a character, it seems really it's just, yeah, it is weird, like, especially because it is sandwiched between, like you said last time we're talking about the previous chapter in Marco, we're talking about like, like income inequality and like wage earning in different regions, like not being the same based on like economic circumstances in those regions. We hit this chapter where he's like, Yeah, bro, I just spent 40,000 milliner on random stuff for a picnic. And then the next chapter is more about economics. Again, it's like, what? What are you doing? What is this? Yeah, well, the only thing I can think of, right? Because, in in this chapter, it is, is, I'm trying to, like, did he but he didn't, because Dolly's I'm trying to, my brain is trying to function here Dallas is called Dolly's humiliation. Did I? Did I remember? Did he? But he did all this before he got connected with dowley and like in their talk about, you know, being self made men and that kind of stuff. So maybe he just played it up extra to, yeah, I think on him, I don't that's the only thing. I think it was. Is maybe he wouldn't have made such a big, flashy show of it, had, had he not been, you know, confronted, or had the had the ire of dowley against him to try and one up him? But it's Yeah, that might be true, right? He just like it. That could be where it comes out of but I just, it's just very weird. It seems way, but again, he admitted he does way overplay and play his hand on these things. So that's true. He does, yeah, he does one time. He's like, maybe I did go a bit overblown here that Whoopsie daisy. Like, yeah, I just couldn't help myself. Oh, you know how it is. He just get all exact. He's also talking at some point about, like, the currency, and, like in the previous chapter, he's talking about, like, the the the his banking system and the minting of the new currency, how it stands up to the old currency, but he pays for this stuff and, like, the old currency. So it's like he's basically saying it's not worth anything because it doesn't have the backing and the valuation of the banking system and, like, it's this whole big metaphor about, like, super banks and all stuff, yeah, basically, this is very, this is very much tied into the, like, late 1800s like Gold versus silver standard money backing situation that was happening while he's writing this, right? Like this is where this is coming from in like Mark Twain's brain, sure, right? It is talking about the post civil war economy and the valuation of the US dollar, and what is going to be backing the currency, right? Because that's the big debate in in Gilded Age America is, is gold standard versus silver standard, right? What's What does that mean for the valuation of the dollar? What does that mean for the buying power? What does that mean for the markets? Like, just, like, huge, all encompassing thing. And, like, you gotta remember, like, when this book was published, every single American would have known about this. Yeah, right. Because this is dominating the political field, right? This is, like, the most important political issue of the time, is, what is like currency, right? This is, this is the thing like inflation values and what's going to be backing the thing. And just like economic policy is, like the number one thing on everybody's mind in the 1880s right? So this commentary coming out and basically having a character going, Ah, what is money worth? I've made my own that's worth more. This is ridiculous. I don't care. Getting rid of this. This isn't even worth, you know, it's not worth what it's printed on at this point. So, yeah, sure, fine. Take this. Yeah, that you could see how that would land really heavily with people who are watching their own economy get get wrecked and get this feud going. But what will happen to the rest of this if one wins and the other loses, what happens to everything else that's built on that other system? How do we make that actually work? Exactly, right? And then we did have some pretty big economic recession during this time in 20 time too, right? So, again, this is a very prevalent thing in the mind of a gilded age reader, right? This is, this makes sense to what's happening in their world. So, like here in our context, it is very odd, but I imagine it makes much more sense to an 1889 person, but still out of, slightly out of slightly out of context for Hank here, just to come out of left field with the Duncan on the party thing. But yeah, I think that's where it all comes from, right? This is like a Twain commentary on banking and greater economic policy, and at least it's in context of the story this time that's at least Nice. Thank you for that. Yeah, I think that's where this is coming from, right? So that's whole thing, which we then carry over into the next chapter, yeah, talking about sixth century political economy, right? Like we start talking about, like real wages versus like and like inflation and all kinds of stuff, right? He's talking about, like real earning power, like buying potential of currency, things like it's he goes hard at this, right? He goes, he's going hard at this guy, yeah, well, and he starts off by basically saying, the way you prove yourself is by having by being exceptionally wealthy or having a title, and sometimes both, and so you can't that's how you one up people here, that's how you compete now. How you have station in life. And so once you've proven that you have more money than somebody, there's nothing to that. He's, you know, he says in this first couple of lines, he says you can't insult him after that, no, I don't mean quite that. Of course you can insult him. Wait, no. So before that, says you prove your security over him in station or rank or fortune. And that's the end of it. He knuckles down, basically, get over it. I'm better than you because of how much money I had. Yeah. And so then that leads us into our buying power situation, where he's talking about, like, yes, yeah, because they're they're arguing about, like, which Kingdom is better off economically, I guess right there, that's what's happening here. They're not like, like, they're not from the same place, right? So again, he's using this comparison of like, north and south from the posts of War era in two chapters ago to come CIR he circling back to it here, and he's talking about, like, Okay, well, your wages are this much, but it costs you this much to buy thing, right? Whereas, like, it costs you a large percentage of your wages to buy things. Whereas we earn, we have like less wages, but the costs are lower, right? So there's like more buying power there, like, you can buy more with the dollar. Like, when he's talking about eggs, he's like, Yeah, we pay 33 for this, but, like, we get more eggs, and you pay more or less, and blah, blah. And he's trying to make him understand how buying power works, and he's not getting it, because he's just saying, like, Yes, so, but you, he just keeps saying yes, but you agree that we make more money, right? Uh huh, but he's not. He's not talking. He's not taking into valuation like he can't understand that the the cost of production is higher, and so he can buy less for his dollar than Hank can in his hungum, right? He doesn't care, right? He's just focused on that top dollar figure of like, we make more, right? That's all that matters to me. Yeah, not, not that all of the stuff also costs more, yeah, right. He's not looking at the Big Mac Index correctly, right? He's how much how much Big Mac Can I buy for this dog is $4 right? Or how much Big Macs are? Now, I think it's some stupid amount of money. But like, you know how much of my wages go? What percentage of my wages does do? I need to buy this commodity, right? He's trying to make this big, big economic argument. This is a very deep economic topic. Yeah, and the other guy's like, but you said that I have more money than you, so I can see that I'm you're wrong and I'm better. Like, he keeps trying to tell him in, like, basically this whole chapter is just like him telling him in like six different ways about how to grasp real wages and economic buying power. This is an econ textbook, just like sunk and snuck into a story that's what's happening. And man is it ever more relevant these days, with inflation and cost of living, and even with wage increases, how with inflation and stuff again, like but real world buying power is not what people think it is, or they don't feel that in, because, well, that's in. I mean, I attended that economic outlook thing and they were like, Yeah, wage to spending is still there's a huge gap. Because while yes, people's wages have risen, and sure that that's great, so too has the cost of everything. So spending for households has also gone up. So, yeah, the real world buying power of that is not eligible, right? Or, if not less, yeah, exactly. And yeah, it is very, like, this is very, this is very relevant. 2024, like we think about, I saw a chart the other day, right? People talk about, you know, inflation at it's like, below 3% now for the first time, which is good, right? Slowing down. But if you look at inflation rates since like 2019 it's like astronomical, right? The chart is like bananas. It's like something like 20% or something like that, like since like 2019 or 2020 right? Because of various economic things and the lack of growth potential in a saturated market, right? So, problem again, I said this a long time ago. Okay? Economic people. Cool, right? I don't know why you're not listening to me. Clearly, I'm an expert here, because I was right. I want you to I'm putting this on record. I was correct in saying what's going to happen when people start talking about increasing wages, right? They're going to say, yes, yes, we're going to increase wages. So all of these companies are going to look at their boardroom and they're going to say, now our profit our profit margin, let's say, was 10. I'm just arbitrarily he never right. Profit Margin is 10. Our if, if all stays the same, right, if we change nothing, our profit margin will now be seven. Uh huh, to shareholders and business executive people, this is unacceptable, because this is a profit margin number going down, which is like, they cannot fathom this. This is not possible, right? So what they've done, what they did originally, was artificially inflate everything and moved up all the prices and all the everything else, so that the ceiling is now higher, so the profit margin remains 10. Yeah, right. Could they have lived and been perfectly fine with their profit margin at seven? Yes. Would it affect anything at all? No. Would it affect their product? Would it affect their customers? No, it only affected the people in the boardroom and the shareholders of the company, right? And they saw that it had worked, and nobody said anything. And they were like, 11, right? This we, a lot of companies now are in this place where the growth is not there, right? You the way that it works, right? You grow to a certain point, and then the your growth starts to level off, and you're going to be at just like a small percent the rest of the time. But if you look at that compared to in the first six months of your company, say, when you were growing by, I don't know, like 15% and now you're at two. You say, Oh, something is wrong. Nothing is wrong, right? This is the natural arc, because now you're in a competitive market, and the slice is among all these people, and you cannot grow anymore, right? You hit a cap, and then you start leveling off. This is just how it works, right? This is this how it works. This is why, a long time ago, not not even that long ago, people were talking about, like, China's economic growth forecast, right? And they were like, Oh my gosh, China is like slowing down in growth. Like, no, no. They've just caught up to everyone else, right? They were industrializing and growing it like a huge rate, because they were behind, right? And now they're, they're caught up to where everyone else is. So their growth is slowing down. This is normal. This is what all these companies do. But they saw the slow down and freaked out and saw that they could just raise prices, and nobody noticed. So they just did, and that was it. There's no other real reason. Nope. So So, yeah, there were, there was a small period of of, like, some there was, you know, the the whole supply chain thing. There was the, you know, ships getting stuck in the Suez Canal thing, right? There was a, you know, a global catastrophe for a minute, but then after that, prices should have rebounded down. But again, because boardrooms cannot stand to see prices going down, they think that is bad, right? They're just like, Nah, we're just gonna artificially keep them up. The same people that say government's putting price caps on thing is socialism and bad also just artificially kept the prices up, which is the same thing, just backwards. You're still fudging the numbers, right? So, like, this is what's going on here. So, so, yeah, that's, that's what we're dealing with here. And Hank is trying to explain some of this very deep economic stuff to a sixth century man who just heard but I have more money than you, so I'm better than you, uh huh, and could not comprehend that Hank's dollar could buy more than his dollar because he had more dollar, but I had more dollars. Yeah, so who cares? Sorry. There's a bit of a long winded econ rant. I apologize for that. It is important. I think again. As people fully try fully understand it's not just about the macroeconomics. This is, this is microeconomics stuff. This is impacting people's families, budgets, and the people do cry for and and there is this need and desire to have higher living wages, higher wages for people like it is, it is a necessity. In many places, people are chronically underpaid. But let's but there are, or can be consequences down the line, depending on how things shake out. I mean, I know tons of small business owners who just physically can't afford to pay anybody with because, because they know well, if I pay the person more, I don't have money for my own personal budget to pay for my kids food, so but also I can't, because we're in a price sensitive economy now I can't raise my rates to accommodate this price increase For this person who's working for my company, because that's not tolerated by my customers anymore, because they're fed up with it. And again, like but a lot of this has started in you're saying larger corporations, multi billion dollar, trillion dollar corporations who went, No, I need nine, not seven, or I need 10, not nine. And across the board, it's made that happen, and people become hypersensitive to it. When at local economies, it makes more sense, I want to pay somebody more. I have to earn more. How do I earn more? I have to grow my business, or I need to charge more for my things. And unfortunately, when and I was listening to something about, you know, like restaurants, like, the amount that they pay in food products, is asinine. And they still have to pay people to cook that, to make the meal. And we're like, oh, I had to pay $10 for my, you know, my chicken alfredo. It's like, that is like, they're barely covering their costs with that at this point. That needs to be a $25 dish just to pay for the cream, and you are complaining about $10 like, but because people don't think about they don't understand that it's it's harder to have those conversations, because all they care about is, well, I'm making more. So what's the big deal? Yeah, and I think that's a really important thing that government regulatory bodies need to consider, right? I feel like one size fits all legislation, as far as, like, wage earning is not acceptable because you're right in the food service industry, right? Like, you know it'll be, there has to be some nuance here. Because, because, yes, I think personally, that the wages and the earning potential that we need to be worried about is like McDonald's, right? We don't need to be worried about like Bob's restaurant, right? That's not important. The problem is we can't say that McDonald's has to pay X amount of money to their employees, because now the workforce is going to be driven there, yep, instead of Bob's, and you're going to still put Bob's out of business, because the labor force is going to see that and go, well, they make more than over here, right? But that's because they can afford to pay more, right? So you you have to say, you have to put some sort of regulation. Increase in incentive for McDonald's to just pay their people more naturally, because they have more money, right? If you're a multi billion dollar corporation, pay your employees, bro. Like, this is not a difficult thing. This is not a hard thing for me to comprehend. But like, yeah, like, if you are making that much money, like you need to be paying the people that made you that money in some way, shape or form, right? Not just being like, well, the government says I only have to pay this, so that's what you get, loser, sorry. So that yeah, you're right. The the regulation has to take into account small business and other things, otherwise, you're just gonna kill off the smaller businesses faster, right? Because, yes, do people need to make more money? Yeah, probably. But also, the other way to think about this too is to because we might end up like the other guy in this book, and just like I have more money, but I don't have any buying power with the money, right? My money doesn't go very far because I have, I have $10 but all the things I need to buy are all cost $7 right? The valuation is backwards, right? So there has to be some mechanism to bring down the costs of the raw material and the raw goods, so that the wages will just naturally buy more stuff. The problem is the economy really doesn't like it when prices have. Things go down, right? People freak out and again, because the economy's made up and it's not actually real. When prices go down, all those fools on the stock market just go, oh, sell all the stuff. And that's bad, right? That doesn't go good. Panic selling is a bad time for everyone. So there needs to be some like sensible pricing control measures. I know that sounds like socialism, but it's not. It's fine. Don't worry about it to drive down the costs of the raw materials so that then everything else can, like, level off, right? Well, and he gets to a little bit here at the end, where they start talking about price fixing for wages too. Where he touches on that, you know, he says, uh, the magistrate fixes a mechanic's wage at one cent a day. For instance, law says that if any master shall venture even under utmost presence of business to pay anything over that cent for a single day, he shall be both fined and pilloried for it. And it's like, Oh, man. So now you're really locking all of this in, right? And and and no matter where you lock this in, on the high end or the low end, like, any sort of monkeying with that kind of starts throwing off the whole system, because now not everybody can do that, and it's one reason why, if you look at like, I think of this from like, also like regulatory perspectives. Like, yeah, of course, Facebook really wants to, they would love to be regulated. Why? Because they're a trillion dollar company, and they can pay lawyers. They hope that they get regulated to win an inch of their life so that nobody else can come and supplant them from their position of power. Of course, they want that any major business is like they just they try and cut off the rungs of the ladder as they climb up them to keep others and yes, same thing can happen with wages. Trillion dollar companies can easily say they can be on they they are on the biggest bandwagons for Yes, $25 an hour. Why don't we just go $80 an hour? Can we please do that? Because they know no smaller company, no small business, can pay that for their their workers, because they don't have the scale to do that, and that cuts them out of the market entirely as well. Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think, like, one way that you can drive down, you have to drive down the cost at the bottom right of, like, the raw material goods of the foods product, right, in order to make the prices go down and be able to pay these people, and then that money can go further, because the goods cost less, right? The one of one possible real solution, I'm not saying the only solution right. One possible real solution is actually so all these companies that have, like, billions and billions of dollars, you actually have to just tax the bejesus out of them, right? And they need to be paying a lot more tax, and that tax money has to go back into like government subsidies, to help subsidize the cost of raw goods, to bring the cost down and to be able to pay the people that are producing the first line of stuff, right? Like farmers, right now the farmers are getting paid, and the bad like, the cost of them to farm and do things goes down too, because they're getting paid subsidy prices from thing, right? But that subsidy price has to come from taxes on like, somebody that's making, like, if you're making, like, $97 billion and you're like, Oh no, I have to pay some tax. I'm not sad for you. I just want you to know that, like, I don't care, sorry, so that you have to be able to feed the money back into the system some way. Otherwise it just all goes up and then just stays up there and doesn't do anything for the economy, right? It looks good on a graph, but like it's not doing anything. The money's not being used to go back and build into the account that's you have to use it, and it has to be doing stuff for the economy to function. You can just like, have it somewhere, because it doesn't do any good at all, right, just stuck, and you can't buy anything with it, so, because it's in a stock or something. But, yeah, anyway, sorry. Hank got me all Hank got me all sidetracked with the economic policy here. I don't know what's going on. Sucker punches dowley here by basically throwing it in his face that dowley What had confessed to paying more than a particular price. Yes, goodness. Yes, and things get real quiet real fast, and it's kind of left awkward with with Mr. Hank sitting over here going, I think I overdid that a little bit. Yeah, he did. That wasn't good. I really it made. He's going, ooh, I threw that in his face. Too hard, a little too much. I really hit Yeah. He says, I hit him too hard. Oh, no. Basically, he's just, you know, anyway, he's he said, Well, you're breaking the law, and that's not what you're supposed like you, you've been fighting for all this. You've been fighting for these protections this whole time, and you yourself have just admitted to living outside that and not abiding by those so anyway, want to drink if Yeah, like, oh, anyway, yeah, and we live leave them in quite the quite the quandary. And I haven't read the next chapters, but I haven't either, so I did page over to see the next title. And yeah, we'll see what it doesn't bode well for. Nope, like things definitely the chapter title suggests things take a big turn just out of nowhere, just like, there we go. I mean, not necessarily out of nowhere. We did just huge spending spree and then some accusations to get somebody so anyway, we're gonna, I'm very interested to see what happens here and and see what the next chapter's brain, that's for sure. Yeah. So, yes, yes, right. So in closing, right? If I can figure out what I do with my screenshot of the Mark Twain quote of the week. Ah, yes, haha, right now we got a bit serious there with economic policy discussion, so I didn't plan this. I had this one picked out already. But here's your Mark Twain quote of the week, right? The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. Oh, bringing some, speaking of levity, right? Speaking of bringing it back, yeah, well, unless, depending on how that laughter is, Metro, I think it means like we're, I think we're I think we're talking about mirth and joviality. Let's hope I think we're like, I don't think we're like, mockingly laughing at people. I wrote that as, uh, brain is quote, and that's actually Mark Twain's, it's Mark Twain's quote. I am quoting Mark Twain. I have not, I've not come up with that. That's not me. Fine, sure. Okay, I do have a haiku, though, a haiku, a haiku I know who saw that one coming. So a bit of a haiku inspired by the greatest Olympic movie of all time. The new door open. Demons surface from the past, peace in unity. And I like it is that not the plot of Cool Runnings? Or what? Look at that exactly the plot of cool running. It's, it's that just, you might just want to scream, it's bobsled time at the end of that. Yeah, it is good. I like it. Bobsled time is only four syllables, and could not fit into hacker anywhere, and so I have two on the nose. I had to go, like, really, like, esoteric with it, because every other sentence I kept coming up with had four or six syllables. Was like, Oh my goodness. This I had to think of had to go with, like, beaming right, yes, like right on the nose, or themed around it, yeah, yeah. It was a little tricky, but got it done in the end. I like, good we'll stop there. And I just, I just checked the time, and I was like, Oh, well, that was that took a minute. Yeah, I just noticed that too. I was like, Oh, we just get through those chapters, like, real quick. Like, oh no,
1:54:23
I had no
Collin 1:54:23
idea I wasn't paying attention. I was like, what time is we're about to wrap up with, oh gosh, Whoopsie daisy. Yeah. All right. Well, enjoy the long episode drivers out there, next week. Oh yes. Love you. Love you.
1:54:39
Bye. Bye.