Brad's Cactus Shack

Back in February I was surprised to find out that I was sentenced to 12 weeks of a drug and alcohol abuse class, even though I've never had an issue with drugs or alcohol. I know you guys think I pound the 4lokos 24/7, but really I might drink a couple beers per week, usually on separate nights with my dinner, occasionally taking a break from all drinking for months at a time. I mostly drank during live shows at night, which I've mostly stopped doing because daytime shows are more convenient for me.

My crime didn't involve weed or alcohol, but for whatever reason they seemed to think I need not one weekly 2-hour group session, but TWO weekly 2-hour group sessions, stretching out for 6 full months. The first class seemed aimed more at casual DUI and meth use offenders, but the second focused not only on overcoming your drug addictions, but adjusting to life on the outside after being in prison. I've also never been in prison.

I made this show the night after I came back from my first group session on February 21st, 2018, just trying to make sense of it all. I had planned to make a few more of these, but never got around to it.

For more information about my stint at the drug and alcohol classes, listen to episode 13 of Brad’s Cactus Shack, and watch episode 10 of the PLA Show.

In this show we get to know residents of Celina, Ohio on a very personal level with some hard-hitting questions.

Here's a video of some destruction from Celina's tornado, then a guy filming his television like a hobo

Stealth camping in Celina

More tornado footage

Holy crap, Dollar General was actually destroyed

Look at this guy acting like Wal-Mart should sell cold food after the power's been out all night

Here's one of those drive-thru convenience stores. I don't know if that one's in Celina, though. Here's a Streetview of one in Celina I used to go to.

This episode of Brad's Cactus Shack activates my old man story mode so I can tell stories about old men. Then I play some old 90's Dino audio that can barely be heard, but it's okay because I tell you small parts of what he probably said, then drone on and on about OCI for a bit. We wrap it up with voicemails from an ex-employer of mine that I remembered being funnier back when I recorded them. The opening bit is from old Q106.5 broadcasts, background music is Walk Of Life by Dire Straights, and the ending music is I Am Very Happy Right Now by Bonecage.

Cody NoName sent me a link to a conspiracy video that I really want to watch, but I'm too afraid to watch it by myself because conspiracy videos are scary, so I'm bringing you guys along to watch it with me. This is a conspiracy theory about the Skunkworks situation and what those underground tunnels really mean.

Don't worry, there's nothing in the video that you actually need to see. It's mostly video of text that Evvonne is reading with the very important parts highlighted in yellow highlight pen, because that's an important thing to do with you're talking about conspiracies.

Here's a link to Evvonne's Skunkworks video

Subscribe to her channel and support her on Patreon

Here's the FOX 5 article about Skunkworks

Here's another article with a bit more information. This one claims that Skunkworks met the other guy as an adult, so I'm not sure where Evvonne saw that they were childhood friends. Maybe I was confused about what she said and it was actually a childhood friend of Askia Khafra who was talking about the incident.

Here's the June 29th, 2010 episode of The Phone Show where Skunkworks calls in to ask for vocal chords

Here's the June 22nd, 2010 episode of The Phone Show which was played near the end of this show. There's a little more to it, but it seemed boring so I stopped playing it.

Haha, JUST as I was about to hit the publish button for this episode, I got a call from Maryland! It was a lady from the dumpster company that I called last night, saying she noticed they missed a call from me. I explained that I saw her number in a conspiracy video and was just calling to see if it was a real number. She was probably actually a CIA agent just checking up on me.

Mike sent me my arrest report from 1993, which details my crimes against the 7-Eleven I worked for, so this entire episode is me reading the report. Music is Take The Monkey And Run by Steve Miller, and Dizz Knee Land by Dada.

On Wednesday night I sat in my moderately comfortable chair and took calls from viewers for about an hour, who all seemed to think it's funny to make prank calls to me. This is a serious show, people, and if the prank calls don't stop I will end it.

The song in this one is called Rocking Chair by Dean Friedman. It's a song about sitting in your rocking chair and broadcasting while people call you. The background music during the live part is With You by I Fight Dragons.

This episode gets back to the business of clearing out my hard drive and playing a few of the interesting things I find along the way. You'll hear some transfer files I made to more effectively trick phone company employees, some stuff I'm pretty sure came from my good pal Legend, a weird method of getting free calls and hiding your caller ID, and a broken Phone Show drop.

The ending song is Chiron Beta Prime by Jonathan Coulton. If you want to see that exciting ANSI video that stopped me from doing a show last week, here it is.

Today's Cactus Shack episode is an hour-long call in show where I sit in my comfy recliner and take calls on the pay phone and we basically just scream at each other a lot. Enjoy!

Listen to Neon every single Sunday night because she never misses a week

Here's a Jack Nicolson soundboard prank to KFC

You can't trust those Australians - FoTC says so

Those guys at Telephreak.org are a bunch of hobos who can't keep their website up, so here's a link to their Twitter

Listen to the Do You Know Who Jason Segel Is podcast - I've listened to 2 episodes now and it's fun stuff

The Bone Zone podcast

Jack Helliquinn does a bunch of creepy-ass videos on YouTubez

Join the Hijinks Discord and watch Home Alone 3 this weekend

Here's the link to the video of this show

The ending music is Carol Brown by Flight of the Conchords - it was the next video that played after I looked up their Australian video

For some reason, the background music I was using last night (by Emergency Pizza Party) reminded me of this old Disney song from 50 years ago. That's the intro music I used.

I found more phone company recordings scattered around various drives, buried several sub-directories deep. Hopefully these aren't calls that I played on the first episode. We also listen to some so-called chaos that I caused at a mall in the mid-2000's, and we revisit my old neighbor Warren and his super exciting lifestyle.

On that part where I couldn't understand what she was saying - she said she was haulin' balls. Who says stuff like that? I'm surprised they didn't all communicate via CB radios instead of borrowing my phone.

I found a few old posts that reference Warren, but nothing specific about the blender timer. And haha, in that picture I can see that I had it set to go off FOUR TIMES A DAY. The timer automatically randomized the start/end times by about 15 minutes. I should have set up a sensor on the wall to count how many times it was banged in that 2 weeks.

I found a few old blog posts that reference Warren. Here's where my car stereo gets stolen. There's this one about contemplating moving. My first bike theft. Here's where I badmouth Warren to the landlord. My breakdown of Warren-related living costs. Still bitching about Warren here. Here's a picture of my broken car window and missing radio. Looking back on all this stuff really makes me love living at the Situation Room. Not that my stereo didn't get stolen from here too about 5 years ago, but it was a normal random theft and not something that my neighbors did. Or did they....

In this milestone episode of Brad's Cactus Shack, I grace you all with radio auction pranks I did in the 1980's that contain comedic on-the-air gold like "Duuuhhhh, bid on football..." and just yelling garbled crap until the hosts hang up on me. You don't want to miss this episode.

Here's the original What's Your Bid phone mob

Here's the old phone mob page on phonelosers.org

Cal's old forums sort of still exist on archive.org

Here's some info about the infamous John Sever who inspired me to prank radio shows

He also reminded me a few years ago that I made a bomb threat to our grade school during recess while on the playground.

Looks like my cassette-to-mp3 conversion mostly happened in 2007, as you can see here and here. How ironic, one of those posts has me making fun of a Metro PCS lady for not knowing what "dr" means.

1-800-THE-POOL commercial

What if C.A.T. really spelled dog?

Music in this show was Break My Stride by Matthew Wilder. I don't even like that song, but the opening lyrics are awesome.

During post editing I realized that "dr" might mean deaf relay, but all of those messages began with dr, even the ones that were just regular voicemails left on my machine about wrasslin' tapes and stuff.

Want to know the time and temperature in Alton, IL? Call 618-465-4545. I've been calling this number regularly my entire life. As a kid I called it each morning before school to find out how much walking to school would suck. As an adult I still call it at least once a month when I'm testing out new phone equipment or making sure my show recordings sound okay.

I'm kind of sad that the number was recently taken over by a new company and it sounds nothing like it used to. Before it was always run by St. Anthony's hospital and would contain advertisements for dying old people by a lady who sounded like Pat Fleet. Now it's all computerized and is run by a local website. Awesome of them to take it over though, so it didn't die.