Show 858: Elite Special Forces Bin Collection

They abolished the Brontosaurus a few years ago. They did the same with the Brontosaurus as they did with the planet Pluto. They demoted the planet Pluto. Then they announced that the species of dinosaur known as Brontosaurus... didn't in fact exist after all. There was another species that was a bit like a brontosaurus.

And all the brontosauruses that they had labeled brontosauruses were just merged into that species. They said, we thought there was two different dinosaur types where there was only one. It made us all very happy that we had a Pluto. So happy, in fact, that we named them after a much-loved cartoon character. And somebody decides, oh no, this is, we just get rid of this. We just get rid of this.

That's terrible for morale. There's more to it than just naming things and being scientifically accurate. You have to think about morale. Imagine if during World War II, Winston Churchill had come out and said, What would he have said? It would have damaged morale. He would have said, we're going to have no more of your own. The English people had this woman who used to go around singing.

uplifting war songs she only died a few years ago she was about 140 during world war ii she used to go around singing these motivational songs like we'll be again Know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day. If Winston Churchill has said we're not going to let her sing anymore, we're going to have no more cheerful and uplifting songs.

We're going to ban all entertainment. We're going to shut down whatever that radio program is that all the English people laugh at at lunchtime on a Saturday. Monty Python's great-grandfather or something. The Goon Show, that wasn't done in wartime, was it? No, but they had stuff like that. They'd gather around the radio in the middle of the day. This was before television. And they'd have a weekly half-hour anarchic comedy.

Some old men standing at microphone making noises and doing characters and everyone fucking loved it. Now, can you imagine if they banned that during World War II? And then they said, we're not going to do any of that anymore. We're going to be serious. War is a serious business. Everyone be serious. I would argue that that would be exactly as bad as telling us we can't have Pluto anymore.

And now that I think about that, it doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't make any sense at all, and this segment is probably going to have failed now. I've hereby deemed this segment to have failed. So that's unfortunate. It's a mess.

If you're listening to this from a location adjacent to a roller coaster ride, perhaps you've just put your children on the roller coaster and you've stood back to watch. You're sitting there listening to podcasts in one ear, listening to screaming in the other ear, and thinking, wait a minute, are they supposed to be screaming? Are the children supposed to be screaming? I thought this thing was supposed to be fun.

Screaming is what you do when you're not having fun, is when you're terrified. I know, they're screaming. They claim they enjoy this sort of thing, so... I keep putting them on this thing. Seems very good value with all the joy they supposedly get from it. But then when I put them on and it starts moving, they just start screaming like they're going through some horrific...

Horrific, horrific thing. It's like a train crash or something. They start screaming their heads off. In fact, everyone on the roller coaster does this. It goes along for a minute or two and then...

Rather predictably, it goes round the loop thing. It starts going up and down at steep angles. We all know that's going to happen. We've looked at the track before we got on it. And now they start screaming as if it's some horrific surprise that's being... thrown at them they start screaming their heads off now of course then when they get to the end of it they'll pretend they had a great time they'll often say oh that was fantastic that was fucking fantastic and we do it again

Of course, you will say, yes, how much is it? Let's see. See if I have any change here in my pocket. So you reach into your pocket. Have I gotten enough money here to let my children have another go at this thing that is apparently terrifying? Well, it sounds like it's terrifying, but they claim they enjoy it. Who am I to believe? There's a strange thing to lie about.

If you're in a plane crash, falling a thousand metres from the sky, you landed on the sea, ended up in the water and ended up somehow getting rescued and surviving. You wouldn't go around saying, oh, that was fucking amazing. That was absolutely amazing. Can I do that again? You'd say that's extremely disrespectful, first of all, to the pilot. and the cabin crew and all of the other passengers, all of whom perished, you come down here saying, oh, that was great. No.

Maybe people do think that that's great. It is somewhat great to have survived it. That's what makes it great. But the crash itself, no, you can't go around saying that. You can't turn up on the media saying, yes, I know everyone died, but... For me, the experience was great. I survived. I'm alive. I would argue I'm more alive now than I was before I got on that plane. If you ever want to increase your chances of being alive...

Get involved in a plane crash if you can at all. No, you wouldn't go and say that. For one thing, you get locked up in some mental hospital. They say there's something wrong with him. Something wrong with him. He's far too positive.

He was thrown from the sky. Like the Greek God of Thunder grabbed him with his fork. Oh, wait. Greek God of Thunder, wouldn't we? I'm sure there's some God who... Or maybe it's Satan who picks people up with her fork and then launches them from the fork or some such utensil. First you'd have to stick it into them. That would involve stabbing them.

You'd have to get some leverage going on your arm because you'd want to fling them from the fork. You'd have to get some leverage going on your arm, get some force into it. You'd be swinging your arm like, oh, you can't see this one. I'm doing the action with my arm now. It's actually quite tiring. If I was some sort of Greek god or Greek Satan or something and I needed to grab someone, well, I wouldn't need her. I'd be doing this just for kicks.

I want to pick someone up using a fork. Stab behind them, then pick them up like I'm picking up a sausage with a fork, and then I want to fling them from the fork. You'd have the fork enough. and momentum into the fork so that it would throw them and they would slide off the fork and then go flying across the room. If you do it in a way where they don't come unstuck from the fork then you've still got them on the fork. You look ridiculous.

Probably takes a bit of practice. Of course, if you're a Greek god or if you're Satan or whatever, you probably have had plenty of practice on that. You've been alive for thousands of years.

Had plenty of practice doing that. The god of thunder, I imagine. Couldn't just pick up the lightning in his hands. No, a piece of lightning, even if he is magic. able to survive touching lightning without getting electrocuted. That doesn't mean he'd be able to pick it up. Lightning is not a solid object. A piece of lightning is not a solid object that you can just pick up like a bit of metal or something. No.

You gather up the electricity on something like a fork. Now, I don't recommend doing this if you're a mere mortal. Don't pick up electricity with a fork, especially not a metal one. If I understand electrical current correctly, and I might not because I'm not the electrical engineer in my family. I'm the field accountant. So I don't know much about that stuff.

From what I understand, if you had a joint metal fork in your hand and you could somehow pick up electricity with that, you'd be drawing electricity into the fork and then they'll go into you and electrocute you or something. I assume if you're the Greek god of thunder or some mythical figure like that, it doesn't hurt you. Or you have a system, perhaps you have a special fork with a rubber handle and you're very careful with it.

All I'm saying is, if you think of the Greek god of thunder as running around in the sky and casting down bits of lightning, like he's throwing a ball, it's more like hitting a ball with a bat or a tennis rocket, or in this case, a fork. So he'd be casting the electricity down with his fork or implement. And again, a special fork. Now Honda conducts electricity into his hand. Although in his case, perhaps...

We have to remember these are not normal human beings. These are gods. So maybe the ability to generate electricity is in fact coming from his body. Electricity may well be coming from his arm and out through his handling into the fork. He's generating it. I suppose he'd have to be doing that. Because if he's just using the fork to pick up the electricity from somewhere and cast it down.

There's no special powers or talent involved in that. Anyone could do that. There'd be no special advantage to being the Greek god of thundering lightning.

That's like saying, I'm the Greek god of podcasting because I own a microphone. No, that's not how it works. Anyone can own a microphone doesn't require any special powers. other than the ability to go onto Amazon.something and type in a search for whatever it is. What's this microphone on you? That doesn't really matter. Suffice to say, it doesn't take much talent.

In fact, it takes even less talent, less and less talent every time I do it. Because whenever I break a microphone, all I have to do there is go into my purchase history and just find the one I got last time.

still quite happy with despite the fact that I keep breaking them and then I just go buy again buy this again and then it turns up in my front porch a couple of days later No special talent to that, so don't be fooled by these people who tell you, odd casters of these special, my point was that the Greek god of thunder, from those of a special power, he creates the electricity from his body.

Because otherwise, anyone could do that. You can't just be, I'm the Greek god of thunder because I'm able to throw electricity using this electricity throwing implement that anyone can get. Anyone can make one of those forks, I presume. I know they might be patented or something, but people who are willing to become a Greek god or impersonate one or replace one, they're not going to be worrying about patent laws or anything like that.

To just say, give me the blueprint for that fork thing. Have a look at that blueprint to see. It's a piece of metal. It's got three grooves cut in one end. If you cut three grooves in one end of it, that means it has four prongs. Now, do you need four prongs on an electrical fork? I don't know. Is it more like a tuning fork?

Those people, they have these tuning forks. You see piano tuners using them. They get this tuning fork. I haven't seen one since I was in music class when I was about 15. But remember, there's some sort of tuning fork thing. You shake it or you bang it on a table or something and it makes a noise. I can't remember what to do with it. I don't think I've ever met a piano tuner in my life. There's no reason I would because I've never owned a piano.

I think we have a Yamaha keyboard in the attic somewhere, but that's not the same thing. Do they need shooting? Maybe they do. I don't know. Does my harmonica need shooting? Maybe it does. Maybe that's why I've never advanced very much.

my harmonica skills. I've been playing this harmonica on the podcast since the mid-2000s. I don't really think I've made any, I don't think I've advanced as a musician in a sense. I really don't. I'm not just being modest. I'll try and play something for you now. Now that was a load of shit. And it's the same load of shit that I was playing back in the early days of this podcast. So no, I can't say I've advanced in.

harmonica playing. I do have two harmonicas now. That's the only advance of me. I'm a dual harmonica household now. I have that one that I use in here. That's the original one. And I have another slightly different harmonica in the setting room. But that's like if the Greek god of thunder bought a second fork, what's he going to do? Double his output? No.

In fact, very unlikely to do that because if you hold a fork in each hand, that probably messes up the current somehow. It goes in one fork and up through your body and out and then down through the other. That's probably how you get electrocuted.

You hear a lot about electricians who work on high voltage wires. I think I never remember. Is it making sure you only touch the wire with one hand? Or you make sure you always touch it with both hands so the electricity flows in one arm and out the other. I did see a thing a while ago about you Americans and your high power cables that are apparently so important.

You don't even switch them off when the electrical people are working on them. These high voltage wires that go across the country. They showed a helicopter flying above one of these high powered cables. with a hedge trimming blade hanging on the rope from the helicopter and they were using it to saw the tops of some very large trees.

lining a road right beside some electrical power cables, and he didn't even turn off the electrical power cables for that. He can't even shut it down for half an hour so they can cut the hedge. There's a documentary about that somewhere. fascinating and terrifying they go around to say oh look This is our main electrical wire. It goes all the way across the bracket. It puts the electricity into everything. It's probably powering the server that this podcast is on now.

And they won't turn it off for half an hour so they can trim the hedge once a year. It's not even the hedge, it's a line of very tall trees. It was either just below or just above the electrical wires. And then they have these people who go and work on the cables and they wear some sort of suit. They say, oh, while I'm touching this.

there's ten million volts of current flowing through my body but it's fine because i'm wearing some sort of suit and gloves fucking lunatics and then of course if you murder someone in america They put electricity through you the exact same way they put electricity through your hero electrical operatives and you treat them exactly the same and then you wonder why you can't figure out how you feel about the death penalty.

You Americans, I'm not picking on you Americans, but it just happens to be you Americans I know about. Because you're everywhere. You're on the media. You're on every movie I watch, every cartoon, every podcast. It's all about America. I happen to notice you have this thing where you go, oh, we don't like murderers. We believe in putting them to death. We're going to fry them. We're going to fry them. See, say this bastard.

He's giving him the death penalty. We're going to fry him because he deserves everything he gets. He deserves to die in pain and misery. We're going to put 10 million volts of electricity through him. But then what you do is just before you put the electricity through them, you take time out and you go and say, would you like something nice to eat before you fry? Anything you like up to a budget of $15, the chef will cook up for you.

Would you like a nice little burger or maybe some sausage and mash? Something nice before they kill you. Oh, you're doing something like that.

That suggests to me that your conscience isn't entirely as clear as you think it is when you're frying these people. Once upon a time, there was a dog. A dog. A- a dog a dog a dog a dog a dog a dog a dog basically a dog and this dog he was lying on a rug one day in his owner's house Minding his own business, relaxing on rug. In front of the fireplace. But it wasn't a fire litter and eating. Most fireplaces nowadays.

Don't ever get lit at all. There's never a fire in them, but the fireplace is there and the rug is there and it's still a nice comfortable place to sit. Often there's central heating on. That probably confuses the pets. Hundreds and thousands of years getting used to being man's best friend and they get used to these houses where they come in and they look forward to sitting down after a long day out hunting reindeer with their owner.

shooting geese or whatever they do and then they come home to a nice fire up until electricity and central heating were invented. People used to light fires in their houses. And the dog would be used to that and say, oh, this is great. I like living with humans. You get a nice hot fire every day. If I was living out in the wild with the werewolves and the foxes and whatever the wild dogs are.

What are wild dogs? I don't know. Are foxes dogs? Wait, I don't know. Anyway, if I was out with a pack of wolves or something, we wouldn't be coming home even after a long day out hunting. and bothering sheep. He never would come home to a fire like this. In fact, he wouldn't go home at all if he were wild wolves. Probably going to sleep in a hole somewhere. Where do wild wolves sleep?

Do they have a cave or anything? I don't even know. Surely they must have somewhere where they go to sleep. Have a little pad where they go. I know, they wouldn't build a house or anything. They must be somewhere where they go, where they go, it's night time now, we're finished our work.

or daytime do they work at night i don't know well if they hunt at night they must have somewhere to go during the day where they go for a sleep surely they don't sit in the middle of a meadow somewhere out in the open I'm not saying they have a house or something, but surely there's some shelter they go to. Do they go sleep under some leaves in the forest or something? I don't know. There must be somewhere. Anyway, please.

domesticated dogs. Over hundreds of years they got used to going home to their owner's house after a long day at the office or whatever they do and they get home and they sit in front of a lovely hot fire that's safely in the fireplace it's got a grid in front of it to stop the sparks flying out into their faces nowadays they come home they still have the fireplace because houses still have fireplaces and they still have rugs

But there's no fire lit, but it's still nice and cosy and warm because of the invisible source of heating that the dog probably doesn't even understand. The dog probably thinks the climate... Fantastic in the winter here now. This fella hasn't had to light a fire in almost 150 years. It's great, especially in the winter. I find this house is a lot warmer in the winter nowadays than in the summer. It's a bit odd. Maybe it's because he opens all the windows during the summer.

That makes it cold. I don't know. Of course, maybe the dog doesn't think any of that at all. Maybe the dog doesn't even notice. He's just sitting there minding his own business, having a nice sleep. And then a cat comes in. Thanks.

Close the dog's eyes out. Now, before we go on, I'd like to say I'm not promoting the idea of cats clawing dog's eyes out. I'm not particularly in favour of that. I'm neither in favor nor against that concept. I'm just reporting that it happens in this story. The cat comes in and close the dog's eyes out. And then the dog goes, oh, what just happened?

I felt a bit of a tickle in my face and now I can't see. Did I accidentally tickle my eyes out or something? I don't know. I thought I was asleep. Have I been scratching myself in my sleep? I don't know. And why do I feel a weight on my back? I hear some snoring coming from the top of my head, like something's leaning on it and sleeping. I don't know. Of course, that's ridiculous. Cats don't just go into...

and claw the dog's eyes out and then sleep on its head. That would be ridiculous. No owner would tolerate that for one thing. Owner would say, no, you've done that one too many times. It's time for you to get out of here and we're going to re-home you. We're going to re-home you and we're going to put you in some home for delinquent cats. They have these cats' homes for...

People send their cats if their owner dies or something and they haven't been left a fortune. So they have to put the cat somewhere. So they get the cat and they bring it to some. rehousing place. They say, hello, I have a cat here. Its owner died. I don't want to just throw it out onto the roads to fend for itself. So can you take this and deal with it?

And the people in the cat's home, of course, will say, certainly. What kind of a cat is it? How old is it? Has it had its injections? Is it being fixed? Was it ever broken? Has it ever lived with other cats? Has it done so peacefully? Or is it a loner? Tell me everything you know about this cat. I want everything. Just tell me everything. Absolutely fucking everything. I'll get out my notepad and I'll write this down.

That's what I imagine they do. I don't know why I imagine any of that. Last time I saw anyone furiously writing a load of stuff in a notepad, I think I was about five years old. Someone suspicious had come to my parents' house. Apparently they had a gun asking for some money or something. I can't remember. I wasn't there for the event. I do remember as a five or six year old.

A guard coming to the house, the Irish police officer, he called them guards here. He came to the house and he got out this huge notepad, A4 notepad, the big ones the students use, a refill pad. And he asked my mother questions about the incident. And he just kept writing and writing and writing. I'm pretty sure he got through about three pages. Now, in hindsight, a house we lived in until I was six and a half.

In hindsight, I look at pictures of the house now and it's a lot smaller than I remembered. The rooms are a lot smaller than I remember. The garden and the outside of the house are a lot smaller than I remember. The roads are a lot narrower than I remember. So it's very highly likely that that Garda's notepad was a lot smaller than I remember. But at the time, I remember him writing and writing and writing.

At least three pages of this notepad. He says, right, I was very impressed. I'm not sure that I even learned to write yet. That was probably in my first year at school or something. I remember being very impressed, though. That was my first experience of the police. Oh, maybe it was my second. That happened before the incident in the car. I did relate the incident in the car a few episodes ago.

I was in the front of the car once and we were stopped by a cop and he said, you can't have a child in the front of the car. I was about five or six then as well. So was that before that or after that? I don't know. Either way, I've been on both ends of the law there. So I think I got a balanced education as to the police. At the time, we were six and a half. So that's good.

now i know what you're thinking there you're thinking wait a minute what did he say about a gun well i'm not sure myself to be honest some man came to the door and i think if i understand correctly he may have been brandishing a gun He was threatening in some way. He may have been drunk and looking for money or something. My mother banished him or something. I don't know the details and I never will. I suppose I could ask my brother who was...

like the old Erwin. Maybe I'll ask him. He's on another continent though. I don't want to have to write a letter and get all the details about this. Dear sir, this is your younger brother. i'd like to ask some questions about her childhood about an incident i don't want to write this query and then get back from my brother excuse me you were there when she was describing it to the cops so you know more about it than me i don't know

Because if he says that, that would be a big disappointment. Because then I'll be the last surviving witness of that big thing that happened in my family. I was there literally as it was being described to the Garda. That's a big responsibility.

Isn't it? If you ever have an opportunity to take advantage of a supermarket trolley. That's been abandoned conveniently for you, close to where you're parked. The last person who used it decided to leave it there. and not bring it back to collect the deposit. Now you, I don't know if you foreigners do this. We have a system here whereby when you get a trolley, you put a one euro coin into a slot, and that's a deposit.

Just make sure nobody's watching you. Because you have a reputation. People don't think about this. But someday you might be looking for a job, looking to change careers. Or you might be running for...

a secretary of your local residence association, perhaps. Maybe you're looking to apply to be a legal minister of weddings so you can marry people in your own sitting room as a service or something, or perhaps... take over the milk round probably for the whole corner of the country if you're becoming a milkman or a milkwoman in the 2020s that whole thing is dying out so any milk rounds to her left

They probably cover a huge area. There's probably one fellow who does a whole corner of the country, one house every two miles that uses his services. So he spends much of the time just... driving just driving and driving and driving the old milk floats that he used to use for milk delivery rounds they used to be designed in such a way that he could stop it very easily and frequently and just hop out

You didn't have to open the door or spend ages stopping and adjusting the gears and putting on the handbrake. Maybe they have a handbrake, but the point is they were easy to stop and start again. It's also like the bin collection lorries. Now those are much heavier vehicles and they're certainly not gentle or quiet. The operatives hang on for dear life to a bar on the back of the truck. and then jump off and go running after those wheelie bins.

The way they run these bin lorries, the way they make these bin collection operatives run around in their rain, make them jog around lifting up these bins and pushing them as fast as possible as if there is some huge hurry. You would think they were being sent in at night undercover into Osama bin Laden's hideout. And they were sneaking in to get him at night. And he had to run around in the dark in the rain. Like special ops.

They're doing stuff that anyone in the military would spend five years trading before they go on a mission like that. If the army had bin lorries like that. where they expected people to run around catching up with the lorry and then run down and push this huge thing, lift it up into the lorry and then hang off a bar off the back of the lorry.

They go into a special training course. They do obstacle courses 24-7 for five years. They've all done top secret undercover. And only then, they'll be on standby just in case. The worst comes to the worst and we ever need to run a mission like that. And you just hope we'll never be needed for anything. For at least we're trained just in case.

Anyway, I looked into getting a milkman a few years ago. Going to get a milkman like my parents had. So I looked into this and there was a new service where you register your interest in getting a milk delivery thing. I don't think I ever heard back. So I think if you're waiting on a milkman, don't count on that. If I'd waited on that and then decided I won't drink any milk until I found a delivery service in 2025.

My bones would be falling apart and crumbling from their lack of calcium. If you don't have calcium, first thing that happens is that you crumble like a pillar of salt, like a biblical pillar of salt. There's a thing in the Bible where there's some fella walking out of a city. I think it's him and his family or something. God or somebody tells him, now get out of the city and whatever you do when you're walking out of that place, don't look back.

Or you'll turn into a pillar of salt. Of course, he turns around and then he turns into a pillar of salt. Or a rock or something. This is rather stupid. Someone warns you about something like that. Just fucking listen to them. Just listen to them. I know it sounds incredible. When someone tells you you're going to magically turn into a pillar of salt, of course you're perfectly natural to think.

That's bollocks. That fella's clearly a ludic. People can't turn into pillars of salt. And that's true. They probably can't. But if someone has gone to the trouble of risking themselves looking stupid and saying that to you... That means they're worried enough to think that there's a possibility that that might happen to you, that they've gone to the trouble of saying it to you and making themselves look stupid. So you should take that seriously. Take it seriously.

Even if the chances are very small, you might think, no, there's no way it can turn into a pillar of salt. Someone has risked their reputation being pulled away by men in white coats and put in a straight jacket for the rest of their lives. They've taken that risk with their freedom and their reputation just so they could warn you not to look back. Well, then don't look back, especially if it's God or if they're claiming to be God.

i suppose if they're claiming to be god and you happen to know that they're not then that's fine if it is god then you should well be listening to that i know he's a benign force but he did put all those people on that boat he said but two cats and two dogs and two of each species on that boat and we're just going to drown everyone else because everyone else sucks in fact the clear implication

that i got from noah's ark was that god thought everyone on the planet was shit he wasn't saying oh there's two of each species and those two of each species have a heart of gold and they should be saved no He was just randomly saving two from each species so he could start again. If you were one of those animals or people who got saved and put on the ark, I hope you weren't silly enough to think that that meant you were a perfect being. No.

He just needed to save two of you for biological reasons. He wasn't saying, oh, you're great. I'm going to save you. You're going to be the foundation of my new world. No, he just basically needed eggs from one of you. and other stuff from the other one of you. So don't start with your head full of nonsense about how great you are. No, he just got lucky.

He got very lucky one day and ended up being the last handful of people surviving on a drowned earth. He got lucky. The previous person who chose to... forego their deposit by not returning the trolley to its station is essentially paying you for your work and collecting it and bringing it back into circulation. So it's perfectly fine.

Just you don't want to be seen doing that. I suppose it's okay if they see you taking that trolley. As long as they don't see you getting the previous person's deposit back. You don't do that until after you finish your shopping though. I suppose they won't unless they're watching you the whole from the moment you retrieve that trolley that's been abandoned in the car parked until you do all your shopping and come back out of your car again and then return the trolley.

and collect this deposit that wasn't yours in the first place, they'd have to be watching you for the whole trip. So I suppose, yes, I'm overthinking the chances of you getting seen doing that. You're not really doing anything wrong. I'm just afraid people would judge you for that. But it's hard to get respect from your local community these days because these local communities just don't exist. We all live in boxes and apartment...

You've no idea who lives next door to you. The only time you see people is in the car park, either at the local supermarket or... The car parked is in front of your building. It's more of a bookcase than a building. That's what an apartment block is. It's a series of bookshelves. You live on a shelf. Now, you can't just climb down from the shelf.

to get down from the shelf you have to go through the front door of your apartment which goes into a corridor like having a little door in the back of a bookshelf You go into that and then you go back down the corridor behind the bookshelves, down a series of stairs or perhaps an elevator. And then you go down to the bottom.

and you come out through the bottom shelf and you go out into the car park. That's what an apartment block is. It's a bookshelf. There's no books, just a load of identical windows and balconies. If you're one of the lucky ones, you'll own a whole bookcase yourself and you'll be the landlord. And then where will you live? You can't just keep living there. People will look down on you and say, oh, that fella.

He owns a whole bookcase, but he still lives in one of the bookshelves. Why doesn't he go off and buy himself a mansion somewhere for all the profits he has from renting out this bookcase? And of course you'll say to that he said because I used the profits to buy more bookcases and rent those out.

And then when I have enough rent from them, I buy more bookcases. I'm just going to buy more and more and more and more bookcases until I'm the founder of Amazon or something. The founder of Amazon. What's his name? I forget his name. I believe he's there.

billionaire, of course, what happens then? You get to be a billionaire. The first thing that happens the day after you become a billionaire, you go down to your local shopping center. You probably don't have one penny toilet stalls in shopping centres nowadays, do you? No. When we used to have public toilets, our...

in public places like car parks and city center parks. We used to have public toilets where if you wanted to go into a cubicle, you'd put a penny in the slot and you'd get in. I really liked the mechanisms and those trolley deposit things. Except they weren't making a deposit, not with the coin anyway. They were making a payment of one penny to get into this toilet. You go in there, then you'd make your deposit in the toilet. Then you'd wash your hands.

And then you'd leave, but you wouldn't get your deposit back. If you do that the day after you become a billionaire, you spend a penny doing that, instantly you're no longer a billionaire anymore. You've spent a cent out of your billion. So you're down to 999,999,999 euros and 99 cents. I know you're probably thinking that's not how it works at all. He'd have made about a million euros in interest overnight on that billion. I suppose that's true. I don't know.

I bow to your superior knowledge of what it's like to be a billionaire. I've never held that status, nor do I expect to. So I yield to your...

higher knowledge of the situation. If you're listening to this through a cloud of tobacco smoke, or perhaps other types of smoke. Some of which may well be legal in your jurisdiction, but I'm pretty sure they're not legal in mine. You have very high restrictions on what type of smoke you can have within your environment here. They banned several types back in the 1980s. It made a big difference if I remember rightly. They banned the coal that produced that smoke in the 1980s.

The smog over Dublin disappeared overnight. Anyway, if you're listening to this through a cloud of smoke, it'd be a cigarette smoke or smoke from your fire or smoke from your barbecue. or smoke from your cooker, which you're using to bake marijuana cakes. Is that a thing? I think they put marijuana in baked goods now, don't they? Isn't that what the young people do?

In places where it's legal, they get this marijuana or cocaine or whatever it is they have, or ecstasy, and they literally bake it into cakes. I think they make brownies. Is that a thing? I think so. Or maybe they just buy them. Do people bake their own drug brownies or do they just buy them off Girl Guide to whoever sells them for charity? I don't know. Do they buy the charity brownies and then add the drugs later, perhaps? I don't know.

Add the drugs and then put them back in the oven. Because then you'd want to get brownies that are only half-baked. You want the scouts to be selling brownies that are only half-baked so you can add your own. When you go to the supermarket now... You can get a half-baked French stick. It's a strip of dough that's been half, it's still semi-raw and you put it back in the oven for about 10 minutes and then you have a fresh roll.

I presume that's what they do with these brownies. You get them half-baked and then you add the drugs and you put them back in the oven and then you get yourself half-baked. Is that a thing? I'm not in touch with that world. The only drugs I do are over-the-counter sleep aids, coffee, energy drinks, what else? Food, podcasts, Star Trek The Next Generation, accumulation of cats.

I don't do any illegal drugs at all. And I'm not just saying that because it's on a podcast, by the way. No, I don't do drugs. I'm a law-abiding citizen of this country. I obey the rules and regulations and laws that have been set out by society. I'm part of that. We have a system. Our citizens and we come together every four or five years. We go out to the ballot box.

and we make a vote we carefully read through all the politicians proposals about what laws they're going to enact or de-enact and we say right I'm going to sign up to this I'm going to cast my democratic vote now and make my choice and I'll agree to be bound by whatever laws are made by these people because I've selected them. If I do want to do drugs, I'll vote for someone who's proposing to legalize the drugs that I want to use.

And then if it turns out he fails to do so, that's a failing on my part. I've made a bad political choice. I've chosen a failure who's either turned out to be a lawyer or just not very good at enacting laws. I don't say, oh, he failed me. I'm going to go and do cocaine anyway, even though he hasn't legalized it. I do not. For one thing, I've no interest in doing these drugs. Why would you want drugs? No. There's more to life than crumming drugs than your greedy gullet like this loads of macro.

For one thing, a brownie is a perfectly enjoyable baked good without adding any drugs to it. It's perfectly enjoyable. Now, not these homemade ones you get from these kids who go around selling them for the scouts. I wouldn't eat them. They're disgusting. For a proper professionally baked brownie from a supermarket such as Tesco, if I ever see them on special, I get one. Sometimes they do the brownie bites, little cubes of brownie bites.

Now, I have a problem with calling them bites, not just brownies. Any confectionery item that's marketed as bites, I have a problem with. They'll tell you here's brownie bites and it's a box of bite-sized pieces of brownie. It's designed to fit exactly perfectly in your mouth, so there's no biting involved. It fits perfectly. You're not biting a piece off. So it's not a bite. Unless they're pre-bitten, are they? The smallest thing they would...

count as a bite legitimately should have more than one mouthful in it because you need to be able to bite a piece off. Otherwise, it's not a bite. It should be the size of two mouthfuls, the pair of bites. Well, there's one bite in it. No, at least even then it's complicated. If you make it the size of two mouthfuls, you bite off the first mouthful and then you're left with the second mouthful there.

which itself is also now not a bite because you won't have bitten it off you're left with one bite but you can't bite that off because it's already separated so it's still only one bite i don't know I suppose there's such a thing as overthinking this stuff, is there? It probably is. You might argue that I'm underthinking it as well. I'll give you that. I'm not underthinking it half as much as the people who are doing drugs all day. No.

I'm doing caffeine and energy drinks. If anything, I'm more likely to be doing more overthinking than underthinking. I've been thinking now almost continuously for the past two and a half hours that I've been in here. I've been doing non-stop thinking. My brain hasn't stopped in ages.

I stopped consuming caffeine and energy drinks about three hours ago and drinking water. The water is probably helping because it's keeping my brain hydrated. You have to keep your brain hydrated or it doesn't work. The drugs and the caffeine and everything else, they are supplementing it, but you still need the hydration. You need to hydrate your brain, keep it wet. It needs to be wet. If your brain dries up, then you're in big trouble.

Is then what you're left with is a, well, nothing can move. Is there a lubrication in your body, I wonder? I know there's water. Everything in your body has water in it. Blow this liquid that flows through you. You hear a lot about hydration and blood and keeping things oxygenated and hydrated. You never hear about keeping it lubricated. No, they don't say anything about oil or any other kind of lubricant. So...

It's not a problem apparently. Surely your bones and your joints need some kind of lubrication. Even the door of the toilet needs to be lubricated at least once a year or it starts squeaking. And of course, the worrying thing about that, I once over-lubricated a door and a member of my family got locked in the bedroom. They couldn't open the door. I lubricated it so much.

The door handle couldn't turn with the mechanism so the door couldn't be opened. Had to break it open. I suppose we should be glad then. There isn't a need for lubrication in the body because it'd be easy to overdo. And then what happens when you over all your body probably causes some huge problem. It's something along the lines of if you drink too much water.

Which you can do. There was a few years ago, an American radio station had a competition where it got their listeners to drink gallons of water and one of them died. So I suppose it's good that we don't have lubrication to worry about for our bodies. One less thing to worry about. Let's be grateful for small mercies like that. Anyway, this dog...

He was sitting there happily on this sitting room floor, enjoying the heat. Enjoying the heat. Oh, this is great. that modern convenience is fantastic this is absolutely amazing to think that i'm here in this artificial cave that's being built by putting blocks of artificial stone on top of each other in a suspiciously straight format like they've been carved by probably some aliens came along a hundred years ago and carved up all the quarries into

cuboid straight blocks so they could be conveniently arranged into houses that are conveniently straight straight lines and flat walls and flat floors nothing like a cave at all That's the thing about a cave. Caves, they're convenient in one way, in that they're just there. You can move in straight away. If you come across a suitable cave to live in, you can just move in straight away. Don't have to do anything to it.

unless you're obsessed with decor, but with a house. You have to get the bricks first, which you usually get by demolishing someone else's cave. I don't know if you realize that. When you buy a house, every block that has been used to make that house has been got by basically destroying someone's mountain that they probably have a cave under. Do they even check?

When you go to a quarry and you get stones from that to be made into bricks, has it occurred to you that there might be someone living in a cave underneath that? Maybe it hasn't. And you won't find them until the quarry is nearly empty because you get to the bottom of the quarry and then you realize there's an empty space there where there's no stone and that must be a cave that's at the bottom. And that's someone's house.

It's like when you go around with a vacuum cleaner around your sitting room and you just point it up at the top of the wall and the ceiling and the corners and you go, oh, look, that's a cobweb. I'm going to suck that into my vacuum cleaner. That's someone's house. And the same is true of a cave. A cave may be negative space. That's empty space inside a mountain. It's someone's home.

Now, I know there aren't a lot of people living in caves in the developed world. I understand that. But there are other creatures living in cracks in that mountain. There's things that live under that mountain. i presume there are anyway are there wait a minute are there though maybe maybe there are maybe there are if you're so into turning rocks into

bricks and reshaping them to suit yourself. Why don't you just get them from a volcano instead of a normal quarry or mountain? Get them while they're red hot and then it's like getting melted down glass. Like one of those people in Waterford Crystal who get this melted down glass. You put it on the end of a rod and you expertly form it into the shape you want. Form it directly into a brick.

At least there's a good chance there isn't someone living in there. So you can take it with less guilt and more convenience as well. It's good for the environment because you're using the natural heat that's heated up that rocking. Made it melt and your wallet's melted and hot and red hot. You form it into the shape you need and then no more energy needs to be expounded to make that brick. They're also gradually taking away a dangerous volcano.

At the same time, that's looking after the environment we've a lot to get on with today. Items that need to be attended to. Issues that need to be addressed. We're positively booming to the seams with topics. We've got topics coming out of. Topics coming out of. Oh, what's this? Oh, there's an outdoor sweeping brush in here. I'm starting to get concerned. I told you before about the outdoor.

weedy bin that's in this bedroom has been in it for some time in this bedroom it's in it for a legitimate purpose and it's clean it's not like i'm bringing the outdoors in But now I see there's an outdoor sweeping brush in here as well, and that is bringing the outdoors in. I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with that. I'm going to have to have words with myself about that. That shouldn't be in here. That's not appropriate.

There's also a tarpaulin. Is that what it's called? A tarpaulin. The kind of thing that you put on the ground to catch leaves when you're cutting a hedge. There's one of those in there and in here. It's on top of the wheelie bin. When I brought that in, I hadn't intended to keep it in here permanently or even in the medium term. So no, that needs to go. I needs to go in this shed. The outdoor sweeping rush needs to go in this shed as well.

The shed is indoors, but I count it as outdoors. It's not the sort of shed you'd sleep in unless you had to. And if you had to sleep in the shed that's in the back garden of your own house. then that leads me to question what's happened to your house i suppose if it burnt down nowhere else to go i suppose you could sleep in the shed but i haven't sure and surely that would cover me to sleep somewhere else

Let's not worry about that though. You can worry about that sort of thing too much. You end up, you end up, that's what happens. You don't want to end up. Stop worrying about where you end up or what you end up or how you end up. Just decide not to end up at all. Don't end up full stop. And of course... People will say, this end up. You see that on boxes sometimes. They'll say, this end up. And all of my life, that phrase seemed completely normal to me.

And it probably seemed completely normal to you when you say this end up on a large box. It means keep this end facing upwards when you're carrying it. By now that I've talked about ending up, every time you see that... for the rest of your life. And every time I see it for the rest of my life, I would say, this end up, you're going to go, this end up what? Where does it end up? How does it end up? What does it end up?

And I just want to be exactly like an earworm, the verbal equivalent of an earworm I've put into your head now. In fact, that was the original concept for the name of this podcast. into your head i was going to fill your head with nonsense with all sorts of things into your head which i believe i do

Now I put that into your head. Anytime now you see this end up on a box, you're going to say, this end up where? This end up what? Where does this end up? What does this end up? I want to know what this box's fate is. Well, of course, its fate is in your hands. And I would argue that if you're carrying something that's delicate enough to need this end up written on it, you should be doing it with assistance anyway. Don't be trying to lift that up on your own.

Maybe you're not trying to lift it up. Maybe you're doing the opposite. Maybe you're using this box as an inner lining for your garden shed that you've been forced to live in after your house burnt down. I suppose that would make sense. It'd make a good inner lining. I have a metal shed, and it's not a hermetically sealed metal box. It's not designed as such. You have corrugated metal walls.

then a corrugated sloped roof. And where the corrugated sloped roof meets the top of the corrugated walls, the air can get in there. So it's not hermetically sealed. So yes, you would want to have something to insulate that. Ideally, a big cardboard box that was just slightly smaller than the shed. Now, perhaps the shed comes in the cardboard box that you could use.

You'd have to shrink that slightly, would you? Maybe cut it to size. Why would a shed come in a box that... No. A shed like that wouldn't come in a box that's the same size as the shed or even slightly bigger. No. because that shed doesn't come assembled it comes in the flat pack so a flat pack wouldn't be much use if your house does get destroyed and you have insurance you ring them up and they tell you what to do anyway to say do you have a shed

I'll say, yes, I have a shed. Can I live in that for a while? And they'll say, no, because your shed isn't insured. You haven't insured your shed. You can't be living in there. It's too dangerous to live in your shed. What if it burns down? And you'll say, why would it burn down? And they'll say, well, for one thing, it's still connected to the mains electricity circuit of a house that's lying there in ashes. The wiring is all effed up now. If it exists at all.

So once you go and switch the light on in that shed, probably going to get electrocuted. Anyway, that shed's for you. Have you ever lived in a shed? You probably haven't. You probably will, though. The way the property in this country is going, we're all going to end up living in sheds. Well, except me. Except me. I live in a house. There's no reason I would stop living here. But the rest of you, unfortunate young people.

You may well end up living in a shed down shit creek without a paddle. Is that a thing? This end up shit creek without a paddle. Is that a thing? I think so. You're up shit creek. You end up in some hellhole, whitewater stream somewhere. It's full of shit and you've lost your paddle. I'm surprised that doesn't happen more.

These people go whitewater rafting or canoeing in some place where the water is foaming and there's all little waterfalls and rapids and you're all over the place. Half of your day you spend upside down in the water trying to figure out where... Everything is. They don't seem to lose their paddle as much as you'd expect them to lose it. Maybe it's attached to them. Maybe they have it like we used to have with our gloves. When we were going to school, your parents would put your gloves on.

piece of string and you'd have the string would go up one sleeve of your coat across the back of the inside of your coat and down the other sleeve so you couldn't lose your gloves unless you took them out of the coat as well. Did they do that with paddles on a canoe or a rowing boat? I don't know. I was in a rowing boat once. It was the emergency life dinghy wooden boat thing of a rented.

Holiday cruiser that we got when I was a teenager. I wasn't impressed by it I can tell you. He and my friend got into this wooden boat thing. First thing that happened when I tried to get into it was I fucking leaned over at one end. It was like being on the Titanic, capsizing.

You move your finger a tiny bit to the left and the whole balance goes. You have to spread out your legs and make sure your weight is perfectly balanced or else you're fucked. Sometimes we rode around a bit just to see what it was like. It was like shit.

I suppose that's okay. It's an emergency lifeboat. It's not meant to be enjoyable. It's not meant to be enjoyable. Recently, I've read several books about people who got lost at sea. They're either in a yacht or a... fishing boat and ended up stuck for weeks or months in a dinghy out at sea and you would hope that that would be somewhat enjoyable if you're going to be stuck there for the rest of your life waiting to drown or get eaten by sharks.

Surely make it somewhat tolerable. Don't make it so every move you make you're afraid you're going to sink. No, make life both somewhat enjoyable. If you think that that's a waste of space or resources. That's probably what they think. They think we're making this lovely luxury cruise ship. And if there's going to be a lifeboat, you don't want to waste anything on that because you're never going to use that.

If you're making a life carriage on a luxury train, that would be different. Because you'd put a carriage on the end in case the front of the train crashes or devails or something. The train equivalent of a lifeboat would be a carriage that's attached on the end, whereas independent battery operated electrics and lighting, so it can be separated off very easily.

in case of an emergency. So if the rest of the train sinks or crashes or devails, this thing at the end automatically separates so it doesn't get damaged with the rest of the train. And then that's like a lifeboat. I think I've just invented a lifeboat for the railways. Have I? I think I have. Nobody ever done that before. Maybe they have. Let's say you're on some train going across Europe.

What's that thing they used to have? The Trans something or other Express? The Orient Express, wasn't that a train? Maybe it still is. goes from England to China or something along those lines. Inspector Poirot was always on it solving murders. Now the fact that there's murders on it is probably a bad thing. That goes on a very long journey. There's a reasonable chance that...

It could come to harm. It could go through some storm or something and much of the train gets damaged or derailed. So you have a carriage attached to the end of that. But it's not attached in the normal way. It's not properly attached. It's kind of a tow rope, a very long tow rope. So when the rest of the train derails. It doesn't necessarily drag the life carriage off the rails with it. It stays on. You give the life carriage its own independent power source. Keep some emergency supplies on it.

And everyone who survives the train crash, if they're stuck in some place where it's minus 20 degrees because they're going through the North Pole or something, they can go cram into that lifeboat carriage. Now, would they need a... propulsion system maybe i don't know or just need to be like a thing you just sit in until you're rescued like a life dinghy i suppose make it big and bright and yellow invisible from space

So if the train doesn't turn up at the expected time, the authorities can connect to the satellites and see, do you see a yellow thing on their railway line anywhere? Probably as a flashing light, it's probably letting off some emergency fireworks as a signal. It can't be that hard to locate part of a train anyway. It's obviously going to be somewhere along the train line.

Be easier to locate than a lifeboat, I suppose, that's drifting in the Atlantic. I think I've invented the emergency rail life carriage boat, but it's not a boat. You can call it a lifeboat. In Star Trek, they use nautical terms for stuff in space. They have ships, and they have a bridge on it, and they say starboard and bow, and they pull out buoys.

So I don't see why you can't do the same thing with trains. Trains already exist. Spaceships don't exist. Trains do, and we can use noticable terms for trains, because why not? Why not? Anyway. Good morning.