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The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck
The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck is a documentary-style audio descent into a place that shouldn't exist—but very much insists that it does.
Once a forgotten military outpost in the depths of Northern Ontario, Bootstuck has taken on a life of its own. Discovered only through a pile of mislabeled cassette tapes at a Sudbury garage sale, the story of Bootstuck slowly unravels through scattered interviews, cryptic clues, and increasingly bizarre residents. The deeper you listen, the more you realize — this isn't just a town. It's a puzzle. And somewhere in that puzzle?
A plane crash that changed everything.
Somewhere between folklore, found audio, and fever dream, Bootstuck blurs the line between documentary and delusion—offering listeners a place to get lost in, over and over again.
The Unorganized Township of Bootstuck
TAPE 55 - The Mushroom Intelligence Test with Corn Juice
The tape begins with a voicemail — a jumble of static, mumbling, and the distinct sound of someone explaining how to “fix” a cassette with a pencil and a wiggle. From there, the conversation slides straight into Bootstuck logic: juice made from pinecones, acorns, and possibly corn itself.
Soon the townsfolk are preoccupied with a new community effort — putting up lost cat posters around town. The posters, placed two feet high so the missing feline might “see them,” are an act of optimism more than strategy. From there, talk turns to the township’s new “no passing” rule — not for vehicles, but for joints — and the alleged health benefits of mushroom gravy breakfasts.
The episode closes on a high-minded note as Bootstuck’s residents describe their scientific testing methods: paper, pencils, and a race down a hill to see whose “results” travel farthest. The conclusion? Science, like most things in Bootstuck, is mostly guesswork.
www.bootstuck.com
Yeah, I got the box machine again. Hopefully your tape don't run out. If it does, use a pencil. And s wiggle a wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle. Think about it in the back.
Speaker 2:Oh sort of juice inside of my belly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Juice enough everything around here. Pine comb juice? Yeah. Egg corn juice? Yeah. What kind of corns do you like?
Speaker 1:I like corn. I don't know about corn juice though.
Speaker 2:Try it, yeah. You ain't never tried it. You don't know what you don't like. Yeah. I know I don't like it. You know what's nice to know?
Speaker 1:Stimulus response. Just as this sort of stimulus, rage, produces this sort of involuntary muscular response.
Speaker 3:Gerald, new man in town, he put up flyers yesterday afternoon about a lost cat.
Speaker 1:And and how is that going? Have you have you found the cat?
Speaker 3:No. That's why we put up flyers. It says, hey kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, come on home. Hopefully the kitten sees it. He put them about two feet up from the post. I told him put it about six inches. We're not sure if the cat's gonna see it or not. Cat's pretty smoke.
Speaker 1:Are you assuming cats can read?
Speaker 3:Not knowing, but you gotta give it a try. So we're waiting until tomorrow.
Speaker 1:See, I I hope the cat comes back.
Speaker 3:Woo whoop, me too. Otherwise, we're gonna have to get a chipmunk and replace it. He doesn't really know. We can kind of do as we please to do.
Speaker 1:Clearly.
Speaker 3:Last time he had a fuzzy mouse.
Speaker 1:A fuzzy mouse, and he thought it was a cat.
Speaker 3:No, but he had a fuzzy mouse. It was nice. I did a lot. Then the post came home.
Speaker:Excitement in the kitchen.
Speaker 3:Hey, let's see the excitement.
Speaker:All right. Just you come along with me and I'll show it to you. This, a specially designed modern young housewife. Just look at those exciting lines. Fits in perfectly where everyone comes. It has all the features that you expect to find in a big brown bedding. High, wide, and handsome, I call it.
Speaker 3:Was I gonna tell you about something I didn't know that I was gonna make up anyway? Woo! I can't remember. You go ahead. Wait, I'll let you answer in a minute. I've got three more things to tell you and only one more minute to talk about. First thing is one, two, three. You ever see that written around town? One, two, three. And then you know you're on track, yeah. I see. So, yeah. And then the last thing I wanted to talk to you about was the fact that there's no more passing here in Bootscope.
Speaker 1:Passing? Yep. How do you mean? Uh in driving, you mean you're not allowed to pass each other?
Speaker 3:Well, we don't drive around too much because Dave's school's got all cracked up now. We're gonna have to look for both new tires and new coffee tables. It's gonna be a horrible time, yeah. But no, I mean passing. Like we all just smoke our own joints now.
Speaker 1:Oh, I understand. I didn't realize it was a drug culture.
Speaker 3:Understand and overstand and stand under the bridge. As long as ain't nobody peeing off the top of it, it should be okay.
Speaker 1:So there is a drug, there's there's drug use up in Boostock. So, what do you use as recreational drugs up there?
Speaker 3:Mushrooms. You ever have mushrooms?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we like to put them in our gravy. A cup of gravy in the morning with a nice little mushroom cap inside.
Speaker 1:You microdose mushrooms in the morning. That's very interesting.
Speaker 3:It's a healthy thing to do. We've been doing it for 22 years, and all of us have been scientifically proven to be much smarter than we were 22 years ago.
Speaker 1:Uh you you tested yourself? Yep. Well, I see. What what does the test consist of? Is it a good thing?
Speaker 3:The test consists of a paper and a pencil, and you got a time limit of until it's done. And then what you gotta do, take it to the top of the hill, and we'll fold them all into paper airplanes and race them to the bottom. And whatever one gets there first is gonna be the one that gets the highest mark. Last year was Caleb's first year, and he won because he had the smart idea of just putting the paper in his pocket and rolling down the hill. So he obviously made it the farthest.
Speaker 1:That's remarkable. And from this, you have determined that you are scientifically getting smarter.
Speaker 3:Science. You know what science is a lot of? Science is a lot of guess all.
