Prepare yourself for: Cheating at the special Olympics, giants fighting giants, lazy horror movies, enthusiastic reeking, and Walmart Mike.
The Skinner Co. Network
FC77 - Para Doxies
Some days, gloomy, my hours are slumberless Dearest, the shadows I live with by nonetheless Little white flowers will never awaken Not worth a bright culture, sorrow and taking you Angels have no fire, evolution in you Or they'll be angry if I sort of join in you Hello and welcome to Flashcast77, a Skinner Co presentation Skinner Co, harnessing the laughter of minds to power your devices since 1955 This episode is also brought to you by generous donations from our heron, David Doc Blue went Colorado Joe and Alan Burns, many thanks If you'd like to sponsor an episode, please feel free to use the donate button on the site But now, prepare yourself for cheating at the Special Olympics Giants Fighting Giants, Lazy Horror Movies, Enthusiastic Reaking, and Walmart Mike There's no dream for a death I'm caressing you With the strength of my soul, I'll be blessing you Glue me Sunday Hi, I'm Opopin X, and joining me in my quest to discover the secret behind the riddle of steel Are Jessica Male? Yeah I called you Jessica Male, Jessica Male Now when you said that it was more like a male bag or a male like the sex and charity Hello It's a question left for the ages So there's a lot of talk lately about this Lance Armstrong situation Yeah, the fact that he doped one for so long, he said that he didn't dope and he basically tried to ruin people financially in order to make them look bad Now I realized this is an odd topic to open our pulp chat show, especially after we've been away sick for a while, but just bear with me So there's this Lance Armstrong thing, and that got me thinking about controversial sports scandals Okay, Tiger Oh, yes, have you read what's going on with Tiger speaking of a controversial? Geez This may just be gossip gossip like I can't it didn't come from like my you know top notch a one plus plus gossip sites Those are the people you pay directly Shut up, but I did read that they may actually after she got like 350 mil off of them They may actually be getting married again, and there may be a prenup where he gives her a huge amount of money if I know so we'll see what happens there, but that's crazy That just seems like a terrible idea for everyone involved Yeah Speaking of terrible ideas, do you guys recall the incident? This is what got me thinking the whole tiger situation was a pretty big scandal and this Lance Armstrong thing is very big in the popular press I think it's worse. Honestly, but continue Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Do you recall the 2000 the 2000 summer Paralympics in Sydney? Uh, yeah, I was there and competing Alright, as a as a pre note, let me mention that in 1996 at the Atlanta Games for the first time people with an intellectual disability were allowed to participate Because you need to you need to have a disability to be in the very Olympics Mm-hmm, yeah, I know, I was In 2000, Spain was stripped of their intellectual disability basketball gold medal Because the guy was just sad He lost his cat the week before Because Carlos Rubigorda, which I may have mispronounced, a member of the team was an undercover journalist and he revealed to the Spanish business magazine Capitão that most of his colleagues had not actually undergone any medical testing and that he himself was in no way actually mentally disabled No way And they had cheated their way too Wait, did not compare a pair of gold? Hang on a second, hang on a second Didn't like Will Ferrell or Vince Vaughn or something make a movie, but it seems like they should have Yeah So they should have had at least an IQ of no more than 70, but I guess they just recruited from local, not like pro, but semi-pro, ball teams Oh, that is so gross How gross is that? Rubigorda led to that some Spanish participants in the table tennis, track and field, and swimming events were also not disabled Meaning that five medals had not been or had been won fraudulently Wow This is all from the, yeah, we could beat our ankle Seating at the peril Well, thank you, reporter from Spain, willing to Or, yeah, good ass, yes Okay, now to take this in a bit more of a pulpy direction And where I was going with this This led me into something even better in the world Oh boy Have you guys heard of paradoxes? No Oh my goodness, paradoxes is a bra It sounds like something that would attach itself to the bottom of a ship or inside my mouth, like a parasite Yeah Should have seen her face, guys, it was awesome Yeah Okay, tell me In 2014, a former English madam In 2014 Oh, 2014? I swear to God, he said, in 2014, and I'm like, what's gonna happen? In 2014 Oh my God, coming soon In a world, okay, listen Becky Adams, a former brothel madam Is spending 50,000 pounds or so to launch a two-room prostitute soon establishment Okay I should clarify first that prostitution in the UK, my understanding, at least from this article from the Inquisitor.com, is that That sounds valid Prostitution is legal, so long as there's no middleman or management involved Oh good, no pimps Exactly so, you're not supposed to be a madam and you're not supposed to be a pimp, but as long as it's just the john and the prostitute Yeah Everything's A-okay for financial exchange, which is, you know, that's an interesting way to approach things Then how do you get a brothel? I suppose you work You open a building and then you go to work for yourself Or, no, I don't know I think you like rent a rent a rent? Yeah So there's a way But then who do you rent the space from? Essentially you're propelling a door No, no, my feeling is that you say this base fee for a room We provide, you know, on-site services, cleaning maybe On-site services Pay a little something on the side, but They're usually very small rooms Okay So she's opening a two-room brothel Okay, yep Okay Specifically for sexual services exclusively for disabled clients Okay, that's awesome You know what that didn't mean actually makes a lot more sense now Because doxy is where horror is, right? Yes, para-doxies Cute So they go to your house if you're a disabled person Okay They pick you up, they drive you to the brothel I'm calling this Little time Draft home Relaxed Yeah I'm saying flashcast episode, what is this? 77 Paradoxies Paradoxies Yes, I think we have a title Yeah But yeah, that's wonderful. They should Yeah People who are handicapped also have genitalia How can we press? Strasburg sent along this article from creativereview.co.uk and all of these links will be in the show notes Okay But it was a cover reveal of a series of new penguin books and they're really just reissues of old or well, you know, 1984 on Animal Farm down in Elton, Paris and London And it may have come up because I had just said that I had finished down in Elton, Paris and London not too long ago, but you guys are looking at these, are you sure? Yeah, they're complete I like the 1984 cover because they've essentially just given a very classic cover and blacked out the title and that's very clever Yes, and it's embossed right so you can see it when you kind of turn it a little bit But the thing that struck me about these covers, some of them I like, others I'm not such a huge fan of, they all look like despite the fact that they're new designs and they're coming out in 2012 They look old They look like they could have been published anytime between 1960 and 1985, so Yeah, the Animal Farm is especially reminiscent of a lot of the older storybooks that I have for the kids now And Dan and Elton, Paris and London has this sort of almost all bass abstractish And the typography on politics and the English language It seems to me, in general actually, and let's even step away from something as literary as Orwell into the kind of thing you see in a convenience store I've probably mentioned it before, but whenever I go into a convenience store I always take a moment to stare down the darn novel rack To see what they're selling these days Well to see what they're selling, to see who's doing what, but also to take a peek at the covers Because I always have an interesting cover design, if nothing else And I feel like we're in a real slump right now You can really look at these covers and they really feel like they're of previous eras And you can say there's some timelessness to that, but you can also maybe argue there's a lack of creativity to that I feel like between this and the awkward pose situation that comic books and also frankly pulp novels are going through right now where you'll have a heroine on the cover and she's in this physically impossible Like Gina and Liz's photoset Oh such a fantastic Every impossible pose is Yes Yep I expect to do that when they come here I feel like we're in a slump for cover art I don't feel like our era has really defined itself in the I feel like every time period you can kind of identify in the popes Always has its feel to its covers There's this slick kind of 80s feel The 70s are all bell bottoms and switch blades Even the 90s had something Yeah they did They did But we just I don't feel like we've defined that yet Everything looks a little bit recycled or just terribly generic and not well built Yeah Think of all the trashy vampire novels that are out that you know the moon and a candle Exactly You know Whatever We've gone into the same thing that happened with comic books frankly which was in novelty cover design Where there's a little cut out in the middle and you flip it open and there's a picture inside but none of it's terribly good Yeah I remember this We should bring that back Actually speaking of pulp novels and weird covers Have you guys heard about this physicist fellow who's trying to sell his science fiction novels to raise money for his crazy weapon What? Do I want a crazy physicist with a crazy weapon? Is he crazy? Because that idea does sound kind of crazy Australian born physicist Adam Weigold He was trying to raise 20,000 on Kickstarter to pay for editing and marketing his novel Dragon Empire Which is essentially as far as I can tell a terrible Tom Clancy-ish futuristic fight Between America and China Terrible In which lasers and energy weapons play a heavy part Terrible And essentially he makes an argument in his novel for the importance of EMP weapons Are you familiar with EMP weapons? You Explain it to me Electromagnetic pulse weapon since when you use an electromagnetic pulse to disable the electronics and everyone gets back to the stony Yes because all those doomsday prepper shows talk about EMP attacks Yes, that's what they're hoping for It was the crux of Oceans 11 and the ending of the terrible terrible escape from LA I don't know if you recall that In which Snake Liskin decided he was going to wipe out all the electronics on Earth because I think it was because he was having a bad day As ever go You know what? Escape from New York? Boss An amazing thing Escape from LA? Not so awesome As soon as extreme sports enter the premise of your film Yeah You're done And I realize there's a little bit of that sort of thing in Escape from New York but it's so minimal No, yeah, it's not even like a mentionable Anyhow, this fellow There's a scale Yes This measurable This fellow wants to publish this novel and I don't know if it's a series but he eventually wants to raise two million dollars If it's not a series and he wants two million dollars, good luck I think this is part of a larger strategy It's trying to pull together two million dollars He wants to build these EMP weapons with this two million dollars Which frankly, that seems like a pretty minuscule research budget, frankly He knows a guy Yeah, I suppose He knows a few guys Get your good deal on an EMP beam out of the back of a van Anyhow, they want to use it to nullify the effect of getting missile technology Okay Yeah, good luck with that Anyhow, my feeling is pretty brilliant marketing ploy on that guy's part to be like Oh yeah, by my book, I'm going to build a death ray Yes, yeah Isn't it like an anti-death ray? An anti-death Well, how do you, all the better, set yourself up as the hero There you go Your ray doesn't even kill people, it just stops other people from killing people Yeah, exactly You can isolate it somehow I bet you you'd get a lot more donations If you weren't trying to kill people It's a hug ray Maybe we need to consider our business plan You can eat a better marketer if it was going to kill people Maybe we need a better marketer Maybe this is where it's at Maybe we need a death ray? That's right Where's our death ray? A hug ray, a hug ray, that's what we'll call it Yes We'll market it as the hug ray, we'll eat the little hugs So oh my god, did you hear about the new? Oh my god I like that you said "glorb" though I'm gonna say that now You're so uninformed What was I even saying? Alright, X-Men won all lady cast Oh yeah, I heard they were really good Did you hear about that? Yeah Yes, I am so excited about that, I heard about it I mean, you showed me this article, but also I heard about it a little bit on Tumblr It was like live action No, no, the comic The comic is being rebooted Oh my god Yeah A black widow is gonna be in it too Oh yeah? Does she even have any meat and powers? Who's black widow? She was even talking She was in the Avengers And she was really sad because somebody died guys I don't know how happy that way dude No, she was really sad because it's Hulk, I almost died Fangirl Fangirl Anyway, yeah, I find it really interesting that they're going ahead with this It does feel a little bit like "Oh, you want more ladies in comics? Here's a bunch of ladies!" Well, okay But it's written by a fella Yeah, it's written by Brian I hear Gail Simone has some time on her hands Mmm, too soon Do they have like ridiculously large boobies and stuff? Do we know anything yet? Have we seen boobies? What's the state of the boobies? I've seen a couple of shots and there aren't like really boobies Are they like really super, like super boobies? Like super hero boobies? Yeah, I mean they're spandexy I think Yeah I mean they're in their superhero outfits Yeah, it was as was the style of the time Yeah I wish more superheroes weren't for a Victorian styling That was a little... You need to go a League of Extraordinary Jams Too many clasps It takes them way too long to get ready No kidding Just for me, are you superhero slut-shaming? I think that's really awesome It's interesting, I want to see how it develops I'm a little concerned it's just a marketing ploy, but... I would totally read that See, I wonder how much of it is just going to be like superhero ladies doing superhero lady stuff or if it's going to be a little bit more lady-centric plots Because I'd be interesting Like, oh my god, I'm a period guy I'm so bloated, I can't wear my tights I'm going to split my tights guys Guys, I just wish I had my ice cream I'm totally... Let's not be stupid today guys Let's just go home and film the couch I feel mediocre at best What's the... I can't believe I'm blanking on this But what's the name of the test that you apply when it's a film? The Bechdel test, thank you I wonder how applicable... I bet you this is something somebody on the web is already doing There's probably a somewhat dedicated person But I wonder how applicable the Bechdel test is to become a book issue It's been a long time since I've sat down and read like one of the main franchise top shelf books You know what I mean? I want you to get this for me Oh, is that where this is going? All of this is all just to say Get it for me And I will review it for everybody else so they'll know whether they should get it They should get it I'll do y'all a favor Well, speaking of classics I don't know Classic Lady X, man I recently caught windows some advice from HP Lovecraft on writing but I thought I should share Okay This is from an IONI article Was it racist? No It does? Okay, I'll just use the I'll use Lovecraft's words It is also important that cheaper types of reading if hitherto followed be dropped, he's essentially saying Pulp. Popular magazines in inculcate a careless and deplorable style which is hard to unlearn and which impedes the acquisition of a pureer style He's saying don't buy, say, the things that I sell because it's going to bugger up your writing There's such things must be read let them be skimmed over as largely as possible Don't pay much attention And then the man who invented the Cthulhu mythos, the elder gods, the whole Yes An excellent habit to cultivate the colony of the King James Bible I can believe that of him Yeah, the epic wording and I can see something there but The mythos that is created Yeah, unexpected He's got quite a bit more to say and I'll leave it I'm sure he did Good books though Hmm, actually speaking of dead guys I believe we have a movie night coming up It's weekend at Bernie The film was chosen by Tibby It's platoon of the dead Not weekend at Bernie She chose it specifically because she heard the cast was accused of using Nerf guns in production Really? That's awesome The art is awesome for this film and Glenn, who has been hosting our game nights, who has been unable to recently because of a whole host of reasons He's going to be there a movie night just to like just to hang out and not worry about being a gay boss man But he's enjoying it thoroughly wants to continue doing it On the 26th Yes, January 26th 2013 Metis on the Googues on the Google+ 730 All you need is a Google account Yep, if you need some help We will provide the film, we will provide some help We generally have a wobbly pop and Gigantor himself will be here He'll be on his own computer So it will look like he's at home He'll also be in our basement With us So I'm really excited The kids are always so excited to see him There will be considerably less thrusting in this film Thank goodness It's too bad we already have a title for this episode Limited thrusting Yeah Limited thrusting Yeah, limited thrusting Oh, that's so beautiful Actually, they're kind of in a weird way Libs back to paradoxies Too limited The home of limited thrusting Oh, man That's so inside baseball We should totally do it, guys Let's write them a letter To the sponsorship Surely they need to get some PR there Speaking of terrible films, though Let's go down that route And not the other one Dino Crock vs. Supergator Okay, so we had the flu Let's go down that route We had the flu, everyone ended up on the couch for a while Some of us in pairs We made it through Partially with the help of a lot of films One of them happened to be Dino Crock vs. Supergator Like, I never saw He was just like the elusive Supergator Yeah, we spent a lot of time with Dino Crock Because I think they realized Supergator Was just a big gator Dino Crock was essentially A crocodile Grafted onto a raptor's body And, okay, there was, yes, a million things Wrong with this movie, but the worst Thing to me was the fact that These huge animals were supposedly Coming up through the water But we always had these characters So shallow, little pools of water So how, where? Any puddle they would stay beside Would become A source of just the ample Magical sources That was the thing about Supergators The only way Supergators seemed to be able to kill anyone Was to be able to lure them into Puddle's side and then leap out Which is also ridiculous Because these puddles would just, like, okay It would be like this pooling water Underneath the waterfall It would probably take a shot From the waterfall, away from the waterfall So that they could be by the waterfall So their back would be to the wall Yeah, it's just, you could see Everything that was gonna happen It was the worst, which is the best But it honestly, it does make me sort of angry 'Cause... I am increasingly realizing That once I am tired enough And my brain is worn down to a point Where I'm making terrible decisions I will basically watch anything That is giant fight something else that is giant Honestly, for the first chord of the film I was editing something Or doing some mob junk And looked over, yeah And you were watching it without the sound on It was really awesome It was the sound in a giant fight movie Oh my god, and then finally get the music on It was just even worse And David Carradine was in it Yes, David Carradine was in it And it must have been one of his last films Yeah, I remember He was released in 2011 But he died, I think, in 2009 I remember you saying Wow, I really hope this wasn't his last movie Maybe that's why he died Did you know his wife is suing I'm not sure which production company it was I don't know that it's related to this film I don't think it is, but it could be She's suing the production company That he was filming with at the time it was death Because he requested an assistant be with him For that evening And the assistant instead took off And got like lunch downtown Wait, so So... I don't know what the implication is there Somebody would have been there to tell him? I don't know I thought he was doing something with a lady No, he was doing something with a closet I thought it was like a closet and a lady No, just himself No, I think it was just himself Cool I think probably the reason why it was so easy For them to get this guy was cause like Like his only location shot ever Well, no, I don't think there's any studio work It was all the location The whole movie, he was Like beautiful valley And you know, pool It looked like they had rented a house for him For the weekend or a week And they had done all the shots in one day And he probably just got filled with liquor Set by the pool there Yeah, cause he was big even for the rest of the movie He was big even for Denno Correct vs. Supergator Well, I mean he had Kill Bill that brought him back But it wasn't like if you look He made a lot of films between Kill Bill and the time of his death And there is something out now I think that is getting a little bit of praise But the vast majority of that stuff was just I mean it was Denno Correct vs. Supergator Anyways, enough about that guy Yeah, enough about that We also happened to stumble across a copy of Sinister Yes More, okay I felt like this movie fit in with our recent odd theme of watching found footage films And although the majority of the film is presented as a Hollywood style straight horror flick It contains the device of a fellow finding a box of disturbing horror, like home movies Which are done in a very verite of their period style The way the movie starts out very strong Some of the imagery they have in this movie is just amazing Some of the imagery is really good, really disturbing And all these home movies are like from the house where you're finding this And it's like, you know, pool party 86 all the way back to like the 60s or whatever There were some really strong aspects, but it felt like Okay, with VHS there was, I don't recall how many segments, the six segments, five six segments And then there was the rapper that fit between those And I felt like the rapper was really rather weak, but I enjoyed many of the individual segments Not all of them, but I enjoyed many of them I felt like this was an even weirder sense of that in that they had these disturbing scenes But they had no other movie to carry it And if they could have done anything more with it, it would have been interesting But everything they threw against it was just carrying the movie down There was a scene in which they do the very standard scare of the main characters Looking at some footage that he's recorded and then he looks away You know, I can't recall if he's rubbing his eyes or something, he gets momentarily distracted And then the footage moves behind him And you just, as soon as that happened, I disengaged from the movie And I'm glad I did, frankly, because everything from that point on went downhill There's not to give away the surprise ending, but the movie literally ends on the worst sort of YouTube jump scare Where something moves from the side of the frame very quickly and does something dumb And it was so disappointing The promise of some of the eerie scenes versus what ended up happening with that film Yeah, yeah, started off so strong I was like, wow, I was impressed Yeah, yeah, I was on board And they just kept going back to that same shot, to that same shot I was okay with some of that, I was okay with Ethan Hawke getting drunk and having weird fits in his writing room at night But it just did not hold together By the end of that film, it just shook itself apart And I want to also add that my feeling is that the new, this really cemented in my mind That the new lazy ending, it used to be, you have the original female character, she survives And then everyone else can die and that's fine, and usually everyone else has some sort of character flaw to make it Okay, for them to die, yeah But now we've decided we're doing something different In which we're not even going to have any sort of proper resolution at the end of the film The movie is essentially going to be a slow monster reveal with no ending So there's no real point to watching it in any one section Like this movie, again, I'm spoiling it, but you don't If you watch it, you'll be enjoying it for the visuals, not for the story So this movie basically ends with everyone dying And it's the same with paranormal activity, quarantine, even Prometheus Where the new ending is just a not bother having an ending And then I find that really frustrating Yeah, where there's no end to it, it's not like the fifth family who comes and finally, you know, destroys the whatever Yeah, it's just like, and so it's sitting there still We could have seen this movie about the family and the film that was from the 80s or the 90s Or the next family, and it wouldn't have mattered It doesn't matter that it was, like, it could have been anywhere in the chain And that's interesting if your film holds up in itself beyond that But none of these movies has enough meaning You're not answering why I think a lot of that is that You look at a film like paranormal activity Where the first one, okay, it was okay, it was pretty good The second one, it was kind of just the same and the third one It's like, well, is this just really, are you just looking for a reason to make another movie? Well, here's the thing, my feeling is that back in the 80s, back when I was a boa Back in the old slasher flicks, which really, these are just a new take on that, right? Like, here's a series of horrible deaths Stitched together with some sort of premise They would at least get to the end of the movie and kill the evil They would kill Jason, they would kill Freddy And there'd be some implication that maybe that person came back Or maybe it was just a dream or whatever You know, maybe Jason jumped out at the lake and pulled her under Maybe she was just dreaming and maybe, whatever But it gets to the point where they realized, well, they're going to want to make a sequel And if they end up killing the villain at the end of the film, if they manage to stop the evil They have to figure that out again They have to figure out a way to resurrect it So, isn't it a lot easier if we just have them kill everybody and not have to worry about Think of a backstory to bring them back, you know? Because we can do it all again, yeah With a whole new cast of people to kill On to something a little more enjoyable to watch Before we get into some bothersome business with Mr. Lynch The TNG rewatch continues very slowly Yeah, a little more slowly now But we have encountered some interesting secondary materials, if you will I recently stumbled across, and actually this is, we're a very IO9 heavy episode today Anyway, I stumbled across this test footage Before they were doing the actual show Trying on the makeup, trying on the visor for... Cool Just seeing how people would look in their costumes essentially Yeah, I saw the part with Data, which was really weird LeVar Burton looks like he just walked in off the set of Reading Rainbow Which is really interesting He's dressed like that, he looks very disengaged He knows he's making a sci-fi show That's awesome I also found very interesting that right from day negative one They had Wesley in a stupid sweater Mmhmm Looked ridiculous Now, there's no real audio worth playing Although, obviously I'll put the clip in the show notes Mmhmm But this did, however, remind me of the blooper reel That came out a while ago, which we will also include in the show notes Awesome Jessica, may you want to maybe give us a little taste of TNG bloopers? I already am Right there! Shit! Yeah, I didn't know what we got right here No, I didn't know what it was We are receiving no shit It's playing the delay After relieving, look at it, look at it, look at it, look forward You are a star-dazer Whoa For God's science, Mary, I built this second butford ball That was great Yes, now that we've lifted ourselves up a little, let's bring ourselves back down With something bothersome With something bothersome With something bothersome Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito? If you ever go outside, especially in the summer months, odds are you have There are stealthy, nasty little bastards Not only are there vampiric feeding habits disturbing But as you well know, they can pass along all sorts of nasty little infections Most notably malaria and West Nile virus While these diseases are quite serious Mosquitoes occasionally bring larger friends along for the ride Friends that, after a while, really start to get under your skin For Ali Vagg and her boyfriend Brian Williams, their trip to the Amazon Basin Was meant to be the holiday of a lifetime And it has been just that, but for all the wrong reasons The couple from Australia are now stranded in Bolivia And are not allowed to return home after contracting a rare flesh-eating parasite After suffering from irritated skin, they initially thought they were simply suffering from mosquito bites A standard occurrence in that part of the world But then, to their horror Both Ali and Brian started to feel something squirming under the skin And occasionally poking its head out of some of the wounds It was then they were diagnosed with the human botfly infection According to the Gold Coast Bulletin While their wounds probably did start as mosquito bites The theory is the insects were carrying botfly eggs These dropped into the wounds caused by the mosquito bites And the larva then hatched under the skin The couple, who live in Sydney, are now stranded in Bolivia Until they are free of the parasites It's thought that up to 50 eggs could be living in each wound Fly larva have been living under the skin, feeding on their flesh The maggots eventually crawl out of the host body And become large, densely-haired botflies that resemble bubble bees I lifted my shirt to see the head of it crawling at the top of my skin Looking like a worm or fishing bait, Mr. Williams told the newspaper The paper reports that they have already pulled seven of the worm-like larva From wounds on their stomach, back, and legs Mr. Williams is also said to have spent days with tape over his stomach wound A method used to starve the larva of air and draw them to the surface During another attempt to remove the parasite, his friend pulled out three of the inch-long larva He said, "We all nearly puked" The pair may also need minor surgery to remove the remaining parasites The couple hoped to return to Australia in mid to late February But must remain in Bolivia until at least next month when they expect to be fully healed Now, upon doing a little more research, here are some interesting facts About botflies that I'd like to share with you, dear listener A female botfly captures a mosquito and attaches its eggs to its body before releasing it The mosquito then carries the eggs, and when it bites an animal's skin, will drop the eggs And they burrow under the skin's surface They stay just below the surface to breathe, and the most common treatment is to cut off their air supply With Vaseline, so they will crawl out Untreated, they can burrow too far down and need to be cut out before they develop into flies Contracting the condition is highly unlikely, and the only reported cases are from tropical areas, mainly Africa and South America Dr. Ron Behrens of the London Hospital of Tropical Diseases said It can occur in anyone, a mosquito dropped the botfly's eggs into the skin The botfly doesn't come into contact with the person, the mosquito does, and is a third party The pupae then burrow under the skin, often the scalp, legs, or grow an area And feed off of it, but stay close to the surface so they can breathe Flies can also lay their eggs on clothing, hanging out to dry So we recommend ironing it before wearing, if you're staying in a tropical area They would have been growing bigger under this man's skin, which makes it very painful After a couple of weeks, they develop into flies, and are moving around, which is very unpleasant But luckily, it can be successfully treated In closing, I'm rethinking my strategy for dealing with mosquitoes next summer Not only will I be buying insect repellent and citronella candles, but also a nice, old-fashioned, fly-swatter I'm Jeffrey Lynch, and that's This Week's Spot of Father I have got you under my skin I've got you deep in the heart of me So deep in my heart, you're in the head of one of me I've got you under my skin I have tried So in an interesting, if maybe slightly poorly thought out decision, we decided, because the mail banks a little late this week We'd crack open some of the straws box, thank you very much, Mr. Strawswick Yes As a lot of that candy was sent to us, maybe around Halloween and is possibly as we are eating spookiness now past its date Let's make some even spookier When you start listening to a piece by Mr. Lynch on bot flies and insect eggs, suddenly these little white and orange pellets don't seem so delicious I think they're great Nice job, Jeff, yeah, I don't really like bot fly stories I feel like you really reach deep this time around Reach deep and you're disgusting Went for the grossest thing ever happened to you, Jeff, I want to know Oh, I'm so itchy and grossed, so grossed, am I like tingly? This actually reminds me, the first time I think I heard about bot flies, it was one of those My grandparents used to get a lot of readers digest content And they were really into the magazines and every now and then they get some of those three books in one condensed novel things And I read one of those about a woman who had crashed in the Amazon and managed to survive And almost immediately she gets infected with all sorts of insect life in her open wounds Wow, that's horrible And she has to deal with it and yeah, and I'm sitting in my grandmother's living room It looks like the most innocent thing in the world because it's this faux leather reader's digest book And it's this woman discussing how she's trying to pull out these things and find food at the same time So she eats them? Anyway, thanks a lot, Jeff, if you want to find more bot fly, no, just more bothersome stories in general You can follow Mr. Lynch at Please Lynch Me on Twitter And you can also subscribe to his "Bothersome Things" podcast at Bothersome Things.com And the other bothersome happening around the house is that we just had Ludo chew up the carpet right in front of our very eyes That's awesome No, he's a wonderful dog I'm going to eat one of those candy and pretend like a rabbit You're wonderful dogs going after the curtains I was going to suggest that we would move on to something a little less disturbing But this week we actually have a Franklin DeGash story from Nick Tyler And is that really less disturbing? Generally known as Captain Pickhart, but when it's a DeGash story, it can be quite a... Anyway, here is prime evil entertainment Oh, the horror of humanity They're dreadful-loing as they mimble-encompetently The noise some clots of mankind reeking enthusiastically Their hateful prattle drove me to a killing spree But all the murders in the borough could not salve the fire in my mind Ignited by their endless empty chatter Even my habitual practice of manting their husks In rustic dioramas with concentric alphabetized rings of their innards could not calm me My hands were bloodied and shaking I could not even drink to satisfaction In despair, I fled into the past To a time free of man babbling without cease The time tunnel flared and spun around me I gripped my time hamster a little too tightly And the universe streamed past Like an over-watered horse The tunnel whirled and squeezed us out into a puddle of earth's past There, in a world before time was sliced into a dial Numbered, named and made man's I found love I met Unag We met dramatically I, 12 feet above the ground, gazing down through the netting that suspended me She, spear in hand, clubbing me to a quietitude When I awoke, the first thing I noticed Were the filthy fingerprints marring my formlessly spotless overcoat Displeasing However, my second vision of note Was the frustrated slapping of fingers and fists In a pre-vocal exchange of thoughts Using mine and my Tesla shiv, I made it know that I was a stranger here A kin to a god, and that worship would be both appreciated And the best way to evade further jabbing with my electrical stick These intriguingly foul creatures were clearly some ancient cousin of humanity Though few and wretched in number Unag soon came to my attention as the least backward of these shadowy apes And I took her as my cave bride Her name I derived from her beastial expression And the clacking of her knuckles upon the ground The ceremony was as primitive as one might expect Although I did attempt to imbue it with some dignity True, her features might have been as well defined as a well slag heap Her hair, a jungly thatch of diseased creepers An odour to shame even the working man And yet Indeed She was mute Silence saved for the odd, memphatic grunt As were all of her trogleditic clan I dressed the apish folk in coat and tails But a little avail, they ate the hats and chased the tails in circles Never mind We lived together happily She and her dank cave An eye luxurious if ungainly two-wheeled apartment Which I'd stolen from the future It was an idyllic life I microwaved the animal kules out of the hunted and gathered food While my wife cracked open the ashy bones and gnawed the marrow from them I believed that for a time I was happy They were brutish folk but blissfully silent The soul exception being their lusty mateings They lacked even skill in that matter 'Tis a wonder their breeds breeding bread are brewed at all Perhaps this is why men of my tang have their manly parts in a visible region To avoid such pointless spatterings Their inept rutting drove me to distraction And I set out to educate them in effective mounting Their improbable procreative plumbing directed my task towards Diagrammatical education They had crude finger-painting sludge With which they marred their cave walls I introduced them to paintbrushes and oils And then I shoved them out of the cave before they ate too much of it I barricaded the cave-mouth so that my creation of their gentlemen's guide to cave swiving Would be spared their curious interruptions They grunted and thumped in disgruntledment For the barring of their wretched hovel Night had fallen and the sun risen before I finished my works My illustrations of their prehensile recursive appendages And the proper manner for intimate interlocution with their ab-organized wives was complete The manimals had finally fallen silent after some hammering in the night Clearly they had finally realized the importance of my investigation For the very sake of their race Even though it had required that I retain an aging mating pair My wrongle and neh to meet Mr. and Mrs. Scalpel Their exploded organs had been well sketched by my fair hand on the walls of their cave It would undoubtedly improve the chances of offspring and improve the smell Complete, I knocked down the wall of mammoth bones, brambles and mud A supernative barricade emulsifier I may have become absorbed in my work The happy half area outside the cave was a bloodbath Scarred at pools with hairy limbs and tatters of face scattered about like a dreadfully neglected beach I stumbled out a gust into the massacre blinking in the bright sun just in time to see unag I held her and she turned to me with her quieting finger upon her lips Silly girl, she hardly makes a sound anyway I cried out and bounded towards her, bursting with inquiry A shadow fell across the plain, its owner followed A vast, scaly lizard face descended and toothily snatched off my mud maiden's head Her torso blundered, comically animate until it too was hoiked aloft and consumed This was a disappointing outcome Filled with rage, I bellowed at the monstrous reptile and jabbed it with my prickling staff Blasting the beast with Tesla's art It squealed and flared its legs on fire Damn them, damn them all, my work, wasted This last pocket of proto-humanity snuffed out by beast lizards And all because they were incapable of modulating their throaty choking into a simple cry for help Cursed that baffling biology, were they better prepared to copulate and have had no cause to sequester their monster-proof cave I resolved to slaughter their butchers, those monsters that rendered my sketchings and study worthless I, a scholar without subject, a husband without Lady Aperi And so it is, many eons later, that we no longer have tortoises, my apologies Nicely done sir That was good Captain Hanks It's easy to do a story like that wrong, I have to say And Nick really knows how to nail it His writing is quality so that the, you know, more base concepts come across really well Phrasing like, reeking enthusiastically and mentions of the tesla shiv Yeah Really sell something like this And I like that he's like, "Oh my sketchings, nothing" Yeah, no, he did it, he does an amazing job Perfect, it's like, it doesn't really care so much about the people You can find the rest of Nick's work over at captainpinkheart.com That includes both the Salty Tales of Captain Picard and the Franklin Degas stories And Alex Capran and some other tales he puts up Oh worth listening to Absolutely, and reading Next we actually have a new segment, and possibly more nerds Yeah, that's what I hear Scott Roche has been so kind as to come up with a podcast review segment Oh, thank you Hi, this is Scott Roche, or a podcast, Prossolite And this week I'm going to be reviewing the Gorilla Poet This is a podcast novel written by Keith Hughes You can find his website at penslinger.com This book is also available at pottyobooks.com This is a completed book, and the brief synopsis is What if by simply writing a word you could build a wall, light a fire, or cloud someone's mind? In an environment like this, Alan Porter struggles to use his talents to overthrow a totalitarian government that controls the masses by controlling words Access to writing materials is restricted, and creating a verse without a license is severely punished Raised in the atmosphere of systematic censorship, Alan feeds the irresistible call of words to create a better world Now Alan gathers people who will fight with him to bring about a society based on freedom In a war where the weapons are stylists, paper, and words He is the only one who can lead the battle and show the way to victory A fight that Alan Porter wages even long after his death Because he is the Gorilla Poet The production quality on this podcast is good Keith Hughes uses some musical cues and some light sound effects In a world where podcasters seem to go overboard on these things, I like a light touch So I gave his production quality a beat As far as cast is concerned, this is a straight reallus, Scott Sigler For those of you not in the know on that reference, it means Mr. Hughes, like Mr. Sigler does give each character their own inflection and tone While I wouldn't say that Hughes is anything like a voice actor, I can say that this didn't detract from the story And did serve to distinguish characters His reading of the narration is done in his own voice And his reading style is what I would call a bit soothing Perhaps not ideal for a story that involves a fair amount of tension I gave his cast grade a B as well Now onto the story This is a story within a story While the synopsis would lead you to believe that the story is all about Alan Porter, the titular poet There is a framing device around it I think that this story would have worked better simply as the story of Porter told in the first person perhaps That served as a prequel for what's going on in the here and now world of Trev Haraldsen The frame seems to weaken both stories a little The villains were also more than a little two dimensional Still, there's a strong dystopian sci-fi vibe with the dash of fantasy And I liked the characters and ended up caring about them all It goes a long way towards smoothing over the story cracks I also liked the world he developed and how it feels one world removed from our own I gave the story a B minus So, what's the verdict? The more podcasts I listen to, the more I like to mainline them That is, I wait till production finishes and consume them in large chunks I did that with this one and it definitely had me coming back time and again I'd say if you're looking for a new author, this would be one that deserves to be checked out If you decide to listen, give it a few episodes because it does get off to a little bit of a slow start Overall, I gave this one a B, check him out Again, this is Scott Roche, you can follow me on Twitter @spiritualtramp Or you can check out my reviews, my fiction, and my other meanderings at scottroosh.com/thoughts So that sounds interesting Yeah, that was in 1984 And an excellent start, Scott, you're so easy to listen to, that was really, really nice Yeah, I'm really excited about this segment, I think it's got legs I would say you have a soothing voice But not too soothing Yeah, and there wasn't much tension, which is a good thing in a podcast review Yeah, Scott's got his fingers in a lot of little podcast pies So it's definitely worth checking out his site He's got his, you know, a lot going on Yeah, please stick around, dude Looking forward to it You and your stash Oh, yes, his stash has become epic anyway It's a mighty stash, and we've seen it progress It has handles now But now, I believe it is time for... Mailman! So we actually only have a couple little items from the TT this week But while we do that, we will be eating... Which is good, because he hasn't been around like... Yeah, people get busy Yeah, whatever Whatever Whatever He's a time traveler, he's in fun time Yeah, whatever, give me candy, c'mon So, yeah, well, the candy... Wait, first, how did you guys feel about the orange punch spooky nerds? I like them, I love nerds I'm a big nerds fan, but... It was a little more sweet than the sweet and sour Yeah, you know, there's that I'm just gonna do a little bit of this, because I know I felt there was a lot of sugar, but I really liked the spike of... The tart Yeah, there was tart, there was tart Nah... Not my favorite nerd flavor Anyway, still, many thanks Jawsburg, I like experimenting Lesson learned More for me? Anything tastes better with spooky in it So there's a little bit of history behind this, because we've discussed the Haribo, I'm going to say... Gummy candies before, we've had their Coke bottles Oh yes, those are delicious Now, interesting fact, the company Haribo are the originators of gummy bears Or they claim so on their package Well, no, it says original all over, but I actually looked it up Because everywhere they have their little gummy bear figure, he's saying original So I wanted to see if they actually were, and apparently they are Well, there you go They were the first gummy company Well, I apologize But they called them gold bears Gold bear is gummy candy What have you said? Kids and grown-ups love it, so... Give me some I love it so much Oh, well, they provided a convenient rhyme, so now I know it's Haribo Oh, there you go, nice That's good Anyhow, before we start chewing noisily upon these The TT sent in a quick response, and he may mention this in his call-in But he mentioned on the Facebook mob The many skirts from Star Trek We've been the next generation at least, we've been discussing He sent in a blog STTNGFashion.tumbler.com And it is all of the rather exciting fashion moments from the next generation Including the many scariest forms of many skirt Yes, there's more than one many skirt Oh, yes, oh, wow Well, there's the dress uniform many skirt Oh, okay, racing stripe Mm-hmm Mm-hmm It's got speed holes Alright, now, let's hear from the TT and chew loudly The tirelessly seeks through the age as for fictions Besties rich the time, travel alone Hello, Flashpulp crew and fellow mobsters Rich the time traveler here I hope my fellow krononauts remember we've just started a new year I cannot tell you how many times I've missed set my return coordinates And have ended up scaring my January 2012 self by showing up unexpectedly Mrs. Time Traveler and I finally got a chance to watch Taken Which I know was a Skinner Co favorite We enjoyed the ridiculous over-the-top nature of it Though the Mrs. did say she thought all the antagonists got off far too easy And now I'm going to have to figure out how to work A man with this particular set of skills, speech, into meetings at work We had friends over for New Year's and played lots of board games as usual Not the step on gigantic territory, but I want to talk about a few of them now The first is Quarriers, that's Q-U-A-R-R-I-O-R-S A dice drafting game Essentially your wizards battling for prestige You start with a board with a random set of creature cards and spell cards Each of these has a set of custom dice that match them that you place on them And each person starts with a set of basic dice that give them quiddity, essentially mana, and some assistant creatures Your dice go into your bag and you draw a set number each turn to roll Some dice results, or creature spell powers, let you pull additional dice from your bag or choose some to reroll Then with your results, you can buy creatures or spells from the board, essentially dice to add to your pool Or activate creatures you summon, creature dice you already owned that came up with the creature result when you rolled them You then attack all the other players If your attack is greater than their defense of any creatures they have out, you destroy their creature At the start of your next term, any creatures you have in play after the attacks of the other players score you victory points or prestige It's a very quick game to play once you know the rules, maybe 20-30 minutes The only need I have against it is that often it seems the first player to luck out with several creatures in play is unstoppable and wins This reduces the effectiveness and use of some of the more subtle strategies and powers available I think with a little tweaking that it could be easily overcome There are also three expansions available that add more creatures, spells, dice, and mechanics Overall this plays a little like dominion with dice, and a little like magic the gathering It's also something that can easily be picked up by tweens, so it's a good family game I'd give it a solid 3.5 out of 5 The next game we tried was called Belfort, B-E-L-F-O-R-T In this game you're trying to build improvements to the city of Belfort, with your staff of elves and dwarves before winter comes and the Yetis attack That always happens every winter The game was divided into the month turns of the building season, with scoring occurring at the 3rd, 6th, and final 8th month when the game ends The city board itself was divided into 5 districts, each with an identical set of buildings, pub, garden, keep, walls, gatehouse, etc There's also a resource map from which one can gather building supplies, wood, stone, steel, gold, and additional elves and dwarves And a training post where you can get building supplies, and hire gnomes to staff your buildings Each turn, everyone places workers on certain buildings you wish to use, or resources they wish to gather in a round robin fashion And then collect their results, build any buildings or features they wish Certain buildings have special features that can be used once they are completed, like pubs and gardens convert dwarves and elves respectively Into their master version that can gather more resources But many buildings require you to not only build them, but staff them with a gnome before you can use their ability Also, you need to have a building plan for most of them before you can build them as well On the scoring rounds, points are ordered to the players who own the most buildings in each district and have the most workers of each type Also, there's a, kind of a scale going down, so the first person with the most gets x points, the person in the second place, y points, and so on But there is a catch! As you move up the victory point track, you start having to pay taxes each turn The number of gold you owe steadily increases as the level of victory points you have goes up If you ever cannot pay, your victory points are decreased by the number of gold you are short Also, as I said, each district is exactly the same, with one exception Each one has a guild hall that can be built The guilds give you certain special powers, like building a structure without a building plan The guilds are randomly selected from three classes, basic, resource, and interactive The latter is safe for the advanced version of the game, and allow you to do things directly to other players, like attacking them to take their resources Overall, it sounds more complicated than it really is, and is rather easy to pick up They do very cool things, and include a link to a free PDF strategy guide on the publisher's website I haven't read it yet, but it is a nice touch I give this one a 4 out of 5 The last game we played was the Battlestar Galactica game from Sci-Fi Games This is a game of hidden identities At the start, each person is dealt a card that details their loyalty, human or silon, that is kept hidden The basic goal is simple, the humans are trying to jump Galactica a certain distance, and the silons are trying to stop or destroy them Each player takes a turn and draws a crisis card This contains some danger the colonials have to overcome, from a water shortage to a base star jumping in and deploying raiders, or political uprising Each crisis has a cost to avert, and a list of what types of support can help Political, tactical, piloting, engineering, etc To start of their turn, depending on the character the player is, they draw a certain number of cards from those areas So when the crisis arises, they can all chip in, face down, any number of cards to help, or hurt, along with some cards from the random fate deck Then the cards are shuffled and tallied Cards from the helpful area go towards paying the cost of success, and the cards from the other area are negative This is how the silon player sabotages If they are unsuccessful, there is a penalty that must be paid, such as losing a food resource or a population At any point, the silon player can choose to spin their turn revealing themselves, and move to the resurrection ship At this point, they can now only contribute one card to the crisis resolution, but they have the ability to trigger much more nasty things called super crises Also, halfway through the game, an assessment is made to see who is winning, and then new loyalty cards are passed out This will turn one of the players either into a silon, if the silons are behind, or a human sympathizer, if they are ahead Though there are odd rules about what happens if an existing silon gets that card Anyway, this game is full of paranoia and accusations In our session, I was Gaius Baltar, and I was human One of my character's special powers was the ability to look at another player's loyalty card once per game I also got dealt two loyalty cards at the beginning that made me look doubly suspicious to others Also, since I was the highest ranking political character, I was the president The other categories are support, i.e. Chief Terrell, Pilate, such as Starbuck or Apollo, or Military, Colonel Tye, Admiral Adama The highest ranking military character is the Admiral, and controls Galactica's nukes supply In our game, that was Colonel Tye Not even the first set of turns have passed if we're accusations of "that's just what a silon would do" or "a silon would say that" or "flying between us" I began to get suspicious of Colonel Tye early on, but before I could use my power on him He threw a crisis event and ended up with seizing the presidency from me Then I used my power to pick at his cards to confirm he was the silon But of course, being Gaius Baltar, no one believed me By the time the new cards were dealt, our Chief Terrell got converted to a silon, since the humans were slightly ahead In the end, we came close to winning with the silons managed to board Galactica and destroy us before we got our last jump in It was a fantastic game, and it reminds me a lot of my mafia type games Also, the constantly building peril is like a more serious version of the Red November game we played at Fan X There are a lot of cool bits and cards and color text in the game that really sells it I certainly wouldn't recommend novice gamers unless they have some experienced friends with them to help out, since the rules can be a bit complicated at times Though if you're up to the challenge, I give it an enthusiastic 5 stars out of 5 I'll also give a quick mention to Nobleman, a game we didn't get to play, but I'm looking forward to soon It's set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and you are Nobleman, or woman, maneuvering to secure powered influence in her court It is interesting as it has some work replacement and role selection, like Agricola, or a Belfort I mentioned earlier, elements But it also has some tile placement and alignment elements, like Carcassonne This game is also published by the same company that did Belfort, Tasty Menstrual Games I kickstarted a couple of their other projects, and I definitely think they're a company to watch Okay, that's about it for now, but I think you should have an extra post-holiday dose of gaming goodness to tide you over for a while Maybe a good game will help you pass the time in your shelter as you're waiting for death once Carc rises Until then, this is Rich That was great Rich, thanks It was great to hear from the TT again, it feels like it's been a while At least it's hearing his voice, like we encounter him often enough It's funny because as soon as he started discussing board games, it got me thinking about Fan Expo And kind of missing that group of people There's been a bit of a mini mob meetup in Texas this weekend that we've been following on Facebook Between Ami and Peter Church And we're a little bit jealous, I must admit We're missing the mob, I'm happy for you They had a really great time, which is awesome Like I have to get used to it because more mobsters are meeting And I can't feel so, you know, like homesick about it I'm really pleased with this board game bonanza we seem to be living in these days I'm not sure what happened to revitalize the board game, I suppose I mean, clearly the majority of the people investing in Kickstarter are projects like this are not hipsters This is a geek-led return to "we like to do math and complex rules systems" Let's get a tabletop game I like fiddling the bits It's disgusting We actually picked up Dominion while we were with Rich I can't imagine that And he sent us a game called Super Showdown Yeah, which we were just playing today Yeah, it's another game that I believe he kick-started and made its way into the box I quite enjoy it, it's a two-player game, it takes about ten minutes to play It's something that the tens can pick up I don't know that they're quite capable of grasping all the little subtleties, honestly The strategy has some stuff, you know? Yeah, I wish that kids were smarter I'm working on it I'm just kidding, everyone The genetics department is working on it Yeah It's funny, as he was discussing the Battlestar Galactica game He did eventually get around to it, but it immediately brought to mind the mafia game Which I can't believe we haven't been discussing, or the cult of Karwick Well, actually, I was going to bring that up in the... Oh, I see In my section Well, forget I said anything then Yeah, you're stepping on toes The Battlestar Galactica game sounded fantastic Fantastic, um... Would you think the gummy bears cured? Uh, I think I accidentally got the waxy ones He's like... It tastes like dust Dust and wax, and what was the other one? Soap Oh yeah, I think it was just an accident I got one that was pineapple, it was really really good I enjoyed it, yeah I think the problem is that I just took a handful, well not a handful I took a collection and shoved them all in your hand I'm sure that you can normally do that, but you just like put the wrong ones together That's just like the do not put together ones Mm-hmm That'll have them You crossed the streams, gird I enjoyed them, thank you so much They're delicious You're so evil and good to us Evil to us, good to us I can't decide The R, O, never raised you So, I mean, I know Rich had mentioned how the Battlestar Galactica game was a little bit like the Cock Mafia that we have going, but we just finished that up recently And I wanted to talk a little bit about it Sure And everybody enjoyed it I thought it was good to enjoy it Well, how did you enjoy it, Jimmy? There's so much subtlety involved And I want to trust everyone who says what they're saying, you know Yeah, we had some pretty interesting results And then I think these people are my friends One of my favorite things is watching the people who were evil be killed off And then just feel so relieved that they're dead so that they can be like I'm so sorry I murdered you I didn't play the game Yeah, it was funny getting some messages from Gigantor saying Oh my god, I just killed Billy Winnipeg, this is horrible Yeah But I thought for sure that we were going to have an innocent victory this time round But the very end The cultists won Yeah, the very end, the cultists were able to Doc Blue's already Chat there with it, I think Yeah, Doc Blue pulled a maneuver right at the end Oh, yeah, yeah Just suckered Hail Mary Yeah, he basically talked himself off the hanging platform And talked to somebody else onto it And that was the end of the game Yeah, that's pretty good That's the name of it, I suppose Yeah, but at least so many times where I thought, okay, now we're okay Now we're going to be okay This time I heard and I'm like, what happened? Like, I step away for one minute and look what happens the cultists take over But I think everybody did it As is always the case, I think if we don't stay vigilant the cultists always win Everybody did a really great job this round now I was really happy to be with them And Dave Went is actually going to host our next game I'm quite excited about that It may be Doc Hasreal themed Oh, that should be fantastic That's cool It was work A bit of work to keep the game going Just getting things in on time Which, I mean, people will know We had a little bit of a hard time doing Because of sickness Yeah, well, I think that there's a little acceptance of being half an hour or so Here and there The final results came out an hour late But I just think of that as tension building But yeah, overall Yeah, we had lots of fun Thinking about it in the night And people were getting off the road while driving to Texas I knew what was going on and I was thinking about it in the night The first thing I wanted to do in the morning Check to see who said what? Yeah, even days that you were able to sleep in You couldn't, you're like, no, I gotta get up I want to see what's going on Yeah So it'll be exciting in this next game because we're all playing Mm-hmm Yeah, so maybe I'll get to Maybe I'll get to Lynch one of you guys (laughter) So aside from that, I've also had, because I've had some time that I've been sick and off work I've had a little bit more time to fiddle about with stuff on the computer And I came up with a couple new desktop themes That I posted onto the ning mob Mm-hmm That was a lot of fun just going through the engine tubes And I guess I kind of started off with this one picture I had Which ended up in the coffin collage The collages, yeah, that's right, kinda Yeah, the picture of the skull and I saw it And I was like, wow, it really reminds me to look up And then I just kept adding more and more pictures that I found off the internet So, I mean, I can't ever really release it as anything They're not my pictures, they're, you know, some of them are under copyright for other people or whatever Mm-hmm They're nice little collections and I have them rotating as my desktop right in hand If anybody else wants to have them You're posting them off to the ning mob, right? Yeah, go check them out I'm still working on a couple that got a Joe Munk one going right now and a collective detective So, hoping to have one for each of the series, yeah We got a, we really need to get the visual gallery together on flashvope.com There's some stuff that I really need to get up there Some favors I really owe people Anyhow Are you a dassy old hoe? I was supposed to have something recorded and have it on the internet tonight And I sat down to do it, my hair was all did I was actually gonna do it on video Yeah, we're getting a video and mp3 down Yeah, but I don't think I'm gonna guys Cause I discovered something upon watching myself sing that I didn't realize I do Uh, what is this? Open your mouth It looks like I'm chewing It looks like I'm chewing meat or something And I don't like it I've seen you sing many, many, many times And I've never said to myself That woman's got some meat in her mouth I've seen you sing a dozen times man from different angles And I'm like, what are you doing with your face But I can't do it any other way, that's just the way I do it But it looks so fucked up So then I just went to audio And then it's just like there was like these minor little hiccups And I can fix minor hiccups of other people But for some reason if there's even something wrong with one song Then I'll just start all over again from scratch Even if it doesn't matter like if I'm like one line away from the end And then so by the time I'm like, you know what? I should just fix that little bit I've recorded it like 20 times And I can't do what it's good as I did from the beginning So it was just the biggest cluster ever in the world Sounds like we're having some perfectionist issues I think so I think so Perhaps I will step in and assist you with some sort of recording setup Or just basically record you and run away before you can delete it 'Cause yeah, I get the sort of note It just sounds like crap by the end of it Like what am I doing? You are ridiculous Who would listen to this bullshit? But you will be doing this regularly on the site on flashpulp.com/skinner.fm You're gonna watch me eat some invisible meat, guys Some invisible sandwiches Long, long, long, long Backroom plots We've covered a lot of fictional ground since the last Flashcast We have, we've been very productive Well, we've had our moments We had the coffin Christmas special Frankly, that was an idea that I had, I think, two years ago And I came up with it, forgot it, around the Christmas period And then it came back to me later on in the year I didn't get around to it again, and then this year Even though it was slightly late I was like, I'm just getting it out there You know what's really funny, too Is that he had this idea, would you say, two years ago? Yes There's actually a part of it that he forgot to put in So he was like, did I put that in? No? Yes, it was in this detail I had cooked up this detail And it's just, a lot of the times I'll just have a moment where I think of something It has no real connection to anything else I like the image, or I like the wording Just like Bill Clinton And I'll throw it, just like Bill Clinton? He saves it up I see He thinks of zingers, and then he waits for the moment He's got a zinger book? Bill Clinton's big book of zingers Anyway, this is getting a little sidetracked I had this image of Bunny burning her hand Because she was using it Don't give it away I can still put it in a story I copyright it by mentioning it here Okay Burning your hand by using a Christmas stocking as an oven mitt While she's drunk, obviously And missed it just totally I had it, I even had the kitchen in place I had the ball in play, and then I got writing And I forgot to look back at my notebook And that happens sometimes She just got angry But usually what happens is If I miss a detail like that, it's not a big deal Because all Mulligan should say this witty thing I can just work it into the next one But this is so seasonally specific You can't really work in a Christmas stocking Any old times Oh, you know what, maybe Actually, I just had an idea The next coffin episode It may just actually be there They're so lazy They haven't put anything in my hand It makes So keep watching Yeah, watch the skies The one we just released Was basically a Walmart Mike episode Mulligan was in it Mulligan was the pretense But my Marlow again appears And I don't mean Philip Marlow I mean Marlow from Conrad Anyhow Marlow appears and the story comes out Wait, that's the ghost in Dickens? No, different Marlow It's the same one that went up the river to Kale Kurtz Oh yes, of course Walmart Mike tells a tale of something that happened to him in the past But the past just happens to be that day for once Which was nice It's nice to tell a forward-facing Walmart Mike story Yeah I feel like it went well Mm-hmm It wasn't the deepest tale we've put out there But at the same time We've had a few episodes in this past while That were quite depressing And it's nice when people Treat them nicely At the end Yeah By the end Yeah, the last Walmart Mike tells It's kind of sad Mm-hmm Yes, and that's actually part of this It was following the upward swing of We've basically been getting a little bit more light-hearted Since the bunny and Coffin, yeah Yeah, and all of that business And this is probably where that's going to peek out And then we're going to dip back down into depression town a little bit Wait, that was like the peak of happiness? Yeah, peak of happiness This is Accusations in a Walmart That's what you get That's what you get people Okay But Walmart Mike also, if you Have you been following Walmart Mike's thread specifically The previous story was sort of a Heart sick tale Yeah And this was That was like the Serinot de Bergerac tale Yeah Yeah And in that same kind of sense This Last collective detective story Was also followed up to the collective detective story that had followed it Which was This last collective detective story dealt with Some mass fraud Let's just leave it at that with it It's spoiling too much Because people may not have heard it Mm-hmm And The tale that you probably don't recall Directly before that involved Facebook fraud In a sense Mm-hmm Which you may or may not recall That was actually the crossover episode with Mike Oh, that was the furry one No No Nope I don't want to give away too many details It could have been furries No I guess if you're listening to this flashcast You should have theoretically listened to that episode by now Because we always discuss things in chronological order That was the one where Mulligan ends up Coming across one of the sweets Pulling a con on Facebook Oh yes Merry couple That's fun Anyhow So this was taking that situation to a bulk Kind of sense and Seeing where that ended Mm-hmm Anyhow I'm You can compliment yourself It's okay You're like you're gonna say something nice and then you're like I can't, I can't I feel like we always Do our best to swing for the fences But I feel like these last few Or at least some of them have been Pretty solid Mm-hmm They're always solid Yeah, you're well too pretty solid You know who else is solid? Jim Jim Totally Always been Since the beginning man Thanks Jim Knuckle-bump In the beginning was Jim And it was good Mm-hmm Thanks Jim for hosting wicket.flashpump.com and flashpump.com Thank you Jim You can find Jim's radio empire over at RillickRidio.com Or follow his blogging business at TheAudements.com You can follow us on Twitter at SkinnerCo Or you can follow us individually At Charity Skinner The Jessica May? Yeah Or a Pope in Acts with a zero That's me Good luck with that Mm-hmm Enjoy the show Tell a friend, really enjoy the show We've got a donate button on the site Few of comments, questions, or suggestions You can find us at flashpump.com Yeah, those do Or email us text her in p3s.com At flashpump.com I have to make a confession I miss, and you know what? There's a certain percentage of the audience Probably a decent chunk of them Who have already zoned out at this point But maybe they're going to be Flipping ahead that last 30 seconds On their little iPod And suddenly they're going to discover I'm talking So suck it I really missed the column line Yeah, I missed the sexa hawks I know, it was good Once we lost that number it almost felt like We're never going to get a number as good as this again Yeah But at the same time I really liked having the column Yeah, I liked being like Oh, we got a call The problem is that It would be really handy to have a Google voice Mailbox They provide free phone numbers But not in Canada Not in Canada, but only in the States Screw you Do we know anyone who's with a Googz? Yeah, we gotta get that figured out It seems like something that should be easy enough to circumvent But I just got it Was it kind of figured out? Anyhow The entire round of flashpump can be found at flashpump.com Or be the search bar in iTunes Flashcast is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution on commercial 2.5 licenses [Music] When they know that I'm glad to go It's a dead dream Then I'll be mine for helping you On the long journey I know I'll be blessed to you Well, it's a way [Music] [Music] Ludo? Oh my god, Ludo! Ludo, no! Bad Ludo! What did he do? Oh god Oh god, Jessica May What is that? He ripped up a chunk of the... Like a row of the garbage Fuck [BLANK_AUDIO]