Eight Maids A-Milking

{{#widget:YouTube|id=EWdbyWAKRrM|height=188|width=336}}

"Eight Maids A-Milking" on the podcast YouTube channel

"Eight Maids A-Milking", released on January 1, 2019, is the eighth installment of the 12 Days of Hello Internet series. The series consists of twelve parts, released one day at a time from December 2018 to January 2019, that together serve as Hello Internet's fifth annual Christmas special and as its 116th overall episode.

Transcript

Happy New Year, everyone. Happy New Year. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ We're coming to you live from Dover, the capital of Delaware. Wait, what? Okay. No, we're back in London, mate. No, we're not in Dover. That's an excellent joke, Brady, pretending that we're somewhere that we aren't. Yeah, no, we're actually in London under your date. No, we're in Bristol. I've come up to visit you. We're still in Bristol. That's where it is. Underneath the Christmas tree. We still here with our pile of Christmas cards sent in from all over the world. But I did promise that I was going to show you for the first time in real life the golden hot stop I haven't shown it to you ever. No, I have not seen in real life. I've only seen the video. All right, I'm going to get it. You might switch that main light on, so we've got Maximus Barkles. Yeah, you want to have Maximus Barkles. All right, I'm going to get it all out. This is very exciting. You ready? I don't know if I can ever be ready. There comes. Oh, wow. This pillow is fantastic. It smells of lavender too, just for the record. I can confirm that it does smell of lavender this pillow. Wow. You can hold it. Ooh, it's way way easier than I would have thought. It's solid gold. I know it's solid gold, but still hot stoppers unless they are six, seven feet tall. I don't think of them as very heavy objects. Yeah. Very nice. Forged in timness. It looks great in person. It really does. I almost feel like I'm gunking it up by touching it. You are. I'll be sterilizing it later. Yeah, it needs to be cleaned to remove the fingerprints. But it looks great. This is so nice. I mean, that's going to be a centerpiece of the H.I. Museum clearly, isn't it? Like it's going to be in the center of the room. Yeah. Spotlights coming down on it. So nice. Very cool. And the pillow braiding. The pillow braiding. I can never say enough about how much this pillow acts as a magnification of the beauty and magnificence of the hot star. It does. It makes some far more regal. It really does. Here we go. All right. Thank you for showing it to me first. That's all right. So it's a new year, but let's continue with our Christmas cards and messages from Tim's. We've got knives everywhere that we're using to cut open these envelope. It's been a frenzy of knives and paper and we're surrounded by stamps and envelopes. It's like a male sorting office here. Yeah. And Christmas heart chocolate. We're having a, I've introduced Gray to the joys of Ovalteen. I didn't think you'd like it. You got here and I said, do you want a coffee? And you said, I don't feel like a coffee. I'll have a tea. And then I decided to make myself an Ovalteen and I said, do you want one of these, Gray? Like just to be polite. You were like, you know what? I will. And your head won. And then later on we came home and then unsolicited. You said, I could go another one of those Ovaltakes. They feel very appropriately holiday. They are. It's a good little holiday drink. They're super super Christmasy. Not very fitter-tron, but the holidays are opposed to fitter-tron. So we've had a number of questions and postcards sent in by people who have sent in repeat cards that have been like they're trying to make a joke by sending in loads. But there's no rules against that. No, no, it's not like they're stuffing the ballad bars. So this is one person whose name I don't have here, but they sent in lots of questions. But some of them are quite good. I liked this one. If the other person, so presumably this is between you and I, if the other person called you and said, I need your help to hide a body, what would you each think had happened? We think it happened. So if I find you as a great, did you help hide a body? I mean, obviously someone wouldn't have treated you with the respect that you deserve. That's what I would assume. Like I don't really know how we should answer that or discuss it, but I do think it's a really fun question to like, it's probably more or not of a podcast question, but it's a fun question. The other person just said, I need you help hiding a body. What do you start a straightaway start thinking happened? I kind of feel like if you did get yourself into a tangle and had like a body to dispose of, which is a pretty serious tangle would be fair. I'm not sure you'd call me. I'm not sure I'd be your guy. I mean, why would you expand the circle of people who know? You're already thinking it. Thinking it through. Why would I have expanded? I mean, why would I expand? The other question asked by the same person, what extinct animal would you de-extinct right now if you could? Okay. What? Tyranisterus Rex. Really? I imagine one of those bad boys walking around. I mean, are we de-extincting it in Jurassic Park or is it just like running free in the world? Well, I'm not advocating, releasing it into places where it's going to cause problems, but I just want to see what they look like and smell like and sound like. That's just gotten maximum wellness. Well, again, always with these questions, what are the parameters? Do a bunch of Tyranxes just appear just burst across the world? That seems like a bad idea. Do we get one in a zoo? That's a pretty awesome idea. Oh, yeah. I was thinking more as a one-off science project. You're thinking that the same de-extinct it sounds a bit like we're reintroducing it to the world. Oh, yeah. Right? So it was still going to exist in the world. I would want something like a woolly mammoth. Yeah. I think a pack of woolly mammoths would be pretty cool. And the figure that's mostly Canada's problem. You could just go up there and see what they look like on a nature preserve. Something along those lines. Yeah. You can have mammoths. Thanks. Yeah. But if it was just going to be one in a zoo, I think I agree with you. Like T-Rex. And that is the dinosaur you'd go for. You wouldn't go for like a brachiosaur or tracerotop. So it's King of the Dinosaur. King of the Dinosaur. You got a he-respect of the crown. Was T-Rex the King of the Dinosaur's at the time or of we kind of King of Fard in our modern culture or was it like top dog? King is a constructed office and we have constructed it around the T-Rex. Now this one that you've just opened, I put on the pile especially for you. I thought you would appreciate the efficiency of this contribution. I mean, it looks all business, this envelope. This looks like something that a computer would print out in the 1950s. Yeah. It looks like a check or a bill or something doesn't it? And have a look at the card and what's on the back of it. Oh wow. Okay. Here we go. From Robert in Virginia. Okay. So it's a card that lets you tick 10 boxes for each of the things that you want it to be. So check one. They wrote, they checked the box labeled deer versus high or to whom it may concern. So it's deer, Brady and Gray. Box two. How are you, they've checked and it keeps going through. So what's the code I was saying on the other side? Is it the process letter or it's kind of the process letter stationary for the busy person? So it's like it's the most impersonal way you could possibly send someone a letter with just a bunch of tick boxes and pro forma fields and things like that. You know when you get a form letter, it has that form letter feel. But this is a form letter that lets you see all the other possibilities for each of the form, which makes it even less personal. It kind of wears its form letterness on a sleeve. This is obviously like a joke thing to buy in a shop and then you send to people say, yeah, okay. I thought you'd appreciate the efficiency of it at the bottom of this. PS, I found a stack of these and thought you would like it and the answer is correct. I do like it. All right. So the plan is hopefully with some of these cards and notes and things that we've been sharing over the course of the 12 days of Hello Internet that some of these will find their way onto our podcast postcards website where I've been uploading ballots for the last couple of years. So we'll include links and stuff and you can go and check out that site and have a look at some stuff. All right. This is another one that looks like maybe it's a card that is being sent for Christmas to people by like a couple. There's a picture of this couple and they have like Photoshopped Santa hats on. So they're obviously the couple. Bacon, Rajni, high-bradian grey. What do you think of the Norwegian municipality shields? I think they're great and show you how limitations on colors and simplicity breeds greatness. There are a number of rules for them and the two most important being one only use two colors and two only having one motif which can be repeated. There is a bit.ly slash Norwegian shields or you can find them another way but he's created a bitly. Whoa. Okay. I'll let you just quickly scroll up and down here. There is an overwhelming number of these shields. Oh yeah. Wow. Gosh. They are good. I mean, there must be a hundred on here. There's just way too many to review and some of them do not look so great. Some of them do. It's very hard to make a general statement about them but I like at least that there were rules for how the municipalities are supposed to design their shields. Yeah. So plus one to rules is the way I'm going to vote on this one. Okay. Oh, there's one that has a beehive. I like that one. Oh, who's that for? Who are they? Lessable. I'm not quite sure how to say it but yeah, they've got a beehive on there. I caught my eye. All right. Well, maybe one day we'll have a closer look at the Norway shields. I like that at the end here, Eri can Rajny say, if anything, they're better than the Swedish shields and they have a link to the Swedish shields. I don't want to start like a whole, you know, Sweden versus Norway. Oh, my goodness. Okay. So these are the Swedish shields that I'm looking at that I pulled up on that link. I only saw the one. Okay. So now give me this back. Oh, hang on. Oh, dear. No, this is... No way ones at the top. Oh, you made a right mess of it. No, but okay. But now we might contribute to arrival. So just to clarify people, Gray called up the link for the Swedish municipal shields. Luckily people from Norway and Sweden don't really mind when you get them mixed up and stuff. Yeah, I think they're all pretty good about that. Yeah. Like when I jokingly said, Magnus, Magnus the chess master was from Sweden. I still hear about that. Ooh. I think the Norway ones are better. All right. I'm having a look. Just glancing at them. Again, they're still a bunch, but I think the Norway ones are better. Norway ones are more consistently simple. Yeah. They're nice. I like the Swedish ones too, but yeah. I mean, I don't want to start another war between Norway and Sweden, but I'm going to point to Norway on their municipality shields. Don't see any bees though. No, but you don't see any beehives. No, see hives, but better shields. Oh, hang on. He says, so they're from Oslo and apparently Oslo's shield was made before the rules. I have to see the Oslo. This is the most complicated card. He puts in the end of his cards greetings from Oslo, whose shield was made before the rules. So it stinks. Oh, I see. And he says it stinks. I found it for you. Oh, yeah. And Oslo looks like it belongs on an American state flag. I was just about to say it does not look very far from New York, Excelsior. And yeah, it's. Why don't Oslo fall into life? Yeah, get with the times, Oslo. I don't know what your problem is here. Great. I think it's time for me to show you something. Okay. Yeah. Don't panic. Instantly panic. This has been something that people have been wanting me to show for a long time. I'm not going to lie. And like, I've delayed it because we talk about flag design quite a lot. And we also talk about how much I love Adelaide quite a lot. And a lot of people have been pretty keen to point out that Adelaide City has its own flag. So South Australia has a flag. And Australia has a flag. But Adelaide, the city, municipality has a flag. Have you seen it yet? I don't know. I have no nothing about this. Many people have been wanting me to show you the Adelaide flag. Okay. I have not wanted to show you this flag. Okay. Which probably tells you a lot. So people by popular demand, at last, I am showing Gray what the Adelaide City flag looks like. Well, that's very sweet. Adelaide. This is not a pred moment for me. Oh, I didn't realize it has this border around it. Awesome. So there's a big red like English cross through the center of it. Like it's a thick red cross, which divides the flag into four. And then there's drawings in each of the four. My gut reaction was to say that they're childish, but they're too good for children, but there's this unhappy place where you need a certain amount of skill to be able to draw something poorly. They're like, they're very clip art, aren't they? It is clip art, the cow in particular. And is that a sheep being hoisted by something? I was going to ask. So there's a ship. There's a bundle of wheat. The wheat is the best, clearly. There's a cow that's poorly drawn. And there's a sheep that is being pulled up in the middle by something. I don't know what. And then around the whole flag is this horrible yellow and blue diagonal border. Also at this very moment, Brady is sitting down trying to pretend like he didn't just sneak off to show shardering. Audrey and wedged herself between Lulu and a heater and she was snoring very loud. She's very happy though. Is the sheep being pulled up onto a ship or something? Like it's being... I mean, maybe it is, but they haven't drawn the ship that it's being pulled up onto. It's just a sheep suspended in nothing by a belt and a little eye hole for a hook around itself. It's not good. It's not a good flag. I'm very used to it. I used to cover the Adelaide City Council as a journalist. I was exposed to this flag a lot. So to me, it's kind of quite acceptable. And it's only now. I suddenly have this epiphany that you can't do that. That border. The border is bad, but it's also that blue, like that particular shade of blue that so many places use, just a bad color blue for the background. The Armorial Flag of Adelaide was approved on August the 2nd, 1982. Oh, oh god. It replaced the de facto decoration of the Code of Arms. The new flag was prepared by the College of Arms and took it symbols from the city's Code of Arms. I can't really find out much more. I'll have to just look anyway. That's unfortunate. People have been wanting me to reveal this to you for quite some time, like, you know, because I'm always bigging up Adelaide. So I thought people thought this was a chance to, you know, if you have a swipe. So there you go. He's seen it now, people. You can stop asking. Thank you for showing me that. Let us not speak of it again. I understand this is a difficult moment for you. Yeah. I want to just pick one and pass it to me. You pick one at random. Oh, oh, I like this one because this has got a picture of a little cute girl on it. That looks like it's being terrorized by some kind of demon. Right. The crampus. I love the crampus. I love myself some crampus. I don't hand riding too. It is good handwriting on there. The crampus, I also, like, I squint my eye out a little bit because I don't know how much is this an actual historical thing or how much of this is a modern creation that people like to pretend as a historical thing. Okay. Something about the crampus feels a little bit constructed to me, but I don't know if that's true or not. What does this say? Do you see GP Gray and Dr. Brady Harron? Of course. I think Brady got rid of all of the cards that didn't say Dr.. Merry Christmas from Germany, where Christmas is not always so merry, especially for naughty girls and boys who get a visit from crampus instead of St. Nicholas. Crampus will whip the misbehaving children, stuff them into his basket, and then take them straight to the fires of hell. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. So this question that's now being posed as a result is kind of like, you know, I think if we take it as fun and not imbue too much meaning in it, it could be interesting, because this is, since you two boys have been very naughty all year, I expect your fate has already been determined. Which is what I have decided to ask you this question. Here's the question. What five objects need to be placed at the five points of a pentagram in order to summon your spirits from the beyond? So what five objects would be used to summon a gray? Yeah, we're thinking like, what are the two atomic objects? Yeah. A hole cruxers or something, you know, like they can. Yeah. I mean, I can think of some for you already. I mean, obviously an iPhone is going to be one of yours. Okay. I feel like that is unfair, but probably accurate. Right. So an iPhone. And I would want a caveman club for you. Okay. A club. That's what I want. No. Instead of a club, I feel like almost a wooden toothbrush, even though this is an old Brady, but it still would be an object. Right. That could summon a Brady. For you, I would have a hot stopper. I think a hot stopper could count for both of us. Yeah. Because you like a coffee. So that is true. A hot stopper. That is true. It's hard coming up with objects for you. I think you need a camera, like the camera that you used to record your videos. Yeah. Like an interviewer, interviewer camera. Yeah. Or maybe a copy of that Adelaide newspaper that you worked for. The Adelaide Observer or whatever. Advertiser. Advertiser. I was so close. I would have, I would also have a, like an eye pencil, whatever they. Just because I think they're not nice objects. They're so eye pencils. Like, but an eye pencil. I think maybe you could leave one of my pentagram points blank just symbolically because there's not an object there. No, I like a lack of objects. A lack of object would be one of the objects. Maybe a little B stands here. That would be great in a movie about like, you know, trying to solve the puzzle of bringing you back and they keep rearranging the five objects. And then it's not until some genius says, no, the key to bringing grayback would be to leave one object out. Right. And then suddenly you just like appear from below. Moo-hoo. I could see that as a resolution to a movie. I like that. That's good. I like to lie at the idea of the five objects to someone as back, but you know, you could have a million objects for me. It's not, it's not really fair, but this is also like an assignment for the Tim's in feedback for the show. Because also, like the way we know each other, I think in sometimes block these sort of thoughts sometimes, like it actually makes it harder. And so other people might be able to think of the objects more easily. But I like that. Like, because there are things that I would think, if you like, I think, oh, I think, oh, a big black coat. Because sometimes I see wearing a big dark coat or something. But then like, that's not really a very fun object to be putting like down to someone someone, you know, my glasses, right? Yeah. You need the glasses. I think that's, that would be a winner for that. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's kind of, yeah. I like a microphone for you as the winner of the Rio and podcast champion. A CGP Gray mug would be a good one for you. Because I very much associate you with that. And it's got your CGP Gray logo on it. And it appears in your videos all the time and that. So it's like, that's if you're a you object. Brady, Brady, how could I not think of this? White gloves of destiny. What gloves of destiny? Well, that seems like it's 100% be one of your objects. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. You don't like it. It's like the white gloves. No, that's so Brady. Yeah, I guess. Or just, just if we could somehow put the channel objectivity on one of the corners. But like that's for small channels, isn't it? You'd want to roll the brown paper. No, but it's, it, it may be a smaller channel, but it's so you. It's the most you channel that can exist. OK. So you need to put objectivity on one of the corners. White gloves. All right. All right. All right. Well, maybe people put together your list of five objects. But also, I'd like to see people saying what their own five objects are. Because that would be interesting little insight into how people perceive themselves. So go into our, you know, Reddit and do that list of five objects. So Gray, it's a new year. It is a new year. It's a new year. And famously, in one of the reasons we're going through all these cards right now is because of project cyclops. I don't know what you're talking about. Project cyclops where you went offline in many ways. You've been off Twitter, been off Reddit. You weren't listening to podcasts. I wasn't really clear how long you were doing it for, but I was under the impression maybe it was going to be ending at the end of the year. Yeah. So as we go forward now into 2019. Since it is a new year. Since it is a new year. First of all, what are you doing? Is it going to continue? Are we going to start saying tweets again? Are you going to start lurking in reddits? Are you going to start listening to podcasts again? Do you know yet? It was supposed to end at the end of the year. It was going to do it for the remainder of the year. And now that as we're recording, it's January 1st, 2019. All I can say for sure is I'm not ready to come back. You're not coming back yet. I'm not coming back yet. Okay. I don't have any more plans than that. But I figure people might want to know what's going on. I have no easy way to tell them. So yeah, I'm not ready to be summoned back. At some point. No five objects will do it. Maybe if someone comes up with the list in the subreddit, Gray would just magically come back like. Yeah. Maybe some spells are powerful enough. But for the time being, I'm still staying away and I'm not quite sure how long. How come? Like, you just because it's working? I just don't feel ready to return. I have no better answer than that except just like the remainder of the year, which seemed like a long time when I started it, went by very fast. And I just have a feeling like whatever I'm trying to achieve with this, I haven't quite achieved yet. So I'm not, I'm not ready to cut it. What now seems short. I'm going to let it run for a little while longer. I remember how much longer. I remember when you started it, it felt like one of the real things you were trying to achieve was somehow improving or regaining like your attention span and your ability to concentrate. Have you noticed that changing? Can you read for longer periods of time now? Is it, are you feeling a healing? I can say that is one of the things that I feel like I've noticed a difference with, that I've noticed a difference in my work, particularly with like reading and researching for videos that I'm able to do it for much longer stretches of time. And there's a particular feeling of concentration that's hard to articulate. But yeah, that feels like it's returned or it's back to a large extent. So. Do you want to continue or is there other reasons? That's part of it. There's part of the reason that I want to continue is that in some sense I can say it's been successful. But it still feels like that success is maybe a little bit fragile. And so coming back when it feels like it's too soon to come back just because like, oh, past me, set a date. Like, I don't really care what past me had to say about anything. And so it's like, no, I'm not going to come back yet. If people out there were waiting until January 1st to tell me something. Yeah. You have to wait a while longer. Yeah, hopefully you sent a Christmas card. Yeah. That was your chance. That's exactly it. That's why we're going through these cards. Is there anything you're missing about it? The thing that I miss and which is kind of these Christmas cards is some level of feedback and interaction. There have been a number of times where I thought like, oh, it would be useful to be able to reach out to the audience for something or to just have a sense of how things have gone. But overall, the benefits out, out way. So I'm going to stay away for a little bit. I'm scheming about how to come back in a gradual sense in the future, but it's all very vague right now. What about like, Tuesday tweets with Gray? And it's like, that's the only day you tweet. Maybe in the future, Tuesday tweets is not a bad idea. Is there anything about the process that like has surprised you in a way that it's harder than you thought, easier than you thought you've liked more than you thought? Like was anything unexpected or has what has happened to be exactly what you anticipated? I think the thing that's unexpected is after maybe two months, maybe two and a half months, it just felt like everything was kind of the same. It wasn't harder. It was just, oh, this stuff is not a part of my life anymore. And so I just don't often think about it. And so I don't think it would be harder to do a year versus six months versus four months. I think at some point you just hit a threshold where you just kind of forget about it and it's not part of your life. And it's just like, oh, this is not a thing that I'm involved in anymore. So I think that's been a surprise. I might have expected to be really itchy to get back and shocked that as the years come to an end, it's mostly been a feeling of dread of like, oh, I don't want to go back. And I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing because I don't feel like it's quite done yet. And it would feel silly to cut it short sooner than I think it needs to be. But I don't know how long it's going to be. Does it ever make you feel silly that it ever was such a big deal in the first place? What do you mean by such a big deal? There was a time when being on Hacker News and Reddit was, you gave a lot of your time to it. You gave a lot of your brain space to it. Hang it out on Twitter. You gave a lot of time in your brain space to it. Now that you're not doing it, and it's almost like it doesn't exist, do you think, bloody hell, what an idiot. Why was I giving it so much in the first place? What a waste of my time. No, it doesn't feel that way because there is some value as a person who makes things for the internet to be part of the internet. And there is some time horizon where I felt where I feel like if I did this indefinitely, it would eventually become more net negative than net positive. Like if I didn't go on the internet for three years, I think at that point I would just be so disconnected that it would be like making things in a total vacuum. You need to have some kind of connection with the world. No, I don't feel like it was silly. And I also just love meme culture and I love a kind of crazy wild west cowboy-ness of the internet. There's something about that that just like really lines up well with my personality. So I don't feel like it was silly, but that's a different question from is stepping away for a while net positive. And I still feel like I'm in net positive territory. Has there been much lobbying for you to come back that you've been exposed to? Like whether it's from friends and stuff like people going, come on, great, come back on Twitter and Instagram, it's good fun. Or do people not talk to you about it? Or do people say, this is brilliant, you should keep doing it? I would say the near universal thing from colleagues and friends who work in the business is one, intense interest and two, a desire that they could do it. But everybody has some reason why they say they can't do it. Even though with rare exception, I don't think they're right. I think many, many of like friends and colleagues in the industry dramatically overestimate how much they need to be online as part of their work. But no, most people are very interested. I can say no one has mounted a lobbying campaign for Twitter is a great idea to spend more of your time on. Right? No one has even brought that up as an argument. Fair enough. All right. I thought you were going to announce to the world you're back and you've just like on not. No, I'm not back. If I had to put money on when you'd be back, what should I bet on? If bookmakers were taking bets like June, what are you looking for insider information about how to take bets on the very active Hello Internet betting market? Yeah. Because you say it can't be three years, right? And zero time was not satisfactory to you. Three years is too much. So I'm guessing 18 months is the smart bet. When would 18 months be? That would be like the start. This would be about this time next year. I guess so. If that's where you want to place your bet. There suddenly feels like one of those baby betting pools of like, what's the arrival date? All right. There you go. You heard it here first. Well, where else are you going to hear? Well, happy new year's day. Are you braiding? Yes. Yes. And like, well, let's not talk about New Year's resolutions. And New Year's resolutions are done anyway. Well, I'm going home and I'll come back and talk to you tomorrow. Yeah, it was lovely here in Dover, wasn't it? Wait, where are we? Dover. Delaware. Delaware. Oh, Delaware. Not over England. That was my whole joke because we didn't say the capital of Dover the first time. Right. No, it was a very good joke, Brady. Wasted.