Archive for the ‘Answer Us Back! Your time to opine’ Category

cinematic snooze

November 21, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT237

AMT234 has spurred Martin to write in:

As you have stated on many occasions, you are yet to be blessed with the fruit of your loins; a point emphasized by the comment, “How do parents make it through kids’ films?”

As a father of three beautiful children I can assure you that the guff churned out by Pixar, Disney and Dreamworks is indeed proof of God’s existence.

The cinema means that kids are in a safe environment, they are being entertained by someone other than yourself in a moralizing and amusing fashion and have a trough of popcorn to stop their hands from punching each other.

Knowing this, I sit back and get the best sleep ever. At the end of each film I feel as though I have slept for a fortnight and can wake to find the kids still in one piece both physically and psychologically.

Recently I slept through The Avengers which, from what I can gather from my seven-year-old film critic, had explosions, crashes and fights all the way through. I missed them all. Nothing can keep me awake. Brilliant.

And are there films which work the opposite way round, ie keep the parent lively while sending the sprogs off to Snoozeford? Chip in, people, via the comments. If a DVD of Black Narcissus is all it takes to sedate my gaggle of niecephews, it’s far cheaper and safer than Ritalin.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

lovely compliments

November 14, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT236

20121114-130822.jpg

Yes, the above book is from my own library, and why not? Australia’s slang is as thrillingly unusual as its indigenous wildlife, as demonstrated by Steve from Adelaide, South Australia who has donated the following suggestion to AMT236’s appeal for synonyms for ‘the bollocks’:

How about “She’s the duck’s guts”?

Very poetic, Steve. However, let’s not forget that in the question in question, Brad in Philadelphia’s wife was writing a letter of recommendation for a student. An expression evoking a duck with its entrails on display is perhaps not the most enticing for an employer, unless that employer is a Satanist or Fergus Henderson.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

password passnotes

November 14, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT236

Passwords are like tattoos of the Bishop of Peterborough dressed as Elvis: we’ve all got them. RIGHT? On that subject, Dylan muses upon the question raised by Jack in AMT236:

There are plenty of opinions in the IT community to support the idea that a password change policy is actually not beneficial in a meaningful way. In fact in some cases it can harm security as users who are forced to regularly create new passwords are more likely to choose easy to remember (and potentially guess) passwords, or to write passwords down or record them in a file.

However it really is a good practice to use a different password for every site you visit. The method I’ve used and recommend to other people is to use part of the site’s name or URL within the password you use. You start with a reasonably complex password that’s common to all your sites, and then modify it slightly for any given site.

So you could have “R4gh1p5” as your common password. On eBay you might then use “eR4ghy1p5” on that site – the same password, but you’ve added the first letter of the site’s name at the beginning, and the last letter of the name before the “1” in the password. This way you have a unique password on every site, but only have to remember the base password and the rule you’ve come up with.

Good tip, Dylan. For the legion of people whose password continues to be ‘password’, I’ve made your life easier: you just need ‘epasswyord’ for eBay, ‘apasswnord’ for Amazon and ‘gpasswsord’ for Geocities. I assume those are the only websites you use.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

nun of the above

November 14, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT236

Perhaps during AMT236 we opened a floodgate for all the lewd nun jokes that are neither comprehensible nor funny. Luca writes:

Two nuns were cycling down a cobbled a road. ‘I never came this way,’ said one nun. ‘It must be the cobbles,’ said the other.

Answer me this: why are nuns so sexual in jokes?

In my opinion, it is because the composers and repeaters of those jokes can hardly believe that sentient women would actively choose a life of celibacy. It is INCONCEIVABLE that they would waste their God-given BOOBS and LADYPARTS in this way. Since they have forsaken the public-facing singles scene, they MUST be getting their kicks elsewhere, and therefore a convent must be like a 24/7/365 Carry On film set in a boarding school for wayward girls.

To my mind, however, the real question is why a nun commits herself to marriage with a man who is not only dead, but cheating on her with all the other nuns.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

That’s Asda cacophony

November 7, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT235

In AMT235 we spoke of jobs none of us has experienced. But, being such a diverse bunch, you listeners have. Jess from Dorset writes:

In regards to your recent question about Asda FM: I work there and they repeat the music ALL DAY LONG and play the same adverts over and over again. Absolutely terrible and definitely for the customers not the staff!!!!!

I always had my suspicions that somebody has been developing a noise equivalent of chemical weaponry. Now I know.

Anyway, as for jobs outside of the retail sector, Elizabeth from Madison, Wisconsin informs us:

I can say that people going to the South Pole are definitely encouraged (one might say forced) to make sure that their teeth are in top shape before going there.

My husband is a physicist whose experiment is at the South Pole (IceCube Neutrino Observatory if you are interested) and in order to go there for a month one winter they made him get his remaining wisdom teeth out as a precautionary measure because they thought that one might have a cavity.

He was not keen on getting them out, but his desire to go to the frozen south was such that he did it anyway and brought me back a lot of pictures of snow.

I love the show, and listened to you while dissecting over 200 squid yesterday.

Thanks Elizabeth – we hope that was a work thing, rather than a nice day out to the aquarium that you decided to sabotage.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

the dream is over

November 5, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT235

Much of the USA has already had a rough few days, and I’m sorry, but I’m about to make things even rougher.

Brace yourself for more bad news:

My mum is definitely not eligible to become the President of the USA.

Aside from the reasons for disqualification as listed in AMT235, she actually had to give up her US citizenship in 1970 when she married my father: they wouldn’t let her have dual nationality, so to allow my South African father to remain in the UK, she had to choose to be 100% British.

Of course now, after 41 years of darning his underpants and withstanding his puns, she might be regretting that decision.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

surviving Sandy

November 5, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT235

Hey! AMTpals on the other side of the Atlantic, are you alright? We hope you and yours made it through the Extreme Weather Events, and we are relieved to have heard from some of you, sounding damp but resilient, like Emma from the Soggy Apple:

As a New Yorker, last week was pretty hectic. Hurricane Sandy turned out to a be quite a bitch.

Me, my two roommates, my roommate’s annoying dog, our friend who lives in Manhattan, and my roommate’s boyfriend were trapped in my Brooklyn apartment for days with very little to do but drink the mass amounts of beer we bought from the one open bodega in our neighborhood. We don’t have a tv, so we ended up playing lots of games.

One game we played for far too long was MASH, which is one of those playground games girls play to predict who they are going to marry, where they are going to live, how many kids they will have, etc. For instance, after one game I ended up living in Tokyo, married to Danny Devito, having no kids but 20 cats, getting around by helicopter, and working in a dildo factory. Would it actually be fun being married to Danny Devito as long as you didn’t have sex with him?

I’m not sure that would be your choice if married to Danny Devito, if there’s any truth in the rumours which sprouted after he and Rhea Perlman announced their separation last month. We learn that if fidelity is important to you in a relationship, don’t marry one of the stars of Twins.

Also if you’re deliberately entering into a sexless marriage and you have TWENTY cats, your life sounds like a mess no matter who your husband is.

Nichole had different means of seeing out the storm:

Great big slug pigs from hell, we survived the New York apocalypse known as hurricane Sandy! We roughed it out for FOUR days in our one bedroom apartment with no heat, no electricity, NO INTERNET, and water turning off and on with the wind.

Would you believe it? The husband and I managed the early darkening nights huddled around the soft light of candles and a thankfully charged iPad stocked only with Answer Me This! episodes from your early days of yore, episodes 62 to 90. It was like a drunken end of days with only the soft lull of you cracking whimsical over grandpa’s proverbial wireless.

Now we’re back and there are things we have to know! What happened to the on-again, off-again couple of Anastasia and Wade? Did Graham from Canada ever get a girlfriend in his own country?

The truth is: we don’t know! All those kids are now grown up, and unless they contact us, we can’t find out what’s going on with them since the government shut down our covert surveillance operation. So here’s an appeal:

Wade. Ana. Graham from Canada. If you’re reading this, please go to the comments and tell us what’s been happening in your life since we last heard from you circa 2009.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

Miss Marple: marriage wrecker?

November 1, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT234

Apropos of AMT234‘s contemplation of the sexual preferences of Agatha Christie’s fictional detectives, Hannah from Bedford writes:

I don’t know if this is something that comes up in the books, but in the ITV shows, Poirot does have a romantic relationship with a Russian woman, so seemingly he might be heterosexual. Obviously this doesn’t rule out the idea of him having repressed homosexual feelings like you were saying.

Similarly Miss Marple has an affair with a married soldier during WWII, he dies during the war and she doesn’t seem to have any other romantic relationships.

That stinks of TELLY MEDDLING. You know why? Firstly, because Marple does not seem the type to plant begonias in another woman’s herbaceous border. Secondly, because Miss Marple first appeared in print, already an elderly spinster, in 1926, thirteen years before the Second World War broke out. Although, as the final Miss Marple novel was written in 1971, it is possible that she did have that affair when already pretty ancient, then pined after him until her death at the age of 120 or so.

“Phwoar. Have him scrubbed and brought to my tent.”

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

locks and clocks

October 24, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT233

The bowels of Andrew from County Down have been suffering from stage fright:

To continue with the bathroom lock talk from AMT232, I have a similar problem.

When visiting my friend who still lives with his parents, I went to use the bathroom facilities. Having closed the door, I noticed that there was no lock but, oddly, a clock above the door. Needless to say, once I sat down with my trousers round the ankles, my friend’s mum walked in.

Answer me this! Should I introduce the family to an open and closed door system, insist they get a lock put in, or insist they remove the clock so that I’m not caught in a daydream staring at the clock when various family members walk in on me taking a shit?

No, no and no!

1. It’s not your house, so you can’t waltz in there and boss them into changing their customs.

2. It’s not your house, so you can’t waltz in there and expect them to add door-furniture.

3a. It’s not your house, so you can’t waltz in there and demand they remove the clock that presumably they keep there for a reason (eg to monitor time for the annual family competition: the person who has spent the longest time in the loo over the year wins a kilo of prunes at Christmas).
3b. Getting rid of the clock won’t stop the door from opening when you don’t want it to.
3c. Your fear is that they might catch you mid-daydream, rather than mid-shit?
3d. If you find clocks so enrapturing, this is far from your most pressing problem.

Here’s a simple solution: take a door wedge with you when you visit, which will keep the door shut long enough for you to alert the loo-invader about your presence. Alternatively, buy them one of these, but don’t be surprised if they decide not to use it, because if they haven’t already got a lock it suggests they actively enjoy the risk of a lavatorial interruption.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

bad Bad Ischl

October 24, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT233

Not everyone would want to claim it, so it’s nice of Gareth to pipe up:

While listening to you discussing the birthplace of the industrial revolution in Episode 233, Olly asked in passing where the first world war started. Well I am pleased to tell you that it was started in my home town of Bad Ischl in Austria. Everyone round here is very proud of the imperial history of the town. The Kaisers came to Bad Ischl for generations to take the waters and relax.

You can have guided tour of the Kaiser Villa and they glow with excitement as they show you the desk at which Kaiser Franz Joseph wrote the letter declaring war on Serbia. This on its own is not odd, but they also every year have the ‘Kaiser Bummel’ where they cover every street in the town with red carpet and have food stalls, beer and live music. All while a man and woman dressed as the Kaiser and Sissy his wife ‘bummel’ (walk slowly) around town.

If you ask me, this seem a bit over the top for a man that started the First World War. I don’t recall any yearly street parades in Ranshofen with people dressing as Hitler.

Probably for the best.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

lost photos

October 23, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT233

Julia from London has a tip for the poor young fellow in AMT232:

I empathised with Steve and his friend’s deleted photos of Paris – I deleted everything off my camera’s memory card AS I was backing it up! But then I found out there is a free programme you can use to “undelete” them and get them back! It’s called Pandora Recovery.

Apparently it will work better if you use it quite quickly so that you haven’t saved new photos over the old ghost files – but it worked perfectly for me and I got about 50 photos back!

Hurry Steve, there is not a moment to lose! You may yet be able to recover that photo where you’ve used perspective to make it look like your friend is wearing the Eiffel Tower like a hat.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH

shrink to fit

October 16, 2012

CLICK HERE FOR AMT232

Here’s a point of information from Hilary from Hemel Hempstead:

Bearing in mind the subject of AMT232 I thought you might be interested in this oriental remedy which claims it can change the size of vaginas.

Great news! At last Anish Kapoor will be able to shrink this down so it fits nicely on the mantelpiece.

ALBUMSiTUNESCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKQUESTION ARCHIVEFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH