1051 – Hey Atoll | Spice Friends 4

Notable Language:

• Hey A-toll
• Demanifest and Remanifest
• Some Bogs are Brackish

Notable Culture:

• “Radioactive” Song
• Manifestation Theory
• Creature from the Black Lagoon

Notable Talking Points:

• Offensive Dancing. Defensive Dancing. Energy raising Dancing
• Garlic doesn’t feel great about this
• The Big Ones don’t normally use tools

Episode 1051 – Hey Atoll | Spice Friends 4

 

[START OF RECORDING]

 

SCOOTER:    Friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time for the podcaster…and I’m wearing flannel.  I’ve talked about flannel in intros and then I’ve forgotten what intro I talked about it.  But I’m cloaked in flannel right now, or I’m clothed in flannel so I can be cozy so I can make you cozy, and if you’re confused, you’ll be confused and you’ll be cozy, ‘cause it’s time for Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  If your hand hits the fridge tomorrow and you wonder, how does Sleep With Me put two episodes out every single week for free, it’s these sponsors.  You can find them at sleepwithmepodcast.com/sponsors, and I couldn’t do it without all of you.  Thanks, patrons.  What do you say we get on with the show?

 

INTRO:    [INTRO MUSIC] Hey, are you up all night tossing, turning, mind racing?  Trouble getting to sleep?  Trouble staying asleep?  Well, welcome.  This is Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  We do it with a bedtime story.  Alls you need to do is get in bed, turn out the lights, and press play.  I’m gonna do the rest.  What I’m going to attempt to do is create a safe place where you could set aside whatever’s keeping you awake, whether it’s thoughts, things you’re thinking about on your mind, thoughts, feelings, anything you’re feeling emotionally, physical sensations; maybe there’s been changes in time or temperature or your routine, you got something coming up, you got somebody visiting, you’re going somewhere, just got something going on.  Maybe you don’t even know why.

 

Well, whatever it is, I’m here to help.  I’m especially here to help with the feeling in the deep, dark night, the feeling when you feel lonely, even when there’s someone sleeping next to you.  They need a good night’s sleep too, and it can be a little bit baffling.  You say well, they got to sleep, but I can’t get to sleep.  So, whatever it is that’s keeping you awake, I’m here to help with that by taking your mind off of stuff and keeping you company so you can fall asleep.  It’s a little bit counterintuitive, so if you’re new, stick with me.  I’ll try to explain everything.  The first thing I’m gonna do…I try to create a safe place.  I try to smooth it, I try to pat it, I try to rub it down.  I say hey, here’s a safe place for you.  Come check it out, or I’ll send it to you.  The next thing I do is I send my voice across the deep, dark night.

 

I use lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones, pointless meanders, superfluous tangents.  So, that means I’ll go off-topic, I’ll get mixed up, I’ll talk about something, then I’ll forget what I was talking about, then I’ll go on a tangent.  I’ll do it all in a voice that sounds not traditionally soothing.  You say, it’s creaky, dulcet.  I thought I would want to sleep to sweet, dulcet tones or melodious, frony frones.  I don’t know, those are the kinds of things I thought I would want to sleep to.  I say yeah, this show’s a little bit different.  If you’re new, I’m glad you’re here.  If you’re a regular listener or an occasional listener, I’m here too.  I’m so happy to see you, really.  I’m welcoming you in ‘cause I’m so glad you found your way here.  I hope you could take a little breath, but I’ll also explain a lot of stuff that you could either fall asleep while I’m explaining it or relax, or hopefully it clears things up.

 

So, if you’re new and you’re doubtful, you’re skeptical, you’re ambivalent, you’re feeling a little bit of unease, those are understandable feelings when you first get to this podcast, ‘cause it is very different.  If you’re like everyone that listens to this show and me, you’ve tried a lot of stuff, right, to help you fall asleep.  Maybe it worked for a week or two.  Maybe it worked one or two times and then you said…then, you know.  We know how it goes, everyone that’s listening to the show.  So, why wouldn’t you be skeptical or doubtful?  The other thing…and there’s…this is where a healthy dose of skepticism comes in; this podcast really doesn’t work for everybody.  It just works for the people it works for, but on top of that, for the people it actually does work for, which is a pretty good amount of people, it took them two or three tries.

 

So, out of the people it works for, 80%, 90% of those people had to listen two or three times.  Sometimes they needed a year or two or three-year break because the first time they listened, they didn’t like the show.  But it takes two or three times to really get used to the podcast because at some point you just let go and you say oh, okay, this is a show that never goes anywhere and never gets started and never…well, it kinda stops, but it never gets going and it’s always running, and Scoots forgets the perfect way he had…to sum that up anyway.  So, if you’re skeptical and you’re new, please try to give this show a few tries.  If you already dislike it, there’s a website I made; sleepwithmepodcast.com/nothankyou that has other sleep solutions and sleep audio that you could check out, because truly, the main reason I’m here and that I make this show is because you deserve a good night’s sleep.

 

Whether this podcast provides it or something else does, it doesn’t change the fact you deserve a good night’s sleep, and I hope you can find that.  I hope you can get the rest you need so that your life is more manageable, so that you can flourish, because that is gonna positively impact every single person that’s listening to this right now.  One, accepting that and saying yeah, you do deserve a good night’s sleep, already has a positive impact.  But if you get the rest and you flourish, we’ll all benefit from that.  Sure, you could say indirectly or whatever, but it’s true.  Even if you don’t think it’s true, it’s important to me.  You getting the rest you need is important.  The flip side of that is I know how it feels.  Yeah, I got…my dog’s got something with her ear right now so she’s been getting up a lot, and yeah.

 

So, when you’re listening to this, it’ll be far removed, but…from that, but so, it’s…I haven’t been sleeping great.  But there’s other times it’s something else going on, or it’s thinking about something, or the past, the present, the future.  So, I also know…that’s why I said it can feel lonely there in the deep, dark night, even if you’re not alone.  It doesn’t matter; it’s how it feels in the deep, dark night that’s important, and that it’s not easy.  Despite what all the sleepers say out there…oh, just…why don’t you drink some milk?  Blah, blah, blah.  We know how it is, and you’re not doing it wrong if you can’t sleep.  It’s tough.  So, that’s why I make the show.  A couple other things about the podcast, though, to know; this podcast is not something you really listen to in a traditional manner.

 

It just kinda happens in the background.  You can listen, and I’ll be here the whole time to keep you company whether you’re awake or asleep.  So if you can’t fall asleep, don’t worry, I’ll be here telling a story for the next hour.  But you don’t have to listen to me, and if you try to listen to me, try to do it in a loose way, like looking at clouds floating by.  You say…just like you say…someone that’s more chill, they say ah, I wonder what shape that is that you’re seeing.  You could say, I wonder what Scoots is really trying to talk about, if he’s trying to make a point or not or if he knows the point he’s trying to make or if the point will ever be made.  I say well, no; pointless meanders, so…so yeah, just kinda listen loosely, like sand going through your hands.  Also, ironically enough, this podcast doesn’t put you to sleep.

 

I’m here to keep you company as you drift off, whether you’re awake or asleep.  So, I’m here to be your bore-friend, your bore-bae, your bore-sib, your bore-cuz, your bore-bestie, your bore-bruh, your bore-bor, your neigh-bore, your bore-friend to keep you company and take your mind off of stuff, just like if you were…like if I was on-call.  You say Scoots, I need you to talk to me about…not nothing, but almost nothing.  I say, that’s my skill set.  I can tell you an all…a story that almost is about…it’s almost about some…it is about something and it almost makes sense.  So, don’t worry.  I got that covered, and you don’t even have to listen to me or pretend to listen.  I’ll just be here for you.  So, those are a couple things.

 

The other thing that can throw a lot of people off is the structure around the show, and the structure around the show is…the show is designed in a very specific way, but as you become a regular listener, you can kind of adjust to how you want to listen to the show.  It kinda winds up with the goals around the show.  The first goal of the show is that you feel welcomed in, and so, we start off…friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, so hopefully you feel seen and you say okay, this is a place that might feel safe to me.  I’m not sure yet, and I get that it’s a little bit silly of a place, so let me see if I feel comfortable.  So, that’s the greeting.

 

Then there’s support for the show, and that’s just the reality, is I…my goal is to have as…a bunch of free episodes in the feed so you could listen to episode after episode after episode, that there’s a lot of variety, and that two new episodes come out a week for free on all podcast platforms.  To do that, we need the support of the sponsors and the support of the listeners who support the show financially.  So, that is that support…first part of the support.  Then there’s support for listeners; if you have extra needs right now, there’s organizations you can connect with, and it’s about supporting the communities that the show…communities, listeners around the show, communities of other human beings.  So, that’s the beginning of the show.

 

Then there’s the intro, which I don’t know, we’re like, eight or nine minutes into, which is separate from the support, though people…when people have strong feelings about the support, they also have strong feelings about the intro.  But the intro is a show within a show, and it runs, I don’t know, anywhere from ten to twenty minutes of me explaining how the podcast works every single time I try to explain…well, I try to explain it in the same way every time.  Thus far, over a thousand times, I’ve been unsuccessful.  But what that provides you is a little bit of distance between being awake and being asleep.  The intro…the reason it’s a show within a show is that it serves a purpose, which is to help you wind down, to give you some twilight time.

 

It’s just…not just to introduce the podcast; it’s to say oh, here’s my friend Scoots once again stumbling long, just like a human being does.  Okay, and I know these parts of the intro are pretty standard, but then he deviates ‘cause he gets mixed up and then he forgets where he is.  So, I don’t know.  It is my bore-friend there.  If you’re new, you say okay, I kinda get what you’re talking about, but I don’t quite get it.  I say boy, you get me.  Do you ever get me; that was quick.  So, the intro goes on and on and on so that for a lot of listeners, it’s part of their wind-down routine, whether they’re getting ready for bed, they’re doing some other relaxing activity, or they’re just in bed getting comfortable.  That’s why the intro goes on and on and on and it’s a show within a show.  Also, people just like it.

 

For 2% or 3% of people, they just skip the intro.  They start the show at 20%, 25% minutes into it and then a few thousand people actually pay so they get story-only episodes.  But more…actually, more people pay to get all-intro episodes, which is…or, well, I guess more people listen…anyway, not important.  So, just kinda see how it goes at first.  But the reason the intro goes on and on and on and the story does not start right away is because it’s just my feeling after a thousand episodes or even after a few hundred, it was like oh, wait a second, if I start the story too soon, it kinda interrupts that flow, because it’s not like a direct…if we switch A, then we switch B.  That’s what never worked about that countdown stuff or okay, get in a boat to your higher animal or whatever.  You’re rowing with your higher animal.

 

I’d say wait a second, I’m rowing a boat with a high animal?  There’s…must be a dream, because it’s…and it’s not a good…’cause it’s not a good idea.  Also, which animals have opposable thumbs that can be rowing something?  Because I was picturing a teddy bear which is not an animal, either.  It’s a toy that’s become a sentient anthropomorphized being.  Anyway, so, see; there’s a pointless meander that just popped up.  So, just kinda see how it goes.  But that’s why the intro goes on and on and on.  Then there’s business between the intro and the show.  Again, that’s what keeps the show coming out twice a week for free.  Then there’s the story.  Tonight it’ll be our episodically modular slightly-serialized series…what is it called?  Spice Friends.

 

I mean, what could be more…what could you look forward to falling asleep to more than a series about giant Spice Friends?  So, there’s that, and then there’s thank-yous at the end.  So, that’s the structure of the show, that’s why I make the show, so give it a few tries.  I really hope, I really yearn and I strive.  Really hope I can help you fall asleep.  Thanks again for coming by, and here’s a couple ways I’m able to do it for you free twice a week.

 

Alright everybody, it’s Scoots here.  It is time for our episodically modular series…episodically modular series with a touch of seriality.  It’s at this point called Spice Friends, and this…but so, if you’re new to the show or new to the series, or you say Scoots, hasn’t the series kinda…?  I say yeah, these series are always in…Sleep With Me; always in…developing, but sometimes reverting at the…reverting, developing; Sleep With Me stories.  Sometimes they’re going nowhere.  They’re neither reverting nor developing, but they’re always becoming something.  But sometimes they’ve already become what they…oh, sorry.  This is not a intro, though.  It’s a setup for our…well, it’s not a new series anymore.  This is the fourth episode.

 

Here’s the good new, though; this could be your first episode ‘cause I’m gonna tell you everything you need to know right now.  Then you could listen to the first…the other three episodes.  They’d be prequels.  That actually just works out like the famous space opera.  A New Hope was Episode 4, so there you go.  You’re right in…you’re listening at the perfect time, and that’s why I’m gonna tell you everything I need to know episodically modular means, that even though there’s a touch of seriality, you could listen to these episodes in any order.  Out of order…might even be preferable…in fact, you don’t even need to listen to them at all ‘cause I’m gonna carry you off into dreamland.  So, I guess…yeah.  Oh, okay, so what is Spice Friends?

 

Spice Friends is a story about a world just like ours not too far in the future where…and you’ve seen this portrayed in so many movies and so many different…I don’t know if I’ve read any books about this, but I’ve seen movies and cartoons, animated programs, comic books, and toys.  So, at some point in our future in this world, which is…it’s a fictional world, there becomes Big Ones, like big forest friends that are walking around.  They don’t exactly love humans, and somehow…if you trace it back, you say okay, maybe this has to do with…there was once a song called Radioactive.  I can’t remember who sang it.  Maybe it was just something in the background.  I get a London dance feel from it, but I’m not sure if it was kinda that style of song.

 

These Big Ones appeared and they said…the…we didn’t get the message right away, but they said hey, we don’t like that song or anything that subtextually might be related to that song, if you catch my drift.  We didn’t realize that as human beings in this world that I’m broadcasting from now, as of right now this second.  So, the Big Ones would go around and they’d say well, what are you using that…what are you playing that song for?  Offensive dancing?  Defensive dancing?  Energy-producing dancing?  Actually, we don’t care.  We’re gonna…we’re not gonna…we don’t…we’d prefer it in a strong sense…we may step on your boom box or take the batteries out, but we’re also gigantic beings.  So, that was the state of the world for quite some time.  They would come, they would go.  It was always a conundrum.

 

How do we deal with this?  But then they had gone for a while and they made this comeback.  Oh, we thought we had them all in this island.  It was technically an atoll, but…how come everybody now yells at me, hey atoll?  I’ve recently…I said oh, I thought…I said…no, I said great…when they’re honking though, or they’re just driving by, they say…make a comment about how I walk or how I bike.  Then they usually say hey, atoll.  I said, I thought I was the only atoll fan around that didn’t know really very much about atolls, ‘cause I’m not…I think they’re islands.  But if they act…is it an island?  Here’s a question; do islands…this is really a question, I’m not kidding, and I guess I already answered it.  Islands must go all the way down below the sea to connect with the earth below the sea floor, right?

 

Okay, dead silence in my…one of my parts of my brain just face-planted itself.  But really, if that is the case…there’s gotta be some floating islands, right?  Maybe not.  Yeah, I guess my ignorance is…my ignorance is always on display.  So…but they lived on a…they were all resting on a atoll.  Don’t you want to call me an atoll now?  You say…I say, it’s not my name, but I do like atolls.  I love saying it.  Or a toll; I say, you say atoll, I say a toll.  I say, usually…I said, or is that that effect when you’re going by, the Doppler Effect?  That is sounds like atoll when you say a toll?  So…okay, giggles aside, the Big Ones were on a atoll, then President Smith and Vice President Smith were elected as president…in…vice president of the United States at the time.  It just happened to coincide with the comeback of the Big Ones.

 

President Smith had to, one, disconnect part of the United States to become a Atlantis-like civilization in an attempt to get rid of one of the Big Ones.  That didn’t really work, which probably stressed President Smith out even more.  Then President Smith became a Big One with this serum or something.  It doesn’t matter, ‘cause it’s in the past.  But President Smith became a giant Big One, a big being, dealt with the Big Ones, got them all…actually it seemed like it was gonna be an offensive thing, but it was really a distraction.  President Smith got all the Big Ones to the Big Ones Atoll, and then I guess there was some sort of…President Smith was working with this Planet Zipper who then put everything…entire…our entire planet into hibernation.

 

Now, the good news is, because of their metabolism or something, Big Ones sleep a lot longer than everything else on the earth, so they stayed asleep a long time, a lot longer than all the humans and everything else.  Then we had sent a space team or astronauts to Planet Zipper to get some longer-term solution.  One astronaut came back.  Now, in the meantime, this was…space travel is not like in the movies; it takes a while.  So, by the time this astronaut got back, a lot of things had changed.  So, if you were living where you’re living now, you may be under the auspices of affiliated…I don’t know, the Friendly Nations or something.  Vice President Smith, she had…I think she’s taking a step out of politics but then returned or whatever you call it.  Leadership, I would call it.

 

She was now president…technically not President of the World, but president of the CN, Cooperative Nations.  I just got that note; thank you.  Then the Big Ones…so, I’m trying to get to where we’re supposed to be, right?  So, then the Big Ones appeared again, unrelated to President Smith being President of the World.  Or, not appeared again; they were already appearing on…they were sleeping on Big Ones Island or hibernating, and everyone was waiting for the hibernation to end.  Not exactly a great thing.  One of the astronauts returned from Planet Zipper.  They had sent instructions, so there was this whole children’s programming happening, and cereal and toys at the instructions from the astronaut of Planet Zipper they sent ahead of time, which was confusing, but President Smith, she went with it.

 

Then the…but she was expecting the astronaut to have a laser or super serum or something else to deal…or a big…a positive Big One or something to deal with the Big Ones, or extending their hibernation.  Understandably, the whole world was expecting that, too.  Meanwhile, the astronaut said no, we don’t have anything like that.  But if you trust me, if we put on this children’s programming which is also geared towards adults with positive reinforcement, validation, all that kinda good stuff, I think if you trust me, you’ll see.  Oh, because the astronaut explained to President Smith and all of us who were listening, but I’ll explain it to you now; there was a manifestation theory that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  Even…you gotta take it on faith alone.

 

But if you track things back, you say okay, wait a second, when that…the inspiration for the song Radioactive started, which is not the actual inspiration, I know, that’s when the Big Ones appeared.  The manifestation theory goes, that manifest…that’s how they became into being.  Again, we don’t…I’m sure science could track down…eventually will track down the actual mechanics of all that.  But right now it’s beyond our understanding, especially for this story.  Many things are beyond my understanding.  But the astronaut said on Planet Zipper, they take the manifestation theory seriously.  If a Big One can manifest from that kinda energy, just like the song Pure Energy, which may be or may not be by the same band, but it’s in the same style as that…it said if you use positive energy, maybe you could manifest a positive Big One.

 

Obviously President Smith kinda scoffed at that and said, we’re actually looking for real solutions here.  But the astronaut was very confident; said hey, trust me on this one.  Or go ahead, only partially trust me.  Keep going in parallel.  Now, the only thing that was troubling…beyond the Big Ones that was troubling President Smith was the fact that she did have one big solution which was similar to her father’s, but her father’s was only localized in the United States; in California and Nevada.  She had a solution because the Big Ones Atoll happens to be at a inter…just like all good atolls, they’re at a intersection of continental plates and things, or whatever, rift…whatever those things are called.  You know, lines, where continents…where continental plates intersect.

 

They did have a device that could cause…definitely cause the Big Ones Atoll to be…go bye-bye.  But it would also impact those continental plates.  So, definitely get rid of the Big Ones Atoll.  But it would have a lot of after-effects for regular folks, and a large, large impact.  So, President Smith was like okay, that’s a real tough decision to make here.  Not the one I want to make…get rid of the Big Ones, but I’m not…no one’s qualified to make that choice, though everybody expects…President Smith also…this wasn’t revealed in any of the stories but I’ll just tell it to you now so you have it; is the only one that can enact that, because working with her father and seeing the path her father had to go down, and because of her intelligence and foresight, made sure this was…that she…only she would carry the fail-safe and that there’s no way to duplicate it or anything.

 

So, only she can make the final choice, because she carries the fail-safe with her.  Of course, you can see that there’s a little bit of a thing in that plan, you know?  She did have minor backup plans, but again, for the time being, she said if anybody’s gonna do it, I’m gonna do it, because my father had to do something similar.  I’m President of the World but I don’t want to do it because I’m President of the World, not part of the world.  Not just a part of the…but also, President Smith on the other side said, but I’m President of the World, so I will have to decide this if needed.  The astronaut was saying don’t worry about it.

 

Meanwhile, the manifestation theory turned out…well, again, this could be just projection, but let’s just say it for the sake of the story turned out to be true; the projection or manifestation worked, and they were able to manifest a giant, positive cinnamon stick who managed to deal with Moth Breath, the first Big One that awoke, and saved us from…saved different places from Moth Breath, and then left the world…maybe fused with Moth Breath or something, but they went into outer space.  So, that’s one Big One gone.  I guess we won’t be…I don’t think we’ll see Cinnamon…not Cinnamon…yeah, Cinnamon Spice; that was the name of the Spice Friend.  So, but meanwhile, that left an island also still full of Big Ones that were getting to the end of their sleep cycle, because Moth Breath woke up, though Moth Breath may have been awakened by a bunch of people that had a Moth-Breath-based belief system.

 

So, without further ado, that’s where we’re left off.  President of the World, President Smith, the astronaut working on positive solutions through children’s programming that manifests giant, spice-based beings, and one…and a recipe with one Hollywood announcer who really is my Cinnamon Spice, Mr. Antonio Banderas.  Thank you, Scooter.  The friends beyond the binary, the ladies, the gentlemen, the boys, the girls, it’s time to get spicy with Spice Friends.  Clomp, clompity, clomp.  Yeah.  Holy cow, you…once again you came up with the thing…see, just like the…it takes a while for the show to get a title, it takes a while for your brilliance…I mean, I’m sure a lot of people that work with you expect you to just turn…I mean, your charm’s already turned on, but that…whatever that is, that skill that you were able to do there, you can’t just turn that on, right?

 

It takes…right, Scooter, it takes a while.  I need a title and understanding of the basic story, which you’ve provided me now.  Thank you, and goodnight.  Alright, yeah, you could go lie on my bed again.  I have the…your comforter.  I also added some other…I said, how is that…?  I tested the comforter when you weren’t here; it was quiet, so I don’t know if there’s something else…you don’t…it sounds like you were wearing all-leather clothes, but you’re not.  So, I also ordered you some clothes that you can…that…oh, you…I need you to change into.  But yeah, thanks, everybody.  Thanks.  That’s Mr. Antonio Banderas, and this is Spice Friends.

 

Okay, so, well, I’m recording these messages for you, or for whoever listens to it. President Smith, I’m very proud of you.  I think I mention that every single time, but it’s just because of the spice…Cinnamon Spice worked, and there’s been some time since Cinnamon Spice’s appearance.  Just because it worked once, we don’t know…I mean, I’m confident it’ll work again.  But everyone expected it to work again immediately before any other Big Ones awoke.  I’ve told you this interpersonally, but I don’t know if there’s a way to announce it to the world, that it’s like, what if this doesn’t work in the way we all expect?  My team is prepared for that.  It’s not…even when it did work, it wasn’t in the way everyone expected, because along the way, one thing we learned is we…when we lost sight of the why and the what, the first time, is that what caused it not to work?

 

Probably contributed to it.  So, I have to think about how I can stay focused and my team can stay focused.  I don’t know if the right word is firewall, but you’ve done a good job of that, protecting us from the outside world, our existence, our…even those people said huh, that’s interesting, that there was a Spice Friend on that show and then there was a Spice Friend in the world.  It’s brought in a lot of…Spice Friend stuff is selling out, of course.  But it’s just not that simple, you know?  But the whole world is waiting vigilantly for both the next Big One and the next Spice One.  There’s reports all the time of Spice…or Big Ones waking up or Spice Friends appearing, and that why can’t one appear now?  But there hasn’t been any appearances, but people want either answers or actions from you and their leadership.

 

They don’t want faith, they don’t want trust.  Obviously you can’t just present the manifestation theory or to say hey, trust us; everything’s gonna be okay.  Just be patient.  We don’t know what we’re doing, but trust us anyway.  At least on my end, I know what our next steps are gonna be, because I can feel the feelings directed at you and directed…that everyone’s feeling right now is pretty potent.  It’s the A-N-G-E-R and it walks hand-in-hand with that vigilance, this hyper-vigilance.  So, we’re moving forward and we’ve been pitching ideas and we’ve been testing out different Spice Friends, and none of them have appeared, and that’s fine.  But we thought about it in a session recently.  I said okay, are…it’s hard to detach, to be process-based when we’re hoping for an outcome.

 

But we keep returning to the feelings, and that’s why I’m talking about feelings, because we made a list of…how do we feel or what do we think about those feelings I mentioned?  Then a list of spices that don’t reflect those feelings, but one of the things we came up with was like, well, it’s tough to understand, or this doesn’t make sense, or how is this healthy when it’s portrayed always in a non…not a positive light?  How do you validate something that’s volatile?  What do you do?  ‘Cause of course, if there’s an island full of Big Ones, you’re gonna be on alert.  We kinda talked about the feelings and the thoughts and tried to stay process-based.  Then we said well, what is a spice that’s kinda like that, especially from a child’s perspective, that they don’t understand?  If you told them about it, they probably wouldn’t be interested.

 

Even if you told them trust me, when I put this in food, it makes…it’s one of those things that makes it taste better.  We couldn’t just…we did want to get the rights to the Dragonlance prequels of the two brothers and…the Mejier Brothers, and then just for the one scene where Raistlin gets a job cooking at an inn and the secret ingredient is garlic.  But that was not possible, and they said it was too confusing.  So, we said okay, garlic, but that was the spice we came up with, was garlic is in a same way or similar to those other feelings.  You say, I don’t know about it, or I’m not sure.  If you overcook it, holy cow, it’s bitter, it’s unpalatable if you go too far, or if you just have it raw.  You wouldn’t…only under certain circumstances, but at the same time, if you roast it and it’s caramelized, it’s entirely different and subtle.

 

So, we started to work on understanding garlic, or garlic being the misunderstood Spice Friend.  Especially even as adults, you say oh, okay, there’s garlic.  It’s papery, it’s leathery.  You say okay, that’s not where…is…garlic could be green.  So, I don’t know, we just started doing dances about that, and how it feels to be misunderstood.  It was…I guess we did make some missteps with showing Garlic how to cook garlic.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I wanted to kinda…that was me.  I wanted to point out that…what if you overcook this?  We didn’t air those, luckily, but we did take the steps back, and I said okay, wait a second; like, the team reminded me.  Follow the feelings, right?

 

I said okay, what if we, through song and dance and in a subtle way that I’m not capable of but this amazing team of dancers and singers and writers and performers and puppeteers, they’ve been able to do, what if there is a way we could create dance and song and story, to take Garlic on a journey that I think our world needs to go on, of following those feelings.  So, we did; we’ve been doing these stories of taking Garlic to places maybe Garlic doesn’t want to go.  Again, it’s cloaked, but not in a way that insults children, obviously.  More…it’s even obvious.  A lot of it’s on the nose, but it’s in song and dance, so then it makes it not on the nose.  I don’t even understand some of this stuff.  But you know, what would happen if Garlic stays on guard about everything?

 

Just like you are in that place of…if the world’s aggression, if they expect you…they’re turning it against you to make you more offensive, but you don’t want to make that last choice there.  Or, I don’t know.  I can’t speak for you.  But leading Garlic down that road and saying yes every time…I guess validating…I was saying yeah, okay, okay.  What if you…on guard.  Okay, what if you feel…what if you go with these feelings and seeing the folly in it, through Garlic’s eyes, mostly, and saying oh, wait a second, I can…you can…if you validate it, then you kinda see…you get sad in the end.  You say well, I really feel bad for you, Garlic.  You followed this friend.  It was a little bit of a misdirect.  You know, down Angry Road, keeping an eye on everyone.  Look where it led.  Now, how do we feel about Garlic?

 

Oh wait, were we with Garlic the whole time?  We were, dancing and following along.  Oh, we feel a little bit sad, if that’s where we ended up.  Not in Candyland; no, no, no.  But there’s been no result of Garlic, whatever, appearing.  But I can feel it in the team.  I could feel it in me, and I can feel it in the children, that there is a response.  I don’t think the adults are changing their mind; they’re saying oh, no, no, President Smith.  It’s time.  We’ll take action against the CN.  We’ll leave the CN if you don’t…and…but the funny thing is, I guess, to me, what you’ve explained to me and what you’ve explained to them is you don’t know.  There’s theories; oh, okay, it’ll be this ring theory around…concentric rings around Big One Atoll.  But other geologists said no, no, no.  It probably will cause an impact on the other side of the world.

 

Or oh, well, there’s this tectonic plate theory.  So, you have people holding onto different theories of what would happen.  I mean, every theory says this impact of getting rid of Big Ones Atoll will have…come with great cost.  But everybody’s looking at it from a different way, ‘cause no one knows what’ll happen.  But they all want you to act anyway, because they want you to act, right?  So, that’s what I’m thinking Garlic is providing us right now.  But you know, the world does not want to wait.  It makes me wonder how you’re feeling.  I guess you have to be stoic and strong, but I have seen you watching the more time you spend down here, and that you are…I guess that’s where my pride came from at the beginning, is in your ability to make…be a leader.  It’s the ability to also be a join-inner, or a part of.

 

That’s kinda…you’ve been a part of the team.  You’ve set aside and you’ve even scheduled it as a time, ‘cause we’ve talked about these things, obviously, where you’re only a part of the Spice Friends production team or the Big Emojis team.  Whatever it is.  Spice Friends have kinda taken off, where the show itself…still the Big Emojis show with Spice Friends, but really, the Spice Friends are the focus.  So, I don’t know.  We’ve talked a lot about it and the cost of things and where things are going, and I also know that you have some plan.  By coming here and joining us, that’s part of the plan.  But it’s a lot for you to carry.  I like watching you dance and sing and partake and be a part of the team, a contributor to the team, even with your presence.

 

I guess, yeah, just like everywhere else in the world, there’s staff members that have stronger feelings about what actions you should take.  But if they’re participating, they can only…you know, they have to make…they have to walk their own path.  Let me just…you’re knocking at my door.  Excuse me.  Okay, well, it’s been a little while since I’ve recorded, but…and things have happened.  You had knocked on my door during my last recording and you had said okay, these rumors, they’re not rumors anymore because we had talked about…people had started seeing Garlic Spice everywhere, which we were hopeful about, but it wasn’t showing up on any of our tests.  Then you said there’s something showing up, but it’s not from Big Ones Atoll.  It was never on Big Ones Atoll.  So we said, maybe this is Garlic.

 

It was in wetlands areas.  The signal would go and it would disappear.  But that also started to line up with people seeing this new Big One, Boggy, and…rising up from bogs or swamps.  Again, those are somewhat isolated areas, most places…wetlands.  But again, when we looked, we said wait a second, these sightings do line up with the tests now.  Some of the views people were saying didn’t exactly…I don’t know, that it looked different in different places.  But then we had I guess our first…well, the…Boggy’s here and it’s here in Florida, or the former Florida.  We still call it Florida, though.  Boggy is…Florida’s wetlands…all wetlands now, but cities and wetlands, and Boggy’s been visiting the cities, and it’s not going good.  But then vanishing back into the wetlands and occasionally peering throughout the world.

 

Again we said…but now we know…the world doesn’t know that there’s only one Boggy.  You said, does this fit the manifestation theory?  Is it manifesting?  I said, no.  I don’t think you could manifest twice, or de-manifest and re-manifest.  But obviously the world didn’t know that, and they said what if there’s multiple Boggy’s?  While it was a distraction, it was also another impetus for the other leaders of the world, and I guess a large percentage of the populous to try to again get you to take action.  But it was also, as we stay tuned to the feelings of the world, it was also this thing of…wait a second, things have changed.  There’s still that A-N-G-E-R and this vigilance kinda leading you to be…take action and…or want you to take action.

 

But now it changed a little bit too, because the feelings became more and more…frustrated with you is a mild way to put it, and blaming you for not getting rid of Big Ones Atoll.  Kind of more of a…it went from a hot to a slow smolder; I’d say what people would say would be contempt.  I saw it around us, even some of the staff.  I said well, okay, they have their feelings, but if they’re focused on being part of a team, those feelings don’t have to be everything for them.  They can be there.  So, people were starting to feel loathing and blaming and frowny faces.  So, I said okay, well, how can we do this with Garlic, whether Garlic appears or not, which is really hard, especially with Boggy appearing and disappearing, but becoming more and more frequent in Florida.

 

Again, just like you were responsible for the people of the world, you’re saying okay, well, sooner or later, Boggy’s gonna get closer to really…a area where a lot of people live in Florida.  But we talked about that.  We actually returned to those cooking lessons and talked about Garlic.  How’d you feel about the…this mistake I made?  I went on and have been rare since I’ve been on the show.  I told Garlic hey, I made this mistake.  I thought we would teach people about you, because when you cook…it was a little bit comedic, but again, with a strange undertone.  Then I said to Garlic, do you know you’re not even the same as the garlic we eat?  You’re a symbol of garlic, but you’re also a bigger symbol.  But then I said, how are you feeling about all this?  Garlic said, not good.  I feel like my temper’s rising.

 

But I also feel a lot of it directed at you.  We played this out, and again, played it out over song and dance.  I’m trying to be as clear as I can, ‘cause sometimes the subtleness of the show…I don’t know.  This helps me to think it out and say…to see where I’m missing things, because when I miss things, they’re always…I’m missing the thing that’s right on my nose, you know?  So, we talked to Garlic about this, and holding resentment and that kinda stuff.  Again, where would it go?  Let’s head out again, Garlic.  Take me with you.  But the world’s fires didn’t subside towards you.  But again, I felt a shift in the children and in the staff, even the staff’s attitudes towards you, because when you get to the end of those roads, it’s a sad road to go down.

 

You really can, and you say hey, I keep validating this but also looking at it and saying okay, well, if we validate that you’re feeling this way, but we…the feelings.  But then you say okay, well, what if you acted on that thought, Garlic?  Where would it take you next?  When you see where those kinda things end up, you say oh, maybe I should just let those feelings flow through me, ‘cause it’s sad if I’m just controlled by the thoughts and the feelings.  I don’t know.  But what couldn’t be denied is that finally Boggy had headed inland, or what you would consider inland in other areas.  What’s interesting though is Boggy…we thought Boggy was gonna go to one of the big cities, and out on the outskirts of one of the big cities is this gigantic garden that’s been maintained for so long, and that it’s really something people love.

 

They’ve adjusted it to the more wetlands-type environment over the few decades.  But something about Boggy seemed different.  Now, we had learned by observing Boggy that Boggy was of the wetlands and the swamps and the bogs, so kind of a amalgamation of organic materials.  But this garden really seemed to irritate Boggy, which was interesting with all the way the world was feeling, that Boggy seemed really angry at this manufactured garden.  You say okay, well, maybe it’s this clash of organic versus a cultivated garden.  Now, of course, we were wrong because it had been a while since…that…whatever.  So, Boggy started clomping around this garden.  It was very large.  At first we didn’t even realize it ‘cause we said well, it’s not that far outside of the city.  Maybe Boggy’s getting ready, or maybe…I don’t know.

 

But then we saw Boggy make its way towards the center of this garden where there’s this giant green stalk, towering and towering.  Boggy was pacing around and he seemed to be yelling with one of those sonic things at the stalk and kicking at the dirt.  We realized Boggy’s digging with feet; there seems to be something about this green stalk, and…I guess none of us thought to analyze it, or the history of the gardens.  How long has that stalk been there?  What was it?  But it ended up, we would find out, because Boggy started to pull at the stalk and dig around the stalk and hit at the stalk.  Then it pulled it out of the ground and started swinging it.  Our reaction was a bit of concern, because at the end of this long, green thing was this big clump of earth.  We said, is Boggy using tools?

 

Then go to the history of the Big Ones; the Big Ones used tools not normally, but they could, and they never use them for anything other than causing…property damage I guess would be the way to put it.  So, Boggy’s swinging this thing around.  We were all watching.  We were getting ready to film something, and someone said, what if that’s actually Garlic?  Say, wait, Garlic is a bulb.  We did say okay, let’s get something on air, but what happened as we were…we had something ready to go.  It was in the same thematic place.  But at the same time, we noticed that suddenly the Garlic…it was Garlic; started to wrap itself around Boggy.  Then feet…it was long, so it wrapped around Boggy a few times and then started to swing Boggy up over a…now, in this garden they had these giant trees that were no longer trees; they were just wood.

 

They’re trees that had passed the great beyond.  But their wood was there.  It was called the Empty Forest.  Garlic threw Boggy over the tree so they were hanging in counterbalance over this tree, off the ground.  Boggy was writhering and trying to get some of the garden to grow up to connect, but it was pretty high up.  They sat there in the Florida sun for some time.  I said oh yeah, that’s right; this is a lesson in garlic.  Garlic is drying out, but Garlic was also drying out Boggy.  Now afterwards, we realized wait a second, ‘cause Boggy’s power was the wetlands and the swamp and the bog.  Not just the organic material, but the water as well.  Eventually Garlic dried out first; Boggy was still resting and waiting, and…but it was clear also that Boggy’s…obviously the thing that dried out first was the stalk.

 

But Boggy knew that, so Boggy dropped down, and…on its feet and then became this giant Spice Friend just like we would have expected, a smiling bulb of garlic.  But what we didn’t expect was Boggy kinda opened up to catch…or, I’m sorry; Garlic, Garlic Spice.  Everybody says, Garlic Spice?  But yeah, Garlic Spice caught Boggy and shot out some of its cloves so they could fit Boggy in the paper part of Garlic.  Again, Boggy was very irritable.  This part was a bit of a back-and-forth, because Boggy was trying to use the earth and trying to get…splash water, but Garlic seemed to know, to just hold, and this kinda went along with those things we were saying.  Okay, let’s see your anger.  Oh, okay, yeah, let’s let that play out.  Let’s hold it.  We’ll be here for you as you get more and more irritable.

 

Garlic kinda marched along the few dry places left to the highest point it could get to, which luckily these are giant beings, so it’s not as like us walking across Florida to Georgia and eventually getting to the top…the highest, driest place it could find, and still letting things dry out and air out, but holding and smiling.  You could kinda see that Boggy was comforted by Garlic, too.  I don’t know.  Again, we’re still trying to figure out why did Boggy manifest?  My theory is all of the strong…Boggy was all of those strong feelings people were feeling towards you, and wanting you to act and wanting to take away…to make you act.  Then eventually Boggy kinda seemed to really be more dried out, and Garlic hopped into the sea and headed towards Big Ones Atoll, like a garlic bulb boat or a…I don’t know.

 

I guess it was…Garlic was using its feet like a duck and just kinda floating along the water.  Boggy kinda had the sense this was really salty water, so not the kind…some bogs are brackish, but not all bogs are brackish.  Only brackish brog…bogs are brackish, Boggy.  It gave us some time, ‘cause all this unfolded slowly to address it on the show and to kinda address it in the same themes, to even give it a deeper lesson.  What did we learn?  Oh, Boggy’s…or Garlic sat with Boggy.  Garlic held Boggy when Boggy wanted to be held, or gave it a container for its feelings.  Then Garlic went up to Big Ones Atoll, climbed up to the top of that same volcano, and sat in there.  Then…again, before our eyes, we realized that those two had become a flowering…I don’t know, something.

 

I don’t know if there’s garlic flowers, but they’re sitting there and they’re plugging the volcano, though I think it went…it stopped flowing with Cinnamon Spice…and sitting in there, kinda like it’s a big pot and the two of them are there, but neither one of them seems…they seem like just beautiful plants again.  So, I don’t know.  I know we’re still waiting for the rest of the Big Ones, and…but I hope we can rest and say hey, let me lie here and give myself and hold my own feelings.  I say oh, who else feels this way?  Can I hold their feelings too?  Or can I hold some space for them?  ‘Cause if we run down that road, it’s a little bit sad.  We don’t want to be…it’s okay to feel sad, too.  It’s okay to be mad.  But look where it go…let’s see where it leads us before we let it…before we’re led.  I guess that’s kinda your leadership style, too, President Smith.  So, I hope you’re getting some rest wherever you’re hearing this, and I appreciate you.  I’m proud of you.  Goodnight.

 

[END OF RECORDING]

(www.leahtranscribes.com)