1064 – Gunky Astronaut | Spice Friends 8

Notable Language:

• Similean
• The great gray zone we all live in
• Gunk

Notable Culture:

• An American Tale (Feivel)
• Marvel / Tony Stark
• Obsession perfume

Notable Talking Points:

• I’ve got gerbils in my brain
• Deep Instinctual Drive for Rest
• We were a playground for Planet Zipper’s feelings

Episode 1064 – Gunky Astronaut | Spice Friends 8

 

[START OF RECORDING]

 

SCOOTER:    Friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time for the podcaster who…I don’t really know what I’m doing because I just started recording this.  But I’m glad you’re here.  I was just…I was just thinking about when dogs sigh.  I don’t know if that’s another Prince song, but I wish it was.  Think about it; Prince is somewhere with dogs, sighing.  Or, well, Prince is probably rolling Prince’s eyes while I’m doing this, but what could be a better honor?  Prince, you could roll your eyes at me across the cosmos.  It makes me feel good even imagining it.  Oh, it’s time for Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  Thanks for making it possible, patrons.

 

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 from the past, the present, or the future.  So, thoughts, thinking stuff, thoughts, feelings, anything you’re feeling emotionally coming up for you.  So feelings, those are feelings.  Sometimes I call them…normally I call them feelings or emotions.

 

Or, I usually just roll my…I’m trying to learn to embrace my feelings in a kind and loving manner.  So feelings, physical sensations, so anything you’re dealing with physically, any changes in time, temperature, routine, schedule.  So, life stuff, it could be anticipation, it could be something else.  Every time I have trouble falling asleep, I think…or trouble waking up or trouble getting to sleep, I say well, thank goodness I make this podcast, ‘cause I can stay related to listeners.  So, whatever it is that’s keeping you awake, I’m here to take your mind off of that and keep you company.  I’m trying to establish a safe place that either you could come to or I could send it to you, or I’ll meet you halfway.  I don’t know who…is that from a…I know there’s a song, Meet You Halfway Across the Sky.

 

For some reason, I don’t know if that’s one of the great songs from a Fievel movie.  I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the movie America…the…An American Tale About Fievel, who was a mouse, I believe.  My brother was a fan of American…An American Tale, it was called, and he…I think he even had a Fievel plush.  I like saying Fievel.  Somewhere Out There, that’s where…that’s a song from that movie.  Meet You Halfway Across the Sky; I don’t know.  Maybe that’s…is that a Christopher Cross song?  I don’t know.  Way off-topic, but I’m trying to create a safe place.  Right, I said okay, you could come here and you could say oh, I’m gonna come in, I’m gonna check it out.  You could say that’s okay, I’m gonna look at it at a distance, Scoots.  I say okay, that works.  I could send it to you or we can meet halfway.

 

We don’t have to meet halfway; who says…that’s…this…that’s kinda my all-or-nothing thinking.  You say well, why do we always have to meet halfway, right?  Isn’t that…they say well, that’s a compromise.  You say, are you sure it’s a compromise, or isn’t this an all-or-nothing situation you’ve put me in, old idiom brain?  Who are you calling an idiom?  I’m not even sure that is an idiom, but I feel like one.  So, I’m trying to create a safe place, and one of the ways I do it is I send my voice across the deep, dark night.  I use lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones, pointless meanders, superfluous tangents.  So, what that means is I’m gonna get mixed up, I’m gonna go off-topic, then I’m gonna…you’ve heard me do it already; get mixed up, then repeat something, then wonder what I forgot about, then try to rephrase it, then mispronounce it, then stumble over my words, then come back to another point.

 

A little bit like I got gerbils in my brain.  I don’t know if that’s…have I ever said that before?  But I do have gerbils in my brain.  I mean, not literal ones; not even figurative ones, but some…well, no, I guess I don’t have…I definitely don’t have little…I hope I…to goodness I don’t have any literal ones in there.  I guess I only have figurative gerbils, ‘cause they’re not even…I can’t even visualize…so, is it figurative?  It’s more like a simile.  It’s like a gerbil in my brain.  That’s probably the best…you say yeah, that’s the first successful use of a simile.  I don’t have meta…I guess…you say well, it could be a metaphorical gerbil.  Probably not a figurative one, but it’s the similean…the gerbils in my brain are simileans.  They say, yeah, we’re not gerbils; we’re like gerbils.  We move like gerbils.

 

That’s our only similarity to gerbils, and our cute little tails.  Other than that, we’re just a combination of brain goo and synapses and some sort of…you know, dark matter.  A whole lot of dark matter up here.  Matter in Scoots’ brain, most of it’s always been dark.  It’s got…it’s like, the shades of darkness up here.  Oh boy, so what was I saying?  Oh, I’m gonna go off-topic.  There you go.  All to keep you company so you can fall asleep.  Now, if you’re new, this is…show is very, very different.  I acknowledge that and I want to talk to you about it because I’m really here to earn your trust, but I will be straight with you that hundreds of thousands, if not more, probably pushing a million people have said I didn’t like this show when I first…I don’t want to brag, but millions of people have told me they didn’t like the show.

 

But maybe close to a million have said I didn’t like it at first and then I tried it again and I wasn’t sure, and then the third time I fell asleep, or some sort of thing, ‘cause it takes two or three tries just ‘cause the show is so different.  But also if you’ve been trying stuff to fall asleep, right, you’ve been probably let down more than once, and…or something’s worked a couple times and it hasn’t worked on the regular.  That’s been my experience and a lot of listeners’ experience, and I want to tell you how sleep with me works so you could just try it on and see.  If you tried stuff for years, trying Sleep With Me for a few nights and just seeing how it goes, hopefully it works for you.  But it’s very different.  It’s a goofy, silly show.  It’s structured differently, and there’s a bunch of caveats that I’ll give you.

 

Of course, this is made by a man with similean gerbils in his brain.  Actually, now they’re figurative, or…because they’re wearing sashes that say similean.  So, that’s already…there’s already some sort of evolution happening with my brain gerbils.  So, okay, so a few things to know; first off, let me tell you why I make this show.  There’s two reasons that I make this show.  One, I’ve struggled with sleep my whole life and I find it to be very…it can be very frustrating.  Right now I’m having trouble with it.  It can be very…make your regular day life challenging, and it can feel…in the deep, dark night or the early hours of the morning, the wee hours, lonely and upsetting.  I’m here to keep you company during that time or take your mind off of that, so that’s one of the reasons I make the show, ‘cause I know how it feels.

 

But the more important reason is you.  You really do deserve a good night’s sleep.  You really do deserve a place where you can get comfortable, get in bed, and drift off, and I really hope I can provide that for you or be a part of you getting the rest you need so that your life is more manageable and that you don’t dread going to bedtime.  You say well, I got this weird podcast I listen to, so I’m looking forward to that.  So, that’s the goal of the show, is you’re important, your sleep is important, and I know how it feels.  Now, let’s get to the other stuff; the show…this is a podcast, believe it or not, that you don’t really listen to.  I think you probably already got that part.  You just kinda barely listen.  You say uh-huh, okay, okay.  Don’t know what you’re saying, but okay, yeah.  Uh-huh, uh-huh.

 

Kinda like that; you just kind of barely humor me.  Or lower me down to just background noise.  But it’s something you just kinda barely listen to or you slowly stop listening to me, or some at point you’re…one of your parts of your brain says yeah, we could kinda listen to this, but I don’t need to stay awake for it.  I can listen to it while I’m sleeping and get the…I got the gist; he’s going nowhere fast.  So, it’s a podcast you don’t really listen to.  It doesn’t really put you to sleep, either.  I’m here to keep you company so you can fall asleep, to take your mind off of stuff, to be a presence, a friendly presence in the deep, dark night.  I’m here for you.  I’m here to be your bore-friend, your bore-bae, your bore-sib, your bore-cuz, your bore-bestie, your bore-bor, your neigh-bore, your bore-bud.  I don’t know what else.

 

Bore…did I say bore-bae?  That’s one I…I get a kick out of it, I guess.  Your bore-bor.  So, whatever it is, I’m here to keep you company while you fall asleep.  Moreso, you just wake up and you say oh, I think I was listening to that podcast.  I’m not exactly sure.  So, that’s that.  Then the structure of the show can also throw people off, so let me tell you why the show’s structured the way it is.  It’s a very intentional structure to help the most people it can, and that people can kind of adjust how they listen.  But that way, the structure also helps us keep the show coming out free and twice a week.  So, it starts off with a greeting; friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, whatever witty thing I can almost say but not quite get there that’s silly.

 

They say okay, so, I feel seen and welcome and I know the tone of the show is a little bit light-hearted about a serious subject.  Quirky might be what…it’s not a polite way to say it, but I’ve been called quirky more times than I can…I mean, to my face, you know.  Idiosyncratic.  I’d say thank you so much.  Interesting.  There’s other terms.  That’s just how people describe me in my personal life, not even the podcast.  So, a little bit different.  So, there’s that, then there’s support for the show via sponsors and listener support so the podcast can come out twice a week for free on every platform, every podcast app.  That’s the best place to listen, is a podcast app.  Then there’s support for listeners if you’re having a tough time right now, there’s support for the communities around the show, so that’s like the support and sponsors and stuff like that.

 

Then there’s a intro, which is separate from the support and the sponsors.  Sometimes people are new, they feel like the intro sometimes gets lumped in with that.  The intro is a bit different than that; it’s a show within a show and it runs from, I don’t know, minute six or minute eight to minute twenty or ish.  It’s a show within a show to ease you into bedtime.  It’s where we’ve been here already ten minutes together talking, I think, and it’s where I unsuccessfully try to describe the podcast and how it works and everything, and it takes me forever, where some other show would be like, badda-badda-boo, this is the podcast about, you know, whatever.  This is the Idiom Podcast made by a couple of…imagine if idioms made a podcast about idioms.

 

We’re just a couple of idioms talking to idioms, with no sense of…nothing ironic here, either.  No irony allowed.  It says it on the front of the podcast; only idioms.  Also, note; look up what a idiom means so you don’t look like an idiom tomorrow.  That was a note to myself.  So, oh, what was I talking about?  I got dis…I said wait a second, where can I down…where can I listen to that show?  Is it actual idioms that are…?  Are they sentient idioms?  ‘Cause we could be…we might be in trouble, then.  I mean, that could be something…we might have to call some…who do you call?  Really, if you found out you had…you were dealing with sentient idioms and similean gerbils, you’d say, you better call…well, who would I call?  ‘Cause probably there’s gonna be a phone tree and I wouldn’t even know who…do I ask for an agent?

 

‘Cause I don’t even know if that…those are just fictional movies.  I wouldn’t…I really would not know who to contact.  I mean, at least in the movies, you say well, you contact Stark Enterprises or something.  But in a actual situation, they’d say don’t worry about it; it’s…that’s what they say to me, ‘cause I’ve tried.  I said I got some sentient gerbils from the simileans.  They say son, I’m sure you do.  That’s usually…and then they pat me on the back and then they say, it’s all in your head, kid.  I’m sure you do, though; usually that’s the subtext, this is all in your head.  I’m sure you do.   I say I’ve just encountered some sentient idioms, and then they…they don’t even say anything; they just pat me on that one, ‘cause they say he doesn’t even know what idiom means, in their brain.  Their face says it all.

 

Oh, I’m supposed to be introducing a sleep podcast, though.  So, the intro goes on and on and on as you’ve seen, and it’s different every time because it’s important for me that the episodes are different every single time so that your brain and those things keeping you awake can’t adjust and so you have something to look forward to, something new.  But it’s also the…I almost said idiom by accident, but is…the intro eases you into bedtime.  For a lot of listeners, they’re doing something to wind down or they’re in bed getting comfortable.  So, it serves as a twilight phase between being awake and being asleep so that you can ease into bedtime.  So, the intro goes on and on and on, then there’s business again between the intro and the show just so the podcast…that’s just part of the structure of keeping it free.

 

Then there will be a story.  Tonight will be our episodically modular story, Spice Friends.  I think it’s Episode 8.  So, that’ll be fun, and you could…but you can listen to those in any order ‘cause they’re episodically modular, so if you’re…I’ll describe all the plot points before the story starts so you won’t miss out on everything.  Then there’s thank-yous at the end.  So, that’s the structure of the show, that’s why I make the show, and I think that’s it.  I’m really glad you’re here.  I really appreciate you checking the podcast out.  I really hope I can help you fall asleep.  I work really hard, I yearn and I strive, so thanks again for coming by, and here’s a couple of ways I’m able to do it for you twice a week.

 

Hey everybody, it’s Scoots here.  Welcome to another episode of Spice Friends.  I believe this is Episode 8, but you can listen to them in any order ‘cause it’s our episodically modular serialized series.  When you say…how could it be episodically modular and serialized, Scoots?  I say, let me ask you a question, okay?  Fair question; have you ever had cereal for lunch or dinner or dessert or a snack?  If the answer’s no, totally cool.  The answer could be no, could be I don’t know, could be yes, could be maybe, and that’s enough for a sleep pod…that’s…’cause the sleep podcast, while it goes out in the deep, dark night, comes from the great, grey zone we all live in.  Cereal; sometime…most of the time for breakfast, but not always.  Cereal also has a broader definition than how I would define it.

 

That means it comes in a box with hopefully a puzzle on the back that no longer contains toys, but unfortunately for the youth of today, maybe…I don’t know.  So, episodically modular means you can listen to it in any order.  I’m gonna explain everything you need to know right now to take that off your plate.  The only reason I number the episodes is ‘cause I know there’s completists out there, so maybe you want to listen to 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, if there…if that’s how many episodes we put out, then listen to 1 through 7.  Or you may say well, Episode 8 was my favorite one.  Oh boy, did the characters in Episode 8 feel good about that.  This is one of those pause episodes where we get a little bit of a pause in the action.  What is the action?  Correct; great question.

 

So, in a world like ours, pretty similar…it’s not that far in the future when all good tales…some of the tales I tell are told.  We have our world, right?  Pretty similar.  Well, at the beginning of our story, it was pretty similar.  You may have seen some of this in movies, so I don’t know if it’s a parallel timeline or whatever they call it, the scientists, but you know, when there’s these movies…they’re called kaiju, is actually a soft way to say it.  But maybe you have…maybe that…but big beings, forest friends, and dino buddies and winged beings that…they’re really large; skyscraper size.  Furry mammals; that was another one, and they’re running around our world right around…you know, sometimes…I don’t think…did they say this on…?

 

They don’t say it on dating sites that I know of, ‘cause I’m not on any, but like…and there’s a audio…there was this audio dating app.  I said well, that could cause problems for my job making a sleep podcast.  But it’s a nuclear…nuclear, nuclear…that’s a word that…I guess I wouldn’t say…here’s a tip; you…’cause they say well, we’re not…I say, don’t you know opposites attract?  They say yeah, we’re not opposites, though.  I say well, how do you say that word that…do you say…which word?  I say, the fission, fusion word.  They say, you realize I’m in your imagination and you’re having a con…?  I say well, yeah.  We gotta have a conversation in my brain first before I even…you’ve never even spoken to me in real life.

 

Right, ‘cause I’m having a pre…I’m supposed to be setting up a sleep podcast backstory, and now I’m having a conversation…well anyway, do you say…which word do you use?  ‘Cause I just wanted to wonder…the only way you’re gonna find out if opposites attract or if we’re opposites is talk to me.  Okay, but do you say nuclear or nuclear, or one of the other correct pronunciations that I don’t have within me?  Okay, so anyway, right around the time those words came into parlance, these big beings started walking around our world, right?  They would make a big fuss and a muss, and knock over buildings.  Particularly, they had a thing for giant billboards and neon signs.  There was video games based on them; everything, right?  A Page of Rams…the video game was called The Page of Rams.

 

I think they even made it into a movie.  Oh yeah, they did, with the Rock.  I’ve never seen it, but…right?  Is that what The Page of Rams is called?  But so, anyway, living in a world like ours were these big beings walking around.  Not exactly easy on your limbic system, eh?  Some people said to their leaders hey, can you deal with this?  My car, it was…I still had two payments left on that thing, and the big, furry ape stepped on it.  So, at the time, the leaders in here in the United States, where it’s President and Vice President Smith, the first father-daughter team or whatever…I don’t know.  What do you call that?  President and vice president.  They were dealing with the best they could.  They had to make a lot of tough choices, including President Smith eventually becoming a Big One and then dealing with the Big Ones.

 

They also sent a team of astronauts to another planet called Zipper, Planet Zipper, that said they had a solution.  They said also, we’re gonna put everything on Earth into hibernation because then while the astronauts come to our planet to learn the solution of how to deal with the Big Ones, you’ll all be asleep, but the Big Ones, their metabolism’s slow…or fast or slow; something, ‘cause they’re so big, so you’ll all wake up first and then you could get everything dealt with and get ready for dealing with the Big Ones when they wake up.  Because when President Smith…President Smith had to…he didn’t actually deal with the Big Ones; he just brought them to Big Ones Atoll.  It was a secret plan and he ended up visiting the big farm in the sky.

 

I think…actually, I gotta check the episodes, ‘cause that could be a key continuity question.  Vice President Smith, she became president for a time, then of course when this kinda stuff is going on and an entire planet goes into hibernation, tends   to…but the national…things change, so then by this time, President Smith had left politics and leadership, then returned as President of the World, which is CN, the Collective Nations.  One of the astronauts returned, only one, and said hey, I’ve got the solution from Planet Zipper for dealing with the Big Ones.  It’s through children’s programming, song and dance.  Teaching children to articulate their feelings through song and dance or process their feelings through song and dance; something like that.

 

Healthy boundary type stuff, stuff I…they didn’t have this programming when I was a kid.  It was like, giant robots punching each other, and…voiced by the same people that were…anyway, so…oh, so it ended up working, not in the way…it created these Spice Friends which were also giant spices, which was kinda part of the branding.  Planet Zipper was really good at this stuff, so they had already set up all the branding, all that kinda stuff.  So, a giant cinnamon stick or whatever was dealing with this…these Big Ones, the big beings.  It worked and it kinda didn’t work because you couldn’t…it wasn’t so clear; do a song and dance and a giant lime leaf will appear.  It was a little bit more subtle than that, and I think when you got giant, furry apes walking around, nuance is not at the top of everybody’s to-do list, right?

 

It was also confusing where these beings coming from.  The astronaut was offering this manifestation theory which just kinda seemed like wait a second, so they just…the atoms in the soil make the Big Ones?  But you know, at the time, you say okay, we’ll put nuance aside.  We’ll put these questions aside; we gotta deal with this.  But also, other people have other ways of dealing with things other than the way some…you know, everybody deals with things in their own way, including nation states, particularly under times when the intensity of feelings is strong.  So, there was conflicts around how to deal with the Big Ones.  Some countries or…I don’t think they were called countries anymore, but…Collective Nations…I don’t know; the other ones, they eventually became the Big One Nations and they would align with the Big Ones.

 

Then our Spice Friend…Team Spice Friend, we’ll call them, President Smith and the astronaut and a large number of the Collective Nations, but not everybody, they said okay, we gotta get more…the Big Ones are active.  We need more Spice Friends.  They introduced these toys, limited edition toys, but mass-produced, but still limited edition when you’re sending them out to the entire globe.  Even 200 million’s a limited edition.  But I don’t know if that’s the number, so don’t quote me on that.  But so, that did cause more Spice Friends to come and to distract the Big Ones.  They started participating in what I would call parallel play, but they also seemed like they were playing together.  But you know that contemplative state you get into when you’re doing some hardcore parallel play?

 

Or, I least I know who my introverts are; they’re nodding their heads out there.  Very meditative state.  So, that was the status of the Big Ones and the Spice Friends, but then with all the people, these toys kinda became a currency because it was global and people wanted them.  People were participating in their manufacturing.  They actually created a sense of…they were a big like a talisman, if you don’t mind me saying.  People kinda got caught up in it, and then of course different people tried to control the flow of the…what they started calling NFTs, new f-word toys, and things kind of fell into a little bit of a chaotic state even without the Big Ones and the Spice Friends being occupied.  That created a global shift.  Again, I’m giving you the summary, here.

 

Only taking me twenty minutes to summarize a forty-minute episode.  Now, the president and the astronaut were sitting on this giant, large…they were slowly parceling out the toys, right, and they had their studio where they were kind of creating the Spice Friends with a team of writers and experts and all that kinda stuff.  Eventually, the CN kind of became lined…I don’t know.  The socio-economic politics is well beyond me.  I don’t even know if that’s actually a word.  But basically, they lost…she lost her presidency of the world.  They said we’re gonna come take those toys because you’re…kinda have the last remaining…a large…it was Fort Knox, believe it or not, just like in the movies.  The studios below Fort Knox…pretty secure, and that’s kinda where we left off.

 

So, President Smith’s lost her presidency of the world.  They’ve lost their ability to broadcast the Spice Friends show and all the affiliated programming that supports the underlying wellbeing of children, that somehow by something we don’t understand other than a theory, creates the Spice Friends, which…so, not a good situation, though when we last left off, the Big Ones and the Spice Friends were still participating in parallel play.  As far as we know, though, because the broadcasting…they were only receiving news into the Fort Knox facility, so actually, they don’t have any way of confirming anything.  They don’t have a way to contact the outside world, and they’re trying to get in and take the toys.

 

For once, this picks up not that long after we left off, with…so, yeah, without further ado, straight from Hollywood and only what should have been a five-hour drive but somehow took six and a half, not that I’m counting ‘cause he does it for free as a hobby, just for the listeners, the man who has the loudest spirit and soul on the planet ‘cause even when he’s not moving or in total stillness, somehow he projects a sound that would be described as shiny.  You’re gonna say, what does shiny sound like?  I say, you’d know it when you hear it, especially when you hear it in your headphones; a low, shiny sound, like a humming soul.

 

More like an…I mean, again, I talk about these angels ‘cause I think they just love him, understandably, and I think sometimes they’re just sitting around watching him lie on my bed, which has three comforters on there that are just for…to silence him and keep my bed…I say, there’s only so much intimacy I can handle, even with Antonio Banderas and his booties that I have him wear and his special outfit that he changes into, which now they tell me is scrubs.  My neighbors…I got a call from one of my neighbors; they said is Antonio Banderas changing out of his clothes into scrubs in his car in your parking spot?  I say I’m sorry, no, I don’t have…I say no, I don’t need a new car…I just say you know, I don’t have a car.  I don’t need a new car warranty.  Thank you.  So, that keeps…that’s how my life goes.

 

So, without further ado, straight from Hollywood to your hearts, Mr. Antonio Banderas.  Thank you, Scooter.  The ladies, the gentlemen, the boys, the girls, the friends beyond the binary, it’s time for a journey, a spicy journey, with the Spice Friends.  Yeah, spicy, yeah.  Thank you, Scooter.  I…so glad to be here, intimate with you, because the true intimacy takes place when we play a game and I see the real you.  Yeah.  Oh, you got me, man.  Talk about the key to…really?  Do you see the real…do you like the real me?  I guess you do, because we keep playing board games after I force you to not move for an hour.  So, I guess that’s a relief, but now I’ll be thinking about it the whole time we’re playing, especially when you’re watching me with those knowing eyes and that knowing smile that makes me feel warm and…inside and feel like I’m humming a shiny song.  Well, maybe what that song Shiny’s about…maybe they…do you know if that dude wrote it about you?  Okay, this is…that’s Antonio Banderas.  This is Spice Friends.  Thanks, everybody.

 

Okay, so, I think you can hear me through this vent, so I guess it’s like our recordings and you’re the only person I can communicate with, but I need to communicate with you now with some immediacy, because we got stuff going on.  I don’t think they’ve gotten to the toys yet, but our staff, understandably, on my behest as…said okay, we’re going to pretend that we have…they put us in these two adjoining rooms and said we’re on time-out, and our staff is…but that I am not able to…which is true; only I can unlock the facility, and the staff is hoping I’ll tell them how to unlock the facility, which I think we will do once we have a plan, because they still are having trouble getting in to access the toys.  They don’t want to destroy the toys, so they’re being cautious.

 

You say wow, what…this is a…the Collective Nations and the Big Ones Nations’ best…no offense, but not impressed that they can’t get in here, which tells me that there isn’t a unified front, right?  If they were unified, then the smartest people in the world would say oh, okay, you just hit that…I mean, this is…I don’t know if this would work; blue wire, green wire, pinky touch it to metal or something.  But I’m also really…you could probably hear the tension in my voice.  I’m no longer President of the World.  That’s kind of a…not a…well, it’s kind of a relief and not a relief, especially seeing the leadership that’s going on, trying to get into this building.  But we’ve gotten the information.

 

You’ve listened to it, because these…they’re broadcasting…there’s…only allowing us to watch certain broadcasts, but I…this is a question I had been thinking in the back of my mind the whole time, your story about…we had to put some feelings on hold and some doubts on hold to move forward.  Why…what happened to the other astronauts?  What exactly happened on Planet Zipper?  Why do you seem so confident and so sad at the same time?  I tamped those down, which I’ve kind of learned there is some boundaries and compartmentalization that sometimes I needed to do to operate in my leadership roles.  Even looking back on it now, I think we chose the best path, so that’s why I’m dealing with this now.

 

Also, we have nothing else to deal with, and we have to come up with a plan, and this is the only process I can see, because I need to know if I have to do this on my own with my staff and those…or we could do this together, and I don’t know if we can, because I don’t know if I can trust you, right?  I mean, that’s as plain as I can put it.  The news has been coming in that Planet Zipper has contacted the Big One Nations or the…I think they’re calling themselves the BONTONs, but they’ve never explained what the…Big One Nations…they never said what TONs stands for, or I guess s would be plural.  Big Ones Nations Together One Nation, but that doesn’t make any sense to me.  But that’s the best I could figure it out.  Big Ones Together One something, maybe.  I don’t know.  BONTONs.

 

Also, I don’t even know what…I know BONTONs are…I don’t…any…man, I’m…so, I don’t know if I could trust you.  I don’t know what…I need to know what happened on Zipper, if they really…why is Zipper contacting the Earth now?  Why didn’t they contact it before?  You said they couldn’t or they wouldn’t, or…oh, or maybe you said you don’t know what happened because the time you left, the time you arrived, I think you just acted surprised.  I don’t know; my head is bouncing around.  But the message on the news is that you’re not to be trusted and that therefore I’m not to be trusted, and my staff is confused, but they still trust me and want to trust me.  Me, I’m wondering…I think I can trust my best judgement, and I did the best I can, but I need to know what happened.

 

I need to know…that’s where we’re at in this situation.  So, tell me what happened and start at the beginning.  Well, we don’t have a ton of time, either, so don’t talk like you…I mean, try to get to the point and why should I trust you.  Thanks, Madam President.  I know you don’t want me to say that, but should you trust me is a fair question, and I say, should you trust me?  I’ll tell you what happened and then you can decide.  I guess I’m partially surprised.  I was hopeful if Planet Zipper contacted Earth, if they did, that…but I’m not surprised, either, and we’ll get to that.  So, what happened?  You know my file; I don’t have a storied history or family or…kind of.  I was a nobody and I got chosen for the team to go to Planet Zipper for one reason and one reason only; I was the support systems expert and I was good at my job.

 

I had had…I had come to my career a little bit later in life than a lot of people do, and you know my history; I didn’t live a perfect life.  I lived a much less than perfect life, and it wasn’t all…I didn’t…you know my past, and maybe not all of it, but you know enough.  But I’m a human being, right?  I poured myself into support systems, and I know that I wasn’t…there was many other people in line for this job, but they needed someone that could handle everything, ‘cause what they don’t talk about with…and why support systems are why this space travel is so limited or why we haven’t done it and why we needed a little bit of extra help from Planet Zipper, because when they say support system…you say oh, you just get in that pod.

 

We’ll put…we’ll turn it on, you’ll sleep, and then before your destination, it’ll turn on and artificial intelligence will handle it, and the automated backups and all that stuff, and some support systems supporting the systems that enable that stuff to happen, that the other astronauts can get the rest they need for the takeoff and the landing.  Those are the hard parts, or if something unexpected were to come up on the journey, or the navigator…if something was to go off, and, you know, whatever.  You know.  I was just there for support systems.  Some of that is hardware, some of it’s software and redundancies, but a lot of it is what I guess we would term maintenance, because we’re human beings, right?  Human beings are gunky.  That’s the biggest part of support systems that nobody talks about, is the gunk.

 

Whatever; we’re breathing, our breaths are humid.  I’ll leave it at gunk, Madam President, ‘cause you said to stay on topic.  So, for me, it wasn’t as restful, because I had to get up on a regular basis; either something had to be changed because of one of the redundancies of a filter, but there’s also a lot of wiping and cleaning and flushing of systems.  That’s the support systems that…I say, I guess it’s just too boring and gunky.  You say well, I don’t want to know about gunk in space.  But it’s really something that even engineers…I guess as human as we are and as egotistical as all humans can be, we don’t…we always underestimate the gunk.  I’m not talking about the gunk that you don’t want to think about; it’s like the gunk you’re not aware of.

 

When you rub your hands together and you say oh, I’m making pencil…you know, those…whatever.  That’s the kind of gunk I’m talking about.  That adds up, so I would get up on a much less restful basis, so my aging and my experience of time-space was not the same as anyone else’s.  I was alone a lot of times while everybody else was at rest, and I…let’s just…if my job was support systems, Madam President, I failed at my job.  I took my job seriously, too seriously, not seriously enough all at the same time.  But there’s also another kind of gunk, Madam President, right, between the synapses or in our hearts, in our souls or whatever.  I don’t know, Madam President.  Alls I can tell you is I did not do my job.

 

I chose to try to escape from those feel…those gunky feelings on our way to Zipper, and I…stuff started to add up with my rest, and so, I did not support all of the support systems, and I failed at my job.  You could read in between those lines, because I want to keep it going.  So, finally, we arrived at Planet Zipper.  In the state I was in, then I was fully alone and I had thought about…again, I didn’t know what I was going to encounter at Planet Zipper, what…we had never had any contact other than the Big Ones with life that could have been from another planet, other than audio contact and beams and stuff like that.  So, I told the…when I arrived at Planet Zipper, there was a lot of communication at first.  They could speak in English and communicate clearly, and they had learned that.

 

They said they were gonna slowly prepare me.  I said yeah, there was a malfunction, is what I called it.  It was a…I malfunctioned, but…and they said okay, don’t worry.  We’ll work this all out and we’ll help you deal with these feelings.  We’ll help you get through this, because obviously…and we’ll help…and they said, it’s actually okay.  You’re gonna have strong feelings about meeting beings from another world.  Inside, I was a bit detached, which kinda like you said, Madam President, it may have inadvertently served me or be a liability that was also an asset, because I was able to go through these stages of trying to cope with what happened, and my inability to cope, and eventually being prepared for meeting beings from another world.

 

They had all that set up in a very similar way to what we’ve been doing here, so I saw the process work to heal me.  One of the things they did on Planet Zipper and one of the things you need to know about Planet Zipper is that, well, I used to think it was just a great love of humanity, and that’s what they showed me, is how much they love humans, that they are…so, Planet Zipper is made up of collective…or once was made up of just collective beings, one collective being that could express itself…it’s confusing, Madam President.  I don’t know how else to describe it, ‘cause you say wait, you’re one being but you’re presenting yourself to me as a individual being.  Oh, it’s easier for your…you…for you as a human to connect with us.

 

But also, I’ll tell…explain more later, but at that time, they would show me and they would…what I thought was love could have been another thing that used to be…there used to be a perfume or a cologne called Obsession by somebody, somebody.  But they would watch Earth and humanity in this distilled way.  They had ability…I don’t know…whatever their ability…I don’t know if it’s telescopes or beams or stuff on Earth, but they would show me these moments.  I don’t know, maybe it was ‘cause I was gone, maybe it was ‘cause of what I…the choices I had made not to get my job done, but just watching somebody skin their knee and get back up, and their face and their feelings; it was like I could feel it.

 

It made me love people in a new way, and it…and again, there was other stuff going on, a lot of stuff that they had learned from watching us, healthy stuff that they were teaching me to help me recover.  This was over a period of time.  So, I really started to love people again, and I got better, I guess.  I started to do this and they said, this is…and they…I said okay, now I’m feeling better.  They said well, this is…how am I gonna save the world?  I have to save humanity.  It’s really important to me now.  They would laugh and they’d say don’t worry, this is…we’re teaching you how to save humanity, and the why was obvious, right?  They felt…their…they felt good, but I also felt like there’s something off, but I guess I thought it was me that was off and not Planet Zipper, because what I had been through, right?

 

That it was me that had this mark, which is true, I guess.  I don’t know, but I said this is worth saving, of course.  Maybe on the journey out…and that hopelessness had guided my choices in some sense, ‘cause things did seem so stacked against us being successful, or even getting to Planet Zipper.  Then I started to learn more, not about…not just about okay, song and dance, and got to participate in the planning and watching all this research they had gathered, and these companies they were starting that they didn’t know they were being funded and controlled by Planet Zipper.  But I started to learn more about Planet Zipper, that it was…I guess out in outer space, in the universe, there was once a lot of these planets made up of a collective consciousness being or beings, similar to what Planet Zipper was.

 

Maybe there’s other versions of it, that’s kind of like a collective but also can bud off or form itself into a individual or create a individual thing to kinda solve…I think…I don’t know, ‘cause trees aren’t…don’t have consciousness, right?  Like, aspen trees.  But they were also…their planet was going through this conflict, right?  But they also believed in evolution and so, they said well, we’re evolving, and some of us evolve into individuals, or we bud off into individuals, or we’re…but we’re…then we reabsorb and…I don’t know.  A little bit beyond what I can process, because I’m just me, right, Madam President?  But that was also causing some tension, right?  Not everybody…any kind of change, even if it’s slow evolutionary change, once you have this consciousness of the change, it also comes with some conflict.

 

So, on the whole planet, it was a little bit of like, should we keep allowing this more-defined budding of individualism or should we just keep the collective?  And that it was associated with the love of Earth, watching individuals.  Now, why was this really important and why was this conflict increasing?  Well, because like I said, there used to be other planets of the same being and they were in contact with one another.  You could say they were collective individuals, right?  Other planets with another collective individual on it, organic like us, but different.  But they kinda told me their history and that why the Big Ones were so important and why helping us was so important, was because the Big Ones…that was why there was no more.

 

They were the last planet, or the last of their kind, and that they were afraid of the Big Ones and that right now, something had brought the Big Ones to Earth or made them manifest, and they didn’t know when they would…and they thought this conflict had something to do with it.  But it was important for them to solve for their own…and again, again, that also within their own conflict was that thing of well, if we’re individuals, then we’re no longer what we are, and we need to preserve this collective way of being, this collective being.  So, just like the drive we all have, in some sense, the drive for life.  The other thing I learned, because I was healing, was that in this collective organism, this collective being, it had feelings like we do.  I don’t know if that’s part of consciousness or not; emotions.

 

But that their emotions were much more powerful because they were a collective, right?  One way they demonstrated it was the…what do you call it?  Well, one, they used it to help me, to heal, but they also used it to hibernate.  That was how they kept the hibernation going and started the hibernation.  It wasn’t just a hibernation ray; it was them putting our planet into hibernation with their feelings, some sort of comforting…I don’t understand, again, but triggering some sort of deep, instinctual drive for rest, to preserve the wellbeing of our planet.  That’s what they told me.  So, they kept training me and I became very engaged.  I was driven.  I said, I still am not comfortable, but I guess I kinda understand this, but I could see the conflict within their way.  I said well, jeez, conflict is our way, too.

 

It’s not a…sometimes the conflict is just there under the water, right?  Just like on Earth.  So, we really focused and they kept teaching me and showing me…okay, if we can help you deal with your feelings, then you can kinda…we think you could create these Spice Friends, right?  That the Spice Friends will kinda counteract the Big Ones.  Then, that’s when I made the connection, right?  Or that’s where my manifestation theory came from that I presented to you, ‘cause it sounded so sound even to me.  I said okay, so, wait a second; is that your theory?  They let me lead myself to my own conclusion, in some sense, Madam President.  I said so, the Big Ones are from our feelings about our powerful discoveries and science that…and then people choosing to use that science in a offensive way that could have big consequences.

 

Those feelings deep down created the Big Ones and they kind of made me believe that…let me believe that I was correct.  Then it made perfect sense; oh, okay.  I mean, it does make perfect sense without…beyond…accepting some things I don’t understand.  Okay, then of course, this training you’re giving me can create the solution.  If we could create the problem, then we can create the solution.  If our feelings manifested the problem, then our feelings can manifest the solution.  I started to feel more and more confident, right?  My doubts had kinda been…and they said you just have to trust that this is gonna work.  You just have to trust that this is gonna work.  But I had seen it work on me, and I had reached an acceptance of my choices and the consequences, and written letters and all those kinda things.

 

But I…and then I said well, when am I gonna get back to Earth?  They said okay, well, we’re really…I started to see more and more distraction and feel more and more tension between these semi-individuals and the collective.  They said yeah, we’re working on when and…but we…I had the…access to the same clock you had on Earth.  They no longer were able…they couldn’t…they had used up so much of that feeling or whatever.  It wasn’t like they could just put the Big Ones…and they didn’t seem…or that’s what they said; they said well, we can’t access that.  We won’t be able to put the Big Ones back to sleep without putting the whole planet back to sleep.  We wouldn’t be able to do that until…and I said, okay.

 

But it felt like people were looking at me, especially the more defined individual parts of this collective were, that…and I know Madam President, I’m asking you to trust me on something I can’t even describe clearly, because it would…I don’t know how to describe it.  I don’t think my…but so, they were…they would talk to me, the…and it just seemed like there was more and more tension growing, more and more sadness, sadness for me, even though I believed this was gonna work.  I had kinda seen…I had felt it.  I said this is gonna work.  But I also had become quite interested in their history and what history I could access, mostly through spoken word and talking and saying hey, tell me about this.  That’s when I made this accidental connection, Madam President, which was like well, when did you start watching Earth?

 

Because that is where…I said, is this a love of Earth or something…sometimes I would feel, especially from the collective, something beyond even a matriarchal or patriarchal loving relationship, or a friendship, or even a lover, something that is just on the dial a little bit outside of my comfort zone.  But again, I thought it was me.  But that was when I found out they discovered Earth, because of those same tests.  Before the Big Ones had appeared, one…that was when they became aware of us.  That had kinda been a sound or whatever, a vibration, and that’s when they fell in love with Earth, as soon as they discovered it and saw it.  Then especially…and I think from my understanding, is they thought Earth would satisfy their need for individualism.

 

For a lot of the large…again, I guess it’s confusing, but if you look at it like a pie that’s…only part of it’s cut; you don’t cut the pie in half and half again, but if only one part of the pie has individual pieces, that’s kinda what Planet Zipper was like at the time I was there.  They said okay, well, this will…maybe this will satisfy most of our needs for individualism, and these other buds will maybe keep evolving.  Maybe they’ll become individuals.  But the majority of our world, the last world, will stay this collective.  Maybe one day we can move outside of this collective, but really, we have to find a way to keep this collective going.  So, this thing with Earth, it was less just about love than about utility.  Then again, that struck me in a feeling place, and they had been the ones that sense…made me so sensitive to my feelings.

 

So, in my spare time, I started doing…working on my feelings about this.  I say jeez, I don’t know about this relationship they have with Earth.  It’s a little strange to me.  It doesn’t just feel like a loving friend or a pen pal or something like that, you know?  So, yeah.  I guess it’s confusing, Madam President.  I keep going on and on and on because I guess the stuff about trust was that my trust started to slip away with Planet Zipper, where I was like, wait a second, and then I kept asking, when am I gonna go to Earth?  What’s going on with this tension?  It’s pretty apparent to me that there’s tension going on.  I know this is gonna work; why don’t I…the clock is rolling down.  I would have to leave by this point, and we’re getting close to that zero hour.  Finally, I started to chip and chip away ‘cause at first, I could just feel it.

 

I could feel their feelings, right?  You can only…if you’re in a planet of intense feeling, well, that factors into what I discovered, Madam President, was that they were at this decision-making point, because someone led us…well, we haven’t decided if you’re gonna go or not.  I said, what do you mean you haven’t decided if you’re…?  They said well, we’ve been doing these other tests, and we’re just trying to…and I said well, I’m going back to Earth, you know.  You have to…and they said well…and they said don’t worry, we’re gonna find the middle way, right?  We’re gonna preserve things here and preserve Earth.  I never had heard that before; preserve Earth?  What do you mean?  They said well, we need you.  I said, I thought you were helping us.  I know you like us and…they said, but you need us?

 

This was the people…the parts I thought I was friends right, right?  Said, what do you mean you need me?  I don’t know, eventually between my asking questions and my own feelings and letting my feelings go and then being open, I figured it out.  The Big Ones aren’t…the Big Ones and maybe even the Spice Friends, Madam President, they’re from…they…they’re not just manifest; they’re a budding of Planet Zipper, a pure, individual from this collective being, but a pure one…like, of one feeling, and somehow it’s related to our feelings.  Maybe ‘cause it’s traveling…but that…you know what I mean?  They’re budding off with just their raw feelings and energy.  So, it is a part of the…it is a being, a conscious…somewhat-conscious being, but it’s just one raw emotion, raw, intense emotion.

 

This is the best I could figure out, Madam President.  So, my manifestation theory was true ‘cause they were saying well, maybe their theory had…the whole time had been…well, it could save Earth if we teach…if we can do the same thing with positive feelings and if Earth can kind of tease it out of us, ‘cause we’re so into Earth.  Then…because that’s where the Big Ones…that’s how the other planets had gone; the feelings had consumed…created individual beings that had then consumed the planet, to put it mildly.  All the other Planet Zippers or whatever they were called…and the only difference between this Planet Zipper and the other ones was they had discovered Earth.

 

So, we were kind of like a playground for their feelings, and they said well, we could keep this playground going and if we could keep our feelings projected outward onto Earth and then teach Earth to project our feelings…or, you know what I mean, Madam President?  I know it’s confusing, but it’s what I figured out.  But there was one other thing I figured out; well, one, I said well, I have to get back to Earth.  I said, what’s…I said okay, if this is what your motive is…but we could cope with things.  Just let me go to Earth then, right?  I can live with it if it’s gonna work, right?  If I can save Earth, if I could be a part of it, get rid of the Big Ones, stop the Big Ones, control them or at least keep them counterbalanced, whatever the result is, we know this will work.  Why can’t I go to Earth right now?  We’re ready.

 

Finally, some people said we’ve decided to…we’re still having this discussion and this vote and these algorithms or whatever to make a final decision.  I said well, what’s the decision between?  What I’m saying and what?  They said well, there is a theory that we’ll be able to project all of our negative, strong emotions, like empty out our entire ability to create Big Ones onto the Earth, and to keep doing that and maybe just keep…maybe there’s a way we could just kinda use the positive energy to keep…so Earth would just become a place of Big Ones, and then maybe some Spice Friends slowing things down?  They said yeah, maybe just only Big Ones, that your ability to adapt would be enough and that you would become a place…because the individualism and because we’re not them, that that would be okay, right?

 

Of course, Madam President, I said well, you gotta get me outta here.  I can’t believe you would vote that way or that you would decide these things, but you have to let me go back to Earth and save Earth, and try.  So, they snuck me out and I headed back here.  I just hope that…I mean, I knew we would have this conversation at some point when we were ready, and there’s just so many other doubts to overcome, Madam President.  I thought about it and the times I was awake on the return, and luckily, Planet Zipper had…they taught me how to deal with the gunk inside me and the organic gunk, too.  But I thought a lot about it and I said there’s no way I can just load all this on you and then ask you to believe me.

 

I guess I would have to learn…earn your trust and then lose your trust to get it back, and that we’re also in a position now where apparently…I don’t know how things turned out on Planet Zipper, but we have to figure this out together.  We’ll get through it just like we both know; all will be well.  I don’t know how, Madam President; that’s what I was…okay.  I know that you’re the leader we need right now and that we’re gonna get there, and maybe we should just rest while you…and give you space to see if you could trust me.  Whether you can do it on your own or I can help you, Madam President, I’m here, and that’s where we’re at right now.  So, I’ll talk to you…I’m gonna rest now and get some sleep.  Remember, all will be well.  Goodnight, Madam President.

 

[END OF RECORDING]

(Transcription by Leah Hervoly)