Pillow Scream Radio

Alex, Jim, Mandy, and Mike finish out the libertarian dialogue and end with a big announcement

If you feel like you're going crazy, you aren't. If you feel like you're alone, you're not. We know these past few weeks have been tough for anyone so we wanted to refocus the episode on something that's near and dear to every veteran's heart. We all feel like we've lost a part of ourselves and you shouldn't feel ashamed for that. We'll miss you OnlyFans. Rest in peace. 

Oh yeah, we talk about Afghanistan too. 

No one wants to hear that the original libertarians were actually communists. Unfortunately, facts don't care about your feelings, so we have a go at the OG libertarians and discuss how the term somehow morphed from "anarcho-communism" to "anarcho-capitalism." Hint: it has something to do with money. 

So, funny story. We were going to watch the new Mortal Kombat (2021) movie and riff about how terrible it was and how it perfectly encapsulated the decadence of late stage capitalism. What actually happened was that we ended up liking the movie. Something about ripping someone's spine out and beating them to death with it just speaks to our lizard brains. Anyways, we debo'd the episode to talk about some of the quirks of our fever dream reality with our returning guest, Zach! 

Yell at us on Twitter @pillowscreampod. Drag us on apple podcasts with a review. 

This week the two athletes of the gang discuss the strange history and traditions of the Olympics, who profits the most from the games, and which "sports" should definitely be cut.      

Jim and Mandy welcome a new guest, Raj!  There's no better way to talk about Afghanistan than with a battle-hardened combat veteran, and boy did we find one.  Raj, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for the daring behind-enemy-lines rescue of fallen beef stroganoff, left the service after one cup too many of dogsh*t army coffee.

Anyway, we talk about the all the media noise surrounding Biden's decision to pullout of Afghanistan, once and for all (by the "darkly ironic" date of September 11th, 2021, no less).  We discuss the ulterior motives of the man who helped start the war--and the utter vanity of his claim to be the man that ended it.  All in all, we agree that all us veterans and active duty folks are sick of the Democrats and Republicans fighting over us like it's a goddamn custody battle.  Get your shit together Mom and Dad, you were both trash parents, you didn't feed us, you blew our college savings, and we're definitely going to become strippers.  Oh and we're absolutely doing drugs.

Fun fact: Dick Cheney tastes like baby powder.  Can confirm.  Want to know how we know???

Thanks for coming on Raj!

Love, Mandy and Jim

(Oh and btw, there's an audio clip in here about the military industrial complex from the documentary Why We Fight.  Brilliant piece of filmmaking.  Check it out!)

We're joined by Dr. Stonk Brule aka @amcstonkrocket aka Mike who discusses both his good and bad experiences with the Department of Veterans' Affairs, gives us some A+ fiduciary advice, and cures every illness imaginable with nothing but a rubber band. Mandy takes us through the long and meandering history of the VA and veterans' benefits. Finally, we examine how we might remove the barriers to accessing healthcare for everyone whether they served or not. Veterans, if you feel like you don't deserve benefits, take a tip from Dr. Stonk: There’s a lot of wastes of tax payer money but you are not one of them. 

Find us on twitter @PillowScreamPod

The Pillow Scream Team, with guests Jackie and Dennis, gets together this week to answer a question: now that the pandemic is easing up, why is it so hard to get restaurant workers to come back to work?  To help us answer it, we invited two experienced servers to talk us through the experience of working in a restaurant, highs and lows.  Some interesting stories on this one--creepy old men, miniature cowboy congressmen who don't tip, and kilted Scots who freeball where they really shouldn't.  Tune in for a good one.

Want to know about the restaurant industry? Don't listen to the suits that write for the Wall Street Journal.  Listen to your favorite weekly podcast.

Find us, message us, make fun of us, you can do it all on Twitter: @PillowScreamPod 

Yes I KNOW this was published late sue me we'll just delete the podcast and make a new one nerd

Houston Wade joins Mandy, Jim and Alex for our 25th episode and an *extremely* informative show!  A teacher, geologist, and retail investing enthusiast, Houston explains in detail for us just how screwed up Wall Street has become.  Dark clouds are gathering over the financial sector and none of those preppy investment banker jabronies are taking notice.  But that's not all--if you have even a little interest in field grade stalkers, real-life treasure hunts, space mining, thousand year helium oligarchies, or what a trillion dollars in public spending can do for the American citizen, give it a listen.  Also, fuck Mars.

Where to find more of Houston if you like him as much as we do:

Twitter: @TheWouston

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HoustonWade

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/houstonwade/videos

Jim and Alex are joined by a new member of the Pillow Screamin' Family, Jackie!  After we cover a bunch of rapid-fire news stories and put ourselves in a thoroughly melancholy mood, we talk about something that is WAY more motivating.  

Ever noticed how American cities are just, like, gross?  Feel like this is a country made for musty 40 year old semi trucks, not for people?  They are and it was.  We explain that.  And then we offer the alternatives: Municipalism, Local Socialism, and Community Wealth Building Strategies!  We stumbled onto these ideas after too many uppity leftist Zoom calls and Reddit purity tests made us realize that the whole "Online Socialist" dog just ain't gonna hunt.   We'll never really be over Bernie losing the primary, of course.  But there ARE things, actual real world things, that work out there!  Check them out at the links below:

The Democracy Collaborative https://democracycollaborative.org/

Community Wealth: https://community-wealth.org/

The Trust for Public Land: https://www.tpl.org/

In this episode, we review an American coming-of-age movie starring Operator Jim, a rad pair of aviator sunglasses, and some of the sharpest jawlines this side of Easter Island. It's Thirteen Hours, written and directed by Michael Bay, who is frankly not notable for anything besides being the director-iest director that has ever directored. And this is his movie. It's big, it's bold, it's American, and full of all the military hero-worship, internalized misogyny, and repressed sexuality that you could ever ask for. 

We get real out there, folks. Talking the scifi book Blindsight by Peter Watts and all the empirical reasons as to why you're not as real as you think. Cotard's Delusion, blindsight, transaccadic memory, Anton's syndrome, body integrity dysphoria. It's a fun time. Maybe, just maybe, this gives us more of a reason to give a shit about each other as humans. Not all of us asked to be aware of our own existence. 

Mandy and Alex take the Army's equivalent of a "What disney princess are you?" online quiz and get caught up in the glory of 90s military advertising. Pro tip, if your PTSD-ridden Vietnam vet father begs you not to enlist in the military, you probably shouldn't do it. Take it from us. We're professionals. 

Given the situation in Palestine, we (Jim and Mandy) wanted to zoom out this week to discuss just and unjust uses of violence. Jim mansplains the ethical framework supporting the use of violence, then we delve into different opinions on the matter between the left and the right. We also parse through the thinly veiled fascism of Jack Donovan's "Violence is Golden." Finally, Jim waxes poetically about the dangers of adopting a nihilistic position. 

It's over Anakin, we have the moral high ground. 

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @pillowscreamradio 

In this episode we forego politics to talk through some big news in entertainment concerning the arrest of Josh Duggar and delve into the sick world of fundamentalist Christian families. Mandy gets disappointed because Jim and Alex came totally unprepared to discuss the NFL draft. Also, Bill Gates is now single and ready to mingle! 

For the main course this week, we dig in to some of our favorite brovet™ style election ads and dispute the premise that military service justifies running for political office. We reach across the aisle to mock all aspiring politicians: conservatives and democrats, men and women, parents and nonparents.      

Finally, Mandy offers us the cure to our deranged Instagram algorithms.  

Mandy abandons the show this week for something actually impactful.  Meanwhile, Alex and Jim do the news.  Topics include: Joe Rogan being an anti-vax moron, Joe Biden's big ole' American Families Plan proposal, his dem-brain means-tested attempt at tuition-free college, Bernie's College for All plan (which is, of course, a million times better), Mark Zuckerberg evicting native Hawaiians from his newly purchased beach, and India's coronavirus woes.  

Then we talk something many vets are thinking about: the War-That-Will-Not-End in Afghanistan.  While Biden blows off the May 1st troop withdrawal date, and the Taliban prepares to attack coalition bases in reprisal, veterans of Afghanistan are back home trying to make sense of it all.  Timothy Kudo captured this sentiment in a bottle with a NY Times opinion piece called "I Fought in Afghanistan. I Still Wonder, Was It Worth It?"  Though he hasn't quite figured out yet that WAR IS A RACKET, he still works through his own Hurt Locker Moment, like we all have (or will).

Link to the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/opinion/afghanistan-war-biden-veterans.html

If you want to reach out to us the best way is to send a note to pillowscreamradio@protonmail.com.  One of us will respond.  Being frustrated together is better than being frustrated alone.  #You'reNotTheOnlyOne

-Jim & Alex

It's the Zach and Alex show now, ladies and gents! We talk Chauvin's trial (and god-awful Reddit takes), Ukraine shenanigans, and the militarization of video games. We have on our third ever guest, Zach from About Face Veterans, to talk about the history of the military entertainment complex and how Call of Duty Black Ops tries to convince us that the commies are coming to steal our toothbrushes. That's right, don't consume any media unless it's ours. That's the only way to be a good leftist. Anyways, it's a fun one, come check us out!

Jim's away! We can finally speak the truth! 

Instead, we talk about Biden's pull-out game in Afghanistan, uncover some decent takes in the America First Caucus policy platform, and discuss Texas's plan to send parents of transgender youth to prison for supporting their kids. 

Then, we set the record straight on the Army's SHARP program and why it sucks. This one gets heavy.  

Also, Mandy claims that the first Jackass movie healed the nation after 9/11. 

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Posts are coming...maybe: @pillowscreampod 

Liberals suck.  Especially neoliberals.  And especially condescending neoliberals who want us to grow up and bend the knee to Joe Biden.  So we do our best in this episode to "have a dialogue" so we can find "common ground" with our "fellow progressives".  By that I mean we ridicule the cognitively dissonant, economically privileged, and sexually frustrated middle-class boomer lib types and why their arguments for liking Biden make about a much sense as, well, Biden.

We also review another AWESOME week of American news.  Dead Royals (hell yeah), DMX died (hell nah), triggered baseball fans, cops being complete chuds to an active duty service member, and the Amazon Bessemer Warehouse Union Vote (RIP).  We also continue to explore our piss fetish and discuss the Egalitarian Philosophy of Pooping.

Hope you burn in hell Philip,

-Mandy, Jim & Alex

Alex has to edit the podcast again so levels are probably off. Don't @ me because if know anything about Twitter it's that I don't care about it. Also, we have our second guest! Mike, aka Mash from Veterans for Peace/Gamers for Peace. We love our guests, don't we folks? Main topic for this one is the militarization of police. Come get weird with us.

Look at us, actually doing research and shit:

"The US military is poisoning communities across the US with toxic chemicals," David Bond @ TheGuardian.com

"What we know: Rep. Matt Gaetz is under federal investigation, accused of having sex with a minor," Matthew Brown @ USAToday.com

"White House unveils $2 trillion infrastructure and climate plan...," Stein, Eilperin, Laris, and Romm @ WashingtonPost.com

Police Use of Force Project @ useofforceproject.org

"Police Use of Force, Training, and a Way Forward After the Death of George Floyd." Ronald Tyler & Suzanne Luban @ law.stanford.edu

This was a fun one.  News topics include: the Boulder Shooting, gun laws, Boaty McBoatface in the Suez Canal, our Beautiful Boy Bernie in Bessemer, and the new (Republican) voter suppression laws just passed in Georgia.

But the main attraction is the oft-forgotten Milwaukee Socialists!  Once nicknamed the "Sewer Socialists" for their commitment to public health and sanitation, the three socialist mayors of Milwaukee proved that socialism works at the lowest level--improved quality of life, arts, recreation, workers' rights and general humanity.  Oh and they were anti-monarchists aka total G's (they also ran a balanced budget every year, if you're one of the weirdos that cares about that).

Follow us on Twitter: @pillowscreampod

And help us reach more vets by giving us some stars on Apple Podcasts!  Apparently that's all that matters in PodWorld.

ATTENTION: NEW COHOST!!  Pillow Scream Radio is proud to announce that our old friend Mandy has joined the team as a permanent cohost of the show.  We kindly remind our audience that she is, in fact, a US Army retiree, and that you must render her the proper customs and courtesies when you encounter her.  She will also post feet pics for money.

Anyway, in this episode we take a break from theory and just have some fun discussing four people that our brains had to think about this week: Tucker Carlson, Mitch McConnell, Ian Miles Cheung, and kill.z0n3 (aka Maj. Thomas Schueman).  Flyin' Ted Cruz also gets an honorable mention this week.  What a cast of characters.

Looking forward to all the future episodes with our new teammate.

Cheers,

Mandy, Jim & Alex

We got a GUEST!  A real live guest.  We want to thank Chris aka sinseerly_V for joining us on our 10th episode.  As a USMC veteran of two wars who (like us) executed a left-face when he found Bernie, Chris is a fantastic find, a PERFECT first guest for the show (Chris thanks for coming on!)

We chat with Chris about what it's like to transition out of the military and the importance of forming a leftist veteran community.  We hit the big news headlines, take another swing at the Black Rifle Coffee weirdos, before getting into the main course: The Propaganda Model, how our consent for the War in Iraq was manufactured, and how insanely hot Chomsky used to be.

Check out Chris's new project, Gamers for Peace, that he's undertaking with Veterans for Peace.  View his Twitch stream at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/veteransforpeace.

Lastly, wanted to thank our friends for their constructive criticism this week, in particular Codename Camera Man for his honesty, and Codename B-Dubs for being our very own Don Draper.  Keep it coming!  Episode 025 is right around the corner.

-Jim and Alex

What if I told you...that only rich people have the ability to affect public policy, and that America is NOT a democracy????  You'd probably laugh at me and say OK Boomer.  We all know that already.  You're right.  But in 2014, two Princeton professors published a study that proved it with SCIENCE.  Now you can roll it up and stick it in the eyes of condescending boomers who tell you that you need to vote so the orange man doesn't win.  But we're not hopeless pessimists--we also discuss a few ways that you can actually make these old-timey oligarchs listen to us, the bewildered rabble, a.k.a. regular people.

We also spend time on some news, both domestic and foreign policy.  Some real stories this week.  Not just ones about how Donald Trump is still rich even though he's not.

Here's to taking the Red Pill,

-Jim and Alex

We discuss some hot news takes, mourn the life of Rush Limbaugh, and gush over legendary military leader and socialist Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler.  He saved America from fascism.  No seriously.  Just listen.  Also Jim has spent his leave period either drunk or hungover so he's like a week behind.  Even for low-effort leftist podcasting this is lazy.  Jim, get your shit together.

We served our country by watching some of its god-awful propaganda: Act of Valor, a feature-length 2012 movie starring all active-duty Navy SEALs and their families.  We apply our critical framework to it, discuss why it existed, who it was for, and the Military-Entertainment Complex.  Note: this episode was recorded in early January and we used it to cover a gap in our recording schedule.  Oh and Alex I hope the VA gives you 0% disability.

We've got a few changes to the podcast, we shittalk our first guest on the show (he's totally real), and then talk a lot of news. CMSAF Bass' facebook shenanigans, Air Force cheating scandal, how the DoD plans to handle white nationalism (big lol), Jeff Bezos is a sucker, aaaaand... a Marine gets himself abducted. Our topic is how money fucks up your brain and why that is. I hate writing these episode descriptions. Jim, fuck you. 

Aren't we witty. Gamestop, Space Force, AR 670-1, and then we try to define capitalism. Also bitpatron broke, so we only accept donations through carefully constructed money laundering schemes and/or OnlyFans. Jim beatboxes in this one. 

Uhhh this is Alex's first time editing the pod, so if it's shit DM us at @MatBest11x. We'd love to hear from you. We talk Department of the Army Civilians (fuck em), spit some hot takes on why Dave Chappelle is a crank now, discuss who the ruling class is (also fuck em), and give you some Good Housekeeping-approved tips for cleaning your shower.

We consider Ben Shapiro's exhaustive definition of "socialism", talk about some key indicators that a person talking about socialism is an idiot, and get preachy about freedom and how you don't got it dawg.  Dang we gotta upload these things faster if only I WASN'T IN THE MILITARY

We talk about the strong military showing at the Capitol, laugh at ugly dead billionaires, and define the F-word since it's on everyone's minds these days.  Who is/is not a fascist?  As far as we know it's what college kids scream at cops.  Here try some brain juice it's good we promise

Our self-titled episode.  We talk about our motivations, current events (aka Le Riot Capitol), and everyone's favorite weirdos, the Bro Vets.

If you feel inclined to donate, we only accept BitCoin for the time being.  Link: https://bitpatron.co/pillowscreamradio.id.blockstack