Ep. 17: "Antisocially Promoted"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: How are you?
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: Are you doing well?
John: Merlin, man.
Merlin: I got to work on something better.
Merlin: What do you recommend?
Merlin: What do you think?
Merlin: How would you like your name sung?
John: It's not really... My name isn't as singable as your name.
Merlin: Merlin, man, is like... It's like asking for a Christmas present, right?
Merlin: I should come up with something.
John: Well, I don't know.
John: I mean, people have tried to give me theme music.
John: I've always felt like the best theme music I ever had, I was on tour one time and bought one of those little 99-cent keyboards.
John: in a thrift store and it had it had uh like 10 presets on it preset buttons like that played little themes and one of them just said oriental which of course is great congratulations john that's a new record 54 seconds to ping pong when you pressed the button it the keyboard is a little eight-bit keyboard it just went
John: And so I carried that keyboard around on tour for like three weeks.
John: And every time, like before I would enter a room, I would just hold the keyboard through the door and push the button.
Merlin: After like a month of that, how much fear that horrible little sound would strike in someone's heart.
John: It was so great because it was one of those jokes that stopped being funny and then got really funny and then got really funny.
John: Oh, I love those.
John: I just wish I had a hat that, like, played that music everywhere I go.
Merlin: I used to want a vest like that.
Merlin: Today they call it a soundboard.
Merlin: Like, you go to a page and you can make Arnold Schwarzenegger noises or the Big Lebowski.
Merlin: I always wanted a vest, you know, that played sad trombone or... Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Something like that or...
Merlin: I've got to be honest with you.
Merlin: I don't think of myself as a dishonest person.
Merlin: I don't want to have an entire affected fake audience, but I would like the opportunity to punctuate my own not-that-funny jokes with a sound effect.
John: There's a part of you that wants to be a morning DJ.
Merlin: It's a very, very small part that probably got dropped a lot.
John: You'd be a great morning DJ, though.
Merlin: I could be a morning DJ.
Merlin: I don't mind getting up early.
Merlin: I don't like driving.
John: The thing is, you could have been a morning DJ.
Merlin: I could have been a lot of things, John.
John: At our age.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: We really have to transition from talking about things that we want to do or could do.
John: Oh, God, yes.
John: Start talking about things that we could have done.
John: The big transition.
John: I could have been in the special forces, but I am now no longer eligible for the special forces.
Merlin: I should have listened to my bowling coach because he told me something that sticks with me to this day.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: Ask a question.
Merlin: You have a question at this point?
Merlin: You had a bowling coach?
Merlin: John, you can't have a bowling team without a coach.
Merlin: No, wait.
Merlin: Let me take it back.
Merlin: Let me strike that.
Merlin: It was not a bowling team.
Merlin: It was a bowling club.
John: Right.
John: Okay.
John: So he was a club leader, a bowling advisor.
John: I was in bowling club.
John: He was a bowling advisor.
Merlin: That's a good way to put it.
Merlin: I think he regarded himself as a coach.
Merlin: He had one of those creepy little mitts you wear when you're a serious bowler.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: You know those creepy little things that bowler guys wear?
John: You're not talking about a glove.
John: It's a kind of glove, but it's a really... It's like a swimming glove?
Merlin: It's webbed or something?
Merlin: I've never seen somebody wearing one of those who didn't look a little bit like a discount supervillain.
John: What I'm wondering is, does that give you an unfair advantage in bowling?
Merlin: The only unfair advantage is what Mr. Trapani taught me, which is starting when you're young.
Merlin: He would say he was also the graphics teacher, the graphic arts teacher.
John: Did he teach AP history?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: That was the guy who looked like Jabba the Hutt, Mr. Dettleson.
John: Boy.
John: You would have liked... I'm going to make a note card about AP history.
John: Can I write that down?
John: This is the first note card I've made.
Merlin: Oh, congratulations, John.
Merlin: Episode, what, 16, 17?
Merlin: AP history.
Merlin: Let's come back to Mr. Detleson.
Merlin: I can tell you this quickly.
Merlin: But he said, what was his advice?
Merlin: Mr. Detleson or Mr. Trapani?
John: Mr. Trapani.
Merlin: Mr. Trapani.
Merlin: I'm going to write this on two cards just so I don't forget Detleson.
Merlin: His wife was the dean of girls, so that seems like some kind of racket to me.
Merlin: Mr. Trapani, this is eighth grade.
Merlin: I really like graphic arts, where you learn to use a compass and a protractor and make orthographic, orthogonal.
Merlin: What are they called?
Merlin: The 3D-looking drawings?
Merlin: The cube, the mysterious 3D cube?
Merlin: So yeah, perspective.
Merlin: I learned perspective.
Merlin: Well, in a sense, capital P. You learned a kind of perspective.
Merlin: I learned a kind of perspective.
Merlin: The kind of perspective you can get in Pesco County in 1980.
Merlin: Mr. Trapani said he would say ruefully.
Merlin: Ruefully, he would say.
Merlin: I think he's from the tri-state area.
Merlin: I'm guessing he was in New Jersey.
Merlin: He said it with rue.
Merlin: With that kind of glove, you make a lot of rue.
Merlin: And he said ruefully, he said, and he'd shake his... Oh, he was rueful.
John: Rueful, yeah.
Merlin: And so he would shake his bearded head, and he'd say, guys, I really wish I had started doing this when I was 14.
Merlin: He says, because bowling is one of those games where if you started, if you guys took this seriously... He was super nice.
Merlin: He said, if you stick with this, and you do this a couple, three times a week...
John: You could go to the show.
Merlin: You could go to the show.
Merlin: You go all the way to the top, playing with the big boys, wearing the metal cleats.
Merlin: Hold on.
Merlin: And he said, look, that's the thing.
Merlin: Now, you know, I inferred in retrospect.
John: That's true of everything.
John: That's true of tap dancing.
John: That's not true.
John: That's not true.
John: I mean, that's Zoe Deschanel's secret.
John: She started young.
John: She started on all that stuff.
Merlin: I don't think that's true of football.
Merlin: I think you have to be a thyroid case.
Merlin: I think you've got to be a little goofy.
John: I mean, you certainly have to be big, but...
John: But that's self-selecting.
John: Do you have to be gay?
John: Not really.
John: I don't think that's a prerequisite.
John: Okay.
John: You can't prove a negative.
John: You have to, like, dogfighting.
Hmm.
John: That's a good point.
John: No, I think, I mean, some of that stuff is self-selecting.
John: Golf?
Merlin: I bet golf.
Merlin: I bet golf, if you try really hard at golf, you get good.
Merlin: I bet you do get good.
John: There are a lot of things that you can't get good at no matter how hard you try if you're a motard.
John: That's good.
Merlin: I wish we had that word.
Merlin: There's two words you and I love that we just can't use.
Merlin: There's two very special words.
John: Motard is offensive.
Merlin: That's like saying Jiminy Cricket, John.
Merlin: You know what you really want to say.
Merlin: It's like calling somebody a maggot.
John: acting like a maggot or a mag you're such it's just such a mag you could say you could say flame tard you could say you could well you can't say flow tard because that's a girl i know but you can put tard at the end of anything and it's it's automatically offensive it's horribly offensive and it's awful
Merlin: that's the old john that's the old john just lost two listeners in canada you should have a medical procedure more often this is the john this is the john uh you know i i think if you keep it fresh i'll do i'll do clown tard i'll do dick tard clown tard i'll do fuck tard you know what i learned from you is fuck stain i never i know it's a good one i never heard that before well fuck stain i mean is there a lower thing
John: Santorum.
John: Astain.
John: Santorum, that's right.
John: Santorum.
Merlin: I do not want to talk about the Tea Party.
Merlin: You don't want to talk about politics, I mean.
Merlin: Mr. Chappani was rueful.
Merlin: He was a good man.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I got to tell you, John.
Merlin: He had rue.
Merlin: He had rue, and I don't mean... He first said rue.
John: Louisiana.
John: Yeah, Louisiana sauce.
Merlin: And that's got flour in it?
John: Or...
John: Rue, the little Louisiana sauce?
John: That's my new stripper name.
Merlin: My new stripper name is going to be Louisiana sauce.
John: Or Rue the baby kangaroo in Winnie the Pooh.
John: Or Rue, short for roofie, a roifenol.
Merlin: I think you're having a stroke.
Merlin: All right, here's the thing.
Merlin: It would be the first one I had today.
Merlin: Mr. Japani was super nice.
Merlin: Now, Mr. Detlefson, I was not in AP history.
John: You cannot be a nice teacher if your name is Detlefson.
Merlin: No.
John: Isn't that awful?
John: It's just you're a born prick.
Merlin: You get a cold sore just saying that.
Merlin: Ow.
Merlin: Detlefson.
John: Detlef Shrimp seemed like a nice guy.
Merlin: Detlef Shrimp?
John: Detlef Shrimp.
John: He was a basketball player back in the old days.
John: Back when Seattle had a basketball team.
Merlin: The Sonics?
John: That's right.
Merlin: Here we go again.
Merlin: Now, where are the Sonics?
Merlin: Oh, don't tell me they're in Iowa.
John: No, Oklahoma City.
Merlin: Oh, for the love of Christ, that makes me angry, John.
Merlin: I hate sports.
Merlin: You know this about me.
Merlin: I hate sports, but the only thing I hate more than sports is people who like sports and people who can suffer the idea of a regional name going to a different fucking place.
John: That makes me so goddamn mad.
John: Oklahoma City, and now they're called the Oklahoma City Gold Stars or the Oklahoma City... That sounds like a sex thing.
John: They're like the Sunshine Rainbows now or something.
John: They have one of those expansion names.
John: I don't care about sports either, but all the new teams, like the old teams have names that, I don't know, maybe it's just because they're old.
Merlin: Utah Jazz.
Merlin: Don't get me started on Utah Jazz.
John: Okay, Utah Jazz.
John: That's terrible.
Merlin: That doesn't make a lick of sense.
John: What the hell is an Oklahoma City Sunshine Rainbow?
John: That's no name for a basketball team.
Merlin: Is that the Panhandle State?
John: That state does have a panhandle.
John: It's one of a few states that has a panhandle.
Merlin: You should call them the panhandlers, the Oklahoma panhandlers.
John: You know, Alaska has a panhandle, too, that we call the panhandle.
Merlin: That's what she said.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: You call it the panhandle?
Merlin: Oh, it's a little wang at the bottom, right?
John: Well, there are two wangs.
John: Is it a peninsula?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Does it count as a peninsula?
Merlin: Is it an archipelago?
John: It's an archipelago.
John: It's a great word.
Merlin: I'd go to a gulag just so I could say that.
Merlin: Sounds awesome.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing about Mr. Detlefson.
Merlin: I never had AP history.
Merlin: I was in clown tart history where truly, truly at one point – I've mentioned this before in another program.
Merlin: But the teacher of the class who was a coach – Detlefson.
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: No, this is Mr. – I don't know.
Merlin: I think he had like a borrowed name.
Merlin: Oh, OK.
Merlin: But this guy, my class, this guy actually one day said that as part of this treaty, the Indians would get – the Native Americans would get two-fifths of the land or 40 percent, whichever it was more.
Merlin: So that was a good class.
Merlin: Now, my friend Sam had AP history, which is advanced placement history.
John: That's right.
Merlin: And Mr. Detlefson was famous for two things.
Merlin: Well, first of all, it was just a hard class in general.
John: This is clown-tard history?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Now I'm back to Sam's class, AP.
Merlin: So this is a guy who looked like Jabba the Hutt.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: He's in the racket with his wife.
Merlin: And he, Mr. Detlefson, it was a super hard class, and I think he did two, every semester, two 20-page papers.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't think I ever wrote one 20-page paper in high school.
John: That's not normal for high school.
Merlin: Yeah, you ready for this?
Merlin: Your second 20-page paper, this is, I believe...
Merlin: the day before Christmas break or whatever.
Merlin: For one thing also, Mr. Detleason demanded that AP history always be fourth period so that you could take his test through lunch.
John: Yeah, what a tough ask.
Merlin: Okay, so you go in there.
John: And then the second 20-page paper was 90% of your grade.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, this was a giant, giant part of your grade.
Merlin: So get this, it's December, whatever, 21st.
Merlin: You go in there, 22nd, whatever, you go in there,
Merlin: No, school's always out by December 18.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: There's already a flaw.
Merlin: I should check this.
Merlin: The day before Christmas starts, Christmas break.
Merlin: You go in there.
John: Right, right, right.
Merlin: A, put your 20-page paper on my desk.
John: Yes.
Merlin: B, you got your final or your semifinal.
John: That you have to take now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it puts it down in front of you.
Merlin: This is a real blue book.
Merlin: You ready for this?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Discuss World War II.
Merlin: That's the question?
Merlin: How fucking great is Mr. Detlefson?
John: Discuss World War II.
John: Exactly.
John: Take as long as you want.
John: I would have taken that test all the way through lunch.
Merlin: You would have taken it through today.
Merlin: You'd still be sitting there.
John: I would be graduating from college with a degree in World War II.
John: If you could get a degree in World War II, I would have a PhD.
Merlin: There would be no Cold War without World War II, John.
Merlin: I don't have to tell you that.
John: Good heavens.
John: I don't even know where to start with that statement.
Merlin: Now, at the time, that was merely one of those, like, I don't know.
Merlin: You know the kinds of stories.
Merlin: You hear those stories, again, like the teachers with the paddles with the holes in them.
Merlin: This is one of those things, but this was real.
John: Sure.
John: Well, AP history, I mean, AP history attracts the kind of teacher who justifies any manner of sadism by saying that they are preparing you for college.
Yeah.
John: I'm preparing you.
John: This is what it's going to be like in college.
John: I'm preparing you.
Merlin: It's the first time in your school career, if you can call it that, that somebody actually makes good on that bullshit promise that they're not going to treat you like a kid next year.
Merlin: Because you hear that.
Merlin: You hear that from fucking preschool.
Merlin: Oh, let me tell you, when you get to second grade, they're not going to treat you like a kid anymore.
Merlin: Yeah, you're going to have to use sharp crayons.
Merlin: Use cursive.
Merlin: But of course, then it's just a bunch of bullshit about standing in line.
Merlin: I got to tell you, buddy, I think discuss World War II is maybe the greatest blue book question of all time.
John: It's wonderful.
John: It separates the men from the boys, the wheat from the chaff.
Merlin: What you, what I, maybe you, what I would not have known then that I know now is you just have to write something really fucking awesome about an aspect of that, right?
Merlin: You don't have to go like, and then this happened, and then, because you don't have to just spit out everything you know.
Merlin: You have to write something cogent that fits in the book.
Merlin: Like, I would know that now.
John: Right.
John: Well, that's what's true about all essay questions.
John: I mean, they're just looking for you to be
John: You can show that you have a deep knowledge of a topic by just kind of skating across the top of it if you write with confidence.
John: But that's the problem in high school.
John: You can't count on even 10% of the kids being able to write.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, imagine, like, for example, you know this stuff better than me, but imagine a lead that was something like, you know, whatever, with 20 million dead and da-da-da-da-da happening.
Merlin: Who would have imagined that it's— 50 million people.
Merlin: See, I'm already off the thing.
Merlin: But say, go back to the train car.
Merlin: Like, you've got a bookend now.
Merlin: You say, who would have guessed, with the Cold War beginning, you've got the two sides, these great allies broken apart, who would have guessed that this all began back in this train car?
John: This all began on a summer day in 1939—
Merlin: that's not nothing what was that that one was versailles quick don't overthink it what the treaty of versailles no the place with the fucking mirrors john uh the treaty of versailles was 1919 1919 1919 Teddy Roosevelt Teddy Roosevelt president then Teddy Roosevelt no Woodrow Wilson Woodrow oh of course he's on the money what money is Woodrow Wilson on I think he's on the hundred thousand dollar bill
John: the woodrow will that's why all the rappers are like yo give me the woodies give me the wilson's i hope it's all about the wilson's i hope i'm right about this yep yep google it hundred thousand dollar bill woodrow wilson is on the hundred thousand dollar bill i'm not gonna lie john there are not a lot in circulation well can you imagine feel how bad you would feel if you lost that
John: If I lost that bet?
Merlin: Well, no, no.
Merlin: I mean, you already lost the bet.
Merlin: But I'm saying if you had, you thought, you know what?
Merlin: It's been a good year.
Merlin: I'm just going to go get.
John: Well, see, those bills are for banks.
John: Those bills are for banks only.
Merlin: That's terrible.
Merlin: And during the gold standard, having a $100,000 bill.
John: Woodrow Wilson is on the $100,000 bill.
John: Yeah.
John: That's pretty cool.
Merlin: Bruce Valanche is on the $3 bill.
John: They don't let those $100,000 bills out.
John: And this is the thing that's very frustrating.
John: They hold them up to the light.
John: In Europe, they have 500 euro bills that are in wide circulation.
John: 200 euro bills, 500 euro bills.
Merlin: That's like a grand bill.
John: 500 euros?
John: No, it's like $600.
Merlin: This is Europe?
John: Europe, yeah.
John: But we have $500 bills here, but they won't give them to you.
Merlin: It's the tyranny of the 20 because of the ATMs.
John: President McKinley is on the $500 bill.
John: Now that you got me thinking about this, I'm crazy about it.
John: There's a website that I was on very recently that tells you how much your coinage is worth if you melt it down just for the melt weight of the metal in the coins.
Merlin: I do not want to know that for pennies.
Merlin: It would make me so angry.
John: It's pretty nuts for pennies.
Merlin: Doesn't it cost like two cents to make a penny?
John: Oh, I think pennies are worth more than two cents now.
Yeah.
Merlin: And hobos are stealing copper pipes?
Merlin: Jesus Christ.
Merlin: What is wrong with this country, John?
John: You know what we need is... Hobos have been stealing copper pipe for a long time.
Merlin: Everybody's always trying to steal your copper pipe.
John: They are.
John: It's a copper pipe problem.
John: But no, here, this website, I'm going to plug a website.
John: It's called Coinflation.
John: C-O-I-N-F-L-A-T-I-O-N dot com.
John: Coinflation.
John: And it will tell you the melt value of your coins.
John: Oh, this is awesome.
John: Yeah, it's really, really, really, really cool.
Merlin: I don't say this often, John, but this is one of the resources that those fat cats in the government do not want you to know about.
John: That's exactly right.
John: So, like a 1964 quarter...
John: A 1964 quarter is worth like $4.
John: $4.30 just in silver weight.
John: If you find a 1963 quarter in your pocket change and you think like, oh yeah, that's probably worth something.
Merlin: They're still using pre-embargo silver at that time.
John: Pre-embargo silver.
Merlin: Yeah, like you want to get a Havana or something like that?
Merlin: You know, Kennedy stocked up on Havana cigars before the embargo.
Merlin: You know that, right?
John: Oh, embargo silver.
John: That's one way of putting it.
Merlin: Boy, this is really amazing.
Merlin: 95% copper.
Merlin: Look at that.
Merlin: Now, you know, nickel's a carcinogen.
Merlin: You know that, right?
John: Well, if you smoke it.
Merlin: How do you do it?
John: I just put it in my nose.
John: I use them as a suppository.
John: I stick a roll of nickels up there.
Merlin: You think you can find a five cent suppository somewhere?
Merlin: I don't think so.
John: Well, no, not now that nickels are worth $1.50.
Merlin: This is a fucking upside down society.
Merlin: You know, Mr. Detlefson, we should get in touch with him and find out what he thinks of this.
Merlin: Discuss melted coins.
John: I don't want to talk about Mr. Detlefson.
John: He sounds like a real hard ass.
Merlin: He was.
Merlin: He was huge.
John: I got kicked out of AP history.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Oh, and this is when you and your mom was thinking of sending you to special school.
John: Yeah, this was a scandal.
Merlin: Can you tell me about it?
John: Well, so, AP history...
John: Right.
John: You're supposed to get college credit.
John: If you if you get a good grade in AP history, you can they'll give you credit for when you really take that.
Merlin: Isn't that kind of like a like a like a traveler's check?
John: I think if you go to Princeton, they probably don't care about your AP history exam.
John: But but maybe, you know, at the University of Alaska Anchorage, maybe you can skip freshman history or something.
Merlin: I think at the University of South Florida, you could clip out of the first two years.
Merlin: They call it automatic junior.
John: But in my case, I was in this history class, and I had long, long, long since stopped paying attention in school.
John: And I was taking a makeup exam out in the hall, and I had my history book in the little rack.
John: that was bolted to my little chair-desk combo thing.
John: And at a certain point in the test, I looked down and flipped through the pages and tried to see if I could figure out when the War of 1812 was or whatever the hell question he was asking.
John: And the teacher was out in the hall, and he came around the corner and saw me cheating.
John: And it was a cheating scandal, and he gave me an F.
John: And he actually cried real tears like, you were one of my favorite students and you're cheating and I couldn't believe that you would do such a thing.
John: It's a betrayal of the education and betrayal of you.
John: You're betraying yourself and all this terrible stuff.
John: It was just like a real burden of...
John: guilt and shame for my cheating scandal which was me looking you know flipping through the table of contents of my history book out in the hall it's not like it was cheating though right it was cheating it was cheating all right it was i used to cheat like hell in that in that fake history class but in any case at the end of the senior year i've told you this story right i didn't have enough credits to graduate because i graduated last in my class in high school
Merlin: You graduated last in your class?
John: I was absolutely last in my class.
John: I had a 1.2 cumulative GPA through four years of high school.
John: I was...
Merlin: That's nice grouping.
John: On the list of graduating seniors, there were like 25 guys, 25 people who had higher GPAs than I did that were actually held back and not allowed to graduate.
Merlin: A couple that had died when they were sophomores.
John: They called me in, the principal and the guidance counselors and the teachers.
John: They called me down to the office and they were all there.
John: And they said, look,
John: we talked about it and we don't want you to come back.
John: So here you'll see here in AP history that you, you have an F, but we're going to award you the credits and we're giving you some credit for your extracurricular activities.
Merlin: Come on.
John: You got, you got an antisocial promotion that you'll see over here in column B. That's insane.
John: And so congratulations.
John: Congratulations.
John: Good luck.
John: Godspeed.
John: So you got a diploma.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And the thing was that the student body knew that I didn't have enough credits to graduate.
John: The word had leaked out in the month coming up to graduation.
John: And so it was...
John: already a scandal.
John: It was buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
John: Roderick's not going to graduate.
John: Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
John: And so right up until the day of graduation,
John: it was, um, it was still, I mean, like, it was still a, a matter of contention.
John: Some people were saying, no, of course he's going to graduate.
John: And some people were, there were, people were betting cases of beer back and forth.
John: And then, um, and then I, I, I walked at the ceremony and when they called my name, it was like, uh, you heard in the whole, cause the, the graduations in the big auditorium, you know, and you heard, um,
John: 75 raspberries across the room.
John: They were like John Roderick.
John: Just people all through the hall making raspberries.
John: Mostly faculty.
John: Honking their little air horns.
John: It was kind of rude, actually.
John: But that's how it played out.
Merlin: There's so much wrong with that on every level.
Merlin: I just think that is really sick.
Merlin: yeah that they let you do that and that's the way that's the way that's how it goes that is so messed up yeah exactly i mean i could see you being a real nuisance i've heard about some of your customer service problems in the past but even the faculty john and it wasn't like they said oh you're a good kid to give you a little chuck on their shoulder and say hey good luck at uh gonzaga or whatever like this is this is going to be that that's that's really that's that's a holocaust john they should never let you graduate that's ridiculous
John: Yeah, no, there was nothing about it that was like, oh, you nut.
John: It was very much like, don't come back.
Merlin: I mean, I completely understand.
Merlin: And I think – well, I mean, my position was I wasn't that bad.
Merlin: But I – see, then the other thing was at our graduation, everybody went to graduation.
Merlin: Now, how fucked up is this?
Merlin: This is very lock you in a closet kind of thing.
Merlin: You go to graduation.
Merlin: You sit there.
Merlin: They call your name.
Merlin: You got to go.
Merlin: Like even if you failed out, you still have to walk.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh, that's cruel.
Merlin: And if you didn't – because that would screw up the seating, right?
Merlin: That's brutal.
Merlin: They hand you a case, a blank case.
Merlin: There's no diploma in it.
Merlin: It looks like you got a diploma, but there's no diploma inside.
John: No way.
John: But people know.
John: All your friends know.
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: I did not know until I looked inside whether I would have a diploma.
John: Wow.
Wow.
Merlin: I was right on the edge.
Merlin: For all I know, it was a clerical error.
Merlin: But like I said, I failed two classes when I was a senior.
Merlin: I shouldn't have graduated, but somehow it happened.
Merlin: I was taking geometry in 12th grade.
Merlin: That's a busted-ass system.
Merlin: Mr. Detlefson, that's a guy who could really turn things around.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: No, I don't.
John: Because I don't think Mr. Detlefson could turn it around.
Merlin: See, but I don't know.
John: I think the system's broken.
John: I had a conversation with a girl today on the phone.
Merlin: Wow, let me mark my calendar.
John: A business conversation in a business capacity.
John: She's in PR, right?
John: Is she in PR?
John: No, no, no.
John: She's in some music business capacity, let's just say.
John: And halfway through the conversation, she works at an office where I have...
John: I have business dealings.
Merlin: They're in town?
John: Not in Seattle.
John: Okay.
John: And I said to her halfway through the conversation, I was like, so have we met before?
John: And she said, I don't know.
John: And I was like, oh.
John: Did I ruin your life?
John: That's weird.
John: Are you sure?
John: You don't know?
John: I would think that you working in an office that deals with musicians would know if you had met me.
John: But okay, that's fine.
John: And so we talked a little bit more and we got to the end of the conversation.
John: I said, well, thank you very much for your help.
John: And she said, yeah.
John: And then there was a long pause.
John: And I said, okay then, goodbye.
John: And she was like, oh, goodbye.
John: And it felt like I was, it felt like I was in, like I was in Teletubbies land.
John: And this is, we're talking about real money, this girl and I. We're having, we're having a,
John: This is like high-powered business convo.
Merlin: Is it about agreeing to do things?
John: It's about agreeing to do things.
Merlin: That's serious stuff.
John: Yeah, I was giving her verbal authorization for to make some money.
Merlin: That's a strange way for someone on that call to talk.
John: Yeah, and she's talking to me like it's a Teletubbies thing.
John: And you could tell from her voice that she was in her 20s, potentially in her early 20s.
John: And I imagine maybe that she was wearing some skin-tight jeans and maybe some big white sunglasses.
John: And like a Palestinian scarf.
John: But even so...
John: Her phone etiquette was so off the charts in the wrong direction bad that it made me think that it was ultimately the fault of the American schools.
John: But more than that, like further evidence of this thing that we're always talking about, this, the end times as represented by like
John: like the, the sweeping waves of fake autism that we call, we call youth culture now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Did you get any resolution to this?
John: No, I, I wasn't even sure that we had hung up.
John: I sat and stared at my phone for like 30 seconds.
John: I was like, is that, are we, are we done?
Merlin: I've had a lot of conversations with people that go like that in the last five years, and even excluding the fact that I don't like talking on the phone and I talk too fast.
Merlin: I often say this to people.
Merlin: I will actually sometimes say to people, are you checking your email right now?
John: Oh.
Merlin: Because I can, I mean, I know I talk a lot.
John: You can hear them not be listening.
Merlin: um i uh yeah um i okay i think i think that's awesome great no that right there okay so and you're like what that huh did you hit with a sock full of pennies like what's going on like what what is that
John: For a long time, I carried on all phone conversations while playing computer.
Merlin: Yeah, that's what you say.
Merlin: It keeps you in the right zone for a phone call.
John: Yeah.
John: But then I realized that, no, that's false.
John: Too much of me was being used up.
John: I was not actually...
John: I was not actually in the phone conversation as much as I needed to be.
Merlin: I cannot do it, John.
Merlin: I might as well be like driving on a highway and trying to chop green peppers.
Merlin: I cannot do it.
Merlin: It's so obvious.
Merlin: And I'll actually stop and say things like, and I should not try to do two things at once.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, you know.
Merlin: You know what, John?
Merlin: I'm with you.
Merlin: I think it could be the schools.
Merlin: I think at every step of the way this is messed up.
Merlin: I think you and I are both examples of white people who got to graduate from high school that shouldn't have.
Merlin: I think that's ridiculous.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, all of my teachers were really, almost all really stupid.
John: Some of them were awesome.
John: My drama teacher.
Merlin: My drama teacher was amazing.
Merlin: She was great.
John: On the one hand, we clearly did not do what was asked of us.
Mm-hmm.
John: And so in that sense, should not have been allowed to graduate from high school because we did not perform the tasks.
John: But on the other hand, personally, I feel like I never should have even gone in the front doors of high school.
Merlin: You know what they used to say?
Merlin: They used to say that – you know what separates us from the Soviets?
Merlin: They say, you know, the Soviets, they go in and by whatever some grade – doesn't matter.
Merlin: I'm sure they were making it up anyway.
Merlin: They go in and they pluck you out of there and they give you a test and not everybody gets this nice education you're getting when they're 14.
Merlin: You would be like learning how to work a lathe at this point.
Merlin: Right, right.
John: But I kind of wish I had that.
John: The Soviets will shoot a dog into space without any contingency plan for the dog ever coming back.
Merlin: This is why we lost the Cold War.
Merlin: It was our fear of shooting dogs.
John: Did we lose the Cold War?
Merlin: You know, you're the expert.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: No, but I'm totally with you.
Merlin: I wish the Soviet system in a slightly more improved way had been there to benefit me.
Merlin: I think they should have looked for people who are writing Aussie on their folder, you know, and taught them how to work a lathe.
Merlin: And we're a little heavy.
John: Are you saying that you'd be happier right now, like working a metal press somewhere?
John: I don't know.
John: What kind of work does he do?
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's what I think a lot of people don't understand about America.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: Do you know why they give people the SAT?
Merlin: You know this.
John: SATs are according – It's to keep the black man down, right?
John: Right.
John: I mean it's so hard to spell.
John: Is that the primary role of the SAT?
Yeah.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: The reason that they do it, as I understand it, is that of all of the, like, I don't know, like fucking chicken bones they come up with to decide how you will be quote unquote successful in college.
Merlin: And let's be honest, it's not like you get out of secondary school and suddenly everybody's really smart.
Merlin: Like it's a whole big broken system.
Merlin: But supposedly SATs are the single best indicator of success in college.
Merlin: I don't know if that is true.
Merlin: That's what I was told at the time.
Merlin: And that's why you have to take the SAT.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: because they can look at stuff like your essay or they can look at stuff like your grades in your community blah blah and again this is 25 years ago so i don't know if this is still the case but that was that was the thing but success in college is no indication of success in life yeah but if you don't go to college your life's going to be a lot harder so if you don't do that sat well did you graduate from college yeah yeah yeah you got a college diploma uh yeah
John: How come it's not hanging prominently on the wall of your living room?
Merlin: It's right here by my divinity degree.
Merlin: You have a degree in divinity?
Merlin: Well, you know, actually, I was all made up.
Merlin: I do have a diploma.
Merlin: I am a mail order minister like everyone I know.
Merlin: But I have a friend who lives near the Universal Life Church.
John: There's an actual building?
Merlin: Yeah, the guy's pickup truck is full of pamphlets, apparently.
John: Oh, I should go down there.
John: I'm a Universal Life member.
Merlin: Apparently, he keeps a lot of money around the house, just FYI.
Merlin: Well, you know, I never graduated from college.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: I thought you had a master's degree.
Merlin: I'm a college dropout.
Merlin: Huh.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: So you got socially, you got antisocially, unsocially promoted out of high school, and then you didn't graduate from two colleges.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Did you not do a thesis?
John: I have more than enough credits to graduate.
Merlin: Oh, usually I don't want your stupid diploma.
Merlin: Fuck you, you don't.
John: I just have never, it's much more like, yeah, I haven't filled out the paperwork to graduate.
Merlin: I'm so reluctant to ask you anything about this, John.
John: It just makes me feel like I still got a hand in the game.
Merlin: You're saying you didn't fill out a form and therefore, after your family paid all that money for you to go to college, you are not a college graduate because you didn't go to the registrar one day?
John: Well, I mean, there's a couple.
Merlin: It's more complicated than that.
Merlin: It's a little more complicated than that.
Merlin: There's several days I didn't go to the registrar.
Merlin: Do you remember how much of that administrative bullshit there was, though, in college?
Merlin: There was so much, at least in my school.
Merlin: Because we were a state school.
John: There was a lot, but I lucked out.
John: I really lucked out.
Merlin: They asked you to leave.
John: Gonzaga asked me to leave, but my first day at the University of Washington.
John: See, Gonzaga was on a quarter system.
John: I'm sorry.
John: Gonzaga was on a semester system, and the UW was on a quarter system.
John: Okay.
John: Right?
John: So the credits don't all transfer.
John: They don't transfer straight across.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And so at a good slash weird school, that's not unusual at all.
Merlin: My school would hardly give you any credit for anything because it's not even that we don't have that class here.
Merlin: It's just that we're better than all those other schools.
John: They were just like, oh, you got a who from a what?
John: Well, maybe we'll give you a quarter's worth of credit for that semester class.
Merlin: No, it's like an intellectual pawn shop.
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: So I show up at the guidance counselor's, you know, the big guidance counselor office where there's a waiting area.
John: It's like a bus station waiting area.
John: There's 60 kids waiting, all who've taken a number.
John: And there are doors on either side.
John: There are probably 15 or 20 different guidance counselors.
John: And it's just like your number gets called.
John: And you go in the door of the next available guidance counselor who will, in the next half hour, decide your fate in college.
John: And also, this is going to be your guidance counselor for the rest of your time here.
John: Like, this is a person you're going to see over and over again.
John: And I'm sitting in the lobby and I'm just like, oh, God, I hate everything about this.
John: And because of that whole business with Gonzaga where they were like,
John: we won't include your permanent record with you.
John: You know, if you go now, we won't, we won't send all the disciplinary files along with you.
John: I had no proof that they had not done that.
Merlin: It's like witness protection.
John: So I'm sitting in the lobby, you know, kind of like bouncing my feet back and forth, just kind of like, okay, I hope this goes well.
John: And I get called into the office of this guidance counselor who is a woman.
John: She's about four foot 11 feet.
John: She has a Dorothy Hamill haircut.
John: She probably weighs 96 pounds.
Merlin: NPR tote bag.
John: And she has an NPR tote bag.
John: And she's this darling little pixie of a lady who was an attorney for many years and then transitioned into this role at the University of Washington guidance counseling.
John: I'm not sure why.
John: I never did figure out why.
John: And she brought me in, sat me down in the chair, and we started talking.
John: The conversation got very flirtatious.
John: And she came around the desk and sat down in the chair next to me and said, let's see what we can do.
John: And she went through my Gonzaga credits and she was like, oh, well, we don't have this, but we don't have this class here.
John: But here's what I'm going to do.
John: We'll just call it the next highest level class.
John: And we'll just say that you have credit for all of it.
John: And she took my two years at Gonzaga and she translated that into me being halfway through my junior year.
John: What?
John: With a major in Russian lit and a minor in a double minor in like ancient Greek and philosophy.
John: Yeah.
John: Who's going to check that?
John: And I was just like, tell me more.
John: And then she asked me out on a date.
John: Come on.
John: Yeah.
John: This sounds like a penthouse forum.
John: It was incredible.
John: And we went out for like several months.
John: While you were matriculating?
John: I was 22.
John: She was 38.
John: Wow.
John: And she held my future in the palm of her hand.
Merlin: Literally.
John: And literally, that wasn't all she held in the palm of my hand.
John: And she would use that sometimes to get me to do things...
John: in the romantic film, she would remind me of the power that she had over my future.
John: It was a total May-September reverse sexual...
John: The reverse of what you normally think of as the sexual dynamics, power dynamics.
John: She really had me, not exactly under her thumb, but if I stepped out of lounge, she applied a certain amount of pressure.
John: And she was a tiny little pixie of a gal, but had no compunction about giving me the business, reading me the riot act.
Merlin: Would she say it overtly or was it like, well, you know, three ring binders can have papers fall out, that kind of thing?
John: Yeah, exactly that type of thing.
John: And one time called my mom.
John: She couldn't get a hold of me.
John: Oh, that is so creepy.
John: Called my mom and was like, this is John's guidance counselor.
John: I'm concerned about his well-being.
John: Do you know his whereabouts?
John: that's insane and my mom you know god bless her just smelled a fish or just smelled smelled something fishy right away she was like what who who is this why are you calling me here and really gave her like kind of scared her in the opposite direction like this is highly inappropriate that type of thing and she never did that again but uh but yeah eventually the relationship ended kind of
John: but not before not before all those papers had been filed let's just say i waited until all the paperwork had been filed and was stamped and sent off to the to the great warehouse in the sky but uh but you know it was a fairly it was an eye-opening relationship for me as as a young man because you know you're not you don't usually get into those kinds of scrapes do you think you're the only one
John: Well, I certainly was her cause.
John: She might have had people behind other doors.
John: That year.
John: Well, she devoted a lot of time to me.
John: There wouldn't have been a lot of extra free time for her to have other undergraduates.
Merlin: Do you think she did a lot of mentoring over the years?
John: She certainly mentored me.
John: Merlin, I have to say, as a young man, I had a tremendous charisma.
Merlin: Would she agree with that?
John: Unlike now.
John: Now, I think you would categorize me as a grotesquerie.
Merlin: But at the time, I was... Even in that unflattering office lighting, you could really pull it off.
John: At the time, I used to wear sweaters, jauntily draped across my shoulders.
John: I was one of those guys that wore Levi's that had been dyed...
John: different color so they weren't just irregular levi's they were they had a purple tint to you're selling past the clothes i don't know how she could i had a lot going on but anyway that's another example though john i mean what a fucking travesty that's ridiculous it's it it was it was another in a long line of incidents or another in a long line of of uh of of happenings where i walked away saying well
John: the next guy, the next guy in her office is probably going to get, he's probably going to get his bed short sheeted because she just gave away the farm to me.
John: And, you know, the next kid that comes in is like, I've got these transfer credits from Wazoo.
John: And she's just like, Nope, sorry.
John: Start over.
Merlin: I have to imagine that it's not precisely like a sales kind of position, but what credits they take, it's certainly going to affect the school's bottom line on some level.
Merlin: I mean, I think make this mercantile, but if you take a ton of credits for stuff, you're not only undercutting, you're selling short in almost the true sense of the word.
Merlin: You're selling short your own academic credentials, but you're also harming revenue.
Merlin: Like she basically, you shouldn't have gotten shit.
Merlin: You should have paid for two more years of school like a man.
Right.
John: Right.
Merlin: That's ridiculous.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, it's super frustrating.
John: Especially since I ended up... You still didn't graduate?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what you should do?
Merlin: You should look her up on the Facebook.
Merlin: Maybe she can move a couple things around.
Merlin: What the hell would she be now, probably?
Merlin: Terrible idea.
Merlin: She'd be 55 or so?
John: Well, let's see.
John: I was 22 then, and I'm 42 now, so she would be 58 now.
Merlin: That's a nice time to hear the phone ring.
John: When you're 58?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Remember me?
Merlin: Died Levi's?
John: Hey, remember me?
John: I don't know.
John: Thinking about the way we left it, I think we would pick right back up where we left it.
Merlin: You should stand outside her window with a boombox.
John: I'm sure she kept her figure.
Merlin: Yeah, too bad you couldn't.
Merlin: The amazing thing is that those people wield so much power.
Merlin: The registrar, I mean the capital R registrar at our school, the person who headed up that whole administrative department.
John: Well, it's like the gals at the DMV.
John: They, you know, they're the first line of sense.
John: All gals.
John: All the gals.
John: The gals at the DMV, yeah.
John: Actually, the last time I went to the DMV, every single person I dealt with was a guy.
John: You sure?
John: Yeah.
John: Absolutely positive.
Merlin: And make them do all the work.
John: It's a whole string of guys.
John: But then I was getting that top secret driver's license.
Merlin: No, wait a minute.
Merlin: Was there more favoritism for you here?
John: I got a top secret driver's license.
John: I didn't tell you about this driver's license.
Merlin: I got a lot to follow up on.
Merlin: Tell me about that.
John: They got driver's licenses now in Washington state that function as like junior varsity passports.
John: So you can cross overland, any overland border into America from Canada or Mexico, plus any arrival in America from a ship.
John: If you're on board a ship...
Merlin: This sounds so made up.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: A state government is allowed to give you federal clearance?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: You can use this driver's license in lieu of a passport.
Merlin: That is not real.
John: If you arrive either by land or by sea.
Merlin: That sounds like something you buy on a sheet of scored Avery sheets.
Merlin: Like a cheap business card and you just cut them up.
Merlin: That sounds ridiculous.
John: It's a real thing.
John: The driver's license is embedded with all this biometric information and...
John: That's what the guy said anyway.
John: That's what he said.
John: And they make me carry it in a tinfoil sheath so that people can't scan it when I walk through public places.
John: Oh, so it's got an RFID or like a smart card.
John: It's got an RFID on it.
John: And they were like, no, you got to carry it in this tinfoil wallet, small wallet now.
Merlin: God, John, I really sincerely hope this is true.
John: And Washington State is, I think, the first state or the only state that has this special advanced driver's license.
John: And it was a real watershed moment for me as a citizen because for many years I didn't have any government ID at all.
John: And I eschewed citizenship.
John: Even though you were born in the United States.
John: Because I did not want to be complicit in all the machinations of citizenship.
Merlin: You know what makes you frustrating?
Merlin: What makes you frustrating is not only that you get off easy on this stuff, but you do it by fucking avoiding paperwork.
Merlin: Everybody hates paperwork, but somehow you've managed to come up, cobble together this little broken lifestyle of yours based on talking to ladies on the phone and getting favors from people with pixie cuts.
Merlin: I have no idea.
Merlin: Everything you're describing here is completely inscrutable.
Merlin: You get a special license in a tin sheath?
Merlin: Fucking Washington?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: You're saying before Virginia gets that?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You're telling me Washington gets that?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: If there's any state, there's two states that should get that.
Merlin: Maryland and Virginia.
Merlin: That would make sense.
Merlin: Because you know who wants that?
Merlin: Senators.
John: Yeah, we don't let them have that.
John: But Washington is way ahead.
John: That's bananas.
Merlin: Is it because of the number of crossings into Canada and the boat stuff?
John: We have a lot of crossings and we have a lot of boats.
John: Big crossings.
John: But also we're forward thinkers here.
John: So anyway, I went in and I got this thing, but they make you go through all this extra hullabaloo because it's this official document.
John: Screening and stuff?
John: They screen you, yeah.
John: You pass that?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: John, that doesn't make any sense at all.
John: Because I kept everything because I didn't have an ID for so many years.
John: I used to get picked up by the cops and they'd find out I had no ID and half the time they'd just chase me, just let me loose.
John: But in any case, in any case... Someday I'm going to find out how much of this is true, and it's going to be so sad.
John: I'm in this line, and they're scanning my eyes, and they're taking these three-dimensional photos, and they're saying like, oh, now we're going to be able to... There are machines in airports that are going to be able to identify you by your biometricality.
John: And I was standing there thinking like, God, I'm going through all this stuff that I used to think...
John: Was all Big Brother, One World, New World Order, you know, like Alien, Overlord, George Bush.
John: No, I know what you mean.
Merlin: The Trilateral Commission, Internationalist kind of stuff.
John: All that stuff that you only believe if you're smoking a lot of pot.
Merlin: Or not sleeping.
John: Or both.
John: And here I am voluntarily submitting to all this New World Order type of extra data gathering.
John: And I just didn't mind it at all.
John: I just shrugged it off and I said, that's right.
John: I'm not some Eritrean taxi driver.
John: I'm a super spy.
John: I'm not a super spy.
Merlin: Boy, there's just so much wrong with that.
Merlin: So the administrative parts, think about everything we're describing here.
Merlin: It all involves some kind of intervention or ignorance or other stuff, mostly intervention and ignorance on the behalf of someone who's basically a bureaucrat.
Merlin: Think about all of those things.
Merlin: You have no business being cleared for anything.
Merlin: That doesn't make a lick of sense.
Merlin: I don't know how you got a loan.
Merlin: That doesn't make any sense.
Merlin: Just an evening of sitting around with you would tell somebody that you are not qualified to have the keys to anything.
Merlin: It's just a terrible idea.
John: You know what my credit score is?
John: It's like 840.
John: Is that good?
John: I think so.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But it's weird.
Merlin: I mean, so we had the registrar at our school.
Merlin: There was a librarian.
Merlin: The librarian was also the person at New College, was the person who also inspected your physical thesis to decide whether... Inspected your physical thesis?
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: For the speculum?
Merlin: Worse.
Merlin: Worse.
Merlin: Because you had to turn in two copies of your thesis, right?
Merlin: It could be that there was the version that had been cleared by your committee and your sponsor after baccalaureate.
Merlin: Like, you're done, right?
Merlin: Good to go.
Merlin: You got to take two copies of it to Althea Jenkins because Althea Jenkins has to look at it.
Merlin: Remember her name?
Merlin: Oh, I'll never fucking forget her name.
Merlin: I never forget the name of any administrator who crosses me.
Merlin: They're all right here.
Merlin: Althea Jenkins.
Merlin: Althea Jenkins, big lady.
Merlin: And so since she would inspect it, every single graduate – no, it wasn't many.
Merlin: There was like I think something like 60 people in my graduating class, 100 people.
Merlin: She would sniff it, you mean?
Merlin: She would sit there with a ruler.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So if you did anything wrong, if you did anything wrong, if you were like an eighth of an inch or sixteenth of an inch over on this one page, like I had to print it a little bit bad, you got to go back and start over.
Merlin: Go back and start over.
Merlin: Go back and start over.
Merlin: Now, luckily – now, I was just coming up in the age of the computers.
Merlin: So this was – most of us were – I mean I wrote mine on a Mac.
Merlin: Everybody did.
John: But I mean – Five years before, it was all typewritten on a Selectric.
Merlin: Well, you know, Dr. Bates, she said –
Merlin: That if you had more than – and actually the thesis guidelines were if you had more than three erasures or corrections on a page, you had to retype it.
Merlin: And so with Peggy Bates, if you took Peggy Bates' class like three years before I had arrived there, you would have – she would make you redo the whole paper.
Merlin: If she made a correction on it, you had to turn it back in.
Merlin: So in like the early 80s, people had to retype 20-page papers.
Merlin: Seriously, that's $1.25 a page.
Merlin: That runs into serious dough.
Merlin: But it's just – all I'm trying to say is this, John.
Merlin: Whether it is your testicle-less man at the DMV, whether it is the idiot who scanned your eyes and gave you the clear pass, whether it is – God bless her.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This whole phalanx of broken people who let you leave the building at all in high school and then these people who are letting you through on these –
Merlin: These are all bureaucrats and administrators.
Merlin: The person who decides to pull you out of line, the TSA person, bureaucrats, bureaucrats, all bureaucrats.
Merlin: Isn't it insane how much you got breaks based on what a bureaucrat decided?
Merlin: Or you could be thwarted.
Merlin: You could be thwarted at any time by a bureaucrat.
John: Interrupting your anti-bureaucratic rant.
John: Sorry, sorry.
John: Your anti-bureaucrat rant.
John: I'm going to get some water.
John: If you ever travel to any of the former Eastern Bloc countries,
John: Particularly the ones in the sort of Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania orbit.
Merlin: And let's be honest, I do.
John: You will very quickly, and I exempt Poland...
John: And the Czech Republic from this.
John: Although Slovakia, I think, is in this category.
John: Hungary, not.
Merlin: I don't have a single acquaintance, male, female, or otherwise, who likes saying the name of Eastern Bloc countries the way that you do.
Merlin: But in any case... If it's a satellite country, John's going to mention it.
Merlin: Romania?
Merlin: I don't have any friend that's ever said the word Romania except for you.
John: Well, Romania is a wonderful place.
John: Let me highly recommend it, except for this one thing, which is that the bureaucracies in those countries have completely broken down.
John: And when you travel to places like that and you see what it is like when people are living in a world without bureaucracies, you realize that bureaucracies are what separate us from the beasts.
John: Right.
John: That in these places where either corruption is rampant or where the system has broken down totally and it's just a sort of – your culture goes feral –
John: you realize that, oh my God, the recourse to the law that bureaucracies allow us, that we can avail ourselves of these multiple layers of, even if you have to fill out a thousand forms, just the fact that the form is there and that at a certain point you have some hope that someone will read the form and feel obligated by their job to take the form seriously and
John: to consider your problem.
John: It is such a gift.
Merlin: You won't have to bribe your alderman to go and find out which person probably lost it.
John: Right, or you don't have to bribe the people to pick up your garbage.
John: You don't... I mean, there are places... The Eastern Bloc is full of this, where you're walking down the street.
Merlin: Isn't it like everywhere?
Merlin: Isn't it true in Central America, in Mexico?
Merlin: I mean, isn't it like this in a lot of places?
John: It varies.
John: It varies, but it's particularly noticeable in these places because there used to be such a tremendous bureaucracy.
John: People relied on the bureaucracy for everything, and then the bureaucracy went away, and people don't have...
John: the self-reliance or they don't have the they're not they don't have they there isn't a sense of like well if i sweep in front of my store and the guy next to me sweeps in front of his store then we have at least a clean sidewalk for the for the front of these two stores and that'll help our business people will come
John: our customers will come and the sidewalks will be swept.
John: You know, in these places where that mentality, where bureaucracies took care of all of that for decades and then went away, there's just a sense of like, a sense of futility pervades the whole culture.
John: So you get these people that are like, well, why should I sweep in front of my store?
John: What good will it do?
John: Like, well, you start sweeping in front of your store, maybe the guy next to you will sweep in front of his store.
Yeah.
John: And they look at you like you're crazy and go, well, no, if I sweep in front of my store, then I'm a sucker.
John: And then the guy next to me is just going to sweep his garbage over here.
John: You see missing manhole covers throughout that area.
John: And in Central America or whatever, a lot of the rural areas, they don't have...
John: They aren't built to the same sort of urban standard that you'll find in Kiev.
John: But you walk down the street and all the manhole covers are missing and you're like, this is incredibly dangerous.
John: Like you can fall into one of these and get hurt.
John: Well, yeah, but the manhole cover itself was worth a certain amount of scrap metal and somebody just grabbed it and there wasn't anybody to replace it.
John: And so you just got open manhole covers all over the place.
John: Like, talk about really having to watch where you walk.
John: And it's because whoever's job it is up the line at the Ministry of Missing Manhole Covers, that person doesn't feel like there's no penalty when he doesn't go out and replace them because there's no form to fill out to say the manhole cover in front of my store is missing.
Merlin: Well, and then the guy, theoretically, if this exists, if there's a bureau of manhole cover replacement, that comes out of his budget.
Merlin: It comes out of his budget.
Merlin: He's got to process the form, you know, 332 stroke D or whatever, and replacing manhole cover.
Merlin: And that's going to come out of his budget.
Merlin: And he might be selling those himself for the melt value.
John: Absolutely.
John: Hmm.
John: So you don't have to spend very much time in places where the bureaucracy doesn't work to come back here and thank God for that stack of forms.
John: But more than the stack of forms, thank God for the many levels of administration that always, or almost always, end somewhere where there is accountability.
John: Ultimately, there's a person whose job really is at stake.
John: who will hold everyone else accountable so that the people don't just take your form and say, that's nice, and they light their cigar with it.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: i don't know there's ultimately oh even if it's your congressman yeah ultimately you can write how do you reach your congressman john it's i mean it's yes it's better it's certainly better i would just like to say that for somebody who didn't graduate from college you are an extremely articulate uh apologist for for bureaucracy but but if to get to the congressman like you got to be you got to know if you you got to be like john rotter you got to know ted stevens well i don't think you just waltz in there and go we want a new manhole cover
John: You don't waltz into a congressman's office.
John: Absolutely not.
John: You say I demand satisfaction.
John: You can hoxtrot in there.
John: But no, I mean, if you are a dedicated letter writer, you can accomplish a lot in the world.
John: People like us who don't want to go to the bother, we often feel thwarted or frustrated.
John: And people that don't have the education to know or to be able to compose a letter...
John: Or to know that that is possible, they also are at a disadvantage.
Merlin: This is what helps to be like your sister.
Merlin: Old people are like your sister who's created customer service in the sense that they have nothing better to do.
Merlin: And not that she's like this necessarily, but they will grind you down.
Merlin: And they will follow up on the phone call.
Merlin: They will stay on hold.
Merlin: They could watch their stories while they're on hold.
John: Not to talk about the Tea Party.
John: This is why they have been so tremendously successful.
John: They don't represent a majority of Americans, but they are made up entirely of people that are willing to write 1,000 letters to their congressmen and their local aldermen.
John: These are the people that are willing to learn Robert's Rules of Order and disrupt town meetings.
John: And ultimately, the reason that they have power is that in America, there is a process by which the elected office holders are accountable.
John: The bureaucrats are accountable.
John: The system actually for all of its waste is incredibly important.
Merlin: relative to like almost anywhere else in the world i'm so glad you don't know my phone number because you would be texting me i would just say you know what i'm done here because you're wrong i'm done here well you're not completely wrong but like so many things that's the problem is that you're that you're mostly wrong there's so many things where you can truly help people i you know what i think you taught me this it might have been you that taught me this it sounds like something you would say
Merlin: Well, it's the kind of thing you – well, that when you go somewhere, you learn a lot about what made the city be built there rather than somewhere else.
Merlin: And I think you said this.
Merlin: Are there mountains?
Merlin: Is there water?
Merlin: Like, oh, it's because of the railroad.
Merlin: That's why this town exists.
Merlin: And so now I've learned that anytime something is near water, there's probably a pretty good chance that they decided to put their stakes down there because that would be a good place.
Merlin: And where they stayed there was that that would be a good place for ships to come into or something like that.
John: Right.
John: That was probably you, right?
John: That is a theory that – or not a theory.
John: That is a principle that I use all the time.
John: It's – once you learn that about one – you take the – Oh, it's blown my curiosity open.
Merlin: I have to be honest with you.
Merlin: It's totally changed.
Merlin: Everything they never taught me in my stupid high school, that one paragraph has made asking questions about things so much more interesting to me.
John: And what I recommend to people is that if you start with your city and you look at your city in the context of the geography and the way the city interacts with whatever waterway it is that is the main waterway, where the railroads come in, where the natural resources and the...
Merlin: Well, I mean in our case – San Francisco has a million of those.
Merlin: It could be where they built the ships.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's not just where the ships came in.
Merlin: But in our case, when they blew all the Japanese people out of what was called in Japantown, they moved in all the African-American folks to work in the shipbuilding factories.
Merlin: They just basically took stuff out of people's houses and moved factory workers in there.
Merlin: And they had a really nice lucrative lifestyle for a few years and then it became basically a ghetto.
Merlin: This is how you learn about a town.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: At one o'clock in the morning, if you go down to where they take the containers off the ship and put them on the trucks, and you watch the trucks head out into the night, and you imagine what's on those containers, and you start to see the way that San Francisco, for instance, the role that San Francisco plays in the life of the nation, that San Francisco is really...
John: an organ that is pumping pumping pumping out into the out into the rest of the country and that at that you know that it's really a robust system but also a very fragile system you know any one of those little aspects can fall apart and this is why when you listen to truck drivers complain about fuel costs uh-huh
John: You know, it can strike you as very boring.
John: Peak oil, buddy.
John: Peak oil.
John: Truck drivers complaining about fuel costs.
John: Those guys are right at the... Buddy, look up Kunstler in the peak oil.
Merlin: I can't even look at it.
Merlin: It makes me so sad.
John: I don't want to look up Kunstler.
John: Kunstler.
John: Kunstler.
John: I don't want to look up Kunstler.
John: Kunstler makes a point.
John: I know a lot about Kunstler.
Merlin: Kunstler's a little over the top, but I'm just saying, if we have gotten close to getting most of the oil out, there's not going to be a Walmart anymore.
John: Listen, if you don't want to talk about Tea Party, I'm not going to talk about Peak Oil.
Merlin: Do you understand, though, that everything in that Walmart is made out of plastic that is because of cheap oil?
Merlin: It was brought there because of trucks that are running cheap oil.
Merlin: But most importantly, they came from China on a giant-ass ship.
John: that was running cheap oil.
John: Even before that stupid... Leave China out of it.
John: I mean, just... For once.
John: Chop a tree down and turn it into boards and move the boards and build a house.
John: You got...
John: There's a half a dozen different people in between.
Merlin: Yeah, but you're getting a fair price for the wood, if you know what I mean.
Merlin: I'm saying that if you work with Walmart, you bet you will.
Merlin: And if you work with Walmart, you can go read lots of liberal magazines about this.
Merlin: Your prices have to go down every year when you work with Walmart.
Merlin: You can't afford to be there.
Merlin: This has been true for Snapper.
Merlin: It was true for Vlasic.
Merlin: It was true for Levi's.
Merlin: Snapper used to be the premium brand of lawnmower that you could buy.
Merlin: They decided not to go to Walmart because Walmart makes you create an entire product line just for them.
Merlin: So when Levi's went into Walmart, they couldn't repurpose any of their existing product lines.
Merlin: They had to create new product lines just for you sign up.
John: Oh, you're so bad at Walmart.
Yeah.
Merlin: No, but here's the thing.
Merlin: Vlasic spent 20 years trying to get you to understand that if you buy these premium pickles in the fucking refrigerator section, it's worth paying more because it's really good.
Merlin: It's a crisp pickle.
Merlin: It's a very crisp pickle, and it's got a fucking stork.
Merlin: You now go to an end cap, and you can get a five-gallon bucket of fucking pickles for 20 cents.
John: Let me tell you my experience.
John: I've only been into two Walmarts.
John: Cheap oil, John.
John: Cheap oil.
John: I went to a Walmart in Florida one time.
John: me too it was a 24-hour walmart and at three o'clock in the morning was full of family shopping kids yep a lot of women with five kids that's when they get off work i i ran out of that walmart screaming but the second time i went to a walmart it was on my birthday it was in like uh new mexico and i'm walking through the i'm walking through the walmart and i'm just taking it all in and there is a poster of
John: in their, like, you know, admittedly, it was in their kids section, but a poster, a wall-sized poster of Tinkerbell, the beloved Disney character, the disagreeable little minx, Tinkerbell.
John: And this poster of Tinkerbell, she's flying because she's a sprite, but she's looking over her shoulder at you
John: And she's got her little tuchus pointed at you.
John: And the way her little feathered skirt is arranged, you can kind of... It's like you're looking up the back of her skirt at her little pixie tuchus.
John: There's a fairy upskirt?
John: A little fairy upskirt shot.
Merlin: God, why do I find that so hot?
Merlin: That is so fucked up.
John: If you look at Tinkerbell's face...
John: you see that she's got a kind of... You know, she's blonde, right?
John: Because why not?
John: But she's got a very long nose.
John: She's got a very... She's a very Judaic-looking little pixie when you look at her closely.
John: She looks like a blonde Fran Drescher.
John: She's a kind of Jew-y little pixie, and she's got this big ass that she's, like, pushing out of it.
Merlin: You sure she's not Italian?
Merlin: Like, Northern Italian?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I mean, there's some wiggle room there.
Merlin: She's got wings, but she's also got junk in the trunk.
Merlin: She might be from... She's got junk in the trunk.
John: I'm feeling, though, just given the proclivities of the Hollywood animators of that era, I'm thinking she's a Jewess.
John: I'm thinking she's an Ashkenazi.
John: Eastern Europe.
John: Little flying bug.
John: And this poster is like $1.99.
John: This fantastic...
John: piece of art.
John: And it was my birthday.
John: I bought it for myself.
John: And I carried it around on this tour.
John: I put it on the dashboard of the van.
John: Everybody in the van was like, what's that?
John: I was like, don't touch that.
John: Don't look at it.
Merlin: I never told them what it was.
John: I never told them what it was.
John: I just drove around on the rest of the tour with this thing on the dashboard.
John: I got home and I put it up on the wall.
John: And all the women that come over to the house, they're all... Were you looking at it just now while you were describing it?
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: I have it memorized.
Merlin: Ha ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha!