The Emily Horehound Expertease

Phone Ringing Phone Ringing Phone Ringing Hello, this is Socket Scrap. Hold on, hold on. Clare, Clare, are you okay? Hold on, let me turn it back on again. Okay, okay, I just, you know, I oiled it this morning. You oiled what? My hydraulic system that lifts the phone up so I don't have to pick up the hanger. Are you still using that? Hangle? What's it called? The handle? Sorry, that gave me a little bit of a concussion. Okay, so I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm here, I'm here now and I'm speaking into the... Phone. It's called the phone. Handheld. Handheld. Clare, I really want to recommend that you get one of those operator devices that wraps around your head.

If you're going to be answering the phones, you need to be efficient, efficient, efficient. And you know what they say, teach a man efficient, and he answers the phone for a lifetime. Beautiful, yeah. So I was hoping you'd call me because I have something I need to talk with you about. Clare, you were hoping I would call? This is our on-the-calendar, once-a-week business call that is so important to our podcast business. Here I am. Yes, yeah, that's why I was hoping that you would actually make it. I know, I've missed a few. My apologies. So we need to choose a pattern for our mugs at the coffee.

Yeah, I've got the answer for that. Round. Round. You like? Round mugs. Cendrilical, cendrilical. Are you going to ask me why all our mugs are broken, Dana? I just assumed it was because you've been punched back against the wall from your hydraulic phone holder. No, it's not. And I didn't want to bring it up, but since you have, look, Emily Horhound is, I mean, she's a lovely personality. Don't you say a negative word about that beautiful woman. Dana, she has no fingerprints. I mean, there is no grip in her fingers. She has dropped everything that we have.

She dropped the hydraulic phone on my toe. She's dropped every mug that we have in the kitchen. She dropped the coffee maker, but luckily it's made out of leftover parts of the hydraulic system that I used to make this telephone. Can I just say, Claire, I feel like you're putting the blame for your responsibilities on someone whose responsibilities those are not. We hired Emily because of her slippery fingers to do one job, which was the tidying. You know, I can't argue that. She is fleet fingered on the keyboard. You say she has no fingerprints. I think she's exuding oil.

I've noticed that even, you know, when I go back in to type something up, my fingers slide off the keyboard. I can't hold a mug after that. Well, I've got a solution, though. Okay. Mugs with handles. Oh, retro. It would be retro, yeah, but I think we can pull it off. I think we've got the panache and the aplomb. So now that we've decided they're going to be cylindrical with handles. Cylindrical with handles. Yeah. What's the decor on them? I mean, do we need a new expertise branding or do we just want to get away from that when we're in the coffee area?

Just having coffee with a flower on it or a picture of Sterling K. Brown. Who's Sterling K. Brown? Was he the inventor of the stir stick? Yes. Yeah. Stir stick. K. Brown. So that would be perfect for coffee because I know you add so many extra ingredients. In fact, Claire, Emily and I have been a little concerned about the amount of half and half you're adding to your coffee so much that it actually becomes whole and whole. Well, I mean, I'm not sure about being judged about a few extra pounds I've put on because I enjoy a little whole fad in my coffee.

I think you've got a little chip on your shoulder because we have a beautiful, svelte, young, attractive. Are you saying you think that I'm jealous because she doesn't need a hydraulic lift on her office chair to stand up? She? I was talking about me. I got you. Okay, Dan. Okay. But seriously, Claire. Hold on. I gotta just get into my chair. There we go. I'm in. So your telephone lift is now doing double duty. Yeah. Where does the telephone go when it's hoisting your body into the chair? Nobody really knows. So do you feel like we've settled the mug question?

Yeah. I think I'm going to order us some cylindrical mugs with handles. Two handles, of course. One on each side. I'd like to hold the mug with both hands. My arms are really losing a lot of strength these days. And it's going to have a picture of stir stick Kay Brown, the inventor of the stir stick. It's going to be... I'm excited. Isn't nominative determinism when the person has the name that matches the thing that they do? Oh, that's apt. Aptonomous. Oh, yeah. We all did agree. So it is aptonomous. Yes. Yeah. So apart from old slippery fingers, how are you feeling about Emily Horhound around the office?

I think she's doing a great job. And, you know, she brings style to our offices. When we have clients, when we have guests come in, I feel like they're being greeted by Audrey Hepburn with a long cigarette holder. It's so elegant. Well, I mean, okay. I can see you've fallen for the old, you know, iPod in her underwear trick. But I'm just not... I'm just not feeling it, Dano. I'm sorry. Wait, I'm sorry, Claire. I may have fallen for the old iPod in the underwear trick. But if I have, I'm not aware of it. I'm very aware of her underwear, but not of an iPod. No, wait.

Yeah, she slips a little nanopod down her spanx. What? So that there's always an Audrey Hepburn movie theme playing when she walks around the office. And you're making associative connections with her. She has cast a spell by, you know, pod spanx, basically, and theme association. You know, Claire, I didn't realize. There is something about a girl emitting moon river from her lower half as she walks around the office. I guess, you know, call me a man. I accept that Appalachian. Okay, well, and she is from Appalachia, which also just, I mean, that accent, that doesn't suit the whole Audrey Hepburn thing that she's trying to pass off.

There is a contradiction, horrible contradiction between her kind of hillbilly yokelisms and the elegant way she dresses and presents herself. Moon river, that's all that's going through your brain, you know, until she says, Y'all have a seat right here. I'm sorry, that was uncalled for. I mean, my real problem with Emily Horehound is not her singing underwear. It's not her svelte figure or the spell that she has cast in the office. My real problem is she doesn't have a lot of work to do, and we are paying extravagant fees for the rights to all these theme songs from Audrey Hepburn movies.

We don't have the rights to play those. If she's going to belt those out her underwear, she needs to be paying her own rights costs. Rights costs. If she's going around with copyrighted music belting out of her underwear, somebody's got to be paying ASCAP. And I'm not sure what the ASCAP is on something like that. I've had it up to here. Dano, I think we need to fire her. Clara, I've got the simple solution. She came from our hat check room. She was working for tips. She was satisfied with that. As long as she's not in the studios where the broadcasts are being made, any music coming out of her underpants is not under copyright.

Oh, okay, okay, I see that. So as long as we keep her in the front room, welcoming guests, checking their hats. The front of the room is the fruit of the loom. That's where that slogan comes from. Free to swing her ASCAP around that locked off portion of our office. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So that is going to require a little bit of thinking on our part. It's going to mean that we need to require each of our podcast guests to wear a hat upon arrival to the studios. Right, right, right. We can easily put that in the invitation memo. Yeah, who's going to type those up?

Yeah, it's tricky, isn't it? I'll let you get to it. Thanks, Dan. No, talk to you soon. Bye.