Here at AMT, we are suckers for a Christmas song. A Christmas song that raises money for charity? Even better. A Christmas song that raises money and was composed by one of our listeners? JACKPOT! So apply yourselves to this email from Jason Noble:
As an avid listener of your cracking podcast, I would be massively grateful if you could help me. I am an albino and registered blind. I have recently graduated from Brighton Institute of Modern Music where I completed a course in songwriting. For my dissertation, I decided to write, record and release a charity single called ‘Be Mine This Christmas’ and because of my disability, I chose to support the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Secondly, to raise money for a great cause, I wanted to write a song specifically about Christmas to reignite the nostalgic feelings from Christmas song of my childhood, instead of adding to the mundane releases from tv shows etc.
The single is released on the 18th of December and all the proceeds are going to the RNIB. It is available on iTunes, 7 Digital, HMV and Amazon.
It sure is a good cause, listeners, so dig deep! You can also support the Facebook page, and here be the song itself:
We weren’t the only people to be rather alarmed by last week‘s question from Chris about his armful of glass; Jim from Twickenham was too:
That question about NHS records and the guy with glass in his arms made me think that maybe you guys missed an important part.
I think it’s a real possibility that the questioner tried to slit his wrists and that was the real reason for the fake name and secrecy. I had a friend who actually did drunkenly cut up his arms by accident and got a real grilling from the doctors about suicide.
Good point, Jim, but fortunately your fears proved unfounded. How do I know? Because we also received the following email:
It’s Chris from episode 199. Thank you for answering my question. I will now go to my local GP and explain the situation without fear of punishment.
I thought you might like to know exactly how I smashed the glass into my arm:
Two of my friends were play fighting drunkenly and toppled over into a TV cabinet with glass doors. They smashed one of the doors.
He did not want his parents to notice the smashed door so we decided to even it out we would pull the other door off the cabinet. I volunteered to do this as I was sober and everyone else had been drinking.
I pulled the glass door off; it smashed into my arm. I then asked politely to use my friend’s bathroom as blood was spurting from my arm!
I know, I’m an idiot!
A noble idiot, Chris. Well done for trying to save your friend from parental fury (which I’m assuming didn’t work, as if there’s anything a parent notices than one missing glass cupboard door, it is two missing glass cupboard doors). Less well done on potentially incurring far greater parental fury directed towards yourself, and for causing yourself long-term physical damage; but as we all know, no good deed goes unpunished.
Happy Advent, Team AMT! Let’s open the first door of our advent calendar……..oh. It’s a bloody Robin Redbreast, like it is every bloody year. Better luck tomorrow, eh? At least there is the consolation of today’s other new surprise, Answer Me This! Episode 199:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
Plus: Olly warns against handling screwdrivers with your buttocks when attempting DIY tasks; Helen says NO to Grandpa Joe; and Martin the Sound Man plans the toast-based timelapse video that will be going viral shortly after he’s finished his breakfast.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices or Android) is a question from Katherine about how to compile the perfect mixtape with which to woo her new boyfriend. We also learn how not to woo Olly’s mum, and how many Strangelove songs it is permissible to add to one compilation (clue: either one, or none).
We are VERY VERY EXCITED about next week’s episode, because it is of course going to be AMT200! It’s a milestone we never imagined we would reach, but by crikey, here we (almost) are. It will be a rather different affair to AMT100 – the party whistles are still ringing in our ears – but it’ll definitely be a bit special. And like every single one of the episodes preceding it, it will be based upon your QUESTIONS, so send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com and leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis).
As we’ve also mentioned, another AMT landmark lurks around the corner, namely our 5th BIRTHDAY, so help us celebrate by sending something suitable to the following address:
Resist the temptation to smack the bottom of our next correspondent Nick, for you may not like the consequences:
I’m on study abroad in the Netherlands this year. I’ve met a lot of good people here, one of whom is a particularly good friend from Canada.
He and I and a couple of other friends are in Budapest for the weekend. Tonight on the way back to our hostel from a night out he kept hitting me in the arse (as he does a lot), and I told him to stop. He didn’t and I got angry at him and I jumped at him trying to hit him. He hit me in the arm a few times and I swung back at him and I hit him in the face! I didn’t realise straight away but then he started bleeding! He wasn’t happy obviously and said no one had done that to him before.
I have apologised many times, but still feel bad. He has blood on his jacket and I offered to pay for a new one, but explained that I didn’t want to make amends just by paying him off. I offered to let him hit me back but he said no, he said to just go to bed. I feel so bad though, I’ve never done that to anyone before! I was drunk and pissed off that he kept poking fun at me and smacking me, but that was still no reason to react that way.
So answer me this, how can I make it up to him? He’s a good friend and I don’t want him to remain upset at me, but I don’t know what to do. I also don’t want him and our friends thinking I’m a violent person, I would never intentionally do that to him. Please help!
Readers, go to the comments and suggest means for Nick to restore his friendship. Be sure not to make him angry.
As we said in last week’s episode, we can’t condone cheating in Quasar; but if you INSIST upon cheating, you might as well not waste your time with inferior methods. Here follows an admonition from Henry:
In the latest podcast, Olly seemed to come to the conclusion that you could cheat at Quasar using a laser pointer. This is WRONG. Growing up as a nerdy kid in the early 90s, I can tell you that the lasers in lasertag games (yes, there is a blanket term and this is it) are JUST FOR SHOW.
The packs actually communicate on the infra-red (like VCR remote controls), meaning that you could cheat and give yourself an extra gun by smuggling in one of those universal remotes and programming it by shooting your gun at it while it’s in learning mode. Later, when such remotes were collapsed down into handy watch form by Casio, these could be deployed to similar, but more surreptitious effect.
Other popular (but lower-tech) cheats popular in the Coventry Laser Quest revolved around blocking up the sensors on your pack, either with black tape, chewing gum or a baggy hoodie (this being Coventry).
If, however, you do prefer to maintain your honour during laser games, Mark from Essex has some above-board tactics for you:
I am part of a group of friends that goes to Quasar every week (indeed, because we are that cool). Please pass along these tips to the questioneer if he wants to improve his game:
– Create a formation. Always have at people defending the base, people regularly storming the opposing team’s base and midfielders. The ratio should be about 3:2:1. Try to get almost everyone in a strategic place where they will not have to move much. You lose lots of points running around.
– Do not attack the opponent’s base while it is guarded. In most versions of Quasar, if you get shot 10 times or more while attacking a base, you have lost points. For this reason, never send more than 2 people in – if you send 5 people in and they each get shot twice, you have lost points.
– For the same reason, you should have lots of people defending – when the opponent storms the base, shoot them as many times as possible.
– Ensure your teammates do not stand too close together – the guns are infrared, not laser, and if two team members are standing next to each other, they will probably be shooting each other more than the opponent.
– Have an emergency signal for summoning team members for assistance. We use whistles.
So: stand very still, keep distant from your friends, and play a defensive game. Got it. But…it doesn’t actually sound FUN.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding. For all I know, Quasar might not in fact purport to be fun.
I’ve never been a teenage boy, but if you have, or possess especial insight into the condition, please apply yourself to the following two questions and offer sage advice in the comments.
The first is from A Horny Teenager, which, let’s face it, could be any of them:
Being a 15 year old boy, my hormones are raging and I have a lust for certain things e.g. Sex.
I have a girlfriend, we have been together for 4 years, however nothing sexual has ever happened. I would like to do something however I do not know how to bring it up with ruining our friendship. Answer me this: how can I instigate sex?
Readers, while you tackle his delicate question, I’m just going to sit here and reel at the fact that a 15-year-old has already been in a relationship for FOUR YEARS. Kid, are you living your life backwards? Sexless long-term relationship now, knee-tremblers behind the bike sheds with a new girlfriend every fortnight when you’re in your eighties?
Although his situation is unusual, Horny Teenager’s problem is not uncommon, unlike the one now presented to us by Rikki from Dunfermline:
My friend Alan has brittle bone disease and is wondering when is the right time to tell a girl about this if by a very small chance he ever gets a date?
Probably at a similar time to when he’d tell anyone else about it, and definitely before she suggests a date to Go Ape/swing dance/Fight Club.
He needn’t be too shy about it, though, as classic literature reliably informs us that the ladies can’t resist a gentleman with an unusual and incurable condition.
So you’re out playing a nice game of Fetch with your pet dog. Everything’s going brilliantly – your throwing arm is strong, its aim is true; the dog is showing unprecedented levels of agility and enthusiasm – until suddenly you realise that on your way out of the house, you accidentally picked up a Chocolate Orange instead of a tennis ball. (This is an all too common mistake in the run-up to Christmas.)
Knowing that chocolate is poisonous to dogs, you rush over to the hound, but it’s too late – the Chocolate Orange has already been bolted down and is heading rapidly for the canine colon. The dog swoons into a pile of rotting leaves, life already ebbing from its furry face. You crumple over its prone body, caterwauling to the God you don’t believe in, begging him/her/it to save your beloved pet.
God, of course, doesn’t answer, but fortunately AMTfan Alan does:
Yes, chocolate is poisonous for dogs but did you know by giving them a slice of bread, it counteracts it?
I did not know! Thankyou, Alan, for potentially saving the lives of dogs everywhere. I’ll never again embark upon Walkies without ensuring there’s a bap in my pocket, just in case.
Following our ‘Flapjack=cake/biscuit?’ and ‘Pasty=pie/not pie?’ discussions of recent weeks, apparently food classification questions are a popular genre now! Beats me, but I do not wish to be disobliging so here’s another from Alistair in Germany:
My gorgeous girlfriend bought me a rare treat in Germany, a packet of crumpets. This raised a ‘cake or biscuit?’ question!!!
Answer me this, is a crumpet a cake, a biscuit, or even… a bread?
It’s OBVIOUSLY NOT a biscuit. What a ludicrous suggestion.
But although I’d count it as a bready product – insofar as it’s available in the supermarket bread aisle, I’d store it in the breadbin, top it with bread-compatible spreads, and consume it at breadtime – its batter-based composition precludes it from counting as bread. Therefore, if you insist upon being official about it, we should file crumpets in the ‘pancake’ category.
Now that this matter is settled, I hope you and your girlfriend find better avenues of conversation than this, else I fear for your future.
Brush your teeth extra-assiduously before bed tonight, because Answer Me This! Episode 198 is super-chocolatey. We learn about literal death by chocolate (not carob, as if!), wonder at the untold stories of Oh Henry! bars, and invoke the name of chocolate behemoth Helge Rubinstein, again. Hear here:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
Amongst the subjects tumbling out of our mouths this week are:
Plus: Olly wants to take down Annie Lennox, gently; Helen declines ‘pie’ (in the linguistic sense, rather than in the sense of turning down pie); and Martin the Sound Man teaches us an important lesson about diversity in evolution. We also recommend you check out the illustration which accompanies the final question in the episode, which can be found HERE.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App recounts where Olly had the Time of His Liiiiife – at his bar mitzvah in 1994. Have the time of your lives by firing up your iDevices or Android to get it.
We implore you to send your QUESTIONS to us, by leaving voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis) and emailing answermethispodcast@googlemail.com; but we also yearn for your hard-copy, old-fashioned postal correspondence to celebrate our forthcoming 5th BIRTHDAY! So please do send us something celebratory, to the following address:
Answer Me This!
PO Box 53587
London
SE19 9BQ
We really will be beside ourselves with joy to receive something from you, with which to festoon AMT Towers for our birthday extravaganza.
It sounds like Cassidy here has a severe case of malaise:
I am a second-semester junior at a small liberal arts college in the US. I’ve always gotten (very) good grades, but I’ve been gradually realizing that they really don’t mean shit to me, I’m not interested in my chosen course of study, and have no desire to be here.
It has gotten incredibly easy to convince myself to sleep in rather than go to class, make myself a snack instead of go to class, or to read or play computer games or anything else rather than go to class. This is affecting my grades, and I do not care.
How awful would it be to just drop out/take a year off then transfer someplace not nearly as expensive to finish up a bachelor’s degree? I had a fairly shitty part-time job over the past summer, and doing simple work there was far, far more satisfying than readings and classes and writing papers, despite being tedious and probably doable by a reasonably talented six-year-old.
I’m worried it’ll be very difficult to get a job, however, without being an actual college graduate, even though I really wouldn’t be too picky about the work. And no, I don’t think I’d have the same issue going to work as I do with going to class- I have a job here and have never had trouble going, and I never had trouble going to my job back home. Knowing that my presence and effort is actually needed for things to work out there is very different from just being one person in a class.
Answwer me this: what should I do?!?!
Readers, please go to the comments and give Cassidy some of that copper-bottomed A-grade advice you’re so good at.
Meanwhile, Cassidy, here’s my ha’ppeny worth: while at the moment you think you find shitty work satisfying, in 20 years’ time it will have broken you. Whatever you decide to do, keep your future options as open as possible; and if you can’t transfer courses or colleges, the best option may be to grit your teeth and sticking with the current situation for another couple of years. Unappealing as this might seem presently, once you’re on the other side it will seem trifling.
Real-life example: our very own Martin the Sound Man. Halfway through his doctorate in quantum physics (yes, he has one; we like our sound men to be ridiculously over-qualified), he was ready to chuck in the whole thing. But for want of more pleasant options, he shouldered on for another two years, and lo, he was crowned Doctor Martin Austwick, so all the pain was worth it in the end.
Then he went and temped in a call centre for a year, but that’s another story.
Irish dancing has a defender, in the form of its newest fan Lesley from Forest Hill:
I just started taking Irish Dancing lessons. In my long 4 weeks’ experience, I can confidently say that there are no arm movements because the foot part is so complicated, your brain would explode if they tried to add anything more.
Incidentally, Irish Dancing is amazing fun. I’m completely allergic to all forms of exercise, but this class makes me actually willing to be all sweaty!
It’s true; whenever I’ve been to ceilidhs, they’ve been far funner than aerobics classes, and about 20 times more taxing. Seriously, I was worried that my friend Tom’s heart was going to burst in the middle of a 60th birthday ceilidh. Yet oddly, all the octogenarians present were hopping around as unflushed as daisies. What’s their secret?
Chris from Cardiff, Australia has also written in to stick up for the underdog:
I just thought I’d say that Canberra is actually quite a nice place to go to – as long as you have an interest in politics or museums. There are tons of great museums and exhibition buildings. As a person whose childhood holidays were either (a) camping in the rain, or (b) museum-hopping, Canberra is an veritable haven of enjoyment.
Canberra hosts “Questacon” (an amazing interactive science museum), the High Court (where you can sit in on hearings), parliament house (‘where your federal MP will be happy to give you a tour’), the mint, the Australia Museum, the War Memorial (which has some amazing exhibitions), the Federal Police Museum, and a heap of other interesting and cool things.
If, however, your idea of a good holiday is sitting on the beach or getting blotto, then Canberra is not the place for you.
I shun beaches and blottificaiton, so maybe Canberra IS the holiday for me! I’m booking my tickets pronto.
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