Rish Outcast 309: MagicClaw

Rish presents his 2014 claw game story, "MagicClaw." Two brothers discover the claw game at the convenience store is more than meets the eye. Play at your own risk.

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support my hopeless efforts on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "MagicBra" Moretto.

The Truth Nut

A lady approached my desk at work and, without any approbation by me, began to tell me of her time working with the sick and dying in Ecuador years ago.  I assumed she had worked with the Salvation Army or the Peace Corps or something similar, but she started telling me about all the people she'd seen with terminal cancer, and that it was actually the CIA that was injecting people with this irreparable cancer, linked to the Covid vaccine, and that it was created in a benign-seeming lab in Saskatoon (which I have to admit I chuckled at, because it's as funny a place name as Lake Titicaca or Toad Suck, Arkansas).  When I did, her feelings were hurt and she said, "I know I sound like a nut, but I'm a truth nut!" and started to cry.  I apologized, but she wandered away, presumably to look for watch for chemtrails. 

An hour or so later, I started writing this blogpost, and she came up to me again, interrupting.  She had written up a list of her references and the experts who were speaking the truth about the impending loom of transhumanism, and told me they were "not all from the YouTube."  I guess she was not offended by me after all, and proceeded to tell me all about nanotechnology and the secret tests being run on average citizens and her son-in-law in Edmonton who does autopsies ("but is not a mortician, he's the other thing") and can always tell the difference between a dead body that's been vaccinated and one that hasn't, because of all the irregularities and abnormalities in the corpses that were "jabbed."

She really had a lot to say, but I was a) afraid of hurting her feelings, and b) a little big curious how long she could keep her rant going, since I had already decided to blog about it.  And the answer was: 

I'll never know, because after fifteen minutes, I cut her off because I was late going on my rounds (and I was worried Abe on the other side of the building would wonder what was going on at the library entrance and call me).  She clearly had more to say, but seemed to understand and/or was used to being interrupted (and disbelieved).  She gave me the paper with her notes on it and left, and I felt bad . . . but did I feel sorry for her or sorry for me?

Rish Outcast 308: In Security 4

The mean man, Rish Outfield, tells more stories about being a library security guard, including:

1. The Vomit and the Unlucky Patron
2. The Guy Who Says That The Library Is For Everyone
3. "I don't know you. Are you new here?"

If you wish to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you wish to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "The Pee Wee Kiwi" Moretto.

Fake Sean Fakes The Hits

In college, I got a job--at least in part--due to my Sean Connery impression.*  And that's either been a back-pocket talent or a crutch ever since.  

Case in point: I've recently sat down (okay, most are standing up) and recorded Fake Sean Connery quoting pop songs for use over on Instagram, the account I made years ago and almost never use, where I wear a Connery mask and say stuff, sometimes profound, usually quite the opposite.

As of now, I have thirty-seven of the suckers recorded (though only thirty-six will be used), and I'll be posting them every day or so for the rest of the summer.  You may go over to Fake Sean's Instagram page if you'd like to play along.

In case you're interested, so far, the vast majority of songs have been from the Eighties (the absolute best decade for music, sorry, snobs), but I've tried to sprinkle in older and newer songs, just in case someone without a memory of paying double for New Releases happens upon the page.

And one of the songs I accidentally did twice, which I'll go ahead and post here, just for the novelty.

Hopefully, Real Sean would be stirred.  Not shaken.


*The owner said he called me in for an interview specifically because I put it in my resume under Skills.

I Perform "Dead By Night" on Tales To Terrify

I know I said that last time was the final story I'm doing for the Tales To Terrify podcast, but whoops, here's another one.  I was born without a spine, as you may recall.

This time it's "Dead By Night" by Edd Vick.  It's very short, about nine minutes long, so they bundled it with another story, "Janelle Is Still Janelle," by Donovan Thiesson.  In Vick's story, a young policeman investigates murders at a retirement home . . . in a case where stakes might be more useful than firearms.

Will it be my last?  The answer cannot be found HERE.  But you CAN probably find out if Janelle is still Janelle.

Rish Outcast 307: Like Stamp-Collecting

After going to two different comic-related sales, Rish talks about comic books, and a chilling prediction someone made.

Also, Fake Sean knows a special place where boys and girls can all be queens every single day.

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Likes Damp Collecting" Moretto.

The Creep In The Woods

I had to wait until today to type this up because yesterday afternoon, the R button broke off on my laptop* and I had to resort to Copy-and-Pasting the letter in my writing and not being able to Repeat Action in my editing, but you wouldn't believe a) how many times one Ctrl-Rs and b) how many words have Rs in 'em.  

Anyway...

I've mentioned it before, but my brother has one of those nature trail cameras he will often set up outside our family cabin, usually to find out where the badger keeps its den (the darn thing is smart enough to avoid most traps we set for it, but strong enough to bend the metal of the one that's caught it)(it's also small enough to evade our turbolasers, but that's beside the point).

I noticed that there was a dead animal in the trap outside the badger den, and thought I would look to see if the creature had come out at any time to try to get it, so I grabbed the SD card and took it inside to look at the footage.

It's got a motion sensor on it, and it only works when it sees something move in front of it, but this machine is a newer one that records video AND audio several times a day.  I saw a couple of deer walk by, several squirrels, and at least one large woodchuck, and--I think I've mentioned this before--I always imagine how it would be to see some kind of thing wandering around in the woods out there, lurching about in the dark, perhaps stepping up to the camera to investigate it.  What if it was a terrifying old woman with shining night-vision eyes?  Or a young, naked Rami Malek or old, fully-clothed John Malkovich.  How about Jon Heder in a corn chowder-spattered wedding dress?

But no, there was nothing explicitly terrifying . . . except that in the moments I had walked around the cameras, examining the traps and the den, you could hear me talking to myself, like a crazy person wandering around the park (or city library) or a character written by Stan Lee.  I couldn't help but wonder what my brother would think, when it comes time to watch the footage himself, but he's known me for decades, so the only person surprised would be me.

*It was SOOOO beyond time to retire the darn thing, but I kept using it out of stubbornness, despite it having about a dozen problems (from overheating to the sound going out to making a loud buzzing sound [the fan was broken, hence the overheating] to simply not wanting to boot up from time to time), since it was familiar to me.

Rish Outcast 306: With A Banjo On My Knee

Rish presents his story, "With A Banjo On My Knee," written for a Journey Into... contest, that, despite not winning the contest, he thinks is pretty good.

Garrett McClarren finds an old banjo in an alley and discovers that it has the power to soothe the savage . . . well, Los Angeleno.

If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

If you wanna hear the original version, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "With A Ukulele On My Knee" Moretto.

Mystery of the Open Unit

(February 7th . . . move there)

Last night, after I got off from work, I quickly drove to the storage unit to retrieve two Transformers I had sold (they were Crasher and Blurr, since you asked.  Why are you so oddly curious about them?), and as I pulled in, I found an open unit a couple rows away from mine.  There tend to be open empty units all the time, because their owners have cleared them out and not bothered to close the doors, since (presumably) they're just going to get opened and inspected anyway.  But this one was not empty . . . it was still full of stuff.

I was pressed for time (twice I've been locked inside the property for staying later than ten o'clock--once it was literally 10:00 and the doors wouldn't open to let me through), but I paused for a few seconds outside their unit, shining my highbeams on the contents, wondering if someone was transferring the inventory to another space and had just left it open since it was night and no one was around, or if someone had accidentally left their unit open (which seems extraordinarily unlikely.  You see, the reason people pay so g.d. much for someone to store their stuff month to month is because it is valuable to them (presumably more valuable than the price to store it - though, in my mom's unit's case . . .), so even if you didn't have a lock*, you'd surely close the door, and hope no one would notice (which they wouldn't, I mean, come on).

Well, I saw a bunch of items sitting in the darkened unit, but nothing that jumped out at me enough to go in there at night and risk getting locked in the property and/or murdered by the madman who lives in the unit (he's in space 214, by the way).  I raced over to my own space, opened and grabbed the Transformers (they were the Walmart exclusives from 2022.  Why ask for all these details?  Are you interested in buying them?  If so, why did you wait until someone else did?), then left with six or seven minutes to spare.

I did sell something in the night (no, I don't remember what it was.  Do you need me to look it up?  Is it that important?), though, so I drove back again the next morning, hoping to get it packaged up and in the mailbox before the postman came.  But that abandoned storage unit was still open, still stocked, and seemed to have been untouched since the night before.  So, I parked outside it, and went to investigate. 

It had been cleaned out of anything valuable, but there were still several books, packing materials, a bunch of plastic containers, some clothes, and a little coffee table-sized shelf, along with what was surely garbage they hadn't felt like hauling off.  I opened one of the plastic containers, just to see, and it held a bunch of family pictures in it.**  Odd that they would be abandoned, but you never know the backstory on these things.  I found nothing of value--to me, anyway--and the only thing I took was a five or six foot stretch of bubble wrap, which I could easily use the next time I sell a Transformer (Um, okay, the series was called Velocitron 500.  They were in a blue package.  If you like them all that much, I'll hook you up with a deal, okay?  Just get off my back and let me blog).  I was again curious why a non-empty unit would be left open, but in a world where little makes sense, you can drown in the rising tide of How Comes.

But you may be asking, why did I share this stupid post with you, if you didn't find anything and nothing of interest ever happened (except for a reader being bizarrely curious about the overpriced action figures I sell, jeez!)?  Well, I can't help but think about what I might have found.  

Either something crazy-precious and costly, or something super-creepy and upsetting.  As I went on my run tonight, I thought there had to be a story in there, of stumbling upon something where I would spend the rest of my days regretting being curious and wandering into where I didn't belong.  Of course, in a story it would have been night, and I'd have had ten minutes (or so) before the gates locked, so I'd have had no qualms about peeking into the darkened unit to see what was in there.  And maybe I did find something valuable, something totally cool, and it caused me to lose track of time, and by the time I also discovered something disturbing or grisly, those doors would be sealed for the night.

And of course, the strange storage unit would not have been abandoned--the owner would have been nearby, perhaps disposing of a body, perhaps just getting more bubble wrap (so he could use them to dispose of a body).  You never know.

*Twice I have dropped a lock after opening the unit and broken the key off, forcing me to go out and buy another lock.  Twice.

**According to that Robin Williams movie, other than the family pets, the first thing a family would rescue from a burning house is their family photos . . . so maybe that movie was wrong?

Marshal And I Talk Season 2 of "Andor"

After a bit of foot-dragging, I finally watched the second season of "Andor," and just like seeing CITIZEN KANE, GONE WITH THE WIND, THE RISE OF CHUN-LI, and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA for the first time, I kinda had to shrug and say, "Yeah, it was as good as everybody says."

Whoops, guess you don't have to listen to me and Marshal Latham talk about it now over at the Star Wars: Delusions of Grandeur podcast HERE.  Seems like a bit of a waste spending all that time on the episode.

Marshal And I Talk About KRULL (1983)

A while back, Marshal and I watched KRULL, an ambitious 1983 Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie hoping to be the next STAR WARS.  But did STAR WARS have The Glaive?

Seems like a long time ago, but you can check out our review HERE.