#64 – Story Time 3: Thunderdome

FEAT. BENTLEY PASCOE & ALEXANDER WILLIAMSON

3 years ago
Transcript
Speaker A:

Why, hello, ladies. Normally we do an advertisement for Joe Shrimshack.com, which you can still save 15% off using promo code aquarium Guys at checkout. But today we're going to be talking about a hot single Joe tyson, the owner of Joe Shrimp shack. Yes, he's single and ready to mingle. Joe is 6ft tall, 205 chiseled pounds of pure muscle. He's 43 years of age and has blue dreamy eyes that burn work sapphires. So if you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain and would like your chance at this handsome single, email us at aquariumguyspodcast@gmail.com and maybe you can find yourself a hot Joe. Joe Shrimpshack.com. Always for the ladies. One last thing to mention is please don't forget about cobalt aquatic and reflower's aquascaping competition. The notes are below. Certainly fill out the form. We'd love you to submit fresh or salt water. anybody's welcome. You can submit multiple tanks. They're giving out great prizes. Certainly. Check it out. Let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the aquarium Guys podcast with your host, Jim colby and Rob dolson. Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited. It finally happened.

Speaker B:

Jimmy, what happened?

Speaker A:

COVID can't stop. Story time three.

Speaker B:

Oh, my god. We are so lucky.

Speaker A:

We we got to do with friends, right? We we did the first one alone. Second one was with friends. Now we got some friends again. We're never going to do this without friends, in my opinion.

Speaker B:

Sounds like your sex life first. You did it alone.

Speaker A:

No, no, that's not coming with some friends.

Speaker C:

He doesn't really have very many friends.

Speaker B:

See, that's why he his experiences are far and few between it's it's all over.

Speaker A:

Well, I'm your host for Rob zolton.

Speaker B:

I am Jim colby.

Speaker C:

And I'm Adam lashar.

Speaker A:

He didn't hit his head on the mic.

Speaker B:

I know. That's my favorite part of the whole podcast. One when he leans forward into the microphone and smacks it like just dong dung.

Speaker D:

And bentley and I are amused that you think we're your friends.

Speaker A:

Right? So our happy acquaintances this evening fuck nuts and pork chicken is Alexander Williamson from The Secret History living in your aquarium. I got the name right without looking it up. Look at me go.

Speaker D:

Better than me.

Speaker A:

And we also have with us bentley pascoe. I think I said that right from his self titled YouTube channel as well.

Speaker E:

Hi.

Speaker B:

I meant a few words.

Speaker A:

I got them both. I got them both right.

Speaker B:

I did that for the podcast.

Speaker E:

I regret to burst your bubble, but it's just pasco.

Speaker A:

Dammit. That's why I was laughing, because I was so close. I knew it was so wrong.

Speaker E:

As long as you get the first day right, I really don't care.

Speaker B:

All right, before we start, right, we.

Speaker A:

Got to go through questions like normal and reviews. But Jimmy, I want to thank you. Your trade, Joe. Joe snuck in as well. Hi, Joe.

Speaker E:

Hey.

Speaker A:

So Joe, he's got to be here to listen to story time. So again, Jimmy, before we start the podcast, I got to thank you. Yes, so much. We got this beautiful gift. Your daytime job is bread liaison. Yes. And in Minnesota, we have this wonderful tradition of being really fat. And how we get that fat in the holidays is through a potatobased product called lefsa. For those that haven't tried it, I highly suggest it ordered in. We have a popular name brand called laura's lefsa and it is the shit. Now, homemade is always slightly better. Why did you get to because I love lefsa. Because you're like 6 hours away.

Speaker B:

He's diabetic and I'm hoping to kill him.

Speaker A:

Right. That's how I going to have my finger on toe.

Speaker E:

Yeah, it's fluffy, not fat.

Speaker A:

It's fluffy. Oh, man. Anyways, so thank you for the lefsa. Look it up, guys. You can put like butter, sugar, eat it straight. It's just potato cocaine. So thank you for these plastic baggies of potato cocaine. Potato cocaine.

Speaker B:

I can't wait until the door gets kicked in.

Speaker A:

It's scandinavian potato cocaine. I want to be quite frank on that. So tonight we've gathered together and again, we're going to do storytime three with you all. We all have stories prepared embarrassing explicit. So know that you're warned that this is not intended for children. Normally, I would put this at the beginning of the podcast, but why not put it here when we're starting the content. So we're going to answer some questions and then get into a traditional uncensored story time. Even though we're still going to put some beeps in there. We ran out of the quacks last time. Damn, COVID it's expensive, man. Quacks aren't what they used to be. As far as the first questions and reviews, we'll go over the first review. It says great show. I don't know what the other reviewers talking about. These guys are funny as hell. They really know their stuff behind the humor. And there is some amazing information for hobbyists. novice or experienced people. Love the guests as well.

Speaker B:

Very easy.

Speaker A:

Easy way to pass the time at work. So thank you for that five star review. I think you're referring to our favorite review, which basically it's a four out of five and that's how we feel. We have some great guests and info on here, but our humor is intolerable. So thank you for all that to review. I think the review source is on Apple. Most other platforms don't even allow a space for a user to give a review. So if you're not listening on Apple, email us. Let us know that we suck.

Speaker B:

Or don't. I can tell you right here that you suck, right? I don't even have to email that in.

Speaker A:

So the next one is a message from Facebook. So he said, hi guys. Discover your podcast. Love it. Started to catch up because I'm working on a little shrimp tank right now. I really like the podcast on shrimps. My already existing tank houses a nice little triath colony and wondered if you'd like to make an episode on triumphs anemia or other little hearty. Guys love to hear more. Thanks very much. Keep it going. Best wishes from Germany.

Speaker B:

Wow. Didn't we already do an episode on sea monkeys?

Speaker A:

We did. We referenced Sea monkeys.

Speaker D:

I was there.

Speaker B:

You were there? I know. It was the best sea monkey episode.

Speaker A:

I just feel like any crustaceans that we have to do besides popular shrimp, I mean, we got Joe shout out to buddy that unmute himself. Any other crustaceans? We have to go. We got to talk to biggs. He's the guy that has those crazy giant isopods.

Speaker D:

I had a cream for that one.

Speaker E:

Yeah, you have a cream for everything.

Speaker A:

Dry. itchy skin. All right, so let's go to the other questions. We have text message that was sent to us. And again, you guys can find all this contact information, go to a cramegistpodcast.com bought on the website. You'll find an email, you'll find a number. You can call and text, leave a voicemail if you so choose. You can go on Facebook, message us there. We do Twitter. But Jimmy got lazy, so a text message says, hi, guys. I'm an experienced fishkeeper for about 15 years now. I've decided to try and fund my hobby, or at least some of it, through breeding, which I've never attempted. There are so many different options on the Internet that can get overwhelming, so I decided to ask you for yours. Long story short, I now have a 55 gallon tank with ten quarter size angel fish that pair off. When these fish pair off, I have a place to put them in a 30 gallon high or can I get away with 20 gallon longs? Also, is brine shrimp for fry a must? I have heard yes and no. I'm trying to make this as simplistic as possible and cost effective, so maybe if I'm lucky, I can make a couple of bucks. Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated. By the way, even if you don't talk about fish, I'd probably still listen to you guys. You guys are hilarious. Would love to get drunk in a ramble about fish someday. Until then, thanks for what you do from New York. So, Jimmy, you're the one that has a ton of angel fish breeding experience. Yes. So the first question was 30 high or 20 long?

Speaker B:

I'd like to 20 highs personally because angel fish get really tall as your breeders get older. They usually last about two and a half, maybe three years for breeding, and then I usually retire them.

Speaker A:

But individual pair of angels at 20.

Speaker B:

High as a minimum, that's what I like. I've been down to breeding angel fish breeding facilities down in Florida, and they use tens, but they have very young pears in there, and they use that pair for like, six months and then they sell them out and start over.

Speaker A:

Let me tell you, that's a loose term on ten gallons because they'll use whatever container they can get a hold of.

Speaker B:

That'Ll hold water.

Speaker A:

That'Ll hold water, yeah.

Speaker B:

I saw up here in a Mountain.

Speaker A:

Dew bottle, so that's rough.

Speaker B:

I know.

Speaker A:

I hope that's not true.

Speaker B:

I've tried different tanks and stuff. I personally like the 20 gallon highs, especially when you use a 20 gallon long when they're going up and down on the slate, laying eggs and stuff, it seems that they almost kind of breached the top of the water. So I personally like a 20 gallon high. Whatever you can afford is best. I use just basically a sponge filter heater. And the way I get my fish to breed once they've paired off is I like to feed frozen blood rooms in the evening. And for some reason all my fish always breed somewhere between 06:00 p.m. And ten when I go to bed. And I really like that idea. I've even gotten lazy now. And we're putting in some cameras so you can watch the fish breed. So you know, when you're done, you can go grab the eggs and artificially raise the eggs so they don't eat them.

Speaker A:

Wonderful. On the second question, we know brine shrimp can be used for fry, but is there any alternatives that either bentley or Alex would use for raising young angels?

Speaker D:

Hamburger helper? No. Golden pearls, I would say, but I mean, decapsulated baby brine shrimp are going to be your gold standard in my opinion. But in theory you could get some Artema at very first and some vinegar eels or Walter worms or whatever, micro worms, but they kind of fall to the bottom and then the babies lose interest. So really something that swims in the water mid level and has color is what is going to draw their attention the most, in my opinion.

Speaker E:

My opinion is that I am going to literally just spout what probably the best angel fish breeder I know has told me, which that's Dean twidale, who we always call master breeder Dean, they will eat baby brine shrimp and angel fish fry from day one. As soon as they're able to eat food, they will eat baby brine. And nothing grows an angel fish faster and healthier than baby brine. I know lots of people loved. Like, I want to do a flake, I want to get away from brine because it's work. And buying a big tin of eggs is a little expensive. But if you realize how long said Tin of eggs is going to last you and a brunch trip hatchery or a couple of brine trip hatcheries made out of, like, two liter pop bottles, if you just do a little bit of DIY they'll cost you maybe five dollars to six dollars a piece of parts and about an hour of your time, if you're handy it's. So worth it in the long run. Baby Brian is actually not expensive. If you realize how much of it you can generate for that one tin of eggs and how far it can go across not only just the fry, but it helps trigger the parents to spawn more frequently, because they think there's lots of small food available so that the babies will be able to eat. They're more likely to spawn if they know food is plentiful.

Speaker B:

I'll give you one more tip on raising albino angel fish.

Speaker A:

I was about to say the same thing because that's a separate hassle that people don't understand why they're doing anything wrong.

Speaker B:

Yeah, albinyl angel fish. I'm not talking about gold. Angel fish talk about albinyls with a true pink eye. Their eyesight is so poor, especially when they're young.

Speaker A:

Yeah, especially almost completely blind.

Speaker B:

And the way to get them to eat a little bit better is to surround that entire tank in black paper to make it as dark as possible so they can see the brine shrimp against that black paper on the outside of their tank.

Speaker A:

That and say you have a pickle jar, that's what you use. It's a gallon and a half ish container and that's where you initially hatch baby angel fish. And if you wrap it around with black and then have a light on top, that way the brine shrimp continually go up and they have a halfway hope to see the brine shrimp. If they can see movement, you're in the game and they'll eat right away.

Speaker B:

And the thing with them too, with their eyesight being supported, don't really hit them really hard with light because that will then really confuse the hell out of them. So you got to find that happy medium of light for them to be able to see the food. But that's something that I struggled with for a long, long time. And then once I started doing the black paper around and stuff and lower lighting, it really helped me quite a bit.

Speaker A:

The only other tricks is we always make jokes between ourselves that angel fish don't ask heaters for permission and they just have their way with them. So make sure to position your heater in a way that you're not encouraging them to lay on them. We do not condone heater rape.

Speaker B:

I do.

Speaker A:

You do?

Speaker C:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

I always recommend putting it horizontally a little lower in the tank. I mean, honestly, you shouldn't. There's not a lot of scenarios where you should have your heater perfectly vertical anyway, but don't put it in a place where you're encouraging them to lay angle on it, because they will. Guaranteed.

Speaker B:

If I have a hang on the back heater for that particular tank, I'll put two slates around it so they really can't get in there and get at it. And to put two or three slates in a tank, they will find their favorite spot and they will continuously on that same slate in that same position.

Speaker D:

I think a lot of people breed angels and they think, yes, I'm going to get rich. These things have so many babies and they're worth X amount of dollars. And just remember that whatever you're raising, you're going to get a third to a fourth of the retail value in your market. So know also the stores, do they want them grown out to adult size? Do they want nickel size? Do they want quarters, silver dollar? And think strategically about what's going to be popular three to six months down the road. I know some places that's more applicable than others, but like here, maybe Koi or the redback wild angels and things like that have been very popular. Or anything with a panda in the name has been popular in all fish species and wild stuff. Whereas maybe some of the other things like smoky blues and things have kind of gone a little less popular lately. So if you know there's anyone in your area, either make sure that you're breeding more of what they are selling too many of too quickly, or you're selling something that they don't already have a source of.

Speaker A:

There you go.

Speaker D:

That's true for all fish.

Speaker A:

I know in some of jimmy's stores that he supplies tiny sells faster than anything bigger.

Speaker B:

I tell you what, first of all, you can't make any money selling an adult angel fish. You just can't. Because Florida I agree.

Speaker A:

Steve ricky just sitting, sitting in his rocking chair going, yeah, Steve ricky makes money.

Speaker B:

He just sold a pair for $795 the other day.

Speaker A:

See, that's the only way you can make money on the tall angel fish.

Speaker B:

But to raise angel fish to an adult, I can pick up adults for $5, $6 from Florida. And so it makes to me no sense. Adam and I used to go around back and forth and stuff. Adam loves to get small fish, raise them up to adulthood and let them pair off. And I'm all about skipping the middleman and buying adults and letting them pair off. Best bang for my buck.

Speaker A:

You're a very impatient person.

Speaker B:

I'd buy six boxes of angel fish under pack 15. And so you get 90 adult angel fish and you put them in 325 gallon tanks and you've got pears by the end of the week.

Speaker D:

Oh, yeah, let's just put them in my set of 300 gallon tanks.

Speaker A:

Yeah, that's jimmy. That's right.

Speaker B:

When we used to put them in, we had 300 gallon vast that we would put them in to raise them up and stuff. But I tell you what, in 30 years that I raised angel fish, I've never had a problem getting rid of black angel fish. If you can raise blacks, they're continuously, you'd never see them. I've been at petco and Pet smarts all summer long. Nobody has a dark fish. I've seen like maybe a couple of marbles. All you see there is koi and silver.

Speaker A:

Pierre black. Yeah.

Speaker B:

If you can do a big pair of black fish, you can make some money. But if you're going to go out and sell to the pet store, you can expect to get anywhere between $50 to $0.75 for a silver, all the way up to about a buck 50 for a black. And that's what they're going to pay you in cash. And then if they pay you in store credit, that's even worse for you because they're making money on you twice.

Speaker A:

Well, to move on to the next topic, just to cover the last pieces, we mentioned Steven bickie. He has angels. Plus, we talked with him. He's one of our earlier guests in one of our first episodes. Go to that. And as far as for the next one, we have Ron that messages in, says, I enjoy your podcast. You guys occasionally get to the topic. Keep up the good work. Wow. That was it. That's all he said.

Speaker B:

And he sent this to us about six months ago, and so we're occasionally going to get to him.

Speaker A:

Two days? Really?

Speaker B:

That's pretty good for us.

Speaker A:

Well, next one, Peter, the Sunfish guy, wants to know if we know much about killies. He says, I'm thinking of getting some you know what? No. You want to butcher that one there, Jimmy? No, me either.

Speaker B:

He's going to get some fancy kili fish.

Speaker A:

He's going to get some fancy killy fish eggs, hatch them over Christmas. I'm going to send it to bentley and Alex the name, and see if they're like oh, yeah, these ones.

Speaker D:

Where am I looking?

Speaker A:

Oh, that's twice the same guy. Hold on. I'm sending it to Private Bias.

Speaker E:

Pepper fillers.

Speaker A:

There you go.

Speaker B:

You're just making shit up, though.

Speaker A:

I feel like you need a Latin degree to be a real good that's even frank.

Speaker E:

So you're doing some real weird gilly, right? I got to look this thing up.

Speaker D:

Where are you guys seeing it, by the way?

Speaker A:

I sent you a private message directly there. Alex.

Speaker D:

Okay. All right. Got it.

Speaker A:

And I'm getting at him right now.

Speaker B:

It's right below pornhub.com.

Speaker D:

Yes.

Speaker A:

Not sponsored.

Speaker B:

I wish they would sponsor.

Speaker A:

Anyway, so he's looking to get some of these eggs to hatch over Christmas. I've read they are best in rainwater at the moment. Am I okay to catch this in a bottle and keep them until I'm ready? Or does rainwater have to be fresh to be best? I'm looking at banana worms and Walter worms as a staple for their diet. kindergarten. The sunfish guy, that's from Peter. That's Peter. Hey, Peter. Peter came into the discord chat the other day, and we had a good talk. We laughed about the story of the pharmacy scenario.

Speaker B:

That was disturbing.

Speaker A:

That was a great time for those that didn't listen. You should go. I think, like, two episodes back, we talked about someone putting a fan mail in. I got in trouble at the pharmacy for listening to our podcast about floral.

Speaker B:

Horns it's a good time yes anyways.

Speaker A:

Did we find out what is that pretty breathtaking killer fish?

Speaker E:

It's quite pretty less of orange, a little bit of blue speckling kind of like almost like discus in coloration.

Speaker A:

Wow.

Speaker E:

Here's the jam on this thing right? They're from temporary pools in floodplains so I would argue because it looks more like an annual achille than anything I'm not going to read too deep in research on the fly have fun.

Speaker D:

Three months.

Speaker E:

Yeah, honestly, go find the Killie Fish Association. They're free to join. They even send you free killie fish when you join. But if you really want to know, there's going to be somebody that keeps this fish, somebody that breeds this fish, probably several somebody. And they'll tell you that's your best answer. Anytime you can find any of those libraries association and those super focused club or associations, they're going to be your best source for information about the obscure fish. It's an annual killy treated like an annual killer. That would be my only advice to you. And I don't keep killing fish. But you can probably feed it some pretty big food right away because it's achille.

Speaker A:

And for those that are listening that are beginners killy fish there's so many different colors and varieties and so many of them we spoke about being annual fish. They literally have a unique characteristic where you can dry their eggs, keep their eggs on hand for x period of time, just essentially put them back in water and hatch out live fish.

Speaker B:

It's like instant mashed potatoes.

Speaker A:

The reason for this is in the wild they spawn, their small puddle pools dry up and they need the species to last until next year. So most of these species that they talk about that are really obscure bright colors, especially for I'm pretty sure it's only exclusively to kill a fish. If I'm not mistaken, I'll probably learn learn to eat that later is a lot of these species only live three months because they're only intended for the summer breed. And then once the winter comes or they dry up, the eggs are maintained throughout that season until next spring.

Speaker B:

What's really nice about we're going into winter, we're recording this the first November. If you go on aqua bid you can purchase eggs, different eggs from different species and they ship very well in the cold. Whereas when you're trying to ship live fish I just got some live fish sent up to me from Florida, got delayed and they all froze out because it's pretty chilly up here and very disappointing for myself plus the gentleman that I bought it from. But the killer fish eggs, they'll send them in the mail in the envelope. it'd be very little bit hardly any amount of what am I trying to say?

Speaker A:

Effort?

Speaker B:

Not effort, but amount of money spent on shipping.

Speaker E:

Oh yeah, there's no shipping cost.

Speaker A:

Yeah, no shipping cost basically is stamped. They're going to just come in a normal envelope. They're going to be packed at least going to be, what, $3. The post office.

Speaker B:

And what I would do is I'd go in Aquabid and buy some eggs from somebody. And you know what, you'll develop a friendship with that person you bought those eggs from. They'll give you information on how to breed them or how to hatch them and raise them to adults.

Speaker A:

And we'll certainly have an episode on killy fish in the future. We've been trying to find some specialists. The thing is that there's so many different varieties, so many people keep them in cycles and then categorize eggs. There's so much to learn about each species that, like bentley said, the clubs are so invaluable to start in, just because every species has some sort of requirement, age, time of living. It's an incredible genre. But there are long term killies. Don't let this overwhelm you that you're going to get a killy fish and they're only going to last three months. There's others that last years.

Speaker D:

You see people with killy fish, too, that have like a flat in London or something, like a little studio. And they have these little rubber made one gallon.

Speaker E:

You give them like a shoe box.

Speaker D:

And they keep them. Yeah, they basically have a wall of shoe boxes and they have 100 species. They're kind of cool in that way.

Speaker E:

Keep in mind the one thing I would go to the American Killyfish Association, aka. Aka.org. It's super easy. That's going to help you get information. But more importantly, if you buy eggs of this fish or any of the annual killers, don't try to hatch all the eggs in one go. Talk to the person you got the eggs from. If they tell you the last X period of time, try to hatch them in little batches. That way you don't like, accidentally lose them all in one shot. Give yourself multiple attempts at this fish before you get a proper pair raised up and can get your own eggs. Then once you get in that cycle and you get used to it, you're.

Speaker A:

Going to be fine.

Speaker E:

You just keep breathing them in cycles. You get your own eggs and be able to do whatever you want with that fish. But don't risk the entire batch in your first shot just because of how killies are. Get used to them in small batches at first.

Speaker D:

Oh, and killy is the Dutch word for ditch. So it means ditch fish or ditch fish. Say that ten times fast.

Speaker A:

So I want to go back to the prior point. Are you telling me not to put all my eggs in one basket? Well, I mean, it's called a hedging.

Speaker B:

Your best generally smart numb nuts. The bad jokes when I bring in stuff from overseas and stuff. I just bought a bag of painted glass fish. Don't scream at me. Quit whining.

Speaker E:

Why?

Speaker A:

They demanded it, if that they have other people that needed them.

Speaker B:

So 150 to a bag. I had three tanks put 50 per tank just in case they didn't do well.

Speaker A:

Horrible thing to do to fish, by the way.

Speaker B:

And anyway, sold them all in a time machine. Sold them all?

Speaker A:

Yeah. They're still out there and they disappear instantly. It's kind of crazy. For those that don't know, we talked about this before in a pirate podcast. Glass fish get injected with a needle.

Speaker B:

No, hand painted.

Speaker A:

Oh, these are the hand painted.

Speaker B:

Hand painted, yes. And so actually, you'll watch the paint flake off after a certain amount of time.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker B:

And then you eat it and die.

Speaker D:

I want my fish tortured.

Speaker A:

Yeah. So there's the two varieties.

Speaker B:

Buy yourself a flower horn for glass.

Speaker A:

Fish because glass fish can't be normally tattooed. So they have hand painted and then also injected.

Speaker B:

The ones that people think are injected, those are the white tetras that are tissue absorbed. They put them in big Easter egg vats and they actually absorb them through there. So most of them now are not injected because it got to be too time consuming and they had too much trouble with different diseases.

Speaker A:

Yeah, they amazingly don't last that long. Anyways, let's get off a depressing subject. So speaking of depressing subjects, politics. Now, we're recording this on November 2, and I just want to put out there that 2020 has not been a great year for 21. It has sucked royal. Shit. We've been stuck inside dealing with medical conditions, fear, the whole thing. And now it's all coming to the pinnacle where you're picking between we're going to be very agnostic about this.

Speaker B:

Two old guys.

Speaker A:

Two old guys that are supposed to change the world and won't. What better time to ignore it all and just treat yourselves to a bit of story time?

Speaker B:

Sounds good.

Speaker A:

For people that haven't listened to this.

Speaker D:

Before, we've done vote Nader.

Speaker A:

Vote Route. Don't be a hater. Excuse me. It's kanye. 2020, sir.

Speaker B:

That's one vote.

Speaker A:

That's the route nader of this year. Anyways, without getting political, we got two other episodes that we've done in the past for Storytime, and what we do is we gather around our virtual fireside and just have a chat. We have people that message us in the past saying that our anecdotal stories with guests and ourselves have been a lot of fun. And some of our fans have requested we just have an episode of just us telling stories roughly about the hobby or outside of it. Some aren't about the hobby. We try to keep it closer to the hobby as much as we can. But again, this is having fun. Imagine you're cracking open a beer. You're just bullshitting around a fire. It's story time.

Speaker B:

No dolphin stories.

Speaker A:

No dolphins. Maybe dolphin stories. Not off the table. But who wants to. Go first, gentlemen.

Speaker D:

I'll take it.

Speaker A:

All right. Do it. All you, Alex. Here. This was something great.

Speaker D:

Well, I just figured I'll set the bar real low so that way you guys have to live up to less. I thought I'd be kind.

Speaker A:

I mean, thank you for that. You don't want to be first. You don't want to be last.

Speaker B:

Yeah, thanks for not going for a three pointer right away.

Speaker D:

Yeah, just do a late. I used to work in an aquarium store. I've actually worked in two in my day, and the most recent one was a very nice aquarium store. It was actually an aquascaping based store in Seattle, and it is in the part of town very close to the children's Hospital. The children's hospital here is very famous for its care. They have kids from all over the country being treated for leukemia and I don't know, whatever they treat little kids for. So I was working, and it wasn't unheard of to have. They usually would have kind of almost like day care for kids that are in the hospital super long term with various conditions. And so sometimes they would bring them through as, like a free aquarium trip kind of thing to the store because they're only about 2 miles up the road. So they would bring them through this aquascape store and just three or four kids at a time, like real low key, I don't think. It wasn't like a field triple of kids, but they'd bring them through the store, and one day I was working, and I kind of saw that that's what was going on. I saw these two parents. They had a camera with them, not just like a phone, but a camera, and they were kind of like taking pictures and kind of huddled up, kind of like, oh, look at him. Look at our son enjoying this trip. And I could see that the kid had a hospital bracelet on his wrist, and he had no hair. So I was figuring something like childhood leukemia or something like that, as you would.

Speaker A:

That's pretty common.

Speaker D:

Yeah. And I didn't want to assume or say anything. It's always a kind of a touchy situation. I mean, obviously just dream normal.

Speaker A:

That's what they want. To be treated like you're in that spot where you look different for a day. You just want to be pretend you're not dealing with it.

Speaker D:

They are people, after all. So in any case, I was standing there, and I'm kind of waiting to see what they're going to do. And the kid's gone around to every tank a couple of times. Now he looks at the big square tank we have, and it happened to be for sale, which was lucky because usually stuff wasn't for sale in there. But the very first thing he says is, I want this Oscar. Can we get this Oscar? And I was like, oh, okay. I get it. So I'm thinking in my head, they're setting this kid up an aquarium. And in my head, I'm like, I don't want to be super negative, but I'm thinking, what's, like an easy setup for the parents? Easy fish, peaceful fish? Am I an awful person for thinking, like, maybe it shouldn't be something that lives super long or you have to wait a super long time for it to do something cool? So I was kind of thinking, I don't know, rainbow fish or angel fish or something pretty. And he picks a full grown Oscar that was there as like, a rehome. And I was like, okay, all right, yeah, it's for sale. But these guys aren't very nice, bud. They don't get along with any other fish. Really? How big of a tank are we looking for? And the parents are like, he can have whatever he wants.

Speaker A:

One of those parents?

Speaker D:

Yeah, I think it was more of a, like, this is serious.

Speaker A:

It's like a make a wish thing. He'll get whatever he wants.

Speaker B:

That's right.

Speaker A:

It wasn't like mom going into Walmart saying, I'm going to get saints, roll four for my kid, and he gets what he wants. I like, that.

Speaker D:

No, it's not. The kid running down the aisle with his arms stretched out and the cereal all the knocks down, right?

Speaker B:

Because his trial is so sick he can't run.

Speaker A:

You got the point real quick.

Speaker D:

Yeah, arms are gone. So he comes in and at first I'm like, okay, well, let's look at some other options first. How about that? And he's like, okay. And the kid actually knew, like, the Latin names. This kid's probably nine to eleven. I don't know how old, not super young. Not a teenager, though. Not a preteen. Well, I guess that is preteen, but whatever. I don't know kids.

Speaker B:

So he's not a child wrangler.

Speaker A:

You were focused on measuring the child. You were just in the moment trying to satisfy a mom that needed fish at the moment.

Speaker B:

Make a Wish program.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker D:

Well, I try not to be that creepy all the time, so I don't carry a measuring tape for children with children size increments on it.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker D:

So yay big child is in there. And I'm like, okay, well, how about these angel fish we could get you set up with maybe in that store? They don't have rimless or anything, so I'm like, you guys have a tank? And they're like, it doesn't matter what the cost is. How about that display tank? This is an ada rimless tank with an 880 pendant, $800 light over it, and co2 injection, just like the works. And so I was like, Are we going all in with this? I mean, this is probably going to require some parental help, right? And they're like, yeah, we'll pay you guys to come out and set it up. It doesn't matter, whatever.

Speaker A:

Okay, so I'm assuming this wasn't like a petco. They were like, willing to come to a store, get help, maintenance, the whole thing, right?

Speaker D:

And so that's when I was sure that I was like, okay, we're dealing with a kid that's going to pass away probably. Or they're thinking he could. And this is like make a Wish because there were a couple of adults with them, like a nurse of some sort and maybe some Make A Wish person, I don't know, rough and another administrator. And they were documenting the whole thing clearly, like taking pictures and little video.

Speaker B:

And pictures of him.

Speaker A:

Dick what did he say?

Speaker B:

Pictures of him being addict as kid.

Speaker A:

Oh, no.

Speaker D:

That's why I didn't get out my measuring tape.

Speaker E:

I already told him, right?

Speaker D:

He goes over to the garami tank and he's like, I want to get a male garami. And I was like, kay, why don't we go with a female? The powder blues or the honey, they're really good. We could set you up with the, you know, the 90 P tank is what we ended up going with and we squared it away. It's basically like a 40 gallon tank remorse in the end with a stand and everything. I mean, they were going to put probably $2,000 into this whole set up when everything was said and done, I would guess. bentley you think that's about right for ada? Yeah. So for those of you who are used to the petco dollar per gallon sale, that's not what this was about. And so working at a store like that, your mindset is in a certain way. Just keep that in mind as I finish this off here. So the kid is dead set on it. So I was like, okay, well that's good. Let's get lots of plants in there then so that we can keep the female so we can keep the female away from the males. We can keep little or fish if you pick little or fish out away from the garamis. And he's like, okay, whatever. And he's just kind of ignoring me, the kid. And I'm like, okay, well, he knows what he wants. So he goes over and next he wants an angel fish. And I was like, okay, good. An angel fish. We can work with this. And the next thing he wants are some shrimp. And I was like, well, who doesn't want shrimp? But they're going to get eaten. And I try to tell him nicely. I'm like, hey bud, these are really cool. And we could stick with small little fish. Nanofish are really cool. We could do a bunch of fish. And he's like, no, I want 20 shrimp red ones. And I was like, okay in my head, too. I was like, wow, this is going to be a big sale. But cool. That will look good for me, that's fine. But in my head, this kid is picking out some expensive stuff that's probably.

Speaker A:

Going to get you what we call expensive treats.

Speaker D:

Yes, expensive snacks, $10 snacks, essentially. So then next thing goes over and picks out a honduran red point cichlid and says, these are cool. And I'm like, okay, bud, yeah, those are great live bears, but with the angel and the garami, I think that maybe we should and the parents just give me this death glare. You're denying our son his last wish?

Speaker A:

They're just sitting there like, will you shut up, please, and just let us get what do you want?

Speaker B:

I would be adding on to fail so much.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Jimmy he'll just turn off the morals. I'll be like, how about some goldfish? You want to stingray in there?

Speaker B:

You want to stingray?

Speaker E:

Well, you're being a good fish keeper.

Speaker D:

And I was like, do you want to see any of your fish breeding, or are we just into watching them? Or what do you want? Everyone's just it's so dismissive. And I was like, okay, well, he's a kid. Maybe I'm assuming too much of him. He goes around, he picks out some filler fish, some neon tetras, and a few other things that are just kind of like group fish. But then we had it was in the back, and it hadn't sold, which was weird because everyone wanted them. But a beta macrostoma, which is the largest beta, and they're very expensive.

Speaker A:

Aren't those the ones that they commonly use in illegal fighting trades? Jimmy correct. Yeah.

Speaker D:

In fact, they're more popular than, quote unquote, siamese fighting fish betas.

Speaker A:

The last one I saw was one that you ordered was like, what, four bills?

Speaker B:

Some of us can be really expensive.

Speaker A:

They were crazy. And the one that you got did not look pretty.

Speaker B:

They're ugly.

Speaker A:

Usually they're just a massive beta, and they love shrimp.

Speaker B:

So you just sold them 50 shrimp?

Speaker D:

Yeah. Well, and so I'm like, all right, well, hey, bud, this fish actually gets, like, probably eight inches long at least, and it's a really mean fish. It was already probably four inches long. It was a male, and I think the female had died, and that's why we still had it. And we were trying to sell them as a pair for a while or something. But the kid looks at me and I'm like, hey, buddy, this fish is actually going to kill your other fish. And he goes, Good.

Speaker C:

Oh, my God, I want them to fight.

Speaker A:

The kid puts on a switch and turn into Lex Luther.

Speaker D:

Well, I just kind of stood there, and the parents clearly heard him, and I was like, oh, okay. And then I started thinking about his choices, and it all came to me. I was like, this kid is making thunderdome in the most expensive tank possible. And that's exactly what a ten year old boy is going to do.

Speaker A:

Absolutely.

Speaker D:

If you tell them they can do anything. So I was like, all right, let's get that Oscar boxed up. You want some bettas, too? And so we got a couple of betas for them and they literally bought the stuff and they headed out. Don't judge a book by its cover.

Speaker A:

No.

Speaker D:

And please don't give PETA My contact information.

Speaker A:

I also realized what I did and I wanted to apologize. I did not mean to make fun of a boy of cancer. The lex luther joke was not because he was bald.

Speaker D:

It's because he had superpowers.

Speaker A:

It's because he had superpowers.

Speaker B:

You guys are such dicks.

Speaker A:

So wait, wait. I got a couple of follow up questions here.

Speaker B:

So no follow up.

Speaker A:

I'm just going through this whole walk through you're going through. I want some of those. I want some of those. Are you bagging and tagging as you're going through? Are you just writing this down?

Speaker D:

No, it was more of like a consultation at that store. If it wasn't busy, it was like I was going to round it all up later because I thought for sure parents are going to step in here when I'm saying very clearly, hey, bud, trying to be nice?

Speaker A:

Sure.

Speaker D:

Let's try to pick something smarter. And I've got that dumb voice on.

Speaker A:

That is the craziest make a wish thing I've ever heard of.

Speaker D:

It might have been real make a wish or something.

Speaker A:

Like a ryan reynolds thing pops up. You figured that would be on a kids list, but no thunder dome in an aquarium. So did you go around being like, you know what be great? These things, just when they get hit by something, the scales just spoof all over the place and shiny.

Speaker D:

As tempting as it is to say that or to make the story sound like that, I really did try to be like, hey, that's not how I like to treat fish. I did actually have a moment like that. But in my head I'm like, is this immoral? What am I supposed to do? I don't know. That the right thing to do is.

Speaker A:

That is the perfect impasse. You're sitting there between probably cancer child in his last month stays who knows how long versus ethical treatment of animal. I mean, I don't know. I don't think there's an answer either way.

Speaker D:

Honestly, the first thing there is, you.

Speaker C:

Don'T sell the fish.

Speaker A:

Adams had a store of his own and he clearly just tells cancer patients to leave all the time.

Speaker B:

See, I would have sold them for.

Speaker D:

A day that would have gone over really well in the local media.

Speaker A:

Right?

Speaker D:

We tried to sell a beautiful set up to our son.

Speaker A:

Pet store denies cancer patient.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I was thinking that you're getting punked.

Speaker A:

That would be a great punk. Just alex sitting there like, I don't know.

Speaker D:

I have to get a follow up on any of that. I felt like I should have somebody would have called and been like, hey, can we return this stuff?

Speaker B:

You ever feel like you're on that show? What would you do that they have on NBC. It's got like a date. Like, yeah, what would you do?

Speaker D:

That was one of the moments in my life. That's exactly what I felt like. I was like, when are the people going to come out with balloons and stuff now? Because this is real weird. I've embellished how bloodthirsty the child was. He may have just acknowledged that he knew that there would be conflict.

Speaker A:

Yeah, who knows? You really can't read someone's mind, but oh, that's a rough one. That's funny, but rough.

Speaker B:

Fight Club.

Speaker A:

Fight Club. Don't talk about Fight Club.

Speaker D:

I'm talking about fish club.

Speaker A:

It does exactly don't talk about it.

Speaker E:

So while I was in college, my cousin and I lived together, and a group of our friends, we we started telling them a story about a tank we had. So we had a 55 gallon bowfront, and he wanted to do South American predatory cichlids. So we had, like, a Jack dempsey, a Red devil. And the dempsey basically picked fish that it allowed to live in the tank. So if something lived for two or three days, usually it got to stay. An example would be we had a group of ball sharks. He let one live and that one every time one of the two humans it knew walked past the tank would jump out of the top. Get me the hello down on the tile. No. At that point, we just thought it was some kind of fly for attention because it was only when we walked past. Never jumped out of the tank. Whenever we weren't in front of it, it was very much, I better jump out, like a torpedo. Slam into the slate. That's down low. So it eventually probably bashed itself extra stupid.

Speaker A:

You figure you get a lid sometime in the middle of this.

Speaker E:

Well, that was the problem. We couldn't we were they're in college kids. We're going to spend the money on beer lid. We had better things to buy, like.

Speaker D:

Beer cans. You just float them.

Speaker E:

So there's no bad idea.

Speaker B:

I like that.

Speaker A:

I want a picture of that shit. If someone's done that.

Speaker E:

We go to a party with some friends. And one of the friends, who is not a direct friend of ours, but his acquaintance of our overall social group, is one of the roommates that's hosting this place. And they have this big 125 gallon tank with one red belly piranha in it. And they're talking all the stuff about how aggressive their piranha is and how it kill, all sorts of stuff. It's a piranha, and it's very clear they're not an aquarist. Right? And at this point, I've been keeping fish since I was, like, five. I know a little bit more. Not a lot, but enough. So they're going like, that fish is not that scary. piranhas are really scary in groups. You got one piranha. My Jack dempsey at home will murder this thing. They won't even be close. No, there's no way. It's a prana to prana. I'm like, just, okay, yeah, you believe whatever you want. I put goldfish in this all the time. I'm like, how long is the goldfish in there before it gets hit? It's like, oh, put it in there. By the next day, it's gone. We put a live fish in the tangler. Jack dempsey. And it's literally within 30 seconds, it's mean. It's named after one of the meanest boxers in history for a reason.

Speaker B:

Mohammed Ali.

Speaker D:

Gary Coleman.

Speaker A:

You need to get out of the gary Coleman. Get out of the corner.

Speaker D:

I love the cold.

Speaker E:

Later on we host a party and what we didn't know until it was too late. So this person, we're doing all this stuff and like, I used to DJ in college, so, like, I'm running music. We got friends running a small bar. We're just all having a blast right up until that person comes running up to me, goes just like your tamp.

Speaker D:

Fish or tap fish.

Speaker A:

Pow.

Speaker E:

And I'm really not paying attention. I got, like headphones on. I'm trying to do work music and stuff. I'm like, what do you mean? My damn fish? Finally, I get one of my friends who have taught how to use my equipment to run my equipment for a little bit, go over the fish tank, and there's this red belly piranha missing, like, throat section and one clean bite just floating. Then I see a little bucket down on the floor by the stand. What the hell did you do? It brought my piranha over because I wanted to see if it was tougher than your fish.

Speaker A:

Oh, my God.

Speaker E:

You brought your red belly piranha to my house in a bucket and then without even asking me, put it in my tank with Captain Jack in Captain jack's pirate ship. And you thought this was cool? It's a piranha.

Speaker D:

He imagined him getting pulled over driving with a bucket.

Speaker E:

What happened to your piranha? I put him in the tank and like, maybe a minute passes swimming around trying to figure out what's going on, and all of a sudden the thing comes out of that little broken pirate ship like a missile just chomps into its throat and then swims away and goes back and hide. It's not hiding. It just murdered what it needed to murder because get off my lawn.

Speaker A:

We're going to call this episode storytime three fish fight club.

Speaker E:

I would have told a different story if it wasn't for like the little kid wanted to creep thutter dove in his tank because it reminded me of like, oh, well, I guess I could tell that story.

Speaker B:

I mean, honestly, it puts the lotion in the bucket.

Speaker D:

Puts the piranha in the bucket.

Speaker E:

I remember this very specific. I was sitting there going like, okay, get your piranha out of my tank before it causes some issues. You're going to buy me a replacement fish, right?

Speaker A:

Are you serious?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

The guy had the nuts to ask you.

Speaker E:

I finally looked at him and go.

Speaker A:

Like, you get out of my house.

Speaker E:

So here's the deal. You can take the fish out of tank, go throw it out in the garden, go flute yourself or put it in your car, or I can make you do it. And if I make you do it, you're going to eat it. I've always been a big dude.

Speaker A:

I'm just imagining the whole like you're in DJ garb telling someone that you're going to basically be a bouncer or make them eat fish. Like that's intimidating stuff.

Speaker E:

I couldn't believe it. And so finally they're like, okay, do you have a net? I didn't bring a net.

Speaker B:

I'd make them go bobbing apples in the tank.

Speaker A:

You're going to raw dog that stuff, man. It's dead.

Speaker E:

Grab it with your hand. What about your fish? Oh, don't worry, it won't bite your hand. I don't think so.

Speaker B:

He's probably full from the piranha.

Speaker A:

The dude's like a creeped out.

Speaker E:

But it just like bit my piranha.

Speaker A:

They fast. Yeah, I know.

Speaker E:

I feed that fish by hand. It doesn't ever bite me. But it doesn't know you.

Speaker A:

You smell like bacon in my tank.

Speaker E:

Of course the ax is kind of scared. The fish doesn't do anything. Just sits there knowing like, you can't have anything in my tank. This is my damn house. Get out of here. I couldn't believe the audacity. Don't even talk to a person. Just bring your stupid toronto over in a bucket. Let's just throw it in your fish tank and see what happens. College idiots.

Speaker A:

I love alcohol.

Speaker D:

I'm surprised you could have a fish tank in college. I had some and there was beer in it the first night.

Speaker E:

We didn't throw parties. It should be referenced that typically where parties were thrown was in this massive garage that's attached to this house that we were in.

Speaker A:

Right. But people are idiots and you're not going to like lock doors.

Speaker E:

You'd be surprised.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker E:

And more importantly, like, we normally like he worked at a petgo, right? So he could afford a fish tank because he had a massive discount at petco during the time. The only thing he wanted was to have predatory cichlids in a tank that was his jam at that time. He didn't want anything else. And that particular fish murdered nearly anything he put in there. Like tin foil barbs, ball of sharks, silver arijuana. It just was absolutely what you'd expect out of any given jack dempsey. It was mean.

Speaker A:

I feel like everybody has some sort of like fish story where something accidentally happened in some ways, but I never have a guy that put the effort into it, like, hey, bentley is throwing a party. You know what? I'm going to dump some shit in his fish tank and see if he wants to talk smack later. That's some sort of like maybe I was really hunker high. What's the reason behind it?

Speaker E:

The person was pretty notorious for being a stoner back in the day. So I suppose that maybe, man, you'll.

Speaker A:

Be sweet if my piranha beat up bentley's stuff.

Speaker B:

That'D be cool.

Speaker A:

He's talking all this shit about 15.

Speaker B:

Years later, you take your child over there to beat the shit out of his kid.

Speaker A:

Go. That's something else you don't do if people are listening. You're not one of those aquarium people. Imagine taking your dog to another dude's party and they fight just because you want to be a dick. That's the same level of what we're talking about here. It's stupid. It's downright stupid. But Adam, what you got for a story for us, bud? Well, also, before you start, I want to point out that you're a trooper. You're wearing your old pet store t shirt. So old vintage swag I love.

Speaker C:

Do you guys want to hear about the time first? About the time that I found something very venomous? Or the time I got questioned by the dnr?

Speaker A:

Question by the dnr all day?

Speaker B:

Because we're going to have the dnr on again shortly.

Speaker A:

We actually got him booked. We got mandy coming back on to talk to us about sunfish. So what better time than now?

Speaker B:

We'll give her your personal information when we see her.

Speaker A:

I do not need her.

Speaker C:

They already dealt with it.

Speaker A:

Okay, good. It's been seven years. You don't have to worry about it.

Speaker B:

Never been story.

Speaker C:

Okay, so it's wally opener in northern Minnesota, and it's Lake pacagama. And you know what fishing opener is in northern Minnesota?

Speaker A:

Everybody goes to the lakes literally bigger than 4 July.

Speaker C:

Yeah, it's a pretty big thing. And you know how it's always like cold, wet and rainy in Minnesota? Fishing opener, it's never sunny. Half the time it's snowing and it's just shitty out. The dnr came to my store on a Sunday. This is when I was open. Saturday and Sunday. Fishing opener Saturday. They came into my store on Sunday and they looked at my tank, and Jim knows my store layout. And I had my feeders, feeder goldfish in the front of my store. And they see and it's just full of feeder goldfish and rosy reds and everything.

Speaker A:

Right? The reason you do that is because in Minnesota, it's cold, and that door is going to hit all the cold breezes. And you want your cold water fish hitting that not warm.

Speaker C:

Yeah, so it's just all my cold water fish are in the front of the store. This dnr officer comes in and they go, can I talk to you for a few minutes? And like, oh, shit. And I'm running through my head, what do I have that's illegal? What do I need? I'm just trying to make sure I didn't have anything bad.

Speaker A:

What snake did I bring in this time? Where did I sell that one octopus to?

Speaker C:

Yeah, that was before the octopus. I literally only had my store for like six to eight months.

Speaker D:

I think Jim knows about this one.

Speaker C:

Because I called him, like, right afterwards.

Speaker D:

And he just laughed at me.

Speaker A:

I feel like there's a lot of scenarios that happened in your guys'past to continue.

Speaker C:

So this dnr guy is questioning me about my feeder fish, and he's like, Why?

Speaker D:

Do you know?

Speaker C:

Do you carry feeder fish? I see you have them. And I'm like, yeah, there's no problem with me carrying feeder fish. It's legal. I buy them from my vendors. I bring them up here, and they're just to feed other fish or little kids for first pet cycle fish tanks, that type of stuff. Well, apparently they had arrested a guy because he was the only guy catching fish on Lake Pachegama with using feeder goldfish as fishing bait.

Speaker A:

Lovely. So they couldn't figure out why one.

Speaker C:

Guy in the whole damn lake was catching fish. Because it's shitty. Super cold. Well, he took all the bright gold.

Speaker E:

Ones, and they want to know if.

Speaker C:

You bought them from me, but I think he bought them from Walmart because I sure as hell didn't know who the guy was.

Speaker B:

That's what we'll stick to that. Yeah, walmart.

Speaker C:

We'll stick with that because I wouldn't have okay, let's put it this way. I would not have sold them knowingly if I would have known that he was going to use them for bait.

Speaker A:

Well, you can't stop someone's intent. I mean, I'm not going to stop selling someone's spray paint just because they're going to go vandalize them. They're not telling me they're of 1821 whatever it's required.

Speaker C:

Yeah. So the guy I get the story from the dnr, basically they drive their boat over because he's the only one catching fish, and they check his boat, and as they're pulling up to his boat, he's reeling in a walleye with a goldfish hanging out of its mouth. Done.

Speaker A:

Yeah. You lose some of the punishments they do in Minnesota. You lose your fishing license. You get a fine dependent on the invasive species. It's jail time in some scenarios for.

Speaker D:

Hunting violations, drift and push you out into a lake. Is that not what they do? No.

Speaker E:

They wait for the summer and let the mosquitoes eat you to death.

Speaker A:

Right. The Hunger Games edition.

Speaker C:

I was told by the dnr guy that it was $10,000. It was a $10,000 fine for the fish that he pulled out of the lake. It was $1,000 for every goldfish on his boat. He was double over the legal limit of walleye for opener. So they just basically arrested him and confiscated everything. Brand new truck, brand new boat, his fishing rods, his hunting license, everything. He was done. But I'm like, so why are you guys bugging me? Well, we were just confirming, trying to figure out where he bought these from. I'm like, so you came to the one store I said. To him if I'd have known that he had these and I didn't hear anything afterwards, but that was the time I was questioned by the dnr, and I was like shitting myself.

Speaker B:

I call that profiling.

Speaker C:

Thank you, Jim. I appreciate that.

Speaker D:

Maybe you shouldn't wear that on your head then.

Speaker A:

So for those that are listening, you can watch us. We got at least Jim and I on the stream. Otherwise we're on discord. Go to Aquariumgyspodcast.com on the bottom of the website. You can join these live. This is a Monday night at 07:00 p.m.. We start the Central Time. And Adam has a particular mic that he actually puts a blanket over his head.

Speaker C:

So I bought the mic you told me to buy, and I think you did this on purpose so that I fit your racial profiling ideas.

Speaker A:

Well, I didn't know you have such echo problems, but I think he's, like.

Speaker D:

Hot boxing himself with park.

Speaker A:

If you guys want to help out Adam, you can donate at the bottom of the podcast as well, and find a new blanket. Send us a note that it's for adam's new mike, and we'll get him to set up.

Speaker B:

I heard Sarah mclaughlin there for a little bit.

Speaker A:

Hey, that's copyrighted. This is a rendition.

Speaker B:

There we go.

Speaker A:

We're on YouTube now. I've only had 80 million copyright strikes.

Speaker D:

I saw that when you were uploading.

Speaker A:

Them, luke, you YouTube.

Speaker D:

I was like, welcome to my world, Rob.

Speaker A:

You can suck on my fat Ghana podium. YouTube.

Speaker B:

You know what's funny? When Adam tells that story just real quick, just isn't my story. My seven year old Aaron doesn't get two stories. No, I run this damn place.

Speaker A:

You pay the bills.

Speaker B:

I'm not even wearing pants right now.

Speaker A:

Oh, thank God.

Speaker B:

But my seven year old, him and his Aaron and his buddy Austin were bringing home two and a half, three pound rock bass off the dock about three blocks from her house and stuff. And nobody else was catching anything, too. And then I asked Aaron, I said, how are you catching these things? And go, oh, it's my secret. And then the next day, I catch him taking I had probably a thousand feet of goldfish, and they're down there with their little net and bucket, and they're seven years old, and they're down there catching them with goldfish. And I said to him, I said, you can't do that. I said, The dnr is going to put you in jail. He looks at me straight and I go, oh, they're not I'm not a little kid.

Speaker A:

He knows what's up.

Speaker C:

I'm a little kid on the news. And we were discussing this yesterday, me and Jim, about how they pulled 50,000 goldfish out of a lake in Minnesota.

Speaker B:

Out of a pond.

Speaker C:

Out of a pond.

Speaker B:

They showed the picture of it. It was a freaking pickup load.

Speaker A:

Yes, it was back of a pickup.

Speaker E:

Full to the top of the pickup.

Speaker A:

This is on the lake called chaska in Minnesota. October 26 they did a big netting procedure and it's thousands potentially estimated over 50,000 goldfish just in the first netting.

Speaker D:

Carp or goldfish?

Speaker B:

Goldfish.

Speaker A:

Goldfish, yes, very much goldfish. I'll be sure to actually add the link to you guys here in Discord and that's based upon their estimate of just a handful of goldfish being let loose in the lake. They really do overtake environments because they breed so fast in batches in the summer that they overtake it's so detrimental. It's not just a fish getting in there and overtaking food but carp really do destroy bottoms of waterways and just completely dirty and stop other fish from even breeding. All the habitats get destroyed.

Speaker D:

So don't put any fish destroy my bottom.

Speaker A:

Don't have any fish from aquarium ever. Go into a natural waterway, contact your dnr local rescue, give us a call. We'll find someone in your area to.

Speaker D:

Release it for you.

Speaker A:

Right? But yeah. Jimmy, do you want to give us a real story?

Speaker B:

A real story? Yeah, I've got a real story. My two stories tonight are both from the same location. I started out with my location in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. I now live in perm, Minnesota which is about 20 miles difference. So I worked for a mortgage company and the guy that owned the mortgage company said hey I got this extra building over here if you want to rent it because I was talking about expanding my fish business at that time and I said sure, let's go take a look at the building. So on our lunch break he took me over to this building and it was actually a pretty nice building and he shows me two apartments above but the whole bottom. He said I could have for $200 and I want to say it was probably about 2500 sqft. It was pretty good size and in the very back there's like a kitchen area. And he says, yeah. He said this will work great for your fish business. He goes I already have to heat the building because I have two renters upstairs. He goes, So you'll get free heat. He goes, Just pay your electricity bill down here and you'll be fine.

Speaker A:

And not just heat like you could make that basement you know, heat the room for tanks. Heat. Yeah.

Speaker B:

This isn't Fraser, right?

Speaker A:

Oh, okay.

Speaker B:

This isn't Fraser. You've never seen this one before?

Speaker A:

I haven't seen this one. Okay. I thought you were referring the other one.

Speaker B:

No. So to explain, when you walked into the building, you had to use your key to walk into the building. And then you locked the building up behind you. And then there was a steps that went upstairs to the apartments. And then there was two swinging doors that went into my area. And they had a curtain on the outside for privacy. I moved over there. I was really excited I went from about 300 tanks to about 600 tanks in a short time. Had about 600 aquariums in this place. And every once in a while, you would hear the people upstairs walking around. Well, one night I'm traveling there about 637 o'clock at night because I hear a noise. And I look and I see an old woman peering through the window. I mean, takes her fingers, pulls a curtain back, looks in, gives me a kind of a gentle grandmother type smile, and then the curtain went back.

Speaker A:

This is getting creepy.

Speaker D:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And it went away.

Speaker A:

That's it. And anyway, they're going to be like, this house is haunted. There's no one been in there for 20 years.

Speaker B:

And so as we go on, this happens not once, but several times over the next two or three weeks. And I said to Pat, who owned the building, I said, oh, I said, One of your renters keep peeking in on me. I said, One of these days I'm going to be sitting there with my shirt off because it was hot and air to take my shirt off. And I said, she'd probably try to get a glimpse of these massive pecks and biceps. And he goes, Describe this person. So I describe this person. He goes, I go, Is it one of the renters? He goes, no, there's two guys that rent the upstairs.

Speaker A:

Oh, no.

Speaker B:

And I said, so who is this? He goes, That's Sarah. I said, who is Sarah? And he goes, well, he said, we and bulmed him there at the old funeral home. About 25 years ago, I'm renting a goddamn funeral home, and I didn't know it.

Speaker A:

And I went, what the hell? I didn't mean to predict this. By the way, I've never heard this story before.

Speaker B:

I share this with anybody other than my wife.

Speaker D:

No.

Speaker B:

Anyway, it just became Halloween edition.

Speaker A:

Yes, it did. So late there, Jimmy.

Speaker B:

Okay, here's the interesting part, guys. So towards the back, that wasn't interesting. Oh, that was interesting as hell. But in the back, where the kitchen area is, that's where you go back there and cut my bedrooms and stuff. And I kept all my Goldfishing back because it was much colder. Well, that was the freaking embalming room. So I'm in the embalming room after he explained this to me, then I.

Speaker A:

Started going, yeah, it's real cheap. Rent is real cheap. We heat for you.

Speaker B:

That explains the freaking shadows. We would see shadows from lights and stuff. Finally, I finally get to meet the two guys that live upstairs. And they went, oh, yeah, dude, you wouldn't believe the crap that goes on in this place. And I'm like, I'm out of here. And they went, oh, you get used to it. Sarah was somebody they embalmed 20 years ago and never really left.

Speaker A:

I'm just trying to put myself in the homeowner situation, right? He's got a bad reputation. He knows it's a funeral home. He's got basically the place paid for from the apartments above. So why wouldn't you if you're a wealthy guy, you retired, why wouldn't you like to screw with someone? Someone comes to their place, be like.

Speaker B:

$200 a month I work for this man, right?

Speaker A:

Even better. I'm saying that's why even better. He's got the money, he's got the time, right? So he's like $200 a month. Jimmy and then what he does is he takes that $200, hires an old lady to come peaking on you, peeking on you, and then does creepy things to you on purpose to see how long you take it. I'm just saying, if I had the money, there's nothing stopping me from screwing.

Speaker E:

Old on that, right?

Speaker A:

So the only thing I would do is $200 wasn't enough to flash you. That would have been so there was.

Speaker B:

A basement to this place? There's a basement to this place. Never been down there. My kids at the time are probably 1012 years old, and they came upstairs really excited, going, you got to come down and check this out. It's really cool.

Speaker A:

Daddy, daddy. grandma Sarah made cookies.

Speaker B:

No, I went down there and look at the display of children's caskets.

Speaker A:

No, they still had the crap building.

Speaker B:

They still had children's caskets down.

Speaker A:

I am convinced this man, your quote unquote friend, you worked with him. He's there. He's flaking with you, bro.

Speaker B:

Oh, man. So that was story number one about this building. Now that we're kind of just past Halloween and stuff, but yeah. And I was there probably another two or three months and I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Speaker E:

But did they have the concrete sealers that these burying? Because those are just free fish pond.

Speaker B:

Yeah, you know what? I wish they would have I would have used them.

Speaker A:

We're in Minnesota. We don't have to worry about flooding up here. Really? So we don't have concrete sealers? That's more of a south thing?

Speaker B:

No, my mom and dad both had concrete.

Speaker A:

Really? I've yet to see one in person besides going down south.

Speaker B:

No, they require them. The state of Minnesota requires you to where the burial vault is put in the ground, and then the casket is put in there, and then it's both sealed.

Speaker A:

Telling you, last three funerals I was with the graveside ceremonies, dirt.

Speaker B:

The last three funerals you went to was probably where you flushed your fish down the toilet.

Speaker A:

I just want to know more. And we can have people look up like, you should find out, sarah's real life.

Speaker B:

No, I don't want to know.

Speaker A:

And then we can have people send us credible information.

Speaker B:

If I had jen on this we saw our first ghost here in perm the first year we lived, when we went on that bicycle path out here.

Speaker A:

Maybe she just wanted to do the fish death battle with you. I feel like we had a phone call there for a minute.

Speaker B:

It was Sarah Adam.

Speaker A:

No more text messages. Well, I know what to do. Now for future pranks.

Speaker B:

Yeah, you definitely should. Because now that I own jim Jim now that I own handguns future pranks That's even better.

Speaker E:

Yeah, I forgot about that.

Speaker B:

Just start shooting through the door.

Speaker A:

All right, so I got one and I was leased. I convinced myself that I needed to tell something. Because you've never told anyone. That right. I'm going to share a story that for legit reasons, never really told anyone. I don't think even my wife knows the story.

Speaker D:

Can I interject real quick before we start, please?

Speaker A:

We need something to break this up.

Speaker D:

So speaking about handguns, it's fish, please. It's fish one. It's real hard to shoot a fish in a barrel. I don't know if you guys have tried, but it's hard. So I was in Texas real quick.

Speaker E:

Cherry, all you we had fished all.

Speaker D:

Day and we were trying. Everyone owns a pond in Texas. If they have a ranch, everyone owns a pond. And everyone puts bass in the pond. And apparently it's so easy because these fish are just in there and huge, and nobody cared because it's all old people in my family that live down in Southeast Texas, but they left us down there. We're bored. I'm like 19 or 20 years old or whatever. No, wait, I must have been 21 because I'm sure I was legal sure. Let's say 21.

Speaker A:

Yeah, he was 21. Definitely.

Speaker D:

Yes, I was 21.

Speaker B:

Still not enough for me.

Speaker D:

I've been out there all day.

Speaker A:

Wait, this is Texas to catch fish. You're 14. You're legal in Texas. Don't worry about it.

Speaker D:

Oh, right. Yeah. So I've been at this lake all day and trying to catch fish. I hadn't caught a single thing. No bites. I was convinced there weren't any fish in the lake. So we've been drinking and sitting there and it was getting dark. I pulled out my pistol and I fired a whole magazine into the lake. Just randomly. Like a belligerent keanu reeves or something.

Speaker A:

No.

Speaker D:

In Point Break? No, but literally, the bass comes floating up and it just floats up to the top. I have a picture of it still. I can probably upload it later tonight. But I was like, Are you kidding me? I hit a fish in this entire pond. I hit a fish with a bullet out of like nine or ten of them, literally.

Speaker A:

The odds of that are astounding because bullets don't exactly travel perfect in water either, and they quickly dissipate their velocity. So you hitting that is like, real something else. It's like shooting into the air and randomly hitting a crow in the sky.

Speaker B:

There's probably two dead mermaids on the bottom of that pond, too, that didn't float to the top.

Speaker D:

Well, you should see the neighborhood just on the other side of the lake. Skip. No, I was in the middle of nowhere, thank goodness.

Speaker A:

Your fishing skills are very mixed with the bull.

Speaker D:

The shooting skills are very high, though, clearly.

Speaker A:

So note to self, don't mess with Alex, all right? Especially if you're underwater. If you're in an open air, you're fine, but if you're in water, don't do that. Anyway, my story, I have not told anybody, right? I'm pretty sure. Anybody? Yeah. So I talked about it on one of our last podcasts that I was a single child, right. I'm not a normal person. This personality we know that didn't come.

Speaker B:

Out of a box. There's a point where people just give up, and that's what your parents did.

Speaker A:

Right? So at the points where they give up, they see the kid burning ants with a magnifying glass type of thing. No kidding. I, as an immature child, was obsessed with farts. Right. So that's your preface. Farts are the funniest thing. If I could ship my pants right now in command, I'd do it just for the listeners, because farts are the best thing ever.

Speaker D:

Now, I think you're confusing your bodily function.

Speaker A:

Confusing? Knock on the fart. Sure. And growing up, I've told people in the podcast that I got into fish at a very young age. I grew up with my grandmother breeding all different types of fish, all different types of betas. She was the first person I've ever saw that had 40 betas and male betas in one tank that didn't fight, because she grew them up together and for some reason figured that out, that matrix out somehow. She had huge tanks. I still have a couple of her books with handwritten notes and getting into the hobby at a very young age. I had a couple of tanks in the house here and there at all times. And I live in a lake, so sometimes I'd have a tank where I'd have just temporary fish for a couple of days, put them back out in the water humanely, or I just keep tropical fish at all times. And there's always fun aquarium accessories. Like, my grandmother gave me some of the first clock timers. They're literally a clock motor with the auto feeder on it. So a lot of cool products. But the fun things is the power of some of those antique whisper pumps, the air pumps. Right. I was just amazed with it. And it was the best toy, getting a bunch of old rattly, burnt out air pumps from my grandmother because she gave me a lot of fish accessories. Right? I still have one of these, like, whisper pumps from, like you look at it and it's like 40 years old. It's incredible. So I will play with them. I go plug them in outside, see if I could make milk chocolate with mud in the dirt outside, because why not? You blow a straw milk, turn a chocolate milk. Why can't I play with it outside? So I was trying to find new fun inventive ways to play with the air pumps that I got. And it's hard for me. Jimmy, don't look at me like that. There's going to be a whole lot of judgmentalness in the room here. But being an eight, nine year old kid, farts are the best. So I decided to take I just.

Speaker B:

Knew it was going in that direction. I'm going to leave the building for.

Speaker A:

December at eight years old. I decided to take the air pump and just see what it would do if I squeeze it. marm where? Give me time, all right? Don't judge me. I was eight. So I put in the armpit. Sure enough, I make fart noises. raspberry out. Put it my belly button. raspberry out. I was giggling myself. I didn't have a brother or sister to make fun of me. I could have used one at this time in my life. And this escalated to fart noises. I'm like, I wonder. And I took that and well, where the sun don't shine just a little bit. And it was enough to collect a little bit of air where I could go run out in the living room and then fart loudly in front of my parents television. So I thought this islands followed throughout the rule. I feel all your judgment and you can all go fluke yourself. All right? I was eight. I was creative. This is my body. And I thought farts were cool, so I would do this, right? And my parents there's more to this story. There is more to this story.

Speaker B:

God help me.

Speaker A:

So my poor parents, I'm their only child, right? So I run out and I try to pretend they could see my cheeky face, like I made a grin. And I just go in, I lift my leg or I do like the whole bend over backwards like the Jim carrey movies and was it Ace ventura? And pretend to talk with my butt and fart, right? So anything I could do to heal up a fart. So if I thought it was a funny moment for a fart, my parents are being serious with a family member or a friend, I come out and just rip my ass. And I learned a lesson one day that there's appropriate amount of air to put in your dairy air and there's no PSI pressure thing like a tire. One day my parents were watching a really serious movie. I think it was like a Nazi documentary or something, because my mom loved history and stuff. She always watched World War II stuff. And I go out there being all serious like, oh, Robbie, knock it off. And I go out. I think I almost rupture my colon with this huge ball of air. I release it, it's like prolapse problems going on, none of that. I was eight. Things were very young elastic back then.

Speaker B:

You don't do this now, do you?

Speaker A:

No, because.

Speaker D:

You'Re eight.

Speaker A:

I ripped one for about 20 to 30 solid seconds, and at the end, violently shit my pants. Like, it wasn't even a little bit. It was just, like, violently shit my pants. My parents just think it was the continuation of a fart. I turn immediately red, and they're like, are you holy crap. Are you okay? They don't have a clue to this day that I shoved an aquarium tube of my dairy air for a couple of seconds just to fart in front of them on command. But God, I just realized my mom might listen to this anyways.

Speaker D:

Don't lie. How long did that air pump stay in your life?

Speaker A:

He said, I don't have the same one. That one did finally burn out.

Speaker B:

Well, yeah, because he's trying to freaking blow up Bullwinkles and mason's Thanksgiving day parade is what he's trying to do.

Speaker D:

He burns a motor out on an air pump for fish tank in your butt?

Speaker A:

Yeah, holds it in my butt. Try to blow up the universe after the fact. Come on. All the judgment here. This is a safe place. It's story time.

Speaker B:

This is not a safe place. You are so ridiculed and wrong. Oh, my God.

Speaker A:

So anyways, I shit myself to an epic degree. I slowly walk away trying to not have my parents notice.

Speaker B:

Do you leave a trail?

Speaker A:

I hope to God not. I never checked the carpet. I know the carpet was dark colors. I have I basically just cried in the shower. That's fake light ahead. And to this day, I look at air pumps. Very weird. They they haunt me. Not as much as Sarah haunts you in the warehouse. But for those that don't listen to this, take it as a tale of caution. Be careful with their devices. Use as they are intended, and know that the antique Whisper air pumps are by far the most powerful ever made for commercial plants.

Speaker D:

Other brand.

Speaker E:

Last time when I was here and I talked about gaseous exchange, this was not what I meant.

Speaker A:

No, not at all. Eight year olds are the stupidest human beings on the planet, especially eight year old boys. Farts are still cool. Air pumps haunt me.

Speaker B:

And stay tuned for Rob seconds. rob's second story of the night will be about the time that he dried his hair in the shower with a blow dryer.

Speaker A:

That'Ll be how I end my life.

Speaker B:

Just that explains why he's just to.

Speaker A:

Figure out a way of another device to make a fart noise. Oh, yeah.

Speaker D:

As an eight year old after that discovery, join discord gigi aquariums.

Speaker A:

I don't know what that was.

Speaker B:

Sarah.

Speaker A:

That was Sarah.

Speaker D:

I was thinking I was thinking of gg. Allen.

Speaker B:

I I feel like I need a shower after that story. Just, I feel kind of I just.

Speaker A:

Feel kind of well, someone please take me from embarrassment. Who's up next?

Speaker E:

This one has nothing to do with fish.

Speaker A:

It's okay. We need anything right now.

Speaker E:

I've never told this story that will be available for the internet. So take that as you will.

Speaker A:

Bentley, we appreciate your sacrifice.

Speaker E:

When I was in high school, I was a loan shark.

Speaker A:

I love this story.

Speaker B:

I love how this starts out.

Speaker E:

I have to tell you one other story first.

Speaker A:

Okay? Please.

Speaker E:

It leads into why, when I was in my very early teens, like 11, 12, 13, my dad and I were really into sports cards. We used to go every weekend, we would go to a different sports card show in the mall, and we would sell sports cards. We got so heavily into the collecting hobby that we started selling stuff as a kid. I was always really good at numbers, math, understanding, pricing. Okay. So a lot of times what you would get is you would get these people who my dad would, like, leave the table because he knew that there was no way somebody was going to hoodwink his kid. And you get these older guys who thought, oh, it's a little kid. I can totally get something off him dirt cheap. He won't know the difference. But deep down, lil bentley was a hustler. And the way that I figured out how to hustle people for money as a kid was through magic cards. Now I'm a nerd. I love playing magic. And I realized very early, nobody sells magic cards as sports card shows. There's packs and the kids that come with their dads, the dads are into sports cards. The kids don't give a dang.

Speaker D:

Right?

Speaker E:

All they want is magic.

Speaker D:

In our area, we're in the federal area.

Speaker E:

This is where magic started. Okay?

Speaker A:

I'm a magic fan through and through. I got a couple of $1,000 decks. I can confirm this.

Speaker E:

I start selling singles.

Speaker A:

The singles online.

Speaker E:

I sold them at the sports card show. There was no online back then, sir. This is 1993.

Speaker A:

A birth of magic where it belongs, right?

Speaker E:

This is real early. So I made a deal with one of the guys that's always at the show. He always had boxes. And it was basically he was like, I'll give you any box of magic you want that I have for $50 a box. Well, I could sell most of the chase cards for between $20 and $30 a piece. And he was almost guaranteed in a full box that I would make two to three boxes worth of money and also keep the things I wanted to keep aside. So very quickly, what I figured out is that young kids don't know the prices I do. And those young kids will badger their parents until they just give in for the cards they want. Back then, the big thing was the shiven dragon. Every kid wanted a shiven dragon, even though it wasn't really that good. And they were, quote, worth $30 a piece. But you would get a kid who.

Speaker D:

Would want it so bad.

Speaker E:

I realized that if I didn't put a price on certain cards, I could get fifty dollars to sixty dollars a piece on them. And the parents would know no better because they would see that a box of magic cards is $100. And you could basically convince them, listen, you're lucky if you get one of these. Every two boxes and a box costs you $100. So you're looking at $200 to buy to get the one card the kid wants. Or you just pay me $60 and you get the card.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Fast forward to like, 26 years into Magic of the Gathering, and now you have an app that tells you the price. There was none of that.

Speaker E:

This stuff didn't exist. There was a magazine called sky, but even then, nobody read it, and it wasn't app.

Speaker D:

I did.

Speaker A:

Man, I am with the right crowd tonight.

Speaker B:

No, you're not.

Speaker E:

We keep that in mind. I used to hustle sports cards and magic cards as a kid to make money. Fast forward when I'm in high school, my senior high school. I have never done any illegal drugs. This is all important, but I knew, no, I'm real weird and I really care about my mental state, and anything that impairs my capacity over myself, I can't stand.

Speaker B:

And you're on this podcast.

Speaker E:

I know.

Speaker A:

We'Re a compromise.

Speaker E:

For me, it's a different kind of compromise. In doing this, I was kind of a person. I wasn't in any given single social group, so I knew over time every drug dealer at my school, and I was that person who was well known as I owned my own little DJ business when I was in high school. I did all sorts of stuff. I was one of those people who networked. I knew a guy for everything as far as what kids cared about when they were young. And I realized really quickly that most of the people at my high school never had money for lunch because they spent it on fucking pot. Very quickly, I realized I can profit off these idiots by loaning them money.

Speaker D:

And I'm a bad person for selling a cancer kid.

Speaker E:

About a month into figuring this out, and I have one guy who had borrowed $20, and my deal was, if you pay me back within two days, there's no interest after that for every day you miss the amount of money you owe me. Doubles.

Speaker D:

Or a kneecap.

Speaker E:

Wow.

Speaker A:

Or a kneecap. kneecap is cheaper. No, he doesn't do a kneecap. All right. Bentley has ways of Jack Dempseying you to talk. Oh, no.

Speaker E:

So let's get into how this really let's tell the meat of the story. And I did this through my entire senior year without a single administrator or teacher being the wiser. Yet almost every member of the student body knew that if you ever needed money, I was the person to talk to. But you better pay me back fast, or it's going to be. Trouble. Fast forward a month into doing this. I got a guy that owes me, like, $150, right? We had this guy, we'll just call him Big Red. He's six foot four, £360 of solid muscle that's at my school. This guy had become my enforcer.

Speaker B:

Done.

Speaker E:

You figured out we're not even done yet? Hold on.

Speaker A:

Don't worry. You're still not as bad as butt tubes.

Speaker E:

So anytime somebody owed me more than $60, I would go talk to him. And the deal with him was very simple. He would intimidate him because he's a very large man, very scary, and I would buy him whatever he wanted for lunch. And what was noteworthy is that in our particular high school, you couldn't go off campus for lunch, with rare exceptions.

Speaker D:

Sweet deal.

Speaker E:

I had an off campus pass so I could leave campus to get lunch. That guy. Loved him. Some Pizza hut. And there was a Pizza hut, like, four blocks away from the school, and it was very much a deal. Like, the first time I remember negotiating with him, he's like, I can have anything I want for lunch. That's right. So if I want a large pepperoni pizza and a thing of bread sticks and a soda from Pizza hut, I was like, Done. I'll go get you your money.

Speaker A:

Can we call you the Pizza mafia? Is that what this is?

Speaker E:

I send Big Red after this one guy who owes me, like, $150, and he's a horrible stoner, and I know it. He doesn't have the money. Doesn't have the money. We're not going to actually hurt the guy, right? But it's just very much like, all.

Speaker D:

Right, you got a week.

Speaker E:

If you can't pay it in a week, we're going to have some issues, right? Very faux mob boss kind of stuff. So Big Red comes back to me, goes, hey, man, I can't get it, and go, you know what? Don't worry about it. I'll still buy you lunch. Buy him lunch while I'm out driving. Go get lunch. I call every single drug dealer that deals at our school.

Speaker A:

No.

Speaker E:

All these guys know me because they know when their people don't have money, they can send them to me, and they'll get a loan, right? So I guarantee them income. It's called networking.

Speaker B:

So I don't deal networking.

Speaker E:

I call them all. And I remember the first guy I called. He was a good buddy of mine. We used to play D and D together. This is how we knew each other, right? This is how I slowly started to learn who all the drug dealers were. Back in middle school, when we were, like, 13 or 14, we played dnd together. This is how I network. I network in the weirdest ways. I call him like, yo, we'll call him Joe. Okay, Joe, here's what's going on. Definitely another guy's name. Owes me a lot of money. I know he's been buying from you. blacklisted don't sell to him at all until he pays me back. He's like, dude, that's one of my best customers. If you keep selling to him, I will not loan to any single person who buys to you ever again. He's like, are you serious? You're going to treat me like I.

Speaker A:

Go, yes, that's exactly it. You're going to get it.

Speaker E:

Okay. You got it. How long do you think it's going to be like when he pays me back? I'll tell you. I call everybody. I blacklist this guy from every person who deals drugs and get them to push it up further.

Speaker A:

No, this guy wants to go through.

Speaker E:

Six different high schools worth of local high school dealers and get anything.

Speaker D:

Drought. This was the larping. Drought of 2003, I think.

Speaker B:

Was the guy's name Alex? Was it Alex?

Speaker E:

I graduated before then.

Speaker A:

It was Alex. So this basically got all the way back into heisenberg.

Speaker B:

It went back to Columbia.

Speaker E:

This person comes by a day later, and his parents are pretty wealthy. I want to put this out there. This guy comes from a wealthy family. I lived in a relatively wealthy area. I was the poor kid on the street where I grew up. Comes back and he goes, so how much do I owe you? Yesterday it was $150. Doubles every day. You owe me 300 today. He goes, If I can get you 300 tomorrow, is that okay? Just give me the one day I can figure it out with my parents and get you paid. I went, 300 tomorrow, cash, no credit card. Otherwise, you know what's going to happen. He goes, I've called ten different people. No one will sell to me. And I go, I know because I called them, and they know that no matter how much money you spend, because mommy and daddy give you money all the time, I bring in more money than you do. So that is the story of how.

Speaker B:

You bought your first fish tank.

Speaker E:

I was a loan shark and bought my first car, a lot of my upgrades to my DJ equipment, how I bought my second car, and how I afforded all sorts of nerd things in high school despite my job. Being working at a small mom and pop burger joint.

Speaker A:

That's perfect. That's basically jimmy's upbringing, except insert cash for lefsa. Oh, man. Just this year. I want to know what's going through your mind. Like, as a kid, you're like and then the light bulb goes off. You're like the genius mobster. kudos to you, man. kudos.

Speaker E:

Just deep down, I love money.

Speaker A:

Who doesn't? That genius is off of a lot.

Speaker E:

More morals than I did as a high school child.

Speaker A:

Well, you got a job.

Speaker B:

So let's go back to that first question about how to make money selling angel fish. screw that. Go down. Your high school.

Speaker A:

You loan people angels, become your local.

Speaker B:

High school loan shark.

Speaker A:

And then the moment that they don't pay you back for them. You just tell every pet store owner and be like, hey, I loan you a lot of money so kids can get fish tanks. Alex, you got one for us, or was the other one your second story?

Speaker D:

Whatever you want it to be. Anything you want, all you.

Speaker B:

I want you to borrow money from bentley.

Speaker D:

I apparently wasn't as smart as bentley because I just went straight to dealing the drugs.

Speaker A:

It was like, weird. You got a call, and they're like, oh, bentley said so.

Speaker D:

Yeah, actually, I'm a little younger, but we grew up in the same 100 miles radius as one another around the same city.

Speaker A:

There you go. That's why you guys don't have left.

Speaker D:

Literally, though, I used to. Now that it's legal, basic, might as well be everywhere. I sold a bunch of pot to get, like one of the things that motivated me selling pot when I was a teenager was because the purple metallic snake skin, delta tail guppy was a new thing that you could get on ebay from Thailand. And I literally had someone, basically, I remember it was the same price as an ounce as what I paid for for this stupid guppy.

Speaker A:

Lasted about as long, too, didn't it?

Speaker D:

Yeah. Lost all clout amongst drug dealing friends. They're like, you should go out in a perona, bro. But clearly I should have gotten a Jack dempsey.

Speaker A:

Clearly. Clearly. Clearly too good.

Speaker D:

Yeah. Okay, so the next story, it's not a very long one.

Speaker A:

That's okay.

Speaker D:

When I started on the YouTube, I only had a few tanks because my wife and I live in an apartment, and I just moved in with her maybe, I don't know, a year earlier or something. But it wasn't like we thought, okay, we're going to get a different place together soon, kind of thing. So I was like, I'm not about to start collecting 40 gallon breeders in here, or whatever. So I had like a 20 and a ten and another ten or something like that. I think maybe a little aquascape cube, too. But two of the tanks, one had if you guys know Lucas brett's, it had a bunch of his shrimp in it. And I had a colony of I think it was mostly red shrimp. Yeah, I think they were like his painted fired cherry reds that ended up winning aquatic Experience, like, best in show for American bread neocaradina shrimp. And so he hooked me up with them, but they weren't cheap. We weren't, like, good friends or anything at the time. This is how I found out about him. So I had been doing this series on shrimp, and it was the best on the channel. Secret history. Living in your aquarium, that's an easy one for people to remember and type all the way out. So when I had something that finally gained ground, I was kind of, like, sweet. So I realized people were digging on my shrimp stuff. Well, I had also done a video on Peacock Gudgeons, and just unlike a species profile, and the tanks were set up. So one was up here on kind of a rack, and the other was the shrimp tank on the floor, which is a dumb place for a tank, especially when you need to siphon it. But I had realized, okay, brainstorm, all these things that I could cover about shrimp, the stages of life, how to grade shrimp, all these things. And I had all these baby shrimp in there, and I was pretty happy because it was the first time I picked shrimp back up in the hobby since they came out in like four or whatever when they were brand new and really novel, the neocaradinas. Anyway, I go to bed, wake up next morning, and I look in the shrimp tank and there's just dead shrimp everywhere. I can't even find a live shrimp. And I was like, what happened? And I go looking up in the other tank. No fish in the tank. And I was just like, what happened? And I'm looking around, looking around. Finally I have to clean up the whole shrimp tank anyways, because I was I thought maybe I could fish out a couple live ones. And I did. I found like, I don't know, six live ones or something, but I found in that tank a male and a female peacock gudgeon that had been in the tank up and diagonal from it. So they both made a leap of faith down into my cherry shimp drink, like a good two or 3ft distance between the height and over a foot. And they managed to both get in there. So they either chased each other out of the tank and into there, or they both were like, we're going to ruin alex's life. And then they just jump. They clearly didn't swallow the shrimp. They just chewed them. They just chewed them and then hit under a rock and I don't know. But the crazy ironic part and you can go back and watch these videos I cover. I think I made some melodramatic title.

Speaker A:

Like Thunder dome.

Speaker D:

Yeah. gujin, cherry shrimp gudgeon slaughter fest or something.

Speaker B:

Slaughter Fest.

Speaker D:

The weirdest part is so I take out the peacock Gujans, throw them back in the tank, and I'm ready to just put them in, I don't know, the disposal. I'm so pissed off the fluster because shrimp are not cheap.

Speaker A:

They basically like in 2004, they didn't even have a lot of neocardina colors. For people that are really understanding this, the getting shrimp at that time was unheard of. And you had to call in favors for people. I mean, crystals didn't even hit the scene until 2011. And further, yeah, all the way back.

Speaker D:

Then, that was like I think it was red and then blue and orange came next, I think. But in any case, this this was this was later than that, but they weren't cheap. These were Lucas brett's lrb aquatics that, you know, he had some standing in the community.

Speaker A:

So as this 2014, because this is your YouTube channel, which is still prevalent. The shrimp thing was emerging then, so still just as impactful.

Speaker D:

I was just saying 2004 is when the last time I had kept shrimp before this got you? And that's when they were brand new. I think as a common I'm up there as a common thing, okay. And so I put the guns back in the tank, whatever, they're lame. No one cares about them, no one wants to see the Gujan videos. And I still actually do like peacock gudgeons and I have a couple but I put other fish back in there and then I call Lucas and I'm all like, hey man, can I order the same thing I ordered like a month ago and just get another colony going? And told him the story? And he's like, that was dumb, you should have put a lid on your tanks. And I was like, I know, and everyone had the same thing. Like, does that happen? I still feel like I'm justified in assuming that a fish is not going to leap like 3ft down and 1ft over to eat all your shrimp. But I might be wrong. I mean, clearly that happened. So that tank though, I have baby shrimp again in it a few months later. And I'm like, yeah, sweet. I'm raising these baby shrimp and I made sure to move the tanks apart. All good.

Speaker A:

Did you put a field goal post.

Speaker D:

Just be like, the Gungeons could not get in. I was sure of it. I knew that they would try. What had happened though is about two months into it after I'd re got the new shrimp and they started having babies. And when the babies are first born, they kind of disappear anyways. You're kind of like, I don't know where they went. I saw that the mom was buried, but the babies kind of went away. And so I am looking around and I'm like, man, I thought she had more babies than this. But I don't know. This planted tank, maybe they're just missing. And after that, another week passes and I'm sitting there staring at the tank and I see a gudgeon swim by and I'm like, what, did my wife put another gudgeon in this tank? And it was a little gudgeon, well, wait a second, murdered my shrimp. And four and a half months later, two baby gudgeons had hid in that tank. So they had murdered my shrimp and then had a fest over the dead corpses of my shrimp.

Speaker A:

Maybe that's why. Maybe the slaughter and not eating the slaughter of shrimp just got them in the mood.

Speaker D:

Well, I think there's something to that. So if you're trying to breed guidance for profit, just take them to your friend's house, put them in their shrimp.

Speaker B:

Tank, feed them about $100 worth of shrimp, and sell the guns out. Yeah.

Speaker E:

Stepping up the peacock guardian.

Speaker A:

Say that one more time.

Speaker E:

The synchronized diving champion peacock gudgeons. Apparently they're getting from the bulgarian judge.

Speaker A:

I want to see a competition aqua Shella of jumping gudgeons.

Speaker D:

Well, I thought that that was like, what are the chances? Because most of my fish don't grow very quickly, but apparently peacock gudgens, most of fry must have died, and it was a well planted tank, so I guess they grew to the size where they could eat baby shrimp quickly within a couple of months. But I don't know what all they were eating until then, but that was weird. And the last little thing I had to say, because feeding fish, I mean, jumping fish are on my mind is that same store with the cancer kid? We used to have that oscar for a while, and so we taught him how to jump through a hoop. We cut the lid of a brine shrimp thing out like a plastic lid, and so it was just the rim, me and this girl that worked there, and we would teach it to jump through in the tank, out of the water for a treat for black worms or whatever. And you could get it to jump on command without giving it a treat first after a while. So you can teach your fish how to do this, but I didn't really think about it. And we would then taught it how to jump down because he used to have two aquascape cubes. And so the girl's idea was, let's see if it can jump through the hoop over the edge, down into the other tank. And so she would give it food and taught it how to do that. And then we sold it to that kid. But I was just thinking, man, I wonder if we taught that fish how did jump out of the tank, too? Well, I think I sold that.

Speaker A:

You need to have a new YouTube series. Like, you guys want to hit some subscribers? For sure. Do a YouTube series, like a four part series. Teacher fish to jump through hoops for shrimp or fun. Either or. And people were angry with Barnman Bailey.

Speaker B:

Circus headed Alex, for gosh sakes.

Speaker D:

Yeah, I only cattle prod my fish occasionally.

Speaker A:

Occasionally? Occasionally, yes, occasionally.

Speaker D:

It's easy because you just put it in the tank real lightly, and you get them all. You'll never miss.

Speaker A:

You got another story for us there, Adam? If not, we can go to jimmy.

Speaker C:

I can talk about the time I got something else super dangerous and deadly in my store.

Speaker A:

All right, say this quickly.

Speaker B:

What's her name?

Speaker C:

Okay, I told you guys the last time about how I had the arizona.

Speaker E:

Bark scorpions.

Speaker A:

A little bit, but refresh, everybody.

Speaker C:

I took these arizona bark scorpions from this lady at my store, and I traded her for like a leopard gecko or something, because she was going to give them to the kids at the trailer park or in the neighborhood. And they're not something that you want little kids to have. So I just did the nice thing and took them in. Well, I had gotten a phone call from a lady that knew my store. She was coming back home. She was from Vegas.

Speaker A:

And she goes, let's talk about the spark scorpion. Why are those such a problem?

Speaker C:

Well, they sting and they're communal scorpion. They're actually kind of cool. I'm going to get them again.

Speaker D:

What? There's communal scorpions?

Speaker A:

Yes. Oh, God, I'm haunted.

Speaker B:

Not as haunted as I was when he stuck that tube up your butt.

Speaker A:

Hey, Sarah is going to come haunt you tonight.

Speaker D:

But anyway with that tube.

Speaker A:

All right, so they sting you. They're venomous. rob's butt used to have tubes in it. Keep going.

Speaker C:

I would consider them mildly dangerous to children because there's no anti venom in northern Minnesota. And I don't know how dangerous they could or couldn't be. So I just decided they glowed under the dark. In the under uv light, they glowed a pretty dark green. So I'm like, yeah, they're pretty dangerous. They had small little pinchers. I took them in. So this lady comes in, or she calls me and she's like, I'm a couple of hours away from your store. There was a scorpion crawling on my daughter in the car. And I'm just wondering if you could take it because we don't want it. I'm like, yeah, sure. Where were you guys at? And she's like, oh, we were near Arizona, Nevada. And I'm like, okay. I figured it was another Arizona bark.

Speaker E:

No biggie.

Speaker C:

She brings a scorpion to me. And the scorpion is big, and it's the sandy brown color, but it's got right below the stinger. It's got a bright neon black, like it's a dark black, but it's like a weird color black segment. And I'm like, well, that doesn't look like Arizona Bark. And I'm like, it was like closing time. So I'm like, I'm not going to worry about it. So I dump it in with the Arizona barks. I figure it's fine, it'll be all right. So I'm just trying to think in my head, what the hell is going on with the scorpion? And I talked to the lady, and she was going to come back in a day or two. So I come back the next day. I come in early and I look at my Arizona bark tank that's behind.

Speaker E:

The counter so nobody can get the things.

Speaker C:

My Arizona barks are in a circle, like the old wagon wheel thing, like the old western wagons.

Speaker A:

Sure.

Speaker C:

And they're all facing outwards. And then there's parts of scorpions all over my cage.

Speaker A:

And I'm like, what the hell happened in here?

Speaker C:

And I find the other one, and I take the neon green light or the uv light the black light and I shine it in my scorpion tank. And then the new scorpion shows up. And that thing made the other ones look dull. Like, it is the brightest neon green that I have ever seen. You know, this thing is just dangerous as hell by looking at it. So I'm sending pictures to my friends and a couple of vendors, and I finally hear back from them. I'm like, what the hell is this thing? Because I don't even know what it was. And I messed with it. I took an adult cricket and I poked at it with the cricket. So it stung the cricket, and the cricket just literally twitched and died. And I'm like, well that ain't good.

Speaker A:

They send me a thing.

Speaker C:

Yeah, but I had a pet store, so I had to deal with everything.

Speaker A:

Oh yeah. If you listen to prior story times, adam has a history of getting stung by everything and then just kind of living with it and not going to medical treatment.

Speaker B:

Northern Minnesota, they don't go to any venom. I'm just going to write this out.

Speaker A:

Adam doesn't have erectile dysfunction. He has erectile overreaction.

Speaker D:

Sounds like he has a reptile and insect dysfunction.

Speaker B:

Yes, he does have a reptile dysfunction.

Speaker C:

I finally get a phone call from one of my vendors, and it's one of my reptile vendors on the West Coast. And he goes, dude, what the hell did you where did you get that? I'm like, I don't know. Some lady brought it in. I don't know much about it. She brought it in. I was going to close. I threw it in with the Arizona Bark scorpions. It ate a bunch of them. I'm guessing it's hungry. Can you tell me what the hell it is? He goes, I'm pretty sure that's a Death stalker scorpion.

Speaker A:

Where the hell did that come from?

Speaker C:

I'm like he goes, I don't know, but you can't touch it because it will kill you in 15 minutes. Like, is that a guaranteed going to.

Speaker D:

Kill me in 15 minutes?

Speaker C:

Yeah, you're going to die. They call it death soccer for a reason, dumb ass. Like, he was a good friend. He was a good friend. Like, Jim would call me a dumbass.

Speaker B:

You are a dumb ass.

Speaker C:

Well, yeah.

Speaker B:

Are these things native in Arizona?

Speaker C:

No, the lady comes back a couple of days later and I'm like, this thing? How did you get this? And she goes, well, we were visiting friends in Vegas and the husband just came back from Iraq, put his bags, his duffel bag near our luggage. And then we loaded up our luggage after we said our goodbyes and everything because it's a Minnesota goodbye. So it's like 4 hours later and they loaded in the car. Well, the daughter said icky and this scorpion was crawling up her leg.

Speaker D:

Brushed it.

Speaker C:

Yeah, brushed it off her leg. And the mom caught it because it was AC going. So it wasn't going very fast. The mom caught it in a cup and then brought it to me like a McDonald's cup. And I'm like, you're very lucky because I was told by a vendor that this is a death doctor scorpion, and if she'd have been stung, she'd have been dead because there's no anti. There's nothing. You're just pretty much sol.

Speaker A:

So I had to move the reference.

Speaker E:

For a quick look. venomous scorpion.

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker D:

Wow.

Speaker A:

There's a couple of variations going even further. Like, there's yellow ones. Apparently the black ones are the worst. Like, the yellow ones, they say, aren't particularly lethal unless you have your elderly, a child, or have some sort of heart condition. But the blacker ones are the ones that have the real problem. They're from Israel.

Speaker C:

Well, that's what I couldn't figure out, is how the hell it got to Iraq from Israel. But I don't ask questions.

Speaker D:

That's not a long law.

Speaker A:

There's a legality clause on these. They're illegal and highly regulated on most countries. Laws prohibiting even keeping them in general. Only certain zoos with licenses can have them for educational purposes.

Speaker C:

I can buy one for $15 tomorrow.

Speaker A:

I'm assuming there's there's a few different kinds.

Speaker B:

I want to talk about the elephant in the room that nobody's asked about yet, and I know it's on everybody's mind. So when you shine the black light in your tank with the Death stalker and the other ones, did all the little pieces of the other ones just kind of glow too? So it's like, really pretty.

Speaker A:

They did so it was kind of.

Speaker B:

Like loud into a starry night.

Speaker A:

Why he had stains all over his face if it was a glow light. But never mind.

Speaker C:

But no. That was the Death stalker. And then I got in an argument with the police department, and they were killed. And I didn't want to they got mad because there was an ordinance in Grand rapids saying no exotic. So they tried to get me to get rid of all my reptiles. And I'm like, look, if it wasn't for me, you guys would have this type of shit running around. And I showed her the Death stalker, and then there you go, bark scorpion. And she got pissy with me. And I said, fine, I won't take cats in anymore, or kittens. So I just made sure all the kittens went to her. And after about two days, they decided that they were going to let me keep whatever I wanted, within reason.

Speaker A:

No lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my.

Speaker C:

Well, it was just stupid. I mean, I was there. I helped out. I took care of stuff for I made sure it was stuff that they didn't have to deal with, and they didn't even realize it was going on until I because I would take it.

Speaker B:

Did you go a couple of times before the police department and capture snakes? If I remember right?

Speaker C:

Yeah, to catch a couple. Then I got called.

Speaker D:

Where do you live in?

Speaker C:

I lived in northern Minnesota, in Grand rapids.

Speaker D:

Okay. Like duluth?

Speaker C:

I lived about an hour and a half. What is it from south of the north of duluth?

Speaker D:

Way up there.

Speaker C:

Yeah, way, way up.

Speaker A:

Oh, you beat you.

Speaker C:

I had I had gotten a phone call from the duluth Police Department at one time because some guy had a cobra loose in his apartment complex. And then sherry yelled at me because I was going to go get it. And then they had some guys from the city drive up to go catch it. But yeah, I was the one that would deal with this stuff because nobody else would. And so the cop just kind of pissed me off. I did kill it eventually because it just got too dangerous because the kids all knew that it was in the store. So if I was helping customers, they sneak behind the counter to look at it.

Speaker D:

And I'm like, nah, I'm just glad.

Speaker A:

You didn't take the same precautions like you did with the lion fish or any of the other stuff where you.

Speaker B:

Called me and your doctor for a few months.

Speaker C:

Like, I'd feed it and stuff.

Speaker E:

It was fun to have.

Speaker A:

You're a sick human being. Let's just feed it more scorpions, because Thunder dome scorpions are expensive. That's it. This podcast is now storytime three, the Thunder dome.

Speaker B:

Thunderdome.

Speaker A:

That's what it is.

Speaker B:

I got a quick thing for bentley real quick, and I don't know if bentley has heard this or not earlier. You're talking about sports cards. You're talking about magic cards. And Rob does have a huge collection of magic cards that I make a lot of fun of.

Speaker A:

I make a lot of money.

Speaker B:

And so, bentley, if you need some, let me know, because a lot of times rob's isn't home, and I can just steal them. But did you happen to see you.

Speaker D:

Got a cheap one called Black lotus? There we go.

Speaker A:

That one? No, I have the Underground Sea. There you go.

Speaker D:

Wow.

Speaker B:

I don't even know where to start looking. This has happened last week, and I don't know if you caught it. We all know who Rob kardashian is. And Rob kardashian. whoa.

Speaker A:

You got to remember that our listeners are mixed. Some of them are your age, some of them are my age.

Speaker B:

And who does not know about the kardashians?

Speaker A:

I don't think people know about dad kardashian, which is the guy that helped get oj. Simpson off.

Speaker E:

Yeah, there's Lawyer kardashian that saved oj.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker B:

They're best friends.

Speaker A:

Right. So could do continue.

Speaker B:

Now, this is Rob, the son, and we all know the kardashians have a little bit of money.

Speaker E:

A little bit.

Speaker B:

Just a little bit of money. Here's what the sob hit last week, rob kardashian hit the football card equivalent of the lottery this week, pulling an insanely rare Tom Brady card that could be. Worth about $250,000. Here's the deal. Rob is a massive sports card collector who's been buying boxes of rare cards from his pals over at the bullpen Card Shop in Los Angeles. About 03:00 in the morning on Tuesday morning, Rob is feeling the urge to buy a case of 2020 panini mosaic Choice Hobby Cards, which comes with 20 boxes of cards. Nowhere in how much Rob paid for the case, but they usually run around about $10,000. It isn't exactly a cheap hobby anymore. So this is like at 203:00 in the morning, rob calls up his card buddy at the shop.

Speaker A:

You just get that urge, you need to crack some cardboard crack. You all, yeah.

Speaker B:

And so Rob couldn't personally make it to the store, which I'm assuming because he's too drunk or too high. So he gave the green light to the guys at the bullpen to open it on his behalf and even allowed him to stream it on. ig live. And he hit some big cards. There were some cool too rich. Yeah, he got about four or five cards, but the biggest one was the Tom Brady card. So they'll figure he's probably going to gain about 3000, $400,000 for this one box of cards.

Speaker A:

We're in the wrong business.

Speaker B:

I know. I'm just so mad.

Speaker A:

Well, now that you got us craving cardboard crack, you got a story.

Speaker B:

Do I have a story? I do have a cute little story, which involves the same spot when I went to this little town of freeze.

Speaker A:

Now that you've been making out with Sarah the ghost. Yeah.

Speaker B:

This is a couple of months later now. I'm still at the same old place where it used to be the funeral home. But now I don't go there at night. I go there in the afternoon. I'm out of there by 06:00 at night. I'm just not going to be there during evening hours. So I'd gone over to brainerd, Minnesota. There was an older gentleman named Joe who I would buy angel fish from, and he sold a lot of black angel fish to me. So I went over to brainerd, which is about 90 miles away. I came home, I had 350 Angel Fish in one bag with about eight gallons of water in there. When I came home, I took it out of the back of my minivan. Now, you realize it's an hour and a half drive home, and I've got plenty of tanks ready for these fish. And when I pick up the box, the bottom of the box broke. The bag hit the ground, and in front of the funeral home, the bag fell out. And all the fish weren't floating down the street because it was downhill. And so I had all those hundreds of angel fish going down the gutter through the rocks and the glass and the garbage and stuff. And so I'm out there just in panic mode. I had to go get a bucket of water, and I'm just grabbing the nets and fingers. I'm throwing these fishing as fast as I can as we're going down the stream. And anyway, little do I know is that they took my picture. The city newspaper was just down the street, and the headlines were, local Man Brings Mineral Races Back to Fraser.

Speaker A:

I got to get a copy of this. This is the phrase paper.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker D:

Local man introduces goldfish into Lake.

Speaker A:

Right?

Speaker B:

Yeah. No, horrible mental racing, apparently, years ago.

Speaker A:

That's actually still a big thing. A couple of towns around us. So, yeah, I got a lot of.

Speaker B:

Crap about that, but then I moved out of that town.

Speaker A:

For those that are listening, I want you to do us a favor. Fraser, Minnesota, they have a local paper. Find that, put the picture on, email it to us, whoever can find that first. I will give a T shirt to Graham Grass.

Speaker D:

T shirt.

Speaker B:

And this was probably about 15 years ago.

Speaker A:

Done. All right. There. I set it here live. Maybe someone live on discord will already do it, who knows? But look out for that T shirt. So who won the race?

Speaker B:

Who won the race?

Speaker A:

You? Or did you rip your pants?

Speaker B:

I will say this, that several of those fishers looked like they had been played baseball and slid into the third base because they were pretty scuffed up. It was a pretty sad ordeal. The nice thing was, too, it was fall, so it was like, pretty dang cold out, and by the time I got done, I was pretty upset.

Speaker A:

It was Sarah. You could just hear, like, you dump the fish, probably hackling in the background.

Speaker B:

I wouldn't doubt one did.

Speaker A:

Well, as long as they weren't swimming to the Thunder dome today.

Speaker B:

Well, a few did go down the sewer drain. That a few of them did make it to the bottom of the hill.

Speaker A:

They're still there. They're chilling with Sarah. All right, well, I think I'll finish up then. I swear nothing will go up my butt for this next story. You guys got to do a couple of stories that weren't necessarily fish related. So I'll hit an embarrassing one again.

Speaker D:

My computer is going to die, and I love you. I just want you to know that.

Speaker A:

All right, Alex, it's been a pleasure. If you disconnect join on your phone, we forgive you, but okay. As we finish up here, I'm married to my wife now I have to think about this. Eight, nine years, right? And I am 30 years old.

Speaker B:

I like how you look at me for, like, an answer.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I have to look at something bewildering so I feel better. I think it's eight, nine years. And I was old fashioned, right? We met in high school, and we dated since, I think, 2008. So we we've been together a while, right. And I'm being old fashioned, right. I was always the one that didn't want to move in with with someone, you know, stick to abstinence, you know, have my first time be with my wife when we're married, that whole thing. So the only thing I found acceptable was that if we're going to live in the same house, it's going to be with my parents. Because I'm dumb, right? I'm dumb. So we're dating.

Speaker D:

I'm like a fun dude today.

Speaker A:

Oh, man. You guys have a way better story. You didn't stick airlines up your ass. You guys had money making schemes. I had none of this.

Speaker B:

You kind of remind me of Howard from Big Bang Theory.

Speaker A:

I'm the dude that kept weird shit and jars and then clearly real shit and jar. literal shit and jars. It's another story from another podcast we just did. I think it was like, last week. But my parents have a pretty big house. I grew up on a small lake. It's a private lake. And my parents had an obsession with having a ton of dogs at night. My parents didn't feel like they needed to take out the dog, so I was the one that took the untrained dogs. To this day, I hate having dogs. I love jimmy's dog. Their trains are wonderful. They got, like, little collars to make sure they stay at home. I didn't have any of that, so I had to walk my damn dogs. And they had, like, six, seven dogs at any given time. So I had to go out and walk the dogs at night, and I do them a couple at a time or one at a time. So we had this little pekinese with us. And for those that don't know, it's like a pug, but longer hair, longer body.

Speaker B:

This is a disposable dog.

Speaker A:

Gross looking, a dyes, you flush, pompoms looking piece of shit. So get outside. And my parents have an elevated house because they put it onto a basement. I'm sticking to abstinence, right? I haven't seen my wife completely nude at this time. That's the best way I can put it for you, Jimmy. I'm sorry. So I'm outside doing the dogs. She's in her own room on the one side of the house. And as I'm taking the dogs, the dog is sitting there and he starts taking a piss in front of me. And I have a thing wherever I'm at. I seem to swallow things randomly, like bugs, continually. If I'm by a tank, I'm the guy that grabs the hose, swallows tank water. I once had not only tank water, but I sucked a fish, swallowed at my mouth, and choked on it. I have a long history of just swallowing random shit no matter where I go. It could be a bug. It could be anything. So given this special talent, I have.

Speaker B:

101 liners, and I'm not going to see any of them.

Speaker A:

I appreciate that. You're a kind gentleman that understands my problems on this episode. So I'm taking on the dog, and I'm not paying attention. And I look up in the window like, there's no blind on the window. And it's open to just the screen. I'm not hearing anything. I'm kind of focusing the dog. I'm just sick of having the damn dog. I got to take outside. And all I do is hear a small noise. I look up and about 3ft from my head is the person that is now my wife getting undressed. But she's kind of, you know, dairy air to the window. She just pulled down her pants and her entire back end side was like two to 3ft for my face. And this was the first time I've ever seen that, much less had this view of my wife's downstairs. And at that very moment, it was like the world came to one. And Sarah. No, I'm kidding. And a bug, a giant June beetle. Like, have you seen these June bugs? They're huge sons of bitches. Flies into my mouth as I'm going and just grabs that diddler on the back of your throat and holds on for dear life like it's a stripper pole and he's trying to make it once. All right. Just holds on for dear life. And that's a big thumb, bitch. You need to Google these things if you've never heard of a June bug in another country or whatever and just holds on. So now take it from my wife's point of view. This is mine. I go gasping because it's the first time I've seen my wife's hooha and future wife, see, huh? At this point, right? And it's just sitting there and just holding on for dear life. And at that moment I go, what.

Speaker B:

Are you holding on to?

Speaker A:

Hears me gasp and then immediately following with projectile vomiting, just like inches away from a peeing dog right in front of me, just grabs on. I have a really big gag reflex. I try to swallow and vomit all over like a cartoon. So my wife turns around, sees that I'm puking at the sight of her lovely lady parts and will not talk to me for like four days. In the doghouse, it's all over. fluke, eugene bugs. That was like the most demeaning part of my life, even past the airline tubing in my pocket.

Speaker B:

That is so disturbing in so many ways, right?

Speaker A:

So that was the wonderful moment I was trying to save for my wedding day. And it was so much worse.

Speaker C:

You do know that you said this on the podcast? And I'm going to make sure that your wife knows about this.

Speaker B:

I'm going to tell her when I leave Jim. I'm going to find her.

Speaker A:

I don't know who I'm slightly just enough to make a fart noise.

Speaker E:

We've talked about I see lady stuff, vomit.

Speaker A:

First time I see specifically my wife.

Speaker B:

But then brags that he has an incredible gag reflex.

Speaker A:

I do.

Speaker B:

You really held back.

Speaker A:

I'm easily grossed out. You said something before, bentley. It wasn't coming in.

Speaker E:

I was just like, we're going to have a series of things here. We've got airline tubing, up, derriere, swallow, nearly anything, throw up the first time we see the lady bits. Are we sure that the wife is not a cover story?

Speaker C:

I guarantee you she is.

Speaker A:

There's other stories to go along with it.

Speaker B:

I'm going to go upstairs to make sure she has lady parts. I apologize in advance, but I'm doing it.

Speaker A:

So the moral of the story is don't go outside when there's June bugs. Don't use airbine pumps except for their intended use. And above all else, don't put fish in for a thunder dome.

Speaker B:

Don't borrow money from bentley. Don't buy reptiles from Adam.

Speaker A:

Yeah, and get a power cord for your computer.

Speaker E:

Alex, ensure proper gaseous exchange with your weather.

Speaker B:

Between bentley and Alex tonight, I think I should buy them each like an aquarium glass top or something because they.

Speaker A:

Seem to have problems with something or at least a trophy of making it through the battle of this podcast. Well, gentlemen, you have any other closing notes? I will take your shocked and horrible faces as a note of how well we did this podcast. So, again, if you guys feel bad for me, want to buy Adam a new microphone, go to the aquarium, guys podcast website, aquariumguys.com. And on the bottom, you can send some financial stimulus our way to keep the lights on. We appreciate it. Also support our sponsors. They support us. And thanks to Joe again for sponsoring the podcast. I think he left to hear a little bit ago, but thank goodness he didn't hear that last story. I'll give a free t shirt for whoever finds the picture. Jamie in the paper from years back. Freeze, Minnesota. Hunt it down. Free t shirt.

Speaker B:

I'm going to go out and get some money and buy some soap. I just want to get rid of this funk that's hanging on me right now. I feel like I've been through a shit show.

Speaker A:

Scrub it down.

Speaker B:

Just scrub it down. I feel like I was violated in so many ways.

Speaker A:

Before we go, don't forget to go to bentley pasco. pasco. dammit. It's like tabasco. Go to bentley pasco's YouTube channel right now. It is in the show notes. If you don't subscribe, I'm going to force Jimmy to eat more June books. So also Secret history, living in your aquarium. Go on that one as well. It's in there. Thank you, Alex. I know your battery died. Feel like and subscribe. All right, guys, until next week, maybe.

Speaker B:

We'Ll be out here.

Speaker A:

Thanks, guys, for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this.

Speaker D:

I never knew that a minute so to accent be so sexy until I heard adam's voice go frank yourself.

Speaker B:

Don't you know that's my boy? Don't you know.

Episode Notes

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Alex from "The Secret History Living Inside Our Aquariums" & Bentley Pascoe join us for story time debauchery.

Secret History Living Inside Our Aquariums https://www.youtube.com/user/seespikerun1

Bentley Pascoe https://www.youtube.com/user/bentleypascoe

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