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Dec. 27, 2008 - No Agenda

01:51:30

63: Save This Polar Bear

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	Coming to you from the epicenter of global warming, where it is sub-zero temperatures in Gitmon Nation, east from the United Kingdom, still in the Curry Manor.
	I'm Adam Curry.
	I'm John C. Dvorak here in northern Silicon Valley, California, where it's actually sunny.
	It'll probably be about 65.
	I hate you.
	65, that's global warming right now.
	Oh man, it is.
	The continent is like minus five centigrade.
	It is so cold and it's just hovering around freezing here.
	Well, I spent the week up in Washington where we were snowed in.
	Oh, that's right.
	Well, that must have been cozy and fun and old-fashioned snowing Christmas.
	You know, it was okay.
	It was good.
	I got to throw snowballs.
	You know, we have a hill in our, you know, we have actually from the driveway down.
	So we were, you know, all drank a lot and went down the inner tubes at midnight and bounced around a lot.
	Wait a minute.
	Let me just get a visual.
	Okay.
	I just see your fat white ass in a big black inner tube.
	Just a quick visual.
	And then if you snowball fights, and that was that.
	You know, it's cold.
	But the thing that was interesting was the trip up, because I took a, again, Virgin America, who should be sponsoring the show.
	Hell yeah.
	Flight.
	And why don't you call Branson up and tell him to sponsor the show.
	I met him once in the lounge when they were doing their Chicago inaugural flight.
	He's a real introverted guy.
	I think he's really like the rock star figurehead.
	This is all big hedge funds.
	Most of Virgin, certainly Atlantic is run by, I think, Lufthansa.
	And if you go to...
	Well, what they do is pretty smart.
	If you take Virgin Atlantic, at least, and Virgin America is yet another operations company, but I think it's Menzies Aviation, I think, does all of their ground handling and their check-in work.
	So they've outsourced all of it.
	So the whole thing's virtual?
	It is, kind of, yeah.
	Yeah, if you know what you're doing in any business, you can virtualize it.
	Well, the first clue came, in fact, almost a year ago exactly to the date.
	We always get invited to the flight attendants party.
	They have a party and awards.
	And you get to know most of these flight attendants if you fly it a lot, particularly on the long-haul flights.
	And so it's kind of fun.
	And every single year, Branson always shows up and does a nice little spiel for everybody and then hands out an award.
	And last year, it was via videotape.
	So you know that's when the culture is kind of disappearing.
	And it becomes, oh, Gads, a real business.
	No more fun.
	Well, yeah.
	Well, that happens to everything.
	Everything is a startup.
	You know, it goes...
	It's cheap after the bean counters come and say, hey, you guys can't keep doing this.
	Really, my most favorite airline has got to be EasyJet.
	That's the one that has just everything about it works, right down to speedy boarding.
	Do they have this on the low-cost airlines in the States, John, the concept of speedy boarding?
	Well, Southwest, you know, the originator of this whole type of operation was...
	Is Southwest, right?
	No, actually, it was a company called PSA, Pacific Southwest Airlines.
	And they were bought by American or United or somebody, and they were just...
	I think they were bought by...
	No, they were bought by U.S. West.
	Or U.S. Air, I'm sorry.
	They were bought by U.S. Air, and the first thing they had to do was...
	These airplanes that PSA flew had a smile on them.
	They painted a smile on them.
	And the first thing that US Airways does is they take the smile off.
	And then the second thing they did was...
	Fuck the smile.
	Get rid of that.
	Yeah.
	So that's gone.
	And then the second thing they did was on PSA they used to have these comedy acts.
	In the unlikely event of a water landing, besides getting wet or some lame joke like that.
	And if you're sitting next to a child or someone acting like a child.
	Put their mask on.
	Put yours on first and then theirs.
	I remember once I heard a pilot do a spiel.
	Have you ever heard the pilot come on and do a good spiel?
	No.
	No, I never have.
	The one I liked, and it was in America.
	I can't remember.
	I was a kid with my parents.
	I remember we were being pushed back from the gate.
	So just before that happened, the pilot gets on the intercom and he says, okay, let's just put that in reverse.
	Easy up on the clutch.
	There we go.
	Ah, yes, we're backing up.
	It was very funny.
	And I've never forgotten that.
	Like, eh, that's a good joke.
	Well, I have a recorder on me usually, and I'm always waiting to catch it, because most of this is a folklore bit, because the same gags have all been recycled, and every once in a while, somebody will come on, they'll do it on Southwest very rarely, but once in a while, some guy will come out with the entire, the classic.
	Spiel with all the jokes.
	All the jokes in it, yeah.
	And, you know, he reads through the whole thing.
	Anyway, so they got rid of that because we can't have that because it's probably, you know, they don't know why, but this U.S. Air is not the most fun-loving company.
	Anyway, so then they had this, they took all their routes and then they couldn't make any money on them and then they folded it.
	Yeah.
	And then apparently, there was another one, Western Airlines, and there was a couple other ones that flew out here, and they got all bought up, and then these guys couldn't handle it.
	And all that's left now is United Express, which I think was Western or one of the other companies that they bought.
	And then the Southwest cropped up.
	And Southwest, the guy who started at Southwest, he modeled the company after PSA, and that's why he named it Southwest, which is part of the PSA name.
	But he has his basic theory, and they have speedy boarding.
	He says that once these carriers have to realize that a plane doesn't make any money sitting on the ground, he wants his planes in the air almost as much as, you know, he doesn't want them sitting around.
	They're flying.
	Yeah.
	It's a spreadsheet business.
	That's absolutely the only way you make money.
	Right.
	So he's got those things.
	They land, they dump everybody out, and they load them up.
	You know what I like even better is now Amsterdam and London, Gatwick, which has a beautiful new north terminal.
	Gatwick always had a real seedy kind of connotation, but the new terminal is fantastic.
	They have their own kind of pier, their own wing, if you will, for these short route, short hop flights.
	And there's no jetway.
	It's all stairs.
	So, boom, you know, the plane rolls up.
	They've got the hold open before they even have the chocks in.
	The bags are coming out.
	The new bags are going on.
	People just are right off the plane.
	You don't have to wait for that stupid jetway.
	They walk down front and back, which is great on a 737.
	So it empties out real quick.
	And then everyone walks on.
	And with speedy boarding, the only advantage is for like, I think it's 10 or 12 pounds extra, you are boarded first.
	So you can basically sit wherever you want.
	I like to sit kind of near the front so you can get off even quicker.
	But it's fast.
	What I love about Virgin America, which I hope EasyJet will get, Is the in-seat ordering.
	That just rocks so hard.
	I love that.
	You just sit there and go on a little screen.
	Boop, boop.
	I'll have a Coke.
	I'll have some pretzels.
	Because, of course, that's about all there is.
	You know, I want a little model airplane.
	A Virgin America model airplane.
	And then you swipe your credit card and the stewardess flight attendant comes by and hands it to you.
	Yeah, well, Virgin America is the way to go.
	But anyway, so I go up to Seattle, and I guess I landed up there, and it was, I guess, a hub of a disaster.
	The Alaskan canceled all its flights.
	Northwest canceled all its flights, because especially Northwest had some issues.
	I don't know what was wrong with Alaska.
	And so the airport was like being in Saigon when the fall of Vietnam took place.
	There's people, they're walking around.
	I guess they have these, in Seattle airport, they have these blue blankies that they give out to people that are, I guess, stranded there so they don't freeze to death.
	The ones that are about big enough to cover half of your body?
	No, actually, these are pretty big.
	But it was freezing because it was snowing.
	It was like a blizzard outside.
	And so there's a bunch of these people wandering around with these blankets on.
	It looked like the Bedouins or something.
	It just had a strange feeling to it.
	Anyway, it was pretty funny because I was taking a puddle jumper from there, and I went down to Boeing Field to get that, and that wasn't really too bad there.
	I don't know.
	It was a localized puddle.
	Problem, I guess.
	I don't know.
	But whatever the case was, I guess some people were stranded in the United States because of this winter storm for, I don't know, three, four days in some of these airports.
	They couldn't get home.
	They're moaning and groaning on TV. Bastards.
	Just the same.
	Don't moan.
	Don't moan.
	So I guess a lot of them just finally got out the other day.
	So I thought that was kind of interesting to experience.
	And this is all part of the global warming, of course, which has struck America.
	Is it not so that there's still ice storms in the northeast and there's all kinds of weird weather, right?
	That's still ongoing since we spoke last week.
	Yeah, it's been going on all week, it looks like.
	And there's the snowfall we had up in Washington.
	I mean, flying in.
	I'm flying in, looking down on Seattle.
	I've never seen Seattle like this.
	It was just white.
	The whole thing, it was just a mass of snow.
	Nice.
	Anyway.
	So, for the listeners who are hearing this on the podcast, for the first time today, we're streaming the show live.
	Which was kind of funny because I was also trying to set up the phone bridge so we could take a call, but Skype is...
	I mean, this thing is so jerry-rigged.
	It's really held together with bailing wire and some chewing gum that I just couldn't get it to work.
	But I think people enjoyed me trying to configure it.
	A lot of swearing.
	So the big news here, I come back, I'm watching the ABC. It's still made off a bit.
	No.
	Well, I mean, yeah, but to me, the big news is a new show they're bringing out.
	Homeland Security USA? Yeah.
	Can you believe that?
	Homeland Security USA? John, what rock have you been on?
	You were up in Seattle.
	This is like three weeks ago.
	Same thing.
	Seattle rock.
	No, but didn't I mention this to you three weeks ago?
	No.
	Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did.
	Homeland Security USA. What was the timestamp on the mention?
	It was episode number 6-0 and the timestamp...
	Thanks, Dick.
	This is what we always do.
	It's like, you know, I mentioned that.
	Oh, yeah?
	What episode and what time code?
	Yeah, that's the great thing about doing.
	When you do a show that's an hour and a half, if you did it more, you'll never find anything.
	This is all lost to posterity in some future date when somebody takes and transcodes everything into some way they can search it.
	I wonder about that, you know, because I do keep a lot of stuff that I think is relevant.
	And, you know, all of my Dutch and American radio work is all online.
	Nice guy in Australia, clogwog.net, he did that all for me.
	And I always wonder if, you know, will anyone ever give a shit?
	Well, it's just, you know, the server will one day just, you know, someone will die, no one will pay a bill, and then it's gone, right?
	It's just over.
	I think most stuff will be gone.
	But people would give a shit if they, you know, if we're talking about 100 years from now and someone's doing research of the era and there was some way of accessing some of this old material just to see what people were thinking.
	You know what we need?
	Here's what we need.
	We need to get a number of episodes of this show into a presidential library.
	It's got to be possible.
	It'd be funny to be in the Bush Library.
	I think all the episodes should be in the presidential library.
	Damn straight!
	If not the congressional library.
	All the episodes as MP3s would go on one DVD. I mean, what's the big deal?
	We should probably make a number of DVDs of all the episodes in MP3 format and then give them to a bunch of libraries all over the country.
	Yeah, see if they take them.
	They might.
	Yeah.
	I'm sorry?
	I'm saying they might.
	I mean, if I'm a librarian, they have a lot of these archival libraries like the Bancroft over here at the University of California, which just essentially collects all kinds of weird crap.
	That's, you know, hundreds of years old.
	Usually from family heirlooms.
	Well, I am in the Dutch Broadcast History Museum because I did all that stuff for public television.
	So I know that's been kept.
	But it's always, you know, the same five clips.
	Right.
	Yeah, that's not the same.
	That's complete episodic clips.
	You know, 60, 70, 100, you know, how many shows?
	I've got thousands.
	I've got thousands of shows.
	I have, like, all my Silicon Spin shows.
	And, of course, they're in boxes scattered around the basement.
	And I also have, actually, the early stuff I did from CNET on big U-Matics.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I love those.
	You know, those should probably be transcoded before the other stuff, before those things all blow up.
	And, you know, it's all, you know, I don't know.
	I mean, this is typical of any kind of small operation, but they, at ZDTV, which became TechTV, I went into the office once and there was a big giant box of all my, you know, two years of my shows.
	And I said, what is this box doing here?
	And they said, we're throwing it out.
	You know, you've told me this story.
	Yeah, and so I grabbed them and I made sure to get them, as they came out, I made sure to grab them when they were going to go into another process of throwing them out.
	And it reminds me of a friend of mine who's a New York agent and book packager named Bob Mecoy.
	He used to work at Dell, which was bought up by, I think, one of the other Bantam and then bought up by somebody else and God knows who owns what now.
	So he's going, he was apparently at one of the, someplace, one of their facilities to get something out of the archives.
	And he goes and he finds a dumpster filled to the brim with original art that was cover art for all those old Dell murder mysteries and all that kind of stuff.
	Oh no, you're kidding me.
	Oh, that's horrible.
	Yeah, and he says, what's going on here?
	And the guy says, oh yeah, the accountants told us we had to get rid of this stuff so we could shrink the office, blah, blah, blah.
	So he grabbed whatever he could.
	Actually, I have four pieces that I got, and they're just really dynamite.
	They're oil paintings.
	So he just grabbed as much as he could and filled his car, because they were going to just burn it.
	And I'm thinking, what a bunch of boneheads.
	I mean, this could have gone on a really nice auction.
	I'll tell you though, because we've just gone through this exercise, cleaning out storage, really decimating the amount of crap we have in this house for the move, which starts on Monday.
	Tuesday we'll be in the new house.
	And...
	Everyone says, okay, I'll take this to the auction house.
	We have some nice shit that we just don't want anymore.
	You can't just throw it away.
	I'd much rather give it away, which is what we're going to wind up doing because no one's buying anything.
	There's auctions of smaller, lower-priced items that aren't specialty antiques or real collector's items.
	Even eBay.
	It's really tough.
	People are not buying a lot.
	In fact, when it comes to furniture, I'm not talking about paintings.
	When it comes to furniture, the experience that these guys have is people would much rather go to Ikea, buy some flat-pack crap, throw it together instead of buying something.
	We have a quality late 1800s couch and two chairs.
	I'm talking big bombastic Victorian wood with gold trimmings.
	We had them completely reupholstered.
	These things, when we bought them, probably worth $9,000.
	Maybe a little more.
	Couldn't give it away.
	No one wants it.
	They'd much rather have IKEA shit.
	This was in the 80s when he found this cache of art.
	But I think there's probably more to it.
	I think the one element, even though I express lament, there's probably the element of rights.
	Artists, they send their stuff in and they still own it.
	And so you can't, you know, they may have sold it as, you know, there's probably, like, some of them were probably sold as work for hire and some of them were sold as, you know, one-time North American rights.
	And, you know, there's probably a whole bunch of different deals that were done to get all this art.
	And they probably, if you put it on the auction market, you'd get sued by one of these artists who was seeing you ripping them off because they probably should have the piece back or who knows what.
	Yeah, could be.
	So they say, screw it.
	We'll just throw it out.
	And, you know, what's the worst that can happen?
	I don't know.
	But I think that goes on a lot.
	I think a lot of stuff is a lot of history and a lot of, I know, like photographic archives, a lot of these newspapers is going to end up gone because these newspapers are, you know, one company buys another, which buys another, which buys another, and then they fold it.
	So check this out.
	The New York Times, did you know that they own part of the Red Sox?
	Yeah, I know.
	Isn't that funny?
	We blogged that.
	I mean, where's the outrage on that?
	That's ridiculous.
	So they have like a $400 million payment coming due in February or March, so they need to get some cash.
	I don't know if this is public knowledge, but all of a sudden I read right there in the paper, it's like, yeah, we're selling our $200 million stake in the Red Sox.
	Huh?
	In the rival town's team?
	Well, the New York Times owns the Boston Globe, and I think that's a connection there.
	Okay, yeah, that's true.
	But still, the headline was really weird.
	I'm like, whoa.
	Well, yeah, that's the way you'd want to play the headline, to make a laughing stock out of New York.
	But, in fact, it's the Boston Globe that's, you know, the real...
	That's the real owner, yeah, true.
	So, um...
	Yeah, so I think, you know, these shows, there's a lot of stuff that, you know, I mean, I was thinking about this with the, generally speaking, because I still have a bunch of, you know, I moved some old CDs.
	I had a CD-ROM burner, like, you know, version one.
	When they first came out, they were 1X. And then it finalizes for three hours?
	Yeah, it was 1X, it was SCSI. Oh, I love SCSI. Old SCSI CD-ROM burners, the first ones you'd get.
	The blank CDs, I think, were $2 or $3.
	And it was like a big deal.
	And then you'd burn it, and it was like only one out of two would take.
	They'd always crap out.
	The thing would blow up for some reason.
	It would be, sorry, this didn't work.
	So you'd have to do it again.
	And so anyway, but some of those did, you know, you got a bunch of old ones, and so now some of them are actually losing data.
	I mean, they're already, they're not even that old, 20 years old maybe, and they're already losing data, and so you have to get, find all your old CD-ROMs that you burned and move the data to a DVD as fast as you can.
	And luckily I have a, there was one Plex store model I got a copy of that was considered by experts who analyze discs to see how well they burn or whatever.
	The DVD itself?
	Yeah, there's a couple companies that look at, you know, if you produce a CD-ROM burner, this is for a CD-ROM burner, they can tell you how well it did by looking at it under an electron microscope or something.
	And this guy who runs one of these companies, it's a testing company, he told me about this one particular Plex store drive.
	This was a few years ago, to say the least.
	That was absolutely perfect in every way.
	And it actually, I still have it, and it will read discs that...
	I've got 20 different readers.
	It will read a disc that none of these other readers will touch.
	But then I have to get it off that.
	Obviously, the disc itself is flaky.
	Anyway, it's a real problem.
	I think a lot of data and pictures and everything, people have to have two...
	You back up to hard drives now.
	Yeah.
	Can't trust it.
	I mean, then you have to have a second one just in case.
	Yeah.
	Well, I find just having a lot of copies everywhere usually works.
	That's what I do.
	I have like two, three, four, sometimes more copies of the same thing.
	It's like clutter.
	Yeah.
	There's no reason that you have to do that in a digital age, but, you know, a couple of bad experiences, because this stuff is, once it goes, you lose everything.
	We were just talking about that, that there's a trend amongst the young, the youngins here, when they go to a party or some kind of event, a lot of them will buy the throwaway film cameras, the Kodak, you know, the cartons.
	The carton cam.
	And then they trade those and they hand them out and sometimes they'll even make duplicates.
	But it seems like when someone really wants to make something they care about, there is a difference.
	The youth seems to value traditional photographs over the digital kind.
	Well, I don't know.
	I haven't seen that trend here.
	Well, yeah, but this is England, man.
	We're ahead of all trends in the U.S. Well, we're behind.
	I don't think so.
	Dude, would you please go look at the Hollywood box office and tell me how many English people are involved?
	Give me a break.
	Yeah, well, that's true.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it is.
	No, the music comes from here generally.
	Yeah.
	The big musical influences?
	Yeah, what are you talking about?
	The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Bee Gees.
	Do I need to go on?
	Do you need to get any further back in time?
	No, well, okay.
	Alright, I'll grant you new kids on the block.
	I'm not taking them either.
	Take that.
	Robbie Williams...
	I think you're digging yourself into a hole.
	No, I'm not.
	I'm not.
	Most of the musical pop trends definitely come from England.
	It's always been that way.
	No.
	Yes!
	Oh, please.
	The musical pop trends, yeah.
	You mean the bubblegum music?
	Well, starting with the Beatles.
	If you call the Beatles low end, that's where it started, then yes.
	Skiffle music.
	All the way up to the Spice Girls.
	Hey, here's a movie, if you have not seen this, John, you have to watch.
	It's a French documentary called The World According to Monsanto.
	Oh, yeah, I've heard about it.
	You have got to see this.
	In fact, let me give you, I can give you the link.
	I think I can.
	Of course, it's on Google.
	Hold on.
	Should just be able to click that.
	What the hell?
	Alright, you still with me?
	I didn't bust you out there?
	No, I'm here.
	Okay, good.
	Yeah, you have to take a look at this.
	This is a...
	French...
	It's on Google Movies?
	Yeah, it's on the Google Movies Channel, where everything's available.
	It's on Google, where all your movies can come from.
	I got a great high-quality version of It's a Wonderful Life.
	I actually put that on Medio Today, the little piece where George Bailey says, well, your money's not here.
	It's in your house.
	It's in his house.
	What do you want to get?
	You're going to foreclose?
	I thought it was so cool.
	For 60 years, this movie has been warning us about this very moment, about what can actually happen.
	Every single year it gets rolled out again.
	Although I must say in the past five years since they actually started to do this, to bankrupt everybody, you don't see that movie around that much.
	So that one guy committed suicide?
	From the Madoff...
	I saw them report this live on CNBC. It was fantastic.
	They went live to...
	They showed him killing himself?
	No, not quite that good.
	But they showed a reporter on the street corner.
	And he's like...
	And it was so funny.
	I'm reading this off my Blackberry.
	He was literally reading the ABC News website.
	I'm reading this off my Blackberry and that's why I'm on the corner here standing somewhere, I guess, near the guys.
	He could have been on any corner.
	He says, I don't speak French.
	Because the guy's name is Villapenu or something like that, I believe.
	Yeah, it's got this real aristocratic old French name.
	Yeah, here, I'll look it up from the link that you just sent me.
	I guess he lost a billion dollars of his client's money.
	He figured he had to kill himself before somebody killed him.
	Yeah, really.
	But he slit his wrist, which is an old-fashioned...
	That's old-fashioned.
	Very old school, yeah.
	René Thierry Magon de la Villa...
	Fuck him, he should be dead with a name like that.
	René Thierry Magon de la Villouche.
	Darn!
	Yep.
	Well, every single day now there's new, what would be the right word to describe it, harshness coming out about this fund.
	I mean, the amount of people who were invested directly or, probably worse, indirectly through these so-called feeder funds, which were essentially a fund that you would, you know, you'd put your money into a fund and that fund would do nothing but basically feed the Madoff fund.
	Yeah, how lazy can you be?
	I mean, these guys were just front-loading.
	They were just taking your money, charging you a commission, and then giving it to somebody else.
	It's like outsourcing your investment.
	Cut out the middleman.
	Yeah, so they take a fee.
	Even before the money is invested, they were taking a fee.
	The writer of Forrest Gump, he's suing his broker.
	For investing his money indirectly, one of those feeder funds into Madoff.
	And this is what's crazy, because now there's word that a lot of the fees and commissions that were taken will have to be paid back.
	So you've got schmucks out there who maybe got a $500,000, maybe a million dollar bonus, bought a house, a car, put their kids into college, and now they've got to pay that money back.
	Yeah, well, good.
	Yeah, hell yeah.
	It was so cool.
	Last night they had a movie on here based on a true story.
	And it really shows you...
	I wonder if it was...
	It wasn't BBC, but it really shows you what they're trying to do, how they're trying to portray government workers.
	You know, the people from TheyWorkForUs.org.
	TheyWorkForUs.
	This is a famous story.
	She was a council worker, and her job was to collect the parking meter money And then keep the accounts.
	And what she wound up doing is she wound up skimming.
	And she was skimming off the top and she was doing creative bookkeeping because she was very lonely.
	But she had an Elvis obsession.
	And in her attic, she literally built a 200,000 pound Elvis Presley collection and shrine of memorabilia, which she bought at auctions with this 200,000 pounds.
	But they made it like she was, oh, poor girl, you know, and she was a loner, and no one had liked her, and no one was nice to her, and so it's, of course, it's...
	No one liked her because she was a criminal.
	They were like, throw the...
	And I kept saying to Patricia, throw this bitch in jail, now!
	Even though it was an actress, I'm yelling at the television.
	But they really twisted the story into making it nice.
	But yeah, I know, she was obsessed and no one loved her and had an evil stepmom and her mom died.
	Fuck you!
	I don't care.
	Everyone's got it hard.
	Well, except for you.
	So now, hey, I forgot to mention this.
	I was on the, you know, when I went to Portugal, I watched a bunch of movies, obviously, on the plane, right?
	Coming and going.
	So I watched, believe it or not, I watched Mama Mia.
	Wow.
	I would only watch that if I was certain I was getting laid.
	It was terrible.
	Of course it was terrible.
	I only watched it because it was like watching a train wreck.
	And Meryl Streep, who can't sing and admits it, is just bad.
	And then, the only reason I bring this up is because I'm watching a couple, you know, I'm watching some show on TV, they're raving about this film, and they're, you know, going on and on about how great it was, and she's the great, what an actress, blah, blah, blah.
	The movie made no sense.
	It was stupid.
	The story, and the singing was dreadful, and it was awkward, and it was like, what were these people thinking when they did that, and Pierce Brosnan?
	Have you seen the musical?
	No.
	Sure, the musical was fine on the stage, you know, if it was stage, right, and you had, you know, people who could belt out a tune for a theater audience, I'm sure it was acceptable.
	Doubt it.
	I think I told you that Patricia was offered to do the Meryl Streep role in the Dutch version.
	Joep van der Ende called her personally.
	He's one of the end-em-all guys.
	And she said, no, I hate the outfits.
	The songs, you know, we all know them.
	But her big problem was the outfits.
	The outfits.
	She doesn't like the bell-bottoms.
	I don't want to wear that.
	I was, I was, but anyway, the only reason I ended up watching as much as I did, I think I saw most of it, because I just couldn't, I was just, my jaw just dropped, you know, what is, what is this?
	Yeah, about how bad it was.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, so you seen any good movies lately?
	Uh, well.
	Now we've got the stream going, we've got to be a little more topical.
	Yeah, although I'm just trying to figure out why you start, are you downloading something?
	You really started to break up a little bit there.
	Uh, no, but let me go look.
	No.
	No.
	Oh, wait a minute.
	There's something going on in my other machine.
	Let me turn it off.
	Okay.
	Anyway, while you're doing that, here's, if you want to be topical, the CIA is now bribing Afghanistan warlords.
	Are you with me?
	You know what they're bribing them with?
	No.
	Let's see.
	We have the choice of cash.
	That's always a good one.
	We have guns, another good one.
	But would you believe Viagra?
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	We're the most creative group of people in the American CIA. We really are fantastic that way.
	That's amazing.
	Yeah.
	Viagra.
	Hey man, you're still breaking out.
	It's really shitty.
	What the hell is that?
	It's nothing.
	I'm fine.
	You sound good.
	There's nothing going on.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	Nothing to see here.
	Just move on.
	It's just your ears.
	People on the streams.
	Well, hopefully when you get your new connection next week, we'll have this resolved.
	But this is the thing.
	I believe...
	I was thinking about it last night.
	Because look, what is this connection?
	It's 12...
	12 kilobits...
	Maybe it's a...
	Make it 100 kilobit per second up, 100 kilobit per second down.
	It can't be much more than that.
	In fact, I can measure it right now.
	Hold on, I've got a monitor.
	And my router is set up to prioritize such things.
	Well, this, I believe, is the problem.
	So right now I'm sending between 20...
	Yeah, of course, I'm sending the stream out.
	So 230 kilobits per second.
	And coming in, it's only, you know, it's like one.
	Wait a minute.
	See, that makes no sense.
	Oh, that's kilobytes, so about 100 kilobits per second.
	So that's not the entire pipe.
	So I immediately started thinking, wait a minute, that's got to be the priority routing, and either A, I have to change my router to prioritize Skype packets, or perhaps the ISP is doing nasty things.
	Maybe.
	You know, like after a while, they just get bored of my packets and they start to mess with them.
	I don't know.
	So as you know, I'm a big fan of 1AA football.
	No, what is 1AA football?
	Well, it's now called Division I, but it used to be 1AA. It's college football at its best because it's not commercialized.
	It's very creative.
	There's a lot of experimental play calling, and they have a tournament at the end of the year, which everyone wants the big boys to do.
	And so this team, the Richmond Spiders, won this year.
	And I was rooting for them since they beat the team that I was rooting for before.
	I'm a bandwagon jumper, by the way.
	The most hated of all sports fans.
	I'm on the winning...
	You know, there's a study that was done that shows that the sports fan has the same visceral response to winning and losing as the actual people playing the game.
	Really?
	You ever see this research?
	Yeah, so when you are rooting for the losing team and they lose...
	And it does the same kind of body chemistry stuff to you that it does to the, I can't believe it does it as bad, but it does the same thing to you as it does to the losing team.
	And if you win, you feel elated and it's good for you.
	So this is interesting.
	Why does this take place?
	And is there a way to harness that and change it so that people get those feelings when politicians screw them out of their money?
	Yeah, that would be good.
	Wouldn't it be?
	Because when people lose, in fact, when people win, they go out and they trash the streets.
	They burn cars, they loot and break shop windows, but when there's blatant stealing going on every single day in front of their faces, like, oh, okay, I'll just go watch some 1AAA football.
	That's cool, I like them.
	So anyway, so the Richmond Spiders won, and so now I have to find some way of getting a hoodie.
	Oh, yes, of course.
	Because it's got the greatest logo.
	It's got this huge red spider on a blue background.
	It's really a cool-looking logo for this team.
	But unlike Appalachian State, where there's a bunch of hippies and people that would listen to this kind of show, I don't think anybody at the University of Richmond has ever heard of No Agenda, and I really doubt...
	Oh, dude, we totally have it connect somewhere.
	I guarantee it.
	I guarantee it.
	Yeah, I guarantee it.
	We got like 350 people on the stream right now.
	There's people out there.
	If you take 350 people, power of six or whatever it is.
	Maybe.
	someone knows someone somewhere but anyway if I get to ever get a hold of one of these things just a big spider school again so but yeah so I'm a bandwagon jumper and I always have the time you know in fact I have if you would like a Super Bowl game where there's two teams that I don't care much about either one or even if I do care about one you really switch sides in the middle of the game in halftime I do it.
	Oh, man.
	I know you will.
	I know you will.
	It drives everybody crazy.
	How can you do that?
	I have people saying, how can you do that?
	You were rooted for them, now you won't even talk about them.
	Just because they suck.
	You know, the 49ers are a good example.
	Why should I be rooting for a team that can't win any games?
	It doesn't make any sense to me.
	Well, it's called team spirit.
	It's called state spirit or city spirit, of which you clearly have none.
	I have zero, and I don't intend to have any.
	I don't see why.
	It's like a crappy product.
	What am I supposed to do?
	Say the milk goes sour three days early.
	I'm supposed to be rooting for it?
	I mean, oh, I used to like this milk ten years ago.
	I'm still going to hope it doesn't go bad.
	I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.
	That's a bit of a stretch as an analogy, but I understand where you're coming from.
	You're coming from an unloyalist perspective.
	No, it's not unloyalist.
	This is a product that's not anything more than that.
	Yeah, but we're trained differently.
	A basketball team is a product.
	And if the product sucks, I'm not rooting for it.
	Right, but it's supposed to be a localized product.
	Oh, it's just a marketing gambit.
	I can't fool you, can I? As hard as I try, I can't suck you into it.
	Hey man, I'm really excited.
	You know Mythbusters?
	I'm sure you've watched that show.
	Oh yeah.
	So, Mythbusters, now these are the guys, whenever I latch on to some kind of...
	Isn't the English version slightly different?
	They have different people?
	No, it's the same guys.
	Okay.
	Yeah, they may have a different chick.
	No, I think it's all the same guys.
	It's certainly...
	What's his name?
	Adam.
	Yeah, okay.
	Adam and the other guy.
	Yeah, so it's the same ones.
	So whenever I latch into an alternative energy theory or whatever, people are always jumping on me and say, well, look, the Mythbusters proved it wasn't true!
	I love it.
	Like the Mythbusters, like these fucking jabronis are the absolute scientists of the world and they've got it all figured out.
	They make a TV show.
	Anyway...
	They have...
	I'll just read you a piece from the release.
	The Mythbusters have finally given into the pressure the producers have been under for several years now.
	The show asked the viewers to send their favorite myth in, blah-de-blah-de-blah.
	So they're going to do a two-hour special about the World Trade Center, and they are going to prove or debunk that the towers came down in free fall based upon steel that melted because of jet fuel.
	And the way they're doing this is they're building a one-third scale replica, which still seems pretty damn big to me.
	No, that doesn't sound right.
	It'll cost $7 million.
	That sounds kind of right.
	The whole production should be about $25 million.
	Boeing has donated a scale model airplane.
	They're really going to try and do this.
	And I'd say goodbye to Mythbusters as a show forever once they do that one.
	Because they'll never tell the true story.
	You know that.
	Well, let's see what happens when the executive producer winds up dead in an alley.
	Hell yeah.
	Who else died recently?
	Oh, you know, Eartha Kitt died, which kind of sucks.
	And I've gotten into the habit, which is a sure sign of old guy stuff.
	I read obituaries.
	Not the obituary page, but if I'm reading the Financial Times and I have an obituary, a playwright, Britain's Nobel Laureate playwright.
	Harold Pinter died.
	Yeah.
	They always die in three, so you had Eartha Kitt, Harold Pinter, and probably another one coming.
	I thought there was a third one.
	Hmm.
	By the way, that three thing is actually appropriate considering random number theory.
	So anyway, the Harold Pinter death, I've heard of him, but then I read his bio.
	Wait a minute, you're like an obit guy too?
	No.
	Once in a while, I click on one, though, and I say, whoa, that's interesting.
	So-and-so died at 90, you know, or whatever.
	He died at 92, I think.
	Let me just see if I can find it.
	91 or 92, and then they put of cancer.
	Well, even if he didn't have cancer, he's pretty old.
	So, I mean, I don't think he had that.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	He didn't die of cancer.
	He died of a heart attack, heart failure.
	Eartha Kitt died of colon cancer.
	Okay, well, she's the one.
	I don't understand why some people...
	Which, by the way, if I die of colon cancer, please don't put that in the paper, because then everyone's thinking of my ass.
	I don't like that.
	I don't want people thinking of my anal cavity when I'm dead.
	Tell them he's suicide by cop is what I want.
	So, anyway, you may get it.
	Thanks, friend.
	So, Pinter, I guess he was just an American basher.
	He just blamed us for everything.
	Yeah.
	Like most British people.
	Is that right?
	Have you ever seen the Top Gear episode when they go to the United States?
	Even my wife was offended.
	And she's Dutch.
	Yeah, oh yeah.
	It's totally every single stereotype.
	They go through the South.
	And at one point they even paint a white pickup truck with pink letters like I'm gay or something like that.
	Oh, I vaguely remember.
	Yeah, I may have seen this one.
	In fact, they were refused a license or a permit to do another documentary.
	Ever again, unless it had educational quality or value or whatever.
	But I have to tell you, it was so incredibly biased.
	And of course, all the stereotypes are there and it's all true.
	But it was offensive.
	It really was.
	Most Brits, they talk about America, they all start to laugh.
	For a little bit there, we were kind of cool because we had Obama and they're on to it here.
	They're like, that sucks.
	But then when they meet you face to face, they fall in love with you.
	Yeah, well, that's typical.
	Yeah.
	People don't understand, you know, the way we talk and the way we come across as being really dumb, that's just the way we are.
	There's nothing wrong with it.
	Anyway, Pinter, I still can't find his obituary in the paper.
	Yeah, somewhere.
	Anyway, but Eartha Kitt was, you remember her when she was big back in the heyday?
	Yeah, back in the 1800s, I remember her.
	She was born in 1927.
	Hold on a second.
	Yeah, I'm recording, hon.
	I'm recording.
	Can I help you?
	Yeah, but you're opening the door.
	She doesn't give a shit.
	She needs a foot rub.
	She just got one the other day.
	All right.
	So I got this letter from some guy.
	I'm going to publish it probably on my blog or maybe make a column out of it.
	It's kind of interesting.
	He says that he used to work at the Cheyenne, Wyoming facility.
	They were building Cheyenne Mountain or whatever it's called for the government.
	And he was working for this colonel that used to be on the White House staff.
	Wait a minute.
	Didn't you do this last week?
	Did I do this last week?
	Oh.
	I haven't done anything with this thing.
	I'm still trying to figure out what venue.
	It needs to be repeated and repeated.
	Well, repeated again, because I did like it, and I liked basically what it was saying.
	I don't have it in front of me.
	I had it last week.
	Well, you were going to tell the story, so tell the story again.
	The story is that the government decided they were going to do martial law during the Lyndon Johnson administration, but the Pentagon kept saying, no, we're not going to do that because it's ridiculous because you're a wimp.
	And they tried to get martial law passed three times, and they finally decided that the real problem in the United States was that we were getting back in the 60s.
	We were too smart.
	We were getting too smart.
	We were getting an educated public, and so they had to pull the plug on it.
	And they said, we're not going to be in the business of educating people anymore.
	Let's just dumb them down so we have like a population that is docile.
	All right.
	Now, do you remember we went through this whole thing, and I said they've got New World Order in the history books?
	Well, the thing I forgot to mention was a couple other aspects.
	that To calm down the college kids during this era is when they developed the quarter as opposed to semester system.
	Really?
	Yeah, because they could keep the kids busier because they had more finals.
	They had three instead of two final exam periods, and that would keep them from...
	That's a fact.
	That's fascinating.
	I didn't know that.
	And then the other thing is, if you go to the University of California, they decided to heck with it.
	You know, we're going to just raise the rent.
	And in fact, that's one of the things they did.
	And that's actually Ronald Reagan who decided to add tuition to what was a free school when I went there.
	You know, it was a state university paid for by the taxpayers.
	Why am I, as a California citizen, paying to go to my school?
	And so they ended that in around 1969 or 1970.
	And then they cranked the tuition way up, so it's like really expensive.
	It's almost like what private schools used to be.
	At state university.
	at a university right owned by the state yeah and so that keeps the riffraff out or you know smart kids who would you know cause trouble and then they said well let's take the up the ante one more time you know i don't know if it's the majority but there's an inordinate number of chinese students who are mostly from you know across from china and hong kong and There was always a lot of Hong Kong students, even when I was there.
	But now they've got so many, it's almost like a completely Asian campus.
	And it's kept that way because these kids, what are they going to do?
	Cause trouble?
	They're going to get shipped back.
	Can I tell you something interesting?
	When I was flying, remember when I flew down to Yosemite to go meet my buddy Lex?
	You don't remember.
	Yeah, I do, because this is the guy that you meet every number of years and you do it in Yosemite.
	Right, exactly.
	So, I was flying down in a Cessna 206, and the radio is filled with students, right?
	Because, you know, there's just a lot of people flying in California.
	All of them with Asian accents, almost unintelligible when it comes to their radio traffic, what they're talking about.
	And I was like, dude, what is this?
	He says, no, they can't learn how to fly in their hometown.
	It was too expensive or whatever.
	So they all come over here.
	And throughout the Northern California skies, most radio traffic for general aviation, Asian.
	Outrageous.
	Well, that brings up a number of potential jokes.
	Well, the jokes are made in the air, believe me, when you're just listening to these people trying to communicate.
	It's hard to understand what pilots are saying anyway.
	I'm reminded of a punchline to the Air China catchphrase, you know, you've seen us drive, now watch us fly.
	I like that.
	That's good.
	Well, you know, they also, I know that in Hawaii, a lot of Japanese learn to fly there, because in Hawaii, the Japanese think they own it.
	And so they came, although now that they fly over, it really screwed them into real estate.
	Once the 747, 700, or the big, I think it was the 300 or 400 series, the one that could fly, they used to have to stop in Hawaii to get to Asia.
	Right, now they can just pass right over and go.
	No, I just pass over and the real estate prices collapse there.
	But they like to come over and take flying lessons and go shooting.
	They have more gun ranges, you know, indoor gun ranges where you can shoot almost anything you want.
	And if you look at the Japanese language pamphlets that are all over the place, you just see all the advertisements for all these gun shooting places, karaoke bars, escort services, and flying stuff.
	I think we need to do a no-agenda road trip.
	We've got to go to Hawaii.
	Yeah, we should.
	Shoot some guns.
	Get us some bitches and shoot some guns.
	You know, we can shoot guns here.
	Yeah, but we want some bitches.
	There's bitches here, too.
	I just wanted to hear you say it.
	Hey, let me ask you a question, John.
	Yes?
	Because I'm sure that you, at one point, have been an economic advisor to the government.
	How does this just happen in Russia?
	They devalued the ruble.
	How do you devalue the money?
	How is that done?
	You make an announcement, and then you...
	You sent out a press release on prmarketwire.com.
	Then you peg it to a different figure.
	In other words, if it was 1 ruble, or let's say 20 rubles a dollar, and it's indexed against the dollar, you just say, okay, now it's 40.
	So that's kind of my question.
	Is that always done against the dollar?
	Is Russia doing this against the dollar?
	Are other countries expected?
	No, it tends to be done against the major currencies, which is the dollar, the yen, and the euro.
	And then the rest just fall in line.
	Hmm.
	Well, I think it's interesting that that's happening.
	Well, you know, yeah, I guess.
	It doesn't sound like a...
	You know, it's always a bad thing when it happens.
	Well, I understand that they say they're doing it because oil revenues are so much lower, so I guess then if you devalue the currency, then everything you sell...
	No, wait a minute.
	Well, let's figure this out.
	It said it in the Times.
	It literally said they devalued the currency because oil revenues were so low.
	So that means they have to make...
	So you're getting $60 a barrel, let's say.
	And let's say the $60 translate...
	We're just going to do a one-to-one thing.
	Just to make it easy.
	The $60 translate it to 60 rubles.
	So now you're getting $30 a barrel.
	And so you want to still have it translate to 60 rubles, so you cut the currency in half.
	Well, they didn't do that.
	Makes sense.
	You just index it against, because you're doing the oil deals in dollars.
	Right.
	Okay, yeah, that's it.
	It's so that you can buy the peg currency cheaper.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, yeah.
	Well, 3% doesn't sound like a half.
	But I guess it means something.
	They only did 3%?
	I think so.
	Well, that's kind of silly.
	Well, let me see.
	Maybe that was...
	There was some other country that also devalued.
	That may have been the one that did 3%.
	But they had devalued it like four times in the past month.
	It's not like a one-shot deal.
	It just keeps on going.
	I can't find anything in this.
	Maybe I saw it in yesterday's paper.
	Interesting to see that William Hill, one of the big bookie chains here in the UK, they've got 1.4 billion pounds worth of debt they're trying to refinance.
	How does a bookie go into debt?
	Talk about a pyramid scheme.
	Aren't those guys supposed to be making money off of this?
	They've got a huge 1.4 billion pound of debt?
	That doesn't sound right.
	Yeah.
	No, it says it right here.
	Well, I'm sure it does.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's the Financial Times.
	You've got to believe something at a certain point.
	Huh.
	And I guess really the big news, which is kind of the news that we'll be talking about for many years to come, is, of course, what's happening in Australia, where they are about to start, or they want to put into law that they're going to filter the Internet through Yeah.
	So today, the minister of culture in the United Kingdom came out and said, we need ratings for websites.
	Ah, there you go.
	Ratings if it's inappropriate for children.
	And, you know, there's thousands of websites that show you how to make a bomb.
	We have to stop this.
	Like, dude, there's thousands of libraries.
	Close the libraries.
	Burn the books.
	It's out of control.
	And the news just...
	Well, the culture minister said we need ratings for the website to protect the children.
	They have a culture minister in Australia?
	No, no.
	This is the culture minister of the United Kingdom.
	Oh.
	Yeah, no, I'm saying...
	Do you have a culture minister?
	Well, it's a sorry excuse.
	What's a culture minister?
	I thought the queen was the culture minister.
	Oh, man, she's the head reptile.
	You've got to hold it.
	Oh, oh, this...
	Oh, dude, here's one for you.
	So, a big cultural deal in the United Kingdom.
	On Christmas Day at 3 p.m., the queen's speech to the country.
	To her, what do you call them?
	Minions?
	Subjects.
	Subjects, that's it.
	And I think we've missed it every single year because, you know, it's not...
	I think I saw it as I was up in Washington.
	I think I saw it.
	They think they broadcast it on Canadian news.
	I'm sure they do because, of course, Canada is controlled by the Queen still.
	Yeah, and it's more than just set dressing.
	Witness what just happened.
	Anyway, I don't want to get into that because we'll get all the Canadians pissed off again.
	So I'm like ready for this.
	And so what she does is she starts off and she says, and not a smile, right?
	And it's just horrible.
	It's just really cold and impersonal.
	And the Brits are like, oh, we love watching the Queen's speech.
	Okay, we'll watch the Queen's speech.
	So we're all ready.
	By the way, Top of the Pops came back for a special hour and a half show before that, which was pretty cool.
	Anyway.
	She comes on, she says, well, you know, what I've learned is that when I work with people who help others in these trying times, that they truly are fulfilled, that they have fulfilled lives and they truly are happy.
	And then they switch to this ENG footage of her boys, you know, visiting poor kids, and then there's Charles somewhere with African kids.
	And she's like, well, see, this is my family.
	See how much they do for other people.
	That's what you should do.
	Merry Christmas.
	And that was it.
	And I'm like, it was absolutely, I was shocked.
	Yeah, I saw it.
	That's what I saw.
	They showed the kids, they're always, you know, these...
	Yeah, but they have no jobs!
	No kidding!
	It's easy for them to go around doing good when you have endless tax money to spend and no job.
	And these are just obvious photo ops.
	Yeah.
	You know, the guys probably blew in there, sat down, okay, took a couple shots, okay, let me get out of here and they had to wash up.
	And I've been reading the papers, and I'm like, please tell me that some journalist somewhere, some editorial writer just said, what the frig was that?
	Literally, here's my family.
	They're so great.
	They help everybody.
	Oh, and she threw in a little bit of Jesus there, too.
	You know, a little bit of God love, which is fine.
	But do you, I mean, I'm sitting there going, does the British public actually eat this shit up?
	I mean, it was offensive.
	You should be more like my family.
	Because then you will truly be happy.
	Well, what can I say?
	There's still a lot of monarchists in that country think it's great to have a queen.
	I don't know any personally, to be quite honest.
	I've been into a number of them over the years.
	I've always liked the idea of a monarch, and it really disappointed me in the Netherlands when we had one week before the national general election, the leading politician, Pim Fortan, was assassinated, was shot.
	And that was the moment when you'd expect the...
	because the whole country was frozen.
	It was like, wow, what just happened?
	It was like the scale of JFK. And everyone still knows where they were when Pym got shot.
	And the Queen didn't say anything.
	I was like, this is a purpose.
	She should come out on TV and say, alright, you know, whatever.
	Just make people feel good.
	Kind of like a motherly, matronly type thing.
	No way.
	Cold.
	Cold as ice.
	That's because they don't care.
	They don't love us.
	They don't love their subjects.
	Well, they're not supposed to.
	They're under no obligation.
	No, you're right.
	Their job is to fight wars and grab land.
	That's all they've done their entire lives.
	How's things going in Belgium, by the way?
	Have not heard a lot.
	The last I read is that the king of Belgium, he has to officially decide if he accepts the part, because the cabinet fell.
	But he has to still accept, which is kind of weird, you know.
	It's like, okay, the cabinet fell, we don't want to work together anymore, and he still has to say, okay, you're allowed.
	You're allowed to fall, you know.
	So, I don't know, maybe he has accepted it, but Belgium's a funny country.
	You won't hear anything about it.
	It doesn't exist.
	Talking about Silicon Valley, it's like Belgium is a creation.
	Actually, Wikipedia, even though I don't think it's a great resource for a lot of stuff, has a pretty good breakdown of it.
	It's kind of a green zone.
	It was like a phony baloney thing from the get-go.
	It was the French and the Dutch, and they really didn't like each other, and then we kind of got this middle bit, which is like a border, I guess, a really wide border.
	Yeah, it's a wide border.
	And isn't it ironic that the wide border called Belgium is actually now running the entire EU? Yeah, Brussels, I know.
	Only half the time, though, because we have to be in Strasbourg because the French wanted their little power center.
	So the government, a lot of people don't know this, but the European Parliament actually moves.
	They'll be in Brussels one month, and then they go to Strasbourg the next month.
	They've got duplicate offices.
	It's a huge expense.
	I would think.
	Yeah, a lot of travel.
	Yeah, two offices, two everything.
	You've got to move back and forth and back and forth.
	Yeah, I mean, that's inconvenient.
	No, that's only reserved for people like me.
	That's ridiculous.
	Well, you never move.
	You're just always in England.
	You never come over here much.
	So that's not even true.
	I was over there for three weeks.
	That was the one big...
	No.
	It's not the same as being one month there, and then a month here, and then a month there, and a month here, and a month there, and a month here, like they do with that crazy EU parliament.
	But you know what?
	If I was trying to really save the country, then I might consider it.
	Eh, I think you're overdue.
	No, no, no, no, man.
	I'm not coming until February, maybe.
	I am overdue for some food.
	You've got to come over and hang out with me.
	Yeah, it's just getting to the point where I can afford it.
	Yeah, it is.
	It's $1.46, I think, now for the pound.
	Oh, that's perfect.
	That's what it should be.
	Yeah, it's good.
	It's always been about $1.50.
	You're right, that's what it should be.
	Yeah.
	It usually fluctuates between $1.45 and $1.55 usually.
	I mean, that's what I've always seen.
	And then all of a sudden it goes to $2?
	With the inflation you already have over there?
	Jeez.
	Yeah, the inflation is pretty bad.
	But, you know, Gordon Brown, the guy who was at the helm and steered us right into the credit crisis here in the UK, you know, he's the guy running the show.
	He's going to save us.
	So he says...
	So I'm going to go to Amsterdam hopefully in April, and I'm going to go at the end of the month where they have this...
	What's it called?
	Queen's Day?
	Yeah, April 30th is the Queen's birthday in the Netherlands.
	Although it is not actually her birthday anymore.
	It is still observed on that day.
	And the cool thing about it is it's a national...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	It's not her birthday anymore.
	Did she change her birthday?
	I think it was her grandmother's birthday.
	But they just kept it on the same day.
	It's kind of a good day because...
	30th of April, it's not really cold.
	Everyone can still have hopes for a sunny day.
	So the 29th evening before, particularly in Amsterdam, is where you really want to be, it's just mayhem.
	And if the weather's nice, then it's crazy.
	Everyone's just bar crawling, just tits up drunk.
	And the next day, everybody can mark out their spot, lay out their little blanket, and sell anything you want to sell.
	No tax, no sales tax, no nothing.
	Sell whatever you want.
	It's like one huge flea market.
	The whole country.
	But Amsterdam is probably the best place to be.
	And there's great shit and lots of music and food.
	A lot of people choose to set up.
	They'll be cooking something and they'll sell that instead of their old radios.
	You find the weirdest things.
	And you usually come home with just lots of other people's junk.
	It's like a recycling program.
	Yeah, it's a recycling program.
	Everyone passes on some junk to somebody else.
	Might be a good time to...
	I wouldn't be trying to scrounge old art.
	I would think that Amsterdam has a lot of, you know, art.
	I'll tell you, the old art, and I have a couple pieces, it's not selling.
	None of that stuff is selling.
	Good.
	Yeah, I mean, I'm not looking to sell them, but I do kind of pay attention from time to time to see if any category I have gets hot.
	It's pretty much like our global warming right now for everything I have.
	What do you have?
	I don't want those expensive Rembrandts that you've collected.
	No, I don't have Rembrandts, but I have a Rouillet, which is French.
	I have a David Bless, which is a pretty well-known Dutch-Jewish painter.
	That's significant because of the topics that he paints.
	And we have another semi-master.
	And they're nice paintings.
	They're beautiful.
	We like them.
	We hang them up.
	We look at them.
	So if I go to Amsterdam, are you going to come over and be the celebrity friend of mine?
	Yes, of course.
	But you'd be like swamped with people asking for your autograph.
	No, because I have an attitude and I'm six feet tall, no one bothers me.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	They just stare and point?
	Yes, and giggle.
	I don't know.
	I don't know what they're giggling about.
	Anything.
	What about Patricia?
	You want to drag her around?
	That would be something.
	No, she won't go because she's five foot and she gets very anxious in those situations because a lot of people, when she's in a crowd of a lot of people, she's basically staring into their belly buttons and it's not a happy experience.
	She does not like...
	That's why we moved away.
	And my wife is so incredibly famous there, particularly with all these shows she's doing.
	No matter where she goes, if she walks into the shop, everyone's going to look and watch what she's buying.
	You understand people like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, minus the shaving of the head stuff.
	So can I come over, can I come and visit the abode there in London, take a few shots of her, and then sell it to the tabloids in Amsterdam, pick up some money, I'll split it with you.
	Yeah, you wouldn't be the first.
	Sure, no problem.
	But we've got to have a story, you know.
	I mean, I've got those ins, no problem.
	You've got to have the right story, though.
	And then you've got to stick the appropriate picture.
	You've got to snap the right one.
	Well, you know, you shoot a lot.
	But there's already been stories about our new house in the tabloids.
	Oh yeah, they'll come looking.
	They always do.
	That's why Patricia already gave them a picture.
	Said, here's a picture of the house.
	Go public, which it isn't, which is the funniest thing.
	She just got a picture off of the net somewhere that looks like her house.
	And she sent it to the journalist, and he published it.
	This is her new house.
	That's so funny.
	Yeah, well, I'm sure after they listen to this, they won't be laughing, although they probably don't.
	Who listens to this show?
	We have dedicated listeners, but I don't think the journalist that got the fake picture is one of them.
	No, they never listen.
	If they actually listen to any of my shows, man, they could be writing for hours.
	We got a lot of people, I think, listening on iPhones.
	You always see these singular.net.
	I know people listen to the streams on iPhone.
	Yeah, that's kind of cool.
	Speaking of paintings...
	At least 50 paintings from the government art collection, which I didn't know existed, I presume something like that would exist, are missing and unaccounted for.
	What government art collection?
	The one in England?
	Yes.
	Well, it's probably something like the National Gallery in Washington.
	They have, you know, they have at least a guy, I was walking around, I looked at a picture there, I was looking at this picture, I can't remember the artist's name, but it was just really fascinating.
	I never heard of this guy's Kind of an American Impressionist or something from around 1920.
	And I asked one of the guys that stand around to make sure you're not poking holes in it.
	I said, well, who is this guy?
	And I asked him.
	He said, I don't know.
	They probably brought that up from down below.
	They're always moving stuff up and down and up and down.
	He says, you know, only about a quarter of the collection is actually up here.
	Right.
	And they rotate it.
	Because someone's got to have a job.
	And so they rotate.
	I mean, they keep the classics, you know, that everybody wants to see, but then they rotate all this other stuff.
	But I'm thinking, so three quarters of the paintings are down in the basement.
	They could, you know, I'm sure stuff could disappear effortlessly.
	We're talking thousands and thousands of paintings, and they'd probably only inventory it once every few years.
	Well, of the 50s, a lot.
	But those will show up.
	They got all these systems in place.
	No, listen to this.
	Listen to this.
	So they just did an audit.
	Fifty are unaccounted for.
	None of them were insured.
	Some are known to have been stolen, but more than half the total simply disappeared.
	The whole collection worth about 100 million pounds, so I'm sure that there's some nice pieces that have walked out.
	Well, you know, the biggest, so they say in the art world...
	The instigators of this sort of thing are the Swiss.
	Oh?
	Yeah, the paintings all end up in these Swiss collections.
	They never go on the auction block, never show up in galleries.
	They're just in somebody's house.
	Oh, yeah.
	Because the Swiss are less likely.
	I mean, apparently, you know, you can't steal a great painting and get away with it.
	And sell it.
	You can't sell it.
	No, you're stuck with it.
	Yeah.
	So if you want...
	Like it's a horror...
	You're stuck with that freaking Mona Lisa.
	I'm going to slap that bitch's smile off her face one of these days.
	Well, that was stolen, by the way.
	I know.
	I know.
	And so...
	Well, I don't mean stuck with it, but if it's a painting you don't like, you're stuck with it.
	But if it's a painting, yeah, you can put it up on your walls, you know, claim it's...
	You know, I would just...
	I'd have a piece like that, and I'd say, yeah, I had it copied in China.
	You know, this is a pretty good...
	No, no, no.
	What you're supposed to do is when you're sitting around with all your Illuminati brethren, you sit there and you pet your white pussy and you smoke your Cuban cigar and you look at your stolen painting and you enjoy it because you are sophisticated, much more sophisticated than the wee people.
	I think if you're going to do it that way, you have to push a button and then a wall.
	Yeah, a wall revolves, right, with perfect lighting, of course.
	It goes without saying.
	Go ahead.
	I was going to say that the Dutch socialist system 20 years ago, I don't know if they still do it, there were lots of artists, and artists can study art for free at school because it's a socialist system, unlike what we discussed with the U.S., State government-run institutions.
	But the deal was, all the art they made, you could actually go and, on a rotating basis, you could pick up three or four paintings, maybe a sculpture, put it in your house for six months, and then after six months you bring it back and you get some other stuff that some students had made.
	They put it into circulation within society, which I always thought was kind of cool.
	Well, you know, there's a bunch of museums that do that.
	The Oakland Museum has a collection that rotates around.
	The University of California has a pretty big art collection that they used to loan out.
	I think they had to take insurance out or something.
	I think that's it, but it's free.
	Oh, I'm sure, yeah.
	Anyway, so I mean, I don't think it's totally out of the...
	Out of the ordinary.
	Now anyway, talking about these buried art collections, the reason I mentioned it.
	So I went to this, I had this event I went to in Korea and met the public relations guy.
	Did I tell you about this?
	No, I didn't think so.
	The public relations guy from the Vatican.
	He's like the Pope's PR guy.
	This rings a bell, but I don't think it was on the show.
	I mean, please, tell me.
	So anyway, he says he invited me to go visit the Vatican when I get a chance, and he'll take me into the bowels.
	Of the Vatican art collection, and the collection of all this crazy stuff that they put down there, you know, the stuff about the Illuminati and all those secrets.
	So, he says, not too many people get down there, but he says, it's really interesting, and he says, he was roaming around down there recently, and I just imagine the place, you know, dripping.
	And he says he found Marco Polo's divorce decree.
	Excellent.
	I guess it was an annulment.
	Right.
	Fantastic.
	I thought that would be kind of a one-upsmanship thing to do.
	Hell yeah.
	I have to actually do these things instead of just sitting here at home.
	Yeah, I know what you mean.
	I dream a lot, too.
	According to the Swedish trade journal, Dagen Medicina...
	Nobel Media, because we were talking about this last week and I picked this story up, Nobel Web, some Nobel affiliated corporations, are accused of taking many millions of dollars from AstraZeneca.
	Who, of course, hold the patents for the HPV, that's the cervical cancer vaccine, Gardazil, and Severix in Europe.
	You may recall, so we talked about the difference in Nobel Prizes.
	A Nobel Prize for medicine was given to the German scientist, Harold Zurhauser, for the discovery of this so-called virus, which is killing children.
	The vaccine, at least.
	And he got a Nobel Prize, and so now there's accusations that AstraZeneca, who of course makes this, basically bought it.
	Oh.
	That's good.
	That's good.
	People should know the truth about these.
	Well, why?
	Well, it's good to know.
	You're right.
	Just let people sleep on.
	We don't need these riots in the street.
	Yes, we do.
	Food riots.
	When people are hungry, we're going to need them.
	Of course we need that.
	As long as they don't tear down the deli.
	Yeah.
	Oh, boy.
	I would take some precautions.
	Well, how many people live up there in Port Angeles?
	Not a lot.
	I think about 20,000.
	Oh, okay.
	You could feed everyone.
	Maybe 15.
	You could feed everyone.
	Yeah.
	Well, you know, they got the Border Patrol.
	You know, this is this Homeland Security USA. They got these guys called Border Patrol now up there.
	And because, you know, they declared the border to be 100 miles deep.
	Yeah, that's the Constitution-Free Zone, as we call it.
	Right.
	Right.
	And according to my wife, she says that, you know, because she has to drive to another city every couple of days, she says these guys, you know, they're pulling people over.
	Yeah, illegal search and seizure.
	Yeah, constantly.
	And making them open their trunk and, you know, whatever.
	You can't say no.
	There's a guy who has a website.
	You've got to see it.
	It's CheckpointUSA.org.
	And he films every single...
	And it's great to see because he knows the very simple laws of the country and the Constitution.
	And so they stop him.
	And he's filming the whole thing and he keeps saying, am I being detained?
	And of course they won't say yes or no.
	All they're asking is, are you an American citizen?
	And he won't answer the question because of course he doesn't have to.
	And he says, am I being detained?
	Answer the question.
	And it goes on for like 20 minutes.
	And then pull over to secondary.
	Am I being detained?
	And they won't answer it.
	And so he just doesn't do it.
	And he just stands there.
	And eventually, every single video, they wind up letting him go because he just knows his rights and just sit there and says, I'm not going to take this shit from you.
	And I think Mimi should do the same.
	She hasn't been pulled over yet.
	No, she will.
	Is she American?
	She an American citizen?
	Yeah.
	Yeah?
	Is she going to tell them when they ask her?
	She's going to probably, I don't know what she's going to tell him.
	She could blow up.
	That would be not good.
	Oh, well.
	I didn't know your wife was an IED. She will give him lip.
	See, that's the problem.
	If you try to do that, it never works.
	Well, maybe she won't.
	All right.
	Show her those videos.
	She drives a van.
	It's like they don't pull people over.
	Of course!
	Are you kidding me?
	Because they're expecting, you know, like a hundred illegal immigrants to be in the back.
	We're talking about, what are these immigrants coming in from Canada from?
	Are these illegal Canadians?
	Yes!
	Damn it!
	Someone has to clean my toilet!
	The Canadians do it!
	Move these guys down to the south.
	It's unbelievable.
	There's something else going on.
	Oh, you think, John?
	You think that this is exactly...
	If you look at all these checkpoints, and you'll see it on that guy's blog, I'm just presuming the guy has his data right, it rings all around the United States.
	It's 100 miles, and it's called the Constitution-Free Zone.
	And the entire outline of the 50 states of America now has all these checkpoints set up.
	And hell yeah, can't you see the net closing in?
	It's pretty obvious to me.
	I think it's to keep people from leaving.
	Of course.
	That's exactly what it is.
	And it's to keep you away from the border and to keep you in fear.
	And pretty soon we'll have the military at these checkpoints.
	You know that's going to happen.
	Well, you know, there's this discussion about the military, you know, helping out.
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	It's called training.
	It's just a training exercise.
	These guys and gals were in Iraq.
	They're hardened.
	They're coming back, and now they need training.
	What?
	How to be compassionate?
	Apparently they used these guys for a checkpoint, military guys, for a checkpoint down in Santa Barbara or someplace down there, just as a kind of a, you know, let the military pull some drunks over.
	Yeah, DUI, yeah.
	You know, it's against the law, right?
	Yes, it's illegal.
	We also talked about this last week, but I don't mind repeating it because it's a huge deal.
	Yeah, I know.
	I challenged you to give me the information about the Southern California thing.
	I sent it to you.
	You sent me a link, but I still haven't seen this.
	Like I said, if I personally saw this...
	Yeah, I showed you a video that wasn't good enough.
	You have to actually...
	Well, why don't you get in your car, get off your inner tube...
	Put your butt in your car and go find one and tape it because it's going to happen.
	You'll bump into it.
	If I find one, I'll tape it.
	I met a girl in the coffee shop right around the corner from the new house.
	She's from San Francisco.
	Cute girl.
	And I said, so what are you doing here?
	She says, going to school and I'm going to work as hard as I can.
	I don't ever want to go back.
	You bitters, it's going to be shit in America.
	I don't want to be there anymore.
	So you think it's going to be any better here?
	Which I've also noticed.
	I think it'll be worse there.
	I agree.
	I think it will be.
	And I'm seeing more and more people stop me on the street begging for money in London.
	In San Francisco, everyone's jaded and used to it.
	And I'm always a good target.
	People are always coming up to me.
	I guess I don't look threatening enough.
	They won't ask me for my autograph, but they'll try and bum a cigarette or a quarter off of me any day.
	And I'm seeing more of that in London.
	So, yeah.
	I like, especially guys on the freeway exits, which are all over the place.
	These guys are at every exit.
	Only in America, by the way.
	You don't see that in many other countries.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's weird.
	But it's actually mostly in the Bay Area.
	You don't see it in many other cities.
	But I try to keep...
	I haven't done it much recently.
	I think I only have a few left.
	I try to keep a box of baseball caps in the car that were taken from tech TV years ago that say big thinkers.
	And you hand that out to people asking you for money?
	Yeah.
	Well, most of them need a hat.
	And so I give them a big thinker's cap.
	And it's something, especially when the show was still being aired.
	John, you're such a humanitarian.
	I always found it highly amusing.
	And I think it brightened many people's days to see a guy with a sign begging for money with a hat that says big thinker.
	That wasn't cruel, was it?
	It pretty much borders on shooting kittens.
	No, it doesn't.
	The guy's got a nice hat.
	The guy wants to eat.
	He's got a nice hat.
	It's alright.
	Don't worry about it.
	Obama's going to save him.
	It's all good.
	So anyway, yeah, no, I also, if I have food, I'll give them food.
	They just don't carry a lot of money with me, you know, just to give away to people from my car.
	How about that bag of quarters?
	How about that bag of quarters you're always toting around in your car?
	You need those quarters because, you know, a lot of people, you know, anyone traveling to San Francisco, let me give you some advice.
	Anyone that thinks you're going to be a tourist, do not go to San Francisco.
	It's the worst place in the world.
	Yeah, it's quaint.
	It's got cable cars, you know.
	And we got some hookers, but still.
	Go look at the cable car.
	Go up and down the cable car.
	Go look at the Golden Gate Bridge and drive around for a few minutes.
	Go down the world's crookedest street and take a trip to Alcatraz and then get out because it's a horrible place.
	There's bums and homeless and criminals everywhere.
	Everyone's on the cell phone talking to somebody and bumping into each other.
	It's very dangerous.
	And the parking...
	Like a metered parking meter.
	That's why I got this bag of quarters.
	It's five minutes for a quarter.
	Right?
	Five?
	I thought it was 15.
	It's five?
	Five.
	So by the time you're done loading the quarters up, you lost your first five minutes.
	You've got to put another quarter in.
	It's unbelievable.
	No wonder out calls for hookers are so expensive.
	They've got to pay for all that parking.
	Anyway, it's a profit center.
	Those parking meters are supposed to be instituted.
	They have them in France with the blue disc, and you put the disc up there.
	The parking was always supposed to be monitored to keep them moving.
	You wanted to have a timer that said, okay, you've been here that long, so they're all pennies.
	They weren't supposed to be profit centers.
	You know, to make money off of you.
	The city's supposed to encourage people to be there and have a good time and do whatever they want.
	But this city of San Francisco discourages people from coming to it.
	Certainly with a vehicle.
	So I would say don't go to San Francisco ever.
	What a great endorsement.
	You could be in one of those Schwarzenegger come to California ads.
	You and Maria and Arnold will be great.
	California itself may be a questionable place to visit.
	Well, $46 billion in the hole and looks like it's going belly up.
	I don't know how that works when a state actually just goes bankrupt.
	What happens?
	They don't pay anybody anything that they owe them.
	They're bankrupt.
	Right.
	So then, does that mean the cops stop functioning?
	They just stop working?
	Ah, probably.
	Well, you know, they hope that they volunteer.
	Really?
	It'll really come down to that?
	You won't get some kind of...
	I mean, can't California become a bank holding company and qualify for some TARP? Maybe.
	In fact, if I were Schwarzenegger, I'd be trying that.
	We're going to be a bank holding company, our state of California, and we're going to need some of that money.
	I don't know what they're going to do.
	All I know is that the New York state is also in trouble, and the city of New York is close to being bankrupt.
	Well, the city of New York took all the pension money.
	That's how they're solving it.
	They admit it.
	We're taking the pension money.
	Yeah.
	That's some solution, isn't it?
	You come over here, man.
	You're not going to want to go back.
	You're going to want to stay.
	Because this is the epicenter.
	Right here.
	But your house?
	No, this country.
	It's still the British Empire.
	That's what's going on.
	So I keep my enemies close.
	Yeah, well, there's some truth to that, at least.
	Certainly in the financial world there is, you bet.
	Are you kidding me?
	Well, you know, the Brits have always been the big shots in that arena, although they really screwed up on this last one, I have to say.
	Well, it got out of control and got way too big and everybody was way too greedy.
	But I'm still convinced that the bubble bursting is intended to happen.
	I see it in very simple terms.
	Blow it up, then steal the money, trillions of dollars and pounds and euros and whatever.
	That went straight to the bankers.
	They all paid themselves.
	They all got their bonuses and then some.
	We know the first $120 billion went straight into bonuses.
	Take that money, you know, and then ride the wave of the devaluation and, you know, spread it out.
	Maybe pounds, euros, yen, whatever.
	Make sure you got something everywhere.
	And then go and then leave.
	Then you go on a buying spree.
	If you devalue, I mean the whole deflation thing.
	Exactly.
	Then they buy up all of the assets.
	They've got all the companies cheap, buy all the land cheap, buy all the houses cheap.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	So first they needed to get the money.
	That just took place.
	Have you not received this thing circulating the internet?
	I've seen two versions of it.
	One is about acorns, the other is about monkeys.
	No, I've seen neither one.
	I don't get spam.
	It's not spam.
	My friends sent it to me.
	Let me just read it to you, if I can find it.
	It's essentially a simple way to understand what happened with the bailout.
	Oh, man.
	See, this is where we need a commercial break or something, so I can go and find it.
	Or you could just say something.
	Well, you know, I was thinking that I had on the blog a very funny cartoon from Calvin and Hobbes.
	It's apparently 15 years old, which more or less described the situation, I thought, in a cartoon form better than anything I've run into elsewhere.
	And can we share this with the listeners?
	Well, it's hard to because you can't see the cartoon.
	But let me, let me, I'll tell you what, let me, if the blog's running, which of course, you know, we've had nothing but trouble since we upgraded to 2.7, turns out.
	Oh, really?
	What kind of trouble, this is a WordPress thing?
	Well, I mean, this is what somebody on Twitter posted, you know, I've had nothing but trouble since I went to 2.7, and this is what you did.
	Because the blog's crashing, it's like a mess.
	I mean, right now it's up, I'm glad for that.
	There's some really screwy stuff on here.
	I'll find these cartoons just within a couple of days, and you get it.
	It's a title of 15-year-old cartoon prediction.
	It starts off with Calvin and this little girl whose name I can't remember.
	She goes up to him and he's got a lemonade stand and she says, 15 bucks a glass?
	Which it says.
	And he says, that's right, you want some?
	And she says, how do you justify charging $15?
	He says, supply and demand.
	She turns around, there's nobody there.
	She says, where's the demand?
	I don't see any demand.
	He says, there's lots of demand.
	Yeah, sure, as the sole stockholder in this enterprise, I demand monstrous profits on my investment.
	As president and CEO of the company, I demand an exorbitant annual salary.
	And as my own employee, I demand a high hourly wage and all sorts of company benefits.
	Then there's overhead and actual production costs.
	She points at the lemonade and says, but it looks like you just threw a lemon in some sludge water.
	Well, I have to cut expenses somewhere if I want to stay competitive.
	Okay.
	Then she says, what if I got sick from that?
	And he says, caveat emptor is the motto we stand behind.
	I'd have to charge more if we followed health and environmental regulations.
	She walks off saying, you're out of your mind.
	I'm going home to drink something else.
	And he says, sure, put me out of a job.
	It's your anti-business types who ruin the economy.
	He sulks, goes over to his mom and says, I need to be subsidized.
	That's a good one.
	It is actually quite funny.
	Hold on.
	Safari is fucking me up here.
	So I guess you went through all that rigmarole and you still can't find it.
	That's okay.
	Why don't we do it next week?
	Hold on.
	Yeah.
	The problem is...
	Oh, please.
	Oh, don't crash.
	Please don't crash.
	Safari...
	Oh, man.
	Safari crashed.
	Yeah.
	And it's like hosing out the entire computer.
	I'm trying to quit it.
	Oh, please.
	Safari is taking down the show.
	Okay.
	I was able to quit it.
	Oh, thank you, Steve Jobs.
	You're fantastic.
	Okay, so the story is very simple.
	There was a village, and one day a guy came to the...
	I'm doing this from memory.
	It's pretty simple.
	And one day a guy came to the village and said, I'll give you $20 for every monkey you can deliver to me.
	So the townspeople go out, and they start getting some monkeys.
	They bring them back, and he pays them $20 for each monkey.
	And then he comes back the next day and says, hey, you know what?
	The monkeys are pretty hot now.
	I'll give you $25 for every monkey.
	So townspeople go out.
	It's a little bit harder, you know, because they've got a shitload of monkeys for $20.
	But they find some, they bring them back, and the guy pays them $25 per monkey.
	Next day he comes back, he says, I'm going to give you $50 for...
	The monkeys are so hot right now.
	I'll give you $50 for every monkey you can deliver to me.
	And the townspeople are like...
	And his assistant came with him.
	Because he had to leave and go back to the city.
	So his assistant stayed there.
	And the townspeople, you know, they tried, but they couldn't find any monkeys.
	So the assistant says, hey, look, listen, here's what I'll do.
	I got like 100 monkeys.
	I'll sell them to you guys for $35.
	And then when he comes back, you sell it to him for $50.
	And, of course, he sells the $35 monkeys to the townspeople, and neither of the guys come back.
	And that is exactly what the bailout is all about.
	That's funny.
	Yeah, but I like that because, you know, people can understand a story like that.
	That's exactly what happened.
	Yes, it's a con.
	Yes, thank you.
	Con, indeed.
	And not the kind of con that we like in the south of France.
	All right, so, anything else?
	How was your Christmas, by the way?
	We never talked about it.
	It was treeless.
	Oh?
	Yeah, we had no tree.
	We're in the middle of boxes.
	We knew this would happen.
	Do you guys have Boxing Day?
	Yeah, I'm not quite sure what Boxing Day actually is, other than a reason for 10,000 idiots to line up at Selfridges and storm down the doors at 7 a.m., which is what happened.
	Well, it means, you know, when I first saw Boxing Day, which was in Canada, I was there, I guess...
	That's the gift exchange day, isn't it?
	Yeah, but I never knew that.
	I thought it was like some day that was the Boxer Rebellion, or there was some match going to be, a boxing match.
	I had no idea what it meant.
	And then, you know, somebody told me I was an idiot.
	It means you box your old gifts up and take them back.
	Oh, really?
	Well, all these stores are going out of business, and retailers in battle at dawn is the headline in the Financial Times, and literally 10,000 people rushing in to get all these deals before all these companies go out of business. people rushing in to get all these deals before all They expect 15 retail chains to go in the next six months.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	No, it's really bad.
	And, you know, Woolworths went out of business.
	I told you that.
	They're literally selling the lockers, the employee lockers now at some of these Woolworths.
	That could come in handy?
	Yeah.
	For what?
	I don't know.
	People will buy it.
	How many stores have employee lockers?
	Well, Woolworths has been around for a long time.
	You know, they're old-fashioned, old-school.
	27,000 employees out as of January 5th.
	But I'm going to get me a damn cheap set of TVs, that's for sure.
	Oh yeah, there should be some good deals on televisions.
	Oh, fantastic deals.
	What's a good deal there?
	Because we have right here in Costco, we have the 42-inch plasmas going for $679 or so.
	And I thought that was a pretty good price, but now I'm starting to see 50-inchers going for like $700.
	Yeah, I saw a 50-inch plasma, and it was marked at 425 pounds.
	Oh, that's good.
	So that's probably just a little bit under that price, not much.
	But yeah, it's like they're doing 70% off.
	I mean, it's been amazing.
	We buy a bed.
	It was a $2,000 bed, 700 pounds.
	It's...
	Yeah, now's the time to spend more money.
	Yeah, I want to help the economy pump some money in.
	There's even wine bargains all over the place too, which is kind of problematic.
	Why is that problematic?
	Well, I've got so much wine in my cellar now because of all these deals.
	Oh, you don't have any place to store anything?
	No, I've got plenty of places.
	I've got a whole basement.
	I know what my drinking process is.
	I drink a lot of, mostly, samples to decide what to buy.
	I can't keep buying stuff that...
	I just got too much.
	You know, you can't drink fast enough.
	There's some people that have these wine cellars with like 10,000 bottles in them.
	I think, what are you going to do with this stuff?
	You can't get through it.
	You can't, you know, too much of it will go bad, you know, because wine doesn't necessarily age, unless some wines do, but not all of them.
	And, you know, what are you doing with a cellar this size?
	It's ridiculous.
	Now, do you have a drinking setup in your cellar, so you can actually crack a bottle there and sit down and drink?
	In my cellar up in Port Angeles, I do.
	Oh, that's hot.
	And it's humidified, and it's got all the groovy rags.
	It's too cold in there that I drink, believe me.
	Oh, so it's just cold?
	Yeah, it's all.
	The cellar up there, I mean, this one here is a natural cellar.
	The one up there is cold, actually.
	So I think it's probably a degree or two too cold.
	So you don't have a constant temperature?
	It is a constant temperature.
	It's constantly cold.
	You know what I'm asking, obviously.
	No, I don't have all that gear.
	I have a natural set.
	I don't need it.
	If I was living in Arizona, yeah, I'd probably have something like that.
	You're au naturel.
	You slay me.
	I think the coolest thing to do...
	You know, they think about it, because we have a funny incline in our property, is to get a bulldozer and bulldoze up a, or get like a Quonset hut and then cover it, and make a shea, which is a wine cellar that's above ground.
	French have them, very common.
	But they're really cool because it's like above ground and it's like, because you really, cellars in the Pacific Northwest where we are, it's a sandy soil and it's just going to have a lot of seepage.
	I mean, it's just not a good idea.
	I mean, you have to have big, thick cement walls.
	It's not worth doing.
	But a shea is really a good concept and you just walk in, you can set it up with a little tasting bar in there and you'd have all your stuff stacked up.
	It's kind of cool.
	It'll never happen.
	I was just going to say, why don't you crank up the digger?
	I'll be right over.
	On my way.
	Just need to rent a bulldozer.
	This is interesting.
	I just got an email from someone.
	Regular dropper, no agendist here.
	I'm guessing you've moved to bleep bleep by now and thought you might want to know what the nightlife's like there.
	Guy knows exactly where I'm moving.
	Huh.
	How does he know that?
	I think you must have mentioned him.
	No, I've never mentioned.
	I've said SW4, but he actually has the street.
	Oh, he's probably with MI6. Yeah, and he's giving me some tips on where to go get hammered.
	I did check, though.
	I did a walk around today.
	Not a single, at least not that I could see, not a single CCTV camera in the square.
	Oh, that's nice.
	Yeah, it's very nice to know you're not being spied upon by the government.
	Yeah.
	That won't last.
	For a while, at least, I hope.
	Oh, man.
	Yeah.
	They may be hidden.
	They may be hidden.
	No, no, no, no.
	I don't think they do.
	They don't bother?
	No, they don't do that yet.
	So anyway, so Christmas was in between boxes.
	It was, we're very low key because we always, you know, and this has been this way since Christina was a baby.
	You know, it's like every day is Christmas with us.
	So it's not, you know, Patricia and I, or Patricia mainly, we'll cook a nice meal and we'll sit down and we have a good time and we'll watch a movie together.
	But we generally, you know, there's always a gift exchange.
	And it's more about the, you know, I always ask for books.
	So my daughter gave me the book Spliffs 2, which is the second volume of the history of marijuana and hemp, which is such a nice present.
	It's the gift that keeps on giving.
	Is it printed on hemp?
	Yes.
	I don't think so.
	That actually would have been...
	Let me just check.
	That would have been smart, I guess.
	That would have been cool.
	Probably stink up the place, though.
	Let's see, Tim Pilcher wrote this.
	Of course, by the way, now someone's going to write in, you know, it doesn't smell, I use hemp, I wear hemp clothes.
	Well, there is, and first of all, it's kind of cool because it has like a burn hole in the cover, which is intentional, but it is an actual hole, which anyone who's a spliffmeister will know.
	But yeah, it does go in quite a lot of detail.
	In fact, it has some interesting facts in here that in the mid to late 1800s, farmers in the United States were obligated by law to grow hemp.
	And they were paid for it, but they couldn't just grow anything else.
	They had to use a portion of their farmland for the growth of hemp because it was very important at the time.
	It was a great industrial thing.
	Yeah.
	Rope and other things.
	Well, not just rope.
	Well, blue jeans.
	The original blue jeans, of course, were made of hemp.
	Levi Strauss.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	You didn't know that?
	Yeah, the original blue jeans from the Levi Strauss company.
	Oops, I just lost my microphone.
	There we go.
	Which is, I think, still based in San Francisco.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, the original blue jeans were made out of hemp.
	Henry Ford, we talked about that last week.
	Henry Ford made a hemp car.
	There's a YouTube video of people actually banging the car with a crowbar.
	Yeah, we mentioned that last week.
	We're even now.
	Yeah.
	But, you know, I'm just saying there's a mention of it.
	And what's cool is they have the top 50 stoners, all the people who were well-known smokers.
	Yeah.
	Who are the top 50 stoners?
	I mean, give me a couple of the top five.
	Well, I'll give you a couple.
	How about Bing Crosby?
	Really?
	Well, according to the book, the King of Croon maintains his mellow demeanor thanks to a few tokes on the herb.
	Hmm.
	Musicians, you have to assume that most people in the music business are...
	I'll give you a couple more.
	Willie Nelson, of course we know about Willie.
	Whitney Houston, but she smoked a lot more than marijuana.
	The obvious, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Louis Armstrong, of course, all the jazz guys.
	They sang about it in their songs.
	Then many different titles.
	Give me some more surprise names like Crosby.
	Queen Victoria?
	Queen Victoria?
	Not an actual stoner as such.
	Old Vic used to neck back bottles of cannabis tincture to ease her savage period pains.
	Nicely put.
	Her physician, Sir J. Russell Reynolds, reported in the first issue of The Lancet in 1890 that he had been prescribing cannabis for 30 years and he considered it, quote, one of the most valuable medicines we possess.
	This typical use of marijuana for medicinal purposes surely had her royalty high and most amused.
	Okay, that's cool.
	Royal highness is a funnier gag.
	Well, royalty high is the way he wrote.
	I agree.
	You should have edited this book.
	William Shakespeare.
	Newt Gingrich.
	Well, Norman Mailer, no surprise.
	Allen Ginsberg.
	I mean, Hunter Thompson.
	Yeah, right.
	Jay and Silent Bob.
	Now, there's a shocker.
	Larry Hagman, Morgan Freeman, Robert Mitchum, Robert Altman, Jack Nicholson, Jane and Peter Fonda, Cary Grant, and Diane Cannon.
	Whoa.
	Cary Grant was also a huge LSD promoter.
	Acid, right, yeah.
	Didn't you used to do Acid with Nicholson?
	I don't know.
	I wasn't there.
	It was before my time.
	No, it wasn't before your time.
	You just weren't there.
	Cary Fisher was on the shootout show with Peter Goober and Peter Bart, and she's actually quite funny.
	I didn't realize that she's a script fixer.
	Cary Fisher?
	Yeah.
	The actress?
	Apparently, yeah.
	The real job is she's a writer.
	Oh yeah, it's a huge job.
	And in fact, Cooper says that this category of writer are called the body and fender people in Hollywood.
	And they showed her the credits.
	She fixed a lot of scripts.
	And she says, you know, you have to do it, and the way she described how you had to do it, and she's always wanted to be a writer.
	She never wanted to be an actress anyway.
	She's kind of chubbed out.
	But she was very funny, I thought.
	She had a lot of one-liners, and she apparently writes humor into the scripts.
	But she talked about the fact that her mom, she was, I guess, having problems with drugs or something when she was young, and her mom decided that she's going to have her get a lecture from Cary Grant.
	Well, we just have to say her mom, of course, is...
	Debbie Reynolds is her mom, of course.
	Yeah, Debbie Reynolds is her mom, and so she made Cary Grant...
	And apparently Debbie Reynolds didn't know that Cary Grant was...
	LSD stoner.
	Excellent.
	A stoner.
	Yeah, we'll have Cary come over.
	All she got was these lectures about how great LSD was.
	Fantastic.
	I bet she did a lot.
	Could be.
	I don't know if she didn't say.
	Wow.
	Yeah, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.
	Or her parents.
	Yeah, so it was very amusing.
	The show, which is one of my favorite shows, and I have to look it up because I just watched it last night before I went to bed.
	I guess they're taking it off of AMC and they're either killing the show or they're moving it someplace else.
	I've never seen it.
	It's a great show.
	I'll make a copy of the show.
	No, no, no.
	If you just tell me when it's on, then I can log into the Slingbox, my choice, Detroit or Hawaii, and I can watch it live.
	Yeah, it's on at 8 a.m.
	on Sunday mornings, and then they do a repeat showing some other time during the week, which I don't know, but you can look it up on the AMC channel, a guide online.
	Yeah, cool.
	And it's called Shootout.
	It used to be called Sunday Morning Shootout, and they changed it to Shootout.
	And it's, you know, they essentially, it's an inside baseball show.
	They have Bart and Goober and the two of them who are, and especially Goober is astonishing in terms of his just the stuff that he knows and all the stuff that he's done.
	But they have all these different people come on that are all these people that you'll, that will never show up on a talk show because they're just too shy.
	All they want to talk about is the business they're in or they're uncomfortable in most venues.
	But on this show, you got the, you know, the editor-in-chief of Variety and the superstar, um, You know, executive producer type who's also a professor at UCLA. And they're very relaxed with these two guys.
	And you hear all these interesting inside baseball anecdotes about the movie industry and what's going on and trends and how people are losing money or what they're spending.
	They had the guy who did Transformers, that famous director who does these big films.
	I can't think of his name.
	The guy who was fighting against Blu-ray.
	He was?
	Yeah, I think it was in the HDVD camp.
	Or no, I think it was angry because his film wasn't coming out on Blu-ray.
	That guy.
	Yeah, that guy.
	Anyways, I can think of his name in a second.
	I can look it up, or people out there can look it up.
	He was really...
	I mean, he's got a really terrible reputation.
	People don't like him.
	But he was on the show, and it was so enlightening.
	But the most interesting thing he said was, when they tried to get him to do the movie, and apparently it was Steven Spielberg that talked him into it because he didn't want to do it.
	He says they wanted him to go to Canada.
	Instead of using his own crew, and he works everybody to death.
	He does like two takes and something like 40 setups a day instead of the normal seven or eight.
	And he says he goes to Canada, and he took one look around.
	He says, there's something wrong here.
	This is a scam.
	Really?
	He says, I'm going back to Hollywood and shoot this movie with my own people.
	And nobody ever followed up on this concept that he had.
	The whole thing was the whole...
	The Canada deal, which a lot of movies are made up there, is rigged, something fishy about it.
	But it's all just a tax write-off, and it's supposed to be cheaper.
	Isn't that the whole deal?
	Yeah, it's a tax write-off.
	It's cheaper, and the government up there supports some of it.
	But he didn't like any bit of it.
	I don't know why.
	He never went into any details.
	Probably the labor.
	He has to use local labor, I think.
	Or something, I guess.
	Yeah, maybe.
	It makes a lot of sense.
	Yeah, it makes sense.
	Because I think Leo, when he would go up to that...
	He doesn't still go up to Canada for that nutty cable show, does he?
	I don't think so.
	Yeah, because I know that he would have Callie on and they couldn't pay her or whatever.
	I mean, I don't know.
	It was weird, but it all had to do with...
	With regulations and having to be someone special if there wasn't a Canadian Callie Lewis available or some shit like that.
	Yeah, something like that.
	Canadian Callie Lewis.
	Which is very French.
	The French have...
	Yeah, no, it's absolutely...
	The French have got these crazy...
	But I'm not against it in general.
	I like it.
	I like the fact that certainly in Canadian broadcast outlets, certainly on the radio, an X amount or X percentage of the music must be Canadian produced, at least.
	And I think that's a good thing.
	Well, they've got enough music up there.
	They can do that.
	Yeah, but you know what I mean.
	I think we're done.
	You looked at the clock where we're running at 150.
	Holy crap.
	We shouldn't be doing that.
	Hold on.
	Everything's crashing today.
	Play, bitch.
	There we go.
	Okay.
	So next week, do you want to try phone calls?
	Yeah, sure.
	Why not?
	What I was thinking, because I can identify where people are calling from, I thought it would be kind of fun if we're talking about Canada.
	I could just say, okay...
	Michael Bay, that's the director.
	Right.
	I could just say, hey, listener there in Canada, come on in and tell us what the story is.
	You could try it.
	We have no one to screen the calls, which means that people actually have to...
	Yeah, you suck, and the guy's going to hang up.
	No, that would be okay, but it's people going, like, hey, how you doing?
	Or you just have nothing to say, or on Skype.
	Skype headsets are the worst.
	It just is not...
	It doesn't work.
	If it's just a headset, and you're calling it, it sucks.
	It's absolutely horrible.
	Unlike our connection today.
	Okay, coming to you from Gitmo Nation, east in the United Kingdom.
	My name's Adam Curry.
	And I'm at GitWest here in northern Silicon Valley, also known as the San Francisco Bay Area.
	We'll talk to you again next week.
	Let me get my name out.
	Do it again.
	I'm John C. Dvorak.
	And we'll talk to you again next week, right here, on No Agenda.

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