Richard Hanrahan opens a shared google doc window, and after 15 minutes of waiting for Alex Kealy to finish his breakfast cereal, the page begins.
He is here, terrific, Welcome friend!
Right, first things first - our podcast has a name, following a public vote (and yes everything has to have a public vote, even the presidency of the USA) and the name is Demagogglebox. You can subscribe here, or like our facebook page or whatever. But more importantly, welcome to THIS (what you are reading)!
How does this work? Shall I write in Kealy yellow highlight?
I guess so mate. Wait, this hasn’t worked has it. Makes it all to easy for me to pretend I’m you. Or am I?
Does it automatically make you write in yellow? This is vintage stuff. Or did you change it to yellow to fuck wit’ me?
We will never know.
So this can be me then? If you’d like
Oh I don’t like orange on yellow. Stop that.
I’ve stopped. Anyway, formatting issues aside, let’s see what we can do with this. Plan is that we co-write something together in a half-hour sort of format, warts and all, and then we throw that out there for the world to see. Questions and answers just now, but maybe in future we can expertly craft this into a unique co-written editorial style. It can be exactly to the alt-right fantasy liberal stereotype of a kind of thought-police/everyone lives fucks and eats in the same shit bucket kinda deal.
Sounds g-o-o-d. Right, shall we begin? What do you predict will happen in tonight’s US presidential election of American?
Oh - is something happening tonight?
Yes, there’s a party in my pants (/local polling stations) and you’re (/over 115 million American voters are) invited. Although over 32 million partiers (/voters) have already partied (/voted early) in my pants (/not in my pants).
Very good! I originally replied with something but it wasn’t funny enough. We can re-write it later on. Or not and leave the boundaries of conventional editorial writing by the way-side. See, isn’t this fun?
...yes?
You sound scared… will pose some more specific questions and we can respond in kind. Give it a bit more structure...
Q. Why are we doing this?
Basically, I didn’t fancy podcasting but needed five minutes of material for a gig tonight. Okay, real question now -
Q. US Election - what the hell is going on? Who do you think will win? Any other straight to the point observations or comments that someone would find funny?
At least 43% of the electorate are going to vote for a fascist. If 47% do he may win. Pretty classically funny stuff.
You’ve made basic statistics into a kind of horror story. I mean, what is the worst that can happen?
President M.Pence (the ‘M’ stands for ‘My, oh my, I do love gay conversion therapy’)
You know how most presidential candidates choose a safe bet for a vice-president? You know, to have a softer, every man appeal? In that relationship - he is supposed to be the sane one. Ain’t that swell?
Well, when Trump is the nominee, literally everyone else is a safer pair of hands #TrumpTapes
Except Hilary of course My favourite bit about the election so far has been the bat shit crazy theories being put out there, i.e. the Podesta email about #spiritcooking - in which one of us liberals is probably involved in a blood sacrifice ritual (*which is so far from the truth it is laughable) and the rumour that Hilary is secretly suffering from a rare disease from Papa New Guinea which only arises from eating human flesh (but which also happens to have flu like symptoms)
Ok, you have to link me to both of those as I’ve missed them. I’ve also actually had flu myself last few days so getting jumpy.
HAHAHA. Who knows, maybe you are coming down with a mad case of democracy?
Yeah, I’ve been coughing up checks and balances all night, found some superdelegates in my stool.
Wow. Bringing up those superdelegates to a guy who clearly liked Bernie Sanders. Classy move there AK.
I liked Bernie for a time. Still do, he’s been a classy campaigner for her.
For a time makes him sound like he slept with one of your ex-girlfriends or something [kindly refuses to include a reference that berates you for human relationship failures however true this is]. Anyway, the first one has even bled through to The Guardian - which ironically will only fan the flames of a media conspiracy. They should just not have mentioned it and let whoever make claims to it unsubstantiated, but whatever - they go over most of it there. The cannibal stuff I have found more through reading shitposts and back alleys in internet terms, so best just google “Is Hillary a Cannibal” and have at it. You’d be suprised how many different ways potential Trump voters can find for linking Hillary with consuming another human.
Q. So what else has been happening?
You heard about Prince Harry? So apparently he has been in a relationship and because the UK press is a real class act, they’ve written a borderline racist/sexist piece about them. (hang on will look for the actual tweets or something)
Yeah, not good. The worst bit is that the press response from the tabloids wasn’t “oops, sorry” [I originally wrote mea culpa but deleted it because I thought I’d come off like a twat] but “yes, he’s confirmed he’s dating someone” with no awareness.
Yeah! It’s obscene right? Like they just wanted to flush out the “truth”. What I like about this though - and I’m potentially leading into some material for tonight - is how far we’ve come from the classic Disney Princess model.
Go on...
So in Disney, there’s all this “it’s all on the inside” kind of stuff, and Prince’s/Princess transgress boundaries of who can and can’t be in love, when the reality is that Harry is dead keen to get laid with the most astonishingly attractive women he can find without accidentally causing a constitutional crisis, but then he gets to flash his credentials, get in bed with anyone he likes, and then they have to face the wrath of the british press and/or death threats from random members of the public who for whatever reason believe you are not good enough. Which in this instance happens to be because of the colour of her skin.
I mean really the royals should be married off by ballot. Or collectively to every single woman (or man) in the UK. One night at a time.
Q. So what else has been happening?
Eh? That. Is. Bonkers. I can’t even read his page, I don’t understand half the words being said. This the guy, yeah? https://twitter.com/Piers_Corbyn? Shit yeah, he’s even followed by JC, he’s actually real
Yah. Not that it’s Jezza’s fault or anything.
Also Piers Corbyn’s use of hashtags is an absolute catastrophe. Hilariously rambling, has up to 15 hashtags in a single tweet.
I always try to draw the line at jokes about poor grammar and stuff because it is elitist.. But here I will make an exception. FUCK ME HIS TWEETS ARE NUTS. I tell you though, it’s almost enough for me not to want to elect him to lead Labour instead of his brother.
Haha, fair play.
Also, Piers has one of those “Free Assange” things RT-ed. And it’s like, Assange is free, he’s hiding from allegations against him.
To be fair - we had a very similar split with the Ed/David Miliband brothers; Jeremy Corbyn is a more extreme candidate, so it’s only natural that the chasm between him and his brother would itself be more extreme. ←- this needs re-written but that’s a funny idea I think.
Agreed.
Q. What do you make of Toblerone-gate?
Taking back control of a lower calorie diet.
I think most companies would ideally sell you something with bigger gaps. In fact, the ideally they would like to sell you the very manifestation of nothing without losing any money
I know its cliche to say, but have you ever seen a Toblerone outside of an airport lounge? There’s probably a joke in that. Gaps? Less chocolate? No one will to admit that the UK economy is really fucking shocking just now and that companies will do anything they can to hide it from consumers and it seems the moment people step out of the UK they realise how bad things are?
Not many people know this, but Toblerone were originally designed to reflect the GBP on the currency markets, so the new design is merely falling inline with that… or something.
Haha! The chocolate standard
Q. So what else has been happening?
Brexit!
So it’s been great chatting Richard, how do you think this went?
About a 5 out of 10? I think I can see the benefits of doing this, but I don’t think we produced the real high points we wanted - but it was a first attempt I guess, so that’s only inevitable. Plus I didn’t really get 5 minutes of material for tonight, so I guess I have to go onstage and do the same nonsense about words being incorrect?
Hahaaha, I think the princess thing and the jeremy corbyn thing were good.
Yes, but have we changed the world?!
Uhm, no.
Well anyway, if you’ve made it this far, you will be pleased to know that our podcast Demagogglebox will be back this week, and we can really kick things off! Also, I can tell already that I for one am not happy about the website appearance just yet… might post this as a pdf for now so people’s eyes aren’t destroyed
It’s goodnight from me! [Is it? I don’t know?]
MY NAME IS ALEX KEALY AND I COVER MY KNEES IN JAM.
I guess so, yeah!
Alex Kealy Logs off and Richard Hanrahan is left to work out how he gets this online.
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