We’ve heard of sock monkeys, but not shocked monkeys, until we received this email from Larry:
While driving around with my teenage son, Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey” came on the radio. After 4 minutes of being told over and over to shock the monkey, we’re not quite sure what he wants us to do. Is this an expression with some other meaning? Or is Mr. Gabriel suggesting that we toss a plugged-in toaster into the tub the next time a chimp takes a bath???
I’ve tried reading through the lyrics, but all I can gather is that Peter Gabriel has probably dropped a lot of acid in his lifetime.
Firstly, Larry, thankyou for directing our attention to this song which we’d never encountered before. The video looks like Peter Gabriel is starring in a Matthew Bourne ballet alongside the Pixar lamp.
Holed up in the Holiday Inn in Salford Quays, we contemplated holding a Bed-In for Peace. But then we realised that if we did, the already oversubscribed lifts would become clogged up with press and peaceniks, leaving all the other hotel guests feeling far from peaceful. So, sorry, peace; we made Answer Me This! Episode 232 instead:
Today we consider:
the Virgin Trains slow reveal
personal massagers
naughty Amazon
animal blood donation
magic oily fish
Les Rosbifs
immature students
maths vs. emotion
cottaging
Ping (who?)
and
the Holiday Inn pillow menu.
Plus: Olly would like to reverse decades of progress in gay rights just so he’s got something to read when he’s on the loo; Helen is unlikely to renew her wedding vows, unless the magazine deal is lucrative enough; and Martin the Sound Man goes off to have a rest in the rest room. He’s a very well-rested man.
Check out this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) if you’ve been wondering what happened next in the tale of vengeance from AMT231 and/or why your pineapple jelly won’t set.
We’re relieved to tell you that our Skype problem seems to be fixed, but if you used Skype to ask us a question in August or September, we never got it, so please ask it again by dialling up answermethis. You don’t need to worry if you sent a QUESTION via email (answermethispodcast@googlemail.com) or the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877); it’s safely swimming around with all the other questions in our question tank.
See you next Thursday!
Helen & Olly
Martin the Sound Man has a little alone time with the personal massager in the Holiday Inn.
Of course we love being right. Even when we’re right at the expense of somebody else’s happiness. So we were delighted to have the correctness of our answer confirmed by questioneer Fiona from Busan, South Korea (formerly from Golden, Colorado):
I wrote in a few months ago asking for advice on what to wear to my friend’s Renaissance Pirate-themed wedding.
After I had picked out my awesome pirate wedding attire I have to say you were right. One of them turned out to be a massive twat and left the other a few weeks before the wedding. Unfortunately, it was the one who had originally been my friend.
She now is married (to a different man) and is pregnant now with his child.
Good grief; Fiona’s query was featured in AMT211. Her friend sure works fast. I wonder how she even managed to decide a new wedding theme and seek out an appropriate costume in such a short space of time.
I like almost all museums, and frankly I would have enjoyed this holiday excursion which has left Baggsie so aggrieved:
On a family holiday we were starting our long journey home. We had to leave the caravan site at Lago Maggiore in Northern Italy at 10am and our train from Milan to Calais motorail was not leaving till late in the afternoon. So in a country of such supreme culture, where did Mum and Dad decide to take us to cap off a fantastic holiday???? The Umbrella and Parisol Museum.
It was as exciting as the website appears… particularly if like us you do not speak Italian. None of their info was translated!!
Answer me this: what is the worst museum you have ever been to?
It certainly wasn’t boring, Baggsie, but my stomach nearly flew out of my mouth when I visited the Pathological Museum in Vienna last year. Like the Umbrella and Parasol Museum, the information was not translated, but my ignorance of the German language wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle: I recognise a pickled conjoined twin foetus when I see one, in between waxworks of syphilitic genitals.
Readers, do let rip in the comments about the museums which have left you underwhelmed or, like me, swallowing down the bile as you dash for the exit.
I gather the rest of the world recoils in horror when they learn of the popularity of baked beans as a component of the Full English Breakfast. How refreshing, therefore, to hear this from Danielle from California:
One of my online friends from the UK recently introduced me to Beans and Toast which I heard was very popular in the UK, and I loved it.
Helen and Olly, answer me this have you ever been to the USA, and if you have what is your favorite food from America?
Pssst! Guys! I don’t want to be the one to tell her that it’s ‘beans on toast’; she seems so happy.
Danielle, if you trawl the AMT back catalogue, you will hear each of us rhapsodise about our numerous holidaysvacations in the USA, where between us we must have notched up over 15,000 road trip miles thus far.
We stuffed down many wonderful items along the way, including a few tonnes of peanut butter M&Ms, Cheetos, chowder, giant sandwiches, and some very impressive Vegas buffets. However, what we all love the best is the Mexican food that has successfully leapt the border fence into the States and flourished all over the nation, but has not thus far swum across the Atlantic to repeat the trick.
You may point out that there’s Wahaca and a few other decent representitives of the genre, but you can’t buy chimichangas with tomatillo salsa in every service station in Britain, so we’re still trailing behind.
As living arrangements have taken over from weddings as the AMT question topic of the season, let’s hear from Alistair:
I’ve recently been flat hunting in London. Due to the competitive nature of London dwellings at prices I can afford, I’ve found it to be much more like an interview or X Factor audition every time I see a room, rather than a viewing of the property.
So answer me this: should I play it cool and collected when I view a room, or should I go all out and let my full personality shine through in an overly enthusiastic horrible mess?
Try operating on a setting somewhere between those two extremes, Alistair, because most people don’t really want to share with either a sociopath or a chatterbox. Aim for engaging, but not too needy. You can unleash the real babbling lunatic Alistair when you’ve successfully signed the lease and it’s too late for them to get rid of you. Aaah-hahaha!
Readers, please visit the comments to give Alistair your own tips on how to wow his potential new cohabitants, because it has been many years since I had to audition a flatmate (Martin just moved in with me without even asking, and I DON’T EVEN GET MY OWN ROOM). But I would recommend that you don’t turn up late or use a false name. Both of those used to sour the start of the vetting process, and it rarely improved from there.
What we learn this week is that you people are not very good at sharing. Sharing milk. Sharing beds. Sharing in the joy of an imminent birth. But by all means share in the joy of Answer Me This! Episode 231:
We share thoughts upon such subjects as:
Julius Pringles vs. moustache champions
Thor’s hammer vs. dress codes
baby poo vs. Norwegian cheese Special K vs. Special K
drawers full of dead butterflies
baby showers of cunts
Dr Faustus in the SMS age
soy milk
and
Queen Victoria’s wedding.
Plus: Olly thinks that the biggest problem he’ll face if his loved ones die is having wasted money on their birthday presents; Helen accepts no responsibility for Prince Philip’s bladder trouble; and Martin the Sound Man offers the sophisticated insult to end all sophisticated insults.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) follows the baby shower gift theme to its natural conclusion: death.
Meanwhile, keep AMT alive and well with your QUESTIONS: email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and/or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877. We’re relieved to tell you our Skype problem seems to be fixed so answermethis is the ID you need, but if you’ve used Skype to ask us a question in the last two months, we never got it, so please ask it again. If it was a good one.
Difficult cohabitation has been a theme at AMT lately, and like many of you, the communal living situation is stoking murderous rage in Amanda from Virginia:
I live in a big house with my fiancee and three other roommates. We’re all students in our late 20s. When my fiancee and I moved in here, we were too poor to afford anything else. I’ve got a well-paying full-time job now and go to school online.
I HATE LIVING HERE. My roommates are ridiculously messy. I’m no neat freak, but this house is fucking disgusting. I clean all the time only to find the house trashed again within hours. My roommates also go around all winter long leaving windows and doors open, saying the cold air will rev up their metabolisms and make them skinny.
The problem is our upcoming wedding. If we want a decent wedding and honeymoon in Mexico (which we REALLY want), we’re going to keep living here another year in order to afford it. We haven’t really set a date yet, so I suggested postponing the wedding so we could afford to both move out AND go to Mexico. My fiancee doesn’t want to postpone the wedding at all. I dread my own home. Answer me this: what should we do?
I don’t know how you can postpone something which has not yet been organised, but if another year of domestic dread is likely to damage your relationship so much you never make it as far as the wedding, MOVE. Meanwhile, I assume you’ve eliminated the following possibilities:
1. Evicting the roommates and drafting in super-neat new ones;
2. Finding somewhere else cheap to live;
3. Having a smaller budget for the wedding, because weddings – and particularly American ones – are NEEDLESSLY EXPENSIVE.
Anyway, Amanda, your living arrangements are now in our readers’ hands, as I invite them to vote:
Whatever you do, don’t move out into a commune. Something tells me it wouldn’t suit you.
Not since ‘Friday‘ has there been such spiritual turmoil about the choice of car seats as there is in this question from Fraser from Erskine
When getting in a taxi alone, should one sit beside the driver or in the back seat? I don’t want the driver to think that A) I want to have a conversation or B) that I’m an antisocial weirdo.
Don’t worry about part B, Fraser – Taxi Driver set the ‘antisocial weirdo’ bar really high.
Anyway, I don’t think the average taxi driver wants you to sit in the front seat; that is where they keep their sandwiches, plus they might worry that anybody who automatically gets into the front is about to stick a gun into their ribs and order them to DRIVE.
As for part A, the driver knows that you required a taxi because you needed to get somewhere, not because you wanted to make a new friend. Nevertheless, EVERYbody knows that it is not up to you whether you’ll be having a conversation, so you might as well suck it up and prepare some gambits about The Football, something about Britain that is not as good as it used to be, and Princess Diana.
In America every child must have an annual, updated school picture in case the child is kidnapped. That way there’s a recent and well-lit photo to put on the “MISSING” poster.
Are American schoolchildren really that likely to be kidnapped? Because this seems like a very expensive and labour-intensive method of ensuring there’s something to put on the sides of the milk cartons.
It’s odd that in his ode ‘To Autumn‘, Keats never mentioned amongst the swelling gourds and clammy cells that it is also the time of year where the images of schoolchildren are harvested for posterity in the annual school photos. See above, then while your eyes recover, hear Answer Me This! Episode 230:
In which we speak of:
sharing a bedroom
Dorian Gray Liz Jones
the Meg Ryan Game
glamping Olly’s friend Chay in a Britney video
sleeping arrangements
dehumidifiers
the Titanic Memorial Cruise
grey water vs. black water
big baggy clothes vs. Joseph Gordon-Levitt Aaron Paul vs. Aaron Paul
court artists
Ocean Colour Scene
and
relationship advice via Neil LaBute.
Plus: Olly has had enough of these mother-fighting snakesDaily Mails on this monkey-liking plane; Helen’s Kentish childhood was nothing like the latest Wand Erection video (see below); and Martin the Sound Man did not do a William Hague, honest.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (get it for iDevices and Android) involves further discussion of cruises, namely why haven’t hipsters taken them up yet. Surely it’s only a matter of time, though – after all, nobody ever thought bowler hats or the A10 would ever make a comeback, and look at them both now.
As we said in the show, do share your most memorable birthday in the comments; and as always, share your QUESTIONS by leaving voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or sending emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Also go here if you want your own Answer Me This! mug. It’s so big, you could probably go for a week-long cruise in it.
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