The Dead Bee Conspiracy

00:01 Swimming upstream in a river of mainstream diarrhea. It's time for your weekly old guy gab fest known as no agenda Coming to you from Gitmo nation east in southwest London in the United Kingdom. I'm Adam Curry I'm John C. Dvorak here. What was that intro again? That's disgusting swimming upstream in a river of mainstream diarrhea It was meant to be graphic and then northern silicon valley cringing uh... also known as uh... get more nation the west and i'm reading this book on uh... i'm going to take a look and found it was one of the moves the boxes around right to find these old uh... boxes books including the uh... oakland athletics the world champions uh... information guide for nineteen ninety and in nineteen ninety seven zagat

00:51 Zagat's guide, yeah. Yeah, the Zagat guide. And the restaurants have switched around quite a bit, I have to say. Nothing stays the same. And you've discovered this after X amount of years of living on this globe? Yeah, you'd think that there'd be more consistency. I think there is in France. Why don't you move there? Good riddance to you. We're sick and tired of your crankiness. What did, what did, yeah, Sumi, what did she call you the other day? Buzzkill. Everyone's favorite buzzkill. Thought that was pretty funny. Yeah, that's funny. I'll get her for that. I saw you were in Las Vegas.

01:38 Is that right? You didn't see me VO? Thanks for watching my show. You didn't see me VO today? I watch it daily. Yeah, I'm sure you do. Well then you would have known you were in Las Vegas. Yeah, no, I saw that. Last year. I was in Las Vegas. Last year. I thought it was actually there last year? I wonder. Yeah, no, this was the, remember the pinball museum you were harping about? Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. That was the report. But I just had to do a quint box. I wanted to get all of our reporters into one screen. Why would anybody go to that show in Las Vegas is baffling to me.

02:19 Well, I'm reading mixed reports. First of all, I agree. I despise trade shows. I love watching them if they have streams. I love watching keynotes on streams. I think that's fantastic. Yeah, you see those keynotes and everything. You don't have to go. It comes right into your bedroom. I mean, it's just like, why am I going to... And the keynote things, especially when they have big names like... Even without Steve Jobs here at Macworld, which I did go to in San Francisco, even without Steve Jobs at the keynote, I didn't go to the keynote, I never, I seldom do. People who went said it was a madhouse.

02:55 Well, people are scrambling to get in and rush into the seats. But trade shows of course, they actually, the trade shows that I've been to with my wife when she had her cosmetics company is essentially you're selling to stores, retail, you've got big buyers. It's a place where buyers and sellers more at the wholesale level can get together. And this became a thing where consumers wanted to go because they could find the latest products, etc. and in fact at the end of our stay in the Netherlands when Patricia would do a trade show, so many people would come in to buy stuff that eventually she said screw it, I'm just going to set up a booth which is really oriented towards people who walk in the door and want to buy and was making huge amounts of money doing that. Most of the trade shows in the US don't allow that by the way. Oh really?

03:48 I wonder why is that? Why won't they allow that? I think it has to do with the local business licensing. I do know that at all those trade shows the ASCAP BMI agents are out and if you're playing music in your booth and they discreetly take you aside and hand you a bill. Really? Yeah, that's happened a couple of times. What if you're playing pod safe music and I wonder what happens when they take you aside and then you pull out the little document saying, what are you kidding me? You know, I only wish that it happened when I was involved in Podsafe music. That sounds like a fight with Adam Curry written all over it. Sounds like something I'd love to get into.

04:32 Yeah, because you know some of this stuff now The pod safe music is some of it is very commercial And I think a guy roaming around doing that pulling that stunt You know trying to nick people for ASCAP fees wouldn't know the difference. Oh no of course not well a lot You know some companies are now trying it and you know, but these ask I'd be in my fuckers or you know fill in your local your local letters here for whatever your country is, they basically have a God-given right looking at the law books as usually the sole company allowed to collect rights and their vision is, well we'll take the money now and then we'll check it later. They're kind of like IRS agents, they're really quite frightening.

05:20 And you get you always get the other was a lawsuit recently some hairdresser who said hey man I'm playing this radio for me not for my clients. I'm playing shitty music. They don't even want to listen to so that's for me personally Yeah, good try. They didn't work now of course not no way So what kind of bill do they usually present people with it depends on the size of your booth? and they have calculations as to how many I mean you'd be surprised if uh... how much science there is or so-called science particular when it comes to retail i've known a number of restaurant tours and bar owners and these guys will you know the literally come in and they will do a calculation based upon your whatever time they're in there the size of the venue and they'll go back in the look at your tax records and said this you know you're not you're not speaking uh... paying enough tax in uh... because you you are you have to be selling more based upon what we've tracked in the volumes into the same with music

06:17 And so, you know, even if you have a workshop where you have the radio on, you have to pay your ASCAP BMI dues because you're effectively broadcasting or narrowcasting to, you know, ten people or whoever, however many people you have in there. So let me get this straight. So I have a radio on in my little carpenter shop that has three people working in there. Yeah, you eventually will get a visit if you don't pay of your own accord. Now, what if we had the same three people and myself with a FM radio on our person with headsets on listening to the same music on the same channel? That would be okay. So does that make any sense to you? No. I think in general, John, when it comes to rules, regulation, the government and the man, I don't think a lot of that makes sense to me.

07:11 But in the... So if anybody's out there, I was going to say if anybody's out there who has been hit with one of these bills, little small shops or a retail environment or a hairdresser, which I think is where you're going to run into this quite a bit. Yeah. Would you send us a note and tell us what the... give us the experience? and what you were told to pay and what came of it and we'll talk about it later. Or better yet, if you're listening right now, seeing as we're streaming live, you can call into the chat room and I actually have everything jacked in today so if we wanted to take a call we could.

07:48 Story about the British music industry in the Financial Times today in the weekend edition. So how much do you think, and this of course has nothing to do with what we just mentioned, the performance rights, but what do you think physical and digital sales did in the UK this last year? It's down obviously from 2007, although only 25 million down, but they sold 123 million. 123 million dollars worth of pounds pounds pounds worth no 123 million physical albums were sold in the UK so that's a lot more than 123 million dollars or pounds uh seeing as there was okay yeah so that's closer to like seven or eight hundred billion a million

08:35 Didn't everyone used to sell a million albums that was that became a gold or platinum? Oh these days it's in some countries. It's 10,000 It's like yeah, you won gold how am I sell 8,000 units? I'll see you tell me it's a scam No, you think dude I Patricia still has gold records that are actually the the mother masters that they use when they pressed vinyl and You can put these on a turntable and if you play it backwards because it's the mirror image It is indeed the song that that achieved the sales. It's really cool. Although what's not so cool is these were these things are so old I had to take it out of the case to play it on a turntable and I couldn't get the casing back together and that made my wife very angry and

09:20 But but but it did play I played it backwards on a turntable and it was the actual song I Think it's like proving the point. Yeah, okay fine. Well, they don't do that anymore I mean now it's just a CD and like a plastic frame, you know, like congratulations and they give them to everybody every disc jockey and every promo guy the secretary everyone's got gold records, I don't mean anything like they used to They used to mean something. Yeah, it was cool, you know, and the more you had... Here was the key is particularly in the radio business and station managers and program directors and music directors were always getting these because it's the most informal form of bribery that is accepted. And the cool thing to do is to have them all stacked up against the wall. Don't have them hanging on the wall, but just have so many of them that they're just stacked in rows of ten against the wall. Oh yeah, man, I got to hang those up one of these days, you know. That's what you got to do.

10:15 Oh yeah. So weather-wise, we are freezing our tits off here in the United Kingdom. I'm cooking here in Northern California. God, in the Netherlands, they do this whenever it really, really gets cold and I haven't heard this chatter for at least a decade. But then they start threatening with cranking up the 11-city natural ice canal race. Which is famous, famous in the Netherlands. Where it's all done on natural ice on canals, under and around bridges, and it's 11 cities, it's hundreds of kilometers, people lose their toes, their fingers, their lives, but it's a huge, huge cultural deal. And I hope it happens again, but it just goes to show that there's something funky going on.

11:01 I know they do that in Ottawa City. Of course, it's not always freezing. But this is the legend of Hans Brinker and the silver skates, right? This is what that is about. This is that story. So it freezes that bad that that those all those canals get frozen over well It hasn't it was only well. You know it was only one freezing over an hour. No no no It's it's the freezing has really started now, so now everyone's talking about cranking up the competition But the last time You know it had been a while until of course Al Gore proclaimed global warming. That's when it you know luckily we have the the 11-city canal race coming back and

11:40 Yeah, I'm reminded of the I've always said to people you know the day that the term paperless office was coined If you'd invested in paper mills right then you'd been make a fortune you'd have made a fortune Well, you know what my dad always says the paperless office is as likely as the paperless toilet Which which I always thought was a good one. Yeah, well they do exist in India. Yes and in other countries so So it's cold and there were you getting freezing is it getting snowing and I was up in the you know snowing this morning Yeah, it was snowing in London this morning. Yeah, yeah flurries. I mean not like big big snow, but yes sticking yes Oh, it's very cold. It's a I see out so can people fall in their ass no unfortunately no no But if they can then we have a good shot so huh well sunny here we were looking for some rain and

12:36 It's supposed to happen last week, nothing happened. It's just like right now it's clear, there's not a cloud in the sky. And I don't know, it's probably going to be 70 today. Of course, meanwhile in Washington they had this number of storms, a bunch of snow storms and then ice storms and then some terrible rains that have flooded most of Washington state. and uh... smelt all the snow of course which makes it even worse because it'll happen in the end and that with twice as much water and uh... and then that's a guess sweeping across the northern states uh... in some horrible way uh... and just one biggest skin affect the football games today was football games who was a couple playoff games i think one of them is being played uh...

13:26 in uh... baltimore maybe or new yorker someplace and i don't know who's who's home and who's away but that i know is this one or two enemy played back east which may be means it'll be a scene football game in the snow and we're talking american football here for anyone in europe listening in uh... And those are always usually great fun to watch because you know these people slide around, they fall on their ass, and if the ball ever gets loose which happens at least once or twice a game, starts bouncing around, it becomes quite humorous to watch people try to grab it. And that could be fun. That reminds me, have you seen that, it's floating around on YouTube, it was

14:08 a military marine beach landing demonstration video which of course the Royal Marines the United Kingdom say it's not them which is kind of weird because they're using British military machine guns, they have British military landing ships, they're wearing British military marine uniforms, you know, it's basically the Royal Marines. And so they land on this beach and then four guys jump out. This is a demonstration of how they do a beach landing. It's kind of Normandy-esque, if you will. And the beach is completely filled with mud. These four guys go face forward, flat into the mud, and they're stuck because they have so much gear they can't get out of the mud. And they're just sitting there struggling and they're trying to pull each other out. It's like the biggest embarrassment ever.

14:57 No, I've not seen that. I'm gonna have to go check it out. Yeah, I'll send you a link for that It's funny. I shall mention it to the Queen by the way when I see here in February. Oh Yeah Yes, so he sends me a note Which written that you think that would have some calligrapher working for the Queen? Can I just say I was quite disappointed by that as well. We're referring to my invitation from the the Queen and To come visit her at Buckingham Palace for a special reception for the relaunch of the Royal website at royal.gov.uk and so you know it's a beautiful invitation. It's almost like a piece of wood John. This is not cardboard. I mean it's like plywood, gilted plywood.

15:44 And, um, but my name is just kind of written in in block letters. Yeah, I mean, it looks like somebody, it looks like they hired the handicap to put the names in because, I mean, you know, you'd think there'd be a royal calligrapher who would, you know, with a flourish. drew right adam curry you know in some very nice man looks like it was scratched in by some guy who barely writer well it's not that bad okay it's pretty bad it's not that bad hold on a second small too it's like really small like the guy was just came out of prison so so i rsvp to the uh master dot household

16:23 at royal.gsx.gov.uk. Did you RSVP plus one? No, it's... I got a parking pass and everything, it's quite clear. Photography, mobile phones with photographic capabilities are to be... not to be switched on. So I sent back thank you for your kind invitation to the relaunch. I'm happy to attend very much look forward to it and then I got a return email from Lucy Regan from the same website or email address. Thank you very much for email. I am delighted that you are able to attend. Kind regards. And then there's a royal household legal disclaimer.

17:10 Oh really, you have to sign it? No, no, it just says, this message and any attachment should only be read by those persons to whom it is addressed. You know, one of those. Yeah, like that's gonna do any... you know, that always amuses me. What lawyer came up with this? I remember when that first started. That was maybe 10 years ago. And some people have like 20 paragraphs of shit below their emails. Yeah. Right. I know it's ludicrous. I should come up with one of those really ridiculous ones like my terms of service that I have on the blog. People should check that out. And which goes on and on and on with all kinds of nonsense. What does our Bobby have on his emails? I bet you he has a whole shitload of stuff. I don't know. Let me see. I got an email here from him.

17:58 Bobby is our in-house lawyer. Oh, yes nothing Bobby Fantastic There you go Bobby you rock man. I love that rain just went by I could see it down the hill What's that it had a train? Yeah, just went by and it had all antique passenger cars on it Oh pretty where it's going every once in a while uh... i remember some everyone so well they have the day and always works me that dislike no notice nobody seems to care to tell anyone i guess the local media doesn't think much of a way everyone's in a while there's a bit southern pacific has a uh... i think senate figures who they have this this historic old steam uh... passenger train that they drive all over the place it goes all over the country it's a big you know eight

18:54 driving wheels is a huge thing and I've seen it is seen a couple times and they never tell you when it's coming through when it's around but but when it's in the area it's constantly honking its steam whistle is very distinctive and so you go what the hell is that and you go and you look and you see this antique steam train going shooting down the road and down the track and you go what did how did it and then you look it up and you found it was over here for a week and people were got to take a little rides in it and you know and then of course nobody did because nobody knew about it. No one knew about it, yeah. Anyway so just a gripe of mine. So I should I think though that when when I when I go to this reception with the Queen I need to be very skeptical of a number of things. A. Why did they invite me other than to throw me in the tower?

19:46 Maybe to bite you we'll have one of the lizards bite you. But you know the Queen also started a podcast in Christmas 2007. She did? Yeah. And how often does it run? Well this is the point that Stefano who sent me an email about my invitation said you may have already noticed but it might be worth noting that a podcast of the Queen's speeches have been set up two years ago but has only been updated at Christmas 07 and for her birthday six months after that but nothing since including this past Christmas typical. So I'll have to make mention of that. Certainly you're here to tell me that you're also going to relaunch your podcast because I'm severely you know you being the fairy godmother me being the pod father I think we should hook up and make something happen your royal highness.

20:37 So the question is should I take along some... Approach the subject. Well, should I take along some clandestine recording equipment and record my encounter? You mean put a wire on? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Well, you've done it before. Yeah. I just wonder if it's gonna... I mean, it's easy, right? Because I just can take along a bag and just leave the bag wherever, literally, and have my wireless lav on. And I can clip that to the inside. It'll work. Yeah, I would do it. I mean you they don't want you taking pictures. They didn't say anything about recording well audio Yeah, that would be the technical right answer while they're throwing me in the break Hey, man, it's like you only said no pictures didn't mention recording equipment Okay, that's it. I'm doing it. Well. Maybe they'll put you know the problem is they're gonna probably you first you gotta realize They're gonna pat you down. Yeah, I don't know if they're gonna pat me down you think so I

21:45 I think they're gonna walk you through shit, yeah. They're gonna walk you through a mental attack. Wait, there's people breaking into the Queen's bedroom all the time. There's like no security there. Well, this makes it even worse. Once something like that happens, they get even more freaky. So they're gonna walk you through a metal detector because obviously the fact that you were invited and you're not like a regular at Buckingham Palace that I know of. That you know of, yes. That you're like with the hoi polloi and there's probably a lot of others like you. And so they're gonna bring you in through a metal detector and then there's gonna be some goons who are probably humorless and they're gonna pat you down. Let me see what the invitation says exactly.

22:27 It's a it's but it is kind of I mean just the envelope and everything in it is really cool. Okay, so I have like a parking pass that says MI. It has big big pink letters MI. That's what you have to put in the lower right hand corner of your windscreen. Am I? Mission Impossible is what it is. Then I have an entry card. Oh, this is nicely printed, Mr. Adam Curry. Please bring this card with you. Security. In addition to this entry card, would you please bring photographic identification with you? Passport, photo, driving license is ideal. This will be checked on arrival. Arrival and parking. Please display the enclosed label on your windscreen before arriving. Parking is available.

23:10 Cameras and telephones. Photography is not permitted. Mobile phones must be switched off. And then there's a whole other... The following information about the reception may be helpful. Security. Please note carefully the security information shown on the reverse of the enclosed entry card which you must bring with you. The invitation and entry card are for the named guest only and are non-transferable. And there's information about arrival. And there's how to get to Buckingham Palace. correspondence, additional information, doesn't say anything about recording, about audio or video for that matter. Well there you have it. Yeah. Okay. So you're still gonna get patted down.

23:56 Then I'll just say, oh, I'm sorry. You don't have to, you know, you just put it in, you know, put it, you know, where it's not a problem. Well, I can just put the, I have the i, what is it, the i8, 899 or whatever, the iRiver. It has a built-in mic. I can just slip it into my breast pocket and let me see, that's my mp3 player. Yeah, that'll work. Yeah. And then whatever we get, we get. If we get nothing, then we got nothing. Right, which can happen. Yeah, quite likely. Considering my sound engineering capabilities of last week, anything could happen. Oh yes, let's talk about that a little bit. No, let's not. That's pretty sucky. I got a whole bunch of notes about it. Yeah.

24:32 So it would have been, you know, to have SoundFuck up one out of 64 episodes or really if you think about it over 900 combined with all the daily source code episodes I've done, probably over a thousand of shows I've done. That's acceptable. But to have me gloating and pontificating about how great the sound is while it sounds like absolute shit. Although we did pick up a whole bunch of listeners in the Middle East Apparently because they all like it. They really know good That's their sound they're like hey finally a show for us that's cool this podcast and got something to it Abdullah come over here listen to this. This is a great show hmm. Yeah, I got some guy irked when I mentioned it said it's like Arab radio oh, oh, I mean admitted that there was some stations that sounded like that most

25:29 Most also sounds like Mexican Mexican radio has that quality so I got to talk I got to talk with you about UFOs because there are two things two things that happened this past week one of them I saw you blogged about the And this happened in the UK that apparently a UFO with tentacles. That's the flying spaghetti monster. The flying spaghetti monster hit a wind turbine and broke it. At the same time this is actually from, this must be an AP story, it's coming from Yahoo. This is why they don't want wind turbines. Yeah really.

26:13 Space rate Mystery roar from far away space detected. Have you heard about this? No, no, tell me this is NASA See Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland something new and interesting is going on in the universe. I love that where so they listen to space and Normally it just kind of sounds like Nothing, but apparently they're picking up loud roaring noises now and they're not quite sure what it is. But, you know, considering my disappointment of the of the first contact of October,

26:56 and so much mainstream media attention being paid to stuff like this stupid spaghetti monster hitting the wind turbine and we've got space sounds from outer space and Obama wants to accelerate and put us on the moon. Didn't we already see that movie before? But anyway, we've got to get on the moon. I'm thinking that... Like Obama's a fractal of Kennedy. Right. Well, here's the scenario. The scenario is, you know, of course there's more and more dissent coming from amongst the slaves saying, wait a minute, global warming, yeah, okay, we gotta protect our Earth, but hold on a second, what are all these taxes for this unproven theory of yours? And what they're going to do next is they're going to have space aliens communicate to us and tell us that we're killing our world and carbon credits are good for us. Something like that is in the works.

27:51 Like it yeah, I mean I gotta be a hard one to pull off. Are you kidding me? If we have maniac would think that that could work Okay I Look at I look at Rahm Emanuel, and I think yeah, he could make it up He could do it. You boy. He could be an alien for all we know no shit. He has a funny look about him I keep reading more and more cynicism in the papers here about Obama. Well, it's because there's nothing else to write about. Sarah Palin's not in the news anymore. So they gotta focus their attention on somebody and the Republicans have all, you know, scurried away. And so what's left? There's gonna be a lot more, you know, Obama's, the wedding's over. Honeymoon, the honeymoon's over. The honeymoon is over, yeah. So now he's gearing up to hit a trillion plus.

28:52 and uh... was a million jobs six hundred thousand a million i keep seeing different numbers yeah who knows doing what building uh... bridges and roads that were not going to write to get rid of sarbanes-oxley new get your million jobs back right now and no no it is quite the opposite today the uh... the finance ministers are meeting and to come up with new regulation this is happening as we speak so the new sarbanes-oxley is being uh... implemented along with whatever else are cooking up Hmm, so do you might did you've been following the Madoff thing, right? Yeah, the hundred and seventy three million dollars worth of checks in his in his drawer. Well, I didn't get that one Oh, really? He's got a hundred seventy three million dollars worth of checks. Yeah here I got the article right here. This is hilarious What he well what he he demanded about I guess was about two or three weeks before his sons gave him up and

29:53 He demanded, well this is the way they print it, he demanded 100 million pounds be transferred from the UK office to the US office. And so that 100 million, well 100 million is about 173 million dollars in checks investigators found in his desk drawer. It was better organized than that No, man, this is fantastic and I predict that This is going to unfold right into Citigroup and city is gonna come crashing down on the heels of this Madoff thing I mean it there's so much tied up in here and that Citigroup is such a black box that no one understands and what the guy just quit Let me see. What was his name?

30:40 The big board member, the guy who was responsible for all of it. What the fuck is his name? Well here's why you're looking at it. The thing that I find interesting is that it turns out, at least some people believe this, that one of the big investors in his scheme, Ponzi scheme, to the tune of about two billion dollars, is the Russian mafia. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Not only. Robert Rubin. Oh yeah, Robert Rubin, right. He's quitting Citigroup after 10 years. Listen to his resume. Former US Treasury Secretary. To who? To the United States! No, to who? What president? Oh, to which president? Oh, that's a good question. Clinton, I believe. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. Yes.

31:36 He ran, oh of course he ran Goldman Sachs, gee you think that club is small huh? Before joining the Clinton administration. I mean is it clear to people now that Goldman Sachs, the most hated firm on Wall Street, first of all we understand why they were hated because they were playing a whole different game. All those treasury secretaries come from Goldman Sachs. They keep giving money to Goldman Sachs. When will people catch this? Like, hello! Don't you see what's going on here? It's pretty funny that they keep getting away with this. It's like Lucy and the football. It's unbelievable. I've had so many blue collar guys around the house for the past month almost. And eventually they'll say, so what are you, in the music business? Because I've got guitars and of course I've got a lot of equipment.

32:25 And I said, no, no, I'm involved in propaganda. And they love it, right? Oh, really? Really? And I'll show them a couple of videos or I'll tell them to start talking some shit. And it's funny because sometimes, more often than not actually, these guys are right in step with it. And I always ask them the same question. So why aren't you doing it? Aren't you pissed off? Yeah, somehow we gave up. That's what they all say. Yeah, that's kind of weird. We are just taking it up the ass. We just kind of give up. But I think they're gonna crack. I think that the Brits will crack sooner. Well, shit, there's tens of thousands of people throwing shoes at the Israeli embassy here, which I think is fancy. What a great meme.

33:08 So yeah, it's great. Yeah, that one guy doesn't know what he said off the shoes He's a hero. What a fantastic meme, you know, and and you see these pictures of you know adidas Nike's Manalo Blahnik's, you know all kinds of shoes just laying in front of the embassy, but no nothing at all on the six o'clock news not but not a single clip not a single mention whatsoever really enough and i mean it did it does she would think it's is i want that's going on around here because of course we'd be built last to know what you've got you have riots in oakland yellow the rights of open or cover pretty well covered because it has to do with the cop killer or a cop shooting a guy on the defense this guy and uh... and it's good everybody up in arms and then you know

33:55 Well, this is exactly what started off the riots in Athens, which by the way, you're not hearing about man And it's like there's 20,000 people at a time are demonstrating. This is really big. Yeah, I don't think this is gonna trigger an Athens style Riot, there's a couple of problems one. It's in Oakland. Yeah, and that's kind of like the end of it Well just because they don't have an Acropolis they don't have a necropolis and it's not the capital of anything. So, it's the capital of bad football. So, I don't think much is... I think it's just gonna, you know, boil down. But it's interesting that these guys are recognizing the fact that they're not taking action and they're just passively putting up with crap. You know, this is the group, the Brits, you know, that stood firm against Hitler.

34:49 and now they can't get out of their own way and they're getting pushed around by their own people. Yeah, well... So anyway, back to the meme. So I don't know that we're not seeing the shoe thing happening around here because it wouldn't get covered. Probably the same thing is happening there. It's interesting though. Are bloggers covering the shoes being thrown? You know what? I don't think so. Because I think this could be the next big thing for any kind of a... Any type of civil unrest or protest. It's a beautiful gesture. It's just absolutely beautiful. You get it. Even though it's not in our culture to have the bottom of your soul showing, to be seen as insulting, which is a very Asian cultural thing. I didn't know about the shoe throwing actually being a large insult, but it doesn't matter. It's so clear to you. It's like, yeah, I'm throwing my shoes at you. That's how much I hate you. And it feels good. Granted, if you have an extra pair of shoes, it feels even better when you walk away.

35:52 But, um... Yeah, everybody's got a pair. Let's face it. I've got some sitting around here. Everybody has a pair of crappy shoes that you may have had repaired. And you're willing to throw at the government. Yeah, and they're so far gone. I have a pair that's so comfortable, I still wear them once in a while, but they're shot. And it's like, you know, I'm gonna have to throw them away eventually. Why should I just throw them away when I can throw them at someone? Yeah. Excuse me. Because I'm sure they could like do DNA testing on all the shoes and identify every person individually.

36:32 Yeah, well how much further do they have to go and everything's so tied in now It's it's phenomenal to see it to see how things are happening here So I've had the wonderful experience of setting up so I have the BT broadband line in the new house Couple interesting things. Are you on it now? Yeah, I'm on it now. So one is you cannot set up your own easily, let me rephrase that, if you use their hub, you cannot easily set up your own VoIP connection because they have their own VoIP service and there's certainly no clear way to set it to something else. But more interestingly, now I use Gmail so all my mail goes through port 80 kind of accepted web type traffic. Patricia uses Apple's email and she just got used to it and I never want to confuse her and just let her use whatever she wants to use. But of course one of the things you bump into if you're not using, now that we've basically switched providers to British Telecom, is that you have to deal with little annoyances like the SMTP server.

37:34 which is what you have to set in order to be able to send mail from an email program. Not such a big deal. Interesting though, that British Telecom will not let you use any other SMTP server but theirs. So there's the trap, there's the siphon, there's the hose. Right, everything has to go through central control. Yeah, so they could be monitoring all the email. Well, they're going to be monitoring the email as of March. That's when it starts. Oh, right, right. Yeah, they're already starting. It's all of your email, all your phone calls, all your text messages, although they say not the content of the text messages and the phone call. Yeah, right. Only the information who communicated with who. Yeah.

38:24 Yeah, well they can map out people's relationships that way. I saw that program some years ago as a matter of fact, Interpol developed it and they were demoing it at a thing I was visiting or an event I went to. And it's very interesting because they showed how you can identify, you know, who's the, you know, the first they decided to isolate I think 50 people that were suspected of being in a maw, in an organized crime family. and then they showed in a did did it's there's a circle and then they show uh... the they start to track the calls from this person that person is person that person they haven't some sort of analysis uh... algorithm that can then identify uh... because with length of call and who's calling who they can't and do you have to do a lot of it and you can't just do five minutes you have to just track these things forever and then you get a

39:19 a few after a few thousand calls then they stopped it and they said here's the here's the way we see the structure of the organization and they had here's the godfather the head guy here's his you know his minions his main go-to guys and then here's all the the stooges that are out in the field and it was like it would they look pretty clear as exactly what it was and I think obviously it's what they're up to You know, they could just subscribe to my LinkedIn. It'll be probably easier and more efficient. Or just look at my Facebook account. So who is the current Secretary of State for the United States? That's Condoleezza Rice still, right? As far as I know. Yeah. Because where is she in all of this? And by the way, where is our coming Secretary of State, Clinton?

40:11 Where is she? I'm just referring to Israel and Gaza. I know, and that's why you haven't heard from either one of them. Think about it. Neither one. Neither Rice nor Clinton. They're off together. They're off together. Oh man, can you imagine that porn movie? Boy, that could make some money. Clinton Does Rice? That's like got everything in it. Right down to foot fetish. I mean, that's a perfect... It's impossible. We laugh about the porn industry bailout. Which Larry Flint and that was the guy Joe Francis from Girls Gone Wild which they Jokingly, I presume requested or talking about funny. Yeah But I actually got an email from Patricia's porn friend Bobby Eden she's a she's like a like a real porn star and she said just you can better on an airplane whatever and I

41:05 And she sent me an email and she said, you know, we're talking, I was talking with my business partners, you know, because it's, times are kind of tough and sales are really down and we're, you know, long story short, well, oh, I found out you're the guy that knows a lot about podcasting. What do you think about podcasting? And I'm like, yes, I think that we need to have a meeting. I definitely think a meeting is an order. Yeah. Yeah, well now we know how that meeting goes. Yeah, no I will. I will. She's probably working for MI5. So US and Europe, here it is, US and European banking chiefs converge today in Basel for behind-the-scenes meeting. I love that, behind-the-scenes meeting with central bankers and regulators to discuss the post-crisis regulatory framework.

41:55 Nice. Oh, of course, the gathering hosted by the Bank for International Settlements. It is really happening. It is really taking place as we were just reading it in the news. And I even saw an ad. I mean, the Financial Times, it's better than the National Enquirer. It's funnier. Here it is. So it's a one-page ad. It's their own paper. So they're advertising to subscribe to FT.com. And view from the top video, Russia-Ukraine gas dispute. And here, Tony Blair video, former UK Prime Minister on the new financial order. I mean, come on! Did you hear about his Medal of Honor? That's the big thing here in the UK. For what? Well, George Bush gave him the highest order in the land, the Medal of Honor.

42:53 uh... for his uh... stellar work in the invasion of iraq based upon the lie of weapons of mass destruction and the big joke here is that the metal doesn't actually exist it gets it's meant to be designed specifically for him and so everyone's coming up with these really goofy idea you can only imagine right what the ideas are But it's just and you know the guy got this he doesn't even want to show up to receive it I mean, can you imagine can you just imagine these war criminals handing each other medals? It's it's amazing. I Like the medals thing. Yeah, well they had you know, they'd love handing out medals to these stooges. It's pretty funny Yeah, so Tony Blair needs to get his iron cross and then he can go on with whatever he's doing. Oh

43:39 I think that's a great idea for a contest though. You can get a lot of mileage from it. Let's design Tony Blair's presidential medal of honor, congressional medal of honor, whatever it is. That's funny. Yeah, well we didn't hear about that here either. Well there were three people who received it. It was really slow because there hasn't been any good celebrity news and I guess, you know. Well you heard about the German banker who killed himself? Probably, I think I blogged it. Yeah, Adolf Merkel? Yeah, Merkel. Yeah, do you think he's related? I could only find one picture of that guy. Talk about a guy you couldn't find. I was wondering whether he was related to Merkel herself. Exactly my question.

44:24 And I couldn't find any documentation for that. No, me neither. Wouldn't surprise me though. And I couldn't find any pictures of the guy. I found one crappy picture from like 15-20 years ago. So he was obviously, you know, one of those guys that wanted to stay out of the spotlight. Yeah, yeah. Then he kills himself. Whatever. He could have been murdered. Here it is. Here's what Rice is doing. Oh, of course. Oh, this makes total sense. The US risked irking Russia yesterday by signing a partnership charter with Georgia, intended to act as a catalyst for its strongest ally in the South Caucasus, Condoleezza Rice, at work. There you go. Is she trying to calm things down in the Middle East? No. No, she's trying to piss off the Russians. There you go. Good job, Condi. Well, that's okay. After Obama gets in, he'll continue to piss them off.

45:19 yeah so when I'm seeing that I'm sorry they're having this gas thing going on there you know the Russians basically say you guys are want to piss us off okay fine no gas for you well I see it a little more as a business deal because you know in honesty in the Ukraine basically is not paying their bill you know they owe Gazprom a lot of money there's no dispute and there's also just you know they're talking about pricing because they're taking it for I don't know it's like $200 a cubic ton or something like that whereas some prices in some countries are 500 so that you know There's all kinds of disputes going on But the biggest one is that the Ukraine was basically of the gas there that runs through the Ukraine to to West to Europe They were siphoning stuff off for themselves, you know, so there's a legitimate dispute there, but you know, come on Europe, you know, let's consider

46:16 Yeah, we got to come up with some other solutions. You can't just be written, you know, you can't be relying on one country for your natural gas But this should always always happens. Of course when it's the coldest winter in a years Yeah, well, that's when you put the screws to people and you hear people on the BBC on the radio like, you know I had to turn off my or my gas has been cut off. You know, I can't afford it anymore. I'm freezing It's a civilized country People are freezing to death. Tell me it's crazy It's crazy. Hey, get back to the coal. I mean, you have a, I understand you have in your new place, you have little fireplaces all throughout the house and there's nothing to me that's more interesting and a nice coal fire. A nice coal fire is one of the most fantastic things. I have actually a coal holder here and my, one of my fireplaces and I would, uh, although it gets harder to get now, but I would burn coal and of course it does make a small odor in the neighborhood, but nobody knows what it is cause nobody knows what coal is in the California.

47:12 But it's a gorgeous fire, and it's like you know I call them rocks that burn It's like a rock it burns and it burns for hours and it burns really warm And it gives off a good radiant heat because there's a lot of ultra Infrared coming off these things because they're rad and they're also flames coming off them, so it's really a quaint fire It's not an ugly fire. It's not a smoky fire. It's not a horrible fire by any means is a really cozy warm inviting fire and once you get it going it goes for about twenty hours you don't have to keep poking it and moving the logs and sticking it or whatever. It's an amazing product and so now that you've got this great new house with all these little fireplaces I'm thinking wow you're gonna be having these great little coal fires that's gonna make the place so cool right? Yeah that would have been very nice if it were not for regulation that prohibits me from doing that

47:59 You have to... regulation. Oh yeah. You can't have a coal fire in England. Now here's what they do. So these fireplaces, they'll work. The flues, they're all wide open. You know you can shut them but they're open. I've got brand new chimneys on top. Everything's beautiful. However, if you actually want to burn anything in it, wood, coal or otherwise, Then you have to go through an extremely lengthy application process. They have to come in and approve it. It has to be done by in a certain way. I mean, it's like everyone says it's just not worth it to get that done. And then they'll tax you for whatever phantom shit you're spewing into the air from your burning rocks. It's just not worth it. Oh, I think you're going to have to do it.

48:49 Just for the benefit of this show. Honey, it's show prep, okay? I've gotta do it. I don't know, man. Come on, you got these little cute little fireplaces all over the place and they're designed originally for coal, let's face it. Because you know the other cool thing about you can have a really small firebox and just have a little bit of coal burning because once one of these rocks starts burning it doesn't stay doesn't need like a lot of other you know friends I mean the problem with wood is that if it's not with a lot of other friends burning it doesn't burn well now it won't burn well you can't just put one log in and it light it and get a lot to burn it won't burn but with coal you can you can put a couple of stones in there crank them get them started which by the way is the hardest part

49:34 But you can do it. It takes a long time to get one of these to start. But once they start, one rock will just burn by itself. Well the one we had in Guilford actually was gas fired. So you can fire up gas first to get a nice even flame underneath all of your coal and then you turn it off and then it's just burning. Then it just keeps going which is a perfect system. Yeah, that would be good. But you're not going to start a coal fire with a match, let's put it that way. No, no. Well, so, I don't know man, but they killed the coal industry here. Well, it was pretty, they did a crappy job of keeping a handle on them, and that's when you had that kill off in the 50s, that, you know, the black fog or the death fog or whatever the heck it was from, because they were burning coal everywhere. When I first went to England, it was in 1973. That was the London fog, right?

50:25 Yeah, London Fog. And I was in there in 1973 when they were still using a lot of coal and you had to change your shirt twice a day because around the collar and around the bottom of the sleeves at the very end where, you know, where there's any sweat on your, you know, that got on there with the coal would stick to it. And so your shirt cuffs were black. within four or five hours of just walking around town and you had the chicken out of the stuff was like it was coal dust it was all over the place and I guess it was in everyone's lungs it was a problem is that maybe the answer to your question why people don't burn coal anymore well I think that was that we know it's probably pretty crummy coal

51:09 you know anthracite, there's different kinds of coal. We have extremely good quality coal in the US that you can burn like that without getting a lot of dust everywhere. And of course then the power plants nowadays that burn coal have these floating beds and they're very high tech and they have scrubbers and they don't make such a mess even though people still claim there's mercury in the in the plume, which I wonder. Mercury in the plume, you said? Well, that's what they say. I mean, the big argument that you'll get from people who promote, you know, the thing that's being promoted now to death around the world and I think considered a wonderful marketing ploy because I always think of marketing as like driving force behind a lot of these crazy changes in society.

51:54 But one of the great marketing ploys under all circumstances is to get legislation passed. Right, and you do that with a sad looking polar bear on a piece of ice. Right. So the thing that they've managed to do in a lot of places is ban the incandescent light. and that means that China and those crazy little cheap-ass fluorescent bulbs that you know those little crazy things that don't last as long as they say and they're hard they don't fit make it into a lot of fittings and they look stupid and they give off a moderate amount of light for watt I have to give them credit for that the watt the like 20 25 watts or something like that five to one over a piece yeah

52:38 over a, you multiply by five and that's what you'd have to be using if you were using incandescent to get the same lumens. I think there's a couple of disadvantages. One thing, they burn cool so mosquitoes don't get killed when they come up to the light and kill themselves. So I think that's a disadvantage. So I think we're going to have more malaria. But besides that, it's obvious that they're trying to get these things to become standards. Every one of them has mercury in them. So if you bring this up amongst the complainers, the greenies, they say, well, you know, and if you do the calculation, and they should have the numbers, and they may be right, except there's always potentially a flaw in the calculation, and I'll point out what it might be.

53:28 They will say, okay, so you use one-fifth as much electricity. To generate that four-fifths more electricity, you have to burn this much more coal, and that much more coal for those watts produces this much mercury which goes into the atmosphere, which is less than the amount of mercury in the bulb. So that's their argument. The question that needs to be answered is, is the amount of mercury that they claim is coming off those stacks accurate? I'm not sure it is. Well, when it comes to government data in general, I'm

54:08 I'm highly skeptical. It's like the joblessness rate, which, um, was it so we had another four or five, about a half a million extra non-farm payroll jobs that the United States lost in the month of December. But apparently under Johnson they changed the way they count the unemployed and what I call them the people who just give up. They have a name for that, the quitters or whatever. So people who have been unemployed for more than two months they no longer count. So where they're talking about what is it what are they saying now what's the percentage maybe 7% unemployment? Yeah that it actually is closer to 12.

54:47 If you're counting by Great Depression days, which there was a 25% unemployment. Actually 27% by some calculations, maybe 30%. So anyway, back to the light bulb thing, I just thought of one other point. If you can legislate these fluorescent bulbs into existence so they're taking over everything, I'm not completely annoyed by it, although let me point out one thing. There was a lot of high technology bulbs that came out around 15 or close to 20 years ago and a lot of people don't even remember these things. But Phillips had a slew of them. I have two of these bulbs that have been burning on and off for 18 or 20 years.

55:30 19 years. Incandescent bulbs. They have a little device inside them that turns them off automatically after 5 minutes of not being, you know. And then it's like they stop making these bulbs because they last forever. and so there was like that kind of thing was dropped in favor now of these fluorescent bulbs. Luckily, but if you can legislate the fluorescent bulbs into existence, I think you can legislate them out of existence at the point where we have the crossover and LEDs become the light source of choice and we can just say, you know, screw the Chinese, we're just gonna make LED lighting and that's the only lighting that's gonna be legal. So it looks like we have Al Gore to thank for this too.

56:14 I just found a TED talk by him. Yeah. We must not change the light bulbs, we need to change the laws, is his quote. I thought, I believe he, isn't he involved with some kind of fluorescent light company? He probably is. Everything he does, he's got his fingers in the pie. It wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. Well, and everybody, oh, Al Gore, Al Gore, you know, wow, you know, he's a good guy. Well, he has a Nobel Peace Prize, a Grammy, and an Oscar. How can you go up against that? Those are all the symbols of the United States of America. He has the triumvirate. All he needs now is one of those medals from Bush, and he's set. He'll get one of those medals from Obama, I guarantee it. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. Yeah. In Holland, the packaging on the Phillips version of these

57:11 Long lasting low energy light bulbs that actually says if you drop it and break it you have to take it to the disposal Center, whatever that is. Yeah Because it's got all this mercury. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know man, which which is worse I mean people just toss light bulbs where they're not thinking about that. Just throw that shit in the trash Exactly, and that's where all these things are ending up. They're ending up in the regular garbage and busted up and this is going to be have mercury leaching from all of our dumps sites and is going to be so much of these because we're talking about millions and millions and millions and millions of these bulbs and millions of pounds of mercury is going to be reaching and they're going to end up turning these things into hazardous waste sites that have to be blocked off the taxpayers are gonna have to dig up

57:57 these garbage dumps because of this thing is going to cost more money than we save with the bulbs. It's going to be an ecological disaster no thanks to Al Gore. Yeah, but it's already taken place because you know where they're dumping all this shit is in right off Somalia. I've been reading about these pirates man that's a really interesting story when you really get into it. You know the whole branding of these pirates is just Is it beautiful who you know, of course, it's not a stretch to come up with it, but they did a great job But when you look at the history of all of the toxic illegal dumping off of their shores Which I'm sure contains all of our toxic light bulbs which is rumored to be done by It's funny by the mob the mafia who of course are traditionally very strong in the waste disposal business

57:11 Long lasting low energy light bulbs that actually says if you drop it and break it you have to take it to the disposal Center, whatever that is. Yeah Because it's got all this mercury. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know man, which which is worse I mean people just toss light bulbs where they're not thinking about that. Just throw that shit in the trash Exactly, and that's where all these things are ending up. They're ending up in the regular garbage and busted up and this is going to be have mercury leaching from all of our dumps sites and is going to be so much of these because we're talking about millions and millions and millions and millions of these bulbs and millions of pounds of mercury is going to be reaching and they're going to end up turning these things into hazardous waste sites that have to be blocked off the taxpayers are gonna have to dig up

57:57 these garbage dumps because of this thing is going to cost more money than we save with the bulbs. It's going to be an ecological disaster no thanks to Al Gore. Yeah, but it's already taken place because you know where they're dumping all this shit is in right off Somalia. I've been reading about these pirates man that's a really interesting story when you really get into it. You know the whole branding of these pirates is just Is it beautiful who you know, of course, it's not a stretch to come up with it, but they did a great job But when you look at the history of all of the toxic illegal dumping off of their shores Which I'm sure contains all of our toxic light bulbs which is rumored to be done by It's funny by the mob the mafia who of course are traditionally very strong in the waste disposal business

58:49 And of course the overfishing, illegal overfishing off of their shore. This is why these guys are going out and saying, fuck you, I'm going to grab some shit for me. Did you see that parachute with the $3 million coming down on the ship? Is that amazing? I mean, do we live in a science? Where's Bruce Willis? This is a science fiction movie. We're parachuting a red capsule with $3 million or $2 million onto a $25 million load of oil with accuracy. With accuracy, indeed. Yeah, they didn't have to fish it out of the drink. But it's more like Waterworld. So they have these rib boats, which is rigid inflatable boats, and they launch from a mothership.

59:38 So you hear this thing about the mothership, but that's literally what it is. So they're 200 nautical miles out and there's these tankers and they just poop out these rib boats, which are 250 horsepower jacked up speed boats. They just go in and hop on board, lock the doors, treat everybody nicely and then just start negotiating a price. It's brilliant. Pirates. But the history of the pirates is what's interesting. Because the pirates have always been kind of like Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp. It's kind of romanticized. But the reason why that these guys were actually pretty social in their lifestyle because they were basically rebelling. These were all

1:00:25 Boys who probably were taken on board ships when they were young teenagers and you know were whipped and beaten and treated as slaves essentially and then probably cheated out of their wages at the end of two years on board of a ship and they all kind of said I fuck this we're gonna become pirates and they captured it and they live side-by-side regardless of race or religion or whatever religion they had you know, then and and they were just kind of taking what they thought was theirs and getting back for being screwed and that's what's behind these Somali pirates. Yeah, the story is going to be interesting when it finally gets told. Well, I think we will see, you know, where's Steven Spielberg? It's time for Pirates of Somalia.

1:01:09 I think it's going to show up first as a thriller, a Bruce Willis type movie. And those guys are going to be portrayed as a bunch of evil doers. And then there'll be some more sympathetic material later, years from now. Well right now there's a fleet of 20 ships headed by an ex-admiral or maybe even a current, whatever, like a big naval Yahoo. And they're sailing off there and they're gonna go start shooting ship because ships are literally avoiding the Suez Canal now, which is, you know, it's an economic disaster. There's a reason for that canal. And so now they want to go around the Cape of Good Hope, I think it is, to avoid the pirates. And so now there's an army of 20, an armada of 20 ships to protect

1:01:56 And it's an international army. You know, it's like the UN-based thing, I'm sure. But that Blackwater was gonna do something too. Oh, I'm sure their private company's involved in it. That's why they sent out the press release, you know, ta-da, here comes the cavalry! Is that Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope? I think it's the Cape of Good Hope. I'm going to South Africa, by the way. Oh, you'll like it, it's very good. Yeah. a capable of his own tip of africa by the way i went to the cape of good hope and uh... you get to see the convergence of the uh... indian ocean and the atlantic ocean and in fact it's a very violent piece of the world is extremely weird because those two oceans two oceans they clash there i think i horrible yeah i don't think it doesn't seem to get along at all and uh... it's a huge do you go we actually went there uh...

1:02:54 what was weird about it's kind of weird because down in that area there is a uh... there we'd we'd go into the the there's a bit like a national park where the where you get into parking the parking lot and you walk out about it's about a half a mile to get to the exact point uh... that you do we're right there at the bottom of africa and um... in the process of getting there we'd go into the parking lot and there is a uh... a bunch of baboons like a of but 10 of them who had some some Japanese guy cornered in the parking lot and they were there were I wouldn't say they were beating him up or anything but it was it was like a gang they were intimidating him and the these baboons by the way are all over this area and they're and they're frightening

1:03:42 and they walk around like they own the place and uh... they actually gave us the couple gave us the eyes we were going up to the thing and the world but they reckon but they recognize distant family and let you slide is that what you're saying now they say that it was more like you know will you know we got this other guy were having fun with and that you know you had to give him for his given him stuff right and so i knew it would be means uh... description of this was like like incredibly big dogs that were intelligent and so they had and you can just see it and you know you can't look him in the eye by the way don't look a baboon in the eye

1:04:21 It's a challenge. So you had to not look at him in the eye. So anyway, so we went up and watched the thing, the action, and then we stayed there for a while, because there was a bunch of, you know, it was just interesting. And there's all kinds of weird little critters living around there. And so then we were worried about coming back, and we came back and the parking lot was clear of the baboons. And so as we were driving back the road, back to the family of these punk baboons was on the road, you know, and I was thinking of running a couple of them over, but I decided against it. And... John C. Dvorak, the environmentalist. But these guys were punks. It was unbelievable. And you've run into this problem when you're in, you know, floating around. They're just, the baboons are just, you know, they're running the place.

1:05:08 That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Phil Spec... What are you going to do in South Africa? I'm sitting on my ass. What part of South Africa are you going to? I am not sure. It's kind of a mystery. Patricia, my wife, you know, she's so kind. So, you know, being the huge celebrite that she is in the Netherlands, one of the glossy magazines, in fact, I think it's called glossy. uh... said hey we really want to a photo shoot because you know uh... photo shoot uh... equals a command magazines being sold it's very simple business we need the cover is what sells at all and uh... answers it's kind of simple with these types of deals you know there's a

1:05:48 There's not a huge fee involved, but typically you say okay. Well, what are we gonna do this photo shoot? Well, how about we were thinking South Africa at this five-star resort and I'm thinking yeah, that's a good idea So Patricia will do one or two days of photos and they'll pay for a week. That's five. There's a couple of Can't remember the name of this this right outside of Johannesburg. There's a resort area. Mm-hmm that has these I think that's probably where you're gonna end up and where you want to go, where you're down there if you can. There's two things that would be nice that you could do. I couldn't do, I couldn't get a ride on this thing but the blue train I believe is still in service which was supposed to be one of the greatest train rides in the world. But it's always, when I went there it was all sold out. You couldn't even... Where does it go?

1:06:33 I think it goes from Johannesburg to Cape Town or something like that. Dude, I'm gonna stay in the resort on my ass drinking pina coladas. I ain't going nowhere. You gotta go to Cape Town. I'm not gonna go to Cape Town. Cape Town's schmapetown. I'm gonna stay by the pool. See, that's the difference between you and me. No, no, that's not. That's the difference between you and me and my wife. You and me? We'd be out in the jungle, man. We'd be killing our breakfast. You mean me and my wife? Not so adventurous. What's interesting down in Cape Town is they have a restaurant which I think is called the Blue Train as a matter of fact. Or I think it's there. Anyway, somebody could correct me. But they have every known... they cook everything. So you can go in there. So I caught up with all my... obviously I needed to see what these things tasted like being a carnivore. And so you get to have elephant

1:07:28 and zebra and crocodile and different kinds of elk and gazelle. Oh, I want to try that. And hippo. I think there was hippo and just like everything. I mean, you can imagine. So it's a big lineup of this stuff. And unfortunately, because it's South Africa, they have to overcook everything because of the fear of worms. Yeah. And have you seen those YouTube videos? Did we talk about that? No, oh, there's this big YouTube thing where if someone started it off And so there's a lot of different videos out there now, and you don't know what's real anymore They said that they they bought some pork and they poured coca-cola They basically marinated it in coca-cola in a little Tupperware bowl and after about three minutes these little worms start appearing out of the out of the meat and the theory is that because of the carbon carbon

1:08:23 Monoxide carbon dioxide in the coke that it there's no oxygen left and then the worms have to try to get out of the out of the meat out of the pork you Google it is there's a couple of obvious fake ones, but there's some that's like wow man It looks like larvae coming out of the out of the pork chop there. That doesn't sound good No, of course not. So what they're saying is this is you know, this isn't basically almost all American pork and I don't know what kind of... hmm... It's... you know, I haven't done anything with it because... Yeah, we gotta figure out whether this is bogus or not. Well, some... It doesn't sound right, because I mean, what are these worms doing in there? They're obviously eating anything, because you don't see it in the structure of the meat when you cut through it, I mean, when it's raw. They're little white larvae, almost like how maggots start out.

1:09:17 It's disgusting. You google it. Google coke and pork on or just go to YouTube and you'll see it. And there's some really funny ones where there's a little flash edit there, right? And then they put garden worms on the pork. It's like, okay, yeah, now I'm really freaked out. But there's a couple where it looks like it's an unedited shot and then there's these little white dots start to appear and then they go in with tweezers and they pull out these worms. Here we go. Snopes dot suggestion in the chat room. It's already right at the top claim pouring Coca-Cola into a piece of raw pork will cause worms to come crawling out of the meat status false Well or who believes those guys?

1:10:02 So let's see if they explain how they're getting this effect though, because obviously they're doing something. Well the effect, I understand the effect is because the coke, because it has all the carbonation that the oxygen gets pulled out of the pork and then the worms freak out and they start... No, no, I know what I'm saying, but they're getting this effect when there's no real worms. They said they've tried it and they can't get this to do it. Well it may not be in all pork obviously. Maybe you have to go to... the chat room says... let's just call them our listeners say that halibut seems to also have worms. Yeah, halibut does have... a lot of fish has worms. I know monkfish has a lot of worms. That's kind of disgusting.

1:10:50 Well, once they're, you know, if you cook it, you're just eating the worms. Yeah, you eat cooked worms. Protein. Oh, it's protein. Proteins. Well, I guess that's the bigger question is, is it a problem? Worms, you know, people eat worms all the time. I just don't buy, I'm not buying this worm thing coming out of pork that much. You know, people do eat worms. In fact, there's fried worms as a dietary thing in some cultures. Well, speaking of worms, Phil Spector got off on a mistrial. You're kidding me. Yeah, mistrial. 10 to 2. No one knows if it was for conviction or against the conviction, but apparently it was 10 to 2. So that's a hung jury and he got off. He shot the girl. He shot her. Yeah. Yeah, he did. But he's pretty well known for handling guns around people.

1:11:46 I think he shot at John Lennon once. Or he shot in the studio. Yeah, he white missed. No, the CIA took care of that. So, uh... Don't laugh. Don't laugh. The CIA killed John Lennon. Why? Why? Excuse me, did you see the multi-million dollar ad campaign he took out? He went on a whole peace campaign. He was promoting exactly the opposite of the reptilian agenda. And they got sick and tired of him. And they killed him. That's the easiest way. This is how they kill important people. They get a nutcase, they jack him up, make sure he has a gun and then they turn him loose. Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician who got killed one week before a landslide election, he won posthumously. They got some animal-loving tree-hugging nut and they jacked him up and got him a gun and he shot him right outside the radio station. You know, this is how they do it. I've always wondered about Sirhan Sirhan.

1:12:49 That means nothing to me. How come this guy... Who's Sirhan Sirhan? Sirhan Sirhan is the guy who killed Bobby Kennedy. Jeez, yeah, you know, he... Bobby Kennedy got a bum deal because, you know, his brother had such a better death. So Bobby Kennedy gets killed and Sirhan Sirhan who's a I don't know what he's like in Middle Eastern or some sort. And nobody's ever made the connection between his you know with the 9-11 or anything you know the Middle East you know kind of disappointment with this guy Sirhan Sirhan. No one interviews him. He's I think he's over here in San Quentin.

1:13:29 And he just came up and fell off the radar. I think it's kind of interesting. I think somebody should go over there and see what he has to say. I'm just looking at his wiki page. Born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian Christian family. If he was black, he'd have it all. Wow. He killed him with a .22, huh? Yeah, which is not the easiest thing in the world unless you're a professional. Yeah, I mean you really got to know what you're doing. I mean at 22 you can put that into someone's head and they can just walk away. Hmm, interesting. I will look into him. Yeah, good. No one ever talks about him at all. Yeah, I'll add it to my growing list of conspiracies to discuss. Screwball stuff. Screwball stuff. I got a few more for you.

1:14:22 The one that is concerning me. I know we've been lacking in your nuttiness over the last few weeks and I think it's probably increased our numbers but people still need to hear it. What's interesting though is a lot of people, here's your problem, people are turning on to it and they're like yeah I agree. And then when you start to agree they're actually like hey man, John should agree with you more and you know you should I'm like no you don't understand why do we even do a show if John agrees with me on all this stuff

1:14:58 But this is one that, and someone dropped me a piece from BBC World Service about bees. And I know that this has been in the news off and on, off and on, but now it's really getting pretty damn serious. And bee-sing is the problem. So what they said in this report is that every third spoonful of food you put into your mouth, bees had something to do with it. Well there's a couple of things here. One is there's a lot of here's the actually there's a couple problems, too One of the things is for here in California for example the honey bees have been you know decimated just like any places these are Alien be they really don't normally exist in the United States, and there's a lot of native bees especially in California some I don't know how many species, but it's it's it's a 30 or a hundred or something. It's a lot and

1:15:52 And so this year during the pollination season, everything got pollinated and my plum tree was loaded with plums. It wasn't a problem. But when I go out to look at who was pollinating them, it wasn't honey bees. It was all these other weird bees. There's a green bee and there's a big fat bee and there's all these other bees and they're all living it up. John Vellucci dressed up as a bee. There's a... speaking Spanish... and there's a... there was just like a whole variety of weird bees that they were now, you know, being able to, you know, thrive without the honey bees, you know, hogging everything. And so that probably was a good thing, but meanwhile there seems to be some evidence that these bees are now getting this problem. Now if that happens, then you have a serious issue. But it may be, the whole thing may be solved at some point

1:16:39 by some of the more, there's a beekeeper up in Port Angeles who is very famous for being extremely, he refuses to use anything that's not natural and he basically let his bees die off from mites and everything else except for the strong bees that had natural resistance and he's been breeding those. And so now he's got some queens and it cost him I think two seasons of honey. which is a shame because his money is unbelievably great and we always would buy cases of it. But there's two parts to this story. Part one, which I think is the one that people don't understand, and then there's part two, the thing people don't want to understand. But part one is bees, it's a business, beekeepers take their bees to fields of crops

1:17:27 The bees are then let loose, they pollinate so that crops essentially grow and fruit springs or whatever is needed but they're responsible for it and it's a business. And then these bees come back to their hive and the guy goes to another farm. The problem is the bees are disappearing. They're not just dying and falling down dead, they're gone. They don't come back to their hive anymore. And so the problem is that severely impacts food and this is what people don't understand. Right? I don't know. I think they do. No, are you kidding me? You go on the street and ask any person how important are bees. I guarantee you only 5% will know the importance of bees in our food chain. Nobody knows this. Nobody knows this. Let's take it up a level since they can't figure out what's causing this to happen to the bees. Well, I have a theory on that.

1:18:23 Well, give me your theory and I'll give you a theory that maybe will be more interesting. Oh, okay. Well, fuck you very much. I'll give you my very interesting theory, which is, first of all, there are too few crops. So, we only have a few types of tomatoes left that are still being grown, a few types of apples. It's a very limited supply, so the diversity is being taken away from them. Secondly, they're pollinating genetically modified shit and it's killing them, whatever it is, and it's killing everything and everybody, these genetically modified organisms. And that is what the problem is. It seems very clear to me. John C. Dvorak, your more interesting theory.

1:19:15 and would be owned by you with a patent that would be very expensive to sell. And in the process you could find some way of poisoning the bees with either this or with previous crops as a setup, as a marketing tool to get rid of the bees so that people would have to buy the self-pollinating crop and continue to feed people because there wouldn't be enough bees to pollinate anything. You are now officially ruining the show. you are ruining the damn show you have taken it up to an extra level that i love absolutely absolutely so i i was thinking actually it could have been that they were creating their i think it would be smarter for monsanto to create their own version of bees because they could then cross breed those and turn them into actual killer bees and they can be sold to the uh... weapons industry now we find it crazy but we'll just ignore that

1:20:12 Wow, so self pollinating genetically modified crops. Yeah, it's right on dude They won't have any customers left to eat the shit after we all die. But yeah a great move. There you go There you have it. Hmm. Now. Did I talk to you or not? You did I'm dumbfounded. I'm completely And play that game another another institution bites the dust Which, while you're talking about things dropping dead, we have a real serious problem with the West Coast Brown or sometimes called California Pelican.

1:20:49 which are dropping out of the sky in droves. They're hitting cars, landing on boats. They're just flying, flying, flying. Oh, boom, dead. They come out of the sky like a big giant, like the size of a turkey, and they crash into the earth dead. And I've noticed that, because I go to the city a lot, I've noticed this last year, because every year when you're going across the Oakland Bridge, you will see these usually three to six pelicans flying. They're a beautiful bird to watch fly. I mean, you can't take your eyes off them because they look like pterodactyls.

1:21:25 And they're usually low to the ground and they don't do a lot of flapping. They're just going like little stealth jet fighters. Shooting usually low to the water and they're flying all over the place. And their Bay Area, especially here in Berkeley, there's a lot of these pelicans. I have seen none this year. None. I've not seen a pelican all season. Did you just see this in the chat room or does this just came up? Yeah, because someone knows. Oh no, someone, oh you blogged it, okay. I blogged it yesterday. And the pelican is really one of the most spectacular birds we have out here. And that's the reason the pelican was why they banned DDT because they determined that DDT in the pelican's diet, even though I guess it got in there through fish who ate the bugs who had the DDI, who knows. But whatever the case was, it was making their shells of the eggs too thin and so then they banned DDT for that particular reason. Who makes DDT?

1:22:27 No, but well, I mean, I think Chevron probably made it for a while. No, they don't make pesticides. They make herbicides. So, no, all the, you know, pesticide companies made DDT was very common. But anyway, so yeah, Monsanto began manufacturing DDT in 1944, along with 15 other companies. Interesting. I didn't know that. Well, they're behind everything. But anyway, whatever the case, the Pelicans have got something going on. Wait, who was the CEO of Monsanto again? Help me remind me of his name. I don't know. George Bush? Wasn't it Rumsfeld? No. Wait a minute, Rumsfeld was with the Aspartame company.

1:23:15 Well, he's been on different boards. I mean, he's basically a political guy. No, I thought Rumsfeld. I thought he was the CEO. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look him up. Look him up. I am. I'm looking at him right now. I'm telling you. Here, CEO of Hurl. Hurl? Well, that's a program. Surl. I'm sorry. Surl. Oh, Surly. Surly. Manufacturer of Aspartame. CEO of Surly. Manufacturer of Aspartame. Yeah, okay. Okay, so you know that aspartame, which of course is a sweetener, that the FDA would not approve it but three months after he entered into the administration, it mysteriously got approved. They'd been refusing it for 16 years because it killed lab mice, like half the population. Huh.

1:24:07 Well, that's a good one. This is like one of the oldest conspiracy stories out there. I'm surprised you didn't know about this. I didn't know about it. You can't keep up with all this stuff. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I'm... Hold on, Monsanto... I'm pretty sure that... Well, first of all, Obama's guy is a Monsanto guy, right? Which guy is this? The agriculture guy he just brought in? Is that a Monsanto guy? Yeah, yeah, we talked about that two weeks ago. That doesn't bode well. No, of course not. I thought Obama and his boys were a bunch of greenies, a bunch of tree-huggers, a bunch of environmentalists, a bunch of people who wanted to protect us. Why would they put a Monsanto guy in? That doesn't make any sense. Better living through chemistry. He's just following the program. So did you find anything else about Rumsfeld? I'm not looking for Rumsfeld. How many hours do you want to make this show if we're going to talk about Rumsfeld?

1:25:10 Robert Shapiro is the Monsanto CEO. Robert Shapiro. I'm pretty sure that there was some kind of... I mean, they've got to have their hands all in the government. So Robert Shapiro is the guy that... He's an economist. No, no, this is the former CEO of Monsanto. Maybe another guy. Anyway, the Rumsfeld thing tells you enough right there, doesn't it?

1:25:47 Yeah, well that's pretty typical. I mean, but then we look at the SEC, you know, and the fact that they, you know... Or Madoff being the, one of the founders and the CEO of the NASDAQ. I mean... Yeah, but then, of course, meanwhile he's of course giving, I guess he sent a million dollars to one of his friends in the last minute here or one of his family members and he's still roaming around free, you know, even though... I know, Martha Stewart, I know. Martha Stewart has been in jail by now, beaten up. Yeah, probed. Martha Stewart is really, you know, I take a little bit of pity on her. I've met her several times. She used to work in our building, or I used to be in her building, I should say. And her daughter is very nice. But man, they've been through some rough, rough times. And just being a woman, I think, at the top of the company isn't as large as it used to be. But you know, that's tough. It's a boy's game, you know, it's, or it still is a boy's game, I should say, unfairly so.

1:26:44 And you get, you know, people hate you. They just, you know, it's just like, you're a woman, shut up. And of course, you're automatically a bitch just because you have the position. I have to say, I never really saw her crack a smile when I rode the elevator with her, but I don't know her that well. Her daughter is extremely nice, but you know, typically fucked up kid. And I'm pretty sure that whole arrest thing, there was, you know, because she, She lives with Bondi, I think his name is, the guy from Viacom. I'm sure there's all kinds of political media shit wrapped up in that and someone's getting back at someone for something. I mean, we know how politics works this way. Just look at Blagajewicz.

1:27:26 Whatever his name is who was just impeached, you know, he's he was threatening, you know He wanted you try to get people fired from the board of Tribune for you know, writing negative shit about him or whoever I mean, this is how it works people. Well, well there were a lot of people who think the same thing was the case with The only guy who was going in fact, they believed he was gonna go after Mad off like, you know earlier like years earlier and embarrassed the SEC was Elliot Spitzer But you said you sent me that PDF file. We haven't even talked about that. The red flag document? Right. Some guy who was high up in the media, he sent this. Apparently he won the SEC in 1999 and then won him again. I guess that document was written in 2003 or something like that. And they paid no attention to it. He had all the goods. He said, here's why this is not this guy's not running a legitimate business. He said Ponzi scheme, literally.

1:28:20 Yeah, he says it has to be a Ponzi scheme and he outlined the reasons why. With math. He actually used mathematics and showed that he can't be doing what he says he's doing. And then he went on and on and he also made note of the fact that people like Goldman Sachs wouldn't do business with him because they knew. And a lot of these banks wouldn't do business. And of course the irony is why these guys weren't going to do business with him, a bunch of dumb Swiss bankers did. Which is like what are they thinking? I thought these guys were supposed to be the world's greatest bankers. Nah, they just got better secrecy or they had at one point. People just don't connect these dots and it's frustrating and particularly when it comes to the media. Now we've got Davo happening again. Davo, Switzerland.

1:29:06 and uh... since the most that i say double you say dabbles and is the world economic forum and uh... everyone and which is a laughable a big wanker fasted if robert scobel is allowed in anything it can really be a serious economic summit let's let's just be honest about it But, you know, Rupert Murdoch's gonna be there. It's gonna be this huge reptile fest. Yeah, they all go there, they give the little speech. It looks like a complete waste of time, unless, of course, You're a skier because that's why people go to this thing so they can ski right in the area which has a skiing But that's what it is. It's a huge conference and the guy who runs the conference it cost 50 grand You know just for a booth and it's a it's a huge profitable money-making business, right? It's just it's it's like it's like CES for ugly people uglier people I should say yeah, well, it's definitely a

1:30:04 It's you know where these guys get to socialize for a little bit. I mean it's a social event, that doesn't mean anything. They had, you know, you do have a few crackpots come up there and say a few things that are weird but worthwhile. I didn't notice, I don't know that anybody at the economic summit over the last few years picked what happened to the economy over the last few years. Gee, yeah, where's that announcement from last year? Oh, we're headed for horrible times. Nah man, it was party on baby, past the hookers and the blow. Matt Madoff, nobody brought up the ridiculous housing bubble, nobody brought up anything. So what good is this conference if they can't even spot the obvious? Because what they're doing is they're all, you're right, they're all on the slopes going, man, can you believe this shit? We got a paid vacation. We all know the crap's coming down. They love it. I'm going to predict as our one of our final topics here, it's going to be one that you'll be, if you're on Twit tomorrow, you'll be talking about. So I want to make sure we talk about it first. Obama.

1:31:03 Has started to make noises that he may delay the switchover of digital television. Yeah, I heard that and And there's a couple thing and so first of all, why is this happening? Why are they switching to digital? Yeah well I mean the what they say is so they could free up the that 700 megahertz area of bandwidth and use it for various you know it's got like high penetration. So you're saying this is a telecommunications lobby that started five years ago maybe even longer? It's probably seven or eight years ago they started this. The steel is banned. Right. So it was a money-making scheme for the government.

1:31:47 Yeah, they were going to auction this band off for billions. So this is going to come to a head because I think the media companies are now lobbying Obama really heavily because they stand to lose. What is it? Something like 10 million people in the US aren't ready to switch. and of course they ran out of coupons and a million coupons are you know that they're short and people of course have no money to buy this forty to eighty dollar converter whatever it's often is there all eighty dollars is gonna cost you forty bucks a pop for each TV so I think they're not gonna work very well because you need a special antenna to pick up that signal you need a

1:32:23 you need a UHF antenna, a fringe antenna, a good one, especially if you want to go through any walls. I mean I have direct access to the transmitter. Are you receiving it? Do you have a DVB receiver? Yeah. So I've been receiving it for a long time, but I don't understand how other people are doing it because I'm using a fringe UHF antenna and looking out the window of my house I can see the the transmitter. It's over on the other side of the bay. You have line of sight and you can't receive it? No, I can receive it but I have line of sight and I get, you know, still it breaks up once in a while, somebody walks in front of the antenna. I mean the thing is pretty flaky compared to a regular VHF analog signal.

1:33:09 It's beautiful though by the way, it's a million times better and the sound of Dolby 5.1 comes across perfectly. Over the air is the way to go if you can get it but I don't think a lot of people can do that. Well there's a substantial amount of people and these of course are the people that do count in the Nielsen ratings who just are going to lose out and the fear is what I'm reading is that people may just give up on television altogether. Oh please, oh please. So one of the things that you know that cracks me up is they have all these ads they've been running them constantly about the switch over to digital and I've written about this and I'm convinced that half the public because we've dumbed down America they don't know anything they think that if they have a you know a digital tuner you know then other words it has numbers that pop up

1:33:56 if you push buttons that they have a digital TV they don't know the difference I mean this is you know it's like you know you just use the word digital doesn't mean anything and they don't understand digital ready I have a digital TV that someone could say because look and then they could show that there's like a 12 blinking. That means it's digital, doesn't it? And they don't know any difference or they don't think about it. I cannot see how the media industry agreed to this because all I see is there's going to be more channels available and when you have more channels then it's this is cable the cable model is very hard to get huge ratings I mean it's just it's

1:34:35 It is going to kill or maybe it's just the final shot in the head, the mercy shot for the television industry. Look, newspapers are closing left and right. They're all going digital. There was another paper up for sale just the other day. If no one buys it, then they're going all digital. The Seattle Post Intelligence. Yeah, the Post Intelligence, right. So no one's going to buy it, of course. No, and Hearst owns it. The idea was that they could buy the Seattle Times, but Hearst pulled the, they had the Examiner in the San Francisco Bay Area and they sold it so they could buy the Chronicle and own the market. So they bought the Chronicle.

1:33:56 if you push buttons that they have a digital TV they don't know the difference I mean this is you know it's like you know you just use the word digital doesn't mean anything and they don't understand digital ready I have a digital TV that someone could say because look and then they could show that there's like a 12 blinking. That means it's digital, doesn't it? And they don't know any difference or they don't think about it. I cannot see how the media industry agreed to this because all I see is there's going to be more channels available and when you have more channels then it's this is cable the cable model is very hard to get huge ratings I mean it's just it's

1:34:35 It is going to kill or maybe it's just the final shot in the head, the mercy shot for the television industry. Look, newspapers are closing left and right. They're all going digital. There was another paper up for sale just the other day. If no one buys it, then they're going all digital. The Seattle Post Intelligence. Yeah, the Post Intelligence, right. So no one's going to buy it, of course. No, and Hearst owns it. The idea was that they could buy the Seattle Times, but Hearst pulled the, they had the Examiner in the San Francisco Bay Area and they sold it so they could buy the Chronicle and own the market. So they bought the Chronicle.

1:35:16 And the word on the street is that they're losing a million dollars a week. No! A week? A week. And they're trying to get rid of this thing. So they're not going to touch another newspaper, especially the Seattle Times, which they figure is going to be the same thing. And you know, so they're just going to bail out. They may just abandon the property. Just like give it up and just like close the door and that's it. Just walk away. It could happen. I mean that in some cases that's the best solution. It's like alright we're done. They must have a mountain of debt on that thing already. Oh yeah it's probably building. Yeah well whatever. So but what is our trusted news? You know what? That's it John. I'm putting my foot down. We're just gonna have to become the trusted news source. We're gonna have to become the new source of record.

1:36:05 because someone's gotta do it we're better than some things but whatever the case is yeah this is bad but anyway back to the analog switch over to from digital so anyway the other thing that they had was and I think the reason they're gonna put us there they're not gonna let this thing I think Obama's gonna manage to get it put off a little way I think that's what's gonna happen with the because if you watch these ads all if there's a if you have a problem with your digital transition or something doesn't work, here's a number to call. This is going to be the number to call and there's going to be some helpline in India I guess. But the fact of the matter is if somebody goes, what's really going to happen, I'm an old woman and I'm not literally but I'm sure people, listeners think so but let's say I'm some theoretical old woman somewhere and I turn on channel 5 after the switch over and it's dead.

1:36:55 And so I don't think much about it. Then I turn around, I turn on Channel 7, and they're all dead. And so then, although I think they're probably going to be broadcasting a message saying, look, dummy, you should have done this. But let's just say that whatever the case is, I'm not going to call the government number. I'm going to call the station and ask them what the heck happened to my show. So all these stations are going to be inundated with phone calls because that's the only number people can find in the phone book. They don't have the call the government number. Okay, it all clicked together. Finally, understand it. We're talking about a potential 7 to 10 million people who will have this problem. So let's say we're going to generate millions of calls. The number is 1-800-CALL-FEMA.

1:37:38 and they come to your house, if you are incapable of switching to digital, they take you to one of their FEMA camps and then they kill you. It makes so much sense. Look, I don't understand how, sorry for saying look, but I really don't understand how the media industry agreed to a dilution, a dilution of their monopoly. I just don't get it. So there's got to be something or maybe I'm mistaken and it's just one for one digital but I would believe that they're going to have more channels now. And so those... Well I actually channel like for example KQED here

1:38:19 here in the Bay Area which has HD they have they have I think four or five channels at least three that I have because I so that's it all the stations are going to have to produce more crap they're going to have to fill up more channels or are there other people under these airwaves like us Channel 7, the KGO station which is ABC has three channels. They have the regular feed which is the network feed which is in HD. Then they have a feed of like weird old movies or something that they're showing on a second channel. And then the third channel is weather. And there is a, I think it's KTVU, another one of the local stations has

1:38:57 uh... the regular feed fox feed on the on the main to dash one and i think you dash two or two dash three or something like that i think exist but there's a couple stations that have cameras that are just around the bay area to show you traffic and that's a twenty four seven of the most popular channel you know that but i don't know whether channel it's like it's ridiculous i mean what's the point of broadcasting some of the stuff is you know i don't know it's baffling to me Well, the KQED folks do actually a pretty good job because they have their main feed and they have two of the digital feeds which have shows like Nova from last week and Charlie Rose on the old-fashioned

1:39:40 the just the DTV is not an HD and then you know then I think there's a kids thing and something else it's just there's a lot of weird little channels and then all these and then what's really weird is if you go up higher there's a bunch of these religious stations that have never existed before and they're just you know basically preaching constantly and I am seeing more and more religious broadcasts broadcast channels pop up we now on my skybox I think we have 15 There's God one God two God three, you know inspiration Hope and glory. I mean it's just time that a lot of them are a US base, but there are some apparently, you know like from the Caribbean

1:40:24 some UK it's just it's everywhere and even on the radio I'm receiving Radio Maria which is a Dutch religious station I mean it's it's crazy they get the best transmitters they get they get all the coverage you always notice that whenever you're or back in the day I mean it's not like this anymore but back when we just had radios in our car and AM at that Which station, John, always had the cleanest, clearest, best reception and the strongest signal? It was always the classical station. Yeah, the classical station typically. Always sounds the best. And it used to be, there always used to be a number of classical stations. Now you're lucky in any... You can even get one classical station. Yeah. We have one in the Bay Area. I don't think there's another one. And then, you know, the public radio stations that used to play stuff like that now just play either green propaganda or a happy punk show.

1:41:19 or you know so if in our vast audience of hundreds of thousands if there is anyone who programs a classical music radio station may I give you some advice do not play marching band music in the morning it does not excite your audience okay no one gives a shit about marching bands in the morning drive time slot okay play something soothing that's why we tune into you You know, talking about that kind of complaint, when I'm up north in Washington, I have a radio that looks for... I have this one... the one classical station I can find where I live is coming out of either Victoria or Vancouver, Canada.

1:42:03 and they play like classical music that is like weird avant-garde classical stuff that is really depressing and I can't put my finger on who's programming this crap but it's unlisted. It's coming out of a predetermined selector system. They buy this shit off the shelf at what's the broadcast conference in Vegas? NAB. NAB, right. They buy it off the shelf with the library. It comes pre-programmed. You know what selector is, right? You've seen selector. Yeah. Yeah. So it comes pre-programmed and they don't know what to do. This is a business. You know, most of these... Who's really good at it is Sky. Sky has this so well and all across Europe. They've just got, you know, a room full of computer servers and I've seen that's homegrown stuff. It runs on a Mac. It's fascinating.

1:42:58 and uh... and that you know they just drop in the voice files and they just have the same shit crank out everywhere across the globe but it's not a no really does some thought go into it you know it's classical that we're done Well, I don't know. Our local one in San Francisco seems to be pretty. This is the art that is lost. This is the... so, thank God I love podcasting, but the lost part of the art is turning on the radio in the morning and based upon what's going on in the city, based upon the weather, based upon the meme of the day, the guy on the radio is playing songs that fit with it. That is the lost art. Yeah, well, it's lost art because they had to pay him

1:43:38 Yeah, shit. We forgot about that minor detail. Yeah DJs are you know? The lowest paid the bottom of the show business ladder the bottom rung, you know, it's uh, They're they're kind of like charter pilots You can always tell it a DJ because he has a u-haul trailer hooked up to his car Ready to move to the next market like the song says W o LD So moving to the next market, I think we've run out of time. God, we really ran through this one fast. Holy shit, you're right. I wasn't even paying attention. Well, hopefully it recorded. I know something on the stream worked because... Oh, it recorded. It doesn't sound like... Yeah. I'm just saying. Hey, how come... You might as well put a big echo on the thing, you know? Just to add to the ambiance? Yeah. Yeah, 144. It'll give those guys at Yoagen something to complain about.

1:44:39 So you can check me out at channeldvorak.com. And I'm channelcurry.com, which I am just loving what Eric put together for me. That's fantastic. And then also we have Bubba doing the show notes. He'll be covering the, putting it on the cage match. And we have a whole bunch of people on the talk show system, but no one has actually dialed in. So, oh wait a minute, you know, Bob has dialed in. Well, maybe we'll get to Bob sometime in the future. We do have the capability to take calls. I don't know. I just want to try something just to know that it actually works. So we haven't... Where did he go? Oh, he hung up? Wait. He just drew attention to himself. Whoa! Hey Bob, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Thanks, man. He's on Skype probably. Wow, that sounds terrible. Yeah.

1:45:28 I bought that on my own, iPhone, probably a bad day. Thanks Bob. Sounds like short wave. It doesn't work if you call in on Skype, it has to be a minimum, it has to be a cell phone. It just doesn't work, it sounds like shit. Alright John, well it was great talking to you as always. Have yourself a good week, you got any plans? No, no, nothing. Exciting as always. Coming to you from Gitmo Nation east in the United Kingdom, the southwestern corner, I'm Adam Currie. I'm in northern Silicon Valley, also known as Gitmo Nation west for the moment. I'm John C. Dvorak. We'll talk to you again next week on No Agenda.