swimming upstream in a river of mainstream diarrhoea. It's time
for your weekly old guy gabfests known as no agenda coming to you
from Gitmo nation east in southwest London in the United
Kingdom. I'm Adam curry.
I'm John C. Dvorak here. What was that the intro again? That's
disgusting swimming
upstream or in a river of mainstream diarrhoea was meant
to be graphic.
I'm in northern Silicon Valley cringing, also known as get mo
nation West. I'm reading this book on, I'm going okay guys. I
found everyone's won by moving some boxes around right. So I
find these old boxes of books including The Oakland Athletics,
World Champions, information guide from 1990 and the 1997
Zagat Zagat guide, and the restaurants have switched around
quite a bit. I have to say, Nothing stays the same.
And you've discovered this after X amount of years of living on
this. This globe?
Yeah, you think that there'd be more consistency? I think there
was in France.
Why don't you move there good riddance to you. We're sick and
tired of your crankiness What did what did not as sue me. What
did she call you the other day? Buzzkill? everyone's favourite
Buzzkill. But that was pretty funny. Yeah, it's funny that I
saw your I saw your in Las Vegas.
Is that right?
You didn't You didn't see me. VO thanks for watching my show. You
didn't see me do today. I watched the daily. Yeah, I'm
sure you did. Well, then you would have known you were in Las
Vegas. Yeah, no, I saw that.
Last I was in Las Vegas. Last year. I thought it was it was it
was actually there last year wondering Yeah, I didn't know.
This was the member of the pinball Museum. You were you
were harping on Right? Right. Right. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah,
that was the that was the report, but I just had to do a
Quint box. I wanted to get all of our all of our reporters into
one into one screen.
Why would anybody go to that show in Las Vegas is baffling to
me.
Well, I'm reading mixed reports. First of all, I agree. I mean, I
despise trade shows. I love watching them if they have
straight I love watching keynotes on streams. I think
that's fantastic.
See this keynotes and everything. You don't have to
go? The the comes right into your bedroom. I mean, it's just
like, why am I going to the keynote things, especially when
they have big names like, even without Steve Jobs here at
Macworld, which I did go to, in San Francisco. Even without
Steve Jobs at the keynote, I didn't go to the keynote, I
never sold them do I people who went said it was a madhouse?
Well, people scrambling,
but tration to trade shows, of course, you know, they actually
the trade shows that I've been to with my wife when she had her
cosmetics company is essentially you're selling to stores, you
know, retail, you've got big buyers, it's a place where
buyers and sellers more at the wholesale level can get
together. And this This became a you know, a thing where
consumers want to go because they could find the latest
products, etc. And in fact, at the end of our stay in the
Netherlands, when Patricia would do a trade show, you know, so
many people would come in to buy stuff that you know, eventually
she said screw it, you know, I'm just gonna set up a booth which
is really oriented towards people walk in the door and want
to buy and was making, you know, huge amounts of money doing
that.
So the trade shows in the US don't allow that by the way.
Oh, really? Hmm.
I wonder what why is that? Why Why? Why? Well,
it has to do with the local business licencing
I do know that at all those trade shows the ASCAP BMI agents
are out and if you're playing music in your booth and they
discreetly take you aside and hand you a bill really
Yeah, that's that's what if you're playing podsafe music and
wonder what happens when they take you aside and then you pull
out the the little document saying what do you what are you
kidding me?
You know, I only wish that had happened when I was involved in
podsafe music that would that sounds like a fight at with Adam
curry written all over it sounds like something I'd love to get
into.
Yeah, cuz you know some of the stuff now. The podsafe music is
obvious is very commercial. And I think a guy roaming around
doing that pulling that stunt you know, trying to Nick people
for ASCAP fees wouldn't know the difference.
Oh, no, of course not. Well, a lot of some companies are now
trying it you know, but these ASCAP BMI fuckers or you know,
fill in your local your local letters here for whatever your
country is. You They basically they have a God given right, but
like looking at the law books, as you know, usually the sole
company allowed to collect rights and their, you know,
their their vision is, you know, well we'll take the money now
and then we'll check it later. That's the kind of like IRS
agents they're really quite frightening. And you get you
always get the you know, there was a lawsuit recently some
hairdresser who said, Hey, man, I'm playing this radio for me
not for my clients. I'm playing shitty music they don't even
want to listen to. So that's for me personally. Good try.
Didn't work. Now? Of course not. No. So looking at bill do they
usually present people with
it depends on the size of your booth. And they have
calculations as to how many I mean, you'd be surprised how
much science there a or so called science, particularly
when it comes to retail. I've known a number of restaurant
tours and bar owners. And these guys will, you know, they'll
literally come in and they will do a calculation based upon you
know, whatever time they're in there the size of the venue, and
then they'll go back and look at your tax records and said this,
you know, you're not, you're not paying enough tax in. Because
you have to be selling more based upon what we've tracked.
And the volume has to do the same with music. And so even if
you have a workshop where you have the radio on you have to
pay your ASCAP BMI dues, because you're effectively broadcast
narrow casting to 10 people or whoever, however many people you
have in there.
So let me get this straight. So I have a radio on in my little
carpenter shop that has three people working in there. Yep,
you eventually will get a visit if you don't pay have your own
accord.
Now, what if we had had the same three people and myself with a
FM radio on our person? With headsets on listening to the
same music on the same channel? That would be okay. So does that
make any sense to you? No.
I think in general John, when it comes to rules, regulation, the
government and the man I don't think a lot of that makes sense
to me.
But I was gonna see buddies out there, I'm just gonna say if
anybody's out there who has been hit with one of these bills,
little small shops, or a retail environment or, or a hairdresser
of arch, I think is where you're gonna run into this quite a bit.
Would you send us a note and tell us what the give us the
experience and what you were told to pay? And what came of it
and we'll talk about it later. Or better
yet, if you're listening right now, seeing as we're streaming
live, you can call into the chat room and, and I actually have
everything jacked in today. So if we wanted to take a call we
could story about the British music industry in the Financial
Times today in the weekend edition. So how much do you
think? And this of course has nothing to do with what we just
mentioned the performance writes, but what do you think
physical and digital sales did?
In his last year in the UK? Yeah, this
last year, it's down obviously from 2007. Although only 25
million down.
But they sold 100 123 million
120 $3 million worth of
pounds pounds pounds worth now 123 million physical albums were
sold in the UK. So that's a lot more than $123 million, or
pounds. Seeing Is that okay, yeah. So that is closer to like
seven or 800 billion a million.
Didn't know when you used to sell a million albums. There was
never became a gold or platinum.
Oh, these days? It's in some countries is 10,000. It's like,
yeah, you wouldn't go oh, how am I sell 1000 units?
Tell me it's a scam? No, you
think, dude, I Patricia still has gold records that are
actually the mother masters that they use when they pressed
vinyl. And you can put these on a turntable. And if you play it
backwards, because it's the mirror image, it is indeed the
song that that achieved the sales. It's really cool.
Although it's not so cool. As these were these things are so
old, I had to take it out of the case to play it on a turntable,
and I couldn't get the casing back together. And that made my
wife very angry. But but but it did play. I had played it
backwards on a turntable and it was the actual saw.
I think there's like proving the point. Yeah. Okay.
Well, they don't do that anymore. I mean, now it's just a
CD and like a plastic frame, you know, like congratulations. And
they've given everybody every disc jockey and every promo guy,
the Secretary, everyone's got gold records. I don't mean
anything like they used to. They used to mean something that was
cool, you know, and the more you had here was the key is,
particularly in the radio, business and station managers
and programme directors and music directors are always
getting these because it's the most informal form of bribery
that is accepted. And the cool thing to do is to have them all
stacked up against the wall. Don't have them hanging on the
wall, but just have so many of them that they're just stacked
in rows of 10 against the wall. Oh, yeah, man, you know, I got
to hang those up one of these days, you know?
That's what you got to do.
Oh, yeah. So, weather wise, we are freezing our tits off here
in the United Kingdom. In US
cooking here in Northern California, God in
the Netherlands there now they do this whenever it really,
really gets cold and I haven't heard this chatter for at least
a decade. But then they start threatening with cranking up the
11 city natural ice canal race, which is famous famous in the
Netherlands. Where you know, it's all done and naturalised on
canals under and around bridges, and it's 11 cities, it's
hundreds of kilometres. You know, people lose their, their
toes, their fingers, their lives, but it's a it's a huge,
huge cultural deal, and I hope it happens again, but just goes
to show that there's some funky going on.
I know they do that in Ottawa city. course they don't know
it's not it's always freezing but this
is like hot. This is the legend of Hans Brinker in the silver
skates right this is what that is about. This is that story.
So it freezes that bad that that that those all those canals get
frozen
over? Well, it hasn't it was only Well, you know, it was only
one freezing over an hour or No, no, no, it's it's the freezing
is really started now. So now everyone's talking about
cranking up the competition. But the last time it had been a
while until of course the Al Gore proclaimed global warming
that's when you know, luckily we have the the 11 city yet canal
race coming back.
I reminded of the I've always said to people, you know, the
day that the term paperless office was coined. If you had
invested in paper mills, right, then you'd been making a
fortune, you would have made a fortune. Well, you know what my
dad always says the paperless office is as likely as the
paperless toilet.
Which which I always thought was a good one.
Yeah, well, they do exist in India.
Yes. And in other countries,
so. So it's cold and you're getting freezing and you're
getting snowing and I was up in the snowing this morning. Yeah.
It was snowing in London this morning.
Yeah, flurries I mean, not like big, big snow. But sticking Yes.
Oh, it's very cold. It's
icy out. So Can people fall on their ass?
No, unfortunately, no, no. But if they can, then we have a good
shot.
So was sunny here we were looking for some rain is
supposed to happen last week, nothing happened. It's just like
right now it's clear. It's not a cloud in the sky. And I don't
know, it's probably going to be 70. Today, of course. Meanwhile,
in Washington, they had this number of storms, a bunch of
snow storms, and then ice storms and then some terrible rains
that have flooded in most of Washington State and smelt that
all the snow of course, which makes it even worse, because it
will have it with twice as much water. And and then that's just
sweeping across the northern states in some horrible way. And
just I guess it's going to affect football games today.
With football games.
Well, there's a couple playoff games. I think one of them's
being played in Baltimore, maybe or New York or someplace. I
don't know who's, who's home and who's away. But I know there's
at least one or two going to be played back east, which means
it'll be us football game in the snow. And we're talking about
American football here for anyone you're listening in. And
those are always usually great fun to watch. Because you know,
the people slide around, they fall in there as if the ball
ever gets loose, which happens at least once or twice a game
starts bouncing around as it becomes quite humorous to watch
people try to grab it. And that could be fun. That
reminds me Have you seen that it's floating around on YouTube.
It was a mill, a military marine beach landing demonstration
video, which of course the Royal Marines, the United Kingdom say
it's not them, which is kind of weird because they're using
British military machine guns. They have British military
landing ships, they're wearing British military, marine
uniforms. You know, it's basically the Royal Marines. And
so they land on this beach. And then four guys jump out. This is
a demonstration of how they do a beach landing. It was kind of
Normandy esque if you will. And and the beach is completely
filled with mud. And these poor guys go face to face fall flat
into the mud and they're stuck because they have so much gear
they can't get out of the mud. And they just sit there
struggling and they're trying to pull each other out and it's
like the BIGGEST EMBARRASSMENT ever.
No not seeing that. I'm gonna have to check it Yeah,
I'll send you a link for that. It's funny. I shall mention it
to the Queen by the way when I see her in February.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, so so he sends me a note which written read me
that you think that would have some calligrapher working for
the queen and
I just say I was quite disappointed by that as well.
We're referring to my invitation from the Queen to come visit her
at Buckingham Palace for a special reception for the
relaunch of the Royal website@royal.gov.uk And so you
know, it's a beautiful invitation. It's almost like a
piece of wood John, this is not cardboard. I mean, it's like
plywood. guilted plywood and, but my My name is just kind of
written in in block letters.
Yeah, I mean, it looks like some of that looks like they hired
the handicap names and because I mean, you know, you think
there'd be a royal calligrapher who would you know with a
flourish right Adam curry you know in some of your very nice
manner and it looks like it was scratched in by some guy who
barely writer
it's not that bad okay, it's not that
bad all on a sec small to it's like really small like the guy
was just came out of prison.
So So I RSVP to the master dot household yeah@royal.gsx.vk plus
one No, it's It's I got a parking pass and everything and
it's quite clear photography mobile phones with photographic
capabilities are to be not to be switched on. So I sent back
thank you for your kind invitation to the relaunch Oh
ALLAH I'm happy to attend very much look forward to it and then
I got a recurrent return email from Lucy Regan that from the
same website or email address, thank you very much for email. I
am delighted that you are able to attend kind regards.
And then there's a royal household legal disclaimer.
Oh, really had to sign it?
No, no just says this message and any attachment should only
be read by those persons to whom it is addressed. You know, one
of those
Yeah, like that's going to do any you know, I did always
amuses me. Lawyer came up with this. I remember when that first
started, that was maybe 10 years ago.
And some people have like, 20 paragraphs of shit below their
emails.
Yeah. Right. I know. It's ludicrous. I should come up with
one one of those really ridiculous ones like my terms of
service that I have on the blog. People should check that out.
And which goes on and on and on with all kinds of nonsense.
What is what is our Bobby habits that aren't his emails? I bet
you he has a whole shitload of stuff.
I don't know. Let me say I got an email here from Bobby is our
in house. Lawyer. Oh, yes. Nothing.
Literally nothing. It just Bobby. Fantastic. There you go.
Bobby, you rock man.
I love that rain just went by I could see it down the hill was
that it had a train just went by and it had all antique passenger
cars on it. Oh, pretty. where it's going. Every once in a
while. I remember some every once in a while they have it
always irks me that there's like no notice. Nobody seems to care
to tell anyone. I guess the local media doesn't think much
of it every once in a while there's the Southern Pacific has
a and I think Santa Fe does so they have this this historic old
steam passenger train that they drive all over the place. It
goes all over the country. And it's a big, you know, eight.
driving wheels is a huge thing. And I've seen it I've seen it a
couple times. And they never tell you when it's coming
through when it's around but but when it's in the area, it's
constantly honking it's steam whistle and it's very
distinctive. And so you go What the hell is that? And you go and
you look and you see this antique steam train going
shooting down the road and down the track and you go What did
how did it and then you look it up and you find it it was over
here for a week and people got to take a little rides in it and
then you know and then of course nobody did because nobody knew
him no one knew about it. Anyway, so just a gripe of mine.
So I should I think though that when when I when I go to this
reception with the queen, I need to be very sceptical of a number
of things. A Why did they invite me other than to throw me in the
tower?
Maybe to bite you and we'll have one of the lizards by
but you're the queen also started a podcast and Christmas
2007.
She did. Yeah. And how often does it run?
Well This is the point that Stefano who sent me an email
about my invitation, said you may have already noticed but it
might be worth noting that a podcast of the Queen's speeches
had been set up two years ago but it's only been updated at
Christmas. Oh seven and for her birthday six months after that,
but nothing since including this past Christmas.
Typical, huh?
So I'll have to make mention of that. Certainly, you're here to
tell me that you're also going to relaunch your podcast because
I'm severely you know, you being the fairy godmother me being the
pod father, I think we should hook up and make some happen
Your Royal Highness so the question is should I take along
some this subject Well, should I should I take along some
clandestine recording equipment and and record my encounter?
You mean put a wire on Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Well, you've done it before. Yeah. Yeah,
I just wanted it would wonder if it's gonna I mean, it's easy,
right? Because I just I just can take along a bag and just leave
the bag wherever literally, I have my wireless lav on and I
can clip that to the inside it'll work
yeah, I would do it.
I mean, you didn't want to take in pictures they didn't say
anything about recording well hottie
Yeah. That would be the technical right answer while
they're throwing me in the break the tower hey man is like You
only said no pictures didn't mention recording equipment.
Okay, that's it. I'm doing it
well, maybe they'll let you know the problem is they're gonna
probably go you first you gotta realise they're gonna pat you
down.
He I don't know if they're going to pat me down you think so?
Now I think they're going to walk it to shit. Yeah, they're
gonna walk you through this.
People breaking into the Queen's bedroom all the time. There's
like no security, there's no makes it
worse once something like that happens they get even more
freaky. So they're gonna walk it through a metal detector because
obviously the fact that you were invited and you're not like a
regular at Buckingham Palace that I know that you know of
Yes. That you're you know, you're likely with the hoi
polloi. And there's probably a lot of others like you. And so
they're going to bring you in through a metal detector and
then there's going to be some goons who are probably
humourless and they're going to pat you down.
Let me let me see what the invitation says. Exactly. It's,
it's but it is kind of I mean, just the envelope and everything
in it is really cool. Okay, so I have like a parking pass that
says Am I It has big big pink letters Am I that's what you
have to put in the lower right hand corner of your windscreen?
Am I Mission Impossible is what it is. But I have an entry card
oh this is nicely printed Mr. Adam curry pre please bring this
card with you. Security. In addition to this entry card,
would you please bring photographic identification with
EU passport photo driving licences ideal this will be
checked on arrival arrival and parking please display the
display the enclosed label on your windscreen before arriving
parking is available. Cameras and telephones photography is
not permitted mobile phones must be switched off. And then
there's EU then there's a whole nother the following information
about the reception may be helpful security. Please note
carefully the security information shown on the reverse
of the enclosed entry card which you must bring with you the
invitation entry card are for the named guests only and are
non transferable. And there's information about arrival and
his how to get to Buckingham Palace. Correspondence
additional information doesn't say anything about recording
about audio or video for that matter.
Well, there you have it. Yeah. Okay. So you're still gonna get
patted down.
Then I'll just say, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm gonna
have to you know, just put it in you know, put it you know,
where's it's not a problem.
Well, I can just put the I have the i What is it i Eight 899 or
whatever the I River, it has a built in mic. I can just slip it
into my breast pocket. And then yes, it's my mp3 player. Yeah,
that'll work. Yeah. And then whatever we get, we get and we
get nothing then we got nothing. Right. Which can happen. Yeah,
quite likely. Considering my sound engineering capabilities
of last week. Anything could hell yes.
Let's talk about that. Oh,
let's not that's that's pretty sucky.
I got a whole bunch of notes about it. Yeah.
So it would have been, you know, to have sound fuckup one out of
64 episodes, or really, if you think about it over 900 combined
with all the daily source code episodes, I've done, probably
over 1000 of shows I've done. That's acceptable, but to have
me gloating and pontificating about how great this is. While
it sounds like yeah, which is absolute shit, although we did
pick up a whole bunch of listeners in the Middle East.
Apparently, you because they all like it, they look at their
sound, they're like, hey, finally a show for us. That's
cool this podcast and got something to it. Um, do like
come over here listen to this. This is a great show
I got some guy or when I mentioned that said, like Arab
radio. Oh, la MIDI admitted that there was some stations that
sounded like that most most also sounds like Mexican Mexican
radio has that quality.
So I got to talk. I got to talk with you about UFOs because
there are two things and two things that happened. This past
week. One of them I saw you blogged about the This happened
in the UK that apparently a UFO with tentacles
that's the Flying Spaghetti Monster
flying spaghetti monster hit a wind turbine and broke it. At
the same time this is this is actually from this must be an AP
story. It's coming from
why they don't want wind turbines really
spaced out. Rate. Mystery roar from faraway space detected Have
you heard about this?
No, no, tell me. This is
NASA. And see Alan Cogan of NASA's Goddard Goddard Space
Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, something new and
interesting is going on in the universe. I love that. We're so
they listen to space. And normally, it just kind of sounds
like nothing. But apparently they're picking up loud roaring
noises now and they're not quite sure what it is. But considering
my disappointment of the of the first contact of October, and so
much mainstream media attention being paid to stuff like this
stupid Spaghetti Monster hitting the wind turbine and no, we've
got space sounds from outer space. And Obama wants to
accelerate and put us on the moon like Didn't we already see
that movie before? But anyway, we're gonna get on the moon. I'm
thinking
that Obama's a fractal of Kennedy.
Right? Well, he it Well, here's the here's the scenario. The
scenario is, you know, of course, there's more and more
dissent coming from amongst the slaves saying, wait a minute
global warming. Yeah, okay, we got to protect Earth. But hold
on a second. What are all these taxes for this unproven theory
of yours. And what they're going to do next is they're going to
have space aliens communicate to us and tell us that we're
killing our world and carbon credits are good for us.
Something like that is in the works.
Like it? Yeah, I mean, I can be a hard one to pull off.
Are you kidding me? If
a maniac would would think that that could work? Okay, I am an
artist space and we must tell you Earth names.
I look at I look at Rama Manuel and I think, yeah, he could make
it up. He could do it.
He could be an alien for all we know. No should. He has a funny
look about him.
Like Hebrew reading more and more cynicism in the papers here
about Obama.
But because there's nothing else to write about. Sarah Palin is
not in the news anymore. So they got to focus their attention on
somebody and the Republicans have all you know, scurried
away. And
so what's left?
Now there's gonna be a lot more, you know, Obama's the wedding's
over honeymoon. The
honeymoon is over here. So now he's he's gearing up to hit a
trillion plus. And what is it a million jobs? 600,000 A million.
I keep seeing different numbers.
Yeah, who knows? Yeah, doing what?
Building bridges and roads that we're not going to
get rid of Sarbanes Oxley, and you'll get your million jobs
back right now. Yeah, no, no, it
is quite the opposite. Today. The finance ministers are
meeting to come up with new regulation. This is happening as
we speak. So the new Sarbanes Oxley is being implemented along
with whatever else are cooking up.
So do you might digit you've been following the Madoff thing,
right? Yeah.
The 170 $3 million worth of checks in his in his drawer.
Well, I didn't get that one. Oh, really? He's got $173 million.
Where the checks?
Yeah, I got the article right here. This is hilarious. What he
what he, he demanded about I guess was about two or three
weeks before his his sons gave him up. He didn't end well. This
the way they printed you know, he demanded 100 million pounds
be transferred from the UK off This to the to the US office.
And and so that 100 wall 100 Millions about $173 million in
checks, investigators found in his desk drawer
was better organised than that, though,
this is fantastic. And I predict that this is going to unfold
right into Citi Group and city is going to come crashing down
on the heels of this made off thing. I mean, it's there's so
much tied up in here and that Citi Group is such a black box
that no one understands and what the guy just quit. Let me see
what was his name? The big board member, the guy, the guy who was
responsible for all of it, the fuck is his name?
Well, here's what you're looking at. The thing that I find
interesting is that it turns out at least some people believe
this. That the that one of the big investors in his scheme,
Ponzi scheme, to the tune of about $2 billion is the Russian
mafia.
Go Yeah. Oh, yeah. Not only Robert Rubin.
Oh, yeah. Robert Rubin. Right.
He's quitting Citigroup after 10 years listen to his resume.
Former US Treasury secretary. To who? To the United States.
No. to who? What President?
Oh, to which president? Ah,
it's a good question, Clint. And I believe Yeah,
I think you're right. I think you're right. Yes.
He went, Oh, he Oh, of course, he ran Goldman Sachs. Gee, you
think that club is small? Before joining the Clinton
administration? I mean, is it clear to people now that Goldman
Sachs, the most hated firm on Wall Street? First of all, we
understand why they were hated because they were playing a
whole different game. All those all those treasury secretaries
come from Goldman Sachs. They keep giving money to Goldman
Sachs. And when when when will people catch? It's like Hello,
don't you see what's going on here?
It's pretty funny that they keep getting away with this, like
Lucy and the football. It's unbelievable.
I've had so many blue collar guys around the house for the
past month, almost. And eventually they'll say, what are
you in the music business? Is because they see I got like
guitars and of course I got a lot of equipment. And they said
no, no, I'm I'm involved in propaganda. And they love it.
Right? Well, really, really? You know, and I'll show him a couple
of videos or I'll tell him and start talking some shit. And
it's funny because sometimes more often than not, actually
these guys are right in step with him. And I always asked him
the same question. So why aren't you doing it? Aren't you pissed
off? So yeah, somehow we gave up. That's what they all say we
Yeah, that's kind of where we are just taking it up the ass we
just kind of give up. And, but I think they're gonna crack I
think that the Brits will will will crack sooner. Well, that's
shit. There's 10s of 1000s of people throwing shoes at the
Israeli embassy here, which is, I think is fancy. What a great
name. And so, yeah,
it's great. Yeah, that one guy doesn't know what he said off
the shoes. He's a hero.
What a fantastic meme. You know, and you see these pictures of,
you know, Adidas, Nikes, Manolo Blahniks, you know, all kinds of
shoes just laying in front of the embassy. But nothing at all
on the six o'clock news, not not a single clip, not a single
mention whatsoever.
Really? You mean? Nothing? I mean, the shoe thing is, I
wonder if that's going on around here? Because of course, we'd be
the last to know. Well, you've got you have riots in Oakland?
Yeah, well, the riots in Oakland are covered pretty well covered
because it has to do with a cop killer or a cop shooting a young
defenceless guy. And, and it's good everybody up in arms. And
you know,
this is exactly what started off the riots in Athens, which by
the way, you're not hearing about man. And it's like,
there's 20,000 people at a time are demonstrating this is really
big.
Yeah, I don't think this is going to trigger an Athens style
riot. There's a couple of problems. One, it's in Oakland.
Yeah. And that's kind of like the end of it, or just because
they don't have an acropolis. Definitely, I'm an acropolis and
it's not the capital of anything. So it's a capital of
bad football. So surrounding me, which is I think he's just
gonna, you know, boil down but it's interesting that these guys
are recognising the fact that they're not taking action and
they're just passively putting up with crap is the group to
Brits, you know, that stood firm against Hitler. Now, they can't
get out of their own way and they're getting pushed around by
their own people. Yeah. Well, So anyway, back to the meme. So I
don't know that we're not seeing the shoe thing happening around
here. Because you wouldn't it wouldn't get covered. Probably
the same thing is happening there as interesting though, is
bloggers covering the shoes being thrown. You know, I don't
think this could be the next big thing for any kind of
any to any type of civil unrest or protest. It's a beautiful
gesture. It's just absolutely beautiful. You get it, you know,
it's like, even though it's not in our culture, to have the
bottom of your soul showing this to be seen as insulting, which
is, you know, it's very Asian cultural thing. And I didn't
know about the shoe throwing actually being a large insult,
but doesn't matter. It's, it's so clear to you like, Yeah, I'm
throwing my shoes at you. That's how much I hate you. And Finn,
it feels good. I mean, granted, if you have an extra pair of
shoes, it feels even better when you walk away.
But yeah, everybody's got a pair. Let's face it. I've got
some sitting around here. Everybody has a pair of crappy
shoes that you may have had repaired and you're willing to
throw it the government. You're Yeah. And they're, they're so
far gone. I have a pair that is so comfortable. I still wear
them once a while, but they're shot. And it's like, you know,
I'm gonna have to throw them away eventually. Why should I
just throw them away? When I can throw them at? Ya. Excuse me?
Because I'm sure they could like do DNA testing on all issues and
identify every person individually.
Yeah, well, how much further do they have to go and everything's
so tidy now. It's it's phenomenal to see it to see how
things are happening here. So I've had the wonderful
experience of setting up. So I had the BT broadband line in the
new house. couple interesting things.
Why are you on it now?
Yeah, I'm on it now. Yeah. So one is, you cannot set up your
own easily. Let me rephrase that. If you use their hub, you
cannot easily set up your own VoIP connection because they
have their own VoIP service. And you know, there's certainly no
clear way to set it to something else. But more interestingly,
now, I use Gmail. So all my mail goes through Port 80, kind of
accepted web type traffic, Patricia uses Apple's email, and
she just got used to it. And I never want to confuse her and
just let her use whatever she wants to use. But of course, one
of the things you you bumped into if you're not using, you
know, now that we've basically switched providers to British
Telecom, is that you have to deal with little little
annoyances like the SMTP server, which is what you have to set in
order to be able to send mail from an email programme. Not
such a big deal. Interesting, though, that British Telecom
will not let you use any other SMTP server. But there's so
there's the trap. There's the there's the syphon. There's the
hose.
Right, everything has to go through central control. Yeah.
Yeah. So they could be monitoring all the email.
Well, they're going to be monitoring the email as of
March. That's when it starts a little Right, right. Yeah,
they're already starting. It's all of your email. All your
phone calls all your text messages, although they say not
the content of the text messages and the phone call he had right.
Only the information who who communicated with who? Yeah.
Yeah, well, they can map out people's relationships that way.
I saw that programme some years ago, as a matter of fact,
Interpol developed it. And they were demoing it at a thing I was
visit or event I went to, and it's very interesting, because
they showed how you can identify, you know, who's the,
you know, the, the first day decided to isolate, I think 50
people that were suspected of being in a MA in a organised
crime family. And then they showed in the, there's a circle,
and then they show the, they start to track the calls from
this person, to that person to this person to that person, and
they have some sort of analysis algorithm that can then identify
the cause with length of call and who's calling who they are.
And you have to do a lot of it. I mean, you can't just do five
minutes, you have to just track these things forever. And then
you get a few after a few 1000 calls, then they stopped it and
they say here's the here's the way we see the structure of the
organisation, and they had, here's the Godfather, the head
guy, here's his, you know, his minions, his main, go to guys,
and then here's all the Stooges that are out in the field. And
it was like it was it looked pretty clear. That's exactly
what it was. And I think, obviously, it's what they're up
to.
Yeah, you know, they could just subscribe to my LinkedIn, it
will be probably easier and more efficient. We're just looking at
my Facebook account. So who was the current Secretary of State
for the US I'd states who is that's Condoleezza Rice still
right?
As far as I know Yeah.
Because in all because where she and all of this and by the way,
where is our coming Secretary of State Clinton? Where is she? I'm
just referring to Israel and
Gaza they haven't heard from either one of them think about
it.
Neither one neither right nor Clint gather they're off
together. Oh, man, can you imagine that porn movie?
Well, that could make some money Clinton does rice.
That's like got everything in it. Right down to foot fetish I
mean it that's that's a perfect. Possible we laugh about the porn
industry bailout, which Larry Flynt and now with the guy, Joe
Francis from Girls Gone Wild, which they jokingly, I presume,
requested, or are talking about funny. Yeah. But I actually got
an email from Patricia's porn friend, Bobby Eaton. She's, uh,
she's like a, like a real porn star. And she's in the middle of
an aeroplane, whatever. And, and she sent me an email, she said,
you know, we're talking, I'm talking with my business
partners, you know, because it's a times are kind of tough and
sales are really down and we're blog is long story short, whoa,
I found out you're the guy that knows a lot about podcasting.
What do you think about podcasting? And I'm like, Yes, I
think that we need to have a meeting. I definitely think a
meeting is an order.
Yeah, yeah. Well, let me know how that meeting goes. Yeah, no,
I will. I will. She's probably working for MI five.
So us and you're here it is US and European banking chiefs
converge today in Basel. For behind the scenes meeting. I
love that behind the scenes meeting with central bankers and
regulators to discuss the post crisis regulatory framework.
Nice. Oh, of course, the gathering hosted by the Bank for
International Settlements. This it is really happening. Oh, it
is gonna make hitmen. It is really taking place as we were
just reading it in the news. And I even saw, I even saw an ad and
I mean, the Financial Times it's better than the National
Enquirer. It's funnier. Here it is. So it's a one page ad it's
their own is their own paper. So they're advertising, you know,
to subscribe to ft.com. And View from the Top Video Russia
Ukraine gas dispute. And here Tony Blair video, former UK
Prime Minister on the new financial order. I mean, come
on. Did you hear about his medal of honour? That's the that's the
big thing here. In the UK, everyone's for what? Well,
George Bush gave him the the highest order in the land, the
medal of honour, for his stellar work in the invasion of Iraq
based upon the lie of weapons of mass destruction. And the big
joke here is that the metal doesn't actually exist. It gets
it's meant to be designed specifically for him. And so
everyone's coming up with these really goofy ideas. You can only
imagine, right? What the ideas are. But it's just the guy got
this. He doesn't even want to show up to receive it. I mean,
can you imagine? Can you just imagine these war criminals
handing each other metals? It's amazing.
I like the metals thing. Are they handed to you? They love
handing out metals to these stooges. It's pretty funny.
Yeah.
So Tony Blair needs to get his Iron Cross, and then he can go
on with whatever he's doing.
I think that's a great idea for a contest, though. You get a lot
of mileage from it. And
let's design Tony Blair's Presidential Medal of honour,
congressional medal of honour, whatever it is. It's funny.
Yeah. Well, we didn't hear about that here either.
Well, there were three people who were really slow, because
you know, there hasn't been any good celebrity news. And I guess
you know,
what you heard about the German banker who killed himself?
Probably I think I blogged it. Yeah.
Adolf Merkel. Yeah. Merkel. Yeah, you know, do you think
he's related? I
can only find one picture of that guy talking about a guy you
couldn't I was wondering whether it's related to Merkel herself
exactly my question. And I couldn't find any documentation
for them either. Wouldn't surprise me though, and I
couldn't find any pictures of the guy found one crappy picture
from like 1520 years ago. So he is obviously you know, a one of
those guys they want to stay out of the spotlight. Yeah. Then he
kills himself. Whatever. He could have been murdered.
Here it is. Here's what rice is doing. Oh, of course. Oh, this
makes total sense. Do you us risk irking Russia yesterday by
signing a partnership charter with Georgia intended to act as
a catalyst for its strongest ally in the south caucuses.
Condoleezza Rice at work. There you go. Is she is she trying to
calm things down in the Middle East? Nah, now she's trying to
piss off the Russians. There you go. Good job Condi.
Well, that's okay. After Obama gets in, he'll continue to piss
them off.
Yeah. So, so what I'm seeing,
I'm sorry to having this gas thing going on there. You know,
Russia is basically you guys are gonna piss us off. Okay, fine.
No gas for you?
Well, I see it a little more as a business deal. Because, you
know, in honesty in the Ukraine, basically is not paying their
bill, you know, they owe Gazprom a lot of money is there's no
dispute. And there's also just the they're talking about
pricing. Because they're taking it for I don't know, it's like
$200, a cubic tonne or something like that. Whereas some prices
in some countries have 500. So that, you know, there's all
kinds of disputes going on. But the biggest one is that the
Ukraine was basically of the gas there, that that runs through
the Ukraine, to to West to Europe, they were syphoning
stuff off for themselves, you know, so there's a legitimate
dispute there. But, you know, come on Europe, you know, let's
consider, you know, we got to come up with some other
solutions. You can't just be you know, you can't be relying on
one country for your natural gas. But this should always
always happens, of course, when it's the coldest winter in a
years.
Yeah, well, that's when you put the screws to people. And you
hear people
on the BBC on the radio, like, you know, I had to turn off my
or my gas has been cut off, you know, I can't afford it anymore
and freezing. It's a civilised country. People are freezing to
death. It's crazy.
Get back to the cold. I mean, you have I understand you have
in your new place. You have little fireplaces all throughout
the house. And there's nothing to me that's more interesting
and nice coal fired and nice. coal fire is one of the most
fantastic things I have actually a coal holder here and might one
of my fireplaces, and I would although they it's harder to get
now, but I would burn coal. And of course, it does make a small
odour in the neighbourhood. But nobody knows what it is Cuz
nobody knows what coal is in the California. But it's a gorgeous
fire and it's like be like calm rocks that burn. It's like a
rock, it burns. And it burns for hours. And it burns really warm.
And it gives off a good radiant heat because there's a lot of
ultra infrared coming off these things because they're red, and
they're also flames coming off. And so it's really a quaint
fire. It's not an ugly fire. It's not a smoky fire. It's not
a horrible fire by any means. It's a really cosy, warm,
inviting fire. And once you get it going, it goes for about 20
hours. You don't have to keep poking it and moving the logs
and sticking it or whatever. It's an amazing product. And so
now that you got this great new house with all these little
fireplaces, I'm thinking wow, you're going to be having these
great little coal fires. It's going to make the place so cool,
right?
Yeah, that would have been very nice. If it were not for
regulation that prohibits me from doing that. You have to
wait a minute. Wait, what regulation?
Oh, yeah, you have a coal fire in England.
Now here's what they do. So these these fireplaces, they'll
work the fluids that are wide open, you know, you can shut
them but they're open up got a brand new chimneys on top.
Everything's beautiful. However, if you actually want to burn
anything in it, wood, coal or otherwise, then you have to go
through an extremely lengthy application process they have to
come in approve. It has to be done by in a certain way. I
mean, it's like everyone's it's just not worth it to get that
done. And then and then and then they'll tax you for whatever
phantom shit you're spewing into the air from your burning rocks.
It's just not worth it. Oh, I
think you're gonna have to do it. The benefit of this show,
honey, it's show prep. Okay, I've got it. I've got to do it.
I don't know, man.
Come on. You got these little cute little fireplaces all over
the place. And they're designed for originally for coal. Let's
face it. Yeah. Because you don't get the other cool thing about
you can have a really small firebox and just have a little
bit of coal burning because once one of these rocks starts
burning, it doesn't stay doesn't need like a lot of other you
know, friends. I mean, the problem with the wood is that if
it's not with a lot of other friends burning doesn't burn
well, now it won't burn well, you can't just put one log in
and light it and get and watch it burn, it won't burn. But with
coal, you can you can put a couple of stones in there, crank
and get them started, which by the way is the hardest part. But
you can do it. It takes a long time to get one of these to
start but once they start, one rock will just burn by itself.
Well, the one we had in Guilford actually was gas fired so you
can fire up gas first to get a nice even flame underneath all
of your coal and then you turn it off and then it's just
burning then it just keeps going which is a perfect system.
Yeah, that would be good. Yeah. But you're not gonna start a
coal fire with a match. Let's put it
that way. Oh, No. Well, so I don't know, man, but the quote,
they killed the coal industry here.
I was pretty new, they did a crappy job of keep keeping a
handle line. And that's when you had that, you know that that
kill off in the 50s that, you know, the black fog or the death
fog or whatever the heck it was from because they were burning
coal everywhere when I first went to England was in 1973.
That was the London fog, right? Yeah, London fog. And I was in
there in 1973, when they were still using a lot of coal. And
you had to change your shirt twice a day as because around
the collar and around the bottom of the sleeves. At the very end
we're you know, where there's any sweat on your, you know,
that got on there with the coal that stick to it. And you're so
your shirt cuffs were black, within four or five hours of
just walking around town. And you had to cheat, you know, and
it just stuff was like it was cold dust. It was all over the
place. And I guess it was in everyone's lungs. So it was a
problem? Is that maybe
the answer to your question why people don't burn coal anymore.
I think that was that was probably pretty crummy coal. You
know, anthracite, there's different kinds of coal. There's
a we have extremely good quality coal in the US that you can burn
that that without getting a lot of dust everywhere. And of
course, then the power plants nowadays that burn coal have
this floating beds and a very high tech and they have
scrubbers. And they don't make such a mess. Even though people
still claimed his mercury in the in this in the plume, which I
wonder
mercury in the plume, you said, Well, that's
what they say. I mean, there's a big argument that you'll get
from people who promote you know, the thing that's being
promoted now to death all around the world, and I think
considered a wonderful marketing ploy. Because, you know, I
always think of marketing is like driving force behind a lot
of these crazy changes in society. But the one of the
great marketing ploys under all circumstances is to get
legislation passed, right.
And you do that with a sad looking polar bear on a piece of
ice,
right? So you can hit so so the thing that they've managed to do
in a lot of places is ban the incandescent light. And that
means that China, and those crazy little cheap ass
fluorescent bulbs that you know, those little crazy things that
don't last as long as they say, and they're hard, they don't
fit, make it into a lot of fittings, and they look stupid.
And they give off a moderate amount of light for what I have
to give them credit for that
the what the, like 2025 watts or something like that
five to one over A over A, you multiply by five. And that's
what you'd have to be using. If you were using incandescent to
get the same lumens. I think there's a couple of
disadvantages. One thing they burn cool, so mosquitoes don't
get killed when they come up to the light and kill themselves.
So I think that's a disadvantage. I think we're
going to have more malaria. But besides that, it's obvious that
they're trying to get these things to become standard that
every one of them has mercury in them. That's, you know, and so
if you bring this up amongst the complainers, the greenies, they
say, wow, you know, and if you do the calculation, they should
have the numbers and they may they may be right, if the except
there's always potentially a flaw in the calculation, and
I'll point out what it might be, they will say, okay, so you use
1/5 as much electricity, the good regenerate that, you know,
four fifths more electricity, you have to burn this much more
coal, and that much more coal for those Watts produces this
much mercury, which goes into the atmosphere, which is less
than the amount of mercury in the bulb. Right. So that's their
argument. The question that needs to be answered is, is the
amount of mercury that they claim is coming off those
stacks? Accurate? I'm not sure it is.
Well, I when it when it comes to government data in general, I'm,
I'm highly sceptical. It's like the joblessness rate, which was
it? So we had another four or five, about a half a million
extra nonfarm payroll jobs that the United States lost in the
month of December. But apparently, under Johnson, they
changed the way they count the unemployed, and what I call
them, the people who just give up who have they ever named for
that the quitters or whatever. So people who have been
unemployed for more than two months, they no longer count. So
what were they talking about? What is it what are they saying
now? What's the percentage maybe 7% unemployment? Yeah, that it
actually is closer to 12. B, if you're counting by gate by Great
Depression days, which there was a 25% unemployment actually
27 needs by some calculations, maybe 30 or so. Anyway, back to
the light bulb thing since I was just one of them. I just thought
one other point, you know if you can legislate these fluorescent
bulbs into existence, so they're taking over everything, and
which doesn't I'm not completely annoyed by although let me point
out one thing, there was a lot of high technology bulbs that
came out around 15, or close to 20 years ago, and a lot of
people don't even remember these things. But Philips had a slew
of them, I have two of these bulbs that have been burning on
and off for 818 or 19 years. Incandescent bulbs, they have a
little device inside them that turns them off automatically
after five minutes of not being you know, yeah. And then it's
like, they don't really stop making these bolts because they
last forever. And so there was like, that kind of thing was
dropped in favour now of these fluorescent bulbs, luckily, but
if you can legislate the fluorescent bulbs into
existence, I think you can legislate them out of existence
at the point where we have the crossover and LEDs become the
light source of choice. And we can just say, you know, screw
the Chinese, we're just going to make LED lighting and that's the
only lighting that's going to be legal.
So it looks like we have Al Gore to thank for this too. I just
found a TED Talk by him. Yeah, we must not change the light
bulbs. We need to change the laws is his quote. I thought
that belief he isn't he involved with some kind of fluorescent
light company.
He probably is everything he does. He's got his fingers
in surprise me.
Yeah. Well, and everybody Oh, Al Gore, Al Gore, you know, you
know, he's a good guy. Well, he has
a Nobel Peace Prize, a Grammy and an Oscar, how can you go up
against that? Those are all the symbols of the United States of
America. He has the triumvirate all he needs now is one of those
metals from Bush and he said
he'll get one of those metals from Obama I guarantee. Exactly.
Yeah,
in, in Holland, the the packaging on the Philips version
of these long lasting low energy light bulbs that actually says
if you drop it and break it, you have to take it to the disposal
centre.
Whatever that is. Yeah. Because it has got all this mercury
mercury.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man, which, which is worse. I mean,
people just toss light bulbs, where they're not thinking about
that just throw that shit in the trash.
Exactly. And that's where all these things are ending up,
they're ending up in the regular garbage busted up. And it's just
going to have mercury leaching from all of our dump sites. And
there's going to be so much of these because we're talking
about millions and millions and millions and millions of these
bulbs and millions of pounds of mercury is gonna be leaching out
they're gonna end up turning these things into hazardous
waste sites. So they're gonna have to be blocked off and the
taxpayers are gonna have to dig up these garbage dumps because
of this thing is going to cost more money than we saved with
the bulbs. It's going to be a it's an ecological disaster. No
thanks to Al Gore.
Yeah, but it's already taken place because you know, where
they're dumping all this shit is in right off Somalia. I've been
reading about these pirates, man, it's a really interesting
story, when you really get into it, and the whole branding of
these pirates is is just is beautiful, who you know, of
course, it's not a stretch to come up with it. But they did a
great job. But when you when you look at the history of all of
the toxic illegal dumping off of their shores, which I'm sure
contains all of our toxic lightbulbs, which is rumoured to
be done by it's funny, by the mob, the mafia, who of course,
are traditionally very strong in the waste disposal business. And
of course, the overfishing illegal overfishing off of their
shore. This is why these guys are going out and saying fuck
you. I'm gonna grab some shit for me. Do you see that
parachute with a $3 million coming down on the ship? Is that
amazing? I mean, do we live in a science? Where's Bruce Willis?
This is a science fiction movie. We're parachuting a red capsule
with $3 million dollars or $2 million onto a $25 million load
of oil
with with accuracy. With accuracy indeed. Yeah, they
didn't have to fish it out of the drink.
But these but it's like it's more like actually it's more
like Waterworld. So they have these, these rib boats these
which is rigid inflatable boats. And they launched from a
mothership. So you hear this thing about the mothership, but
that's literally what it is. So they're 200 kilometre or 200
nautical miles out. And there's these tankers and they just you
know, they poop out these, these rib boats, which should you
know, 250 horsepower, jacked up. speedboats. Just go on and hop
on board. You know, lock the doors, treat everybody nicely
and then just start negotiating a price. It's, it's brilliant.
It's pirates. But but the history of the pirates is what's
interesting. Because the pirates, the pirates have always
been kind of like Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp is kind of
romanticised. But but the reason why that these guys were
actually pretty social, in in their lifestyle, because they
were basically rebelling, and these were all boys who probably
were taken on board ships when they were young teenagers. And,
you know, were whipped and beaten and treated as slaves
essentially, and then probably cheated out of their wages at
the end of two years on board of a ship. And they all kind of
say, Fuck this, we're gonna become pirates. And they
captured it. And they live side by side, regardless of race or
religion or whatever religion they had, you know, then and and
they were just kind of taken, what would they thought was
theirs, and getting back for being screwed? And that's what's
behind these, the Somali pirates.
Yeah, the story is going to be interesting, when it finally
gets told,
Well, I think we will see a you know, where Steven Spielberg,
it's time for Pirates of Somalia.
I think it's going to show up first as a as a thriller, with
Bruce Willis type movie. And those guys are going to be
portrayed as a bunch of, you know, evil doers. And then
there'll be some more sympathetic material later, when
they, you know, years from now, well, right
now, there's a fleet of 20 ships, headed by an ex Admiral,
or maybe even a current, you know, or whatever, like a big
naval, Yahoo. And they're sailing off there, and they're
gonna go start shooting ship, because ships are literally
avoiding the Suez Canal now, which is, you know, it's an
economic disaster. There's a reason for that canal. And so
now they want to go around the Cape of Good Hope, I think it is
to avoid the pirates. And so now there's a there's a an army of
20 armada of 20 ships to protect. And it's the
international army. You know, it's like the UN base thing. I'm
sure.
What's up Blackwater was going to do something to Oh, I'm
sure. I'm sure they're private companies involved in it. That's
why they sent out the press release, you know, don't draw it
comes the cavalry.
Is that Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope? I
think it's Cape of Good Hope. I'm going to South Africa, by
the way.
Oh, you like it? It's very good. Yeah. It can't be good hope as a
southern tip of Africa, by the way, I went to the Cape of Good
Hope. And you get to see the convergence of the Indian Ocean
and the Atlantic Ocean. And in fact, it's a very violent piece
of the world. It's extremely weird. Because those
two hours two oceans they clash there, right, you got it
horrible.
Don't seem to get along at all. And it's so you, you go who
actually went there. What was weird about it's kind of weird,
because down in that area, there is a we go into the there's like
a National Park where the where you get in parking the parking
lot, and you walk out about, it's about a half a mile to get
to the exact point of where you're right there at the bottom
of Africa. And in the process of getting there we go into the
parking lot. And there is a bunch of baboons like 10 of
them, who had some, some Japanese guy cornered in the
parking lot. And they were they were, I wouldn't say they were
beaten him up or anything. But it was it was like a gang. They
were intimidating him. And the these baboons, by the way, are
all over this area. And they're and they're frightening. And
they walk around like they own the place. And they actually
gave us the couple of them gave us the eye as we were going up
to the thing. And we're worried,
but they recognise that they recognise distant family and let
you slide. Is that what you're saying?
Now they said, they was more like, you know, we'll you know,
we got this other guy, we're having fun with him there, you
know, he'd had to give him you've given them stuff, right.
And so and it would work Mimi's description of this was like,
like, incredibly big dogs that were intelligent. And so they
had and you can just see it. And you know, you can't look him in
the eye, by the way, don't look a baboon in the eye. It's a
challenge. So you had to not look at him in the eye. So
anyway, so we went up and watch the thing, the action and we
stayed there for a while because there was a bunch of you know,
it was just interesting. And there's all kinds of weird
little critters living around there. And so then we were
worried about coming back and we came back in the parking lot was
clear of the baboons. And so as we were driving back the road
back though, the family of these these punk baboons was on the
road, you know, and I was thinking I'm running a couple of
them over but I decided to get and
John C. Dvorak, the environmentalist.
But these guys were punks. It was unbelievable. And you you've
run into This problem when you're in, you know, floating
around, they're just the baboons are just the you know, they
they're running the place. That's my story and I'm sticking
to it feels like South Africa. What are you going to do in
South Africa?
I'm sitting on my ass.
What part of South Africa you going to?
I am not sure. It's it's kind of a mystery. Patricia, my wife,
you know, she's, she's so kind. So, you know, being the huge
celebrity that she has in the Netherlands, one of the glossy
magazines, in fact, I think it's called glossy. So today, we
really want to do a photo shoot, because you know, photo shoot
equals magazines being sold, it's very simple business with
the cover is what sells at all. And, and so it's kind of simple
with these types of deals, you know, there's a, there's not
huge fee involved. But typically you say, Okay, well, where are
we going to do this photo shoot? Well, how about we were thinking
South Africa at this five star resort? And I'm thinking yeah,
that's a good idea. So Patricia will do one or two days of
photos. They'll pay for a
week. And there's five there's a couple of I can't remember the
name of this visit this right outside of Johannesburg, there's
a resort area that has these. I think that's probably where
you're going to end up. Where you want to go with where you're
down. If you can, there's two things, you'd be nice. You could
do. I couldn't do. I couldn't get a ride on this thing. But
the Blue Train, I believe, is still in service, which was one
of the greatest train rides in the world. But it's always it
was when I went there as all sold out and you can couldn't
even where does it go? I think it goes from Johannesburg to
Cape Town or something like that.
Dude, I'm gonna stay in the resort on my ass drinking pina
coladas.
I am going to go to Cape Town. I'm
not going to go to Cape Town, Cape Town, Cape Town.
I'm going to I'm gonna stay by the pool. See, that's the
difference between you and me.
No, no, that's not that's the difference between you and me
and my wife. You and me we'd be we'd be out in the jungle man.
We'd be killing our breakfast. You mean to me and my wife not
so adventurous?
What's interesting down at Cape Town is they have a restaurant,
which I think is called the Blue Train. As a matter of fact,
yours Your tickets there anyway, somebody could correct me. But
they have every known. They have they cook everything. So you can
go in there. And so I caught up with all my needing to,
obviously I needed to see what these things tasted like being a
carnivore. And so you get to have elephant and zebra, and
crocodile and different kinds of elk and gazelle. And hippo, I
think there was hippo. And just like everything. I mean, you can
imagine. So it's a big lineup of this stuff. And unfortunately,
because it's South Africa, they have to overcook everything
because of worms. Yeah. And
have you seen those YouTube videos that we talked about
that? No. Oh, there's this big YouTube thing, where if someone
started it off, and so there's a lot of different videos out
there now and you don't know what's real anymore. They said
that they they bought some pork. And they poured Coca Cola, they
basically marinated it in Coca Cola in a little Tupperware
bowl. And after about three minutes, these little worms
start appearing out of the out of the meat. And the theory is
that because of the carbon carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide
in the coke that there's no oxygen left and then the worms
have to try to get out of the out of the meat out of the pork.
And you Google it is there's a couple of obvious fake ones. But
there's some that's like, Wow, man, it looks like larvae coming
out of the out of the porkchop there.
That doesn't sound good.
No, of course not. And so what they're saying is this is you
know, this isn't basically almost all American pork. Oh,
no, we can't do it. You know, I haven't I haven't done anything
with it. Because
yeah, we got to figure out whether this is bogus or not.
Well, sounds that sound right. Because I mean, what are these
worms doing? And they're they're obviously eating anything
because you don't see it in the in the structure of the meat
when you cut through it. I mean, when it's raw.
The little white larvae almost like how maggots start out.
It's disgusting. You google it
Google coke and pork on or just go to YouTube and you'll see it
it's and there's some yeah, there's some really funny ones
where there's a little flash edit there, right and they've
put garden worms on the floor. Okay, yeah, now I'm really
freaked out. But there's a couple where you know, it's it
looks like it's an unedited shot. And then there's these
little white dots start to appear and then they go in with
tweezers and they pull out these worms. Here we go.
Snopes dot suggestion in the chat room. It's already right at
the top claim pouring Coca Cola into a piece of raw pork will
cause worms to come crawling out of the meat status false.
Well, or who believes those guys
So let's see if they explain how they're getting this effect
though because they're obviously they're doing something to
the effect I understand the effect is because the coke
because it's it has all the carbonation that the oxygen gets
pulled out of the pork and then the worms freak out and they
start doing
it I know I'm saying but they're getting this effect when there's
no real worms. They said they've tried it they can't get this to
do it.
Well, it may not be an all in all pork, obviously. I mean,
maybe have to go to the chat room says our list let's just
call them Mara. Our listeners are saying that halibut seems to
also have worms.
Yeah, halibut does have a lot of fish has worms. I know monkfish
has a lot of worms. That's kind of disgusting. Well, once there,
you know if you cook it, you're just eating the worm
cooked worms. Right. Right. Oh, it's protein. Protein. So
I guess that's the that's the bigger question is Is that a
problem and worms, you know, I why people eat worms all the
time.
I just don't buy I'm not buying this worm thing coming out of
pork that much. You know, people do eat worms. In fact, there's
Fried Worms as a dietary thing in some cultures.
Well, speaking of worms, Phil Spector got off on a mistrial
hitting mistrial. 1010 10 to two, no one knows it was 10 for
conviction or against the conviction, but apparently was
tended to so that's a hung jury, and he got off.
He shot the girl. He shot her.
Yeah, yeah, he did.
But he's pretty well known for handling guns around people.
Did he? I think he shot a John Lennon once. Or we shot in the
studio. A white mist? Yeah. Now the CIA took care of that. So
don't lie. Don't laugh. Don't laugh. The CIA killed John
Lennon app. So why? Why? Excuse me? Did you see the multimillion
dollar ad campaign he took out with the he went on a whole
piece campaign he was promoting exactly the opposite of the
reptilian agenda. And they got sick and tired of him and they
killed him. That's the easiest way this is how they kill
important people. They get a nutcase they they jack them up
make sure he has a gun and then they turn them loose pin for
time the Dutch politician who got killed one week before a
landslide election he won posthumously they got some
animal loving tree hugging not in a jacked him up and got him a
gun and he shot him right outside the radio station. And
this is this is how they do it.
I've always wondered about sir hand sir hand
that means nothing to me. How come this guy is booster hand?
Sirhan?
Sirhan Sirhan is the guy who killed Bobby Kennedy.
Chase. Yeah, you know, he Bobby Kennedy got a bum deal because
you know, his brother had such a better death.
So Bobby Kennedy gets killed and Serhan Serhan who's a I don't
know what that name is, like, in Middle Eastern or some sort.
Would and nobody's ever made the connection between his you know,
the 911 or anything near the Middle East. You know, kind of
this disappointment with this guy, sir. Hanser had known
interviews him. He's, I think he's over here in San Quentin.
And he's just been they just came up with fell off the radar,
I think is kind of interesting. I think somebody should go over
there and see what he has to say.
I'm just looking at his wiki page. Born in Jerusalem to a
Palestinian Christian family. If he was black, you'd have it all.
Huh. Wow. Yes, sir. He killed him with a 22. Hmm.
Yeah. Which is not the easiest thing in the world known unless
you're a professional. Yeah,
I mean, you really got to know what you're doing. I mean, a 22.
You can put that into someone's head and they can just walk
away. Hmm. Interesting. I will look into him. Yeah, good. And
no one ever talks about him or not? Yeah, I'll add it to my
growing list of conspiracies to describe I got a few more for
you. Okay, the one that is concerning, I know we've been
lapped by we have been lacking in your nuttiness over the last
few weeks. And I think it's, you know, probably increased our
numbers but people still need to hear it.
What's interesting though is know a lot of people in the
here's your problem people are turning onto and they're like,
Yeah, I agree. You know, and then and then when you start to
agree, they're actually like, you know, Hey, man, like, you
know, you John should agree with you more and you should not you
don't understand why do we even do a show of John agrees with me
on all this stuff. But this is one that And someone dropped me
a piece from BBC World Service about bees. And I know that this
has been in the news off and on off and on. But now it's, it's
now it's really getting pretty damn serious. And the thing is
the problem. So what they said in this report is that every
third spoonful of food you put into your mouth, bees had
something to do with it.
Well, there's a couple of things here. One is there's a lot of
here's there actually, there's a couple of problems to one of the
things that are out here in California, for example, the
honeybees have been decimated, just like any place. So these
are alien B, they really don't normally exist in United States.
And there's a lot of native bees, especially in California,
some, I don't know how many species but it's, it's a 30 or
100, or some, it's a lot. And so this year, during the
pollination season, everything got pollinated and my plum tree
was loaded with plums, it wasn't a problem. But when I go out to
look at who was pollinating, I mean, it wasn't honeybees, it
was all these other weird bees, there's a green bee, and there's
a big bee. And there's all these other fees, and they're all
living,
John Belushi dressed up as a B, there's
speaking Spanish, and there's a, there was just a, like a whole
variety of weird B's that they were now you know, being able
to, you know, thrive without the honey bees, you know, is hogging
everything. And so that probably was a good thing. But meanwhile,
there seems to be some evidence that these bees are now getting
this problem. Now, if that happens, then you have a serious
issue. But it may be the whole thing may be solved at some
point. By you know, some of the more, there's a beekeeper up in
Port Angeles, who is very famous for being extremely, you know,
he refuses to use anything that's not natural. And he let
it let basically let his bees die off from mites and
everything else, except for the strong bees that had natural
resistance. And he's been breeding those. And so now he's
got some queens and he cost him I think two seasons of honey,
which is a shame because his hunt is unbelievably great. And
we always want to buy cases of it. And so
there's two parts to the story, part one, which I think is the
one that people don't understand. And then there's
part two, part one the thing people don't want understand,
but part one is bees. It's a business bees, you know,
beekeepers take their bees to fields of crops, the bees are
then let loose, they pollinate so that, you know, crops
essentially grow and, and, and fruit springs or whatever,
whatever is needed, but they're responsible for it. And it's a
business and then these bees come back to their hive, and the
guy goes to another farm. The problem is, the bees are
disappearing, they're not just dying and falling down dead,
they're gone. They don't come back to their hive anymore. And
so the so the problem is that severely impacts food, and this
is what people don't understand. Right? Well, I
don't know. I think they do
know, are you kidding me? You go on the street and ask any person
how important are bees? I guarantee you only 5% will know
the importance of bees in our in our food chain. Nobody knows
this. Nobody knows that's
let's take it up a level since they can't figure out what's
causing this to happen to the beach. I
have a theory on that.
Well give me your theory, then I'll give you a theory that
maybe will be bit more interesting.
Okay, well fuck you very much. I'll give you my very
interesting theory, which is that first of all, there are too
few crops. So we only have you know a few types of tomatoes
left that are still being grown a few types of apples you know,
there's really that that's a very limited supply. So there's
the diversity is being taken away from them. Secondly,
they're they're pollinating genetically modified shit, and
it's, it's killing them, whatever it is, and it's killing
everything in everybody, this genetically modified organisms.
And that is what the problem is, it seems very clear to me John
C. Dvorak, you're a more interesting theory.
What if you had in the labs at let's say, Monsanto, a crop that
would self pollinate and would be owned by you with a patent
that would be very expensive to to sell. And in the process, you
could find some way of poisoning the bees with either this or
with previous crops as a setup as a marketing tool to get rid
of the bees so the people would have to buy the self pollinating
crop and continue to feed people because there wouldn't be enough
bees to pollinate anything.
You are now officially ruining the show. You are ruining the
damn show. You have taken it up to an extra level that I love.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So I was thinking actually, it could have
been that they were creating there. I think it would be
smarter for Monsanto to create their own version. didn't have
bees because they could then crossbreed those and turn them
into actual killer bees and they can be sold to the weapons
industry
now we find crazy but we'll just ignore that.
Wow so self pollinating genetically modified crops
that's right on dude. They won't have any customers left to eat
the shit after we all die but yeah great move
there you go there you have it now did I talk to you or not?
You did I'm dumbfounded I'm come
and play that game
another another institution bites the dust
which while you're talking about things dropping dead we have a
real serious problem with the West Coast brown or sometimes
called California Pelican which are dropping out of the sky in
droves. They're hitting cars landing on boats so just just
rely on flying flying it Oh, boom dead. They come out of the
sky like you know a big giant did like the size of a turkey.
And they you know, crash into the earth dead and weed and I
noticed that because I go to the city a lot I noticed this last
year because every year when you're going across the Oakland
bridge, you you will see these usually three to six pelicans
flying the five beautiful bird to watch fly. I mean, you can't
keep your take your eyes off because they look like Terra Dak
dolls, and they're usually low to the ground and they don't do
a lot of flapping they're just going like little stealth. jet
fighters should shooting usually blow to the water and they're
flying all over the place in the Bay Area. Especially. Especially
excuse me, especially here in Berkeley. There's a lot of these
pelicans I have seen none this year. None I've not seen a
pelican all season.
Did you just see this in the chat room or did this this just
came up? Yeah, because no oh no, someone Oh, you blog that okay.
I blogged it yesterday. Ah and the Pelican is really one of the
most spectacular birds we have out here and that you know,
that's the reason the Pelican was why they banned DDT because
they determined that DDT and the pelicans diet even though I know
how it got, I guess it got into through fish who ate the bugs
who had the DDI? Who knows, but whatever the case was, was
making their shells of the eggs too thin. And so then they
banned DDT for that particular reason. And who makes DDT? No,
but Well, I mean, I think Monsanto Chevron probably made
it for a while now. They don't make pesticides. They make
herbicides. So no, David, all the, you know, pesticide
companies made DDT was very common. But yeah,
yeah, Monsanto began manufacturing DDT in 1944, along
with 15 other companies.
Interesting. I didn't know that. Now they're behind everything.
But anyway, whatever the case, the pelicans have got something
going on. Right, who was the
CEO of Monsanto again, helped me remind me of his name.
I don't know. George Bush, wasn't it?
Rumsfeld? No, women. And Rochelle. We're not done.
Rumsfeld was with the aspartame company.
Well, he's been on different boards. I mean, he's basically a
political guy.
Rumsfeld, I thought he was the CEO.
No, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. look him up. look him up.
I am. I'm looking at right now. I'm telling his CEO of hurl
pearl.
Well, that's absurd. I'm sorry. Searle was surly manufacture
surly manufacturer of aspartame, CEO of surly manufacturers of
aspartame. Yeah, okay. Okay. So you know, that aspartame, which
of course is a sweetener that the FDA would not approve it.
But three months after he entered into the administration.
It mysteriously got approved. They'd been refusing it for 16
years. 16 years because it killed lab mice, like half the
population.
Well, that's a good one.
This is like one of the oldest conspiracy stories out there.
I'm surprised you didn't know about this.
I didn't know about it. I just you can't keep up with all this
stuff. Yeah, but
I'm pretty sure I'm hold on Monsanto. I'm pretty sure that
well, first of all, the Obamas guy is a Monsanto Monsanto guy,
right? Which guy? Is this? The agriculture guy he just brought
in?
Is that a Monsanto? Yeah.
And we talked about two weeks ago? No, of course not.
That's not Obama and his boys are a bunch of green. He's a
bunch of tree huggers, a bunch of environmentalists a bunch of
people wanted to protect us. Yeah. Why would they put a
Monsanto guy in that doesn't make any sense that are living
through chemistry. He's just following the programme.
So did you find anything That's about Rumsfeld.
I'm not looking for a flaming rum. So you know you how many
how many hours do you hold on to make this show if we're going to
talk about Rumsfeld. Robert Shapiro is the Monsanto seat,
Robert Shapiro. I'm thinking yeah, I'm pretty sure that there
was some good they've got to have their, their hands all in
the government.
So Robert Shapiro is the guy that the
economist No, no, this is the former CEO of Monsanto maybe
another guy anyway, the run sell things tells you enough right
there, doesn't it?
Yeah, well, that's pretty typical. I mean, but then we
look at the SEC, you know, in the fact that they, you know,
were made are made off being the one of the founders and the and
the CEO of the NASDAQ.
I mean, yeah, but then, of course, then meanwhile, he's of
course giving I guess he sent a million dollars to one of his
friends in the last minute here or one of his family members,
and he's still roaming around free you know, even though I
know Martha Stewart has been in jail by now beaten up. Yeah,
probed
Martha Stewart is really is you know, I take a little bit of
pity on her I've met her several times, she used to work in our
building, or I used to be in her building, I should say. And, and
her daughter was very nice. But man, they've been through some
rough rough times and just being a woman I think at the top of
the company isn't as large as it used to be. But you know, that's
tough. It's a boys game. You know, it's it's it's still is a
boys game, I should say. unfairly so and and you get no
people hate, you know, it's just like a woman shot and of course,
you're automatically a bitch. Just because you have a
position. I have to say I never really saw a crack a smile when
I rode the elevator with her but I don't know her that well. Her
daughter is extremely nice. But you know, typically fucked up
kid. And I'm pretty sure that whole arresting there was, you
know, because she she lives with Bondi, I think his name is the
guy from Viacom. I'm sure there's all kinds of political
media shit wrapped up in that and someone's getting back at
someone for something. I mean, we know how politics works this
way. Just look at Blagojevich blog, a blog, a a which,
whatever his name is, was just impeached, you know, he's he was
threatening, you know, he wanted to try to get people fired from
the board of Tribune for writing negative shit about him or
whoever. I mean, this is how it works people well,
a lot of people think the same thing was the case with the only
guy who was going in fact, they believed he was gonna go after
Madoff, like, you know, earlier, like years earlier and
embarrassed. The SEC was Eliot Spitzer.
And you said, You sent me that PDF file. We haven't even talked
about that. The the red flag document,
write some guy who was high up in the EU, he sent this a
apparently he won the SEC in 1999. And then warned him again,
I guess was that Doc was written in 2003 or something like that.
And they paid no attention to it. And he had all the goods. He
said, here's why this is not this guy's not running a
legitimate business. Now, he said Ponzi scheme literally,
yeah, he says it has to be a Ponzi scheme. And he outlined
the reasons why with with math, he actually used mathematics and
showed that he can't be doing what he says he's doing. And
then he went on and on and and he also made note of the fact
that people like Goldman Sachs wouldn't do business with them.
Because they knew Yeah, and all these other bits, a lot of these
banks wouldn't do business. And then of course, the irony is why
these guys weren't going to do business with them. A bunch of
dumb Swiss bankers did, which is like what are they thinking? I
thought these guys were supposed to be the world's greatest
bankers. They just
got better secrecy. Or they had at one point.
People just don't connect these dots and it's it's frustrating
and particularly when it comes to the media. Now we've got
Davao happening again, devo, Switzerland's and those that I
say Davao, you say Davos, and as the World Economic Forum, and
everyone, which is laughable big wanker fest if Robert Scoble was
allowed in anything, it can't really be a serious economic
summit. Let's let's just be honest about it. But, you know,
Rupert Murdoch is going to be there. Yes. It's going to be
this huge.
Yeah, they all go there. They give you a little speech. It
looks like a complete waste of time, unless, of course, you're
a skier, because that's why people go to this thing so they
can ski right in the area, which has great skiing,
but that's what it is. It's a huge conference, and the guy who
runs the conference, it costs 50 grand, you know, just for a
booth. And it's a it's a huge profitable money making
business. Right? It's just it's like it's like ces for Ugly
people. uglier people. I should say,
Yeah, well it's definitely a it's, it's you know where these
guys get to socialise for a little bit that means a social
event is that doesn't mean anything they had. You do have a
few crackpots come up there and say a few things that are weird
but worthwhile. I didn't notice. I don't know that anybody that's
ever economic summit over the last few years picked what
happened to the economy over the last since she
Yeah, where's that announcement from last year? Oh, we're headed
for a horrible times now man, it was party on baby pass the
hookers and blow but he
brought up the Madoff. Nobody brought up to the ridiculous
housing bubble. Nobody brought anything. So what good is this
conference that they can't even spot the obvious?
Because what they're doing is they're all you're right.
They're all on the slopes going. Man, can you believe this shit,
we got a paid vacation. We all know the craps coming down. They
love it. I'm gonna predict as our one of our final topics here
up, it's going to be one that you'll be taught. If you're on
twit tomorrow, you'll be talking about so I want to make sure we
talk about it first. Obama has started to make noises that he
made the lay the switchover of digital television. Yeah, I
heard that. And, and there's a couple things. And so first of
all, why is this happening?
Why are they switching to digital? Yeah. Well, I mean, the
the what they say is so they could free up the that 700
megahertz area of bandwidth and use it for various, you know,
it's got like high penetration.
And so you're saying this is a telecommunications lobby that
started five years ago, maybe even longer? Is probably seven
or eight years ago, they started the band
with the steel that the steel this band,
right. So it was a money making scheme for the government?
Yeah, they're gonna auction this band off for billions. So
this is going to come to to a head because I think the media
companies are now lobbying Obama really heavily because they
stand to lose wasn't something like 10 million people in the
US, you know, aren't ready to switch.
And of course, they ran out of coupons and a million coupons
are, they're short, and people of course have no money to buy
this 40 to $80 converter or
whatever, it's often at zero $80 is going to cost you 40 bucks a
pop for each TV. So I think they're not going to work very
well. Because you need a special antenna to pick up that signal.
You need a you need a UHF antenna. Yeah, fringe antenna a
good one to give you especially if you want to go through any
walls. I mean, I have direct access to the to the
are you receiving it? Do you have a DVB? Receiver? Yeah,
yeah, so I've been for I've been receiving it for a long time.
But, but I'm going to procure it, I don't understand how other
people are doing it. Because I'm using a fringe UHF antenna. And
looking out the window of my house, I can see the
transmitter, it's over on the side
of the bed, you have line of sight and you can't receive it,
I can receive it, but I have line of sight. And and I get you
know still it breaks up once a while somebody walks in front of
the antenna. I mean, the thing is pretty flaky compared to a
regular VHF analogue signal. It's beautiful, though, by the
way. So it's million times better in the sound of Dolby 5.1
comes Crusher, sure, over the years a way to go if you can get
it, but I don't think a lot of people can do that.
Well, there's a substantial amount of people and these, of
course, are the you know, the people that do count in the
Nielsen ratings, who just are you know, are are going to lose
out and the fear is what I'm reading is that people may just,
you know, give up on television altogether. Oh, please. Oh,
please.
So one of the things that you know, that cracks me up is they
have all these ads, they've been running, I'm constantly about to
switch over to digital, and I've written about this. And I'm
convinced that half the public because we've dumbed down in
America, they don't know anything. They think that if
they have a you know, a digital tuner, you know that in other
words, it has numbers that pop up if you push buttons that they
have a digital TV, they don't know the difference. I mean to
say you know, it's like you know, you just use the word
digital doesn't mean anything to them they don't understand
digital ready. I have a digital TV that someone could say
because look i in the naked show that there's like a 12 blinking
that means is digital, doesn't it? And they don't know any
difference. So they don't think
I can't see I cannot see how the media industry agreed to this
because all I see is there's going to be more more channels
available. And when you have more channels than it's this
cable the cable model is very hard to get huge ratings and
it's just it's it is going to kill or maybe it's just the
final you know, shot in the head the Mercy shot for the
television industry is looking at newspapers are closing left
and right. And they're all going digital. What was it there was
another there was another paper up for sale just the other day
if no one buys it, they're gonna you know, then they're gonna
post until the post Intelligencer. Right. So no
one's gonna buy it. If Horse?
No, and hearse you know, that first owns it and they are now
and you know, the idea was that they could buy the Seattle
Times. But Hearst, you know, pulled the you know, they had
the examiner in the San Francisco Bay area and they sold
it so they could buy the Chronicle and own the market. So
they bought the Chronicle, then the word on the street is that
they're losing a million dollars a week no trying to, oh, we have
a week and they're trying to get rid of this thing. It's a debt.
So they're not going to touch another newspaper, especially
the Seattle Times, which they figure is going to be the same
thing. And you know, so they're just gonna bail out there. They
may, they may just abandon the property.
Just like give it up and just like close the door. And that's
it. Just walk away. It could happen. I mean, that in some
cases, that's the best, the best solution is like, Alright, we're
done. They must have a mountain of debt on that thing already.
Dad's probably building. Yeah, well,
whatever. So but what is our trusted news to us, that's a
jump, I'm putting my foot down, we're just going to have to
become the trusted news source, we're gonna have to become the
new source of record. Because someone's got
to do it. We're better than some things, but whatever the case
is, yeah, that's bad. But anyway, back to the analogue
switch over to from digital. So anyway, the other thing that
they had was, I think, the reason they're gonna put us
they're not gonna let this thing I think Obama's gonna manage to
get it put off a little waste, because I think what's gonna
happen with it, because if you watch these ads, or if there's
a, if you have a problem with your digital transition at some
doesn't work, here's a number to call, this is going to be the
number to call, and you're just going to be some helpline in
India, yes. But the fact of the matter is, if somebody goes,
what's really going to happen, I am an old woman, and I, not
literally, but sure people listeners think so. But so I'm,
let's say, I'm at some theoretical old woman somewhere,
and I turn on Channel Five, after the switch over and is
dead. So I don't think much about it, then I turn around a
turn on channel seven, it's and they're all dead. And so then,
although I think they're gonna probably be broadcasting a
message saying, Look, dummy, you should have done this. But let's
just say that whatever the case is, I'm not going to call the
government number, I'm going to call the station and ask them
what the heck happened to my, my, my show. So all these
stations are going to be inundated with phone calls,
because that's the only number people can find in the phone
booth. They don't have to call the government number here.
Okay,
it all clicked together, finally, understand, and we're
talking about a potential seven to 10 million people who will
have this problem. So let's say we're going to get we're going
to generate millions of calls, the number is one 800, call
FEMA, and they come to your house, if you if you are
incapable of switching to digital, they take you to one of
their FEMA camps.
And then they kill you.
It makes so much sense. Look, I don't understand how sorry for
saying look, but I really don't understand how the media
industry agreed to a dilution, a dilution of their monopoly. I
just don't get it. So there's got to be something or maybe I'm
mistaken, and it's just one for one digital, but I would believe
that they're going to have more channels now. And so those
I actually challenged, like, for example, KQED here in the Bay
Area, which has HD they have, they have I think four or five
channels, at least three that I that I have, because I
so that's so that's it all the stations are going to have are
going to have to produce more crap, they have to fill up more
channels with a lot of other people under these airwaves like
us. Channel Seven kg yo station, which is ABC has three channels,
they have the regular feed, which is the network fee, which
is an HD, then they have a feed of like weird old movies or
something that they're showing on a second channel. And then
the third challenge is weather. And there's a cake I think it's
KTVU and other one of the local stations has the regular feed
Fox feed on the on the main tube dash one, and then I think two
dash two or two dash three or something like that I think
exists. But there's a couple of stations that have cameras that
are just around the Bay Area that show you traffic, and
that's 24/7 It'd be the most popular channel, you know that
the Weather Channel? It's like it's ridiculous. I mean, what's
the point of broadcasting some of this stuff? You know, I don't
know, it's baffling to me. Well, the KQED the KQED folks do
actually a pretty good job because they have their main
feed and they have the two of the digital feeds which have
like shows like NOVA from last week and Charlie rose on the
dawn that really this the old fashion, the just the DTV is not
an HD. And then I think there's a kid's thing and something
else. It's just as a lot of weird little channels and then
all these and then what's really weird is if you go up higher,
there's a bunch of these religious stations that have
never existed before. And they're just you know, basically
preaching constantly and I am
seeing more and more religious broadcasts, broadcast channels
pop up. We now on my sky box, I think we have 15 And there's God
one god to God three, you know, inspiration, hope and glory.
It's just time that a lot of them are a US base, but they're
some apparently, like from the Caribbean. Some UK it's just
it's everywhere and even on the radio I'm receiving Radio Maria,
which is a Dutch religious station. I mean, it's, it's
crazy. They get the best transmitters they get they get
all the coverage, you always notice that whenever you're,
we're back in the day. I mean, it's not like this anymore. But
back when we just had radios in our car and am at that which
station John always had the cleanest, clearest best
reception and the strongest signal. He was always the
classical station.
Yeah, the classical station typically
always sounds the best.
And it used to be I always used to be a number of classical
stations. Now you're lucky in any maybe you can even get one
classical station. Yeah, yeah, we have one in the Bay Area.
It's I don't think there's another one then, you know, the
radio stations that used to play stuff like that. Now just play
either green propaganda or, or shows or, you know, so
if in our vast audience of hundreds of 1000s If there is
anyone who programmes a classical music radio station,
may I give you some advice? Do not play marching band music in
the morning. It does not excite your audience. Okay, no one
gives a shit about marching bands in the morning drive time
slot. Okay, play something soothing. That's why we tune
into you.
You know this, they're talking about that, that kind of
complaint. When I'm up in northern Washington, we I have a
radio that looks for that I have this one, the one classical
station I can find where I live is out coming out of either
Victoria or Vancouver, Canada. And they play like classical
music that is like weird avant garde classical stuff. That is
really depressing. And I can't put my finger on who's
programming this this crap. But it's unlist coming
out of a predetermined selector system. You they buy these they
buy the shit off the shelf at what's the the broadcast
Conference in? Vegas, NAB NAB, right? They buy it off the shelf
with the library. It comes pre programmed, you know what
selector is? Right? You've seen selector? Yeah, yeah. So it
comes pre programmed, and they don't know what to do people.
This is a business. You know, most of these who's really good
at it is sky sky has this so well. And all across Europe.
They've just got you know, a roomful of computer servers. And
I've seen this homegrown stuff, it runs on a Mac. It's
fascinating. And, and, you know, they just dropped in the voice
files and they just have the same shit crank out everywhere
across the globe. But it's not I know, rarely to some thought go
into it. You know, it's classical
dad. We're done. Now and I look at when a San Francisco seems to
be pretty. This is
the art that is lost. This is the so thank God, I love
podcasting. But the last part of the art is turning on the radio
in the morning. And based upon what's going on in the city
based upon the weather based upon the meme of the day. The
guy on the radio is playing songs that fit with it. That is
the lost art.
Yeah, well, it's lost art because they had to pay him.
Oh, yeah, shit. We forgot about that minor detail. deejays are
the lowest paid the bottom of the show business ladder, the
bottom rung. And it's
there, they're kind of like charter pilots. You can always
tell it to a DJ because he has a U haul trailer hooked up to his
car. Ready to move to the next market?
Like the song says W O LD
So moving to the next market, I think we run out of time guy we
really ran through this one fastly shit, you're
right. I wasn't even paying attention. Well, hopefully, it
recorded I know something on the stream work because
Eric doesn't sound like yeah,
I'm just saying Hey, how come I put a big
echo on the thing you know?
Just to add to the ambiance Yeah, 144 Oh, it'll give those
guys a yo agenda, something to complain about.
So you can check me out channel devora.com
I'm channel curry.com, which I'm just loving what Eric put
together for me. That's fantastic.
And then also we have Bubba doing the show notes. He'll be
covering the putting it on the cage match.
And we have a whole bunch of people on the talk show system
but no one has actually dialled in so oh Women. Now, Bob is
dialled in.
Well, maybe we'll get to Bob sometime in the future.
We do have the capability to take calls that no I just want
to I just want to try something just to know that it actually
works. So we haven't. Where did he go? He hung up.
drew attention to him. So oh,
hey, Bob. Are you there? Yeah, here
it is on Skype. Probably.
Wow, it sounds terrible. On my iPhone, it's probably that bad.
Yeah. Thanks, Bob. It sounds it sounds like Yeah, thanks, Bob.
It sounds like shortwave. It doesn't
work. If you call in on Skype. It has to be a minimum. It has
to be a cell phone. It just doesn't work. It sounds like
shit.
So okay, all right.
All right. John was great talking to you as always have
yourself a good week. You got any plans?
No, no, nothing exciting is always
coming to you. from Gitmo nation East in the United Kingdom, the
southwestern corner. I'm Adam curry.
I'm in northern Silicon Valley, also known as get mo nation West
for the moment. I'm John C. Dvorak. We'll talk
to you again next week on no agenda.