The Gargle - Skimpflation | Robot mauling | Self improvement

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Guest editors James Colley and Alison Spittle join host Alice Fraser for episode 143 of The Gargle - the sonic glossy magazine to The Bugle, with one rule: no politics! Skimpflation  Ro...bot mauling Queen abdication Self improvement ReviewsStory 1: https://globalnews.ca/news/10158591/inflation-skimpflation-grocery-store/Story 2: https://nypost.com/2023/12/26/business/tesla-factory-worker-attacked-by-robot-which-dug-claws-into-back-arm/Story 3: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/01/queen-margrethe-ii-abdicated-to-save-sons-marriage-after-af/Story 4: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231229-how-to-improve-your-life-in-2024-according-to-scienceHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateCONTENTS00:00 Start01:36 Front cover03:49 Satirical cartoon04:43 Story 1: 'Skimpflation' hits grocery stores amid rising inflationary pressures10:07 Ads13:37 Story 2: Tesla factory worker attacked by robot18:41 Reviews21:32 Story 3: Queen of Denmark abdicates26:35 Story 4: How to improve your life in 2024 according to science31:23 Bye / Anything to plug? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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
Starting point is 00:00:22 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.
Starting point is 00:00:49 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.
Starting point is 00:01:20 Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. and clumps as the new you crawls wet and quivering from the discarded self of last year. The new you blinks, bulging black eyes against the brightness of the sun, then moistens both with the tip of its flickering tongue. Its head cocks too suddenly, too far to the left, as it hears a distant signal, bending to run on all fours, too many joints moving in too many directions. It sets off for home for the half-remembered comfort of the gargle. This is the gargle, the sonic glossy magazine to the Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world.
Starting point is 00:02:10 I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and welcoming in the new year with all of the news and none of the politics are our two guest hosts, James Colley and Alison Spittel. Welcome. Pew, pew, pew. Hello. Hello. Very nice to be here. and Alison Spittel. Welcome.
Starting point is 00:02:23 Pew, pew, pew. Hello. Very nice to be here. Every time I'm on With Us, I realise that Alison always goes pew, pew, pew, which is a very cool start. I'm always left with her like, hello, like I'm on the first day of kindergarten. It's always pales in comparison. This year's a write-off. Start again.
Starting point is 00:02:39 I like to process news like a wrestling heel, you know? Give myself a backstory and a character. Vital and important. But before we crouch together and rend sharp teeth into the steaming entrails of the still living beast that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine. And the front cover this week is 16-year-old Luke Littler, who is a contender for world champion darts player. He's 16.
Starting point is 00:03:11 He's only finished his GCSEs last summer. After he beat Andrew Gilding in the second round, he celebrated by treating himself to a kebab and a can of tango, and he is the most 45-year-old-looking 16-year-old you will ever meet. And you won't meet him unless you play darts because that seems to be his jam. Playing darts, that is our front cover. Darts events, by the way, go off.
Starting point is 00:03:37 They have no business being so fascinating and fun and they should be the most boring thing you've ever been to in your life. But in Australia, we had a riot based on a darts event. and fun and they should be the most boring thing you've ever been to in your life but like in australia we had a riot based on in a darts event there's the melbourne darts riot which which i've got to say it started it started off with people being angry about the darts for dart reasons and they started throwing their plastic chairs and then very quickly because dudes rock and always have rocked it became how many chairs do you reckon we could get in a big pile in the center of this room? So then everyone started throwing their chairs together.
Starting point is 00:04:11 That's amazing. That's amazing. That's like street darts. That's what they call riots. It's just street darts. We're just throwing stuff. That's great. I happened to watch the Microsoft Excel World Championships the other day
Starting point is 00:04:25 because somebody sent me a clip of it, mainly to say, hey, there's a Microsoft Excel World Championships, and it is commentated by an extremely enthusiastic man who clearly has no f***ing idea what he's watching. Really? So the commentary is mainly like, whoa, look at that. Wow, can you believe your eyes? So the commentary is mainly like, whoa, look at that. Wow. Can you believe your eyes?
Starting point is 00:04:50 So how do you win at Microsoft Excel? Like, how does one? I think by entering Microsoft Excel, you've already lost. Fair, fair, fair. Beautiful, beautiful. That is how it should work. It's like where McGannon. How far could you get into the year without ever having to open Microsoft Office
Starting point is 00:05:09 and the last survivor is our winner? The satirical cartoon this week is Jeffrey Epstein's client list being released in categories of fake news because I like them. Oh yeah, I always knew there was something sus about that guy and oh boy, I can't there was something sus about that guy.
Starting point is 00:05:27 And, ooh, boy, I can't wait for the statement. Those are the categories officially. I think they should tease one a week. It should be like Survivor. They come out, or the Masked Singer. They announce the new celebrity each week. Oh, my God. We need to bring back event viewing, James. I would love it if they announced they'd like to do
Starting point is 00:05:44 with, like, Premiership football signings. And it's like, nonce, nonce. need to bring back event viewing. I would love it if they announced they'd like to do with like premiership football signings and it's like nonce, nonce and you just have a video of a man turning around and folding his arms. Do you know what I mean? You get their stats. Ah, you gotta laugh or
Starting point is 00:06:03 you'll cry slash break out the guillotine. Our top story this week is skimflation news, the sexiest word for a thing that's not sexy at all. This is skimflation hitting grocery stores amid rising inflationary pressures, which is to say businesses charging more and giving you less. As a man who always over promises, James Colley, can you unpack this story for us? I promise you I can and not really. So skimflation. So this is not to be confused with inflation or shrinkflation. Don't you dare confuse it with shrinkflation,
Starting point is 00:06:42 which is products getting smaller. This is... And in Australia, we call that prawnflation. You can't get away with that when there's another Australian in the room. So this is remaking a product using cheaper ingredients. So let's say like your Cadbury, and it's very expensive to create a bounty because you have to get the finest chocolates from Brazil and the finest coconuts from, I'm going to say, on top of a palm tree. And those are both quite difficult. And it's actually cheaper to get plentiful, affordable glass. And you're like, well, people who eat bounty couldn't tell the difference between a bounty and glass.
Starting point is 00:07:20 And they both taste like glass and they deserve to eat glass. So you just put glass in there. And so this is what you're replacing ingredients with cheaper ingredients and a lot of these are like reducing the amount of oil and replacing it with water which you're going to live longer but you're going to resent it you're not going to enjoy any of your extra life you'll give it on the back of this and then there are some particularly cheeky examples where like this study has cited a blueberry company that didn't include blueberries in the blueberry muffins which feels fairly fundamental i think i feel like swapping out chocolate for chocolate flavoring and stuff you see that every so often but you know if you if you get a blueberry
Starting point is 00:08:00 it should it should legally have one blueberry at least. That feels fair. Yeah, and let's just say a decent blueberry, not a wrinkled, sad blueberry. Like, if you're only going to have one blueberry, it better be the crowning glory of that fucking muffin. Oh, the size of the kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, surely. If it's just one, let's get a blueberry. Yeah, let's get actual children into it.
Starting point is 00:08:26 Like, skinflation, it feels like a modern thing but like the whole food industry has been built up on skimflation like anything that you get in a chip shop there are things in like a hole where it's uh i can't remember the name of it but it's like chopped meat and potato in batter. And that really wasn't done for, I think this will taste good. It's like, we don't have enough meat to make something. So we're going to add potato and then put it in breadcrumbs and stuff. I hope maybe there's going to be new inventions of food.
Starting point is 00:08:59 I mean, we've been seeing this in the comedy industry for years and years as comedians get bigger and bigger and charge more and more for their tickets for an hour-long show that contains somehow each year fewer and fewer jokes what do you mean they take out the jokes and fill it with transphobia yeah exactly new and innovative transphobia and you have to edit out things that carl pilkington said that people understand are his jokes and not yours. It's all very difficult. I know, Alison,
Starting point is 00:09:28 we, we've introduced you to, um, like last, our last episode together, we were talking about, uh, the chip supremacy, the,
Starting point is 00:09:35 the chip color packets. Just a little bit more of Australian cuisine for you on this topic. Do you know what a Chico roll is? A Chico roll. I'm going to, I don't, but I i'm gonna make a guess yes please marks brother is it like chicken in a roll is that what it is sounds like it should be doesn't it uh the answer
Starting point is 00:09:56 is we don't really know no one knows what's inside there no one's super sure and chico rolls marketing is like yeah we don't know what's in there either but it tastes good so we did oh that's amazing that's like catholicism with communion it's like could be christ but the ingredients definitely say wheat and water do you know uh do you know pluto pups pl No. You've got to tell me all this. If I was to presume, I'd say the offspring of Pluto, the dog. Well, they're more of a similar to a chikorol. They're a thing on a stick. Right.
Starting point is 00:10:35 In the same way as Pluto is never quite sure whether it's a planet or not. Pluto pups are never quite sure whether they're something that's edible or not. And maybe they shouldn't be mentioning dogs in the context. Also, you're given them at a carnival, and I reckon were you given one in a scientifically, hermetically sealed room, you have like a 60% chance of vomiting anyway. And then they're like, all right, eat this now,
Starting point is 00:10:57 get on something that spins real, real fast. Oh, my God. It is like, I think it's a novelty of something being served on a stick, though, isn't it? It makes you feel like a caveman, even though you're just a little boy of a balloon eating candy floss, but you're just champing away. Everything's better on a stick is the title of James Colley's new porn series.
Starting point is 00:11:19 It's also a very important part of Catholicism, just to loop back there. You think he's good now? Wait till we put him on a stick. Oh, my God. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Jim's Gym and Gymnasium's New Year Fitness Body Boot Consent Violation Beauty Achievement Camp.
Starting point is 00:11:44 You trying to get in on the TikTok looks maxing community? You trying to drop a couple of body weight measurement units? Gain the muscles of a young Arnold in an unfeasibly short period of time? Want to be hot at any cost? We will charge that cost. Our range of fitness instructors are deeply personally invested in your acquisition of abs for reasons they'll never explain, and they will break every rule of man and God to ensure you get all six. We'll see you next time. of fresh, answering the question what fresh hell is this? Each week we'll deliver a carefully measured
Starting point is 00:12:26 and packaged set of ingredients for causing spiritual torment in your very own home. Customised to your hellish preferences and household needs. No waste, no fuss. With canned phrases that are guaranteed to satisfy the urge you have to destroy your own life and the lives of those
Starting point is 00:12:42 around you. Let us tempt you with a series of small mementos guaranteed to keep your recent failings top of mind. An exact replica of your partner's clothes, half a size smaller than the ones they have, for optimised gaslighting. Therapist-approved conversation topics so you can be the dad your girlfriend's always trying to escape.
Starting point is 00:12:59 Hello, Fresh. What fresh hell would you like this week? Like all advertisements, that made me sad, Alice. That was great. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Passion Fruit, the fruit of passion. Tough to open, more sour than you expected, and significantly less good than you had anticipated, given the effort.
Starting point is 00:13:21 It's fruit pistachio, 100%. I'm so with you on this it's it's the same thing every time you open a pistachio you're like oh not quite worth it that passion fruit is the exact same boat alice let's this is all i want to talk about from that one well simultaneously not quite worth the effort but then if somebody presents you with uh already shelled or potentially already deglooped passion fruit it's too much of a luxury like it's too decadent it's it feels like morally wrong for somebody to be given like a bucket full of passion fruit is the rich person's version of this lobster where it's just like it's it's
Starting point is 00:13:57 so annoying to get to it's almost like they don't want to be eaten and then you're like but you're like well i've got a it's lobster i've got to eat eaten. But you're like, well, it's lobster. I've got to eat the lobster. It's really just never quite worth all that went into it. True, true. I love the way Passion Fruit goes into it. Pornstar martinis, which is my mum's favourite cocktail. I think she just likes ordering it.
Starting point is 00:14:21 But you get half a Passion Fruit served on top of your martini and um because i'm such a cheapskate and if i get any garnish with anything i will eat the garnish as well whether that be a carrot rose or a rose carrot or whatever so i'll just like i'll just place my tongue in the passion fruit in my local pub licking it out like a like a very sick cat you know and it just gives me no dignity that's all i'm saying no dignity at all acas 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.
Starting point is 00:15:15 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.
Starting point is 00:15:44 Acast.com. And that brings us to our next top story, which is Apocalypse Now news. This is the news that a Tesla software engineer has suffered serious injuries after being quote unquote mauled by a malfunctioning robot at the floor of the factory in Austin, Texas. Alison Spittel, you've mauled an innocent passerby before. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah, this is what I've always suspected about robots and ai and stuff is that they will hurt
Starting point is 00:16:26 you and uh i would love to be at the hr meeting between this robot and the the person that this robot mauled and what i love is there's an article about in new york imagine that like you're trying to explain consent to a robot and pain It's a lot of stuff for that robot to take in. You know they don't care about you when they put you in mediation with the robot that mauled you. And the robot has to speak in, like, feeling terms and stuff. I feel like your flesh is just too soft for me not to mull. But what I love is, like, the article brings up so many accidents
Starting point is 00:17:10 that happened at, like, Tesla's factories after. And you're just, like, it's just, like, I would not work in a factory. I did work in a factory for one day. I worked as a person who puts ball bearings into office chairs. But I realized I was allergic to latex because the gloves I was using broke me out in a rash. And I was delighted that was the way I found out that I was allergic to latex. Like I feel like in a safe work environment, it's a good way to find out your allergies. But yeah, this basically, this robot mold.
Starting point is 00:17:48 Did you resign with a letter that said, this is unbearable? Oh my God, Alice, I wish I had you about 10 years ago to help me with my work issues. Yeah, because then I worked at a camel factory uh that was there were there were there were stuffed animals there was stuffed with straw and i'd be like this is the straw that broke the camel's back it's all the you know it's all simple you get to resign with a late text about your latex so that helped a little my microphone literally gave up at that moment.
Starting point is 00:18:26 You might hear a crash on the record there, but my microphone stared, went, you know what? No, I'm not participating in this. I'm boycotting the rest of this joke. Someone needs to step in. But yeah, this is a workplace accident in the test. And they gripped it. They gripped and they said caused like some lacerations to the flesh and stuff,
Starting point is 00:18:50 which is so scary. But I've been gripped before by like bouncers being thrown out of nightclubs and stuff. And I feel like the robot is trying to pretend that it's not as violent as it actually is, you know, by just grabbing you a little bit. But then, you know, I don't know, no control over itself. Well, the fascinating thing about this story is that it cannot decide how much to anthropomorphize the robot that caused the injury. The language throughout is sort of mixed between using extremely like active language like the robot mauled and a malfunction occurred and so i feel like this article perfectly encapsulates the human ambivalence towards robotic help whether this robot ought to be seen as a sinister threat deliberately damaging
Starting point is 00:19:37 its co-worker or whether this is a human error caused by lax safety standards in this factory. Yeah, you never say, like, I made love to my flashlight. You know what I mean? You don't have to phrase it that way. It is the exact problem with Tesla as well. It's real overpromising. They can't even give us a robot apocalypse you can really believe in. What they do is they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Starting point is 00:20:02 we're going to have a robot apocalypse. Anyway, we hurt one guy with an arm. But in like 15 years if the governments get behind us we get enough defense contracts we promise we will ruin the whole world it's actually we're only this is this a couple years ago and as allison said like this has only just come to light along with a whole bunch of other mess ups and then just to add to like the really bad start to the year of tesla footage from kiev this week reportedly showed a tesla showroom on fire and you know you cannot confirm if it's been struck by a russian missile or that's just what happens to ordinary teslas sometimes it could have been just a completely unrelated incident that's going on there
Starting point is 00:20:41 actually that that's what they should be doing. Send all those robot arms out. Do some good for the world. Get them on the front lines. Reach out the robot arm of friendship. Crushing the dove of peace. Due to programming error. Now it's time for our reviews. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars.
Starting point is 00:21:06 James, what have you brought in for us this week? Oh, I'm worried I might be a little bit early on this one because I love to do end-of-year reviews, but I always get really busy around the end of the year with holidays and Christmas and all this stuff coming up. So I thought I'd get ahead of the curve, get ahead of everyone else putting theirs out, and I was going to do my end-of reviews now so i'm reviewing 2024 uh best movie i haven't really seen
Starting point is 00:21:31 anything yet unfortunately sorry i haven't had time uh best album nothing's really come out yet uh best book i don't know uh biggest story i haven't been checking the news uh good year though five stars in my opinion really really all downhill from here i think we can all anticipate the best book uh james will be your book which is coming out in the next few months i believe next month end of this month i should know that end of this month but that's such a lovely plug to shove in this section allison what have you brought in for us I've brought in because I'm never going to have a mortgage
Starting point is 00:22:08 or a house I've got some avocado topping that was that I bought look at the depressed face on the front of that avocado topping it's very millennial I always thought avocado topping was a very specific sexuality
Starting point is 00:22:23 yeah it is a very specific sexuality. Yeah, it goes along with smashed avocado. Yeah, she's nonplussed, you know? Just maybe a bit like avocado. She is like avocado herself because we're just putting stuff on her to make it, you know, she's very plain, but it's what we add ourselves that make it actually good um the avocado topping it's um it's basically salt um and it cost me about four quid and it's
Starting point is 00:22:56 a very small packet and i do feel like this is uh my finances in in this is like this is me with my finances in a nutshell is buying avocado topping when it is salt and some sesame seeds and oh crushed chilli but yeah anyway I'm going to give it sorry
Starting point is 00:23:18 genuinely I was like I've not been feeling that from you like where is this crush feeling I'm going to give it a 3 out of 10 because I feel like a millennial having it in my cupboard and you know I feel like I'm
Starting point is 00:23:36 a millennial having it in the cupboard that I share with two other people you know that's the kind of thing because I live in rented accommodation and i'm perfect i'm fine about it it's fine and in australian head of state news uh which is to say australian head of the state of denmark news queen margaret in denmark has abdicated the throne in favor of her son, who is married to an Australian.
Starting point is 00:24:07 That's what that joke was. It's a very long way round if you don't know about Crown Princess Mary, who's an Australian who met the prince in a Sydney bar during the 2000 Olympics, which has led to many, many a Sydney girl getting drunk in a bar in the many years since. James, you've been drunk in a bar before. Can you unpack this story for us? Oh, pity the poor people who went there to meet the Prince of Denmark
Starting point is 00:24:35 and found me in a Sydney bar. But so as I was saying, Crown Prince Mary is maybe one of the biggest stories in Australia for so long. And this is massive because over the span of a couple of months, things have happened. So they actually have a reason to write about her. They never stopped writing about her, but now things have happened. So it's quite a big deal. So just a quick summary.
Starting point is 00:24:59 According to the article I read on this, the surprise abdication of Denmark's queen may be a calculated strategy to save the marriage of her son and heir following rumors he had an affair with a Mexican actress. Royal experts said on Monday, to continue reading this article, you can subscribe to The Telegraph, cancel anytime,
Starting point is 00:25:15 click here to start your free trial. Already a subscriber? Log in. So some really worrying stuff there early on in the article. This is a bit of an unfamiliar area to me because um i would think just personally that if you were covering up an affair from the prince you just have the princess killed i would think like i'm not referencing anyone in particular legally
Starting point is 00:25:37 i was just saying if you're in that situation like if it was me and i was like the husband of the queen i would simply orchestrate that and then a bit further down the track make sure that any prestige television seriously addressing the happenings of the time got all weird and unwatchable as soon as this came up that's what i think you should do um i do like the idea though that they're fixing the affair by just giving him more to do here's a new job now you can't have any affairs anymore but this is like the problem with all of this is this is speculation by a bunch of supposed royal experts and look if you have a if you're a dutch royal expert you had some time
Starting point is 00:26:15 on your hands it is a nasty shock to be called into work this early in the year you had like 1600s was a big time for you and then you were pretty pretty clear uh sorry dane royal expert but it look in my opinion all royal experts are about as useful as a cock on the pope and the reason i say this is that this very article right now this this article uh puts in this whole big story this is this put in in Sky News Australia as the truth, the truth about the abdication. And the whole first two thirds of the article is about this affair and potential cover-up
Starting point is 00:26:53 and what world experts say. Then the final third is how the Queen had back surgery and had been thinking about abdication. They filled in for her while she was having back surgery and has just been a bit under the weather lately and not up to doing the duties anymore. So that's almost certainly the reason why she's doing it but it could also be this insane conspiracy theory that's come from nowhere is there any of that segment that is legally okay to publish
Starting point is 00:27:17 like she was getting back surgery from the weight of carrying the monarchy on her back like uh i it's it's so being a royal i wouldn't want to be a royal um because i grew up at a council estate and to grow up in a small rural council estate is like being a celebrity in your own right because everybody gossips about you i remember um seeing two women have a physical fight out of my green because one accused the other of uh doing a thing and this really dates it as a one accused the other of teletext dating which is where people remember cfax and teletext in ireland you could put up personal ads and someone presumed that another person on my estate had done that uh through detective work and just i think the feeling of vibes and they had a physical fight to sort this out and i feel that's what being a royal is like you know there's a there's a hand across the class divide
Starting point is 00:28:25 it's just everyone you know being a royal is exactly like being in a council estate as in you need a little help from the government to live and also people are worried about who you're shagging and how many kids you have so it does it feels very much like being like my childhood i was a princess growing up and that brings us to our final story a hopeful and good news story on how to improve your 2024 going forwards as we launch into a new year we all want to have the best year that we possibly can have uh i assume i don't know why i'd assume that about you listeners you're listening to this podcast after all um have we got any advice james and allison have you got advice for our listeners as to what we ought to do in the year ahead imagine if i'm like uh invest in gold and
Starting point is 00:29:27 buy canned goods then i don't elaborate do you know what that's what i'm gonna do invest in gold get physical gold bars and canned goods and thank me uh in 2025 i'm gonna go the other way get as many bored ape nfts as you can they're coming back baby they dip and they rise they dip and they rise they're about to be cool again i can feel it it would be funny if the gargle now started getting into the nft game now that we've seen how it plays out, now's the time. It's a good time to launch it, I reckon. You've got Steamboat Mickey coming off copyright.
Starting point is 00:30:12 We could start with that. It's time to get some good gargle NFTs. Well, some of the advice that is being given by scientists in this article on the BBC is that you should focus on your sleep, that you should focus on your body, that you should focus on your mind, and that you should focus on writing original content for your essays. This is like some of the most predictable and boring advice. This is not the advice i want for 2024 i want the uh buy gold advice i want the very specific very weird advice just don't eat a pineapple in 2024
Starting point is 00:30:52 is that's what i want to hear i don't know why i said a pineapple i've been eating a lot of pineapple recently apparently that's what the baby wants you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna take up darts because i feel like i'd be a 16 year old i feel like you'd have the psychological edge yeah yeah i would i'd be like i've seen things you wouldn't believe and then i did a bullseye i think the real problem with me is like i started this article and as i was reading i was like oh this is interesting you know because it's the kind of i'm like i'm an optimist at the start of the year. I'd really like to, you know, work on something, put the goal, like put a goal in, try and
Starting point is 00:31:30 achieve it. And then I scrolled down and I was like, well, this is actually quite a bit of stuff. It seems like a lot of work. I'm a few days behind already. Do you know what? Screw it. Next year, this year's a write-off. It's done.
Starting point is 00:31:41 There's nothing going in. The only New Year's resolution i have um is and i had the same last year i'm really gonna stick to it this year which is to quit smoking um and i don't smoke and never have which makes it easy and achievable every year but when you say that this year i quit smoking at the end of the year everyone's really impressed with you oh my god smoke a single cigarette do you know how i started in a year i went on a bender with my friend in her house right and then i woke up in her house and went down the stairs and her boyfriend had just got in from a park run that's the type of life he has and that's the type of life i had he came in for the park run and he
Starting point is 00:32:22 looked around the kitchen where i had built some sort of den with a rose and loads of flowers under a table and pretended it was a coffin. And he came back from his park run. And I'm like, this is not the life I want to lead. I hate to say it. I feel I went overboard in how much of an annoying dad I've become because we were at a party for years and it got to 11.58
Starting point is 00:32:47 and everyone ran inside to be like, oh, we've got to watch the countdown and the fireworks. And I was like, all right, we know how this goes. Let's go. And then we caught a cab at 11.59 because you know at 12.02 you are not catching a cab. So we went home. That's amazing home that's amazing
Starting point is 00:33:07 that's amazing that is the ultimate oh my god you sound like a man who loves foreplay and it's just like I don't need to I'm fine I know how this goes you get the point to be fair
Starting point is 00:33:23 to be fair James we are the generation that came of age when Y2K was a thing. So at this point, any year that doesn't end with the prospect of the entire immediate collapse of all civilization, it just feels like a bit of an anti-climax. That brings us to the end of the show. I'm flipping through the ad section at the back. Alison Spittel, have you got anything to plug? Oh, baby, do I have something to plug? It is called a tour.
Starting point is 00:33:51 I'm doing a show called Soup. It's on the early part of this year. We're going to places like... I don't even remember the names of these places. One place is leaked. And I'm like, is that a place? So I'm really excited about going there now like it's gonna be great but um so go go to my uh website or my instagram and you find all details of uh of that tour there please come to it. My New Year's resolution is to advertise that tour more.
Starting point is 00:34:26 Yes. And also, if there's any garglars that are financial whizzes, contact me because my New Year's resolution is to store out my life. I can help you out. Just buy some gold. Oh, yeah, yeah. And food as well.
Starting point is 00:34:41 Beautiful. We'll do that. And James, what have you got to plug? I'll pull this out again. The next big thing, which I have in my hand for any list, is an actual physical copy of this, is out at the end of this month in Australia. Elsewhere, you can contact your bookstore
Starting point is 00:35:02 and just, if you bring a weapon, they will find a way to order it in and I've been everywhere if you're in Australia this week the big issue which is a good magazine to pick up because it supports unhoused people in Australia I've got a nice little year wrapping them
Starting point is 00:35:18 in the Sydney Morning Herald you're probably going to be sick of me by February so pace yourself but I'd say buy the book and avoid everything else if you have to. And I'd like to plug Braxton Hicks contractions, which are a lot like being elbowed in your pelvic floor from the inside. Oh, that sounds great.
Starting point is 00:35:38 Mainly because that's what they are. You can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts and blogs, as well as my weekly salons and writers' meetings. We do two writers' meetings a week, so there's one in your time zone, and you can sign up to that starting at $1 a month.
Starting point is 00:35:57 And it's pretty good. I enjoy it. Other than that, this is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. I'm Alice Fraser. Our editor is Ped Hunter. And our executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week.
Starting point is 00:36:11 You can listen to other programs from The Bugle, including The Bugle, Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.

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