84. Whirling Away Into the Unhearable

Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! Lords: Erica @YerrikTRB on Twitter Erica plugs Kitchen! The Musical, and also Micah’s books: https://tinyurl.com/46k5zfnm Micah @micahwrites on Twitter Micah plugs Bermudez Triangle, “Chilling Tales for Dark Nights” https://www.youtube.com/user/chillingtaleswi Topics: In praise of bad hidden object games HOPAs, or Hidden Object Puzzle Adventures, made by studios in Hong Kong and Eastern Europe: https://www.eipix.com/hopa-games/ http://blueteagames.com/ https://elephant-games.com/games/ https://www.world-loom.com/ HOPA Let’s Plays: https://www.youtube.com/c/YourGibs/playlists Better designs for the human body Modularity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity_(biology) CRISPR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR When you say "excuse me" you're asking forgiveness for doing something rude, such as burping. When you say "excuse me" as a demand that someone move out of the way because you're impatient to get past, the demand is itself the rude thing, so you should have to say it twice. Brood X: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22362042/cicada-brood-x-map-2021 Palo Verde beetles https://www.azfamily.com/weather/phoenix_weather_blog/the-monsoon-monster-beetle/article_bb4bd606-0476-5c0e-ae2a-ddbe1467d9d5.html https://arizonareport.com/big-black-arizona-beetle-palo-verde/ Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_hissing_cockroach Beastie Boys - Sabotage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE https://youtu.be/-TQgbVk9jss Deodar Cedars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedrus_deodara Ryan Reynolds and the Deadpool Cinematic Universe Watching Shakespeare The Hollow Crown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hollow_Crown_(TV_series) Henry V: https://globeplayer.tv/videos/henry-v Falstaff, who is actually more in Henry IV than Henry V: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Falstaff Hamlet in the original Klingon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF0k4qV1I1Y Richard II (the one that precedes Henry IV) https://tinyurl.com/344kjjp4 Microtopics: Kitchen! The Musical. Inviting the general public to write the musical that exists only in your head. Introducing the guest who is bad at introducing himself. Running a white-hat ARG on company servers to research and understand the employees you fired for running an ARG on company servers. In praise of terrible games. Procedurally-generated hidden object games. Organizing your life in a video game when you can't organize shit in real life. Where the Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure fan communities are congregating online. Using the block button on the pile of dishes in the sink. Asking the manliest gamers to play feminine-coded video games and discovering if they become less manly. Ladies who want to wear big dresses to be fancy ballroom ladies. Gamers who don't congregate online but instead enjoy video games by themselves. Where the Russian developers who make games for American women congregate online. Clicking on something to make it go away. Improving humans by adding components vs. by replacing components. The legality of inventing a new organism by adding or deleting genes. The Modular Human. Plants undergoing full genome duplication. The Diploid Human. Using your hundred tongues to speak a hundred languages at once. The one line you remember from "Kitchen! The Musical" Saying "excuse me" in a higher and higher pitched voice until you're only saying "excuse me" to dogs and bats. Running an errand in Tucson and incidentally removing horrifying beetles from multiple strangers’ hair. True bugs and untrue bugs. True bugs, with piercing and sucking mouthparts. A reimagining of the insect phylum that includes small dogs and especially annoying children. Hissing cockroaches that repeat what they hear like a parrot, so when you walk through the forest all you hear is a chorus of raspy voices saying "agh, get it off of me!" Brood X, scheduled for this summer! Brood X: Brood In Space. OS X: OS In Space. Which is worse, piercing and sucking mouthparts or sawing and sucking mouthparts? What color of flashing lights civilians are allowed to use. Pretending to be police. The invasive plant species that the Sabotage music video is trying to highlight. Hypothetical potted plants in the background of Powerman 5000's When Worlds Collide. Being sentenced to community service and filling your rap punk band's trailer with fresh vegetables. Nick Cave throwing a chair. A poolside interrogation to find out if someone has a waterproof phone before you push them into a pool. A cloth dummy falling off of a bridge. Whether that cloth dummy had a cloth family. Whether 1970s porn stars styled themselves after 1970s cops, or vice versa. Popeye the Sailor Moon. Everybody at the party dressing up as sexy cops and handing the real police a beer when they show up at the door. Accidentally bringing up sexy cops every time you're on the show. Chill dudes in short ties. Taking a picture of a tree out of your moving car and asking a botanist to identify a blurry mess. A boss who thinks your name is Marcia. Meeting somebody with overlapping energies. Total freedom from all societal expectations. Setting up a movie streaming service that only streams one movie to promote your new phone company. Buying every copy you can find of your first movie. Watching multiple sets of people trapped in the same reality where they play out the same dramas and say the same lines over and over. The one time Shakespeare wrote a stage direction. Every time Shakespeare has been adapted into a movie. Who even likes Falstaff. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged. Re-subtitling your movie using lines from Shakespeare. The origin of Klingons as Shakespeare characters.