Latest / Armstrong & Getty One More Thing / We'll All Miss Jim...But He Was Delicious!
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: We'll all miss Jim, but he was delicious. It's one more.
- 0:03Speaker 2: Thing this was going. That's right, Wow, just the way
- 0:15Speaker 2: Joe Biden's great uncle died or something.
- 0:18Speaker 1: Like that, right right, one of the many crack potteries
- 0:24Speaker 1: in the last two years or so, Joe Biden's rule
- 0:27Speaker 1: that we can all remember fondly. So I've been sitting
- 0:31Speaker 1: on this story for a little while because partly it's
- 0:34Speaker 1: a little kind of aluted and long to present during
- 0:36Speaker 1: the radio show in which we're during which we're under
- 0:40Speaker 1: the cruel, cruel oppressions of the clock. But now we
- 0:43Speaker 1: have a little time, and I guess this is probably
- 0:46Speaker 1: under Jack, filed under one of your favorite themes, which
- 0:50Speaker 1: is people aren't nearly grateful enough to be Americans. Yeah,
- 0:55Speaker 1: so live in America, who've grown up those of us
- 0:57Speaker 1: who've grown up here or ended up here. If that's
- 0:59Speaker 1: the case.
- 1:00Speaker 2: This morning, I won't say what, but I heard a
- 1:01Speaker 2: story about a dar four and they're in Africa this morning.
- 1:05Speaker 2: It's all like, jeez, you're so lucky you live here.
- 1:09Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. It's probably costing me part of
- 1:11Speaker 1: my soul, but I do read those accounts of the
- 1:13Speaker 1: various wars in Africa, and I mentioned them now and
- 1:16Speaker 1: again on the air, but the horrors of them are
- 1:21Speaker 1: I don't want to bring you down to describe them. Yeah,
- 1:24Speaker 1: but it is human beings who have lost their humanity completely. Yeah,
- 1:30Speaker 1: committing atrocities on grand scales. Anyway, on a cheerier note, whoops,
- 1:36Speaker 1: this isn't very cheery, but it's amazing. So there is
- 1:40Speaker 1: a huge problem in Africa, specifically South Africa, with illegal mining.
- 1:47Speaker 1: You have companies or groups of people either do their
- 1:52Speaker 1: digging themselves or find an old mine and decide we
- 1:56Speaker 1: think there's still some life in this bastard and we're
- 2:00Speaker 1: to mine it. But they have no right to be there,
- 2:01Speaker 1: they have no permits, they're not operating under any laws,
- 2:05Speaker 1: they're trespassing and the rest of it. Well, So there
- 2:07Speaker 1: was one of those in a place you've never heard
- 2:10Speaker 1: of in South Africa where the authorities found them and
- 2:17Speaker 1: busted them while there were a ton of guys down
- 2:20Speaker 1: under the surface. And I think initially the guys refused
- 2:26Speaker 1: to come up because they didn't want to get arrested,
- 2:29Speaker 1: and so the government said, yeah, we're going to starve
- 2:32Speaker 1: them out right, We're going to cut off any food
- 2:37Speaker 1: and water getting down there, and so the miners have
- 2:45Speaker 1: been holed up since the police cut off the employe
- 2:47Speaker 1: use of food and water in August. The story's written
- 2:50Speaker 1: in August, Yeah, this was story was written in mid January.
- 2:55Speaker 1: A legal application filed by a human rights group to
- 2:57Speaker 1: speed up the rescue included an affidavit for I'm a miner,
- 3:00Speaker 1: who also said that some had resorted to consuming human
- 3:03Speaker 1: flesh to stay alive. So the government finally initiated the
- 3:08Speaker 1: rescue operation after a human rights group launched a series
- 3:11Speaker 1: of legal challenges to the blockade. The government was physically
- 3:14Speaker 1: blockading anybody from rescuing these miners. They're like, no, we're
- 3:18Speaker 1: starving them out. You can't help them, you can't get them,
- 3:21Speaker 1: so before you pay it off, well one more factor
- 3:26Speaker 1: real quick. But officials refused to allow even after they said, okay,
- 3:30Speaker 1: they can be rescued, but nobody official is going to
- 3:32Speaker 1: go down in there because it's too dangerous.
- 3:37Speaker 2: Hmm, not sure. I have a problem with this. We're
- 3:42Speaker 2: not making you stay down there, come on out. No,
- 3:45Speaker 2: we're not coming out. Okay, well we'll wait.
- 3:47Speaker 1: Well, but then for some reason they couldn't get out
- 3:51Speaker 1: anymore because they didn't have the Some of the logistics
- 3:55Speaker 1: of this are a little confusing to me, but like
- 3:57Speaker 1: they didn't have the elevators down there or whatever, so
- 4:00Speaker 1: they couldn't come out if they wanted.
- 4:01Speaker 2: But you can't eat somebody unless they're dead. Did they
- 4:04Speaker 2: start killing some of their compatriots and then eating them?
- 4:07Speaker 2: And how do you decide who goes? Or did they
- 4:10Speaker 2: starve and then you eat them?
- 4:12Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean we I can.
- 4:15Speaker 2: See donner party of one, Donner party of.
- 4:17Speaker 1: One, jeez. Yeah. Yeah. So what happened was and the
- 4:25Speaker 1: way the narratives plays out in this whole long article,
- 4:28Speaker 1: I apologize for my fumbling with it. It skips back
- 4:32Speaker 1: and forth like journalism sometimes does. It's not laid out chronologically.
- 4:38Speaker 1: But so, with hundreds of miners trapped below the ground
- 4:42Speaker 1: with out food or water, two men from the local
- 4:46Speaker 1: town volunteered to venture where no police, government officials, or
- 4:50Speaker 1: professional rescuers were willing to go. So these guys made
- 4:54Speaker 1: their first descent wearing white hard hats, helmets, t shirts,
- 4:59Speaker 1: stepped out of a red cage dangling on a cable
- 5:01Speaker 1: from a crane on the surface forty two hundred feet
- 5:04Speaker 1: above them. Their lights illuminated a sea of emaciated faces.
- 5:11Speaker 1: Men crowded into a chamber were crying and pleading to
- 5:14Speaker 1: be saved from the pitch black of the abandoned gold mine.
- 5:17Speaker 1: Their lights had burned out weeks or months earlier, and
- 5:21Speaker 1: they ended up making more than thirty trips underground over
- 5:24Speaker 1: the next three days, and says the one guy, can't
- 5:28Speaker 1: explain the smell down there. They told us they were
- 5:31Speaker 1: eating human flesh and cockroaches. They had lost hope. And
- 5:37Speaker 1: one of the touchy parts of this was everybody was
- 5:40Speaker 1: so crazy and panic stricken, and they could only bring
- 5:44Speaker 1: up thirteen men at a time in a cage designed
- 5:48Speaker 1: to hold six people stuffed together. Okay, so it was
- 5:52Speaker 1: completely crammed with these poor, barely hanging on human beings
- 5:57Speaker 1: trying to assure the others we are coming back.
- 6:01Speaker 3: Oh, could you imagine seeing that thing going up and.
- 6:04Speaker 2: Not knowing Yeah, the lifeboats on the Titanic. Yeah, wait
- 6:07Speaker 2: a second.
- 6:08Speaker 1: Right, Well, that was one of the reasons that these
- 6:11Speaker 1: two guys, who are heroes, unquestionably and some of the
- 6:13Speaker 1: authorities agreed to send them down because they were locals
- 6:17Speaker 1: and could talk to these guys and relate to these guys.
- 6:20Speaker 1: They weren't quote unquote the authorities. So oh, by the way,
- 6:26Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning that even in normal times, gunfights have
- 6:29Speaker 1: been reported among competing minors thousands of feet underground. These
- 6:33Speaker 1: are just crazy ass lawless digs that people. They have
- 6:38Speaker 1: no better options than to do this, so they do
- 6:42Speaker 1: go down to survive, okay, right. In fact, this one guy,
- 6:46Speaker 1: one of the rescuers, He last emerged from a stint
- 6:51Speaker 1: underground in October at a different abandoned gold mine. He'd
- 6:54Speaker 1: lived in tunnels below the surface for three months at
- 6:56Speaker 1: a time where underground commerce was functioning. A regularly purchase food, drinks,
- 7:01Speaker 1: and headlamps from vendors who bring their wares into the mines.
- 7:04Speaker 1: But you never go out for months at a time
- 7:08Speaker 1: lest you get arrested.
- 7:12Speaker 3: God what no outside, no sunlight? What that must do
- 7:16Speaker 3: to your mind?
- 7:17Speaker 2: Right?
- 7:18Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And so then and you're reduced to eating
- 7:22Speaker 1: cockroaches and dead people. You got to f feel around
- 7:25Speaker 1: and find them and communicate with each other.
- 7:27Speaker 2: And then Jim starts looking delicious.
- 7:30Speaker 3: Oh jeez, there's no way to go back to normal
- 7:32Speaker 3: after that at all.
- 7:34Speaker 1: No, No, no, not even close. So it was difficult
- 7:37Speaker 1: to decide whom to bring up first. Charles said, that's
- 7:40Speaker 1: one of the key guys here. Each trip up and
- 7:42Speaker 1: down took forty five minutes. They tried to prioritize the
- 7:44Speaker 1: weakest second deceased for fear the decomposition would worsen. They
- 7:48Speaker 1: brought bread, potato chips and water with them to ease
- 7:51Speaker 1: the last agonizing hours underground for the people who had
- 7:54Speaker 1: to wait. For about five months. These workers were trapped
- 7:59Speaker 1: underground as police tried to smoke them out. In the
- 8:01Speaker 1: words of the minister in the government, a long time.
- 8:04Speaker 2: To be in the pitch dark eating gym.
- 8:08Speaker 1: The operation was part of the police's closed the whole
- 8:12Speaker 1: plan to combat illegal mining, which has reached crisis levels
- 8:16Speaker 1: in South Africa, a staggering forty two percent unemployment rate
- 8:21Speaker 1: in South Africa under the brave leadership of the parties
- 8:24Speaker 1: that took over after all the white people were kicked
- 8:26Speaker 1: out of government. Not that it's a race thing, it's
- 8:29Speaker 1: a corruption thing. But it's led to high levels of
- 8:32Speaker 1: chronic poverty. So people do this sort of thing. Between
- 8:35Speaker 1: August and January, more than fifteen hundred miners emerged voluntarily
- 8:39Speaker 1: from this shaft. Others died attempting to climb out of
- 8:42Speaker 1: the mine, while some became too weak to try after
- 8:45Speaker 1: hunkering down for months to avoid arrest, and the people
- 8:49Speaker 1: pulled out of the mine were charged with trespassing and
- 8:51Speaker 1: other crimes.
- 8:53Speaker 2: Well thanks, yeah. Do you think you could get hungry
- 8:57Speaker 2: enough to eat Michael?
- 8:58Speaker 1: For instance? If I'm starving to death, do we have
- 9:01Speaker 1: to make it a specific person? Well, yes, is the answer. Yes, absolutely, Really,
- 9:07Speaker 1: I'm surprised by that. I'm a carnivore and I'm a realist.
- 9:12Speaker 1: I assume it's ay. If I don't eat him, I
- 9:14Speaker 1: will be dead. I would prefer to live, So that's
- 9:16Speaker 1: what I do. Can you cook him first with what
- 9:20Speaker 1: you're stick down a miron shaft? I don't know, make
- 9:22Speaker 1: a fire? You're unclear on the concept, dear, so the
- 9:28Speaker 1: government official. And this is another aspect of how foreign
- 9:32Speaker 1: this is to Americans. Literally, this government official they quote
- 9:37Speaker 1: about why they starved him to death like that. He
- 9:40Speaker 1: compared the calls for humanitarian assistance for the miners to
- 9:43Speaker 1: asking the police to send food and water to a
- 9:45Speaker 1: robber hold up inside a bank. Sending sustenance to the
- 9:49Speaker 1: miners would be aiding in a betting crime and criminality.
- 9:51Speaker 1: If they let them die and starve and eat each.
- 9:53Speaker 2: Other, I agree if they can get out, but if
- 9:55Speaker 2: they actually if they if they can't get out, well
- 9:57Speaker 2: then it's a different thing.
- 9:59Speaker 1: Yeah. See, that's the part of the narrative that confuses
- 10:01Speaker 1: me because at the point where they're starving to death
- 10:05Speaker 1: and eating Jim, you'd think they'd think, you know, it's
- 10:08Speaker 1: like just a misdemeanor charge. I'm gonna go up and
- 10:11Speaker 1: get busted right.
- 10:14Speaker 2: And go to subway right.
- 10:16Speaker 1: So yeah, that that part is not clear to me.
- 10:18Speaker 1: But between the way the government approached it and that,
- 10:23Speaker 1: the employment rate and so misery eye.
- 10:28Speaker 2: So you get hungry enough, So where do you start?
- 10:29Speaker 1: Do you suppose five?
- 10:34Speaker 3: Yeah?
- 10:36Speaker 1: Ribs? You know I love ribs, whether it's babyback, you know, Michael.
- 10:40Speaker 3: Put some on those, you know.
- 10:41Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know the thigh has got a nice
- 10:44Speaker 1: it's in the butt as well, I mean, the the
- 10:47Speaker 1: gluty's maximus. You're looking for muscle tissue somewhat marbled with fat.
- 10:52Speaker 1: It's like taking a good steak, Jack. I don't look,
- 10:55Speaker 1: we're starving to death in this scenario, and you all are.
- 10:57Speaker 2: Like, oh oh, Ikey, you gotta get practical, I promise you.
- 11:02Speaker 2: I'm plenty of marbled.
- 11:06Speaker 1: Yes, it's probably gonna be rare.
- 11:10Speaker 2: If I'm cooking it. This is one time where I
- 11:12Speaker 2: want it well done. I want it cooked all the
- 11:13Speaker 2: way through. No pink police, And Mike is working on
- 11:16Speaker 2: his glutes as he says, so is it legitimately?
- 11:22Speaker 1: Is it?
- 11:22Speaker 3: Like?
- 11:24Speaker 2: You know, if you're at the grocery store and you're
- 11:25Speaker 2: not hungry, you just buy the stuff you need. But
- 11:27Speaker 2: if you're hungry at the grocery store. I tell my
- 11:29Speaker 2: kids this all the time. If you're hungry at the
- 11:31Speaker 2: grocery store, everything looks delicious. So if you're even hungrier,
- 11:36Speaker 2: do you get to the point where it's just not
- 11:38Speaker 2: even really a battle to eat a human? You're just
- 11:40Speaker 2: so hungry It smells, looks, taste, tastes great.
- 11:43Speaker 1: You think, I'm not sure I'd go that far, But
- 11:47Speaker 1: I'm with you eighty percent of the way. Yeah, you
- 11:50Speaker 1: wouldn't think, you know, this is kind of gross. He'd
- 11:54Speaker 1: be like a snarling beast, like a hungry wolf.
- 11:58Speaker 2: You're right, yeah, shop being at the grocery store hungry
- 12:02Speaker 2: is just the disaster.
- 12:04Speaker 1: Michael.
- 12:04Speaker 3: If we're eating your glutes. I need some cho lula
- 12:07Speaker 3: and some sauce, and they got to be cooked.
- 12:10Speaker 1: Yeah, a little sweet baby raised or something like that.
- 12:12Speaker 1: What isla, I don't know what that is. You don't
- 12:15Speaker 1: know chi lula? What not? That one raised? Right?
- 12:21Speaker 2: Yeah, my Martian illegal goal. I'll stand up for you.
- 12:24Speaker 2: Mil I've never heard that word in my life. What what?
- 12:28Speaker 2: What the hell is that?
- 12:29Speaker 3: There is something seriously wrong with you too? If you
- 12:31Speaker 3: don't know what the chilu is.
- 12:33Speaker 2: No idea, that's probably racist. I guess it's something they
- 12:37Speaker 2: put on your ass to make it taste better. Michael, Yeah,
- 12:39Speaker 2: it's it's ass sauce.
- 12:40Speaker 1: No, it's a delicious, mildly hot hot sauce that comes
- 12:46Speaker 1: in a couple of different varieties. And I've never even
- 12:48Speaker 1: heard the word, and Americans are familiar with it. If
- 12:52Speaker 1: this was the Battle of the Bulge, I'd shoot both
- 12:54Speaker 1: of you as German spies because you don't know this
- 12:56Speaker 1: great country.
- 12:57Speaker 2: We don't have it at eye hoop.
- 12:59Speaker 3: I can tell you that, you know, I probably wouldn't
- 13:04Speaker 3: be as tasty these days. I have my blood sugar
- 13:07Speaker 3: down and so I'm probably not real sweet.
- 13:09Speaker 1: I've gotta think my taste is pretty dull.
- 13:11Speaker 2: Point, if I have to eat pre dieting, yeah, well,
- 13:15Speaker 2: to paraphrase Luis c K, I am literally starving.
- 13:20Speaker 1: I don't care. Well, I guess that's it.