It started on day 2 of NH, at hotel, with my foot killing from a 6 mile hike and one bad shoe. We decided to relax and sit in the outdoor hottub. There were 2 other couple in there one guy was a drummer & ex navy guy, 52, drinking sangria with his 4th wife. The other guy was 6'4, nonstop michelob lights, his girlfriend kim was sleeping on a lounge chair and we were all talking shit and about the stock market, hi my name is Scott mine too, Juliet was with us. Went for a while about current events until it spun into OJ is guilty and some conspiracy stuff (the older guy was more wild ie the CIA is killing the Kennedys, etc, Scott usually balanced his statements with specific references.  ("Not conspiracies - plans of action"-S.T.) Talked about economy -> Stock Market, scott was into mining/gold he worked out in colorado 1996 at a gold mining firm. He's currently fishing for a living and a major clinton hater. Says that fed is trying to do to RI what they did in alaska, which was the fed mandated a minimum hole size of 3" in the nets which eliminated the catch of certain species like calamari and whiting (which he said was fine if it was truly for population or environmental conerns) but it wasn't, because after the fisherman went out of business because of the new laws, Tyson Foods came in and bought the whole fleet for less than 10 cents on the dollar and a month later the federal regs (affecting only alaska BTW) were repealed. He says it worked so well that that Tyson (a major clinton/dem friend & donor) wants to do it again in RI and the whole country, killing independent fishing and raising the price of a McDonald's filet o' fish for example to $9 in the process. 

He said he was a writer, and had interest from penguin in his latest 20 chapter novel, which he says the crazy characters in it keep getting away from him and he may have to turn it into a screenplay. 

Anyway, juliet had me go out and get a case of beer and we drank for 4 hours in the hottub. More current events and india mentioned. Then he said he was in pakistan and afghanistan as a journalist and i asked 'is your last name Traudt'? Yeah! Hahaha we had already been talking for over an hour. then we talked about you & walrus and he asked about kim kazan & jill & mac (jp mcormick) so that was cool.  FYI Trout said he really enjoyed "newport on 2 mics a day". Got pretty wasted as we went out to dinner and bars but i tried to brain dump below on some interesting topics:

1. On the Indian nuke scenario:  Often talks with some friends from Afghanistan, who are now naturalized americans. Thinks this is the next really big war coming, and will spread to the middle east. Indians are scared shitless of china, who is fully nuke capable. India also has a constantly ongoing border war with Pakistan who made the news recently with its own nuclear program, which was supplied to pakistan by its ally china, india is effectively saying to china if you give pakistan one more nuke there will be trouble. The PM of pakistan was in china last week.  India has been acquiring nuke equipment from Russia; they purchased two nuclear submarines capable of nuke sea launch and also rented the russian crew as a team to train the indian team which runs 2nd shift in the sub. The nuke technology he belives was delivered to india via a Loral-type deal involving -ready for this - microsoft, BG was in india 5 mos. ago. He said microsoft helped deliver some nuke and other hi-tech and has more but is using it as leverage in the antitrust case.

2. clinton scandal - he said you'd get a kick out of this: Amy Lehrman, former student body president uri, went to intern for clinton and 6 months later got a mysterious and sudden xfer to Ted kennedy's staff. She used to be Scott's old girlfriend & he got a postcard from her. Also a uri secretary named 'dee' went to work for clinton, same thing suddenly xferred to Ted Kennedy's staff. Thinks we'll hear Amy's name in another 30 days if clinton interns stay in the papers. He thinks some wierd quid pro quo is going on, try and locate the last 20 interns or so.  One was shot and killed in a bar, and a journalist trying to dig into it got killed also. Also thinks BC behind the death of former CIA head who died in that mysterious canoe accident, because the head was stirring up dirt about what is now in the news as the Loral-China missle connection, also the Ron Brown crash because it killed 2 birds w/one stone - RBRown, who was being indicted and drawing attn to Tyson, and also all the heads of the oil companies on the way to oil rich bosnia, who the dems needed out

3. When talking about movies and 'Fear an Loathing', ST mentioned that Deb Doolittle of yankee travel in wakefield grew up with hunter s. thompson in colorado and knows him well.  while he was last down there, she gave HST a couple copies of the great swamp gazette, which she said he really dug and then passed a few of them onto dennis hopper who read them on the film set of a movie (he can't remember the name but the explosion scenes for it were being filmed in colorado). Dennis Hopper also later got to read the "dennis hopper" tribute issue.

Anyway I had a good time. I left him my # in PRV. His girlfriend Kim who joned us later for dinner & the bar works PT at the mews as a bartender and they live together in a condo complex which i think is across the street from Linden drive.

small world, huh?