WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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To close out the night of my
portion of the night, rather--

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[LAUGHS]

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[AUDIENCE MEMBER HECKLES]

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[LAUGHS] So this is this
manuscript called "Feed."

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It's coming out next
year at some point.

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The excerpt that
I'm going to read

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is, kind of, a spring
and reconciliation,

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and the loneliness of being
a traveling performer,

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and also how to know what
it is that feeds you,

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and then death--

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LOL.

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[CHUCKLES]

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[LAUGHTER]

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So this is "Feed."

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"Are you an introvert or
an extrovert?" he whispers.

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Black light, blackout,
as his biggie,

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big balls bounce against
the throat of my taint,

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by which I just mean my taint.

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Dear Reader, traveling
is so romantic, ain't it?

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Uh-oh, that bodes of
dynamism and gutter

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sluttery, a glittering
sea of one-night stands

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and kickstand dicks, camel
blue ash, and pit stain tease.

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Alexa, Siri, what time
does Panda Express open?

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Panda Express-- I mean,
James Brown is dead.

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Crowbar crack and
awake, every fire

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hydrant on every
corner of every city

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block and mainline that
shit into my veins.

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I'm planted in
mustard-yellow slip-ons

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at the waterfront
of a new city made

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of mustard greens,
metaphorical tetherball courts,

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and a literal city.

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SEPTA, Charm City
Circulator, MTBA--

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I'm sprouting a pink tank top at
the bus stop of a new city made

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of absinthe, sugar cubes,
metaphorical troll doll,

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jewel-belly t-shirts,
and literal britches.

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I mean bridges--

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L train, Amtrak, a
streetcar named I'm tired--

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[LAUGHTER]

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[AUDIENCE MEMBER SCREAMS]

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[LAUGHS]

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[AUDIENCE MEMBER SCREAMS]

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[LAUGHS]

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[AUDIENCE MEMBER HECKLES]

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I've grown spray-on, skinny,
high-waisted, acid-washed old

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fashioneds at the hotel
bar of the new city made

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of tucked-in, black
"Wayne's World" t-shirts,

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(SINGING) oh, dreamweaver,
and literal roundabouts.

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Portland, Oregon is a bunch
of White people in a brew pub

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whose name is just two unrelated
nouns like brush and mortar,

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or smoke and sage, or jam
and Freddy Krueger glove--

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expectant faces expecting
me to smile back?

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I don't do that.

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Portland, Maine, the
other White Portland,

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is a (LAUGHING) bunch of
full-leg pants and pansexuals.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Dear Reader, (SIGHING) hi.

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Do you hear the
moaning plane overhead?

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Do you feel the beating
heat on your t-zone?

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A sizzle of foam on the water?

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Poems light up corridors
of the mind, like food.

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I grew up on a food desert--

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a speck of dust on the
map of the United States,

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a Indian reservation east
of San Diego in a valley

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surrounded by tall
mountains that

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slice through the
cloud like a loaf,

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where the average age of
death is 40.7 years old.

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I'm 34.

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I live in the busiest
city in America.

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I'm about to eat an orange.

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Every feed owes itself to death.

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Poetry is feed for
the horses within me.

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Tonight, I'm pierogies--

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Ross Pierogies.

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[LAUGHS] Beer-battered
fish tacos and jalapeno

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cornbread, aloe lavender
face scoops, obsessively

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checking my bank
balance, and vocal rest

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stop in Connecticut that has
a Subaru, a Pick n Mix candy

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store, a Taco Bell
and a Chipotle-- proof

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that linear time
is a goddamn sham.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[AUDIENCE MEMBER HECKLES]

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Yes!

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Once, I wrote about being
ancestrally from a desert.

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That drought made me
restless, searching

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for a nourishing territory.

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You know how some
people are all that?

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[CHUCKLES SARCASTICALLY]
Well, I'm all appetite--

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hunger pang and
ambulance siren speeding

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to another needy feeling.

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[INHALES SHARPLY] Shall
I be a poem for you?

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I mean, I used "shall," TBH.

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[CHUCKLES] Me AF.

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The human condition, SMDH.

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The Bible, LOL.

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Bibliosexual?

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WTF?

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The library-- IYKWIM?

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No territory will
ever satisfy me--

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AF.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Cousin dies-- some overdose.

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And another cousin
has a daughter.

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Incel man plows into people
with a truck in Toronto--

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mostly women.

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And there are something
like 70 million

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more men than women
in China and India.

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And Roy says he has a new
metaphor, except it's not

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a metaphor because the literal
part of his heart has died,

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says the echocardiogram he got
just before starting a new med.

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But it's fine.

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He just needs to eat
more farty salads.

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And Mamihlapinatapai is
the most precise word,

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according to linguists from the
Yaghan language of Tierra Del

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Fuego.

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Something like, when you
leave a cafe bathroom

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and want to tell the
person in line next to you

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it wasn't you who took
the smelliest dump

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in American history,
but you keep walking.

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Or the word means
something like,

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when two people
look at each other

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and the look is, you both
know what the other should do

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but neither wants to initiate.

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And then, Wilkes says, after
talking about her noninvasive

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surgery, that John Krasinski
is the shortest-- at 6'3"--

00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:04.960 align:middle line:84%
is the shortest
of three brothers.

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The other two, 6'8" and 6'9".

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And I start to pal-pi-tate.

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My back arch is so
hard, I snap in half.

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On the link light
rail on the way

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to drop my stuff off at Rich's
in Cap Hill before checking

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with Colleen, before my reading
in Mount Analog at Zzz Space.

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And imagine being the mozzarella
in between that fucking

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baguette!

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Are you kidding me?

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6'8" and 6'9"?

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I need to be in a small
closet in a shoebox apartment

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in the cut of the sticks--

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like totally alone,
suffocating into a paper bag.

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And Jess text me
that she got a mass

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inside her the
size of an orange.

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And she's going under next week.

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And I'm practicing
lines for when

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I officiate Becky's wedding.

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Some kind of grand metaphor
about the golden hour--

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that light, that
sliver of golden light

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that's light unlike a
light-- any other light

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you'll ever encounter.

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Nothing we've ever made can
come close to that glow--

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not a filter, not a
software, not a bulb.

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A gathering of circumstances
that produce the light of you

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right now, in this moment.

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And someone tells me, "You
should wait five years

00:07:15.310 --> 00:07:16.810 align:middle line:90%
in between publishing books.

00:07:16.810 --> 00:07:18.040 align:middle line:90%
Like, what's the rush?"

00:07:18.040 --> 00:07:20.440 align:middle line:84%
And I'm like, "Did
you not just read?

00:07:20.440 --> 00:07:22.420 align:middle line:90%
My cousin died today.

00:07:22.420 --> 00:07:24.850 align:middle line:84%
And he was only two
years older than me.

00:07:24.850 --> 00:07:27.340 align:middle line:84%
And it's been that
way my whole life.

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Like, (ELONGATING)
bitch, I would

00:07:30.990 --> 00:07:34.500 align:middle line:84%
love to imagine being
alive in five years.

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But I have these
bones, you know?

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And just like that, I'm writing
a poem, a poem, a poem again.

00:07:42.930 --> 00:07:47.310 align:middle line:84%
The ephemeral garden--
big blooms, big,

00:07:47.310 --> 00:07:48.960 align:middle line:90%
bold, and beautiful.

00:07:48.960 --> 00:07:52.770 align:middle line:84%
Sip spoonfuls of air,
the feral perfume.

00:07:52.770 --> 00:07:57.270 align:middle line:84%
Razzle dazzle and jazz
cigarettes in the June Jordan

00:07:57.270 --> 00:07:59.070 align:middle line:90%
almond afternoon.

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It's spring!

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I'm tired of being grave.

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(SINGING) Let's talk
about death, baby.

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What a better time than in the
face of spring and the spring

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ephemeral--

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a bloom so short, it puts the
fleet in fleeting feeling,

00:08:14.680 --> 00:08:15.180 align:middle line:90%
which--

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OK, fleet is on sale for
like 1,99 at Walgreens--

00:08:18.510 --> 00:08:21.300 align:middle line:90%
[CHUCKLES] spring cleaning.

00:08:21.300 --> 00:08:25.170 align:middle line:84%
Rich and Willy and Chase
talk about the Proud Boys

00:08:25.170 --> 00:08:27.450 align:middle line:84%
stalking up Cap
Hill in Seattle--

00:08:27.450 --> 00:08:28.860 align:middle line:90%
70 strong.

00:08:28.860 --> 00:08:31.740 align:middle line:84%
The 70, 70 strong--
twice the size

00:08:31.740 --> 00:08:35.159 align:middle line:84%
they were last year, not
to fight, Chase says,

00:08:35.159 --> 00:08:37.710 align:middle line:84%
intones, They're mostly
nonviolent frat boys

00:08:37.710 --> 00:08:40.090 align:middle line:84%
just trying to
disrupt the community.

00:08:40.090 --> 00:08:43.830 align:middle line:84%
And I feel like a backslash
running through me, blood

00:08:43.830 --> 00:08:45.780 align:middle line:90%
leaking from uncooked meat.

00:08:45.780 --> 00:08:49.650 align:middle line:84%
Not like Palestine
protest, Jerusalem Embassy

00:08:49.650 --> 00:08:53.610 align:middle line:84%
massacre, or in Pakistan where
the journalist disappeared,

00:08:53.610 --> 00:08:56.730 align:middle line:84%
or Mogadishu bustling
city-center bombs,

00:08:56.730 --> 00:08:59.670 align:middle line:84%
or ICE losing thousands
of kids at every turn,

00:08:59.670 --> 00:09:02.550 align:middle line:84%
targeting target rash
explosion of ticks,

00:09:02.550 --> 00:09:04.650 align:middle line:84%
nearing Lyme season
again, targeting

00:09:04.650 --> 00:09:08.640 align:middle line:84%
churches and sanctuaries, and
sanctuary cities and the bombs.

00:09:08.640 --> 00:09:12.060 align:middle line:84%
And the bombs, and the
bombs fly over state drones,

00:09:12.060 --> 00:09:13.650 align:middle line:90%
fly over other countries.

00:09:13.650 --> 00:09:18.690 align:middle line:84%
And the LOL president says,
we tamed the continent

00:09:18.690 --> 00:09:22.560 align:middle line:84%
and we aren't
apologizing for America.

00:09:22.560 --> 00:09:25.900 align:middle line:84%
And murdered and missing
indigenous women never ever,

00:09:25.900 --> 00:09:31.300 align:middle line:84%
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,

00:09:31.300 --> 00:09:37.575 align:middle line:84%
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,

00:09:37.575 --> 00:09:43.030 align:middle line:84%
ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever, ever, ever, ever,

00:09:43.030 --> 00:09:46.920 align:middle line:84%
ever get an article or a
shout-out or a headline.

00:09:46.920 --> 00:09:49.080 align:middle line:84%
But that White
crisis actor lady,

00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:51.600 align:middle line:84%
who advocates for
police brutality,

00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:54.330 align:middle line:84%
got water splashed in her
face at a brunch spot,

00:09:54.330 --> 00:09:57.810 align:middle line:84%
or the mouthpiece of the regime
getting denied service at a Red

00:09:57.810 --> 00:10:01.530 align:middle line:84%
Hen, or staffers bombed out
at their treatment in public

00:10:01.530 --> 00:10:02.280 align:middle line:90%
to outcry.

00:10:02.280 --> 00:10:04.260 align:middle line:90%
And it's like, IDK!

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If I'm even here, WTF.

00:10:08.430 --> 00:10:11.770 align:middle line:84%
The ancient Egyptians
used to worship cats.

00:10:11.770 --> 00:10:13.680 align:middle line:90%
And now they're dead.

00:10:13.680 --> 00:10:14.640 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:10:14.640 --> 00:10:15.890 align:middle line:90%
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

00:10:15.890 --> 00:10:16.000 align:middle line:90%