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Podcast 57 Transcript

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A transcript for Episode 57: "Letterpress Waffles."

Pronoiac set up a Fanscribed page, and this transcript came from there.

Transcript

jingle: (theme music)

jessamyn: So, hey, this is episode 57 of the Metafilter Podcast. Our last episode was recorded on Monday, November 8, so this will be stuff from - oh! pretty much exactly a month, which never happens, and I hope you enjoy it. Josh, when are we going to get a podcast jingle that has your name in it? Or cortex's name in it?

cortex: One of these days.

2011. Let's aim for 2011. (laughs)

mathowie: (laughs)

That's so far off in the future!

jessamyn: All right. All right, man, you've got three weeks.

mathowie: Oh, here's something minor, if you go to the podcast site: we are showing off, we are using it for testing the past two weeks and haven't heard a single complaint, of HTML5 audio player.

cortex: Oh yeah!

jessamyn: Which could mean anything.

mathowie: If you go to podcast.metafilter.com, there's no Flash on the page. It's just a HTML5 player, that seems to work fine. We're ready to switch Music over -

to it. Oh, it works on an iPad and iPhone, you get the little player.

jessamyn: That was gonna be my next question. Nice!

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: So any of the no Flash stupid machines.

mathowie: Yeah, before Paul was kinda concerned it doesn't work perfectly, it's not, you know, because the touch controls are kinda small, but I was like--

jessamyn: Sure.

mathowie: --it was blank before. Like, there was no--

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: (laughs) There was just a cube and a question mark.

cortex: It would like, what did it do, it kicked open... well, I think it kicked open a QuickTime thing, if, yeah.

mathowie: If you downloaded it, yeah, if you went to download it would kick open an audio player.

cortex: But it's sort of clunky and weird.

mathowie: Yeah. And then it tries to download a 50 megabyte file to your phone, which isn't ideal.

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: I don't really like that. We don't have enough Internet here to deal with that. I have to share it with everyone else in Vermont.

Today's Wednesday, December 8th?

mathowie: Yeah. I guess we have to mention good posts from the first week of the Awesomest Post Ever Contest.

jessamyn: Yeah, I know, right? Well, it's not the awesomest post ever. It's just December Post Contest.

mathowie: Oh, it's Awesomest Post Ever if 'ever' includes just December of 2010.

jessamyn: I think we're both saying the same thing.

mathowie: Yeah, but it sounds better when I say it.

mathowie, jessamyn, and cortex: (laugh)

jessamyn: Oh, that's how it's going to be today. (chuckles)

mathowie: I guess what, I haven't looked at Jobs.

jessamyn: I have!

mathowie: I haven't looked at Projects. Anything cool in Jobs?

jessamyn: Oh, you know, if somebody's in the DC area and wants to help k8t [keɪt], K-8-T, I don't know how to pronounce her name.

mathowie: k8t [keɪti]. k8t [keɪt].

jessamyn: --unpack her apartment, she is working on her PhD, or she's an academic and she's got a baby, and she needs someone to help her unpack!

mathowie: Oh, and it's not even open until tomorrow to the end of the month. So I was thinking, "Oh, this is weeks ago, it's already happened," no, it hasn't.

jessamyn: No, no, no! So, people in the DC area, want to hang out, and as near as I can tell she's nice and interesting and everything else, so you should help her unpack her house! I only wish I--

mathowie: Plus, you get to go through her personal things!

mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)

jessamyn: You can touch all her books. I only wish I could be there to help her out. Unpacking

is wicked fun!

mathowie: Oh, we should mention the holiday shopping mall.

jessamyn: Oh, yeah! I could talk briefly about the holiday shopping mall.

mathowie: Yeah, works better at the top of the hour than the bottom.

jessamyn: Yes. We have put together the Metafilter Shop from last year, and one of the cool things about it that we have this year, [other than?] last year, is pb coded up a little photo randomizer for the side, so you can add pictures of your stuff

by adding it to the whatever-it-is, the Metafilter Shop group pool. Details are in the MetaTalk thread about the store. But yeah, you know, as always I'm surprised at how creative and interesting all of our people are, and they sell all sorts of neat stuff. Lots of Etsy stuff, lots of authors, lots of CafePress things, and a lot of other random things.

mathowie: Sweet.

jessamyn: timsteil and his friend did a Route 66 documentary.

mathowie: Awwh.

jessamyn: And I've sort of enjoyed the nearly identical clothing sets for multiples that Fricka does. It's really cute, because you know how there's lots of people thanks to fertility treatments who are having twins and triplets. Seriously. No, you haven't noticed this?

mathowie: Yeah, yeah, no, totally.

jessamyn: Well, she's made a whole store that's basically for moms and their multiples. It's cool!

cortex: Huh.

mathowie: Multiples.

jessamyn: She had it up last year, too, but I always liked it.

mathowie: Wow. Route 66 blog.

jessamyn: It's really cool! There's a whole bunch of really cool stuff going on there.

mathowie: There's not much of that left. [All that?], wow.

jessamyn: Well, they made a big trip on it, and then did a documentary about it, and it looks like it's probably awesomely interesting.

mathowie: What does Ten Years Later refer to? Did they do it ten years ago as well?

jessamyn: Err... click through.

mathowie: 1999, they drove it, it looks like. And then they drove it--

jessamyn: So they're watching it deterioriate.

mathowie: Yeah, 1999 to 2009. Huh. There are stretches of it where I grew up in Southern California, like out by San Bernardino, and they were in disrepair.

jessamyn: Is that the highway that's the loneliest highway that goes through Nevada, or is that a different...

mathowie: No, that's--

jessamyn: Completely empty highway.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Because I did enjoy that when I drove across it.

mathowie: I think that's when you go south from Elko, which is in far-east-north Nevada, almost to Idaho,

jessamyn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

mathowie: And that's an outpost that looks like you're on

the planet Hoth every time I've been through there.

jessamyn: (laughs) And there's big signs, like, "Oh my God, you're in the middle of nowhere!"

mathowie: Yeah, it's like, "Get gas here, and it's wicked cold, and there's nothing but semi-truck trailers, and, you know..."

jessamyn: Right, Ely, you go through Ely, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

mathowie: That's, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then if you go south from there there's nothing. Nobody.

jessamyn: Oh, and along those same lines, we should probably mention, we added the dancing Santa to the Ask Metafilter page, so if you're looking for gift ideas, please

give us a clue about who you're looking for and maybe search the gift, christmas, holiday, and all the other tags before, but don't forget, there's the Awesome Gift Ideas page on the wiki that has people's accumulated Ask Metafilter threads about gift ideas already! It's actually kinda good.

mathowie: (chuckling) [That's what it is. ?] Dancing Santa!

jessamyn: Yah! And the real answer this year is those little hacker bugs? Like, that appears to be the thing

that if you don't know what to get people, you either get them that square of magnetic balls, or you get them one of those little hacker bugs.

mathowie: Oh yeah. Huh. I think... or tiny helicopters, are those still a thing?

jessamyn: (laughs) I don't know. I'm saying hacker bugs and the magnets. But probably. Tiny helicopters are always still a thing.

mathowie: I mean, I [?] think it was huge last year or the year before, but they're still around. I mean, they're tiny, tiny... like, hand, they fit in your hand, tiny helicopters with remote controls.

Those are fun. Wow. Dancing Santa alert is over.

jessamyn: What are they? Are they not hacker bugs? What are they called?

mathowie: What's a hacker bug?

jessamyn: They're those little... they're little... ehhh, now I can't remember the name...

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: Why don't you just go to Gift Ideas?

jessamyn: What are you laughing at?

cortex: I just liked the sound, the, you know.

jessamyn: ehhhhh. I call it the Sideshow Bob rake noise.

jessamyn and mathowie: ehhhhhhh.


jessamyn: Because there's two open Secret Quonsar threads, and one of them talked about the hacker bugs, and obviously it's not the one that I commented in. Errr.

mathowie: Oh, man. 105 comments on the "Why did you delete my thing?" Geez.

cortex: It's sort of wandered at this point.

jessamyn: It's under control.

cortex: There are about fifteen comments on the actual question, and about ninety now--

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: --of MetaTalk just being MetaTalk. (chuckles)

jessamyn: And it was fine. And the

guy who opened the MetaTalk thread is relaxed, and so it's just, you know, a couple people who like to holler about censorship because it's the holidays and they're home with their families.

cortex: And then everybody else trying to be...

mathowie: Oh, and everyone--no, that thread over there, where Mo Nickels gave us shit about 'tis, 'tis the season, that was...

jessamyn: Well, see, that's the thing, if you know Mo Nickels--

cortex: (chuckles)

mathowie: I was gonna say, 'taint a problem in my eyes. (chuckles)

jessamyn: (laughs) That's very funny. Well, and if you know Mo Nickels, you know his whole kinda thing, and you know it's kind of a joke--

mathowie: Yeah. Word nerd.

jessamyn: --but it's funny too, and I don't know. I like Mo Nickels very much. (pause) But now we're off the rails again.

mathowie and cortex: (laugh)

jessamyn: So that's what I had for... Jobs. (laughs)

mathowie: Sweet! Let's get this back on...

jessamyn: God, Josh is just gonna laugh at all my jokes today. I should think of some good ones.

cortex: You need me to not get sleep before a podcast more often. I'm just, I'm an easy...

jessamyn: Burt burt!

cortex: Herp dur burt herf de burt dert! Herp de burt!

jessamyn: (chuckle) An agreeable avuncular guy. I mean, you're always kinda agreeable though.

mathowie: Euhhh.

cortex: Herf, [? herf herf podcaster].

mathowie: How about the best Projects of the last month?

jessamyn: Projects has been awesome.

mathowie: Yeahh. Lute Cat!

jessamyn: This month. Don't you think? Here's the best one. In fact, this is my favorite podcast Project (cortex chuckles), I mean my favorite project, probably all year. Although it's by Paul Slade, who has done a whole bunch of I believe other Projects... he's a mostly Projects commenter.

cortex: It's kinda, yeah, it's...

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: If it was crappier stuff I'd be

sort of actively bothered by it (chuckles).

mathowie: Fifteen pages!

cortex: But as it is, he posts good stuff, so.

mathowie: Can you give the short version?

jessamyn: Yeah, and I have AdBlocker off, so if this is all just some kind of ad scam thing--

mathowie: No, no.

jessamyn: But basically, it's a story of Tom Dooley, and a lot of people know Tom Dooley because of The Kingston Trio's song, but a lot of people don't know what the story is, and this is really a comprehensive, you might almost say... what do you say when people are a little obsessively into their

thing? He does a ton of research, and there's a ton of links about who this guy was, what the actual story was, what actually happened, where the song came from, who recorded it, who popularized it, and for people who are really into folk history, it's the best. Like, I read it all the way start to finish, and I never read anything start to finish anymore. It was really just great, and I really liked it.

mathowie: How does the Tom Dooley song go? Let me go to--

jessamyn: (sings) "Hang down your head, Tom Dooley!

Hang down your head and cry!"

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: It's all about, you know, he's going to go get hung.

mathowie: Sweet.

jessamyn: Because he--

cortex: If you know what I mean.

jessamyn: --did a thing.

cortex: If you know what I mean.

jessamyn: But there's not a lot going on. But he's a real dude!

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: What?

cortex: (laughs) Just enjoying some euphemism. Please continue.

jessamyn: (pause) But I grew up listening to The Kingston Trio singing it. It was very popular, and a whole bunch of people did their own different versions of it, but nobody knows the story. This is the story.

cortex: That's neat.

jessamyn: It is neat!

sfx: ("Tom Dooley", by The Kingston Trio, plays faintly through mathowie's speakers: "A condemned man named Tom Dooley...")

mathowie: Wow.

jessamyn: I hear you listening to it.

mathowie: I looked it up on Google, gives me YouTube, and there it is, the song on YouTube. 386,000 views. And do you know what the video for it is? Blackness. Nothing. Nothing at all. Just a black screen playing the song. I was telling Paul the other day, my dad, older man, slightly disabled,

he uses YouTube as the radio. Just anything you think of, he just Googles it--

cortex: Oh, yeah.

mathowie: Like Frank Sinatra, "My Way". And then goes to YouTube and then plays Frank Sinatra.

jessamyn: And listens to it.

cortex: I do that too.

jessamyn: Right!

mathowie: Yeah, like that's his iTunes. Like, he'll just think of a song, Google it, and then play it at... and it's always the album cover as the song plays.

jessamyn: I have sort of a thing going for trying to find songs that you can't find on YouTube.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: It's quite difficult.

mathowie: It's funny that they haven't cracked down on it.

jessamyn: They're just monetizing it. Like, what do they give a shit? They don't care.

mathowie: Yeah, I guess.

cortex: Yeah, I mean, if someone complains, I'm sure they'll take it down in a second. Obviously they're not shy about--

jessamyn: They don't even! They just put a link to buying the fucking song!

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: Yeah, I think there was a Buy It Now on Amazon when I was just looking at Tom Dooley.

cortex: But yeah, no, I totally do that too. I mean, I do other stuff as well listening to music, you know, but there are plenty of times I'm like, "Oh, that song!", and I go looking for it, boom, and then I listen to it. And it's kinda nice, because you do the same thing with Pandora, except then three songs later it'll have moved on to Coldplay

somehow, no matter where you started, so.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Pandora never has anything I want, though. And YouTube tends to. I mean, it may have to do with what your kind of niche interest music is.

mathowie: Isn't it weird that it's like--

cortex: I tend to do a lot of catch-up on pop music. Like, I want to listen to something three or four years after it came along and I hadn't really listened to it. So that, it's pretty good about that, it's like, I've been listening to New Pornographers recently, and they're obviously not a brand-new gig anymore, but I hadn't listened to them really before, and I'm really liking it.

But yeah. So it's not like it [???].

jessamyn: I recommend A. C. Newman if you're trying to stay awake today.

cortex: Yeah? A. C. Newman?

jessamyn: Yeah!

mathowie: It's weird, so the record industry is now basically depending on some bored kid in Idaho who uploaded some 1958 song to YouTube to sell that song. Or random kid in Brazil, you know, because every song ever seems to be on YouTube. It's so weird.

cortex: People like music.

jessamyn: Yeah, except for indie bands from Seattle in the '90s.

That's the only hole where I can't find every single song I want.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Like, there was a great Ask Metafilter thread, which I'll probably mention during that, but it was like, "-ongs about sleep." Like, pretty easy, right? You go to your iTunes and you type in 'sleep' and then you listen to the songs, because they have to be about sleep, not just have the word, and I found that like half of the ones I had on iTunes I could find on YouTube, which is actually a fairly low ratio, you know. You would think every song is on YouTube.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: But a lot of them weren't, and they were local Seattle stuff, mostly.

mathowie: Mudhoney?

jessamyn: Mudhumpy! Yeah. No, I don't think they've done a song about sleep.

mathowie: Dude, did you see this Project on the letterpress stuff? I can't find the actual...

jessamyn: (ascending pitch) Buheuh-buheuh?

mathowie: This was Dempsey Press, absolutely beautiful site, beautiful work, amazing letterpress stuff.

cortex: I did not see that.

jessamyn: Oh! No, I didn't! I tend to not to look really closely at the username is the same as website Projects, for some reason.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: But I should have looked at this one.

cortex: (chuckles) Because it's kind of a bad sign sometimes?

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: And often a bad sign.

cortex: Especially when the username and the website are both named, you know... DiscountCalendarResale.com.

mathowie: Get Rich Quick.

jessamyn: But it's got an awesome comic, yeah.

mathowie: dripdripdrip.

jessamyn: Wait, what does this have to do with letterpress stuff?

cortex: What, no, no, I jumped on the gun on... the bittermensch thing is unrelated.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Oh! Okay. Wait.

cortex: I accidentally jumped the gun on Matt there, so.

mathowie: Yeah, sorry.

jessamyn: Which are we talking about?

cortex: Dempsey Press.

mathowie: We don't--

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: The letterpress one, with letterpress stuff.

jessamyn: I was like, "Bittermensch is a good name for a letterpress."

cortex and mathowie: (laugh)

jessamyn: Yes! This was terrific! [??]

mathowie: View the links!

jessamyn: This in the Store, also, if people want to actually get stuff from the Store. And they've got one of those Heidelberg Red Ball presses, which are awesome, awesome, awesome. There's awesome pictures of it on their website.

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: What?

mathowie: You know the brand of letterpress?

jessamyn: There's not that many! I used to have a

letterpress when I lived in Seattle.

mathowie: So you just get the paper--is it the whole thing, you just get the paper wet, you press it, and it bumps out a little and looks cool, and then you wait for it to dry? Is that it?

jessamyn: (with energy) No, no! It's like, there's this giant machine, and it has a plate in it, and then there's a roller thing that rolls the ink over it, and then it smacks the plate of thin ink onto your plate of letters, and then it slips a piece of paper on it and goes BA-BANG! So it's kind of like the slowest typewriter ever

with really good ink. But a lot of it has to do with the sliming of this really thin layer of ink onto a flat plate. And so the slimer has to be flat, the plate has to be flat, then the plate hits the letters, which you had to put all in there, and they used to be made of lead, and so people would go all crazy by putting them in their mouths. And then it goes and hits the piece of paper, and then you can... you have to keep putting the paper in by hand and whatever. If you go to their website you can see some really cool pictures of it.

mathowie: Oh, cool. So it's still.

jessamyn: But it's cool! Letterpressing is neat.

mathowie: It looks cool. I was wondering how intense it was.

jessamyn: It's a little intense. There's a lot of cleaning involved with it (mathowie chuckles), is what really soured me on... because if you just want to do some little project, I had a tabletop letterpress, and just to do a little project was a shit-ton of cleaning up a ton of stuff. And like, I don't mind--

mathowie: (chuckles) It took me four years to come out with labels for everything in my house!

jessamyn: Totally.

mathowie: The shittiest label maker ever.

jessamyn: But it's kinda great, because people do some of their own little stuff, and I got some letterpressed holiday cards this year, and they were beautiful.

mathowie: Yeah, I've gotten them.

jessamyn: People really like the vibe of it, you know.

mathowie: The letterpress wedding invites and stuff are always super nice.

jessamyn: Totally, totally.

mathowie: But iPhoto, the one thing iPhoto 11 doesn't suck at is I think it has letterpress options, I remember it was in the...

jessamyn: What does that even mean? That doesn't mean anything! What?

cortex: It will actually cause ink to spill out of your printer.

jessamyn: It's the only way it could be worse at this point in time.

mathowie: No, you can order it, you can order stuff, you know, like books and prints and stuff. One of them was this weird letterpress thing with your photo printed on it. Somehow they mechanized it.

cortex: Like, it creates an actual block that you can use for printing, or...?

mathowie: No, no, no, it just shows up in the mail after you pay ten bucks for it. And it's actually letterpressed instead of just printed.

cortex: Oh. Ah.

jessamyn: But that doesn't make any sense!

mathowie: It was in the last... like, the keynote for

iPhoto, or iLife. I just thought, "Holy shit, a major corporation is doing letterpress? How does that scale? How do they have...?"

jessamyn: I don't even know how you can do that. But yeah, I mean, they're just machines. You can have people running them in China, I suppose, the same way you could have people running them here.

mathowie: Yeah. Ohh, child labor.

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Tssh.

mathowie: Is there anything you can't do? (chuckles wryly)

jessamyn: They can't run a library, because they can't see above the desk.

mathowie: Ohhh.

jessamyn: Ohhh.

mathowie: Is that a racist? I don't know.

jessamyn: What? Because children are shorter?

mathowie: Oh, I thought you were going to make fun of Asian children being shorter.

mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)

jessamyn: That exists in your own mind. We'll just edit this out. Okay! Moving on.

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: Let's talk about this comic, whoever wants to talk about this comic.

cortex: Bittermensch. I just wanted to point it out, I haven't even read through all of it yet or anything, but I liked what I read. It's a nice webcomic.

And I always kinda worry when I see webcomic posts in Projects. Because, I mean, I don't worry, you can post anything you want to Projects, and, you know, I appreciate the creative urge and the fact that people are trying, and...

jessamyn: But you're afraid it's going to be somebody's darling, and then a whole bunch of nerds are going to show up and be like, "We hate you."

cortex: Yeahh... a lot of webcomics aren't really great. And, you know, it's a valid form of self-expression, it's fine to go for a little audience. But, you know, they're not always so hot, but I thought this was fantastic. So I clicked through, you know, despite my general, maybe I just shouldn't because then I'll feel bad if I don't like it.

But no, it's great! It's fun, and it's really well-drawn.

mathowie: Sweet.

cortex: And I think it's great. So there we go.

jessamyn: Did you vote for it? Did you leave a little comment?

cortex: I voted for it. I didn't comment as such.

mathowie: Oh, I forget to vote.

jessamyn: (chuckles) Comment qua comment?

cortex: (chuckles) Exactly.

jessamyn: I think we need to post from each other's accounts on April Fool's.

mathowie: (sucks in breath, then exhales) Ahhh... hmmm.

cortex: That could be tricky.

mathowie: Yeahh.

jessamyn: (chuckles)

cortex: A little bit tricky.

mathowie: Well, we'd all have to abuse our newfound power, though.

jessamyn: Right. But then you'd switch it back in the end of... well, and then you couldn't, I guess.

mathowie: (chuckles) To let people live with those consequences of the abuse. Awesome.

jessamyn: Sure, but it would be funny! Like, you know, we'd all post, I'd post from the vacapinta account, and people would be like, "When did you start talking all the time and up in the middle of the night?"

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: You know, he could post from mine and Josh could post from yours.

cortex: (chuckles)

mathowie: I will respect what he says, since he is a man now! I will not argue

with him!

jessamyn: Exactly! That's what I'm waiting for, really.

mathowie: (chuckles) Exactly.

jessamyn: I just want a little respect. Maybe if I posted as a man...

mathowie: (chuckles) Ohhh.

jessamyn: Alright, and there's one more project, just to mention it, because it just came in yesterday, I guess, is this completely awesome book by gottabefunky about crossing the heart of Africa--

mathowie: Powered by Ask Metafilter!

jessamyn: Powered by Ask Metafilter. He links to eleven questions that helped him write his book.

mathowie: Wow, I am stupid.

jessamyn: And a book actually got written, and it's amazing. Well, I mean, I haven't read it, but.

mathowie: I am so stupid, American stupid, about geography. When he said he crossed the heart of Africa, and he mentioned like three major countries, I assumed it was horizontal across the globe. (chuckles) No, he went from Egypt to South Africa, he went north to south, south to north.

jessamyn: Top to bottom, yeah, yeah, yeah.

mathowie: Bottom to top, it looks like he started... aughhh.

jessamyn: Well, I think crossing people think means side-to-side.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Is there some reason for that? Like, if you cross your heart... well, I guess that's kind of an X.

mathowie: Well, he did give countries, he was like Malawi, I know where Malawi is, that's in the south. I assume that he just cut across... eugh, I'm stupid.

jessamyn: Sorry!

mathowie: Yep.

jessamyn: This is why I'm bad at trivia, actually, because I don't know enough about Europe. I actually know probably more about Africa than about Europe. Which actually... oh, sorry.

mathowie: Oh, I just remembered the one time I went to London, and

I was watching the BBC News on the plane on the way in. It was all this African news that I had no idea existed. Like, there's all this strife in Zimbabwe as the election's coming up, and I'm like, "Really? Wow." And there's tons of Africa knowledge just being dropped, and I was like, "Oh my--"

jessamyn: Right. BBC is great for that, because they still actually have reporters in Africa.

mathowie: Yeah. Yeah, and oh my God do we not care here about other side of the world stuff.

jessamyn: I care.

mathowie: Oh, I know. But media--

jessamyn: Hey, Lute Cat! In fact, hold that 'crossing Africa' thing, because it leads into my favorite AskMe, but let's talk about this one first?

mathowie: What is your favorite AskMe?

jessamyn: Wait, I--

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: Oh, okay, that'll be a good segue.

jessamyn: It would have been a good segue.

cortex: (is still laughing)

jessamyn: Past tense.

mathowie: Oh, we have editing powers.

cortex: Oh, no, I think this is better.

jessamyn: No, no, go ahead, Josh.

cortex: The Whelk made some cards out of Lute Cat, which I think is neat and I'm entertained by because it was based on my deletion reason. You can buy them, and they're kinda nice,

and I bought a couple, and they're great.

jessamyn: I actually bought some too, and The Whelk, little word of advice: please write DO NOT BEND in significantly larger letters on the outside of your envelope, because my post office and I had a little bit of a détente when I was like, "What the fuck? You bent this!" and they were like, "What? I can't even read that!", and they gave me a big orange sticker--

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: --that says DO NOT BEND, which was really insult to injury after the point because they stuck it on my bent envelope.

cortex: (is, once again, still laughing.)

jessamyn: I have killed Josh.

cortex: (a few more laughs) That's pretty great.

jessamyn: But yeah, no, they're really nice-looking, and everyone should buy some Lute Cats for the people they love.

mathowie: "Play him hence, Lute Cat."

jessamyn: But back over to AskMe, when we're talking about crossing the country, this was one of my favorite questions, and it was asked right after we did the podcast last month--in fact, I feel like I mentioned it in the podcast last month, but the dates make that impossible!

Basically, "how do you walk across the country in your country?" So there's canonical cross-country journeys in different parts of the country. We've got the Appalachian Trail and the Long Trail, Canada's got the Trans Canada Trail, but there's a whole bunch of trails in other countries that I knew nothing about! So this was wonderful and I enjoyed it, and it was short but informative.

mathowie: Mmm.

jessamyn: Errr!

mathowie: (mutters) "How do they walk cross country in your country?"

jessamyn: Yeah!

mathowie: East to west, north to south, how hard is that? But they actually did an AskMe for it. How hard is that?

jessamyn: Right. Oh, God!

mathowie: What?

jessamyn: If vacapinta said it was interesting, you'd say it was interesting!

mathowie: (laughs) "Fascinating, thank you."

jessamyn: (laughs) "Really! Tell me more, vacapinta!"

mathowie: No, I'm thinking of bikeways, and there's the north-south, there's... I mean, there's all sorts of routes, someone does mention the Adventure Cycling Association, which is the ultimate mapmaker for America.

jessamyn: Well, there's a lot of rail-to-trail kind of stuff for cycling kinds of things. I know there's awesome trails around Massachusetts that are pretty terrific like that.

mathowie: Sweet.

jessamyn: Josh is like, "Sounds like exercise!"

cortex: Yep.

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: (laughs)

mathowie: Sounds like someone's wearing brown shorts and walking!

jessamyn: (laughs)

mathowie: Which is all hiking is. So Ask Metafilter, have we officially segued to it?

jessamyn: That was my segue, what do you think?

cortex: That was good.

mathowie: Pretty strong.

cortex: It was seamless.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Almost seamless.

cortex: I liked how you worked Lute Cat into it, that was really a surprising degree of difficulty. Nice.

jessamyn: Thank you, thank you.

mathowie: Where is Ask Metafilter? I don't have any favorites marked.

jessamyn: I had a bunch to say about Ask Metafilter this time and not so much about the rest of it, so I'll be happy to just...

mathowie: Run with it, maybe.

jessamyn: Run... (laughs)

cortex: Because I got nothing for AskMe this month.

mathowie: I got nothin'! I got nothing marked.

jessamyn: Well--

cortex: Well, you know, actually, I saw a post the other day that was talking about newbies to the game

Arkham Horror, which Angela just got for me and... so that was actually convenient.

jessamyn: Oh, I just played that, actually!

cortex: Yeah?

jessamyn: At a Metafilter meetup a couple months ago. It's complicated.

cortex: It is!

jessamyn: I would be interested in that question.

cortex: We spent two nights getting through part of a game. I mean, part of the problem is we spent the first night mostly just reading the fucking rulebook--

jessamyn: Right, right, right!

cortex: Because it's 24 pages long, and it's a big book, so it's not like 24 napkins.

jessamyn: 24 pages? I read a William Gibson novel in the last two nights. Really? Really?

cortex: (chuckles) Well, yeah, but okay--

mathowie: Whaat?

jessamyn: (chuckles) "Sounds like work!"

cortex: You get to the end of William Gibson's novel and there's not a quiz sitting on the table that you all have to agree on the answers to. So, you know, it's a little different.

jessamyn: Yeah, but I gotta talk to friends about it, you know.

cortex: Well, yeah. I'm just saying it doesn't compare, and you can go to hell.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: But anyway, there was an AskMe about it, and that was nice, because it's got a couple one-page cheat sheets that summarize all the rules. Because part of the problem with the rulebook is, the rules for any situation aren't necessarily super hard, but they're all from the rulebook.

jessamyn: You really gotta understand a bunch of situations.

cortex: Yeah. You gotta keep flipping them back and forth. It's like, okay, now it's time to do the next step of the next turn, let me turn twelve pages and find the bit that talks about that again.

jessamyn: Yeah, I played with zizzle and Cat Pie Hurts and Jim and a whole bunch of other people at their house for a game night and we were really lucky that there were a couple people who kinda knew that part.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Because oh gosh, we already spent far too long reading the rules and I can only imagine what it would be like if there hadn't been somebody there who knew what was going on.

cortex: Did anybody get lost in space and time or devoured?

jessamyn: You know, people just kinda die quickly--

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: --which sometimes with a new game isn't a bad thing, you know? Because you're like, "Okay, this game looks great, but really, is it going to be six hours long?" But, you know, it was fun! I'd like to play it again.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Sometime. When I had a little bit more time.

(pause)

cortex: So good job, AskMe.

mathowie: Did we?

jessamyn: Yaay!

cortex: You were relevant to my life.

mathowie: Did we have a Ask Meta--did we have a podcast in my brain already? I have the same problem you have, Jessamyn, which I

could have swore we talked about this, "What stuff can I buy cheaply online?" that's...

jessamyn: That's because this question gets asked every eleven days.

mathowie: Yeah. Maybe so. It just seems like we talked about it in the last podcast, but this thing was posted like a week ago.

jessamyn: It wasn't this one, I think, it was a similar, which--

mathowie: Oh, it was "What is overpriced?"

jessamyn: Yeah.

mathowie: What's wildly overpriced, and this is... but this is more like, what commodity things are wildly overpriced that you can buy online much much cheaper?

Like HDMI cables.

jessamyn: Yeah. These are great! I use these as examples all the time when I'm explaining digital divide stuff, because it's one of the things that everybody can get their head around.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Like, look, it's fine if you don't want to be on the Internet! Totally fine. Totally fine. But... you're paying way too much for printer ink. And people kinda get that, you know? Because printer ink at the stationery store costs a shit-ton, and printer ink online costs normal amounts if you know where to buy it.

mathowie: Yeah. I was laughing at the original question, they mention gaffer's tape, you know, just colored tape that's sorta sticky that you use all the time when filming stuff and taping stuff. It's always... I've never seen it less than 12-14 dollars a roll, and then I followed the comment to a link to gaffer's tape online stuff, and everything started at 12 or 14 dollars a roll, which cracked me up, but.

jessamyn: Hehh.

mathowie: Apparently it used to be cheaper. Like it should be--

jessamyn: I just realized I spent too much for holiday ribbon, reading this thread.

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: Let's see. What else have I spent too much money for? Dog toys...

mathowie: Eyeglasses.

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Oh, I bought vanilla beans the right way.

mathowie: I thought this was interesting, the AppleCare via eBay. I've seen that warranties--

jessamyn: But that doesn't work anymore, I don't think.

mathowie: Ohh. I've seen lots of warranties for sale.

jessamyn: Like, I was a huge person, yeah. I was the person who was always like, "Oh my God, it's great, I got AppleCare for 50% off," but the guy I used to buy it from doesn't sell

it anymore and doesn't answer e-mail about it, which leads me to believe maybe there was something sketchy going on.

mathowie: Ohh.

jessamyn: But my AppleCare still works, so that's really all I care about.

cortex: I had this idea that maybe I would approach the problem of not having any favorite AskMes this month by just clicking on Random a bunch, but it's not really working.

mathowie: (chuckle)

jessamyn: Euhhh.

cortex: But it's not really working, because, I mean, well, with MeFi it's going to be like--

mathowie: Going back six years.

cortex: --oh, here's a random neat thing, oh, here's a curious story, oh, here's an artifact. But on AskMe it's like, oh, it's someone's really personal situation, oh, it's somebody's really personal situation,

oh, look at the question about trying to make Vista work. So yeah.

jessamyn: Here's one about germs!

cortex: Germs! I like germs.

mathowie: Ooh, what comes after [moss ?]? Germs.

jessamyn: It's great! It's by Pastor of Muppets, which is one of my favorite usernames (mathowie chuckles) of all time. And basically it's kind of an interesting question. "How come when I see a commercial and it shows the thing killing the germs, or the bug, or whatever, it doesn't show you the thing killing all the germs, it shows you the thing killing most

of the germs?"

mathowie: That's realistic.

jessamyn: There's always a germ left. Why?

mathowie: Even in illustrations for TV only, we're talking?

jessamyn: Yeah! Specifically for illustrations for TV only.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: And people talk about it, and there's a couple interesting microbiology people talking about it, and I don't know, I just learned something when I read it.

mathowie: That's funny, why would they make that realistic? I guess they don't want to trump it up as they'll kill everything, I don't know.

It's weird.

jessamyn: Yeah, that they're afraid it's going to be giving false claims if you show it killing everything, but if there's still one fake germ left...

mathowie: (chuckles) Because clearly, you know, scientific trials conducted by the Ty-D-Bowl Man should be taken as gospel.

jessamyn: Right. Right. Ty-D-Bowl.

mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)

cortex: I was just thinking about the Ty-D-Bowl guy the other day. I can't remember why.

mathowie and jessamyn: (chuckle)

cortex: I think maybe there was a discussion of building a giant toilet in Minecraft, actually, so...

mathowie: (laughs) Oh, Jesus, and shaving your head.

cortex: Because then you can just totally paddle... because you can build a boat, so you just paddle around the giant toilet, maybe. But I didn't bother trying to build that one.

mathowie: (chuckles) Nice.

jessamyn: (sighs)

mathowie: I liked... unusual blogs, blogs about unusual lives.

jessamyn: Hey, that was on my list too!

mathowie: Ha-ha, beat ya. (chuckle)

jessamyn: That's fine.

mathowie: It's just good reading for people...

jessamyn: And it's short, surprisingly.

mathowie: Yeah! Yeah. But lots of people...

jessamyn: People who live in Antarctica. People who are taking methadone.

mathowie: A cabbie.

jessamyn: People who move to... yeah! And there's a link to another earlier thread about alternative lifestyles, which is more of a wince-inducing term for me.

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: But basically, like, yeah, hey, you live your life differently than the bulk of, whatever, the people reading it, what are interesting blogs? I like reading blogs around here by farmers, people who do a lot of agrarian kind of stuff. They're neat. They're good reading, usually.

There's lots and lots and lots of people in the world who write interestingly about the things they do in their lives.

mathowie: Yep.

jessamyn: So, back to my other best of AskMe, "Which things are better when they're worse? I prefer stale licorice--"

mathowie: Mm.

jessamyn: "--I like overcooked turkey--"

mathowie: Eugh.

jessamyn: "--new leather looks weird, what else?" And it's just kind of a fun, you know, hey, hot dog buns are better when they're a little burnt, Triscuits that are a little burned on the edge, peanut butter and

honey sandwiches are better when the honey soaks into the bread, you know, real maple syrup, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, somebody recommended Grade C maple syrup! Which is my new thing this year.

mathowie: Wow! Going down to industrial grade.

jessamyn: Yup, yup! I have a gallon of it in my fridge right now.

mathowie: Everyone in Vermont does.

jessamyn: No, Grade C is a little harder to find!

mathowie: Refrigerators come with a syrup spigot, don't they up there?

jessamyn: (laughs) They really should. But man, can you imagine cleaning that? It's worse than a letterpress.

mathowie: (chuckles) But, it provides convenient syrup release right on the door, so [??].

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: [Think that they've ?] ever done printing work using syrup?

mathowie: (chuckles) A letter syrup?

cortex: Think about it. Design the most beautiful print ever, and then make it with syrup--

jessamyn: And then have bees.

cortex: --and the person that's looking at it, they have to be torn between, well, it's a priceless piece of art, but also, I could lick it. Maybe like a human dilemma, you know.

mathowie: I'm just going to say two words--

jessamyn: Well, there's maple syrup ink that comes in Neopets.

mathowie: I was just going to say two words, and I think we can make something out of this. Ready?

cortex: Do it.

mathowie: Letterpress waffles. That's all.

cortex: Hmmm.

jessamyn: That's--

mathowie: You put in a blank waffle, and you say something you love with a thin layer of syrup on it... aagh.

cortex: Well, I was thinking it would be a, moveable type would make the waffle iron face itself, so you'd be actually pressing whatever the print was into the surface of the waffle.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: (sings) Letterpress waffles! In the heart of America.

cortex and mathowie: (laugh)

jessamyn: It's a really, you know, anybody can...

cortex: There's still a whole Bob Marley...

mathowie: I'm sure there's a shop in Brooklyn doing it.

cortex: (sings) No waffle, no cry!

mathowie: (laughs)

cortex: (sings) do-do-do-do, no waffle, no cry!

jessamyn: You know, I have Googled 'letterpress waffles' and I'm not, you know...

mathowie: It's an open market, is what you're saying. We're leaving money on the table.

cortex: (sings) I! poured the syr-up!

jessamyn and mathowie: (laugh)

cortex: It's a good concept album, we could put--

jessamyn: No results found for 'letterpress waffles'. Matt Haughey, you have done it.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Make sure this is called 'Letterpress Waffles'.

mathowie: Okay. Sweet.

jessamyn: The podcast.

mathowie: Yeah!

jessamyn: And that way you'll have cornered the market when you decide to go viral with your waffle videos.

mathowie: Moving on... did you see--

jessamyn: Wait! Oh.

mathowie: What?

jessamyn: Hey, this was the other one I liked!

mathowie: Science tricks for 8-year-olds! "I'm doing an eighth birthday party and want some wacky stunts I can show

that's really cool," and there's a crapload of easy sciency things to do that are awesome demos.

jessamyn: How old is your daughter? 5, 6? 5?

mathowie: Five, five.

jessamyn: (chuckles) Sorry, I didn't think.

cortex: Hold on for 2013, Fiona, it's gonna be great!

mathowie: She was flipping out over when I rode my bike up Mount St. Helen's and grabbed some pumice off the top, and then brought it home--

jessamyn: Yeah!

mathowie: --and said, "Check it out, let's get a cup of water! The rock floats!" and that just blew her skull apart, like, "WHAT?!"

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: "How does a rock float?! That shouldn't happen! Oh my God!"

cortex: Very small rocks.

jessamyn: I'm saying her seeing this in Aziz Ansari's voice. "WHAT?!"

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: "Whaat?!"

jessamyn: That's great.

mathowie: Dude, this milk and food coloring and bubbles is amazing. Holy crap.

jessamyn: And you can really learn stuff about science, which is kinda cool too. I'm always in favor of learning more about science.

mathowie: Well, the adults can. The cool 8-year-olds really don't care. I never cared as a kid, I just wanted to see a cool demo.

jessamyn: But did you learn stuff that later you were like, "Ohh, it's like that light bulb that that kid made in the science experiment!" No?

mathowie: Nope! Not until high school.

jessamyn: Just me?

mathowie: It was high school. Yeah.

cortex: Sorry.

mathowie: Oh, yeah.

jessamyn: Sprite and salt? Oh, ferrofluid! Oh my God! (excited noises)

mathowie: What, Sprite and salt? (pause) I still want to make some of that cornstarch fluid, neofluid stuff.

jessamyn: Oh, that's easy. Super easy.

mathowie: Yeah, I know. I never bothered with it.

jessamyn: The ferrofluid videos on YouTube are some of the awesomest things ever. Because it's basically oil and metal shavings, and it...

mathowie: Woww.

jessamyn: I know. Blows your mind. You wish you had some handy psychedelics.

mathowie: Is that magnets? How do you make it do that?

jessamyn: And then with magnets you make it do the stuff.

mathowie: Woww.

cortex: Yeah, I find this stuff terrifying.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: I mean, like...

jessamyn: Because you're afraid you're going to see it as a monster in your--

cortex: Well, it's just a very visceral sort of thing, like, I think it's fascinating, I think it's a very neat effect

and I like looking at it, but sometimes it just pushes some fucking, I mean, speaking of Arkham Horror, this is some horrible, unspeakable stuff from another dimension sort of feel when it's moving and globbing together and you've got this shiny black viscous horrible stuff moving in a--

mathowie: So what you're saying, Josh, is fucking magnets, how do they work?

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: Seriously.

mathowie: Okay.

jessamyn: Everybody's getting the magnets for Christmas, man. That's how it's going to work.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: They were on Woot. I made my dad go to Woot and buy them.

mathowie: Oh, like those buckyball

things?

jessamyn: Yeah, but the little squares?

mathowie: Yeah. Oh, okay. Sweet.

jessamyn: Alright. I have one more, maybe two more Ask Metafilters and then we can move on.

cortex: Do it.

jessamyn: This one's pretty straightforward. "All great libraries have books in them, but how many great books have libraries in them?" This is just books that have great libraries in them.

cortex: In the story?

jessamyn: Yeah. Straightforward. We have over 200 librarians on Metafilter, they will appreciate this.

mathowie: We should do some sort of groups thing.

I don't know what to do with it, but.

jessamyn: Oh, shut up! Edit that out. Everybody's gonna want it.

mathowie: What? What?

jessamyn: Everybody's gonna want it!

mathowie: That's demand for a feature! I just don't know what to do with it once we've identified all 200 librarians. People will be like, "Can I MeFi Mail all of them in one blow? Can we have our own MetaTalk?"

jessamyn: That's what I'm saying. We don't need to be Facebook, there is Facebook already. Although I guess we could... you know what might be cool, actually? A Metafilter Diaspora node?

mathowie: Augh, I hate Diaspora. (chuckles)

cortex: I forgot about it already.

jessamyn: Why are you [??] Diaspora? It's all the social stuff that you don't want to build!

mathowie: Because it doesn't work!

cortex: Well, other than that.

mathowie: It doesn't work, I don't know what the fucking aspect is (cortex chuckles), I can't add someone to more than one aspect in my life, even though I might work with them and ride a bike with them and talk with them.

cortex: They're trying to encourage you to partition your life.

jessamyn: You can! You can multiple-aspect people.

mathowie: I know! I don't know if that was the prime problem to be solved with Facebook, like, keeping my mom separate from my friends from my coworkers.

cortex: That's a pretty [??] problem.

jessamyn: That's a life problem that you need, yeah.

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: It is! It's a huge problem. But people figured it out, they edit themselves when they need to. Or they selectively do privacy stuff. Making it a top-level requirement? It's weird.

cortex: Well, but think how much weird sort of 'my attempt to partition my life has failed' drama you see, that I could see someone sort of thinking, "Man, we should fundamentally address that problem." And I don't know if that's what they're going for or not, but--

jessamyn: I think hanging out in real life solves these problems pretty well.

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: Yeah, it does. That doesn't scale well to the Internet.

You can hang out with some people, but you can't hang out with everyone.

jessamyn: (laughs) But, I mean, a Metafilter Diaspora node might solve some of these problems. But yeah, I'm not pushing it, I'm just saying, instead of us reinventing things that already exist.

mathowie: So that would be our group interface, is a Diaspora subgroup or something? I don't know.

jessamyn: Yeah! You have all the Metafilter people have the ability to port their Metafilter username over to a Diaspora username, and then you can skin it like Metafilter. And, I mean, it's open source, right? So it's pretty easy to

jigger around with it, I think?

mathowie: I mean, we might as well just have a MetaTalk for every group, you know, like the way Flickr does.

jessamyn: Oh, because that works really well, and everyone loves the way Flickr--

mathowie: Oh, it'd totally scale too, I mean.

jessamyn: (snorts)

mathowie: We have so much time to watch every discussion thread in every subgroup.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: (hums in a bee-like manner)

mathowie: (laughs) Ooh, how about if we gave admin powers to the group leaders, and then they could have power struggles?

jessamyn: (sings) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

cortex: Is this a--

mathowie: Wait, wait! There'll be a Sarah Palin group.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: (stops singing) I'm sorry, can you guys hear that noise in my head?

(pause) I have one last Ask Metafilter, unless anybody wants to talk about libraries some more, or your ill-advised Metafilter Groups idea.

cortex: Eh.

mathowie: No, let's move on.

jessamyn: (chuckles) "How do you use digital media as a reference while cooking?" Lots of people geeking out on good ways to either use an iPad or use a computer to do recipe

and conversion stuff in their kitchen.

mathowie: I use iPhone, but you always have to tap it to make it stop it going dark.

jessamyn: Oh, to keep it awake?

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Can't you change that, or no? You can't change that setting?

mathowie: You could, but then you'd forget.

jessamyn: So complicated. Touch a button.

mathowie: (drinking water, chewing ice) It's like ten button touches.

jessamyn: Chewing ice may mean you have an iron deficiency.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: I know, right?

jessamyn: Right!

mathowie: I've chewed ice my whole life, and I have to edit these ice chews out. I'm just making more work for myself, really.

jessamyn: (laughs)

mathowie: Maybe I'll leave that one in.

jessamyn: But I enjoyed the Ask Metafilter thread because a lot of people talked about apps they use or things that help or blah blah blah, and my sister is a big digital media person, I'm going to send this to her.

cortex: Interesting.

mathowie: Your sister? How? What?

jessamyn: Well, she's a real cook, but she also has an iPhone and stuff like that, but she wouldn't necessarily look up iPhone cooking stuff, so I think this would be like, "Hey, you didn't maybe know that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."

mathowie: Maybe you should get her a stocking stuffer, that little stand that I found on Amazon for like three dollars, it's amazing.

jessamyn: That's exactly what I'm getting her. Although Jews don't have stockings, but yes.

mathowie: (laughs) It's more of a furry hat we hang upside down (jessamyn laughs) from our tendrils off our sideburns, I don't know.

jessamyn: Girls don't have sideburns. But yeah. Close. (chuckles)

mathowie: (chuckles) Awesome.

jessamyn: We have the fake wig, and a whole bunch of other stuff. But at any rate, yeah, that's exactly what I'm getting her. And I have one, too, so I can

hang my iPad up in the kitchen, though to be honest I don't cook from recipes that much, it's mostly English muffins and things that go on them.

mathowie: Augh, you know what cracks me up? That just reminded me of Neil Gaiman talking about when he tried to learn to cook, his kids would come home, I think it's just Britishisms, the way they talk without what, nouns? or something, like 'going to university'.

jessamyn: Right. They're articles, actually. 'The' is an article.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: Right. That's the word. My wife's a--

jessamyn: You have a master's degree in something?!

mathowie: Science!

jessamyn: (laughs)

mathowie: My wife's a linguistics researcher, and she's always... she would know the word.

cortex: 'The' as a noun is the exciting [??].

mathowie: (laughing) No, I know, that's funny. But his kids would always come home and go, "Have you been cooking recipes again?"

jessamyn: (laughs)

mathowie: "I don't want to eat recipes."

jessamyn: As opposed to, say, Triscuits or something, yeah.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Not recipes.

mathowie: Right. Let's move to Metafilter, eh?

cortex: Let's do!

jessamyn: Terrific!

mathowie: Run with it, Josh, you must have a few favorites.

cortex: Yeah, but I didn't get them very organized because of the whole stupid--

jessamyn: Alright, I'll take the lead!

cortex: Why don't you jump in, Jessamyn, I'll [get you back ?].

jessamyn: "How to Make Google Beatbox for You." Everyone loved this.

mathowie: Oh, yeah.

cortex: Oh, that was great.

jessamyn: It's from Reddit, I guess?

mathowie: (makes faint beatboxy noises)

jessamyn: But it's just a whole bunch of people... basically, if you do this translation thing on the Google translator and you have it go, what, from German to German, is that how it works?

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: German to German, and then type a bunch of

consonants in and then click 'Listen'. Can you hear that through my headphones? No? It makes these adorable sounds.

cortex: Well, it's got all these, yeah, it has to recreate various aspiration noises. And you can find this in various of the different languages they do translation for, but German, yeah, was what everybody started with because there's a bunch of good little noises there that are voiceless noises that the computer's making, and the computer can do--

mathowie: Oh, yeah, I saw someone did

a key, like, here's how you do a hi-hat, here's how you do a cymbal.

jessamyn: Right.

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: (cymbals) Tss-tss-tss-tss-tss! It's great. It's really great. And it was just kind of a fun thread because everybody liked it and there's basically nothing to complain about and it's just a bunch of people geeking out on things you can make a computer do.

mathowie: This reminds me of the... what was that website that does nothing but play the [??].

jessamyn: zambo.com.

mathowie: No... it was like, the sound that's repeated is the name of the URL.

jessamyn: Not zambocom?

mathowie: No, it's like

ontsontsonts.com or something?

jessamyn: Oh, like untuntunt?

cortex: Oh, is it--

mathowie: untsunts... I think it's untsunts.com, and you have to spell it correctly, and all it does when you load is just go unts unts unts unts unts.

cortex: unts unts unts unts. Oh yeah, I mean, come on!

mathowie: This might be U-N-C-E?

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I got to the University of North Texas Office of Sustainability.

mathowie: (laughs)

jessamyn: That's not it. Unt? Maybe it's Unt.

mathowie: Once? Once? It's... no, that's once.

jessamyn: Junta?

mathowie: Ohhh, Jesus.

cortex: U-N-C-E-U-N-C-E?

mathowie: Maybe O-N... no? Ahh, I always forget it, but.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: It's one of those hilarious sadtrombone.com things, you know.

jessamyn: Single-serving site.

mathowie: Yeah, it does exactly what it says.

cortex: Yeah. I liked the desaturated Santa one, in part because of how effective it was at looking like it was nothing at all until you knew what was going on, because you go to the photo but it just looks like a woman in a Santa costume standing around with other Santas except

for she's been desaturated in Photoshop. Except for it wasn't Photoshop!

mathowie: She did that last year!

cortex: Yeah, yeah. She did it again this year, and I didn't know about it last year either. So I was like, "Yay, Photoshop," I was like, no, that's actually someone who built an entire Santa out of perfect gray and white and black tones and then did the makeup perfectly too so they look like they're desaturated standing there in real life, and I thought that was really great. So yeah, [??] for the last couple years.

mathowie: Yeah, I saw this picture last year, and I went, way to nerd it up, like, you're doing a drunken Santa run, and then

you have to out-nerd nerds doing that, so you go black and white meticulously.

jessamyn: It's great! It's totally great. It is awesome.

mathowie: It's so hard to explain to...

jessamyn: Well, and it only kind of works in photos.

mathowie: Yeah, yeah.

jessamyn: But she did an amazing job.

mathowie: Well, it's also like the guy who went this Halloween as a Banksy graffiti.

cortex: Yeah. That got linked in the thread, I think.

mathowie: Yeah. And that's only, it only makes sense in a photograph, and that one, yeah.

It's like that famous bullshit thing, that theater thing they do in Southern California where everyone's a living painting and their [whole ?] makeup is weird, they look flat.

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: I forget what that's called, but. It's cool. I watched the other night, I could not sleep--

jessamyn: Aah!

mathowie: ...three in the morning... What?

jessamyn: I found it.

mathowie: What was it?

jessamyn: untsunts.com. [sp?]

mathowie: Space [?]...

jessamyn: Oh. No, I didn't. Forget it.

mathowie and cortex: (laugh)

mathowie: That was just in your head?

jessamyn: Uehhh. Go on.

mathowie: So I enjoyed this Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie reunite for a TV special where they talk about the 30th anniversary of entering show business on BBC TV.

cortex: Although it was so fucking overproduced. I mean, I liked it too, but...

mathowie: Yeah. But the content had some meat to it, like them actually talking was a good half-hour of it, and it was fun.

cortex: Yeah. It was like they managed somehow to squeeze

thirty minutes of great content into a mere 75-minute program.

mathowie: 68. But there's pointless, like somebody says, what was the point of showing all these shots of them arriving? It takes fifteen minutes for the program to start. And then shots of them having lunch outside that have no bearing on anything that happened.

cortex: Yeah, it's all this tiresome bullshit just like [??] up. But you should go watch it, it's great.

mathowie: It's awesome, but there's just shitloads of B-roll, it's pointless B-roll.

cortex: Just make a drinking game where whenever they're--

jessamyn: Is that just because they were trying to pad out the

show?

cortex: I guess so, yeah.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: Or is it just because that's what people really want?

mathowie: They'd have to get--

jessamyn: Or because they thought it was going to go longer and then they didn't talk long enough?

mathowie: Yeah, maybe that's it. [??]

cortex: Maybe they're trying to justify it even by really building up the, "Oh, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie!"

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: It's like, you know, you can just say, "Hey, we got Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie to talk for a while, because they're funny and people would watch," because that's why people are watching.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: If there's not enough talking.

cortex: BBC...

mathowie: Do you think their humor holds up? I mean, I didn't grow up with it, so it's hard to say. It's so hard to revisit

comedy years later, because it can go bad.

cortex: Well, it's interesting. I really liked Blackadder when I was growing up, you know, it was like we watched a certain amount of Britcom stuff in my family, and that was one of the things that we watched, and I remember religiously enjoying it, and I tried to show some via Netflix to Angela earlier this year, I think, and just started at the very beginning, and she really didn't get into it. And, you know, we like the same stuff sometimes, some stuff we

don't so much, and that turned out to be something she didn't like. But Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry both show up in it eventually.

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: And so I'm thinking maybe I'll try showing her Season 3 or whatever.

mathowie: They mentioned The Young Ones as the competitor at the time, and I remember that was, I loved that so much in fifth grade or sixth grade when it was all good TV, like '84, '85. And then I caught ten minutes of one like a year ago, and it was fucking dreadful!

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: It was so stupid!

jessamyn: Well, and it was slow, and kind of dirgy, I mean, that's what I remember. I mean, I still enjoy The Young Ones, but I'm kind of like, "This is so... weird!"

mathowie: I just remember it's just yelling and insulting people and that's funny, and it's just, (shrillish vibrato-y voice) "Blaah! Blaahblahblablahblah." Like, eugh, so much of old comedy was just yelling. Especially '60s stuff.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: Have you ever seen It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, that whole 1968 movie with everybody--

cortex: Yeah, no, I've never actually seen it. Tons of references.

jessamyn: Yeah, is that Peter Sellers? Michael Caine? Who's in that?

mathowie: Yeah, it's just yelling. Everyone's screaming at each other for comedy purposes, and it's just so dumb.

jessamyn: Well, as I've said before, that's sort of how I feel about the theater.

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: Like, it's all like, "Drama!", and you can tell it's dramatic because people are hollering at each other, and I just walk out of there feeling assaulted.

mathowie: (chuckles) "I'm talking very loudly!"

jessamyn: Right. Like, I get it, it's important to you. Subtlety, subtlety.

mathowie: Mm. Jessamyn, you sort of turned into an AM radio for me about five minutes ago.

jessamyn: Really?

mathowie: Oh, now you sound good!

cortex: Yeah, did you say--Yeah. Weird. Maybe it's a...

jessamyn: Hey! I desaturated my voice, what do you think?

mathowie and cortex: (chuckle)

mathowie: Very black. I can hear the black.

cortex: That was very convincing. I thought you just had a shitty headset. That was... I had no idea.

jessamyn: (laughs) Hey, Matt Haughey bought me this headset!

cortex: (chuckles)

mathowie: So who's going to do the Alice's Restaurant post? That has to be...

jessamyn: Oh, yeah, that was the best post of the year, pretty much.

mathowie: Yeah, pretty much.

cortex: Wrong month.

mathowie: Four hundred favorites, what the what?

jessamyn: But it was in November.

cortex: Yeah, so sorry, Miko.

jessamyn: So it doesn't qualify.

mathowie: She'll get the Early Award.

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: She knows. She's... she's fine with it. She said she was working on that post for years, and it's great. It's just the completely annotated Alice's Restaurant post, which includes the lyrics to the song with lots and lots and lots of hyperlinks to stuff. I'm not even sure what we can say about it because it was just terrific.

mathowie: Yeah, it speaks for itself.

jessamyn: I have nothing to add. It speaks for itself. Similarly, this

giant Misfits Post... oops.

cortex: That's...

mathowie: I'm just pasting it in.

cortex: (chuckles)

jessamyn: ...was one of my favorite December-based multi-link posts at this juncture.

mathowie: Wow.

jessamyn: By user 256, which also has, you know, some favorites and whatever. If you're into the Misfits, this is great. If you don't care about the Misfits, it's easy enough to get two sentences in and say, "I don't care," and move on.

So one of the things I like about these threads is because the people who wind up hanging out of them are the people who give a shit about the topic, so you can talk about the Misfits with people.

mathowie: I didn't know Glenn Danzig started, or was in it.

jessamyn: Really? Glenn Danzig, that's how people know about Glenn Danzig, basically.

cortex: (in the manner of a kitten meowing) Nooo!

mathowie: I know him from kitty litter, man. That guy fucking rocks when he goes out and buys kitty litter. Sorry.

jessamyn: Why did you think people wanted to know who's bought kitty--oh, forget it.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: That was a meme in the last month or two.

jessamyn: No, no, I remember! But the reason it was a meme was because he--

mathowie: It's because he's fucking Danzig!

jessamyn: Because... and he's fucking Danzig because he was in the Misfits.

mathowie: Hm. I thought he was just awesome for being Danzig.

jessamyn: Seriously?

mathowie: Being hilariously overbuilt in the '80s and screaming about--

jessamyn: In the Misfits! Like, how did you not know he was in the Misfits?

mathowie: (laughs)

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: I've only known him as a solo act from 1985 on or whatever.

jessamyn: I guess that's true. This is maybe where I admit that somebody tweeted that they would offer a thousand bucks to somebody who would edit

Danzig's Wikipedia page to include a Relationships section? Which I did, though I didn't get the thousand bucks--

mathowie: It didn't pay off.

jessamyn: --because it was one of those Twitter joke things, apparently.

cortex: Bastards.

jessamyn: But, now it does talk a little bit about the Danzig comic... I don't even remember what it's called, 'Danzig and Rollins' or 'Rollins and Danzig Forever' or 'Henry and... whatever.' Oh, fuck! And of course you type Danzig in and you get fucking Gdańsk.

Eughh.

cortex and mathowie: (laugh)

jessamyn: Sorry. Glenn Danzig. Yeah. But I actually made some nice edits that talked about this nice comic book. Wikipedia is slow as hell. I blame Jimmy Wales' giant head.

mathowie: It's because of the WikiLeaks. They're all over the place, leaking everywhere.

cortex: I've always thought Glenn was like...

jessamyn: 'Henry and Glenn Forever.' It's a great sort of hilarious comic that implies they have a relationship, which of course they don't.

mathowie: (chuckles) Oh, Henry Rollins.

jessamyn: Again, you know. You know he was in Black Flag, right?

mathowie: Oh, I just know him from his beat poetry circuit in the mid-nineties, you know. Of course.

jessamyn: (laughs) Ohhh.

cortex: He's that nice fellow who helped out William Shatner with his album, right?

mathowie: He's that nice fellow on the IFC who was yelling about things. About Bush, all the time. He used to have a show.

jessamyn: He's a little grouchy, you know, but he was very great in Black Flag.

He was the right man at the right time for that band.

cortex: He's an enthusiast, you know--

mathowie: [laughs]

cortex: --he's enthusiastic, he just--

mathowie: Oh yeah! He was yelling at hipsters the other day on MetaFilter, right? Uh...

cortex: [laughs]

jessamyn: Who doesn't yell at hipsters? That's so tired.

mathowie: Yeah that's so--no! No! There was a YouTube video of him screaming about... what? Have you seen this? Do you know what I'm talking about?

jessamyn: No.

mathowie: He's at like--

cortex: Is there anything that there isn't a YouTube

jessamyn: [He, Rollins?] [?]

cortex: --Roll-- video of--Henry Rollins screaming about though? It seems

like kind of his mode.

mathowie: Henry Rollins is like sitting in a bar in Brooklyn, and someone goes, some woman just like half-drunk goes like [drunk woman voice] "Oh my gosh, Henry Rollins you're so awesome you're in [??] my favorite album." And he just starts laying into her, like, yelling at nobody, like--

jessamyn: He... kinda does that.

mathowie: Yeah like nobody's talking to him and he just goes [bro voice] "Oh, do you see what's happening here, folks?" And he just starts going off on uh, he's basically--

jessamyn: But of course somebody's paying attention cuz it's all on the YouTube, right?

mathowie: Yeah the entire room is paying attention to him. And he's--but--he's just, it's just like the woman did nothing to deserve it except like say she was a fan, and kinda, I guess bothered him you know while he was just sitting quietly. Uh it's... oh...

jessamyn: [sighs] You know, if you stay out of Brooklyn it's really--

mathowie: [laughs]

jessamyn: --he could be around here and no one would recognize him.

mathowie: [laughs] I know, yeah.

jessamyn: But that doesn't solve his problem.

mathowie: [laughs] I know, he--yeah. He likes that problem.

jessamyn: He likes that problem.

mathowie: Uhhhh...

jessamyn: What else did you guys read on the website, at all?

cortex: I wanted to mention one of those interesting almost for the phenomenon posts more than for it being a great post or anything, but the 'worst band ever butchers Pink Floyd' post, that meme was going around--

jessamyn: God Almighty, Josh, I don't understand this why you liked this or care about it?

mathowie: I knew that you'd be defending it so I didn't delete it, but wow.

cortex: I, yeah, I...

jessamyn: Can you please explain to me everything? Like, what?

cortex: It's one of those things where, okay, it's complicated, I'm not--

jessamyn: Is this one of those 'so bad, it's good' things? Because I'm going to have to get some hipster hate on your ass.

cortex: See, I'm not sure if it is. I think it might be one of those things that's just kind of bad, but I felt conflicted about it and I ended up going to bed that night instead of deleting the post and then up in the morning it kept going and so I ended up just leaving a long comment.

jessamyn: Can you give us a link to it?

cortex: I did, it's the "There should be laws against this" one, it just got lost in the storm of [click in theres ?].

jessamyn: Oh, oh! From before.

cortex: Yes. But yeah, it's just an obviously inexperienced band of

thirty-something, forty-something dudes playing a cover of Comfortably Numb really poorly.

jessamyn: Now, is that a difficult song? Can you tell me as a musician?

cortex: It's... it's a straightforward song, it's kind of difficult to pretend you're David Gilmour on the guitar solo, it's kind of difficult to convincingly pretend you're both Roger Waters and David Gilmour on vocals, but--

jessamyn: I understand.

cortex: And any credible musician can do a fairly straightforward cover and it's not going to sound bad per se. And these guys really

don't know what they're doing and their bassist has no sense of time at all, and so the whole thing's really kind of a train wreck.

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: But it became this big meme, when, you know, there's shitty random inexperienced bands playing terrible song covers all the time, and some of them end up on YouTube, but this one ended up on YouTube and then got huge, and so I kinda figured it was probably going to end up on Metafilter.

jessamyn: And why did it get huge, just out of curiosity?

cortex: I think it's a perfect storm of point and laugh.

jessamyn: Because I don't understand this 'I waste my time listening to terrible things,' but other people--

cortex: Well, there's something... there's something, for me it's kind of fascinating listening to how it goes badly, because you know, as a musician, I've been a shitty musician, and I've worked hard to become not so, but everybody sort of learns the same stuff and fucks up the same things early on, and so it's like I'm kind of watching these guys being, you know... I don't know. It's sort of interesting to me in that respect. But I think a lot of it is just people like pointing and laughing. It's like, "Oh, wow, they're really doing a bad job of that." Or, to some extent, people like having an excuse to say, "Oh, that reminds me of this other bad music thing," and that's a whole lot of

it, what it was.

jessamyn: Well, and I enjoy those discussions generally--

cortex: Yeah. And so I think that's basically [what] it is.

jessamyn: --but I find a lot of this stuff kind of mystifying.

cortex: But yeah, as a post it's kind of eh, because yeah, it really is sort of like, "Hey, these guys suck, ha-HA!" You know, and it's eh, what, so what?

jessamyn: That's funny about that.

cortex: But yeah, that's kind of why I wanted to mention it, because I thought it was sort of interesting in how it was sort a conflicted thing.

jessamyn: Say 'interesting qua interesting'.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: SAY IT!

cortex: It was quid interesting pro, it was...

jessamyn: Aegh!

cortex: Cogito ergo interesting?

mathowie: I could have swore there was a really shitty rendition of Europe's Final Countdown from a state fair from a high school band, they didn't quite--

jessamyn: I am having that recollection as well.

mathowie: Yeah, but--

jessamyn: See, I never check these things out! I just like to delight in what's awesome on the Internet.

mathowie: Yeah. Europe's Final Countdown doesn't bring up that post.

jessamyn: (sings) The fin-al count-down!

mathowie: And it was like, they didn't quite even have the synthesizer...

jessamyn: (sings) Ha-ba ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

mathowie: It was like doo-do-daww, do-da-do-doh-dou! And I'm like, they're missing a couple minutes.

jessamyn: (sings) Ha-ba-ba-ba.

cortex: I think someone may have linked in that thread actually a bad performance of it--

jessamyn: (sings) Ha-ba-ba-ba-ba ba ba ba!

cortex: --that was by a four-piece band or something.

mathowie: (chuckles) So bad it's good.

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I'm kind of bummed I can't find this unta-unta page, though!

mathowie: (mutters, descending into a whisper) Unts-unts-unts-unts-unts...

jessamyn: It's bothering me.

mathowie: (laughs) It's hard, buddy.

cortex: You should Ask Metafilter. I bet someone there knows.

jessamyn: I already used up my question trying to figure out how to back up my Gmail.

cortex: Oh, shit.

mathowie: Ooh, how do you back up your Gmail?

jessamyn: Which Blazecock Pileon and a couple other people helped me out with, and now I am done! I have a backup of my Gmail.

cortex: I should really do that.

mathowie: Did you just POP down everything, or what?

jessamyn: I tried to POP it, but they use this throttling--

mathowie: Oh, yeah.

jessamyn: --so you get like 500 messages at a time, which then trickles down to the point where you're POPping in two messages at a time.

mathowie: Auugh. What is your--

jessamyn: Because they throttle it in some random way, so what you have to do is do IMAP and in Thunderbird 3 IMAP gets the full message by default, not just the headers, for

'offline reading' is what they call it.

mathowie: Ohh.

jessamyn: But I was used to Thunderbird 2, so I didn't know that, and so it all worked out!

mathowie: (laughs) How much of Gmail's space are you using on the footer of...

jessamyn: 16 percent.

mathowie: Oh, I'm at 51 percent. 3.8 gigabytes.

jessamyn: Start deleting those movies!

mathowie: Nope, I don't know what people are sending me.

jessamyn: Start deleting those... I deleted all the Metafilter poop posts, all this stuff.

mathowie: Oh. I have to keep that for accounting purposes.

jessamyn: What?

Do you keep them--

mathowie: I file reports.

cortex: Just go searching, go cleaning out stuff with attachments, is usually what you need to do.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: You file reports? What kind of reports? Wait a second.

mathowie: You know, PowerPoints.

cortex: To the NSA.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: What? Are you joking with me?

mathowie: Yes, I'm joking.

jessamyn: I feel like my sense of humor is deteriorating.

mathowie: Because you're getting old?

jessamyn: Have you ever had that problem? (pause) I feel like I don't get jokes that would have been funny to me six months ago.

mathowie: (chuckles) What happened?

jessamyn: (high-pitched, with a chuckle) I don't know!

mathowie: Oh, that's sad.

jessamyn: If it gets worse, will you guys tell me, as my friends?

mathowie: Okay. (chuckles) Sure.

jessamyn: (chuckles)

mathowie: Hey. We gotta talk about your sense of humor.

cortex: Are you kidding?

jessamyn: (laughs) Ohhhh.

mathowie: I'm sending you a rubber chicken from Amazon.

jessamyn: (chuckles)

mathowie: When it shows up, read it, use it, I don't know.

jessamyn: (laughs) Okay. Okay.

mathowie: Recalibrate. I liked this problematic post about crossing the Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, by--

cortex: Oh, yeah.

mathowie: [??] because it's, awww. You read it--

jessamyn: Oh, me too! This was an interesting story all around.

mathowie: It's so conflicted, yeah, it's interesting everywhere.

So, if you follow the link--

jessamyn: Start from the top.

mathowie: Yeah. If you follow the link you get this horrible interface, a forum post, and the guy's running up against the limits of what the forum will accept, so it's about 15 pages on a forum. It took me about four hours to read the story of going from one corner of the Congo to the other.

jessamyn: (sings) I passed the rains down in Africa!

mathowie: And they're Dutch, right? I think they're Dutch.

jessamyn: (sings) And a hundred million men on Mars would ever do.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: Are they Dutch or are they Danish?

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: No Toto!

jessamyn: Shut up! That's a great song.

cortex: It is a great song, but we can't put it in the podcast.

mathowie: (chuckles) So--

cortex: The podcast will rock too much at that point.

jessamyn: (laughs, then sings) Do-do doo doo doo!

mathowie: (laughs) So they drove from Europe all the way down to Africa and back again, like they spent three or four years on the road, and then this is just a two-month segment of that, and it's meticulously detailed. It sounds like the most horrific over-land journey

that shouldn't have been possible. But it brings up a zillion issues in that how they... they seem, the guy seems slightly arrogant when he arrives, because he hates bribery so much, and the entire world operates with bribes down there. And then since he's European and he's from the country that conquered the place hundreds of years ago--

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: --a lot of people on Metafilter felt he should feel some guilt about that, maybe not run a truck over that country

and--

jessamyn: Or not be such a crabby European about it, yeah.

mathowie: Yeah. It was very--

jessamyn: And they were like, "Quit whining! RAR RAR RAR." And then...!

mathowie: And then you read the whole thing, and then he shows up and he kind of yells at everybody, and...

jessamyn: Shows up on Metafilter.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: As RadioBaobab.

mathowie: He eventually just gets so annoyed he leaves, but... because people were, I think people were being a little hard on him, but he deserved a little bit of it. It's wei--it's problematic. The whole thing's problematic.

jessamyn: Well... yeah. It's--

cortex: Yeah, well, how do you deal with that dynamic where you've got someone who jumps in new and they've got a

reason to be annoyed but at the same time they don't really know the culture so they end up--

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: --sort of being annoying themselves, and then how do you tell people, "Hey, no, be nice to him. He's being kind of a dick, but he's new here."

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: You know, it's... yeah, it's really kinda hard to manage that [??].

jessamyn: And we've seen that before, it's kind of a common problem, that people show up and they think it's like their other forum--

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: --and it's not, and then there's kind of a dumb hazing tradition which it would really be nice if it would go entirely away, but yeah.

mathowie: Yeah, I think the forum he came from, everyone's like, "You're so awesome! You're

living our dreams!", you know, driving all over.

jessamyn: And at Metafilter people are like--

mathowie: "Why are you driving?"

jessamyn: --"Invisible backpack!".

mathowie: Yeah. "Why are you driving all over the world? You're burning too much oil!" Like, you know, you can get any sort of person complaining sometimes. But maybe the entire story boils down to, they constantly get the car stuck, there's constantly people that live there standing around doing nothing asking them for money, and I think to help them

but also sort of begging for money because white people generally have money when they come through that section of the world, and then these people just get incensed and annoyed and they dig themselves out and then they drive another mile and then they get stuck again and it repeats itself. And in the end, it's like, the car breaks so much that they basically have to be pushed by hand by a team of six guys over almost a week of just moving a foot every fifteen minutes, and it takes them
like a week to go two miles to get to the main road. And then he ends up giving them like 150 bucks or something, for at least, like, a team of dudes. And they were kinda happy about the money, but I just thought, "Wow, it's kind of a rip-off." I don't know. They slept outside and they're pushing this muddy car up a hill, like auh, it's crazy.
But yeah. Problematic story and journey, yeah.

cortex: But interesting. The whole thing is very--

jessamyn: Well, and you've got a whole bunch of people coming from kind of the same generalized Western perspective, and so yeah, it does wind up leading in one direction, I think.

mathowie: It's a fascinating story. All around.

cortex: In an equally controversial event, JHarris made a post that had a bunch of stuff from MST3K that was funny. (pause) But yeah. I got nothing. It's great! I don't know, I like MST3K

and the thing about MST3K--

mathowie: Do you like Mike or Joel? Are you a Mike or--

cortex: I like them both.

jessamyn: Which one's the robot?

cortex and mathowie: (laugh)

jessamyn: Seriously, guys, which one's the robot?

mathowie: (laugh)

cortex: Neither. They're two human--

jessamyn: It's two guys and a robot?

mathowie: No, one guy...

jessamyn: Goddammit!

cortex: Well, no, no, there's two robots, but first there was Joel Hodgson.

jessamyn: Oh, it's like which Doctor Who do you like?

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: Yeah, exactly.

jessamyn: Alright.

mathowie: There's a lot of people who loved Mike and I never liked Mike.

cortex: Yep, yep, yep, the original Doctor Who left the show because he was unhappy with the people there or whatever. I don't know, I've [never been ?] following the drama--

jessamyn: Is that what happened, he got in a fight with the robot?

mathowie and cortex: (laugh)

mathowie: [??] robot?

cortex: I think there were creative differences within the team as the show went on. I never really followed the drama. But anyway, there was Joel and there was Mike, and I like them both. They both have their strengths.

mathowie: Oh, come on, pick a side.

cortex: No, no, no. I think Joel has a kind of quiet affable charm, whereas Mike's sort of... what am I looking for? ...comedy arrogance works well for him as well, and they both have their own strengths.

jessamyn: You're so good at that 'I like you both in different ways.'

cortex: Yeah, well, I do! I like them both and they're both great guys.

mathowie: Did the classic--?

cortex: I want them to be happy! I want them to like each other!

jessamyn: Mike qua Joe!

cortex: I want them to have the Mike and Joe--

mathowie: Did the classic derail pop up on this post, of...?

cortex: I didn't actually read the post, I just said, "Hey, there it is!"

mathowie: "We shouldn't like Mike..."

jessamyn: Of what, copyright infringement?

mathowie: No, every time MST3K comes up, and every time Mike comes up, someone will link to his crazy right-wing racist comedy he does.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: Like, he's apparently the only right-wing standup comic in the world, and he's--

jessamyn: I thought Dennis Leary was the only right-wing standup comic in the world?

mathowie: Dennis Miller? Dennis Miller.

jessamyn: Dennis, sorry. (laugh) No, Dennis Leary. Yeah, yeah, Dennis Miller.

mathowie: Yeah. I think...

cortex: Yeah, I just don't pay attention to them outside of context.

mathowie: He's a nice guy, but yeah, he does [??] Dennis Miller. Oh, it didn't get mentioned, cool! That's a first.

cortex: But yeah, no. Well, it's great because, I mean, there was so much of the fucking show, and we'll put on, they've got a ton of it on Netflix Instant, and so we'll stream it. But the problem is, you put it on, you're like, "I'm gonna watch this, and hopefully some of it will be funny."

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: Because it just, it tends to be slow burn, and if you're watching it

at night and you're kinda getting ready for bed, it's a little slow, you know?

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: Because they take terrible fucking movies and then quietly make jokes over them, so. So I love this sort of thing because it's a very excerptable show, and you pull out the good stuff and it's fantastic, you know, if you go to YouTube you can find tons of clips of the best shorts and whatnot. There was an old Best MST3K Shorts post, I don't know, a couple years ago I remember that I loved too.

mathowie: So, the original team now does Laugh Tracks, is that what it is?

They can't use the main...

cortex: There's RiffTrax, and there's...

mathowie: RiffTrax, that's it.

cortex: And I think different parts of the original team maybe have competing--

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: --making fun of stuff.

mathowie: None of them are allowed to use the title MST3K anymore?

cortex: Yeah, I don't know. I've just never looked into it.

mathowie: And I think RiffTrax.

cortex: I decided I wouldn't be any happier knowing the ugly details, so.

mathowie: Yeah, I think RiffTrax you cue up an MP3 in headphones or something while you actually play it.

cortex: Something like that, yeah.

mathowie: It's kind of janky.

jessamyn: Janky! Hey, did you see my picture?

cortex: Which picture? You're taking one?

jessamyn: Sorry, you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?

cortex: Yeah, what?

mathowie: Maple syrup-related?

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: Sorry, I made a--

cortex: I saw a picture of you.

jessamyn: No, not a picture of me. I made a bird feeder out of duct tape and pencils--

mathowie: (chuckles)

jessamyn: And then I put it upon Flickr and said, "this is my janky bird feeder", and then Metafilter user tube, who I have corresponded with in the past--

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: --left this long comment that he'd never heard anyone besides this one guy use the word 'janky' before, and I was like,

"Really? It seems kind of normal to me," but we had a little conversation about it, and I guess Urban Dictionary has a whole bunch of definitions for janky. But it never really occurred to me that I don't think I've heard that word that often, but maybe it's kind of an internet word? But then you said it, and this all happened yesterday, so.

mathowie: (laughs) Well, thank God, I'm looking at... it just seems like one of those things where you repeat it from your youth, and then someone goes, "Oh, that's what's the owners used to call slaves, you fucking insensitive jackass!"

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: That happens to me too sometimes, yeah. (laughs)

mathowie: Where I had no idea something was super duper racist a hundred and fifty years ago that I was saying.

jessamyn: Because in your house it referred to dirt or something, and you're like, "I don't know, I grew AAAAH!"

mathowie: Well, like... never, eh, (laughs) [??].

cortex: (laughs) Yes.

jessamyn: It's hard to use examples I know.

mathowie: No, no, I was thinking of rigged, like...

cortex: Jury-rigged?

mathowie: Yeah, you know what that's supposed to mean, like

n-word-rigged, like, it's something people used to say all the time, and...

jessamyn: Oh, really? God, I've never heard that!

mathowie: Yeah. You've never... I've heard mechanic, like when I was a kid in the '80s, would just say, "Oh, it looks like someone n-word-rigged it," and I'm like...

jessamyn: (recoiling) Euhhh! No, not in New England, for whatever reason.

mathowie: Oh, yeah, thank God. So yeah, I bristle every time I hear someone say 'jury-rigged', because I know it kind of is the nice way of saying something [??].

jessamyn: Well, it comes from the other way, too, but yeah. I mean, there's two

alternative kind of side meanings of it, and unfortunately you can't control which ones people have original experience with.

mathowie: Yeah. (sighs) Ahhhh. Is there anything else?

jessamyn: Eh, we're already running a little long. We didn't mention Music at all, but maybe Josh can get his holiday music [podcast ?].

cortex: Oh, well, hey, there were a few songs that I liked.

mathowie: Send me links and I'll score this.

cortex: There is the old, yeah, there's the holiday playlists from last year

we could break out again.

mathowie: Oh, yeah.

cortex: But there are a couple things that I caught in the last few days, actually. I was popping around on Music and trying to actually pay attention again for once.

jessamyn: Yay! It's good to have you back.

cortex: Yeah. I'm making it. But where is it? Dammit. There was this fantastic thing and I'm trying to remember.

jessamyn: (sings, underscoring cortex) do-do-do-do-do, I got the chance, I'll take it.

mathowie: Whoa!

cortex: Well, okay, there were a couple good things. There was...

jessamyn: (sings, still underscoring) No more, no more fakin' it...

mathowie: The Flash player took forever to load.

cortex: Yeah, it's kind of slow. I'm glad we're moving to the other one.

mathowie: We need to go HTML5.

cortex: Seriously.

jessamyn: (sings) This time in life I'm makin' it! (ascending pitch) Whoo-whoo-whoo!

cortex: (laughs) So there's this nice version of Tonight You Belong To Me, which is just, it's a really nice guitar and musical saw instrumental take on it. And it's an old, it's an oldie. You'll recognize it when you hear it, but.

mathowie: Oh, that old musical saw.

jessamyn: I love musical saws!

cortex: But yeah, no, it's a really nice cover that TheCoug did, and I think it may be their first Music post, even. So way to go, TheCoug!

mathowie: Sweet!

jessamyn: It's pretty.

cortex: But very, very different from that is GOLFSAUCE by jake,

which (laughs) it's a fantastic bit of, he describes it as '50s/Ren and Stimpy "light music"--

mathowie: (chuckle)

jessamyn: I like it already!

cortex: But...

mathowie: Holy crap!

cortex: Yeah, it's amazing, and the story about it is fantastic! He's just like, "I wrote this after my this after my dog, Nugget, recovered from being terribly sick. Let's just say he ate a scrap of fabric and it... didn't come out. After a couple of days he was in bad shape, dehydrated and in constant pain. Without emergency surgery, things did not look good.

Well, as luck would have it, on the very morning that we were due to discuss said surgery, the problem resolved itself."

jessamyn: If you know what I mean.

cortex: "On his walk, in front of a bunch of little kids. "Oh look a puppy, he is cute, what's his EWWWWWWWWWWW.'"

mathowie: (chuckles)

cortex: "This is the music that was playing in my head as we joyfully skipped the whole way home."

mathowie: Oh my God. That is so great.

cortex: It's fantastic. So those were a couple things I liked. And there's, I'm sure there's a bunch more.

jessamyn: Thank you for sharing that, that is terrific. I love it.

cortex: And yeah.

mathowie: Ahh. I'm going to close this with that, that's so wonderful.

jessamyn and cortex: (laugh)

jessamyn: We'll just leave it at this.

mathowie: Yeah. Dog crapping happiness. Sweet.

jessamyn: (laughs)

mathowie: Alright! That's a good one.

jessamyn: (sings) Letterpress waffles!

mathowie: (laughs)

cortex: Yeah, do it! Make it happen.

mathowie: Bye.

jessamyn: Okay. Bye guys!

cortex: Bye!

sfx: (Music: GOLFSAUCE by jake)

sfx: (Music: GOLFSAUCE by jake, continued)

sfx: (Music: GOLFSAUCE by jake, end)

Credits

  • beryllium, 188 segments
  • twist my arm, 3
  • Pronoiac, 2
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