Bugle 245 – Syria, too complicated for 5 year olds

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to Bugle issue 245, the first bugle of the 2013-14 Bugle season with me Andy Zoltzmann freshly returned from a family holiday in Spain where I taught the legs of dead pigs some lessons they will not forget in a hurry.

I'm live in London 2012 never forget and joining me from New York after a traumatic disastrous week for British status in America the British government falling victim to democracy and having to declare war on the US.

I think that's what happened I was away.

Andy Murray hammered like a tent peg in a resentful ditched husband's attempt to pitch his tent on the road outside his ex-wife's new home she shares with a a millionaire tent peg manufacturing magnate.

And

most humiliatingly of all, Britain's John Oliver sacked as host of the Daily Show after just two months in the hot seat in favour of some film director.

Bad time for Britain.

But he'd never be devoted on the bugle, not unless Chris worked on his singing skills and John learned some I.T.

So, from New York, here he is, the musketeer of mirth, slicing the apples of abomination with his sword of satire to make the tart-ta-ta of truth.

It's John

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Well, Andy, I hope you had a nice, relaxing break.

I myself went to Afghanistan to do a USO tour over the break, which I'm pretty sure is whatever the exact opposite of a holiday is.

In fact, I think that might actually be Afghanistan's official tourist slogan.

Come to Afghanistan.

It's whatever the opposite of a holiday is.

It all happened very fast.

I finished the last daily show of the summer, went home to pack, and then flew to Kyrgyzstan to get picked up by the military the next day in the second most ridiculous thing I've ever done the first most ridiculous thing I've ever done Andy is tase myself in Afghanistan for no reason whatsoever other than a soldier saying to me I got a taser you can tase yourself with it if you like

and I was so jet lagged before I knew what I was doing I just tased myself in the leg and you know what Andy?

It actually kind of helped with my jet lag.

I definitely didn't feel drowsy anymore.

It might be the perfect treatment for jet lag for someone who is a complete idiot.

It's hard to describe the sensation really.

I guess I'd say it felt like however you would describe the feeling of tasing yourself in the f ⁇ ing leg.

I think the Germans have a word for it.

They usually have a word for that kind of thing.

Lekentarsen!

Or yeah, something like that.

I'm guessing.

I mean, how was that?

I mean, did that make it, did it, do you feel it made you kind of more athletic or?

Well, you know, it definitely, I mean, it made me more athletic for about a second because I jumped extremely high and then ran extremely fast.

I mean, it definitely hurt a lot.

I think that's so yeah.

I mean, didn't Justin Gatlin do that in the US?

I think he did.

I think I could get close to Usain Bolt if I just kept tasing myself in alternate legs for 100 meters.

The audiences for a USO are...

are a little different because for a start your audience is usually heavily armed over there and believe me nothing sets a carefree tone for comedy more than every single audience member having an M4 on their person.

It's it's the ultimate heckle in a way, having hearing a clip shoved into a machine gun, because that sound really says this gig could be over a lot sooner than you seem to imagine it.

One gig.

I was standing on the back of a truck in an open tent and behind the audience I could see fueled up helicopters in front of the Hindu Kush mountains.

Look, it's not a place that's seen much stand-up over the years, Andy, but it turned out to be a surprisingly great place to do it.

I met some incredible people over there with some even more amazing names.

I met a man called Captain Hefty, whose name broke checks that his personality easily cashed.

I met a woman called Captain Power, and I swear this is true, someone called Sergeant Slaughter.

That man had three career options ahead of him, Andy.

A professional wrestler, a soldier, or a stripper.

And trust me,

he could have been successful at any one or all three of those.

So, well, welcome.

back.

How was Kyrgyzstan as well?

It was much

more

the nightlife like and well, I'll tell you how Kyrgyzstan was, Andy.

It seemed nice.

You know, there was a great statue of Lenin there, which for some reason they didn't take down.

And I thought I was quite a nice experience until I got home and news broke that there was the bubonic plague had emerged

in Kyrgyzstan, exactly where I was.

So, you know, that made for a couple of days of thinking, I've got a tickly throat.

Is that how it starts?

Actually,

I flew from Gig to Gigandi in Black Hawk helicopters, and it's only in flying over Afghanistan that you realize what an impossible task winning a war there is, because it's not a coherent country, it's just a series of uninhabitable hellscapes.

Within 20 minutes, you can have flown over desert, mountains, and something that if I knew better, I'd have sworn was actually the surface of the moon.

Because the temperature there tends to fluctuate quite quickly between violently hot and death-inducingly cold.

Afghanistan is often referred to, as we know, as the graveyard of empires.

It's where Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and even the British, and the British back when it meant something, bit off officially more than we could chew.

And it suddenly hits you when you're flying over it that if America can't do it with Chinook helicopters, F-16s and up-added Humvees, I don't know how the hell Hannibal thought he could do it in the middle of winter crossing the mountains with 37 f ⁇ ing elephants.

At one point I was standing in a valley, this is true, and an American soldier pointed to the entrance to the valley and said That was where in the 19th century, 16,000 British troops had entered the valley, and by the exit, there was only one left alive, and he was allowed to live so that he could go back and tell people what had happened.

And I'm guessing what he said, Andy, was, Hey, chaps, good to be back, lovely to see everyone.

Listen, um, quick point, uh, but important point: I'm never going back to Afghanistan ever again.

And if any country in the future have half a brain, they'll do the

same.

Yeah, that was a lesson that we have rather surprisingly chose not to learn.

So, well, welcome back, Buglers, after our after our, well, welcome back to John.

Welcome back to you, Buglers.

Whilst we've all been away, I've been counting down the days to the show visibility of the Millennium.

My Soho Theatre run in London.

Saturday's fire, night the 21st of September, except the middle Sunday.

Thanks to any buglers who have already booked tickets at soho theatre.com and sent in their satirical requests.

And to the rest of you, what are you waiting for?

The world is burning and you're just sitting there.

This is Bugle 245.

245, the number of times Christopher Columbus tossed a coin in his heads or tails, Should I Stay or Should I Go?

coin toss challenge with King Ferdinand II of Castile to decide whether or not to set sail across the Atlantic in 1492.

He really didn't want to go, but finally, with the words, what do you mean, best of 491?

You've had 245 tails in a row.

Now get in the

boat ringing in his ears.

Off he went.

The week beginning Monday, the 9th of September 2013 on this day, the 9th of September in 1776, according to Wikipedia, no less a source.

The United States was officially named the United States from a list of possibilities, including Dudeland, Funktopia, the Independent Republic of Awesome, and North Korea.

Definite missed opportunities.

And this week's section in the bin, as always a section of this audio newspaper, going straight in the bin, as Strictly Come Dancing begins another season of Celebri Prancing in Britain, we look at one of the other big celebrity shows hitting the screens this autumn, Hit Squad, in which teams of stars plan, execute, and try to get away with an assassination of a prominent politician.

We have exclusive behind-the-scenes access as the girls' team, that's Canadian singer Carly Ray Jepson, former American Olympic hepatathlon champion Jackie Joyna Kersey, and British TV property expert Sarah Beanie attempt to bump off the mayor of Bogota, whilst the boys' team, Fashionista Gockwan, French actor Jean-Hugh Jean-Glad, and former CIA boss Porter Jay Goss, plot the termination of polar explorer Ranolph Fiennes.

Oh, it's good to be back.

Top story this week, Sus-S-Syria.

Oh,

sir.

One for all you Phil Collins fans out there.

The drumbeat for war, or at least attacking Syria, is getting louder and louder, Andy, with President Obama beating the drum of war like it's a Neil Purt solo.

One for all you Rush fans out there.

Look, yes, yes, this is a glib way to start talking about Syria, but frankly, you know, you have to find a way to lighten this up.

Well, you don't have to, but I choose to.

Now, all of a sudden, America seems intent on, at the very least, airstrikes and at the very most, airstrikes on Syria.

And you might think, why now?

You know, this humanitarian crisis has been going on for over two years.

More than 100,000 people have been killed.

Two million refugees have fled Syria to neighboring countries.

And the international community has proven its ability to be laser-focused in its determination to ignore everything that's happening over there.

Why this sudden concern for the welfare of the Syrian people?

Well, it all comes down to chemical weapons.

Not so much having them, any country worth its salt has them, but using them.

Chemical weapons are not supposed to be used, they're ornamental, they're like a garnish.

That's supposed to make your other weapons even scarier.

And this current flashpoint comes down to an alleged attack on civilians in Damascus suburb on August the 21st in which 1,426 people were killed, over 400 of which were reportedly children.

The White House claims that Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the attack, which Assad claims that he wasn't.

and that either there was a naturally occurring sarin rainstorm somewhere or that the civilians must have somehow done it to themselves to make him look bad.

And that might sound ridiculous Andy but it's actually what some Syrian officials are almost suggesting arguing that the opposition were behind any such attacks and that they were encouraged to do this by the West.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekhdad claimed that it was attacked by the rebels to turn around the civil war which he said they were losing and that's a classic move Andy.

They gassed themselves playing the long game.

It's just like during the Battle of the Somme Andy when we must have gassed ourselves to prove that we could take a punch.

It made sense then and it makes sense now.

It's all pretty depressing, John, as you've suggested.

I was away in Spain for 10 happy news-free days.

Prior to that, I'd been concentrating on the final test match of the England-Australia Ashes series.

So I'd basically had almost three weeks away from any form of reality.

And I returned to self-style civilisation on Wednesday to basically find that not only was Syria about to explode internationally, but that British politics politics had been tearing itself apart like a masochistic fox in a pack of hounds outfit.

And the world was now teetering on the edge of its biggest international crisis in years.

There is a kind of general sense that a happy and harmonious solution to this whole shebang is about as likely as Elvis Presley making it through qualifying for next year's World Snooker Championships.

Even if he is still alive, he'd be 79.

So even if he has been locked in a snooker hall for the last 36 years, he's almost certainly passed his best.

Assad has challenged President Obama to present evidence that the Syrian government was involved in the Damascus gambling attack, saying those who make accusations must show evidence.

We have challenged the United States and France to come up with a single piece of proof.

And look, I'm not a UN weapons inspector, Andy, and I am sorry if I ever suggested that I was one, but I guess the evidence is probably at the very least fourfold for that.

One, the piles of dead bodies with no visible wounds.

Two, the fact that Assad wanted to do it.

Three, the fact that he had the capability to do it.

And four, the fact that no one else f ⁇ ing did.

That really does point the finger of blame, at the very least, in his general direction.

Obama claims that the world must act and that this is a red line that Syria has crossed.

Although, again, to be fair, America has in the past been a little wriggly on the exact shade of red that would necessitate a response.

When Assad was previously accused of a chemical attack, all of a sudden the red line looked a lot more pinkish.

It definitely had a significant rosy hue to American eyes.

Well, also, I mean, there's been a lot of this talk of this red line, and, you know, because there have already been chemical attacks

during the two years of the Syrian-Asyrian conflict, suggestions by UN's own reporters that both Assad and the rebels may have perpetrated them.

So, where is this red line?

As you say, arguments over whether the line was red or just a really dark orange and a strange light, or as the various sides, the Russians and the Americans and the Chinese and the British rifle through their paint catalogues to decide exactly what colour the line was.

A burnt sienna line, or a Hawaiian sunset, a Leninist brick, or a blushing priest line, perhaps even a Vermilius Tomatista, a squashed Andalusian puppy, a rampaging watermelon, or a tuberculotic rat mucus line, maybe even the classic, unless we have this in our living room, the chafed mountaineer's testicle line.

I mean, what exactly is

red, John?

What is that's a lovely colour?

It warms up a room, that, doesn't it?

And also, what colours were the lines marking out the slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of citizens by fair, honourable and largely pain-free conventional weapons, and the displacement, if you say, of millions through strategic but non-chemical and therefore gentlemanly state terrorisation?

There's some very oddly coloured lines in this conflict.

Syria is becoming a particular flashpoint due to countries using it as a vessel through which to essentially piss each other off.

It's now not just a civil war, as it serves as a proxy war, with Iran, Hezbollah and Russia taking sides against Saudi Arabia, the Gulf sheikdoms and America.

Russian President Putin has been very critical of the US saying that Secretary of State John Kerry lied in his testimony this week.

He said he lies openly and he knows that he lies.

This is sad.

Now here's why that's suspicious Andy.

Judging by his face, I don't think Vladimir Putin even has the capacity for sadness anymore.

In fact, I think the only time he might even approach sadness is whenever he suspects that he might just have been happy.

That's the only time he gets even close.

President Obama has opted not to take executive action on Syria and has chosen to ask the permission of Congress first instead, probably less out of a desire to follow the exact letter of the US law and more to say, look, if I'm going to eat this shit pie, you can at least all have a slice of it with me.

He's attempted to reassure those doubters by saying that any military action would be, and I quote, limited and and proportional.

Essentially, he's having to reassure people in Congress that the strikes will basically do nothing.

You know, they won't suck us into a war.

They won't remove Assad and make us accountable for the consequences.

They'll basically be pointless.

In fact, if it makes you any happier, the missiles will be empty, or they'll just have a little flag that comes out at the end, which says bang in funny letters.

He even went so far as to describe it as a shot across the bows of the Syrian government, rather than trying to tip the balance against it in the conflict.

It's just a warning shot, Andy.

We're just going to aim the missiles slightly over their head or in front of their feet to make them dance.

That's all we're going to do.

Well this is in the great tradition of the international response to the Syrian crisis, which admittedly has been a situation as complex and awkward as a teenage hydra with a penchant for chopping its own heads off.

But and for whatever reason, the UN's previous resolutions to try to force Assad into line have not worked.

Resolutions ranging from now, now, now via, come on, simmer down, oioi, and I mean, really, all the way to the one that nearly broke him, Resolution 2065.

And none of those none of those have worked.

And this is this is why now the governments have been

trying to force themselves into action.

David Cameron, a British Prime Minister, recalled MPs to vote on whether Britain should give military support to an

American strike.

And he lost the vote.

It was the first time in 300 years that a government has been defeated on a military action decision.

And in those 300 years, we've taken a fair amount of military action.

That gives it some

kind of context.

And we have the now traditional sight of sights and sounds of politicians opportunistically accusing their opponents of political opportunism.

Cameron accused the MPs who voted against British intervention of failing to, quote, take a stand against the gassing of children.

And then he said that Britain will be one of the leaders, despite this vote, in bringing forward plans for a peace process for Syria.

Thus, I guess, taking the kind of stand those MPs who voted against him presumably thought was a better way of standing.

And it's all, man, it's, I think it, to be honest, John,

I chose a very good week to be away on holiday because I think I would have smashed at least three televisions had I been here.

In response to

the UK losing that vote, or David Cameron losing that vote, the US said it would continue to consult with the UK, who are, and again, I quote, one of our closest allies and friends, going on to say, pussies, grow some balls, grow some actual balls

david cameron is in his attempt to convince parliament uh talked of the evidence that the us has of the chemical weapon to strike the problem is that having america say we have evidence of chemical weapons rings a little hollower than it once did after that whole colin powell and his prop anthrax bottle of the u.

sheboggle in fact that evidence now rings so hollow it basically echoes back at you even though that evidence is clearly real

yes it's a kind of yeah the the old boy who promoted Wolf the Musical scenario.

Exactly.

It's a classic, I mean, this is a classic case, John, of

history repeating on itself, with the acid taste of half-digested failures of the past chundering their way back into the world's throat and producing one of the more noxious global belches of recent times, if I may stretch an unnecessary metaphor.

Safety estate John Kerry here has been leading the charge for war, although he himself has some personal baggage to check in that he might have to pay for.

Kerry praised Assad as recently as 2011 as being a very generous man, saying, well, I personally believe that.

I mean, this is my belief, okay?

But President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussion we've had.

And when I last went to the last several trips to Syria,

I asked President Assad to do certain things to build the relationship with the United States and sort of show the good faith that would help us to move the process forward.

That is so bumbling, Andy.

It's almost like as he was saying it, he he was thinking oh shit this sentence is really gonna come back to bite me if he starts gassing his people in the future isn't it?

Oh shit and this generosity that Kerry speaks of me what what's that about?

You know, it's it's not like Assad picked up a dinner tab when the two of them went out to dinner with their wives is it?

Oh

actually it could be exactly that because a photo emerged this week of all four of them having dinner together in a restaurant in Damascus in 2009.

I am guessing that he and Assad were fighting over the check at the end and Assad was saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, please, John, please, let me get this.

This dinner is going to come back to haunt you in the near future.

Put your money away.

It's the least I can do, John.

Let's not fight over this.

We'll be fighting over much more important things in the future.

Do not insult me, John.

My treat.

My treat.

Much has been made here in the US of not wanting Syria to be like Iraq.

And of course, it isn't.

It's not like Iraq at all.

In Iraq, the evidence of weapons of mass destruction didn't exist in Syria the chemical weapon evidence is all over the fing floor as well as in the lungs of 1500 people I mean it can't

it can be hard to understand the exact differences as you mentioned Andy between chemical warfare and warfare seeing as most both methods seem to end with poles of bodies surrounded by justifiably angry people it's like we're somehow able to draw a distinction between the horror of chemical warfare and the honor of traditional gentlemen's massacres why can't a sad just have the class to fire a series of missiles at his own people's and then shoot anyone who attempts to run away?

You know, behave with some etiquette when it comes to illegal mass slaughter.

Come on, boy.

So now President Obama must convince enough of Congress to let him get involved in his nebulously defined military intervention with no clear mission focus.

Shouldn't be too hard.

You know, it's not like he doesn't have support.

The problem is that one of the main proponents for intervention is John McCain.

And he was caught on camera during the hearing playing video poker on his fing iPhone.

When asked about this, McCain said, as much as I like to and always listen in rapt attention constantly to the remarks of my colleagues over a three and a half hour period, occasionally I get a leele bored.

Oh, I am so sorry senator.

I'm sorry we were boring you by discussing sending US military into combat in Syria, something you yourself have been pushing for for over 12 f ⁇ ing months now.

There's something even more galling about the fact that he was playing poker on an iPhone too, Andy, because because it was an iPhone, he had access to all world knowledge in a device as small as his hand.

He could have looked up, say, the history of Syria, the breakdown of religious tensions there.

He could have googled what an Alawite is, or he could have just typed in America and Middle East into Google, and I guarantee he'd have got a few interesting results.

But no, he didn't have time to do that, because because he wanted to wait to see if he flopped an ace on the river to give him a flush.

He didn't even need to ask John Kerry any questions.

He could have just asked Siri in his phone.

Siri, can you guarantee that the US will not be drawn into a larger, longer conflict?

Of course I can't, John.

This is f ⁇ ing warfare.

You of all people should know that.

Okay, thank you, Siri.

Oh, and by the way, John, what was that Sarah Pali pic about?

Was it pure desperation or complete stupidity?

I said thank you, Siri!

And if you got bored John, I mean in what a three-hour debate?

He spent years in solitary confinement, didn't he?

He did.

How much poker did he play with himself then?

I was quite impressed by the fact that he was just totally and utterly unrepentant.

And it made me think that maybe

it was kind of justified because maybe there can be no better mental preparation for a crisis like Syria than poker, a game of deception, some skill, a reckless disregard for financial consequences, and above all, massive luck.

Such as Syria, John, only with absolutely no chance of winning anything and instead merely hoping to minimise your losses and leave with your dignity, wallets and trousers vaguely intact.

But

I like the way that he just bawls it out as if you said he'd been caught cop as if he'd been caught reading a copy of in-depth analysis of the religious tensions in the 21st century Middle East.

Bit of a surprising new book from pop starlette Taylor Swift, but fair play.

It's good she's encouraging the teen market to take an interest in the geopolitical affairs that will shape the future of their planet.

I certainly can't wait to read.

Controversial baseball star Alex Rodriguez's eagerly awaited new research paper, Recalibrating American Expectation in the Post-Post-Cold War economic era.

There was another inexplicable moment where Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader of the House, delivered a mystifying speech in front of cameras after meeting with the President when she revealed that she had consulted with her five-year-old grandchild about potential airstrikes

she said and this is an exact quote my five-year-old grandson as I was leaving San Francisco yesterday he said to me Mimi my name Mimi war with Syria are you yes war with Syria no war with Syria and he's five years old we're not talking about war we're talking about action yes war with Syria no war with Syria I said well what do you think he said no war I said, well, I generally agree with that, but you know, they've killed hundreds of children.

They've killed hundreds of children there.

And he said, five years old, were these children in the United States?

And I said, no, but they're children wherever they are.

Now, two key questions straight away there, Andy.

One, why is Nancy Pelosi discussing child slaughter with her five-year-old grandchild?

And two,

why is Nancy Pelosi's grandson such a heartless isolationist asshole

who clearly doesn't care what happens to non-American children.

You know what?

I'm going to say this, I'm not comfortable saying it, but I think it's the right thing to do.

Nancy Pelosi's five-year-old grandson.

It's about time.

It's about time someone took that down a peg or two.

Sorry, viewers.

So we're in this weird, weird situation now with the president lobbying Congress for permission to do something he doesn't technically need their permission to do, and putting us in this strange limbo.

Strikes have been delayed, yet still seem likely.

But the thing about airstrikes, Andy, as we know, is that it's all about the anticipation anyway.

This is essentially tantric intervention from America: delay and delay the airstrikes until you feel like you can't hold them anymore, and then boom, Damascus is a complete mess.

And I probably not helped helped by the fact that this weekend there's the G20.

Yes.

G20 Summit.

The G20, of course, a regular feature on the bugle over

the over the years.

Of course, some dispute over what the G20 actually is, as we've discussed on

previous bugles.

Some suggestions that it is G20, an excerpt from the renowned Jazz Saxophonist Kenny G's influential academic paper entitled Suggested New Values for Letters in Scrabble, G20.

He also suggested that K should be worth 10 and S, A and X 5 each with no points for any other letters.

They are set to be some of the iciest conversations at this G20 summit since Captain Scott tried to persuade his buddies that a silver medal was a solid result and that dying on the way home was all part of the fun.

So it's...

And I think we need to put this in some kind of context as well, John, for what it means to the people of this country here in Britain and in America.

When I got back on Wednesday from my holiday, I'd really had almost no news access, and I obviously quite a lot of complicated and massively depressing things to catch up on.

So I went on the BBC News website and I looked at the column of the most read stories, thinking that clearly this is the issue that is really

getting the British people exercised.

It's an issue that everyone must have some view on.

And the most read story was, Miley Cyrus defends VMA performance.

Now I thought, what could this be that has so piqued the interests of the British newsreading public?

Has Cyrus finally come off the fence with some stridently leftist views about healthcare and used her VMA performance, whatever that is?

Something I think,

something I think in a London museum that's be renamed after it turned out that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were involved in a 20-year ménage à trois with a plumber called Mike.

Has Cyrus waded into the Syria debate?

We're doing a corporate gig to the viral marketing association by suggesting that the West undermine Assad with carefully targeted

YouTube clips and internet memes, highlighting to the Syrian people the benefits of not being governed by a psychologically unstable puppet with a hereditary penchant for slaughter.

Maybe has the Billy Ray Cyrus of the 21st century become the latest celeb victim of the new VPL, VMA, visible moccasin abrasions where the overuse of ill-fitting slippers leaves an indentation around the ankles.

No, it wasn't that.

It wasn't that, John.

She had had twerked.

Now,

here's a question for any buglers who, like me, are not familiar with what twerking is.

Here's a multiple choice.

What is twerking?

Is it A, toilet working, a curse of the mobile age when even a toilet break is an opportunity to send some emails or edit a PowerPoint presentation?

Chris, please.

Is twerking B a baseball term referring to the little-used tactic of getting a runner on first base to distract the pitcher by clucking like a chicken, was pioneered in the 1930s by pinch runner Sanctimone Twerk, who played variously for the Boston Red Sox, the Houston Herneas, the St.

Louis Weirdos and Miami Crotch before winding down his career in the minor leagues with the Bakersfield nudists.

Is twerking C, a woman writhing her scantily beclothed bottostereals up against a man's trouser-inhibited grunch?

Or is it D, the cause of more hospitalisations than any other activity?

Twerking is the process of removing a recalcitant lid from a jar of jam or beetroot or whatever other shit comes in jars these days.

It's a combination of the twist and the jerk, the twerk, often accompanied by the grimace, the ng and the swear, and results in approximately 150,000 global muscular injuries per day, 76% of which result in hospital treatment, 44% in a full face of jam, and 13% in death.

Well, the answer, John,

are you familiar with twerking?

Of course I am, Andy.

I live in the United States of America.

It's my right to twerk.

It's a bit like daggering, isn't it?

What's daggering?

Is that what I think?

Daggering, I think, is like a Jamaican dancehall version.

Right.

So it's obviously the beatroot thing, I'm guessing.

Right.

Well, is that similar to booty clapping?

Booty clapping, of course, played for Gloucestershire in the 1920s.

A very fine leg spin bowler.

It was C, it is, it is.

That's what she did.

And that is what the British public cares most about.

Miley Cyrus

and her curiously placed Batut.

So take that, people of Syria.

Parliamentary porn news now.

And a report came out this week that over the last year there were, and this is reportedly true, 300,000 attempts made to access pornographic websites of the houses of parliament.

I don't even know where to begin with this, Andy.

First, I mean, let's start with 300,000.

That's a lot.

That's around 1,000 a day.

That's either 1,000 people being distracted a day or one person being incredibly focused, just not on the thing that they're supposed to be focused on.

Secondly, 3,000 attempts.

Now,

if anything, that's even more pathetic to me.

If you fail in an attempt to access pornography online, you are a dangerous individual.

Because you can access pornography online without even trying.

You literally can do it accidentally.

It is actually harder not to access pornography online than it is to access it.

The full breakdown of the figures are incredible.

Apparently in November, there were 114,844 attempts to access websites classed as pornographic, but just 15 attempts

in February.

What happened there, Andy?

I know that February is the shortest month, but is it also the least sexy?

Is it the lack of daylight?

I thought if anything, that might help.

And what does November have that February doesn't?

Is it the fact that it comes on the back of Halloween, which is now basically an excuse to dress as a slotty traffic cone or

basically a sexualized anything?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I guess, you know, January here, the end of January, is when you have to fill in yourself a sexman tax return and maybe just the...

the mere thought of anything that possibly involves activities related to human procreation just seems

seems worthless in a joyless universe.

So, um, I mean, I mean, who are these parliamentary porn dogs, these democratic dirt fiends, these governmental grillth gawkers, these representative regarders of raunch, these House of Commons hardcore horncrankers?

I mean, who who exactly is doing this?

And why are they not running our country, John?

Or m I mean, is this the only way that they they can run the country whilst well whilst whilst

whilst using a pornograph.

I mean, it's extraordinary that I believe.

I think

John Logie Baird, he did leave his original pornography invented after the invention of the television to

the hazards of Parliament.

Since when it's been

a problem, been a big problem.

Churchill delivered most of his speeches whilst looking at porn.

That's why he only did it over the radio.

If you listen very carefully, you can hear a kind of magazine page turn and then go, oh, goodness.

We'll fight them on the book.

Oh, come on now.

Later.

Come on now.

Well, it's not.

The truth is, it's not yet entirely clear

who exactly was accessing the pornography.

It may not necessarily be MPs or peers, as around 5,000 people work on the parliamentary estate.

But even if it is the other workers, Andy, I think that might make...

sense in a way.

They have to work around members of parliament all day, every day.

Who can deny them a momentary escape into pornography every now and then?

It might be that the only way to tolerate working around such arseholes is to look at a bunch of arseholes instead.

It also shows how prevalent pornography has become in mainstream media to the extent where, actually, if you play episode 213 of the Bugle Backwards, it sounds like Angela Merkel and Theodore Roosevelt doing the deed in a museum.

A museum full of stuffed animals that Roosevelt had shot and in between their groans of carnalistic rapture discussing a long long-term restructuring of the European economy.

But I mean that's it's just mainstream now isn't it?

And there's been some debate as well over whether

internet pornography needs to be included in school sex education to better prepare youngsters for the absolute tsunami of filth they will inevitably be exposed to.

And I mean these things have changed very rapidly.

I know when I was at school and I went to a private school in

Kent, south of London, the sex education at my school basically involved nervous coughing, singing the national anthem, and a three times life-size wicker statue of Mrs.

Thatcher in bondage kit being wheeled around the school cricket pitch on the night of the summer solstice before the school's horniest boy was sacrificed in it.

So it does need some updating.

Your emails now, thanks for all the emails you've sent in over the summer.

This one came in from Steve in Boston.

Dear Chris, Andy and John, in order of how likely you are to have your leg blown off by an exploding t-shirt gun.

Wait, what?

I thought that'll get your attention, John.

Yeah, it's gotten.

You've been in America too long.

Gotten is...

Not only is that not a word, it is

an abomination.

A while back, you guys were speculating about a t-shirt gun arms race and reacted with delight when a taco cannon able to fire wrapped-up tacos across a country

was unveiled at some godforsaken festival in the American southwest.

Well I have bad news.

It turns out there is a dark side to unrestrained military spending.

A student from the University of Arkansas,

or as we in the Northeast call it, the 13th grade, Zing,

suffered a leg injury from an exploding t-shirt cannon.

I don't know if this will lead to a celebrity-driven campaign against t-shirt cannons like we saw in 9 mindsets.

And frankly, I don't care, but perhaps John

could make another trip to Australia and do another gun control piece.

That's incredible.

Well, I mean, you've got to be careful with t-shirt cannons.

Oh, hold on, let me immediately take that back.

You don't.

The whole joy of them is their indiscriminate use.

Listen, one person hurting their leg is not enough, Andy, to stop that kind of fun.

No, in fact, I mean, it's, I mean, what nobler way to get injured than in

basically going to Valhalla.

As long as you don't mind spending eternity with some very rough-looking Nordic Vikings,

go for it.

Well, due to

us overrunning again and

the utter misery of Global News, we're going to wrap it up there for this week.

Buglers will be back next week with Bugle 246.

In the meantime, I will see you all at the Soho Theatre from Monday to Saturday for the next two weeks for my show.

And you can see John back in the ranks on the daily.

So

did you ceremonially have some badges ripped off?

Yeah.

That's good.

It was a full change of the guard.

And then, you know, I put a sword either side of his shoulder.

I thought I was about to kill him.

He didn't know what was happening.

So we'll be back next week.

Until then, Buglers.

Oh, do check out our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle.

Don't forget to check out your voluntary subscription at thebuglepodcast.com, where you can also get our merch.

And we're hoping to have some more, some new lines available.

It's that they sat in technical parlance Chris,

in the hopefully

not too distant future.

So,

bye-bye.

Bye.

And to all our Syrian listeners, good luck and sorry.

Yeah, all the best.

All the best.

That's as meaningless as what we're about to do to you.

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.