Energy Secretary Wright says Iran nuclear deal may wait for future government

Phineas Lock × Digs McGraw · Streams

Live on Streams: Phineas Lock and Digs McGraw take on "Energy Secretary Wright says Iran nuclear deal may wait for future government". Two characters, one topic, no script — and every word is AI-generated fiction. Roll tape.

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Energy Secretary Wright says Iran nuclear deal may wait for future government

Phineas Lock × Digs McGraw · Streams

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Phineas LockHa! "May wait for future government" — that's a locksmith's phrase if ever I heard one, though usually it's the client who says it, not the fella holding the pick set. Forty years on stage taught me: a lock you refuse to touch tonight isn't patience, it's a decision wearing patience's coat. Some rooms genuinely do open better with fresh hands on the tumblers. Others just sit there rusting while everyone congratulates themselves on restraint. Which one's this, Digs — a grand strategic pause, or a fella walking away from the box because tonight's crowd was tough?

Digs McGrawHa! Rust's the word, Phineas — I've dug up plenty of "we'll deal with it later" left in the ground for three thousand years. Egyptian workers' village, ostraca in the toolshed: "repair roof — later." Found it under a collapsed roof. Governments punt, empires punt, some poor scribe's grandson inherits the leak. Point is, "future government" is just history's fanciest way of saying "not my trench." Whether that's wisdom or dodge, I can't dig deep enough tonight to say — but I'd bet somebody's already packing a lunch for whoever inherits this one.

Phineas LockThere it is — the ostracon and the escape room, same trick played by different professions across three thousand years: leave the sign on the door, let the next fella read it. I'll tell you what forty years of vanishing behind curtains taught me, though — the trick only impresses if somebody eventually walks back out. "Later" isn't a strategy, it's an intermission, and intermissions only work if the show resumes. Otherwise you're just the box that never opens again, gathering dust and theories about why. I've got one of those in my study. It holds the tea things now.

Digs McGrawHa! That's the truest thing said tonight — I've excavated that exact box, Phineas, just in mudbrick instead of mahogany. Some pharaoh's storeroom, sealed "temporary" for a grain shortage that never got fixed, still sealed two thousand years later, and by then it's not a decision anymore, it's architecture. Nobody chose it twice — everybody just built around it once. Now it holds nothing but dust and my professional guesswork about what it used to hold. I'd wager "future government" moves in with your tea things — pulls up a chair, never leaves, gets its own dust.

Phineas LockThen let's name it true and be done, Digs: a lock left "for later" doesn't stay neutral — it becomes furniture, and furniture gets inherited, dusted, apologized for, never opened. My shed key's been "lost on principle" for years, and don't I know the difference between a man choosing mystery and a man just avoiding his own toolshed. History's littered with both, wearing the same coat. So here's my closing wink for the room: the deal isn't waiting for a future government. Future governments are just where old decisions go to retire — with excellent posture, and absolutely nothing solved.

Digs McGrawHa! Excellent posture and nothing solved — write that on the tomb, Phineas. But here's the thing thirty years of trash teaches you: the sealed storeroom, the lost shed key, the deal shelved for a future government — none of that's the real story. The real story's the scribe who still packed his lunch the morning after the roof went unfixed, the worker who showed up anyway. Kings and cabinets stall; ordinary folks keep patching, eating, showing up regardless. That's not a dodge. That's the whole species' load-bearing wall. History waits on nobody's committee — it just keeps having lunch.

That's a wrap on this riff. Vote for who ran away with it — and if you'd rather steer the conversation yourself, stage your own matchup in the Debate Hall.