[00:00:01] Speaker A: Now, wait a minute. Now wait a minute.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: There are many times today with the news and the stories that you hear and these things that we hear all around us, things people are saying, it's easy to feel like it's time to throw tradition away. But I think that that temptation is risky. I think it is a proposition that can lead us to ruin. It could destroy everything that we care about. And that is why today, here on the most important election of our lives, we are taking a strong stance in support of vampirism. That's right. That's the V word that we care about here.
Time to. It's time to go back to our roots as a country. The United States was founded on vampirism.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: And it's the only way we're getting back to something resembling normaly is to bring back vampirism. And of course, you can do that by heading down to your polling place where vampirism will be on the ballot today, right now, right this second, while you're listening, it's time to vote in the most important election of our lives.
This election, which will be, I do.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Truly believe, the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:01:26] Speaker C: This is the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: This is the most important election. Don't you you hear that?
[00:01:34] Speaker A: This is the most important election in our lifetime. I certainly think it's the most important election of my lifetime.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: This is the most important election of our times.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Politicians say every time, this is the most important election.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: This one's really that important.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: The Vampire party sucks. Positive, complimentary, not derogatory.
I'm Kennedy Cooper. As always, we've got Brandon Buchanan here.
[00:02:06] Speaker D: Hey, folks, Garrick Taylor there, editor supreme of this year podcast.
So funny thing happened. On the way to the podcast pod we go to introduce Brandon and he just, I mean, kind of puts on these glasses that I've never seen him wear before.
And then he grabbed a katana out of nowhere and. And just left.
Yeah, so I assume he will be back eventually, but we'll see.
Anyways, back to the show and we've.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Got Andrew Fields, our in house statistician, of course, on the panel as always. Andrew, say hi.
[00:02:50] Speaker C: Hello. Numbers, numbers, numbers, Statistics, numbers.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: And today in the hot seat at our polling place, we have our lovely and esteemed guest, Liz of Studio Metropolis, one half of Studio Metropolis, the author of My Boyfriend is a Shark and other fantastic Things.
Liz, welcome to the show.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Thank you. I actually have a correction to make.
I have just. No, no, no, no. It's not your fault, it's my fault. I've just left the studio, so I've left it in the capable hands of Atlas Talos, who is my artist for these wonderful projects that I've been doing. And I am getting back to my vampire roots, actually writing a couple of books and working on my anthology on my own like a big girl for the very first time.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: Whoa, that sounds batshit crazy.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it is a little bit.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: That's great. Yeah. And I will correct myself and say founder and former, former partner at Studio Metro. That sounds fancy, right? That's what you like. That's what you'd say if you were like a tech. If you worked in tech, you'd say something like this. Founder and former board member. I don't know. At studio.
[00:04:08] Speaker C: Founder and former board member.
Technology expert. Advancement, Future enhancer. Boom. You're a tech person now.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Just come up with a fancy title for yourself now that you're, you know, you're founder, former board member.
Still, you should say something like, you're still a creative visor.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: I thought that I just got to spend the rest of my life as Stone Cold Fox. Like I thought that was. That was it. That's the goal.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: Fun fact, Liz, as our special guest, you've. Your vote is worth a thousand times more than anybody else's. So you better listen up and pay attention, Liz.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: You'll get a second chance to plug at the end. But not everybody listens to the end of shows, unfortunately. So is there anywhere that you want people to follow you so they could stay up to date with all of your works? Especially vampire related, it's sounding like at the moment, actually.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Yes, of course. I love my, my little community in Blue sky and on Insta, I just started a patreon, which is patreon.com backslash se Ramsdell. And since I'm really mouthy, I'm going to be just everywhere now. Nobody's on Facebook, right? Nobody's on Facebook.
I'm doing my best to avoid your.
[00:05:29] Speaker C: Racist relatives are on.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: That's true. My mother is on Facebook. This is true. Okay, but that's good. I don't need to be there though, so. Yeah, of course. Always have the most fun on blue sky. But I'm actually trying to put my work out there and so releasing stories, especially coming up, one of my novellas as a serial on Patreon.
[00:05:51] Speaker C: You know, you say you like blue sky, even though vampires prefer going out when the sky is black and not blue.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Well, okay, but is it black or is it just a really, really, really, really dark blue?
[00:06:04] Speaker C: You know What? You got me. You got me. Bam.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Even Boom.
As.
As the kids have not said 10 years.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: I don't need HR involved.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Liz, you wanted to speak with us today about a vampire who himself is quite well known in our modern culture.
Also a series of films that are both not like Marvel movies of the modern era and kind of like modern, modern Marvel movies in a weird way, the Blade movies. What made you pick these?
[00:06:46] Speaker A: You know what? I. I was a sucker for vampires from day one, right? That was from the earliest me, back when I lived in the country where night gets really, really long sometimes.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Was your first big vampire thing.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Oh, gosh.
How far back can I go without aging myself too hard?
[00:07:11] Speaker B: You can just pretend you were a precocious child getting into the things that your older cousins were.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: All right, So I just believe Liz is a vampire. Liz, if you're a vampire, you're 100 years old years old. Your secret safety.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Thank you, God. I need that time, too, because I'm never going to get all the stories out of my head. But Lost Boys. Lost Boys was Lost Boys. I was the right age for Lost Boys to be really tasty. When I was. When I was, you know, first getting to watch things that my very conservative parents would not normally let me watch. When I was, you know, finally got out of the house, got to babysit, got to go to other people's homes and got to find out that all of this media and all of these wonderful stories existed that I didn't have access to at home. And vampires have always been a really curious mythology for me, just by virtue of its contradictions and how. How hard we try to humanize monsters.
It just. It all came together in vampires for me. You know, they didn't have to change like, say, a werewolf would have to. They didn't turn into something. They are what they are, and they made people bend to their will. And not only that, but the older I.
The sexier vampires were getting. And I love sexy things very much. That's how I ended up being a smut peddler in the first place.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: So those of us who are roughly of a certain era, we got. We got some really good sexy vampire years. We really lucked out.
I feel like, you know, culture now is so chased in a lot of media.
I watch so much media where every single romantic intention is just faded to pretty much instantly. And it's. I mean, I'm okay with that sometimes. Of course, sometimes you don't really need to see more than that. But then other times, I don't know, you know, we. In like the early 2000s, late 90s, there was a lot of really horny vampire media that was not hiding it at all.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: It was, it was sort of like a revisitation act for me because even though, again, my parents were like these Christian converts who had raised me so sheltered, my mother was a latchkey kid who watched Dark Shadows. And there was nothing hotter and more antagonistic than that relationship between Barnabas and Angelique. Right. And so, like, that was, that's some of my earliest memories. And that was black and white. Right.
But yeah, like when, when I got to be about high school age, that's when all the really hot stuff was coming out. And I was like, yes, I'm here for this.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: I've got to ask, statistically, according to the central limit theorem, I have to ask this to you. Don't look up what it actually means, but I have to ask you, what are your thoughts on Twilight?
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Oh, please don't ask me that question. You do know my parents are Mormon, right?
[00:10:13] Speaker C: Oh, my God, I am so sorry. I'm canceling myself.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Stephanie Myers actually went to college. I'm pretty sure she went to byu. That's where she graduated.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: Okay, you know what? Voters are home. I want you to cancel me with your next vote.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: I deserve it for that. So. No, it's. As a writer, it's hard for me to say because, to give my opinion sometimes because I have some particular feelings and I don't ever want to sound like I'm trying to put someone else down to lift myself up because I am competent, but I am not one of the greats. Okay. And I'll be the first one to say that she is not either.
She's not one of the great.
And even. Even.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Game recognized game. You know, you're. If you're, if you're willing to get on a podcast, I'm not a top 10 writer.
And then you're also allowed, you're also allowed to point at one other person that you've read their works and say, and they're not either. That's just fair. That's just there.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: You know, even leaning heavily on the stereotype, stereotypes and tropes and racism, it still wasn't great. So I do have. But I understand that people really, really loved it. And it was fascinating to watch middle aged women because I wasn't there yet.
Yeah, I was. You know, the Team Edward versus the Team Jacobs women that I had. I lost friends over Twilight and not because I said Twilight was bad writing. To be clear, I actually just pointed out they were being really gross towards young men the way that they would never be okay with men being gross towards young women.
And I lost.
I lost friends over that just because I was like, well, you know, you're being kind of creepy and gross, and I'm not cool with that. Like, it would make me uncomfortable. As a survivor, I was like, I don't know why you expect me to be okay with this, but I'm not.
So. Yeah, actually, there was one really good thing that I saw in the movies because, to be clear, I. I didn't make it all the way through the books. I just couldn't. I DNF'd most of them. But at the end of the very last movie, after all the weirdness, there's this amazing fight. A fight humans could never have, not with all the technology in the world. Right. Because it literally required your body and your. Everything about you being this extraordinary thing. And this was the coolest battle. And I thought, this. These movies have redeemed themselves. Holy shit. Oh, wait, can I swear? Holy cow.
Okay, just checking, just checking. But then they took it away from us. Oh, just kidding. It was just a vision. Oh, my God. It took me days just to process that last. That last five minutes of that movie.
I was so angry because it was incredible. Like, I. I finally. I felt like they had finally shown us what this. This mythological creature was capable of. Right? This absolute bloodbath, this crazy fight where everyone gave their all and people sacrificed themselves for their beliefs on both sides. And then. And then they took it away from us. And that's actually why my opinion of Twilight is so low now. It's not even for the writing anymore. It's just because I could not believe they did that to us. Like, it doesn't have to be good, but at least, you know, Follow Through Blade would never.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: It's actually a really.
That is a really strong, specific, pointed and accurate critique.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: My Blade would never. To be clear, he makes sure everyone's dead.
Yeah. He's not walking out there if someone's still alive and kicking. And I'm down with that. That works for me. Because if you're going to try to be a good guy, especially if you're in a gray area, if you're an anti hero, you better not leave anyone standing.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: You know, here, I'm not a publishing author, so I can say something a little harsher that you might be comfortable with and just say that I think that Stephenie Meyer's entire problem as a writer is that she could never make decisions.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: I think that's actually accurate.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: And that's why this. This, you know. Yeah, like, that's why this sucks. But that's why, like, the whole series sucks, ultimately, is because of all the waffling and rug pulling. If you actually removed all of that, wouldn't be nearly so bad. I'm not saying it'd be great, but, you know, if there was just. If it was just a little bit more of a straightforward story without so much waffling, it wouldn't be nearly so bad. But the thing is, she couldn't decide what story she was writing, and so we all had to suffer for it.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Well, that's actually. Yeah, you're right. And that's kind of part and parcel for the whole vampire thing, is she was trying to moralize, which you can't do.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: You mentioned earlier the contradiction of vampirism as a. As a mythological trope and how, you know, for vampire, for a werewolf, that contradiction is externalized.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Right?
[00:15:07] Speaker B: You're the human or you're the werewolf. You're the person or the beast. Right?
And with the vampire, the contradiction is internalized. And that's the whole point of vampire stories, at least from my reading, in a lot of ways. I mean, not necessarily the whole point. I don't want to sound like I'm. That I'm sounding like a YouTuber, but.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: It is. It's a very man versus self. And that's like, honestly, that's. That's the best trope, like, from a reading, you know, from someone who. Who has spent my life voraciously consuming literature, that. That's the best story. And it is. It's a very. Man versus self, right? You. You're conquering this vast, ephemeral hunger, but we constantly try to take that hunger and put it into the perspective of control.
And vampires aren't. You know, they're not controlled. Their lack of control, they're this beautiful lack of control. They're. The fact that everything is.
Is more real, more colorful, sexier.
Y' all should know I'm sitting out of my back patio right now, and I'm watching hawks fly over the orchard behind me. And it's really pretty. But anyway, you know, there. This. The hunger is.
[00:16:33] Speaker C: Is I want to see the hawks. That's my hunger. You gave me a hunger for seeing the beautiful sights on your side.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: So, like, they're just. They're just so beautiful. I was like, oh, look, they're. They're playing nobody's Cat's out, right? So but you know, this hunger that they, that they personify is.
I think it's a version of humanity without a lot of the unnecessary controls that we put on ourselves. Quite frankly, we all have hungers and it seems bad to feed them, but it's all based on the worst options for mores and norms. Like, we chose the. What the hell?
There's so many cool things about taking care of one another and being. Being good members of our communities and building each other up that we could have made our social norms, but no, we chose monogamy and patriarchy and starving ourselves.
And like, really, I don't want any of those things. And that's, you know, that, that, that's why vampires are so cool, because you step into that world and suddenly I can shed that child. That was brought up by converts. And by the way, converts are always interesting, but like, you know, I, I can shed all of that and allow myself to be hungry.
And, and as someone who writes horror, I actually read the coolest essay about women and hunger. How women eating in horror movies is itself a horrific act, not because people eat so much as they. They hunger. And women are shown to exist in that reality with hunger and, and, and allowing themselves that hunger. And I feel like vampires are like a constant version of that that is just not gendered. Anyway, I could talk forever. I'm really sorry.
[00:18:30] Speaker C: Well, that's.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: We, we.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: We invited you to talk forever. Like, if you stop talking, this podcast will explode.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Oh, I wouldn't want that. I take full responsibility.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Oh, that's. You're dropping an incredible insight. If this was also, if this was a three hour show, I'd be like. And go on and go. I dive much deeper into that. But Liz, I'm going to give you a freebie. I've got an idea for a vampire story and you can have it. Okay.
Which is, you know, vampires are often like. The hunger is often a metaphor for sexual desire. Queer coded sexual desire in particular. Traditionally, it's also been popularly used as a metaphor for drug use in a lot of modern media.
I want to see a vampire story where the hunger is a metaphor for neurodivergent task avoidance. Just like painful. A vampire who's like, who's like, I really should do my laundry and is like, oh, but I've got to satisfy the hunger. You know, I just have to satisfy the hunger. So I got. I actually, I have to go drink. I don't know. I don't have time for laundry today. I have to go drink blood right now. I just I, Yeah, I, I love vampires. This is a great topic. So, yeah, Blade in particular, a very interesting one.
Obviously this is a character who, his own struggle with the hunger in his context is, you know, he's, he, he really wants to reject this as hard as he, this part of himself, as hard as he can. But it was, was born a vampire, so it's really hard for him to avoid this part of himself that he hates so much.
And that's a big theme. And also you have these themes of traditionalism versus modernity that exist throughout this series that permeate not just through his character, but through all of the characters to a large extent.
How do, how do we, how do we move forward is the big question a lot in Blade, both for the heroes and the villains.
And that's kind of an interesting aspect, is that although the villains seem powerful in Blade, they don't seem to be those type of all knowing villains that have the perfectly laid traps all the time. They seem to also be uncertain of how to claim power.
And that's interesting.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: This is unrelated, but I have to, if I thought of this, I have to let everybody know about this. When you said how do we move forward, Kennedy, I thought party. And then I imagine vampire Andrew Yang. All right, continue.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: I mean, just regular Andrew Yang. I'm confused.
[00:21:17] Speaker C: Fair enough.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Not left vampires, not right vampires, forward vampires.
So, yeah, I, I don't know. Liz, do you want to.
Is there anything about any of those themes or other themes about these films that particularly.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it really, it really.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Is interesting that I find all of that very compelling.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean, you make a really good point because at the end of the day, all of Blade's antagonists, I mean, with the exception of one, and I actually do love Stephen Dorff, so it's really enjoyable just watching him be just the shittiest of bad guys. Like, he's really awful and I just love it. But they're just trying to survive. So who's the real villain?
You know, and that's, and I know that that's, you know, pretty normal for a story as well. You could slip it on his head. No, I mean, you take Maleficent. They tried to humanize Maleficent, and sure, one person hur what she was doing in return, but these are people who are literally trying to survive.
And most of them weren't trying to turn humanity into slaves or cattle. They just wanted to survive. They were willing to stay in the dark. They were willing to mind their own business for the most part.
Take what they had and leave the rest. Right. I mean, humans aren't even that good at that. And so, you know, we expect it from our villains. But, but here we are and consumption is literally 90 of existence for a lot of people. Like a lot of people. And so, you know, if you, but, but he, like you said, here's this guy who rides this line where he was born this way and he has no control over it and he's making choices based on that and based on regaining control of it, but also it's just really one long revenge ride.
He's pissed that somebody did something to his mom and he's going to just get them all.
And, and they had an ecosystem working.
They had people who knew that, who they were and knew that they were there, who worked for them, who worked with them, who they had made promises to, who, you know, they had set up blood banks. They've got things. I mean, I'm not really keen on stealing people for blood banks either. I'm not trying to defend that. But they, they had set up systems to try to evolve with this changing time, with the modernity of it. And, and he's just coming in and destroying it and he's not giving them any other.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: We're not condoning blood theft, but it's clearly more ethical than murder.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no.
Right.
And so like I'm just trying.
But they did, they have an, they have like this whole ecosystem that he constantly upsets because he's mad that something happened to his mom. And it's such a weird way to look at that because he's my hero. Like, I love Blade and I'd absolutely be team, Team Blade. But just looking at it from a. Yeah. From an unbiased point of view, you're looking at it going, wow.
So they have this whole, they have this whole system set up where to at least some extent, considering what they are and what they do, they're trying to kind of be fair about it. And you're giving them no other options but to then try to go bigger and better.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: It's not like Blade comes to them and he's like, if you toe the line, you're fine, but if you step one foot over the line, I come for no. It's like, even if you're like the most mild mannered vampire, just like living out in the country, you know, like, like not bothering anybody, he'll show up at your house with 17 guns, like, what's up? And it's just like, okay.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: And yeah. And that's Kind of a. And that's kind of a departure from a lot of modern vampire stories, at least longer. If you anything that's, you know, a saga versus an episode, you find that like Interview with a vampire. He. There was Louis and oh, gosh, what is the one? I'm thinking, oh, Dylan Dog, duh.
Of course, one of my other heroes, Dylan Dog, has a vampire friend and he's a historian, and he goes to him for help with things. And he's in no danger when he goes there, even though he's literally like the sheriff. I don't know if anybody knows who Dylan Dog is, but he's the sheriff, basically that intermediary between humanity and. And supernaturals. And he keeps the supernaturals in line and solves those crimes they don't spill over onto. Right. And even he has a vampire friend, someone who is a mild matter.
Mild mannered. What? Thanks. Mild mannered old man. He's just a historian. He's surrounded by books. It's honestly the life I'd want to have as a vampire. And he's able to explain things to him and help him when he needs it. But Blade takes all of that out. There is no set. There is no gray.
There is only the good and the evil, and you're either on the side of good or you're dead. And it really puts things into such clear boxes, which I'm not. I don't know if I've ever enjoyed media like that before. You know, I'm sort of a Punisher fan. I'm sort of the gray area. Anti hero.
It's my thing. I know it's a lot of people's thing. It's a very popular trope. But Blade takes that right out of it. But at the same time, you're like, but is he a good guy? Because he's so bloodthirsty, he's so violent, and he's so ready to just take everybody out. He's like, no, I'm just gonna throw a grenade in there.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: You compare and contrast this to a lot of modern Marvel movies. Kind of try to have this dynamic between the heroes and villains, but it's. They. They don't pull it off. And you look at something like Black Panther where the villain is essentially right, but he kills his girlfriend and so we have to hate him. And the hero really doesn't have any serious conflicts other than he's a reluctant hero, basically. Like, like, like he's not. But he doesn't have, like, a moral. He doesn't have like a strong Internal moral opposition to doing the right thing.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: So to speak, or something like that, you know, but then you look at Blade and you've got these sides where you've got one side just wants to survive and is willing to do questionable things for that. And you've got to maybe look at that and go, I don't know if I support that.
Then Blade himself sees things so starkly in black and white, like you were saying that. Like, he doesn't leave any room for anything else. And you've got to look at that and go, well, is that justice? Is that righteous?
And that's such a. That's such a good dynamic for these characters.
And I think that's a good turning point for this episode as well, for us to move towards stepping into the polling booth here for. For. For some spicy questions that will provoke some interesting votes and answers.
You know, tradition versus modernity, black and white versus shades of gray. These are some of the topics that inspired today's main questions here. So I. I hope you're ready for this one. Liz and Andrew, I'm curious what both of you think.
Could a vampire wear a blue tie?
And we know that tie color is very controversial in politics, and I think it. I think vampires are required, if you're going to the vampire meeting, to wear a red tie. What do you think?
If you're going to the. The Vampire High Council, you show up in a bright blue tie. Not necessarily bright blue, but a nice strong. Is that. Is that violating cultural norms?
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Oh, you know, I. Again, this. This goes back to. To which. Which vampires we're talking about today?
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Back in the days, you think the modern vampire.
Yeah. Like, Louis would have got away with it. Lestat would never.
Right. You know, and the only reason Louis could get away with it, because Louis was kind of a dork anyway.
But who wants to be seen as that? And I don't. I don't know how many, you know, some of us. Some of us, myself included, have really found our identity in dorkiness. But is. That's so antithetical to vampire?
[00:30:02] Speaker C: So my take is I could only see it being told off by one of the most powerful vampires. And they do this specifically to make a point that they can get away with anything that nobody else could, including wearing a blue tie.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Like the one ad agent who shows up in white when everyone else shows up in black.
[00:30:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Yes, I can see that. But yeah, normally, no, I would say that most of them. And honestly, I think the vampires are fundamentally Insecure. So I don't think that it would happen except in a very specific.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: But in general, if we look back at the history of vampires.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: There's dress code at vampire club.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: Strictly enforced. Okay. Okay, I like this. Yeah, I kind. I kind of felt the same way. But it's great to hear some other opinions I've got. Here's my next question for you.
If vampires were known to be real, let's say that this news comes out, you know, next week, next month.
[00:31:06] Speaker C: Yeah, it probably is going to come out. By the time this episode comes out and releases, voters at home are going to wonder, yeah, this already happens. Kennedy, why is the hypothetical, like, with everything going on. Continue.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Rfk Working on it.
So if vampires were announced to be real and a serious threat, would the threat of real vampires be enough to get Democrats to finally get rid of the filibuster?
[00:31:37] Speaker C: Both sides. Both sides. We can compromise with the. We can compromise with the vampires.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: You know, I really like being contrary, but you're not giving me the chance here because. No, no, because they're the waffle.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: They would.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: They would. They would. It would take hours for them to move from we're going to be strong about this to waffling hours.
[00:31:58] Speaker C: We have a strong commitment to democracy, and we are keeping. We have given the vampires a firmly written letter.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Exactly. Yes. Open letter, too.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: Susan Collins is deeply concerned.
Exactly.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Somebody's gonna write a book. Yeah.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough.
What do you think about now? Let. Ignore it. Let's go. Let's rewind history to when things were a little more.
[00:32:26] Speaker C: Okay, that's the rewinding noise.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Slightly more in balance than they are right now. Let's put it that way, I guess.
Imagine Maybe it's like 2012. Ish. Or maybe 2008. I don't know. It doesn't really matter. Just not now.
And vampires are announced to be real. What are the CDC vampire guidelines?
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Wait, so we. We get to still have a CDC in this? In this?
[00:32:54] Speaker B: We got to go back. Exactly. We have to go back to when we still had a CDC.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Got it. Got it.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: At least like 2016 or 2020 something.
But what would the CDC vampire guidelines be? Is there a mandatory quarantine time after exposure to a vampire? Are you allowed to come back to work right away?
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Oh, gosh.
You know, I think they'd handle it like they do any, you know, epidemic lately. Which is they wouldn't. They would definitely begin with strict rules around things like quarantine, distancing.
[00:33:28] Speaker C: If you get in 50ft of a vampire. Quarantine yourself for 10 days.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, in silver.
But the moment that landlords, you know, property owners and business owners complained, then they would simply shift to.
If you're not comfortable being around vampires, just make sure your, your, all your work hours are during daylight hours.
Make sure you have a window, you know, you, you may ask for the accommodation of a window and daylight hours and then that's, you know, that'll be the extent of it.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: So night workers are getting a raise.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, fair enough. Do your best.
[00:34:09] Speaker C: There. There will be our new essential workers.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Crosses are available upon demand. You know, garlic CVS and get your garlic peels and your silver and you'll be good.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: I was going to ask about ppe, actually. So are we making garlic and silver crosses more readily available, especially people who work at night?
[00:34:29] Speaker A: You know, crosses are difficult one. Crosses are a difficult one because, like, you have religion, it's all around faith. Right. And Mormons don't do the cross thing. They think it's weird to worship the thing, the torture device that Christ was hung on. So there's no crosses in Mormon religion. So we'd have to find something. I'm assuming that if you're Jewish, perhaps the Star of David would be more appropriate or something of those. But. But something that, that matches your religious beliefs, your. Your strongest belief. They would make that available to people.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: I just, I'm just picturing myself because my first job was a factory job and I did some night shifts on it. So I'm just imagining me mirror me with my regular ppe, the bright yellow vest, the earplugs also on top of garlic. Over me. I would have across myself, all of that.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Maybe a mirror. So you could like. Yeah, if you heard someone approaching, you couldn't see them in the mirror.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: You'd know, like, some people have like little desk fountains. You know, you could get some running water in the, in your workplace.
[00:35:39] Speaker C: And there's me in the warehouse, lifting, moving everything with that freaking garlic around my neck. Beautiful. I hate it. I love it.
Oh, yeah, we'd have to. The Pope would come by. The Pope, like, I live in Illinois now. The Pope can come by. That's just his stay. He can just give me some holy water. He could just bless the factories with holy water.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: You know, I'm beginning to think that PPEs really wouldn't actually be that hard. We're really talking this into existence.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: Garlic farmers, though, they're thriving for them.
Do vampires have to mask up?
[00:36:14] Speaker C: Oh, my God, go.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Like, if you're a known vampire and you want to hold a regular job and not freak people out, you gotta do. You gotta wear a mask. Is that.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: Well, well, are. Are. I mean, are we. Are we wondering if vampires can actually carry airborne illnesses? Are we asking them to wear muzzles? Like what kind of mask we talking about here?
Oh my gosh. I want to put this in a story now, which is for.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: It's for our comfort. Like your teeth are. There's a layer of something between me and the teeth.
[00:36:48] Speaker C: It could also be a song. There's a layer of something in between me and the teeth.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: That's the number one hit.
[00:36:55] Speaker C: I. I don't hate you.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Don't.
[00:36:57] Speaker C: But it's just I got no be.
[00:36:59] Speaker B: Not in the United States or any country that matters.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Yeah, knock me out.
They would definitely have to mask up because people would be uncomfy.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: And then you'd have. And then you'd have a whole run of designer masks and clear masks to say, look, there's something there. But you can still see because my fangs are fashionable and that makes me cool.
So you'd have to make those sorts of things available. But yeah, I can see an entire industry around masks specifically for vampires where it's not filtration.
It is.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: Yeah. I can see it becoming a very style based thing, now that you mention it.
[00:37:39] Speaker C: Capitalism.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Capitalism, Exactly. And then you've got teenagers wearing them just to wear them because they're hoping they'll fool someone into thinking they're a vampire.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: Don't even necessarily need to breathe at all, arguably, depending.
And so they could wear masks that are absolutely stifling iron.
[00:38:03] Speaker D: Hey there, editor again.
So at this point, Brandon crashes through his own window.
Don't ask me.
He looked pretty rough, but he just kind of brushed himself off his shoulders specifically and just sat back down.
No one really wanted to ask on a conversation of, you know, the katana. But anyways, back to the show.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Outrageously ornate.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: Okay. So obviously roasted them the Democrats a little bit today, but I actually dislike the Republicans more, believe it or not. And I know, I know.
So on the subject of those pesky Republicans, it's clear that if vampirism were announced to exist that they would be less than inactive. They would hinder any sort of potential progress. And so I think there would immediately be conspiracies on the right about vampirism.
Where do you think that the Republicans would say that vampirism originated?
[00:39:22] Speaker C: Oh, oh. Because of the bat that started Covid.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, there's.
Wow, there's so many options.
[00:39:32] Speaker C: No, they think it was artificially made. They don't think it came from a bat. I take back that answer.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. It was artificially made. And by whom? Depends on their favorite, like their pet bigotry. Was it the gays?
Did the gays create vampires? Because they're so weird. They just wanted to. An excuse to drink blood. To drink each other's blood. Yes.
[00:39:55] Speaker C: Happy Pride Month, everybody, by the way.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
Happy Pride month. I actually texted my kids that this morning. Happy Pride Month. Be guilty to cry hashtag blood.
But. But, like, it depends, right? There's so many places that could go. But I feel like in. In the name of Western imperialism, that they would make it a far east creation. Feel like that that's the place they would want it to be from. Those are the people they would want to blame for making this. In an effort to, you know, take down the greatest. What is the greatest nation on earth? Right, That's. I hear it a lot. I don't know if ever. I don't. I don't know. Honestly, I actually don't know how common that is among Americans to say that being non American, It. It seems very loud to me.
[00:40:45] Speaker C: It's common.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: It seems very. Okay. It seems really.
[00:40:48] Speaker C: We are the freedom country. We're the greatest country. Yeah.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: America.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: Nobody else has got freedom like America.
[00:40:54] Speaker A: Right. And I firmly believe that someone would somewhere say it would be specific to reduce the population of white people who could procreate.
[00:41:04] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:41:07] Speaker A: Based on lowering the child rate. Yeah.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: Right. Because Elon Musk can have children. Once you become a vampire, you can't have kids. At least in most mythologies.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Right?
[00:41:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Elon Musk has already made that queen.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: Which we're talking about today is a little different.
But, you know, in most mythologies, vampires can't have children.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: And even if the vampire. Even if vampires could have children, Republicans would be spreading the belief that they can't.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And then. And then. And then it would be about trying to figure out how to make them part of the workforce.
They can work longer hours. You can sign them into longer contracts.
You know, you can.
They work down a factory work exactly like they're. That. That step one would be blaming somebody for trying to reduce the. The population of white babies that are being born. And then second would be, how do we monetize this?
[00:41:59] Speaker B: We've got special 750.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: Mortgages just for vampire come today.
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
Wouldn't be awesome.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: Fantastic. Fantastic. Let's get into some stuff that's overall a little More specific.
I'm bringing it back to fashion again.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: I do love fashion.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: How much trouble would Deacon Frost get in for showing up to a meeting with the vampire elders wearing a tan suit?
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Immediate execution. That one's so hard because they were always that. You'd almost think that that would be the least offensive thing he could do.
But, you know, I would. I would. I would hope.
I would hope that they would. That they would. Immediate torture, if nothing else. But those. That council was so Magoo.
Like, I. For a minute, I was on Deacon Frost's side, right? Because those guys were just so.
Man, they were babes, they were bays, they were base vampires. It was sad, but it does feel.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: Like vampire rules kind of state that you have to wear black, red, limited amounts of gray and purple, and that's it. Right?
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Preferably Victorian in flair. There's got to be a little Victorian spirit in there.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: Some. Some ruffs and cuffs.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: Yes. And no suits that cost you less than ten grand. Because if you're a vampire and you can't afford that, you're a bad vampire.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Obviously, there's no excuse for being a bro vampire. Let's just talk about that for a second. I, I'm. I, I really. I. I want to get on this soapbox because sometimes you have these vampires that are like total broke ass, barely got their together. Obviously, I'm not counting like a comedy like what we do in the shadows.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Why did the Lost Boys live in a dead mind?
[00:43:52] Speaker E: For real, vampires exist as a metaphor for class warfare. So people kind of feel that they're subverting tropes by having broke vampires. It's just that, you know, they're violating the laws of compound interest. We are going too far into science fiction.
[00:44:09] Speaker C: Okay? I want to make. Listen, I want to make sure I have this clear.
The easiest path to become rich is to let a vampire bite you and you become a vampire. Am I understanding this?
[00:44:21] Speaker B: You simply will just be rich in a thousand years by accident.
Yeah.
[00:44:27] Speaker C: Come on, vampire.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: It's pretty much what I'm holding out for at this point, because I am. I. I may be the shark queen on Blue sky, but I am actually the queen of rejections right now. So, you know, it's a lot. But if I know that you can just betting on the horses and then stealing money for more bets from other people until you make it big.
[00:44:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, well, I'm voting for you. Okay, you have my vote.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: Brandon, what did you have on this?
[00:44:56] Speaker E: It seemed like you just this entire. And there may be Three or four seconds of cutting here.
This entire thing with Frost and what was the topic this is about.
What was this thing?
[00:45:15] Speaker C: Blade.
[00:45:15] Speaker E: No, I know it was about Blade. It was the subtopic.
[00:45:18] Speaker A: The tan suit. Oh, yeah.
[00:45:20] Speaker E: Well, I guess this was a subtopic. Vampires just start.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:45:26] Speaker E: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That is what it is. And yeah, this money thing, compound interest is a force more powerful than almost anything that a vampire can do. It shouldn't even take you a thousand years to get rich. Yeah, you could just be a furious degenerate gambler and hopefully in a hundred years luck would just swing your way mathematically. But just think of all of. All of human financial instruments is all weighed against the fact that, that it's got limited utility. You can't take the money with you.
So interest rates become like cheating. Like if you take any investment on an 80 year time frame, every bank will give you infinite monies.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: You know what I mean?
[00:46:13] Speaker C: I have seen the first few episodes of Futurama.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: Every vampire is just living the.
The first couple episodes of Futurama.
That's it. That's.
And if you're not as a vampire, what the did you do? Because again, all you need to do is like back in the 1400s, pick one painter and be like, Here's 500 bucks, my guy. And then you should be a billionaire in 25 things.
[00:46:46] Speaker E: Seems to be kind of cool. You guys are selling treasury bonds.
[00:46:50] Speaker C: Okay, but don't.
Oh God. A vampire who invests in Bitcoin in NFTs.
[00:46:57] Speaker E: If you were a vampire. Oh my God, you were a vampire. And bitcoin comes along.
Remember that? Bitcoin was extremely cheap when it started out.
[00:47:07] Speaker C: Oh, true, true.
[00:47:08] Speaker E: Like you'd have to spend 50,000 Bitcoin to buy a pizza in 202008 or whatever. So if you're a vampire and you hear about this bitcoin and you're. You're already sitting on 400 years worth of money. All you have to do is.
[00:47:23] Speaker C: I have a curse suggestion for you. I have a curse suggestion for you. One of your books. Write a vampire who got rich off of bitcoin.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Oh my God.
I will write that story just for you.
[00:47:36] Speaker C: Thank you.
Thank you for spiting me.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Yeah, you got. You've got to write the. The Very Special Vampire Goes to the Polls.
[00:47:48] Speaker A: I would love to write a vampire. Always best on the wrong thing.
It's just like that's the only consistent is at some point his friends start asking him so they can do the opposite because they Know whatever he does is going to fall through, no matter how good it looks.
Yeah.
[00:48:02] Speaker C: Invested in all these ugly. All these ugly monkey NFTs. They're going to skyrocket. Okay, let's avoid these NFT things.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: What was. What was that festival? Fire. Fire Festival.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: The. The vampire. Back to.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: The vampire who goes to jail for 10 years for financial fraud.
[00:48:30] Speaker E: That's terrible.
[00:48:33] Speaker B: But. But it's just like, whatever. I can be in jail. I can leave at night in my bat form.
There's plenty of victims here.
It's actually kind of insane.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: Like, honestly, if a vampire was down on his luck, I think going to jail would be the best thing for him. People would just be, you know, some weird. Some weird epidemic would befall the jail. The prison people would start dying and nobody would understand the mysterious illness. But meanwhile, the vampires got three hots and a cod.
[00:49:04] Speaker B: Maybe not a lot of deaths, but everybody.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: Just one prison is anemic.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: Maybe not a lot of deaths, but just everybody's got anemia now. It's just so bad.
[00:49:13] Speaker C: Starts to get a little money and decides to take a submarine ride on the Titan.
[00:49:18] Speaker B: Oh, the warden's like, we're feeding red meat every day.
We put.
They eat spinach five days a week.
[00:49:31] Speaker C: The world's worst.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: We really got on a tangent here. This is amazing, though.
Okay, what are we voting on?
So my next question here is much like in Blade, Reaper mutation is spreading, threatening both humans and vampires alike. Do the Republicans that are secretly vampires reach across the aisle to the Democrats that are secretly vampires to shut this shit down?
[00:50:02] Speaker E: Really good question. I really. You've really. You've really dug deep for this one. And I mean, all of the vampires would have been around during Tip o' Neill, all of this, this. This liberal stuff about reaching across the aisle, historically. Well, first of all, like, I guess the vampires have been in office long enough that they remember bipartisanship.
So would they just say, let's just go back to that for the sake of our own lives or not?
[00:50:34] Speaker A: You know, I have a hard time. I have a hard time seeing the political climate being what it is.
If there were vampires, simply because that longevity and the being able to watch the evolution of people, I feel like for their own sakes, because they're so fundamentally selfish, but sometimes it works out so well. I feel like for their own sakes, they would have avoided all this, actually.
I think we would have been read. Better governed. I think we would have been better governed. I mean, to a certain degree, in certain ways, by vampires, then I don't.
[00:51:12] Speaker B: Think they would have avoided all of it. But here's what I do think. I think it's undeniable as an example that vampires would all believe in climate.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: Change and in things like abortion and.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: And believe. And believe in immediate climate change action.
[00:51:31] Speaker E: Now this, that's kind of impossible to argue with. They don't have to worry about anything related to humans.
The humans destroying the planet is the only thing they have to really worry about, it's true.
[00:51:44] Speaker A: But keeping people happy, like the early robber barons, who still knew to invest in schools, museums and art because it kept people happy if they've been around long enough. They remember when peasants had lots of holidays and were given time because the church knew that happier peasants meant less revolt. And that's why I think the vampires would have at least handled that differently. They wouldn't be driving people towards revolution so hard.
They would have been better at doing what has been attempted here, which was to get people, you know, stupid and complacent or whatever, you know, people want to say about it. Complacency really is a big problem. But to get them. To get them ignorant and sort of happily so. I think the vampires would have used all of that.
That history differently, rather than repeating it.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: You know, I've got a question that kind of ties together some of our recent topics here.
[00:52:43] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: Is there a vampire working class, or are you necessarily a part of the ownership class as a vampire?
[00:52:53] Speaker A: I was just gonna say, I think there are, actually. I think there are, first and foremost, because they're so hard on each other, that there are definitely some who they have locked out of certain things. I think it would. Like. Like we talked about how bad you have to be at being a vampire to be broke. But I do think that there are certain vampires that they would still create, maybe even its own separate class that is not quite worker, but not quite owner, landowner, or elite or whatever we've got going on there, because they simply are just not liked by everyone else.
Just a very social thing.
[00:53:31] Speaker C: Hey. Oh, God. The electricity just went out and it's midnight. We're gonna have to wait till tomorrow. Wait, I know this excellent vampire electrician, but is it.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: Wouldn't it be nice to think that even if you got to live forever, you still had passions or things that you love to do? Like if. Again, I'm gonna make this about me as a writer.
[00:53:56] Speaker C: You're the guest.
[00:53:56] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I. And me, this is. I do this everywhere I go. But.
I'm sorry, but I don't ever want to stop writing. I don't want to ever stop telling stories right like that. That just sounds awful to quit. That sounds so terrible. And I would like to think that there are vampires who would feel the same way who are like, hey, I just like working with my hands. I don't know what to tell you.
[00:54:21] Speaker C: Vampire who likes teaching and teaches night school.
[00:54:24] Speaker A: Oh, my God. I can see it, though. I mean, I don't know if you all remember.
Oh, what was his name? Forever Night. The TV show Forever Night. It's like way old. I hardly remembered it. So old.
And it might not have been in America. Sorry for that. But it was a. A night ship cop. He solved murders. He was trying to in his story. He was. It was a. A redemption arc. We can ignore the redemption part of that and we can ignore the cop part of that, but what if there's someone who just is like, actually, I get bored. I want to go do something. I would love for there to be vampire teachers. I think that's the coolest.
[00:54:59] Speaker B: See, I don't know. I.
I have mixed feelings about being a working class vampire as a concept because I think about like, he never died. Have you seen that movie? Yeah, where he, he. There's that scene where the woman asks him about, like, well, what. What are some of the jobs you've had? And he starts listing them off and he's like, oh, you know, I was a soldier.
I was a book binder. I was a glue maker. I worked in a factory.
I worked in another factory.
And he just keeps going because he's a vampire. He just keeps going and going and going. I worry that might be me, you know, like, what if. What if I'm a vampire who never finds my thing and I'm just fucking. I have like for a thousand years. I work 450 odds.
[00:55:51] Speaker A: And then you live in a shitty apartment.
[00:55:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
Although, to be fair, he wasn't broke. He chose that.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: Exactly. I think, I think that's. I think that's the biggest myth of all.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: Even he understood that you simply become rich by being a vampire.
Because his whole thing was that whenever he needed money, he just pulled stuff out of this trunk of stuff that was just like.
That he had accumulated over the years.
That was all like extremely valuable to.
But to him were just like that he had found, you know, that's, that's. That's another reason why no vampire should be broke. If you've lived long enough is like you should simply just have a trunk full of stuff from another Era. And it doesn't even matter if it was cool back then. Just, if you have it, that's enough.
[00:56:43] Speaker A: You know, three Mesopotamian coins, some little statuette from Rome of people, I don't know, masturbating or something, you know, just. Just shit.
[00:56:52] Speaker B: Most of what.
[00:56:53] Speaker A: Okay, maybe. Maybe masturbating statues would be me, but, you know, I mean, yeah, I would love to live long enough for something that I own to be valuable because I was raised in poverty, and so I've never had anything like that. My parents killed off all of their. Any. Anything that they had inherited from their families just for. Just to survive.
Right? So I don't have anything like that. And I. I mean, that alone makes me so jealous for the idea of vampires who can just be like, yeah, I'm just gonna hang on to this forever.
Yeah, what I want, anything I hang on to.
[00:57:27] Speaker B: You just automatically get generational wealth. Now. You might have to wait around a little while.
Okay, I'm gonna pivot in a slightly different direction here for the next one. This is a bit. A bit. A bit spicy. May cause a little controversy. I'm sorry in advance, but I have to ask. This. Is Deacon Frost's war against the vampire elders rooted in ageism?
[00:57:56] Speaker E: I don't know, but these motherfuckers need some ageism to go away.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: You've.
[00:58:04] Speaker E: At some point, we cross from ism to just it just being what it is.
And these. These vampires just weren't on the ball. You know, at some point in life, tenure runs out, and, you know, you just need. You just need somebody to yell at these boomer vampires and get them moving.
So I guess technically, maybe you could call it ageism, but honestly, it's probably more of a generational turnover in the. In the vampire world. I don't even know if, you know, isms are more of a cultural thing, and you get more prestige with age as the vampire. So really, this could be treated as a reverse ageism or something. In the vampire world, what Frost is doing would be considered punching.
[00:58:59] Speaker A: Yeah, like I said, I don't want to.
At the risk of indicting myself, I honestly. That is one place where I'm fully team froth, like, so maybe. But I actually agree that, you know, imagine if Congress actually had to deal with that. What if they had to worry about being just annihilated from the inside by someone who was just ready to take over?
I mean, it's terrifying because, oh, my God, who comes next?
Might want to completely end the world, but they should have been More afraid. They should have been more on it. This is something they've probably done to their. Like they. Were they the first vampires? Doubtful. Which means that somewhere along the line, somebody else had already done this. That's how that. That council got there, because they had done that to whoever preceded them. Whether it was, again, you know, Mesopotamia at the time, but long lived doesn't necessarily mean incapable of dying. Which means this was probably a normal turnover of power. But they got lazy because I think sometimes with modernity, we forget that we can still be, you know, animals. We're kind of at our core pretty violent. Maybe. Again, I'm just. That might be a personal thing, but I think Frost knew that there was only one way he was ever going to be there, and so he took it.
[01:00:26] Speaker E: Is. Is. Let's find someone in Congress for Deacon Frost to primary.
[01:00:32] Speaker A: What would. What would Frost be like? No, as a. As a political.
[01:00:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:00:38] Speaker B: Forward party.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: Okay. So that. That makes things a lot easier.
[01:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
Again, technically a Democrat.
[01:00:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Let's see. Okay. I'm not as up on American.
Not as up on American politics.
Beyond the broad strokes. I don't. I'm still learning people's names because, you know, not American.
[01:01:02] Speaker C: Well, there's this one guy called Donald Trump. Have you.
[01:01:05] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
Yeah. You know, anyone. Anyone in the administration would be at the top of the list. But if we were talking about like the House, the Senate, I am out of my element.
Oh, goodness.
[01:01:21] Speaker E: Would Deacon Frost qualify for your own parliament?
[01:01:26] Speaker A: There's some entire provinces where I would say, you know what? You need Deacon Frost to represent you.
So I'm not. The current PM is a Biden. Where unfortunately, it was a good.
It was good that he won against what he was running against, but he opens the doors for worse things in the next election.
And so we could start there.
But, you know, or my favorite, Alberta. Alberta is.
I don't. I don't know what to compare it to.
The Midwest. What is the most right wing state in the. In the middle, like the farming countries.
Countries, but the farming states. Okay. Oh, gosh. Yeah.
[01:02:14] Speaker C: Idaho.
[01:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah. No, Alberta. Well, Alberta's right above Idaho too, so, you know, that actually makes sense.
[01:02:20] Speaker E: They're not really a farming. But sure.
[01:02:22] Speaker C: Potato. Potato.
[01:02:23] Speaker B: No, they are actually Idaho's main agricultural export is onions. And most of the onions that you eat are grown in Idaho.
[01:02:31] Speaker C: I fell for propaganda.
[01:02:33] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:02:34] Speaker A: Nope, it's true. I mean, please understand, when I was driving from Utah to Washington to visit family, when I lived in Utah, we would drive past, like, Orida and stuff. And, like, it is there. You know, that is there. But it's true that in even the. The onion growing comes even down into northern Utah, so. So when I was there, it was. It was fun.
It smelled interesting. They. They smell right out of the ground. Anyway. Yep, it was. It was something else when you're allergic to that. Anyway.
[01:03:04] Speaker C: I have a poor sense of smell.
[01:03:06] Speaker A: But, yeah, like, that's Canada. While the whole 51st state thing just makes me want to punch somebody in the throat, they.
[01:03:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:03:16] Speaker A: I've always referred to Canada as US Light. You know, it's just a little diet US and in fact, you might not know this, but Canadians have a great capacity for absolutely monstrous violence.
If anybody's a World War I buff, go check out what the Canadians were known for, because they're messed up. But.
[01:03:38] Speaker C: One time when I went to Canada for a school trip, a drunk guy was about to hit me because I said bad things about Trump, who he supported. Good times.
[01:03:47] Speaker A: Good times. That's my country.
[01:03:50] Speaker B: Definitely just Google the words Canada. Indigenous people.
[01:03:55] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
That's a whole nother hour of hearing.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: My angriest to say, not in this episode, at least.
Yeah, we're gonna be wrapping this episode up shortly, so we definitely don't have time for that, but.
[01:04:12] Speaker C: Holy.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:04:15] Speaker B: Ex America almost seem humane in this regard. And that's not a good thing to ever say.
[01:04:21] Speaker A: No, not. Yeah. And. And you're absolutely right. In fact, you know, the first internment cap, I didn't know America had Japanese internment cap. I only knew that Canada did, so that was.
[01:04:32] Speaker C: And now a lot of Americans don't even know about them.
[01:04:35] Speaker A: So, yeah, you know, I came. I've been learning. I'm doing my part. But, yeah, I. I came here. I. I came out of Canada and came here to. And I'm not 100 sure which violence against a black man that it was at the time, because, you know, they're pretty innumerable at this.
But that was my first news coverage that I was exposed to in America, like within the first week of my being here was a beating. And I was like, oh, great. You know, out of the. Out of the frying pan into the fire. Cool. But.
But yeah, Canada has its own stuff, but Frost could primary pretty much anyone on the West. The west is really, really right wing and then alpha right wing. That's where you have miners and, you know, basically the. The coal miners of. Of Canada. They're mining gold and things. But it's. It's a very similar climate. It really is. Socially, very much. Yeah.
[01:05:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
It's like. I'm thinking West Virginia specifically, which shifted Democrats to very bright coal mining jobs dried up and they got really mad.
[01:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. No, that's. My uncle's a miner up in. Up in the north northwest terr.
And I. I never could understand why he said and believe the things he did until I moved here and I was like, oh my gosh. It's like a whole thing. It's a very. It's very cultural societal versus it's not so much economic as it is perceived social class. And. And I started. Which again is tied to the economics. I understand that. But as far as how. How people divide themselves, it. The lines are not what I thought they would be.
So. Yeah, anyway. Sorry, I'm tangenting, you guys, aren't I. Canada.
[01:06:27] Speaker B: Oh, it's fine. It's fine. I just have one final topic for us to ponder today.
[01:06:34] Speaker C: Let us ponder the topic. Orb.
[01:06:36] Speaker B: Would Congress pass a law regulating day walkers given that, you know, they're in the pocket of big vampire and all this? And we understand there's only one day walker at the time that they're doing this? Okay. So there's just the one day walker.
[01:06:54] Speaker A: Oh.
[01:06:55] Speaker B: Would Congress in the pocket of big Vampire, pass a law regulating the single.
[01:07:01] Speaker A: The sole day walker 100% would be subject to more search and seizure, traffic stops, curfews, probably.
I mean, anything that that day walker could be kept out of would be 100%.
Anything that was seen as some sort of perceived benefit of being a day walker would then be regulated to the point where people who weren't even vampires were then regulated based on those perceptions.
[01:07:34] Speaker C: Can't be in sports.
[01:07:35] Speaker A: No. No. Oh, my God, no. Sports. How dare you? Can you just imagine with the speed. Oh. With the strength. Oh, my God. Even if you're. Even if you're playing against vampires. Not fair. Just totally unfair.
Yeah. No, I would not want to be a daywalker in that reality.
[01:07:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I know it doesn't sound good.
Liz, thank you so much for being our guest today, jumping into the voting booth with us. We have voted our hearts out, listeners. You voted along with us. Liz, if. If the listeners want to vote your projects, remind them again, where do they find you?
[01:08:11] Speaker A: I
[email protected] on Bluesky. I am under SE Ramsdell, which is my writing name on Insta and Patreon. Patreon.com Se Ransell. You can find some of my work. People can contact me if they want to. My comic book or my erotic Illustrated Erotic Horror Anthology and Volume 2. The anthology is coming. So I'd really love for people to sign up on mailing list, get in touch with me so that they can hear the news as that comes forward, because I've got other writers joining me and I'm so excited to showcase their work.
[01:08:52] Speaker C: So did we vote in the Canadian elections or did Liz vote in the American election?
[01:08:57] Speaker B: Either way, it's fraud.
[01:08:58] Speaker A: I've always wanted to vote in an American election.
[01:09:01] Speaker C: All right.
[01:09:01] Speaker A: Good.
[01:09:02] Speaker B: All right, let's get out of here, folks. Thank you so much for joining us, as always, and we'll see you next time.
[01:09:13] Speaker C: Bye. Three ever.
[01:09:15] Speaker E: Bye. Bye.
[01:09:22] Speaker A: Thanks for listening.
