4169 Strikes and Jet Skis

Hello, and welcome to a special interactive edition of The Bugle, in which we give you, the listener, a choice of which show to listen to.

Your options this week are The True Story of Cushions, Magic Myrtle's Moonshine Mayhem, the podcast in which Magic Myrtle, 63rd ranked necromancer in Utah, which is a surprisingly impressive achievement, gets hammered on homemade spirits and attempts to make the dead laugh with some extremely rude jokes.

Are you using your bucket wrong?

The Paint Colour podcast, 10 new paint colours described.

What worms think this week with a special interview with Germany's leading worm impersonator Werner Worm.

Be warned, Werner stays in character throughout.

Which isn't great audio to be honest, despite the undercurrent of sexual tension between himself and herself.

uh donald trump screams at traffic also known as the news from america or the bugle please make your decision now you have chosen the bugle hello buglers uh phew that instant vote was much closer than i would have hoped welcome to issue 4169 of the bugle i am andy zaltzman now aged 46 a whole year more than when i last spoke to you which coincidentally is the age at which buddy holly had he lived would have produced an album of avant-garde hard house cover versions of the songs of the British punk band The Slits.

In 1982 that would have been a decade ahead of its time shows what we lost when the music died.

Also by coincidence 46 is the equivalent age in Delania Americana Mayfly years at which the average Delania Americana Mayfly starts to wonder what it's doing with its life.

For the male Delania that's about 18 minutes into its half-hour lifespan.

For the female it's about the three minute mark of her five minutes of existence.

Probably just enough time for the lady Delanias to start meditating on the patriarchal unfairness of Delania lifespans, I imagine, and for the dude Delanias to think about running off with a two-minute old female Delania and buying a flashy new car.

I'm not suggesting, of course, that I've started wondering what I'm doing with my life at the age of 46, far from it.

I've been wondering that for at least the past 45 years.

Well, joining me on this week's bugle from the other side of the world, it's Alice Fraser.

Hello, Alice.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

How are you?

I'm well, thanks.

How's Australia?

It's full of despair, but you know, nice weather.

That's despair and nice weather.

It's full of magpies at the moment.

I got swooped by a magpie earlier today.

Right.

Well, if there's despair and nice weather, is that slightly more irritating?

Because you can't even use the weather as a metaphor for your general sense of being.

Yes, yes.

To make poetry harder.

Yes, the pathetic fallacy is is a bunk.

The pathetic fallacy is something I've had

family show.

I met your family.

Also joining us later on,

we have two interviews

with,

well, from across the pond in America,

with well, one with a bit of a blast and a bugle past and one with NATO Green.

we are recording on the 12th of October 2020 on this day in 1492 Christopher Columbus's first expedition made landfall in the Caribbean in the Bahamas they exchanged gifts with the local Taino people

not sure history doesn't tell us what Columbus received but it is known that his hamper of goodies for the locals consisted of a bumper sticker a branded CC Explorer travel bag, a leg of good quality ham, smallpox and a commemorative pewter tankard inscribed with the traditional European greeting, congratulations, you've been colonised.

On this day, 200 years later in 1692, the Salem witch trials ended.

At the time, of course, there was considerable legal and linguistic semantic dispute over whether or not there was any difference between the word witch and the word woman.

But

recent computer simulation has revealed that if tried under the laws of 1692, 97% of all people alive today would be legally witches.

And who wins out of that, of course?

The lawyers.

Always the way still raking it in some 328 years later.

And coincidentally, 328 is the number of spiders

you're supposed to throw into your cauldron in some witches' recipes.

Read into that what you will.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week.

Board games, a special board games section.

Now we're all spending a lot more time at home playing board games either literally or metaphorically with our inner selves.

And we review the latest board games to come out, including Forget Me What, which is a brilliant new game for the disposable instant media generation.

Draw three cards to describe a new sensation sweeping the internet, from stacks of person stroke animal cards, activity cards, and adverb cards to make a sensation such as a donkey canoeing fearfully or Mike Pence shaving his head erotically.

Set the included egg timer going and if any of your opponents can remember any aspect of your sensation you lose points for insufficient viral ephemerality.

Also we review another exciting new game, Top Turd, a deeply satirical game of politics in which you have to move your politician around the board collecting scandals, failures, indignities and other assorted corruptions and career ineptitudes.

Land on a make a speech or write an article square for the chance to win extra gratuitous offending and naked hypocrisy points.

Compete with your opponents for most ethically squalid business practices or political policies until your reputation is so destroyed that nothing can damage you further.

The 21st century politician's shield of invincibility.

The first person to achieve total unelectability wins and becomes the king turd who has floated to the top of the jacuzzi of politics.

Also, we review reboots of classic board games for our new COVID age, including No Risk, an update of the world domination classic Risk.

For the Covid age, you begin on one of the continents and stay there, having nothing to do with anywhere else in the world.

Each turn, the player rolls the dice, which are blank on all sides, and then does nothing.

The game ends when all players agree that everything is futile.

Also, Squabble, which is a cross between Scrabble and a Squabble, in which players have to dispute all words played by their opponents because, hey, it's 2020, we're humans, and how do we know we're alive if we're not in a futile argument with someone?

And an operation, an in-action-packed fun for none of the family game as the much-loved electric loop-based game of Steady Hands Operation moves into the year 2020.

Essentially, it's the same setup, the operation table with patient, a pair of tweezers for removing organs, all wired up to a buzzer and a light, but each player is allowed no closer than two metres from the board and no operations are allowed to take place.

That board game review section in the bin.

Are you a board games fan, Alice, or not?

I'm not.

I feel like I should be a board games fan.

I played a fair bit of board games with my first-year university friends, and then to the point where they bought me a trivial pursuit board for my 18th birthday, and they gave it to me.

And I thought, I hate board games.

What I liked was my friends.

Top story this week, COVID around the world.

And, well, at last, some good news, Alice.

We always focus on the negatives with COVID, the pain, suffering, tragedy, the slow degradation of everything that makes life worth living, the crushing of the hopes and dreams of generations amidst the political flailings of the inept and unqualified, the agonising realisation that democratic politics is dealing with all of its challenges incredibly badly, the heart-rending lack of spectators at sport and face masks.

And we bleat on about negative things like our government's awarding billions of pounds worth of contracts to companies with no discernible expertise but friends in high places.

We bleat on about that as if companies with relevant expertise could have done any better, which they could have done, but that's not the point.

But what about the positives, Alice?

What about the positives?

Obviously, I mean, people do, it's not what we haven't mentioned the positives at all.

People bang on about the displays of incredible humanity and generosity, nice homemade bread, the intermittent outbreaks of tokenistic, performative corporate shame.

But what about real, tangible, measurable politics?

Well, this week at last, there is one, because billionaires are doing measurably well out of this global pandemic.

Surely that is something for us all to cling to.

Yes, yes, Andy.

The headline that I read is the wealth of the world's billionaires is up 27% during COVID.

Open brackets, cackles an evil wizard with a hard-on for recreating the feudal systems of the past by regenerating a peasant versus aristocracy format.

I'm definitely not saying that the billionaires wanted or caused a massive increase in human suffering that directly caused an uptick in their personal wealth.

I am saying that when you see your industry on a seesaw with human happiness, you might want to start trickling some of that wealth downward by, for example, pinning employee wages to profit, you ravenous salac-mouthed dickwips.

Just always be careful when you're on a seesaw, what may come trickling down from the other end.

The breakdown, if I had a look at this, the breakdown of billionaire winners from the coronavirus is fascinating to me.

So tech billionaires' wealth is up 41%.

That makes sense to me.

The gentle touch of a grandmother, a spontaneous ego-boosting kiss slightly too close to the lips from a hot colleague, even the ability to punch a Nazi have all been sublimated to unsatisfying

technological proxies.

The last two sometimes come incredibly close together, of those as well.

Yeah, everyone's getting cancelled.

Even the self-protective, ironic sexiness of a let's not define this relationship, Netflix and chill, has turned into a solo Netflix and YouTube at the same time so that makes sense.

Healthcare billionaires also make sense.

Their profits have gone up with mortality at the forefront of people's wallets and some of the nicer billionaires dropping funding into other billionaires like a money-based version of suck and blow.

Even the people who are offering things that people would especially want during a pandemic make sense to me.

China's new richest person is a bottled water guy.

James Dyson is doing incredibly well.

He's the top of the UK rich list because who doesn't want a top-notch vacuum cleaner when you have to spend 23 hours a day confronted by your own skin flakes.

The weird thing,

the weird thing for me is that the rise in billionaire money reflects...

My favourite breakfast cereal, incidentally.

The thing that's gone up is like stock markets and industrialists since late March.

And that has happened even though most countries are in severe recession.

The reason, apparently, is that industrials are being priced,

the markets are pricing in what's called a significant economic recovery after the lockdown ends, which is a really nice way of saying that people are paying the people they think will be rich later by making them rich now, which is a significant portion of the reason that they will be rich later, because nothing makes money like free money.

Oh, it's so reassuring that our economic system constantly learns the lessons from its historic mistakes.

Now, the way I look at it is, I mean, this is a genuine genuine good news story you said that the report from the Swiss bank UBS showed that the world's 10 digit net worth individuals have seen their wealth climb by over a quarter during the pandemic to just over $10 trillion.

That's 10 trillion or in layperson's terms how much?

And that's not just in the pandemic.

That was from April to July alone.

So basically April is when it basically that's the just gave them long enough April to see how the pandemic was unfolding and say to each other, hang on, team gazillions.

Is it just me or is anyone else up for a happy hour at Club Global Crisis?

And

again, I think it's a positive because let's not forget, billionaires are one of the world's smallest minorities.

Numerically, there are fewer billionaires than speakers of the Kalina language in Brazil and Peru, which is comparatively healthy, almost 4,000 people, almost double the amount of people who speak fluent billionaire.

Extreme poverty is set to rise for the first time in two decades this year, but that doesn't matter so much.

Out of sight, out of mind.

And let's focus on

the success of these hard-working billionaires.

The UBS report said that some billionaires have donated some of

their increased wealth to help the fight against COVID.

The report said that they'd identified 209 billionaires billionaires

who've publicly committed a total equivalent to $7.2 billion

from March to June.

So that's around 10% of all billionaires who've committed to giving a bit of a shit and they have pledged almost a hundredth of a percent of the collective billionaire wealth pot to the global cause.

You simply can't ask for more than that, can you?

You cannot ask for any more than that.

You can't afford to ask for more than that.

Presidents versus COVID updates now.

And well, Donald Trump has proved conclusively this week that the 210,000 people and counting who've died from or with COVID in the USA were all wrong.

They were wrong to do so.

COVID is actually a piece of piss on a cakewalk in the park.

Those were the President's own words written with his own face.

I mean, it's a miraculous recovery, Alice.

I mean, from you would have thought, you know, that

it's a miraculous recovery, really, and it shows very much that God is clearly on the side of the

president, who described his bout of COVID as a blessing from God,

as well as a priceless election campaign opportunity, the kind of thing only really awesome people get and no big deal unless you're a wimp about it and die.

But the key, I mean, he didn't say all of those out loud, but it's very much all of those were implied.

But he did say out loud it was a blessing

from from God.

I mean you are

renowned to be in direct contact with various deities

current, present and future.

Is there any truth to this claim made by the President?

The thing about Trump's illness is that nobody believes any of it.

Everything that has come out from all sides of the equation, whether it's his doctors or him, just no one believes it.

And they don't believe it for different reasons.

If they're on his side, they think that it's a secret plot that he's doing.

And if they're on the other side, they think it's a secret plot.

And just nobody...

What is the point of anyone saying anything if no one can believe anything anyone says?

Well, that's getting very philosophical now.

I mean,

it certainly gave...

Trump a chance to channel his inner cartoon autocrat and indeed his outer cartoon autocrat.

Amazingly how often those amazingly how often those two go together.

He flew back to the White House in a chopper, although only after the chilly weather put him off returning naked in a burning golden chariot.

He then heroically strode up a staircase, leaving himself majestically, only very slightly, obviously desperately gasping for breath.

He then removed his mask because, well, why not show your people you're unafraid of other people getting ill?

That's the kind of strong leadership we need in this world.

And then saluted the military helicopter like any decent draft dodger would.

And then made the chopper take off by saying, Arise, my pretty pretty.

He's managed to turn it into some kind of personal triumph, you know, the way he's projected it to the American public.

You do get the impression that if he was a footballer, he would be the kind of footballer who would celebrate wildly and point at the name on the back of his shirt after a ball ricocheted into the net off his ass for a 94th-minute consolation goal and a 9-1 defeat after he had scored four own goals and repeatedly whacked his own goalkeeper in the crotch with a baseball bat.

And he told America not to live in fear of the virus,

which, you know, in a way that's that's fair enough.

It's also good, for example, not to live in fear of lions.

But that doesn't mean that you have to demonstrate how little you fear lions by putting on a pantomime zebra outfit, smearing yourself in wildebeest-flavoured ketchup and prancing around a safari park shouting, look at me not being afraid, before fearlessly unlocking the gates of the lion enclosure.

One of the things that is astonishing to me is that he told America that he had lied to them about the virus for their own good.

Now he's telling them that he got the virus because he was being brave for them.

And despite having already told them that he lied, I think the people who say they like Trump because he says what he means then spend all of their time explaining what he actually meant by what he said

or explaining that he didn't mean what he said, but he didn't say it on purpose.

And what he said he meant wasn't what he meant to say he meant because it's obvious what he meant.

It's so obvious that he meant it's so obvious what he meant that he didn't need to actually say it.

That's a very good summary of the last four years, to be honest.

He talks in innuendo conspiracy jargon, half sentences.

He uses language like an abstract impressionist to sort of herd people towards meanings that are more emotional states than they are ideas.

Everything he says is a Rorschach test if the inkblots are always in the shape of a penis holding a gun and a massively overdrawn credit card in the name of a shell company.

That's a beautiful image, Alice.

He was given a number of experimental treatments to expedite his recovery and get him back to work as quickly as possible, including steroids, plasma, and the looming prospect of electoral defeat, which I think was probably the most effective medicine he could have had, to be honest.

He downplayed the seriousness of the virus and basically said that if only the 200,000-plus losers who've lost to it had taken the simple precaution of having access to a helicopter, their own private hospital and a million dollars worth of medical treatment, they would probably agree with him instead of being dead.

He was given dexamethasone, which has a number of side effects, including pronounced mood swings and irrational disinhibited behaviour.

And by coincidence, dexamethasone is what powdered baby milk was made of in the USA in 1946.

I mean, is that a fact?

It might as well be.

His personal physician, Dr.

Sean Conley, I think came up with arguably the greatest piece of

doctoring in the history of medicine.

He was asked why Trump had been given...

he was asked why he had not informed the media that Trump had been given supplemental oxygen.

He said, I did not want to give any information that might steer the course of the illness in another direction.

Which I think has given us an insight into how diseases work and how psychological viruses are.

You know,

they are confidence-based creatures, very much like human beings.

And COVID, whatever you say about it, that's a virus that listens,

it listens to data, and it listens to what doctors say.

And

if you don't build it up, then the virus is going to lose its edge.

Yes,

COVID is very smart.

It can solve simple puzzles.

It's almost as intelligent as a doctor.

No, that's COVID.

This brings me to the launch of my new product, which is fact-based medicine, which is where you just say facts or lies at a disease until it goes away and I'm calling it a fact scene.

I don't know if that was worth the build-up.

I think Alice it's the bugle.

If anything you could have gone a lot further with the build-up.

We also saw last week the vice presidential debate, which is rather more civilized than the first presidential debate, and the accolade right up there alongside with being a more child-friendly toy than a hand grenade.

And

obviously there's been a lot of talk about the fly that landed on Mike Pence and ended up saying, no way, I'm eating that.

And the fact that the candidates, Pence and Kamala Harris, were separated not by seven feet, as initially planned, but by an infinite chasm of American division and despair.

So that seemed a lot safer.

It did.

It's just amazing to watch them both try to be incredibly giffable.

It's become the marker of politics, is just doing the eye roll that people are going to send to each other.

Exclusive Bugle interview now, and we now cross to California to join NATO Green.

This is a very exciting new development for the Bugle.

We are interviewing NATO, who's sitting in a car in the middle of some news.

NATO, just explain where you are and what you've been doing.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Hello, Alice.

uh i am sitting in a car um i so some buglers will probably know this so as uh you know i'm a comedian but i also have a uh hobby as a union organizer um

and uh and so i just uh it is as as i sit here i just organized uh a incredibly successful strike.

It was a five-day strike of over 3,000 public health workers

in and around Oakland, California.

And the strike ended at 7 a.m.

Pacific time this morning.

I was out in front of the buildings and then walked the workers into their buildings at 7 a.m.

to end their successful five-day strike.

So I'm checking in with you, and then we go back to the bargaining table in a couple of hours.

So the strike was essentially nurses at three hospitals in Oakland?

Not just nurses, it was all the job classifications.

So nurses,

house hospital housekeepers hospital food service workers social workers physical therapists uh phlebotomists you know ultrasound techs everybody we also uh and we covered i think four hospitals and three satellite clinics so uh and and that you know at certain points we had just like hundreds of people filling the streets uh uh and blockading the streets and what was unusual about it is uh is that it wasn't just a strike

over money, but it was really a strike over

sort of austerity, like chronic underfunding of the public health system.

And about 20 years ago, the county that Oakland is in, Alameda County, kind of quasi-privatized its public health system.

And the strike was

partly to undo that and get

the county to take responsibility for public health again.

And on the second day of the strike, they agreed basically to do that.

I don't know if you've been on strikes before.

The weird thing about going on strike, Andy, is that like you have these huge ideas about, you know, we're about reducing economic inequality and we're going to change the world and the rising of the working class.

And then, as soon as the strike starts, it's like, where are the granola bars for the picket lines?

You know, every strike develops its own sort of unique picket line culture.

And so, like, there were some cases where individual departments would go, would sort of take, grab a bullhorn, and then go march around and just shout about how much their own managers sucked.

So there'll be some people being like, you know, what do we want?

Contract.

When do we want it now?

And then there's another group of people down the block who are like,

Jeff, you know.

So that's great.

Also, you know, 3,000 workers, it's a hugely diverse workforce, probably 80% people of color,

and a lot of a very international workforce.

And so, and because it's Oakland, a big part of the strike culture was synchronized dance numbers.

So, different sites would create these elaborate synchronized dance

numbers on the picket line and then post videos, and then there were battles between them.

Do you know, do you know?

I know I'm going to regret asking this.

Do you know what Ghost Riding the Whip is?

No,

not personally.

No.

Okay.

So Ghost Riding the Whip is some, as we say, some real Oakland shit.

So

it comes out of the

sideshow culture, like

Oakland's underground car culture.

And Ghost Riding the Whip refers to

putting your car in neutral, unlocking the parking brake, and then getting out of the car and dancing around the car while it rolls slowly forward.

So

that's that's what Henry Ford had in mind when he invented the Model T.

So

we had people ghost riding the whip on the picket lines.

So in true Oakland fashion, we had a group of Ethiopian nurses aides doing synchronized dancing to Amharic music.

We had a bunch of Nigerian nurses dancing to Nigerian music.

So we had a Zumba class on the picket line.

We had a giant inflatable 20-foot rat for no reason, just because people like to see it.

So that was very exciting.

And then

late at night on day four of the strike, we found out that someone who had been on the picket line had tested positive for COVID-19.

And so we scrambled and didn't want to have our strike be a super spreader event.

And so with about half an hour notice, we assembled 20 workers who were on strike, our elected rank-and-file leadership,

and then in a span of of about three hours,

evaluated the information, made some decisions, planned, and then executed a response to contact, trace, isolate, and contain the exposure, and shut down in-person picketing.

And so, what I'm trying to say is that 20 striking healthcare workers had a more competent response to the pandemic than the entirety of the U.S.

and British governments combined.

So,

that's how it's been.

Right.

So amongst the some of it was sort of related to COVID safety and complaints about understaffing, inadequate training and shortages of personal protective equipment.

I mean, okay, isn't, yeah, wouldn't having adequate staffing, decent training and decent equipment show the virus that we're afraid of it?

And isn't it better to go with the American government and not show that kind of weakness to the virus, which hates our way of life?

Yeah, so just to give you a sense of it,

you know, staff, they have, because they don't have enough PPE, staff have been given medical gowns to wear into patients' rooms that say not for medical use.

So that's fun.

Under California law, in the public sector, an employer is allowed to seek a court order to have exemptions from the strike

for

workers who are irreplaceable.

And the group of workers that were irreplaceable, that I mean, so they tried to get an injunction to stop the strike.

There was a whole legal ordeal.

And the group of workers that they wanted to

be compelled to cross the picket line and work during the strike were workers in the psychiatric hospital who were mostly

Nigerian immigrants.

And they wanted to compel those workers to have to report to work.

And the workers were like, f you, I'm striking.

And

so, and I was really struggling to remember, like, Andy, do you know, is there a word for what, what do you call it when you try to compel Africans to work against their will?

Oh, oh,

I should know this.

Oh,

we don't really like to think about it.

Something beginning with S?

It's lodged deep in our national consciousness.

Yeah, it was something like that.

Right.

So, not a good look for the entire system.

So, as with everything else in the United States, when something is messed up, usually the explanation is slavery.

We've talked about Cardi B and the song WAP.

One of the members actually rewrote WAP as a picket line chant.

So, that was, and shall I read you the lyrics briefly?

Please, please.

Okay, here we go.

I said, certified freak, striking seven days a week.

Workers and patients make that layoff game weak.

Woo.

Yeah, you f fing with some workers and patients.

Bring our contract and respect for these workers and patients.

Beat it up.

Take in charge.

Extra proud and extra hard.

Put these f right in your face.

Cut them out like a credit card.

Workers out here on the front line.

Bosses work from home safe inside.

COVID breakout.

Cover your eyes.

Something like that.

I always knew that song had a kind of a hard left-wing undertone.

It's

taken you to show it to us all.

You're welcome.

Well, I mean, my favourite bit is the parking attendants taking temperatures.

You know, that you said it was a bad idea that they take them from their elbows.

I'm surprised they didn't take them from their cars.

That's right.

Yeah.

And

now we're on to victory to settle the contract.

Cool.

Congratulations.

That's

a fascinating and

uplifting story.

So thanks for telling us all about it.

And hopefully we'll talk to you on a full bugle at some point, some point soon.

Do enjoy the next three weeks, Nato.

I'm sure you're, you know, it's going to show America at its absolute best and the build-up to the election.

Andy, I have to say, one of the best things about the strike is that I've had this single-minded focus on pulling off the strike.

And apparently, Donald Trump has done something.

There's

an election underway.

I have no idea what's happened in the news for the last week or two.

So that's like it's been a real vacation.

but now it's time for another trip across the Atlantic to talk well to to someone we've not spoken to on on the bugle for

some time and it is hugely exciting to welcome him back to the show please give a huge bugle welcome where wherever you are to the returning hero that is the American

American

hello how how how have you been for the last what decade or so oh it can't be a pot can't possibly be a decade since I've seen you guys huh I mean

if so I can tell you this it's been a hell of a decade you know it's been a hell of a decade we're doing I mean things over here you know you guys never talked to me when the ship was sinking over here with during Obama and now all of a sudden once again things are great and then the phone rings you know right I guess yeah I guess well we've got to cover our cover our backs I mean what have you personally been up to the last you know the last however many years since since since you were last with us?

I've been doing pretty good, you know, a couple of divorces.

That's fewer than your average decade, isn't it?

Well, you know, look, I I can tell you what's happening right now, and I don't want to get into relationship advice, but women over here now, all of a sudden they've got all these ideas about, you know, not, you know, not being called this, not being called that.

You know, so it makes, you know, relationships pretty tough.

Right.

You know, it makes relationships tough.

Really what i've been working on is some ideas for shark tank i think that's my my next play okay so that that's that's where you pitch a business idea yeah we have dragon's den in britain yeah oh yeah i don't know what they call it in britain because here we have real businesses and stuff so we call it shark tank oh okay yeah

i know in england you guys used to have dragons but here yeah yeah it's been it's been interesting four years for america i mean how would you sum up the last for you the trump era as as a as a as an as as the american that you are

i mean I don't, I'm happy to sum it up, but obviously I think anyone could see it's been the greatest four years in, you know,

centuries.

Well, you say that anyone could see it, but it seems that, you know,

at least half of America think the exact opposite of that.

So, I mean, what?

Nah, that's fake news.

No, that's what.

See, that's what they do.

You see, this is what they do.

Like, so they take facts and distort them.

This is what's, and I'm glad you asked about this because this is what keeps happening.

So there's any number of topics that people will tell you are true and aren't true, and everything's up for questions right now.

You know, they'll say things like the earth is round, you know what I mean, or it's a globe or something.

And you go, Well, is it, but is it?

You know, so I'm all about asking questions that open up people's minds that are, you know, right there in front of them that maybe they're not seeing.

And I can tell you that the last four years, this country's stronger, it's

you're

it's stronger, it's better than it's ever been.

been.

Are you sure you're okay?

Yeah, no,

I just got allergies.

A lot of them.

Allergies, yeah.

A lot of my friends have allergies.

Yeah, it's been a tough allergy season.

I got

real bad headache.

I got like 103 fever for the last week or so, and I can't taste.

That lost mine.

It's just, I don't know if it's bad pollen.

Right.

A lot of pollen.

Everybody at my friend's house, we had a big party last week.

Like half the people from the party got allergies afterwards.

Right.

I've heard the pollen count is unusually high if you add it all up yeah and it was weird because we were all we were all inside and had the windows closed so no pollen came from but yet a lot of people got allergies from it i don't know but i mean pollen's a lot more advanced than it used to be isn't it it sort of finds it adapts yeah

evolution evolution in action isn't it yeah well if you believe in that but yeah yeah yeah so yeah of course now i mean one one interesting uh aspect of uh of uh Donald Trump's president.

Well, there's two things.

We look at the statistics of it.

One thing has gone up, and one thing has gone down under Trump's presidency.

Patriotism, I could tell you right now, patriotism is up higher than it's ever been.

And I think what's gone down is cowardliness.

Right.

Well, I mean,

that might be two different ways of looking at this.

What's come down is shark attacks.

Shark attacks have statistically, there have been fewer shark attacks under Trump per year than Obama.

And also.

That makes a lot of sense.

I mean,

how would you explain that?

Are sharks now, is America so much greater as a nation under Trump that sharks are now more scared of Americans than they used to be

100% right because they know we're not going to just stand there and take it you know what I mean that's the whole energy we've been putting out so whether you live on land whether you live in the ocean America is not to be messed with you know right okay so if you're gonna if you're gonna attack someone in the water at the beach you know go for i don't know a german maybe right okay

another thing that what the thing that's gone up is the the sales of jet skis has gone up.

Now, as we talked about before with you, the jet ski is

the most American object in the universe.

Well, it's a motorcycle on water.

I mean, it takes everything that's great about the world and combines it into one thing.

Yeah, so it makes sense.

It's like, in other words, the jet ski is what I call the freedom indicator.

So the more freedom you have, the more people are going to have access to jet skis.

So obviously, as Trump has increased freedoms, you're going to have more people being able to experience the great joy of freedom on the water with the wind in their face and also a lot of times water on them, even though they're on a device.

But of course a lot of Trump's heartlands are

in

the central part of the USA, which doesn't really have sea so much.

Well they got lakes.

They got lakes.

You know, look,

I'm not jealous.

I'm not jealous of where they got to ride their jet skis, but they can ride them.

So I just, sorry, the American Alice Fraser, pleased to meet you.

You may have met my alternate universe self quite recently.

Now, I have a question because you say that jet skis are the ultimate expression of freedom, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

But recently the NRA tweeted that their bullet sales had gone up about 134%, and they said that's a lot of freedom seeds.

Are you telling me that jet skis grow out of bullets?

Well, look, there's two different types of freedom.

All right.

There's the freedom of experiencing just, you

actual, no one is near me freedom.

And then there's the freedom.

And this is a big thing in this country.

See, see, the left is scared.

All right.

They're scared of their own shadow.

But what they don't realize is you don't have to be scared as long as you build a wall around the entire country and have a lot of bullets in your house and guns.

So that's why, you know, we're not scared.

You know, we just, we're just ready.

And I think that when you see bullet sales, you know, right, it is tough to get bullets right now, I can tell you.

That's why you got to stockpile.

And I've been telling people that a long time.

Gold and bullets are the only two things you need.

No, because if people have, you know, oh, they got, you got to stockpile food.

I go, do I have to stockpile food?

Because if you have food and I have bullets, then don't I have food?

You stockpile the food.

I'll take the bullets.

And then when I'm hungry, I'll come by your house and we'll have a conversation about how much of your food I can have.

Now, this year, of course, dominated around the world by the coronavirus, or as I know you call it, the alleged coronavirus.

The China hoax is right, okay.

So, I mean, how have you personally taken the fight to the China hoax?

You know, what I've been doing, I think, which is important, is whenever I go to Applebee's

for lunch or dinner, which is maybe three to five times a week, I won't wear a mask.

I will not wear a mask.

I walk in there, I won't wear a mask.

And here's the reason.

Now, there's a 22-year-old kid there who's the host.

You know, he's the hostess to made a D, whatever you call it.

And he gets upset, you know, because he's got to deal with me, a full-grown man who's angry with a lot of times a rifle on his shoulder, refusing to wear a mask.

But

I like to take the fight to the little guy.

I like these people with low-paying jobs at these small places to have to deal with my anger.

So that's one of the ways to do it.

Right.

So

you scare people like that.

Yeah, at the local level.

At the local level.

And that will drive the virus out of America.

Yeah, it also will drive the fear out of people who work at Applebee.

Not rather than increase the fear, because that would seem that that might.

No, no, no.

If you give people a little dose of fear, it cures them of the bigger fear.

It's like a vaccination.

It's like a fear vaccine, exactly.

If you believe in that sort of methodology.

Right.

I mean, look, I'm not a big vaccine guy, but if Trump says this is going to work, I believe him.

But like something like polio, no thanks.

I'll roll the dice.

Roll the dice with that.

Okay, fair enough.

That's more.

Yeah.

So

that's a projection of American strength, is it?

That America can say, well, we can afford to lose more people than any other country because we're so.

I'm not saying, I'm just saying that that is something that we're number one at, right?

Right, okay.

Just anything.

We're just listing things that we're number one at.

Right, okay.

That's what I'm saying.

And if we start doing that, then it will never end, really.

No, we'll be here all day.

I don't know.

I'm not sure how much time this show is anymore because it's been a long time.

Well, on that, no, I think we should probably bring

this conversation to a close.

It's been a fascinating insight into a side of America that maybe on this kind of lefty woke show,

we don't see enough of Americans.

Yeah, no, I think that it's important to be woke.

You know, I do.

But I think it's all relative about what

you're woke about.

You know what I mean?

Yeah,

what wokes you up?

Well, you know, for me, what wokes me up right now is realizing that everything I'm hearing coming out on the news media is fake.

And I think the more I realize it's fake, the angrier I get.

And I think the angrier I get, the more I want to take my guns and my bullets to the streets.

And so I'm waking up about the fact that even though...

My doctor says stairs aren't good for me right now because of my weight,

that I still might have to you know I still might have to get out there you know what I mean and but then the other part of me is like well it'd be easier to just do like an online civil war you know because I'm I'm tired yeah but I don't know so I'm waking up to a lot of things right well American thank you very much for joining us to do enjoy the elect the election in in a few weeks maybe we can talk to you again after that and see how you're looking forward to I'm happy to talk to you afterwards but I can tell you right now Trump's gonna win

Look, a lot of us have been saying, Do we even need an election?

You wouldn't understand that, but why not just have one leader in charge forever and then their kids can take over?

You know what I mean?

That seems like more of the American way to do it, you know.

Well, I mean, that's just baked into your DNA from the early days, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

Something you guys won't understand.

That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle with our two world-exclusive interviews and contributions from the wonderful Alice Fraser.

Alice, anything to plug?

Yes, I do a daily satirical news podcast set in an alternate dimension that is a sister podcast to this podcast.

It's called The Last Post and we have merch.

We have merch.

We have

if you are a listener to The Last Post, you'll know that in The Last Post, Dimension, Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Bob DeSenti and Trash Island are running for office under the Democratic flag and we have campaign t-shirts available, all of the proceeds of which go to the Rock Slash Island 2020 campaign.

So that's a great cause there.

That sounds like a crazy utopian world.

Oh, and you can find them on the buglepodcast.com.

Oh, yes, but you can also buy Bugle merch.

Yes.

From Vista.

But more importantly, the last post-merch.

Buy both.

You've got more than

one body to clothe.

Probably.

You can wear wear different clothes on different days.

That's what I was trying to say, Alice.

I'm a natural-born publiciser.

You can find all of

Alice's various works spread all over the internet.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

We'll be back next week and I will now play you out with some more lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme and to give a recurring or one-off donation to keep the show free and independent and thriving.

Go to thebooglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Chris Plumley wrote a children's book called Nonny Mouse The Anonymous Mouse.

It was, however, rejected by the publisher who claimed the title was self-contradictory and added that a cloak of anonymity is something shared by many, if not all mice anyway.

Chris responded, oh, well, here's another idea.

How about Paul Powerprick the pedantic publisher?

To which the publisher responded, it's better, but it's still no.

Muammar Gaddafi, interestingly one of five people of that name who are regular donors to the Bugle through the voluntary subscription scheme, pitched another book to the same publisher about a friendly dried grape who had the magical ability to bring people back to life.

His book, entitled Raisin the Dead, was also rejected on the grounds that it made it sound like the raisin itself was dead, which the publisher thought would be a hard sell in the kids' market, without even touching on the author's refusal to use a pseudonym.

John Tracy also had a fleeting brush with children's publishing.

However, his book, Millie Peed Goes to the Shoe Shop, was rejected as being, quotes, overly long and repetitive, aside from being a harrowingly overt satire on the life of the former Philippines First Lady and Despot wife, Imelda Marcos.

George Hasser wonders if whales ever have erotic dreams about submarines, and whether, when they wake up from those dreams, they feel more or less submarine curious than when they fell asleep, and whether or not they feel ashamed.

Liz Cole was once asked in a job interview what Islets of Langerhans were.

She had a vague recollection of learning about them at school and took a guess that they are the scene of a naval battle off the north coast of Prussia during the early 18th century War of Spanish Succession or a 1990s thrash metal band.

Neither was correct, Liz was asked to leave the room instantly.

Following Liz into the same interview, Ian Tucker, on being asked the same question, was also sure he could remember what islets of Langerhans were from school and suggested that Islets of Langerhans were the famously narrow passages between seats of St.

Eustace's Cathedral in the Dutch city of Langerhans, the church renowned as the thinnest church in the world built to fit in between two canals just four meters apart.

Passing the disconsolate Liz and Ian, Emian Jahadian had absolutely no idea what islets of Langerhans were.

However, he took a wild stab at them being parts of the pancreas containing hormone-producing cells critical to the process of metabolizing glucose and was surprised and delighted to be told that he was correct and had just landed himself a job as head of pancreatic surgery at the world-renowned Charité Hospital in Berlin.

GJ was given a homemade mixtape in the 1990s by a radio head obsessed friend who had a tendency to misspell simple words when writing them out longhand and omitted the letter R from the title of the song Fake Plastic Trees in the handwritten track listing.

GJ therefore spent several years believing that Tom York, lead singer of the influential rock band, was vehemently opposed to the modernization of golf equipment.

In another bad job interview story, John Woods had to give a PowerPoint presentation at a job interview once, but accidentally included a transition between two slides which featured the face of Beelzebub emerging from a fiery background and mouthing the words, you will all burn.

Needless to say, John was not employed by that particular kindergarten and blamed the incident on having lent his laptop to his friend Weird Ken for his TEDx talk on Satanism in the age of tech.

And finally, Aiki Burmese is pleased that giant squid never evolved the ability to live on land as well as or instead of in water.

I think they could have been great colleagues in the workplace, don't get me wrong, which is how I judge all species, says Aiki.

However, I just think those wandering tentacles would have got them into trouble at some point in a business meeting or at an office Christmas party or something.

No fault of theirs, but I think it's for the best that we dodged that particular evolutionary bullet.

Here endeth this week's lies.

Goodbye.

Hi, buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.