Last week I had the distinct honor and pleasure to perform again at THE PAPER MACHETE, which has become my favorite reading series/cabaret in Chicago. It takes place every Saturday afternoon at 3 at the legendary Green Mill Cocktail Lounge in Uptown. Christopher Piatt has been setting up some amazing shows this year — with Marc Maron, Janeane Garofalo, Al Madrigal, and Nora Dunn, to name a few of the bigwigs — but every week, he presents wonderful music and hilarious/scintillating readings from performers all over Chicago. You owe it to yourself to check it out.
In his “Salon in a saloon”, Christopher is interested in exploring the events of the week. You pitch him some ideas by Wednesday, he expects something killer on Saturday. The week of my appearance, the inadequacies of the ACA website was big in the news, and word had leaked that House GOP leaders had wanted to meet with software pioneer and not-at-all-a-fugitive-from-Belize John McAfee. That meeting never took place, in part because Congress wouldn’t spring for the guy’s airfare, but I decided to write what I thought would be his public testimony before the committee. I have an audio file from it, but can’t figure out how to change its format.
So, to clarify, here’s me acting like him. Enjoy.
The following is a transcript of the remarks made by John McAfee to the House Committee, if they had paid his airfare to go to DC.
Hi There. I’d like to thank the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee for inviting me to speak here today. Thank you, Congressman Upton, and the other people on the committee, their security detail, their staff members, and that cute little intern hiding back there next to the flagpole. Yes, you. How old are you, dear? What? 21?
I’m tech guru John McAfee, founder of McAfee Anti-Virus software, thrill seeker, life liver. I’ve been asked for my opinion on the Obamacare website because of my name recognition. Congressman Upton tells me he sees my name every time he switches on his computer. I’ll keep my comments brief to make way for his other invited speakers, Mr. Java, Mr. Adobe, and from France, Mr. Google.
In my life I’ve started and then sold 15 different companies. It’s not easy being a tech visionary, though the drugs do help. The Obamacare website is Without a doubt the worst designed project I’ve seen since my failed online venture, Lunchmeat.com.
I won’t bullshit you, congressman. That’s not what I do. I’m a straight shooter and a maverick. You know I’m a maverick because I’ll say bullshit in a committee hearing, especially in front of reporters. I’m also a trickster. A Gazillionaire. A voodoo priest. A joker, a smoker….Did I say Maverick yet?
People always ask me, Did you really sleep with 10 17-year-old girls? At 67 years old? And I have to say, Yep, Yep I did.
A child can can see the Obamacare website is an unuseable mess. I know how government contracts work. I realize most of the programming was subscontracted to Canada. I have two big problems with Canada: A small tech community, and very sticky extradition laws. Believe me.
But we need to look at the big picture here. Health care is expensive, but the only thing it costs is money. We all have to die sometime, and you can’t take it with you. The best kind of health care is to live your life to the utmost and thumb your nose at what society thinks. The next best is to be born in a period of rapid tech innovation so they can put out a half-assed product that no one can remove from their PC and then sell their company to some sucker for billions of dollars, like me. Also, drugs help.
To the larger point, saving people money on health care is not helping them. The people would not be holding on to money, the money would be holding on to them. It’s a cage that keeps people from living free. And I say that as someone who has lost hundreds of millions of dollars and made even more. If people would grok the perspective of a tech guru and maverick gazillionaire, they’d understand it’s all so meaningless. What’s your goal in life? I wake up every morning hoping to feel like a 12-year-old again. Because 12-year olds can’t be tried as adults, even in Belize.
People always ask me, Did you really sleep with 10 17-year-old girls? At 67 years old? And I have to say, Yep, Yep I did.
One of the major reasons I moved to Belize from America is exactly the nanny state socialism that Obamacare epitomizes. While I can’t say that Belize is perfect, nor that my neighbors down there know how to mind their own business, I will say the law enforcement agencies in Belize have a proper appreciation for gazillionaires. They also by the way have government run healthcare, and it’s a nightmare. Belize is a third-world country. Belize has govt health care. Therefore, government health care will make America into a third world country. Do the math.
Rachel Maddow and MSNBC have said that I am a fugitive from Belize. This is not true. What I am is a fugitive from justice. One neighbor in that country tried to stop my freedom to enjoy music and rifle shooting in the early evening, late-night and early morning hours. He also tried to take away my dogs’ freedom to run in a pack as they are meant to and attack their enemies when I tell them to. He called in the authorities and sadly paid the ultimate price for it, with a 9-mm shot to the back of the head. You may be surprised that the Belize police carry such a small caliber weapon as a 9-mm, let’s not be all first-world judgmental about it.
But back to the objectives of your committee.
The naked truth about the online exchanges is this: Americans will have to divulge very personal information, and private data, in blind trust, and then regardless of their satisfaction with what they get, will be subjected to repeated attacks on their privacy, their money, their time and their patience. It’s what McAfee Antivirus has been doing for years. In fact, if I still ran the company, I’d sue the government for copyright.I’ve decided against this on the advice of my counsel, The Honorable Ms. Brandi Misti Carlie, and her co-counsel, Ms. Lolita McKnobwasher. Who, by the way, I’m banging. I’m a gazillionaire, it’s what we do.
I’ve been called a genius, a gun nut, a short-tempered tyrant, a coked up cradle-robber, an amoral self-serving fraud, a sun-baked murderer. This is all semantics. What I am is a gazillionaire with a high-Q rating, and I’d like to thank the House GOP, true to form, for begging me to tell them what to do.
When Americans look back on this Obamacare rollout in 50 years, they are going to ask themselves, “Did John McAfee really sleep with 10 17-year-old girls? At 67 years old? And they will have to say, Yep, Yep he did.”