Episode 204 - BBC Love

Check out Hack of the Living Dead Premiers Monday October 26th @ 8pm eastern

A dark and stormy night. Lightning crashes in the distance. On the highest hill in the lands just outside a village in central Germany there is a man in a castle. In that castle there is a laboratory. Harnessing the power of the storm, an array of machinery in this lab is powered to do something unimaginable. As lightning strikes the tallest tower of the castle, it powers this demon machine and enters a slab of dead flesh held together by sutures and metal. As the nightmare is struck with the harnessed energy of a thousand suns, the unthinkable happens: the demonic mass of collected remains comes to life. Shambling around he searches for his master in order to fulfill his one mission. This decrepit mash of unholy science and the recently dead has but one thing on his mind. A single task to employ on everyone he meets. As he finds the one who created him, he extends his hands, starting the chain of events that will take over the entire castle, leaving the nearby town in tatters. The monster begins the time-long ritual that has taken over the mind of much more alive men as long as they've been able to. He does the mash. He does the monster mash.

* Not Available In Your Country
* Needing Celebrity Endorsement
* Only Playing the New Stuff
* Fauxmpkins

FIRST ISSUE DESCRIPTION HAS BEEN BLOCKED BY HWIDG STUDIOS LLC (EVEN THOUGH THIS CONTENT IS FREE AND MAY NOT EVEN BE LICENSED TO A SEPARATE COMPANY IN YOUR LOCATION).

There was a time when people didn't publicly display every aspect of their life nor was it expected. In fact it was looked down upon! Can you imagine that? Everyone just keeping their thoughts to themselves? Neither can I, because I've been dealt a barrage of the details of everyone's personal lives that I never asked for. That's 2020 for you. Everyone's got an opinion, and opinions are a lot like assholes. Everyone's got them, they usually stink, and before recently most people didn't go around showing them off to everyone.

A free concert in which the artist only performs their latest work is just a commercial. Sure, most people understand you've got to do some advertisement for the new stuff, that's why the tour exists in the first place. But you've got fans there to hear you, not just your material, so that includes the classics. This is the absolutely only time that the drunk guy yelling for your biggest hit as if you're not going to play it is correct.

Fake pumpkins are a lot like fake meat. It's an approximation of the real thing that has been created by science to placate white women. They're for entitled people that don't want to put the effort in to Halloween decorations but still want to fit in. Imagine going to a butcher's shop and asking for their vegan, pre-cooked, gluten-free, organic beef roast substitute. I'd say that butcher's got free reign to go Michael Myers on your pumpkin-spice drinking self.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 203 - Turnaders

It's a chilly, foggy night. You find yourself walking the streets of your hometown once again. You recall the days of yore, running from house to house on Halloween night, holding out a pillowcase and getting it filled with literal pounds of sugar. Eerie vibes came from Mr. Jenkins' place, but if you were brave enough to get past the dead bodies and shrieking lady on the porch, you'd be rewarded with a handful of King-size candy bars. But now things are different. It's still cold, and maybe you're wearing a mask, but no longer do children run around in costume. They're either herded in a minivan safely from house to house or are doing the rounds at the local mall that hasn't gone under. You yourself have changed. You're older now, and perhaps you're in a costume, but its nothing extravagant. No fake blood or Batman cowl. You've lost the Halloween spirit and just go out drinking these days. What's the point, it's 2020 anyways, next week will bring even more depressing news. It turns out that Freddy and Jason should have been the least of your worries. The real monster all along was you.

* Spooky Season
* Storm Chasers
* Halloween Movies
* Politics

There's a conspiracy abound, folks. The Case of the "Spooky Season". Why have we gone from Halloween to "Spooky Season" or "Spookytime" or "Scary Days" or "Candy Month"? Is it the old Christians at it again? Blaming slasher flicks and Reese's Cups for letting Satan into our hearts? Or is it something more sinister? Perhaps its the deadly grasp of capitalism, wishing to take another Holiday and cram it into Christmas like many others have been. Soon enough we just might see orange and black Holiday decorations, and finally they can officially add September and October into the Holiday shopping season.

Hey, i've got a great idea, lets load up a van with a bunch of expensive monitoring equipment and radar, load up on beef jerky and Pop-Tarts, and make our way through the plains of Oklahoma looking for high-speed funnels. Yeah, we'll go around videotaping wind, doesn't that sound great?! We can pretend it's exciting and cool! We can freak out and need to change pants because of ROTATION. Doesn't that sound absolutely magical?

Much like a hack comedian doing a political bit about a potential Presidential candidate, setting your film on a holiday is a real gamble. It either makes the movie all about the holiday, forcing it squarely into a certain time of year where you can watch it and not feel like a psycho, or it simply is the backdrop and in that case, why bother? Its even worse with Halloween movies because it forces you to make a Holiday-worshipping horror movie all about pumpkins or whatever, or you've got a kid's movie. There's no in-between.

Being told to do something makes people not want to do it. Being told to do something over and over can make a person go loopy. Being told to do 15 things multiple times a day every day can make a person want to KILL YOU. Vote. Voting isn't everything. Sign this. Raise awareness for that. Hate them. Don't hate them. Watch this. Cancel this person. Support this. Support that. Every day. Over and over. OVER AND OVER.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 202 - 250K Dongs In My Pocket

With the official start of the spooky season, HWIDG is proud to bring to you life's scariest costumes! No vampires or ghouls here, though. No, we've got a line of the highest quality, low-quality costumes of life's actual monsters. Like: taxes! BOO! Okay hotshot, not scared yet? How about a broken condom! Get ready for those child-support payments bud! Or what about this: a kidney stone! You've never wished for the sweet relief of Lady Death faster than when one of these is stuck sideways in your tubes, eh? Also featuring:

* Mice
* Hyper-Edited Podcasts
* Self-Censoring
* Rich White People

Small, beady eyes. A love of cheese and peanut butter. A severe physiological reaction to cats. But enough about me, lets talk mice. Vermin. Rodents. Do other words sound like they're moist like these do? They're perfectly suited for the tiny scuttling creatures that currently have the Handlebreaker House in terror! Even a single rogue mouse, if bold enough, can get you into attack mode (or more accurately fight or flight mode with a heavy emphasis on flight). And we keep trying to re-invent the mouse trap yet somehow these little creepy-crawlies must have their own mouse scientist working on a "How to Lick the Peanut Butter Off of a Trap 2020" pamphlet. Well, stop it Brain!

Look, we don't claim to be the be-all and end-all on how to run a podcast. We do our thing and we stick to it. No one wants to hear 20 seconds of silence while you pull up a news story, sure, but there's got to be some middle ground between not editing at all and the hyper-stylized flash-forward speed of some of the podcasts out there. Maybe some nutso out there needs to have no gaps between words spoken, but come on, let there be a flow to the conversation.

Look, i'm not pointing any elbows, but i'm fed up with a certain website that's got Tube in the name. It's probably my most visited website, and heck I even pay for their premium service, but sometimes I wonder if its worth it. I've also got qualms about a certain Hub if you will. *nstagr*m deleted my last selfie for being too risque, what's up with that? And my car isn't doing so great, it's a F*rd. WHOA I DIDN'T SAY FORD, DON'T YOU PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH.

Everyone likes money. Everyone hates losing money, especially other people taking it from you. So when you get a lot of it, you like to keep a lot of it. Well, it sure would be nice if you could keep more of this money than your neighbor. Well, invest a little of that money in a poliitcal campaign, toss a couple of platitudes around and BAM, you're on top of the ladder with all your money, making the rules about what those other people can do with theirs. And wouldn't it be nice to have a little more money? Sure would. Well, with your new found power, you can take a little bit from each of those tiny people down there. So you do that a few times and they like you! You do them good. You keep them safe. Yeah! You know what's best for those people. You know better.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT! Plus check out the video segment of Lower Decks-pectations Episode 3!

Episode 201 - A Nice Pesto Aioli

Debates, debates, debates. Dat's all I hears about dis week. Debates this, de bates that. I don't even know who da Bates are? Norman Bates? Like from da Psycho movies? Why is he runnin' for President? You gonna vote for a psycho? Really? Don't he dress up like his mother or whatnot? You really want one o' dose homeopaths in da White House? Whateva happened to decent honest Italian-Americans runnin da joint. Like Bobby DeNiro. He was king a da place back in da seventies! Hell, even an Irish fella. Nowsadays we got all these Khakistanis and Liberians and You-Know-Whats in the office. Anyways, $14.56 is your total. Jeez all dat moolah, just for:

* The Open Software Gamble
* Getting Your Issue Solved Right Before You Record
* Fact Checkers
* Douche vs Turd Sandwich

Ah, good ol open source software. All the goodwill of a community-ran project combined with the work effort of $Free.99. The problem is that you've got to deal with either a know-it-all, anticorporate, "i'll never sellout" bastard that works on it when he's not delivering pizza or a constantly shifting "small company" aka a Slack server of university students that's actually a branch of a branch of the original project because the creator ghosted them. And even then, you're dealing with either the barest of bones "drag this file into this command prompt batch script" or the "I Can't Believe It's Free" almost professional UI and by god, everything in between. It's a real gamble and honestly, most of the time you're better off buying.

Sometimes an issue is a big ol diamond. Shiny and new, we can wax poetically about it for a whole episode by itself. Other times it's a 5-minutes-before-we-hit-record last resort of a hail mary. Then every now and then something happens and the issue starts growing and growing. It's just one thing after the other this week and boy are you going to unleash it on Monday night. And right before you do, the thing you've been steaming about the last four days gets put out like a lit match and a gust of wind. You're not gonna be able to light that match again, but damn it you're gonna tell the story of that match's life.

The problem with fact checkers: there are two facts to every question these days. The one you want to hear and the one you don't. Is that how facts actually work? Of course not, but we've pushed each other apart so much that we have "facts" and "alternative facts" now. And everyone is guilty. Agenda-pushing news gets stuffed into outrageous headlines that present half of the facts if any and that gets shoved into your timeline or wall or what have you, and the common person doesn't click through. Whether its laziness or for any other reason that headline is now the fact, even if the rest of the story disproves it. And so you've got 2 different sides doing this to two separate types of people and now we can't agree on anything because every part of the chain is biased.

The greatest of choices. A literal douche versus a literal turd sandwich. At this point its like the country is being run by Jigsaw and he wants to play a game with us. Either cut your chest open with a rusty spoon to find the key he implanted into you that will unlock the machine slowly running a giant drill into your temple or sit there and let it happen. Either way it's going to hurt. People don't like pain Jigsaw. That's the part you forgot. Worst of all, these days there's a bunch of people on the sidelines constantly yelling at you to play the game. THERE'S A DRILL INSIDE OF MY HEAD RIGHT NOW.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 200 - Bicentennial

Like all great things, HWIDG has reached its 200th anniversary. That's right we've been bringing you life's toughest issues for two hundred years now. Hard to imagine that this all started with two guys writing into their local newspaper about the death of Daniel Boone and how he was "an overrated hack". Their newfound brotherhood in all the things in life that bugged them created what will become today's media empire. Here's to two hundred more:

* No Source
* Collectible Coins
* Ignoring Scalpers
* Time to Load Games

These days people are all about "aesthetic". Mood boards, screencap galleries, and more are plastered all over to get you to say "that's so aesthetic", whether its purple-soaked rainy cyberpunk or high end modern-day prosthetics-as-art or even retrofuture car dashboards. Even the dumb things you want to dunk on are their own dumb aesthetic. Therefore, you don't need to add any words or searchable features. They would just mess up the mood. That way you can get even more "engagement" by having everyone ask you what the hell it is you're aestheticing/dunking on.

Coins! Unless you've got a mint condition 1823 strawpenny they're worth about their face value. It's just metal! Usually bad quality metal at that! Quarters made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Watergate? Useless if they're made of the same things as regular quarters and they print a bazillion of them. Those commemorative 9/11 golden dollars you bought? Now those will be worth something when World War 3 happens. You could probably trade one of those puppies in for a week's worth of MREs. Mmmmmmm. Dehydrated chicken alfredo.

Seems every time an expensive limited-edition hot new thing is announced, the inevitable happens. Terrible people abuse the systems in place or straight up use bots to grab every one they can, then once stock is out, sell them on eBay or Facebook Marketplace for five times the price. That means you don't get a new Playstation, some kid doesn't get their Scooby Doo Lego set, and some highschooler that got a part-time job to buy those new Jordans is now failing Math for no reason. And who cares about this? Not the manufacturers. It seems every time this happens they say "we're so sowwy, we had no idea that putting all of our current stock up for order at a single time and announcing it ahead of time would make them disappear faster than a chocolate cake at a fat girl's wedding."  

20 years ago: insert cart/disk, boot into game, select your save and load, play. Currently: log in to your account, update console firmware, reboot, login, all your recently played games' updates are queued up, stop the ones you don't want so only the game you want to play now downloads its 43GB patch, watch YouTube on your phone but turn your Wi-Fi off so your console gets all the download juice, wait, let it unpack and patch, boot up the game, login to the Developer's account system, then finally you can play.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 199 - XXXL, All Beef, No Filler

It's finally that time of year folks. The weather's getting colder, the trees are changing colors, and you're stuck inside! You're working from home for the foreseeable future and its driving you crazy. In fact you're hearing strange noises from the neighborhood. Every odd noise makes you jump feverishly, and you arm yourself when you walk around the house. Smart, because there's been a ravenous escaped convict in your attic and walls. You better escape from him if you have any chance of appearing as a guest on our new sister podcast Here's What I Don't Get About Almost Being Murdered. Join us every other week as we discuss the finer points of dodging knife strikes and which kind of doors are the hardest to break through with an axe. Oops, you're dead. This must be the beginning of the movie, my bad. I guess I'll just wait here until those sorority girls move in to ask them about:

* Blowing Smoke Up Your Ass
* Tree Care
* People Who Don't Take Care of their Car
* The Gathering Place

By the late 1700s, it was popular belief that drowning victims could be resuscitated by literally blowing smoke up their ass. And not just any smoke at that! Tobacco, specifically. The thought was that it would dry the water and the tobacco would increase their heart rate to get them back to life. I've just got to imagine two things. One: that the guy who invented this was just really kinky. Did you know that at this time they also gave monetary rewards for civilians that rescued drowning victims? And that there were con men who would abuse this system by "saving" their drowning friends? So, two: those dudes were just really kinky too! Damn, old people were really kinky.

Just let trees be. They are not your hair. They do not need constant pruning and primping. If something bad happens, like a rogue branch starts leaning on some electrical lines, or a storm blows one over, sure, it needs to get taken care of. And if it needs to get taken care of it needs to be done by a professional with the right tools. Your small hand saw with half the teeth missing or your little electric "chainsaw" is NOT the proper equipment. You need power tools. The stink of gasoline, they're incredibly dangerous, but guess what, they get the job done.

Car guys really like their cars. Car guys also really like telling you things about cars you didn't know. Is it useful? I guess. I know not to put water in my radiator now. Or was it my carburetor? I also know that you don't just grab the gold bottle of Valvoline oil. I think Tab said you buy three bottles and mix them all together? Or don't do that. One of those. ALl I know is that hood pins look terrible.

The Gathering Place. Do you really like to gather? Do you want to go to a place? Congrats, you're boring, but boy do I have the perfect place for you. It's full of places to gather, and that's about it.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT! And check out the video segment of Lower Decks-pectiations! 

Episode 198 - Kicked Out Of Six Flags

This week's episode of HWIDG is HOT HOT HOT! With the west coast fires burning out the last remains of the 4chan /pol/ anarchists, we are born anew. Let the fires blaze and wash over us to absolve us our sins. Like the Phoenix we will rise again and form a new country: NeoU.S.A. Our new cyberpunk futurecountry will be the pinnacle of human civilization. Neon-soaked streets and flying cars will give way to the transhumanist movement, giving us sick blade-arms and turbo engine piston legs. The only downfall will be the typical cyberpunk future problems: corruption, violent anti-government protests, terrorism, and gang violence. See?! Totally different.

* Gimmick Burgers
* Tom Cruise
* Rob Schneider
* Battle Royale Games

First we take 100% Dutch beef that has only been fed butter its whole life, and turn that into 5 half-pound patties. We cook those on our one-of-a-kind Giant Easy-Bake Oven for approximately 75 minutes. Then we slice open our in-house made English muffins and slather them with a horseradish and chocolate aioli. Add a couple slices of moldy government cheese and stack everything a mile high. It's nasty, impossible to eat, and was invented by a 5 year-old spinning a wheel of ingredients, but boy will it get you 1.5 million views on Instagram.

Tom Cruise is crazy, we all know this. He does insane stunts every 2 years for his own enjoyment, then gets a movie director to film it and come up with a new Mission Impossible around it. He had the whole couch jumping bit that was all the meme rage of 2005. There's that video of him berating a guy for a prank. He runs like your favorite action figure come to life. He's a manlet, and maybe worst of all he's a die-hard Scientologist, praise Xenu and all of it, and those people are bad people. But SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, he's still Hollywood royalty and likable! He hasn't gotten canceled, and those Mission Impossibles just keep coming with his dazzling smile and him jumping a motorcycle from a plane onto a tower or something and he's almost 60!

On the other hand, Rob Schneider is just the worst.

Oh Koushun Takami. If you could only see what your book hath wrought. You could never predict how 21 years later, you'd have a successful manga and film adaptation, even getting a sequel film, and influenced both of those mediums for years to come. Maybe even more surprising is the millions of teenage girls that fall in love with the pared-down American rip-off. But video games? In the late nineties you couldn't fathom what you would do to them. The most popular game in the world and the spawn of a new genre itself. Hundreds of millions of kids begging their parents for imaginary currency so they can buy a virtual dance. All from a book about middle-school kids' heads exploding.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT! See the video segment on Lower Decks!

Episode 197 - Praise Jesus, But Not Too Much

Graphics Cards are in the news this week, and not to be outdone by anything, HWIDG is unveiling our new extended cut of the weekly podcast, Here's What I Really, Really, Really Don't Get. With more issues than ever before, get ready for the Big Chungus of podcasts. Each episode is 73 hours long and filled to the brim with just as many issues. But the kicker? We're introducing our brand new DH Cores which will extend the podcast with another 12 hours of blazing fast Deadhelm voicemails. It's the ultimate podcast experience, available starting at $1599.99, and if you pre-order now, you'll receive a voucher for free copies of:

* Black Panther
* Unitarians
* No Backwards Compatibility
* Freedom of the Press

For all intents and purposes, the late Chadwick Boseman seemed like he was a cool dude. Outside of the movies he had a charm and presence to him that made him stand out. Unfortunately he forgot to bring that to the set of Black Panther. Black Panther isn't a train wreck (outside of the CGI in the final battle), but it's not even one of the better Marvel movies, and he had a good part in contributing to that not-so-greatness. The villain outshines him by a mile, and he's surrounded by actors that have dozens of years of experience over him and he fails to bring the goods. And yet, in the wake of his death it seems some are trying to hold it to much higher standards than it deserves.

Ah, Unitarian churches. The vegan, gluten-free, fat-free, low sugar birthday cake of the church world. We made it vegan, gluten-free, low sugar, and fat-free so that everyone can have a piece! No one's left out! Except everyone that doesn't want to eat that garbage. It's church for white liberals who have a sharp disdain for traditional strict Catholic church and the Conservative Southern Baptist churches, but who still want the sense of community that comes from the weekly gatherings. But Unitarians are so inclusive, right? It's in the name! Why yes, they are inclusive to anyone white enough who doesn't rock the boat. Wouldn't want you praying to Vishnu too hard, now.

The further we advance our video game technology, the further behind our 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and beyond game systems become. But, I say, isn't that the point? To be able to go back to these old-school games without worry of system memory or sound chip woes. If we've blazed past them so fast, then it should be relatively easy to let us play the back catalogs without buying another port of them again for the fifth time. If we cannot be compatible with our pasts, then we are doomed to buy Super Mario 64 again and again and again (unless you like actually good platformers).

Gone are the days of the local street urchin hocking newspapers on the side of the road for a nickel a day. Back when journalism meant going places and writing stories. A newspaper writer was someone you could trust. Then, mass production led to a newspaper on every doorstep first thing in the morning or a box stuffed full of them every 20 feet on the street. TV news came along, and those that didn't want to read forced it on the rest of us. The internet came along and killed any semblance of authority and respect the news had left. Now, every story is opinionated and rushed out for the fastest clicks. Journalists just regurgitate headline news and add their political bent. If I wanted more of that I wouldn't skip Thanksgiving with the family.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 196 - Mandatory Dry Skin

The National Podcast Convention was canceled earlier this week by shocking events that this country has never seen before. A mass assault was carried out on fellow American citizens by Vice-Presidential nominee Reacher the Cat, a first of its kind (unless you count 9/11). When questions about his economical discrepancies where brought up, he began to hiss toward the reporter and in a flash jumped and latched onto his face inflicting many, many shallow cuts. He then jumped from face to face as if it was an all-you-can-eat tuna buffet. I've got to tell you, the violence was unlike anything I've ever seen before. Luckily the day was saved by a quick, loud "No!" from President Birt, and we are all in his debt. If this had gone on any longer, we would've seen medical bills in the hundreds. A quick reminder that the National Podcast Convention is brought to you by:

* Security Theatre
* Going Up
* "Just"
* Losing Your Wallet

One part of media I enjoy these days are the incredibly specific genres we can enjoy. Readers can be into lesbian sci-fi neo-noir or monster-girl harem isekai manga. As a fan of heavy metal, you can listen to progressive blackened death metal but only the kind with americana folk influences if you like or chiptune covers of avant-garde industrial shoegazecore. But then there comes a genre that nobody wants: security theater. Who wants Paul Blart: Mall Cop the musical? Or an operatic Observe and Report? I'll tell you who: mindless peons that need to be reminded that Big Brother and Cousin Corpo are doing everything they can to keep you safe from big bad flu.

Man just doesn't know when to stop. We invented fire and it gave us steak. We invented the wheel and it gave us travel. We should've stopped there. We were meant to look at a mountain and say "that's cool, glad we can't go there though". The first guy that wanted to climb a mountain should've been stopped in his tracks for the goodness of the future of mankind. Now we're up here defying nature thousands at a time in planes every day. Hundreds of climbers and hikers go undiagnosed with mental disorders. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

It's never "just" one thing. It's "just" one rejected art school student. It's "just" splitting an atom. It's "just" one canister of ooze in a sewer. It's "just" an alleyway mugging. It's "just" one segregated housing floor. It's "just" a little war-time experimentation. It's "just" a renewal of Fox's hit animated sitcom Family Guy. See what I mean? "Just" has given rise to many of mankind's atrocities, and by god if modern family Guy isn't one of them.

I got mugged last weekend. The guy stabbed me multiple times, stole my dog, and took my car. But the worst part? He took my wallet. Insurance forms I can do. Medical bills? Easy. But now i've got a hundred or so missing in cash, business cards gone, i've got to freeze my credit and debit cards, fight the charges the mugger made, get new ones issued, and change all my saved payment information on a dozen or more websites and apps. Worst of all i've got to go to the DMV during the middle of the day and wait 5 hours for them to print a new license and ID. Shoulda just killed me, mugger.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 195 - Meet the New Boss

This week's episode is brought to you on location from the National Podcast Convention. Vice President Reacher of HWIDG is expected to take the stage any minute for a rousing speech. Now, keep in mind this comes at a critical time as last night documents were unearthed showing he has been falsifying his mouse-catching numbers to appear far greater than they are. Will he be able to explain the discrepancies or will he ignore the accusations? Here he is, let's see what he has to say:

* Halfassing the Job
* Won't Get Fooled Again
* Moral Bragging (Special Guest CrippledJesus)
* Burying the Lede

If you're going to do a job, see it through to the end. It'll be hard, it'll be costly to do ir the right way, but dammit the sense of pride you have when you can look at something you've made is unmatched. Throwing out something half-done, covered with duct tape and carefully balanced in the one way it won't tip over is shameful. To then sell it for as much as similar works, or even more is downright evil. Showing it as an unfinished work is different, because claiming its done then coming back and fixing it is MORE WORK THAN JUST RELEASING WHEN IT'S DONE.

Like a child and a hot stove, we learn that once we get burned we DON'T DO IT AGAIN. Yet, here we are, on the fourth new Star Trek Series since the end of the TV era and we've still got our usual suspects ranting and yelling about how bad this one is. Of course it is. The stove won't magically be not hot the fourth time you touch it. So STOP TOUCHING IT. You're only bringing more attention to the stove. Maybe if you stopped yelling about how the stove is hot, people would leave it alone.

I am pure of heart. I donate 75% of my annual earnings to blind and deaf orphans in fourth-world countries. I find NPR crass and vulgar. I never take the Lord's name in vain because I have taken a vow of silence that only the highest echelon of Buddhist monks can aspire to. I have self-castrated as to not be afflicted by the obscene and vile thoughts of mankind. I only take-in the most pure of media, such as My Little Pony, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Any chance I get I will crusade against those that stand for all the squalid and offensive. I am Jesus Christ reborn and you're a pedophile.

A man approaches you on the street. He's a street magician and offers to show you a trick. He spins you around and steals your wallet, spins you back around and before you can protest he punches you in the face, dazing you for a few seconds, then pulls a rabbit out of a hat. Ta-da! Isn't that such an amazing trick! Where did the rabbit come from?! "But what about my wallet?" you say. What wallet? There's only the magic trick. No one punched you either. Everyone on the street claps in amazement. What an amazing magic trick, bravo!

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 194 - Supertramp vs. MegaWasp

We here at HWIDG are pleased to announce our new Vice President: Reacher, the cat! Mr. Reacher has all of the qualities a fine podcast like ours is looking for in a vice president. A can-do attitude and a fierce policy against Tim's allergies are just some of the qualifications we used to gauge wether or not he was ready for this high-level job. Now, as Vice President, Mr. Reacher has the ability and duty to establish new podcast guidelines and to help flesh out our squeaky toy collection. Also, he isn't a cop like some other vice presidents. So without further ado, your new Vice President had this to say about his new position:

* Taking the Long Way
* Captain Janeway
* Preorders
* Bugs

Sometimes things must be done, and they must be done in a roundabout way that involves all sorts of converters and cable types and amplifiers and such. Sometimes the things that must be done are not this way and are achieved with the press of a button, or by a previously forgotten input. And then you feel like a moron for not realizing you could have done it the easy way earlier. Alas, life's lessons are so. As technology moves forward into a self-driving, wireless, one-touch, 5G-enabled future, you will no longer have to do things the hard, long way, because you won't even have that option, so enjoy the scenic route while you can.

Captain Kathryn Janeway of the U.S.S. Voyager is a lady, they tell me. She likes coffee I think. And science too. She's got some funny space hair. She eventually becomes an admiral and talks to Picard for a few seconds. These are the things I know about Captain Janeway. Tab probably should have written this section. Anyways, I also know that whatever I think of her when I get around to Voyager, it will be better than any of Alex Kurtzman's anal leakage that he calls current Star Trek.

Remember the high days of preorder bonuses? Where you could preorder at GameStop and get a cool gun, but if you preordered at Best Buy you got a free car, or if you preordered at Wal-Mart you got a free 6 pack of tube socks, and you couldn't buy any of them separately after the game came out. We needed entire graph systems to figure out what preorder bonus came from which store and with what edition of the game, it was maddening. Well, things have changed since then. Sure, some games still give you an incentive for doing it, but it's died down quite a bit. Now they're just wacky. Preorder this game demo and recieve a free 32 oz. Big Gulp with a code for a preorder for the sequel we haven't even announced!

There are good bugs, like butterflies and honeybees, you know the ones that get made into Dreamworks characters. Then there are your average bugs like ants, spiders, house flies, and grasshoppers that are at most a minor annoyance to you. Maybe they freak you out, but they mostly just go about their own thing. Then there are the bad bugs. The ones that belong on death row in bug prison. No parole. Wasps are the 9/11 of bugs. And I don't mean the government is lying to you about them. They deserve all the bug spray/raid/fire you can throw at them. Hate them and don't feel bad about it.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 193 - Run Red

Welcome to The HWIDG State Office, please take a number. This number lets you know in what order you will be called, if your number is after 10 just go ahead and go home, there's no hope for you. Please fill out forms 75-C and 76-A completely before you are called, yes all 47 pages of them. If you require immediate help, you can sit down and shut up and wait like everyone else. Please do not interrupt employees that are on the phone loudly having a non-work related conversation or you WILL get a hand upside your head. Anyone not currently in line that has finished their forms is welcome to visit our "Room of Sharp Objects" and run around in a circle. All proceeds will directly feed our boss. Also do not in any manner attempt to:

* Government Employees
* Not Following Your Own Rules
* UPS Drivers
* Audiologs

Good pay. Short hours. Generous benefits. A lackadaisical work ethic. Would you like all of these? Then try a government job! Would you like to be the scum of the earth? Then try a government job! Can you screw over your fellow citizens with a heart full of black and still enjoy your weekend? Then try a government job! Do you enjoy loudly having private conversations in front of customers then deriding them when they want you to do your job instead? Try a government job! DO you want to work under the heel of tyranny and then in turn oppress the people you should be helping? Try a government job! Do you have an IQ under 75 and enjoy parroting a yellow print-out of canned responses? Then I assume you have a government job!

They sat absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think that's wrong. I think any modicum of power corrupts absolutely. As soon as someone has power over you, you're done. They start to create rules for you. Guidelines for you to follow. And guess what, even when you follow those to a tee, they can still screw you over for doing absolutely nothing wrong. You can check all of their boxes that you want, but those boxes are meaningless in they can just ignore them.

What can brown do for you? Apparently nothing at all. They can't give you a proper delivery window, then, they won't deliver the package at all, then they won't tell you anything helpful when you call them about it. Which is amazing because anyone with a driver's license and half a brain can do that job. Especially in an incredibly easy to navigate city built on a grid system! How many times have you been waiting on a package and seen a UPS van drive right past your place? I'd wager most people have. And that stinks. I guess we know why they're all brown.

WORLDBUILDING. LORE. You MUST retain the knowledge of this fake video-game world. How else are you going to argue with idiots about it online? They're dumb-dumbs that didn't even listen to all 128 hidden audiologs that tell the story of a dead tertiary character. But you did, dammit. You ran around in circles waiting for all 128 of those audiologs to finish. And dammit, you read all of the fake books in Skyrim too! No one else can recite the entirety of The Lusty Argonian Maid at the drop of a hat, can they? Time well spent.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 192 - One Cult Admission, Please

We here at HWIDG know that life comes at you fast. If you aren't prepared to move out of the way, you'll end up with a very sticky situation. That's why we're opening up the HWIDG Cares Hotline. Call us 24/7 and a qualified technician will listen to your issues through and through and then tell you to go screw yourself. Because we care. Having trouble with a co-worker? We'll listen to your manlet cries and then shame you for not confronting him instead. HWIDG Cares, call us at 1-800-YOU-SUCK and ask for:

* Sad Slow Covers for Trailers
* Moving
* Not Sticking to Naming Conventions
* Men

Picture this: you're in the movie theater and some trailer you've never seen starts playing. It's some cheesy Christmas rom-com at first, but then there's a gruesome murder. Detectives are on the hunt for a serial killer. The music intensifies. A lady sings hauntingly: "It's Christmas Eve and I've only wrapped two presents....". You think to yourself, wait a minute that sounds familiar, put you can't quite place it yet. Then the murderer strikes again! Some poor Santa Claus impersonator has been disemboweled. The song continues: "And I hate, hate, hate your guts...". And it finally comes to you. You stand up and yell, "IS THIS A GODDAMN SPOOKY SLOW COVER OF A BLINK-182 SONG?! THAT'S IT, I'M LEAVING!"

There's a reason we invented movers. Moving sucks. Mostly because it's your own stuff. The whole time you're judging your past self's buying habits, all the while trying not to scratch up the floors or walls and lose your deposit. One thing we need to start stealing from the Japanese other than weirdo anime fetishes is how they handle moving. Have you seen Japanese movers? They take care of your stuff better than you do, as if each individual item you own is a priceless faberge egg or a precious waifu.

Welcome to Here's What I Don't Get 3: Episode 137: Issue 547: The Write-Up. Tune in next week for HWIDG Resurrection: The New Episode, then the week after that for Here's What I Don't Get Resurrection 2. Followed by The New Episode Returns, followed by Here's What I Don't Get (2020). Then we'll give you HWIDG 2, but ultimately return with Here's What I Don't Get: Episode 666.

Where have all the good men gone? And where are all the gods? Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds? Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed? Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need. Humidity is rising, barometer's getting low. According to all sources, the street's the place to go. Because tonight, for the first time, just about half-past ten, for the first time in history, it's going to start raining men.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 191 - My Strange Gengar Addiction (feat. Justin Silverman)

It's time folks. Time to get your mask on. That's right, state governments all over the country are getting into these Mask mandates, and we for one could not be happier. The Mobile Armored Strike Kommand are heroes known worldwide, and yes, every citizen of the United States should be required by law to always be watching an episode of M.A.S.K though in cases where this is not possible, a citizen can show an item of M.A.S.K branded apparel or official Kenner action figure. Remember, M.A.S.K is the mighty power that can save the day against the evil V.I.R.U.S, and you can help them by:

* Transferring Services
* Why They Still Make Star Trek
* Pretending You Care

While pondering on the seemingly decrepit system that internet relies on, we at HWIDG made a startling discovery. In those lines that connect houses and buildings to the World Wide Web lies an extremely complex system of tiny little humans that carry your information back and forth. These tiny athletes run their tiny little legs from your laptop directly to the WankHub server and ask the search bar for all the listings for "sexy cowboys licking mustard off their nipples" and they precariously balance all of those video preview thumbnails on their back while they race to you in the blink of an eye. Where would we be without these unseen heroes? Well, you would be in a library defacing pictures of cowboys.

The biggest way to get an audience is to go away. It seems crazy but time and time again, people have proved that when their favorite thing goes away for 10-20 years and comes back, they come in droves to support it. Star Trek's problem is that it aside from the gap between TOS and The Motion Picture, it never went away. In fact, the longest break between any 2 Trek productions was the 4 years in between the end of Enterprise and JJ's wretched mess. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Trek really needs to go away. Just go! Leave us until we need you again.

We here at HWIDG know that 75% of our listeners are men, and there's only one thing that men truly care about: their balls. Did you know that repeated podcast listening correlates with increased chances of testicular cancer? It's true, look at this single study done by a guy who really likes balls. Therefore, to raise awareness, HWIDG is committed to buying expensive velvet plush seat cushions specially made to cradle the sack gently and risk damage to the boys. We care about your hacky-sack and you should too, so we are offering these HWIDG-branded cushions at a discount of 10%, because hey, we care about your coinpurse too.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 190 - Huffle My Puff

We here at HWIDG are proud to announce that we are currently preparing for an eventual 2024 Presidential run. That's right, Tab and Tim are finally getting political, in a big way. As President, Tab promises to put taxes in the trash and a fat-ass steak on every plate in America. As Vice President, Tim will be locked in a padded cell with increasingly brittle items until his hands can no longer be considered lethal weapons. So when you're at the polls (in a few years) vote for what you DO get:

* Cancel Culture
* Big Sequels
* Harry Potter
* Smelling Your Own Farts

Well, it finally happened folks. We got hit. Sure it was an indirect one, but it still hurts. Turns out if you remove the context that something was said in, and jumble the words around, take a few out and throw a couple in, it turns what you said into cancel-able fodder. Look, eventually one of two things will happen. Either they win and everyone that isn't in line gets canceled, or they cancel the wrong person and people die.

There's two places where bigger means better: Texas and porn. Outside of that, it's pretty hit or miss. Sometimes it works out. Ending the first 10 years of the MCU with a 2-part 6 hour CGI extravaganza works because they built up to it. Taking one terrifying space-horror monster and making an army of them fight a bunch of space marines? BOOOOOOO. Or maybe you spend just a little too long telling us how your fantasy hero learned how to do sex good from fairies and was an awesome gaijin samurai.

Harry Potter, one of the last if not the last cornerstone of public media. With the rise of the internet, you could just go out and find fellow [INSERT CHOSEN MEDIA HERE] nerds instead of pushing it on the others around you. Combined with the fairly soon movie adaptations while the books were still out, it was a media sensation that everyone in your family was into! Apparently though, it's the only book or movie some people have seen and therefore it's all they can relate real life issues to. Guess what Sarah? You will never be able to do magic. Shut up and keep embarrassing yourself by pretending to play Quidditch in the park.

Sometimes someone receives so much praise, has such a high ego of themselves, and has no one tell them they suck, and therefore they get their head stuck up their own ass so far that it cannot medically be pulled out. You can tell this person from others because they can't take criticism, and refuse to admit any wrongdoing on their part. It's always someone else's fault. Also, there should be a faint smell of feces emanating from their head.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 189 - Jane Fonda Release Fund

WELCOME BACK TO HERE'S WHAT I DON'T EXPLODE (WHICH IS NOTHING BY THE WAY) THE ONLY CURRENTLY EXPLODING PODCAST TO EXPLODE ALL OF LIFE'S TOUGHEST ISSUES. I'M YOUR HOST TIM THE HANDLEXPLODER AND TODAY WE'RE BRINGING YOU TWO AND A HALF HOURS OF NONSTOP EXPLOSION NOISES FOLLOWED BY:

* Picking up Strays
* Diplomatic Impunity
* Quibi
* Protesting After the Fact

Look, everyone knows a wonderful story about finding a scared, ragged, bony dog or cat, slowly gaining its trust, giving it food and water, taking it to the vet, and before you know it, little Spot or Garfield is suddenly family! But occasionally, seldomly, you find some runaway and treat it nice and in return they scream the scream to end all screams. In fact it's less of a scream and more of a short summoning of the maddening void wherein the demon Pagliocalus lives. Every time said demon prince stubs his toe on one of his many handcrafted torture machines, he lets out a noise that reverbates through these stray animal traps.

Dirty Harry, John McClane, RoboCop, The Punisher, Walker Texas Ranger, etc, etc. These are the heroes that cops look up to, and that we praise on televison or the big screen. The rough-n-tough lone wolf that's got the Captain and IA breathing down his neck, trying to stop him from taking down Jimmy "Two-Shoes" McClarty once and for all. He can breeze through red lights without his siren or lights. He can hijack a citizen's vehicle in order to chase down a broken taillight. He can blow up all of Fisherman's Wharf in order to stop an 86 year old lady from jaywalking. He can shoot you and he'll get a pat on the back. Why? Because of a thin blue line that separates him from you.

These damn millennials and their screens! They spend all their time looking at these 5 inch screens in their hands and not enough on the big ones we want them to! Why would they want to watch their media at their own leisure, at any time, anywhere, without having to interact with anyone? It's just not American! Well, what if we got a bunch of new hot celebrities to make workout tapes? I'll call it Quibi after the noise I make when I climax to the sight of Jane Fonda's BUNS OF STEEL!

No second chances. If you don't vote against the Smoke'em Peace Pipe Weed Forever law of 2020 then get upset in 2022 when 75% of stores are dispensaries, you dun goofed. You can't protest it now, you lost your chance. A lack of foresight is what it is. Most people think, "well, even though I don't like that thing it'll never affect me". UNTIL IT DOES. Don't let hindsight be 20/20. Go beyond perfect vision and gain future vision. Then you can tell everyone "I told you so" which is the best thing ever.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 188 - Felony Selfishness

Just like the bad guy, from Lethal Weapon 2, we've got diplomatic immunity, so Hammer you can't sue. We can write graffiti, even jaywalk in the street! We can riot, loot, not give a hoot, and touch your sister's teat, you can't touch CHAZ! That's right, you can't touch us! Wait... Stop that! Stop touching us! YOU'RE RUINING OUR COMMUNAL BASIL GARDEN! GIVE US OUR HACKY-SACKS BACK YOU FASCIST PIGS! GATTACA! GATTACA! GATTACA! YOU MAY TAKE OUR LIVES BUT YOU CAN NEVER TAKE:

* Outbigotting
* Making the Issue About Me
* No Value In Intelligence
* Musicians Kidnapping Fans

Anyone you can hate I can hate better, I can hate anyone better than you!  No you can't! Yes I can! Okay, but they can't. Agreed. What a topsy-turvy world we live in folks. It seems we've gone so far in one direction trying to undo racism that we've gone back in time, not unlike Superman in those movies. Excuse me, I'm sorry, I meant Completelyaverageman, as you know DC Comics has changed the name of the legendary icon in order for the hero to not be seen as superior to anyone.

In these trying times, we here at HWIDG have taken a step back to reflect on just how good of a podcast we are. Despite this, we feel that podcast hosts should be completely accurate to their podcasts and so, effective immediately, Tab and Tim will be stepping down from their roles as co-hosts and will be replaced by more accurate portrayals of the podcast. Starting with Episode 189, the podcast will be hosted by Todd's dog and a loop of rambling voicemails from Deadhelm.

"How do podcast?" "How make sound in head play mean angry man voice?" These Google searches were found on the personal computer of your boss. That's right, the guy that pushes you around all day despite the fact that he reads at a seventh grade level and got to where he is simply based on his age and a dash of nepotism. Oh and he makes BANK. His salary is 5 times your own and that's before all the bonuses. All the while your Master's degree is put to good use as a space-filler on your wall, and he makes sure you only work 39.5 hours a week just above minimum wage because he's such a good guy. Not to mention he makes your branch look bad every week because he thinks the red lines under the words in his emails "add a touch of color".

WANTED: A ruthless kidnapper, charged with nearly 1,000 counts of criminal kidnapping, abduction, selfishness, and larceny. This weekend a local musician kidnapped around 1,000 of his fans and forced them to pay to attend an outdoor concert that met or surpassed all health guidelines. The venue owner is also charged with felony business running, but most heinously, charging $6.50 for a small plastic cup of domestic light beer.

All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't  forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 187 - Red Ring Circus

BREAKING NEWS! Coming to you live from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ground Zero of the first Viral Race Riots, as you know COVID-19 has transformed due to 5G into the BLM-COVID-25G. There's only one way to keep from getting sick and that is to keep constant rage in your heart. Fortunately for Tab, his constant blood boiling has kept him completely immune. Tim has fled the country to try and keep from getting sick, and Todd is still asleep but we assume when he awakens he'll probably already be infected. The constant need for rage has led to constant lootig and Rioting in Tulsa, and across the country, doctors are working on a treatment and so far they've tried...

Insufficient Cooling
Poorly Made in China 2: Coilover Boogaloo
Zoomers vs Millenials
The Ass-Blastening

Entropy is a universal constant, yet one thing can fight entropy and that is the processor of your average gaming pc or console. From the Red Rings of the XBox 360 Gen 1, to the jet engine sound of the Last of Us 2, and everything in between. Insufficient cooling is a crime against hardware, please please console and computer manufacturers. Just make things slightly larger and add more fans.

Sometimes the online cheapout pricing makes you the winner, and sometimes it makes you a loser. This time I was the loser, and now, you're gonna hear about it. If Kung Flu should have taught you anything it's that China is evil and doesn't care how many of their citizens they sacrifice to collapse the western world. Now I've gotta wait another 2 weeks for a refund before I can even begin to come up with a plan to continue the suspension upgrade.

The boomers are such useless trash they've mobilized Gen Z to assist in their all out war to destroy the Millennials. Little does Gen Z know, once the boomers have sucked the life out of our bone marrow to stay forever in power, just like they did Gen X, they are coming for you Gen Z. Our only hope is to team up and mandate euthanasia over the age of 65. Though I will agree with the Zoomers, Harry Potter sucks.

We've reached a point in our culture where people cannot, absolutely cannot handle another person not making the same choices they do. You don't want to stay home, you're a grandma killer. You don't want to go to protest, you're a minority killer. You like Donald Trump, you're a white supremacist. Can you not just calm down and shut up? Do we all need to know what a cry baby you are? Cry at home, and out in the world act like an adult.

All this and more on this week’s  episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and now introducing GUILDED a Discord alternative that doesn't have a Trust and Safety Diversity Squad, and support us on PATREON,  NEWPROJECT2 or by BUYING A SHIRT! 

Episode 186 - Show Me the Money!

Football fans, welcome to the HWIDG League's Thursday Night Football Special, brought to you by Jerry's Exotic Meat Shack, they have everything from beef and bird to possum and turtle! Tonight we've got the ultimate showdown: it's the Lincoln Pre-K Chiefs versus the Golden Garden Child Day Care Center Tigers! The stands are packed, and the crowd is already getting rowdy! I don't know about you, but i've got a cool 5K resting on GGCDCC tonight, their quarterback Kyle Higgins has been on an absolute roll this season and that's WITHOUT his lucky blanket! The only way I can see Lincoln coming through tonight is if their defense has eaten all of their graham crackers and juice like good boys.  So, without further delay, let's get to the national anthem on recorder, played by:

* Phased Reopenings
* Black or White
* Football Funding
* Monopolies

"Be a good little child and you can have your bars back, okay? And maybe if you're good for an undetermined amount of time, then you can come out of your sterilized plastic bubble! And whenever I decide it you can invite one friend over, okay? And maybe later we can talk about going to school again. BUT DON'T EVER GO OUTSIDE! I'm doing this for your own good. Now go put on your orange onesie." Well, thanks Mommy Mayor. While you're at it, if I'm a good boy can I have an extra cookie at snack time?

Have you ever watched a black and white movie? Or read a black and white comic? Is it actually only black and white? Not usually. It's usually in greyscale. That's because only having 2 colors to use severely limits what you can do. Yet, here we are. In a world where not only can you not be a shade of grey, or black *and* white, you must be one or the other. Rich or poor. Left or right. Murderer or saint. The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. Steak or salad. Pro-skub or anti-skub. and if you're a rich, liberal, steak-eating, pro-skub, Beatles-fan? Well then you don't deserve to live.

Football. America's pastime. For watchers, it's a reason to get together and drink beer, eat meat, and criticize the athleticism of men bigger and stronger than you'll ever be. For players, it's a way to exercise in 15 second spurts for 4 hours once a week for half of the year and get paid million dollars of year for it. For everyone else it's static noise at the watercooler at best, and at worst it literally leeches money from your education. Wanna learn music, art, or drama? Good luck finding a school that hasn't already ripped out those programs to pay for a new row of seats in the stadium. Want to learn actual life skills in shop or home ec? What are you an ex-con? No, we need more money so that the football coach can be bad at coaching AND teaching.

Let's be honest. Eventually HWIDG will be part of the Amazon Podcast family, brought to you by Netflix (A Walt Disney Company), and you'll be listening to it either on your Apple Galaxy iDroid 7 or your Facebook Neuro-Implant v2.3. That's just the way it's going to go if these companies keep eating each other and end up owning everything. It means less choices. Less innovation. Less freedom. DOWN WITH THE MEGACORPS. HACK THE PLANET.

All this and more on this week’s  episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON, NEWPROJECT2 or by BUYING A SHIRT!

Episode 185 - Psychadelic Toad Venom

Welcome to another episode of DYCIWMDVGC, the only podcast to tell you "Damn You Corona, I Want My Dumb Video Game Christmas" every week. At the time of writing, it's t-minus 23 hours until our first taste of our new E3-less future. This time of year any other year I'd be looking at conference schedules, making snacks, and dammit even going to bed at a reasonable time just to catch an hour and a half of trailers for games that will either never look like the trailer or be pushed back again and again until they do. Until then all we can do is start World War Three with China because of this, I'm sorry, it's the only rational thing to do besides:

* Trusting Science
* Systemic Racism
* Bad Timing
* Publisher v. Platform

There used to be a time where you could trust "science" and "experts". That time is long gone now. Don't get me wrong, i'm not going to turn into a born-again Christian until Jesus himself tells me to, but that's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. Losing my religion. George Michael is not getting through to me, I can't have Faith in science anymore, and it sucks.

We get spicy.

Imagine you drop your phone. Crack it all to hell. Technically usable still, but now you have to go and get a new phone. Oh well. You do your research into phones, you settle on the hot new iPhone. You're on the way to the phone store, when a car swerves toward you but stops just in time to not hit you. Then you hit every red light. You arrive at the store, and they've got a water leak so they're closing early, but the one 15 minutes away is still open. At this point anyone familiar with bad timing would drop everything and stay as safe as possible. Odds are you've angered some ancient cosmic being and on the way home, you'll hit someone with your car and magically they'll be fine but your car will be done for and the tow truck guy you call will make unwanted sexual advances on you. You've got bad timing, son.

When you're a platform, you let anyone on. Aside from a few legality-related rules, anyone can join and have fun. Let's take Spotify for an example. No one but hipsters would use it if they only let music with a 7.0 or better from Pitchfork on it. At that point Spotify is not a platform, it's a publisher of curated tastes. This isn't always a bad thing, a radio station for example, curates genres and artists by the DJ's picks and the popularity of the music. But, then there's when platforms slowly pick and choose what's right and wrong and eventually become publishers that say they're platforms.

All this and more on this week’s  episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON, NEWPROJECT2, or by BUYING A SHIRT!