From the far-reaching corners of the police state we call Gitmo Nation, it's time for your weekly quest to ask not what you can do for your country, but what your government is doing to you.
From Gitmo Nation West in Southwest London, in the Curry Terrace, I'm Adam Curry.
On the West version, I'm John C. Dvorak here in Silicon Valley North.
I think that's your new catchphrase.
You're going to use that from now on.
I've got two.
I like the ask not what you can do for your country, what your government is doing for you.
And I have a new one, which is not an original, but I love it.
Capitalism without bankruptcy is like religion without hell.
That's a good one.
I don't know what it's got to do with the show.
Nothing.
That's why I didn't use it.
But it's a new catchphrase, that's for sure.
Hey, John, how are you?
Good.
It's been raining.
Oh, really?
Well, you deserve some out there, I guess.
Well, yeah.
I suppose it's probably true.
We needed it, actually, if it was going to be a long, hot January.
I mean, it was like 75 for about 10 days in a row.
It's been cold here, dude.
Actually, it's been all over the map.
All of a sudden, we had a day when we had, or like two days of 10 to 12 degrees centigrade, and now it's back down.
It's really chilly.
New York has similar weather.
I've been watching the news on WPIX. Oh, Slingbox?
No, it turns out that the Dish Network has...
Isn't that Channel 11, WPIX? Yeah, I used to watch that all the time when we lived in New York.
Is it still an independent station?
Yeah, they get nothing.
I don't know how they stay alive.
Independent television is so going down the tubes.
Here in the United Kingdom, we have BBC 1 and 2.
There's also 3, but the main ones are 1 and 2.
Then we have Channel 4, which has a very interesting business model.
It's public service broadcasting, yet they have commercials.
It's crazy.
And they are losing 100 million pounds a year.
They should stop the commercials.
It might help.
And so now there's kind of like this race going on because we have one other real full-blown terrestrial, I think it's terrestrial broadcaster, Channel 5, or 5 as they call it, which is owned by RTL. What's Thames?
I thought 10's television was more like a production.
I don't know, honestly.
What's ITN? Well, we have ITV. Okay, what's Sky?
Well, Sky is Dish.
I'm talking really about terrestrial broadcast.
Okay.
So they've been talking about merging the commercial Channel 5 with the half-assed, half-commercial, half-state-run Channel 4.
But I think what's going to happen is they're going to be assimilated by the BBC, BBC Worldwide.
It's crazy, man.
Everyone's just doing whatever they can.
What's BBC Three?
That's a full-fledged BBC. What do they do, though?
Actually, they have the most interesting program.
That's really kind of the alternative channel.
That's where you'll find things like the Mighty Boosh and real alternative off-the-wall comedy shows.
That's about it.
And they don't have a full 24-hour broadcast schedule.
They go off the air, and they don't come on until 6 or 7 in the evening.
So I don't...
6 or 7 in the evening?
Yes.
Yeah, they have no daytime programming, as far as I know.
But it's great.
We're getting all these new digital channels.
Yeehaw!
Don't know what we're going to fill them with.
But they're coming.
American crap.
Hmm.
Well, Channel 4 is already filled with, you know, that's the station that does the Big Brother shows, and I'm a celebrity, get me out of here, and all that.
And they still lose 100 million pounds a year.
How do you do it?
I don't think the market's big enough to sustain all those channels there.
Hmm.
Maybe people don't watch the TV. You have to pay.
You have to have a license.
I think some of our listeners know this, and all the British do.
But you actually have to have a license to own a TV. It's like owning a gun.
Yeah, when you go into a store, even if you go into the Sainsbury's supermarket and buy a television or a radio, you immediately have to fill out all of your details.
And they have commercials running about this, which I'll tell you in a second, but you fill out all your details and you have to pay, I believe it's £157 a year.
It's less if you only have a radio and you don't have a television.
And they run these commercials all the time, which are really scary, like, don't think you can get away without paying for your TV license because it's in the database.
Yeah.
Seriously.
It's in the database.
We know where you live.
You cannot get away from it.
You have to pay for every TV. Well, if you have two TVs, you have to pay twice as much?
No, you only have to pay for one.
Just if you have a TV, and then you can have as many as you want in the house, TV and radio.
Now they have these, I know they used to do this years ago, but do they still do this, where they had these trucks with these giant kind of dishes on the top that can aim at your house and tell if you have a television inside?
Oh yeah, they have them.
They have those.
Well, I think they used to use those.
Now it's in the database, so you can't get away from it.
How's it going to be in the database?
Let's say I have a bootleg television set somehow, that I had a license up in northern England, and then I come down and I just cancel it and moved.
Well, I've had the benefit of moving a couple times, and you have to go online and transfer your license to a new address.
But already, before I'd even done that, I was getting mail...
At the new address saying, you have to have a license, you know, we'll come and check, you know, all this kind of semi-threatening language.
So, I don't know.
They probably just will go by any house and knock on the door and say, do you have a television?
If you don't have a license for it, according to the database.
No, just tell them to sod off.
Yeah.
Dude, you know, the repo guys even have the right now to break and enter into your house and take away any shit they deem.
They call it a bailiff here.
But it's basically the repo, man.
They're allowed to break and enter and take away your shit.
So I'm sure that you can try the sawed-off thing, but it won't fly.
Can you just have a TV in there?
Say, look it, but yeah, but it's not on.
I don't use it.
No, no, no.
You have to have a license if you own one.
See, this is just, you know, it's onerous.
But at the same time, it seems like it's just a tax.
Well, yeah, but it's a voluntary tax because you don't have to have a television.
The thing that's stupid, because it's a separate bill, which I like, but what's lame is that people don't utilize...
There's no real recourse.
You should be able to say, hey, you know what?
It's not the value for money.
Fuck you.
I'm not going to pay it.
Or people should organize and say, let's just stop paying the BBC. But they don't do that.
Because I figured something out, John.
It's hit me.
Twelve years ago, we had a very similar situation, or there was a similar situation in the United Kingdom as to the United States is going through right now.
We had this fresh young guy come in and he was going to save everything and new labor and it's going to be fantastic.
And yeah, you know, sure he's going to hang a couple cameras up, but it's all for our protection.
And the place has become a complete police state.
And people have no way out of it.
You can't protest legally.
There's all kinds of stuff.
Well, you can look forward to that in the United States.
At least in the next four years it'll get started.
Well, apparently Obama's already snapped at the reporters who asked him a question when it wasn't allowed to.
Oh, dude.
I've been watching the live coverage.
C-SPAN is my new favorite channel.
It used to be CNBC. Now it's C-SPAN. And I saw the first press conference with the new press...
Is this press secretary, I guess?
Robert Gibbs?
Oh, man.
The press are going to eat this guy alive.
I hope they're going to eat this guy alive.
Because all of this freedom...
The first press conference, he didn't have it under control.
He really didn't.
And you can see him searching and trying...
Because he has to be very careful, right?
Every word he says has to be chosen...
So carefully, and he's letting people ask three follow-up questions, and he just digs himself into a hole.
And this whole Freedom of Information Act, which is not an executive order, but it's a memorandum that Obama put into place.
Like, oh yeah, we're going to honor the Freedom of Information Act now.
And so everyone's drilling down.
So what does that mean?
Can we really get answers?
Yeah.
If the press is any good, which is questionable, but also they're refusing to allow pictures that haven't been taken by the White House staff photographer, and there's background information, and the press is not allowed to release the names of the people who are giving the background information to reporters.
Already, secrecy has started.
Transparency, my ass.
Well, the thing is, Obama's kind of a newbie, a lightweight, almost an amateur.
He doesn't know how to deal with the press, except during that period where they were all on his side.
Yeah, exactly.
And now it's like, hey, I thought you guys were my friends.
Well, he did his first weekly address.
The president typically does a radio address, and so he's doing his YouTube address.
God, man, it's sad.
So not only is he reading, which people are going to catch on to this, I hope one eventually will say, you know, the guy's just reading, but they don't have a teleprompter on these, at least not yet, on this weekly thing, so he's looking to the left of the camera.
And, you know, they're even cutting it because he clearly fucked up, and, you know, it's like, oh, whoops, let's just do a little zoom cut there.
Wait, wait, wait, this is his address to the nation?
This is that national address, and he's not looking into the camera?
No, he's looking off to the side.
Go to whitehouse.gov.
You can see it.
He's looking off to the side.
Who's he looking at?
He's supposed to be looking at the public.
No, he's looking at a cue card.
Well, obviously.
He's gonna have to learn how to read off of a sheet of paper in front of him.
How about saying some words that actually come from his heart and he's sincere about?
It's just an idea.
It's a concept.
Just a thought.
Why don't you sit there and just say what you actually think, dude?
No, we're going to get notes.
Oh, you guys are bashing Obama.
Yes, I am.
That's correct.
Absolutely.
Hey, by the way, the question on my mind is, which Obama are we talking about?
Are we talking about the first president they swore in or the second Obama that they swore in secretly who's a different guy?
You know, a different guy?
Oh, I hadn't heard that one yet.
That's good, John.
He's a different guy.
How do you figure?
He's a different guy.
Why would they have to swear him in a second time?
When I saw the inauguration, and first, I think I sent you a text message.
I'm laughing my ass off.
I'm like, the one time the guy has to do something without a prompter, he had to memorize eight lines.
He messed it up.
And because he messed it up, because he didn't know, he couldn't repeat the second line of...
Of the oath.
And then Justice Roberts, then he totally fell apart.
And I was like, oh my God.
And I was like, that's definitely going to hound the guy.
But the thing is, and this is what's bugging a lot of people, is that he got sworn in again.
There were no video crews, only a staff photographer, and no Bible.
I don't know if there's a significance there, but he did not have his hand on a Bible.
Well, my guess is that he wanted to do that Lincoln Bible thing.
Yeah.
They took the Bible back after he did the thing because it's a valuable document that's owned by one of the museums or somewhere.
Yeah, they couldn't get it out?
I don't know who has the thing.
But anyway, obviously he's not taking it home.
And so that thing disappeared.
So they had to go do this again because Roberts was freaked out that it would become some sort of an issue and he'd be embarrassed.
So they went, although they could have just brought in the second Obama.
And then sworn him in, and he's actually going to be the president.
The second Obama.
I wonder how many Obama doubles we got in here.
It's like Kim Jong-il.
It's like we got a whole slew of them.
The real Obama.
That's a good one, John.
Thank you.
I like that.
But I was looking at the first Obama being sworn in.
That Lincoln Bible doesn't look like it was used very much.
Did you notice that?
It looked like it was new.
Yeah, it did.
If you look at the, not the binding, but the pages itself look completely fresh cut and certainly didn't look over 150 years old.
Well, obviously what had happened, I'm guessing, I'm sure there's a story to be told about the Bible.
Lincoln swore in on that Bible and then they immediately made it a collectible and put it aside.
Oh, that makes sense.
What is the significance of the swearing in on the Bible?
Is that necessary?
Has there ever been a president who has not been sworn in on the Bible?
I think they've all been sworn in on a Bible, but I don't think it's necessary.
There's no mention in the Constitution of being sworn in on a Bible.
They just have to make the oath.
I was reminded of these people.
When I used to work for the government, we used to have these cases, and you'd put these juries together, and there'd always be some...
Usually some foppish weirdo that refused to be sworn in at the jury.
They said, I'd rather be affirmed.
We always knew it was going to be trouble, too.
This was this character.
It was an air pollution case against somebody.
One guy, he was a...
A music teacher who called himself a singer.
He came in and he was a skinny guy.
He was like a petite male, as my wife likes to describe him.
Who came into the courtroom wearing these kind of Bermuda shorts and a suit and tie, jacket and tie.
So you have to imagine, jacket and tie, Bermuda shorts, socks and regular shoes, and very thin.
And he comes in and he said, and when he's asked what he does, he goes, I'm a singer!
So we're going, oh God, this guy's going to be a problem.
So anyway, and so when it came to being sworn in, this guy couldn't be sworn in.
He had to be affirmed.
Because he had to be sworn in or affirmed.
So they had to interrupt everything so this guy can be the one guy being affirmed.
Is it just me or was the oath for the vice president twice as long as the oath for the president?
I didn't see it at all.
You didn't watch the inauguration?
I only watched the speech.
Which was written by a 27-year-old punk in a Starbucks.
You know, I don't know whether they...
I think the guys must have run out of material.
That speech writer he had was this 27-year-old guy, kid, who gave Obama some of his best speeches.
I think Obama wrote that thing.
No, no, no.
There was a whole article he said that he wrote it, but that Obama gave him kind of the direction, and then he...
Well, I think he's lost it then.
Yeah.
Well, what I took huge offense to was the line that said, basically, it's all our fault.
It's everybody's fault.
I'm like, no.
No, it's not our fault.
The state of the economy.
Yeah, I agree.
It's not everybody's fault.
We don't use credit cards.
We've been very responsible.
I have a small to medium business.
We don't go to the government for handouts.
We work.
We haven't been abusing anything.
I wish I would have.
In hindsight, we got screwed.
You just wait until they start reducing people's principal on their mortgages.
That's when the shit will hit the fan.
I do want you to take a look at a link for a second here, because this will freak you out.
Hold on, I'm going to Skype it to you.
This is from CNN. Hold on, where's Skype?
Here we go.
So, while you're doing that, I guess the big news in England, from our perspective, is a woman over there letting her three-year-old smoke.
Yeah, I've seen the story, but it's not dominating the news at all.
But take a look at this link, John, this video, and eight seconds into it, I want you to see the UFO that flies from right to left.
Oh, and I saw this.
We blogged this.
Oh, really?
You blogged it?
That looks like an actual UFO! It looks like a scratch on the camera lens.
No way.
I freeze-framed this thing, man.
It's not a scratch.
It's a flying object that goes right in front, halfway down the...
What do you call the...
Washington Monument.
Washington Monument, sorry.
On the camera side, and it flies right by.
I don't know, man, but that looked...
Either it was some incredibly fast, stealth military aircraft.
It was not a bird.
And I don't think it was a play.
No, it was not a bird, but I think it was an anomaly.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, how come nobody saw it?
Well...
Until they made this video.
And where's the other videos of it?
And it's only a spot.
No.
It's not like it has legs or anything.
No, it's like a fast-flying disc.
That's the way I saw it.
Hold on, hold on.
We got our jingles, John.
They finally came in.
Jingles?
I'm not hearing any jingles.
Hold on, I'll play the other cut.
At this defining moment, change has come to America.
A government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the earth.
This is your victory.
We are and always will be the United States of America.
Yeah, I've already heard these things.
Have you heard these?
Yeah, yeah, they're floating around all over the place.
Well, I love this.
Welcome to Obama FM, everybody.
I'm Ace A to the C here in London town, and we got JCD over there in California.
How you doing, Johnny, boy?
Obamatown.
Yeah, I know.
These guys have got to back off.
These freelancers that are doing this stuff.
It's going to be embarrassing eventually.
Well, I've been showing as many of those crazy clips as possible on Mevio Daily of the celebrity pledges.
Oh, yeah.
I pledge, I pledge, I pledge.
I like to see how many people even turn off their lights, those clowns.
I mean, you're talking about multimillionaires like Ashton Kutcher and his wife.
Yeah.
And their goal, they're going to do this and that.
They're not going to do anything.
Well, no, but there's a pledge like to conserve on use of plastic by drinking less water.
Well, less water from a place, which, by the way, has got to con.
I just went to the gourmet food show that was in San Francisco, the fancy food show.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm sure that the people who...
This year, there's a number of themes that people can expect to see.
One thing, the salt thing has fallen off the face of the earth.
That's not happening as much as it was a couple years ago.
They tried that, right?
It just didn't really catch.
It had a peak.
It had a peak.
It's gone.
There wasn't any salt vendors.
But there was like tons and tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of chocolate.
I mean, it's like everybody who can heat a pot is making chocolate.
So that was a little annoying.
Cocoa, it's funny you say that, because the price of cocoa has exploded.
I was just reading that today.
Hold on, let me see if I can find it.
And you wonder why...
Well, so that's the question.
Is it because everyone wants it?
Because they're using it?
It's because all these chocolate companies...
My wife excused it as, well, you know, when you have a financial downturn, people need chocolate.
Cocoa prices at 24-year high above 2,000 pounds per tonne.
There you go.
That's pretty crazy.
It was obvious to me that the rationale for that is this show indicates trends.
I go there and look at trends, and the trend was chocolate.
And all these different chocolate companies, and they're just, you know, yeah, some of it's good.
How much chocolate can you...
There was tea-flavored chocolate.
There's one company that specializes in weird-flavored chocolates, hot chilies, green tea, things in the chocolate.
And tea was the other thing that was hot, which has been a trend for a number of years.
But flavored teas, right?
Not just traditional good old-fashioned tea.
Yeah, flavored tea, sparkling tea.
There's some company called White Star making a spark, by the way, which is tasty but way too expensive.
And there's just a lot of different kinds of tea.
Tea flavored this and tea flavored that.
But anyway, so there's all, but then again, one of the biggest thing is these flavored waters in these plastic bottles, which is one of the other big trends.
And there's all kinds of, you know, just one company after another with, I think like one of them called Hint.
This is the name of the water company.
And the thing is, it's regular water, but it's got like a drop of some weird flavor in it.
In other words, you get a hint of mint, you know, kind of thing.
So anyway, but I'm watching that video that you were talking about, which was on the blog, and we could probably reset it.
And they go on and on about not using these plastic bottles.
And meanwhile, there's one company that came out, and the name of the water is called Help.
And it's like they donate almost all their profits to charities.
And so they're obviously, you know, there's the conflict for people out there.
It's like, I can just see somebody shorting out trying to decide whether they can buy this water because it's in a plastic bottle.
But anyway, it was an interesting show.
But that was it?
Chocolate is the trend, and salt is out, and that's it?
Chocolate, tea, and water.
Chocolate, tea, water.
Well, the other trend that was pointed out to me by the PR woman was there's a downsizing of...
Like chocolate bars.
They have these big giant bars, and now they're going to make smaller ones.
Smaller bars, yeah.
And kids.
How about peanut butter?
That must have been really popular at the show.
Peanut butter's never really been popular at the show.
Salmonella in a can, everybody.
You're welcome to it.
But the other thing was they have these kids, like water for kids, tea for kids.
They're trying to introduce tea to kids, but it's going to be decaffeinated, they say.
Although I don't think it makes any difference.
So they're trying to get kids, children into tea.
Well, you know, in the UK, they're a little easier.
Just teach your kid to smoke.
That sounds like a bogus story, by the way.
It's just bogus.
Yeah?
I'm not really buying it.
We liked the story.
We blogged it.
Well, of course.
Um...
Big story which only got, as far as I can tell, only got press on CNBC who broke it about John Thane.
Is it Tane or Thane?
The Merrill Lynch CEO just got kicked out.
You know, I never heard his name pronounced.
I think they were saying Tane.
So, only a few days after Merrill Lynch received their first billions in bailout money, he redecorated his office for $1.2 million, including a $32,000 toilet.
Yeah.
What are these guys thinking?
Well, the kicker is...
No wonder these guys brought down the economy.
These guys are idiots.
Of course.
But that was with our money, which is kind of upsetting.
But the kicker of the story is that the designer, the interior decorator who did this, is the same guy who just redecorated for the Obamas in the White House.
Hmm.
Who is this guy?
Let me look up his name.
By the way, let me see.
I wonder what the...
What?
Oh, nothing.
Go ahead, say it.
Nah.
Nah.
Now you've got me intrigued.
I'm just wondering what calls they're going to make in the White House to personalize it for Michelle's taste.
Michael S. Smith, known among society's higher echelon for his makeover of Bel Air Estates and Malibu beach houses and the client list that includes Dustin Hoffman and Rupert Murdoch, was chosen just last week to redesign the Obama's private quarters at the White House.
The Obama's got a deal.
$100,000 versus the $800,000 paid by Mr.
Tain.
Bandit.
Huh.
Well, this is a good deal.
$15,000 a year.
Why are they paying $100,000 of the taxpayers' money here when he just first gets in office and we're trying to cut back on this sort of thing?
Can't they just make do and then maybe spend the money later?
It's part of the perks.
They're comparing Obama to FDR, but FDR, when he was inaugurated, he had a plate of cold chicken.
For solidarity.
And the Obamas, I think they had a really nice five-course meal at Blair House.
But of course, that was the other Obama.
Yeah, you don't know which Obama it is anymore.
One of the stunt doubles.
And us schleps here around the world, certainly in Europe, can be happy to know that McDonald's is expanding with 240 new restaurants, 12,000 new jobs.
They're totally in the lift.
Yeah, well they would be during these kinds of economic times when people need to eat one buck hamburgers for dinner.
It's sad.
Yeah, FDR was pretty good at staying on the course.
Was he truly one of our...
So they were already talking about, I was listening to something the other day, and they were talking about why I think, just before he got inaugurated, or not inaugurated, before he got sworn in, about Obama deserving already, without spending one minute in office, already should be on Mount Rushmore.
Does that mean we have to retool someone or we just make a new head?
How does that work?
I think we could take Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt.
We could retool him, right?
Because he's got the big fat head and he could be pounded down to Obama.
Uncle Fester just twittered, the Lincoln Bible was procured new, I guess new, it says, for Abe's inauguration.
His family Bible was unavailable.
It was archived and not used again until the 20th of January 2009.
So that's our answer.
There you go.
Yeah, you're right.
We've got people out there helping.
Highly appreciated.
It's a resource.
The public's a resource.
Certainly.
Especially when we have no material.
Well, I've got plenty of material.
Okay, well what?
Well, that's it.
We're done.
It was great talking to you, John.
28 minutes, shortest show we've ever done.
Well, it seems like there's so much, but everything would come down to...
Well, we just can't sit here bitching about Obama.
Exactly.
That's the problem.
But I will say this one thing.
Until he gets in office, the next thing you know, two missiles go into Pakistan.
Yeah, and kill 13 people.
Yeah, I know.
But the whole thing is complacency on the part of the press.
I mean, right now, if you go on the street and you say to the American public, what has Obama done?
They'll say, he closed Gitmo.
We're no longer torturing.
Please, I urge you, go read.
Please go read it, because that's not true.
You know, he's put a task force, which is, in all business, I hate task force, because nothing ever comes of them.
It's like a steering committee.
Let's all grab the steering wheel and drive off the road.
Well, this reminds me of when Ronald Reagan first ran for president.
This was during, or president, for governor of the state of California.
I'll never forget this.
He was a big saber-rattler, and at the same time, he had a lot.
You know, he used to be a union organizer and a hard, you know, Franklin Roosevelt Democrat.
So, you know, you can never quite eliminate some of these aspects of people's personalities if you've been on both sides of the political spectrum.
And so I always saw a lot of his stuff was bluster.
And so I remember, I distinctly remember him coming into a Californian and threatening all his students were rioting all over the place.
And he says, I'm going to put a blue, I remember this, blue ribbon committee headed by John McCone, who I guess was some CIA guy at the time.
And he kept talking about this blue ribbon committee headed by John McCone to investigate this, you know, student unrest.
He got elected and that was the end of it.
There was no Blue Ribbon Committee, right?
John McCone, I don't think, ever showed up.
It was unbelievable.
I would like to revisit Flight 1549, which I brought up last week.
I remember the first part of the week before they pulled up the engine, they showed a piece of metal with a hole in it on one of the news shows.
And said, look, there's a feather stuck on it.
Something like that.
Yeah, that's the report.
We found a feather.
Bird strike.
Totally clear.
But I'm sure you know that this exact aircraft had engine problems in flight two days before this.
Right.
Everybody reported that.
Okay.
And I have to just say again, why is there no audio available of the so-called distress call, this whole conversation you had, which is just not there.
It does not exist.
There is no recording of the pilot saying, we had a double bird strike, we're in trouble.
There's none of it.
It's just not there.
And I'm not saying it's a government conspiracy, but it stinks.
It absolutely stinks.
And, of course, the Sullenberger, the captain, was at the inauguration.
The press asked him questions.
He said, no, I can't say anything.
I'm not allowed to say anything, and I won't say anything.
Well, he's going to be interviewed on 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Oh, okay.
So here comes the spin.
There you go.
So they've set him up.
They've put the chip in him.
He knows what to say now.
I'm just not buying this bird strike.
What do you think it is?
I mean, just to intimidate those bankers that were on board.
Well, that would be a very deep conspiracy, but there's a number of reasons why people would not want to have...
The thought that someone else was responsible for a plane crashing anywhere near New York.
I'm sure that if that was the story, that could have blown up the markets.
It could have done a whole bunch of things.
So I can see where they'd want to spin that.
Yeah, of course.
Please.
Particularly with bankers on board.
Whatever.
I don't know.
It'll come out probably in about 50 years when they release the files.
There's still that TWA flight that was hit by a missile.
And I'm the conspiracy theorist, John?
Well, you know, that's actually more of an interesting story.
Not because there was a missile that hit it.
It's because of the number of people that have come forward that volunteered to testify to the FBI or whoever was investigating the investigation.
The accident.
To say what they'd seen, and they were never called back.
Nobody cared about it.
Their minds were made up from the get-go, and that was the end.
It was a tank that heated up and blew up.
It never happened before.
It never happened since.
But, you know, obviously it was a problem with the plane.
Right.
You mean kind of like buildings collapsing in free fall from jet fuel that never happened before?
Into a perfect mess.
Well, whatever.
That one, I'm not...
You know, who knows?
I mean, that one, they...
Just a head shaker.
But whatever the case is, we just don't get good information, and nobody does any follow-ups.
As soon as somebody comes up with something, they try to find someone to ridicule.
During that, what's that flight?
I think it was 700, whatever that TWA flight was.
700, yeah.
I remember...
Yeah, I think so.
And I remember the, what's his name, Pierre Salinger.
Pierre Salinger apparently came out.
Nobody needs this.
It was 800, by the way.
Oh, Flight 800, right.
Okay, whatever.
So Pierre Salinger comes out and he says, you know, it was struck by a missile and there was pictures and there's this and there's that.
Of course, he got it all from some crackpot's website.
Mm-hmm.
And so he comes forward and he gets a head of steam with people getting interested in it.
And then they just go after him with such a vengeance.
It was like they humiliated him to death.
He's an idiot for reading these kinds of websites and they didn't have the facts.
And I've never seen a guy...
Hounded to oblivion as much as they did.
Because he was the highest profile guy who came out and said anything.
And who is he?
Because I've never heard his name before.
He was the press secretary for John Kennedy.
Ah, okay.
So he was a pretty famous guy.
He was actually a very interesting press secretary while he was there.
And Pierre Salinger.
And so they just slammed the door on him.
And it was pretty interesting to watch how they can do that.
Whoever they are.
Yeah.
Well, the real problem, of course, is that there's...
The only real investigative journalism that was done, I guess, is really newspapers.
And the newspapers are in so much trouble.
They're now being bought up by rich dudes everywhere.
Was the guy who just put $200 million into the New York Times...
Yeah, who was that?
I can find it.
There's also the evening standard, the last for pay...
Where they saw it for a dollar.
No, a pound.
Pound, oh.
They should have done it for a euro, really.
It would have been more symbolic.
I see there was an article about that today.
They saw some Russian guy, right?
XKGB, actually.
And he says he wants to use it to expose Moscow, which is a sure way to get killed.
Yeah, that is a sure way to get killed.
Yeah, I got it here.
Alexander Lebedev, the nominal sum of one pound, the Russian oligarch and former KGB lieutenant colonel said he would pump tens of millions of pounds into the London Daily, which has struggled with falling circulation and competition from free sheets.
Mr.
Lebedev also co-owns some Russian thing...
I'm looking for the New York Times.
I don't know where it is.
So how does that work?
Rich dudes just buy this up to promote their own agenda, or do they actually care?
Isn't that the way newspapers always have been, or at least since the turn of the century?
I need to get me a column in a newspaper here in the UK. I bet you I could get one, too.
I bet you could get one real easy.
Yeah, just write your shit.
Just do my crazy shit, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That would be good.
They go way off the deep end.
The reason they throw you off the station in Holland.
No, remember, if you ever read Adam Curry's Death by Suicide by Cop Suicide, it's not true.
It's not true.
I found a copy of The Wave.
Hey, by the way, before you go there, let's stick with this for a second.
Sure.
Because we were talking about Pierre Salinger and all the Kennedy boys that were wiped out.
Oh, you want to talk about Carolyn Kennedy.
I think it's interesting, right during the inauguration, Ted Kennedy had a heart attack, like he went into convulsions.
So they gave him, okay, Ted, this is your special glass of wine.
No, that's horrible.
Let's have a toast.
That's horrible.
It just seems like they're trying to, you know, they're...
I mean, the Kennedys have been, you know, essentially...
Two things happen.
One, Ted Kennedy has this heart attack, and the other one is Carolyn Kennedy, who was kind of a dingbat anyway, but she seems, you know, well-meaning.
I've met her.
She's not a dingbat.
I've met her.
She's quite nice, actually.
She looks like she's nice.
She has a really pleasant quality about her.
It's hard to describe.
And she bails out on this thing for some unknown reason and won't say why, and nobody can figure it out.
It's not about Ted.
I think the Kennedys are...
I hate this...
I don't want to sound like you.
No, God forbid that would ruin the show.
It would.
But go ahead.
But I remember once when I was a student at the University of California and the Pacific Film Archives had just opened up and they were showing the weirdest movies.
And there's this one movie.
I couldn't actually sit through the whole thing because it was such an eye-roller.
But now I regret not having seen the whole thing or finding access to it to this day.
And it was a crazy, crazy movie about how all the different presidents of the United States represented heads of various criminal organizations, specifically mob organizations.
And the Kennedys, in particular, were...
Part of it was, I don't know if it was Genovese or Costello, I don't know which family it was, but they named the family who were on the outs because it stemmed up from, and they went back to the history of how, you know, the family was a bunch of rum runners.
I mean, they were in...
Well, yeah, that's where Joe Kennedy made his money, right?
From running bootleg money.
His bootleg.
And he was big, so he had to be connected.
And so, apparently, so the Kennedys had to be, you know, taken out of the picture completely because...
Do you remember the name of this film?
I wish!
Hmm.
Because I'm sure, you know, this kind of shit is on Google Video, I'm sure.
Of course I would.
Carlos Slim is the guy who invested in the times.
Thank you, Fyndom.
So, anyway, so the...
In the back of my mind, ever since the Kennedys started getting pushed aside...
Let me connect those dots for a second.
Essentially, the Kennedys have to be eliminated, and they've done quite a reasonable job so far looking at the family history.
And Carolyn Kennedy is ready to ascend to the Senate seat, and they say, oh yeah, watch this.
Here, Ted, have a glass of wine.
That's the way I'd connect those dots you just gave me.
And then she's like, shit, I don't want to suicide by cop.
I'm not going to do this.
But who is this woman that now has been brought in?
She's interesting because she's like kind of a Democrat or a Republican in Democrat clothing.
She's pretty much politically an old-fashioned Republican that is only interested in conservative monetary policies.
She's an NRA member, a big-time gun user, which pisses off almost all the Democrats.
I don't know why they're so adamant about this.
And...
But she's, you know, for gay marriage.
So she's kind of like, you know, there are a lot of Republicans that don't give a crap about gay marriage one way or the other.
And those are what I still consider the more mainstream, old-fashioned Republicans that wouldn't let what happened during the Bush administration actually happen.
You know, they don't think that the earth was made 6,000 years ago.
Right.
And that kind of thing.
Like, these conservatives, you know, all believe, or too many of them believe that.
And that's what she is.
And so she's kind of a little bit of a...
Off the wall.
And that guy, I don't know why she was chosen.
There's a lot of Democrats in New York State that are irked to the nth about this.
Well, no kidding, because she's a Republican.
That's the first thing that's interesting about it.
Well, there was two things.
One, she's a Democrat, but she's a Republican in her philosophies.
And the worst part is...
She won as a Democrat in a highly Republican area in the middle of nowhere, upstate New York.
And that means they're not going to be able to get another person in there.
So a Republican will probably end up with that seat because there's no Democrat that has her types of politics to win up there.
So let's trace it back one more step back to the Kennedys.
Wait a minute, one more thing.
What about Andrew Cuomo?
I thought he was the shoe-in.
Who also was related to the Kennedys.
Cuomo?
By marriage, yeah.
Wasn't he married to someone from the Kennedy clan?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
And of course, John Jr.
was killed by plane sabotage.
Right.
Seriously, John, that was not a spatial disorientation issue.
The conditions were just not there for that.
I'm just not buying that one.
As an aviator, I'm not buying it.
Hold on.
Andrew Cuomo.
I'm pretty sure he was married to someone in the Kennedy clan.
No.
Carrie Kennedy Cuomo.
Really?
Yes.
But I think he's divorced, wasn't he?
Carrie Kennedy?
Well, once you're in, you're in.
Yeah, right.
So this sounds like maybe there's a lot more to it, particularly because Caroline just won't say anything.
That's, you know...
That's kind of weird.
Yeah, I just think the thing, it's just an interesting thing to think about.
You know, Ted's going to be out of the picture shortly.
Yeah.
So all you got now is Robert Kennedy Jr.
and a few of the other kids who are lying low.
How about the kid who, the raper, the ex-rapist?
Yeah, I don't think he was part of the real family.
I mean, just a relative of some sort.
Remember there was some, didn't someone get killed with a golf club?
What was that?
Remember that?
I don't remember that one.
Yeah, that was maybe ten years ago.
There was something where someone got their head beaten in.
I thought that was a Kennedy kid who was...
I don't know.
There's a lot of Kennedy kids, that's for sure, but how many of them were part of the inner circle remains to be seen.
But I think it explains one of the reasons that Ted Kennedy had become, he was like the third brother, or the fourth actually, because the first brother was killed off during the war, which was Joe Kennedy Sr.
He was the one that was supposed to be the shoe-in to be the politician.
So you had these four brothers with only Ted left, and Ted became something of an outrageous left-wing, almost an anti-government style of Democrat, promoting old-line socialist concepts.
I mean, he's basically a socialist.
Well, that's pretty much the administration we just voted into office, isn't it?
Well, he was from the Kennedy...
I mean, Kennedy did...
When Kennedy took sides, he took Obama's side.
Right.
Instead of Hillary's side.
Right, which, you know, which is another thing because, you know, there's all this, you know, the kind of mean-spiritedness of the Clintons.
And by the way, it was a pretty good move.
They got Hillary out of the picture by making her secretary of state.
And, you know, there's one couple of guys are going to argue about it.
And I think somebody went up and said, look, Hillary's more dangerous as a senator than she's ever going to be a secretary of state.
Get her out of there.
Put in somebody else.
you know, this Republican woman who is a Democrat.
And now she's not going to be able to run for that office again.
No.
Because it's idiotic.
And she's going to have a good retirement because you get a good one if you're a Secretary of State.
And she can go off, float around the world, be a big shot, and that's the end of her.
So she's out of the picture.
Another memorandum from our new president.
Remember, I think memorandum, does that have any legal standing, a memorandum?
I don't know.
Maybe a lawyer can, or it had to be a constitutional lawyer.
Probably not.
Because he's got a lot of memorandums that he's passing out, and the press is, of course, reporting that as, oh, it's all fixed.
basically turning back a bush memorandum not a wish me yeah this is the what the i read these laundry list of these things but most of those were like put in play by you know something was put in play by Carter Reagan reversed it Clinton reversed that Bush reversed it back And now Obama's got...
Basically, we're looking at Carter administration policy.
No kidding, Brzezinski.
No kidding.
I can remember no agenda.
I think it was like 16 or 17.
And you were like, what are you talking about, Brzezinski?
Shut up.
I never said that.
Oh, don't make me go into the archives.
Don't make me go in.
The reason why I'm bringing it up is because, do you not find it strange?
Because now the anti-abortion versus pro-choice or pro-life, I forget what the politically correct term is, now that's heating up again.
Is there something weird about people, anti-abortionists, people who are against abortion, throwing eggs at clinics?
Doesn't sit right with me.
Maybe they're not fertilized, but still, it's a weird thing to do.
You know what I'm saying?
They should be throwing shoes.
I like that.
I like the shoe thing.
Well, you know, that issue crops up and it just detracts from anything, you know, that affects people's day-to-day lives.
I mean, it doesn't make any difference to me one way or the other, but the fact that the economy's in the tank does mean something to me daily.
Yeah.
Yeah, but that's not what people in the hypnotized states of America are talking about.
I'm telling you, you go on the street and you say, what is Obama?
He's closed Gitmo.
We're no longer torturing.
I'm just like, that is exactly what the press is reporting, but it's just not factually true.
And it's sad.
So please, tell a friend to listen to this show.
Because we'll give you at least some fact.
Some pieces of, yeah, lots of opinion and fact.
Thoughtful opinion, though.
That's the difference.
I posted a Google video of the wave on curry.com.
Are you familiar with this, the wave?
No.
I don't know, am I? Yeah, it was a book based upon a true experiment that a high school teacher...
Oh, right, right, right, the wave, yeah.
Which has a color scheme on the cover of one of the books that is exactly the same as Obama's, that artsy picture of Obama.
The blue, red, and gray stuff, yeah.
And a lot of people really responded very interestingly to that.
It was like an ABC after school movie.
It's horribly acted.
It's a piece of shit.
But it is the story.
And I remember my mom telling me this story.
I don't know.
It must have been seven or eight.
I was in the Bay Area when that happened.
I remember the reports on the news about it.
Coverley High was where it actually took place.
Well, play it back.
Tell people what it is, because not everyone is familiar with it.
Well, what it was is it was some guy wanted to teach the class about bigotry and how dictatorships can evolve and how things can naturally, if encouraged, can naturally turn into sort of a fascist environment.
And so he set up a classroom experiment where people had to, you know, there's one group that was one way and another group had to be their opponent.
That's actually incorrect.
That's what I thought the story was, but it's not.
They were studying the Holocaust, and the kids were like, well, how could all these millions of Germans not know that they were killing millions of Jews?
And they just didn't believe it.
They didn't understand it.
And he then started very, very simply.
It wasn't two groups, but he said, okay, let's put this into practice.
Why don't we...
Start understanding that with community dedication, that's how you get things done.
And you had a little salute where you pound your chest and hold your fist up.
And everyone really got into it.
And then it just caught fire almost immediately.
And the quietest kid in the class, of course, wanted to be bodyguard and essentially like an SS agent.
And the wave, you know, it spread and they were doing meetings and then the crescendo of this whole story is he holds a meeting and he says, alright kids, there are groups all over the country now who are part of the wave and they all want a new wave of community and being together with hope and change.
And then he shows this big, he said, okay, here's your leader and then he flips up a video of Hitler.
And of course all the kids then realize that they've been sucked into fascism and what that really means.
Yeah, I think that's the dramatized version of what actually went on.
Possibly.
But that's probably something worth reading.
The guy, by the way, that teacher's still around, and he refuses to talk about it.
Really?
Yeah.
He just refuses to talk about it.
He just doesn't want to talk about it.
Because I guess it was just frightening the way it unfolded.
But if you want to read a good piece of fiction that's about this phenomenon, and I think it's very believable, is Sinclair Lewis' classic, It Can't Happen Here.
Yes.
You sent me a copy.
I think it's being distributed.
People are emailing this out on the net.
Well, what's interesting about Sinclair Lewis was he was a Nobel Prize winning, Pulitzer Prize winning, one of our greatest writers, and adored by the left literati.
But he did this book, It Can't Happen Here, which was about, you know, essentially how the left wing could take over in a fascist way.
And, of course, then he was on the outs ever since then.
Same thing happened to John Dos Passos, who wrote some, you know, essentially conservative perspective book once.
So anyway, but a real life story, if you want to read, which is a little harder to come by, it's called Life and Death in Shanghai, which talks about the communist takeover of the city and how people were just like you described, you know, the weak little wimp that had no power somehow becomes the boss. the weak little wimp that had no power somehow becomes Right.
And turns into a despotic little jerk off.
And it's a very interesting story.
Actually, it's much more frightening than the way this woman wrote this book.
Killer, but it was banned in China.
Life and Death in Shanghai, extremely popular in Hong Kong just before the turnover, like in the mid-90s.
Because everyone who was reading this all freaked out in Hong Kong when they figured that the Chinese...
I mean, I was there...
A couple of times before the turnover, and everyone's just freaked.
Was that 2000, the turnover?
Yeah, it was.
No, it was 1997.
Oh, 1997.
I'm sorry.
Jesus, that long ago, huh?
Yeah, and everybody was roaming around.
I said, oh, we've noticed there's a lot more people speaking Mandarin.
You know, there's spies everywhere.
But it was a really easy handover.
Not much change that I know.
Yeah, I know.
It's the joke of it.
Yeah.
It can't happen here.
Is that public domain, do you think?
No, it can't be.
It was written about 1933.
Because I was considering turning that into an audiobook.
I've been wanting to record an audiobook for a long time, and I've been considering that would be one to do.
You could probably get rights to it for next to nothing.
Well, I don't want to make money on it.
I just want to do it.
Just do it.
You know how long it takes to read a book out loud?
Yes, a long time.
I think it takes a long time to do it properly.
Yeah, and you probably have to redo a couple things once in a while, and it has to be edited a little bit.
I think you should have sound effects.
Well, you know, I've done one.
Oh, dude, have you seen...
Go to Mevio.com and turn up your sound.
I want you to see this.
My browser is not working.
Oh, you can't do that?
Ah, shit.
Sorry.
If I reboot the router, I can do it.
No, no, no.
Don't do that.
Do it later.
Do it later.
Because I put a good comedic effect in there for a reason.
I don't want to give it away, but if you look at it right now, you might get a chuckle.
It's one of my best pieces of work.
I did a couple of audiobooks.
You know which ones I did?
Which I have never released because I wasn't happy with them?
What?
Tom Swift.
Tom Swift?
You don't know the Tom Swift series?
You did all of them?
No, no, no, no, no.
I did, I think, his Hydro Flying Machine I did.
When I was a kid, I read Tom Swift.
I read all of them as a kid, and I didn't know that they were from, like, 1850.
These things are incredibly old, and it's all the stuff that we now have.
And the reason why I've never released them is because I couldn't quite get it.
You know, they had this black guy who, I would have to say, served Tom Swift and his dad, who, of course, was also a famous inventor in the books.
And when you read these original texts, it's like, Yes, Massa, I could be doing that right away, Massa!
And how can you read that without reading it like that?
And I really struggled.
Mark Twain, all his books were written in dialect.
And it was very popular to write in dialect.
And it wasn't just black people in dialect.
No, no, all of them.
It was also white people.
Everybody was written in dialect.
Everyone always talks about Tom Sawyer, but my favorite book was Huckleberry Finn.
It was a much more compelling adventure that he went on.
And...
And that was major, because he was with Uncle Tom?
Wasn't Uncle Tom who was with him on the raft?
Could be.
Yeah, but I've always struggled.
I have a feeling if you don't read it the way it was written in dialect, then it misses a lot.
And if you do, honestly, people call me a racist.
Yeah, exactly.
Because there's too many people out there that don't understand that it was written that way.
I mean, there are people I would swear, right?
I mean, if you did a survey and you said, I'm going to quote Mark Twain reading from this character, and you talk like that, nobody would believe that it was actually written that way in today's world because we can't do that.
It's not politically correct to even think about it.
Apparently, It Can't Happen Here is in public domain and available on Project Gutenberg.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Although, I'm not sure that's true because a lot of books that are on Gutenberg are still to come into public domain.
You have to be real careful.
Yeah.
Because they're up there, but they have specific disclaimers.
Well, there's one clearinghouse that does art.
I don't have their name offhand, but they're the big ones.
There's a copyright clearinghouse.
You could probably contact them, and they would help you in this regard.
I'll get their names.
I'm really considering that, because that's the kind of project.
Another thing I'm worried about, and this is what I ran into.
It's a great book.
Great book.
It's a great book, yeah.
Because I'm a Sinclair Lewis fan, so...
If you do this over a number of weeks, and I ran into this with the Tom Swift experiment, you get so many differences in your intonation, and it's really hard.
It's tough.
It's really hard to read an audiobook.
And if you want to do production, it's even harder.
I think you have to read it in one sitting.
This is my guess.
I don't know.
Somebody who probably does these for a living maybe listens in.
But I would think you could get away with it if you did it in one sitting and then you did the production stuff afterwards.
Or the alternative, and this has been done by many people, is to do it as a podcast and then do a chapter at a time.
Yeah, you could do that.
But I've never gotten into that.
I just want to listen to the whole thing and stop it in my own tempo.
But I'll tell you...
I think it'd be a good book to do.
Some of the audiobooks that I've purchased are so poorly read.
Ugh.
Just shit.
There's not that many people that do it well.
Would you do one?
It's not easy to do.
Could I do one?
Well, would you?
Can you imagine somebody having to listen to my screechy voice for more than an hour?
You have a very nice voice, John.
I disagree.
No, I don't know if I could...
Let me read something from the news here and see what it sounds like.
Do it with the Uncle Tom dialect.
I don't know how that dialect works.
Yeah, sure.
You lived in that era, man.
What are you talking about?
Well, those days are over.
So, I could do it as Deepak Chopra.
Okay, that'll work.
Oh, I can talk like Deepak Chopra.
Oh, no, that's horrible.
You're no good at it.
You think so?
No, no, good at it.
Here's one.
I can't do the voice.
Not since the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago has a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations.
It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage are avowing their desire to undertake the transformation imposed on them.
Who's this supposed to be?
This is Mike Kissinger.
Oh, it's terrible.
It's terrible.
Well, here's the line.
I actually can do a perfect Kissinger.
Yeah?
If I take, I have this, there's this one, there's a cough syrup called Ventolin.
Seriously.
It's a cough syrup called Ventolin.
And I don't know what, I have an allergic reaction to it or something.
And my voice becomes Henry Kissinger.
And there's nothing I can do about it.
All right, read that.
Read this middle paragraph.
The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity.
What?
Yeah, that one.
In shaping the new world order?
That's the one.
Opportunity, not a policy?
What is this?
This is Kissinger, man.
He just said this.
He's calling for new world order.
He just said this now?
Yeah, this is from January 12th.
The extraordinary impact of the president-elect on the imagination of humanity is an important element in shaping a new world order, but it defines an opportunity, not a policy.
There you go.
What is that supposed to mean?
Oh, one world government.
Gordon Brown.
He's one of those one world government guys.
You know Obama's, I think, in that crowd.
You think?
You think?
You know what, I wonder, maybe.
Brzezinski is, and he's there.
He's a part of it.
Please.
This is, Gordon Brown is literally having wet dreams.
He is ejaculating over the fact that Obama is now president.
Can't wait for Obama to come to the United Kingdom for the G20 summit, which is coming up in a few weeks.
Everything he, every speech, every time he's on television, well, President Barack, and they never say Barack, it's Barack Obama.
Hey, England, it's Barack, not Barack.
Do they call him Barack?
Barack Obama.
Barack Obama.
It's Barack!
Barack Obama.
Barack Obama is coming.
Yes, Barack Obama, because we can't do this alone.
We have to have bad banks together.
We have to have all the...
They're creating a bad bank here, a bad bank in the U.S. We're going to have one big, badass bank, and it's going to control everything.
Surely, surely, surely you see that, John.
Yeah, you know, these schemes have little chance of success.
That's the way I see it.
No, of course it has little chance of success, but what it's going to succeed at is bankrupting the countries that...
You know, so the UK has...
What they've set up, and this is very controversial, or should I say controversial, the United Kingdom will underwrite...
The banks.
So kind of like AIG as an insurance company.
So the banks will have to pay these huge premiums to guarantee their business.
And if they go bankrupt, then the Bank of England, essentially, will cover the loss.
Well, you know, just have one or two of these banks go belly up and there's no more money.
They're already talking about David Cameron, the leader of the conservatives, is already saying, oh, we're going to have to go to the IMF. We're going to have to get bailed out by the IMF. This place is going down the tubes.
Well, if you've followed the pound, or the euro for that matter, versus the dollar.
Yeah, good news.
Well, good news for me, good news for you, not good news for the United Kingdom.
Yeah, well, you know, they had their day.
So I recorded for you the Marijuana, Inc.
special that was done by Trish Regan at CNBC. Thank you.
I requested that.
Did you watch it or did you only record it?
I watched part of it.
It's mostly Trish, who used to work for Market Watch.
I've met her, and I've been on a couple shows with her too, and it's always good to see you again, like we've seen each other ever.
She's in New York.
But she was...
I've got to send her an email.
She was like kind of...
She did this thing, and she's like standing in a field of about a million dollars with 20-foot-high marijuana plants with all blood.
You mean heaven.
And she is giddy.
And I'm thinking, you know, I think this girl smokes once in a while.
I mean, that's the impression you have.
You should introduce me to her.
She sounds like my kind of people.
She's pretty hot looking.
Voila.
I only watched part of it.
She's roaming around.
They do have a lot of numbers, the kind of billions of dollars that it produces for places like Mendocino County that would otherwise be just broke.
There was an argument for legalization I thought was pretty valid.
You know, just that you'll like it.
I couldn't watch the whole thing.
It's bored me stiff.
You know, in Surrey, where we used to live in Guildford, there's a research park.
Nokia has a big facility there, even a helipad, in fact.
And there's a whole bunch of nondescript buildings.
And the movers, who have moved us every single time in the UK and had our stuff in storage, I know these guys, you know, a pretty small outfit.
And so I'm talking to them, and they said, you know, because they were up in my office when they were cleaning out the old house, and of course, how can you avoid hearing my work when you're in my office for two days?
Did you turn your fan back on?
No.
And he said, you know, that's kind of interesting, the stuff I hear you talking about, because we were at one of these research facilities over at Surrey Research Park, and the guy had a whole room full of screens, and there were all these red dots.
And he said, you know, so what are these red dots?
And the guy apparently was quite friendly.
He said, oh, these are all of the, this is where all the troops are in Afghanistan.
We're monitoring these live satellites, and we passed that on to the Ministry of Defense.
He was clearly saying stuff he shouldn't have.
And then the guy says, you know what's interesting is all these red dots, they're all around the poppy fields.
People have no idea.
I've asked my Daily Source Code audience to go out on the street and record people and ask them two questions.
One, what kind of government do we have in the United States?
And the second question is, what are we doing in Afghanistan?
And I can't wait to hear the answers when they come back.
Oh, they'll just be a bunch of dumb answers.
Well, I think the answer to the first question will be democracy.
That's pretty much what everyone has been led to believe, which is wrong.
It's a representative republic.
Thank you.
And started by the French.
Wasn't it a French guy's idea?
A republic?
I think, didn't the Greeks and the Romans, one of them had some sort of similar...
Well, the Romans had a similar structure.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
The Senate and the whole thing.
So, the Afghanistan thing still fascinates me that two missiles come flying in to blow up a camp and a house.
And people.
Well, you know, there's people in there usually.
And...
Well, what happens?
I saw...
And this was under Obama's watch.
Obama's watch.
He was threatening, if you remember, that he was going to blow up...
I'm sorry, it's Pakistan, right?
Yes, Pakistan, you're right.
Well, the border, the Afghan-Pakistan border, yes.
Right, it's Pakistan, it misspoke.
But he was threatening them from the get-go.
Yeah.
And then it kind of went under the radar, but he seems to be...
He doesn't seem to be a pro-Pakistan type of guy.
No, because the U.S. has a deal with India.
India hates Pakistan.
They've had this whole thing and this whole argument for decades about Kashmir.
And as far as I understand, India wants to get rid of Pakistan.
They've always hated each other.
I don't know.
I think the whole thing...
Well, I don't know if they want to get rid of Pakistan.
I think they just want to get Pakistan out of their hair.
Two missile attacks from suspected U.S. drones have killed 14 people in northwestern Pakistan, officials say.
At least one missile hit a house in a village near the town of Murali in North Warizistan.
Of course, a stronghold of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, of course.
I did see a documentary.
Maybe it was Channel 4, interestingly enough.
It's just like in Gaza.
The press is not allowed to go anywhere anymore.
And, of course, they don't do it.
But these guys had given their Afghani cameraman all the gear and said, okay, sit in the hospital.
And he shot for a week in the hospital.
And he interviewed all these people.
And essentially what's happening is militants, combatants, whatever, come into a village.
They hide in the village.
They lob some shit at the U.S. troops.
Then they run away.
Then the troops come in and then kill everybody in the village.
It's like Vietnam all over again.
It's like, seriously, torch the village.
Most of the experts that are familiar with the region say that we should just get out.
Well, of course we should just get out.
And these are academics.
We're not talking about just a bunch of policy wonks that are here and there.
People who are genuinely familiar with the area say we should get out.
And I've always wondered about this idea, and I think it would have worked in Iraq, too.
George W. or George, the other Bush, the older one, kind of maybe had...
41, as we say.
He maybe had a little bit of the right idea when he invaded Iraq and then left.
I thought it would have been...
Well, that was because of his deal with the Saudis.
That was all about Kuwait.
So that was a business deal.
But he still had these great quotes about how getting involved would be bad and bad.
It's bad.
It's really, really bad.
So...
When they started, it was shock and awe, you know, that one or two days of just blowing the place to smithereens.
I thought it would be like, you know, you get into a beef with the United States, we just shock and awe them for a couple of days, and then split.
Well, you know, my stance on that is I totally disagree.
We should get the fuck out of it.
Yeah, because you don't like the idea of just throwing missiles at...
No, at anybody.
No, at anybody.
I'm against throwing hot lead at children.
But it seems to me to be a more interesting way of approaching this than going in and just dragging these things out forever.
Well, of course, but look, Karzai, who was a unical guy, who was an oil guy, who pretends like he's some hotshot by wearing this cape and this fucking hat made of fetus, calves fetus, his brother is a known drug czar, known.
It can't be anything but a huge scam.
There's no other reason to be there.
Now, from Huffington Post, this is one of these people you're talking about.
I don't know if she...
Malu Innocent.
Great name.
Malu Innocent.
Posted yesterday, during his campaign for presidency, Barack Obama pledged to deploy more troops to Afghanistan and to take the fight into Pakistan.
I guess he did.
During the second presidential debate, he said, if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think we should have to act and we will take them out.
We will kill bin Laden.
We will crush al-Qaeda.
That is our biggest national security priority.
And she goes on to say, no one should be surprised that missile strikes have been launched under the new president's watch.
President Obama was unequivocal in his commitment to go after Al-Qaeda, hiding in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And then, of course, she says, is there a better approach?
So, yeah.
But he's also said, and I've read this somewhere, it's like, well, you know, the guy's holed up, you know, he clearly has no control anymore, so we don't have to go after him now.
When did he say that?
Not long ago, I could find.
Bush did this.
Oh, you know, wanted dead or alive, you know, blah, blah, blah.
This guy's like the tallest man in the region, and he's floating around doing videos.
And so they're going to go after him dead or alive, and then, what, eight years go by, and they never get close to him, and they don't, you know, I don't know, I find the whole thing disturbing.
From Times Online, January 15th.
Of course, it's the Times.
Barack Obama suggested last night that removing Osama bin Laden from the battlefield was no longer essential and that America's security goals could be achieved merely by keeping Al-Qaeda on the run.
Here's the quote.
My preference, obviously, would be to capture or kill him, he said.
But if we have so tightened the noose that he's in a cave somewhere and can't even communicate with his operatives, then we will meet our goal of protecting America.
So we're done.
I guess we can leave now.
He's in a cave.
It's all set.
If they've tightened the noose and he's in a cave, they at least know where he is.
Why don't they go get him?
This makes no sense.
The logic of this is ridiculous.
Yeah, but this is the state of our fucking press corps, dude.
As recently as October 7th in a presidential debate, Mr.
Obama said, We will kill Bin Laden.
We will crush Al-Qaeda.
That has to be our biggest national security priority.
Yesterday, the president-elect adopted far less aggressive language, saying his number one priority was to protect America from further attack.
Well, look at the CNN video and look out for them fucking flying saucers, Barak.
That's the shit I'd be worried about.
So in other words, we're going to get tough, and it's not that important.
I think the whole thing's a scam.
Well, from what I understand, it was actually Robert Gates, the defense secretary who was staying on, who actually came up with al-Qaeda, even with the name.
Well, there's that special that was done by that great documentarian that the BBC uses every so often.
Oh, yes, I know what you mean.
A friend of mine knows the guy.
Yeah, I can think of his name.
Knows the guy.
So if I go to London, we can go out and have dinner with him.
Really?
Oh, I'd love to.
But we have to know his name, because that would help.
Like, hey, nice to meet you, dude.
Hey, nice to meet you.
If I get my browser up, I could find his name.
But anyway, he's, yeah, I think it's Orlowski at the register who's pals with him.
It's like an S. Anyway, he's the one who does the voice for those documentaries, too.
I think he's done three or four sets of them, and they're fantastic.
And we'll blog it or talk about it next week.
Let me make a note, so people can watch them.
Now is the time to come over, by the way, because the Germans are coming to the United Kingdom to buy BMWs.
Wow, things are that screwy?
Yeah!
Because the pound has just collapsed.
And you get the value-added tax, you get that back.
You can claim that back when you take it back to the continent.
Now, of course, you have a left-hand drive, but who cares?
Well, they could sell the right-hand drive ones in England.
Yeah, but I think then you kind of lose your benefit because they are significantly more expensive.
And they don't really sell them here.
In fact, the right-hand drives may be manufactured elsewhere.
Well, in fact, they're not manufacturing anything anymore.
All the car companies have just closed.
I see people floating around the United States with one of these right-hand drive cars from England, like old Rolls-Royce to get them cheap.
The thing is, it's the most dangerous thing in the world to drive around.
You can't pass people on the open road because you can't see.
They actually stick your whole car out to see if anything's coming.
Well, that's not true.
That's not true because when we moved here, I still had my Audi A8 with a right-hand drive.
And honestly, I'm very happy that the first year that we lived here, we had that because I only had to get used to one thing.
Which was driving on the correct side of the road, apparently.
Because once you get into the car, particularly a manual, because my daughter has a manual stick shift, and it's left hand drive, and you have to shift with your left hand, that takes a little getting used to.
I don't know.
You know, I've driven over there a lot, and I've had the shifters.
It's never bothered me.
Well, then what are you saying?
You just have to concentrate.
You just have to concentrate.
Yeah.
And pretty soon it's second nature.
I think it's kind of sporty.
You're on the wrong side of the car with a left-hand shifter.
You think you're in, like, the Grand Prix of some place.
It just feels sporty.
I don't know why.
Technically, it's the correct side of the road.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know why?
Tell me.
Because it dates back to the days of the horse.
If you were sundering along the road, you would want to be on the left-hand side because if an adversary came from the opposite direction, you wanted to be able to draw your sword with your right hand.
Oh, I thought it was so when you were going on the horse past one of your buddies, you can give them a high five with your right hand.
No, I think it's actually easier for the drive-thru.
Yeah.
So, whatever.
I know they have that.
People drive on that side of the road in Hong Kong, but not in China.
But with a right-hand drive car.
No, they have the right cars.
Oh, but in Jamaica and in Africa...
They drive on the left-hand side, but they have right-hand drive cars, most of them.
They have.
I've been there.
They have the wheel on the right proper side.
And they also, in Japan, because a lot of the cars come from Japan, where they drive on the wrong side of the road, too.
And all the Japanese cars that are coming out of Japan are the ones that are floating around Hong Kong and places like that, so it's not like a big deal to get a car with the steering wheel on that side of the car.
So...
Sweden used to have, I think they switched over, and of course it was a problem.
The story goes, in Sweden, they had to make the transition slowly, so when they switched over from the right to the left, the trucks do it the first week, and then the cars started the next week after that.
Last night, Jonathan Ross returned.
Is that like a joke you don't get?
No, I didn't get it.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, now you have my proof.
You know what?
I just wasn't listening to you.
Aha!
I'll cop to it.
You lie, but at least I'll admit it.
I don't lie?
When you're not listening to me, you just play it off like you don't care, but you just weren't listening.
Say it again so I can listen to it.
Please, please.
They had to transition from the right-hand to the left-hand side of the road, so they wanted to do it in an orderly fashion.
So for the first week, the trucks switched over, and then the second week, the cars switched over.
Very funny.
What a bing.
You're Robin Williams.
Stephen Fry was on Jonathan Ross last night, who reappeared after a 12-week forced absence for being naughty on the radio.
You know who Stephen Fry is?
Right, that was a big scandal.
The guy's making $4 million a year or something like that?
On the BBC off the taxpayers' back?
Well, at the time, I think he was making more.
I think it was more like £6 million, but of course now that's probably $4 million.
Anyway, his guest, Tom Cruise was on, was interesting.
But Stephen Fry, who does, and I like him even more than I already liked him for a number of reasons.
So this was a highly anticipated show, so a lot of people watched, I'm sure.
And he does documentaries, but he's done some very famous ones about America.
And it was so nice to finally hear an Englishman say something nice about America.
And it was really great.
And this was the point that he hammered home, which I really liked.
He said, in America they have a saying which is, only in America.
When someone comes up with some crazy invention or some fantastic idea or something that's just, wow, you know, whoever would have thought of that, then Americans say, yep, like Don King, of course, only in America.
He says, but in Britain...
Whenever something's fucked up, when you have to stand in line, when the weather is shit, people always say, only in Britain!
Like, that is indeed the essence.
And he said one more thing, which was great.
He promoted Twitter on the show, which was really...
It came out all wrong, because, of course, when you try to explain Twitter to someone, no one gets it.
And he is on Twitter, and he has been tweeting his travels.
But that was kind of cool to see that big plug for Twitter.
That was pretty awesome.
Yeah, good for him.
You should watch some of his documentaries.
They're really, really quite good.
Particularly about the U.S. There's another one called America Unchained.
And this guy, his idea was to drive from the West Coast to the East Coast without eating or getting gas at a chain outfit.
And it was a very challenging journey, let me tell you.
Well, it is on the main drags, that's true.
If you get off of those, you know, I've driven across the country, and if you get off the interstates and you go on the old U.S. highway system, which is still intact mostly.
Which is what he did, absolutely.
Yeah, then there's plenty of places to eat, and there's tons of places that are not necessarily changing.
Now, it is a little more difficult with the gasoline in some parts.
Yeah, the gasoline was the hardest part.
Finding diners and stuff like that was relatively easy.
Yeah, no, the gasoline, because it's like, what's not a chain?
And how do you have a gas station that's not a chain?
And, you know, if you go to Costco as part of a chain, I mean, I don't know how you can, to be honest about how you can make it.
He did it.
He, I'm sorry, there was one time when he had to fill up at a chain, because he literally ran out of gas.
But yeah, he did it.
He did.
He went all the way from...
In fact, he drove, I think, 6,000 miles because he wanted to also go to every town named Independence in America.
And there's quite a few, particularly in the Midwest.
So he drove a lot more and a lot longer.
But it was beautiful to see.
You know, when you see what I believe is real America with mom-and-pop stores.
It was just a beautiful...
I'll get you a copy because I recorded it.
I think I can spin it off onto a disc somehow.
Yeah, bring it over.
I think you'd like it, yeah.
What else are you going to bring over?
You're coming over to this site.
Monday, yeah.
Where are we eating, my bro?
Well, the trend right now, and I think we're going to explore these things, is these Peruvian restaurants that are the trendy San Francisco thing, and there's about four of them, or five, and I think it'd be worth checking out.
I went to one during Macworld with Callie Lewis and her husband.
Oh, how was that?
It was good.
They're nice, aren't they?
Yeah, they're very...
I know.
I'm looking for confirmation, basically.
No, no.
They're extremely pleasant people.
And they're into what they're doing, and they're doing a fine job.
But anyway, so we went to this place, which is one of the trendier of the Peruvian places.
And it's a lot of ceviche made with all kinds of fish you never thought of that they would make it that way.
And it's called something else.
And they have a lot of these dishes that are one thing and called another.
I was in Peru, and I never noticed this kind of food at all.
It must be resort food or something.
I don't know what the...
We're not going to go to the restaurant you already went to.
We'll go to a new one, I hope.
Yeah, sure.
We certainly should have dinner twice.
I made a mistake in my email.
I'm leaving Saturday, not Sunday.
So I can do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night.
The problem with you is on Tuesday...
There's a lot of problems with me, John, but feel free to point one or two out.
You're kind of fagged out for the first two or three days that you're here.
And you're like, if we go to dinner at five, it's too late.
No, that's only the first day.
I'll be fine.
I'll be fine.
I'm well rested.
I'm into it.
I'm good.
You say that.
Yeah, no, I know I'll be good.
I can't wait for you to come over here.
I want you to come over here, man.
I'm a Londoner now.
I've got all the fresh places, all these small little, the butcher, there's the fish guy, there's the vegetable guy, it's all these independent stores that have been around for 40 years.
You'll love it.
This area, by the way, You know Samuel Pepys?
Pepy?
Oh, yeah.
He lived here.
I thought it was Pepys.
Well, it's P-E-P-Y. I thought it was Pepy, whatever.
It says Pepys.
But he lived here.
In your house?
No, not in this house.
I do know that a very famous person lived in this house.
I'm not going to mention it on the air because I don't want people to know where I live.
I'll tell you off the air.
Very famous.
In fact, some of what he did, he has done in this house, which is...
You'll love this story.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to tell it on the air.
You'll love the story when I tell it to you, because he has done his work in this house, and no one fucking knew it.
This is like a landmark, and it's not recognized.
Nick Jagger.
No, but I will tell you that right in front of our door in 1970...
Maybe it was 69.
The Who...
Their van was stolen with their equipment, and it showed up right near the house here with all the equipment gone, 5,000 pounds worth of gear.
So there's some rock and roll history.
But no, this guy is from the 1800s, late 1800s.
Mick Jagger.
Yes.
But this entire area of Clapham, Battersea, and to a certain extent Brixton, In the 1960s, when the Black Death was in London, everyone fled London if they could, because eventually at a certain point around 62, 63, they locked up London.
You couldn't get across the Thames, and everyone fled out here to be safe from the Black Plague.
It's a very interesting history.
I think you'll enjoy it if you come over.
Yeah, I know.
I get over there.
Sure.
No, I will, because actually now there's almost...
Now it doesn't cost...
Hey, look, I got miles.
I can give you miles on my Virgin Atlantic.
Yeah, I'd take them.
You probably got lots of miles by now.
Yeah, in fact, to help with the credit crunch, I'm now buying Coach and upgrading with miles.
Well, it's the same thing.
Well, what do you mean it's the same thing?
Well, I mean, you're still in first class.
Right, yeah, right.
What I'm saying is I'm no longer paying for...
Oh, you were actually buying first class tickets?
Upper class.
Upper class.
Well, back in the day when everyone had tons of money, it was okay, but now we've all got to be careful.
Right, except Obama redecorating his place for $100,000.
Yeah, and the $170 million inauguration, sure.
Except for those minor points.
Was it $170 million to do that?
That's what I heard.
$150 to $170, yeah.
Someone even calculated the carbon footprint, which is like bigger than a whole coal installation.
Carbon footprint.
It was like 525 million tons of CO2 or whatever.
So, I don't think we got to any good topics today.
What are you talking about?
Well, first of all, you came to the party with nothing.
I've been driving the ship, so what do you mean no good topics?
I just get the feeling that compared to last week's show, which I think we were pounding the ball out of the park, you know, we got, like, it's kind of a boring show.
I think we should start it over.
Obama!
We are the people of America!
United for a country!
Obama!
Hey everybody, welcome to the Obama Station of the Nation.
It's A to the C here in Southwest London.
JCD, how you doing everybody?
Hey buddy, come on in.
By the way, I've recorded a family guy for you where Brian becomes a DJ. Oh, great!
Have you ever seen this one?
No, I haven't.
Oh, that's great.
Oh, this is the funniest one because they've got these two boneheads that are just a...
All they do is play jingles.
Oh, awesome!
You would love this particular episode because it just shows the...
It has all the stuff you like, you think is funny.
Well, it's like I saw Wayne's World 2 the other day.
You've probably never seen Wayne's World 2.
I never even knew it existed.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, no.
That's the one with Kim Basinger, isn't it?
That was one.
I don't know if she was in two because I only saw a little bit of it.
But basically, Wayne and Garth go to promote their concert.
Maybe it was one.
Now I don't know.
Maybe it was one.
And they go to a radio station, and the guy, he's interviewing them, and it's exactly the way it works.
And so they're talking, and the guy is basically turning around, he's fiddling with the carts.
You know, that's an old-fashioned jingle system, basically 8-track cartridges.
And he's going, mm-hmm, yeah, uh-huh, mm-hmm.
And so they're talking, and it just makes these listening noises.
Mm-hmm, yeah, mm-hmm.
You hear all this rambling.
Uh-huh, yeah.
And then all of a sudden it's like, pew, a gunshot.
Oh, yeah, they're coming closer.
Yeah, okay, good.
And it's so spot-up.
It is so exactly, exactly what Top 40 used to be because, of course, now we don't even have that sad type of radio anymore now that it's all...
Clear Channel.
All the radio companies, all these big ones, you can buy them now for 18 cents a share.
It's all bankrupt.
It's all going to go away.
I've talked to you before about the fact that we should own a radio station, but you thought it was a bad idea.
Yeah, because people just don't tune in that way anymore.
That's why I think the newspaper column, I think I want to do that here in the UK, because that's still kind of where people get their info from.
And I could plug this show.
I did plug this show.
I was in the Financial Times a couple weeks back.
And you plugged the show?
Yeah.
Daily source code, no agenda.
The guy didn't really report.
Nice guy.
He's the guy.
He does a weekly podcast for the Financial Times, Mike.
His show is like Beer Mat Radio or something.
He's not really a typical Financial Times type guy.
But he wrote a nice column, a little interview about...
About what I'm doing.
Zero.
I heard no one say anything about it.
Nothing.
Not an email.
Nothing.
Yeah, that's actually something that, you know, I don't know if the public understands completely, but if you do a lot of this kind of stuff, you know, whether it's writing or TV or radio, you'll get some feedback from the public at large sometimes, and it's always usually, sometimes it's surprising, and then other times you do something you think is going to get a lot of attention, and you get nothing.
Crickets.
And nobody says, oh, you were on that?
I didn't know.
No.
I was going to say, Leo Laporte's Twit is a good example of something that has a huge wide audience.
In fact, I use that platform occasionally to solicit clothing.
I know it sounds silly, but what I'm talking about is football.
Like a football team wins a championship.
I put the word out to get me one of these things.
I'll get them.
I'll get these hoodies.
And the other things you do, you get nothing.
In fact, when I was doing...
I still do this, but not as much as I used to.
But at Market Watch, when they were owned by CBS, they used to have this show called Money Something or Other.
And it had a huge audience.
Huge.
And I would do the show once in a while, and there was only one person that ever saw me do it, and it was my pharmacist, who was like 90.
Yeah.
And it was on sign on one day because they showed it at weird hours.
And so then they got sold to Dow Jones and I started doing CNBC. And by comparisons, it was like talking to an audience of 5 million to an audience of 45,000.
But the CNBC audience is like...
Guys watching 24-7, they're all in the stock market thing.
I got more feedback.
I got like, oh, you were on there, you were on there, from guy after guy after guy.
And I'm thinking, this is interesting, because sometimes the biggest, what you think is a big effect, is just a dud.
Well, I've seen this throughout my entire career, the duds.
But, you know...
In the early days in the Netherlands, when we only had two television stations state-run, and I would do my show on Thursday, and later it was Sunday.
First it was Sunday evening, I think.
Literally, it was 35% market share, like huge audience, so just millions and millions of people.
And nine times out of ten, you'd think, oh man, people are going to love this show.
And nothing!
The numbers were there.
People watched it, but just nothing.
And then you do something, typically when the ratings would be lower, and you get all kinds of feedback.
You can't pin anything down on it.
You have no idea how it works.
I think it's the targeting.
I think if you get the right person targeted to the right audience, you'll get a lot of feedback.
And it doesn't have to be a large audience.
It just has to be the right audience.
It's like right targeting.
It's like this is, you know, narrow casting.
And I think you have a bigger effect.
That's just my guess.
But, I mean, it seems to be the case.
I mean, it's like with the Twit thing.
Leo's got, you know, I mean, there's nobody that would possibly listen to that show at all unless they were interested in one thing only.
It's not like broadcasting in any way.
And I think with our show it's a little bit like that, except we're more of a general interest podcast.
Although I get a lot of feedback from this.
I mean, we have enough people now, even though people should help us get a bigger audience.
Yes, you should.
And get me more followers on Twitter.
I think I need more.
I've only got 7,500 or something.
I need more because I am starting to use it more and it really does work.
Well, that's the complaint about you.
What?
You don't use it that much.
I use it all the time now.
Okay, well, you're using it more.
I'm tweeting.
So anyway, the point is that I get people coming up to me, and I still find this peculiar, since I've been writing for PC Magazine for 25 years, and at some point the audience was 2 or 3 million people.
I still have people that just discover me only from these podcasts.
They say, I love you on Twitter, and no agenda.
That's fantastic.
And they don't know me from anything else.
It's like it's a complete...
My theory about that is that you have this audience that essentially stems from the tech TV days, which was a very rabid community.
Yeah, very small, but rabid.
Yeah, well, you know, so $250,000 is, yeah, it's large for us, but I think that's probably what the audience was.
No.
At Tech TV? It was smaller than that?
$50,000.
$50,000?
Yeah.
But it's also about a topic that a lot of people are in.
In general, This Week in Tech is supposed to be about tech.
So when you have a great episode, by the way, with Geordi LaForge, we used to have the same agent.
Seems like a nice guy.
Very nice guy.
And he does a lot of stuff, man.
Not just the Star Trek stuff, but the Reading Rainbow.
He's been doing that for a long time.
But it's interesting for...
Look, how many iPhones are out there?
Anyone with an iPhone who likes iPhone apps is going to be interested in Twit because eventually something will fly by.
That makes total sense to me.
I think the audience is limited, and I think the impact that you have on the world in general is zero.
It's chewing gum, but it's great chewing gum.
I think there's no impact whatsoever.
In fact, the impact you get from print media has always been...
It's always been more noticeable.
I used to be able to monitor, and I'd never monetize it for my own benefit, but in the heyday, I could write just a two or three sentence thing, plugging a specific product in InsideTrack, and I would get a hold of the vendor, and I'd want to track sales, the sales bump they'd get.
In the heyday, half a million.
Wow.
Half a million dollars sales bump instantly.
Wow.
It was actually quite interesting.
Dave Weiner was harping on you yesterday, which was kind of interesting.
What did he say?
Well, I saw these...
Because I follow him on Twitter, and I saw these Twitters...
I guess some journalist or someone said something nasty about him, you know, typical...
And, of course, he won't write about who said what.
He won't point to it.
God knows what it was.
But he was saying there are two types of...
Actually, I should read the blog post to be factual.
There are two types of journalists...
Actors and non-actors.
I'll read it.
You're probably looking at it right now, but I'll read it.
In journalism, there's a big difference between the actors and the non-actors.
The actors are trying to create an effect.
You're not hearing what they really think.
You're hearing what they want you to think they're thinking.
Non-actors try to play it straight.
They want to communicate their ideas accurately and persuasively and strive to find better and better ways to do that.
It is true in journalism and equally true in blogging.
To explain the idea to a journalist friend, I thought of two people who he would be likely to know.
Two extreme examples, Scott Rosenberg and John Dvorak.
Should I continue reading?
Yeah, like I said, my browser's not up, so I can't read this.
Rosenberg is the former managing editor of Salon, film critic at the SF Examiner.
Dvorak is a long-time tech columnist.
I read him 30 years ago in Infoworld at then PCMag.
Now he's a blogger and podcaster, which is incorrect, because you're still right.
Rosenberg and Dvorak are very different sorts of reporters.
In person, check it out, John.
In person, Dvorak is a gentleman and really nice, thoughtful guy.
On the web, and in his podcast, I guess it's this one, or maybe it's Tech 5, he's an actor playing the role of a cranky, thoughtless clown.
In this video, thoughtful Dvorak explains Dvorak the actor.
You know which video that is, right?
Yeah, I have a crazy video.
About the Mac?
About Apple?
Yeah.
And then he goes on to say, Rosenberg, on the other hand, if you met him in person, would be the same and say the same things in his online persona.
I disagree with that because, well, maybe I'm just seeing John the actor, but you act the same around me in person as you do on this show.
Yeah.
What he's doing, he's basing that entire theory on that one Macintosh, goading the Macintosh community incident.
Turn it off.
I don't want to hear it.
That audio is too shitty anyway.
Sorry.
He had a cheap camera.
He should reshoot that.
But anyway...
React it, please, John.
That's the point.
It's that, you know, there's the element, the way he expresses it is that you do some...
When I do cranky geeks and I get orked about something, I'm not...
I'm not not irked.
I mean, there's a lot of things that really irk me.
And you've heard me go on these rants.
And it's not really an acting job.
I'm very sincere about these rants.
Now, when I'm kidding around about that Macintosh thing, that's a different story.
But that's like, out of my body of work, it's so minor that I can't, you know, I don't, weiner's generalizing in a funny way.
But at least he gave me a compliment for being a gentleman.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the stuff you said about him.
No, you're right.
He doesn't, you know, that's just Weiner doing his thing.
Well, I'm not going to paraphrase you.
It's okay.
All right.
About what?
Yes?
About what?
Paraphrase me about what?
No, what you said the other day.
That doesn't matter.
It was private conversation.
People hate it when I do that.
Yeah, they do.
You're going to get letters.
Oh, I hope!
It would be nice to get one!
You know, at MTV, I used to actually get letters before email, and there were sacks and sacks of mail in my dressing room.
There used to be a lot more mail.
I mean, during the, like, just before the email thing became super popular, which I would kind of pin down around the year 2000.
I used to get lots of press releases.
I'd be loaded with mail, and then one day it just disappeared.
I don't get a press release in the mail now.
No.
I don't think I've seen one.
That's progress, I think.
That's kind of progress.
But I really miss the old days when you go on MTV and say, hey, send me a naked picture, and lo and behold...
They would show up.
The audio guy, Rick Kelman, was a good friend of mine.
Sometimes he'd say, hey man, could you just do audio and I can go take a shit?
Because I had the only dressing room nearby with a toilet.
So I'd be doing audio in the booth and then he'd go and he'd open up my mail and literally 10, 12 postal sacks full and it was just amazing to see the stuff that people would send.
I kept some of it.
And cakes and brownies and Are the things I would not eat?
Yeah, you don't want to eat stuff that's sent to you.
Not a good idea.
I didn't think it was boring, John.
I thought it was a really good show, personally.
Okay, well, we'll have to let the readers decide.
But you might want to prepare for next week?
We have no agenda.
I got the one note that I made.
Where is it?
What is your one note?
That I can find out who the BBC documentarian is.
That guy with the voice that we're going to meet.
It's something with a P. I'll get it.
I'll get it.
But he is great.
He's done many good documentaries that I would say...
Even David Icke...
Quotes him a lot for the work he does.
My friend.
David Icke, yeah, your friend.
We should go have lunch with him.
I'm sure he'd love to.
Maybe.
Yeah, we can get him.
We can ask him why he uses the pen name Dick.
Yeah, D.I.C.K.E. I don't know.
All right, all right, all right.
So coming to you from the Curry Terrace, famous for its escape route out of death-ridden London in Gitmo Nation East, I'm Adam Curry.
John C. Dvorak here in northern Silicon Valley, also known as Gitmo Nation West, at least for the moment, until Obama changes it.