Triforce! - Triforce! Mailbag Special #40: An Investigation into Spaces

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Triforce Mailbag Special 40! Lewis gives a big Jingle Jam update and gets banned on Discord, Flax shares a controversial thesis on "Spaces" for review by the guys and Sips prays for an abridged version of "Goldilocks"! Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hick Axe Greetings mortal beings! How would you like to be the hero of the afterlife? From the creators of Manuel Samuel and Helheim Hassel comes the Holy Goshtan, a new time traveling adventure. Players Cassio, an angel racing to save heaven from blowing up in, let me check my watch here, six hours! Jump between the past, present and future to uncover the secrets of the Holy Goshdarn,

a mysterious artifact created by God himself, and stop the phantoms from overrunning heaven with four different worlds to explore, 23 heavenly elders to roast to your heart's content, and precisely 4,250 dogs that you definitely can't pet. Get ready to lose yourself in this puzzle-packed narrative adventure. Yes, it's out now. We're very proud of it. The team have made the third one in the series.

They're all very, very funny. If you love classic adventure games with comedy, as I know you do, it's on Steam, also on Xbox, PS4 and five and Nintendo Switch. Don't miss out on a variety of discounts and bundles across all platforms for the launch period and for Pickaxe listeners you can grab a heavenly discount thanks to our friends over at Fanatical. You go to fanatical.com slash pickaxe you can

grab a copy at a reduced launch price. There you go, holy gosh darn. It's funny, classic, you will enjoy it, I enjoyed it. And thank you very much for sponsoring this. On with the show. Ah yes, the mailbag is upon us, welcome. It's the mailbag, the mailbag, the mailbag here once again. Oh, hang on. I'm so sorry. I'll be two seconds. I just got to go.

You got to go? All right. Well, look, this is fine. That's a great start to the episode. Listen, I've got a special email that might take up quite a bit of time today, Lulu. Oh, okay. This is... I was given someone's thesis, a very brief thesis, and I disagree with it fundamentally.

Oh dear. And we can talk about this thesis. It's a multi... Well, it's good that you're not their professor. I am not their professor. No, I firmly disagree with this. This has not been submitted for academic review, nor should it be. But that's for you guys to discuss. And certainly this might well

generate some interesting mailbaggery. mailbag the mailbag I will wait for young Chris to get back before we you want to do it first? Before I present. Yes, I want to lead with this because I don't know how much time you might want to spend on this. Oh, by the way, just a couple of notes. First of all, I've had people ask why I haven't quote unquote replied to their emails.

If your email doesn't get read out, there are a whole bunch of reasons. First of all, it might have arrived when I was away and I come back and I've got a way through about 60 mailbag emails and some of them are quite long and I come back and I've got a way through about 60 mailbag emails and some of them are quite long and I read them all. Some of them I discard quite quickly because they're just disgusting. No offence, but they're just gross stories. If your email has a ton of pictures, I can't use it because this is a podcast, not a TV show. So don't send in like 20 photos, which I've had. Especially if you're a fool.

Videos and things like that. Yeah, pictures of injuries, stuff like that. Please don't send that. It's never going to get used. I'm very sorry you hurt yourself. I really hope you get better soon. It's not good for the mailbag because what am I going to describe an injury? It doesn't really work. And I really hate seeing this picture, so please don't send those. If you've sent something in that a lot of other people have also emailed in about, the one that got read out was, in my opinion,

the best email on that topic. So I apologize for that. Sorry, Mark. That's all right. Just a little bit about people. I'm not ignoring your guys' emails, but I'm not going to respond to each email and say, thank you so much for emailing. I could set up an auto reply, but I don't think anyone would appreciate that. That's just, that's even worse. Yeah. So I mean, I do this, right? I'm

reaching out for Jingle Jam. Of course. So there was this thing yesterday that happened, right? Where a guy, I often get like cold, cool spam emails. Like I, like when we did the live one the other day, and I read out that one from like Alan Sugar's agency or whatever. I get a lot of these. One of them actually rang the office phone and because he was on such a crappy call center phone, Pierre thought he was downstairs at the front door. So he was like, Lewis, you've got a guy here from, you know, some corporate company who's coming in and he says he's got, he wants to talk to you. And I'm like, okay. So I went to the door and went downstairs. There was no one

there. I came back upstairs. I was like, yeah, what was this? And it was obviously some spammer had just called the office phone and left his low quality garbled message. And I mean, I get it, right? I'm doing the same for Jingle Jam right now. I'm cold calling people basically. I'm emailing people out of the blue saying, do you want to give your game away for charity? And I've got all these great reasons why, you know, like the Jingle Jam, like we've got really good evidence it doesn't damage their game sales. It doesn't entirely have to be like a charitable act because it is, although it is largely,

it is also a marketing thing. We've seen games do well off the back of it. You know, it can rejuvenate like a lapsed game. Like maybe you put your game out, I'm not going to say any, but maybe you put your game out and it's not done very well because it had bad reviews or it had a bad thing. Like a lot of games don't have a super smooth launch, but actually then they get a lot of patches and they get changed. They get adjusted and they get fixed.

Sometimes, you know, the Jingle Jam can kind of add a little new community and injection of new players to the game, which can get the ball rolling again. Right. And so there's all these good reasons, but, but this year I've been reaching out and I think I've reached out to, I would say 200 people. And I have secured not a single game yet. And it's kind of leaving me a little bit petrified and it's not like I'm not trying. So I email people back in August. I've emailed, I've done like chase up emails and then if they haven't

replied, what I've usually done is like gone on their discord and then I've like messaged a dev or community guy there and said, Hey, I said, email me what's going on. But the thing is I am now flagged as like a bot on discord because I've joined, I've joined so many games. I've done like 200 game discos. I've messaged like 200 people. And because I'm kind of cold messaging these people on discord, a lot of, there's a lot of spam on discord as well. And people like me doing this for their business, for their job, right? Trying to drum up business. And so these people were very wary to it.

And I think a lot of people have marked me as spam. And as a result, now, every time I join a new Discord, I have to complete this weird capture. And the capture I've been doing is like, what weighs more, a parrot or a tiger? And you have to click on them. A ton of parrots or a ton of tigers? Exactly. It's a ton of tigers, isn't it?

Exactly. Tigers are heavier. Which weighs more? Five parrots or a bee? And it's like, okay. Oh, I'd go with parrot. Are they in flight? Well, they're all...

I see. I see what you're saying. The way to trip up the robot. What cannot compute? What is this question? Exactly. How does that work? There's a couple of other captures like click on all of the bison that are jumping. Got. I hate those ones. But there's ones where it's like click on the cars and there's like one square that's got a corner of the roof of a car.

Right. And you're like, do I click corner of the roof of a car. Right. And you're like, do I click on that? Is that a car? Or not? And then click on the traffic lights, click on the ladders. It's like, give me a fucking break. Some of them are all some of the things that they ask you to do the capture for are like country specific.

So I'm like, that's not a traffic light. You know what I mean? Like it's a that's a traffic light in Malaysia, but maybe it looks different. Like sometimes it's at an angle and you think it's at a traffic light or a telegraph pole. I can't really tell. So yeah, it's tough. So I think I'm going to try and spin it this. I have spoke Rich, who's our sort of big PR gentleman. He's in charge of all the... I love that. He's like, I'm a PR gentleman. He's a PR gentleman.

He's a very big gentleman. Thank God for Rich, honestly. Yeah, we need Rich. We need Rich to come in. What a lad. Like, he's like, if I'm Obama, he's Biden, right? Wow. I think... I bet you he doesn't view it like that. He probably thinks of himself as Obama. Hold on, wait a minute. Hold on there. I ain't no game PR guy, whatever. I'm back in Oklahoma when I was making video games with my, when I was a young black woman.

So he has, God bless him, reached out to some actual contacts and we have secured a couple of very, very good games. And so I'm starting to think we should pivot. Have you secured Star Wars Outlaws? Have you secured Black Myth Wukong? These are games that I've played recently. It's a very hard time in the gaming industry. A lot of publishers are having trouble, are shutting down, the whole of Annapurna, their

whole game publishing studio quit, they resigned en masse after they were treated so badly. Lots and lots of game studios are really struggling to... There's a number of things. One is I think the ripple effect of COVID, right? COVID was twofold. One, it gave people a lot of free time to make games. Okay. And two, it gave people a lot of free time to spend money and play games.

And the gaming industry had this huge influx of money during COVID and they sort of thought, oh, this is the new normal. We can get this back. And a lot of investments into games and they've been big flops like Concord, you know, they're theorizing that it lost like hundreds of millions, like 400 million to make that game. And it was just absolutely the biggest loss in a game in history. But it's not that Sony are, you know, not, that was the biggest almost spent and lost on a game, but Sony is spending twice that on the

new Spider-Man game and another game and another game. Oh, they're minted, yeah. And so, the big companies are having big losses, but also I think that is seen in the, I don't know to what extent like these evergreen games also take a lot. Like Baldur's Gate, when that came out, yes it was an expensive game, but not only when all the money went to that one company, Larian, who've made billions off of it, but it also sucked up a lot of people's time. Anyone who played Baldur's Gate played it for like 300 fucking hours.

Oh my god, I played it. It was insane. I played it, I finished it, I started again immediately after. I didn't finish the second playthrough, I just had it. Well I looked at my Steam review of the year or whatever last year, and other people's. It was like an entire month. The entire month of October was Ballscape 3. Great game though, holy shit. Fantastic game. Oh absolutely. But I think during that month, nothing else sold. And it was like, and I think these ripple effects sometimes take time to damage the

industry. So I think there is a problem, and I think games companies are scared to give their games charity as always, even though I'm touting the benefits of being part of Jingle Jam. I think it's hard to convince people to be generous. And I understand why, because they're protective or scared. I think also usually they're willing to take more of a risk if their game hasn't been a success. If their game has been a success, suddenly there's other people involved. There's publishers involved. There's people porting it to console and they're like, well, we don't want to damage sales for the console launch. You know what I mean? They're all like,

there's, there's, there's all these other people involved that cannibal, like kind of stop, you know, it's, it's funny really, like the big AAAs are definitely not going to be involved, but any game that's had a bit of success or so is scared to be involved in Jingle Jam. So I usually have to rely on people who are looking for a Hail Mary because their game hasn't been a success. But it's good. And we don't want to just put bad games in, right? And I think that's, that's the other thing. It's like, why not if you just put all bad games in and just see how it goes. Right. What was that game? Put that in there. Bad rats. Terrible game.

Wasted pizza. That was another one. It was in the bundle. But on the, there's a pizza game called Pizza Tower, number one rated game on Steam. And it's like a Wario. I'd be very wary of that. It'd be very wary of that. It's great though, really amazing. I'd be wary of that. Alright, let's do an email.

Let's do an email. Anyway, sorry, I thought I'd share. Sometimes people want to hear what I've been up to. No, no, of course. It's a good note to. Is this like a pseudo mailbag? Because I did notice someone was like, I want to hear what I've been up to. No, of course.

It's a good note. Is this like a pseudo mailbag? Because I did notice someone was like, I want to know what Lewis has been doing. Right. Well, there you go. That's it. I've been sending emails and getting banned on Discord. Well, now they know.

All right. So, Sips, I was explaining this is a thesis that was submitted to me by a group. Okay. People that I may know them, but I will, I want to present this to you guys, and hopefully to the wider audience, and I would like their input on it. Simplifying universal spaces, a multi-dimensional analysis of spaces into broad categories.

Author Ashwin, co-authors, I never knew, Eddie Smalls, S1, Bad Vox, Steve, ThePlague34 et al. For years, people have struggled to class various spaces into categories as they contain vastly different specifications and uses. This paper aims to use simple assumptions to class spaces into broad categories. These are the categories. Rooms and Houses The most pertinent space to human society is a building, whether used for working hard or playing hard. It's common knowledge that within houses are rooms.

As per the Cambridge Dictionary, a room is a part or division of a building enclosed by walls, floor and ceiling. Don't use that. Don't use that in your work. Don't quote a dictionary. Just listen. AI level. Wait until it's over.

Believe me, that is the least of it. Is this written by your Dota friends? Yes. Our first class of space... I'm not going to be mean to them because they're lovely lads. ...is a 3D, typically polyhedral object in which there are subdivisions divided by walls, ceiling, floors and doors. Some typical examples of this would be a house, an office complex, a mall or a hotel. This is rooms or houses. We can agree with that. Sure. Sure. However, when we expand this definition to other spaces, we can class a variety

of spaces into the category, which would not previously fit the model. For example, a chest of drawers. This is indistinguishable from our definition of a house because it is still a three-dimensional object, which contains subdivisions of spaces, which are enclosed by walls, ceiling, or a floor. The decided name for this category is The House. We are open to changes in the nomenclature but prefer to use common objects to cluster spaces to make it clear to the casual reader." Okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm getting very high vibes of an ongoing office joke, right? That

everything, all food can be classed as a salad, a sandwich or a soup. Right? It's that kind of thing. Yeah. You name me a food and it will fall into one of those categories. Right. I know. I'm aware of this. This is like- Like a pizza? That's a sandwich. It's just, oh, it's open sandwich. It's not a sandwich. That's ridiculous. Pizza! How is it a sandwich?

Well, listen, this is it. It's like this meme in the office that everyone kind of half takes seriously and we have this pseudo argument every lunchtime about what foods- But a pizza is not a sandwich. So what's a hot dog? Oh, it's a sandwich. It's not a sandwich. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. All right. Anyway, I'll let you get on with it. So the next definition. So we've got the house. Okay. And the house, of course, was houses and buildings and things like that. But we've also, with this definition of house, which seemed very reasonable on the surface, a part or division of a building enclosed by walls, floor and ceiling. So a chest of drawers fit into that category, according to the paper. Next up is the shed. We have covered enclosed areas which have multiple rooms. We have we have we moved to enclosed areas which do not have subdivisions. Early in the research,

there was heavy discussion over whether a building with no subdivisions was in itself a room. However, after consulting the Cambridge definition, we have decided that these to not be rooms. Therefore, this space fills a different category to houses. This class of space is known by the common name shed. A shed is an enclosed 3D space with no subdivisions. Typical examples of this space is obviously a shed, a greenhouse or a tent. Some more surprising spaces that have been classed into this is chests, cupboards, coffins and even much smaller items like pencil cases and water bottles. Structurally a shed is no different to a water bottle.

This is astounding stuff. Okay. Okay, now listen. Some of these are problematic because the chest of drawers is a problematic one. Right. Because it's not, yes, it's a 3D space divided into more 3D spaces within it, but they are no openings between them. Right. And I also think that you have to have the human element involved. Right. I think a human can't live or be in a chest of drawers, right? Well, how big a chest of drawers are we talking?

Right. I s- I s- And if you open all the drawers, you could- There's a Triumphal episode about this. Remember when Kramer had some people staying over at his place and they were all tucked up in big, big drawers. Remember? They were in little pods. Yeah. Okay. Great. Carry on. All right. So, uh... So we've got house, rooms slash houses and shed.

We got room. We got house, shed. Now, the final talking point on sheds comes back to the sheds are rooms. If you took a room out of a house and separated it, according to our definitions, it would no longer be a room, it would be a shed. Yes. Therefore, much like how protons, neutrons and electrons make up atoms, sheds are the sub-particle of the house. Ha ha ha ha! I.E. a house is made of sheds.

Ah, okay yes, I agree. Next up. I agree. I'm on board with this. How long is this? If this is 300 pages, people ask. It's not much longer. That's it. Next up, the garden. We've covered enclosed space, but obviously the majority of space is external. This leads to our simple definition of the garden. Any space that is not enclosed, that is A, not enclosed, B, on the ground, is a garden. An easy example of this is a

garden, a football field, a mountain, a desert, etc. That's the garden. The sky. Same as gardens, but not on the ground. This would therefore include the sky, outer space, gas clouds, etc. Okay, no, okay. There's a big problem here. Well, you haven't listened to the definition of sky yet. Just wait for the complete definition. Okay, sure. There are some interesting crossovers between gardens and skies. For example, gas giants.

I don't think anyone would argue that the surface of Jupiter as we see it is a sky area. However, as you get deeper into Jupiter, it still remains gas, but the particles become so dense they form into a quasi-surface. Does this make it a garden? Where do we draw the line? Additionally, is water the sky or a garden? It could be argued that another class of space needs to be created for this. We've left that as future work.

The final and most complicated class of space is void spaces. If you looked at the architectural plan of a building, staircases are often omitted or simplified into another form. In this case, is a staircase a room? There is no consensus on this, but we believe the staircase to not be a room, but instead a void space. This stems back to another definition of a room, which is to have a use. Staircases have a use, but it is just to get from one space to another. A to B. Therefore it is

a separate space in itself, a transitioning space only used to go from A to B dubbed the void space. Wrong. No, a staircase is a room. This brings up some interesting scenarios. If a car is only used for transport, is it a void space? However, if it is used for any other use, it is likely a shed. If a plane is used purely for transport, it is a void space. But if it is used for other things, it is a house. We must also note that the stem off going from A to B, like eating in there, do not count as other uses, as they would not exist without the primary use of going from A to B. like eating in there, do not count as other uses, as they would not exist without the primary use of going from A to B.

Cars are a house, unless they have no little cupboards in them. But if a car has a little, what's it called? A glove compartment. A glove compartment, then it is a house. By your definition. My definition? I am merely presenting this paper. By your lad's definition. The void space, I don't know, I think that needs more study. I think the garden space, listen, I understand what they're saying, but what they need to understand with that

space is that should be a space that is bounded on three of its multiple dimensions, but not one. Do you see what I mean? No. The garden space goes up infinitely. It doesn't go back. No, it doesn't go up infinitely because eventually it hits the sky. Well, the sky is a separate space. Well, but again, it goes, um, oh, I see. So, well, not infinitely, but it's, it's, but again, depending on the planet and how much atmosphere there is, that will be different. That will depend on the planet. Right. In terms of the garden? Yeah. So if you had a little garden patch on the surface of Jupiter, that would then

go up to wherever the atmosphere, until it hits space. I think you're ignoring the sky though. Each section of space is categorizable as its own space, because it's unbounded on multiple sides. Right, but you're defining the garden as a three-dimensional area. Yeah. Right? But really you should define it as a two-dimensional area, because otherwise it impedes on the

room that is known as the sky. Well no, but the sky one is wrong. When does the sky begin? Well, you don't need a sky one if you have a garden. You don't need a sky! What are you going to do without the sky? Well, listen, no, but what are you saying? The sky isn't anything. The sky is there! It's the sky! You point to it and say, that need a sky. What are you going to do without the sky? Well, listen, no, but what are you saying? It's sky. Sky isn't anything.

The sky is there. It's the sky. You point to it and say that's the sky. What are you talking about? All right. Look out of your window and look up. What do you see? Okay. Like, okay. Here's, okay. Imagine this situation, right? Imagine on top of the roof of your house, you have like a little, like an air, there's an area going up, right? Imagine if you divide, divide, divide. This is why I've been talking about this, because I can't even say the word divide. What I'm saying is that the garden is a shape, right? Which is a 3D

shape, which goes all the way up to the atmosphere. When it hits the edge of Earth's atmosphere, it could be rounded off. Okay, so, do you see what I'm saying? You could have. Yeah, but no, I think you have an upper bound on the space that is a garden, because for example, you don't own the sky above your house. Yeah, you do in flying freehold. Depends.

It depends. Up to what level? You own quite a bit of space above your house. That's why it's buried. Yeah, but you don't own it all the way up to the fucking end of the atmosphere. Well, I'll tell you what level you own it up to. That then becomes governed by bylaws. Exactly.

And by the government essentially controlling it. Exactly. Because you can't, for example, if you're in a low-lying residential area, you couldn't expand your house to be ten stories tall, for example. Exactly. Because it would break bylaws relating to people's view, people's ability to have sun on their property, like all sorts of stuff.

Yeah. Yes. The big difference between a garden and a shed is that the garden would have invisible walls, right? Yeah. Bounding it all the way up. I like that. It has an invisible ceiling, essentially. Yeah. And invisible walls up beyond where the limits of it are. It's a defined area with... But I think, again, that's a problem because sometimes a garden might have subdivisions within it

as well. You know, like it might have a... And anyway, I think the sky thing, I'm not sure you need it. And I think the void is a tricky one because I don't really love it. But I think once you're in space, I haven't really considered that. And I don't think the authors of the paper have even considered it properly either. Believe me, a lot of time has been spent on this. I think other planets like Jupiter should be treated as, and I understand where they're

coming from with an atmosphere, a very thick atmosphere, but a thick atmosphere shouldn't make any difference. You should treat an atmosphere that you can't see through just the same as Earth's atmosphere. So all of the rules for rooms, houses, shed, garden should still work on Jupiter. Can you get these guys to maybe cure cancer instead of thinking about all this stuff? Or something else? They are all very clever lads. There's got to be other things that they could use their time and effort on solving, right?

I could be wrong. I don't even want to tell you how qualified these guys are to put this together. A lot of very smart lads. I'm still not sure about this staircase idea. I think it's just a room. I know it's a connecting room, but I don't think it deserves its own category. It is a corridor. Like, if I open my front door, there's a corridor to my living room. Is that a void space? No, I would say so.

But I also keep things there. So I would say it's a room. It is bounded. It has doors. I'll tell you one thing for sure. It does need a fire alarm. It does have one. Don't worry. Right. So there, these are the final thought before we move on. As a final thought, we leave the reader with an interesting question. Is the human body a house? It has enclosed subsections like the heart and plural cavities in the lungs. It is one enclosed 3d object, doors of the mouth, anus, ears, nose, etc. We encourage the reader to think more about fringe cases like this and share them in their own research. Please, if you have any theories about the categorization of rooms, sheds, gardens, void spaces, what was the other one, houses, please do

keep them coming. Keep them to yourself. I guess you have to consider that humans also do have their personal space. Yes. See, it gets very complicated. I'm just saying it's something worth examining. I guess that would be a void space. Or a garden. I don't know.

I think your personal space would be a garden. How is your personal space a garden? Well it's flexible based on the situation you the situation. It's also intangible. Your personal space reduces if you're like in a lift. It's intangible. That is entirely defined by socialization. It's much harder to categorize, I would say. Anyway, there's a new, I'm giving you a 2-1. You're giving my mates a 2-1. There you go. Is that how it works? Oh no, I don't think that's how it works.

I don't know. They're looking for a PhD here. I think it's a PhD. So I don't know how they categorise it. Their rating system works for that. I'm not even sure if they're looking for a qualification. Is it like a pass? No, they're already qualified. I think they're submitting this for peer review like you would to nature or something like that. Oh, I see. And they're just looking for experts.

Yeah. Well, they've come to the wrong place. Well, I don't know. I think they're in exactly the same company as themselves. I would define this podcast as Peter's of that paper. As people who've played Dota with them, we are technically their peers. So this is a peer review. And also we talk shit about things like this all the time. So I thought it was the right place to bring it up. I think you need to study the sandwich, a soup, salads thing more plague and friends. What's this now? What's the other guy's name?

Ashwin, Eddie Smalls, S1, all those lads. I don't know if Arka was involved, but he's a very clever lad as well. I do like all these people that you've mentioned and have played a lot of Dota with them. Yeah, they're top lads. They're good lads. Alright, so this is to lighten the mood and for anyone who was extremely annoyed by that last part of the podcast. Sorry, everyone.

We're going to line it up with a brief history of ridiculous Ecuadorian names. I will say I fucking loved that section. I know. I loved it too. I know. It's interesting. I don't want to be the party pooper, but I hated every minute of that. I see, Mike.

So, my name's Carlos. First time writing in and probably your only Ecuadorian fan. On the last mailbag, Sir Flax requested a list of weird names, and oh boy can I deliver. Some context, there's a special region of Ecuador called Chone, where the people have the special reputation of having silly foreign-inspired names. Chone. Chone. Why?

I think they're just connected enough to the rest of the world to know that these words exist but not enough to know that these make for bad names. So it's a combination of ridiculous name plus very ordinary Latin last name is comedy gold. So for example- So it's like Chinglish kind of where it's like, in China or Japan or Taiwan or somewhere, they do sort of a kind of English sounding thing that appeals to them, but to us sounds mad. Right. For example. Like, orange Jew or whatever.

Burger King Herrera. Burger King Herrera. Burger King Herrera. Yeah. Is that, that is a name. That is a name. Alibaba Cardenas. Alibaba Cardenas.

International, international conflict lure. Centipede Piñares. Okay, these now sound like... I do like Centipede Piñares. Yeah, that's great. They sound like... Suck my piñares. They sound like t-shirts that you buy at a shitty knockoff market, do you know what I

mean? Yes. I know. On holiday. Tintin Delgado. Tintin. Pure Whiskey Zambrano. Do love Tintin. That's a great name. Pure Whiskey.

Is that all one word? Yeah. Adolf Hitler Flores. Nooooo. Come on, man. What were they thinking? And these are some of the less foreign inspired examples. Mar Pacifico Cedeño, which is Pacific Ocean Cedeño.

Orgasmo Salvatierra Cedeeno. Orgasmo Salvatierra Sedeno. Orgasmo! Yeah, but that translates to Earth-saving orgasm Sedeno. Okay. Espartico Tarzan Torres. Spartacus Tarzan Torres, that translates to. I like that. Espartsico.

I think that's reasonable. Leyenda Filarmonica. Efefefefe. Leyenda Filarmonica Sedeno. This waddle. El Filarmonic legend Sedeno. And then... Scorcio! It's always funny to hear just that stupid stuff. Yeah. Ah, it's good to chill.

Yeah. I think that whole thing was like, it was just making light of the fact that you go to Spain on holiday, you watch the TV weather report's on, and it's just this hot woman who feels the weather's just beautiful every fucking day. It's like, what is the job here? It's like, I guess it's like, you know, in some parts of America as well. Why do we need to just remind everyone that the weather is just sunshine all day, every day?

Oh god. Ah, fucking hell. Yeah. It's a classic. We got another email from Dan. Just listening to this week's podcast and the subject of Greg Wallace has come up again. You just want to say, I've met them both having bumped into Greg on the tube with him saying sorry to me.

And I saw Ainsley Harriot in Chester, who I assume was with his wife and dog. His dog ran up to me and my girlfriend and jumped up and Ainsley came over and apologized before taking the dog away. I would say it was more thrilled to me Ainsley than I was Greg. But more importantly,

who do you think would win in a fight? My money is on Greg. I don't know. Ainsley looks tough, man. Like I feel rangey. I feel like he he would. I feel like Greg is is maybe past his prime more. So, you know, a bit more out of shape,

maybe a bit more out of shape than than Ainsley. So they are both. So it's an eight year gap. Greg is eight years younger than Ainsley. Right. Um, I also know that Greg has recently gotten in shape, hasn't he? Oh, that changes things. I think Ainsley Harry is pretty tall. I think he'd probably have the range on him.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a tricky one. I don't know. My money's on Ainsley. My money's on Greg. Really? You putting all your money on Greg?

Uh, well, yeah, I am actually half of it at least. My money's on big, big a, I think he'd do the business personally. I think of all the celebrity chefs, uh, that you would, uh, or, or, you know, food, food knowers on TV, Gordon Ramsey's gotta be the one that's going to win a fight, though, right. Against any of them. He seems he seems like he could fight. I don't know if that's just, you know, his persona or part of his persona. But I always felt like he probably could could fight a little bit.

I think he's pretty scared. He played football for a bit as well. Yeah. You've got to be quite tough to play. I think so. Yeah. Especially in Scotland. God, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Hey, big boy. Come on. Hey, that's what he does. He always calls people big boy. Yeah, but it's it's it's the balls to sort of to to to invite somebody into your space like that aggressively.

You know? Yeah. I think if you- He gets in people's faces enough if you think. If you have the capability of doing that, it's like my wife was saying that there's like an altercation between some neighbors on my mother, like where my mother-in-law lives and one of her neighbors told the other neighbor's wife to fuck off. Okay. Like it, it, it got heated, it escalated. Uh, and I said, if you came to me and told me that somebody told you to fuck

off, there's, I would never go and, and speak to them about it or confront them about it, because I feel like if you're telling somebody openly to fuck off angrily, you're probably going to, you're, you're, it's not going to take much for you to fight, right? Like you're, you're, you're kind of ready to go already. And I feel like you backed yourself into a corner where there's basically one result. If the other person turns up, like, yeah, I just, I always just think like, you know, if somebody is capable of being like that,

then they're probably ready to fight. I don't want to fight anyone. It would just be, I feel like that's just the worst outcome for any situation getting into like a physical fight with somebody over something. But some people seem like they're more up for it than others. Right? Oh God. The last thing I want to do is fight anyone ever.

Yes. Yeah. It would be pretty bad. Yeah. I think that sometimes can, I think people know that though, right? Some people who are aggressive, fighty people, they almost expect the opponent to back down when they do that. Most people do everything they can to avoid a fight.

My kids have seen me cry many times before, like, you know, when we went to see Inside Out 2 and when we went to see Moana and stuff. But I would hate for them to see me crying because another adult is beating me up. Right. Yeah. That would kind of destroy the image. It would a little bit. I don't know if there's much, I don't know if you can really come back from that, but

I mean, luckily I don't think I've ever really been in a physical fight before. Like, you know, like kids when you're, when you're a kid, you fight, fight and tussle and stuff like that. But as an adult, I've never been in a, in a physical altercation with, with anybody. So if I can keep going on that basis, uh, you know, there's a good chance that my kids will never see me crying because somebody's beaten me up, which I think is a good thing. I think. Yeah. Yeah. So talk, talking to kids that segues beautifully into the next email. This is from, uh, from Amber. Uh, several years ago when I was 20, my mom asked me to pick up my little sister from primary

school. She was in reception year at the time, and in the weird first week of school where they finish at 12pm. I arrive at the school with the knowledge that my mum had called ahead to let them know that her oldest was doing the school pick up that day. After five minutes of intense social anxiety because I'm surrounded by people I've never met, the teacher walks out with a gaggle of kids and I spot my sister among them all. I try to wave to get my sister's attention, but she's daydreaming and not paying attention.

The teacher is sending off each kid one by one after spotting their specific grown-ups. My sister is a sick though so I get the kid to get cold forward and the teacher looks around and spots me. The teacher leans down and I hear her ask my sister, is that your older sister? My sister looks directly at me for the first time and answers her teacher's question with a deadpan, no. As previously mentioned, I'm already feeling very socially anxious. That goes through the roof as soon as I hear my sister essentially tell her teacher that I'm a stranger and she doesn't know me. I immediately start panicking, thinking that everyone is going to think I'm some weirdo there to try to kidnap a child. None of the other parents know me and all the teachers that were at the school when I was a student

there have moved on. Thankfully I was able to video call my stepdad whilst he's at work. He confirmed that I'm not a stranger and the designated adult for school pick up and was allowed to leave with my little sister in tow. That is a tricky situation, Amber. That is a tricky one. That's great. Little kids can't be trusted.

I'll put it that way. They say the darnndest things. Really, you know, and at the worst times sometimes too. There you go. What can you do? It's going to happen. I'm sure you guys must have plenty of those. Yeah.

So many. That's just one of the things that comes with the territory, right? So the most recent one is my youngest daughter openly laughing at me. Okay. This is something else. The other day I bent down to pick something up for her that she dropped on the ground because she just refused to bend down. She's closer.

She refused to bend down to pick up something that she dropped on the ground. So I had to swoop in, bend down, pick something up off the ground. And she said, dad, that you have a hole in your head. And I said, what are you talking about? She said, look, there's a hole in the top of your head. She's talking about my bald spot, big bald spot on the top of my head, a hole in the top of my head and, and laughing about it as well. She was like, like full laughing. Unbelievable. Oh, someone's got to laugh about it as well. She was like, full laughing.

Good. Unbelievable. Oh, someone's gotta laugh about it. Yeah. So if anyone out there wants to pay for it to go to college at some point in their life, feel free to write in because it's not going to be me, because Elephant never forgets. Yeah, you'll have to hold that grudge against her. Oh, that project is done. Oh, anyway. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird. I don't remember saying that part.

Visit DejaDen.com slash care and get insurance. That's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? So we like prison stories, right? Oh, man, do we ever. Hi, all. Just put two and two together that you like prison stories. And I worked as a prison officer. Nice. I worked for a couple of years right in the pandemic era of prisons,

which was a struggle in its own right. No amount of training can prepare you for that uneasy feeling as you drive to work with thoughts of will I get attacked today? Will I have to use force or train someone? I'm on the shit wing today, I hope it goes okay. The prisoners don't want to be there, the staff don't want to be there, it's a toxic work environment. Either way, I have a bad viewpoint of prisons but don't want to be there. The staff don't want to be there. It's a toxic work environment. Either way, I have a bad viewpoint of prisons, but don't regret the life experiences. And I've now got a cushy office job. So I thought I'd just share one of the funnier slash awkward moments of my time there. As I'm sure you know, prisoners go on escort to hospital appointments. Yeah.

For these one officer is handcuffed to the prisoner while the other one does the paperwork. On this occasion, I was handcuffed to the prisoner as I was less experienced than the other officer and the higher rank pulls the shot. As it turns out, on this occasion we weren't going to hospital, we were going to a funeral. His dad's funeral. Unbeknownst to me, the prisoner was the eldest son and was the one elected to read a eulogy in front of the dad's entire friend and family group. So there I was, standing at the front of the stage? Handcuffs

jingling while the prisoner reads the eulogy. It was a lovely service, by the way, and the prisoner seemed to be a decent guy. I didn't know where to look or what to do, but finally opted for hands clasped and stare at the floor. It seemed to drag on forever, but was probably only about three to five minutes. It was also fairly awkward being sat in the front row of a funeral where you don't know the deceased. A few family members came up to us after and thanked us for being respectful. I had to say I had to lie and say he was a good guy, as honestly, I'd never seen him before that day.

The prison is one of the biggest in the UK. So that wasn't unusual. I can share some other stories. You actually have to say that he is a good guy and you didn't even know if he was a good guy. Yeah, I mean, he's you know, what if he was, this lad, who knows what he's banged up for. I think he's probably a piece of shit. Yeah.

Like it's kind of. Well, it's a shame your son is such a piece of shit, but, uh, nice eulogy, all the same. And condolences for your loss as well. Um, yeah, it's a weird one. Yeah. I don't know. You'd have to, you'd want to pick your words wisely in a situation like that. I feel, you it's a weird one. Yeah. I don't know. You'd have to, you'd want to pick your words wisely in a situation like that.

I feel, you know, and not just- I think it's better to someone to say that he, it's better to do the white lie than the, ah, he's a cunt. Yeah. Like, like, like he was obviously, he was obviously imprisoned for something. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, who knows? Like, ah, I think you a prisoner for something. Well, no, I mean, who knows? Like, I think you did the right thing. Just navigated a very awkward social situation. And I don't think many people would find themselves in. Jason No, it's a tricky one.

Daishi It is a tricky one, yeah. It's weird though, because I guess prisoners do need to go to certain places and need to be escorted to go to those places, right? There is, I mean, like funerals and, and, and, and hospital appointments, but a lot of big prisons have a lot of some of these facilities are not like for funerals and stuff, but like they have like a lot of facilities within them, right? That, that would potentially make it so that prisoners don't need to leave the prison necessarily. I don't know. I mean, I'm only basing this on my time playing prison

architect. I don't have any other experience whatsoever with prisons. That's the extent of our knowledge on this subject. I heard a good prison story from the Criminal Podcast the other day. It's one I talk about quite often, I'm a big fan. But they did a really good article on this story from the war where there were these, I think it was the first world war where there were these prisoners of war being held in Turkey and they were having a terrible time of it. And the way they sort of pretended, you know, they were trying to escape, but back then if you did a successful

escape all the other inmates would be punished or sometimes killed. And so it was a very, like, seen as a very frowned upon thing to try and escape, right? Because you didn't want to risk your fellow men by escaping. And so what they did was they started doing these seances and one of them was like an ex-magician and one of them was like a bit of a sort of trickster and kind of mentalist guy and sort of quite good psychologist. And they sort of convinced all the other prisoners that the seances were real. They managed to convince some of the guards and actually they managed to convince the

commandant of this whole prison who's like, you know, 2000 prisoners in this prison that they were real. This was at a time when the Armenian genocide had happened and the Turkish Ottoman forces were looting and thinking, oh, the Armenians, they've all been killed, but they must have buried their loot somewhere. There's all these rumours of buried treasure. Their plan was to convince the camp commandant that they knew, they were talking to the dead Armenians on this Ouija board and they could find this

treasure. And it was such an incredible story. And they almost, they got like all the way through to like the final stage of their plan to escape, you know escape and get away. And the commandants had got cold feet right at the last stage. They planted all these clues, they hid buried tins with coded messages in them, like in Armenian, they made it's not even Armenian dictionary. Because they were these British prisoners, well, they had nothing but free time to come up with this kind of elaborate treasure hunt to try and trick the Commandant into sort of getting them out for the day. I think it ended up failing because the Commandant was worried because there were sort of rumours that people who spoke to the spirits would go mad or get injured or the spirits would be angry

with them and haunt them. But the commandant didn't want to get haunted because he believed in it so much that he thought this will be bad karma. I don't need this buried treasure. Maybe he started feeling bad about all the Armenians that they killed. But it was a really interesting story. And obviously because it backfired, they went to plan B. And plan B was to act as if they had gone insane. And so they both picked different ways to go insane. One of them was like sort of a hermit and didn't eat and didn't wash and let his hair grow out and he just became like an absolute shambles. And the other one was like a different kind of mad. And anyway, they went mad and they eventually got hospitalized. They kept up this ruse for months

and months and months, like six or nine months. And eventually they got certified insane and swapped back in a prisoner transfer. And so, again, it was like an escape plan, but it was, it was the most insane escape plan. And they got back into the UK two weeks before the war ended. Oh man. Jesus Christ. They went through this incredible journey. Yeah, I can't remember what the podcast was called. I think it was called something like seance, seances, criminal podcast.

I'll be honest with you, if I was a POW, I'd probably just chill. As long as they weren't like, we weren't a risk of dying in there. Yeah, I'd just chill. I don't know if it's your duty to try to escape or whatever, but I'd be like, you know what? It's probably safer here than out there. And I could just just ride the war out in relative discomfort, but with much less risk of dying. So if I was in like a regular prison war camp, not like a, you know, a concentration camp or something, obviously then you'd want to do your best to get out. But yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't mess around.

I wouldn't like, you know, do anything that would get me in trouble or, or anything. Yeah. I wouldn't be a snitch, but I'd be jolly well behaved. Yeah. Same. Cause I would just hope that, you know, eventually that it would end and I would get out and just get back to living and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. It's called The Seance is the podcast on criminal podcast. And the book is The Confidence Men by Marguliet Fox. That's what, cause a lot of the time criminal podcasts will get this really cool book about like someone's life and just make like a 30 minute highlight. I wouldn't want to be on. I have read some of the books off of the back of that podcast and I've really enjoyed them. It's kind of like a true crime-y style.

But sometimes people's lives or certain events within them are so fascinating. Oh yeah. Yeah. The other one I really enjoyed was The Wager, which is about the shipwreck mutiny David Grant's book, which was, oh, such as one of my favorite books of recent time. I've raved about it before. But I loved that. Oh, you should read the Mutiny on the Bounty. There's lots of books about that. That was very interesting as well. If you like mutinies.

I read a good one recently. God, that's so fascinating. Yeah. Dom, tips. It's Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but I've been reading it to my daughter, but I, man, I don't- She throws it on the floor. No, no, it's not that.

She loves it. She wants to read it every night, but this version of Goldilocks is so long winded. Like, man, they explain everything and there's like, there's about 50 more pages than need to be in. It's an illustrated book too, but the writing is really, really small and it takes so long to read the book and you got to do all the voices and stuff too. We have another version of Golly Locks and the Three Bears that takes like three minutes to read and it's got nice pictures and the words are huge.

Cause it's not a complicated story. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know if you've ever encountered anything. I'd like to, I'd like it to flesh it out a little bit more. I want some backstory. What are they, what does everybody do for the job? Okay. You know what I mean? All that kind of stuff. I would, I would, I would go deeper. That's fine. But I think like 10 minutes is, is a reasonable amount of time to read a story. It's just like 45 minutes. It's really, really long. And like sometimes she I'll be like, okay, go pick a story for bed.

And she'll come back with this book and I'll be like, Oh, Oh, read that one yesterday. Oh man. It's a huge one. I don't know why somebody felt the need to really do that to Goldilocks. We don't need the lore, the backstory and everything. It's too much. Especially not night after night. Do you have to finish the story? Yeah.

Yeah! Are you crazy? But you know what, because she's still really small, sometimes I just skip entire paragraphs. Like, oh, that's I'll do like a TLDR on each page as I'm going through. Cause it's like, especially that one, you know, because you can cut out so much of the guff and just stick to Eaters, they ate. Oh my God, man. Okay. She's got a Gabby's Dollhouse book. She's not, she doesn't even watch Gabby's Dollhouse. She doesn't really know that much about Gabby's Dollhouse, but she's got a book that she really likes. And I read it to her like a million times,

but that's another one that I have to just cut down because it's long and it's just nonsense. It's all like the characters aren't even named nicely in any way. They're all called like fluffy bunnykins and all this crap. And it's, and, but it's constant. Like Gabby doesn't just have one good friend. Gabby has like a million friends and they all have really long, tedious names and they keep coming up and up and up and up and you're just like, Oh my God, just end. This has to end.

Yeah. This really just has to end. I can't read this book anymore. I hate it so much. But then, you know, like we have a bunch of books that are a lot less to read, but she never picks those ones. I'm pretty sure we have the whole Mr. Men collection. Those are kind of nice to read,

you know, they're okay. Yeah, they're pretty long and they're pretty shit. Some of them are pretty long. So obviously, in the original version of Goldilocks, it's an old woman, Goldilocks is an old woman described as... No way! Described as insolent, mean, swearing, ugly, dirty and a vagabond. Right.

Well I don't have any of those portions of the book. Okay. Sounds like a Joe Biden speech. And the bears are described as... Yeah, he's a goddamn bear. He's an alley cat. The bears are described as good-natured, trusting, harmless, clean and hospitable. And so this whole story really is about this old woman who's basically breaking

it and entering, and just fucking, like some sort of beggar woman who comes in and eats their porridge and sleeps in Baby Bear's bed, and then when they find her, they let her go, they just let her jump out the window and escape. They should do a follow-up book on Baby Bear's life post this incident, and the trauma that he suffered from it, and how it's affected his adult life, and some of his decisions and stuff too. His trust in the elderly. That could be an interesting one.

Very, very weird. It's, I mean, in my version, in my brain, I mean, obviously the thing is, it must have evolved over years and years, but in my version it was kind of this strange story about, yeah, someone is breaking and entering, and they get punished by being eaten. ALICE Sadly, Baby Bear could never trust anybody again. JUSTIN Right. LIAM He died alone.

ALICE He lived in a crack house. JUSTIN Ha ha ha! ALICE He drowned in a giant bowl of porridge. ALICE he blasted himself with crack every single day to try to forget. Oh, my God. They found him face down in a bowl. Turned to drugs of perfect porridge. When they did an autopsy, they found that he was riddled with venereal disease. Riddled, riddled. Baby bear couldn't form any adult relationships.

You couldn't trust. Let's do another email. Go down a rabbit hole. This is from Mike from New Jersey as a vet tech. And I'm going to read one of these stories. The other one is a bit mad. We had a married couple, a man and a woman without any children. This info is important.

Come in with their dog that had been vomiting for a couple of days. We ended up taking x-rays and we determined that the dog has an intestinal foreign body causing an obstruction. This means that the dog ingested a foreign object and it's now stuck in the intestines causing the dog not to be able to keep food down because it can't get past the obstruction. We bring the dog into surgery and end up removing a pair of woman's panties from the dog's bowel. No. Not that it's uncommon because dogs like to eat gross things like socks and underwear are among the most common things we remove from dogs. Later that day,

the wife comes to pick up the dog and while I'm going over discharge instructions, I show her the panties that the dog ate. We usually keep the object in a plastic bag for the owners. Most owners just like to see what it was. She stares at them for a time, then looks back at me and says, those aren't mine. At this point I kind of laugh it off, and she ends up taking the dog without saying much more. Couple of weeks later, at the surgical recheck, the wife comes back in and asks us to remove the husband's info from her account because they're getting divorced.

Turns out the panties belonged to the woman the husband was having an affair with. Nooooo, what a way to go! Jeez. That's great. That is crazy. Wow. Well, because you can imagine that the woman he was having an affair with wouldn't have been careful with throwing her panties on the floor, because the wife, the actual wife, knows that that dog is naughty and eats things. Um, yeah. I also just think, quite honestly, when, when an affair gets discovered, because one party accidentally left something at the, you know, the, the, the sort of the cheetah's house.

She must have noticed. Yeah. Where the fuck are my underpants? They want the catch to happen, right? Like, even if they notice the dog ate them. That guy must have known his goose was cooked at that point, right? When she's like, I can't find my underpants. See you later, I gotta go home. Maybe they just laughed it off or something?

This is like the plot of a CSI episode or something, isn't it? It's great. I love it. I think it's... Because that'll be like something they get very late in the story. What if this mistress wanted his marriage to end, because then she gets him. Nah. I think a lot of the time people deliberately want to break the couple up. I mean, if you're in love with the person that's cheating with you, that's why you try to break them up. I don't know, dude. I think people are,

people think it's always the, it's always the simplest thing and I just find it crazy that they didn't see this coming. She fed it to the dog. I'm not saying she fed it to the dog. She couldn't find her underpants that that was going to come back. That's my point. That's my point is that she knows it's going to potentially end the marriage. And that means what now?

Well, he goes and moves in with her. Maybe, you know, I'm just saying, you think there's a level of feed. She's like, Oh, I lost my pants. I don't care. Even if they lost here, you know, maybe his wife will find them and then maybe I can get get with him full time. You don't think that's ever on the mind of people cheating that they could break up the marriage? I guess so. I mean, yeah, maybe I'll say yeah, sure. But it is it is a bit

reluctant. I mean, you're giving you're giving a lot of people involved here a lot of credit. It's a simple decision. Yeah, they're not evil geniuses. You know, But there's nothing genius about losing your pants and then thinking, I don't care if I find them because maybe the wife finds them. That's not evil genius. No, but that's still like, I guess, you know, like if she just sort of realized, oh well,

who cares? I can't find them. And you know, maybe this'll cause a breakup. We see that as a stereotype that anyone who's having an affair with someone wants to sabotage that relationship. Well, they already are. They are, but I don't think they think that, they don't think about it. I don't think, I don't think they, they, they go like, oh shit. Yeah. I'm really ruining this marriage or whatever. I don't think they think about the other person at all. I need to speed this thing along.

Send us some emails. Send us some emails guys. If you've, if you've been a cheater, it'll be anonymous. Don't worry. If you've been a cheater, if you've been cheated on, what was the deal? Give us your I was cheated on stories. Or I did do some cheating. And if you were some sort of, you know, really forward thinker and you had all these like clever ploys and plans to break up the marriage or whatever, let us know about those two. Yeah, let us know. We'd be fascinated. All right. So here's a quick one is from Kaz. Twenty seven and just discovered from my horrified friends that it is not normal to eat peanut butter and cheese sandwiches.

My entire family eats these, but my friends were shocked. Thoughts? I think it sounds disgusting. I also think it sounds disgusting, but if you like it, I'm not going to go for it. I mean, I know people that eat ham and jam. It doesn't matter, man. I used to eat bologna and ketchup sandwiches when I was a kid. I don't think that's too bad.

It was kind of gross looking back, but, um, whatever. But that's not like peanut butter and cheese. I don't think there's any dish where they are presented together. No, not really. I don't think they compliment each other very well, personally. Is peanut butter like salty or sweet? It's a bit of both really. A bit of both really, yeah.

Mmm. I never, oh of course you don't bloody eat it do you? I'm allergic to peanut butter so I can't eat it. I don't even know what it's like. I mean what kind of cheese are we talking about here? Are we talking like something really mild where you wouldn't be able to taste the cheese? Like is it like a texture thing more so than a flavor? I don't know.

I don't know. Peanut butter and cheese. I am not qualified to answer this question guys. Yeah, I just realized. Sorry, Lulu. That's all right. All right. This is from Greg. Wallace? No, sadly not.

I'm traveling in Eastern Europe at the moment and noticed a number of small but awkward and probably petty cultural differences between the UK and countries such as Poland, Hungary, Chechia and the Baltic States. This is a small list of what Greg has discovered. Now I am not saying like none of these are like super bad, but I'm just saying this is like cultural differences. If you are from those parts of the world, this is just Greg's opinion. I'm not trying to... Sorry, what is he saying? I personally have no experience with those other parts of the world. I've never been to any of those countries before.

So he's talking about ex-Soviet, socialist republics, right? Well, essentially, yeah. I mean, so Poland, I've been to Poland. Hungary, I've been to Hungary. My wife's been to Czechia, she loved it. And of the Baltic states, I've been to Estonia. Czechia is part of Russia, right? Czechia.

Oh, Czech, Czechia. Sorry, I thought you said Chechnya. Chechnya. Is it Chekia? It's Chekia now, yeah. Chekia. Okay, I said Chekia. So it was Czechoslovakia, then it was the Czech Republic, and now it's Chekia.

Well, Czechia. Slovakia's now its own thing. Chekia yourself before you recce yourself. Very good. All right, number one. Service. Every restaurant you go into, you just take a seat and eventually someone gets around to serving you.

If you ask for a table for one, two or four, they look at you weirdly and then point around the restaurant to the tables. Also the faux friendliness that you expect in the UK is not there. I've had many great chats with bored and aloof staff complaining about their jobs. It's not there in the UK either. What are you talking about? It's not here in the UK either. What is this? People grunt at you and then you pay them a lot of money for crappy food and no service.

Are you talking about the UK? Yes. Yeah. There's no phone for them in this here. Sorry, Lewis, when we went out to, in Bristol, we'd been out for a meal a bunch of times. Did you ever feel that the service was bad in the restaurants that we were at? No. So what do you mean grunts and unpleasant?

Maybe I'm just eating at the wrong places. Oh, what are you saying? It's actively people who don't want to be there. That's what Zips is saying. I feel like the service over here is like bad. I feel like the UK is like, compared to in America, I think it's, it's bad. There's a lot of faux friendliness in America. There's tons of it in America.

I hate it. It is way over the top. Yeah. But in the UK it's completely the other way, in my opinion. But, no, yeah, there's very little faux friendliness here. Maybe in Jersey. I don't think I've been in a restaurant and had unpleasant service. No, unpleasant, but like it could be a bit more pleasant.

It's not ever unpleasant, but it's not fake friendliness. No, it's not nice enough. It's not fake friendliness, but in some cases it's not even just normal friendliness either. It's just like, okay, why do we, you know, I get it. But is it even worse in Europe? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, he's saying that they just don't give a hoot. Like they're kind of aloof and they will just complain and anyway. Driving. Maniacal. The speed anyway, yeah, driving maniacal.

The speed limit lanes your vehicle, all factors ignored by many drivers here. I bus between the Baltic capitals and it was astonishing. Our 80-seater bus was overtaking for overtaking frequently on the opposite lane. And I watched an old woman's ancient two-seater violently shake as she determinedly overtook our bus. Their country roads are like the Wild West, almost as bad as being a pedestrian in a major city. Walking across pedestrian crossings in Prague is genuinely unnerving.

And I found staring down drivers was the only way they would slow down. I don't even know if pedestrian crossings exist in Europe. I'll be honest with you. When we were on holiday this summer, France and Italy, there are what looks like zebra crossing. There's no button to push. No, you just have on holiday this summer, France and Italy, there are what looks like zebra crossing. There's no button to push. No. You just have to step out. And I'm like, yeah, so this is like a battle of will.

France and Italy are both bad for that. Yeah, especially in big cities. Forget it. Yeah, if you wait, they ain't stopping for shit. You've got to go. You've got to be determinedly stepping out. Spatial awareness. This one bothered me a bit. On the street, most people have zero spatial awareness. If you're trying to pass anyone, they will often swerve directly into your way as they walk straight on. Groups are impossible to pass by even by saying excuse me.

Worse is the people coming head on towards you. They simply expect you to move out of the way. Men especially are bad for staring you down and expecting you to shove off. When I walk around the UK, situations where you both move the same direction or bump into someone are so infrequent, I usually can remember them. I think I must have doubled that number since I came to Eastern Europe. Spatial awareness being a problem, not just in Eastern Europe, in my experience.

This is a Europe-wide thing. Not so much in Germany, funnily enough. No, they're very cool about it in Germany. In France and Italy and maybe in parts of Spain as well. Jesus Christ, man. People, I've complained about this at length in the past, but this idea that you're the chosen one and cues don't apply to you, fucking hell.

It's so bad. The French especially, fucking hell. They're the worst. They're terrible. They're so bad. Oh my gosh. Infuriating. Like I'm not even, I'm normally a passive person, but I've actually had to say to people in the past, I'm fucking standing here in a line. Like get the fuck behind. What is wrong with you? They just don't give a shit.

Yeah, it's crazy. But when it comes to groups of people, I mean, I find this in London as well. There'll be four people walking towards me, taking up the whole pavement, and I'm walking along and none of them... What I always tell my kids is when we see someone coming, go behind each other, like single file, and that way everyone's got room to pass, and then you can stand back as a group. You don't maintain group formation.

You break formation. Yeah. You've got to make room for other people. So you got to especially make room for people that are pushing like buggies or like in on like in wheelchairs or older people and stuff. Like you have to be somewhat aware. Right. And make some make some room for them. So they look at you like they ain't stopping for shit. And I'm like, so what's the plan here?

Because if I keep walking, you keep walking, we're just going to bang into each other. And are you going to think you're in the right? You just fucking didn't give me any way to go. So now I'm walking in the road and you're like strolling past like

nothing happened. I'm thinking, you know what, maybe I should just be the dickhead and just walk into you. But then I think, no, that would don't belittle yourself by sinking to their fucking level. The fucking pavement, non sharing scum. I hate them. Man, I was I was at a shopping center in France recently.

This is giving me a great deal of anxiety. You guys talking about queuing. Yeah. Well, listen to this. OK. I'm the queue here. There's a queue for both the men's and women's toilet that is just snaking around the mall. Everybody else is standing in the queue. No problem. There is a separate queue in the middle to get into the baby changing room, which is

also a disabled toilet. So I'm waiting and there's one person behind me. We're waiting in this like separate queue because I need to change the baby. So I'm waiting and there's one person behind me. Okay. We're waiting in this like separate queue because I need to change the baby. So door opens, another mother comes out with the baby. She just changed the baby. She walks off this like 70 year old woman who's in the queue for the women's darts in from the women's queue and closes the door and locks it immediately.

I'm standing there. I'm like, what the fuck? A couple of people turn around. I'm like, what the fuck? A couple of people turn around. They're like, what the fuck? You know, like, uh, she comes out, no eye contact whatsoever. Just like, she just like basically fuck you. Like I've gone in, I don't care who you are or whether you were in the queue or not. I like, I've, I've gone in and done that. And then she comes out and another fucking lady goes right in behind her!

It was unbelievable! Like, it's just unbelievable. I think, I think to some people- It's so audacious! It is, it is audacious. It is fucking unbelievable. To some people- I will do a counterpoint though, almost.

Alright, go on. If you've been waiting in line for the loop for a while and you really need to go, sometimes you just have to go. Right? But wouldn't you say to people, excuse me, this is an emergency, I'm super desperate, do you mind if I go first? You would. You use your ability to communicate.

Yeah, you talk to you at a really young age. If you're 70 years old, you should know how to talk to people. You just say, I'm so sorry, I know you're in the queue, I'm gonna fucking piss my pants, can I go in there please? You say whatever you have to say. You stay, you fucking speak up. I think to these people, they feel like we're the chumps and that they've got one over on us.

That's how it feels. When they both waddled out and just like no eye contact, no awareness whatsoever, I just thought, fucking hell, no awareness whatsoever. I just thought, fucking hell, it's unreal. I know, but there's a lot of embarrassment around this stuff as well. Like, I don't know, like it's not always, like I think you do have to consider that, yes, we live in a society. And sometimes it's worth picking that fight. It's not. I don't think it's worth it, but I will definitely retell the story and complain

about it because I think some people's heads are so far up their asses. It's worth it. But I will I will definitely retell the story and complain about it because I think some people's heads are so far up their asses. It's a miracle that they function in society. It's crazy. That's the thing. Like, like, I won't say anything. But there are people out there that'll that'll say something and maybe beat you up as well. So you got it? Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, be careful. Be careful. Let's finish on one last email. This is almost like, I'm gonna call this housekeeping as we spoke about cleaning on the previous,

one of the previous mail bags. And interestingly, it is about housekeeping. I worked in housekeeping for five years. Yes, it is awful, the worst. Each hotel's housekeeping department seems to operate in the same way. 30 minutes to fully clean a room for guests checking in and 15 minutes to service a room that guests are currently staying in. This time is then added together and those

are your hours. You'd have to fight the girl in the office for going over your hours. Hence the dirty cups. And yes, this is how all cups in hotels are cleaned. In the sink with old ass rags or the towels from the previous guests, which is what we're instructed to clean the bathrooms with. Jesus Christ. Sometimes we'd have dishwashing liquid, sometimes we wouldn't. Nothing hot water and a bit of blue spray won't fix. Probably not very interesting. Housekeeping is the first department they cut costs from.

Anyway, I've upgraded to OnlyFans. Oh my goodness. Well, good luck with that. Holy crap. That's an upgrade. Yeah. Good. Have they included a link?

No, it was not furnished with a link. That's a shame. Oh man, that's an upgrade. Yeah. Good. Have they included a link? No, I was not finished with a link. It's a shame. It's a shame. Oh man, that's good. Just for, just, just out of interest.

Just out of interest. Yeah, good. I had a whole bunch of old maid outfits that I stole from my old job. Oh man. Oh wow. That's it. Well, I was most disgusted by your description of how the cups were cleaned and aroused that you are now an OnlyFans at the same time.

Yeah, you should do, you should combine the two. Just wash some dirty ass cups in the nip. You could do what, no, do what the Romeo cleaners did on Eurotrash, remember the Romeo cleaners? No, I don't remember them. What reference is this? It's very very old school reference. Old people might remember the Romeo cleaners. God bless that show was so fucking funny, man.

They were a couple of German lads, with mustaches, who would clean in like tiny little hotpants, and they were not attractive dudes at all. They looked like the Chuckle Brothers, but like the German version of the Chuckle Brothers, and they would go, hello, we are some Romeo cleaners. We are here to clean your house. And they would like do stuff with the Romeo cleaners. They were the fucking best. That sounds awful. That's so funny.

Look up the Romeo cleaners. You'll see a picture of them. Romeo cleaners. God, yeah, I found them. There they are. A couple of lads. Oh, they're so funny. Oh man. Oh my god.

That was a show. That was one of the best shows. It was a great show. Man, it was so funny. Well, there you go. That's our podcast for this week. Thank you everyone. See you next time.

Keep the mailbags... Keep them coming. ...overflowing. Keep it coming. Keep that sack overflowing. See you later. Alright. Goodbye. sack overflowing. See you later. Alright. Goodbye. Bye.