Revenge is a frequent theme at AMT, as is the pettiness born of cohabitation. It is little surprise that those topics combine. Add a fractious sibling relationship, and you have household napalm. Luca from Malta is ready to detonate:
I have a younger brother who constantly eats my food. It is fine when I make enough for both. But if I prepare a sandwich or a salad and leave it in the fridge for when I have work or school, it always goes missing – invariably, he eats it.
I have confronted him about this and have told him, SPECIFICALLY, ‘Do not eat my food.’ Last night, I spent 3 hours making the most beautiful and delicious pizza. I could only eat a quarter and left the rest in the fridge with a paper saying ‘Please, do not eat!’ for I had a long day at work and needed something to cheer me up for when I got home. He ate my pizza and he just laughed and laughed about it.
If I poison some food, leave it in the fridge, with a sign saying “Please do not eat”, yet my brother eats it anyway, and dies, will I be sent to prison?
I’m not well versed in Maltese law, but yes, you probably would, as your intent was to endanger life. But even if you wormed your way out of a prison sentence, for killing your brother your parents would send you to your room till the end of time, so it’s the same result either way. Plus, you’re ruling yourself out of eating your own food, too. Everybody loses in this scenario, as with the piss-laced soy milk we recently refused to drink.
It seems to have taken you a remarkably long time to realise that your notes are not only failing to deter your brother from theft, but are even spurring him on to commit mischief. The only thing more delicious to him than contraband food is your annoyance.
He would probably continue to eat your food if you deploy reverse psychology in your notes, eg “Go ahead and eat my pizza” – face it, if he can see your pizza, he is going to eat your pizza. So…prevent him from seeing your pizza. Construct a disguise. Get yourself a Tupperware container and dress it up to look like your brother’s least favourite food – or just pop a plastic turd on top. That is cheaper than buying your own fridge and a padlock, which is the other option.
Readers, please go to the comments to lend Luca your ideas – both to defend his food from his brother, and to deal with his stress levels and controlling urges.
Tyler from San Francisco is movin’ on up, movin’ on out, movin’ on up, nothing can stop him:
I broke up with my boyfriend about one month ago after nearly two years (in gay culture, this is a quite long relationship). We share a large group of mutual friends here in San Francisco which has made things a bit awkward. I have only briefly encountered my ex in passing. I’m now starting to date new people. Is this too soon? I don’t want to be insensitive, but we’re finished and I’m moving on.
Answer me this: how long should I wait before publicly dating or bringing a new gentleman to a party or event with this circle of mutual friends?
As we established last week: if the new relationship is with a close relative, WAIT FOREVER.
Otherwise – three months? Readers, what do you reckon? Since age gaps can be governed mathematically, surely there is an equation to compute the value of y (length of post-relationship public singledom) as a proportion of x (length of relationship). Add your calculation to the comments.
In the last episode, we decided that a relationship with your first cousin who also happens to be young enough to be your child equals ICK. But Sarah writes:
I utterly adore your podcast. So imagine my chagrin when, in the last episode, you guys ranted about the unsuitability of relationships such as mine. No, I am not dating my cousin. But my girlfriend and I are 23 years apart in age, precisely the same as your anonymous questioner and his girlfriend. Answer me this: what’s is so wrong with that?
Jenny and I are coming up on our five year anniversary. We have a circle of mutual friends that doesn’t suffer from the fact that they’re of different generations. Jenny is only seven years younger than my mom and nine years younger than my dad but that didn’t stop them from welcoming her into our family, something Jenny really appreciated as her own family, believing same-sex relationships to be wrong, have distanced themselves from her.
Come on, guys – you’re too smart to believe that age difference in a relationship is inherently wrong or icky or exploitative.
We agree that age difference isn’t inherently wrong, but this is influenced by the age of the youngest half of the couple. For example, although Courtney Stodden and Doug Hutchison would always seem an insanitary pairing, the 35-year age gap wouldn’t have appeared as bad had she been 26 or 36 when they got married, rather than 16.
Had our questioneer been 54 and his cousin-lover been 31, perhaps we would have been more generous to him (although, obviously not, because SHE IS STILL HIS FIRST COUSIN), and if children were not involved. You don’t mention, Sarah, whether Jenny has children that are almost the same age as you. Children are prone to being freaked out by their parents’ relationships, but surely more so when the new partner was in the same nursery school as them. (And even more so when said partner IS A BLOOD RELATIVE.) You see the difference between your relationship and his, we hope!
Mark from New Zealand chips in with an equation:
In terms of what a minimum age for a partner is, the standard creepiness rule: don’t date under (age÷2)+7 seems reasonable, so on that score your mid life crisis cuz-banger falls a bit short.
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.
Plus: even a customised Segway won’t bring back Olly’s childhood joy; Helen will consider being your late mother’s marketing consultant, but only for actual MONEY not some old shoes; and click here to see the picture of Martin the Sound Man that brought all the boys to the yard – however do bear in mind that it IS just a picture of a 34-year-old man drinking a strawberry milkshake, nothing special. Martin’s new album, on the other hand, is very special – it comes out next week so preorder your copy HERE.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Helen complains about one of her legion linguistic bugbears: the word ‘umami’. Then turns it into a song, in an effort to make her like it better.
You know what we do like a very great deal? No, NOT pig sex; your QUESTIONS. Email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
I have been good friends with a boy since I was 12, when we met in high school. He has always made it very clear that he likes me, and I have always carefully turned him down so as not to hurt his feelings.
However, this morning, I received a…Crotch picture, and I need to tell him no means no, once and for all, but still remain friends.
Also, there is an opportunity for me to move in with him, his friend, and two other girls in about two months… Do I take it, or is it too risky?
It’s a dead cert that if you move in, you’ll be treated to some real life ‘Crotch pictures’ before you’ve even had enough time to unpack.
Wake up and smell the cock that he’s been dangling on your face whilst you sleepcoffee, Caity. ‘Carefully turning him down’ for several years has not proven effective. Perhaps he has interpreted your kindly rejections as you playing coy, in which case you need to be unequivocal in your declarations of non-interest. Agreeing to move in with him does not send the right message.
The right message is ‘I DO NOT WANT YOU SEXUALLY’ on the back of a postcard of Lorena Bobbitt.
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.
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.
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.
Rub-a-dub-dub, two nuns in a tub – but what the blazes are they getting up to in there? Find out in Answer Me This! Episode 236:
Today we consider:
Roman wine
Roman semen
flamenco dancing
Roger vs. Wilco
wet bars vs. dry bars vs. swim-up bars
the Moorish influence on Span vs. Frank Muir’s influence on Spain
polluted peanuts
Sarah Palin’s password
laundry fragranczzzzzzz Pfalz Historical Museum drink options
the oldest continuously producing Cabernet Sauvignon vine
airport shopping
and
double disk drives.
Plus: Olly is a bit disappointed by his holiday hotel’s drink facilities, in that they did provide kettles but didn’t serve drinks through boobs; Helen doesn’t think you should trust Password Wallet any more than post-it notes; and Martin the Sound Man is never going to make it as a wedding singer if his set is just ‘Heartbeat‘ four times followed by ‘Magic Dance‘ as encore.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) Olly reminisces about the time he had a wet bar in his student bedroom. People always think wet bars are so ritzy, but the Olly Mann twist on MTV Cribs fanciness can be yours for only £20 from Millets.
We are, as always, agog to receive your QUESTIONS, so please email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
By the way, if you’re curious about spiders after today’s episode, our pal Jim Bell of Geekpop podcast is your spider man. NB Jim is not Spider-man, he is a normal man who doesn’t wear spandex and seems fairly unwracked by angst. He is just very keen on spiders, as his website demonstrates – in an entirely safe-for-work way, we assure you.
Less safe for work is our photo of Olly demonstrating that, like today’s questioneer Brad’s wife’s student, he is the bollocks. Click here to see. Don’t be scared – it’s much gentler than all that nasty Staplenuts business last year.
Anyway, rest assured, dear listeners, that we think you are all the bollocks. So please bring your beautiful bollocky selves back here next Thursday for AMT237.
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.
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.
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