Weakness for Bleakness: Recent Episodes
weaknessforbleakness
“I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery."
Happy holidays, Bleakers. This time around we're talking about Victorian Labor and the big rural rail project (but not really) and then about our past experiences of religious faith or lack thereof (or is there a difference!? Yeah.)
ayyy, we're talkin heeyuh! It'sa a me, Maaahrio! Gedda loada these mooks Biden and Fitzgibbon, ya goombah! Ayy, dat's it. Tell Bowzah I said ayyy, I'm WALKIN HEEYUH!
Hey listeners, heard you like megasodes. What's that? Two and a half hours is too long for a podcast episode? Well, on the one hand, you're right. And on the other, here we are.
We got carried away with our first in-person record but there was a lot to talk about: The upcoming US election, the downgoing QLD state election, a li'l Musk Update for ya, and then two meaty and really quite depressing topics: Australian police and state over-reach, with a particular focus on the destruction of Djab Wurrung birthing trees, and the EHRC report into antisemitism in the UK Labour Party plus subsequent suspension of old Jez. There's also some directionless waffle at the end about what's next for the left, questions of scale, focus, etc.
oi oi Bleakers.
More bad audio this time. Bought the wrong batteries. We're talkin' supreme court, we're talkin' Kent border, we're mainly talking the New Libs, the Diggers (not those ones) and the Levellers. Levelers? Levelers.
orright. Take it easy, have a good one.
Hey bleakers. The Zoom is running out of battery, I can't find the power supply and there are no fresh 9 volts in the house so you're dealing with the warpy shit audio from Kieran again.
We've got a langurous look at the mental workings of the enemy today. First up, the wonderbrains of the mostly-lib writers over at Unherd - where genius goes to jerk itself off. And then after that, Darcy's adventures in the world of Talking to Racists Online.
Peace, friends.
Yo bleakers, another tardy episode to chew on. This time around we're talking private high schools, Elric Degandre, the Sargon/Warhams nexus, and lifestyles of the rich and the famous! (building obnoxious temples to dizzying excess while drawing from the privatised care sector like a total parasite)
Take it easy, friends.
Long time, bleakers. We're back and we're talkin' bout statues and the Zoomer v Millennial Generation War.
Another wonky audio episode this time, hopefully less wonky than last time and I think we're getting closer to something that doesn't sound like pure garbage.
We talk briefly about Dan Andrews' council reforms and the US Democrat primaries, but our main meat this episode is a double dose of injustice: the George Pell High Court decision, and the report into the handling of anti-semitism allegations in the UK Labour Party.
Closing song is a cover of 'Paradise', originally by John Prine.
Literally just a slow conversation between two friends gradually losing their minds. Darcy has been going back to Lord of the Rings, and Kieran has been going back to videogames and also spends the whole episode fucking around with a latex glove that he doesn't realise is making a super irritating noise. Can't even muster up a title pun that isn't bottom-tier bogshit.
It's episode 50, what a milestone. To celebrate, we record in separate places, being good little antiviral warriors. That's why the audio for this episode is so resoundingly bad.
We don't want to talk too much about news and politics. We end up doing it anyway but we don't want to, and eventually we manage to transition into our meandering bullshit about books, video games, other podcasts, etc. Not sure when we'll get back to our regular format but for now I think we're just coasting on this chill shit.
Hey Bleakers. We run through the basics of Super Tuesday: what happened, why, fuck, why, all that. Also got a little discussion on the closure of the Australian Associated Press, plus some mindless diversions about Dr Hook and the Welsh Herring Guy.
Take it easy.
Hey everybody, it's Darcy's Grab Bag! A series of small treats and tidbits from the warm pouch of Melbourne's favourite son. We got a Dutton bite, a Weinstein bite, a Cashless Welfare Card Bite, a Transport Union fracas bite, and I think maybe another small morsel in the bottom of the bag.
In the second half of the show we talk about the Nevada caucus results and the monstrous personage currently using the name Mike Bloomberg.
Lots of fucking sleep deprivation and fuzzy brains and low mumbly voices in this one, listener. That's how we do it!
Moron alert: listening to this during editing made it crystal clear how little we can be trusted with basic arithmetic involving simple rounded numbers. Almost every claim involving simple addition, subtraction or multiplication is an error - see if you can spot them all!
After a very brief touch on the NH primary and Darcy's experience protesting in the stupid opulence of the Crown lobby, we look into the scandal surrounding Bridget McKenzie and the allocation of sport club grants - the most boring dogshit in the world, right? Wrong. It's a tale of twists and turns and this is the level at which the average Aussie is interested in politics so god damn it anyway.
Then we read the findings of a news dot com dot au survey which suggest that, among news dot com dot au readers anyway, there is a deep paucity of self-awareness re: wealth and doing it tough, and perhaps a general lack of wisdom and worldliness, possibly connected causally to their decision to read news dot com dot au and maybe, although we couldn't possibly comment, that causal link has something to do with news dot com dot au being fucking dumb and its readers are dumb for reading it and reading it has made them more dumb.
It's a big look at the absolute disaster that was the Iowa Caucus, the opening moves in the intolerable chess game that constitutes the Democratic Primary in the US. Wanted to gloss over this one but unfortunately it's like a John Le Carre novel if it were written by John Kennedy Toole.
New Year Same Old Us. What we've done here, essentially, dear Bleakers, is accidentally record two episodes instead of one. Our opening "wee chat" constitutes the first episode, where we talk about the US Democrat Party primaries again (I promise, only another interminable several months of this shit) and about the Witcher TV show.
For the "actual" episode, starting about an hour in, we get emotionally distraught talking about the bushfire crisis and then wind things back with a look at the profoundly stupid Rolling Stone article about Russian "trolls".
All the best, take it easy.
Ay bleakers, sorry we been away. As penance we've put together this interminable 2.5 hour Christmas/Hannukah/Holiday Season special episode to tide you over. It's not, like, Christmas themed or anything, it's just happening at Christmas. Basically we just take a bit of a gander at what's going on in Australia, the UK and the US.
Plus a few little extras like a terrible conversation about our high schools and a game that Darcy's designed to foster peace between the warring generations.
Was gonna do a "Terror Tory" double pun but tbh Labor are fully culpable too in today's topic from Darcy: The Northern Territory "Intervention".
Plus, listen to a sleepy Kieran give a run-down on FBI profile-em-up "Mindhunter".
Happy bleaking.
We've streamlined our format! After a bumbling start of outstanding business and two new peerless and definitely funny characters Kieran's cooked up we dig into the preposterous shit going on with Julian Assange at the moment and then have a semi-directionless rumination on horror movies. Even our episode descriptions are getting more concise.
We have an exclusive, unique thing that no other podcast or media outlet of any sort is offering: Two white dudes talking about Joker. We also talk about the huge child forfeiture crisis happening due to NDIS delays as well, just to cut dumb with harrowing.
In stories, we have Babymarch, Epsteinkin Park, The Incredible Climate Moron and a MUSK UPDATE.
Hey bleakers. It's been months! Kieran is back from his quest to find himself in the wasted landscape of America. For an agonising fifty minutes, hear him deliver his field report about conspiracy theory, celebrity sightings, Yosemite mai tais and American Italian cuisine. Then listen to Darcy's breakdown of the Andrews/Hanson family court investigation - it's depressing!
In stories, we cover Bernie's health scare and coverage of his campaign more generally, Boris Johnson's unbroken stream of public self-humiliations, the bizarre and disquieting boring of Australia's political elite into the depths of the American arsehole, and our experiences of the climate strike on opposite sides of the world.
Hopefully we'll be back to a pretty regular schedule now with both of us dumb bastards back in Melbourne full time. I hope you're well. We've missed you!
Kieran's going away for two months so enjoy this Weakness for Bleakness Megasode(tm) in the interim. We look at the genuinely baffling scope of the Epstein madness and ponder a future where the craziest conspiracy plot out there turns out to be more true than we could have feared. And then we enter into a sort of rambling theological war with our Prime Minister over the shaky spiritual ground of his prosperity gospel bullshit.
Our stories this episode are: sushi pizza restaurant goes tits up because they obeyed the law; turns out recycling isn't some dangerous school of magic only available to those who roll a Chinese character; one-of-a-kind ooshie destruction drama; and the new beer tax: will gradually deepening our regressive sin taxes be the thing that tips the hand of the proletariat into revolution?
We also talk a little bit about the second round of Democratic primary debates at the top of the show. Spoiler: boring, Sanders good, Warren okay, Booker embarrassing, Biden shite.
Outro song is '1998 Demos' from old mate Leonardo's Robot, off the album Ziggurat Vertigo.
Hoy bleakers, Darcy's back and there's a couple weeks before Kieran's gone. So here's a bit of a megasode, a two hour paean to political monstrosity that orbits around the dark star of the UK Tories. Darcy runs down the origins of the name and the deep legacy of vicious ineptitude that lives on in the current party. He also takes a look at how they differ from our tories and also how the two parties resemble each other. There's kind of a mini B Topic where we gripe about how shit the current Labor party are.
Our stories are: Australian aged care facilities are killing their residents through the totally normal and understandable malady of malnutrition; Victorian authorities are doing sweet fuck-all to prevent the bulldozing of the sacred sites of the Djab Wurrung people; George Calombaris fully got away with stealing nearly eight million dollars and I guess the powers that be barely give a fuck; and a little bit of a Musk Update, which is mostly an excuse to talk about the Grimes fitness regimen thing that fooled way too many people.
The album we pulled our old outro music from has been released - Ziggurat Vertigo by Leonardo's Robot. You can listen to it on Bandcamp or Spotify using the links below. Our exit music for this episode, the song 'Concrete', is taken from the album.
All the best, bleakers, stay in it.
https://leonardosrobot.bandcamp.com/album/ziggurat-vertigo
https://open.spotify.com/album/4mJOn8gM7jqRHlbSBEFk8v?si=-Wdze8_rRz273X6_xPbOkQ
Come hear us congratulate ourselves. Darcy wants to talk about political correctness, specifically how easy it is to say sorry and back off from a shit position, specifically how easy it is for him to walk back his vile racist slurs from last week. We're here, we're white, and we're ready to accept your plaudits for solving the problem. Kieran wants to talk about prison labour. Shouldn't be a controversial position but I guess maybe it is: forced prison labour for sub-minimum wage is bad.
In headlines: Telstra contracts! Dutton saying gross shit! Labour tax strategy! Georgina Downer (our favourite)!
Little special between-episodes episode here, where Kieran, by himself, talks through the first round of debates in the US Democratic Party primary. Ever wanted to listen to one person stutter through a tedious political evade-a-thon only to come to the conclusion that Bernie Sanders Is Good? Then this is the episode for you.
Middle-East heavy episode this week, bleakers. We talk about the looming Iran war, how terrifying and stupid it is, and also about the baffling proportion of UK Tories who think the country is riddled with sharia-law no-go zones.
The stories we're looking at are CFMMEU party donations, Scumbum's "Trumpian" ambitions for the Australian economy, his extraordinarily sinister-sounding Industrial Relations reform, and some stats re: religion, migration ambitions, democracy-opinion-having, etc. from the Arab world.
It's good stuff.
Ciao, bleaklings. Another post-fast feast for you today. Our big topic from Darcy concerns refuting the idea that bigots are experiencing undue prejudice at the hands of bleeding heart leftist hypocrites, when in fact the correct take is that it's good, actually, that they're being shouted down. We talk about tolerance, the Karl Popper's paradox thereof, and the shaky moral ground of reasonable "civil discourse". We also talk about Adrian Cheok, the mad scientist villain from a side-banner porn game who absolutely dares you not to cum in minutes when confronted with his sexy, sexy robots. Oh, also, he's a fucking fascist and he wants to set up another dumb "Western Civilisation" school where you can study the new model of beauty: bloated, cyrrhotic shit-sack Steve Bannon.
In stories, we got Folau's big double down, we got Tiny Homes and the slum-to-come, we got local wards and the political composition thereof courtesy of new legislation from Dandrews, and we got a big ol' juicy doubler of a Musk Update for you.
Holy hell, bleakers, it's been a spell. We're back, for a few weeks anyway, and we want to talk to you about the results of the election. What went wrong? What were the bad things? Were there any good things? And more importantly, is there a way for us to pivot and rip the piss out of the Labor party? You bet your god damn sweets there is.
And in headlines, some bizarre Caro smearing; some terrible Setka infestation that just won't shift; Netflix and Uber are unprofitable but mostly TV is kind of bad a lot these days; and another mini update on the US Dem primaries, from your tenth and least informed source.
Greetings, my tetrachromatids.
Internet and University are to blame for the lack of an episode last week and the late episode this week. But with those problems resolved, we bring you this, our thirty-second episode, a scrabbly thing looking back at the last few weeks.
First up, Venezuela! What can we take from the current clusterfuck and apply to discourse with those folks who use it as a holistic condemnation of socialism? Then Kieran's got a little kicker on there in the form of three juicy climate change nuggets sure to suck the wind out of your lungs.
In stories: Would a -rose by any other name smell so much like Butt?; Georgina Downer is the latest Coalition person to fuck up the integrity of campaign advertising, and she's not even an MP; Darcy does this new gimmick where he experiments with playing devil's advocate for stuff. Here, he jumps to the defense of Robert Richter; and lastly, Kieran walks you through the Ramsay Centre curriculum.
Hey kids, and welcome to, uh, "Season 2" I guess we're calling it.
We're talking global poverty numbers this week, and why you shouldn't trust your friends when they tell you that, contrary to all reason, only 10% of the world's population are poor. We're also talking about the Gilette ad, and yes, you're right, it's not exactly timely, but somebody wrote about it in the Spectator and far be it from us to deny you all.
In headlines, we've got the miserable ghost of Tony Abbott's onion fiasco, we've got some criminal charges maybe coming down the pipe for some AMPeople, we've got franking credits trickery from the LNP and we've got more drama in the gang war between the mafia and the legal system.
And a new outro song for season 2! Leonardo's Robot gave us another one. This time it's "Franz K"
This time it's for real - the arbitrarily chosen endpoint for the meaningless designation of "season 1"!
We're talking Fingerhut, the Washington guy with an amoral recommendation for left-of-centre parties. Here's a surprise: it's what we kind of want them to be doing anyway. Also, we run through the contenders announced so far for the Democratic Primary for the 2020 US election, and it's: largely uninspiring!
In this week's stories, we got another Craig Kelly-related balls-up, an absolutely baffling Clarks Shoes proposal from the UK tories, capitalism's "identity crisis" as described by a disingenuous ghoul, and Hildebrand's latest great bungle. This time it's super racist!
Also we completely whiff Kenneth Hayne's name and call him "Bill Hayden". What're you gonna do?
Play us out, Robot.
It's that time of year when Australians everywhere start debating the wisdom of codifying nationalism, the world's worst political mindset, in a Purge-style day of divisive hatred. Find out whether or not we support it in the episode!
And in headlines: Wavves & the Slumlord Fiasco; Morrison & the Mundine Dream Team; Victorian Liberals & the Revisionist Sexuality Takes; Morrison & the Anguish of his Ancestors.
We're back, folks, and Darcy has an only slightly untimely 2018 wrapup/2019 speculation rundown for us. And Kieran wants to talk dead fish, and the cotton irrigation that likely caused the deadness of said fish.
In headlines, we got Peta Credlin and Right Power; we got the Bob Katter toad gambit; we got Macedoniae of varying legitimacy; we got the Australia Day citizenship power move. It's a big old return show, get on it.
Hey everyone, we were gonna have a Christmas episode but it just didn't work out. Kieran's away for a couple of weeks now so we'll be rejoining you in the second half of January where, without the vicious monstrosity of the holiday season, we will be able to maintain a more sensible release schedule.
Take it easy, listeners.
We're back! And it's a good thing too, because we have to talk to you about this execrable encryption bill that the Labor party have gently guided through the parliamentary process instead of opposing like sane people. Pretty soon downloading this podcast will be a vector for Peter Dutton's Home Security malware. And our B topic is this: the Labor party conference. But it's so dull, so uninspiring, so potentially enchanted with ancient glamours that we spend most of the time discussing sausage rolls.
In headlines, sort of: A tale of beans, heartbreaking and complex; Scumbo fucks up again with the whole Israel thing; a lawyer is forced by hard straits to prove the complete corruptibility of our legal system; and some rock-solid advice from millionaires, who if you think about it are the most trustworthy and switched-on folks ever.
Kieran got sick. So here's a pointless five minute episode if you feel like listening to him apologise in person.
Just kidding, all you chuddy boys. Sorry to disappoint. We're talking about Kelly O'Dwyer's valiant effort to eat her cake and still have it tomorrow, by taking her place as a feminist hero within the inherently misogynistic apparatus of the Liberal Party. And in other news, the climate strike. Get yer clarinets out for the environment, kids.
Headlines! A socialist hero, whip-and-chain queen Mistress Rebecca, who breaks down Tories for the good of the public. Abbott claims he's not a miserable ghost, but a real, meaty boy, who could too be king once more. Craig Kelly takes a shit in a public gym, then gets a pat on the back for it from his party. AND: Latham set to pay out big time in defamation case loss, the absolute dick.
Hello weaklings,
As we mentioned last week, no full episode this week as Kieran's away. But, since the Victorian State Election just resulted in a crazy bloodbath win for Labor, we thought we'd throw up a very short episode talking it over.
Plus, Michael Lamb had a hysterically funny interview and we want you to hear it.
That's all, take it easy.
Just a total hate-in today, a real bleaker. Darcy's recovering from a literal blow to the head and Kieran's going through some weird McDonald's-induced vagueness episode, so marvel as they stumble over their own attention spans in order to talk about: the Don Dale facility, notorious hellhole where human decency goes to die. Oh, and it's a youth detention facility, so it's twice as vile. Kieran runs through some of its history and a couple of the latest developments. Spoiler: fuck all has changed in the last two years.
Darcy's got a much nicer theoretical musing on the dangers of economic nationalism. Of course, it's Trump and Brexit-adjacent, so no real quarter here. What does it have to offer vs. globalism (nothing great) and what does it mean for the hopes of a brighter, more peaceful and internationally communal future (nothing good).
In headlines! Pamela Anderson puts elastic wonderboy Scott Morrison in his place; Matthew Guy has another policy basketball to shoot - whoosh! Nothing but nowt; Homophobic magazine says it had to close down due to all of the discrimination against its prejudice; and Glenn Druery's "hit-Netflix-drama-cum-baffling-disappointment-House of Cards" has started to come down, maybe, as he attempts to fully contain the Australian electoral system within a cash-based system of his design.
I love Philip Seymour Hoffman. One interesting thing he said, which I heard today during fifteen minutes of half-arsedly listening to an interview for some completely non-podcast related research, is "I'm not good at accents, you know, mimicking people." Just an interesting factoid!
Our big topic today is the Armistice Day Centennial and the surrounding nationalistic blood worship of military and war that has risen to accompany it. Darcy's rightfully skeptical of how we took the only opportunity we'll ever have to mark the Centennial and mostly used it to beat a war drum for, appropriately, war and war-related accessories.
Our little topic is the US mid-terms. Folks, Kieran is tired, and he's forgotten all the specific facts but that's okay, because the general take-away is that it was mostly a slightly-disappointing victory for the Democrats, who have an opportunity to recognise the electoral value of progressive politics but will likely choose to ignore this in favour of trying to peel off moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Mordor.
Quite a crop of headlines, too - The Luke Foley sexual harrassment scandal has us rightly bummed out, not least of which because of the disgusting way that the story was broken and its resonant effect on the suffering of Foley's victim. Mark Latham has joined One Nation in an attempt to prove that two heads with a collective intelligence of one pretty stupid person are better than one head with only the dull reptilian malevolence of a minor serpent. The Bourke St attack has predictably been hijacked by jingoistic fuckwits for jingoistic, fuckwitted ends. And Scott "Beefy's" Morrison has done it again - made a god damn fool of himself, and it may be the apex of his unbelievably dumb arc.
America sucks, friends. This week's topic is the three high profile domestic terror attacks carried out by shapeless white boomers with massive chips on their shoulders, as the US of A continues to slide comfortably into its old white supremacist jeans. Darcy lightens the mood, though - he hates your human rights, and he wants to take away Putin, Jinping, and Bin Salman's power to uphold those rights.
In headlines: Centrelink failing 48 million times, Scummo Underground, Birmbrain thinks he has a bigbrain, and Matthew Guy's got nothin'.
This week the boys allow themselves to flirt with dangerous levels of optimism as Darcy poses the question: Is the Libs' experimentation with political extremity possibly winding down? And Kieran continues to parse the world through the only lens he has available: stylised fiction, in this case The Man in the High Castle, which he suggests might be worth watching.
In headlines: Scott Morrison's apology to children abused by institutions, provided the abuse happened under somebody else's authority; Pauline Hanson is impossibly not the biggest idiot involved in her "OK to be white" motion; the Shooters are coming, and they're here to respectfully let you know that they're coming and what their strategy will be; and Wentworth, what the switch from a neoliberal, corporatist golem with soft commitment to tackle climate change to a neoliberal, corporatist golem with a soft commitment to tackle climate change might mean.
I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news first? Makes sense, take the band-aid off and then soften the sting. Well, all right. The bad news is the IPCC have let us know that we've got until 2030 to get our shit together and there's no chance of that happening, especially when the debate is always framed in terms of what you as an individual can do in the face of widespread corporate negligence. Ha ha! Well, you asked for it. The good news is that Darcy had a nice old time doorknocking for the Victorian Socialists and wants to tell you about it.
In the headlines, we have a real melange. Andrew Bolt stopped-clocked it. Wentworth could go bad for the Liberal party, luckily. Stuart Robert is a thief, as you well know, and he'll never be punished for it. And Scott Morrison has some truly insane worker-relocation ideas off the top of his terrible brain.
Plus another featured song from Leonardo's Robot's upcoming, at some point, album. This week, "They're Killing the Private Plane Industry".
It's an extremely hungover/generally exhausted episode this week folks! Darcy's got a missive from Alex Rosenberg (not Greenberg) about the role that narrative plays in our understanding of history. The long and the short of it: we reckon yeah, probably, but like, what can we do about it? And Kieran takes a quick look at the extremely incompetent Sokal Squared hoax.
In headlines: Labor's FGAP, Kavanaugh's in, Christians still not persecuted, and gambling ads on the Opera House.
Wowee. Plus a long overdue shout-out to our closing act, Leonardo's Robot.
It's back across the ocean for this week as we take a squiz at the strange US national-psychic rupture over Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court candidacy. Will they elect a likely sexual assaulter and compulsive perjurer to the highest legal office in the land? Probably! Those crazy kids. And Darcy wants to talk about representative democracy. Something new maybe? What could it look like, and what roadblocks do we face? Who knows, and many, respectively.
In headlines, we got a Trumpish love affair, a think-piece on smug politics, some reef science misbehaviour, and an ABC catastrophe as political contamination is finally proven. What a surprise though, it's the goddamn Tories.
This week we're talking homelessness and housing, as the nation's disenfranchised begin to sprawl out to the suburbs. Then we have a trip report from the second "State of the Union" panel, which leads to a conversation about social movement unionism.
In the headlines: Cop powers pumped! Farmers gazumped! Housing market slumped! Abbott nearly bumped!
Yo what's up? For your main course, Kieran will be taking you through the Steve Bannon/New Yorker Festival shit-show and inarticulately trying to explain why it has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with trying not to be in Mad Max world before 2025. He also ties in that lazy Jazz Twemlow video that's doing the rounds. Meanwhile, Darcy offers a look at Morrison's "gender whisperer" gaffe and the very real villainy that underpins it.
In the headlines: Responsible Adults who Worked Hard For Their Fortune tell you to shut up and get a second job that treats you like filth, as if you didn't have one already; Bill Shorten's curse from that time he chuckled and called a witch a "bit of a... ha ha... hard sell and Gretel type" means that he's inexplicably slipped in the polls; The Victorian Libs are trying to sell their HQ to make money for the election, which is not at all suspect coming from a group that claim to be elite economic operators; and Daisy Cousens is here again, to provide her favourite take: actually, being punk rock isn't punk rock, being a total square is punk rock.
Also, first ever and probably last ever edition of Kieran's terrible game: Is This Person I Follow On Twitter Any Good, And Also Who Cares?
Guest Description by Mark Latham:
These two stuck-up wankers virtue signal over the supposedly "racist" tradition of golliwogs. Let me get this straight - they're not even accurate depictions of black people and yet somehow they're "racist" because of how they depict black people? Another great example of consistency from the Left. Golliwogs are fine! Not one of them ever used memetic Twitter voodoo to incite a jihad or even once hurt my feelings. And I would know it if they had! My skin, while notoriously thick, has been described by more than one doctor as "singularly sensitive". You can have it all.
Also, some more Leftist snowflake drivel: They'll have you believe that the welfare of several psychologically pulverised brown (ie: jihadist) children is somehow worth equal consideration to that of our shapely French friends. Has the sight of a child mistreated with the full weight of reactionary Western monstrosity ever made me pathetically cum my pants as I stood up to deliver a speech about how the spread of Middle Eastern food represents discrimination against the proud Australian culinary tradition of doing British food but shit? I don't think so! It was an ad for Dior standing up the back of the room that day, coaxing thin, acrid fluid from the wizened labyrinth of my seminal vesicles and creating a noticeable wet patch on the front of my half-price Roundboy Special suit. It's the Edict of Fontainebleu all over again and I for one will not lie down for the dragonnade!
As if that weren't enough, watch these soy-chugging nongs pussyfoot around the headlines: Scott Morrison maybe masterminded this soft-cock spill bungle where the Silent Majority were robbed of their opportunity to have White Knight Peter Dutton come and solve all our problems with a flick of his discerning ivory wrist. These jokers boo-hoo over Morrison calling the putrid CFMEU photo stunt abuse, which it clearly is because these promising white colts deserve the chance to grow into beautiful racists without the influence of their so-called "fathers". They rightfully rag on Identity Left champion Elon Musk, who wants to build more turnstiles for filthy foreigners to jump probably. AND they weigh in on my defamation case, the boobs, the cretins, and they get it all wrong. It is NOT TRUE that I am a gleaming preposterous child, an extremely vulnerable tag of nerve-dense hysteria condensed into the terrible and shapeless form in which my dessicated, putrid brain now resides. Cancel these morons.
This is getting repetitive: What a week for the Liberal party! We go into some of the wild business surrounding the leadership spill that saw us with Morrison in the Lodge - it's all voting records, WhatsApp controversies and mystifying Cronulla profiles this week.
To lead softly into the topic we have some headlines about Derek, Newspolls, John McCain and planted churches. It's good stuff, folks. Keep your chins up.
Wow, what a week for the Liberal party. The Libs' relentless battle with their own sense of ideological identity is confusing, so we talk about it. We also talk about complete non-issue 'Insatiable', the sound and the fury surrounding it, and whether or not any of it is justified (basically not).
In headlines: Fraser Anning is a Nazi for the modern era, Charles Blackman has died, old mate Trumble's getting the hungry eyes from sunbathing-and-insect enthusiast Peter Dutton, and a Musk update! (he's sad :( ).
Kieran is away so here it is - a special two-topic non-political episode where we try to make things more complicated than they need to be!
Kieran talks about storytelling in video games, specifically the From Software games Dark Souls and Bloodborne, atrocious nerds' favourite media to get insufferable about. And Darcy talks about comedy as the social conscience of the times and how that whole thing came to pass plus its different visages, from the alt-comedy stuff in 80s UK to now. Don't let that trick you into thinking the boys are funny though! Comedy is serious business.
The Big Question: What is a socialism? Darcy's frustrated by the implication that he's been avoiding taking a firm position, so he takes one and provides a barebones definition for his vision of socialism. Kieran appends to this a doomed attack on the concept of productivity.
In headlines, we talk about the racialisation of violent crime by Australian media, the character-assassination of the Gatwick Hotel, the Nine/Fairfax merger, and a Hot Hildebrand Take on the Super Saturday elections.
Shifting sands! Malcolm Turnbull has decided that he has to be a bit more like 2013-era Tony Abbott and Fairfax Media has decided that it needs to be more like 2008-era Malcolm Turnbull. Truly, are we not witnessing the march of progress?
And in headlines, we have a Musk Update; we have a vast governmental system of data collection and management pushed by the Liberal party, of course; we have news from Israel too bleak to make a joke about here; and we have the revelation that, according to the brains in Canberra, all Melbournians are racistly terrified of the fictional African gang scourge.
No time for our usual topic format this time - there are too many headlines! We got Liberal party infighting, renewable energy, prison villainy, Trump update, Brexit/Boris woes, a baffling child gang story, Daisy on Apu, and the piece de resistance; Elon Musk has melted down in the most satisfying, hilarious way possible - we run through the timeline of rescue dive/pedo-gate.
Opening audio courtesy of some tragic on Youtube.
On this week's episode, we discuss two ways in which the info-pipe is doing you wrong. First, Darcy walks us through the latest senator Leyonhjelm debacle and how the media keeps bouncing off the man's absurdity. Also, Kieran gets on his high horse to talk about the latest Apple ads and their abuse of Daniel Johnston's 'Story of an Artist'.
In headlines this week: Outsourcing gambling and NBN solutions to you, the atomised subject! Local papers are dying in the US and it might hasten the death of society at large! And monsters compete to try on Mandela's skin in a ghoulish opposite-day display of charitable spirit!
Bleakness indeed! Kieran decides to use his topic slot to drop some omni-directional economic, environmental and existential misery on the podcast for no good reason, then Darcy gives us another Tiny Primer on government debt.
In headlines, we have the slow march of authoritarianism via anti-protest legislation; we have farmers, selfishly whipping Darcy into ceaseless apoplexy; we have the latest overture to GFC 2.0 in the form of the McDouble Mortgage; and we have the NBN, screwing up again, wow, what a surprise.
While we were trying to work out the logistics of remote recording to accommodate Darcy's illness this week, he said "I'll be back in a minute", then came back more than ten minutes later saying "I just had to vomit". We decided to postpone. Return next week, for more bleakness and hopefully a little less bodily weakness.
Oh no! Einstein was a racist! We discuss the implications of the revelation that a German man in the 20s held racist opinions and the dangers of sacralising heroes, but it turns into a narcissistic contemplation of the ramifications of our own inevitable fame. Also, a little primer and debunk of the arse-backwards theory behind trickle-down economics.
And in headlines: We got a political witch hunt, only the witch is a monster, and real, and worth hunting, and Peter Dutton. We got the ABC privatisation vote cockup from the Liberal party peak council. We got more microparty farce courtesy of Clive Palmer and his gormless candidates. And we got Elon Musk throwing his workers into a thresher for the sake of promises he fails to deliver on.
What happens to art under socialism? There are scraps of murky conversation across the internet and a body of old theory, but people aren't talking about it a lot, so we do. Then we talk about co-ops, what they are, what they do, and how they might help industry to navigate late stage capitalism.
And in headlines: Victoria has socialists, the Libs have failed to launch their anti-charity sedition law Trojan horse, Paul Dacre's been hidden in the attic after several unchecked years of coating the kitchen walls in poo, and good news for s'wits everywhere, another rickety Elder Scrolls game is coming sometime in the next decade.
Bonus game: Through fatigue or incorrect word selection, Kieran wildly mis-judges at least three spans of time - see if you can spot them all!
It's all about crime, criminality, criminals and criminy this week, as seen through the lens of the Andrews government's "tough on crime" posturing.
And in headlines: recycling is futile, superannuation is impoverishing us, Melania is missing, and the ways in which pro-small business rhetoric from banks might just be an attempt to sell a million-dollar dress-ups costume.
Plagued by technical difficulties, the boys nevertheless manage to discuss the US's attempts to one-up Australian villainy in the immigration department before Darcy brings us another brief on language clarity.
In headlines: the Labor part conference standstill, the inner-city housing market dip, the starved public medical system and the prospect of getting a personal call from a man who once acted in a creamed corn commercial in 1987.
It's all market horror from an ill Kieran and gross sexual misconduct from a less ill but no less beleaguered Darcy in the headlines this week. But don't worry, because we wash that bitter pill down with a circuitous, despairing discussion of the Gaza massacre. All this bleakness is making me thirsty.
Also at one point Kieran calls Roger Ailes "Bill Ailes" by accident. It's not a big deal.
It's the most exciting thing in the world: a budget episode! We cover some of the most egregious grab-hands of the latest Coalition budget and take a look at Shortman's reply; how it sought to whelm us, the whelming methods it employs and how a little more whelming could've gone a long way.
In headlines, there's a 200-year-old man touching the kids, an invisible hand touching China, a desperate party failing to touch the polls, and an American Hero exhorting us to touch the beehive of international tension.
This week, Darcy's trying to curtail your religious freedom to wage death upon the public and Kieran's as typically feckless and work-shy as any other self-entitled millenial. We go deep on some terminology so that any accusations of intellectual laxity are confined to our morality and work ethic, and we take a squiz at the circus surrounding the latest missives from the Prophet Kanye West.
Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain performed by the Skidmore College Orchestra
Now with all baffling pitch issues fixed! Kieran is staggeringly ignorant about the state of piscine gastronomy in the USA and Darcy brings troubling portents from Godzilla's pelagic kingdom. We talk about Lyca Mobile's involvement in governmental corruption so naked it'll make you blush, then check in on the vitals of the alt-right.