Answer Me This! Podcast

** Click here for Episode 169 **

Help is at hand for the aspiring author wife of questioneer Dave from Colorado from last week, stymied by her own lethargy. Lewis from Cardiff sympathises:

Much like Dave’s wife from episode 169 I have the same problem of tremendous procrastination. This caused me to have to learn an entire module for my Chemistry degree in just 2 days. However I did find something to help called the Magic Work Cycle.

Simply put, it’s a way of dividing every hour into 30 minutes of hard work and 30 minutes of goofing around, work solidly for just 30 minutes (which we’ll all agree isn’t a long period of time) then when the time is up you can do whatever you want for the next 30 minutes (I suggest an episode of South Park), repeat this for a few hours and you’ll be shocked how much gets done.

The promise of half an hour of relaxation helps keep you motivated through the 30 minutes of work, so motivated in fact that I got far more done in 30 minutes using this method than I have ever know myself to in a usual procrastination filled hour. I’m sure this method will help Dave’s wife as I am living proof that this works, in that modules exam I got a 2:1, narrowly missing a first.

Pat from Canada also recommends the following kick up the arse in book form:

I suggest that he get her a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

I read this book a couple of years ago as part of a course and found it to be both inspiring and comforting. It has a series of exercises and assignments that you complete each week and through this you identify where you are sabotaging yourself and you can have a lot a fun. I did with with a group of 10 women and couldn’t wait to get to the next chapter. Julia Cameron wrote this book about 25 years ago and many artists and celebrities have cited it as a great way to get your act together.

It’s true – I’ve even heard that Patsy Kensit uses it, and she’s a creative force to be reckoned with.

However I still think that Mrs Dave would be far more productive if she didn’t have the comforts of infinite time and financial support. Ringfence your money and force her to take a dead-end job, Dave, and she’ll be bound to use her few remaining spare hours far more productively.

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** Click here for Episode 169 **

Sir Thomas More’s dreamland is real! Christine from Grand Prairie, Texas writes:

Helen asked if there was a town called Utopia. There is a town in Texas called Utopia which I did a project on in elementary school. Here’s the town website: www.utopiatexas.com

It’s not looking so utopian everywhere though, for instance in former anarchist community Utopia, Ohio. It’s not looking so sprightly there, which is not a great surprise when you try to imagine how well anarchists would handle the rigours of local government. Weekly bin collection? Dream on!

PS If anyone knows of a town called Dystopia, I sure would like to hear about it.

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** Click here for Episode 169 **

Hooray! For once we got something right, according to Paul:

I have an utterly useless qualification in fish biology and once spend 3 pointless weeks working for a goldfish producer. Your advice to the student who wanted to start his own fish finger farm was spot on for numerous practical reasons let alone the moral ones.

Finally, if by some kind of miracle they do manage “the dance of many fins”, then you would need to produce a supply of tiny crustaceans to feed their offspring. Plus you’d need to separate them from their parents so that they don’t succumb to that most disturbing of goldfish behaviour, cannibalism!

Bad news for you, James from Aberystwyth – your scheme will certainly not keep you in an endlessly renewed supply of fishfingers. Try offering yourself as a concubine to Captain Birdseye instead.

David Beckham's rich, he doesn't even need to grow his own

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** Click here for Episode 167 **

Now whoever could have predicted that the topic of famous Belgians would get you so hot and bothered? Here are just a few of the slew of emails we’ve had about it. First up are Elodia & Julian:

We were both born and brought up in Belgium, and together with our fellow expats we’ve been defending the reputation of the country we call home for as long as we can remember. So here is a list of famous Belgians, to quell once for the misapprehension that “there are no famous Belgians”.

We hope this clears up any confusion as to the importance of our dear old waffle-land.

Despite that valiant effort (which does ignore the rule imposed by my mean schoolteacher, who specified no sports players), this email from Chick from Leeds shows even Belgians don’t necessarily have great faith in their homeland’s position in the celebrity galaxy:

I remember when I was about 10 we were in a restaurant in Belgium, and we asked our Belgian waiter to name ten famous Belgians. Off the top of his head he got about four – Jean Claude Van Damme, Hergé, former footballer Giles de Bilde, and the King of Belgium(!) – before pondering for a moment and walking off saying ‘I’ll phone my mother’.

He’s a long way from Belgium, but Steve from Oakland, California still has nominees:

Aside from the Belgian Waffle I thought of three famous Belgians right away:

– Epic mass-murderer Leopold II
– Epic depictor-of-mostly-exposed-buttocks Peter Paul Rubens
– Epic kicker-of-faces Jean-Claude Van Damme.

So, it looks like the consensus nominates Van Damme and Hergé as the most famous Belgians, unlikely equals that they are. If you’re still in doubt, however, you may like to peruse this site that Michael from Brisbane kindly brought to our attention: famousbelgians.net. But take note that in their top 10 they include the not-Belgian Audrey Hepburn and the inventor of Bakelite. That’s all I’m saying.

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** Click here for Episode 167 **

History Corner now, which for reasons of economy this week will be combined with Bawdy Corner. Shaun from Canton, Massachusetts writes:

You recently requested examples of historical glory holes. I would suggest the hole in Pasiphaë’s hollow wooden bull through which she mated with a bull, producing the Minotaur.

Though the incident is mythological, it suggests that the concept would have been known to the Ancient Greeks, though they don’t seem to have properly worked out how best to use such powerful sexual technology.

How do you know, Shaun? For all we can tell, finding the wherewithal by which to allow humans to mate with unwitting bulls might have been the pinnacle of Grecian sexual ambition. Perhaps it is in fact we moderners who are missing out on the zenith of erotic joy.

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** Click here for Episode 167 **

The following email from Alan in Glasgow made my day, and possibly also my week, month and, dammit, year:

Hello! I’ve just been catching up on some of the last few podcasts and came across the Bouncy Roulette mention.

Below is a picture of a slightly bemused bouncy roulette operator in a room that looks far too small for such an activity. The twat in the suit is myself.

‘Twat in the suit’? Alan, you are the king of kings!

And now I know what we’re going to be doing with the spare room.

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** Click here for Episode 167 **

Here’s some feedback from unimpeachably chivalrous Luke from Stockport:

In response to the ‘nude-pictures-of-a-friend’ topic in episode 167:

To advise you, this had no benefits, they didn’t give a shit, so bonk off to the pictures before your friend finds them and tells you to delete them.

It’s like that adage, ‘regret the things you did do, not the things you didn’t’, isn’t it? Or is it like that adage, ‘keep your friends close, but not close enough to beat off over them’? It’s so hard to pick the right adage in a sticky situation.

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** Click here for Episode 166 **

No way! Someone’s taken exception to sex advice from Olly Mann? Meredith from Framingham, Massachusetts tells him to shove his conception advice right back up into his man-womb:

I am writing because, respectfully, I thought that Olly’s advice to the lady calling in about her and her husband’s problems keeping sex sexy while trying for a baby was very off base.

My advice to the caller would be to take her partner someplace fun they haven’t been before for a long weekend, someplace with particularly comfortable beds and room service and to not even say the word “baby” the entire time…and see what might occur!

Egad, I officially know too much about the sex life of strangers now.

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** Click here for Episode 163 **

Good news for Emma from Bristol! Sarah knows exactly what you should do with your four boxes of unwanted Christmas talcum powder:

Picture the scene.

So when great aunty Mabel presents me with a little bottle of talc every Christmas I smile, thank her, and tuck it away with my suntan lotion.

Hooray! So by deploying it for a post-beach clean-up, you should have used up your supply in a mere 80 years or sono time. But whatever you do, don’t sprinkle it on a baby, Jamie in Nottingham warns:

My partner Marie and I have a 14-week-old daughter, Lily Sophia!!! And we have been told by medical professionals that you cannot use talc as the tiny particles – if that is the word – is bad for them! I fucking loved talc!!

Don’t let such a pure love die, Jamie! If you’re scared to sprinkle the substance over your daughter, give yourself a thick dusting instead. You’ll look like John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons, which might give Marie a nice post-natal thrill.

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** Click here for Episode 163 **

I’m sure you’re all agog to know, as we were, the technical details of Josh from Warwick University‘s lift ordeal from last week’s podcast:

I’d just like to clarify, where you were wondering if the lift got full of wee – it didn’t, as we managed to open the inner doors and (as Martin suggested) have a wee down all 4 feet of lift shaft, since we were trapped between the first and second floor.

Since the inner door opened fully, and only the outer doors were locked, even Olly could get his sizable penis through the gap.

What a relief! In both senses. Here’s another relief, this time for waggly pop sensation Chico, who must have been very hurt that his career-high concert in Hyde Park didn’t even make it into Olly Mann’s medium-term memory bank. Cheer up, Chico! You made a far more lasting impression upon Michael:

You reminded me of the strange moment I met Chico – I was on a trip round Europe with 2 mates, and when on a boat on Lake Como in Italy, we spent the whole journey distracted not by the beautiful scenery around us but by trying to decide whether it was him or not. We decided it had to be and ended up getting a picture with him and his daughter, the best snap from the whole holiday!

Wow. Call Cameron Crowe – I think we’ve got a plot for Almost Famous II!

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