Episode 34 - The REAL Here's What I Don't Get

Ladies and gentlemen, let your beefs begin!  We've discovered that there's another podcast out there calling itself Here's What I Don't Get, and in true HWIDG fashion, instead of a polite e-mail inviting them to change their name, Uncle Buck has gone off half-cocked with his hat and shades on.  But what's their show like?  What are the issues that they discuss?  Do they talk about issues like

- The Hallmark Channel
- Weather men
- Using Your Kids for Virtue Signaling
- Updates

This episode is posting in the middle of July, which means it's only a few days more until they start putting up Christmas decorations.  And with the impending holiday seasons, everyone's minds turn to things like fall festivals, thanksgiving, Christmas parades, and the holiday spirit.  The "holiday spirit", as it turns out, is a corporate invention designed to sell decorations, presents, and greeting cards.  From Hallmark.  But with Man-Net infringing upon their market, they had to branch out into another lucrative revenue stream: entertainment.  But is the Hallmark channel really entertaining?  No.  No it isn't.  There's no witty joke or even room for discussion.  It's just drivel.  Mindless, bland, effortless drivel.  Hallmark movies are the television equivalent of flour and water mixed into a dough without any levening, binding agents, or spices, and then baked until it dries into a flavorless clump that isn't so much bread as it is dried dough.  It's technically edible, and if there literally nothing else to consume, you'll consume it, but it's a chore to eat and leaves you feeling dried out and miserable.  That's the Hallmark channel.  But, if there's nothing else on and you don't want to watch the Hallmark channel, what else is there?  The weather channel, you say?  Well, about that . . .

There are lots of jobs out that that essentially boil down to "step in front of a camera and lie".  One of those jobs is being a tv weather man.  You may or may not have a degree in meteorology, and you may have enough radar domes to supply radar jerk-off material for all of your meteorologist friends, but what you don't have is the ability to predict the weather with 100% accuracy.  What you do have is a rapidly waning commercial and societal relevance.  Nobody really watches actual tv anymore; we're all watching Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, or the insides of our eyelids, but by and large traditional tv stations are going the way of the buffalo.  And if you're a weather man, Tab doesn't even trust you to tell him whether or not that buffalo is going to get rained on, or sucked up into a tornado.  Furthermore, he's *really* annoyed when you bump his favorite show for a pointless tornado watch for three counties over.  Stop that.  Now you're just flashing that horrible "alert" noise to get attention and show how important you are.  That's called "virtue signaling", and while that's bad enough, there's another type of virtue signaling that's even worse . . .

I like to crack jokes with these write-ups, but this legitimately ticks me off.  Stop doing horrible, life-altering things to your kids like raising them specifically to be degenerate, or pumping them full of hormones to show how accepting and tolerant you are.  Stop using your kids to virtue signal.  I'm not one for passing laws to tell people what to do, but I have a soft spot for kids, and when you take your five or six year old kid and start pumping them full of hormones to prove a point, I think you should go to prison.  Not the county jail, but federal prison.  In the worst cell block, where they stuff you in a corner with all the crazies and assume they won't have to worry about feeding you breakfast the following morning.  From giving your kid a dumb name to telling your teenage son that you're ashamed of him for being born male (which was your fault, by the way; nice job), using your kids to show the world how progressive you are is exactly what tells me you're the worst type of human being alive.  And, as I type this and boil over with rage, I kinda think maybe "alive" is exactly what you shouldn't be.  But, feelings change, and maybe, just maybe, by next week my opinion will have been updated.  Speaking of which . . .

It's increasingly popular to have a "smart" this and a "smart" that.  From phones to watches to televisions to refrigerators, everything has to have a computer and a bunch of apps slapped on it.  But what happens when the devices that you use on a daily basis have to go through daily updates?  How about when you need to make that emergency phone call and your OS is in the middle of a ten minute reboot because it's updating?  What then?  I hope you weren't calling 911, or trying to explain to your boss that you're a couple minutes behind but you'll definitely make it to work.  If you are, you're boned.  All because the jerks that made the software got about 75% of the way finished and said "Yeah, that's good enough.  We'll finish the rest later."  There was a time when you bought a thing, turned it on, and just used it, but now you have to update a product AS SOON AS YOU BUY IT, which is absurd!  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to prepare some edits to this write-up so I can update it in the middle of you reading it.

Andy calls in, with his windows up this time, and Sage tells us what he doesn't get.  We had a VERY special 10 word list come in during the news segment this week.  Who were they from, who were they to, and what did they say?  You'll have to listen to this week's episode to find out!
(Tab mentions a video during the episode.  Here's the link.  https://youtu.be/49WDCIaD0ck

Episode 33 - Lower Education

The nightmare is over again (for a while at least) and Tab is back in North Carolina!  Once again in-studio, and before an audience of live streamers, we slam the throttle into high gear when we bring in the following issues:

- College
- Password Glitches
- Textbooks
- Ecosexuals

You've heard it since before you were born (because they whispered it to you while you were still in your mother's womb).  You've heard it from nearly everyone, because it's ubiquitous . . . Go to college.  But why?  That's what Tab would like to know.  There's a rising tide of common sense and realization that maybe the modern version of college is just a ponzi scheme and has nothing to do with improving your actual future.  You see, back in the days of yore, going to college had a very specific purpose, and that purpose was to give you the knowledge you need to go into a specific field of expertise and succeed.  You'd go to college to learn a trade of some kind.  Maybe law, maybe medicine, maybe finance, but you'd come away from the experience having exchanged your time and money for something of value: knowledge.  Maybe, if you were lucky, even wisdom.  But today colleges offer one and only one course: Advanced Cuckoldry.  I would have said Cuckoldry 101, but you're taught that in elementary school, these days, so that by the time you reach college, your skills of being a useful idiot are so advanced, you could go back in time and ruin history by teaching cuck-fu to the most important historical figures and altering the timeline, ultimately performing the ultimate self-cuckmate by preventing your own existence.  But then you won't have existed to become a cuck and go back in time in the first place, so history will switch back in a paradox of cuckoldry where you both do and do not exist simultaneously; Schrodinger's Cuck.  But, at least you won't have to worry about logging in to anything . . .

It's happened to us all; you're attempting to access some quasi-vital thing in your life, be it e-mail, facebook, or just your Xbox, and you have to enter your password.  No problem.  You haven't changed the password in months, so you fingers glide over the keyboard with the skill, ease and precision that only comes through muscle memory and BAM! you hit that enter key, only to have your password spat back in your face.  "Nope.  Sorry.  That's not right.  Do it again."  So, confused but aware that sometimes even the best of us can fat-finger a key on occasion, you back up and punt.  Nope.  Still not right.  So, this time, you take extra time, ensuring that you're hitting only the correct keys.  Still no.  Your account is locked up tighter than a Puritan vagina.  So now you start to question whether or not you've changed your password, or if maybe your account has been hacked, or if you're just losing your mind.  So it all ends up coming to the last resort: the password reset.  But now your well-rehearsed muscle memory is wasted.  That password will no longer exist; it went right into the same oblivion as your patience.  Sometimes it's better to just walk away for a bit and come back later.  Go calm down by doing something constructive like taking a walk, watching tv, or reading a book.  Of course, some books will only lead to more frustration . . .

Gamestop is notorious among gamers for buying a used game from a customer for a pittance and putting it right back on the shelf an just under full price, but they didn't invent that business model.  No, that honor goes to your college book store.  I remember my college days when you'd go to the book store and pay well over $100 for each of the eight textbooks I'd need for that semester, and that was for used copies.  I'd hate to know how much they cost now.  But, in a day and age where literally all of human knowledge is available at our fingertips, thanks to the internet, what good is a textbook?  If your professor is so smart, why can't he or she just straight up explain the facts to you, or demonstrate them somehow, and leave the Big Textbook industry out of it?  Because it's those same professors who are writing the books, and those greedy jerks aren't going to let a second revenue stream just pass them by.  But what happens when you refuse to buy the book and just show up to class, armed with the internet and a sassy attitude?  Can you autodidact?  Can you out-teach the teacher; out-profess the professor?  If you could find a way to undercut the teacher by being a tutor, could you out-sell the snake-oil salesman?  Could you out-cuck them Cuckster?  That's the beauty of the free market.  Except for the inherent deviancy of creepy college professors.  And speaking of creepy deviancy . . .

I remember back in the 90's when environmentalism was being crammed down the throats of children across America, sold to us by shows like Captain Planet, but now it seems that they're using sex to sell environmentalism, so prepare to have something completely different shoved down your throat.  A penis.  Because the latest and greatest trend in idiotic leftist non-sequiturs is Eco Sexuals.  What are they?  Well, as the root words suggest, they are people who literally (not figuratively) try to have sex with the environment.  Women smearing mud in their vaginas and grinding on trees and rocks.  Guys (I assume) who see that knothole in a tree and think "Oh baby . . .".  I wonder how long it'll be before I see the inevitable image of a woman (or man) with tree sap dripping down their face like a money shot?  The sad part about that last statement is, as silly and deranged as it is, you KNOW for a FACT that it's coming.  But, when you're desperate and wierd enough to try to attain sexual gratification from tree bark, maybe it's just a relief that anything at all is coming, because you definitely won't be.
We revisit a voicemail from last week, and Sage drops by with an issue of his own.  What doesn't he get?  You'll have to listen to this week's episode to find out!

Episode 32 - Happy 4th of July

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I hope you're ready for some fireworks (both literal and figurative), because this week's episode was recorded on the good ol' fourth of July! So prepare to 'ooh' and 'ahh' as we bring in the following issues:

- Slow People In Buffet Lines
- "I'm a [blank]" guys
- Pirate movies
- Assigned Seating at Movie Theaters

With cookouts and potlucks being in full swing this summer, Uncle Buck has a helpful PSA to help you stay ahead of the game: KEEP MOVING! There's very little as boring as a potluck dinner, and even worse than the screaming of the unattended kids isn't as mind-numbingly enraging as the dawdling, dead-eyed pace at which people shuffle through the buffet line. It's as if everyone got injections of indecision and ineptitude prior to attending. It's not that hard to choose the two or three things you're actually going to scoop onto your plate, especially since 75% of what's on the table looks completely inedible and\or unsanitary. Just grab the spoon, scoop up your burnt turd casserole, accept your fate, and move along. It's not that hard to pluck out a piece of KFC chicken from the bucket and get out of the way. I have no idea why so many people out there are hyped up over socialism, because the food lines that await us twenty years down the road from now are exactly like this, both in terms of quality and selection, except the table is going to be empty by the time you get to it, and by that point you're going to have either starved to death or cannibalized your neighbor, so the whole ordeal is a moot point anyway. That's why we have jobs. In an economy driven by capitalism, you go to work, earn money, buy food, then prepare and eat it in the privacy of your own home, without the entire nursing home pawing over it first. On today, of all days, I'm thankful for the freedom to develop a skill, work a job, and reap the benefits of my labor for ME and ME ALONE. But, even going to work has its down sides . . .

It's happened to us all. You're taking that skill that you've built over years of hard work, and applying it to a work situation. There's a problem to be solved, and just like that anti-gun weenie who portrays the hero in the Taken movies, you've got a particular set of skills, baby! But, it never fails; some schmuck who saw a Youtube video that one time and somehow has the authority in the situation to hamper your progress comes up and tells you "Oh, I know how to do this, too. I'm a [blank] guy." and proceeds to spout the most inane nonsense you've ever heard. "Oh, you do a podcast? Yeah, I listen to several podcasts, so that makes me an expert. Here's why your show sucks." Oh yeah, buddy? But how many do you actually DO? How many hours have you spent actually COMING UP WITH CONTENT, performing that content, recording it, editing it, presenting and then promoting it? None? Imagine my surprise . . . Until you've actually put your face in front of the camera and hung your voice and opinions out to dry for the entire internet, how about you shut up, yeah? Oh, you know a thing or two about turning on a light-switch, huh? That makes you a lighting engineer? I'm gonna refer you to my buddy, Tab, who is more than likely going to take that entire lighting fixture and wedge it up your rectum and turn it on so that your face looks like the CHARGIN MA LAZERS meme. Speaking of memes . . .

Culture is informed by memes. Did you know that. No, not just the silly pictures we look at on facebook instead of being productive at work. I'm talking about the original definition of cultural memes. But one stereotype that I'm sick to death of is that of pirates. Not the internet pirate, but the Golden Era of Sailing type. The "swashbuckling adventure" type. What exactly does "swashbuckling" mean, anyway? It's basically become synonymous with "cheesy pirate movie". But the fact of the matter is, pirates, while fascinating to learn about, weren't heroes. Or even entertaining. They were a terrible nuisance, and everyone and their brother loathed them to hell and back. Why? They stole and killed. That's it. They didn't bury treasure, they didn't have noble intentions, and they weren't particularly charming or fun. They were people who didn't want to to an honest day's work, so they got on a boat, waited for someone with money to come along, boarded their ship, killed everyone who resisted, and stole whatever was valuable. In essence, they were socialists on a small, more effective scale. It bugs me to no end to see them portrayed as romantic heroes, and it bugs me even more to see kids shows telling us weird nonsense like "pirates never take anything that doesn't belong to them." That's nonsense. That was the entire purpose of being a pirate. But there's one more thing that bugs Tab about pirate movies . . .

Back in the good ol' days, you could just go to the theater, buy your ticket, go in, and pick a seat. Any seat. Got there before everyone else? Then you get literally any seat in the house! Enjoy! But not anymore! There's a growing trend of buying your movie tickets online (which is degenerate, by the way) and having your specific seat in the theater saved for you. You don't even have to get off of your lazy butt and get to the theater early; you can just have mommy and daddy coddle you. Pretty soon, you won't even need to drive yourself to the movies; they'll offer a service where someone comes to your house and carries you, like the crippled writer in Clockwork Orange. But while being toted around by David Prowse (look it up) may be fine to you, it's not to us. There's an old saying, "The early bird gets the worm." Well, I'm not too keen on eating worms, but if I get to the theater before you, I'm taking whatever seat I want, and if that happens to be the one you reserved, too bad. You can go pound sand. I was here first. What's that? You're getting the usher to come deal with me? Good luck, sucker! I out-weigh that pimply prick by a good hundred and fifty pounds. I'd love to see him try to force me out of this chair. You just have fun with that. It'll probably be more entertaining than the movie, anyway!

Our buddy Sage calls in again, and we get a surprise voicemail from a super-villain! Which one? You'll have to listen to this week's episode to find out!

Episode 31 - "Alexa, Where's My Package?"

Once again into the breach, and by "breach" I mean technical frustrations!  I swear, whenever we're doing the show via Skype, things just get more and more frustrating, but in just a couple more episodes, we'll be back in studio, so please bear with us as we tackle the following issues:

-Delivery Tracking
-Cuddlists
-DIY
-Weaponized Consent Laws

It's a staple of the modern age, it seems, to order something online.  From tools to entertainment to food, we click the "confirm" button and the excitement begins to set in as we eagerly await whatever it is we've spent our hard-earned money on.  And, to heighten that sense of expectation, you can now track your shipment on every leg of its journey, and even see when it's supposed to arrive.  The key words being "supposed to".  But even Alexa can't make the delivery driver competent, and when they screw up and your precious, anticipated package doesn't find its way into your hot little hands, it's upsetting.  Very upsetting.  Upsetting enough to make one need the reasurring comfort of human touch, like a hug.  But what if you're just too socially inept to score a hug without money exchanging hands?  Well . . .

Like most folks these days, Uncle Buck is way too addicted to Facebook.  And every so often, he runs across something so strange, so backwards, so inexplicably stupid that he just can't wrap his head around it.  But could he wrap his arms around it?  I'm talking, of course, about Professional Cuddlists.  What are those, you may ask?  They're charlatans who have somehow managed to make a living by selling non-sexual physical contact.  Like hugs.  Or cuddling.  Or dry humping?  But, it seems like most folks chicks don't need to hire a professional to hug or hump them; they can find that on their own.  But maybe some things you shouldn't be doing on your own . . .

As one comedian put it, Pinterest is where your girlfriend stares at her phone for eight hours and then you eat salad out of a mason jar.  But, aside from helping birth the Ten Word List perk for our Patreon subscribers, it's also a place that convinces the least skilled among us that they too can slap together some ramshackle monstrosity and boldly declare "nailed it!" to the world.  Well, how about when the "nailed it" refers to the rusty nails that you failed to remove from pallet wood that pierces your skin somewhere and requires a tetanus shot?  Or how about if your DIY playhouse collapses and kills your dog?  Let's face it, sometimes taking a half-assed stab at something just because you saw it on the internet isn't such a good idea.  Sometimes trying to do it yourself will only get you screwed, and you'll have no one to blame but yourself.  But speaking of blaming people for screwing you . . .

If you're one of those folks who has managed to shed your professional cuddlists and found some actual human affection in the real world, watch out, because even though money isn't exchanging hands, sex is getting to where it requires a signed contract.  Why?  Because of weaponized consent laws, so that even though yes means yes, sometimes it can also mean no.  Especially during or after the fact.  And whereas some folks are decent enough to talk things over before the banging begins, sometimes you wind up in these situations and find that things aren't going as planned.  Consent laws are, on the surface, a great thing that give victims of rape a voice to hold their attacker accountable, but that pendulum can swing both ways.  It's very easy for any rule to be abused, and when that abuse is used to accuse someone of rape, you can permanently ruin someone's personal and professional reputation.  Buck talks about a solution, but it may not be for everyone.

Our buddy Sage calls in three separate voicemails, and our Aussie buddy Pork Hunt gives his two cents on the Air Compressor debate.  Whose side did he take?  Find out on this week's episode!