It’s funny how we do need those kind of trigger phrases to activate the character in our vocal cords.

Yes.

If I want to go into an Irish accent, I have to say we gobshite multiple times.

And that will prime my vocal cords for the Irish accent of my parents.

Oh, nice.

I would like to hear that.

We gobshite.

You’re a wee gobshite.

And then I can just get more emphatic.

And the more emphatic I get, the more Irish it gets.

Oh, God.

You’re a wee gobshite, y ‘all.

That’s pretty good as well.

Yeah, of course it is.

Top of the morning.

We gobshite coming in here.

You dirty wee devil.

That was good.

You’re a dirty wee devil.

And you’ve come in the house and you made everything.

Oh, dirty.

Oh, God.

You’re a wee gobshite.

I feel like I’m talking to a man from Ireland.

Well, I was born in Belfast.

I was naturalized when I was seven.

Oh.

I had an Irish accent until I went to school, basically.

And then when I went to school, it went away very quickly.

Oh, right.

I see.

They erased your culture.

I know.

Well, I just know.

I got a new culture.

I got Canadian culture.

Yeah, we’re going to go down and place my s**t, yeah.

I don’t know how much of a stereotype it is or how truthful it is with the whole kind

of A at the end of sentences.

Oh, it’s a lot of my friend group, yes.

At the end.

Not every sentence, but regularly.

And then, yeah.

Yeah.

That’s.

Oh, okay.

That’s just an affirmation that, yeah.

It’s always yeah.

Yeah.

You want to go out for a beer, eh?

Yeah.

Okay.

Because they always do it.

Any Canadian character in any show, it’s like a, not a series show.

They lay it on thick, don’t they?

All the A’s.

Yeah.

They just every single sentence.

I, even the people who do it a lot, don’t do it every sentence.

Enter the mind of the academy.

Chalk my big chest.

Where the best is a philosophy.

Drinking at lunch.

Brings verbal skills like a sucker punch.

Woke up to CMRB.

Yeah.

Yeah.

CMRB.

Yeah.

Yeah.

CMRB.

Yeah.

CMRB.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh.

I buggered it up by, um, calling you on the laptop first.

But once, once I had to check the messages, um, to find out what exactly you said after

last time, the way I found it was looking for that, um, lovely dick emoji that you sent

on you.

That’s how I found it.

I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s like an exclamation point at the end of a statement.

Yeah.

Uh, I have those emojis.

They’re not, they’re, they’re mushrooms.

By the way, they’re not dicks because if they were penises, they would not get through

censorship.

So they’re mushrooms.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Of course.

I have about four packs of those I’ve bought over the couple, last couple of years.

When that artist releases a new animated one, I basically buy it now.

Okay.

Wow.

So there’s some guy whose job is making mushrooms that look like penises and then having them

like animating them.

And he’s making money off that.

Well, that’s, that’s being an artist, baby.

Yeah.

But I, I think about like all this stuff I’ve in my life that I’ve tried to do and I never

make any money off anything.

It’s like, yeah.

Mushroom dick guy is probably making more money than me.

Probably.

But like mushroom dick guy should not be making more money than me.

No, really not.

But, but the amount of money you make is often, you know, correlated to how much money you bring

in for yourself or some, well, or somebody else or interest.

What am I trying to say?

I’m not a financial advisor.

Well, the, the first one I was surprised because when I found out that furry artists make bank.

Oh, they do.

They make a lot of money, like a glorious amount of money.

I was like, man, I should have started drawing because I have no qualms about drawing weird

stuff.

No.

I just have no talent.

Well.

Going back to the furry thing.

I watched a YouTube documentary on furries.

And this is how you spend a lot of your time?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I’m trying to break into the business.

But yeah, these, what I realized and when they were kind of going, people were going around

these conventions, talking to furries, just trying to get how much it’s often kind of

we, from the outside, we look at furries as like being a weird fetish thing.

And I would say for maybe half or probably a little over half of people or probably a

lot over half of people.

That is true.

It’s like a fetish thing.

But these people who are furries, a lot of them are really well off because a furry suit

costs a lot of bloody money.

Oh, a good one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And some people have, they’ll have their kind of signature character that they’ll make

and design and they’ll wear it as their, that’s like their fursona kind of thing.

But they’ll have other ones as well for mixing up.

And so anything that’s marketed towards furries, that’s a, that’s a, that’s like a target

consumer base that’s loaded.

So the people that you’re making things for have a lot of money, so you can charge a lot

of money.

Yeah, no, it’s probably, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s like the whale.

It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a little idea of monetization.

Like you don’t need a huge audience.

You need a small całe audience with a lot of money.

Okay.

Sorry.

I’m back.

And the dog is now quiet on my lap.

Oh, right.

Okay.

So it is Dave.

I was wondering if by dog you meant Dave or just the, the furry person.

The furry, the furry that lives in my house, he was acting up again.

I had to like, you know, go whip him a little bit to calm him down.

Kind of his gag.

Yeah.

He needed, he did a bit more humiliation before he went back in his cage.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

When you, when you said I just need to brush my teeth.

Yeah.

That was bullshit, wasn’t it?

So have you been excited about the Olympics?

Honestly, not at all.

I don’t know anything about it, but.

I hate the Olympics, but yes.

Yeah.

I brought this in.

Oh, well, well, why, why don’t you care about the Olympics?

It’s like the most important thing in the world, apparently.

Says who?

Well, I mean, the way people react, people, it’s think, I think what bugs me most is people

who never watch sports suddenly get really excited about the Olympics.

I’m like, you don’t care.

You don’t really care about the Olympics.

You don’t really care about sports.

I think that’s most people.

I don’t care about sports and therefore I don’t care about the Olympics.

Yeah.

Like I’m consistent in my, I do not care stance.

Yeah.

People justify it by saying, well, I care, I’m patriotic, so I want my country to do well.

And I always think, well, surely your country is competing in something that you’re interested in.

Even if it’s really, really low level, low stakes, it’s not like the Olympics.

But yeah, I don’t know.

I, that is actually to me, the thing I hate most about the Olympics is the Olympics claims to say,

like we’re bringing people together in the spirit of sport.

But then you immediately divide everyone up by nation and everyone has like,

oh, I want my country to win more medals.

There’s no one ever supports other countries.

So you’re actually defying your, your, your mission statement by breaking people up into countries.

I agree with that.

So I think for team sports, they can’t do, this only really works for team sports.

If you want to solve that problem, you take, so I would choose my team for whatever sport from my country,

but then those players would go into a pool and you would mix all the players.

So you wouldn’t have a country team anymore.

You’d have a random selection of players for sport A.

And then the team that overcomes language problems and working together is the team that’s going to win.

That’s interesting.

Right.

And that’s, that’s bringing people together for sports.

They’ll never do that, but I would like to see that more.

Because then you couldn’t have like America won 500 medals and China won X amount of medals and stuff,

which again is really divisive.

The only problem is like in an individual sport, you could never say like that person doesn’t represent their country.

Well, I, I was, I was trying to think of a way around that, but I couldn’t because they’re always going to connect the person.

Like I, I would be okay.

Cause I was born in the UK, grew up in Canada and then live in Japan.

Which country should I compete for?

Cause I’ve lived in Japan longer than I’ve lived anywhere else now.

Yeah.

Which, which it’s probably really hard to question answer,

but which culture or country has formed the most of your basis of the way you look at life,

your morals, things like that?

I, I think it has to be Canada just because of like my politics and stuff.

I’m very liberal Canadian politics, I think.

So I think that’s, yes, formatively speaking, all my formative years were in Canada.

Pull me out after that point, put me in another country.

You still have my foundational ideas.

I’m sure Japan has changed a lot of what I think, like, you know, what’s acceptable,

what’s not acceptable maybe has changed.

My ideas of customer service has changed a lot.

My acceptance of furries has really changed a lot.

Yeah.

I knew I’d been in Japan a long time when I was walking down the street and for,

there was a trend, it was like 10 years ago.

And girls were wearing Pikachu onesies.

It was, it was like a gal thing.

And so all these girls, so I just had two girls walk by me wearing complete Pikachu onesies

as their evening out costume.

And I just walked by, I was like, yeah.

The furry community would be annoyed that you’re classing that as furries.

Furries.

Oh, they’re not furries.

Okay.

That was fashion.

Okay.

Furries is a lifestyle.

This was a fashion trend.

Yeah.

For about six months.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Oh, I know, I know what’s a furry and what’s not a furry.

Furries, it’s not a choice.

It’s a lifestyle.

It absolutely is.

Have you seen any of the cheating scandals?

Speaking of my nation.

Oh, has Canada cheated?

Well, Canada, apparently the Canadian curling team, a sport, again, I’ve never cared about.

You have the big thing, you push down and then they brush the ice.

And then the guy, he touched it with his finger, apparently, and just gave it a little nudge,

which you’re not supposed to do.

One of the sweet things.

The interesting thing, I don’t know.

I just know that he was, I was like, in the Olympics, there are 20 cameras around you.

You’re not going to get away with cheating.

Hmm.

Like, but it seems like they have, because he was basically like, no, we weren’t cheating.

Or, yeah, we cheated a little bit, but everybody does it.

And then now it’s like, you set up that camera to catch us cheating.

You’re bad people.

It seems to be the stance.

Yeah, I’m not kidding.

How is that?

It’s insane.

Like, I think curling is one of those sports where, like, it’s low, like, no one gives a shit about curling.

So it’s not being recorded most of the time.

So you could probably get away with curling, cheating and curling.

But then the Olympics, you’re being videoed.

You know you’re being videoed.

Yeah, the Olympics is probably the most, if whatever process you’re talking about, whether it’s anti -cheating or whatever it is, it’ll be the most mega version of that.

So I have a cheating story, but it’s not from the Olympics.

And I was going to share that with you.

But I was wondering, have you ever cheated at something?

Oh, sorry.

Just to go back to the curling thing, because…

Oh, no.

We can talk about curling.

I mean, I could talk about curling all day.

Curling and furries.

Furry curling is the best.

Furry curling.

Oh, that sounds different to the two ingredients there.

Yeah, anyways, yes, curling.

Because it looks so different and weird compared to any other kind of normal person’s sport, no offence, curlers.

I just find it more fascinating just based on that.

The idea that a broomstick is involved in any kind of sport that’s not from Harry Potter is really exciting to me.

I’d much rather go to a curling tournament than a football tournament any day.

I agree.

Because I’ve seen like two baseball games more than enough.

I would be open to going to a sport that’s new to me.

But I don’t know how long a curling match is.

I don’t want to spend two hours watching curling.

Will you take your phone?

I, for me, the best part of the year is the sort of early, end of January, early, you know, new year.

When you get the highlight reels of sports for the entire previous year.

Because then you don’t have to watch a two hour game.

You just watch the best bits of the entire year.

And it is.

So like American football game, I care nothing about.

You watch a guy catch a ball and leap over another human being and do a backflip.

But that’s really cool.

I don’t want to watch 60 hours of football to get to that.

And then like, I don’t, I’m not interested in football, football, like soccer.

But three or four really amazing things happened this year.

I’d like to see those.

So I just love watching compilation clips of the best things that happened this year in sports.

That’s better.

Because then I don’t have to watch the sport.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I would sit down and watch that.

I’d make time to watch that.

Yeah.

Yeah, 20, 30 minutes of that.

That’s a great, better than a furry documentary.

Ooh, I’ll tell you, I’ll get the judge of that.

Okay.

The question is, by the end of this, are we going to make furries more angry or curlers?

Or will they combine and like unify against us would be a very interesting.

Well.

Which group could you piss off the most to make them come after you?

Well, I didn’t.

Furries or curlers?

I think curlers because we’ve not really said anything negative about furries other than…

That’s because I’m scared of them.

They’re rich.

They’re connected.

Which group would you be more afraid of?

Because curlers, they could just sort of lob those stones at you.

And if you just sort of jog ahead of them, I think you’re safe.

Furries, they’re active.

I think furries, a lot of them study the way a fox walks or a wolf walks or whatever their creature is.

So it might have imbued them with some physical traits that I can’t get away from.

Do you know what yiffing is?

Yiffing.

I’ve seen that word used in posts, but I don’t really know what it is.

I don’t.

I don’t 100%.

Yeah, so my understanding is they make like a pile and then they just start like moving and doing stuff,

which I guess could be non -sexual, but also could become sexual very quickly.

I don’t know enough about it.

I would…

I’m going to have to like go online and ask if a furry will talk to us.

Maybe we could do an interview with a furry sometime.

And a curler.

Oh, what a combination.

If we did an interview and talked to a curler and a furry at the same time and just tried to treat them like equals.

You guys do the same thing.

Yeah.

Well, in my…

For my ill -informed brain, they are equal…

Unequal footing right now.

Because I don’t know the technical differences between skills of yiffing and curling.

Yeah.

I think the skill set is a Venn diagram that’s almost a circle.

I reckon so, yeah.

Yeah.

Holding balls.

Okay, but have you…

So I was thinking…

Because I was bringing this story.

So I had an example ready.

When I was a kid, I didn’t cheat on tests, but you had to get your parents to sign them.

And I used to forge their signatures.

And I was really good at it.

Like a nine -year -old who’s really good at forging signatures is a weird skill to have.

But I would do…

I was doing my father’s signature.

And then I actually…

I don’t know what’s going on in my head.

Decided to like…

My mother’s was harder.

So I started doing hers.

Because I essentially wanted to challenge myself to be a better forger.

And it kind of worked when you were forging the signatures?

It worked for about…

Like, I don’t remember how often you had to do it.

But I know I got away with it like six, seven times.

And then my mistake was I signed it in pencil.

And an adult basically would never sign something in pencil.

So the teacher circled it in pen and said, go take that to your parents.

And so that was the end of my forging career.

I was good.

And if I was good at nine years old, if I’d kept going, I’d be amazing by now.

Yeah.

You could have stolen so many people’s identity by now.

Yeah.

And that’s actually, again, probably way more money in that than what I do now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So my parents have actually ruined my life by making me not forge stuff.

Exactly.

But have you ever cheated?

Have you ever cheated on a test or at a sport or something?

I was one of those really goody -goody -two -shoes kids at school.

But that’s not to say I wasn’t a sneaky bastard as well.

Because I did the occasional forgery.

I used to put my mother’s signature in the homework planner we had to say,

yes, I’ve locked up my child’s homework and they did it themselves.

I used to do that.

But I don’t know what the consequence would have been had I not forged a signature.

Maybe they wouldn’t do anything.

They asked to have the signature, but I don’t think there was any consequence for it.

So my forgeries didn’t really, I don’t think they benefited me that much like yours.

It was lower stakes.

Yeah.

But I did, oh, I stole things.

Is that similar to cheating?

I would love to hear about you stealing things.

I’d say the first major theft I committed was when I was about 11 years old and I went to my friend’s house.

Scott, I’ll not say his last name for confidence.

We should anonymize it so his name was Toss.

Oh yeah, Toss.

And Toss Myth.

Yeah, there you go.

All right.

Perfect.

We used to go around each of the houses regularly.

And for some reason, well, I was obsessed with kind of female kind of tomboyish characters from anime.

And he had this small figure that I’d never seen anything similar to of Android 18 from Dragon Ball.

Do you know the one I’m talking about?

I know the name.

I will have to pull it up on my computer because I have not.

Okay.

Anyways, you can continue.

I will look up Android 18.

Yeah.

There’s a set of twin Androids and she was the kind of the funky denim blonde girl boss one.

And so he had a figure of her and I wanted it.

And I decided pretty early on in this meeting that I was going to have that.

And we carried on with our kind of playing whatever is more made as dinner and stuff like that.

And then I, kind of hours before I was due to leave, I placed this Android 18 kind of nonchalantly by the corner of the door frame in his bedroom.

Oh, you were setting it up for the diversionary.

That’s amazing.

How old?

You said you were 11?

Yeah.

Yeah, I was 11.

I think pretty, I would say, yeah.

And so I put it there, kind of, no one thought about anything since then.

It was on the floor because all of his toys on the floor.

And then later on, as he walked me down the stairs, because my mum was picking me up, waiting by the front door.

I said, oh, I just forgot something in your room.

I’d also left one of my toys in the same place.

So when I went back up to his bedroom unattended, I just snagged them both, mine and Android 18.

And then that was it.

And so I…

I mean, pretty good crime.

Mm.

I mean, again, on my other podcast, Ninja News Japan, I talk about criminals all the time, and they do not put that much planning into their crimes.

And that’s why they almost always get caught.

So I think this was well done.

I think so, yeah.

I do think about it maybe once a month.

So whether I’m haunted by it or just admiring myself, I don’t know.

But I never told Scott…

Sorry, Toss.

I never told Toss about that at all.

And so when he hears this, he’s going to be well angry.

Well, how old is he now?

Same age as me, 33.

So you could send him one, though.

If you felt guilty about it, you could send him, hey, I would like to replace the Android 18 figure I stole from you when we were 20 years ago.

Yeah.

He’s a bit of a vengeful guy, I think, so I would be frightened of…

Oh, is he a furry?

I don’t know.

Oh.

Wait, how much money does he make?

He works in a shop.

He’s not a furry.

Okay.

Because I went through a shoplifting phase and I stole like chocolate bars and stuff from convenience stores.

And then my friends dared me to steal condoms from like a drugstore.

And I did, but we were not of a sexual age yet.

I think this was, again, maybe 9, 10, 11.

So we just blew them up with water and threw them at each other.

But they don’t break because they’re really strong, right?

Yeah.

So like you can put a lot of water in it and then huck it at your friend and it hits your friend, but it doesn’t break, which is super fun.

And they were like, oh, it’s got a little residue on it.

That’s fine.

And then just…

Yeah.

And then I think about like, if you were walking in the countryside of Canada, because we were doing this out in a field, and you saw two kids hucking what would appear to be water balloons at each other.

And you realized like there’s these children throwing water -filled condoms at each other.

Like, what would you think you should do?

I’d say leave them.

I mean, I think that is the natural instance.

Like, not my kids, not my problem.

Yeah.

Not going to deal with that.

Android 18.

Yeah.

Oh, I found it a lot.

It was just image search.

50 % ass shots.

Really?

Yeah.

Her standing with her butt towards the camera looking over her shoulder.

That’s half the image search when you immediately do it.

And then you get into poses.

Oh, I’ve been knocked down.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Oh, are these my panties?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there is one.

I scroll down.

She’s taking off her shirt and she’s wearing short shorts.

Uh -huh.

Yeah.

This is an interesting character.

The OG design is pretty just kind of cool vibes.

But yeah, the fan arts definitely takes liberties in it.

Clearly the oldest one is her wearing a full pair of jeans, high -waisted with a shirt and a vest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you can see some very clear updates as the jeans get tighter.

Yeah.

And the vest and the shirt gets torn.

Yes.

Yeah.

And the bosoms are out.

Yeah.

What do you think it was about Android 18 that appealed to you the most?

I think…

I was one of those typical kind of…

When I was kind of realising that I was gay, I was…

What?

Oh, shit.

Oh, damn.

Bye.

Bye.

Just a lot of kind of young gay boys just like female characters.

I think it’s because maybe there’s like a feminine girliness to us that we can’t really get out kind of in our physical mannerisms because we’re kind of ashamed by it or something.

I’m speaking broadly.

So it kind of…

Well, society has not been supportive.

I think that’s pretty fair.

Yeah.

I think it manifests in just being fans of kind of girly things.

I used to play with my sister’s Polly Pockets and things like that.

If I…

Do you know when you play those pretend games where you are a character kind of in the playground and you’re recreating fights or whatever?

Yeah.

We used to play this game kind of with Yu -Gi -Oh! characters.

I always used to say, oh, I’ll be ancient elf.

Somebody would say, I’ll be blue eyes.

I’ll be dark magician.

You know, those characters things.

I would say, oh, I’ll be ancient elf, which is a pretty well -known kind of classic elf guy with a staff and who’s like just wizard stuff.

But, haha, jokes on them.

In my head, I was mystical elf, which was this really nice looking girly elf with gorgeous long hair.

But they had no idea.

So I have to look at mystical elf.

Yes.

Oh, it’s…

Okay.

I’m getting very quickly a similar vibe, though.

Oh, no!

This is long, long straight blonde hair.

Yeah.

Very feminine, but very strong at the same time.

Yeah.

A bit nun -like, isn’t it?

Well, a lot of the poses have her, she’s doing like a prayer.

Yeah, that’s right.

But, like, if you looked, if you, again, I don’t know about these two franchises.

So I look at Android 18, I look at this mystical elf character.

Yeah, there’s a lot of overlap there.

So you had like essentially a type.

This is still my type for women, you know.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

There’s no judgment there.

It’s just very interesting.

Yeah.

That it manifested so quickly.

Because I…

Early, early, early days, it was very clear it was brunettes all the way.

Oh, yeah.

Because my first digital crush was the, I think, the keyboardist from Jem and the Holograms,

but not Jem and the Holograms, the bad girls.

The other band, the Misfits.

How do I search that on the internet?

The Misfits, Jem and the Holograms.

Drummer, did you say?

I think it’s the keyboardist.

Oh, so keyboardist, so.

This was a long time.

It was developmental in the kind of woman I actually pursued later in life.

I’m not sure which one to focus on.

Ah!

I think I’ve seen a picture of…

Oh, that’s a guitar.

Yeah, I think that’s going to be her, though.

It’s either going to be blue hair or black hair.

My Sailor Moon choice was the Sailor…

The blue hair one.

Uranus?

No, you blame…

I forget the names.

Neptune?

Sailor Neptune, maybe?

Yeah.

She was the smart one.

I kind of went for the smart one with blue hair.

Oh, yeah.

But the…

This…

This girl from The Misfits, there was some combination that awoke something within me.

Ooh.

I’m seeing a lot of kind of…

There’s…

I’m seeing an array of different characters, but one with black hair who…

Yeah.

Kind of big brushed out back…

What is it?

Back brushed.

Is it like big volumous hair?

Yeah.

I’m seeing a lot.

I like a lot of hair.

That’s true.

Yeah, yeah.

No, she looks pretty…

Pretty rad.

No.

Now, see, the interesting thing is for the Misfits, they were the bad girls, but she actually

didn’t want to be a bad girl.

She wanted…

So every now and then she would help Jem in the holograms.

Oh.

Ooh.

So you could see that two ways.

You could see that as a traitor to her band, or you could say like, oh, she doesn’t actually

want to hurt anyone or be evil.

She’s showing some duality in her character.

So I like…

I like a complicated brunette.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right, right, right.

Well, that’s…

That’s good.

She’s going to be, you know, a feast for your brain as well as your eyes.

That’s…

Yeah.

I have to…

I need that complicated nature of…

Of a human being to be into.

And so anyways, the cheating scandal I found.

It was in the UK, so I’m surprised you’re not already like well up on this.

But back in September 2025, the World Stone Skimming Championship was rocked by Cheating

Scandal is the title.

Get it?

Rocked?

Yeah.

You can’t see, but I rolled my eyes.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

I…

My very first thought was, isn’t it sad that all the best skimming stones are already in

the middle of the lake?

So like I…

Now whenever I go to a lake or a beach, I’m always like, oh, I would love to get a skimming

stone and throw it and have it skim like 20 times.

But the best ones are already in the middle of the lake.

They’re already gone.

You know, it’s never meant to be.

No, it’s like a…

It’s like a legend’s graveyard, isn’t it?

Yes.

Very much so.

So have you ever heard of the island of Ysdal?

I have.

Ysdale?

Ysdal.

Oh, you have?

They have.

It’s a very small island.

Every year, they have the World Stone Skimming Championships.

Now, I don’t know when they say world, if that actually means people from around the

world come.

But this year, this 2025, an American, the first time an American has won the World Skim

Stoning Championship.

So I’m assuming, without having looked too much into it, that most of them are from the

UK.

Most of the previous champions.

But this time, an American came over and actually won.

Oh, right, right.

The cheating was…

So you’re supposed to go to…

There’s a quarry you can get your stones from.

You’re not allowed to, like, shave or chip the stone to make them better.

And there was some concern that some of the stones looked.

The judges spotted edges that were too smooth to be natural and tiny marks that suggested

sanding or shaping.

So 2 ,000 people had traveled to the Hebrides.

I’m not sure if I’m saying that right.

I’ve never heard that place, yeah.

I don’t know.

I’m assuming it’s a town or an area to skim…

Oh, maybe it’s a series of lakes.

That actually would make sense.

Hmm.

To skim slate across the flooded quarry.

Oh, it’s not a lake.

It’s a quarry.

And there’s no prize money.

So it’s just for a trophy and a little bit of, you know…

Glory.

Pride.

Yeah.

And yet people still cheated.

I’d say if you’re cheating where the prize is glory, that says a lot of stuff about you

that I wouldn’t want the world to know if it was me.

And it’s stone skimming.

It’s not…

Like, I know people can be good at everything.

Like, good at stone skimming, good at everything.

But as far as skills go, you’re not…

Yeah, you’re not using that for anything.

Well, you have just expressed some melancholy at knowing all the best stones are in the middle

of the lake.

So if you’re here…

Having any kind of thought about stone skimming…

Well, see, my feeling is, like, I have maybe mediocre skills at stone skimming.

The best rock would make me better.

It’s not me.

I need that rock.

Yeah.

To be the best stone skimmer I can be, I need that rock.

Yes, but I’m sure there’s tweaks to your form, to your angle of swing.

I don’t know.

So I bet there’s more…

If we really dissect it, I bet there’s more skill than we assume for stone skimming.

I bet if you talked to one of those previous champions and they watched you skim, I bet

they’d give you five pointers, at least.

Five?

Wow, okay.

I reckon.

I reckon.

Very specifically, five pointers.

Well, I’m thinking, so, the arc of your swing.

Okay.

Maybe the power.

Maybe there’s too much power.

I don’t know.

I’m not staying through now.

I think if I was going to make a mistake, it would always be too much power.

Because when I…

The few times I’ve gone bowling, clearly I’m throwing the ball too hard.

How can that negatively impact the pins?

Well, because it’ll…

Let’s say I actually do a good job and it goes right down the middle.

It’ll nail the middle one so hard it goes straight back and it doesn’t knock down any

of the other ones.

So you always have to hit it so that it sort of bounces around or flies off on an angle.

Oh.

Okay.

Okay.

So I actually…

Too hard, like, in a straight line.

It’s like a bullet.

It goes right through it and then, like, the ones on the side don’t get knocked down.

Oh, yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

That’s why, like, professionals, they always try to, like, spin it.

Oh, yeah.

So…

I’ve never tried to do any of that stuff, but…

I can’t…

I can’t even…

Hmm.

Yeah, the spinning…

What was I going to say?

What was I going to say about spinning, Peter?

I don’t know.

It spun out in a brain.

When you say it that way, I immediately think of a furry thing.

Spinning.

Maybe…

The furries…

How…

When you look at furries…

Because I don’t…

I’ve seen a lot of furries online.

Don’t ask any questions, please.

But…

I don’t know where it extends to.

What animals are included from that kingdom of animals into the furrydom?

Is it only things with fur?

No, because dragons can also be furries.

Because your fur kin can also be a dragon.

I think they probably say they have a different thing,

but they will end up falling under the furry umbrella.

Well, how do you know…

So that’s scales.

That’s not…

Hmm.

But how do you know real dragons don’t have fur?

Oh, I don’t.

But I believe it’s up to the professionals.

The dragon kin would be able to tell you that they have scales.

Okay.

Fair enough.

And like I’ve seen on videos…

I think we might be spending a lot of time watching the same videos.

Where it’s…

Like there’s birds and stuff as well.

I think most of them are wolves, horses, dogs, that kind of stuff.

Which actually I would see is very relatable to the average person.

But then there’s the people who kind of hit the fringes,

and that would be birds and dragons and other…

Maybe more extreme animals that are more distant to the average person.

Because I’ve encountered dogs and wolves and horses and bears and stuff.

As fairies?

No, as people.

Again, because I think your furry persona…

Mm -hmm.

…would have to come from an experience.

So this is the most natural question to follow up is,

if you were going to be a furry, what would you be?

What animal would you choose?

What is your…

Deep down inside, what’s the animal that represents you the best?

Oh.

Well, my favorite animals of all are giraffes.

But by being a…

It’s a very hard one to pull off, I think.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

And they take up a lot of room in yiffing, I’d say.

That is an unintentional double entendre, too.

And…

After I said it, I heard what I said.

Yes.

What?

Where am I listening?

Well, giraffes are really tall, so they’re really hard to pull off.

Hey!

I’m talking about masturbating giraffes.

Ah.

I should have got that.

Digitally stimulating a giraffe is difficult because of the general height of the placement of the giraffe’s penis.

Yeah.

Also, it would be hard to pull off, as in to wear appropriately, a giraffe costume.

Damn.

Your brain is at, you know, 10 miles faster than mine.

I’m double entendre -ing by accident.

Nice.

So a giraffe.

So would you choose a giraffe, though?

So you’re going to go to your first furry convention.

You might be yiffing, you might not, we don’t know.

Is the giraffe what you’re going to go with?

No, because…

Well, the thing that…

The number one thing for a giraffe, it’s its long neck.

And how can you do that justice?

Well, I’d have to wear a long neck and then the head on top.

That’s going to be heavy.

And I can’t emote like that.

Like they do, like as a wolf.

So I’d need to…

And also, I don’t want to sully my favourite animal.

I need an animal that represents me, that I don’t mind taking into horrible, desperate areas.

Because I will be starting as I mean to go on, and I will be yiffing on my first try.

Oh yeah, yeah.

No question.

I once took a Patronus charm test online by answering some personality questions.

And, you know, Patronus from Harry Potter.

It’s like your kind of spirit animal, in a way.

Are you Hufflepuffin?

I was Slytherin, yeah, when I took the house quiz.

But my Patronus is a Basset Hound.

Oh, that’s…

I mean, we’re going cute.

Yes, maybe…

You’re going to get a lot of yiffing.

I think that is actually a really good choice, because it’s a non -traditional dog choice.

And it’s also very cute, but in its own way, very powerful.

So I think you would be able to garner a lot of attention if you did that.

Yeah, possibly so.

So, and, as a plus, I’ve never had a Basset Hound as a pet.

So I won’t be thinking of them while I’m, you know, at the conference.

You don’t want to be thinking of your own actual pets.

I don’t want to be cosplaying as Rascal or anything.

No, no, yeah.

Well, because I had an experience in university, and people…

I’m pretty sure that raccoons are my spirit animals.

Because I got really, really drunk.

And you know when you do that drunk walk home, but you’re too tired, so you have to sit down for a bit?

Yeah, for a bit.

So I did…

Yeah, so I sat down.

This was in my university campus.

And I was just sitting on some stairs.

And I just, you know, the deep breathing of trying to like, okay, I got to walk for another 5, 10 minutes, but it’s really hard.

A raccoon came and sat down next to me.

And I was so drunk, I started talking to the raccoon.

Now, people always make fun of me like, oh, the raccoon didn’t understand, whatever.

I’m like, yes, I know, but he paid attention.

He listened to me for an extended period.

Then, he got up on his hind legs and put his hand on my shoulder in sort of a fatherly way, and then left.

Oh my goodness.

So I think raccoons are my spirit animal.

But I am insecure enough as a male that I wouldn’t want to be a raccoon, so I’d probably choose a bear.

What?

This is the full open honesty.

Okay, okay.

My heart is a raccoon, but the thing I want to show to the world is a bear.

Right, I see, I see, I see.

Okay.

And I’m wondering if now, like, could you get away with that?

Like, everyone goes, you’re not a bear.

Being discovered as you are not being true to your furry animal would be a shock.

And also, it’ll be a big disappointment, considering you’ve sourced or paid for this suit that now people are saying…

A very expensive suit.

Yeah, that’s not you.

What are you doing?

The bloody hell did I buy this thing for, then?

Yeah.

And also, raccoons.

I wasn’t there, of course.

But I’m dead certain that raccoon was understanding, in part, what you were saying.

Because don’t they say that, I think, only 0 .1 % of understanding is delivered through speech itself.

I think animals absolutely could understand tone.

Yeah.

Like, the raccoon clearly knew I wasn’t threatening him.

He knew I was not…

He probably could hear that I was maybe a little sad, you know.

And I needed to talk to somebody.

And he was like, all right, buddy.

I’ll listen.

I don’t understand what you’re saying, but it’s good.

And then, hence, the shoulder touch.

The little shoulder touch was amazing.

It was shocking.

And then he just kind of walked off.

Like, it wasn’t runaway.

It was no scurrying or anything.

He was just like, all right, we’re done.

I gotta go.

My next appointment is waiting.

That was probably a very highly renowned raccoon therapist in the area.

I have carried that with me my whole life.

And it is one of the, like, a peak moment in my life.

And whenever I tell people the story, they kind of try to make fun of it.

And I’m like, no, you don’t get it.

Like, there’s nothing to make fun of.

This was cross -species communication.

Again, words were irrelevant.

It was just, I felt something.

The raccoon was like, oh, I need to just take that in.

All right, I’ve had enough.

Bye.

It was probably some pretty strong emotion, yeah.

Yeah, I think I was really sad at that time.

I don’t, probably, probably, again, I might, like, I didn’t have much direction in life.

So, I think I felt lost for a lot of my life.

Because I dedicated my life to judo.

And that is not a career path or valuable.

Well, we’ll say that when you’re getting mugged and you pull out all your judo stuff.

I did get mugged once.

This was actually, for the mugger, a big mistake.

Because this was me at my peak.

Like, I was at my biggest, strongest, most physically capable.

And I was in an alley in Vancouver.

And I’d parked somewhere weird.

So, I was walking through this alley.

And this guy, he clearly had not eaten in, like, a week.

Or at least not food.

Probably had a lot of drugs.

And he jumped out with a screwdriver.

And he was, like, basically shaking.

And he goes, like, give me your money.

And I just took the screwdriver away from him.

And he left.

How did you take it away from him?

I just grabbed it out of his hand.

Because he was, like, he was barely able to hold on to it anyways.

And I was, like, free screwdriver.

You mugged him.

It ended up that way.

I just wanted to take it out of his hand so that he wouldn’t accidentally stab me.

I was more worried about an accident than anything else.

And then he just, he realized he’d lost his screwdriver.

He’s like, oh, I got nothing now.

And he ran away.

Oh, bless him.

I feel a bit sorry.

Yeah, I felt bad for him, which was the weirdest mugging experience ever.

Well, I suppose there are, of all, if you line up all the muggers and categorize them based on

how they ended up in that situation where they’d mug somebody.

A lot of them probably do have sad stories.

Oh, I’m sure.

Again, he was clearly just a drug addict.

And he’d just run out of everything in his life.

This was his last effort.

Like, he didn’t, like, your planning to steal the figurine

was ten times more than his planning on mugging.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Which is why you were successful and he wasn’t.

This is my biggest complaint about criminals and crime is they don’t do the planning

and that’s why they’re not successful and that’s why they get caught.

Yeah, it seems that that’s the majority of things that lead to a successful capture of a criminal.

It’s down to a detail missed or maybe overdone.

Don’t they say never return to the scene of a crime?

I don’t know how true that is if it’s just a cliche phrase.

But, yeah, two little thoughts in the details maybe.

I think if the return to the scene of the crime is, like,

they have to be talking about, like, something like a crime of passion or a fire or something

where it’s like, that’s an emotional crime.

I think for theft, there would be very little point to go back to the same place

because if you had to successfully steal from someplace,

unless you think it’s an easy mark and you could do it again.

But, again, any sensible criminal would be like,

don’t steal from the same house, like, twice in a row.

Mm -hmm.

You’re just way more likely to get caught, so.

Yeah.

But I think, like, if your arsonists are attracted to fire,

if they set a big fire, I can see them going back and being like,

ooh, look at the fire I set.

If you’re setting a fire just to set a fire, there’s some kind of trophy part of that.

It’s like some pride, some kind of bragging thing.

So, yeah, that kind of mindset, I reckon, would be somebody who would return to the crime

because if they’re doing it to kind of admire themselves or just for their own ego or something,

I don’t know.

Yeah, maybe they would do something like that.

Yeah, so there’s a passion element to crime and then there’s, like, just the, like,

I need money or I want money or I’m greedy or whatever.

Those I would separate into the two different categories for sure.

And then there’s these, like, guys who, like, cheated stone skimming.

They’re actually, to me, the worst.

Like, the guys who are stealing for money, it’s like, I understand, maybe I don’t agree,

but I understand you need and or want money.

That makes sense in modern society.

You need money.

The guys who are, like, maybe have issues and they set things on fire and it’s, they need therapy.

I kind of get that.

To cheat at stone skimming is the lowest because there’s no, there’s not even a benefit.

Okay.

You don’t get anything for this.

I understand what you’re saying.

And as highly unlikely as this is, picture the following scenario of maybe, maybe somebody is coming of age.

They’re about 20 years old.

It’s time, if they were going to start skimming stones, now is the time to do it.

Let’s say their parent and their parent’s parent were master stone skimmers.

Maybe they have an older sibling who was also successful in stone skimming.

And they’re the only ones who haven’t kind of picked up the…

Ah, they’re in the shadow of a great stone skimmer.

If this person who maybe, maybe hasn’t taken to the, to the craft as easily as other people around them, maybe if they were to cheat, I can see the psychological reasoning behind that.

The kind of their, their self -worth is based upon the opinions of their previous skimmers in the family.

Yeah.

Yeah, I understand that.

I, this is actually why I did not want my son to do judo.

I, I not consciously thought about stone skimming, but I thought like, oh, my son wants, he’s going to do a sport or something.

We’re going to put him into something.

And everyone, everyone just immediately assumed he’s going to do judo.

And I was like, well, no, but that’s my thing.

And I don’t want him to feel like he has to achieve something I didn’t, or he needs to have his own thing.

So I, in your scenario, I can at least say I’m a better parent.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So what we’ve actually, the conclusion we’ve come to is that stone skimming families are bad parents.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, give it, give it a break, parents who skim stones.

Yeah, come on, man.

Think of your children, for Christ’s sake.

Think of your children and how they’re going to feel when they’re at the island of Ysdal.

Shovels from America.

Wait, which one was the cheater?

The American?

The Canadian?

It actually, probably the Canadian was trying to push it across the, no, the American man won.

So that to me would imply that they did not cheat.

Because I’m assuming if you cheat, you don’t get the prize.

No.

His name was Jonathan Jennings of Kentucky.

And he became the first American man to win.

And Lucy Woods collected her sixth women’s title.

They don’t say where she’s from, which makes me feel like she’s from the UK.

Okay.

Right.

Because it’s a UK based contest.

So if you’re not going to say where they’re from, it’s at least the United Kingdom.

I don’t know if it’s Scotland, Wales.

Yeah.

There are only 60 residents in Ysdal.

What is there?

I couldn’t point to Ysdal on a map, but I’ve definitely heard the name.

I think it’s like a, there’s a small quirky place from, in England.

But yeah, I wouldn’t know where it is.

I kind of want to go there now.

I kind of want to enter the stone skimping town.

Skimping?

Now skimping is completely different to skimming.

Yeah.

No, I would, it’s because I got the yiffing in the back of my head.

Now I want to, I want to, I would like, because I guess just anyone can enter.

I would love to just enter and try.

Well, you should.

With no intention to win, just go and do it for fun.

This is the, this is the reason people have jobs in adult life to do shit like this.

No, I, I’m now looking at this article going like, they’re not going to turn me away.

Well, not, not unless they’ve had enough of cheating, cheating foreigners coming into our skimming competitions.

Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

But I do have to answer the question now, who would I represent?

The United Kingdom because I was born in Northern Ireland.

Canada because I was raised in Canada.

Or Japan because I’ve lived in Japan longer than I’ve lived anywhere else.

Before you make a decision, I would suggest that whichever country you ultimately decide to represent

in this confirmed promise of entrance into this,

you should definitely play up the British side in case it gets you more brownie points

and they look at you.

Exploit the, the patriotism of the judges there.

Well, that’s, that’s a really, no, that’s a good idea.

Cause it’s one of those things where like, if I did win a championship in anything,

suddenly the UK would claim me.

Ireland would claim me.

Like everyone wants to claim the champion.

They will.

They’re from here.

So yeah, no, that’s not a bad idea.

We should, okay.

I think we can finish on this.

We’ll let people decide.

So if you have an opinion of which country I should represent in the stone skimming championship,

should it be the United Kingdom, Canada, or Japan,

you can send a message to chunkmanbeefchest .com

or a voice message to speakpipe .com slash chunkmanbeefchest.

The best is a philosophy.

Drinking at lunch brings verbal skills like a sucker punch.

Woke up to CMRB.

Yeah, yeah.

CMRB.

Yeah, yeah.

CMRB.

Yeah, yeah.

CMRB.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh.