Bugle 288 – Bear Sick

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 288 of the Bugle for the weekending 27th of February 2015 with me Andy Doltzmann back up on the correct side of the equator after a 38-hour door-to-door journey that I'm still not sure psychologically has fully ended or indeed will ever end.

But I am allegedly in London and 1-0 up in the most number of weekly topical HBO shows currently on the air, but 1-0 down in most jet-lagged bugle co-host.

It's the man who mangles the oranges of obfuscation, boils them up with the sweet, sweet sugar of satire to make the marmalade of mirth that makes that topical toast slip down a treat.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Welcome the right way up, Andy.

Welcome back.

How does it feel to have the blood in your feet rather than in your head?

Awesome.

That's how the human body works, isn't it?

It's one or the other.

Yeah, that's, I mean, it was interesting at doing my gigs down in New Zealand that I end up doing the punch lines first and the setup second.

They just go around the other way.

That's right.

All the logic goes backwards.

It's fing cold here, Andy.

It is face-bitingly cold.

It is air-slappingly cold.

And there's a car outside my office which has been left there for the last two weeks.

It's completely covered under snow and ice.

And the person who owns it seems to have just decided, I don't have a car anymore.

This morning, someone had dug out a small space on the windscreen through the frozen bush.

And I looked inside, and it was a f ⁇ ing parking ticket, Andy.

There are some hardened parking attendants in this city.

They will not be stopped by the elements.

They will issue their tickets.

Well, that's it.

You can't show weakness to the elements, John.

Life must go on.

And if life is putting parking tickets on permanently frozen cars, it's essentially you're giving a parking ticket to a fossil there.

Yeah, that has shown the New Yorkers' determination not to give in.

This is Bugle 288 for the week ending Friday the 27th of February 2015.

On this day, as we record, on Friday the 27th, It's 115 years to the minute since the British Labour Party was founded.

No one knows whether or not it still exists.

Scientists have taken a swab from the alleged leader Ed Miller Bandana awaiting results.

Also, it is the 200th anniversary of the first ever post-match interview.

in which Silenius the gladiator said, obviously I was delighted to have killed five, that was terrific for me.

But then when they released the Tigers, obviously I was disappointed by that, but that's what being a gladiator is all about.

As always, the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week week after my trip to Auckland.

It is a section of Auckland's architectural wonders.

There's a big tower with a spike on top, the end.

That's

New Zealand, I thoroughly enjoyed, but I did spend six days there, all in urban centers, which I don't believe is the correct way to see the beautiful country of New Zealand.

And I had an hour and a half to look around Auckland on Tuesday morning before catching the plane home.

And I got back to the hotel with 45 minutes to spare.

So I don't know what if that says more about Auckland or more about me.

Probably a little bit of both.

Top story this week.

Happy Polar Bear Day, everyone.

Andy, February the 27th, as we all know, is International Polar Bear Day.

And amazingly, the existence of International Polar Bear Day is actually a fact.

It's one of those things that sounds like a lie, but it's actually true.

Like Oscar winner Sandra Bullock.

You have to Google it first before you'll admit that it's genuinely a thing.

International Polar Bear Day takes place every February the 27th and it's a day designed to raise awareness of the plight of polar bears rather than, as cynics might suggest, a bullshit holiday that greetings card manufacturers have made up so they can sell more polar bear themed cards.

Oh, what are you getting me for International Polar Bear Day?

You hadn't forgotten, had you?

No, of course not.

I got you a card.

You didn't leave it until the last minute, did you?

No, of course not.

Here you go.

What's this?

There's a fing penguin on it.

I'm sorry that sold out.

It was the closest thing I could get.

I'll do better next year.

Yes, we are recording on this day of all days.

If you're a polar bear or a huge fan of polar bears, International Polar Bear Day.

This is the one day of the year, John, when flying the white flag is entirely appropriate.

Take down your bunting, hang up your polar bear skins.

It's time to get down and get furry with everyone's favorite merciless Arctic carnivore.

Surrender to the bear.

The holidays run by polar bears.

That sounded like that wasn't the first time you've used those words, John.

The holiday is run by Polar Bears International, which sounds like a lobby group of polar bears themselves.

And I actually wouldn't blame them, Andy, if in the last few years, when they realised how little humanity was doing to help them, they just unionised and are now making demands directly.

The group encourages people to find ways to reduce their carbon output by asking everyone to turn down their thermostats by two degrees today in order to reduce our climate impact.

And Andy, that is not much much of an ask.

Considering the peril that polar bears are in, they are really setting us an achievable and yet eminently missable goal there, Andy.

Turning your thermostat down by two degrees for one day a year.

That's like just before the dodo became extinct saying, hey, everyone, can you please eat three less carrots this year?

That should do it.

And if it doesn't, let's just say the dodo wasn't meant to be.

Now, I don't know how you celebrated International Polar Bear Day, Andy.

I would encourage everyone to honour the polar bear by living as it does.

Maybe having an entire ringed seal for lunch or making it an even bigger occasion and gathering the whole family around a whole whale carcass later tonight for dinner.

You know, just to show the bear you respect how it chooses to live.

Yeah, well, I've done exactly that, John.

I've done exactly as the polar bear does.

As you say, I've killed and eaten a live seal in public.

I've gone for a swim without my trunks on.

And I've also had a camera crew follow me around whenever I've had a meal, taken a shit or tried to pull.

So it's been basically exactly like your standard polar bears day.

There is very little in the way of good polar bear news to celebrate this year as indeed has been the case over the last couple of decades for PBs but at least there was a little lighter news recently as apparently there is something of a temporary polar bear infestation at the moment in Labrador, Canada.

Labrador is a coastal community in northeastern Canada and if you think Labrador is a made-up name for the place, just wait until you hear the specific part of Labrador which was effective, because it's a town called Black Tickle.

Yes, Black Tickle.

And let's be clear, Black Tickle is a terrible name for a Canadian village, but it's an incredible name for a 1970s black exploitation film.

Apparently, there were around nine polar bears wandering around the Black Tickle vicinity on Monday.

Experts say that it is one of the earliest times of the year on record that they've been seen there.

And one local man who spotted them was Jeremy Keefe, who was apparently driving home on his snowmobile when he saw polar bears hanging around by the side of the road.

And that's a pretty Canadian sentence right there, Andy.

It couldn't get much more Canadian without having a maple syrup-covered moose playing ice hockey against a loon on a frozen lake nearby.

But the story gets even better because apparently he was able to deal with the situation safely because he was carrying a, and I quote, bear banger, which is

a small handheld device that can launch a small explosive.

And he fired it to move the bears away from the road and his community.

Apparently he said it's the same as herding cows, which is not finging true, Andy.

It's not true, because you don't herd cows with an explosive cowbanger, do you?

I mean, you should, but you don't.

And cows can't rip your head off and use your body as a toothpick after eating a seal kebab.

Well, I mean, of course, if International Polar Bear Day works, then we'll all have to live with the ever-present threats of a polar bear infestation.

And we have a quick bugle guide now for how to deal with a polar bear infestation in your house, village, or town.

Step one, dress entirely in white.

Step two, be friendly.

Step three, turn off the central heating.

It just makes them cranky.

Step four, fill in any polar bear-sized holes in your skirting boards with some wire wool that stops them getting in and out.

And five, tell your next-door neighbours keep baby seals and whale carcasses in their shed.

That should work.

The depressing thing is despite this temporary infestation you cannot escape the fact that polar bears are famously in dire straits.

Part of the problem is that changing climate conditions for them have caused polar bears to lose body weight with some very serious consequences for polar bear cubs.

A polar bear expert Ian Sterling revealed that between 1980 and 2007 pregnant females had lost an average of more than 110 pounds in body mass which in turn led to smaller litters and reduced cub survival.

And there's just no way to pose that as a positive, Andy.

Sure, climate change deniers may try to argue that there's nothing wrong with polar bears losing a bit of weight, that it might, they might even actually make posters featuring happy female polar bears holding out their old fat jeans in front of them, thrilled at being slimmer, with a pile of dead polar bear cubs hidden in the background.

But, you know,

it won't be making it a good thing.

So as you say, the aims of International Polar Bear Day are several, as you say, including encouraging people to turn their thermostats down and also to drive less, although both of those things are fraught with polar bear risk.

I mean, if you drive less, you're much more likely to be caught by a hungry polar bear whilst walking home.

And if you turn down your thermostat, you're likely to get so cold that you need to kill and skin a polar bear to make a nice warm coat.

So I mean,

this could backfire.

The other aims

of the organisation include to ensure that there is a wild polar bear population of at least 2,000 in every single town in the world by the year 2043, that there is a polar bear on the management board of at least 25% of the world's 83 largest corporations within 15 years, an acknowledgement that polar bears were the first people to walk to the North Pole, and also that all polar bears in zoos should get preferential treatments, including complementary Wi-Fi, bathrobes, and a baby seal dispensing machine.

So it'll be interesting to see how it all pans out.

The other absolutely terrifying development for polar bears is that a new study has found a link between chemicals and bone loss that could damage polar bears' penises.

Now,

if I had a pound for every time I've heard someone say that sentence, John,

this could damage polar bears' ability to mate.

But I'm guessing that male polar bears have already tuned out from the second part of that sentence and are still panicking saying, wait, what chemicals do what to my penis?

What the f is happening up here?

We cannot catch a break.

The chemicals in question are PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls, which were once used in everything from transformers to paints, but were banned here in the US back in 1979.

Sadly, their residue has been floating around for years.

And when PCBs make their way into polar bears, the chemicals can damage the baculum, a bone in the bear's penis.

And I think we just now, at this point, Andy, need to replace the famous image of the polar bear floating on a tiny piece of ice.

Clearly people are immune to that image.

It does not shock people anymore.

The new image Andy should be a polar bear buckled over in pain clutching its visibly broken penis.

If environmental groups can't get that to work Andy, then we are truly f ⁇ ed.

But I must make for, I mean, it's amazing how they found this.

Scientists apparently gathered polar bear wang bones or baculums as you call them from hunters in Canada and Greenland, tested the bones, these penis bones, to determine their mineral density.

Because, well, I guess someone had to.

I mean, if we don't know the mineral density of the bones in polar bears' flobble drops, then how can we possibly hope to understand the meaning and purpose of all life?

One of the impacts has been that apparently polar bears can find it hard to bring their Percy to perkiness, so to speak,

which must make the whole situation rather awkward for polar bear daddies in their more intimate moments with polar bear mummies.

Do you not fancy me anymore, Dennis?

Uh, it's not that love.

It's what then, Dennis?

Have you been seeing that grizzly bitch again?

Uh, no, of course not.

That was a one-off for a wildlife documentary, honest.

Then why can't I make you feel sexy?

Uh look,

sorry, it's look, why can't you get it up, Dennis?

Uh, it's very cold.

It's always fing cold, we're fing polar bears.

We used to do it all night, and we live in the Arctic, that means we're about four fing months.

Uh, okay, I'll tell you why I can't get it up anymore.

It's because of what they used to make paints out of in the 1970s and the now outdated methods for manufacturing electoral transformers.

There, I've said it.

You are seeing that fucking grizzly harlot again, aren't you, Dennis?

Tough, tough times.

Tough times for them.

No wonder polar bears are cross with us, John.

Not only do we constantly represent them in cartoons and soft toys as cuddly and friendly, how do you think that makes a trained killer

feel undermining its very essence?

Not only is our carbon habit knocking some very serious value off their property prices and some even more serious surface area off their properties, but also we are stopping them getting up, John.

What more is there left to live for as a polar bear?

Dark days.

One of the articles I was reading about this story, John, told of a Canadian woman who had recently shot her first polar bear.

And

two quotes.

I don't know if this is part of a controlled cull or just a lark, but anyway,

two rather...

bizarre quotes came from it.

The woman said,

it ran probably 20 yards and fell down and died.

I felt so bad, I can't believe I just did that.

And then one paragraph later, she says, a lot of people dream their whole life about getting a polar bear and I just got to do it.

I mean, what are we to believe from that, John?

I know hunting is a, I mean, it must be it must come at some kind of psychological cost.

But

that is one confused polar bear huntstress there, John.

I think what she's saying really is, you know, if you've not killed a polar bear, you can't criticise her.

I think that's basically what she's saying

polar bear facts now there are around 25 000 polar bears in the world that is enough to fill a medium-sized english football stadium and you would in fact barely be able to tell the difference in terms of the demographic makeup of the average football crowd although the language would be slightly more advanced and the manners very slightly improved the average polar bear can consume in a day 4.4 pounds of fat which might explain why there's only 25 000 of them they must be keeling over with heart attacks almost once a meal.

And a polar bear's enormous stomach can hold 10 to 20% of the animal's vast body weight, which is the equivalent, John, of Elvis Presley eating a 50-pound beef burger.

Which, I mean, I'm not saying that didn't happen.

It may well have happened, but the polar bears seem to be able to deal with it rather better.

One of the main reasons that polar bears are having such a difficult problem is, of course,

our continuing reliance on oil.

And the world is currently enjoying a front row seat for some seriously juvenile oil price wars.

There was this extraordinary quote suggesting that the current

low price of oil could be absolutely catastrophic from an article in Forbes in which an oil expert said, there is no doubt in my mind that modern civilization would collapse in a matter of months if oil stopped flowing.

John, that has to be a strong contender for least reassuring sentence of the year so far.

Alongside Vladimir Putin sleeps with the big red button on one side of his bed and his alarm clock on the other, and he really likes the snooze button in the morning.

Perhaps alongside Jeb Bush is hotly tipped to become the next president of America.

Islamic State is establishing a stronghold in Libya.

Those are deeply, deeply unreassuring words.

The Qatar World Cup will definitely go ahead.

I mean, maybe not quite in the same ballpark, but of a similar nature.

England will bat first against New Zealand.

Deeply, and all these sentences just chill you to the bone.

Tony Abbott has won a vote of confidence in Australia and sharks have developed the atomic bomb.

But this is

a couple of months, John.

We've seen things collapse in a couple of months before.

For example, celebrity marriages, banks and the ethical viability of our economic system.

But not the whole of Western civilization.

You compare it with the Romans, John.

It took the Romans a couple of hundred years of drinking lead and f ⁇ ing horses for them to completely collapse.

And we are a couple of months away because of our over-reliance on oil.

This article also added another quote.

Oil is about as important to the developed world as agriculture.

And what that says to me, John, invest in hot dog vans, big time.

They are the tech stocks of the 21st century.

Here's a quick multiple choice quiz question for you, John.

What are stockpiles of crude?

A, the winner of the International Brevity Association's 2015 Summarize the Internet in Three Words Competition.

B, a thrash funk bebop fusion ban that Condoleezza Rice was in during her college days.

C, something that is causing global oil prices to slip and aggravating political and economic tensions around the world, especially in areas that really don't need any more aggravation.

Or D, a carpet retail outlet in the quiet English village of Crood-upon-Trent, stockpiles of crude for all your flooring needs.

Oh, it's Condoleezza Rice, Andy.

I've got a bootleg of that band.

They are very loud.

Yeah, anyone who's seen her tats will know quite what that band

meant to her.

And it's certainly true that oil has caused many, many benefits for humanity, including, of course, the quad bike.

But it's also caused probably more problems for this species than any other thing apart from butterflies, which of course have caused all kinds of trouble.

There was a butterfly called Ian.

in Mexico, flapped its wing in 1904 and set in train a chain of global events that led to two world wars Hiroshima the premature death of Jimi Hendrix the birth of Osama bin Laden and the onslaughts of reality television all from that one butterfly flapping its wings that puts it everything in perspective or out of perspective I'm not sure I can't tell I was basically on a plane for a day and a half

There was one potential piece of consolation news for polar bears when Barack Obama vetoed the proposed Keystone pipeline that would pump more of the sweet sweet black economic nectar from Canada down to the states.

It was only his third presidential veto, one of which involved the unforgettable Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010.

I know you've still got the t-shirt from that one framed on your bedroom wall, John, like all good Americans.

And the other was when Michelle wanted to watch The Love Guru at the Oval Office movie night in 2009.

And to be fair to Obama, he only vetoed it because he'd already seen it three times in the cinema when it came out.

It's still a misuse of presidential power, Andy.

This is supposed to be a democracy.

Currently, Obama has the fewest vetoes of any president.

He's only three vetoes in six years now.

The fewest of any president since James A.

Garfield, who clocked up zero, although that achievement was, of course, assassination assisted.

And he might fire out the vetoes in his final couple of years in office, but he's going to have to really put his presidential pedal to the legislative metal if he's going to catch up with the all-time veto record holder, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who kibosh the crap out of 635 bits of legislation.

That is a lot of vetoes, John, the man who put the delay and the no into Delano

and also who put the oo

into Roosevelt.

Your emails now and we have an email here from Chris saying, hi chaps.

You missed out on one of Prince Philip's many honours.

He's a god in Vanaratu and he provides a link to the Express, which

probably questions whether what he's just said is true or not but still that's a hell of a claim yeah

if Vanaratu do see him as a god Vanaratu are not likely to exist for long

yeah I mean I don't know what kind of religion would view Prince Philip as a divine being I mean the evidence

Does suggest that if that I mean they must be lowering the standards of divine I mean the Greeks had some f ⁇ ing shit gods I mean that some I mean they were making them up pretty much left, right and centre.

I think maybe it could be the I mean he is from maybe he's just a descendant from one of those low-ranking ancient Greek deities and people of Vanuatu have picked up on this.

Pretty self-loathing tribe anyway.

Thanks for all your emails including from

quite a few this week about people who've been binge listening to the bugle, including someone who appeared to be doing it whilst safety checking a military helicopter over two long long weeks uh we will not give any further details of that for fear of provoking a major sacking or some kind of court-martial or even a war but

let's hope for the best i guess it you know assuming this helicopter doesn't crash then we can assume that the bugle also contributes to air safety amongst its many other renowned medicinal properties do keep your emails coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com don't forget to check out our soundcloud page soundcloud.com slash the hyphen bugle um and uh do keep coming to my southern hemisphere shows there's an extra date in melbourne on the 27th of march now um and uh hopefully uh we'll confirm in the next day or two a gig in wellington on the 15th of march during an added bit of new zealand action um so i will uh tweet the links and uh put the ticket links up on the website thebuglepodcast.com until next time buglers thanks for listening and goodbye

bye

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.