BudPod with Phil Wang & Pierre Novellie - Episode 220 - Self-Help Dracula

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

Phil returns with tales of Glastonbury! Green bins and sequins, Project Pyramid, Russian coup FOMOCorrespondence from Emma and her spring car, Turkish tat Get bonus BudPod on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Budpod 220! 220! Ooh, Spenny! Spenny! Well, that's a bit Spenny, by which I mean Glastonbury tickets, Pierre. Ah! Which is a festival I was just at! I was just at a Glastonbury festival! Wow!

I hear the tickets are spenny I don't spenny any on Tickies because I go there as a Performer But I get to enjoy the festival As well You don't need to spenny any Because you're fenny

Fenny? Fenny That's like a sassy American You're just a fanny It's a fanny You're such a fanny fanny I'm a funny fanny But it was good

I missed Fred again Which is annoying I missed Fred again Again He's an electronic musician he's he's sort of coming up and it's um it's really my kind of music I love that sort of thing yeah like there's a lot of samples and like build-ups to big sort of electronic drops and sort of wall of sound Brian Eno stuff just washing over you I love it but I couldn't make it what kind of samples are we

talking about because obviously there's like public service broadcasting which is like sort of World War II 50s samples he does samples of things people either he knows or he's found like a lot of the samples are people singing like a cappella in their bedrooms

on their phones or the opening track of his Lockdown album, which is very, very good, he samples a poet, a performance poet, and he just cuts up a couple of the lines and, you know, autotunes them and repeats them. Oh, right. I Found You is a song.

It's really, really good. He's really good. And a very sweet middle class boy in a very clean white t-shirt as all electronic musicians are yeah middle class white boys in white t-shirts there's something about the private schooling system that makes you really good with the mixes and little bleep bloops and that probably means like you could afford electronic equipment as a teenager

yeah and you were a bit nerdy I think that's right and I think that's why so many musicians even from the past were if not private school in the UK like grammar school like pre-80s education so grammar

so still with the aesthetic and levels of suppression and repression of a private school so they had more to rebel against and opportunities oh yes the Gen X people I mean like classic rock

I mean people who were educated in the 50s and 60s because even if you weren't at private school the teacher still had fucking cloaks and hit you and screamed at you yeah and beat your ass yeah um okay so the question on everybody's lips and on everybody's hips was chung fu's crystal warehouse still at glastonbury i was in the healing fields briefly, which is the hippie area. I did not actively seek out Chung Fu. Yeah. Partly because,

and it's unlikely, but I was worried he'd, he'd read the book and would pelt, uh, blood crystals at me. If I walk past his teepee. Although, um,

he's such a loopy hippie. He probably didn't remember me or, and probably doesn't. Uh, i don't think he reads books that come out in on hardback i don't feel like i think i don't think he reads any book that isn't self-published yeah yeah yeah i think that he reads books that are either self-published or very old paperbacks on aliens and unicorns and spirits from the 70s that have that kind of almost brown paper now yes and loose leaf binding from age

and you see them in like shops that sell skull-shaped bongs uh in parts of the southwest of england yes yeah exactly yeah so i did not see chung fu um or and so which means i'm not up to date with what form chung fu has taken this year i presume it is still a an old chinese man who looks like an old chinese lady but it could be any chung fu could be anything yeah that's that's the part of the magic and the mystery uh so okay in the absence of the crystal warehouse what was the most hippie fucking thing you saw oh well you'll hate this, Pierre. In the green futures bit, so there's a field called green futures, and it's about protecting the environment. It's about how we move towards a carbon neutral world

and how we cut out plastics and all that sort of thing. And one of the tents, one of the areas, just had a big sign above it saying no to nuclear power. No! There's a lot of that shit, man. And I just thought, okay, so you don't want a green future then. I thought this was a green future field. Not a living in La La Land field. I didn't realize that i was in the nimby field

no wonder there are not in my backfield not in my backfield no wonder there are no permanent structures in glastonbury you keep blocking planning permission yeah that was very annoying so the the annoying thing about glastonbury is politically speaking it is a lot of self-comforting meaningless and contentless um proselytizing yeah you know the the spark stage is covered in crocheted and knitted signs that say things as boundary pushing Pierre as stop climate change. Oh. And save the planet and there's no planet B. And buy less, make more.

Okay. And all this sort of thing. And which is good, you know know until i saw a sign that said stop climate change i i thought i think climate change is fine well it would never have occurred to me the sign kind of changed everything for me well i wouldn't it would never have occurred to me to try to stop it no no no i was assumed if something bad was happening you just let it happen yeah it was god's will yeah and so that that is the annoying thing about glass and i'm sure at some point it would have well i mean that is the hippie

that is the hippie um tradition really is that you know you call for change and then sit in a field the only green futures field that would have a an impact it would be if they literally were talking about trading in green futures like stocks and shares it's like there's just a guy bunch of guys in pinstripe suits investing in back troy yeah yeah just a bunch of guys in pinstripe suits just going like would you well if you um all form a kind of mutual fund you can you can invest in this offshore tidal um development and already the hippies are just fuck you man and they're just walking away oh man i'd love i'd love to start the uh stock exchange field in in glass and that'd be so fun yeah yeah yeah

but but you know what the thing about hippies are right they're either sort of hey man stop the war man and sitting around the field not doing anything or they are the sort of silicon valley business hippies who are incredibly cutthroat and extremely effective and end up very very rich yeah you know you know i mean yeah because they, because they've invented a kind of yogurt brand or they've run some sort of hippie business. Or they use hippie ideology to create products. I mean, Apple, a lot of Apple's design and ethos is from Steve Jobs following,

I can't remember which guru it is, but there was this Indian guru he was obsessed with and he followed him to India and it's all about sparseness right and and honing in on the thing that matters and cleanliness and you know and sort of keeping sort of a clean soul and that's you know apple products are like that they're very clean design there's there's a lot of empty spaces you can't even really you know you can't customize your desktop really you can't even really, you know, you can't customize your desktop really.

You can't really customize your phone backdrop really. You can put a picture on there, but it's not like a Windows where you can change the picture of every icon or whatever. It's all about simplicity, right? And that's very much the hippie ethos.

And the whole self-realization, the whole power of the individual, that's all hippie-ish. That's what silicon valley is about really it's a libertarian ideology and and so that's the one the side of the hippie yeah the people with blood boys and then the other side of the hippie is just sit around do nothing but they all kind of effectively believe in the same thing and dress the same weirdly yeah but end up with these completely opposite lives well that's it and then in extreme cases you get the the green brown

yeah you know where which isn't just something that happens to you if you spend too long at a festival um toilet wise and you eat too much spinach poppin up popeyes um it's that thing where someone becomes such a fan of you know the purity of the land that they start having a really uh strong view on who has the right to till the land and everyone should stay where they're from and maintain separate cultures and live in the woods and you know slowly things start to go a little dark yeah yeah yeah i mean we've talked about this before you know people talking about even even when when when in you know indigenous uh activism which talks about we were here first you know this land is ours and leftist progressives go yes you go oh okay okay yes no no there's some some addressing redressing of the balance does

have to happen here but um i don't think that should be the central argument that you go down yeah you know i think if you if you're going to believe in an argument it better be universal argument i'm pretty sure you don't want that argument being made in the uk by the welsh yeah or just generally any of the terrifying men you can find on various high streets on sunny days with no top on this land is ours we were here first it's much worse in uh in that context oh yeah um uh they well on the it's a real fest for poo lovers, of course, Pierre, i.e. the people listening to this podcast. A lot of...

I mean, I was shitting and pissing into a green wheelie bin for a lot of it. What? Yeah, so I didn't realize until this year what they actually are. In the performers backstage camping bit we have a little stretch of toilets and you go up walk up these stairs and you're in a little cubicle and there's a toilet and a hole and you can look down into a gradually building pile of it's your favorite trilogy urine feces and toilet paper oh wow building in this hole beneath you you can see everything and you and you you, wow. It's building in this hole beneath you. You can see everything.

And you go in with a cup of sawdust and you throw the sawdust on top. Oh, there's no blue? No blue. No blue, it's just sawdust. Oh, no! Hippies, man! What's wrong with the blue? But I like blue! You have to bring your own blue, Peter.

Oh, everyone's favourite blue liquid? It's sawdust. The sawdust keeps the smell... Like, keeps all the smell down. Bullshit. No, it does actually work. It does work. And it covers it up visually.

But then I realised I came off the platform after a couple of poos. And I looked at what was actually underneath them. And it's just green wheelie bins. So they wheel under these... These these holes and then they wheel out and god that's a that's a job, that's a job to have some of the jobs in Glastonbury must make you

wish you were like an animal or just like a bug instead of being a human in that moment you know what I mean you ever have those moments where you're like I kind of wish I was just a bug right now if i was a bug i'd be loving this all these turds yeah that's funny to wish can you imagine that wheeling oh i couldn't even bear to think what they do with the wheelie bins full of shit and piss and do you you think that the guys whose job

is to wheelbarrow away the wheelie bins full of celebrity logs look down on the Do you think they look down on the guys whose job is to carry all the normal people turds Right, yeah

You had a good day wheeling your normal turds around you fucking loser hey nice nice peasant shit you got there lana del rey crapped in mind yeah one of these is hers think about that i do a lot do you think secretly glass and breeze collecting all the poos of his headliners yeah and take up splicing the dna together to create them well the history's most talented person do you think they might be doing i think it's called the pyramid project and i think i think over time that's what's under that's what's buried under the pyramid stage yeah big biological engineering lab and they're going to have this sort of frankenstein like uh you know

the flair and longevity of elton john you know all these different dnas that they've collected in the poo wagon yeah yeah they must be doing it or do you think oh imagine like that's something that i could see a british journalist doing undercover they become one of the celebrity wheelie bin full of shit people and they take it away and they just swab it for drugs oh yeah and then they could do a big expose on how the backstage celebrity toilets are filled with this drug or that drug in in the sewage and they don't know who's who's responsible for sure but that they don't care you know that's an angle yeah a sting operation a stink operation a stink operation to end all stink operations what what celebrity would you least like to follow up the stairs onto the green

wheelie bin because if you look in the hole presumably you can see this terrible mountain I think Jeremy Clarkson but so okay hold on a second he feels like I feel like he eats a lot of red meat

and not very much fiber but but Hold on a second. I feel like he eats a lot of red meat. And not very much fiber. But, but. Think on this. There could be a celebrity who you really like and you don't want that mystique ruined. Oh, I see. Is that your main concern here? Well, yeah.

Not about the quality of the poo they leave behind, but what it's going to do to my perception of it. Yeah, like never meet your heroes. Never use the loo right after your heroes because now then forever you can go, well, I know what that guy's or lady's shit smells like. And now that's in my head every time I encounter their work. I think, oh yeah, poo.

Have I told you I've used the loo after the Archbishop of Canterbury? Ooh, I don't know if you did maybe you did i have i was at uh he smashed it to pieces i was at a secret illuminati dinner thing oh was this the the museum one maybe and i went into the the men's room and coming out of the men's room, I was like, what's the Archbishop of Canterbury? In his finery, like wearing the uniform. Oh, man. I felt like I was in a joke.

I felt like I was literally in a joke. Yeah, that's definitely joke territory. I'd give it five minutes, my son. Or whatever. It gives you some Bible verse. it is easier to pass a camel through an eye of a needle than to follow what i just did so i i'd give it i'd give it 10 oh man yeah so who oh so so who would i least like to who whose legend would i at least like to tarnish by following them into the toy let yeah i think oh well i saw elton john i think i would i Elton John. I love some of his songs. I think I wouldn't really like to follow him into the toilet.

I don't like the idea of him doing a... Can you imagine Elton John in a sparkly suit just sat on the toilet with his trousers around his ankles? It's quite an upsetting image. With a little cigarette in the corner of his mouth reading the paper. Yeah, yeah. You don't want to see him like that. No, no. No, that's a good one i guess it is more disappointing in proportion to their finery

yeah anyone with a lot of mystique and an artifice like elton john or lady gaga or lady gaga it kind of suits her persona i'd say to take a big old crap because she's that's kind of her thing all right like she's a bit she's wild she's out there she's unapologetic you know she does she doesn't shy away from the dirty stuff what if you look down you know what you know who i would really wouldn't want to is follow one of the many uh bbc news readers that i fancy oh i think that would ruin it for a bit for me because because they're sat down when i'm watching them as well right they're sat down doing their job and so the imagery would sort of you could pick together i think more easily do you do you think when they sit down they say this just in and then and that just out

do you think um they do they do little little eruptions in between each like bong bong just like it's all timed. Breaking poos. Or just right before they unleash it. And now the weather. And then a big piss. It's a lot of fun they can have. Phil, have you got some sort of alarm? Oh, can you hear that?

Yeah, a little bit. Oh, shit. It's one of the house alarms. Well, burglaries aside. Well, the alarms keep messing up in my little muse, in my little corner. Do you think if you followed the right person into the loo and just looked into the big wheelie bin, there would just be a big...

Sorry, is the alarm very annoying I'm not sure if it's coming up on the microphone I can't tell I can just hear it faintly whatever okay if you look down there was just a sort of a completely like glittery turd like it had been rolled in glitter

you'd want it to look different yeah like Elton john's elton john's poo i'd want to be covered in glitter yeah maybe with a pair of glasses on it fun glasses yeah exactly oh man whereas my my life is not nearly as exciting as going to Glastonbury. Here's my problem, Phil. I keep losing my keys. Yes. Yeah, so Pierre is going through a key crisis at the moment. Yeah, I'm a key loser. This feels like very much a problem I have.

This seems like my kind of forgetfulness. But I will say I don't lose anything. This is the thing. My saving grace is I'm quite forgetful. I have occasional executive dysfunction, but I've never lost a wallet ever. I've never lost a watch. I've never lost a bank card.

I've never lost anything important ever, ever. I don't lose anything. So I'm intrigued to know what's going on with you. I used to be the biggest loser. I used to be, so lose a lot. When I was at school, I don't know where my homework is, don't know where my pen's gone. It was chaos.

And it was only through great force of will that I managed to gradually reduce the amount of things lost and the frequency with which they were lost to basically nil yeah and impressive i've had a big sign up you know like a whiteboard in my flat days since last pointless fucking thing has been lost or like you know whatever and i've had to keep wiping that board and putting zero because something's happened to my brain in the last maybe it's the heat or and it's specifically keys well yeah because now it's shorts where the fill and the keys can come out the shorts a lot more than a zipped jacket pocket as in they fall out the top

they fall out the top i yeah this has been a problem i've got some pretty shallow pockets and i've resorted to putting my key into my wallet. I've had to go back to a bar the other day because my key had just fallen out of my pocket onto the floor. Did they have it? Yeah, they had it. Oh, the sweet relief of that moment. Yeah, because I'm so constantly anxious,

I'm always patting myself down. So I noticed when I turned the corner from the bar because i did my routine pat and it wasn't there yeah you're like a one my anxiety does have some benefit you're like a one-man airport security oh yeah constant patting oh yeah when i when i when i get up to security at the airport i go no don't worry about it guys i've already done myself i got this like yeah cool good to see you phil come on through yeah you just do it in front of them while they sort of they lean back and gasp mary get over here look at this guy go you're like a speed the grace the softness of touch you're like Dave Grohl standing in

guest drummer you go through airport security and you go guys you mind if I just step in and do a couple of guest pat downs oh Phil it would be a please it would be a pleasure watch and learn everybody

Dave Grohl made a surprise performance at glastonbury the foo fighters yes he was a surprise but also he didn't he do some guest drumming on other bands oh over over the weekend i think so yeah did he yeah what's weird is that i wasn't at glastonbury but because i'm getting the external news overall coverage i know a couple more things about what happened than you do even though you were there absolutely you do end up in a little bubble there i mean it was very weird on saturday getting ready for my set in the cabaret tent and when you when you go somewhere like last year festival you sort of feel like the world stops but it doesn't and

i'm opening my phone and reading about fucking pregozin and wagner group of course fuck you were fucking rebelling against russia and and marching on moscow and i'm like i'm about to do 30 minutes in a warm tent to people who are mainly just trying to stave off mainly just trying to to sleep off a hangover yeah meanwhile there's a potential uh uh history going on in in yeah in russia this great historic event and is it weird that i was partly relieved progrosian didn't do it because i didn't want i would have got fomo is that weird you get that when progrosian's like fine i'll just go to belarus i was like oh oh, thank God. I didn't want to miss that. You didn't want to miss the downfall of the Putin regime live.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, incredible, incredible stuff. Oh, man. Yeah, so Prokosian just sort of, Prokosian, who's the head of the Wagner group, who are this mercenary army that ostensibly fights for Russia and Ukraine,raine but are a lot unto themselves he just went rogue basically right he mutinied well what's weird is that two days before that he just released a big video where he did something unforgivable in russia which was he told the truth yes he said what's actually going on yeah he said uh no the war is really dumb it's nothing to do with

denazifying that's obvious and also the only reason we're doing it is not to help russian speakers but so that the oligarchs can loot all of the natural resources of not just the parts we already have but the rest of it anyway bye like just the most insane suicidal video what did he what did he put that out on would russians have been able to see that on telegram yeah on various channels social media yeah right okay okay okay yeah so russians could could could see that well yeah and also all the all the wagner stuff is pro regime up till that point so the the security services have never stopped it it's a reliable channel although he did do a lot of criticizing of the defense ministry but never putin himself whereas that video where he's saying all this stuff is a

lie he didn't specifically say putin lied but he was saying all the things putin had said were lies indirectly so it's as good as and then he shot down seven fucking russian aircraft they're shooting down their own aircraft on the highway yeah incredible psychotic and then march on moscow everything's coming to a head how close will he get to nuclear facilities and then just like okay bye just insane insane very weird i mean in a way it's you know i guess just showing how easily he was able to drive into moscow oh yeah i mean or even to get near it and all the police and the the rosgvardia the national guard just doing nothing or actively working with him that's what was so fucked up about it because putin constantly does speeches about how if you betray russia it doesn't matter what we agree to officially we're just going to find you and kill you just like skripal yeah and then so pregorshin

must know that he's fucked or notionally fucked and then put Putin looks like an absolute weakling who has to negotiate with just this bald chef who's gone mad. You know? And so he looks really weak. Hopefully it's the best of both worlds and they're both fucked. Yeah. Right?

And this is how stuff with Russia always goes down anyway. Yeah. Is the two most powerful guys go, I want it all! And then they just shit the bed when it comes to actually getting it all. And then someone comes through the middle, right?

Yeah, someone was saying online, it's like Ceausescu's regime, hard but brittle. So very, very hard, but with enough cracks, it could just shatter much faster than people think. Really strange. Really think really strange really really strange for once so now so now wagner are not fighting in ukraine anymore um only the bits of wagner that did what putin said and signed contracts with the mod instead so that was part of what triggered all this is that they were going to pass a law that

said we'll make some demand that everyone like wagner would just have to become part of the mod right which uh would not have been nice for uh old old uh old pre pre prego old prego um because he just wants to go to africa he just wants them dime yeah he's old school like that he he wants to keep running like a fucking he's like an actual pirate he's like a pirate cobalt mines and and gold and diamonds and and illegal regime contracts in africa and a little bit in syria it's so vintage to have a villain who literally just wants like actual booty it's it's like not not not money not cash it's like chests full of pearls and jewels and gems. Yeah, and for him to look like that, you just go, yeah, that's it, that's right.

You need to look like that. A kind of saggy, bald, terrifying skull guy who does insane rambling speeches and dresses in silly military ways. Yeah, it's perfect. and silly uh military ways yeah it's it's perfect and it is also basically everything that happened is also the plot to call of duty modern warfare oh is it yeah russian ultra nationalists trying to mount a coup and take over russia and make it go even crazier that's call of duty so it was really surreal watching it just being like oh that video i'm prepared for this weirdly yeah i've played this level i've seen this cut scene i mean they're also even releasing videos of them like facing the camera saying you will never capture the green key that you need to unlock my you know like when they give

you it's like it's videos from fucking red alert too yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah well done player you may have defeated my armies in the south but we'll see how you cope with my new base underwater yeah exactly insane insane for that to be the reality that we live in um very very we're in a simulation territory where do you think it goes from here i mean it's good for the ukrainians but it's not it's not like war changing or war ending just yet no but it does seem like they've managed to advance a lot around bakhmut and and some of the other places uh to the south along that that sort of donetsk border in some places they're across the 2014 line um as in they've taken the 2014 line um as in they've taken they've they've taken land off of what russia got in 2014 yeah a little bit yeah so that's crimea yeah and they haven't committed anywhere near all of their guys yet so they're probably just waiting for the prime chance to go and just well this is it this

is why part of the reason why it's so easy for progosian to roll on roll into moscow is all the all the armies in ukraine right yeah and if you have an army that everyone knows is comprised of um just been let out of prison psychopaths who've spent the last year using flamethrowers in urban combat in ukraine the local drunk policeman is probably just like no like i'm obviously staying in bed i'm not fucking why would i why would i try and pull over this guy in my little in my little nino car for what a dollar a month you know in rubles yeah fuck that yeah no way well speaking of rogue lunatics phil let's do some correspondence yes roll into the moscow of our ears with your mercenary correspondence

mount some sort of amusing coup in our minds minds minds minds letters, emails, phone calligraphy, your sister, to who they want correspondence. I'm pulling nose hairs out of my nose. I can see it looks like agony. It's quite satisfying. It is quite painful, but when you get a couple,

oh, it feels good. Do you do that thing where they just put a bit of wax On the stick up your nose and just rip it all out No I trim them with my little trimmer Yeah I just go

Like that I should get some of that Give me that We've heard from Emma Emma I don't blam her for wanting to write in We've heard from Emma Emma I don't blam her for wanting to write in I don't blam her at all

That's nice The subject line of this email is Visiting my sister was a mistake Which is good Emma says Good morning P&P Good morning Shall we start with the end

Ah Very good place to start This is alternative Storytelling Tell us what we have to look forward to Shall we start with the end Myself and my daughter went to visit my sister The evening prior

I drank a little too much wine. Okay. Okay. At the time, my sister lived near a really good play park. Oh, I like the look of that play park. That's a really good play park. Oh, they got the swings. They got the giant spring with a bee on top that you can ride.

They got the circle twisty guy. They got a covered slide with a shiny metal slide. They got the crawly, climby rope grid. Yeah. They got the sand. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's a good looking play park

so uh at the time my sister lived in a really good play park my then young and recently toilet trained daughter wanted to park so off we went to park great at the park was a four by four car on springs oh yeah yeah yeah i love that sort of thing pretend you're driving a car yeah well so she says my little daughter got in the car and then adults like they they sort of hang on and bounce the car um jiggling the thing on the big springs it's very realistic simulation that's what driving feels like it is yeah It's like bouncing backwards and forwards Like in a black and white cartoon Where that's how they're animated

Oh yeah, with the exhaust puffing out the back All of a sudden, my rear opened I like that Unusual phrasing All of a sudden, my rear opened and closed with a bang No, I didn't fart my rear just opened and closed with a bang all right nothing embarrassing or gross about that all you need to know is that my rear is so muscular that when i open and close it, it sounds like a clap. A little explosion. A little lightning

thunder kind of thing. All of a sudden my rear opened and closed with a bang. Made all the worse by the fact that I was wearing pale blue jeans. Blue jeans. Oh no. You just shat a pair of blue jeans. That's David Bowie's

B-side. Blue jeans. You just shat a pair of blue jeans. And now partly brown jeans. You better not hang around jeans. You should have picked darker trousers. All of a sudden my rear opened and closed with a bang. pick darker trousers.

All of a sudden my rear opened and closed with a bang. I had to excuse myself and waddle my way back to my sister's flat to quote, use the toilet. Thankfully my ample underwear contained the mess. Oh no. Got a nappy on. Yeah.

That's a funny sentence to say in the privacy. My ample underwear contained the mess. But also just to be in the privacy of someone else's loo and say well thank god for my ample underwear I got cleaned up and discarded my shitty knickers in the apartment block's communal bins

I was on my way back to rejoin my toilet competent child and all was well again alas not quite oh dear what has happened this was to haunt the car on springs crash yeah she involved in an accident got pulled over by a police car on springs uh do you know how fast you were bouncing back there yeah you were boinging pretty quick back there yeah yeah your left you get out your left spring is out

the apartments had experienced some fly tipping around the communal bin area which were now covered by cctv oh so later that day my image was added to the apartment complex fly tipping whatsapp group as a potential suspect oh no and there would have been flies on what you were tipping nice um needless to say i never visited my sister again wow yeah oh right I guess because of the community is out there to burn the one they want to burn her at the stake Pierre yeah the neighborhood watch know

that she's the knicker shitter I've recently been on holiday to Turkey the particular hotel we stayed in is not available to book in the UK Strange To cut a long story short We arrived at a hotel we had booked And it was a building site

Is this for the same email? Yeah This is another story I think Oh I see okay Which was very nice and we were the only British guests The hotel's dining room was in four sections the theme of each being a season and plastered an ugly art and tat quote c attached right so there's this it's a building site it's not finished no no they got taken away so they

she's saying that they went to a hotel and it was a building site so they just went well well guess you'll stay in some other place then right i don't know about the relevance of that other than that it's moderately scandalous yes um so there's like a summer winter autumn spring dining section okay in this dining room yeah yeah uh so here is some of the tat let me have a look oh great turkish tat tur Turkish tat. It's like normal tat, but it's brewed on hot sand. Brewed on hot sand? Like Turkish coffee. Is that how they do it? Yeah, it's boiling hot sand.

They've superheated some sand, and then they put the little thing in some sand. How do they do that? I don't know. It's just a big oven or something. Gosh. Yeah, it's really cool. And the coffee is thick like soup. Imagine getting home.

I'll put the sand on, would you love? I awoke on Saturday from the delicious smell of roasting sand. Hey, buddy, wake up and smell the sand, okay? She doesn't like you. Don't even talk to me till I've superheated my sand. Okay, so... Oh man, I'm 90% superheated sand right now. Oh boy, Wednesdays, huh?

Pass the sand. So, this tat, Phil, it is a beverage tat. Okay. It's not great grammatically. Okay. It is a picture of a glass with a straw in it, and then a sort of a pineapple and some other fruit in a kind of scrabbly clip-art way. In the glass? No, just sort of next in it. And then a sort of a pineapple and some other fruit in a kind of scrabbly clip art way.

In the glass? No, just sort of next to it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I've got the image of the image. So the tat says, drink the what, like a glass of what what So don't expect proper grammar This is kind of gibberish Drink Drink the day like a glass of Juice

Juice is correct That's correct It's not day, it's longer than a day Summer Even longer than that Year Drink the life is it yeah drink the life like a glass of juice yeah drink the life like a glass of juice i think that isn't that an old uh vampire motto motto. Summer vampire? Yeah, drink the life

like a glass of juice. Drink the life like a glass of juice. Yeah, that's right. That's from Dracula's... Because, you know, he's eternal, so he goes through a lot of phases, given that he never dies. And he did go through a bit of a self-help phase.

Yes, his emo phase was long. Whoa. Yeah, that's true. He was pretty down there for a while. But now he's very much a self-help kind of... Only you can make the most of your afterlife. Eternal life doesn't have to feel eternal. Pull myself up by my capestraps.

Yeah, drink the life like a glass of juice. That's good advice. Okay, so this is another piece of drink tat. If this is blank... Sorry, I'm just thinking of one more vampire. One more Dracula thing. One more Dracula. Die, laugh, love.

Die, laugh, love. Maybe, how about... die laugh love die laugh love maybe how about Dracula counts instead of count Dracula that's good Dracula counts I deserve to be around because Dracula

counts always remember Dracula counts at my lowest I didn't even enjoy the sweet music of the creatures of the night um so this is some more drinks tat okay it's quite confusing tat okay If this is blank, please bring me some blank. But if this is blank, please bring me some blank. Wow. Is there an image to go with this? Yes, but the image kind of gives it away.

Okay. If this is blank, please bring me some blank. But if this is blank, please bring me some blank. Yeah, it's quite confusing. If this is water, please bring me some blank. Yeah, it's quite confusing. If this is water, please bring me some beer. If this is wine, please bring me some ice. That's good. That's much better than this. I will...

Okay, here's a clue. Okay. There are four missing nouns yeah there's only two words like two of them are the same that's what's so confusing about it oh wow very confusing is it to do with alcohol

no okay if this is hmm If this is... If this is... If this is... Coffee, please bring... Is it? Yeah, yeah.

If this is coffee coffee please bring me some oh toilet paper but if this is toilet paper toilet paper coffee yeah that actually makes more sense than what this is i'll give you if this is coffee please bring me some work if this is work please bring me some coffee it's both drinks that's what doesn't make any sense about it gosh okay if this is coffee please bring me some juice

it's water it's tea tea I almost said tea but that makes no sense at all no if this is coffee please bring me some tea

but if this is tea please bring me some coffee right so you're just being a dick you're just being indecisive yeah you're just being a dickhead you're just being difficult I have no idea what that could mean I mean sometimes I'm indecisive

as to whether I want a tea or a coffee but if you go to give me a coffee in that instance I go well I guess I'm having coffee then if you're admitting to my face that whatever I've brought you you want the other thing by virtue of what I've brought you then you're just cunting me off and you're admitting it yeah and I know not to do this again I'm not going to get your hot drink anymore no fuck you by virtue of what I've brought you, then you're just cunting me off. Yeah. And you're admitting it.

Yeah, and I know not to do this again. I'm not going to get your hot drink anymore. No, fuck you. Fuck you, Dracula. Fuck you. And, oh yeah? The last bit of tat, it's unguessable. It's just a massive mural of the words, of some words from, as Emma explains,

in the summer dining area, they quote the mark twain poem warm summer sun which the diviner the designers obviously took literally um perhaps not realizing that it's about death it's the holiday it's all about the holiday vibes guys koji emma so this is the warm summer sun shine kindly here warm southern wind blow softly here green sod above lie light lie light good night dear heart good night good night so green sod above means that you're in your grave green sod sod is is like turf wow i didn't know that yeah okay so wow that's funny that's that that's the hotel The hotel designer is putting out, ah, sunny daylight.

Yeah. It's all about how the sun is nice. And it's nice to say goodnight, you know, in summer. What is this, tea? Give me a coffee. Maybe it's Dracula again. Green sun above. Goodnight, goodnight.

Yeah, it is good for him. Well, I think we've solved who runs this, um, who runs this hotel, Emma. It's Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. our good friend Count Dracula. Yeah. If this is coffee, bring me some blood. If this is blood, bring me some coffee. May he reign eternal.

And may you reign eternal, listener because uh that is the end of this episode yes um thank you so much for listening we are are now off to the exclusive patreon vampire castle yes um if your patron will see you there if not we'll see you otherwise yeah have a good week guys and if your patron see you in. If not, we'll see you otherwise. Yeah, have a good week, guys. And if you're a patron, see you in the Vampire Castle. Much love. Bye-bye! Bye!