Rum Doings Episode 62
by John Walker on Mar.04, 2011, under Rum Doings, The Rest
We’re really sorry that this is a clicky episode. We have no idea what causes it, and there’s nothing we can do to fix it. It’s really not that big of a deal.
In episode 62, Nick’s broken voice becomes the first point of discussion, once we’ve established we won’t be talking about whether the English have forgotten how to make a good cuppa. We then move on to talking about Nick’s wife’s breast milk ice cream, Nick introduces a new indication law, and John tells the story of the crazy Welsh ex-policeman at his door.
We have a discussion of Sweden, talk about why John’s risking becoming a rapist by playing Bulletstorm, and then chat about violent videogames.
Make sure to tune in to next week’s too, when we’ll be releasing episodes 40, 50, 60 and 63 all in one episode, with a truly excellent celebrity guest.
Tweet it, Facebook it, ask strangers on Formspring about it. We really do need you to do this. It makes a difference, and makes our egos happy. And writing a review on iTunes brings us more attention.
If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.
To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.
Or you can listen to it right here!
[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e62.mp3]37 Comments for this entry
1 Trackback or Pingback for this entry
-
Lady Gaga says no to "Baby Gaga" Breast Milk Ice Cream
March 14th, 2011 on 11:15[…] That's this Lady Gaga, is it? Also, the husband of the woman who donated the milk is half of a podcast I listen to – they discuss the issue on the episode linked. And finally, the lady who donated the […]
March 4th, 2011 on 15:41
Please can you provide the podcast in an ogg format? I feel slightly dirty playing your casts in mp3 … although maybe not as dirty as if I were a freedom advocate who uses an iPhone.
March 4th, 2011 on 17:27
Interestingly I think it was Nick who gave it away last week, as opposed to John this week – “Or I’ll revoke certain priviliges.”
March 4th, 2011 on 18:31
Listening now. Mongolians also drink fermented horse milk. I wouldn’t recommend that.
March 4th, 2011 on 19:13
Clickiness could well be a recording buffer issue, if you’re using a PC and DirectInput to record either an external mic or an internal loopback – it’ll most likely be a CPU load thing. I’d suggest something like ASIO4All and to set a nicely large recording buffer, and that should fix things.
March 4th, 2011 on 22:20
James: is it worse than any other yoghurt?
March 4th, 2011 on 22:23
The law in Scotland has just recently changed and now a man can be raped. I think the relevant act came into force very late last year.
Now oral, anal and vaginal penetration amount to rape in Scotland regardless of gender (except men tend not to have vaginas of course).
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2009/9/section/1
March 4th, 2011 on 23:19
I’m not concerned with what people eat or don’t eat; I’m just concerned with whether animal products and related processes are sustainable and ethical. I would, in fact, argue that it is generally unethical to pursue unsustainable agricultural processes.
This is terrible for me as I absolutely adore cheap red meat. I don’t care what anybody says, cheap hamburger and cheap steak is delicious. Properly-reared meat is better, certainly, but it’s not as if factory-farmed beef tastes disgusting.
I recently paid to have a cow slaughtered and processed from a local farmer’s lot of field-reared cattle. He filled three racks of my freezer! For the final cuts and ground beef, I worked out that the end-cost was just under twice what you could find it for at any supermarket, but the taste is far different and I feel secure in knowing the animal’s history. I had most of the ground beef made lean – it’s lean enough that no fat pools from them on cooking, but they remain juicy and delicious. Also, since I saw it processed, I’m confident that it’s very clean. I tasted a pinch or two of the raw ground beef at the butcher’s. Mmm. And I can cook them to a proper medium or just over medium doneness which is orgasmic-delicious.
Also, speaking of whether phenomenon like snow from blue skies, I once experienced thundersnow in South Bend, IN. Talk about eerie!
March 4th, 2011 on 23:19
Weather phenomena. Jeeze.
March 5th, 2011 on 11:00
I saw the ice cream story multiple times in the BBC’s “most read” sidebar and avoided it because it produced a very visceral “eww, gross” reaction. Now know it was pasteurized and all, I’m a bit curious to try some! Have you tried it John? If eating ice cream made from the breast milk of a stranger is a bit odd, what about from someone you know? I suppose the inevitable question is where does it all end? There’s another milky product men produce and I’m sure they’d be more than happy to donate it…
March 5th, 2011 on 12:31
I think were sleepwalking into a real problem with food, its bloody scary actually if you think about it. Farmers are getting screwed by the supermarkets so new farmers aren’t coming in and the old farmers are basically wondering what the point of it is. Plus we have the fact that we rely on other countries for some of our most basic ingredients and if they have any sort of problems were screwed. Plus biofuel is actually damaging our food production because were using the land we used for food for fuel. We won’t get it for a number of years but there might be a possibility that we will starve as a country.
Anyway back on topic, Sweden is expensive to our money but I thik people in Sweden get more money from there jobs then we do and people are happier there. Plus they have one of the greatest public infrastructures. I would love to go there once. Or even live there since they seem to be hiring a few animators over there.
March 5th, 2011 on 17:23
Tetris is one of the most barbaric and inhuman games I have ever seen. It requires the player to force blocks into other blocks to earn “points”. It therefore and without room for counter argument is a rape orchestration simulator and should be banned. This opinion does not in any way demonstrate how my own mind works, but in fact, demonstrates that all of human society is fundamentally flawed and should be stopped.
March 5th, 2011 on 18:57
Suicide doesn’t seem nearly so selfish as demanding people continue lives they find miserable and pointless.
I feel sorry for the people caught up in it, drivers of trains people jump under and so on, but maybe if there were some reliable and controlled method for people to end their lives, should they so wish, they wouldn’t feel they have to resort to such things.
March 6th, 2011 on 00:11
I was once trapped in a hotel room for 2-3 hours while a Canadian police team tried to convince the man in the opposite room to not jump out of the 6th-floor window.
I missed breakfast.
I like breakfast.
Since then I have had very little respect for people who contemplate/commit suicide. Don’t ruin everyone else’s day/breakfast as well as your own.
March 6th, 2011 on 11:33
@Colthor
Suicide is very selfish, suiciedal people do not care how people will feel about there death. I know a few people that were very fucked up because there close friends have died.
Also Suicide doesn’t solve anything. There is help out there even if you feel very miservable to say you should end your life because you feel very dpressed is a bit much to be honest. There are always good and bad points about life there are always depressing moments. Theres always a way to get out of them and help yourself.
But that involves hard work. Suicide is the easy way out, the cowards way out.
March 6th, 2011 on 12:24
While suicide is certainly selfish, almost by definition, I am not convinced that its cowardly, or that such language is useful. I think we can also distinguish between it and coding to die on ones own terms, which is a while other conversation
March 6th, 2011 on 14:02
Gloomy listening this week chaps. Condolences to Nick’s voice.
March 6th, 2011 on 18:02
@Xercies
And complaining that others’ decisions to do with their lives as they see fit could make you upset or inconvenience you *isn’t* selfish?
What people *should* or *shouldn’t* do is up to them.
And of course suicide solves things; once you’re dead you don’t exist at all. You can’t have any problems, because there’s no you to have them. It can, however, cause even more problems if you muck it up.
March 7th, 2011 on 00:31
Suicides don’t care whether it’s selfish or not. They are on a dark and lonely path, and such considerations are long gone.
March 7th, 2011 on 11:14
@Colthor
Well these people aren’t complaining it just happens, you go through the guilt of someone commiting suicide wondering if you were the one to cause them to do it. Its very sad, it has literally made them a bit more depressed and causing them to think of suicide. So at worst suicide can cause a chain of other suicides.
I just think suicide for depression is very wrong and very much to easy, a lot of these people don’t even talk about there problems to there parents or a professional they just think suicide is the answer.
March 7th, 2011 on 13:26
Nick’s missus in The Grauniad:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/mar/07/my-breast-milk-ilady-gaga?INTCMP=SRCH
March 7th, 2011 on 19:47
If you’re driving down the motorway and there are no cars a mile in front of you and no cars a mile behind you…
You _don’t_ need to signal, because there would be no point in changing lanes.
March 7th, 2011 on 19:52
Well, looks like your views on suicide has lost you a listener. I may come back but not for a while. You clearly don’t know what depression is. Yay for you.
March 7th, 2011 on 22:33
I recommend getting over it. You only listened because you agreed with everything we said? That would be a ludicrous approach.
March 7th, 2011 on 23:23
I’m assuming John dislikes suicide because he’s a mate of Jesus. Although Jesus technically committed assisted suicide, didn’t he?
March 8th, 2011 on 10:13
“I’m assuming John dislikes suicide because he’s a mate of Jesus.” Well this makes sense, as Nick seems to positively love suicide! I am generally willing to disagree with the gentlemen, but I’m not sure how one can disagree that suicide is almost always a selfish act (ignoring self sacrifice excetera). Something being selfish doesn’t make it inherently wrong of course.
March 8th, 2011 on 10:47
Well, to be fair, I imagine that John also finds other actions that have similar results but without the same short-term consequences of death (for example, going to somewhere far off like Thailand and never getting in touch) as similarly selfish.
It’s not like he’s saying “you can do what you want whilst you’re alive and that’ll be fine, but if you kill yourself you’re being selfish!“. Because that position would most likely be untenable.
John: is this accurate?
March 8th, 2011 on 10:48
(Obviously the Thailand thing only works if you’re living in the UK, and not Thailand or nearby territories. For people living in Thailand, feel free to substitute “Bognor Regis”)
March 8th, 2011 on 12:33
@mister k:
All acts are selfish.
But which is more so: doing something with your own life, or demanding others don’t do something with theirs so that they don’t upset you?
March 11th, 2011 on 12:02
Well, I have continued listening so I got over it.
March 11th, 2011 on 14:25
Graeme – I’ve edited your comment because I found what you said to be very unfair. Suicide has played a horrible role in my life, and my recognising it as a selfish act in no way suggests that I’m incapable of empathy. It doesn’t make any difference how tragic a person’s situation may be, nor how serious their depression is – things for which I feel a great deal of sympathy – suicide remains selfish, and I’m entitled to express that.
March 11th, 2011 on 17:16
Yeah, you’re entitled to express anything. Apparently I’m not entitled to respond since you’ve edited me out.
So you get to say what you like on your podcast (which is great), but people aren’t allowed to comment publicly back because you have control. I doubt Nick would agree with your action because BEMLi never worked that way.
Look, my dead brother tried to take his life on multiple occasions but it never occurred to me once that he was being selfish. He was in tremendous physical and mental pain.
You apparently haven’t suffered enough to know why people kill themselves. You mentioned that you’re on meds for anxiety. Imagine if it were far worse and untreatable (or, at least, treatments have failed), to the extent that when you know you have to put the bins out it occupies your whole day, just the fear of going outdoors.
To rein back a bit, I do think the podcast is great. And I do like you. But you’ve expressed a very extreme view. That suicide is THE MOST selfish thing you can do. If you’d just said it’s selfish maybe I would not care so much.
Anyway, I accept it’s your view. I will never agree with you. I will continue to listen to your show but you have made me very angry.
March 11th, 2011 on 18:20
Fine, repost your comment and I’ll leave it there.
I don’t remember what I said on the podcast, but if I said “the most selfish thing you can do” then I was incorrect to say that, and it’s not what I think. I think it’s selfish. But there are many more selfish things a person can do.
I really don’t think there’s useful ground to be gained in telling me here, and in your previous comment that I deleted, that I haven’t suffered enough.
March 11th, 2011 on 18:28
Graeme, I think John was not helpful in editing your comment. It just causes more friction; however, I think you should also consider that he may well have suffered terribly (I know some of the background to his statements, and I can assure you they’re comparable with what you suffered in this regard).
I suppose the debate is about the word “selfish”. Suicide as an act of wilful egotism is, I think, reasonably termed selfish. If it is little more than a chemical reflex, or is driven by the pits of desperation beyond any rationalisation, then how “selfish” it is, I suppose, depends on how one determines where will ends and base reaction begins.
March 11th, 2011 on 22:10
Well, you seem to argue that John has had serious mental illness. For which I’m very sorry because it has totally destroyed my life and that of my brother.
But John is not showing any of the signs of severe mental illness that I know from those I’m in contact with that have to chug bundles of pills.
What is getting married other than an act of self-gratification? Or maybe you’d argue that you’re doing it to give gratification to another. I guess you’d say that it’s a mutual bondage.
The most selfish thing I could do is to have a child. I’ve tried to kill myself multiple times. My mother is mad and my dad expressed suicidal ideation: it was selfish of them to bring that into another generation. The most selfish thing I could do is perpetrate my genes.
It’s far more selfish of me to fucking take up people’s time and energy and it would have been fantastic if I’d died at the age of twelve as I attempted.
Everyone would have been over it by now.
But, ultimately, suicide runs in families. So it’s no more selfish than having brown hair or blue eyes.
March 11th, 2011 on 22:32
Meh, fuck it anyway. Friday Night Dinner is quite funny. What is life for other than to watch sitcoms.
March 12th, 2011 on 10:41
The other thing is the thought of suicide gives many people hope. People say that if things get too bad they can end it. It’s an inspiration on par with religion.
And what was Jesus, who John reveres, but an ancient version of ‘suicide by cop’?
March 13th, 2011 on 18:37
Graeme – To be clear I have not suffered severe mental illness. I have anxiety disorder, which is about as non-severe a mental illness as you could hope for.
The role suicide has played in my life is not something I want to discuss on my public blog – it would be inappropriate for reasons that would be equally inappropriate to explain. I am fortunate that I never never considered suicide. But it is a subject that I find very traumatic.
I would like it to be clear that I am very pleased that your attempts at suicide have been unsuccessful, and I’d much prefer it that you stayed alive. While it’s obvious that when in the control of depression suicide can seem like a safe way out, it’s my belief that depression can be recovered from, and thus having terminated that life would be a far greater tragedy. And I do not say that lightly, or with the flippancy to believe that it can magically get better if one only pops the right pill or sees the correct therapist. Even with my somewhat mild perspective of having had anxiety depression for the last twelve years or so, I’m aware that fix-all cures are not realistic, but rather slow, deliberate, hard work leads to progress.
I’m also aware that without your comedy writing, the world would be a poorer place.