Speaker 1: I work up to another episode of a crime pace
that body doesn't podcast. I'm driving north to Dallas through Dallas.
It's never gonna sound good when you're saying I'm driving
to Dallas. It's just never. It's never gonna be an
uppity feeling. It's never gonna feel positive. It's never gonna
feel like a new day's beginning. That's just those those
words and that feeling just don't go together. They don't
go together at all. I just want to get through it.
I want to stay in a a shitty Best Western,
or a or a maybe even a Day's Inn if
my standards. It depends how low my standards are. I
got my kid with me. You know, she's she can't
hear me. She can't hear me screaming into the mic
right now. She got her headphones on, she's insulated from
the world. She's watching turtle videos on this screen. But
you know, because of that, because she's with me, maybe
I would get a Best Western normally, like a Day's In,
like a like kind of a dump, you know, but
they got the Texas Toast Machine. But either way, Dallas
is as far as we're gonna make it tonight, we're
going to Chicago. Might meet up with my buddy Akash tomorrow,
who's starting Native Planned Nursery and has been documenting the
horrific atrocities that have been occurring in the Dallas Fort
Worth metro area, just leveling what's left of the prairie,
those beautiful, thin soiled limestone prairies home the species like
so female befloor them and a host of Dahlia's, including
that one that was thought to be extinct that was
just rediscovered a conscience some other guy helped helped the
because they were the ones that discovered it, rediscovered it,
and the landowner of that Dahlia actually reached out to me.
You know. Dahlia's right. They a Morpha tribe. They're in
the Amorphia tribe, so that means, you know, they smell
kind of kind of good. They smell kind of like
they'd be in the citrus family or something. The leaves
do they got them punk take glanes and and uh,
they got these fucking drivers. Man, I can't wait to
be once you leave Texas. You know the phenomenon of
being tailgated even though you're already going eighty five by
some massive you know, double DIGITIQ meathead in a giant
truck that's not you know, is not even halfway paid off?
Like that phenomenon just fades away, right These trucks are gleaming,
not a scratch. Ear me rand about this before. I
think we got a cop. I think we got a
cop behind me. I don't know anyway, but there was
a new dahlias. Why can't I kid think of the
name right now? Oh god, I can't remember the name.
It was another day anyway, there's like nine thousand Delia species.
That's not the point. They found a dahlia on this
private parcela Land and thank god, gahd, I can smell
Jack's mouth right now. Holy hell. I think he's finally
going this week. I think he's crossing a rainbow bridge.
I've been able to do it so I've just been,
you know, doing weekend at Bernie's with his ass for
the last six months. You know, he's been ready to
check out for a while. I think he was looking
at me Yesterday's saying why won't you just kill me?
And I said, because I can't let you go that easy.
We've been together seventeen years and I love you too.
Much and it sucks and then he just you know,
I think he cursed me under his rancid doggy breath.
And anyway, so it was a private parcel of land
in this Dahlia species was rediscovered after being thought to
be extinct, and luckily the landowner was cool. They reached
out to me even and I think a cash collected
like three pounds of seed from it too, So he's
gonna get into cultivation. But he's been documenting this. It's crazy, man,
the amount of racist shit that came out because he's Indian,
you know, the amount of racist shit. These these fucking
pasty textan mother, but no offense. I'm friends, listen, I'm
a hockey. If you call it that, I don't even
believe there's no race. It's just the human species. We're
all the ship at it as the other. But you know,
if I had to again, I'm a hockey, right, So
I can't be I can't be too racist against white people.
But I'm just saying, and I'm friends with people that
burn easy. I got friends that burn you. I got
friends that gotta wear HISPF fifty, okay, get a lot
of friends that are real pink Okay, Alan Rockefeller has
to wear a lot of something. Great man, one of
my best friends. Rockefeller is not his real last name either,
so don't go give a him shit about being connected
to the steel magnate or what was it oil or
steeling or some fucking prick. He's dead anyway. But the
with which someone who needs to slather themselves in SPF
fifty or above to avoid burning at this latitude to
talk shit on someone who's you know, not who's who's darker,
who's Indian? I think maybe just because Indian culture gets
a lot of hate. But a Conscia is like a
third generation Texan. Yeah, and he knows this shit. He's
a great fucking botanist, but you know, and I think
it's just these Rando accounts find they find someone describing
the destruction that's going on in Texas and what a
shithold it looks like, and they get upset, they get
their panties in a bunch, and so they just talk
shit anyway they can. But it's it is nuts, though,
because you wouldn't see this shit happen plenty of other
places I've lived. And I'm not saying there's no racism there,
but I wouldn't see this happen whereas now, you know,
in Texas, because I get that's what the algorithm feeds
my ass. I'm trying to stay off the thing, but
what it feeds me is Texas based shit. The amount
of races shit, just like and I think it's just
because the Trump years too. You know, everyone's out right
ol racists are out. It's okay, you know, but again
it's like, it's it's just fucking ridiculous. It's a people
conflate culture which is not inherited with human phenotype which
is and they don't understand either one because you know,
our education system's fucking failing and uh you know the uh,
no one understands that basic evolutionary biology at all. Oh look,
here's that spot where Liatris Carizona used to grow until
it was leveled for a sand quarry. There's the sand quarry.
There's still some individuals left. I should have trespassed there
and gotten more seed. God, they really fucked up that
whole population, man, that's amazing. They leveled the whole population
of that liattress. James Piece is growing a shit done
of them at Limestone Tortoise. That reminds me. I got
Arizona ironwood desert ironwood one a testoda seed. I gotta
get to Willie. I guess I could give it to
James too, but I need somebody to grow it. That's
a great fucking lego, man. And it's edible, you know,
which is great. You can get in with the permaculture
people that only pay attention to shit if you can
put in your ass or eat it. Right. Oh, they
don't care about the I'm just joking. I'm just joking.
Ease up. They don't care about the ecology. Tell you
till you tell them me. If you put in your ass,
it's here's some ailment, or you can eat this thing
or something, then they're like okay, right. But again, I'm
not anti permaculture. I'm just anti non native perma culture. Right,
work with the tools that came with the land. But anyway,
Dlia species but it wasn't hally eye. What was the dahlia?
I forget what the dailia? Let me you know what,
because it's useless. If I'm telling you there was a
Dahlia species rediscovered and I'm not telling you what the
uh what the name was? That's useless to you, and
it's not. It's not going to help you out right,
You're you're missed opportunity. Okay, Yeah, it was Dahlia Sabina's
sab analyis, and I think Eric Knight anyway, was someone
photographed that on IIGH Naturalist and I think it was
observed on a ranch by someone who was doing a
study for quail without knowing what it was. And then
later I d'd on IIGH Naturalist to be Delia sab Analys,
which has been thought to be extinct. It's this is
somewhere near Brackettville. To be honest, I don't even know
where Bracketville is. I don't know where a lot of
these central Texas places are. I should, but I don't,
and I can't tell you any more information because I'm driving.
Otherwise i'd look it up. But regardless, it's really cool.
So there was this new not new, but this species
that was thought to be lost, that an extinct that
was rediscovered, and so Akasha is going to be growing
his shit done of it, which is great. Anyway, so
Akasha was making these videos on the uh complete and
utter annihilation of the remaining Fort Worth Prairies and any
this really nice Parcela Prairie that got bulldozed for some development.
All these fucking developments look the same. That's just what
they do. It's not even I don't even think it's malicious.
You want to think it's malicious, but it's just stupidity. Right.
But you know you're never gonna go wrong overestimating people's
maliciousness or stupidity, stupidity, at least not in this society.
So anyway, either way, that said, some people don't like that.
They think it sounds negative. I don't think it's negative,
all right. I think of myself as a pretty cheery guy.
I think a pretty upheat. I'm in a pretty good
mood most of the time, right. I just I've seen
a lot of bullshit, and I've seen a lot of phonies,
and I've seen a lot of They don't worry. The
kid can't hear this. She got her headphones on. I'm
about the yank that's screen out away from her in
about an hour. But you know, on an eight hour
drive to Dallas, what are you gonna do, right, You're
taking a kid to Dallas. She's not gonna be excited
about this. She's gonna be bummed out the minute we
get within city limits. I would be. My heart hurts
for myself going to Dallas, Right, it's not a nice
place to be. The whole for Worth metro READI you
see what they've done with their their local landscape. Jesus Christ,
who would do such a thing, those beautiful prairies. Anyway,
so Akash was filming this, and he filmed this, you know,
he's he had video at a spot before and it
was just lit up and looking gorgeous as fuck, and
then video of it after and it's just these bleak
fucking houses. And you know these houses. You ever follow
any of those like home inspection accounts on inter sham,
it's the same thing. They fail, they they these home
inspectors filmed just like these crackpot whack job half assed
complete quack uh quack supply to doctors. Well you know
what I mean in terms of construction, just like these
shitty houses just built like you know, like they were
built by someone no offense, someone who's mentally disabled. Right,
and when you say retar anymore, all the all the
like Persnipity Karen's and shit get upset when you say
retard no whatever, say retard to talk about someone who's
actually mentally disabled, that would be sociopathic. You say retard
to talk about people who are fully capable. They're just
choosing to act like fucking idiots. Right, So now I'll
say mentally disabled instead and then wait to get lectured
about how that's inappropriate anyway to point this. So, these
houses got built on this beautiful praige, just demolishing these
incredibly beautiful places to build these utter garbage, you know.
And of course when you when you talk about this
in any kind of public form, there's always gonna be
that nitwidth that comes into the common section and says, no,
I don't think people. You don't think people shill live
at houses. Huh, you're like people still live at houses.
Come on, man, you're talking about these places. These houses
aren't even gonna be standing up in thirty years. I've
seen videos of the framing blowing down in windstorms. You're
fucking kidding me. And since when are developers trying to
be charitable? Right? You're like standing up for developers, just
like standing up for ambulance chasers and personal injury attorneys,
right Like they're like, like, these are some of the
pillars of society got Thank god for these developers, these
slimebag developers and these ambulance chasers. If it weren't for them,
society would fall apart. They're right up there with like
the first responders after COVID. He's fucking not how do
you get how do you lick boots at heart? He's scumbag, right,
And not only that, but there's other options for building
neighborhoods besides somebody's bleak. I'm going off on a tangent,
you know what I'm saying. These cul de sacts, these
motherfuckers demolished amazing grasslands and then put in sodbermuda grass
just completely idiotic, just depressing, like marks of a society
in decline where the public education systems failed. Everyone's a
moron and there's no hope. But alas there is SOAI
guess kash Akash filmed this and the developer actually reached
out to him and they're gonna try to get him,
probably just for pr it's phony his help, but whatever,
better than not doing it at all. They're going to
reach out to him and see if he wants to
be the one to install like a native garden right,
native Prairig. So that's amazing, that's great. Right. Whereas if
it was me doing it, I probably would have talked
so much shit they wouldn't have offered me to you know,
it wouldn't have changed their mind. But Akash was like, well,
he was a little sarcastic, I think in this post anyway.
Check him out. He's on Instagram Flora of the American Interior.
But either way, it's good. It's good. I mean, the
ship is still sinking. Don't get me wrong. I don't
want to give you too much hope, but it's good.
It's better than normally. You know. Part of being alive
today is just just learning how to accept bad things
and learning how to make the medicine that makes them
easy to go down. But the system will write itself eventually.
I mean, this society can't go on forever. It'll collapse anyway. Okay,
you know what we're getting a little negative here? Oooh
what is this? What are these? Is it? There? Rebeccia,
I gotta go check out what that massive bloom it
might be with Dilia. No, no, no, it's said Helianthus it
said rare Heli anthis from the sand it's pretty interesting,
how about that. So anyway, so you know, the blae
housing developments still going to be there, but at least
have native plants around it. That's the best we can
hope for in this day and age. Right. Anyway, that
was Helianthus prey cox. By the way, I always got
to check out what those composits are on the side
of the road, right because in North America are always
going to be yellow or orange for the most part.
But damn, there's a ship ton of it. It's all
Helianthus prey cocks. Because we're a little bit on the
sand right now. But we're going up. We're going up
to the oak woodlands. But anyway, I got back from
Costa Rica a week ago. It was nice. I was
getting paid to help out with a tour down there,
and the whole time we were up in the cloud
forest except for the last three days I was with
Allen and we went to we we scale like a Airbnb,
like the mid elevation forests, hotter and more humid than
the cloud forest to nine thousand feet. With pectanopots Stanley,
I got those cloud forests at nine thousand feet. The
spot we stay at is basically this giant house that
was built entirely built by this family that moved to
Costa Rica from Michigan in uh when like the sixties
or seventies. They're like, they're all ginger. It's like a
ginger family. They're all like Irish or something, or they're
northern Northern European. They're sweet fucking people. They moved to
Costa Rica because they realized the US was just it
was going into Vietnam and it was going to be
whack and uh, it was not an ideal place to be.
They said, fuck this, I'm done, and so they moved
me turned out of the blues a little bit, and
so they moved to Costa Rica, learned Spanish, got their
shit together. They've got you know, they milt their own cows,
fucking happy cows too, really really kind loving people. I
don't know if maybe to get like a Quaker or
a Mennonite background or something, I don't know, but either way,
pleasant place to be. And so we were posted up there.
We were set up the mothlight. Every night, wild shit
we were seeing coming to the moth light, even though
we're in nine thousand feet and it gets chilly at
night because the air is thinner, there's still a bunch
of stuff coming to the mothlight. There was a black
witch moth there one night, which is some fucking stupid
it's some stupid superstitions associated with death. Eat my ass,
No it's not. You're just a fucking idiot. You're afraid
of You're afraid of nature, superstick, Get shut up. The
people are afraid of owls too, fucking goofballs. Man never
understood being afraid of I'm afraid of cities. I'm afraid
of for Worth. I'm going to Fort Worth. I'm gonna
see some of the ugliest shit I've seen in a
long time. You know, I'm thinking my mind is still
in the cloud forest of the Talamaca Range with massive
cloud forest oaks and so lamb a bracket klyx and
Pectanopoties stanley I. This ancient potal carp, this ancient conifer.
The other two species in the genus Swellers, I think
they're six total. But the other two that I know
of growing Australia and New Zealand. What does that tell
you how old that lineage is? Huh, it's a gondwan
in lineage. And then it migrated up the Andes over
the last fifty million years or however long to grow
in Central America. You know, when did Pectanopoties Stanley I
crossed the equator? When did the distribution shift enough that
it could cross? These things grow slow as hell. They
can get incredibly large. They're covered in all kinds of
cool bromeliads and mosses and ferns. And here we go,
these fucking idiots. They speed up. There's no concept of
stopping distance in the mind of the Texas driver. They
speed up to get to a red light. They speed
up to get to the car in front of them.
Now realizing, see I'm thinking like you know, when I
used to run locomotives, it was restricted speed all the time.
That was his speed. Restricted speed was a speed there
was there's no number attached to it, the actual speed.
The definition in a g CORD, a General Code of
Operating Rules, the definition was stop within half the range
of vision. So put it on you. It was your
responsibility entirely if you hit. If you if you knew
you're supposed to be going restricted speed in a signal
block between two different signals, then you know, and you
come around a curve. You got to bring your speed down. Otherwise,
if you hit a boulder that fell off the cliff
into that curve, it's it's on you. It doesn't matter,
there's no speed limit, it's you. It's your own judgment,
right anyway, So I I'm always you know, I see
shit slowing down, I slow down way ahead of time,
so I have to slam on the brakes. He's fucking
idiots again. A kid can't hear me. She got her
headphones on and she's you know, you put these kids
in front of a screen. It's like they're in a trance, right.
I normally I'm opposed to that, but in this case,
it's like a sedative. It's like giving a dog CBD.
But then I tell her at the same time, the
screen is poisoned for you. And you know, especially when
if you're watching like TV and a commercials come on.
I tell her, these guys are trying to sell you
stuff you don't need. It's a scam. Right, My six
year old knows what a scam is already very important.
If you have kids and they don't know what a
scam is at the age of six, you failed as
a parent. I'll go ahead, I'll put that out there.
You have failed as a parent if your kids don't
know the concept of a scam right, because they're gonna
be getting scammed through like you're just raising a patsy.
You're raising a sucker, a sap. What was I talking about? Oh? Anyway,
this is that a cloud force was real nice. It
was real nice. You got these quircous coast the Rikensis
Quirkus copasis. You're at eight thousand feet, you go up
to nine thousand feet. There's a bunch of wonderful trees there.
Cloud Fit's chili. There's Gunnera, which if you don't know
what that is, I put a video up on it.
That's a wonderful species, very distinct flower morphology, highly invasive
in the UK. I can see why there's like fifty
different species Gunnera sum are tiny like gunner A Monoka.
I saw on a on Mount Terrriaki. It's uh. I
forget the actual name of it. It's not Mount Teriyaki.
I just started calling it that and uh, and now
I can't remember the actual what the literal name was
with the with the real name. Anyway, The point is
Gunnera is it's an old lineage. It's weird, it's cool,
it's got symbiotic associations with nitrogen fixing cyanobacteria, and uh,
you know, everybody's happy. There was Nasa speciosa growing under
the canopy of some of these trees. There was oh god,
what was it. There was a really cool relative of
Eugenia in the mertesi. And uh, there was Hediosma mexicanum.
There were Hediosma is a weird one, many different variocean
variations on Hediosma opposite leaves. They almost look like they'd
be in ruby ac They got interpetial or stipules, so
it looks like, you know, a seam goes across the
main stem in between the two opposite leaves. Anytime you
meet a plant, there's no flowers. First thing I always
look at, but even before leaf shape is are the
leaves opposite or alternate? Right, That's the first thing you
look for, because I will tell you a lot, and
it also if you're later trying to key stuff out,
that'll be a big thing you look for when you're
diagnosing to feel anyway. But god, damn, those fourths are amazing.
I thought I would be bored because I've already been
to Costa Rica twice to this area, but every time
you go, just I mean to stand at the foot
of one of those old Pectanopodes trees and look up
and see all this cool shit growing up there, and
then the bark peels off on these things. It flakes
off to the detriment of some of the epiphytes, and
it leaves behind this really beautiful red bark with these
like circular lentiscles them. I don't know if they're old
branch scars or what, but they're fucking gorgeous. And I
just I love the Poto carps Man. That's family Poto Carpesi.
Put that in your vocat bank and learn it. It's
a really cool family. I think it's the sister family
to the monkey puzzle family. Eric carry Ace monkey puzzles
one of the dumbest common names. Just gonna say that.
Norfolk Island pine, which you could buy in inside the
drug store on Christmas time, right, they sell them, They wrap,
they put it in a pot, they wrap it in
some red tinsil. They say, here, give this to your
grandma for a house plant. She's gonna like it. And
then she puts it on top of a heater and
doesn't water for a week to think dice, right, But
if you were a plant that in the ground in
a place like Hawaii where it's not native to, or
even Oakland, California, it'll get ninety fucking feet tall, which
eric Carria heterophyla or sometimes eric Carria columnaris both did
when I lived in West Oakland. They were like ninety
what Eracarria trees there anyway? So Potocarpesi is sister family
to that. A lot of really interesting species, a lot
of really interesting conifers. Decritium pectinatum, which I just saw
in the Philippines is in that family too. A lot
of them are bird dispersed, and they're not fruits, remember,
because it's a naked ovary. A fruit is an ovary
enclosed or a seed enclosed in an ovary. So these
are naked seeds, not naked ovaries, you know what I mean,
naked seeds. They're gymnose sperms, these conifers. But Potocarpus, you know,
Potocarpus family home to the world's only parasitic conifer species
Paris to Texas, Usta just south of me on the
Texas border. There's a Potocarpus is it selignis? Now? What
is the species that grows in LCLO Biosphere Reserve? And
tom Alipis? Shit hid in San Antonio traffic, Man, it's
it's rough going. I just, you know, there's a lot
of stuff to get distracted by, and I always seem
to hit rush hour. The kids in an opium. You know,
she's basically in and out. She's just like opium for toddlers.
There you go, she's on opum. She's watching the screen.
I'm a bad parent. It's like an opium. Then you
go in and you're like what they don't even know
what time it is anymore? Then I haven't looked up
in in five hours. They're just where am I? You know,
they don't even even know what's going on. It's like
they're on heroin. It's like, could give me a kid?
Heroin basically is what I'm doing. Why am I doing it?
Because I'm a bad dad? Only eighteen more hours to
go to Chicago. No, that's not true. How many is
he's eighteen or seventeen? We're going to be stopping. Oh,
I wanted to stop in to the Dallas Fort Worth area.
Go look at the dinosaur museum there. We're going to
be doing a lot of dinosaur museums. I can't smell
Jack's mouth. You know. The nice thing is, like last
time I drove with Jack, he was getting up a bunch.
Right now he's laid back. I think he's just because
he knows he's on a verge of death. God, it's
so sad just watching him. By the way, it's not sad.
I've gotten plenty of time with him. I thought he
was gonna croak. Four months ago. I was crying with him,
giving him kisses and hugs, and I said, you know,
you've been the best dog. Thank you. I don't deserve you.
And then uh, it's you know, after two days of that,
he wasn't getting up, he wasn't eating. Suddenly he gets
up and he eats a hot dog. So I fed
him a bunch of hot dogs. Terrible for the for
the health. You know, it was not heart healthy, right,
he's a little blue healer. It's not heart healthy for them.
But it was what what can you do? Right at
that point, he just it's just about the flavor. He
likes that smoky flavor. It doesn't mind all the nitrates.
He just wants that smoky flavor. But anyway, so yeah,
the Costa Rica, the cloud force was great. Then we
came down to like the lower elevations near Santa Sidro.
But you know what blew my mind though, was going
back through the fucking through the airport. It was a ripoff.
Everything's a fucking rip Costa Rican prices. We went to
a grocery store. I should you not? I saw eleven
dollars peanut butter and it's suggusted with the currency that's
from you know, uh, Costa Rican. Uh. I forget the
name of our currency, whatever our currency is over there
that suggested for the US dollar. It was like ten
or eleven bucks. And the name of the supermarket was BM,
which stands for bowel movement which has heavy had one today?
Are you're eating enough fiber? You know? I here cilium
husk is good for cleaning your colon. Uh colonico erbalo.
That's how you say herbal colon cleans in Spanish in
case you were wondering. But yeah, the fucking price. It's
an expensive country, man, It's an expensive country. It's a
very very expensive country. And they've got a lot of conservation.
That's kind of wealthy. What is this fucking goofball doing?
What is this guy? What are you doing? God? These
fucking drivers, man, you need like I should, I should
get off this. I'm just I got the my clip
to me, so it's not you know, but uh anyway,
but yeah, and then going through the airport too, it
was crazy. Man, it was fucking crazy the prices there,
and it's all like Americans and tourists and shit that
you know, they're really big on the tours in there,
and I get that that's good, but I don't like
to feel like I'm getting robbed every time I I,
you know, go do something right. The Luckily, for most
of the trip we were just we you know, we
were just up at this little uh, this this lodge
that this family ran up in the cloud for us.
But like, damn man, they really they shake you down.
It is like they will fucking get their little more dta,
they will get a little bite in. It's expensive as hell,
and it's not only the way I travel to like
when I'm you know, I don't normally stay any place
longer than a night unless it's really really good. But
that this tour was fun it was there's so much
stuff to do. You can you can get to the
Paramo from this lodge, so you're it's like cloud forest,
and you go in this hike up you get to
the Parmao. You can go past this cool waterfall that
then ends up to some of the lower elevation stuff.
And there's so much diversity you could easily spend three
or four days there. And the fucking stars at night. God,
it was just beautiful. I'm grateful for places like Costa
Rica where they've been doing conservation, where the government will
pay you to conserve land. But I still don't like paying,
you know, twelve dollars for a jar a peanut butter
at the grocery store named Bowel Movement. It just doesn't
feel right. I just got an issue with that. You know,
it's not nice. It doesn't make me feel nice. It
makes me feel like I'm getting shut down. Like it's
an opportunistic thing, right, Like I haven't gone to a
sports game in a while, but don't they do that's
sports games. They do at the movie theater too. They
rob you. Yeah, we're in san Anto. She wants to
know for Insanta. Say hi, everybody, say hi. Everybody. Yeah,
she says, Hi, she woke up from her beam her
opium slumber. What are you watching? Are you watching something good?
It's not gonna make it stupid, right, it's educational. Are
you watching Turtlevie? You're not watching Where were you watching
turtle videos or something? Yeah? The city's cool. You like cities, right,
san Antonio. Yeah, We've been to San Antonio plenty of times.
Say see what what she's doing right now is expressing
hope for the urban condition, which is really you know,
we love we love nature. Uh, the living world is
something cult. But we love the city too. The humanity
resultimate hope lies in cities. You gotta bring the nature
to the cities, right, what is it, baby? You've been
here before. We've been to San Antonio before. Remember that
Charlie Pride song. She's familiar with Charlie Pride. She could
sing something I'm gonna I'm gonna go, I gotta we
gotta deal with this. Now it's getting a little congested.
I'm gonna turn this off for a second. All right.
It's the next day. We're in the car slum known
as for Worth, the for Worth Metrori. It's one of
many many car slums in North America, which are frequently
the subject of angry ranting on this podcast, being that
so much of America looks like an abject shithole, just
a spiritually a spiritually dead, soul killing shithole. But I
do have to say the nicest part about staying in
a place like the Scampton Inn, which we did last night.
We got to play in a pool today we uh,
you know, my daughter's again in her in her catatonic
chloroform trance of she's watching Dinah Toopia or something, and
they make you watch ads on it, and so again
I have to explain to her what an ad is,
how it's such a huge part of American society, how
it's basically brainwashing to sell you stuff you don't need,
et cetera. Right, Like, what are they trying to sell you? Now, baby?
Every different you know commercial that comes up where they're
trying to sell you, what is it the t sell
you like a sugary juice is gonna give you diabetes? Huh,
give you diabetes, You're gonna die. But anyway, yeah, so,
so teach your kids about the advertising and how it's
you know, brainwashing. Anyway, So Okay, so now we're we're
on the road. We fed the dogs a nice breakfast
full of shit I would never put into my own
personal mouth, which is, you know, some of the reconstituted
eggs and the what was it all? Yeah, bacon and
other things, and I had some nasty coffee. You know,
this is the hotel breakfast, so really you gotta watch out.
But uh, just you know we're now we're here in
for Worth. We're gonna go meet up with a cash
and watch this prairie get destroyed. And it's all just
part of dystopia, you know, the American dystopia. But we're
gonna document some cool species too. Why are there? Why
are there so many daily species? I wonder? You know,
my friend Sophie studied that group, the Amorpha tribe, and
I think she she was telling me about what Delia
species in uh Nuevo Leone that was getting reclassified as
a marianna or no marina. Mike, My brain is just
the word CellID. It's just a soup of botanical nomenclature
and genus names. But uh yeah, but so that was
a really cool what was it philiformoius? Was Delia philiformis
Art's Mariana. Oh shits sneeze, Oh never mind. Anyway, God,
it's still you know, it's hot as balls during the day,
but it's still not as hot as where I live.
Like you walk outside and it just it doesn't feel
nasty like where I live. You just walk outside and
it feels nasty. It's just so gross and humid. That
humidity is everything. Man. You go west one degree of
longitude and what two degrees of longitude and you start
getting dry nights. You know, it's so nice. I got
an alpine West Texas. It cools off at night because
it's it's there's now humidity. Best weather in Texas, not
an alpine. There's still no public land, so you can't,
you know. But it's a little bit different out there.
You know, it's kind of nice. Al saw Alpine for
the first time two months ago, and I think it
blew his mind. This is so nice. This is such
a nice spot. But anyway, so we're going to this
prairie demolition site, gonna check out these Fort Worth limestone
prairies are really cool. There's very thin soil and because
you're right at the part of the content where you're
going from the music humid east to the more arid west.
And also you've got the remnants again of that Western
interior seaway that was here during the Cretaceous that left
all those cool ammonite fossils and other other fossils. I
gotta get off here. So but it's really interesting for us.
So when you've got thin soils and lots of rock,
you're gonna have, you know, a convergent trait. You see
among a lot of the plants here are these thick,
kind of woody taproots that you know, if it's not
a grass of course, because grasses don't get tab roots.
They've got fibrous roots, you know, being monocots, and all
all monocots have fibrous roots, no tab roots. But I
remember when we were doing I was with the Kash
two years ago and we were doing a plant quote rescue,
just you know, basically picking up the pieces a plant salvage.
The rescue is so self gratifying and stelf and does
I don't like that word rescuing, you know, rescuing your
salvaging shit that your your species is destroying, right because
it's run by pigs any the remises. But anyway, but yeah,
so I was remember like Dhlia Haley and the stealinge
is and stuff. They've all got the end of course,
the liaddress, they've all got, these thick corms, Jim radfree Way.
Where the fuck where am I going? God damn it,
hold on, I gotta I gotta pull over. This is
this is all a fricking I can't thou the Google lady,
she said, I feel like she's intentionally trying to mislead
me here. These Texas drivers are awful too. Just ride
your ass, just ride. Just know where you're going, buddy. Oh,
where you're going so much more important than where I'm going.
I get it, Okay, you gotta get there first. And
your giant oversized truck it's got. Some of these trucks
are just hilarious. I like that gender affirming care. Somebody
called it. That's really what. I'm not a pussy. I'm
not a pussy. I'm an alpha. I'm saying that while
you're looking in the mirror with your your truck where
the hood is like six feet tall, It's just like
the hood is taller than you are. How where am
I getting off? Now? God, it's just a mess. I'd
love to meet the endeers at design cities like this,
you know, like with all their maps in front of
them on it. Well now they do it on screens,
but you know, back in the day when they were
laying this stuff out with these maps, just showing these
spaghetti bowls of freeway overpasses, just an absolute clusterfuck, Like
what made you think this was a reasonable way to live?
The amount of land that's devoted to roads and parking
lots is just fucking nuts. What a miserable way to
I just I get in my car, I immediately want
to get out, right. I like the long drives, well
I don't like them. I like the feeling of going someplace,
but I want to get out of it. I'd rather
be like sitting on a train or something where I
can read. I don't have to they keep my eyes
glued to the road ahead of me. And then people
just become assholes in cars too, you know, even myself.
I just get you just get really impatient. You can't
see somebody. It's not personable anyway. I'm excited to see
these species, so a lot of them are going off.
It's been a while since I've seen Sophia and albfloor
them as well, which is that it looks like Sylphium liciniatum,
Sylphium of course, the genus known as the compass plants
and prairie doc. Uh, there's none in the West, but
there's what is the furthest west species of Sylphium, probably
liciniatum or maybe even this one Albaflorham, but prairie doc
of course you get in Chicago. It's one of my favorites.
These things are their long lived plants. They get really
deep taproots, sunflower family, astracy, robust root systems of roots,
just like this huge battery. The tops die every year,
so there are baceous perennials and you know there's no
woody tissue above ground. God damn, though they're they're such
a it's such a cool group. And the Silfia a
form of course, is endemic to Texas. There might be
a population in Oklahoma, or at least there should be
because it's so similar. But let's see if I can
grab a coffee and one of the many bleak strip Oh,
look at coals. We have that we have that whereial
of the coals with another giant parking Coals. You know,
I'm surprised Coals hasn't gone out of business soon. They should.
It's kind of a bleak play. I mean, the whole
thing's bleak. But it's like it's like the housewife, the
housewife center, right, it's like their husbands like, uh, you know,
works doing what's selling insurance or some wife's got to
go get a job at Cole's, you know, doing Amazon returns. Anyway,
I'm so glad that's not my life. No offense to
anybody whose life that might be. But but Sylvia malibleflorm
I haven't seen in a while. That's gotten hit hard
with all the development in Texas. Texas and Florida, of course,
are incredibly corrupt. The you know, political the political class
of the state is basically owned by developers. That's mainly
who they serve more than the people. And uh, and
so there's been a huge sell off of a bunch
of land, lots of development lately. Oh, that cough is
worrying me. I don't know what's up with that. That
wasn't going on last night. She can't hear me. She
got her headphones on, right, She's like catatonic in front
of the screen. I'm taking it away to we're going
out into the prairie. I don't do the screen thing
with kids that much. I really don't like it. It's not good.
But on these long drives, I feel like it's torture.
But I was proud of her last night. She got
bored with the screen, put it down and just looked
out the window for a couple hours. I was like
getting all excited and looking at stuff, and I was like, Yeah,
that's right, that's what you should be doing. That's what
I had to do. I didn't. I don't get to
just you know, zone out into a screen. It's it's
you do that long enough, it feels I remember that
used to make me feel bleak. It used to even
when I was young. I'd be like, God, I just
feel like zonked, you know. So yeah, so Sophia, now
a floor will be great to see again. It's flowering
right now, the only white flowered Sylphium, and a lot
of different liatrists. Love all those liatrius, And then the
Dahlias bia. Why is Dahlia so species rich? I wonder
it's insane how species rich it is in Mexico and
North America and how many Dahlias do you get in California?
Do you get money out there? I don't remember seeing.
I'm sure there's probably a few, but I don't remember seeing.
But you get soorl Famness, which is in the same
tribe as Dahlia. You know, that whole tribe of Morphi
has the very fragrant foliage, right, whether it's Issenhardia or Dahlia,
or a morpha or or the sorol famness, they've all
got those, you know. Like I said, those punk take
glands that I was talking about that smells so fragrant,
almost like they should be in the citrus family. I
wonder if it's a similar chemistry at all. And I
bet there's a shit ton of butterflies and other lepidoptera
that use them as host plants too, Because if you've
got unique chemistry like that in your leaves, I'm sure
something will have evolved at some point in the last
few million years to exploit it. And you know, bioaccumulated
as defense against birds. Got the speaking of lepidopter Holy shit, man,
the moths we saw, well, we came down from the
cloud forest and there were a shit ton of moths
up there. We came down from the cloud forest to
an elevation of like forty five hundred feet just what
is it like like fourteen hundred meters we stike the
moth diversity doubled and there were so many moths around.
It was just fucking wild man. And the rhinoceros beetles
showed up one night. He was crawling all over us.
It's a little unnerving at first because you've got an
insect the size of a fist that's just you know,
lurking on you. But they're they're harmless, you know, and
they're kind of fuzzy too, kind of cute. But some
of those some of those moths, there was a moth
that showed up, I mean a lot of them just
you know, they've got to find a spot to lurk
during the day and hide out from birds. So a
lot of them, you know, look like tree bark or
they look like a leaf. There was a really odd
one that showed up when you were in the cloud
forest that looked kind of it looked like almost tarantula
hawk mimicry, like orange wings, semi translucent. It looked like
across like the coloration looked like across between a tarantula
hawk and a monarch. It was a fucking beautiful moth.
It was a beautiful creature. Oh my god, looking at
this spot on a map, it's just it's just cancer cells,
cancer cells of culd deessects, little pods, concrete pods of living.
But you know, I bet if you did like a
gas chromatography now it's some sort of analysis with the
detect chemicals, chemicals in the water here and the sewage,
you'd come out with a whole host of SSRIs. You
gotta be on some sort of prozac or you know,
prozac analog to tolerate living in a place like this,
because this is fucking bleak man, this is a rough
Oh my god, who get that gym membership? That's where
you're gonna get your exercise because there's nowhere else the
walk or or bike or do anything without worrying about
getting killed, get flattened by one of these these oversized
tanks Jesus driven by someone who'd be out of out
of breath going up a couple of flights of stairs. Texas.
Oh nice accident they did, and that they did good work.
So some some truck just got all smashed. It was
a little fender bender. The guys were okayters standing outside.
They did a real nice job mashing in that hood though,
and there was cooling fluid, you know, dripping all over
to the pavement. Excellent work, my friends, right in the
middle of the street. Who slows everything down. Now we're
entering some green space they've been they've made with good
use of this, uh, this limestone, right, just like they
do in Austin when they're building these fancy new buildings. Right,
if you're gonna build, if you're gonna demolish all the
habitat and just you know, create sprawl and sell everything
to developers because everything's private land anyway, at least you
can use cretaceous limestone the flagstone as they call it
in the Midwest to build your nice walls for your
gated community interests. And you know the buildings, the strip, malls,
et cetera around there. God, I would have loved to
see for Worth the region three hundred years ago. I
bet it was gorgeous. Man. The fucking prairies here, holy shit.
I love prairies in general, but especially these are hotter,
drier prairies. Well, there's none of them left. But you
know what I mean, the ones that are left. The
plant communities here, I mean, these are really heat and
drought adapted species, but at the same time they need
cool winters. It's different from tom leap and thorn scrub
like where I live, where it's just insanely fucking brutally
hot all the time, except well we get chills out
in February a little bit. You got to put a
hoodie on. But incredible species and the penstemens that alias
the sylphium. Huh, what's up? I can't see that you
want me to kill I'll kill all of us. But
oh you got to You got toy story on. Good job.
It's okay, you know she's she's six, but she understands
the concept of of having the focus on the road.
La Frontera. It looks like a bleak gated community anyway.
Uh so, But to see this kind of especially when
they were bison here, can you imagine what that must
have been like? Holy shit, must have been incredible, the big,
wide open blue skies with just the the incredible grasslands
that must have been here. I just don't understand why
you wouldn't want to preserve that and yeah, look there's
limestone right here at the surface, there's like limestone cowls,
a very thin layer, a single yucca rupacola, and then
just just standing in the middle of a standing there
in the middle of a mode abutonment to a gated community.
I wonder where they left that single yucka. I'm thankful
that they did. But some oak woodlands. It was like
oak savannah and grassland. This is one of my favorite
habit that time. So oh, look at all that yucka. Oh,
it's beautiful, so much good stuff. Oklahoma, like Western Oklahoma
must have been beautiful too. I'm sure it probably still
is in some places. But the development in Texas has
just been so bad. Man Florida and Texas because they're
so corrupt and owned by developers. The development has just
been off the It's basically redeemable at this point, right,
you need some sort of natural disaster to kind of
I don't want to, I don't want to say anything,
you know, cleanse the development at some point, not now.
I don't want anybody get hurt. But I'm just saying,
you know what I mean, this is a reasonable thing, right, right,
don't don't don't what I'm saying is not problematic. This
is something we all agree on and it's just you know,
and also I'm being half facetious at least, but you
know this all this shit, man, this is you know,
this is ephemeral, uh effluent in a long span of
geologic time right now where General's ross dressed for less
aldus crap. These these houses that fall apart, you know,
twenty years after they're built. Amazing work they do on
these I mean amazing incomfidence. It's just it's it's impressive.
It's like they're not like these would they're like gag houses.
They're like if the construction crews were playing gags on people,
you know, right, like you like when you put beef
bullion in the shower head or something. It's it's almost
like that, like we're just working like the fucking studs,
Like the studs and the roof dart don't even the
joysts don't even connect. There's nails everywhere. It's like someone
put a blindfold on, got hammered and then was just
shooting nail gun all over the place. You know. It's
it's again, it's it's impressive. Okay, now we're on the outskirts. Oh,
I can see the development from here. They're bulldozing it.
It looks like a landfill. There's some mild topography, some
hills and undulation in the landscape, and then at the
top of this hill they're just bulldozing the hell out
of it. And uh, I assume they're creating pads for
some of the cul de sect. So we're gonna pull
over here. Hopefully a casha is here already. We're gonna
see what plants. Oh wow, there's already see anathro A macrocarpa.
That's a wonderful one. Flowers withering at ten am in
a morning. It's redundant. You know what I mean? Ten
am flowers withering. They bloomed last night. Their moth pollinated.
Who's done pollination studies? I know? Nathroa macrocarpa. What the
fuck is the cash? You ain't hear you? Oh, there's
Sparky's fireworks. We're gonna post up here for a minute. Oh,
it was brutal to see. So we just just left
for Worth across down to Oklahoma. Spent three hours today
at a really wonderful prairie site that's all being destroyed
for these bleak man just bleak housing subdivisions, but they're
done in the Texas style with like the limestone gates,
you know, the gated like the limestone Uh. Because all
these bleak you know, the the housing communities, these these developments,
they've all got like the entrance with the name of
the development in the got itself such a fucking horrible
style too, so that these plays aren't even neighborhoods. They're
like anti neighborhoods. So it's got the name of the
of the I saw some great hideous shit. I got
stopped at a couple did you know, did a quick
three minute segment for spiritually depraved the misery inducing landscapes
of North America. Lots of material, they're horrific landscaping, But
this one that was just being built was just like
god Man. There was Sylphium albiflorum going off. Still, there
was two different Delia's. There was a hollyye halle i
and uh tenuous and or was it tenuifolio I forget?
And they were fucking amonite fossils everywhere, like large ammonite
fossils throughout this area, some of them still complete. Really
that was really cool to see. I've never found a
complete ammonite before, like the size of a dinner plate.
Some of these things wonderful fossil assemblage, remnants of the
Western Interior seaway. But god, the stuff they're building is
just you know, they So you got to tell these
Ponzi scheme developers like you could still you could still
have your this grandiose scam that you're making, but like,
wh why not just leave these native plants in there?
They're dope, right, But you know, if you get there
at the wrong time of year, they're not flowering. They're
not at the wrong time of year. Just when they're
not flowering, you would think they're all weeds because we've
all been conditioned to think that land you know, plants
and landscaping have to be flowering all the time, like
all the hideous shit you see in front of you know,
the commercial businesses. And I swear to God man, I
hate I hate landscape. I hate most American landscaping more
than I hate the lawn because it conditions people to
hate nature because nature's boring. It doesn't flower, the only
thing plants are supposed to do. When you have that worldview,
that modern American landscaping worldview is they're supposed to flower
all the time, and they're supposed to She can't hear
what I'm saying. The worst she got the headphones on.
I don't want her to hear me cust as much,
but it's certainly, you know, whatever it's. The kids have
seen worse things. I don't want her to not know
what the words are. I want her to know what
the words are and know that you don't use them.
She did call me a dumbass earlier today though, which
I was quite impressed by. But anyway, so you know,
it's just God. There was some cool stuff. There was
a sleepiat angle Maniana there too, which is like these
thin leaved this thin leaved probably like four five feet
tall milkweed. There was a sleepiest Stenophila there too. Sleepy
is verritis and Verida flora. Verrita flora has axillary flowers.
The inflorescences come out of the leaf axles, and Verritis
has appicle inflorescences. It's just flowers at the top, so
it's very confusing. Whoever whoever named those two just stopped
to make a mancha. I got some I got some
plant based milk in the back of the the cooler
and I got some fucking mancha and get ripped on
this ship. You know, I can't do coffee because it'll
fuck up my stomach. This is nice. You get the
polyphenols and the gatakins and stuff, so you don't get
the cancer from all this shit they spray out of food.
Everybody gets cancer these days. Boy, this is really a
It's just really an uplifting podcast. You know what you
want cheery, I am a cheery fuck. If you want cheery,
listen to something else. Candy ass you're gonna complain about
the anyway. So uh, now we're in Oklahoma, you know,
much respect to the grasslands underappreciated. Really cool to see
what Akasha is doing. He's collecting thousands and thousands of
seeds of all these plants and trying to grow them
out in mass I don't know how he's doing it.
I'd love to see his operation, but his main goal.
I mean, you make this stuff available to these landscapers,
even if they're nitwits, then maybe they'll start using it
if the public demands it. The landscapers don't have a choice.
If clients start demanding this stuff, even if some dipshit
was you know, raised to put in crape myrtles. You know,
because people go to horticulture school for this, they get
licenses and shit, right, even if they're taught the horticultural
puke standard, which is vitex and crape myrtles. Maybe if
the public's demanding it, like oh, we want natives, you know,
they'll start using more natives. I mean, you're never going
to recreate what's law, but at least you can keep
some of the life alive, like the insects and other
things that are so integral to these ecosystems. It just
blows my mind. Man. These plants are so robust and
so built for this region of the country where you're
going from the music humid East to the arid, hot West.
You know, all of them have like Stelingia, Texana, big
robust tap roots. There was liatrous punk Tata with a
corm the size of a human head. You know, You've
got all these cool plants and that's but they're not
what get planted. They're not what get planted there, and
there's so much beauty in them, but they get discarded
because the idiots that run these well most people just
want they want that horticultural crab. You know, they want
that shit. It's criminal, it's just insane. I mean, I'm
driving through Oklahomad and they got fucking crape myrtles plant
that on the side of the road. You have so
many dope plants and they're these crape myrtles and vitex
and it flower. I like it's flower. I like how
it flowers. I like it's pretty. It flowers. It's not
pretty to me. It looks gaudy. It looks gaudy and cheap.
It looks like a you know, a lady with a
bunch of lip filler and botox, and you know who
fucked up her face? You know what I mean. You've
seen that happen before, right this Jeff Beazles his wife.
No offense to her. She's a wonderful woman. Probably not
that nice. She's a billionaire after all. But you know,
maybe she's I don't know what she's like. Maybe she
works at a shelter with puppies or stuff. I don't know,
but she did. She what she did. People could do
whatever they wanted their face. It's hilarious. So I look
at before and after pictures of that woman, and I
fucking crack up. It's it looks it's insane. It looks insane.
She looks like the Joker, right, Jack Nicholson Circle Batman
Movies nineteen eighties, late nineteen eighties. You know it's there.
I grew up in right, they see it's who you
gotta get. Oh wow, I think really problematics can't believe
you saying that. So, but yeah, man, it's just this
shit is so gaudy, got I wanted. Someone's got to
go out and I'm just gonna start advocating vandalizing, create
myrtles and vitex and shit. Right. And it's like Nandina Domestica.
If you see someone getting Nandina Domestica installed by a
landscape or just go saw it down, do it at
night so you don't get caught or shot. Go ahead
and do it. It's fine. Nandina Domestica in Texas invasive
as hell. It's it's a highly invasive privet same thing.
Just start. You need these teen vandals. Just go out
and start vandalizing this shit, right, You got a responsibility
to the land you live on to do that right.
Nobody advocates for these plants. And I think you know
a lot of these native plants that these no offense,
bless their hearts. But up until you know, recently, it
was a bunch of like soft spoken old white people,
which is not what that's not a fucking great advocate
class no offense. Right, you need people to get loud
about this stuff and also just be really amped on it,
not be dicks, you knowrategic, but uh, it's just it's insane, man.
I mean, I kept I kept looking at like the
case of mesquites in Texas is a great example. Wonderful
tree food source, uh so good at growing where it grows,
beautiful when they're full grown, and hate it on for
no other reason than just cultural stupidity. Right, Ranchers over grays.
They don't rotate their cattle, and miskeait and prickly pair
is what dominates. And then they think that, oh, this
is an invasive tree. I mean, the amount of Texans
who think miskeat's invasive in crape myrtles are native. I
don't even know what the concept the native is probably,
but they think crave myrtles are from here is nuts.
It's just fucking nuts to me. They've been brainwashing them
so hard. You got to undo that. But you know again,
you don't do it by just shitting on people. Shit
on the crag burdles. But don't don't shit on the people.
Just point out. You know you've been You've been suckered, man,
you've been. You've been duped by the landscape industry to
want shit you don't need. Oh, Oklahoma, wasn't it a musical?
I never actually saw that music? Oklahoma? What's it about
a whorehouse? That's not that's best little whorehouse in Texas?
Is that's another musical? Isn't it one? I don't know.
It was never into it was never big into the
musical theater never never was not much of a thespian.
Oh wow, that looks like a bleak hotel. Guest in.
Got this drive. I've done this drive a couple of
times now. I was gonna stop at U T. Austin
and drop off some herbarius herbarium specimens that we didn't
have time. I'm trying to make it quick, man, I'm
trying to like get on the road, get it done.
I got, you know, people I could stop and see
along the way. My Buddy Brian, Oklahoma City, some people
in Tulsa, Southern Illinois, et cetera, Saint Louis. But no,
I gotta we gotta get, we gotta get this chicuaggle.
It's ninety five there, that's nothing. You know, it was
hot today too, and for worth this prairie site. But
I got some nice shots that the bulldoze are just
destroying shit in the background, well a cautious collecting seed, right. So,
I don't even know what to say anymore. Man, It's
so the development is just so insane. They're just leveling
stuff and so and that's the thing too. They got
to create these retention ponds at these housing subdivisions because
there's so much runoff, both from the turf grass and
all the pavement. Both of those cause heavy runoff. Turf grass.
Of course, you know, roots only go down two an
inch two inches below that, it's just compacted soil. Water hits,
it runs right off, runs right off. Same thing with pavement,
and so you get all this runoff, you get flooding.
So that's why there's retention ponds around all this bleak shit,
whether it's shopping plazas or these or these these housing tracks,
so it just it boggles the mind. We were in
this kind of limestone wash. That was the cool thing
with the spot too. It was an ecotone. It was
a transition from blackland prairie thicker soils with a host
of little bluestems sky Zachrium scoparium, which looks dope from
three hundred yards away. It's just like the land is
just blue like because the blades of the grass are blue.
So you've just got these like these shimmering waves of
blue grass. But that's on the Blackland prairie. The blackland soils, darker,
deeper soils, and then it transitions to the thin, thin
soiled limestone. And that's when you start seeing the Silphium
albiflorum with one hundred year long, one hundred year lifespan
taproots probably more, you know, going forty feet into the rock,
not into the soil, into the rock. I mean it's
a squat little plant that gets two or three feet
tall max. With you know, giant baseball sized white flowers
on it, sandpaper like leaves. Clearly it's spaciated out of
Silphium liciniatum. I don't know what would select for the
white flowers maybe reflecting more heat, but yellow reflects a
lot of heat too, I feel like, so maybe not,
I don't know, but these are hot, dry plants. And
again that evolutionarily convergent trait of the large roots right
like stocky tap roots, right like Salviegomnii, was there too,
and that was you know, multiple stems rising up from
this thick woody root, and they'll you know, a plant
gets about like ten twelve inches tall, but all that
stuff will die back and then you'll be left over
with the root in the winter. And some of these root,
these stocky woody roots, I mean there's stem in there too, clearly,
I would it be a corm. Corms are stems, bulbs
are leaves or is it the other way around? No,
I think that's correct. Yeah, corms are stems, bulbs or leaves,
they're both storage mechanisms. In the case of these, I
guess it would just be yeah, just like a woody taproot.
It's the thick woody taproot that acts like a battery
and just you know, packs up a bunch of carbohydrates
in some water. So these things can die die back.
The herbaceous parts can die back during cold or during drought.
But you see it in all the plants. There Solnia
text saying a liatris the all the dahlias. God, it's
just it's a shame. It's it's crazy, so much stuff
being lost. But you know when, yeah, when you don't whenever,
all the land is private and there's nothing public anything
can be sold. So it was probably a ranch or
farmland for a long time. And then you know, the
patriarchal family died as the siblings fight over it like
greedy little bastards, and then whoever gets it sells it off.
That's normally what happens. Driving through the Ordovician limestone of Missouri,
much older than the limestone that's a remnant of the
Western and theor Seaway This is not Western in theory
or Seaway limestone. There's a nice junkyard with a bunch
of billboards sticking out of it, and the human scenery
got I miss riding freight trains. That was nice. It
was so nice. The scenery was so much better competed
to see any billboards. Didn't see any of this shit.
You'd see billboards if the train tracks went next to
a highway. But you wouldn't see. There's just much less
visual pollution. It's ninety one degrees in central Missouri today. Actually,
we're getting into Saint Louis. God, it's been a long drive.
We stayed at a motel last night. You tell them
they got a dog, it's a service animal, and they
always give you the uh you know uh, because Louis
actually is a trained service animal. They got the papers
and everything, but they always give you the room on
the end that We go to the room in the
end and it smelled like somebody had been smoking newports
in there for six hours. I was like, man, come on,
what fuck is this? Give me? How about that room
one twenty nine? Huh, you don't want to put us
in there? Why is that? It's like in the center
of the the branch of the motel. You know, It's
like they didn't want to do that because you got
the dog. They're discriminating. Speaking of dogs, I can smell
Jack's mouth. But yeah, man, it's a this ortovichy and
limestone here. God, it looks so good on the road
cuts of these hills of central Missouri as you roll
into Saint Louis. This is the first time I've passed
through Saint Louis and haven't stopped the mobot. We've we've
broken up temporarily. They told me they didn't want to
take my specimens anymore. I think, I think because they're
a little worried about anyway. I don't know, I don't
know what they're upset about. They're worried about heat or
something they got. You know, the people that work there
on a lower, on a lower, you know, echelons, they're
great people. But you get up into the higher where
the stiffs are. You know, where it smells like farts
an expensive cologne, steak farts, an expensive cologne. And that's
when you really run into some undesirable personalities, some characters
you don't want to interact with. You know, it's a bitch,
bad juju up there. They're all you know, they go
to these dinner parties. They're huffing each other's farts. You know,
they're talking about what private schools are sending their kids to.
You know, their their face is probably hurt from doing
those fake smiles the whole time, because you're using a
lot of I mean, smiling is nice when it's genuine,
but when it's forced, which is what you know, a
lot of those people do for you know, ninety percent
of their social lives. They're never honest either, right, because
you don't want to bump people out with the truth.
You've got to smile and be full of shit all
the time. When you're doing that all the time, it's
hard for your muscles, you know, to adjust if you're
not doing you know, face stretches, because that's what happened.
You do this. You wear that shit eating grin all
the time, that fake smile, that phony smile, and it's
it ends up you end up getting cramps, face cramps.
So I think that's right. I got to go on
the boatox too. It's because it relieves some of that
the stress from the face cramps, from those shit eating
grins they're always wearing. Yeah, Oh that'll be lovely, that'll
be great. You know, how do you know how to talk? Oh? God?
But this fucking limestone looks wonderful and it's got this
dark gray patina on it, and then places where it
was recently weathered and fractured, it's you know, a brighter
white revealing the calcium carbonate. What's the kel here? Here's
a quere's a quiz for you. What's the calcium carbonate
compensation depth? You know what that is? Off? And if
you do, I'm really impressed. If you don't, you need
to look it up right and what type of what
type of oohs muddy ooze lithifies in the oceans below
the calcium carbonate compensation depth. It's a really nice rock
that it makes too where you end up getting into it,
you know, you get it. Part of It's part of
the Franciscan complex. The rock that I have in mind,
part of the Franciscan complex out there, you know in
San Francisco, like in the Oakland Hills. You got some
of them marine headlands too, right, And that's all that's
all deeper. That's an ooze. That in ooze, it's an ooh.
I used to not know how to pronounce ooh my seats.
Apparently I still don't know how to pronounce it. I
would always pronounce it ooh, ooh my seats. You know.
The like what fight top three is water molds as
they call them, but they're not actually molds. They're more
closely related to brown algae, but they're there. You know.
Irish potato blight sudden oak death FIGHTAFTRA there ooh ooh
mice seats. How how do he actually pronounces oh oh
ooh oh mice. I don't fucking know. Leave it into
comments if you're if you're listening to this podcast, if
they allow commenting, because it would be great to you know,
let everybody else know so they're not they don't end
up pronouncing it the way I did for several years.
Ooh my seats. But the calcium carbonate compensation death. The
rock I'm talking about is radiolarian shirt. And I was
so impressed with radiolarians when I first learned about them
that I got a tattoo one. They're these beautiful little,
single celled plankton that build their shells out of silica.
You have some organisms that build their shells out of
silica and other organisms that build their shells out of
calcium carbonate, both of which are diluted in ocean water.
Now we're getting into your headphones off. I'm just spitball
in here. Where do you take your headphones off for? Wait?
Watch your show? Wa'ts your PBS kids? What are you doing? Hey?
Come on, we're gonna cross some Mississippi river soon. Put
your headphones back on. We're watching watch PBS. Kids. What
are you doing? Why do you look at me like that? Say? Hi?
What do you want to say to everybody? Say something?
Leave and like what leave? Like, don't do that, don't
don't don't don't don't leave a like, we don't care
if people like this or not. We're just doing our thing.
Never tell people like and subscribe? That's bad. Where'd you
hear that? You see that in somewhere? Oh? Yeah, she
saw it on the YouTube. She said. I let her
watch this YouTube show of this guy that collects tortoises
and bugs and stuff. I love you say something. Hey,
all right, she's not feeling very extroverted now only she's
pretty extroverted. But uh, but yeah it was so you know, yeah, radiolarians, diatoms,
cocoa lithophores for a manifer, two of those. Uh normally
you know, mostly built out of calcium carbonate and in
the artitude build out of silica. I gotta put this
down from it. I gotta pay attention here and be
a dad. Okay, good good. We're gonna cross the Mississippi
River here soon. It's gonna be nice. You're not gonna
be want to be looking at a screen. Matter of fact,
let me take that away from you as we gently
cross into the state of Illinois and a monoculture of
corn drenched in pesticides that will be used to feed, uh,
the animal slaves of the modern American consumer farm consumer civilization,
so that you know it's a It's amazing how much
corn and soy there is, all of it nasty. You
want to eat that stuff. It's all going to feed
animals too. It's all drenched in fucking what was it?
The Iowa has the highest cancer rates in the United States.
Now good for Iowa. Gotta be first in something. Got corporate,
the corporate farming. Man. I remember where was I think
it was a South Texas It was site Where was
it Camera County or something somewhere east, you know, east
South Texas, like more towards the Gulf. And I remember, God,
I was looking what was it? Looking for one of
these rare aquatic plants Casey Williams told me about. It
was a really cool one. I have to gotta look
it up again. I can't remember the name of it.
It was in pontadierri Ace, but I remember it was
near you know that whole place has been just wiped out.
There's like little pockets of habitat left, but it's mostly
all destroyed for agriculture. And there was a cotton farm
and man, it's just stank, like oh god, it just
smelled so nasty and toxic. It was like they had
just sprayed the round up, they'd just done an initial spraying.
It was one of the foulest, most toxic smells it,
you know, and it was all over. It was because
this cotton, I guess, takes a lot of water, you know.
Was what was nice to see is Guycipium therbrie when
I was doing U Brad Lancaster videos. That's a really
common plant that they plant a lot in his neighborhood
in Tucson. It's a native cotton species and you know,
the fruits have those little I hadn't looked up close
at the fruits. I don't know what the cotton that's
in the quote husk and the fruit is if I think,
I imagine it evolved to act as some dispersal mechanism
and then just was selectively bred. You know, the species
was selectively bred for more you know, for a for
a higher production of those the material. I guess it's
tricomb's what would it be? What's what is? What is
the origins of kind? It's a good thing, you know what?
Should look that up? Actually what cotton is those fibers?
Where do they occur in the fruit? And is it
just dispersal or what? And how many species are in
the genus Cucipium. Anyway, it was a real nasty smell
down there and those cotton fields. Yeah, you could smell
the lymphoma you'd be ginning in ten or twenty years.
It's very, very impressive when it's that toxic. Holy h Okay.
I looked it up. Hetererantha mexicana was the species, the
aquatic plant species with the purple flowers in pontidiy a
seed that I was looking for down there. Had to
get some nice, you know, waiter boots to get out
there and see, especially in that water. You don't want
that water's probably got so much toxic affluent in its
South Texas is heavily polluted, man partially because you know,
the ruling elite overlords know they can get away with
it because it's just a bunch of poor Mexicans. Fucking
Shit's these pigs. You know, you got to create checks
and balances again, you know, I mean it's just we're
we're in the new Gilded Age where these corporate overlords
get away with anything. There was you know, there was
a big problem with woke identity politics. It was such
a distraction from class and it just was so good
at just making people be insufferable plots. And then of
course people that aren't that smart, you know, they're easily
pulled over to the right. You've heard me rant about
this before. It just kind of breeds fashion. It was
probably a SI up to be you know, to be honest,
I think it was quite quite literally a good site.
It was a great cia distraction that she laughing and
she's watching the thing. But yes, had her anthems kind
of It's got a really that aquatic plant that I
was speaking of, which and in pontidiirri ac, it's got
a really interesting flower morphology. It's a nantio stylist, which
is those mirror image flowers. You know, it's it's way
to promote outcrossing, because if you've got a style that
swings to the left rather than being in the center
of the flower, then it's got to pick up pollen
that's on the left side of a bee's body, and
if that bee was hitting a flower, you know the
styles on the left, the stamens are on the right,
and so if the if that bee was hitting a
flower that had stamens on the right side of the
bee's body, then it's not going to come into contact
with that style. So it's it's a way to promote outcrossing.
Walkin' doorfia does it too. Again, that's in nantio styley
e n A N T I O S T y
l O U S And it's a product of selection
for outcrossing, which is more advantageous than pollinating yourself, right,
we understand it. I talk about this all the time.
You don't want those recessive alleles stacking up up and
causing inbreeding depression. Though there are benefits to both. There's
benefits to outcrossing, and there's benefits especially during high stress
situations like a mass extinction event or you know, a
reduction and population. There's benefits to being able to self pollinate,
even though there's not going to be that much genetic
diversity in the resulting seed getting tailgated by a chevy
Right now, looks like a kind of beat up paint job.
You know, that's what you got to do if you're
if you're trying to convince convince members of a square
community to plant trees in your lower latitude United States
or Mexican neighborhood, like in the state in the country
of Mexico, there's all low latitude where you get much
more solar installation, you know, telling them, it's telling people
that it's gonna shade the street. They don't get and
they don't understand that. But when you start talking talking
about it's going to fuck up the paint job on
your car, which ultra violet lights certainly does, then they
start listening and you're like, you know what's gonna be.
You're gonna get some leaves on your car. They can
be washed off. You get that paint, beating the paint,
getting the shit beat out of it by the sun.
You know, two or three years, you've just lost half
that car's value. Just talk to them in words. They understand.
You got to think strategically like a criminal, right, even
if you personally don't give a shit what the paint
job looks like you got, you're just trying to manipulate
people into caring and doing the right thing, which is
sadly what you have to do, because we don't live
in a society full of intelligent people, intelligent empathetic people.
They're out there, but the society is certainly not dominated
by them. Not yet. We're not at that point in
human history yet. Maybe we will be at some point
if we don't knock ourselves out. But in the meantime,
you've got to manipulate people. That's fine. Manipulate them by
talking about the things they give a shit about, which
is the paint job on their car. They don't give
a shit at the time. They live in looks like
a bleak shithole. That's just concrete an asphalt, But some
people do. I'm kidding. I'm kidding around. Okay, God, these
clouds look lovely, don't they. Okay, Anyway, the genus Gucipium.
Back to cotton, which we were talking about. Here's fifty
one to fifty five species in it, and those those here,
I just looked this up. Actually, the cotton fibers are
actually single celled trichomes that occur on the outer layer
of the seed. Yeah, So anyway, cotton fibers are single
celled seed hairs. Again, this tricombs, and they grow in
the outer layer of seeds, and there's many seeds inside
an ovary a fruit capsule of any of the cotton species.
I remember there was a cool Goucipium my son the
Dominican Republic in the dry Force. There wonderful habitat. It's
amazing how much diversity of habitat there is in the
dr I really love. I would fucking move there. That's
a wonderful country. People drive like fucking maniacs. Everyone's chill otherwise.
They got good food. It's affordable. I like the Minnicans,
you know, they're personable. When I lived in New York,
I got along with a lot of them. I worked
for a messenger company out there in early two thousands.
A lot of Dominican guys, real chill, good vibes. They
got cloud forests, they got dry forests, they got massive iguanas,
they got all that lowland tropical shit. I fucking hate
the beach, but I would go there occasionally if there
were cool plants. You know, I wants to go sit
on a beach. That's what I want. I want about
these people that. I want to just go sit on
the beach. You travel somewhere to go sit on your
ass on a beach. You could do that anywhere, go
sit on the beach. Gotta get a tan. I don't
want to go sit on a beach. There's no plants there. Maybe,
you know what, Sometimes there's plants on a beach, maybe
in the dunes and stuff. Ah. God, all this prairie
that used to exist in Illinois and it is now
just bleak, genetically modified corn. It's round up, ready, it's
round the ready. Where is arnoglossom? Where's the nearest patch
of arnoglossom? That's a wonderful asteraceous sanesioid sinesio relative. You know,
a genus Aenesia, right, you filthy fuck arnoglossoms, a wonderful
senesio genus in the prairies. Yes. Anyway, So those the
cotton fibers, so they've just they've just been bred. I
think the ancestral species of cotton is mostly an Old
World species. It's not just a New World genus through
its Old World as well, both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah,
but every every single strand of cotton fiber is just
a dramatically elongated single plant cell. It's a single cell,
single celled tricombes. Remember, tricombs can be lived or dead.
In the case of a plant like cannabis, those tricombes
are mostly alive. In the case of cotton, those fibers
are dead. It's dead tissue. When the tricombes are dead,
they're dead tissue. When the seed is well, the seed
is still alive. So really interesting. Man. Gucipium therbriize a
banger though, and they, you know, a really easy volunteer plant.
I haven't seen it in situ in you know, in
what kind of how it grows in a wild setting,
only in the rain gardens of Brad Lancaster's work in Tucson.
Some permaculture guy, and perma culture is not that thirty
of a worth them anymore. It just depends whether they're
ecologically literate or not, whether they believe in invasion biology
or not, or whether they have more of an anthropocentric
lens where they don't care whether something's native or invasive
as long as it's got used to humans. It's youthful anyway.
So uh, but yeah, some perma culture guy just came
out with a really good video. I forget the name,
and I wish I could tell you so you could
go look it up. Maybe I can find it. But
he did a really you know, it's not like the
kind of videos I do is like over It's produced,
not overproduced, it's produced a really good production value. I
don't do that. I'm just I'm just some you know,
lone angry guy ranting and screaming at the excitedly about things.
But let me see if I can find the name
of it for you, so you can go look it up. Nice,
you know, you go look it up, you figure out
what channel was this the perma culture. I ever thought
i'd be watching permaculture if Andrew Millicine Andrew Millicine from Oregon,
and I guess he filmed this. He must have filmed
it last year because he's filmed some of the gardens
that I filmed when I was filming Brad, but they
hadn't filled in yet. They were fresh. It's so cool, man.
Those those they're like these pit gardens in between the
sidewalk and the street. I mean, if you didn't see
the video, they're like pits in the ground. But you
know they'll go three feet down, but they're staggered like steps,
so it's not just a straight drop off like you
could fall in. You know, some old lady falls into
a pit in the ground. Well, she's walking, you know,
with a cane or a walker down a sidewalk. You're
gonna have a liability issue in your case, my friend,
you're gonna be getting sued, buddy. But yeah, then they're
just filled in with plants. It's fucking beautiful, but it's
you know, obviously, in a climate that's that hot and
where rainfalls that sparse, you want the water to pool
up and form ephemeral ponds that last for a day
and then I don't even think they last that long, honestly,
it probably drains pretty quick once it stops raining. But
that's kind of similar to what we need in South Texas.
But South Texas is fucking decades behind. Shit. South Texas
decades behind the rest of the country, and even you know,
probably a century behind what Tucson's doing. And then you know,
society won't even be around anymore because we will have uh,
probably exterminate ourselves or been merged into some sort of
synthetic AI thing that's been shoved down our throats. But
the pit'st those pit gardens and two you gotta swing
through two cent checkout dunbar Spring neighborhood man, please check
it out. It's God, it's so cool what he did.
And he's he's got before or after photos in this video,
which is really cool too. Like the dude, I guess
Brad must have given him photographs of what the neighborhood
looked like before, when it had no trees and it
was just a heat island. It looks like where I
live now. Uh, and then went after he transformed it.
But you know, as again as happens though, then when
you make a neighborhood nice, now that the pig developers
and vultures swing in and turn everything into airbnbs and
sell it out, you know, unless you got regulations in
place to prevent that this way, you need that, you
need you need regulations. Anyway, that was such a wonderful experience.
What a nice you know, your miskeuats everywhere shade walking
through a shade canopy of trees on the sidewalk, even
though you're in one what's supposed to be one of
the hottest cities in the United States. Why couldn't l
Passo do that. You've been to l Passo recently? Holy shit,
is that a bleak down? God damn it. They got
the if you go through town, check out the university
and the little like Native Botanica, And they got there.
They got some cool stuff, including one of those shrubby
peas that's relatively rare in the Chihuahua Desert, at least
on the on the United States side. And they got
a cool museum in El Paso too. But the rest
of the town kind of looks like shit, no offense,
you know, there's there was an Italian restaurant I went
to in a El Paso I remember they had the
nice red checkerboard table cloths. L Passos where I filmed
that Wired Plant video. I did well. I guess Wired
rented out a studio and that was nearest where I
was living at the time, so I went out there
and did it. So I got a little taste of Opasso,
my friend. But but god damn when you're driving through it.
Used to ride trains through Elpasso two thousand and four,
two thousand and five Sunset Route, riding trains along the
Texas border, doing crew changes. San Antonio del Rio, Eagle
Pass Alpine, El Paso. Remember I'd always be worried about
getting pulled off. I never got pulled off, though. I
got pulled off in Yuma by some dude that looked
like the Pillsbury dough boy. It looked like he burned
very easily, speaking of you know, light skinned, low melon
and phenotypes. And he asked to see my identification. I
gave it to him, and then he ran off. He's
excuse me, I've got illegal iLiads to catch. You could
tell this guy was living the dream. He was living
for that border patrol job, where he could, you know,
go get some little brown guys and put handcuffs on
him and feel like he did his job to protect America.
He was funny. I think he had one of those
Hitler mustaches too. He's like a Pilly Pillbury dough boy
with a Hitler mustache. Somebody go out and draw that
for me. Could you go out and draw a little
picture of Pillsbury dough boy with one of those uh uh,
you know, sergeant slaughter hats on, you know, those wide
brimmed hats these fucking goofballs were, and put a little
Hitler mustache on him, you know, just for shits and giggles.
Pillsbury dough boy with a would a Sergeant Slaughter had
one of those wide brim teddy Roosevelt hats and a
little uh Hitler mustache. Maybe just put an ice vest
on him for shits and giggles too. Yeah, there was
a long time ago, and I remember the helicopter kept
it kept coming. That the way they would flush people
off these double stack trains, because that's what we were riding,
is the helicopter would come down and it would like
swing kind of low to the ground and kick up
a bunch of dust, both making it obvious that they
had spotted you and also kicking up dust so it
would make it uncomfortable for you to breath, and then
they'd wrangle you off. And god damn. That was a
long time ago, you know. I used to lift speaking
of Mississippi River which I just which we just drove over. Remember,
I used to take just for ships and giggles. I
would go to Willow Springs Freight Yard in Chicago and
there was a I think it was like a six
pm train you could catch right at dusk and it
would and I'd ride at the Fort Madison, Iowa, which
is the next crew change point. I'd get off in
Fort Madison. Sometimes I'd have enough time left over to
catch one of the late movies at the five dollars
movie theater they had there. You go to Fort Madison,
Iowa for a movie, they'd go sleep in the bushes
and then come back. Oh shit, there was just that
urra growing on the side of the road in fucking Illinois.
That's impressive. I wonder how the seeds got out there. Nice.
It look like that urre righty eye. Those things will
go ape. Shit. Man, if you grow those in l On,
you can grow that turrighty in Illinois. Just keep those
you know, toxic and hallucinogenic seeds away from the high
school kids because they'll try and get far out. And
you know, shamans back in the day used to take
one or two seeds. These high school kids take a
whole fruit capsule full of like sixty seeds. Then they
find themselves walking half naked down a freeway at three
in the morning, got to go. You know, they have
a really bad time. They lose their minds. You don't
want to be doing that tura, right, Maybe eat one
or two seeds. I've never done it, so don't actually,
don't do that. I'll get sued. Anyway. I'm so excited
at to be in Chicago again. I mean, I can't,
I can't. I can't explain how happy I am. It's
gonna be so nice. Museums, tall buildings, a bunch of
different kinds of people to shoot the shit with. It's
so fun. The museums especially, you can just go lurk
in the library. You don't even need to spend money.
I think I get into the museum for free, to
Field Museum, and then I know somebody who can get
us into the Shed Aquarium for free, because all these
museums been tired. I've ranted about this last time. I'm sorry.
I'm kind of being redundant here, but fuck it. Whatever
you do. What are you're doing, You're working or driving,
or somebody's listening to this podcast for ships and gigas anyway,
what do you care? But uh, you know, all these
museums are like theme parks. Man are charged at thirty
bucks admission. Who the Fox's gonna pay that? They're supposed
to be like the library, open source education. Oh, I
should go to the herbarium at the at the Field Museum. Again.
I'm trying to go to Bolivia in September, and I
reached out to a guy I know who lives down there,
who actually works at the herbarium in Bolivia. In La Pause,
Lapause is high up. Like you know, you basically you fly,
you land in town at the airport. You can immediately
get altitude sickness, start puking. Just you land and I
open the door. You just start puking everywhere, Just start
throwing up because it Lapase is fucking high up. It's
like thirty five hundred meters. Man, it's like eleven thousand
feet high up. I love the exasperated sixty year old
West side Chicago Italian just comes out sometimes, you know,
in moments of heat and stress, Tony Centaurro comes out.
It's my old to ego. God, it's so green and
nice here, but you come, you come through Iowa and
Illinois and the Midwest in the fall when they're plowing
everything and it's just particulates everywhere. I can't believe plowing
is actually a thing is shipped for brain. It's just
it's just this, there goes your top soil, especially everything
I know about botany and plants now and soils and
just plowing this. But I guess you gotta you gotta
sew a bunch of seeds and plant the you know,
thousands of plants at once. Plowing makes it easier. I
guess seems pretty shit for brain, honestly, because I'm everything
I'm trying to do. I plants and cover that soil
with mulch immediately so it doesn't get baked a shit.
Shut up? You know this? Uh this this collision alert.
It sees the shadows on the bridges and overpasses and
it thinks I'm hitting gonna drive into somebody. I think
they put that on there for the old people. Now
you get someone who's seventy five. They should have had
their license taken away five years ago. And next thing
you know, you know, they're plowing through a deli or something.
They kept stepping on the breaking it. The car would
just keep going forward. You were stepping on the gas.
My grandma was like that lovely woman, she should have
had her license taken away. Anyway, where were we I
think we're basically done. I'm just rambling here, and I apologize.
This has been a long painful drive. My kid's been
really good. I really I gotta get her back for
this somehow. Maybe we'll I'll, I don't know, we'll figure
we'll figure something out of way to compensate her for
her the emotional suffering she's been through the last two
days on this long ass car ride. Anyway, I'll be
what am I doing. I'm gonna be in Kuliwi Native
for speaking of Chulowe Native Plant Conference in mid July.
I'm going to be in Columbia, South Carolina on July eighteenth,
is it the eighteenth or whatever, whatever the Sunday is,
I'm gonna beat her on a Sunday. I'm doing something
on a Sunday. I'll post about it on the social media,
the Insta sham and the facecrook stories I'm going to
I'm doing a show in Chicago July fifth, which is shit.
That's three days away. It's this Sunday, and then I'll
be in Milwaukee on the seventh at Cactus Club. You
can buy tickets for both those on the crime Pace
website under events, where you can also get a file
folder access to a file full of free downloadable PDFs.
Why He's this guy? Where's this guy going this slow?
This guy's killing me. He was just being extra cautious.
And then I'm gonna be in Denver August fourteenth. I'll
be around there for a week. I'm speaking to Denver
Botanic Garden. I think on the fourteenth. It's a Saturday
or a Sunday. I don't know, because I stopped giving
a shit. I just I'm so overwhelmed my band with
this so blown, I probably need an agent. But who
wants to be an agent? I'll see if al Scorch
can do it. He'll be my agent. He's easy to
work with. He knows I'm fucking nuts. He knows how
to work with me. Damn, it's ninety seven for real.
Whoa buddy get a new muffler. Guy looks like this
guy that this guy just passed on a freeway. I'm
driving his beat up van. He looks like this uh
guy who picked me and my buddy Liam up hitchhikinging Gary, Indiana.
Once this guy picked us up. He was an off
duty sheriff. He was racist as hell. He had a
damn mustache that looked like a fucking broom above his mouth.
He was you know, he was in his van. He
was packing heat. He picked us up, said you gotta
get out of Gary Man, and then said some racist
shit about how we were gonna get murdered for being
white or something, and you know, we were so desperate
at that point we said no, I fucking we gotten
this guy's van and realized he's just a fucking loose
cannon man. He's probably not alive anymore because he was
hammered too. Amount of times I got picked up hitchhiking
by drunks or you know, just alcoholics was I don't
recommend it. That's why I hate hitchhiking too. I don't
want to hitchhike. That's why. That's why I used to
ride trains everywhere so I didn't have to, you know,
do the greyhound bus scam or hitchhike because you never know.
You could meet really cool people hitchhiking. You can also
meet some real nut jobs. And though the nut jobs
are fun for a little bit taken in context, all
due respect, you know, there's sometimes collateral damage just being
around him. So this guy picked us up. I forget
where he left us up. I think, you know, after
twenty minutes of being in the van, with this guy.
We were just like, you know what, he's an off
duty cop. He's drunk a shit, he's saying a bunch
of creepy racist shit. He's packing heat. Just let us anywhorse, Fine, buddy,
thanks a lot, Thank you, thank you. Don't want to
offend him. You know, I had like a damn cold
forty five on his hip or something. I don't know.
I had to move a bunch of fishing poles out
of the way to sit down in the back. Anyway,
he just looked at this guy passed on a freeway. Anyway,
So that's my schedule, and I'm gonna try to go
to Bolivia in September and maybe Mexico again. You know,
my buddy Sezar, and you know some other people, nice people. Shit,
I'm missing my turn. There we go, here we go.
He's a little Yeah, we're just stepping over here. Some
guy dragging a boat. God, I can't wait to get
off the road. Man. Who and uh, I think that's it.
I think that's it. And you just have a grocery day.
Go fuck your up. Body,