The Biggest Problem in the Universe: Uncucked - Episode 16

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

Welcome to the biggest problem in the universe. I'm Maddox. With me is Dick Masterson. Hey, what's up, buddy? Happy to be here. Like always. Who won? So last episode, believe it or not, militarized police won. Yeah. Of course they did.

Yeah. Of course I did. Yeah. Dick, I got to hand it to you. That was a real problem. Yeah, I wish I could be happier that I won, but just hearing about it again, thinking about it again just pisses me off. It instantly pisses me off. Yeah. Well, you know, that deserves to be up there. I don't know if it deserves to be number one. I still think female genital mutilation probably deserves to be number one on that list.

Yeah, maybe so. You know, I was thinking about it during the week, too, and there's one thing that I wanted to bring up that I didn't bring up, which is I always see in the big old, the gun debate, the big old gun debate of things on the Internet, is people saying gun people are crazy because you could never take on the military with guns. You can't.

You can't. Of course not. You can't. But the reason, but you can, you could have taken on the police. Yeah. And that's what, that's what it's for to me. That's what it's always been for.

It's never been about the military. But now that the police have military, goodbye, Liberty. You know, I forgot to mention the last episode, all these weekend warriors with militarized equipment, they're just like in Rambo First Blood when they were trying to hunt Rambo and they gave all these weekend warriors,

bazookas, and they went up in the hill. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. No. They're just, they're doing, but they're part-time little gig. They go home to their families and they wipe their kid's ass. These aren't hard in warriors.

They don't know this equipment. They don't know what the hell they're doing. They don't, they don't go through all the same psychological evaluation. Anyway, big problem. Kudos. Thank you. And thank you for voting.

All right, who won? Who's the big winner? Well, congratulations, Dick. It was the Facebook satire tag. That's shocking. Yeah. Well, there's a satire. Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. Maybe our fans are doing a meta joke on us. Maybe that's a satire. Well, Facebook, you heard it from us. Fuck you and fuck your tag. Yeah. And still waiting for that joke tag to be added to jokes to let us know

that we're seeing something that might be funny, idiots. All right, who won? Who won? Tell me, I want to know. Wow, this one caught me by surprise, but emoji won. I guess everyone's fed up with that stupid hieroglyphic bullshit. Man, you guys are texting the wrong chicks. I still think that there's something to be said for emojis. They say a lot more than words can.

Four broads, coming from broads, you get a couple smileies, man, you're in, you're in. No, you don't know what they actually mean. You lose a lot of nuance in your written word. That's why we have so many different words in our language to describe different things, because different words have different emotions and connotations. Yeah, whatever.

Hello versus hey, says the same thing, but one's way more casual, isn't it? I don't know. Pick up your phone and make a call. Oh, you piss me off. If you want words so much, pick up your phone. I'll text. Who won? Who won? Who won, who won? Who won? Is what I think about all week.

So, this one actually caught me by surprise, but Spider Woman's ass. Yeah, that's weird. Big problem? Big ass. I didn't even ask why it was such a big problem. I totally forgot about that. Yeah, it's... Well, it's a big problem to some people, I guess. But, yeah, Spider Woman's... I guess my problem more was with the outrage about Spider-Woman's ass.

Why is that a problem, though? That's why I'm asking. Because it distracts people from actual problems, from things that actually matter. These are people who spend countless hours in the comments section arguing with people about nothing. Yeah. Nothing. Having problems with things as a form of entertainment, basically. Ah, I guess. Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yeah, wait a minute. That's satire. I don't like this. I don't like this at all. So let's move on. We got some comments. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got to actually, usually, you know, we read comments from the site, but today I have an audio comment that someone left on our voicemail.

Ooh, audio comment. Yeah, yeah, we have a voicemail. You want to know what it is? You can go find out. But here is the voicemail from the biggest problem in the universe. Um, hey, Maddox. I don't know.

I just saw your Who page and it just occurred to me if you hate taking phone calls and you think voicemail sucks, why the fuck do you have a voicemail link on it? It just doesn't even make any kind of sense. Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Okay. Yeah, why the fuck? Fuck do you have a voicemail? Yeah, good question, good question. So let's do a little detective work, shall we? Huh? Let's piece this together. So let's look at what we know for a fact.

I hate voice, voicemail. Number one, worst form of communication is voicemail, followed by phone calls, then email, then texts, then what else? Oh, Facebook Messenger. Well, I would swap, actually, Facebook Messenger way up there. Anyway, so if I hate voicemail, then I have voicemail on the website, then whose idea was it?

Who could it have been? Oh, fuck you, it's funny. All right, great. You got comments? Yeah, I do have some comments. Actually, so this is something we haven't actually done on the show before, but we have all this archive of old episodes where people sometimes go back and listen to older episodes and leave comments on them. And I'd like to read some comments that we've never read on the air before from some of our older episodes.

Cool. This one comes from all the way back from episode number three. and if you don't remember the problems on the episode were other N-words, everyone needs to lose 20 pounds, monkeys, and Tesla. And so this one comes from Scott Cornish. He says,

Catching up on the Back episodes, I love how Dick complains about women he matches on Tinder being so far away when he can just set the max miles away in the options on the app. Yeah, Dick, why don't you do that? If you're too lazy to go a couple miles to meet a date, Why don't you just set your max options to,

or your max mile radius to like four miles? I don't know why I don't do that. Yeah. I think it gradually creeps up. I'm like, what's going on? What's going on over here? What's going on over here? You know what it is?

You start out with like your bedroom and find that there's no women there and then you expand it to your kitchen, expand it to the block, and then you just burn out the entire radius surrounding you until there's no women left in the entire West Coast. I'm fucking done with Tinder. Somebody actually sent me an email about Tinder

after we did that episode and they said their friend gets girls the regular way. Like, gets great-looking girls the regular way. And on Tinder, he only matches duds. And I was like, dude, that's exactly what happens to me. Like, I don't understand it. I'm not built for online whatever's hookups. Like, I need it to be real.

I have, I can relate to that in that I do meet a lot of really hot women in real life and really hot women on Tinder. There we go. Sean, you were going to say something. he was going to say Maddox is about to say a bunch of bullshit I was going to say I think you were spot on with that analysis that radius thing Maddox because at one point Dick like basically

fucked us out of every bar in Hollywood I was like hey we're going to this one he was like oh no no no I can't go there God damn it dude do you have to fuck us out of that's what he does it's not just bars he's fucked us out of the entire fucking industry all right all right all right you guys

come on this one we've all right made mistakes, guys. Yeah, your mistake is called being born, apparently. Jesus. I got a, I got a comment. Well, actually, it's a problem. My dad had a big problem with this show. Oh, let's hear your dad's problem. Yeah, he says, he says, Dick, you guys talk way too fast on the show. I'm like, what? What the hell are you talking about? We talk, I talk at the same speed on the show that I talk to you normally. Do you have a problem with me talking to you normally? Oh, that's what that is. He's like, no, he's like, no. He's like, no, definitely something's going on. I'll tell you what's going on.

Sean is speeding up the show. And I'm like, Dad, I really doubt. He's like, did you guys tell him to do that? I'm like, no. He goes, well, then he's doing it on his own. I'm like, I really doubt Sean's doing it on his own. If anybody's doing it on their own, it's Maddox. But I don't think he's doing it

because I listen to it off the website all the time. I go to sleep listening to this show. You know? So I'm like, what, you know, do you have it on like a fast mode or something? Are you listening on like fast forward? and he goes, Dick, what am I an idiot? Don't talk, don't talk to me like that. You are speeding up the show.

I was like, okay, whatever. Nice talking to you. So I go out and have dinner with him and my mom recently. Mom's like, you got to look at, you got to look at what he's doing over there. You got to look at the phone. So hand over the phone. Let me hear, like, the,

because maybe it's like, you know, sometimes on the movies, they speed it up like 4%, so it'll fit on television. Right. You know, so I'm thinking like, maybe Sean did something like that? Because he's adamant about it, and he's not wrong.

Like, he's never, he's wrong, to an amount that makes me believe everything he says. Yeah. You know? Like just with like Diet Coke challenges and things like that. Why don't you go fuck yourself, you son of a bitch? So I'm like, Ted, give me your phone. So I play it and it sounds like we're chipmunks.

Like I play it and it's like, but da-b-da-da-da-da-da-da. Like, dude, this is obviously fast-forwarded. Sure enough. What? Sample rate conversion? Sean, there is a gigantic button on the iPhone that says play this at double speed. It's like a giant 2x. that was highlighted like a fucking neon sign.

I'm like, what do you think that means? There you go. Hit it, we slowed down to normal speed. So I'm bringing it in. This isn't my problem this week, but I'm bringing it in case in case I sound like a chipmunk to anybody out there. Look at your phone.

It probably says 2X right now. Go ahead and press it. Just press it and we'll slow right down to normal speed. It's a toggle. If you press it once and it's with chipmunk speed, press it'll turn off. You're throwing out these words toggle. That'll immediately get you tossed down.

I lost your dad. All right. Well, I got a comment. This one comes from episode number two, way back when. And it's from Edwin. I think it's Efting. Yeah, Edwin Efting. He says, I think charging money for plastic bags.

Oh, and for people who don't remember, the problems that week were horoscopes, the plastic bag ban, long emails, and Tinder. Was it? No. Tinder, I thought Tinder was the last episode. Oh, no, I was Tesla the last episode, but the guy did comment on Tinder. Anyway. Because that was episode number three, and that's why he was. commenting on it.

Sure. So, anyway, he says, I think charging money for plastic bags is a good thing. It forced people to use bags more than once, which is good for the environment. Hey, Edwin, guess what? I already reused those plastic bags. They're already reusable.

I lined my garbage bags with them. I put them on my bike seat when it was rainy. I would do everything with those bags. I would use them for just garbage around the house. I'd put flip-flops in them. I would use them all the time. I'd use them for condoms. As a condom.

I would use it as a condom. Use it as a condo. There you go. There you go. Dick has Elephant Titus. So these bags were already reusable. And then he says, I usually reuse a bag a few times and buy new ones after that or when I forget to take it to the store. Oh, well, well, well.

So now you're wasting even more because those bags that you buy at the stores are reinforced. They're heavy. They have polycarbon blends in them. They have inks, alloys. Yeah, the primitive minds wouldn't understand. Yeah. So anyway, Edwin, yeah, you missed the mark on that one. Edwin, reuse a bag by putting it over your head and breathe into it, right?

Yeah, breathe really hard. Suck it all the way down your throat and don't let it come back up. And then one last comment I have, this is from episode number six, and the problems for episode number six were people who can't eat spicy food, non-apologies, condoms, and America sucks at soccer. Yeah. This one comes from Anthony Giuliano, who says, I'm tons of fun and I hate spicy food

Thanks Anthony We don't know that that's true or not true Maybe he's the exception to the rule Oh no no anytime someone says they're tons of fun They probably are Like when people tell me they're fun I know I'm in for a good time Hey so speaking of old shit

Who is currently reigning Is the all-time biggest problem in the universe So number one clocks in with slacktivists Followed by armchair psychologists Hey, that's me All right There you go. All right.

Nipping at your heels. And conspiracy dipshit. Ow, fuck you. Which, can we include your dad under that? Because he thought there was a conspiracy with Sean speeding up episodes. If you call my dad a dips shit, he will kick your ass. I know he will. And dad's cool shit.

Look, he's not a dips shit. But he is a conspiracy theorist. Man, he, like, immediately threw you under the bus. I couldn't believe it. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to get more out. It was like, why would Sean do that?

just to fuck with him. Yeah. Let's send him a... It fucks with one person. It's worth it. Let's send him a special episode. Let's record one. Well, we can't because he listens to the podcast.

So we just blew... Unless we'll have to intercept this one before he listens to it. I think we're too lazy to do that. So one little point of business, a couple episodes ago, we mentioned that we might... We're considering either some kind of limited sponsorship

or charging for a bonus episode. And actually, the comments were split pretty evenly. Some people said they've... really wanted to pay for episodes. They didn't mind doing that, but they didn't like ads. Some people said, hey, we can't afford to pay for episodes, so let's keep the episodes free and, you know, throw an ad in there. So I think we might actually end up doing both at some point.

Some people want the bonus episodes, and some people want the episodes to stay as is. And the bottom line is this. My philosophy towards ads is I don't want them to be too intrusive. I don't want them to be, you know, too obnoxious and too many. And only... And they won't affect the content. No, they won't affect the content. That is my number one...

only companies that support what we do and we actually believe in. So we may actually look at doing that in the near future and that will help actually pay for lots of things and we may be able to take the show on the road. Well, that's what I wanted to say. There is a lot that we could pay for around here that would really improve the show. Whenever I think of like, whenever I think of the amount of entertainment products that do get funded, my first question is always, why the fuck don't you get that money? Like what you could do with an entertainment budget is something.

I would actually want to watch. Great. Thank you. Or listen to. Well, there we have it. So coming soon probably, we'll decide which to do. And I think the bonus episode would be a lot of fun too. And those will probably be ad-free because we'll, you know, those will be for a nominal fee. People are asking for video on those too, which I do think would be fun.

That would be fun. We'd have to figure out something with the lighting. Let's get to some problems. First problem this week. All right, my first problem this week is cold lasers. Cold lasers. You know what a cold laser is? I do, but why don't we explain it to the audience?

You do really? Do you really know what a cold laser is? Yeah, I saw it on, I think Dr. Oz was talking about some... Okay, that's your first clue that it's bullshit. Yep. Is it was on Dr. Oz? Yep. It is also known as low-level laser therapy. Here's what...

Here's how Wikipedia defines it. Other names for this therapy include low-power laser, soft laser, cold laser, biostimulation laser, uh, therapeutic laser and laser. acupuncture. What is their acupuncture? Yeah. Here's the only thing scientific

that I could get out of this whole fucking thing is that it's a beam of light that's 600 nanometers to a thousand nanometers that's red, but they always say close to infrared. Right? Because that sounds scientific or magical in some way. It's basically a red fucking light. And if you want to know why I'm so upset about this,

I will happily tell you, I fucked up my ankle big time playing dodgeball. Cool. Okay? Yeah, cool. Couldn't walk on it for a week. Everyone laughed at me and pelted me in the head with dodge balls until I was dragged off the court, right? Pretty hilarious. Very hilarious. Yeah. So I go to a doctor, I go to urgent care, I get the x-ray, I go to whatever, another guy when I still can't walk for a couple days, and he says, look, it's just a really bad sprain. Here's a prescription for some physical therapy. You can do some exercises that'll, like, firm up your ankle or whatever. All right, pretty, like, standard stuff for an ankle sprain.

Oh, firm up your ankle, huh? Yeah. So I go into the therapist's office. Yeah. She sits me down, and she goes, all right, take your shoe off, take your thing. I'm like, you know, I just need the exercises. I really just show me what I can do with the exercises at home, and I'll do them. And she goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, but first, first, we're going to use this to heal you up.

And then you're going to have, you're going to be pain free at no time. So she busts out this looks like one of those defibrillators. Defrivolator? Deferbulators. diffribulators. Yeah. And it's got a, it's got like a,

like a, like a, like a, diode series coming out of it like a plug, like a stethoscope, right? Like a long cord and then a circle

that has a bunch of, a bunch of LEDs on it. Yep. And she fires this fucking machine up and takes, and these things light up red, right? Like a light bright.

And she puts it on my ankle and she goes, this is a cold laser. Don't worry. It doesn't hurt. In fact, you won't feel anything. And I'm like, yeah, no shit.

I know I won't feel anything. I've seen a fucking light bright before. What is this? What are you doing? She goes, well, it stimulates healing. Oh, it stimulates healing. That sounds like a medical explanation. In the tendons of your foot.

So under the skin, under all the dermis or whatever you have, or the ligaments that are connecting your fucking bones, this magical device is shooting cold lasers under your skin to heal your body. That is what I'm being told when I'm showing up at a medical facility in the modern age. What?

Oh my, this is unbelievable. That's an outrage. Are you kidding me? So this thing is supposed to target what's injured in your body and just heal it magically? Then why don't we just have these lights on all the fucking time?

Right? Yeah, let's heal everything all the time. Let's make clothes out of them. We'll be Superman. We'll be flying around shooting magical healing rays out of our assholes if we have enough of these. Sure.

Cure cancer, cure everything. Cure everything. Why not? All the time. Well, you know what? You're not far off. So, of course, I looked into this. And of course, it's standard procedure across, like, physical therapy as a whole. I call physical therapist, I know. And I'm like, hey, this is bullshit, right?

And I'm like, well, you know a lot of studies, this and this. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Am I, is this pod planet? Are you all fucking pod people? It's a light bright. It's a light bright that you can hold in your hand and you're putting it on my skin and telling me it's healing things. There's no way that can be true. I don't care what studies there are.

I do not believe it. You know what, Dick, this sounds a lot like people who are on the cusp of homeopathic therapy. Those people, you know, the holistic healers, which, you know, holistic means something else in the medical term. But these people have appropriated it for alternate medicine. And these cold lasers, first of all, if it's near infrared, when you, okay, so for people who aren't scientifically versed, when Dick said that it was 600 to, what, 1,200 nanometers? A thousand nanometers? That's in the visual range. So what that is, so normal light is usually around 600 nanometers.

That's yellow, normal, like sunlight. Like sun just... Like pee. Like pee. Yeah, sure. Great dick. Great analogy. But that's usually what our sun beams towards Earth.

And that's why stop signs are red because we see color in that, in that spectrum, most readily, because that's what comes from the sun. So this is just visual light. They're just shining a flashlight essentially onto your leg. Yes. And there's nothing cold about it, by the way. If it's near infrared... Well, it's plastic.

Well, another word for... Okay, fine, but another word for infrared is heat. Heat is infrared. That's why when you have infrared cameras, they pick up heat signatures. That's why the movie Predator, when he covered himself in mud, the predator couldn't see him, to use a scientific term... Yeah. To use a scientific example.

But seriously, like, that's what that is. So if you have something that puts out heat near the infrared spectrum, by definition, it's not fucking cold, now, is it? So they're doing this, and I'm thinking, I would have bought this more if you'd have just left it off. Because then I wouldn't see a bunch of red flashlight shooting magical light at my ankle. Yeah. Just leave it off. Like, make it, at least tell me it's shooting invisible rays out and have it shining actually fucking nothing out.

So part of my research to see if everybody knows this is bullshit or not, or if it's just me, the last person left, and I should just go ahead and kill myself. because now the medical profession is run by quacks. Yeah. I found that they, you want to hear the things that this can cure? Cold lasers? Oh, let's hear this list. I'm going to make a prediction, Dick. Yeah.

I'm going to guess that there's at least 10 things on this list. I mean, you, on my list, I stopped at 10. Okay. But here's the list. Okay. Arthritis pain, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia pain, knee pain, neck pain, tendonitis, right? Right. That sounds like, that sounds believable.

At least it's all in the same wheelhouse of things that it cures. But you know these motherfuckers with their motherfucking scams, they can't stop it believable, can they? Because if once you got them in, once you got them roped in with this shit, you got to keep pulling, or someone else is going to get your scam. Someone else is going to drink your milkshake, right?

Sure. Get ready for some more. Smoking cessation. What? Yeah. So when you quit smoking, that feeling that you're urged to smoke, that's what it's supposed to help?

I don't, dude, you know what? I think you're putting more logical thought into the process than any of these fucking people are. Like, the steps that you described, it's probably just, oh, you know, just shoot it at your face. And then, uh, weight loss. Oh, it helps with weight loss. Yeah.

So that's actually... So deck out your whole house in them. Yeah, so when I mentioned I saw this on Dr. Oz, that is the application. I actually saw this being used for it. Are you fucking kidding me? No, they said they use cold laser therapy, and I thought, huh, that's kind of interesting.

I wonder if this will be on the market. I never really thought about it. Until you mentioned cold laser therapy today, and I thought, Huh, that sounds an awful lot like cold fusion, which is also bullshit. Because fusion, when it reacts, it's releasing nuclear atoms. It's releasing gamma rays, which is going to melt the entire fucking facility. There's no such thing as cold fusion.

Speaking of market, you brought up, when are they going to bring it to market? Yeah. Guess how much one of these motherfuckers costs? Oh, I'm getting... $1,200 bucks. Keep going. North of $10,000? $7 to $23,000.

Holy shit. For this bullshit LED display? For a battery pack with a light bright. You can get LEDs adjusted to any specification you want. You can get any nanometer, any wavelength of LEDs that you want. And they cost nothing. You can go to Radio Shack

and build one for like fucking 20 bucks. This costs $20,000. We should get into this business. Oh, yeah. Dick, we said, we said too much this episode. Hair growth. It also promotes, apparently. So you got a bunch of, somewhere in the U.S.,

There is a bunch of bald assholes sitting around in a doctor's office, getting red flashlights shown on their heads and crossing their fingers that they're going to grow a beautiful mane of hair. This was a big thing a while back. I remember seeing it on talk shows where people had these hair laser combs and they would just put it in their heads and they supposedly grew up. You know what, though? They did show some growth in some of these people,

but it's hard to tell whether or not it was attributed to the actual lasers or the stimulation of a comb going through your head for 20 minutes a day. Or just like, fuck you, I know. it's not the lights. Yeah. No matter what you're showing me, no matter what, if some of these guys grew their hair back,

yeah, right. That's what, like, okay, and it's on TV, it's not real. Fuck you. So what else? I don't need to see the study. Well, it doesn't stop there.

You know what else? What else? They recommend using it for? Horses and pets. Hmm. Well, that would make sense. Of course. If it's going to cure humans,

it's got to cure horses. Of course. Because people who are doctors also are special, have specialties in animal care, don't they? You know what? people who own horses are rich as fuck, aren't they?

These guys have it cracked, man. Hair loss, weight, hair growth, weight loss, and horses? Is there anything? Like, do you even need to look at the studies to know that it's fake when they're targeting such a specific group of people? Yeah. So,

wait, remember, I got something else here. Okay, so I looked up where this came from, right? Some dude in Budapest in 1967, right? Land of Gypsies. Yep. noticed that when he shone this light on a bunch of shaved mice, their hair grew back more quickly. Oh.

That's it. That's the extent of the studies on this magical device. So here's the kicker. One study from Budapest in 1967. Or possibly just an anecdote. Sure. From Budapest. Yeah.

So here's why it's a problem. Now, you're saying there's tons of crackpot theories out there. Right. Right? You can get actual, you can get acupuncture, you can buy a bunch of sage and wiggle it around your house, maybe that makes you feel better, maybe it doesn't, I don't know, the placebo effect is very powerful. That's what I was going to say, yeah, it might be a placebo effect, so you can't discount that. Well, you know what you can do with the placebo effect now, apparently?

You can submit it to your health insurance. Guess who paid for my first physical fucking therapy session with this goddamn light bright on a stick? I submitted that shit straight to Blue Shield and guess who picked up the tab. Oh my God, that is... That's ridiculous. Yeah, that actually is ridiculous. It actually is ridiculous.

That's absurd. That is, that infuriates me. So this is why our insurance is so fucking expensive because we're paying for $20,000 flashlights. Yeah, that you can get for 15 minutes at a time. I don't know, I don't know when the limit is... I don't know when you're full of bullshit. Like, I don't know when the effectiveness of bullshit expires every day.

So however long, you want to sit there in the, I don't know if they are doctors, but they're like, they're at least they're more connected to the doctor than I am, so I'm going to say doctors. As long as you want to sit there under a medical professional care and get bullshit

shined on your leg, you can do that and someone else will pick up the tab. All of us will pick up the tab, in fact, because we're all putting in for it. You know, I've always felt that physical therapy, the whole entire field is a little bit just on the verge of bullshit.

Right? It's a little wacky. Yeah. I remember one time I went to either a GNC or a vitamin shop or something like that, and I popped in, there was this guy there who was a physical therapist. He said, hey, we're checking people's posture and spine, their spine, whatever. And it was, I read the brochure and it said it was for people who were suffering from lower back pain. Well, I didn't at the time, and still don't thankfully. But I was dating someone who did, and I thought, you know what, I'll hop into this thing and I'll see how they check me and see. see what the procedure is so I could tell her and then maybe she could check it out, right?

So I hopped on this platform and they used these elastic bands to check my alignment, my posture, and they said, oh yeah, way off, your spine needs to be realigned, this is off, this is bad, this is wrong, and he said, you're definitely suffering from lower back pain.

I told him, I wasn't. I actually feel really good. And he said, well, that's a surprise to us because according to our readings here, that you're way off. I'm like, well, I think somebody's way off, and it's not me, buddy, because I feel great. I was actually just asking this for my girlfriend,

but apparently you're full of shit, so we'll be moving on. And, of course, it had nothing to do with that. Most lower back pain is related to stress, but that's a different issue. But then you guys broke up and she's fine now. No, well, she was fine when we were together, broke up, back pain came back, so. Ah, yeah, good.

I'm okay with that, yeah. Yeah, well, um. Big problem. Yeah, that's my problem. So basically I think anybody who, like if you get health insurance, instead of asking you about, like, health problems in your family, they should be saying, are you a sucker? Like, do you believe in horses shit?

Do you think that can cure you? And if you say, no, you should get a separate insurance premium so you don't have to subsidize shit like this. And you know what, don't give it to me. Like, don't let me. Do you know that they cover acupuncture now? And that's the same shit. I don't buy that for a second.

I don't need to see any studies of that. I know it doesn't fucking work. I know it's maybe it works, but it's not real. Well, look, here's the thing, Dick. I believe in the placebo effects because placebo's work on me. And if, if placebos don't cost much, I'm all for them. Look, sell me whatever line of horse shit you want. If I feel better because of a placebo effect, great.

I just don't want to pay a lot for it. But if it's this $20,000 bullshit label that... $23,000, man. Yeah, this laser that people are subsidizing. Are you insane? Well, at least it's horse strength. Hey, speaking of of a bullshit

of a paying too much for bullshit Yeah Right Here's my first problem Okay Game pre-purchases Okay, you know what these are

Explain it to me So when you go to the store Like GameStop or EB games Or Babbage's, I don't even know if they're still around But if you go to any of these stores To buy a video game They won't just outright sell it to you Or they won't just sell you the game that you fucking want

They'll try to cram some the shit down your throat as a pre-purchase. They say, hey, do you want the new Grand Theft Auto 5? Well, if you want this game, you better pre-purchase it because we're only ordering just as many copies as people pre-order. Oh, okay. Right? So what's the problem with this?

What do you think the problem with this is? Well, it's like a big dick in your mouth, as South Park said. Like, it's just screwing over your brand loyalty. Like, I don't know. Well, these companies basically, they want your money before you have a chance to even know if the game is good. So you've already paid for it. Then if the game comes out and it's schlock,

you read the reviews, it's garbage, guess what? Too late. They already got your money. And they rely so heavily on these game pre-purchases. They're banking on these hardcore fans who buy the game before it's even out because they can sell it to them for $60 or $70. They up the price the first two weeks,

then after that initial hype has died down, then they lower the price to $50 or $40, which is the actual market price. Which, by the way, I'm not even sure it might be inflated. So you're saying it's a scam. It is a scam. It is a scam.

Also, once you've given them your money ahead of time, what you've essentially done is turn the game company into a bank. Right? Yeah. I mean, because instead of you collecting interest on your money, they're collecting interest on your money. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

And there was actually an article a while back where some guy was using a game store, like a GameStop as a bank. He would come in, he would basically take his paycheck, spend it on video games, bring it back in, sell his used games, and then get store credit. Yeah. Well, that sounds like an awful lot

like a bank to me. If you're getting store credit, except the only difference is that unlike a normal bank, you can only spend this store credit in this actual store. You can't buy goods, you can't buy milk and eggs,

you can't buy services, you can't do anything except buy more bullshit games and then more pre-orders. Now, the other problem with this is that by pre-ordering game, you're signaling to the publisher that you don't care about the quality of the game. No, that's true.

All right, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. You got me on that one. Yeah. Because I'm for people getting conned out of money. It's like you really want something, just pay us. Yeah. But you're definitely making a worse game by getting the money in advance.

Right. Because remember a long time ago when publishers, like, back in the Nintendo era, they would make games with extra levels, hidden levels, bonus levels, all the shit that they threw in there that people who bought the game would then unlock and talk about at school and be like, wow, can you believe this game? I found this secret. They would talk about it, and people would go out and say, wow, that's a really great game.

I'm going to go out and buy it. Not anymore. They have no incentive. Okay, so, can I ask you something? Has this happened to you? The pre-game thing. When did you lose, when were you disenfranchised to the practice of pre-selling games? Oh, man, so many times.

Yeah, because I feel like we've all gone through it, and as you're describing it, I'm remembering when it happened to me. and it's flooding, it's like, it's all flooding back to me, the memory of pre-purchasing a game and getting totally fucked over and like learning about life, when's the last time that it happened to you? The last time I really got burned on any kind of game pre-purchase was the 32x.

The Sega 32x, this is something a lot of people don't even remember, but right before the Sega Saturn came out and right after the Genesis and Sega CD, Sega of America... Wait, let me set, just to be specific, because you have an encyclopedic knowledge of video games. That was like right after the Super Nintendo and the Genesis were having their console wars, right?

Yes, yes. And then the 32X was like supposed to be the next big thing. Yeah. Well, it wasn't. It was a big piece of shit. Got very little support. A few months later, they just stopped making games for it. I just plonked down 150 bucks on this bullshit piece of hardware, and now I can't use it. Yeah. Yeah. Garbage. It's totally garbage. And I was so pissed off. I stopped buying anything ahead of time. I remember my buddy came to me, and this is the day I woke up. He said, hey man, do you want to go stand in line to buy a PSP, a Sony? PSP? And I said, fuck no. No, I'm not buying a PSP.

Is it good? I don't know. What are the games like? I don't know. I'm not going to fucking pay money for it. Are you kidding? You're not, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not buying this horse shit anymore. I'm done. I'm done with game pre-purchases. And here's the other, now, here's the other thing that's really, really pissing me off now. Now with games, they're not only doing game pre-purchases, but they're doing deluxe editions for different retailers. So, for example, uh, Nintendo, Nintendo has, um, this, uh, this new, uh,

a high rule warriors game coming out. Okay. And if you buy the game from Best Buy, you get the Skyward Sword costume set. If you buy the game from Amazon... Wait, wait, in the game? In the game, yeah. You get, like, pretend clothes?

You get pretend clothes in the game. All right, cool. So if you want your character to look a certain way, you better buy it from the right retailer. From Amazon, you get the Twilight Princess costume set. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with, like, the stuff that's going on there. Stupid.

Well, I'll tell you why there's a danger here. And from GameStop, you get the Okorina of Time costume set. So depending on where you buy it from, you get the different costume set. So this could potentially, actually, if you think about it, this could potentially reveal where you live. Right? Because say somebody has your IP address,

they know approximately what state you live in or something. And then they see, well, this guy only has, you know, a GameStop, Ocarina of Time, whatever, and you can narrow it down to the town and find out where the game stop is and be like, well, they've got to be within this radius. They approximately know where this person's from. Because of pre-purchasing video games.

Yeah. Yeah, you could. You're giving up a little bit of price. privacy there. I guess so. Well, okay. But here's the really insidious part. You know the game Watch Dogs that just came out? No, man. Watch Dogs is kind of like a Grand Theft Auto game

where you were kind of a hacker. I stopped playing attention to video games after Oh God. I played like justified or just cause two. And then before that, the last game I remember is like dead or alive beach volleyball. You remember that? Yeah, I remember that one. That was a good guy. Bouncy Boobes.

A lot of boob physics. A lot of people bitched about that. You can bet there was shit on Tumblr about that bullshit. So listen to the number of editions of this game, okay? Imagine this wasn't even a game. Imagine this was any other fucking product, anything. This is the number of additions, and this is

no joke. Standard edition. Special edition. Vigilante edition. You play exclusive edition. Limited edition. DeadSecek Edition. Digital Deluxe edition. You play deluxe edition. Gold. And how do you get these? You have to buy, these are all individual packages that you can buy.

And some of these editions include, like, exclusive packaging. Some of them have the original soundtrack. One of them has a cap that your character can wear, a baseball cap. One of them has a mask. Another one has a steel book, an art book, badges, cards, map of Chicago. And all this, like... A map of Chicago. That's not a very good prize.

No, it's kind of shitty, right? But these are all different editions that you can buy, and some of them have different content based on how much you pay. Oh. Right? I'm not as offended by that, I'm going to tell you. Okay. All right, Dick.

So I've done this with Army of Darkness. Like, Army of Darkness has like seven different versions, and it's always some new shit that they throw in. I'm such a sucker for that. I know, I get scammed every time, but God damn, but I really love that movie and I really want to see the deleted scenes. I got no one to blame by myself, though.

Yeah. If you can just keep your credit card in your pants and not whip it out every time you get excited, that's all you got to do. Yeah, but it's ruining video games. ruining the video game experience. If you have to pre-purchase this stuff, and companies actually gauge the number of copies they order sometimes.

You know what? I've stopped buying games from game stores, because if you walk in and just want to buy a game, they won't sell it to you anymore. They say, you have to pre-purchase it, and they'll punish you for it. They'll say, hey, you didn't pre-purchase a game. Sorry, we didn't order enough.

I'm like, hey, do you want my money or not? Because I'm going to buy this on Amazon, dickhead. I don't give a shit if you pre-ordered or not. I'm just going to buy it on Amazon. And they'll ship it to you the same day. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah, I remember.

I remember very clearly buying SimCity 3,000 as a pre-purchase, like, because I was so into SimCity for some stupid reason when I was a kid. Yeah. And when I went to pick it up, they had, like, sold out of all of it. Like, they had sold out of all the pre-orders. Yeah. So that annoyed me. But then when I went back again, a couple days later, and they got the shipment in,

I asked my mom to drive me to the mall, I think it was an electronics boutique. I picked it up. I took it home, and the discs were corrupted. So I took them down to, like, the computer guy in our neighborhood. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, dude, this is fuck. They're broken. Like, I just got totally screwed.

So it goes, give them over here. Put them in, and he, like, uncorrupted them. He did something. And he's like, yeah, you know, next time you want to get, like, games like this, just come talk to me. Don't, don't buy them. Yeah. Right?

Just get pirated ones. And from then on, I do not buy software. Anything that you can get for free online, I get for free. So it's interesting you mentioned that. I used to have a policy that I always paid for video games. I always wanted to support the industry. This is the thing I love. I want to support the people who make it.

I want to support the industry. I want to reward these guys for making this content that I love, right? Yeah. Changed. I've changed my attitude about that. And now if I can download a game, it depends. If it's an indie person, if it's somebody who just created this game and they're just, you know, by the, you know,

if they're bootstrapping this project or whatever, I'm going to support them. However, EA games, forget it. I'm never going to pay for an EA game again, ever. Yeah. Because they fuck you every chance they get. They sell you incomplete games, and you have to buy a bunch of shit afterwards.

And then, so when I decided I was going to stop paying for games that I, is when I decided that I realized I already had the game. If I have a game on Nintendo, and it's a cartridge for him and I want it on Wii, guess I'm not going to pay for it again. I already have it. What am I going to pay them for again? Why am I going to keep buying the same content over and over and over again?

No, I know. I think, yeah, what a bunch of fucking nerds we are. So you're getting so upset about video games, but I totally agree with you. Thanks, Dick. That's the special buzz for this episode. Yeah, no, I get the anger. Yeah.

Everyone could just have a little bit more. I think, right? They'll fix it. A little bit of restraint. And also, uh, stop placing so much value on pre-orders. Yeah, if you want to spend the money, just get something else. No, no, I mean, I'm telling the companies to stop placing so much more value on. Believe in your product. Put out something good. Don't worry about the pre-orders. And let us collect interest on our own fucking money. Stop turning video game companies,

uh, video game retailers into banks. It's not GameStop savings and loan. True. I don't want to bank with these idiots. those smelly bastards All right, what's your next problem? My next problem is missing your fantasy football draft. Oh, whoo. Yeah, which I did.

So now I have three quarterbacks, no tight end. Oh, Dick, you lost me right at football. I don't know what anything you're saying means. So I know that you feel this way about football, but I wanted to, so I want to try to present this to you in a way that you'll understand. Okay.

Forget about football. Done. Just pretend that it's a vicious competition between you and your friends. Okay. Let me, I have a fantasy football team with my family every year, and the highlight of my week is writing the recap email on Monday that shits all over everyone. You're interested now, right?

I do like shit talking. You do like writing big, shitty emails to your friends, right? That's what fantasy football is. Okay. It doesn't matter. And even if you lose, the email could be even shittier. Mm-hmm. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. If you lose, I'm a bad sport when I win, and I'm even a worse sport when I lose. You can be the worst sport in the world at fantasy football. All right. And everyone cares. Let's back up for a second. What is fantasy football?

Okay. Fantasy football is like regular football, except there's more points. Like, you get points for doing everything. You pick guys. Oh, Jesus. All right. I got to go way back. Yeah, I don't understand anything.

Okay, so football, right? It's a whole league with all the teams all over the place, right? And usually you root for a team, and if they win, you're happy, and if they lose, you get drunk and get into a fight. Right. Right. So with fantasy football, you pick players from all over the league and make your own team as if you own it.

And then with whatever they do during the week, they get points based on what they did. Okay. And then you play other people in your little fantasy league who also made their own fantasy team. So, that's not, yeah. Go ahead. This sounds like Dungeons and Dragons.

I was just going to say, it's like Dungeons and Dragons, but for jocks. It's the jock version of Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, so this sounds fun, right? No. Oh, come on! I'm trying to pitch us to you here. Okay, I get it. I get it.

You get it. It's not fun, but I get it. Go on. Okay, then it gets like neck and neck for the week, and you lose, and then you go on to play other people and they lose or whatever, and then you, you know, you talk shit, basically. But, but here's the biggest, here's the most important. important part. The part where you pick your teams is a very intense, fast-paced process. You know, it's not like Dungeons and Dragons where you're just rolling fucking dice and you can sit there

all day counting up your points. You're whatever they are, right? Right. This is, you are on the clock. You've got to make your choice. And then when you pick that person, that person's gone for the next person. So if they wanted to pick your guy, they're fucked. They got to think on their feet and pick another guy. Why is this on the clock? Is this just arbitrary? You guys just Set up a timer? No, it's controlled by Yahoo. Like, it goes around. They're actually really good at it.

It goes around and you got like four minutes to make your choice and then you pick. And if you don't make the choice, it picks who's ever on your list. Okay. Right? Sure. So if your list is fucked up and you are not there to adjust it depending on who everybody else picked because you got to pick like 12 guys. Yeah.

Right? you are totally fucked you do not get the positions you want like you don't get your wizard you don't get the wizard you wanted you don't get the paladin you wanted thank you dick for relating this to terms that I can understand thank you for not condescending

you don't get the you end up with three quarterbacks who are all shitty you end up with no tight end and you end up getting shit on by everyone in your league because you look like a joke oh no well that's unfortunate yeah

so this season is starting off really fucking bad for me Well, I'm really sorry to hear that, Dick. You don't know how important this stuff is to people? I don't. You don't want to hear? No, I don't know. I thought you said you don't know how important it is, and I said I don't.

Are you getting a sense of how important it is to me? Let me tell you how important it was last year. Last year, last year, I got killed in my fantasy league. Yeah. But, but I beat my dad's team and I beat my brother-in-law's dad's team. So I was a fucking hero. Dick, let me, this is so many steps removed from actual football. And for you to take any credit for anything, for doing anything, you didn't beat anything.

You just sat, first of all, you didn't pick the football team that actually, like, you didn't, you weren't coaching the team, you weren't playing the game, you aren't related to any of the characters, you don't even live in the hometown, I'm sure, of any of the teams. So you then went one step further removed from that and then just picked them out of the ether and just, played this points game and wrote them down on a piece of paper and you feel proud of that. Yeah. Why are you playing video games, you asshole? I'm not letting someone who's pissed off about video games tell me about football. All right? Fuck you.

It's important. It's important. Yeah, real important. What a jock. This is your jock. This is, I want to say it's Halo for jocks, but Halo is Halo is for jocks. What is it? It's like even more jocky than Halo.

It's like, it's one of the- What do you mean it's more jocky than Halo? It's football. Not Halo. Halo is like the frat guys video game. Okay, frat guys, all right. Yeah. Same thing, right?

You're not getting there. No, frat guys and jocks are not the same. Really? What's the difference? Uh, date rape? Wait, more or less. Probably more so in fraternity. I don't know, actually.

I don't know. I'd say it's comparable. So you're saying it's the halo of... You've got to keep a lot of score, man. I mean, you don't have to, because Yahoo does it for you. Oh, boy, well. You just kind of show up and log in and see how you're doing. So everybody, does everybody use Yahoo?

Is that what everybody uses? I think so. Well, everyone in your league uses the same thing, yeah, because it, like, controls your league name, and it, like, controls who's logging in and keeps track of everything. Wow, it sounds like a lot, it sounds almost like math. It sounds like the least fun thing about math, which is statistics. Yes, it is. Yeah, the least fun thing about math. That's what this is. This is just, like, really, really tame statistics. I guess. Yeah. I don't know. So, hey, hey, guys, you want to come over, drink some beers, do some statistics? Yeah.

Do some stats homework, huh? Yeah, well, you know, it was very fun. You know, I've been over during a fantasy draft football thing, and, you know, none of my friends include me. They never even offered to ask or explain anything. I'm like, okay, fuck you guys, I don't give a shit. So I went over there. First of all, the entire...

Fuck you, I don't give a shit. So I went over there. You got... You know, it was incidental. It was on my way to another party. An actual party. I was on my way to a symphony, a symposium, where we were talking about cool math. Which is any other math, actually.

But I went over to their place when they had a whole bunch of beers and chips and shit out. Like there was an actual football game going on, except there wasn't. They just had a projector up with fantasy football. And the whole place smelled like farts. It was humid in there. Everybody looked like they were just depressed and fat.

Even people who weren't fat were fat. Look, it's a very stressful time. Oh, yeah. Everybody was sweating. It just smelled. It reeked. It looked like the room was dim. like a musky, like a smoky old bar,

except no one was smoking. Why does it get that way around fantasy football? What do you guys? Just like, like, you have to dedicate 100% of your mental faculties to your fucking team, to the draft. You do, I don't, because that shit's stupid. Oh, man, oh man, you better play, because you would get your ass kick. Oh, you're fucking afraid.

You're fucking afraid. You know what, I'll just crunch some numbers. I'll figure out your bullshit little diamond nickel operation. You're talking to the dad slayer over here. How fucking dare you? The dad slayer. The dad slayer who couldn't figure out how to hit double speed on his podcast. Oh, all right.

Yeah, you're on, Dick. I'll play your bullshit little Dungeons and Dragons game with football players. That's what it is. It's Dungeons and Dragons for Football. Yeah. Except instead of interesting characters with interesting archetypes and powers, these are people who just throw a ball. And they're millionaires.

Whoa, whoa, not interesting. No. Do you know how many fucking murders happen? How many DUIs happen in this league every year? These guys are way more interesting than Dungeons and Dragons. You know what? I would say they're comparably interesting. Dungeons and Dragons is fun from time to time,

but I'm not investing huge amounts of time into doing it because I get late. So there's that. This is fucking guy? All right, is that all you got for your big, big problem of the universe this week. I mean, I guess. Look, there's people out there who get what I'm saying. My fucking brother-in-law was frantically putting his team together on the phone while his kid was in the hospital with the croup or whatever it was. That's how important it is. That's what I'm telling you. It's way more important than not buying video games in advance. I don't know about that. But speaking of, my second problem this week is video game post purchases.

Shut the fuck up. Yeah, game post purchases. This is downloadable content or DLC. I know what that is. Okay, you know what that is, right? Yeah, explain what it is, though, yeah. So everybody just calls this DLC. So let's say, Dick, you go out to the store and you want to buy a TV.

And you think you're buying top of the market, the best TV out on the market. It's got, you know, HD. Yeah, what's it got? Yeah, it's got HD. It's got 4K, huh? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it, I like it. Yeah, the resolution race.

It's got 3D. Well, you take this thing home. plug it in, it works for a little while, but then you notice it's kind of missing some features. Some features that were promised on the box that aren't in there. Oh, maybe it's not quite 4K yet. But that's coming. You have to do a firmware update. And to get that firmware, you have to pay for it.

I'm going to pay for that shit? Oh, yeah, you got to pay for it. Uh-oh. Now your TV's not so hot, is it? You paid for a full TV, but what you got is an incomplete TV. That's what DLC is to video games. Companies are no longer selling you a film. finished product. They're selling you a bullshit-ass game. Sometimes the DLCs is as grievous as

extra levels to the video game. Like, I bought this Castlevania game. Yeah, okay, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I bought this Castlevania game on PSN that was this, uh, Symphony of the Night kind of callback of this, this awesome game that came out on PlayStation. This was after you were getting laid, right? Well, you were not playing fantasy football because you're getting laid? Uh, this was before. Yikes. But, uh, no, anyway, the, the game came with one level for $15. You want another dollar? That sucks. Oh, yeah, it does suck.

You want another level? Three bucks. You want the complete game? 35 bucks. So, essentially, they sold me a demo and paraded it and masqueraded it as a full fucking game. They roped you in, man. That's bullshit. Because $35, that's an actual full-blown game.

And they clearly roped you in to sell you the whole thing. Yeah, that's horseshit. You know, I used to buy PC magazines that came with CD-ROMs, and the CD-ROMs had demos of games on them. Or sometimes they would just send them to you Like Sony would send out demos And let people play a level or two And I loved that

That's how I got excited about video games I would play them They were really good, they were really polished They gave me a sample, a taste of the game And then I wanted to go out and buy the full game No more Now they're selling you the demo And then hoping you'll buy the full game

Well fuck you, I'm not buying shit You sold me a full game I expect a full game And a story How rampant is this though? Because there's some like I only know what you're talking about a little bit, and it's never seemed that egregious to me.

Like, it's always seemed like additional content. Like, it doesn't seem like a broken TV when you got it. It seemed like here's a whole game, and now you're buying extra levels, you're buying a dumb hat or whatever after the fact. Yeah, no, it's pretty egregious. There was one game, I forget the name of it, but they sold the ending to the game.

Oh, I think it was Acura's wrath or something like that, some Akuma's wrath, something like that. It was a Capcom game where if you wanted the ending to the game, you had to pay additional money to see how it ended. Fuck you. How about that? Here's how it's going to end, me unplugging it and throwing my fucking PlayStation out the window.

Go to fucking ending to your bullshit-ass game and the end of video game industry. Like, if this continues, this is going to kill the video game industry. Well, I feel like it's actually defined the app industry. Like so many, this DLC, what you're talking about? Like downloadable content is the same. to me is in-app purchases. Well, it depends. Oh, really?

Well, like, for example, give me an example of what you're thinking. Well, I got this, like, guitar app that has, like, guitar tablature, and they are always hitting you up for shit that should be in the app in the first place. Like, pay two bucks, and, like, then you'll get a toggle that will stretch the guitar tablature to the right size. Do you, Sean, do you have that app? I think it's, I think it's, like, the ultimate guitar app. I have like one tuner on my iPhone and that's it.

Yeah. And they charge for that. They have an in-app purchase for that. But it's so fucking frustrating because it's like, man, this should, there's a very clear line between something that is a feature that could just be like a nice little feature to throw in and something that's completely different from the basic functionality of the app. Yeah.

You know what they, these publishers, what they used to do is they just released the full software. Like Microsoft is really bad about this. They used to just release the operating system. with a whole bunch of apps and everything you needed was included. Oh, yeah. But then some marketing dickhead got involved, some business shitwad from fucking Brigham Young University got involved and said, hey, you know what?

All the shit that you're giving away for free, we could charge extra for. So now you get this crippled operating system where little diamond-nickel features like having global hotkeys, which I know nobody uses because they're all idiots, but I do. Global hotkeys is a premium feature. Oh, really?

Now you're fucking over the one customer who might care about this who might actually tell other people to buy software. Hey, Dickhead Microsoft, this is exactly, I'm talking to Microsoft right now. When we have to install operating systems on our parents' computer, guess who's going to install it? The people you're fucking over. And if you're fucking us

over, we're not going to install your bullshit operating system. Quit selling a shit after the fact. Sell us the complete product, end of story. Now, here's... Switch to Mac. That's what you're saying. Oh, fuck Mac. You got to switch to Mac. Apple is just one long post-purchase line of a business model. No, what is it? It's one long strain of post-purchases.

That's all Apple is. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, here's where it really becomes a problem. Some companies let you buy advantages after the game has come out. The fuck is that. So for example, Battlefield 3, there's a kit shortcut bundle. Have you heard of this? You can like buy like cheats? Yeah, no, you're buying with money. No, you can buy the weapons. You can buy the weapons that you have to earn in the game. There's, let me read you what this gives you. I'm for this though.

Go ahead, read it, but I am. Yeah, here's what it is. It unlocks all 39 weapons and gadgets for 2,000 Microsoft, excuse me, it unlocks all weapons and gadgets for 2,000 Microsoft points, which is approximately $25. Weapons are normally unlocked by earning experience while playing as different classes.

So instead of earning the weapons in the game, whoever's richest can just have all the fucking weapons. You want to unlock the secret, level on Kunami, you want to get extra 30 lives? Here you go, just pay for it, Dickhead. No, no, no, I'm for this because I don't have the kind of time that I used to have to earn all this shit, man. I want to enjoy it.

Like, I played Diablo 3 last month, and I did, like, halfway through, and I was like, well, there's still, there's a lot of cool stuff in this game. Guess I'll never get to fucking see it, because I don't have time to sit around all day playing video games like I did as a kid. Like, what about all of us guys who just want to... I'll plunk down 25 bucks to see this stuff. That's not a big deal. That's on top of $60 you already paid for the game.

So you're paying, what, upwards of $100 for one fucking bullshit game just to see some weapons? And if you don't have time, just stop playing video games. That's less than a stake for me. What the fuck do I care? Oh, it makes me so fucking mad. No, that's good for, like, the dads of the world out there. Like, the young dads who just want to play... They want the satisfaction of playing the game, and they don't have the time for it.

Get the fuck out of here with that's a problem. You know what, Dick, though? here's the thing. The people who are using this are rich, snotty, bullshit-ass kids whose parents are going through a divorce and they'll give them anything they want. Oh, here you go. Here's my credit card, honey. Why don't you go buy your fucking weapons pack?

And then you see their scores on the leaderboards. I'm like, holy shit, this guy's really good. Nope, not good. Just has lots of money to spend. Just had 25 bucks laying around. 25 bucks. Is not a lot of money that's spent for these kids. Come on. It all adds up, dude. 25 bucks for this game. 13 bucks for that game. Next thing you know,

you're spending a fucking fortune. just getting things that you should earn, right? You're just taking a shortcut. What about paying for grades, huh? Why don't you just, like, fucking create a pay-for-grade system? Richest people should just be able to get whatever they want. Sure, I guess so. Great.

I'm fine with paying for grades. You make me so fucking... I want to scratch my eyes out right now. What does it matter with paying for grades? So mad. I knew it. You have an agenda against rich people. I fucking knew what I called it three episodes ago.

No, because... Yes, I fucking did, didn't I? I know you said that, but it's not fucking true. I just get so mad because it's an unfair advantage. I want people to just be on a level. playing field. I caught you, you snake in the grass. What did rich people do to you? What did they fucking, is some rich kid out there kicking your

ass on some video game that just pissed you off? I'll tell you what, though. This has nothing to do with a D.L. But I was once playing Call of Duty for a long time ago. And I swore off all the games, all the Call of Duty games because they're all the same bullshit and it pisses me off. Anyway, I was playing one night with this 13 year old kid and this kid was

fucking cheating. He was shooting through walls. And so I sat up all night. How you know? Because I was standing in a corner and a bullet came and hit me. I was standing in a fucking corner in a closed room. How do you know I wasn't like sneaking or like crawling under you or something? Because you can see where they are on the map and they're on the other fucking side of the map. Sniping me through walls? Get fucked.

That's bullshit. He was cheating. Anyway, so I sat there all night getting in this kid's head and he was just like... This is great. He was calling me gay. Every other word. Like he's just gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. That's all he's got, right? It's like a 13-year-old insults. And then I was like really getting in his head. I'm like, hey man. It's a pretty nice PC you got there, huh? This game just came out. How do you run this game?

Because my PC's awesome. I'm like, wow. To run a game like this, you must have spent at least like $1,200 to $1,500 on your PC. Upwards of $2,000 with a video card. What kind of video card do you got? You know, he's starting to brag. I'm like, wow, that's really expensive.

So parents must be going through a divorce, huh? He's like, oh, how did you know? I'm like, yeah, because your parents don't love you enough. And then finally, after hours and hours of getting in this kid's head, Got him to sign off. 6 a.m. I felt like a hero. 30-year-old, beat a 13-year-old. I felt so good.

Maybe he was just really tired after all those hours, and he just went to bed on his own accord, you know? Maybe he had a job the next day he had to get up for. You idiots? No. That was awesome. Manix, I really got to say, I think you are perfect for fantasy football

with the level of petty childishness. You're displaying fighting a 13-year-old over the Internet at video games. You're like the teenage Hannibal Lecter. No, this was not just a battle on the video game front, it was a battle on the psychological front, and I won. Hey, I got a question for you. Yeah.

Speaking of downloadable content. Sure. What do I remember? What was it called? What was the downloadable content for the alphabet of manliness? What was the addendum that was sold attached to that? There was none? I think there was.

I remember you having a... a best-selling book called The Alphabet of Manliness, and then I remember coming out again with a dish that was longer and harder. Yeah, all right, Dickhead. And it had some additional content. I think I remember that. No, but here's what I told fans on book tours. So anytime I went on book tour and people would bring the book to me and they said,

hey, hey, Maddox, I have the original edition. Should I buy this new edition? I said, no. I said, you could sit down in a bookstore. Yeah, I'm sure the publisher loves this. But I said, you could sit down in a bookstore. It's about 40 additional pages of content. If that's valuable to you, if you actually want that for a collector's edition,

because it does have some extra art and things like that, that was all stuff that was produced after the fact and it's all new content. It's not stuff that I wrote and then left out of the book. It wasn't stuff I left on the chopping floor. So the publisher came to me and they wanted to do this extended edition. Originally, the idea I pitched to them was, hey guys, let's do a flip book where on the front, on one side is the alphabet of manliness and on the flip side is the alphabet of womanliness.

No, I remember this pitch. That's a great idea. you. Yeah, that's one of my favorite ideas that you've ever had. Thank you. And it was going to be a flip book. So on the other side, it was the alphabet of womanliness as told by a man. Right. So it was going to be just kind of like a... I mean, man, like a quote man who argues with 13-year-old kids on the internet.

I don't know if you say... Fuck you dick. Piece of shit. Make me so fucking man. I'm going to gouge my eyes out and then I'm going to gouge you as out. Okay. Blind. You should reverse the order. Nope. I'm going to attack you blind. I don't need my senses. I don't need all my senses.

Like a ninja. Yeah, like in Ninja Scroll, the blind guy. So anyway, so yeah, the alphabet of manliness, the extended edition, I actually told people, I'm like, hey, guys, you already own this book. If you want it just for, you know, the collector's sake or whatever, you like to cover better, go ahead. But if you sit down in a bookstore, you could read it for free. So there it is.

And it's not the idea I wanted. That's the idea the publisher came with. The publisher, by the way, tells you nothing. I didn't even know that there was a paperback edition of my book until somebody emailed me They're like, hey, Maddox, what's the difference between the red and the yellow cover of your paperback? I said, I didn't even fucking know it had it. You have a paperback? Yeah, and they made two alternate covers because of an argument that I made with the publisher.

Oh, man, this pisses me off. Okay, I'll end this, I know we're running out of time. But when the publisher... Do you want to bring it in next time as a problem or you want to get this rant out of your system? No, I'll just get out of system because it's not a whole problem. The publisher came to me and they said, hey, Maddox, we want to do this new edition of the book. Originally, I told him, Alphabet of a womanliness as a flip. book. They said no. So then they said, okay, well, you can change the cover if you want, do

whatever you want. And I said, okay, great, I want to make a blue cover so it's distinct from the previous book. They said, no. They said, what we want to do is put a starburst on there that says new additional content. Like literally, the quote was new additional content. I wrote back to them and I said, right on brand. Yeah. You nailed it. You nailed it. You fucking nailed it. Yeah, so I wrote back to them, I said, no, we're not going to put a starburst on my book. And he said, why not? I said, because it's not a fucking detergent. This is a book.

We should make it at least on point with a brand or, you know, in the same theme or whatever. And I can't believe this was a fight because I have both of your books and I actually like that the blue one is blue. Yeah, right? It's just cool. It's just makes the red one look more special. It does. And the red one, it's very distinct. Just at a glance, you can tell which is which.

and they wanted the exact same cover just with a starburst on it. I'm like, you guys are morons. So anyway, we went back and forth, and finally I broke down with the publisher. I was so pissed off. I still have a vein in my head. I remember the day I got this vein. It popped while I was at the gym

because I was telling my trainer about how pissed off I was. And he goes, hey, man, has that always been there? I'm like, shit, no. And now I got this vein on the side of my head. I swear to God, that's the day I got it. I told the publisher, I said, Hey, has any, have you ever had any other book duplicate my success on Amazon? Hit number one on Amazon for over two weeks and pre-orders alone.

Because if you have, let's do what you did for that book. Because if not, shut the fuck up and let me market my book to my own fans. Those fucking idiots. It was a fight. That argument worked? Oh, yeah. Wow. Why wouldn't it?

You really throw your, I don't know, because it's so full of obscenities. It's so bullying. Well, I didn't, you know, it was a little bullying, but I didn't actually cost to the culture. Good, fuck them. Yeah. No, that pissed me off, man. That whole thing pissed me off.

Now I'm in a great mood. I want to punch the wall. So what are our problems for this week? I've got cold lasers. Man, cold lasers. Fuck cold lasers. What's next? We're all paying for healing crystals

and acupuncture and prayer. And bundles of sage, twigs of sage, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Power crystals and remote therapeutic healing. Have you heard of that one? Rakey? I have heard of that one.

Yeah. I sure have. Sean, have you heard of that? Have you heard of Rakey? I've heard of that. And he was talking about, I think there's something called therapeutic touch too

that's equally bullshit. That's actually touching you and Rakey's kind of, you know, you could be or maybe not be in the same state or country. You're just sending out good vibes, you can do it over YouTube videos, by the way. People make YouTube videos about this.

See, if they could put that... It's colossally stupid. If they could put that in a machine, though, then you could get your health insurance to cover it, I think. This is a big problem. We've got to bring it in sometime. What's your second one? My second one was missing your fantasy fucking football draft.

Well, that's unfortunate. Oh, big problem. Go ahead. So my... Right before your vein blows. My problems this week are game pre-purchases and game post-purchases or a DLC. All right. That's it.

Go vote. Yeah, don't forget to vote on the website. The Biggest Problem in the Universe.com. I'm Maddox. This Dick Masters and hey, leave us a voicemail. Thanks, guys.