Says Who?

ONE WEEK

Episode Summary

Look, we apologize in advance for getting that song stuck in your head.

Episode Notes

It’s just ONE WEEK until the election, and Dan and Maureen are ready. By ready, this means they are not ready. They are sort of ready. They are as ready as they will ever be, which is not that ready, but ready enough. So, not ready.

It’s time to talk about final moves, coping, and who might be hiding in your toilet.

SaysWhovia…assemble!

Episode Transcription

Maureen:

Hold on, [crosstalk 00:00:01]

Dan:

This episode ... What, you're just going to mumble the whole time?

Maureen:

No, I'm trying to find a link to something and it keeps going to the wrong thing.

Dan:

Okay. You know we're recording an episode, right?

Maureen:

Yeah, but I want to read out a link and it's [crosstalk 00:00:17]

Dan:

Now I get it. Well, I'll read out a link. This episode of Says Who is brought to you by you through your support of our patron at patreon.com/sayswho, where every Sunday but this past one, you get a bonus episode of Says Who ...

Maureen:

We'll get into it.

Dan:

... for your $5 a month support of this very podcast. Thank you for that. And patreon.com/sayswho.

Maureen:

You guys, look, books. Here's the thing. I'm trying to find a link right now. It's to the Goodreads reader's choice awards. And one of my books has been nominated and I had a link earlier that seems to have vanished. But anyway, if you go to Goodreads and you want to vote in the best books of 2020, I am in there.

Dan:

Who doesn't?

Maureen:

I don't know where the link is. It has temporarily vanished, books. Also, that 3-Book Box Set: Truly Devious, Vanishing Stair, and Hand on the Wall, is available now. It's a very nice shape, and if you're looking for a nice little gift ...

Dan:

I am.

Maureen:

... I think it's nice. It's not terrible. You know what I mean? It's something you could gift to people back here. It looks like a big brick. It's bigger than a brick. It's like a tiny yoga block size. It's smaller than a yoga block and it's bigger than brick, but it's the same pleasing shape. But instead of just being a block or a brick, it's books.

Dan:

This is perfect, because if you buy your books based on dimensionality ...

Maureen:

Yes.

Dan:

... now you've got all the information you need.

Maureen:

You've got everything you need.

Dan:

That's perfect. Books, hey, you know what else you need? You need stuff from us here at Says Who and you can go to merch.sayswhopodcast.com ...

Maureen:

You're crashing this.

Dan:

... where we have stuff for you, including the, I will go ahead and say it, best selling Thickie Chex and his all dinosaur orchestra hoodie sweatshirt, which many of you have bought and are wearing, and I have one and it's warm. And that's nice, because it's fucking cold here right now, merch.sayswhopodcast.com.

Maureen:

It's going to be one week to election day, except that everybody's already voting, which is what they always say. They say to Dan, "We're already voting. This is a process of voting. It's not just one day." But it turns out that the election day is the one day in which we count all the votes.

Maureen:

And then we say, this is the end of the electoral process because in some places they're going to stop counting votes that don't get there on the day, but you're supposed to count all the votes that come in. But the Supreme court, I don't know, maybe Wisconsin, can you only count some of your votes, and it's been in one week until we stop talking about election ads, getting text messages and emails from people.

Maureen:

It's like, "Hey, I'm James Carville, I just want to come into your house and say you're to vote when on voting day, except the election is process, and I'm James Carville, and if you don't vote, I'm going to come in there. I'm going to slide into your house through the toilet with my big snaky head, and I'm going to bite you on the butt if you don't vote because it's me, James Carville, and you have one week."

Dan:

Welcome to Says Who, the podcast that isn't a podcast.

Maureen:

It's a coping strategy. I'm James Carville.

Dan:

I like how you pronounce his name like the ice cream cake.

Maureen:

Yep.

Dan:

And I'm Dan Sinker

Maureen:

And it's me, Fudgie The Whale. Sorry, if you don't know Carvel Cakes, which you might not, depending on what part of the country you're from, they are a cake maker that they had three major cakes. One was the Tie cake, which was, and now father's day, the Tie cake. And they had Fudgie The Whale which was a whale. But the most famous one was Cookie Puss. Cookie Puss was just like, it wasn't cookie monster, it was like their cheap knockoff cookie monster in the form of a cookie ice cream cake. But he would have different seasonal versions, including, "I'm Cookie Puss' cousin. Oh, Mr. Old Cookie Puss." And he was green.

Dan:

I thought that Cookie Puss and Fudgie The Whale where the same shape just turned differently, but now I'm looking and they totally are not.

Maureen:

Yeah, one's a whale.

Dan:

Right, one's definitely, clearly a whale.

Maureen:

And one is a cookie puss.

Dan:

Just sounds gross.

Maureen:

Yeah, there's a lot of good commercial jingles. My mother listened to a lot of talk radio in the morning. And Philadelphia local talk radio when I was growing up had a lot of very distinctive jingles. And there was one that always goes through my head that very few people, even in Philadelphia, will even remember, but it was a [inaudible 00:06:02] guy named Lou Zmuda, and his thing was vertical blinds. It's what he did.

Maureen:

And they got this woman, this, she had a kind of voice like this, and she said, this was the jingle at the end of every commercial. "He's the King. He's the King. He's the King of vertical blinds." And I was like, who else is vying for this title? Was there a big competition to see who was going to be the King of vertical blinds, but there's only one, and that guy was Lou Zmuda.

Dan:

It's so oddly specific, not just blinds or window coverings, he's seating that kingship to other people, vertical. "The future's in vertical blinds kid."

Maureen:

"You come at the King of vertical blinds, you best not miss."

Dan:

"Coming at me with that horizontal bullshit."

Maureen:

"You come in long and skinny. You have to get in between those vertical blinds," and then just plinking back and forth in the way because they're long and skinny and it's just like chunk, chunk, chunk, not Lou Zmuda's I bet. I bet Lou Zmuda's, didn't, well, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk around. They were just like all attached on the bottom, flippity flop and open. "He is the King of vertical blinds," yeah.

Dan:

I like it. I like it Maureen Johnson.

Maureen:

Nope.

Dan:

Maureen.

Maureen:

Nope.

Dan:

All right. How are you? How about that? I'll just go with, how are you?

Maureen:

I think we need to talk to the people about what happened this week.

Dan:

It's been ...

Maureen:

One week. Also, you guys, if you, you may also not know that I am referencing the Barenaked Ladies, hit 90s, 90s hit, I guess it's called One Week.

Dan:

I have to admit that I get a lot of those mid 90s radio hit bands confused. I thought that was Smash Mouth.

Maureen:

Nope.

Dan:

And are the Barenaked Ladies the ones from Canada with the bee?

Maureen:

Yes. No, they're from Canada, but the ones with the bee were, [inaudible 00:08:32], that one. I don't remember what they were called.

Dan:

I don't know. I don't know.

Maureen:

No, the Barenaked ladies were very wholesome, nice boys from Canada. They had a song called Alcohol, which was all about how this guy was basically ... The premise of the song seemed to be like, "Have you heard about this crazy stuff, alcohol, you drink it and you get nuts?" And he's like, "Until I discovered alcohol." It's like this guy had a fuzzy grass opera somewhere, and he was like, "Woo-hoo. I'm singing at nobody." And he was so excited about his discovery that he wrote a song about it.

Dan:

Maureen Johnson.

Maureen:

That guy fully woke up on the floor one time, and he is like, "Look, I'm not recommending this to everybody, but I need you to know about this saucy shit that I got into. Have you ever had a pina colada?" There is a ...

Dan:

All right, Maureen Johnson ...

Maureen:

I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to stop. There is ... I was very ...

Dan:

I just ...

Maureen:

I didn't think that we're going to talk about the 90s. I was very into The Kids in the Hall and they had a skit called Girl Drink Drunk, in which a guy has never had alcohol before, but his boss takes him and he's like, "Come on, have a drink." And he gets him this giant drink with 29,000 umbrellas on it, and he becomes obsessed with ... It's not funny because he becomes an alcoholic, but it is funny because he only drinks, he's addicted specifically to giant incredibly complicated drinks with lots of umbrellas on them. And he has a blender in his office where he's constantly making, I don't know, I'm not going to get into it to Dan.

Dan:

I think you've already gotten into it. Sorry, we can get out of it though. I feel like Maureen Johnson, there's elephant in the room that we are not discussing, which is election day's in one fucking week.

Maureen:

We didn't tell the people about what happened over the weekend.

Dan:

Right. Over the weekend, we were sitting down to record the Town Watch as we have diligently done four months since lockdown began.

Maureen:

We did start recording it.

Dan:

But we did start recording it, but we were, as I was waiting for you to join the recording space, I got a phone call. And so I was on the phone when you joined. And I was on the phone with a guy who hit our trailer, for those of you that listen to the travel podcast that my wife, Janice, and I do called The Hitch: Back When People Could Travel, our trailer, which we store in a storage facility in Wisconsin, and we have not seen in over a year, the guy that parks next to it backed into our trailer and called me up literally just as you were joining the call Maureen. And so you only heard one end of a conversation. And I had to ... Yeah.

Maureen:

This is what I heard, "No. Maureen, are you there? I'll be back in one second. Sorry [inaudible 00:12:11]. Oh, no. My trailer," which is not making fun of you, it's just actually a little bit of what it sounded like.

Dan:

I'm not sure what it sounded like I'm sure. Yeah, so it sucked. And I had to then run upstairs and relay the message upstairs. And then I came back down and I was like, "Okay, we can do this." And then we started, and then I get a text from the guy needing some information for the police report that he was filing. And then I'm like, "Okay, we can do it again." And then he starts sending me pictures of it. And finally, I just had to be like, "Maureen, I can't do this."

Maureen:

Oh, no. Oh, no.

Dan:

"I'm just not."

Maureen:

And I was like, "God damn it Dan, we have to do the record. God damn it Dan. These people are fucking waiting for us. It's all they have in their miserable fucking empty lives. God damn it. You and your stupid fucking trailer." So that night, we were working on Oscar's green card paperwork, because obviously the America is you want to get on board right now.

Dan:

Get in early on this deal.

Maureen:

Oscar has got one foot in the US and one foot in England. And I'm telling you talk about what a straddle he's doing right now. That's what's called the winning stretch. And so we were doing his paperwork that night, which I thought was going to take, not that long, but it turns out every time you think you're done, it would be like, "And now upload form, blah, blah, blah, into this form, blah, blah, blah." And then we'd have to go and fill out that form and then upload into this form. And then be like, "And now include pictures of these documents." And then we'd go and get those documents. He's like, "Now pictures of yourself. Now make a face. Now do yourself doing Kojak. And now take a picture of your feelings. Dance for us. Dance for us."

Maureen:

And so we were doing that until 11:00 PM and then we went to bed. And then we woke up, I don't know, around one in the morning to the sound of a dog barfing. And so our dog was, she had the barfs all night, so that we took her out for a walk around four in the morning. When you have a barfing dog and you live in the city, it means you have to take an elevator many floors down. You have to get dressed in clothes, get on an elevator, take her out on the streak in the city.

Maureen:

Oscar did that and then she just wanted to sleep in the living room. I was like, "All right, I'll sleep in the living room with her." We had a weird night and then I woke up late because we'd been up a bunch during the night and you're like, "I feel really bad. Can we record it?" I'm like, "I'm really sorry, but I'm super behind on all this stuff now." And so I feel like then I let everybody down.

Dan:

It's all right. This is the thing. If people in four years of this have not figured out that we are not a couple of let downs, I don't know when they are. It's fine. It's fine Maureen Johnson.

Maureen:

Maybe they're all undecided voters.

Dan:

So wait and like, well, if I keep listening ...

Maureen:

Maybe I'll figure it out.

Dan:

You know what we are having here where I live? We are having snow and fucking cold. And let me tell you something, the lockdown brain and snow-cold brain are not working together in good ways in my own head right now, Maureen.

Maureen:

I'm sorry.

Dan:

It's not a good place inside my head, but it's a great place outside my head.

Maureen:

Well, you've got that beard on the outside of your head.

Dan:

I do. It's true. It's hanging on. It's hanging on. I cut my own hair this weekend, it was fun. I enjoy doing that, good at it.

Maureen:

You want to hear about the gift that Oscar's getting me for the day after the election?

Dan:

Yes.

Maureen:

I have been asking this entire lockdown, "Can I cut your hair?" He's like, "Nope." Every day I'm touching his hair. He wakes up and I'm just like, "Can I touch it?" It's like a low Barbie place that I want and I'm like, "I just want to cut it so bad." And so a month ago he decided that as a gift, he's like, "You're going to need a lift the day after the election. So the day after the election, November 4th, I will let you cut my hair." So I've been waiting on to that. I get to cut his hair on November 4th and I am psyched.

Dan:

That's fun.

Maureen:

He looks like a little 70s child. His hair is at times fabulous. It blows in the wind. He's just got so much hair, a lot of hair.

Dan:

Should we tell everyone listening what else is going to happen on November 4th?

Maureen:

All right. I can barely bring myself to say it.

Dan:

Next week SaysWhovia there is going to be a change in programming a little bit, because normally we record our episodes on Tuesday and release them on Wednesday. Well, next Tuesday is the final day of voting. The day formerly known as election day, and we will get into that in a second, but it would not make a lot of sense for us to record an episode that day.

Dan:

So this is the deal. We are going to record a special episode next Monday that will come out on election day. It will be your election day coping podcast. And then we are going to record a morning episode on Wednesday the fourth, and I will turn the edit around right away and we will just put it out. So in fact, we will see you tomorrow that day.

Maureen:

Where we'll see you tomorrow will be? Will it be a bonus or will it be in the main feed?

Dan:

No, I think this will be main feed.

Maureen:

Okay, Dan.

Dan:

We got two episodes in the main feed next week.

Maureen:

Oh boy. And then every week thereafter for, what is the limit? When the election is officially declared?

Dan:

Yeah, when see you tomorrow will end.

Maureen:

So if he can see it on Tuesday night, we're not doing it?

Dan:

Right. And he is unknown entity at this point.

Maureen:

Yes.

Dan:

Right. But if the election ends on election night, we will just one and done it.

Maureen:

Yep, it will be no see you tomorrow if that's a thing.

Dan:

Well, there will be a Wednesday morning next week, where we say, "Look at that, the election is over. Let's talk about that." And then ...

Maureen:

And then we'll have a party blower mode, and then [crosstalk 00:19:35]

Dan:

Yeah, hopefully.

Maureen:

You know what Dan?

Dan:

Hopefully, we'll get into that in a second. But otherwise, yeah we will start ...

Maureen:

See you tomorrow. Just say it for me once.

Dan:

See you tomorrow.

Maureen:

Why is it so funny?

Dan:

It's just is. It just is.

Maureen:

It really is. God damn.

Dan:

Maureen Johnson, I had two really terrible realizations last night.

Maureen:

Oh, good.

Dan:

Amy Coney Barrett was passed by the Senate and then immediately sworn in literally under the cover of night at the White House. The first was, "Jesus Christ, Donald Trump has placed a full third of the entire Supreme court now," which is not a good feeling. [crosstalk 00:20:37] And then I realized we have been witness to all three, which feels ... I don't even remember Gorsuch now.

Maureen:

No.

Dan:

So much has happened between ... I literally was like, "Did we even talk about that?" And I'm sure that we did. It's been four years. It's been ...

Maureen:

Four years is a [crosstalk 00:21:09] thing. Yeah, it's ... I don't want to talk about her. Also, her name is just way too close to Amy Carter's Shoe. I believe that ...

Dan:

She got to be pissed.

Maureen:

... Amy Carter's Shoe is, well like, "Hey, hey. Hey girl."

Dan:

Yeah, there we are. It took a moment for you to pick up on that cue.

Maureen:

"I heard my name."

Dan:

Yeah, I thought you might. Hey, Amy Carter's Shoe big week for you.

Maureen:

"Yeah."

Dan:

Big week for you.

Maureen:

"I hate that bitch."

Dan:

Yeah, I bet you do. She feels like she's really running rough shot on your good name.

Maureen:

"You know what I'm going to do?"

Dan:

What?

Maureen:

"I'm going to follow her everywhere I go. You know what they say? If you want someone in your footsteps, you better not piss off her shoe because I'm going to be behind her everywhere she goes, where she goes I go."

Dan:

I didn't know that that's what they say.

Maureen:

"That's what they say."

Dan:

You learned something new. Beyond being angry at her stealing, virtually stealing your name, I'm just, how are your spirits here at the end of this election season?

Maureen:

"I'll tell you something else about her."

Dan:

Please?

Maureen:

"I'm going to be all up in her."

Dan:

Who?

Maureen:

"You heard me."

Dan:

I don't know that I really want you to elaborate there. Okay. Are you done? Are done with that? Okay.

Maureen:

"Oh my God."

Dan:

Oh good. Thank you. Yes.

Maureen:

"I'm not going to talk about it. I don't want to talk about my plans. I got plans."

Dan:

Okay. That's okay? Okay. Amy Carter's Shoe, Joe Biden, your man?

Maureen:

"Yeah, my man. He looks good, doesn't he? He looks good."

Dan:

He's making his closing arguments.

Maureen:

"Yeah, he's a closer. My man's a real closer. Yeah."

Dan:

Oh, really, you know what ...

Maureen:

"You know what rhymes with a vote?"

Dan:

What?

Maureen:

[inaudible 00:23:39]

Dan:

Well ...

Maureen:

"Yes."

Dan:

... are you on the road? Are you doing this?

Maureen:

"Yeah."

Dan:

Are you doing swing states?

Maureen:

"Ah, Dan I'm doing swing States all right. They really swing those states, back and forth. I'm talking about a real two party swinging system, you know what I mean? No one's slow like my man. No one's slow. All those, [inaudible 00:24:20] are you out there voting?"

Dan:

I think that most of the [inaudible 00:24:25] are voting. That is ...

Maureen:

"How did you vote?"

Dan:

I voted by mail. Amy Carter's Shoe, I don't know. I got caught up there for a second. I voted by mail. I got my confirmation. The deal is done Amy Charter's Shoe.

Maureen:

"Hey, can I ask you a question?"

Dan:

Sure.

Maureen:

"How do you vote by mail?"

Dan:

You fill out a paper form.

Maureen:

"You fill it in?"

Dan:

You fill it out.

Maureen:

"You fill it in."

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

"Where do you put it?"

Dan:

I got to choose my words really carefully here.

Maureen:

"Where do you put it?"

Dan:

You put it in the postal container.

Maureen:

"In the what?"

Dan:

The blue postal ...

Maureen:

"How do you get it in there?"

Dan:

I lifted in with ...

Maureen:

"You lifted?"

Dan:

I'm trying real hard here.

Maureen:

"And then what?"

Dan:

Just place it in, and it goes ...

Maureen:

"Why didn't you get in there?"

Dan:

Oh boy.

Maureen:

"Get it right in there. Get in there for Joe. Get in there for Joe. Hey you [inaudible 00:25:41], get it in there for Joe. Yeah."

Dan:

I tried.

Maureen:

"Everybody's going to want a piece of my man."

Dan:

Yeah, that's true.

Maureen:

"There's plenty of Joe to go around."

Dan:

I think that's probably true.

Maureen:

"Yes."

Dan:

Oh, boy.

Maureen:

"Well, goodbye."

Dan:

Goodbye. Maureen Johnson, Amy Carter's Shoe's not wrong, election day is around the corner.

Maureen:

Dan, I just want to say this as a sentence. It's one week till election day, and we made it this far. Did you think we would? It's October 27th. We long ago stopped counting the months we were in lockdown.

Dan:

Yep. I still record the day ...

Maureen:

Oh, boy, this is not going to be good.

Dan:

... number in my little journal here. What day? Today would be day, for me, day 228.

Maureen:

God damn it. "God damn it Dan. God damn it. Shut up with your fucking numbers. Okay, so shut up with your numbers. Non of these stupid fucks can even count." Can you imagine going back four years to this ... One week ago, the week before the election in 2016, we recorded a very complicated episode, which involved a whole play about you being on a plane. And we had other people doing voices for it. And we were like, "This is the last one that's very complicated. We'll never have to do this again." And now it's like, we're running in like quantum leap's going, "Listen, it doesn't go well."

Dan:

I remember it was probably two years into this, having a journalist friend of mine came into town, and he was like, "Hey, I'm in town, come grab a drink with me." And back then, that's what things you could do.

Maureen:

You could go out.

Dan:

Back in the before times, you could just be like, "Cool. Yeah, I'll meet you at this random bar in the vague middle of the night in Chicago after you've just gotten off an airplane." And I remember at the time, I forget, there were 19 different scandals. I think Mueller stuff was still going strong and the report hadn't been published yet and all of that. So it was, we were at that time. And I remember being like, "So all right level with me. When's he gone?" And he was like, "He's going to last all four years." And I was like, "There's no fucking way." And yet here we are.

Maureen:

Here we are.

Dan:

Here we are.

Maureen:

Technically, he hasn't lasted all four years shit.

Dan:

That's true. That's true. COVID did come gunning for him for a minute but ...

Maureen:

Yeah, it got dicey for a minute, but he made it.

Dan:

Speaking of dicey, we somehow blip on the news radar at this point, but pretty much all of Mike Pence's inner circle now has COVID though he's still right out there making campaign appearances, so that seems great. But Maureen Johnson election day is next week, and as many people have pointed out repeatedly, "Well, the election is already going."

Maureen:

You got to let this go.

Dan:

"It's already ongoing. There are so many people voting."

Maureen:

You got to let it go Dan.

Dan:

But you know what, they're right. Over 60 million people have already voted at this point. That is 15 million more than voted early in all of 2016. And that's with a week left.

Maureen:

That's pretty good

Dan:

Wild things. It's like 7.2 million Texans have already cast a ballot, which is 80% of the overall number cast in 2016 there.

Maureen:

Yeah.

Dan:

At the time that this episode will come out, we will have passed over half the total number of votes cast in 2016 across the country early or not. It's fucking wild. I was just reading in the Washington post that is, it will now likely be that the majority of votes will have been cast before election day.

Dan:

And part of that is young voters, new voters, so it's wild. I read that three million new people have registered to vote in Texas. It's wild. It's wild. You all just got your early voting just starting and I've had many friends in New York that are posting photos of hours waiting in line.

Maureen:

Yeah, it's really long. I considered doing it. I got my ballot. I had my ballot for weeks and weeks and I was going back and forth about it. And then finally, I guess about two weeks ago, I was like, I'm just going to mail it right now, because I just ...

Dan:

There you go.

Maureen:

... I foresaw, I had this ... I was like, "Who'll be able to walk in on the first day?" I'm like, "It's not. It's going to be apocalyptic."

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

In a good way, but the lines will be around the block. And they are. There are some footage of Time Square on the first day of early voting, and the line just goes, because there's no shows in Times Square right now, so it's so weird here. It's so weird here. First of all ...

Dan:

I've heard it's a ghost town.

Maureen:

Okay. I'm so mad about that. All New York is like, "Bitch, what?" Because, we're here. Where are the people that in the beginning of COVID left? Yeah, a bunch of rich people temporarily left. A bunch of people ... There are people in different circumstances left, also a lot of rich people that.

Maureen:

Anyone who had a second home tended to bug out. But most of us were still here and have been here the whole time. And also most of those people came back. We're here. A lot of stuff is closed. Broadway's closed, but all the actors are, a lot of them are still here just waiting around to ... It's not great and it's not what we want, but we are fucking here.

Dan:

Yeah, you are.

Maureen:

And I've been here the whole time. And I can tell you ...

Dan:

They'll call it a come back.

Maureen:

No, I've never gone.

Dan:

I've been here for years.

Maureen:

We went away that one week when we stayed in our friends, "Can we hide at your house?" And we were given refuge in a barn, nice barn. It's a nice barn, but we were staying in a separate structure. We went away that one time for a week, because our friend provided shelter for us and allowed us to walk around outside and breathe some fresh air, and boy, oh boy, I still think about it every day. I honestly feel like I soaked up the sun like a solar powered battery and I've been holding onto it since that time. But yeah, this is about voting. Hey, wait, fuck Donald Trump. Did you watch that dumb 60 minutes interview because I did and it was stupid?

Dan:

Fuck no, I didn't. Are you kidding me?

Maureen:

It was just real dumb. It wasn't ...

Dan:

I watched various clips that ended up on the internet, but no, no, no.

Maureen:

It was, he just didn't like it and he left. It was, he gave stupid answers and she was like, "That doesn't make sense." And he was like, "Why do you hate me so much? I'm such a great guy and so sexy." She's like, "I beg to differ." And he's like, "I got to go." And that was basically what happened.

Dan:

Yeah, but Maureen Johnson, excuse me. So you have voted?

Maureen:

Yes.

Dan:

Have you gotten your receipt?

Maureen:

Yeah, the way it works in New York is it, you get a, when I've looked on the system, it says vote receive valid.

Dan:

Nice. Yep, I have also, I sent mine in. I was going to wait and do a Dropbox and then I decided I literally voted the day that my ballot arrived, I filled it out. And then I was like, "This is so early that I will just go ahead and drop it in the mail." And I got my receipt. Janice got her receipt.

Dan:

Her receipt took quite a bit longer for whatever reason. Hers ended up in the mail I think two days after mine and did not get processed for a good week and a half, although it had ... In Illinois, you can track the ballots through all the various postal scans and hers had scanned at the final post office, but it had not been recorded by the secretary of the, whatever.

Maureen:

Defense. He's the one who gets all the ballots.

Dan:

I would say secretary of state, and that is definitely not true.

Maureen:

Yeah, secretary of defense is, "I have no time for this shit."

Dan:

But hers finally came in, but SaysWhovia at this point, if you are hearing this right now, even on the day that it comes out and you have a mail in ballot that you have not filled in, and you live in a place that you can drop it instead of putting it in a mailbox, that is how you want to do it.

Maureen:

Yes.

Dan:

Because we are running out of time for the post office to get that through. And as we learned last night with the Supreme court, deciding that Wisconsin will not count a single vote after election day, even if it is postmarked on election day, it is imperative that you don't dawdle at this point.

Maureen:

They are really trying everything possible Dan.

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

These sneaky fuckers. They are the dirtiest sneakiest fuckers. I know that we know that, but it's just, again, I feel more and more like the Mad Max person as this goes on, where you're just more gritty with these dirty fuckers. "All right, you dirty fuckers."

Dan:

There are ... I collected a few decent resources. If you are still trying to figure it out, especially if you are in a situation where you, for instance, requested a mail in ballot now, or like, "You know what I want to fucking show up and be counted, and is that possible?" And all of that.

Dan:

There are a lot of really pretty decent resources out there to help you navigate because every state's deal is different. Howto.vote is a real good. You just choose your state and it's going to give you instructions on how to vote there, both in-person and mail-in or drop-off and what's possible if you requested one and want to do the other or anything like that. Iwillvote.com, that one is run by the Democrats and you've heard Joe Biden say it a bunch. So you will definitely end up on one of their lists, but it is really actually a super useful resource to check whether you're registered to get instructions on how to do it.

Dan:

There are a bunch of other things on whatever ballot you are voting on, and it's good to know that. Ballotready.org is my go-to for that. It will show you everything that's on your specific ballot from where you live so that you can know what the down-ballot stuff is, or like here in Illinois, we actually have a voter initiative to change our tax law, which is great, and you should vote yes on it if you're listening. So knowing all those things is good, but especially just get it done folks.

Maureen:

Yeah.

Dan:

There's no more time. Time is, it's now. It's go time.

Maureen:

It is go-time in SayWhovia.

Dan:

It is.

Maureen:

Everybody meet on the Town Green. Assemble, SaysWhovia, assemble.

Dan:

But so you voted, I voted, I am ...

Maureen:

I was torn. I didn't know who to vote for Dan. It took me a while to really work it out.

Dan:

You didn't know if you should go Kanye or not?

Maureen:

I'm like that guy that, did you read that thing this morning?

Dan:

Which thing? The Soylent guy?

Maureen:

The Soylent guy.

Dan:

I didn't read it, because all I did was see the Soylent guy wrote about how he voted for Kanye and I said, "That's all I need to know. I'm out"

Maureen:

It is. He wrote a piece on medium, the guy that created the disgusting sludge drink Soylent. The guy who was like, "Eating and takes too much time. Here is your ultimate tech pro, unaware of the world," he's like, "I don't have a TV. I just want everyone to be kind. I can't tell the difference between these guys." It's like Juicero wrote I think a piece on the election. It's the best way I can describe it. He seems like he ... It's like a very bright four-year-old wrote it. Honestly, it's just, there's not ... It's just vast empty hallways in his mind, but if you're wondering who the undecided voter is, it's him.

Dan:

Yeah, and he decided ...

Maureen:

He decide to vote for Kanye.

Dan:

... to vote for Kanye West.

Maureen:

Indeed.

Dan:

Well done Soylent dude, whatever dude, fuck off. But you may not be like him. You might be, you may have already voted and then you're like, "Fuck, now I have all this energy for the next week, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this because I'm super stressed out? What the fuck?" In which case, think about maybe doing some phone banking and text banking to help get people out.

Dan:

My good pal, Maggie, has been texting like crazy using mobilize.us, mobilize.us. A bunch of author friends, I think of both mine and yours, have been text banking with something called fieldteamsix.org where you can sign up for stuff. Swing Left, who we have had, folks from Swing Left on this podcast before is always a good choice at swingleft.org. Because it isn't just about getting people to show up for the presidential, there are competitive Senate races to the point that it looks like there's a possibility that the Democrats could retake the Senate, which would be nice.

Dan:

You've got Susan Collins in Maine who's on the bubble. You've got Lindsey Graham in South Carolina who's on the bubble. You've got Ernst in Iowa, Tillis in North Carolina, Georgia has two Senate seats up for grabs right now, Martha McSally or whatever her fucking first name, is this Martha, right?

Maureen:

Yeah.

Dan:

It seems like it, in Arizona, Gardner in Colorado. You've got all sorts of places where we are going to be able to potentially pick up some seats. And so getting some act, if you have the energy and need a place to put it, that's pretty good places to put it.

Maureen:

Yes.

Dan:

If you don't have the energy, that's also okay. If you have voted and you are like, "I need to just shut off for a week." Great, do that. It's important too.

Maureen:

Yeah, it's certainly been, I think we need to talk just briefly. You need to make a plan for what you're doing on election day, if you have any ... If you're working for ... I don't know. Some of you are going into work, whether you're going into work, whether you're working from home, whether you have any say on how your day is organized, anything you can do to build in some bumpers for yourself.

Maureen:

For example, I work from home. I'm lucky I decide my own ... I'm a writer, so I decide when I'm doing stuff. And really I've decided I'm like, "That day, I'm going to be bouncing off the walls a little." So I'll get some work done at my desk in the morning, but I think that I need to leave my desk and do a thing. I think it's going to be a cooking and organizing the kitchen thing.

Dan:

Nice.

Maureen:

So that will, I'm like, "Okay." Because that's at least, I love to cook, so good food, and it's always ... I regularly clean out the fridge and the freezer anyway. I'm like, "I'll do that," because I really like it in there, and I'll bake some stuff. And then if I bake too much, then I'll just go around and I'll make little packages and I'll leave them by my neighbor's doors like, "I stress bake these cookies."

Dan:

I like that. Yeah, I think having a good plan is a good idea. In Illinois, election day is now a day off, so the kids will be home.

Maureen:

Oh, good.

Dan:

Wait, they're always home. They will not have ...

Maureen:

What is it going to be like when the kids go back to school?

Dan:

It's going to be wild. It is going to be ...

Maureen:

Are you going to feel uncomfortable?

Dan:

You know you are a dog owner?

Maureen:

I am.

Dan:

And you know that you occasionally will travel and put the dog at boarding or with a friend or something like that, and there are those times that you will, at least for us, we'll drop the dog at the boarding place that the dog goes to. And sometimes you end up doing that in the morning but you don't leave till the afternoon, and the house feels so weird and still. Just that presence isn't there, not necessarily that the dog would be doing anything, but sleeping, but that it is going to feel like that times a million.

Maureen:

Yeah.

Dan:

I can't even ... I don't know when it will happen, certainly not happening anytime soon because our COVID numbers in Illinois have moved to the nightmare zone. But yeah, it is ...

Maureen:

Is the highest it's been in Illinois right now?

Dan:

Yes. Well, the actual case numbers are the highest they have ever been. The positivity rate is not the highest it's ever been, but that's because in the early days they would run a 1,000 tests a day and they would get 800 back positive.

Maureen:

Right.

Dan:

Now they're running 60 to 80,000 tests a day. But the positivity rate right now in Illinois is higher than it has been since May. That's not good either. But yes, so the kids aren't going back anytime soon. But this was all a big ... we drove off the road of the fact that they'll be around. So I think we got to figure out some activity that is kid involved.

Maureen:

Board games?

Dan:

Yeah, that kind of thing, or treat it like a weekend. Maybe do some baking, that's a good idea because it takes time, it's warm. It's cold as fuck here right now.

Maureen:

It's warm. It smells really nice.

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

That's one of the things I like about it is it fills everything with really nice smells. You know what you do? You get a little, get a container, an Apple cider, you put that on the back burner on a low simmer with a stick of cinnamon in it ...

Dan:

Oh, man.

Maureen:

... throughout the day, you can have a warm cup. It's super easy. All you do is warm [crosstalk 00:46:51] that cider, you get a warm cup of cider and your whole house smells like warm Apple cider. That's not bad. That's super easy. And then tell me, "You want a cup of warm Apple?" I'll say, "Yeah, I'll have a cup of warm Apple cider." It's good for them. It's not unnatural, it's nice.

Dan:

God damn it. Look at you.

Maureen:

I'm going to make biscottis with cranberries and white chocolate chips.

Dan:

What the fuck?

Maureen:

Yeah.

Dan:

Jesus, the queen ...

Maureen:

You know what?

Dan:

... over here.

Maureen:

Because biscotti, once you make them, that shit does not, they remain nice and you can ... They keep and they keep.

Dan:

This is ...

Maureen:

It's in a tin and it's fine.

Dan:

If you would like the most extreme example of the difference between you and me, you are talking about making, what were they? White chocolate cranberry biscottis?

Maureen:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dan:

And as were talking, I was remembering the meal we ate last night which involved ground beef, onions, tater tots, and a can of cheese soup.

Maureen:

There's nothing wrong with that.

Dan:

That was our dinner.

Maureen:

I'm going to cook a meal that day as well. I'm going to make Oscar his favorite thing that I cook that I've never tasted because I'm a vegetarian. I've never been able to eat this. He says, it's restaurant quality. I make him Coq Au Vin, which is a French chicken and red wine stew with bacon.

Maureen:

It sounds a lot more complicated. It's just not complicated, but there are a lot of steps. It's a lot of brownie stuff, take it out of the pan, you have to render the bacon. I've never tasted it. I had to do it entirely by eye and smell, but he loves it so much when I make this. And maybe if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll get one of those kits for the dog food, because you can buy the kit instead of buying it. Maybe I'll make dog food as well [crosstalk 00:48:57]

Dan:

Wow, let me ...

Maureen:

... eating chicken livers and stuff.

Dan:

Let me get this straight. You are going to make Oscar's favorite meal on election night, the third, and then on the fourth, he's going to let you cut his hair.

Maureen:

We have a beautiful marriage.

Dan:

You two are adorable.

Maureen:

We are.

Dan:

You are just the best.

Maureen:

The thing is he'll want the food and I will either be super hungry or have no appetite on election. I can't tell.

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

I don't know.

Dan:

I don't know. I think that everyone is so shell shocked from last time that there's, certainly for me, there is no part of my brain that is willing to entertain the idea that things could go well.

Maureen:

Yeah. I will say that I spend a bunch of time on the FiveThirtyEight election tracker where you can change the state. You can opt to turn the state's different colors to see what all of the different projections are. And I do that a lot, and I watch the little bubbles cluster.

Dan:

It is a remarkable piece of technology I will say. And early on, I kept going, "Oh, this is great. Look at this." And then I would look at what I had revealed to myself and literally feel myself starting to pass out because I would make assumptions that I thought were totally reasonable. And then suddenly it was like 99% Trump victory. And I'm like, "Whoa." But yeah, I still visit it. I've now learned which things that I should not touch in order to duke the stats so that I don't feel like I'm going to make myself pass out. But yeah, it's, I don't know. I don't know, Maureen. I don't know WhoSaysvia. I don't know how to get from here to there.

Maureen:

Can I ask a question?

Dan:

Yes.

Maureen:

What was, and as we neared this time in the 2016 election, the polling averages? As I remember it, FiveThirtyEight still had Donald Trump at about 20 ... I looked this up. I think they had him at, basically they had him at about one in three.

Dan:

Yeah, he was at about 30%.

Maureen:

It was not as Stark as a lot of other places. The other places were like 90% that [crosstalk 00:51:46]

Dan:

Yeah, I just pulled it up. The final, Hillary Clinton was 71.4 and Donald Trump, 28.6.

Maureen:

So basically, roughly one in three?

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

A little under little but more between one in four and one in three.

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

But well within possibility.

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

Definitely not impossible?

Dan:

No. And now FiveThirtyEight, it wouldn't, this is not their final form, so things could still shift. I can't remember when the final cutoff point is. But they are 12% Trump, 88% Biden, but ...

Maureen:

Yeah, I don't know.

Dan:

... I just can't hear it.

Maureen:

No.

Dan:

I can't hear that.

Maureen:

It's about one in 10, yeah.

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

Yeah.

Dan:

Do you hear it? Do you hear it in my voice? Yeah, that's stressful. That's stressful to me.

Maureen:

I'm looking at the bubble, Dan

Dan:

It is stressful to me. What?

Maureen:

I'm looking at the bubbles.

Dan:

I don't like the bubbles.

Maureen:

Maybe by next Monday, all I'm going to be doing is clicking bubble, click, click.

Dan:

I will be. I will be, just constant bubble clicking for sure. For sure.

Maureen:

We record again in six days, Dan.

Dan:

Perfect.

Maureen:

We record again in six days and eight days. But six days from now, we will be making the last recording before the election of 2020.

Dan:

Yeah.

Maureen:

We did it.

Dan:

Did we?

Maureen:

We made it this far.

Dan:

I guess. I don't know. What point do you count the things you lost along the way?

Maureen:

We don't.

Dan: