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June 14, 2009 - No Agenda
01:05:20
104: Furries Forever
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Time Text
Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
It is Sunday, June 14th.
Happy birthday to Super Agent Keith.
Hey, it's time once again for your Gitmo Nation audio publication.
This is No Agenda.
Coming to you from the crappiest bandwidth in the Bay Area, located in Gitmo Nation West, I'm Adam Curry.
And from Gitmo Nation Pacific Northwest, and powered by oatmeal, I might add, I'm John C. Dvorak.
Hey, I'm powered by oatmeal as well.
So how do you prepare your oatmeal?
Well, there is very little in the casa at the moment.
So here's...
I prepared it with water because that's all I had.
That's a methodology.
It's not unusual.
It's not bad.
It's not bad.
And since I had no sugar, no brown sugar, no maple syrup, I had some blueberries.
So I infested it with blueberries and actually it was okay.
It kind of tasted like blueberries with sawdust.
Do you normally make it with milk and make more of a mush?
Yeah, I do like to make more of a mush, and I like a little bit of brown sugar, or it kind of depends on the mood.
I might try maple syrup, but only if it's really good maple syrup.
So I had my oatmeal.
I also had the boiling water method.
I sometimes make it with milk, too.
But it makes a different product when you...
Oh, totally.
Yeah, totally.
But I had birch syrup.
Mmm.
So that's...
It's...
Wow.
It's from Alaska.
But it's...
How different does it taste from maple syrup?
They don't taste anything the same.
But is it...
Can you try and describe it?
Well, if anyone's ever had birch beer, obviously you can taste that.
Thomas Kemper makes that up here in the Pacific Northwest, and they have birch beer.
It's a little generally milder, unless they concentrate it, than maple syrup.
Maple syrup has an absolutely amazing flavor profile that is just all-encompassing.
It's one of the greatest sugars ever.
And, of course, if it's from Vermont, then it's really the best.
Well, you know, I found good Canadian stuff and elsewhere.
But Vermont does have a good reputation.
A good blend.
They go out of their way to make good maple syrup.
Anyway, the point is that the birch syrup is nothing like it in terms of its flavor profile.
But it's a nice change of pace.
It's like if you have the Nopali's sugar, that stuff that comes from the plant that makes tequila.
Oh, that cactus thingy?
Is that it?
Yeah, it's kind of a cactus thingy.
I can't think of the name of it for some reason.
Agave.
Ah, yes.
So most of the tequila companies make sugar from the agave plant, and that makes the tequila.
And they sometimes bottle the sugar straight, and you can buy that now because it's supposed to have all these health benefits.
Uh-huh.
That's actually quite tasty, too, but it's the mildest of the three.
Anyway...
It's your food chapter.
I'm sorry.
It's in the morning.
We need a cough button.
Leo's got one on his rig.
Yeah, I know.
Leo's cool.
I was going to say the loft that I hope to move into on Monday is in the same building that houses the company that is the first company to legally distribute absinthe in the U.S. Oh.
Huh.
This absent that they're distributing, most of it's not very good.
I don't know.
I'm not a drinker, as you know.
I think I've tasted it once or twice, but I'm not really like, woo, can't wait.
So we have a stream live for IRC users, but you can go to it directly with noagendachat.com.
Yeah, I'm just trying to log in to irc.zeronode.net, and I try to hit the No Agenda channel, and it says, if you're at a conference and other people are having trouble connecting, please mention it to staff.
I don't know what's going on.
Well, I mean, if you go straight to the website, there's a...
A live web client that runs, and it looks like it works fine.
In fact, I'm going to send a message.
Hello?
Yeah, so you clearly didn't see my hello, because I guess I'm not in.
It doesn't matter.
I can't do the web client now, because...
Right, it'll kill this...
It'll kill everything, yeah.
And the worst part, if I can just send you this link, John, because it will not open for me.
Every other...
You know, I have to open all of my web pages before the show on this crappy bandwidth, but the story looks so fascinating.
If you could...
Hold on a second.
If you could just open that, because the title of this story, which I'm just dying to hear about, and of course totally fits under the category of...
And now, back to real news.
Man sues over 55-hour erection.
And I'm thinking, you know, this is...
There's a phone ringing.
Hold on.
It was...
Oh, God, you're getting a phone call.
Yeah.
Hey, who the hell is calling me on the phone?
No way.
Reminds me, I can unhook my phone.
So let's see, we've got man sues over a 55-hour erection.
Former prison inmate, Dawood Yadula, is suing a nurse in the United States claiming that he suffered an erection that lasted 55 hours as a side effect of medication he had been given.
Yadula, 43, said he had to wait more than two days before being taken from a New York prison to a hospital.
To hospital.
Oh, to hospital.
Yeah, it's a British story.
As we would say, to the hospital for treatment, reported in the New York Post on Monday.
According to media reports, Yadula said that his daily dosage of antipsychotic medication was increased, must have been an experience for him, was increased by 25% by nurse Judith Lovelace.
Oh yeah, like Linda's sister.
Now we're talking.
And as a side effect, he had a persistent and painful erection.
This left him irreparably injured.
Well, I was thinking this would be some kind of Cialis or Viagra story because they always have that tagline at the end of the commercials.
If you experience an erection for more than four hours, contact your doctor immediately.
Yeah, and as the joke goes, if I get an erection for more than four hours, I'm calling everybody.
Or, that's not a problem you need to call your doctor for, that's a scheduling problem.
Yeah, there's a bunch of gags over that line.
Yeah.
Which reminds me, I've got to get some more clips of these.
There's a new drug out here.
Which reminds me, we've got to get some more funny material.
Is that what you were going to say?
We need more funny material.
We're short.
Speaking of short, a great, and of course all of these links are faithfully put into the show notes at noagenda.mevio.com.
I'm sure you saw all the conferences where you had Sarkozy and Obama sitting together and discussing things together.
I guess it was Normandy.
We talked about it last week.
But there's this picture and it's from Times Online.
I'm going to Skype this to you because if you haven't seen it, it's just hilarious.
Of course, we always harp on...
And, you know, both of us being over six feet tall, we're allowed to harp on the vertically challenged.
You'll see a profile picture at the podium of President Obama standing with his...
What is he like?
The guy's like 6'3"?
I think so.
Something like that.
I think he's 6'2".
And then you see Sarkozy, who is, you know, 4'9".
Standing on an apple crate.
Ha!
Do you see it?
Yeah.
I love it.
Somebody shot that picture just to ridicule him.
Yeah, and rightfully so.
Look, they even have that podium that's got these barriers on either side.
So you can't see it.
Yeah, so somebody went way over to the side.
They even used the N-word in the article.
I love that.
The N-word, of course, being Napoleon.
And then they got a cartoon of him standing...
What's the cartoon?
Oh, no, there's a picture at the bottom of him, but all standing flat-footed.
And, you know...
With his lovely wife.
She must be 5'11".
No, man.
She looks almost...
I don't know if she's wearing...
She wears flats.
She doesn't really wear heels.
So she looks about...
She's 6'1", dude.
I don't think so.
Because he's already towering over her.
He's standing in the background.
But look at the lovely, lovely Carla Bruni.
Yeah, she's like a foot taller than...
Well, she's about five inches taller than Sarkozy.
And her knees are bent.
She's hot.
She's on her knees.
Yeah.
I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal weekend yesterday.
Actually, I was looking for a story about the New York Stock Exchange.
I don't know if you followed that, but on Friday, the thing glitched at the opening, which I found highly suspect.
I flipped on CNBC and they're all like, whoa!
You can tell that they're all excited.
Something horrible is amiss.
Something's going on.
These things with computer glitches, particularly when it comes to trading systems, I've just always got to put my little question marks around it.
You didn't follow that, obviously.
No.
I don't know.
Whenever that happens, I'm like, hmm, okay, I'm sure, just a computer glitch, nothing to see here.
But, sorry, I forgot to hit the cough button.
In the second part of the W1 section...
They have a whole article titled, Divided We Stand, and subhead, what would California look like broken in three, or Republic of New England, with the federal government reaching for ever more power, redrawing the map is enticing, says Paul Starobin.
And it's about something that I've certainly been following.
We've discussed from time to time that there are many, many states within the union that have movements of people who are thinking about breaking off from the entire union.
Yeah.
Well, we're doing other things like Northern California from about, I don't know what area, maybe north of Reading, to most of southern Oregon wants to become the state of Jefferson.
They have a name for it?
What?
They have a name for it?
The state of Jefferson?
Yeah, Jefferson.
Yeah.
And in fact, when you drive up there, when you drive through that area, you'll see signage all over the place.
Really?
Welcome to the state of Jefferson.
And it's a big picture of Jefferson.
It's the profile of Thomas Jefferson.
Really?
Yeah, Jefferson.
But they tend to be...
They tend to be slightly right-wing.
You think?
Just a guess.
Economic logic suggests a natural multilingual combination between greater San Diego and Mexico's northern Bahia and to the Pacific North between Seattle and Vancouver in a mega-region already dubbed Cascadia.
Oh, Cascadia.
That's a good one.
So, I don't know.
It feels like something really is happening.
When it's in the Wall Street Journal, you go, okay, I'll pay attention to this for a second.
There is a similarity between this northern part of California and southern Oregon.
And then there is probably more of a connection between Portland and that southern part of Washington State.
In fact, maybe the whole coast.
But when you get to Seattle, Bellingham, Redmond, Bellevue, that Puget Sound area from Seattle up to Vancouver, there is a similarity in a lot of different ways.
Although Vancouver and Seattle being so close to each other would present some sort of a metropolitan issue, I think.
But whatever.
Now, do you think that this is actually...
A lot of these people in B.C. always consider themselves more part of the United States than they do Canada.
Do you think that this actually could happen?
How about Texas?
Texas has always kind of been...
Yeah, big talkers.
I realize that Texas is a bunch of blowhards.
It's john at dvorak.org.
Send your ammo to him.
I don't know, man.
There's a lot of people who are getting pretty pissed off, and it's a movement that's bubbling under.
In fact, last night I was cruising through.
I actually spent some time trying to watch some television, and I have Comcast basic cable at this place, so no premium channels.
It's basically every single channel is a commercial.
It's unreal.
You never hit programming for some reason.
And on one of the, I guess the high numbers, 78, which is, wow, that's got to be some local access.
They had architectural engineers for 9-11 Truth.
And they had like a whole hour program.
It was amazing to see that that was on.
And there is some stuff creeping through, John.
And there's a lot of dissent and a lot of dissatisfaction.
So we have, my son came up with a good phrase that we can use to generate income and sell t-shirts maybe.
Help save America.
Listen to no agenda.
I don't know.
It's a bumper sticker.
Yeah, but first of all, why only America?
We have tons of producers and listeners from around the globe.
Yeah, but America needs to be saved.
Yeah, the whole world needs to be saved.
Well, help save the world.
Then we sound like an environmental movement.
Yeah, but it's like, can't we just do like nuke the gay whales, listen to no agenda?
That would entice me more to listen.
So, do you have the real news thing?
Yeah.
Hold on a second.
Why, yes, I do, John.
And now, back to real news...
So did you know that Simon Cowell was one of the original producers of Teletubbies?
No, I did not know that.
Are we sure everyone knows who the Teletubbies are?
I guess so, right?
Yeah, no, they had the Teletubbies on in the United States and it became a big controversy when one of the religious guys said they were gay.
It wasn't a governor or senator who said Tinky Winky was gay?
One of them was gay.
And by the way, Tinky Winky is gay.
Big deal.
Tinky Winky.
I did him.
So this came up in a conversation yesterday that I was having.
It turns out that there was a follow-up to the Teletubby show, which you can look at on YouTube, called Booba.
Have you ever seen or heard of this?
No, and I can't look at it now for obvious bandwidth reasons.
Booba, can you spell it?
B-O-O-H-B-A-H. Okay.
Booba.
Booba.
And it's Teletubby's looking guys, only they have like...
Not to be crude or rude, you can cover your ears if anybody doesn't want to hear this.
It looks like they have dickheads that actually come out, popped out of their bodies like a dick.
That's disgusting.
It didn't go over very well.
Clearly not circumcised.
Or something.
But anyway, that's my news.
I want everyone to go check it out.
How does Simon Cowell relate to that?
I just thought I'd throw his name in so we'd have some real news.
We don't know whether Simon Cowell had anything to do with Booba, but we know that some of the other Teletubbies people do.
That's all we know.
Oh, okay.
I got you.
We never really, and that's I think because of our no agenda schedule on Thursdays and Sundays, we never really got into the European Parliament elections or touched on it briefly that of course Labour did very, very poorly, Gordon Brown's party, if we look at Gitmo Nation East.
And boy, I can't wait to get all of my Gitmo Nation East publications in so I can try to continue the Gitmo Nation East flavor on the show.
But interestingly, the UKIP, the Independent Party, did quite well.
And this is, of course, what's his name?
Neil Farage?
Is that his name?
I have no idea.
Yeah, that's the guy who's always standing up and doing great speeches in European Parliament and giving everybody shit.
I'm pretty happy about that.
And now it seems, according to the Telegraph...
That a new Commons, that's I guess their Hill, vote could prove explosive and would be seized on by the Tories and the UKIP, who made big gains in the recent European elections, to actually really have to make a vote on the Lisbon Treaty in the United Kingdom.
Which, as you know, if you listen to this show, they just kind of ran through Parliament.
There was some cool guy who did sue the Labour government trying to stop the ratification of it.
But it's a good article, and of course that will be in the show notes.
And I guess that they're using some legal recourse now.
To actually put that to a vote, which, wow, that could really disrupt a lot of the plans that these guys have.
Yeah, you think?
That's okay, they'll find some other way to bypass it.
Well, we'll see.
Ireland still has...
They're still trying to force the second vote...
For the Irish.
This thing is so messed up.
We just become so desensitized and just kind of accept all of this bullshit that they pull on us.
Unreal.
So, I see Jeff Smith has Twittered me that there was some guy who...
Get back to that.
What was this, the CNN fail?
No, the CNN feel, I can't, you know, the CNN feels got something to do with the fact that the coverage of the Iranian elections was crap.
I don't get the big deal.
I did see this past, you know, the news channels, like, oh, well, you know, it's clearly, it's been a big sham, and Ahmadinejad wins by, you know, a 50% margin.
Like, who cares?
Who cares?
Yeah, you're finally getting back into becoming an American.
Yes, a fine American who doesn't give a crap.
Neither one of us would be able to do the show solo.
Yeah.
We've got to practice from one of us gets two to the head and the gun in the left hand, John.
Yeah, we just yak away about it.
Yeah, and then such and such and such.
So anyway, Jeff Smith says, have you seen the time travel guy story?
Man travels in time from 2036 to visit his mother?
No.
Have you seen the story?
Well, it actually turns out that I clicked on it.
And it turns out to be an event being a kind of a...
A link or something that happened on Coast to Coast with George Norrie, that crazy radio.
That's just something you should be listening to.
You should listen to this show.
I do listen to it from time to time, but rarely ever live.
You have to pay for it to get access to the podcast or whatever, so sometimes people upload some story to the drop, which I find a pretty good editorial process.
It's only like four hours long, isn't it?
It was just a daily talk show.
It's one of the oldest ones ever.
Yeah, they got a lot of good stuff on there.
They got a lot of good alien UFO stories.
Yeah, I like it.
It's a good show.
But anyway, so the guy time travels to visit his mom and...
Yeah, I got a link to it, but it's like this.
It sends me to this John Titor Times, which is under johntitor.com, which is one of these sites that apparently scrolls down to China.
And all it's missing is the cat running back and forth and back and forth across the screen.
I know exactly what you mean.
I couldn't find it on here if I wanted to, so never mind.
Just going back to either one of us could do this show solo, can we just make a pact?
That should either one of us be killed by the government, that, you know, the other one just goes on the show and then, you know, says, well, you know, in my case it would be, well, we're very sorry to report that, you know, John has been suicided by the government, and then just go...
And now, back to real movies.
And then just do some story about a guy who got his penis caught in the door and just continue the show?
Yeah, well, that's pretty much what we're doing now.
Exactly.
I just want to make sure we agree on that.
So I went to the commencement at Evergreen State College.
Oh, this is for your son.
Yeah.
Which one?
John.
J.J., as I call him.
J.J. I call him J.J. Yeah.
Right.
As a retort to that.
But anyway, so this is actually one of the greatest entertainment values that you could have in your lifetime.
And I would recommend next year, people, they finally, when Evergreen's doing their commencement, you have to go to it.
Because, and I'll have some photos posted.
And I think you should briefly explain what commencement is for the...
Commencement's where you get your degree, your bachelor's of whatever it is, or your PhD, or whatever.
Whatever he got.
Whatever thing he did, you went.
He got a degree.
But is it done, you know, it's just, it's commencement.
It's a very common occurrence.
Yeah, in America.
In America, it's very common.
It's a ceremony that is completely uncommon outside the borders.
So they don't give diplomas to people that go to Cambridge?
But the commencement outside of Gitmo Nation West is different.
Well, tell me.
I'd be interested.
I've never been to one.
I don't think there's caps and gowns.
Yeah, maybe Cambridge, but not in Germany.
Not in the Netherlands.
In fact, it's really quite boring.
You sit in like an aula.
Is that a correct English word, an aula?
No.
A-U-L-A? No.
Never heard of it.
So, you know, like a gathering room.
It's not like the cool thing out on the grass with the sun shining and everyone's there and they're all dressed up and we throw our caps in the air.
It's none of that.
I mean, that's a fine American tradition.
I think the Navy Academy does that.
Yeah, but you put the tassel on the other side and you've got your valedictorian speeches.
No, I don't think it's like that outside of the United States.
We're very, very culturally embedded in tradition here.
So anyway, all right, I'm sorry.
You know, I'm finding it hard to believe and I'll tell you why.
This is not something that we dream up.
It sounds like it came from England or France or someplace else because there's too much costumes.
I don't know, man.
We're pretty good when it comes to costumes and uniforms in this country.
So anyway, but the joke of it is that at Evergreen, because it's kind of a free spirit school, everyone has a green cap and gown, but about 10% of the people dress up in their own outfits.
Okay.
So there's a guy in a penguin costume.
There's women that are dolled up like they just, you know, one of them, they dubbed one of them Carmen Sandiego.
She'd be wearing a white sundress and a big red hat.
Oh, fantastic.
And there was some girl in all, just the brightest red, tight-fitting dress imaginable.
And what was your son wearing?
He was wearing a regular cap and gown.
Him and his pal, they had a million ideas.
They were going to do this.
They were going to just stand up and go Sieg Heil to one of the speakers.
No way!
They never got it.
They couldn't manage it.
Pussies!
Pussies!
That would have been awesome.
They did have...
Because this one guy, this one character, one of the speakers, his whole speech was about Obama.
It wasn't about we have to do something for our country.
We have to do this.
No, we have to do it for Obama.
So we have to help Obama.
So Obama's the greatest thing that's ever happened and we must help Obama.
Help him.
He needs help.
So go forth, go forth.
And help Obama.
Did you videotape any of this?
That is so YouTube-worthy.
I wish I had that Obama one.
I think they did tape it, so I think it's gettable.
Oh, that's funny.
And then there was some...
Here's the interesting thing.
The guy who heads the school, one of the chancellors, And I was just kind of stunned by this.
He announces the guy who was the keynote commencement speaker, whatever you want to call him, who was this guy named W-H-Y-T-E, who bills himself as a corporate poet.
Hmm.
And of course he had no poetry to read except, you know, none actually.
Right.
And he was introduced as having a degree from some weird school I've never heard of.
Zoology.
Which, of course, is a mispronunciation of the word zoology.
Zoology, yeah.
Because there's not that many O's in the word to be pronounced, zoology.
And zoology would be the study of zoos.
Which I think you and I have a degree in.
We do.
We are the zoologists.
We are the zoologists.
So this is done by...
I'm mumbling to myself as I'm walking...
Because I took just probably 500 photos with zoology.
So then the guy comes out, this white character...
And he says, yes, I have a degree in marine zoology.
Oh, no.
And you stood up going, Zeke Heil!
What are you talking about?
It's like nobody that actually has the degree would ever say that.
Would ever say that.
Yeah, of course.
Well, it's very interesting because I watched the Jon Stewart show.
Gosh, for someone who doesn't watch television, I watched a lot this week.
I watched the Jon Stewart show maybe...
Thursday, I'm going to say.
And it was quite disappointing.
It was really not a good show.
I can't put my finger on it why.
But more interestingly, right after the Jon Stewart show, of course, Stephen Colbert comes on.
And I didn't know this, but apparently he is with the troops in Iraq.
Yeah, he was doing reports from there.
And he had his head shaved and everything.
I thought at first it was like some kind of chroma key joke.
I'm like, what is going on with his hair?
I'm like, oh shit, he actually shaved it.
But he had the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq on the show.
And of course the audience is all fine young servicemen and women.
And guess what this guy studied?
He studied probability and, he said it, zoology!
And I'm sitting there going like, no way, dude!
You cannot sit there and say you're a zoologist!
Of course he's not, or he's full of it, otherwise he would have said zoologist.
Well, maybe, yeah.
And then, of course, the punchline that Colbert had was, you know, well, how can you be a...
It was like a marine zoologist, in fact.
And the guy, well, how many...
How much practicability does that have in Iraq, in the desert?
And the guy said, well, of course, that's why I studied probability, because I knew I'd really score well, because the probability of applying my knowledge in Iraq is zero.
But I just found it interesting that he pulled out the zoology instead of zoology.
Zoology.
So I know usually at the University of California you would get berated publicly for saying zoology until you got it through your head that it's pronounced zoology.
So I'm looking at a photo here, by the way, just to change the topic back to commencement ceremonies of the University of Heidelberg, as a matter of fact.
Commencement ceremony.
And curiously, they're all wearing caps and gowns and big red sashes.
Maybe I should not have dropped out of my freshman year.
Then I would have known better.
Here's more photos from Europe.
But they call it graduation there.
I guess that's the big difference, not commencement.
And I don't think the speeches are as entertaining.
I certainly have not heard of anyone doing a commencement speech in Germany and going, seek Heil, but I would...
I'm sure they used to.
It's been a while, John.
It's been a while.
They seem to have the same cap and gown in these German universities I'm looking at, but they all have the thing that's different.
Instead of having, like, for example, they had all this green stuff at Evergreen, which they're called greenies, is they have different colored sashes, and these sashes are quite colorful.
I'm looking at some blue ones here.
I might mention something else, just to be off that topic completely.
There were a couple of furries.
Are you familiar with these people?
In Second Life, I'm familiar with the term furries.
They're people who have cat-like fur and pretty much only like to have virtual sex with other furries.
Yes, well, there's real furries in the real world, and a couple of them were dressed up as such at the commencement.
One was dressed up as a panda bear, and he received his degree, and his girlfriend was dressed up as a bunny.
I have actually a portrait of the two of them, because as they came out, I had moved myself into a position to get some good shots, and they posed.
So, you know, I've been trying to capture them the whole time.
A lot of people dressed in drag.
Yes.
Just staying with furries for a moment, is this an actual lifestyle that people choose to follow?
Yes, this is what I'm getting to.
Yes, it's a lifestyle and the key to it is it's a sexual cult.
I'm going to call it a cult.
And the idea is that you find your inner...
I didn't know about this either, but I got the lectures.
You find your inner animal, what it might be.
If you're a bunny, for example, that means you like to screw a lot.
Either that or you like to get eaten.
Sorry, no rimshot.
Yeah, thanks.
We need the rimshots.
So, you know, you find your inner animal, and then you dress like them, you become that animal, and you only have sex as a furry.
So these people apparently have sex all dressed up in these costumes.
Really?
Oh, that seems like...
So these costumes have trap doors and stuff?
I have no idea.
I didn't go that far into it.
Obviously, there's some way of doing it.
Whatever the case is, it's...
Are there clubs where furries go and hook up?
There are...
I don't know if they have nightclubs or places.
Yeah, I'm sure there's something like that because apparently...
I was told that one of the schools they had, there's a term that you can use, I can't remember the name of it, but it had to do with one of the schools they...
Deranged?
Would that the word be?
It had to do with isolating the furries within an institution, and then apparently some school put them all in some one group to say, yeah, you guys can have your own club and your own room, and they found out who all the furries really were, then they just kicked them out of the school.
Come to the club, kids.
It was almost like one of those scams where they find the criminals and they can't get them to show up for anything.
Yeah, like Dateline NBC. One of those scams.
Yeah, you just won the lottery.
Just meet us here and you can collect your money.
Yeah, wear a white rose.
So, anyway, the furries.
So I didn't know anything about the furries until I... Because I just thought these guys were just dressing up as...
I didn't know they existed for real.
I thought it was just a second life kind of, you know, sexual fantasy thing.
That's for sure.
But I didn't know that they actually existed in real life.
That makes sense, I guess.
Yeah.
When I first saw the loft, which has, gosh, these ceilings must be, could it be like 18 feet, maybe even more, the ceiling height?
Does that sound about right?
18 feet is pretty common.
Yeah, and it has exposed pipes and stuff.
What is the first thing when you're standing, as a guy, the first thing you think, and guys, I want you to listen, and maybe some gals out there too, for the four that are listening to this show, is When you have this, you know, and a loft, by the way, by itself, by definition, has something sexual to it.
I'm not quite sure what it is, but it's a sexy type of thing.
And I've never lived in a loft, and I've never even thought I would enjoy the idea, and I'm kind of getting into it.
And when you have an 18-foot ceiling, and you see these pipes that are exposed, what is the first thing as a guy you think of?
When I look at a tall ceiling and the pipe's exposed?
Yeah, I mean, because you're thinking, hmm, what could I hang from?
Who's going to dust that crap?
No, that's you.
Now go into guy mode.
What would you think of hanging from those pipes?
Hookers.
No, a sex swing.
A sex swing.
I've always wondered, who has one of those sex swings?
Well, you can put one in your loft and we can show it to people.
Exactly.
Now I know.
Now I know.
It's for loft people.
It's probably going to break the pipe.
I'm going to get one just to see what it looks like.
What, a sex swing?
Yeah!
I've always wondered.
You'd probably get them on the net.
No, of course you can get them on the net.
They used to be in the back of the magazines.
No, of course you can.
I'm sorry.
I have the bandwidth to go look up sex swings.
High quality sex swings.
You can get a sex swing at healthyandactive.com for $69.
Well, of course.
$69.
That makes so much sense.
Oh, that's right.
$69.
I get it.
Bada bing.
Here's a bungee sex swing.
Send me the links, dude.
Send me the links.
So that's an up and down sex swing instead of a back and forth sex swing.
That's interesting.
I think there's a guy here, this is Sex Swings, highlighted on the website Ken's Twisted Mind.
Dot com?
I'm sorry I started this.
I've got to get you out of it quick.
John, surely you are familiar with Zyprexa.
No, I'm not familiar with Zytox.
You're not?
Oh, I've heard about that for a long time.
It's an anti-dimentia drug.
An anti-dimension drug?
Dementia.
I think an anti-dimension drug.
Dementia, I should say.
Dementia.
Okay.
Thank you.
How do you spell it?
Zyprexa or dementia?
I've seen it advertised on television.
Yes.
This is the one that has so many side effects that as soon as you take the pill, you might as well shoot yourself.
Well, you might as well because Eli Lilly& Co.
urged doctors to prescribe Zyprexa for elderly patients with dementia.
Even though the drug maker at the time had evidence the medicine did not work for such patients.
I just love it when these guys do this crap.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
Take it anyway.
Take it anyway.
Yeah, what the hell.
The official Zyprexa site, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia can be treated with Zyprexa.
The word bipolar, who made that shit up?
That's not an actual medical condition, is it?
That's just like a marketing term.
Please tell me.
No, it is.
It's manic depressive.
It used to be called manic depressive.
They changed the term to bipolar about 15 years ago.
Case in point, bipolar is a marketing term.
I mean, if you've ever known any bipolar people, you know that it's a real illness.
Manic depression, is that a chemical?
I mean, I understand manic depression.
And what is the difference between depression and manic depression?
That means you're a maniac?
No, it means you go, but you flip back and forth.
You're depressed.
And then you go crazy, high energy, and you're really, you know, knock yourself out and you're happier as a clam.
Then you go back to depression.
It's like a huge mood swings that are, you know, everybody has mood swings.
Sure.
But these are so massive that they go way off on one side and then way down on the other, just near suicidal and it can happen like every day.
And does it really have to be near suicidal for it to be actual bipolarism?
I don't know.
I like bipolar.
Bipolar is a much better description of what it is.
But it's still a marketing term.
I don't care what you say.
You run into these people and it's like, wow.
They flip.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Is it a chemical imbalance?
If it's a disease, then there's some explanation for it.
No, I think it's a chemical imbalance.
That's why I think that drugs usually help people.
A lot of people just take lithium.
That seems to stop a lot of it.
Is that the same type of stuff that's in batteries?
It's the same element of the periodic table, if that's what you're wondering.
I wouldn't think sucking on a battery is going to do you much good.
Oh, damn.
But no, there's a lot of areas of the country, there's a lot of natural lithium.
It's just like fluoridation.
The natural lithium in the water, they've found that there's a low rate of mental illness in some of these places.
And so then they started working with lithium.
It turns out that lithium stabilizes a lot of people that would otherwise be crazy.
Well, anyway, regulators required Eli Lilly and other antipsychotic drug makers in 2005 to warn that the products pose an increased risk to elderly patients with dementia.
Great reason to prescribe it.
And this document, which you can find, of course, link in the show notes, shows the health dangers in marketing a drug for an unapproved use, which is called the Off-Label Promotion.
By definition, off-label means, pay attention people, there is no clear evidence that the benefits of a drug outweigh the risks.
And off-label promotion, I guess, is illegal.
Yeah, that's where they go out and the sales guys pull that crap.
Right.
In fact, I'm looking at the Zyprexa site here, which is obviously owned by the drug company.
Eli Lilly.
And what a fine name.
Doesn't it sound kind of like happy and purple?
Eli Lilly.
Anyway, there's a big box text here.
It says, elderly people with psychosis related to dementia, a brain disorder that lessens the ability to remember, think, and reason, are at increased risk of death when taking certain mental health medicines, such as Zyprexa, compared with a sugar pill.
Zyprexa is not approved for these patients.
That's in box text.
Zyprexa does $4.7 billion in sales.
It was their best drug.
Antipsychotics as a group in the United States, $14.6 billion industry.
We got a lot of fucked up people.
Yeah, well, they're probably more fucked up from the drugs.
Please.
I've seen it happen, man.
Ritalin, that shit they give to kids, which parents just pop in their kids' mouths like M&M's.
Man, that stuff is so destructive.
It's so bad.
Give your kids some chamomile tea and tie them down to the chair with a belt.
We've been following...
Take them to watch Booba.
From their sex swing.
We've been following Baxter International, which of course is a specialty drug maker, indirectly owned by the U.S. government.
We've discussed that on this show before.
They're part of a larger company which exclusively has governmental contracts.
This is the company that accidentally bypassed biohazard level 3 security and somehow was able to mix up regular old seasonal flu vaccine with the bird flu vaccine.
And distributed it to the 18 European countries, and apparently it never got into the doctor's office, but who the hell knows?
They are, of course, at this moment in time, in full production of the swine flu vaccine.
They say, hey, we're in full-scale production.
Of a swine flu, which, by the way, in Europe is called the Mexican flu.
I want to make that very clear.
They do not call it...
If you say swine flu in Europe, people go, huh?
What are you talking about?
Mexican flu.
Oh, oh, I understand what you're talking about.
And it will be commercially available in July.
The company made its announcement Friday, one day after the World Health Organization declared swine flu a global pandemic.
Oops, missed that one.
They raise it to level 35, whatever it is now.
Baxter said its patented technology cuts in half the usual time it takes to develop a vaccine to about 13 weeks instead of 26.
Yes, because they obviously do a sloppy job.
One thing worth pointing out, that specialty drugmaker Baxter International, it's headquartered in Illinois.
Yeah, I think you did that before.
I just have to keep pointing it out.
The center of the global mafia that runs our country.
Yeah.
UFOs exist.
I believe in them.
So, I'm watching it with C-SPAN or CNN or Charlie Rose or I don't know who.
It's just one of these shows where you're talking to people.
All right.
So, they had this woman on, the head of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan.
Did she have her uniform on?
She's from China and she seems like a dimwit.
Did she have her uniform on?
No, she didn't.
She was just wearing a man's blazer.
And HEMA underwear.
I don't know if anybody watched the older versions of MADtv, but she reminded me a little bit of Miss Swan.
I don't recall.
If anyone out there who knows, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
But she just seems like a dummy.
I mean, I just thought, why is this woman running things?
And she's going on with all these excuses.
Maybe she's a genius, but she doesn't speak very good English.
But it sounds like she speaks good English and is just not bright.
But I was not pressed.
Okay, and was there any new information?
Oh, she's just going on and on about how people don't understand what a pandemic is.
Oh, yeah, this is their whole kind of backpedaling thing?
This is the new meme.
The new meme is the, no, pandemics is in every country in the world, thus it's a pandemic, so let's all panic and run around in a circle with our arms waving and the air screaming.
Right.
Well, the meme is, you know, you probably won't die from the pandemic, but because the virus propagates so quickly or it's unpredictable, they have some really weird set of metrics that determines what a pandemic is.
And ergo, for the first time in 45 years, they have actually raised the threat level to, what is it, six or seven?
Six.
Yeah, and we have a pandemic.
It's like...
Well, she did hint at one thing in this interview that I tried to get a clip of it.
I don't know why I didn't, but maybe I don't know.
You were at the commencement doing Sieg Heil's.
Sieg Heil.
We must help Obama.
She made mention that there was a fear, and she just said this subtly, but it was like she's worried.
The worry is the following.
Yeah, okay, this thing is not a big deal.
Nobody's really dropping like flies.
We don't really know what happened in Mexico.
They killed those 15 in one place.
It could have been something else.
She says the problem is, and I think there may be some...
It was, of course, whoever was interviewing her didn't do any follow-up.
No.
She says...
Because it's a talk show.
Yeah.
She says they're...
Right, why should they be talking?
So she says that we don't want to have...
The problem is H1N5 or H5N1, the bird flu, and this thing, H1N1, are both floating around at the same time, and what we don't want is these two to bump into each other and create something that we really have a problem with.
Well, you don't have to worry about that because Baxter does it for you.
Isn't that what they're hired to do?
Right.
Don't worry about it.
Baxter's doing it already.
Baxter's on the case.
Why worry?
It's already taken care of.
Well, you know, and...
Can you imagine if you...
What kind of meetings would you have if you're a corporate guy?
You're in the board and say, look, our vaccine sales are up this year, but what can we do?
We've got to keep on our growth.
We need to double that.
How do we...
How exactly do we sell them?
How do we move the needle on our stock, people?
That's how it goes.
Come on, people.
I'm the CEO of Baxter International.
How do we move the needle on our stock?
Come on, everyone's got options.
We've got to get this thing moving.
Our options are about to vest, so what can we do here?
I don't think they actually have those meetings, but it's in the DNA of the company.
For sure.
Yeah, no, there's a lot of that DNA-related decision-making, which I agree.
I mean, sometimes they might have a meeting like that, but it seems unlikely because then you need someone to write a memo down and you'd be in jail.
But generally speaking, it's like when people say, well, you know, you work for a news organization that's owned by NBC, which is owned by General Electric.
How come you don't do any stories about the...
Right.
Well, we haven't really found such a thing.
Has anyone ever told you not to do a negative story on General Electric?
No, absolutely not.
No one has ever, ever, ever said not to do a negative story on General Electric, which I believe would be the truth.
But nobody working in their right mind would do it.
And that brings me to an email from Chris Clark, just following up on the Last Know agenda, where we were talking about Taylor Swift and what were the connections for Taylor Swift, the fine country and western artist who noodles around and is ergo a musical genius.
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
So here's the connection.
I'll just read his email.
He's from Orlando.
And of course, we could have figured this one out.
Taylor Swift's, quote, music.
I like that.
Nice little editorial there, Chris.
Is being distributed by Universal Music Group, which is owned by Vivendi.
Vivendi sold some or all of Universal Studios to NBC a few years ago.
And of course, NBC aired the interview of the genius Taylor Swift.
Bingo.
Yeah.
That's how it works.
That's how it works.
Yeah, it's one big scam.
Yeah, but they don't even know they're doing it, which is just the crazy thing.
When I was at MTV, man, and Viacom, it was so obvious how this stuff worked.
And people would just be like, yeah, this artist is really cool.
Oh, yeah, awesome.
And they'd be talking to their buddies over at the other channels.
It flows.
You become part of an organism, a compartmentalized organism, and it just happens.
And it's not even necessarily big evil.
Well, I wonder how many people really notice this, because I know my kids do.
Well, your kids seek Heil at commencement.
I mean, clearly they're not the norm.
The point is that when we're watching CBS, it's kind of funny if everybody's watching 60 Minutes, which is rare because most people don't like the show except me.
There'll be a news story, hard news story, hard news story.
Then there'll be some fluff piece about some singer or an actor.
And the kids will always go, I'll bet you that's a Viacom movie coming out.
Ten bucks, it's Viacom.
Go look it up on the net.
Of course.
But it's like, why is 60 Minutes?
It's just baffling me.
Yeah, 60 Minutes, which does huge world events, talks to world leaders, and then all of a sudden they come up with a big fluff piece.
Yeah.
And they make those pieces months in advance sometimes, John.
It's just on the shelf.
Don't forget, in the traditional broadcast medium, you have to make, let me think, 60 Minutes!
Without commercials, of course, 46.
But you have to make 46 minutes of programming every single week, and you need some pad, as they call it.
I think it's down to 40, isn't it?
No, seriously.
You could be right.
You could be right, the way I'm seeing the television these days.
Yeah, I think it's 40 minutes an hour now.
So you need padding.
And that pad comes in the form of a two-minute piece, a four-minute piece, or a six-minute piece that can be chopped down to a three-minute piece.
And then, of course, the credits are really the final measure I love the way you pronounce that.
And depending on how much time is left, they will speed up the credits or slow them down to hit their 60 minutes exactly, including all the commercials.
That's how it works, because you've got to hit the commercial pod right on the dot.
People don't realize this.
You know when sometimes you see a show and the credits go by?
It's so fast that on your LCD screen it's actually completely unreadable?
They do that because they're trying to cram in all the credits into the exact amount of time they have left.
Yeah, no, the credit roll is used as a kind of a buffer.
A bumper.
Yeah, a buffer, bumper, pad.
A buffer that you got.
Then when you see a slow credit roll, which is the one that always cracks me up, and they start showing credits for people they never show.
They have all these extra names they put on.
And I like to thank my mother.
And you go, oh my God, somebody screwed up.
Because when you have a slow credit roll, then you know that the show ended too soon.
Somebody had a missed timing or something.
Who knows?
And the Simpsons do it kind of on both ends of the show.
At the beginning of their show, they have variations of their opening cartoon where Homer's driving home from work after leaving the nuke plant.
And sometimes they'll compress that and they'll leave sections of it out and they use that to buffer the show too.
Oh, really?
I didn't know.
They have a real short version that's almost like he just pretty much gets out of work and is at home.
I will say it is so impressive when you see how the big...
Broadcast personalities.
When MSNBC launched, and they were over in New Jersey, this was with my previous company.
Actually, it was before Think.
It was OnRamp.
And Microsoft, who of course were one of the partners with NBC, they needed a chat.
To go along with some of their programming.
And I can't remember exactly how, but actually it was Denise, what was her name, who was a Microsoft woman.
I'm sure you know her.
Caruso, I want to say.
Does that make sense?
Denise Caruso.
She was a journalist.
No, not Denise.
It was Denise something or other, and she was in charge of, at the time, it was Microsoft Comic Chat.
Do you remember that?
We had these little avatars.
Yeah, right.
It's another thing that failed.
Yeah, of course.
They never stick to these things is the problem.
It couldn't scale.
This was the problem.
So they couldn't scale it, and the team within Microsoft was really worried, but they wanted some form of chat.
And we had a bunch of these hacker boys with names like Rat Boy and Alan Louie was one.
Not that that's a cool name, but I just remember these guys.
And they had basically...
We've hacked together a very, very, very basic, very freaking simple CGI script into an IRC, you know, proven technology, right?
Go figure.
And so we had this really robust chat based on IRC, which I, to this day, obviously still can't figure out.
And so they hired us to implement this.
And because of that, we were invited to the opening, and you'll recall perhaps that the big interview they had on opening day was Tom Brokaw interviewing President Bill Clinton.
And I sat in the control room and I was blown away by the professionalism of this guy.
So he's got his earpiece in and he's talking.
He's having a conversation.
And I believe he is listening to what the then president was saying.
And so they're having a dialogue and the producer is continuously talking into his ear and giving him cues.
And then it's like, okay, Tom, we have 30 seconds to commercial while Brokaw is talking.
And he's counting down the seconds, and Brokaw fires off another question which he knows is only going to get a quick yes or no answer, and he pulls it back away from the president and hits the commercial break right on the nose.
And I still get goosebumps when I think about that actual sequence.
It is unfrickin' real how good these guys are.
Okay.
You know, I do a lot.
Every once in a while, I have one of these remote crews from one of the big networks come by the house or something to shoot for some two-second thing, you know, a blurb.
Yeah.
And I'm always grilling them about people they worked with.
And at one time, I was working with the ABC network crew on, they used to have a thing called Sunday Business, and I got to do a report on it.
And so I was chatting with the guys and I know about these kinds of guys who have the multitasking ability to listen to the IFB in their ear and make it look...
And by the way, I can do some of that, but not like Brokaw.
Well, of course not.
That's why I broke up and was making millions of dollars.
But they always said that the guy who was the absolute best at the stuff and totally underrated was Forrest Sawyer.
Really?
Yeah.
The guy says that apparently Forrest Sawyer is legendary amongst various crews for being so slick.
He never flubs a line.
He can pick up the stuff off the IFB. His timing is impeccable.
He's just apparently just astonishing.
He...
He went off.
And I've always wondered why he never took over the nightline job or stuff like that.
I don't know what he...
I know why.
I know why.
Because he's like a flying goalie.
I mean, you need a guy like that within your team to be able to throw into any kind of situation, particularly if he has that...
And IFB is internal feedback, I think, is what it stands for.
I mean, when we did Mardi Gras live...
At MTV. That's when I kind of became the Forrest Sawyer of MTV. Damn it, there it is.
I am the Forrest Sawyer of MTV. Because I could do that too within the limits of the complexity of Mardi Gras on MTV. But I could take the direction and I could pretty much keep all the shit together on a live remote where you might actually have to go over someone else and kind of anchor that.
So it makes total sense to me that Forrest Sawyer would not have a full-time position, but...
Would be kind of the guy you can throw into anything.
And he probably just loves doing it, too.
I don't know how much he loves it because it seems to me that he quit the network and he went off to some university to teach and give seminars.
Now he does new media stuff.
He's out of his element completely.
I'm actually following his career so much, but I ran into him on some C-SPAN thing where he was hosting a...
One of these panels of dullards that sit at the table all in a row, and each one of them says a five-minute presentation, and they go back and forth with an uninteresting conversation kind of thing.
Well, it's probably because he had to do a Zyprexa story, and he got so disgusted by everything, he just quit.
I don't know.
It'd be worth checking out.
I know he's floating around somewhere, but anyway, he was like the guy that'd bring up his name.
I went, okay.
So I started watching him after that with that in mind, and I'd just see if there was ever going to be one mistake.
It was just like a machine.
You said something very interesting, by the way, at the beginning of this little dialogue about IFBs and Forrests.
You used the term blurb, which I like very much, and I think we should bring back.
My mom used to say that all the time, a blurb.
It's in massive use in the magazine business.
Yeah, exactly.
Which means no one uses it because no one reads magazines or books anymore.
In the back of the book, every one of those little quotes that says, I think this book is the greatest thing ever.
It says so-and-so Entertainment Weekly.
That's a blurb.
Could you please look up the definition online right now for me of blurb?
I wonder if it is defined as such in Webster's.
Blurb.
And by the way, this is probably a fine time as we near the end of this episode of No Agenda to talk about why we need your help to continue this fine programming.
Yes, and like...
Blurb is not defined?
That's what it's looking like.
Let me try it again.
Blurb search.
See, we need your financial help so that we can actually look things up for you.
Yeah, we can look stuff up on the internet.
Yeah, the pay us for it.
The blurb was actually a 1914 coinage by Gillette Burgess, and it means a short publicity notice as on a book jacket.
Okay, but it's keyword publicity, so a blurb is not news, it's PR. Okay.
By definition.
Yes.
Well, I like it.
I think we should bring blurb back into the mainstream, which of course is the internet.
Let's use that.
All right.
We'll blurb it.
Excellent.
And by the way, it can be used as a noun or a transitive verb.
I love it.
So you can blurb it.
And what's the transitive noun?
What is that?
It's a...
It's not a transitive noun, it's a transitive verb, or a noun.
A blurb is the thing, and it's just basically a...
It's a thing you can do.
You can verb.
It's like any other...
It's like most verbs.
It's interesting.
Almost all of them are transitive.
Okay.
It's interesting how you just said we can blurb it.
That's so close to blog it, isn't it?
Blog would be a transitive verb in that sense.
Right.
All right.
So could you please blurb a little bit about our armory?
Well, we can use some...
This show is publicly supported.
I want to remind everybody of that.
And we're trying to keep it that way so we don't sit here and do five-minute commercials for various products.
Like Squarespace and GoDaddy and Budget.
And the same old stuff you hear every place else.
And it's like...
Which is, there's nothing wrong with doing that if you don't mind, and some people actually sent us notes saying, well, you know, you might as well do commercials, so we're sick of you asking for money.
We only ask for money for about 30 seconds, as opposed to two or three minute commercials where we're asking you to do this and that and the other thing, which is pretty much the same thing.
We're just telling you to just give us some money directly so we can not worry about, you know, we might have something else.
And influences, and not, you know, so we can be completely free.
Yeah, zero.
I mean, at some point, okay, maybe, you know, we won't be able to...
We're going to prove that we won't get enough public support.
We won't get enough donations at Dvorak.org slash NA. It's Dvorak.org slash NA. You can sign up.
And, you know, but we haven't done any premiums or anything like that, which some people complain about, but I think we're going to probably have to do that.
In other words, give away a book or something when we...
Or HEMA underwear.
By the way, the HEMA underwear thing, I was thinking about the embroidery.
You know, I think it might not be a good idea.
Oh?
Well, you don't want a bunch of knots and strings and threads rubbing against your private parts.
I know, I was just trying to visualize if I wanted that or not.
You know, you're going to have a, you know, you'll be sore.
But maybe on the waistband?
I mean, the waistband won't hurt you, will it?
Yeah, but the waistband, the really good ones, is really kind of thin.
It's not like a big, fat waistband, like, you know, cheap jockey shorts.
Okay.
Well, I have a prototype coming.
So we can try the prototype.
We can try the prototype.
I'll get the, you know, you get the black jockey version, and I get the, you know, the cool kind of surfer dude with pant legs.
And we'll try it.
We'll see if we like it.
I don't think it's going to bother you at all, the embroidery.
I take your point.
But, you know, a premium is a premium.
I mean, let's learn from MTV, okay?
I mean, Christ.
Cripes.
Crikey.
How about just a blurb?
We'll put a blurb on the HEMA underwear.
A blurb.
So I just crashed my...
Firefox.
You get update 3.5 million, which of course automatically downloads and kills everything you're doing and you never can figure it out until you get that dialogue box saying, hey, we downloaded this for you, sucker!
I have no idea.
I might have.
It's quite annoying.
I hate it when they do that.
So, it crashed?
Yeah, and it said, do you want me to send a message?
No, don't.
Don't click it.
What's the point?
We didn't have any good donations since last Thursday?
Anything worth mentioning?
Nothing major.
And the ones that did come in, I'll mention them on the next Thursday show.
Well, thanks, everybody.
We really appreciate it.
Alright, John, what are we at?
I count 65, take off the beginning of about 61 minutes, so we've been trying to keep this a little bit short.
Well, listen, there's just a couple more things I want to mention.
Oh, I'm sorry, should I stop the credit music?
No, we'll mention them on the next show, let me tease them then.
Okay.
I'm going to talk about some PBS programming, including Kids Biz, or Biz Kids, or whatever it's called.
Oh, nice, yes.
Where they show a Jewish guy in a money safe, counting money.
Ha ha!
It's extremely offensive.
It's extremely offensive.
And it's on PBS, of all things.
Unbelievable.
And also, if you wash your car in Port Angeles on the street, you can be fined $1,000.
Because the federal government will not let you wash your car anymore if it's going to go into the sewer.
And that is in the state of Cascadia.
Yes, but this is it.
They always say, no, no, no, it's a government edict.
The government wants water rights.
They want to make it clear you can't get water.
Well, they own the water, remember?
They passed the bill.
The government owns all the water.
It's their water.
It's not your water to expend however you wish.
It's their water.
So, we'll talk about that next time.
And next time, we'll come very soon.
Until then, coming to you from the crappiest bandwidth corporate apartment in San Francisco, Gitmo Nation West, my name is Adam Curry.
And sitting on fiber up here in the Pacific Northwest, Gitmo Nation Pacific Northwest, as it were, I'm John C. Dvorak.
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