Our next correspondent asked that their name and address be redacted, so they will henceforth be known as Captain Scammington:
I have hit on a way to get anything you want for what you want to pay – yes really, and this isn’t junk mail I promise.
On, shall we say, certain well-known online retail outlets, as well as buying new tat, you can sell your old tat. On certain well-known online retail outlets you will find a few big timers, using clever software, will always undercut your price by a penny – several times a day.
So you simply decide what it is you want to buy and the price you would like to pay for it. Check to see if big timer has the item (one doesn’t want to shit on one’s peers) and then tell a tiny fib that you have one already and put it up for sale. They will then lower the price of theirs to a penny under the price you’d like to pay for it – at which point you buy it. It’s very unlikely that someone will buy the one you ‘have’ in the meantime and if they do it’s very easy task to cancel the transaction. I ‘reckon’ you could get away with this maybe a half dozen times a year.
Now answer me this: is it so terribly wrong to fraudulently offer something for sale you don’t have (big business would never do that, would it?)? Or is it sticking it to the man and to be applauded?
Readers, you sit on all points of the moral compass. Is there something noble about sticking it to Big Business with a bit of petty crime? Is one foolish not to use the mildly naughty means at your disposal to bag yourself a bargain? Or is wrongdoing just plain wrong?
Whatever you say, though, I’m sure Captain Scammington will continue their cheapskate ruse until either they cook up an even better one, or they get struck by lightening.
If you’ve ever wondered what Martin the Sound Man does in his day job of “physicist”, take a look at this video here, and try not to get as much of a shock as Krish did:
Looking at the technology section on the BBC website, I clicked on the video link called ‘data visualisation’, being a 3D visualiser myself.
I paid half attention to the video, just seeing a chap being interviewed by a journalist, and saw the name Martin come up. I recognised the voice, it was the Sound Man. I saw the hairy scarf wrapped round his neck and that confirmed it for me. It’s well known to AMT listeners Martin is a hairy man.
How often does he appear on TV? Will he knock Brian Cox off his mantle by appearing on more TV shows?
I thought he did very well. I would be glad to see more TV appearances from Martin.
Wouldn’t we all! We’re still waiting to hear back from the casting director of BBC3’s Help! Everyone Keeps Mistaking Me For a Bear, but if any of the rest of you want to employ Martin on the TV networks that you run, do get in touch. Surely Professor Cox must be feeling a bit weary of sitting on the edge of cliffs explaining about atoms by now.
Craig from Louisville, Kentucky has some feedback which sounds like bollo to me:
US Sailors’ asymmetric ear-piercing is determined by which ocean they are deployed from. Left ear Atlantic, right ear Pacific. The right ear being for gays is due to US east coast bias that gays come from California.
Of course, there’s not a single gay on the east coast. Not in New York, Fire Island, Cape Cod, no!
Mark in Portland, Oregon also writes to us concerning something which sounds like bullshit (and in this case looks a bit like it too):
Recently a conversation came up about chocolate milk and a couple of my friends told me that chocolate milk is the pus and blood-tainted milk which is then covered up with the chocolatey color and smell so we don’t know it is, well, pus and blood. I half believe them and half hope that this is either no longer the case or simply myth. Please, for the sake of children everywhere, let us know!
I’d heard that most intensively-produced milk contains a few shots of pus, but now I’ll start looking out for a delicate pinkish tinge as well. If any of you readers work in the chocolate milk industry – or, better yet, are disgruntled former employees of the chocolate milk industry with an axe to grind – go to the comments to tell Mark whether or not he’s drinking pus and blood. Frankly a glass of that doesn’t sound much worse than flavoured milk to me.
Look. We don’t want to point fingers or anything, but if you are the person who rifled through Olly’s desk and stole the gold jacket he bought at the Strictly Come Dancing costume auction, GIVE IT BACK. It may have been years ago now, but as you can hear in Answer Me This! Episode 181, the pain is still all too raw:
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)
This week we also contemplate:
stagnant white scabs
fluorotrousers Rhydian
grievous misuse of the Keith and the Girl book
black pudding
Black Eyed Peas
manuka honey
Henry Holland aquarium pimp-shoes
Fruit and Fibre
Napoleon-compatible party themes
psychiatric facility reading matter
fish sausages
Baci
bees vs. babies
ice cream vs. ice lollies
globalisation vs. jokes
Seth Rogen vs. Olly Mann
our pitch for Wonderland
and
Elliott Gould.
Also – Olly’s not going to be inviting Mark Ronson on a trip to Topman anytime soon; Helen wonders about the secret life of Russell Brand and Katy Perry; and Martin the Sound Man finds the thing that keeps our conflict-strewn crazy world together: sausages. If only the UN would hurry up and realise.
This week’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available on iPhone or Android) explains how Olly’s youthful ambition to be the next Christopher Pike was derailed by his innocence. Which is why he’s slumming it at AMT now rather than living in the gothy house that childish horror built.
You can be part of the childish horror that is next week’s episode by sending us your QUESTIONS – leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Of course we will struggle to emulate this childish horror, but it’s good to have goals in life.
Pete from Lancaster has a workplace grievance crossed with a moral dilemma:
I work with some people who are freelance and I know for a fact they don’t pay tax! They work at a telesales company and arse around a lot when they should be bringing money in. Annoying.
Please answer me this:
Should I grass them up to the taxman in this age of austerity? Or is unfair to do that?
Aww, Team AMT has its own little late-period Howard Hughes! Molly from London writes:
In episode 157, you discussed what one could with spare hair. One of the options given was to send of the a charity that used it for cleaning up oil spills. Having long, thick hair that is prone to shedding, I began to collect it in an old, clean, Nutella jar.
When people I know heard this, they tended to react negatively, and my boyfriend wouldn’t stay over in my room. However, I was righteous, and knew that I could take a little mockery if it meant that the people and animals suffering because of oil spills could be helped in a small way by me.
The jar was getting very full, and starting to become reminiscent of the exhibition I saw at Auschwitz, of all the Jewish hair the Nazis had collected for clothing, so I decided to send it off to the charity. However, when I looked it up, I found that they were no longer collecting hair!
Noooooo! But let’s not allow that lovely jar of hair go to waste. Anyone here want it? Perhaps you’ve got a small oil-spill in the kitchen that needs taking care of; or you’re in need of a witch jar.
This seems an intelligent thesis from Tom from San Francisco: A couple of episodes back, you discussed why plain nuts are more expensive than salted, dry-roasted or other flavored nuts, even though it seems like they should cost less.
I’m not in the industry, but I do have another theory in addition to the ones you offered: when making salted or seasoned nuts, it’s possible to use lower quality (and thus cheaper) nuts in the process, and the salts and flavours hide the fact that the quality is lower.
Plain nuts, by comparison, need to taste good in order to sell, and they could be using more expensive high-quality nuts for this purpose.
Are any of you readers in the nut industry? Can you confirm Tom’s theory, or reveal the darker secret of the nut pricing disparity? The world deserves to know.
To all our listeners in the Northern Hemisphere: hope you enjoyed the summer solstice! Only 185 sleeps to go until Christmas! Wooooo!
Southern Hemispherical listeners: happy mid-winter’s day! Now roll on summer! Woo woooo!
Equatorial listeners: as you were.
One thing that is the same the world over is Answer Me This! Episode 180:
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)
In it, we speak of such things as:
Gunther from Friends
seaside rock
the Wailing Wall
chocolate mousse
Claridge’s tea
mango lassi Face/Off
disappointing fudge
hypnotherapy vs. stage hypnosis
British postboxes vs. French postboxes
Lady Godiva vs. Ed Balls
and
wanking in the Ritz.
Plus: Olly is made of stronger stuff than Carrie Bradshaw; Helen was hypnotised for love; and Martin the Sound Man admits to a few awkward moments in his honeymoon. He likes to live life like an Ashton Kutcher film, he does. Accordingly, before any and every decision, Mr Kutcher thinks, “What would Martin the Sound Man Do [WWMTSMD]?” And Demi Moore sighs, and thinks that if only she’d stayed with Bruce Willis, she wouldn’t ever have to talk about sound cards over breakfast.
This week, we’re popping up on a couple of other podcasts: Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown, the new comedy quiz show from the AMT37 alumni; and Radio 4Xtra’s What’s So Funny?, wherein we talk in a not-so-funny way about podcasting.
Despite flirting with other podcasts, AMT will always be our (audio)boo, so keep the love alive by sending your QUESTIONS – leave voicemails on the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or find answermethis on Skype) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – that we may magically create next week’s episode with them.
Julia from Oxford is the biggest sexual deviant since James Spader in Crash. (And Secretary.) She writes:
I’m massively attracted to men who are good at science, which may say something for evolutionary theory as I’m rubbish at it and may be trying to secure some scientific intelligence genes for my future offspring.
I also have a bit of a thing for appendectomy scars, but that’s just a bit weird.
So answer me this: What are your biggest unconventional turn-ons?
Gather round, pervs! Go to the comments and tell us your wrongo turn-ons, and try not to get too aroused whilst doing so.
The following person has written to us under the pseudonym “Jeremy in Stoke” (to conceal the fact he is actually a lesbian blogger in the Middle East). He has a fake name, but a real problem, you see:
Despite being a happily married man and father of two small boys, the girlfriend of a friend of mine has started cracking onto me rather a lot recently. Let’s call her Emma. She flirts with me so obviously when we are out that it has become a standing joke with some of my friends (even my wife says she finds it rather funny in a sad kind of way).
The thing is that Emma’s boyfriend, my friend Mike, seems to be totally unaware of all this. He’s a lovely chap, a little bit head in the clouds and really doesn’t seem to see anything at all dodgy in the fact that whenever he’s away she asks me to come round and ‘keep her company’ on my own etc etc etc.
Answer me this:
DO I TALK TO HIM ABOUT IT?
I obviously don’t want to, because I’m a bit too English.
That’s right. You and he must never have a heart-to-heart about this, unless you want your UK citizenship to be revoked.
In fact, I’d hesitate to talk to him about it whichever nationality you are. He evidently trusts you and your upstanding Englishness completely, to see nothing but innocence in her hussyish come-ons; and so far you’ve done nothing to break that trust. Perhaps he is even aware of her vixenish ways, but has chosen not to act, rather than embarrassing you, himself and his errant ladyfriend. If you wade in, it could cause a fissure of awkwardness in your friendship and a dent to the dignity on at least one of your sides.
However, you could have a short stern word with Emma asking her to knock it off; or, better yet, your wife could stage a catfight with her in the middle of the street. After some publicly humiliating hair-pulling, tit-punching and screams of “Step off, bitch!”, her ardour might be dampened. Tell your wife to get acrylic nail extensions beforehand.
Readers, agree or disagree with me? I don’t mind which, but I do urge you to go to the comments to advise Jeremy upon apt procedure.
Given your clear interest in paperweights last episode, I highly recommend you visit the Paperweight Centre in Yelverton, Devon.
I went there with my boyfriend and we had an awesome time hearing all about the history of the humble paperweight. I even bought one which wasn’t listed in the glassmaker’s catalogue! A one off orange specimen which now resides on my desk in Holborn much at the mockery of my colleagues.
I have never actually used it to weigh down my papers as there is rarely a breeze in my climate-controlled office, however I occasionally play with it when thinking or stare into it when bored. It really is quite mesmerising. I can also confirm that it would be a good weapon in case of attack but as I don’t carry it around in my handbag, and I do not expect to get attacked at my desk, I doubt it’ll ever be used in self defence.
I have now developed a genuine interest in niche museums. The Paperweight Centre is linked with Barometer World, so I look forward to going there next.
Here is a photo of me at the joyous place in question:
Readers. Have you been to a shittermore obscure museum than that? Tell us about it in the comments, so that we – and Dina – can plan our next holidays around it. NB Martin and I visited this one on honeymoon (because nothing says romance better than a nutcracker shaped like Adolf Hitler), so do aim high.
was derailed by his innocence. Which is why he’s slumming it at AMT now rather than living in the gothy house that childish horror built.
Answer Me This! Podcast 