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Dec. 6, 2008 - No Agenda
01:17:42
60: We're Celebrities Get Us Out of Here!
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Time Text
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, unless you live in Gitmo Nation.
Time for your weekly review of our lives as we live them.
Coming to you from Gitmo Nation East in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in Gitmo Nation West, Northern Silicon Valley to be exact.
The place that doesn't exist.
The place that doesn't exist, yeah.
Yes, I'm sorry, I stepped on you.
You are?
John C. Dvorak.
Yes.
You may have heard of me.
Surely you've heard of me is what you're supposed to say.
Is that the line?
Yeah, that's the line.
Surely you've heard of me.
Surely you've heard of me.
Hey John, how you doing?
Okay.
What is going on in Gitmo Nation North?
I don't know what.
Have you been following Canada?
Oh yeah, they're going to have a revolution.
They just mined.
Yeah, no, it's pretty funny.
They're very upset about this.
I haven't followed it as closely as I'd like to.
If I'd gone up to Washington this weekend, I would have been watching the CBC News and I would have a better feeling for it.
I do not understand why the Dish Network and DirecTV and even Comcast do not give us a feed of the CBC News.
It just doesn't make any sense to me.
I mean, the CBC's got all these great shows, and it would give us the CBC National, the news, which is better than our news, by the way.
It's an hour-long news show that's quite good.
And we could keep up with this.
And people, you know, the Canadians are always moaning, oh, you know, Americans don't even know who our prime minister is.
Well, we would probably if we had some opportunities to see what, because they watch our news.
Yeah.
Well, so anyway, the prime minister of Canada, what's his name again?
Harper.
Harper.
I guess they wanted to kick him out.
Well, see, there's this other guy, the opposition candidate, Stéphane Dion, who I wish I could do an accent of good enough French accent.
Axon.
Well, not in the Canadian version.
It's flat.
It's a weird accent.
But anyway, they figured some way of doing a coalition Even though Harper's party got more votes than ever and was solid in office, but these guys have figured out some scheme to actually...
Yeah, to pull together, have a coalition and actually put Harper in the opposition.
Yeah, to oust him, essentially.
Yeah, put him out.
So here's the crazy thing.
Here's what blew me away.
And it just goes to show who really runs Canada.
The Governor General of the Queen of England came in and suspended Parliament.
Wait, time out.
We're stopping play, boys and girls.
The Queen doesn't like what you're doing.
I thought Canada was independent of the Queen.
I don't know where I got this impression.
Apparently, in the 60s, they tried to really sever the ties between the Queen of England.
And it was, bring the Constitution home, I think was the slogan at the time.
And I guess they never wound up doing it or not ratifying it or whatever.
Sounds like the Canadians.
Oh, shit!
We started the process.
I thought we did it.
You know?
Oi!
Eh?
Didn't you do it, eh?
So, apparently...
So, the Canadians, eh?
They've not gotten their act together.
Uh-huh.
I don't know.
This is the weirdest thing I've seen for a while.
And the Canadians are all in fits about it.
But they have such a culturally such a deeply ingrained sense of humor, I think based on their own history, that I just have to see what they're saying at this hour has 22 minutes, which is their satirical show, right?
Yeah, and they have all the politicians are always on the show.
In fact, Stéphane Dion is like a regular...
You know, they're always having him on.
And he plays along.
I mean, all these guys play along.
It's quite a funny show.
Well, it really does blow me away that I guess this guy is a part of the shadow government or whatever.
He was going to get kicked out and the Queen stops it.
I mean, come on.
And the Canadians just sit there and take it, I guess.
I don't know what choice they have.
I mean, you know...
It's like, what do we have?
Strike?
General strike?
Stop?
Organize?
You know, get angry?
Yeah, they could organize.
That's possible.
And they have more...
I mean, they have kind of a socialist bent.
They're...
So it would be possible for them to organize.
But, you know, sometimes the socialism...
Uh, angle is it actually prevents you from, uh, really taking action, which is with the irony of socialism.
I mean, look at the, in Russia, for example, I mean, or even in China, uh, under communist rule, I mean, unions are, like, foreboding.
So how does that work?
Yeah, that is kind of a problem.
Workers control the means of productions.
Beat down those union guys.
Yeah, it's like in socialism you wait for the government to tell you it's time to go protest.
Yeah, that must be it.
They haven't been told.
Speaking of satirical shows, man, it's too bad they don't have Spitting Image on anymore here.
Remember that show?
Yeah, you know, that show, I love that show.
It was fantastic.
That show, they played it in the U.S. a couple of times, I think, on some PBS stations.
Very few members, I think, of all the listeners that we have, ten people have probably seen the show.
Except maybe some of those British, the two British Europeans that watch the show.
Anyway, I thought the show was marvelous.
I mean, these guys made these, what happened to this team of people that made these crazy puppets?
I have no idea.
The puppets, of course, were fantastic, but the situations and the storylines, which are very, very political, was just awesome.
Right.
When they did them over here, they had a lot of Americans, too.
They had Reagan, because it was in that time, right?
They had Sylvester Stallone, I remember.
Yeah, Sylvester Stallone and Jackie Stallone, his mom.
They had a puppet of her.
There was a lot of Thatcher and Reagan doing stuff together.
So if anybody wants a description, these puppets would look like really high-end caricatures.
They were not trivial puppets.
In fact, there's probably some pictures of them on the net somewhere.
I mean, they were pretty amazing.
Yeah, I don't know if it was a spitting image or the spitting image.
I can't quite remember.
I think it was just a spitting image, that's what I recall.
But anyway, yeah, that's too bad.
This would be the era to do it.
Yeah, no kidding.
Spitting image.
Yeah, it is spitting image.
1984 to 1996 is when it ran.
Oh yeah, it's all over Google.
You can find it real easy.
There's really no satirical programs at all.
Not in the U.S. There's not.
They used to have something in the 70s that they called That Was the Week That Was that kind of became avant-garde and everyone had to watch it every day.
And then when they had some mainstream comedy variety shows right in prime time when they had the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, they had Laugh-In.
There was a whole slew of these kinds of shows and they weren't dead satirical like that was the week that was.
But they had some bite, especially the Smothers Brothers, which is being documented now on PBS here on a weekly basis called Censoring the Smothers Brothers series of these shows documenting all the censorship that took place that resulted in them quitting.
And, um...
And anyway, after that, there wasn't anything.
Now there's nothing, except late night TV. You can watch Leno, who's not very, I wouldn't call him a biting satirist.
Certainly not.
And Letterman, who's funny, and he makes slight remarks about things.
But these guys are weak by comparison to these biting shows of the past.
Yeah, well, stuff like Spitting Image, I'm pretty sure that was a BBC show.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah, there was tons of money for that.
And the charter probably was a little bit different.
But I mean, this hour has 22 minutes up in Canada, which has been a show on forever.
And then there's a couple of spin-offs of it.
Those shows are very political and interesting.
We can't even come up with something like that.
I mean, I think there's nothing.
Yeah, because people don't care anymore, John.
They don't care.
I blame the school system.
I'm right there with you, my friend.
You know, they don't teach these kids anything.
They teach them some kind of left-wing crap that's meaningless, and then the kids are baffled because it doesn't make any sense to them.
You know, if you give a typical high school student, if you give them the newspaper and say, okay, what does this mean on the front page?
Let's say it's a proper newspaper.
They wouldn't know.
They wouldn't have the foggiest idea, not the slightest.
Right.
I've always thought that history lessons should start with today's newspaper and then pick a topic, any topic, and then work backwards and explain how it came to be.
It's only a couple hundred years.
I'm baffled by it myself.
Then you watch Jay Leno doing his jaywalking, which is probably the only piece of satire he does, even though it's...
By no means satire, it just becomes satire because of the public.
And he just had Battle of the Jaywalking All-Stars on the other day.
And it was like people answering...
And all the questions were taken from a fourth grade book and the U.S. Test for Citizenship.
And these people couldn't answer anything.
They kept misidentifying photos.
One girl thought everybody was John F. Kennedy, including Nixon.
And one of them thought Alaska was an island.
And it was just amazing.
Oh, man.
And I really don't like it when they do that about Americans because, first of all, you can do about any country and however you edit it, it can always wind up being funny if you just take all the people who have the right answers out.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you have to do that.
Yeah.
But that's not satire.
That's easy.
That's low-hanging fruit.
Well, you know, it started with, you know, there's another group that came down from Canada and went to Hart.
What's interesting about it to me And I agree with you.
You can probably go anywhere.
I mean, I'm still stunned by when you see interviews done on European television of people.
I remember when the EU, they took all the barriers between the countries down so you didn't need a passport to go from Germany to France, for example.
And they were interviewing somebody who was in Germany.
And they asked them if they've ever been to Paris.
They said, oh no, I've never left my town.
I'm thinking, it's just like an American.
Some Americans never leave their town.
But I'm thinking, if I'm in Germany and Paris is like a two-hour train ride, what am I doing sitting around this little berg?
I'd be going to Paris every weekend.
Although the British, man, a large percentage don't even have a passport, have never ever been off the island.
Yeah.
Well, I find that the same way up in Port Angeles, Washington.
You know, where they're right across, it's an hour boat ride.
You go to Victoria, Canada, which is an incredibly cosmopolitan, well, it's kind of a funky, old-fashioned version of England cosmopolitan.
But it's a gorgeous little city that's got all kinds of qualities that just aren't in the United States at all.
It's got a small Chinatown, a little theater district.
It's just interesting.
And 95% of the people that live in that town, which is the boat right away, have never been there.
And they don't have any interest in going.
You know, you can ask, have you ever been to Victoria?
No, I thought about it, you know, kind of thing.
That's the end of it.
That's the pioneering spirit.
Yeah, I think we have to assume that most people worldwide are not interested in floating around aimlessly.
Meanwhile, in the tiny borough of Guilford, the Surrey police shot and killed a guy.
Oh, really?
Shot and killed a guy?
I thought there were no guns in England.
Yeah, yeah.
Up near the, on the steps of the Guilford Cathedral, no less.
What was he guilty of doing?
Looking suspicious and carrying something that looked like a gun.
Huh.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was kind of shocking.
It was national news here because Guilford is not the kind of place you'd expect something like that to happen.
The guy was apparently stressed out.
But they had choppers after him and they thought he had a gun and they shot him.
Killed him.
Bada bing.
So what's the background of this guy?
Do they do any research?
Oh, we'll never know.
It's Gitmo Nation East, man.
We'll never know.
We'll never find out.
And you're right.
This is the country where the cops have no guns, except in Guilford.
They say they have no guns.
Yeah, really.
You see these guys armed in Europe or in England at the airport.
These guys are carrying semi-automatic or semi.
These things are probably fully automatic AK-47s.
No, they're not A. They don't carry A's.
Well, they're carrying some sort of a big-looking nasty gun.
BFG. It's a BFG. And they're walking around the airport with them.
Have you ever seen the arms on those guys?
Yeah, they're big.
Yeah, they seem to be from the same clan.
They've got these humongous muscles sticking out of short sleeves and then some form of incredibly large BFG automatic weapon.
Yeah.
So I'm sure someone will write in, you guys don't know your guns, and they'll tell us what they are.
But they're nasty looking.
They're all, you know, flat black and look like they're cocked and ready to go.
Just in case they have to, like, pepper the place for some reason.
It's really getting bad over here, man, I tell you.
Remember we talked last week about Damien Green, the minister who they arrested?
Yeah, what's come of that?
Well, the papers have gone nuts, because really the way newspapers here...
They're really important when it comes to political commentary.
So they've gone completely apeshit over particularly the home secretary, this woman named Jackie Smith, because no one's copying to have known it.
And she says, no, no, this was a police investigation.
I had no knowledge of it.
It's really, really deep.
And what people are writing is scathing.
And they're making all the right comparisons.
So what's the public doing about it?
Nothing!
Sitting at home watching I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, which, by the way, was a fantastic series.
I have learned so much.
No, no.
You know the premise of the show, right?
They throw 13 or 14 celebrities into the jungle for three weeks and they have to do all kinds of jungle trials, including eating live insects, etc.
These are celebrities who don't happen to be working as a coincidence.
Well, I'll tell you that there were two people.
They usually have some American celebrities in there as well.
And this year they had George Takei.
Who is Sulu from Star Trek.
Yes.
Oh my.
And he's like 70, 71 years old.
He's a tough old bird.
And then Martina Navratilova.
I sense a theme.
What's that?
Keep going.
Well, I was just going to say, I thought it was interesting that Martina Navratilova was in the show at all.
What is she, like nine or ten time Wimbledon champion?
As it turns out, she felt that she was very shy.
She's always been very shy her entire life.
She's at a party, she'll stay in the corner and then people have to come up to her.
She doesn't mingle or anything like that by her own admission.
And they offered her, and she said, yes, you might as well see if she could stretch herself to the limits.
And you know what?
She came across as a really, really nice lady.
Yeah.
I mean, seriously, just a nice person.
I have friends who I know her pretty well and says she's a great person.
Yeah, she came across as extremely nice.
And George Takei, I just love.
He's funny.
Yeah, he's got a good sense of humor.
Yeah, yeah.
Old queen of the jungle.
Very funny.
As it were.
So, uh...
So that's what the public is doing.
Yeah, I'm just saying that you said you learned something.
That you just learned that Martina is a nice person and Takei is funny?
Yeah, that's kind of it.
Okay.
Yeah, I know.
You know, the funny thing is, it turns out that I think the Bush administration proved this, too.
That, you know, the people in power can pretty much do anything they want.
And you really must have to push people to an extreme limit.
I mean, I can't imagine how the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution or any...
I mean, I can see how the U.S. Revolution kind of became, you know, it was kind of...
Developed.
But, you know, nobody ever drove the Canadians to revolt.
But the people who revolted big time must have been under an amazing amount of stress.
It's interesting you bring that up, because last night was, and I've recorded both episodes for you, and there's a couple more coming, and I have them recorded.
I just got to figure out how to get it on the DVD.
There's a Channel 4 program here called The Ascent of Money.
And they actually explain how the French Revolution took place.
And it was a situation extremely similar to what's going on in the United States right now.
Where a guy named Jean Law, who was a Scotsman, who lived in Amsterdam in the late 1600s, early 1700s, as he was like a gambler and got kicked out of Scotland or whatever.
And he witnessed the East India Company being formed, which was really the first company that had shares.
And subsequently were traded on the first, what we would call a stock market, all in Amsterdam.
And he studied this for a year or two, and then he went to Paris, and he started the first, for all intents and purposes, French central bank issued shares.
And essentially just, you know, did what the Federal Reserve has done in the past, you know, 80 years or whatever.
He just was printing up more shares, selling them.
And he owned, you know, like half of Paris.
He owned fucking everything.
And it just became a bubble.
And everyone was in on it.
Everyone had shares in the bank.
And all of a sudden, there was nervousness or whatever that just entered the market the way these things do.
That's more your area when it comes to cycles.
In fact, the collapse of the East Indian Trading Company falls right onto one of the cycle numbers, right on the money.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And it was funny because I was watching this documentary, which I think you'll enjoy.
It was a lot different from the things you might find on the internet, you know, about the Money Masters and all that.
Yeah, well, the Money Masters is a piece of crap for my, looking it over and checking, documenting some of their claims.
But let's go, let's stop right here and let me tell you one thing straight up.
Get a DVD recorder.
You will not...
I have one, I have one, I have one, I have one.
That's, I... What do you mean you can't?
Because I've got to connect the Skybox because I recorded it on the Skybox because it's on like Season Pass, like a TiVo automatic record.
Yeah.
And so I can output it.
I just have to output it and reroute it to the DVD recorder.
I have one.
I got one upon your recommendation.
I hope, by the way, that it isn't a different region or any shit like that.
No, no, no.
They use region zero on these things.
Oh, good.
So I got it.
So I'm going to hook you up.
Okay.
My experience, generally speaking, with equipment like this, if you buy the D-recorder, you actually have to connect it to something for it to be useful.
Yeah, thanks.
Thanks, John.
I'll take your advice.
I appreciate it.
But anyway, you were going to talk about the collapse of the East India Company on the cycle.
Yeah, I don't have it in front of me, but it's just like a classic year.
I mean, it's just bang, boom, you know, there it is.
I forgot.
But that, for all intents and purposes, was that collapse in France of Jean-Law's central bank.
The collapse of the shares.
They were the only shares that were being traded.
It was like any classic boom.
Everybody had their stock.
It came flying back.
The price went from 9,000 florins to 5,000 in one day.
Let's start about our thing.
The price of oil is now 40.
Isn't that unbelievable?
So anyway, I bought into the double short on oil.
You got the ETN? No, yeah, the ETN. Which, by the way, Andrew and I are going to do a special discount for, I'm not sure what we're going to charge for it on ETFs and ETNs.
For people that need to catch up to this, because these ETFs in particular are just on fire in terms of the popularity.
But anyway, so I got out of my ETN at, I think I got out about 120 or so.
And it went up another 15 points cents, which is, I don't know, I was thinking the oil was going to hit 50 and then it was going to maybe settle in a little bit, but then it dropped another 10.
Boom!
Boom!
The guy who's the head of Iran publicly says they're budgeting for oil at 30.
Yeah, and I'm hearing that gas in a year from now, actual gas at the pump, could be as low as $1.
Yeah, I find that hard to believe.
Because, you know, if you settled in at around the $2 range, it's already hit, you know, around here I can get premium.
For under $2, it just hit, I just bought some of the other at $201, then I saw it at $199.
And I suspect it might get down to $151.60, which will crank the economy up, because people don't realize that the price of energy has a lot to do with the economic well-being of a country.
Because, you know, the energy, just like if it's cheap...
It's energy.
I mean, it results in direct production of products and whatever.
Energy is, that's the basis of everything.
Yeah.
Every single thing in our lives is all based on energy.
So I'm looking at my DTO as after I leave it, and here's the key.
I did some more research than usual.
And, you know, as opposed to my normal research was just talking to you and then making a decision.
Yeah.
That's the way to go.
So what was the name of that brokerage, a banker, it starts with a G, it's like Goldman something.
Goldman Sachs?
Goldman Sachs.
When they said something about oil is going to go to $200.
Who do you think the largest single holder of the exchange traded note, double short oil, is?
Yeah, well, of course.
That's what they do.
They buy the opposite direction.
They come out with a recommendation.
All the suckers.
I learned that the second day I had my level two trading screen.
I was reading research.
I'm like, oh yeah, this is good.
I'll invest in that.
And then, boom, I got fucked.
I'm like, huh?
And immediately, this is a stupid game.
If you're not on the inside, you can never win.
Well, I learned this a long time ago, too.
I mean, I never thought I was going to be so blatant, but I mean, these guys are just ridiculous.
And CNBC is in on the whole game.
Well, somebody there is.
So anyway, but I learned years and years ago, because I would always...
I remember during a boom of some time back, 40 years ago, there was this company that was being touted by Merrill Lynch, who was always the one company.
Every time they were really pushing something, I was very skeptical.
They were pushing this company called Sterling Homex.
And Sterling Homex is this company that was one of...
There was an era in the United States where everything was going to go prefab.
Oh, I remember that.
Housing.
It was like a boom, a boomlet of prefabs.
We're going to manufacture all our houses in factories.
What was it called?
Sterling what?
Sterling Homex.
I think it's S-T-I-R-I-N-G dash Homex.
And Merrill was pushing this stock like there was no tomorrow.
People were bloated up with it.
And then, of course, the company goes bankrupt about two weeks later.
Well, a couple months later.
And it was just like, wait a minute, weren't you?
And then it turns out that those guys were, you know, on the other side of the deal.
They were out.
Yeah, you know, I got to think that...
And nobody said, where's the SEC with these scams?
Where's the SEC with Goldman Sachs telling everyone that oil's going to go to 200 while being short?
Well, dude, they haven't even taken anyone to task over the ratings agencies, like Moody's.
Oh, we had a software fault for two years.
I mean, there's no oversight.
They're not doing anything.
They're only on the game.
Meanwhile, Martha Stewart goes to jail.
To jail, exactly.
Exactly.
And they shoot an innocent guy on the Guilford Cathedral steps.
And I guess now they're going after Mark Cuban for something.
Well, we talked about that two weeks ago.
Yeah, I know.
I've been bringing that up.
People are fascinated by your theory.
Oh, about smartest guys in the room?
No, no.
Oh, about Loose Change.
Oh, that's what it was, yeah.
Was it Loose Change?
Yeah, 9-11 Loose Change, the second edition or final edit or whatever, the one that Sheen was...
Did he actually ever wind up doing the voiceover?
I thought he did.
I don't know.
I don't watch that stuff.
No, I'm pretty wary of what's going on.
I think right now, you know, now that we have, the bailout is now up to $8.4 trillion, which has been lent, spent, or otherwise disposed of.
Given away!
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that this is just keeping it afloat until Obama comes in, then boom!
They're just going to drop it all.
Nah.
Because he's the right guy to convey the message, whatever it is, which I presume is going to be some change in the monetary system.
All your base belong to us.
Yeah, for real.
Well, you know, here's what's happening in Europe.
This is a very interesting way of tackling the bailout, and I think this is even funnier.
People are jumping into this head first.
So, Gordon Brown has proposed it, and it'll cost the UK one billion pounds.
In Italy, they're already doing it.
What they're offering to homeowners is, okay, you pay a set rate, so maybe 4% on your mortgage, And you don't have to pay whatever the difference is of your arm going up, your adjustable rate mortgage, for, you know, like a period of anywhere from six months to two years.
And then, of course, you get a balloon payment at the end of that.
You have to pay the piper somewhere.
Right.
You know, I had a sense that this whole thing took place prematurely.
You know, this collapse.
I thought they wanted to...
I think that...
No, I disagree.
I disagree.
It's exactly on time.
What they messed up was the Lisbon Treaty.
That was supposed to be, in effect, as of October, so that they could do all this financial mumbo-jumbo.
And now what these guys are talking about is they're operating under the Lisbon principles.
Don't you love it?
Yes, well, we have to approach this under the Lisbon principle.
So, completely not ratified because Ireland said no.
All it is is a legal document.
For this, the way they were freaking out about it, I'm convinced, John.
This was, you know, the timing is perfect, but Europe wasn't ready for it yet because they didn't have the Lisbon Treaty in place.
So what do you think the end result's going to be?
Because it seems to me that, you know, everyone's talking about depressions.
I don't think this is leading to one.
I think this is going to put it off, hopefully, so I can have my cycles thing fall right into place.
Not that I want to see a depression.
Anyway, the...
Well, you're asking a question.
I'm totally convinced still that we're going to have a boom.
And then, oh, I'm watching the Kramer.
You know, you ever see Madeline?
Yeah, Jim Kramer, of course.
I don't watch him that much because he makes me shake.
And so, you know, I always look at the coffee and think, and it's the coffee.
I'm drinking too much coffee, and then I realize that this guy's got, you know, he's just the way he is.
He's wired.
So he made a couple of interesting comments.
He actually predicted, he took back a bunch of his stuff that he said before, which he does commonly.
And then he said, and he used to, and in fact, I recorded it.
I should have sent it over to you and you could have played it.
A couple of moments where he says, and then you know what this means is when Obama comes in, there's going to be a boom.
And he said, use the word boom, which is what I've been thinking too.
But this time, you know, this boom will lead to a bust.
And then when the bust happens, a real bust.
Uh You end up with all this money that they've thrown into the system, the 8 trillion.
There's nothing left.
I mean, now all you can do is just...
Well, that 8 trillion wasn't even there.
That's got to...
Okay, can I give you my opinion?
Here's what's going to happen.
First of all, there's a lot of rumblings now about the way the 8.4 trillion is going to be paid for is through a value-added tax in the United States.
I think that's highly feasible.
I haven't heard that much here.
Oh, it's a rumor on the interwebs.
Well, look, the rest of the world does it.
Yeah, yeah.
We've got 17% in the United Kingdom, 19% in most European countries.
Belgium, 21% value-added tax.
So that would be one way to get it back.
But I don't see a boom happening.
What's happening right now is...
Because of the lack of credit facilities, farmers can't get loans to buy fertilizer.
We're going to have a supply problem.
There's just no doubt about it.
There's going to be some essential supply problem, I think, when it comes to food.
And the dollar, you know, there's no faith in it.
They're propping that up.
Then when Obama is sworn in, boom, they'll drop it like a hot potato.
No more propping up of the dollar.
And that's when the new money system will come into play.
And it may even be called something else, but we'll certainly have a different reserve currency, and I'm pretty sure it's going to involve carbon one way or the other.
Well, the carbon thing is hopefully going to be dropped.
Let me write the date down here for your crackpot prediction.
It's not that much of a crackpot.
Once again, there's rumors now about the United Kingdom going to the Euro.
If they wait any longer, the pound will be equal to a Euro.
They don't have to worry about it.
Yeah, well, that's the whole point.
No, I see bad times ahead.
Yeah.
I see really, really dark days.
That's the way, that's the typical public attitude.
At the bottom.
You're at the bottom.
No, no, no.
No way we're at the bottom.
We're at the bottom.
This is the bottom.
This is what the bottom feels like.
And it always brings up this gloom and doom thing.
So when things start to pick up, you say, well, I guess I was wrong.
And then you'll jump in at the wrong time during the boom.
And then that's when they pull the rug out from under everybody.
And the public has to be involved.
I mean, the public has to take it up to shorts.
That's the way it always works.
And, you know, in this situation, these banks and all sorts of stuff, the public is, you know, and so far as being taxpayers are concerned, they've been getting screwed.
But we don't have the real sense of being personally screwed over.
Which is really necessary to really do this right.
Well, what are you talking about?
Of course people are screwed over.
The 401ks are hoes.
They're getting kicked out of their homes.
What do you mean?
The public is very much...
Oh, nobody's getting...
I mean, the number of people that are getting kicked out of their homes is minimal.
And it's played up a lot in the media.
And there's a lot of houses for sale that have never really...
There's a whole development up north of me here.
That was built out, and then just before they were going to start selling them, the whole thing collapsed, and now they're trying to give these places away.
But the problem is, since nobody's moving in, they're starting to deteriorate.
It's kind of interesting to watch something like this go downhill, because they can't maintain it.
So now weeds are growing everywhere.
I saw a documentary on their companies now that...
That go around all these houses and they, you know, I guess the bank hires them and they drain the swimming pools so they don't become, you know, cesspools of mosquitoes.
They paint the lawns in some cases.
They paint the lawns green.
Oh, that way when you fly over it doesn't look too good.
No, when you drive by you can't tell.
It's like, oh, that's nice.
It's pretty good.
Let's spray paint the dirt green.
It's actually not a bad idea.
If you can get some kind of paint or some sort of substance that you can spray on dirt, that would also have a weed killer in it so that you don't have the weeds popping through this stuff.
That's not a bad thought.
I like it.
Maybe somebody out there knows about this, if that's how they're doing this, because that's not a bad idea.
Anyway, I have in my notes that after a new president is elected, the stock market is supposed to go crazy in a positive way.
That was your prediction, which has not taken place.
It's not, no.
When he gets in, he has to be in.
Oh, okay.
Boy, are you going to be disappointed.
I don't think so.
I think the day he gets in, this thing is going to start to move.
The fundamentals aren't there, John.
Fundamentals don't mean anything.
Yeah, but as a country, America has already had a $10 trillion debt in four months.
It's almost doubled.
Yeah.
You know, China is not going to lend us any more money.
They've lost billions.
Mm-hmm.
I'm just telling you.
We'll wait and see.
We've got until January, and then when he gets elected, Obama, Hussein, Obama...
No, no, no.
Pakistan and India have something to do with the strategy.
Well...
Yep, there's something.
And that would be mainly because...
So the Chinese have a pact with Pakistan.
I think they've been pretty...
They're neighbors, first of all, but they've...
Yeah, and the Russians have a pact with India, and they were selling them...
The latest news is they're selling a bunch of nuclear reactors for power.
What does Pakistan have?
Does Pakistan have anything in the ground?
No.
You mean oil?
Yeah, anything like that.
I don't think so.
I think they're pretty dependent on, you know...
Hard labor to do what they do.
I don't know.
I do know this, by the way, just as an aside.
If you buy basmati rice, buy the Pakistani ones as opposed to the Indian ones.
It's just a cleaner product by five washings at least.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, they have these Muslim cleanliness laws in the food business, and so they don't let, you know, they're not as careless as the Hindus.
No offense to the Hindus out there, but the rice, I mean, it's like the stores we have over here.
There's a couple of Hindu stores, and there's a couple of Pakistani stores, and the Pakistani stores are generally cleaner, even though they tend to scowl at you.
But the rice...
But the rice...
But we're not generalizing at all.
No.
The rice...
But the rice is...
There's a bunch of basmati rice, which, of course, takes a special technique to cook, which people don't seem to understand.
Well, fill us in.
Well, it's boiled.
It's a boiled rice.
It's not like a Chinese rice.
Typically with rice, Chinese-style cooking rice, you take a long grain rice and you put like a cup of rice in one and a half to two cups of water and then you slowly boil it and then all the water in the pot sucks into the rice.
There's no water left.
And the Basmati-style rice, which is a different rice altogether, which is more fragrant, a very different rice, is boiled.
So you take a cup of rice and then you put it in like a gallon and a half or two gallons of water and you boil the crap out of it until it's just one second away.
It gets a little al dente.
It's just a little bit almost finished, but it's not quite.
And then you dump the water out.
Down the drain.
And then you, and by the way, the rice has to be washed two or three times before you cook it and then soaked for like 15 or 20 minutes.
Although the soaking, I think, is optional, but the argument is that it keeps the grains from breaking when it's being cooked.
But anyway, so then you dump the water out and then you put the rice back in the pot and then you cover it with a towel and then you let it steam to completion.
It's the most perfect rice there is.
It's unbelievable.
And that technique was, I think, derided as boiled rice during World War I. So no Americans, and I can guarantee no French people, know how to use this technique to cook rice.
And that's the way you cook basmati rice.
Have you ever had Indonesian rice toffel?
Yeah, I have.
Because the rice you described there sounded a bit like that.
It could be.
I mean, I don't know.
I never asked.
But I first picked up this recipe.
By the way, while it's steaming, under the towel, you can put some butter in it and let the butter kind of melt and then you stir it in gently afterwards.
You generally get it so the grains are almost individual.
So if you could like lift up with a fork and all these pieces perfectly cooked would just fall, you know, all over the place.
You've made me hungry now.
It's delicious.
I think there's no rice.
I don't even buy it.
And it's quick.
The whole process for making basmati rice, a rice dish, and you can put saffron into the liquid.
You can do different things to season it.
Man, there's nothing like Uncle Ben's.
You open that pack two inches, throw it in the microwave for two minutes, ba-da-boom.
The whole process for making basmati rice is about a 12 to 15 minute process.
And so I'm always amused by Uncle Ben's instant rice, which takes as long.
It's not clean of any nutrients and it's horrible and it's mushy and it's terrible.
People should learn how to cook.
I call it Iranian-style rice.
The Iranians are the ones who do this rice the best.
They're fanatics about it.
They have a lot of different kinds of variations of the rice.
They grow rice in Iran in a couple of areas where they make some killer rices that are just impossible to get a hold of.
It's very hard to produce, but the opportunity is very apparent, John, that there's going to be a lot of demand for quick, simple, yet elegant, good-tasting meals in a cooking show.
You're almost the perfect candidate for it, you know?
Yeah, well, I can do the rice, that's for sure.
The funny thing about rice, which has always amused me, is that the Europeans had never really got a clue.
I mean, there weren't a rice culture.
And they have like, you know, yeah, you can get the risotto, which is a stirred, you know, kind of gooey rice that you make.
Oh, man.
If you get the wrong risotto, it's really, really horrible.
Yeah, and even if it's right, it's not that good.
And, I mean, it's interesting.
It's kind of filling because it's so starchy.
I've had really good risotto in two restaurants, both in the United Kingdom, of all places, where the risotto was always on the menu.
Gordon's restaurant, what the hell is the name of it?
It'll come to me.
As well as the...
Okay, I'm two for two.
There's two restaurants I've had in the UK. It was really good.
Man, I had this great wine last night, DeVore.
Oh, you would have loved it.
What was it?
I don't remember.
Gordon Ramsay's restaurant.
Yeah.
But they eat it here all the time.
It's like the favorite dish, the favorite appetizer.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing to eat, but it's not a rice dish by any means, at least the way I think about it with the Asian rices.
Most people here cook rice Chinese-style.
Some people cook Japanese-style, which is a gooey rice that forms lumps.
Sticks six together a little bit more.
Sticky.
sticky rice and i was a little chinese style of the you know i remember you know there's different ways of doing it and it's always the same which is you know with and typically with long grain rice uh...
this growing california texas and uh...
it's not this people then go and they'll buy some basmati rice and cook it that way and it is just I mean, for one thing, they never wash it enough.
Basmati rice needs a lot of washing.
Except the Pakistani stuff, it needs half as much.
And they never soak it.
Because the first time when I was in college, I was fascinated by my understanding.
Oh, Basmati rice is the world's best.
I didn't know how to cook it.
And so I cooked it Chinese-style, and I said, this is the worst rice imaginable.
It stinks.
I mean, it was horrible, and I never went back to it until I rediscovered it at an Iranian restaurant.
I don't think I've ever really had rice that I thought was horrible, honestly.
Oh, try cooking basmati rice Chinese style.
You'll see.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
Right.
Anyway, that's my rice story, and I'm sticking to it.
The Supreme Court is now handling the quest into Obama's birth certificate.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Huh.
I wonder what would happen if it turns out that he wasn't born in Hawaii.
The whole thing was a scam.
And he was actually born in Kenya.
Well, when you think about it, what do we...
Can you turn on your speaker a little bit, John?
I mean, you don't have headphones on, do you?
No.
You're getting bounced back too much?
Okay.
Yeah.
There you go.
Yeah, a little bit.
We don't know anything about this guy.
We really don't.
Yeah, I know, I know.
We do know that he's picked all the old cronies to be in his cabinet.
I was looking into Richard Gates' background, who is the current defense secretary.
You know who he worked for back in the 70s?
Who?
Zbigniew.
Oh, Zabrinski, yeah, your buddy.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense.
He's the inside guy then.
Why doesn't he just put Zabrinski on one of his, you know, just make him his chief of staff and get it over with?
Nah, he's pulling the strings, man.
That's what he does.
He's the big kahuna, big man on campus.
He's making it all happen.
Yeah, apparently.
So we'll see.
We're going to get a boom and then a bust.
No, we're going to go down further.
The next bottom is 7286, and then I'm calling Dow 6000.
Yeah.
Yeah, you and a couple friends of mine are calling Dow 6000.
I'm not seeing it.
We've got to break through this barrier first and this wishy-washy up and down 300 points per day.
And now we're going to bail out this auto company bailout.
Man, is this unbelievable?
Have you followed any of that?
Of the hearings?
No, I should have been listening to the hearings, but these guys are whining a little too much for my taste.
But the fact of the matter is, first they bail out these financial institutions, and then the car companies get screwed in the deal because these guys hoard the money.
Well, they don't just hoard it.
They just want loans.
They're not looking for free money like these other guys.
It was funny.
During one of the hearings, they kept saying bailout, bailout, and then actually one of the auto people corrected himself and said, I mean loan.
We're asking for this bailout, I mean loan.
And it's my favorite.
I drove a hybrid car here today.
So they've learned, right?
They're all putting their corporate jets up for sale.
And I drove a hybrid here.
I drove a Chrysler hybrid test vehicle.
It was really great.
Well, the thing that bothers me, there's a piece of news that came out claiming that the only reason they were flying corporate jets...
And they couldn't fly commercials for security reasons.
Give me a break.
I guess so.
You find out the guy's a CEO, a GM, and you got something wrong with your car.
Hey, that Saturday night bus is a piece of crap.
What are you going to do about it?
It wouldn't be security reasons.
They'd be harassed on the airplane, I suppose.
I don't know.
I saw Bill Gates' flight commercial, and he was the world's richest man at the time.
Once in a while, somebody would come up to him.
I was on a plane once with Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter's got the right approach.
Because I talked to the stewardesses about it afterwards.
For one thing, it took me forever to get to the airport.
The traffic was a mess.
I couldn't figure out what the deal was.
So I get to the airport.
I'm on this plane to Atlanta on Delta.
And Jimmy Carter's on the plane.
And Jimmy Carter, he gets on the plane.
Of course, that meant their security was screwing up the roads.
Anyway, so Jimmy Carter, he's booked in first class with a couple of...
Of Secret Service guys.
Babes.
A couple of babes.
That would be nice, but no.
Jimmy Carter goes through the plane and introduces himself to every single passenger.
Hi.
How you doing?
Seriously.
He goes down one aisle and he takes, you know, he does it real quick.
He shakes hands with everybody and says, hi, how you doing?
You know, you may, you know, have heard of me kind of thing.
Surely you've heard of me.
And he comes back around and then he comes back around the other way and he meets me and I talk to him for a couple seconds.
You know, yeah, how you doing?
You know, no, it's good.
This is John Plain and whatever.
I forgot what I said.
It was something stupid.
And so then he goes back and he sits down and I talked to the stewardess about this.
What's the deal with him coming in?
And she said this I thought was genius.
She said Carter comes on the plane.
Everyone knows he's on the plane.
So he introduces himself to everybody on the plane.
And by the way, she's been on a number of planes with him.
So we're talking 200 passengers or just in first class?
No, 200 passengers.
He goes and does the whole thing.
It takes about half an hour.
Half an hour at least, yeah.
But it's during, you know, the ramp up, so it's not like, you know.
He introduces himself to everybody on the plane, she says, because once they meet him, they're not going to bother him.
Because before that, people would come up and want his autograph, and they want this and that, you know, and he couldn't get any sleep.
He likes to sleep on the plane.
And so now he does this, and I thought, what, it was a great idea.
And I think everyone who's that famous...
Although I don't think there's too many in that category.
We should do the same thing.
It was actually kind of cool.
Well, typically celebrities don't introduce themselves to anyone on the plane, get hammered, grab the stewardess' ass, and then wind up fighting and arrested and diverting to another airport.
That's pretty much the way it usually works.
Certainly with the supermodels.
I flew once when Fergie was still married to Andrew.
She flew British Airways when she was still a member of the royal family.
Huh.
Yeah, to New York, I think.
What happened to her?
She was like trying to become a celebrity in the United States and eventually just became a, you know...
Yeah, well, she did Jenny Craig.
She made a lot of money on that, and she wrote a book, and she made money on that.
I think she did a video, made money on that.
And there was a kind of reality-type docudrama on her a couple months back here.
It was at her home.
It was like living with Fergie.
So, yeah, I would have to say she gets pushed away into the archives.
Yeah, for good reason.
I saw her in one talk show once and she seemed, you know, like that typical upper class, boring British style of, you know.
She was no Diana, man, I'll tell you that.
A person that wasn't of any interest to anybody.
She seemed like a nice enough person, but she didn't seem to have much going on.
Nah.
She'll wind up on Celebrity Rehab.
You are.
Celebrity Rehab.
Talking about Celebrity Rehab, I understand that our friend Amy Winehouse is about to die in rehab or something.
John, it is a cold day in hell when you're ahead of Amy Winehouse news.
What is going on?
They came over here.
I mean, normally we don't get a lot of Amy Winehouse stuff unless she's on death's doorstep.
And that was kind of the few...
Or maybe what it was was I was too lazy.
I lost my remote control.
And I ended up watching Extra, which is one of the worst shows on television.
Extra!
Extra!
And, you know, which is all...
Flashy, gossipy stuff.
Yeah, most of it's paid for.
You know, pay for gossip, pay for the minute.
And I think she was mentioned as something wrong with her.
There seems to be a couple of news articles.
Let's see.
Amy Winehouse still hospitalized as hubby sent back to jail.
Now there's a headline for you.
This is what you don't want you...
You don't want to read this about yourself.
This is the definition of a bad day.
Yeah.
She's been hospitalized since November 23rd.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's a shame because she's a talent.
Well, you know, apparently she's...
I don't know.
Who knows?
Blame it on the Afghani drug trade.
Yeah.
Actually getting involved with these drugs.
You know.
So, what else is going on over there?
Is there anything that In the EU happening, I mean, I guess the Lisbon Treaty is like, there was a special on, maybe I was watching BBC America, and they're like, the Irish are, you know, they're trying to resell them on another vote, and they have all kinds of relations about why they should be voting yes, how much good it's going to do them.
The Irish weren't even in World War II, for God's sake, they're pretty much isolationists.
Well, that's one of the main reasons, because they felt that they didn't want to be locked into some kind of tax scheme, Europe-wide, and they definitely did not want to be a part of a European army, which, of course, is exactly the two things that are in this treaty.
They'll probably vote against it again.
I don't think so, man.
People are so stupid.
They'll do a whole media blitz, they'll really work it, and...
I don't think so.
Do you think the Irish can be convinced that it's good for them to sign off on this deal?
I think that they...
No, but I do believe that whatever they do in the referendum, I'm sure they can get the votes they need.
It was close enough.
Now, we are getting a new EU president, the Czech...
This Czech guy who is actually...
He seems pretty interesting.
He's pretty much spoken out against the Lisbon Treaty, specifically.
What him is the boss for?
That doesn't make any sense.
Well, it rotates.
That's one of the things they wanted to stop in the treaty is they wanted to have one president, none of this rotating shit, because clearly that doesn't fit the agenda.
So, it's nuts.
Well, I know it's going to be responsible for World War III. Okay, hit me.
It's going to be at some point, you know, there's still animosity, cultural animosity between a lot of these countries, you know, ever since, you know, the 10th century.
I take you right back, you know, it's not going to happen between the European countries.
It's going to happen between, it's going to be India, Pakistan, it's going to be China with Pakistan, the U.S. and Europe with India.
I'm not quite sure how Russia fits in, where they're going to fit in.
But I think it's those big three.
I think that's what's brewing.
That's what's happening in the background.
Everyone's got to be pissed at each other about the money system and that whole region.
Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India.
That's the next theater as far as I'm concerned.
No, that place is always battling each other.
I don't see that as causing the kind of mess that you get when the Germans and the French go at it.
Man, wouldn't that be funny to see that happen?
You know?
Could happen.
Yeah.
I mean, but you might be, you know, but we have to remember that media has changed a lot, and the public has, you know, reacts differently than they used to to things, and I don't know.
Historically, but I'm just looking at it from a historical perspective, these Europeans are always fighting with each other.
You know, and they get into this pretty nasty, you know, it gets pretty bad.
What I'm seeing is it's all lackluster.
No one gives a shit.
No one wants to fight.
No one wants to do anything.
I take you right back to I'm a celebrity.
Get me out of here.
That's all people want to do.
They want to drink.
They want to watch TV. And they want to see the football game.
And that's about it.
People don't give a shit.
They just let it all happen.
No one's paying attention.
And everyone's talking about Amy Winehouse.
Including us.
What happens when the Muslims get majority control of France?
That'd be interesting.
Well, this is already happening all over Europe because people are so lethargic.
The Netherlands, great example.
I hear people complain all the time, oh man, we've got more scarves in our government than we have on street corners.
What's going on here?
Well, you lazy bastards.
You didn't run for anything.
You didn't vote.
You didn't run for anything.
These people who did, they're smart.
They said, hey, shit, there's an opportunity.
I'm going to represent my community.
Boom, they're in.
They get voted for.
It's the same everywhere.
Well, throughout Europe.
It's the same in the States.
No one sticks up and says, oh, I'm going to run for mayor or senate or governor or anything because they actually have any ideals.
Yeah, people don't run much.
They should run more.
They bitch a lot.
People could complain.
In fact, where's the organization of the Democratic Party?
Where are all the field offices?
Where's the organization for the Republican Party?
Yeah, sure, we've got the Obama bots and they've got their little email network and stuff.
But really, people who care and are out there and doing stuff doesn't exist anymore, John.
Well, not to mention it, I don't know where these things are.
I mean, there's like a back room somewhere, and then all these guys that are just perpetual politicians move into an area.
They take over the town, and they start to rob it, and nobody seems to notice.
I mean, the state of California is ridiculous, as a matter of fact.
We were so broke.
And somebody pointed out that we've doubled our size of government even though we're in debt over the last few years.
And every time there's a scandal, there's always some middlemen, like the school systems around here, are top-heavy with bureaucrats, and they're getting incredible salaries.
And the one little city that went out of business, Vallejo, went bankrupt.
And then they revealed what they were paying these people.
Oh, huge.
I mean, the chief of police was making like a half a million dollars, and these other guys, our deputy, were making $400,000 a year, and clerks were making hundreds of thousands.
It was like they were robbing these idiots.
Yep.
Just like the $8.4 trillion robbery.
We're all idiots.
No, it is a robbery.
It's a complete robbery.
And you can't even get somebody like McCain, who was running, who could have positioned himself against all this stuff.
He was part of the sellout.
He was just a stooge.
It was ridiculous.
No wonder he couldn't even come close to winning.
So?
Can we fix it?
No.
We're screwed.
Totally hosed.
I can't even get into the Christmas spirit.
I have no Christmas spirit going on.
Well, it's early.
No, it's not.
They put the lights on in the town and everyone's, you know, they got the bells out and the Santas and they're doing their thing.
And it's probably this deflationary spiral or whatever it is where everyone's just staying indoors.
You know, it's just nothing's going on.
It seems like total deadlock.
I don't know, man.
Well, I remember last week we made our predictions about the Black Friday.
Did you get the actual numbers?
It probably wasn't that bad, was it?
No, it was good, actually.
I had predicted it was going to go down 5%.
You predicted 20%.
And it actually went up, depending on who you talk to, between 5% and 7% up.
It went up between 5% and 7%.
Unreal.
Where did those numbers come from?
Who produces those?
I don't know.
They come from here and there.
You don't think that's important?
I don't know where the numbers come from off the top of my head.
I could look it up and find out, and I'm sure that since everyone uses these numbers, and from what I could tell, because I looked around, these places were doing a hell of a business.
Three people were killed!
I was going to say, that's the thing we should do next season.
We have to do the body count for Black Friday.
God, man.
So they break the door down.
This guy is squashed underneath the door.
They're just running over the door.
And then everyone's in, the guy's dead, squashed like a bug, and then they want to close the store and people say, no, screw you, man, we want our cheap Xbox 360.
We don't give a shit if he's dead.
I got a deal here.
There's only a couple left.
And it's like the other thing was, there's something about the Walmart employees had locked arms.
I'm thinking, what do these guys work in minimum ways, locked arms against an angry crowd of people bearing torches trying to kill Frankenstein, and you're locking arms?
Hell, I'm getting out of the way.
They must be chipped at Walmart.
There's no other way.
Yeah, I know.
It makes no sense.
If these people were pushing in, they're going to bust down the doors.
People have got to get a little more experience with crowd behavior and how dangerous a moving crowd is.
I mean, this is particularly...
I mean, you can get killed.
Well, also, a lot of people don't know about the corporate culture of Walmart, which is indeed very cult-like and a little bit scary.
They have these huge company meetings and auditoriums.
Whenever people travel, including the highest executives in the company, they stay at really cheap hotels slash motels.
They sleep two people to a room.
It's all about cutting costs, and it's a very...
Yeah, it's kind of like a militaristic culture in a way.
You know, I've run into other companies.
There's a number of them that used to go to trade shows a lot.
You know, so, yeah, well, I'm at such and such motel here in Las Vegas.
I'm saying, why don't you stay at one of the main places?
Well, they put us up because we got a real good deal.
And, of course, we're two people to a room.
And I'm thinking...
I'm thinking more along the lines of a typical liability issue.
I mean, if you're starting to put two people in a room, and you're a corporation, and you irresponsibly put two people in a room, and one of them happens to be a, you know, a pedophile, a rapist, you know, or just a masher, or somebody, you know, just the risks there are just, you know...
I mean, it's out of control.
I mean, whatever ten cents you saved could be wiped out, you know, a hundredfold with a lawsuit about somebody, you know...
Doing something, throwing up.
I mean, there's a million possibilities.
The lack of privacy.
I've never ever heard of any problems like that with Walmart.
And they've been doing this for a long time.
Well, the Walmart police is always on the lookout, of course.
I'm just saying, I think it's a bad idea.
If you're spending, you know, send less people.
I mean, if you're spending, if you are so cheap that you have to put people in a crappy motel two up, why don't you put three in there while you're at it?
Get a roll away.
Get a roll away.
And get a roll away.
They always have a roll away.
Every place has a roll away.
You can get a third person in there once you go that far.
You know, it just makes no sense to me that these companies do that.
I mean, there are ways to get...
I mean, another possibility for...
I've always thought this was a good recommendation.
Instead of, you know...
Dictating what people should be doing with their travel budget.
Give them a travel budget of X amount of money and let them spend it the way they want to.
Let them figure it out.
If they want to double up to save money so they can have some leftover at the end of the year for their travel budget, fine.
MTV used to do that.
It was Viacom then, yeah.
So you could split the cost of a first class ticket and take someone with you and go coach.
There was all kinds of things that they did.
It was kind of cool that way.
Yeah, I think it's a good policy and it lets people be creative and it also is less work for the company.
You're just responsible for ending up in Vegas.
You have to be there for some show, let's say.
And you can stay wherever you want.
If you want to stay at the Bellagio, go ahead.
If you feel like throwing your money at it.
Why should it all be determined by the corporation putting everybody up in the same stupid motel so they can share a ride?
It's all for the cost.
It's all for the company.
Hey, look, they link arms.
You don't think that was a bad idea?
Boy.
Thousands of environmental campaigners marched on Westminster today to demand more to be done to combat climate change.
Ha!
My goodness.
Hey, that's a dead horse.
So their government's robbing them blind, making them poor.
Let's go march for climate change.
There's some screwed up priorities there.
Oh, it's about the third runway at Heathrow, of course.
Oh, yeah.
Those things are always just a scam.
You know, you get a group together and you pressure Heathrow about the third runway until you get bought off.
Really?
You can make money out of that?
Oh, I mean, there's a lot of these pressure groups that do nothing more than go into a corporation with a large contingent of idiots that go along with the program, these protesters.
And then they go into a corporation, and the next thing you know, they have a big contribution to their organization, and then they go off to some other corporation.
They don't bother these people.
I mean, this was always the accusation against Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, that he was essentially, you know, it's a legal form of extortion.
And go from one company to another and claim that, you know, you're looking into this or that, and then you either, you know, get told to shove off, and you're either going to have to do it, you know, a lot of it's a bluff.
Or you protest against a thing, you make a big stink, give the company a black eye.
And it's not worth the company's PR efforts.
They just as soon give you the money.
It's a good way to make a living.
I was just going to say, yeah, my brain is spinning.
I'm in overdrive here.
It's like, oh, opportunity.
Yeah, it's a real good way to make a living.
I mean, if you have the lack of scruples to do it.
But yeah, when you see something like this about Heathrow, about the runway, I can't guarantee it, but there's a good chance that it's somebody's operation that needs to get a little more funding, let's say.
They could use a little donation, if you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, I hear you.
I hear you.
Well, anyway, just to finalize UK news, they did their annual Queen's speech or whatever, and then they present what laws they want to put into effect, which includes lots more CCTV coverage all over the country.
How much more can they put in?
Oh, you'd be amazed.
The big drive...
So, you know, they're on this prostitution thing we talked about last week.
Now they want to change the licensing laws where lap dancing clubs are now deemed as places of sexual encounter.
Hmm.
Which...
There you go.
That's the queen calling.
Yeah.
Which...
Queen's calling.
This happens every week.
Hello?
Can you call back in a half an hour?
No, man.
15 minutes, I'm done with you.
Ah, fuck it.
Anyway.
So, that was a solicitor.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Is it a lawyer solicitor?
No, no.
We don't have lawyer solicitors.
No.
The thing is, you know, these boiler rooms are so blatant now that when they pick up, when they say, you know, usually they mispronounce your name.
Is this John...
It depends on, you know...
They obviously didn't think much about it because it comes up on the computer screen if anybody wants to know how these things...
Hello, is Mr...
They look at the name and they go, oh my god.
And they say, what am I going to say to this guy?
Dvorak?
Dvorak.
Yeah, yeah, that's how we say it.
What I find highly annoying is T-Mobile does this a lot.
AT&T does it as well.
I'm sure all carriers do it.
So, you're in a foreign country, and you get a text message, which costs 50 cents.
And it's like, win an Xbox 360!
What the fuck is that?
Stop!
It costs me money to receive this stupid message...
And you'd think that they would have...
It's not that hard to figure out that I'm in a different country.
Maybe not a good time to bother me.
That's hilarious.
Well, anyway, so these people pick up, and it's all computerized.
By the way, I worked in a boiler room once when I was in college.
Of course.
And what was cool about it is that one thing I learned of one scam...
Which is not on the boiler room side, but on the corporate side, there was some company that bought a bunch of, a huge buy of a bunch of tickets to some Warriors game for the benefit of some, you know, the fireman or something.
And then they called you guys to unload them?
No, they bought the tickets, and then they, when you went to deliver something, you gave them a receipt.
I wish I could remember the details.
It was too long ago.
But you gave them the receipt, and then they had to return the tickets.
They wouldn't pay, and they kept half of the receipt and said they lost it.
Oh no!
Yeah, so they kept, so they basically took, and I mentioned this to my supervisor, oh yeah, those guys, they do that every year.
And so, but anyway, so I was the number one sales guy for one day, and I was like, just everybody was buying.
And then, of course, the random number theory came to pass.
It turned out it was just a random number event, because I couldn't sell anything after, that was weird.
But the thing about old-fashioned boiler rooms is they weren't as noisy as the ones today.
So when these people call you like this last call I got, you pick it up and it sounds like they're at a football stadium.
I mean, there's so much ambient noise because these guys are so cheap, they can't put people in a soundproof booth.
Yeah, soundproof booths or good headsets.
And they always wait because they have systems in place where if an answering machine picks up, they know it's an answering machine.
Right.
So I'm always...
If I get an unidentified number, I'm always trying to answer in one of those ways that I can pretend to be an answering machine.
Hello.
And then I wait.
I'm not here right now.
Hi, I'd like to tell you something.
I'm not here right now.
Yeah, or if you could have something hooked up when you hit a button.
But...
Yeah, but anyway, there's too much of this.
There are these callers, and they're all done on obviously the same computerized system.
They're wrapping through, and you always have the one where it rings, and you pick it up, and they never pick it up because the machine had cycled onto the next number somebody else picked up before you did, and you have one clerk that's selling.
And then the other thing that's kind of amusing is they all work off scripts.
Yeah.
And so whatever you tell them, they have a branch.
If he says no here, then go to page three, then they start to pick up the script again, and they start reading it.
And these guys are very insistent in boiler rooms that you read from the script.
So if I'm bored, once in a while I'll start to chat with the guy, because I know it's killing him, and try to get him off script as best I can.
So I had this guy call me a couple weeks ago, selling of all things wine.
Oh, boy.
You were the wrong guy to call on that day.
Well, the guy was a jerk, too.
And I looked up this company, and I should look it up and tell everybody what it is, because you never get called by these guys.
This place is ridiculous.
They sell unknown, in this case, it was a little-known Grave wine, which is one of the cheapest wines you can get in the Bordeaux area.
Typically, any Grave in the absolute best year, if you pay 20 bucks, you pay too much.
And generally speaking, you can get them for 12 bucks a decent bottle.
And he had some grov wine and he was picked by this guy, a famous guy, and this and that.
And he went on and on.
They're $35 a bottle and you should buy five cases.
And he says, I was thinking, fine cases.
I don't even have heard of this winery.
Buy now while stocks last.
And the guy's really adamant.
Well, I don't think you know anything about wine.
That's the problem.
If you did, you'd buy this wine immediately.
Why don't you just buy a case?
I was baffled by the fact that I said, no, I'd like to taste the wines.
I've got wine stores all around me that get better deals than this by a lot.
And he went on and on and on and on and then he became like the, I think he had a supervisor watching him because I couldn't get rid of him.
And I had to actually hang up.
At some point.
And so he was obviously being tested.
Somebody was watching him.
His every move.
So did you actually get to lay into him?
Did he finally figure out that you actually know what the hell you're talking about?
I told him he was talking about this operation.
It's a scam.
And you don't know anything about anything.
He always had some snarky answer.
And then he got mad at me for being an idiot.
You know, this is a sales thing where first you sweet-talk the person and you change your approach because you never know.
Some people might like to be abused and so is a last-ditch effort.
You start insulting the person and maybe, okay, I'll buy, I'll buy.
Stop insulting me.
I don't know what that is.
I'll have to remember that next time I'm at an advertising agency.
Hey, you idiot!
You don't know how good we are.
You don't even deserve to be advertising on our programming, damn it!
So anyway, and then the guy said something else, and I said, well...
I can't buy.
And I just hung up on him because I couldn't take it anymore.
Because he wasn't going to recognize the fact that I wasn't going to buy, A, under any circumstances.
And he was wasting his own time.
He's supposed to be making money as a salesperson.
I had to assume that he was just being trained or something.
I don't know what it was.
But if anyone out there ever gets a phone call about wine, do not ever buy wine from some solicitor online.
You're going to get ripped off.
Alright, man.
I think we're done.
Yeah, we could be done.
I do want to remind everybody that seeing that this is the holiday season, please, since you probably can't find it on television anymore, maybe, maybe one or two stations still run it, but you should definitely have a look at It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart.
Very recognizable story these days.
So we have some t-shirts, by the way.
No, we do not.
Our friend at Angry Shirts is...
Oh, from Angry Fan?
No.
Yeah, go to angryshirts.com.
You actually go to noagenda.angryshirts.
Really?
Dot com?
Yeah.
Okay, this will mess up the connection.
Oh, I see.
$16.95...
Yeah.
Hey, I like the logo.
Let me just copy that.
Now we have a logo.
Yeah, he sent me a note saying, you know, I just made up a logo because you guys apparently don't have one.
Yeah, we do now.
Yeah, it's true.
We do now.
Great.
This is pretty funny.
I like these.
What is this?
Proud Citizen of Gitmo Nation.
That's funny.
I like it.
Yeah.
And I decided what we should do is we're going to bring a T-shirt.
These are limited editions.
We're going to roll them out for a month or two, maybe.
And then we're going to just do a new one, and the old ones are going to be discontinued.
And that's going to, you know, hopefully get people to collect them.
So here's the only thing.
Shouldn't there be a URL or something or some place to go to, maybe on the back of the t-shirt?
Is it only on the front?
No, we're going to...
I wanted to make sure that...
This is a test.
I just wanted to do something simple so it would be, you know, people would wonder what it was.
And then you might have to ask the guy wearing the shirt, what the hell is that?
What do you mean?
This is a test.
Only a test.
What are you talking about?
Brown citizen of what?
When is this?
So then they'd say, well, there's a pod show named No Agenda.
You can find it at curry.com and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Dvorak?
Dvorak.org?
Dvorak.org slash blog.
I could have put that on there, but no.
All right, man.
You really got to turn on your speaker next time.
I get a lot of slap back.
It's interesting you don't use headphones.
I do use headphones when I do the Tech 5 and some other stuff, but when I'm doing these back-and-forth podcasts, it's just easier for me not to.
Huh.
I should try that next time.
And it's an hour and ten minutes, and you know, with the headphones on, I mean, it's just like your ears get sweaty, you get fungus.
Full of fungus in Gitmo Nation East.
I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak here in Gitmo Nation West, also known as Northern Silicon Valley.
We'll talk to you again next week, right here on No Agenda.
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