Category: Podcast

Oh, no. So I have to start with actual catch up news because I got in trouble. You and I did an episode last month and then I got some messages because apparently I did not introduce you properly.

So everyone who’s listened to this podcast knows who I am because the podcast is a couple of years old now, but you never got you never got.

Yeah, you just suddenly were added in. And because we had been doing like practice and experiments over the last couple of months, I didn’t even think to introduce you properly.

So this is Jordan. He’s joining Chunkwood Beef Chest podcast, Seeming Bee podcast, fitness influencer.

I am absolutely turgid at the thought of speaking to him today and hopefully many days into the future.

How would you introduce yourself?

Phone on the spot. OK, let me let me say the first five words that come to mind.

OK, why five? Why five? Why five words?

Three. Everyone says three. Everyone says one. Five is the next odd number.

OK. And speaking of odd, that is one of the five words.

Then, then committed and then brown hair. That’s four words and glasses.

Wait, wait. Does brown hair count as two words? Because odd is one. Committed is one. Brown hair should only be one.

But it’s two words. It’s two words, but it’s one concept.

I can’t say brown. You could say you could say you could say auburn.

Auburn?

That doesn’t include hair. Brunette.

Brunette. That sounds classy.

It sounds like brown hair sounds so bog standard, isn’t it? But brunette.

Brunette sounds way better.

Sophistication. Class.

Now there’s your five words.

Sophistication and class.

And all that ass.

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.

Yeah.

CMRB.

That is a great set of words.

I think this was a successful experiment.

I wasn’t, I was ready for that to fail and I was absolutely wrong.

Well, I’m happy to, to, to, what’s the opposite of disappoint?

To impress.

To impress, yes.

How’s your life been in the last two weeks?

Oh, do you want the truth?

So this is for anyone who’s listening, who isn’t as familiar with Japan.

This is exam, university exam, entrance exam, season time.

I said exam like five extra times.

This is university entrance exam time for kids.

My son is going through his university entrance exams.

So at the end of high school, you take the common exam, which is sort of your high school exams.

And then you would apply to each university you want to go to and take their exam.

So then they put those two numbers together.

My son has very high aspirations and very good scores, but he messed up his common exam.

So he maybe transposed a column of like, I guess, of multiple choice and he did the wrong column or something.

So he got a suspiciously low score compared to what he was getting on his tests previous.

But that has basically messed up his entire life.

So he didn’t get into the two schools he wanted to get into.

We’re waiting till next week to get one more.

But if he doesn’t get into that, he’s going to be a ronin.

Do you know the ronin thing?

Fighter, samurai type.

Yeah.

So a ronin is a samurai without a house.

So he is going to take an extra year of just studying and then try again next year if he doesn’t get into this school next week.

And he is very down about it.

So it’s just been this like oppressive weight in our household.

And I just want to play video games and stuff.

Because I went to university.

I got a job.

I don’t need any of this shit anymore.

Well, life’s hard.

Maybe you can learn a lesson this way.

But it might save him a lot of mini lessons down the line.

I think this is actually, if I want to look at the silver lining, this is actually really good.

Because he’s overconfident.

And he always has been.

And he’s very focused on status.

And he wants to go to the best school.

And so he always does everything too quick.

And I think that’s what happened.

He did his exam too fast.

He thought it was going to be perfect.

And he’s got to learn to be a little more careful.

So this is a whole year -long kick in the ass for him.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, when I think about you, Peter, I don’t see those kinds of qualities from what I know of you.

Where do you think that comes from?

I, this is, it’s interesting when you have kids, you realize like what does come from you and what doesn’t come from you.

So when there is any sort of anger or conflict, he just goes dead silent, which is exactly what I do.

But his desire for status is completely alien to me.

Like I do not care about what university someone went to or, yeah, like just that stuff doesn’t matter to me.

Like I don’t, it never meant anything.

Nice.

So that to me is almost like an opposite attribute, but it’s not like my wife is like that either.

So I don’t get where that came from.

Do you have like your personality?

We know each other, but not that well, because we don’t get to hang out that much.

But do you have like a status element to your life?

Because I almost go out of my way to not show status.

Well, I think in a lot of circumstances, status, sorry, I’m copying you, but I’m going to say status.

Well, please do.

We want to get, we want to get our international audience on board.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And all the fitness buffs, don’t forget.

Yeah, of course.

Like my background isn’t, isn’t preoccupied with anything to do with status.

It’s, it’s, I’m from a small town in England and my parents were always there that you could discover their path in life.

And I think if you’re, if you’re consumed by status, you’re, you’re not really discovering your path.

You’re following this pre -walked path to the high status places.

I’ve never, I’ve never really been inclined to go there.

I don’t know.

I like an easy, relaxing life.

Yeah.

It doesn’t mean not driven in certain areas, but it’s definitely not by status.

It’s more of a fulfillment or fun.

I do everything until it doesn’t feel fun anymore.

And then I change, maybe like a leaf in the wind in that way.

But I don’t know.

I’ve never, I’ve never put too much stress on status.

Like I almost go out of my way to play down anything that would be significant in my life.

So it’s almost like the opposite.

We’d rather positively surprise somebody than negatively.

If, if someone’s, if I, if they find out the status thing first and then they see the actual skill, which might not be as good as they expected.

That’s the opposite of what you want.

Yeah.

Not impressed.

Yeah.

When I, when I came to Japan, one of the good pieces of advice I was given by one of my judo teachers was tell them you’re really bad at judo and then let them find out.

Cause otherwise you’re putting like a big target on your back.

If you’re like, I come in and I won this and I did that and I’m really amazing.

That puts a big target on your back.

And it’s also the opposite sort of humility thing that Japanese people kind of go for.

So he’s like, just go in and say, Oh, I’m not very good.

I’m getting old.

You know, my back’s sore and everyone will be like, Oh, cool.

And then you do well.

And they’re all like, Oh, okay.

Yeah.

That humility went a long way.

I think that helped a lot.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I agree.

100%.

Overwhelm, not underwhelm.

Would you like to know about, since we only put out one episode so far, would you like to know the breakdown of the audience we got?

Oh, go on then.

36 % from the United States.

28 % from the Philippines, which was a bit of a shock for me.

Oh, okay.

24 % from Japan, 8 % from Germany and 4 % from Canada.

That’s a good start.

I mean, there was only so many downloads to begin with because it was, it’s been, that feed has been dead for a long time.

So it’ll take a while to kick in again.

Does it go back into the algorithm after some?

Yeah.

I think, I think it’ll be like more active.

People, people will be more likely to download it or see it again.

Okay.

Well, that’s good.

So the Philippines part surprised you.

Have you not had much of a, you know, Philippines following before?

Well, it’s an, just because it’s an English speaking podcast.

I would just assume it’s English, primarily English speaking countries.

And I know there’s a lot of English speakers in the Philippines, but didn’t really expect.

Yeah.

That’s like the second biggest group.

Nice.

Nice.

I mean, I’ve got some friends from the Philippines in Japan and they all speak really, really good English.

I wonder if it’s maybe a little known fact that English is a bit more widespread in the country.

I don’t know.

I’m guessing.

No, that’s good.

I’m happy to hear.

We’ve got some international variety.

Yeah.

Some people, some people listening.

So yeah, we want to make sure that my North American isms and your British isms are full in full effect to make sure everyone’s getting represented.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Let’s do it.

Let’s nod to these different places.

So last week we, or last time we talked about furries and stuff.

So I have two stories.

I’m going to let you choose.

It’s, we could talk about a beauty show or being angry.

Which one piques your interest?

We’ll probably use the other one next time.

So I’m going to say, I’m going to say beauty show.

Beauty show.

Okay.

Well, you stick with what you know, I think.

So last time we did talk about furries and I said, while my spirit animal was a raccoon, if I was going to present myself, I would present myself as a bear.

And you said your spirit animal was a giraffe.

But I forget, I forget what you said you’re, you would dress up as.

The giraffe was too hard.

Yeah.

Very inconvenient.

I think, um, logistically, but I was, I think I was leaning towards the Patronus I was given on a Harry Potter website, which was a basset hound.

Oh, basset hound.

Yes, I do remember that.

Okay.

Basset hound.

Uh, so I think bear is very gay coded attractive, but I, maybe I’m saying a message that I didn’t intend.

Uh, and basset hound is very cute, but what, what about camel?

What about camel?

Well, what do you think camels are particularly attractive is kind of what I’m saying.

Ah, I think, um, I think camels have the opposite effect to horses in attractiveness.

I’m going to need an explanation of that.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

My thinking on this is, um, horses as a whole, you look at them, you think what a, what a beautiful, majestic, gracious looking animal.

But when you, when you zoom in on the individual body parts, um, they’ve got knobbly knees, they’ve got weird shaped kind of torso business.

I think in different areas of their body, I think it’s a bit weird looking, but as a whole, it makes a beautiful picture.

I think camels are the opposite.

As a whole, they look a bit frumpy and a little bit weird, but I think, what am I trying to say?

Am I saying?

No, I think I get, I get it.

So like you’re saying the pieces of a horse don’t make sense, but when you put it together, it’s like a beautiful animal.

Whereas a camel looks odd, but probably all the pieces look better.

I think individually, if you just look at one hump, you think that’s a nice hump or that’s a nice tail.

That’s a nice curved neck or something.

But then as a whole, you think, Oh, that’s what it is.

It’s a bit odd looking.

Yeah.

Horses have really like the horses with the manes and really big horses.

Like even though, uh, like they’re attractive.

It’s very weird.

I, I kind of get why girls go through a phase where they’re into horses.

Oh yeah.

Because it’s, my theory is that the horse represents everything a man, they want a man to be.

So it’s like big and strong and powerful, but also very horses, you know, the image is that they’re very gentle and loving and friendly.

So it’s got all that.

And so like you can form this deep relationship with it, but this, because they’re young, the horse is not trying to have sex with them.

Exactly.

I think at that age, that’s what you want.

You want all the stuff, but you’re not ready to have sex with someone.

So it’s, it’s there, but it’s not there.

Yeah.

So maybe the romanticized qualities are all there in horses.

Yeah.

I can see that.

I think though, I think a horse is almost a perfect man.

What would push it into perfect man area?

Yeah.

Well, okay.

And you see, now I’m just going to make dirty jokes.

There was, they have gigantic penises that if you have sex with them, it would kill you.

Not a perfect man then, is it?

No, no.

So to perfect man, you’d have to reduce everything.

So then, then is a centaur a better, centaurs are generally considered sexy.

They are.

And I don’t get that.

I can see why.

Because I think you have to suspend your disbelief massively to, to really romanticize them.

Because obviously you think, well, where, where is, where is the stuff?

Is it going to be at the front, at the back where a horse is?

Well, it’s got to be at the back.

Because they have, they have the human torso and then the horse body.

So the genitals will have to be the horse genital.

It has to be.

You would see a little dingley out the front if they had it up there.

But they’d, to make it look aesthetic.

And think about, think about how sad it would be to be this giant horse animal and have a tiny,

like even a human penis on that animal would look incredibly small.

It would.

But when you’re getting down to it, it’ll be appreciated because your horse is, is dangerously large.

So, yeah, the centaur business is, is a bit of a conundrum.

They are so fantasized about, but yeah, there’s this huge glaring issue.

Now, not to, not to reference the previous week too, previous thing too much about drawing weird furry fan art and stuff like that.

But of the few centaur pictures I might have seen in my, in my life.

I like, I like that you, you qualified that with might have.

You, if you’ve seen it, you’ve obviously seen it.

There’s no might, the things I may have experienced in my time.

The, the ones that I definitely might have seen more than four times have been mostly in the area you’re saying between the horse legs.

But that’s, that takes all the romance that, that people think of with centaurs.

You know, they’ve got gorgeous faces, gorgeous bodies, and then they’ve got the, the cool stallion thing going on as well.

If you are getting nitty and gritty with a centaur, you’re not seeing the very attractive human part because you’re under the horse.

Yeah.

You’re seeing, you’re, all you’re seeing is horse legs.

Oh, it’s a nightmare.

There’s no way this is a good thing.

He’s going to have to shout.

You’re right back there.

Awesome.

I don’t know.

They could set up mirrors and check in.

Mirrors in the, in the forest or wherever centaurs live?

I know, I know.

Um, the centaurs wouldn’t have mirrors.

I was just trying to think of a way to make it so they could actually like make some eye contact.

And the only thing is mirrors.

And that’s, of course, he’s looking down, but then his head’s like upside down.

And that’s not attractive.

No one’s attractive upside down.

No, because your cheeks sag, your, your skin fall.

Oh, everything.

Everything’s terrible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don’t see how the, the, the romance ends as soon as you try to pursue it physically.

So as soon as you try to make it work, yes, the romance goes away.

And I think that’s true for all interspecies relationships.

Absolutely.

All the ones we’ve tried anyway.

Yeah.

Cause Zeus, Zeus turning into a swan.

Oh, I guess, I guess that wasn’t consensual.

No, it wasn’t.

It was a, it was a, it was a ruse.

That was pretty awful.

Anyways.

Well, it was something strange about this lady.

He was, he, he turned into a swan specifically to seduce a mortal woman.

Is that how it goes?

It’s, I haven’t read it in so long, but I just remember there were multiple instances where

Zeus turned into an animal to engage in relations with a woman.

And I was like, I don’t see how that’s better or more effective or more like, you think you’d

get more resistance unless that’s what he’s going for.

And it, the thing is with Zeus, that might be what he goes for.

He might want to, you know, yeah.

Claim somebody with a bit of force, perhaps, or just a bit of coercion.

Yeah.

But also you think maybe he just knows his target audience.

This mortal woman could have been looking at swans a whole life thinking, oh yeah.

But this doesn’t finish.

He is a god.

He would know your, your deepest inner desires.

So when the raccoon showed up, that was actually Zeus.

Zeus, he’s just trying to get it off with me.

Absolutely.

But you were too sad.

I was drunk.

I was drunk.

We were not, nothing was getting off with anyone when I was that drunk.

That was, that was always a problem.

Yeah.

Definitely has issues.

Yeah.

Too much baggage.

So the 2026 Camel Beauty Show Festival in Al -Musana Oman had 20 camels disqualified because of Botox, fillers, silicon reshaping and hump inflation.

Oh no.

I know.

I was ready to laugh at this story, but that’s very, very sad.

Yeah.

So I was, when you went, started talking about the parts of a horse, I was like, I actually started thinking immediately, what’s the sexiest part of a camel?

And so like the camel’s humps, they deflate because they’re full of water.

But then.

Are they full of fat?

Or are they full of fat?

It’s fat.

It’s fat, but it’s, it’s, that’s what holds the water.

So they will, if they, if they spend X amount of time in the desert, they’ll start to sag.

So when they drink water, the, I think the fat just holds the water for them.

So it’s both.

It’s fatty water.

But surely it’s not, when I’m thinking of like a cross reference, it’s not what I’m thinking.

If I imagine two cavities in the humps that are just full of water, like a, like a jug.

Surely it’s not like that.

That’s very cartoonish.

No, no, no.

So you’re right.

It’s, it’s like fat and the fat holds the water.

So when the fat, when the water is in the, when the camel drinks a lot of water, it inflates

and gets like firm.

And then as, as it uses the water that it’s stored in the hump, the, all the fat will actually

sort of shrink.

Gotcha.

Okay.

My friend’s daughter learned in school, in Japanese school, that if you’re in the desert,

you can drink camel pee.

Oh, that’s good to know.

It’s hydrating.

It’s just another reason not to go in the desert, I guess.

Also, you’d have, that’s very look based.

You’d have to be right there when the camel is peeing.

I guess, I guess the intent is to try to catch it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Dear.

This makes me sound like…

You immediately, you immediately went to like straight into the mouth, didn’t you?

Well, you have to catch way out of a penis, isn’t it?

Treat it like a, like a straw.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, imagine a camel centaur.

Imagine that.

A camel centaur.

Yeah.

It’s not better.

It’s not better.

It’s not better.

Camels themselves, though, have really nice lips.

And I think that’s interesting because that’s where like the fillers and the silicon might

come in.

Is they were actually trying to reshape so they have more luscious lips.

Because I know, I know camels are one of the few animals that have like big lips.

Yeah.

But what do you think is the most attractive element of a camel?

I’m going to say the neck.

I don’t have a thing called slender animal necks.

All my favorite animals have long necks.

Starting with a giraffe and then working our way down makes sense.

Yes.

Yeah.

I love ostriches.

Okapees.

Yeah.

All that business.

What was the last one?

Pocopee?

I’m not sure what the correct pronunciation is.

Okape or Okape?

It’s the, I think it’s the closest living relative to a giraffe.

Is it species wise?

It’s that animal that’s, it’s kind of the size of a big deer.

It’s got striped zebra like legs, but a brown body with some markings on it.

It’s got a longish neck, but not as long as a giraffe.

Okay.

And very, very rare.

Okay.

That’s probably just why I don’t know it.

That’s good.

What about like an ostrich or that?

Really?

Because the ostrich neck to me is more alien.

Because it’s so slender and thin, it actually seems like too much.

It’s also quite hairy as well.

I’ve never been that close to an ostrich neck.

I just would have assumed it was skin or feathers.

It’s hairy.

No, it’s not.

It’s not.

It’s like, it’s like a big hairy shaft with a head on it.

Yeah.

I’m just going to let that one sit there for a bit.

Listen, everyone enjoy big hairy shaft with a head on it.

Yeah.

Yes.

Shout out both of you.

The most interesting part of an ostrich’s neck is how it connects to the feathery part

of its body.

Because it’s not where it’s stuck out of a tuft of feathers randomly, like a dusty.

It’s more, when you look at the way it transitions into the body, it’s weird like branching a pendant.

I’m just making it sound like an alien.

They are.

It’s not as alien as I’m making it sound, but it’s just interesting to see where the feathers start.

It’s, I can’t describe it.

I’m sorry.

No, no, it’s fine.

Because I actually, I understand what you’re saying.

When you get to an animal like that and you get down to its component parts, they are really alien looking.

Like we have, we have these like genuses of animal, like dogs.

And dogs all have inherent sort of similarities, even though there’s a lot of variety of dogs.

But it’s clearly like there’s dog archetype.

Yeah.

Ostriches and things don’t fit into any archetype.

There’s just ostriches.

Any animal that’s almost individualized is alien feeling.

I see what you mean.

Anteaters.

Yeah.

Things like that.

There’s nothing else like an anteater.

It’s just anteaters.

No, I see what you mean.

Those creatures, I’ve, those creatures I think tend to do very well in their environment,

in their specific environment, but not very well at all if they travel to a new environment.

I suppose you could make the argument for all animals, but I think to a higher extent here

because they look so interesting and so unique because they’re designed specifically for the,

for the one job.

It’s almost a single use.

They have, they have one thing they can do and nothing else.

Yeah.

That’s why you get more distinct features with these kinds of animals that don’t, that you

don’t see living widespread.

It’s just in that one zone.

Yeah.

Have you heard of the theory, everything is turning into a crab?

Yes.

Uh, there’s my favorite podcast, three bean salad.

They’ve made this a running joke over the last like five years.

How every evolution is gearing everything towards crab eventually.

And I was actually where I first heard that.

And it was like, yes, everything evolves to become crab sooner or later.

Yeah.

Why do you think that is?

I don’t know.

Because when you think of a crab, I’m not seeing dexterity.

I’m not seeing, um, anything that would, would, you know, benefit somebody outside of a crab’s

environment and hardly anything lives in a crab’s environment in the grand scheme of things.

So I don’t know why people are being, not people.

I don’t know why things are being crabified.

Yeah.

But, so should I stop moisturizing then and become more crab -like?

That would be like the ultimate, because calloused hands are good.

It means that they’re stronger.

And that is step one towards getting claws.

Yeah.

So I just stop using fine motor skills.

I should stop using, I should stop, uh, moisturizing my hands for sure.

Yeah, definitely.

To increase my evolution.

Okay.

Even bind your fingers together.

Make a pincer shape.

I, okay, because I hurt my fingers in judo, when I do judo, I actually do have to bind my fingers.

And I have like a weird, like the Vulcan hand symbol.

That’s how my hands are when I’m doing judo.

Really?

Nerd.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

But this crab thing, I don’t know, I don’t know what the purpose is.

I don’t know what our future is going to look like.

Maybe in a million years, we’ll all be crab people.

So then it would have to be, the world would evolve along with crab.

Crab, so as, as we become crab, so I’m assuming we maintain a level of intelligence as we become

more crabified and therefore start to adjust all our technology to be more crab friendly.

Hmm.

Yeah, I suppose so.

So we need to write science fiction stories about crabs in the future being like the dominant

species.

We could, but when, when you compare crabs to centaurs, I don’t know if a half crab person

is going to pull in the female gaze as, as centaurs.

Well, so that’s the, see, see, you’re using your current modern value system to look at

the crab.

Whereas evolutionarily speaking, when we get down the line, the crab will become the thing

that becomes more attractive.

Of course.

Yeah.

So everyone would be like centaurs.

That’s disgusting.

Now, I mean, look at this half crab, half human with like a crab body and like a torso sticking

out the top.

That’s sexy.

Yeah.

That, yeah.

I see what you mean.

We’ll, we’ll adapt, won’t we?

We’ll have a different kind of sex drive.

Yeah.

Because if you go back, what, what year were you born?

It’s kind of weird.

92.

92.

Okay.

So I was born in the seventies and in the eighties, when I was growing up and having

my sort of awakening, as we discussed last time, it was gigantic fake boobs and zero hips.

And then by the late nineties, early two thousands is when sort of more curvaceous aesthetics came

to play.

And so I saw that evolution over real time where people were like, they wanted just flat

butts and giant fake boobs was what everyone was, was attracted to.

And I actually never was, but I couldn’t understand why.

And I actually felt like it was weird and wrong of me to be me, but I’ve always felt

that way.

But now it’s just the exact opposite of what it was when I grew up.

Do you think there are more people like you that were thinking, I don’t know what the

big deal is with this big boobs?

No, no hips.

I honestly think it was mostly the people in charge of media had one, maybe archetype that

they liked and they were trying to enforce that on everybody.

And they just, there is also the guys in power must have assumed that everyone liked what

they liked.

Probably.

Yeah.

Because there was a weird thing.

McMahon, I forget his name.

He was in charge of World Wrestling Federation for years, Vince McMahon.

And he didn’t think anyone found Asian women attractive.

So there were no female Asian wrestlers.

Oh, right.

And it was just, I was like, but you know, other people have different tastes, but then he

didn’t.

He thought everyone liked what he liked and nothing else.

And so I was like, there must be this weird power thing where you are in charge and you

think everything you like is what everyone wants.

Yeah.

It’s very self -absorbed, isn’t it?

But that’s happy.

That must be what happens when you get rich.

Yeah.

Because no one disagrees with you anymore.

No, you’d be just reinforced on all areas by the people surrounding you, wouldn’t you?

But I think, yeah, the media definitely puts a lot of emphasis on certain types of bodies,

certain types of looks.

So I think, I remember being in school pretending I was, you know, into girls and stuff.

So I know following the crowd is a big part of…

No, it’s social pressure.

Social pressure.

That’s right.

Yeah.

Social pressure.

Because I was in a weird spot where I wanted to do sports.

I wanted to do judo and stuff, but I was with the alternative crowd where it wasn’t actually

cool to do sports.

Oh.

There’s not really much to say about that because my friends were actually really accepting

and stuff.

They were very nice.

That’s nice.

A lot of the friends that you have in school are all kind of engaging peer pressure and

there’s like a leader of the group sometimes as well.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that.

I think my experience in high school was very unique because I didn’t suffer from a lot

of peer pressure.

Like, I think at that age you want to fit in, but no one was pushing us, like no one

in our group was pushing us to be a certain way.

So, like all the kids were kind of from different countries.

Like one guy, his parents were from India and the other guy’s parents were from Czechoslovakia

and then my parents were Irish and we were all living sort of in this little melting pot.

It was like maybe 10 of us if you took the extended group, but there was no single person

or leader or anything who was pushing anything.

And so, like when I see other people or different experiences, I think it seems really different.

So, I think I was very lucky.

That’s nice.

Because I was…

Sounds like a nice…

Oh, they were great.

I think I was, like I was scared to do drugs.

I didn’t want to do…

I didn’t want to smoke weed or do acid or stuff because I was just scared that it was going

to like mess me up.

Yeah.

So, I just was the designated driver.

It was just like an unwritten thing.

Like, oh, well, we’ll drop acid and then if anything goes wrong, Peter will take care

of us.

And I was really happy to be in that role because there was no pressure for me to join

in and they could do what they want and I was still cool.

But then also it was safer because there was someone who was sober.

If you’re going to do it, yeah.

This is a safe way to do it.

Seems like.

Yeah.

Well, taking drugs is never completely safe.

Don’t do drugs, kids.

But…

But they are super fun.

I mean, don’t do drugs, but seriously, awesome.

How would you know you were driving?

What have I done?

I’ve done legal drugs.

So, probably the…

I got really, really hurt once and the doctor gave me these like painkillers that were so

strong I wasn’t allowed to drive or anything.

And he was basically like, you have to stay home for the next two days on these like painkillers.

And apparently I watched Beethoven, the big dog movie, like three times in a row.

Like I was so loopy that I watched this dog movie about a dog, you know, crashing a kid’s

birthday party over and over and over again.

What was it that was so enticing?

I was high.

I like, I honestly right now could not tell you what Beethoven is about.

I know it’s about a big dog.

I don’t…

That’s about all I know.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think that might be the whole plot.

It’s a big dog in small space or big dog runs through children’s party and breaks everything.

Like I think that might be the basic plot.

But I know I’ve seen…

Technically, I’ve seen that movie at least three times.

Yeah, fair enough.

In the same day though.

Like you got to be really high for that.

I used to do that as a kid, but not because I was high.

I hope.

I remember watching Aladdin about three times in a row.

But this is going back…

I was seven or eight years old.

I think I was just…

I don’t know why I’d do it.

Maybe I was high on drugs.

Maybe I had the same as you.

Who knows?

No, but kids watch the same thing over and over again.

Kids like repetition and…

Like they get something and they lock into it.

And it’s just…

Because I went through the phase with my kids in the car and it was like one song on repeat, basically.

And I was…

I’ve never liked Katy Perry, but I was so happy when they were like, let’s listen to this other song.

And it was a Katy Perry song.

I was like, I’m more than happy to listen to Katy Perry now because it’s not that kid’s song that I hate.

What was it that you…

What was it that they liked?

The kid’s song or the Katy Perry?

The kid’s song…

It was…

Again, I don’t even remember.

I probably blocked it out because of trauma.

It was…

It was just one of those ones that was like…

Like we do at work where it’s just like the ABCs or the days of the week or something.

It was just one of those really, really sing -songy kid’s songs that you end up despising because it’s just got zero creativity to it.

And then I’m a firework or whatever it was.

That song is what they switched to.

I was really happy about that.

That’s a good one, yeah.

That’s a Katy Perry.

I’ll go on.

I have a similar kind of again and again and again kind of earworm kind of thing.

I used to work in a special school back in England.

And for one year, I was one of the staff in a class of children with autism.

And there was one kid who loved a song for about two months and then moved on to another song.

But he would sing it over and over and over and over again.

It could literally be for about three hours uninterrupted unless he was eating or drinking.

And this one that he was really enamoured by, it was…

I don’t know what the song is called.

It goes, that’s the way…

I like it.

I know that song.

Yeah, it’s a well -known song, but I think it’s pretty old.

But he never…

The bit that he liked from that song was, that’s the way, aha, aha.

So he’d repeat that over and over again.

That’s the way, aha, aha.

That’s the way, aha, aha.

That’s the way.

And he would never get onto the, I like it.

So all of us staff were just kind of waiting and waiting and waiting until one time,

after about a week of going over this, that’s the way, aha, aha, he finally said, I like

it, aha, aha.

Us staff stopped what we were doing.

We cheered.

We celebrated.

We were so, so ingrained in this wheel of that’s the way, aha, aha, aha.

We were released from it.

It was amazing.

So when you left for the day, though, was it stuck in your head as well?

Absolutely.

Yeah, because I learned that the reason we get earworms, we get a song stuck in our head

is because it doesn’t finish because you get like the hook or the chorus and that gets

stuck in your head and it’s on a loop.

And if you can finish the song, it’ll go away.

So you need to finish the song for it to stop being sort of in your head.

Interesting.

Because I, when I, when I got it, when I got a song stuck in my head, I would sing the

greatest American hero TV theme song because I knew all the words.

It’s a terrible TV show from, I think the eighties in America, maybe even the seventies

in America about this school teacher who finds a superhero suit and doesn’t know how to use

it.

So they’re like really bad at being a superhero.

Okay.

It’s a comedy show.

I remember it being good, but I’m sure it was like, if I watched it now, I couldn’t even

watch a whole episode.

Believe it or not, I’m walking on it.

I never thought I could feel so free.

He, he, flying away on a wing in a prayer.

Who could it be?

Believe it or not.

It’s just me.

But because I can finish that whole thing, it’s the end.

And then it stops being an earworm.

And so I could block out other things by singing that to its completion.

Wow.

Okay.

You’ve weaponized this against earworms.

I have.

Well, once I learned the psychology of you need to finish the thing for it to stop looping,

you either need to go find the song and listen to the whole song, or you need to sing another

song in your head to completion.

I was able to do it.

In a theme song from like a TV show is less than usually 30 seconds, maybe a minute.

Okay.

Do you think any song would work or does it depend on the person?

I mean, it works for me.

I’m assuming, again, I read the psychological aspect of how the earworm works.

And once you know it’s to completion, it should work for most people.

The problem is if you put yourself back in the loop somehow right away.

Okay.

I mean, I’m thinking happy birthday is a very short song.

Maybe that would work.

Do you remember on TV, there was a period when they didn’t sing happy birthday?

They sang some like weird rendition of it.

Happy birthday, Peter, Peter, birthday.

Is it that one?

Yeah.

That’s because there was like this legal thing.

Someone basically, I don’t know if they bought it or they claim the rights to happy birthday

for a few years.

You couldn’t sing the traditional happy birthday song because you would have to pay rights to

someone.

It seems crazy how somebody would own that.

I think I heard that a woman owns it somewhere.

She made the song or she at least has the rights to it.

But maybe this is a different person.

I’m sure lots of people can argue over who owns happy birthday.

But happy birthday seems like one of those songs that shouldn’t have an owner.

I guess because we just sing it on our own.

So it’s not really like no one’s paying for it.

I saw a trend recently, say recently last year, on TikTok where people were singing happy

birthday, but only the word birthday.

birthday.

And they would do this to kind of freak out the person whose birthday it was.

So they’d be sat around the cake and then the whole family would say birthday.

Birthday.

Oh, just that part.

Birthday.

Birthday.

Birthday.

And it sounds so creepy when they skip all the other words.

Oh, because I was thinking birthday, birthday, birthday, birthday, birthday, birthday.

But no, just silence until you hit the birthday part.

Okay.

That’s right.

Really awkward.

Yeah, mine’s just weird.

It seems a very ritualistic.

Because if everyone did it in unison as well, because in their head, they’re singing the

same song.

So they would get it in time.

They would.

It would just be a group of people standing around going birthday.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And poor person whose birthday it is.

You said last time about the raccoon thing, that it’s been something that you’ve held with

you kind of since it happened.

And maybe like a core memory of yours.

It is.

I have one as well that I can’t explain.

And I wondered if you had any idea of the origin or heard anything to help me make sense

of it.

Because similarly to that, this has been carried around by me for about maybe 25 years.

When I was a kid, I was walking around the neighborhood and my old house was next to

a convent of nuns where they used to live.

And you’d often see nuns walking around, walking around the neighborhood.

So you’d say hello to them and things.

I was just walking through the neighborhood somewhere.

I saw a nun.

We were going to cross by each other on the road, on the path.

And as I was doing this, I was maybe about seven or eight at the time.

Maybe, was I walking around at seven or eight years old?

Maybe I was 10 years old.

I was just around my cul -de -sac area.

I was walking through and she put her hand out to stop me as she crossed me.

So I stopped.

And wordlessly, not saying anything, she reached inside of her bag and pulled out a leaf.

And she took my hand, put the leaf in my hand, closed my fingers around the leaf.

And then, again, without saying anything, walked off.

And, which is, this is very, very strange behavior to me.

I looked at the leaf and it looked like a completely ordinary leaf, apart from right in the center of the underside of the leaf was, looked like a spiky growth, but it was coming out of the leaf.

Now, since then, I’ve lost that leaf.

I don’t know where it’s gone.

I think I probably lost it maybe on the same day.

But I’ve been thinking about this leaf for years and years and years, thinking, what significance does it have to Christianity or any kind of spirituality?

No, she’s cursed you.

Do you think so?

Okay, so a nun.

So if I was going to say anything about, like, giving a leaf to someone, that’s very paganistic.

That is not a nun’s behavior.

So she was a witch.

Do you reckon so?

She was a witch and she’s either blessed you or cursed you.

I don’t know.

I think the leaf in general would be a positive thing, if I’m being honest.

But the spiky growth in the middle feels very curse -like.

Hmm.

Oh, you know, bless you.

Here’s a leaf.

Or, you know, have a good day and put the leaf in your hand.

Or said something.

I assume positive.

It would have felt good.

But anything you do silently takes on a more nefarious tone.

Oh, doesn’t it?

Yeah.

That’s scary.

I mean, the story you just told is actually quite scary sounding.

Do you reckon so?

I mean, I was there saying…

Imagine a horror movie.

And then so it’s a young boy standing at a crosswalk.

Nun garb.

So, like, the full black, like, the whole habit.

Walks up and just, like, takes the hand, puts a leaf in it, and, like, walks away.

That’s the beginning of a horror movie where, like, either terrible things happen to the child or the child becomes the terrible thing.

Oh, crikey.

Yeah.

Now that you say it like that, it does sound very, very, very horror movie coded.

It is the beginning, opening scene of a horror movie where everything sparks off this point for that child’s family or the people around that child or something.

And then they have to figure out how to break the curse or something.

That would be the end of the movie.

Maybe.

I’ve not broken it yet.

Maybe my curse is just being me.

I’m not very successful.

We’re all cursed.

We’re all cursed by just being us, though.

That is the problem.

In my memory, it didn’t seem so, so horrific because it was probably about mid -morning.

And I don’t remember feeling positive or negative, just confusion.

But, yeah, that’s when you paint it like that.

It does seem very nefarious, a little bit sinister.

If you lived in a horror movie and that’s all you knew, then you wouldn’t know it was a horror movie.

But you tell the story to someone outside of the world of the horror movie, everyone’s like, that’s horrific.

That’s horrible things have happened.

Because the only closest experience I have is when we had my son, we took him to the local Japanese temple and had him blessed.

And so you pay some money and they put his name and they do the sutras.

So they go, and then they say his name.

And then after a while, they walk over, you’re holding the baby, and they take a branch with some leaves on it and they shake it over the baby’s head.

Oh, yes.

And that’s the blessing of the child.

I was okay with that.

But then the priest walked over to a minivan and used the same leaves to bless the minivan.

And I was like, dude, swap out the leaves.

Don’t fucking bless a minivan with the same leaves you bless my child with.

That’s bullshit.

I paid for this.

And that made me lean over to my wife and go, like, can you get anything blessed?

And she was like, you pay the money, they will bless it.

And I was like, I kind of want to bring my PlayStation in and get it blessed.

That is wild.

The guy goes in like, headshot, headshot, something.

But they’ll bless anything.

So I was like, yeah, it’d be weird to see, like, if I had the money and the time, make a YouTube series of, like, increasingly weirder things to see if they’ll just bless it.

That is a great idea for a channel.

So I’m bringing just the weirdest things I can think of and bring it into the temple and pay them to bless it and see if they’ll, like, at what point would they refuse?

Like, here’s a bottle of liquor.

Here’s, I mean, they’ll do vehicles for safety.

Yeah.

I mean, when you say bless the minivan, it’s, that sounds really, it doesn’t sound like there’s any kind of, what’s the word, sacredness to that.

Yeah.

They were, they were, it’s the same as hanging a charm.

A lot of Asian people will hang a charm in their car for good luck so that they won’t crash and stuff.

But this is the same thing.

They’re just blessing it so they won’t have accidents and the car runs well.

And I was like, okay, I don’t think that’s how that works, but okay.

But I just thought they should swap out leaves.

I don’t know why that was the bit I got stuck on.

And I was like, don’t reuse the blessing from my kid on, I guess at least my son went first.

Yeah.

You don’t want to go after the minivan.

If they blessed a minivan and then came to bless my child with the same leaves, I would have been very annoyed.

That seems more disrespectful.

It does.

It does seem very disrespectful.

Yeah.

But I mean, but I think when you think of the core message in the blessing that they’re giving,

so safety and probably fortune and just like a positive life experience,

just taking it at that value.

Yeah.

I can see how one would bless a child and bless a vehicle for travel, of course.

But at least wait until you’ve left before doing that.

I think they should be different ceremonies.

I think there should be the people ceremony and the thing ceremony should be separated for sure.

Yeah.

No, I think I agree.

Yeah.

So off the top of your head, choose something in the room that you sat in.

What would you have blessed from that room?

Well, so I have, if I was going to do serious ones, I got Dave on my lap.

So blessing Dave would be pretty appropriate, I think, because that’s as much love as a human as I have for this dog.

So if I’m looking for the weirdest thing, I have a printer cartridge, not a printer, the printer cartridge, the black ink cartridge.

Or I have this strap that I put on my arm to support my elbow.

That would be a very weird thing to have blessed.

I have many straps and things to hold my body together.

Okay.

Okay.

It sounds like Death Becomes Her.

Have you seen that movie?

I don’t think so.

Oh, you need to watch Death Becomes Her.

Okay.

And that’s all I’ve got to say.

Okay.

No, no.

I mean, I watched like, because of my train ride, I watch like a movie every day, basically.

So I have knee compression sleeves, elbow compression sleeves, straps for my like ankle braces.

And it’s like, I just every part of my body, I could strap into a harness of some sort.

Right.

It definitely sounds like Death Becomes Her.

Because the movie is about two kind of very vain women who get obsessed with this potion made by a guy that can make them live young and beautiful forever.

But something happens and the guy dies.

So there’s no one left to make potions.

So they’ve got this kind of what was a blessing, but now a curse of being young, not being able to die.

But they can’t do their own upkeep of beauty themselves.

So at the end, they’re kind of helping each other tape their nose back on and keep their beauty in a very makeshift hodgepodge way.

It sounds like what you’re describing.

Yeah.

So it’s like Dorian Gray.

Because he’s the portrait of Dorian Gray.

He stays young and the picture gets old.

But then when I forget if they slash the picture and then he suddenly gets really old and dies.

The portrait of Dorian Gray.

And then there’s the myth of how the grasshopper is like a Greek myth.

And so this guy went to the gods and they said, we’ll give you a wish.

I forget why.

And then said, I want to live forever.

But he didn’t say stay young forever.

So he just got older and older and older and older and older.

And then they took some sympathy and turned him into a grasshopper.

Oh, that’s torture, isn’t it?

That’s why grasshoppers have that pinched face.

Pinched face?

Yeah.

If you look at a grasshopper’s face, it’s like a man who’s never died.

It’s just he’s like a thousand years old.

I’ve never seen a grasshopper that close.

I don’t know.

I’ve actually not looked at one lately, so I don’t know if it’s true.

But that was the story I was told.

Okay.

Yeah.

Eternal life seems good until you look at the reality of it.

And if it is like that, where you’ve got to age, then yeah.

But any wish, any superpower has to come with like a whole list of and I need.

And because like, yeah, if you’re going to live forever, you want to be a certain age forever.

Like I would say mid 30s or late 20s.

I wouldn’t want to be too young.

I wouldn’t want to be too old.

And then like it was the same with like superpower.

I want to make sure like all my bits work.

Yeah.

Do I have I want super healing because I don’t want to be like, oh, I hurt my leg and now it hurts for eternity.

Yeah.

Like that’s that’s a really big caveat is like so if I mess up something in my body,

is it going to stay messed up forever or does it going to heal eventually?

So you almost want to make sure that you maintain youthful healing abilities.

Yeah.

But then as we are right now, we don’t live this long.

So who’s to say that what we consider as a permanent damage is actually permanent if we have a long enough lifespan.

Well, there is the other side of it in that if you live forever, I so my thing with like, you know, vampires are all very sexy.

Um, the the problem I have.

Well, yeah, but the problem I have is sex would be boring for his vampires because they would have been like done it for the last few hundred years.

So to me, vampires would be into weird stuff.

So they might actually like hurting themselves because the pain, it feels different.

And this is when you get into the Hellraiser pain is pleasure.

Pleasure is pain kind of thing.

Yeah.

Because you would just get bored of regular stuff.

They would once they’ve done, once they’ve explored every avenue, they’d, yeah, they’d need, they’d constantly have to push the boat out further, wouldn’t they?

So I think for anything that lives forever, novelty would become the sexiest thing.

So you wouldn’t want an attractive person.

You’d want a weird person because attractive people of all look kind of the same over time.

Well, there’s definitely features that they would gravitate to.

So a lot of the parties have those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you’d get bored of that.

You’d be like, oh, I’ve had that, had that like a million times.

They’re really boring.

Move on.

Exactly.

Yeah.

You’d want a knobbly nose.

I want, you’d want a Quasimodo.

Yeah.

One of those fit camels from that beauty pageant.

Yes.

The fit camels.

So they were getting, oh, you’d loop that back very nicely.

No.

Okay.

So they, they were people trying to game the system because they want to win, but they were again,

using like Botox and fillers.

Camel fill.

I’m just trying to see what they actually injected it to.

Cause it seemed like their lips were a big deal and their humps, they wanted like big,

firm humps, which is a very human thing.

Yeah.

That’s, that’s yet another beauty standard.

People can’t keep up with.

But humans imposing that upon camels is a very weird idea.

Yeah.

But if they use Botox and fillers, it was making it difficult for the camels to eat, chew and drink.

So it came down to, so, so like the organizers was like, this is just animal cruelty.

So, but there were 20 camels dis, uh, disqualified.

Wow.

I mean, I hate the whole business of, um, the kind of contest on the aesthetic aesthetics

of animals.

I mean, there are human beauty pageants, but for the most part, people lend to them themselves

off their own tradition, but animals, they don’t care about any of that.

Um, yeah.

So you’re not into dog shows?

Yeah.

There’s, there’s a whole thing with dog shows.

Cruft is very big in, in Britain.

Have you heard of Cruft?

I, I’ve heard the name.

Um, it’s, it’s, it’s on TV though, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Like it’s a big deal.

That’s right.

Yeah.

I’ve attended one of the, um, events before with my mom and brother for a mother’s day

thing.

Um, I liked going around the shops and things and seeing all the dogs cause there’s, you

can’t walk without treading on a chihuahua there.

But, and I think over time they’ve become more ethically, um, sound with, with kind of adjusting

how they, how they view what’s a perfect look for a dog.

I mean, they don’t advocate for things like tail docking anymore.

Um, which is where you cut off the tail of a, of a dog to get a little stumpy one.

Um, nothing like that is kind of promoted anymore, thankfully.

But yeah, there’s a lot of, um, animal contests throughout the world, obviously.

So hearing about it.

What do you think?

So you have an alien comes down and he says to you, what is a dog?

What do you think is the most dog looking dog possible?

So you have to pick one dog to show the aliens, to show them what a dog is.

What would you choose?

I’d probably go a little bit boring and choose a golden retriever because not only do they

look like the, you know, the, the family dog kind of type, but they also embody the qualities

that we love in dogs, the loyalty, the companionship, the playfulness.

It’s like the Captain America of dogs.

I think.

Um, no, that’s pretty good.

So I chose, I just put it in the discord is the Rhodesian Ridgeback.

I feel has all the attributes that make a dog, a dog.

Like it’s not huge, but it’s, it’s, it’s midsize.

Uh, they have that kind of face that has all the bits that make a dog look like a dog.

Oh yeah.

What a handsome dog.

It is.

Rhodesian Ridgebacks are, I think like if I was, if I had the time and the money, this

would be the dog I would try to get, but I would never actually want a purebred.

I was like months, all my dogs have been months.

So, yeah, but it’s just, if I was going to show someone like, Oh, what is a dog?

And I was like, you could see like, there are smaller versions of this, like a Chihuahua.

There are bigger versions of this, but I think that is the representation of what a dog is.

No, I think you’re dead right.

Yeah.

It’s a very dog looking dog.

It’s a very dog looking dog.

Yeah.

And what a beautiful name.

A Rhodesian Ridgeback.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They’re really, really cool.

Hmm.

What do you think is the least dog dog?

Uh, you get into the really weird ones.

Like, like, uh, the tall skinny ones.

What are, I forget what they’re called.

Whippets don’t look like dogs.

Uh, but then there’s tall ones.

It starts, it’s not Alsatian cause that’s like a German shepherd.

I can’t remember.

It’s, it’s a dog.

It’s really tall and thin and has long hair.

It looks like Cher.

Oh, is it an Afghan hound?

Afghan hounds do not look like dogs to me.

They look like supermodels.

Yeah.

They, but they look, they look just stretched out.

Anything that, that I think it’s almost like the hyper, um, almost designed animals.

So like wiener dogs don’t really look like dogs to me.

No, just the face really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Their face does, but they’re, you’re looking at their body.

Like that’s not a dog.

And yeah.

So whippets, the really, really skinny, runny, like fast dogs don’t really look like, they’d

look like a separate species.

Also when it comes to whippets, um, when you look at them head on and the ears go back,

it just looks like a circle with a nose in it.

That’s a strange, it’s very, very cute, but that’s an, if you look at a dog, like the

Ridgeback you mentioned, if you look at it from the front, the ears give it the nice doggy

almost triangular shape.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But whippets are not like that.

They look very, very odd and very alien like, uh, from the front.

They need some filler.

They do.

They need a BBL and a filler.

Oh, BBL.

I, what does BBL stand for?

I’ve heard it.

It’s a butt thing, right?

Uh, is it a something bump lift?

Uh, okay.

No, I just, you just sparked a memory.

It’s Brazilian butt lift.

That’s right.