The Harland Highway - PODCAST 252

Episode Date: April 6, 2011

Hunting vs Groceries, red tailed hawk hunt, how to be cool, Celebrity Races, and gophers. Stack a sandbag on my Flowbee!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hell yeah! Hell yeah! Hell yeah, you are on the Harland Highway. Welcome, one and all. So glad you could join me here today. I'm Harland Williams, your host or hostess or however you see me. Doesn't matter to me as long as we get down the highway. Great show today.

Oh, my God. We're going to have some real-life drama. I witnessed a predator and prey moment right on my front lawn. Hunter and hunted. I'll tell you all about that. We're going to go to the celebrity racetrack today. It's a beautiful day for some celebrity racing. We're going to discuss the cool factor.

What do you do to be cool? I got a little something that might help accent your coolness. We're going to get into hunting versus buying groceries. I got an interesting email from one of the highway listeners. He asked me a question about that, and we're going to look at the pros and cons of that. And lastly, we're going to get into something that bothers me. Gophers, little pesky gophers chewing up the lawn. Yeah.

How do we get rid of them? Well, you're not getting rid of me, because I'm right here, your host, Harlow Williams, on. Harlan Highway Welcome to the Harland Highway. You fellas been doing a bit of booze and have you? Sucking back on Grandpa's old cough medicine. There's an element of uncontrolled chaos.

The Harland Highway. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth. What a treat. Oh wait. Was you a great big fat person? You just made a wrong turn. On to the Harland Highway. You need many years of therapy.

Hey, Harlan. Stephanie from Denver, just do me. You might want to think twice before sticking your penis in there. Just do me. You're riding down the Harland Highway with Harlan Williams. Hey man, what's up, all you groovsters? So Harlan Williams here. On the Harlan Highway, you hip cats.

Don't you wish you could just be instantly cool? You know, sometimes you have to work at it Or sometimes you're not in a cool mood You're just feeling nerdy Or you let your guard down You let your cool drop, you know I kind of wish I had a fail-safe device, man Whenever I gave an answer

It's like bongo drums went off I just had some cool bongos It was like bongo fever You know, people are like Hey Harlem man, you want to go to the mall with us And then the bongos just kick in Then I'm like, no, man, I can't do it. I'm too busy being cool.

Okay, man, thanks. And then even before I said, you're welcome, the bongos kick in again. Yeah, you're welcome, man, yeah. And you know how it gets when you're out at a singles bar, you're on the prowl, you know, you just need that cool backup to just ensure yourself to close the deal. Just walk up to a hot mama Hey baby, can I buy you a drink Snap, the bongos kick in

What's that music? I don't know what you're talking about, baby I hear bongo drums I don't know, man It's just what I got, that's my mojo Oh my god, can we do it right here on the bar? Sure, baby But I wasn't looking at you, I was looking at your friend

Oh, I don't care I'll do her too Even in places Where it wasn't supposed to be cool You know, you're at church You go up for communion You know, you walk up Priest puts that little round

Piece of bread in your hand You're like, thank you, Father Even the priest is like Dear Lord in heaven Who's the coolest person in this church Thank you Lord for gracing us with this cool person. Oh, you're welcome, man.

This is Harlan Williams. The Harlan Highway, hipsters. Yeah, coolness, coolness, coolness. I'll tell you what I find cool is when you listeners, shoot me your emails at HarlanWilliams.com. And I got a letter. I got a letter from a guy named Jeremy in Denver. and I had done a bit on going into a gun store for the first time of my life,

and I started talking about hunting, and that I didn't like it. And, you know, and I got this email from Jeremy in Denver, and let me read it to you, and then I'll respond. I thought it was a cool letter. He says, hi, Harland. I'm actually in the process of listening to your gun shop story, just finished up. I actually don't want to ask you about the hunting,

but I'm exceptionally curious about your opinion on commercial meat based on your opinion of hunting. Just curious about this because I've almost completely switched to getting meat to eat from hunting because I think that the commercial meat system is much crueler to animals than hunting is. What's your thoughts, Jeremy and Denver? Excellent letter, Jeremy. I appreciate it.

Great topic to get into, and I think it's interesting that you are doing that, that you are taking your meat from hunting versus buying it in the store. And, you know, since you asked, let me give you my thoughts on it. Here's where I think we run into problems. With hunting. Okay, now, harvesting domestic animals, I'm with you 100%, man.

It is cruel. It is hard to watch. It is kind of heartless. It's emotionless. And let's face it, these animals are just raised to be slothed. They're herded down a line. They're hung up. They're cut.

Their throats are slashed. They bleed them. They hang them upside down. So all the blood splashes out onto the ground. They cut them open. They rip out the guts. I mean, I don't have to get into the whole process here. I think we all know how grisly it is.

Okay? And it is awful. It is awful, and look, I've been around farms. I've seen a cow get shot in the head. I watched a farmer put a rifle between a cow's eyes and pull the trigger, and the cow spasmed, and milk started squirting out, involuntary, out of its udders. And I knew the thing wasn't dead. It was still kind of thrashing around, and the farmer put another bullet right to its head.

and it kind of killed it a little more, if you will, but it was still alive, and then they put a rope around its neck, and they dragged it into the back of a truck, and I saw its legs still kicking. It was awful, and I was a young kid when I saw it. It had a big impression on me. So I don't like that part of it at all, but so let me address that part of it,

and then let me address the hunting part of it. Now, the dilemma we have as a human race is that we are expanding by millions, if not billions, every decade. Okay? We are at about 6.5 billion human beings right now. Okay? We're in the year 2011. And you've got to ask yourself, where will we be? by 2025.

I think it's a safe bet unless something goes catastrophically wrong that we will be probably I'm going to hazard a guess and say up in the 9 billion region maybe a little less, maybe even a little more. And then you've got to go

20 years after that, where are we? You go from 9 billion, you probably double it, 18 billion. I don't know why I'm laughing. I'm laughing because it's just so obscene almost. So here we go. Right now we got 6.5 billion mouths to feed.

And the reason why you almost have to have domestic cattle produce and domestic poultry and all the rest of it, fish farms, you know, all of it, is that there's probably no other way. to get food to the human race, fresh, clean, you know, butchered meat to six and a half billion people. And you say, well, sure, you can. You can raise them organically, and you could, you know, you can euthanize them and you can do this and you can do that. But what you're forgetting is we don't live in a world of fairy tales. We live in a world where time is money, economics come into play,

corporate policy comes into play, government entities come into play, unions come into play, you know, that there's so many levels that go into it just on the political and economic level, and then after that, it's down to getting product to people so that they can ingest it. so sadly we have to create this assembly line system where basic is like get them in and get them out shuffle them through shuffle them through because you know you have to feed the masses and and that dilemma is a product of of us if you want to call it overpopulating or if you just want to call it just breeding And so here we go into the second half of the question where we get into the gentleman who wrote in talking about how he gets most of his meat now from hunting. As he said, he found, you know, domestic slaughterhouses, cruel and inhumane and all the rest of it. So here's where the problem comes into play with hunting.

Okay, I already said there's six and a half billion people out there. You do the math, okay? You tell me how long it would take for the ecosystem to crumble, for the population of just about every edible species of land animal or air bird or whatever, how quickly would those resources be depleted if we all decided to go hunting, okay?

I mean, I think it's safe to assume that if, you know, a city of 10 million or 11 million people, Los Angeles went to the surrounding environment to hunt, it would become a wasteland. They'd have to start hunting each other. You can't sustain it. Okay? And same if you're in a small city,

like Oklahoma or Cleveland or you know somewhere where there's only like 70,000 people imagine of everybody who lived in that community went to the surrounding area and shot a deer and shot a moose and shot a goose

and shot a you know how many years can that go on I mean these mammals don't breed that much they don't have a system like fish where they drop 10,000 eggs at a sitting. They have one calf or one cub or maybe two, maybe three if they're lucky, per season.

So stack that up against a population of even 300,000 people. Okay? That's a lot of animal killing. So in the end, everything would be dead and everything would die. And on top of that, can you imagine 300, 100,000 people out every day with rifles, wandering through the woods, competing for the scarce mammals that somehow are still out there? How many hunting accidents are they going to be per day?

Um, you know, so it's just not practical, man. You can't, you can't go hunting in a modern society where we have, you know, millions. of people clustered together. And so you also can't, you know, like I said, you can't subtract critters from the ecosystem on mass like that. I mean, you know, you can't just take away the wolves and the deer and the moose and the elk

and the caribou and the beaver and the muskrat and the dinosaurs. I don't know why I said that. Who knows? I mean, it's all there would be left. Dinosaurs. What the hell am I talking about? There's no dinosaurs left, but I'm getting all fired up here. Hey, everybody. Who wants to have better sex? No? Yes. Yes. The answer is yes. You always want to have better sex. That's what you want it to be better, not worse. Trust me. And Adam and Eve is offering 50% off just about any item plus free shipping. And more than that, Adam and Eve, wants to make your life easy. They offer discrete shipping as your privacy is a priority.

Plus, 100% free shipping on your entire order. Doesn't matter how much you spend or what you buy, I will be packaged and sent discreetly for free and fast. Don't wait. Better Sex is just a click away. That's 50% off, one item, and free shipping. Bring more pleasure and satisfaction into your bedroom. Just go to Adam and Eve.com and select any one item. It could be an adventurous new toy or anything you desire. Just enter the offer code Harland to check out. That's Harland, H-A-R-L-A-N-D at Adam and Eve.com. This is an exclusive offer specific to this podcast. So be sure to use this code Harland so you get your discount and 100% free shipping code Harland.

have fun don't throw your back out so it's just not practical it's easy for one guy to say you know what screw the grocery store man i'm going out to hunt for my meat it's much more humane it's just one one or you know what maybe bag five deer a year okay that's one guy imagine like i said a million and then here's the final argument people are like you know i get my meat from nature because killing at the slaughterhouses is inhumane and cruel. As compared to what? Shooting a deer through the head or through the heart isn't cruel. The end result is death.

The end result is butchery. Okay? Isn't it just cruel right across the board that you're killing something? How do you separate that? How do you differentiate? and don't sit there and tell me all you hunters, you know, that you, every time you shoot, you get a perfect shot and drop your target.

Bang, boom, on the ground dead. Uh-uh, man. A lot of people hunt with bow and arrow. A lot of people hunt with, you know, rifles. A lot of people hunt with high-powered rifles. And you don't always sit, your mark. I've seen more than enough hunting shows, sadly, where, you know, Mr. Johnny Perfect Hunter hits his animal and that thing runs through the bushes for a good one, two, three,

four, five, six minutes. Okay, it either bleeds to death or it stammers around, stumbles around until it hits a tree or falls or believe me it ain't it ain't it ain't all that sweet okay at least in a slaughterhouse they attempt to try and kill these animals quickly and believe me i hate it i'm i'm with you man i'm with you i've seen the videotape of the slaughterhouses it's it's disgusting it's horrible hanging a mammal up by its feet upside down, slitting its throat. Yes, it's still alive for a little bit. Well, it's blood drains. I mean, it's graphic.

It's disgusting. But pegging a moose in the shoulder blade with a, you know, a hollow point and watching it stumble through the woods until it can't walk, you know. It's all just death. There's no winner here. You can't argue one's better than the next. Because the end result is the same. Oh, boy, this is going on for a long time,

but see, that's a good question. So let me just wrap it up. The reality is because there's so many of us, we cannot do the hunting thing. If we were still caveman, if we were still clan people, yes, of course. It would probably be the best way. We've figured out a way to live too long.

We've figured out a way to prevent illness. We've figured out a way to multiply. We've figured out ways to cheat the system where it's out of balance, man. We are almost like a plague on the world. And so we've overpopulated and we're just consuming and consuming. So until we're eating Soiling Green, and if you don't know what that is, you know, download the movie, Soiling Green. I won't give away the ending. But perhaps, maybe perhaps, Soiland Green is the solution.

I won't give it away. Go watch the movie, read the book, Soiling Green. And until then, I'm not going to hunt. I'm not going to go to the grocery store. I'll be sitting patiently in line at the drive-thru. Honk! Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the fabulous Harland Highway Celebrity Racetrack,

and what a day we have planned out for you today. Four wonderful, wonderful celebrities. We have Rihanna, Pop Sensational. Rihanna in Gate 5, Dana Carvey, comedian Dana Carvey in Gate 4, Meatloaf, singer extraordinaire Meatloaf in Gate 2, and Salt and Pepper, rap superstars at gate 4, and there they go, they are running down the track. At least some of them are running. Meatloaf is lumbering down the track, followed closely by Salt and Pepper. Rihanna takes the lead, head long athletic legs, flying down the track, and Dana Carvey is coming up behind. Rihanna taking a bit of a lead here, and it's looked like she's stopping.

She's stopping to sing a song, as if she hasn't got enough songs on the radio already. She sings another one. She sings it very quickly and keeps moving. Meanwhile, Dana Carvey has stopped to appease the crowd. Being the hem that he is, he can't resist the live audience. He starts doing some of his impressions to the crowd, but wait, it's the same old impressions he's been doing for 45 years. He's doing the original George Bush.

crowd is booing so he switches gears quickly and goes into church lady a character he developed over 35 years ago the crowd is not having any of it there throwing popcorn and beer bottles at the aging comedian and there goes meatloaf he's finally picking up speed he's running so fast his legs firing back and forth his corduroys building up friction it looks like meatloves running so fast his pants have caught on fire Meatloaf burning, bursting into flames, and it looks like salt and pepper are coming to his side to try and extinguish the flames. Salt and pepper all over the meatloaf,

salt and pepper getting into the flames. The meatloaf is cooking, and now there's salt and pepper all over the meatloaf. It smells delicious, but not enough to knock Rihanna off of hammering out yet another pop song in the short span that she's been running down the track. And now it looks like Dana Carvey,

Dana Carvey getting booed for church lady switches back unbelievably to George Bush Sr. The one he got booed for before. And Rianna's finished writing another song. Here she goes. She runs past the burning meatloaf covered with salt and pepper. Rihanna picking up too much speed. She has to pull out her umbrella. Ella, Ella to slower pace.

It looks like Dana Carvey's been punished by the crowd. They're smashing chairs over his head. And Rihanna pulls her umbrella. Ella, Ella, and slows down her fast run as she speeds across the finish line, meatloaf, cooking in the middle of the track, covered with salt and pepper, the seagulls descending and eating. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Charles Pazley. Yo, yo, yo, hunk, hunk, two, two, beep, beep, you are cruising down the Harland Highway, and how many you folks like me suffer from gophers?

And I'm not talking about a skin ailment, like a mole or something. I'm talking about real live gover. Remember Caddyshack and how obsessed Bill Murray was? Three big gobs and greasy granite overguts. How about a nice cool drink? Vermints, scum, slime, menace to the golfing industry. Your disgrace and your varmints, you're one of the lowest members of the food chain and you'll probably be replaced by the rat.

I am not kidding. This, no word of a lie, about five years ago, I had my whole lawn ripped up, okay? Because those gophers had put so many holes in it. It looked like SpongeBob. There were just holes everywhere. They come up from underneath, and they push all the dirt out, and they make these little holes, and one hole's not good enough. No, we need an escape route over here, and a backdoor over here, and a fire escape over here,

and an evacuation route over here. It's like each gopher makes like 32 holes in your lawn until you got nothing left, man. Oh, those little weasel. So I had my whole lawn ripped up. And even my gardeners hadn't thought of this. I don't know why. It's pretty simple.

I said to them, I said, look, tear up all my lawn, put down a new layer of dirt, and put chicken wire all across my whole lawn. I want chicken wire, cover the whole lawn, lay another little bit of dirt, and then put the fresh sod on there. Because I knew the grass would grow right through the chicken wire, right? And they're like, hey, man, we never thought of that. Yeah, well, that's why you're a gardener and I'm a genius, okay?

And lo and behold, man, it stopped them. Oh, yeah, for five years, my lawn has been immaculate. But you know how nature evolves? Things happen when animals get put in situations, they change. They're weird little creatures. It's like how human beings, if you put them near a fast food drive, through, they get bigger. You know, we evolve.

And somehow, these little weasels, after five years, either the chicken wire got rusty, or they evolved like wire chewing teeth. And my yard is now like that fox show breakout. Except now it's like, break up. My lawn's being destroyed again. They finally found a way through the wire. I got to call Bill Murray, man.

Get his ass over here to blow up my property. uh hello mr gopher yeah it's me mr squirrel yeah hi uh just a harmless squirrel not a plastic explosive or anything nothing to be worried about well in the words of jean paul sartre au revoir gopher it's the harland highway it's the harland highway Yeah, little varmints. And speaking of rodents, okay, this was so cool and kind of scary. I guess I can appreciate that these rodents have a bit of a rough life. They live underground for a reason, but I was sitting in my living room the other day.

And my living room, I look out onto my front yard where there's a couple of deck chairs and some grass, you know, where the gophers are ripping it up and, you know, living out somewhere in the bushes are squirrels, right? So every now and then the squirrels get the cahones to run across the grass and try to make it to another tree. So I'm sitting there

and I see this squirrel run across and nothing new, right? But then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, dive bombing in from left field, like a red-tailed hawk. Okay, we've all seen hawks. when we're driving. They're either gliding in the sky or they're just a little ways off in the distance on a

fence post or up in a tree branch. You see them when you're driving. And you rarely get to see them super, super close. And I guess because this hawk couldn't see me because of a reflection on the glass, I was literally probably about, you know, 12 feet away, 15 feet away from this giant hawk and he landed and he tried to get the squirrel. and the squirrel just missed him and ran underneath the lawn chair. And so I would have thought that the hawk would have just taken off,

but instead he hopped up on the chair. And, you know, this is probably the closest I've ever been to a wild hawk because, like I said, it couldn't see me, and I got such a good look at it. And up close, they are much bigger than you think. and they've got longer legs than you think and their talons are much bigger than you think and I could see this thing's eye it had a yellow eye and it had like

kind of like goldish brown feathers and it was determined man it was standing on that chair and I could see the little squirrel underneath just like you know it reminded me of the scene in Jurassic Park when the kids are hiding in the kitchen and the velociraptors are coming after them.

Remember that? An incredible scene where the kids are hiding in the pots and pans. And these two velociraptors come in the kitchen and start sniffing and walking. It was terrifying, right? Well, that's what this was, man. It was playing out on my yard. And here's this squirrel trying to say really still and quiet.

And this damn red-tailed hawk, which is a raptor, right? Some claim that dinosaurs evolved from the birds, from the raptors. So here's this bird of prey, this predatory bird, and it's standing up there, and its heads tilting, and it's eyes blinking, and it's like jumping around on the chair, and it's craning its neck, and it's bending down.

And I'm like, I'm almost terrified watching. I feel like I'm watching Jurassic Park, and this squirrel had no. nowhere to go, because, you know, these birds are lightning fast. If that squirrel had made a run for it, over. And I just thought, this would be like the equivalent, like if I was hiding in my house right now, and Godzilla came and was trying to peel the roof off.

So the hawk keeps doing it, and then he knows the squirrels under the chair, so he jumps down onto the ground and starts looking. And so the squirrel makes a little bit of, run for it from under the chair to under the lawn chair, which is one of those longer ones that you lay out on, right? So the hawk kind of tried to play a little game on the squirrel. Hawk jumps up and flies back up in the air, and I'm like, okay, that's over.

So the squirrel's laying under the lawn chair stretched out on its belly, trying to stay motionless, and all of a sudden the hawk comes circling back in, lands. on the lawn chair and starts the whole process over again and he's getting down on the ground and now he's sticking his head under the chair trying to scare the thing out and I'm just like this little squirrel man

and then finally this beautiful bird I mean they are just stunning gorgeous raptor this red-tailed hawk finally kind of called it a day and took off for good but it was just so fascinating to watch you know, kind of life and death play out right in front of my eyes, right on my front lawn. It was kind of dramatic and it was just interesting to see how the squirrel played it,

how its instincts, you know, because it's not like he gets swooped down on every day. For all I know, that might have been its first aerial attack, but somehow its instincts told it what to do, where to go, how to stay low, how to stay motionless, and it just reminds you how nature equips everything with the tools that it needs of course until it makes a fatal error.

So there you go. It's all about the rodents today. And you know what? I think by babbling away into that story, I think I used up all our time. In fact, I know I did, but nonetheless, glad I could share my nature adventure with you from the safety of my own living room couch. I hope you're safe. Please wear a helmet or put on some hawk propellant or something because we want to see you here next time.

And until next time, chicken, chow main, baby! Thank you.