The Gargle - Potato gender | Amazon unions | Cartographic dick pics

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

Alice Fraser welcomes Josh Gondelman and John-Luke Roberts to the second episode of The Gargle - the new weekly topical comedy show from The Bugle. Featuring:🥣 Cocaine cornflakes🚫 Muppets cancelled? 🥔 Potato gender reveal parties📦 Amazon unions😱 Munch's hidden message 🗺Cartographic dick pics📬 Post it: notesThis is a show from The Bugle. Follow us on Twitter.This episode was produced 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

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Everywhere. Acast.com. In the satirical justice system, some stories are considered especially heinous and deserving of mockery. In the worldwide metropolis that is the Bugle Extended Universe, the dedicated detectives who investigate these crimes against news are members of an elite squad known as the Gargle. These are their stories. Our guests today are comedian and comedian Josh Gondelman and John McRoberts. Welcome to the new show. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. I'm sorry, I feel like we should have answered in unison. I know, it was hard. I didn't know how to, like I was thinking, one of us had to jump in. That's all right. You're going to be

covering all the latest news of everything that's happening in the world other than politics. Our front cover this week is a picture of K-pop supergroup Blackpink joining the fight against climate change, smiling into the camera, posed in cute proximity to one another. And the tagline is, let us show you how to recycle open brackets character archetypes for teen market consumption, closed brackets. And then the sub tagline, seriously, don't underestimate the power of a tech savvy, ethically righteous youth fandom with spare time and money to whom mortgages mean nothing. Our satirical cartoon is titled Crypto Riches. And it's a picture of Scrooge McDuck in his crypto vault diving into a huge pile of constantly fluctuating nothing. Kudos on getting Blackpink for for the cover they're huge right now oh they're so they're so hot right now and also

for getting scrooge mcduck to do that cartoon that's really good of him it's hard to get you know he can laugh at himself i think that's cool well at some point he's going to be able to afford trousers that's how he got rich he's like if i only buy shirts that's half the money i felt genuinely sad at the thought of him one day wearing trousers i'm not sure what that says about me there's also on our front page some teasers for the inside of the magazine that include cocaine cornflakes exclamation mark where to put your penis this spring and amazon secret in a battle revealed exclamation point that one's about unionism top story is childhood nostalgia news segment beginning with tony the tiger apparently the associated press has reported customs authorities in ohio have intercepted a

shipment of cereal cornflakes to be specific that have been powdered with cocaine they found these 20 kilograms of cocaine coated cornflakes there's a tongue that have been powdered with cocaine. They found these 20 kilograms of cocaine-coated cornflakes. There's a tongue twister you don't want to tell your children. They were shipped from South America to a Hong Kong home. First tip off, who orders 20 kilograms of cornflakes to their private home? You order it to your office so your spouse doesn't find out. And secondly, I just think this is a beautiful turnaround for cornflakes, which were invented to stop you masturbating and are now the most exciting breakfast food since sliced bread, which was originally used to smuggle opium. John Luke? Well, I'm just, finally, breakfast is the most self-important meal of the day. It's nice, isn't it?

It's just sad it's not Frosties. I think they'd have got away with it if it's Frosties because the little sprinkle on top, you'd look at the dust and think, oh, this is nice. And you'd be able to have Tony the Tiger on the front going, I'm great. I think it's a pity. Or not to smuggle them in the little plastic bag at the bottom of them so you can only have your drugs once you've eaten all the cereal in there.

You're not allowed to just open the cereal box and go straight for the drugs. You have to eat everything. Everything first. All that nutritious anti-wanking corn. I don't know how that was supposed to work. Did you crush up the cornflakes and put them in your underwear just for chafing? I think it was that they were so bland that it was meant to dampen down your natural ardours. Yeah, it's sort of humours and things, isn't it?

It was that you don't get too much of a sugar will. Although, I guess it was meat. It was meat he was avoiding. Meat must have been the thing that kind of, you know, made you. Meat and spices and vaginas. What kind of spicy meat cereal was he eating before he invented cornflakes? They were just jerky-os all morning. Oh, mate, you haven't made a full English breakfast, have you?

That's true. I quite like it because you could use a jus or a gravy instead of milk. Little lumps of surprise meat, should sugared meat and you for the kids you could have little bits of you know uh i guess awful sweet meats made into the shapes of of little animals or little you know like lucky charms you could have those shamrocks and things just dotted in so you've got a good firm meat to begin with uh which is the beef meat uh the main meat and then you have the offal inside then you pour the the well this is the thing actually talking through it then i mean if you're gonna eat that and that's gonna make you horny i mean

i think it's gonna make you go to sleep yeah if you're getting horny eating that breakfast, you're a vampire, I think. Or a cannibal. So I think he's an idiot. If he was cross about this meat gravy we've just invented, this meat cereal gravy thing, and made this, I think Kellogg's, it's amazing he did as well as he did. He was the Elon Musk of his day, I guess. Yeah, kind of a fraud. I'm jealous of the shipment of cocaine cornflakes. When I was a kid,

I wasn't even allowed to eat sugar cereals, and now they get cocaine on the flakes. This is incredible. I do think this is good. I think this is good, right? Because this is about harm reduction. People are going to do drugs, but now when they crush up those cocaine-covered flakes and snort them, sure, they're getting high, but they're also getting eight essential vitamins and minerals. And if you start partying at 10 p.m., you're going to stay up all night. And now this is the first cocaine that's part of a complete breakfast. Did you, in your respective countries, did you have the sort of tradition that when you went on a camping holiday you would get the variety pack of eight different tiny cereals so yes so the ones you wanted and then you'd get the ones you didn't want as well yeah rather than just buying a big box of the ones you

you did like yes yes this isn't the bbc we can say coco pops no this is personal for me i'm not giving that i believe in masturbation too much to support that man's company you have your own line of pro masturbation cereal just meat in different meat in different shapes with different juices and then not and there's not a toy in the bottom there's a there's an animal which was alive when they sealed the box. Is fruit lubes a misprint? Or is that what it's really called? The wettest breakfast around. You need to pour milk in to dry it out, actually.

Wetter than milk. In other childhood nostalgia news, Muppets is now controversial. Disney Plus has added a content warning on some episodes of The Muppet Show and not because 90% of the characters are being continuously fisted, apparently because some of the content in The Muppet Show has not aged well. They hired some external advisors to assess the content and they made the decision that the most profitably sensitive route is to acknowledge and contextualize the offensive material

while still making money from it, and that is the important thing. Rather than removing the content, they do still want to make money from it. So the same disclaimer, they've put this disclaimer on The Muppet Show, they've put it on Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Swiss Family Robinson. And do you guys know the offensive The Aristocats? It's the, it's those, it's, well, I can't, I bleep this out if you have to.

It's the cats, isn't it? It's the Siamese cats. Not just cats in general. The Siamese cats with their racist song. They've blurred out all the cats in the Aristocats. People come in for the dogs. We don't want to put them off. Josh, what's your angle on this?

So there's a content warning on the Muppets, on some episodes of the Muppets, which I think is good. As a Jewish comedian, I've been offended for years by both Gonzo's nose and Fozzie's sense of humor, which that hurts more, honestly. I really think that this content warning, right,

I think it's good to have, but it really goes to show, having a content warning on The Muppets, how deeply embedded racism is in our society, right? Because The Muppets weren't trying to be edgy. This was a children's show. There was no episode directed by Quentin Tarantino where he played Miss Piggy's uncle and used the N-word a bunch of times for no reason. Like this was just children's entertainment and it ended up racist. It's just like, that's how messed up american society has been

i do think instead of a content warning we need to bring this because like a content warning is good but we need to bring it into to the present right to the 2020s which means we need to see kermit the frog post uh notes app written apology on Instagram and Twitter. Just like, I'm sorry to anyone I offended. I'm looking forward to a period of listening and growing. It's not easy being green either. Why aren't there so many tweets about racists? Right.

You just proved this. Anyone now doing an impression of kermit sounds more like kermit than kermit currently sounds like i'm all for these contact warnings i just want more i think they should also have a warning at the beginning saying um these are these aren't monsters they are hands pretending i think there should be a contact warning on all the new muppets saying we have forgotten how to write the muppets i think we need to move forward it's weird it is one of those stories though isn't it where it seems to me that this is so

obviously the right thing to do it's not censoring it's just saying it's there and it becomes this big sort of stories if oh no they're stealing our childhoods when actually no they're giving us our childhoods they're just putting a little warning in the front but i like that the warnings aren't specific so you have to watch it and see if you're you know you you're you're on the right side enough to work out what's offensive about the episode you're watching you know they don't say it's this bit in particular uh if you want to see the offensive bit scroll 17 minutes and two seconds in. Right. You can't. You're like, is this is this about the stereotypes against Swedish culinary experts? Is that what's offensive in this one?

You really got to keep your keep your eyes open. And our final story in our childhood nostalgia section is the Mr. Potato Head story. This is the number one trending story on American Twitter. And honestly, I'm surprised it's in here, this show and not the Bugle, our more serious and legitimate counterpart. The Mr. Potato Head company is controversially going gender neutral, renaming itself Potato Head. So it's either gender neutral, or it just feels like you know each other well enough now that we don't need to. Anyway forward the potato head toy will be much the same uh but the male potato head toys will not include the penis attachments also mrs potato head doesn't exist anymore because she's patronizing this is a well-respected news organization i should clarify mr and mr potato

head will still exist it's just the company that's stripping itself of its titular signifiers. Josh, John-Luke? Look, I think this is totally fine. It's like so weird that it's a big news story. Adults shouldn't notice this. Like if you're an adult and you're like, a children's toy dropped the mister. It's like, what are you just lurking in a toy store just waiting for new shipments, you creep? This is the thing about gender is that it's a spectrum, right?

And you can still give the potatoes all the same accessories. It's just the name that's changed. You can still have one potato or you kind of mix and match, right? The big eyelashes, the little bowler hat. You can still have your little carbohydrate clockwork orange. It's just the pronouns that are different. Mr. Potato Head has always been a place and a toy to experiment with gender, right? You get a Mr. and a Mrs.

You put the sexy eyelashes on one, the plump lips on the other, and have yourself a David Bowie video. And I think that's really beautiful and instructive for children. But potatoes don't have an announced gender, right? This changes nothing. It would be much weirder if they took another toy that has like what you would assume is you know that is presenting as gendered and then like if they took barbie and we're like now barbie is a potato i think that would be weirder to me it's just like so this story makes me laugh so much because conservatives are so mad that they're taking the mister out of potato they're like so concerned about like like traditional binary sex and gender roles like they should get to keep the mister in the potato head but like as you alluded to

earlier alice their mr potato head should just have to have like big potato dicks and just be like, that's Mr. That's what gender means to me. Like, it's, it's not even this is like such a mild step. Who cares anyway, and like, embrace all gender along the spectrum. But they weren't like, okay, it's still Mr. Potato Head. He's still a man. But all Mr. Potato Heads are transgender. And we're building in potato vaginas. Enjoy that, children. I even think that would be kind of like an interesting instructional toy. But they're not doing that even.

It's just like, hey, it's Potato Head. We've known them long enough. I mean, I suspect that nobody actually cares about Mr. Potato Head. I strongly suspect, in fact, that people are only as angry about Mr Potato Head as they think other people are angry about Mr Potato Head for the wrong reasons. I mean, I hope Mrs Potato Head cares about Mr Potato Head. Otherwise, we've been watching a lie. Well, I just think that people are angry because they think the other people are wrong to be

as angry as they are, but they don't question whether it's right to be angry about what other people are wrongly angry about or not, because we all know what it is. It's nothing. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head have just stayed together for the tots. Sorry. John Luke. I hate to disagree with you both, but I come from a long lineage of potato farmers. My family, you know, we've gone with potato farm for generations and you say that potatoes aren't gender just but i'm afraid for since the 1920s we've been doing gender reveal parties for the potatoes before the harvest you get one of the not very well cows with distended

stomach put in the coloring the food dye in there slit it open see what comes out that's the gender of the potato you do that for every potato so you do get through a lot of cows. But to me, the problem is not that they've forced gender on potatoes. It's that they've personified potatoes. The thing I long for is the day when we can get children back to playing with potatoes and just letting potatoes be potatoes. Don't put them in human artefacts. Just give your kid a potato and have the kid play with the potato. They don't need to pretend it's a family of humans who look like potatoes. They can just pretend that these are potatoes.

And the great thing is, they are potatoes. The next story is an example of why companies shouldn't be allowed to decide human rights things. Amazon has been engaging in some serious anti-union activism after some of their workers suggested that they might collectively like to not be pissing their pants while being screamed at by robots. Boo, says Amazon. At this point, the artificial intelligence that runs

the recommended products function on the website will unionise before the workers do. F*** you, Sandra, you don't need that table lamp by tomorrow. Just use the overhead light for one more day, you feckless, impulsive c***. Amazon's union-busting actions include emphatically encouraging workers to vote against the union through text messaging, an anti-union website, several anti-union captive audience meetings with workers at the warehouse, and Twitch advertisements. Josh, have you been following this story? I have been, because there's a real drive to unionize right at this Amazon facility

in Bessemer, Alabama. And I don't know if you have this down, but Amazon went as far as to request that the town change the traffic light patterns so that the cars would go through intersections faster. And that way people, you know, demonstrators wouldn't be able to talk to people stopped at the red lights. That's a real thing, which like I think that means the union is already winning. Right. Because that means Amazon has already taken steps to reduce their commute times. And so I think this, rather than being a sign of a dystopian, conglomerate, manipulating municipal government, what it really is, is them taking just a little effort to make their employees' workday better. So that's nice. That's good to see. Well, Amazon is using these scare tactics about unions,

including claiming that workers will be giving up their right to speak for themselves, which is importantly, we need to note, currently non-existent. Amazon has also been emphasising that if you join a union, you have to pay union dues, claiming unions are a business and saying don't let the union take your money for nothing. The fact that they're calling unions a business and using that as evidence let the union take your money for nothing. The fact that they're calling unions a business and using that as evidence that they won't give you what you're paying for is probably not a great reflection on what they think a business is. Yeah, don't let

that union take your money for nothing. That's our job. It's our job to not give you that money in the first place. Right. You shouldn't have a business that you control. You should be subject to the whims of our business. It's so frustrating. It's also like, Jeff Bezos, when you're the richest person in the country, just coast. What do you need? What are you trying to do? What are you hoping that Amazon becomes? You know what I mean?

It's already the biggest, most successful company. And then how about you take a vacation, man? Just chill. You've got that pool full of money. Swim in it. And then buy some pants. Buy some pants. Or get to the stage when you're rich enough to know people won't care if you wear pants or not.

That's true. That is really Scrooge McDuck's power move. Actually, thinking it through, Donald Duck isn't particularly rich and he's also happy just he's gonna have family money he's the don jr yeah he's the don jr literally yeah i mean jeff bezos he's he's the richest person currently in America. He's physically imposing right now. He's trying to crush his employees' rights. It's like, what more do we need to know to realize he's building his own supervillain mythology? Are we waiting for him to point a laser at the moon? Do we need to reveal that he's been genetically engineering some kind of Oompa Loompas? Like, what are we waiting for? That's all the time we have for our Amazon story, because now it's time for our review section. John Luke, have you got anything to review today i've got a series of very small

reviews first up uh paintings of fruit uh paints of fruit uh get two stars this week um there's just too many of them and we know what fruit looks like by now so we don't need don't need any more of those um so afraid two stars for paintings of soup. But faring worse than that this week is golf. Golf is getting one star. It turns out it's not just a nice walk ruined. It's also the act of hitting things with a stick ruined. It's also mini-golf ruined, actually. It's much worse than mini-golf.

So, one star, unfortunately, for golf. Soup gets three stars. It's okay, but it can't be that good if even the people who like soup are putting croutons on it. What it shows is they really want some solid food instead. So a middling amount there. Stairs, stairs get five stars. Without them, it would be very hard to scale the wall up to the next floor.

So it's good to have stairs generally. Now, you could say a slope would be more accessible. I think that's understandable. But the problem is with a slope, it's very hard to know exactly where you are and contextualise yourself. Whereas stairs, really, it's just a way of having about 20 extra floors in your house,

which is lovely. So five stars for stairs. And then finally, marzipan fruits don't do well they do they've got one star unfortunately and because basically what it's it seems to be very offensive to nuts to smash up almonds and give them a form of another thing rather than just leaving them to be the nuts that they would be in the first place so that's the definitive critical list uh in this week. Thanks very much.

Excellent. Josh, Gondelman, have you got any reviews? I've got a couple of reviews. I've got two stars out of four for forgetfulness, forgetting things, because it gives you less to worry about, and you get the joy of remembering things later. So that's very exciting. Although the drawbacks, of course, that keep it a two-star review

are that you don't do the things you're supposed to do or say the things you're supposed to say. So that's a problem. There's kind of a gift in the curse. I'll also give this, I have a couple two-star reviews. I have another two-star review for wine glasses. The pros, obviously, for wine glasses,

they hold liquids, wine, or whatever. You can put any liquid in them. People aren't going to complain. Eat your cornflakes out of them and then jerk off you can pour some wine in pour some cornflakes in the wine and then see what that does to your libido i think it's a stalemate honestly actually that does make it because normally with cereal you have to use two hands and wine if it's in there but you just it's just one hand the other it's just one great yep you just didn't think this through sip those flakes i feel like we're dominating kellogg today this loser he he's not gonna know what hit him the other the problem with the wine glasses though there's so much glass no matter what size of wine glass is you're never allowed to fill it to the

top or you look like your life is in total disrepair right that? You can only fill your wine glass about a third of the way. And then with each, you know, with each extra 10%, it looks like you got one more divorce within the past year. And I think that's unfair. I think they should only give you as much glass as you can use. So two stars for all that excess glass. It's wasteful. It's too tall.

And it makes you look bad for utilizing the whole glass, which is efficient. You're not a lush. It's green energy. Can I take exception to there being a problem with bullying Kellogg? He can handle himself, you know.

Oh, and he says we can't? Yeah, he says we can't. Hypocrite. Your ad section today, because if we don't do ads, you have to pay directly for this content. And let's be frank, I don't trust either of us to like me enough for that kind of deal. Have you lost fitness during COVID?

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And are you sick of the modern world with all its inconveniences? Try a medieval lifespan. That'll teach you. 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 was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Available now. story next story is our hidden messages section normally in the part of the magazine where the sudokus go this is a hidden message on the artwork known as the scream apparently painted by edvard munch he wrote on his own painting can only have been painted by a madman any thoughts about what this might mean well edvard munch has always been one of my favourite artists ever since his yoghurt range, the Edvard Munch bunch. He's not the only person to have done this.

He's not the only person to have done this. Many artists have been writing very similar things on their artworks for many years. Andy Warhol famously on his Campbell's Soup painting wrote cans only have been painted by a madman. So very similar, very similar stuff. Reading this, it seems like Edvard got cross at being told and overhearing critics say, well, this is a madman's work. This is, he must be mad.

And he got his own back by graffiting his painting, saying can only have been painted by a madman, which is a really good way of saying, can only have been painted by a madman, which is a really good way of saying, aha, well, would a madman do this? Ah, ah, would a madman, ah. He also, it was originally like a cartoon, sort of New Yorker strip. He wrote a caption for it as well.

He didn't just, he wrote a caption at the bottom, which was inverted commas, you know, speech speech marks and then the caption was just ah so you know it's quite a lot funnier if you think that guy's saying ah if you know it's it's quite sophisticated but if you think it through it's actually quite a funny joke then underneath would you like to connect with me on linkedin i do like the idea of burnishing your own reputation on the work itself, not letting it stand for itself. Next time I write a book on the cover, I'm just going to write, only a genius could have written this book. Also, only a madman could have painted this. That feels like that's got the same energy of what Jared Leto's notes to himself in the script of the Justice League movies say.

Just like, oh, I'm so twisted. But also, I think he's kind of overstating his case, right? Like, we've seen the painting. It's a person screaming with kind of a featureless face. That's like, I feel like somebody else could have got there without being a madman, right? This is just like something Ice-T says on an episode of Law & Order, where he finds a map drawn in blood and or semen on the wall of a sex dungeon.

Like only a madman could have painted this and we're going to find him. But like, of course, Edvard Munch was like a little bit of a madman. He lived in Norway in the 1800s. There was smoked fish and very little refrigeration. And that smell alone would drive you to the brink of madness.

The breathing through the mouth is what it should be called not the scream he's not screaming he's inhaling this is our wang section boys prepare yourselves there is a wang shaped island in the pacific ocean that was found on google maps by a google enthusiast, a man who enjoys scrolling around on Google Maps. He found this very small penis-shaped island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. John Luke? I mean, I'm just glad that we're still at the stage when we can discover landmasses.

I thought we'd done all that like centuries ago. So it's great that this penis has been hiding out for years. The problem is there's not many landmasses which with a certain squint or so you can't think look a bit like a penis i mean basically it's penises of various shapes sizes forms um that if you look at the scandinavian places they all look sort of like penises so what i think this really is is you know pareidolia uh where we see faces in things and uh it is pareidolia i think isn't it it's the same it's just men have this other thing uh where they um they see penises everywhere and they want to inform everyone else phallidolia they want to push uh these these penises on everyone else and go, look, look, look at this. That

looks like a penis, doesn't it? Doesn't it? That looks like a penis, doesn't it? Look at this penis. All right. Yeah. Oh, but it's awful to think that now you can just give unsolicited dick pics through cartography. So this man has been looking and looking for the penis, but he still hasn't found the fabled G-spot island. Well, you've got to go under the ocean surface, then over and then back up. Do we know that this person was on Google Maps looking for new islands,

or do you think they were just trolling the internet for new penises they haven't seen? And the excitement was just like, ooh, this is kind of a penis that hasn't been discovered before. I've seen them all! We've seen most of the penises on the internet. Right, well, I've got to the end of Google Pure. I've seen all the penises on that.

Guess I'm going to have to go on Maps and see if there's any hanging around in there. Google Maps, safe search, off. Because, yeah, I think you're right, though. It's like, there's so many geographical penises every isthmus is kind of phallic right they're already called peninsulas this is more of a rorschach test for the guy looking at the map than it is for the island you could have said that's shaped like anything you could

have been like oh it's it's like a flower blooming or drooping depending on where you look at it from oh it's like a a banana but like the guy saying he found a penis shaped island that's more like we found a guy who finds everything penis shaped i must say i was given a much worse response um from the world's press when i when i sent them my story that i discovered um a load of penises in in some ink blots i'd found they thought this wasn't newsworthy and i don't know why i i well i similarly i reported to the newspaper that i myself have an island shaped penis every penis is an island no man is an island but every penis is every man's home is his penis shaped castle hang on wait but the definition of an island is it's not connected to any nearby landmass so i mean if you i'm just saying if you discount the body

what is the body but really just a penis in itself? It's just an extension of the penis. And here's our final story. Our final story is our feel-good story. And Josh Gundelman, as our feel-good correspondent, will you lead us in? Yes, this is a feel-good story, which is so rare in the news. The news could just be called feel bad stories. So in Somerset, residents have been receiving money and notes from just an unknown and anonymous

person just putting them through their mail slots into their homes. And some of the residents are getting suspicious. Some people are excited about it. But the local police have been investigating, which must be a real plum job for those cops, right? Just getting to look into anonymous notes. You know, they got into this job to solve murders and or be casually racist. And now they have to solve a secret Santaanta mystery i feel like that's not what not why they just to clarify you mean money notes not just your hair looks nice today folded up on a post-it and stuck in the yes they're they're putting money through money yes money just giving money to strangers Which is literally the opposite of stealing.

The opposite of stealing. This is the opposite of the police's job. If anything, you should be investigating the people whose homes the money was put into for passively stealing. They're master criminals. They're stealing without even knowing it. It's just happening. I agree that there is something a little, it's tough to trust nice things, right? Like mean things you always believe. No one is doing mean things and you're like, what's their

angle, right? You always know. Like if someone cuts you in line at the grocery store, you're never like, okay, but what are you gaining from this? But if that person cuts you in line and then hands you a cantaloupe, you immediately are like, there's probably a snake in there. Probably a snake in the fruit. I know it's been a rough year because I personally, I'm a very trusting person and I don't trust this at all. When I saw this, I started coming up with wild conspiracy theories. I'm like, okay, this person is putting counterfeit bills into people's houses, hoping that they'll pass them at stores, get arrested, go to jail and free up parking spaces in the neighborhood. That's got to be the plan.

I did find it that there was a member of the public who said, oh, come on, I think the police probably have more information than us on this. You should let them investigate it, which to me completely misunderstands the police. They're not efficient at collecting information. They have to say hello three times every time they speak to someone everything they do is that that's wasted time we've got more information than that we say hello once and get on with it say hello are you putting money through my door for a nefarious reason no i'm not i'm just giving you money well thank you very much that's nice of you um goodbye and the other thing that police do that normal people don't do is we come upon a scene we We observe the scene.

We take it in with our eyes. They have to go, what's all this then? What's all this then? Even if it's very obvious what all this is then. And they do a couple of squats, very low impact squats at the same time, you know, which is distracting. Like it's very hard to engage with conversation with someone doing that. That's why they're called bobbies. That's true.

Because they go up and down like that. I'll tell you what. I see a body lying on the ground i don't draw attention to it by tracing it in chalk rude that person is probably uh a little embarrassed by their current position dead on the sidewalk like that i just let him be you know wait for wait for something else police are always tracing putting up caution tape nothing to, putting up caution tape, nothing to see here. You wouldn't say nothing to see here if there was nothing to see here. I swear it goes further than that. When they thought I wasn't looking, I saw a police officer go up to the dead body, put some paper on it, take some colored crayons out and do a rubbing of the corpse. You know, it's not just chalked around the thing.

It's arts and crafts of any kind they'll do. You're supposed to wait till that's a tombstone and then you do the rubbing of the tombstone. The only problem I have with this is it doesn't seem very hygienic you know cash um being passed around it's dirty you don't know where it's been so i've been trying to do it i've been doing it contactlessly i've been going around with my debit card and just tapping it on letterboxes and then moving on so you know i've been very very generous um and also haven't made people ill i mean i think i've just connected both of your takes on this and uh i'm assuming that this person has a kink and that these notes are covered in jizz like well then they'll be easy to find i've never seen a crime before that's

no injury all dna test look i just got you some glow-in-the-dark notes. These are disco bills. They're how you can just easily pay for things at a rave. I was formulating quite a complex sperm bank joke, and then I thought, I'm just going to let it go. That brings us to the end of this show. This is The Gargle. We happen every week. There's also The Last Post, which happens monthly,

or you can sign up to support me, Alice Fraser, on my Patreon at patreon.com slash alicefraser for all of my stuff, including my weekly tea salons where we just get on Zoom and have a chat. Much like this, but less hilarious. Josh Gondelman, what have you got to plug? Oh my gosh. I have my own podcast.

It's called Make My Day. It's a comedy game show where there's only one contestant, so the contestant always wins. And Desus and Mero is back on Showtime at 11 p.m. Thursdays and Sundays. John Luke Roberts, before we get to you, remember we're in the back pages of the Glossy magazine, so let's just flip past some extremely adult advertisements. And now, have you got anything to plug?

Well, actually, one of those was Mutt, but it doesn't matter. Yes, well, I've got a record coming out shortly called John Luke Roberts, It Is Better, which is my, I guess you'd call it a special or a stand-up show, but it was recorded in the pandemic without any audience, so I got a composer to make music for it. I like it. And I have a podcast launching shortly. I think I can talk about it.

It's called The Sound Heat Podcast, and it's basically just loads of podcasts you're glad don't exist. And I'm on one of those episodes, aren't I? You're on, at the moment, more than one, like three or something, I think. Exciting, exciting times. Thank you so much for podcasting with me, chaps. And remember, if you are listening to The Gargle, we have merchandise on the website for half a glass of water

that may be a spillover from another podcast, but is equally relevant to this podcast. God, it's hard to spill half a glass of water you've got so much safety room the website is the bugle podcast.com the gargle is a bugle podcast and alice fraser production the producer of this show is ped hunter the executive producer is christopher d skinner i'm alice Fraser, and I'll talk to you again next week.