Well, everybody, once again, welcome to the show that has no
format. No jingles, it has no music. It apparently has no
talent. It has no agenda. I'm Adam curry at the curry condo in
San Francisco.
And I'm John Dvorak out here in the Albany area of California.
John, it's been a long week, man.
For you.
I gotta tell you, I'm so incredibly tired. This is about
the last thing I can do. I'm supposed to do a Friday show for
daily source code. I just don't think I have it in me. It's just
been too much. It really has been.
Well, yeah, you've been working. If anybody doesn't know it, Adam
comes out here. You know, he's like the president of pods show.
And he shows up and he they just work them to death. I mean, I
load his calendar up as best I can. But I don't get that much
in. But everybody else does. And he's like, going up and down the
peninsula driving around in the traffic around here, especially
this time of year is dreadful. It is horrible.
It really I think, this morning was pretty good around 8am. But
that was a that was this morning.
Well, I was gonna actually go over to the office at noon, and
it was stopped dead. And said, I guess I might as well just work
here. It was unbelievable how it knew and what we talked about
this the other day. There's something screwy going on in the
San Francisco Bay area, because the traffic going into San
Francisco during the commute hour when that you should be
leaving San Francisco. In other words, in the in the evening,
when San Francisco is closing, and everyone's leaving San
Francisco, the traffic going into San Francisco at that time
is usually worse than it is going out. And is it because
everyone's living in San Francisco and they're working in
Union City? I don't think so. No, I
don't know what it is. I know what it is. Those are all the
people who live in the Tower of death that I look at here.
Nobody lives in there yet. Not
yet. But it's getting close, man. I'm looking at it that
thing's growing. So,
by the way, wait, let's tell people what we're talking about
it and I'm gonna have this on the blog. By the way, I've been
taking pictures of this thing constantly. They're building a
new tallest building in San Francisco, at least in terms of
altitude, I believe.
Wait, it's the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Okay,
it's the tallest building west of the Mississippi. It's an
apartment building, condos, apartment, whatever. And it's
huge. And is built right at the base of the San Francisco
Oakland Bay Bridge
is an accident just waiting to happen.
If there's any kind of an earthquake, even if it doesn't
drop, the building of the building falls over this. It's
going to be horrible. But any other situation where the glass
in that building copper breaks, the Bay Bridge will be closed
for weeks because it'll just cover
it. And this is just one of two towers they're going to build.
They're going to have one wind towers, which just invite
somebody. Yeah,
Twin Towers. Really nice, guys. Thanks.
Unbelievable. Anyway, it's a disaster. I don't understand how
the city could have approved it to begin with it used to be but
for people who come through San Francisco, it's sitting where
the old a union oil building used to be, which was right at
that when you get off the San Francisco Bay Bridge from
Oakland. This was on the right hand side had a clock on it.
Yeah,
it was the Bank of America clock. But before they tore it
down,
and they tore down the building. They built this atrocity. And,
uh, you're telling me that it has a bunch of water at the top?
Yeah,
some guy, the guy who drove me from the airport when I came
into town. He said that and you can actually see it, there's a
circular, you know, kind of like in Manhattan where they have
those big water tanks on top. So it's about that size. Of course,
it doesn't look like Petticoat Junction the way it doesn't
Manhattan. But apparently there's some kind of honeycomb
grid structure inside of it. They filled it up with water and
that is intended to counterbalance any swaying that
would take place by extremely high winds or indeed an
earthquake. I'm not quite sure how it works. But I guess
someone thought it
was like if you a balanced and you know if you bounce a
baseball bat if you put the heavy and
Yeah, could be could be, but there's no finger underneath
moving around to keep it stable. I really
should get some alligators into that water. Some fish.
John, I'm sure you've thought about something for our no
agenda programme today.
Yeah, that were the week where the American dollar is now worth
less than the Canadian dollar. Yeah. This should be like front
page headline news. No offence to you Canadians out there. But
over time, this is humiliating.
It's not just humiliate. Actually, in some ways, it's
been good. I was just thinking it's funny. You brought this up
as the first topic. We've been working for quite a while now on
a significant deal in Germany. And we had a board of directors
meeting I know when was that last Friday or Thursday or
whatever. And so the question was, you know, it was what's the
value of the deal. And between the time when we started the
negotiations or actually started talking to them, and this board
meeting, the value of that deal that actually in decreased by
about a million dollars.
And the reason because of the falling
because of because of the falling dollar Yeah, and that's
a Euro deal. In fact, I get a couple of emails from people
that to Giesler Boonton the supermodel. She has now
requested that all of her modelling contracts be paid by
euros. Yeah, I mean, when you're Giesler bunch and asking for
euros, we're just steps away from oil being traded in
dollars. I'm citing euros, I'm sorry. We're very, very close to
that point. And all these countries are making noise about
it. And boy, oh, boy, I don't know if it's just me, but I'm
getting a little claustrophobic about this.
Well, you know, it doesn't really affect anyone who doesn't
leave the country.
Well, that's not true, John, that's absolutely untrue. I
remember living in the New York metro area, we left in 2000. And
the tunnel toll was four bucks. And just two weeks ago, they
raised it to eight bucks. I mean, you know, I come loaded
with experience of what stuff costs from seven or eight years
ago, and it's about lots of stuff is twice as expensive. So
you have to feel it. That's just inflation that exists.
Yeah. They jacked up the price on the bridge, used to be 50s.
You know, the thing about the bridge over here that we've got,
it's like, I still have newspaper articles from the day
that they propose both the Golden Gate Bridge, and then
later the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. And I've got the
original, the original things that were sent out by the bridge
commissions. It's gonna cost this much, and then it's going
to be free forever, because it's going to pay for itself with gas
tax and all the rest of it is not going to be a toll bridge.
No, no, no, never
never happen. Yeah. Who was Mayor then? Was it Newsom then?
I know it's another scammer.
But yeah, the dollar is clearly in the form of, well, not really
freefall, in fact that it went it ticked up a little bit today,
not that it's very significant. You know, it's like three, three
cents or something. But it's, it's definitely I think it's
really concerning
and lasted since the election of George W. Bush. We went from
being you know, I think that Canadian dollar was like 75
cents, and now this Canadian dollars worth more than the
American dollar. All in one with one president. I don't want to
blame him.
I you know, it's interesting, you said that this should be
front page news. Because it probably should be I think
you're right, that Americans really don't understand that,
particularly Americans who haven't been out of the country
ever, don't really understand what it means, you know, for the
euro to be at 141 47 Or would have wanted on a 142 or whatever
it is right now.
Yeah. It could hit $2.
I hate to think about that. I really do. I think
you're all locked up in euros aren't Euro Swiss francs,
among among many currencies. John, why just stop there. I'd
like to divest a little bit.
I have to go back to the article I did. I did a blog article on
this. Bill Gates about two years ago said he was getting out of
dollars. Way ahead of the game on this. And of course pay more
attention with Bill says
this amongst a week were in general, more General Motors
reported a $28 billion
loss. How do you do that?
I mean, it's like if you make no cars, but everybody's still
working. I mean, I still don't think you can lose 28 billion
that's mystifying that a lot of money to lose, I know
what it is, I think it has to do, you know, their money, or
their business is actually not even cars. And I think their
product shows that it's financing, financing. It's what
the automobile business about. And so I'm sure that this is
related to all kinds of financing problems in the
financial world. It has to be related to that. So I'm pretty
sure that's where it's coming from. So they they to me, oh,
maybe they are also part of the subprime problem is subprime
only for mortgages on homes? Can it also be for car loans and
leasing and stuff?
Well, the car loans, they don't have subprime necessarily, they
have these deals where he got paid zero interest for 24 months
and things like that. It could have something to do with it. I
mean, but you know, these bankers, you know, these
bankers, even though they do the car loan, they do a lot more
than that. I mean, they're a big, you know, these guys are
doing cross deals all the time. They want you to get in our
deal. You know, we could use a couple billion from you. I mean,
who knows? I mean, I'd like to see somebody who out there or
have a friend, I've got a lot of bookkeeper friends to have
somebody actually look at the GM numbers and tell me what
happened. What
happened, where did they lose that money? Because that, of
course, is almost not to be found anywhere in any reporting.
Unless I guess you go look on a Bloomberg terminal. The story
is, GM lost 28 billion that's all you just no one's doing any
reporting anymore. No, the reporting is over. It really is
the reporting is just is over. It's all about headlines and
opinion. It's well,
it's over I have to tell you this is that it's not cost
effective anymore to do real news reporting now because you
nobody pays you to do it.
If you can't write a headline, I'm not interested in your news.
Is this stingily that reporters are underpaid? They don't they
don't they have too much to do. And then the ones that are real
productive, they don't get extra money. I mean, there's all kinds
of problems with the whole scene. It's just don't know
what's important. And a lot of people can't you know, it's also
difficult to do reporting if you if you're starting from square
zero. And in other words, you don't know anything about the
topic and the way the J schools have cranked out journalists
over the years is to keep them from being specialists, they
tend to be generalists wasn't that
supposed to be you're supposed to have a beat and you're
supposed to be on the beat and know everything about
the beat thing? Yeah. But it's the beats aren't like as
specific as they once were. I mean, in the olden days, if you
were an AP reporting, you had a police beat, say you're in
Albuquerque, you'd actually be in the police station. I mean,
people were actually hanging out with the cops, I mean, then they
would know really know a lot of stuff in great detail. Or if
somebody has a technology beat, it's a little better if they
actually know something about technology is but what they'll
do now, take some guy to J school, and he knows how to
report you can write, and the technology story or the
technology beat. And he's done in Silicon Valley. And basically
being bamboozled every time he turns around, because he doesn't
know that the games that these jokers play, and
I was actually going to say that in particular, I'm really
getting down yourself, of course, excluded John, I'm
really getting down on on tech reporting. It's really it's just
all so speculative, full of opinion, lots of lack of
knowledge, particular technical knowledge. If I if I read one
more story, about you know, like, open social, you know,
show me the API already, you know, it stopped. You know, the
story is now that's
actually kind of what that kind of bothers me. I mean, I'm, I am
an opinion writer. So I'm gonna you're gonna get a lot of
opinions from me, but I try not to, like, don't get on a
bandwagon of vaporware. Somebody says are going to do this, that
and the other thing and they say they'll be out in 2009. Like,
why am I getting excited? This sounds like they don't know what
they're doing is gonna get out in 2009. If they knew what they
were up to they why isn't it out now?
I'm telling you what I actually I I had a discussion with Ron
earlier today, I said the marketplace is so fucking crazy.
It's so stupid news reporting is so stupid. I suggested. And I
think actually, Richard Brewer, hey, is taking it to the PR
firm. I said, Why don't we put out a release? Because you know,
there's a couple things going on here. First of all, Reuters
reported two days ago, that they expect online advertising
revenue to double by 2011 2011. And I think it actually probably
could be more, but let's just say it's gonna triple Okay,
triple. So that's and you know, it's Reuter. So hey, of course,
it's true. Then you have the writer strike. And there's lots
of people going endless complete nincompoop. Discussion and non
knowledge of what is really going on. And just not
understanding anything about it. All people talking about is
television industry will come crashing down. It may very well.
But that's beside the point. I think that it's a perfect time
for us to do a press release and say, hey, wow, you know, it's
really true what Reuters is saying, because now with the
writer strike, we're seeing the value of RFPs. From media buying
companies almost double, which by the way is true. I don't know
if it's related. But I bet you I could get some real serious ink
with a story like that.
If you had to write public relations agency, you could make
a lot of hay with that concept. Let's
try that. Let's try it next week. I think we should really
go for it. Well, it's doable. It's a media hack. I think we
can do it. I think people will jump for it. Anytime anything to
jump on the writer, strike story, anything a new angle,
they need a new angle for the writer strike story.
There were writers strike stories, it needs a new angle so
badly that the story is already dead.
And I'm watching the YouTube channel. Less and less writers
are picketing by the day. You know how they start off and
everyone's there and the show runners? Who are you know,
that's Hollywood speak for the producers. And it's and it's
dwindling, and I feel bad? Because this is I think it's
going to be well, we talked about it last week, but it's
going to be a long haul it's it's it's really you know, Jack
Myers, do you have a read Jack Myers you know who he is? Yeah,
okay. So he's, he's writing about this almost every single
day. And in his one of his office today, or yesterday's
email column, which I guess you can find at Jack myers.com. He
really breaks it down as to how impossible this is. Because, you
know, it's not about a percentage of a physical sale of
something. It's about this really smoky business called
advertising. And, you know, where's the cost and where's the
profit? You know, when you have a DVD? It's kinda clearer, you
know, costs 10 cents, sell it for $24 Give the writer you
know, five cents. But when it comes to advertising, it's I
don't know that I don't I don't think you can. If they want a
percentage of something the wind up with nothing that's the
Hollywood system.
Ya know, they'll get screwed i That's the reason I'm kind of
was against this strike. I was thinking that until you see
solid numbers that you can actually play with and work with
and see where you're getting screwed, as opposed to this
nebulous, we're getting screwed, but we're not absolutely sure
how, yeah. You know, I don't blame them for being a little
paranoid because they've been getting screwed left and right,
you know, every chance you get. But at the same time, doing
something like this prematurely, I think it's gonna leave, leave
them open for a kind of a scam.
Jack Myers had a pretty interesting suggestion. He said,
you know, all of the advertising agencies who the advertising
agency business is pretty, pretty spectacular. You know,
client comes in, they say how much you want to spend on
advertising, we're going to spend $100 million. Okay, so
standard practices, the agency takes 15%. So that's $150
million. And all the rest, they pass through to the media
outlets, and you know, they buy the the spots. And from that 100
and 50 million, they have to come up with the creative, well,
Big fucking deal, you know, he has enough money there to come
up with the creative. The idea was, is for the media,
purchasing agencies to actually put together a fund of 1% of
their 15 to pay, you know, and then divvy that up amongst the
riders, you know, at least you'll have a finite amount of
money, right? Something that you can actually look at and say,
All right, we're gonna divvy this up in this manner, not some
smoking number of what, what the advertising is being sold for,
because it's unaccountable, almost. And I thought that was a
pretty interesting idea. It'll never happen, of course, but it
would be a way out.
Yeah, what won't happen. You're right. Now that one thing that I
sent you some email about this one of our vector my little
blogging community got came up with, I guess there's one of the
subtext gossip pieces floating around the net, suggest that the
producers and the networks don't want the writer strike to end
because the season this year is such a disaster. Yeah, that they
can just let the season get killed by the writers and then
they can blame them.
Which they will they totally well. Wow. Whatever. I'm sick of
this story.
Well, it's like, yeah, you're right. She's a dead story
already.
It's a dead story. I'm sorry. I'm just sick of it. So
I watched Letterman last night, which you know, I guess it's not
really on the air. That must have been a repeat. I'm thinking
it was it but I never saw it before though. And it was fine.
Remember, we talked two weeks ago about Linda Stein, ex wife
of Seymour Stein, the manager to the Ramones, who got all right,
bludgeoned to death? Yeah, well, turns out it was her assistant.
Oh, she was this is great.
So as you're following this story,
it pops up on my news radar. Her so she's she's 62. This is Linda
Stein. And and you know, she's still got the same attitude she
had when she was managing the Ramones. And so she comes in and
she's yelling at her assistant as usual and blows apparently a
big cloud of reefer smoke into her face. And then this, this
assistant, this girl picked up what they're calling a yoga
stick. I'm not quite sure what a yoga stick is. And she thinks
that she basically hit her six or seven. And that will do it.
Well, she's defending herself.
I think I think she has a case certainly for temporary
insanity. Everyone knows that crazy
blast of dope smoke and boom, anything can happen and you've
seen it in the movies.
So this is kind of interesting. I was just looking at AOL news.
And so everything that's going on in the world the top stories
right now, cop named suspect in Weiss vanishing stocks plunge
again on credit worries whose face was behind the mask.
Musical code found in DaVinci painting, arrest and realtor to
the stars slaying. What the hell is going on people? This isn't
news.
It's Entertainment Tonight. Except for that one story. Yeah,
about the dollar. Know about the arch? What was that again?
Oh, you mean about the DaVinci painting that the guy mirror the
DaVinci painting is on it.
Was there a wizard that somebody said they'll take a painting
underneath a painting somebody got I mean there's always the
stories about some guy goes to a flea Mark market and buys a
painting for 10 bucks and underneath it there's like you
know a Monet
well that now there's there's a couple of stories. The one that
caught my eye was so you have the Last Supper and someone by
accident. Super superimposed the same painting a picture
obviously. Root River First mirror image on top of it. And
now they found this, like, you know, all these, like, very
carefully constructed musical staff of him to God, which is,
you know, and it goes into this whole I mean, people, of course
are saying, well, that's just coincidence or whatever. But
that is always some there's always some cool with DaVinci
the guy was smart
keeping like to do a lot of stuff backwards. So that's
possible. Yeah. But that painting has been so beat up
over the years that it's like the original so gone. Yeah,
there's a lot of good. You know, there's a lot of good
documentaries about that thing. In fact, let you see it anymore.
What do you mean, they don't let you see it?
You know, it's in the hold up in this in this on this wall
someplace and they've been trying to fix it or they're
trying to protect it. There's a I don't know if you can go see
it anymore. I don't know if you can, if they let the public see
it anymore. Do they? Isn't that in the Louvre? No, no, the thing
still on the wall and some church? No,
that's right. No, no, of course, the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre.
Yeah, right. Yeah. And there was they you're right there is they
did think there was something behind it or some fresco that
might have been put in place?
No, well, actually, the gallery HD had a one of my favourite
channels. I've taught you about this before. Anyone who has a
dish network should check it out. It's gone. That voom HD
that they bought, anyway, they did have a special on the the
kind of the whole story of this of this painting and how they're
trying to keep it from deteriorating because it was a
fresco and as you know, it wasn't really built to last. And
you know, it's built to last 100 years, maybe, but not forever.
And it's very fat. Interesting, but the thing is just apparently
been worked on and screwed up. It's just a mess. Anyway, yeah.
But it can go I don't I was under the impression that they
did not let people see it for a while, for some reason.
Well, I remember they had that with the Nightwatch. Rembrandt's
Nightwatch, which hangs in the Rijksmuseum in in Holland, I
think it was I was probably like 12 or 13. And someone, you know,
hopped over the velvet rope and slashed it with a knife and it
took Oh, yeah, I remember years to repair. Yeah. And I remember
that being quite shocking as a child like, wow, why would I
want to do something fucked up like that?
Well, you know that Mona Lisa, when I first saw it in the
Louvre in 1973. It didn't not only didn't have a crowd, but it
didn't have any guards, and it was just there. Like it wasn't
covered in glass or bulletproof glass like it is now if you go
there now. There's a big crowd around it, and it's got the
thing is it behind bulletproof glass or something like that?
Nice. It's kind of taking the lot of the charm away. And I
remember also that same year again, 73. I'm in England,
floating around, I went to Stonehenge. And back then there
was nobody at Stonehenge and you could go sit on the stone.
Remember that I when I was 11, my dad took me to London then.
Then we took a trip out to Stonehenge. Indeed, I didn't
even know that you couldn't sit there anymore. It's all blocked
off. Right?
You can't even touch him. You can't even get close to him.
It's all blocked off. That's not right. And what's weird about it
though, here's what's weird about it. This always reminds me
of the Antonioni movie blow up. And that one scene in that
movie, which is always really kind of I think, one of the more
interesting scenes, there's a guitar scene the guy plays in
playing this guitar and his crazy audience is going nuts and
the guy throws the guitar into the audience and everybody goes
crazy trying to grab the guitar. One guy gets he starts running
and running around and people running running running running
after him trying to grab the guitar I find the outrace is
everybody they all disappear in the back he's got the guitar
looks around nobody's there throws the thing away. Of
course. And you know stone handy when I went to see it the first
time there was nobody there I mean, it was like me a couple of
cows and I was with and it was nothing and then if you go now
it's a huge as a big parking lot there's a million people because
now that they made it precious. You can't It's crowded, not
really crowded but it's crowded enough that is different. And
then the Mona Lisa was the same way you can just go by casually
look at it was kind of neat, but now it's a bit crowded around
it. It's the public is crazy.
Here it is GM attributed the third quarter loss to a I'm
sorry 38 point 38 point 6 billion noncash but get your
calculator John noncash charged largely related to establishing
a valuation allowance against accumulated deferred tax credits
in the US, Canada and Germany as well as mortgage losses at GMs
former financial arm JMac financial services. There's that
mortgage, but accounting rules require that companies expecting
to keep losing money cannot keep carrying deferred tax credits
indefinitely and must write down their value so that what they
did is they just decided to take the hit now and they think the
dollar is at the lowest it's it can possibly be and it probably
would have been could have been a lot more I guess.
That's actually a pretty good Good move.
And it's funny here it says what might be considered more
troubling for GM, though is continuing losses in its home
market. So here's the here's the real losses. It reported a net
loss from continuing operations of 247 million without the
charge for the latest quarter. That compares with a net loss of
667 million in the year ago. So operationally, they actually did
better. Huh, crazy. But the headline and now, you know, this
is the first time I'm really digging into it. And by the way,
what normal fucking human being can understand what all that
means.
bean counter. Yeah. I have a friend who could get it.
But the headline is, GM goes, Wow. Yeah,
that's a good idea. What? Yeah, yeah, the headline just goes for
the juggler.
All right, you got something else for us, John.
Now the only other thing is I did this common market watch
this week. And I wrote I talked about this on the tech five.
Podcast tech five that podcast.com hotshot Bob sorry,
pod show. Thanks.
Don't make me edit this out.
Yeah, tech five, that pot Should I come anyway? About I just find
it peculiar that the US Congress is pounding on Yahoo over this
Chinese guy? Yeah, well, AT and T is like, essentially giving up
the PharmD and giving all everybody's email and everything
they've gotten now apparently all email can get used by this
by the intelligence agencies to spy on us. And which would
probably result in some sort of, you know, I'm sure a few people
would get busted over one thing or another over time. And it
just seems to me that the US Congress is concerned more about
protecting a Chinese citizen than they are about protecting
American citizens. It's just weird. There's because I boiled
it down to the fact that as far as I can really tell me what
this is really all about. Tom Lantos obviously didn't get a
big campaign contribution from
from Yahoo. And now Now he's spoken with them,
says, yeah, he's screwing with him. So again, why not? You can
do it. There's a story. But the Yahoo guys you know, they
shouldn't have even been they should just said we were refused
even talk to you guys do you know, make him do more?
I'm right. But it's you're right about the AT and T thing. And I
have an 18 T cell phone. And I figured the best thing to do is
just spam their Echelon system with all kinds of information,
take all of my information. Just please organise it for me and
send it back.
Yeah, that would be nice.
Can you please help me? Yeah, really?
Yes, Windows Vista can't do it.
There's a story that someone sent me that was in a respected
newspaper in the Netherlands, if you can speak of one about two
young kids to Dutch new young 24. And they went on a
backpacking tour of the states. And they plan to spend a couple
months and they were on their way down to Mexico hitchhiking
and because I think one of them became sick. And so they, you
know, they stayed in a little longer than expected to so
actually their tourist visa had expired. And a state trooper
pulls over and says, Hey, we you guys going on? We wanted to go
down to the border. And he said no problem. And but then Border
Patrol showed up. And they got thrown into jail for six weeks.
And were interrogated were put in isolation cells we're not
allowed to call a lawyer or any type of legal representation.
completely nuts.
Where did this take place?
near Mexico. Hold me see if I can find the I'm on my other
computer here of course, which makes it hard to to find this,
it'll hopefully this will hit some US newspapers because this
is a really good story. Here horrific backpacking story in
the US. Let me see.
What would be what would I look it up? And if I was gonna go to
Google, this is blockable. Well,
who am I? Why don't I skype you the link right now hold on here
comes
do that here? How do I use Skype? I've clearly forgotten
it. I have turned on if I can do this.
So and I mentioned to people out there I was calling you earlier.
And you have I don't know maybe you can't use Skype you say but
you have call forwarding on Skype. So when I called you
using Skype it called your cell phone and that was pretty
trippy. Are you are you paying for that?
Yeah, you have to use Skype out. Forward. Okay, this happened.
Oh, wait, I'm sorry, Miriam. She's 35. He's 29. They're both
from Amsterdam. September 2 2006. They came to the States.
Well, let's take away I'm gonna get people out there who are
listening. There's a photo here and this In this newspaper have
the two of them. She's like, a white blonde. She's a MILF.
She's a middle. Yeah, no, he's just a normal looking character.
He's a milk seeker John milk seeker. Okay, but it's not
like they are a couple of Arabs.
No, hold on. Let me see where the hell that had happened. I'm
just reading through this. Um, oh, Texas, of course. They were
on the way to Mexico. I'm just translate on the fly a Texas
sheriff. Stop this because we're hitchhiking. The girl says the
sheriff was really nice. He asked us where we wanted to go
want to drop us off. Just that very moment that we were putting
our backpacks in the back of his car, a border control agent came
up. And they were taken away to what they call is a heavily
armed jail in the middle of the desert. For months, they were
there. I'm sorry, four months? Another way. No way. No, hold on
a second. Hold on. They told them they would be there for
four months. I'm sorry. I'm translate on the fly, John, it's
kind of hard. Let me just translate it for you. I can do
this. Because the girl says How long is it going to take? They
said four months? Of course, that shocked us. Just before we
were separated. Wesley said, Don't worry, I'll get a lawyer.
But Wesley landed half naked in an isolation cell of two by
three metres after he had undergone a psychological test,
which he had answered incorrectly, after a couple of
that's what it says. answered correctly. It's what it says
after after a couple of days you got a t shirt, and after a week
a book. Once in a while, they'd let him take a shower while
shackled. During the day. He tried to sleep because the
guards would spend their nights yelling and screaming, keeping
everybody up. Wesley was in the ISOs cell for four weeks because
they had forgotten him. The two never received a lawyer or legal
help. No one ever read them their rights. They were not even
allowed to make a phone call. They got a basically jail
clothing, a piece of toilet paper and a toothbrush, which
combined with a compass and a rubber knife. I mean, let's be
honest. What else do you need? Miriam shared a cell with more
than 80 women. The bathrooms and showers were open. And cameras
were hanging everywhere. They were not allowed to go into
fresh air. The first couple of days, Miriam was just sobbing
uncontrollably. Later, she really wanted to be in an
isolation cell because it was so crazy in the cell she was in
after six weeks Wesley got out a miracle he says through friends
in the states he was able to also get marry him out and to
the Netherlands. They will not be visiting the states anytime
soon. Here it is. Wesley says we love the nature. But the
American society makes me want to puke everywhere that American
flag. It looks like Nazi Germany. Right? There you go.
Ladies and gentlemen. That's and that's just coming from people
from fucking Amsterdam. Okay, where there's a lot of Sodom and
Gomorrah going on.
Well, that's the whole story. As weird as this story has to be
somebody's got to do this story. Well, that's because it just
doesn't make any sense. The whole story doesn't make any
sense. What do you
mean, it's an accounting of what happened to them.
But there's no rationale for it. This is like cost the taxpayers
money to even do this. I mean, what's the point of it?
Well, and it sounds like there's a lot of people in these jails
in the desert, whatever it is where you get no lawyer that's
pretty messed up.
Well, the whole thing is fishy. Well,
it's from the oncoming dark blood. And I have been
interviewed by them many many times I have to say they're
reasonable in the reporting doesn't mean that they did the
research or check that out but I'm sure that this is the story
these two told they reported it exactly like that. But I think
it's a big one. I think it's a that's
a good story and it hasn't picked up over here at all. I
haven't seen I'll blog it and then I'll it's worth looking
into because it's unique. Excellent. A because you have to
assume that this is not there though. I mean, these are just a
blonde girl in a backpacker. Well,
he looks kind of Asian. I think that's
fishy. You think he looks his little Asian?
Don't you think so? But you think it looks a little Asian
maybe Suriname or something low up to picture. I'm blowing it up
here too. Yeah. Let me see. Oh, and now they're suing they want
to sue America, of course.
But they should sue Yeah, that's one thing we got going here.
First they have to Oh, before that. They shouldn't be they
should just be suing the local authorities whoever it was that
let this happen. Well, here's what the story says guys goofy
looking.
Yeah, I throw him In the cell to fuck him.
Well, I would say I mean, he's what's he doing with his
blondes?
Yes, he's kind of cute. So he said they first had have to sue
the Dutch state for negligence of letting them rot. Without
without I'm sure that there's a lot of backstory that's not in
here, dude. That's for sure.
Yeah, it's probably be a good story to uncover. And if
it's, if it was full of shit, then there goes my there goes
the status of this newspaper, but it sounds it's a legit
paper. I read this paper. That's how I came down.
You know, who would know that if this actually happened would be
that Sheriff that let him get picked up by the other agency.
That's the that's the key. Maybe that was maybe that was his deal
all along. I mean, all of a sudden, so there, he's putting
them in the car. And then all of a sudden the Border Patrol shows
up. I mean, honestly, honestly, with that, how many how many
sheriff's would say hey, you're hitchhiking. You know, that's
illegal. Don't worry. I'll drop you off. Where do you want to
go? I just I just get a short picture that
will actually hit hitchhiking is not illegal. But the there's a
lot that I've noticed this over in the Berkeley area. There's
been a lot more HIV. I've done a lot more of seem to. But there's
been two hitchhikers I've seen recently who are just women and
they looked into those tall Dutch looking women. I think
Dutch come over and they just think they're gonna hit shot.
Yeah, what
they don't hitchhike here, you duchies get out of
it and nuts.
Don't stand in that building. Hitchhiking could fall on you
any moment. Now.
You know, it doesn't cost that much for a bus ticket.
Oh, all right. I think we're done. Yeah, I think we're done
too. All right. Well, hey, John. It was good seeing you this
week. I'm glad we didn't eat once but twice. That's a big
deal.
Yeah. Okay, I didn't get to do the freebie stuff, but it was
okay.
No, that's all right. Now. This was good. And it's you. You've
got an excellent Pallant by friend. I like following it. I
like following it around.
Now, there it goes now, hey. All right.
Okay, that's it for no agenda. I'm sure we'll do another one
somewhere around next Friday. From the Marie Kondo in San
Francisco. I'm Adam curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak.
We'll talk to you next week. Bye bye.
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