984 – Lady Witchbeard Returns | Ep1

  • Notable Tidbits

    Notable Language:

    • A Knowing Cackle
    • Bungalow
    • Pantaloons

    Notable Culture:

    • “Cortez the Killer” by Neil Young
    • Wandavision
    • Captain and Tennille

    Notable Talking Points:

    • Wind Chimes are Great in Theory
    • Lady Witchbeard is rebooting in a bungalow
    • A Last Ditch Playlist Attempt
  • For Transcript of Episode Click Here

    Episode 984 – Lady Witchbeard Returns | Ep1

     

    [START OF RECORDING]

     

    SCOOTER:    Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and friends beyond the binary, and my patron peeps, it’s almost…for me…for you in the future, it’s probably past time to take off your lounge pants and put on lounge shorts, but I’m in lounge pants.  It’s at the end…I’m coming to you live from the end of lounge pants season and hopefully you’re lounging though, pants or no pants, ‘cause it’s time for Sleep With Me, patrons, the podcast that puts you to sleep.

     

    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.  It could be thoughts on your mind, thoughts about the present, past, or future, so anything you’re thinking about, feelings, anything coming up for you emotionally.  Maybe it’s related to the thoughts, maybe it’s related to your feelings or physical sensations.  Maybe they’re just there; you’re feeling them.  That’s good though.

     

    That’s a really good thing that you’re feeling your feelings, but I’m here to kinda slowly let those drift into the background.  It could be physical sensations, could be changes in your routine or your work schedule or something situational.  You may work the second or third shift, you might…there might be something…you could have weather-related…have I ever talked about this, weather-related…WRAs, weather-related annoyances?  I don’t know if I’ve listed those kinda things.  You say, wind…this is my personal opinion, but…and it’s actually my personal opinion; I said, wind chimes are great except when it’s really windy, and then…’cause where my…have I…I don’t know, this is…wow, I’ve talked about my wind chime before, I think.  I only have one.

     

    It’s no longer chiming but I had to take it…because when it was windy, I could hear it.  You say well, okay, wind chimes are great in theory or in a non-bed…no, you know, became a weather-related annoyance for me, just I think ‘cause where it was.  For a lot of us, a really unpredictable noise can keep us up.  But let me get back to that if I remember to ‘cause I want to…oh, first I gotta explain more about how the podcast works.  So, whatever’s keeping you awake, I’d like to take your mind off of that.  What I propose to do is send my voice across the deep, dark night.  I’m gonna use lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones, pointless meanders, superfluous tangents.  You’ve witnessed a few already, meaning I’m gonna get confused and go off-topic and kinda go nowhere all to keep you company while you fall asleep.

     

    Now, if you’re new, there’s a few pieces of information I want to give you to make you feel more comfortable.  One, you might not be comfortable now because you say, what is this?  This is something new and different and strange.  You may even be skeptical and I’d say that those are totally sensible places to be.  This podcast, yes, it is a bit different, it is a bit strange.  So, if you’re not sure about it, that…I can totally understand that, especially if you’ve tried other stuff to put you to sleep and you say nothing’s worked for me.  That makes a lot of sense.  So, most regular listeners say give this podcast a few tries.  It takes a few tries to stop listening to this podcast as a listener.  Usually it only takes five minutes to stop listening to it as a non-listener, but just give it a few tries ‘cause we really have nothing to lose here.

     

    I’m just here to help take your mind off of stuff and in that spirit, this is really a podcast you don’t really listen to.  You just barely pay attention.  It’s also a podcast that doesn’t put you to sleep.  I’m here to keep you company.  I’m applying for the role of bore-friend, bore-bud, bore-bae, bore-bestie, bore-bruh, bore-bor, you know, bore…your bore-best…oh, bore-bestie, bore-bud.  I said all those.  Your friend that repeats things.  So, I’m really here to take your mind off of stuff while you fall asleep.  That’s why these shows are over an hour, so you have plenty of time to drift off.  You say okay, I don’t got to worry about it.  I got over an hour to fall asleep.  Then, what was the other part of that?  Oh, so, no pressure to fall asleep.

     

    Oh, also, if you can’t sleep, I’m gonna be here to the very end so if you can’t sleep situationally or you’re going through something or you just can’t sleep normally, I’m here to keep you company as much as I am to put you to sleep.  Those kind of things work in sync somehow.  So, those are two things to know if you’re new.  The other things to know that can throw you off…regular listeners, I already forgot what I was gonna go back and talk about.  Now I can’t think of it.  I know I went off-topic earlier but alls I have in my brain…I have an empty bucket or pail in my mind.  I said, what was I talking about earlier that I was gonna try to talk about again?  Oh, my wind chime.  Hopefully I’ll remember, but regular…but, you know, our regular listeners know sometimes I remember stuff, sometimes I forget.

     

    But if you’re new, structure of the show is the next thing you want to know about, because this show does not have any kind of…it does have structure but it’s a bit different.  So, the show starts off with a greeting; friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.  That’s a serious part…it’s funny; sometimes I say something mildly funny but that part is important so you feel seen and welcome, that this podcast is here for you to help if it can.  So, that’s the greeting.  Then there’s listener support and support for the show.  So, you know, if you need some extra support right now, there’s resources.  Then there’s the resources so we can be here for you free.  Then there’s the intro which is the main thing that can throw new people off ‘cause the intro is somewhere around twelve to twenty minutes long.

     

    For some people, they feel like it’s part of the…I don’t know.  I guess if you…hopefully you don’t listen to it but if you don’t listen to it…if you don’t listen to it while listening to it, that’s one thing, but I think some people skip through it or fast-forward a bit waiting for me to get to some sort of tangible point.  Then they say what is this intro?  It just goes on and on and on like an advertisement.  I say no, this is a show within a show.  It does serve a purpose, or two purposes; one is to introduce you to the show.  I just do that in a very ineffective and inefficient way because the second purpose is to ease you into bedtime.  Now, you can skip it.  I just went on a podcast and the person said yeah, I start the show at like, twenty or thirty minutes in.  I say, that’s great.  That’s about 3% of listeners.

     

    Some people…if you listen…if you like just story-only or intro-only or you listen all night, you might be…those people are on Patreon.  But you could also do it with this.  Whatever works for you.  But those are smaller slices of the listenership.  Most people, they listen to Sleep With Me and the intro is part of their wind-down routine or their getting-comfortable routine.  So, there you are, my regular listeners; you’re in bed waiting for me to talk about or see if I…once again, I can’t remember.  I had it and then I forgot.  I said oh, I was gonna talk about my wind chime, which I just almost called a bird chime because it is a bird.  So, the intro kinda goes on and on and on to give you some distance from the day so you can get comfortable.

     

    Whether you’re doing it as part of your getting-ready for bed routine or your wind-down routine or you’re in bed getting cozy, it gives us some distance and lets us come in for a landing.  That’s why it takes twelve to twenty minutes, ‘cause that’s about what I’ve found over the years how long it takes to ease…’cause I don’t know, in other situations…and I’ve been in this where I’m in a hurry to go to bed, and that just never works.  I say okay, I don’t have time for any of that bedtime stuff.  I gotta get to sleep.  I can hear some sort of cackling as soon as I say that, like knowing…a knowing cackle.  I say well, but I gotta get to sleep now because I gotta get up for that thing.  I was messing around before and now I gotta get to bed, and that just…so, for the most part if I can, I want to ease you into bedtime.

     

    So, that’s why the intro’s so long and pointless for you, and also my natural ability.  Then there’s business between the intro and the show.  That’s just where some of the sponsors like their business as people are just getting ready to turn in.  Then there’s our episode.  Our bedtime story tonight will be a very special new…a return to a character [00:10:00] in a new season.  So, it’ll be just a nice little bedtime story at a…it takes…this episode tonight takes place at a bed and breakfast.  What better place for a bedtime story than a bedtime storyteller at a bed and breakfast?  Then there will be thank-yous at the end.  So, that’s the structure of the show.  The reason I make the show…well, the reason I make the show is twofold.  One, you deserve a good night’s sleep because you do.

     

    You deserve some rest and you deserve to be rested tomorrow so you can live your life.  The other side of it is I’ve been there, speaking of this wind chime.  So, this wind chime, I have talked about it before, I think, ‘cause when I moved…my daughter and I moved a few years ago to a new apartment.  I said well, what are we gonna get as a housewarming gift?  I let her pick out a wind chime ‘cause finally we had a place to put a wind chime ‘cause we have a deck.  So, she picked out one and it was bamboo chimes on a carved piece of wood that was an owl.  I said, wow.  Now, this wind chime…and it had rope or string instead of…I don’t know what else they put on wind chimes but our first year here, it gets a lot of wind, this wind chime, and so, it fell apart.

     

    Each year in the spring…this sounds like the beginning of a Epcot Center video; each year in the spring we rehabilitate the wind chime with fishing line that I bought.  We replace…we put all the bamboo…I think there was one piece of bamboo that did fly away last winter, or one of the winters that we’ve been here.  But the other thing is that when it does make it through the winter, the parts of the winter it’s making it through successfully…my window just happens to be below the deck, so it is…that this is…like, I say what in the heck?  Even if I close my window, I can still hear it.  I say, as much as I love you, your chiming…you’re driving me chimes.  You’re making me chimey.  You’re chiming me nuts.  So, I have to take it down.

     

    I just noticed that yesterday ‘cause when I’m recording this, it’s the end of March and spring is kinda springing.  So, I was trying to clean up the deck and I said hey, there’s the wind chime there on the ground.  Said, how are you doing?  It said, I’d like to chime.  I say well, maybe two more weeks.  We’re expecting a little more rain and wind here and I don’t want to over-commit.  Plus, it’s like, that’s the worst time if it’s raining and windy to have to go back upstairs, find something to step on to reach the hook that it’s on.

     

    But this is the person that makes the podcast, the person that does…I think there’s people that just fall asleep and they’re…they don’t have W…whatever, weather-related annoyances ‘cause they’re snoring through it or whatever, but I’m not that person.  So, that’s why I make this show, because I can relate to how it feels whether it’s weather-related noise or something else that’s keeping you awake, and I’d like to help.  I really appreciate you coming by.  I really work hard on this show, believe it or not, but…because…not just because I work hard on it; because I yearn and I strive to help you fall asleep, and here’s a couple ways I’m able to do it for you for free twice a week.  Alright everybody, it’s Scoots here and it’s time to introduce our new series.  I guess this is something of a reboot.

     

    I looked up the actual definition of reboot and I said wait a second, ‘cause I had gotten some great questions on a Patreon AMA about hey, would you ever reboot a series?  I would say that this is interesting because this is a series…this is the beginning of the series for you ‘cause you’re listening right now.  In some sense it’s a character who is in middle of a reboot.  I said well, this is kinda rebooting the series…it’s a standalone series.  You don’t have to have heard…and you might even be better off hearing things through the character’s eyes for the first time, and…a character though that I have great affinity for as you’ll find out.  But yeah, it’s someone that existed before but if you’re just getting to know her now, you’re really in for something special and sleepy.

     

    So, I’m trying to think of anything else you might need to know.  But yeah, coming to you live from the…outside my apartment in his own car, still when we’re recording this…is the new agreement we have.  I mean, talk about willing to do things for his art, though I did realize I don’t have any way of confirming that he’s actually outside in his car.  He could be at his home in his car and say he drives from Los Angeles here, which I…which…would I…which I probably would respect greatly, to say wow, Antonio, you must have known I can’t…there’s no way for me to check if you’re actually sitting outside in your car zooming in to record thirty seconds of audio and not unnecessarily driving twelve unpaid hours as a favor to all the listeners.  Huh.

     

    But I won’t check because if I…I’d feel like…but so, coming to you to set this up; Mr. Antonio Banderas.  Friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time for a tale…more…it’s time for tale…the…Scooter, this…it’s time for a reboot.  None of that works, but this is my…this is the first episode, so join me in listening to tales of Lady Witchbeard.  I didn’t like the way my mouth sounded on that one.  Join me.  Also, by the way, I did drive.  I wish you would have told me that was an option, but I am able to make it there on all-electric…and then I drive nearby and I charge my car.  Then I drive halfway home, charge again, then I drive the rest of the way.  But it’s time to join me in listening to tales of Lady Witchbeard, yeah.  Thank you.  Sorry about that, Antonio.

     

    I used to tell one of my roommates that he was the…like, you could be one of the last honest…also, you could just be…that’s great.  I’m glad…that’s so good for the…you’re really doing good for the environment.  I’m sure there’s other things you’re doing but maybe not.  I don’t know.  Maybe you’re taking some calls.  Hopefully you’re listening to some other podcasts and stuff while you’re driving, thinking, doing…I mean, when you were thinking, is your…are your thoughts as handsome as I would assume they were?  Anyway, it’s time for tales of Lady Witchbeard.

     

    Hey everyone, this…I just want to ask you a quick question and set something up in your mind while you’re there listening.  If you want; this is optional imagination but I want you to think about what if or maybe once, one of those two things ‘cause maybe once you knew someone that was very charismatic, or what if you knew someone that was very charismatic and they weren’t all good and they weren’t all bad?  In fact, they were so charismatic, so comfortable in who they were, they just were who they were.  I said well, I do some things that I’ve…you know, and then I make mistakes.  But it was more than that because their charisma didn’t come from be…just be…you say well, they’re acting charismatically or they have an air of charisma.

     

    No, you could sense in them something deep and powerful, something like unfathomable, even, but that you wanted…you say, I want to plumb those depths, figuratively.  But when you were with them you felt at ease most of the time.  You felt protected and under their care.  You felt safe.  But not just safe in a way that triggers apathy or lying around.  I mean, that would be great; that’s a different kind of charismatic figure, I guess, than this one, maybe once or what-ifing [00:20:00] or doing, ‘cause for me it’s both.  No, this particular person I’m talking about put me such at ease that I could step out of my comfort zone, that I felt that freedom not just to naturally be me but to take more risks than I might have taken on my own, calculated ones, we’re talking about.

     

    Now, what would you give to be around that person right now?  I say okay, well, something reasonable.  They wouldn’t ask for something unreasonable, probably, the way you’re describing them.  I’d say, yeah.  You say well, that’s something maybe I’m searching for.  I say, same…I was searching for it.  But what if you kinda fell outta touch with that person maybe once…you went from a what-if to a maybe-once and there was something in-between those moments?  It might sound like I’m not talking about someone realistic and I’d say well, yeah, this is a one-in-a-million, one-in-a-billion-type person.  You say well, it sounds more like you’re talking about a goddess or a demigod or something, or maybe you’re just projecting or over…and I’d say it’s possible, that part.

     

    But no, this isn’t a goddess or a demigod or a Marvel character, though you say wait a second, a couple…coming soon and not that long ago.  You’d say wait a second, you could be…you could have…I said well, you remind me of Lady Witchbeard in a sense.  Oh, and then I said her name.  But some of you might say Lady Witchbeard, who’s that, or why should I even care?  I say, that’s a great…totally understandable, and I got two words for you; witch pirate.  I don’t mean like sandwich pirate or hey, which pirate are we looking at?  Which is the pirate with the hairy legs on Pirates of the Caribbean?  No, no, no.  I’m talking about a witch.  Like, actually another character whose name I’ve…Agatha or the Scarlet Witch or…oh, now I forgot her name.  You know, famous witches.  They’re all witches, right?

     

    You say, what if there was a witch that was a pirate?  You say whoa, boy, I’m not comfortable with either one of those.  Well, what if it was the same person I just described to you and you were able to feel so safe that your normal, maybe even ingrained impressions of pirates and witches were put at ease maybe just by her mere presence?  You say oh, well, this is…I thought I knew everything there was to assume about pirates and witches but now I realize I was just assuming and I really had no idea what…and that’s why I’m here to talk to you tonight, ‘cause you might say okay, but who…well, one, who are you?  Who’s talking and why are we here?  Those are, yeah, great questions that I’m gonna fill you in on.

     

    Now, I will say speaking of words that have meaning…dual-meanings or words that have feelings behind them, I want you to think…this is an exercise that I didn’t even know we would be doing, but I think it’s to prepare you for what I’m called and what I go by, because understandably you may have some feelings about my name, but she won’t change my name.  I know Lady Witchbeard well enough.  She calls me by something and so, I want to re-power this word for you, in some sense reboot it or just offer you a picture of the word.  So, I want you to imagine we’re in the grocery store and we’re talking the big box grocery store, you know, the ones…not…no, not the big one where you buy in bulk.  But you know, one of those mainstream ones that you say oh, this is where the cereal monarchs sell their wares.

     

    So, we’re in that kinda store, and I don’t know…this is a question we’ve never talked about before.  Does everybody go…do I do a theme park…do I navigate a theme park and a grocery store in the same way?  I don’t know.  I go left and then I go in a clockwise manner.  I think the answer is yes, but let’s say we went into my grocery store and we went…we did go left through the produce section, not…no, not my Trader Joe’s.  This is the old corporate goods store.  If we could put artificial stuff in it, we will.  So, we’ll go through the produce section and then we take a right.  We’re saying wait a second, what do I need?  We say well, I’m just here to kind of make an analogy and a metaphor to put you more at ease.  Well, what aisle do you do that in?

     

    Well, I can’t remember, actually, if it’s…’cause this is where I get mixed up, because…and plus, they keep moving stuff around.  It could be the aisle with coffee or the aisle with…it’s like, then it could be the aisle with baking ingredients or it could be the…but it’s not the cereal aisle.  That’s where it should be, but maybe it is.  So, it could be in one of those aisles.  I want to say for some reason it’s always near juice boxes, but I would think it would be near cereal.  But definitely it will be near pancake mix…premixed pancake and waffle mixes.  We see it there and oh, wow, I realize well, the coffee is on one…is on another aisle but it’s also at the end cap.  Then there is the mixes for pancakes and things, and then this is what we’re looking for.  It’s…comes in a glass jar and it’s something you add to things.

     

    I don’t really know…I started adding it to smoothies inconsistently over the past twelve years ‘cause I said it’s gotta be good for you; it comes in a jar.  It’s called wheat germ and you get it, and it looks a bit like…it looks tasty when you look at it through the jar, and it’s not quite a powder, it’s not quite a grain; it’s a wheat germ.  You can even look at the back of it.  I think it describes that it’s some part of the wheat.  It’s the germ and it breaks off, and then they separate it, and then…so, it’s got some stuff in there, probably folic acid but I’m just guessing, and other stuff you might like.  But you say well, there’s another way to use that word.  I say right, it’s like the germ of a idea, where an idea starts.  You say well, is…I thought the germ maybe was like the food for the seed.

     

    Then I said wait a second, it’s in the grain, right?  But anyway, sometimes it gets used for the start of an idea, too.  Sometimes I think Lady Witchbeard gets mixed up ‘cause she thinks it’s a husk or just a piece of an idea that’s incomplete.  But maybe she’s right, but that’s what she calls me.  In the spirit of one of those two things, she calls me germ, with a lower-case g.  But I just want to let you know that because…and it’s in a lovingly, friendly manner, like a nickname, but I think that’s…that’s just what she…I mean, when I…and I’ll tell you; maybe you could catch how I feel when she calls me it.  I feel good.  Like, when someone you have a crush on says your name, you say oh boy, you said my…like, even though it’s not…that’s my name, germ.  So, I hope I could put you at ease about that.  So, that’s who I am.

     

    Oh, where am I?  Yeah, that’s a great question.  So, we’re at a bed and breakfast that I work at.  It’s way, way out in the middle of nowhere, out on the edge of the transverse plane.  Now, I’ve worked there since…a long time, a long, long time.  This bed and breakfast is a place, actually, people go for reboots.  Occasionally it’ll be used for the main purpose of bed and breakfasts which is a romantic getaway.  I guess I’m surprised now that we’re talking about it that more bed and breakfasts haven’t…because I…here’s some key things that make something a bed and breakfast; beds and breakfast, okay.  Some sort of look that I say well, this could be a country house or something.

     

    Normally French doors are required, multiple pairs of [00:30:00] French doors which are double doors with glass, ideally a pair of French doors that opens up into a garden maybe with hedges and flowers.  A fireplace, a library, or a living room/sitting area usually key to a bed and breakfast.  Older furniture, doilies, the doily things that go on the arms of chairs.  Those are all traditional.  Smiling couple, maybe.  That’s not…that runs the place.  In this particular case, it is.  But this one is even better, so it has the gardens but then it has grounds ‘cause it’s outside in the…so, then it has a back forty, you might call it, just open.  Then it has a pond where you could go for sitting or playing with…feeding ducks.  In that case, giving it a…swimming in there.

     

    Then it has brambles and woods behind it, and then even out behind the back forty part, a trail that goes to the transverse plane which is not too key in our discussion here but it is an intersection of universes that I’ve found my ability to access.  Now, you probably have two natural questions; what do I do at this bed and breakfast and why is this…why does any of it matter?  I say wow, you’re…you’ve…you’re really making my job easy.  So, what do I do there is I tell bedtime stories.  That’s how I applied my trade.  In another world I may do it by another way, even though this exists in your world, in your time.  This is all taking place in parallel with your…and this is in our universe.  I just go by germ here and not Scooter.  But so, I tell the clientele bedtime stories.

     

    It’s a service that…arrangement the couple and I had back when I thought I was gonna have a lot of romantic getaways.  I think that’s why I made the deal, which gives…but chuckle, chuckle.  But I don’t know if you’d want to have a romantic getaway someplace you work, anyway.  So, it worked out for the best.  But really, what I realized is that I have a deeper role there, non-professional role.  Well, a professional nincompoop…once Lady Witchbeard called me that.  I’d say she’s probably right because I could take the characters out for walks on the transverse plane and sometimes they would connect with what they need to connect with to help them as part of their reboot or wherever they’re going on their journey.  A particular clientele this…that this bed and breakfast serves is very niche, you’d say.

     

    It goes for beings, even creatures, you may say, associated with the autumn, the Great Autumn Festival, where people dress up like beings but not necessarily are them.  Those, you’d say, friends that live in swamps or lagoon-based creatures, brides of Frankensteins, purple eater…purple people pals.  Those are the kind of clients that go there.  They say well, I’ve lost my…I’m…just find myself eating carrots.  That’s it.  I say okay, well, let’s talk about it.  So, that’s where I work and that’s where we are now.  Now, one of the other features is not just the main house, but there’s bungalows out back, kinda lining the parts of the garden for a little bit more privacy or extended stays.

     

    Like I said, I always…one day I hope to have a office in a bungalow on the universal backlot even though I’d never get any work done because I’d just go out to goof around and people-watch with the trams that go by.  Just to put it out there, I do…one day I would like to sit in the chair that overlooks…it’s like a chair for the guarding of water.  Looks…overlooks where old Angela Lansbury plied her trade.  I don’t think…I think it goes by another name of a town now.  So, I don’t know.  Just something I…on my mind.  Okay, so there’s these cabanas or bungalows, you’d call them.  In one of these bungalows or cabanas right now, rebooting, resting, R&R, is Lady Witchbeard, the witch-pirate who had…I think she’s known as…she was once known as the scourge of the eleven or twelve seas.

     

    Then we had met each other years and years and years ago when she was staying there on another reboot trip.  I kinda got her going on a mission.  I think she was looking for a mission.  That was in another universe similar to ours historically where she…I played her the song…the Neil Young song about Hernán Cortez, and then she set out to deal with Hernán Cortez before…to, you know…she just said that she wanted to teach him some manners.  That kind of caused a lot of disruptions in most of the time-space continuum.  It also resulted in me being ejected across time and space.  Eventually Lady Witchbeard had to set out and collect my pieces because it was my…somehow it was my incompetence.  So, she set out to recollect all those pieces.

     

    That may be a pretty good…might be becoming a plot device in a lot of Sleep With Me series.  But so, we’ll have to keep an eye out for that, but she did do that.  She returned and returned me, and she’s been resting and R&Ring ever since.  Time has passed, and at first I said…you know, I had to take my own time.  I had been separated across time and space in little bricks, waiting for Lady Witchbeard to come rescue me and reassemble me.  Through some magic process, I was able to be returned to who I was.  You know, naturally when someone does that big a favor, there could be some resentment or you say well, I need a break from you because I just spent, whatever, the equivalent of forty human years tracking you down.

     

    So, we kinda…our friendship needed a break, but I found when I returned to my regular life that it definitely wasn’t the same.  I missed Lady Witchbeard specifically and in general, and how she made me feel when I was around her.  Now, some of you may…just to set the stage, you say Scoots…germ, tell me what…so, you’re saying she’s a witch and a pirate?  I say, yes.  You say, does that mean what I think it means?  I say, maybe.  It means she is engaged in…generally engaged in piracy on the…and I guess this is in the grand…not in the actual sense ‘cause she lives in a pirate universe of twelve seas, different than our universe.  So, it’s a little bit broader term with…’cause you’d say well, you’re just taking people’s stuff.  I’m not into that.  I say don’t worry, that’s not Lady Witchbeard’s game.

     

    Also, she is…yeah, she is…is she green?  Yes.  Does she have a pointed hat?  No.  Does she have a broom?  At times she does.  Does she have a cat?  No, ‘cause I’m allergic to cats and I just realized that I may be the equivalent of her cat, so that’s a little bit embarrassing.  So, she doesn’t have a cat but she’s got…great; she’s got me.  Does she have a cauldron?  At times, but usually she…her ship does have a cauldron, yes.  I mean, imagine if you were…so, imagine there was a piracy world and again, not…you say well, all pirates are bad or all pirates are good.  No, all pirates…some pirates are bad, some pirates are good.  If it was a SAT question, Lady Witchbeard is both neither.  But say you’re a reg…say you’re old Rumbeard or whatever out there and you’re just taking stuff.  You say oh, there’s a freighter of potatoes.

     

    I’m gonna go take the potatoes.  Lady Witchbeard says those potatoes are for people that are gonna eat them.  She comes…she hears about it and she says well, I’m gonna take whatever…[00:40:00] that kinda thing.  Imagine if you were Rumbeard and you didn’t ever encounter Lady Witchbeard and then you see her.  You say well, I cover my beard in rum and rum balls, and I throw…we throw rum balls at anybody that…that’s what we use to intimidate people.  We also yell with our mouths full of rum balls.  That’s what we do here on Rumbeard’s ship.  I’d say well, that’s ridiculous anyway, so we’d…but so, imagine you’re that…on that ship and then you see her standing in the stern.  She still wears a billowing cloak, of course, when the wind is billowing.

     

    In addition to being an adept sailor and scourge of the twelve seas or the eleven seas, she has the…you know, she can…she’s a magic-user.  So, that’s pretty…I mean, you say oh boy, that’s not good if you’re up against her.  So, I guess that’s really all you need to know at this point, other than she saved me twice and she also is against her…and I say oh boy, Hernán Cortez is my favorite…I’m a big fan of conquistadors.  I say well, are you studying them?  Because you…if you’re a conquistador fan, you may be listening to the wrong podcast, anyway.  Yeah, but…so, I mean, she’s conquered conquistadors, or…she said no, no, you’re not gonna conquist anything.  These are in other universes ‘cause I guess apparently according to the time council, it would disrupt our timeline if she did any of that here.

     

    So, that’s why she’s in our timeline just resting and relaxing in her bungalow condo where, for a few months now, I got the bug.  I stayed patient, I try…at first I avoided her, then I dreaded accidentally running into her ‘cause also the bed and breakfast people were like, what are you doing?  We’re gonna have to find a new bedtime storyteller.  I said that…really?  You’re gonna find somebody else that works for tea and breakfast?  They said, maybe.  They said also, Lady Witchbeard…when she got here, you said put her on my account.  I said, oh.  So, they said you owe us like, four thousand bedtime stories.  I said okay, well, I’ll be over there, then.  So, then I was…I wasn’t really avoiding her but I was…a part of me was.  Part of me was hoping I’d run into her out for a walk or something.

     

    Then I’m…as I’m known to do, then I kept taking walks closer and closer to her bungalow.  Then…not seeing her, so then walking really loud.  That didn’t work.  Mumbling; that didn’t work.  Calling…like, pretending…of course I was pretending, but calling back or waving to somebody that wasn’t there and saying hello when I was standing near Lady Witchbeard’s bungalow.  On the twenty-sixth time I did that, she did start tapping at her window because…and I waited to common noise hours; 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM or 8:00 PM.  So, I think it was like, 10:01, but I don’t know if she was asleep or making breakfast, but she just tap, tap, tapped on her window through the curtain, so I couldn’t actually see her but I said oh, boy.  Twenty-six times is a charm.  So, then at least I knew she was aware of my existence.

     

    I said okay, we’ve re-established contact.  So, then I would do some gentle tripping, then I was pretending to do work.  I even begged the couple that…they said well, we have a landscaper.  I said well, don’t…then I said well, maybe I’ll practice some bedtime stories.  That immediately got tapping because I guess she was trying to work.  So, I kept it up and I kept…I tried to respect Lady Witchbeard’s privacy, but you know, tried to get her attention, and I was really busy.  I was telling a lot of bedtime stories.  I definitely felt like I needed to repay her in some way other than paying for her stay at this bed and breakfast.  I said well, it’s been a few…I don’t know, been a while, so it’s at least six months to a year longer that she had been R&Ring.

     

    But eventually what happened was that one day…so, outside of her bungalow not that far was a picnic table.  A couple other tables and stuff, but a picnic table with the built-in benches and stuff.  A really nice one.  That would be…I would play drums there on the table, sing to myself, pretend to be talking in my sleep, all those tropes.  But one day I went there and I saw a note there with a rock on it.  It said germ on there.  It was sealed like one of those things you see in movies with the wax seal.  It said…I opened it up; it said assignment for germ.  I said oh boy, this is it, we’re…and I said…and then…I read it a few times but then I started reading it out loud to try to…and trying to be confused by it because I was hoping Lady Witchbeard would come out and correct me.

     

    But it was like, get me all the…this hemp and rope or something and leave it.  So, this went on for a while where it was like, four planks of bark board or something.  I don’t know, she would get it and then I would talk to somebody that knew what…I said, what is this?  They said, rope?  I said, hemp and rope.  They said anyway, here’s where…this is the…so, I used to spend a bit of my own money.  I said okay, this is good; Lady…I’m gonna…then I was like, I had to try to leave notes for Lady Witchbeard.  It would just come with new assignments though, never…I said where should I put the receipts?  But it went on and on and on and I started to get bored.  But even though I was busy, it was kind of like…it felt like a little bit of a…like I was collecting things.  Then I was wondering what she was doing with the stuff.

     

    One mistake that Lady Witchbeard naturally makes is…but one skill set I have is like, okay, I’m gonna have to lull…I’m gonna have to…just like I can use lulling, soothing tones when I’m telling bedtime stories at the bed and breakfast, I gotta use lulling, aloof tones with Lady Witchbeard.  So, eventually I fell onto the game of like, you’re being too much yourself.  You gotta be more yourself, yourself.  So, I started just trying to carry out her tasks in a way…it was really…I’m trying to think.  I don’t know, trying to find these salted something or salted fish or something.  I say okay…I don’t know, I tried to act like I was really doing the tasks and I was a little bit caught up in it and it was taking me longer when it wouldn’t take me that long ‘cause I say, salted fish?

     

    I say oh, well, this is…’cause I guess the one thing Lady Witchbeard didn’t know about was YouTube ‘cause some places, they say well, we don’t sell that or this is really expensive.  Then I say oh, I could just go on YouTube and figure it out ‘cause it was like, waxed canvas.  That was another one.  It did actually take me…well, it…if I had to figure it on my own, it would have taken years.  So, that’s what I kinda let Lady Witchbeard believe.  I would be muttering to myself and that actually worked, not…only after four weeks where I was mostly watching YouTube videos and I had my phone and Lady Witchbeard’s bungalow, so I was at a distance in what you would call a treehouse that they used to rent out at the bed and breakfast, but that was where I had been sleeping and stuff when I would stay overnight.

     

    I said, you don’t rent this out for not…I said, this is just for sleeping, this place, right?  To the owners; I said, ‘cause I don’t need to be…and they said don’t worry about it.  It’s your place.  Lady Witchbeard I assume didn’t know where it was, but my window looked on her bungalow just on the…where the path was and the table, not…just a bit of her front door, so I could watch if she was coming or going.  [00:50:00] Also a lot of times I would imagine myself knocking on the door and saying let’s get to the sea, you know, if…how I wanted things to be.  But so, I’d be watching YouTube videos on, whatever, salting fish or making barrels.  I say, what’s a bung or whatever?  Finally, one time I see her door open, I see her look around, and I see her listen.  Then I see her start sneaking off.

     

    I knew I couldn’t follow her without getting caught, but so what I would do is I would…I said okay, the first…I started noticing it was happening on the regular, on the daily basis, so she was doing…I said, well, maybe she’s just going for a walk and maybe I better make sure she’s not gonna trip on anything.  That was how I justified it.  So, then I would set up a hideout or whatever, a duck blind, you call it, along the path.  Then I kept extending that ‘til eventually…this is a long, meander…she was going in a long, meandering way, so I couldn’t follow her, but eventually I learned where she was going which was this lake a couple miles from where the bed and breakfast is, not on the transverse plane.  She had a boat out there, a sailboat.  She would go out there and she would sail.

     

    She was doing different roping things and moves, and judging the wind, and taking down the sail, putting the sail back up, jumping out of the boat, swimming back to it, all sorts of stuff.  She really seemed happy, but also very intensely focused and, I don’t know, moving the rudder, the boom, and all that stuff.  I was just like okay, well, that’s interesting.  Then one day I kinda got bored with it, to be honest.  I said okay, how much joy can Lady Witchbeard partake in that I’m not a part of?  Then one day I said…so, I missed a few times watching her, so this one time I said well, let me just see; she’s probably done.  She was like, practicing swimming underwater and stuff, and fishing.  Then I saw someone else was in the boat with her.  They had a clipboard and they were taking notes.

     

    Then they got back to the dock and the person was even watching her dock the boat and writing stuff down.  Then they just nodded and they got out.  Then they kinda were in pantaloons or something.  I said, what are they wearing?  Pant…those boots with…they look like they got…I don’t know, kinda like pirate boots with buckle…I said, what the heck?  I said, what are pantaloons?  Are those pantaloons?  Then I was like, have I been replaced by someone that has a clipboard?  Then of course I went and bought a clipboard and I started walking around with that.  A couple days later I noticed…I went out there and Lady Witchbeard wasn’t in the boat when she…I said, that’s normally a time…and then I said well, should I sneak down to the boat?

     

    I know what you’re thinking and yeah, I did it, but the important part isn’t that I sunk her boat and tried to go sailing and unsuccessfully went sailing and left the boat roped to the dock but it still sunk right next to the dock and was totally fine because it was right by the dock and I’m a good swimmer; none of that’s important.  I mean, it was Lady Witchbeard…oh boy, was it important to her, but…and I said wow, you’re kidding me; your boat’s…that boat sank.  She said, how do you know about my boat?  This is another conversation we’re not there…we won’t ever be there.  She’s not…she won’t ever be ready to talk about it.  She said how did you know about my boat?  I said, that’s terrible.

     

    Your boat sank on that…right by that…so, but what I did find right before the boat…as it was going down was a crumbled-up piece of paper shoved in the corner of the boat and I opened it up.  Somehow, I don’t know, when I opened it up…actually, this was part of the reason…well, no.  The boat was already kinda…said how’d it get so many holes in it?  I said wow, that sail could be a parachute.  It really moved away.  But I found this piece of paper covered in green tears and it’s…it was tough ‘cause it was in the old…ye olde pirate language, but what I took from it was that that was kind of like the pirate…there’s a Pirate’s Guild, one, in this world Lady Witchbeard’s from.  Apparently you need…you’re…you could be…it’s kinda…piracy in that world is a trade.  You’re a part of a trade organization.

     

    Piracy…this is the Pirate’s Guild and you become…there’s levels of piracy, like you’re an apprentice pirate or, whatever, journey pirate.  I don’t know, or pirate in charge, a full pirate.  That was part…I guess you gotta keep up your license or whatever, and Lady Witchbeard had not done that because she had been saving me and a bunch of other stuff.  So, unfortunately, her thing had expired.  Her membership in the guild had gone and they said well, now you gotta retake your test.  I guess she…according to this piece of paper, if my understanding is correct, she had lost her pirate…her status as a pirate and she was now considered a apprentice pirate.  Despite her years of exemplary service, because of the sub-rule BCQ or whatever, I don’t know, a lot of that stuff is beyond me.  Plus, it was wet.  I was soaking wet.

     

    I don’t know if it was green tears or actually…or a gift from a bird but it said okay, and then you’re, whatever, you’re gonna be apprenticed to this person year 40…2040…2021…I don’t know.  They would come to see you.  I said oh boy, I feel bad for that person because…but then I said oh no, Lady Witchbeard’s gonna be…and then I started watching.  Even then, she was out of her place packing and putting potted plants out and looking busy.  Her windows were open.  I said oh boy, this is it; I’m gonna lose Lady Witch…what if I lose her forever?  So, then I went out to her place and I said you know, I’m not leaving ‘til you talk to me.  Like, one of those.  Then she didn’t answer, so then I left an…I said my assignment…are my assignments completed?

     

    I know something’s going on because your…and she left me a thing; she said germ, you know, without…I’ve been reassigned.  I don’t have a grand mission and…so, I have to reestablish my membership in the Piracy Guild and I’m gonna go away and return to the twelve…the world of the twelve seas, pirate realm or whatever.  Then I said wait a second…and then I said could I…is there a way I could be apprentice to a pirate…apprentice…pirate apprentice?  I think that’s what a cat is, but Lady Witchbeard…oh, this…you might say are there a lot of witch-pirates?  Nope, only Lady Witchbeard, so that should answer that question.  So, then I remembered though…and how I had forgotten this was my method…now, this is probably misguided because once again, I was putting my needs before other people’s needs which is something I do all the time.

     

    My need to be an assistant to Lady Witchbeard and my need to be…I remember that the last time I got her a mission was through music.  So, one of the things I’ve been doing is…a big fan of getting old Fisher-Price record players and trying to get them to work again.  I said okay, I just gotta find the right song for Lady Witchbeard, so I’ll just sit outside.  Hopefully I can [01:00:00] do this before she goes away on her assignment.  I think I knew…I don’t know.  I had…my…I was like, okay, I got a week or something, whatever the date was on the thing.  So, I started sitting out there and I made a list of all these songs about the sea.  You know, songs…I said okay, there’s Beyond the Sea…I was trying to find sea songs.

     

    There’s also songs I like, like Ocean Size, The Ocean, Come Sail Away, La Mer, oh, Ocean Man; that’s one of the ones I like by Ween.  Octopus’s Garden…there’s other versions of Sail Away.  There’s even a Glee version.  There’s Sailing by Christopher Cross…oh no, that’s the one.  Oh no, Christopher Cross, Sailing covered by NSYNC which as the same…which has some of the same music from the song Ocean Man.  I don’t know.  There was…oh, Castles Made of Sand, Southern Cross, Under the Sea, of course, Yellow Submarine, Ocean Eyes; that was the only song that’s by Billie Eilish.  That was the only song that up until she came out, she said I like this song, germ; play it again.  So, I mean, that’s a great song anyways.  I said no problem.  But none of them seem to have the mission that Lady Witchbeard was looking for.

     

    Then I played some…I would play…then I would play more Billie Eilish on my phone, too, and then I was also using my phone to try to figure okay, what am I gonna do here?  I need to go deeper.  But then it was The Commodores that saved me.  Not Commodore 64; The Commodores.  I should have known it.  Like, Sail On.  I played that song and actually, I liked it.  I mean, I like it already but I said whoa, this is…but it didn’t have…I said okay…oh, Billy Ocean.  That was another one.  But anyway, I played Sail On and then I left and I came back the next day.  That was the last song I played, and there was an assignment from Lady Witchbeard.  She said something…it’s something like that.  At first I got caught up in the lyrics which now I don’t even remember because it’s not important.  I’ll just tell you right up front.

     

    Then I said well, it’s something maybe about…she said that…didn’t she say it feels right or something?  So, I thought about the feel of that song.  Then I said what other songs feel like that?  Again, this is something you can’t do by algorithm but I…so, I kept trying to find…I mean, I went through all the recommendations from algorithms and I said no, no, no, but I gotta find something.  Then the other…some of the songs, I was like what the heck?  What does that song even mean?  But so, I was listening over and over again to that song and I said there is something here.  There’s something in…and I realized it was something about that song and what would lead me in the right direction was that it has a feel from my…not my childhood but something like it of when it was the 1980s but I was watching a TV show from the 1970s.

     

    I’d say…so, I started going on music forums and telling people that.  I’d say, what?  I’d say yeah, it feels like that.  Total…no, no, it reminds you of that?  No, no, no, feels a little bit like that.  At some point I thought about Phish which is a band I listen to, and then I thought about…then I said there’s something about Captain and Tennille and that was where I got…this time…at this point I’m in a fog because we’re right up against one or two days now Lady Witchbeard is leaving.  I said well, Captain and Tennille, so then I start listening to Captain and Tennille which does feel like watching a 70s TV show in the 80s a little bit, just a little bit.  Let’s see, what were their songs?  We Will Be Together, something…something else.  It’s like, has a bum, bum, that kinda thing.

     

    Then that’s when it brought me…I said but Phish didn’t cover any Captain and Tennille that I knew about.  Then I was like oh, Captain and Tennille doesn’t sing Ride, Captain, Ride.  At first I thought that was a song because oh boy, it has the Captain and Tennille, a little bit of The Commodores feeling of watching a 1970s TV show in the 80s or in the 90s, even, with something a little bit funky like the start of a random game show or something.  But I played that song over and over again and the only thing [inaudible]…put is almost there ‘cause I thought okay, ‘73…I thought that was it.  It had the mission but then I said this…is this about the summer love?  I don’t even know.  It must have fallen asleep ‘cause I…when she…I said what am I gonna do now?

     

    Now we’re down to the next day Lady Witchbeard is supposed to be leaving.  It was probably by the power of Carole King that inhabits the algorithms that play my music but at some point I know I heard the music of this song which was in that same realm.  It would…do-do-de-do-do-do or something, stuff with that but with music and stuff and lyrics.  Then I was…it was playing in my dreams over and over again because when I woke up, Lady Witchbeard was there with my phone, with the song just playing over and over again.

     

    I could hear the lyrics about a bay, western…she said germ, this is it.  She was sitting there and I hadn’t been in her presence this close in years.  I woke and it was like I was in a dream.  She said germ, this is it.  This is our very fine mission and it’s time to go.  I said well, Lady Witchbeard, I’m gonna rest my head just for five more minutes and get comfortable here and get…she said that’s a good idea.  I’m gonna take…she goes, I’m gonna take a twenty-minute nap and then we’ll go on our mission and get comfortable and snuggle in and a take a nice resty-poo until we set off on our mission.  Goodnight.

     

    [END OF RECORDING]

    (www.leahtranscribes.com)

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