Bugle 277 – Wow! Why?

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 277 of the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world week ending Friday the 7th of November 2014 with me Andy's Altman live in London and from midterm USA that's similar to normal USA but bitchier it's the satirical doggy who fears not the postman of news and who will happily bite into the trouser leg of total lies and thinks nothing of pooping on the pavement of political pomposity or shitting on the sidewalk of senatorial self-importance for history follows was it with its plastic bag of justice it's john oliver

Hello Andy, hello buglers.

I'm frankly still reeling as we were talking about Andy from last week when it turned out Playboy had done a Halloween costume of me a sexy Halloween costume and I didn't know how to feel about it Andy obviously you know initially there's the instinct of well it's almost a compliment you know to be thought upon by that esteemed dying institution

and then that was instantly replaced by pure pure insulted horror as you realize the only point of doing a sexy Halloween costume Andy is if the thing you're dressed up as is not sexy in the first place.

Because the only sexy Halloween costume is like, oh, it's a sexy SpongeBob.

It's a sexy fire hydrant.

Not a sexy Ryan Gosling.

That would make no sense.

So it seems I have all the sex appeal, Andy, of a banana or another piece of fruit.

So this is Bugle 277.

That means we've now done the same number of bugles as there are roughly days in the human gestation period.

So for any attempting to be pregnant buglers out there, you could now play your unborn future child a full episode of the bugle every single day of your pregnancy.

That's right, and give birth to a sociopath.

If you do do that, please do report back in 18 to 20 years' time on exactly how troubled or childhood your offspring suffered as a result.

Also, 277 is the number of times that the words lame duck are used in the average conversation between Republicans in the US this week, and the number of different options that William Wordsworth tried on the end of his I Wandered Lonely Azer line before plumping on Cloud.

The rejected versions included Bastard, Banana, Weirdo, Psychopathic Golfer, Really Lonely Chicken,

Dungeons and Dragons player at a 1970s funk-themed disco, and Randy Rhinoceros in a hippopotamus convent.

And it's weekending 7th of November.

Leon Trotsky, 135 years old today.

Ironically, on the day he was born,

someone in Russia bought an ice pick, probably.

Little Lenny wasn't too fussed about it then.

All he wanted was boo-boo, but he did change over the course of his life.

And just last night, as we record, was of course Guy Fawkes Night,

commemorating one of Britain's greatest failed acts of terrorism, the 1605 gunpowder plot.

And for people who complain about the quality of football punditry,

recently discovered in the archives of the British Library was a commentary on

the Fawkes issue, the Guy Fawkes issue, by a contemporary

pundit, Alanus Shiria.

And I'll quote directly from it here.

And he wrote, well, we pick up Fawkes here, and as you can see, he's been caught red-handed before even lighting a match.

He'll have to be disappointed with that.

When you're a conspirator trying to blow up Parliament, you've simply got to do better than that.

And then, of course, if we roll the action on, we can see he's dragged from the Tower of London all the way to Westminster.

He's hung, and then, of course, he's chopped into four bits.

He's quite literally gone to pieces there.

And And well it's always tough to bounce back from something like that.

So all in all, disappointing effort from the lad forks, just not good enough at this level of conspiracy.

And as always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week to commemorate a possible anniversary of online fraud.

And we give you a free virtual ID.

Name, Elizabeth Windsor.

Occupation, monarch.

Age, immortal.

Address, wherever the fk I want.

Hobbies, controlled waving, state dinners, break dancing and snooker.

Mother's maiden name, Al Faruki.

Shit, is that still covered by the Official Secrets Acts?

My mistake.

Bose Leon is the official mother's maiden name.

Top story this week.

Is it a bird?

Is it a plane?

No, it's a man on a motorbike driving across a tightrope while balancing a cow on his nose or something.

It's a daredevil roundup.

And look, Andy, let's get this out of the way immediately.

I love daredevils and I think most children love daredevils too why because whether they're jumping over buses belly flopping off a building into a two-foot swimming pool or getting fired out of a cannon dressed as a donkey what daredevils do is as impressive and brave as it is completely pointless and that is the point Andy I think I've mentioned before that it's easy to risk your life for something that's worthwhile that motivates it motivates itself it's hard to put your life on the line for literally nothing because logic kicks in Andy and logic is kryptonite to a daredevil.

When you have every reason not to do something and absolutely no good reason to do it it takes someone of immense misguided commitment to see that thing through and last week we saw a few examples of daredevilism in action displays of bravery that would make you think wow and then immediately think why

so first last Sunday Nick Wallender walked across the Chicago skyline on a tightrope for no demonstrable reason whatsoever in front of 60,000 people on the street and a worldwide TV audience.

The wire was strung between two Chicago towers and Wallender did the last leg blindfolded and the whole walk without a safety net, harness or seemingly any sense of the fragility of human life.

The big disappointment for me, Andy, was the ridiculous absence of a cape.

during the whole sum.

If you're going to be a daredevil, great.

But wear a cape, Andy.

I'm old school on this issue.

I believe any daredevil should wear a flowing garment behind them attached around the neck.

Otherwise known as a f ⁇ ing cape, Andy.

Mask for a daredevil?

Optional.

Jumpsuit?

Preferred, but optional.

Cape?

Mandatory, Andy.

F ⁇ ing mandatory.

Well, this might explain why capes used to be so much more popular back in history because time was when simply going for a walk in the street was basically a daredevil activity.

You could could be killed by all manner of things, diseases, plagues, wars, dragons, volcanoes, the sudden vengeance of an angered deity, indigestion, Romans with two big planks of wood and some nails, and of course dinosaurs, depending on where, when and how stupidly you lived.

But now, as you say, our lives are thankfully more sanitized, and you have to seek out this level of danger.

And few seek out danger as enthusiastically, dangerously, or, as you pointed out, f ⁇ ing pointlessly as Nick Wallander, the latest in a long line of daredevil Wallanders, which goes back several generations and includes quite a lot of danger-related family fatalities that you might have thought would have made that logic that you mentioned kick in at some point.

And someone in the Wallander family of next generation might have thought, you know what, I'm going to live the safe life.

I'm going to do something dull like become an executive at a technology company.

But he didn't do that, John.

As you said, he walked blindfolded between two f ⁇ ing skyscrapers.

That is the kind of stupid shit people used to do when they didn't have tellies to watch or PlayStations to chug their their play trains in and out of or whatever you do on play stations these days and death was just something to do in the afternoon no big deal plenty more fish in the sea but uh I mean you do as you say have to admire the sheer and relentless pointlessness of this idiotic and magnificent activity you're right though he has a family heritage he's a member of the famous flying wallenders uh circus family although he's not so much a flying wallender of course as a walking wallender and if he ever did find himself airborne he wouldn't be so much a flying Willender as a plummeting Willender.

Another time, at which it really would behoove him to wear a f ⁇ ing cape, Andy, because if you're not going to wear a cape when on a high wire 500 feet above the Chicago streets, when the f ⁇ are you going to wear a cape?

That's not the point.

The point is, it's still amazing what he did, because it's a human being walking across two buildings on a tiny wire.

in the windy city.

And this is far from Willenda's first televised walk.

Last year, he walked across the Grand Canyon with with 13 million viewers watching the Discovery Channel's coverage.

Although for the Chicago walk, he didn't fall down.

His rating certainly did, because this walk received a peak viewership, apparently, of just 6.7 million.

And the explanation for this was that when he walked across the Grand Canyon, there wasn't an NFL game on, but this time his walk coincided with the Raven Steelers game.

And that...

has got to be a blow to Nick Wallender Andy.

Because this is not the playoffs we're talking about this is the regular nfl season between two teams who are not going to win the super bowl and he could have found himself 500 feet in the air balancing on a wire only three quarters of an inch thick hearing cheers from the ground coming from inside a bar where people are watching a game between two teams neither of which belong to the city that they live in you don't go up against the nfl andy no one competes with the nfl in this country not if you're doing a high wire over chicago and not if you're pogo sticking across a lake.

You do not take on the NFL.

But maybe we're being a bit harsh claiming this had absolutely no practical purpose.

I mean it's it's quite a useful skill to be able to carry a massive long pole across a precipitous drop.

I mean if ever you found yourself in a situation where the multiple

champion pole vaulter Sergei Bubka was on one side of a canyon but had left his pole on your side of the canyon and there was a two-inch wire connecting you, then I guess Wallender would be pretty much your go-to guy for resolving that situation.

Or if you have one daredevil on top of one building and he'd forgotten his long pole for walking across the other building and you had already made the crossing, you could carry your pole back across.

That's another practical use.

Or if you work at an illegal exotic restaurant and you have a sudden inspection and have to carry a large frozen boa constrictor from the top floor of your building onto the next building to avoid detection.

So maybe he's a trailblazer, John.

He's making these things possible for future generations.

I think perhaps my favourite response from the whole spectacle came from a bystander who was interviewed called Christophe.

And he said, as he was seen walking away before it began, I'm not too much into seeing a guy fall to his death before going on to say, I'd prefer to watch it on TV.

And

could there be a more perfectly contemporary response to that Andy?

Of course you could see him fall to his death live but when it comes down to it why not watch him plummet into the afterlife from the comfort of your own couch?

You get all the angles and the replays of a man hurtling towards his doom.

Sure, sure, you don't get the live atmosphere of being in a crowd of horrified strangers, but with TV the way that it is now, it's the next best thing.

You can even pause him on the way down, Andy.

The man was right.

And then you can flip over to the football afterwards if you get bored of all the post-death analysis.

Exactly.

Well, apparently said afterwards himself, what an amazing, beautiful city.

The skyline is so unreal to take in.

I was ready to take a selfie.

I was so bummed that I didn't.

And if he had, Andy, if he had taken a selfie halfway through that walk, that's a tough way to justify dying.

If you're the Grim Reaper, Andy, and you're watching a guy do a high wire walk between two buildings in Chicago, you might be thinking to yourself, wow, that's impressive.

I mean, it's dangerous, but it's impressive.

I'm going to give him a pass on this one.

But then, if you saw him stop on that wire to take a selfie, you as the Grim Reaper might think, you know what, f that guy.

I'm sending a gust of wind over there and introducing him to the ground because it's one thing to cheat death, it's another to take the piss.

I'd prefer to have seen him paint a selfie on the way across.

You're mixing up your daredevilry with your Rembrandt.

That's what I wanted to see.

Although, having been there, it's actually worth it.

But that's not the point.

Australia has had its share of spectacular fools over the years.

But this might take the biscuit.

An Australian man decided to surf a dead whale while sharks were circling around it.

He jumped off a boat, climbed onto the whale and started surfing on it.

There's only one even potentially stupider thing to do, Andy, and that is to attach small wheels to the front and back of the whale and skateboard that dead whale instead.

But it was all worth it.

if just for this single detail from one Australian news report which said, and I quote, a 26-year-old Australian man who risked his life by diving into shark infested waters to climb onto a rotting whale carcass has confessed that even his parents think he's an idiot do you know what I might be ready to call it Andy I think that could be my favourite sentence ever uttered in the English language Shakespeare could not have imagined that.

Let's just recap that again.

A 26 year old Australian man who risked his life by diving into shark-infested waters to climb onto a rotting whale carcass has confessed that even his parents think he's an idiot.

idiot.

There's so much going on in that sentence, Andy.

There's a dead whale, there's shark-infested waters, there's an idiot, there's surfing, and there's ashamed parents.

That sentence is like a 34-word novel.

It's like the sequel to Hamlet, but more so.

George Mallory, the early 20th century British mountaineer, was famously asked why do you want to climb Mount Everest?

And he replied, because it's there.

And I guess this Australian guy, Harrison Williams applied a very similar logic when presented with a dead whale carcass why do you want to climb on a dead whale carcass and surf it whilst surrounded by a hungry-looking shark because it's there and because my mates are watching and I think it'll be pretty funny

oh you know what Andy I'm I'm glad he did it.

And you know, also I hate to harp on about this, but the only way it could have been better, a cape, Andy, because a man surfing a dead whale on his own is irresponsible.

A man surfing a whale carcass on his own in a cape, that man is going somewhere in life.

Now, he may be going inside a rotten whale or inside the stomach of a shark, but the point is he's going somewhere.

Carl Wallander from the Wallander family, here's something he said.

Being on the tightrope is living, everything else is waiting.

And once again, I guess Harrison Williams might think surfing a dead whale carcass while surrounded by shark is living.

Everything else is waiting to tell my buddies I just surfed on a dead whale carcass while surrounded by sharks.

He did miss an opportunity though, John, to climb on the whale and start giving it CPS.

I think that would have been a lovely gesture, this with half of its side already eaten off by sharks.

Some gesture from humanity to the beleaguered whale community which has suffered so much.

The slings, arrows and harpoons of outrageous fortune stroke the Japanese fishing fleet.

That's the point because as you say, even while he was doing it Andy there were several tiger sharks and a great white shark circling the whale but he said he did not feel in danger saying the sharks were too busy chomping on the whale so it wasn't too bad but unfortunately that was the dead whale that you were surfing on you glorious idiot

I guess maybe you know let's put it in context John he might have might have been very opposed to the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbotts who was booed into on his way into a funeral this week.

He might have thought my government is swinging right in quite an unpleasant way.

The country seems to be in the pockets of mining conglomerates.

My cricket team has just been absolutely horsed by Pakistan.

Ah, what the f, I'm going to surf a dead well in shark-infested waters.

It's the only logical step.

Abbott this week, John, has stood by his defence of coal, saying it is, quote, the foundation of Australia's foreseeable future.

This came just days after a United Nations climate report called for urgent reduction in carbon emissions.

So I guess jumping onto a rotting whale carcass while surrounded by sharks is not quite the stupidest thing an Australian has done this week.

It does raise the prospect though, John, of an exciting new sport.

the dead whale surfing while surrounded by sharks.

I mean the problem is making it fair.

You've got to get a whale carcass at an equivalent level of decomposition and make sure each carcass is surrounded by sharks at roughly equal points on their daily hunger cycle.

Because you want a fair competition, John.

But whichever way you package it, you can be pretty fing sure an Australian is going to win that competition, hands down.

And in yet more exciting daredevil news, just over a week ago now, I think, Google executive Alan Eustace broke Felix Baumgartner's world record for highest ever parachute jump.

He jumped from 135,000 feet, breaking Baumgartner's record from two years ago, as reported exclusively on the Bugle, by over 7,000 feet.

Now, John, a few alarm bells rang for me with this story, particularly the words Google executive.

Now,

those words should not be followed by, has broken the world altitude record for parachute jump by leaping from 135,000 feet.

Something is seriously wrong there.

I mean, another thing, let's look at the two guys' names.

Alan Eustace.

What does that say to you, John?

That says to me, Google executive.

Felix Baumgartner, that says, man who will jump from fing anywhere.

And I know which one of those names I want holding the record for highest ever jump.

John, this is not an achievement by Alan Eustace.

This is a tragedy for the concept of human daredevil idiocy.

Yes, I totally agree.

He's not a daredevil, Andy.

He's a douche.

He's a business douche.

Being a daredevil, to jump from space for no reason should not be something that you're doing on the side of your day job.

It should be because you have nothing left in your life.

You have no other ideas of what to do with your day.

So let's again, let's compare the careers of these two men and work out who really should be holding this record.

As a child, Felix Baumgartner dreamed about flying and skydiving.

In 1999, he claimed a world record for the highest parachute jump from a building when he jumped from the Patronus Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

In the mid-1990s, Alan Eustace worked a binary code instrumentation system that forms the basis for a wide variety of program analysis and computer architecture analysis tools.

Well, I think that's one nil Baumgartner on those ones.

On 20th of July 2003, Felix Baumgartner became the first person to skydive across the English Channel using a specially made carbon fibre wing.

In 2002, Alan Eustace moved to work at Google, where he has since worked as Senior Vice President of Engineering.

2-0.

On the 12th of December 2007, Felix Baumgarner became the first person to jump from the 91st floor observation deck of the then tallest completed building in the world, Taipei 101, in Taiwan.

Alan Eustace currently serves as senior vice president of Google Knowledge Department.

F ⁇ you, Alan Eustace!

You!

You did not need to do that!

You have stolen this record from a man who has dedicated his entire life to doing f ⁇ ing stupid life-endangering shit.

And you walked straight out of your tech sector office with your fancy chairs and your smiley faces and your wireless f ⁇ ing shoes and trousers and shit like that.

And you've just plopped out of a f ⁇ ing balloon from 25 miles without even making much fuss about it.

Hardly anyone knew it was happening.

Baumgartner streamed it live, at least giving the world the chance to tune in and see if he might f it up.

Screw you, Eustace, you slayer of the concept of crazy logistical pipe dreams.

This would be like Captain Scott reaching the South Pole to find that it wasn't fellow polar explorer and conqueror of the colds, Raoul Amanton had beaten him to it, but that John D.

Rockefeller was sitting there inside a golden thermal pod drinking a martini, having been carried there by a squadron of specially trained penguins.

To me, John, this is as dark a day for humanity as if someone painted over the Sistine Chapel with a load of smiley-faced demoticons.

It is that bad, John.

I think the tech industry has a lot to answer for.

But all hope is not lost lost because Eustace's records will hopefully be mercifully short-lived because the German self-styled father of free flying, the much more dare-devilishly named Olaf Zipser, a veteran of almost 22,000 skydives, a 35-year veteran of chucking himself towards the surface of planet Earth from an inadvisable height, is set to become the first man to jump out of a rocket with the ultimate goal of free-flying from 100 kilometers above Earth.

A record that will no doubt stand until 58-year-old tech sector finance director Nigel Gray falls from 200 miles directly back to his fing desk in a corporate park in California.

F you, Eustace.

F you.

Satirist for Hire tour update.

Thanks again to all the buglers who have come to Satirist for Hire.

Without you, there would have been some rooms that were even more empty than some of the quite empty rooms

there have been.

The schedule coming coming up.

Colchester this Saturday, the 8th of November.

Salford, Lowry on Sunday.

You might actually have to check for tickets for that one.

It is selling in a slightly unzoltzmannic way.

Next week, Oxford on Friday the 14th, Leicester on Saturday the 15th, then Bristol on the 20th, Folkestone, Shoreham, Aldershot, 27th, 28th, 29th.

Then in December, Wimbledon on the 3rd, Aylesbury the 4th, Reading on the 6th, the Gala closing night of the tour.

And I'm also recording a DVD at the Chapter Art Centre in Cardiff on the 8th of December.

All details, apart from the Cardiff one, on saturatedforhire.com.

And I've had some terrific

requests.

Yesterday, John in Maidstone, a guy asked me to satirise Slovenia

because he had a Slovenian girlfriend who was visiting him purely to see my show.

And I did a bit of research on Slovenia, and they had a general election in July, in mid-July,

and it was won by a party that had been set up on the 2nd of June.

And

they won the general election six weeks later.

Now that is...

that is speed democracy.

I think America could do America stuck with the same old arguments it's been having for almost 200 years.

I think America could do it.

Britain could certainly do with that, depending on the type of party.

So the new Prime Minister is Miro Serar.

I hope I pronounced that right.

And his party is called Stranka Mirar Seraja, or or translated into English the party of Miro Sera.

Nice modestly named political party and the Slovenian lady at the gig said that so he won this election from nowhere in mid-July and apparently he is already deeply unpopular.

So they've basically accelerated the political food chain.

They've condensed it to about a three-month period what usually takes about a hundred years fantastic super effort from Slovenia and the ruling party which won the election in 2011 positive Slovenia was chucked out of power with a grand total of zero seats.

That is proper democracy in action.

Also, at the gig in Stafford, someone asked me to satirise a local tree.

Because I don't know if it's been big news in the States, John, but the U-tree on the Shugborough Estate has been nominated for Tree of the Year.

which is

I mean that's amazing that that that competition exists The tree of the year.

I mean, that shows the natural competitiveness of the human soul.

They were even making trees compete with each other.

This tree is, this celebrity is, claims to be the widest tree in Britain with 175 meter circumference.

That is one fat ass tree.

Some people have complained that most of the trees on the shortlist are very old.

And I guess there's really no substitute for experience when you're a tree.

But, I mean, I guess you'd worry that you're not really encouraging the young trees if none of them get on the short list.

And also, some of the big money botanical gardens have been buying in at Spencer's expensive overseas trees.

So you think, what's the point of the competition?

Hopefully it'll raise the standards of the other trees.

I mean, also, tree of the year,

how much are these trees going to change by next year?

I mean, surely a decade

at the very least

is all that's needed.

But

I sincerely hope, John, that the Shugbury Ewe doesn't win.

I mean, it might be wide, but it's an absolute mess looking at it.

I reckon if it does win, it'll show there's match fixing, and it would be an absolute con if a tree like that wins.

Oh no.

I can feel it coming.

Can you feel it coming?

Stop it.

I can't fight it, John.

Strap in.

There's a lot of lovely puns on trees.

Okay.

Now, I don't approve this competition, but the homepage has had loads of hits this week.

I don't know why it's so popular.

Makes me sick.

A more pointless competition, I cannot imagine.

Anyway, how can you judge between one tree and the others?

I like all the trees.

But I've heard heard that fans of the Shugbury have been trying to make one of the other nominated trees look worse by getting beavers to nibble away at it, but that would obviously beat cheating.

You have to trust the integrity of a contest, and if they don't sort it out, the sponsors may pull their support for the competition.

But I've got a friend of mine, John, who hates trees.

He had a terrible, John, he's still there.

He had a terrible accident when he fell out of a tree as a child.

As a result, he has no arms.

It's quite awkward because he's a journalist.

He has to write with his buttocks using his ass pen.

He also had his testicles grafted onto his pecs as a result of the accident, leaving him with some sweet chestnuts.

A bit embarrassing when he takes his top off on a hot summer's day though.

You should see the looks he gets.

See that?

Anyway, a strange guy, used to absolutely love playing strategic board games whilst riding an animal.

He was an absolute horse chestnut.

And

I think we're done.

I do think, oh no, there was what, oh yeah, so we hopped in a cart and drove to Kew Gardens to protest about the tree competition, but just as we were passing an Australian tree, this idiot on a motorbike tried to overtake us.

There wasn't enough space and he knocked our wing mirror off.

Oi, I shouted.

You clipped us.

Fuck sake, that's going to be expensive to fix.

You will owe us at least £50.

I'll make sure of that.

You pay up or I'll head-butt you.

I will knot you in the face.

Right, I need a cock drink to calm down.

Teak, offee, anything.

Right.

That's

officially the end.

That was a long walk to a you clipped us joke.

That was the initial title of Mandela's book, I think, wasn't it?

Anyway, sorry, it's just when I started doing these puns, the feeling's too strong.

I can't suppress it.

Anyway.

I had this friend, John,

who

he had this nasty genital condition where if he saw any large American trees,

his wangle would swell up.

The skin on it would get really raw and he'd have an uncontrollable involuntary erection.

Poor lad, and his giant red wood.

Right.

Is anyone still there?

A blue way to finish.

I mean,

yeah.

You wouldn't catch John doing that kind of stuff, would you?

Not Mr.

Olive.

Don't bring me into this, Andy.

Your surname started it, John.

That's it for this week's Bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

I'll see you all at my

forthcoming gigs.

And uh we will hopefully be back uh next week with uh bugle 278 until then buglers do keep your emails coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com and check out the soundcloud page soundcloud.com slash the hyphen bugle and uh imminently there will be new lines of bugle merch

being launched including what may be the piece of merch to end all pieces of merch

which if it sells more than two I will consider something of a disgrace

Until then buglers 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.