Speaker 1: Cools Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club book Club, book Club book Club. Hello and
Speaker 2: welcome to the Cools one Media book Club, which is
Speaker 2: going to be a rerun episode because, as you can
Speaker 2: maybe tell by my voice, I'm too sick to record
Speaker 2: an audio narration.
Speaker 3: So that's why.
Speaker 2: I'm going to run a rerun and I hope you
Speaker 2: like it. We're going to rerun a story called the
Speaker 2: Free Orcs of Cascadia, and I think as things are
Speaker 2: falling apart, it's important to remember all the people who
Speaker 2: choose to live in the cracks of the system and
Speaker 2: possible futures that that might bring, especially if those people
Speaker 2: all have swords. Isn't that what matters? I think that's
Speaker 2: what matters. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and
Speaker 2: we'll be back soon with my voice not being destroyed
Speaker 2: by coughing.
Speaker 4: It could happen here to welcome THEE Evans Robert podcast.
Speaker 4: End of the World at the beginning of news. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think we did it right.
Speaker 1: Evans Evans Robert. Who's here with us?
Speaker 4: That would be kill Joy, Margaret and Lichterm and Sophie.
Speaker 3: I like this.
Speaker 4: M m's keep it. Lichtman Komma, Sophie, kill Joy Comma, Margaret,
Speaker 4: Margaret Commas. Also, I could also attorneys general. You kill
Speaker 4: Joy's Margaret. One of my hobbies is anytime I pluralize something,
Speaker 4: attorneys generally it Margaret. How are you. How are you
Speaker 4: doing on this beautiful December.
Speaker 2: Day.
Speaker 3: I'm good. I just got my booster shot and the
Speaker 3: negative effects haven't kicked in yet.
Speaker 4: That's good. How does it feel to have like, has
Speaker 4: your internet sped up?
Speaker 3: Now? I have a boost? Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm making the same fighting that everybody makes because it's
Speaker 4: easier than thinking about the fact that Omicron looks like
Speaker 4: it's going to be a real, real nightmare and the
Speaker 4: world's never going to go back to you know, it's
Speaker 4: not going back to normal. I miss it's it's being
Speaker 4: able to walk into a bar and not worry that
Speaker 4: I was going to catch a new variant of a plague.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's a yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. How are you doing with the plague?
Speaker 3: I live completely alone and isolated, so yeah, well, which
Speaker 3: I you know, I'm not sure this is how I
Speaker 3: would have built my life if I hadn't done it
Speaker 3: during a plague. Yeah, I mean I dream about interacting
Speaker 3: with humans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just like a hugging a person that that you
Speaker 4: don't know all that well, and it not being like
Speaker 4: involving both of you risking your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a blood pact to Yeah, we're going
Speaker 3: dug Yeah, and if.
Speaker 4: We wind up in Hell, we'll scream at Satan together.
Speaker 3: Come what may, you will hug.
Speaker 4: You have written another story. I mean you wrote this
Speaker 4: a while ago, as you did with the last one.
Speaker 4: But we're doing We decided one of the things we
Speaker 4: wanted to do to close this year out was a
Speaker 4: little bit more fiction, because fiction, I think plays an
Speaker 4: underappreciated role in revolutionary practice, in kind of every aspect
Speaker 4: of being someone who envisions a different world. So we've
Speaker 4: always i mean, it could happen here. From the beginning,
Speaker 4: there was always a strong kind of focus on fiction.
Speaker 4: And I'm really happy to be presenting another one of
Speaker 4: your stories today.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 4: You want to tell me introduce this piece?
Speaker 3: Sure? This piece is called The Free Yorks of Cascadia.
Speaker 3: It was first published in Fantasy and Sign Fiction, which
Speaker 3: is the name of a magazine, and this one was
Speaker 3: actually really important to me because Fantasy and Science Fiction
Speaker 3: FNSF was one of the magazines that my dad had
Speaker 3: a subscription.
Speaker 4: To Yeah they go. This was a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was a very and it was a very
Speaker 3: important piece for me that it got published there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's awesome. Well let's uh, let's let's let's take
Speaker 4: a take a hop in a publicly funded bus and
Speaker 4: roll down to Storytown.
Speaker 3: Speaking of taking one's life in one's hands. The story
Speaker 3: is called The Free Orcs of Cascadia. You all know
Speaker 3: the first part of the story. The song ended in blood.
Speaker 3: It was two years ago in the summer. Rick Green,
Speaker 3: the singer of Goblin Forest, crooned in his Osborne esque
Speaker 3: voice to fifteen thousand Goblin Metal. A short man wearing
Speaker 3: green body paint and brown leather stepped out from backstage,
Speaker 3: drew a sword and cut the singer down from behind.
Speaker 3: The last lyrics Greene ever sang were take me Back,
Speaker 3: take me Back, take me Back to the Misty Mountains.
Speaker 3: The man with the sword, of course, was Golfen Bull,
Speaker 3: the rhythm guitarist for Crimpetool the opening act. He and
Speaker 3: his bandmates escaped in the ensuing chaos and remain at
Speaker 3: large to this day. Neither band has released a song
Speaker 3: or played a show since the rest of Goblin Forrest
Speaker 3: decided to call it quits. Without Green and Crimpetool, no
Speaker 3: one knew what happened to Crimpetool. Fans deserted the genre
Speaker 3: and droves, and overnight Goblin Metal went from stadium rock
Speaker 3: fad to a niche interest of the obscure Canadian orc
Speaker 3: cults were originated. It was no longer hip to be Green.
Speaker 3: If golfen Ball had been trying to take the Goblin
Speaker 3: Metal throne, as it were, he failed spectacularly. Rumors have
Speaker 3: flown about motives and locations, but there have been no
Speaker 3: arrests and no public statement from the band. All we've
Speaker 3: had to work with were rumors until now. Earlier this month,
Speaker 3: Orc Folk act Alcrith listed golf and Ball as the
Speaker 3: harpist in their liner notes of the single The Gray
Speaker 3: Fog of a Ruined Forest. Alcareth was as obscure as
Speaker 3: Crimpetool was infamous. The band had never done an interview,
Speaker 3: not even a photoshoot. Like everyone else these days in
Speaker 3: countercultural music, their videos featured only masked performers. I've been
Speaker 3: casually obsessed with post civilization culture ever since the Communicate
Speaker 3: from the Junkyard Rats of the Rust Belt, and I've
Speaker 3: been covering music of pretty much every secessionist movement and
Speaker 3: subculture I coud sink my teeth into. Since after I
Speaker 3: saw those liner notes, I put out feelers to friends
Speaker 3: and friends of friends, and I waited, and last week
Speaker 3: I was invited to go to an orc village hidden
Speaker 3: away in the burned forests of Cascadia. I was invited
Speaker 3: to be the first person to tell golf and Ball's story,
Speaker 3: a Hellfire Harriet exclusive. Usually I post full interviews for everyone,
Speaker 3: but reserve my travel diary for the patron to my blog.
Speaker 3: This time, though, I'm foregoing that this story is too important,
Speaker 3: so I've interspersed to the two below. All I knew
Speaker 3: before I went was what everyone else knew. Three years ago.
Speaker 3: A bunch of metal heads and hippies and burners and
Speaker 3: nerds all decided to dress up like orcs and goblins,
Speaker 3: and some of them took it too far and decided
Speaker 3: to distance themselves from the rest of society. They got
Speaker 3: really famous one summer, then that fame died in a
Speaker 3: single bloody act, and who knows what kind of weird
Speaker 3: ship they're up to. Now. Before you get worried, no,
Speaker 3: I will never offer a platform to a fascist fascist. Fascism,
Speaker 3: as it turns out, is the furthest thing from golf
Speaker 3: and Ball's mind. What he's into is a lot weirder
Speaker 3: than that. Still, it's sort of lucky that I survived
Speaker 3: to write this story. So you killed a guy, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I killed a guy. We stared in silence at one
Speaker 3: another for a while. He wore rawhide and fur, and
Speaker 3: not much of either. He wasn't painted up, but his
Speaker 3: skin was sort of natural olive. His lower teeth were
Speaker 3: filed down the fangs like any serious Orcs. There is
Speaker 3: still something unassuming about him that I have a hard
Speaker 3: time describing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, waiting for me to tell you about it, aren't you?
Speaker 3: The interview was not off to a good start. Are
Speaker 3: you worried about how your words will sound in court?
Speaker 4: I killed Rick Green on stage with a sword in
Speaker 4: front of thousands of witnesses. Talking to the media isn't
Speaker 4: going to make anything worse for me at this point,
Speaker 4: and I don't respect the authority of the US government
Speaker 4: to hold me accountable for my actions. I will not
Speaker 4: go to court.
Speaker 3: So why'd you do it?
Speaker 4: The old world is dying My world, the free Orcs
Speaker 4: of Cascadia. We're not going to replace the old world,
Speaker 4: but we will be part of its replacement. In order
Speaker 4: to do that, we have to take ourselves seriously. An
Speaker 4: element of that struggle is the struggle to create meaning,
Speaker 4: to create a new sacred. I killed Rick Green because
Speaker 4: he was defiling something meant to be sacred. How so
Speaker 4: we share an esthetic, but he didn't understand what it
Speaker 4: meant to be an orc.
Speaker 3: You killed him because he was a poser.
Speaker 4: I guess you could put it like that.
Speaker 3: So the lesson here is, don't be a poser.
Speaker 4: Don't be a poser.
Speaker 3: You heard it here first. Kids, don't be a poser,
Speaker 3: or golf and ball will literally murder you. They picked
Speaker 3: me up in the parking lot of grocery outlet in
Speaker 3: northeast Portland. That's a mundane detail, I suppose, but perhaps
Speaker 3: the single most remarkable thing about my trip was the
Speaker 3: ever present contrast between mondanity and the bizarre. I bought
Speaker 3: a case of coconut water while we waited, orcs might
Speaker 3: like coconut water. Who doesn't like coconut water? They showed
Speaker 3: up in a mid teens Honda Civic Sedan, and I'd
Speaker 3: been hoping for something out of Mad Max. The two
Speaker 3: women who got out, one cis one trans, both white,
Speaker 3: were dressed in clean gray tank tops and leggings, like
Speaker 3: half the women who live in Portland. To be honest,
Speaker 3: I only noticed them in the parking lot at all
Speaker 3: because the trans woman was cute. Hell Fire the sis
Speaker 3: woman asked. She was tall and severe, with the fierce
Speaker 3: but almost trustworthy look of a lone shark, or, as
Speaker 3: it turned out, an Orcish enforcer. That's me, I said Fenric.
Speaker 3: The this woman offered her name, but no handshake, fist
Speaker 3: bump or hug. I nodded. Nor Inda, the trans woman said,
Speaker 3: Like a lot of trans women these days, she didn't
Speaker 3: bother to feminize her voice. Her name sounded familiar, but
Speaker 3: I couldn't place it. How is this going to work?
Speaker 3: I asked. We're going to drive around back where no
Speaker 3: one can see us. Fenric said, We're going to take
Speaker 3: your phone and laptop and any electronics and put them
Speaker 3: in a faraday in the car. Then we're going to
Speaker 3: put you in the trunk and drive out to the forest.
Speaker 3: We'll provide you with a recorder and notebook when we arrive.
Speaker 3: You'll get your stuff back when we leave. I nodded.
Speaker 3: I'd pretty much expected this. Do you need to use
Speaker 3: the bathroom? Nor Inda asked, have any medical conditions we
Speaker 3: should know about? No, and no, I said, either of
Speaker 3: you want a coconut water. Goblin Forest sang in English,
Speaker 3: but Crimpetole's lyrics were all in Tolkien's Black Speech Dark Speech.
Speaker 4: Our lyrics were in dark Speech.
Speaker 3: Stokin referred to the language as black speech.
Speaker 4: Tolkien meant well, but he was about the most influential
Speaker 4: unconsciously racist author of the twentieth century. All his villains
Speaker 4: were either Green or Middle Eastern. When you engage with
Speaker 4: the work of historical authors, especially when you make derivative
Speaker 4: works a century later, you have to adapt to one's
Speaker 4: own social context. Calling the language black speech today is
Speaker 4: at best wildly misleading. Its name is a translation anyway,
Speaker 4: It's possible that dark speech is just as accurate. Besides,
Speaker 4: Tokien didn't write the language. He only wrote like sixteen
Speaker 4: words or something. We wrote the rest. Most of us
Speaker 4: prefer to translate the name of it as dark speech.
Speaker 3: Since when are murderers pc?
Speaker 4: My status is a person who has ended the life
Speaker 4: of another person, carries no implications about my personal ethics
Speaker 4: other than that I clearly believe there are circumstances under
Speaker 4: which it's okay to kill someone.
Speaker 3: Imagine being at the Renaissance Fair when the apocalypse hits
Speaker 3: and you're stuck trying to reach creates society surrounded by
Speaker 3: swords and minstrels and these and thows. You know how
Speaker 3: that sounds like either heaven or hell, depending on who
Speaker 3: you are and also who you're stuck there with. That
Speaker 3: was my first impression of the village of Gray Morrow.
Speaker 3: The fires out west have burned forest after forest and
Speaker 3: small town after small town, and no one tries to
Speaker 3: deny that pretty much every bio region on the planet
Speaker 3: is going through transformation right now. It's in the worst spots,
Speaker 3: these dead ecologies that the post civilization movement has found
Speaker 3: its roots, like wild flowers growing up between paving stones
Speaker 3: or rats hiding in the walls, I guess, depending on
Speaker 3: who you ask. Gray Morrow sits in the scorched graveyard
Speaker 3: of a Douglas Fir forest, halfway up a mountain, occupying
Speaker 3: the remains of an evacuated town. Slab foundations are all
Speaker 3: that remain of the original structures. A seasonal creek runs
Speaker 3: through what was recently a river bed at the edge
Speaker 3: of the village and long abandoned train tracks skirt the
Speaker 3: ridge above town. Even armed with all of that information,
Speaker 3: you'd still have at least seventy or eighty possible spots
Speaker 3: to search satellite imagery with help. Of course, I can't
Speaker 3: imagine that the Big six techs or the US government
Speaker 3: don't know where Gray Morrow is. The residence of gray
Speaker 3: Morrow in general and Golfenboe in particular, had an awful
Speaker 3: lot to lose by letting me write this report. Noorinda
Speaker 3: let me out of the trunk, and she smiled when
Speaker 3: she saw me. Her bottom teeth were filed. That should
Speaker 3: have been unnerving, but I've always been a sucker for
Speaker 3: face tattoos or anything that really shows someone as going
Speaker 3: for broke. Fenrick just stared at me severe. Being severe
Speaker 3: was pretty much her thing, as far as I could tell.
Speaker 3: She took a sip from her coconut water. Three other
Speaker 3: cars filled a makeshift parking lot. The village itself was
Speaker 3: surrounded by a wall built from blackened logs, set upright
Speaker 3: and buried in the ruins of the road. My escorts
Speaker 3: had changed clothes en route. Fenrick looked like a bandit
Speaker 3: out of Skyrim, complete with iron puldron on one shoulder
Speaker 3: and a hand axe strapped to her belt. I won't lie,
Speaker 3: it was a good look. I'm no fashion reporter, but
Speaker 3: I figure half the magazines in New York would love
Speaker 3: to get someone out here and take pictures of Orcs
Speaker 3: like her. Noorinda wore a simple, modest dress of undyed wool.
Speaker 3: Imagine a Viking kindergarten teacher who also wears a rather
Speaker 3: large dagger horizontally on her belt at the small of
Speaker 3: her back. My crushing on her intensified. She handed me
Speaker 3: a spiral notebook in an old fashioned digital recorder, and
Speaker 3: we walked into the village. A lot of people say
Speaker 3: that you killed Rick Green because you were jealous of
Speaker 3: Goblin Forest's success. That the Orcish code insisted that if
Speaker 3: you wanted the throne, you had to kill the reigning monarch.
Speaker 3: Golf and Bull stopped fidgeting and stared directly at me,
Speaker 3: his dark brown eyes boring into me.
Speaker 4: That's bullshit. I'm sorry, it's like three layers deep of bullshit.
Speaker 3: He was still staring at me. I was starting to
Speaker 3: regret this line of questioning.
Speaker 4: Okay, to start, there are pretty much two ways to
Speaker 4: interpret the Orcish Code of Honor. It's not written down anywhere,
Speaker 4: but there's some strong central themes, like an interdependence between
Speaker 4: individual sovereignty and collective identity. We value strength. The idea
Speaker 4: is that everyone develops their own strengths, whatever they may be,
Speaker 4: for the benefit of all. One should be as self
Speaker 4: reliant as one is able to be, both for one's
Speaker 4: own sake and again for the community's sake. I care
Speaker 4: deeply about this. That same basic idea, though, can be
Speaker 4: interpreted two different ways.
Speaker 3: So there's a split in the orc community.
Speaker 4: Damn right, there's a split. The free Orcs are matriarchal
Speaker 4: and the or Scene are patriarchal.
Speaker 3: Golfin Will produced a cigarette from god knows where, considering
Speaker 3: how little he was wearing, and lit it with a
Speaker 3: lighter from the same mysterious origin. It wasn't tobacco, it
Speaker 3: wasn't weed, maybe mugwart.
Speaker 4: The matriarchal way of interpreting those tenets is roughly anarchist.
Speaker 4: It's anti authoritarian, an anti nationalist. At the very least.
Speaker 4: We respect the wisdom of elders, children and women, self
Speaker 4: identifying women, but the hierarchy is anything but rigid, and
Speaker 4: the guidelines are anything but laws. Most importantly, our sense
Speaker 4: of community or tribe is fluid. Gray Morrow is a
Speaker 4: free orc village. Go fifteen miles southeast and you'll find
Speaker 4: a larger village lonely mountain there or scene. The patriarchal
Speaker 4: way of interpreting Orkish tenants is roughly fascistic. Authority is absolute.
Speaker 4: Rank within the hierarchy affects every aspect of one's own life.
Speaker 4: It's not racialized, but it's nationalistic. There are very specific
Speaker 4: considerations of who is and isn't a part of any
Speaker 4: given social grouping, and definitions of strength tend to skew
Speaker 4: toward boring shit like physical size and power.
Speaker 3: So you tell any doubters that you weren't trying to
Speaker 3: claim the Goblin throne because your faction of Orcs doesn't
Speaker 3: work that way.
Speaker 4: No Orkish culture works that way. Even those fascistic shits
Speaker 4: don't work that way. Among the or scene. If you
Speaker 4: kill your superior, people aren't going to just suddenly start
Speaker 4: kissing your ass. They will literally flay you and turn
Speaker 4: your skin into a battle flag. You advance in rank
Speaker 4: by demonstrating your capacity to lead. This isn't some fucking
Speaker 4: Hollywood bullshit. Evil is a lot more banal than that.
Speaker 3: I didn't have the heart or maybe the courage to
Speaker 3: tell him that. To me, to pretty much any outsider,
Speaker 3: Hollywood bullshit is exactly what the whole place looked like.
Speaker 3: When you say battle flag, what do you mean? Who
Speaker 3: do they do? Battle with?
Speaker 4: Us? The free orcs? Are you at war for the
Speaker 4: very soul of our culture?
Speaker 3: How'd that start?
Speaker 4: When I cut down Rick Green the Mountain King?
Speaker 3: You killed him because he was the leader of a
Speaker 3: rival faction, then, not because he was a poser.
Speaker 4: They weren't a rival faction until I killed him, But
Speaker 4: sure he was a poser, though all fascists are posers.
Speaker 3: Did you go on tour with Goblin Forrest specifically to
Speaker 3: murder him?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Probably?
Speaker 3: What do you mean probably? That was a very specific
Speaker 3: question about a very specific intention.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess I'd been thinking about killing him
Speaker 4: for a while. It was premeditated, and it wasn't you know.
Speaker 3: No, I don't know, because I've never killed anyone.
Speaker 4: So it's like, I've known Rick Green almost five years.
Speaker 4: He and I and maybe thirty other people. We started
Speaker 4: this whole thing. Goblin Metal of the Orcs all of that.
Speaker 4: Rick Green's always been a fucking bastard. I figured I'd
Speaker 4: probably kill him one day for being kind of a
Speaker 4: Nazi or whatever. Then we go on tour together and
Speaker 4: I tell myself, hey, if this goes badly, I can
Speaker 4: always just kill him on stage. You've got to understand,
Speaker 4: Orcis culture wasn't even a year old at that point.
Speaker 4: We weren't split into the Free Orcs and the or
Speaker 4: Scene yet. There were only maybe five villages total. We
Speaker 4: were just starting to explore what it meant to be ourselves,
Speaker 4: what kind of culture we could build. Then, while we
Speaker 4: were on tour, I hear he's got himself crowned the
Speaker 4: Mountain King. And this isn't a game. I don't know
Speaker 4: how to get that through to you or your readers.
Speaker 4: This is our life. It's one thing to put on
Speaker 4: a silly hat and pretend to tell people what to
Speaker 4: do in some larp somewhere. But Rick Green had gotten
Speaker 4: himself coronated for real dictator over actual people. So I
Speaker 4: killed him. The Free Yorks split off the or Scene,
Speaker 4: closed ranks, and we've been at war ever since.
Speaker 3: Am I safe here? He didn't answer me, at least
Speaker 3: he didn't stare me down again. He just looked off
Speaker 3: into the distance, maybe towards lonely mountain. I've been to
Speaker 3: LARPs before, where when you show up, they make you
Speaker 3: put on garb. That is to say, they make you
Speaker 3: wear period appropriate clothes, or whatever weird interpretation of period
Speaker 3: appropriate that particular group of LARPers had come up with.
Speaker 3: As I met the denizens of the village, they all
Speaker 3: came out to the parking lot to introduce themselves. I
Speaker 3: realized they didn't insist on anything like that because they
Speaker 3: weren't LARPing. Pretty much, every one of them was dressed
Speaker 3: like either a Viking re anactor or a fantasy game villain,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't an act. About thirty adults and eight
Speaker 3: kids lived there, running the age gamut from six months
Speaker 3: to seventy eight years. They told me their names and pronouns.
Speaker 3: About a third told me she, a third he in
Speaker 3: the third day. Many of them were white or past
Speaker 3: as such, but a significant minority were black. Neurinda told
Speaker 3: me later their orc villages with substantially higher proportions of
Speaker 3: people of color. That might be true, but I got
Speaker 3: the impression she said it to convince herself or me
Speaker 3: that the free Orcs aren't a specifically white phenomenon. No One,
Speaker 3: no one decent, likes looking around their community or seen
Speaker 3: and seeing only white faces smiling back. After everyone introduced themselves,
Speaker 3: immediately forgot all their names. There are only so many
Speaker 3: fantasy names like Lazari and de Molin that you can
Speaker 3: hear before they all just sound the same. Narinda and
Speaker 3: Fenrik flanked me as we walked through a gate in
Speaker 3: the wall into the village. It's strange to say village
Speaker 3: in America. We don't really have villages here, But in
Speaker 3: some ways Gray Morrow isn't the United States. And to
Speaker 3: be certain, it was a village, maybe ten or fifteen
Speaker 3: houses crowded together along either side of a single potholed street.
Speaker 3: Two architectural styles reigned, junkyard shacks built out of railroad
Speaker 3: cars and regular cars, and traditional American log cabins, many
Speaker 3: of them were adorned with solar panels. At the end
Speaker 3: of the street, near the black palisade, the beginnings of
Speaker 3: a stone tower stood fifteen feet high. I wasn't sure
Speaker 3: if I was impressed or not. On one hand, the
Speaker 3: village couldn't have been around longer than three or four
Speaker 3: years and they had already done so much. On the
Speaker 3: other hand, and it was filthy. Everyone was filthy. I'm
Speaker 3: kind of obsessed with the post civilization movement, so I
Speaker 3: wish I could tell you everyone looked well fed and happy.
Speaker 3: They didn't. People looked proud, and they didn't look miserable.
Speaker 3: But there was an intensity in everyone's eyes you simply
Speaker 3: could not mistake for happiness. A trash pile needed tending
Speaker 3: near the front gate, and some of the animal hides
Speaker 3: stretched for tanning had begun to rot. Everything looked like
Speaker 3: it was about to fall apart, both physically and metaphorically.
Speaker 3: What now, I asked when we reached the central square,
Speaker 3: a stone cobbled chunk of what had been once an intersection,
Speaker 3: now decorated with poorly tended gardens and rustic benches of
Speaker 3: dubious quality. You're here to interview Golfenbah, are you not,
Speaker 3: Fnrick asked. I am. Golphen Bol doesn't live here. I
Speaker 3: waited for her to elaborate. Golfenbol lives in the forest
Speaker 3: with the rest of his band. He's on his way.
Speaker 3: You'll meet him a bit outside of town. I'll take
Speaker 3: you to him when he gets there. Someone near the
Speaker 3: gate shouted and both of my escorts flinched bodily and
Speaker 3: turned to look. It was just a kid chasing in
Speaker 3: another k with a wooden sword. Fenrik and Nerindo were
Speaker 3: on edge. Something was about to happen. Tell me about
Speaker 3: your new band, Alcareth. What does the name mean?
Speaker 4: Alcareth is the dark speech word for the phase of
Speaker 4: the moon on the last night before the new moon,
Speaker 4: the last sliver of light. Alcareth is a holy day,
Speaker 4: a day of self reflection. Our band's music attempts to
Speaker 4: capture that spirit of self reflection. On Alcaireth, we listened
Speaker 4: to our naysayer and think about ourselves and our community
Speaker 4: your naysayer. Free Orkish villages don't have leaders, We have naysayers.
Speaker 4: Two years ago we tried rotating leadership. It was ineffectual.
Speaker 4: We didn't need leaders. We stuck with it anyway because
Speaker 4: we felt like we had to, because those were the
Speaker 4: rules we had come up with. Then one person said, basically,
Speaker 4: this is bullshit. We don't need someone to tell us
Speaker 4: what to do. We need someone to tell us what
Speaker 4: to stop doing. We need someone to tell us what
Speaker 4: we're doing wrong. Every new moon, every village picks a
Speaker 4: new name naysayer. That person spends the month picking up
Speaker 4: heart group structures, observing what's happening, being critical on alcareth.
Speaker 4: We fast and listen to the naysayer. They don't offer
Speaker 4: solutions necessarily, but instead bring our problems to light. Does
Speaker 4: that work surprisingly well? Except about a third of the
Speaker 4: naysayers end up leaving after their month. Some go to
Speaker 4: other villages, Some go to live in the forest, like
Speaker 4: Nearinda al Sareth's singer did, but most leave the woods.
Speaker 4: As we put it, most go back to civilization.
Speaker 3: That's why Nearinda's name is sounded familiar when she didn't.
Speaker 3: She introduced herself. To be honest, I saw your name
Speaker 3: listen in the liner notes and didn't pay much attention
Speaker 3: to the rest.
Speaker 4: That's an argument for me to take my name off
Speaker 4: our next release.
Speaker 3: If there is one, why did you put it there
Speaker 3: in the first place, Why did you agree to this interview?
Speaker 3: And what do you mean if there is one?
Speaker 4: I told you we're at war. Yeah, we're losing that war.
Speaker 3: He took a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm.
Speaker 3: He didn't strike me as a man who was afraid
Speaker 3: to cry, but he was clearly trying to keep his composure.
Speaker 4: There's no way that Gray Morrow would have let you
Speaker 4: talk to me here if any of us thought that
Speaker 4: Gray Morrow had a future. There's no way I would
Speaker 4: have talked to you at all if I thought I
Speaker 4: was going to be alive to see another Ulcereth.
Speaker 3: Why are you losing? Why are you going to die?
Speaker 4: It's not a question of military efficacy, or of bravery
Speaker 4: or strength or any of that shit. It's just a
Speaker 4: question of numbers. Orsine Society is a military society. Every
Speaker 4: member fights. As far as we can tell, They've got
Speaker 4: fifteen hundred warriors. We've got five hundred.
Speaker 3: So use guerrilla tactics. Golfenbal shook his head.
Speaker 4: Striking Rick Green down from behind was a cowardly action.
Speaker 4: I can justify it almost by the fact that Green
Speaker 4: had declared himself my monarch. But the Orsine warriors are
Speaker 4: my peers. They would not stalk me in the night.
Speaker 4: I will not stalk them. That sounds, I know how
Speaker 4: it sounds. So this interview I want to be remembered.
Speaker 4: I want the free Orcs of Cascadia to be remembered.
Speaker 4: I put my name on the liner note, so that
Speaker 4: someone like you, an anti fascist music blogger, would talk
Speaker 4: to me. I leveraged my own infamy to draw attention
Speaker 4: to what we're doing, what we've done.
Speaker 3: I fucking hate the tragic utopian trope? What like seriously,
Speaker 3: like fuck you? Okay, I know I'm here as a journalist,
Speaker 3: but I'm not going to write your fucking obituary. I
Speaker 3: don't think I've ever turned on an interview subject like
Speaker 3: that before. I get it. Hopeless causes are beautiful, But
Speaker 3: as I understand it, the whole goddamn point of holding
Speaker 3: on to your honor more firmly than your life is
Speaker 3: because the world is a better place for everyone if
Speaker 3: more people did that. Right, Okay, the world isn't a
Speaker 3: goddamn better place if you let your subculture. And I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I know it's very serious and I'm not trying to
Speaker 3: downplay it, but that's what this is, A musical subculture
Speaker 3: be taken over by fucking Nazis, and I respect that
Speaker 3: you're going to fight them for it. That's cool. But
Speaker 3: if you consider buying some guns, maybe a few drones.
Speaker 3: They'll come in here with spears, right, and you'll fight
Speaker 3: them off with other spears. It's twenty twenty five. Man,
Speaker 3: there are fucking Nazis everywhere. If you don't give a
Speaker 3: shit about going to jail or dying, then fucking shoot
Speaker 3: the Nazis who are trying to kill you.
Speaker 4: You don't understand, You're fucking right.
Speaker 3: I don't, if I'm being honest. Most of the time
Speaker 3: I was waiting, I spent flirting with Narinda and avoiding
Speaker 3: talking to Fenric. Miorinda asked me to keep our conversation
Speaker 3: off the record. We didn't talk about Gray Morrow or
Speaker 3: the orc thing much. Anyway. Everything I learned about the
Speaker 3: village and its culture I learned by observation only. An
Speaker 3: elderly man came by and offered us cold tea and
Speaker 3: wooden mugs steeped BlackBerry leaves, sweetened with juice from the berries.
Speaker 3: He said, no caffeine, no other particularly strong medicinal effects.
Speaker 3: The three of us took cups from his platter, and
Speaker 3: he continued down the street passing out drinks. No one
Speaker 3: else approached us. I watched people go about their lives,
Speaker 3: though the tension in the air was thick. I saw
Speaker 3: a few people look at cell phones and spent a
Speaker 3: not inconsiderable amount of time trying to decide if that
Speaker 3: was hypocritical and or bad opsec Eventually I gave up,
Speaker 3: because frankly, it wasn't my business, and one of the
Speaker 3: most interesting things about all the post civilization groups is
Speaker 3: all the bits and pieces they choose to carry over
Speaker 3: from mainstream culture. Finally, after an hour, Fenric stood up
Speaker 3: come with me. I followed her to the other side
Speaker 3: of town and through a smaller gate. On the other side,
Speaker 3: a box truck that had seen better days sat on
Speaker 3: a road that had too. We skirted around the truck
Speaker 3: and up into the black forest. The scorched hills looked
Speaker 3: more like meadows than forests, with green grass and undergrowth
Speaker 3: broken only by black spikes of burned trees. We followed
Speaker 3: the path this way and that, and soon I was lost.
Speaker 3: Soon after fog set in, I was further through the
Speaker 3: looking glass than I had realized. I imagined us lost
Speaker 3: a mile from a town full of people who give
Speaker 3: a double meaning to the word stranger, and probably at
Speaker 3: least an hour's drive from civilization. My guard hadn't shown
Speaker 3: me much in the way of kindness, and I was
Speaker 3: on my way to meet someone I knew to be
Speaker 3: a murderer. It's the kindest shit I live for. If
Speaker 3: I'm being honest, I love my stupid, fucking weird job
Speaker 3: and the stupid fucking weird world we live in. Thank you,
Speaker 3: my readers, for making that possible for me. Be sure
Speaker 3: to check out my Patreon page if this is the
Speaker 3: first thing you've read by me. Lots of members only
Speaker 3: content over there, including a few snippets of orc song
Speaker 3: from Narinda. The only thing I saw in the distance
Speaker 3: was a single black spire, thicker than the dead snags
Speaker 3: around me. As we approached, it came into focus as
Speaker 3: a boulder jutting up into the sky like an angry finger.
Speaker 3: Sitting at the base of it was a short man
Speaker 3: with a sword across his lap. Golfenbol. I'll leave you
Speaker 3: to to it, Fenric said. She left me alone with
Speaker 3: an armed murderer. I sat down across from him, took
Speaker 3: out the notebook and recorder, and asked him questions. All right,
Speaker 3: convince me.
Speaker 4: We can't fight them dishonorably, because you can't protect an
Speaker 4: idea by defiling that idea. We don't want them to
Speaker 4: destroy our way of life, but we don't want to
Speaker 4: destroy our way of life ourselves either.
Speaker 3: The basic problem with the ore scene is that they're
Speaker 3: interpreting your coat of honor to mean might makes right. Yeah. Yes,
Speaker 3: By facing them an open battle and nobly dying or
Speaker 3: whatever for your goddamn plan is, you're just letting them
Speaker 3: make might right. You're letting their superior numbers dictate what
Speaker 3: your culture has to look like. It's like majority voting,
Speaker 3: but even dummer because more people die. I expected them
Speaker 3: to double down on his position. Most men would.
Speaker 4: What do you suggest instead.
Speaker 3: Fuck, I don't know. Don't be here when they attack,
Speaker 3: Go somewhere else, stay on the move, build your strength.
Speaker 3: Oh shit, that's what Rick Green was doing, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Huh Goblin Forrest singing in English, a stupid name like
Speaker 3: Rick Green. All that shit was designed to make Goblin
Speaker 3: metal more palatable to the masses, to get fans, to
Speaker 3: get recruits for his stupid, fucking fascy goals.
Speaker 4: Yep, do that.
Speaker 3: I mean, don't become fascists or change your name or
Speaker 3: make your music worse. Everyone knows Goblin forst and have
Speaker 3: shit on krimpatool. Just don't be obscure for the sake
Speaker 3: of being obscure. Fucking advertise you have a decent thing
Speaker 3: going here. People are abandoning mainstream society left and right.
Speaker 3: No political pun intended. Make it easier for them to
Speaker 3: get here. Make it so that when you fight the
Speaker 3: fashion your epics, swords and spears, Viking deathmatch, you win
Speaker 3: better yet, make it so they don't even want to
Speaker 3: fuck with you because they know they lose.
Speaker 4: I don't know whether that would work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but dying doesn't work either.
Speaker 4: The Ark way of life isn't meant to be some revolution.
Speaker 4: It's not meant to supplant the mainstream. It will never
Speaker 4: appeal to the mainstream, not without losing its soul. Would
Speaker 4: you live like this? Would you want to?
Speaker 3: You're right, I'm obsessed with you weird subcultures, but I
Speaker 3: wouldn't want to live like you. We both stared at
Speaker 3: each other in silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. We're
Speaker 3: both just thinking, okay, scrap that. You're never going to
Speaker 3: get big numbers. You don't need big numbers. You don't
Speaker 3: want big numbers. You don't need recruits, you need allies.
Speaker 4: What would that look like?
Speaker 1: God?
Speaker 3: Damn all Orkish men not actually listen to women's ideas.
Speaker 3: I'm used to guys just talking over me or shutting
Speaker 3: down completely. If I get mad.
Speaker 4: Free Orkish men, I would hope know how to listen.
Speaker 3: Guns break the spell and the spell you're casting here
Speaker 3: it's powerful, it's good. So no guns. Other people have guns, though,
Speaker 3: Let those people stand guard or make their arm presence.
Speaker 3: Note outside or scene camps, other people have access to,
Speaker 3: say doxing, how many recruits are the or scene going
Speaker 3: to get if every time some wanna be forest Nazi
Speaker 3: dude joins, someone tells his mother what they're about, or
Speaker 3: access to the media, How many recruits are going to
Speaker 3: join if everyone knows the orsine or posers putting out substandard,
Speaker 3: watered down goblin metal just to try and lure in
Speaker 3: impressiable military aged men to fight their holy war.
Speaker 4: You'll write those stories.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to write you any propaganda, but sure
Speaker 3: I'll tell the truth.
Speaker 4: How do we get allies?
Speaker 3: But at another single, maybe a full length? The Gray
Speaker 3: Fog of a Ruined Forest was the best shit I've
Speaker 3: hurt in years. You're redefining folk music just like you
Speaker 3: redefine metal. Put out shit like that and I'll cover it.
Speaker 3: Talk to more press, maybe someone other than you. Not
Speaker 3: everyone's going to be sympathetic to what you did, even
Speaker 3: if that fucking guy was a fucking tree Nazi. A
Speaker 3: hunting horn cut through the fog and through our conversation,
Speaker 3: and my subject's face fell into despair for a half
Speaker 3: second before determination took over.
Speaker 4: What's that interviews over? I thought there would be more
Speaker 4: time another day. At least, we have to get you
Speaker 4: out of here.
Speaker 3: Turns out Fenrick had taken us on a purposefully circuituitous
Speaker 3: route into the woods. It wasn't a quarter of a
Speaker 3: mile straight down hill before Golfenbolt and I reached the
Speaker 3: box truck at the back entrance to Gray Morrow. Miorinda
Speaker 3: and Fenrick stood there talking with a kid, maybe fifteen,
Speaker 3: who was out of breath. She was dressed in scraps
Speaker 3: of fur and leather and cloth, like you might imagine
Speaker 3: a medieval beggar. It wasn't until I noticed all the
Speaker 3: twigs and sticks and moss tangled up in the fabrics
Speaker 3: I recognized it as camouflage. I saw about thirty the scout,
Speaker 3: for that's what she was said about. Fenerick asked exactly
Speaker 3: thirty ten with pikes, ten with tower shields and swords,
Speaker 3: five archers, two scouts to command, one noncombatant. I'd guess
Speaker 3: a surgeon, but I couldn't promise how far away I asked.
Speaker 3: Fenric glared at me for interrupting. Five miles Nearinda said
Speaker 3: probably three and a half by now downhill. We have
Speaker 3: time to get you out with the children and the elders.
Speaker 3: The scout had just run five miles up hill because
Speaker 3: she was too stubborn to use a walky talkie or
Speaker 3: a cell phone. We should evacuate every one. Gulfenbol said
Speaker 3: what Fenrick asked. We've got walls and almost even numbers.
Speaker 3: Fuck them, this is our home. I wanted to shout
Speaker 3: at her. I wanted to shake her, to tell her
Speaker 3: this wasn't a fucking game, that it wasn't the twelfth century,
Speaker 3: and that killing people or dying over some squatted chunk
Speaker 3: of nowhere was somewhere between stupid and reprehensible. I didn't,
Speaker 3: though I'm a good journalist, this isn't the place for
Speaker 3: us to debate this, Nernda said, and all four of
Speaker 3: them walked through the gate and left me standing by
Speaker 3: the truck. That was why the gardens were untended, and
Speaker 3: the trash was piled up and the hides were left
Speaker 3: to rot. They were expecting this. They'd lost their will
Speaker 3: to pretend like their lives were going to continue to
Speaker 3: progress forward. I'm not the first to suggest that nihilism
Speaker 3: is the dominant affect of society today, with climate change
Speaker 3: destroying communities and bioregions all over the map, with the
Speaker 3: economic crisis deepening, in the wealth gap widening. I think
Speaker 3: all of us are guilty of forgetting to tend our gardens.
Speaker 3: All of us have a hard time figuring out why
Speaker 3: it matters whether or not we deal with our trash.
Speaker 3: All of us have proverbial or literal Nazis marching on us.
Speaker 3: The Nazis the free Orcs of Cascadia are dealing with
Speaker 3: are the literal variety. Some costplaying fascist was about to
Speaker 3: stick a sword between Nearinda's ribs. Bill rose in my throat.
Speaker 3: I don't know I believe in love at first sight
Speaker 3: or any of that shit, but I just couldn't handle
Speaker 3: the idea. I fucking hate honor. I will never be
Speaker 3: an orc. I got lost running through solutions to the
Speaker 3: problem of hypothetical arrows and swords that were going to
Speaker 3: interfere with Lorenda's continued existence. Most of those solutions involved
Speaker 3: assault rifles, which I didn't have access to. Cars though
Speaker 3: were available. What's thirty warriors of medieval armor versus one
Speaker 3: station wagon driven by an angry woman with a lead
Speaker 3: foot put the odds and my favor. I wasn't going
Speaker 3: to do it, though. Instead I waited to evacuate. I
Speaker 3: don't think that speaks well of me. Individually and in groups,
Speaker 3: people came out through the gate and loaded bags and
Speaker 3: baskets onto the back of the truck Neriinda returned with
Speaker 3: a simple backpack sewn from rawhide. Most of her belongings
Speaker 3: were probably wherever she and Golfenboul and the rest of
Speaker 3: Alserth lived. She handed me my phone, I didn't have service.
Speaker 3: I wondered whether or not she and golfenbul were dating.
Speaker 3: It wasn't relevant to the present moment exactly, but my
Speaker 3: mind always as a way of thinking about bullshit to
Speaker 3: avoid thinking about impending doom. Another important effect of our
Speaker 3: generation distract ourselves with disaster with petty things like love
Speaker 3: and jealousy. I don't know what you said to Golfenbolnerinda said,
Speaker 3: but whatever it was worked. He just convinced everyone to evacuate. Everyone,
Speaker 3: I asked, shocked, everyone except him and Fenrik and Gorn.
Speaker 3: Which one's Gorn, the man who brought us tea? Do
Speaker 3: you remember him? He's old as shit, though, I said,
Speaker 3: because I have no fucking manners or common sense ones, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's old as shit. He's a linguist by training. His
Speaker 3: main hobby is writing morbid poetry and dark speech, and
Speaker 3: when he can't figure out how to say something, he
Speaker 3: just makes up new words. He developed about a third
Speaker 3: of the language, did all that shit before orc culture
Speaker 3: was even around. He's also a widower three times over.
Speaker 3: He doesn't give a shit about dying. His last chat
Speaker 3: book was called soon I will return to the earth. Oh,
Speaker 3: Gorn is going to die today. Golf and Bull and Fenric,
Speaker 3: they're going to hold the wall as long as they
Speaker 3: can and then fall back to the woods. And you,
Speaker 3: I asked, I'm driving us out of here to another village.
Speaker 3: Then I'll take you home after that. I don't know, girl,
Speaker 3: I don't know. If I signed up for this, I
Speaker 3: might leave the woods go back to being a vettech.
Speaker 3: I just nodded. I was too biased to offer objective
Speaker 3: life advice. Oh, and golf and Ball said, to give
Speaker 3: you this. He said, it's in case he dies. He says,
Speaker 3: you're right, you shouldn't have to write his obituary, so
Speaker 3: he wrote his own. She handed me a piece of paper.
Speaker 3: I piled into the back of the box truck with
Speaker 3: forty other people, many of them in tears, many of
Speaker 3: them in shock, and we drove away from Gray Morrow.
Speaker 3: None of the three Free Orcs survived the battle. Gorn
Speaker 3: died impaled on a spear while holding the gate. Fenric
Speaker 3: was killed by an arrow that struck her in the
Speaker 3: back of the neck as she and Golfenbol ran. Golfenbol,
Speaker 3: Fenric's lover turned and stood his ground over her body.
Speaker 3: I didn't know any of that yet. I found out
Speaker 3: when Mirinda found out two days later. Maybe all three
Speaker 3: of them would have survived if I hadn't interfered, and
Speaker 3: they'd all fought with equal numbers, Maybe more of them
Speaker 3: would have died. Maybe I can forgive myself, Maybe there's
Speaker 3: nothing to forgive. In the back of the truck, by
Speaker 3: the light coming in through a crack in the steel wall,
Speaker 3: I read Golfenbol's note.
Speaker 4: All my life, I didn't give a shit about anything.
Speaker 4: I liked weed and metal in whatever counterculture trend was
Speaker 4: big in a given year, but my heart wasn't in it.
Speaker 4: I just went through the motions until I became an
Speaker 4: orc saying I'm an orc and meaning it isn't like
Speaker 4: a trans man saying he's a man in meaning it.
Speaker 4: Gender is a social construct that goes back as far
Speaker 4: as I understand, to the beginning of humanity. There has
Speaker 4: always been gender, and there have always been people who
Speaker 4: transgress the roles assigned to them at birth. An orc
Speaker 4: is a social construct that we just fucking made up.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess the orc is an archetype too,
Speaker 4: but it's a fantasy archetype. We know what's make believe.
Speaker 4: Make believe is what gave my life meaning. I promise
Speaker 4: you that for me. The day we decided we were
Speaker 4: orcs was the first day that the sun shone benevolence
Speaker 4: upon the world. It was the first day that color
Speaker 4: radiated from everything I saw. It was the first day
Speaker 4: that the rain on my roof tapped out codes of meaning.
Speaker 4: It was the first day of my life, my real life,
Speaker 4: my first ulcerat I fell in love with the world.
Speaker 4: Everyone finds meaning in different ways. I found meaning by
Speaker 4: believing in some shit we made up and letting that
Speaker 4: be real. I was born Jason Sanchez. I died Gulfumble.
Speaker 4: I'm not sorry. That was great.
Speaker 1: That was so fun.
Speaker 4: I mean, not my narration, the story. The story, not
Speaker 4: my narration. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: The second way finished, we all just got that little
Speaker 1: smirk on our face, like.
Speaker 4: That was delightful. Yeah, Margaret, you're the best. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, if I were going to be in orc
Speaker 4: there would be rifles but problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is absolutely This is like a really good
Speaker 3: example of what I mean that when I write utopian
Speaker 3: fiction or like fiction about other societies. I'm not saying hey,
Speaker 3: everyone go do this or like this is what people
Speaker 3: should do.
Speaker 4: No, I mean I liked that. I like it. I
Speaker 4: like that I've had that experience in other cultures, you know,
Speaker 4: places like slab city and different kind of encampments and
Speaker 4: whatnot that I've spent a lot of time and as
Speaker 4: a journalist where it's like I'm fascinated by and I
Speaker 4: respect aspects of this, but like I I also think
Speaker 4: some of these things are that you're doing or dumb
Speaker 4: or I don't understand why you do it or this
Speaker 4: isn't like you know, but you don't. Your notes don't matter.
Speaker 4: You know, that's not your job, although actually having an
Speaker 4: impact in that way is kind of Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Somebody go, somebody go make an orc village. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll go out there, I'll report on it.
Speaker 3: We'll go.
Speaker 1: It'll be fun.
Speaker 3: Don't take the band name all sorts, though I already
Speaker 3: stole that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a number of dope band names in here.
Speaker 3: All right, people should make orc folk. I'd be really
Speaker 3: excited to.
Speaker 4: Hear make orc folk abandon civilization to live as fantasy creatures,
Speaker 4: fight fascists, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Margaret, is there anything you'd like to plug?
Speaker 3: Well? I do you have a new book out or
Speaker 3: a reprint of an older book called A Country Ghosts
Speaker 3: that is a more directly utopian book. It's out from Akpress,
Speaker 3: came out last month, and I think that's it. That's
Speaker 3: the main thing. Oh, you can support me on Patreon,
Speaker 3: although it's no longer supporting me on Patreon. It's supporting
Speaker 3: a publishing thing that I'm starting back up with people
Speaker 3: called Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness, and it will publish
Speaker 3: fiction and memoir and like the kind of like more
Speaker 3: culture side of radical politics and less the like theory
Speaker 3: and stuff.
Speaker 1: What's the patreon.
Speaker 3: Patreon dot com slash Strangers in Entangled Wilderness? Because why
Speaker 3: would I pick short names for things?
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't do that. Yeah, And we have a live
Speaker 1: show coming.
Speaker 4: Up right, Robert, that doesn't sound like us.
Speaker 1: It's a virtual live show of for Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: with our friend prop that's on Thursday, February seventeenth, allegedly
Speaker 1: momenthouse dot com slash Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 4: I can't confes more deny that.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, we've got you a lawyer on here before
Speaker 3: you can.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's let's get Moira on the horn and.
Speaker 1: More come on the horn and tell us if we're
Speaker 1: actually doing this thing show?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Are we also?
Speaker 3: Are we alive?
Speaker 2: That's another question? Oh?
Speaker 4: I text her that most days. All right, Well, thank
Speaker 4: you Margaret, and thank you all for tuning in in
Speaker 4: the first year of the rest of the next year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yo, it could happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts, you can find sources