January 6, 2025 • 14 mins
This episode is a collection of thoughts and musings I've had while writing stories. To my listeners, you're welcome and I'm sorry.
Our Small Business Shout Out this week is Beaverdale Books. Hear Jan tell us about not just this awesome little bookstore, but all the exciting events coming up.
instagram: @beaverdalebooks
X: @beaverdalebooks
(515) 279-5400
Music:
"Skinny Food Fighters Blues 85" by Won Jong Hwa from Pixabay
"Corporate Optimism" by Dvir Silver from Pixabay
If this made you laugh, please consider leaving a tip at:
buymeacoffee.com/discountstorytime
My contact information:
email: mail@discountstorytime
Mastodon: @discountstorytime
BlueSky: @discountstorytime
Or click the link in the show notes to send me a message!
Thanks!
Coffee
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, this is Coffee McCann, and welcome to episode
35 of Discount Storytimeliterature's finest dumpster
fire.
In addition to storytelling,discount Storytime promotes
local businesses in the DesMoines, iowa area.
After the story, stick aroundfor our small business, shout
out and hear from BeaverdaleBooks.
(00:27):
This week's story is a littlebit different.
Instead of the typical 15 to 20minute story, this is going to
be a little bit shorter and itis a collection of thoughts and
musings that I've had whentrying to come up with story
ideas.
Little things that weren'tenough to build into a full
(00:48):
story, but I thought you mightenjoy hearing.
So we'll call this one DiscountMusings, and this may be first
of a series, so I hope you enjoyit.
And here we go.
When writing a story,punctuation is key.
I like to start with all thepunctuation first.
About every two lines I'llplace a period, occasionally a
(01:11):
question mark and sometimes anexclamation mark.
Then I fill in random commasand quotation marks.
Once all the punctuation is in,I start filling in with words,
but those are less important.
I remember taking my kidsfishing and they caught a boot.
They were so excited to catch afish that I couldn't tell them
(01:35):
the truth, so we took the boothome and bought a large aquarium
for it.
Then one day the boot wasfloating at the top and I had to
race to the boot store and findan exact match to replace it
with.
Man fishing is a pain in theass.
If some people think clowns arescary, wait until they hear
(01:59):
about murderers.
Spell casting can be unreliable.
One time I cast a spell on myneighbor Maya to make her leave
her apartment, but the spellonly worked on Mondays through
Fridays from 8 am to 5.30 pm.
One day the spell glitched andshe came home early and caught
(02:23):
me raiding her refrigerator.
They say too many cooks in thekitchen is bad, but are they
giant cooks?
What if you have tiny cooks,like little monkey cooks?
I bet you can fit a lot of themin.
If I could do one thing formental health, just one thing I
(02:46):
would put more seatbelts onturnip trucks.
I guess I have a good sense ofhumor.
Since I was a small child I'vemade others break out in nervous
laughter.
I'll never forget the sageadvice I got from Old man
Mumbleface.
It was mostly gibberish, but hesaid something about tomatoes.
(03:09):
Or maybe it was turtles.
No, no, it was about tomatoes.
I think If I'm ever in front ofa firing squad.
My last words will be tocorrectly pronounce
Worcestershire, not in abragging sort of way, but in a
sincere, humble sort of way.
(03:30):
I remember great-aunt Tilde andher bedtime stories.
She would make sure nobody elsewas around and then bring out a
large leathery book and startreading in a strange language
while I wore a glowing skullamulet.
She asked me to be a whalingvessel for her dark master.
But Great Aunt Tilde had athick accent, so instead of
(03:53):
whaling vessel, I thought shewas saying whaling vessel and
said no, because I like whales.
She then said no, not whalingvessel, whaling vessel, but I
said no whaling vessels.
This went back and forth for along time and she finally got
mad and left.
I kept the skull amulet and itstill glows if I walk past
(04:17):
graveyards.
If we're on a plane together,don't talk to me and stop
yelling open the emergency exit.
My friend Stan came over forcoffee.
I gave him a cup of coffeegrounds and he looked to me and
asked hey, where's the water?
(04:38):
Can you believe that?
Why would you water downperfectly good coffee?
Believe that?
Why would you water downperfectly good coffee?
I am getting my face on thedollar bill, but it's taking a
while.
I started with a prettydetailed drawing of my face
covering George Washington, butthat took a long time and I
(04:59):
thought I have a lot more ofthese to do, so I lowered my
artistic standards to more of abald, smiley face.
However, the jerks at thegovernment print over six
million $1 bills every day.
Seriously, how do they expectme to keep up with that?
(05:23):
The other day, a small childasked me if being an adult is
happy.
I said yes and no.
As you get older, you're lesshappy.
Every single year of your lifefrom now on, you will be a
little bit less happy and lesshappy, and less happy.
There's nothing you can doabout it until you grow old and
die.
(05:43):
She got real quiet and startedcrying.
Then her mom told her to getaway from the weird man.
I looked around and I didn'tsee any weird men.
That mom is such a liar.
Some people just don'tunderstand children.
My wife got mad at me foryawning at a wedding last week,
(06:05):
but she's the one that wrotelong marriage vows.
Remember.
A spellchecker will not knowthe difference between starting
and starving.
This is important.
If you write the sentence, Idream of starting a large family
.
Remember the Guess I'll Go EatWorms song from our youth?
(06:28):
You know who really doesn'tlike that person.
That's right, worms.
They say the rich should paymore in taxes.
I say we should let the richhave a choice Either pay more in
taxes or buy our groceries.
I hope they choose groceriesand I hope they decide soon,
(06:52):
because I'm almost out of orangejuice.
If space aliens arrive on Earthand ask me to take them to our
leader, this is what I would do.
I would show them my cat andthen get on my hands and knees
and pretend like I'm worshipingmy cat like a god.
Then maybe, as if not to seemrude, they would also get on
(07:16):
their hands and knees andworship my cat.
That would be pretty funny.
I'm tired of people telling meto choose joy.
Those people are stupid.
Choose palmolive.
It's all mental Thinking.
You're bathing is the same asbathing.
(07:37):
If I'm ever held captive in asupervillain's lair and the
supervillain is telling me herevil plans, I'm taking notes, or
at least pretending to takenotes I'll probably just doodle.
I think the world would be abetter place if we were all more
like dogs and feared vacuumcleaners, if ghost witches from
(08:04):
another realm suddenly appearedand demanded that I give them
one dollar.
I would do it.
Hey man, it's only one dollar.
The doctor didn't slap me on thebutt to make me cry when I was
born.
That's because I was holdingnunchucks and the doctor was
like whoa, a baby with nunchucks.
(08:26):
Better not slap that one.
What you say, that's impossible.
Oh yeah, I don't rememberseeing you there.
If I someday have one legacy tomy name, I hope it's Nursing
Home.
Goth Cars should have automatedroad rage capabilities so they
(08:51):
honk and flip off other driverson their own.
That way the drivers canconcentrate on road safety.
If I become a necromancer, Iwill change my name to Doug but
leave out the O, so it's DougD-U-G Doug.
Most people won't get it if Isay it, so I will have to wear a
(09:15):
name badge all the time.
My family was the best atplaying hide-and-seek.
One time, while I was countingto ten, they moved to Europe.
Even if I was a ruthless mobboss, I would still take
Thursdays off, because you canrun a lot of errands on
(09:40):
Thursdays.
I don't know what my last wordsin this life will be, but I'm
betting on flammable-schlammable.
They say the best laughter islaughing through the tears, but
they're wrong, it's laughingthrough the mouth.
Well, I hope you enjoyed those.
And next we are going to visitwith Beaverdale Books Enjoy.
(10:06):
Next we are going to visit withBeaverdale Books Enjoy Discount
story times.
Small business, shout out.
This is Coffee McCann and I amhere with Jan at Beaverdale
Books and she's going to tell usa little bit about the
bookstore and what they havegoing on.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Well, as usual, we have lots going on, a lot of
things coming up for the newyear too, but first it's the
holiday, and right now we've gotour holiday catalog filled with
great gift suggestions, and ifyou stop in, there's a 10% off
discount on any of the booksthat are in here, and there's
(10:42):
all kinds of books, includingchildren's books, and and just
about something for everyone.
Our store is packed full ofgreat gift suggestions, and I
would be willing to guaranteethat we would have something for
every single person on yourlist, even the hard to shop for
ones.
And then January comes, and wedon't do a lot of programming in
(11:05):
December, but in January we hitit hard, on January 6th,
starting right off, and we'vegot three authors right in a row
.
You can find all thatinformation on our website at
beaverdellbookscom.
We also have all of our eventson our Facebook page and on
Instagram, so we would encouragepeople to follow us.
(11:27):
We also have a monthlynewsletter that we love to send
out to people and that kind ofsummarizes all of the upcoming
events and any other news fromthe store, some of the things
that we do, some of thecharitable donations we make,
some of the scholarships we givejust all kinds of things that
(11:48):
we do on a regular basis here atBeaverdell Books.
Then, of course, in February wehave our local author fair and
that will be on February 1st.
We'll be hosting about four orfive local authors, from one to
three, so people can come in andmingle and buy their books, and
(12:09):
if you've never met an author,it's a great chance to support
local authors.
And, by the way, beaverdaleBooks is known for its support
of local authors.
In fact, our east wall hasabout 600 Iowa authors books on
that wall.
So if you want to reallysupport local authors and find
(12:33):
some good books to read, I wouldencourage you to look at that
wall.
Then in March we have the DesMoines Book Festival coming up.
That's coming on Saturday,march 22nd.
We are hard at work planningthat.
We're going to have keynoteauthors, great programs, some
panel discussions, someworkshops, kids activities.
(12:56):
So mark your calendar.
You'll be hearing moreinformation about that.
And then, just a little secretwe have a couple of best-selling
authors that were doingticketed events.
We're bringing CurtisSittenfeld on March 11th and
Jennifer Weiner on April 11th.
(13:17):
Both of those are ticketedevents.
You can find them on ourwebsite.
Both of those are ticketedevents.
You can find them on ourwebsite.
Just go to events and scrolldown till.
You find their information andyou can purchase tickets for
those.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
That sounds wonderful , and that's one thing I'm
really impressed with isBeaverdale Books is not just a
small local bookstore, but theway you give back to the
community and you support localauthors, which is so important.
So thank you very much andagain, that is Beaverdale Books.
Thank you for listening.
(13:56):
I hope you enjoyed this kind ofdifferent episode and until
next time, enjoyed this kind ofdifferent episode and until next
time, play nice with others,take super duper good care of
yourself and, as always,remember to laugh Bye.
Hi, this is Coffee McCann, and welcome to episode
35 of Discount Storytimeliterature's finest dumpster
fire.
In addition to storytelling,discount Storytime promotes
local businesses in the DesMoines, iowa area.
After the story, stick aroundfor our small business, shout
out and hear from BeaverdaleBooks.
(00:27):
This week's story is a littlebit different.
Instead of the typical 15 to 20minute story, this is going to
be a little bit shorter and itis a collection of thoughts and
musings that I've had whentrying to come up with story
ideas.
Little things that weren'tenough to build into a full
(00:48):
story, but I thought you mightenjoy hearing.
So we'll call this one DiscountMusings, and this may be first
of a series, so I hope you enjoyit.
And here we go.
When writing a story,punctuation is key.
I like to start with all thepunctuation first.
About every two lines I'llplace a period, occasionally a
(01:11):
question mark and sometimes anexclamation mark.
Then I fill in random commasand quotation marks.
Once all the punctuation is in,I start filling in with words,
but those are less important.
I remember taking my kidsfishing and they caught a boot.
They were so excited to catch afish that I couldn't tell them
(01:35):
the truth, so we took the boothome and bought a large aquarium
for it.
Then one day the boot wasfloating at the top and I had to
race to the boot store and findan exact match to replace it
with.
Man fishing is a pain in theass.
If some people think clowns arescary, wait until they hear
(01:59):
about murderers.
Spell casting can be unreliable.
One time I cast a spell on myneighbor Maya to make her leave
her apartment, but the spellonly worked on Mondays through
Fridays from 8 am to 5.30 pm.
One day the spell glitched andshe came home early and caught
(02:23):
me raiding her refrigerator.
They say too many cooks in thekitchen is bad, but are they
giant cooks?
What if you have tiny cooks,like little monkey cooks?
I bet you can fit a lot of themin.
If I could do one thing formental health, just one thing I
(02:46):
would put more seatbelts onturnip trucks.
I guess I have a good sense ofhumor.
Since I was a small child I'vemade others break out in nervous
laughter.
I'll never forget the sageadvice I got from Old man
Mumbleface.
It was mostly gibberish, but hesaid something about tomatoes.
(03:09):
Or maybe it was turtles.
No, no, it was about tomatoes.
I think If I'm ever in front ofa firing squad.
My last words will be tocorrectly pronounce
Worcestershire, not in abragging sort of way, but in a
sincere, humble sort of way.
(03:30):
I remember great-aunt Tilde andher bedtime stories.
She would make sure nobody elsewas around and then bring out a
large leathery book and startreading in a strange language
while I wore a glowing skullamulet.
She asked me to be a whalingvessel for her dark master.
But Great Aunt Tilde had athick accent, so instead of
(03:53):
whaling vessel, I thought shewas saying whaling vessel and
said no, because I like whales.
She then said no, not whalingvessel, whaling vessel, but I
said no whaling vessels.
This went back and forth for along time and she finally got
mad and left.
I kept the skull amulet and itstill glows if I walk past
(04:17):
graveyards.
If we're on a plane together,don't talk to me and stop
yelling open the emergency exit.
My friend Stan came over forcoffee.
I gave him a cup of coffeegrounds and he looked to me and
asked hey, where's the water?
(04:38):
Can you believe that?
Why would you water downperfectly good coffee?
Believe that?
Why would you water downperfectly good coffee?
I am getting my face on thedollar bill, but it's taking a
while.
I started with a prettydetailed drawing of my face
covering George Washington, butthat took a long time and I
(04:59):
thought I have a lot more ofthese to do, so I lowered my
artistic standards to more of abald, smiley face.
However, the jerks at thegovernment print over six
million $1 bills every day.
Seriously, how do they expectme to keep up with that?
(05:23):
The other day, a small childasked me if being an adult is
happy.
I said yes and no.
As you get older, you're lesshappy.
Every single year of your lifefrom now on, you will be a
little bit less happy and lesshappy, and less happy.
There's nothing you can doabout it until you grow old and
die.
(05:43):
She got real quiet and startedcrying.
Then her mom told her to getaway from the weird man.
I looked around and I didn'tsee any weird men.
That mom is such a liar.
Some people just don'tunderstand children.
My wife got mad at me foryawning at a wedding last week,
(06:05):
but she's the one that wrotelong marriage vows.
Remember.
A spellchecker will not knowthe difference between starting
and starving.
This is important.
If you write the sentence, Idream of starting a large family
.
Remember the Guess I'll Go EatWorms song from our youth?
(06:28):
You know who really doesn'tlike that person.
That's right, worms.
They say the rich should paymore in taxes.
I say we should let the richhave a choice Either pay more in
taxes or buy our groceries.
I hope they choose groceriesand I hope they decide soon,
(06:52):
because I'm almost out of orangejuice.
If space aliens arrive on Earthand ask me to take them to our
leader, this is what I would do.
I would show them my cat andthen get on my hands and knees
and pretend like I'm worshipingmy cat like a god.
Then maybe, as if not to seemrude, they would also get on
(07:16):
their hands and knees andworship my cat.
That would be pretty funny.
I'm tired of people telling meto choose joy.
Those people are stupid.
Choose palmolive.
It's all mental Thinking.
You're bathing is the same asbathing.
(07:37):
If I'm ever held captive in asupervillain's lair and the
supervillain is telling me herevil plans, I'm taking notes, or
at least pretending to takenotes I'll probably just doodle.
I think the world would be abetter place if we were all more
like dogs and feared vacuumcleaners, if ghost witches from
(08:04):
another realm suddenly appearedand demanded that I give them
one dollar.
I would do it.
Hey man, it's only one dollar.
The doctor didn't slap me on thebutt to make me cry when I was
born.
That's because I was holdingnunchucks and the doctor was
like whoa, a baby with nunchucks.
(08:26):
Better not slap that one.
What you say, that's impossible.
Oh yeah, I don't rememberseeing you there.
If I someday have one legacy tomy name, I hope it's Nursing
Home.
Goth Cars should have automatedroad rage capabilities so they
(08:51):
honk and flip off other driverson their own.
That way the drivers canconcentrate on road safety.
If I become a necromancer, Iwill change my name to Doug but
leave out the O, so it's DougD-U-G Doug.
Most people won't get it if Isay it, so I will have to wear a
(09:15):
name badge all the time.
My family was the best atplaying hide-and-seek.
One time, while I was countingto ten, they moved to Europe.
Even if I was a ruthless mobboss, I would still take
Thursdays off, because you canrun a lot of errands on
(09:40):
Thursdays.
I don't know what my last wordsin this life will be, but I'm
betting on flammable-schlammable.
They say the best laughter islaughing through the tears, but
they're wrong, it's laughingthrough the mouth.
Well, I hope you enjoyed those.
And next we are going to visitwith Beaverdale Books Enjoy.
(10:06):
Next we are going to visit withBeaverdale Books Enjoy Discount
story times.
Small business, shout out.
This is Coffee McCann and I amhere with Jan at Beaverdale
Books and she's going to tell usa little bit about the
bookstore and what they havegoing on.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Well, as usual, we have lots going on, a lot of
things coming up for the newyear too, but first it's the
holiday, and right now we've gotour holiday catalog filled with
great gift suggestions, and ifyou stop in, there's a 10% off
discount on any of the booksthat are in here, and there's
(10:42):
all kinds of books, includingchildren's books, and and just
about something for everyone.
Our store is packed full ofgreat gift suggestions, and I
would be willing to guaranteethat we would have something for
every single person on yourlist, even the hard to shop for
ones.
And then January comes, and wedon't do a lot of programming in
(11:05):
December, but in January we hitit hard, on January 6th,
starting right off, and we'vegot three authors right in a row
.
You can find all thatinformation on our website at
beaverdellbookscom.
We also have all of our eventson our Facebook page and on
Instagram, so we would encouragepeople to follow us.
(11:27):
We also have a monthlynewsletter that we love to send
out to people and that kind ofsummarizes all of the upcoming
events and any other news fromthe store, some of the things
that we do, some of thecharitable donations we make,
some of the scholarships we givejust all kinds of things that
(11:48):
we do on a regular basis here atBeaverdell Books.
Then, of course, in February wehave our local author fair and
that will be on February 1st.
We'll be hosting about four orfive local authors, from one to
three, so people can come in andmingle and buy their books, and
(12:09):
if you've never met an author,it's a great chance to support
local authors.
And, by the way, beaverdaleBooks is known for its support
of local authors.
In fact, our east wall hasabout 600 Iowa authors books on
that wall.
So if you want to reallysupport local authors and find
(12:33):
some good books to read, I wouldencourage you to look at that
wall.
Then in March we have the DesMoines Book Festival coming up.
That's coming on Saturday,march 22nd.
We are hard at work planningthat.
We're going to have keynoteauthors, great programs, some
panel discussions, someworkshops, kids activities.
(12:56):
So mark your calendar.
You'll be hearing moreinformation about that.
And then, just a little secretwe have a couple of best-selling
authors that were doingticketed events.
We're bringing CurtisSittenfeld on March 11th and
Jennifer Weiner on April 11th.
(13:17):
Both of those are ticketedevents.
You can find them on ourwebsite.
Both of those are ticketedevents.
You can find them on ourwebsite.
Just go to events and scrolldown till.
You find their information andyou can purchase tickets for
those.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
That sounds wonderful , and that's one thing I'm
really impressed with isBeaverdale Books is not just a
small local bookstore, but theway you give back to the
community and you support localauthors, which is so important.
So thank you very much andagain, that is Beaverdale Books.
Thank you for listening.
(13:56):
I hope you enjoyed this kind ofdifferent episode and until
next time, enjoyed this kind ofdifferent episode and until next
time, play nice with others,take super duper good care of
yourself and, as always,remember to laugh Bye.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com