Bugle 287 – Ecuadoh!

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to a very special issue 287 of The Bugle because this week we come to you not from one continent, as we seldom do anyway, not from two continents, as we normally do, not from four continents, which would be a logistical shitburg, but from three continents.

Chris is holding the fort in the crumbling edifice of Europe, and I, Andy Zoltzmann, I'm in Australasia, or as the Australians call it, Australia, but I'm in the bit of Australia out in the ocean called New Zealand, and still hold up, claiming creative asylum in the USA.

It's the satirical salad spinner himself, whisking the moisture of malfeasance off the legislative lettuce leaves.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Hello, Chris.

In that alphabetical order.

That's a classic ABC introduction, right?

There.

Not only is this tri-continental bugle a catastrophic waste of time and resources, Andy, it's touching on every part of the global day.

Breakfast time for me, lunchtime for Chris, midnight snack time for Andy.

I'm munching on oatmeal, Chris is munching on a sandwich, and I presume that Andy has an entire lobster hanging out the corner of his mouth right now.

I hope that everyone's had a good couple of weeks.

I've had a slightly weird weird time, not just because we've been trying to get the show back on air, but also because in doing that I seem to have got involved in my first high-profile beef.

Tupac had Biggie Andy, 50 Cent had Jarul, Jay-Z had NAS, and I seem to have President of Ecuador Rafael Correa.

Let me explain.

We did a piece on our first show back about how oversensitive he is after he went so far as to call out by name people on Twitter and Facebook who'd criticised him and encouraged his followers to attack them online.

Now, from what I knew of him, Andy, which is very little, I didn't anticipate him taking that well or indeed enjoying it in any shape or form.

I was not, however, expecting him to completely lose his shit and spend the entire next week shit talking me on Twitter because that, amazingly, is exactly what happened.

The president of Ecuador, Andy, a man who, to put it mildly, needs to stop googling himself or, Or, at the very least, have someone take his phone away from him.

The president of Ecuador went on a Twitter spree saying that the term English comedian was an oxymoron, that

I was an idiot who probably thought the capital of Ecuador was Kuala Lumpur.

And finally, saying this, and I quote, regarding John Oliver, too much noise for such little nuts.

Now,

now

that

is an expression, I believe, over there, which means something along the lines of much you do about nothing.

But you can't escape that in translation,

you can't help but think that a world leader has just publicly stated that I have tiny balls, Andy.

You can't escape that.

There was even a campaign set up by someone apparently married to a government official saying, hashtag John You AreInvited, arguing that I should come to Ecuador to see what it was like there, which I'd love to do, Andy.

The only problem is, I know a trap when I see one.

They're trying to lure me over there with their majestic sea turtles and their oxygen-free air, Andy.

But it's not going to work because me and my tiny nuts are staying here where we're all safe.

All three of us.

Well, I think maybe you should give it a go, John, because

the capital, I forgot what it's got,

Quala something,

I think,

is

about 3,000 meters above sea level.

And of course, up at that altitude, your nuts would swell up to an acceptable size and that's that's how hot air balloons work i think so give it a go so i mean what's what's the what's the next step i mean do we need to start mobilizing bugle forces to to to gather on the borders of ecuador i mean that's the problem i mean this is normally how it works isn't it an escalation of words and then eventually there's a military standoff and then there's military force deployed so we've done the words bit I guess it's me against the Ecuadorian military now.

Well, you've got HBO.

They made Band of Brothers, didn't they?

They must have some of the broadband.

They do, yeah, exactly.

I guess I've got a mixture between

using HBO's resources, which would be a sprinkling of Second World troops, Ivan Drago and Omar from the Wire, except the last two of those were dead, of course, as indeed was the first ones.

So anyway, it's worth a go.

Sorry there was no full bugle last week.

That was due to an unfortunate collision of the unstoppable march of time and a diplomatic incident with Ecuador, it seems.

When will those two just bury the hatchet and learn to get along?

I'm now in Christchurch, New Zealand, which city took the wrong end of a nasty bit of plate tectonics four years ago.

It's gradually rebuilding.

Thankfully, it's prioritised its cricket ground, which is now up and running, ready for a couple of World Cup games this weekend.

Building a cricket ground not necessarily top of everyone's priority list post-earthquake, particularly not those who are waiting for arguably more important things to be rebuilt first, for example, their houses.

But it shows that this is my kind of town.

I got a taxi down to my gig in Christchurch, and thanks to all those buglers who came along.

And the taxi driver was telling me a story about how, just after the earthquake, she'd been in the taxi, driving her taxi, picked someone up from the airport, and they had said, Of course, you know why this earthquake happened.

It's because

the city of Christchurch is no longer a Christian city.

There are too many sinners.

And the taxi driver told me that she had replied by saying, Well, how do you explain that the mosque was fine?

And then the person she was having this conversation with just kind of shut up.

And then the taxi driver said to me, The thing is, I had absolutely no idea what had happened to the mosque, but it seemed to shut her up.

So there we go.

I think that's basically how religion started in the first place to be honest um

this is bugle 287 um uh and uh 287 this is coincidentally the 287th year since 1728 which was of course 42 years before captain cook arrived in australia or new zealand no one really knows which

Top story this week, more pain in the Ukraine.

Crazy insane.

got more pain

The week started so well Andy on Sunday a ceasefire came into effect in Ukraine which sounds so great in principle There was only one explosive problem with that and that's that either nobody told the people in eastern Ukraine about it or they're having a little bit of trouble with the cease part of ceasefire firing is not the problem Andy they've proven they know how to do that loudly and often it's the cessation part which is proving tricky perhaps they felt that it counts as a ceasefire if you cease fire for the duration of time that it takes to reload.

The point is, things are currently so bad that NATO's top military commander said the ceasefire currently exists in name only.

And of course the only problem with that is it means it doesn't f ⁇ ing exist at all, does it?

That logic does not apply anywhere else.

Try telling a 10-year-old that their birthday cake exists in name only.

Good luck with that.

Listen, Amy, the cake exists in principle.

it just hasn't taken tangible form yet.

But hold back and it'll happen.

Just blow on the table in front of you for now and make the best of it, okay?

Happy birthday!

Stop crying!

Of course, as always, right at the center of this is your friend and mine, Vladimir Putin.

We're stirring the shit in the international cauldron for far too long now.

And I've got a quick step-by-step guide, John, to when to trust Vladimir Putin.

Question one is Vladimir Putin breathing?

If yes do not trust Vladimir Putin.

If no give it 40 years and you might be okay.

So I hope that will help push things forward a bit.

The fighting continued this week as Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany held more talks over the phone and I guess the only problem with that is that it's going to be hard for Ukraine to hear what's going on on that conference call with all the f ⁇ ing shelling going on in the background.

Oh, what's that?

How's the ceasefire going?

I'll tell you what, let me hold my phone up to where my window used to be.

Did you hear that?

Does that answer your stupid f ⁇ ing question?

As you say, John, the other two countries involved were Germany and France.

And I suppose if you want to talk to two countries that really, really know the dangers of allowing a little local skirmish to spiral significantly out of control, those are the two best countries to have at your table.

The ceasefire or the Minsk agreement was supposed to take place from one minute after midnight on the 15th of February.

But all that seemed to achieve was to get people to fight even harder in the lead-up to the deadline.

It was like the last orders being called at a bar in England.

There were basically incidents of binge bombing up and down eastern Ukraine before someone was supposed to

ring a bell and say, time,

please, gentlemen, that is time.

Weapons down, please, gentlemen.

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

Time, please.

that's time

and look andy i'm not saying that this agreement was doomed doomed from the start all i'm saying is it wasn't a great sign that at the very moment that the peace deal was being negotiated in minsk a video emerged online of two ukrainian mps outside parliament in kiev beating the living shit out of each other and the crazy thing is they were both from centre-right parties that should nominally agree with each other uh yegor sobolev of the self-assistance political Alliance and Vadim Ivchenko of the Fatherland Party kicked and pussed each other in a spectacular barefist brawl in the corridor of a government building.

The video has to be seen to be believed but if you cannot find it then perhaps this journalists magnificent description of it will suffice and I quote.

At first, with one of the MPs on the floor receiving a kick to the face, a suited man attempts to drag the two men apart, yet he quickly recedes into the background as the men trade a series of blows to the face and upper body area for around 30 seconds.

The only thing this video was missing, Andy, was a 15-year-old kid screaming, World Star, in the background, or Don King somehow pocketing a huge amount of money behind them.

Apparently, apparently onlookers were either filming the fight on their cell phones or crying.

And if there is a better summation of what is happening in Ukraine at the moment than that, I certainly have not heard it.

Ukraine had made significant concessions to broker the peace deal.

The problem being that Vladimir Putin is very much the man who puts the I into compromise and the nyet into net negotiations.

Making concessions to Putin's Russia is a tactic akin to pacifying a baby-eating dragon by feeding it a baby on condition that it promises to go on one of those trendy no-baby diets afterwards.

The problems with this are: A, you cannot fight nature, B, the dragon now knows where you keep your babies.

C why is that dragon hanging around that maternity unit with a napkin tucked into its collar?

D, my baby, my baby.

E, what do you mean it could have done with some ketchup and mustard?

F, okay fiery face, I'll get you some ketchup and mustard for the next one.

Concessions very rarely work in these situations, John.

It's like working on a BBC comedy show.

The White House spokesman Eric Schultz expressed that America would very much like Russia and everyone else involved to abide by the ceasefire agreement, saying, what was agreed to last week was not a shopping list.

You don't get to decide which items you're going to abide by.

Those were commitments made by all parties and we expect them to keep their words.

Now for a start it seems like Eric Schultz is a bit of a nasty when it comes to shopping lists, Andy.

But also,

the broader point is, he said that with the authority of a substitute teacher who already knows they've lost control of the classroom.

And the even more chilling detail in this whole story is that some are arguing that Russia may be partially using eastern Ukraine to test its new military capabilities.

Apparently after the Georgia war in 2008, Russian generals were concerned at the performance of Russian troops and so have been re-equipping and retraining them ever since and have seen this conflict as a chance to test how far they've come.

And if that is true Andy, then this situation is even bleaker for eastern Ukraine.

Because if there is one thing worse than having Russia wanting to annex you, it's Russia wanting to annex you so it can use you as a f ⁇ ing firing

Yeah, that's basically using Ukraine as a new material, Knight.

I'm not sure that's entirely acceptable.

Putin, we have to assume, does not want an all-out war, not because he isn't a lunatic, but because he is a pragmatic lunatic rather than a lunatic lunatic.

And he looks set to swing his political plonker as far and as hard as he can without getting hurt.

But he's now facing a really tough response from the West.

David Cameron, John, has warned Putin once again that there could be, and I quote, consequences as a result of what is happening.

These consequences, he expanded, would be unacceptable financial and economic consequences for his country for many years to come.

Now, Putin, the problem is, has shown that one man's unacceptable financial and economic consequence is another man's price very much worth paying.

Cameron added, one country is effectively challenging the territorial integrity of another because those Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine are using Russian rocket launchers, Russian tanks, and Russian artillery.

You cannot buy this equipment on eBay.

It comes from Russia.

And those are the words, John, of a man who has tried to buy this equipment on eBay and failed.

Google Q ⁇ A now.

Last week some of you sent in questions for a Q ⁇ A session that I was going to do until time rather ran away with me and Cricket intervened.

So we're going to do some of these questions this week.

This one came in from Richard, who writes, on your upcoming tour of Australia, Andy, will you be inviting our esteemed Prime Minister, the Honourable Tony Abbott, to one of your shows?

The way he's performing, he's like to have quite a bit of spare time around your visit.

Alternatively, you might like to catch up with him when he's in London, giving Prince Philip his knighthood.

This is a truly extraordinary story.

When I arrived in Australia about 10 days ago, Tony Abbott was just in the process of surviving a no-confidence vote, or as in Australia it's called, a some worries vote.

To the outsider, it might seem like the only reason you would have confidence in Tony Abbott is if you are clinically insane, clinically hyper wealthy, Tony Abbott, a raging misogynist, a fervent racist, or simply love the concept of environmental Armageddon.

In Australia, not everyone is entirely one hundred percent happy with their Prime Minister and certified crankshaft.

Abbott, as many listeners and watchers of John's TV show will know, is a platinum grade opinion splitter, and of late, he'd split that opinion into Australia and him and even his traditional supporters had become a little concerned with his Prime Ministerial behaviour, which has swung from the provocative and intolerant to the inexplicably bizarre.

And the high point of this, for the neutral spectator, was Abbott's unilateral decision to give a knighthood to, any guesses, yes, Prince Philip, the Prince Philip, the husband of Her Wrinkly Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, a man who was probably sitting at home thinking to himself, well, I'm husband of the Queen of the United Kingdom, therefore technically husband of the Queen of Australia.

I'm His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh.

I'm a certified prince.

I'm the Earl of Merionath, Baron Greenwich, Royal Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Extra Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Member of the Order of Merit, Grand Master and First and Principal Knight of Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Lord of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, oh yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

Personal aide-de-camp, Her Majesty, hell's potatoes, you still got it.

Additional Member of the Order of New Zealand, Extra Companion of the Queen's Service Order, Royal Chief of the Order of Lagohu.

What is that?

A service station?

Extraordinary companion of the Order of Canada.

Extraordinary Commander of the Order of Military Merit, Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom.

I've won a coronation medal and three Jubilee medals.

I deserve them too.

It's not just because I'm shagging the boss.

In Zanzibar, I'm a member of the First Class Order of the Brilliant Star, whilst in Singapore I'm an honorary member of the Daraya Utama Temasek.

I'm Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Christ in Portugal.

I'm Colonel-in-Chief.

of more military regiments than you could dream of for breakfast.

I have the freedom of the city of Guadalajara.

I'm an honorary member of the the Canadian Medical Association.

And I picked up a doctorate of laws from the University of Jordan without even going to Freshers Week.

But somehow, I feel incomplete.

I know what?

I need Australia to give me a knighthood.

Well done, Tony Abbott.

You are a fking visionary.

This one came in from Nathan in Atlanta, who said, Dear Andy and John, I hadn't heard of Boney M until I listened to the bugle.

I listened to a few songs and I like it.

Should I be embarrassed by that?

I feel like I should, but I am not.

Well, John, I mean...

Andy,

I don't know if your feelings are completely clear to buglers about Boney and, but you were a big fan.

Huge, huge fan.

Huge, huge fan.

I mean, they've done some of the classic songs, John.

And,

you know,

this is the 21st century.

I think we should all be free to listen to and like listening to whatever we want, whether that's what Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, and Tony Blair have all died for.

So, Nathan, you shouldn't be ashamed of enjoying the funky groove of such chart hits as Daddy Cool, or the divinely endorsed neo-hymnic majesty of By the Rivers of Babylon, or the historically informative epic narratives of Mar Baker, Elute, or Rara Rasputin, Vlad's granddad, of course.

I think that's the best way to describe Boney M to people that haven't heard of them.

And that is that if you could imagine a band that could put together a reggae-infused version of the life of Rasputin, then what you're thinking of in your head is what actually existed.

And, amazingly, was briefly, intensely popular.

I wouldn't, you know, I just can't.

I think we live in an age, John, where you would hope people

like

me and Nathan would no longer be persecuted simply for the 1970s disco classics we listen to.

I think we should be persecuted simply for the kind of people we are.

And I guess if you like Boney M hits, well, we're just going to have to take whatever comes our way we're clearly dicks

Dan Richardson asks how big is a small

any I mean any response to that John no I've got no response to that that's I'm not interested in questions that are either meaningless or incredibly profound Andy I like this sweet spot in the middle

I would say that a small is as big as the size of the smallest big, provided it is bigger in proportionates than the big that is smaller than the biggest small.

So, I hope that's clear that up.

All in all, it's about an eight.

Dear Andy and John, I have a cue I would like you to A, says Lewis.

What the f is going on in British politics?

I'd say nothing much, Lewis, just the gradual demolition of the foundations of democracy and social justice, the outsourcing of our national vital organs, and the flogging off to the most convenient bitter of everything we once held dear.

Other than that, all fine.

Looking forward to the election, it's going to be a dignified, mature exchange of heartfelt political views, whose only true purpose is the embeddment of the nation and its public discourse.

Can't wait.

Cannot wait.

Here's a question you might be able to answer, John.

It's from Cam in Leicester.

He asks, Hi, will you read my email out on the show?

No, yeah, I can answer that.

No, absolutely not.

That can't be any clearer than that.

This one comes in from John Barnier, who asks, My wife is a seventh-grade special education teacher, sounds like a real gold digger, in a relatively affluent suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

What a glory hunter.

Last week she was told by a school administrator that her classroom was too messy and cluttered.

She's a dream wrecker.

Granted, my wife, at her own expense, had filled her room with books, maps and brain exercising games, an intellectual showboater of the worst water, she sounds like, to help enrich her students' learning, do good in control freak interfering in other people's lives.

But, according to the administrator, continues the email, who is married to a Republican state representative, all this had to go because, quotes, it interfered with the students' ability to learn.

One example was that my wife had too many dictionaries in the room, total number four.

Am I imagining things, or is something going wrong here?

What would you say, John?

Can you have too many dictionaries in a classroom?

Of course, you can, Andy.

Depends whether you want to teach children to comply with how words are spelt, or if you want to free them up to spell them how the f ever they want.

I would agree.

I'd say once you've read one dictionary, you've read them all.

I mean, what can you really learn from dictionary number two?

Besides, if she's a so-called teacher, as she claims, she should be able to explain words to her poor students herself without having to look the f ⁇ ing things up.

Do you really want our children's futures in the hands of a teacher who needs dictionaries?

What is this?

The 19th century.

And besides, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Dante, Julius Caesar, Sun Tzu, never even had one dictionary between them.

Still turned out okay.

So frankly, I think

I'm entirely with the state of Minnesota on this one.

So thanks for your QA's.

Do keep your emails coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Don't forget you can still contribute to our appeal at gofundme.com slash this hyphen is hyphen Michelle.

There's a link also on the website thebuglepodcast.com and don't forget to check out our SoundCloud page soundcloud.com slash the hyphen bugle.

Now I'm out here in New Zealand and Australia for the Cricket World Cup.

I like cups.

I'm a big fan of the world and I love cricket so this is right in my personal personal cold scuttle.

But, John, it has not gone well for England so far.

It began last Saturday with England being narrowly obliterated by Australia by a massive margin.

And today, as we record on Friday in New Zealand, England were due to play a cricket match against New Zealand.

Sadly, that cricket game was cancelled and was replaced instead with some arcane local pastime, which appeared to be the rather brutal slaying of an already dead carcass of a once adequate puppy.

England, I don't know if you saw what happened, but we were utterly and reprehensibly humiliated.

We were clobbered, eviscerated, mashed, squished, splattered and generally violated.

In a dance as old as sport itself, we were beaten, we were utterly thrashed at cricket by one of the teams that we taught to play at cricket.

In fact, New Zealand won with so much time to spare that England had time to invent a new sport, teach New Zealand how to play it and lose with them at that as well, and still have time to attend the press conference afterwards to find 35 different ways of saying massive pile of shit without actually using the words pile of shit.

Now, I know not every bugler is infected with the benevolent virus of cricket, but

the last time an English thing was spanked this thoroughly was when the future King Edward VII ended up in an SM brothel in Paris pretending to be a naughty donkey.

It was awful.

If you only saw the result, John, and I guess you probably didn't watch the game ball by ball, it must have been like having your favourite kitten taken away in a van for questioning by the CIA and it coming back three hours later as a Donna kebab.

The end result is bad, but what must have happened in between will keep you awake for months.

It was that bad.

It was almost literal decimation.

That's all for this week's Bugle.

Thanks very much for listening.

There are still some tickets left for one of my shows in Auckland on Tuesday the 24th.

I'm also hosting a benefit gig at the Batsy Arts Centre for Michelle's Fund on the 27th with Daniel Kitson, Russell Howard, and Alan Cochrane at the Batsy Arts Centre.

If you check their website, I think there's still some tickets left for that as well.

And we will be back hopefully next week, but certainly soon.

Thanks once again for listening, Buglers, from the southern hemisphere, where I'm recording basically tomorrow, John.

I'm a whole day ahead of you.

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.