TAPE 68 - Health and Safety in Bootstuck

This week’s call to Bootstuck begins with a surprisingly large audience gathered to listen in — though most of them quietly leave through the back door before being counted. Conversation turns to local cuisine, including a house mustard recipe featuring red dirt, pine clover, and enough mystery spice to apparently represent half of Asia.

Plans are also underway for the next big Bootstuck reunion, where traditional games include egg-on-a-spoon races and the slightly less traditional sport of water balloons, darts, and minor burns. Safety, the town insists, is taken seriously — thanks to a three-member safety committee consisting entirely of fence posts wearing yellow vests.

Meanwhile, Bootstuck’s law enforcement system is revealed to be a collection of toy badges from a drop box and a shared understanding that most crimes are simply “relocation.” With only two chairs in town — bookable in advance — there isn’t much worth stealing anyway.

www.bootstuck.com

Transcript

How are you there?

Hello?

Where am I?

I'm here.

Well, I'm.. Ask it again?

Wait, no interference here.

He's got his hands in his pockets.

Don't look at me like that, Dave.

His hands are in his pockets.

That's not a good sign Oh, it's time for our weekly catch up.

We like other compliments too.

Most of the time.

We like to use the mustard.

The yellow one.

You got yellow mustard?

We do.

We put a little bit of spice in ours.

You do.

What kind of spices do you do you put in your mustard?

Red dirt.

We use a little bit of pine clover.

And we also use a little bit of allspice.

That's one of my favourites.

It feels to me like I'm getting all the spices.

Yeah, it feels like you're getting a taste of India and China all together.

Altogether.

Altogether.

Altogether.

All together now.

All right, one more time.

Everybody's in the back.

Yeah, we got a whole bunch of people here today lined up.

They knew you was gonna call.

You're getting famous around here.

How many people?

Let me look backwards and see.

Oh, god damn.

Dave can you count them for me?

Hold on now.

Six, four, 2 just ran away too.

Never mind. Nobody's left.

They went out the back door there.

Just kind of left out.

Oh, what's coming up in the next little while?

It's been a while since we've seen each other from other places like yonder and far away and over there and near here.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna have a reunion.

You know that kind of thing?

We all get together, put Diego the spoon and walk around the field.

Yeah. Egg on the spoon.

Sometimes we play balloon pop.

You know that one?

You fill up a balloon with water, water balloon, and then you hold it on your head and you run around and you try to pop it off under people's heads with darts.

That sounds quite dangerous.

Well, it's not so bad, but everybody gets burned once in a while.

What you do is you put the balloon on your head and then you light up a bunch of darts and then you throw them at each other.

So we kind of get a little burn pop.

And then you get wet, puts out a cigarette.

You know, Bootstook is a very unsafe place.

No, it was pretty good.

We got a safety committee.

You have a safety committee.

Yeah, we got 3 people and they all wear yellow vet.

And what do you talk about?

What, what, what, like safety initiatives?

They're actually not really people.

We have 3 posts outside and we put yellow vests on them.

Everybody's slowing down being safe.

Slowing, what, what, some?

Yeah.

The other thing you could do is you could just get a white impala and leave it on the side of the road.

Would it be effective in a place that has no police?

I'm not listening to you.

Because you have no police.

Hold on.

I'm having a sip of my gravy here.

Not better.

Sorry, go ahead.

Do you have police?

Real police, uh, in in bootstock.

Oh, no.

We, yeah, we all wear badges.

Okay.

What kind of badges?

Oh, mine says deputable constable, and the other one over there, Dave's got a shiny bag, it's a diamond shape, and it says auxiliary constable.

We got them on a drop box from a whole bunch of little costumes and we also got cowboy hats that don't fit.

So you're using children's toys as badges for your police force.

Well, we ain't got no children around here, so they're just toys.

Now, do you do any actual police work?

Like, do you hand out fines and tickets?

Do you investigate crime?

Oh, no.

We're writing a notebook once in a while.

Stick on scratch. Scratchy.

Kind of letting it down like that, make a pen over.

Well, what happens in bootstuck if somebody commits a crime?

Make it.

Like what?

I don't know.

Let's say somebody steals something from somebody else.

Why would they do that?

All we have is things that are made of wood.

You can make anything out of wood, you know.

If you wanted to steal my chair.

That's all right.

There's only 2 chairs and boots stuck anyhoo.

That means Dave got the chair this week.

They ain't stealing.

It's just relocation.

You only have 2 chairs.

Chair, a chair.

You can schedule one for Wednesday or the 3rd Tuesday of the 2nd week if you wanted to.

You booked the chair.

Why don't you just make more?

Go the chair.

You ever hear about that, Muskoka chair?

They used to be called Adirondack.

Then they said, nope, Skoka.

Same thing.

Look it.

I used to smell cocaine.

I used to wear aviators, biggest crime of all.

I used to check people with ashes, and it's all changed, thanks to this beautiful anteronic hair.

You can get out only 49.9.

Yeah! 


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