The Gargle - Runner's penis | Space chorizo | Kindle ants

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Josh Gondelman and debutant Steffan Alun join host Alice Fraser for episode 74 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle - with no politics!🏃🏻 Runner's penis pops out🔭 Space chorizo🐜 Ants buying Kindle books👷🏻‍♂️ Man steals excavator and digs🤒 ReviewsProduced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels

or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.

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Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. I'm here sitting in the Underbelly Bar, which is called Abattoir, because the Underbelly's theme is a cow, and I assume that death is their theme as well. We are in George Square Gardens at the Edinburgh Fringe, because this is literally the only place that we can find good Wi-Fi. But what you can hear in the background is the sound of a thousand artists

having a nervous breakdown, and also some civilians eating ice cream and refusing to be flied into shows because it's too hot so instead of writing an intro what i'm going to do is i'm going to read some extracts from my five-star review of my show kronos the breathtakingly funny relatable and meaningful bon mots that comprise kronos are set amidst the premise of alice stitching this show together last minute across a train ride from London to Glasgow in March 2020. With genre-defying material so original, eyes will widen at the novelty. Alice is a superlative wordsmith. The poignancy and connection Alice infuses into her writing and delivery, evidenced by prior literative stand-up treasures Empire Ethos Mythos The Resistance and her inaugural Edinburgh fringe wonder, Savage,

are what will keep her words alive and along with you long after you leave her. But you will not leave her because this is The Gargle, the sonic, glossy magazine to the Bugle's audio newspaper for Visual World. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Josh Gondelman and Stefan Allen. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I feel, compared to your situation, I'm in a tranquil and relaxed New York City right now. The front page of this week's magazine is Serena Williams,

retiring at the age of 41, posing next to all of her trophies. I know that's her in the corner. No, that's her in the even smaller. She's just right there in the tiny, tiny, tiny corner. It's like Where's Wally? Or as you say in America, Where's Waldo? Apparently in 1987, when they brought Where's Wally to America, they decided that Americans couldn't handle the name Wally. Really? Oh my gosh. I feel so talked down to by my childhood books in a way that obviously they always have been talking down to me, but now I'm aware of it. It's only occurring

to me now that I didn't know whether Wally or Waldo was original. So it's nice to have Australia as a sort of deciding vote. Well, he's a British author. so I think it was originally Wally and the Americans were the ones who were patronized by Waldo. And then, you know, the reality is in Germany, I think it's Walter, full name. In France, it's Charlie, Charlie, like Charlie Hebdo, je suis Charlie. Everyone's Waldo in France. Well, then he's much easier to find. Everyone's Waldo in France. Well, then he's much easier to find.

The way you put it, though, it sounds like America has never heard of a Wally, but is crawling with Waldos, which is not the case in my experience. Okay, here's a thought, though, because evil Wally is called Odlor, which is Waldo backwards. So is that an American invention? I imagine it is an American invention, like fries. Yes. Or as they're known everywhere else in the world, French fries.

They're not an American invention at all. Yeah. Okay, so what you're saying is that America looked at Where's Wally and thought this is good, but it needs a villain. It needs a villain. Which is, I always considered in the earlier books the villain was the frailty of perception and the uh the kind of the the way that perception washes over you and makes people anonymous even when they're crying out to be found but apparently they needed a guy with a mustache or whatever now it's time for the satirical cartoon for this week the satirical

cartoon this week is the fbi raiding donald trump's house at Mar-a-Lago. And one of the FBI agents is saying to the others, do you think this is a good idea? And one of the other ones says, why? Because it'll make people angry and like incite conspiracy theorists. And the original one says no, because it means we'll have to make Trump jokes in the news again. That's the satirical cartoon for this week. Joshosh how do you feel about having to make trump jokes again i like truly haven't thought of a new thing actually that's not true i thought of one thing to say because it's the same day but like i'm really scraping the bottom of my brain barrel uh but it was the same day that he said i wish that my generals had had the loyalty of german

generals right like and the fortitude of like World War Two German generals, essentially. And I'm like, well, then I think Trump should have acted as decisively as Hitler did when he found people about to raid his compound. Stefan? I quite like Donald Trump being back in the news, because it feels like when an old Doctor Who comes back. They're not really the focus anymore, but it's just, oh, yeah, I remember you. And even if you didn't like them at the time,

it just helps you feel nostalgic. Oh, yeah, like the reboots. It makes you feel young again. Yeah, that's nice. Now it's time for our top story. And our top story this week, a runner has come in last in a four-minute dash after a wardrobe mishap.

Josh Gondelman, you're a runner. Can you unpack this story for us? Sure. So an Italian runner came in last in an event, a 400-meter dash as part of a decathlon in Colombia. And he came in last. People noticed that he was clutching at his groin. It wasn't an injury his penis had fallen out of his shorts uh and he was trying to kind of keep it contained and i think

even though he came in last in the race once your penis unfurls out the bottom of your garment you're already a winner uh i think that's the case he doesn't seem to have i will say does not seem to have the heart of a champion, though, right? If your penis pops out during a big race, you've got to let that thing flap and hope it crosses the finish line ahead of the rest of you. Just go for it.

Fortunately, this is a decathlon, so he has a few chances to make up ground. Perhaps he will do better in a javelin or a pole vaulting event. I mean, I think it's such a sad story because he's 18. So he's, although it is an adult penis incident, he's quite young adult. So this is, I feel like a very formative thing. He's taken to social media to express his feelings about it. He says, I'm conscious. It was obviously an

accident. And I'd like to tell you, I'm aware of the reaction and you don't need to send me the links to the blogs out there. Poor man, just being cascaded. I mean, this is the reverse dick pic. He's being sent thousands of pictures of his own penis. Which might be historically unprecedented. So I think he's, you know, he didn't finish in record time, but he is setting some kind of competitive record here. Yeah. I think this is win-win really. Because if was a racer I'm sure there's financial advantages to winning but the main reason you want to win a race is bragging rights yeah and I think it's slightly better than winning a race to say I was slowed down by my own penis That is, in some way, the Freudian version of bragging that racing is surely aiming towards.

Yeah, I think, yeah, ultimately, they should just have a dick-swinging competition. So he's arguably launched the very first real-life dick-swinging competition and won it. I don't think he lost at all. He was the only competitor, so I do think he won on a technicality. You're ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy.

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ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era.

Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. ACAST.com That's all the time we have for our ad section now

because now it's time for our next story. And this is our space news. This is the image of a distant star that turned out to be made of meat, or did it? Stefan, can you unpack this story for us? So this is the story of a scientist who put up a picture claiming it was a picture of a distant star. And everyone got very excited until the scientist revealed that it was actually a picture of a slice of pepperoni, which I really love. This is exactly what I would do if I was a scientist. I would spend all my time doing pranks.

Just putting up headlines like, Apple juice found on Mars. Or, the dodgers are fine, they were just hiding. You're really good at camouflage. Josh? This is truly a brutal prank, though. The scientist referred to it as a, quote, science joke, but it is really the most

deflating prank I've ever heard of. It's like, oh, doesn't this picture make you feel tiny and insignificant in the context of the ineffable and unknowable vastness of our universe? Doesn't it give you perspective on the petty problems you obsess over day to day? Doesn't it make you feel lucky to be part of a shared existence of humanity and this breathtaking intergalactic spectacle?

Psych! It's charcuterie! You reflected on your own pathetic existence for nothing. Well, I mean, just from a Buddhist perspective, everything is sort of awe-inspiring. If you think of things as atoms, we are as much ineffably bigger than an atom in a piece of salami than we are ineffably smaller than a star in a distant universe. So I think it's actually as awe-inspiring to look at a piece of chorizo as it is to look at a distant star. I agree with you. I think that we were kind of tricked into believing in the beauty of our universe, but really it's an opportunity to marvel at the majesty of chorizo, right? The colors, the composition, the implication of flavor. It really makes me believe that we're part of something bigger than ourselves.

I think maybe God exists. Well, yeah, I think when you look at things like the diagram of the golden mean and things like that, and they sort of superimpose that over various things in nature, and it makes everything look like it's connected. How does the miniaturization of a distant galaxy in the form of a slice of meat plywood not inspire you to believe in a kind of an echoing sort of communion of things in the universe?

So I think I see it from the other angle, though, because I've only just learned of the philosophy of the sublime, the idea that we see a giant mountain and we feel insignificant and it makes us feel very small. And what I like about this is, you know, that's not inherent to the chorizo. I can see that you can intellectualise it, but if you look at it, it doesn't make you instinctively feel small. But what we've done is, yeah, but just imagine it was massive.

I like that. I like the way it works. It's made me really appreciate Honey, I Shrunk the Kids more. Just turning the everyday into the sublime. I mean, my favorite bit about this whole story is that we've had three different pronunciations of the Spanish sausage. And nobody knows who's right. Oh, I know I'm wrong. Don't tell me the Spanish are right.

I really Americanized it, for sure. And look, I knew, we should have known something was up, right? Because this picture, and I hate to say it, looked way better than the other ones taken by the Webb Telescope. Like, I know people found those other ones moving for what they mean for science and our universe, but visually, that was some Windows 95 computer desktop looking stuff. I mean, like some real 90s TV scrambled porn ass photos.

I get it. We're all specks of dust. But you know what else is a speck of dust? A speck of dust. And that's what it looked like we were looking at. Well, that's because ultimately, as much money as you try and put into photographing space, they're never going to be as incentivized as people trying to take pictures of things for a takeaway menu. Those need to look appetizing.

Right, right, right, right. I totally agree. That's all the time we have for Space Sausage News, because now it's time for Ant Book Worm News. A woman in Brazil has purported finding that her Amazon Kindle e-reader has been infested with ants who are now buying books on her behalf. Josh Gondelman, you've read a book. Can you unpack this story? Yes, of course. So this woman found that there were purchases she couldn't explain on her Kindle account. And then she looked and there was a little hole where ants were crawling into it. And first of all, I have to say huge respect to this woman for apparently having an unprecedented level of crumbs in her electronic device.

My laptop is basically a crouton buffet at this point. And that has never happened to me. So she's on the next level. My hat is off to her. Secondly, I want to say that I really relate to these ants, because they're buying a bunch of books they're never going to read, and that's classic me behavior. This is truly the most adorable version of Black Mirror, where technology goes awry. And I like this world. Ants are ordering books online. You can get anything delivered instantly. But what cost?

It's brought to you by a platypus. The president is a goat. I think this is kind of fun. Well, I mean, this is like, this is one of the, I do not think Amazon is against this. I think Amazon wants you to accidentally order books online while having sex. I think that this is the ultimate outcome

that the capitalism has gone so wild that ants can act on your behalf as your book-buying agent. Next, there'll be a cockroach negotiating the rights for the next Fast and the Furious movie. I'm just going to say that if this had happened to me, I would never have told anyone, because the story seems so implausible, and I don't trust myself to be able to sell it.

Like, I wouldn't have even asked for a refund, because the idea of telling them it wasn't me, it was several thousand ants in a trench coat. Sure, buddy, we all saw the ants. I do like, though, that this shows that ants are more efficient than monkeys. Yes. Because they can just order the complete works of Shakespeare. You need an infinite

number of monkeys with typewriters to produce it. Your reviews section now. As you know, each week we ask both of our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars. Stefan, what have you brought in for us? I'm going to review Tenerife. Okay. So can I be unprecedented and give the star rating first? Yes. I'm giving it five stars. Okay. That is not what the review reads like it is aiming towards but I don't think you could give a place less than five stars. I think that's awful. However I've got some criticisms.

So I'd never been to Tenerife because I'm Welsh. I grew up with not a huge amount of money. So that was somewhere the posh kids went, the daughters of politicians and lawyers. And whereas my wife, there is a sort of wealthier branch of her family that decided after lockdown, let's go to Tenerife. I wasn't prepared for it. I thought it was in Spain. It's actually off the coast of Africa because it isn't in Spain. It belongs to Spain. There's a difference. So you sort of go there.

It's built for tourists, it belongs to Spain. There's a difference. So you sort of go there, it's built for tourists, which I was thinking I could try some tapas, the first restaurant I actually saw was Burgers, because it's for us British scum. The thing I liked about it is that there aren't neon signs for the nightclubs, because they know we'll just find our way to that, that's not where the competition is.

We'll smell the stale aftershock and go there. So the neon signs in Tenerife are all on pharmacies. That's where the real money is. First sign I saw said, We speak English. You go into the pharmacy, you can't browse at the shelves. They just give you a party bag

with an Alka-Seltzer and a morning after pill. So Tenerife, five stars, Tenerife, five stars. Tenerife, five stars. Josh, who have you brought in for us? This is my review of feeling better after you've been sick. Feeling better after you've been sick. Feeling sick, obviously, we're talking, that's a one to two star experience maximum, right?

Your body feels bad. You can't go to an amusement park. Food tastes weird. Not a great experience. Feeling better after being sick, I would say a substantially improved experience, right? Your senses come flooding back to you. The abilities of your body return. You feel a renewed sense of enthusiasm for life. However, you are expected, once your ability to do things returns, the expectation that you will do things returns with it. And that is the rub, isn't it? Right?

People expect you to do things. They want you to go places and accomplish things. And I've gotten pretty used to, in the past couple weeks, a life of zero accomplishment and zero expectation. And I don't pretty used to, in the past couple weeks, a life of zero accomplishment and zero expectation. And I don't like the fact that that left me. So it's a real mixed bag here. I'm going to go for feeling better after you've been sick, three and a half stars. Three and a half stars. So we've got a five star that read like a two and a three and a half star that read like a probably a four and a half star. Well done for getting better, Josh. That's a nice thing. Infinite possibility that lies ahead of you.

And now it's time for our final story in this shambolic festival edition of The Gargle. This is like, as far as The Gargle goes as a glossy magazine, I feel like this is the zine edition of the glossy magazine. This is just like badly photocopied A4 black and white pen drawings that have been stapled onto an old newspaper. So I apologise for that. We will try and do better next week.

And it's now time for our final story, the story of a man who stole an excavator and just started digging. Salt Lake City Police arrested a man on Sunday because he stole an excavator from a construction site. He drove almost a mile, and then he just randomly dug a hole. Which I think, let us be honest, we have all wanted to do.

I mean, none of us walk past a digger without like a wooga-ing it at it like a cartoon from the 1940s. Like we all want to steal a digger and dig a hole. The police are arresting a folk hero here. I don't know what more I can say in praise of the man who dig a hole. The police are arresting a folk hero here. I don't know what more I can say in praise of the man who dug a hole. It wasn't a purposive hole, it was just a hole for the sake of a hole. And I feel like he's building a portfolio

to audition for a job in construction. There's just an unpaid internship in hole digging. I think it's beautiful. I think it is beautiful. But I also think, I really want to, because I can think of a thousand different ways to approach that dream.

You know, is this a childhood thing? Is this someone who, as a child, tried digging a hole to China and thought, I need to scale up? Is this someone who played Grand Theft Auto and thought, yeah, I want to do that in real life? You know, I can empathise with that. I grew up on Pokemon, and there is a part of me

that wants to make a hedgehog fight a seagull. Or maybe this is just someone who has run out of novel experiences. I think we live in a world where the internet gives us access to so many things that sometimes we do things that are absolutely morally wrong, but we do them because it's the only thing we haven't experienced. Like, the other day, I ate a deep-fried kree leg. It was awful, but now I know what it's like.

Josh? Yeah, I mean, how can you blame someone for wanting to live a childhood dream? Every four-year-old wants to dig a big hole with an excavator, and this guy did it. Like, sure, it's a crime, but it's a really impressive commitment to staying in touch with one's inner child, and we need to celebrate that. Like, if a space shuttle was sitting there with the keys in it, it would be hard to turn down your one chance to actually be an astronaut, right? Like, you would have to understand that that's what's happening. Also, here's a little bit of american context um in salt lake city it's like substantially harder to access alcohol so there's a good chance that this person was not even drunk was just like

i get to do this for the love of the game or meth but i don't want to make assumptions well maybe this speaks to alcoholic tolerance uh maybe he he'd returned from holiday having had his first pint and a lifetime's worth of bad drunk decisions all came out at once well i mean i read this story number of times trying to find the and he was on drugs line but there was it was absent from this tale so i think i think we just have to assume that he is a rational actor acting in his own best interests and he's decided well look there's plenty of things that are crimes that should not be crimes uh and i'm going to i'm going to make a stand and by a stand i mean a hole i'm going to make a hole and now with a spaceship launching

in the background of this podcast i am going to draw it to a close. I'm flipping through the ads at the end. Stefan, have you got anything to plug? Yes, I'm doing the Edinburgh Festival. I'm on every day at 2pm at Cannonsgate on the Royal Mile. Free entry, donations at the end. I take Wednesdays off, don't come on Wednesdays. And I also do AAA, which is a showcase that I do with two other comics,

at 7.20 seven every day. That sells out very quickly. So if you want to come out to that, you'll have to be careful. And Josh, have you got anything to plug? I do. I have a new stand-up special that came out this summer called People Pleaser. It's an hour. You can find it wherever you rent or buy streaming things.

It's on Vimeo, I think, is the best place to find it, like fully internationally available. And I'm starting to go on the road a little bit more. Boston, Thanksgiving weekend, and more to come. And that'll be, you can find that at joshgondelman.com or I'll tweet about it, Instagram, at joshgondelman. I'm also in Edinburgh. I've been saying hello to a lot of garglers and buglers in the audience.

Do come along. I'm at the Gilda Balloon at 9.15. My show is called Kronos. This is a Bugle podcast, an Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. If you'd like to send us in a story at HelloGarglers on Twitter, you can become one of our roving reporters.

And that's all I have to say for you. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from The Bugle, including The Bugle, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.