The Gargle - Chonky bears | Mountaineering | Vibe planning
Episode Date: October 13, 2022Tom Ballard and John Robertson join host Alice Fraser for episode 83 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle - with no politics! 🐻 Chonky bears🧗🏻 Tracksuit mounta...ineering👩🏻💼 Meta vibe planning 🗿 President The Rock🤖 ReviewsProduced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner.Subscribe now for a daily celebration of the best of The Bugle! https://pod.link/TopStories Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This is a podcast from The Bugle. steps in on your step counter. Your messenger app alerts you that your parents are telling you that they love you, but you don't have time to look at it properly
because if you do, they'll get a notification that you read it
and then they'll worry if you don't reply quickly enough.
You check your social media instead.
Your podcast app has a badge in the corner,
something new to parasocially engage with.
What can it be?
Your thumb plunges towards the glass of the screen.
It's 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 Tom Ballard and John Robertson.
Welcome.
Hey.
Hello.
I like that you can say A as a kind of an all-encompassing just noise.
Every emotion.
Yeah.
Every emotion indeed.
It's the Fonz, it's a Pokemon together in the one place.
I like all my pop culture references dated as all hell.
Are they still doing
Pokemon? I guess that's still a thing,
right? I was hoping you'd ask
are they still doing Happy Day?
No, Joy went away a long time ago,
Tom.
Henry Wickler doing some of his finest work at the moment.
Now before we curl up together in the pillow fort
that is this week's top stories,
let's have a look at the front page of the magazine.
The front cover this week is Chef Liberty Jamie Oliver posing provocatively
with a budget-friendly bowl of gourmet gruel that you can make during any cost-of-living crisis.
Are you cutting costs, John Robertson?
Absolutely, in every way.
I'd like to be cutting and eating the rich, is what I'd like,
getting through their fondue-like skin to their camembert-like entrails.
But no, no, mostly I'm just sitting around
using the same simmering resentment I have since about 2007.
That's my recycling.
Is that how you're heating your home at the moment?
Yeah, just endlessly, just sort of sitting around, you know,
kind of angry at political figures that don't exist anymore.
You know?
It's great. It's great fun.
F***ing John Howard. He's the worst.
Yeah, oh, yeah, I've got ageing satirist disease.
You know, it's just like, no, no, no,
the thing that was evocative to me when I was young,
that's still important now.
You kids don't know who Keating is, right?
Tom, what about you?
Yeah, I'm rich. I'm fine, thanks.
I'm going to peel back your Brie-like face.
Well, I also don't live in broken Britain,
which I feel like is a really big advantage,
where, yes, cost of living is going through the roof
and the pound is falling and everything's on fire,
seems to be the impression I get of the general England situation.
Is that the vibe?
Yeah, more or less.
But Australia's going into a third year of La Nina,
so nothing's on fire.
Thank goodness everything's just flooding instead.
That's fun.
The fires were flooded.
That's how it's changed.
The satirical cartoon this week is the Tory party conference.
Sorry, that's just a picture of a satirical tumbleweed,
sort of a Rorschach test for your favourite political failure of the moment.
Just imagine that and then imagine what it would make you think about.
Top story now, Chunky Bear News. This is the news, the annual news, but it's news this week,
that the chunkiest bear in Alaska has been elected after some tampering with the polls.
Tom, you know about chunky bears.
Can you unpack this story for us?
Okay.
First of all, f*** you.
And also, yes, chunky bear is my future as a chubby gay man.
But I don't think the bear has been elected to any sort of position of power.
I think that's an incredible part of the story that I'm not across.
Hi, everyone.
Welcome our new fat leader. Yes, indeed. No think that's an incredible part of the story that I'm not across. Hi, everyone. Welcome to our new fat leader.
Yes, indeed.
No, it's Fat Bear Week.
It happens every single year,
and basically fat bear nerds vote
for the bear at Alaska's Katmai National Park
that is the fattest of bears,
according to Popular Will.
It's a very popular competition
that once and for all answers the question,
does a bear shit in the woods?
And the answer is yes, they do.
And they're f***ing massive shits
because these are some massive fat bears.
The voting results were announced on Fat Bear Tuesday,
which is the name of a controversial new night
at my local gay bar.
The winner in 2022 was a bear, a fat bear in fact,
dubbed 747, weighing in at a hefty 635 kilograms.
Hey look, lockdown's been tough on everyone
okay guys? We've all had a rough time.
747 took out the title in 2020
and returned to wrench the title away
from the leading favourite Otis,
a large adult bear who once ate 42
salmon in one sitting, presumably
because he'd just been through a really bad breakup.
Unfortunately, Otis wasn't
deemed to be sufficiently fat enough this year, but to his credit, he did really well in a really bad breakup. Unfortunately, Otis wasn't deemed to be sufficiently fat enough this
year, but to his credit, he did really
well in the swimsuit section.
There was a voting scandal.
Officials detected 9,000
sudden spam votes for 747's
semi-final opponent
435 Holly. They deleted
the votes and notified all the competitors
immediately, all of whom responded by saying
SPAM! Nom nom nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.
They're very fat bears, Alice, you see.
Yeah, it's great.
We could have done the Nobel Prize.
It's not political either.
It's also this week, but I preferred the fat bear story.
I just really like the idea that they're large enough
that we can change the play school opening.
There's a bear in there and nothing else.
I like the competition too and I watched a few
of the things. I just wish the stakes were a bit higher.
I think the winning fat bear should be able
to eat the loser, right? So the thinnest
bear should be consumed by the winning
fattest bear. I think that would sort of like improve
the competition markedly.
That's just my take. Well also I'm sort of confused
why this is a vote in competition
because surely the fattest bear is an objective quality.
It's not just the fattest looking bear or the friendliest looking fat bear
or the most photogenically fat bear.
I feel like the core of this competition is flawed
and there is a measurable quantity at stake here
that could be on the table.
No, fatness is a state of mind, Alice, okay,
and particularly when it comes
to a bear like some bears might be technically fatter than some bears but it's like do you embody
and represent the fatness of the bear like do you carry that with you in your heart and your soul
and everything that you do and you know like that's that's sort of a more intangible quality
that people are voting on that's democracy i would love to be. The bears, like the hibernation system is so good.
They eat for six months and then they just sleep for six months.
I just think like, that's pretty much my lifestyle now.
It's just organized better.
But I just, I really, I really think that that would be a better way to live.
You know?
Do you want the social media joy of having people vote as to how well is Tom sleeping now?
He is the sleepiest of all the comedians.
Look at him pudge, you know?
I reckon if you're asleep for six months,
then you just webcam it,
because I'm sure there's someone who'll pay for that.
And then you wake up after six months
and you've got heaps of cash and also some stalkers.
It's a very simple bit of stalking.
They know where you are.
You didn't move.
Yeah, that's a very...
I'm stalking a hibernating bear.
I'm extremely lazy.
I love the way that the contest, like,
sells itself as something, like,
doing incredible work.
Like, the website says that the contest
is a way to celebrate the resilience,
adaptability and strength of catmize brown bears.
And it's like, you're voting on fat bears, okay?
Let's not overstate.
You're looking at some tummy bears.
You're going, that's a bit cute.
Look at that fat one. I like that one. I'm voting on it. You're looking at some tummy bears. You're going, that's a bit cute. Look at that fat one.
I like that one.
I'm voting on it.
You're not celebrating the strength of these motherfuckers.
Just chill out, everyone.
Go and fetch the holistic dictionary.
Resilience.
That's a positive word.
Put strength in there.
Oh, Christ.
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biding its time until the opportunity strikes it's the other half of the glass of water available in your glass today. In a world just like our own, but it's
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Well, I kind of am.
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I'm absolutely an NPC.
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Acast.com Now it's time for mountaineering news.
This is the news that a Briton has attempted to climb Mount Blanc wearing a tracksuit.
John Robertson, you're in England at the moment.
Can you unpack this story?
I absolutely can.
In the finest possible traditions of a British person walking into a climate they don't understand
and presuming that because they had an empire they can handle this one baby um a man has gone up a
mountain in the ice and the snow and the wind and the rain walking across the tundra without any of
the provisions required to do it uh one of the great sentences in the article I read about it, points all of this out and then says that he is an aerospace engineer.
So there's no hope, folks.
You can be hyper-intelligent and still just suicidally stupid at any time.
I mean, it's not rocket science, but even if it were,
this guy would still do it.
Yes.
My feeling about this guy is that he probably wasn't worth rescuing.
He seems like the sort of man that if he had sent the St Bernard's
He would have just drained all the brandy and sent for a second dog
It's of no value
He was challenged as to why he didn't have any provisions
And he said, no, I had them
I just got rid of them
They were holding me back
I mean, it's heartbreaking
He was in a really bad way.
He was quite extremely in hypothermia,
which is about 10 degrees less than the hypothermia limit.
And apparently he was in a zone that he shouldn't have been able to get to.
He would have had to cross crevasses and holes and various things
in order to get to the place that he got to.
So he did some quite extreme climbing while dressed in this tracksuit
and then collapsed in a hole in the snow as was always
going to happen. Yeah, he did a lot of
extreme climbing in the wrong direction.
It's so fantastic what you've
done if only you'd looked where
you were going. One
element that we haven't discussed yet is the
rescue helicopter, which
popped by the day
before he was rescued and said
we can't land there, sorry.
My favourite part of the story is that in August,
the mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains,
which I assume is not how you pronounce it,
on the French side of Mont Blanc,
so this happened on the Italian side of Mont Blanc,
but the Italian side is wondering whether they should send this guy
the bill for his rescue.
And the French side pre-empted that problem in August
by saying any would-be mountaineers have to pay a 15,000 euro deposit
before they attempt the climb,
10,000 of which would be spent on their rescue effort
and 5,000 would be spent on a funeral.
I sort of prefer that approach of like be as dumb as you want
but pay in advance, cash up front.
Nothing says like I'm going on a holiday than funeral deposit.
I feel like you're in for a good time if you lay that kind of cash down.
Apparently this is an international problem.
All mountaineering areas all around the world,
I don't know why this has happened,
but there's been a surge in the last five to ten years
of people who are climbing irresponsibly,
so being undisciplined climbers going up these mountains
without proper equipment just in order to take, I assume, selfies.
Yeah.
I assume it's selfies.
Do you reckon they probably just watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials
in lockdown and emerged from their home,
couldn't even go to a park for longer than an hour,
but now they can do it?
If they're obsessed with climbing,
then there's just a million documentaries out there
that are like how this person lost all of their toes.
They're just terrible.
All climbing documentaries are terrible stories
about horrible things that happen to people.
Tom?
Well, let's be real.
I think the professional climbers, they like a few deaths, okay?
Like not everyone can make it,
otherwise their personal achievement of climbing the mountain is way less impressive so let's be honest we need a few every year to make it like
make a little bit those documentaries would be boring as batshit if everyone came back you know
what i mean i also like that uh he did manage to call the rescuers himself and he later told the
media we stayed in touch for a few hours and then i remember calling and saying don't worry i'm gonna
die in a minute.
And then I blacked out.
And I'm sure that he was quite sincere and distressed,
but that just reads like a really bitchy thing to say.
Like, don't even worry about it.
I guess I'll just die.
Cool.
All the most British thing.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm just going to die on your rug here if you don't mind.
I'm so sorry.
Yes, I'm frightfully afraid I will be dying right now.
Ooh-roo, chip-chip.
Terribly sorry.
It's most inconvenient.
I'd shake your hand, but it's the frostbite you see, dear dear.
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.
What have you brought in for us this week, Tom?
Alice, I've recently put on a fair bit of weight
recently quite quickly, like a fat bear.
I was competing in the competition
and then was told I couldn't enter.
That was very annoying.
And that's resulted in me developing stretch marks,
which if people don't know,
are sort of red lines that you get around your middle.
You might be familiar with them personally,
Alice, with a recent babiness having.
They're basically your skin's way of screaming in pain.
And I don't really know what the point of the stretch marks are.
I guess they're to let you know that you're getting fatter from your body.
I'm very aware of that.
And you can get them from putting on weight, but also losing weight really quickly too.
And I think that's brutal.
Like you just put in all this work, you lose weight really quickly, take off your shirt
and go, do I look pretty hot? And people go, go no you look like an elephant got f***ed up by
wolverine so i'm reviewing stretch marks zero out of five alice don robertson what have you brought
in for us to review well uh just just quickly on just on the topic of fat bears the very first
sydney gay club i ever went to i was taken to by tom ballard in the year of our lord 2006
where i turned to one of your friends and went, I'm a pretty twink.
And your friend looked at me with the cold, dead eyes of a just inner city, Sydney homosexual,
and went, no, you aren't. At best, you're a chubby otter.
So there we are. That was a big day for John Robertson.
And that young.
I don't remember that at all.
No, you had taken us there
and then you went off and hung with your actual friends
and I was stuck with some little bitch.
I'm not going to lie.
I was quite upset.
Anyway, what I've done in an effort
to make my home look less diseased
because I am one of the 100% of
comedians who at the end of
lockdowns decided that they had
ADHD and need to get diagnosed and
I reached this conclusion when I stepped over the
same pile of clothing 14
times and realised that
I just couldn't seem to
figure out that it was there. I have
bought a robo vacuum
because I do very well when I have
a guest in the house, especially
if the guest is a bit of an idiot and
keeps clonking its adorable round face
into everything, just
banging off the walls. And
in order to work and not just
scream in a robotic
fashion, I have to clean the house entirely
because this thing is of no f***ing
use. It hates all of my other cleaning products. Like, I'll come clean the house entirely because this thing is of no f***ing use. It hates
all of my other cleaning products. Like, I'll
come downstairs and it's screaming
and it will have picked up the dustpan and brush
and it's sort of like a dog that doesn't like
the old dog that you have.
And it's just gorgeous. And some, I
might have anthropomorphised it. Yes, I have.
But I didn't get it for the cleaning. I got it for
companionship and we're very happy.
So yeah. Five out of five,
and I bought some googly eyes to put on it.
That's the saddest thing I've ever heard in my life.
Look, us chubby otters have got to have somebody, buddy.
Yes.
I mean, sure, I've got horrible stretch marks on my fat belly,
but at least I'm not talking to my f***ing back.
He doesn't mean that, Roomba
One. He doesn't mean that.
And now
it's time for our business news.
Our business news this week is that
in a sort of
immensely dystopian move,
Meta x Facebook has decided
to call its new downsizing move
Vibe Planning.
Vibe Planning. Vibe Planning.
Tom, you've planned a Vibe before.
Can you unpack this story for us?
Many Vibes.
Yeah, look, they're downsizing,
they're rearranging their offices.
Apparently, Meta might be in a shitload of trouble
and they're downsizing all this.
They have a very amenable work-from-home policy as well,
but yes, have
described it as vibe planning. I think it's a smart business strategy, Alice. Clearly the big
wigs at Meta have been watching a lot of severance and haven't recognized it as a satire and the
evils of the modern capitalist workplace. They've thought, this is good. This is good and it's the
future. And I think we're going to see more of it from now on. Companies don't downsize,
they're vibe planned. They won't do layoffs. It's's feng shui we're not union busting we're creating a safe space for
management we're not demoting you we're encouraging you to do self-care for less money i think you
know you're really when you're told you're getting relocated to the metaverse i mean that's when
you are really in serious trouble when it turns out when you're working at meta so watch out for
that meta employees listening to the gargle.
They've just invented legs in the Metaverse.
Like you can't diss the Metaverse.
Did you not see this news that they've just invented legs there?
They've invented legs and just in time to cut them off from their employees.
It's brilliant.
What do you mean they've invented legs?
What does that mean?
I didn't say that story at all.
Up until now, they haven't had legs that worked like legs,
and now they're launching legs.
The metaverse is launching legs is a sentence
that would not have made sense even three years ago,
but now seemingly has revolutionised the space,
or rather the non-space.
Have they copyrighted legs?
Is anyone else allowed to have legs?
Or is that exclusively owned by Mark Zuckerberg now?
Yeah, so disruptive.
Apparently legs are really tricky to do, and so they've done them.
Look, you wait until they innervate the knee.
At the moment, it's just for standing.
They're getting really specific about how they're downsizing.
So not only are they firing a lot of people,
they're also separating all of the people that they do have.
They spent about six months working with a furniture manufacturer
to design specialised noise-cancelling cubicles
that it plans to install throughout all of its offices in the coming months
so that no one can hear anyone else screaming.
John Robertson, how would you design your ideal office?
I am currently in my ideal office and I am alone.
I am surrounded by every possession that I've ever had.
No one needs to know that I've worn this jacket
for every online show I've done in the last week,
so that's several hours of sweat.
And I have the small vacuum cleaner
slowly bringing me a Pepsi Max.
God bless you.
It's been on you for six hours.
I blue-tacked this on.
Ah, excellent.
Excellent.
Oh, Lord.
Is Facebook still going?
What is it for?
I basically, it's just a thing I use to remember birthdays,
find a new housemate occasionally,
and spread my anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
You can do that on any platform now, really.
What's the unique, what's the USP for Facebook?
Come on.
I was wondering when the destabilisation of democracy was going to come in there you know it's the place where friends of my mother's can
comment on any publicity photo i've uploaded just going why does he do this lynn why does he do it
those are important questions
bloody piano teacher from when i was 12 stop Stop it, John, this isn't you.
That was one of them the other day.
37, for f***'s sake.
This isn't you.
This isn't you!
And now it's time for our non-politics news.
As you know, one of the briefs of this podcast
is that we do not touch politics.
And I am relieved to announce that now we have Dwayne the Rock Johnson's back
in the bosom of our forum because he is not running for president
in order to spend more time with his family,
even though he wasn't running for president
and presumably spends too much time doing bicep curls
to see his family at all.
John Robertson, you're a big fan
of Dwayne The Rock Johnson. Can you unpack this story
for us? I certainly am. Dwayne The Rock
Johnson, one of the most famous people
on the planet, Hollywood's most bankable actor,
a man who currently has about
five films in production, 16 in
post-production, and his own tequila
company, is now just taking
a little bit of time out of his busy schedule to say
he won't also be
the president of the united states unless he can do it in the jungle in the jungle yeah with his
little little bloody you know vice president kevin hart and jack black's there for some reason he's
very amusing dwayne johnson is a busy man but he does appear to be a very good father at least for
the 15 second instagram clips he uh posts of him with his kids which might be the only time he gets to see them.
Also, God bless this man
because of course a lot of people
when they are elected to the position of the US President
get accused of various crimes,
alleged and actual.
Dwayne The Rock Johnson once legally bashed a man in the head
16 times with a steel chair
and that man became a UNICEF ambassador
and a best-selling children's author.
So this is how blessed this man is.
Tom?
Look, I was pretty sad about this news
because it implies that he is going to make more movies
and I don't know if you've seen 2018's Skyscraper
but for me that was basically Dwayne The Rock Johnson's Iraq War.
It was illegal.
It was wrong.
It was based on a lie.
And while it didn't kill a million people, it did kill my afternoon.
And I really hope he doesn't return to those.
You loved Skyscraper?
Yeah, I thought it was exactly what it was trying to be,
which admittedly was terrible,
but it was successful at being the exact kind of terrible
that it wanted to be.
He seems like he wants to be a daddy,
but it's like, dude,
you could be the daddy of the greatest nation on earth.
Wouldn't you prefer to do that?
I think Lizzo should step in.
If we're talking about other celebrities
that might take the Democrat nomination,
I'd like to see Lizzo in there.
She's already playing the flutes of the president,
so I think she might as well go the whole hog and f***ing run.
I think she'd win in a landslide.
At this point, when it becomes a popularity competition,
I feel like almost all the skills you need
to successfully achieve power in the modern world
are the skills that are not consistent with having and using power.
Oh, no, it's a terrible system and democracy sucks, that's for sure.
Bing, bing, bing, not allowed to talk about politics, it was a trap.
Oh, sorry, sorry.
Talking about Dwayne the Rock Johnson and how great his biceps are.
Well, if we're going to be like that,
I love that I was posited as the one who's a fan of Dwayne the Rock Johnson.
I haven't actually watched one of his f***ing films.
Why would anyone do that?
Actually, Tooth Fairy I actually thought was actually really funny.
I was very surprised
and it was actually good.
He's got good comic timing, I think.
Oh, he's very funny. His great skill is
looking like he's genuinely happy to be
somewhere, which is something that I need
to work on. I briefly did radio
in Sydney, sort of
a community radio station
and the producers kept telling me to stop
sounding so sarcastic
when I announced the bands.
I say, well, that was very experimental,
and apparently that was not acceptable.
If it helps you at all, Alice,
I've had two interviews over the years
to go and be a breakfast DJ for Commercial Australian Radio,
and when I went in the first time
and the engineer went, okay John, come
on in, come and sit down.
And so I started talking like that and he went,
got on the thing and went, what are you doing? No one
speaks like that.
You
sound ridiculous.
Good times, great
classic hits, get out of the booth.
Now it's time for our end of the show.
That's all the time we have for the show.
Oh, I love this segment.
Yeah.
My favourite.
I used to watch Hey Hey It's Saturday every week just for end of the show.
It's the end of the show.
We're flipping through the ads at the back.
Tom, what have you got to plug?
Oh, people can follow me on social media at Tom C. Ballard.
And if you're in Australia, you can pre-order my debut book,
I, a Millennial, One Snowflakes Screed
against boomers, billionaires and everything else.
It's out in the shops in November 30, but you can pre-order it now.
I worked really hard on it.
It drove me f***ing crazy.
And I actually think it's good.
And there's cute photos of me as a baby in it.
So enjoy.
I highly recommend doing that.
Pre-ordering is really good for books
because it puts them up for rankings and various other things.
Do follow everyone on social media.
It makes a difference.
People now look at your social media rankings
when they decide whether you're going to be booked for anything.
Even if you, the listener, do not use Twitter or Facebook or anything like that, go and follow
all of your favourite acts because it will help them.
John Robertson, what have you got to plug?
You can find me at
robotron, R-O-B-B-O-T-R-O-N
on Twitter. Mr. John Robertson
finds me everywhere
on Google. I stream
pretty much every single day at twitch.tv
slash robotron. I'm touring around
the UK with my show The Dark Room,
the world's only live-action video game.
And depending on when this goes out,
in the first weekend of December,
I'll be doing a 50-hour streaming charity marathon
for three charities like we do every year.
And I'll be dead before Christmas.
So there we go. That'll be fun.
I've also got a children's novel out,
but I always keep forgetting to plug that.
So let's not change that for any reason right now.. I've also got a children's novel out, but I always keep forgetting to plug that,
so let's not change that for any reason right now.
No, tell them about the children's novel.
Yeah, my novel, The Little Town of Marraville.
Beautiful book.
The second printing is out now.
You can get it anywhere from Puffin.
The Bugle is doing a 15th anniversary set of shows.
I will be on them, in them, at them via giant head screen,
all of them except the first one, which is on the 15th of october if you're going to that look them all up at the bugle podcast.com i'm
alice frazer you can find me online at at alliterative a-l-i-t-e-r-a-t-i-v-e on twitter
and instagram or patreon.com slash alice frazer it's a one-stop shop for all my start specials
podcasts and blogs as well as my weekly tea with al salons. My show Kronos, which is this year's solo show,
will be coming out there in a matter of weeks.
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, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions
and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.