Trying times today, as a questioneer faces a choice between her dream job as a vet, and her debilitating allergy to animals. What to do? Listen to Answer Me This! Episode 313, of course!
In which we discuss:
food that is older than you
political posters
cleaning with booze
yearning Boudin Bakery bread bacteria
Olly’s mum’s rack – spice rack, that is!
photographic memory Jill Price
escalator speed
tortoise vets
licorice root
and
poogatory.
Plus: young Olly’s wish was to become Billy Baldwin in Sliver; Helen is desperate for someone – ANYone! – to invent a hoverbag; and Martin the Sound Man headbutted an escalator whilst still in utero, setting a precedent for a lifetime of clumsiness.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, there’s a question from Christine in Philadelphia whose Fitbit is bullying her into physical exertion. March on the spot as you listen via your iThings, Android and Windows phones.
Having literally just got back today from two and a half years working on a British Antarctic Survey base I was excited when I updated my podcasts to find AMT had a question on just this.
Firstly, there are plenty of non-scientist jobs on the British bases; builders and technicians, computer and communications specialists, boat teams, mountaineers, chefs and cleaning and maintenance crews.
Secondly, I had no psychological profiling before heading south and I’m fine.
Thirdly, am I weird for wanting to see penguins, albatrosses, whales and icesheets? I always laughed at the fact that Olly is a grown man who is into Disney, show tunes and a cat. Or are we two ends of some sort of interest bell-curve, pushed to the side by the sport and Top Gear-dominated middle ground?
But how did you get your job, Mr Sexhammer? That’s what questioneer S needs to know!
As for your bell curve: you and Olly can probably meet in the middle at the dancing penguins from Mary Poppins.
Make the following amendments to your MP3 of AMT312. Jonathan writes:
I wanted to comment on your discussion of the word “yogurt”. The word indeed comes from Turkish, and is spelled “yoğurt” there, with the root of the word being the verb “yoğur”, which means “to create [something] by adding water to a condensed fermenting agent”. The suffix “-t” transforms this root to give it the meaning “a product of”. Thus the final word, i.e. yoğur + t, means “a foodstuff that is the product of curdling/condensing”.
In terms of the pronunciation, I’m afraid you were a little off. The accented g, i.e. “ğ”, which the Turks refer to as “soft g”, isn’t really a “g” sound at all, nor is it the harsh, throaty “chhh” sound (similar to the “ch” in “challah”) you made in the episode, which wouldn’t be a sound found naturally in the Turkish language (except in maybe a tiny handful of imported foreign words, and even then, in significantly softened down form).
Instead, the Turkish “soft g” is not at all assertive. In fact, it’s barely a sound. The closest approximation of “ğ” is like a soft throat “w” but without the lip-rounding. Often times, most foreigners pronouncing a “soft g” can away with simply lengthening the vowel that precedes it.
So the Turkish pronunciation of yogurt is simply yo-urt. You can hear this yourself at this link. Of the three pronunciations available, the best and most accurate one is the first, recorded by user “zlvrzz”.
Lee in London comments:
I felt the need to correct Olly on some of the things he said regarding the books/props in the House of Commons.
The books on display in the front are not bibles but are in fact the books listing the orders for the house, and the procedures that need to be followed for all debates and discussions in the chamber. Though he was correct that MPs do need to swear an oath on a bible which are also available in that massive central bit.
The burnt bible Olly referred to as having been damaged by WW2 bombs in actually in the dispatch box for the opposition side, and a fresh new bible is in the dispatch box for the Government side. This is I was told similar to the swearing to tell the truth as you would on a bible in court but on a simpler scale.
I know this little tidbits of information as I use to work in said building and knew people who had worked there for decades who imparted this knowledge to me as I impart it to you.
A listener who asked to remain anonymous has shared this highlight(er) of her sex life:
I have some sage advice for Holly from Aberdeen in episode 312, who got in touch about the uninspiring length of her new lover’s schlong. I’d echo your advice in sticking with him, or at least looking beyond the end of his very short knob.
I too went through a very similar situation. The first time I slept with one excellent man last year (with whom I got on with famously and fancied the pants off), I was left deflated by not only by his small love muscle, but also the lacklustre performance he gave in the bedroom. While we got on so well, I did have doubts about whether I could continue seeing someone who couldn’t satisfy me sexually.
However, the next time we slept together – and every time thereafter – was EXTREMELY satisfying. His tallywhacker seemed to almost double in size. Although, I never whipped out the tape measure to verify this, but let’s say he didn’t leave me wanting.
I never questioned him about it, but in the end I put our first disastrous intercourse attempt down to the amount of alcohol we had drunk that evening (we’d had SO much to drink), lack of sleep and, dare I say it, nerves. Which may well have been the case for the “tall, handsome, strapping” fella who Holly has dismissed already.
Granted, me and this bloke I’m referring to aren’t together any more, but that’s not the moral of the story – the moral is that the first time you have sex with somebody doesn’t always give you a true perspective of what your sex life future will be.
I do hope Holly doesn’t dump him, but sticks with him a little longer (to see if he gets a little longer…).
P.S. When I listened to you discussing Holly’s conundrum, there was a man sitting in my eyeline, using a regular-sized Stabilo highlighter. I will never look at a Stabilo highlighter in the same way.
Another medical question arrives from Courtney, 34, in Omaha, Nebraska:
I have been lucky enough never to need surgery, but if I do ever need to have my appendix, tonsils, or several inches of my intestines removed…
ANSWER ME THIS:
Would the surgeon allow me to take my innards, rather, my newly outtards, home with me in an alcohol-filled jar?
Medics and surgery-alumni, please go to the comments to supply Courtney with her answer.
I know that after I had my gallbladder removed, in my post-surgical party bag was a little plastic jar filled with gallstones, or a spoonful of gravel off the pavement, difficult to call.
Like most boys at a younger age I enjoyed such hobbies as climbing trees, making rope swings and generally running around. On occasions, this led to the odd injury including broken bones, which heal when placed in a plastic/fibre glass cast. Many years later it is a good thing that I haven’t been injured in a while but I do have a faint memory of having casts removed – this included the use a type of circular saw to cut through the plaster.
This seems a little over the top to me now, but obviously I would have just accepted it as a child. However, answer me this – did/do they use a circular saw to remove casts, or is it some kind of phantom memory my brain has created?
If I haven’t made it up then how can it be that this does not generally result in loss of limbs etc??? Maybe there is a safety device to stop this or maybe it relies on supreme skill from the people doing it (seems hugely unlikely!!)? Finally is there any documented time when this has gone horribly wrong??
Readers, I turn to you for the answer, as I am not somebody who has ever worn a plaster cast/removed a plaster cast/sliced off someone’s arm whilst trying to remove a plaster cast.
One Bad Mother is a really fun show whether you’re a parent or not, and they just made it past the 100 episodes landmark! Well done, Mothers!
There’s some very good stuff on Everything Is Stories. I was particularly struck by the ‘Everything Can’t Be Something’ episode, combining the headiness of 60s Hollywood and the headfuckness of religious communes.
In AMT312, we advise questioneers on how to get a job in Antarctica, how to wipe their bums on gold, and how to spell yogurt/yoghurt/yoghourt (OK, we’re not 100% certain on that point). Catch up, and rejoin us next Thursday for AMT313.
Plus: Olly’s pub quiz victory strategy is ruined by cocks; Helen would rather swear on the dictionary than the Bible; and Martin the Sound Man is vanilla-blind. Quick, throw a benefit gala for him!
There’s bonus Jews for Jesus jazz in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, available for iThings, Android and Windows gadgets.
Thanks very much to Squarespace.com for supporting this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘ANSWER‘.
We’ll return on 30th April 2015 with AMT313, please return too!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT312 Child-Friendly Rating: 21%. Martin the Sound Man deploys the word ‘cunty’ in the first couple of minutes, but in protest at poor provision of services for the visually impaired, which is a cause your children ought to support. Shortly followed by a discussion of crude cock’n’balls drawings, with which the average child will already be more than familiar. Question about penis size at the end of the show. While the content is clean in between the penis references at either end of the show, there are a few swears sprinkled throughout. In sum: not an episode to enjoy on the school run.•••
My brother in law and his family are going to Hawaii tomorrow. I want to just be happy for them but one question troubles me.
Answer me this: In Magnum PI, Magnum’s boss or buddy – I don’t remember which – is British and had a Union Jack flying at his office. Why??? I thought Hawaii is the USA?
I have never seen Magnum PI, so from that position of ignorance, and going only on the evidence supplied by Jon, I deduce that a Union Jack would be thus deployed as a shortcut to establish that the character is a big British Brit. Perhaps he also drinks tea, wears tweed golfing bags and says, “What what?”
To add to Jon’s confusion, the Hawaiian flag does incorporate the Union Jack:
Most of all, I’m sad that this issue is interfering with Jon’s wish to be happy for his brother. Somebody, please step in and deliver the truth in the comments. A family’s contentment depends upon you.
If there are any hairdressers, trichologists or mythbusters reading this, please go to the comments ASAP to answer this question from Hollie in Reading:
My boyfriend is adamant that hairdressers never wear flip flops because if they get cut hair on their feet it can attach itself and grow!
Is this true?
We have been arguing about it for 5 years and he is wearing me down. It sounds so ridiculous but he is certain and even got a hairdresser friend to tell me ‘the truth’ and she agreed with him! Is he right? Can hair attach itself to other people’s skin?
I would imagine that hair trimmings, particularly short ones, could stick like a splinter into a hairdresser’s foot, hence them choosing more protective footwear. But, just as a splinter in your foot won’t grow into a sapling, NO OF COURSE SOMEONE ELSE’S HAIR TRIMMINGS CANNOT TAKE ROOT AND GROW OUT OF A HAIRDRESSER’S FOOT.
I’m not a scientist, so maybe I’m wrong. But cut hair is dead, so surely I’m not.
Next question: if someone has particularly sweaty feet, could you grow cress inside their damp trainers?
Here’s the stage-eye view of the practice of impassioned underwear-throwing at concerts, as discussed in AMT308. Connor writes:
I recently worked as a lighting technician on One Direction’s Sydney show.
On their tour Down Under, bras and garments from down under so to speak were tossed on stage. As one of the first people on stage after the show, I saw the cleaning staff just scooping them up with gloves on and tossing them in the bin.
In a rather lovely moment of classic rock behaviour intersecting with the digital age, the few bras that were still on stage as I was working all had the Twitter handles of the throwers with pleas for the boys to follow them, as having 1D follow you apparently is the ultimate achievement these days for some tweens.
Anonymous Man finds himself with an unwanted travel companion:
I am a single gay man in his early thirties. As part of being a gentleman that enjoys the casual shag every now and again, I go get my bits checked in my local GUM clinic 2-3 times a year. Unfortunately, my most recent trip ended with me having a round of applause* in my throat.
I was given a jab in the bum and a several pills as a massive dose of antibiotics, and told to come back in two weeks to make sure all was well and good. However, it will be three weeks until this appointment as I am heading on holiday before then.
The was to be a somewhat sexy holiday, and thus my dilemma is this: should I abstain from sex, even though it is overwhelmingly likely (99.6%, by rough internet research) that I will be cured at this time? As someone that engages in semi-regular casual sex, I’m aware of the risks of having sex with a stranger (that all parties should take into account); in my case, the percentage wouldn’t be based on how adventurous I’d been but on the efficacy of treatment.
I try to be honest and up front (I have contacted all those who needed to know about this bout, in case they need to get themselves checked) about stuff like this, but I think this degree of honesty would probably make the question moot.
Thoughts?
*applause = the clap = gonorrhea – but I’m sure you figured out already.
Readers, what do you think? Would condoms not make this a non-problem even if he’s 0.4% uncured? Provide your medical and sexual advice in the comments.
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