Thinking Sideways: The Nutcracker

the not the little metal ones, decorative ones. Yeah, but like, yeah, exactly exactly. And since I'm the first one up today, I'll go ahead and just give the brief bit of history, that supposed history that we have about them, and then we'll actually talk about my theory of where the nutcracker came from. Yeah already, because we all have theories. We've

all done our own research as I was a kid. Yeah, So officially, the story goes that in Germany sometime in the fifteenth century, there was a nutcracker challenge, which is strange, but it was won by a puppet maker who came up with what we now know to be the design of the decorative wood nutcracker. The lore around the design of it disagrees with itself and a couple of tellings. But the in some as we were just saying, it's got to the lever on the back and the mouth

closes to crack the nut. That's the official version. There's other versions that say that. In actual the nutcrackers were two pieces of wood that were strapped together, and I guess you've stuck the nut in at the end where the strap was and used leverage to break it. Actually, the original ones you just sort of like west the nut end of the mouth of it, and then you smashed it against something hard. Well, that's also one way to do it. But the thing is they always looked

like people. They were always designed to be a little human figure, and so then of course as time went on they got a little more charming and people had them around in the holidays. And what we don't really know is why why why are they so so popular at this time of year? And I have done the research and I have what the actual reason is? You

ready to hear this, Okay? So I pieced this together from some really old manuscripts that were that have been coming out of Eastern Europe and as PDFs, and they're on the Internet now. Then they're on the Internet now for the Internet US. Indeed, So here's here's what happened is sometime in the fifteenth century, there was a plague that was roaming Europe, and uh, it's it's a fun myth today, but it was a creature that was so fun at the time. No, not so fun at the time,

but it's a fun myth now. So these are considered a myth, but they were real and that is the wolper Tinger for those of you who aren't familiar with this little creature. Uh, they're small, they're furry, They travel close to the ground, um, and when they're scared they fly away, though normally they don't have to. They have duck wings, Yeah, they have little duck like wings on them. Yeah, but they have feathered duck wings on them, which is

pretty cool. They're about the size of a rabbit and they have horns which they'll use to to defend themselves if they need to, though they don't normally need to because they're great at distraction and they use their little squirrel like tail to flip around and confuse the predator before they scurry away. So they're they're pretty uh they're pretty quick little buggers. Yeah, And the problem is is they were for a while they were just a bit

of a nuisance. But after after time, because they reproduced so fast, they were at rabbits. Like rabbits, they were threatening all of the crops in Europe. They were devouring things. People were worried they were going to starve to death because there was no food. Yeah, you know, that happened a lot back in those days. One one crop and

you were screwed one just a little, you know. Yeah. So, not knowing what to do about this infestation, the uh a plea from the royalty was put out to all the learned men in in the country to kind of come up to come up with a solution to this. Actually not the country, the continent, the continent. Yeah, really, you're right. I did understate that a little bit. Well, two men came forward today they're only known as Sir Chapman and past your Palin. But these men stepped forward

with what they claimed was the solution. And their solution was to use a blend of chicken feathers and fuag raw and to spread it around the entrances to their warrants. The thinking being that they would be unable to cross that barrier, and therefore they would start to death in their warrens and the problem would go away. That makes

a total sense. No, no, no, well, it turns out you're both right, because it went horribly, horribly wrong, because it turned out, instead of trapping them in their burrows and starving them to death, Uh, it actually drove them into a frenzy. And these little guys became not only rabid, but they developed, courtesy of the flag raw, a taste for flesh. Yeah, and they were specifically now after liver.

They wouldn't want to eat my liver. Soon, entire villages were being destroyed as they tore through the townsfolk literally with their horns. Uh. And you know, and and there was no human organ that was spared from the destruction of these little bookers. Yeah. Well, as you can imagine, this had to be stopped, and soon enough a solution was found. At an october fest. There were men who started, after consuming all of the beer that was in the kegs,

started walking around wearing said brightly colored kegs. And turns out that the little guys couldn't use their horns to get through the keg to the liver, so nobody was hurt. The only problem is it's the only really on trade of the keg was up to the bottom. And you know what that leads you passed if you're one of those little guys. Well, these were tall, These were tall kegs. Yeah, yeah, they were tall kegs, you know. And you only you don't have to wear it down there low, so they've guy,

can't get you. Yeah, I mean they're loading the ground to start with, so that's where you're gonna put your your defenses. Okay, think about it, all right. So here's what happened is they started advancing on the wolper Tingers and what they would do is they were shouting brow. As they were doing that, they were throwing large bread pretzels at them, yeah, you know, the things you usually have with beer. And they got hypertension and they died of like no, no. It turns out that these creators,

believe it or not, we're gluten intolerant. So it decimated them and they were able to clear the continent in a matter of hours of this pest. As we all know, I mean, gluten intolerance just you know, it'll kill you in an hour. Yeah, it is it is really yeah. Yeah. So this is how the nutcrackers came about to be so popular. Is that the wooden armor and the shapes of the men's mouth when they were shouting brow. That was shouting brow over and over, just like yeah, exactly

yeah um. And so I believe it or not, this is the story. How this story disappeared I don't know, but it was slowly covered up by the media at the time because they were busy covering you know, religious wars and whatnot in the internet sucked well. Plus also this representative you can you can say, wow, this is humanity salvation or you could say a great environmental crime was committed. That is a good reason. But either way,

it was then to commemorate. The next year, they realized they need to commemorate these men who had saved the continent, and so they made these little wooden soldiers that were painted to match the kegs, and those in time evolved into more of a soldier esque figure that didn't look like he was just a barrel, but like he was

an actual person. And typically these were released in sets, so you'd have that you have the nutcracker with this little barrel shaped thing and brightly painted, there'd be a lot of little wolfing dingers that you would surround him with, and being smaller and more delicately carved, they got they got crushed and or lost over the years. Yeah, and it turns out that the you know, like the the helf of Eising style nutcracker guy, wasn't nearly as popular,

so we lost the yellow one to history. So there's a lot of stuff that disappeared on the sides with this. So that is actually why we have the nutcracker really. Yeah, So Devin, what do you think do you an agreement with that? I can see the word that she is. She keeps mouthing over and over and it's not a nice word, but she's not saying it out loud. Nick has something to do with cows. Yeah, well I should It should explain one bit, which is how I know

all of this. Yeah, and you should talk about that though. Yeah. So there was a documentary made. I got admit I didn't actually find from stuff that's been coming out on the internet only recently. There wasn't movie made about thirty five or forty years ago. Almost almost it was. It

was a great documentary. It was directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, and it features a creature that is very similar and as deadly as the Woopeninger, which I think is probably how you found out that it was that that was even a thing, right, Yeah, I put two and two together because if you look out there, the clues are there and you just need to know where to look. Come on, people them. I saw a

documentary actually about the making of this documentary. They originally had big plans for for making the rabbit wear a wig and some fake wings and some antlers and stuff like that, and the rabbit really didn't take to it. Yeah, and it was kind of a low budget movie, so they really couldn't afford to take a couple of months off and train the rabbits, which is which is a shame. But yeah, so they went with the white butt. Budgets are budgets. Yeah. Well, you know, I think that's a

nice story, um thing, I do. I think it's kind of a fairy tale because I also have seen a documentary about nut crackers, so I actually have the inn on on how this actually went down. All right, And you know, as my favorite stories often do, this one starts with a princess in a far off land. Oh, I thought it was supposed to start with bullet points. Nope. So there was this princess in a far away land.

Calm down, it's fine, and she was tricked by this woman who was called Madame mouse Coteer and U you're laughing, but that's like, that's the translation. I'm sorry. This is a Russian story. This nutcrackers actually came from Russia, not Germany. I don't know if you guys know that or not, but it's true. Okay. So anyway, so in Russia there was this princess and she was well, okay, Madame Mouseketeer was often also called the mouse Queen, so we'll just

call her the mouse queen for now. We know we're going to call her mouse Queen. There was one where the mouse Queen tricked this princess into allowing her and her children, the queen, not not the princess, to eat up a bunch of lard that was being reserved actually to go into the sausages for the princess's father, the King's dinner that night. So obviously the king was like mad about this, right, nodding, yeah, Well, because they couldn't

make sauce. No, they didn't even they couldn't, you know, the sausage was missing, and so apparently I don't know, and you know, and the queen, not the mouse Queen, the princess's mom. The queen was upset because she couldn't make the sausage for the king, and so everyone was mad at the princess. So, you know, the queen is upset that she can't make the sausage, and the princess isn't kind of deep trouble for letting the mouse Queen

or Madam Mousketeer eat the lard and her children. So the king um commissioned this court inventor, whose name was Drossell Meyer Um to create some traps or the mouse Queen and her children, which worked. Yeah, I think we used those today, we do. They're different, but we do. So what he created was kind of similar to nutcrackers, but unfortunately it did get all the children, but it didn't get the mouse queen. And so the mouse Queen,

who was obviously like annoyed, yeah, upset, understandably upset. She swore that she would take revenge on the princess. So the network cable and yeah, yeah, no, it was even back. Yeah no, this was old in time. So no. But since you know, her name was the mouse Queen. The king and the queen who were the parents to the princess. I know, there's lots of kings and queens here. I'm sorry. They decided that they would protect the princess by putting

a circle of cats around the princess. That sounds perfect. It's good because the mouse you don't want the mouse Queen to get past them. But cats sleep a lot, so there were nurses who were assigned to each cat to pet the cat, to keep it alive, to protect the princes. Oh yeah, yeah, the only way you keep cats alive, it's true. Yeah. Well, um, of course we all know how this story is going to go. The nurses fall asleep and the mouse Queen gets past. She puts a spell on the princess. Now, I know what

you're thinking. Spells aren't real, but actually they are. Okay, they were at least in Russia, and this time, let's be honest here. There's a lot of pinky things happening in Russia that we can only attribute to magic. Okay, mrs It's just a dark, mysterious place. There's no. Yeah. So the spell or curse that the mouse queen put on the princess um was to make her ugly because

her soul was ugly, I guess. But it gave her a huge head with a really wide grinning mouth and a cottony beard, just like a nutcracker, like the traps that killed her children. To make her look like that. Quite a curse, somebody, somebody I know, actually, but not you, okay, maybe happy to know, Steve, Steve, Okay. Well, obviously the king blamed the inventor Russell Meyer, and he said, you've got four weeks to find a cure for my beautiful

daughter who is now ugly and horrible looking. Droussell Meyer was big into the occult, you know again, a Russian thing, and so he um took the princess to have her horoscope read. And it turned out from the horoscope they

could tell that Steve's looking skeptical right now. It turned out that from the horoscope they could tell that the cure was um that she had to eat a nut, and that nut had to be crushed in the hand of a man who had never grown a beer, or never shaved his beard or worn boots in his entire life, and it's pretty specific. And the nut was also a very specific the nut. Yeah, it was a very specific kind of nut. And then without opening his eyes after he gave her the nut, he had to walk seven

steps without stumbling and then the curse would be open. Yeah, it does kind of sound like a dance move. Huh. So obviously they go scouring all of Russia to find this a haircut shaved. He could have had a haircut, he just had never shaved. They travel around, but it turns out that drossell Meyer's nephew might actually be a perfect fit for this the person to break the curse.

So they spent all that time looking, but the well, like a lot of yeah, I mean a lot of guys came and like broke their jaws trying to break these nuts because I don't know why they were like trying to break them with their teeth when they should have known you break it with your hand. They're dumb guys. No, not nutcrackers yet, No, no, nope, nope, nope, no nope.

And so finally the nephew comes and like breaks this nut with a hand and gives it to the princess and she eats it and she turns back into a beautiful creature of you know, being and princess. Then he does Yeah, so he walks back six and a half steps, and when he takes the final half step, um, he stepped on the mouse queen who was there. She didn't go squish, but he did, of course stumble, and so the curse was transferred to him. Well that's a crappy curse. Yeah,

cluseval the queen actually deliberately did this. I think. Yes, I have my suspicions. I think there's a wide conspiracy theory here. Yeah, I think so too. Well, it turns out that Princess maybe was kind of an ugly person because despite the fact that this nephew, drasse Meyer's nephew came and um, you know, broke the curse for her, and he accidentally took it onto himself, so he turned into this ugly, kind of nutcracker looking thing. She said, Oh no, you're no, you're not cute. I don't want

to I won't be with you. Typical typical behavior. Yeah. So, actually, are the documentary that I watched, Um, that I've seen Actually, I've I grew up with this documentary documentary. It is a hard, hard hitting documentary starts several years later, also in Russia, and it may sound familiar to you guys, because, um, you've probably seen this documentary as well. It's called The Nutcracker, which is how you know. It's a hard hitting documentary

about the creation of the nutcracker. Oh is that how you know? Yeah? Uh so if you if you have seen the documentary, you know that a young girl named Clara was given a nutcracker by none other than Drossell Meyer, the inventor slash clockmaker. Yeah, and it well, it was given to her family, but she was like the primary caretaker. Clara was seven at the time when the original filming happened. There have been a lot of remakes of this documentary,

you know, dramatic recreations and stuff like that. But yeah, yeah, well we'll get to her age in a minute here. Um. Anyway, it turns out that the rat king, who was actually the mouse Queen's husband, had taken up bread sudents in Clara's family's house. And you know, parents can be kind of jerks and deny things, and I think they were just wilfully denying the fact that their house was being taken over by rodents, yeah or oblivious or I don't know.

But on Christmas Eve, the rat Army made its move to try to take over the house and they defeated the doll army. And the doll army was obviously trying to protect Clara because she's a young girl, and like dolls protect children, sure they do. Yeah, yeah, that that really isn't creepy to think about the fact that dolls come to life at night. Well, you know, the documentary Toy Story proved that. So I don't know. Your problem is I never had dolls when I was a kid.

It wasn't allowed in your little boy whatever. Now yeah, my day you only get truck sun Yeah, well those are Yeah. But the Nutcracker that Clara had been taken care of sprung alive and saved the day from the rat Army and you know, fought them back. Unfortunately for Clara, when she went to you know, tell her parents, oh my gosh, the nutcrackers alive, they said, um no, yeah, Unfortunately the Nutcracker had turned back into his kind of toy like state. I'm actually that that frog and the

old Warren Brothers cartoon. Yeah yeah, yeah, then you know, Christmas night comes around and the rat Army comes to try again. I won't go into it, you can just watch the documentary. But um, spoiler aler, the Nutcracker saves Clara and her life and brings her back and defeats the rat King, and which is great. I mean, you know,

her family was all set free. Unfortunately, her family did continue to deny that the Nutcracker was a real thing until like a couple of months later, droussell Meyer, the clockmaker inventor guy Um, he came back to fix her grandfather clock and Clara, being a seven year old girl, could not contain herself and went to drosse Meyer and was like, hey, I know your secret. I know about the Nutcracker. I know I know that he's actually a real person, and I love him and I'll love him

no matter what he looks like. So I just wanted to tell you that I love him no matter what. And um, suddenly there was a knock on the door. Knock knock, knock, knock knock, and it turns out that that draws Meyer's nephew had actually just arrived. Spoiler alert. Drawsma's nephew was the Nutcracker. The whole time, and the curse was broken by true love. And so he asked Clara if she would marry him, and of course she said yes, because like what seven year old girl isn't

just dreaming of marriage. But her family said, no, you have to wait a year in a day before we'll let you marry. Yeah. So then he came back a year later and he took her away, Yeah to um Doll, Dall Kingdom, where I you know, I'm planning a trip to Dall Kingdom actually, but they, you know, Dalsa Meyer's nephew and Clara rule as king and Queen of Dall

Kingdom to this day. And then Dall Island has made all of these nutcrackers to help keep kids safe from the rat army and to you know, to scare them off because they know that that's what works against the rat army and when they see them, the exterminators of the world that are keeping this story down because they would be out of work exactually and the rats, oh well yeah, the rats are doing it. Yeah, but the

rats as humans. It makes sense now. And I asked your trip to the Doll place, you know, I hear it goes a lot further there I've heard that. I'm it's kind of expensive to get there, but won't you're there? Yeah, that's whatever you do. Don't take the cruise there that Yeah, no, I won't. Don't worry, but yeah, I mean, you know, And the reason that they come out in this time of years because this is when the rodents are coming

into the house. You know, in the summer, you don't need the nutcrackers around because the rodents are all around. But when it's getting cold and they come inside, you have to have the nutcrackers to keep your family safe. Got it? Russia, the land of magic and big rats, giant rats, you have to put out nutcrackers. What do you think, do you guys? Well, it's sort of like it's not entirely at the room of plus of ability, but there's a there's a big story that you guys

haven't heard. Well, I think the big problem with the story that you're telling is I can sum up in one word magic. Well no, because like listen, magic is just a word for things we don't understand yet, right, yeah, yeah, magic is just a word for science that we don't understand yet. Okay, so someday we'll we'll get that nutcracked. Yeah, exactly, you're at your iPhone. If you had one, would seem, you know, very magical somebody who had lived a hundred

some years ago. No, it wouldn't because they would smash it. It wouldn't be magical at all. Yeah, but I mean, actually, what what devon says that technology at a high enough level is indistinguishable from magic. Okay, I feel a lead in here. So yeah, the behavior of the Nutcracker and maybe some other nutcrackers is not necessarily magic at all, but easily explained. All right, let's hear it. So this

might put everything in a different light. Uh. The story of the Nutcracker begins roughly in the mid fourteen fifties a d that's Anno Domingo, according to some lost lost writings, which very recently turned up on the internet. Thank god for the Internet once again. And this story starts in the tiny hamlet of Monter Schlegm once in house flowers on the um ins today's central Bavaria. I'm going to shorten the name of this village to just enter if

that's okay with you, guys, fine, higain. It's a very old, traditional kind of farming town where everybody lives simple bucolic lives of Filton squalor. Uh. When the harvests were good, of course it made for a nice winner. But the rest of the time things were kind of lean. That was the way it was back in the old days. And we try to romanticize that, but no, it really sucked.

The simple folk unter came out of their hovels early one morning at the crack of dawn, and they were greeted by a rather startling site which stay ending in the middle of the sound of square. It was a giant humanoid statue. It was made of black material which almost felt like metal to the touch, but not quite. And that was when people find the working up the courage to actually walk up to it and touch it. Um. It was black, It didn't seem to reflect light, it

didn't seem to absorb light. It was kind of mysterious material. The villagers began to move in a circle around the statue, and they were squawking among themselves and arguing about the media, the whole thing and what it was doing there. Uh. And then one of them spots a large bone laying on the ground, and there's some disagreement among historians about whether this was a cows fever or maybe a human fever, because, like I said, things did get a little lean from

kind of time in these towns. Um so it's kind of not for sure. But it was a big, hefty bone. So the guy picks it up and turns to the guy next to them and starts beating the hell out of him. But other than the giant statue being present there and all the vision beatings of course, things other than that, we're life was pretty much unchanged in the win term. But local artisans and abaateur experts came from all over the countryside to take a look at the statue.

They didn't have much of the way of scientific instruments. They could, yeah, I mean, they couldn't give it a cat scan or an m R or anything like that, but they could poke it and tap it and whatever. And that's it occurred to somebody that they should measure it, so they did. It was six hands deep that's from the front of the chest to the back, twenty four hands wide that's shoulder to shoulder, and fifty four hands tall.

A stranger appeared who none of these measurements, and he was somewhat conversed with math apparently, and he noted that the numbers reduced to one to four to nine, which are the squares of the numbers one, two, and three. Okay, yeah, uh this mathematician, if that's what exactly he was, but he thought that was significant. The townsfolk, for their part, were suspicious of it. Then it's fancy pants theories, and so they all grab their pitchforks and droves in that town. Yeah,

typical standard off. There's always somebody with a time. Actually, they drove him out in daylight, so torches were not necessary. Yeah right, yeah, Well torches, you know, aren't always necessary, but they just add a little. They add ambiance, There's no doubt about that. Uh. And you know, I mean definitely there were other drivings out that did require torches, So they are would make an angry mob villagers, so quaint, I think. So all the all the farm implements, not

a single rifle among them. Just yeah, adds ease and pitchforks and stuff like that. He yeah, But let's continue with our story of the statue. It was there for three days and then one day the villagers woke up and it was gone, just like that, vanished without a trace except for some massive garbage can sized footprints leading off to the forest to the northwest. Technically without a trace. Yeah, so I'm not quiet without a trace, I guess. Yeah.

Uh so that sparked a little debate, well, do we track this thing and see what it's up to or do we just stay the hell away from it and leave well enough alone. And at that point enter Old One, who was a local woodsman and mountain man type guy and an ace tracker, and he volunteered his services and tracking the statue, which again he probably overcharged. Yeah, well he volunteered. They didn't really need one to do any trackings as the statue left you know again deep footprints,

and it wouldn't take any more woodcraft attracted statue. So he assembled the party I presume, yeah he did. He tried to, but yeah, following this guy would not would not have been tough. But Old One volunteered to follow the statue, and everybody agreed that was a great idea, but everyone was otherwise committed and nobody was able to accompany Juan, so he just went Yeah. Finally he gave up on trying to persuade anybody to go with him. Needless to say, he was never heard from again. There's

a lot of theories surrounding disappearance. His disappearance, Um, it's possible he went off to start a new life, or he you know, maybe just had an accident in the woods, was eaten by bears, or he was maybe the statue turned on him and ate him, and we don't know. Maybe they lived happily ever after her together. You could have moved in with the statues. Yeah's good point. Yeah, but forgetting old one. But it's kind of a it's kind of a footnote to history. But not long after

that wouldn't replica. It's very similar to the statues started popping up everywhere, interestingly enough, starting in the village of Winter and it's longer than that, I know, but I shortened it. But you know, but moving out from there, more and more in surrounding areas, these little things were popping up everywhere. Lizs who was making these things, because they seem like these, you know, very intricate. Yeah, it'sricate,

lovingly handcrafted. Statuettes are nutcrackers or whatever you want to call them. But the people who lived in this area had no time for this kind of crap, because the typical working day for these farmers was fourteen hours of backback breaking labor in the fields, and after that you come home and you got to spend another forty five minutes scraping the maneuver off yourself and uh and and then that that doesn't leave a whole lot of more time for like arts and crafts. So why SZ is

who was doing this? These things showed up in local shops. The first recorded instance of a purchase was in late November or perhaps early December fourteen fifty five, and the name of the buyer is lost to the ages, so we'll call them Villehelm. And these things did have articulated bodies, and everybody assumed that they were nutcrackers, because what the

hell else are they good for? Right, So the nutcracker was given by ville him just as a president to somebody else at an office Christmas party, and it was regifted about a week later on Christmas Eve, and as Us was born, by the way, the ancient Christmas tradition of regifting. I don't know if the re gifters did it because they were cheap, or they had no use for the nutcrackers, or maybe the nutcrackers were creeping them out.

That would be it. There might be well, you know, it could be one of those things where you know, you're sitting there in your living room and you got this nutcracker over there in the corner, or maybe sitting on the mantelpiece, and then all of a sudden, it's like, well, did that thing move out of the corner by I That kind of thing. Yeah, in the village, and and also in a widening geographic area, ever spreading over the next few years, there was a lot of regifting going on.

Often somebody would have just gotten rid of a couple of nutcrackers, and then he don't put up his presence under the Christmas tree and find another one or two waiting for him there. And so everybody, it seemed like, pretty seen everybody in Europe had at least one nutcracker, if not more than one. And at this point of course, I'm not going to keep you guys in suspense. You probably figured this out, But for a few of you that haven't, the original eighteen foot tall statue, it turns out,

was a self replicating alien probe. Such things are not unheard of. They've been you know, these things have been actually prophesied by many, many scientists here in America and road. Such things can and probably do exist or maybe will exist some day soon we'll know, we'll find out one

of these days. But an army of little killer cybors what's fotasticizing across the European continent created by the original statue or monolith or whatever you wanna call it, and history as we know it was about to be drastically rewritten. But meanwhile, all these little sideboards are being used to crack nuts because actually that's what people thought they were, was nutcrackers. Uh so if they weren't regifting them, they were cracking nuts with them. And I'm not sure these

little terminators felt about being used this way. They probably thought it was kind of undignified at the very least, and maybe a little insulting. I assume that they just bided their time and waited for the rise of the machines and the robotic takeover, and then they would have their time for their revenge. Right Yeah, yeah, So nobody really knew this at the time, but things were not looking up for humanity. Uh, we're kind of on the

razor's edge there. But then stroke a look, on November fourteen fifty seven, our Sun bropt up a very large coronal mass ejection which hit the Earth around midday European time. And you guys know what a coronal mass ejection is, right, yeah, I do it. Yeah. Occasionally the Sun just burped up very large quantities of you know, highly charged material and spits them out, you know, away from the Sun, off

in the space. If the Earth and center are in a certain position, then sometimes just this huge blast of stuff hits our planet. The last time this happened to us, and in a law on large scales in eighteen fifty nine, when we experienced what's called the Carrington event, and at that time a lot of electrically based stuff that not that we have a lot of it back in the eighteen fifty nine, but we had things like, you know, some power lines and we had telegraph lines, things like that.

Stuff got toasted some of them, some of that stuff did burst into flames. Yeah, and so this is a very fortuitous event for humanity because all those delicate electronic enters inside all those quote unquote nutcrackers which were which really they were not. And so we gotta say once again, you'd think that the aliens would have been smart enough to plan for something like that. But you know, it's amazing what changes from upper management will do. Yeah, you know,

the simplest things get cut out for budget reasons. Yeah, I mean, I you know, I think that everybody assumes that aliens are going to be more competent than human beings. But there's no reason to really think. So let's let's let's face it. Incompetence is kind of a universal rule. So yeah, exactly. Well, so these things were basically bricks. Now, they were no longer sophisticated little terminators. They were just

bricks and suitable for nothing more really than just being nutcrackers. Uh, And so that's how they were introduced, introduced actually by an alien species. And of course some of them did occasionally come alive, you know, like like for example, to rescue the Princess from the Red Army. But for the most part, they just sat there playing dumb and pretending life. They were just you know, catching implements nutcrackers in holiday decorations. But they were just waiting for their turn. But it's

tragically for them never happened. Well, I don't know, I mean, I I personally I'm having done my research and watched the documentaries, I still think that I have the right answer. But you two are welcome to believe whatever stories you want as to what the real truth is behind the nutcracker. Well, the whole thing about it is is like you know, rabbis, rabbis, antelope, porns. I know, of course they exist, but the duck wanks. Come on, dude, really you listen. Just because you don't

understand the cryptid doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Who doesn't mean at least it's some taxi dermost hasn't created it. Yeah, I mean that's really the problem here. I mean, we know rats exist, we know, like giant rats exist, aliens and like some weird scryptid animal. No, I mean you're killing species off left right in the center. They don't. They hardly exist anymore. We wiped them out. Yeah, there's there's almost no species left. Yeah. We gotta do is

wipe each other out and then we're good basically. Yeah. Yeah, I mean we know rat we know giant rats exist, and they have very very bad attitudes towards people. So I think, all right, and if there are, if there are rats, they must have a rat King, there's no doubt about that. There's punk rats, you know, with the

little rat mohawks those I see all the time downtown. Yeah, well, you got to carry your nutcrack with you and they'll just run away because they'll be like, oh no, it's that guy that beat us off thousands of years ago. Right well, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna go ahead and wrap up this special holiday episode. You can uh and believe whichever version of the story you want. That's why we've got them all out there. Enjoy your holiday, have fun,

be safe, and we will talk to you soon. Merry Christmas everybody, and uh, happy New Year and all this stuff too. Bye guys. Oh yeah, ho ho ho