The Zen "Offer"

00:01 Ladies and gentlemen, time once again for the program that comes to you from different ends of the universe. And I'm not just talking geographically. It is your weekly NOAHgender, coming to you from the United Kingdom in the Curry Manor. I'm Adam Curry. And I'm here in Northern California. I'm John C. Dvorak. And we have a beautiful weekend here, John. It's about time we had some good weather. I hope it's shitty where you are. No, as a matter of fact, it's quite nice. It's probably gonna be around 72 today and maybe 75 Okay. Hey, we have a new mayor in London. Did you know that? Oh, you got rid of that communist guy? Yeah, Red Ken He's gone. We got Boris Johnson as our new mayor

00:42 Boris Johnson, sounds like he's a Norwegian. Have you ever seen this guy? Do you know anything about him? No, no, nothing. He, well he, um, I didn't really know him as a politician first. I saw him as he was a host of several television shows Kind of like you know stuff like what is it have I got news for you? I think he he certainly well that they have a rotating host I've seen him on that a number of times. He is a spectacularly Completely British funny guy. I have no idea if he can run the city of London or London I should say But he's he's a joker dude. I mean this guy is funny capital F now I

01:21 It's funny. I really don't know anything about Well, what's your name again Boris Johnson? He's a conservative as in Boris. Yeah as in Boris and Natasha Yeah, Boris Johnson He's with the Conservative Party and of course This is the big deal because Gordon Brown is labor and you know, they lost I think 400 council seats around the country which is just you know, it's that's devastating of course projecting onto the The job that Gordon Brown is doing, the current Prime Minister, and he's with the Labour Party, so this is a huge deal now that he no longer has a direct party connection to London. This is big. I just don't know if this guy... I love the guy, I think he's funny, but I have no idea if he can run London.

02:04 Well, what do they just vote on any... do they put just people just randomly... I mean, how do they... how does these guys run? I mean, this is always... These elections would be besides Red Ken and Boris now, it sounds to me as though it's like a college election where, you know, some guy puts himself up, happens to, you know, wear a clown suit. It's not quite like that. And he always wins. Yeah, so you have... it is a party-driven system. So we have Labor, we have Conservative, we have the Lib Dems, the Liberal Democrats. What is interesting though, and I haven't quite, this only happened yesterday or two days ago basically, is that when you vote, you have to vote for your favorite candidate and then your second favorite. I'm not quite sure why, but you have to cast your favorite and second favorite.

02:49 Really? Yeah I think there's like some tiebreaker deal or something that they put in there. It's like alright the second guy We'll let him we'll let him go so but I was just cruising around the net It's more like a survey, you know Win valuable points get points get points for valuable prizes Cross off a couple boxes But I had asked on the Daily Source code for people to explain it to me or tell me what's going on or what's up with Boris Johnson. I got literally no response. Just no one responded at all. And what I did see surfing around the net, I see a lot of people are really pissed off that he's become mayor and I see people twittering stuff like, I'm so disappointed in this city. So I think a lot of people really don't like him. Well, it's gotta be better than this other guy. He was a real clown. Yeah. Well, the thing that really made me laugh recently about Boris is

03:43 It relates to that Jerry Springer show we were talking about, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But someone asked him the question, he said, have you ever slept with a man, Mr. Johnson? And his answer was, well, not yet. So that kind of guy, that's funny, man. That is funny to say, especially if you do it in this kind of naive style. Yeah, that kind of way. Not yet. And he's always jogging, as these politicians do, right? They get up in the morning, crack of dawn, and they'll jog around the block and the reporters follow them. Except he wears like a... He has a... And he has quite a distinct, huge mop of blonde white hair. But he'll wear like a skull and crossbones scarf on his head. I mean, he's nuts, man. It's just like a typical, what I love about British, nuts.

04:31 I'm looking at the Telegraph and it says, senior conservative sources said that they would be gobsmacked if Mr. Johnson did not win the mayoral contest. What is gobsmacked? Well, you obviously understand the... what they mean with it is just completely flabbergasted. Yeah, but gob is... it means face, right? I think gob is... isn't... yeah, maybe it is. Are you looking that up? I don't know. Remember we had gobstoppers? Right, gobsmacked. Candy? I think gobsmacked. Worldwide words. Okay. What can you tell me about the British term gobsmacked? It's a fairly recent British slang term, the first recorded use only in the 80s. Really? Though verbal use must surely go back further. Not necessarily. The usual form is gobsmacked. A combination of gob, which is mouth, and smacked means utterly astonished or astounded.

05:32 I guess it'd be the same as jaw-dropping. Yeah, right, right, right. Boy, it sounds more British. Well, you know, the Brits over the years, especially recently, have done a lot more for the English language in terms of being inventive. The other forms of the English language, the American form and all the rest of them, are pretty conservative by comparison. I mean, we're almost like the French compared to the British. They're making stuff up constantly. I don't know. We have a lot of technical terms, I think, that we made up in the US. Yeah, but that's not in the did well yeah, but that's hmm. That's an interesting point Yeah, you're right Not you mentioned it, but it's not like but it's this out of necessity You've invented something and you got to call it something. It's not like you're casually Livening up the language with ad with newer adjectives and screwball. You know to Google. That's pretty lively. Oh

06:29 We made up a word there. Alright, alright, forget it. I'm sorry you brought it up. I'm writing it down. I got another yes you're right from John. I've got three so far. Four now. No, I'm only... I think it's... They were up to four. So anyway, I just got back from Holland. Oh yeah, how'd that go? Your wife got a contract extension or what happened? Well no, not yet. This is the first... now they do four, I think four or five live shows until the winner of Holland's Got Talent is announced. Oh, who won? Well, so this was a pre-qualifying round. So they've already pared it down from 200 people to 30 people. And so now they do... That's right, they do 10 for the next three weeks, including last Friday night. And then the fourth week is when they do the final... That's the real finals. Is it broadcast live, the final one? Well, this one was broadcast live too, last night, or Friday night. How do you do four then if they're broadcast live? That doesn't make any sense. What do you mean?

07:32 You said they're gonna shoot four. I didn't say that. No, no, no. They're gonna do four live shows. They did one last Friday night. They're gonna do one next Friday night, the Friday night after that, and then the 30th of May, I think, will be the final Friday night, and that's when they have the final, final contestants. So are you flying there in your private plane? Unfortunately, I think I told you this, my wife refuses to fly with me over the channel. unless I have a safety pilot and I couldn't get anyone who could stay overnight and stay with us so and actually we took KLM what a it was it was such an infuriating experience once again and partially KLM but Heathrow Airport I usually fly out of Gatwick unless I'm going with Virgin but Virgin has like their own entrance and you don't even see anything of Heathrow

08:18 They, so BAA, which is owned by a Spanish conglomerate, is running Heathrow. And of course these guys are responsible for Terminal 5, which is just- Hey, wait, wait, stop, stop, stop. I thought BAA was, stands for British Airways or something like that? No, no, no. BAA is British Airport Authority. And it's run by the Spanish? So a Spanish conglomerate runs BAA, which includes the two major airports, Gatwick and Heathrow. So there's no competition here. Oh, hold on a second. Wait, stop, stop, stop. I thought the British were known for their management skills at levels like that. How come the British don't run their own airports? Because they were, this is part of the nationalization, you know, they were fucking greedy. They wanted to make money. So they sold it to the Spanish. Yeah, exactly. Well, you made that point a while ago. You said this is what nationalization always leads to, then some other freaking government winds up running your shit.

09:13 It's unbelievable. It is and and so it's you know, it's you know He throw terminal 5 is messed up Gatwick has been under construction for 40 years Although I think it is a pretty pretty well-functioning airport, but now They have this... Stop them. You know, I phoned into Gatwick once. It's in the middle of nowhere. You have to drive right through the city streets to get back to where you're going. You must be talking about London City Airport because that's not true. Gatwick is literally underneath Heathrow. You mean below it? On the map? On the map, yeah, below it.

09:51 Hmm, so that must have been London City or something where you landed because it got wake is it's the same to get from Gatwick into the city as it is Okay, then I'm mistaken. Yeah anyway, so And this is it makes me so angry so only the only airport I fly in and out of and I fly out of a lot of different airports at At London Heathrow, they have a welded rack and your carry-on bag has to fit into this rack, otherwise you can't take it with you on board. Yeah. Okay. It is the size of a cigar box.

10:30 And I know this because, well first of all, whenever I go to Heathrow it's through Virgin and so you don't actually go through the BAA part of the airport. Virgin owns that part and so it's their decision to say, okay, whatever size you want you can take on. And you know my bag, right? The famous Adam Curry's office bag that I schlep everywhere with me. Yeah, it's a funny shaped thing. But it's oblong. It's rectangular, but it's perfect. It fits in every single aircraft overhead bin that I fly on. And I know it does. It fits into this thing except for the wheels. The wheels won't actually go into this welded frame that everything has to fit into. So I know this. So I'm already trying to push my wife along my side so that no one can really see I'm carrying the bag.

11:20 And then this shithead's like, oh excuse me sir, you have to see if it fits in this rack. And so I say yeah it fits, look no but the wheels have to go all the way down. I'm like, it will fit in the overhead bin. Oh yes sir, but this is a BAA regulation. So it's only for their airport that your bag can't be over a certain size. And my bag's not huge. And it fits in every single overhead bin, and so I always wind up getting into a fight with these guys. And then I have to go and check my bag and take my computer out and do all this crap, and it just really pisses me off. Wow. Yeah, it started... it started... it really started me off wrong. I was so... and of course, just the fact, just going through all this crap of commercial flying. EasyJet is great!

12:02 Compared to KLM which is like a scheduled flight where they you know a crew shows up And then you have to wait for the ground staff to do shit, and you know priority boarding whereas easy jet It's the plane comes in throw everyone off empty the sick bags put the new passengers on and we're off ladies and gentlemen Southwest oh, I love it so much. The CEO of Southwest once he said I can't you know somebody asked How do you come you're one of these airlines that makes money? And he says a lot of these airlines don't realize that the only way... You can make money, or no, he said the thing you have to know about the airline business is that planes sitting on the ground do not make money. Yeah, it's extremely expensive. And so he just, you know, his operation is the same thing. They run the plane in, they offload it as fast as they can, they beg people to clean up after themselves. And then they throw another group on as fast as they can and off they go. It's a total spreadsheet business. I actually had a very small airline myself with, well, with helicopters.

13:01 And you have what they call a DOC, a direct overhead cost. So you know exactly And that includes maintenance per hour, it's all by hour. So maintenance per hour, fuel burn per hour, obviously stuff like oil, but also every piece that's going to have to be replaced. Contingency, which is a percentage of overall. So you know that this aircraft will cost and it's like an Airbus 320, I'm probably just making it up. But let's say it'll cost you $6,000 an hour DOC. Right? And then per extra person that I mean, it's all down to a spreadsheet. So they know everything but you're absolutely right. That's only if the plane is operating. If it's sitting there, it is just costing shit loads of money because that's the other side of the spreadsheet is the financing and the depreciation and it's really simple. It's a very simple business. It's just that no one wants to pay a lot of money to fly anymore because it's so heavily subsidized for years.

13:59 Well, so EasyJet is a good one. I've never been on them. That's a European cheapie. Yeah, EasyJet, that's Stelios, you know, the Greek shipping magnate who started the airline and then he started a cruise line and he's kind of like a Richard Branson only without class or style. Totally. And his color is orange, right? Everything is orange, which is just an atrocious color. uh... but i i think it's kick-ass the only thing that's sad and i had heard that this was this was going to happen is they used to have four flights uh... between london and amsterdam daily weekdays and they've had they brought it back to two and that's purely because of the oil price what's the what's the cost of a flight from london to amsterdam on easyjet well this of course depends on how much in advance you book so what's the range the range is

14:49 One way, the range is between 38 pounds and 138 pounds I'd say, if you book the day before. So you can go to Amsterdam casually for 75 bucks or so US? Yeah, yeah, and you can get deals and you could probably do it consistently for a round trip about 100 bucks I would say. That would be fun. Well, again, it's the Americans don't, you know, Americans, you know, we were over here in an entirely different hemisphere. And I and we don't realize, you know, that there's always a certain cosmopolitan, not everybody in Europe is cosmopolitan by any means. In fact, I remember watching some report once with talking to people in Germany who have never been to Paris, even though it's just a short train ride.

15:32 and they never left the country. I mean, there's a provincialism all over the world, but the fact that, but the opportunity exists if you live anywhere in Europe to just about visit all this cool stuff for almost next to nothing. And it's something Americans don't understand because it actually costs us a lot of money just to go to the Grand Canyon. which is in our own country. Yep, exactly. And it's funny because I know a lot of cab drivers in Amsterdam and they love, they love, they love doing the Schiphol Airport into the city run on, oh, my daughter closing the door, on Friday afternoon because that's when all the Brits en masse hop on the easy jet, fly over to Amsterdam to get completely shit-faced all weekend long

16:12 And then so the ride the cab drivers absolutely hate is a bunch of puking sick-ass Brits on Monday morning trying to get back into the city to be in in their office by lunchtime. It is the worst ever So we just get invaded but there and you know and the and the Brits are rowdy to see the museums Of course the Rijksmuseum the Van Gogh Museum. Yes, I And the red light hooker district. Now they all get stoned and tanked up and laid and then they go back home. Yes, you know, it's called, it's a form of tourism. Amsterdam does not like being known for that as their main...

16:54 I did want to say... No, well it's a classy town. I think a lot of people, Americans need to visit this town because I consider it one of the really cool towns of the Western Hem... or the Western Hem... of Europe because it's... I mean, there's the bicycles and the trains going every which way and the cool little shops and the really outstanding museums and... And while we still have a reasonably small amount of listeners, If you're going to Amsterdam, you can hit me up personally. Just email me and I'll help you find whatever you're looking for. I'll tell you the best places to go. As a service, from no agenda to you. Oh, that's nice of you. I do it all the time. People are always emailing me saying, hey man, I'm gonna be in Amsterdam. What should I do? Where should I go? Yeah, what do you tell them usually? Well, it really depends on who it is. You know, some people, believe it or not, that I know actually do want to go see the museum.

17:48 strange like recommend by the way anybody you know that music there's the both museums are good but the the van gogh was quite interesting because that museum has got so many vandal paintings in it and i mean this is a hundreds and hundreds of them if that music is everyone's relatives state they pack up a bunch of angeles from all around the world and they stay put him on a tour of the u s museum circuit which you know they do with all kinds of different things and i remember one of those things should then go in particular showing up in san francisco and years and years ago, and it was like, there were like, you had to get tickets, and there was a line a million miles long. You had to pay a fortune to get in, and it was like a slow moving process. Meanwhile, you can go to this museum, and you get to play, I mean, it's just.

18:32 I mean there's 20 times more paintings and it's just like, you know, there's none of this hassle. It's a fantastic thing to do. So, there's also the Rijksmuseum, which usually has the Night Watch, one of Rembrandt's most famous paintings on display. That's a great one to see. I always recommend people go to see the Museum of Modern Art, the Stadelijk Museum. Have you ever been there, John? I have not been to that museum. Oh, it's a really good one. I think you'll enjoy that. And you know then London depending you know I may say check out the Anne Frank house although I find that to be kind of disappointing I think it's depressing, the whole concept. And that does have a line. Oh, it has a huge line. But what I recommend to others is the Blowboat, which is a canal cruise with goodies to smoke. That's a pretty good cruise. Alternatively, you can take the Wine and Cheese Cruise, which is also good. Seeing Amsterdam from the water is a great way to see some fantastic parts of the city. You've done the canal boat tour, I'm sure, John.

19:35 Not the blowtor I never heard of that one. I was thinking something else by the way No, I have thought about setting that one up, but no No the blowtor it doesn't operate all year round And I sit around a big table. I don't know anyway. No, it's just you just like in a coffee shop You know you can buy some stuff, and then you sit there, and you smoke and the guy tells you what you know It's like it's beautiful man. It's like oh wow yeah look at that look at the fakes facade. They're so pretty Right one of the reasons I like Amsterdam is it's a photographer's dream come true there are because of the architecture and

20:15 And also there's the, last time I was there I went to, in the old town, there's this thing called the, I think it's called the Hidden Church or this, it was this old Catholic church that's built into a bunch of apartments. Oh, is that, you mean where the nuns still live? No, I don't think anybody's living there. It's almost purely a museum now. I'm trying to think what you're saying. It's right off the main, it's right walking distance from the, well it's right as you first go into Old Town if you're coming from the train station. And it's a really cool exhibit. And you've seen it, the Americans have seen it because they highlight it occasionally on various documentaries. But it's like a church that's in the roofs of about five or six buildings

20:56 and during some period of history it was used as a Catholic's gathering place because being a Catholic was illegal for a while. And it's a whole, like an infrastructure into these houses that's a church with an organ. I would go there and look at this and say, wait, the authorities couldn't tell this was going on? They had this huge organ. I don't know what, you know, it's funny, I don't know what you're referring to, actually. Yeah, I'll have to send you a link. I'm surprised you haven't been there. It's actually worth checking out. So, and to eat, I would just recommend a couple things.

21:32 If you're in Amsterdam, if you have a chance and although not a Dutch, it's an imported food, but it is a very typical Amsterdam snack particularly after you've been out at night drinking or whatever. Whereas in the UK people would get a curry or a kebab. In Amsterdam you have to get a swarma. Are you familiar with the swarma, John? Uh, not, no I'm not. Okay, so it's a pita bread and in there is very much kebab-like but cut up into small bits of strips, usually veal I think. I think I saw this on a tourist show, you know, rough guide or something. Right, but what you want is you want to find Ben Cohen's place, it's on the Rosengracht, and tell him I sent you.

22:17 Would you get an extra piece of meat? You'll get all kinds of love, trust me. You gotta have it with the garlic sauce, the white garlic sauce, that's the best. And typically even people drink two glasses of milk with it which is just astounding. Oh God! Yeah I know, but it's an Amsterdam treat, I'm telling you. Well, the food in Amsterdam is not necessarily as typical of all those countries. Denmark, Amsterdam, all those Nordic and Scandinavian countries and Holland, they don't know how to cook. No, and in fact the best cuisine in Holland is it was brought was what's rife stoffel whatever it is. Yes, it's not even there Yes, Indonesia's not even their food. That's a rice toffle So which literally translates to rice table and you want to go to some acebo for that now that now I will say this the last time I or the time that the line knows the last time I was there I I there's a

23:15 There's some people that do the Taneu, T-A-N-E-U, there's some crazy European press that produces all these cool books. If you go to an architectural store, you'll find them. There's a builder source bookstore on 4th Street in Berkeley for anybody in the Bay Area. They should go there and look at these books. And there's the series, they're called Cool Hotels. cool restaurants, cool bars, and they'll have them like cool restaurants in Amsterdam, cool bars in New York, cool hotels in San Francisco, and they're inexpensive books. And they're not meant to be tourist guides, but the fact is I got the cool restaurants of...

23:56 of Amsterdam before I went and looked and found about 10 cool places that were just astonishing, because this is like a book for architects so they can steal each other's ideas. And it turned out that the food was good too, so there is good food to be found, but it's a little rough. But there's just some typical Dutch things that if you run into them, like the, well, rice taffle would be, would be a typical fare for going out. But if you can get poffertjes, which is seasonal, but that's little pancakes, I mean like really half-dollar sized pancakes you eat them with powdered sugar and melted butter. And of course if in season, the herring. You want it, and it's just, and it's literally raw herring, although it's been in salt I guess or whatever, it's been cured.

24:47 With onions on it, you pick it up by the tail and you just eat that right up. And then hit it with some Dutch jam. All you're talking about is snack food. Well, the Dutch fare is basically meat, potatoes and cauliflower. That's what they've been eating all their lives, you know? No wonder they had to go to sea. Yeah, but if you're on vacation, you want to, you know, catch the local culture. You know, it's like they eat french fries over there with mayonnaise. You know, it's kind of weird, but you should try it. Yeah, it's snack food. But you're right, in fact, that whole Denmark's the same way and so is Belgium. They all eat french fries with mayonnaise. I'll never forget 1972 and we were in Somforte and the Formula One races were still on that circuit at the time and as my dad and I went to have a look and he says, I'll get us something to eat and he came back and I'm like, what the hell are you thinking? Yeah, I'm seven years old, right? Are you out of your mind? You're gonna get french fries with mayonnaise?

25:48 But I've really learned to love it. Well, it's actually not bad. It's a little on the, I mean, it seems to me it's about a grease overload. I mean, even with the ketchup, there's a little vinegar in there to cut it. I mean, the extreme, the other extreme of eating French fries is the British style where they don't even use ketchup. They cut to the chase and it's just vinegar. Vinegar, right. Yeah. What I want to love what I wanted to say though about being in Holland in the show and this actually relates to The DVD that that didn't work that you gave me you said George Carlin was on it was with his most recent Yeah, yeah, yeah, HBO special so of course I went to Google and video google.com and of course the entire thing is online right that that only makes sense and I watch it and

26:36 And there was this one segment in there, John, you'll probably remember he's talking about how the kids today, well he's done this routine before I think in a different version about how the kids that are growing up today are all pussies and they're never taught to lose. Do you remember that piece? And you know it's like, oh well, the kid that comes in last these days, he didn't lose, like, oh Johnny, you were the last winner. Right. And I related that to the show. So the show, by the way, a live television show with an audience and with 13 cameras, it is very exciting to watch. I'd kind of forgotten how cool it is and I could basically go anywhere and stand anywhere and you know, multiple cranes and just a big production. It was impressive and I'm always excited how that works and to see it all come together. It was very cool.

25:48 But I've really learned to love it. Well, it's actually not bad. It's a little on the, I mean, it seems to me it's about a grease overload. I mean, even with the ketchup, there's a little vinegar in there to cut it. I mean, the extreme, the other extreme of eating French fries is the British style where they don't even use ketchup. They cut to the chase and it's just vinegar. Vinegar, right. Yeah. What I want to love what I wanted to say though about being in Holland in the show and this actually relates to The DVD that that didn't work that you gave me you said George Carlin was on it was with his most recent Yeah, yeah, yeah, HBO special so of course I went to Google and video google.com and of course the entire thing is online right that that only makes sense and I watch it and

26:36 And there was this one segment in there, John, you'll probably remember he's talking about how the kids today, well he's done this routine before I think in a different version about how the kids that are growing up today are all pussies and they're never taught to lose. Do you remember that piece? And you know it's like, oh well, the kid that comes in last these days, he didn't lose, like, oh Johnny, you were the last winner. Right. And I related that to the show. So the show, by the way, a live television show with an audience and with 13 cameras, it is very exciting to watch. I'd kind of forgotten how cool it is and I could basically go anywhere and stand anywhere and you know, multiple cranes and just a big production. It was impressive and I'm always excited how that works and to see it all come together. It was very cool.

27:26 But it kind of clicked for me after having seen that George Carlin bit, that why this type of program works so well because it is so... It seems really harsh but basically just like the Olympics, which of course are also extremely exciting because on these types of events, Olympics and performance-based reality shows, people actually do lose. And they cry about it. And they cry about it, exactly. And on this show, it's kids too, which is really, really heart-wrenching. So it was just, it was good to watch, man. I love it. I know you hate that kind of TV, but wow, it really sent me up and down on the emotional rollercoaster. I hate it because it ruins these people's self-esteem. Oh, you're kidding me! Come on, this happens every single day in auditions. Auditions every, you're shitting me, right? Did I just fall for that? Did I just like step in that? Oh God, I'm horrible. I gotta switch topics real quick.

28:24 How embarrassing. That is bad. I'm tired, man. Come on. I've been like a bitch boy for my wife carrying her suitcases, getting her tea, you know, keeping people out of her dressing room. It's been, I've been total, I've just been subservient. I'm, I'm, I've been beaten down. I was watching an excellent documentary on the BBC. It's a series, I think a four part series and hopefully I configured it right to record the other ones. It's about BRIC and we talked about this. BRIC is this new acronym for Brazil, was it? Russia, India, China. Yeah, thank you. Brazil, Russia, India, China. So it started with Brazil, makes sense.

27:26 But it kind of clicked for me after having seen that George Carlin bit, that why this type of program works so well because it is so... It seems really harsh but basically just like the Olympics, which of course are also extremely exciting because on these types of events, Olympics and performance-based reality shows, people actually do lose. And they cry about it. And they cry about it, exactly. And on this show, it's kids too, which is really, really heart-wrenching. So it was just, it was good to watch, man. I love it. I know you hate that kind of TV, but wow, it really sent me up and down on the emotional rollercoaster. I hate it because it ruins these people's self-esteem. Oh, you're kidding me! Come on, this happens every single day in auditions. Auditions every, you're shitting me, right? Did I just fall for that? Did I just like step in that? Oh God, I'm horrible. I gotta switch topics real quick.

28:24 How embarrassing. That is bad. I'm tired, man. Come on. I've been like a bitch boy for my wife carrying her suitcases, getting her tea, you know, keeping people out of her dressing room. It's been, I've been total, I've just been subservient. I'm, I'm, I've been beaten down. I was watching an excellent documentary on the BBC. It's a series, I think a four part series and hopefully I configured it right to record the other ones. It's about BRIC and we talked about this. BRIC is this new acronym for Brazil, was it? Russia, India, China. Yeah, thank you. Brazil, Russia, India, China. So it started with Brazil, makes sense.

29:04 Here's something I didn't know and I and I've never been to Brazil. I've never even been to South America Which is really on my list. I want to go you'd love it. I'm sure I would so did you know that in Brazil? The houses are bought with 100% cash that up until a few weeks ago six weeks ago You could not get a mortgage But you literally would buy a house from someone for you know whatever the the asking price was and you'd give them like a check with the full amount and And what's happening now, and I'm like, wow, this is pretty amazing from a financial perspective, is they've now opened it up. And it makes sense, the world needs another money supply. Well, basically, they're going to start pumping all this money out of Brazil because now everyone can get a mortgage.

29:49 People are like and by the way the mortgage rates 68% 68% interest I'm gonna I'm gonna have to you know I write for a magazine in Brazil for done for me decade or more Decades is that a tranny Gazette? It's called info. I I'm gonna write my editor and check this story out because that did I don't know it doesn't sound right Wow okay, I mean it was a looked at a pretty credible documentary and I was flabbergasted. You know, they're like, hey, what a great place to go get some money. We'll just start offering mortgages. And I can see a number of institutions that would be very interested in grabbing some of that cash for everyone. You know, the whole all of Brazil is basically loaded with with equity. Yeah, I would think so if that's true. It's you know, it's a possibility. I've only been to a

30:46 I have been to a number of private residences and um I never thought to ask how they were financed, but excuse me Did you pay for this fucking thing yourself? You know I mean it's just wouldn't kiss like one of those weird things that you just don't know country half a dozen times or more and then the next thing you know there's some screwball fact you never thought to ask yeah damn How could you not think of that one? It's too off the wall Well, for us, yeah, but when you think about it, maybe we're just off the wall. You know, that's the thing why I find this story somewhat incredible because most nations, whether even China, I mean, they look at what we do and copy it. It's not like what we're doing is crazy. Everybody copies our form, especially the United States form, and actually Britain, I mean, the British and the United States are pretty much the same when it comes to how we do capitalism. And everybody copies it.

31:47 And, you know, it's not like, you know, all of a sudden, you know, a hundred years into it, somebody says, gosh, let's do mortgages. I never thought of that. Ah, geez, you know, slap in the foreheads. It just doesn't sound right. Well, I was really paying attention to it because I was like, holy crap, I had no idea this was... And by the way, was it like 19 million people in Brazil? I'm sorry? 19 million people live in Brazil? That's how many people live in Rio. In Rio, right, I'm sorry, no, you're right. I meant Rio. Yeah, Rio's probably around 19, Sao Paulo's probably around 25. Hey, I wonder if- You know, Sao Paulo, they don't know what the population really is. You get different estimates from 20 million to 35 million. But I'll tell you, the first time you see that place when you're flying into it, if you're coming from the right angle...

32:40 You look, you think you're landing on Mars or something. I mean there are just buildings right to the horizon in every direction. It's amazing. And with no seeming structure or organization. It's kind of a mess. Yeah, Rio. Well maybe it was just Rio then. Maybe it wasn't all of Brazil with the mortgages. Well Rio's got issues. Uh-huh. Particularly on the other side of the river. Well, it's not just the river. I mean, it's mostly in the hills the all the best You know like somebody once said this is what town would you have where all the best view lots and everything? That is really cool is all slums It's the favelas are all on the hills and it's like a separate city within the city and it's like if they ever got could get rid of that this too late now because they let it fester and

33:25 But if they cleared that area, it would be some of the most amazing property in the world. Yeah, but they can't do that now because that's part of the work, a big part of the workforce lives there, right? Not that I can tell. You know, I don't know how much of the workforce comes from the slums. I'll go back and I'll check my skybox later on tonight and I'll find out the name of the documentary because I'm sure it's on Google. And by the way, why doesn't Google get sued for that? What's up with that? It's like no one gives a shit anymore. It's like have copyright, have mainstream copyright authorities given up on Google? You mean the George Carlin thing? Yeah. I don't know.

34:02 That's a good question. You never hear anything about it anymore. Yeah, you know, once in a while you still hear about a takedown request for a song from some guy who taped his three-year-old dancing to, you know, Michael Jackson or whatever. You never really hear anything and, you know, and here it is only a couple weeks after, yeah, a month after Carlin's new HBO special is on. This thing, of course, was up the day after. It's nicely categorized, you know, this guy's got a whole page filled with all of George Carlin's work. And it's like oh, here's here's this series. Here's that series, and it's all just up there I don't understand that just not getting called on it. It's fine. I'm happy right and it was on YouTube They probably would get called on it. It's on YouTube as well. It's just shittier quality. Yeah, it's on YouTube

34:47 I don't know. You know, the whole thing is somewhat baffling. People do, you know, things get taken down that should be up there and things are up there that should be taken down. It doesn't, never made any sense to me. I mean, somebody puts a little clip of Jon Stewart and comedy, you know, which is like a short, which is nothing more than a publicity. Everyone freaks out. It's like free advertisement. And then the Comedy Central guys get all bent out of shape about it. There's no free advertising with the George Carlin thing, but there's free advertising with the Jon Stewart thing and the Jon Stewart thing gets taken down. The Carlin thing stays up. Exactly. I know it doesn't make any sense. It's like the British Airport Authority. It's like no fucking consistency. This is Spanish. And Boris Johnson's gonna take us through the Olympics. Wait a minute, no that's not true. He doesn't get to stay that long. So I was at the library, our library here has these sales every once in a while and I always go to them. I bought a cookbook. I said this is an aside because it was a callback to a show we did.

35:48 or a couple weeks ago. So I got this cookbook that was a dollar, and it's from 1940, and it's Ruth Wakefield's Toll House Tried and True Recipes, which apparently Ruth Wakefield was like the Alice Waters of the 1930s. And- Wait a minute, wait a minute. You just said nothing, that meant nothing. The Alice Waters? I know Julia Child. Alice Waters is the one who does Chez Panisse, she's famous in the West Coast. This is the problem with With the trendiness of cooking comes and goes. So tell me about Alice Waters first so I understand. Well Alice Waters is the one who kind of rejuvenated fresh Mediterranean style cooking which became California cuisine in the 70s. And she runs this restaurant Chez Panisse which has become kind of a mecca for foodies.

36:37 Although I don't go there much anymore because it's I think it's it's lost a little of its of its Lustrendyness, they've lost some and the audience is I mean I don't like really going to restaurants where I'm I'm the youngest person in the restaurant just doesn't work for me so But anyway, she, but this woman from the 40s, but what's cool about this, there's a couple things I wanted to mention. I don't want to get into too much of a food discussion, but there's a couple cool things. One, inside the cookbook there was a penny postcard that was dated June 11, 1940, and it actually has a one-cent stamp on it. That's a penny postcard that used to be a penny. And this woman was bragging about how she loved this,

37:24 this restaurant she'd eaten at there. And the other cool thing is that the book is apparently autographed by Ruth Graves Wakefield. And the thing I really wanted to bring up, and this is for a dollar, by the way. I was just about to say, how would it cost? One buck, huh? One buck, yeah. But the thing that's weird about it is that there's a picture early in the book, even though I can't find a recipe for it, of grapefruit stuffed with crab. Oh my goodness, that's your favorite So I might like I had I was gobsmacked When I read this and and I said looked at I went oh my god This isn't even a new idea because as anyone who listens to the show consistently knows a few weeks ago Adam and I went to a lot fully and that one of the dishes was this crab

38:16 Dish and it was on the plate was a bunch of grapefruit ground up It was like a grapefruit sauce, and I thought the combination of crab and grapefruit was horrible Well here up here, and I just want to say that my wife eats that quite regularly She'll make that for herself as a little snack. I believe the differences in the grapefruit I think she sugars the grapefruit a little bit and that was probably what threw you off. I Well, the grapefruit was a little bitter. But I'm still trying to imagine, because I'm pretty good at kind of, you know, imagine the taste of crab and grapefruit, and I'm not getting it. I'm not getting that this is a good combination. When you come over here, I'll have Patricia make hers for you. Maybe you will get it. Maybe. I'm already prejudiced now, though. I mean, it's going to be hard for anyone to turn me around, even though I saw this old recipe from the 1940s, which makes me think it's an old style thing that's never really caught on. It's maybe only spotty. With the Dutch.

39:10 The Rotterdam faction. So why do, why does the library, and I've always supported libraries, I've famously done a big hair poster for the ALA, the American Library Association, which is still laughed about. Why does it... Can I get a copy of that? Yeah, I still have a couple of the full posters. Why does a library sell books? To make space? Well, sometimes just to, there is only so much space and they get a lot of books in and then they move some of the older ones out. A lot of these, they have a sale at the Albany Library twice a year and I think a lot of the books are donated or they come from someplace else or from closed libraries because there's more books for sale than the library ever had.

39:55 And I have boxes and boxes of books that I've bought, usually these huge sets of reference books that you can get for next to nothing, that are sitting in the basement because I can't resist buying the 45 volumes of How to Prune a Tree. Of course, as one does. For $6. It's just, how can you not buy this thing? So that's a little known fact about me people be all say you know for my birthday. What do you want for your birthday? What does a guy like you want and I always it's always the same just buy me a book any book will do I'm prefer I'm preferential to coffee table books actually, but I Love big-picture books, and that's my favorite but what I like about someone giving you a book as a gift is it says just as much about what that person thinks of you and

40:49 It's like, oh well gee thanks, you know. And like, you really think I would read this? It's a perfect, I love it. It's my private little... Well now everyone knows. But anyway, one of the things my wife and I both do is when we see these book sales of any sort or we go to a used book place, we're always looking for antique, really, really old, especially if we can find public domain. Cookbooks that go back into the turn of the century, especially, or even before. And we have a pretty large collection of interesting cookbooks. And it's in, this book is, this particular one, which is, I think is the 11th printing, I guess it was very famous in its heyday. It follows a certain weird style that these old cookbooks used to have, which is the beginning of the cookbooks. And I don't know when this ended, but I suspect in the late 50s.

41:39 The beginning of the cookbooks had nothing to do with cooking at all. It was just a bunch of household tips, like tons of them. You know, here's like this, right to page 37. Cuts and scratches remember that all cuts and scratches are dangerous if neglected it goes on epileptic fits Place the patient in such a position. What does this have to do with the cook cooking? Yeah I just pulled out one of my favorite books because it just and by the way, it's hardly even cracked I used to go to the bookstore and we lived in New Jersey and every week it seemed one of these books would come out and I'd buy it because I knew that I was in it and

40:49 It's like, oh well gee thanks, you know. And like, you really think I would read this? It's a perfect, I love it. It's my private little... Well now everyone knows. But anyway, one of the things my wife and I both do is when we see these book sales of any sort or we go to a used book place, we're always looking for antique, really, really old, especially if we can find public domain. Cookbooks that go back into the turn of the century, especially, or even before. And we have a pretty large collection of interesting cookbooks. And it's in, this book is, this particular one, which is, I think is the 11th printing, I guess it was very famous in its heyday. It follows a certain weird style that these old cookbooks used to have, which is the beginning of the cookbooks. And I don't know when this ended, but I suspect in the late 50s.

41:39 The beginning of the cookbooks had nothing to do with cooking at all. It was just a bunch of household tips, like tons of them. You know, here's like this, right to page 37. Cuts and scratches remember that all cuts and scratches are dangerous if neglected it goes on epileptic fits Place the patient in such a position. What does this have to do with the cook cooking? Yeah I just pulled out one of my favorite books because it just and by the way, it's hardly even cracked I used to go to the bookstore and we lived in New Jersey and every week it seemed one of these books would come out and I'd buy it because I knew that I was in it and

42:19 And I was just seriously well, I'm not kidding. I was like one day I'll really enjoy this now and this is this is actually the first moment when I was a kid when I was a kid and prove I was in this book all right can't sit on my knees sonny boy I'll tell you now I'm looking for the publish date on this 1994 new writers publishing It is the New Rider's official internet yellow pages. Yeah, these guys were a publishing company on the west coast out here during the heyday of the computer book business before they were all bought up by Pearson. Yep, and it looks like the yellow pages. It's as thick as the yellow pages, even if you look at the side of the page, it has all those little black marks for the letters, you know?

43:04 It's crazy. If I showed this to my daughter, which I should do, she'll laugh because it even says here, as easy to use as the phone book with over 10,000 entries. Your internet Yellow Pages is a fantastic service. Nothing like it exists anywhere, says Bill Arms, Vice President of Computing Services. I wish I had a copy. That's a collector's item. There was two of them actually that came out during that year. I have the other one too. I have the other one. Really, the other one I think was from Osborne McGraw-Hill. And they had the same title. And the thing is, people don't realize is that book titles are not copyrightable. So you know, you can go write War and Peace if you want to. And... Let me just... Let me go look up my entry for a second. And so I remember the editor of... One of the editors at McGraw-Hill moaning just horribly, wanting me to write in PC Magazine what a ripoff this other one was. Really? I'm gonna answer the phone. I'll be right back.

43:58 Yeah, you go ahead you answer that phone John. I mean it's not like we're doing a show or anything Let's see so I'm looking in my that's interesting. I wonder maybe I should look under the M for MTV calm That's usually where I'm listed in these things. I'm back. Yeah. I'm just I'm just trying to find my entry I think it might be under MTV I thought you were gonna pull out when you said there was in this book one of those crappy What was that one? The Who's Who books. Oh, I have that one too. I'm in that as well. The Who's Who of Rock and Roll.

44:34 who's who in the way we always come to you know i actually was invited to be in the real who's who once uh... the one who was one of the the who's who book but i never followed up as to raise default form but the other ones that was a senior as they saw these who's who in in business who's who and who's who's who's who in the west who's who in california and the whole the idea the business model for those books is done Try to get you know thought you know five thousand people you're gonna. You're gonna order 50 copies for yourself, right? Yeah, cuz nobody else is gonna buy these damn things and so you know that you you put somebody's name It's just like your name here And then you sell then you buy the book for like some ridiculous price and then you're in the who's who so when I go to somebody's house every so often I do see one of these books and

45:20 You know, if I ever see a who's who in the West on somebody's bookshelf, I know that person's in there and they're an idiot. That's two things I can conclude. One, they're in the book and the people that have the book are complete idiots and I should not want to be their friend. So I have an even older book, a McGraw-Hill publication. I'm sure you have this one. The Internet, complete reference. The most comprehensive guide available includes extensive catalog with more than 750 internet resources. 750? Wow! And it's all like command line stuff, right? It's all news groups and Unix. And then there's the whole Earth Online Almanac by Brady publication written by Don Rittner.

46:08 A topical A-Z resource guide. A guide to the internet libraries. Hey man, we've come a long way, haven't we? Well, now that you're bringing out books... I knew it! Here comes John C. DeMorak's collection! This is not a collection. This is one book that I'm gonna sell someday. And I want to make it clear that people know I have a copy. Let's see here, what's inside? Oh, I found a... Interesting, a publication contract for Cybex, which is in this book for some reason. One of the dummy contracts. Anyway, the cover's got a couple bins on it now, which really annoys me to no end. But, except for that, this is the Macintosh Basic handbook that came out before Macintosh Basic was ever released, and this is the Basic that was never released. Wow, that's nerdy.

47:06 It's totally nerdy. This is the big scandal that took place because apparently Bill Gates puts the screws to John Sculley and they pulled this version, this programming language off the markets and it never was released. It's got a lot of cool things in it. I mean, and this is a very this book The Mac never had basic and that you could never program in basic on it, right? No, this was was gonna be it cool And I don't even see there's just this book is so big. They don't even have page numbers. I Swear to God, it's unbelievable. I'm looking at it now. There's no page numbers in this thing. It must be 2,500 pages, huh?

47:48 Anyway, so is it signed is it is it I mean is it a what kind is it? How unique is it? I mean, do you think that how many do you think were printed or the manual? Well, the manual was that I don't believe this manual was ever released. I just happened to get a pre preview copy of it before it went out before the printer. What killed? I mean, this is a finished copy, but it was never sent into distribution. So the number of copies out there has to be probably less than 100. But what killed the basic on the Mac? Bill Gates, this is documented in John Scully's biography. Bill Gates went to Scully, I believe, and said, look, we don't want anything competing with Microsoft Basic. We're gonna pull Microsoft Office off the Mac if you release this thing. Oh, wow, I didn't know that.

48:40 Yeah, and so they did. They pulled it off. Apple pulled off BASIC. They never released it. And Thomas Blackadar and Jonathan Kamin, the two guys who wrote this book, had to be the most disappointed guys in the world because this book is huge and these guys had to do a lot of work. By the way, just to tell you I have it, I have here the Osborne McGraw-Hill, the Internet Yellow Pages, 2nd edition. That's the one that they were complaining to me about. A must-have book for anyone who wants to explore the vast reaches of the internet. Don't venture into the ether without it. The Wall Street Journal. They said that they did theirs before New Writers, but New Writers became a big hit for some reason. And so they were moaning to me, John, you know, because I was writing books from, I actually had an imprint at the time.

49:32 Can you say something in PC Magazine about how they ripped off our title and that and that? But you know, the fact is your titles are not copyrightable. Wow, were they on helium when they talked to you like that? Yeah, they were all on helium. So where would I... You'd be in this, wouldn't you? I know I'd be in this somewhere. I don't think I'm in anything. Yes, you are. You're cool, John. Oh, it has all of the Usenet groups listed. Yeah, those groups are still still there. Yeah, like alt dot religion dot Monica. Oh Yeah Oh Then we're today's huh then we're today anyway So this book is is available for anybody who wants to buy it take it off my hands Anyway Where's your father? Where'd you go into the kitchen? No, I went into the library. Yeah here at the manor. Well, that was fun. I

50:31 What's your most prized book? Which is the one you're most proud of? Well, I don't have any books I'm proud of. No, I mean, what book do you look in often? You know, it depends on what book's lying around. It's not as though I'm like, I don't really have anything that you're trying to describe. I have lots of books. I have like a, you know, I have like so many Civil War books, it's ridiculous. I have a lot of financial books. I have a lot of books on economic cycles, because I'm working on that myself. There's a book called The Language of Pattern or Pattern Language, a pattern language, something like that. I pick that up and breeze through it every so often. It's about architecture.

51:15 But it's really radically weird. And I've got some Toynbee laying around once in a while, that'll put me to sleep. But this is the thing though about books, I don't know if you care or not, but I like a book not just for content, but to me a book can really look pretty. It's the cover, I like hardbound books, I like them in my bookshelf. I don't know, I like the physical object of them. Yeah, but books are objects and many are designed to be pretty. Or useful, or you know, a lot of reference books actually are put together in a useful way, physically in a useful way. That's why I like coffee table books, you know, lots of big different shapes, I like it. I got a coffee table book lying around here that I was gonna sell off, I'm giving it to you.

52:04 Thank you. I have a lot of cookbooks and I go thumb through those constantly, but have you ever seen the book century? It's a coffee table book. No, it's a it's a humongously big book it's really and it's what's funny about it is you'll see this book on television shows all the time because It was at the turn of the century for some reason it became the gift to give to your business relations And so companies were, I guess these guys did some great marketing and it's a century worth of history in pictures. So you can imagine how big this book is and on the back of the book, so when you see it in a bookshelf, you see with big white letters, century.

52:44 and from time to time I'll be watching a show like the last time I saw it was on Studio 60 on Sunset that show unfortunately got cancelled but it was in the producer's office it was in his bookshelf there and you see it all the time and it's a great book. I see this book, it's the Bruce Bernard A Century, it's hardcover, it's 1236 pages and it is available used for nine bucks. You're shitting me. Nine bucks? Can you find out what the original price was? One, two, three copies. 966 at Tower.com, 924 at the Golden Gate Bookstore and 942 at Word Lover Books. And then it goes up from there to 19 and on. 40, 14, 29. It's a great book. It's a fantastic book to look at. It really is cool. I'll get a copy for nine bucks? Yeah, you should. For that. What is it? 12 for shipping and handling?

53:34 I don't know. It's that big, it's probably gonna cost you 20 to ship the damn thing. It's very heavy. It weighs a freaking ton. It's one of those things you use, you know, when you're gluing shit and you're like, uh, what can I put on this? Uh, get the century book. That's what I mean. It's a great object. You know, it has, it's multifunctional. Yeah. 100 years of human progress, regression, suffering, and hope. I love that. It's like a reality TV show. Huh. Okay. Of course, I better order it now before the our listeners all buy them up We got a list price and this thing's only 1495 I'm telling you it was it was a huge hit as a as a giveaway In fact, I received two copies myself. I gave I gave another copy away But 1000 photographs it was a comparable. I never get it's funny. I missed this one Yeah, it was it was a big hit in the turn of the century good marketing

54:31 Turn of this century. Yeah, turn of this century. Yeah, it came out in June 2002. Oh, that does... No, that's not correct because I received it in 1999. No, this version, this published. This is obviously a reprint. Okay, yeah. In 1999... Well, let me just see. Mine should say 1999, right? Hold on. It weighs two and a half pounds. Yeah, this has got to be a smaller version. This is a different one because this is only five inches by five inches Here it is. Oh, so you got the big giant one check it out. I'll just drop it on the table Yeah, it's the big giant one. It's and this was given to me by so the one I kept apparently by RTL Veronica and the Holland Media Group

55:24 And they put some little, they had a little inscription there. Oh, actually it's an inlaid page with a Holland Media Group. So it's even a special print. It's a special run. You know what I mean? Yeah. It has their logo in it. It's conceived and edited by Bruce Bernard. Right, I got that. Let me just see. I think this came out obviously as a packaged thing. It was a packaged job. If you're in the publishing business, you can put the book together for the publisher. The publisher doesn't do anything but really print it and distribute it. It's called packaging. And so this guy obviously packaged this thing and sold it to a number of different publishers around the world. But there's no date? That's crazy. Okay, so there's a foreword, a preface, I'm sorry.

56:14 which is by Bruce Bernard 1999 but there's no other there's no other date. There's no copyright date in there? No. Huh. That's crazy. On that page where the inscription is basically saying hey have a great have a great new century. Have a great new century. Let me just see what they actually say I'll translate it on the fly. The end of a new year the start of a new century and a new millennium looking back We'd like to stop and think with you and reflect on what was and as far as we're concerned what will be again more than just a good relationship. We're looking out to lots more. Fuck you very much. Okay. So one of these guys that's selling this book, the small version, even though it says hardcover, is Tower Books.

57:14 And they have this big website. So Tower Records became like music video books. I didn't know that. I don't know if that's universal across all stores that closed. Well, I think this is for the online. Oh, okay. It looks like a clone of Amazon. You know, there's a big problem with Amazon. I'm sure you followed this and it didn't really register with me until I found out. You know we have this Pod Show Press thing that Mark Namcov runs? Right. So the deal is, you know, we do the audio book And we get the advertising from that if we're fortunate enough to sell it. And then we will pay for the cost of printing, proofreading, some typesetting things or whatever it is, layout, and cover art even, and then the printing.

58:01 But now Amazon has decided that they'll, I guess, did they buy an on-demand printing company, John? You know, I have not followed that. I've only heard about it. I haven't gotten, I've been too busy to check out what the hell they're doing with this. I know they've done stuff like this before. They may have bought an on-demand printing company, but I know they can do short runs. Right, well I know the thing I know is that they will only now carry on-demand printed books from this one supplier, which is, I know it's not the one we were using. And the reason why is because the one they use exclusively or purchased is apparently really shitty and like the pages fall out. The ones that they're, the Amazon ones are crappy? Yeah, yeah.

58:45 uh... it's a it's quite a you know i don't think this is korea's been covered well enough well i look into it because i'm a bit canadians were a few little subsections of the this is that i actually do follow i've been to the on-demand show in new york a couple times and i've keep up with some of the technologies out there with these companies do is actually somewhat amazing you can actually as you know they don't know this these these books and we are referred to in the business as uh... what's the word, toner-based printing. So instead of having a printing press print the book, it's printed on a, what essentially is a high-speed copying machine. But it's not a copying machine. And so what you can do with toner-based printing, and I can spend, if you ever get one of these books, you've probably seen them, but as soon as I get one in my hands, I can immediately tell that it's a toner-based book, it's an on-demand book.

59:39 They have a certain feeling and look and the paper and the way the fonts look on the page and everything about these books just reeks. And it kind of bothers me because I think it, maybe most people don't notice it, but I find them to have a slightly cheap quality that is indefinable. Anyway, people should understand that the mechanism out there, there's actually a end-to-end mechanism now that you can literally do the following thing. You give the printing company a PDF file and an Illustrator file, which consists of the entire innards of the book and the cover.

1:00:22 Theoretically, they don't very rarely do this by the way, but theoretically you can, the printer can do the following. They can take your PDF file and your illustrator file. They can take somebody else's PDF file and somebody else's illustrator file and it goes into the computer and out comes, it goes right through this machine and makes all the pages and binds it and puts a cover on it. It comes out one copy of your book followed by one copy of the other guy's book. Bang, bang, just like that. Amazing, isn't it? That's what print on demand can do. Now, they generally don't like doing it because there may be, it's just a data entry. I'm not sure exactly why they just don't do it. I think it's also, you know, you got a bunch of books that are all mixed up. But, you know, they'd rather print like 500 to 1,000 copies so they can put them in a box and get them, you know, they don't have to deal with here's one copy of your book and another copy of this guy's book and another copy of the other guy's book and what do we do with all these books?

1:01:18 They don't like that. It's not that organized. It would be really cool. What's missing from the picture is that one book comes out, bound, chopped, falls off the edge into an envelope that is a shipping envelope and a label slapped on it and it's automatically sealed and goes right into the UPS truck. That would be cool. They don't have that end part yet as far as I know. Let me just read from an email from Mark Nemcoff to me. I'm sure he'll be okay with it. So, there's a slight problem with the book publishing thing I didn't want to bother you with yet. Of course, good little soldier. Long story short, Amazon has said it will no longer carry print-on-demand books done by companies other than their own, which is called BookSurge.

1:02:00 Problem is that book surge has a terrible reputation for bad quality pages falling out etc. Very high costs and lack of availability This just came up about a month ago And I've been waiting to see how it gets sorted out before proceeding with putting out books there has of course been a loud outcry from the indie publishing community that I've read the Washington State Attorney General is looking into possible Rico implications evil Involving Amazon book surges attempts to strong-arm publishers into taking their less than adequate deal interesting Sounds like we need to look into it. Yeah, sounds like you need to make sure you're really following these things. Well, it sounds like it. Yeah, no, I haven't gotten that far, but I think it's a good, this sounds like a MarketWatch column for me since Amazon is a publicly traded company. Well, I'm happy to have been able to source some of that for you, John. I mean it. I like that. I love it. It's a, you know, I, MarketWatch to me is a pretty mainstream brand, you know, stuff gets out to the front that way. I like that.

1:02:58 Well, you know, MarketWatch is an interesting operation to write for because once you realize what you're doing in terms of what the audience wants as opposed to like PC Magazine or some of these other things. And once you realize that essentially a brand like MarketWatch is good for one thing and one thing only, it's very much like CNBC. You're there for stock tips. You're not there so you can learn about how to paddle a boat or you can learn about how to buy stocks or how options work. You're there for tips and lots of them. And that's the difference between CNBC and Fox Business.

1:03:34 Fox Business is not caught on yet because they don't get that. They have shows, they got talk shows, and they got little dingy girls that- Yeah, people just want to know how to get rich, that's all. They just want, what's the stock doing? Is it a good stock? Should I buy it? One guy says yes, one guy says no. There's actually a show I listen to on One day I was driving around Massachusetts in a car that had a Sirius, I think it was Sirius. It was either Sirius or XM, one of the two, whatever. And I was tuning around and there was a section of these radio talk shows that don't get a lot of distribution. I think this was only on the satellite. And it was a stock tip show that had a unique format that I really liked and I wish if somebody out there listens to the show they can send me an email so I know who these people are. But it consists of like

1:04:23 four experts from different companies, and they would say, what do you think of such and such, you know, this, and they'd name a company, and then one guy would say why he was recommending it, another guy would say why he doesn't recommend it, and then another guy would say, you know, he thinks the company stinks, and the other guy thinks this company's great. It was actually kind of interesting, because then they'd argue About it and you get some sort of a consensus out of it as to whether this was a good stock tip or not Well one thing I think would be very interesting John I Think that that holds true for our audience here. I think you should do a stock tip every show Yeah, I should or just tell us what you're buying. I mean you disclose it obviously you know I don't buy anything in tech though because I write about it and so many Whether it's tech or not

1:05:12 Oh, well I would just stuff out of tech. Oh, excuse me. This is not twit I know you're confused because it's the weekend. You don't know if it's Saturday or Sunday. You got your buddy Lee You know, I heard you last week man on you guys it like a two-hour show all of a sudden now It's okay for twit to be long You're talking about you it was right after right after you did this show and you're talking about the same topics and it's pissing me off Oh brother, so the Don't do that man. I'm gonna have to ban you from twit. This is gonna stop. Let me give you this the stock tip that I'm thinking it I have not into this, but I should. If I hear you talk about this with Leo I'm gonna be so upset. I don't think Leo did like stocks. But you guys aren't even talking about tech anymore on twit.

1:05:58 Well, I that's not my idea. I'm the one who keeps bringing up the news items, but we're not talking about twit We might as well talk about Twitter by the way if you have a Twitter account The Vorac is my name I need to get a couple hundred more and I'll be in the top ten. That's what I'm trying to do. Yeah anyway a lot of people are looking at Capital one is short hmm interesting Now they're the credit card company or is that just credit cards? No, it's mostly credit because COF is the symbol. It's Capital One Finance, I think, financial. Yeah, you think something's got to happen with the credit card companies. There's got to be some shit going on there too.

1:06:39 There's got to be tons of defaults. Yeah, no, the whole thing, I mean, ever since the Bear Stearns collapse, everybody's really skeptical about all these finance companies because they all made the same mistake. A lot of it had to do with the fact that they were, you know, these fake AAA ratings that were just bogus. And I had lunch with somebody the other day, was in finance, and they were talking about how the whole lending system has changed so drastically because it used to always be you'd set across from the person that was borrowing the money and now it's all done on computers and it's done out of India and it's all offshore and you know who knows you so that people were obviously the scammers just came in. The rating agencies I think are the the largest to blame because they're the ones that put triple-a status on all this crap. Yeah no the rating agencies are to blame. They should all be taken out and hung.

1:07:30 And you know, and this, and I think we're still not even halfway through this game, man, because I, you know, I'm really into this and I'm just reading all these horror stories and, you know, bang, there's no money flowing. It's just not flowing. It really is not. It's not a pretty situation to find this. Everyone was fucking everyone else in some minute small way and it was all You know, it's just all come crashing down. It wasn't just these, you know, mortgage securities. All kinds of shenanigans have been going on. Yeah, it's been the shenanigan era. Damn. But this took place in the 20s too and it's very similar. Yeah, we'll get over it. It's just how long will it take, you know, because you keep talking about it. We'll get over it when the economy collapses, you know, in about a year and a half. What happens when the economy collapses? I mean, what actually takes place?

1:08:22 Well, it upsets a lot of people. It's great fodder for news. It's great for news stations. You're like a pundit. It upsets a lot of people. I'm really pissed off now this economy has collapsed. I'm trying to work out my British understatement. That was a good one. So, what happens? Hyperinflation? What takes place? Well, that's the question. So here's the question. What happens is, I believe hyperinflation is what's going to happen and the reason why is because we're so deeply in debt worldwide that the fastest way to, even my dad told me this when I was a little kid, exactly why he's telling a little kid this, I'm not sure, but he says, these guys like inflation because that way you can pay off your debts with cheaper money.

1:09:14 and uh... okay dad and we're in a little bit let me just let me just stick with that for a second and clearly you're scarred for life by this hyperinflation they can pay off their debts with cheaper money if you have a but that if you're a thousand dollar ten say a hundred thousand dollars in debt And all of a sudden we go into a hyperinflation mode where everything goes up in value like drastically and it costs more to do everything and you have to obviously get raises and get more pay. The relative value of the dollar stays the same but you have like now you have 100 times more of it because you have to keep up with hyperinflation. And by the way, the Brazilians are the best at dealing with this. They used to have it as a common problem in the country for a decade or more. And the Brazilian banks are known to be the most advanced in the world because of their ability to deal with hyperinflation.

1:10:02 Anyway, so now you have, so now there's like everything is, just costs a lot more and so you still have the $100,000. That doesn't change. Yeah, so that's basically like worth a thousand now that debt. So I can pay it off and I'm done with it. You give them the equivalent of a thousand bucks, you're out of debt. I mean what could be better than that? So if you're heavily in debt and all screwed up. You know hyperinflation is the way to go and we're internationally heavily in debt and it's possible that hyperinflation would fix it but you know hyperinflation is also got all kinds of other issues. So run me through the scenario for a second. So let's say we have hyperinflation so the dollar devalues, no wait a minute, the prices go up tenfold does the dollar then go down tenfold is that what happens? The value versus the euro?

1:10:48 Yeah. That's a relative value, it does. But only if, of course, you demand you get paid more because, you know, you can't keep up with inflation. Yeah, otherwise you starve to death. Right. Right. Otherwise you starve to death because you got nothing. Right. Now, the thing is, what happens to real estate? Real estate obviously goes up in value because it's real estate. By the way, you don't actually own the land. I just want to point that out. You only own the real estate shit on top. I actually do own the land. Oh, I beg to differ. But anyway, once I you don't own the mineral rights generally, but you generally own the land Because you can buy lots. How does that work? So anyway, so the price of all that I just want to say John you just asked me a question and waltz over it Okay, we'll get into that another time, but don't think you can just blow past me because you don't own your land. Okay? No, I don't I've been lectured on this and I'll have to get by a constitutionalist

1:11:51 It's a Ron Paul thing. It's a total Ron Paul thing. So I gotta look into it. Alright, so then we know it's a little nutty. Besides the point one way or the other, for all practical purposes you do, even if you don't, based on some crackpot theory. Oh man! Anyway, the point is... You don't talk to Leo like that, ever! He never comes up with crackpot theories. If he did, I would. So anyway, the point is that hyperinflation creates one form of a weird economy and the other one, of course, is the one that they hate the most, which is deflation, which is the one where real estate becomes worth less and the dollar becomes worth more, so you want to be in cash and not in property or debt for sure.

1:12:39 And deflation is the one that scares them the most. And the last time we went through an economic situation, we had this thing called stagflation, which was something totally different than anything anyone's ever witnessed before. You had a lot of hyperinflation in the cycle before that. And it always takes on some sort of different form. That's the problem with, yeah, even if you could accurately, and I think you can, accurately predict an economic downturn, You run into a bunch of issues. One, everyone wants to know why. I don't think there's a why, I think it's a cycle. And then everybody wants to know what, in terms of what is it going to be like? Is it going to be hyperinflation? Is it going to be stagflation? Is it going to be something new? And what would that be?

1:13:24 That's the question you really can't answer. It's just like you don't know, because every one of these things is so different. So, let's just look at it. I don't know what to recommend. I tell you, the only thing that's been consistent over every economic downturn has been farmland. If you can buy farmland at the bottom of an economic collapse, which tends to be in this next one, would be 2013. That farmland will increase in value until, for about seven years, while everything else is going all over the place. So I notice you've actually moved your target from 2012 to 2013. No, no, the target's still October 2009 for a crash, and then it cycles down to 2013, which would be the bottom. It would be the same as 1933, as a matter of fact. Ok, hold on. October 2009, and the bottom is when in 2013?

1:14:14 I don't know, summer. Summer. Could be any time in 2000. It just bounces around on the bottom in 2013. That's the bottom. And then it starts to pick up. This is the way the cycle works, by the way. Well, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this then, since clearly some questions can't be answered. Ultimately, everyone within the collapsed economy gets hurt. How do you think that's gonna look? I mean, what is the hurt gonna be like? Does that is that totally depend on whether it's a deflation hyperinflation or stag stagnation? Stagflation I like stagnation better I don't know. I mean it's like everybody gets hurt in one way shape or form and it's but you know Some people get through it to get lucky. I mean, what's do you have a strategy for each for each scenario so that we can get unbelievably wealthy

1:15:04 Well, if you can short, you know, and drive the thing into the ground, you can make quite a bit of money if you have the guts to do it. Right, that's driving the actual collapse. But once you're in the collapse, what can you do? Is that when you want to just be at the bottom, get your farmland, that's it? That's pretty much it, yeah. Only farmland, huh? I mean, that's the safe bet. That's the only safe bet. And then you'd sell the farmland in the year 2020, and then it goes back to its old price. Because at the end of the day we need to eat. I think the Swedes came up, I have the documentation for this farmland idea somewhere, but it'll be in this book when I get the damn book done. But the farmland thing, the Swedes I believe are the ones who documented this strange effect. And it seems to be valid. And if you think about the logic of it, it makes sense.

1:15:52 That's fascinating stuff, man. So, okay, so we gotta look out for the shorts on the way in, and that's gonna be before, well, October 2009. Do you wanna explain? Well, that's October 20... Now, there's three ways that these cycles begin. There's the one that essentially... Sometimes you can carry the thing... Whatever the case is, in 2013, that is a bottom of something. It might not begin in 2009, it might not begin in 2010. The cycle that was in 1890 really didn't start with a crash in 1889. It was actually kind of a, the business, everything was looking good for a number of years and then it collapsed and he had a depression, quote unquote, in 1893 and it was called the Great Depression of 1893.

1:16:40 and then to follow the rest of the cycle. So the beginning of the thing has a number of different, the entries to the collapse are varied. There could be some of them, I think ideally you have a stock market crash after a little mini boom, and a lot of people don't see a mini boom coming, and you can't have a crash without a boom. So. Would you not say that? I think there is one. I think next year, I think in 2000, I think as soon as John McCain is elected president, Which is good. Yeah, everyone laughs at me, but... No, no, no. Listen, dude, I'm all over the world. I'm telling people, John McCain's gonna win. Like, I fucking made it up, okay? So I'm totally there with you. So when John McCain is elected president...

1:17:19 And I think the scenario would be different if the other two got in. But if John McCain's elected president, I can assure you, because this kind of happened, we've seen it a couple times, that the stock market's gonna take off like a rocket. And then if he can get us out, you know, if all the guys running, he's the one guy who could just pull us out of Iraq, just out of the blue. He could just say, I looked this over and I guess I was mistaken. These guys are screwed up. I didn't realize how bad it was. We're leaving now. You know, and he would have the chops to do it, and he's the only guy with the credibility to pull that off. If it was Obama or somebody, oh, they would think he's just a big weenie or a wimp, but McCain could pull that off. He has the charisma, yeah, absolutely. If he did that on top of the fact that he just got elected, the stock market would go crazy. It would explode, absolutely. Now you have to remember, I'm sorry, you have to remember 1929, before the market crashed. Well, some of us can remember that, John.

1:18:16 Well, when I was a kid, when the stock market crashed in 29, you have to know that it was 1929 where the thing went crazy. It wasn't 1928 or the equivalent of 2008. It was in 1929 and within that one year period, the entire Dow Jones tripled. which means that the Dow Jones that it is today would go to over 30,000 sometime before the crash. So you just basically buy indexes then just to be, you know, safe? Yeah, that would be a good bet and then short them. And anyway, people always say, well, you know, this is a... What do you mean short him? Because it's gonna go... First, it's gonna take off and then we short him, right? Yeah, yeah. You wait for it to take off, then you short him. Yeah. When it crashes. Yeah. Actually, the crash always usually has a bounce, so you can usually short at the bounce. But be that as it may, I always tell people, I said, you know, Dvorak, this theory of yours which you've been talking about for years now is crazy.

1:19:13 And I always say to him, look, here's the only thing, just do me this one favor. If Dow Jones hits 30,000, consider the theory on the money, A, and start getting ready to sell everything you own. Well, so let me say this, I'm in. You know why? No, seriously, because I don't give a shit. Right now I have nothing but cash. I have no stocks, no bonds except what I own in Mevio. Everything else, I'm completely out because I just don't want the headache. However, I will go into your strategy full force. I buy it.

1:19:48 And, because if I lose, I'm like, I don't give a shit anyway. All right, well then if you're heavy on cash, the thing you have to do, and boy of course you could put some money in the market when it starts to pick up after McCain gets elected. You want to put your money in Swiss banks, in Swiss francs, because that'll be indexed against any sort of up or down. Right, but that's the cash that I'm not putting into the market, you mean? Yeah, yeah, I'll do 50-50. Yeah, it'd be fine. You got so much money who cares 50-50 I'll put 50 into the indexes or indices. Is that what you call them? I don't know and I'll put 50 into Swiss francs That's cool. Because then I also get one of those bank account numbers that no one else knows No that you have to ask for that suspect you got every Swiss. That's a rare account Very few people get those those are crazy. That's all that's the big that's got to be the biggest suckers game in I only see

1:20:45 I'll tell you know what the biggest suckers game is so the minute you show up at a private bank right so you know that there's banks People might not know this so maybe it's interesting to talk about it But when you have a certain amount of money you will be aggressively marketed by banks who basically want to you know manage your money and use it to you know do shitty loans and stuff and I What the hell was my point, John? What the fuck were we just talking about? You were talking about the private banks is the biggest scam. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Okay, right, right, right. So when you have over a certain amount, then they always come to you in this meeting. It's like, well, and then we have, because they always have all these different programs and vehicles. Basically, it's like charges, right? There's just stuff to take money away from you, not even using your money, just fees that you will pay. Fees, fees, exactly. And by the way, some of them are really good and very personable, and I have a good relationship with some bankers. But the one that really always freaks me out is, well, we have the kidnap insurance.

1:21:46 And yeah, oh yeah, it's nuts. And it's never actually signed in your name, so no one ever knows that you have the insurance. You only get a number, and it's like you get a number in a sealed envelope, and then should you or someone in your family or whatever who is insured is kidnapped, then you're insured up to whatever amount, but only by number. You're not known by name because of course, You know, if someone knows you have this insurance, which of course the guy who was selling it to me knows no matter what, whatever my number, he knows I have it. It's a freaky thing. How much did they charge? I don't know. I always said no. I said you can keep her. Yeah. And she said the same thing. Yeah, so how is that coincidental? It's not worth it. I'd rather have the interest.

1:22:39 Well, that's when we had our public company, man. That was like, there were guys, I've told you this before, they were waiting outside the door. And our stock went from 7 to 45 over a couple of months. It bounced around and then we missed a quarter. Typical public company stuff, although we actually were pretty much profitable all the time. Then you get these shareholder lawsuits. And what would happen is they start suing the companies, the publicly listed companies. You have to go through all these procedures. This is before Sarbanes-Oxley. And lo and behold, they'd pretty much go for the amount of money that is known as a basic insurance rate for these types of lawsuits. And so at the end of the day, when it got to that point, everyone said, okay, well, here we go. And then they get a check just for being dickheads, horrible business.

1:23:26 Just sitting there just waiting to sue you for whatever reason they can find any kind of cause and it's always for the exact amount that you're insured for it's just it's another sub Loop of this big theft that's going on in Wall Street on wall. Yeah, well, that's it is a per issue so I bought some raw milk the other day. Hmm like straight from the cow wrong. I wish I Have you ever had that straight from the cow? From the udder? Yeah, when I was a kid. Yeah, me too. It's good. Yeah. It's kind of warm. It's kind of a weird way of consuming.

1:24:06 No, I've got a photo in one of my one of these crazy old cookbooks that shows it I guess in these little towns in Italy some guy'd wander into town with a cow with a bell on it ding ding You know with his wife and they would sit down and that would they'd set up shop Yeah, then you bring your bucket and in the farmers market kind of thing Yeah, you bring your bucket and you did squirt in a bunch of milk and you'd walk it home Ah the good old days my friend. I remember them well squirting cows But I'll tell you this, there's no comparison. If anyone out there has a raw milk dairy nearby, they should get this stuff. It should be a nearby dairy, it should be a small one. There's a big conglomerate that makes this stuff and it's just terrible. It goes bad and it's just... Oh no, you don't want that. But the good raw milk... Or go to a farm. Go to a farm. When you're driving by some cows, go to the farm and say, dude, can I please suck your cow? I would like to try some milk.

1:25:03 It's not a bad idea. I'm sure they'll sell some milk to you if you come around milking time. Depends. I mean it depends on how freaky they are about the health department. You know, there's been a thing that's been done in this country to brainwash people that raw milk is bad. And so that way, you know, these big giant dairies can make all the money. But if you're up in Washington, there's the Dungeness Creamery. which is the first raw milk dairy in the country, which is down near our house up there. And you can actually drive over there. The place is so spotless, this dairy is, and the cows look so happy.

1:25:39 It's hilarious. What does a happy cow look like? It's just like there's a contentment you can't describe. Have you ever gone cow tipping at night? No, I never have. I really hated it, but it was like because I grew up a certain couple of years really in farmlands and that we do that kind of shit go out at night and then tip cows over. I really felt bad. It's really sad. It is kind of mean. It is. It's incredibly mean. But, you know, that's the way they are. It's not like you killed the cows. No, of course not. No, that was the local butcher. We used to go peek and we'd look through the doors, the crack in the door of the abattoir, and we'd see how he'd slaughtered the cows. Yeah, that was pretty quick. So we were talking about the, um...

1:26:28 about the fact that we buy animals off the hoof. And these small farmers have these guys that come around that sometimes are in trailers, but these guys are called offers. I never got to this conversation before when they bring it up because I was talking to my wife about it. So these offers, these professional guys who kill the animals. As in offing them? Is that why they're called offers? And apparently they you like it's your you got your steer that you've been raising you know these you know nine months old you decide you're gonna off him and eat him Now by the way This is a good conversation for this particular show because this gets rid of any of the vagans that might be listening I hope those of you still left

1:27:16 You know, go someplace else. So anyway, so they, but the way it's done apparently is they come up and they pet the animal and then they do all this stuff. Talk nice to him, whisper sweet nothings in his ear. Yeah, they make a perverted boom and blow their brains out or hit him with something. Shock, electric shock, right. And that changes the nature of the meat because These slaughterhouses are all the animals are freaky. You know, they're going in the up the steps and they know what's going on They know what's happening. They know what's going on and they're all nervous and all their Hormones are in their meat and you know, you wonder why the public so screwed up because we eat this crap Which has been all you know excited this animals excited and scared and now you're eating the same hormones, you know This is just not a good thing. Well, anyway that the

1:28:05 The end of the story is there's apparently one guy up in Washington who is so good at this that he's called the Zen Offer. The Zen Offer. And the Zen Offer apparently can go up to just about any animal and sweet talk them, and the animals just relax as hell, and it just feels so good about life, and then boom, dead. And so my wife's comment is, I wonder if that guy can even get a date. Hold on, Zen Offer, let me see if the dot com is available.

1:28:43 ZenOffer.com. Oh, it's already taken. Alright, who hasn't? You're kidding me. Of course. I told you, man, you can't get a .com domain name anymore. That's unbelievable. ZenOffer.com. Loading. Hold on. Loading. Maybe it's him. No, it's a parked page. It's a very friendly page. No, it's a parked... You're a good cow. No, no. Airline tickets, hotels, car rental, flights. Oh, it's his parking site. Yeah, parked page. I hate that. That means it costs $100,000. It's got pop-unders. Oh, geez. I hate that. That's good. I need to tell the story about the Zen offer. Yeah, that's cool. Apparently the menus in Holland, although they weren't all that great to start with as we established earlier, they get all their meat now from Argentina. They're not even eating their own meat anymore.

1:29:36 And it's become so expensive that they have had to pare down the menus. You just can't get certain cuts of meat anymore because they would be like 50 bucks if they actually had to charge fairly for it. So some restaurants are not even putting it on the menu anymore. It's messed up, man. It's a globalization thing. Well, yeah. What sense does it make to ship a carcass From Venezuela or wherever, Argentina. I guess which is where their place is loaded with meat. If you don't go down there, that's all they eat. It's actually pretty good by the way, the meat down there. Plenty of good cows to kill in our own backyard.

1:30:19 Well you could, I mean there's plenty of grass around. The thing is there's all this propaganda against meat starting to crop up again and it all happened during this green week that we had. Yeah, we talked about that. And we had guys like Bill Maher, you know, going on about how bad meat is. I'm thinking what is this guy's problem? Did you read that article in the... you read the International Herald Tribune, don't you? Once in a while, usually only when I'm traveling, no. Oh, okay, yeah, it was yesterday's edition. There was a whole thing about the about the, actually it was something we said we might touch on. Basically the article was America has no energy policy and he took the Hillary and Obama measures, which are now known, which we actually talked about. They said, well, if they became president, both Obama and Hillary Clinton would remove the gasoline tax, essentially.

1:31:17 And so this whole story went a little bit deeper how this absolutely- I think Obama said he wasn't going to do that. I'm sorry, McCain. I'm sorry, McCain and Clinton. Yeah, Obama said he wouldn't. And then this article went in deeper as to how we have So poorly thought out our energy strategy the year we're still putting billions of research and subsidies into R&D for you know liquid extraction and all these other petroleum based versions of getting energy out of the earth and No investors want to step up uh... you know it like a client of perkins is example they're they're hesitant to step up because you know that seems like there's no subsidies for any of the of the solar or not i don't even know if that's gonna work that well but you know the solar uh... wind energy and it was like a real conundrum and we're and i've been just looking at article see if i can get online uh... it looks like in the u s would be good we're pretty boneheaded right now when it comes to just setting out a couple strategies for the future other than invading other countries that have oil

1:32:21 Well, that seems to work. I reckon, of course, it harkens back to confessions of the economic hitman. Yeah. And let's just wrap it up, John, because we're already pretty long right here. I wanted to ask you, both Obama and Clinton were quite clear that they would bomb Iran. And I was just, why did that come up again? I mean, can you just explain to me what... I'm really afraid that that's going to happen. It just seems like it's weird, because now we've got all of them talking about it. We know McCain's done a song about it, but...

1:33:01 Now to have all three potential candidates, of course we know it's going to be McCain. I mean, do you think that could really happen? Could we really bomb Iran? I mean, I would doubt it. I wouldn't think, I think maybe, I just can't see it happening. I mean, the real threat that according to Hillary, who's the, you know, the get tough candidate all of a sudden, she says that if Iran bombs Israel, then you bomb Iran or obliterate them. Can Israel do that all by themselves? Don't they have nuclear capacity? Yeah, they do. That's the point. It would probably be unlikely. So I think the whole thing is saber-rattling and probably just to get to... I would think maybe the Jewish world could swing for them. There's that word that's saber-rattling and that's to me, that means like there's code of something I should be understanding that I don't know. I mean, why are we saber-rattling Iran? Why?

1:33:53 I don't know. Okay. Probably, uh... I just want to try and understand. Maybe to destabilize, maybe it's code for some, I don't know, to destabilize the country or to get... I have no idea. And why is it saber-rattling? Why isn't it not pistol cocking or some other cool word? Well, saber-rattling is the term. Can't we make a new one? I know, can't we make a new one? Pistol cocking? Pistol cocking? It sounds profane. That's why I like it. I think saber rattling is a good one because it harkens back to a historical context meaning that people have done this for a long time and it has some, it has large scale context. So, you know, and it's also silly if you think about it. If you can imagine Hillary holding up a saber and rattling it. First of all, how does a saber rattle? It's like a piece of crap.

1:34:43 That's a shitty ass saber you got there, Hill. That fucker's rattling. You might want to check that out before you go up against a Tehran. That's funny. Anyway, so no, I don't know. I guess they used to ride all the sabers, maybe in their scabbard. Well you mean just put your hand down on the thing and shake it. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it should be, but this is usually leather-ish. Yeah, didn't they used to have jewels? Maybe they had some like, you know, a couple of rubies and shit in the... Rubies. On my saber. Alright. Hey John, I think we've had a pretty good day. I think we should keep it at this.

1:35:25 Alright, well I'll be in Korea next week so I should be back on Saturday to do the next show. Well, you just give me a jingle whenever you're in. And you're going to Korea for a conference I think, is that it? Yeah, it's a big summit and all kinds of hot shots are going to be there. It'll be kind of interesting. I haven't been to Korea for a while. I like it, it's a nice country. And I think I'll be sitting on a 30 megabit per second line so I can make phone calls. Sweet! And what are you going to eat? What are you going to be looking out for? They got some good shirt shops there and a couple of tailors that are pretty... Yeah, that might not be so tasty though. Oh, you mean to eat? Yes. Kimchi, of course. What? There's a lot of good food. They have a kimchi. It's the pickled cabbage, hot pickled cabbage from Korea. But no, there's a lot of good food in Korea. They have a... It's a nice cuisine. It's very tasty. Lots of little dinky things. You have like whatever the meat or whatever it is you're eating. There's a million little bitty dishes with all kinds of strange pickles. Can't wait to hear all about it. Oh, you will.

1:36:32 Coming to you from the United Kingdom where we make up words all the time. I'm Adam Curry And I'm John C. Dvorak here in Northern, California. We'll talk to you again next week right here on No Agenda.