Ep. 08: "The Reptilian Behind the Long Pig Mask"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: Six minutes.
Merlin: Six minutes.
Merlin: Six minutes, John Roderick here.
Merlin: I got nothing.
Merlin: I missed your voice.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: I missed yours, too.
Merlin: I kind of make a note here.
Merlin: I got to do more homework.
Merlin: I don't prepare.
Merlin: I don't prepare.
Merlin: I miss you, too.
Merlin: I doubt that you don't prepare.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: I just opened a whole new thing, index cards.
Merlin: I haven't written anything down for today.
John: Somebody asked me, does he really use index cards?
John: And I said, does he really use index cards?
John: He really does.
Merlin: Does Stephen Hawking really need to talk like that?
Merlin: Is that just to get laid off?
John: Oh, that wall in your office, which is just 10,000 index cards all taped to the wall with post-it notes and other, you know, on a whiteboard.
John: Some bits of string, different colored string that represents relationships.
Merlin: Tinsel.
Merlin: Tinsel is very distracting.
John: Well, the thing is, you see it blowing through a park and you can't, you have to chase it.
John: You have to have it.
John: Did you ever see that American Beauty movie?
John: Remember that?
John: I did see it.
John: I resisted seeing it and then had to cave because it was all anybody was talking about at the time.
John: And having seen it, I realized I was right.
Merlin: But there I was.
Merlin: I saw it on a date.
Merlin: And I...
Merlin: I remember thinking, oh, this is really, really good.
Merlin: And then the more I thought about it, the less I thought it was really great.
Merlin: And then I saw it again.
Merlin: And it's one of those movies, like movies I watched in college.
Merlin: Like, I don't want to incur the wrath here, but like some Bergman films where it seemed very important.
Merlin: Or Kenneth Anger.
Merlin: Like things I watched at the time, ooh, this seems very important.
Merlin: And then I go back and I go, that was a little silly.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It felt like a Donnie Darko to me.
Merlin: Oh, you're not a Darko?
John: No, but Donnie Darko I liked, but Donnie Darko didn't... Well, Donnie Darko didn't have Kevin Spacey in it.
John: I find it very hard to put Kevin Spacey and a very important film on the same 3x5 note card.
Merlin: Oh, rewind.
Merlin: You're not pro-Spacey?
John: It's not that I'm not pro-Spacey.
John: It's just that Kevin Spacey is a movie star, not an artiste.
Merlin: Oh, I'm going to write that down.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: I'm going to come back to that.
John: Not an auteur.
Merlin: Okay, that has an extra E at the end.
Merlin: Artiste, is that right?
John: Yeah, an extra E at the end of artiste.
John: And actually, while you're at it, put an extra E at the end of auteur.
John: Auteur.
John: Auteur.
Merlin: Isn't that that techno band that plays power books?
Merlin: Auto-share, auto-share, auto-share.
Merlin: What are they called?
John: Ature is a guy, actually, who lives up here.
John: He's a sous chef at a restaurant I go to a lot.
Merlin: I think you're thinking of that movie, Ature, Wrath of God, which we never did round back to.
John: You should make another note about that.
Merlin: I've got plenty of cards, John.
John: Ature, Wrath of God.
Merlin: Fresh pack of 100.
Merlin: No, what was the other thing then?
Merlin: There's another term like that that confuses me.
Merlin: I'll have to remember it.
John: I see what you're saying.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: You know that?
John: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Is that that band?
Merlin: It's not a adult.
Merlin: Aturker.
Merlin: Atucher.
Merlin: Atucher.
Merlin: For a long time, weren't there a lot of bands coming out like Iceland and Finland with funny names?
John: Oh, it is a band.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, you know, bands from Iceland and Finland always had funny names.
John: It was just that the rest of us weren't aware of them.
John: Did they know they were silly?
John: Well, have you met many people from Iceland?
Yeah.
Merlin: I'm starting to think it might be some kind of, what do they call it, a collective hysteric?
Merlin: What's it called?
Merlin: Like when everybody thinks they have pox or believes in orgasms for women?
Merlin: Like what is the thing where it turns out that it's something that we mostly, it wasn't real, right?
John: Yeah, it's the collective unconscious all freaking us out.
John: Yeah, yeah, kind of like that whole tulip thing.
John: But Iceland does exist.
John: And the people there do believe in gnomes.
John: And they do think... Even more than believing in gnomes, people in Iceland believe in cute.
John: And when you meet them in real life, they have that Scandinavian standoffishness that makes you think, oh, these people are super deep.
John: But then they start talking about gnomes, and you realize, oh, no, they're just Scandinavian dopes.
Merlin: So, hmm, hmm, hmm.
Merlin: I might need to get some more colored thread.
Merlin: I got a lot of...
Merlin: Okay, so, and it was, who was it, Eric the Red?
Merlin: Somebody went up there and said, I'm going to fuck with everybody, because I'm going to call the one that's nice icy, and I'm going to call the... The one that's icy green.
Merlin: And did that work?
Merlin: Did that really work?
John: It absolutely did.
John: People, I think, you know, even when I was a kid, didn't you think Greenland sounded nice and Iceland sounded terrible?
John: Yeah, precisely.
Merlin: Precisely.
Merlin: Exactly the same thing.
Merlin: It would be kind of like when the Dutch, the Holland people, the ones that speak... The Holland days.
Merlin: The Holland days.
Merlin: It's like when they named it Nice York.
Merlin: It used to be Nice Amsterdam.
Merlin: Nice Amsterdam.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: New Amsterdam.
Merlin: Why'd they change it?
Merlin: I can't say.
Merlin: You got Iceland, you got Greenland.
John: Now we can Google it and say, oh, right.
John: Iceland is green and Greenland is ice.
John: But back in the old days, you were standing at the port.
John: In Manchester, and you had to get on one boat.
Merlin: Oh, and the only Wikipedia was at the Library of Alexandria, which I think burned down sometime in the 20s, 30s?
John: Actually, it was burned, and then there was an earthquake, and then it sank into the ocean.
Merlin: Now, is that different from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or is that a Cure song?
John: Well, both of those things.
John: Well, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are actually one of the seven ancient wonders of the world.
Merlin: Now, are you positive that they exist?
Merlin: Have you checked this?
Merlin: Did you fact-check the Hanging?
John: I'm pretty sure, I'm going to go on record and say that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were real.
John: Okay.
John: The library at Alexandria also, pretty sure that it was real.
John: Is that where they invented calculus?
John: I think the Arabs invented calculus.
John: I think you're supposed to say that.
John: I think you're supposed to say that.
John: When the library was at Alexandria, little known fact, those were Greeks, actually.
Merlin: Oh, and we know what they're dealing with now.
John: Yeah, the Greeks, they didn't invent calculus.
John: They can't even balance their checkbook.
Merlin: They think cucumbers and tomatoes is an acceptable appetizer.
John: Yeah, the Greeks, what, you call that a dessert?
John: That's just some tissue paper and brown sugar.
Merlin: Right, that ignores the whole concept of logos.
Merlin: Now, is it like hanging plants in the garden, or is the entire garden literally hanging from ropes or colored yarn?
Merlin: How does the garden hang?
John: The hanging gardens of Babylon, I think, were that the entire city was...
John: Everybody had like window boxes with flowers in them.
Merlin: Oh, that sounds lovely.
Merlin: That sounds like the country of Dutch, where they also had the tulip hysteria.
Merlin: This is all very related if you have the right kind of colored yarn.
John: The tulip hysteria?
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: It was the example everybody used during the dot-com days, right?
Merlin: Because suddenly everybody decided, there's no way I could look this up anywhere, but I'm pretty sure that suddenly it cost a lot of money to get tulip bulbs.
John: In recent times or back in the old days?
Merlin: I don't remember.
Merlin: It was either a couple decades ago or the 1400s.
Merlin: It was a long time ago.
Merlin: And then that caused a hysteria in the same way that people wanted sites with fake money in the late 90s.
Merlin: And that became a giant thing.
Merlin: Oh, well, that's even better.
Merlin: Let me get that.
Merlin: Market panic.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Okay, sure.
Merlin: And then everybody buys low, sells high.
John: Sure, sure.
John: You had to have tulips.
John: I remember this now.
Hmm.
Merlin: Warren Buffett must have spent years telling people it's not pronounced buffet.
Merlin: That must have just driven him nuts at a certain point.
Merlin: I would have changed that at some point.
John: He's been a rich man for a long time.
John: And I think from that point on, no one ever made that mistake again.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I mean, you learn once and cut once and Bob Vial twice.
Merlin: He says, he says that the key is to buy when other people are selling and sell when other people are buying.
Merlin: And I think that's the kind of statement that makes so much sense.
Merlin: A lot of people don't understand it.
Merlin: They think there's a trick.
Merlin: They think there's a trick.
John: It really does.
John: It also helps to have $1 billion to buy when people are selling and $1 billion shares of stock to sell when people are buying.
John: You see, you got an extra clip in the belt.
John: Yeah, I'm saying if you have $1,000 to invest, buying when people are selling and selling when people are buying isn't going to make you rich.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: Every blackjack strategy works as long as you have a literal unlimited amount of money.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I mean, so you make a 20% on your investment.
John: Congratulations.
John: Now you have $1,200.
John: Get back to work.
John: Okay.
John: Wait for the next market swing and invest it again.
John: Wow, 20%.
Merlin: Okay, I want to come back.
Merlin: Now, Alexandria also, they had a bunch of books that got lost there.
John: Well, yeah, the library burned and then sank into the ocean.
John: Because of the earthquake.
John: A lot of stuff got lost, yeah.
Merlin: It's kind of a perfect storm for librarians.
Merlin: I mean, it's not just about talking loud and smudging the covers.
Merlin: You're saying literally, did it explode first and then the earthquake?
Merlin: It sounds like they had a pretty rough time.
John: It was burned in the course of the city of Alexandria being sacked in war.
John: which is a bad thing to burn the library, but it's what they did, the old-timey people, because they didn't appreciate that the collected wisdom of the Greeks and Latins was contained there.
Merlin: I don't want to open an old wound, John, but is there a chance?
Merlin: You're saying this is literally in Greece, and it's named after the guy who cut the knot.
Merlin: It's Alexandria.
Merlin: It's in Greece, right?
John: No, Alexandria is in Egypt, but it was controlled by the Greeks at the time.
Merlin: This is very similar to the Iceland and Greenland problem.
Merlin: I think if you start naming things the wrong thing and then putting them in different countries, potentially other continents, I think that's extremely confusing.
John: Agreed.
John: Well, it's named after Alexander, who sort of made a name for himself by conquering places and naming those places after himself.
John: And cutting a knot.
John: That is the definition of making a name for yourself.
Merlin: He literally formed it out of letters that he found from places he had pillaged.
Merlin: He started with the A. Maybe he started with the X. Alex.
Merlin: Now, okay, so you've got a market panic hanging gardens.
Merlin: I want to get back to the cure.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: I got a lot to talk about here.
Merlin: Now, here's my question for you.
Merlin: Now, the Icelandic Green.
Merlin: Now, what was the band that didn't have a real language?
Merlin: There was a band that everybody with weblogs talked about a few years ago, and they had a name like Moo or Bonk or something.
Merlin: And there was a band, I think it might have a diuresis.
Merlin: Am I pronouncing that right?
Merlin: Bonk?
Merlin: Bonk, yeah, bonk.
Merlin: Is that what they were called?
Merlin: And they had all their songs were like, and it wasn't even like a language.
Merlin: You know who I'm talking about, right?
John: No one can tell if it's a real language or not.
John: Can you tell the difference between that and Icelandic?
John: I cannot.
John: And see, I think that's important.
Merlin: I think, hmm, I need to look into this Iceland and Greenland.
Merlin: Now, which one are the sugar cubes?
Merlin: They're from Iceland, right?
Merlin: They're from Iceland, yeah.
Merlin: And they're the ones who believe in gnomes.
John: Absolutely.
John: In fact, they have one as a singer in their band.
Merlin: And if memory serves, Einar does not like lobster.
John: Do you remember Einar?
Merlin: He was like the Flavor Flav of the sugar cubes.
John: You know, I had only a passing, a tangential glimpse of the sugar cubes as they went by in popular culture.
John: Because I was focused at that point in preserving grunge at the Grunge Museum here in Seattle.
Merlin: Did you start there as a guard, or did you go in as a docent?
John: How does something like that work?
John: I was the cook.
John: I was the cook at the Grunge Museum.
John: You were the Grunge cook.
John: And then I worked my way up to assistant manager.
Merlin: What's a bill of fare look like at a Grunge Museum?
Merlin: Scrambled eggs, greasy potatoes.
John: Black tar heroin.
John: Well, so the thing is, when you're nodding off, there's nothing that smells better to you than a cold plate of greasy eggs.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Or maybe give you a Hagstrom.
Merlin: Did they play Hagstroms at all during the grunge period?
John: That's funny that you should say that.
John: A Hagstrom, of course, being a Swedish Les Paul...
John: Would he agree with that?
Merlin: Who, Hagstrom?
Merlin: Oh, Les Paul, the titular Les Paul.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: Can you get a Hagstrom gold top?
Merlin: My impression was they fell apart pretty easily, but it sounded good.
John: That's the thing.
John: No, Hagstrom's were made great, but that's the thing in musical instruments, right?
John: Everybody always tries to compare the musical instrument, the shoddy musical instrument that they're manufacturing to the good musical instrument that doesn't exist anymore.
Merlin: Oh, kind of like democratic politics.
Merlin: I thought you didn't want to talk about politics.
Merlin: I'm not going to discuss the Tea Party.
Merlin: I don't know much about Hagstrom's.
John: I always thought it was... Hagstrom's are great guitars, but it's like... Do you remember when Kim Thale came out and he was playing a Guild SG rather than a Gibson SG in Soundgarden?
John: And at the time, speaking as a guitar person, it seemed like a radical and uncomfortable choice.
John: Like...
John: Why is he playing that off-brand guitar?
John: I would guess endorsement.
John: I mean, not in a cynical way.
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: It was something he found in a junk shop.
John: Kim Thale refuses to be endorsed?
John: At the time, you certainly could not have been endorsed.
John: If you were a grunge musician and you had a musical instrument endorsement, I don't think that would have flown very well.
John: Until Kurt Cobain did his stupid Jagstang thing.
John: But Hagstroms were great guitars.
John: I knew a guy that had a Hagstrom.
Merlin: i had a friend who's in that's all the band would only play hackstroms i think i think the fucking champs play hackstroms from florida though yeah fucking champs from san francisco i think they play nothing but hackstroms yeah but see something has changed in the last 15 years now you could now that could be a thing now you could have right you know like back then that you couldn't that couldn't be a thing you could pay you could do like have like a really heavy and pointless pv bass that you played ironically you can have an ironic bass
John: You could have an ironic bass, but we were still experimenting with the technology of having female bass players in 1992.
John: Right.
John: You're not going to be working with like super high chemical reaction matter like female bass players and then also try and throw in some like, oh, and all we play is hagstroms.
John: Right.
John: Like, come on.
Merlin: You got to change one factor at a time.
Merlin: That's science.
John: That's right.
John: Isn't that science?
John: Go slow.
Merlin: You can only fit so many molecules in a building.
Merlin: And at the time, I think also within a few years, all the bass players were named Kim.
John: That's interesting that you picked that out.
John: I've been talking to some people about the next iteration of the Long Winters, and I was thinking all Kims.
John: Boys and girls.
John: That's the thing.
John: That sounds like a Korean Smiths cover band.
John: If your last name is Kim, you're in.
Merlin: You can be like Paul Kim.
Merlin: It could be anywhere in your name.
Merlin: If your name was like Skim Boberstedt, you could totally be in the band.
John: You could be Kim Kimmerstein.
Merlin: But you have to have a Kim in your name at some point.
Merlin: Al Demiola shows up and you say, you know what?
Merlin: For a variety of reasons, you're not going to be in the band.
Merlin: The one I'm going to give you is you're not named Kim.
John: You don't have Kim in your name.
Merlin: Also, you literally have no soul.
John: And we could, I mean, I'm willing, there are people that want to play music badly enough that they would be willing to change their name legally.
John: Well, people who get tattoos.
Merlin: I mean, they'll do anything.
Merlin: These people are desperate, John.
John: Yeah, we were on a train the other day talking about tattoos.
John: And this woman, this 75-year-old woman, comes up the aisle and she says, I hear you're talking about tattoos.
John: And did you know that I had a tattoo?
Merlin: And you said, of course I do, ma'am.
Merlin: I have a book here.
Merlin: I have a book here of all the elderly people with tattoos.
John: And she's a little old lady with like a little gray hair.
John: She's got that wedge haircut that little old ladies have.
Merlin: Oh, wait a minute.
Merlin: Do I know how this ends?
Merlin: How old is she?
John: Well, she's, you know... Did you say 70s?
John: Yeah, or late 60s, early 70s.
John: Okay, so it's not like that kind of tattoo.
John: No, no, no.
John: And I looked at her, too, and I was like, you don't have that kind of tattoo.
John: Right.
John: And she said, no, in 1954 or 1952 or something like that, I was living in northern Utah, and we were all shepherded down to the health center and each given a tattoo of our blood type under our arm.
John: What?
John: What?
John: And she said, because they told us that it was in case the North Koreans bombed America.
John: And I said, how old were you at the time?
John: She said, four.
John: I said, they gave a four-year-old girl a tattoo?
John: She said, they gave everyone in the town a tattoo.
John: And I said, because the North Koreans were going to bomb.
Merlin: So, so, so Hodge, there's so, there's so many confusing things about that anecdote.
John: Oh, it's bonkers.
John: But, but so as, as John is looking it up on his phone, I'm thinking, wait a minute, Northern Utah is,
Merlin: Yeah, is that even real?
Merlin: Is there even a northern part of Utah?
Merlin: There is.
John: I've been there, but I realized, oh, right, that's where the missile silos were, or it's one of the places the missile silos were.
John: So I was like, they were bullshitting you if they said anything about the Koreans, but they were definitely preparing for a nuclear apocalypse.
Merlin: I've heard of people who write their phone number on their arm in Sharpie before they drink, and I think that's smart.
John: Do you think that's smart?
John: I have another suggestion.
John: Don't drink so much that you forget your phone number.
John: That's smart.
John: Here we go.
John: But anyway, so Hodgman pulls this up on his phone, and yes, in fact...
John: It was a pilot program in rural Indiana, northern Utah, and one other bumfuck Egypt kind of place.
John: And they tattooed everybody in the town, including little children, with their blood type under their arms.
John: In case after the big apocalypse...
John: people were coming into triage with their faces melted off, couldn't speak, but you could still figure out their blood type.
Merlin: First on North Korea, did North Korea have the kind of B1 type things?
Merlin: Could they get to us?
John: North Korea couldn't have thrown a basket of fruit
John: 150 yards in 1951.
John: Not without permission.
John: But they were being funded by the Chinese.
John: It was the first proxy war.
John: It was the first war between the Soviets and the Americans fought by proxy.
Merlin: Before it became fashionable.
John: Before that became a real thing later.
Merlin: This strikes me as on any number of levels is a very duck and cover style solution because it seems to me that whether you're four or aged, if you're very near a place that's going to be bombed, they're not going to be able to find that tattoo.
John: Sure, you would think it's a kiss your ass goodbye scenario, except that I just read a thing the other day that after they exploded the A-bomb on the Bikini Atoll,
John: They went, obviously, back to check it out, see the scorched earth situation, and numerous rats had survived.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Purely because they'd gotten transfusions.
John: No, I think they survived because they are indomitable spirits.
John: They're hardy.
John: They are.
John: They cannot... They're planning the big takeover.
Yeah.
John: But anyway, if you can be on a tiny, I mean, it's one thing to be at Hiroshima and survive because they're presumably like buildings and places to hide.
John: But if you're just a rat on a desert island and they blow up an A-bomb and you walk out of there, pretty impressive.
John: So anyway, Northern Utah.
Merlin: Yeah, well, Northern Utah, I got to learn more about that.
Merlin: I don't have Hodgman's phone with me.
Merlin: Does he still have that mustache?
John: Boy, does he.
Merlin: Can we come back to that?
Merlin: I hate to keep bringing this up.
Merlin: I'm writing it on a card.
Merlin: I'm writing it right now.
Merlin: I mean, I know you're pretty good pals with him, and it's probably not the kind of thing you bring up, but I want to come back to that.
Merlin: Now, here's the other thing, though.
Merlin: Now, if I live near a lot of tall icicles, stalactites, or an unregulated abattoir, I think having a blood-related tattoo is silly but understandable.
John: You're saying that if you lived near an unregulated abattoir, you might accidentally find your way into the spinning knives room or something?
Merlin: It's the same problem as generic drugs.
Merlin: It's not well-policed.
Merlin: Or herbs.
Merlin: You go out and buy some ginseng, you don't know what's in there, right?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: That could be cat whiskers in shredded newspapers.
John: It never occurred to me to go out and buy some ginseng.
Merlin: Well, how many abattoirs have you personally been to, and do you know whether they are well-regulated?
Yeah.
John: I've been to a couple, but they were in Morocco, and I can attest that they were not.
Merlin: You're trying to tell, as I sit here today, you're telling me that you have been in a Moroccan abattoir.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: What kind of thing do they kill in a Moroccan abattoir?
Merlin: Goats.
Merlin: Goats.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And they've got a whole system for that, and there's rotating knives in the whole nine?
John: No, in the Moroccan abattoir, they slit the goat's throats with knives.
John: First, they take away, let's just say, step zero, take away knives from all the goats.
John: They take away the goat's knives and slit them.
Merlin: And the one in your sock.
John: They slit the knives in front of the goats to say, see what we can do to your knives?
John: You thought you were protected.
Merlin: That's a knife abattoir.
Merlin: I don't really fully understand these things.
Merlin: I mean, but again, blood type.
Merlin: I mean, of all the things that you could choose to put on there, I'm thinking, did you build models like Ravel models when you were a kid?
John: I built so many Ravel models.
John: I still have, periodically, I'll just get a flash, and sometimes I think I'm having a stroke, but I'll get a flash of the smell of the Ravel modeling glue.
John: It just comes out of some recess of my mind.
John: My brain is offloading some old memory in order to retain the new memory of what the chord sequence is to Tonight You Belong to Me.
Merlin: They say that's the strongest sense.
John: The smell, yeah.
Merlin: Especially of glue.
John: I'll get this modeling glue smell.
John: You remember for a while there, all the modeling glue smelled like lemons because they...
John: I don't know.
John: They were trying to dissuade kids from sniffing glue.
John: I don't know why they would make it smell like lemons.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Who amongst you that's looking for a buzz would want the refreshing smell of citrus?
John: No, no, no.
John: That's appalling compared to the delicious smell of modeling glue.
John: I love that smell.
John: Contained in a plastic bag and huffed.
John: Did you ever huff modeling glue?
John: I didn't, but when I was in Romania last, glue huffing and adhesive huffing was an epidemic.
John: And out in front of the train station, there were all these little kids, like really young kids, urchins, just kind of sleeping in little hollowed out depressions in the dirt and passing around these bags of 3M spray adhesive.
John: And they have these zombie looks.
Merlin: This is in Romania?
John: That's right.
Merlin: Where do you get sniffable adhesives in Romania?
Merlin: Is that...
John: Well, I mean, Romanians need to adhese things just like anybody else does.
Merlin: Seems like somebody would notice.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: It's transitive, intransitive.
Merlin: I think it's one of those things, like, you'd start noticing, like, there's just not as much, you know, oomph, you know, in the Cool Whip cans.
Merlin: It just seems like that would be enough.
Merlin: Somebody would notice that there's a lot, you know.
Merlin: And where does an urchin find money for something like that?
Merlin: You're telling it's an inexpensive high.
Merlin: It's like the air conditioning, the Freon thing.
John: Yeah, I mean, urchins, first of all.
John: Urchins are not picky about their high.
John: Well, urchins are not above stealing, for one.
John: That's right there in the name.
John: Yeah, that's, well, yeah.
John: How?
Merlin: Oh, I just meant in a Dickensian sense, in a Fagin sense, not to be anti-Semitic.
Merlin: But, I mean, the whole nature of being an urchin is you're probably not going to go out and get some extremely high-grade drugs.
Merlin: I mean, you don't have a car with a window to roll down.
John: And I'm guessing you probably don't go into the store and comparison shop.
John: Like, you don't go in and say, I don't know, this adhesive is... I mean, you buy the cheapest thing with the money that you stole from the little old lady.
John: And I think you get a lot of bang for your buck with a can of spray adhesive.
John: And at least the last time I was there, your typical Romanian shopkeeper was not going to keep spray adhesives behind the counter to keep them out of the hands of kids.
John: The cough syrup problem.
John: The cough syrup problem.
Merlin: Well, for example, today, setting aside the fact that almost everything at Walgreens is now behind the counter.
Merlin: If I'm going to buy Neutrogena shampoo, there's a little yellow piece of cardboard that says, for your convenience, please go somewhere else to buy this.
Merlin: Razor blades, good luck.
Merlin: There's a reason I don't shave.
Merlin: Well, I mean, there's several reasons I don't shave, but I'm really tired of going to the counter and asking them for that.
Merlin: And now, you know, first of all, it's just a shame that you can't buy ephedrine anymore because that really helped me get a lot done at one point in my life.
Merlin: But now you can't even get pseudoephedrine.
Merlin: You have to go to the pharmacist, who's probably incompetent, let's be honest, and then ask them.
Merlin: You have to make a case for wanting pseudoephed.
John: You have to prove to them that you're not making crystal meth.
John: Right.
Merlin: Absolutely, and I don't know if this is like this up in the fruitcake place you live, but here, you've got to show them a driver's license, and they're checking that.
Merlin: They don't want you buying too much Sudafed.
Merlin: They don't want you to be completely clear.
Merlin: They don't want you breathing clearly.
John: Well, as you know, I am not above, and in fact, often relish, screaming
John: a lecture at people who are standing behind the counter of somewhere.
John: And I have gone, because... They often can't leave.
John: That's right.
John: And they're often standing there asking me for something, and I'm yelling back at them what they need to know.
John: And I, too, am not just a fan of ephedrine, but a...
John: I believe it is one of the things that God made to make life on Earth more bearable.
Merlin: John, this is a whole motherfucking card.
Merlin: I don't have anybody I can talk to about this anymore.
John: I go into these pharmacies.
Merlin: It was my secret shame.
John: And I'm pawing through these...
John: antihistamines and i and i'm looking at the list of ingredients and i'm like not a single one of these ingredients is an actual antihistamine these are things these are like fake antihistamines and i my body is not fooled so i go up to the counter and i say where is the pseudoephedrine and they say oh you have to fill out a card or whatever and
John: And I rant and rave.
John: I yell at every pharmacist that makes me go through this process.
John: Look at me.
John: Look at me.
John: I want the one thing that works.
John: It's like withholding the polio vaccine.
John: You whore.
John: Why aren't you helping me?
Merlin: Do you know what it's like to have allergies?
Merlin: You have it right now.
Merlin: You have it right back there.
Merlin: You can sell it.
Merlin: Give me the little red pill that makes life bearable.
Merlin: So you're talking about the true, forget my saying, prophylactic purpose.
Merlin: You're saying for clear nostrils.
Merlin: You're not saying for twitching and writing more.
Merlin: You're talking about for actually clearing out your nostrils.
John: I do not misuse these drugs.
John: You never misused it at all?
Merlin: No, I'm a drug addict.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I mean, before you got all that straightened out.
John: No, no.
John: Compared to a crosstalk, an ephedrine is not a very... A crosstalk?
Merlin: You mean like a white cross?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now, what's in that?
Merlin: I thought a white cross was...
Merlin: That's actual speed.
Merlin: I've had that for my condition.
John: Yeah, I know, for your condition.
John: And if you take a lot of those, now you're really driving a semi-truck.
Merlin: Do you have any idea how angry I could get right now?
Merlin: You have no idea.
Merlin: I could take another one of these and just be good and pissed.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I had to watch that with that Adderall.
Merlin: Boy, that Adderall will just... It will piss you off.
John: Yeah, I mean...
John: I can't touch that stuff with, I can't look at any kind of medication and think, oh, maybe if I just took two, it would help me get this writing assignment done.
John: Because that's a very slippery slope for somebody.
John: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
John: Absolutely.
John: But I do take one of those pills during allergy season.
John: I take one of them every day.
John: whether I wake up with a stuffy nose or not because it is an antihistamine.
John: It suppresses the histamine response and then you end up not going through the agony.
Merlin: That's why they call it a prophylactic.
Merlin: It's not just about intercourse with a rubber.
Merlin: Prophylactic, as you know, I think that's probably Greek because it's got a Y in it, but you're taking it in order to avoid something happening, right?
Merlin: That's the notion.
Merlin: Now, I'm almost to that point.
Merlin: I've got that generic Claritin
Merlin: I can't tell if it makes a difference.
Merlin: I can't tell if it's one of those adaptogen BS things like vitamin C, but it seems to help me.
Merlin: All I know is that sometimes I will find myself standing in the kitchen and sneezing for just minutes and minutes and minutes, like 16, 18 sneezes in a row.
John: That's how you get your bacon so flavorful, right?
John: I mean, I've always admired your bacon recipe.
John: I just assumed it was that you sneezed on it 16 times.
Merlin: If I knew the answer, I wouldn't tell you for reasons I'm sure you can understand.
Merlin: I do understand.
Merlin: And then the lady at my coffee place, Brownell Coffee.
Merlin: A little product placement there.
Merlin: Yeah, I'd like to place them when I can.
Merlin: I retweeted them this morning.
Merlin: Love that place.
Merlin: But Ariana there, she just gave me some stuff she got at Whole Foods that she claims is a Chinese herb.
John: Is Ariana some kind of Ukrainian refugee or Russian bride?
Merlin: You mean like a fish in a stocking maid type situation?
Merlin: Well, or just an immigrant, a woman from the East.
Merlin: I don't want to speak out of school, but I believe she is, her parents are from China and Afghanistan, which is very interesting.
John: Wow.
Merlin: that's exotic right now see now my shrink has got me worried about the whole herb thing because in the same way that he's got me worried about the whole generic drug thing he says the whole generic drug thing he says it's these are my words not his because he's a professional complete horseshit really oh well the thing is it's the worst kind of horseshit because you don't know if it's horseshit is this wait is this your shrink that's saying this or is this the voice of your shrink that you're picking up in your tinfoil helmet let me check my wall
Merlin: Let's come back to the wall, too.
Merlin: I want to talk more about those index cards.
Merlin: I got a lot of stuff here.
Merlin: Wouldn't help to write index cards on the index card.
Merlin: Boy, I really need to get something straightened out of my life, John.
Merlin: Did you just write index cards on an index card?
Merlin: I crossed it out.
Merlin: The wall slash art slash adhesive.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Now here's the problem.
Merlin: You're afraid of ginseng.
Merlin: Well, I see now I've taken the ginseng and my shrink just – he says just don't even touch that stuff because you don't know how much of anything is in there.
Merlin: It's totally unregulated.
Merlin: He says this is the problem with especially, I must say, antidepressants.
Merlin: Now, apparently, you go and take one of those name-brand depressants, and it may work or not work for a person, but it can work.
Merlin: Now, a lot of this stuff, you don't know what's in there, supposedly.
Merlin: And he says, the problem is, this is so boring, there's no way to actually check this stuff out.
John: It's full of rodent hairs and stuff?
John: I mean, what do you mean, what's in it?
Merlin: It could be just, it's just like... When you go to some yo-yo, some yo-yo says to you, oh...
Merlin: yo-yo being the people who disagree with me about this they say oh no generics are exactly the same as regular drugs each one of these has like for example 0.01 percent of this active ingredient but the other 98 per 99.9 percent i see exactly i mean okay now here's the thing and so in the absence of of ephedrine and the absence of uh so you're what is it you're taking every day
John: Well, pseudoephedrine.
John: I mean, I would take an ephedrine.
John: Like a pseudo-fed type situation.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I started on the ephedrine in college because the place that I buy my malt liquor obviously also had little bottles of ephedrine.
Merlin: And you could buy a bottle... This was back in the 70s.
Merlin: Close.
Merlin: Close.
Merlin: This would be 1986, 87, 88.
Merlin: You could buy...
Merlin: 50 of these little, tiny, white, unadulterated ephedrons for $2.99.
Merlin: A 25 milligram ephedron.
Merlin: You get 50 of those for $2.99.
Merlin: Now you're asking me how do I know this?
Merlin: Because I made a spreadsheet a few years ago.
Merlin: Because I was getting concerned about the historical cost of dancing medicine.
Merlin: I call it dancing medicine.
Merlin: Because you can take a lot in dance.
Merlin: Or drive really far.
Merlin: do you still get do you still import these things i don't need to i have the add medicine now and i don't need to self-medicate with these that's nice okay so i that's a happy ending okay so what i just found out a place across the street is a handjob place we should get back to that too oh really oh it's totally i've had i've had the feeling for a while and i just got confirmation from the merchants association guy yes the bar where the firemen drink
Merlin: Oh, the racist farming bar.
Merlin: That's changed now.
Merlin: Now it's Asian kids with funny haircuts.
Merlin: And it's really costly.
Merlin: It's really costly.
Merlin: So I'll share this.
Merlin: I made a Google Doc a few years ago that I'm happy to share with people.
Merlin: Now, here's the problem.
Merlin: You know, they made it illegal.
Merlin: You couldn't buy the ephedrine anymore.
John: Oh, I thought we were talking about hand jobs still.
Merlin: Oh, I think those are still legal.
Merlin: I think they're, you know, it's one of those things like weed where, you know, you might as well regulate it, you know, and, you know, tax it and stuff.
Merlin: So everybody wins.
John: You're telling me San Francisco taxes hand jobs?
Merlin: What if they could?
Merlin: I don't know how well they follow this stuff.
Merlin: I'm just saying that a lot of nail places, I'm just saying.
Merlin: Finger nail places?
Merlin: Like where you buy fingernails?
Merlin: Any place where you can go and they do things to you like a spa type situation.
Merlin: First of all, be very careful.
Merlin: There's a lot of diseases you can catch in a place like that.
John: Those places are caustic.
John: I can't breathe in a nail salon.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a very inexpensive business to start.
Merlin: And that's why a lot of people who came here after the Vietnam War opened them.
Merlin: There's a whole thing on NPR about this.
John: I think they also use that solution to electroplate truck bumpers and stuff.
John: And it's very costly.
John: What does that do to a bumper when you electroplate it?
John: Well, it plates it.
John: It puts chrome on a bumper with...
John: Okay.
John: It's a very toxic process to chrome a bumper.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: And that's not a euphemism.
Merlin: No, well, it sounds like it.
Merlin: Now, let's just say for the sake of argument that some lady has sucked the chrome off your bumper.
Merlin: You literally go somewhere and they use electricity to replace it.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That sounds like a racket to me, John.
Merlin: That sounds like a lady who's good at fellatio, and so people from Southeast Asia could easily turn that into a hell of a racket.
Merlin: Oh, and then her brother is running the electroplating thing.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: What about removing golf balls from garden hoses?
John: Constant cycle.
Merlin: How did the golf ball get into the garden hose?
Merlin: Ask yourself that.
John: I was walking in a neighborhood not very long ago, a neighborhood that I didn't normally go to, and I saw a donut shop sort of up the street and across the way, and I was walking to this donut shop.
John: The streets were abandoned or deserted.
John: Not abandoned.
John: They were still using them, but they were deserted at the time.
John: I'm walking across the street and here comes a car the other direction.
John: And as I'm halfway across the street, this car slows down and I see that it's a guy I know.
John: And he sees me and we kind of look at each other, but he doesn't stop.
John: He just keeps driving.
John: And I was like, what was he doing up here?
John: This is a weird neighborhood for either of us to be in.
John: Oh.
John: Have I told you this story?
John: No, no, but I'm all... So I head over to the donut shop.
John: I have a donut, whatever.
John: A few days pass.
John: I bump into this guy at a rock club and I go, hey, how's it going?
John: He was like, hey, I saw you up there in weird neighborhood, weirdo neighborhood.
John: I was like, yeah, what were you doing up there?
John: And he said, well, I was trying to think of what you were doing up there.
John: And then I realized there's only one reason to be in that neighborhood.
John: And that's the $50 lunchtime hand job at the strip club that's up around the corner from there.
Merlin: $50 lunchtime hand job.
John: And I went, I just like stone face like,
John: And he said, oh, oh, oh, oh, no.
John: Did I say that?
John: I meant... I meant the donuts.
John: I meant that you were just up there to see a friend.
Merlin: Anyway, good to see you.
Merlin: Bye.
Merlin: There should be... It's like you talked about with the handkerchief codes.
Merlin: There should be some way to make sure we're always talking about the same thing.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: And what was terrible about this exchange was that he was so excited to have found another...
John: Somebody he could share this.
Merlin: It's like me with the dancing medicine, John.
Merlin: I thought we were simpatico, and now it turns out I'm fucking Elliot Smith, and you're Mother Teresa or something.
John: Well, I'll tell you.
John: As you were talking about the $2.50 bottle of ephedrine in 1986.
John: $2.99.
John: I was able to transport myself to my 1986 self.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I was thinking, wow, that's a good, that sounds cool.
John: That's a good deal.
John: We could get really high.
Merlin: I'm not going to dwell on this because this is not interesting and it reveals way too much about me.
Merlin: But I did take the time, according to Google Docs, 660 days ago to calculate.
Merlin: I took all my receipts for having bought these from pseudo-legal places over the years because I was appalled by how expensive the ephedrine was getting.
Merlin: And then I did a cost calculation based on milligrams.
Merlin: It turns out in 1988, I was paying six cents.
Merlin: Six cents for an equivalent unit.
Merlin: It goes up to $1.46 in 2008.
Merlin: Can you believe that?
John: It's so much harder to get high now.
Merlin: Can I just say, I don't come from urchin people, but I can understand the huffing.
Merlin: I can understand that if you're going out and you're having to go to one of these like smart supplement sites and go drop, in one case, what did I spend here?
Merlin: $59.95 for 48 count, and that's cut with bifenesin, which is that cough medicine bullshit nobody needs.
Merlin: That's more than a dollar a pill.
Merlin: See, here's part of the problem, John, is they don't want you doing this huffing, and so then they add stuff.
Merlin: You remember in the science, you know, when they add that garlic smell, so the Bunsen burners stink, and you can tell them if they're leaking?
John: Same deal.
John: I think it's a sulfur smell.
John: Is it sulfur?
John: I don't think they add garlic.
John: That sounds pretty nice.
John: But maybe.
John: It's been a long time.
Merlin: That's only a more artisanal science program.
Merlin: I sniffed a Bunsen burner.
Merlin: I'd sniff a Bunsen burner.
John: It's the time of my life I totally would have.
John: They've been drinking Sterno.
John: They've been drinking hairspray.
John: I mean, you know, there's always somebody wants to, that's why they put the nasty chemical in the rubbing alcohol.
John: You could get shit-faced on rubbing alcohol if it didn't have that, whatever the hell that stuff is they put in it so you can't drink it.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: They call that Dukakis dropping whenever they have to add something in it because potentially a presidential candidate's wife is abusing it.
Merlin: That's not funny.
Merlin: Anyway, the point is that the price went way up.
Merlin: I'm glad I got the help.
Merlin: And I feel bad for the urchins.
Merlin: Now, they're not going to be able to walk up to, for a variety of reasons, the urchins are not going to walk up to a strip mall and be able to just go buy some whippets.
Merlin: And again, you go buy the whippets, you're going to be burning through the whippets super fast, and then you're going to want more whippets.
John: I mean, I can't speak for urchins exactly, but if you're living in a hollowed out depression in the ground in front of a Romanian... It's not even a hole.
John: You can't even afford a hole.
John: I don't think that the 35 seconds of euphoria that a whippet provides is quite enough consciousness alteration to really smooth over the bumps in your life.
John: Whereas if you're huffing glue all day, you're killing brain cells by the hundreds of thousands.
John: And I think that that's maybe much more comforting to them.
Merlin: If I understand you correctly, you're saying there's something like a sliding scale.
Merlin: If you're living literally in a proto-hole, you're dreaming of adhesives and proper holes at some point.
Merlin: You're saying you want something really, really solid.
Merlin: You can form to the hole.
John: You want a high that you can count on.
John: A whippet is a high that... If you're at a party in a suburban house and there's a girl at the party that you have a crush on and she's talking to your friend, not even flirting with him, but just talking to him, and that is causing you psychic pain just because you're a teenage kid and you think...
John: That just the fact that she's talking to him means that they're in love and that she's never going to, she's never going to see you across the room.
John: She's never going to love you.
Merlin: How long is it taking for the person to think this?
Merlin: Is this in a flash?
John: This all happens at once.
John: I mean, you're carrying this baggage around all the time and it just activates, it activates.
John: I caught a trigger word.
John: A trigger sight.
John: You see the girl.
John: And then your head's going, here we go again.
John: If she's doing anything else, if she is making top ramen in the kitchen, you are convinced that she is in love with that top ramen and not you.
John: A whippet is the precise dose of drugs that you need to make it through that experience.
John: If you're living in a depression in the ground, you need a stronger dosage of altered states.
Merlin: John, I know you're somebody who doesn't do stuff with intoxicants anymore, but A, can I just say I am learning a lot?
Merlin: And B, it seems to me that you have the basis for what could be something like a very disturbing almanac or possibly an unlicensed medical practice.
Merlin: Because it strikes me that, especially given the fact that you do...
Merlin: tend to know what's right for people a lot of the time.
Merlin: It seems to me that you could, if you chose to, you put an ad in The Stranger, you put an ad in The Seattle Weekly, maybe you can leverage your reverb thing for this.
Merlin: It seems to me you could start finding people who have fundamental personality problems and potentially connect them up with the kind of...
Merlin: drug-ish item and dose that would either make it better or worse depending on what they need.
John: Have you thought of this at all?
John: Well, I have long felt that psychedelic mushrooms are an underused mind alterer in terms of solving people's psychic trauma.
John: And a lot of people don't, they don't find mushrooms either because they think mushrooms are some kind of hippie drug or when you eat mushrooms it makes you vomit or
John: Or they are put off by the hallucinations and put off by the fact that sometimes your friends will turn into lizards.
John: Cartoon cats.
John: Yeah, cartoon cats or big, you know, bug-eyed, whoa, you really see the reptilian behind the long pig mask.
John: But mushrooms in proper doses and used under correct adult supervision can be very good for people, I think.
John: And I don't mean like take mushrooms every day for a year.
John: I just mean like take mushrooms once and then you think about it for a year and then you take it again.
John: And then you're probably...
John: That's probably enough.
John: You should be done at that point.
John: Right.
John: But with the right, I think it would aid to the, it's an aid to, it goes in conjunction with counseling.
John: You take some mushrooms.
Merlin: Counseling by you.
Merlin: Would you potentially, I understand for this to scale, you're going to have to get some assistance, interns, urchins maybe, but you're saying potentially you would prescribe people something like a certain amount of mushrooms.
Merlin: You tell them to just buck the fuck up and take it.
Merlin: And then would you talk to them before, after, during?
Merlin: Would you be fucking with them?
Merlin: Would you be wearing what you've described as a long pig mask?
Merlin: How would you be interacting with them?
Merlin: Would you just be doing follow-up?
John: Speaking as somebody who has fucked with a lot of people who were on mushrooms, I can say that it is very hard to tell in advance who is going to benefit from being fucked with while on mushrooms and who is really going to be traumatized by that.
John: It's like college.
John: I would tend to be very gentle with people while they were on mushrooms unless they indicated that they really desired to be messed with.
Merlin: Is that like, do they have like a safe word or a grunt?
Merlin: Or is there something that lets you know they're ready for more of John's medicine?
John: Yeah, in most cases, I think safe words are good.
John: The problem is that most people who are taking mushrooms are in a group of people who are also all on mushrooms.
John: So there's a tendency to forget the safe word or ignore it.
Merlin: That's a good point.
Merlin: But it's also in the same way that, like, you don't let it—I mean, one of the big problems with drunk driving, apparently, is that, like, if you have three or four drinks, you go, you know what?
Merlin: I probably shouldn't drive.
Merlin: If you have 160 drinks, you may become imbued with the power of believing that you're the greatest driver in the world.
John: Right, right.
John: You forget.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And it just strikes me, I know that if I could say that, I don't want to speak out of turn, it strikes me that a lot of, in addition to people not being exposed to the things you share with them, they're also getting cross-channel noise.
Merlin: They're getting advice from different people.
Merlin: Could you potentially be in a position where you would have to argue with a theoretical cartoon cat about what's best for the person who's being fucked with?
John: No, I don't think so.
John: Although...
John: You don't want to be in a controlled laboratory environment.
John: I mean, I don't want to be standing there in a lab coat.
John: No.
John: I think that we should be out at La Push in Washington on the coast.
John: Isn't that an easy top song?
John: No, La Push is a real place here in Washington State.
John: And you watch the whales kind of cresting there.
John: And rather than a lab coat, I think I should probably be in a furry sweater and maybe a co-eachin hat.
Merlin: I see a vest.
Yeah.
John: Sweater vest?
John: No, no, no, not a sweater vest.
Merlin: No, no, more like Mamas and the Papas getting on the bus kind of like a fussy vest.
John: Oh, right, like a yak vest.
Merlin: I've seen you in a Dennis Hopper mustache.
John: So a yak vest and a Dennis Hopper mustache.
John: So they feel like they're in good hands.
John: So they feel like there's a spiritual component to it because here's their guide.
John: They don't just give vests to anybody.
John: They don't give a yak vest to anybody.
John: And then I'd just walk them through being high, and then as they came down the other side, I'd be like, yeah, right?
John: Am I right?
John: And then the next day, we could talk about some of the stuff that went on, and then follow up a few times.
John: How are you feeling now about that?
John: How are you feeling now about that that you saw?
Merlin: I mean, do you really care how they feel, though?
Merlin: I mean, or is it just, this is just part of the thing.
Merlin: In order for you to get the final payment, you'd have to make them feel like they're listened to.
John: Well, here's the problem.
John: The thing is that drugs are not inherently bad.
John: Drugs are just drugs.
John: They just are, they do, they drug you.
John: They do things to you that are druggy.
John: But we've demonized them, and in so doing,
John: We've done the thing that we always do in paternalistic societies, which is that there are a certain number of people who are too stupid to live, too stupid to make their own choices.
John: And in order to protect those people from their own stupidity, we remove...
John: the option from everybody else of doing things that they're perfectly capable of doing without harming themselves.
John: So there are certain kids who are too stupid.
Merlin: So nobody's allowed to build models anymore because some kid might end up with a bag on his head.
John: Right.
John: And kids under 21 are not allowed to drink in bars because 7% of them would not be able to handle it, whereas 93% would be fine.
John: They'd go watch a rock show, have a beer,
John: Nothing bad is going to happen, but that 7% ruins it for everybody.
John: And this is the thing with drugs, too.
John: I mean, there's a certain percentage of people that use them wrong.
John: And the vast majority of people who would use them somewhere on the sliding scale of from good to neutral...
John: They're prohibited from using.
John: So I feel like drugs used improperly or in excess are, you know, are bad.
John: Just like television used in excess is bad or the Bible used in excess is bad.
John: But these things aren't inherently bad.
John: And the problem is that this is what Timothy Leary said 40 years ago, except he was such a stoner.
John: He was goofy.
John: He absolutely squandered the opportunity he was given.
John: And a lot of the drug gurus squandered that opportunity by becoming drug dipshits, you know?
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, I think if you're trying to help somebody on a clinical basis, it shouldn't seem too much like you're at a party and kind of confused.
Merlin: Yeah, but... It's going to sully the real penetration of your wisdom if you're giggling a lot.
John: You certainly shouldn't say things like, you know, we're going to open everybody's mind and then it's going to be the end of war because you just sound like an asshole.
John: That's just crazy drug talk.
John: But the problem is now we have this incredible... We have this incredible...
John: resource of all these people like me who have used drugs and now are not on drugs and the only way we can think of as a culture to utilize the collective wisdom of all these former drunks and drug addicts is in this
John: Like this recovery industry where all these brilliant people who have used drugs have to kind of secretly pretend or have to publicly pretend that, oh, that was bad.
Merlin: It's like the camps that try to un-gay people.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like, you can go there and, like, you know, you can, you know, act like you don't like show tunes anymore or whatever, but that may not really stick.
Merlin: Like, you can keep it up for a while, but you're still going to be thinking about adhesives.
John: Well, except that, no, I mean, I'm not interested in doing drugs anymore, and most people... Not you, but the people you're helping.
John: But what the people that... I mean, we're...
John: The people who formerly used drugs have a collective wisdom that is worth more to the population at large than it is being confined simply to talking to people who are also struggling with drugs.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: Wow.
Merlin: I think it's unsubtle.
Merlin: It's very unsubtle, because basically what you're saying is there's these million different things that could be problematic, and then there's one way that we've all just agreed is normal, and so it doesn't matter what's happened in the past, we're going to reroute you into this one thing, which is the normal.
Merlin: That's part of what you're saying.
John: It's a little bit of what I'm saying, but there's so much paranoia about drug use on the part of normals, right?
John: I mean, for every kid who has a drug problem, who needs someone to step in and say, kid, you need to find help for your drug problem.
John: I think I see a better outlet.
John: For every kid like that, there are five kids who really should get high once.
John: Right.
John: And they're so scared of what's going to happen if they get high one time or they got high and it was bad and there was nobody there to help them figure out what was happening.
John: Right.
John: that those five kids are becoming... Those five kids that have never gotten high or got high and had a bad experience, they grow up to be just as big a part of the problem in America as the kid who's struggling to...
John: to not die of drugs, you know?
John: And the people that are off drugs now, and I think eventually, I think doing drugs should be a phase.
John: If you are 45 years old and you are still getting high, or frankly, in my opinion, drinking yourself to sleep every night, you should stop doing those things, you know?
John: Or try something different.
John: Well, yeah.
John: Try something different as a component of stopping Google.
Merlin: This is my point, John, is that you end up in a proto-hole in a lot of ways.
Merlin: Think about the times.
Merlin: I don't know if you've ever... Do you remember in high school having to go to your guidance counselor?
Merlin: I don't think I ever got any really great advice from my guidance counselor.
Merlin: There's two pieces of advice my guidance counselor gave me that have stuck with me.
Merlin: One of them was that I should probably join...
Merlin: the Air Force in particular, because he'd been in the Air Force, he says... I could have seen you in the Air Force.
John: Yeah.
John: You had the mustache, you had that blonde mustache, Air Force mustache.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: And, you know, he says you get free clothes and three squares a day.
Merlin: Nothing wrong with that.
Merlin: Free glasses.
Merlin: But, I mean, this is one problem with taking your advice from a guidance counselor.
Merlin: The other one was that he said, I should probably go to community college, because you essentially get the same education at a community college that you get as any college in America.
Merlin: Which is in part true and in part just dangerously untrue.
Merlin: But that's the thing, right?
Merlin: Here's where I try to make a point.
Merlin: You go to a guidance counselor who's really into community colleges and the Air Force, you're going to get a certain kind of answer.
Merlin: His answer is, if I could make a big leap here, is not going to be, like, you need to see a couple cartoon cats and then have somebody talk to you about it.
Merlin: So what I'm saying is, because of the wisdom that you have gleaned over the years, often to your detriment, you have a lot to share.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's more than some kind of, I'm going to go on and do my PSA to work off the sentence.
Merlin: There's something much more profound going on here.
John: Well, sure.
John: And the difference between your dumbass Florida guidance counselor and me is that I highly recommend that you join the Air Force, go to a community college, take some mushrooms, and then come talk to me.
John: Because until you've done those three things, you're not ready.
John: But if you have been in the Air Force, gone to community college, taken mushrooms, and you have some questions, I'm somebody that you can talk to.
John: And that's also true if you have not joined the Air Force or gone to community college or taken mushrooms.
John: You can come talk to me then too.
Merlin: You're like a cross between a Dell customer support person and the blind guy in Kung Fu.
Merlin: Plus huffing.
Merlin: And I know you're not going to be into this, John, and I understand.
Merlin: This is all the more reason you should hear me out because maybe you should be the one who's grabbing the pot with your forearms and getting heat tattoos.
John: I can walk across the rice paper and leave notes.
Merlin: See, this is the thing.
Merlin: This is the thing, John, is I always think I could walk across the rice paper.
Merlin: I think I would tear the shit out of that rice paper.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, you need to clip your nails.
John: It's not even that.
Merlin: I have a very light footfall.
Merlin: I don't think that would be a problem at all.
Merlin: I don't own cowboy boots.
Merlin: But here's, I guess, never mind.
Merlin: I'm beating this point to death.
Merlin: I'm just saying that there are a lot of people out there that probably should be a little bit fucked up on a slightly different kind of drug.
Merlin: Maybe you could help people from an economic standpoint.
Merlin: Maybe you could help them.
Merlin: The thing is, you have a peculiar, truly peculiar, disturbing ability to know in your heart, whether it's right or wrong, what's fucked up about somebody.
Merlin: And you tell them that, but it doesn't always sink in.
Merlin: And I'm thinking it could be because they're all fucked up on margaritas.
Merlin: And what you could say to them is, listen, Johnny, when you sober up...
Merlin: we're going to get you fucked up on something that would be much more useful to you.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And maybe that could be some kind of cocaine that's been cut with broken glass and Cheerios.
Merlin: It could be something where you take them and you get them some Scotchgard.
John: A lot of people, I think, could just benefit from sustained holding of their breath.
John: Oh, just like we spin in a circle.
John: You know, I go to a lot of Mexican restaurants and I look in the bar portion as I'm walking through to the restaurant portion.
John: I look in there and I see all those gals in there with their big cock, their icy cocktails.
John: And I think you just need to hold your breath as long as you can and then do it again.
John: You ever thought about building models?
John: There are so many ways to alter your states.
John: Yeah.
John: And every person has their own way.
John: Like for me, I take a lot of baths.
Merlin: Yeah, you really do.
Merlin: It seems like it's not even prophylactic.
Merlin: It seems like it's extra hygienic.
Merlin: Hyper over hygienically.
Merlin: It's not a cleaning thing.
John: It isn't about cleaning.
John: And in fact, sometimes I will eat a meatball sandwich in the bathtub and that is not a clean process.
Merlin: Do you have a tray or a sling?
John: I have a tray.
John: Do you have a small table?
John: Do you have a table?
John: There's going to be collateral damage.
John: But it isn't about getting clean.
John: It's about the sandwich.
John: It's about getting mentally clean.
John: Do you understand?
John: I mean, you're in there and you are.
Merlin: Is it a hot sandwich?
John: It's a hot sandwich in a hot tub.
Merlin: So there's timing involved.
Merlin: You got to make sure the water is the right temperature.
John: I had a piece of pumpkin pie in my bathroom.
John: And it was what I needed.
John: I'm my own psychopharmacologist.
John: Yeah.
John: I said, today your dosage is one hour in the bathtub, a slice of pumpkin pie, and the crossword puzzle from New York Magazine.
Merlin: You're operating on a whole different level than my guidance counselor.
Merlin: You should be in every school in America.
John: Well, I've been saying that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, could you pass a background check for something like that?
John: You know, here's my feeling about background checks.
John: You go in and you just lay it on the line.
John: You just tell them the truth.
Merlin: They're not so interested as much in what you're doing as whether you're lying about it.
John: Right, exactly.
John: And they're afraid, you know, background checks date back to a time when the cultural norms were so stratified that the threat of blackmail
John: That was a real fear that people had.
John: If you were gay or if you had smoked a marijuana cigarette or if you had talked to a communist and that information came out... You compromised.
John: It could really be used against you because your fear of being revealed would cause you to make really bad choices, be under this person's thumb.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But the fact is, no one could say anything about me in public that I haven't already said.
John: I have no secret that if somebody came out and said, yeah, John Roderick back in 1993, he rolled around in bed with a guy and they touched each other's peepees.
Merlin: Did you have a sub at the time?
John: I would go, it was great.
John: It was amazing.
John: He was a dancer.
John: He really was.
John: He was a dancer.
John: Is this a hypothetical?
John: No, no, no.
John: This is 100% true.
Merlin: I got two new cards.
Merlin: And also... I'm sorry, was that 1993?
Merlin: 1993.
John: Also, he was African-American and a dancer.
John: Two, three, four.
John: So, Andrew, he's a very handsome guy.
John: And I think right now he's probably working.
John: He's probably Paula Abdul's stirrup pants advisor.
John: because he was actually a gay person and i was i was a pedestrian i was a uh i was an uh an interloper or a uh you were just you were just a pedestrian you were just checking out the crosswalk i was i was a i was a young guy and i was like so what's what's this all about what is this what goes on here
John: And, you know, so somebody's going to come up to me in a trench coat and say, I know what you did.
John: And I'm going to say, do you?
John: Because it wasn't so bad.
Merlin: That's not something that somebody's going to be able to come up to you and say, okay, so I know that you touched wee-wee's with Paula Abdul's African-American stirrup wrangler, and therefore you have to give me $50 a month or what?
Merlin: I guess you're not allowed to play benefits in Seattle anymore.
John: Right, or you're going to start passing us microfiche.
Merlin: That's a slippery slope, John Roderick.
Merlin: That's bad for everybody.
Merlin: And see, this is the problem.
Merlin: See, you have so much honesty to share with other people that I think you don't want to put your candle under a bushel basket.
Merlin: I mean, you know, unless he's a dancer, I guess.
John: Well, I'll put my candle a lot of places and have, but nowadays...
John: I have my possibilities.
John: You got a bath coming up.
John: I do.
John: The leaves are falling from the trees.
John: Somebody's got to rake those.
John: I could hire one of the guys that drives by my house every day in a truck with a big sign on the side that says, we'll rake your leaves.
John: Now, wait a minute.
John: I want to do that work myself because that's how I feel connected to the earth.
Merlin: Gosh, John, I'm connecting a lot of dots.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: First of all, you were in the handjob district.
Merlin: There's something with a dancer, and now you're going to hire a guy to rake your leaves, except you want to take care of it yourself.
Merlin: Now, is that something you do in the bath?
John: I don't rake my leaves in the bath.
John: I wouldn't either.
John: Wait a minute.
John: You're euphemizing what I'm saying and turning it into something dirty.
John: No, I'm just slicing your sub a little bit.
Merlin: if i could get a decent meatball sub every time i draw a bath if i could just like wave a wave a magic wand yeah now wait a minute now i'm euphemizing no it's the magical thinking which we never got back to but this is the problem this is this is what buddhism tries to address you know it says it's okay to want the bath and okay to want the meatball sub but it's not not bad to have goals you know maybe you'd like to start your own uh leaf raking business i i don't know your record's not out
Merlin: But I'm just saying, no, just for the sake of argument, I'm saying that this is the problem, right?
Merlin: This is the dukkah, as they say, you know?
Merlin: But does $50 seem like kind of a lot for a handjob?
Merlin: Oh, are you kidding?
Merlin: That seems like a bargain price.
Merlin: You're telling me this is a lunchtime special?
John: I'm saying that the type of guy that wants a handjob at lunch from another person who isn't just willing to go into the stall in the bathroom where he works and get a self-administered handjob.
Merlin: You're talking about like a leaf raker or a dance wrangler?
Merlin: I'm talking about... A professional jobier.
John: Yeah, I'm talking about an unregulated abattoir.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But you're not talking about the lady at the desk or something.
John: It's not going to be the lady at the desk.
John: It's going to be a professional nail salon employee.
John: Okay.
John: And there's a certain... I think that you forget because you haven't had sex since 2001.
John: At least.
John: 9-11, fuck with my balls.
John: Part of the appeal of having sex is the idea of taboo or the badness.
John: You're a bad boy.
John: You're a bad boy.
John: And to just sit in your... Dirty, dirty sub.
John: To just sit in the stall at work
John: and self-administer a hand job there's for a lot of guys that's enough badness they're being bad don't you see two sets of feet though is that part of the badness is but somebody comes in self-administering oh i understand and your imaginary friend i i'm sorry i misunderstood your hand but that wouldn't count as a hand job though really right
John: No, that would count as masturbating.
John: To actually go and get a handjob is to take several steps toward being dirty that in and of itself is the appeal, I think, to most guys.
John: The handjob itself, the woman that is administering it, or the man, those are secondary.
John: It's the steps that they take to get there and to be dirty that are the things that are really turning them on.
Merlin: Does it make it less dirty if you get a discount?
Merlin: Because doesn't that seem like a little bit... Oh, it makes it dirtier.
John: Are you getting a discounted handjob?
John: I mean, come on, use your brain.
John: That is dirt.
Merlin: You know, my problem is, of all the things I've done, and I've intercoursed in the past, and I've done things that are weird, but I've never, to my knowledge, compensated someone for a specific thing.
Merlin: You know, I've helped with the rent or I've, you know, picked up flowers or something, but I haven't, I don't think I've ever specifically gone into a place that it was intentionally built, uh, with handjobs in mind and said, I'd be interested in this.
Merlin: Can you give me a little break on it today?
Merlin: It is lunch.
John: Well, except your wedding chapel, right?
John: I mean, that's the, that's all a wedding chapel is.
Merlin: Wedding job.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Stop right there.
Merlin: Oh,