The comedy4cast Network. Let's dog ear that for now.
Hi, Clinton here. Welcome to the Dog Days of Pumpkin Spice Season.
Yes, August got away from me because life. So this is my unofficial extension of Dog Days.
For more information on that, go to dogdaysofpodcasting.com.
I always use Dog Days to give you 31 episodes full of some interesting,
yet totally useless, odd news.
And this year, to celebrate the Platinum Anniversary of comedy4cast,
or PAC for short, I'll end each Dog Days episode with part of a classic comedy4cast
episode. So, let's get started with...
Odd News, PAC!
When it comes to traffic violations, they say there's never a cop around when you need one.
Of course, the exception to that rule is when you happen to make a slight mistake
at a yield sign and then suddenly there's an entire fleet of squad cars parked right across the way.
And everyone saw what you did.
It's a fair cop. But here's a story that flips all of that onto its head.
Recently, in San Bruno, California, a police... What's that?
Well, I just thought since the... We're not allowed to talk about San Bruno?
No? No, I'll just make up a name then. How about that? San Skrit.
San Disk. San D'wich. Okay, I'm getting to the story.
Sheesh. Recently, in San Ity, California, police officers pulled over a vehicle
that had made an illegal U-turn and did it right in front of two officers. Easiest ticket ever!
Or was it? Because when the officers pulled the car over and went to talk to the driver...
There wasn't one. Had the driver's operator abandoned the car over this minor violation?
Gone on the lam to avoid the $200 fine?
Was there a high-stakes foot pursuit? An APB? A nationwide alert?
Were special news reports graphics created?
No. In fact, the driver had actually never left the vehicle.
Oh, they had hidden in the back seat, under the dashboard, in the glove box?
No, no, and why am I asking myself questions?
The driver had never left the vehicle because this was a Waymo self-driving car.
I guess the officers didn't notice the huge spinning LiDAR sensor on the roof
of the custom Jaguar I-PACE.
Or the 29 cameras mounted all over the vehicle.
Or maybe they just thought it was a Google Street View car and they could get themselves on the map.
Well, whatever the reason, the officers did have a problem.
Despite the flagrant violation, there was no one to issue a ticket to.
See? That's why these things should have robot drivers, like the Johnny Cabs in Total Recall.
That way, you could have handed the ticket to animatronic Robert Picardo.
But, to their frustration, the drivers had to let the car go.
There truly was nothing to see here. The San Bruna, uh, San Ity Police Department
said they had spoken to Waymo about this problem.
And for its part, Waymo says it is looking into the situation and that its autonomous
driving system has been designed to obey the rules.
Well, let's be honest. One of the unspoken rules of the road is do what you
can to get out of a traffic ticket.
And now let's celebrate 20 years of comedy4cast with this classic clip.
This clip is from episode 59, released in March of 2006. Just like these days,
sometimes I don't have time to do a podcast.
But here, I get into more details.
Too many things going on.
And I'm tired. I've been trying to figure out why I keep waking up at three
o'clock in the morning, night after night.
It's horrible. And I tell you, it doesn't help that the alarm clock is going
off every time it happens.
And I keep thinking about that legend where they say, if you die in your dreams, you really die.
And I can't figure out how they know that. You're asleep. It's like that ancient riddle.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?
Well, yes, it does. it says most boring forest ever.
And I don't know how I know that either. Like I said, too much going on.
I can't stay. I only have a minute.
I'm working on a product idea over there. You know, I hate those clear plastic
shopping bags that all the stores are using now.
I don't want people to see my stuff. That's my stuff.
Don't look at my stuff. Shh.
That's my stuff. So I'm developing an opaque plastic sleeve that you can slide
over the clear plastic shopping bag.
And if you don't want the opaque sleeve to get all scratched up,
you can slide that inside the optional cloth bag, which you can keep clean by
putting it inside this custom clear plastic bag.
So far, I'm up to about 15 layers and there's no end in sight. Brilliant!
But that's just one more thing. There's far too much going on. My mind is racing.
All this talk about sleeves made me think about Netflix, about how you just
send back your DVD rental in that postage paid envelope.
So I'm wondering, why can't you do that for other rentals? Like apartments.
See, I wish I had time for a podcast, but there's so much to do in so little
time. I'm thinking about words.
For instance, what if junk email had a name other than spam?
I mean, spam is a great name for it. Spam.
What if it was fluffy clouds or fuzzy bunnies?
Would it sound as bad if you said your email was full of fuzzy bunnies? Or chocolate?
Oh no, not more chocolate. Make it stop.
Look, I really wish I had time to do a show, but there are too many things to
do, too many mysteries to solve.
So I'll leave you with one final thought.
When you come across one of those displays that says, take one,
How do you know someone hasn't already beat you to it? I gotta go.
That about wraps it up for today's Odd News PAC.
But first, a shout out to the comedy4cast Patreon patrons,
including our producer-level patrons, Paul Barrie from the A Window to the Magic
podcast and Kirby Bartlett-Sloan from the 20-megabyte Doctor Who podcast.
You too can support comedy4cast
and get episodes before everyone else for as little as $2 a month.
Just search for comedy4cast, all one word with the number 4, on Patreon.com.
Script, voices, and original music by me, Clinton Alvord. Copyright 2025.
All rights reserved. Talk to you again next time. But for now,
that's it. We're done, done, done, done, done. Bye-bye.
You.