Rum Doings

Fresh as the morning dew, episode 113 of Rum Doings was recorded only moments ago. John with a cold, Nick with a smoke up his nose, we don't discuss whether extended Twitter downtime will affect the Olympics. But we do discuss the potential for the opening ceremony, to which Nicholas shall attend. We question whether there should be a paralympics at all, and then move onto the strangeness of Mitt Romney. Is gaming moving to Linux? We don't actually discuss that, but Nick does explain just what a disaster Windows 8 is going to be. We wonder how Sorkin's The Newsroom could be better, and then decide to get rid of wee-wees and poo-poos. Would you jump into a volcano? Would you watch White Collar? Would you be a Scottish Catholic?

Goodness, it's been a while. But finally, Rum Doings returns with episode 112, not asking what ambulances are going to do now there are Olympic lanes. It's a Skype episode, but we seem to have the sound pretty well fixed now, so apart from even more talking over each other than usual it's one heck of a step up from the terrible echoes of the last couple. Although there wasn't even a plan to record at all on this evening, as John was supposed to be having a romantic night away in a hotel. As you might expect, why he's not there is the first matter discussed. How do you escape from a hotel? We then move on to plugging Nick's brother's book, The Fastest Loser, which you should buy. There's brief chat about the Google Nexus and Raspberry Pi, and Ouya, before we move onto more important matters - the details of the Farmborough W.I. July meeting. There's more news from our new favourite paper, the Midsomer Norton, Radstock and District Journal, including a footpath we must save, and a lady who wants to set our he

Bum dum Rum Doings episode 111! Back in our echo chamber, at the bottom of a giant well made of metal, we try to read out an email but then get distracted by everything. Nick apparently wants to "fix" Laura, and then John gets angry with a man. We dismiss the BMI, tell Money Supermarket to go away, and then finally read the email. About someone setting their house on fire because of Rum Doings. A bit. It gets boring for a while, then we talk about how people are precious over dead bodies, and why John wants to be eaten by sharks. Did you know that baby cells live inside mummies? Probably if you listen to Radio Lab. But we talk about it inexpertly with some of the facts wrong. It turns out Nick's daughter gets violent when her grammar is corrected, giraffes are tall, and Microsoft doesn't have a brain in its tail.

Welcome to a very echoey episode, Rum Doings 110. Trapped in the attic of Nick's evil enterprise, the acoustics match the décor, as we begin as banal as possible by discussing the weather. Then we swiftly leap to poking tubes through all of Nick's holes. We question the usefulness of our eyes, and Nick banishes all discussion of free will. John then shares his quiz show schadenfreude, Nick dares to question the Anglican church, and we voice how impressed we are at how the government responds to Leveson. Jigsaws are briefly mentioned before moving on to pointing out how women can't really do science. There's a short eulogy to Nick's cat, Minnie, and then it ends.

Something bloody terrible has happened. Nick has recorded an episode of Rum Doings with Judge Coxcombe, but not John Walker, seemingly on a wax cylinder in a wind tunnel. What manner of madness is this?! And why are they sat beside the Mediterranean without him? (Well, because he turned down the invitation because the flights cost too much.) But, despite this despicable action, this is indeed Rum Doings Episode 109, in which it's not discussed whether John will be annoyed by the recording of this episode without him. HE'S FINE. Sipping pudding wine, they discuss bathing together, then as flipping usual Nick brings up videogames. Instructing Judge Coxcombe to judge the show as experienced from Spain, they explore the concept of this "music", and then predict the future of gaming. Europe is explained in the simplest form - a cream egg - and then the pair move on to gay politicians. And they get run over by a tractor.

Gosh, this nearly didn't happen. After another week of not being able to travel to meet up, John and Nick once more resorted to crappy old Skype, where John is far too loud, to ensure there'd be an episode before next week's week off too. So episode 108 is a slightly talking-over-each-other job, in which we don't discuss whether pasties should be available on the NHS. (It's only occurred to me now as I write this that pasties in America are something rather different to in the UK, and yet I think it still works.) We discuss John's impressive squits, and then on a similar matter move on to talk about Jeremy Hunt and the Leveson enquiry. We wonder what it might be like to have porn stars for parents, and ponder the wisdom of trusting God to stop snakes from biting you to death. Again we celebrate how much money people are willing to pay for the Humble Indie Bundle, and wonder if the Youth Of Today still use instant messenger. There's discussion of the maddest lady in the world, somehow convincing us to like Da

In Rum Doings 107, we begin by revealing not only how much this damned thing costs us, but an outbreak of sheer honesty. After plotting the demise of a clock, we return to your subjects about which you want us to be angry. Which kicks off with people who stop suddenly on pavements. HNGH! We establish the rules on looking into people's windows, spilling things on shirts, and are cornered into discussing how cats are annoying. Is saying "sigh" acceptable? How severely should we punish prestige car drivers? Nick gets awfully cross about litter, and then when asked to be cross about American politics, we slightly miss target and rant about British and Ancient Roman politics.

In episode 106 of Bum Pooings, while we don't discuss the over-population of Britain's towns, we instead received your tweets explaining what makes you annoyed. Whatever it might be, we decided we'd be angry too. Whether a listener should join the army distracts us slightly, and then Nick breaks his own rule and starts going on about games as usual. Then we do get cross about the data retention directive, the use of "gay" as a pejorative (although we do end up banning the word entirely), bad service, and then distract ourselves with suspensions and expulsions from school. Learn that John can pick up heavy things, and then we get back to being enraged, this time about plug sockets. Is John an insane homophobic bigot when it comes to marriage? Then Nick tries to get John even further in trouble. And then it ends.

It's the onehundredandfifth episode of Rum Doings, which is far too many of anything. Our beginnings are found in Nick's having illegally recorded John's ugly road rage, which is reproduced for our listening pleasure (with some subtle editing). Then after a foray into burns and tattoos, proving that all lesbians are robots, and noting the arrogance of Newton, we take to the homepage of the Daily Mail, to explore the reasons behind their success. The extremely right-wing paper betrays itself with a peculiarly grungy tabloid bottomless column of celebrities with their boobies out. But have John and Nick ever heard of either of them? We focus more especially on one story, because it's about buying a rolling pin, before we realise quite how foul it is. This would be Courtney Stodden. You can read the story here (although they appear to have finally edited some of it.) We then get a bit distracted by our thieving ways, and grumble about how rubbish DVDs are.

An episode of Rum Doings! Words and stuff.

Episode 103 of Rum Doings is voiced by two tired, over-fed, and cold-riddled men, hidden away in a dark lounge while their wives sleep. We don't discuss how it could be possible that there's a hosepipe ban AND flood warnings!!!! Instead we explain the new rules for standing ovations. We discover that we're both terrible Jews, but not as bad as Mel Gibson. We remember our ridiculous lunchtime meal, where Nick definitely didn't ignore the basic tenets of his inherited religion, and then almost instantly move onto Nick's favourite topic, games. Which he keeps bringing up. This time Kickstarted games. Then the dangers of bacon-flavoured drugs, why cocaine makes you a dick, and how LSD became naughty. Talk of cats gets us to superstitious pigeons, and eventually Elmo. Then we feel oooooooooooold. Also, now, from 80 years old laws don't count for you. Oh, and people called Lee are banned from listening.

In a somnambulistic, rather long one hundred and second episode of Rum Doings, we don't discuss whether it's time to stop not discussing things. Nick and John still find the effort the argue despite the late hour. Beginning with Galloway, things naturally quickly switch to Just A Minute and Indian politics. And then back to British politics, and the current trend for pretending to like Islam. We enjoy some splendid lemony booze from the lovely Ed Stern, argue over what age people become humans, ponder the last time we listened to a CD, tape cassette or VHS tape. We are old. John discussed the Mountain Goats/Anonymous 4 gig he'd recently seen, we question the possibility of monitoring everyone's emails, and then things get a little heated as we consider the strip club. Nick recalls when John was on the receiving end of some sexual attention, discuss Enid Blyton again, and Nick tells us about the evening his stomach went on holiday. Then we get uncharacteristically serious and talk about anorexia and bulimia.

In Rum Doings 101 we eat sweeties! Sugary sugar-free sweeties. And then enter something that's going to dominate most of our Eastery episode - a leaflet from the local health food shop, promising it can cure all our ailments. That's enough for most of an episode of Rum Doings.

In the Rum Doings episode 100 spectacular, we don't discuss the fact that it's the 100th episode. So instead we talk about what we've been up to for the last few weeks, including John's stories of being in America, and indeed the Lake District. For some reason that we aren't going to mention, we have all manner of rum goodies in the episode, including a rum sponge cake from Nick's wife Victoria, gingerbread rum from Nick's brother, and rum butter from the wilds of Windermere. With our faces stuffed we rank American cities in order of bestness, argue about breakfast, and explain how John fell down the stairs. And how he broke the hotel. And then we're back in England, where the sausages are apparently boiled. There are some very serious concerns about the North West's cream tea provisions, and their parking prices.

It's the actual 99th episode!

In episode 99C of Rum Doings we don't even have time to tell you what happened, so quickly have we recorded it and uploaded. Find out for yourself by listening! But we do mention the Muppets, and swearing, and Nick goes on about something or other.

Rum Doings 99B doesn't discuss whether a cat or a dog is better, but begins with SCIENCE, as Nick engages in a blind test to see if he can identify the difference between bad tea and decaffeinated tea. We recognise that podcasts are marvellous, ponder if it would have been so bad if SOPA had won, and ask whether there's a way to find out what words mean. Which fish is the biggest nob? Why might we not move to America? Was Nick looking forward to FOSDEM because he'd obviously already been. Do we want 3D printers? That's a question you obviously can't ask without inevitably talking about making a dildo in the shape of your own penis. Top Chef vs Masterchef: the ultimate battle. Which race does Nick like the least? And John reveals a horrible prejudice. Another one. And we talk a bit about how Rum Doings isn't copyrighted in any stupid way - see the link at the bottom of this blog for the copyleft license it's under.

In episode 99A of Rum Doings - the podcast for the new generation - we don't discuss whether it's about time we abandoned the TV license and reintroduced the dog license. And then we took to Twitter to find out what it was we were supposed to be talking about. Which we then ignore for ages and talk about the importance of rum for preventing heart disease, how you only exist if you podcast, and then finally turn to a tweet for how copyright will be interpreted by the next generation. Is it more humane to keep a robot pet? Or how about a robot wife? Why aren't there boobies on children's TV? And why can't Sherlock Holmes investigate the missing grammar? We consider the difficulty curve of petrol stations, the most bestest academic discipline, and then someone flicks the vegetarian-rant switch on Nick. Can a Morman be president of America? And are gays icky?

Annoyingly in episode 98 of Rum Doings, we don't discuss which letters of the alphabet should be removed. But instead we gain insight into the tragedy of John's life. We learn how Philadelphian trains cause rampant terrorism, paedophilia and puns. Nick dunks himself into a nice mug of tea, and we consider the artificial nature of jellyfish. We talk about the artifice of Hollywood, the artistry of The Artist, and how we hit our wives. Did Nick ever microwave his baby? Does Dexter still have a pee-pee? Are Smarties right for you? And then we talk about Rock, Paper, Shotgun's hack, before we move onto Nick's extraordinary array of retro computer floppy disc sound effects. It's a thing to behold.

In a pre-recorded episode 97 of Rum Doings, we don't discuss this week's SOPA activities because we recorded this weeks ago. But it's the final part of our Judge Coxcombe trilogy, where we take questions from the audience. We begin with some real life, and then quickly get into cuddly character as we question Nick's absence. We celebrate making money by letting things be free, and then impressively we DO talk about SOPA! We are prescient. Then we turn to the Twitters to solve your woes. The choice between trifle and banana crunch! Whether Mark Kermode is a big twit (he is)! Dealing with txtspk! The future of newspapers! These exclamation marks feel inappropriate! We ponder Kunstler, whether it's okay to associate with people who like George Galloway, how marshmallows predict your future, and the hypothetical kitchen of Nicholas Mailer. And who will Baby Judith grow up to be?