Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate.
And I'm Mike.
What are we smoking today, Nate?
We are smoking a Gurka Vintage 2001, which is strange to think that anything during my
lifetime could be considered vintage anything.
Yes, this looks wonderful.
It really does.
It's a really nice torpedo.
Double torpedo.
Indeed.
It's a good start.
A very good start.
Are you pairing this with anything, Mike?
White Russian.
Not a traditional cigar pairing, but had a rough weekend.
Have you heard of the Iron Butterfly?
No.
It's basically a white Russian, except instead of the cream, you use something like rum chata.
So it's another kind of liqueur you add.
So it's got a little bit more potency.
I'm going with something new to me, a Joseph's Brow Hefeweizen.
This is, I believe, a Trader Joe's special, but it's brewed out of the Joseph Brow Brewing
Co. in San Jose, California.
Very nice.
And it's unfiltered wheat.
So you had a rough weekend and I had a rough week.
So Monday, our water heater went out and by going out, I mean, it was leaking from the
vents.
So we had to get that replaced.
Shout out to Keith, one of our listeners, for helping me with that because that was
a little over my skill set.
And then Tuesday, I was going to go to a concert with our listener and one time guest so far,
Dev, and he was asking, hey, who's going to drive?
Because we're neighbors.
And I said, oh, it doesn't matter to me.
And so I was standing out in my driveway and I kind of looked over at my car and I'm like,
huh, I don't think that was there before.
And so I thought, and there's a pipe laying on the ground underneath my car.
And it was my exhaust pipe.
And I got down to look at it and sure enough, it was sawed off.
So my catalytic converter got stolen.
So Dev had to drive to the concert and back.
But he also helped me fix this in a totally legal, non-illegal way.
So with the help and aid of Campbell's Soup, not a sponsor.
Are you willing to talk about how you fixed it on the show or is that something for after?
No, I don't care.
You can go online and Google all these comments and things.
And I'll tell you a couple.
I can tell you a couple of the reasons behind, but this is actually going to like kick into
our topic for this episode.
So it might be worthwhile talking about.
But yeah, so far the cigar is really nice and I'm digging it.
I am too.
So I don't know much about cars.
I drive a 2004 Honda Civic.
It's a hybrid and it's a manual transmission.
It's almost 20 years old and it's a car in Minnesota, meaning it's got rust and the rust
gets bigger every year.
And I park out in the driveway because we only have a one car garage and Sarah's got
a newer car than I do.
So we keep that one kind of nice and out of the elements.
And I just kind of assumed that with it being a manual, nobody would want to steal it.
And two, just kind of like looking at it.
I was hoping people would look at it and say, you know what, this guy suffers enough in
life.
Just let him keep his catalytic converter.
However, that is not the case.
So apparently you can get like three to $500 for a catalytic converter.
Yes, you can, even though it's illegal to buy them.
Well, tell that whomever.
And I think, and we'll get into this in a little bit, but and so they're more valuable
if they come from a hybrid car.
I don't know that mine's fully considered.
I mean, it says hybrid on it, but it's really more like a battery assist because it's only
four cylinders.
So the battery will kind of kick in when you're trying to accelerate and stuff just to assist
you.
It's never going to switch over to full battery mode.
You know what I mean?
Okay.
Yeah.
It doesn't run on battery and then have the main motor be a pony.
No, this is a, it's, I mean, it's from 2004.
So it's like one of the earliest, I'm sure available kind of like hybrid technology type
of things.
So, so anyway, of course, Dev was home because we were going to the concert and I asked him,
I'm like, Hey man, like somebody jacked my catalytic converter.
Should I, should I even bother filing a police report?
And he said, well, you know, you can, if you like doing a lot of paperwork and I don't,
so I didn't because like what they're going to find, they're going to find this catalytic
converter somewhere and bring it back to me.
And then I still have to put it back on.
And then I was kind of looking at like a catalytic converter costs and we're talking like 1200
bucks for a 20 year old car that I don't think I could even get $500 for if I sold it to
the scrap yard.
You know what I mean?
And then if I get a new catalytic converter, I'd have to put a catalytic converter protector
thing on it, like have somebody weld the cage on.
And that's another, I was looking like another 900 bucks or a thousand bucks as a 20 year
old car.
And technically you can drive a vehicle without a catalytic converter.
It's not a, not a necessary component of operating a motor vehicle.
In fact, if you remove a catalytic converter, and I'm not saying you should do this because
this is illegal, you actually get more horsepower and better fuel efficiency by not having a
catalytic converter.
Oh, growing up, it was very common for the Hibbilloo people to remove their catalytic
converters and strike pipe usually to increase horsepower and noise.
Yes.
I will tell you, it was very noisy when I pulled it up onto the, onto the ramps to,
to fix it.
I bet it was noisy.
Yeah.
Not having a catalytic converter is known to the state of California to cause cancer.
And state, and the state of California is one of the few states, or maybe more states
do it now, but I think that some of the East coast states do.
Minnesota here does not do vehicle emission testing or vehicle inspections, which I guess
they do in some other states, even like, I think Michigan does, does them or no, wherever
Nantucket is, does them.
Having a cat doesn't necessarily mean anything because if the baffles come loose, this is
my understanding, and I am not a car expert.
If the baffle comes loose, first of all, it rattles really bad.
Like my truck, pretty sure the catalytic converter is damaged.
So it's doing nothing.
Potentially it's causing me to get worse gas mileage.
You know, I should just cut it out, but, and then it rattles.
That's illegal, Mike.
It's not doing its job either.
This hypothetical situation of what I did to remedy this is purely hypothetical and
not what I actually did to remedy this.
So what I did to remedy this was we just straight piped that bitch.
And what did he use?
Hypothetically speaking.
Hypothetically, yeah.
Yeah, hypothetically.
Well, since I couldn't drive my car because the exhaust pipe was actually laying on the
ground and still attached to the muffler and the exhaust pipe in the back, right?
So it was kind of going to dig into the road and potholes and like rip the whole rest of
the assembly off.
So I couldn't really drive it to go get parts.
And I don't have an auto parts store nearby, but Dev, shout out again to Dev and to Keith
because they were kind of like our two heroes this week with all of the stuff that went
just shit walls.
So anyway, he picked up some exhaust pipes because you can go buy like two foot sections
of like test pipe at automotive stores.
And so what it's used for is to bypass your catalytic converter to see if something else
is the cause of the issue or if it's catalytic converter.
So and I was told after I first bought my car because it's had the check engine light
on for probably 20 years now that the catalytic converter was bad on mine.
So apparently mine wasn't even working to begin with and somebody I guess kind of did
me the favor of getting rid of it.
So he got all these fittings and couplers and things and then some clamps.
And we hypothetically got this all assembled up.
And what the criminals did was they jacked up just on not on a jack point on my frame.
So they bent the front frame quite a bit.
And then what they did was they started a cut on the exhaust pipe after the catalytic
converter.
And then they decided they're about halfway through the pipe and they decided, oh no,
no, no, let's cut a little closer to the catalytic converter.
So they left a half a cut there.
And then they cut as close to the where it comes out of the actual engine as they possibly
could.
So we had to hypothetically we had to flange one of these connectors using my vice grip
and we had to flange it so it fit over this bit.
And we had to angle grind a clamp off because they didn't leave us enough room to straight
pipe it hypothetically speaking.
I mean there's criminals and then there's dick wads.
And these people were definitely dick wads because he could have cut it and left me enough
room to just have an easy straight pipe.
But no, they did not.
So we got that all all hooked up on Friday.
And then we realized that that first initial cut that they made and left in there was rather
large and it was going to be putting out a bunch of exhaust and some noise.
So I was like, well, okay, I'll go get some sheet metal.
Now we'll just wrap that over there and get some clamps and whatever.
And it'll be good.
So I go to the store and the sheet metal is pretty thin, but it's way thicker than I could
physically bend.
And my exhaust tube is only an inch and a half.
So there's no way I'm bending a piece of sheet metal to an inch and a half circumference.
Like it's too thick.
And I asked one of the older guys that was working there and he's like, ah, there's machines
that do it.
But he said it in a way that implied to me that those machines are not cheap and you
don't just buy one for a weekend project.
Then I went up to plumbing and electrical because he was like, maybe there's a, like
a over clamp you can do.
Well, I found this self fusing tape that you can use for plumbing and its temperature rating
is 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
So then of course, because I have the internet in my pocket, I needed to find out how hot
exhaust is.
Well, it's 1200 degrees Fahrenheit.
So because I know some basic math, 500 is way less than 1200, at least by a few hundred
degrees.
So I was looking on Amazon and I had previously looked at an article that said you can take
a beer can and some JB weld and patch a hole in your exhaust pipe using that.
And I thought that's pretty redneck.
And I also thought that, gee, a beer can is awfully thin and I don't think that would
stand up to the heat either.
I think that would burn through pretty quickly.
So I found this exhaust tape on Amazon, not a sponsor.
It was like 10 bucks and it was specifically designed for exhaust pipes.
And this guy was like, Hey, save your money.
Just get a soup can and some hose clamps and you'll be good to go.
And I thought, gee, that sounds swell.
So I went and bought a can of chicken noodle soup, a Campbell's, not a sponsor.
And I ate that bitch up and gave some to my daughter and she ate some too.
And then I rinsed it and JB welded and hose clamped that motherfucker right up there,
hypothetically speaking.
Nice.
And does it seal at least for your ear?
Yeah, it sounds as quiet.
It's not as quiet as before the incident, but it's quieter than after the incident.
You know what I mean?
And so I actually took it for a cruise today and my car kind of sometimes would lurch upon
accelerating and it doesn't do that anymore.
And I think because the catalytic converter was bad, that it was like gumming up my whole
flow, man.
And I was just blocked up and now I'm not.
But I do hear a little bit of a weird noise and I smelled some exhausts.
So I might have to pop back down there and just make sure I completely covered that cut
because it was almost all the way through the thing.
And I think I did, but when you're under a car and inverted or upside down or whatever,
it's hard to see everything.
So right.
Interesting.
You could suppose you already bought the pipe.
You're already money in.
Let's say you cut the rest of it out, whatever the section was theoretically.
Yes, theoretically one piece there.
And so theoretically, this cost was about $40 to do all this fix, you know, with all
the couplers and the straight pipe, the dollar 29, I think for the can of soup, the 99 cents
for the hose clamps.
And that would be your theoretical cost of straight piping your car.
So the reason that people have a catalytic converter is because it cuts down on the emissions,
the pollution emissions.
Right.
And I guess fairly drastically, I don't know.
I don't have the numbers.
Nobody really tells you because it's one of those things.
It's hard to get a reputable source on this because I was looking this up for our topic
for tonight.
How much does the catalytic converter prevent from leaking into the atmosphere and stuff
like that?
And I can look again real quick just before we get into the brunt of it.
But they won't tell you because it's illegal to drive without one.
So it's kind of like when you go into a head shop in a state that doesn't allow marijuana
sales and you want to buy a real nice Chillum or something.
And they have big signs saying, if you mentioned weed or marijuana, we have to ask you to leave.
These are only for tobacco or personal display or something.
Which is always hilarious.
Yeah.
And in cities like Fargo, at least when I was living there, all the head shops were
in Moorhead because they had a Sydney or city ordinance against it.
Okay.
It was the goofiest thing, you know.
Yeah.
I can't.
I mean, so to replace a catalytic converter costs between $945 and $2,500 to fix a catalytic
converter.
Right.
So it doesn't really by how much do they?
Okay, so here we go.
How much do they reduce pollution?
This is the International Platinum Group Metals Association.
So I'm sure that it's non-biased because they use a lot of platinum metals in the converters
and that's why they're so expensive or such a hot thing to sell.
Basically it just says the use of a particulate filter in conjunction with a catalyst can
reduce the particulates mass by 90% or whatever.
So I don't even know.
Let's see.
2015, you know, it doesn't even really say like how much they do.
It just says by can reduce like up to and that's not what I would call it.
One time in a lab test they got 90%.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
That's our high water mark.
So it could get that high again.
It hasn't for a long time because we don't make money off of that.
Yes.
So.
Yeah.
I wonder how long or how many years a catalytic converter is good for realistically because
it's got to go bad.
You would think.
I mean, it's basically filtering, right?
And I know they want every time I go to get my oil changed, which I don't go to get my
oil change because I can do it for a lot cheaper myself.
But they're always like, oh, you got to replace your cabin filter.
You got to replace your engine filter.
And that's just regular.
That's just regular air.
So you have to imagine something filtering out like deadly harmful pollutants needs to
replace more often.
But maybe that's part of the problem too is they only sell them as a whole and you can't
swap out the filter in them.
Right.
Or maybe they work through some kind of like chemical thing.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And then on the badlands, I'd have to change out my cabin air filter, my engineer filter
every 5,000 miles.
So that's why I have a K&N cabin air filter.
Yeah.
Well, there's so much dust out there.
Yeah.
It's just dusty as shit year round.
And even in the winter time until there's snow on the ground, which usually isn't until
January, it's dusty.
Yeah.
So you're talking nine months of dust, you know, just awful.
And you go through a set of windshield wipers three times a year because all the dust just
cuts your.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Just microabrades it.
And I was having my moral conundrum about whether to theoretically, hypothetically straight
pipe my car or do the right thing and the legal thing and put a brand new several thousand
dollar catalytic converter on a piece of shit, which is what I did.
I did this.
I did the latter thing, of course, wink, wink.
And well, yeah, yeah.
You made a investment in your old Honda Civic.
And I am and I am totally not at all worried that somebody stole my catalytic converter,
knows that I legally need another one and will probably come back to check to see if
I went and put a new one on there just so they could steal it again.
You know what I mean?
Like you're if you're not if you're not fixing the problem and people are like, well, you
could spray paint your catalytic converter.
Great.
They don't give a fuck what color it is.
Neither do people buying it since it's illegal to buy one anyway.
And it kind of reminded me of one of the jokes I saw online that I liked where it was.
Sure.
Donate one kidney and you're a hero.
Donate 15.
And they start asking you, what are you doing with all these kidneys?
Yep.
Yeah, I can't believe that people are still stealing shit like that when it's it's illegal
to buy one.
Yeah, not illegal enough, I guess.
So I was having that moral dilemma.
And then Elon Musk decided to blow up his spaceship.
And then I remembered the thing that I read that there's like a handful of companies that
are responsible for 70 percent of all the pollutants in the world.
So maybe maybe a paper straw isn't that big a deal.
So I wanted to talk about that.
I want to talk about companies that pollute and that are terrible.
OK, I am about halfway through my cigar, by the way.
Me as well.
Yeah.
Do you want to wait for our topic and just ramble this episode?
No, because I don't have that much data or information on these companies.
I was just going to kind of read through the list and then we can kind of talk about how
evil they are and how they make us fight amongst ourselves to use plastic straws and reusable
bags.
And they're basically flushing, you know, nuclear waste into the rivers.
Right.
That sounds good.
Yeah, I'm halfway through.
So far, I like it.
Like, I like it, too.
Way better than that beauty.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I recall the beast is pretty good.
The beast was good.
Yeah, the beast was good.
The beauty was, yeah, not not good.
All right.
So I've got this because I wanted to do a comparison between cars and these corporations.
So I think I think this is still be good.
And this is from a totally non-biased site.
OK, non-biased.
No way, no how.
It's treehugger.com.
They are firmly.
I know what they are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK.
Anyway.
All right.
So it says here, this is really the only blurb we need from them.
It says, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, motor vehicles produce about
22 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gases in 2020.
And so this is funny because it says, making them the most significant contributor to the
country's emissions.
Are they are they not good at math?
I mean, 22 percent is not 100 percent.
And then they did a bunch of like.
That's impossible.
I know.
And that's what we're going to try and prove here, because 22 percent and then probably
the other 8 percent is, you know, like whatever you or I forget to recycle.
Right.
And then the remaining 80 percent is corporations.
So I don't know what their math is.
And I don't really care because it's treehugger.com.
It's not, you know, like Friends of the Environment dot org or something.
And we did a whole nonprofit thing and how corrupt a lot of the nonprofits are, too.
So let's not get all bent out of shape about dissing on treehugger dot com or save the
earth dot org or whatever.
That's intense.
Do we ever talk about the Biden plan on having electric vehicles on?
Yeah, we talked about that briefly with Simha.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So what a fucking joke.
Yeah, man.
So let's see, this here says reveal the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions.
So I don't know how treehugger dot com can say greenhouse gases at 22 percent is massive.
And then this says there's 20 firms behind 33 percent of everything.
And I'm sure there's more, you know, if you really broke down and everything.
But this is strictly emissions.
There was a whole article on microplastics.
Right.
So there's more than one way to pollute the planet.
And these corporations have found them all.
And you know, you can't just look at that one thing.
But even with cars being 22 percent of the emissions, there's here's 20 companies that
are responsible for 33 percent of the emissions.
So this is like this is a apples to apples because cars do emissions and these companies
do too.
So it's kind of apples to apples, I guess.
So do you know who's number one?
And this is in billion tons of carbon dioxide, a billion tons.
I mean, I know I know most of these.
They're actually not on this list.
Really?
So these are these are these are like firms.
So I don't know that they're actually like manufacturing companies.
So the first one is mining.
This one is Saudi Aramco.
The next one.
The next highest is Chevron, and we've all heard of Chevron.
Then it's Gazprom, then Exxon Mobil, then National Iranian Oil Company, BP, Royal Dutch
Shell, Coal India, Pemex, Petrolios de Venezuela, Petro China, Peabody Energy, Conoco Phillips,
Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, Kuwait Petroleum Co, Iraq National Oil Co, Total SA, Sonatrack,
BHP Billiton and Petrobras Petrobras Petrobras.
And those are like billions of of whatever's.
So I don't know that they must be extremely wasteful in their extraction because I didn't
hear any Bakken oilfield companies.
Well, yeah, it was one or two, but not Whiting or S or EOG or but do they do the same volume?
All the Bakken oilfields is the biggest oilfield in the planet right now.
So they're producing a lot of oil and they do oil in Colorado and they do oil in Texas.
All those companies do.
OK.
Yeah, they're big conglomerates.
Yeah.
And so, you know, I mean, I don't know, I mean, without kind of really going into a
big like kind of expose type of episode, which is not usually what we're about.
Right.
Like we're just kind of like here's some general knowledge or a little bit deeper than surface
level knowledge.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
I kind of thought like blowing up a spaceship would probably be more harmful to the planet
than me theoretically straight piping my car.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Owning a mega yacht is definitely worse.
Yeah.
And and forcing a country to take down a bridge and then reassemble said bridge.
Right.
Yeah.
I can't remember where I was listening, but they were talking about the mega yachts and
one mega yacht produces eight hundred years worth of one person's annual CO2.
Yeah.
Per year.
Well, and I read something too, and I don't know if it was Taylor Swift or if it was one
of these other like Instagram influencers or somebody, one of the Kardashians, maybe.
I don't know.
But it was somebody who was kind of like they had a big like pro-earth message and like
anti pollution message.
And it's only well, it's end of April when we're recording this.
So we're only four months into the year and they've already taken over 200 flights on
their private jet.
And they're trying to make people who follow them feel like shit because they wanted to
use a straw that didn't disintegrate halfway through their beverage.
Right.
I've never had a problem with the paper straw, but I don't know.
I usually don't use a straw either.
Yeah.
I think it depends on whoever manufactures it, because some of them have been fine for
me and some of them really do disintegrate really, really quickly.
So I think it depends on how they make them.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I've never had a problem, but I've also always only ever had ones that are like really large
diameter, you know, like quarter inch at least on the inside of them.
Oh yeah.
I think if they're tightly wrapped enough, then it's okay.
And if they're thick enough, thick walled enough.
But if you get them that are kind of like, I don't know, shoddily manufactured, I guess.
But interesting.
Anyway, yeah, I just thought it'd be nice to call out some people that do an awful lot
of polluting.
Oh, the US military is a major polluter too.
All militaries are, but US military is bad.
Just because of the size.
And they want a diesel.
Think of all the diesel they can burn.
Well, maybe one day we'll get tanks that run off the blood of our enemies.
Right.
Fuck yeah.
Yeah, and I just, it was mind boggling about how ineffectual or, I don't know, what is
it called?
Castrated, our legal system is when it comes to like the catalytic inverters, because they're
talking about passing harsher laws here in Minnesota about reselling them or doing a
law that puts your VIN number on your catalytic inverter.
And it's like, well, okay, but people are still buying them even though it's illegal
to buy them.
So do you think they're going to care that a VIN number's on there that they can grind
off really quick?
Like that's not a, I don't think that's a solution.
No, it's totally pointless.
What they don't want to do is make it so that there aren't people who are so desperate that
they want to steal catalytic inverters.
Yeah, heaven forbid we fix the problem of drug addiction or homelessness or poverty
or anything else.
You know, let's spend more money on these stupid fucking catalytic converter things.
Right.
Even if I could sell a catalytic converter for $2,000, I wouldn't go around stealing
them.
That's just not...
No, I totally steal my own and then just straight pipe it, theoretically.
Yeah, theoretically.
I wouldn't go around and steal other people's catalytic converters for sure.
No, there's a lot of other good things you can steal.
Not that I'm advocating stealing unless it's from the rich or these corporations.
Right.
Also, if you see someone stealing food from the store, no, you didn't.
It all depends.
It's like the Walmart that closed in Portland.
Depends on what?
Let's talk about it.
Well, it's like the Walmart that closed in Portland because they can't get police to
come and arrest shoplifters.
It's like, well, okay, so now there's not a Walmart anymore.
So the people that live in that community don't have access to that.
Well, in an area where you're getting a lot of theft from Walmart, there probably isn't
a lot of other options as far as shopping and for food.
Yeah.
Well, were they shoplifting food or were they shoplifting electronics?
Oh, I'm sure they were shoplifting electronics and other shit like that.
I'm guessing.
Yeah, that's why I specified if you see somebody shoplifting food, no, you didn't.
Did you see the Target lady?
The Target lady?
Yeah, the Target reparations lady.
No.
Well, you should watch that video.
It's fantastic.
There was a woman maybe in Minnesota.
It felt like that because of their accents, but she tried to go through the line.
I thought they were headquartered here.
They are headquartered here.
Yeah, yeah, they are.
But she tried to go through the line with a thousand dollars worth of groceries and
she forcefully requested reparations so that she could get a free thousand dollars worth
of groceries.
Okay.
Yeah.
And finally, she got a little too aggressive with some of the employees for her own good.
Yeah.
Well, and I think there's a fine line between trying to screw over the corporation who's
screwing over everybody and screwing over the employees who are just like you or I or
the reparations lady, I'm sure, and just trying to go through your day and get your paychecks
and go home and be taken advantage of by some other major corporation.
I'm sorry, corporate person.
Right.
You know, I mean, then that's the thing.
You have to like not everybody that works at these corporations is a mindless drone
who wants to kill you.
You know what I mean?
Like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for sure, but everybody else that works there, probably
not.
Not everybody else.
There's got to be a handful of them, though.
Yeah.
I mean, the C-suite for sure.
But yeah, when I went to court, this was a long time ago to fight a yellow light incident
in the middle of a snowstorm of all things.
And I got pulled over for going through a yellow light, and so I went to court to fight
it.
And there's this woman before me that got was in there for her like 15th shoplifting
charge or something.
She had stolen like two cans of soup.
But the way that she was like, kind of like, it was weird, man, like the way she was responding
to the judge and everything.
Like I think she got off on like going to court.
You know what I mean?
Like just got a rush from doing that kind of stuff.
And so she stole like two cans of soup or something.
So it wasn't enough to toss her in jail or anything.
But yeah, you got to go to court and you got to settle your $2 bill or whatever.
Did she get irate with the judge or what?
Oh, no.
She was thoroughly enjoying the whole proceedings.
Like if she could have dropped her pants and like masturbated, I'm sure she would have.
Really?
Was she homeless?
It was that weird with the body language.
I don't know.
I don't know if she was like, I don't know.
I don't know.
But it was just one of those things where it like really stuck out because they were
like, you're charged with stealing like a couple cans of soup.
And I'm like, we're really wasting time on this.
Like couldn't you just take up like take up an offering of everybody in the courtroom
right now and we'll just we'll cover it and let's move on with our lives?
No.
There was a Walmart that I went to.
This is years ago.
And they had a donation bin in the front of the Walmart.
But the donation bin was for the employees of the store.
So good.
Yeah, I was like, I saw that.
I was like, what in the fuck is this?
That's what they call late stage capitalism, I guess.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it was in the oil field during the height of the boom.
Okay.
It's not the it's not the capitalist system that's wrong.
It's the communist millennials.
Right.
All those millennials who totally weren't the major workforce behind the last several
boom cycles.
Yeah, those that were essential, but not essential paid.
Right.
God, that's always funny to essential essential worker.
Maybe pay them like that that then you know what I mean?
Oh, I really like the backlash of the office pukes who said that it was psychologically
damaging to not be called essential.
It's like you are being paid to work from home.
Shut the fuck up.
Yeah.
And you're sending emails and you're sitting on zoom calls.
It shouldn't even be a zoom call.
It shouldn't even be an email.
And yet you're spending a full hour listening to some asshat flap their flap their gums,
you know.
Right.
Because they have to have you busy for eight hours.
Yeah, I don't want to be called essential.
I don't want to be called at all.
Don't don't think about me.
Leave me alone.
Right.
I would love to not be essential.
All the people were like, oh, essential workers.
And they're so brave, because they served me while I was out eating during the height
of the pandemic.
It's like maybe maybe you don't go out and eat in the middle of pandemic, you fucking
boomer.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Yeah.
They don't have to work.
Not every four workers were quote unquote essential workers.
Yeah.
They did the minimum wage pay in Minnesota and it was one quarter of every of every person
in the state.
Fucking goons.
Yeah, dude.
People that just don't understand like action reaction choices and repercussions, you know.
It's crazy, dude.
It's crazy.
So you theoretically not not that you did this.
You went and got a stick of straight pipe and clamped it on with an adapter.
Yeah.
A couple of adapters and a couple of smaller little chunks to kind of make up the thing.
And we were a little worried, hypothetically speaking, because they kind of cut it right
when the pipe bent to go from the muffler.
It went ran straight for a couple of feet.
And then there was a bend in it that shot over to the center of the car right underneath
the engine.
So but we hypothetically, theoretically in the textbook, we got it to work.
And then the pipe was hanging so low because I feel like the catalytic converter might
have been like actually bolted to the under undercarriage.
And so this pipe was hanging so low that we in our textbook simulation, we got the bottle
jack out and jacked this pipe up and then got some of that steel like plumbers spool
stuff, you know, like the hangers.
Yep.
And and then we use that in the textbook illustrations anyway.
And so hypothetically, that would work very well to go through the car and then hold that
pipe up if one were to do that in a textbook setting.
Yeah.
In Minecraft, in Minecraft, you were to do vehicle repair.
Yes, indeed.
Oh, boy.
Cool.
So did you look at the flex pipe?
I looked at the flex pipe.
That's what I use.
Well, I use the variant of it for the bathroom fan right above my podcast studio in the garage.
But that stuff is like it's like it's like coiled.
Right.
So it's like one layer and then the next layer and the next layer.
So when I tried to cut that at the end, I should never have cut it.
I should have just shoved the excess up.
But I kind of like started to unspool.
And then it like cut me and I was bleeding and I was screaming and my buddy was screaming
and we were all screaming.
But then it was all OK again.
And so I thought, you know, I don't want to really mess around with that shit.
And here in Minnesota anyway, if you go by the book, Captain, there's a lot of rust and
salt salt on the road leads to rust.
The flex pipe isn't as thick as other pipes.
So I heard it degrades rather quickly.
I don't know.
Possibly in a previous life, I used some to repair a muffler situation on a pickup truck
and textbook author yourself.
I see.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So theoretically, I may have popped a hole in a muffler and instead of replacing the
muffler, I just cut the fucker out.
Maybe and then put a piece of flex pipe in because it was in a real awkward spot underneath
the truck.
Yeah.
Well, and I don't know that it's illegal to cruise around without a muffler unless you're
like in a neighborhood where there's noise laws.
As long as you're not over the decibel limit.
Yeah.
You might still get hassled, but then you're going to have to what?
Get an audio meter out there and whatever.
Yeah.
I worked down in southern Minnesota and the cop hassled me because my truck was too loud.
And then I eventually got enough money and I just put a regular muffler back on it.
But, you know.
The muffler was too loud and the driver was too attractive.
Next week, nice ashes.
Will Mike seduce the police officer or not?
Tune in to find out.
My employer threatened him.
That's the end of the story.
My employer threatened him.
Nice.
So, yes, the officer may or may not have had a girlfriend that was in high school and my
employer was aware and threatened him.
Isn't that the, that's one of those things.
Okay.
So I'm just going to say that.
Have you seen Mel Brooks films?
Okay.
So it's good to be the king in America.
It's good to be the cops.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, you can have a girlfriend that's 17 all day in a small town in southern Minnesota.
If you're a cop or a politician.
Right.
And 17 is a little old if you're a Catholic.
Hey, oh.
Hey, wrong gender too.
That is very true.
I was raised Catholic for all the listeners who got upset with that joke.
Yeah.
I have the right to say negative things.
You keep offering to help me go to the bathroom.
Yeah, right.
Some habits die hard.
Yes, they do.
No, I'm just kidding.
Mike's been nothing but a perfect gentleman with me, except for our first meeting.
Yes.
Well, you know, gotta be a twat every now and again.
Yeah, it's good to know, you know, you got to keep yourself balanced and level and you
can't be level being good all the time.
People that are good at two shoes, I never trust.
There's something going on, you know, there's some dark.
Yeah, if you're not willing to straight pipe your car in the textbook.
Oh, my God.
It's like the Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, you just can't trust those people.
Yeah.
Did you hear I heard a story?
I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently somebody's mother convinced the Jehovah's
Witnesses that they could give their their spiel if they like cleaned her windows.
And so sure as shit, they cleaned her windows.
Wow.
So they give their speech.
There's a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses who are window cleaners by profession.
Oh, OK.
I know that.
And apparently Serena Williams just got baptized as a full on Jehovah's Witness.
OK.
Which is fascinating.
Is that her after she's a tennis player, right?
Yeah.
After her after tennis career, then is door to door sales.
I don't know.
I guess that she was raised Jehovah's Witness adjacent and now after her career is done,
she's finally joined up.
I know that there's a lot of really strict rules with that.
So probably no tennis.
Yeah.
I don't think there's any dressing up in like skippy clothes and going on television and
doing a lot of the shit that she did during her career.
I'm not talking about tennis clothing either.
I'm talking about her appearances on like red carpets and stuff.
Yeah, I'm sure she's been in some of those like swimsuit magazines and whatnot.
Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah.
I've never looked at a swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, but I'm sure.
Yeah, me either.
You know, like, OK, swimsuit.
Cool.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, I grew up in the age of the Internet.
Yeah.
So yeah, I'm not that interested in looking at famous people in swimsuits or whatever.
Yeah.
Or a lot of times normal people in swimsuits, like it's not that interesting.
No, no, it's not that crazy.
Like and it shouldn't be like it's a swimsuit.
Like, yeah, everyone calmed.
Everyone calmed down.
Right.
Yeah.
Ronda Rousey in a swimsuit is just like whatever.
Or like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Oh, yeah.
In a swimsuit.
I'd be more interested in seeing that.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
Hillary Clinton in a swimsuit.
Oh, boy.
Well, we know where you would stand on a Soka in a swimsuit.
So here I hear Daisy Ridley is going to be a swimsuit in the new Star Wars movies.
Ray, it's going to be Star Wars Star Wars 13.
The Jedi Way of Water.
It's going to be four and a half hours long.
Some blue people will show up.
Some blue people with their nipples conveniently covered with by their hair the entire time.
Yeah.
Did we talk about I finally have watched Avatar 2, the longest drink of water.
We talked about it.
We covered it on the show.
Not on the show.
So I fell asleep because I was not interested at all in it.
I was awake and then they kind of like took a long time to get out to the island people.
And then I just knew there was still like two and a half hours left.
And they were kind of doing like and I sent Mike a text and I said in summation, it was
something like white people bad, blue people good, white people who clap, blue people cheeks
good, whales good.
And really it just kind of made me want to watch Free Willy.
I didn't care about all the rest of the stuff.
I just wanted to watch Free Willy.
It definitely leans very hard on watching it on a huge screen because it's very visually
interesting, you know, extremely visually interesting, especially if you're drinking
whiskey at the movie theater.
Yeah.
If you're drinking whiskey at the movie theater, it's not too bad.
Yeah.
I feel like if I had been well rested and had consumed copious amounts of the Giggle
Bush, then I would have been very interested in like a 3D full immersion experience.
But it's still three and a half hours long and that's that's too long for anything that
doesn't really have a story.
It has a story, but it's not much of a story, is it?
Well it's not.
So it has a story, but it's not a three and a half hour long story.
It's like a 90 minute story.
Right.
And so much of it, I mean, you know, and so much of it is the visuals and it's the visuals
and hey, we're back in this Pandora place and you know, hey, hey, hey.
And they're kind of he's kind of going going like the Gola route, the cloning route, you
know.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
It's got exactly the same fucking characters and exactly the same story.
Yeah, I don't know.
I wasn't very thrilled with the whole thing.
I think Sarah watched to the end.
I was asleep so I don't know how it ended.
And I know you said it ended on a cliffhanger.
Even if I had known what the cliffhanger was, I'm sure I would not be that super interested
in the next one.
But it wasn't that great of a cliffhanger.
That's the next one.
It has to do with that.
Did it have that spider?
It has something to do with that spider kid or what's his name?
No, you know what?
It's so forgettable.
I don't even remember what the cliffhanger was, to be honest.
You were so gung ho on our movie episode when you're like, oh, it ends on a cliffhanger.
So that's good.
And now you're like, I don't even remember what that cliffhanger was.
It was very forgettable.
Visuals are good, though.
Visuals are good.
Yeah.
If you can't see it in a theater, don't watch it.
And if you can't sit still for three and a half hours in a theater, don't watch it.
Go watch Top Gun Maverick or something.
I think that's still in theaters.
I don't know.
It's on Amazon, I think.
It's easy to rake in a lot of money when you spend like six months out of the year in theaters.
Right.
I am near the end of the cigar, by the way.
Me as well.
My fingers are getting a little bit toasty.
Mine are as well.
Do you think I should do more?
Should I do more voices on the podcast or should I just talk normal?
I don't know.
I'm kind of experimenting.
You know, that's up to you, man.
They might think that we have guests.
This is the experimental episode.
I have guests in my head and they tell me to straight pipe my car.
But don't if it's illegal in your municipality.
Yes.
In Minecraft.
Yes.
Yeah, I like this cigar.
I don't think it really changed a whole lot throughout.
Very solid.
At the end it is.
At the end it's a little bit different.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like the finish is very nice.
The last inch or so is peppery.
Otherwise it was very smooth.
I don't know what the term is for these kind of like lighter wrappered cigars.
If they're really good, they kind of have, it's not like a butter taste, but you know,
like, and you're like, oh yeah, I went through the water like butter.
I went through the water like a Navi.
It's kind of like that.
Yeah, it's just smooth and creamy.
Yep, creamy, creamy.
That's it.
Yeah.
It's only Navi are only smooth in the water if they're a water Navi, not a forest Navi
and forest Navi, water Navi can be racist towards one another, but heaven forbid you're
not a Navi and you point out the differences and then that person's the racist.
So all right, you know, oh geez, American politics 101.
There we go.
So yeah, I would recommend it.
Go out and get one.
Yep.
I would recommend it.
Stay tuned for next week because we're going to smoke another agarca torpedo.
Thanks for listening.
Be safe.