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Jan. 10, 2009 - No Agenda

01:46:07

65: The Dead Bee Conspiracy

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Time	Text
	Swimming upstream in a river of mainstream diarrhea.
	It's time for your weekly old guy gab fest known as No Agenda.
	Coming to you from Gitmo Nation East in Southwest London in the United Kingdom.
	I'm Adam Curry.
	I'm John C. Dvorak here.
	What was that intro again?
	That's disgusting.
	Swimming upstream in a river of mainstream diarrhea.
	It was meant to be graphic.
	I'm in northern Silicon Valley cringing.
	Also known as Gitmo Nation West.
	I'm reading this book on, I'm going, I found, every once in a while, I'm moving some boxes around, right?
	So I find these old boxes of books, including the Oakland Athletics World Champions Information Guide from 1990, and the 1997 Zagat.
	Zagat's guide, yeah.
	Yeah, the Zagat Guide.
	And the restaurants have switched around quite a bit, I have to say.
	Nothing stays the same.
	And you've discovered this after X amount of years of living on this globe?
	Yeah, you'd think that there'd be more consistency.
	I think there is in France.
	Why don't you move there?
	Good riddance to you.
	We're sick and tired of your crankiness.
	What did Sumi, what did she call you the other day?
	Buzzkill.
	Everyone's favorite buzzkill.
	I thought that was pretty funny.
	Yeah, that's funny.
	I'll get her for that.
	I saw you were in Las Vegas.
	Is that right?
	You didn't see Mevio?
	Thanks for watching my show.
	You didn't see Mevio today?
	Yeah, I watch it daily.
	Yeah, I'm sure you do.
	Well, then you would have known you were in Las Vegas.
	Yeah, no, I saw that.
	I was in Las Vegas.
	Last year.
	I thought it was actually there last year, I wonder.
	Yeah, no, this was the, remember the pinball museum you were harping about?
	Oh, right, right, right, right, right.
	Yeah, that was the report.
	But I just had to do a quaint box.
	I wanted to get all of our reporters into one screen.
	Why would anybody go to that show in Las Vegas is baffling to me.
	Well, I'm reading mixed reports.
	First of all, I agree.
	I mean, I despise trade shows.
	I love watching them.
	I love watching keynotes on streams.
	I think that's fantastic.
	Yeah, you see those keynotes and everything.
	You don't have to go.
	It comes right into your bedroom.
	I mean, it's just like, why am I going to...
	And the keynote things, especially when they have big names like...
	Even without Steve Jobs here at Macworld, which I did go to in San Francisco, even without Steve Jobs at the keynote, I didn't go to the keynote, I seldom do.
	People who went said it was a madhouse.
	People scrambling to get in.
	But trade shows, of course, they actually...
	The trade shows that I've been to with my wife when she had a cosmetics company is essentially you're selling to stores, retail, you've got big buyers.
	It's a place where buyers and sellers more at the wholesale level can get together.
	And this became a thing where consumers wanted to go because they could find the latest products, etc.
	And in fact, at the end of...
	Of our stay in the Netherlands when Patricia would do a trade show, so many people would come in to buy stuff that eventually she said, screw it, I'm just going to set up a booth which is really oriented towards people who walk in the door and want to buy, and was making huge amounts of money doing that.
	Most of the trade shows in the U.S. don't allow that, by the way.
	Oh, really?
	I wonder, why is that?
	I think it has to do with the local business licensing.
	I do know that at all those trade shows, the ASCAP BMI agents are out.
	And if you're playing music in your booth, then they discreetly take you aside and hand you a bill.
	Really?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, that's happening.
	What if you're playing pod-safe music?
	I wonder what happens when they take you aside and then you pull out the little document saying, what, are you kidding me?
	You know, I only wish that had happened when I was involved in Podsafe music.
	That sounds like a fight with Adam Curry written all over it.
	Sounds like something I'd love to get into.
	Yeah, because some of the stuff now, the pod-safe music, some of it is very commercial, and I think a guy roaming around pulling that stunt, trying to nick people for ASCAP fees, wouldn't know the difference.
	Oh, no, of course not.
	Well, some companies are now trying it, but these ASCAP BMI fuckers, or fill in your local...
	Your local letters here, for whatever your country is, they basically have a God-given right, looking at the law books, as usually the sole company allowed to collect rights, and their vision is, well, we'll take the money now, and then we'll check it later.
	They're kind of like IRS agents.
	They're really quite frightening.
	And you always get, you know, there was a lawsuit recently, some hairdresser who said, hey man, I'm playing this radio for me, not for my clients.
	I'm playing shitty music they don't even want to listen to.
	So that's for me personally.
	Good try.
	It didn't work?
	No, of course not.
	No way.
	So what kind of bill do they usually present people with?
	It depends on the size of your booth, and they have calculations as to how many...
	I mean, you'd be surprised how much science there is, or so-called science, particularly when it comes to retail.
	I've known a number of restaurateurs and bar owners, and these guys will literally come in, and they will do a calculation based upon whatever time they're in there, the size of the venue, and then they'll go back and they'll look at your tax records and say, you're not paying enough tax in.
	Because you have to be selling more based upon what we've tracked and the volume.
	So they do the same with music.
	So even if you have a workshop where you have the radio on, you have to pay your ASCAP BMI dues because you're effectively narrowcasting to 10 people or however many people you have in there.
	So let me get this straight.
	So I have a radio on in my little carpenter shop that has three people working in there.
	Yeah, you eventually will get a visit if you don't pay of your own accord.
	Now, what if we had the same three people and myself with a FM radio on our person with headsets on listening to the same music on the same channel?
	That would be okay.
	So does that make any sense to you?
	No.
	I think in general, John, when it comes to rules, regulation, the government, and the man, I don't think a lot of that makes sense to me.
	So if anybody's out there who has been hit with one of these Bill's little small shops or a retail environment or a hairdresser, which I think is where you're going to run into this quite a bit, would you send us a note and give us the experience?
	And what you were told to pay and what came of it.
	And we'll talk about it later.
	Or better yet, if you're listening right now, seeing as we're streaming live, you can call into the chat room.
	And I actually have everything jacked in today, so if we wanted to take a call, we could.
	Story about the British music industry in the Financial Times today in the weekend edition.
	So how much do you think, and this of course has nothing to do with what we just mentioned, the performance rights, but what do you think physical and digital sales did?
	This last year?
	In the UK, yeah, this last year.
	It's down obviously from 2007, although only 25 million down.
	But they sold 123 million.
	123 million dollars worth of...
	Pounds.
	Pounds worth...
	No, 123 million physical albums were sold in the UK, so that's a lot more than 123 million dollars or pounds.
	Seeing as there was...
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah, so that's closer to like 700 or 800 million.
	Didn't when you used to sell a million albums, that became a gold or platinum?
	Oh, these days, in some countries, it's 10,000.
	It's like, yeah, you won gold!
	How am I selling?
	8,000 units.
	Oh, so you tell me it's a scam.
	No, you think?
	Dude, Patricia still has gold records that are actually the mother masters that they used when they pressed vinyl, and you can put these on a turntable, and if you play it backwards because it's the mirror image, it is indeed the song that achieved the sales.
	It's really cool.
	Although what's not so cool is these things are so old, I had to take it out of the case to play it on a turntable, and I couldn't get the casing back together, and that made my wife very angry.
	But it did play.
	I played it backwards on a turntable, and it was the actual song.
	I think it's like proving the point.
	Yeah, okay, fine.
	Well, they don't do that anymore.
	I mean, now it's just a CD and like a plastic frame.
	You know, like, congratulations.
	And they give them to everybody.
	Every disc jockey, every promo guy, the secretary.
	Everyone's got gold records.
	They don't need anything like they used to.
	They used to mean something.
	Yeah, it was cool, you know, and the more you had, here was the key, is particularly in the radio business and station managers and program directors and music directors were always getting these because it's the most informal form of bribery that is accepted.
	And the cool thing to do is to have them all stacked up against the wall.
	Don't have them hanging on the wall, but just have so many of them that they're just stacked in rows of ten against the wall.
	Oh yeah, man, I've got to hang those up one of these days, you know.
	That's what you've got to do.
	Oh, yeah.
	So, weather-wise, we are freezing our tits off here in the United Kingdom.
	I'm cooking here in Northern California.
	God, in the Netherlands, they do this whenever it really gets cold, and I haven't heard this chatter for at least a decade.
	But then they start threatening with cranking up the 11-city natural ice canal race, which is famous, famous in the Netherlands, where it's all done on natural ice on canals, under and around bridges, and it's 11 cities.
	It's hundreds of kilometers.
	People lose their toes, their fingers, their lives, but it's a huge, huge cultural deal.
	And I hope it happens again, but it just goes to show that there's something funky going on.
	I know they do that in Ottawa City.
	Of course, it's always freezing.
	Yeah, but this is the legend of Hans Brinker in the silver skates, right?
	This is what that is about.
	This is that story.
	So it freezes that bad that all those canals get frozen over?
	Well, it hasn't.
	Is it freezing over now?
	No, no, no.
	The freezing has really started now.
	So now everyone's talking about cranking up the competition.
	But the last time, it had been a while until, of course, Al Gore proclaimed global warming.
	Luckily, we have the 11-city canal race coming back.
	I'm reminded of the...
	I've always said to people, you know, the day that the term paperless office was coined, if you had invested in paper mills right then...
	You'd make a fortune.
	You'd have made a fortune.
	Well, you know what my dad always says?
	The paperless office is as likely as the paperless toilet.
	Which I always thought was a good one.
	Yeah, well, they do exist in India.
	Yes.
	And in other countries.
	So...
	So it's cold, and are you getting freezing?
	Is it getting snowing?
	It was snowing this morning, yeah.
	It was snowing in London this morning?
	Yeah, flurries.
	I mean, not like big snow.
	Are they sticking?
	Yes.
	Oh, it's very cold.
	So is it icy out, so can people fall on their ass?
	No, unfortunately, no.
	But if they can, then we have a good shot.
	So, well, it's sunny here.
	We were looking for some rain.
	It's supposed to happen last week.
	Nothing happened.
	It's just like right now it's clear there's not a cloud in the sky.
	And, I don't know, it's probably going to be 70 today.
	Of course, meanwhile, in Washington they had this number of storms, a bunch of snow storms and then ice storms and then some terrible rains that have flooded most of Washington state.
	And smelting all the snow, of course, which makes it even worse.
	Because they end up with twice as much water.
	And then that's, I guess, sweeping across the northern states in some horrible way.
	And just, I guess, it's going to affect football games today.
	What football games?
	Well, there's a couple of playoff games.
	I think one of them is being played...
	In Baltimore, maybe, or New York, or someplace.
	I don't know who's home and who's away, but I know there's at least one or two going to be played back east, which means it'll be a football game in the snow, and we're talking about American football here for anyone in Europe listening in.
	And those are always usually great fun to watch because, you know, these people slide around, they fall on their ass.
	And if the ball ever gets loose, which happens at least once or twice a game, it starts bouncing around, it becomes quite humorous to watch people try to grab it.
	And so that could be fun.
	That reminds me, have you seen that?
	It's floating around on YouTube.
	It was...
	A military marine beach landing demonstration video, which of course the Royal Marines in the United Kingdom say it's not them, which is kind of weird because they're using British military machine guns, they have British military landing ships, they're wearing British military marine uniforms.
	It's basically the Royal Marines.
	And so they land on this beach and then four guys jump out.
	This is a demonstration of how they do a beach landing.
	It's kind of Normandy-esque, if you will.
	And the beach is completely filled with nut mud.
	And these four guys go face forward, flat into the mud.
	And they're stuck because they have so much gear they can't get out of the mud.
	And they're just sitting there struggling and they're trying to pull each other out.
	It's like the biggest embarrassment ever.
	No, I've not seen that.
	I'm going to have to go check it out.
	Yeah, I'll send you a link for that.
	It's funny.
	I shall mention it to the Queen, by the way, when I see her in February.
	Oh.
	Yeah, let's...
	How creative was that?
	So he sends me a note, which written...
	You think that we have some calligrapher working for the Queen?
	Can I just say, I was quite disappointed by that as well.
	We're referring to my invitation from the Queen to come visit her at Buckingham Palace for a special reception for the relaunch of the Royal website at royal.gov.uk.
	And so, you know, it's a beautiful invitation.
	It's almost like a piece of wood, John.
	This is not cardboard.
	I mean, it's like plywood.
	Gilted plywood.
	But my name is just kind of written in in block letters.
	Yeah, I mean, it looks like they hired the handicapped to put the names in.
	Because, I mean, you know, you'd think there'd be a royal calligrapher who would, you know, with a flourish, write Adam Curry, you know, in some very nice manner.
	And it looks like it was scratched in by some guy who you barely write.
	Well, it's not that bad.
	Okay.
	It's pretty bad.
	It's not that bad.
	Hold on a second.
	It's small, too.
	It's like really small.
	Like the guy just came out of prison.
	Yeah.
	So I RSVP'd to the master.household at royal.gsx.gov.uk.
	Did you RSVP plus one?
	No, I got a parking pass and everything, and it's quite clear.
	Photography, mobile phones with photographic capabilities are not to be switched on.
	So I sent back, thank you for your kind invitation to the relaunch, blah, blah, blah.
	I'm happy to attend.
	Very much look forward to it.
	And then I got a return email from Lucy Regan from the same website or email address.
	Thank you very much for your email.
	I am delighted that you are able to attend.
	Kind regards.
	And then there's a royal household legal disclaimer.
	Oh, really?
	You have to sign it?
	No, no.
	It just says, this message in any attachment should only be read by those persons to whom it is addressed.
	You know, one of those.
	Yeah, like that's going to do any...
	You know, that always amuses me.
	What lawyer came up with this?
	I remember when that first started.
	That was maybe 10 years ago.
	And some people have like 20 paragraphs of shit below their emails.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I know.
	It's ludicrous.
	I should come up with one of those really ridiculous ones like my terms of service that I have on the blog.
	People should check that out.
	Which goes on and on and on with all kinds of nonsense.
	What does our Bobby have on his emails?
	I bet you he has a whole shitload of stuff.
	I don't know.
	Let me see.
	I got an email here from him.
	Bobby is our in-house lawyer.
	Oh, he has nothing.
	Literally nothing.
	It's just Bobby.
	Fantastic.
	There you go.
	Bobby, you rock, man.
	I love that.
	A train just went by.
	I can see it down the hill.
	What's that?
	It had a train.
	Yeah.
	It just went by and it had all antique passenger cars on it.
	Oh, pretty.
	I wonder where it's going.
	Every once in a while, I remember every once in a while, it always irks me that there's no notice, nobody seems to care to tell anyone.
	I guess the local media doesn't think much of it.
	Every once in a while, the Southern Pacific has a...
	And I think Santa Fe, they have this historic old steam passenger train that they drive all over the place.
	It goes all over the country.
	And it's a big, you know, eight driving wheels.
	It's a huge thing.
	And I've seen it a couple times.
	And they never tell you when it's coming through, when it's around, but when it's in the area, it's constantly honking its steam whistle, and it's very distinctive.
	And so you go, what the hell is that?
	And you go and you look and you see this antique steam train going shooting down the road and down the track.
	And you go, what?
	And then you look it up and you found it was over here for a week and people got to take little rides in it.
	And then, of course, nobody did because nobody knew about it.
	Nobody knew about it, yeah.
	Anyway, so just a gripe of mine.
	I think, though, that when I go to this reception with the Queen, I need to be very skeptical of a number of things.
	A, why did they invite me other than to throw me in the tower?
	Maybe to bite you when we have one of the lizards bite you.
	The Queen also started a podcast in Christmas 2007.
	She did?
	Yeah.
	How often does it run?
	Well, this is the point that Stefano, who sent me an email about my invitation, said, you may have already noticed, but it might be worth noting that a podcast of the Queen's speeches have been set up two years ago, but has only been updated at Christmas 07 and for her birthday six months after that, but nothing since, including this past Christmas.
	Typical.
	Huh.
	So I'll have to make mention of that.
	Certainly you're here to tell me that you're also going to relaunch your podcast because I'm severely, you know, you being the fairy godmother, me being the podfather, I think we should hook up and make something happen, Your Royal Highness.
	So the question is, should I take along some...
	Close the subject.
	Well, should I take along some clandestine recording equipment and record my encounters?
	You mean put a wire on.
	Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
	Well, you've done it before.
	Yeah.
	I just wonder if it's easy, right?
	Because I can take along a bag and just leave the bag wherever, literally, and have my wireless lav on.
	And I can clip that to the inside.
	It'll work.
	Yeah, I would do it.
	I mean, they don't want you taking pictures.
	They didn't say anything about recording audio.
	Well, yeah, that would be the technical right answer while they're throwing me in the brig.
	Hey, man, it's like you only said no pictures.
	You didn't mention recording equipment.
	Okay, that's it.
	I'm doing it.
	Well, maybe they'll...
	You know, the problem is they're going to probably...
	First, you've got to realize they're going to pat you down.
	Yeah, I don't know if they're going to pat me down.
	You think so?
	I think they're going to walk you through shit, yeah.
	They're going to walk you through a metal detector.
	Wait, there's people breaking into the Queen's bedroom all the time.
	There's like no security there.
	Well, this makes it even worse.
	Once something like that happens, they get even more freaky.
	So they're going to walk you through a metal detector because obviously the fact that you were invited and you're not like a regular at Buckingham Palace that I know of.
	That you know of, yes.
	That you're like with the hoi polloi, and there's probably a lot of others like you.
	And so they're going to bring you in through a metal detector, and then there's going to be some goons who are probably humorless, and they're going to pat you down.
	Let me see what the invitation says exactly.
	Hold on.
	It's, uh, it's, but it is kind of, I mean, just the envelope and everything in it is really cool.
	Okay, so I have, like, a parking pass that says MI. It has big, big pink letters, MI. That's what you have to put in the lower right-hand corner of your windscreen.
	Mission Impossible is what it is.
	Then I have an entry card.
	Oh, this is nicely printed, Mr.
	Adam Curry.
	Please bring this card with you.
	Security.
	In addition to this entry card, would you please bring photographic identification with you?
	Passport, photo driving license is ideal.
	This will be checked on arrival.
	Arrival and parking.
	Please display the enclosed label on your windscreen before arriving.
	Parking is available.
	Cameras and telephones.
	Photography is not permitted.
	Mobile phones must be switched off.
	And then there's...
	Ooh!
	Then there's a whole other, the following information about the reception may be helpful.
	Security.
	Please note carefully the security information shown on the reverse of the enclosed entry card, which you must bring with you.
	The invitation and entry card are for the named guest only and are non-transferable.
	Then there's information about arrival and there's how to get to Buckingham Palace.
	Correspondence, additional information.
	Doesn't say anything about recording, about audio.
	or video for that matter.
	Well, there you have it.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, you're still going to get patted down.
	Then I'll just say, oh, I'm sorry.
	You don't have to, you know, you just put it, you know, put it, you know, where it's not a problem.
	Well, I can just put the, I have the I, what is it, the I-8-899 or whatever, the I-River.
	It has a built-in mic.
	I can just slip it into my breast pocket and say, that's my MP3 player.
	Yeah, that'll work.
	Yeah.
	And then whatever we get, we get.
	If we get nothing, then we got nothing.
	Right.
	Which could happen.
	Yeah.
	Quite likely.
	Considering my sound engineering capabilities of last week, anything could happen.
	Oh, yes.
	Let's talk about that a little bit.
	No, let's not.
	That's pretty sucky.
	I got a whole bunch of notes about it.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So it would have been, you know, to have sound fuck up one out of 64 episodes, or really if you think about it, over 900 combined with all the Daily Source Code episodes I've done, probably over a thousand of shows I've done, that's acceptable.
	But to have me gloating and pontificating about how great the sound is while it sounds like absolute shit.
	Although we did pick up a whole bunch of listeners in the Middle East.
	Apparently.
	Because they all like it.
	They really like it when you talk like that.
	That's their sound.
	They're like, hey, finally a show for us.
	That's cool.
	This podcast has got something to it.
	Abdullah, come over here.
	Listen to this.
	This is a great show.
	I got some guy irked when I mentioned it.
	It sounded like Arab radio.
	Although he admitted that there were some stations that sounded like that.
	Most.
	Most.
	It also sounds like Mexican.
	Mexican radio has that quality.
	So I've got to talk with you about UFOs.
	Because there are two things that happened this past week.
	One of them I saw you blogged about the...
	This happened in the UK. Apparently a UFO with tentacles...
	That's the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
	The Flying Spaghetti Monster hit a wind turbine and broke it.
	At the same time, this is actually from...
	This must be an AP story.
	It's coming from...
	This is why they don't want wind turbines.
	Yeah, really.
	Space...
	Mystery roar from faraway space detected.
	Have you heard about this?
	No, no, tell me.
	This is NASA. Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
	Something new and interesting is going on in the universe.
	I love that.
	So they listen to space, and normally it just kind of sounds like nothing.
	But apparently they're picking up loud roaring noises now, and they're not quite sure what it is.
	But, you know, considering my disappointment of the first contact of October...
	And so much mainstream media attention being paid to stuff like this stupid spaghetti monster hitting the wind turbine, and we've got space sounds from outer space, and Obama wants to accelerate and put us on the moon.
	Like, didn't we already see that movie before?
	But anyway, we've got to get on the moon.
	I'm thinking that...
	Like Obama's a fractal of Kennedy.
	Right.
	Well, here's the scenario.
	The scenario is, of course, there's more and more dissent coming from amongst the slaves saying, wait a minute, global warming, yeah, okay, we've got to protect our Earth, but hold on a second, what are all these taxes for this unproven theory of yours?
	And what they're going to do next is they're going to have space aliens communicate to us and tell us that we're killing our world and carbon credits are good for us.
	Something like that is in the works.
	Yeah.
	I like it.
	It's going to be a hard one to pull off.
	Are you kidding me?
	Only a maniac would think that that could work.
	Okay.
	I am in outer space and we must tell you earthlings.
	I look at Rahm Emanuel and I think, yeah, he could make it up.
	He could do it.
	He could be an alien for all we know.
	Yeah, no shit.
	He has a funny look about him.
	I keep reading more and more cynicism in the papers here about Obama.
	Well, that's because there's nothing else to write about.
	Sarah Palin's not in the news anymore.
	So they've got to focus their attention on somebody, and the Republicans have all, you know, scurried away.
	And so what's left?
	I think there's going to be a lot more, you know, Obama's, the wedding's over.
	Honeymoon.
	The honeymoon is over, yeah.
	So now he's gearing up to hit a trillion plus.
	And was it a million jobs?
	600,000?
	A million?
	I keep seeing different numbers.
	Yeah, who knows.
	Doing what?
	Building bridges and roads that we're not going to drive on.
	Get rid of Sarbanes-Oxley and you'll get your million jobs back right now.
	No, no.
	Quite the opposite.
	Today, the finance ministers are meeting to come up with new regulation.
	This is happening as we speak.
	So the new Sarbanes-Oxley is being implemented along with whatever else they're cooking up.
	So you've been following the Madoff thing, right?
	Yeah, the $173 million worth of checks in his drawer.
	Well, I didn't get that one.
	Oh, really?
	He's got $173 million worth of checks.
	Yeah, I got the article right here.
	This is hilarious.
	What he demanded about, I guess it was about two or three weeks before his sons gave him up, he demanded, well, this is the way they print it, he demanded 100 million pounds be transferred from the UK office to the US office.
	And so that $100 million is about $173 million in checks investigators found in his desk drawer.
	I thought he was better organized than that.
	Oh man, this is fantastic.
	And I predict that this is going to unfold right into Citigroup and Citigroup is going to come crashing down on the heels of this Madoff thing.
	I mean, there's so much tied up in here and that Citigroup is such a black box that no one understands.
	And the guy just quit.
	Let me see, what was his name?
	The big board member.
	The guy who was responsible for all of it.
	What the fuck is his name?
	Well, here's why you're looking at it.
	The thing that I find interesting is that it turns out, at least some people believe this, that one of the big investors in his scheme, Ponzi scheme, to the tune of about $2 billion, is the Russian mafia.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Not only...
	Robert Rubin.
	Oh yeah, Robert Rubin, right.
	He's quitting Citigroup after 10 years.
	Listen to his resume.
	Former U.S. Treasury Secretary.
	To who?
	To the United States.
	No, to who?
	What president?
	Oh, to which president?
	Oh, that's a good question.
	Clinton, I believe.
	Yeah, I think you're right.
	I think you're right.
	Yes.
	Of course he ran Goldman Sachs.
	Gee, you think that club is small, huh?
	Before joining the Clinton administration.
	I mean, is it clear to people now that Goldman Sachs, the most hated firm on Wall Street, first of all, we understand why they were hated, because they were playing a whole different game.
	All those treasury secretaries come from Goldman Sachs.
	They keep giving money to Goldman Sachs.
	I mean, when will people catch this?
	It's like, hello!
	Don't you see what's going on here?
	It's pretty funny that they keep getting away with this, like Lucy and the football.
	It's unbelievable.
	I've had so many blue-collar guys around the house for the past month almost, and eventually they'll say, so what are you in the music business?
	Because I've got guitars, and of course I've got a lot of equipment.
	And I say, no, no, I'm involved in propaganda.
	Yeah.
	And they love it, right?
	Oh, really?
	Really?
	And I'll show them a couple of videos or I'll tell them and start talking some shit.
	And it's funny because sometimes, more often than not actually, these guys are right in step with it.
	And I always ask them the same question.
	So, why aren't you doing it?
	Aren't you pissed off?
	I said, yeah, somehow we gave up.
	That's what they all say.
	Yeah, that's kind of weird.
	We are just taking it up the ass.
	We just kind of give up.
	But I think they're going to crack.
	I think that the Brits will crack sooner.
	Well, shit, there's tens of thousands of people throwing shoes at the Israeli embassy here, which I think is fantastic.
	What a great meme.
	Shoes.
	Yeah, it's great.
	Yeah, that one guy doesn't know what he said off the shoes.
	He's a hero.
	What a fantastic meme.
	And you see these pictures of Adidas, Nikes, Manalo Blahniks, all kinds of shoes just laying in front of the embassy.
	But nothing at all on the 6 o'clock news.
	Not a single clip, not a single mention whatsoever.
	Really?
	Nothing.
	I wonder if that's going on around here, because of course we'd be the last to know.
	Well, you have riots in Oakland.
	Yeah, well, the riots in Oakland are pretty well covered because it has to do with a cop shooting a defenseless guy.
	And it's got everybody up in arms.
	Well, this is exactly what started off the riots in Athens, which, by the way, you're not hearing about, man.
	And it's like there's 20,000 people at a time are demonstrating.
	This is really big.
	Yeah, I don't think this is going to trigger an Athens-style riot.
	There's a couple of problems.
	One, it's in Oakland, and that's kind of like the end of it.
	What, just because they don't have an Acropolis?
	They don't have an Acropolis, and it's not the capital of anything.
	So, it's the capital of bad football.
	So, I think it's just going to boil down.
	But it's interesting that these guys are recognizing the fact that they're not taking action and they're just passively putting up with crap.
	This is the group, the Brits, that stood firm against Hitler.
	And now they can't get out of their own way and they're getting pushed around by their own people.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well...
	So anyway, back to the meme.
	So I don't know that we're not seeing the shoe thing happening around here, because it wouldn't get covered.
	Probably the same thing that's happening there.
	It's interesting, though.
	Are bloggers covering the shoes being thrown?
	You know what?
	I don't think so.
	I think this could be the next big thing for any kind of a...
	Any type of civil unrest or protest.
	It's a beautiful gesture.
	It's just absolutely beautiful.
	You get it.
	Even though it's not in our culture to have the bottom of your soul showing to be seen as insulting, which is a very Asian cultural thing.
	I didn't know about the shoe throwing actually being a large insult, but it doesn't matter.
	It's so clear to you.
	It's like, yeah, I'm throwing my shoes at you.
	That's how much I hate you.
	And it feels good.
	Granted, if you have an extra pair of shoes, it feels even better when you walk away.
	But...
	Yeah, everybody's got a pair.
	Let's face it.
	I've got some sitting around here.
	Everybody has a pair of crappy shoes that you may have had repaired.
	And you're willing to throw at the government.
	Yeah, and they're so far gone.
	I have a pair that's so comfortable.
	I still wear them once in a while, but they're shot.
	And it's like, you know, I'm going to have to throw them away eventually.
	Why should I just throw them away when I can throw them at someone?
	Yeah.
	Excuse me.
	Of course, I'm sure they could do DNA testing on all issues and identify every person individually.
	Yeah, well, how much further do they have to go?
	I mean, everything's so tied in now.
	It's phenomenal to see how things are happening here.
	So I've had the wonderful experience of setting up...
	So I have the BT broadband line in the new house.
	A couple interesting things.
	Are you on it now?
	Yeah, I'm on it now, yeah.
	So one is you cannot set up your own easily.
	Let me rephrase that.
	If you use their hub, you cannot easily set up your own VoIP connection because they have their own VoIP service and there's certainly no clear way to set it to something else.
	But more interestingly, now I use Gmail, so all my mail goes through port 80 kind of accepted web-type traffic.
	Patricia uses Apple's email, and she just got used to it, and I never want to confuse her and just let her use whatever she wants to use.
	But of course, one of the things you bump into if you're not using, now that we've basically switched providers to British Telecom, is that you have to deal with little annoyances like the SMTP server.
	Which is what you have to set in order to be able to send mail from an email program.
	Not such a big deal.
	Interesting, though, that British Telecom will not let you use any other SMTP server but theirs.
	So there's the trap.
	There's the siphon.
	There's the hose.
	Right.
	Everything has to go through central control.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so they could be monitoring all the email.
	Well, they're going to be monitoring the email as of March.
	That's when it starts.
	Oh, right, right, right.
	Yeah, they're already starting.
	It's all of your email, all your phone calls, all your text messages, although they say not the content of the text messages and the phone calls.
	Yeah, right.
	Only the information, who communicated with who.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, they can map out people's relationships that way.
	I saw that program some years ago, as a matter of fact.
	Interpol developed it.
	And they were demoing it at an event I went to.
	And...
	It's very interesting because they showed how you can identify, you know, the first they decided to isolate, I think, 50 people that were suspected of being in an organized crime family.
	And then they showed, and there's a circle.
	And then they start to track the calls from this person to that person to this person to that person, and they have some sort of analysis algorithm that can then identify, because with length of call and who's calling who...
	And you have to do a lot of it.
	I mean, you can't just do five minutes.
	You have to just track these things forever.
	And then you get, after a few thousand calls, then they stopped it and they said, here's the way we see the structure of the organization.
	And they had, here's the godfather, the head guy.
	Here's his, you know, his minions, his main go-to guys.
	And then here's all the stooges that are out in the field.
	And it was like, it looked pretty clear.
	It's exactly what it was.
	And I think, obviously, it's what they're up to.
	You know, they could just subscribe to my LinkedIn.
	It would be probably easier and more efficient.
	Or just look at my Facebook account.
	So who is the current Secretary of State for the United States?
	That's Condoleezza Rice still, right?
	As far as I know.
	Yeah.
	Because where is she in all of this?
	And by the way, where is our coming Secretary of State, Clinton?
	Where is she?
	I'm just referring to Israel and Gaza.
	I haven't heard from either one of them.
	Think about it.
	Neither one.
	Neither Rice nor Clinton.
	They're off together.
	Oh man, can you imagine that porn movie?
	Boy, that could make some money.
	Clinton does Rice?
	That's like got everything in it.
	Right down to foot fetish.
	I mean, that's a perfect...
	It's impossible.
	You know, we laugh about the porn industry bailout, which Larry Flint and with the guy Joe Francis from Girls Gone Wild, which they jokingly, I presume, requested or are talking about.
	Yeah, it's very funny.
	Yeah.
	But I actually got an email from Patricia's porn friend, Bobby Eden.
	She's like a real porn star.
	Uh-huh.
	And she said, just admit her on an airplane, whatever.
	And...
	And she sent me an email and she said, you know, I'm talking with my business partners because times are kind of tough and sales are really down.
	Long story short, well, oh, I found out you're the guy that knows a lot about podcasting.
	What do you think about podcasting?
	And I'm like, yes, I think that we need to have a meeting.
	I definitely think a meeting is an organ.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, let me know how that meeting goes.
	Yeah, no, I will.
	I will.
	She's probably working for MI5. So U.S. and European banking chiefs converged today in Basel for a behind-the-scenes meeting.
	I love that.
	Behind-the-scenes meeting with central bankers and regulators to discuss the post-crisis regulatory framework.
	Nice.
	Oh, of course, the gathering hosted by the Bank for International Settlements.
	It is really happening.
	It is really taking place.
	We're just reading it in the news.
	And I even saw an ad.
	I mean, the Financial Times, it's better than the National Enquirer.
	It's funnier.
	Here it is.
	So it's a one-page ad.
	It's their own paper, so they're advertising, you know, to subscribe to FT.com.
	And view from the top video, Russia-Ukraine gas dispute.
	And here, Tony Blair video, former UK Prime Minister on the new financial order.
	I mean...
	Come on!
	Did you hear about his Medal of Honor?
	That's the big thing here in the UK. For what?
	Well, George Bush gave him the highest order in the land, the Medal of Honor, for his stellar work in the invasion of Iraq based upon the lie of weapons of mass destruction.
	And the big joke here is that the medal doesn't actually exist.
	It's meant to be designed specifically for him.
	And so everyone's coming up with these really goofy ideas.
	You can only imagine, right, what the ideas are.
	But the guy got this medal.
	He doesn't even want to show up to receive it.
	I mean, can you imagine?
	Can you just imagine these war criminals handing each other medals?
	It's amazing.
	Yeah.
	I like the medals thing.
	They love handing out medals to these stooges.
	It's pretty funny.
	Yeah, so Tony Blair needs to get his Iron Cross and then he can go on with whatever he's doing.
	I think that's a great idea for a contest, though.
	You get a lot of mileage from it.
	Let's design Tony Blair's Presidential Medal of Honor, Congressional Medal of Honor, whatever it is.
	Oh, that's funny.
	Yeah, well, we didn't hear about that here either.
	Well, there were three people who were...
	It's been really slow because, you know, there hasn't been any good celebrity news, and I guess, you know...
	Well, you heard about the German banker who killed himself?
	Probably.
	I think I blogged it.
	Yeah.
	Adolf Merkel?
	Yeah, Merkel.
	Yeah.
	You know, do you think he's related...
	I can only find one picture of that guy.
	Talk about a guy you couldn't...
	I was wondering whether he was related to Merkel herself.
	Exactly my question.
	And I couldn't find any documentation for that.
	No, me neither.
	Wouldn't surprise me, though.
	And I couldn't find any pictures of the guy.
	I found one crappy picture from, like, 15, 20 years ago.
	So he was obviously, you know, one of those guys who wanted to stay out of the spotlight.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Then he kills himself.
	Whatever.
	He could have been murdered.
	Here it is.
	Here's what Rice is doing.
	Oh, of course.
	Oh, this makes total sense.
	The U.S. risk-irking Russia yesterday by signing a partnership charter with Georgia intended to act as a catalyst for its strongest ally in the South Caucasus.
	Condoleezza Rice at work.
	There you go.
	Is she trying to calm things down in the Middle East?
	No.
	No, she's trying to piss off the Russians.
	There you go.
	Good job, Condi.
	Well, that's okay.
	After Obama gets in, he'll continue to piss them off.
	Yeah.
	So, when I'm seeing that...
	I'm sorry, they're having this gas thing going on there.
	You know, the Russians just basically say, you guys are going to piss us off.
	Okay, fine, no gas for you.
	Well, I see it a little more as a business deal because, you know, in honesty, Ukraine basically is not paying their bill.
	You know, they owe Gazprom a lot of money.
	There's no dispute.
	And there's also just, you know, they're talking about pricing because they're taking it for, I don't know, it's like...
	$200 a cubic ton or something like that, whereas some prices in some countries are $500.
	So there's all kinds of disputes going on, but the biggest one is that the Ukraine was basically of the gas there that runs through the Ukraine to Europe.
	They were siphoning stuff off for themselves.
	So there's a legitimate dispute there, but come on, Europe.
	Let's consider...
	You know, we've got to come up with some other solutions.
	You can't just be, you know, you can't be relying on one country for your natural gas.
	But this should always, always happens, of course, when it's the coldest winter in years.
	Yeah, well, that's when you put the screws to people.
	And you hear people on the BBC, on the radio, like, you know, I had to turn off my, or my gas has been cut off, you know, I can't afford it anymore, I'm freezing.
	It's a civilized country.
	People are freezing to death.
	I'm telling you.
	It's crazy.
	Hey, get back to the coal.
	I mean, you have a...
	I understand you have, in your new place, you have little fireplaces all throughout the house.
	And there's nothing to me that's more interesting...
	And a nice coal fire.
	Nice coal fire is one of the most fantastic things.
	I have actually a coal holder here in one of my fireplaces, and I would, although it's harder to get now, but I would burn coal, and of course it does make a small odor in the neighborhood, but nobody knows what it is because nobody knows what coal is in California.
	But it's a gorgeous fire, and it's like, you know, I call them rocks that burn.
	It's like a rock.
	It burns.
	And it burns for hours, and it burns really warm, and it gives off a good radiant heat because there's a lot of infrared coming off these things because they're red.
	And there are also flames coming off them, so it's really a quaint fire.
	It's not an ugly fire.
	It's not a smoky fire.
	Horrible fire by any means.
	It's a really cozy, warm, inviting fire.
	And once you get it going, it goes for about 20 hours.
	You don't have to keep poking it and moving the logs and sticking it or whatever.
	It's an amazing product.
	And so now that you've got this great new house with all these little fireplaces, I'm thinking, wow, you're going to be having these great little coal fires.
	It's going to make the place so cool, right?
	Yeah, that would have been very nice.
	If it were not for regulation that prohibits me from doing that, you have to...
	I'm sorry, wait a minute, wait, what?
	Regulation.
	You can't have a coal fire in England?
	No, here's what they do.
	These fireplaces, they'll work.
	The flues, they're all wide open.
	You can shut them, but they're open.
	I've got brand new chimneys on top.
	Everything's beautiful.
	However, if you actually want to burn anything in it, wood, coal, or otherwise...
	Then you have to go through an extremely lengthy application process.
	They have to come in and approve it.
	It has to be done in a certain way.
	Everyone says it's just not worth it to get that done.
	And then they'll tax you for whatever phantom shit you're spewing into the air from your burning rocks.
	It's just not worth it.
	Oh, I think you're going to have to do it.
	Just for the benefit of this show.
	Honey, it's show prep, okay?
	I've got to do it.
	I don't know, man.
	Come on, you've got these little cute little fireplaces all over the place, and they're designed originally for coal, let's face it.
	Yeah.
	Because the other cool thing about it, you can have a really small firebox and just have a little bit of coal burning, because once one of these rocks starts burning, it doesn't need a lot of other friends.
	I mean, the problem with wood is that if it's not with a lot of other friends burning with it...
	It doesn't burn well, no.
	It won't burn well.
	You can't just put one log in and light it and watch it burn.
	It won't burn.
	But with coal, you can.
	You can put a couple of stones in there, crank them, get them started, which, by the way, is the hardest part.
	But you can do it.
	It takes a long time to get one of these to start.
	But once they start, one rock will just burn by itself.
	Well, the one we had in Guilford actually was gas-fired, so you can fire up gas first to get a nice, even flame underneath all of your coal, and then you turn it off, and then it's just burning.
	Then it just keeps going, which is a perfect system.
	Yeah, that would be good.
	Yeah.
	But you're not going to start a coal fire with a match, let's put it that way.
	No, no.
	Well, so, I don't know, man, but they killed the coal industry here.
	Well, they did a crappy job of keeping a handle on it.
	I mean, that's when you had that kill-off in the 50s, the black fog or the death fog or whatever the heck it was, because they were burning coal everywhere.
	When I first went to England, it was in 1973.
	That was the London fog, right?
	Yeah, London Fog.
	And I was in there in 1973 when they were still using a lot of coal.
	And you had to change your shirt twice a day.
	Because around the collar and around the bottom of the sleeves at the very end where there's any sweat that got on there, the coal would stick to it.
	And so your shirt cuffs were black.
	Within four or five hours of just walking around town, and you had the, you know, and stuff was like, it was coal dust.
	It was all over the place, and I guess it was in everyone's lungs, so it was a problem.
	Is that maybe the answer to your question, why people don't burn coal anymore?
	Well, I think that was probably pretty crummy coal.
	You know, anthracite, there's different kinds of coal.
	We have extremely good quality coal in the U.S. that you can burn without getting a lot of dust everywhere.
	And of course, the power plants nowadays that burn coal have these floating beds and they're very high-tech and they have scrubbers and they don't make such a mess.
	Even though people still claim there's mercury in the plume, which I wonder.
	Mercury in the plume, you said?
	Well, that's what they say.
	I mean, the big argument that you'll get from people who promote, you know, the thing that's being promoted now to death around the world, and I think considered a wonderful marketing ploy, because I always think of marketing as like driving force behind a lot of these crazy changes in society.
	But one of the great marketing ploys, under all circumstances, is to get legislation passed.
	Right, and you do that with a sad-looking polar bear on a piece of ice.
	Right.
	So the thing that they've managed to do in a lot of places is ban the incandescent light.
	And that means that China and those crazy little cheap-ass fluorescent bulbs, those little crazy things that don't last as long as they say, And they're hard.
	They don't make it into a lot of fittings and they look stupid.
	And they give off a moderate amount of light for watt.
	I have to give them credit for that.
	Yeah, they're like 25 watts or something like that.
	Five to one over a...
	You multiply it by five and that's what you'd have to be using if you were using incandescent to get the same lumens.
	Wow.
	I think there's a couple of disadvantages.
	One thing, they burn cool so mosquitoes don't get killed when they come up to the light and kill themselves.
	So I think that's a disadvantage.
	So I think we're going to have more malaria.
	But besides that, it's obvious that they're trying to get these things to become standards.
	Every one of them has mercury in them.
	So if you bring this up amongst the complainers, the greenies, They say, well, you know, and if you do the calculation, they should have the numbers, and they may be right, except there's always potentially a flaw in the calculation, and I'll point out what it might be.
	They will say, okay, so you use one-fifth as much electricity to generate that...
	Four-fifths more electricity, you have to burn this much more coal, and that much more coal for those watts produces this much mercury which goes into the atmosphere, which is less than the amount of mercury in the bulb.
	So that's their argument.
	The question that needs to be answered is, is the amount of mercury that they claim is coming off those stacks accurate?
	I'm not sure it is.
	Well, when it comes to government data in general, I'm highly skeptical.
	It's like the joblessness rate, which, what is it?
	So we had another four or five, about a half a million extra non-farm payroll jobs that the United States lost in the month of December.
	But apparently under Johnson, they changed the way they count the unemployed.
	And what do they call them?
	The people who just give up?
	They have a name for that.
	The quitters or whatever.
	So people who have been unemployed for more than two months, they no longer count.
	So where they're talking about, what are they saying now?
	What's the percentage?
	Maybe 7% unemployment?
	Yeah, that it actually is closer to 12.
	Could be.
	If you're counting by Great Depression days, which there was a 25% unemployment.
	Actually, 27, by some calculations, maybe 30.
	Right.
	So...
	Anyway, back to the light bulb thing, since I just thought of one other point.
	If you can legislate these fluorescent bulbs into existence so they're taking over everything...
	I'm not completely annoyed by it.
	Although, let me point out one thing.
	There was a lot of high-technology bulbs that came out around 15 or close to 20 years ago, and a lot of people don't even remember these things.
	But Philips had a slew of them.
	I have two of these bulbs that have been burning on and off for 18 or 19 years.
	Incandescent bulbs.
	They have a little device inside them that turns them off automatically after five minutes of not being...
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah.
	And then it's like they stop making these bulbs because they last forever.
	And so there was like that kind of thing was dropped in favor now of these fluorescent bulbs.
	Luckily, but if you can legislate the fluorescent bulbs into existence, I think you can legislate them out of existence at the point where we have the crossover and LEDs become the light source of choice.
	And we can just say, you know, screw the Chinese.
	We're just going to make LED lighting.
	And that's the only lighting that's going to be legal.
	So it looks like we have Al Gore to thank for this, too.
	I just found a TED talk by him.
	Yeah.
	We must not change the light bulbs.
	We need to change the laws, is his quote.
	I believe, isn't he involved with some kind of fluorescent light company?
	He probably is.
	Everything he does, he's got his fingers in the pie.
	It wouldn't surprise me.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, everybody, oh, Al Gore, Al Gore, you know, he's a good guy.
	Well, he has a Nobel Peace Prize, a Grammy, and an Oscar.
	How can you go up against that?
	Those are all the symbols of the United States of America.
	He has the triumvirate.
	All he needs now is one of those medals from Bush, and he's set.
	He'll get one of those medals from Obama, I guarantee it.
	Exactly.
	Oh, man.
	Yeah.
	In Holland, the packaging on the Philips version of these long-lasting, low-energy light bulbs, it actually says, if you drop it and break it, you have to take it to the disposal center.
	Whatever that is.
	Yeah.
	Because it's got all this mercury.
	Mercury, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I don't know, man.
	Which is worse?
	I mean, people just toss light bulbs away.
	They're not thinking about that.
	Just throw that shit in the trash.
	Exactly.
	And that's where all these things are ending up.
	They're ending up in the regular garbage, busted up, and they're just going to have mercury leeching from all of our dumps, sites, and there's going to be so much of these.
	Because we're talking about millions and millions and millions and millions of these bulbs and millions of pounds of mercury.
	Mercury is going to be leaching out.
	They're going to end up turning these things into hazardous waste sites.
	They're going to have to be blocked off.
	The taxpayers are going to have to dig up these garbage dumps because this thing is going to cost more money than we save with the bulbs.
	It's going to be an ecological disaster, no thanks to Al Gore.
	Yeah, but it's already taken place because you know where they're dumping all this shit is right off Somalia.
	I've been reading about these pirates, man.
	That's a really interesting story.
	When you really get into it, the whole branding of these pirates is just beautiful.
	Of course, it's not a stretch to come up with it, but they did a great job.
	But when you look at the history of all of the toxic, illegal dumping off of their shores, which I'm sure contains all of our toxic light bulbs, which is rumored to be done by the mob, the mafia, Who of course are traditionally very strong in the waste disposal business.
	And, of course, the overfishing, illegal overfishing off of their shore.
	This is why these guys are going out and saying, fuck you, I'm going to grab some shit for me.
	Did you see that parachute with the $3 million coming down on the ship?
	Is that amazing?
	I mean, do we live in a science...
	Where's Bruce Willis?
	This is a science fiction movie.
	We're parachuting a red capsule with $3 million or $2 million onto a $25 million load of oil with...
	With accuracy.
	Yeah.
	With accuracy, indeed.
	Yeah, they didn't have to fish it out of the drink.
	But it's more like Waterworld.
	So they have these rib boats, which is rigid inflatable boats, and they launch from a mothership.
	So you hear this thing about the mothership, but that's literally what it is.
	So they're 200 nautical miles out, and there's these tankers, and they just poop out these ribboats, which are 250-horsepower jacked-up speedboats.
	They just go and hop on board, lock the doors, treat everybody nicely, and then just start negotiating a price.
	It's brilliant.
	Pirates.
	But the history of the pirates is what's interesting.
	Because the pirates have always been kind of like Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp.
	It's kind of romanticized.
	But the reason why...
	These guys were actually pretty social in their lifestyle because they were basically rebelling.
	These were all...
	Boys who probably were taken on board ships when they were young teenagers and were whipped and beaten and treated as slaves essentially and then probably cheated out of their wages at the end of two years on board of a ship and they all kind of said, hey, fuck this, we're going to become pirates and they captured it and they lived side by side regardless of race or religion or whatever religion they had.
	And they were just kind of taking what they thought was theirs and getting back from being screwed.
	And that's what's behind these Somali pirates.
	Yeah, the story is going to be interesting when it finally gets told.
	Well, I think we will see.
	Where's Steven Spielberg?
	It's time for Pirates of Somalia.
	I think it's going to show up first as a thriller, a Bruce Willis type movie.
	And those guys are going to be portrayed as a bunch of, you know, evildoers.
	And then there'll be some more sympathetic material later, you know, years from now.
	Well, right now there's a fleet of 20 ships headed by an ex-admiral or maybe even a current, you know, or whatever, like a big naval yahoo.
	And they're sailing off there and they're going to go start shooting ship because ships are literally avoiding the Suez Canal now, which is, you know, it's an economic disaster.
	There's a reason for that canal.
	And so now they want to go around the Cape of Good Hope, I think it is.
	To avoid the pirates, and so now there's an armada of 20 ships to protect, and it's an international army.
	You know, it's like the UN-based thing, I'm sure.
	I thought Blackwater was going to do something, too.
	Oh, I'm sure there are private companies involved in it.
	That's why they sent out the press release.
	You know, da-da-da, here comes the cavalry.
	Is that Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope?
	I think it's the Cape of Good Hope.
	I'm going to South Africa, by the way.
	Oh, you'll like it.
	It's very good.
	Yeah.
	The Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa.
	By the way, I went to the Cape of Good Hope.
	And you get to see the convergence of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.
	And in fact, it's a very violent...
	It's extremely weird because those two oceans...
	Those two oceans, they clash there, right?
	You've got horrible storms and stuff.
	Yeah, and they don't seem to get along at all.
	And so you go...
	We actually went there.
	What was weird about it, it's kind of weird because down in that area, there is a...
	We go into the...
	There's like a national park where you get into the parking lot and then you walk out about...
	It's about a half a mile to get to the exact point where you're right there at the bottom of Africa.
	And in the process of getting there, we go into the parking lot and there is a bunch of baboons, like about ten of them, who had some Japanese guy cornered in the parking lot.
	And they were, I wouldn't say they were beating him up or anything, but it was like a gang.
	They were intimidating him.
	Mm-hmm.
	And these baboons, by the way, are all over this area.
	And they're frightening.
	And they walk around like they own the place.
	And a couple of them gave us the eye as we were going up to the thing.
	But they recognize distant family and let you slide?
	Is that what you're saying?
	No, it was more like, you know, we've got this other guy we're having fun with, and he was giving them stuff.
	Mimi's description of this was like incredibly big dogs that were intelligent.
	And you can just see it.
	You can't look them in the eye, by the way.
	Don't look a baboon in the eye.
	It's a challenge.
	So you had to not look him in the eye.
	So anyway, so we went out and watched the action, and then we stayed there for a while because there was a bunch of, you know, it was just interesting.
	And there's all kinds of weird little critters living around there.
	And so then we were worried about coming back, and we came back, and the parking lot was clear of the baboons.
	And so as we were driving back the road, the family of these punk baboons was on the road, and I was thinking I'd run a couple of them over, but I decided against it.
	John C. Dvorak, the environmentalist.
	But these guys were punks.
	It was unbelievable.
	And you've run into this problem when you're floating around.
	The baboons are just running the place.
	That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
	What are you going to do in South Africa?
	I'm sitting on my ass.
	What part of South Africa are you going to?
	I am not sure.
	It's kind of a mystery.
	Patricia, my wife, you know, she's so kind.
	So, you know, being the huge celebrity that she is in the Netherlands, one of the glossy magazines, in fact, I think it's called Glossy, said, hey, we really want to do a photo shoot because, you know, a photo shoot equals magazines being sold.
	That's very simple business.
	The cover is what sells it all.
	And so it's kind of simple with these types of deals.
	There's not a huge fee involved, but typically you say, okay, well, where are we going to do this photo shoot?
	Well, how about we were thinking South Africa at this five-star resort.
	And I'm thinking, yeah, that's a good idea.
	So Patricia will do one or two days of photos, and they'll pay for a week.
	There's a couple of...
	I can't remember the name of this.
	Right outside of Johannesburg, there's a resort area that has these...
	I think that's probably where you're going to end up.
	Where you want to go, where you're down there, if you can...
	There's two things that would be nice that you could do.
	I couldn't get a ride on this thing, but the Blue Train, I believe, is still in service, which was one of the greatest train rides in the world.
	But when I went there, it was all sold out.
	Where does it go?
	I think it goes from Johannesburg to Cape Town or something like that.
	Dude, I'm going to stay in the resort on my ass drinking pina coladas.
	I ain't going nowhere.
	You've got to go to Cape Town.
	I'm not going to go to Cape Town.
	Cape Town is shmap town.
	I'm going to stay by the pool.
	See, that's the difference between you and me.
	No, no, that's not.
	That's the difference between you and me and my wife.
	You and me?
	We'd be out in the jungle, man.
	We'd be killing our breakfast.
	You, me, and my wife?
	Not so adventurous.
	What's interesting down in Cape Town is they have a restaurant, which I think is called the Blue Train, as a matter of fact.
	I think it's there.
	Anyway, somebody could correct me.
	But they have every known...
	They cook everything.
	So you can go in there.
	So I caught up with all my...
	Obviously, I needed to see what these things tasted like, being a carnivore.
	And so you get to have elephant...
	And zebra and crocodile and different kinds of elk and gazelle.
	Oh, I want to try that.
	And hippo, I think there was hippo.
	And just like everything.
	I mean, you can imagine.
	So there's a big lineup of this stuff.
	And unfortunately, because it's South Africa, they have to overcook everything because of the fear of worms.
	Have you seen those YouTube videos?
	Did we talk about that?
	No.
	There's this big YouTube thing where if someone started it off and so there's a lot of different videos out there now and you don't know what's real anymore.
	They said that they bought some pork and they poured Coca-Cola.
	They basically marinated it in Coca-Cola in a little Tupperware bowl and after about three minutes these little worms start appearing out of the meat.
	And the theory is that because of the carbon dioxide in the coke, that there's no oxygen left, and then the worms have to try to get out of the meat, out of the pork.
	You Google it.
	There's a couple of obvious fake ones, but there's some that's like, wow, man, it looks like larvae coming out of the pork chop there.
	That doesn't sound good.
	No, of course not.
	So what they're saying is this is basically almost all American pork.
	You know, I haven't done anything with it because...
	Yeah, we've got to figure out whether this is bogus or not.
	It doesn't sound right because, I mean, what are these worms doing in there?
	They're not obviously eating anything because you don't see it in the structure of the meat when you cut through it.
	I mean, when it's raw.
	The little white larvae, almost like how maggots start out.
	Hmm.
	It's disgusting.
	You Google it.
	Google Coke and pork.
	Or just go to YouTube and you'll see it.
	And there's some really funny ones where there's a little flash edit there, right?
	And then they put garden worms.
	On the point.
	It's like, okay, yeah, now I'm really freaked out.
	But there's a couple where, you know, it looks like it's an unedited shot, and then there's these little white dot star to appear, and then they go in with tweezers, and they pull out these worms.
	Here we go.
	Snopes.com.
	Suggestion in the chat room.
	Claim.
	It's already right at the top.
	Claim.
	Pouring Coca-Cola into a piece of raw pork will cause worms to come crawling out of their meat.
	Status?
	False.
	Well, who believes those guys?
	So, let's see if they explain how they're getting this effect, though, because obviously they're doing something.
	Well, the effect, I understand the effect is because the coke, because it has all the carbonation that the oxygen gets pulled out of the pork, and then the worms freak out and they start...
	No, no, I know what I'm saying, but they're getting this effect when there's no real worms.
	They said they've tried it and they can't get this to do it.
	Well, it may not be in all pork, obviously.
	I mean, it...
	Maybe you have to go to...
	The chat room says...
	Let's just call them our listeners.
	I say that halibut seems to also have worms.
	Yeah, halibut does have worms.
	A lot of fish has worms.
	I know monkfish has a lot of worms.
	That's kind of disgusting.
	Well, once they're, you know, if you cook it, you're just eating the worms.
	Yeah, you're eating cooked worms.
	Protein.
	Oh, it's protein.
	Protein.
	Well, I guess that's the bigger question is, is it a problem?
	Worms, you know, people eat worms all the time.
	I just don't buy, I'm not buying this worm thing coming out of pork that much.
	Yeah, no, people do eat worms.
	In fact, there's fried worms as a dietary thing in some cultures.
	Well, speaking of worms, Phil Spector got off on a mistrial.
	You're kidding me.
	Yeah, mistrial.
	Ten to two.
	No one knows if it was ten for a conviction or against a conviction, but apparently it was ten to two.
	So that's a hung jury and he got off.
	He shot the girl.
	He shot her.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, he did.
	But he's pretty well known for handling guns around people.
	I think he shot a John Lennon once.
	Or he shot in the studio.
	Yeah, he missed.
	No, the CIA took care of that.
	So...
	Don't laugh.
	The CIA killed John Lennon.
	Why?
	Why?
	Excuse me, did you see the multi-million dollar ad campaign he took out?
	He went on a whole peace campaign.
	He was promoting exactly the opposite of the reptilian agenda, and they got sick and tired of him, and they killed him.
	That's the easiest way.
	This is how they kill important people.
	They get a nutcase, they jack him up, make sure he has a gun, and they turn him loose.
	Pim Fortin, the Dutch politician who got killed one week before a landslide election, he won posthumously.
	They got some animal-loving, tree-hugging nut, and they jacked him up and got him a gun, and he shot him right outside the radio station.
	This is how they do it.
	I've always wondered about Sirhan Sirhan.
	That means nothing to me.
	Sirhan Sirhan is the guy who killed Bobby Kennedy.
	Bobby Kennedy got a bum deal because his brother had such a better death.
	So Bobby Kennedy gets killed, and Sirhan Sirhan, who's, I don't know what, he's like a Middle Eastern or some sort, and nobody's ever made the connection between his, you know, the 9-11 or anything, you know, the Middle East, you know, kind of disappointment with this guy Sirhan Sirhan.
	No one interviews him.
	He's, I think he's over here in San Quentin, and he's just been, he just came up, fell off the radar.
	I think it's kind of interesting.
	I think somebody should go over there and see what he has to say.
	Hmm.
	I'm just looking at his wiki page.
	Born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian Christian family.
	If he was black, he'd have it all.
	Hmm.
	Wow.
	He killed him with a.22, huh?
	Yeah, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do unless you're a professional.
	Yeah, I mean, you really got to know what you're doing.
	I mean, a.22, you can put that into someone's head and they can just walk away.
	Hmm.
	Interesting.
	I will look into him.
	Yeah, good.
	No one ever talks about him at all.
	Yeah, I'll add it to my growing list of conspiracies to discuss.
	Screwball stuff.
	Screwball stuff.
	I got a few more for you.
	Okay.
	The one that is concerning me...
	I know we've been lacking...
	By the way, we have been lacking in your nuttiness over the last few weeks, and I think it's probably increased our numbers, but...
	People still need to hear it.
	What's interesting, though, is a lot of people...
	Here's your problem.
	People are turning on to it and they're like, yeah, I agree.
	And then when you start to agree, they're actually like, hey, man, John should agree with you more.
	I'm like, no, you don't understand.
	Why would we even do a show if John agrees with me on all this stuff?
	But this is one that, and someone dropped me a piece from BBC World Service about bees.
	And I know that this has been in the news off and on, off and on, but now it's really getting pretty damn serious.
	Bee thing is a problem.
	So what they said in this report is that every third spoonful of food you put into your mouth, bees had something to do with it.
	Well, there's a couple of things here.
	One is there's a lot of...
	Actually, there's a couple of problems, too.
	One of the things is for here in California, for example, the honeybees have been decimated just like any place.
	These are alien bee.
	They really don't normally exist in the United States.
	And there's a lot of native bees, especially in California, some...
	I don't know how many species, but it's a 30 or 100 or something.
	It's a lot.
	And so this year during the pollination season, everything got pollinated.
	My plum tree was loaded with plums.
	It wasn't a problem.
	But when I go out to look at who was pollinating them, it wasn't honeybees.
	It was all these other weird bees.
	There's a green bee and there's a big fat bee.
	There's all these other bees and they're all living it up.
	John Belushi dressed up as a bee.
	Speaking Spanish.
	And there was just like a whole variety of weird bees that were now being able to thrive without the honeybees hogging everything.
	And so that probably was a good thing.
	But meanwhile, there seems to be some evidence that these bees are now getting this problem.
	Now if that happens, then you have a serious issue.
	But the whole thing may be solved at some point.
	There's a beekeeper up in Port Angeles who is very famous for being extremely...
	He refuses to use anything that's not natural.
	He basically let his bees die off from mites and everything else, except for the strong bees that had natural resistance, and he's been breeding those.
	And so now he's got some queens, and it cost him, I think, two seasons of honey, which is a shame because his honey is unbelievably great, and we always would buy cases of it.
	But there's two parts to this story.
	Part one, which I think is the one that people don't understand.
	And then there's part two, the thing people don't want to understand.
	But part one is bees, it's a business.
	Beekeepers take their bees to fields of crops.
	The bees are then let loose.
	They pollinate so that crops essentially grow and fruit springs or whatever is needed, but they're responsible for it.
	And it's a business.
	And then these bees come back to their hive and the guy goes to another farm.
	The problem is the bees are disappearing.
	They're not just dying and falling down dead.
	They're gone.
	They don't come back to their hive anymore.
	And so the problem is that severely impacts food.
	And this is what people don't understand.
	Right?
	I don't know.
	I think they do.
	No!
	Are you kidding me?
	You go on the street and ask any person how important are bees.
	I guarantee you only 5% will know the importance of bees in our food chain.
	Nobody knows this.
	Nobody knows this.
	Let's take it up a level since they can't figure out what's causing this to happen to the bees.
	Well, I have a theory on that.
	Well, give me your theory, and I'll give you a theory that maybe will be a bit more interesting.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, fuck you very much.
	I'll give you my very interesting theory, which is, first of all, there are too few crops, so we only have a few types of tomatoes left that are still being grown, a few types of apples.
	It's a very limited supply, so the diversity is being taken away from them.
	Secondly...
	They're pollinating genetically modified shit, and it's killing them, whatever it is, and it's killing everything and everybody, these genetically modified organisms, and that is what the problem is.
	It seems very clear to me.
	John C. Dvorak, your more interesting theory.
	What if you had in the labs at, let's say, Monsanto, a crop that would self-pollinate You
	are now officially ruining the show.
	You are ruining the damn show.
	You have taken it up to an extra level that I love.
	Absolutely.
	So I was thinking, actually, it could have been that they were creating their...
	I think it would be smarter for Monsanto to create their own version of bees because they could then cross-breed those and turn them into actual killer bees and they can be sold to the weapons industry.
	Now we finally see that.
	We'll just ignore that.
	Wow, so self-pollinating genetically modified crops.
	Right on, dude.
	They won't have any customers left to eat the shit after we all die, but yeah, great move.
	There you go.
	There you have it.
	Now, did I top you or not?
	You did.
	I'm dumbfounded.
	I'm completely...
	I can play that game.
	Another institution bites the dust...
	While you're talking about things dropping dead, we have a real serious problem with the West Coast brown or sometimes called California pelican, which are dropping out of the sky in droves.
	They're hitting cars, landing on boats.
	They're just flying, flying, flying.
	and oh, boom, dead.
	They come out of the sky like a big giant, like the size of a turkey, and they crash into the earth dead.
	And I've noticed that, because I go to the city a lot...
	I've noticed this last year because every year when you're going across the Oakland Bridge, you...
	You will see these usually three to six pelicans flying.
	They're a beautiful bird to watch fly.
	I mean you can't take your eyes off them because they look like pterodactyls.
	And they're usually low to the ground and they don't do a lot of flapping.
	They're just going like little stealth jet fighters.
	Shooting usually low to the water and they're flying all over the place.
	In the Bay Area, especially here in Berkeley, there's a lot of these pelicans.
	I have seen none this year.
	None.
	I've not seen a pelican all season.
	Did you just see this in the chat room?
	Pelicans?
	Yeah.
	Oh, no.
	You blogged it?
	Okay.
	I blogged it yesterday.
	Huh.
	And the pelican is really one of the most spectacular birds we have out here.
	And that's the reason the pelican was why they banned DDT, because they determined that DDT and the pelican's diet, even though I guess it got in there through fish who ate the bugs who had the DDT, who knows.
	But whatever the case was, it was making their shells of the eggs too thin, and so then they banned DDT for that particular reason.
	Who makes DDT? Well, I mean, I think Chevron probably made it for a while.
	No, they don't make pesticides.
	They make herbicides.
	So, no, all the, you know, pesticide companies made DDT. It was very common.
	But anyway, so...
	Yeah, Monsanto began manufacturing DDT in 1944, along with 15 other companies.
	Interesting.
	I didn't know that.
	Mm-hmm.
	Well, they're behind everything.
	But anyway, whatever the case, the Pelicans have got something going on.
	Wait, who was the CEO of Monsanto again?
	Help me remind me of his name.
	I don't know.
	George Bush?
	Wasn't it Rumsfeld?
	No.
	Wait a minute.
	Rumsfeld was with the Aspartame Company.
	Well, he's been on different boards.
	I mean, he's basically a political guy.
	No, Rumsfeld, I thought he was the CEO. Oh, no.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Now, look him up.
	Look him up.
	I am.
	I'm looking him up right now.
	I'm telling you.
	Here, CEO of Hurl.
	Hurl?
	Well, that's a program.
	Surl.
	I'm sorry, Surl.
	Oh, Surly.
	Surly.
	Manufacturer of aspartame.
	CEO of Surly.
	Manufacturer of aspartame.
	Yeah, okay.
	Okay, so you know that aspartame, which of course is a sweetener, that the FDA would not approve it, but three months after he entered into the administration, it mysteriously got approved.
	They'd been refusing it for 16 years because it killed lab mice, like half the population.
	Huh.
	Well, that's a good one.
	This is like one of the oldest conspiracy stories out there.
	I'm surprised you didn't know about this.
	I didn't know about it.
	You can't keep up with all this stuff.
	Yeah, but I'm pretty sure...
	Hold on, Monsanto.
	I'm pretty sure that...
	Well, first of all, Obama's guy is a Monsanto guy, right?
	Which guy is this?
	The agriculture guy he just brought in.
	Is that a Monsanto guy?
	Yeah, we talked about that two weeks ago.
	No, of course not.
	I thought Obama and his boys were a bunch of greenies, a bunch of tree-huggers, a bunch of environmentalists, a bunch of people who wanted to protect us.
	Why would they put a Monsanto guy in?
	That doesn't make any sense.
	Better living through chemistry.
	He's just following the program So did you find anything else about Rumsfeld - You must be looking for it.
	I'm not looking for Rumsfeld.
	How many hours do you want to make this show if we're going to talk about Rumsfeld?
	Robert Shapiro is the Monsanto seat.
	Robert Shapiro.
	I'm pretty sure that they've got to have their hands all in the government.
	So Robert Shapiro is the guy that Obama kicked?
	He's an economist.
	No, no, this is the former CEO of Monsanto.
	Hmm, maybe another guy.
	Anyway, the Rumsfeld thing tells you enough right there, doesn't it?
	Yeah, well, that's pretty typical.
	I mean, but then we look at the SEC, you know, and the fact that they, you know...
	Or Madoff being one of the founders and the CEO of the NASDAQ. Yeah, but meanwhile, he's giving, I guess he sent a million dollars to one of his friends in the last minute here, or one of his family members, and he's still roaming around free, even though...
	I know, Martha Stewart, I know.
	Martha Stewart has been in jail by now, beaten up.
	Probed.
	Probed.
	Martha Stewart is really, you know, I take a little bit of pity on her.
	I've met her several times.
	She used to work in our building, or I used to be in her building, I should say.
	And her daughter is very nice.
	But, man, they've been through some rough, rough times.
	And just being a woman, I think, at the top, the company isn't as large as it used to be.
	But, you know, that's tough.
	It's a boy's game, you know.
	Or it still is a boy's game, I should say.
	Unfairly so.
	And you get, you know, people hate you.
	You know, it's just like, you're a woman, shut up.
	And of course, you're automatically a bitch just because you have the position.
	I have to say, I never really saw her crack a smile when I rode the elevator with her, but I don't know her that well.
	Her daughter is extremely nice, but, you know, typically a fucked up kid.
	And I'm pretty sure that whole arrest thing, there was, you know, because she...
	She lives with Bondi, I think his name is, the guy from Viacom.
	I'm sure there's all kinds of political media shit wrapped up in that, and someone's getting back at someone for something.
	I mean, we know how politics works this way.
	Just look at Blagajewicz, whatever his name is.
	Who was just impeached.
	You know, he was threatening, you know, he wanted to try to get people fired from the board of Tribune for, you know, writing negative shit about him or whoever.
	I mean, this is how it works, people.
	Well, a lot of people think the same thing was the case with the only guy who was going, in fact, they believed he was going to go after Madoff like, you know, earlier, like years earlier and embarrass the SEC was Eliot Spitzer.
	And you sent me that PDF file.
	We haven't even talked about that.
	The red flag document?
	Right.
	Some guy who was high up in the...
	He sent this...
	Apparently he won the SEC in 1999 and then warned him again.
	I guess that document was written in 2003 or something like that.
	And they paid no attention to it.
	And he had all the goods.
	He said, here's why this guy is not running a legitimate business.
	He said Ponzi scheme, literally.
	Yeah, he says it has to be a Ponzi scheme and he outlined the reasons why.
	With math, he actually used mathematics and showed that he can't be doing what he says he's doing.
	And then he went on and on and he also made note of the fact that people like Goldman Sachs wouldn't do business with him because they knew.
	Yep.
	And a lot of these banks wouldn't do business.
	Of course, the irony is, while these guys weren't going to do business with them, a bunch of dumb Swiss bankers did.
	Which is like, what are they thinking?
	I thought these guys were supposed to be the world's greatest bankers.
	Nah.
	They just got better secrecy.
	Or they had at one point.
	People just don't connect these dots and it's frustrating, particularly when it comes to the media.
	Now we've got Davos happening again.
	Davos, Switzerland.
	Davos.
	I say Davos, you say Davos.
	And it's the World Economic Forum, which is a big wanker fest.
	If Robert Scoble is allowed in anything, it can't really be a serious economic summit.
	Let's just be honest about it.
	But, you know, Rupert Murdoch's going to be there.
	It's going to be this huge reptile fest.
	Yeah, they all go there.
	They give a little speech.
	It looks like a complete waste of time, unless, of course, you're a skier.
	Because that's why people go to this thing, so they can ski in the area, which has great skiing.
	But that's what it is.
	It's a huge conference.
	And the guy who runs the conference, it costs $50,000 just for a booth.
	It's a huge, profitable, money-making business.
	Right.
	It's like CES for ugly people.
	Uglier people, I should say.
	Yeah, well, it's definitely a...
	It's, you know, where these guys get to socialize for a little bit.
	I mean, it's a social event.
	That doesn't mean anything.
	They had, you know, you do have a few crackpots come up there and say a few things that are weird.
	Or worthwhile.
	I didn't notice.
	I don't know that anybody at the Economic Summit over the last few years picked what happened to the economy over the last few years.
	Gee, yeah.
	Where's that announcement from last year?
	Oh, we're headed for horrible times.
	No, man.
	It was party on, baby.
	Pass the hookers and the blow.
	Nobody brought up Madoff.
	Nobody brought up the ridiculous housing bubble.
	Nobody brought up anything.
	So what good is this conference if they can't even spot the obvious?
	Because what they're doing is they're all, you're right, they're all on the slopes going, man, can you believe this shit?
	We got a paid vacation.
	We all know the crap's coming down.
	They love it.
	I'm going to predict, as one of our final topics here, it's going to be one that if you're on Twit tomorrow, you'll be talking about, so I want to make sure we talk about it first.
	Obama has started to make noises that he may delay the switchover of digital television.
	Yeah, I heard that.
	And there's a couple things, and so, first of all, why is this happening?
	Why are they switching to digital?
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, what they say is so they could free up that 700 megahertz area of bandwidth and use it for various, you know, it's got like high penetration.
	So you're saying this is a telecommunications lobby that started five years ago, maybe even longer.
	It's probably seven or eight years ago they started this.
	The steel is banned.
	Right.
	So it was a money-making scheme for the government.
	Yeah, they were going to auction this band off for billions.
	So this is going to come to a head because I think the media companies are now lobbying Obama really heavily because they stand to lose.
	What is it?
	Something like 10 million people in the U.S. aren't ready to switch.
	Right, and they ran out of coupons.
	Yeah, a million coupons.
	They're short, and people, of course, have no money to buy this $40 to $80 converter or whatever.
	They get $40 off, and it's their old $80.
	It's going to cost you $40 a pop for each TV. And they're not going to work very well because you need a special antenna to pick up that signal.
	You need a UHF. UHF antenna, yeah.
	Fringe antenna, a good one, especially if you want to go through any walls.
	I mean, I have direct access to the...
	Are you receiving it?
	Do you have a DVB receiver?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so I've been receiving it for a long time, but I don't understand how other people are doing it because I'm using a fringe UHF antenna and looking out the window of my house, I can see the transmitter.
	It's over on the other side of the bay.
	You have line of sight and you can't receive it?
	No, I can receive it, but I have line of sight, and I get, you know, still it breaks up once in a while.
	Somebody walks in front of the antenna.
	I mean, the thing is pretty flaky compared to a regular VHF analog signal.
	It's beautiful, though, by the way.
	It's a million times better, and the sound of Dolby 5.1 comes across perfectly.
	Over the air is the way to go if you can get it, but I don't think a lot of people can do that.
	Well, there's a substantial amount of people, and these of course are the people that do count in the Nielsen ratings, who just are going to lose out.
	And the fear is, what I'm reading, is that people may just give up on television altogether.
	Oh please, oh please.
	So one of the things that, you know, that cracks me up is they have all these ads.
	They've been running them constantly about the switch over to digital.
	And I've written about this.
	And I'm convinced that half the public, because we've dumbed down America, they don't know anything.
	They think that if they have a, you know, a digital tuner, you know, in other words, it has numbers that pop up if you push buttons, that they have a digital TV. They don't know the difference.
	No, they don't know.
	I mean, you know, it's like, you know, the word digital doesn't mean anything to them.
	They don't understand it.
	Digital ready.
	I have a digital TV that someone could say because look, and then they could show that there's like a 12 blinking.
	That means it's digital, doesn't it?
	And they don't know any different, so they don't think about it.
	I cannot see how the media industry agreed to this, because all I see is there's going to be more channels available, and when you have more channels, then the cable model is very hard to get huge ratings.
	It is going to kill, or maybe it's just the final shot in the head, the mercy shot for the television industry.
	Look, newspapers are closing left and right.
	They're all going digital.
	There was another paper up for sale just the other day.
	If no one buys it, then they're going all digital.
	The Seattle Post Intelligence.
	Yeah, the Post Intelligence, right.
	So no one's going to buy it, of course.
	No, and Hearst owns it.
	And the idea was that they could buy the Seattle Times, but Hearst pulled the – they had the Examiner in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they sold it so they could buy the Chronicle and own the market.
	So they bought the Chronicle.
	I don't know.
	And the word on the street is that they're losing a million dollars a week.
	A week?
	A week.
	And they're trying to get rid of this thing.
	So they're not going to touch another newspaper, especially the Seattle Times, which they figure is going to be the same thing.
	So they're just going to bail out.
	They may just abandon the property.
	Just like give it up and just like close the door and that's it.
	Just walk away.
	It could happen.
	I mean, in some cases, that's the best solution.
	It's like, all right, we're done.
	They must have a mountain of debt on that thing already.
	It's probably building.
	Yeah, well, whatever.
	But what is our trusted news?
	You know what?
	That's it, John.
	I'm putting my foot down.
	We're just going to have to become the trusted news source.
	We're going to have to become the news source of record.
	Because someone's got to do it.
	We're better than some things.
	But whatever the case is, yeah, it's bad.
	But anyway, back to the analog switchover from digital.
	So anyway, the other thing that they had was, I think the reason they're not going to let this thing, I think Obama's going to manage to get it put off a little ways.
	Yeah, I think so.
	What's going to happen, because if you watch these ads, oh, if you have a problem with your digital transition or something doesn't work, here's a number to call.
	This is going to be the number to call, and there's going to be some helpline in India, I guess.
	But the fact of the matter is, if somebody goes, what's really going to happen, I'm an old woman, and I'm not literally, but I'm sure people, listeners, think so.
	But let's say I'm some theoretical old woman somewhere, and I turn on Channel 5 after the switchover, and it's dead.
	And so I don't think much about it.
	Then I turn around, I turn on Channel 7, they're all dead.
	And so then, although I think they're going to probably be broadcasting a message saying, look, dummy, you should have done this.
	But let's just say that whatever the case is, I'm not going to call the government number.
	I'm going to call the station and ask them what the heck happened to my show.
	So all these stations are going to be inundated with phone calls because that's the only number people can find in the phone book.
	They don't have the call the government number.
	Okay, it all clicked together.
	Finally, I understand it.
	We're talking about a potential 7 to 10 million people who will have this problem.
	So let's say we're going to generate millions of calls.
	The number is 1-800-CALL-FEMA. And they come to your house.
	If you are incapable of switching to digital, they take you to one of their FEMA camps.
	And then they kill you.
	It makes so much sense.
	Look, I don't understand how...
	Sorry for saying look, but I really don't understand how the media industry agreed to a dilution of their monopoly.
	I just don't get it.
	So there's got to be something, or maybe I'm mistaken, and it's just one-for-one digital, but I would believe that they're going to have more channels now.
	Well, I actually channel, like, for example, KQED here in the Bay Area, which has HD, they have, I think, four or five channels, at least three that I have, because I... So that's it?
	All the stations are going to have to produce more crap?
	Are they going to have to fill up more channels?
	Or are there other people under these airwaves?
	Like us!
	Channel 7, the KGO station, which is ABC, has three channels.
	They have the regular feed, which is the network feed, which is in HD. Then they have a feed of weird old movies or something that they're showing on the second channel.
	And then the third channel is weather.
	And there is a...
	I think it's KTVU, another one of the local stations has...
	The regular feed, Fox feed, on the main 2-1.
	And then I think 2-2 or 2-3 or something like that I think exists.
	But there's a couple of stations that have cameras that are just around the Bay Area that show you traffic.
	That'll be the most popular channel.
	You know that.
	That and the weather channel.
	It's like, it's ridiculous.
	I mean, what's the point of broadcasting some of this stuff?
	I don't know.
	It's baffling to me.
	Hmm.
	Well, the KQED folks do actually a pretty good job because they have their main feed and they have two of the digital feeds which have shows like Nova from last week and Charlie Rose on the old-fashioned, just the DTV, it's not an HD. And then I think there's a kids thing and something else.
	It's just there's a lot of weird little channels.
	And then all these...
	And then what's really weird is if you go up higher, there's a bunch of these religious stations that have never existed before.
	And they're just, you know, basically preaching constantly.
	And...
	I am seeing more and more religious broadcast channels pop up.
	We now, in my skybox, I think we have 15...
	And there's God 1, God 2, God 3, you know, inspiration, hope and glory.
	I mean, it's just time.
	A lot of them are US-based, but there are some apparently, you know, like from the Caribbean, some UK. It's just, it's everywhere.
	And even on the radio, I'm receiving Radio Maria, which is a Dutch religious station.
	I mean, it's crazy.
	They get the best transmitters.
	They get all the coverage.
	You always notice that whenever you're...
	Well, back in the day, I mean, it's not like this anymore, but back when we just had radios in our car and AM at that, which station, John, always had the cleanest, clearest, best reception and the strongest signal?
	It was always the classical station.
	Yeah, the classical station typically.
	Always sounds the best.
	It always used to be a number of classical stations.
	Now you're lucky in any...
	You can even get one classical station.
	We have one in the Bay Area.
	I don't think there's another one.
	The public radio stations that used to play stuff like that now just play either green propaganda or happy talk shows or...
	So if in our vast audience of hundreds of thousands, if there is anyone who programs a classical music radio station, may I give you some advice?
	Do not play marching band music in the morning.
	It does not excite your audience, okay?
	No one gives a shit about marching bands in the morning drive time slot, okay?
	Play something soothing.
	That's why we tune in to you.
	You know, talking about that kind of complaint, when I'm up north in Washington, I have a radio that looks for it.
	The one classical station I can find where I live is coming out of either Victoria or Vancouver, Canada.
	And they play, like, classical music that is, like, weird avant-garde classical stuff that is really depressing.
	And I can't put my finger on who's programming this crap, but it's unlistenable.
	It's coming out of a predetermined selector system.
	They buy this shit off the shelf at...
	What's the broadcast conference in Vegas?
	NAB. NAB, right.
	They buy it off the shelf with the library.
	It comes pre-programmed.
	You know what selector is, right?
	You've seen selector.
	Yeah, so it comes pre-programmed, and they don't know what to do.
	This is a business.
	Who's really good at it is Sky.
	Sky has this so well, and all across Europe, they've just got a room full of computer servers, and I've seen this homegrown stuff.
	It runs on a Mac.
	It's fascinating.
	And, you know, they just drop in the voice files and they just have the same shit crank out everywhere across the globe.
	But it's not, you know, rarely does some thought go into it.
	You know, it's classical.
	We're done.
	Well, I don't know.
	Our local one in San Francisco seems to be pretty...
	This is the art that is lost.
	So, thank God I love podcasting, but the lost part of the art is turning on the radio in the morning, and based upon what's going on in the city, based upon the weather, based upon the meme of the day, the guy on the radio is playing songs that fit with it.
	That is the lost art.
	Yeah, well, it's lost art because they had to pay him Oh yeah, shit.
	We forgot about that minor detail.
	DJs are the lowest paid, the bottom of the show business ladder, the bottom rung.
	They're kind of like charter pilots.
	You can always tell it's a DJ because he has a U-Haul trailer hooked up to his car, ready to move to the next market.
	Like the song says, W-O-L-D. So, moving to the next market, I think we've run out of time.
	God, we really ran through this one fast.
	Holy shit, you're right.
	I wasn't even paying attention.
	Well, hopefully it recorded.
	I know something on the stream worked because...
	Oh, it recorded.
	It doesn't sound like...
	Yeah.
	I'm just saying.
	Hey, how come...
	You might as well put a big echo on the thing, you know.
	Just to add to the ambiance?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, 144.
	It'll give those guys at Yoagen something to complain about.
	So you can check me out at channeldvorak.com.
	And I'm channelcurry.com, which I am just loving what Eric put together for me.
	That's fantastic.
	And then also we have Bubba doing the show notes.
	He'll be covering the, putting it on the cage match.
	And we have a whole bunch of people on the talk shoe system, but no one is actually dialed in.
	So, oh, wait a minute.
	You know, Bob is dialed in.
	Well, maybe we'll get to Bob sometime in the future.
	We do have the capability to take calls.
	I don't know.
	I just want to try something just to know that it actually works, so we haven't...
	Where did he go?
	Oh, he hung up?
	Wait.
	No, wait a minute.
	He drew attention to himself.
	Whoa!
	Hey, Bob, are you there?
	Yeah, I'm here.
	Thanks, man.
	He's on Skype, probably.
	Wow, that sounds terrible.
	Yeah.
	I got that on my own iPhone.
	It's probably a bad day, but...
	Yeah.
	Thanks, Bob.
	Sounds like, yeah, thanks, Bob.
	Sounds like short wave.
	It doesn't work if you call in on Skype.
	It has to be a minimum.
	It has to be a cell phone.
	It just doesn't work.
	It sounds like shit.
	So, okay.
	All right.
	All right, John.
	Well, it was great talking to you, as always.
	Have yourself a good week.
	You got any plans?
	Uh, no.
	No, nothing.
	Exciting, as always.
	Coming to you from Gitmo Nation, east in the United Kingdom, the southwestern corner, I'm Adam Curry.
	I'm in northern Silicon Valley, also known as Gitmo Nation West for the moment.
	I'm John C. Dvorak.

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