Bugle 208 – A Kama Sutra approach to the truth

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 208 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World for the week beginning Monday, the 8th of October, 2012, with me, Andy's Oltzman, in London, Europe.

If you're coming here from the States, just head east until you hit land and then ask.

And in New York City, USA, it's the satirical stuntman himself, ready to cannievel you over another canyon of crap, another bus full of bullshit, another flaming hoop of hogwash.

It's John, the merciless motorbike Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Andy, last week, we began the bugle with a eulogy to the phenomenally ludicrous band and inadvertent despotic disco kings LMFAO after news emerged that they'd split up.

Well Andy, like the disciples of Jesus, I bring good news to you.

Because like Jesus, LMFAO had a colourful, incident-packed, borderline, unbelievable life.

And like Jesus, they were pronounced dead long before their time.

And still like Jesus, Andy, it seems they've made a miraculous comeback.

But unlike Jesus, they have the good grace to do a sit-down interview with MTV to discuss it.

Sky Blue, the stupidly named gentleman from the stupidly named group who have made some of the most incredibly stupid music of all time, said, and I quote, well, you know, first of all, we're not breaking up.

I know that for sure.

We're family and stuff, so it's all love.

It's a resurrection, Andy.

LMFAO, live.

When I heard they were splitting up last week, I couldn't believe how upset I was.

And fittingly, when I heard they were getting back together this week, I couldn't believe how little I cared.

That is the complexity of a a band like LMFAO Andy.

You never know where you stand with them.

Are they a background beat to nightclub dry humping or are they a soundtrack to a Syrian killing spree?

You just never know.

Going on to discuss their plans for the future and the reason behind their break, Sky Blue said It'll free up our minds and stuff to be able to take on another LMFAO project because the next one we do, it's got to be that like amazing, amazing crazy album and stuff like that.

It's It's kind of like let us get our wind up.

Let us kind of show the world who we are as individuals and then we come together stronger than ever.

It's beautifully put there by Skyblue, Andy.

So many people would think about a statement like that before delivering it, planning out what they wanted to say so they could say it succinctly and coherently.

Not Skyblue, Andy, he talks faster than he thinks.

Apparently that's how he writes songs.

He just turns up to the studio, shouts the first things that come into his head into a microphone, and then releases those rantings as a single.

Now, you might ask, what was Redfu's statement on this?

He's been suspiciously quiet.

Well, I'm not sure, Andy, but I can only imagine that he was standing next to Sky Blue during the press conference and simply leaned forward to say, Sky Blue has said that more eloquently and poetically than I ever could.

That's if he wasn't driving a tank into Aleppo.

Is nightclub dry humping and a Syrian killing spree?

Are they mutually exclusive or

I'm guessing they are, but you're right, they're probably not.

Okay.

And yeah, that's right.

It's all about the vigorousness of dry humping.

One can become the other very quickly.

Or it's about the lack of vigour in a killing spree.

Yeah.

There's so many grey areas in the modern world.

Over the Venn diagram of dry humping and killing sprees, there is some crossover.

You're right.

Monday, the 8th of October, 2012.

We're recording on the 5th of October, meaning it is our 50 years to the day since the release of the first Bond film, Doctor Dove.

Of course, there had been a previous Bond film that was never released, entitled James Bond, Landscape Gardener.

However, studio executives decided the plot line, which involved Bond rearranging some flowerbeds in an old woman's garden in exchange for money, lacked a little bit of punch and asked author Ian Fleming to rewrite the stories with Bond as a spy instead.

Also the 50th anniversary of the release of the first Beatles single, Love Me Do, and its controversial B-side, brackets switch on my brackets industrial cockhammer.

Certainly shook up the uh complacent world of early sixties music.

As always.

It's worth a lot of money if you can find that on the original vinyl and not many of them were printed.

As always, the section of the bugle is going straight in the pin.

This week, a first in a new series of audio cartoons lampooning famous prophets from history.

Week one, the prophet Gerald.

Pretty low-caliber prophet who kicked around South London in the 1970s, prophesying football scores in his local pub.

He once correctly called Ipswich Town beating Aston Villa 1-0 with a goal by Paul Mariner, and after that got a bit overexcited and started dressing up in a special cape and waggling a garden rake in the air.

Amongst his other prophecies were that by 2008, all human babies would be forced to drink dog milk in order to make them bark rather than cry on public transport, that tennis player Jeremy Bates would win six Wimbledon titles by 1989 and become Prime Minister by 1997, and that televised karaoke would become the most effective social control mechanism in the history of democracy.

The Prophet Gerald cartoon in the bin this week, along with some audio effigies of the bugle and some audio petrol to ignite them all.

Top story this week, the unrivalled spectacle of two men talking at each other for 90 minutes.

Andy, the first presidential debate took place on Wednesday night, formerly kick-starting the US election season that officially began 17 months and billions of dollars ago.

The debate was, of course, between...

Ugh, wait, I'll get it.

Ah, you know him.

About six foot, married to Michelle.

You know the guy.

Anyway, he was debating...

Ah, shit.

I can't believe I've forgotten this.

You know it.

Tagsdad.

Anyway, the point is that the host city of Denver pulled out all the stops, initially staging the debate in a fight pit with the moderators shouting questions at the participants, then redesigning the stage to feature the debate taking place in a thunderdome, then eventually opting for the classic two-podium model instead, but with both candidates in inflatable sumo suits.

But moments before the debate, one of them got a puncture, so they had to go with their emergency regular backup suits instead.

After months of negotiations, both campaigns finally agreed to the debate rules, which were one, no nutshots, two, two minutes each with a 30-second rebuttal, three, seriously no nutshots, four, maximum of two bathroom breaks and three visits on stage from a trainer and five absolutely unequivocally no nut shots interestingly you can understand that can't you after the uh old jfk nixon

actually it it was from before then andy it's uh it's actually been there for years since the lincoln douglas debate got spectacularly out of hand

that's why they call him the big swollen melons

both both candidates had done extensive debate preparation uh president Obama had been mocked debating with John Kerry, who'd been standing in as Mitt Romney.

I can't think of what about the emotionally robotic multi-millionaire with magnificent hair made him think that he'd be a perfect substitute for the emotionally robotic millionaire with magnificent hair.

And Mitt Romney mocked debated against Milky White Senator Rob Portman from Ohio, who stood in as Obama, mainly because I think he may be the blackest person that Mitt Romney knows.

But after all the hype, followed by all the lowering of expectations, followed by all the hype again, the debate began.

And by most commentary analysis, Obama's performance was somewhere between not great and awful.

The reviews immediately following the debate ranged from inexplicably comatose to the debate equivalent of taking a cyanide pill on stage.

Ouch.

One star.

He did certainly, I didn't see all of it, but I watched as much as the British soul could take.

And certainly he did very little to win over the 5% of American voters who aren't going to vote exactly how their great-great-grandparents voted anyway.

He was described as being hesitant and subdued, worryingly thoughtful at times.

That's a lethal failing in any politician.

And quite tetchy, I thought, John, almost as if he's been doing a really stressful and deeply unenjoyable job for the last four years.

Yes.

Difficulties, troubles, and impossibilities of the planet and American politics it is face on a daily basis.

What would you like for breakfast, Mr.

President?

I'll have some cornflakes, please.

Sorry, cornflakes are off.

You're having war, economic catastrophe, social breakdown, historically intractable global tensions, all served with a side issue of commercial vested interests.

Can I have an egg?

No, you can't have a fing egg.

So yeah, President Obama's tactics seemed to be to be distracted and quite tired, while Mitt Romney, on the other hand, took a karma sutra approach to the truth, bending it, stretching it, flipping it over, contorting it into all kinds of weird shapes before banging the living shit out of it.

That in itself was not a surprise.

The surprise was how President Obama seemed to just stand back for an hour and a half and just let him do it.

Almost as if he was assuming that the American people would research Romney's lies themselves the next day and fact-check vigorously his statements, suggesting that he either received a large blow to the head just before the debates began, or suggesting that he's never in fact met the American people.

We have seen in recent weeks, John, what Mitt Romney really thinks.

But it was interesting to see once the debate started that now America got a chance to see what he pretends he thinks and that could be so much more important when the election comes.

That is true.

It was a weirdly terrible performance from the president.

He seemed slightly preoccupied the whole time and even opened his remarks by mentioning his 20-year wedding anniversary that day, which I think he may have forgotten before that point because the whole debate had a real, holy shit, I just forgot my 20-year wedding anniversary stink all over it.

I mean, what happened to the President Andy?

I actually came up with a list of things that I think may have happened that all, you know, although some of them may be long shots, they would all make a lot more sense of what happened than the fact that he just didn't seem to be all that interested.

One, let's think about a positive option first.

Perhaps something horrific had just happened that he had to deal with.

Perhaps Russia had just nearly launched a nuclear missile.

That would make sense.

Or maybe he just got used to the last two weeks of tactically lowering the expectations for the debate and got so used to it he forgot he was then supposed to exceed them.

Maybe he took an ambient by mistake and was literally sleepwalking.

Is it possible Andy that he actually woke up three hours after the debate feeling fully refreshed and saying, okay, let's do this?

Or maybe, you know, does he actually not want to be president anymore?

Is he like someone who's stuck in a relationship that he wants to get out of but doesn't be the one to do it?

He doesn't want to break up with America, Andy, so he's making America break up with him.

Maybe it was the altitude.

Denver is a mile above sea level.

Perhaps he'd been doing all his debate prep in a special pod at the bottom of the ocean.

Or, Andy.

Maybe there was a mix-up with the pump-up music that he was listening to to charge himself up before the debate.

Maybe he was supposed to be listening to Metallica, and by mistake, he listened to Leonard Cohen instead.

At least that would make some sense.

Well, I guess, you know, it's probably hard for him to

switch off from being president and suddenly switch on to being a candidate again.

And because he doesn't get much light relief in his life, apart from playing golf six times a week.

The only real relief, as you suggested last week, was lightening his mood every now and again by treating himself to a drone strike.

There were points in the debate when it looked like he was contemplating somewhere in Massachusetts for his next one.

But Romney, on the other hand,

Romney, on the other hand, he bore the confidence look of a well-groomed man who has spent four years earning in excess of $10 million a year, paying all of it in tax and having his hair done and laughing at the poor.

So you can see why he was a little more relaxed, also a bit intensively trained, as you suggested for this debate.

Much of the training involving having senior Republicans line up in front of him shouting, don't be a

well, in that case, try even harder.

The truth is that it's often said you can't win a presidency with a debate, but you can lose it, which frequently renders the highest profile supposed discussion of policy that the nation gets every four years into a turgid tango of evasion and a bullshit ballet of pointlessness, where the candidates are not so much debating than regurgitating talking points into your ears.

And watching them can often feel exactly as disgusting as that sounds.

It's not so much two boxers fighting as two boxers standing motionless in front of each other, desperately concentrating on not punching themselves in the face.

I find it quite hard to follow some of the

arguments, particularly on the subject of American healthcare, which is quite an alien issue to British people.

I find myself trying to concentrate really hard for about three minutes, then trying to work out exactly who wants whom to die, why, and how much they would pay to watch it happen.

Then, trying to work out what form of healthcare Jesus would have preferred.

And I'm not sure, but apparently, he presented Lazarus with a bill for 5,000 shekels after curing him of death.

So he is probably bonging up and down on the Republican end of the seesaw.

And I end up thinking, if only all Americans could just agree not to use any medicine at all and let the will of God take its course, they would be so much happier as a nation and with significantly lower unemployment.

Andy, you've just described the thought process of every single American.

Oh, right, okay, good.

I still not just mean that.

You're thinking like a man from the heart of this country.

I think my my least favourite part of any of these political debates is always the sudden cherry-picking of individuals that the politicians have happened to have stumbled into on the campaign trail whose circumstances coincidentally seem to perfectly back up the point that the politician is in the middle of making.

Things like, oh, on the campaign trail, I met a family in Delaware who were concerned about their taxes.

I met a teacher called Wes who asked me to keep fighting for my healthcare plan.

I met a woman called Brianna who had benefited from my back-to-work issues.

I met a squirrel called Keith who agreed with my policy on Syria.

I met an antelope called Barry who hates my opponent's views on stem cell research.

I sat on a bench called Christine who talked about her belief in traditional marriage.

I ate a piece of cheese called Kyle who wants to serve in Afghanistan.

Whether or not these people actually exist is debatable, Andy, they seem to merely function as hypothetical human shields.

Also, you never hear the negative.

You don't eat anyone with a kind of negative story.

You never hear the negative.

That is true.

That's true.

I was on the campaign trail in Delaware and I met Mike and Cindy who saying they're having trouble getting permission to build their f dungeon.

And I said to them, Mike, Cindy, that doesn't seem to be anything that I can do anything about.

And they said, you're right, Mr.

President.

It's just, it's on my mind at the moment.

Anyway, good luck.

I won't be voting for you.

I don't know why I brought that up now, but the truth is, Mike, Cindy,

good luck with the f dungeon.

I guess I shouldn't have mentioned it, correct?

Boosting the local economy?

Would people pay to go to the f ⁇ dungeon?

How did that boost the local economy?

Well, having it built.

Right, okay.

Yeah, because restrictive planning.

Restrictive planning is destroying the American dream.

It is destroying.

And Michael Cindy is killing the small businessman.

Mike and Cindy dungeon is emblematic of everything that is wrong with the Obama administration.

Actually, you see, there is that thing that, look, banks need to have enough collateral to be able to issue loans for dungeons.

That is trickle-down economics in its purest form.

You've got the builders building the f dungeon.

You have the decorators decorating the f dungeon.

You have Mike and Cindy inviting people around.

You have caterers catering the fing dungeon.

We have to get the system moving, Andy.

I'm going to build one.

We need to get America humping in dungeons again.

I think I saved myself there, right?

It's saying the f part that's a problem.

What a shame, because my point is valid.

There was a couple of interesting moments for me.

One where Romney said you can't keep spending and passing the tab on to future generations.

And I thought, well, why not?

Why can't they simply pass that tab on to their future generations in a buck-passing tradition as old as time itself?

Yes.

Safe in the noise that one day, inevitably, the world will end.

And that is when the banks will lose out.

So you've got to play the long game with this.

Also, Obama, who did surprise some of his critics by not invoking Allah when he came on stage and calling for America to become an Islamic caliphate and then speaking in his native Kenyan, instead

slammed George W.

Bush for paying for two wars on a credit card, which I thought was probably fair enough.

That's better than just paying cash up front.

And

the quibble surely should be not paying for it on a credit card, but not checking the invoice first or shopping around for cheaper alternatives and suppliers.

Also, this trickle-down government.

So Romney was going on about

that Obama was basically a fan of trickle-down governments.

And I guess, you know,

better have a government that trickles down onto you than one that urinates straight into your face.

US election around the world news now.

And of course, Andy, the US election doesn't just affect people in the US, it affects everyone on the entire planet.

So it's impossible not to have some vested interest in what happens here in November.

And though no regime will officially state an opinion on a preferred result you know that every regime absolutely has one.

The Australian Foreign Minister was forced to insist that Australia has good relationships with both political parties after a senior minister in Australia labelled the Tea Party Republicans cranks and crazies.

I mean I guess there's no real way to try and play that off as a compliment, Andy, like

some kind of reverse Aussie slang.

Oh calling people cranks and crazies, crazies, that's a good thing.

You know, like you'd say, oh, fair go, Alan, you're a real crank.

How about I bought you a beer, you crazy bastard?

Man, you've been.

That's about the nicest thing you could say to anyone if you're an Aussie.

You've been working on your range of accents, John.

It's coming on strong.

It's come on strong by one.

What he actually said was, let's be blunt and acknowledge that the biggest threat to the world's biggest economy are the cranks and crazies that have taken over the Republican Party.

Oh,

that's not that.

I mean, that is even harder to see that as a compliment.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a fact, but

it's not a compliment.

So the Australian Minister, Bob Carr, in question, was forced to then go on television and say, I think anyone who's followed Republican Party politics and they've been on display during the very vigorous primary process would see that the Tea Party is one strand among several in Republican Party politics.

I mean, that is true, Andy, but to be biologically fair, it's a pretty f ⁇ ing dominant strand, and it's mutated far beyond the point that you could take that strand out without killing the party completely.

Benjamin Netanyahu, however, he seems to be backing a very different donkey.

He has appeared to be expressing a preference for his old chum, Mitt Romney, whilst his relationship with President Obama has deteriorated from bad to brutal.

So that seems to place the high-profile country endorsements at one for one for each candidate.

Now Francois Hollande, the Prime Minister of France, initially refused to say who he would prefer to win in the US election, but then seemed to drop a hint by saying he wasn't worried about not meeting President Obama in New York during the UN last week because he imagined that there would be plenty of time for that after November.

Ouch!

Ouch!

Take that, Romney.

France aren't even considering the possibility of you being president.

Although nothing could hurt Obama's chances of re-election in the US more than an endorsement from a French socialist.

That isn't so much an act of support as potentially the kiss of death.

Maybe that explains his debate performance.

Yes, exactly.

He told what Hollande had said.

Netanyahu appeared in advertisements in Israel which featured the slogan, the world needs American strength, not apologies.

Substitute the word and for not and you might be closer to the truth.

The comments were described by the Obama administration as quotes crude, vulgar and unrestrained intervention in the US election campaign.

And let's not forget, John, that crude, vulgar and unrestrained interventions are not the business of overseas leaders.

They are the business of the Republican and Democratic candidates and their campaign teams.

So butt the f ⁇ out Netanyahu.

Yes.

Potentially lethal holistic medicine update now.

And do you have a headache right now?

Have you run out of ibuprofen?

Well, you may still be in luck as long as you have a deadly black mamba snake handy.

Because French scientists claim that a painkiller as powerful as morphine, but without most of the side effects, has been found in the deadly venom of the black mamba snake.

Apparently the African killer snake uses neurotoxins to paralyze and kill small animals, but during tests on mice, it was claimed that its venom also contains a powerful painkiller.

Now look Andy, I'm not a scientist.

I'm not even a French scientist.

And I'm certainly not a snake scientist.

But I think I may suspect a slight crack in their otherwise faultless research.

Is it possible, Andy, is it just possible that they are mistaking that mouse's lack of headache with that mouse's lack of pulse?

Is it worth going back to the lab logs to see if the mouse actually said, oh, you know what?

I do.

I feel much better now.

My headache is completely gone.

Oh, hold on, hold on.

Now I'm feeling much worse in a different way.

I can't feel my whiskers.

Although, to be fair, my headache has still gone.

But

now I can't move my legs either.

Okay, sorry to be a fuss here, but final update for your records.

Still no return on the headache, which is great news, but I am now dead.

So something for the file, anyway.

Please put me in the bin.

I think the plan.

with this research, Andy, is to attempt to extract the useful headache-killing ingredient from the deadly venom and then use it to make pills.

But I think that would be going about it the wrong way.

I think

pharmaceutical companies should really be investing in research, extracting the deadly venom and then leaving the useful headache killing ingredients in the snake.

Leaving us with headache killing snakes.

And

no longer, if you have a splitting headache, do you need to swallow little pills with a glass of water?

You can simply go fetch your headache killing snake and goad it into biting you.

Oh, oh love, I think I've got a migraine coming on.

Do you want me to turn off the lights and cancel dinner plans?

No, darling, just go and piss off the snake and throw it at me, will you?

I'll be fine.

I'll be fine in 15 minutes.

It's like a pet packed full with paracetamol.

Rather than buying bottle after bottle of pills, you just buy one snake and one headache-killing snake aquarium for it to live in.

I'll even tell you what their slogan can be, Andy.

I'll give you a full advertising campaign.

Goodbye, headaches, hello, snake.

And the image can be of a beautiful little girl happily getting bitten in the face by a snake.

It's a flawless business plan.

Certainly is.

Looking forward to seeing the Rolling Stones update their classic hit sister morphine as Sister Squiggly Snake.

In other news from the natural world, there are only 100 cod left in the North Sea.

No!

No!

Well, this is an extremely distressing story reported in the Telegraph and the Times for Britain's leading most serious broadsheets about how there are only 100 of Britain's favourite fish left in the North Sea.

This is obviously a massive concern.

We're still a nation for whom eating fish and chips on a regular basis is the only way we keep our national life expectancy down to economically manageable levels.

But, John, I'm glad to report there is a silver lining to this story.

And that silver lining is that this story is total bullshit.

Because it turned out that on closer inspection, there were not 100 cod left in the North Sea there were almost half a billion including making one of the most statistically wrong stories in history including over 30 million mature adult cod the hundred figure was for cod that were aged 13 or over I'm not sure why they got that cut off point I think it's the age of consent for cod but I'm not sure

but

As the old saying goes, John, truth is the first casualty of a circulation war, and truth is currently lying in a distant field hospital bandaged from head to toe wondering whether it will ever see the light of day again and why it was shot at point-blank range in the face by both sides at the same time.

And I guess John, this is just yet another

media falsehood.

Start the clock.

It's COD to stop.

They've had a complete nightmare.

It's totally out of place.

I really believe that.

To the bottom of my soul.

I don't care if it's one journalist responsible or a group of them.

It's gone on too long.

We need change and we need it fast.

These facts are deniable no more.

Oh no, I can feel you starting to stir, John.

I can feel a bit of tension.

F ⁇ you, don't bring me into this, pun.

Come on.

Salmon had to say it.

And I won't put my punches on this.

No, I'm gonna gernard.

I'm not the kind of man to rein it back in, because this is a big issue among fishermen.

They've really scraped her bottom of the barrel this time, the media.

It's right out of line.

I hate to carp on about it, but it's polluted.

Bastards.

I'll read this filth whenever I purchase a newspaper.

Six days a week I read it.

Six days a week.

Every day of the week, in fact, Barra Monday.

When I never get past the sports section.

And we know these things are going to happen again.

We know that.

You better believe it.

Come on, better is a type of fish.

Thank you.

Anyone can be the victim of this kind of lies.

It will drag on ficious rumours.

Dragon fish?

Yeah, it's been counted.

They will spread.

People will shout at you.

They'll barricue.

That's inevitable.

We just gotta get down on our knees, Lam.

Pray it's not us.

Poor media regulation, lots of media scandals.

There's a ling

there.

Do you silly?

Seriously, think the media can self-regulate?

Ah, baloney.

The media need to be incentivized to do better and punished for failing.

Oh no, I just did ling, didn't I?

Incentives and punishment.

The carrot will help.

The carrot will help and the stick will back it up.

They've got to wake up.

I know that's a repeat pun, and smelt the coffee.

At least till they appear to have learned their lesson.

It mustn't happen ever again.

Does that count, Snapper?

Mustn't happen

ever again.

Mustn't happen.

So we have the really push-hot case.

Almost.

Basically, yes, emotionally, no, no, no.

I'm dead.

I'm dead inside.

Do you know, John?

Almost all the top Hollywood actors are behind some international agreements on media regulation.

You know, Scarlett, Demi, Nicole, Charlize, Hallie, but not Susan Saranda.

John, you're a film star.

Could you give her her ring?

I don't care how early it is.

Get her out of bed if necessary.

And is Kate Hudson a friend of yours?

What about some of the other stars you've acted with?

Mike Myers and Chivi Chase?

At least think about it.

Mull it over.

Ma, he, uh, mah, he, uh, really doesn't like that.

Hokie, though.

That's it.

It's all done.

Wahoo.

Oh, is that a fish?

Fair enough.

Okay, I'll stop.

I will stop, John.

I'll back off.

Over to you, Ner.

Oh, you sound cross.

You're in a white bait.

Oh, pardon me.

Oh, pardon.

I didn't know that was a fish.

Uh, it's just I flound a rich seam of puns there.

Dab those tears away.

Could have been much worse.

I didn't even do a mackerel pun.

Why not?

Well, my linguistic skills weren't up to it.

Sorry, I will now leave.

There are five exits from this building, but I'm not sure which is the quickest, John.

Door E, I think.

Are you still there?

Yellow.

Finished.

I can come back now.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that.

I didn't mention it at the start of the show.

I didn't want to talk it up,

just in case I'd oversold it.

Stop the clock.

Stop the clock.

53 in three minutes and 28 seconds.

Oh!

You say that like it's a good thing, Andy.

Well, that is one hell of an effort.

Elver.

And to be honest, there's lots more where that came from.

It's going to be tough to beat that pun run, though.

Escabesh one I've ever done.

But my wife didn't like it, though.

So she left the room while I was writing it.

Oh, fuck.

No, no, no, no, no.

That's not a fish.

That's a way to prepare fish.

The last three have not counted.

But don't worry, next week, seafood.

I wouldn't do that to you, John.

Not two weeks in a row.

I wouldn't even dream of it.

You're punching a corpse now.

Andy, did you...

Did you?

did you,

did you buy a pun bell

just for the purposes of doing that?

No, I have a pun bell.

It's not so much a pun bell anyway, it's a pun alarm as far as I'm concerned.

He looked so happy when he came to the studio with these two props and I never thought it would be like this.

I bet he did.

And I hate myself for saying this, but it was almost worth it for the yellow finished one.

I mean that here's the problem the problem is Chris that's undeniably a funny sound

and we'd like to welcome new listeners to the bugle

keep those contributions flooding in Andy shorts off and he shook those off about five puns in

here he's single-handedly making this entire podcast financially unsustainable

what do you want to do

uh Tear my ears off and

feed them to a dog.

Your emails now, and we have an email here from Mike in Madison, for whom we seem to have caused some language issues.

He says, Dear John, Chris, and Andy, this morning I was in my physics lecture watching my professor make some fishy and very convenient approximations in a derivation.

Very nice, Mike.

Suspecting bullshit, I muttered to myself, there is some dodgy math going on here.

Dodgy?

He says, Americans don't say dodgy.

I'm not quite as American as home runs being hit off an aircraft carrier from an inflatable batting case into a sea full of jet skis, but I'm pretty American.

I live in Wisconsin.

I grew up in Chicago.

I spend my weekends watching football.

American football.

I love apple pie.

I think Betsy Ross is a way hotter lady than Florence Nightingale.

And my penis is shaped exactly like the Washington Monument.

See a doctor immediately.

Well, I don't know if that means it has flashing red lights on the top of it to stop planes from flying into it.

But the point, he says, I think I'm just going to have to go throw some tea in a lake just to make up for this.

Keep up the bullshit, Mike in Madison.

Do not throw tea in a lake, Mike, unless you have pre-boiled that lake and added a splash of milk to it.

Well, I know, I mean, English language has taken over.

Apparently,

I had Barack Obama saying chuff to bits, didn't he, when he met David Cameron?

Oh, yeah?

Didn't say it like he looked like he meant it, but I mean that's that's British as well I guess.

This email came in from Matt.

He writes, dear hello Chris John and Andy.

In order of decreasing perceived fiscal responsibility.

Spurred into action by the increasing urgency in Andy's voice I went looking for the page to donate to the bugle.

I started typing S-A-V-E-T-H-E and as if by magic Save the Children appeared fully formed in the address bar.

I laughed, deleted it, found your page and donated to the Bugle.

And now I only feel a little bit guilty.

Yes.

Good decision.

And another email came in from Jason saying that he has now donated to the Bugle podcast, as all of you f should be doing,

and says, I've never donated to starving African babies, homeless grandmothers, homeless African babies, or starving grandmothers, or Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.

Still going strong.

You are magnets of anti-conscience spending my moral compass spinning around and pointing directly at f them.

What we need is more bullshit.

I hope you're happy, baby killers.

Yours, rotting in hell, for all eternity, Jason Anderson.

So, do join Jason in hell and keep the bugle going with your voluntary subscription.

Now available at thebuglepodcast.com.

See you down in hell, buglers.

I think there's going to be a lot of pun bells down there.

I'm hoping that could be my way out of it.

I'll get thrown out of hell.

I mean, I've

that'll definitely work.

Yeah.

Sports and, well, it was golf again last weekend, John, as Europe pulled off the greatest comeback since Jesus managed his I'm not dead, but my hands and feet are still painful trick almost 2,000 years ago.

Europe were 10-6 going into the final day of the Ryder Cup, but they roared back like a lion trying to sing along with some 18th century harps chord music.

They roared back.

No, no, no, no, no, that's it.

That's just a one-off.

I'm allowed that.

I'm allowed one of those a week.

It all swang when Justin Rose won the last two holes to beat Phil Mickelson and the tiny underdog continent of Europe sprang back to bite the trouser leg of the mighty overlords of Amerigolf.

It's amazing to think, John, that after this victory, Europe is a continent that has ripped itself to shreds in a massive war three times since America last did so to itself.

And yet here they were, displaying a kind of unity of spirit that even Antarctica as a continent struggles to match despite having no people on it.

Give or take the odd bugle listening scientist and are by now extremely annoyed and very hungry Captain Oates.

And while it sparked wild scenes of celebration, John, across Europe, from Nizhny Novgorod in the east to the Falkland Islands in the southwest, does that still count as Europe?

I'm a little bit rusty.

How has America coped, John, with its harrowing

time-lapping of defeat from the esophagus of victory?

America was really, really interested in the Ryder Cup, Andy.

We were all pumped up about it for the first two and a half days, but something about that final half a day just made them think that golf was silly and that we put way too much emphasis on the results in it.

Well, that is it for this week's Bugle Bugle 208.

Next week, John, it is our fifth birthday.

Half a decade of bugling.

Wow.

Oh, shit.

Oh, shit.

I think that just went through all of us.

I'm not sure.

I think that was worse than the 100, the 200, I think that's worse than anything.

Half a decade.

Oh, God.

Alec, what are we doing with our lives?

Half a decade.

I'm hoping there's something about that that's not good.

You can buy the Bugler birthday presents with a Bugle Volunto subscription.

Eco Buglers?

Yeah.

Keep us going for another two and a half decades.

At least get us to the midlife crisis, bugle stage.

That's all, buglers.

Until next week, goodbye.

Bye!

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.