Episode 200: Our 200th Episode Spectactular

Jokes show me how to get rid of the unlimited capacity for human beings to make themselves believe that they're somehow right. And you'll just about put this place here out of business.

The great impossible has spoken.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Who are you? Who are you? A very bad man.

I'm a very good man.

Good man. They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man.

I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to very Bad wizards. I'm Tamer Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, I can't believe it, but this is our 200th episode and we have to celebrate. But Jess, please tell me you're not going to whip out your and start, are you?

I feel like Whip out is saying something about the size, like, I don't know. Whip is, uh, an appropriate term for just squeezing out.

Wait, what do you think?

Nudging out? I feel like a whip indicates I got, like a twelve incher.

Yeah, you don't want to, uh, hype it up and then have people be disappointed.

Better to set expectations. Uh, no, um, absolutely. Um, this is a principled, even Kantian stance that I hold, which is your webcam should never even be pointing below your waist because then you could do whatever you want.

Right, but that's true. But presumably what we're subtweeting here. Subtweeting? I don't know. Can you say subtweeting when you're just not on Twitter? But is, ah, Jeffrey Tubin. Presumably what he was doing was for an audience, not the people.

That's right. Camera a should have been above the waist. Like work cameras should always be above the. Know if you're going to do that stuff, like take an iPad, put that on your waist, maybe like a low coffee table, your regular task, your regular computer. Uh, waist level and above, please. This is, as a general rule, dick below camera.

Dick below camera. All right, I'll write that down. Hopefully that'll prevent me from, uh, making a similar mistake. Uh, I think after the last episode, I tweeted out the episode and then I said that I had to note because it was right after the tubing thing happened that, uh, we recorded before it happened, or else we would have talked about it pretty much for the whole episode. But Paul Bloom, uh, among many other people. But Paul Bloom did it to us. But there were a lot of people who, for whatever reason, just decided, oh, no, we can't joke about, like, this is terrible. This is also part of a larger intrusion by the workplace into the home and all of that. I don't agree. So Paul said, leave the poor guy. Um, my, I think, principled stand here. This was a Zoom meeting between writers and staff from the New Yorker and NPR, and they were doing an election simulation.

Was it like a full on virtual reality, like POV simulation?

No, I think it was like people were adopting roles of how different election scenarios would play out. And Tubin, in fact, was at one point, I heard playing, like, judges that were ruling on various issues, know, whether Pennsylvania could count mail in ballots with unmatching signatures, slightly unmatching signatures, or something like that. And then all of a sudden, Jeffrey Tubin, who's a kind of pompous writer for the New Yorker, a CNN legal analyst, he wrote the OJ book that, uh, the doc was partly based on, and he just starts jerking off during M, uh, this massive jerk fest. I'm not going to try to make the jokes that everybody made, but if you can't make fun of that, then there's no point to life. Then the antinatalists are right, and they win.

And the terrorists, too.

Um.

Um, yeah. Uh, I don't get the idea that we're not supposed to laugh at that. I mean, is this just our particular Twitter feed being liberal bias and the fact that, you know, like, one of us, or. Cause, like, did anybody say that about. Yeah, Anthony Weiner. I was trying to be respectful and not call him, uh, that.

I think that one was. It was just off the table not to make fun of, like, it just wasn't in the realm of possibility. But I think this one is, too. It's off the table. It's just not part. The Overton window doesn't. It's not in the Overton window not to make fun of this. He just.

Window.

The Overton window is the things that are debatable. And so when people say, move, uh, the Overton window, all of a sudden, universal health care in America was outside the Overton window. And then Bernie helped move it into bring it back. Yeah, I see.

I want to laugh at it because of how uncomfortable it makes me. I think that just the thought of that happening, I mean, I have a below, like, above waist rule but the thought of that happening to me makes me so uncomfortable. Just makes me so nervous to think about the cringe when you realize, can you imagine the moment, the moment it dawns on you that this whole time they've been watching you jerk off? That is such a shameful. Like, I'm just filled with, I guess, again, my conscient shame.

Well, no, this might be your Christian, like, your religious up.

My Christian? Yeah, my, um. That I want to laugh to keep from crying. And isn't this what comedy is for? This is the role that it plays in society.

We make jokes, and it's not a double standard. I wouldn't do the election simulation, for one thing, if you paid me $50,000.

Wait till part two of the opening.

Yeah, it's true. Uh, but that sounds like, uh, a vision of just, I don't know, of hell or just a godless void of nothingness. I get all high and mighty about this stuff, like, why are you jacking off during a work call? But if I was in an election simulation where I was role playing various different pundits or judges or whatever, I don't know what I would do. You don't know what you're going to do. It's like war. You don't know where that would leave you mentally.

That's why veterans don't talk about that shit when they get home.

Exactly. But if I did, I would never, in, uh, my wildest imagination, expect people to not make fun of me.

No, exactly. Right? Oh, my God. I would just be like, go for it, guys. What am I going to do? I might be like, have your fun. I'm off of Twitter for a while. Even if I lost my job, which I don't know, do you think we would lose tenure if we did that during, like, a faculty meeting?

Uh, we had, like, a little text exchange with Yoel. Um, after this happened, and I forget which one of you said, I had to know if this was, like, a class. You said, yeah, if it was a class. Uh, you were teaching a class and all of a sudden you jerking off during class. Could we lose our jobs?

Like, during a Zoom breakout session? And then they all came back, and then I was just like, what? Hand on my Johnson.

I mean, there's only one way to find out.

This is the sense that I got, uh, from some people who are like, it's not funny. And then there was even some articles about this shows the shame about masturbation or, I don't know what they were trying to do to make it not funny. But I was like, I just let it be funny.

Let it be funny. It's hilarious. It was an election simulation with the New Yorker and NPR and he just jerking up.

And it wasn't on purpose. Like, it'd be one thing if this know, I think it's uh, obviously a serious, actually, back to that text conversation. So I got in a conversation with Nikki about whether or not this was an instance of him exposing himself on purpose. And I was saying something about the rates of how many women have seen men expose themselves on purpose and it ended up transcribing. Like, I hit the wrong button.

I want to find that text because this was in that text thread with Yol. I came in late to it, um, and you guys were already talking about whether you would get fired if you started jacking it during class. And I said, this is a class you're teaching. And I said, I think you might be out of a job. And then you responded to that, well, I think they're starting to get into lower numbers and you're starting to get an, uh, alone numbers when you have like 10% of the male population is