A (13:37)
You walk into a place like Menards and maybe the size of it takes away its charm. It's a big chain store. The smaller hardware stores are so personable and friendly. They remind you of the old days. The problem is the small hardware stores have more restrictive hours. They don't have as many products, and what they do have are more expensive. So it's a quandary for you. Now take that comparison to the world of banks. Something different happens. You leave your big national bank and you switch to North American Banking Co. A community bank with six Twin Cities locations, and you get your small and friendly and warm banking experience but without losing anything. The big banks offer nothing that North American Banking Company doesn't offer. North American Banking Company isn't more expensive. It has every single feature the big guys have. It has every service. Plus they offer that personal touch that means it's easier for them to approve your loan because they don't have to check with the big guys across the country. You're local, they're local. They understand you and your life. You're their neighbor. It's easier for them to deal with you as a unique individual and not a data point On a spreadsheet. Yes. All the pluses with none of the negatives. North American Banking Company. What, pray tell, are you waiting for, people? North American Banking Company Member fdic. Equal Housing Lender. Back to this term friendly and what it does to words that it's placed beside. It's extraordinary to me that its number one use, and I've looked this up, the number one use of friendly is as a word to set beside the word reminder. That's the number one use in the English language for friendly. The number one use of friendly is using it in the phrase just a friendly reminder. That's the way friendly is employed most often in this world in the English language. Why do we need reminders to become friendly reminders? What are they before they're friendly reminders? You see, a ghost is scary before friendly is added. A Nazi is a disturbing, sick and twisted individual before friendly is added. A reminder, however, is just fine before it's made friendly. A reminder is kind of nice from the get go. Why do we need to make it friendly? It wasn't unfriendly. If we said to someone, hey, just a reminder, tomorrow's garbage day, would that person hearing it get angry? Would they get upset? Don't ever say that to me again. If you want to keep that pretty nose of yours nice and straight. Okay? Oh, I'm sorry. I meant to say, just a friendly reminder, tomorrow is garbage day. There you go. That's. That's kind of you. Thanks much. I had forgotten about garbage day. I appreciate the reminder. What are we afraid of with reminders? That we have to make them friendly or we could get into all sorts of trouble. Say you're having to remind a prisoner that tomorrow is his execution day. Say you're his attorney and you know his mind has been scattered of late. Do you say, hey, just a friendly reminder, tomorrow they fry you? I'm not certain that would help. That actually sounds worse to make it friendly. For me personally, the most troubling use of friendly has been when the military has had to inform parents that their son has died from friendly fire. Would you ever feel a little bit better knowing it was friendly? Or does that maybe make it a little worse, given that friends don't let friends get shot? At least that's what the bumper sticker says on my car. Friendly fire should never have been a term. Accidental would have made more sense. Accidental fire, when your car runs into another car, what is it called? An accident. Not a friendly crash. Friendly fire should never ever, ever have been a term because once you're saying friendly fire, you're opening the door to a Saturday morning kids cartoon. Jimmy the Friendly Bullet. Hi, I'm Jimmy the Friendly Bullet. Here I go, zooming through the friendly skies, ready to take out a friendly guy. Friendly fire shouldn't make you smile. It's like getting shot by Gomer Pyle. Tough to get mad at that mar. Sweetest jar head you've ever seen. He shoots and it's a rock. Well, I' n seen though. You're blown a two smithereens, by the way. Smithereens. Have you ever bothered to find out what the heck that is? What happened to him? He was blown to smithereens. Smithereens. What are those? You don't know? Smithereen, interestingly, is a word that comes from the Irish language, the Gaelic language, from the word smidgeni, meaning little bits. That's a Gaelic word. Smidgee ne, smithereens, Smidge eeny. Gaelic for little bits. We get a lot of words from the Irish. Did you know that Irish language has given us all sorts of words? Bog. We got that from them. Galore. Got that from them. When you say there are fireflies galore out here. Stole that word from the Irish slogan. Took that from the Irish whiskey. Took that word from the Irish, from their Gaelic word, which translated means water of life. Water of life. We get the word hubbub from the Irish slough clan. The word gimmick, the word hooligan. Thank the Irish for all of those. Thank you very much. Thanking you kindly. I spotted something on social media that disturbed me a little bit this week. It featured Madonna in a very unusual role for Madonna. She was offering. I can't say this with a straight face. She was offering her services as a spiritual teacher. She was offering her services helping you learn the Kabbalah, the esoteric mystical tradition within Judaism that explores the hidden spiritual dimensions of God and the universe and humanity's relationship with the divine. Madonna is offering her services for a fee to help you learn these teachings. So if you've always wanted to learn the esoteric mystical tradition known as Kabbalah, you can learn it with Madonna. You have to pay her. You have to send her some money. Madonna? Did I mention it was Madonna? What are you up to these days, Tim? Well, I'm exploring spiritual growth with Madonna. Madonna? Yeah. She's become a spiritual teacher in her old age. Well, Tim, there are all sorts of spiritual teachers out there. There are more now than ever. In fact, in all walks of spiritual life, there are people who have devoted their entire lives to spiritual practice, spiritual pursuits, spiritual teachings. There are enlightened mystics out there by the score. People with profound, deep spiritual insights and understandings. I know that, but I went with Madonna. Tim, what the hell were you thinking there? Well, with this spiritual stuff, I'm. I'm like a virgin. It's all new to me. So I don't feel I can start with the top spiritual leaders. I can't go right to Thi Nhat Hanh in Buddhism or Paramahansa Yogananda in Hindu, or Father Richard Rohr in the Christian contemplative tradition. I need to start out with something more accessible. So I'm going with Madonna. Did I mention I'm going with Madonna? Actually, she's my second guru. My first guru was Pee Wee Herman. He had a kid's way of talking about spirituality that I could understand on a six year old level with Madonna. I've kind of graduated to being more of a selfish teen in my spiritual questioning. When I get done with her, I'm going to study under Derek Jeter, the former New York Yankee, and I'm finally going to wrap up at the end of my life learning from Mel Brooks. Mel wrote a religious spiritual text that he called what the. Yeah, that's the title of it. What the. I think at the End of My Life, that'll probably be my main bible. What the. It's really, really good from everything I've read. He just asks questions Mel does. For instance, what the heck is up with death? That's one question he asks. What the heck is up with death? That's one sick invention. Death. Someone has some explaining to do there. Why'd they invent death? Mel has a point. I mean, is there anything more twisted than death? And it's not like it's rare. It's everywhere, man, everywhere. What gives? Someone had a little bit too much hooch when they created this world, huh? And they were a mean drunk. Death. I mean, death is just, you know what death is? Death is icky. Mel is a great spiritual teacher. I hear he's way, way better than Madonna. But again, he's not doing the Kabbalah. He's more into the whole. What the. You know, Picture yourself one day at the age of 67. You've worked hard your whole life. But here's the big question. Will you have enough to live the retirement you want to live? Most Americans vastly underestimate how much money they'll need. And when they find out it's so often too late. Health care costs, inflation, living longer than they thought they would. It all adds up. That's where Josh Arnold comes in. The difference he makes for people is often the difference between comfort and struggle. With over 40 years of experience, Josh Arnold has helped thousands and thousands of people transform their worry into confidence. He doesn't just manage money. He helps you build a roadmap to the retirement you deserve. He gives you 48 minutes on the phone for free. Take him up on it. 952-925-5608. Investment services offered by Josh Arnold Investment Consultant, LLC. A security and investment advisor. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk. Tommy Mischke is a paid endorser. John Kennedy is president. Gas is 30 cents a gallon. And somewhere in Minnesota, a man opens a car lot. He doesn't know his grandson will stand in the same spot 60 years later. He doesn't know families will plan what he sells. First car at 16, minivan at 30, truck when the kids leave. No, he doesn't know all that. He just knows this. If you treat people right, they remember and they come back. That man was Red Leonard. He opened Fury Motors in 1963. And while we don't always remember the cars we buy, we remember the man who stayed open late because your work kept you working late. We remember the kid who grabbed a couple mementos from your trade in vehicle before you said goodbye to it because he knew those things mattered to you. Fury Motors has four dealerships now. They sell new Jeeps, Chryslers, Dodge, Fords, GMCs, Buicks and all makes and models of used cars. But walk into any Fury location and you'll feel that same thing people felt in 1963. Guys taking care of the customer with the idea that if they do it right, that person will be back. Fury Motors. I might start a religion. I don't know. I've been thinking about it. Just calling it Cosmos. What religion are you? Cosmos. Well, who's your guru? Mishki. Well, what's he say? Well, Mishki says that the space between galaxies is so vast that our brains can't really grasp it. The Milky Way, for instance, is about 100,000 light years wide. 100,000 light years wide. Now, the nearest major galaxy to the Milky way, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away. That means you could fit over 20 Milky Way sized galaxies in the gap between the Milky Way and our closest neighbor, Andromeda. And Andromeda is considered near. That's considered nearby compared to other galaxies in the very emptiest regions of the universe. Cosmic voids. Galaxies can be separated by hundreds of millions of light years. Remember, Andromeda is only 2.5 million light years away from the Milky Way. But there are galaxies that are hundreds of millions of light years apart. And in those gaps, you could fit thousands upon thousands of galaxies, and you'd still have mostly nothing in those gaps. Now, imagine being stuck there sometime. No nearby stars, no planets, no bright sky. The closest galaxy millions and millions of light years away in every direction. You could drift for millions of years, millions of years, and never pass a star, never pass a planet, never even pass a cloud of gas. Nothing. On average, that empty space contains one atom per cubic meter. That's less than the emptiest vacuum humans could ever create. The vast, vast majority of our incomprehensibly gigantic universe is trillions and billions and bazillions, quintillions, Godzillions of miles of nothingness. Empty space, nothing, nada, zip. More nothing than any nothing we could ever hope to create here on Earth. The ultimate nothing. For an almost infinite amount of space. Just nothing. An immeasurable void. At night, when I'm lying in bed, I like to imagine myself in that void. The only something in that endless field of nothing. I say out loud, anybody here? And of course, I hear nothing. Because I am alone. And I mean alone. More alone than anything has ever been alone in the history of alone and there. Alone by myself in that eternal ocean of nothing. Feeling an isolation impossible to imagine. A loneliness more profound than anyone could ever encounter anywhere else. Then and there, I picture myself saying, well, if ever there were a place to create an imaginary friend, this is it. And then and there, I create Fritz Cobdabbler. Fritz Andrew Cobdabbler. And he becomes a lifesaver. I say, fritz, thank God I was given an imagination. Where would I be without it? My lord, it's good to have you with me. And Fritz would be the first imaginary friend, the very first to ever wish he had never been born. Why the hell did you bring me here, Mishki? He would say, this is not a fun place. This is no place for anyone, even someone imaginary. This is hell, Mishka. You've brought me to hell. Wait, wait, wait. Fritz. Fritz. You do not know yet how much fun I can be. Hold on. And Fritz would say, do you know how much fun you would have to be for me to enjoy this eternal void? It would be a level of fun God would have trouble attaining. God would have trouble attaining that level of fun. And I would say, well, Fritz, Old boy, I have never thought about how much fun God could be. This is something I've never contemplated and this will give me something to pass the time and I need stuff to help me pass the time. When you think about an omniscient, omnipotent deity, you think about how everybody focuses on God being all loving, extraordinarily loving, compassionate. These people have these near death experiences and talk about this tremendous field of love, all encompassing love. They don't talk about the fun. I would think God would be fun. How come these people don't talk about attaining a level of such fun? There aren't words to describe it. Why don't we hear people say the first thing they noticed after moving through the tunnel and emerging into the wondrous loving light was how much fun God was? Wow. I mean, he's a riot. The level of fun was like. Well, it was like being 12 years old at the state fair, times a trillion. The most fun I've ever had. I didn't want to come back. I said, God, don't make me go back. This is fun. And God would say, I know I'm a fun guy. There's no one more fun. I am the summit of all fun. And I'd say, I know you are. That's why I want to stay here. You are world shaking, zany fun of an impossibly high order. Wow. I died and I saw a bright light and a tunnel. And when I emerged on the other side of that tunnel, I heard surprise. It was a party. And the best party I ever attended. I will tell you this. You think you've had fun. You don't know fun until you've discovered God created fun. He is the fun czar. He's the emperor of fun. It was fun in all directions. Endless, eternal fun. Fun without boundaries, without limits, beyond all the fun the world has ever produced combined. God in the end turned out to be a cosmic clown, if you will. A good natured, fun loving, zany, wacky goofball with a penchant for pull my finger humor that actually is pretty entertaining when it's coming from God. He is nuts. I am telling you, God is nuts in the best way. I've spent a lot of time the last couple of days thinking about fun. Are people having it out there? Is it fun being alive? Are you folks having fun? I went to a Reddit post today that stated the following. I think that having fun is the highest order of human experience. I have set my life goal to having as much fun as possible. I'M curious to know from others what's the most fun you've ever had? And one Reddit user after another answered the question. Here's just a sampling of what people answered when asked what's the most fun you've ever had? This person says I decided to fly out to Vancouver on a whim during the Olympics. Inspired by my spontaneity, a couple friends met up with me. We're all Latvian, so we caught a couple hockey games, got the entire stadiums cheering for our team. Then we met Wayne Gretzky. Then we pre gamed a Canada game, sitting on the ocean with a Heineken mini keg and a bald eagle landed right next to us. Then we got into an amazing bar for a Canada hockey game. There was a four hour line to get in, but we met some Latvian athletes and including a couple medal winners and they got us to the front of the line. I could go on, but this was the most fun I've ever had. Here's another person posting When I was a kid, we had the ultimate slumber party. 20 kids showed up. 4 kids brought over their N64s and hooked them up to multiple TVs. We had a battle royale of Goldeneye, Smash Bros and a bunch of other games. This night will be remembered as the greatest night of fun we ever had. Wow. There's a simple little thrill. A slumber party with video games. This guy says the most fun I ever had was a weekend in a five star hotel room with my girlfriend doing nothing but having sex and ordering room service. This guy writes. When I was eight I went on a cross country trip with my aunt, uncle, my older brother and three other cousins. My uncle had one of those big conversion vans. We towed a pop up camper with all of our bikes on top of it. We had a giant box of comic books in the van. For long stretches on the road, we stayed in campsites every night. We rode our bikes all over the campsites. We swam in rivers, had a snowball fight in the Rockies at 9,000ft in July. I was too young to know much about any of the places we were visiting. I just woke up each morning looking forward to something awesome. And something awesome always happened. Now there, there there is a beautiful, beautiful thing to be a child and to wake up every morning looking forward to something awesome and something awesome always happening right there is what life should be right there in a nutshell. You should wake up every day looking forward to something awesome and something awesome should then happen every day. There's the world I Want? Right there. Fun. Are you having fun? Is there fun still being had out there? Are people having the most fun they've ever had? Or can't that be grasped anymore? Are those days over? Was the most fun long ago? Or is the most fun still ahead? And do you have control of it? Back after these messages. The biggest problem with memory care facilities is staff. Turnover is often high. At a lot of these memory care centers, workers are in short supply, certainly good workers. How do you ensure you don't have high turnover? That the highest quality applicants come your way and that they stay well? You become the well Shire of Medina and Bloomington. The Wellshire doesn't even consider hiring anyone without medical training. Try finding that rule anywhere else. Number two, they provide an environment where staff is valued. Never overworked. They're cared for, they're appreciated. People who arrive at the Wellshire arrive there to work for life. They have found their home, their employment home. The Wellshire knew that they wanted to maintain impeccable standards. It was going to be hard to find workers unless they offered them a lot. So they offer them a lot. It's their way of winning the turnover game and of ensuring that people caring for your loved one are not second rate actors giving lip service to giving a damn, to caring, when mostly they're enjoying time on their phone while your loved one is shoved in front of a TV set. Don't accept that. Tour the well Shire of Bloomington and Medina. It's January 13th, 3:47am Sarah's awake because she can see her breath. Not outside. Inside, in her bedroom, she can see her breath. The furnace died sometime after midnight. And now the cold is doing what cold does. Here's what nobody tells you about a broken furnace in January. It's not about the temperature. It's about realizing how fragile everything is. How fast home becomes just a building. But here's something else nobody tells you at 4:15am when the truck from MSP pulls up and Tom, yes, Tom from Minneapolis St. Paul Plumbing, Heating and Air walks through that door. That's not just a repair that's about to happen. That's the moment the universe tilts back. That's when home becomes home again. At Minneapolis St. Paul Plumbing, heating and Air, they don't just fix furnaces. They bring back the safety of home, the comfort, the feeling of being sheltered. Minneapolis St. Paul Plumbing, heating and Air. That feeling of home. Well, let's go to the phones. I want to go to the phones. I'm going to spin the listener wheel. Find someone to call. I Want to make a call to a listener, find out what's going on in listener land? Let's see what happens when we spin the big wheel. Spin the big Wheel, Tommy.
