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Halloween Q&A Spook-Tacular!
254 Plays1 year ago
This week on a very spooky episode of Friendless, your pal James gives you a rundown of what he's been up to this October, including his sobriety journey and starting a new poetry account (@heysorryimissedyou).
Then he answers all your Halloween questions! From how he'd survive a Jason Vourhees attack, to his preferred weapon in a zombie apocalypse, and if he'd rather have sex with a ghost or an alien, all your spine tingling questions will be answered!
Be sure to sign up for the Friendless Substack
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and follow Hey, Sorry I Missed You on Instagram too!
And as always if you want to support the show, why not Buy Me A Coffee?
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Transcript
James' Sobriety Journey
00:00:08
Speaker
Well hey there sweeties! Welcome back to Friendless! I'm your pal James Averameko and today is a very spooky day! The way that the show has timed out, the episode is coming out on the best day of the year! Other than my birthday, say LALLOWEEN! Look, the truth of the matter is you can take the boy out of the theatre, but you
00:00:30
Speaker
can never really take the theater out of the boy and who doesn't love an opportunity to get dressed up and run around and demand candy from strangers. I mean, what's better than that? Not many things. Of course, as with most things in 2023, this October didn't shake out exactly the way I had hoped it would. After what could maybe graciously be described as a emotional shit storm to start the month,
00:00:59
Speaker
I decided to get sober. I am now, at least as of the recording of this episode, 22 days into my sobriety, and to be totally honest, I'm absolutely loving it. I would never presume to pretend that I have some kind of answer, and I would never start posturing as some kind of, you know, pseudo guru bullshit for, you know, doing what I did.
00:01:28
Speaker
but all i know is i needed a change and i made that change and i continue to reinvest in that change every day and i feel extremely grateful for that making a choice like getting sober is something that is um
00:01:43
Speaker
really scary and really alienating. And in the process, very lonely. I've had to basically completely reorder my social life and really reexamine how I was showing up and how I would like others to show up.
Instagram Poetry and Hope
00:01:59
Speaker
And, you know, 22 days in, I obviously have no answers, but I do recognize that it has been both an extreme blessing and also extremely difficult to process.
00:02:13
Speaker
I guess all i can really say is if you're out there and you're listening and you're considering getting sober or you're trying to get get sober or whatever it is wherever you're at you know maybe you're drunk right now that's fine all of it's fine if you ever want a friendly ear to just listen
00:02:29
Speaker
I'm around. I'm not famous. I'm some guy. And I would love to hear from you. I'd love for you to tell me your story. And I would love to just give you the validation and the support that you might need. So always feel like you can reach out to me. I am around.
00:02:45
Speaker
You know, I hesitate to sort of bandy around words like there's always hope because, you know, hope is something that we ascribe to the random happenings of the world. And if I've learned anything from my therapist Scott and all the talks we have, it's that there's no real meaning to life beyond what we choose to impose upon it after something's happened.
00:03:05
Speaker
So maybe, you know, listening to this, maybe you decide to reach out and maybe that holds all the meaning you want it to later. In turn, maybe it could mean nothing. Who knows? You never know until you try. So why not give it a shot, right? The other big, um, exciting development of the month is that, uh, in case you missed it, I have started a brand new poetry account on Instagram titled, Hey, sorry, I missed you.
00:03:28
Speaker
long-time readers of the substack will probably recognize the title from a little failed experiment I tried out a couple months ago. What I've done is I've just sort of reappropriated the name for the account and have been putting up a poem every day. Currently I am working through the highlights of one of my collection's first dates with ProWrestlers, which I have been dragging my feet on editing and sending out to publishers, and at this point I'm probably just going to self-publish so that I can just get it off my mind, but we will see.
00:03:54
Speaker
and I am spitting myself out so let's double back to the start of that sentence. I've been posting poems every day and the reception has been incredible and I just feel so blessed and supported and validated and it's so much fun and I'm just gonna keep doing it because I'm just, I really enjoy sharing my writing. I love hearing what my writing means to other people.
00:04:19
Speaker
But I also, I just want to share things. I just want you, want to share little thoughts and little emotions and little moments and flashes.
Spooky Questions from Followers
00:04:30
Speaker
And if that resonates with you, all the better. So please feel free to give me a follow at, Hey, sorry, I missed you on Instagram and, um, send me a cheeky little like or tell me what poem you liked or say, Hey, James.
00:04:44
Speaker
you're doing all right today anything at all just don't be a dick how about that that's my one caveat okay thank you i've got tons more writing on the backlog um i actually i still have continued to write at least a poem every day um since i stopped posting a poem a day a couple years ago um so realistically i've written a poem a day for over 10 years now and so i have a
00:05:09
Speaker
very large backlog of writing that I'm going to be sharing on the account. I have other plans to add audio, eventually some video, all that cheeky multimedia influencer stuff that I pretend to not enjoy, but also am fundamentally beholden to and really want to add my two cents to. So look out for that. And as always, don't be a dick.
00:05:34
Speaker
But with that all out of the way, let's dive into the real reason for the system. Muhahahahaha. Say, lalooine, which is the only lyric I can remember from a song I used to sing in French immersion elementary school and have no idea if it's even a real song or not. But it has been earwormed into my brain for 30 years.
00:05:59
Speaker
So a couple of weeks ago, I put out a call for questions on my Instagram and I got an amazing response from tons of followers and I have compiled them into a mega list of spooky questions that we are going to do our best to get through in the next however long it takes. We're here till it's done, all right, people? So buckle up.
00:06:24
Speaker
It's time for spooky questions and answers. I still hate that, but I have yet to come up with anything better. So let's just get to the first question, shall we? All right, here we go. Question number one.
00:06:43
Speaker
If you tried to fuck Freddy Krueger in your dreams, is he into it or does he get super turned off? And I think that this is an incredible question and I think it really begs deeper analysis that I don't know if I'm fully qualified for, but I'm going to try.
00:07:04
Speaker
I think what it really boils down to is how old are you because it's pretty strongly implied and I know in the in the remake but it's sort of alluded to in the original as well that Freddie is probably a molester
00:07:22
Speaker
And so I think if you tried to flip it on him, it would really boil down to, are you too old for it to be legal? In which case he's definitely not into it. This is a dark first question. You know what? We're going to, I'm going to try and reel this one back because we've already gone off the deep end. Several people asked me this, have you ever had an experience with a ghost? And unfortunately, the answer has to be no. That's the end of my answer.
00:07:52
Speaker
No, I've never really had a personal ghost experience. I've had spooky experiences living in Victoria, which is according to the goths that hang out in front of the McDonald's on Douglas Street. Apparently Victoria is like one of the most haunted places in North America or something like that because of like the spirit vortex.
00:08:12
Speaker
Um, and you know, we would do ghost tours and there was some spooky stuff and there was like a golf course near, near, uh, one of the houses I lived in that, uh, some of my friends swore they saw like a lady in white one night and we went out there the next night and we were all on a lot of hallucinogens and, um, it was pitch black.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I remember just being absolutely mortified. We were trying to find our way back to the car and we couldn't see the road. And then there was like a deer or something that definitely was more scared of us than we were scared of it. But we just screamed and we're running everywhere and
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, that wasn't fun, but definitely not ghosty. And then, of course, there was the summers I lived in Barkerville, another place that loves to lay claim to lots of ghosts, which I unfortunately never saw, but heard lots of stories about. But more than the ghosts up there,
00:09:08
Speaker
People in like the caribou love to talk about the fairies and the trees. Like it is the only place I've ever lived where a completely straight cis man in his mid fifties will look you dead in the eyes and tell you to watch out for the fairies in the forest because they love to play tricks on you and they love to get you lost and then they
00:09:31
Speaker
Presumably eat you or have their way with you or whatever it is that they like to do out in the forest and So I guess that's kind of spooky, right? But yeah, sadly, I wish I could say I had seen a ghost I would love to see a ghost I am of the school of thought like Stanley Kubrick that even the most horrific ghost is a story of hope because it means that there must be something beyond this life and
00:09:57
Speaker
So I would love to believe that there are ghosts out there, but I personally have yet to actually find any tangible proof, sadly. Question number three, would you rather fuck a ghost or an alien? And I just, man, my followers are thirsty. It is the Sahara out here because you thirst. And I appreciate it. I'm here for it.
00:10:23
Speaker
I would think a ghost because it's one of the things that makes no sense to me about things like Star Wars, Star Trek, these people who, you humans have sex with aliens and then they reproduce this new creature. And that doesn't make any sense to me, genetically speaking.
00:10:42
Speaker
because it's it's my understanding that like different species can't breed so I don't get it also how would an intergalactic species develop the same genitals I'm not interested in just like putting my dick in things who knows what secretions and acids and yada yada's I saw alien way too young so I know what alien blood does to
00:11:08
Speaker
you know, a spaceship, let alone my soft gelatinous flesh.
Existential Fears and Consciousness
00:11:13
Speaker
So I'm going to go with ghost. They, you know, I've seen Ghostbusters. I have seen Dan Aykroyd roll his head into the back of his head from that ghost blowjob. So I think that's that's that's where I want to go with that.
00:11:28
Speaker
Next question, what makes you go bump in the night? And if this was last month, I would have a very different answer. But currently, what makes me go bump the night is just like the yawning abyss of forever and imagining that consciousness ends at death and that I am just this fleeting speck
00:11:54
Speaker
of consciousness that means nothing and will never mean anything and that legacy and memory is a lie that we tell ourselves to sleep at night and that we are all just sort of callously tap dancing our way into oblivion when we could be spending this one chance at existence and awareness
00:12:19
Speaker
I'm sort of taking in the beauty and the majesty of reality but instead we pay taxes and rent apartments in the furthest corners of the city so we can't actually see our friends as often as we want to and then we have to like pay for Evo's to be able to get anywhere.
00:12:38
Speaker
spooky stuff spooky spooky stuff next question have you ever had any telepathic or foreshadowing experiences you couldn't explain and this one actually kind of yes so every once in a while i've had this long long time
00:12:56
Speaker
Um, every once in a while I'll like have a dream that will vaguely come true sometime in the near future after it's always really mundane stuff. And that's always what makes me laugh the most about it. It's like, I have latent telepathy, but it's really boring. It's like, I predict.
00:13:16
Speaker
I'm gonna be walking up these stairs someday, or I'm gonna be standing on this corner in front of the store, or something just like really, really mundane, you know? But I've had it since like high school, and I have done reading about it, and it is like, it's a form of deja vu, which is basically just our brains firing wrong, which very likely is just interconnected with my ADHD.
00:13:43
Speaker
It's almost certainly nothing to do with, you know, psychic energy and more to do with just my brain chemistry and the fact that it makes itself recognize things that it might not actually recognize. And it creates the narrative within itself to say, oh, this must have been like that dream you had. But who knows? Who knows?
Survival and Horror Tropes
00:14:02
Speaker
Maybe I'm magic. I'm the amazing mundane seer.
00:14:10
Speaker
Here's a little wild card question for you. Who was or is the actually scariest pro wrestling character? And this is a great question. I think everybody would default to like the undertaker, right? That's the one everybody knows. Oh, it's the undertaker. But honestly, who was scared of like an undead mortician? Nobody with his purple gloves and his big, huge bow tie. Come on, grow up.
00:14:37
Speaker
especially when we now know that Mark Calloway, the guy who played him, is just a raging racist. Mark Calloway is way scarier than The Undertaker ever was. For me, the guy who's genuinely the scariest is Meng. That guy
00:14:53
Speaker
in and out of the ring was just this behemoth and he apparently would just like fight six real drunk guys at a time and like not get a scratch on him and just a terrifying man who would be able to do anything he wanted to me if he so chose.
00:15:14
Speaker
Question number, where we at? Six? I don't know. I've lost track. Um, this is a fun one. You're trapped in a panic room for 48 hours while maniacs roam the streets. Who's with us? And what I love the most about this question is that the person who asked it assumed that they're in the panic room with me. And that's your first mistake. Cause if I'm getting to a panic room, I'm not waiting for anyone. Okay. I am in there and I'm hitting the button.
00:15:43
Speaker
There's no, come on, hurry. You can make it. None of that. Absolutely not. I get in that room and I, the first thing I'm doing is I'm hitting that panic button and we're done. And if you didn't make it bully for you, you should have run faster. You have to understand I am the third child. So, um, to potentially inappropriately quote Kendrick Lamar, you know, all's my life I had to fight. Okay. So, um, I just like.
00:16:12
Speaker
I had to fight to get a bite of my birthday cake. There's no way I'm waiting for other people to get to the panic room. Come on, grow up. That being said, if you made it there first, please wait for me. That would be great. I'm trying. I don't run very well. My cardio is not what it used to be. I've been vaping again and it is not doing my lungs any favors. So practice
00:16:35
Speaker
what I don't preach or say I would do. Instead, just do the opposite and look out for me, okay? Because I'm just baby. Next choice, one that we spent countless hours debating in university, weapon of choice during a zombie apocalypse. And I think I am much more into the idea of like a sort of like a mid-range
00:17:02
Speaker
thing I don't want like I'm not like cool guy with knives or swords but I'm also like I've never shot a gun in my life so there's no way I'm gonna be like oh yeah give me a gun like no I'd be useless I would shoot myself before I hit anyone else
00:17:18
Speaker
Um, so I think I would just follow in the path of my personal favorite and the inarguably best Ninja Turtle, Donatello. And I would just get a really big bo staff. Cause that way you could kind of like hip, hip, hip, and you could like kind of keep them away from you, you know? Um, but then you could also.
00:17:35
Speaker
And you can kind of bop him if you needed to, you know, so it's a very versatile, you know, a big stick, right? I think that's what I'm going with. Maybe it could be some kind of light metal. Maybe I could put like cool spikes on it or something like that. But I think a bow staff or just like a big old stick. I think that's what I'm going with. Yeah.
00:17:56
Speaker
And at the same time too, I will die very early if something like that were to occur. I don't think I'd even fight to survive. If the world was burning down with a zombie apocalypse, there's no way I'd want to survive in that. I like fast food too much. I love creature comforts of this North American fall of empire way too much to be like, no, I got to fight for survival. I got to put a bandana on with chains on my jacket.
00:18:23
Speaker
No way, absolutely no way. If I see the zombies coming, I am jumping off a balcony as fast as possible because there's just, there's, there's no chance for me to survive. And, um, I just, I don't, I don't want that kind of laugh to add. Okay. Wow. I am manic recording this and, uh, I really want to thank you all for bearing with my like dysregulated autistic voices coming out all over the place.
00:18:53
Speaker
Ha!
00:18:55
Speaker
Okay. So there's this question I think is asking what's scarier. It says seeing a shower curtain that is fully drawn or closing a medicine cabinet. That is, that is a mirror. And I think what they're meaning is what's scarier. And for me personally, um, I'm terrified of both. Um, the, the, the tried and true jump scare of they're not behind you, you open the mirror, you close the mirror, they're behind you, you know, the violence, whatever go.
00:19:24
Speaker
I hate it every fucking time. Every fucking time it gets me. No ifs ands or buts. I am a highly gasolatable person and that is one of those instances that I will fall for every single time. At the same time though, the shower curtain image scarred me younger because I saw the Made for TV remake of The Shining when I was way too young
00:19:49
Speaker
and um there's a scene where Jack Torrance goes into the whatever the suite is with the woman and he's checking it out and um you know he pulls the shower curtain open or closed or whatever it is and then he's looking around and then it pulls itself shut and he goes running and it traumatized me to this day i am so fucking scared of closed shower curtains i will literally
00:20:13
Speaker
whether it's at my bathroom, at other people's bathrooms, I don't care if your preference is to have a closed shower curtain. If I'm in that bathroom and I'm peeing, I am opening that shower curtain because you cannot stop me and you cannot convince me that there isn't a terrifying old lady ghost just waiting to smooch me and then laugh at me. And I won't be taking any further criticisms about that at this time. Next question.
00:20:40
Speaker
Jason is after you. Do you run upstairs, run outside, hide in the closet, or go on the attack? My answer? None of them. I lay down and I wait for him to step on my head because there is no way I'm beating Jason Voorhees. There just isn't. I have seen the entire series many times over and let me tell you, I don't survive Friday the 13th.
00:21:05
Speaker
Okay, they love to kill queer people. They love to kill nerdy people. They love to kill skinny people. They love to kill sexy people. And I'm all those things. So there's just there's just no way I survive. Jason is gunning for me. Okay, he comes out. He's coming out of his lake, you know, and he sees me and he's just like you.
00:21:30
Speaker
Like there's no way I'm first. It's like Hulk Hogan at a WrestleMania just being like, you know, like I'm done. There's a why would I expend once again coming back to cardio? Why would I tire myself out when I know I'm going to die? I might as well just lean back and let it happen.
Urban Legends and Nihilism
00:21:49
Speaker
Whatever.
00:21:50
Speaker
Next question, do you believe in urban legends? Yes and no. I think that lots of these stories end up having kernels of truth, but also I think that in the age of the internet, it is so easy to proliferate
00:22:08
Speaker
lies. Take for instance the whole thing about on average a human eats however many number of spiders you've heard while they're sleeping. That story was literally created by a teacher who was trying to prove to their class that you could make up stories and it would proliferate really quickly on the internet.
00:22:30
Speaker
you don't like how the fuck would anyone ever measure how many people you how many spiders you eat on average right like the second you actually pick it apart you're like oh yeah that's ridiculous but we we pass along you know it's Marilyn Manson he get his his ribs removed so he could suck his own dick pass it on right like it's just there's there's definitely um
00:22:54
Speaker
Colonels of truth within some of these, and I would love to think that some of them have reality, but they're more just, I really like fun stories. I love urban legends. I love the movie series. I love the actual stories. I just love good short stories. Um, my ADHD just cannot handle long stories. So short stories like that, chef's kiss, baby. Um, do I believe them? No. Do I love them? Fundamentally.
00:23:21
Speaker
Next question, we got three more. What is your ultimate scare? Zombies, spiders, unseen presence, isolation, madness, dolls, et cetera. And I think that I am most afraid of the idea that love is not enough.
00:23:52
Speaker
It's just it's a really subtle reference to major breaks from Twin Peaks and I had to sneak it in there somewhere No, let's see. What is my ultimate scare?
00:24:04
Speaker
I think true genuine nihilism is the stuff that scares me most. Movies like funny games or those kinds of movies that are just utterly devoid of any kind of hope. I think that's the stuff that really messes with me deepest. Just that intrinsic fear that nothing means anything but in the dark direction.
00:24:23
Speaker
You know, I like that therapeutically to sort of remove the pressure of these internalized shame cycles I have. But when you look at it from a horror stance, that can be just utterly terrifying. And I think that when when, you know, human behavior is framed as like there's no hope ever and nothing exists beyond the the vacuum of the abyss. That's the stuff that really messes me up.
00:24:50
Speaker
The other one is the idea of infinity or eternity. That messes me up. I've talked about it, I think in the past. I know I wrote about it in that book, but since I was a child, I've had this like reoccurring sort of like.
00:25:06
Speaker
pre-dream like I never actually dream it but I'll often see it as I'm falling asleep and it's this like vision of just this like endless desert and there's like dead mountains in the distance and there's one dead tree kind of at the center and it's just kind of blowing and to me that's like
00:25:23
Speaker
That's eternity, and it's all dead, and it's silent, and it's just nothing. And that goes on forever, and it warps my brain. It's like the idea of teaching a cow English. It's just something I cannot comprehend, and that terrifies me right down into my bones.
00:25:43
Speaker
Penultimate question here. Are you dressing up this year and what is your proudest costume? Yes, technically I'm dressing up, but I didn't go out this weekend. I'm not going out for the day itself, but what I did was I put on my skeleton suit that I bought years ago and have always meant to use as like a Donnie Darko outfit. And instead I went as a slutty Mark Marin because of
Halloween Costumes and Fun
00:26:12
Speaker
my mustache and hair.
00:26:12
Speaker
hair and glasses dressed up as Phoebe Bridgers. So I just kind of wore that around my apartment for like a half hour and then I took it off because I needed to pee and that was my costume. In terms of proudest, I think there's two. One was when I was a kid, my mom made a homemade Batman costume and it was perfect. She had done like yellow sticky paint for the six pack
00:26:42
Speaker
and it had a utility belt and it even had like little underwear that went over the tights and everything had the yellow embossing so it looked just like a Michael Keaton Batman costume and I must have worn that like six halloween's in a row because um it was I was just I was Batman it was perfect and I would wear it I mean I wouldn't wear it just for Halloween I would just wear it around the house and um I loved it I loved that costume so much
00:27:07
Speaker
I hope it's safe somewhere. I have no idea where it would be, but I really, really hope that it is out there somewhere because it was the greatest costume. In terms of like modern day adult costumes.
00:27:22
Speaker
I think one year in Calgary, I went as Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights. I had like a custom made East Dillon hat made and I got the blazer and I was practicing my one more time, clear ass, full hearts, can't lose. You know, and I just and I mean, I've lost it. I haven't watched that show in years, but I was really proud of that costume. I had a lot of fun that night. And yeah, I think I think Coach Taylor
00:27:49
Speaker
And it gave me the couch, you know, um, that was, uh, I think that was my, my, my proudest adult costume. And we have come to the end, the very last question. Can you dance the monster mash? And, you know, I realized this has been memeified recently in recognition that the song, the monster mash isn't actually the song, the monster mash. It's a song talking about monsters, listening to the monster mash.
00:28:18
Speaker
So I don't know. I don't know if I can dance the Monster Mash, because I don't know what it is. As far as I can remember, they never actually describe the dance moves. But if it is just doing the mash as a monster, then theoretically I could.
00:28:34
Speaker
But unfortunately, unlike most of these answers, I can't give you a confident yes or no, and I have to just leave it to the ether of the multiverse. Somewhere in existence, there is a version of me that, yes, can confidently say he can dance the Monster Mash, but also there's an infinite number that can give you the exact opposite. So I would like to think I could, but who knows? That is such a
00:29:03
Speaker
jerk off answer. But that is it. That is the Halloween spooktacular questions and answers in the can. Thank you so much for listening. I wanted to wrap up this episode with something a little special. My friend Rachel showed me this song recently and I absolutely adored it. I know it's from a couple years ago. Maybe you've heard it. Maybe you haven't. Who knows? It's called Friends by Francis featuring Bon Iver.
00:29:31
Speaker
And the way that I get around using copyright is that I use it to set the mood for an episode. So I'm going to talk over it a little bit before we get to the actual main song. But thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already, please be sure to sign up for the weekly sub stack. Every Wednesday, you're going to get a brand new update straight into your inbox. It's got new writing, new poetry, a new playlist for the week, along with tons of other goodies.
00:29:55
Speaker
on a fun I've been loving doing it I've been getting great reception and I think you're gonna love it so be sure to sign up for that in the show notes other than that I got nothing else so I hope to catch you back here next week with the brand new episode but I'm not gonna worry about that now and neither should you because that is then and this is now and right now is Halloween so go out there be safe enjoy yourself and remember I love you and I will see you soon fun and safety sweeties
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:57
Speaker
Yes, you better chase that ghost. Heard you bought some land in Mexico. And I said, where'd it go, man? Cause whatever you want, man, we're all within the mood. There's a station playing rock and roll. Just stick to it, stick to it. I will turn you around.