The Sickos do a special unemployed version of Cog Talk where they do the unthinkable and wish they had an evil computer that took up half their time with awful job tasks. As bad as it is, just sitting around all day is worse! Plus, Tom yammers and yaps about The Bee Sting, a great novel by Paul Murray.
[00:00:00] Behold, A Cold Open. So I have a very good blue sky tip for the blue sky heads out there. Because if you want to be a posting guy, that's where you got to be these days. You may have noticed that people just respond to the Discover tab, like everything in there is personally directed at them like it's a front facing TikTok video. Yeah, it's like they see a post and they treat it like someone at a restaurant gave them something they're allergic to.
[00:00:27] Yes, and I have a really good fix for this. Everyone says the nuclear block is good. It's so good folks, you should use the nuclear block. No, no, no, no, no, I got something better. I got something better. What you should do is like if you make a post and it contains a joke, something humorous, and they reply in a way that communicates nothing else other than they don't get the joke.
[00:00:57] Do not block them. Instead, just look at their little avatar and their name for a little bit. And just like silently accept that they're not worthy of life. Now, Joe, I'm with you. I'm just wondering, like, is there a bit you're like, because obviously that's true. And I do do that. But like, why not also after that block them? Why block them? Why block them? Why would you block a fucking corpse, Tom? It doesn't matter. Okay.
[00:01:27] And if you're doing this right, they don't show up in your feed just because your brain understands that they are not a living entity anymore and will no longer render it on your feed.
[00:02:03] Welcome to Anime Sickos. It is the podcast for geniuses. It is the only podcast. It is the podcast where we look at the four pillars of modern misery, anime, gaming, posting, and jobs. I am Tom, an anime sicko. I'm Joe, an anime sicko. We have four patrons to thank before we start our hilarious and insightful episode that will take the nervousness and anxiety you're feeling and give it shape and a name. Yeah, but so does giving us money.
[00:02:30] Giving us money also resolves those bad feelings. Yeah, it's like the same as therapy. It's a lot faster, right? Therapy costs more. Yeah, we're faster. It costs more. I've been trying to look into a therapist. I've been learning about all the different types of therapy, all the different schools and philosophies and methodologies. Therapies, I'm not sure I totally understand the lingo, though.
[00:02:59] So maybe if someone out there knows more about therapy, what's the one that fixes living in a world run by evil men? Yeah, what letters are those? Yeah, yeah. All the therapy I've been to has just been talking about my feelings. And it's just like, when do we get to the part of the therapy where the evil men go away? When do we start fixing it?
[00:03:21] I did a joke tweet about that where I said at the end, like, is it CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy? And as I hit send, I'm like, oh, God. Oh, no! Cock and ball torture. Cock and ball torture. Cock and ball torture. And so I deleted it immediately. And anyway, the people who have paid us are, first, Alex Perot. Oh, my God. Is this Italian? I'm seeing the double R's and double T's.
[00:03:50] I'm going to say it in an Italian inflection. Alex Perotti. And was it euros or dollars? It was dollars. It probably was parati. Oh, yeah. Anyway. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. Thank you for your five dollars. Next. Oh, this is a Anime Sickos Discord stalwart. I would imagine a returning donor because I think they have donated before. I don't know. In any case, it's Spaggy B. Thank you, Spaggy.
[00:04:18] Welcome back, unless it's not a return. In which case, just welcome. Yeah, you've been, again, you've been on the Discord for ages. So welcome back in the sense that you were there on the Discord and now you're here again. Get it? Next, we get Zach Hammerman. Thank you, Zach. Hammerman is such a cool name. Remember when the Wii was new and they were like, one of the games that's going to come out is Project Sledge? Oh, no. That makes more sense. Yeah, Project Hammer.
[00:04:46] It never did, but that was... That time when the Wii was called The Revolution and it wasn't out yet and we didn't know that the waggle kind of sucked and wasn't good for anything but light gun shooting. I believe The Revolution when it was the Hammer game. Yes. Like, I was like, you're telling me that the controller is a, is like a remote control that I swing around and in the game I hit shit with Hammer and I do that by, like, that was the coolest shit on earth.
[00:05:15] So Zach Hammerman was the protagonist of that game. Thank you, Zach. And this next patron, another sign of the AI apocalypse. It's Robo. Robobo. Robobo. I don't think this is an AI. I think this is like a guy. Okay. Thank you, Robo. It's the Chrono Trigger guy. Like, he's a very good, dependable party member. He has that one healing laser move. That's useful. That shows that he's not selfish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:45] He's great. I love Robo. He's got Fuzzy Punch or whatever it's said incorrectly in the game. It was supposed to be oozy, right? Yeah. Anyway, today we're going to hit you with a segment we have not pulled out in a long while for reasons that may be clear. It's Cog Talk. Cog Talk. Cog Talk. We're still got no job. Still.
[00:06:13] So here's just a fun element. If I can just speak selfishly and suggest just for a moment that all of lived experience is just me. Applying for a job is annoying at baseline. And then when it's every week, it's like, here's just 8,000 federal employees with skills that are unlike anywhere else in the world of being laid off with no notice. They, to be clear, I wasn't in the running for those jobs.
[00:06:40] However, those smart people are in the running for shit I would do, such as lifting a box or moving a turd. But it is, it really feels like they're kind of phasing out the idea of employment. Like, not just from the sense of, like, the government and, you know, just dismantling the federal government. Because that's clearly just an evil right-wing project.
[00:07:07] But it feels as if, like, overall, the idea of employing people, period, is out of style. Well, certainly just things that are aesthetically a middle-class job. Yes, yes. I'm talking, because, and here's the thing, and we'll get into this. We have gotten, like, fucked in the brain by circumstances that we have fallen into. Such that we are, like, we have to be at the computer to work.
[00:07:36] Like, and it really does feel like that. And I know that there's plenty of people and plenty of career paths that do not involve being at the computer. But my entire life, all the work I've done has been at the computer. And it really feels like I gotta keep on doing that. And this is a little bit of, like, how people our age were like, yeah, you gotta go to college. But, like, it just felt like when we were in the 0% interest 2010s tech boom,
[00:08:05] every step of the way, everyone was like, you gotta love going on the computer. Which you're doing, which is great. It means great things for you in the future. And here's the thing. I don't think I even like going on the computer in that context. I will say, I have been reading about the promise of AI, both, like, the fake promise. Because Ed Zitron has a lot of good writing about how it's just total bullshit. And it's just snake oil.
[00:08:36] And then also just this whole process of the Doge thing. And just embedded in that, which is obviously cut, cut, cut. There's all this, like, techno bullshit sort of mindset stuff. And it has made me realize that, like, the part about computers that I've enjoyed is so distinctly separate from, hey, there's this new AI thing that's coming. We better get real excited about it before we have any specifics down.
[00:09:03] And AI is sort of the most gratuitous example of that. But, like, every sort of large organization I've worked for, that type of stuff, which is, like, the ephemeral big changes are coming, I think we're going to figure this out stuff. That's the stuff I hated. And it's distinct from computers. Computers, you've got to push buttons. Doing that is much more engrossing. And I just don't know how you get a computer-touching job now, necessarily.
[00:09:33] I, if I knew, I would have had one at any time in the last couple of months. I don't, ooh. I mean, Ed Zitron has, if you are a Sego's listeners and you don't check his work out, what's your problem? I don't, it doesn't make sense. Like, the algorithm should have served him up to you by this point.
[00:09:57] But he is so, and just the thing that, like, about what he says about AI that gets me, I mean, it all gets me, is that, like, the way that the economy is set up with, like, the Silicon Valley companies being, like, the cornerstones and drivers of the economy at large,
[00:10:16] the way that that happens and the way that they're able to do that is that they are constantly required to have something coming up that's going to supercharge everything. Because there was a time when they did, and the product came out, the computer, and it did supercharge everything. I would say the iPhone was, like, the last, like, oh my god! Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[00:10:41] And obviously, these companies could still be very, very successful if their business model was iPhones break eventually, like, that that was it. But no, the business model has to be there's something coming up because we're whiz kids that's going to revolutionize everything. And there ain't fucking none.
[00:11:01] And when the bubble bursts, that plus the fact that there's no federal government and mass unemployment and also employing people has become passe and lame. All of that taken together, what I guess I'm getting at is I really feel good about my prospects for all my applications going forward. I do not need a computer job. If you can give me a weird job turning a crank somewhere in a building I'm not supposed to be in or something, I would do so well at that.
[00:11:31] Fellow listeners, if you're in the Chicagoland area and you have maybe some boxes that you need people not to ask questions about, welcome to Joe Uber. They'll go away. Yeah. Dude, I have thought a lot of it because, you know, I don't want to feel doomery, but it really feels like getting a computer job is just not in the car. And I don't know what to do because it's all of my experience and expertise.
[00:11:59] If they're like, I've thought about like, like there's got to be a job where I just pick up a box and put it down. Like an AI could never do that. There's robots though. Fuck. Yeah. And this is the part. Fuck. Have you thought about this? What if they put the AI thinking in the robot? I think they made a movie about that. It was called, I can't think of a punchline for that.
[00:12:27] Imagine I said something really funny that like subverted your expectation. Folks, the words that were going to come out of my mouth were the Terminator, which is not a joke. That's just the fucking truth. If someone has a crank turning, but here's the thing about the crank turning jobs. There's going to be tariffs and thus any sort of like business in the U.S. that like makes physical things that might require a box to go hither and thither.
[00:12:51] Well, they're going to not be able to do that because all their raw materials that are imported from elsewhere are not going to be able to get fucking gotten. I don't know how cars are going to get made. Oh, the auto industry, the classic sort of engine of manufacturing middle class jobs. I don't know what happens because like a lot of those parts come from Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. They just do.
[00:13:20] I love the whole idiots justification of like, well, yeah, it's going to be tough to import that shit. But that's the point. It's supposed to cost more to force people to do it with domestic stuff. The whole idea is that they have the fucking capacity already. They have their little machine that makes the doodads, which we need. Even if we said we will make them domestically, it takes a while to spin up anything. If you were a country that builds anything. Yes.
[00:13:50] And also like the if we are importing shit, it's because someone has looked over the numbers and has decided that the cost of making this domestically exceeds the cost of the thing plus the cost of shipping and customs and all. Also, the entire American empire has been set up. And this is not that it's good.
[00:14:15] This is me just explaining how it generates the value blood it does. You have the dollar advantage because of the financial system. Do you just import anything you can't make? Raw materials? Don't worry about getting them. The money advantage means you can just buy them and bring them in and then get them made into the stuff we need. However, that'll never happen because there's like this like toxic masculinity thing where it's like a man must be in a shitty factory making a toaster. I'm trying.
[00:14:43] I'm just thinking about like I love Lucy. With the chocolate belt. You can't get that job anymore. They took Marshall Fields away, dude. They don't have the chocolate belt. It used to be you could make an honest living. What were they trying to do on the chocolate belt? I know the whole joke was that they couldn't do it and started eating the chocolate so they wouldn't fall off the end. Well, Tom, the joke was she was not supposed to eat them and then she did. Well, yeah. Okay.
[00:15:14] You know, we moan. We complain because the job market is miserable. And here's the thing about not having a job for a long time while your wife does and makes a lot of money and keeps you from destitution and homelessness. You feel so cool and powerful. You feel so powerful. Yeah. And you really feel like as a unit, the two of you are dynamic and equal.
[00:15:38] And this isn't to say that it's like a remnant of toxic masculinity where it's like you got to be. You're not a man if you don't make more money than your woman. My woman always made more money than me and I was fucking delighted by it. The thing is she's always working next to you or near you. You know what I mean? Yes. You are constantly reminded that her expertise is needed. I have like a similar sort of problem. My thing is like I get up usually around 530 in the morning.
[00:16:08] That's when I start my routine for the boy and wife where I make breakfast. I clean up. I get everything set up. I get all his delightful food ready. And then I get his shoesies on, brush his teeth while my wife finishes getting ready for work. And then I put him in the car, strap him in. We sing songs in the backseat. It's very cute. It's very cute. He's so cute.
[00:16:35] I went over to play with Ivan a while ago. He's big as hell. He's so cute. He was like having... He like loves me. Yeah. He was having the time. So I get him all strapped into his car seat. And then I kiss my wife goodbye. And then she takes him to daycare and work. And then so like between 530 and 730, I have like ultimate family purpose. I am crushing it because it's just like people need me.
[00:17:04] Cats are yelling at me and I know what they need. And then the minute it's just like, all right, sense of purpose is over. Go look at the couch. Don't lay down. Just look at it. You might be thinking at home, why don't you guys, if you guys have all this unaccounted for time in the day where you feel worthless and like you have no purpose, why don't you
[00:17:28] use this time creatively to try to become like sort of creative for trying to make a living out of this. Blood from a fucking stone. Did you not hear we were depressed? Like was that not, was that part not clear to you? I yesterday, yesterday, you know what I was doing? Because I was feeling really down. You were bumming me out. You were like, honestly, I'm supposed to be like that. Not you. It really sucked. I was like, you know what I'll do? This has worked a lot in the past.
[00:17:58] I'll just write, I'll just brainstorm. I'll just write down ideas and I don't, they don't need to be good, but like one of them will be interesting enough that I could like spin off something and then let's like a topic we could, we could riff on. And I spent about half an hour and I wrote down the following sentence. Let me read it verbatim. Can't think of any ideas. So that's why we haven't been getting you a lot of Patreon exclusive content with our free time. I have been hitting physical therapy pretty hard.
[00:18:26] That's been kind of like my focus, which I want to be very clear. Having PT and a family to take care of has definitely like shaved the worst of the, ah, fuck. I'm not doing much feeling. Although to be clear, it still hits me. I'm not saying it doesn't, but it's just, it's harder to do that when you go to like in Atletico and you do your little movements and people clap for you. Yeah. And you can feel yourself getting stronger. Yeah.
[00:18:55] Less pain, pain ridden. Right. Right, right, right. And while we're on sort of the, you know, we don't want to be completely depressive because as depressed as we are, it's not as though we are like time to, time to, time to go. Yeah, no. Yeah, no. I did recently have a moment where again, I felt like, you know, I don't want to work, work sucks. I don't want to have a job thing, but I also really fucking want to have a job.
[00:19:21] I think this is like the ultimate problem because it's, we have any previous episode of this show where we talk about jobs. We are correctly saying that like they suck to have and they make you crazy. However, we are just beaten into this mindset where it's like once you don't have it, you're like, I really miss those beadens. Oh man. I just, it, it, my wife is working hard every day and I'm fucking dicking around and I make
[00:19:50] zero purchases because I cannot afford them because I'm making no money and it's just like I need like, oh my, and like the money part again, I don't really even care because it's not as though I have a lot of purchases I want to make other than food anyway. But like just the, the, like having on a day knowing that like your time is gonna get spent on something good and it's like, oh, don't you have like hobbies and stuff that you can spend your free time on? Yes. But again, you don't understand. I'm depressed. So I don't do them.
[00:20:19] When you have a job that's not, it's no longer in your hands anymore. You've got to do it. So there's always some feeling of progress. Ah, however, as much as, you know, I said all that to set up the baseline. And then now that the baseline is set up comes the crux, which is recently I, the sun rose on my life and I felt like there was purpose again.
[00:20:45] I felt like a whole person and like I was contributing just as much as my wife and like we were again, I didn't have that nagging feeling of like I'm feeling her and us. And the reason why is I did what is essentially, and no one can argue this, the equivalent to work, which is I went to Costco. Costco is where if you're a fella in our position and you need to rack up some points, like just karma points.
[00:21:14] I don't want to say relationship points because it's like weird. I just mean like in, in the sense of the universe, if you need to rack up. These points are not, you know, for, for other people to look at you more strongly. This is like self self worth points. Yes. This score is only available to you. However, it fills you with such a joy when that number goes up. If you are in our position, you got to go to Costco because like, I think it's a combination
[00:21:40] of a caveman brain because like you are identifying like a big thing to haul back into your car to bring to your family. It's like a big side of ribs from the Flintstones. Yes. It's also very pleasing because it's just boxes are nice. Just when everything's in boxes, you like can live in Tetris world, which is very calming. It's so Tetris like it's like everything is orderly.
[00:22:07] And then when you get a half a year's worth of paper towels and you bring it home, you're like, I did that. Not a billionaire. Not the people who aren't going to hire me. Like I, I affected a positive change in the world by going out hunting in the fields. The way I said, I just looked at our, our work flowy where we have this concept written
[00:22:31] down and I forgot about this, this extension, this, this elaboration that I wrote, which is that it feels like you just came back from an MMO raid. It's like, honey, you'll never believe I got 200 beaks from the owl bears. They were all dropping beaks today. They don't always drop beaks. They all have beaks. It's literally what happens when you capture something in Monster Hunter. They're like, take it back. We're going to see what's in this sucker. Yeah. No, that's the other thing about Costco is you go with a list.
[00:23:01] You only go because like, oh, we really need something that, you know, is in bulk tends to be olive oil or what have you. Uh, but then also you, you can't just get that. You have to go through every aisle and look because they change the shit and sometimes there's like good stuff. And that when you like find the good thing and bring it home and like, it's a hit and, and now we have like a month of it again. Now we have a $2,000 trampoline that was hanging above the entrance.
[00:23:30] Uh, can you make a job out of just going to Costco all the time? I mean, I looked at their jobs page. I think that's just being a stalker, which fine. Sure. Honestly, that would probably be very calming. Yeah. The only thing is it would have to me because I go because I'm unemployed. I go like midday on weekdays and it's not that crowded, but I like remember when I had
[00:23:57] to go on weekends and I don't think anything that occurs in a Costco on a weekend can be considered calming by any stretch. Yeah, that's true. Uh, but it's boxes. It is boxes. You're just thinking about Wilmot's Warehouse, that game. That game is very good. That's such a good couples game too. Yeah. Because, so this, let me, here's my quick spiel. Uh, it's a co-op game where you and another player are just, it's very minimalist.
[00:24:26] You're just like a face and, uh, you are in a abstracted warehouse and like this truck just drops off tiles of stuff and the tiles are like anything. It could be like a fish, a weird shape, a circle. And then you have to, basically the game is in, in execution, you kind of need to come up with a shared language with this, with the person you're playing with, how you're going to organize all this shit. Because it's like when the round starts, it'll be like, I need eight fish things, things that kind of look like a tire and these things.
[00:24:53] So the game is, you have to make it a deranged sorting system with your butt, which is really fun. Uh, that's the sickos workflow-y. Like that's where all of our ideas are. We're just playing Wilmot's Warehouse in real life. And they just came out, or that studio came out with a new game, which is like, I guess just puzzles, but they're like puzzles to relax and chill to. Oh dude, speaking of, I, so you know how I've like talked about how Slay the Spire's music
[00:25:22] is like dog shit for like the entire time you've known me? Yeah. I finally, I can't believe it took me, I'm just like, here's the thing. I, I, I pretend to be like an intellectual thinker, but I'm the dumbest man who ever lived. It just occurred to me like this month, turn the music volume all the way down and play Spotify at the same time as Slay the Spire. It's so much better. I can't believe it. You don't like wind noises? I don't hear the wind noises.
[00:25:51] I don't hear the boss music. It just, I, I, I picked the music. So here's a good example of like a project. I was like, oh, this will be cool. And then, you know, the depression beats the brakes off me a little bit. But, uh, I was looking at starting an online radio station with the idea that like, that's
[00:26:21] a, a basic no duh for a lot of reasons. Cause we would have our sort of every time playlists, but then also it could be set up to play whatever Tom's album of the week is for his record club. That could be cool. And then I started looking into the scripting language that is for online radio called liquid soap. Holy shit. This stuff is really cool because you can just like set up using really only minimalist scripting, be like top of the hour. Here's your fucking jingle. All this sort of stuff. Yeah.
[00:26:50] Things that got me my tongue wagging, uh, back to my college radio days. Uh, and then like my kid got sick. So like I didn't do it. It's been discussed at length. If you want to hear it more, listen to Josh Borman's episode of Western Kabuki where he talks about the tick tock ban, which, uh, is that going to happen again? I don't know. It feels like anything that anything involves taking away is going to happen, but whatever. Isn't it just back and evil now?
[00:27:19] So why would it go away? Because I don't know, because some people like it. So, and, and you got to take away what people like. Um, I don't know. I just, uh, but, but he goes on about how like it used to be that there were like media and performing jobs for people. And like, now no. And like, uh, it's just like being a radio guy sounds so much better than being a computer dude.
[00:27:48] Being a computer dude fucking sucks. I could be a radio guy, dude. I write so much fucking good shit about this music. I could like give so much little background on the songs before I play them. People would be fascinated. So here's the thing. All you're saying, everything you're saying is I agree with, uh, it's important to contrast that with what radio is in reality. Uh, which is, I think also one of the reasons why I wanted to do the internet radio station,
[00:28:16] because as I had mentioned, it's we, our house has like a, like a radio built into the wall. So I've been listening to like the mix, uh, and some other stations from the Chicago area and everything is just clear channel shit. Everything is like the same type of thing. And it is, it is, it is like this very, I'm having trouble articulating this. I want to say it's vapid, but it's not like vapid.
[00:28:42] It's just like all the talk is like this very specific type of nothing that I, that I, that I, uh, that just having to sit through it frictionless. And then obviously the same songs again and again and again made me want to be like, like this can do more. Like it can do a lot. Uh, like it's radio is a community building medium. It is very cool in that regard. Uh, is a way.
[00:29:10] Honestly, like the things that people say about Twitch where it's like, Oh, you get to build a relationship with your own, whatever, whatever. What I like about radio is it's that, but you don't have to, no one has to see your face and it's more passive. Like I am putting on an hour long playlist to the community. Uh, it does not involve me singing and dancing for an hour. Uh, but yeah, I don't know. It's just like another thought I've had. It's like, it's cool. It's, it's, it's very cool.
[00:29:39] I don't know what the, the hosting requirements are. Uh, I looked into it a little bit. There's shout cast and then there's ice cast. Ice cast is for cool motherfuckers where it's like you do your own stuff and you host your things where shout cast, I believe is like, uh, there's an existing directory of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this is also all secondary to what I really want to do is I want to have a pirate signals radio station. It's like blasting off of a boat somewhere. Being on a boat.
[00:30:07] So, I mean, the lakes right there, like we could do it. It would suck. I would, I, we would quickly be like, why didn't we do this on land? There's like no frequency available. I was trying to find like what is not totally just drowned out in signal. Like if you wanted to do that. And, uh, the answer is nothing because it's the third largest market in the country. Yeah. I, I am not surprised to hear this. Ah, fuck. Talking about this. I mean, like this, this is you thing.
[00:30:36] Like I'm interested in this, but you're really passionate about it. But like this kind of thing, I really wish that there were more, more and more diverse jobs. However, at the same time, I really do think that I'm like tainted forever with the computer. Because I'm just like, when I think of like, I let myself like hope. It's not me as like a full-time media guy.
[00:31:05] It's me as I am now. But I go on the computer during the day and do some fucking sequel and spreadsheet stuff. And at the end of the day, I close that shit and do the thing I normally do. It's just like the, there's something so, I mean, isn't this, this the whole, the whole like addicted to convenience thing. You let yourself slip into evil because it's familiar and, and frictionless, frictionless like the talk on the radio. Yeah.
[00:31:33] It's designed to just flow past you and there's no, there's nothing for you to hold on to because it's just, it's meant to go, go, go, go. I do want to go back to the computer. I want a computer job, dude. I hate to say it, but I really think it's true. What you're, what you're striving for, and you're not wrong to want this. I believe this is what you truly want.
[00:31:55] Yes, a job, but the thing you need is you need to be not shackled, but confined to a not good computer for a certain amount of time. So you can build up meter of ideas and stupid shit as you inherently avoid what's in front of you. Oh my God. Yes, dude. Yes, this is it. This is like, why aren't we doing more sicko stuff with our free time?
[00:32:23] It's like, that's like, why do you simply not use your ultimate every move in a fighting game? It's like, as I have to use my normals to build up the meter that allows me to pay for the ultimate. Like I can't just do all ultimates. I can't do all finishers. That won't work. Also like the finisher, it has a long startup and so you'll block it unless I have a lead up to it. And the other, the other thing is creating an ideation in that way.
[00:32:51] It isn't just like creativity. It's also literally survival because you're like, my brain's bored. I'm going to toss it a bone. And then sure enough, it comes up with an idea that is at least worth talking about. And it's, I mean, speaking personally and to kind of continue what you said, part of it is like my only computer is my computer.
[00:33:18] There's no like, there is no device that does not allow me to quickly easily slip into the convenience you have mentioned. Obviously I can have my own willpower and I like do shit to work around that. But the fact of the matter is it's always there. Shit sucks. I need an evil computer. God, is this just, am I just like addicted to the system? Well, here's the thing is that if you don't engage, you don't have any fucking money and
[00:33:46] then you like get killed and starve. Yeah. I heard about that. I really, that's for another, I was about to start complaining about all the evil men. We're going to make our lives worse and take, take, take everything good. Take, take, take. Not for any purpose, just because they want. Because it has to go away. Because it hurts us. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.
[00:34:11] Like the one thing that has bolstered my sanity is, man, I'm glad we got this place before everything got expensive. Like it is a, obviously everything about American life is like a ladder that is being pulled up behind you. I am aware of that. And I know there are people locked out and will be locked out of the housing market forever because everything sucks forever.
[00:34:34] That said, just for my own selfish purposes, it is making it possible to continue like this. I don't know how else to put it. It's, we are fortunate in that regard. You know what, if any like democratic strategists are listening to this, any pod johns or what have you, I'm going to give you a one for free.
[00:34:55] If you want to win an election in a landslide, your democratic candidate's message has to be, we're going to publicly execute them. Of course, when I say them, I mean the legislative actions that the people want. What else could I have meant? We're going to publicly execute them. Again, them, the legislative actions that people want.
[00:35:22] But again, just to be clear, we're going to publicly execute them. Say that and all you got my vote and you got dozens of hours of volunteering, I will happily give you. Sicko mode, sicko mode, sicko mode. Sicko mode, sicko mode, sicko mode. Sicko mode, sicko mode, sicko mode. Sicko mode, sicko mode, sicko mode. You're never going to believe this show. I still don't read manga or watch anime.
[00:35:50] I read Kang and Omega and that shit sucks. That's manga, baby. I mean, I caught up with One Piece and Chainsaw Man caught up like as of a month ago. But yeah, I was like, I'm going to keep reading every week. No, I didn't. But you got to the end of the ageless demon or aging demon. No, I was in the middle of the aging demon. They were still stuck in tree world. They get out in a very Looney Tunes-esque joke and you're going to enjoy it. I bet I will.
[00:36:20] I've enjoyed every part of the aging devil's bit. It's so goofy. It's goofy and yet terrifying. That's Chainsaw Man all over. However, I've been reading, you'll never believe it, books without even a picture. Well, some of them have pictures. I've been reading normal ass books from the fucking library. I don't know if you know this. These are right to left as well, right? Yes. Yes, I think so. It's extremely confusing, but I keep it up.
[00:36:46] You might not know this, folks, but for at least a couple more weeks, there are buildings you can go to where they give you a book for free. I have read a bunch of books.
[00:37:29] You can get to a part of the history where there was a key song that explained where it was and what the innovations were. It told you what song to listen to. And it had a big receipt paper column where it had timestamps and then a little explanation of what noteworthy thing is being done at that time in the song. That's good document design. I don't care. It is. I'll say it. I'll be a nerd. That's really well done.
[00:37:58] It was a UI. I had a UI for listening to music. Anyway, I read that book and then I got, when I was returning that book, I saw at the library in like the featured shelf a new, well new, it's two years old, the latest novel by Paul Murray, who, Joe, you recommended a book of his to me before. Yeah, that was The Mark and the Void. That is a cog book. It's literally about being a cog.
[00:38:27] It's from the perspective of this French banker who's living in Ireland, working at a huge multinational corporation. Multinational. Doing fake work. Yeah, doing fake work. Yeah, like the Irish economy, it had the big boom and then the huge bust and then a lot of Paul Murray's writing is about the boom occurred because of fake work. It was all fake finance lies.
[00:38:52] And the crash came because it was all fake finance lies. And so that's what he's doing. Yeah, so that's what Mark and the Void is about. The main interest there is that Mark, who's kind of just like a nothing cog guy, finds this, what is he, a failed novelist? He's just like this guy that's just basically really messed up but interesting. Interesting.
[00:39:16] Well, no, what it is is that a fiction writer named Paul, and again, the author of the book is Paul Murray, goes up to this, to the protagonist who is sort of a nothing bland man doing fake work and he has no discernible traits. And he says, my man, you were the most interesting guy. I got to write a book about you. And the protagonist is like, I don't know. I don't really feel like this is going to work. He's like, no, it's real. It's real. And he's just like, is this guy just sort of bullshitting and hoodwinking me?
[00:39:44] Or is he really think I'm an interesting protagonist? He's like, I totally do, dude. And you learn more about Paul's life and his wife hates him. His family hates him. He lives in like a high rise that didn't finish being built. Yeah. He got it in advance for his first novel and he bought like a luxury high rise. But again, it didn't finish being built because of the crash. And turns out it was made really, really poorly. So although it looks luxurious, it is absolutely terrible.
[00:40:11] And it becomes clear later that he did not think that this guy was a good protagonist. And he was just sort of flailing and doing whatever he could out of desperation. And if you're thinking that seems pretty meta, yes. But it's also fucking funny. His boss in that novel is just like this very stoic German man, right? And he basically is just very serious and just is a humorless person.
[00:40:41] And then when the end of the book occurs and they're just talking about like, like the Irish population will be fucked because like the interest rates for all this stuff are awful, yada, yada, yada. His line is just like, well, the Irish have always been sort of a slave race. Yep. Yeah. Oh, God. It's funny. It's a good book. And so I saw his next novel. This is called The Bee Sting.
[00:41:11] And it's a brick. It's like 650 pages. I am like 550 pages in. I'm not finished yet. But I have been telling Joe about this every day because, oh my God. I thought Mark and the Void was really funny and good and a good read. I think The Bee Sting is great with a capital G. Like put this in the canon. Like it is, again, not finished. It could be that the ending blows it. I know that it is controversial.
[00:41:41] I do not know why it is controversial because I have not, I have not sought that out. Some people really don't like it. And I'm sort of banking on that being in the way that people don't like The Sopranos ending because it does something artistic and daring. And people don't like that. And I hope also like The Sopranos ending that it is like if you are at all sort of conscious, you know what fucking is happening. Anyway, it follows this family of four, again in Ireland, again after the crash.
[00:42:11] And again, they were once prosperous, now losing all of their money. And there's no hope because of, you know, the economy. Like why would there be hope? And the way it's written is we start off with each of the four members of the family getting a big point of view section. So like the first 90 pages of the book are all from the perspective of Cass,
[00:42:40] the teen daughter of the book. And then after that, we get PJ, who's like a 12-year-old kid. And then we get a big long section from the mother Imelda, which is written in a punctuation-free stream of consciousness, which is difficult to read, I'll say. However, it is extreme. It does. The effect is profound because like, oh my God. Does it feel manic or like anxious or what?
[00:43:09] Yes, yes. And then there's a final point of view chapter is from the father. And then after that, the remaining portion of the book, which I'm still working through, the perspective starts switching much, much faster so that like the point of view sections are 10 pages, 5 pages instead of like 100. Here's the thing. Every single one of these characters is like trapped in fucking hell.
[00:43:35] All of them are in a nightmare prison where, again, there is no hope. Their body is the prison. Like they are completely alone. Like you said, you said other family members appear just like as basically like aliens or like a strange bird that flies in. Yes, yes, yes. Because they're so locked into their own head and their own prisons of terror and shame. Shame being a big one. It is an Irish novel after all.
[00:44:02] Terror and shame and this just feeling of utter dread and doom. And yes, when they are, when their family members show up, it is as though they're walking by a brick wall and like a sock puppet bops up. And they just sort of like bat it down. They're like, yeah, and keep on going.
[00:44:25] They are vaguely humanoid nuisances that briefly distract them from the important part, which is worrying. Suffer. Worrying forever. And the writing is so fucking good because like you, it's like relentlessly bleak. Like these, the, the prisons that these people are in, the emotional arc that they're on and
[00:44:52] the, the way all this stuff makes them feel is so, so beautifully drawn. You really feel it. It is. Oh, it like it, it scoops out your soul and makes you want to die. But in a way that's like really, it makes me like giddy. Like yesterday when we were chatting, I was so depressed talking to the show, I was bumming him out. But like the time when I like lit up was like, oh, I've read, I'm reading this book that's so bleak and hopeless. And like, it's great. That's not entirely true.
[00:45:18] You also lit up when you sent me that story about the billionaire who was killed because of his, uh, penis injection that murderized him. You were like, why was I even sad? They put dick killing juice in his dick and it killed him. What more can I say? I love the theory that Elon has a botched dick implant. I really hope that's true. And if not, I hope he gets one and they botch it.
[00:45:47] Anyway, so it's just these, these people who are so stuck in their heads. And everything's going wrong. And they feel like, when could it ever have been different? Um, they feel like it's all their fault, like a completely tainted and evil and, uh, hopeless person who's deserves this in a way. And I love how at the beginning, the first four point of view sections being so long doesn't
[00:46:15] have such a great effect because, you know, the first hundred pages you're with Cass, you know, everything about Cass. You feel what she feels. You feel her longing. You feel her shame. You feel her dread. You hate the decisions she makes, but they feel so inevitable. And it's, oh God, it's like, that could be the book. It could just be that. And then the next point of view chapter is from her brother's point of view. And her brother, again, shows up like once or twice and is like, get away, little brother. What do you know? And they're like, he'll say some annoying thing.
[00:46:44] And she's like, oh my God, I don't have time for this. Um, and then you read his section and you're like, oh, this is the most tragic little boy who ever lived. There's so much shit going on with him too. Holy fuck. Oh my God. This poor boy. And like when you see him interact with Cass, it's like now, now it feels like so devastating the way she won't interact with them. She won't help him. She won't support him. And of course, from her point of view, like you didn't get anything from PJ, the boy.
[00:47:14] It's like, like when he just shows up, he's like, did you know that the human body has did? And you're like, shut up. And, but like, oh my, like he's so sensitive. He's so kind. And it's in, of course, like all sensitive and kind people. He lives in a world run by evil men where being sensitive and kind is not fucking allowed, let alone rewarded. And he too is like trapped in a hell. He has these problems that he feels he must solve himself that no one else can help him with.
[00:47:42] And again, through both of the children's chapters, the mother has been portrayed as like this idiot flighty bimbo because like one of the main things about her is that she's like insanely hot even now. And she's like dumb and likes to spend money and she loves shopping. She seems like a caricature. And then you get to her section, the one that has no punctuation. And it's like all those problems those kids had are like for fucking babies.
[00:48:09] They're like baby problems and they are not at all like they don't have anywhere near the emotional depth that Imelda has. And you read her section and it makes you want to fucking cry. And it's so like, oh my. It blew me away. Is the dad the last of the four that are revealed? Yes. And so I was telling my wife this that I felt like this would be true no matter what order the point of views are in. However, the order they are in is the one they're in.
[00:48:38] And my reaction is every new point of view character is more tragic than the last. And all of them have the same issue, which is they are deeply ashamed of who they are and all of their problems come from that. They never feel like they have a home and they never feel like they should be who they are. And thus they cannot and will not and live in constant terror of showing and expressing their true selves.
[00:49:07] And sort of obvious corollary of that is they never communicate with anyone ever. Uh, I mean, I talked to you about how the family members show up in the other people's, uh, point of view section just as like every once in a while, just like yapping little fucking things in their peripheral view that don't have anything going on behind the eyes. And of course, that's not true because I know because I've read all the parts and it
[00:49:34] is so fucking devastating because if there was any of these people had any support at all, like I can't tell you the amount of times I put this book down and gone up to my wife and been like, I'm so fucking glad that we like talk to each other about our feelings. Um, holy shit. It is it also on top of all that, in addition to being about, you know, shame and, uh, isolation,
[00:50:00] atomization, uh, and the hopelessness of, uh, doomed world economy. It's also a lot about climate change. Oh, really? Okay. I've heard about that. Yeah. It, uh, it's not a light read. However, and again, I'm not done. It could be that this is going to pull a ranking of kings on me and it's going to, the last
[00:50:24] hundred pages are going to be about how child, uh, marriage is really cool and everyone loves it. Uh, but from what I've read so far, I'm telling you now, if you are a literary sort and you want to read a great book, uh, oh man, you got to read the bee sting. That's a good pitch. I also very much enjoyed, uh, Skippy dies. Is it Skippy dies at the end? You know, it's just Skippy dies.
[00:50:52] And I know that because all of his books say the author of Skippy dies on it, which makes me feel like I should probably read it. It's good. Uh, it, it takes place at a boarding school, an Irish boarding school. I don't know how old the kids are. I think they're not quite teenagers. I think they're like 10, 12, 13. And it's, I mean, it has the thing that like a lot of, honestly, that like what makes the, the, the tennis school at Infinite Jess interesting. It's just like, there are just children dealing with like reality that is not mitigated by like
[00:51:21] any adults or anything or any structure. Uh, and yeah, it's really funny. Uh, it's the same thing. I mean, like he makes you laugh and you feel like shit at the same time. It's longer even than the bee sting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, you said it was long and I'm like, I don't know, dude, bee sting is pretty long. I looked it up. It's longer. Skippy apparently dies. That sucks. Uh, I, I, I'm interested that it's about kids because one thing that's really striking about the bee sting is that the, the kid characters are really well written and they don't feel
[00:51:51] like adults putting on a voice. Yes. So I, I think he's, I think he's just good at that because that comes through in Skippy dies. Uh, there's, there's a part where like, they're not sure if they made like a transforming teleporter machine. Like they're just like stupid kids and it's like, obviously something terrible has happened, but there's still like, I guess we could try it again. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:52:16] They're like the, the, the 12 year old boy chapter is great because like he, he is a very intelligent and, uh, sensitive and perceptive 12 year old. But he is still 12. Uh, and thus is still like a naive idiot. So there's like, he, he, like when you see how he thinks and like the fat, like he's also like one of those kids that just loves trivia and will tell you like, did you know that and everyone hates him for it.
[00:52:44] And would you believe that makes him feel a great shame? Anyway. Uh, but like when he, he like goes through a situation in his head, like he applies like a logic to it and he's intelligent and he's like thoughtful and like, he thinks through like why he would want to do a certain thing and like what that would mean and what would happen. But throughout there are just like assumptions made that are again, like, oh, you're a fucking kid.
[00:53:14] Like you're so fucking stupid. Like you don't like one of his, again, all these characters have so many impending doom events that cannot be undone. And one of them is this bully. Uh, it's like your dad, cause his dad owns the local car shop and dealership slash garage. It's like your dad ripped me ma'am off. And he, yeah, you owe us 130 euro or I'm going to kill you.
[00:53:42] And he just like goes through like very logically, like how, how, like what would I do to get 130 euro? And like, he puts together this like big plan and like, well, when will, when will I be able to do this? And then get that debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt. And just at the end of it, it's like, you don't understand kid. It's not like, this isn't real. Like, which is not to say like he won't beat him up, but it's like, it's not to say it's not as though this guy, if you give him the 130 euro, he's going to be like, ah, well done then.
[00:54:11] It's like, he just wants to beat you up. Yeah. Real kids. And like just the, the, obviously the teen, the teen is sullen. Would you believe it? The teen hates her parents. And to her credit, they give her a lot of reasons to hate them because, uh, they don't ever communicate and are constantly, uh, spending all their mental energy fighting their unwinnable mental battles, uh, and not reaching out for help. Yes. But, uh, the dad, the dad, but like, yeah, she, like, she's an asshole.
[00:54:38] Like she's a, uh, extremely rude and cruel to her entire family. But then when you hear it from her point of view, it's just like, well, yeah, if that's how you were feeling. And I know the reasons why, because they're all listed here. Ah, I love it. So good. The poor dad, the dad's the most tragic fucking one of all. But again, he's the one that it wasn't for him. All this shit wouldn't be happening. Ta-da-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tom from the future here. Future, future. I finished the bee sting.
[00:55:07] I'm not going to spoil it too much. Uh, just to say that it did not pull a ranking of kings. Uh, child's marriage, I think, is still strongly negatively thought of by Paul Murray and the characters of the bee sting. So, there's that. Uh, that said, the ending, I can see why it would be controversial if you were sort of not all in on the book. If you were like, I don't know about this.
[00:55:35] And you get to the ending, I can see why it would make you fucking furious. And also, I'm, it's going to take a little bit more digesting from, uh, from me just to fully understand what I think about it, which to me is the sign of a good book, a great book, I would say. Um, cause it is, I mean, I guess you could say that this is inevitable with a book that's so heavily about climate change. It really does feel like the ending was the worst possible outcome.
[00:56:06] But man, what a, one hell of a book. Ah, man, I'd love it. And just to talk about the last thing I said before this insert, it's all happened because of the father, the most self-hating and shame-filled one of all. Before I leave you, I want to actually read a paragraph that I sent to Joe with the, uh, caption, this is a real soul annihilator of a paragraph.
[00:56:32] This is from the point of view of Cass, the teen daughter, uh, in an instance in which there is some indication that it might be a smart idea to go back from her college in Dublin to home, uh, because some problems are occurring with her family that she needs to address. Uh, and this is her thoughts on that possibility. Quote,
[00:56:59] You know that once you get home, everything will go arseways. You will remember how utterly fucked up ma'am and dad's relationship is, not to mention what they're like with you. Ma'am will talk and talk and talk, and you will feel besieged and overshadowed and diminished. You will feel dad simultaneously judging you and also inviting pity, and you won't know which is worse. Immediately it'll come back to you why you started hating him.
[00:57:25] Because he taught you to be upright and wholesome and good, and you found out you could not be those things. Because he wants you, needs you, to be his little girl still, when you have become loathsome, crawling, ugly, and perverse. Because you know that if he knew the truth, he would love you anyway. And somehow that is unbearable to you. God. Good book. Read it. Yeah.
[00:57:54] If it's too long, I get it. But if you have the time, you'll like it. Anyway, that's it. Episode over. That was a good one, I think. What did you think? I think it's going to result in us getting hired. I think the way we complained and bitched about our worthlessness and said that we are pointlessly attached to our wives who do everything of value is going to really pave the way for a lot of offer letters. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:58:21] The way that our media product that we hoped to make money off of was just describing events that happened to us only is going to really strike a chord with the public at large. Ka-ching. Oh-hoo-hoo! That's all from us from Anime Sickos this week. We'll see you later. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Anime Sickos. I've been Tom, a sicko. You can follow me on Blue Sky at Tom Harrison. Joe was also a sicko.
[00:58:51] You can follow him on Blue Sky at ShariaUncle. You can follow Anime Sickos on Blue Sky at AnimeSickos or email us at AnimeSickos at gmail.com. You can give us money at Patreon.com slash AnimeSickos if you want. Please leave us a review or something. I don't know. Tell a friend. Anyway, until next time, bye.