It’s not the proper peer-reviewed scientific study of the efficacy of Power Plate for which we asked at the end of AMT219, but it certainly is a ringing endorsement from Rebecca from Loughton:
I have been using Power Plate for a few months and it definately does work with toning! You don’t just stand on it but perform exercises and specifically ones which strengthen your core so it really does make a difference. I for one have lost a stone which I hadn’t done with similar exercise alone!
The evidence is persuasive, but where’s your control experiment, Rebecca? We cannot grant our approval to Power Plate until we have seen the alterna-universe Rebeccas from Loughton, one of whom who spent the same year not doing anything different to usual, and the other doing the same exercises on a non-vibrating plate. Ask them to write in.
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right’ is the moral of today’s parable from Pete from Essex:
The other day when I came home late, I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth, but to my despair, I walked in on my brother’s slutty fuck buddy brushing her teeth…WITH MY TOOTHBRUSH!!!
Instantly I asked her what she was doing, she replied saying, “Your brother said I could use this brush.” I wasn’t best pleased but didn’t make a fuss of it; needless to say, I had to go to bed with stinky breath and waited till the morning to go and get a new toothbrush to brush my teeth.
The next day I came home at about the same time, only to discover the bitch in the bathroom once again, using the very toothbrush that I had bought the day before… I was fuming… Again I said to her, “What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” and she replied again saying, “It was a new toothbrush and your brother said I could use it…” I said “Yes! It was a new toothbrush to replace the one you used yesterday!!” For the second night in a row I had to go to bed with stinky breath. Extremely annoyed, I had to bite my tongue.
The next day, I woke up and went to the bathroom to relieve myself but I noticed my brother’s toothbrush in the corner of the room in the little pot and thought to myself, what can I do to get my own back? I thought about sticking it up my arse, but had second thoughts as it might hurt and I’m not so keen on the idea of having something up my arse.
As it was the morning, I had a raging hard on, so I whacked one out and flumped on his toothbrush. Answer me this, was I too harsh doing this? And if so, what would you do to get your own back?
I’m currently only three episodes in to series one of Revenge, so I don’t think I’ve got to the bit where Emily/Amanda lets the complex businessy schemes slide in favour of this more playground-style retaliation. I’m definitely looking forward to her pissing in Madeleine Stowe’s milkbottles, though!
Now, even if I had had the physical capacity to ejaculate upon my brother’s toothbrush, I would not have done so, for manifold reasons:
1. I am well zen, innit.
2. a) It was not your brother who was wrongly using your toothbrush, it was his ladyfriend; b) you have no proof that your brother did sanction her usage, for her statement at the point of apprehension is not reliable evidence.
3. The idea of your own sibling INGESTING YOUR SEMINAL FLUID is too awful to contemplate (even if this doesn’t happen).
While I agree this lady’s actions are presumptuous and horrifying hygienewise, I don’t think they warrant an act of vengeance – YET. I would have slapped a name label on my own toothbrush, and splashed out the £2 on buying an extra toothbrush for your brother’s sexual partner, so she had no excuse for sticking yours in her mouth.
However, I invite you readers to suggest your own courses for revenge in the comments, in case this spree of toothbrush promiscuity continues.
We’re picking up good vibrations (good, good, good, good vibrations, oooh bop bop, good vibrations) in Answer Me This! Episode 219, thanks to one of our listeners sending us a Groupon offer for Power Plate sessions.
This week we consider:
gratuitous nudity
sexy playing cards
bomb shelters Sliding Doors, alternative version
abetting child criminals
Joseph ‘Giuseppe’ Pinetti
Apple Paltrow Martin
subtitles Slendertone vs. exercise for cosmonauts
and
Ceefax.
Plus: Olly believes china shops should tolerate, nay welcome, his unapologetic vandalism; fun-hating Helen eschews murder mystery parties, entertainment at weddings, and jiggling in public; and Martin the Sound Man is still imploring you to enter his competition to be the Science Songwriter of the Future, which sounds a bit like being the artist-in-residence on the International Space Station, but is in fact much more straightforward and does not require you to urinate into a funnel. Although, the prize includes a trip to the Green Man festival, so a funnel might prove more hygienic than a Portaloo.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) recounts some incredible facts about jubilees, such as how they used to lead to famine, and how the Queen was probably wasted on hers. This seems a suitable point to mention that the Answer Me This! Jubilee is at last available to buy on Amazon. You may think it a bit late for Jubilee Fever now, but we’ve got a £50 bet on the Queen reaching her Platinum Jubilee, so consider the album 15 years ahead of its time rather than two weeks behind.
If you want more AMT next week, send us a QUESTION: emails should be sent to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and voicemails left on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
Either our next questioneer Alex from Melbourne is delightfully innocent, or he has ingested too many household substances in search of a high:
After recently hearing about the Florida zombie and sniffing bath salts turning you into a zombie, I want to know: does the term bath salts mean the actual bath salts like in my grannies’ cupboard or is it a code name for another drug like cocaine?
While I’m sure that snorting granny’s bath additives would have some deleterious effect upon your brain (as well as softening your heels and alleviating arthritis pain), your suspicion is correct that it is another substance – just as meow meow isn’t a wrapful of kitten language, and horse is not a horse. The synthetic stimulant mephedrone sometimes bears the slang name bath salts because it looks a bit like bath salts. You can tell the difference because mephedrone doesn’t smell of lavender.
I know this is all very confusing, Alex, so just try to wrap your brain around the take-home message that DRUGS ARE BAD, KIDS, and you shouldn’t put them in granny’s bathwater.
We sure do receive a lot of wedding questions here, so if you’d like to relieve us of some of the responsibility of answering them properly, take yourself to the comments and advise our next two correspondents. First, we hear from Ben from Britain:
I am a man and in the summer my female friend is getting married. At this wedding I am to be a ‘bridesmaid’.
I have already rejected the idea of carrying a bouquet, which she wasn’t that amused by.
My first question is, am I wrong to not want to be instantly labelled as ‘the gay one’? As it’s pretty obvious already, me being referred to as bridesmaid.
My second question is, she has raised the issue of suit hire and said to me ‘We will leave your fitting for last in case you want to lose weight.’ I am 6ft and have a 38 inch waist. Am I within my social right to not go at all or should I instead intensively eat nothing but chips until the suit fitting?
1. Of course you’re not wrong. Why should your sexuality and/or gender be the defining factor about you? However, when you agreed to be in the bride’s band of indentured slaves, you were effectively signing up for whatever degradation and subjugation the bride wishes. And that includes carrying flowers, wearing a dress, participating in the choreographed dance down the aisle for YouTube, assisting with the bride’s pre-show colonic irrigation…
2. Stuff a pillow down your shirt for the fitting. And, for funsies, a cucumber down your trousers.
All too often, people who are getting married think they have free rein to treat their loved ones like crap, don’t they? (Coincidentally, since my wedding day, my friends now regard me with a mixture of terror and disgust! They’re probably just jealous, right?) However, our next questioneer Laura from Australia seems to be trapped in a cycle of mutual consideration:
As a single lady, if I get invited to a wedding could I take a friend along as my ‘plus one’? Or is it poor form as I know weddings cost a lot and they probably don’t want to pay for an extra meal for my friend. Making small talk to a bunch of people I don’t know over dinner fills me with genuine anxiety and having a friend there would make things less awkward as I’m not great at that sort of thing. Your thoughts?
Well, if the couple actually stated on your invitation that you were welcome to bring a cohort, then they are acquiescing to the possibility of paying to feed someone they don’t know in exchange for your contentment (or bulking up their audience). But if they didn’t, then I don’t think you can bring along a freeloader – and if you yourself don’t know anyone at the wedding, then the person who is only going along because you’re making them is unlikely to have a particularly good time in a roomful of strangers and salmon en croute.
It’s fine to fly solo, and if you really expect that there will be no mutual friends at the event, allay your worries by asking the couple if they can seat you amongst nice people who are easy to talk to. Hopefully they will be considerate of their friends’ social requirements, but as per my point above, it’s far from a given. So maybe take a good book along, as back-up.
Following our discussion of LMFAO’s ‘Sexy and I know it’ in AMT215, Ashlyns School felt moved to share their sixth form leavers’ video with us. Enjoy their exuberance, but don’t have inappropriate feelings about a bunch of schoolchildren proclaiming their own sexiness and knowledge thereof, OK? OK.
Lucky for us, Finlay from Edinburgh but now in Tokyo speaks fluent Super Mario:
In the latest podcast you mentioned the phrase “1-up”. This is a classic example of Japanese English: basically, when the Japanese borrow words from English, sometimes the meanings change.
In this case, the Japanese word(s) for “up”, usually represented by the character 上 (down is 下, in case you were wondering), have a wider range of meanings than the English word “up”, including things like go up, increase, get up, over, on, and so on. When they borrowed the English word “up”, it was applied to a wider range of meanings, in this case particularly the one meaning “increase”. Another word that was changed is “get”; they use it when they achieve something.
Some of these phrases eventually filter back into English, so you often see 1UP and GET in videogames, and internet denizens sometimes use get in phrases like FIRST POST GET!!
And that is today’s lesson about linguistic borrowing. We’re all learning through play, we really are.
There are a lot of really weird stories in the news at the moment – cannibals, dismembered bodies, Octomom doing a porno – but fortunately this week, AMT218 is a largely horror-free zone:
Today we talk of:
marriage licences
the Pitcher and Piano
expensive clothes
actors’ motivation Fifty Shades of Grey vs. The White Hotel vs. Wuthering Heights
Mario vs. Lazarus
moist Jo Whiley
Tinky Winky, live in Luxembourg
outlet stores
death by giant snail
and
#.
Plus: Olly doesn’t want to get married in Vegas; Helen doesn’t want to have to watch embarrassing bodies on Embarrassing Bodies; but Martin the Sound Man DOES want you to enter his science songwriting competition, so click here to find out how to enter before you dash off to your zither-room to compose.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) involves Claudia from Melbourne asking whether you can text the police rather than calling them. With all the cuts to public services, unfortunately the police have had to lay off their full-time team of interpreters waiting to figure out what you mean by HLP pls sum1 tryn2 mrdr me non-LOL srsly >:-O
If you still have proper command over vowels, send us a QUESTION for next week: deliver emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and/or leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
Also, if you’re especially interested in what goes on around here, you can hear us being interviewed on the latest episode of Podcast Squared. We hope that the demystification of our Process doesn’t spoil AMT for you. If not, we’ll see you back here next Thursday.
Apropos of last week’s question about the water in Singin’ in the Rain, John writes in to tell us something which, in its own way, explains why the hosepipe ban might not pertain:
As a painter in theatre, I meet a lot of crew with many and varied stories about theatre, T.V. and rock stars. My friend Steve was a member of the crew of the touring version of Singin’ In The Rain which led directly to the West End revival; he is usually a reliable source, and tells me that one of the stars was such a massive cock that a part of the set-up in any new venue was for the amassed crew to meet in the fly tower to piss in the water tank.
The tour consisted of 64 dates of being pissed-on in the rain.
Readers, if you’re thinking of attending a watery stage show, do NOT sit near the front.
Do not get a job in the orchestra pit either; those poor guys are effectively working in a latrine.
Steve from Reading‘s eyes are bigger than his stomach:
I’m currently watching Man versus Food, an American show where a crazy man travels around the USA eating silly amounts of food or super spicy food and other such food based challenges set by restaurants.
My friends and I got to thinking, why have we never seen a challenge like “eat your entire weight in chicken wings and get on the wall of fame” over here in the UK? So answer me this: are there any such crazy eating-based challenges in the UK, and do you think you could complete them if there are?
In answer to the second question: no. Gluttonous as we are, we would be incapacitated by tears of shame well before we had cleared our plates.
As for the first question: readers, do you know of any competitive eating challenges in the UK? Go to the comments to inform us, then Steve can start on the rigorous training required for each.
There’s an ocean between us and Alexandra in Wisconsin. An ocean of yeast extract:
I’ve always been a fan of British culture, so I went to my local World Market (a speciality store that sells imported goods of all kinds) and bought the biggest jar of Marmite I could get my hands on.
I took it home, and toasted an (English) muffin in anticipation, mouth watering at the deliciousness that was to soon come my way. After all, England has given us so many wonderful things: David Bowie, to name just one.
OH MY DEAR SWEET GOD IT WAS THE WORST TASTING STUFF EVER. I tried it on bread, crackers, muffins… I tried dipping celery in it… to say this is an acquired taste is a huge understatement. How can you eat this stuff?
I’m Marmite-ambivalent, so if you need suggestions for how to eat your Marmite, I direct you to this three-course Marmite menu by Gary Rhodes (non-Brits wondering who he is: a spiky-haired celebrity chef, slightly less annoying than Guy Fieri). And here is a whole website devoted to Marmite cookery. Marmite Victoria sponge? Excuse me while I choke on my own vomit.
Also, a tip: you may be spreading it too thickly. Try a little less Marmite. If you still find it repugnant, try even less Marmite – ie zero Marmite. Problem solved.
On the subject of unfortunate postal dispatches as contemplated in AMT216, Garry from Sussex has a tale from which we learn to exercise caution when recycling stationery:
As an art student I agreed to be a nudey photo model for a fellow student. Soon after she gave me a sheet of contact prints in a large brown envelope.
Some time after that I was applying for a job – back in the days when they asked you to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to put your application form in.
I was at first a little nonplussed when I was sent an application form with a sheet of pictures of me with my knob out – how on earth did they get them? I thought.
Don’t seem to recall getting the job.
I’m surprised – I thought we were always being told to make our CVs and covering letters stand out! As it were.
vs. exercise for cosmonauts
vs. 
vs. 
Answer Me This! Podcast 