Well There‘s Your Problem - Bonus Episode 46 PREVIEW: 2011 Oban Fireworks Display

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

in the industry we call this an "oopsie doopsie" full episode on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/posts/119509129?pr=true

We have been fucking up. This is my fault, right? You asked me to help with the Catholicism bonus episode, it will take, uh, about 500 years. I'm sorry. What we have instead- And that's just the recording time. Also, the Csigrata Famia is coming, folks. Not an episode, it's just the Cathedral's office coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so, this I guess... SEAN I mean that Alan Parsons project song? ALICE Yeah.

SEAN Yeah. ALICE Now about to witness the awesome lethality of the Alan Parsons project. RILEY It's kind of like an inver- it's like an anti-Catholicism, I don't mean in the sense of being against it, although it is, but it's a kind of a Catholicism adjacent little tale we have tonight. ALICE Yeah. Yeah. And are we gonna do the Reformation here in this pod? I mean... Do the counter Reformation.

RILEY I summarized it with one word, which is, uh, England got major divorced guy energy all of a sudden. ALICE And has kept it ever since. RILEY Yeah, and has a lot of shame. ALICE Graham Winner? Uh, who else you got over there? RILEY Well, he's not here anymore, he's gone to Alabama. We've lost him.

ALICE Not even English is Irish! Like, that's... I mean, Gr... SEAN The trail of my people. ALICE Well, granted, he ended up making his career in England, but still. SEAN Sure. It's the only reason Father Ted isn't cultural appropriation. ALICE I have to say the thing about how it's the first episode of 2025.

Unless... SEAN Oh, shit! ALICE Unless Devon has pulled off some miraculous feat of editing, and decided to eat into their own holiday, which I, y'know, would never ask them to do. This is the first bonus episode of 2025. Welcome to 2025. I hope you're enjoying it, we're not there yet. So, y'know.

SEAN Yeah, have not gotten better. Um, welcome. Well, we don't know, they could've been, they could've been, like, January 1st, 2025, Trump could've died? Elon Musk could've died? Elon Musk could've taken with him? Yeah, yeah, murder, suicide, yeah, we're by the paywall, I can do whatever the fuck I want. Sight of the Trump Fire.

I'm falling in. Welcome to 2025. Caution, the moving walkway is ending. Please hold on to the handrail. Welcome to 2025. Caution, the moving walkway is ending. What else is going on in 2025? Well it's gonna be the Jubilee year, which is why we have to... we had to put off the Catholicism episode in order to release it in 2025, for theological reasons.

So I'm not... Yeah, so Catholicism's coming, we're sorry, we are doubling up bonuses, thank you for your patience. That is an ecumenical matter. Actually it is, yeah. Bang. This is the subject of the episode. Wham-o, glam.

Bang. ALICE It's a very quick one. Largely the product of Garrus, but I'm willing to, like, interpolate and improvise. RILEY Aww, I do. It's a total team effort. It's a total team effort. I put this together in a fever dream, about two hours ago. So yeah, we're cooking, we're gonna talk about an explosion, and in particular an explosion that happened in Scotland. So that's exciting. ALICE Did you guys get 9-11?

RILEY Well yeah, this is Oban's 9-11. ALICE I'm lucky it was Scotland's 9-11. RILEY Oban's 9-11, I guess. RILEY Yeah, Oban's 9-11. Yeah, we've gotta set ourselves into the perspective here, that this is the worst thing to ever happen, probably to Oban's 9-11. Yeah, we've gotta set ourselves into the perspective here, that this is the worst thing to ever happen probably to Oban, since the ferry terminal at Oban Dandor closed. Have I been to Oban? This is gonna be a real philosophical quandary for me now, because I've been to lots of places

like Oban, but I don't know if I've been to... Oh, it looks very pretty. I know Oban the Scotch. We'll talk about Oban in due course. There's some very, very nice whiskey in Oban. As Liam is pointing out, it's very, very good. Yeah. You might know a bit about that. Yeah, so quite a bit of bonus, isn't it? So we just... Crack on. Crack on.

I thought it was a regular one, so there's news in here, but we're going to skip it and put it in the next free one. Okay. Yeah, you're getting the fun news. I like that you just zoomed in, that was fun. Yeah. But actually, Roz is starting this one off, because I needed Roz to give me a leg up, so Roz, you're kicking this one off.

Tell us about what the fuck is going on in our screens, there's many colors and shapes. Here's my very lethargic explanation of fireworks. What are fireworks? Fireworks are when bang, and pretty colors. Pretty much, yeah. Potassium, and also a pop-puck band from Detroit, who released Oh Common Life, which is a hell of an album. It's a carl-o-mattric.

It's weird encyclopedia checks that you make, sometimesACH It's all in there, it's all in there. LIAM It's all floating around in some sort of... ALICE Why do I remember the name of a boxer called Contact Mike? Like, uh... ZACH But yeah, it's some kind of pyrotechnic, it makes a bang, it makes a bright light, it's for entertainment. Here in the United States you can buy them quite freely. ALICE Yeah, you can, basically.

ALICE That's insane to me, by the way. I remember watching Simpsons episodes where the availability of fireworks, or illegal fireworks, was a plot point, and being like, this is the only time that I have felt like this is a foreign culture to me. Alright, back when you could buy a quarter stick, you can't even get those illegally anymore. That's cause of Joe Biden. No, that's actually earlier than Joe Biden, but y'know.

You should change it to AFT for absolute fucking tyrants. Yeah, exactly, exactly. ATF should be a convenience store. It's the only good libertarian line. The um, yeah, I mean, you know, there's the fun thing we have in the United States where a lot of states, it's illegal for residents of that state to buy fireworks, and you can't bring them in, but it is legal for out of state residents to purchase fireworks. Oh, yeah.

So there's just this... You have a bunch of like, state line fireworks. Yeah, exactly. At every state border there's just suddenly, you know, 50 fireworks stores right there on the interstate. And then, you know, you just have to make sure the cops don't see you drive back in. Incredible. That's like what P.A.C. police used to pull you over for returning from New Jersey with

liquor in your car that you bought out of state. Oh yeah, that and the Claremont Total Wine. They like that. Sometimes the American Kleinstarteri really heads home, you know, to be like, yeah you guys are global hack-a-mole, but you're also like fifty little feuding Prince Bishop Ricks, you know, to be like, yeah, you guys are global heckamon, but you're also like fifty little feuding prince bishoprics, you know? ALICE Think the whole... like, princely states, yeah. Razz is Prince of Pennsylvania. ALICE Pretty much.

RILEY It's very nice to look at, you know, there's what I believe is referred to as the Eiffel Tower, in its native French. ALICE Yeah, it'd be a cool bonus episode, in itself, in its own right. RILEY It would. ALICE I have a fun one. SEAN Oh, Gustav, you son of a whore. ALICE Let's get this out of the way now, eating

lunch in the Eiffel Tower every day, because it's the one building in Paris you can't see the Eiffel Tower from. RILEY That's a bit like Appleton Tower in Edinburgh, actually. A lot of lunches in Appleton Tower for very similar reasons. Shoutout to everyone who knows where the Eiffel Tower from. That's a bit like Appleton Tower in Edinburgh, actually. I ate a lot of lunches in Appleton Tower for very similar reasons. Shoutout to everyone who knows where the fuck I'm talking about. Yeah, you see my lunch in the Boyd-Ore for the same reason. The problem is now you see a lot of defense.

And what's the other one? Tour Montparnasse. Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of, yeah. That's where you go eat lunch, because I think that's the one. Wow, Appleton Tower is a grim fucking building, good god. I'm so pleased you've googled it, Liam, it's just horrifying, isn't it? Liam, stack Boyd-Orr building on there as well, B-O-Y-D space O-R-R. Okay, what?

Oh. Oh. Oh, okay. Uh huh. Alright, that's... Oh, okay. Uh huh. All right. And now imagine that you were paying thousands of pounds a year to be around that building, chewing on the asbestos, etc. Maybe the woman I am today.

Oh dear. Anyway, pretty explosions. Sorry, we're derailing you already and we're only one slot a guy. We're going to need some derailments because I didn't write down much because I'm tired. Seeking derailments. Is that seeking derailments? Yeah. You've heard of seeking erasures now get ready for seeking derailments. Yeah. We all collectively need to rest after the last mainstream episode where we were all cooking. So it's time to rest our little comedic chops. Absolutely. This is like the pre-holiday one, where it's like, last day of work before the

office Christmas party. We're trying not to phone it in, but like- Yeah, this is sort of, uh, I mean, well that last episode, you know, we were all laughing so hard, we all have rock hard abs now. That's not the phrase I would use, hey. Okay. Yeah. I was wondering how I got this wrong.

I'm feeling like Darren Lyons. So this thing, gunpowder, right, is then... Hooray! Possibly. In the early first millennium AD. In China. China. China.

Sorry Liam. The Trump gets worse every time. It gets further and further from Donald Trump's light. A series of pregnant pauses. We got another four years for our Trump impressions to get worse. Go fuck yourself. I'm really like, well, he's got another four years to get worse as well. Like he's gonna get older and weirder.

Super COVID baby, let's do it! Oh, when he gets COVID again and then gives all the Secret Service guys COVID again. He's gonna get H5N1. That's what he's gonna get. Yes, that's true. Don't drink that milk, folks. What a pandemic too is, he's gonna be right there on the front lines getting it. Don't drink that, don't drink that wrong milk.

That would be hilarious if Trump has to do a second lockdown, y'know, and- Second round of stimulus checks. And yeah, and all the Freedom Eagle guys are like, Trump is the greatest president of freedom ever, y'know. While they've once again had all the restaurants shut down. ALICE I don't wanna do another lockdown. JUSTIN I don't wanna do that either, yeah. ALICE No, I think we should probably try and prevent

the pandemic too. JUSTIN I agree, let's... That's why we elected Donald John Trump. Uh huh. Um, I... It's kinda like Solzell's middle name is John on the flow. I really like, um, figure five here, where a guy appears to be hanging a big thing of mistletoe from a, like, a big lampshade. Oh yeah.

Oh god. This is an early European depiction of Chinese fireworks. Oh boy. Yeah, I mean, fireworks have been kicking around in China for ages. One of the four great inventions is gunpowder, after all, and it's of, like, some military use, but it's also just, like, it's a lot of fun. Once you just have gunpowder ready to go you can just, like, make little firecrackers, and like, uh, explode things for fun and profit.

JUSTIN You can make people think you're cool. That's what you can do. ALICE Exactly. That's pretty much the main purpose. ALICE This is the thing, I'm gonna enumerate an anthropological principle here. About 90% of the shit that happens is due to the human drive to do something cool. Therefore, about 90% of the history of China is also due to the drive to do something cool.

Country shit, yeah. Yeah, thus, I mean, honestly, TikTok was great for that in the early days. It was huge for seeing like Chinese peasant shit. Like Chinese rednecks. Old men are brothers. Redneck shit is like, you know, war changes redneck stuff, man. You wanna see 10,000 videos of someone lovingly washing an animal and then slaughtering it? I don't know why those things keep coming up on my feet, I really don't like them. Just keep serving me stuff I don't want.

Self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, take talk as far as... It's 80% wash, and you're watching the wash because, you know, it's nice to see an animal having a... The sentence I just said, I kind of got to the end of it and thought, no, that's a strange thing to say, but... You doing alright? Yeah, we're okay, we're okay.

I'm gonna do one thing here, which is find, which is, like, read into the record two facts that I learned from Wikipedia, because this is my research process, and it is now time for the first fact about Chinese fireworks, which is that there is one source that said that during a large fireworks display in the Song dynasty, a rocket propelled firework called, I'm not going to try and pronounce the Chinese, but an earth rat went off near the Empress Dowager and startled her. This was one of the earliest examples of rocket propulsion. So it's a straight line from Earth Rat Startles the Empress to RPG7. Yeah. This is also, um, it took a solid thousand years between the invention of gunpowder

and figuring out how to make a little rocket with it. So they did not move fast and break things back then. They probably wrote things. They probably wrote things, you know? Oh god, did they write slow boring? Oh god. Ancient... I mean, can you imagine ancient Chinese manicrasies?

If you had to summarize Confucianism as a value system, I would say it tries very hard to be the opposite of move fast and break things. That's just dickheads. Move as little as possible and preserve things. I hear you try. Just get, just try and do really well on the civil service exam. Mm, blushing.

Also, you're never free of your grandpa who is still judging you. LIAM Yep. JUSTIN Then you get to be a eunuch. ALICE I don't want to be a eunuch, man. ALICE Well, y'know, there are some who are born eunuchs, some who are made eunuchs, some who have eunuchs thrust upon them, so... That's almost a Bible quote.

LIAM At the Emperor's Court, of course. Yes. Obviously. It really does feel like last day before holiday break the teachers have wielded the ancient CRT and have put in one of those eyewitness videos, yeah. ALICE I'm really enjoying the, like, complex, objective ritual significance that also looks like a shitload of TV aerials and birdhouses. JUSTIN I was about to say, yeah, this is... ALICE They've got the Milky Way on there.

JUSTIN They do, yeah, nice. Very good. JUSTIN Some kind of early fireworks display before they had rockets, they just, y'know, you gotta string it up and make a bunch of noise, everyone gets excited. ALICE To be fair, if you lived in a world that is lit only by candlelight and the sun, this shit's gotta pop off. JUSTIN Oh, this shit's blowing your mind. Yeah!

Good point. Very good point. JUSTIN At the very least, they did have computers. ALICE Yeah, Abacus guy moves one to the left. JUSTIN Yeah, now they they ran Unix. JUSTIN We'll get to those. ALICE Awww. That's responsible. Is this some kind of, like, courtly punishment, where you can sentence you two for this?

JUSTIN I think I had that in 2024. SEAN I'm an American citizen, I will protest that. ALICE Just have you immured. No, I can't. They can't. They're gonna have to ransom me or something. Great General Roz, will you return to the front? He's just like, one second, please.

I have to go take a poop. Fetch me my brown pants. Fetch me my pooping pants. Yeah. So wait, so we've had a thousand years from gunpowder to fireworks. ALICE & LIAM Rocket tree? JUSTIN Okay, cool. SEAN Rocket tree.

You know, initially, again, these are sort of primitive firecrackers. Develops over time into rockets, mortars, with fancy colors, with chemical additives. And these are mostly like... ALICE Sort of an outgrowth of alchemy, in a lot of ways. SEAN Yeah, exactly. I've seen a lot. You're fucking around with the salts that kill you, and in the time before they kill you, you go, oh, that makes a weird colored flame.

Exactly. And then you die, and your notes pass to a guy who was trying to make fireworks, and he goes, yeah, potassium, yeah, sure. Yeah, and there was presumably a Chinese guy who also boiled a vat of piss for several months. So, you know, discovered, ah, I can change the color of the flame with this. Still haven't figured out lead into gold yet, but we'll get to that. ALICE Who cares, look at all the pits I'm boiling! ALCAME, ALCAME is so funny to me, given it's like, 100% fatality rate. Like, every alchemist

of note, until they started being chemists instead of alchemists, died of like- Potassium piss? Basically, yeah, of like, incredible poisoning. Just, stuff that we've talked about in previous episodes but absolutely self-inflicted and via skin. Just lovely. Lovely. Lovely. JUSTIN Searching for the Philosopher's Stone and discovering...

ALICE HF. JUSTIN Not every way, but enough ways to make the opposite of the Philosopher's Stone. ALICE The opposite of the Philosopher's Stone is just a tub of HF, yeah. JUSTIN Yeah, the opposite of the Philosopher's Stone is just a tub of HF, yeah. ZACH Yeah, the opposite of the Philosopher's Stone just kills you instantly. We've invented the stone that kills you instantly, it's called that.

ALICE Oh, you want an immortality? Oh, I thought you said mortality, boss. ALICE I mean, it makes sense why, like, Qin Shi Huang would be, like, drinking mercurily trying to prolong his life and stuff, that was, like, the state of scientific reasoning at the time, is, I haven't died of this yet, compared to some of the other stuff I've been doing, y'know? RIght, compared to the cesium I rubbed on my skin earlier, this is good.

Exactly, get out like a cobalt radiation source. It's also fun how many particularly heavy metal poisons feel kind of good. Lead tastes delicious. You can actually... Like, arsenic? Really good foundation until you die. Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah. Antimony as a food additive, you know, you get a lot of like...

RILEY Yeah, for the benefit of the listeners, Liam and I are just shaking our heads in confusion at this point. It's, uh, yeah. Antimony? Oh my god, okay. You can just fuck around, right? Until you actually die, a lot of poisonings feel okay.