The Russian Doll (4221)

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4221 of the bugle with me Andy Zoltzman audio newscasting as ever from the shed on this the 21st of February 2022.

I have reinforced the shed to withstand up to 140,000 Russian troops trying to break in at once.

I've done that by cleverly surrounding it with, well, 2,500 kilometers of land and a bit of sea.

So it should be good to get through this week's recording, for which I'm joined from not one, but two sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

And quite a bit of land after that as well, in one of their cases.

Bye from San Francisco, NATO Green, and from Dublin, Neil Delamere.

Welcome back, both of you.

How are you?

Very good, Andy.

How are you?

I'm all right, yeah.

Well, yeah, apart from the world teetering on the precipice of oblivion, but you know, other than that, yeah.

Oh, I'm just here having a cup of tea, enjoying my country's lack of proximity to Russia.

You can, I mean, you can criticise a lot about Ireland, you know, the weather and

certain inequality, but I mean, there's stuff you can't take away from us.

2,000 miles to Moscow.

Yep, that's

kind of useful at the moment.

Yeah, I've used to think that about the the Vikings when they made it, and we,

I don't know if you know this, it's a three-day weekend in America.

Um, and so uh, we ship the kids off to L.A.

to visit friends, and my wife and I are enjoying our child-free time the way that many married couples do, which is by having a long, uninterrupted romantic talk about the children.

So, you

ship them off.

That's, I mean, what's the,

what are the shipping lines like these days?

Yeah,

there's actually supply chain issues.

Their flight back is delayed.

So we're.

So, but my, you know, it's interesting.

My kids are, the twins are 13, which means that they're brilliant in many ways, but then have like huge gaps in basic life knowledge.

And one of my favorite things about being a parent.

uh of this age is when they confidently assert that something is not a thing that is definitely a thing.

So the list of

things that my kids do not believe are things are Kristen Dunst, Bruce Springsteen, Christmas pajamas, and free juice on the airplane.

It's a wide gamut.

Yeah, that really is.

I mean,

is there actually any

incontroversible proof that Dunst does genuinely exist or not?

I mean,

I think you're thinking of a film that she was in where other people had no reflections.

Oh, right.

Oh, must be that.

Must be that.

But I mean, you can do anything with cameras these days.

You can.

It's all a green screen, isn't it?

I mean, that would be one of the weirder conspiracy theories.

There's no such thing as Christian.

But Dunst is a forgery.

But, you know, who knows?

That could be just the tip of the iceberg.

I mean, next they'll be telling us that Julia Roberts doesn't exist when there are no certainties anymore.

Yeah, no, it it turns out Kristen Dunst is just Andy Serkis in a rubber suit.

You heard it here first.

That's what podcasters are for, spreading conspiracy theories where others fear to tread.

We are recording on the 21st of February, 2022, meaning tomorrow.

on the correct way of formatting dates is 2202 2022 a palindromic date using the eight digit day-month-year day month

format as God intended.

Now, there are just 29 of these palindromic dates to enjoy this century.

And of course, there will be a special bugle on the 29th of February 2092 to mark the last of these with special guests, Simon J.

Nomis and Annabelle Labana, assuming they exist at the time.

And we look back now at some of the great palindromic dates from history.

On this equivalent day, uh, on the 22nd of February, uh, 2022, BC,

um, well, it was an all-action day, a guy in what is now Germany killed an elk.

On the 11th of January, in the year 1011, six-time Viking pillager of the year, Schnjarl Schulsson, did some palindromic pillaging to mark the occasion.

He ransacked a monastery, a convent, a fishing village, another convent, and a second monastery in just six hours of action-packed Viking.

He absolutely viked the hell out of it that day, to be fair to the lad.

On the 11th of November 1111, everyone just went absolutely nuts.

Because that's the only time that a date had the same digit eight times in a row and will remain so until 1111 years, 11 months and 11 days after the real Messiah is born.

Or, of course, unless part of the peace deal in Ukraine involves splitting months in half, so we have 24 in a year.

um and uh helping february make up for all the years it's been the shortest month by letting it have 22 days whilst all the other months have have fewer i mean that's that's a long shot, but it's not impossible.

On the 20th of February, 2002, Andy Hansen, who'd played baseball for the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1940s and 50s, died at the palindromic age of 77.

And would you believe also had a palindromic height of one meter, 91 centimeters?

So I imagine, as, you know, final thoughts go, that would have been quite a satisfying one.

And it's what's now eight years now until the next palindromic date, the 3rd of February 2030.

So do make the most of it.

On a non-eight-digit palindromic day, the first of the first one,

baby Jesus did a sick, but it was magic and cured a sickly pigeon.

But it doesn't qualify as an eight-digit palindromic date.

Andy, how much time did you spend working out?

all the palindromic dates well i started at the first palindromic dates

yes i started at 13 billion bc and worked uh worked from there uh well no it turns out uh conveniently enough thanks to the wonders of the internet, there's a website that lists them.

You seem so obsessed with palindromes that if one member of ABBA dies, you'll murder the other three.

Well, look, I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one.

It would be their Waterloo.

As always, a section of the Bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week, micro pets.

With living space at an increasing premium and an increasing number of people deciding to economize because of the various impending Armageddon that seem to be trundling our way, traditional pets have become simply too big.

Age-old favourites like dogs, cats, salamanders, camels, and even ferrets have become too expensive, space-consuming, and sometimes too poisonous or demanding for today's time, space, and wedgeport animal fans.

So, our special bugle section in the bin this week focuses on the options for micro pets, tiny animals that fulfill the same function, but at a fraction of the cost, time and space.

After all, we're we're perfectly happy to have a house plant in the living room rather than the giant redwood.

So why not downsize animals as well as plants?

We look at the pros and cons of owning a termite.

Pro, for example, you don't have to follow it around with a plastic bag in case it craps on the pavement.

Con, it might eat your cricket bat.

Pro, your termite won't annoy the neighbours like other pets can by barking, neighing or roaring in the middle of the night.

Con, termites have a tendency to become emotionally detached.

Pro, you can take your termite for a walk in the park without getting mobbed by other termite owners, desperate for some human conversation.

And con,

it can be difficult to find a specialist veterinarian who can perform operations on termites.

So I hope we've helped you make your mind up on that.

Krill, of course, one of the great aquatic micro pets and they love being pets, krill.

I mean, they're used to being lumped together in a blob of characterless biomass for the delectation of hungry whales.

But your krill at just one or two centimeters in length will not only fit in a standard pint glass without complaining, but will prove as loyal and grateful as any Labrador at being treated as an individual for once in its species life.

Also, krill are impressively portable.

You can take your emotional support krill with you wherever you go in a simple screw-top portable nano-ocean pod complete with magnetic tide simulator for just £999.

One quick tip for krill owners, avoid using the phrase, I'm having an absolute whale of a time.

And we also look at some of the books for micro pet owners, including How to Deal with Antsy Ants and Worried Worms, Mood Enhancing Tips for a Happy Micro Pet, How Not to Lose Your Plankton on a Day Out at the Seaside, and of course, the top-selling book in the micro micro-pet market, The Family-Friendly Crustacean by P.G.

Woodlouse.

That's awesome.

What would you call your krill if you had a pet?

I mean, I'd call it George Foreman.

Well, no, it seems that it would be silly not to call, not to call it that.

I'm so happy with that.

My question is,

why did you leave out the major argument in favor of micro pets is that unlike dogs they won't make social situations weird by trying to sniff people's balls

you've never had a krill you've never seen a krill sniff someone's balls have you

somebody hasn't watched enough of spongebob square pants

that's an episode that never

yeah you've got to be up very late at night to see that one

anyway that section in the bid

top story this week uh ukraine updates and once again uh the invasion has not yet happened uh as we record russia has still not

invaded it's uh continuing to exist uh it's continuing to insist it's not planning an invasion uh russia and to update last week's exclusive on the bugle about 140 000 russian troops coincidentally choosing to holiday in the very very western russian russia region further reports are now reaching us directly from the Russian Army's military personnel, brackets hobbies commander, Gramek Snichkov, that the Russian military is, quote, seriously struggling with the logistics of an influx of 25,000 more heavily armed troops who've descended on the Ukrainian border region after online reports of a sighting of a rare Carpathian purple-crested chaffinch out of its usual habitat.

How are things in America at the moment with regard to the

potential of a extremely awkward war?

Yeah,

it's very tense.

There's a lot of anxiety.

The U.S.

has threatened severe diplomatic retaliation against Russia.

Like if they invade the Ukraine, the U.S.

might not let them keep hacking our election system

and using Donald Trump as a Russian psyop to destabilize the West.

So we might put an end to that.

I think Russia is right to invade the Ukraine.

Russia is worried about NATO's eastward expansion, and frankly, I am too.

I don't know if you've seen my figure lately, but it's not good.

The conflict has been simmering for some time, and we all know what comes of simmering: gumbo.

And

I can't slim down on all this gumbo.

The solution is right there in the Washington Post: more military exercises.

We would call that gumbo diplomacy.

Nice.

So

Ukraine's president is Vlodymir Zelensky, who was a comedian before becoming president, which is bad for all comedians

because we are not well equipped to navigate sensitive diplomatic controversies.

As a comedian, his instinctive response to Putin is to say, Leave me alone, I'm working here.

I don't go to where you work at the Kremlin and knock Lenin's medically preserved dick out of your mouth.

Is this thing on?

Tip your bar staff and tank brigades.

I'll leave you with this.

Putin said that the Ukrainians and Russians are one people.

And it turns out that the Ukrainians are not on the same page about that, which is

why Russia must forcibly merge them into one people, the way that all one people have been created violently.

So the whole thing feels very retro to me, like very like 19th century great powers geopolitical posturing.

And

it's very modern.

Like people are into oldie-timey stuff.

You know, everybody likes small batch cocktails and like handmade things.

And COVID brought back the Spanish flu of the World War I era.

So somebody has to be Archduke Ferdinand for this.

And then we're in business.

Any volunteers, buglists, do email us in.

I do like the way NATO mentioned Trump and that whole, I always thought it was hilarious that Trump said, you know, there's nothing Russian about me, no connection to Russia.

And you think, Donald Trump had a son called Donald Trump Jr.

And he he has a son called Donald Trump III.

So inside the biggest Donald Trump

was a smaller Donald Trump, and inside him was a smaller Donald Trump.

That's the most Russian thing that is possible.

Putin is clearly waiting for an excuse to invade as well.

He keeps saying different things every day.

He's like, what happened in Don Bass's genocide?

Let's invade.

There's no evidence of that.

And then he said, well, look at those two shells landing in Donetsk.

Let's invade.

That's completely made up.

He's like, well, I had an undercooked chicken Kiev Kiev once.

Let's invade.

Sergey Bubka cut me off in traffic.

Let's invade.

It's just

the leaders in the West are now looking at the logic of this entire enterprise.

And it's hard to understand the sanity of anyone.

who looks at a country whose most famous sons are the Klitsko brothers and goes, yeah, I reckon we could take those lads.

Yeah, I reckon we could.

If you're not familiar with the Klitschkos, imagine someone has put an Easter Island statue on a sequoia tree.

and that's what you get with those two lads they're the hardiest looking lads in the history of the world and people think oh you know we we can take

i would just send one of them out just one of them out and that'd be it but the motivation seems to be to to get ukraine not to join nato right

so i'm i'm surprised that boris johnson just didn't say to zielinski just sign an agreement to to to join um to never join NATO.

And then Zielinski would go, but, you know, then we're locked out forever.

And then Boris would go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

See, it's an international treaty that you negotiate it yourself.

So like you can break that at any time in a very specific and limited way.

I mean, it's cool.

We do it all the time.

I mean, this is the great thing about having a leader like Johnson at this difficult time.

And we've had various UK government ministers accusing.

Vladimir Putin of not being honest and truthful and claiming that supposed Russian de-escalation was disinformation or probably a straightforward lie.

And I think we're all learning the value of having government ministers whose skills in detecting bullshit in a leader have been so thoroughly honed over such a long period of time.

So I think the world is benefiting from the fact that Boris Johnson has been setting this example for everyone to follow.

Also,

the UK Armed Forces Minister James Heapey uh said an extraordinary thing a few days ago.

He said that Europe is quote closer to war than at any point in 70 years which did seem to be slightly relabeling the 10-year violent breakup of the former yugoslavia as just a bit of fisticuffs after closing time and the war in ukraine that began eight years ago as military foreplay uh which might be uh might be more appropriate there's also been a lot of talk about false flag uh attacks a false flag is um amongst many things a technically very tricky but potentially match clinching maneuver in golf uh memorably pulled off by percival snoutridge in the 1937 Empire match play at the Royal Clotterston Club in his victory over the great Henry Cotton, when his false flag resulted in a three-time open champion hammering a perfectly weighted 180-yard approach shot into the local churchyard, disrupting the funeral of a much-loved granny.

You know, if there is an invasion and the gas prices rocket even further, you'd have to think that the other major gas producing nations of the world will have serious leverage over the rest of us.

I would imagine Qatar must be thinking, oh, we're having our World Cup all right.

And we're having it our way as well.

It's not in November, it's in July.

The matches will be at noon.

It'll be 90 minutes straight through.

And all the opposition players have to be ginger.

It's coming home.

It's coming home.

One curious aspect about the Russian build-up has been photos emerging of Russian tanks with big letter Zs painted on them, and some confusion over exactly what those Zs are.

Now, I mean, one possible explanation is that the Russian military have taken it upon themselves to publicize my forthcoming stand-up tour beginning this Friday, the 25th of February in Leamington Spa, then on to Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Barnard Castle, and Salford the following week, followed by more dates through to the end of March and an eight-night run at Soho Theatre in May details at andysolson.co.uk.

But that's not the kind of publicity I want.

That is not the kind of franchise I am.

I'm very much not a fan of the Russian military, especially when it's massing the crap out of itself on the border of a neighboring country.

Another possibility is that it marks vehicles where soldiers are having a pre-invasion snooze, so that the other tanks know not to play music too loudly.

What is weird about this is that Zed isn't a character in the Cyrillic alphabet.

So they're putting a character from a different alphabet onto stuff, which is, I mean, right up there with Ama Tatu is a Chinese symbol for serenity.

You know,

it's not.

It says fuck knuckle.

You're an idiot.

So one theory is that it's for Zelensky, isn't it?

That he's kind of public enemy number one amongst some of these, the

troops who are going to be invading.

One hell of a heckle for a comedian to feel, isn't it?

Well, when the Scots finally invade England, they're going to be driving south with BJ written on the side of the lorries, which is going to make for some very interesting adventures on the lay boys of the M1 as they drive down

uh isn't zed the name of bobcat goldwait's character in the police academy movies

so

deep cut everybody but uh

police state academy yeah um there's a talk that um

French President Emmanuel Macron has been trying to hammer out a deal with Putin to lead to a summit with Joe Biden.

It's been reported differently in different British newspapers, depending on their attitude towards the continent.

See if you can guess which of the following headlines is from the Guardian and which from the Telegraph.

Macron paves way for potential Biden-Putin summit or Putin embarrasses Macron again.

You win

£5,000 if you can get that right.

Oh, but you have to pay it directly to yourself in cash.

It has been reported that Putin has agreed in principle to summiting the shit out of all this shit with Biden, followed by more more chin wagging with the other leaders.

Macron has said they will work with all stakeholders to prepare the content of these discussions.

Now, that's a strange term.

I mean, I'm a stakeholder in this because I have a stake in the sense that I'm on balance opposed to World War III.

I don't know if I get an invite and a

say in this.

I mean,

how do you see the French involved?

It seems to be kind of competitive.

Who is having the most progress going on between various countries?

Stakeholders could be a criticism of the current preparedness of the Ukrainian army.

If it weren't for Henry V at Agincorps,

all of us about Agincor, isn't it?

It all of us comes back to that.

Who had 20 minutes in?

Who had 20 minutes?

20 minutes first Agincorps.

No, I've got Donald Bradbury on 25.

Bradman, you mean Bradman?

I don't know anything about cricket.

I reached too far and I failed.

I should have said Graham Gooch or someone.

Chris, are you raising your hand?

Yeah, sorry.

And I just thought, like, there was breaking news about five minutes ago,

which might be relevant to the end for that.

Just basically saying Putin has now, or Russia now recognises the independence of the breakaway areas of Ukraine controlled by Russian separatists.

And he has apparently told the French and German leaders at one in one of their...

summits that so i don't know if that is irrelevant in or not but chris what i mean the question i have is how come you were the first with this news?

I mean, how are you getting direct news from Vladimir Putin?

And, you know, I mean, we've seen the Russian influence in

elections, as was mentioned earlier on.

And now it appears that they've got a direct line to the producer of the bugle.

I mean, I think there's many buglers who have been part of the show for many years who would assume nothing less.

And I am actually my background is blurred because I am currently in Kiev.

This means that there's a that Putin has also has a Chris Skinner P-tape.

I mean, I sold it to him.

I mean, we all have one in the horse.

I got it in a goodie bag.

Well, if Putin is recognising the independence of breakaway areas of Ukraine, I'm going to recognize the independence of the rest of Russia as parts of the United Kingdom, as all countries used to be.

So, you know, two can play that game, Vladimir.

If you want to come on the show and discuss it, just drop Chris an email.

or is he on your whatsapp group

yeah

what's the name what's the name of the whatsapp group top invasion bants hooting the booting

um in terms of uh america's approach to this at nato um america has defended its decision to not impose sanctions despite uh ukrainian president zielinski calling for the sanctions to be applied now and secretary of state anthony blinken on cnn said said, the purpose of the sanctions in the first instance is to try to deter Russia from going to war.

As soon as you trigger them, that deterrence is gone.

So essentially what he's saying is you have to wait until they go to war.

Otherwise, you won't be able to deter them from going to war.

When is this all America has now?

I mean, it's...

No, I mean,

America, I mean,

this is why it's promising that there's a a summit on offing, is that America's diplomatic secret weapon is Joe Biden getting on the phone with Putin and just saying, come on, man,

until peace breaks out.

That's basically how Joe Biden does stuff.

Operation Malarkey.

Yeah.

Like, there'll be, Joe Biden will launch into some sort of like rambling, incoherent, like folksy tale about growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Biden and Putin will agree to peace just to get off the phone.

Because essentially what Blink was saying was that the threat of sanctions is the deterrent rather than the sanctions themselves, which he clearly knows, he knows what's in the sanctions and that they're f all use.

So as long as we've only threatened them, Russia might think they're actually quite serious.

But the problem is now he said it out loud.

Russia knows that.

you know, the emperor has no underpants on, as the old tale goes.

John Kirby, the Pentagon Press Secretary, said on Fox News: if you punish someone for something they haven't done yet, then they might as well just go ahead and do it as another reason for why America is not.

I mean, I've been advocating this in criminal justice for some time: pre-served sentences where you can put yourself in 15 years in jail, and then you can come out and essentially treat yourself.

It seems to be which came first, the chlorinated chicken or the Fabergé egg?

It's like that experience.

Andy, I'm sure as a parent, Neil, do you have kids?

No.

As a parent, this is like the experience of disciplining young children using counting.

Did you do this where you would start, you're like, you're going to get a timeout if I count to five and then you never get to five.

You just slow down the counting so that you never actually reach five.

That is pretty much the central plank of my parenting strategy.

I mean, I was disciplined using that.

My father would say, I'm going to count to five.

And he'd hit me me on two and then shout, never trust anyone.

That's how you make a comedian.

San Francisco school news now.

And well, NATO, obviously the.

The logical segue from the Ukraine-Russia situation is to schools in San Francisco.

Just bring us up to date with what has been going, because San Francisco residents have recalled three members of the city school board.

It's the first recall vote in the city since 1983.

Now, 1983, you don't need me to tell you, NATO, was the India first won the Cricket World Cup.

But why did that coincide with San Francisco stopping having these recall votes?

Well, so the last

recall vote was an attempted recall vote of then Mayor Diane Feinstein, now

senator facing

in her 90s, who's also sundowning

actively

while on the Foreign Relations Committee.

So,

and that recall failed.

And so San Francisco learned its lesson and set it aside until now.

And, you know, one of my least favorite things about elections, Andy, is that after every election,

people talk about what they mean.

And immediately everyone rushes to declare that the results of the election provide conclusive proof in support of whatever they already thought anyway.

So, whenever there's an election, if you're on the left, the election results confirm that politicians should move further to the left.

If you're in the center, you should stick to the center only more so, as if that were possible.

And if you're on the right, the results confirm that voters want to blow up the world.

It's like here in San Francisco, our local basketball team is the Warriors.

And it'd be like if after every single game that the Warriors won or lost, Andy Zaltzmann was paid $50,000 to write an essay about how cricket is superior to basketball.

And then everyone dropped everything for months to debate the point, forgetting that they had already done that the week before.

And then they'd send like correspondents out to diners to interview Warriors fans about their inexplicable antipathy towards cricket and wonder at length whether Steph Curry is out of touch with the soul of America by not playing cricket.

That's what our political coverage is like.

And so we voted to recall three members of the school board, all people of color, in a special election, and it's been blown into a predictably stupid canary in the coal mine national narrative.

Mike Pence tweeted about it: that the woke left has spent years trying to agitate for a culture war and they're going to lose it.

Ted Cruz tweeted that the leftists who shut down schools for a year now claim anyone who wants schools open is a white supremacist.

Ted, it wasn't leftists who shut down schools, it was COVID.

But if you're Ted Cruz, COVID is a socialist plague.

So

many, many recall supporters were well-meaning parents who have valid criticisms of the school district, and they identify as liberals who care about science and immigrant rights and racial equity.

And they just happen to hate the three people of color on the school board so much that they're willing to go on news networks to the right of Fox to promote it rather than waiting for the next scheduled election, which is later this year.

Perfectly normal, rational behavior.

The big issue that they are upset about is that the schools were closed for longer than they thought they should have been during COVID.

And so they wanted to recall the school board for not reopening schools sooner, except that schools are open now and have been since August.

And so it's a little bit weird to like recall people in February instead of voting them out in November for not reopening schools last February instead of August.

If you're mad at government for doing something more slowly than you think they should, you are in for a lot of heartache.

Um,

I don't know if you have, do you have school boards in the UK?

It's like it's a very weird system where we elect a group of volunteers as the governing board of local school districts.

These are volunteers who spend five hours a week on hearings, they have no staff, they are the embodiment of phoning it in.

They make high-level policy, but the bureaucrats mostly run things.

Like, my dad worked for the San Francisco School District for 35 years, and I asked him if the school board ever did anything that affected him in any way, and he burst out laughing.

So,

yes, in America, any idiot can be and has been president,

but at least he gets a salary in a house.

So, there's some incentive to keep his shit together.

It speaks to how little we think of children as a society.

They were willing to put billions of dollars in educational oversight to train children to be functioning cogs in the capitalist machine to a bunch of volunteers who are free to look at porn on their phones while voting on what math curriculum to teach.

And they're going like, yeah, I want to go up the asymptote.

So

the recall in San Francisco was motivated by middle-class white and Chinese parents.

And

one of the issues was that the high school that's considered San Francisco's most elite public high school, the student body is almost all white and Chinese.

And the school board voted to change the admissions policy to make it easier for Black and Latino students to attend.

And letting Black and Latino students attend a good school was a dangerous precedent that had to be stopped.

So, one of the school board members who was recalled is a Black mom named Allison Collins.

And before she was in politics, she tweeted in 2016 about her own experience with anti-Black racism in the Asian community.

And she was

subsequently denounced as being anti-Chinese.

And the Chinese community of San Francisco was so offended by her comments about anti-Blackness in the Chinese community that they called her the N-word a million times.

So the conservatives are crowing about how, like, even in liberal liberal San Francisco, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

San Francisco has moved to the right.

In San Francisco, today, you can go out on the street and you can see a homeless guy shooting heroin into his dick while shitting on a pit bull, holding a leash made of barbed wire, and he's still wearing a mask.

You, this weekend was the Chinese Lunar New Year parade, and I went to watch, and there was a counter protester with a bullhorn shouting about repenting your sins and accepting Jesus.

And he was wearing an immigrants or welcome here t-shirt.

So, So,

last thing, the recall campaign had about 35% turnout, and the school board members were recalled with over 70% of the vote.

By contrast, the November 2020 election had 86% of the turnout.

This means that they were like first elected with 112,000 votes and recalled with 94,000 votes, but they're calling it a mandate.

And to paraphrase Gil Scott Heron, the first thing I want to say is mandate my ass.

Like, yes, technically, you could say that me and Kevin Hart have both, quote, sold out tour dates, but his shows were in a stadium and mine were in a legal theater in a basement someone lived in with a guy in a bathrobe walking through the gig during my expertly crafted jokes.

So, no, the recall is not a sign that San Francisco has moved to the right, but is a good reminder that white liberals will play FTSE with fascists if you inconvenience them in any way at all.

And FTSE with fascists is obviously the band that Andy was in in college.

Tootsie with Fascists was a terrific Dustin Hoffman film.

Tootsie with Fascists is a financial recommendation if you're going to invest in the stock market.

I love that.

Looking at this from the outside and just reading the odd newspaper article, it seemed NATO that the right-wing press went absolutely crazy over this and going, liberals are losing their job in the most liberal city in America.

Oh my God, this is like the time that fellow from Hamas won RuPaul's drag race.

And it was just like, it was just like, it's a little bit more complicated than that, even reading the odd article from outside.

What I would say, as the only non-parent on this, on this particular podcast, is that you people lost your mind when the schools closed.

Anybody who's involved in homeschooling, I met my brother, right?

And he was just like, They're going to open the schools.

They're going to open the schools.

I was like, Rory, it's Christmas Day.

I don't care.

They're going to open the schools.

I mean, we're all going to get Omicron anyway.

Like, if you meet someone with Omicron, you'll get Omicron.

If someone rings you and they have Omicron, Omicron comes down the line.

If you're watching the French president and you go, oh, Micron, you get Omicron.

I'm telling you, we're all going to get it.

And he's like, I kept, and then I bumped into him the next day.

He's like, I'm sending the kids to school.

I don't care.

If I have to glue a snorkel to my nine-year-old's face and have him drinking death all out of a hip flask like an antiseptic Oliver Reed, he's going to do it.

You people, you parents lost all reason at some point during this pandemic.

Winter Olympics news now and it's all over.

The Winter Olympics has finished with the traditional call for peace.

The IOC president Thomas Pack called for political leaders around the world to be inspired.

by the athletes' example of solidarity and peace.

And the International Olympic Committee calling for peace after two two of its last three Winter Olympics and Paralympics have been in Russia and China.

I mean, that doesn't sit easy.

That's like handing out a lifetime award for services to conservation at the We Really Must Look After Our Planet awards whilst wearing a still bleeding rhinoceros skin onesie.

It's wrong on numerous levels.

It's been a kind of sad and awkward Olympics in a lot of ways.

One of the saddest and awkwardest of all time, I think, as a sports fan.

And Thomas Back said, the unifying power of the Olympic Games is stronger than the forces that want to divide us.

Now, I love sport as much as the next person, assuming that the next person is also looking for any and all available means of avoiding reality.

But he is flat out wrong about that.

The power of the Olympics is not stronger than the forces that want to divide us.

I mean, the Winter Olympic sports give physics a bit of a chasing, but they cannot compete with vast global geopolitical vested interests and they should stop trying, frankly.

Have you enjoyed enjoyed the games either kind of politically in terms of a means of um uh sports washing a nation's reputation and uh ignoring uh genocide uh or just from the spectacle of seeing people do quintuple somersaults off the side of a mountain oh well the first thing we have to say is congratulations to team gb on their on their curling medals um i don't know how familiar you are with uh curling net but uh nato it's it's the big one in the uk even as an irish person we know it's it's curling oh it's the one they all want to win a sport invented by people too silly to notice the temperature dropping when they were skimming stones across a lake and invented in you sport.

Well, no, no, I mean, you say that, Neil, but I think it's just showed what we can achieve as a nation in winter sports, as long as they don't require anyone or anything to move at more than one mile an hour.

Then we're right in business.

Looks like an independent Scotland on the wave to me.

That's what the curling said to me.

But like this,

you're right about back.

What is he saying?

Like, this, there was a diplomatic boycott of this.

Diplomatic boycotts are not enough.

Countries have to decide if they have moral fortitude or not.

The Republic of Ireland has boycotted the 2022 World Cup in Qatar by not qualifying for it.

We did the same for the Russian World Cup in 2018.

We boycotted the 2014 World Cup in Brazil over Bolsonaro's damaging presidency.

And that was a full four years before he even announced his candidacy for the job.

That is commitment.

We boycotted South Africa in 2010 over their historical support for apartment and Germany in 2006 for you know what.

Now, Japan and Korea in 2002, they were grand.

So we went there.

So we stuck by our guns and other countries have to do the same.

And frankly, all this talk about diplomacy is just a distraction from the real story of the Winter Olympics.

And you know what I'm talking about.

Yes.

I think we know where this is going.

This was probably an epic headline.

Well, it's an epic headline.

Epic headline.

And I'm sure many of you listening to this Buglers, you will have already seen it.

And I know we've been tweeted it by around about 98% of our listeners, I think.

The Finnish cross-country skier, Remy Lindholm,

suffered from a frozen penis.

And there's no real way.

Suffered from?

Well, I mean...

Enjoyed.

Well.

I guess he encountered, essentially, what happened was the 50km cross-country race was reduced to 30 kilometers because it was too cold to be outside for that long, even at the reduced length.

Sorry, that is the wrong, sorry, that is a poor term to use in this story.

Lindholm, his trouserial

troglodonk became frozen.

It did become frozen.

However, he didn't let it go and he applied a heat pack to his plunker to defrost his trungle, thus saving his salama drill.

But the key part of this, I think,

is not the fact that a cross-country skier suffered a frozen penis.

He did warm it up afterwards and described the pain as, quotes, unbearable.

The key part is that he did this whilst finishing 28th.

Now,

I fully understand that, you know, elite sport requires sacrifices, but if you are going to freeze your cock off, you better get a medal, frankly.

28th on a frozen penis, that is a very bad combination that is a tough sport

and a sport where you have to defrost your own cock after an event is serious i know you like cricket but never in the toughest match of the most competitive ashes of all time has a player had to insert himself into a microwave like a penile pot noodle to recover the skier remy which rhymes with semi which is even better right he said like you said the heat pack onto his bits to warm up like i assume that they thought all of them out right like it wasn't just that bit and they just made a tiny little tinfoil blanket like after you run the marathon from the wrapper of a kick ass just

like it's so i can't even imagine coding like that not even in the most harrowing part of Scott of the Antarctic's diaries.

Do you see anything like this?

there's no page where he's like there's much to be learned from the adventure so far captain oates has made the ultimate sacrifice as he walked into a blizzard after his dongle became frozen like a popsicle or coccycle as one of the huskies said it they're very clever dogs huskies did he finish the race with a shard on

probably so

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

We were going to have a royal news section.

Tough week for the royal family.

The Queen has contracted COVID after

two of her sons are in varying types and depths of trouble.

The Queen has been triple jabbed with a special golden syringe made from the melted down golden cod piece of King Arthur himself.

But the fact that she's been triple jabbed does suggest we don't entirely trust the efficacy of our national anthem.

But we will have a full report on the royal Royal Family in next week's Bugle, if we can be asked.

Anyway, don't forget to come to all of my tour shows starting in Leamington Spa on the 25th of February.

All the other dates, including the May run in the Soho Theatre, are on the internet.

Do you have anything to plug, Neil?

Yes, I'm doing the SSE Arena in Belfast on Saturday nights, and I'm also on all the socialists at Neil Delimer Comedy.

NATO?

At NATO Green on Twitter, Mr.

Nato Green on Instagram.

I have a couple of albums out: the NATO Green Party, the Whiteness album.

Please buy them on Bandcamp, which is where the most of the share of the royalties go to the artist.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

I will now play you out with some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

To join them to make a one-off or occurring contribution to Keep the Bugle Free Flourishing and Independent, go to buglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Owen Kendler really enjoyed a recent seminar, but was left frustrated by the fact that he was then unable to attend a full-scale NAA.

It was great, says Owen, informative and engaging, but why they stopped at just the semi-NAR, I've no idea.

It sounds like NARs would be absolutely awesome.

I mean, sure, some might not need to be the full 100%, but surely there's scope for at least some to go past the 50% point.

Frankly, I'm baffled.

Neil Franklin has been studying both science and musical instruments and has formulated a theory that there may be an extra category of undiscovered instruments that lies equidistant between brass and strings.

It's like the Higgs boson of the orchestra for me, says Neil.

I've no idea what it is, but it'll probably sound like a cross between a trombone and a viola, but if the trombone was corrugated and the viola had marshmallow stuffed under its strings.

I'll have to do some experiments though.

It remains theoretical at this point.

Jay Francis Francis has been wary of the word overjoyed ever since winning a school terrapin describing competition and walking off with a bar of chocolate as the first prize.

You must be overjoyed, said a well-meaning teacher.

Incorrect, replied Jay.

I'm exactly the right amount of joyed.

And to be honest, second-placed Ian looks distinctly underjoyed.

There's no shame coming second to my terrapin describing skills.

The teacher called Jay something quite rude, and ever since then Jay has striven not to take language too literally.

Amanda Fraser can understand the psychology of making racehorses wear sheepskin nosebands but frankly does not approve.

Look, I get that if you stick a bit of one animal on another animal's face and tell it to run as fast as possible, it is going to focus the mind of that second creature, who's going to think, if I don't shift it big time, I'm going to end up like that.

I assume that's the thinking anyway.

But, concludes Amanda, I think it should be possible to coax an animal to perform at elite level with inspirational speeches about the pursuit of glory for glory's sake.

It certainly worked with my friend Brian's gerbil when we raced it against his Scalextric car.

And finally, Rhys Charlton was wondering the other day whether someone being arrested at a protest who had a banner with a pun or other joke on it could claim quiplomatic immunity.

I do hope so, says Rhys, although I've heard that riot police tend not to be in the mood for jokes.

I also hope that when they then ask you to tell them your name and address, you could point at your joke and say, sorry, I'm subject to a gagging order.

It might lighten the mood, concludes Reese.

Here endeth this week's lies.

But before we go, here's a promo for a show produced by former Bugle producer Tom for ABC in Australia, featuring science, jokes, scientists, and comedians.

Hi, I'm Andy Matthews.

And I'm Alastair Trombly-Birchall.

And we're here to remind you that the Pop Test, that Comedy Science Quiz Show from Radio National, is back.

Each week we pick a science topic and ask comedians and scientists important questions like, why might you stir your tea at 28,000 rpm?

Where on earth does time travel the slowest?

And what's so suspicious about being left-handed?

With guests Sean McAliffe, Claire Hooper, Cal Wilson, Dr.

Alan Duffy and Sammy Shah, the pop test.

Hear it now on the ABC Listen app or almost anywhere you get your podcasts.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.