The Bugle – 194a – Too Good For Context

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello and welcome to Bugle Podcast episode 194A.

I'm producer Chris, one of your four favorite bugle producers.

We're all off celebrating National Museum Day today, but don't worry, every week we record some bits that are just too funny to put out.

For your own safety, these clips are locked away.

When we collect enough of them, we put them together, out of order and out of context, to make them safe for you to consume.

So kids, enjoy.

I wonder if Abbas sprayed a bit of his aftershave on the paper, you know, just to give it a bit of an extra personal touch.

the uh the letter from uh president abbas apparently demands that israel freeze all settlement construction and accept the borders which were in place before the 67 middle east war as the basis for those of a future palestine that's that's according to a draft that was seen by the associated press abbas has also said that the letter accuses israel of undermining the palestinian authority uh now I guess you would say, just easy.

Easy, Mahmoud.

That's a shit letter to receive.

Open with something light.

Personal facts.

What you ate for lunch?

Ask about his family.

Actually, don't ask about his family.

They can come off as a threat.

But work your way into the demands and accusations.

Something like, oh, dear Benji, sorry it's been so long since I've been in touch.

So

busy here in the West Bank.

Exclamation mark.

Exclamation mark.

Exclamation mark.

Had some falafel for lunch today.

Delicious.

Do you like falafel?

You probably do, being a Jew.

We should totally get some falafel sometime.

I know this great place in Gaza.

I'll take you to it.

Actually, you should probably wear a hat though, because I think the owner there wants to kill you.

Nice guy, though, and like I say, great falafel.

Anyway...

Hoping that you'll freeze all settlement constructions and accept those borders we keep talking about.

Oh, I nearly forgot.

Had a great idea that you should maybe stop undermining the Palestinian authority.

What'd you think?

Man, I'm in the mood for falafel now.

I might go get some.

Please write me back.

Your last letter took ages to get to me.

I think that's because you got the address wrong.

I live in Palestine.

I gave you the address.

I know you said you'd never heard of it, but I'm pretty sure you have.

Anyway, gots to go.

I think I just heard a shell explode down the street.

Bummer!

Exclamation mark.

See you soon.

Exclamation mark.

Joke.

Exclamation mark.

My mood.

PS.

Falafel friends for life.

PPS.

Joke.

PPPS.

not a joke.

PPPPS, joke.

And presumably, Netanyaku is going to reply with a couple of bits of stone with stuff chiseled in.

It's the way we've always done it, John.

There are, of course, other concerns about the Olympics.

For example, will the presence of Olympic fencing lead to a surge in copycat knife crime in London?

Will the Greco-Roman wrestling spark a craze for our Greco-Roman heritage?

Causing everyone to run around willy-nilly doing philosophy, bits of democracy, building straight roads, and holding state-run orgies, or whatever the Greco-Romans did.

And can Britain's water polo team get its dolphins trained up in time?

And most pressingly of all, John, is the problems affecting the golden boy of British diving, Tom Daly,

who did very well at the last Olympics when aged about eight,

but has since slightly dropped down the world rankings.

He's currently trying to perfect his new cartoon falling off a cliff dive in time for the 10-metre highboard final.

And it's very high tariff, John.

If he can nail it, it could get him the crucial edge over the Chinese world champion that he needs.

It basically involves sprinting off the end of the board as fast as possible, as developed by the renowned American diving coach Wiley Coyote.

Then defying gravity for a few metres while sprinting through the air, slowing down, realising his predicament, turning to the judges with a look of fear and realisation in his eyes, then plummeting into the pool, or ideally, if he really wants to go for it, onto the concrete right next to the pool before the diving board then comically topples over and squashes him.

Well then, if he can do that, John, gold is his for the taking.

Injuries for nothing.

Do his eyes pop out of his head moments before falling and his skeleton go first and skin after?

But I'm not sure he's going to have that quite ready.

Maybe in time for

2016 in Rio.

The greatest opponent Sarkozy is facing seems to be himself and the fact that most French people cannot stand him anymore.

Even his opponent, François Hollande, admits that his greatest strength is his ability to not be Sarkozy.

Hollande said that as he traveled around France, there were supporters who came up to him to say how much they wanted him to be president, but that there were far, far more people who came up to him and said they just wanted to be rid of Sarkozy and didn't really care who else was in power.

Good luck, Sarkozy.

Bonchance.

I guess, you know, when you're in that situation, there are various ways of trying to get to the bottom of the thorny issue of whether or not the woman involved is a prostitute.

I guess if you are a wealthy businessman and the woman involved is a much younger

lady with no clothes on from immigrant stock,

take a guess, Strauss Kahn.

Just take a guess.

Alternatively, ask the naked woman some questions.

For example, you could ask her,

is the main purpose of your visit here, A, business,

B, pleasure, or C, visiting family?

And you might get to the bottom of it.

Question two, do you expect to be richer when you leave than when you came in?

And question three: Why are you carrying a cash register with you?

If in doubt, ask her to put her clothes back on and then make an educated guess.

You might also like to factor in the number of threatening-looking goons hanging around and the hollow look in her eyes, that mournful expression that simply screams, millennia of gender-based oppression.

And if that still fails, approach the naked lady, offer her $100 in notes, and then see if she says thank you or f you.

21 African golfers and 26 American golfers

played golf together yesterday

and had a lovely time left together because they realized that we're all people deep down Andy?

Is that the end of that math problem?

All of them played terribly.

Oh, all of them.

Each African golfer killed five flying turkeys when his golf balls flew in the sky.

Each American golfer killed seven unlucky bald eagles.

How many more bald eagles than turkeys died?

Is that what golf's about?

I mean, I just think the problem with golf and modern golf is that the technology has just overtaken the skill of the game.

And these modern clubs can now hit the ball so high that they kill eagles.

That's true.

And usually, you know, an old-style club would never have...

You'd never have been able to do that.

Muthu visited a fortune-teller yesterday.

When the fortune teller looked into the crystal ball, he nearly fainted.

Muthu had a terrible feature.

In two days' time, he would be torn to pieces by 714 wild hippos and crocodiles.

The number of crocodiles would be three and a quarter times the number of hippos.

How many more crocs than hippos would tear poor Mufu to pieces?

I think the key answer to all of this, Andy, is do not homeschool your children.

Yeah.

Or do not do any maths at all.

Right.

And that's, I mean, that is advice that has served the global economy well over recent decades.

Do not apply mathematics.

Amongst other questions, they feature man eating oak trees, mermaid fishing, a mother who cooks orangutans and zebras for her daughter's birthday party, a father who gives his daughters headless Barbie dolls for their birthdays, a burglar who steals your idols and sells them on for $28,

a unicorn being slaughtered by some trolls, a bank manager who guns down 252 mobsters, a man who loves deformed chickens, a boy whose grandmother knits him a jumper made from hairs which grew on his sister's tongues.

Oh my.

A man who balances typewriter snakes and grandmothers on his tongue and goes home and finds mermaids and crocodiles frolicking in his hot tub.

So at that point he thinks the guy's guy's just drunk.

And a Thanksgiving turkey that hacks its owner to death with an axe.

Small town value now, and much of me, much is made of small town values here in the US, Andy.

They're usually incorrectly implied to have something to do with kitchen tables, pickup trucks, and be pro-life.

But what is the actual value of an actual small town, especially if that town is absolutely tiny?

Well, a town billed as the smallest in the whole United States recently sold at auction for $900,000.

Buford, Wyoming, has one resident.

It sits on about 10 acres of land with views of the Rockies in the distance.

It has its own zip code.

It also has a gas station, a convenience store, a schoolhouse from 1905, a cabin, a garage, and one three-bedroom home.

Dan Salmons is the town's only resident and unofficial mayor.

How Andy is he the unofficial mayor?

Especially as the sole voter in the town.

Could he not even be asked to vote for himself?

Was he holding out for a better candidate, having serious doubts as to his own fitness for the job?

Or could he just not be bothered to vote, giving Buford a 0% voter turnout during the mayoral election?

Well, I think it was most likely that, that

he didn't bother voting because

both he and himself had conducted such appallingly aggressive attack campaigns against themselves that he just he disillusioned himself away from politics.

Yeah, a lesson for all of America.

It was the microcosm of democracy in one

man driving himself to the edge of madness.

Well, it's a slippery slope, this John.

You might be selling Buford for $900,000 now, but I mean, it's just like the Louisiana Purchase all over again, but backwards, it's smaller.

And was

sold to a Vietnamese man, John.

Right.

Too soon?

Was it too soon?

Will I be selling Los Angeles to the Japanese next and Washington back to Britain?

Well, not selling it back to Britain, giving it back to Britain where it rightly belongs.

Returning it to its owner.

I do hope that the Vietnamese owners now, Andy, have got some big plans for Buford, Wyoming.

I truly believe that Buford should bid for the Olympics.

It'll really put Buford on the map in a bigger way.

I mean just the opening ceremony alone would be spectacular.

Just watching Dan Salmons, the sole resident, showing the world around his house before lighting a cigarette, putting it on the arm of his couch where it will function as the Olympic flame for the duration of the games.

And then wondering how even he couldn't get tickets to the athletics.

This email comes in from Scott Smith in Nottingham, England.

Remember England, John?

Nope.

He writes, on the subject, the curse of the bugle is a sham.

Hello!

No names.

That's interesting.

He's probably,

I guess he's addressing the franchise rather than the

sloshing in my ears just once a week.

I thought I would re-listen to the bugle from episode one.

What a joy it has been to hear the birth of such classics as the audio cryptic crossword, hotties from history, and John's singing career.

I like the fact that those are all blended into one.

In episode 16, I re-witnessed the unveiling of the curse of the bugle.

Anyone engaging in ritualised douchebaggery will be hunted down by our brave boys and aggressively made fun of.

Perhaps a pun or two launched their way and then boom, their career and sometimes their time on this planet comes to an end.

It's a powerful weapon that you use wisely.

Or so I thought.

In this particular episode, Andy gleefully says of your first victim, we did a little bio of this person a couple of bugles ago, and now look at him.

He's become the first victim of the curse of the bugle.

And who was that first unfortunate victim way back in 2008?

It was Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney.

Mitt fing Romney.

So are you telling us that this much-fated curse is in fact just a four-year deal?

Are we to see further abominable showmen making a comeback?

Has Osama been joking?

Is Kim Jong fine?

Yours concerned for 2015?

Scott Smith.

In another French political dispute, the Prime Minister François Fillon is holding emergency.

That was better, wasn't it?

Is holding emergency talks to smooth relations with Muslim and Jewish leaders after wading wading into the halal meat

row,

by saying that there was little point in Jews or Muslims eating kosher or halal, he said, religion should think about whether they should keep the traditions that don't have much in common with today's state of science, technology, and health problems.

And he narrowly failed to add, besides, have you guys not tasted bacon?

Oh man, it's good.

I'm going to at least ask the big guy for an update.

Just ask, just ask nicely.

Also, leaks was this entry from the personal diary of Bashir al-Assad, aged 46, from this week in fact.

Monday, the 12th of March, 2012.

Today I woke up really early.

I was really excited at the prospect of another exciting day being President of Syria.

I had Mickey the chef cook me a boiled egg.

It looked so lovely as he brought it to me in my favourite Power Rangers egg cup.

I gently tapped the top of the egg with my spoon.

Cracks began to appear in the eggshell.

They reminded me of the cracks that have appeared in Syrian society over the last year or so.

So I called in the head of the the army and asked him to strafe the egg with mortar fire before sending in ground troops to smash it to pieces.

Oh yeah, I giggled.

Today's going to be a good day.

A very good day.

Other hunting news now and King Juan Carlos of Spain has apologised to the Spanish people for going on an expensive hunting trip in Africa while his country is in the middle of a huge economic crisis.

Spain is the fourth biggest economy in the Eurozone but has seen its debt crisis worsen and its borrowing costs go through the roof.

It currently has a 23% unemployment rate and there are fears that it could return to a massive recession.

So Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Andy, and when Spain slid into deep recession, King Juan Carlos went out and he shot some elephants.

To quote King Juan himself, Andy, it's the perfect way to unwind.

Let he who has never shot an elephant in the face cast the first stone.

Wow, that's a f ⁇ of a lot of stones.

He has apologised to the Spanish people.

It was widely reported that he was hunting elephants.

And one report said the Royal House had neither confirmed nor denied this.

And neither confirmed nor denied.

It's really shorthand for, I shot a f ⁇ ing elephant!

I'm a camin, I shot an elephant.

His trip to Botswana, which has been widely criticised throughout Spain, only emerged when he had to be flown home for treatment after fracturing a hip.

And presumably he fractured his hip jumping up and down shouting, Yeah!

Packy dorms nil!

King Juan Carlos won!

He apparently broke his hip falling on a step.

I do hope that an elephant pushed him down that step.

And he was flown home by private jet.

He underwent hip replacement surgery last Saturday.

That's very sad, Andy.

But of course the elephant he shot broke its head during that bullet-related injury.

Is it being flown in for head replacement surgery instead?

The king is also honorary president of the Spanish branch of the conservation group, the World Wildlife Fund.

So, I mean, there's a double problem there, Andy.

Lavish trip in a time of austerity, not good.

Killing animals when you're president of a conservation group, even worse.

Unless he's just going to try and claim that he was in fact trying to take beautiful photos of the elephants and just kept mistakenly not picking up his camera and picking up a huge rifle instead.

Oh, what a wonderful beast.

Smile.

Oh shit, not again.

This is why my wife won't let me take photos of her anymore.

It's also why I have a series of beautiful photos of some clay pigeons.

Here's the thing though, Andy.

This is not by any means the first time that King Kwan Carlos' taste for hunting has landed him in trouble.

In 2006, in northeast Russia, there was an official who alleged that he'd shot dead a tame bear that had been plied with vodka.

Although the royal officials said that the claim was ridiculous.

Again, not saying that it was false, just saying that it was ridiculous.

I'm sexy and I know it.

Andy.

If you have that tune in your iTunes account, you can never take it out because it might be gone, but historically it will still be there.

That's the point.

Opposition, you need to have that.

Whenever you watch the news about Syria, it just takes the edge off things.

Well, that's that's the point.

Opposition groups dismiss these elections as a sham, calling for a boycott.

The US government has dismissed them as ridiculous.

And believe me, Andy, the US is a nation that knows its way around a ridiculous election.

They've staged a number of them themselves.

And it takes some balls, Andy, to stage a fake election when your country is on the edge of civil war.

But we all know that Assad has those balls, Andy, just as we also know that he bought this song on iTunes.

And I guess my big takeaway, Andy, is this should be the protest anthem of the Syrian opposition.

Because on one hand, it completely demystifies Fashar al-Assad, stripping him of his superhuman aura.

And on the other hand,

it's fing catching.

And 20,000 people.

Girl, look at that bardy.

20,000 people singing this.

I work out.

Girl, look at that bardy.

Girl, look at that body.

Look at that body.

I work out.

20,000 people singing that.

Could topple any government in the world, John.

Exactly.

The Syrian opposition Andy has passion in its pants and is not afraid to show it.

I'm sexy, man.

So, thanks very much to LMFAO for their contribution to the Arab revolutions.

I'm telling you, LMFAO are to Syria what David Hasselhoff was to the reunification of Germany.

Basically, nothing to do with it.

Nobel Prize winners in the making, John.

He has passed some reforms, to be fair to Assad, albeit they are reforms so cosmetic that they look like a cross between Coco the Clown, Joe Rivers, and Josh Argabor.

This email has just come in from Ian Williams, who writes, dear John, Chris, and Andy, in order of your scrabble score.

It depends where you put the letters.

Today, if you put the J of John, yeah, you've got eight for the J, you've got four for the H and two ones.

Sure, potentially you can score big.

But if you just lay it without any double words, triple word or anything,

that's worth nothing.

You know, Andy,

if you nail the Y both ways on a triple word score, you are scoring big time.

The point is, Andy, you're using a real name, so it's not going to be applicable anyway.

You're getting thrown off the board.

But double points for swear words.

Do you play that in America?

Always.

Yeah.

Certainly, the C is always a tricky letter to get rid of and scravel, and that makes it a lot easier.

So on the subject, vasectomy news now.

You have our full undivided attention.

Today at 2.40pm, I'll be putting my testicles in not just the capable hands of Dr.

Andrew Hopwood, best of luck, Dr.

Hopwood, but in yours too.

I've saved up an episode of the bugle, especially just to listen to it during my op, to take my mind off the scalpel and tube burning work going on downstairs.

So I really need you guys to bring your A-game today.

I need it to be funny enough that my mind doesn't wander, but not so funny that my testicles don't wander around either.

So.

Best of luck.

I believe that the bugle, if used correctly, can bring sterility to anyone.

That is definitely.

Medically or otherwise.

Santorum's brave underdog campaign had had the world on the edge of its seat and its seat on the edge of a cliff, just in case he actually won.

But the underdog has under-humped its last trouser leg for this year's campaign at least, and America will no longer have to follow that underdog around wherever it goes with a plastic bag to clean up whatever it deposits before the rest of the world sees it, or still worse treads in it.

Marriage and Jesus Fan Santorum has now dropped out to spend more time with his family, his lord and his hobbies which include smiling disconcertingly, trying to interfere with other people's wombs, hating homosexuals and wanting them to be miserable and wondering why his number one hero gods made people so obsessed with using their woollyards and spludger splockets without which all these unholy pregnancies and disgusting loving relationships between consenting adults would never have happened.

Italian democracy democracy news now and well Italy can always be relied upon to provide some lights in the tunnel of unremitting darkness that is global politics.

Yes.

And the little village of Simolace in northern Italy has elected a mayor by accident.

He'd only added himself to the ballot as a favour to his friend who actually wanted to become mayor and was the only candidate, but was worried that not enough people would vote if he ran unopposed, rendering his unanimous win invalid for not passing the required threshold.

Let's just be clear, Andy.

Let's just slow down for a second and be clear.

A male was elected by accident.

Just let that fact swill around your palate, buglers, before you spit it into a bucket.

Taste that fragrant fact.

There's top notes of creamy crazy, bass notes of buttery batshittery.

It's a fact that would pair very well with monk fish.

It's like George W.

Bush all over again, but with better food.

It just shows that in a Silvio Berlusconi-less future, Italy can still bring it, Andy.

They're not just about hair-plugged horn dogs, they're about other stupid stuff, too.

The man of Fabio Borsapi, a 50-year-old hotelier,

he bowled 160 votes, running on a platform of having absolutely no platform, whilst his friend only scored 117 votes.

What a message to centre politicians!

Wow.

Another blow to the solar plexus of democracy.

Following, as we report on the bugle some time ago, villages in Romania electing a mayor even though he was dead, which of course is a priceless quality in modern politics, making a candidate more trustworthy, less annoying and less likely to cynically backtrack on policies at the first sign of media criticism.

And of course another similar incident in which the US Republicans chose Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate even though he is also dead on the inside.

And I think this time

from Simolace, I don't know if I've pronounced that right, in northern Italy, the message is we would rather have someone who actively did not want to be a politician and has absolutely nothing that he wants to impose on us.

And this in turn backs up the idea that we suggested a long time ago, John, in the departments, that anyone who has ever expressed any interest in entering politics as a career should be constitutionally barred from doing so.

Yes.

That would solve most of the problems in the democratic world.

The details of this are even better.

He only realized that he'd become mayor when people telephoned him as he was watching football to congratulate him.

And he said, I find myself a mayor who didn't want to be mayor.

That's one of the most beautiful acceptance speeches I've ever heard.

Andy, it's like a poem or a one-line description of a Camus or Kafka novel.

He said, Mr.

Moore said, he said, I wanted Gino to win.

Even my relatives voted for him.

My daughter, my sister, my father, and my mother, they all voted for him.

Well, he might want to talk to Francois Hollande about that, Andy, because I'm fairly sure that his mom didn't vote for him either.

And it really must have been, he was a good friend.

They were good friends and he was doing it as a favor for his friend who actually wanted to be mayor and it must have been an awkward phone call Andy that he had to deliver.

Hey buddy, I guess I must have missed you again.

I suppose I'll just leave another message.

So you know congratulations on coming second.

And I know that you really wanted this job, mate, you know, because we talked about it so much.

And, you know, I wanted it for you.

I mean I I voted for you

you know second is still a great achievement and and you should feel really good about that anyway I better go things are a bit busy here you know I'm the mayor and everything anyway give me a call when you get a chance I'll be at the mayor's office my office I am the mayor my phone number's changed as well it's 0800 mayor

or you could just call the town hall and ask for the mayor who is me

anyway congratulations again good buddy hope you're not mad let me know it if i can do anything for you you know as a friend or as a mayor which is what i am now bye

there you are kids there's a new bugle next week take that

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.