Triforce! - Triforce! #42: Bizz Tips and Sips Strips
Episode Date: April 26, 2017Triforce Episode 42! Pyrion's got some bad news while Sips and Lewis set up a seedy strip joint in Jersey! Â Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....com/adchoices
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Guten Tag, mein Freund, und willkommen Sie zu The Triforce Podcast with me, Herr Oberleutnant von Flax und Obergruppenführer Sips.
Say hallo.
Hallo.
Und unser Führer und Meister, Louis Brindley.
Say guten Tag.
Heil.
Guten Tag.
See, that's what I think.
I think having played Hearts of Iron with you that's what I think, I think having played
Harzweim with you that much, I think secretly
you'd love it if we were living
as Nazis just day to day
Jawohl mein Freund
Yes, what evil plans will
we decide to do today?
Which countries will we
eye up in terms
of conquering and
giving us Lebensensraum or
why is lebensraum a funny word it was like it was the policy for killing a bunch of people
but it was i don't know it just sounds like a funny it sounds like a sauce could i get some
lebensraum on the side please oh we're out of lebensraum can you go heavy on the side, please. Oh, we're out of Laban's rounds. Can you go heavy on the Laban's round please?
I really, really love that. Isn't it supposed to be living room for that?
It's like elbow room. I think it literally means elbow room, which if you had a jar,
if you had a bowl of Laban's round sauce on the table, I put my Laban in the Laban's round.
I tell you what I could, I could have done with some Laban's realm when we went out for an Indian this weekend.
Because we were crammed in like sardines on this table.
It was one of these times where you couldn't decide whether to lean back in your chair to get your arms out that way or lean forward and hunched over.
Because it was that close.
So it was also everyone had to make a decision on that i see and i i you know imagine if you were bigger like i'm quite a
little puny kind of you know i was i'm a little gnome fellow so i was you know luckier than most
i would say that you're more like the stick man from bugs life rather than a gnome gnome fellow
played by niles crane from the show Fraser.
But yeah, you do have sort of Niles Crane tendencies as well, actually, it turns out.
I mean, Duncan was sitting opposite me,
and the person who was sat next to him, I think,
didn't turn up or left or something.
So he had two spaces to himself, okay?
Yeah.
And he obviously just moved one chair out, sat in the middle,
and he looked like he had a normal seating environment. the middle and he looked like he had a normal seating environment you know he looked like it had a normal position uh that's
that's that's to give you a clue just how you know i feel like i feel like that's a really authentic
experience though because like from what i know of india i've never been to india but it's a very
crowded place you know like you see documentaries
about like the trains in that country and there's people like on the roof of the train and hanging
out the windows and stuff and like it's a billion people in India right I know it just seems like
it's a ram-packed country yeah and everywhere that you could possibly ever go in India you
probably don't have a lot of personal space. There's probably somebody up in your space all the time, like shoved up next to you or smushed up behind
you or something. Fun fact about India, they have a billion people, but the whole of the Indian
subcontinent is only the size of the Isle of Wight. It's just that the Mercator projection
that we use for our maps makes it look huge, but it's not. It's just the size of the Isle of Wight,
believe it or not. And Greenland is actually you know absolutely massive it's huge it's um it's the size of the
90 of you know they say 70 of the earth is water only on that map it's actually 20 which is why
we've got so many problems with with uh plastic in the oceans it's only three plastic bags that's
filled up the whole sea yeah it. It's just that small.
I got, I don't know about you guys,
but like I went to a store one time and I bought something
and I bought a couple of things, okay?
Wow.
Yeah, as you do.
So I go to this store, I buy a couple of things.
Please do go on.
Yeah, well, I'm just getting to the interesting part.
I buy a couple of things, you know.
I bought some lube, a couple of dildos
some johnnies and stuff and uh cesco's i guess it was it was like the um it was like the pharmacy
equivalent yeah yeah so so i get up to the cash register and there's this guy he's working the
cash he seems like a pretty nice guy he puts my stuff through and he's like, you're going to need a bag for this?
And I was like, yeah, please.
I'll always take a bag.
I don't want to be that guy that has just like a mountain of stuff like in his arms fumbling around and dropping shit and stuff.
So I was like, yeah, I'll take a bag.
He's like, you know, these are really bad for the environment.
It's like, fuck you.
I don't need a fucking lecture right now.
Okay.
Just put my shit in the bag that I fucking paid for and let me get on with my life okay just find
somebody else who gives a fuck about this stuff because it ain't me all right i didn't say this
to him but i felt like saying it to him because i i just think that you know stores have started
charging now for bags right and it's like five five p a bag. Or you can like upsize or supersize to the 10p bag,
which is like a bag for life or whatever.
And it's just a bigger bag that is just as bad as the small bag,
but it's a little bit bigger.
The bigger bags are twice as thick, I'd wager.
A pet is not just for Christmas, it's for life.
That's what a bag for life reminds me of.
A bag is not just for Christmas, it's for life. Yeah. That's what a bag for life reminds you of. A bag is not just for shopping.
It would be better for the environment if we were just grabbing a pet to carry our goods home from.
At least they decompose.
Yeah.
Right.
Like a kangaroo with a pouch.
Well, the problem is that they say, oh, keep this bag for life.
Reuse this bag for life and stuff.
And I'm like, okay, I will reuse this bag for life. Reuse this bag for life and stuff. And I'm like, okay, I will reuse this bag for life.
But actually, sometimes I forget to bring my bags for life with me everywhere I go.
So I end up accumulating more bags for life.
And now I literally have a closet in my house that's just filled with these fucking bags for life.
And I can't get rid of them.
I feel bad for throwing them away.
I had to, like, pay 10 pence for each one
but i have thousands of them now and they're really bad the trunk of my car is filled with
these things there's a cupboard in my house just filled with these things and we accumulate more
and more and more and it just seems like i feel like the old way of just giving us bags and us
just chucking the bags away was better somehow than
accumulating a billion bags for life that i never seem to remember to take with me or whatever you
know like sometimes you go to the grocery store and you see you see that you see like an old lady
who just has like all the time in the world to have like one of those fucking thatch bags with
a couple of other bags in it. And she's all super organized.
Some people like bring boxes with them and stuff.
Fuck me.
Like I never take bags with me when I go to the store.
Like I don't have time for that shit.
What do you mean time? Well, I don't.
So when you get home, what do you do with the bag?
I put them in the cupboard with the rest of the bags that we have stockpiled for God knows what.
So when you leave the house to go shopping, you don't think I'll take a bag with me
I don't think to take a bag with me because we leave a whole bunch
in the trunk of the car
but when we get to the store I always forget to get them out of the trunk
of the car so we go in the store and buy all our shit
you're not selling it to me
you're on the side of wrong here my friend
Sips is just an ordinary forgetful dad
who's having to deal with all the crap normally
the kids are like screaming
I've just listened to like the Moana soundtrack 50 times in a row.
For the fifth time.
How am I supposed to remember to get these bags
and take them into the store with me?
Like, I think that's a...
I mean, maybe because your kids are older, Flax,
you have a bit more time to think about this stuff or whatever.
I've always done it.
All right, listen.
Listen up, P. Flax.
Well, maybe you're a woman.
Even if you forget, like, one in three times, okay,
you're still going to end up with a surplus of bags, right?
Over the course of a couple of years,
you're going to end up with a cupboard full of bags.
What do you do with those bags, PFLAGS?
You're a bag.
Do you feel bad?
You're a big, flappy bag making hot air.
Bam, bam, bam.
Oh, period.
Some dolphin is out there in the ocean,
plenty of leavings around, right?
Yeah.
Until, oh, it's like, this is the dolphin noise.
Okay.
Ah, ah, ah.
It's more like a seal.
Yeah.
It's not fucking Popeye.
Eke, eke, eke, eke, eke, eke.
Wow, blow me down.
Oh, is that a dolphin?
He's getting fucking Tesco's bag for life stuck on his face just because you, you know, forgot to.
I don't chuck my bags in the sea, Lewis.
No, honestly, I don't either.
You might as well be doing that.
Whoa, I'm the one saying I get it.
I bring a bag.
You're holding a bag over a dolphin's face.
The thing is, you guys don't, though.
You're lying.
You guys don't take bags.
Because you get shit delivered to your fucking houses in the UK.
Yeah, and do you know what?
You give those bags back to the Ocado guy.
I thought that they just turned up in a fucking crate and you just unpacked the shit and gave the crates back.
No, they give you the bags.
Surely that would be a better system.
And they say, any bags to return?
And you say yes, and you get the bags you had last year and you give them to them and they use them again.
I mean, it is in crates, but's also bags i mean i would that that sounds
fine to me i would remember to do my bags in that case but i don't have fucking home delivery over
here i still have to manually go to the store like a normal person and talk to people and deal with
the public and fucking do my shopping and stuff in public buy your dildos in public. Yeah. That's right. I know. It sucks. It's fine.
I think I just use them as bin bags and there you go.
Job done.
Yeah.
I tend to do that too.
That's an expensive bin bag though.
Well, I don't buy the 10p ones.
I've never spent more than 5p on a bag.
Oh, good for you.
I got some news for you guys.
I got some news.
Do you want to hear my news?
Yeah, yeah.
Are you sure?
Yeah.
Okay.
So it's bad news.
Bad news. We've already had that. No, no. We've got some bad news Okay. So it's bad news. Bad news.
We've already had that.
No, no.
We've got some bad news to go with the bad news.
How bad are we talking?
It's pretty bad.
Because I'm starting to regret agreeing to listening to this now.
No, it's worse than that.
Okay.
What happened is...
Did somebody leave a negative comment on your YouTube video?
No, it's even worse than that somehow.
Oh, shit.
Okay.
This is going to have a far more lasting impact on my day-to-day life
all right right oh god effective today effective immediately all right i found out last night so
okay my favorite vape flavor is custard right and i need it in the six milligram
from digby's vape juices okay i go into the website last night because i'm running a
little low and what do i find there's a sale on my brand they've never had a sale in the years i've
been buying from them on that brand and i know my heart sinks and i think there's only one reason
that you do that it's a discontinuing this line sale and they'll want to shift it all so i quickly
think i'll buy all the six milligram uh nicotine level uh custard that they've got and they'll want to shift it all. So I quickly think I'll buy all the six milligram nicotine level custard that they've got and they're out. Some fuck has bought them all.
They're sold out. So I've had to expand and I've had to go into a new vape company and buy a whole
bunch of flavors I've never had before. I've just potluck. I have no idea what is going to be good.
I'm trying to find my new everyday brand,
and I've had to go with a whole bunch of people here.
I mean, it's all, you know, the bottles are different colours and sizes and shapes.
Some of them don't even have the flavour written on them.
I've no idea what I'm doing.
I'm basically blind, stumbling around in the dark here.
Is it just turned up today?
It just arrived.
It's a huge bag.
I bought a lot more than I thought.
I mean, here you go.
This is exactly how you know you're fucking old, right?
It's that, you know, you get scared about change.
Change?
You know, you're like, oh, oh, God, what am I going to do?
What kind of plastic bag did it come in?
Was it a bag for life?
It's a big fucking, it's a dolphin killer of a plastic bag.
Anyone else, P-Flax, would be fucking giddy with excitement about the opportunity to test and enjoy a whole new selection.
But you.
I know what's coming.
Old fucking granddad.
Did you get some fruity flavors?
I got all kinds of fruity flavors.
I got.
Let me just check because they sent me an invoice.
Did you get tutti fruity?
The flavor?
Let's have a look.
Did you just.
Were you just sort of in a real real mess in
your head right now you're thinking oh my god what am i gonna have to do i can't i can't i didn't
know what to do everything in a panic yeah i just bought like 100 100 quids worth of different vape
juices just like just bingo did you swear out loud when you got to the website and you realized
i tweeted at him what the fuck are you doing please don't tell me you're discontinuing this
flavor they never responded.
Oh, my God. Did you phone their customer service line?
No, I didn't.
Do you want to phone them now?
No, they don't have a customer service line.
They're two wives.
So I've got a certain surplus left over, and then I've got these new ones.
And then that's it.
My life has changed forever.
Gone are the days of customers.
So your normal brand has become a rarity. Yeah. And it's kind of like a fine wine. my life is changed forever gone are the days of the custom well that's so that so your so your
normal brand has become a rarity yeah and it's kind of like a fine wine you know you want to
bust those out for special occasions now so you're now on special occasion rationing i have uh one
two three four five eight of them left listen all right are you gonna take one to pdx con just to like i think i might just as a special
occasion yeah just stand by a river at night stare out longingly in sweden and just be like
good knowing you custard flavor vape i mean someone will tell me oh they do other custards
if you've been married to a beautiful woman for a very long time as i have yeah and she then leaves you you don't think well we had some good times you're devastated and if you've inhaled delicious custard for two and a
half years and when that day ends it's hard to look back at the good times without thinking about
the bad times to come you think well i mean come on i think you should be excited about the future
flex because you know who knows you might find something that's way better than custard i know
it's hard to believe right now but you might find something you might find like chocolate twisty
tutti frutti or something like that and it might blow your dick off you're right you might just
think wow where's this been all my life? I wasted all this time on custard.
You shouldn't have been smoking it up your ass.
You could have been getting, yeah, you could have been getting fucking, yeah, shotguns up your ass. Why don't you put it up your bum?
It's almost too clever for this podcast.
Let's bring it down a notch from that level of cerebral sort of insight.
Put it up your bum!
Are we going to get some live taste tests?
No, no, I'm going to wait until...
Come on!
I've got a tank of valuable custard juice here, Lewis.
I'm not going to throw it away just to entertain you.
On the topic of taste tests,
you know, like, there's always these shows
where it's like,
we could save you lots of money
on your average weekly shop by right right
by cutting out the big brands and going for like the you know the the cheaper brands and stuff and
i bet you can't tell the difference between this shampoo that you normally use and the the discount
shampoo and then you know they use the shampoo and they're like this is definitely not my shampoo i
can tell my hair feels disgusting. It's all dry.
It's knotted.
This never happens when I use my own shampoo.
And then the big reveal at the end is always like,
you were using the welfare shampoo.
What?
I can't believe it.
I can save three pounds a year by buying this shampoo instead.
My hair only feels gritty and if it has snot in it.
Did you guys do you guys
feel like you could pass one of those tests because i feel like i i feel like i'm above it
right i feel like i'm like i know like the kind of ketchup that i like and i would be able to tell
the difference and stuff but sometimes i doubt myself and i think maybe i couldn't tell the
fucking difference between your ways are you with stuff?
Obviously, this is a great example of Perion being very set in his custard vapors.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean.
But how do you, do you have a very fixed kind of choice of everything else?
Like bread and milk?
No, no, no.
I mean, over here, there's only one brand of milk.
So that one's done anyway.
You wouldn't, you know, unless I was going to go for like soy milk or whatever, which I never would.
I like normal milk, so that's fine.
But like there's just a couple of things.
I'm not overly particular, but there are a few things that like I'll not go out of my way or like really be overly insistent, but I'll grab it before sort of thing.
There are definitely certain brands I'm way too attached to.
So there's three things off the top of my head, definitely. Okay. And so my top three is Heinz
ketchup. I'll always grab Heinz ketchup before any other ketchup. I don't know if it's because
that's all we had, like when I was a kid or something, or if it's like a taste thing or
whatever. But if I see Heinz ketchup, I'm just like, yeah,
just give me Heinz ketchup.
Same with Heinz baked beans.
Okay. Like I,
you know,
there's all these other brands of baked beans,
like the co-op brand baked beans and like Tesco and whatever.
I see what you mean.
And stuff.
But like,
if I see Heinz,
I'll just be like,
oh yeah,
Heinz are better.
I'll,
I'll grab them.
And the other one is special K like, like the actual kellogg's brand special k
i will get over some other brand of you know the exact same cereal that's not called special k
like right let me let me let me just wake you up from your ketchup slumber sir okay for the
longest time and this is i'm not sponsored by these people but i wish i was
because they're they are doing god's work in terms of ketchup i've never been a massive ketchup fan
until until i tried all gold tomato sauce or tomato sauce as it's lifted on it's a south
african tomato sauce you can get it in this country it is fucking amazing you ask a south african what
ketchup is and they'll tell you it's all gold all gold ketchup it is the best it is incredible
i can only recommend it and it will knock your love of heinz ketchup off the planet you won't
care about it the thing is though is that i don't know if i actually love heinz ketchup though that's
that's what i'm trying to say like i think i'm saying if you try this you'll actually be attached to this brand like
for instance yorkshire gold tea that's the only tea i really enjoy other tea is like nowhere near
as good it's got to be yorkshire gold okay it's got to be not just the plain yorkshire it's got
to be the gold blend i mean these brands okay the thing about these brands is that they are extremely consistent, okay?
They make them in absolutely billions of bottles for 40 years,
and they have to keep them tasting exactly the same.
Every bottle has to taste exactly the same.
Hellmuth's mayonnaise.
That's actually extremely difficult to do, but it becomes very, very familiar.
These brands, Coke and things, are so iconic.
They're so kind of nothing else
trapped in your psyche coke is the one like i i even did like the coke and pepsi challenge and i
passed the flying colors like i i i can tell a coke put that on your resume you know we had like
rc cola in in north america and that actually tasted like urine and then pepsi is tastes like
a watered down coke to me yeah like
it tastes like a bit more syrupy or something i don't know what it is it's like coke i can always
tell for some reason it's like i don't know what they what they do to it maybe that's like cause
for concern what do they actually do to it yeah that secret recipe is it's just too good fuck me
i don't know what's in it but but yeah i feel like
maybe i'm a bit brainwashed some somehow like about the whole ketchup thing with certain brands
like they're just like go-to things but you know what i mean like at the same time it's just ketchup
i mean i grew up in north america so i fucking put ketchup on everything like absolutely everything
and i like it a lot but like i'm exactly the same i mean
my my parents my mom could put ketchup on everything i i i put ketchup on everything
used to you know exactly the same i had smart ketchup and we always used to have the same sort
of breakfast here every every morning we wouldn't have special k because it's just i think it's just
got too much sugar in um it's one of these things that they can't call healthy. They call it something like, you know, help feed your lifestyle or nourish yourself or something like that.
It's not, they're not allowed to call it healthy because it isn't.
It's not a healthy cereal.
And most breakfast cereals, most yogurts, most things aren't allowed to be called healthy because they have too much sugar in as well.
And as with other things too, I'm pretty sure like ketchup has a lot of sugar in it too yeah but
yeah i mean i'm the same with these brands they stay with you for your whole life and they are
it's a little bit like um there's an investing thing and it's like you know investing in brands
like coke and heinz things because they'll never go away they're so integral to you know even if
there's kind of a breakdown in society people
people will still be like i'm not eating that fucking off-brand human-made uh you know baked
beans it has to be heinz only heinz in the apocalypse the fucking process for making
baked beans is crazy you should see have you ever seen a baked bean factory before
like they're nuts i would love
to oh my god like it's actually worth looking up it's it's like a it's like a marvel of like
engineering and automation and and everything else it's nuts the the shit that they do to those beans
and the amount of beans that they process wow is it beans on toast like one of the big things in
new zealand or something isn't it like their main one of the big things in New Zealand or something?
Isn't it like their main kind of... I read something about that.
It's their staple diet.
It's their staple.
I might be wrong.
Some countries like rice.
Other countries, maybe they like pasta.
Our country, beans on toast.
That could be like an English thing as well, I think.
One of my kids asked me the other day, for some reason, she was looking at an atlas.
And on the atlas is marked Pitcairn Island, right?
Have you guys heard of Pitcairn Island?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So she was like, what's the story behind Pitcairn Island?
And when I tried to explain to her about the mutiny on the bounty, which is like one of my favorite stories, I love that story.
I read a really good book about it.
And I mean, I thought the movie B you know with with anthony hopkins and
daniel j lewis brilliant brilliant movie the chocolate bar not so much oh i love a bounty
you kidding bottom of the celebrations oh man i love about just bounties left they're so good
anyway i was trying to explain to her how the world used to be like the people would just go off
in a boat to go and do a thing or explore a place. And that we didn't really,
couldn't really keep track of people the way we can now.
You know,
these guys would leave their families behind for like years and years at a
time just to go off and stuff.
And they just couldn't comprehend it.
It wasn't even that long ago.
It was like 200 odd years ago that we were living like this completely
different life.
And now here we are arguing about which is the best brand of ketchup that
we're attached to.
And I think what a,
what a world of progress that is.
That now we can feel attachment to mayonnaise or wonder at the manufacture of baked beans.
And I just think what a brave new world.
It's the pyramid of needs though, right?
We have everything.
So now that we've got everything, we complain about really, really dumb, mediocre shit.
Like the size of a bag of
yeah like we're constantly fed we you know we we never we're never like going hungry we have like
all the all the electricity and heating that we need like all all the basics are covered right
yeah in abundance we're very comfortable we have all these machines that can do shit for us now as well and so yeah so that's what happens then like it's it's like did you remember that star wars character
uh ensign barkley on he was like the he was one of the engineering team he was kind of useless he
was scared of the teleporter if you remember that episode where he thought he could see worms
floating around in the teleporter and they were going to come and get him and stuff like that. He's living in the future where you don't even need to do anything.
Like, everything is done for you.
You can do whatever you want.
There's no money.
You don't need to worry about money anymore.
Everything's taken care of.
You want a cup of Earl Grey tea?
Hop.
You get it.
You just push a button.
Bingo.
There it is.
You can travel the universe.
And he's still kind of like,
I'm still kind of kind
of unhappy people are never going to be happy ever i mean i wonder if they've always been as
happy as they are now throughout history is it you know this is just what life it's all like
it's all relative to the period that you live in but i think i think you're right i think people
are just destined to always be unhappy like i feel like that's what makes us ever enough
yeah yeah if we were happy with stone age tools we would never have moved out of the stone age
it's our misery that drives us forward i don't know though there's always like a part of the
population that's that's content with things right and then and then there's people that who
think that we can always do better but like the motivations behind that are varied as well too.
Right.
Like some people,
some people will,
will push the envelope because they think that it'll make them rich or some
people do it for other reasons,
I guess,
mainly just because they think it's going to make them rich,
I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's,
it's,
it's a weird one.
It,
but I think it's,
I think it's just human nature.
I think that's,
I think that's just a part of us that will never kick.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's just how we are.
I just noticed that today is Hitler's birthday.
Is it Hitler's birthday?
Yeah, yeah.
So 420 is Hitler's birthday.
Is it really?
I always think of that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You always think of that?
Someone says, wait, 420 tomorrow, and you go, oh yeah, Hitler's birthday.
See, you are a closet fascist.
I knew it.
And yeah,
big fan of old A.H.
I read that he wrote a second book
after Mein Kampf.
You've read Mein Kampf?
No, no.
I've never read it,
but he wrote a second book.
He did write a sequel to Mein Kampf.
He did.
It's called Hitlerler's secret book
it was originally called that but now it's called hit the second book
it's true it's a true fact it's talking talks a lot about labrador um i don't believe it he
didn't write genuinely he wrote a sequel the sequel what, the sequel, what was it called? Mind Even Camp Fear? Let's Go Camp Thing?
Carry On Up The Camp?
No, it was
genuine, but because he didn't,
because back when Mind Camp was originally published,
it didn't sell very well. So his publisher
was like, nah,
it's probably not gonna...
You need to make one with more of an
erotic angle to it,
my dear.
Yeah, with sexy boobies and clip and strom.
That's true.
Why do we always talk about Hitler?
I don't know, dude.
He's such a titan of the 20th century.
It's hard to get away from that shadow, you know?
It's just, it's always there in the back of my mind.
Somebody yesterday commented on my grotesqueque facial hair because every once in a
while i just i don't shave and i go for weeks without doing it and i develop a huge neck beard
it looks gross it's like all patchy and shit but one thing about my mustache is that it doesn't
connect in the middle you know the bit underneath like your your nose like the nostril separator
part of your nose that thing right whatever that is. No hair grows on that.
You cannot do a toothbrush.
Yeah, it's like Moses is like parting my mustache at all times.
He's just in there just holding it down.
So I have this like a no man's land in between my mustaches.
I have like two separate mustaches.
And somebody yesterday said it's like a jigsaw piece puzzle
where Hitler's mustache fits in where
i don't have mustache so it's like like me and hitler could form like voltron to form like one
full mustache because he's got like the little mustache and then i've got like the two side
mustaches right i see i thought it was interesting and then it made me think maybe i would form like
voltron with hitler but at the same time i don't really like
hitler that much so i don't really want to form with them no i i've i i hadn't noticed that but
now whenever i see you i will think that you are the opposite of hitler uh so pubger had an update
today um yes i've been playing it a bit more there i've just i've just looked at the um they've added
a vector which is like a little sort of it's a weird futuristic gun i don't i recognize it is it a real thing the vector yeah
yeah yeah and uh a motorbike with a sidecar is that a real thing a motorcar with a motorcycle
with a sidecar i think it was back in like the 1930s yeah didn't we joke about that being added
what a motorcycle sidecar yeah i'm pretty sure we made we joke about that being added what a motorcycle sidecar yeah i'm
pretty sure we made a joke about that being added and then it actually has been i don't know whether
they listened to us or watched us i doubt it i doubt i'd like to think we influenced the community
though yeah i think you know i don't think that's the case at all given that pretty much everything
that they've added looks to me to be stuff that everybody was saying
they should really add so-and-so.
And I mean, I'm sure they look at the subreddit,
but I'm sure that they watch streams and videos of it
to see how people are playing their game
and what they're struggling with
and what they're complaining about.
Because that's the best feedback you can get.
I mean, all right, people are going to go and complain on Reddit
or praise some aspect of the game.
But I think if you actually watch people play it,
like really playing your game,
that's the kind of feedback you can only get.
Like more often than not,
you just have to wait for people to complain.
But if it's like a minor gripe,
like for instance, you couldn't,
I believe in the new patch you can,
I haven't played it yet,
but you couldn't mark on the map for other people to see,
which is kind of fundamental.
You could say, let's go here and click on a map.
You can mark things on the map yourself,
but your teammates wouldn't see them. Exactly, they have added that. And when you were spectating, you couldn go here and click on a map. You can mark things on the map yourself, but your teammates wouldn't see them.
Exactly. They have added that.
And when you were spectating, you couldn't see the other player's map
when they called it up and stuff like that.
So you couldn't keep track of the circle.
That's the kind of stuff that I feel like they've watched people play
and complain about on a minor level and have thought,
actually, yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, you know, because a lot of this stuff,
the base game was so good and we've played it.
I mean, we've played it so much since it came out.
Yeah.
I find that game just excellent.
It's super addictive.
I really,
really enjoy it.
Yeah.
I like everything about it.
It's great.
Do you guys remember,
this is a complete change of topic.
Do you remember a company called Steorn?
Do you remember Steorn?
S-T-E-O-R-N.
They were an Irish company.
They've got into liquidation, who claimed that they
had cracked perpetual motion. Do you remember this? This was quite a big story about 10
years ago. And I've been keeping an eye on them forever because I love the idea of this
Irish company cracking perpetual motion. But they haven't, and they didn't.
Oh, shit. I remember this. It's coming back to me now.
Right. They had this demonstration that they did at some science museum and everything
that didn't work, and they said it was because of all the lighting and all me now. Right. They had this demonstration that they did at some science museum and everything that didn't work.
And they said it was because of all the lighting and all this stuff.
Right.
So I'm just reading about this other demonstration that they did.
So this is the downhill slide of Steorn from people saying they can't be serious to them,
saying, no, we are serious.
We're going to do a demonstration.
We'll have all the scientific trials and everything.
In May of 2015, they developed this thing called the Ordo Power Cube,
or the Orbo Power Cube, which was a way you could charge a phone with it.
Just set it going and it charges your phone.
It generates more power than you put in and all the rest of it.
They put it on display behind the bar of a pub in Dublin. I just think them walking in and slapping down a perpetual motion machine on a bar
and saying, like, watch this, lads, this is it.
And that same year
they went into liquidation you just think the downhill slide there of a company from
everybody's saying oh really oh yeah 400 scientists said yeah we'll help out with your
you know we'll do an independent peer review and everything to them just walk it into a bar and
slap it down there's a perpetual motion machine right there behind the bar i i think it's just
a desperately sad story and it's a shame it machine right there behind the bar. I think it's just a desperately sad story.
And it's a shame it didn't work out.
Obviously, it would have been great,
but just such an incredible ending.
Where can we see this technology?
Oh, it's in the dog and duck.
It's just behind the bar.
Yeah.
Just next to the Guinness.
Go and ask,
and you can have a look at it.
Does it work?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it works.
We've also got a portal gun
around the back of the Queen's legs.
Yeah, check it out.
Portal gun.
Yeah, it works.
Don't touch it.
Just trust me.
We've also got a time machine
around the back of the bogs
in the pub down the road.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just check it out.
If you go to the ladies
and you just, you know, put your hand down the road. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just check it out. If you go to the ladies and
you just, you know, put your hand
down the cistern, the switch
is right down there. Just reach around
and you'll feel it
and then just grab hold
and then put your head under the water,
flush, and you'll go
back in time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think in 2016, this is what I don't
know. I don't know if this is true. I read this on rational wiki that the ceo said we took their money we raised their
expectations and it fell flat on its fucking face they are right to be angry about that and then he
took up a career as a professional online poker player apparently excellent yeah how many businesses
out there on a daily basis fail it's it's probably a staggering amount right like there's like a lot of people that start
up businesses they get loans from banks and stuff start up businesses they think they have a good
idea or they think they have a good market or whatever and things just don't work out for
whatever reason and they close it's weird though right because you think like you think of if
you're at work if you're at like a nine-to-five job and you're thinking fuck i would love to just work for myself i just want
to go work for myself do something like for myself start a business or whatever and you think that
like when you do that once you've done that because it's like you you don't know where to
start sometimes and then you finally do it okay and you start a startup a business and you you
think that you've made it but right man you're like it's nothing is nothing is guaranteed right like you you might be in business for like a month and then fucking
it just doesn't work out and then you just have to fucking fold and you've lost a lot of money
and you have to go back to work or whatever like it's crazy to think that so many businesses start
up and and fail and then the ones that like the ones that are super super big and super like
profitable and and are just are businesses that have been around for so fucking long you know
like a lot of like the big corporations and stuff have just been around since like the great
depression and stuff like that and like year after year they just continually make more money and
stuff but like i don't know like if you were to start a business right now yeah doing something yeah i'd be really fucking scared to do it like i i wouldn't i would
never like take the plunge it would have to be like an almost sure thing well here's the thing
about half of all businesses like small businesses half of them will fail within five years okay so
even five years though like it feels like a long time it was like i thought it was more
like 90 percent i mean it's hard to find the the statistics i think for sure because they tend to
track like the number of new businesses register a fucking business right and you say here's my
here's my business right we're gonna be ghost hunters what we're gonna do we're gonna suck
the energy off of ghosts we're gonna capture the ghosts and we we're going to capture them we're going to suck their energy off
and that's going to go into power grid it's going to be an infinite source of energy because there's
loads of ghosts right people will say you're insane that's shit if i give money to you then
i'm a fucking idiot you know you can't be like but they said it was gonna work because it was
they said the ghosts were gonna power it shut the fuck up you're a
dumbass i don't have any it's inevitable no but that's that that's what like stion was like right
if you're gonna come along and say something that's just completely impossible like perpetual
motion but that's not most businesses lewis most businesses are not about ghosts and perpetual
motion i don't think that's the opening gambit that most small businesses have in this real world.
Most perpetual motion businesses fail within five years.
Staggering statistic.
The other five, they're still going.
Nothing's going to stop them.
But even five years, five years is a long time to run something for it to fail then right like
you're doing something for five years and you think am i going to be doing this for the rest
of my life am i not like it's a little bit touch and go sometimes i don't know sort of thing and
then after five years like oh shit i've got a full like well you gotta understand it might still be a
profitable thing it just might not be
profitable enough you know it might be like it's just too much time commitment you know a lot of
people who make small businesses they run their own shops or they run their own things and sometimes
they don't really sometimes they're ticking over sometimes they're okay i mean it's it's they're
not they don't i think a lot of small businesses don't start off as huge ventures they don't start off as this this plan to you know
take a million pounds of debt on and build get get you know they're not that optimistic yeah
a lot of like there's a there's a shop near me and they sell like nice little bits of furniture
and things you'd put in your house and go, oh, that's nice, like little pretty things, right?
And they'll distress furniture for you and they'll, you know,
undistress furniture for you if you want it done up nice.
You know, that kind of shop, they'll probably be around for about five
or six years before they finally call it quits.
And they might be breaking even and, you know,
they might have had all these plans to retire on this kind of thing. It's sadly inevitable that you see a shop like that and you're like, well, you know, had all these plans to to retire on this kind of
thing sadly inevitable that you see a shop like that and you're like well you know that shop's
going to be around for a couple of years and then it'll go yeah i mean i'm sure that it won't cause
them to come financially crashing down but it'll be like it wasn't what we thought it would be
it was fun but then it became we're not going to see them on every high street corner you know
they're not going to turn into like some sort of massive chain you know it's just going to be a thing which was some guy or girl or mom or dad just wanted to do
they they had a bit of passion for it they put it together they enjoyed it they found it was too
much work and after five years they were bored of it and they wanted to try something new like
custard flavor or whatever exactly and so they moved on yeah and that's fine that's just the
weird thing is like, when you think about
a starting a business, I mean, I've worked, I'm sure I've spoken about it before, actually,
on this very podcast, the company that I worked for where the company lasted six weeks. And I was
there at the start and I was there at the end. That was the extent of my employment. Did I tell
you guys about this? Yeah, I think so. It rings a bell.
So just as a brief recap recap because we're on the topic
the guy hired me they were writing some programs so that people who had a big site like if you were
a business across multiple buildings it was just a very simple database program that would generate
jobs for your maintenance crew um it was way too expensive he he advertised it the previous year
in in this industry uh sort of magazine
he got lots of attention but he said it's not ready yet call me in a year and of course nobody's
going to wait that long he then starts the company when he finally gets around to it
hires me as like his underling apprentice if you like and then immediately after we started the
company i'm there two weeks he says it'll be ready in like a couple of months no problem
goes on holiday for three weeks comes back having placed the advert now for real, and
finds that we had one phone call and immediately says to me, go home.
I'll call you tomorrow.
And he called me and said, we're bust.
We're done, right?
Wow.
So his company lasted literally six weeks.
So he'd had this idea.
It was a good idea.
Apparently a lot of interest.
Nobody's going to wait a year for him to make this program because if they need it they're going to need it now and
it's not exactly that difficult for someone else to go and do you just go call any old company up
and say we need this program and they go oh you can get one off the shelf no problem so he kind
of fucked it up but at least he i mean i guess he did have a go at it but he he was a contractor so
he could have gone back to contracting everything like that but obviously he had to pay for the hire of the office. He had
to pay me, which wasn't a huge amount of money because I was fresh out of university, but it
was still money sort of down the drain, if you like. And I guess maybe he learned something from
it and he could then do it properly next time. But there must be a lot of businesses like that,
where they literally do something and they just have no fucking idea what they're doing. They
work in the industry. He was a good programmer, but he had no idea how to run
a business or advertising or anything like that. So I think a lot of these smaller companies,
they start off with a good idea and then they hit a problem or they hit a problem that they
don't have any experience handling. They have no idea what to do. And they either hire someone to
handle it and cover that cost and then it works or it's too late and they miss their shot someone
else gets the business and they just can't get any more and they gradually trickle out run out
of money and die that must be what happens also a lot of the i saw an interesting statistic about
the number of companies that fail small businesses that fail after having a fire if you have a fire
at work wow you don't even need to have lost everything. Any kind of fire, statistically,
those businesses are likely to fail within two years, like 40%. It's something stupid like that,
because it's such a huge disruption to business and you lose stuff and everything. And it's like,
that's it. It just knocks you off course. You can't recover from that fire.
Even like a small kitchen fire? Like any kind of fire in the workplace causes a lot of problems
and you've got to
then insurance
and you've got to have
all these inspections
and you've got to then
get it up to code
and then all the rest of it.
And you probably lost some stuff
because if it's like smoke damaged,
they have to replace
a bunch of stuff and everything.
And it's all like a big expense.
And yeah, for whatever reason,
I think mainly the disruption.
Like if you think about
a small business,
it's pretty much living
week to week, you know,
they're not,
they don't have a huge amount in the bank they don't have a huge number of customers who
are super loyal to them there are lots of other businesses that do what they do so if you lose a
big contract it's like we had a fire that looks terrible people are gonna go fuck we're not gonna
go with the business that's literally on fire we'll go with the the not on fire business and
then you've lost that custom and that's that it's tough i was talking to the guy they've got like ice cream trucks over here right like you can buy a whip you can buy a whippy it's
like just like a you know like an like an ice cream cone sort of thing all whipped up comes
out of like a like a machine i think we're familiar with them and so i'm talking to this guy and i
said like you know like what do you do like in the winter when nobody wants to buy ice cream and stuff?
And he's like, oh, we just, like, get the time off.
Like, the bank just gives us a loan to cover us over the winter.
Wow.
And then we pay it back in the summer because we're so fucking busy.
So, basically, they work for, like, three months a year, like, during, like, the really busy summer season.
And then the rest of the time, they're just like, I don't know what they're doing.
Because, like, their vans never look freshly painted or anything like you think like in all that
downtime for three months a year right and then you just lock them up in storage safe i know but
they always look so weathered and like beaten up and stuff you think like all that fucking downtime
you think you just go to like b&q buy a bit of paint and fucking do up the van a bit or like you
know have fucking organize yourself change the freaking yourself how about that it's the same friggin tune this guy i've been living around here for like 13 years
same ice cream truck every summer is coming around he does all the roads it's the same damn tune
same ice cream same tune change the fucking music son you've got nine months of the year off
according to my sources change the tune get on it like make your own tunes in that time you know get fucking use
some of your profits from the summer to open up a studio and get some fucking dj equipment or
whatever and make your own ice cream truck tunes there must be a business there must be a business
of people supplying them supplying them with tunes so you want to be an ice cream man what
tune are you gonna go for this is one of the biggest
decisions you'll ever make direct.com step one pick your music welcome to the world of ice cream man
there's got to be shit like that there's got to be resources out there for ice cream men
yeah how do you do it like where do you even fucking start like who even has that fucking idea
like that's the kind
of thing though that's passed down from like other generations somebody had the bright idea of doing
that it's italians like in italy the the guys would go around with the gelato trucks like the
little carts and they'd sell ice creams to the kids and when they a lot of italians went to
the uk and scotland and amer and stuff. They took that with them.
And obviously, if you're wheeling around a gelato cart, that's all right in rural Italy
in the sort of, you know, early 20th century.
But all of a sudden, you're like, you know what?
We could do this a lot more efficiently if we've had a little truck.
And then they just went for a little truck.
And that was that.
It must be.
We used to have these things when I was growing up.
It was called, the company was called dicky d
and it was like okay it was an ice box that was mounted like onto it was a big ice box it was
like you know like one of those like chest freezers that you like put in your basement
in in like north america whatever you don't get them so much over here we're gonna it was like
one of those painted yellow okay with a sign mounted on top of it that showed you all the ice
cream that you could get okay and it was mounted on to like a like a push bike and it was one of
those jobs that you could get when you were like 11 or 12 or whatever you know when you you just
needed like some some pocket money or whatever sort of like delivering the papers or something
like that but so you could get a job with dickie d and you could bike around and they had bells
and so like we'd be sitting down to like eat our dinner or whatever i was like fucking seven years But so you could get a job with Dickie D and you could bike around and they had bells.
And so like we'd be sitting down to like eat our dinner or whatever.
I was like fucking seven years old at the time.
And you just hear outside like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And there's this fucking like acne covered teenagers just fucking peddling this fucking freezer chest all over your neighborhood
and everybody would run outside and you'd go and you'd pick out and it wasn't like it wasn't like
fresh ice cream that like was dispensed or whatever right it was just like like a little
just a bunch of yeah yeah yeah just like like walls cornettos and stuff like that you know all
the package shit so you'd like pick what you want and like there used to be all these like novelty
ones like i remember like there's this big fluffy baseball glove with with a baseball like gumdrop on it like
attached to it and shit like that like like some of them were really fucking good it was really
cool but like who fucking started that company who came up with that fucking stupid idea like
it was effective like we fucking bought the shit out of those dickies but
i mean at the same time you got to be crazy to come up with that idea i think and actually you
got to be pretty ballsy to like pour money into that and make it work as well i think because i
would never do it dickies and just go with that what do you want to call it dickies no no that's
what we're going with and you've got to
ring a fucking bell everywhere you go like a bell yeah yeah and they had that like they had like
this you know those bum bags just full of like quarters and like like chain loose change and
stuff because it was all kids like emptying their piggy banks to like buy these fucking ice creams
i bet they were selling drugs as well those kids that would be the ideal thinking back yeah you have some other ice creams not on the menu the guy
comes up and he says i'll have one of the walter whites please and he reaches in and pulls out a
special ice cream you give him 20 bucks bingo yeah perfect system cocaine on ice but yeah i like
hats off to people who start businesses because sometimes i think about it and i think
like i come up with ideas every once in a while and think that could maybe work like i i thought
when i moved into the area i'm in i thought it would be i thought i could like open up a pet
store okay there's no pet stores around here but there's like lots of dogs and cats and shit and
they always need stuff right like fucking you can give like sell beds and
like dog food and shit like that but then i thought like do i do i want to fucking do that do i want
to order in a bunch of fucking dog food and shit and stock it up on a shelf and stand in a store
all fucking day waiting for people to come in and buy this shit hell no i don't actually i really
don't want to do that so you saw a gap in the market and you were like and
i did not exploit i went i went the total opposite way i ran home crying and played pubga instead
nice it was like it was like a 15 seconds worth of thought that went into that wasn't it that
business idea it was like do you know what would be be really successful business if i did a i can't
be asked fucking it's like that i guess the difference is the business the small business
guy who does it thinks this is it like they the idea of doing anything else or maybe they don't
know what they want to do and they know that if i can just come up with some kind of business maybe
i can make a living and actually be my own boss that's very attractive to people if you can be your own boss and not have to you know yeah look at us
fucking talking about it we are literally people who've done that you know we all run our own
businesses yeah but independent like i don't it was more of a sure thing like i got to a point
where i was earning enough to comfortably do it and not be too stressed out about it you know what
i mean like and it was there
wasn't any investment like there wasn't any initial like there wasn't a capital injection
or anything like that like i needed a headset it's like 100 bucks you know exactly it's it's
not like i had to rent out fucking a shop and like order in a bunch of stock that i had no idea
whether it would sell or not and worry about
margins and shit like that. Like, I mean, like if you think about this, like I live, obviously I
live in Twickenham, we've got a high street, but it's the weirdest high street because it has some
big name sort of shops on there. But then it also has a lot of smaller shops that someone will take
on and they'll have a go for a few years and some of them stick, but most of them don't. And I kind of feel like there must be a sense of embarrassment
about opening up a shop and thinking,
if this doesn't work out, it's not...
I mean, if a YouTube channel doesn't work out,
nobody notices it.
It obviously doesn't work out,
because nobody's fucking watching it, so that's it.
Whereas if you have a shop on a high street,
people are going, oh, there's a new shoe shop in town,
and they're walking past, and they're judging it, and they shop in town. And they're walking past and they're judging it.
And they go in and they're looking around and they're judging your little merchandise you've laid out, hopefully.
Oh, maybe they'll like these.
And they're just going, no thanks.
They walk out.
It must make you feel terrible.
Terrible.
And the worst one of all must be a restaurant.
I think people that open a restaurant must really have a passion for it because it's so much hard work.
And it's so unlikely to succeed that you must really have a deep determination and drive to make a restaurant work.
It's such a competitive market.
Most of them don't work out.
It's super hard nowadays to get people to leave their fucking houses, let alone pay money for food.
Right.
And yeah, anything like that, like like hospitality like you nowadays you you you're
depending on things like trip advisor and like um you know like expedia fucking reviews and shit
like that right and it's like it's it it i think it's probably easier to market than it's ever been
but it's probably harder to get people to to come to your place like because everybody's so
conscious of price now and reviews and shit like that you've got fucking deliveroo and all the rest
of it and now there's uber eats they'll deliver any kind of food to you so if you're actually
making a takeaway you'll probably do a better than a sit-down restaurant and if you think about
like a sit-down restaurant there's this place near me and it has
been in the last like seven or eight years it's right on the high street it's been about eight
or nine different restaurants like some of them were open for like three months and then disappeared
and they've all tried to be a restaurant in the same place like on the on the grave of another
restaurant they open another restaurant and then on That's exactly where I want to be.
It's ridiculous.
It's like a mass grave
for restaurant hopes and dreams.
And they're like,
let's open another restaurant.
This one's going to work.
And I'm just thinking,
someone's got to tell these people.
I want to go there
when they're moving in and say,
stop.
Put away your crockery
and all the tables and chairs
and all the accoutrement is cursed run
some chef said a bad thing about food here one time and the restaurant
listen we're talking a lot about restaurants hotels retail as well one thing that jersey does not have this is where i live
is are you ready porn are you sure you want to tell this secret it's another one that i've
thought of okay right but i don't wouldn't even know where to start with this one okay
right so we need some help yeah there does not exist anywhere public anyway a strip club baby and i'm thinking i'm thinking i i talked to i talked to a
guy i used to work with about this and i said how how hard would it be to rent out some some some
kind of place cd close to the airport okay there's no hotels by the airport over here either which i
find kind of weird but the airport is kind of in the middle of nowhere out here as well and it's not like a huge
like it's not massively traveled you know it's not like gatwick or something right there's not
millions of people passing through it and you know onwards to other places and stuff like this
is like a final destination you come here and then you die. No, I'm just joking. You come here and then you leave sort of thing.
You don't go on to somewhere else from here.
It's not like a stopover or anything.
So already I'm sort of thinking like,
do I want to put my strip club up by the airport then?
Because not many people are up there.
Like the only people really going to the airport
are people that are trying to get off the island.
They're not really going to stop at a strip club.
And the people that are coming into the off the island yeah yeah they're not really going to stop at a strip club and the people that are coming into the island
likely are here because they're old and they want to see some world war ii stuff or like you know
they're old and they want to visit a sleepy island or they're old and they want to visit like some
family or something so they're not a friend who's got some some kids and a youtube channel yeah yeah
you might be selling the location to me so far.
No, I know.
And that's the thing.
I'm talking myself out of it already.
I'm thinking like, here is a gap in the market that has not been even thought about as far as I know over here.
But already I'm thinking like, maybe there isn't one for a lot of good reasons.
Yeah.
there isn't one for a lot of good reasons yeah and like as i'm slowly talking myself out of it i'm thinking other people have thought about this and have talked themselves out of it as well
because actually up by the jersey airport is not a good site for a strip club and i don't think i
could in a million years make it work but for argument's sake let's say i did make it work
and i opened up a strip club and i called it like i don't know
fucking strips pervy larry's you know titty den or something i don't know get your get your sips out
how would i hire strippers like what do you have to audition or something where do i find these
people that are willing to do this how do i control like drunken pervy randy men
from like touching the women and stuff i don't think i don't think you would be responsible for
all of those things right like i know for a fact that opening a strip club is one of the most
challenging sort of things you can do because of the local council and all the local people
will be dead set against it even the ones who secretly want it didn't you see do because of the local council and all the local people will be dead set against it.
Even the ones who secretly want it.
Didn't you see the episode of the Simpsons with the burlesque house where the moment of public knowledge,
they were like,
yeah,
we're going to shut this down because nobody wants to admit that they want to go look at some titties.
No one wants to,
and no one wants to live next to a place where people are looking at titties.
They don't want to do that.
No.
So it's like,
how do you,
how do you,
how do you, I mean you, how do you,
I mean, there used to be one in Twickenham,
the Piano Bar, which is a classy name
for a really seedy dive that I went to
on a very, very few occasions per week.
And it was-
Was that the one with the pint glass
with the pound coins?
No, that was, that is now a really,
someone sent me on Twitter,
they sent me a link to an article
about how the Flying Scotsman has now been reinvented.
That was the name of the pub.
It's now being reinvented.
It's like this microbrewery sort of fancy schmancy place.
It always is, yeah.
It's gentrification, man.
It's been gentrified.
Yeah.
But if you tried to open a strip club in Twickenham now,
even though there was one,
you wouldn't be able to.
The council would say no fucking way,
even though it was a big hit on rugby days.
Like we've got this massive surge of thousands of mostly men,
mostly drunk coming to Twickenham.
They want to see some titties.
It would be a big hit.
I'm not even drunk.
And I don't even like,
I'm not even really a manly man.
I want to see some titties.
I'm thinking about titties right now.
Well,
listen, that's the thing, right?
If you work in the games industry, you get free games.
If you work in, you know, if you work in a butcher shop,
you're going to end up with free sausages, right?
If you start a strip club, you're going to have a lot of titties.
Oh, my God.
Free titties.
He's right.
Let me Google free titties.
Do you, though?
Because it's not the same thing, you know?
I think it is, right?
It's not.
We go to
vancouver and there's people opening artisan coffee shops and they open their fancy schmancy
artisan coffee shop because they want to have they want to be surrounded by fancy schmancy
artisan coffee all the time you know they open some sort of green smoothie or health shop they
want to use that they want to be healthy i don't think like i don't think you hire on a stripper
and then and then have sex with them what what are you are you
kidding me what what are you like what what kind of what kind of business-minded individual are
you sips well i'm a straight shooter i want to run i you know i want to separate business What do you think this is? How dare you, madam? You've got to have good taste in titties.
You can't be having no broke-ass titties in your titty bar.
I'm not saying I'm hiring broke-ass titties.
I'm just saying I'm not hitting them titties.
You've got to test those titties now.
You've got to know that they're the highest caliber of titties
if they're going to set foot in Sip's strips.
You need to be a real titty taster.
You've got to have a connoisseur.
You've got to be a connoisseur of titties.
Honestly, that would raise alarm bells with me.
If somebody was super willing to have sex with me after I hired them to work at my strip club, I'd be like, well, they can't have sex with the Johns.
Like, and if she's like up for it with me straight away, she's going to be having sex with the Johns on the side for money.
And then I'm going to get shut down.
I think a lot of strippers at titty bars are having sex with the johns.
That's a big part of it.
But it's illegal, though.
That's an illegal element of it.
You can't do it.
Illegality at a seedy strip club?
Hmm.
There might be something to it.
We'll put our best detectives on the case.
Of course they're having sex in the strip club.
Of course. I know. on the case so of course they're having sex in the strip club i i of course i know but the thing is
the people that are going into business into like into the stripping business
the strip already know that they're going to be doing illegal shit so like i think that the people
that that create these these businesses and stuff are it's it's all steeped in like some sort of crime right
it has to be like it's it's not just like some dude like with a bit of money saying like yeah
i'm gonna open up a titty bar and we're gonna have a he's like the one we're gonna have a buffet
a lunch buffet and uh we'll have uh we'll have a day where the families can come in the girls
won't be completely nude and stuff uh we'll do something for the kids and we'll have a day where the families can come in. The girls won't be completely nude and stuff.
We'll do something for the kids.
We'll have a day where the grannies can come by and do their jigsaw puzzles.
We'll do a dating workshop one morning.
We'll have a church meeting the next day.
Man, fucking businesses are hard, man.
Gather around, ladies. I'd like to have a little team meeting Ahead of our opening night here
At this new strip club
Now I don't want any of you to do anything you don't want to do
Don't shake your titties in someone's face
If you don't like their face
You don't have to do that you just come and see me
And we'll have them removed
There's obviously refreshments for you in the back
They'll be like what the fuck kind of strip club am I working in here
Where's the cocaine
Where's the drug dealers
Where's the lunatics Where's like where's the creepy guy
pushing me to have sex with the jones yeah like we didn't get into the stripping business for
an honest dollar we want to all right great pep talk okay everybody all in one two three
they'll have to put their titties in the middle like when you put your hands in the middle
they just put one titty each titty break good job team oh man oh for fuck's sake all right let's
let's let's get on with uh steve bodega and let's get out of here jeez you're hungry huh 1205 he's
getting grumpy that was some that was some spectacular podcasting, boys.
I need my lunch.
I get grumpy for doing that.
I need to try the new pub good patch.
I'm excited.
Yeah, we're going to try that.
Really fucking excited.
Are you guys ready for Bodega part 22, Enyo?
Hell yeah.
Of course.
Bodega, part 22, Enyo.
ETA, three minutes.
The hollered words of Sergeant Hoffel made Ensign Crunket wince.
Their dropship was screaming towards the surface of Babouche 3,
packed with soldiers, guns, ammo, missiles, AFVs, and fear.
If the Federal Assault Team's special order had been deployed,
the target was going to be a total flarving nightmare.
Crunkett's chance of death on this job alone was probably around 25%,
but that was their job, to be the people willing to risk their lives to protect the innocent. That's what they'd
signed up for. That's why they had the health plan and the funeral coverage and the bonuses.
That's why the welcome pack for new recruits to the division included a last will and testament
starter kit and a brochure to give to your kids titled, Why is Daddy in So Many Pieces?
It was the fatso life. Danger, money, glory.
That was their motto.
And it had been convincing enough for Crunkit
and the other poor slobs he'd signed up with.
He'd grown sick and tired of serving under Tortola
and manning that boring old comms console.
So he'd filed the transfer forms and here he was,
still an ensign, still getting shouted at,
but now for marginally more money
and vastly more chance of death or injury.
Now, quick note here
this is ensign crunkett who was the guy on board that ship that caught bodega the first time around
back in episode five so this is a callback to a long time back in the story just in case why am i
so stupid he thought why are other people much smarter than me why do i make a decision and then
realize afterwards that it wasn't just the wrong one, it was the wrongest one? Consistently the worstest, wrongest, dumbest, most objectively idiotic
decision is the one I arrive at. How could I do this to my daughter just because I got bored?
Hoffel was checking the men, adjusting straps on their equipment, repositioning their rifles so
they weren't pointed at other men, straightening out helmets, and occasionally lightly pounding
someone on the shoulder to give them a bit of reassurance.
It wasn't working.
Everybody under his command looked utterly terrified, except Crunkett.
He just looked angry.
That's a spirit soldier, said Hotful,
noting Crunkett's furious expression and mistaking it for some kind of battle-ready war face.
Something occurred to Crunkett.
All the troops in this dropship were transfers.
They'd all been through the same two-week intensive training program, and at night in their barracks they'd all lain awake
talking about how they'd grown bored of their old jobs, pushing pixels around in the endless
bureaucracy of the Federation. None of them were soldiers, yet here they were, being flung towards
a combat zone by the powers that be. What in the flav were they going to do if they got into a
fight? Crunkit had never fired a weapon in anger before, except that time he shot a dildonian who he
suspected of cheating with his wife.
ETA one minute, screamed Huffle.
Everybody take your combat supplement now!
All 15 men necked the large combat lozenge they'd been issued with.
It was about the size of an eyeball, extremely hard to swallow, but they washed it down with
water from their canteens, choking and retching all the while.
Combat supplements. This wasn't in the field manual.
Was it going to give them super strength? Immunity from pain?
Send them into some kind of war trance?
Damn feds. Always find a new way to flab over the working man, thought Crunket.
It felt like he'd been cheated out of at least 50 seconds of that one-minute warning,
because before he could gird his loins and maybe panic a bit,
the ship hit the ground hard and they were piling out the back.
Smoke was being pumped out of nozzles on the rear of the ship to screen their deployment,
but he could hear klaxons sounding all over the small town they'd landed in, and people
were scattering and slamming doors and windows as the citizens took cover.
Crunkit drove his legs as fast as possible and slammed into the wall of a convenience
store.
The ground beneath him was earthy,
and he contemplated whipping out his entrenching tool
and digging a small hole to hide in.
He scanned the area.
It was a small town.
Dirt roads, a few stores, wide streets.
The hills and forests outside town looked beautiful
against the pale blue sky, streaked with pink clouds.
The five moons of Babush 3 loomed overhead in tight formation, watching.
The dropship powered up its engines and zoomed away, leaving the fifteen members of his squad
cowering on the ground, behind the most pitiful cover imaginable.
Three troopers squeezed in behind a single plastic water barrel, another four fighting
to hide behind a dumpster.
Hoffel was behind a traffic cone in the middle of town, his command pistol drawn.
He turned towards Kronkite, his grizzled veteran's face sneering
at the danger they were surely in. Alright, you miserable bastards, let's move out! And with that
proclamation, he stood up and turned face-first into a lasgun beam. His head popped like a water
balloon, and a heavy red mist quickly settled on the dirt as his body slumped over with a crunch.
A voice called out from some hidden vantage point. Federal varmints, this is Bodega.
If you all got a way to call your dropship back, I recommend it. You got two minutes to get the
flarf out of town. After that, the only way you're leaving is when you get washed away by the next
heavy rain. Four of the trippers threw their weapons aside and began undressing, right down
to their birthday suits, screaming the whole time. They ran out of town in a cloud of dust.
The remaining ten men spread out as best they could,
uncertain of the direction any attack would come from.
One minute left, called Bodega, still hidden.
This is it, squealed one of the troopers, Cadet Brunks.
They sent one squad for Bodega?
There were meant to be a dozen dropships, screamed Cadet Jellyface.
Flah this, said Crunkett, standing.
He threw down his rifle.
The Federation had sent just one ship,
one lousy ship of total rookies,
to face one of the most dangerous men in the galaxy.
This wasn't a combat mission.
It was a charnel house.
We surrender, called Crunkett.
The other troops looked at him.
Their leader dead, they were ready to turn
to whomever was willing to make a command decision.
And right now, surrendering seemed like the most incredible command decision ever made. They were immensely proud of their
new leader, Ensign Crunket, who nobly sacrificed their dignity and honour so that they might
live another day. All the men threw down their weapons and stood, heads on their hands, oh
sorry, hands on their heads. They moved into the centre of town, next to a small and quite
attractive water feature. Bodega emerged from a nearby building, Lazgun set against his hip, confident and ready.
Alright boys, sit yourselves down right there in the middle, circle style, said Bodega.
Crunkit looked up at him.
Bodega.
The Bodega.
He'd been there before, aboard the SS Expectation, when they'd captured Bodega the first time.
He never thought to actually come this close, face to face with the most wanted man in the Federation.
Bodega strode towards the group, scanning them for signs of trouble,
looking into their eyes for any glimmer of fight left in the shattered squad.
Alrighty then, said Bodega, relaxing slightly before spitting on the ground.
Damn feds. I'm sorry they sent you poor sons of morgues to take me down.
It ain't your fault you're ill-equipped, and there ain't no hard feelings.
Now don't go worrying.
I ain't gonna slaughter you boys, but I can't have you following me neither.
Gonna have to send you off to sleepy land.
Bodega reached inside the folds of his long, dusty, grey-brown coat
and pulled out a small purple sphere,
the crunk it recognized from the field manual as Happy Thoughts Brain Musher TM.
As Bodega was fiddling with it, one of the cadets began to shake,
slightly at first, then increasingly violently.
Don't freak out on me, son, said Bodega, looking mildly concerned.
It was Cadet Brunks.
He wasn't just shaking, he was convulsing.
He collapsed to one side, foaming red at the mouth.
Bodega backed away.
He called out to someone Crunket couldn't see.
Crunkett turned
back to look at Brunk's, just as the young cadet's body seemed to shear in two. The other members of
the squad screamed and stood to flee. A silver-skinned animal emerged from the ruins of Brunk's body,
just less than human-sized. It was crouched like a dog, but its face was longer like a horse's,
and at the tip was a wide, nozzle-like protuberance that was oozing something viscous.
It turned its head to look at Bodega and spat a stream of the ooze, striking him in the legs.
Bodega went down hard, looking like his knees had been glued together.
Tamira, run! shouted Bodega as he raised his lasgun and blasted the creature in the moor, felling it.
Several of the other cadets fell to the dirt, vibrating and shuddering, wailing.
Cronkite felt something stirring in his guts, in his limbs, in his head.
He felt a terrible pushing sensation against the inside of his skull.
That combat supplement. It wasn't a pill. It was some kind of damn egg.
And they were the hosts.
Bodega was dragging himself away from the group of writhing troopers.
Cronkite saw him reach down and try to pull off the gooey substance on his legs,
only to find his hand now stuck fast too.
Only one hand remained, and that was firmly gripping his famous lasgun.
As more of the creatures emerged from his comrades, Crunket slumped forward.
He thought about his family, his desk job.
He thought about his funeral coverage and his childhood.
He thought about a lot of things in a very short space of time.
He looked at Bodega once more and saw the growing pack of silvery creatures
descending on the cowboy, spitting on him and entangling him amidst a volley of desperate
lasgun fire then he thought of nothing at all as his body exploded and a new life was violently
created as another was snuffed out the end oh very good p flex you're legit are good at writing man
it's fucking crazy that was a good one.
The Bodega book is coming.
It's coming, boys.
I can't wait.
All right.
Well, we're going to go.
Thank you for listening to the Shrouds Podcast this week.
Have a great weekend, y'all.
Yeah, have a good one.
Or a nice Wednesday when you listen to this.
Enjoy your Wednesday evening.
Yeah, have a good Wednesday evening, Thursday, hopefully Friday,
and then enjoy the weekend following that.
But have a shit Sunday.
Yeah.
Because fuck you.
Bye.