Episode 12: You’ve Gotta Be Judicious With Lube; or, Kill the John Butler in Your Head With the Knife He Forged

March 30, 2025March 30, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

Finally back in Captain Handsome’s home office/studio/Idi Amin shrine after two weeks spent hitting, smashing, beckoning, summoning, upsizing, vaccinating, and otherwising, our intrepid hosts are fresh out of Gs and have never felt more amazin’ (that could just be the argon leak, though). Plus, all of these self-explanatory things:

• White Lotus Country for an Old Man

• The Further Adventures of Lumpy Floatum

• Are you down with BFP’s BCC?

• You like palanquin and I like sedan chair (let’s call the whole thing off)

• Parker Posey? Can’t lose!

• Dux of CliffNotes College

• The taintal twinge of terrible tunes (ft. Tim Rogers and Ollie Olsen)

• Misappropriating cultural appropriation

• ‘Futurebob’

• Spooky Holes, Part 1 of 37

• The frogurt is still cursed (that’s bad)

• Quirky hotel criticism: the last refuge of the antidentite

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:32 — 36.2MB)

Episode 11: A Very Special Episode; or, Please Send Help

March 23, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

All work and no play makes Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no play mmakes Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no PLay ma es Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no play makes Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no ply mAkes Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no pllay makes Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no play makes Bitsy a dullboy

All work and NO play makes BItsya dull boy

All work and no play makes Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no play mAkes Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no play makes Bitsy a dull boy

All work and no play maked Bitsy a dull boy

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:12 — 8.4MB)

Episode 10: Travis of Nazareth; or, Manifest Density

March 16, 2025March 16, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

This week, our heroes are fearlessly testing the limits of remote recording technology. As will be apparent, Beautiful Fairy Princess has opted to record in an abandoned grain silo, whereas Captain Handsome joins us from twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Thence, they dare jointly pose the bold and entirely original question, ‘war: what is it good for?’ Those who tune in will not only learn that the answer is roughly eight minutes of solid content but can also expect to hear a snippet from the second-best song ever to be called Good Vibrations!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:40 — 35.4MB)

Episode 9: Role Models Inc.; or, A Gentleman Doesn’t Sing and Tell

March 10, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

1. EXT/INT. LENIN SHIPYARD. BLOOD RED SKY

WE OPEN on a woman, HELEN (36), beautiful, fairylike yet somehow regal, speaking into a microphone.

HELEN

This episode is all about film!

FRANCIS

I shall speak only of dogs.

ROSS

I, too, shall speak of dogs but also of role models

and curated obituary delivery as a service. I might

briefly mention David Michôd if you are lucky.

CINNAMON

I shall sing of dogs.

HELEN

This episode was all about film!

FADE OUT

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:13 — 23.1MB)

Episode 8: Lolito; or, Private Eyes are Apple Watching You

March 2, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

Meatloaf assures us that 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, but can he be trusted? Neither Uber nor those responsible for the Net Promoter Score seem to think so, with the former suggesting that anything under 4.7 out of 5 is not good, and the latter refusing to even count anything under an 8 out of 10. Let’s see, that gives us a common denominator of 30 but, ugh, there’s also a decimal point in the mix, so … 361 out of 450 ain’t, according to the average, bad. That’s 2.40667 out of 3, or 8.0222 out of 10.* Therefore, we can reliably infer that the Net Promoter Score people’s decision was in no way arbitrary; rather, it stems from the utmost statistical rigour, derived as it so clearly was from the mean of the two figures originally proffered by Meatloaf and Uber. Oh, but then there’s also Beautiful Fairy Princess, who reckons that anything over 16 is good to go, so who knows.

*My sincere thanks to the toddler at Fairfield Station for his assistance with these conversions

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:00 — 34.8MB)

Episode 7: Kentucky Fried Chatham House Rule; or, To All the Things We’ve Loathed Before

February 23, 2025February 24, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

Hopped up on Quartiers d’Orange and sundry other entremets from the local footy, Beautiful Fairy Princess seeks routine from a smartwatch in the lead-up to the Masters Games. Will she, like Captain Handsome before her, someday achieve a general equilibrium in her dynamically stochastic lifestyle? Is that how one constructs a question in order to shoehorn in an extremely convoluted and disputably humorous reference to New Keynesian macroeconomic theory in the hopes of eliciting a self-satisfied half-smirk of recognition from a handful of wonks? As our hosts have bilaterally imposed a mandatory opinion lockdown, I am not at liberty to comment, so let us just assume that our information is symmetric. (Another one! Ahh, classic Bitsy.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:42 — 26.3MB)

Episode 6: Funky Science Patina; or, Thrown Into Denim Relief

February 16, 2025February 24, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

Set your intention to stunned as Captain Handsome goes in search of lost pills, including one which promises to catapult him to the ultimate stage of evolution by transforming him into a being of pure energy within Virtual Space Industries’ mainframe and connecting him to all the world’s computer systems, which would presumably be helpful for his internet-making job. Meanwhile, Beautiful Fairy Princess—armed only with a basket of symptoms, and unwisely rockin’ Rolla’s—bravely does battle with a printworm, a faulty toilet, the integral state, scientism, and a pigeon couple.

Will it be enough to save us all from the tyranny of Thought Leaders? Do we need an ethnography of LinkedIn? Are Robin Wright, Patricia Arquette, Elisabeth Shue and Elizabeth Berkley all the same person? Is the real spark-based economy the friends we made along the way? Tune in to find out!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:49 — 29.1MB)

Episode 5: Pirate Coles Radio; or, This Is 36

February 9, 2025February 24, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

What to say about Bossy Rossy this week? That he’s for incentives? Sure. That he’s against negotiation, particularly with himself? Clearly. That he causes arousal in weirdos? Apparently. That he’s driven away his personal trainer? I mean … it does kind of sound like that might be the case, yeah. Which is sad.

But what of [insert topical rhyming name here] Helen? Is she, like Jacques Lacan, every woman? Perhaps. Will she ever fulfil her destiny by killing Brené Brown? Doubtful. Did she clear any of the music that she plays in this episode? Reply hazy; try again. Has she unwittingly recreated an iconic Mr Show sketch by asking listeners to email her in response to episodes recorded weeks in advance? Write to her and find out!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:57 — 33.8MB)

Episode 4: A Nude Night’s Tale; or, Permashazamming the Viagra Boys

February 2, 2025February 23, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

Having successfully recovered from a debilitating bout of Third Episode Syndrome at a place built like a marble schvitzhouse, Beautiful Fairy Princess discovers that self-loathing is expensive; a harsh truth that also sounds like it could have been the first-draft title for the song from M*A*S*H. And, hey, speaking of both sounding like something and song titles, Shazamming is a thing—much like invisible work, disobeying signs, fetishising suffering, wanting to help, using ten-dollar words, attending Auditorium Music Tests, and no longer reading books—that some people do.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:51 — 37.4MB)

Episode 3: The Unbeatable Weight of Massive Blanket; or, How Come Everybody Wanna Keep It Like the Kieser?

January 26, 2025February 23, 2025 ~ Bitsy von Muffling

Join our heroes as they brutally interrogate Francis Leach for fitness tips, quickly veer off into a line of questioning more befitting a Catalina Wine Mixer attendee, and then eventually regain focus. Later, Beautiful Fairy Princess concedes that there is use getting into heavy bedding, a website address is belatedly announced, old adult readers of young adult fiction are rightly condemned, the brand new academic field of Slab Economics is founded, Captain Handsome reveals his favourite flavour of Metamucil, and I think maybe Johann Hari kills Colonel Gaddafi at some point but it’s possible that my mind wandered during that bit because this is a pretty long episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:10:52 — 64.9MB)