Episode 074 - Phantom of the KMart

## Book of Doug Touchstones

Tyler has previously challenged himself and Gordie to choose a story with absolutely no knowledge of the title, and guess the title after the story, so Tyler has chosen to not have any input. Gordie has chosen to go with one word from the middle of the story instead. The words were:

* hissing
* boot
* ale

## Featured Story

Tyler and Gordie chose *Fate,* using the workd boot. The story is a Serbian Tale from *Fairy Tales of Eastern Europe* selected and retold by Neil Philip.

### Overall Plot

* Two brother live together, and one does all the work while the other does nothing. Hard working brother insists they split their work apart.
* Hard working brother's life starts sucking, and then he finds this woman who is young and pretty, and she's his brother's luck
* He gets help from lazy brother (now known as rich brother) who gives him **boots**
* He meets an old decrepit lady with hollow eyes and she is his luck
* He gets pissed and asks to see her manager (essentially) who is fate
* He runs into a farmer who is cooking way too much food, and he says it's because his servants eat WAY too much food. The servants eat all the food and are still starving, and they they put the bones behind the stove and two old ghosts of people suck on the bones. The farmer says it's his parents who are clinging to the world for whatever reason, and asks if poor brother will ask fate why these things are
* The next place he stops, the cows won't give milk, so he's going to ask fate about that, too
* He crosses a river, and the river asks him to ask fate why it doesn't have any tributaries
* He gets to fate, and he has to not say anything and just do exactly what fate does until fate talks to hi,. Fate is living in a swanky palace, and at the end of the day, a voice asks fate to alot the fortunes of each person born that day. He tosses gold coins over his shoulder, and then says "as it is with me today, so it shall be with them for their lives."
* The next day the house is a little smaller, there's more silver coins than gold, and the meal isn't as lavist. The same thing happens.
* He gets slightly poorer each day until he's living in a hovel, and the cycle starts again.
* Fate says that poor brother's life sucks because he was born on an unlucky day, but if he wants things better, rich brother's daughter is lucky, so he should adopt her and say everything is hers. Fate also answers the questions of everyone else:
	+ The servants are hungry and the parents suck the bones because they're not being respected. If the parents were given the first choice of food and the best seat at the table, all of it would end
	+ The cows give no milk because the farmer sacrifices his worst cows on Saint's day, not his best ones
	+ The river has no tributaries because it hasn't drowned a person
* On his way back, poor brother tells these things to al the people, and they act accordingly and everything is fixed. He does wait until after crossing back to tell the river, and the river does immediately flood and try to drown him, but he escapes
* Once, he messed up and called a field of grain his instead of his niece's, and it immediately caught on fire. He quickly corrected himself, and the fire went out, and from then on, everything else he owned he said belonged to his niece.

## Discussion Points

* a summer santa
* a lesson in delegation
* kidnapping luck
* does luck imprint on people?
* whether or not we've said luck
* telling customers that they can see your manager, but only if they can find the manager, then pushing them into a room full of mirrors
* cops don't deal with K-mart crime
* hookworms are the strike force for earthworms to take down humans
* a movie where the worms of various kinds band together to take down the president and the Secret Service has to shrink down and fight them fisticuffs style
* gaming the system

### Notable Quotables

* Carmen: Your wordless cries will be our ascension to the other realms
* Gordie: Someone make a wiki for this show, and there should be one page that just says "did they say boot before episode 74?"
* Tyler: Lady got a face like a roach motel
* Carmen: Tapeworms are really just a proto-dragon
* Carmen: Specter dry? Get ghost moist!