We talk about our holiday plans and announce that we are taking a break over the holiday season. We will be back with new episodes in January 2022. Happy Holidays!

Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to Tricky Fish; a conversation between a Gen X dad and his millennial daughter. Here’s your hosts, Ian and Rhiannon.

I: Alright, if you are a longtime listener, welcome back, if this is your first time, welcome. And I’m really sorry, this is gonna be your first episode. -laughs-

R: I was just gonna say, I’m sorry this is your first episode as well. -laughs-

I: So if you’re not familiar with the show, the show is essentially the two of us picking a random topic and then we discuss it. But we are now hitting the holiday season. And as such things are going to be really hard for the two of us to get together. So we are recording this as a holiday episode. But it’s also an episode to let you know that we are going to be going on hiatus until after the first of the year. So in this case we’re in 2021. Next time you hear an actual episode, it’ll be 2022. Yay.

R: Think of it as like a midseason break similar to Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, you know; all those other amazing archives of shows we’re doing that also. -chuckles-

I: Yes. And do excuse the audio, we are actually not in the same room like we usually are. We are recording this through zoom. So the audio might not be up to par but we beg your forgiveness. But anyway, yeah, it is kind of like that you would watch the television show, it would get to the holidays, mid season break. And so now you’re stuck in the holidays, you’re having to deal with all the people, you’re having to deal with all the family members that you don’t like; the racist uncle, the angry grandparent, whatever. And you don’t even have the comfort-

R: The aunt Karen. 

I: -and you don’t have the comfort of your television show to see you through. Although I will say that Disney plus has you covered.

R: But regardless, this was not the point of this episode, we got extremely distracted. 

I: We did. 

R: But I guess a good segue would be that because I have work. And retail sucks when it comes to the holiday season, and kids, and visitations and all that junk. So I am grateful that we’re going to be taking this midseason break, and that will give us a chance to come back with more ideas. And… knowledge I guess, in the new year.

I: Yeah, well, if you are a longtime listener, at I think in our first episode, or maybe second episode, one of those two, we did talk about how this time of the year is really busy for you. So I even asked if you had to get drunk to deal with it. And you said you couldn’t afford a drink. -laughs-

R: Oh that’s right. I can’t, I still can’t. 

I: So…

R: I’m lowkey worried about rent, I can’t buy liquor right now.

I: That’ll be my Christmas gift to you; a Costco case of alcohol.

R: I do have a preference for tequila or whiskey, if that makes a difference. 

I: All right. A case of Costco tequila will be under your tree. But uh…

R: We don’t really celebrate Christmas, so I don’t have a tree. You can just mail it to me. -laughs-

I: I imagine that that would probably be very expensive, because that’d be very heavy. 

R: Ehhh.

I: You live far enough away that it’s a little bit of an issue to travel. But not so far away that it’s impossible. So I’ll just I’ll just dress-

R: I drove 11 hours yesterday. 

I: Yeah, I don’t-

R: You live like two away from me. If that, an hour and a half I think? I think it’s two if traffic isn’t more than normal.

I: Well, that’s the thing; this time of year that traffic is going to be disastrous.

R: Which is why it took me eleven hours. I should have been able to make that trip in eight and it took me- I legitimately, it took me three hours to drive like 30 miles. 

I: Yeah, it’s ridiculous.

R: It was a nightmare. I hate holidays. I hate everything about the “holiday season”. Everything is just about spending money and going into debt. I’m just over it.

I: I feel you, I don’t- I celebrated Christmas when you guys were growing up because, Well, it’s what you do. You don’t want your kids to be, you know.

R: Yeah, we celebrate the winter solstice where like we still exchange gifts, we just do it on the winter solstice that has nothing to do with Christmas or Christ, or any of that.

I: Which if any of our listeners are into Christmas and Christ, that’s all great. You know, we’re not judging you. You know, live your best life, just don’t use Christ as a means to be cruel.

R: We’re also recording this on Thanksgiving, which is a bullshit holiday and I- We don’t celebrate it either because of all of the genocide and just pure chaos that ensued with the day. So we don’t celebrate today either. So I guess enjoy your family dinners and turkey,

I: I call it Turkey Genocide Day, just because I feel that’s a little bit…

R: It’s fitting because there’s lots of genocide in the history of this day.

I: Sure. And I feel like that’s a little bit less of a downer for people than calling it Native American Genocide Day. 

R: Yeah. 

I: Although theoretically, Native American genocide was every day, and even still, even still is happening today. 

R: Honestly.

I: It’s not as prevalent and in your face, as it was back in the day, but it is still an ever present threat.

R: Every day, I learn something that makes me so disappointed. And like, as a child, you just assume that all the adults in your life, or the adults that are in charge of things, know what they’re doing, and have some sort of plan and like control over the situation. And so we trust that the decisions that are being made are being made for the betterment of the community for humans as a whole, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, no, adults never know what the hell they’re doing. We’re all winging it. And unfortunately, I learned something about the decisions that white men in power have made, and I am disappointed every day.

I: Well, imagine-

R: Ashamed almost, every day. I’m like, Why? Why is that the decision that was made? Why did that come off as ‘okay’?

I: Well, I mean, we can go into the historical aspects of it. I don’t- 

R: Just in general, not even not just Thanksgiving, but like, in general.

I: Sure. And- 

R: Consistently.

I: And imagine being a white man who looks at that and is like, ‘What the eff? Why was that?’ You know, I just, I can’t wrap my head around it. You can sit me down and just talk to me, and I’ll listen. And you can tell me all the reasons why you think that was an okay decision to make and I still won’t get it. I, you know, I understand racism, but I still don’t understand why we have it. Because there’s no- we have one race: it’s the human race. You hear that, that’s pretty trite. But it’s just the whole- 

R: It’s true though.

I: It is. There’s, if you “you want to know what it boil this all down to DNA”. We all have the same DNA. It’s not like there’s a different molecular structure like say if you compared our DNA to, I don’t know, a koala bear. 

R:-laughs-

I: But I’m trying to go for something that would be radically different from humanity.

R: Yeah. Well, you know, I’m sure people that have like, talked to me before, in any real capacity, might hear this and roll their eyes, but it ultimately boils down to capitalism, even back then. Because like, let’s look at slavery, for example. It was all about making money. And so when you are here in America and you are telling these citizens that know nothing, that have no context about anything outside of where they live. And someone they trust, an adult in a position of power comes to them and is like, “These are savages. They’re terrible. They’re going to ravage our community.” What else are you gonna do? You’re gonna trust that the person in power has your best interests at heart. And you’re gonna be like, “Okay, I’m here, like, I’m listening, I’m following.” And so these people who just want to make money, tell all these lies to people that don’t know any better. And then it snowballed into the world we live in right now, where literally everything, every single fucking thing is based off of somebody making money. Somewhere up that line, somebody is profiting off of every decision that’s made, and all the suffering, everything that’s done to other people in general, is always at the expense of somebody else making money.

I: Well, it’s because we see. Well, it’s because those at the top see those of us at the lower tiers as expandable. 

R: Yeah.

I: But I will say that yes, to a point you are right, that, yes, we grow up, we assume that when we’re kids were in school, we assume the teachers are teaching us correctly. However, there is a point at which you become an adult. And you can either choose to continue along the path of knowing that or you can open your mind and go search out the truth for yourself. Nobody’s infallible. The fact is, that the history that we’re taught is to minimize the atrocities. 

R: Is white washed, yep.

I: To ultimately, above and beyond anything else. It is designed to drive into you the propaganda of American exceptionalism. That America’s number one, America’s the greatest. And there is a lot of things that’s good about this country. I’m not gonna lie, but when you look at-

R: We don’t have basic things like maternity leave. 

I: Yeah. And so I was gonna say when you look at comparing us to other first world, industrialized nations, we are not number one. We are so behind. We have kids starving here. Okay, we’re one of the richest countries in the world, yet we have kids starving.

R: So many homeless

I: So many homeless. Yeah.

R: Which is why I don’t understand when there are veterans who say things like, ‘let’s take care of our country before we worry about others.’ But then I look down on homeless people. And a good like, I don’t know off the top of my head. But when I did the research on it, a good chunk of homelessness are displaced veterans who, because of PTSD and not having a support network, end up on the streets. So it’s like, they are literally- they fought for this country. It fucked them up so bad that they can’t handle life on their own now. But God forbid welfare programs, God forbid public funding, but no. Everybody needs to struggle and fight for it, and earn everything that they have. And it’s like, okay, so either we need to support the people in our country, or we need to not invest in like public assistance and like social programs? Like make up your damn mind.

I: As a veteran who does struggle with those issues, who was homeless at one time; I will tell you that… Let’s see. How do I… I’m trying to figure out how to put this nicely, but I guess there’s no way around it. This pisses me off when they trot veterans out. ‘Oh, we got to help veterans.’ Yeah. Okay. But yet, while they’re talking about one side of their mouth about how we need to take care of veterans, out the other side of their mouth, they are supporting politicians who vote against helping out veterans, so nobody gives a crap about veterans. We’re just there to be brought up to so that you can-

R: As clout.

I: – score political points to silence a thing. It’s like, Colin Kaepernick kneeling, you know, that whole thing? And they’re like, ‘oh, that’s disrespectful to veterans.’ Let me tell you as a veteran, you know, what’s disrespectful? Not Colin Kaepernick kneeling, or anybody kneeling for that matter. Okay. What’s disrespectful is we live in a country that supposedly is the greatest country in the world that believes in things like justice, and equality for all.

R: Mhm.

I: But where’s the justice? We have people- for example, I guarantee that if black people stormed the Capitol, the way white people did- 

R: Oh yeah, it would have gone totally different.

I: It would be the bloodbath. 

I: Sorry, you know, that’s just how it is. 

R: Yep, it would have.

I: But meanwhile, those people that stormed the Capitol on January 6, okay.

R: Nothing really happened. 

I: Nothing. They’re being let go. Few people are given 30 days in jail. Like it’s nothing. Okay. You have people at the top, you know, not just politicians.

R: You know, what drives me crazy about that, like storming the Capitol situation? Is everybody, like all the crazy gun nuts that I’ve personally talked to who are like, ‘I vote Republican, because my guns, my freedoms, my rights, whatever.’ And I always ask, like, what do you need them for? Because other than like, going to a shooting range or hunting, this world isn’t really set up to just have a need for guns anymore. 

I: Well- 

R: So I asked, like, why do you need 20 guns and all this ammunition? Like just hanging out at your house? Like, why? Why do you feel like you need that? And they always say, to protect my freedoms and liberty from terrorists. And I was like, ‘Okay, so what’s your definition of that?’ And then they say things like, storming the Capitol, and then I’m thinking to myself, holy shit, the very people who talk about how they need to have their guns and their personal freedoms and their rights so that they can defend themselves in the event of somebody storming the Capitol, literally did that.

I: Yeah. Or this one, where they’ll tell you that they don’t need the vaccine because they have the blood of Jesus to protect them, that God will protect them. 

R: Oh, my goooood.

I: well, if God’s gonna protect you, why do you need a gun?

R: Yeeeees.

I: But anyway, yeah.

R: My biggest thing with vaccines is people that say that vaccines cause autism. Like I just, I can’t facepalm hard enough without smashing my own skull in because they all quote this one, one study that was proven to be falsified for the sake of getting money. It was literally so that he could get more money. He made this fake study that showed that vaccines caused autism and that one thing that has been debunked since like the 90’s, anti Vaxxer still come to that are like oh, well, it’s right there. It shows proof and then ignores the literal universe of information that shows that they’re not connected in any way.

I: Even better than that is when they’re talking about that vaccines cause autism. If you ask them that they got vaccinated in school.

R: They had to!

I: Because you had to get vaccinated to go to school. And it’s like, well, if it caused autism, how do you explain that you don’t have it but you were vaccinated.

R: What else drives me crazy too, is somebody in my life that I don’t have the option of completely dis communicating with until our children are grown. They specifically told us that all of their children, all four, we only share two, all four of their children are never going to be vaccinated because vaccines cause autism. But all four of their children are on the spectrum. So they already have autism. They are autistic, I don’t know how to say properly, and unvaccinated like the two are not linked.

I: -laughs- Well.

R: There’s no connection in the middle.

I: These brainletts are just walking examples of the Dunning Kruger effect. -scoffs- Anyway, so we’ve kind of ranted kind of gone through here.

R: Cause it’s been a while since we’ve recorded. -laughs-

I: Yes. So with that, let’s just talk a little bit about what our plans are for over this holiday. Do you have anything, other than working retail and dealing all the family stuff, do you have any other things that you’re going to be doing or working on? Anything you want to plug?

R: I was gonna say like work is pretty much my only thing. But I am in the process of learning how to become a DJ, so that’s cool. I’ll probably focus more on that. And just keeping my sanity. Honestly, I hate this time of the year. I absolutely hate this time of the year.

I: You and me both.

R: How’s your book coming along?

I: Oh, okay. Well, I have not touched the book.

R: Yeah, but you’ve been writing others, like short stories and things. Did you ever hear back on that contest?

I: I will hear back on December 4, or should hear by December 4th. I’m gonna guess it just depends on the number of entries that he gets. I will say I don’t want to spoil it because the story I submitted was just- French kiss. I was just- excuse me, chef’s kiss, not French kiss. 

R:- laughs-

I: I’m really super excited about that. So no, I Okay, so this is what happened. I use Scrivener for writing. Okay, it’s a program that was designed from the ground up for writers. Originally I was using like Scrivener 1.9? Well, I completed the first draft. I tried to compile it for ebook. 

R: Mhm.

I: So I could put it on my Kindle; did not work because it was so old. It was no longer compatible with this stuff. I had to export it to a PDF, it exported to a PDF that just completely wrecked the formatting. So I basically- 

R: Gotta love technology. 

I: Right. So I put that on hold. And I was like, alright, I’ll go back to this. Once they’ve released Scrivener three for Windows. Well, they did do that earlier this year. But I did not get to that because I was busy doing this podcast stuff getting up and running. 

R: Mhm

I: And then I imported it into the new version of Scrivener. I have not exported it to see if it fixed anything or I have to do something with it because I got sidelined. I took a writing effective horror online class for the month of November.

R: Mhm

I: And during that I came up with like several short story ideas. So I’ve been doing that. But part of my plan is to actually go back and start editing and doing the second draft of the book.

R: Nice. Okay, so in the meantime, people can check out- do you have a link tree?

I: I don’t have a link tree. Because what I did was I created my own quote unquote link tree. On my website, Ian MacTire. Com. 

R: Got it.

I: Just because it was easier. Right now there’s no short stories published there. That’s another thing I’m going to be doing. I’ve got a couple of short stories that I need to edit, tighten up, make better. And I’ll be publishing those. So those will be available for people to read for free.

R: Cool. I have a link tree posted somewhere and the links for everything is on our tricky fish pod com site as well.

I: And the show notes always have the links. 

R: Yeah, I also, I mean, in the meantime, I tried to update TikTok with like realizations and advice and things but it depends on how my mental health is doing for how consistent I am on that. 

I: Sure. 

R: TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, depending on what you want, it’s all there. And I really like the idea of people having this opportunity to like, listen to everything and catch up and then still be able to interact with us online. 

I: Yes cause-

R: We both have access to all the social media. So if you’re interacting with our tricky fish stuff anywhere, we’ll both see it.

I: Yeah, and we will still be active on social media, we’re not going to go anywhere on that. It’s just that the episodes themselves are gonna. We’re just going on that midseason hiatus, like you said earlier. But we will be back in January when things are a little bit calmed down after this holiday season. And I’m thinking that’s probably how that’s gonna be going forward. We will probably-

R: Just always take a break at this time of the year. 

I: Yeah.

R: Or just for every 10 episodes?

I: Yeah. Sounds Yeah. There’s no upfront this week, because we’re taking a break. No, it’s just because we just got to 10 episodes up to this point. But yeah, yeah, no, I would probably think that you should expect a midseason break during that time again, because retail, if you guys work retail, I used to work retail, it is a nightmare. And so my heart goes out to all you retail workers. But yeah, it’s just that’s just the schedules are all over the place, obviously, for staffing reasons. 

R: Mhm.

I: I’m lucky that my job is like eight to five, Monday through Friday. But even my job is starting to ramp up because of what I do. I’m not gonna say what I do. But there’s certain times during the year-

R: It’s not retail, but this part of the year is just crazy with paperwork in general. 

I: Yeah. And in my job, there’s a few times during the year where things pick up, it gets super busy. And we’re heading into one of them. So yay, for me.

R: But it’s by the next time that we start airing again, it’ll be closer to my 29th birthday. So that’ll be cool.

I: Oh, yeah, we should probably plan some of your 29th birthday. Hmm.

R: I feel about it the same way I feel about other holidays.

I: Yeah, I don’t really celebrate my birthday. So that’s all good. But I don’t know, might be something interesting. We can go to a club and record it and then let people hear you getting-

R: -laughs-

I: -stupid drunk or something.

R: I mean, yeah. I’m down for that, I just don’t think our listeners would really care.

I: Oh, my God, we liked you. But oh, you’re just such a horrible human being now. 

R: Yeah, 29 has changed you, 

I: You know, it’s not, it’s not 29. It’s the pandemic. -laughs-

R: Yeah. 

I: But, uh, anyway, here’s to the holidays, I hope you guys have a happy holiday. I hope you have a safe holiday. And my heart definitely goes out to any of you who do not have a safe environment to have holidays in, I do hope you’re able to carve out some measure of safety.

R: And it really comes down to it, I’ll be your mom. And my mom application: I do like white wine. I am down to go to the playground and play whenever. And I do like dance parties like random dance parties in the living room. I am not good at cooking or baking. But like I can if you wanted to make cookies together. And also I won’t judge you based off your life decisions unless you were genuinely trying to hurt other people, which anybody listening to this, I don’t think would really do that. So I’ll be your loving and accepting mom if you need one.

I: And I will be your loving and accepting dad if you need one. But I’m the kind of dad that just tells you not to be an idiot. 

R: -laughs-

I: But I’ll support you. So. -laughs-

R: Yeah, someday we can talk about the sex talk that we had.

I: Oh my god, that was amazing. We probably should.

R: So we were in the movie theater. I don’t even remember what movie we’re watching now. But I was like 13. And there was a commercial, like, ‘Do you know what your kids are doing? It’s never too early to have the talk.’ And then you turn to me and you’re like, ‘if you get pregnant in high school, I murder you.’ 

I: -laughs-

R: And then I got pregnant in high school. And I’m still here. So

I: Yeah, there’s a whole story about that. But yeah, no, it was super weird. Just real quick. Just be you’re going to see a movie and then here’s this commercial. It’s not too late to have the talk with your kids. So yeah, but I mean, that was the kind of dad I was like I didn’t there was a lot of stuff I didn’t take serious and we just kind of goof on but no, if you need someone to reach out talk to you by all means reach out to us on our social media. And we will do our best if we don’t immediately talk, you know we don’t immediate respond don’t assume that we’re ignoring you or don’t care or whatever. It probably means that we’re busy. Whether we’re working or, you know, if you reach out to me, for example, if I’m in the middle of writing, I have everything turned off. So I’m not going to see,

R: Just for my sanity purposes, I have all the notifications turned off on everything too. -laughs-

I: I get the alerts as far as the notifications, I just don’t hear the beeps or whatever. But you know, when I’m writing, like, I want no distractions. So, you know, I’ve got the music on and I’m writing and I’m in that world, but if you do reach out, just give it time, we will respond at some point. If you do find- I will say this before we end this. If you do find yourself in a dangerous situation, please don’t hesitate to reach out to 911 or look for services in your county or state that might be able to help you get out of that situation even if temporarily. Alright, so not to end on a down note. I hope you guys have a wonderful holiday. 

R: -laughs-

I: And we will see you next year.

R: Yeah, happy holidays because there’s a whole bunch that are happening right in the next month and a half. But yeah, have a great life guys. Interact on the internet if you need us… Byyyye

I: Bye!

R: And this has been another episode of tricky fish. If you liked what you heard and want more of us, you can find us on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever else you find your podcast. reviews and comments really help us out so feel free to leave this one. Otherwise, you can find us at tricky fish podcast.com and Twitter at tricky fish pod

© Copyright 2021 Tricky Fish Podcast, All Rights Reserved, except where otherwise noted.