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becausegoodbye · 10 months

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HRT: five reflections after five months

Holy shit, I've been on the girl-goo for five whole months! (If transmascs can make people squirm by referring to testosterone as 'boy-juice', then I reserve the right to call my estrogen gel 'girl-goo'. If I'm gonna be going to hell anyway, may as well have some fun on the way down.)

There's so much to talk about.

Part 1: Instinctive and ravenous joy

I can be such an overthinker, it's extremely useful for me to notice moments of unreflective pleasure. They hit me upside the head, and are pretty unequivocally the most valuable data my instruments are capable of capturing. So here, then, is something small and great:

A few weeks ago, I was walking to the grocery store, and the light hit a store window in such a way that I could see, just for a moment, noticeable breasts. I'd certainly been tracking developments in private, but this was the first time I'd ever really seen them in a public context. The angle was just right, the late-afternoon sun was perfect, and for that moment they were unmistakable. This was me, and I have breasts. And here's the thing. The instant I saw it, my heart just fucking leapt with joy. No time to think. No time to talk myself into or out of anything. I was just confronted of a surprise vision of myself with breasts, and the instinctive animal of me roared with approval.

Maybe that doesn't surprise you! But it has honestly surprised me a bit. I didn't start HRT hoping to grow breasts. I knew that was part of it, but prior to starting, I genuinely couldn't muster up any feeling about physically growing breasts other than a sage neutrality. I wasn't against it, but it also wasn't really what I was hoping to achieve. What I was most hungry for were the mental and emotional changes: the sensation some trans women describe of the fog in which they've lived their lives – fog which seemed excruciatingly familiar, and which I'd always accepted as permanent – suddenly lifting. I had never been able to access any opinions about what kind of body I might like to have, but those mental and emotional changes? I was capable of wanting those. And it turns out that they're what's allowed me to want things for my body – allowed me to want a body at all – for the very first time.

(There's a goofy paradox lurking here. "Don't know if you want to try hormones? Try hormones and then you will!" Which is both logically fallacious and, for me, true. But I guess a lot of things are like that, really. A lot of experiences can't be understood in their fullness until you've had them. A lot of feelings can only be produced alchemically in response to certain real-life stimuli. It's embarrassingly obvious to me now that I could have pondered the issue for 50 years – thought about it from every possible angle – and not realised that I'd actually be really psyched about growing breasts. Which is a real blow to my love of philosophical rumination, but a fucking life lesson.)

Transitioning hasn't solved all my problems; of course it hasn't. But it has helped me care about solving them. A concrete example: I've been complaining about the criminal precarity of my sham-contractor transcription job for years now. Now, just a couple of days ago, I finally got a new job, also in transcription, but which will pay me a real full-time salary with benefits and paid leave and everything. Even though I'm leery of working full-time, and it's not what I hope to be doing forever, I'm honestly really proud of myself for having finally made the move. That's the kind of thing I've always found hard. Part of what I can now recognise as dysphoria has been my tendency to act like a spectator of my own life, leading to long periods of passivity and stagnancy and sorrow.

To be clear, it's not as though I took hormones and suddenly was some go-getter applying for a dozen jobs a day (there are other reasons why it recently became particularly urgent to get a new job) – but I do think it's connected. Taking hormones is me wrenching a bunch of rusted crusted gears into motion to actually try and fix something that wasn't working in my life. It makes sense that it would help some of the other gears start turning too.

Part 2: The roughs

Hormone replacement has not, admittedly, all been roses. My body's reception to estrogen has been wild, with waves of short-lived but intense symptoms that were genuinely startling to my endocrinologist. We recently found out why. She'd started me on a quite low and introductory dose of estrogen (1.0mg estradiol) in the form of one sachet of Sandrena gel that I'd rub onto my thigh once a day. The assumption was that at our follow-up appointment she'd probably need to increase the dose to get into the female range (some trans women end up needing four gel sachets per day to get to that range), but it was worth starting out small and cautious. But when I got my blood tested after three months, it turned out my E levels were already through the roof: higher than upper end of the cis female range. My endo was genuinely boggled. She had no explanation for it other than that my skin is unusually good at absorbing things?

(My personal headcanon, of course, is that my body is simply extravagantly hungry for estrogen. RAVENOUSLY TRANS. That's not really a thing, but it's fun to imagine. All my beleagured body cells who've always had to deal with asshole male hormones throwing their weight around, suddenly seized with the fire of rebellion! Guillotine the testosterone aristocracy! Long live the estrogen revolutionaries!)

Naturally, we've lowered my dosage now, and it already feels more normalised. But I tell you what: beginning with such an unusually – accidentally – intense blast of estrogen has been a real mixed bag. My breast growth seems like it's been a bit more than most trans women report at five months, which has absolutely been neat. But the downsides have been rough:

Early on (about week 1 to week 3), I was needing to pee more than a dozen times per day. It was insane. My bladder was the same size as ever, but it was like the signals to my brain letting it know when I needed to pee were just completely scrambled. Constantly feeling like I'm busting when barely anything would come out. Slightly hellish.

Then there were the nightmares. From week 2 to around week 8, I was having the worst nightmares I've ever had, an absolute film festival of my emotional traumas and most panicky terrors, and they were bad enough that they'd wake me up, like clockwork, between 4 and 5 am every morning. Every single morning for a month and a half. I didn't get a full or undisturbed night's sleep for that entire time. Just grim violence and acute shame and hot sweats in a cold bed. It was like I was a criminal in the year 2600 receiving psychic punishment for deviant future-crimes. I cannot describe how terrible this was. (Interestingly, I looked into it a bit, and it does seem like female hormones have a marked statistical relationship with nightmares, with pubescent girls reporting an uptick in the vividness and memorability of their nightmares. And while I did find some evidence of other transfemmes experiencing nightmares connected to HRT, the sheer volume and scale of mine does seem pretty unusual.)

More recently (since changing my dosage), I've been experiencing an unusual amount of orthostatic hypotension: the thing where when you get up after sitting or lying down for a while, you suddenly get a bit dizzy and woozy. This really isn't so bad, and based on everything else so far, I'm assuming this will level itself out given a bit of time. But it's still worth keeping an eye on, I think, as it's something that used to happen to me occasionally, but now happens almost every time I stand up.

If nothing else, I guess take the above as evidence of how miraculously good the more intangible benefits of HRT have been for me, given that stopping has never occurred to me as a serious possibility. It's pretty wild to think that I can be peeing 12 times a day and having batshit-vicious nightmares every night and still be like "yeah, this rules actually. Obviously gonna keep going."

This is a body and a person that badly wants to be estrogenised, is the only conclusion. I was genuinely incapable of accessing that want before I started (only the faintest notes of it, a hum when everything else was very quiet), but now it's non-negotiable. Hot coals, spike pits, dungeons full of demons – I will, it seems, put up with a lot just to put my body on this different track.

Part 3: Aren't clothes funny?

I used to love dressing gowns. They were my favourite item of clothing, and I (family-famously) once got a Saturday detention for wearing a dressing gown to school on a casual clothes day. Now, though, I find I never reach for them. It's as though they used to be a way of accessing something – some relaxedness, some ease, some softer kind of masculinity – that I now simply have way better ways of accessing.

Similarly, my winter wardrobe used to revolve entirely around sweaters/jumpers. I have loads of them, all colourful and eccentric and warm. And I still like them! But in the recent cold weather, I haven't been wearing them as often, because ... well, it really clicked for me in the last few months how much high-waistedness is the key to so much femme fashion (high-waisted pants, wearings skirts fully above the navel, etc). Most of my sweaters are too thick to tuck in, so they just hang down over the high waist, negating the effect. I feel like my sweaters have been almost wholly usurped by cardigans. Cardigans are holy garments, who never fail to soften any outfit, and who actually accentuate any high-waisted effect by droopily framing the waist-line on both sides. Who knew? (Tons of people, clearly, but me only recently.)

Money's been punishingly tight recently, so I haven't been able to expand my wardrobe much. Luckily, I'm not in the position some transfems are of 'suddenly needing a whole new wardrobe'. I've been a nonbinary queerdo for the better part of a decade, so I had a lot of femme and femme-adjacent clothes already. And with just some subtle differences in styling (e.g. wearing stuff high-waisted, accessorising, colour-coordinating), even clothes that before used to read as kinda masc can be femmed up in all sorts of ways. I'm really interested in the prospect of making tactical cuts to a bunch of my old beloved T-shirts to make them a more femme style ... though honestly, with high-waisted pants/skirts and a cardigan over, most of them work perfectly well as is. Cautious experiments in that area to come.

Oh, I should post some photos of some outfits? I'm among friends here? Fashion show at lunch? Oh, go on then.

First photo: high-waisted skirt + shirt + cardigan has become my new default template of outfit. Such a soft energy. Dig it tremendously.

Another variation of the form:

And another! (This time with a really lovely purple velvet jacket I was able to get on Depop for criminally cheap.)

Of course, I'm not exclusively operating from that template. Part of the joy of transitioning is being able to play with more masc stuff in a femme way, from a kinda lesbian angle, so I'm also getting to do stuff like this:

(I really like that photo. Who is she to be out on the town? The salons are chattering!)

A while ago I found a really sick velvet-flowered dress in an op shop that is just the right level of gothy and witchy for me. Which is to say: "only a very little bit." I am not personally capable of sustaining a lot of that kind of energy, but give me just a soupçon of it – "season 4 Willow" levels of witch and goth – and I think I can cook a little.

Of course, it's been cold as shit recently, so my outfits have been constrained by the need to be extremely warm! But even so, I love scarves and gloves, I love colour-coordinating everything, and I love being a big cosy rosy cinammon bun.

Finally: the one quasi-big clothes purchase I have made in the last few months is this glorious secondhand plum Gudrun Sjödén corduroy coat. It was really important to me, for reasons that I could not possibly articulate, to have at least one coat of this length-profile. (I suspect romantic comedies set in New York in autumn/winter are to blame.)

Okay okay, that's quite enough visage. Let's get to some suffering.

Part 4: Terrible, terrible clarity

I got yelled at by a ranting transphobe on the street the other week. He was walking briskly down a city street, talking loudly to himself, and when he saw me, he started yelling about how "If you suffer from the DELUSION that men can become WOMEN, then you're WRONG, and you'll ALWAYS be wrong." I actually didn't realise that his contempt was directed at me until I turned around, and saw that he was staring directly at me.

If you squint, it was almost affirming. I wasn't presenting particularly femme that day (was wearing pants, hadn't shaved that morning, hair a mess), but this noisy asshole still recognised me, clearly, as some kind of transfeminine thing. Without me really doing anything on the day to prompt it! What a W!

I shouldn't put on too much false bravado. It was a bit scary. But he really undercut his own threat when he started in on his next line of attack, which is the old transphobic canard that "When archaeologists dig up your bones in 500 years, they'll know you were a male!" Which is an argument that I find almost charmingly toothless. Like, (a) that's not how archaeology works; and (b) even if it were … I'll be dead? The distant prospect of some hypothetical future grad student making an error on some paperwork doesn't make me want to … live a less fulfilled life in the present?? Why on earth is this argument supposed to have any power over me???

Free tip for the transphobes: you've gotta do better than the archaeologist argument. That rhetoric is basically cocoa butter on my skin. Which is all the more embarrassing a failure, because one of the defining experiences of transitioning for me has been realising:

Oh god, there are so many new ways to hurt me now.

So many new and tender vulnerabilities. So many novel weapons. So many aches that used to be dull, but are now sharp enough to run me through. Letting yourself be seen as wanting something is inherently vulnerable – hence why so much dating advice is just strategising how to obscure your own wanting – and when that something is wanting to be seen in a certain way? It's shamefully easy for people to squash you like a gummi bear. They barely have to do anything.

I mean, for Chrissakes: I'm trying to be pretty, and I often feel ugly! I'm trying to be soft, and I often feel lumbering! I'm trying to be feminine, and I often feel clownish! It is shockingly easy to hurt me about any or all of these things. I didn't used to try to be perceived any particular way (at least visually), and that position was virtually impregnable, insult-wise. It didn't provide any easy routes to hurt me. But now?

For so long, "I do not wish to be perceived" is all I had to go on. It was like trying to solve a crossword puzzle where all the squares were black. It's hard for it not to feel stupid in retrospect, but the ambivalence of that – very little pointing towards anything, only recoiling – made me insensate to the huge red-blinking warning signal that it represented.

At the very least: I am no longer insensate. Now I'm a bundle of fears and desires and open nerve-endings flapping in the breeze. There's a vertiginous quality to my wants now: a sense of peeking over into a chasm and – "oh no". Oh no, I actually do want these things, and I may struggle to ever get them. Oh no, so many of these things cost money I don't and may never have. Oh no, the acknowledgement of the hugeness of these desires feels existentially overwhelming.

My endocrinologist asked me whether an orchidectomy was something I thought I'd ever be interested in. When you have it – bottom surgery – you stop needing to take an testosterone blocker, because your body no longer produces the boy-juice. And the truth was: I have thought about it, but just never in words, or in a way I've admitted to myself, or with the bravery to risk the pain of maybe wanting it.

I have no idea if surgeries are actually going to be a thing in my future, or whether the diplomatic detente I've reached with my genitals might grow into a more fulsome and prosperous peace. But I'm forcing myself to actually think about these things now, and the results have been rather dismaying at times. All these systems you think are working fine, and then you finally look under the hood and –

"Oh no."

My new vulnerabilities are not a bad thing. Vulnerability is the price we pay for everything truly good. But it feels like being peeled out of my casing, soft white onion folds trembling, and rolled out into the midday sun.

Part 5: Renovations

A bunch of cool things have happened recently. I got taken to my first ever lesbian bar and had a really lovely time. (Which is obviously great for the new comfort in identity it represents, but also: probably the first time I've ever enjoyed a bar? The simple fact that Beans keeps the music low enough that I can actually hear people alone earns it my undying loyalty.) I went to an unusually great house-party, friends around a fire-pit, and reconnected with a bunch of wonderful Wangaratta folks who made me feel smart and funny and seen. I'm reading at a trans poetry night soon, which will be the first time I've done that since the pandemic. The biggest thing to happen for me recently is getting this new job, and that's where a lot of my stress and energy has been, but there have also been these little seams of gold in the narrows.

It feels strange to talk about alongside the Hideous Vulnerabilities, but transition is also giving me a new confidence. Even my relationship with the word 'trans' has palpably changed. I used to sheepishly acknowledge that I was trans (certainly somewhere 'under the trans umbrella'), and mean by it a desire to be other than the gender I was assigned. This felt like a fundamentally interior thing, shadowy and unknowable, only ever really accessed by trusted intimate partners, and it was hard to hold the smoke of it together into a public identity. But now when I talk about being trans, the conversation immediately and intuitively turns to the practical processes of transition: the specific physiological and social things that are changing for me. Now when I talk about being trans, it's essentially short for 'transitioning.'

Obviously, not all trans people need or want medical transition, and that doesn't make them any less trans. The umbrella is capacious for very good reason. What I'm describing is just my relief at finally giving my gender desires some physical expression, something tangible and visible and holdable, to free them from the foggy prison of my thoughts. In the same way that I couldn't know in advance that I'd love the experience of growing breasts, there's a corollary, which is that the experience of having breasts reminds me of what I love and why I'm doing this. Sometimes I just sit there holding them, and it brings tears to my eyes. I've spent so long floating outside my body, to actually be in it can be overwhelming.

This is a really dumb comparison, but I've been watching The Bear. In that show: Carmy wanted to work in the restaurant when he was a kid, but he never could. Now, decades later, he's finally able to access it, and he's working insane hours trying to make it his own: knocking out walls and putting in new wiring and spending money he doesn't have trying to make it a place where he can do the work that fulfils him. That's a little bit what it feels like re-acquainting myself with my body: stressed but alive, realising what it'll take to get it to where I want it to be. (Me, as Carmy, poring over a messy table of invoices: "Laser hair removal will cost how much? Good hair products will set us back what? And don't tell me that the facial feminisation surgery – no, okay, Jesus, don't even think about that. Just wear a mask and hope the health inspector doesn't show up.")

The Bear is not a trans allegory; I am just wilfully seeing myself in a gutted deli. It's intuitive to find myself in both the renovator and the renovated: the exasperated owner of a space that holds my life inside it. It's a place that never quite worked right, that I need to love, and is the only reason I'm here. But I'm gonna make it mine. I'm gonna make it mine.

#trans

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ixlander · 24 days

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condensed transcript below

< okay. I'm trying to take in being seen. it's a lot. I've been sitting with my heart this week. when I sit with it, there's like this plug or like fist at the back of my heart. it's actually calming down now. yeah it's relaxing.

~ there's nothing like getting the inside out to bring a relaxation.

< it's like pre- being able to explain anything. my mind can't get around it, can't get inside of it. I just wonder how to meet it.

~ it very well may be preverbal. you used the word plug? even though it seems preverbal, imagine that you were going to give it a voice, and you’re going to ask it some questions. if I asked the plug in the back of your heart “so what do you think about life?”

< I'm not so sure. it's a lot. it's like hard, and it's scary.

~ yeah it's hard, and it's scary. there's something true about that, isn't there? you've had scary and hard moments. it's tough on the heart. and what do you want? this plug in the back of your heart, not you. I'm talking to that, I want that to have a voice, you know. it's been muted, and so I'm asking you to give it a voice. what do you want? what does it really want?

< to let go.

~ why is it so hard for you to let go?

< because I'm really scared. specifically of being seen. which is why it's funny that I'm up here isn't it?

~ yeah, afraid of being seen. but tell me - I'm going to put words in your mouth, but you take them right out of there if they're not true okay? - also desperately wanting to be seen?

< well yeah, to be to be seen. truth-like.

~ yeah I was just going to ask the plug in the back of your heart what does that mean to you, to be seen truthfully?

< it's to actually be seen. it's like when people look at you but they're not really looking at you? really just seeing themselves.

~ yeah. well, welcome to life. that's what they'll do though, right? pretty much always. let's just tell each other the truth. so, who's the one that really needs to see you?

< myself. so how do I see myself truthfully?

~ just look. you know yourself. you've been yourself your whole life, right? you know the strength of you, and the vulnerability of you. you know the love of you and the anger of you. you know that great complexity of being, right? you know all that, you can look at that. and then what else do you notice? there's something inside of all that, too, all that complexity, the good and the bad, and the up and the down, and the vulnerable and the strong, and all that's part of your human self. but there's something else. what is that like? what if you let yourself see that or know that?

< it's just me. it's just, I'm getting scared now.

~ it's okay. you can be scared too. one of the reasons you're here is to realize you can be scared. and you can look anyway. you can do it. you've done so many things in your life that you've been scared of, we all have. we've done them anyway. so you're a little scared. okay, big deal. welcome to the human thing. it's a little weird, I know, granted. so what's the you inside the you inside the you inside the you? kind of hard to describe isn't it. kind of intangible.

< it's like the ferocity of just there, like thereness.

~ okay, let's start there. the ferocity of thereness. sounds weird, but we understand it. you're seeing it, you're letting yourself see it a bit, experience it a bit. acknowledging the you inside the you. it's nice if somebody can do that for us, see that. it's nice, but it's not enough, until you can see it. because I can see you, but you want to see you, more than you want me to see you. and it feels good.

< it does. so, practice?

~ just like that. the next time, you play my part too okay? you can do it. there's no mystery to it. you could have told yourself everything I told you. so, next time you will. you've been trying, but next time you're going to be good at it, just play both parts. sense into that which wants to be seen, feel into it, acknowledge it, intuitively abide with it, give it what it wants. you give it what it wants, and all of a sudden it's okay with everybody else missing it. once you see it for yourself, then maybe silently, without ever telling anybody, you can see it in them. and the gift gets returned and passed on.

< thank you.

~ you're welcome.

#adyashanti #nondual psychology #Youtube

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dailyaudiobible · 8 months

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8/31/2023 DAB Transcript pt2

And so, they go up a notch and they start telling Job that God would never do something like this. If God did this to you then, you deserved it in some sort of way. Maybe we need to talk, explore that a little bit. Let's talk about that a little bit. And of course, Job is adamant about his innocence. So, once it becomes really, really clear that Job’s not just speaking from grief and anxiety and everything. That he's actually trying to say he's innocent and does not deserve this, well then, his friends have a dilemma because now they’re put in the position of defending God, and that's Job's problem. You guys are sitting there on God's side defending God, but you don't have anything to tell me that I don't already know. And so, none of us can actually get to the end of the road. You're despising me because I'm claiming innocence before God. But I am innocent before God and nobody, there's no one to prove it. Like we’re all stuck here at an impasse. You are certain that you know what God is going to do and what God is not going to do, and that you know the ways of God. But you don't know the ways of God any more than I do, and this happened to me. And so, there's a missing piece somewhere and the only person who knows is God. But wherever I go, I can't find Him. And this goes back and forth, and back and forth and it gets more and more intense until they are arguing and insulting each other. We might even refer to our reading from Proverbs yesterday about the mocker and say, yeah, we can see the at some point things shifted and got personal here. And so, they're having a full-on argument and then everybody runs out of things to say. And then there's a fourth character, Elihu, who's been sitting there silent, and he begins to speak up and he has a lot to say, and it took a couple days to get through all that he has to say. And then, and then the Lord showed up. And He said, who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words, brace yourself like a man. I have some questions to ask of you and you’re gonna answer me. Man, like I can't come by this portion of Job, when God shows up, I just sat and thought what that would be like. I see Job's plight. We've read Job's plight and we wrestle with it in our own lives when we’re asking why, and we don't have the answers. And so, we can see all of the turmoil in the book of Job being very, very human. Trying to figure this out and then God shows up. And I just think about that. Man, I just, that would be so like, what would, how would we describe, like overwhelming, terrifying, probably like literally mind blowing, awe-inspiring, hopeful, yet like fearful. I mean, God shows up in the storm and begins to speak. God is being heard by these people’s ears, that's amazing. It’s an amazing scene and God does begin to ask questions and He begins to ask questions that don't have answers. That no human being has the answers to and we’re beginning to see there's a lot that we don't have answers for. We start asking the questions that are existential because we’re suffering but we don't have the answers to just about anything. We can go through our lives with all of this confidence, when we’re not feeling depressed, when we’re not feeling anxious or any of the darker emotions. We can go through with confidence like we are holding the world by the horns, we got this, we are in control. We are no more in control, then, than when we are suffering, we don't have the answers. But Job just has to stand there and be asked questions that he can't answer and that's kind of where we leave things today. And we will conclude the book of Job tomorrow. And Job has gotten what he wanted. What he wanted was to find God and speak directly with God about his plight. And so, he gets the chance to say what he needs to say, and we’ll get to hear that tomorrow.

And then in Second Corinthians, we’re watching Paul defend himself. He's been accused. Like there’s just kind of accusation that Paul made the whole thing up, that this…this Jesus thing in all the theology that he formed around it, this is his way, he like made this religion up to manipulate people, to exploit people and to control them. And Paul's kind of responding by essentially saying look, I get what you're saying here, but trust me on this one, if that's what I were going for, if that were the goal, this is not the job I'd be doing. Like this isn't what I would be doing. If I wanted exploit people and control people and manipulate people that I wouldn't be doing a job that constantly gets me persecuted to the point of death. As we can hear from his own pen basically, from these letters. Paul believed absolutely that God was transforming humanity through Jesus Christ. His death was one thing, but his resurrection, that was the thing, the firstborn of a new kind of human, one reunited with God. This is Paul's deep conviction. He believed that, that that which was dying would eventually be swallowed up by life, in the end. And that all that we are going through right now, all of the hardships, all the things that were saying why me about, this is part of it, this is what it looks like to see all things being made new in the world. So, Job has questions of endurance and suffering. Paul has questions of endurance and suffering. But Paul's conviction is it's not purposeless, this is going somewhere. So, let's consider that as we consider our own valley seasons.

Prayer:

And Jesus, as we think, I mean, some of us are in the depths of the valley right now. We literally can't find the sunshine anymore. We’re under such deep, deep problems, circumstances that we don't know how to navigate. Anxiety that it's just like a ball of rubber bands that we can't untangle. Depression that's like a cloud that just follows us everywhere we go. Some of us are in that place. Others of us are up at the top and we’re just walking at sea level and we’re just making our way. And then others of us are on the mountain tops right now. We’re all over the place in our stories and in our experiences, and You are in all of it. But we have a hard time interpreting the valley seasons. We have hard time interpreting lots of things; we don't know all that we think that we know. But You have told us that there is a Comforter, there is a spirit of truth that will lead us into all truth, while comforting us on the way. And so, come Holy Spirit, and comfort us, and lead us into all truth, lead us on the way that we should go and help us to interpret our circumstances appropriately, through the lens of the fact that this is all going somewhere. It's not purposeless. Nothing gets wasted. All things are being made new. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com, that's home base and that is certainly a place to find out what's going on around here. The Daily Audio Bible app will do that and a lot more, especially as we make progress on our journey through the Scriptures. So, check out the Daily Audio Bible app, that's free and it is at the App Store that works with your phone or tablet. While you’re checking things out, check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there like Promised Land films, where you can kind of zoom in and actually look at the places that we’re reading about, situate yourself in those stories. Or the coffee table Promise Land, photograph addition, where you can kind of just thumb through and imagine these different stories that we’re reading about. Or different reading materials, different books to take deep dives on things. Or the coffee and tea in the Shop. Or the different categories, things to wear, things to write with and journal with. Check it out.

And if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at…at the same place dailyaudiobible.com, or in the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner. Or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

And as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app. Or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today, I'm Brian, I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Hey DAB family, this is Rachel calling from Pennsylvania. I just wanted to call and pray for all the youth. Whether they be going back to elementary school, high school, college, or just recently got out. Father, I lift them up before You today and I gave thanks unto You for them. I cover them in the blood of Jesus, Lord. I cover the mind, their thoughts, their will and emotions under the blood of Jesus Christ. And I come against every spirit that would attack their mind, their identity, their purpose, like fear, anxiety, suicide. Whatever it may be that they’re struggling with, addiction. Because they all have a purpose, God. And they’re under so much more attack and adversary than previous generations. But I know they are important to You and they matter. So, Lord, I thank You for each and every one of them. And I pray that each one of them that’s listening, whatever they’re going through, that they would know that they are loved by You and You’ve never left them, nor forsaken them. God, I thank You for this generation because they are the generation that will seek Your face and help us all. I just thank You for them, Lord. Cause I feel like they need encouragement right now, cause they’re so many things coming against them. And so many people putting them down. And they are, at times, suffering in silence. But Lord, You see and You know everything that they’re dealing with. So, I give You all the glory and I thank You for them. And I pray that they all be encouraged, every single one of you. Renzo, I’ve heard you call in few times. And the one young lady who prayed for her friend Quill, who is experiencing hardships. Every single one of you, you are loved by God. And I pray that the Lord strengthens you and keep you. And I just wanted you to know that I, I hear, and I see you guys and I am praying for you. In Jesus name. Amen.

Good morning DAB family. This is Delta Alpha Foxtrot, just chiming in. I’m heading home from Erin’s home in Rocksdown, Texas to my home in San Antonio, Texas. And I just wanted to ask you guys for some prayer for my mom. She had a stroke back in December and my sisters and I have been her, been cycling through giving care. She’s getting a lot better physically. But there’s definitely some spiritual depression going on there. She gets sad and very emotional. I think its, a lot of it’s tied to my brother’s death. My brother was an addict; he passed away a couple years ago. And so, I think there’s some spiritual oppression going on there and I want to ask the family to pray against that for us and to cast that spirit of sadness, of depression into the hands of Jesus for final judgement. Thank you. God bless you. Just wanted to give a shout out to Blind Tony, I heard you playing the flute, maaaaaan. I heard the flute come on and I was like aww, this is lovely. And then when I heard your voice, I was like, that’s Blind Tony playing the flute!!! I love it. Alright folks. It’s your boy, Delta Alpha Foxtrot, calling from the south and central Texas Front. God bless you all.

Hi, DAB family, this is Single and Still and I’m calling in response to the beginning of July’s community prayer. Lord, I just lift up sons to You, sons that are grown and that are struggling with mental illness and one that was a brother that I heard about. So, I lift up son Nathan to You, our brother Nathan too, as they recover from alcoholism and there’s mental illness diagnosis and just the struggle. The struggle with drugs and how to cope and how to be able to function under these circumstances. And I pray for freedom from the dependencies of substances to try to live I guess what we call a normal or functional life. And I pray freedom and I pray healing in Jesus name. And I also pray for Jason, I think Margarie that’s your son that sometimes you know, with alcohol, that Lord, just like when one of my sisters on the DAB says, that it would be just gross that the desire would be such a letdown whenever they consume alcohol or drugs of abuse. So, I lift up our sons. I pray for healing. I pray for salvation. I pray for udder dependence on You Lord, every step of the way. Every step, of every day, and other children that are suffering and struggling through this. And Sparky, I just wanna thank you for your testimony. And others that have shared how the Lord has helped you to overcome different battles, especially with alcohol. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

Hey, my incredible DAB fam, this is Kingdom Seeker Daniel and Lady of Victory. And family, we just want to stop by and pray for our dear sister Little Leaf. Sis, we heard you and we hear you. And our hearts are going out to you. I personally want to applaud you, first of all for pressing through an extremely hard place. And I just wanted you to know God is with you. And even in the uncertainties of your decisions, He is with you. And as you continue to lean into Him for wisdom, knowledge, and guidance, he’s gonna help you through to make the right decision. So, Father, I pray for our dear sister, Little Leaf, that You would give her the grace to wait on You, to wait and hope as You are at work in her husband’s life, who is obviously disturbed and not in his right mind. Father, we’re praying that You would bring him to his right mind. And cause, Lord God, a turn-around in this man’s heart. And I pray, that in the meantime, that You will continue to keep Little Leaf, guard her heart and walk her through, in Jesus name. We even pray, God, for the little baby and God, even the other woman, that You would turn this situation around for Your good. For their good and for Your glory. God, and we ask that You would let Little Leaf know that it’s okay not to be okay. And I too, applaud you for just standing, standing strong in the face of adversities. And you remember, when you can’t trust His hand, trusts God’s heart. He loves you. Amen.

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bustyasianbeautiespod · 11 months

Text

Episode 64 Transcript: I Think This Guy's Gay or Something

[intro guitar music]

G: Hello, my name is Grey.

C: And my name is Crystal.

G: And this is Busty Asian Beauties, a Supernatural commentary podcast where I, someone who has seen this show several times...

C: And I, someone who only knows about the show through social media, discuss every single episode of Supernatural from start to finish. Also, we are both Asian.

G: Both Asian! For today’s episode, we will be discussing Season 4, Episode 4: "Metamorphosis," written by Cathryn Humphris, directed by Kim Manners.

C: Oh, god. [laughing]

G: Yeah. I've never dreaded recording as much as I do today. This episode, like, I mean it's not bad.

C: It's not bad, but-

G: It's not bad. Okay, first of all, it's not bad.

C: It’s in fact probably a good episode, but it was unbearable to watch! I can't do this!

G: Like, the concept that they were presenting and everything—very interesting and all that, but my god, is it painful.

C: Yeah, great stuff . Sam has some good lines, some good moments. But oh my god!

G: The thing is, I was telling you this, and then I stopped telling you this story because I wanted to put it in the podcast, [both laugh] but, like, I think it was like, minute 6 into the episode, I was like, “Why am I doing this?" Like, it's good. The fight was good and everything, but like, it was like, painful, right? So what I did was I was like, “You know what? I'm gonna click out of this tab. I'm going to pause my Supernatural experience.” And then I went on YouTube and I literally typed out “Trixie and Katya” on the fucking like, search bar, and I watched an entire podcast episode of Trixie & Katya. An entire episode before I returned to Supernatural. It was that kind of experience.

C: Yeah, I also had to stop and watch other YouTube videos. My videos were Chris Fleming's “Am I a Man?” [G laughs] and Brian Jordan Alvarez’s “How to be Straight” because both of them remind me of Dean Winchester.

G: Yeah. What's the Brian Jordan Alvarez one? Which video is that? Wait, I'm gonna look it up because I think I watched every single one of his videos.

C: It's the one where he goes, “This wall is my enemy! I hate this wall. This wall is my enemy!” [G laughs]

G: Yeah yeah yeah. I think my favorite BJA video is the one where he goes like, “Oh, you kind of look like this,” and like, it's a picture of a cockroach-

C: Oh, yeah, and it's a picture of a dumpling?

G: No, the cockroach!

C: Oh, yeah, it's the dumpling for him and a cockroach for Stephanie Koenig.

G: Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. That one was truly iconic.

C: Mm-hm.

G: Yeah. So let's get into this episode. What did you know about it?

C: So, okay, I knew that it opens with Sam and Ruby, like, practicing his powers of exorcism and that Dean comes in and tries to kill her, and I did not know what else happened. I know about the fight scene, but I didn't know it was necessarily in this episode. And as soon as it started and I recognized Sam’s shirt, I got so excited because I was like, “Oh, this is that scene from these funny videos that I enjoyed watching.” And I sent you the funny videos, and I was so excited, and then I pressed play, and I had the worst experience in my entire life. [laughs]

G: No, for real. I mean, I'd seen those videos. For context, Crystal is talking about the- how would I even describe this? What's the name of the podcast?

C: There’s two videos of this fight scene, and it's overlaid with audio from My Brother My Brother and Me, where Griffin is chewing out Justin for wearing like, a tropical-patterned shirt, and he, like, reads out Justin's entire Spotify history, which is just a bunch of songs by Jimmy Buffett, and then he ends it with like, “Are you haunted? Are you fucking possessed? You were supposed to be my brother!”

G: No, that's literally what happened this episode.

C: And Justin says, “I had a case of the Mondays. I had those old Monday blues, and I just had to chase them away.”

G: Yeah.

C: So yeah.

G: Literally what happens in this episode.

C: Yeah. And Sam is wearing a fun, patterned shirt in the scene and everything.

G: Yeah. So for me, I also didn't know that the fight scene was here. I thought it was gonna be later in the season, or like, in Season 5, but I think I'm thinking of a different fight scene. Because there is a fight scene where Dean goes like-

C: Are you thinking about the one where- [overlapping] “If you leave, walk out of that door, don't you ever come back.”

G: Yeah. But this is separate from that. For some reason, my brain like, meshed them together. I mean, they're the same vibes. So, understandable.

C: Not the same vibe, though, because in this one Sam doesn't fight back in any way, and it honestly looks like a PSA for spousal abuse. So that's different.

G: Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. Let's start the episode.

C: Alright.

G: Alright. So, as Crystal said, the episode starts with Sam and Ruby interrogating a demon. And, I don't know. Nothing much happens. The theme of the conversation was like, the demon was telling Sam that like, “Oh, you're such a big hero, aren't you? But I mean, look at what you're doing. You're like, working with this other demon-"

C: He says "slutting around with some demon.”

G: Yeah. And then Sam gets angy at this and raises- Does he raise his hand? Or he just looks at the demon?

C: I don't recall.

G: But, like, you know, he forces the demon out of the body. And they do the interesting thing again where, instead of the usual exorcism where the demon like, just gets shot out of the body, this one, like, the demon coughs out like, the black smoke. Which, every time they do it, I'm like, “That's so cool. That's so cool and fun.”

C: It's so cool.

G: It is very cool.

C: And instead of going up to the ceiling like it usually does in exorcisms, it like, [both] goes down to the floor, and then it sort of like, burns, like, through the floor, like, going back down to Hell or something.

G: And we're still supposed to think that these demons are going to Hell, not the Empty.

C: Yeah. So I just- I made a vow to myself midway through writing my notes of this episode that I'm just gonna forget that regular exorcisms are a thing because or else, this season doesn't make any sense.

G: Yeah, they don't give a shit. [C laughs] Ruby's there also, as you mentioned, and she's smiling!

C: And she looks great, she’s so fine, she's so fine, she blows my mind, hey Ruby!

G: She's giggling, twirling her hair at this.

C: Well, she's not giggling much.

G: No, she's smiling, though.

C: Oh, you mean you mean after Sam gets it out. Yeah, ‘cause Sam initiates the smile because he like- Oh, are we still talking about like, smiling while he's exorcising it, or after he gets the the demon out?

G: No, like, while. She's like, amused by this. She's impressed by this and shit.

C: Yeah, she's proud of her guy. She doesn't say anything at all during the interrogation, though, which is quite sad.

G: That's interesting.

C: Like, this guy is only insulting her. Like, he is saying a few things about Sam, but he's mostly just calling her a bitch and a slut the whole time, and she just sorta spends the whole time looking at Sam, like, seeing what he'll do about it.

G: I disagree.

C: Okay.

G: The demon is actively going after Sam! [laughs] Like, he's saying like, “You're a bad person,” and blah blah blah blah blah.

C: He has one line about that. And then he calls her a "demon bitch."

G: He has one line, period!

C: Okay, fair. He has 2. Fine, so it's a 50/50 split between insults. [G laughing]

G: Yeah, anyway, Dean is like, in the corner watching all this, and he's mortified and everything. And it starts the most annoying-

C: I fucking hate him.

G: I wouldn't say annoying. But like, the most unbearable scene I've ever gone through Supernatural.

C: Yeah. What happens is after the demon’s fully exorcised- Sam checks that he has a pulse, and he does. And Sam, like, looks so happy about this, and he like, looks up smiling at Ruby. And they talk for a bit, and Sam says that this time, it felt good, and there's no more headaches, which, according to Ruby, is a big improvement from their past exorcisms. And Sam’s helping the guy out of the chair, he's untying him. And the guy is quite calm for the situation, which, I mean, I'm assuming it's because, like, he was awake the whole time, so he's gotten the vibe that Sam’s like, a good guy here to help him already.

G: Yeah.

C: But then [sighs] the worst character in all of Supernatural comes in the door, and he looks fucking livid. Like, I, personally, would not be so livid. I would just be like, "Okay. Like, cool. Good job. You can exorcise people without words. That's nice." Like, if Bobby had figured out a way to do this, Dean would have just been like, "Oh, that's cool that you did that" because Bobby's allowed to do magic or whatever. But no, Dean's just so mad. He looks fucking murderous. And he's like, “Anything you want to tell me, Sam?” And, you know, Sam starts trying to explain. He says, “Let me-” and Dean's like, “You can't fucking explain this.” And then he asks who Ruby is and what the hell she's doing here, and instead of saying that "This is Kristy from the motel, and she just has a kink for demon exorcism and stuff," Sam sort of lets Ruby speak. And she says it's good to see him again, and he recognizes that she is Ruby based off of that. And then Dean goes, like, soo angrily, “Is that Ruby?” And then he just fucking tries to kill her. Like, nothing else. He just starts trying to kill her. He whips out the demon knife, and he is like, going at it. And like, why? Why? Why? What did Ruby do wrong in Season 3? Like, was there ever a moment where, like, there's a reveal that she whatever whatever?

G: No, the implication here is that she is the one who is like, making Sam do all these things. Like, that's what Dean thinks. So like, that's why he's mad at her.

C: Okay. Okay. And the thing she's making Sam do is exorcise demons, which is... bad. It's bad to do?

G: No, the thing is like, Dean isn't mad about the exorcising. It's- he's mad about like, the fact, the thing behind it, right?

C: Yeah.

G: And that's what's most frustrating, I feel. Because the action itself is at most, if we're looking like, at the most negative, it's morally neutral. I would argue it's like, [both] morally good. Yeah. But like, Dean treats it as like, a slippery slope that, like, you start off with this good thing, and then what? And then what? [C groans] And it's like, the reason why it's so unbearable is because Dean is so caught up with just what you are instead of what you do, which is the whole point of this episode, right?

C: The whole point of the episode, yeah.

G: Yeah. But- Well, we'll get into it when we'll get into it. It's interesting how they interface with it later.

C: So he is about to fucking kill Ruby. He has her like, against a fence. And Sam, like, tries to knock the knife out of his hand and goes, “Don't.” And he manages to get it out, but, like, Dean attacks Sam too; he's like, throwing him and shit. But this allows Ruby to get the upper hand, and she has Dean in like, a bit of a chokehold. And Sam yells, like, “Ruby! Stop it!” And she takes a second, and then she lets him go. And then Dean says, “Well, aren't you an obedient little bitch.” Why? Why? Why does he talk or exist? Why isn't he back in the ground? Why can't we put him back in the ground? [G laughs]

G: He's unbearable.C C: At least- The only good thing about this fight scene is that it's shot pretty well, I think, like, cinematography-wise. Because, like, everyone is in such close quarters, and the camera’s generally zoomed in, but it follows the motion so it's got like, this shakycam effect that, like, I think, captures the tension pretty well. So thank you Kim Manners for that one.

And eventually, Sam tells Ruby that she should go and bring the guy to the ER, and Dean’s like, “Where the hell do you think you're going?” And Ruby explains, “I am being a normal, cool person and getting this man medical attention.” And then Dean just makes angry face, and Sam goes all sadly, like, “Dean,” and then Dean just like, fucking leaves. He just leaves. He's gone. And unfortunately, he goes back to Sam instead of walking off a cliff and dying. But, you know, we can't always get what we want. Or what we need.

I do wanna say that it's kinda insane that Ruby let Sam keep the knife.

G: Yeah.

C: But I feel like- I don't know. We don't see that much of their discussion before he starts training with her, but I think that probably there's a lot of like, caveats where she's like, “Okay, well, because you don't trust me, like, for insurance, you can keep the knife, and, you know that, like, with the powers that you have, you could exorcise me if you wanted, right? So like, I can't actually take advantage of you or do anything you don't want to do because you hold this power over me.” And I think that's interesting. Because I know there's a scene in 4.09 where Sam holds the knife to her throat. And yeah. I don't know. Looking forward to hearing more about the arrangement that they have.

G: Yeah.

G: So we are back in the motel, and-

C: Oh god, I'm so sorry you have to do this scene.

G: We're back in the motel. Sam is just chilling. Love it. He literally gives two- he doesn't give two shits about Dean. [laughs] But like, this is a lie. Dean enters, and then we start the scene. And the vibe is like, Sam being like, “Dean, let's just talk it out. Let's just talk it out.” And Dean being like, [fake crying] "We are not talking! I'm so hurt and upset and-" blah blah blah.

C: Yeah, except he's not sobbing. He's angry.

G: He's packing a bag, and he goes like- He's packing a bag, and Sam goes, “Where are you going? Like, are you leaving?” And then Dean goes like, [fake teary] “You don't need me. You and Ruby go fight demons.” And I think this is the part where we talk about like, [overlapping] the jealousy aspect of this. Yeah. Like, Dean is upset for what he says are many reasons [C laughs], and what he tries to justify as reasonable reasons. But there is the primary aspect of he's just mad that Sam is 1) hiding things from him, 2) working with someone else, 3) having this like, entire life that Dean doesn't know about.

C: Yup.

G: And like, a lot of it is like, he's jealous that like, "Oh, like, you're spending time with Ruby?" Blah blah blah blah blah. And yeah. I mean, what is there to discuss?

C: Well, I think it's that as much as Dean said he wanted Sam to like, move on, and like, whatever whatever after he died, like, he did not expect Sam to get a new hunting partner. He thought maybe like, he and Bobby would, but like, Bobby is someone that like, Dean knows and that Dean's vetted or whatever, right?

G: Yeah.

C: And I think a lot about like, I think something that happened with like, soulless!Sam in Season 6 where Dean got kidnapped by aliens, and then during that night, like, after soulless!Sam has exhausted all possible leads, he like, sleeps with a woman. And then Dean comes back, and he's so angry because he's like, “How were you able to like, have fun or live a life while I was gone? Like, why was that allowed? Like, you should have sat in the dark and been miserable,” [laughs] you know? And I think that's what is happening here, too. Like, he's like, “What do you mean that in the few months I was gone, you did things that were unrelated to mourning me?"

G: No, I don't think so.

C: "Or unrelated to things we have done already together that I've decided are okay.” And I think the other aspect of this is like, you know, what Sam said in episode 1 that it was Dean's dying wish that Sam not practice his psychic powers at all anymore because he thought it was a slippery slope. So Dean probably feels betrayed about that specifically. But like, no one has to listen to your dying wish if your dying wish is stupid! [both laugh] And that is my take.

G: Yeah. Dean punches Sam. And then he punches Sam again.

C: And the thing is, after his first punch, Sam doesn't fight back. Doesn't even look angry. And he goes, “Are you satisfied?” like, just completely flat, like this is expected and normal to do.

G: Yeah. And then Dean punches him again, and Sam goes like, “Well, I guess not.”

C: Yeah.

G: And I think maybe- I think the primary- Here's the thing. I've worded it. The primary thing he's mad about regarding Ruby is less that Sam is off doing something else with someone else. It's specifically that she's a demon.

C: Yeah. And specifically one that he disapproves of because we know later, he's totally fine with like, shacking up with Crowley all the time.

G: Oh, no, he's not.

C: Is he not fine with working with Crowley at all in the future, at any point?

G: I don't think at all is the term, but he's generally not fine working with Crowley. It's like, a begrudging relationship.

C: Okay. But like- so like, if Sam had like, contacted Crowley, he would still be mad the same amount?

G: Literally, he was mad about this with Cas. Do you remember that?

C: No, what?

G: [fake teary] "You're working with Crowley? You're working with Crowley?"

C: Oh, yeah.

G: This is like that.

C: Well, this was like, Season 6. I'm thinking like, Season 10 shit or whatever.

G: I think, like, I mean, there's also the aspect of "Sam didn't tell Dean," so.

Yeah, Dean just says, “Do you know how-” like, he says, “how far off the reservation you've gone?” And then, you know, “How far from normal? From human?”

C: Yeah, about "off the reservation," I just wanna say, I checked the Supernatural Wiki transcript searcher, and they keep using this phrase like, in this form, until Season 10, Episode 22 in 2016. Like, it's fucking wild that they are using it in this episode still when it's just incredibly racist, but that they continue until Season 10 is wild. And then the next time the word “reservation” occurs is in the first Kaia episode, where they're like, “Let's go to some reservations and ask about dreamwalking.” Like, congratulations. You upgraded your racism type regarding the word reservation. Good job. [laughs]

G: Yeah. And Sam says something that has been on our minds for forever, [both laughing] which is that he's just exorcising demons. Literally, though. He literally is, though. Yeah, and Dean is upset because "You're doing it with your mind!"

C: He fucking shouts so loud. He, yeah, it's, ugh. It's awful. He shouts so loud. Very, like, angry man in the house levels of shouting.

G: The thing is that Supernatural is a show about men who are angry and shouting.

C: Yeah.

G: And the thing is, I hate when men are angry and shouting. So I don't know why I like this show. [C laughs]

C: Do you like this show? I don't like this show today.

G: And, you know, Dean starts going, "What else can you do?" And he starts like, trying to imply that Sam can do other things as well, and Sam is like, "I literally cannot," and Dean is like, "Well, I can't believe anything you tell me now." Also, at this point, he's grabbed him by the collar and is shoving him around also, which is, you know, another cool and normal thing to do.

G: Yeah.

C: Yeah. I think that the thing about this is like, they don't ever say this in the episode, so I don't think it's actually part of the writing, but I think maybe the worry here is that the most powered-up psychic kids we've seen were like, Ava and Jake, and they started with like, lower level, like, super strength and like, psychic dreams. But then, like, after they trained their powers, like, Ava, was able to summon demons, and Jake was able to do mind control, so like- And also they both happened to turn out evil after that. So like, maybe Dean's thinking about that? Like, with every new ability you gain, like, part of your soul, or whatever, goes away. But like that wasn't-

G: He's not.

C: - stated out loud here, and Supernatural is not a subtle show.

G: He's not thinking about that.

C: Okay. That's like, the only like, actually valid reason I can think of to be mad right now. But I don't think that is anything he's thinking about.

G: Yeah. Sam is like, "I should have told you, blah blah blah. But try to see the other side." And this just upsets Dean even more. Like, Sam is like, "I'm pulling demons out of innocent people!" and Dean says, "Use the knife!" and Sam's like, "The knife kills people. What I do, most of them survive."

C: Literally.

G: He's says an interesting bit of statistic, which is that he has saved more people in the last 5 months than Sam and Dean do together in a year.

C: So real and true. Good for him.

G: And Dean is like- [C laughing] I cannot shake off how much this feels like, like, you know, being discovered that you're gay. [laughs]

C: Yeah, yeah. No, this does feel very queer, and I don't know why, but it does.

G: Well, I do know why. It's like, "I'm not doing anything wrong," and then, you know, like, the other person being like, “Just the fact that you are this way is inherently wrong." Like, it feels very much like that.

C: Yeah, yeah.

G: Yeah. And then, you know, like, Dean is like, “Is this what Ruby is making you think? You know she has tricked you into doing all this?”

C: Ruby is changing Sam's ability to do math. She has manipulated Sam's ability to count. God, what a stupidass thing to say in response to that specific sentence. Like, I'm sorry, Dean, but you're being pwned with facts and logic!

G: Yeah. And then Dean is like, “It's a slippery slope. It's just gonna get darker and darker.”

C: With no explanation why that would be the case. No justification. And the show has never told us that that could be the case. [G laughs]

G: No, for real. They do this in the last episode of Season 3, where Dean is like, "You can't do that!" blah blah blah. "Because it's bad!"

C: "It's evil!" And like, they don't even tell us what the plan would be, like, what Sam's supposed to do. Like, later, okay, when we find out a little bit more about the demon blood drinking and that it becomes addictive, like, okay, sure. That's sort of a bad side effect. That could become a slippery slope. But like, Dean doesn't know any of that shit right now! He's just making shit up! It's- ugh.

G: Yeah. He says the iconic line, “If I didn't know you, I would want to hunt you.” And then, yeah. I don't know. Sam says, “You were gone. I was here.” Which, I like this line. “I had to keep fighting without you, and what I'm doing works.”

C: Yeah.

G: And then Dean says the whole, like - I'm so upset by this.

C: This makes me quite upset.

G: He says like, “If you knew that like, it's so good, then why did you lie about it to me?” And like, obviously, Cas does tell Dean that like, "Stop Sam," which is what he brings up next that like, “An angel told me to stop you. Cas said that if I don't stop you, he will. So like, what does that mean?” Blah blah blah! And he even says that like, “It means God” - a God that he barely believes in - “doesn't want you doing this.”

C: He does not believe in God. He's just figuring out things that will hurt Sam the most.

G: Yeah. But like, specifically, the line where he goes, “Why did you lie about it to me?” And the episode answers it later, right? Or at least attempts to. I didn't find the answer quite satisfactory. But this is the specific part where I was like-

C: Wait, we forgot that Dean literally throws a lamp across the room for no fucking reason.

G: Yeah.

C: Men will literally.

G: Going back, like, this specific line. Like, “Why did you lie about it to me?” Like, this is the- I don't want to be like, "Oh my god! My own experiences in life," whatever.

C: But literally, "My own experiences in life," whatever!

G: Literally my own experiences in life whatever! Like, I mean, who hasn't had this experience with their parents, right? Like, if you think- like, my mom has said this to me. Like, "If you think like, being gay is okay, then you wouldn't lie about it to me." Like, this has been said to me. So like, I don't know, like, this scene, I was like, "Oh, I hate this." Because it does remind me of like, real life, and it's unbearable. I think that's like, a major part of why it was so unbearable to me.

C: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

G: Like, the thing is like, why would you lie about it? And as Sam says later, "Because no matter how hard I try to explain it to you, you just still won't understand, you won't try to understand, you won't try to get it. So like, it's better to just not mention it." And it's like, yeah. It's- I don't know, like. It's so funny to me that Dean is like, "Look at how I'm reacting!" blah blah blah blah. "Look at what I've done so far in my life. I wonder why Sam doesn't tell me shit." [C laughing] Like, Dean, look at yourself. Also, like, are we gonna mention the fact that this is the first time he calls Cas "Cas." I feel like that's important but not that important in the grand scheme of things.

C: I wrote down a note that is "This is the first time Dean says 'Cas,' and I can't even care about it because I hate him so bad." [laughs] That's my note about this.

G: I hate him so bad. Yeah. And then Sam gets a call from a guy named Travis. And when I first heard that his name is Travis, I was like, "This has gotta be a young man," because, like, the only other Travis I know is Travis Scott, and he's like, quite young, right? No, this man is old as fuck! And I was surprised. I was surprised later.

C: Yeah, he is quite old. Okay, I feel like a few more things that I thought about the fight scene. I really liked Jared’s acting, like, after Dean tells him that, like, “God doesn't want you doing this” because Sam just looks so, like, young and scared and sad suddenly. And like, it's like, such a good follow-up from like, in 4.02 when Ruby tells Sam to watch out for himself, and he goes like, “I'm not scared of angels,” ‘cause he is like, so assured that what he is doing is right, because it is. And like, this is like, fucking earth-shattering for him, the idea that like, God specifically hates him and wants him to die, you know?

G: Yeah.

C: Yeah, it's awful. And I guess another thing about the scene is like, okay, like, you found it most upsetting because of like, the parallels to like, queerness and stuff that you saw. I feel like what upset me the most was honestly, just like, how physically violent Dean was being. ‘Cause it's like, yeah, like, me and my sister when we were like, in middle school and below, like, definitely like, attacked each other a lot, but like, you cut that shit out once you're at a certain age. Like, it's not okay after, like, your brains are developed enough, and you know how to talk to each other properly. And like, I feel like I haven't really seen this kind of like, one-sided Dean just attacking Sam thing since, like- I don't like, when else has Dean been this violent towards Sam specifically?

G: I can't recall.

C: Yeah, like, the only parallel I could really draw was in the pilot when Sam says, like, “Mom's never coming back, no matter what we do” and like, Dean-

G: That's a very different vibe.

C: Yeah, it is a different vibe. But like, it did give me a similar feeling of like, “Oh, I don't trust Dean with Sam’s safety.” And like, it's like, way stronger here. And I think like, the thing is like, there are ways to explain it. Like, okay, he just got out of Hell. He was torturing people for 40 years, so like, maybe his baseline of what like, a normal amount of physical violence in a conversation is is skewed.

G: I disagree. That's giving him too much credit.

C: Yeah, no. I feel like if that was true, we'd have like, shots of Sam looking like, confused, or going like, “What the fuck is going on? Why is Dean doing this?” Like, we'd have like, a recurrence of the like, “Did Dean come back wrong?” question and theme, which we got every single time Sam was slightly violent in Season 3, but, like, none of that is here, so it just makes it seem like this was a normal and fine thing to do, and it's not!

G: Yeah. Yeah, anyway, guy calls. [laughs] I keep on trying to stop myself from saying "It's a whole thing." [both laughing] It literally is a whole thing, though. A guy calls, and it's a whole thing. And, like, Sam writes down an address and a name. And so they go to the address and the name.

C: Yeah.

Remember, in 4.02 when Meg's whole thing was about how they need to care about demon vessels, and then two episodes later, Dean says, “Stop trying to exorcise demons. Just fucking kill them and their vessel using the knife.”

G: Yeah.

C: Ugh. Okay.

G: Yeah, that - what a truly harrowing scene that was.

C: Yeah. Just, like, for stats, it took me an hour to get through the this 4 min scene because it made me so mad.

G: I am extremely sensitive- like, the whole, like, family abuse thing is a very sensitive topic for me. Like, I mean, this is obvious given the fact that like, how strong my reaction to Bela's backstory was, right? But, like, specifically, this whole thing, barring anything in my life, like, this is completely unrelated now to what I was saying earlier, but like, it's just like, ever since, ever since, it's been something that I'm like, "Oh, like, watching this is upsetting!" you know?

C: Yeah.

G: So like, now, like, I am thinking like, [laughing] maybe it's not that good of an idea to rewatch Supernatural.

C: Ah.

G: Because this is just the beginning, you know?

C: Yeah.

G: Like, it gets worse from here on now. And sometimes, I'm like [clicks tongue] "Ehhh."

C: Yeah.

G: Yeah.

C: So we cut to Jack Montgomery's house in Carthage, Missouri. And so, there's a guy. He’s just a regular guy. But he's like, eating really gross. We sort of open on a shot of like, his jaw, and like, just disgusting, disgusting, chewing noises for like, 30 seconds before it zooms out.

G: It's impressive to me how visceral they made this eating scene. [C laughs]

C: Yeah.

G: It is truly like- I think what really upset me the most is we don't even see the food go into his mouth. because it's so quick. [C laughs] I think that's a fascinating acting and shooting choice. Like, it's like they made it so that you just see the chewing, but you don't really see the food go into his mouth because it's so quick, and I was like, “Oh, that's fun!”

C: It is quite fun. His wife, Michelle, who we don't find out her name until, like, way later in the episode. But she exists. And she's quite concerned about how fast he's eating and how hungry he is. And they seem to have a decent relationship. They're like, smiling at each other and shit. And Jack asks for her leftover steak even though he's had two already. And, you know, just blah blah blah, that shit.

G: Truly fascinating to me that Americans will literally just eat steak for dinner. [C laughs]

C: Yeah. And mashed potatoes? There were mashed potatoes? Like, I thought they made that shit up for TV [G laughs]. And this is on TV. So maybe they just continued making it up for TV.

G: Yeah, like, I think it's a factor of, when I eat, a lot of Filipino food is like, the main dish is rice, right? And then you have a side dish of like, meat or veggies, or whatever. And like, I often forget - and I learned very late in life that - like, this is not common. Like, other countries don't eat like this. But even now, when I watch like, this, you know, and they don't have rice, and he's just eating meat and potatoes, it's like, “Why are you doing this? This is- like, no wonder you're so hungry.” [both laugh] Like, "Eat some fucking rice, dude!" But like, it's always like, whenever I watch foreign, you know, movies, TV shows, whatever, the way they eat is always so fascinating to me because, like, it is very different.

C: The best Supernatural eating scene is in 4.20 where [laughing] Jimmy and his family are sitting down for dinner, and it's just a plate of sandwiches, and they're drinking glasses of milk with them. Like, please tell me no one actually lives like this!

G: Tangent, I suppose, but like, what was dinner and, you know, lunch like in your house? Because you did grow up in the US, but, you know, you have a Chinese family.

C: Yeah. Oh, I mean rice and like, dishes in the middle that you add to the rice.

G: So like, yeah.

C: Yeah, like, one vegetable, and then like, maybe some more vegetables, and like, maybe one meat item that is also vegetabley. Though I think for lunch, I usually had school lunches, and that was just like, you know, on some days, there's tacos. On some days, there's chicken tenders. That kind of shit.

G: Yeah. Wait, in school lunch, you don't have rice?

C: No.

G: Oh. How would people-

C: There's some dishes with rice. There was fucking orange chicken day, which was my favorite, even though it was very low-quality orange chicken, [both laugh] because at least there was rice.

G: Yeah. Like, that is, I think- I have friends who study in the United States, right? Like, I mean, they're Filipino, they grew up here, everything. And then now they study in the United States. And their main complaint is always “The food here is unbearable.” Like, that's their main complaint. Like, especially, I guess, because these, you know, people are like, in university, so like, it's university school food. It's not like, food that's like, you can buy at a- or whatever. You know what I mean?

C: Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean.

G: Yeah. So like, apparently, food there is truly unbearable. I- yeah.

C: Yeah. Thank you for your service.

G: We can do an entire Ko-Fi bonus episode about just food. [laughs] It is an interesting topic.

C: We cut to Jack Montgomery, and he's in the bathroom, and he is shirtless. So like, at least we get like, like, one scene of a shirtless man in a bathroom for every 20 scenes of shirtless women in bathrooms and stuff. [G laughs]

G: Yeah.

C: But like, he's shirtless for a reason, because what happens is while he's brushing his teeth, like, we hear like, this cracking sound, and like, there's like, pain wracking his abdomen, and he, like, sort of clutches himself, and you see the bones of his spine, like, contracting and pushing against his skin, and it looks pretty cool. I like it.

G: Yeah. It looks cool. It looks cool, but also the moment he started, like, bending over and like, going, "Ah! This is so painful!" I was like, “Aw, he's getting period cramps!”

C: Aww!

G: And he literally was, though, is the thing.

C: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Jack.

We cut to a scene in the Impala, and Sam and Dean are somehow having a normal conversation after that.

G: No, I think that's normal. I think this is like, fine. Like, when you have- this is, not to bring up Succession every other episode of the podcast, but like, you know, how like, what I find the most interesting about that show is that they can have all these like, conversations that are so insulting to each other, or like, life-altering decisions, and then it just goes back to like, “Oh, we're talking like normal." 'Cause like, that's what it really is like, with family. I feel like it's so different in comparison to like, friendships or other.

C: Yeah.

G: I love that. “Friendships or other.” [laughs] But like, with friendships or other, it's like, it's more difficult to bounce back to the normal after a big fight, but with family, it's just like- I mean, what's your choice? You have to be in the same house.

C: Yeah. I guess so. I would not want to get into a car that Dean is driving if I was Sam right now. But yeah, they sort of just have to.

Iit seems like they've been talking for a bit where Dean's been telling Sam about the time travel shit. And Sam’s all like, “Oh my god, I can't believe it. Like, Mom was a hunter?” And Dean's like, “Yeah, wild shit. And she almost kicked my ass.” And we didn't mention the “Then” sequence, because it's not very important, but they put the fucking “Mom is a babe!” line in the “Then” sequence, for no fucking reason.

G: I was afraid that scene would repeat that sentiment here. Like, when Sam asks, "What would she like?"

C: Yeah, thank god. Thank god he did not say, “She was smoking, bro!”

G: Yeah.

C: Yeah. Sam asks, “How did she look?” And then, immediately after, he revises, “Like, I mean, was she happy?” And that made me so emo! Everything about Sam and Mary makes me so emo, because, like, he was 6 months old when she died. Like, he does not remember-

G: - does not know -

C: - anything about her. Like, Dean, for so long has been- John and Dean have been the sole keepers of her memory. Then, for a few years, Dean was the sole keeper of her memories, and now Dean’s the sole keeper of her past as well. And that's- that's sad. I'm sad about it. And Dean says, “Yeah, she was awesome, funny, and smart and so hopeful.” And he says, like, “Dad, too. Until…” and then Sam sighs, and like, after a while he says, like, “It just like, sucks that like, our parents and our grandparents, like, everyone was murdered, and for what? So Yellow-Eyes could get in my nursery and bleed in my mouth?” And then Dean, like, stops. And he's like, “Sam, like, I never said that part.” Which is fun. Like, this is a secret Sam’s been keeping since the end of Season 2, and this is a fun way for it to have come out. But like, it does make me wonder, was Dean even planning to tell Sam about this? Because it seems that like, it's a good like, leverage point for like, "Stop slutting around with Ruby," you know, but like, it's weird that he hasn't brought it up, or maybe didn't plan to bring it up.

Sam starts like, looking guilty, looking away, and Dean goes like, “What the fuck? Like, you knew about the demon blood as a baby thing?” And Sam says, “Yeah, I knew for like, a year.” And Dean's upset. And Sam's like, “I should have told you. I'm sorry.” And like, he literally fucking shouldn't have told him that, and he shouldn't be sorry. Like, it was good that he didn't tell him, and he never should have.

G: By year, he's talking about Azazel showing him, right?

C: Yeah.

G: Okay.

C: Since the end of Season 2.

And Dean says, like, incredibly sarcastically, “Oh, whatever. If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to. It's fine.” Like, ugh! I cannot stand him.

G: I don't think he said it sarcastically. Like, the tone wasn't like that. I think a part of him is like, trying to say it sincerely. Like, "If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to." But given everything, like, it does come off as like, "Fuck you, dude."

C: Yeah. I mean, I feel like if he didn't mean it angrily/sarcastically, like, Sam wouldn't have gone like, "Dean." after it, you know? He would have been like, "Thank you."

G: No, I think that's an appropriate response. No, I don't think so. Like, I mean he's still trying to win Dean's good graces, so I think it's a reasonable response.

C: Alright, yeah, sure. And Sam just goes like, “Okay, whatever.” because Dean's shut down, doesn't want to interact anymore.

G: We go back to Jack, and he's talking to Michelle, his wife. And he's asking when the food is gonna be ready, and she's like, "Oh, 45 minutes." He goes and gets a beer. And then we go to Sam and Dean, who is watching this guy from the window. And they're saying that, like, “Whatever. Like, this guy's normal. Why are we here?” And then we see Jack go back to the fridge, and then he starts eating like, rotisserie chicken leftovers with his hands.

C: Yeah.

G: Which is fine.

C: Not even microwaved, though. Like, it's cold. Cold chicken can give you like, salmonella and shit, can't it?

G: I don't- I hope not. We don't have a microwave. We don't have a microwave, so we don't- I don't heat shit up because, like, it requires opening the oven or the stovetop, and like, I'm lazy. So, yeah. The thing is, when I was young- we've never had a microwave, never will have a microwave, probably. But when I was younger, I thought microwave with the pinnacle of wealth. I thought, like, if you had a microwave, you must be a wealthy person.

C: Yeah.

G: So I think that's pretty funny given the fact that, like, microwave meals is considered like, for people who can't afford home-cooked meals. But, I mean, I think it's because, like, it's such a hefty equipment, and it's like, "Oh, it's so quick and easy," I thought it was like, the convenience was like, for the wealthy only, and that's why we didn't have microwave at home. [C laughs]

C: That makes sense. Your logic is sound. Okay, and I've looked it up, and it's fine to eat cold chicken. As long as it's thoroughly cooked, it can be stored safely for up to 4 days. It's undercooked chicken that's very dangerous.

G: Mm-hm. He starts eating raw meat. Which, you know, fun.

C: Cascore.

G: Cascore? For a while, I was like- because I forgot about the rugaru thing. The thing is, I know that a rugaru, you have to burn them, but I forgot what like, a rugaru does or is. So I was like, "What even this guy? Is this like, a hunger-" what is that? Gluttony thing? From, you know, what we see of Cas later? Is this a premonition to that or whatever? But it's not. It's because he's a rugaru, which we find out later. Anyway, we-

C: Also, the raw eating is fucking nasty. Like, he- it's crusted around his mouth. There's like, blood splatter on his shirt.

G: Eugh.

C: It's like, nasty. I enjoy it. Good for this actor for getting all that food dye in his mouth.

G: Yeah. And then we go to Sam and Dean, who's watching all this and goes, “Yeah. Pretty fucking weird.” [C laughs]

C: So they go into Travis's place. He's staying in a motel room. And, like you said, this guy is older and like, clearly, like, knew both of them as kids. They're like, friendly. They're familiar. And he has a broken arm, which is why he is not doing this hunt, but like, he tells Sam and Dean to get over here, and they do hugs. And Travis is like, “Oh my god! Like, Sam, you got so tall. It's been like, 10 years. Are you still a mathlete?” Which I thought was so fun. I think it's so cute that he used to be a mathlete. He's literally just like me for real. Sam’s like, “No.” But Dean goes, “Yep. He sure is a mathlete.” And Dean, throughout the scene, is sort of making passive-aggressive remarks to Sam about like, the whole Ruby thing. ‘Cause Travis says, like, “Oh, like, John would have been so happy that the two of you are still sticking together.” And Dean's like, “Oh, yeah, we're thick as thieves. There's nothing more important than family.” So he tells them about Jack Montgomery. Sam and Dean confirmed that, you know, he was eating raw meat and all that shit, and Travis explains that this is a rugaru, which Dean says sounds made up.

I did a quick lore check, and they're like, a legend common in French Louisiana, and they're usually people with dog or wolf heads, and they like, kidnap children or kill people or whatever. And often, they were used in Catholic households like, a “Oh, like, if you like, don't obey Lent, like, a rugaru’s gonna come get you" or shit. But the way that they are in Supernatural is that they are, like, people with like, rotted teeth, and, like, “wormy skin” is what he says. And what they do is they start out human, and then they turn. And Sam says the title of the episode by going, “Oh, so what? They go through some kind of metamorphosis?” And more explanation happens as like, a voiceover over Jack Montgomery's place. So like, he comes into the kitchen. Michelle's cutting some vegetables. And then she accidentally cuts her hand pretty badly, and he just like, zeroes in on the blood really hard. And Travis says that the main thing is that they're hungry for everything at first, but then for "long pig," and Sam makes like, a little laugh at that. But Dean, like, I don't know, they do a whole thing where Dean doesn't get it, but like, long pig means human flesh, blah blah blah. And Travis says, like, “The hunger grows and grows until they're unable to fight it. And then, as soon as they get their first bite of human flesh, they undergo the full transformation.” And, you know, at the Montgomeries, Michelle is like, “Oh my god! This fucking hurts! I think I need stitches.” And Jack is like, sweaty, like, can't stop looking at the blood and wanting to eat her. And he just goes like, “I have to go and get out of here,” and he runs out, leaving his wife to drive to the hospital by herself. And yeah.

Travis says that “There's no going back. They feed once, and they're a monster forever.” And apparently, he found Jack because this is something that runs in the family, and that like, 30 years ago, Travis, killed his dad. And like, he used to be a dentist, and like, a regular guy until he turned, and he didn't realize until later that his wife was pregnant and put the boy up for adoption. And Travis had difficulty finding him, partly because he didn't really want to hunt down and kill a child. So he's waited until Jack turns 30 or whatever in order to make sure that he has the right person.

I'm glad that Sam later says the thing that I was thinking, which is just like, “Okay, just go tell him to not eat people, then.” It seems pretty simple. And also I feel like, if one rugaru is able to like, practice self-control, like, that means that if it continues being passed down in the family, they can like, warn their kids while the kids are growing up and like, teach them self-control and like, it'll be fine. Like what we see with Garth and Bess later.

G: We go to Jack. He's in a bar, and he's eating a lot of peanuts, drinking a lot of alcohol. And then we see in the corner, like, some guy is talking up a girl who obviously doesn't want him to talk her up.

C: Yeah. This scene is quite annoying to me because, like, everything he says to that girl is something that Dean would say, like, anytime, and a girl could react the exact same way, and we would still be on like, Dean’s side for it. But because this guy is fat, like, we're supposed to be like- and okay, and we are supposed to be like, because she clearly doesn't want to talk to him. My issue is that it's fine when Dean does it, but not when a fat guy does it when it should be not fine either way.

G: Jack confronts the guy and breaks his arm.

C: And he calls the guy a "fat, sweaty dick." So the fact that he is fat was like, on purpose, and that's annoying.

G: We go back to Dean and Travis, and, you know, Sam. And they're talking about how to kill a rugaru. And it's, you know, by burning them. Sam comes in and he's like, “Oh, I checked the lore, not because I don't trust you, or I think you're stupid, or I think you're heartless, [C laughs] but because, I just wanted to, you know, check it out.” And he says that there's a couple of stories about people who had the gene, but they never turned because they just don't eat human flesh. And Travis is like, “Those are fairy tales,” and Sam says, like, “We're literally just gonna kill this guy who has never done anything wrong?” Travis is doing the whole- Travis has the perspective of “We know he's bad, and we're gonna prevent that from continuing on.”

C: Mm.

G: And Sam has the perspective of “Why are we gonna kill this guy if he has not done anything wrong?” At the end of it, Sam says, like- Well, by the way, there's a scene where Travis says,

C: “Have you ever been really hungry?"

G: "Have you ever been really hungry? Like, haven't eaten in days hungry?” And Dean goes, “Yeah.” And-

C: I guess the thing is like, I feel like people do quote this a lot. And like, I think that it is true that while John abandoned them in motels, that, like, Dean didn't eat in days. But Jensen Ackles’s delivery of that "yeah" is just like-

G: It's so bad.

C: - not very good. Like, it reads as like, one of their jokes about how Dean just is always hungry and loves to eat burger, you know? Like, it's basically like, Dean’s like reading "'haven't eaten in days' hungry" as metaphorically for "haven't eaten in like, half a day, but really wants burger." Like, that is the way Jensen Ackles delivers the "yeah" when it could have been a touching scene.

G: Yeah. Anyway, Travis makes a point that, like, “If you're hungry, you're gonna eat. And this guy's gonna do just that.” And Sam says, “We're not gonna kill him unless he does something that warrants, you know, murder.” Travis asks Dean, like, “What's up with your brother?” And Dean just goes, "[sighs] Don't get me started." Annoying as fuck.

C: Fucking annoying. And earlier, when Sam was like, coming in all excited to infodump about rugarus, Travis, like- or no. What does Dean say? Oh, Dean says something like, "Sam's like, obsessed with research. He keeps it under his bed next to the lube. It's a sickness. It really is." And on the "it's a sickness," he looks at Sam like, "I am talking about the demon blood thing, and I hate your guts." Like, ugh! Sick of him. And also, every like, Dean-Travis interaction, where, like, Dean and Travis are like, being weird about Sam, it feels so much like a "Sam is queer" thing, too. [laughs] You know what I mean? Like, it's like, “Sam doesn't fit in with like, the hunting community because of masculinity, queerness, blah blah blah blah.” Like, that is such a vibe this episode.

C: Back to Jack's, and Michelle is in a white nightgown. It's like, the morning, and she's getting tea. Jack shows up, and she tells him that she is quite angry because she had to drive herself to the hospital to get stitches, and he just walked out on her. And Jack is saying, “Sorry, I just got really dizzy when I saw your blood. My phone died.” And he's like, “I promise it'll never happen again, because you're so beautiful.” And at this point they're sort of like, doing a flirty thing, and he kisses her finger and then kisses her. But then it, you know. Like, it starts getting hot and heavy-ish. But then she starts going like, "I don't really want to be doing this. I don't want to go so far right now." Like, he's like, reacting with like, hunger, basically. Like, he's like, going for her neck like, I feel like, he's probably like, starting to bite a bit. And she tells him to slow down and to stop. But like, each time she does it, and she's told him to stop multiple times, he just does not. And it's, you know. I mean, whatever. Bad to look at. Eventually, she shoves him away and tells him that he's a son of a bitch and that something is wrong with him. And that is how that scene ends. But, you know. Bad to look at.

And, right. This episode does do a thing where it conflates physical hunger with sexual hunger a lot. Like, with the woman that Jack almost eats in a later scene. And, I don't know. I feel like, just stick to the physical hunger thing! Like, that's the lore. Like, I don't get it.

So back in the Impala, Dean's being annoying again. And he tells Sam, like, [annoyed] “Okay, fine. We can- I'm fine with just talking to this guy,” blah blah blah. And he says that he wants to make sure that if they have to, that Sam is going to be willing to burn this guy alive. And Sam insists that Dean calls Jack by his name. You know, Dean does his whole, like, “Oh, well, he's gonna turn because they always turn.” And Sam says, like, “Maybe he won't. Maybe he can fight it off.” And Dean says, like, “Oh, Sam, I think your emotions are like- Are you sure your emotions aren’t getting in the way here?” And Sam goes, "Huh?" And Dean goes, “Well, you know how Cathryn Humphris wrote this guy to be a mirror to you specifically? He seems like a nice dude, but he's got something evil inside something in his blood. Maybe you can relate.” And Sam says, “Stop the car.”(!!!) He says, “Stop the car.” Fuck! I looove this. I love it so much. And Dean says, “What?” And Sam says, “Stop the car, or I will.” Which is, I think, a fun little callback to what Cas said at the end of the last episode, right? Like, “Stop your brother, or we will.” So like, agh. So fun. Love it. And Dean does stop the car. He, like, swerves over his side of the road, not using his turn signal, and they have a conversation.

G: Sam, you know, gets out of the car and goes like-

C: And he's so mad that he opens the door before the car comes to a stop. Like, he's getting out while it's still driving.

G: And he says, like, “You know why I've been lying to you? Because of all this. Like, you treat me like I'm a freak!” And he says, “Or even worse, like I'm an idiot. Like I don't know the difference between right or wrong.” And Dean goes like, “Well, do you?”

C: [groans] God.

G: Sam says, “You have no idea what I'm going through.” And he goes, [dramatically] “I've got demon blood in me, Dean! This disease, pumping through my veins, and I can't ever rip it out or scrub it clean! I’m a whole new level of freak!” [C laughs] And I love that line. He literally is a whole new level of freak.

C: He literally is!

G: Yeah. And then he says that he's just trying to get this curse and turn it into something good.

C: "Because I have to," he says. Agh! He's my favorite little guy! Besides Cas. He's such- he's so good.

G: The thing is, even if he did tell Dean, Dean would react entirely this way.

C: Yeah. [laughs]

G: Although, I don't know, this scene, I was waiting for something more.

C: I felt quite satisfied with this scene. I was like- it was like, fucking 3AM. And I was like, rocking back and forth in my chair, and like, yelling at the- and like, pointing at the screen and going like, "Yeah! Get his ass!" Like, this was like, a sports game, and like, Sam just scored two touchdowns or however football works. I had a good time with this scene.

G: I think what I am upset about is that it very- like, the entire episode, right? It feels like Sam has given up on trying to communicate.

C: Mm.

G: And then the one time that he does open up, it's with anger, and like, he's truly so upset, and it's like this was punched out of him. So I feel like there is still so much more to be said if only he was able to form like, a statement that is not so emotionally driven. And like, I'm not saying that they should have gone that route because this is like, obviously a good scene and everything. But like, if we're talking like, what would allow Sam to experience more catharsis, like, at the end of this scene, he wasn't relieved that- because, like, after this, after he says, like, “I have to," right, Dean goes, “Okay, let's just talk to the guy,” and then he goes, “Well, I mean, like, Jack. Let's talk to Jack.” And like, you would expect Sam to feel, like, relief over this, or to feel better in a way. But like, he doesn't. He doesn't look like he does

C: He nods, but yeah, he does not feel much better.

G: If we're talking purely from the standpoint of like, "I just want Sam to feel better," which I do, so, I feel like, this scene did not satisfy in that way.

C: Yeah. I guess Sam tried to explain to Dean earlier, when Dean caught him and Ruby in the house, and then later in the motel, and each time, Dean just shut him down, like, immediately, right? Like, “How are you going to explain this? What do you mean there's another side?” So like, yeah, the only way for Sam to have done this is to be so angry that he goes like, “No, Dean. You shut up and listen to me.” So like, yeah, it would have been nice if Sam got that catharsis. But the way Dean has reacted to this prevents him from it. And Dean never apologizes properly. Like, even at the end where he apologizes, but like, in the worst way- like, yeah. I feel like for Sam to have catharsis, Dean has to apologize, and Dean never fucking does because the show always proves him right. Sad! Well, there's other TV, but we're not doing a podcast about the other TV. [both laugh]

G: Yeah.

C: So in Jack's backyard, you know, he's being a regular guy. He's watering plants, except he's watering plants standing completely still staring into the distance. Those flowers are going to die. So Sam and Dean show up, and they introduce themselves. And Sam is doing a thing where he's putting on his sympathy face, and like, trying to seem approachable, and Dean's putting on his “I'm just here because my bitch brother wanted me to be here” face. So yeah. Sam says, “We should talk about you and about how you're changing,” and Dean talks about the various symptoms that Jack is having. And Jack asks who they are. Dean says, “We're people who know a little something about something,” whereas Sam says, “We're people who can help.” So we cut to a bit later after they've explained rugarus to Jack. He's not very down to accept the truth, which makes sense, given that he didn't even know about the supernatural before today. And Sam says that his dad, Jack's father, was one of those things. And he says, “your real father,” which is, you know, annoying, but everyone does that about adopted people on TV. And Sam says that, you know, “This was passed on to you genetically.” And Dean says, like, “Stop saying that we sound crazy. Because you're just gonna get hungrier until you really just want to eat a person.” And Sam says like, “You don't have to- It doesn't have to be like this. You can fight it off because others have.” And Dean says like, “You have to not eat people, or else.” And Jack asks like, “Or what?” Sam says, “You feed once, and it's all over. And then we'll have to stop you.” And at this Jack realizes, “Oh, by that you mean kill me. And also, the reason my dad died was that someone else killed him about this.” And he's very reasonably upset about this, and says, like, “Get the fuck off my property right now.” You know, Sam makes like, a last-ditch effort of like, “Oh, like, your wife and everyone you know are in danger,” but he just tells them to leave. And Dean goes like, “Alright. Good talk.” And [sighs] that is the most that they try ever. Like, they don't even leave him like, their contact info for like, “After you've had some time to process this, reach out.” Like, they're just like, “Okay. That's it now.”

G: The next scene is Jack... watching a woman? [laughing]

C: Yeah, well, it's clear that he left his house. He's gone somewhere else because he doesn't trust himself around his wife anymore. So he's like, sitting outside, but then, yeah, there's a woman undressing in her window. Sad.

G: Yeah, and Jack's watching. And Sam and Dean like, check him out- This is such an unnecessary scene. Who even give a shit.

C: I don't think it's unnecessary.

G: But like, the point- I mean, it's whatever. But the point is that Jack is able to stop himself. Like, that's the whole point.

C: Yeah.

G: The details are unnecessary.

Jack goes back home, and I think, like, the the thing here is like, he is able to stop himself, so now he is confident that, like, “I'll be able to stop myself.” And anyway, he calls out to his wife. And then he sees that his wife is tied up in a chair. And then somebody like, chloroforms him, and then he passes out. Then we cut to him tied up to a chair with his wife beside him. And Travis is here. And Jack is trying to do this thing where he's like, talking to Michelle, but really, he's talking to the man where he's saying like, “Okay, we're gonna stay calm. We're gonna give this man whatever he wants.”

C: Travis is like, “Sorry, Jack. Like, I didn't want this to happen.” And he mentions that Sam and Dean are friends of his. And Jack says, “Well, they said that if I don't hurt anybody, then like, it's okay.” And Travis says, like, “Well, you haven't yet, but you would have, because they always do. I'm doing you a favor.” And like, the whole time, Michelle's going like, “What's happening? What is he talking about?” And Jack doesn't tell her, and he never does. And what happens is Jack keeps begging Travis to let Michelle go because she isn't part of this at all. And Travis says, “Well, no, she is, because...” and Michelle reveals that she is pregnant.

G: And this is such a fucking- [C laughing] First of all, where this scene is going-

C: What a coincidence.

G: No no no. Where this scene is going is that he's gonna burn them both.

C: Yeah.

G: Both of them. Just get an abortion! Oh my god!

C: [overlapping] Because Supernatural wouldn't recognize abortion as a thing until Season 12.

G: Yeah! I was like- "I have no ch-" literally, you have a choice, though, is the thing.

C: Yeah. Sam is in fact in a closet full of coat hangers very soon. Like, even if it's illegal in whatever state they're in, like, there are coat hangers right there. [G screams]

G: That's so horrible.

C: Yeah. God. Fucking stupid as shit. But yeah.

So Travis is, yeah, like you said, he's like, "Well. I'm gonna have to burn you both alive, because your unborn fetus thing is going to become a rugaru, too." And Jack hates this, obviously. And Travis is ready to like, burn the entire house to the ground, it seems.

G: Including him. Including himself. [C laughing]

C: Honestly, yeah.

G: It's also including himself.

C: Yeah, he's just pouring gasoline everywhere. God.

G: Including his shoes. Like, bro. [C laughing]

C: Dumbass shit. And then, Jack, you know, like, he gets a bunch of flashbacks of every moment when like, he was thirsty for blood. And then, you know, since he has super strength, sort of, which we saw in the bar with the breaking the man's hand, he is able to just break out of the handcuffs, and then he pounces on Travis. He starts punching him. And then he like, breaks Travis's arm again. Very fun! And then he like, tears Travis's shirt down and then just fucking like, rips his throat out with his teeth. And that's like, a normal and cool thing to do, honestly. Like, if a guy is going to kill you and your wife, like, fine. Go ahead. Do it. You know? And they make- this scene was pretty nasty. Like, he's like, fucking, eating this guy. Like, he like, tears bits of like, I don't even know, like, out of him. There's like, stringy shit in his teeth now. And Jack, at this, he like, transforms, in that his eyes become bloodshot and completely dilated, and his skin turns like, really pale and clammy and whatever. And Michelle is not a fan of this. She's, you know, screaming, crying, etc. And he's like, I don't know. The whole like. “Oh, they only have their base instincts, they’re full monster.” Like, Travis, has a different definition of full monster than me, because, like, he is still aware of things. Like, he knows her name, and he like, has like, the precision or whatever to like, undo her cuffs to save her. So she yells, "Stay away from me-"

G: Also, he has a full conversation with Sam later. An entire conversation.

C: Yeah.

G: He's not out of his mind or anything.

C: Yeah. He's just hungy.

G: He experiences remorse as well. He's hungry, but he experiences remorse. He tells Sam, like, “Have you seen me lately?” Like, he's cracking that kind of like, joke. He's a full, alive, aware person.

C: Yeah. But like, that's also true of like, vampires a lot of time and a lot of the people that Sam and Dean end up killing. But yeah, it does annoy me especially because the way Travis was talking about rugarus, it was like, “They like, literally can't think or speak or like, do anything besides kill people after they turn.”

G: Obviously, it's different, lore-wise, but like, this reminds me a lot of the Episode 2 Season 1 monster, ‘cause like, that one is also like, you have to burn them, right?

C: Yeah.

G: And then also like, that, one is like, “It was human. And then it slowly turned into blah blah blah,” according to Supernatural lore. So like, I guess this is better because it's not- [both laugh] Like, it's similar monsters, but at least this one, we can at least say the name. So.

C: Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like the episode 2 one was more animal-like, or was portrayed as more animal-like.

G: No, like, that's my point. The port- like, it's the similar lore-wise. But the portrayal is interesting, because, like, they could have gone that path, and that was the path also that I was expecting them to take. Like, the moment he eats human flesh, it's gonna be- he's gonna be like that monster. But he's not. He's lucid. So.

C: Yeah. So Michelle yells, “Stay away from me!” And like, he says her name. Like, he's crying and shit. But, you know, she like, runs out of the door, gets into the car, and leaves. Good for her.

G: You know what? At least Travis is dead.

C: Yeah, thank god, at least Travis dead.

G: Also, let's talk about, you know, him killing Travis and what that implies in terms of self-control, whatever. Like, it's- at the end of the day, like, you could say it's because he was hungry, but really, it was because he was trying to protect his wife.

C: Yeah.

G: So like, I think that's such an interesting thing to throw in there. Like, he wasn't like, tempted because of hunger. He was tempted because someone was out to murder someone he loved.

C: Yeah. He was provoked into this.

G: Yeah, he was provoked into it. That's the the perfect word for it. And now there's the, you know, question of like, the nature is of him is to be hungry and to eat human flesh, whatever. But like, also, it's the circumstances around it, and if Travis didn't show up, he would probably still be fine. And I feel like them not revealing this to Sam is an interesting choice. Let's get into it!

C: Well doesn't Travis say something about how like, "You sent your friend here, and he was gonna burn me and my wife."

G: No, he says that. And then Sam says, “What? Why is he gonna hurt your wife?” And he doesn't answer. Like, Jack doesn't answer that.

C: Oh, yeah. Good for him.

G: Yeah, like, he doesn't need to tell this guy anything, but it is an interesting choice. Narratively. That- narrative-wise.

C: Yeah, I just read that as like, “Well, I don't want you to go and kill my wife or, like, my unborn child.” And yeah, I do like that.

G: Oh, yeah, of course. Like, of course, from Jack's perspective. But I think it would have been help- like, it would have been interesting if Sam learned that the reason why he turned wasn't out of self- like, lack of self-control. It was because of self-defense and defending his wife. So like, I think that would be an interesting thing for Sam himself, like, oh, him thinking that like, "I can say all I want about like- 'Oh, I'm just doing it. I'm in control. I'm in control.' But like, the moment a circumstance happens where someone I love is in danger, maybe I won't be so in control anymore."

C: Mm-hm. Yeah.

G: And it's interesting- and also, I think it makes, you know, it makes Jack a lot more empathetic, right? That, like, he's not the monster because of lack of self-control. But like, because Sam doesn't know that, he still thinks that like, this guy killed Travis just because. And I think that's interesting

C: Yeah. And this muddied a bit by him trying to eat Dean later. But, like, he also thinks that Dean is a threat to his life, which he is, so like-

G: No! He doesn't- I'm a bit fuzzy. Does he try to eat Dean? Doesn't he just like, lick the blood or something?

C: I think- the implication was that he was going for it, and then Sam bust out of the closet- again, good for him- with a flamethrower- not good for him- before he could eat Dean.

G: Yeah, but like, it's different from Travis, though. Because, like, now he's thinking, like, “I am already a monster.” Instead of back with Travis where it's like, “If I do this, I will become a monster.”

C: Mm-hm.

G: So Sam and Dean enter. They find all the mess on the floor. They find a blood trail. They follow it, and it's just a clump of flesh now. I don't know how they get knocked out. Do they get knocked out? I think so.

C: Yeah.

G: Sam like, gets locked into a closet. Hell yeah.

C: Hell yeah.

Sam does say sadly like, “Oh, I guess you were right about Jack,” like, when he sees all the blood, and that it is sad. Like, Dean was not right. Shut up.

G: Yeah. So Sam's locked in the closet, and he wakes up, and then Sam, like, freaks out. And then Jack is saying, like, “Calm down. Dean - like, your brother’s alive,” blah blah blah. And Sam is trying to both open the door and like, keep talking to Jack so that he won't attack. So he gets some hangers and like, forms it into a makeshift locksmith thing. And then he's saying that- like, he's trying to plead to Jack, and Jack is saying, like, “You sent a guy here who tried to burn my wife alive.” Realized that Sam doesn't know that his wife is pregnant, so he like, lies, and he goes like, “Oh, he didn't say why he was trying to burn my wife alive.” Anyway, Jack laments that he can't ever see his family again. He's saying that “Your friend and you two, you made me into this.”.

C: Yeah, which is pretty true. Without this provocation, like, he wouldn't have turned today. Like, he may have in the future, but like, also, maybe not. And like, the show is a bit hazy on the stance it takes here. But like, I do like that it's like "It is the circumstances that have created this more than just Jack's nature."

G: And Sam’s saying, “No one's making you kill us. I know that there's a dark pit inside of you, but you don't have to fall into it. You don't have to be a monster. You are what you do, not what you are." Whatever. I think he says it better. “It doesn't matter what you are, it only matters what you do."

C: "It's your choice.” Yeah.

And also, when he says, “I know you have this dark pit side of you," he does like, a little laugh, and he goes, “Believe me, I know.” And that's nice. I like when Sam gets his mirrors.

G: I think it's bullshit. I don't like it.

C: Okay.

G: It's not about you, Sam. Get your shit together. [C laughs]

C: It is the Sam and Dean show. It's always about one of them. And at least it's about Sam this time, and not Dean. I'll take it

G: For real. For real, though. And Jack is like, going to Dean, and he like, licks up some blood, and then blah blah blah, when suddenly, we hear the door open. Sam has opened the closet, and now he's out of the closet. [both] Good for him. And then he burns Jack alive. [laughs] You know.

C: Not good.

C: We cut to the epilogue, and they're in the Impala, and, you know, Sam and Dean are in there, and they're both super bummed out. And Dean says something about how, “Oh, you did the right thing. That guy was a monster. There was no going back.” Sam does not reply 'cause this is a terrible sentence that Dean just said. And then Dean gives the most half-assed apology where he goes, “Sam, I want to tell you I'm sorry. I've been kind of hard on you lately.” Whatever. For the Winchesters, this is like, begging, crying on your knees for forgiveness, honestly. At least for Dean it is. And Sam just says, “Don't worry about it, Dean.” And I hate that he's so defeated about this. And Dean continues, and he's trying to explain, saying like, “Oh, your psychic thing scares the crap out of me,” and Sam goes, like, “Okay, I just don't want to talk about it,” which surprises Dean.

G: I find the wording of it interesting. “If it's all the same, I’d really rather don't talk about it.” I like that. Like, "If we're just gonna have the same like, things that we're gonna bring up like, who even give a shit?" And he's right. Who even give a shit?

C: Yeah. Yeah. Good for Sam. And a lot of people have said like, "Sam is the guy who- everyone thinks that Sam's the guy who wants everyone to talk about their feelings, but he's actually just the guy who wants Dean to talk about his feelings, so he doesn't have to talk," and I think that is true. And Sam continues, and he says that “There's nothing more to say. I can't keep explaining myself to you. I can't make you understand. Because this thing, this blood, it's not in you the way it's in me. It's just something I have to deal with.” God. He's literally gay, is the thing. I think this guy is like, gay or something. [both laugh]

G: Yeah.

C: And Dean says, “Not alone.” And then we get, you know, a fun, on-the-nose shot of Sam looking out of the window-

G: At his reflection!

C: Yeah, it's his reflection, and it's surrounded by darkness. There's no Dean there. He is alone. It's just him and himself. And he just stares for a bit. And then he says, like, “Whatever. Like, it doesn't matter, 'cause I'm just done with these powers. I'm done with everything.” And Dean goes like, “OMG, really? That's great! Thank you!” And Sam says, “Don't thank me. I'm not doing it for you, or for the angels, or for anybody. This is my choice.” Ah.

G: Hell yeah.

C: And that's the ep.

Is he like, lying, or does he actually stop doing it for a while?

G: I don't know. I forgot. I forgor.

C: Yeah.

G: I mean, what did we think about this episode? It's really okay. Like, I know, I complained a lot, but it's fine. It's not bad.

C: Yeah. It feels like like earlier seasons Supernatural in like, a good way, generally. I find the mirror stuff fun in early Supernatural, and I find all the like, conversations where they reveal things about themselves and their motivations fun in early Supernatural. And I liked it here. It's just that I hate Dean so much.

G: Yeah. What's your Best Line/Worst Line?

C: I feel like there were multiple times during the episode when I wrote a line down and I was like, “This is the best line!” and then I would like, write a new one down that was the best line, but the one I was most excited about was “Stop the car.” Like, fuck yeah. Literally stop the car!

G: I think my favorite line is the one where he goes, “If it's so terrific, then why did you lie about it to me?” I think- not because I liked that he said this or I agree with the sentiment, but because- he's literally gay. [both laugh] I think this guy is gay or something.

C: Literally, literally.

G: Sam, I mean. Not Dean. Thank god. [C laughs] So-

C: Worst line.

G: Worst line.

C: I do not like the way Dean speaks to Ruby fucking ever. I think the “obedient little bitch” line was just, like, even for Dean, like, a step too far. So that's my worst line. Oh, but my runner-up for worst line is the like, “Do you know how far off the reservation you are? How not normal? How not human?” Like, the stupidest ever argument coupled with some racism. Like, congratulations, Dean. Good for you, being a stupidass.

G: My worst line is “You fat, sweaty dick.” 'Cause like, oh my god! Like, it is because he's fat.

C: Yeah. Spreadsheet.

G: Spreadsheet.

C: There were moments of misogyny and racism like, in the opening. Well, there was like, “off the reservation" for racism, and then I think the way that Ruby was treated with all the "bitch" and blah blah blah was pretty bad. Those moments are both pretty small in the scope of the episode, but I think in misogyny, I would also add that, I don't know, just the way that the women in Jack's life- and by "the women in Jack's life," I just mean Michelle and that woman that he watches undressing, like, I am bothered by their portrayal also. So I feel like I'm down to give a one in each category of misogyny and racism.

Alright. Homophobia, I mean, a lot of like, metaphorical homophobia in my mind. [laughing] But I don't think that's what they were actually going for.

G: Yeah.

C: So that's a 0.

G: IMDb.

C: Huh. It's a tricky one. I feel like this episode could be polarizing. I think the quality of it is fine.

G: I think this is an 8.6er.

C: Okay. I've been guessing 8.7 every single time, and eventually, one day, I'll have to be right. So let's go with that.

G: 8.7?

C: Yeah.

G: Okay. Oh my god! It's an 8.0.

C: Oh. Oh, dear. Okay. Well.

G: People be hating.

C: People do despise this episode, it seems. Okay, what are they saying? Please tell me they're being Dean-haters and not Sam-haters.

G: Yeah, they are Dean-haters.

C: Thank god.

G: This is so interesting.

C: What?

G: “The only reason why I am not giving this episode at 10 is because they did not portray the rugaru correctly. This is a-" no, I don't know how to pronounce this word. "Cajun"?

C: Yeah.

G: "-myth. Like, the Louisiana version of the boogieman. He is supposed to be more similar to a werewolf in appearance. Usually, Supernatural gets the monsters correct, but they didn't do their research on this one." And this one made me laugh. "Was Jensen married yet when this episode was written? [C laughs] His wife should have informed him about the legend of the rugaru. She grew up in Lafayette."

C: God, that is so fun.

G: And like, [laughing] the concept that, like, Jensen Ackles is writing these episodes [both laughing] or has enough creative control.

C: Yeah.

G: And like, that's so funny.

C: That is pretty funny. One of these reviews says, “The real Ruby should come out sooner or later. I bet Dean will butt heads with her." Like, they think this current Ruby is like, a fake Ruby? Like, they made this shit up? That's really funny. I love this.

Okay, and then, you know, the funniest review, I think, is the one that says-

G: "Heavenly angel."

C: "10/10, heavenly angel. [both laughing] I'm proud of Misha-" who is not in this episode! "Twelve years ago, he was seen as the new man and didn't feel right. Now the value of the final depends on whether it is within it or not. [G laughing] This guy came in, gave more than you can imagine, and he's a huge source of inspiration, and it's a show and family. A part of." [both laughing] What episode did they think this was?

G: [laughing] I'm laughing so hard there's no sounds coming out. [both laughing] [G screams]

C: God bless.

G: [both laughing] Why in this episode? Why? God, it's funny.

C: Okay.

G: Anyway. I think that’s it for this episode of Busty Asian Beauties. Next time, we will be discussing Season 4, Episode 5: “Monster Movie.” Leave us a rating or a review wherever you get your podcasts.

C: Follow us on social media! We are on twitter at twitter.com/BeautiesPodcast and on Tumblr at bustyasianbeautiespod.tumblr.com. Our official tag is #BABPod, B-A-B-POD, and thank you to everyone who's donated to our Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/bustyasianbeautiespod. Also, check out our merch at babpod.redbubble.com!

G: Yeah. You can email us any feedback, comments, or inquiries at [email protected]. See you guys next time!

[guitar music]

#transcript

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jadegiantess · 3 years

Conversation

You have to turn on the sound to hear [thing that can't be described easily]: Fair enough, not great but you probably just aren't thinking about it or how annoying that is to read or see all the time.

You have to turn on sound to hear [thing that can be described easily but is not to 'surprise' the listener and won't say what it is]: It's just a goofy noise or voice 99% of the time. At least I can guess but still not my favorite.

There is no way transcript can capture/describe [thing] you have to hear it for yourself: I hate you personally and am going to fuck your mom.

#deaf #hoh #hard of hearing #transcription #captions #closed captions #capital d deaf #I'm not actually hoh so i don't know the tags but i am a coda with auditory processing issues so #this just always sticks out to me #coda #child of deaf adult #like why even start a transcript if you think you can't describe something #also why shit on the people who did transcript which is an accessibility tool #you may think it's funny but it's kind of like going up to #a braille sign or an auditory description and being like IT CANT REALLY CAPTURE THE ESSENCE OF THE PICTURE THO #and just makes it obvious the people who comment that and reblog it with no critical thought are like #oh yes the transcript and captions are for me to decide if I can unmute it #not at all for people who might not be able to hear #also if that metaphor is rude or offensive please let me know I will take it out #if you are offended that I am going to fuck your mom because you didn't use your brain on why a transcript is there i will fuck your dad to #the first one is annoying but i really try to not assign maliciousness when the answer is usually ignorance #it can be invisible to people who don't think about these things because they don't have to #it's not great and all of these are technically from ignorance #but it's the one I forgive the easiest #if you aren't experienced in transcription and make an honest effort it's better than any of the options you could have said #deaf and hoh #deafculture

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

Text

Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid

It’s been just over a year since the death of activist, writer and anthropologist Gavid Graeber — a brilliant speaker, writer and thinker who helped give us Occupy, “we are the 99%” and “Bullshit Jobs.”

On the anniversary of David’s death, his widow Nika Dubrovsky convened the first “Art Project” discussion, a fascinating debate between Thomas Piketty and Michael Hudson, a pair of political economists whose work is neatly bridged by Graeber’s own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWT0uvBLDbo

Piketty, of course, is the bestselling French economist whose 2013 Capital in the 21st Century was an unlikely, 700+ page viral hit, describing with rare lucidity the macroeconomics that drive capitalism towards cruel and destabilizing inequality

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

Hudson, meanwhile, is the debt-historian and economist whose haunting phrase “Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid,” is a perfect and irrefutable summation of the inevitable downfall of any system that relies on household debt to drive consumption.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#jubilee

Like Hudson, Graeber was obsessed with the history and politics of debt. His 2012 book “Debt: The First 5,000 years” influenced not just Piketty’s work, but the work of many non-economists, including a large group of science fiction writers.

https://www.tor.com/2012/04/16/the-best-science-fiction-ideas-in-any-non-fiction-ever-david-graebers-debt-the-first-five-thousand-years/

Like Piketty, Graeber was capable of writing extremely long books that were so engaging that people actually read them, absorbing complex and nuanced subjects. DEBT clocked in at 534 pages, and not a dud among them.

And like both Hudson and Piketty, Graeber was obsessed with long timescales and the ways that history is pressed into service to assert that various political situations are inevitable products of human nature, meaning that there’s no point in asking for a fairer system.

In Debt, Graeber reaches back 5,000 years to question (among other things), the “money story” that money was created by individuals who wanted to make barter more efficient, settling on coins as a way to make change for someone who wants a cow but only has chickens to trade.

Graeber shows the “confluence of needs” theory of money to be a fairy tale, something that orthodox economists literally made up as the “most likely” source of money, without ever asking historians about what the record tells us about the origins of money.

Which is a pity, because historians know a lot about this stuff! For example, they can tell you about the Babylonian use of ledgers to record the issuance and redemption of debt in the largely agricultural economy of the day.

This early money would be recognizable to farmers today: during planting season, a share of the eventual harvest is promised in exchange for the inputs needed to plant, nurture and reap the crops.

Like Graeber, Hudson also treats Babylonian policy as key to economics — specifically, the Babylonian understanding that “debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid,” which is why the state would periodically declare a jubilee in which all debts were declared void.

Without these periodic jubilees, the entire productive economy is swallowed up by debt service — every poor harvest or other unforseeable circumstance drives producers (who are also debtors) further into debt, whose interest creates an inescapable gravity.

Without some way to escape debt’s gravity, all productive labor becomes oriented toward debt-service, and the economy grinds to a halt. If this sounds familiar, you’re probably paying attention to today’s political economy:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

Piketty also works in long timescales, though his historical analysis is an order of magnitude more recent that Hudston or Graeber’s. At Capital XXI’s core is a data-set, painstakingly assembled by Piketty and his grad students over more than a decade.

That data-set traces “capital flows” (the distribution of wealth and income) for 300+ years, rigorously traced and normalized, so that we can understand things like the relative degree of inequality in different societies over centuries.

Famously, Piketty concludes that no matter how fast an economy is growing — no matter how productive its makers are — that wealth grows faster, making the takers who financed growth even richer than the people whose work is propelling the economy.

This fundamental truth (expressed in economic notation as r > g, or “return on capital is greater than economic growth”) means that “meritocracy” is a lie: the richest people in a market economy aren’t the people who do the best work, it’s the people who started off rich.

Like Hudson, Piketty’s work looks at the relationship between inequality and instability: Piketty uses his data to show that inequality crises trigger political crises, and that high degrees of inequality precede upheavals like the French Revolution and the World Wars.

Given all that, a discussion between Piketty and Hudson, convened in Graeber’s memory, is bound to be fascinating, and they don’t disappoint (if you prefer text to video, check out Naked Capitalism’s transcript):

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/michael-hudson-and-thomas-piketty-debate-inequality-debt-and-reform.html

Here’s my highlight reel of the discussion, with commentary. Hudson opens with a skeptical take on Piketty’s conclusion to Capital XXI, in which he proposes a global wealth tax. Such a tax is nearly impossible to enforce, says Hudson — unlike a jubilee.

Hudson says the source of today’s global vast fortunes is not earnings or income — rather, it’s central banks’ subsidy of the value of stocks and bonds, through rock-bottom interest rates, bond guarantees, etc. These fuel speculative bear markets that run up asset prices.

These state-subsidized fortunes are pumped into the financial markets, becoming the loans that everyone else has to pay debt on, just to survive. As in ancient times, the finance sector eventually swallows the productive economy whole. Without jubilee, you get collapse.

This is true within rich economies, but it’s even more pronounced in the relations between poor debtor countries who were coerced into taking on massive debts by the IMF, who are going to pay an ever-larger share of their GDP to offshore creditors as the economy slows.

The only way for poor countries to service those debts is by imposing crushing austerity, which means starving domestic producers of investment, education and health services, reducing productivity, requiring more austerity — until the whole thing collapses.

Remember: debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. It’s an iron law, and cannot be repealed — not by austerity, not by “better management,” not by “living within your means.” Can’t be paid = won’t be paid.

Piketty doesn’t dispute any of this, saying that he’s reconsidered some of the solutions in Capital XXI in light of subsequent events, like the pathetically inadequate global minimum corporate tax of 15%, which only rich countries’ treasuries will get to participate in.

Piketty points to his followup to Capital XXI, the even weightier (and sadly less influential) Capital and Ideology for his more up-to-date thinking on the way to address inequality and instability.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/19/capital-and-ideology-by-thomas-piketty-review-if-inequality-is-illegitimate-why-not-reduce-it

He reiterates his thesis that inequality self-corrects, thanks to the instability it engenders. Left on their own, market economies collapse, torn apart by the bill for guards to defend lenders’ fortunes, the bill for interest payments that enrich lenders.

Impose sufficient austerity and brutality on a society and the cost of defending it exceeds the wealth its productive sector manages to produce, and boom — French Revolution, the World Wars, etc.

Piketty proposes that mounting “catastrophic climate change” might precipitate the next crisis, which is certainly a safe bet, though of course, the question is whether that crisis will come after the point of no return for a habitable planet.

Hudson has ideas about how we might hasten transformative change without risking civilizational collapse. He points out that Piketty’s work identifies inherited wealth as inequality’s wellspring and points out that estate taxes are much more enforceable than wealth taxes.

Certainly, inherited wealth is a live issue today. The latest installment of Propublica’s essential IRS Papers reporting shows how the richest Americans abuse a bizarre loophole to avoid ANY tax on indescribably vast estates:

https://www.propublica.org/article/more-than-half-of-americas-100-richest-people-exploit-special-trusts-to-avoid-estate-taxes

No one knows exactly how much tax avoidance grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs) drive, because they are shrouded in secrecy. In 2013, the lawyer who created GRATs said they’d allowed the ultra-wealthy to evade $100b in taxes. Their use has increased since then.

Another lever for reducing inequality is political competition. Hudson points out that during the Cold War, capitalist states took steps to prevent runaway inequality in a bid to show that market economies were more stable than centralized, planned economies.

Hudson suggests that competition with China might serve that function today. Without forgiving China for its autocracy and human rights abuses, he gives favorable marks to its economic planners for reining in the finance sector.

It’s true that China intervened heavily in credit markets during the covid crisis, to prevent rentiers from destroying productive businesses that couldn’t service their debts during lockdown, preserving larges swathes of otherwise vulnerable productive firms.

He reminds us that the original meaning of “free market” was “a market free from rents,” where unproductive creditors were not allowed to lay a private tax on productive manufacturers.

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, the meaning has been reversed — a market is “free” if creditors face no limits on rent-extraction.

But there’s good reason to be skeptical of claims that China’s economy is being well-managed, as Anne Stevenson-Yang writes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/annestevenson-yang/2021/09/25/chairman-xi-chinas-looming-crisis-and-the-myth-of-infallibility/

Stevenson-Yang paints a picture of chaotic state management of the Chinese economy, hidden by state-owned media and its rosy outlook. Watchwords like “common prosperity” are empty buzzwords, used to paper over self-interested, corrupt business practices.

State initiatives measure progress through short-term, easily gamed KPIs, something she says is documented in Red Roulette: “a new book written by a disaffected property developer named Desmond Shum.”

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Red-Roulette/Desmond-Shum/9781982156152

Now, I’m willing to stipulate that for investors and property developers “corruption” or “incompetence” might be indistinguishable from what the rest of us would call good governance, but some of Stevenson-Yang’s charges seem factual and well-made.

42I found the discussion between Piketty and Hudson fascinating, and if there was anything more that I’d add, it would be a dose of technopolitics (unsurprisingly). After all, technology has a huge bearing on the timing and nature of the shifts that both economists study.

For Piketty, inequality-driven instability collapses when the cost of guard-labor rises too high to bear — other words, eventually, a society gets so unequal that it costs more to stave off guillotines than even the ultrarich can afford.

For Hudson, debt-driven instability collapses when debtors begin to default because they have no ability to service their debts.

Technology changes the nature of both of these collapses. Take guard labor: mass surveillance and technological controls make it cheaper than at any time in history to isolate and neutralize political threats to elite rule.

How much cheaper? Well, in 1989, the Stasi employed one in sixty East Germans to spy on the whole nation.

Today, the NSA spies on the whole world, at a spy:subject ratio that’s more like 1:10,000 — two orders of magnitude more efficient than the spies of a generation ago. That’s a huge productivity gain, and it’s all thanks to digital technology.

When it comes to debtor default, the tension is between coercion and ability to pay. Yes, “debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid,” but “can’t be aid” is not a hard limit — it turns on how much the debtor is willing to hurt themselves and their loved ones to make payments.

Every mafia armbreaker knows this. When someone can’t pay their debts, you can break their arm and they’ll cash in their kids’ college fund and secretly remortgage their house to make the next payment.

When that runs out, if you threaten to break their legs, the debtor will start breaking into cars. Eventually, this comes to an end, when the debtor goes to prison for 25 years. But in the meantime, coercive force can wring a fair amount of blood from the stone.

Debtor coercion has been transformed by digital technology, from an artisanal, retail handicraft to a scaled up, industrial practice.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

We don’t need the threat of repo men to keep you paying your car note — miss a Tesla payment and your car will phone home and lock its doors. When the tow arrives, it will flash its lights, honk its horn and back out of its parking space for repossession.

The ability to digitally repossess, or partially repossess (as in India, where loan-shark cellphone companies disable your most-used apps if you miss a payment) the tools you rely on for life and livelihood makes it cost-effective to apply coercion at scale.

Cheap guard-labor and cheap coercion mean that crisis can be deferred for ever-longer timescales. Thus, societies up the only kind of debt that really matters: policy debt. Lives are ruined, productive capacity tanked, the planet poisoned.

Add tech to Piketty or Hudson’s analysis and things start to look a lot less self-correcting, and the odds tilt against our civilization, our species and our planet. If a correction only comes after the point of no return, we’re in very deep shit indeed.

#pluralistic

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floralbfs · 5 years

Text

WIP Ask Game!

thank u anon!!!!

1: Summarize your WIP in 10 words or less.

orphan gains powers, gets adopted by alien, saves the world.

2: Post a line from your WIP with no context.

'There's a whoosh of air, and Leo suddenly hears a voice he never thought he'd ever be able to hear again.'

3: Does your WIP have a title? If so, explain its significance. If not, what are you calling it for now?

Okay so I have been calling it the Youtuber Superhero AU (because it started as a fandom au but then i made it an original!!) but I thought maybe it could be "Thicker than Water", since my MC, Leo, is an orphan and he lives alone for most of his life (most of his life lmao at least until canon point? read also: around 9-11 years when in canon he's like 19?) in a remote, lowkey magical place/dimension?, but ultimately he comes back to his hometown and creates a family for himself!!!! i won't give spoilers but, since i already said this, part of his found family is his adoptive dad, an alien who is also a superhero!! If not TtW, I would call it maybe,,,,, Moonstone???? at least the first book!!! (ooh, maybe TtW can be the series name and Moonstone the first book's name?) because Leo kind of gets his powers through a moon stone????? it's not actually moon stone; it was a strange rock he found in the magical dimension that seeked out a champion for the god Huitzilopochtli??? and the closest word Leo could get for it was Moonstone, because of its uhhhhh singular qualities!

4: Describe the setting of your WIP.

OKAY, this is a fun one!!! Leo's hometown is named Star Nova, idk why it just seemed cool, and it is a futuristic city!!! They don't follow capitalism Because I Said So, and they're really into, like, environmental stuff!!! So you'd see SO much flora all over the city kshdsjfh like those???? idk what they're called but like the towns overridden with plants? but controlled!!! There's a tiny percentage of the population (tho I still haven't decided if this is worldwide?? I have a way to make it worldwide but idk) who have superpowers, either due to "individual" factors (e.g Leo's powers are bc of the moonstone, and Matthew(his dad)'s powers are due to him being an alien!) or were affected by a weird experiment an Evil Corporation™ were doing; ECtm was trying out an illegal experiment that could alter living beings' genetics to their will, but it went wrong and their substance exploded and went airborne. Those who were working on it knew about its risks and toxicity, ergo they were wearing a special suit and weren't affected, but the gas contaminated and ??mixed?? with the air and spread to the nearest city, Star Nova (the unofficial capital of the Joint Pacific Nations) and affected a Whole Lot Of People!!! this all happened a while before canon, and the corporation got away with it bc they were filthy rich basically. Anyway, a lot of the people who were affected to the "virus" reacted negatively and died, some were uhhh """immune"""???, and a few Seemed to be immune but had actually had a successful celular-level bonding with the substance! It didn't do anything to them, but their children/grandchildren were born with physical or mental anomalies, also known as super powers (gasps)!!!! BUT!!! a lot of the story happens in the magical city of Coatl (it means serpent!), located within a pocket dimension somewhere inside the Mexican southern forest, where Leo finds himself when he's four years old, recently orphaned, guided by a magical ....bird....being....? he lives there for around eleven years, and he's granted Huitzilopochtli's Champion's power once he's like. Not A Baby lmao. Coatl is.... kind of like,,,,, an Olympus, I guess? Only those with like the destiny to find it know where it is, and they can lead other people there if it's for good causes! It's almost like a sentient city, and the Aztec gods kinda. chilled there???? my theory is that a lot of religious mythologies exist, at least in this universe, and they all co-exist on earth, or pocket dimensions inside of it!!! anyway, Leo lived there and was basically raised by gods???? and an AI???? bc i love AIs???? and uhhhh i think that got away from me ajdhsjdhsj does all of this even count as setting??? am i missing anything????

5: Search for the word “knife” in your WIP. If you find it, paste the line and explain the context.

no knives sadly :( i guess i haven't reached Those Scenes yet???? tho there should be one in the first chapter….. my wip document is just kind of very messy ajdhsjdjsjdh i might just have to make a new document????

6: Search for the word “dream” in your WIP. If you find it, paste the line and explain the context.

???????????? why am i not using any words?????????? sorry :/

7: What are you most proud of?

probably the worldbuilding and characters (at least those with superpowers? maybe i should say superpowers period)!!!!! they're very complex and thought-out????? and i THINK they're original!!!!! so!!!!! ＼(￣▽￣)／

8: What is your biggest challenge?

oooooof,,,,,,,, probably..... getting an actual plot lmao????? like i have an overall view of my would-be first and second books, but i don't know if they actually have enough to them to be written as they are?????? like… idk if the conflict is really like??? worthy to be a Main Conflict™????

9: How would you describe your writing style?

oooooooh uhhhhh maybe….. flowery prose???? i'm a poet at heart, so if i don't use loads of metaphors and language uhhhh idk their name in english but language variators??? i will literally die. but seriously nsjdhsjdhsjfh nothing too serious!!!! most of my “”””angst”””” scenes are….. not so sad, i think skfjsjfj

10: How would you describe your WIP’s narrative style? (1st person, 3rd person, multiple POVs, single POV, alternating chapters, etc.)

oh!!!! well, i think it'd be multiple povs, alternating chapters, third person???? i'm still not sure whether to use 1st or if i already have??? p sure that's a different wip i'm thinking about tho

11: Which character do you have the most in common with?

uhhhhhhhhhhhh seeing how underdeveloped she is right now??? probably Persephone???? bc she's genderfluid skfjsjfjdjfh or uhhhh Scott??? bc i too love leo with my heart and would die for him and stay with him in the afterlife. (hypothetically, of course….)

12: Which character do you have the least in common with?

Maeve, probably!!!! she's, uh…. Something.

13: Your characters are stranded on a deserted island. What happens?

They Are All A Mess. akfhajfjajfj Matthew would probably become the leader and like. establish order and shit???? but he's also the hugest nerd so he'd just give the leader role to someone else (probably seph staine?) and goes exploring and cataloging shit skfhsjfhdjf Leo is probably the most resourceful one of the bunch, so he would immediately like. start planning for huts and food and stuff???? also idk if they would have their powers in this situation cause it'd be too easy to get them all out of there????? but let's just say they do but the island is inescapable by flight?? he can talk to animals, so he could communicate with the local fauna and like form alliances???? Seph is a good leader, so he'd probably like….. keep everything in check???? and Leo's friends are all good and resourceful, so they'd make a good team!!!! tldr they basically create order immediately and do their best to not struggle??? after a few days/weeks, some of them start to like. break down? but the adults are like. wise and shit??? and i'm pretty sure at least one of them is like a licensed therapist??? so they help each other out uwu

14: Have you chosen birthdays for any of your characters? If so, when are they?

oh!!!! only for a few!!!! Leo and Maeve's birthday is on March 25, Scott's birthday is on August 27, Matthew doesn't really have a birthday??? because time is different in his planet????, Percy and Persephone's birthday is somewhere in November, and uhhhh im p sure that's all i got akfjsjfjsj i suck at birth dates

15: Do you know your characters’ MBTI personalities?

GOD, no. maybe i should do their tests???👀

16: What would your characters be for Halloween?

Leo… doesn't believe in/care for Halloween, as he didn't grow up around it, but it's totally Scott's jam!!! they are dirt poor in a good first half of the book, though, so they can't really dress up :( they met in the library, and after (spoiler alert!!!) scotty's death, Leo feels it appropriate to dress up as Scott's fave characters every year. Percy and Persephone are (very weak) shapeshifters, so their costumes ROCK!!!!! they always do matching costumes, so they get cliché pair costumes!! Matthew….. uh. he is… way too old for that. he was literally alive before Halloween was even a thing, so it's not really his thing. Leah just……. does her own thing??? she can see ghosts, so she sometimes does like historical costumes and stuff with their help!!! and Ben…. oof tbh that depends on what his fave song/album/whatev is at the moment??? he kinda creates like a story/aesthetic for them and dresses up that way!!!!

17: Does your WIP have any themes or motifs?

uhhhh found family, definitely!!!! i really can't think of any bc i'm an idiot, but uhhhh intelligence??? if that's a thing??? like,,, they're all powerful and shit but it's also like. brains over brawns????

18: What’s easier, dialogue or description?

i think description!!!! neither of them are… hard??? but!!! description is like…… where i can go hog wild akfjskfjsjfb

19: Post a picture or gif that describes your WIP.

20: Post a brief excerpt.

Leo @Leoberry

You asked, I answered. New Q&A video is now up!

[3k retweets, 10k likes, 9k replies] 20 min. ago

[My First Q&A- video transcription excerpt]

[Leo Berry, a nineteen-year-old brunette guy with green eyes, wearing a red shirt with a lightning symbol on it that's loose on his muscular form, waves at the camera and smiles widely, dimples showing up on his cheeks.]

Leo: Hey, guys. You've been asking me to do a Q&A for a while, and the day has finally arrived! I told you to ask me questions on Twitter with the hashtag #AskBerry, and I've picked a few!

[Leo smiles brightly and lifts up his cellphone.]

Leo: First off, here's one by @razzberry- nice username, by the way-: “what's your cat's name? Do you have more than one?”

[The video shifts, and there's suddenly two cats sitting on Leo's arms: a large, orange cat quickly falling asleep on his shoulder, and a black kitten hugged in his arms.]

Leo: I do! This little fella-

[He gasps as the kitten in his arms struggles to get free and runs off-camera.]

Leo: Don't leave me! Okay, that little fella is Onyx, and, as you can see, he doesn't like me very much. Anyway, this little gal asleep over here…

[He points toward a small orange cat sleeping on his shoulder.]

Leo: ...is Tigress! She's my little baby. You've probably seen her around a lot on my vlogs, since she really likes to hang out on my bed.

Leo: Next! @Honeybats asked: ‘“is it true your dad is Jade?”

[Leo smiles and, after a few seconds of trying to school his features, bursts out laughing.]

Leo: You mean to ask whether my dad is Matlal Jade, the greatest superhero of our era?

Leo: ...Well, yeah! My dad- [more laughs] my dad is totally my Jade. His name is Matthew, and I keep asking him to fly me to school. He says it's not funny!

[He sobers up for a second.]

Leo: Jokes aside, he adopted me a few years ago and he'll always be a superhero in my eyes. I was in a really dark place when he found me, and I can't thank him enough for all that he's done for me.

[Leo looks away for a second and loses his smile. The video cuts and skips again, and Leo appears once again, this time sporting an easy smile and a blue shirt, this one tighter around his shoulders.]

Leo: things got a bit too deep! This one was sent by @shazhangs: “are you dating anyone at the moment?”

[Leo laughs.]

Leo: God, no. I mean, I'm not really a people person, you know? And I’ve been so focused on work, vlogging, and, uh, extracurriculars, that I really haven't had any time to socialise.

[Leo laughs again.]

Leo: This one comes from @perspartone: will you collab with any other youtubers anytime soon?

Leo: Yeah, sure! I don't think I have done any videos with other people in the past, so it'd be a fun thing to do! I just have to find a friend first.

[Leo laughs loudly.]

[End of excerpt. For viewing of the video, refer to Leo Berry on Youtube, and find the full transcription here at DailyBerries in a few hours.]

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dailyaudiobible · 4 years

Text

02/15/2020 DAB Transcript

Exodus 39:1-40:38, Mark 1:1-28, Psalms 35:1-16, Proverbs 9:11-12

Today is the 15th day of February, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it's great to be here with you today fairly…fairly disoriented from the jetlag, but welcome to Rome. We’ll be spending the next…well…today and tomorrow here capturing some film and photography of some places associated with the apostle Paul and now the apostle Peter. That includes part of the Vatican and I’ve never…never been to Italy. So, welcome to Italy. We are in route to Tel Aviv and the annual Daily Audio Bible pilgrimage in the land of the Bible. So, as disoriented as it might be and sort of not…not…quite know where you are, what day it is, and where…what's going on and try to figure out the time difference back home and all that, it is a joy to be here and I'm sure that I can still read, I believe I can. And hey, this is this is kind of a special day. We concluded the book of Matthew yesterday. So, we’ve gone through the first of the Gospels, which means that when we get to the New Testament today, we will be beginning the gospel of Mark. And we’ll talk about that when we get there but first Exodus chapter 39 and 40. And we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week, which is today.

Introduction to the book of Mark:

Okay, like I said a couple minutes ago, we’re moving into some new territory today. We finished the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, now we finished the book of Matthew in the new and that leads us to the second gospel, at least in order and that is called the gospel of Mark. So, let's just understand what we’re reading. Mark, you may have noticed his name wasn't listed among the disciples that Jesus called to be his 12 because he wasn't one of them and he wasn't an apostle either, right? You ever hear anybody talking about the apostle Mark. He was actually more of a long-term disciple of the apostle Peter and we…we see him show up in the book of Acts. He's also known as John Mark and he lived in Jerusalem and it appears that he came from a fairly wealthy family. His mother's name was Mary and she had a big house and she had a servant named Rhoda. All this information is found in the book of Acts. And Mary was an early believer and so she opened her home to early believers. And, so, that's how the church formed and spread. There’s a church tradition holds that her home may have been the place of the upper room where…where the Holy Spirit was poured out on the early believers and where Jesus had His last supper. That’s a tradition but it’s been around a long time. So, Mark was around the faith all of his life even as a boy, even as it was beginning. He was like one of the people there at the beginning. So, the apostle Peter was captured by Herod. We’ll read that story later. And…and then he was going to be executed by Herod because Herod had put some other Christians to death and found that was seemingly pleasing to the people. So, he was planning to execute Peter too and an angel came and opened the…opened the gates and let Peter out from jail. And again, this is a story that we’ll read in the book of Acts. But why it's important is that Peter once he left the jail went to John Mark's house and Rhoda the servant girl came to the door and she saw him, and she slammed the door in his face because she thought he was a ghost or something. Meanwhile, the house was full of believers praying for Peter. So, that gives us just a little bit of background about who Mark is. So, we see that he's one of the first generation to grow up in the faith. He has a cousin whose name is Barnabas who was a dear friend of the apostle Paul. And Mark went with Barnabas and Paul on Paul's first missionary journey. So, he's got a pedigree and a church tradition holds that he…he later then became a servant or a disciple of Peter and traveled all over with Peter, even serving as an interpreter in Italy, especially in Rome. And, so, everywhere that Peter goes John Mark goes and everywhere the Peter goes, he tells the story of Jesus. So, John Mark has heard this story over and over, which would then in some ways make the contents of the gospel of Mark the testimony of Peter. And most…most scholars would agree that Mark wrote the gospel of Mark but also almost all scholars believe Mark to be the first written gospel of the account of Jesus ministry ever…ever written. And the gospel of Mark is a part of a grouping of three Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke and they are known as the synoptic Gospels because they are so similar, like word for word in some places. And, so, for…for centuries biblical scholars have known this, it’s not like a new discovery or anything. And, so, for centuries it's been assumed that Mark was the first gospel and Matthew and Luke knew of the gospel of Mark, had the gospel Mark, used the gospel of Mark in composing their own Gospels. And one other unique feature about Mark is…is the language. So, we’ll read it in English, and we might notice it being a little simpler but not that big of deal, but it like…it's…it's…it's very basic Greek. So, like…I mean this is an English program so I'm speaking English and you are able to understand English if you're listening to this and we would know the difference between say something written or spoken by an adult or something spoken in…in the vernacular and vocabulary of say a fourth-grader. That's basically what's going on in the Greek with Mark. It's not written all beautiful and all flowy and crafted with all the right words. It's very basic. I've even heard scholars describe it as clunky. So, that's a little bit of a flyover of this first gospel. And…and, so, now we enter the book of Mark with chapter 1 and we’ll read verses 1 through 28 but let's be aware that we’re probably reading the first telling of the life of Jesus.

Prayer:

Father thank You for Your word. Thank You for bringing us safely this far of the journey. Thank You for letting us come to the land that…that all of these stories that we’re reading happened in. Thank You for letting us bear witness and we open ourselves to all that You have for us in the land. Lord, for the…for the majority of us all around the world who aren't physically going to be traveling along, I pray that You would awaken something in their hearts as we talk it about each and every day as we share the places that we’ve been and where…what we've seen and what it felt like and what it looked like…and the pictures and the posts. I ask Father that You would bind us together in community as a go through this pilgrimage. We pray this in the name of Jesus our Savior. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website and home base for…for what's going on around here in the community.

And what's going on right now is our annual pilgrimage to the land of the Bible. So, here in Italy, in Rome today for the first time to…to actually capture some…some of the story that intersects here with Peter and Paul. We’re actually scheduled to go into a catacomb today that you have…have an archaeologist to get in there, but there are some…well…actually the earliest depictions of the apostle Paul, like the…the earliest kind of portrait that was painted on a wall, actually on the ceiling I believe, exists. So, yeah, we’re just kind of tracing some of this. We’ve worked hard over the years to try to bring context to the Bible because context is the thing that made the Bible start to make sense and matter. Just to kind of understand what was going on, it makes a difference…makes a difference to be able to see. It makes a huge difference to be able to visit, but it makes a big difference to be able to…to see. Like we were just reading in the gospel of Mark and Jesus is in Capernaum and He…He…He casts out an evil spirit from a person in the synagogue and it's like, yeah, that's there. Capernaum is there and there is a synagogue there and although it's a more recent synagogue from Jesus time, the…the foundation of it isn't. The foundation is the synagogue Jesus spoke in. And we’ll be visiting there in several days and posting pictures. So, like I mentioned a couple days ago I think, this is a really good time to follow the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page or at least be aware. Like it's Facebook.com/dailyaudiobible or our Instagram page Daily Audio Bible because all throughout this journey we’ll be posting these pictures. So, like just talk about Capernaum. When we go through there, we’ll be posting pictures and sitting right on the Sea of Galilee and it makes a difference to visit but it helps to see. These are real places. These are ancient real places where these things happened. So, anyway, it’s a…it's a good time to be aware of Instagram and…and Facebook for the Daily Audio Bible.

Then a week from today we’ll be broadcasting live. I need to get a little…I need to get my bearings before I can start talking about it. I know that it will happen like 7 PM local time and that's usually like noon back in Nashville, but I'll get that all squared away and let you know. That'll be…be next Saturday., So, yeah, just asking again and it won’t be the last time. I’ll continue to ask for…for the continued prayers over all of the efforts here. I mean…I’ve been…I’ve been…been here, I’ve seen these things and the reason that we continue to do this is because you…you can't…you can't see the Bible the same afternoon this. And it feels like the deepest calling and mission of my life to…to…do everything that I possibly can to help people never see the Bible the same again. So, although it's a wonderful joy it's a lot of work and there's all lot involved. And, so, we pray over those things, over the technology, over the travel, over the vehicles, over the people, over health, over whether. There’s just a lot of variables. And, so, thank you, as a community. We’ve done this every year. Thank you for your prayers.

Okay. I better get out here.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com and I thank you with all of my heart for your partnership. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request a comment you can hit the Hotline button in the app, the little red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi this is Lisa from Phoenix. I want to call in and put a prayer request in for my mom. She’s been a faithful listener for about three years. Her and my dad listened to this the Daily Audio Bible faithfully and did this together and two years, almost 2 years ago, God took him home. And that summer my mom went out and met Brian and Jill and it was like the best gift that you could’ve have given her is to meet to meet you guys because she has grown so much by listening to this Daily Audio Bible. And I’m so thankful. She’s been my rock cause since my dad passed away and she too has prayed for me and my kids and continues too and just lifts up my sister and her family. And she just has grown so much closer to God over the years especially after my dad passed away. And right now, her health is just not well. She is going to go in on Tuesday for an injection in her back to release the inflammation that is pinching a nerve down her right leg and she barely can walk, and she can’t take pain medicine right now and she’s in so much pain. That hides it. She even went to church yesterday and just worshiped God and it just brings me such great pleasure to watch my mom. So, please pray for Jackie. I love you mom and I hope this procedure works. And if not, God, I know you know the answer.

Hello, my name is Anna Beth and I him in Auburn Alabama. I was at church this morning and was just very convicted over the fact that I have not been faithful in sharing truth with my brother, my brother who does not follow Jesus. His name is Jay. And, so, I’m just calling to pray or to ask that you would pray for me and just pray that I would have boldness, pray that I would have a heart that breaks for my brothers lost soul, and pray that the Lord would use me as his vessel, although I’m a broken vessel and I’m week and that the Lord is powerful, the Lord is strong, and the Lord is the one who convicts and the Lord is the one who grows. And, so, I just ask that, yeah, the Lord would give me a boldness and the Lord forgive be a desire to share with my brother like never before. Yeah.

Hi Daily Audio Bible my name is Samuel and I’m calling in to ask for prayer for a court date I have tomorrow. I just needed to do one thing on Friday to be able to get reinstated back on probation after a self admitted relapse on drugs and alcohol this past holiday season. However, because of a of a social anxiety disorder that I have that I can control sometimes I was not able to do what they asked me on Friday. So, I have to go in front of the judge. The last time I got in front of this judge he did not believe that the social anxiety was true because…because I don’t have health insurance, I’m not able to get it specifically diagnosed and I wasn’t able to see a doctor this weekend. So, tomorrow I have to go in standing on faith and that believing that our God is truth and standing on the truth of what I’m dealing with. And I need Daily Audio Bible DABber’s prayer as I go into this tomorrow. My families interceding, my brothers in Christ are interceding, my serve and lead team are interceding for me that I have favor with the honorable judge of my County in the 292 district. Just please have me in your prayers. I trust that God will have me exactly where He needs me to be regardless of what happens. I just trust in His faith, faithfulness, faithfulness Lord. Thank you, Jesus and thank you DABber’s and thank you Brian. Let God bless you and protect you the rest of the week. Thank you.

Hi this is Victoria Soldier just calling to pray for some of the DABber’s. I wanted to pray for my precious sister Sharon who’s afraid that she’s gonna lose out on her daughter, that her oldest daughter and she’s getting ready to move. I want to pray for you Sharon and I want to let you know that God knows where you are no matter where you are and you don’t have to…she don’t have to go where you live but God will allow you all to meet face-to-face. Gracious Father, we praise you and we just praise you and magnify you to touch our sister Sharon. Oh Lord encourage her Lord, strengthen her Lord, help her to see her through your eyes. Help her to know you more and know you’re a God that can go more places than just her home. Oh Lord you can find her daughter on the street that she’s walking on one day and then you…He knows that you’re going to be there and you’re all going to meet face-to-face. Our God can do anything but fail. Don’t be afraid of any…of anything. Just be…just meet your eyes on Him. Oh, just begin to think about Him and think about what He can do. He’s a God can do anything. Lord you bless her. You bless that daughter to come home. Lord you regulate her mind, you convict that heart. You tell her let her come to herself like the young man like the prodigal son, let her come to herself instead of __ going to my mother. Oh Lord in the name of Jesus Lord you have your way. Lord I ask You to also touch Isaac Lord and You continue to bless him, continue to strengthen him Lord. Let that forgiveness begin to penetrate and begin to give him more strength even those who are going through anxiety, those who are going through depression. Oh Lord You have Your way in the name of Jesus, You, strengthen him Lord and continue to direct his path in the name of Jesus. Lord let him know that sometimes God takes care of us before we even know we need help. Just remember that He is God and He is not man. Oh Lord we just ask…

Hello, I’m calling anonymously tonight but I’m going to attach the name pink paint I think, so I have some type of reference. I’m an artist and I love the color pink and I’m reaching out because it feels safe to reach out to this community. I’m newer to the community. So, I just really need prayer. I’m feeling really helpless. And I’m reaching out…I’m just…God doesn’t…doesn’t just have the color pink on His pallet. He has red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, purple, white, black, brown, and then shades on top of shades on top of shades of those colors. And then when we get to heaven there’s going to be more colors we don’t even know exist, but that’s a whole nother conversation for another time. But I’m reaching out to all the colors on the pallet. I’m the color pink and I need the other colors to pray for me. Today is February 10th, it’s my birthday. I’m turning 43 today and it’s…I’m…it’s been one of the hardest times of my life and I just need prayer. God bless you all. I’m praying for you all. Thank you.

DAB family this is Laura in South Florida. I am so grateful for this program for being able to be involved with listening to God’s word every single day with all of you. Thank you, Brian, Jill, China, everyone who’s involved in producing this program to get it so we can hear it all over the global community. I am praying for all of you Brian as you travel to the promise land, all of you who will be making this pilgrimage and will be walking where Jesus walked and see where this history is made. I also will be traveling to Rome to see my grandson during is…the same time you’re traveling. But I am praying for each of you every day. I am praying…with you in heart, and spirit, and I’m praying for safety as you travel for the Lord’s blessings to be on you, for you to come home with a renewed sense of…of God in your life. And I’m thanking you Father God for this opportunity for everyone and I pray blessings and Your Holy Spirit to guide every word, every step, as they travel and bring them all home safely. Thank you, Father for Your holy word in Your precious name I pray.

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09/01/2019 DAB Transcript

Job 40:1-42:17, 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, Psalms 45:1-17, Proverbs 22:14

Today is the first 1st day of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, and it is great to be here with you to greet the new week and walk into it together and it's just waiting for us to tell the story of the adventure of life that we are on together with God. So, it’s great to be here at a brand-new week, but here we are in a brand-new month as well. Today is the beginning of the ninth month of the year and it is the 244th day of the year. So, we have been on quite a journey together and we have a little bit of ground to cover before we will call it a full revolution around the sun and a full adventure through the Bible, but obviously the next stretch of road together will be through the month of September. So, we will carry over the book of Job that we began last month into this month. We will actually conclude it today. And in yesterday's reading Job got what he wanted. The whole time he was asking for an audience with God and his friends are basically telling him that he can’t have that and that he doesn't deserve that and in all kinds of things, things that we would say. And they weren’t just mean to him. They were trying to encourage him, but it got very, very tense when Job essentially threw down the gauntlet and said I am righteous. I haven't done anything wrong. I feel like God is judging me for no reason at all and I want God to explain it to me. That was a little bit beyond what his friends could handle. And, so, you know, comfort turns into debate, turns into argument. But what Job wanted the whole time was for God to show up, for God to come. He wanted to hear it straight from God, and God did show up and He started asking questions that nobody can answer, and He's not done. So, we’ll conclude the book of Job today. Job 40 through 42. And this week we’ll read from the New Living Translation.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we concluded the book of Job, and it took a while. It was a long story and we heard Job tell all that he thought that he knew about God. Ans we also heard all that his friends thought that they knew about God and all that they thought that they knew about Job as well. And then God gave Job what we asked for, which was an audience. And every time we get to that part of the book of Job, at least for me, like when God starts to speak, it's…there’s just so much authority there. “Do you still want to argue with the Almighty”, right? “You are the critic of God, but do you have the answers?” Oh, my goodness. And that…that's chapter 40 verse 2. We should remember that verse. “You are God's critic, but do you have the answers”, right? Because that's what we’re looking…like…we spend our lives trying to find the answers, right, the right way that things work. And Job had dedicated his life to this and been righteous and his friends were wise people and even though this is thousands of years ago what this this tells us is that people have been trying to figure this out for a very very long time and we still have not decrypted God because we can't. He is beyond us. So, Job spoke a tong of words about God and his friends spoke a lot of words about God and Job defended himself to his friends like this is what he would say in his own defense before God if he could find God. And then God showed up and Job didn't have anything to say, right? So, he was all full of bluster and pain and suffering and discomfort and his friends are all agitated and they're all explaining how God works and then God does show up and nobody has anything to say. And in conclusion what Job said was, “I had only heard things about you.” Right? Like, “everything that I thought that I knew about you, I had only heard about these things and now here you are and I realize I've said too much, I realize I don't know what I'm talking about. I’m putting my hands over my mouth. I'm shutting up. There is nothing to say here.” And, I mean, man in our own times of difficulty we’re doing the same thing. We’re crying out to God and we have this expectation that He's gonna make it all go away but what if it doesn’t all go away. Like, what if we need to learn like Job did, that there's way more going on than we know about. Usually we’re like very, very impatient. If we don't get a quick fix, if it’s not ironed out pretty quickly, then pretty quickly we start to judge God, right? And then…and then we have to go back to this verse from God's mouth, that “you are God's critic, but do you have the answers?” And, of course, like Job, we don't. And, so, then we start trying to judge whether or not God is trustworthy, or we start trying to judge whether or not He's even there, which doesn't change anything. He is. I mean, we can believe whatever we want but we can't…like…He is who He is, which is how he describes himself to Moses, “I am who I am.” There's nothing that's going to change that. So, our judgments against God and our estrangement that we pull our stuff away from God or that we move back toward evil because we don't want to suffer the affliction, right, because we want to be God's critic, but we don't have the answers. That doesn't change anything about God. It just simply shows how impatient we are, how untrusting we are, how unfaithful we are, how much of the betrayer we can be. And think about, last time you had these kinds of feelings about God, like, “You will abandoned me, You're not even really there so I’ll go do my thing”, usually what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go do something that we’re turning to for comfort in life, something to kinda make it all disappear for a while, but it doesn't work. Walking away from God doesn't work. And the truth is, if you think about, like when you get those feelings of, “you’re not really there, you’re not really hearing me”, like all of these kinds of things that start to bubble up and then we get the anxiety and make those rash decisions, we don't know what we’re talking about. Like, when we put ourselves in a position to make a judgment or even like an assumption about the Almighty God…the Almighty God…we do not know what we are talking about. We are completely ill informed, and the only way we’re ever gonna become informed is to be in God's presence as a son or daughter, not as an accuser. Remember this story and how it began. Who is the accuser in the story, right? Satan. So, why would we want to do Satan's work by becoming an accuser of God? So, we have to remember Job and we have to remember that when he got what he wanted, when he got face-to-face with God, he had nothing, he had nothing to say. In fact, what he did say is that he takes back everything he said, right? So, he took back everything he said and sat in the dust and ashes to show repentance. So, this book packs a punch, takes us into territory that we haven’t been in in the Bible so far. It touches some pretty deep things, you, know, the kind of things you really only access through suffering or when you're suffering. Let's remember, life has its share of suffering. Everybody has hardship. Everybody goes through things, everyone, like everyone. It just depends on what we’re going to do with it. Is it going to thrust us more desperately and hopefully toward our Father or are we gonna just make the rounds looking for any comforter we can find and walk further into the darkness?

Prayer:

Father, as we as we begin this brand-new month and this brand-new week, we invite Your Holy Spirit into this. This is where the road is led. We conclude the book of Job here and we begin this new month. So, it's like we have gone through a bunch of emotions and a bunch of things to think about in terms of our own suffering and hardship in life and You’ve brought us fresh into this new month to contemplate this. So, come Holy Spirit. We acknowledge that the fact…the fact is, we know very little of You. We like to think that we've got it all figured out. We have book after book after book of theology to try to like, add it all up, but You are beyond anything we can comprehend, and we cannot figure You out and we will not figure You out. It's a very arrogant thing to even consider. And yet You have condescended and diminished Yourself down to something we can understand that right here with us, that we are right here in Your presence and still we thrash about trying to do things in our own strength. Forgive us for that. And as we move through and into this new month, come, come may we be humbled before You, may we be in awe of Your glory, may we finally understand that we do not understand everything that we think we do. But we do know You are our Father. We do know that You love us. We do know that You have adopted us into Your family and that You love us. And, so, we rest in that. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, it’s where you find out what’s happening around here.

And well, it's the family reunion happening here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. We are having a good time. We had a really, really, really lovely time last night just sharing and, yeah, fellowshipping. That’s that's the purpose of this. We didn’t invite everybody here like, you know, for a big church service, we invited everybody here to be in community with one another and just seeing like the beauty of that. So, a wonderful time that we’re having and looking forward to today and this evening as well. So, thank you for your continued prayers over safety and all that's going on when we do these kinds of events. We thank you for that.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. And I thank you, I thank you with my whole heart for those of you who have clicked that link. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And as always if you have a prayer request or comment you can press the hotline on the app, little red button up at the top of the app, you can press that button and start talking or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

What’s up Daily Audio Bible. I haven’t called in in a while. This is Asia from Chicago. I just finished listening to August 27th and by the way, Brian, awesome job with this app update. The quality of audio is so much clearer after it being a part of the app. So, very exciting. I’m calling in for two individuals today. I’m calling in for Natalie who lives in Indiana. You talked about struggling with anorexia and are in a inpatient care facility and I just want to know I am praying for you sister and that it really is so hard battling. It’s not even just an eating disorder it’s a control disorder and I just am praying that you can feel the relief of Jesus in control of your situation and that you don’t have to control your life because God’s got it under control and He loves you so much, so, so, so much, loves us all so much. So, yeah, love you sister. I once struggled with anorexia as well. So, I understand where you’re at. I’m also calling in to pray for a woman that called today that did not state her name, but she’s a recovering meth addict. This is day nine. Probably by the time you hear this it will be day 12 or something, but I just wanted you to know I’m praying for you and I love you and it’s gotta be so difficult. So, I’m praying for you while you’re undergoing withdrawals. Stay strong sister. You are, you’re surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Love you all. Bye.

Hi this is Polly in Anchorage Alaska and I just heard you sister, share that you had nine days clean from meth and I wanted to let you know that I’m praying for you, I want to encourage you. I have a daughter who nine years ago I thought that I would never see her again. She was so lost in drugs and she’s celebrating nine years clean and sober and I’m so grateful to God. She’s clean and she trusts the Lord Jesus and she used __, people in AA, and she has faith in the Lord and remarkable, remarkable changes in her life because of the Lord. So, it happens for people in many different ways, but I am praying for you and want to encourage you and I hope that we hear from you again and leave your name for us. God bless you. I love you Brian and Jill. Thank you for this wonderful program that you give us every day.

[singing] You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship you. As the deer panteth oer water so my soul longeth after thee. You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship thee. You alone are my strength my shield to you alone may my spirit yield. You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship thee [singing stops]. Gracious heavenly Father I come before You. I thank You Father God that I can go boldly before Your throne because of the love of Jesus Christ and His blood that covers me. He makes me righteous Father God and I am so grateful. I bring before You Father God my brother, Prodigal and I ask Father God that You would completely heal him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet to the tips of his fingers but more than that Lord I ask that You would come down and anoint him with a deeper anointing of Your Holy Spirit that he might have power, power and might to withstand anything that the enemy throws at him. Bless him Father God, comfort him, and show him the love of Christ. In Jesus name. Treasured Possession.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible, this is Diana from Virginia and I just wanted to call in and congratulate the Daily Audio Bible, Brian and the team for this amazing update that you just did with the Daily Audio Bible app. The ability to be able to record a message right from the app is so huge. I am so overwhelmed. When I just heard it, because that is the one thing that I’ve struggled with, is just being able to pick up the phone and call. And, you know, a lot of us kind of, you know, are juggling so many things, not that that is an excuse or a good excuse but just the convenience of having it there and being able to dial in right away is just like mind blowing. So, I just wanted to congratulate you and the team on this effort to continue, you know, enhancing how we stay interactive and how we stay as a community and continue praying for each other and all these wonderful things and just how this forum is being a home for me. Like, it’s the first thing I do when I wake up when I’m getting ready for work and now just being able to have that ability to do that, there is absolutely no excuse. And, so I just wanted to congratulate you and thank you so much for everything that you continue to do and hopefully I can call in a little more often. But, yeah, I just wanted to congratulate you because this is exciting, and I was just trying it out. Have a great day and thank you all for your all you do. Love you.

Hello, everyone this is Jay from Nashville. Just wanted to reach out and just talk for a moment because sometimes when I feel sad, I have a list of people that I call and this time I went down my list and there was no one available. And then I went to my favorites and realize that I’ve got friends and family all over the world in the DAB. So, I want to thank God for the DAB, I can just call in and get everything off my chest you know. So, I’m just feeling a little lonely. So, pray for me guys and I’ll pray for you. All right. Love you. Bye.

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