Episode 144. Crazy News Stories from 'The Times' Publication
CONTACT US: Email: paranaughtica@gmail.com Twitter: @paranaughtica Facebook: The Paranaughtica PodcastContact Cricket: Website: www.theindividuale.com Twitter: @Individualethe Hey there!On this fine, fine day...we are presenting to you, our beloved audience twelve stories that ‘The Times’ newspaper publication printed back in the 20th century when times were pretty rough for most people – that is, if you didn’t come from a family of generational wealth (meaning you were poor and gross, like me). The Times has had a very long go at the newspaper industry and are no doubt one of the oldest publications funded by certain three letter agencies that push certain propaganda on the world, you know, that thing that is supposed to be illegal but isn’t for some reason....oh yeah, the ‘elite’ control everything. Duh. But today, we are going to go through those fascinating twelve newspaper articles written about some of the most random stuff.Now, velcrow your fingerless gloves and umbrella hat because it’s about to get crazy all back in time. If you want to listen to a song or two of mine, here you go.“There Was Something New, Something Fresh” - Paranaughtichttps://on.soundcloud.com/aAVjdm8dRi1FZ1pPA To check out a small batch of Coops’ music, go to this this link — https://on.soundcloud.com/Q1XRaY9WSpzawV9r7 CHECK YOUR LOCAL WATER TREATMENT LEVELS: EWG Tap Water Database ***If you’d like to help out with a donation and you’re currently listening on Spotify, you can simply scroll down on my page and you’ll see a button to help us out with either a one-time donation or you can set up a monthly recurring donation. ko-fi.com/paranaughticapodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Oh well, once I beat Sulk Song, I got really into that game I was telling you about a few weeks a back about the horse grills, Umamusa May.
Oh, yeah.
Have uh done like over a hundred some runs on it now.
It's pretty freaking addictive.
I thought I was just like one of those silly gacha games where you know you like pull for whichever character you want, which is usually it.
But boy, it's actually really complex and strategic and downright difficult.
And like boy, actually building a perfect character takes some time, dude.
What what game is this?
Uh pretty derby or mamusume.
Oh, the horse girls Yeah, with the ones uh yeah, they uh they have real life horse counterparts in Japan, actually.
Yeah, it makes sense.
Like there's Haru Urara, the perennial loser.
Who happens to be my who happens to be my first nine-star speed spark on there?
That's a bit of nerd shit that isn't important to you unless you actually play that game.
In the which case that's actually in the which case that represents a massive amount of wasted time.
You can spend thousands of dollars on it or absolutely nothing.
I go with uh absolutely nothing.
Because uh yeah, I always have really bad luck when I actually spend money in these gotchas.
They're just like, no, now that you've wasted money on it, now we're just gonna be stingy and I'm like, what the hell, game?
Yeah, no shit, dude.
Should be secretly bumping the numbers up.
Yeah, it's bullshit.
Like the new, you know, um Xbox raised their game pass from like $19 to $30.
Oh, yes, and other gaming news.
Xbox uh their website broke down actually for a while there from so many people jumping on to cancel.
I'm like, boy, that is some news you can't deny right there.
When your egg when your website will not even load because so many because like uh they were people were joking, they're like, hey, look, Xbox DDoS themselves.
Oh my god, they did too.
Effectively, they did.
Yeah, gave themselves a direct denial of service by over pinging their own server with bad news, basically.
Fuck Xbox, man.
I'm pissed about that.
I don't I don't pay for it.
My girlfriend pays for it for the kids, but I that's so stupid, dude.
Raising the price like 50%.
I don't know.
I'm on PlayStation Network, and uh yeah, that would have been one of those things where you just kind of set it to expire when you hear that shit.
Yeah.
Like, oh, fifth like it wasn't just a small increase either.
It was like a what was it ten dollars more a month or something?
Like a crazy amount for the ultimate, which was apparently the only one they didn't change the name on, they just decided that was still gonna be the ultimate.
The other ones all got different names because you know, like they had a whole video where they were talking about how like it's getting all this cool stuff, and then they're like, oh, by the way, compute the PC people aren't getting anything, but they are getting the price increase.
Yeah, dude, that's such a joke.
So uh yeah, like uh as much as I want to just like you know, mock the Xbox people.
I can't be a dick because I know people who play on it, and I feel bad for them because that really sucks.
I'm sorry, guys.
That blows Microsoft should not have done this to you.
I think they I heard they walked it back.
I hope they do.
I think they kinda well it says here standard subscribers will be upgraded to premium, remaining at 14.99 a month, but the unstandard is is up to 30 a month.
So I mean they jumped the price 15 dollars, dude.
That's a lot, 50%.
Wow.
Or 100%.
$15, that's a hundred percent increase.
I thought it I thought it was twenty dollars a month before and it upped it to $30.
That's what I was under the impression of.
Like, that's actually quite a bit worse.
When you double your price, like that's a people were joking, like, that ain't no boiling frog.
So right here it's saying Microsoft announced a massive 50% price hike to Xbox Game Pass.
So yeah, it's 50% hike.
But dude, come on.
Come on now.
I mean, have you considered how amazing you'll feel paying that much money for game pass?
Like, think about think about the executives who get like, you know, golden bathtubs.
Yeah.
That they do lines of crack off of hookers.
Lines of crack.
Because you can't actually do lines of crack.
I have to be I must be accurate here.
Crack off hookers' assholes.
So uh yeah.
Doesn't it doesn't it?
Yeah, like just think about that sense of pride and accomplishment that you gave them if you actually you know pay for this.
Yeah, don't do not help these CEOs do lines of crack off hookers' assholes.
Keep that money.
Remember, if you cancel, instead of giving in to their rather terrible offer, they will not have any lines of crack to do off of hooker's assholes at all.
Yeah, switch switch to PlayStation.
I'm not sure how much better it is, but I've always been a PlayStation guy.
I was always kind of back and forth because uh Xbox Game Pass generally had the wider variety in terms of like titles, and then PlayStation carried the exclusives, and was generally a little oh was I don't know if they were how much cheaper they were overall, they were cheaper when I got them, but they they kind of went back and forth there in a price war.
But I guess Xbox decided, you know, why do a price war when we can just see what people will actually deal with?
Right.
The best part was like the person they put out there, like you know, you'd think like something like that would be like, okay, you know, here's our uh here's like a you know CEO, CFO, some big guy, so some dude with some relation of C and O in it,
but no, it's just like a spokesperson who's just basically like you will go out there and be crucified by the public because everyone's gonna be like hating on you for this indirectly just because you get to make this announcement, and I'm right.
That sucks forever did that.
You know what the their reasoning for this price flux is because they love increasing prices?
They love increasing prices.
So they uh they say Xbox raised prices due to changes in the macroeconomic environment.
Pretty much the tariffs they're blaming on the tariffs.
So wait, pretty much all that they're like changing the cost on are online things, and it's not like they were having to like you know, string the fiber optic cables after the tariffs or something, like you know, these they the infrastructure was here, guys.
Like it makes no sense.
Makes no sense, and they're saying increased costs associated with development of games.
Okay, like there's lots of things you could blame Trump for, but I really feel like this is not one of them.
No, this is far from one of the things you can blame him for.
This is straight up the company's decision.
Like, they didn't have to raise the prices.
At least have a physical product you're talking about.
Are you saying like because your Xboxes are too like not selling?
So I was about to say, like, the idea is you have a sales base already.
Like, what are you trying?
What are you like?
We need to sit we need to build up a retainer by overcharging on this so that we can release a new console.
Wouldn't you help a starving executive?
Oh, they're starving because in Jesus Christ, man, just so far they've already generated almost 25 billion dollars in profit.
Oh, poor them.
They better just raise the prices on the average fucking consumer because god forbid 25 billion of profit's not enough.
Did you know how many starving executive babies like little tiny millionaires?
You could feed for just 70 million dollars a day.
Oh my god.
You could feed a starving billionaire.
Just look at this 80-year-old guy.
Pretend it's he's a baby.
Because we know you care about those.
In the arms of an age.
Every day, every day, Microsoft Xbox peep spokespeople are mistreated because they have to give you shitty news.
For just 15 extra dollars per month, you could save this poor executives effectively like shield.
Little test tube babies.
I want to make a correction.
It wasn't it wasn't 25 billion in profit.
It was 25 billion in revenue with 5 billion in profit, which is still a lot of money.
Why not just say like million billion?
And that's just in three month period.
Five billion in three month period.
Yeah.
Apparently, one of the main reasons they're actually doing it, which is the actual social and economic factors, is that this entire time, and it's been clear, like from the beginning, I think people have pointed this out, is Microsoft Xbox has been eating its own lunch by providing an awful lot of its own exclusive titles for free on Xbox Game Pass rather than making you pay for it.
Whereas PlayStation would uh oftentimes wait around a little bit and be like, you know, you can be on extra a few months from now after we get a few sales in.
Yeah.
So effectively marketing shrewdness.
Wow.
So they uh so they kneecap their own product by dropping things day one on Game Pass.
And then they're shocked that people don't want to pay for it.
When you gotta pay when it's an online mostly game, like you know, most people are not playing Black Ops like multiple times multiple hours per day because they like really love the campaign.
Like, you know, some people do like play the campaigns.
I don't even know if Black Ops is one of the ones six is one of the ones that has one.
Like they were always kind of iffy on whether they'd add them after a while.
Yeah, I was actually just playing six the other day.
I and it was pretty fun, but they already came out with seven.
That's crazy.
Yep.
And yeah, they were estimating three what three yeah, three hundred million dollars lost to this uh, you know, like to just effectively not releasing it three months later on to Game Pass.
My god.
Like that like that's how we're talking, because you know, most of these people like that were talking about the FOMO types would be impatient enough that they'd be like, oh hell no, I'm gonna miss out on that multiplayer wave those first three months or so.
And I can even somewhat relate to that argument.
I'm just not a fan of the game.
But if I was a fan, I'd be like, yeah, I go better go get it.
Better go get it.
I want to miss out.
Yeah, don't wait till it's out on Game Pass, like there'll be a new wave then, but it'll never be as big as the release wave.
And so, yeah, that's well, they screwed themselves.
Great job, guys.
This is crazy.
85% of all gaming revenue comes from free to play games.
Free to play, 85%.
How does Xbox make 25 billion dollars when 85% of the gaming is free?
That's nuts through uh ad revenues, in-game transactions, and optional purchases.
Wow.
And then the fun and then the funny thing is is you play these free-to-play games like Genshin Impact and Umamusume, and they just f give you free crap hand over fist because they know the actual like whale types who want to like pull over and over again and get the perfect constellations and the max star ratings and shit.
Like, we'll pay the extra money, even if you give them tons of free stuff.
So you know, like that's the ironic thing is that these games are making significantly more while being more generous to the actual player experience.
Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
That's pretty nuts.
And PlayStation has sold significantly more consoles than Xbox for the current generation, PS5 versus Xbox Series X or S. Uh PlayStation 5 has outsold the Xbox by a margin of over 44 million units.
So shout out to PlayStation.
Maybe PlayStation will start sponsoring us.
That'd be awesome.
Yeah PlayStation Network.
I mean I always did have a sop have me a soft spot for PlayStation exclusives.
That's part of why I started going with the console ever since my bro gave me his old broken uh not broken down.
It was it's actually lasted to this day.
What the hell am I saying?
I gave it away to someone else.
PlayStation 3 and uh it and I was like I gotta get me Demon Souls.
And sure enough it was as great as I thought it was and ever since then I've always tried to and I've stuck with PlayStation just because there'd always be like one or two games like that that I could only get on that system.
Same reason I was loyal to Nintendo for so long oh yeah yeah you go where the games are you don't go where freaking the overall cheap games are yeah you could play 600 games that suck gives a crap the majority of games suck man like I don't know Resident Evil for me is like well GTA but Resident Evil oh it's the greatest shit man great as shit.
Yeah the ultimate yeah the ultimate play is to play umusume on the phone while sitting through all the boring ass cutscenes in Genshin Impact because they take for freaking ever and they are unskippable okay that that is a complaint about the game unskippable cutscenes as a whole I mean unskippable cutscenes as a whole are of the devil.
Oh totally and always will be definitely is the new Xbox is like a cylinder tower dude but that's fucking weird.
Am I looking at the right thing X game pass?
Yeah the next the next Gen X box is a cylinder tower cylinder thing.
That's nuts that's weird weird design that's where five billion dollars comes from what goes to the development of wait is that the one they were announcing that costs a thousand dollars or was that thousand dollar one just a portable vert X1 X. Dude I have no idea I wasn't sure what I looked into when I I heard of it I was like let me see images because uh the Xbox uh starts with an E. Dang it I heard people talking about it and that it was gonna have a thousand dollar price point and
I'm like boy thousand bucks for a console is a hard sell you what let me see Xbox costs one thousand the ROG Xbox costs up to one thousand dollars the ally yeah the Xbox Ally that's what it is it's it was like a it was like a I think yeah like a portable version or something to my understanding.
It's like a Switch?
Yeah, it's an Xbox on a Switch.
And, yeah.
It is.
Holy shit.
A thousand fucking dollars?
Fuck that.
Yeah, it's like a Steam Deck, except you gotta take out a bank load to buy it.
That shit.
God, kids are so fucking just stingy these days, man.
Gotta have all the newest shit, man.
When I grew up, always secondhand stuff.
Always secondhand stuff.
See, when it was up to me to get it, yes.
It's like someone else is getting it for me.
Sure, I'll take the new gen. And by new gen, I mean when it's on sale and it's like 50% off.
You're gonna work for half of it, etc.
But at the same time, not completely like old gen. But then once it came time for adulthood to be like, oh, what are you gonna get?
I'm like, I am getting one or two generations behind because I'm going to
them yeah the pawn shop was the best game store in town back then because boy you know Mega Man X was sixty dollars at the store but it might be ten dollars at the pawn shop man tech news pretty crazy um well should we get into this uh story for today all right what interesting things have we got I've been watching the um great British bacon show today been on a binge.
Some of the weirdest stories that ever appeared in the Times.
Yeah.
Yeah, dude.
Some of the weirdest freaking stories that have ever appeared in the Times.
The publication, the Times, the kid, the young kids out there have no idea what we're talking about.
I still remember reading like uh law enforcement, like uh report or whatever.
One of those new one of those little newspaper stories that tells you the random local cop stories of the day, and it was like Oh, the blotters, yeah.
Yeah, a local man called in to the sheriff's office today.
The money that he had been planning to use to buy meth had been stolen, and he was tripping on mushrooms and unable to retrieve it.
The deputies gave the man a ride home after he came to the station, or some shit like that.
Something ridiculous.
Yeah, that is that is definitely the police blotter.
And you just think to yourself, like that story was a million times more interesting than what you said.
Oh my god, you left shit out.
Because you know that dude was just like in there, no guys, you gotta help me.
You're the police.
And he stole my meth money.
Stole the meth money and my pipe.
Like, um, get the hell out of here before we arrest you for something.
Like, what the hell, man?
Alright.
Yeah.
Alright, here we go.
We'll start this out.
Stories of friends are always great.
Moving on.
So if you're like us, then you spend countless hours looking for and reading the most strange and bizarre headlines that can be found out there.
And actually, I probably spend more time looking for them, to be honest.
For those who are new to the show, the Paranautica Podcast, we love all the weird shit that's out there that just gets ignored and dismissed by so many people.
Personally, I always have, ever since I was a young, young pleb rocking Windows 95, enjoyed these things while on a colossal IBM computer, which I mean was as large as a walk-in closet, if you guys remember that shit.
Fucking things are huge.
But those were the good old days.
When shit was raw.
Real and raw, real raw.
And we didn't have to worry about all this fake news and people using AI algorithms to create a bunch of fkin' bullshit nonsense.
Because all our news was fake.
Sorry.
And it was too.
And ever since I battled my way out of the womb, I've always been drawn to stories that were dark and macabre.
Such as stories written by the Grim brothers back in the day, which Walt Disney later took and completely fucked up.
But you know, putting all the pedophilia and Nazi propaganda aside.
It seems that every story they turn into a movie has a similar theme where the parents are killed off, leaving the young protagonists to fend for themselves against some evil villain that wants them all to themselves to torture and make miserable, like Walt himself.
It's like a reverse isakai.
You take a instead of you know, instead of taking them out of their world and away from everybody, you just take away everyone they care about from the world.
Exactly.
It's pretty man, it's like akin to some sort of programming they use on the young vulnerable children these days.
Yeah, I was about to say like childhood programming.
Yeah.
Just so you know.
See those tall people.
They can be gone.
Just like that.
You're just like, anyways, be happy.
Yep.
And the journey goes on.
We've all heard all the common tales, such as Nessie, McColly, Membembe.
Is that even pronounced that McKelle Mabembe?
And oh oh go pogo and all the bigfoots, the skunk apes, Yowie's yet.
I don't know what to even try.
I don't want to even try.
The gray man, frogman, dogman, goat man, mothman, hat man, and any man.
Maybe Spring Heel Jack, Rogaroo, Troupacabra, the Beast of Eczemore.
We've all heard all the cryptids and giants for all that matter.
Same with the poltergeist stories and ghost stories.
We've heard them all, right?
And we've heard tales of time travel, astral projection, stargates, objects disappearing, planes disappearing, even entire squadrons disappearing.
We've heard about all the weird phenomena like ball lightning, lenticular, and morning glory clouds, underwater rivers, ley lines, weird sounds and vibrations, spontaneous human combustion, fairy circles, doppelgangers, direct energy weapons, and animals who murder, among so many other curious and unusual things, all of which we'll be covering in a later date.
So keep your Velcro slippers close by because we're gonna need them later on.
And a lot of these strange stories that I'm referring to have been around for quite some time.
Combine two of those.
Get some d get some uh animals that murder with directed energy weapons.
There you go.
Throw in cyborg throwing some cyborgization for some cyberpunk shit.
Cyborg animals with directed energy weapons.
Absolutely.
They're gonna do drop you.
No, no, like the Twin Towers.
They'll call them the dewdrop.
Can mean many things.
Alright.
So long.
So long as human ingenuity grows in our desire to seek out what is beyond this realm, this veil, so will our knowledge and our perspective on the world's mysteries.
And if we didn't have that desire to know more and push beyond common knowledge, even when we are bluntly ridiculed for it and dragged to the gravel, then life would be pretty boring and stagnant, wouldn't it?
I mean, shit.
Stagnant as fuck.
But people have always loved fantastic and extraordinary tales, whether they are man-made or natural fact.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of anything fiction, but I know that I can't avoid it no matter how much I wish I could.
The unfortunate truth is, no matter what, it will always be a little fiction peppered in with the facts in every story these days.
But you know, some people love fiction, some prefer it.
Some people enjoy living in a world of make believe, which is just weird to me, but it happens.
Enough of this talk.
Let's get to the bread and butter of today's episode.
Now, what follows are a series of peculiar stories that were published in the 20th century in the famous newspaper, The Times.
Wait, New York Times or the Times of New York.
Wait, which the Times.
Just the Times.
New York Times?
Just the Times.
The Times.
The Times.
There's something called the Times.
Just the Times.
It's called the Times.
It's a very famous.
I'm just wondering if that was the New York Times.
But or there's the Times.
The Times.
Is there one called Just the Times?
Oh god.
Now I'm confused.
I mean, I have to look this up now because it's called the Times.
It's just the Times.
There you go.
Alright, so it's like the Times.
Alright, now I gotta specify.
It's a it's a British daily national newspaper based in London.
Okay, so it is that one.
Alright.
Again in 1785.
Because I'm like, there's a lot of times.
A lot of times.
This is the times.
Yeah.
British, the British, man.
Great British bacon show.
So it's about these times, not all of the times.
Correct, correct.
It's these times.
The times.
Not any times.
Just the times.
The 20th century was an interesting time period, was it not?
With the burgundy practice of modern divination, necromancy, seances, and all that cool stuff.
Was also the beginning of what has become an indiscriminate monster within the machine.
Mass media as we know it.
Yeah, you can thank the times for what the shit we have to read these days.
But at any rate, ladies and gents, well, grow up those yoga leggings.
and shove those burning corns into your best pair of foot gloves and let's briskly shuffle ourselves into this experience Alright.
Now the Times is great.
The Times is great publication.
The Times.
This one comes from September 14th, 1899, called Parrot Was a Gas Fiend.
September 13th.
Alice Knott, 23 years old of 803 12th Street.
Now these are literally verbatim articles from the Times.
Alice Knott, 23 years old of 803 12th Street came to her death yesterday through the instrumentality of her pet parrot, an evil dispositioned bird who was cordially detested by everyone except his mistress, but who seemed to have a strong affection for her.
So much respect for whoever penned that paragraph, I swear to God.
That was serious.
He was smart.
Evil dispositioned bird.
I love it.
Now this bird, this evil dispositioned bird, would follow her room to room and was never happy except in her presence.
He was generally regarded as a devil by the Negroes.
I'm not a racist, ladies and gentlemen.
This is Verbaton from the Times.
Alright.
He was generally this parrot was generally regarded as a devil by the Negroes and as a bird of ill omen by the whites.
His unpopularity was increased by an uncanny habit of pulling the tips off of cast burners with this strong beak and inhaling the gas until it stupefied him.
He was a gas fiend, a feathered victim of the gas habit.
This author, man, it's crazy.
While his young mistress was sleeping yesterday, the parrot took off the lava tip in her room and started on a gas to box.
This time there was no one near to avert the consequences of his deed.
When Miss Knott's relatives, alarmed by her long silence, broke open the door, they found her dead.
Her little murderer was found half unconscious by the door.
Man, that bird just got fucked up.
And when he found himself succumbing to the gas and was not rescued as usual by his mistress, he realized that something was wrong, and had wit or instinct enough to make for the door and shove his bill as far as he could underneath it.
He recovered, and while the coroner was in the house, the malignant little bird was caught trying to turn on the gas again.
Well, I guess that eliminates the random chance from the incident.
It's a murderous bird.
And this is why we cannot trust our pets.
They wait and wait and they wait some more, just waiting, waiting for the perfect time to take you out.
Your pets will murder you.
Swear to God.
Next up.
I love pancakes.
And turtles are pretty effing rad.
And this next story has both.
Pancakes and turtles.
I feel like as the timeline progresses through like the past hundred years, you like watch the word choice become less and less complex as we progress through technology.
Yeah.
And simplification and uh mnemonics and all that, just in general, uh, our our tendency to do to uh choose the easy route on everything.
That's correct.
Yeah, dude.
Back then they were really creative with their writings.
Nowadays they got the most bland news stories.
It's professionalism, right?
Professionalism.
So this next story.
August 22nd, 1925.
Pancake loving turtle, a family heirloom, kidnapped from home that he's visited for years.
Miss Edward Raynor's pet turtle, which came to her backdoor every day in spring and summer for four years to get pancakes made by a recipe known to her family for 200 years, has been kidnapped and advertised as lost in the current issue of The Brookhaven Advance.
Just a bit of backstory lore there for everyone.
These ancient 200-year-old recipe.
It really does sound like uh the intro like an intro from like great Game of Thrones is like one of those uh new those uh ne those like neo-medieval novels where it's like you know they describe the dinner for like four paragraphs, and then they're like, Oh, everyone got slaughtered, by the way.
Yeah, yeah.
Pretty but pretty bloody bummer.
Anyways, moving on, the food was so delicious.
Miss Raynor, like many other persons of Brookhaven, has made a pet of turtles, especially those which had the initials of her ancestors carved on their shells.
And when this particular turtle, which had a large bee on his back, came to her house four years ago.
She knew he had been the pet of the Bartow family, her ancestors, who settled here two centuries ago, and she took pains to make him welcome by feeding him pancakes every fucking day.
The turtle, a large fellow, immediately showed a fondness for the Bartot pancakes.
At first, he ate only what the Raynor cat left.
But then, after Miss Raynor saw how much he liked them, she made up special batches of batter for him alone and set them out in a plate at the back door.
Every morning he would waddle to the house to get them.
Except during strawberry blossom time, when Miss Raynor knew he was getting sustenance in strawberry beds.
Okay.
Alright then.
This would continue until early fall, when with the first cold snap, the turtle would disappear somewhere into the earth to hibernate for the winter.
But a week or so ago, after the turtle had got his pancakes and waddled off again to whatever turtles do when not eating pancakes, Miss Raynor saw an automobile stop.
A man reached down to the earth, lifts something into his car, and drive away.
The next day and the next and the day afterward.
The turtle did not come home to the Raynor back door for his pancakes.
Then Mess Raynor inserted the following advertisement in the Brookhaven events.
Lost.
If this notice comes to the man who took the turtle, will he please return him to Miss Edward Raynor, who fears he will miss his pancakes, and also will never be able to find his way back to his winter location.
Quote, I want only to know that the turtle is well off.
End quote.
Said Miss Raynor today.
If the man doesn't want to return him, I'll be glad to send him a recipe for the pancakes.
I'm afraid the turtle will miss them and be unhappy.
That's just terribly sad.
I hope the lady got her turtle back.
So someone just did a drive-by kidnapping of the poor turtle.
Yeah, dude.
And they get and their only thought was well, if you don't want to keep him back, at least make sure he's not deprived of his precious pancakes.
I love how they just kinda automatically assume that the beam means Bartow, and that means it belonged to their family.
Like imagine the drunk guy is like, man, this bastard is always stealing my pancakes off my plate.
I'm gonna write B on him so everyone knows what a bastard he is.
And then the next person finds him, it's Bartow!
It's the Bartow family emblem.
Means Bartow my ancestors.
Yeah, there's absolutely no other B words in the entire English language.
It must mean Bartow.
I wonder how many cats this lady owned.
They mentioned one, but God knows how many.
The only answer is like not enough if you asked her.
Yeah, not at all.
They all love my pancakes.
Yeah, I was like, I'm like thinking of myself, like I feed it human food, and it just seems to love it.
I'm like, wow, no friggin' way.
Yeah, you don't say.
It loves human food?
You don't say.
That's just unreal.
So do I. Give me some freaking pancakes.
I that's hilarious.
Like, that's like that's somehow like a connection.
Oh, it must be Barto the Bartos.
It loves my pancakes.
And I'm like, you're feeding an animal human food.
Like, it's so freaking delicious.
Of course it likes it.
Especially pancakes.
Like maybe maybe not an herbivore eating like meat or something, but yeah, you like feed it some grains that are put in a slightly different form.
Of course, it's gonna eat.
I love that shit.
Oh poor little turtle.
Oh I don't even know what this is.
I can't have it.
It puts his little paw hand up.
What do you call it?
What do you call it?
Dogs have paws, cats have paws, or what do you call a turtle foot?
Um they're almost hoovy.
You know, they're like hard, but I gotta listen to it.
I think it would be a f- Well, I think it'd be a foot because they got toes.
That is true.
It wouldn't be a hoof.
For it to be a hoof, it has to be a solid piece.
And usually that's made out of keratin.
So they're called either flippers or webbed feet, or even stumps.
I think claws is actually the term for turtle paws, but I'm calling them turtle paws from now on.
Hmm.
It all worked.
Yeah, who knows?
Everyone's got their own flippers or limbs.
I don't know.
I'm gonna stick with feet.
Alright, this next one.
This next one comes from March 15th, 1904.
The title is Wife Returned After Having Fine Funeral.
Then Valenti Well, who the hell dug her up?
Then Valenti learned he had buried the wrong woman.
Ask City to pay the bill.
Insists that morgue keeper persuaded him against his judgment as to identity of body.
So wait, like the the more the mortuary like guy was just was just telling him no.
Yeah.
No man.
This is this is your wife.
And he's like, I don't think so.
And it's like, no, she's dead.
You better get your better get your affairs in order.
Like, and he's like, Are you sure?
Yeah.
Morguee's like, nope, nope, nope, it's your it's your wife.
It's your wife.
Don't ask questions.
And he's like, Am I supposed to mourn or am I supposed to like launch an investigation into if she's actually dead?
I feel like that would be my move was find out if that's really true, right?
Yeah, and what's crazy is in 1904, man, they spent a lot of money on just that title of the article.
That's a long ass title.
Well, I mean, uh, think about all the ink that took.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And at the same time, you know that sold papers.
Oh, yeah.
Dude, that's on the front page.
You know you're buying that shit.
Buying funeral.
That's certainly to pay the bill.
Insist morkeeper ployed him against judgment's identity of body.
I'm buying it.
Yeah, sound like Obama.
Jesus.
Yeah.
That news he gets to eat today.
So, getting into this article here.
Declaring that the city falsely notified him that his wife was dead and saddled him with the expense of a funeral for a strange woman.
Ignatio Valente, who lives at 311 East 16th Street.
I love how they throw these people's addresses in there like nothing.
Back in the day.
He has filed a bill for 250 dollars against the city.
The auditing bureau of the finance department now has it in charge.
Valente is an Italian.
And about six weeks ago he quarreled with his wife, Angelico, over the way she cooked macaroni.
You gotta throw that he's an Italian in there, right?
Does that mean she gets like a a bonus to the macaroni cooking or something?
Yeah, he had every right to quarrel with his wife over the way he she cooked macaroni.
He's Italian.
Exactly.
Like it's a very important topic, damn it.
And as a result of the quarrel, the wife left Valenti's home, declaring she would rather die than return.
When Valenti's rage had cooled, he became worried over his wife and started to search for her, reporting her loss to the police.
He gave a careful description of the woman, and finally, on being notified that the body of a woman answering the description was at the morgue.
He went there, accompanied by his two-year-old daughter.
He identified the clothing of the dead woman as belonging to his wife, but when shown the body, said he had declared it had been changed.
Quote, they all change after death, end quote, says the morgue keeper.
It all change after death.
Oh my god, Valente responds, this woman was better looking than my wife.
Shit.
And he was willing to have that printed in the paper after he found out she wasn't dead.
What the hell, man?
It's like two weeks later, like uh marriage in trouble due to or due to previous printed article.
Yeah.
The morgue man, they call him the morgue man.
Yeah.
That's great.
The morgue man is said to have replied, Death beautifies them all.
Oh god, this guy should not be a mortician.
Oh, they're so hot once they're dead, man.
You have no idea.
Holy shit.
It's just like, we haven't even started the interview yet.
You realize that, right?
It's like, no, I just like talking about work.
She's so beautiful and cold.
And you're like, you know what?
I think I might use a different morgue.
Smothering his doubts.
Yeah, smothering his doubts.
Valente says he had the body brought to his home, and then, in response to an old request made by his wife, got out the wedding dress used by Miss Valente and had the strange woman attired in it.
The funeral was held and Valente footed the bills, he declared.
Notice of the event was published in the Italian papers, and the real Miss Valente, reading it, started post haste for her home.
Valente, on arriving home, discovered the real Miss Valente rummaging about for her wedding dress.
What has become of it?
She demanded when Valente entered.
Why I buried you in it three days ago.
Valente, in a surprise, replied.
Real trouble followed this.
When Valente had satisfied himself it was his real wife who stood before him, and that he had buried the wrong woman, he could only restore peace by promising to buy his wife another wedding dress, just like the one in which the strange woman had been buried.
I mean, she's not gonna wear it again, is she?
He I mean, especially nothing.
Why do you need it?
But yeah.
Obviously you're not wear it gonna wear it again now.
Oh.
But now he demands that the city pay him one hundred dollars, which he spent for the funeral of the wrong woman.
Forty dollars for wages lost to grief, and because of illness that followed the shock of finding his wife alive, and one hundred and ten dollars for the bridal costume which he had placed on the corpse, and with which some he desires to buy a new gown for the real Miss Valente.
Boy, pain and suffering really didn't mean the same thing back then, did it?
Seriously.
Like, you know, oh you convinced me my wife was dead for six months.
Like, I want forty dollars.
Forty dollars, please.
I don't know, man.
I don't know if we can swing that.
This guy tries a steep bargain.
Granted, forty dollars is probably like uh three months wages or some shit back then, or who knows.
Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure it's a lot.
Here, let's see, $40 worth in when is this 1902?
1904.
1904, yeah, that's probably is pretty valuable.
Oh, it's pre-roaring twenties inflation, so yeah, it's about fifteen hundred dollars today.
Okay, so yeah, it is a pretty good pain and suffering.
That's a big chunk.
Never mind.
That's a big chunk of money.
It just sounds so cheap now, you know.
It really does.
All these things, it's like I need a hundred bucks from you, and it's like that'll ruin me.
The man, Mr. Valente, asserts that he would never would have accepted the body of the other woman whose identity still is unknown, unless the morgue keeper had forced him to believe that it was the body of his wife.
Fucking weird morgue keepers, dude.
Weird, weird people.
You never trust him.
I would never trust a morgue keeper.
Man is facing serious existential questions as to whether it was considered cheating to have necrophilia with the corpse.
Cheated on me.
I thought it was too babe.
Alright, now this let's let this next one be a warning for everyone who takes public transportation, which in New York is about sixty percent of people rely on the public transportation.
I think anybody needs warned about that at this point.
No.
Fuck, people being lit on fire.
I mean, I mean, my god, like you thought it was bad in the Bernie Getz era, but apparently it was way before then.
Terrible stuff.
So this next story comes from 1904.
It's titled Couldn't Lose Dead Cat.
Cometer carried victim and guilty secret to New York.
A New York businessman who lives in East Orange and is something of a pigeon fancier, recently lost several of his finest birds to the depredations of vagrant cats.
A few days ago, the losses became so heavy that he armed himself with a gun and lay in ambush one afternoon when he returned from the city.
After a wait, he saw a lean cat emerge from the coate, the coat, the cote, with one of his finest pigeons in its mouth.
He fired, and the cat fell dead.
In the early transports of his joy at having destroyed the thief, he forgot that there Was yet a task for him to perform, but soon recollected that the body must be disposed of.
First he thought of digging a hole in the backyard and interring the cat therein, but then he trembled when he thought that the neighbors might think he was burying.
At last, a bright idea struck him.
Quote, I'll wrap the cat in papers and throw it off the ferry boat when I cross in the morning.
End quote, he promised himself.
So with the bundle neatly tied.
He took the train on the following morning.
He got off the train and boarded the boat.
And there he was greeted by a group of friends from whom he could not escape.
He reflected that he might have to make embarrassing explanations if he threw the bundle overboard while he was with them.
And he deferred the act until the boat landed, thinking he could easily cast it away in an ash barrel on the way to the office.
He passed several ash barrels on his way, but somehow or other, someone always seemed to be gazing in his direction when he approached one.
And once or twice he saw a watchful policeman.
This guy has a really guilty conscience, does he not?
My guy.
I mean, isn't is this just a s is this just a stray cat that he shot?
Yeah, it's just a random stray cat.
Yeah, I'm like afraid that like the owner's gonna find it.
I'm pretty sure it's just a cat from a cat colony, and the the the everything you're doing is way more making you look way more suspicious than what actually happened.
Seriously.
Like trying to keep a pretty large bundle like concealed as he's walking this whole route.
Right.
This is 1904.
Everyone's watching.
He recollected how unpleasant discoveries had been made in ash barrels, and he didn't want to be arrested on suspicion.
A suspicion of what?
I guess murdering cats, like something back in the day.
Killing animals for fun?
Mister!
Like animal cruelty, maybe?
I don't know.
Yeah, animal cruelty bad back then.
I mean, cats are fucking crazy.
They breed like there's no pe there's no pita back then.
Yeah, there was no pita to kill your cat back then.
They had to do it themselves.
Seriously.
So he went all the way to the office and carefully locked the body in a closet, reflecting he could throw it overboard on his way home.
Man, I think he's gonna start stinking.
Yes.
Going across the river that night, after work, he met some more sociable acquaintances, and the cat boarded the train with him as a result.
He laid the package down beside him and tried to become absorbed in his paper.
But that everlasting cat haunted him.
When he reached his station, he picked up the package and went home.
Reaching there, he handed the bundle to the cook and as indifferently as he could told her to bury the cat in the backyard.
Yes, sir, said the woman.
There were a few minutes of relief for the East Orangeite, but soon the cookie appeared.
I guess there's some mistake, sir.
This isn't a cat in the paper, it's a nice leg of mutton.
The man had evidently picked up the wrong bundle on leaving the train, and he only hopes the other fellow who reached home with a dead cat doesn't learn his identity.
Yeah, that's why he put it in the newspaper.
And we can talk about a catastrophe.
I mean, I imagine they got it home and his wife's like, What the hell did you bring us?
How am I supposed to cook this?
And he's like, and they're like, you know what?
We'll make it work.
Yeah, dude.
The man always sees an opportunity.
So there you go.
Oh, so gross.
Cooking a cat.
God imagine like checking your uh checking your leg of mutton when you get there and finding a dead cat.
Like, what the hell?
Yeah, you'd be a little freaked out.
What would you even think happened?
What the hell?
Yeah, why do I have a dead cat wrapped up in some fucking paper?
Like what's going on here?
He has some answering to do.
I don't even know how that works.
But it was important enough to put in the newspaper back in 1904.
This next one comes from 1909.
Titled Lazy Man in Bed ten years.
Mumkra, not sick.
The amazing part of the story, no internet.
Yeah, dude, no internet at all.
How do you stay in bed for ten years with no internet?
Oh shit, what are you reading?
Anyway, the full title here is Lazy Man in Bed 10 Years.
Mumkra.
The fuck's mumkra?
Mumkra, not sick, but refuses to get up.
Lives at country farm.
Oh, okay.
It's a guy's last name.
So, the laziest this is the article.
The laziest man in the world lives in this village.
His name is John Mumkra.
And he has been in bed ten years because he is unwilling to comply with the rules of the Jersey County Farm, which say that everyone living there must rise at 5 a.m.
That's insane.
So he doesn't want to get up early, so he just never goes anywhere.
Never gets out of bed, dude.
I mean, like what you talk about like the slightest provocation.
He's like, that's it.
That's it.
You put restrictions on me.
I'm never leaving the house again.
I'm perfectly free as long as I stay right here.
No shit.
I guess.
I feel like you're still pretty stuck there, man.
Not according to him.
Mumkr is not sick.
He eats regularly as an imperfect health.
Quote.
I am ready to hold up my hand and swear that he has kept his word.
End quote.
Said Superintendent Morning of the County Farm.
John has been in bed ten years and he says he will stay there the remainder of his life.
Good for you, man.
Like really like committing.
Yeah, stand up for sitting down.
No, it's a man who sticks to his buns.
A man who sticks to his buns.
God.
He just lies there and looks at the ceiling.
Or rolls over once in a while and takes a nap.
When he talks, it is all about how foolish a man is to get up every morning when he knows he'll have to get back in bed again at night.
Well, I can relate to the inconvenience of minor bullshit like that.
That's amazing.
God, I hate basic things like how after you go to bed you have to wake up.
And after you get up, you have to go back to bed at some point.
Better just to never ever, ever, ever, ever leave the bed ever.
Good idea.
That's unreal, dude.
John Mumkra, the laziest man in the world.
John Mumkra.
Yeah, not to be confused with Mumra.
What's the point?
That old friggin' 80s show.
Yeah, not to be confused with Mumra from that old ass show.
And then the ironic thing is what was that song?
What was that show?
Steam song.
It was I stand, I stand so fu away.
And that guy clearly did not stand all night and day.
But he couldn't get away.
But he couldn't get away.
Enough quoting the enough quoting that song before people sue us.
Oh yeah, the lawsuits are about to fucking come left and right.
Yeah, damn it.
More lawsuits.
This podcast can't get enough of them.
But hey, people magazine keeps giving us awards, so that's good.
I think we're on our 14th, 14th award, and about 40th lawsuit coming our way.
There you go.
We're good, man.
We're good.
And its title is Flatbush Has a Ghost.
It has returned for its hand, which Mr. Norton dug up.
The old town of Flatbush, which is a great nickname, by the way.
Now the 29th ward of Brooklyn has a ghost.
A Simon Pure.
Sure enough ghost.
That nightly walks on East Broadway near Nostrand Avenue and stops at the house of Charles Norton to make inquiries for a hand that it lost there many years ago while its restless spirit was in the flesh.
These visits are not fully appreciated by Norton Nort his wife.
But it appears that Norton is to blame for the appearance of this ghost because his ghost ship was not heard of until Norton, while searching for gold in his cellar, dug up a hand that had lain undisturbed for years.
Well, I mean That's crazy.
Do that kind of mummy tomb disturbin, BS.
Expect curses.
Absolutely.
Can't steal hands from corpses.
Yeah, you steal a hand from a corpse, you're gonna get cursed on.
Like come on.
This sounds like the start to a movie.
Oh yeah, it's like the mummy four.
Like they knew they should have left it, but of course they didn't, because it was a bad idea not to.
So let's do it.
There was a ring on one of the fingers of the exhumed hand.
And when this had been rubbed, the ghost in true Arabian Knights fashion appeared.
And as it failed to get instructions from Norton, it is now said that all it wants is the hand and ring, and that thereafter it will seize Wernine, the descendants of the early Dutch in Flatbush.
The story that the old Dutchman in the town tell the ghost is that sixty years ago a belated traveler with lots of gold in his belt, stayed overnight at the farmhouse of one Krug, a thrifty Dutch farmer.
Krug, when he heard of the large amount of gold that his visitor had about him, gave up his own room to the stranger and insisted that he should occupy it.
The next day the visitor had disappeared, and when the family asked Krug about it, he said the man had departed before daybreak.
The bed clothing was also missing, and Krug accounted for this by saying he had burned it, because the stranger had just recovered from an attack of yellow fever.
Subsequently, a man's hand was found behind the bed.
It had been cut off by Krug with an axe, it is said.
when the hand was found Krug disappeared and the hand was buried Miss Norton speaking of this ghost and its uncanny visits Said the house was haunted, and continued, quote, everybody who has lived here since murder was done under this roof, has had bad luck.
One man who occupied the house about 40 years ago, left his wife and children, and ran away with another man's wife.
Another was a burglar.
And when he was caught, a whole lot of silverware was found buried in the cellar.
Another committed suicide.
We've been here for six long years, and there has been nothing but sickness in our family.
I don't like to talk about these things.
It sends a chill down my back.
End quote.
That's how she sounded in the newspaper.
Yeah, I'm like, man, you're legit like you're legitimately like almost reading off a chain letter, but this is what this lady actually said.
I miss those chain letters.
Norton, while hunting for the silverware, supposed to be buried in a cellar, dug up two rusty revolutionary swords and several pieces of ancient coin before the hand was unearthed.
Fuck, that would be awesome, dude.
Two rusty revolutionary swords?
Some coins?
A hand.
I know.
I feel like you just settle with those and be like, ah, the effed up hand.
Oh, I gotta keep this too.
Yeah.
Oh, he probably like got rid of the fucking rusty swords and pieces of ancient coin and just kept the hand.
Oh, this is amazing.
It's the one ring of hands.
He's like compelled to keep it.
Yeah, dude.
Like, no, it controls my actions.
Every night I lick it before bed.
Every morning I lick it again.
Like everybody is everybody around him is just asking him, like.
So, you know, like, uh, did you try to sell the sword as an anti?
No, I just threw it out.
I'm gonna how much will you give me for this hand though?
It's worth it.
The swords were rubbish, but this hand is a treasure.
Yeah, I imagine him getting like really possessive over the hand and like fighting people over it.
Smacking people with it.
Sweetheart, you should you think we should just maybe get rid of the hand.
Oh god, no, I'll give it to you.
You and everyone else around me sooner I throw this hand out.
Yeah.
Smack hands it with it.
Picks up the hand slaps her with it.
You throw this hand out, I go with it.
People back then, man, crazy.
Like, if you're showing s yeah, If you're showing signs of being possessed by the terrifying hand that you dug up from an ancient grave.
Maybe put it back.
Except, dude, this guy was murdered.
This fucking boy Krug.
Krug obviously killed this guy, chopped off his hand, wrapped the dude in in the the sheets, since they were missing, and then he disappeared when the hand was found.
Hmm.
Hmm.
I smell Moira.
Yeah, see.
And that's why you don't keep souvenirs.
You don't keep a hand, no, dude.
But they apparently never found the body.
Like, I don't care how crucial the hand seemed compared to all those other things.
Yeah, dude.
Coins, ancient coins, several pieces of ancient coins.
Rusty swords.
Maybe he sold all the coins.
And was just trying to get as much as he could for the hand and couldn't get rid of it as a result.
There was a ring on that hand.
It was like financially strapped.
Needed the ri proceeds from the hand to keep going.
Oh man.
This next one comes to us from 1937.
Titled Monster of Lochness, now raising a family.
Nice.
Out of London.
It seems there is not merely one, but there are two Lochness monsters, and they have produced a litter of baby monsters.
Oh my god.
That's too great.
D.B. Wedge, a science teacher at the boys' school, attached to the Benedictine Abbey of Fort Augustus, which stands at the head of Loch Ness, told the Sunday Express that he had not seen the baby monsters, but several of his pupils had, and the baby monsters were three feet long.
Mr. Wedge deplored the sensationalism of reports and suggested the use of a diving bell to explore underwater caverns where, fed by warm springs, the last survivors of prehistoric monsters still contrived to exist.
The ancient beasts demand remuneration of exactly $3.50.
Straight fitting, please.
Straight fitting.
It's pretty surprising because just a few years, a couple years ago, probably three years ago now, they had this massive group of people go out there into Lake Ness And uh with cameras, underwater cameras, all these drones, tons of people walking around the lake, all trying to find Loch Ness and still haven't found it.
Not even one photo.
Right.
Not even one photo.
It's funny looking at all these stories.
Like, imagine like so many of them are just effectively the lore of the time, dude.
Like, imagine in the 1600s.
Hey, did you know our neighbor?
He turned the other neighbor into a nude.
Says so right here.
Yeah, he's a yeah, he's executed now.
Like, he had a really nice house.
I wonder who got that.
Can you believe it?
The Lochness Monster had a litter of baby monsters.
I know, I'm like, would you believe it?
He was turned into a nude.
I mean, what could we do, but burn him at the stake?
I mean, that's some witch shit right there.
I I I I saw it, I saw the article.
It happened.
The Times published it.
It's been stated right here that it was a thing that happened.
The Times said it's real, it must be.
Like Dudley do, right?
It's written in the newspapers, so it must be true.
Baby Lochness Monsters.
Alright, moving on to the next one here.
This comes from the year 1900.
The title is Wanted Pickles Fried.
Wanted?
Pickles Fried.
Johnson's desire to vary his diet lands him in Bellevue.
Okay.
That's already a pretty I mean wanted pickles fried.
I don't know.
I mean, like, uh, there was some some pickles that ended up wanted, and they were fried, like in some kind of confrontation, like the bit like, you know, the prickles turn the hot sauce upon themselves in the hotel room as the c as the walls closed in.
Like, I don't get the story exactly.
Well, just basing off the title here, so I think it's saying John this Johnson fella, he wanted his pickles fried, but couldn't get it.
And so he they thought he was crazy and put him in the Bellevue mental asylum.
I don't know.
Oh, uh oh, I've missed that second part.
I just read the wanted pickles fried and just kind of assumed like you know, those wanted pickles finally got taken down.
They were a friggin' menace.
Wanted pickles for fried.
Like you can't ever trust those things.
Not even for a second.
Hell no, dude.
Johnson's desire to vary his diet lands him in Bellevue.
Charles R. Johnson out of Bangor, Maine, registered at Jaegers Hotel, 561 7th Avenue early in September.
Will you have dinner, Mr. Johnson?
The clerk asked.
Yes, send some pickles to my room.
Later in the day, the new guest ordered a coarse supper, two courses of pickles and one of crackers.
That's a great supper.
Like crazy people do.
Johnson remained in the place until yesterday, eating nothing except crackers and pickles.
He had frequent conferences with the cook, who was the only person about the hotel whom he would notice.
Johnson went to the cook yesterday morning, telling him he had a new recipe for pickles, which he desired to have made up.
Opening his shirt, Johnson disclosed a wallet hanging about his neck by a ribbon.
Around it, tape was rolled, the ends being held in place by red wax seals.
These Johnson broke.
And from the wallet, he took a paper and began to read.
The ancient parchment of fried pickle recipe.
Ridiculous.
The recipe or the paper read.
Take some cucumbers, when quite green, from the garden, while unseen.
Soak them long in salt mush.
Add your spices.
Watch them rust.
Four same days, let them lie.
Take them out in slices fry.
That's a dish, which one sings.
So good it is, is fit for kings.
Great poetry.
Beautiful, really.
I want some fried pickles now.
Yeah, it kind of sounds good.
Why, that's nothing but ordinary pickles fried.
The cook told him.
Yeah.
At this, Johnson became angry and retired to his room.
To the proprietor went the cook.
He's not crazy, said the cook.
That he wants to spoil good pickles by frying them.
That's what gets you sent to an insane asylum.
Good God.
Imagine if you ordered Ludafisk, they'd have executed him.
Oh, Jesus, he would have been shot on the spot.
Be like, okay, so you put your fish out for two or three weeks, and they're like, that's it.
That's it.
Like uh, you know what?
Like uh summary execution for that.
Hang this man.
Yeah, hang him right here.
Be like, I'd be like, I have a judge.
We're going to conduct an impromptu trot.
What the hell, dude?
So it so yeah, like uh this town takes their food very seriously, not to be effed with.
They absolutely do.
Don't fuck around in Bangor, Maine.
The rest of this article goes.
The proprietor spoke to the policeman on post, Baxta, of the Tenderloin Station House.
A Bellevue hospital ambulance later took Johnson away on the ground that he was afflicted with dementia.
For a time.
So unreal.
This is great.
For a time he was unwilling to go, inquiring defiantly.
Got any pickles over there?
He was told, whole that's of them.
Johnson then quickly climbed hastily into the ambulance and was taken away.
Fucking what a man wouldn't do for a pickle.
Am I right?
Am I right?
I mean, I really feel like I'm siding entirely with the guy who asked for some fried pickles.
Cause what the hell?
Just give him some friggin' fried pickles.
Are you like, what is this insanity?
Charles Johnson just wanted some pickles.
Just give me some pickles.
This was a truly tragic story.
Put him in the Essain Asylum.
This guy's crazy.
Like, boy, like uh first person to put pop chocolate in peanut butter is still serving a sentence to this day.
Poor Johnson.
They tricked him by saying that a whole that of them in the hospital.
You'll get all the pickles you want.
Then he just hopped in there all fast.
Let's get some pickles.
And there was no pickles and only labotities later.
Johnson regretted his decision when he bit down on his tongue from electric shock.
Yes, because Sandy bit he he for he regretted his decision and then promptly forgot it because his frontal lobe was gone.
It was fucking he said he was had dementia.
He was like 20 years old.
That'll show you for making a custom order, like, damn.
Cursed bee, man.
That's that's sad.
It all for some pickles.
But on we go.
To December 25th, 1913.
The title is Santa dies on Xmas Trip.
Struggle through snow to poor boy's home, fatal to Mr. Heap.
Aww.
Well, that's some holly jolly doom right there.
Santa dies.
Imagine reading that back in 1913.
Santa dies on Xmas trip.
God, imagine being that kid.
Exactly.
You hear that?
Santa died trying to get to you.
You better appreciate these gifts this year.
Oh my god, like trauma trauma for that poor kid.
Like even if nobody blamed him.
Like there's a there's endless survivor skill because Santa's dead and you're not.
I mean, Santa's an immortal being.
How did he die in the first friggin' place?
Life is unfair.
Little crippled Wilbur Harris.
Right?
Wilbur Harris, eight years old, read that.
Oh my god, the real life tiny Tim, no less.
He was trying to get the tiny Tim and he died.
This uh the story's so messed up.
Little crippled Wilbur Harris, eight years old, is to have a Merry Christmas, but his Santa Claus is dead.
So instead he was going to have a traumatic Christmas, or he's always going to remember this.
Oh god.
It was W. H. Heap, a philanthropist who came to Denver from Patterson, New Jersey, or Peterson, New Jersey.
Because stricken with tuberculosis, who made it possible the salvation of the Christmas myth of Wilbur.
Mr. Heap's death came yesterday because ignored his physician's order to remain in bed and walked several blocks through a deep snow in the impoverished section of the city.
He carried a sled, a train of toy cars, clothes, rubbers, candy, and many other presents for the destitute Harris family.
Gotta get those rubbers.
Mr. Heap learned that Miss Harris in desperation had told her little boy that there was no Santa Claus for poor children.
He rose from his bed.
That's so fucking sad.
There's no Santa for poor children.
I mean, I feel like that's probably a reality for most kids that were poor back then.
Yeah, I mean, that that is true.
Be good, or Santa Claus still ain't gonna bing you shit, because you ain't gonna get your help up or anything.
You know what?
I don't even care if you're bad.
Santa ain't coming anyways.
Santa's not coming.
Doesn't matter what you do, Santa ain't coming.
Damn.
So what Mr. Heap.
Mr. Heap rose from his bed and in his automobile drove to the shopping district where he himself made the selection of gifts for his family.
The automobile could not penetrate the deep drifts of snow in the lower part of town.
So Mr. Heap, staggering under his burden, walked to the Harris door, two blocks away.
Leaving the gifts with the mother, he said, quote, the sled will do the boys lots of good.
I think if he can get out of the open with plenty of warm clothes, he may be cured partially of his ailment.
God's open air is the best thing we have, anyway.
End quote.
And then the aforementioned air killed him.
The end.
Yes.
A violent coughing spell seized the philanthropist who was half carried to his motor car by Miss Harris.
He was hurried home, and specialists were summoned, but it was too late.
He was dead.
He only walked two blocks in the snow and died.
And you and you get to be The kid who killed Santa Claus.
Like, God, you were already poor and being told Santa doesn't exist.
Oh, by the way, he's here.
Well, he was here, but he's dead now.
He would be here.
Wilbur Harris.
Like Santa Claus existed for that kid for like 30 minutes.
You fucking killed him, kid.
Oh my god.
Killed him.
How do you ever like get over that?
Seriously.
Send him to Bellevue.
They're like, it's okay.
One of these days that kid's gonna ask for some fried pickles, and we can just institutionalize him.
Forever be demonized.
Yeah, I was about to say the l the lesson of the ancient times is you don't ask for pickles.
Like during the period like now I understand why people thought tomatoes were poisoned for so long.
Like didn't want nobody to say you were like exercising witchcraft because you're like, no, you can actually eat these guys, they're fine.
He's a witch!
Is it witch?
It's just like no, they're just not poisonous.
We don't believe you.
That's it.
We're gonna have to put you in the dunk.
Yeah, you're going down.
The only way to find out if you're not a witch is to almost drown you, and if you somehow drown, well, I guess you weren't a witch.
Dude.
Oh, look, he drowned.
He's not a witch.
And they don't feel guilty.
It's like, but he's dead now.
Oh no, who will get his stuff?
Oh my.
What a shame.
Right?
They feel so bad.
Oh, they feel horrible.
This next one comes from 1910.
It's titled A Dog That Talks.
He's a setter and demands cakes in good German.
It is asserted.
I admire that they like emphasize the dog's fluency when it could talk.
Like that the story isn't really just that the dog can talk, but the dog is actually fluent.
Like it's not just saying, like, you know, this isn't Scooby-Doo here and be like, he can you can really say some for real words here, guys.
Right.
He speaks perfect Germanic language, yes.
Yes.
Comes out of this comes from Berlin.
So the scientific sensation of the hour in Germany is the talking dog Don.
A dark brown setter belonging to a royal gamekeeper named Ebers at Theerschet near Hamburg.
Don promises to become as celebrated an attraction as the horse Cleaver Hans?
Oh clever.
Which startled the zoological savants of Europe eight years ago with his alleged mathematical feats.
Wait, this horse could do math?
That was the horse that could do math through counting or whatever, right?
In 1902?
A true legend.
Legendary counting horse.
I guess.
Clever Hans.
It fucking puts Mr. Ed to shame, I guess, right?
And Mr. Ed can talk, but can he do math?
Nah, he's a dumbass.
All you can do is talk.
Does the hor did the horse did Clever Hans do math with his fingers?
Like, how did he do counting?
How did he do it?
These are questions that have no answers.
Carl Hagenbeck.
Hagenbeck, the world's famed animal dealer, has offered Don's master 2,500 for the privilege of exhibiting the dog in the Hagenbeck outdoor menagerie at Hamburg.
The dog's vocabulary, it is said, already embraces six words.
All six.
Wow, six whole words.
That is pretty nuts that they got a dog to enunciate six words.
That's crazy.
That's a lot.
If 40 is 1500.
And they're all like, what are the words?
Well, they're erf burfarfah.
And they're like, yeah, and then they're like, are you just doing this to like sneak like cheat funding out of us or something?
Oh my god.
He offered 85,000 dollars.
Over 85,000 to get that horse.
That's insane.
Well, clearly worth it.
Clearly worth it.
He had six whole words it could it could pronounce, apparently.
So this uh oh wait, this dog, not clever Hans.
The dog can embrace six words?
It can.
Holy shit.
Oh, yeah, I was like, wait, horse, like we're that's how it was a talking dog.
Yeah, yeah, it's a dog.
Okay.
I was thinking clever Hans.
The dog can speak six words.
So his alleged elocutionary power came to light early this week as the result of reports from the United States that Professor Alexander Graham Bell had succeeded in teaching a terrier to speak.
It was declared that Germany not only possessed a dog with similar gifts, but a dog which had been talking for five years.
In fact, ever since he was six months old.
Wow.
That is quite a while.
The story was first considered a joke.
But Thear Chute all the week has been the mecca of interested inquirers, who have come away convinced that Dawn is a genuine canine wonder.
His callers included a number of newspaper men who went to Their Chute to interview the dog.
The gamekeeper, Ebers, affirms that the dog began talking in 1905, without training of any kind.
According to his owner, the animal sauntered up one day to the table where the family were eating, and when his master asked, You want something, don't you?
He stupefied the family by replying in a deep, masculine tone.
Albin, which is want, want.
The tone was not a bark or a growl, it is declared, but distinct speech, and increased in plainness from day to day as his master took more interest in the dog's newly discovered talent.
Shortly afterward, the story goes.
Then he was taught to say coachin, which is cakes, and finally, and it is added that he is now able to string several of these words together in sensible rotation and will say hunger.
I want cakes.
When an appropriated question is addressed to him.
Now, the New York Times correspondent has caused inquiries regarding Don to be made through trustworthy authority that Hamburg.
He is assured that the dog is an unqualified scientific marvel.
Or the thing.
Yeah, I think they took in the thing, and it's gonna absorb each one of them progressively over the course of history.
I believe it's probably out there today.
After the news leaves him, the thing devoured them all.
The end.
Don's owner is overwhelmed with applications from circus and music hall managers who are outbidding one another for the privilege of exhibiting the dog.
I've never heard of this dog.
Have you ever heard of this dog?
I have never heard of I've heard plenty of stories of talking dogs, but I have never heard of clever Hans.
It's a new one on me.
I always think of the old talking dog story where he's like, What's on top of the house?
Roof!
Who's the best baseball player?
Roof.
And the guy's all like, dude, you're full of crap.
Your dog can't talk, and as he walks away, the dog's like, Should I have said the magic yoke?
This next one comes from 1903.
Title is Lemonade His Undoing.
Chicago man chased by police, distanced them, stopped to drink, and was caught.
That is straight up a police blotter right there.
Yeah, defeated by deliciousness.
It happens to the best of us.
When you got some tasty refreshments, it's worth a rest, what can I say?
What are you gonna do?
Frank Lohman ran swiftly to a child's lemonade stand at 6641 Perry Avenue today and asked Margaret Evans, aged seven for a drink.
As he gulped it down, Margaret said, Were you running a race?
Yes, answered the customer.
Did you beat?
Yes, I beat, said the man as he smiled at the little storekeeper and drew from his pocket a long bladed knife and stirred the second glass of lemonade.
You're awful hot, ain't you?
Again queried the little girl.
Did you run far?
Is a lemonade cold enough?
Just then two men turned the corner.
They were the janitor of the flat building at 6505 Stewart Avenue and a detective who were pursuing the alleged burglar.
Lohman saw them and dropped the knife, which he still held in his hand.
He started to run, then stopped, for he had not paid for his drinks.
Want some more?
Curried the child.
Lowman dropped several coins on the table as he sprinted across the street through a vacant lot over a fence and into an alley the man ran, closely pursued by the officer and the janitor.
And soon another detective was in the chase.
The man was captured by detectives Nelson and Horn after a chase of several blocks.
He had been seen trying to pick a lock in the Stuart Avenue flat building with a long knife, and one of the detectives with a janitor had given chase.
He had lost sight of his pursuers when he stopped to drink the lemonade, and thought he had eluded them.
That's such an adorable story.
Guys like I'm the guy's like, I'm a burglar, not some damn robber who'd steal from a lemonade stand or something.
You know, I'm a thief, not some scumbag.
Not a scumbag.
Stealing from a little girl having a lemonade stand.
Honor like great honor among thieves story there.
Ah yes.
He actually paid for his drink.
Even if it got him busted.
In my mind, this man did nothing wrong.
He paid for his drink.
I mean, what what what more do you want from him?
Maybe he was just sharpening his knife on the log.
There you go.
Okay, no, that didn't happen.
He was definitely robbing the place.
I wonder whatever happened to that guy, Frank Lohman.
He was probably hanged.
I'm assuming.
What more are they gonna do in 1903?
Throw him in prison.
Hang him in public.
They sentenced him to catapult, as was the style of the time.
Absolutely.
Alright, this next one.
We've got what, two, three, three left here.
We'll try to get to these ones.
Alright, ja this comes from wait, nope.
1898.
Titled I want to read this one.
Ghost move macaroni.
Prayers will be said today to lay a wet restless wet orange spirit.
So uh yeah.
Ghost smooth macaroni.
Don't do necromancy, kids.
Yeah, don't.
Alright, you can go.
Oh, you want to read the title?
Alright.
Prayers will be said tomorrow morning in the church of St. Michael the Archangel in Matthew Street, this city, to lay a ghost which is driving the Italian residents of White Street, West Orange, into superstitious frenzy.
Ghostly rappings, hand clappings, and other supernatural demonstrations have been heard and experienced since Monday in the store and rooms occupied by Frank Petro and family, who keep a grocery store in one end of a big frame tenement house just across the orange line.
It was in this house that Peter Cristiano was stabbed by Lorenzo Corbo, an old organ grinder at an organ grinder?
At a New Year's Eve party eight months ago.
Now is this like an organ player who's just like jamming the organ in church, just called an organ grinder?
Grinding his organs.
Or do they do or is it one of the autumn like uh well not automated, the like ones you crank up and he grinds the organ.
I have no idea.
Like the old ones that have like, you know, the the boogie wooggies and all that.
I remember I remember I had like one of those old player pianos or a player piano that worked kind of the same.
It must be an old organ grinder and knew at a New Year's Eve party eight months ago, stabbed to death.
The neighbors assert that the ghostly demonstrations are caused by the restless spirit of the murdered man.
Father Diakila, pastor of the church of St. Michael, was called in last night.
He prayed and sprinkled holy water in the rooms where the noises were heard.
While he was in the house, there were no demonstrations.
But as soon as he left, the family and neighbor, Avar, and neighbor Aver.
He prayed and sprinkled holy water in the rooms where the noises were heard.
While he was in the house there were no demonstrations, but as soon as he had left the family and neighbor Aver, the noises were recommenced with redoubled frequency and violence.
Petro, who is a big hearty man of intelligent appearance just appearance, says he does not believe in ghosts, but does not know what else to think.
At midnight last night, he declares he heard a noise as if the front doors of his store, which were fastened with a heavy bar set in staples, had been thrown wide open and the bar flung to the floor.
He tried to get out of bed to investigate, but was held down by some invisible power which pressed upon his chest and made it impossible for him to move.
The presents remained for an hour, he says.
The store doors were locked as usual this morning, but a box of macaroni, which had been placed atop a shelf, stood upon the floor in the middle of the room with a handful of long straws laying across the top in the form of a cross.
That's interesting.
Wow.
My pants are soiled.
Ghostly wrappings and hand clapping.
The Times correspondents heard the noises tonight and made a thorough investigation of the rooms and cellar without ascertaining their cause.
Samuel Cristiano, a brother of the murdered man, who keeps a saloon on the next block, is convinced that the presence is that of his brother Spirit.
He says he went last night into the room where most of the noises are heard, and begged the spirit to make itself visible.
It did not.
But as he rose from his knees after praying three unusually loud.
It did not.
But as he rose from his knees after praying, three unusually loud knocks sounded just under the place where he was standing.
Petro and his family say they have not slept for three nights.
They went out to stay with friends tonight, and intend to move out of the house tomorrow.
Tenants in the other end of the house have heard nothing of the noises.
Hmm.
What do you think?
Real It moved macaroni.
Well good for them.
It moved macaroni, man.
It's gotta be real.
I mean that's real macaroni.
Definitely poltergeist.
Be like confirmed macaroni moving.
Definitely explorgeist activity.
But I put the macaroni on the floor.
No.
That was a ghost.
It's just like, are you sure I got the macaroni out?
No, that's a ghost.
We're going with ghost, please, ma'am.
It's like stop telling me how it got here while I'm questioning how it got here, okay.
And this next one comes to us from nineteen thirty-two.
Yep.
It's titled It's a ghost is Goat is still goat despite magic right.
Psychic investigators failed to change it into young man on Misty German Peak.
Oh my god.
Interesting.
The goaded ghost Wernigerode Germany.
A group of eminent German and British investigators into psychic phenomena ascended tonight to the top of the broken the Broccen?
The top of the Brocken, Germany's magic mountain, and in accordance with ancient right, attempted to change a Billy Goat into a young man.
Somehow or other it didn't come off.
The failure I mean there was an ancient right to turn things into goats.
To turn goats into men.
Yet turn goats into people like What is this ancient right?
I must try it.
Yeah, I'm curious now.
Now The failure of the experiment cannot be laid to any error in method, for the investigators observed every requirement set forth in the high German black book.
Why?
I gotta get this high German black book now.
As demanded by the formula, the experimenters had the assistance of Miss Gloria Gordon of England, a maiden peer of heart.
They anointed the Billy Goat with blood and honey and the scrapings of church bells.
They used it's a great mix.
I have never heard of this.
They used I guess you scrape the insides of these bells and use the sprinkles into this ancient rite.
Church bells are ringing road off.
A circle of the prescribed size, and they uttered every one of the Latin incantations stipulated for such goings on.
Jesus.
I feel like if this succeeded, you would a hundred percent be doing shit you should not be, anyways.
Yeah, these guys are into some bad shit.
Bad, bad shit.
Witches have frequented the Brocken ever since man can remember.
The smallest boy hereabouts can tell you that.
Even Goat.
He can probably write you a letter that's more eloquent than the average adult is these days.
Totally.
Even Goath, in his Faust, recognized that this was a place where no ordinary things happened.
He wrote.
You want to read this little poem?
Sure, why not?
The witch is on the brocken sail, the shoot is green, the stubble's pale.
And high above them thrones old Nick.
As prescribed by the old right, the goat was led into the magic circle by a silver cord.
Oh wait, wait, wait, yeah.
Hold on.
That was the end of it.
Oh.
Here you go, I'll read the rest.
Uh as as prescribed.
Hold on, make a note.
As prescribed by the old rite, the goat was led into the magic circle by a silver cord.
After it had been anointed, a white sheet was thrown over it.
All the proper abracadabra was intoned.
Then in a weird monotone, Harry Price, director of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, London, boomed one.
With just the proper pauses, he counted to ten.
A hundred or so spectators, huddled in overcoats to protect them from the swirling mists, looked on in breathless silence.
The maiden pure in heart whisked off the white sheet.
And there stood the Billy Goat.
The spectators applauded heartily, and the investigators said they were satisfied.
Why were they satisfied?
They're supposed to turn this billy goat into a fucking man.
Woo!
It's still a goat.
You must have tainted him into a worked well.
He turned him into a man and back.
Wow, that's amazing.
That quick, huh?
So ridiculous.
Yay!
You did it!
It turned Billy Goat into Billy Goat.
That's what you call running with it.
Yeah.
Just run with it.
Tell everyone else, run with it.
Yeah, good job.
Success, I guess.
You did great.
They did they did wonderful.
Good job.
Hoy.
That's fucked up.
Yeah.
Now I wanna I'm gonna have to look up this high German black book.
I'm gonna What's with the reference?
Nick at the end there.
Like Santa Claus or whatever.
Yeah, I was gonna say, is that a is that like uh a bridging of uh you know the story of Saint Nick and you know old Nick from uh you know the goat legend, Phaethon, the sun god, the devil, which is actually where our story c was the story Santa Semi comes from.
Huh.
I don't know.
The witches on the Brocken sail, the shoot is green back when the Faith on Yeah, back when Phaeton used to whip the seven virgins endlessly to force them to fly across fly around the world, you know.
Endlessly, endlessly endlessly causing the same mess.
Old Saint Nick.
Because it can't just be that the sun's going by.
You There's gotta be virgins getting whipped in a magical golden chariot for this to happen.
You can't do anything without seven virgins being whipped.
Like you need that.
That's it's a prerequisite.
Yeah, I mean it's required of all things.
Alright.
Next one's basically a reference to the Futurama episode a hundred years before the Futurama episode almost.
Oh, really?
What is it?
Yeah, because there's an episode of Futurama where he drinks a hundred shots of espresso in one day.
Oh, gosh.
He gets a because he gets some kind of coupon for it.
Oh, that'd be rough.
1927.
He gets so caffeinated he reverses the flow of time.
Jesus Christ.
I haven't seen that show in forever.
So yeah, this one comes to us 1927 called Drinks 85 Cups of Coffee and Regains Championship.
Comes out of Minnesota.
Gus Comstock, a coffee drinking pride.
Wait, wait, wait.
Gus Comstock, coffee drinking pride of Minnesota, today again gulped his way into the national championship.
Downing 85 cupfuls, 8 ounce size, in seven hours and 15 minutes.
That is not good.
Wow.
I mean, they uh they would say don't do this, you'd probably have a heart attack.
I mean, I'm proud of the guy.
Great job, dude.
Way to do dreams that are extremely dubious.
Totally.
I live for this.
Gus won back the title from HA Street of Amarillo, Texas, whose 71 cup record recently had better Comstock's old mark of 62.
So these two guys are just going at it and just out drinking themselves with coffee.
Jesus.
So boring.
I feel like uh I'm I feel like nowadays, if the same story was repeated, like one or the other would die a lot of things.
Warden jails.
Comstock.
Comstock?
They were locked away after a caffe after like their caffeine intoxication drives them to psychosis and start attacking people and shit.
Oh, Comstock.
Comstock.
Comstock.
A barber shop porter.
Who later went on to rule Concordia, the floating city.
Was cheered by a crowd that jammed a hotel where Gus imbibed the coffee.
The hotel paid the bill.
I mean shit.
Now the hotel is just everyone gives out free coffee.
Well, now you know where the idea for vigors from Bioshock came from.
You just drink a hundred cups of coffee and it makes you makes you invincible.
It just makes me have gut rot thinking about it.
That's okay.
At that point, it'll be the shit that's possibly also like, you know, hyponotrimia if you try to like drink too much water to compensate.
All kinds of shit.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, you're kind of fucked either way.
You put your body into a freak out.
Near the Don't do this.
Yeah, do not do this.
Do not drink 85 cupfuls of coffee.
Now, near the end, Comstock's gulps were somewhat labored.
Oh jeez.
When he stopped for a rest, a physician examined him and pronounced him in pretty good shape.
Except for a slight fever.
But the rest threw Gus off his stride and it quit short of the 100 cup goal yet set.
My god, the last mark was 71, and he's like, I'm gonna go for a hundred.
Holy crap.
Nothing like 25 more cups.
Yeah, they're ridiculous.
Yeah, thank God you gave up.
Probably like saved your damn life.
Seriously.
But hey, he wasn't he wasn't just drinking straight black coffee though.
Comstock took his coffee with and without sugar and cream.
In the first hour, he consumed 15 cups of the beverage straight, as it needs to be drunk.
All tore all told, he drank 21.25 quarts.
More than five gallons of coffee.
I feel like you'd almost give yourself hyponetremia just from drinking that much fluid.
Like, Like even with it being, you know, uh like making you pee and everything, like you're taking in so much liquid at that point.
Like, how does your body even void it?
Steve's like do like some kind of like Marvel of human anatomy here.
Well, let's look at this really quick.
I just searched up.
Is five gallons of coffee too much?
Yes.
Five gallons of coffee is too much for a single person, as it contains a dangerously high amount of caffeine that could lead to serious health consequences.
The recommended daily limit for most healthy adults is around 400 milligrams of caffeine, which is about four eight ounce cups of brute coffee, which is what I drink like every day.
Four cups.
Right.
A single gallon of coffee can contain over 20,000 milligrams of caffeine, making five gallons well over the lethal dose of ten to fourteen thousand milligrams.
So don't do this.
Don't do this.
Yeah.
Cannot stress this enough.
Do not try this at home.
And if you are concerned about your caffeine intake, it is best to consult the healthcare provider.
And if you ask them if you should drink five gallons of coffee.
Spoilers, there's a very highly likely chance they're going to say no.
Unless the healthcare provider happens to be a like a meth dealer.
Yeah.
You know.
That dude's gonna get the shakes if he doesn't get his credit.
Alright, I'm gonna switch this.
Is five gallons of coffee too much?
Let's do is five gallons of water too much.
You can drink five gallons, but you risk death.
Yeah, again.
Yeah, the raver disease.
Yeah, yeah, the waver disease.
Hypoxia hyponotremia is always the one I read about, like but uh yeah, the the diseases that cause that come from you being too well hydrated, where you can't that is actually a thing, and you can become too well hydrated and die as a result.
So uh in conclusion, for the third time, I would like to repeat again, do not do this.
That don't seem I really love coffee.
And I drink a ton of it.
But eighty-five makes my heart flutter just thinking about it.
It almost seems unreal, dude.
Like five gallons.
Like is the dude seem kinda dude's like sounds like it's some kind of like freaking sci-fi like homunculus, like created to consume coffee.
So he did like spread it over a period of seven hours and fifteen minutes, but you know, the first few cups were gone by the time he was drinking the last ones.
So, you know, like uh only about 40 cups worth assailing your heart or at any given time, maybe give or take.
Yeah, 50 at one point.
I'm gonna also oh god.
I'm gonna look up Gus Comstock.
I'm gonna see if how he died.
How did Gus Comstock die?
I'm sure there's gotta be like a note.
He died of old age, 1939.
So 12 years later.
Yeah, like he died of old age at the age of 30.
Like I just I typed in how did Gus Comstock die, and it literally says Gus Comstock died of old age on May 14th, 1939 at Minnesota Veterans Home.
There is no evidence to suggest his death was directly caused by his famous coffee drinking feat.
So he's just like old as hell when he does this too.
My god.
What a badass.
Yeah, totally.
Wow.
Alright.
Alright, so the last messed up story.
That's crazy, dude.
Alright.
Next story out of the times.
Out of some of the weirdest stories that have ever appeared in the Times.
The Times.
And it comes to us from 1929.
Titled Two Monkeys Make a Madhouse of Pet Shop.
Alright.
Kill canaries, kill canaries?
Is that a type of canary, I guess?
What?
That's weird.
Kill canaries, upset goldfish, bite turtles, and police.
Oh, that's part of the title.
I gotta redo this.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that's part.
That's the rest of the pilot.
I was like, this makes no sense.
Yes.
Yes.
So I'm gonna read I'll reread this here.
1920.
Alright, two monkeys make a madhouse of pet shop.
Kill canaries, upset goldfish, bite turtles and police, and bring call for firemen.
Couldn't just kill the canaries.
You had to upset our goldfish too.
Over set.
Look at them over there.
Goldfish have two TS gone too much.
You've gone too far.
Fighting the turtles and the police and the firemen are nothing.
But upsetting goldfish?
Not in this pet shop.
Two monkeys.
You go up.
Part of the punishment will be apologizing to the goldfish.
Now, two monkeys made a shambles of Bartell's animal store at 206 Fulton Street yesterday.
They killed canaries.
They dumped goldfish on the floor.
Which just upset them.
They indiscriminately bit turtles and policemen.
It was only after two a two-hour battle by the fire department that they could be quieted at all.
And then almost everything was smashed.
I think taking a fish out of water is a little more than just a little bit.
That's what I'm saying.
You probably killed the fucking things.
Attempted murder on those poor.
Like was the pet shop owner there, like, oh no, I'm gonna go give me some water.
Putting the goldfish back in water, like the goldfish were just like, oh damn it, and just flipped back in the bowl.
Yeah.
They were mad.
Upset, man.
Those fish were upset.
Yeah.
Patrolman, Ron Levin, and Sergeant Alexander Lily arrived at the earlier stages of the rampage just in time to see a small monkey cheerfully wring the neck of a valuable parakeet.
They stopped, looked inside, and saw nothing but broken glass and dead canaries.
While Bromlevin ran to a nearby fire station, Lily forced the door.
Almost at once the sergeant got into trouble.
He noticed that the cage of a large baboon was opened, and in his frenzied efforts to close it before the baboon escaped, allowed that worthy to grab his hand.
What?
Allowed that worthy to grab his hand.
These authors, man.
While he was trying to break loose, a small monkey threw goldfish.
The sergeant, to the baboon's regret, escaped.
Gotta have the perspective of the baboon in the story, right?
Like he was very sad the cops escaped after this disaster.
Now one of the troublesome pair was captured almost at once.
The other climbed on a high ledge and showered the policeman and firemen with Brickabrak.
I paused because people I thought, you're in.
Did he pee all over him?
He probably did that too, but he also threw brickabrack.
It finally was captured when it foolishly became engrossed in trying to pull the tail feathers from a celluloid parrot.
This little asshole, man, just a pissed-off monkey.
Rude.
The assist was credited to patrolman Bromlevin.
What assist?
Capturing the thing?
Yeah, I'm guessing uh stopping this rampage.
I guess.
Which admittedly has been very well described.
Like I have a great mental picture of everything.
I know I didn't in this sense that I can see it.
Like from start to finish, like you don't have anything like, hmm, I wonder what happened here.
Like, no, this is what happened here.
Exactly what happened.
Everything is pretty clear.
It is laid out in this point.
No questions.
Nope.
With the monkeys in hand, the rescuing forces begin picking the livestock, which liberated, was flying or crawling happily around the room.
Goldfish, which so which showed signs of life, were dumped back in the aquariums, and perplexed turtles were taken from their sward of broken glass and dumped after them.
Perplexed turtles.
Sounds like this sounds like the kind of thing that would like happen in a like a daytime Disney's sitcom from the 80s and 90s.
Seriously.
Oh shit.
Now Henry Bartels, the owner of the store, arrived from his home toward the end of the battle, and said the damage would be several thousand dollars.
But the goldfish lived.
The canneries.
The canaries, nah, uh.
Well that means GTSD notwithstanding.
And every time something every time something's hand comes near the bowl, the thing like has it has like a heart attack.
Send them to to fucking Belleville.
Goldfish are now in Bellevue in straight jackets.
They can still get me here.
But my god.
Do you have anything with the seal?
You have anything with the sealed lid?
But my god, cricket.
Have you ever heard such incredible tales?
Such fascinating stories.
Those are some great times from the times.
And it also makes me sad how much our uh understanding and fluency in language has degraded over the past hundred years, as illustrated very brilliantly by this set by this segment.
Yes, very colorfully are authored.
Painfully and brutally like boy, like it reminded me like uh I was re I was uh reading some like little kids like letter from like pr like around the Civil War era, and I'm just like this sounds like a scholar would like 50 years ago because solars nowadays sound like friggin' dumbasses.
Ah, dude.
Yeah, intelligence factor is way there.
Oh yes.
The literacy and intelligence is was just so there back then.
So present.
Yeah, it's near non-existent today.
Now you're like, Where'd all that go?
Well, ladies, gentlemen, that's gonna bring us to the end of today's episode.
I know you're all sad.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as we did.
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Always distrust the government.
They probably threw the they probably the real reason those goldfish were upset.
Oh, for sure, the government's always to blame.
We have good reviews so far.
I mean, we got like a four stars out of five on Spotify.
That's pretty fucking good.
I give myself I give myself a nine-star intelligence spark.
I'd like nine stars.
I like nine stars.
Oh, that's this.
I give myself a million stars because what the hell, like why not?
Million out of ten million out of ten.
So good, better than anything ever.
Alright, everyone.
Enjoy yourselves out there.
And a word of advice.
Wash your hands after you take a shit for fuck's sake.
