The Gargle - Fossil licking | Cursed painting | Casino attack

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Alison Spittle and James Colley join host Alice Fraser for episode 129 of The Gargle - the glossy magazine to The Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world.All of the news, none of the politics!👅 Fossil licking🖼 Cursed painting🎰 Casino cyberattack🎙 Hasan Minhaj🥵 Reviews⚾️ D'Ancey LaGuardeHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLEKeep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!Pre-order the D'Ancey LaGuarde Reader book here! http://l8r.it/DHhGAdvertise YOUR business on The Gargle with an Alice Fraser ad read. Contact [e-mail]00:00 Start02:13 Front cover03:03 Satirical cartoon03:47 Story 1: Fossil licking professor wins the IG Nobel prize09:47 Ads13:04 Story 2: Cursed painting twice returned to charity shop sells for more than £1,60016:47 Reviews20:19 Story 3: Casino cyberattack allegedly caused by 10 min phonecall 25:22 Story 4: Hasan Minhaj admits to making up disturbing stories for his stand-up33:21 Bye! Anything to plug? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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And that one is the gargle. This is the gargle, the sonic glossy magazine to the Bugles Audio Newspaper for a Visual World. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Alison Spittel. Hey, boo-boo-boo. And James Colley.

G'day. I know you very well, James. I've known you for many, many years, and yet I looked at your Zoom profile picture and it says Zoom user, and I nearly said Zoom user. I just like to advertise the brand I'm on, you know. I like to give support to Zoom the way Zoom supports me. Before we put our hands on each other's hips

and do that weird funny dance in a line that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover. The front cover this week is Russell Bland, Russell Brand's non-evil twin brother, with a tell-all expose on all the ins and outs of his job wholesaling staple sharpeners. Subheadline is, a comment section that won't make you feel sick. I just, look, I don't want to get too political too early, but I just feel bad for all the kids who had already brought

their pirate costumes for Halloween because, like, it's going to be very hard to prove now that you're definitely a pirate. I mean, it's a terrible thing for the guyliner sales industry. All of the men who wear eyeliner, like we've lost Johnny Depp, we've lost Russell Brand. Who would have known? Maybe he's born with it.

Maybe he needs to look at himself and reform his actions. The satirical cartoon this week is this statement in full from Lisa Brankin, the Ford UK chair, the chairman of the car company Ford, who said, three years ago the government announced the UK's transition to electric new car and van sales from 2030. The audio industry is investing to meet that challenge. This is the biggest industry transformation over a century

and the UK 2030 target is a vital catalyst to accelerate Ford into a cleaner future. Our business needs three things from the UK government, ambition, commitment and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three. So you know the Tory government has f***ed up on the environment issue when well-known car company Ford tells you to pull your f***ing socks back up. Our top story this week is fossil licking news.

The Ig Nobel Prizes are out this year, one of our favourite times of the year here at the Gargle. The research into improbable things that make people laugh and then think, according to the website, came out this week and some excellent research here. James Colley, you're our science correspondent. Can you unpack this story for us? Of course I can.

So the Ig Nobel Prize is gargle Christmas. It is the biggest story of the year. So the winners are out for this year. You might remember, so the winners are out of the for this year you might remember so the nobel prize just for differentiation the nobel prize was started by the inventor of dynamite to assuage his guilt for creating such destruction the ignoble prize is an award for people who have blown up their own scientific credibility and want to still feel good about themselves so there's a bunch so like the nobel prizes there's a whole list that come out

from this there is the um the team that found anticipating boredom induces boredom in lecture attendees which i'm certain was also a boring presentation to reveal uh there was a group that studied how passers-by stop and look up when they see other people on the street doing so which is a real okay i've got my presentation at 8 a.m i have not come up with anything between here and there it's the comedian equivalent of a funny thing happened on the way to the gig some science happened on the walk here that you all have to know about a group that developed a smart toilet which a smart enough toilet would categorize itself as a sink firstly no toilet that's that smart is staying as a toilet there's a team that counted hairs in cadavers noses which they claim were science and not just perversion but the one that

really came through for us was the winner in chemistry and geology for the work in eating fossils. Now, the idea here is that you can learn a lot from licking a rock. And when the second this came up and I saw that Alison was on this week, I'm like, great. We have got our official expert in having conductive products in your mouth. You are here to exactly know. So I don't want to step on any of your learnings here i'm going to leave this part of the experiment to the experts all i will say about the ignobles is it is so interesting to see all the amazing things scientists can now do now that they

have the spare time after solving climate change so as soon as you go i'm a change thing like i'm sorry i'm i'm getting into let me just google something group oh my god oh my god how are we doing this it's it's crazy it's crazy it's not even cancer no cure for cancer yet diabetes nothing they're like we need to count the amount of hairs in a cadaver's nose it's crazy i mean imagine as well being the like my grandmother when she died she donated her body to science and it was like a real um it was a real noble thing that she did but i would be so pissed if that's what she donated her body towards them just counting her hairs you want something you want something real big i mean i imagine you can reuse the

cadaver it's not like oh well i can't use this one for other research it's already had its nose hairs counted that one's finished put it in the bin straight in the bin go on but how do you research cancer if the nose hairs are gone you know what i mean number one um yeah it's such a um it is nice that like you know science is such a wide field and we do get to have people be a bit silly it is like stand up comedy in a way you know some people

like to do jokes about real things like sexual assault or whatever I like to put batteries in my mouth well I do both but like not the same time though but yeah this Ig Nobel mouth oh i do both but like not the same time though but uh yeah it's it's this ignoble prize is a fantastic thing but the premise of the licking of the fossils is that you can bring

out the texture of the minerals by wetting it and uh when you're in the field presumably um it's too much trouble to go for your water bottle so you can just go but the idea is that eventually, if you've been doing this for long enough in order to see the fossil, you'll start to develop a taste for the kinds of minerals involved. And that, that extremely experienced fossil researchers will be able to tell you what a rock is by licking it.

Which is probably the worst party trick. It's also like the journey you have to go. Like you have started a marathon you don't want to complete here because I'm sure if you licked anything at your work, we are professional writers. We could lick every pen and eventually we'd be very good at being like, well, that's a blue, that's a black, that's a red. It doesn't mean it's worth the journey.

I think it's like it's more just a tragic sign of where science funding is added our community now that geologists are forced to lick rocks just to get through the lunch break i think just like cost of living is very high there's nothing else to do they're out in the desert there's there's not a tesco's about i've britished up that joke for you people i don't know what a Tesco's really is. I have vague context clues of what a Tesco's is. I presume they're not near rocky outcrops. So you are forced to lick a rock. It's like a Coles Metro with about half the number of things on the shelves

because of shortages, basically. Do you think these geologists who lick the fossils are just the geologists who refuse to work for fossil fuel industries and these are the only jobs that they have and they're like no we're gonna be moral people here and we're gonna lick fossils do you think someone was caught sucking off a dinosaur and had like seven seconds to make an excuse genuinely which which type of dinosaur i go for like stegosaurus or something. I'd say triceratops.

Get your money's worth. I want three of them. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by the toothbrush. The toothbrush. Wipe away your mouth sins. All you need is some teeth, a a mouth some sort of an abrasive that aids in removing dental plaque and food from the teeth assists in suppressing halitosis and delivers

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that has been sold at a premium basically because it was returned and the premise is that it's cursed and some people just... I mean, it's an odd person to be, to be the person that believes enough in a curse to pay more for a cursed painting, but not enough in a curse to be worried that you're buying a cursed painting. That's so true allison spittle you're our art correspondent can you unpack this story for us yeah so this was a painting it's a to give the podcast listener the the theater of the mind uh basically this painting is of like a pretty a pretty little girl in like a red kind of shirt.

She looks a bit like Keira Knightley. I think that would be the best description. But if Keira Knightley was a cursed painting, that's what it's like. I mean. I mean. I know. So this is a painting that's been returned twice to a charity shop and

someone had a very clever idea of putting a little sticker on it to say that this is cursed and oh it goes she's back sold twice and returned twice are you brave enough? which is an incredible piece of marketing and I think like McDonald's should do this for their next

like new burger and call it like cursed burger are you brave enough so many have died well it's just botulism you know it's a great way of repainting a disaster um so this yes this is a uh this lady called zoe elliott brown she was the last person to buy it out of this uh charity shop and she sold it for let's see how much 1680 quid in an online auction and she's giving half the money to hastings advice and representation center which is the which is the uh which is the charity shop so yeah let's talk about this it's such a weird story because um at the poster or looking at the picture, do you think it's cursed? I feel like.

Oh, yeah. It's chock-a-block with ghosts. Oh, this has ghosts out the bloody wazoo, this thing. I hate this child. I hate everything about this painting. I think the eyes are going to move on me. I do not care for her one bit. I think if I looked away and looked back, I would be in the painting and she would be here. I do not care for her one bit i think if i looked away and looked back i

would be in the painting and she would be here i do not care for this painting i will bring it back a third time that's how kira knightley got her first job like some some executive looked in and she came out and said i'll start your film and yeah it's so it's so like art is so subjective and i lived in a shared house that had this old piece of art from many, many tenants ago. And it was of this woman who was dipping her very, very long toes into some water. Oh, no.

Like, they were extremely long. Now, looking back, I think whoever painted this, quite into feet. But, like, I... The Quentin Tarantino of brushwork exactly exactly but i was uh i still that is the one piece of art i still remember and it's i think it's because i think it was cursed and i was too afraid to move it i was too afraid to move it from its place because the toes were following you around the room. Those toes could go around corners. They could like, you know.

This is how we get people back into art galleries. You have the boring classic section, but you have it advertised as everyone who painted these pictures has now died. Now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. James Colley, what have you brought in for us this week?

This week I am reviewing summer, which should be difficult because it is September, which in Australia for years now has been spring but it is very much not spring it is 35 degrees yesterday 36 today it is continuing on that way uh it is do you know how like in in kids films they're always like this is going to be the summer that lasts forever well that sucks that's extremely bad i would have to say don't don't do it it's not it's not a good time it is really do you know what here's what happens here is here is what you have to look forward to what happens is you're like you walk out saying oh my god this is a beautiful day this

is perfect weather what a lucky boy i am to live in such a place and then you realize it is 6 30 a.m and it's going to get hotter from here and the world is irrevocably broken so zero stars to summer zero stars to summer and zero stars because of the light pollution created significant part by starlink what fun uh allison what have you brought in for us so i've brought in uh well another thing that i put into my mouth and it's a packet of crisps from ireland called banshee bones which uh speaking of cursed i know these are the ultimate cursed crisps um i've had these as a child and if you don't know what a banshee is

I'll describe it for you now it's like a it is a ghost woman that if you hear it means that a cousin or some other relative of that equivalency will die within the next few days

or if you see her that means you're going to die and I remember once I was about 50 and if you see her that means you're going to die and i remember once i was about if you eat her then she dies and that's why i'm giving it five out of five i've broken the case someone who like i don't i don't know my cousins like i have cousins in the world but i don't we didn't really interact with them i don't know my cousins just really not a threat to me if it happens somewhere out there that's someone else's problem

you're like shit to be my uncle but i'm okay you know um like banshees i remember like when i was a kid i was about 15 and i was walking down the the uh a a small road of my friend Donna and I heard what I like this screaming sound was like me and Donna were about 15 we were walking home from a Darius concert and we both looked at each other and we went banshee run so I ran as fast as I could but the faster I ran the louder the banshee got behind me and I was so scared that i threw myself into a ditch and i said take me banshee take me because at 15 i was ready to die rather than run and uh the noise had stopped and i realized that what i thought was the sound of a banshee was actually the sound of wind blowing through my hoop earrings at the time the scariest irish ghost story you'll ever hear in your life

so five out of five five out of five in a bunch of bones now it is time for our cyber attack news cyberattack, people in black tippy-tapping on keys in the middle of a metal room, apparently. This is the news that ransomware, Alf V, also known as Black Cat, is reportedly behind a cyberattack that shut down MGM Grand casinos on Monday. Alison, you love rolling the dice. Can you unpack this story for us? Oh, this was like a Hollywood film. So basically, the whole MGM Grands system was taken down by a 10-minute phone call. So they were able to, basically, they got a little bit of information about an employee from LinkedIn, rang up the help desk, asked for that employee, and within 10 minutes was able to bring down the whole MGM Grands computer systems, which for me was like a weird comfort that like AI still has no match for being polite. You know, being polite human is going to get you a lot more than AI.

So like this company was valued at like three. Look, this is how long, is it trillion? Is it three-three, nine-zero-zero, and then a zero-zero, and then another zero-zero. What's that in words? I believe that's 33 billion. It's a lot of money. And they were taken down by a 10-minute conversation. And, yeah, they took immediate steps to secure its systems after

receiving outage reports and they and by the way mgm grand they're kind of they're doing the thing that irish people do which is going it's grand leave it it's fine so uh like yeah so the fbi are aware of the incident but it's just it's just a crazy thing now they say what's the name of the organization it's black caps is the organization i've taken uh taking responsibility for this um and i didn't know this but there's quite a lot of um there's quite a lot of computer hackers that steal money from casinos like the last there's a company called that lazarus which is so such a cool name by the way for any for any uh computer hacker company and they stole 41 million in virtual currency from uh from stake.com so it happens

I'm just uh yeah apparently that casinos are a great place to attack uh for which I blame entirely George Clooney also the fact that like it's kind of a victimless crime because casinos are f***ing immoral holes for ruining people's lives and I'm not going to be worried at all if someone steals all of their money. But my favourite recent casino hack was the one where hackers used a fish tank to hack a North American casino by using the sensors that were connected to an internal PC that regulated the tank's temperature of food and cleanliness but was also connected to all the other systems in the casino that's incredible which i think is

great i reckon the fish was in on it i think like that's a very suspicious fish that the fish only started working that casino like a month beforehand highly recommended by a friend if you're doing a hollywood remake of that film you just have some guy in a trilby hat just tap in the fish tank like shooting fish in a fish tank you know what i mean it'd be amazing joe pesci smashing the glass of the fish tank that's now empty after the fish is off in the ocean with a bag of money amazing that would be incredible we got our demolitions guy we got our getaway driver we got our fish yeah all the things we need for a successful casino heist.

Now, this fish is the best in the business. The only problem is his memory is three seconds. So every three seconds, someone has to explain the plan to him one more time. I mean, to be fair, isn't that the structure of every heist movie is just treating the audience like they're the fish and explaining to them exactly what's happening every time that's so true i was thinking about what was the actual phone call like this was a 10 minute phone call and through my kind of experience of breaking the law with phones and maybe the conversation went a bit like this um hello mgm grand hello i just want to know is your casino running you better go look for it that would be the tip-top phone crime of my life i just love the idea that at some point mgm had to admit to this and the universal reaction has been like

oh did someone make a bad choice and end up losing a bunch of money well i mean also a 10 minute phone conversation in the context of the modern world is genuinely stressful i assume that on the heist team they had a boomer this is not a millennial crime this is what you need is you know your mom to give them a call and tell them what how she feels about the washing machine settings yeah if this was a millennial situation you'd receive a text that just says m outside the safe eggplant emoji and that's all the time we have for our casino news because now it's time to people making up things in stand-up news. The extremely lucky Hasan Minhaj has had his scandal wiped out

by more disgusting scandals this week. But we're going to unpack this story a little bit. James Colley, you've made up most of your life. Can you unpack this story for us? Oh, I actually was just on the way to the gig when I heard this story. Hassan Minhaj is a comedian, a very good comedian, and a comedian I very much like, but who a lot of his act is very autobiographical.

This is not one of those acts where you're like, hang on a second, half of this chat is you talking with the squid but squids don't talk it's he's telling autobiographical stories from his life where details seem to have been exaggerated or completely fabricated and with real world consequences with things like various um iterations of a story he told about a prom date rejecting him on the night of the prom they're being disputed uh like recounts of this from the date saying this actually conversation happened beforehand he didn't show up with a corsage and also he put my photo up and told people i was a racist and that did not go

well for me when that came out like so um it's not just comedians make things up all the time they do things like yeah i'm sober or consensual comedians always make up but like they this is a particular one because your act is on authenticity and i would say with hasard there's there's these horrible my like uh problems with as well of like often you're trying to speak to a bigger problem in this case or blah blah blah all the stuff boring cavits that i'm sure anyone intelligent enough to listen can do in their own head what i want to get to out of this is this has been a better week for stand-up comedy comedy in general and i realize i am saying this on a record with a bunch of stand-up comedians but are we sure this is worth the effort are we certain we should still be doing this like

if like every four months we found out one juggler was a fraud and another was a sex pest and i know that's a bad example because i'm certain if i looked into it one in every five jugglers is a sex pest and i am being generous to four out of every five jugglers who are just pervs but if that were the case we would say hey maybe don't juggle for a few weeks maybe we should work out what's going on in the juggling community and perhaps install a hr department in the juggling community but comedians don't do that because we are incapable of keeping as many balls in the air as the juggling community we can't focus on as many things at the same time but all i'm saying is are we certain it is worth it for what is a paltry 50 minutes in an overheated

Edinburgh cavern are we certain that the actions are worth the results well if you see my show twist from this year you'll find out that I think the answer is no um yeah it's a tricky one because we've all we've all you know I've I've got a story where one of the villains in my show is called dave and he's he's a composition of about five different men that i know uh three of whose names were coincidentally dave so i thought i'm gonna call this character dave and then two of the five men contacted me later to say that their feelings had been hurt and i was like it's not you but it's also not not. So I don't really know how to react. It's interesting because I do stand-up comedy about real experiences and stuff.

And I realized that you have to make changes in order for the audience to find it more palatable, even though it's not the truth. Do you know what I mean? I did some stuff about being robbed. And when I talked about having a knife like the the person who robbed me had a knife the audience just refused to laugh at anything else like that i did in the show because they wanted to focus on that one detail and i but the difference of hassan minaj is like i feel sorry for him because he says there's an emotional truth to it and i'm sure he has been rejected at some point like over his race i'm sure like he

wouldn't i i maybe i think too much of him but i'm just like i wouldn't feel that he'd make it up i'm sure he felt at one point that his daughter was in was in danger in direct danger because of the type of comedy that he does and obviously like he's done this story in like such a dramatic silly way that that could that could absolutely be verified and it's just a weird thing sorry to get all serious about it no i i feel so i have a very bizarre inversion of this problem which is i like doing stand-up show do autobiographical stories but i'm mostly telling low risk like big stories from my childhood but my high school friends love to come to every show and then sit me down after the show and go over where i lied and it's a really interesting my friends do that post show factor

and like look i lie because you're not that interesting what i needed in the situation that we were in was a professional comedian to finish the story in a way that would really sell to an audience. This is on you. I'm lying because you didn't deliver in reality. That's amazing. James, when you next put out a special, please can that be the DVD bonus?

Is you just sitting around with your high school friends having them correct all of the facts? That would be great. There is actually a legendary australian comedian tom gleason who alice would know well but a adored comedian here who has a regular feature in his comedy festival shows which is he will finish his show and he will say now there were three lies in the last hour who wants to guess what they were and it is a beautiful yearly end to his show where you get to and then when you've been to a few, you spend the whole time being like,

I don't think he really sold a washing machine on Gumtree or whatever his story is. But it adds an extra game to the show. It's such a good conceit. Oh, look, I got a confession, guys. I never actually put batteries in my mouth. This call is over. This is out.

No, sorry. what i did was i put a one of those uh uh large windmills that make electricity but it didn't seem relatable so i wanted to be relatable to the ground but i was like what can i fit in my mouth and i was like well a battery and air so so i'm sorry i'm sorry i did put a battery in my mouth i promise you i did i'm gonna believe in the emotional. I did put a battery in my mouth. I promise you I did. Hi, Yolk. I'm going to believe in the emotional truth that I want to believe in here. Not only did you put a battery in your mouth, you often have batteries in your mouth in my head.

You're spitting batteries out right now. Genuinely, the biggest feedback I get off people is batteries in my mouth, Shrek or soup. Like those are the three things that people think of very much and i'm into them all maybe you know yeah i feel like the problem with the central problem with the hassan minaj story is that everybody knows that uh comedians make some stuff up but it's at what point is it too much at what point uh do we sort of give up our suspension of disbelief at what point do we agree that it's fictional but you also have to understand this is in a country uh america where despite all of the evidence they still insist that they're number one

yeah uh i feel sorry for him but like there is a part of me that's going, I wonder if he'll just do a second draft now on things that are his emotional truth and go, is there any other examples from my life that I can bring that's actually real to make a point that I want to make? You know what I mean? I think it's a good time for all American comedians

to reassess their action I would like to see Jeff Foxworthy to say you might be a redneck if your gun rack has a gun rack but also you might just be very organised and you might need a second gun rack for your gun rack I want to hear the full disclaimer Alright that brings us to the end of the show

I'm flipping through the ads at the back Alison Spittel have you got anything to plug? I got a tour coming up but it won't be for ages but it's called soup and you can go enjoy that if you're in ireland go on the virgin media player i'm going to be on celebrity goggle box with kerry katona which is going to be a lot of fun yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. James, Collie, have you got anything to plug? Yeah, if you are in Australia and you love a rom-com, I have a novel on sale now. It's called The Next Big Thing. It's a little rom-com about big things in Australia.

I think you'll really enjoy it. If you are an international audience, if you go to small independent bookstores and you threaten them, they will find a way to bring it into your country but for now it's pre-orders in Australia so please go on and do that because weirdly it matters weirdly pre-orders matter you can't just have a book for sale and people buy it

you have to buy it before it's for sale and that's how we do this industry yes it is an extremely odd thing pre-sales do make a massive difference which is why I say that for me, you should also go to unbound.com and find Alice Fraser, find the Dancy Lagarde reader

and pre-order that for your friends, family and frenemies. Also, if you happen to be a romance novelist, a romance writer or in like the romance community, like with a podcast or a convention or something, hit me up because I'd love to tell you why I love this shit. Thank you to our roving reporters, PK,

who sent in fossil licking and the casino cyber attack story, and Robert Wells, who sent in the cursed painting story. If you would like to be a roving reporter for The Gargle, tweet us at HelloGarglers on that particular app. While it lasts, I'm Alice Fraser. You can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser, where we do weekly writers meetings and chatty meetings for a dollar a month. And this is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is

Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from the bugle including the bugle catharsis tiny revolutions top stories and the gargle wherever you find your podcasts