The Gargle - Meta girlfriends | Vegetables | Dolphins (UPDATED EDITION)

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

James Colley and John Luke Roberts join host Alice Fraser for episode 47 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast - with no politics!👱🏻‍♀️ Meta girlfriends 🥦 Sex bias in vegetable faces🧾 Accountancy crisis!🐬 Militarised dolphins🥚 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.

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. This is a podcast from The Bugle. every four years as a little treat. February likes to pretend it's almost like a real month before it's shunted back into the background, ruining the rhyme and bringing in return only the pressures of conforming to or ostentatiously rejecting Valentine's Day. And also, this episode of The Gargle. The Gargle is the sonic glossy magazine to the Bugles Audio Newspaper for Visual World.

I am your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week are James Colley and John Luke Roberts. Welcome, one and two. Thank you. Hello. We find out our rankings at the end of the episode. Before we plunge into the body of this week's edition, let's look at the front cover. The front cover model this week is a gentleman pirate with a monocle and an eyepatch.

Our m'lady, he says. His butler is the parrot. The satirical cartoon this week is an old-fashioned housewife labelled Ukraine desperately trying to clean the house before her in-laws, the Russians, arrive to invade her pristine home and shoot all her nice, clean civilians. This is not a political show. Can I ask for some clarification on the on

the pirates gentleman pirate yes yes the monocle and the eye patch on the same eye or separate eyes separate eyes okay thank you thank you that could mean he's like extra pirate because a monocle is sort of halfway between an eye patch and nothing at all you know know? To go for one of those transition lenses, monocles. Yeah, yeah, you go through the... So the gentleman could actually be the evolutionary pathway to the pirate. I mean, I don't want to question the pirate's role in this. All I know is he's our cover model and he's looking good. There I've gone again and told you that the pirate is a man.

I don't know whether the pirate is a man or not. It's just somebody with a monocle. No, it's a gentleman pirate. We can commit to gentleman pirate, can't we? One side of him looks way closer than the other side. That's a joke from James Thurber's The 13 Clocks. All right. Let's go into our culture section.

We're opening with our culture section, and our culture section is all about meta-girlfriends. John Luke Roberts, you've got long hair at the moment. Can you explain this meta-girlfriends trend? Yes. Is that a non sequitur? Well, at any rate. It is. Okay, good.

Yes, I have to assign the stories to someone or another, and I have to give a reason for it. I don't have to. It's my show. I've just decided and I have to give a reason for it. I don't have to. It's my show. I've just decided that I have to. I'm a victim of my own history in that I have up until now assigned stories to people purporting to have a reason but not having a reason and now I've run out of reasons. Okay well I do have long hair so I will take this. John Luke Roberts you're on my right. Politically. Tell us about this story. Right. So to get this story, you need to understand what NFTs are. You know, NFTs, they're on the

internet now. An NFT is a token. And so when I say token, you're probably thinking, oh, I know tokens. They're little fungible things, aren't they? Actually, that's the special thing about NFTs. Unlike normal tokens that we're used to, NFTs are non-fungible tokens. And the abbreviation stands for normal fun things, because it's normal to spend huge amounts of money for a personal link to something that doesn't exist. And meta-girlfriends are a new type of NFT made by a particular company. And they are cartoon drawings of hyper-sexualized women that you pay 250 pounds for they are randomly generated using over 600 traits across 20 categories just like real girlfriends and um don't worry though some traits are non-negotiable they all have big boobs

and tiny waist so basically you but the worst, the ickiest thing about this, you pay for this girlfriend, there's a finite amount of girlfriends, of meta-girlfriends. I'm not sure if this is the slogan, but if not, they should have gone for the slogan, meta-girlfriends,

for people who haven't. Meta-girlfriend. And the worst thing is, well, this is just, it's a bit slimy. In public view, the meta-girlfriends are only viewable from the waist up and fully clothed but once you've paid for them you can see them naked and that seems to be the reason to pay for them I don't know it's it seems grimmer than just like

naked pictures of cartoons that you don't pay for the ownership element of it is really um it just seems grim but who am i to judge i would be disgusted and appalled by this but i went to an all girls high school the things that i saw being pasted onto the inside of people's lockers were imaginary boyfriends in every possible iteration i mean you had imaginary boyfriends from girlfriend magazine you had imaginary boyfriends from dolly magazine you had imaginary boyfriends eventually being printed out from the internet line by line incredibly slowly, more slowly than they were being downloaded. I remember the only thing slower than downloading a picture off the old internet was the old printers and how slowly they would print a colour picture. So I feel like this is, if anything, this is equality happening. this is equality happening well there's one thing about it which is unlike naked pictures of sort of real people this is the one thing where you can be sure that none of the money you're paying is going

to the woman in question because she's a cartoon i think this is uh very realistic actually uh i know personally uh when i met my partner it wasn't until we got engaged, they actually could see below her waist in general. I wasn't sure if she had caterpillar tires, wheels, like pogo sticks for legs. It was all a big mystery to me. To be fair, that was a courtship conducted entirely across a table. Yeah, exactly. Every date is an interview process and this was no different. There are bits of this that really stick out to me.

Like firstly, there is an easier way we have done this for years if you want to pretend you have a girlfriend just say she lives in canada like everyone else except i presume canadians who i imagine are the target audience for these nfts since everyone in their country is secretly dating a loser overseas the longer you hold on to your meta girlfriend the more features you, which is an amazing way to gamify tech pros into monogamy. I'm currently on level 43 of monogamy. I've just unlocked the feature that tells you which hay fever brand they prefer, two new snores. And if I get to level 50, I'll learn which one of us dies first.

This is a sadder story than anything Hemingway could pen for sale NFT I've never been loved because at the heart of it with the bad ape drawings and all the rest the core of these is a status symbol you have a rare ape that says to other people who value rare apes hey I can waste just as much money as you can but what these words say is the ultimate status symbol would be having someone in your life, someone who could never leave you or, say, be funged. And that leads me to think what you need is not an NFT. It's the personality. You should get a personality. I mean, that's an extremely important and valid point.

I will let you know if I ever acquire one. Your ad section now, because the fear of death looms ever watchful in the shadows of your mind. And what are you going to do? Pay attention to that. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Alternative Médecins Sans Frontières. Are you suffering in a war zone? We'll drop a f***head in to prescribe homeopathy and an essential oil bath. Alternative Médecins Sans Frontières.

We're as brave as the mainstream Médecins but waaaaay more dumb. In the olden days, body standards were stressful because you had to pretend to be effortlessly beautiful, and that's just not possible for a lot of people. Nowadays we acknowledge the huge amounts of effort that go into achieving this perfect body, and so now you have to pretend

to be effortfully beautiful, and who has time for that? Bringing you effortless effort. The effort for people who can't be f***ed, but want to be effortfully beautiful, and who has time for that? Bringing you Effortless Effort, the effort for people who can't be f***ed but want to be f***ed. It's just a Roomba with a human-sized picture of a naked mole rat on it which follows you around a nightclub and makes you look good by comparison. It's the wing thing for the lonely, selfish generation who don't want to help one another towards sex in case it turns out to be problematic in the end.

Effortless Effort. It's like trying, but no. Another job I've lost to a robot. And it's February already. Have you organised your Valentine? Of course you haven't, because you're a petty bourgeois sophisticate too cynical for love. I know you'd rather have nothing

than a tacky velvet-covered heart-shaped box of chocolate, and you will. I too spit on the manufactured hallmark romance of a sweet-at-the-rits-with-hot-and-cold-running-oil-massage-from-some-hot-sucker-with-nothing-better-to-spend-their-money-on than proving that they think you're special. I hope you're happy with the prospect that you don't have to have love proved to you by grand expensive gestures and instead can get love in the day-to-day mundane grind of life

by reminding yourself that they haven't left you yet. Who needs flowers when you have cultural superiority and this half glass of room temperature water that I'm sure they would have thought to bring you as a gesture of love if you'd told them you were thirsty and possibly put it in your shared Google calendar. Now that's realism. Sorry, love. 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. 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 Your next section is a science section, James Colley. This is all about the things that you see in vegetables. As a vegetable inspector, can you unpack this for us? Yes, well, personally what I see in vegetables is delicious, nutritious meal. But this is all about the faces that we see in things.

When you see, say, a vegetable that looks like Richard Nixon or a messiah in your toast, anything of this level. What we're talking about here is a bias that has been noticed in studies, which is that most of these faces we see to like a four to one ratio are male. That we heavily, when we're seeing faces on the front of cars or like you see a couple of toilet rolls on top of a bin lid or however it is you want to spot a face i don't need to tell you how to spot a face i'm sure you can do it we we tend to predominantly see these as male and this imaginary face sex bias is why we need meta girlfriends exactly this it is to me honestly like look i think it's equal parts a fascinating study insightful research and one of those studies that you have the thought of, was there nothing else that needed working on?

Have you noticed the pandemic or were you distracted by the fact that the molecular structure of the novel coronavirus looks exactly like a bloke named Gary? But I think there are all sorts of these biases in these descriptions. Like, have you ever noticed when people see Jesus in toast, it's always white bread when Christ, historically speaking at least, was at the very least whole meal and almost certainly rye. And I think there is an evolutionary reason for this. The thing we are best at, evolutionary speaking, is spotting threats. And the fact of the matter is every man is a threat. So it's only natural that we're programmed to go, oh, Christ, is that a man? Is there a man hiding in that capsule? Get out of here.

Get out of here. John Luke, do you imagine men in vegetables very often? It depends on the vegetable. A hollow vegetable, yeah, it's a little man in there rattling around a pumpkin or some tomatoes, depending. It's actually, interestingly, I touched on on this it's not just vegetables and it's not just like household objects and things if you look around and you discern a face high up in the media or business or politics that's most likely to be a male face as well i love the game of spotting faces in everything it It is my favourite way to ruin friends' furniture,

to let them know what expression I think their car has, which is always, there are some cheerful cars on the market, there are some really grumpy cars on the market, and it is more of a factor in my purchasing of cars than it should be. I currently have quite a timid car that looks like it wants to ask you a question but is not quite sure that you're listening to it or want to be interrupted right now. Before we move move on there's a quick quiz section for this science

segment which is i'm going to name a fruit or a vegetable or an item and you tell me what gender you think it has if you imagine a face on it so the rapid fire round uh question one spaghetti bing james spaghetti's male but it's specifically a little male dog. Question two, apples. Bing. John Luke. There's no face on these apples, these particular apples. No face.

The apples you're imagining the imaginary face on, there's no face on the imaginary apples. Good. There's no face, yeah. Or maybe they're looking away. They could be looking away. It's hard to know. All right.

Question three, a cloud. Bing. James. Non Question three, a cloud. Bing. James. Non-binary, but beautiful. Just striking in features. Question four, a dolphin. Bing. John Luke.

Oh, I don't know the gender of the face, but it's the face of a whale. Strange. And that's all the time we have for our quiz section in our science segment, because now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week our guest editors bring in something to review out of five stars. Delightfully enough, James Colley, you're to my left.

What have you brought in to review? Politically, I am reviewing Bin Night. And in tribute to her boycott of Spotify, I've taken a Joni Mitchell approach to this. You don't know what you've got till it's gone. Last week, such is my dedication to the show, I skipped midnight and the void it left in my life was equaled only by the garbage it left overflowing in my house. There is nothing quite like missing midnight. There's something special about your very first thought when you wake up being one of abject failure in fact my million dollar idea is to create an alarm clock which plays the sound of a garbage truck being like three doors down the

street because nothing makes me wake up and get out of bed and get the blood pumping like the sound of the garbage truck heading down the street when you haven't put the bins out now some might say i've only reviewed midnight because it is once again midnight tonight and i haven't yet put the bins out and I need this reminder in the show to tell me to put the bins out as soon as the show is over. To them I say, correct, Bin Night, four stars. Excellent. The good thing about Bin Night is that you know exactly how long it's going to haunt you for, which is one week.

John Luke, what have you brought in for us to review? I'm going to be reviewing shapes, shapes in general. Shapes are a part of our life whether we like it or not and they have been for quite a long time now uh there's a lot of different shapes and you know i could review each one but it's more like you know different shapes useful for different things you go for a trapezium for stability you go to a square or rectangle for reading or projection you go to a triangle is probably the best one for using as a weapon and egg shape is of course the best shape for an egg but the thing I'd really like to sort of pinpoint here

is that we've had all these shapes for a very long time but it's it's been it's been hundreds of years since we've come up with a new shape and I think I think we're letting the world down in doing that and so I'm going to give shapes three out of five on the grounds that the ones we've we've got are good enough but um boy we could do some do with some more shapes right now just to cheer everyone up that's a brilliant review has anyone thought of one that's like three sides uh i'll have to check i'll have to check i can't think of one offhand but i'll um i'll look into it and get back to you. If no one has, I dibs that one. How many star shapes was that out of five, John Luke? Yeah, that was three star shapes out of five star shapes.

Excellent. Well, that's all the time we have for our review section, because now it's time for our money section. As you know, the gargle is an ineffable source, impeccable source, some sort of source for your money problems. And in this instance, we are looking at accountancy season. Accountancy is in crisis. John Luke you look like you can count. Can you explain this story for me? I will explain it in three, two, four. The accountancy industry of public accountants is suffering an exodus. Accountants are quitting accountancy because they work too many hours a week and ironically they have not got their work-life balance sorted out even though of course most of the time is spent balancing things balancing the

books it doesn't if you ask me add up which is again ironic that's it accountants are quitting we're not going to be able to get other people to add things up which is mean everyone's going to have to add things up themselves and then get done by various tax officers around the place except presumably if people doing accounting are quitting then so the people on the other side of the curtain doing the adding up back there and everyone's going to be an amateur and actually we may be in a beautiful free new world where everyone just guesses what money they should pay for things. I agree with that actually. It's part of a broader trend of people quitting their jobs after the pandemic, an alleged broader trend. It's one of those trends that you're never sure if it's actually a real trend or if it's just something that reporters are doing in order to

pay their increasingly large household bills. James? I'm firstly pleased to hear that accountants hate doing by taxes as much as I hate doing my taxes. I say, we call the whole thing off, we'll be even, we'll both have a wonderful Saturday. I don't think that accountant is a necessary profession. Like I said, I think it hurts society. The richest people can hire the best accountants and therefore pay the least tax. That's a terrible system. And I think you're right. Let's just do each other's and let's just go off the vibe of the thing. You seem rich, pay more tax. You seem to be struggling, take a year off. There, I have just created a more equitable system than any actual taxation system we've ever

come up with. But if we have to save these people, and we don't, but if we have to, which we don't, we need to find a way to make being an accountant more interesting. And if Hollywood has taught me one thing, it's that anyone who claims to be an accountant is actually a spy. So I think we lean into this and give every accountant a license to kill, just in general, like three a year. Don't go crazy. I'm sure you can stretch it out to five with some loopholes, but don't go nuts. Just you get a couple. I mean, that sounds like an immense plan. These accountants are citing a number of different

reasons why they are quitting in droves, one of which is that they can't work at the office during tax season, which is the season in which they all stay up late and work together. Apparently, a spirit of camaraderie arises between the accountants. And I, for one, I'm glad that that's been knocked on the head because the last thing I want is a gaggle of accountants bonding with one another. I feel like they'd be able to cross-check something and it would be bad for someone, possibly me. I miss camaraderie. Do you remember camaraderie?

It's good. I do remember camaraderie. It's been a while. It was good, wasn't it? In Australia it's called mateship, which is we have our own branding of friendship. Mateship. Sounds like a sex boat.

It's named after the boat that brought the horrible criminals and violent guards here. It was called the mateship and it brought strictly murderers. Mateship is sort of defined as the kind of friendship where you would like, you'd be there and you'd help bury the body, but you would never share your feelings. Right, okay. So eventually, definitely, there will be a body to bury.

Can I just check? Mateship is an actual thing? Yes. Oh, they tried to put it in the Constitution. It is maybe the only Australian value, and it's ephemeral enough that every political leader of every stripe has called upon it for whatever they needed to prove wow yeah it's sort of a sort of a hail fellow well-metness as long as you're not a refugee sort of vibe may chip five no one knows what it is five stars or else that's all the time we have for our accountancy section uh because tax season is over and now it's time for militarized dolphins. This is my favorite story of the week. I mean, it is what it sounds like.

There's not that much more to it other than there are militarized dolphins, but there is so much more to it. James Colley, would you like to unpack these militarized dolphins? I would. The headline here is that militarized dolphins protect a quarter of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Now, apparently these dolphins have been trained for military purposes for decades and were even involved in the invasion of Iraq. So I don't know how good they could be because they didn't find any weapons of mass destruction then.

So I don't understand what they were protecting. Like Darwin in Sequest DSV. A good Sequest DSV burn for the four or five people who have watched that series next up our stargate atlantis zingers for everyone hanging on the story here though i think this is just a positive spin that we're putting on this because we have to face the possibility that dolphins have taken a quarter of the u.s nuclear stockpile and if there's two things we know about dolphins it's that they're very intelligent and also massive pricks. Dolphins are jerks who have been whitewashed by Hollywood when the fact of the matter is had Flipper the

chance he would kill you and everyone you love. So why would a dolphin need a nuclear weapon you ask? The answer is the same as they all claim, a deterrent. Why would a dolphin need a nuclear weapon, you ask? And the answer is the same as they all claim, a deterrent. Why would a dolphin need a deterrent? Well, they have a huge number of nuclear weapons and other nations would like to get their hands on it. So it's good to know we are actually helping nuclear non-proliferation by buying the cheap cans of tuna at the supermarket,

because there's probably some dolphin in there. And the more that are in my pantry, the fewer there are destabilizing the global order but the bit that stuck out to me of this is the u.s military mentioned that they have also trained a number of other sea creatures they say there's sea lions and probably others the star spangled fish the red white and blue whale i do not understand which creatures they're using but until it's proven otherwise every other sea creature to me is part of the u.s military industrial complex and the aquarium is hostile territory i use 100 octopuses oh yeah it just it has to be if there is not an octopus with four of its arms around different joysticks

operating some sort of undersea krang creature, I will be deeply disappointed. We should have seen it coming as well. What nation would love waterboarding this much if they weren't adept to water themselves? They think that that part is the good part. Every other second where you're in the oxygen is pure torture. But when you're being simulated drowning,

well, finally, we're giving you a break. If I was the military and I was picking a sea creature to work in the military i'd go for something like a sea anemone because you'd really catch the audience the enemy off guard that shows you how i feel as a comedian doesn't it the audience the enemy interchangeable is the anemone anemone or is it a friendly anemone the sea sea anemone. Keep your sea friends close and keep your sea anemones closer. Now, a couple of things. On the article I read about this,

there was an advert at the bottom of the page asking if you are interested in military life, which makes me pretty sure that they're expecting dolphins to read the article. That's fun. Also, it's interesting. It's just that it's not just the navy uh that did this the u.s army tried it for a while too but it just ended with a lot of dead dolphins and the air force did it and it was even worse um even worse just falling everywhere all around the place

uh the and what the dolphins actually do is they attach boys next to mines and they attach boys to enemy divers so they float to the surface. They're not actually trusted with guns because of the high risk of dolphin suicide. Because, I mean, it's not much of a life, is it? It's not much of a life. I should also clarify, this is the one advantage of an American pronunciation, but boys being the boys with a U, we're not just giving male children off to these dolphins. Strap that to a sea mine, would you?

What do they say, buoys? I think they say buoys, which is frankly horrible, but in this specific situation, very useful. I can see the use. Buoys sounds like slang for a party drug. Slaying two buoys this weekend. Well, that's the end of our militarised dolphins segment

and that brings us to the end of the show. I'm flipping through the ads at the back of this magazine. Have you guys got anything to plug? John Luke Roberts, my name. I'm doing two shows of my stand-up show, It Is Better, at the Soho Theatre

on the 18th and 19th of February, which is this month. So please come along to that. It's good. Also, please listen to my podcast, Soundteap, which has just been nominated for a BBC Audio Drama Award, which is pleasing.

So a podcast which is objectively better than any of my podcasts, none of which have ever been nominated for an award. Wait, no, that's not true at all. No, that's not true. Also, this is a sketch show, basically. So it's been nominated in a sketch show category. There isn't a category there in the Drama Awards for non-scripted

podcasts. But I'm not saying it's not better than yours. The audience can decide themselves. There's a couple of comedy mates doing bants. James Colley, what have you got to plug? I have the only podcast that is officially not allowed as part of any BBC awards ceremony.

It's called Venity Project. It's myself and comedian Bridie Connell going through celebrities' Venity albums, and it has just been nominated as a possible massive violation of copyright and I also have another five hour podcast called

The Collie Problem which the next episode, the second episode will be dropping just as soon as I can get through editing. What I cannot stress enough is a five hour comedy show which has also been nominated involuntarily for Best Sleep-Inducing Podcast of the Year.

So check those out. Very nice. I am your host, Alice Fraser. I have a podcast. It's called The Gurgle, and you're listening to it right now. I'm also going to be on tour in Adelaide at the beginning of March, in Melbourne at the end of March and through April, in Sydney and Perth thereafter, and then in Edinburgh.

So look up those dates. I think I'm probably doing Kronos for those. Also find me online at patreon.com slash alicefraser. It's a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts, and blogs, as well as my weekly Tea with Alice specials. This is a Bugle Podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. And 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.