Boat Got Back (4188)

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 4188 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world, which this week consists of 20 or so prime minutes from the 80-minute extravaganza that was the latest Bugle live stream live show recorded last Saturday the 27th of March, followed by some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

If you want to see and/or hear the full show, you can still buy retrospective tickets via the internet, and I assume specifically via thebuglepodcast.com, where you can also buy Bugle merchandise and join the voluntary subscription scheme or make any level of recurring or one-off contribution to the show.

Let's pick up with that live show now, featuring Andy Zaltzman, also known as me, when I'm talking anyway, as well as Alice Fraser and Nish Kumar.

I'm here in Bugle Studios.

As you can see, a quick check to find out whether or not I am performing in Zero Gravity.

I'm not.

Take that, Neil Armstroke.

You mean nothing to me.

I'm in one gravity, one gravity, buglers, just as God intended.

Loved a bit of gravity, the old G-Dog.

Probably a rebellion against living in space and on clouds all the time.

I am here in London, where there is darkness, darkness as far as the eye can see.

But that's because I'm in my shed, which has black curtains.

If I look this way, there is just darkness as far as I can see, which is about four feet away.

Joining me from the selfsame time zone that was given by Almighty God.

So that Britain may have daytime in the day and nighttime in the night, unlike some countries I could mention, it's the man who to this day has yet to discover even one new chemical element despite being made of pure Nishkumarium.

It's Nishkumar.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

God, I hope we're broadcasting.

And that's how I start every day.

I wake up in the morning, I think, good morning, world.

God, I hope I'm broadcasting today.

I live to cast.

That's a shortening of the word broadcast.

Lovely to see you, Andrew.

How are you?

I'm all right, thanks.

Yeah, it's well, it appears to be going.

Yes, it is working according to William on Twitter.

And that is

it Prince William?

Because surely he's got bigger fish to fry.

That's actually the title of his new podcast.

Podcast Market alongside his brother.

Actually, his new podcast is called How Could It Have Been Me That Said It?

And we'll go no further with that joke for legal reasons.

Allegedly, allegedly, Nishkuma.

Also joining us from an island far, far away from here, off the coast of another island far, far away from here.

If you count Australia as an island rather than a continent or a concept or an experiment or a hoax.

Anyway, from a little island just off the coast of Australia.

It's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Alice.

Are you there?

No, I'm here.

I've caught up.

You were a little glitchy.

It took a little while to get all the way down here to Australia.

But I am here.

I'm happy to be here.

And I'm recording my end of this conversation.

It may be having a different speech to your end of the conversation, but I figure if you listen back later, it'll all make sense.

We'll talk to Australians as well.

It seems like we're conversing at different speeds.

So

welcome.

So, Alice,

you are on an.

And is this

an experiment to just gradually move away from Australia to see if there's other islands in the world you might like to to try?

I'm on a small island off the coast of Queensland, and I'm hoping to island hop to increasingly small islands until I'm just on an island the size of a room, at which point I will detach myself from society completely and just knit or learn some craft.

Queensland is also actually how some sections of the British press are suggesting that the United Kingdom should be rechristened post-Brexit, just to make sure that we,

because I'm not sure enough things are named after the Queen in this country.

In fact, I was discussing this with my two children, Elizabeth and Elizabeth, just the other day.

We are recording on the 27th of March,

well, recording, broadcasting.

Parts of this will go out on a bugle

as issue 4188.

Yesterday, the 26th of March, was World Good Hair Day.

Today, on the other hand, is not.

So the show goes ahead.

But now here's a slight slight potential issue for this show uh earth hour starts at 8 30 p.m uk time that's in approximately 23 minutes where we all have to turn off all of our lights uh in support of nature this could cause a few issues but i am i'm i'm fully kitted up i have i have the candle i have matches that this show is uh is going to go on um thank you to uh all 7 billion plus people uh who have decided to prioritize earth hour over joining the uh bugle live stream live uh live show uh those of you huge thanks from me and my my hypothetical future descendants for putting the planet first ahead of this uh this show not using the electricity the internet you're not cooking your mid-bugle steaks like the rest of you no rocket launches uh mid-show and for those of you who have tuned in i can only assume you don't give a shit about the future of the planet no judgment uh i think it's had you know but personally i'm on your side i think that the planet's had its chance and blown it too so welcome to the show enjoy strangling your white rhinoceros pups or whatever else you're also doing to

destroy the world.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight

in the bin, correct.

Everyone who shouted that at home this week, we have a job section.

A lot of exciting jobs going around at the moment.

The Royal Diversity Czar.

Nish, I don't know, are you going?

Did you read about this?

I'm right.

I'm in prime position for that job, Andy.

And like most of the jobs that i get i'm in prime position to be immediately fired from that job

i i i see the royal diversity job as the latest in a long string of things in which i'm forced to leave in disgrace

but my my first job will be getting some undiversifying the source of a lot of the jewelry that's lying around in the queen's house because they what they what they lack in diversity of actual skin skin colour of family members that they're currently speaking to, they make up for in diversity of places they've nicked jewels from to put in their goddamn hats.

Have I been sacked yet?

Is it over?

Is it over?

Give us that jewelry back, Q dog.

The uh, the Royal Diversity Tsar, it's a genuine job, the Royal Diversity Tsar.

Now, for a start, if you're in a royal family and you're appointing someone to a new job, don't call it a czar.

That is

asking for for trouble frankly uh it could be that this is a way to find it finally find a purpose for prince andrew uh to go of course with this sideline in furthering the cause of republicanism uh of course a role it must be said he plays with almost irrelevant determination uh rumours just reaching us here uh at the bugle news center that uh as part of his role as the new diversity czar uh prince andrew could be married off to narendra modi the prime minister of india uh which uh could uh well that would certainly uh diversify the royal family in a number of ways.

Also in the job section, the Minister for the Management of Public Disgruntlement is a new cabinet post launched less than one week ago.

And it's open again because the man first appointed to it, the rising Tory hot shot Ellsworth Nodge Bribben was tasked with the responsibility of trying to enable the government to disappoint all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

He resigned just yesterday after three days in the job, citing the impossibility of success under the current leadership.

So that is now open once again.

Also in the bin this week, a stoical media section.

Now, social media has been a huge hit around the world over the last 20 years or so, but just add one letter and slightly jumble them up.

Stoical media could be just as big.

It's started to challenge social media for the affections of the global over-sharing community.

Stoical media sites such as Phlegma TikTok share 10-second video clips of people retaining control of their emotional response to events, whilst the new televisual genre of Marcus Aureality TV

gives celebrities the chance to underreact to provocation and the inescapable cruelty of existence.

Also,

we review the new Instagram phone, which turns your Instagram posts into 12-inch vinyl LPs.

The great thing about stoical media is that you can just schedule all of your posts, and all of your posts say, I'm fine.

It's fine.

Is that not progress, Alice?

I think that is progress.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week: global trade comes to a grinding halt because a ship draws a penis in a canal.

Well, actually, it was not actually in a canal, it was towards the entrance of the canal, which is possibly even worse.

But I mean, this is Nish, you are our

massive ships getting stuck in canals, correspondent.

Alice, you are, of course, the Bugles things drawing the shapes of penises correspondent.

I mean, this is

very much why you've both been invited onto the show this week.

What a story.

This is the ever-given ship has blocked the

Suez Canal.

It's a 400-meter-long ship has got jammed in a canal and now the whole of global trade has stopped.

That's essentially what seems to have happened.

Yes, this is the biggest shipping disaster since the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film, which was actually the biggest shipping disaster since the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film, which was the biggest shipping disaster since the third.

You get the point, right?

The first one was fine.

We didn't need another sequel, frankly.

So, I mean, listen, one of the largest container ships in the world has run aground in the Suez Canal, causing a jam of vessels.

The ship itself is called the Evergiven,

which is owned by the company Evergreen, which all of which is really nicely optimistic terms for a company that has really shat the bed this week.

It's 220,000 tons, it's 400 meters long, and it's stuck because of some bad weather that happened as the captain was trying to get the ship into through the canal.

Now, just to be clear, before we go any further, the crew are all safe and accounted for, and there's been no reports of injuries or pollution.

What does that mean?

It means we're all free to find this very funny.

That is always a concern with news stories these days.

You're always like, oh, a ship's run aground.

Has anyone been harmed?

Has there been any mass pollution?

Did the boat do a string of racist tweets in the late 2000s?

No,

the boat's clean.

The boat's Instagram just says hashtag BLM, so we're fine on that front.

No one got injured.

There's no pollution.

So let's make this very clear.

It's been a difficult couple of years

for humanity, but this is very funny because a massive ship has blocked up a massive canal.

It's astonishingly brilliant information and we should all enjoy it.

Though I would say when a British person hears the phrase, problems in the Suez Canal, we just genetically assume we're about to get rid of a prime minister.

And

I want to remind everyone: this is a very, very different climate that we are in from the last Suez Snafu.

It's 2021, and let's face it, if Boris Johnson had driven that boat himself into the canal, there's a chance his approval ratings would have gone up on the basis that people would deem his behavior to be good bants.

Now, for international people, good bants is an English phrase, meaning the guy's a but he's posh, so it's fine.

I think that is one of the very few remaining clauses of the Magna Carta that's written into law.

Well, unfortunately, there's a cloud of doubt that's hanging over this whole scenario.

The idea that this ship has accidentally been turned sideways in the canal

because of the ship's previous actions of drawing a massive penis in the ocean.

It sort of casts into doubt its competence going forward.

And I don't think actually that this was done on purpose.

I think, as with many people who draw large penises in public places, it has proven not to be skilled at actually navigating the canal when it is at hand.

Finally, show us.

But I'm enjoying the fact that they're all sticking together.

They haven't pointed any fingers at any individual who's responsible.

They're blaming the weather.

Because, you know, this is one of those f ups that is such a big f-up that the person who fked up isn't even going to get fired.

You know how there are like normal crimes where you go to jail?

And then this one's costing $7 billion a day.

So it's like the GFC.

Everyone just stands around astonished at how big the crime is and nobody does anything.

I mean, it is a truly wonderful story that the ship, as you said, Nish, is owned by Evergreen, a shipping company that has a green logo.

With the word green in it, so let's assume it's basically saving environment with every breath of the wind in the sails of its ships and it's breeding endangered ocelots inside its green painted containers containers.

The evergreen, the ever-given ship, 399 meters and 94 centimeters long.

Stick a fking pencil on the end of it for sake.

What is wrong with you?

The ship ever given is actually short for no fks are epigenetic.

It can take 20,000 containers, which is one container for every lie Donald Trump told in the first three years of his presidency.

If only they could have been contained.

79,500 horsepower packed into that ship.

Now, I don't know if that's horses on land or horses in the sea, which presumably makes quite a big difference to horsepower.

That's why why boats exist in the first place, because horses don't work in the sea generally, or certainly not for very long.

And the 79, 20,000 containers is also sufficient for all the bugle merchandise that you can now buy from the buglepodcast.com.

So it is

so the key part of this story, obviously, Alice, is what happened before

the incident with this, the route that the ship took, which eagle-eyed people in their millions around the world spotted, bears more than a passing resemblance to the male prongulum and gonadulas.

And look, I mean,

this is not the first, there's a great nautical tradition of

such events.

In fact, one of the most famous sea battles of all time, the ancient Greeks flummoxed the Persians in 480 BC in a key naval battle near Athens by sailing their ships in a series of unmistakably phallic shapes, distracting the notoriously childish Persians who, whilst trying to then add the shapes shapes of nagils to the Greek prongs, left themselves vulnerable to a pincer movement.

Anyway, the Todger-like shapes described by the Athenian and Spartan ships gave the battle its name, the Battle of Salamis, often mispronounced, of course, as Salamis, coincidentally the name of the nearby island.

But in summary, that degree was four years well spent.

I mean, it is

just

extraordinary.

The ship, though, is only, can we blame the ship?

It's only two and a half years old, so it's quite an inexperienced ship.

You can understand the ship making mistakes like this.

You've got to give them a chance at this level.

Otherwise, you'd never know whether these ships have what it takes.

It's holding up $9.5 billion of goods a day.

Now, to put that in context, that is equivalent to 68.5 million smart robot dog toys or 150 million legs of decent quality ham available from motorway service stations in the Basque country, which are an absolute bargain.

And there are now 300 ships stuck either side of it, some of which have had to reroute around Africa.

That is one hell of a diversion.

That is nearly as bad as the one I got stuck in on the M4 ones that took me around half a summer set at the dead of night for no discernible reason.

But I guess it's there's not too many options, are there?

Other than the Suez Canal.

There's no cheeky little cut-throughs that you can hope your Google Maps.

No, I mean, yeah, I mean, I mean, I imagine that has led to the mother of all rerouting situations on various people's sat-navs.

And you never want to be in a situation where your sat-nav is saying, turn left at Africa.

I just don't understand why they don't put wheels on the ships and push them up onto land.

Well,

that's that's I meant to be.

The fact that I don't understand that is why I'm not in shipping logistics.

It's gone in at a terrible angle.

When you look at the photographs, you just think it's like somebody's parked a car whilst wearing a blindfold as part of an elaborate dare.

I've just had a tweet from Hugh who suggested that actually it was 30,000 lies that Donald Trump told.

I was actually just focusing on the first three years, which he had about 20,000.

He already rammed it up in year four.

So thank you for picking me up on that.

There is still no vaccine for pedantry.

That is next on

the lists of

the world's scientists.

So there are alternatives.

for this uh the the the the ship now if they can't move the ship it's going to cause you know possibly weeks of uh delays and more things having to chug around the cape.

So, the alternatives are just released now a stunt ramp.

If they can get container ships up to 300 miles an hour, they should be able to cannievel their way over the evergiven and splash down on the other side one way at a time, though.

But you don't want a mid-air collision between 200,000-ton metallic ship hunks.

You know, some archaeologists actually believe that the pyramids were, in fact, originally designed as a four-way stunt ramp for ships.

That's a fact.

Another alternative, levitation, the freight magician, the amazing bull cargo, has offered to levitate all 20,000 containers off the Evergiven so the ship will spontaneously refloat itself.

An emergency spare canal has been suggested from the top of the Persian Gulf through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean.

A few slight troubles with that.

Nukit has been suggested and just ram it until it moves.

So we will.

Has anyone suggested telling the canal it's beautiful?

So I think it loosens up a bit.

Family show.

Maybe

put on some mid-90s RB.

D'AAngelo's brown sugar.

Just try and get things going.

I'll say this for this ship.

My God.

This ship has got back.

I mean,

that is a big old ass on that ship.

You body shaming a container ship.

Quite the opposite, Andrew.

Quite the opposite.

I'm speaking in admiring tones.

I'm a fan of a ship that's, you know,

got dumps like a truck.

So,

in conclusion, I mean, I think there are

lessons to be learned, Ms, aren't there?

Because I think there are some good rules for life.

And I'll share this.

these with you buglers.

One, do not sleep in a suit of armor.

The clanking is awful.

Two, if you want people not to panic, never at any point say the words, there's no need to panic.

Do not think too carefully about the existence of the phrase social media influencer.

It will only upset you.

Another piece, good rule for life on issues of science, trust the wisdom of science more than you trust Gary from the pub.

And never unnecessarily goad a shark unless you are both on land.

But above all, do not ram a 400-meter-long container ship into the side of a canal, thus blocking a globally critical trade route.

I hope we're all listening and learning.

Chris, you had some stats on the boat.

Do we have time for that, do you think?

I thought, Andy, that you would struggle with a boat story, so I tried to break it down into language that you would understand for you.

The size of the boat we're talking about here.

So the Suez boat is 400 meters long, 59 meters wide.

The maximum length for a cricket bat is 96.52 centimeters.

So that ship is 414 cricket bats long,

61 cricket bats wide.

The ship at 20,000 tons, that's 20 million kilograms.

£3 is heavy for a cricket bat, but many of your favorite batsmen have gone big like that.

That's 1.4 kilos.

So the ship can therefore hold 14,285,714 cricket bats.

Stretched out all those bats continuously would make 14.8 kilometers of bats.

Now, you're, I'm guessing, around 5'10, which is 1.778 meters.

So the ship holds 242,424 Zaltzmen in a queue but lying down.

Zaltzmans.

Or

170,000 Zaltzmen gently lifting their bats, but not enormously, to celebrate a 50 laid down.

170,000 of you.

Are you sure?

I think it's more than that, isn't it?

Because if you've got 20,000 containers on, I reckon you can fit more than

10 of me in a container.

If you want to dispute my maths, I'm happy to share my working out at a later point.

I'm not going to interrupt this mathematics.

I'm just saying my bed is right there.

I couldn't stop.

There you go.

Thanks to everyone who joined us live last Saturday.

And don't forget, you can still buy a retrospective ticket to see the rest of the show.

We're back at the weekend with a full regular Bugle featuring Tom Ballard and David O'Doherty.

Until then, here are some lies about our Bugle premium level voluntary subscribers.

Tina Papaki wonders if Erwin Schrödinger's famous cat theory that a cat could be simultaneously alive and dead inside a box sprang from a simple misunderstanding.

It's quite possible, speculates Tina, that Schrödinger's cat was simply asleep inside a box, which is sort of the same as being simultaneously alive and dead when you think about it.

If the cat was a deep sleeper, well you can understand Schrödinger getting a little bit confused if his is my cat alive or dead gong didn't get completely accurate results.

Someone known as the Sixth Muammar Gaddafi is disappointed that athletics stopped at the triple jump.

The Sixth Muamma Gaddafi explains: I can't help feeling that crowds would love to see an octuple jump, featuring a hop, a step, a star jump, a scissors jump, an aerial pirouette, a double-footed pogo, a froggy-style froggy jump, and finally a belly splash into the sandpit.

I would certainly watch.

The sixth Gaddafi adds, My unofficial personal best is 12m 74cm, but I wasn't really trying, and I ended up crashing through a greenhouse in the garden centre.

Richard Nephew is the proud owner of the world's largest collection of envelopes stamped return to sender address unknown.

Richard tells the story, I thought it would be an achievable world record, so I started sending post to made-up addresses like 424 Spanderland Guava Terrace, Jabbertown Pinkshire and 13B Mayhem Crescent South Snutterbridge, Dakota.

Inevitably they would be returned.

I always wrote a letter in the envelopes though, to make them worth opening when they returned to me, usually with a memo to myself to do something boring.

Tim Tim Parsons wonders whether renowned music composer Johann Sebastian Bach and champion skier Lindsay Vaughan would have gone on with each other if they'd ever met, instead of being separated by centuries.

I'm not really sure, concludes Tim.

Lindsay's obsession with flying down hills at high speed and Joey Sebb's unremitting schedule of baroque out on various musical instruments aren't really compatible activities for me.

There's a reason you don't see pianists playing whilst flying downhill at 70 plus miles an hour.

Also, there might be a language barrier.

Graham Kirkpatrick would like to see world leaders instead of making speeches, forced to communicate with the world wordlessly using ballet.

I think it would be a more universal form of communication, says Graham, that ends the risk of translators just completely making up what is being said at important meetings.

It would also result in younger, fitter, and more progressive world leaders.

So, ballet for leaders is my first request for the world.

If you will, my plea A.

And finally, long-term follower of the show, Kenders Rule, thinks that traditional parenting techniques should be applied to leading politicians.

Parents know that small children, with whom world leaders have so much in common in terms of attention span, focus on the self, and inability to think long term, can be easily coerced into eating something they don't like by the promise that it will lead to being given something they do like, as per Einstein's famous broccoli, then ice cream theory.

So I say that world leaders should be forced to do something actually useful before they're allowed to tell an obvious lie or shut down a much-needed facility in order to look tough to the right-wing media.

I think we would all benefit.

Here endeth this week's lies.

Goodbye.

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.