– By William Cooper

This is an episode largely about video games, but also not about video games. It’s actually an episode about how we spend our time and the ways that our time is both valuable to us, and also up for sale. Everything is monetized these days. Efficiency is time. Time is money. Money is more money. And with more money, you can buy more efficiency. And so it goes.

When it comes to selling your time, there’s always a hook, and once you bite that hook, you are just a fish on the highway of life. Except that I guess you can’t breathe out of water. Maybe it’s more the river of life. Somebody has a boat. There’s probably a cooler full of beer involved and some nice sandwiches, and a hat and some sunscreen, because you can’t be too careful.

Point is, despite how busy we are, and how creatively and constructively we use up the time left over after jobs, families, and the routine of living takes its share, there’s still often some excess. We work hard to one day get more of that excess. And that excess is up for grabs.

And who grabs our excess time? Well you’ll have to spend 45 minutes or so of your own time listening to find out.

See what I did there?

In this episode, we grapple time and things that devour time. William discovers that his wife is the next Bill Gates and reacts to Getting Things Done by running and screaming to the safe havens of paper, pencil, and plausible deniability. Scott first breaks the laws of the State of Ohio to celebrate a positive life change with the good folks at the BMV and then honors the laws of math with a slight correction. From there we launch into the heady world of in-app purchases. William feeds fake food to fake cats for real money, battles Tubbs, and tries to achieve 100 percent cats before he achieves 100 percent broke. Inspired by the Daytona 500, Scott drives his Gambling Addiction Training Program to virtual glory and starts on his 480-hour journey to racing domination or in-app whale status, whatever comes first. Finally, after William’s harrowing tale of accidental multi-player abuse, we experience the DNA echoes of Rush’s Hemispheres with a part of a part of of a prelude to other parts, which still takes us most of the month to hear (and we don’t complain about it a bit).

Links:
Getting Things Done
Neko Atsume
Real Racing 3
Rush: Hemispheres Picture Disc

– by William Cooper

Ten episodes. A momentous achievement, if you ask me… until you realize that the only reason the number ten has any weight at all is that it’s as far as most of us can count on our fingers without taking our shoes and socks off. Somewhere there is a dimension where people have eight fingers. I have it on good authority that we are astonishingly popular there. The frequency of our combined voices reaches a particular and unique vibration, allowing our podcast and our podcast alone to pass through the trans-dimensional barrier, meaning we are the only game in town.

But I digress.

In that dimension, the seminal episode was a few back. There were parades. No, really. I know a guy.

On the other hand, there’s probably also a dimension where people have sixteen fingers. Glove production is a high-tech industry. It’s literally impossible not to give someone the finger. In that dimension, they aren’t impressed with our progress so far. People are probably too busy trying to figure out how to make chopsticks work.

Point is, it’s all in how you look at things. And sometimes it makes sense to look at them again, just to make sure.

In this episode, we revisit familiar ground to take another look. We begin with a catalog of corrections wherein we celebrate our first listener email (text), Scott reveals he retroactively invented the sleep button, and things get very heavy (water). From there, it’s back to the movies where Deadpool’s origin story surprises the parents of a 6-year old, causes Scott to question his own parenting, and threatens to influence William’s drive home. We discuss whether seeing movies in public is really worth the hassle and William’s awkwardness with strangers, before Scott is bequeathed with a truly valuable inheritance. Then we all climb into Scott’s van for an update on VanCam180(squared). But wait! Turns out, Scott’s van has it’s own origin story, and it’s one about a plucky, dented vehicle with stained, mismatched interior and an attitude that would have killed Scott were it not for his Scotty-sense™ (insert bumper). We finish with the precocious and talented 8-year-old musician, Angelina Jordan, who calms our nerves… until we discover the endorsements she attracts.

Links:
The Heavy Water War on Netflix
Manhattan TV Series
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
VanCam 180²
Angelina Jordan, Unchained Melody, on NRK talk show Lindmo

– By William Cooper

In 1995, I was working at CompuServe as a liaison to its various international offices. This meant having a few early morning conversations with said office managers about things I could not change or affect, followed by some afternoon conversations with local co-workers who had the power to change things but would not, followed by the occasional late night conversation with my mate in Australia about how much I wanted to quit, sell all my belongs, and go on a walkabout with him to some faraway, remote corner of the continent.

Eventually, the company decided it would be best to send me abroad to train three offices in some ridiculous tool that they did not want. My first stop was Munich.

The German office was famous for a few things. They passionately hated the English office (the Brits thought this had something to do with WW2), they passionately hated the American office (too many rules they didn’t want to follow), and they really knew how to drink.

I was young, sheltered, and alone in a country whose language I couldn’t even pretend to speak. The Munich staff was sometimes kind, but mainly confrontational and worked me harder than necessary or even normal, late into many evenings well past the drinking hour. I felt shell-shocked, jet-lagged, minuscule, and pretty scared of life.

I did, however, find comfort in two things. Every night, I would eat this amazingly delicious chocolate bar left on my pillow by the hotel staff. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I’d come back mid-day and have an extra one. I also became enamored with a TV station from Denmark, which made no sense to me at all, but at least was warm and flickering and somewhat familiar (and not German).

So, there I lay each snowy evening in a farmhouse converted to a hotel, watching Danish people go about their Danish lives, while feeding my maw with fine German chocolates. These were my refuges in the unknown. Even today, images on a small screen and unfortunate food choices are my go-tos.

When I came back from my trip, I was pulled into the HR office and asked why I had spent 50 dollars on chocolate in my one-week stay. Guess I don’t know how to say “complimentary” in German.

In this episode, we fall back into our comfort zones. Unshaven and alone, William gorges himself on nuts and stoner movies. Overscheduled and overworked, Scott tries to resist the lure of the Great American Pastime known as eating fast food in a parking lot, and eventually discovers the true value of this podcast. But then, the train to Norway arrives, which sends us on an engrossing, virtual journey to small, snowy cities and sprawling mountain vistas. As we consider our relocation options, Scott hatches a plan that involves confusing fellow drivers and enclosing visitors in an especially creepy van-shaped box in his basement. We end our brief European trip with a visit from Max Helmut Wessels and a rare German record that just may prove to be the answer to both our dreams.

Links:
Seth Rogen
Netflix socks
BergensBanen minutt for minutt HD – 7 hours and 14 minutes of heaven
Max Helmut Wessels
Standard Phono Corp on Discogs

– By William Cooper

It wasn’t too long after I had stepped from the plane in Hawai’i, my soft, bright white body blinding passers-by as parts of me that hadn’t been exposed to the elements in ten years slowly started to cook, that I found myself on the rock. The rock was near the shore at the end of a small walk from the parking lot. My friends had taken me there because of the tremendous snorkeling opportunities promised by the locals, a spot not in any guidebook or on any map. As somebody who had only ever snorkeled in Lake Erie in about 2 inches of water while watching goldfish as large as manatees nibble on any part of me that looked like a weed, I was both excited and trepidatious.

But I could not let it happen. I could not let go. I was left on the rock, wearing my flippers and mask, stomach plunging into my colon. The waves were strong and the undertow caressed my toes. My heart pounded. Every fear I could imagine surfaced. The razor-sharp edges of the rock cut away at my fingers.

I took a breath to steady myself, and then gracefully fell, slipping off both ledges on my ass and into the water with a panicked flailing. I pushed hard with both feet, launching myself from the coral and into a world of clear blue.

In the first few seconds, I heard it, a rapid seesawing somewhere above me. The more I listened to it, the more I realized that it was me, me panting, me about to hyperventilate.

As I looked down, trying to relax, fish of all colors and shapes flitted against the black lava and the entire world was luminescent blue. The universe opened up and I was weightless. My breathing slowed to a regular pace, and I turned.

The turtle was inches from me and turned as well to stare me in the eye. We both stopped swimming.

The plating on his head, various shades of green and blue, shone in the diffused late day sunlight. His wide, watery eyes rolled their gaze slowly across my face. And he hung there, suspended in fluid, flipper-fin-feet in motion contrary to the rolling tide. His carapace glistened against the dark crevasses of hidden fish heads and rock eels below. We stared at each other and then, wordlessly, we both started swimming.

In that moment, I lost all fear, all fear of anything and everything. We swam side-by-side around the reef, and I was a different person from any person I had ever known myself to be. I was fully the person I had ever dreamed myself to be. I had left my comfort zone far behind. I was free.

In this episode, we venture out of our comfort zones and dream about island living. After a hearty, rousing tale of food poisoning, William conquers his social anxiety to play a game where no winner is the winner, and then sets sail to a more northerly exposure where horses are horses and septic tanks are mystical. After being awarded a merit badge for hunger at an badly-planned “business meeting”, Scott gets quite drangry and fantasizes about moving to a volcanic paradise where entrees are plentiful and the only hot air being spewed his way comes from a mountain. We end up enjoying a trio of tropical tunes, which becomes quite personal for William, but in the end is just the warm, soothing breeze we both desperately need. Don HO!

Links
Vashon Island
Left, Right, Center
Girl Drink Drunk
Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean – RCA – 1957
The Polynesians – Hawaiian Wedding Song – Crown Records – 1978
Don Ho Greatest Hits! – Reprise – 1969