McFeelyFacts: Hemp.

As I have (somewhat damningly) mentioned before, there was a period of time in my life back in London when I obsessively recorded nearly every conversation that took place between myself and two of my closest friends, David McFeely and Jonathan Gaydon. From that era, ‘MousePower’ was born. But that’s not all.

I have hours — literally HOURS — of meandering conversations on my hard drive. The one constant in all these hours is this: David knows a looot of strange, mind-bogglingly random facts, and he can be fairly easily coaxed into sharing them. Jon and I made a habit of this.

In celebration of David’s strangeness, in November 2006 I created a podcast called “McFeelyFacts.” When I first told the infamous McFeels that I was going to do this, he exclaimed: “I SHALL NOT BE TURNED INTO A FIGURE OF INTERNET MOCKERY!”

Which is where he was mistaken. I mean, mockery may not be the right word, but if I get my way, he most definitely shall be turned into a figure of note on this, the world wide web. Today, I am resurrecting the old collection of McFeelyFacts here, hopefully making it available for consumption by a slightly wider audience, in both mp3 and transcript form. If and when the mood so strikes, I will return to our old, raw recordings and create some new facts, too.

So yes. To listen to the first McFeelyFact ever recorded, click below:

 

 McFeelyFacts: HEMP [1:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Follow along with the transcript below:
DAVID: You know George Washington was a hemp farmer?

MAYA: What?

JON: WhAT?

DAVID: He farmed hemp.

MAYA: I wanna know like, how you make these leaps.

JON: What do you mean he farmed hemp?

MAYA: Like marijuana?

DAVID: No, just hemp.

MAYA: Isn’t that the same plant?

DAVID: I know, it’s the same plant, but he didn’t actually farm
the marijuana, he farmed the seeds. And the constitution is
written on hemp paper.

MAYA: Are you on some sort of email list or something?

JON: Weird shit. 801.

DAVID: I read a big thing in the paper today about the history
of hemp.

JON: As you do. So what did he do with his hemp?

DAVID: You can make fabrics out of it and rope out of it.

JON: Nice.

KATIE: And the oil is good for you.***

DAVID: And you can eat it and…

MAYA: That’s the first thing Katie’s said in like, half an hour.

KATIE: My dad rubs it on his bald spot and his nails.

MAYA: WHAT?

DAVID: WHAT?

KATIE: Cuz it’s good for them.

JON: What do you mean it’s good for them? It keeps it shiny?

DAVID: It keeps it strong and shiny. It’s one of those –
it’s meant to be –

JON: I didn’t know hemp was so useful.

DAVID: It’s meant to be, no it’s meant to be –

KATIE: You eat it on Wheatabix.

DAVID: It has like, 250 thousand uses or something like that.

JON: So it like, it grows marijuana and then what, you discard
that part?

DAVID: No, you can grow brands of — it’s the same plant but you can
grow brands of it that doesn’t have any of that stuff — it’s the chemical
that causes highness. And since they can grow it now without that, it
means they can grow it legally. It grows really really well, and it can
replace cotton and all manner of things and create useful industrial oils
and ropes and all manner of shite.

JON: That’s a good tidbit.

*** DISCLAIMER: Katie doesn’t normally sound like this.
She’d fallen asleep in my bed and we woke her up with our chatter.