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May 31, 2009 - No Agenda
01:15:59
100: A Squirrel Walks Into A Bar
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Armory 99.
No agenda countdown.
Adam Curry.
John C. Dvorak.
Countless stories covering the entire scope of real news and factual journalism.
From aviation to avian flu.
From tax dollars to taxonomy.
Broadcasting from every glistening corner of the earth to bring you your bi-weekly Gitmo Nation publication.
Working tirelessly to entertain and educate the righteous crowd.
Lend them your ears because Sunday, May 31st, 2009, the Crackpot and Buzzkill present to you the 100th episode of No Agenda.
Streams, drops, and forms all created and providing the citizens of Gitmo Nation the true identity of they and why the New York Times harbors ill will against pronouns.
Wine and Food, Real News, Shadow Puppet Theater, and of course, Fractals for 99 episodes strong.
Knights, producers, listeners, and your donations make it all happen.
Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak invite you to tune in to a hallmark event of Gitmo Nation.
No Agenda No.
100 on Sunday, May 31st, 2009.
Ecstatic to bring you this very special announcement.
From an abandoned missile silo in Gitmo Nation South near Dallas, Texas, I'm Parker R. Snyder, and now, on with the countdown.
We'll see you Sunday, May 31st.
Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
Oh yeah!
It's time for episode number 100 of your Gitmo Nation publication.
It is the 31st.
This is no agenda.
This is no agenda.
Coming to you from a beautiful, I mean stunningly beautiful Amsterdam, the Netherlands, right on the canals with the sun streaming in.
It's still Gitmo though.
I'm Adam Curry.
And from an overcast northern Silicon Valley, I'm John C. Dvorak.
It's Crackpot and Buzzkill!
In the morning!
Yeah, it is the morning where you are.
It's the morning.
It's always the morning on the show.
A real long foreplay and then almost premature ejaculation.
Well, at least you got the thing running an hour late.
We suck so bad.
Hey everybody, how you doing?
It's No Agenda episode number 100.
Good to be with you.
I'm very excited.
Not quite sure why.
Can I interject?
Yes, please.
We have a bunch of people that have written in saying there was no episode 22 and this is not really episode 100.
Yeah.
And you know what?
Amy Winehouse is really important.
Just saying.
Yeah.
Did we not do an episode 22?
What happened?
I don't know, but it doesn't make any difference because since we had the one expurgated episode, this would still be episode 100, no matter what.
But this will be a controversial episode 100.
Oh, because of the count.
Because of the count and because of the show that we put in the can and never released.
Oh yeah, you're right.
No, we didn't put it in the can.
Oh, I did, in the trash can.
And then I emptied the trash.
It's gone.
The bits are gone.
There's no record of it anywhere.
Except for the second half.
You have the second half of episode, the lost episode, right?
Right, lost episode.
Yeah.
So we'll call it 100.
Seems like a good idea.
We had the introduction.
Yep.
That was good.
We've got a new jingle, by the way, which was sent to us by our good buddy, The Jeff Smith.
You want to hear it?
Sure.
Go for it.
It's really for later on in the show, but that'll give me a chance to play it twice, so listen to this.
Time has come once again.
To help support No Agenda, my friends.
Help Adam and John keep the show going on.
So drop a coin in the bucket today.
Hey, at Dvorak.org slash NA. You could even be knighted, what you say?
Ah, Jeff Smith, man, you slay me.
I love that.
Fantastic.
So, of course, we'll play that later when we beg for money.
So, John, how are you doing?
Okay.
I'm really happy with the setup.
I'm in a new undisclosed location.
Yeah, it sounds good.
You're not breaking up a lot.
The bandwidth is spectacular.
Well, anything is better than what you had, although you were supposed to get the Virgin stuff, which seemed to never pan out.
The Virgin stuff?
Yeah, you said Virgin broadband or something.
Well, you know...
All jacked up about it.
I was reading about it today.
They said they were going to get 200 megabits per second to some parts of England.
Have they ever actually hooked anybody up?
Yeah, the 50 megabits per second, I think people are hooked up to that.
That's what I never got, but I'm kind of happy I didn't get it because, you know, now I'd be paying for half of it and not using it, so...
So I guess in real news, Susan Boyle lost...
I'm sorry I didn't follow it.
Gee.
Who won?
Who wound up winning the Britain's Got Talent?
John?
Hello?
I think you lost me.
Yeah.
It's like we invited Murphy in and he hit us on the head.
Yeah, I lost you.
Who won?
Who won?
I don't know.
Oh.
I don't watch the British version.
All I know is that she lost and that was a big deal and everyone goes, oh, that's so sad.
Although I'm convinced the whole thing was rigged.
Last night they had the, not last night, Friday night they had the Dutch finals of Holland's Got Talent and everyone was very disappointed with the winner, which is kind of funny, that Britain's Got Talent would also be not the clear favorite.
So maybe that's part of the format now.
I do know that some of these people who do very well in the preliminaries, they get picked up early with record contracts, and some of them are actually very happy they don't win.
It's like, oh, please, can I be number two?
Can I be number two?
So they don't have to buy into the Simon Cowell contract.
They can actually have a real deal and not one of those strangulation deals.
Right, and you have to go on the road and you have to take part in the...
Oh, you have to do that regardless, no matter what kind of contract you have.
No matter what kind of contract you have, I mean, these days.
And what do they call it now, the 360 deals?
Are you familiar with this?
No.
Yeah, we had a meeting in New York.
By the way, I'm smoking tobacco, nothing spiking it up, still 100% clean and enjoying it.
I'm not funny anymore, but I feel much better.
That's interesting because you never were funny.
Oh.
Um...
A 360 deal is the new thing.
I think Madonna was one of the first to have a 360 deal, but we had a meeting in New York with a Warner Music Group, and they were explaining it to us.
And the way it works is usually it used to be the record company would have a piece of the publishing, obviously the record sales, the digital sales, but now the 360 deal, which means 360 degrees, they get a piece of concerts, merchandising, firstborn, all of that stuff.
And it's still, believe it or not, it's still not enough to justify the amount of money that goes into promoting an artist and making him a hit artist.
So they're desperately looking for other avenues to make money.
Don't they keep tapping the person?
My understanding is if they're going to put the promotion money behind somebody, the artist ends up having to pay that back anyway.
Right.
Well, the artist gets an advance, typically.
So the artist will have to sign like a seven-record deal, which, of course, rarely is that ever completed, which means you're on the hook for seven records, so you're a slave for the rest of your life.
So you get maybe, depending on how hot you are, depending on how good your lawyer is, etc., it's kind of like a VC deal.
There's a standard term sheet, and if you sign that, you're well and truly effed.
So they'll give you a $100,000 advance and then you get statements and they'll say, okay, you sold this many records, congratulations, so we'll deduct that from the $100,000.
Oh, and by the way, the limo, the hotel, the food, the hookers, the blow, we're deducting that too.
So all that stuff that you think is cool, that you're being, oh man, this record company really takes care of it, you're actually paying for that as the artist.
At the end of the day you get, I think it's 4% over PPD, which is, I forget what it stands for, but it actually equates to about 1% of the retail sales is what the artist will get with a standard record contract.
Not very exciting.
No.
Well, book deals are like that, too.
They have the same thing.
You get these statements.
It's like, what does this mean?
And you look at it, it's like, wow.
Who wrote the software that produced these documents?
Bernard Madoff, I think.
And then, of course, the standard deal with book publishers is they try to, I mean, there's a thing that's out there called the dummy contract, which, you know, nobody, whether a book publisher or a podcaster or a musician, anybody, you know, they always throw, the first contract that they throw at you is internally called the dummy contract because only a dummy signs it.
Yeah, exactly.
But a lot of people sign it because they're so anxious to get publishers, they're so anxious to, you know, do a deal.
So they'll sign these stupid contract and they'll have cross-collateralization in there and everything.
So in other words, if you have a book that, say, do a couple books and one of them doesn't do very well and they make you do a third book and they suck all the royalties from the third book to pay the...
The advance on the second book, when in fact you should not let that happen.
But anyway, I'm always amused.
There was actually an agent during the heyday of computer books.
There was actually an agent, who will remain nameless, but everybody knows who he is, who would essentially...
Who is it?
O'Reilly?
No.
O'Reilly's not an agent, he's a publisher.
Oh, agent.
Swifty Lazar?
No.
He's just some guy.
You've never heard of him.
Well, you said everybody.
You said everybody would know who he is.
Well, I'm wrong.
Why can't you tell us?
I just don't feel like it.
Okay.
Because what I'm going to assert may not be absolutely a fact.
Okay.
Do you hear the boats going by in the canal, by the way?
No.
Listen.
You don't hear it?
No.
Okay.
They are.
You have a good mic, which shouldn't be picking up all that sound.
So, is it showing up on your VU meter?
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, of course it is.
Yeah, but you know, I'm in a new studio, which I'm in the process of building.
It's my temporary home.
I have a new home.
Did you know that?
Yeah.
I think you mentioned.
It has three rooms.
They all look the same.
Each has four wheels and a handle.
There's a gag in there somewhere.
I'm trying to decide.
It's my suitcases, dude.
Oh, I get it.
I'm living in my suitcases.
I get it.
Yeah.
So anyway, so the deal was this guy essentially sold a lot of computer books, but he did it by getting these authors to sign the dummy contract.
So there was like an advantage to him because all the publishers just love this guy.
Yeah, of course.
Thanks for setting that up, dude.
So anyway, dummy contracts.
Be careful.
Be very careful.
That's it.
Show's over.
No, I've got lots to say.
First of all, I want to thank all of our producers slash listeners who, based upon the news that I talked about in No Agenda 99, have sent me beautiful emails with advice.
I said, hey, I'm in separation, and there's a third innocent party, our daughter is involved, and Everybody has said pretty much the same thing, which is good, because I believe in repetition.
But the reactions have been really, really quite sweet, and I appreciate it.
If I haven't responded to you personally, I will get to it.
It's just been so much.
It's been a bit overwhelming.
So, that out of the way.
I've started a legal proceeding.
Here in the Netherlands, which is always fun.
Would you like to hear about that?
What's it involved?
Creative Commons copyright.
Did you have to sue somebody again?
Well, I had to threaten, so I flew back from New York.
I actually flew straight to Amsterdam, and a couple of people had collected all of the various publications regarding my personal stuff.
And so what I usually do, it's a perfect laxative, by the way, gossip rag.
So, you know, I come in, you know, it's like, okay, I take off my coat.
Well, I think I'll just go sit down and have a nice little business in the bathroom here.
And so I open up this first magazine, and I'm like, whoa, wait a minute.
And there's a picture that I took while flying of me in the plane by myself with...
Well, it was a tobacco, you know, I smoke tobacco.
I've seen this picture.
It's on Twitter.
It's on Flickr.
Flickr, exactly.
So it looks like a joint, but it's not, obviously.
Yeah, because you roll your own tobacco cigarettes.
You're like an old man.
Yeah, that's why this show works so well between the two of us.
So, yeah, and it's not even lit, actually, but, you know, it's a picture, and I said, wait a minute.
It looks like you're flying and smoking dope.
Yeah, but I'm not.
I'm flying and smoking tobacco, which is perfectly okay, because my aircraft has ashtrays.
That's what they're for.
But this is from my Flickr account.
And I said, I've got to check.
So I go and check.
Yeah, it says non-commercial attribution.
So this is exactly the same thing.
In 2006, I took a different gossip rag to court because they published a whole bunch of pictures off of Flickr.
And they had some bonehead excuse like, well, it said download here.
And we didn't look.
It wasn't clear.
It's very clear.
And by the way, any professional print organization should understand that something has to be checked.
You can't just rip shit off of the web.
And although I did not win any cash settlement as requested in that original lawsuit, the Dutch court did say, well, the copyright holds up.
If it happens again, here's the set fine, which I believe was €1,500 per violation.
Can you sound that horn for repeating a story?
That you sound every time I mention something twice.
There we go.
Okay.
Good.
So it was a...
Actually, that has changed a little bit, I found out, because I called my lawyer.
I said, yo, gee, time to get back to work, because obviously you cannot just let it slide.
You know, if you don't protect your copyright every single time, then you can actually run into some problems.
Yep.
So he said, you know, it's interesting because now the way the law is written, you can actually charge up to 5,000 euros and you can sue for any legal costs, which to date are estimated.
One phone call, of course, that's 1,500 euros.
You know how lawyers work.
I hate my lawyer, by the way, with a passion because they're just horrible people.
And he said, okay, what do you want me to do?
I said, well, let's add a twist to it.
Send them a letter and say to them, okay, you're in violation, but I'm not going to take you to court if you will send 5,000 euros to the War Child Foundation and 1,500 or whatever it is, whatever the legal costs are to you, to the lawyer.
So that's what he sends off.
And then this thing, like, of course, I'm already in the press.
This thing hits the press.
It's on all the gossip news shows.
And the editor of the magazine is like, no, man, that's not true.
This was newsworthy because everyone knows he's a stoner.
So that's like fair use.
We can put that picture on because he was smoking dope in his plane.
And these guys are just so...
He turned Canadian halfway through this.
Yes, it's a Dutch-Canadian editor.
It's nuts.
So anyway, what he said, and this was last Friday, he said, oh, we'll see you in court.
I'm like, okay, we'll go.
And so I emailed Lawrence Lessig, who, of course, I worked with three years ago in 2006 on the previous case.
And so he's like, he doesn't really need to do anything, but he's going to provide support.
He just sent me a nice note.
He said, Adam, are we going to just have a beer together and it not be about some shit that you're causing over there?
So, protecting copyrights for everybody, once again.
Hmm.
Well, that's interesting.
Well, we'll see what happens.
Is that the best they can do?
Go to your Flickr account and steal photos and then claim that they're like, you know, with no context and they don't know anything?
You could have been on a sound stage for all they know.
Exactly.
Oh, but they actually are now going on television saying, well, clearly the guy's flying stone.
His license should be taken away.
I'm like, Jesus, how dumb can you be?
I mean, is that all you have to say?
But they're calling it fair use.
I'm like, dude, this is...
How can you even...
Even if it was true, it's not fair.
Is there a slander suit there?
Yeah, but that's the shit I don't want to get into.
Oh, I think there's a big dough there.
There's no money in it, John.
There's no money.
There's no money in Holland for slander.
Please, give me a break.
In Britain, maybe.
In Britain, but not...
That's interesting.
Could I take a Dutch tabloid to court in a UK court for slander?
I don't know.
Maybe.
Or libel.
Well, I have no time for that.
Come on, there's millions involved.
The show could use the money.
Speaking of money, here we are, Nickel and Diamond are listeners and producers for money for the No Agenda Library.
The Bush Library, in 100 days, and of course our entire model is based on the Bush Library because it's such a wonderful project, raised $100 million.
What is this thing?
Is this going to be made of gold?
The Clinton Library is worse, and they keep most of those numbers under wraps, because it seems to be a lot of money from Saudi Arabia.
You know, if we would just be more amenable to Saudi Arabia, we'd probably be on easy street.
Well, actually, the article, and it's from Time, says Bill Clinton's library planners had hoped to receive pledges of $100 million within a year of the end of his presidency, but apparently a pardons scandal delayed that achievement for another year.
I didn't know that.
Well, you know, it takes time sometimes.
Anyway, so unburdened by campaign finance regulations, former presidents traditionally raise money for their libraries the old-fashioned way, by meeting or calling a few dozen very wealthy benefactors asking for large sums, often the order of $5 million to $10 million.
But the Bush effort involves that approach...
But in other ways is organized...
Listen, organized much like a modern political campaign.
A national finance committee has been created with 100 co-chairs placed in every state.
What is going to be in this library?
Is it like...
comic books yeah I don't know Some television sets?
I have no idea.
It sounds like a lot of money could have been used by a real library to, you know...
Yeah, thank you very much.
Like, real books for, like, kids, perhaps, who can go there and read stuff for free?
Is it kind of like a tax-free retirement fund for Bush and he uses that money?
Or maybe he builds a library in Paraguay?
I think he's going to need a lot of money.
No, it's just some sort of a club.
It's a scam.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
I mean, the Bush library is ridiculous.
Yeah, for real.
A hundred million.
A hundred million.
In a hundred days, though.
In a hundred days.
That's a million dollars a day.
That's what you call it.
That's a show.
That's what I call a show.
Obama has not stopped campaigning for money.
He was just in Los Angeles recently.
I guess doing another, you know, some thousand dollar plate dinner or whatever it is for his campaign.
Is this guy actually ever going to do any presidential stuff?
I keep getting email from BarackObama.com.
Oh, you have the mailing list?
Yeah, and they still ask for donations.
Yeah.
What do they need donations for?
He's won the election.
I don't know.
I think it has something to do with the Project America or whatever, you know, the big everybody pitch in and, you know, volunteer for something.
Yeah.
And volunteer your money while you're at it.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Okay.
Silvio Berlusconi in the news, the Prime Minister of Italy.
Had you heard about this?
No.
I'm sure I have, but what?
He is facing fresh, embarrassing revelations after a magazine claimed he held a New Year's Eve party for 50 young girls.
But here's the kicker.
He said it was like a political training exercise, and they learned all kinds of very important skills, like debating.
This guy is great.
If I could ever be the Prime Minister of any country, I would totally model my premiership on him.
Yeah, no, the guy's a winner.
Totally.
Although he's supposedly going to be under indictment someday.
No way.
No, he changed the laws.
He got elected and then he changed the laws so that any offenses he committed he can't be indicted for.
No, that's a pretty slick thing to do.
Yeah.
This is like, you know, Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon kind of thing.
Exactly.
Who did...
Didn't Bush do, like, almost no pardons when he left?
Wasn't that really...
Yeah, no, he was, like, the one of the lowest ever.
Why?
That's so interesting.
Just a few people that didn't make any sense and people who probably could have been or should have been pardoned.
He just said, ah, screw it.
I don't know.
The guy's nutty.
Humboldt County, California voters passed measures F and J. I guess that was a referendum measures.
Last November, prohibiting military recruiters from initiating contact with minors.
However, the Obama administration is now demanding that law be overturned.
Give me that one again.
Okay, let me pull up this from SFGate.
Humboldt County, California.
Passed measures F and J last November, so I guess that's in a referendum, I presume?
I guess, I don't know.
Prohibiting military recruiters from initiating contact with minors, i.e.
trying to get kids to get all hot for the military.
Right.
Come on, kids, you can shoot a gun.
Yeah, awesome.
Hey, screw those video games.
Try out the real deal.
But now the Obama administration is demanding the law be overturned.
June 9th, Oakland, California, a court hearing scheduled.
The Obama administration wants to...
Overturn it.
They're militaristic, these people.
Yeah.
Hey, kids, you get an armband just for showing up to the rally.
So, yeah, well, you know, they'd like to turn all the 17-year-olds into fascists.
Yeah.
So you were mentioning before we started the show, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Yeah.
And I said, have you ever skinned a cat?
And you said, no.
No, but I've skinned a squirrel.
Squirrel, yeah.
And so the big news out of England, coincidentally.
Oh, no.
Demand growing for squirrel pie.
What, after dandelion soup, now we have squirrel pie.
Yes, a pest controller, this is from the BBC, a pest controller who has already helped to cull more than 22,000 gray squirrels in the Northeast is moving south to feed the demand for squirrel pie.
You are what you're eating, by the way.
Paul Parker, 44 from Newcastle, part of a conservation group, apparently they've almost gotten rid of all the gray squirrels up north.
And it seems that all the gourmet restaurants for someone, and I've never picked up on this trend, but a guest squirrel is like a big deal.
They're going to top restaurants, butchers, the working man, they are a delicacy, according to this guy.
You haven't heard about this?
No, and I'm amazed.
We've had so much interesting restaurant news recently, you know, cooking in lukewarm water.
Cooking.
Cooking.
By the way, I think we mentioned somebody died recently.
No, I didn't hear this.
Yeah, there was a death in an English restaurant recently, and they can't seem to figure out why, and some woman went in, the whole party got sick, and this one woman who went in for her birthday, I believe, ended up dead, and I'm thinking, you know, it sounds like sous vide to me.
Is that what it's called?
I forgot, sous vide?
Sous vide, S-O-U-S-V-I-D-E, hyphenated.
Yeah.
Let me just read you some more quotes from this guy.
Two years ago, I was catching up to a thousand squirrels a month, and slowly it's just dwindled down to a small handful a day.
The RSPP, which I guess is some group that, I don't know what it stands for off here.
Protects squirrels?
Some about squirrels.
It was formed in 2006 by Parker and Mitford, the sixth baron of Reedsdale.
It relies on a 900-strong army of volunteers, including game wardens, families, farmers, and pensioners, to help stop the spread of the greys.
They're actually trying to get rid of the squirrel, I guess.
And they're just eating them.
That's one way.
But isn't it funky?
I mean, we've got the dandelions, we've got the warm water baggy salmon, we've got the squirrel.
Are we being prepared for, you know, the stuff we're actually going to be left to eat after the entire global economy collapses, which seems to be nigh?
Well, if that's the case, we should all move to France, because the French...
I have a book, it's a great book, and whoever sees a copy of it came, I think, from the University of North Carolina Press.
It's called...
It's called Unmentionable Cuisine.
Unfortunately, I don't remember the author's name offhand.
But anyway, it's an outstanding work.
It's called Unmentionable Cuisine.
And it's a cookbook for cooking all kinds of weird stuff from insects to squirrels to rats.
And I'm not against it, by the way, because I think there's a huge stigma against rats or squirrels or bugs.
The thesis of the book is that there's a lot of protein out there that goes uneaten.
On the I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here show, which airs in Britain, and it's different around the world, but the British one actually puts D-leberties and some minor C and maybe even B-leberties into the jungle for either two or three weeks, and they have to do all these trials, and one of them is called the Bush Tucker Trial, and it consists of eating a number of horrible things, or seemingly horrible things.
So there's the witchetty grub, which is kind of like a...
It's like a really thick caterpillar and it's alive and you bite into it and it just kind of spews out this goo.
You remember that chewing gum that when you bite down on it it kind of like squirts out the minty goo in your mouth?
You probably know other things that squirt in your mouth.
But really, the witchetty grub is alive and it's supposed to taste nutty.
And the whole thing is these are either aboriginals or aborigines, I guess I say, or guys in the outback.
They eat this shit all the time because it's extremely healthy for you.
Lots of protein.
But the whole idea in the Western society is that it's disgusting.
And honestly, it looks pretty gross and you're eating a live thing.
So there's that.
There's worms.
The best one, of course, is always the kangaroo anus.
And then there's, I think, there's maybe also kangaroo testicle, which kind of pops when you bite on it.
But these are things that people have eaten throughout centuries, and for whatever reason, and I'm not even sure why, we just find the whole idea disgusting, and we'd much rather have a nice, healthy Big Mac.
So what was the point of that joke?
Well, it wasn't a joke.
I'm trying to start a discussion.
I should know something.
Yes, a nipple of a woman that's breastfeeding.
I've tasted breast milk.
Have you?
So, let's go back to your premise here.
When your wife had a kid, tell me that there's not every single...
I'm not going to go into my personal habits.
So let's go into...
If it's a habit, there's a real problem.
If it was a one-off, it's okay.
You can mention it, John.
It's okay.
You've got to start smoking the real stuff.
So, let's go back to this.
It's disgusting because it is disgusting.
Why?
Eating bugs and things that squirt in your mouth and caterpillars and things that have got green blue in them is gross.
But it's okay to eat a cow's tongue?
I think you speak from experience, but in fact, you're trying to defend...
I mean, I think it's fine if you're culturally into that, but I think we're not...
We're not programmed to eat this garbage.
Okay, so all I'm saying is I find it interesting that...
I think the cultural differences are interesting.
And why is it that one culture finds it totally disgusting and the other is okay with it?
And maybe they find it disgusting.
How come you find it okay to cuss and swear on the air...
Yes.
But you find it extremely offensive the way I hold a fork when I'm trying to grab something that I really have to hold down tightly.
I don't find it offensive.
I just find it humorous.
And it's even more...
You go, oh my god, the fork, the way you're holding it, this is not right.
It's not.
It's not right.
Oh, what do I do wrong?
What do I do wrong?
Well, you're the upside-down fork eater.
You know, people like, you know, the Europeans eat with their left hand with the fork.
They never change it like Americans do.
I change.
I switch all the time.
It's always upside-down.
You read the logo on the back of it.
Excuse me?
Upside-down?
I didn't know there was a right-side-up.
It seems to me that the fork pointing into the curve down, so when you pick up a piece of food, it's going to fall off the fork, as opposed to being flipped over, so the food would actually...
Let me switch gears.
You were in Amsterdam recently, and you did a tour of a number of restaurants, and I ate somewhere yesterday that they really screwed you over.
In Amsterdam, a fantastic eating experience, and I want to share it with you.
Because I went there with my daughter and Dexter, her boyfriend.
It's called The College.
And it's this beautiful...
It used to be a school, obviously a college.
And it is now a...
It's a full-fledged restaurant.
And it's almost like a Saint-Tropez vibe.
You know, beautiful...
Place out back.
You can sit outside.
It has the black wicker chairs, really comfortable, you know, kind of cool, chill, mellow music floating around.
And actually, you know, the place we'd see lots of beautiful people with gold chains and big sunglasses.
Now, the food is outstanding, but here's the kicker.
The service is provided by first year's hotel school students.
So they are actually learning on the job.
You're paying full price because the chef is not a student.
The chef is a good chef.
I like the food at least.
So it turns into entertainment, John.
You would love this because they're like dropping Cokes in people's laps.
They're delivering soup without a spoon.
I mean, all this stuff.
And then at the end, it's like, okay, you want to sign the check with your credit card and they hand you a pencil.
I mean, it's this wonderful experience.
You must go to this restaurant, College in Amsterdam.
Okay, I'm there.
Next Queen's Day.
So the next Queen's Day we have to rent a barge.
Yeah, Mickey will take care of that for us.
So anyway, let me go over something I wanted to mention about...
There's a store, a group of stores since you're in Holland, I'll mention this, called HEMA. How do you pronounce it?
Yes, HEMA. HEMA? HEMA. H-E-M-A. HEMA. It's kind of a low, like mid to low grade, what would be comparable in the States?
No, no, no, it is way below Marks and Spencer.
No.
All right, well then, this is where I'm going to tell my story.
Okay.
It's where I buy my underwear.
That's what I'm going to talk about.
I'm wearing it right now.
Well, it's good.
It's where I get my white beaters.
So, in the 1970s, I went to England, and I met this girl who was an Anglophile, and she gave me the lecture about how all the English and everybody that knows that the world's greatest underwear is obtainable at Marks and Spencer, or Marks and Sparks, as they like to refer to it, colloquially.
And so I started buying, in fact, I still probably have a pair from back then that Marks and Spencer, and I like to get the kind of the jockey style briefs that don't really have, they have the elastic inside.
He won't tell me if he's ever tasted his wife's breast milk, but now you're going to tell me you wear jockey shorts?
John?
Horrible visual.
This is a good example of your European sensibilities.
It's not okay to talk about underwear, but it's okay to talk about personal...
It's not okay to give us a visual of what kind of underwear you wear.
Let me just finish the story, and then you can moan about it later.
So anyway, so this type of underwear, which is the Marks and Spencer stuff, was always the stuff I'd always buy and I'd collect.
And they still sell it and it's like you get three pair for about $10 or 10 euros.
But over the years, the quality has deteriorated to such a point that if you wash them three times, the elastic that's inside just falls apart and the things don't...
Disintegrates, yeah.
They're junk.
Yeah.
Compared to what you could get in the 70s.
By the way, also in the 1970s, at Marks& Spencer, you could buy t-shirts that were wool.
Yeah.
I think that's illegal, isn't it?
Haven't they changed the laws about that, about t-shirts being made?
Why would that be illegal?
No, or they had special labeling.
I don't know.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm sorry.
Continue.
So anyway, so I've tried to find some substitute for this underwear, and it turns out that HEMA... It has pretty much the same stuff they were selling in England in the 1970s.
It looks probably made by the same...
It's good quality cotton, like some Egyptian cotton that's got a nice soft feel, and it seems to be a well-made product.
But what was interesting to me, and so I bought some, because I usually...
Because they make you look so hot.
Yeah, right.
But the thing that was fascinating to me wasn't the fact that somebody else makes this exact kind of underwear.
It's three pair were three euros.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It's like, instead of, why am I paying four euros for the crap that the Marks and Spencer guys make now, per, when I could get, you know, like a euro.
It's like, I still kept looking at the price and saying, this must be some sort of an error.
Maybe they package it this way and sell it for some other money.
I mean, it just made no sense to me that the stuff was, it was so cheap.
So I bought a whole bunch of stuff at this HEMA store because everything there was like dirt cheap.
It's an amazing place.
Yes, I know.
So I have been looking for the perfect underwear for years, and I'm talking underwear and undershirts, and I like wife beaters.
And I've tried every brand, Dolce& Gabbana, Armani, you name it.
Either they fall apart, they start to disintegrate, they fade, or they totally lose their softness.
She's very angry at me right now, but I have to give props to my ex-mother-in-law.
She started buying me undershirts and underwear from HEMA, and I love them.
You can wash them 50 times, and they still feel great.
And they cost a dime.
Exactly, like a euro.
It's the price that's stunning.
I don't know.
I don't know how that works.
So you are a briefs guy, jockey briefs, like really tidy whities.
Is that what you wear, John?
I don't wear white.
I wear black.
Oh, right.
No, the reason you wear black is because a long time ago I heard Fred Astaire talk about this.
He says you have to wear black underwear because in the worst case scenario, your pants tear, which can happen.
Especially...
No one's ever going to notice.
My mom would say, if you're in an accident and they have to cut open your pants, you don't want your soiled underwear showing.
Like, Mom, I think I'll have different problems if they're cutting my pants open when I'm on the ground bleeding.
Yeah, well, that's an old thing.
Everybody says that, but...
The only point I'm trying to make here is not what kind of underwear I'm wearing or anything like that.
It's that HEMA is a place to buy this stuff because it's cheap and fantastic.
The quality is outrageously good.
And it's like, now that's it.
That's the word.
That's my...
That's the definitive underwear.
Since I am here, I'll be gone on Thursday, but I will be coming back with some regularity.
I believe that we can probably consider replacing the $100 donation No Agenda flatware with some HEMA underwear.
I think that would be a fine premium.
It would.
Let's do it.
I mean, this underwear is, like I said, but the thing that's interesting is the fact that they price it like a bunch of socialists.
Well, that's why I mention it, because, you know, it's much cheaper than the flatware.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, that's true.
We get to keep more.
So anyway, I wanted to get that out of the way, and what else we got here?
Oh, you have notes?
I have a bunch of stories, actually.
Go, go.
I mean, I got stories, too, but I'm liking yours.
Well, let's go with this one.
Okay.
This took place in Seattle just the other day, Friday as a matter of fact.
Yeah.
A dead-on zombie costume gets man arrested.
A man dressed for an evening zombie crawl chose a costume that was a bit too realistic and it ended up getting him arrested.
The question, of course, is why was he arrested?
What's a zombie crawl?
What's a zombie crawl?
Apparently in Seattle, where there's really not a lot of other things to do, people get dressed up as zombies and go bar hopping.
After they've been to your Port Angeles deli, there's nothing left to do.
You got any more digs?
Wearing all black knee pads and a gas mask and carrying what looked to be a machine gun, he walked into the Metro clothing store Friday evening on Capitol Hill, which was sponsoring the zombie crawl to promote the Crypticon Horror Convention at the Seattle Center next weekend.
But apparently someone thought a masked gunman was walking into a store and called police.
Witnesses say a dozen police cars converged on the scene and officers ran into the store, guns drawn.
Oh, man.
So then they took the guy off and they arrested him.
What did they arrest him for?
It never says.
Well, if he had a gun that looked like a machine gun, that's probably an issue.
Maybe he should have not had the gun.
No.
Even the gas mask, I think, is probably an offense in our fascist state.
Might be.
Dexter and Christina and Patricia were flying over on Thursday because she was going to do the show live on Friday.
So they were in the queue, as one does in the United Kingdom, for check-in.
And Dexter was responsible, Christina's boyfriend was responsible for the big black bag.
But he was running, because the queue was pretty long, so he was running off to get a soda or something.
But he'd come back from time to time.
I think he thought Christina would push the bag along, but she didn't.
And so the queue moved up.
Patricia and Christina moved up, but the bag stayed.
And they called security.
People were like, I saw the bag vibrating!
People freak out at the smallest things now because we've been made so afraid of terrorism.
It's about time for a good terrorist attack.
You know, they've got to keep the meme alive.
Well, we're probably going to get one by the end of the year.
Do you think so?
Is that your...
Well, no, that's the eight-year cycle.
That's the cycle theory, exactly.
Oh, and this is the 8th, or is the 8th coming up?
This is the 8th, but it would be like September 2009.
Hmm.
So investors beware, because it'll drop the stock market like a champ.
Well, and that fits right in with the year after, which is another cycle you're tracking, isn't it?
Well, this turns out that you get caught up in these cycles.
There's too many of them.
Here's another story.
Hit me.
Brazen New Zealand parrot.
Now, this is just a warning for you travelers who are going to go to the South Island of New Zealand, which is where I've been wanting to go for years.
There's a type of parrot that looks like he stole...
The parrot likes to attack cars and takes delight in attacking rubber items like windshield wiper blades.
But this guy apparently had his passport stolen by the parrot, who flew off with it into the bushes and then now the guy's going to have to be stuck in New Zealand for six weeks until he gets a replacement.
Six weeks for a replacement passport?
A replacement passport from the British High Commission in Wellington could take six weeks and cost up to $200.
Wow.
That's pretty outrageous.
The Kia, the world's only snow-lying-dwelling parrot, are widely known as inquisitive birds.
You know, I think that actually qualifies, John.
And now, back to real news.
Okay, I got a better one then.
All right.
This is a good one.
Hit me.
Two murderers escape Arkansas prison in guard uniforms.
Now, the punchline is in here.
I'm just going to read it.
By the way, these are two convicted murderers that were on the...
Well, let me read the story.
It sounds like a Laurel and Hardy movie.
It's getting there.
Two convicted murderers put on corrections officer uniforms and walked out of an Arkansas prison during a shift change, officials said Saturday, as they searched for the men.
Jeffrey Grinder and Calvin Adams escape Friday evening from the Cummings unit.
prison in grady more than three hours before officials realize they were missing both men were serving life sentences without possibility of parole at the prison about sixty miles southeast of little rock the guard uniforms the prison inmates put on are made in the prison that's the punchline Oh my god.
And did they catch him?
Or are they still at large?
No, no.
These guys are gone.
Oh no.
I mean, if you're in prison without possibility of parole for life...
And all you have to do is make a uniform?
Making uniforms, you're out of there.
Following an explosive report that some of the torture photos President Obama is withholding depicting graphic sexual abuse...
The Department of Defense and the White House came out to vigorously refute the claims, but here's what's interesting.
I didn't have time to pull the sound clip.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, that bonehead who speaks on behalf of the White House, he says, quote, I don't want to speak generally about some reports I've seen over the past few years in the British media.
I'm surprised it filtered down.
Let's just say, if I wanted to read a write-up of how Manchester United fared in the Champions League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper.
If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I am not entirely sure British papers would be the first stack of clips I picked up.
So this guy, this bonehead, this is a dumb move.
You do not insult the entire British press.
Dumb.
This is the dumbest thing this guy could ever do.
Alright, let me get back to real news.
Since we're talking about squirrels, there's just a little short article from Port Huron, Michigan.
A brazen squirrel has been grabbing small American flags placed in a Port Turon cemetery and carrying them up to its nest, which now looks like it's bedecked in bunting.
That's a terrorist squirrel for sure.
Just a patriot, that squirrel.
We haven't looked at the economy very closely in any of the recent episodes, John.
Honestly, I kind of lost track, but it seems like we're printing more and more money or hoping for inflation one way or the other.
Now I read that the U.S. is giving $100 billion to the International Monetary Fund.
We don't have $100 billion.
Well, we just print it.
And you're all for this practice?
Until it shows up as a bad idea, yeah.
And, you know, we're still saving or creating millions of jobs, which is not really working?
Unemployment keeps rising?
Well, it's supposed to keep rising until probably the third, fourth quarter.
This is what I don't get.
I keep hearing economists, you know, first it was the green shoots they were talking about, the green shoots of the recovery, but now Bernanke of the Federal Reserve and some serious economists are saying, oh, it's going to recover and we'll be good by the end of 2009 and 2010.
It's all going to come back.
I mean, I don't understand how it happens.
We've gone past, we've spent more money than ever in our history.
Yeah, it's just a business cycle.
I don't see how you can be so calm about it.
I mean, it's your grandchildren's money that's being spent, dude.
It's a business cycle.
What do you mean a business cycle?
Things go up, things go down.
No, but the amount of money that is being spent that we are on the hook for...
Yeah, we just reset everything at some point.
Well, how do you reset it?
Okay, go ahead.
Well, I mean, you reset it.
All of a sudden, you know...
Yeah, you reset it by devaluing the dollar.
Yeah.
Well, but that's bull.
What you have to do, what would you suggest?
Well, I think we're a little bit beyond the point of no return.
I wouldn't have spent all that money in the first place.
I'd let the car companies go broke.
They're going to go broke anyway.
I would have not handed out $3 trillion to bankers.
No, the bankers thing was a bad idea.
Yeah, to the tune of $3 trillion.
They never passed it along.
No!
And no one's talking about that even anymore.
We were so snowed under by news of more money being spent that we're not even talking about that the banks are absolutely not passing that on to anybody, ever.
There's a really good, there was a good presentation by Robert Reich, the petite male economist that used to be in the Clinton administration.
What does that mean, the petite male economist?
I saw a petite male the other day.
My wife always harps about these guys.
Petite males?
Like Sarkozy?
Is Sarkozy a petite male?
Well, he's tiny.
He's short.
Well, you're not only just short, but you're short and you're proportioned like petite, like a petite woman.
You know, they're just small.
And there's petite males.
They're small.
I saw one the other day, and he's just a small guy.
He looked normal, except for the fact that he was 5'2".
He's vertically challenged, so what?
He was small, but he was petite.
He's not just short.
There's a lot of short guys that aren't petite.
Do you think everything on the guy is petite?
I wouldn't know and I wouldn't care to be honest about it, but probably.
But then again, you never know because a lot of these petite males are very popular with women for some unknown reason, so I have to wonder.
It must be their HEMA underwear.
In high school, we had this guy who was a petite male, now that I think about it, and he always had more girls.
This guy.
I don't know.
Maybe it's some sort of a novelty.
You know, there's a thing...
It's like a thing to do.
On the checklist before you die, you have to screw a petite male.
No, there's a thing that women do.
I'm totally...
I mean, there's no doubt about it.
It's totally novelty.
Okay, here comes the expert on women.
Okay, John, hit me now.
You tell me I'm going to be wrong.
Tell me after the fact.
There's a thing called a novelty fuck.
A novelty?
John, you said the F word.
I'm so proud of you.
Well, it's the only way that you can describe it.
And it's like, you know, it's like you have women that just collect these.
I mean, a lot of people have always felt that all these girls are going after Bill Gates up at Redmond.
It wasn't because he's the sexiest guy in the world, but he's a novelty fuck.
You know, I got to screw the world's richest man.
Richest guy, yeah.
Do you think Bill Gates actually cheats on Melinda, Belinda, what's her name?
I have no idea.
And anyway, so that, I think, maybe there's something to, you know, the petite male is obviously falls into that category.
Wow.
I had never thought about that.
I don't think guys have that type of checklist.
Yeah.
Because we have little choice in the matter.
Exactly.
We're just like, hey, you'll actually screw me?
Yay!
So, here's a story.
Okay.
This one is right up your alley.
We have to have a jingle for it.
Here it comes.
Okay.
I can't believe you haven't heard this one.
I've been preoccupied.
Russian scientist.
Love it already.
Says...
UFO crashed into meteorite to save Earth.
Dr.
Uri Labvin, president of...
They've been protecting us for ages, absolutely.
Dr.
Uri Labovan, president of the Tungusta Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists that an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent a gigantic meteor from slamming into the planet above Siberia on June 30, 1908.
And there was something that happened on June 30, 1908.
We know that.
We don't know what it was.
Hmm.
estimated at 15 megatons that downed 80 million trees over nearly 100 square miles.
Eyewitnesses reported a bright light in a huge shockwave, but the area was so sparsely populated no one was killed that they know of.
Most scientists think the blast was caused by a meteorite exploding several miles above the surface, but Labvin thinks the quartz slabs with strange markings found at the site are remnants of an alien control panel which fell to the ground after the UFO slammed into the giant rock.
Well, you know, in the UFO community, and I've been known to dabble in that from time to time, there is certainly in the past five years, there is a general consensus, and that's only since I've been following it, but there's a general consensus that until we are enlightened, until we have all gone through our transformation and become loving beings, Understanding human beings and no longer kill each other for stupid shit.
That aliens are indeed protecting the earth and thus protecting civilization by doing stuff like this.
I mean, that is certainly discussed in UFO communities.
So I'm not going to rule it out.
I'd like to see the control panel.
That would be kind of cool.
Where is this thing?
That's the question.
Where is this thing?
I guess he's got it in his trunk.
Let me get back to some important news.
You know, my theory, which you seem to be buying into more and more, that probably the sole reason, if not one of the few, that we are currently in Afghanistan, which of course is not where the Taliban are because they're in Pakistan and everyone agrees on that, And Osama bin Laden, if he's alive, he is not in Afghanistan.
And of course, Afghanistan is a place you can't win a war.
The Russians tried it for 10 years, and it's just unwinnable.
You'll wind up killing all of your soldiers, and international forces refuse to actually participate with the United States.
And my theory is that this is because the United States is pretty much running all the drugs out of Afghanistan.
It is pretty well documented that before the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban itself had reduced the production of poppy down to a very minimal amount, and that that production has gone up...
At least 100% since we've been screwing around there.
A report from The Guardian, the communist newspaper, I'll quote, United Nations officials in Afghanistan are attempting to create a, quote, flood of drugs in the country.
So now that everyone knows that all these drugs are just, like, being built and we're protecting the...
We literally, our camps are surrounding the poppy fields to make sure that they don't get screwed with.
Now here's the cover-up.
So United Nations officials, these fine people who brought you global warming, in Afghanistan are attempting to create a flood of drugs in the country intended to destroy the value of opium and force poppy farmers to switch to legal crops such as wheat.
I'm just so blown away by how brazen this lie is.
Manual eradication is incompetent and inefficient.
So what the hell are we doing there then?
This is according to the UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa, of course, an Italian name, during a visit to the western Afghan province of Herat.
So we want to see more efforts to stop the flow of drugs across Afghanistan's borders.
Well, all you got to do is stop the military planes from flying it out, dude.
So it's the flood of drugs.
They've got a meme.
The flood of drugs.
If we just have lots of drugs, the price will drop and it won't be worth it, and then people will go make wheat, which is so incredibly valuable in the marketplace.
We're going to make wheat more valuable than opium.
Please.
Your response?
Yeah, it seems unlikely.
So why don't they take the argument to its logical extreme and say, why don't we just legalize it?
Thank you.
That's a good one.
I hadn't even thought of that.
Efforts have been further undermined by a recent decree by President Hamid Karzai, whose brother, of course, is a huge drug dealer, to close down small cross-border markets, which had been a source of economic activity in an otherwise barren wilderness.
What are we doing there?
Can someone please send me an email and tell me what exactly are we doing in Afghanistan?
I would really like to know.
I do pay taxes.
Who is not even on the FBI's 10 most wanted list.
And we've got 150,000 young men and women there in harm's way to get this douche, please.
So, another story about squirrels.
You're killing me, baby.
You're killing me.
Is that a fractal?
Bin Laden squirrel?
A 21-year-old Howell man was uninjured Thursday when his pickup truck rolled on its side after he swerved to avoid a squirrel and hit a pole.
Now, why would anybody...
Swerve?
Swerve?
Oh, there's a rat in the road.
Let me swerve.
It's an automatic reaction.
No, no, not for squirrels.
Yeah, but you may not know what it is.
The automatic reaction I have is the gun.
Yeah, but you wear HEMA underwear.
Black.
Briefs.
Black.
Absolutely.
So, okay.
Your turn.
No, what do you mean?
It's your turn.
You have to top the squirrel stores.
I'm loaded up here.
Okay.
Actually, I did have something.
Let me see if I can find it.
Fill up the gap while I look for it.
Okay, here we go.
Don't tell me it's another squirrel story.
Trapped squirrel leads to charges of animal cruelty.
John, this is episode 100.
This is like...
It's a squirrely episode.
The owner of West Long Beach Pest Control Company has been charged with four counts of animal cruelty after a squirrel was found dead in a rooftop trap.
Oh, no.
What the heck is wrong with these people?
Victor Buddy Amato, chief of the Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, charged Kathleen Buck, owner of the Critter Ritter, after receiving a complaint about the dead animal at a professional complex at 25 Village Court.
The Critter Ritter. - What's going on with the e-cigarette?
I see stories all over the place about this thing.
Is there anything going on about the e-cigarette?
No, I don't know anything about it.
Tell me.
I know what the e-cigarette is because I have one.
Have you seen these things?
They were invented in Holland.
Oh, this is the thing that lights up?
Yeah, you...
It's got like a blue bulb on the end of it and then smoke comes out of it?
Yeah, it's pretty cool because you put a little...
It's a piece of plastic.
It looks like a cigarette.
It has a little battery in it.
And you put a filter into it.
But the filter actually contains nicotine and some other substance, which I'm sure you'll know from your former chemistry background.
And then when you take a drag on this cigarette, the front lights up like a tip...
And it actually creates a misty type of steam that you can inhale, which is like 99% nicotine, and some steam, some chemical that kind of makes it steamy, I don't know.
So it's not actual smoke, and you're supposed to get all the high, but none of the death.
And I see a whole bunch of...
There must be something going on.
Maybe the tobacco industry is trying to squash it or something.
But apparently it's much healthier and of course you can smoke it anywhere you want.
Sounds healthy.
Well, you could wear a nicotine patch.
I don't think it's any more or less healthy.
Yeah, especially the chemical cloud.
No, it's like mist.
It's like water vapor is what it is.
Oh, here it is.
Smoke e-cigs.
Hold on.
I found a...
What is this?
Wolfram Alpha launch.
No, that's not right.
Wow!
That looks cool.
What?
I'm looking at the control room of Wolfram Alpha, the search engine.
Yeah, you should look at this instead.
Oh, hold on.
Give me a second.
Is it porn?
It's better than porn.
Russian passenger filmed strange UFO. Cool.
Passengers on a Russian airline are headed from Moscow to Perm.
Filmed an incredible and rather strange-looking UFO. Just last night, Russian media published a story that workers in the city of Sarapul early morning witnessed the UFO, which they believe was the Russian rocket Soyuz.
Huh?
However, after reviewing the footage from the facility, analysts and experts believe it is the same UFO which was filmed later in the day by airline passengers.
What was the picture?
The picture's on there.
No, it's not.
Yeah, it's that thing.
You click on it.
It's a movie.
Which thing?
Did I have done that story?
No.
I'm looking at...
I'm reading the story, but I don't see any...
There's no picture.
I don't know why.
I got one.
So here it is.
One of our producers sent this in.
The electronic cigarette or e-cigarette is an alternative to smoked tobacco products, blah, blah, blah.
You get an inhaled dose of nicotine by delivering a vaporized propylene glycol nicotine solution.
Oh, that's healthy.
That's good.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just a variation of antifreeze, you know, one of the most toxic substances in the world.
Really?
Is that what it is?
You're kidding me.
Well, antifreeze is ethylene glycol.
All I know is that because when you drag on the cigarette, only like the first ten, because it'll last you, you know, you buy it in a pack, these filters, and you have to change them out.
And the first ten drags on it, it really gets a nice bowl of smoke in your mouth.
But then after that, it kind of diminishes.
And I know a lot of people who have really started tripping out on the nicotine because they're just like...
That could be the ethylene glycol.
Let me just read you from Potential Health Effects of Ethylene Glycol.
may cause gastrointestinal irritation with nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, low hazard for industrial handling, blah, blah, blah, may cause changes in surface EEG and can cause...
John, these are the warnings that are on tampons.
I mean, please.
I'm just saying.
I'm just saying.
If you want to just...
You think this chemical is better than the real tobacco...
Which is a natural product.
Yeah, no, I don't.
I like smoking real tobacco, which is why I roll my own, because I don't want the formaldehyde, which are put into cigarettes.
Right, they put all kinds of terrible things in there.
Formaldehyde, licorice, what else do they put in?
And why do they put formaldehyde in?
I don't know.
I don't know.
All I know about tobacco is that when I was a kid, it didn't stink as much as it does today.
I cannot smoke a regular cigarette.
I hate it.
It doesn't taste good.
It's not satisfying.
It makes me ill.
But when I roll up a nice...
Virginia tobacco or some Dutch, because Dutch, of course, have been making tobacco for centuries.
You know, that's real tobacco, and it tastes good, and I truly believe it will kill me less fast.
And you get exercise.
Because I'm rolling?
Yeah, you get a good finger exercise.
Okay, here we go.
Time has come once again.
To help support No Agenda, my friends.
Help Adam and John keep the show going on.
So drop a coin in the bucket today.
Hey!
At Dvorak.org slash NA. You could even be knighted what you say.
And receive...
Pima underwear for $100 or more.
Monogram.
We need to find somebody who can embroider the underwear for us so the underwear will say no agenda.
On the crotch.
On the crotch.
No agenda.
That'll be cool.
No agenda right on the crotch.
Hey baby, look at my underwear.
I got no agenda, honey.
So we got some $50 contributors I want to mention.
Okay, hold on.
Oops, there we go.
And that's another one for the Armory.
Hit me.
John Kilbourne, Joshua Brickner, Kyle Miller, Elaine Hinge, and we actually have a female listener.
Oh, you know what?
I can't wait until we send her the No Agenda HEMA underwear.
God, maybe she's not a knight yet.
Calvin Perry, who sent us an odd number of $64.21.
I think we've talked about this guy and his number before.
Bren, which is, he's the guy who sent the stuff that means nothing.
Oh, right.
Bren Brucilla.
Yeah.
John Matthews, Chris Engler, also Father Frank out of Chicago.
And Father Frank brought up this thing.
I think Chris Engler, too.
They want to donate an accumulated amount to get to the $1,000 knighthood.
Oh!
So I'm going to set something up on the webpage.
They're pooling together?
No, not the two of them together, but maybe that's an interesting idea.
On dvorak.org slash NA, I'm going to set up something for people who want to do a, you know, a layaway, essentially.
A layaway knighthood.
John, with the lure of the underwear.
By the way, you know, the thing is, you'd have to go to Holland to get this underwear.
There's only a couple of HEMA stores outside.
Exactly.
I have infrastructure.
We can get people HEMA underwear, no problem at all.
That's fantastic.
The embroidery...
Honey, do you have a place who can embroider no agenda on HEMA underwear?
Yeah, it's all taken care of.
John Matthews, Ray Manguel, I guess it's a tough name to pronounce it, M-A-N-G-U-A-L, so I'm thinking it's Manguel, and Brian Navarro.
Now, we also have some odd numbers that came in.
$9.02?
$9.02.
No, we've had a $9.02 before.
And I remember saying that's the McDonnell Douglas helicopter, the MD-902, which was not what it was, but I've forgotten what the real number stands for.
Wasn't it a law or a bill or something?
I don't know.
Maybe this is my list of whatever.
What's next?
Somebody just sent me a link to the HEMA microfiber embroidered bra.
Ooh!
Which is being bid on eBay right now for 99 cents.
1701, 1414, 707.
What's 707?
707.
Is LOL upside down?
Oh, right, right, right.
So, 1414 to 707 twice.
Yeah, there you go.
$24.95, well, it's a price point.
Exactly, that's a sale.
The sale, ding.
And 1964, which is...
My birthday.
Blah, blah, blah?
Sorry.
That's my birthday gear.
Oh, okay.
So we weren't baffled or stumped this time.
I think we did pretty good.
Let's end it up there.
Time has come once again to help support No Agenda, my friends.
Help Adam and John keep the show going on.
So drop a coin in the bucket today.
Hey, hey!
At Dvorak.org slash NA. If you're looking for great voice work for your podcast, anything you just want to have a great little song to send to your lover or someone for their birthday, go to thejeffsmith.com, G-E-O-F-F. Good to have his voice back.
He couldn't sing for a couple of weeks there.
He had some problems, so we're happy to have that.
Jeff, thank you very much.
Alright.
So anyway, yeah, or noagendalibrary.com.
We appreciate your help.
This is public-supported.
We're not doing advertising.
We're not even doing actual show prep or anything, so it kind of fits along with that.
We've got plenty of show prep.
I know.
I'm just messing with you.
In fact, I'm going to read one more story.
One more story.
Hit me.
Police Beat, May 28, 2009.
This is a blotter story.
Caller advised of an injured squirrel in the 500 block of 7th Street, the victim of a dog attack.
Police...
Police picked up the squirrel.
No.
No.
I'm telling you, this is what I'm reading.
This is like Squirrel Week.
Can I just ask you, did this just all happen like you have like a Google alert on squirrel?
No, I'm telling you, this is just a coincidence.
May 28th, this took place on May...
But how do you get these stories?
My wife actually started running into squirrel stories the other day, and after we ran into the fact that they were eating them in England, and apparently she noticed there's just a million squirrel stories all at once.
Well, Mimi, thank you very much for doing John's homework.
We really appreciate it.
Well, at least somebody's doing homework.
Let's see what we got here.
Morse, you want to hear another squirrel story?
No, I'm really sick and tired of your squirrel stories.
And I think people are going to start...
There's only five more.
No.
Give me the headlines.
I'll choose one.
Five headlines about squirrels, I'll choose one.
I'll save them.
No, no, please don't.
Get it out of your system now.
It takes too long.
Go ahead.
I'm stopping.
I'm not going to do any more squirrels.
Someone just suggested we should introduce the No Agenda Mutual Fund.
I like that idea.
Yeah, why don't we just rip people off?
Mutual Fund.
Actually, you know, we could get Andrew Horowitz probably to be the manager.
Yeah, we could probably put that together.
Do we get to keep like 10% fees?
How does that work?
Yeah, it depends on the fund.
I mean, you can do it different ways.
Hmm.
Andrew and I are actually promoting the idea of exchange-traded funds nowadays as opposed to mutual funds, which are out of vogue.
The so-called ETF. Well, I'm going to end the show.
Are you sure?
Well, time's almost there, man.
We've got like four minutes.
I can't do the desperate Russian's turn to spoiled food story?
Please, please, rock it.
No problem.
Go.
Apparently, cheese spoiled with mold, the sausages are ominously gray, slime is beginning to overtake the chicken.
This is like, apparently, what's going on in Russia right now, which I guess we're not paying much attention to, is that they're eating garbage.
So, give me the details on the story.
That's about it.
It just goes on and on about some people, all these people, elderly shoppers eating bad, spoiled, tainted food.
No punchline.
No, but this is the meme.
This is exactly what I said.
It's the squirrels.
It's the garbage.
Oops, someone's calling me.
That's because we're being prepared.
And that's what they're doing, the TV shows, making people eat bugs?
Yeah, we're being prepared because we're not going to actually have any kind of healthy food.
Nothing will be available when the entire global economy collapses.
And I will be licking my gold bar.
I mean, that's basically what it's going to come down to.
Or at least half of a gold bar.
That's another story altogether.
If you need a good gold saw, we'll get one off of eBay.
Does that exist?
Just making it up.
Oh, okay.
John, do we have a website yet?
Yeah, actually, it's not quite finished, but it's getting there.
Go to noagenda.squarespace.com and take a look at it.
How come you didn't email me about this?
No, I forgot to.
Okay, noagenda.
No, can you go to noagendashow.com?
I thought it was noagenda.squarespace.com.
Well, I think noagenda.show points to it.
Oh, no, it's a park to GoDaddy, of course.
Noagenda.squarespace.com.
Let's take a look.
Okay, ooh!
Okay, is that it?
It's just the rudiments.
I mean, we got it started.
John, it's a page that just has our names on it.
Well, I'm saying.
Hey, good job, John.
Thanks for working on that.
Okay?
You're welcome.
Anytime.
I'm so happy you're in charge of that.
I'll take care of the HEMA underwear with no agenda embroidered on it.
That will actually happen.
That is a premium I can stand behind and I think we can actually complete.
Well, let's hope so.
You do that website, alright?
I'm on it.
Coming to you from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, I'm Adam Curry.
And from Northern Silicon Valley, where we are going to be making Soylent Green to show that we're green-oriented, I'm John C. Dvorak.
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