But seriously folks, King will be retiring in the fall and I must say I will miss him. He's conducted over 50,000 interviews in his career and in that business, he is a master. His disarming appeal to guests stems from his candor and genuine likability, preferring to give them just enough rope to hang themselves, if the situation warrants it. In my time overseas I've enjoyed King as a barometer of who's important and what is really going on. Can anyone replace him? CNN might look towards actor Billy Bob Thornton. He's had 5 wives so far.
The deposed Minister of Noodles entered shrouded, round shouldered and avoiding all eye contact. He had agreed to meet me in a coffee shop and sat with his back to the wall like a Chicago gangster, all the while REM-ing the joint for rats, informants, spies and the lowlife spineless bastards who had done his blog in - my Deep Throat, my whistle blower, my inside man - now on the outside, but maybe not for long.
"How did you get out?", I asked him. "I complied with the contract", he answered in hushed and muffled tones. This was a clandestine meeting with a man who had had a contract on his head - a man who nearly blogged himself to death at the hands of grimmer reapers than even the souls on death row had to kneel to. We sat in silence as he sipped his coffee under his hood and through his ski mask - damn brave bloke to be wearing that getup in the sweltering Vietnam heat.
To see the once mighty minister reduced to this shivering shadow of a man was indeed sobering - something neither of us had much familiarity with.
As I rose from the table to leave him rest in this purgatory of Thatcher-like censorship, I felt my iPhone vibrate with an incoming Tweet. "Rosebud" it said. "Rosebud". This Citizen Kha'n had just micro-blogged his last word and the final clue tothe identity of who had word-pressed his blog into silence.The minister is dead. Long live the minister.
Courtesy of our buddy, Rich, over at RCNevada, we bring you the latest in pin-up calendars from Eizo Medical Imaging in Germany. This calendar puts to rest any idea that she may be hiding somethingfrom you by showing virtually every detail of your babe-of-the-month in startling x-ray imagery. No more wondering if she might be a he, or possibly concealing something in a cavity - it's all exposed here. The agency is BUTTER in Berlin & Duesseldorf and the model is currently residing in my hotel room so don't ask her name. I may have finally found a woman who can be completely open with me. Check out the calender and find your month.
It is with a heavy heart that I announce the closing of GarageBand today and with it, the at least temporary suspension of WWED Radio.
So that means the music that you all so much love, or hate in some cases, will be going away. This notice from GarageBand sealed the deal a few days ago.
"After ten years of helping people discover independent music, Garageband.com will be retired on July 15th, 2010."
And that about says it - but we're not finished yet! If you have enjoyed any of the music you have heard here, and would like to download it, go to the Podcast control in the side bar and click, or go directly here to the library and download at will - and for a limited time only, it's all free!
First Napster died, then Mini-Nova and now GB. Pirating is getting harder and harder these days, and it's even tougher with one eye and a wooden leg, so get yourself over to that podcast and have a heapin' helpin' of our hospitality - WWED Radio that is.
And if anyone is aware of a podcast hosting service that will allow me all the 'variety' WWED Radio requires, please let me know. We pirates must stick together!
David Everitt-Carlson:Is that a good thing? I was told recently that 'cute' was not a good thing...
Cheryl Rayden: Aww what a sweetie !! XO ; ) ♥ Sylvia Wilson: That's the way I remember you too! (And what's wrong with being cute? Cute is a GOOD thing!)
Cheryl Rayden: Cute & Handsome.. OK.. Intellectual.. Ha ha !! ; ) ; )
Marcofantyn Alfonso: "Trust your instincts , which have never let you down, when things start to get 'weird'. And... In a real friendship , it's important to sort out who's genuinely REAL & LOYAL !" ;)
"According to the French, the perfect woman for a man is 1/2 his age + 7. I was off by two years. She should have been 34. She'll be ready for me when I'm 58." - Travis
The enemy of a good idea is complacency. No idea at all. The enemy of good is not evil, but inaction - the art of going nowhere for years without ever taking a stand. Without ever knowing where you want to go. Our schools breed this in us.
And I have not yet met a communist who has had a good idea. They have all been bred to believe the same old ones. Mao Tze Tung had good ideas when he was young, but his party institutionalized them and he was not allowed to adapt them to the present, although he tried. He died an unhappy old man, ostracized by the government he created.
Last year I met a woman who talked me out of getting a regular job, she even helped kill one for me, for the proposed valor of starting something new with her - and then she left that idea and me, when it proved difficult - because she needed a regular job and a regular guy, like 99.9% of the world. She had a creative idea, and then killed it herself, or let her society kill it for her. Trouble was, I believed in her at the start. Who was wrong?
An internet entrepreneur, recently, backed me off the idea that we should try to solicit advertisers for a site but what he didn't have was the money to support his idea through years of no income. People forget that Google and Twitter were started with piles of venture capital. Piles of money.
Being an individualist isn't worth a pile of shit if you can't afford it - rather society will take some other conformity and package it as maverick vision. And women who once fell in love with your individualism will abandon you for it in favor of what society tells them is correct.
The trick seems to be balance. How can we be creative and original without being victimized? How can we be responsible, without being complacent? And how can we find a partner who values and supports both?
I end today's rant with a clip of Todd Rundgren's 60th birthday bash two years ago. Todd and I share this day but also a number of ideals. He's raised two pro-ball players, another son in college and Liv Tyler as a step-dad, yet remained a rock star and a creative spirit at heart. And he maintains a successful career.
Who the hell is thinking that at this age I should give up my ideas of being interesting, intellectual, creative and yes, profitable? I've had a life of all of that and can't imagine that it would ever be a good idea to turn a card and become a soldier - so much as others might want me to do. A lyric in a Todd song says, "Choose your heroes and choose them well, they could be leading you straight into hell".
The answer is not a series of integers with a dollar sign in front, and the question is who said it? And in all my Googleness I can't find the original quote - and even I had appropriated it and used its spirit in an advertising campaign for GameBoy at one point in time. But the question goes deep into men's hearts when it comes to the freedom one has in one's daily life - to choose the cigarettes one likes, or to smoke at all - breasts or butts - tall or short - secrets or transparency? The only way to understand one's freedom is to have it taken away, or to allow yourself to get to a point where you have unwittingly surrendered it.
A friend of mine said recently that the advice in my friend Hugh MacLeod's book, Ignore Everybody, had come too late in her life because she had long ago "sold out to corporate America". Another person described her idea of freedom as "going wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted". Freedom means different things to different people. The less of it you have, the more of it you want - but the more of it you give to others, the more of it you get from them. Interesting.
The question of freedom has come up recently in regard to politics. The Chinese can't have Facebook, but they can have a Mercedes. The government in Vietnam doesn't like Facebook either, but they love Bentleys, because you can't really organize much of a protest with a Bentley, but you can with Facebook. And with less than 5% of the world's population, the United States houses 25% of the world's criminals, many just for possession of marijuana, and one in four, a black man. What price freedom, for sure. And what name do you give it? Communism, Democracy, Monarchy or anarchy?
And so another birthday comes, 54 this time, and it will be nothing like the last one. This one will leave me with the greatest gift of all - the freedom to think beyond.
"I celebrate the end of her screaming at me like I celebrate the end of walking on hot coals. I'm stronger for it, but it won't ever fucking happen again." - Travis
Trying to change another person is always a bad idea. Change yourself instead.
Bee-da-bee-da-beep! Newsline. Dateline. Bee-da-bee-da-beep...Come in Radio Free America, bizzz.......da...bizz........da..... ......come in dammit!
Dis is yer man in Saigon with a ............. .........b..e..e..p.., Can you hear me dudes? I'm dyein' man! I'm in the jungle!
I just got in this crashed plane in the jungle and managed to juice the battery for one last transmission.
Come in Houston! C'mon in baby! C'mon baby. I can hear the commies commin' - through the air, through the ground, all over my skin! Ahhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhh!
The ministry is dead! Repeat. The Ministry is dead! Operation 'Ministry of Noodles' has been compromised! Repeat. Send no more agents through the Ministry of Noodles!
It's a trap baby! It's a friggin' trap!I saw dead noodles! Napalm fried, agent orange depersonified dead friggin' noodles baby! It's hell comrads! War is hell my friends------------ --------------------------- The journalistic free press war is over ----------------------------------- ------------------ -------------------------------------- --------------------------!
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the latest from Radio Free America...... .................. ........ ...........
-Dateline 11, June, Saigon
The Minister is missing. The Ministry is dead. There is no content!
In a midnight raid, somewhere in the last of last month, sources have confirmed that the Ministry of Noodles, NATO's covert CIA, MIA, MI-5, Pravda, DOHLS, NSA, FBI and other really smart enforcement guys had massively fucked up and made Obama look like an idiot again! Something a lotta white folks think is really cool.
They not only shut up, padlocked and basically raped the illegitimate authority of the Ministry of Noodles, but they also kidnapped the Minister!
Even Pravda's pissed off and that's a damn commie rag! Bitch. Bitch! It's like, you've pissed off Dan Rather and Boris Yeltsin at the same time! Jeeziz. What's the world coming too?
(And no, Pravda doesn't make handbags you Asian morons!)
Investigations into the closure of the ministry, the kidnapping of the minister and the general duct-taping of free man's mouths have found that the CSI, MI-5, Tom Cruise, Justin Beiber and a number of other stupid bastards could be behind the crime. We even have reports that it may go way friggin' past 10 Downing Street (which seems to have trouble maintaining residents) and go all the way to the Queen!
Reports to follow............... ............. ................ ........ ......... ......b............. ...e........ ..........e........ ................e...... ...........p Click here for the final chapter!
Sylvia Wilson: That's the way I remember you too! (And what's wrong with being cute? Cute is a GOOD thing!)