Ep. 23: "Flange of the Angel Curve"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: It's going pretty good.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: My mouth's a little dry.
John: Why's that?
John: Well, you know, I quit drinking coffee and without coffee in the morning, nothing else seems good.
John: So I don't eat breakfast.
John: I don't have juice.
John: I just kind of sit and
Merlin: I would know, first of all, I got to say that, I don't know if you're looking for a little extra dough on the side, but you being sad and saying that line in a commercial could be like the best thing that ever happened to the coffee industry.
John: Without coffee, nothing in life seems good.
Merlin: Without coffee's delicious lubricating mouth moisteners, John Roderick doesn't know what to do with himself in the morning.
John: My mouth is dry and my taste buds aren't thrilled like they normally are.
Merlin: You need coffee.
Merlin: No, I have to tell you, there's things, I think the hardest part for me with any kind of habit, and I have many, many bad habits I've been adding a couple a week,
Merlin: Are you skateboarding again?
John: It's a terrible habit.
Merlin: I can't keep my cigar lit.
Merlin: It sucks.
Merlin: I'm doing a 720, they call it.
Merlin: Yeah, they do call it the 720.
Merlin: I nail the 720 with a big Nicaraguan in my mouth.
John: You nail the 720 and the cigar goes out.
Merlin: That's how you nailed it.
Merlin: I literally just spun twice while I blew a guy from Central America.
Merlin: Big Nicaraguan.
Merlin: Big ring gauge.
Merlin: 52.
Merlin: I don't smoke.
Merlin: I don't smoke.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Is he there doing stuff around the house?
Merlin: Manuel?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Opera La Puerta.
Merlin: Opera La Puerta.
John: Fucking A. He's putting up some kitchen cabinets.
Merlin: My Spanish is poor, John.
Merlin: Yeah, it's funny.
Merlin: You live in California and you're...
Merlin: I should really be focusing on my Mandarin and my Cantonese.
Merlin: You want to hear my fake Mandarin?
John: Oh my god, I don't.
Merlin: I really don't.
John: That's your fake Mandarin?
John: That sounded like Cthulhu.
Merlin: You've eaten in my neighborhood.
Merlin: There's probably – there's a lot of like money hands in Cthulhu in a lot of the food.
Merlin: You know where I went this morning speaking of money hands in Cthulhu?
Merlin: This morning I went to that place, that place you enjoy when you're here.
Merlin: I went to the dim sum place.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: I love that place.
Merlin: He's such a sweet guy.
John: It's the dirtiest food I've ever eaten, and I've eaten some dirty food.
Merlin: Well, I'm not going to mention them by name because I don't – but I would like – I've learned a couple of things about my neighborhood actually that I'd like to share.
Merlin: First of all, I'm going to write down Espanol.
Merlin: That's how you say that in Spanish.
John: You say who?
Merlin: Español.
John: Yeah.
John: Español.
John: Lo siento.
Merlin: I should just start off by saying lo siento.
Merlin: Lo siento just rolls off my lingua.
Merlin: Hey, I think I got one.
Merlin: Señores y señores, lo siento.
Merlin: Primera.
Merlin: Let's see it.
Merlin: Secondo.
Merlin: So, Espanol, that's hard.
Merlin: Yeah, it's hard.
Merlin: I want to come back to your mouth also.
John: I have a good friend who's living in France now who has a child with a French lady.
John: Nina.
John: And he, well, that would be if he had a child with a Spanish lady.
John: If you have a job with a French lady, it's something else.
John: That's how you start a war, that kind of thing.
John: It's not a Nina.
John: But I said, so how's your French?
John: And he said, I don't speak French.
John: And I said, well, your daughter is like seven years old now.
John: How's her English?
John: He said, not so good.
John: And I said, so how's that working?
John: And he said, well, like a lot of French people, my daughter thinks that I'm kind of stupid.
John: I don't speak French.
Merlin: I think by some measures, I don't want to sound callow, but by some measures, he's stupid.
Merlin: I don't think that's purely a French.
Merlin: I don't think he's just le stupid.
Merlin: I mean, I think that's pretty fucking dumb that he doesn't learn to speak his daughter's language.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: It's like having a deaf daughter and not bothering to learn how to sign.
Merlin: That's different.
John: Don't you think?
Merlin: I don't know.
John: If you have a deaf child, you should learn to sign.
Merlin: Don't you think?
Merlin: What else?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Immersion?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not here to judge.
Merlin: That's not John Vanderslice, is it?
John: I don't think John Vanderslice is a deaf child, no.
Merlin: Can you imagine how hard that would be on him?
Merlin: He'd be wanting to explain something about what kind of wood was used in the room it was recorded in, and they'd be going, I'm not going to do the voice.
Merlin: But Spanish for mouth.
Merlin: Mouth, I was going to talk about your mouth being dry.
Merlin: I think bokeh.
Merlin: Bokeh.
John: Bokeh is mouth.
John: Bokeh raton.
John: What's mouth in Chinese in fake Mandarin?
Merlin: Are you serious?
Merlin: Do you really want to know?
Merlin: No, I don't want to hear it.
Merlin: Don't do it.
Merlin: Shh, shh, shh.
Merlin: I'll come back to your mouth.
Merlin: But so this place that we go, you've been there.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so it's, you know, dim sum is a kind of dumpling.
Merlin: I know people who live on the two sides of the country know this.
Merlin: But, you know, it's a very popular Chinese, like mostly breakfast.
John: Was that another anti-Oklahoma City joke that you just made?
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: You're accusing people in the middle of America of not knowing dim sum.
Merlin: 10 or 15 years from now when they get computers and wires, they're going to be good and mad.
Merlin: When they get wires.
Merlin: Throw their Obamacare at me.
Merlin: When they get wires in Oklahoma City.
Merlin: I love that song.
Merlin: It's Merle Haggard, right?
Merlin: When they get wires in Oklahoma.
Merlin: I'll be there when they get wires in Oklahoma.
Merlin: I'm on fire today.
Merlin: That's En Fuego is how you say that in Spanish.
Merlin: That is En Fuego.
Merlin: I drank like two tablespoons of Coke and I have to throw it away.
Merlin: I can't drink sweet things anymore.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: You're quitting pop?
Merlin: You know, I've been off it for a long time.
Merlin: God damn it.
John: You drink actual carbonated water in cans.
John: You've been drinking that for a while.
Merlin: God, I'm out of SodaStream, and so I've just been downing those 12 packs from Lucky.
Merlin: It's crazy.
Merlin: It's like I'm on the Pabst again.
Merlin: I used to be able to drink a lot of beer, John.
Merlin: I don't know if you know that.
John: I never saw you during your many, many cans of Pabst phase.
Merlin: Yeah, you know what's weird?
Merlin: I have a lot of really problematic things, but I think I might be – you can tell me if this is the kind of thing that used to come up in meetings.
Merlin: But I can just – like I'll tell you, today I can't drink beer.
Merlin: It makes me really, really tired.
Merlin: But I used to be a guy who could just drink a whole lot of beer.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Let's not get into it.
Merlin: Well, let me ask you this.
John: As a man in his 40s, is there anything that doesn't make you tired?
Merlin: oh man you know what i'm saying oh my god john that's the question i never would have expected and i least wanted to hear is there a single thing fucking everything makes me tired sleeping makes me tired i know a single thing that even the things that you love the most do they not oh my god the worst i you know the thing is okay as you know i'm a bad parent and i my daughter and i are really super into star wars i swear to god like she's she's into it too i swear to god well you know what
Merlin: I'm not being that guy.
Merlin: Hey, my dad is a Knowles fan.
Merlin: Shut up.
John: There are a lot of dads out there who are doing some questionable things and justifying them by saying, she's into it too.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, but it's not football.
Merlin: This is Anakin Skywalker.
Merlin: Totally different head.
Merlin: Anakin Skywalker.
Merlin: Uh, so, uh, one of the things I'm doing, I don't, don't tell her I said this, but, um, there's really only kind of two things in life that I really, if I had my druthers that, that she would like, you know, there's two things I wish you, one of them's not star Wars.
Merlin: Uh, it's really, I, I really hope that she likes, you know, and again, let me just stipulate.
Merlin: This is me saying, I hope she's like me in two ways, which is I hope she likes to read and I hope she likes music.
Merlin: And she's kind of into reading, and she's kind of into music.
Merlin: And you know me.
Merlin: I don't want to push her into anything.
John: But she's still a zygote.
John: You can't tell what she's going to be.
Merlin: Of all of my many, many problems in life, I was a very early reader.
Merlin: So you know what it is?
John: Okay, but you were a very early reader, but there was a decided minimum of other things to distract you, right?
Merlin: I was very, very lonely, John.
John: She's got a million things besides reading that she can... A million ways she can input...
Merlin: And I think this is going to be the fifth card, and I don't want to return to this.
Merlin: But really, I think literacy as a concept is changing.
Merlin: I'm loathe to admit that, but I really think it's true.
Merlin: We should come back to that.
Merlin: So here's the thing.
Merlin: I bought a bunch of Star Wars books.
Merlin: Some of them are awesome, like Visual Encyclopedia.
Merlin: You know those cool DK books they've got about all different things?
John: No, I do not know anything about Star Wars books.
Merlin: John, just really.
Merlin: I don't know a thing about them.
Merlin: Try and see past your numerous cataracts and just stay with me.
Merlin: Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys.
John: Nancy Drew, really?
John: That's where I need to go.
John: Well, she's a little girl.
John: Nancy Drew solves mysteries.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You didn't do Encyclopedia Brown?
John: No, but I did do... Oh, what was his name?
John: The little boy who solved the detective stories and smoked cigarettes, and his name was... What was it?
Merlin: Raymond Land?
John: Socrates.
John: Oh.
John: What's his name?
John: You know, my keyboard is still dead on my computer.
John: I would look it up on the internet.
Merlin: I've written that down here.
Merlin: We really need to talk about that.
Merlin: I mean, not because it's about computers, because you're like a man who has a dry and missing mouth at this point.
John: Yeah, I sit in front of my computer and I can move the mouse.
John: I can click on things.
John: But the internet has been... Try this at home.
John: The internet has been reduced to just things I can click on.
John: I can add no text of my own.
Merlin: This is the funny thing.
Merlin: I mean, obviously, you've always needed to type letters, but the original Macintosh, they designed every application so that short of the times when you had to actually make words, you wouldn't need the keyboard.
Merlin: But obviously, if you want to have words and search for things.
Merlin: I don't know how you find porn without typing.
John: I have to go to these.
John: I've bookmarked all these automobile sites dealing with classic cars.
John: And so I go there and then I just have to click on things and hope that if I click on enough advertisements, I will click through to some porn.
Merlin: Oh, it's like the 100,000 monkeys thing.
John: Yeah, right.
John: You click on the ad for motor oil.
Merlin: Eventually, we'll find you some poontang.
John: Yeah, and then on that page, you see an ad for getting your tires rotated.
Merlin: In computer, they call it bubble sorting.
Merlin: You're kind of going through, and you're just seeing less of this, more of that.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: That's really good, John.
John: Yeah, less of this, more of that, and pretty soon it's like,
John: Oh, did you mean get your tires rotated?
John: And you're like, well, I don't know what you're saying, but yes, click.
John: And then you're on the like, in quotes, rotate your tires.
John: Right.
Merlin: If you run into those kind of like New Yorker ads for like buckwheat pillows and book lights, you know, you're going the wrong way.
John: Get out.
Merlin: Escape, escape.
Merlin: Wait, I don't have an escape key.
Merlin: Oh, fuck.
Merlin: Boca.
Merlin: Oh, so anyway, I got to these Star Wars books and she's – I was saying this – I had lunch with this guy who's like kind of like a – this friend of mine who's like kind of a hero of mine.
Merlin: He actually worked on some of the Star Wars movies.
Merlin: Great guy.
Merlin: And we're talking about like what you showed your kids because he's got a kid.
Merlin: He's just a little younger than my daughter.
Merlin: And I was saying like I accept my bad parenthood but –
Merlin: I am really okay with her watching Star Wars movies and Pixar, partly because you know what?
Merlin: I like them.
Merlin: It's not Dora the Explorer.
Merlin: Have you had to deal with Dora the Explorer at all?
John: No, my child is still too young to understand what any of these things are.
Merlin: That's like saying, I just hope I get her away from mumps and rubella.
Merlin: You need to proactively get in front of this, John.
John: I understand the theory.
John: And I've spoken to many of my Wired friends.
John: Not friends who worked at Wired.
John: You don't want to say cyber friends?
John: Cyber friends.
John: Let's say cyber friends.
John: And, you know, there are a lot of opinions, but they seem to break into two camps.
John: One of the camps is I, as the father, am going to curate her digital life so that she gets only the best...
John: Star Wars crap.
John: And the other fathers are like, ah, 10 years from now, there aren't even going to be books.
John: So just give them the gadgets and let them figure them out for themselves.
Merlin: I think half are illogically reductive, and I think the other half are reductively illogical.
Merlin: That is a false dilemma.
Merlin: You learned about that in a college you didn't graduate from.
Merlin: That's a false dilemma.
Merlin: I do both.
Merlin: I'm helping.
Merlin: I'm helping.
Merlin: I don't want to watch Dora the Explorer.
John: I'm in the third school, which is that until she's 16, her afternoons are going to be spent chopping firewood, cutting trail.
John: We got a lot of trails around here that need improvement.
John: Reading the Bible.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You got to get out there in the woods.
John: You got to cut some trail.
John: Cut some trail.
John: I like that term.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Did you just make that up?
Merlin: Did you just make that up?
John: No.
John: Cut some trail.
John: That's an old day...
John: It's an old trapper, minor 49er term.
Merlin: I have no idea what it means, but I can't think of a possible place that it wouldn't apply.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: You're in line at McDonald's.
Merlin: Well, no, you're in line at McDonald's.
Merlin: It's taking too long.
Merlin: You go, hey, come on, asshole.
Merlin: Cut some trail.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You're with your lady, as you do, and you say, you know what?
Merlin: Let's put this wine away and cut some trail.
John: Let's cut.
John: Hey, baby, let's cut some trail.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Give me that remote.
John: I want to cut some trail.
John: So anyway, my philosophy is the only video screens that she's going to see in her life are going to be when she's over at her friend's houses where her parents don't understand how life works.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Or when she's after you've been like indicted or something and the judge is on the other monitor or something like that.
John: Yeah.
John: Or when she's trying to get my attention and I'm looking at my phone.
Merlin: Those are the only times she's going to see a screen time.
Merlin: Call it screen time.
Merlin: So anyway, so I read her Star Wars books.
Merlin: That's all.
Merlin: The screen time thing is complicated.
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: And it's funny, though, because I sometimes get these cautionary tales.
Merlin: I try so hard to not – like sometimes in the morning, I'll look at my computer or something because I'm tired and I'm waking up, even with my coffee, which you don't have.
John: Well, it's the best part of waking up.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: Just looking at your computer in the morning.
Merlin: We've got to come back to this.
Merlin: I'm writing that on a new card.
Merlin: I don't understand how you're doing that, John.
Merlin: I want to talk more.
Merlin: You said you stopped for a while and you were sleeping better.
John: Well, yeah.
John: You know, I quit drinking caffeine because anything that makes me have an edge over the week, I like to try.
John: So I see all the people in Seattle.
Merlin: Within your boundaries.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Within some boundaries, within a few boundaries.
Merlin: Your boundaries are secondarily physical and pharmacological, but if I may say, you cut a lot of trail with your boundaries.
Merlin: That's just part of a much larger thing, something, a much larger system, I think.
John: Yeah, well, the other day I was at a hotel in Los Angeles, and we were having a little salon there, and there was a fellow there who's a famous podcast empire type of character who's also a very snappy dresser.
John: And he starts to berate me.
John: Oh, is this little mustache boy?
Merlin: He starts to berate me.
Merlin: I gotta learn what the deal is with that guy.
John: Because I'm sitting in the lobby of this fancy hotel, and I am dressed in an outfit that is generally, you know, is like casual cool.
Merlin: Is this when you're wearing your jacket from the prisoner?
Merlin: I was wearing some... Did you have white piping?
Merlin: I saw a photo of you today with a white piping jacket.
Merlin: Yeah, I had some white piping.
Merlin: You know that reads as the prisoner.
Merlin: Is that what you're looking for?
John: I always like to feel like I might walk into a train station bathroom and it's actually a portal to a wizard school.
Merlin: You might be steampunk.
Merlin: Anyway, you're talking to Mustache McPenny Farthing.
John: And he starts to break me because I'm wearing white athletic socks.
Oh, God.
John: With my outfit of otherwise of careful discernment.
John: And I said, well, white athletic socks are more than a matter of personal style.
John: It's a survival technique.
John: And he guffaws, and all the people at the table guffaw in that L.A.
John: style, where they're all wearing clothes that they couldn't survive for 20 minutes in the desert in.
John: And I said, listen, you never know when the apocalypse is going to come.
John: It could come at any time.
John: It could come right now while we're sitting here, and you're wearing your expensive men's hosiery.
John: And she's wearing four-inch high heels.
John: And then all of a sudden, we're not sitting here with waiters bringing us calamari.
John: We are trekking across a waterless, burning desert scape.
John: And my white socks are going to wick away moisture.
John: And they're going to keep my feet comfortable.
John: And one by one, you people are going to drop off and become hyena food.
John: And you're going to say, he had the white piping on his jacket.
John: He looked pretty good.
John: But it was the White Sox that ended up being the deciding factor.
Merlin: Yes, I think you're right.
Merlin: And I'm just thinking, I don't know quite how to express my admiration.
Merlin: It's nice to be at a table with you when the room really changes.
Merlin: It's a nice feeling.
Merlin: Because it isn't that you're just simply a disturbing outsider crank.
Merlin: It's that you have wisdom, as you know.
Merlin: I mean, certainly as our listeners know, you're bringing a lot of wisdom and helping people.
Merlin: But you have a way of really reframing things for people in a way that can be a little disruptive, especially if they can't leave.
John: Well, this is the thing.
Merlin: You ever seen a woman try to run in heels like that?
John: That's ridiculous.
John: No, it's terrible.
John: They have to take them off and then they're in their pantyhose.
Merlin: And you can't run across a burning desert pantyhose.
John: I don't think they wear pantyhose anymore.
John: Well, in any case, every time I see a girl with a belly button piercing, I say the same thing, which is, what if you and I need to get over a chain link fence really fast?
John: Like, do you think your belly button piercing is going to help?
Merlin: I'm sorry, are these women you've met or just people you've seen?
Merlin: Because that might be the greatest opening line ever.
Merlin: The thing is... Can I ask you a question?
John: Excuse me, miss.
John: Let me ask you a question.
John: Belly button piercing.
John: What if we have to get over a chain link fence really fast?
John: Is that jacket felt?
John: You know?
John: If that gets snagged, we're both in trouble.
John: And I'm not saying that you're in trouble and I'm going to... Because then I'm with you, right?
John: I got to stick around.
John: I got to fend off whatever devil dogs it is.
Merlin: Because now you've come to rely on her.
John: Well, or at least, you know, I'm not a monster.
Merlin: She might know the combination for something you need to get to.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: And now she's hanging upside down by her belly button piercing from the top of a chain link fence.
John: And I'm... Then I got to go back over the fence and I got to...
John: I don't know.
John: I got to fight, fight off whatever it is that's chasing us.
John: It's really, you got to think about these things.
Merlin: Well, if you're not thinking about it, you will have to eventually.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And my wife watched, I kind of watched as I have, she's more into it than I am, but I half watched that show, the walking dead.
Merlin: It's really good.
Merlin: But you know, I think I don't want to get into the whole internet zombie thing, but I'm just saying once you think even just kind of a little bit about what you would do if you were suddenly surrounded by zombies, I think suddenly you're getting a lot fewer piercings.
Merlin: I think you're doing a lot less like Harajuku cosplay with funny shoes and complicated hair.
Merlin: That's not going to stand up well.
Merlin: You're going to be in situations where you have to make a lot of instantaneous decisions where you see down this tunnel of the future all the branches you might have to deal with.
Merlin: And if you're sitting there thinking about a piercing, John, piercings.
John: Well, and that's why I walk around with that look on my face that I have on my face most of the time, which is a look that's been carefully crafted to suggest that if the shit goes down suddenly and I'm in an airport, for instance, and everyone in the room goes from being their, like, I'm a civilized person in an airport person to being their person as they transform...
John: I want them as they're scanning the room for the person closest to them that they're going to either glom onto or try and cannibalize.
John: I want them to look at me and then choose the next person.
Merlin: You're not panicking.
Merlin: First of all, they're scanning.
Merlin: They're suddenly scanning.
Merlin: Everybody's scanning.
Merlin: Everybody.
Merlin: Their phone's about to run out.
Merlin: They've been writing on Facebook.
Merlin: There's nothing left.
Merlin: That sandwich that they bought in a triangle, a plastic triangle.
Merlin: I hate the plastic triangle sandwich.
Merlin: Tuna sandwich in a plastic triangle.
Merlin: That's living.
Merlin: And the thing is, that's gone now.
Merlin: Right.
John: You're in a room with 1,600 people and the facade is suddenly gone.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: The white socks are off.
Merlin: And the thing is, all those fucking energy drinks, your giant fucking energy drinks that you drank and never made anything good with, they're all gone.
Merlin: The ice has melted.
Merlin: And now there's going to have to be some serious decisions.
Merlin: You look at one man in that room, you see the statuesque man who looks a little bit like the guy from The Prisoner.
Merlin: And you're going to think twice about going over there.
John: That's not the guy whose back you're going to jump on.
Merlin: and say carry me out of here you carry gorp or what kind of what do you carry with you in the event of oh yeah i always have uh i always have my eye on i got little pouches i don't want i don't want to reveal too much john i mean for any variety of reasons i know that there are certain things that we're just not going to talk about and right i hope that i am respectful of those things but i think i think you are you're very good um
John: I mean, I'll talk all day about the makeshift weapons you can improvise.
Merlin: You know what?
John: I'm going to write that down.
Merlin: All of a sudden, you're going to find how sharp that sharper image can be.
John: Somewhere in America, somebody sitting at a console in a giant TSA warehouse, their computer just turned red and went, alert, alert, alert.
John: They're like, weapons?
Merlin: Airport terminal?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: It happens every single time.
Merlin: I'm in line at the TSA thing.
Merlin: I'm watching a little bit of TSA theater.
Merlin: And then a recent immigrant pushes a 50-gallon bucket through a separate lane for the airport employees.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And this guy, he just does this kind of blithe wave, and he's pushing a giant, giant, giant uninspected bucket.
Merlin: They're looking at old people's wheelchairs, right, to make sure that they don't have munitions.
John: They're taking five-year-old shoes off and sniffing them.
John: That's right.
Merlin: I got my man bag touched.
John: And this guy goes through with a 50-gallon bucket full of maybe lard, maybe C4 explosives.
Merlin: Well, and like if it's just full of garbage, like they're going to go through and inspect every piece of garbage going in and out.
Merlin: I'm just saying, like, you know, the thing is, it's like Thoreau, right?
Merlin: With the spiderwebs catching the wasps or letting the wasps through.
Merlin: You know, I got nothing.
Merlin: Now, the weapons in the airport, for example, and I blame you for this.
Merlin: I found myself, and that is such an important phrase in my life.
Merlin: So often I find myself doing something.
John: You do find yourself.
John: It's a passive construction, but at the same time, that is what happens.
Merlin: I want you to understand your influence.
Merlin: For some reason, I think I took my ADD medicine too late.
Merlin: I wasn't sleeping well, and I woke up.
Merlin: It was about 4, and it's in that awful period between like, oh, I really need to go back to sleep, which would be at 2 a.m., or I might as well get up, which is at 5 a.m.
Merlin: For me, it's no problem for me.
Merlin: I can write or do whatever.
John: But it was between those two places.
Merlin: It's a weird time, and it's like, oh, if I do this.
Merlin: So I did this thing I almost never do, and I picked up the iPad, and I started reading about Triumph of the Will.
Merlin: At 4 o'clock in the morning.
Merlin: We may need to have an offshoot, sort of a Laverne and Shirley to our happy days where we just talk about Nazis.
Merlin: Because I got to tell you, I think there is just so much – World War II in general, obviously.
Merlin: The Nazis specifically – I don't even know what angle you begin with.
Merlin: It's so fascinating.
Merlin: The angle I chose this night was to learn more about the major figures.
John: Right.
John: OK.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: You know I'm very interested in Ernst Rome.
Merlin: I'm very interested in the essay in general.
Merlin: But I finally sat down and read the entire Wikipedia entry for Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler.
John: Oh, my God.
John: What a night.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: What a night.
Merlin: See?
Merlin: And again, it's like watching The Wizard of Oz.
Merlin: It's like I know how this goes, but it's so interesting to see it again now that I'm older.
Merlin: Now, here's why do I mention this?
Merlin: Because I'm really sorry that I ever met you.
Merlin: But also, one of them, I think I want to say, who's the snappy dresser?
Merlin: That was Gehring.
John: Gehring, yeah.
John: I mean, the snappy dresser for a 400-pound.
Merlin: He's a very, very heavy man.
Merlin: Have you read about some of his outfits?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: Medieval hunting outfit with oversized pipe.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, I mean, my favorite has to be his powder blue Air Force Rikes Marshal outfit.
Merlin: He designed his own flag, John.
John: He did have his own flag.
John: Have you ever seen pictures of...
Merlin: Of Goering's house?
Merlin: I saw a picture of Goering's uniform and it looked like it might have had a preschool in it.
Merlin: It was very, very large and it had that – you know that fat guy thing where it's not simply a long drapey jacket but it has – it actually has the shape of a very, very large man.
John: Yeah, it becomes like a tent that might be used in the desert.
Merlin: Or like a baseball glove, right?
Merlin: Like if you wear a glove long enough, it looks a little bit like your hand.
Merlin: And this looks a lot like Gehring.
Merlin: Anyway, I think I want to say Himmler, who seems like maybe the most troubling of those characters.
Merlin: He caused a lot of trouble.
Merlin: I don't know if you know that, Himmler.
Merlin: Oh, yes, yes.
Merlin: I mean, Gehring and Goebbels, you know these guys.
Merlin: They're famous, right?
Merlin: Now, who was the one that had the cyanide embedded in his tooth?
Merlin: I think that might have... No, no, Himmler thought he was going to get away with it.
Merlin: He weaseled out at the end, and he dressed up like somebody else, and he had a whole bit.
John: Oh, right, exactly, and tried to, like, sneak out.
Merlin: Now, I think Goering, like, did he hang himself, or somebody slipped him?
John: No, Goering cyanided himself in prison, but he sat through the whole Nuremberg trial.
John: He sat through it all with a smirk on his face, and then after they sentenced him to death,
John: Only then did he kill himself in prison.
Merlin: It was like an Ian Curtis thing.
Merlin: It was like the day before he was supposed to be hanged.
John: I mean, Ian Curtis in reverse.
Merlin: Or the day of, they found him in his cell.
Merlin: It's a great Holly song, Ian Curtis in reverse.
John: He just robbed all of us of the pleasure of killing him for vengeance.
Merlin: Didn't it happen with Slobodan Milosevic too?
Merlin: Or was it the other guy?
Merlin: No, it was the Ratka Mladic.
John: Ratka Mladic.
John: Did he kill himself in prison?
Merlin: One of those guys, yeah, I think, or he just died.
Merlin: I think he died.
John: He died of heart sickness because he realized and was sad.
John: He was sad to death.
Merlin: Didn't one of the guys become an herbalist?
Merlin: I think that was Milosevic.
Merlin: He became a respected herbalist who went, he grew a giant ass beard.
Merlin: You should see him because he looks a little bit like you.
John: All those people in the Balkans, you know, they're all just almost anybody in the Balkans, the president of any one of those countries could be an astrologer.
John: At the drop of a hat.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You know, Hitler was into that stuff, too.
Merlin: Of course he was.
Merlin: What would you call it?
Merlin: More than mythology.
Merlin: Occult.
Merlin: He's very into the occult.
John: Yeah.
John: And pseudoscience.
Merlin: John, you get a lot of dental work done.
Merlin: You've had a lot of dental issues in the past.
Merlin: I believe as we speak, you have some orthodonture.
John: I don't want to say too much.
John: My entire life is like the working script of Marathon Man.
Merlin: Oh, that's rough.
John: I actually had an orthodontic appointment today and I canceled it at the last minute and lied to them and told them that I was still in Los Angeles.
Merlin: You finally got into their good books and you fucked that up.
John: Um, because, because I just, uh, I'm so exhausted.
John: I've had, I've had braces for, I think a lot longer than I need to have.
John: And the only reason that I, that I've had them for so long is that I keep not following through on all the appointments.
Merlin: Cause I got to do adjustments and that's just, you're just pushing out the project, right?
Merlin: It's that you've got to have that adjustment for so long before the next adjustment.
John: Right.
John: And I just, I keep skipping appointments and then they're like, well, we gotta, we gotta do it.
John: We gotta wait another nine months or something.
Merlin: Have you ever priced out, if you can say, and if you can't, we'll just cut this out, like so many other things.
Merlin: Having all my teeth pulled?
Merlin: Have I ever priced out having all my teeth pulled?
Merlin: My stepfather, who, as it happens, was... Jelly bellies?
Merlin: I'm going to be thinking about that tonight when I'm reading about Himmler.
Merlin: My stepfather, who, by the way, was an execrable Serb.
Merlin: He was a Serb?
Merlin: My stepfather was a Serb.
John: I didn't realize that.
Merlin: Yeah, he was a Serb.
Merlin: He had all his teeth pulled, had false teeth.
Merlin: Big, big, big false teeth.
Merlin: He looked like Tony Robbins.
John: A lot of people in the old days had all their teeth pulled.
John: It just made sense.
John: Well, my mom describes it as like before there was dental hygiene or before there was a full understanding of how infection works, that your teeth were the source of
John: all these mysterious infections and people would routinely die or have chronic pain because of what was going on in the roots of their teeth.
John: And so dentists and doctors would routinely recommend that you have all your teeth pulled in order to, like as a health physician,
Merlin: restorative it sounds medieval but um actually the place where i the dentist who was nice enough but i eventually couldn't stand going there anymore his mother who was his dental hygienist constantly gave me this article every time i went in about how if you didn't floss and get your teeth cleaned enough you'd get a heart attack and apparently this is science now is that is that there's something there's some i don't know if it's plaque or whatever but there actually is turns out there's actually some connection uh between what you're describing here
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: It's not just Theodoric of York stuff.
Merlin: The question to you is, again, like so many things I say, we will cut this out if it's problematic.
Merlin: Have you ever gotten an estimate on what it would cost to have cyanide or something similar embedded in a tooth?
Merlin: Okay, it's okay.
Merlin: Don't say.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Don't say.
John: No, but here's the thing.
John: I have never, ever felt suicidal in the whole history of my life.
Merlin: All the more reason to have it there.
Merlin: It's like Nietzsche says, right?
Yeah.
John: But my feeling is in those moments, fight the guards.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Fight the guards to death.
John: Like, don't sit in your prison cell and take your stuff.
John: Oh, you're saying that's a pussy way out.
John: It's totally pussy.
John: When they come for you on that day and they lead you down the hall.
John: Could you get a garrot in a tooth?
Merlin: Like a small, very, very thin garrot?
John: Tiny little wire that you suddenly pull out of your... Maybe you could get a butt derringer.
John: I mean, even in a situation like that where there is no way that that that fat old lame ass Herman Goering is going to be able to fight these young American guards in this prison castle.
John: He should at least give the old college try and, you know, and then throw himself off a balcony or something.
John: But like cyanide.
John: Come on.
John: That's the worst.
John: That's the pussiest way.
Merlin: This is just like General Grievous in Star Wars, who used to be more organic and now is mostly a robot with two opposable thumbs on each hand and dislocatable shoulders so he can fight with four lightsabers.
Merlin: But the point is it's a lot like the Nazis because he's a coward, ultimately.
Merlin: He's a big coward.
John: Are you telling me that somewhere inside of that General Grievous thing there is some kind of living organism?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: That's the theory.
Merlin: That's the plot.
Merlin: I was reading on Wikipedia that he's apparently secretly embarrassed that he's part, like, mostly cyborg.
John: George Lucas expects us to believe that that CGI creation has the heart of a human being.
John: He's got a bad cough, too.
John: You ever notice that?
John: No, because I never have watched those movies.
John: I've only seen them when I'm sitting on an airplane and I look over and some poor kid, his dad has put it on an iPad to try and keep him quiet.
John: And I look and I see, what is that stupid thing?
John: That's the dumbest looking thing I ever saw.
John: Fascinating.
Merlin: So the coffee now.
John: That has less to do with Star Wars than Harrison Ford in American Graffiti.
Merlin: Did you stop the coffee all at once or did you taper?
Merlin: I'm guessing you stopped all at once.
Merlin: I could see you being a man who pulls your own teeth and you just stop buying coffee.
Merlin: It's not even in the house.
Merlin: Or did you keep it in the house and have it tempting you just to make you stronger?
John: No, it's here in the house.
John: I have coffee all over the place.
Merlin: Fuck, you're strong.
John: You're so strong.
John: Well, that's why you have to build that strength.
John: You don't just trip into it.
Merlin: This is all part of your larger practice.
John: When I quit smoking or when I quit drinking, when I quit all those things, you got to quit them.
John: Cold turkey and then sit there with the perspiration dripping down your forehead and really be in the middle of your suffering.
John: You have to own your suffering because that is how you feel like exactly what a hold the thing had over you.
John: You have to explore every little last corner of the power that that, whatever that was, of the power that that had over you to understand what you're quitting.
John: A lot of people are like, oh, I quit this or that, but I took a bunch of medication during the comedown period or whatever.
John: And it's like, no, no, no.
John: The comedown period is the soul of quitting something.
John: You got to be in it and feel like all the nerve endings fraying and feel the headache, feel the craving.
John: And by like suffering through that, then you know what the limits of craving are because craving has limits.
John: There's no, I mean, unless you are a San Diego mom, in which case there are no limits to your cravings.
John: I don't know that reference.
John: What is that?
John: If you're a Southern California power walking mom.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: I see.
John: Is out there power walking around.
John: Alphabetized catalogs and stuff.
John: Yeah, just power walking down to the boutique and getting a mani-pedi, whatever.
John: Your craving is bottomless.
John: Clearly.
John: That's how Southern California stays in business.
Merlin: As is my tradition, I will not discuss Buddhism on here, but you're describing something somewhat similar to that.
Merlin: I will also say I'm really fucking glad I never had to guard you at Nuremberg.
Merlin: You seem like you would be a real handful.
John: Well, because the first thing you do is through the whole trial, you try and get inside your guards' minds.
John: That's right.
John: So they get a little bit of the Stockholm Syndrome in reverse.
John: Where they're guarding you, but then they start to feel like... I mean, obviously, I think the Nazis were deplorable, but if I were a Nazi... Yeah, but like the stormtroopers in Star Wars, I think they're not always a good shot, and they're not that bright, a lot of them.
Merlin: And I think they're easily swayed by the dark side, or in your case, by really just the Force in general.
Merlin: I think you might have the Force more than you're willing to admit.
John: Well, I don't talk about the Force.
Merlin: That's a good idea.
Merlin: That's a pretty good idea.
John: But aren't the Stormtroopers clones?
John: Isn't that the whole theory?
Merlin: Spoiler alert.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I just learned this recently myself when I made the excursion into those movies.
Merlin: I was fascinated to learn that.
Merlin: I learned about Order 66, which is just really – I still have a lot of questions.
John: I have a lot of questions.
John: But in the first three movies, by which I mean the second three movies, or I don't know how to talk about it.
John: Want to talk about coffee?
John: The original movies, there was no mention of them being clones.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Am I right?
John: Isn't that sort of revisionism?
John: Or was there clone talk in the books before the movies?
Merlin: Do you want me to bring up religion?
John: We're talking about Star Wars now.
Merlin: Do you want me to bring up religion?
Merlin: Yes, I do.
Merlin: Be careful, buddy.
Merlin: You got a fork that is dangerously close to an electric outlet right now, my friend.
John: Don't you threaten me with you talking about religion.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You could turn that right around and ruin the rest of my afternoon.
Merlin: I'm very aware of that.
Merlin: You're absolutely right.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: This is not interesting.
Merlin: I talk about Star Wars in other places.
Merlin: No, but the truth is he had an idea in mind fairly early on.
Merlin: But for example, the secret of Star Wars that we never mentioned because you never know who might not know the best secret of Star Wars.
Merlin: That idea did not even appear anywhere until 1978.
Merlin: Right.
John: Oh, after the movie.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: They're just still writing one of the awful scripts for ESB.
John: I just read in the newspaper yesterday that the guy that did all the paintings that established all the look of Star Wars just died.
John: Ralph McQuarrie.
John: Ralph McQuarrie.
Merlin: Probably had arguably the person with the single largest influence on why Star Wars was cool and looked the way it did.
Merlin: huge he was gonna call him anakin star killer that was gonna be luke skywalker's name i just mentioned this on another show we should move on and so you just stopped the coffee now didn't you get like a like a ridiculously when i've done that before i get like a totally wanging headache oh it's the worst you get a not just a wanging headache but you get psychotic i mean i get psychotic you feel your uh your capillaries right throughout your body you can feel your the one time i had acupuncture
John: I was lying on my acupuncture bed in this room that smelled like lavender and with like weird bing bong jazz playing.
Merlin: And I'm lying there.
Merlin: Did you have cucumber water?
John: There was cucumber water.
John: I had everything.
John: I had the whole thing.
John: And my acupuncturist is putting the needles in me.
John: And I'm sitting there kind of thinking like, this is baloney.
John: And then all of a sudden, you know those diagrams that you used to see in old encyclopedias where it shows you your circulatory system?
John: Like the visible man kind of thing?
John: The visible man stuff where all of a sudden you just see the outline of the human body as described by the circulatory system and the nerves.
John: All of a sudden I could feel that.
John: It wasn't abstract.
John: It was not abstract.
John: I could feel it.
John: It became the primary feeling I had.
John: So I no longer felt like the weight of my body or whatever.
John: I just felt my skin and my circulatory system.
John: I could feel every inch of it.
John: And I sat there for a minute or two and I went, wow, that's a fantastic sensation.
John: I don't know what to make of it.
John: And I kind of mulled it over.
John: And then she starts taking the needles out.
John: And I said, what are you doing?
John: Why are we stopping?
John: And she said, it's been an hour.
Merlin: That must have freaked you out.
John: I said, what?
John: What?
John: It's been three minutes.
John: And she said, it's been an hour and 10 minutes, actually.
John: We went over.
John: And I was like, okay, I don't know what that is.
John: It didn't actually help with my neck pain that is the reason I came here.
John: Like I walked out with just as much neck pain as I had when I walked in.
John: So maybe you put that 15th needle in like just a micrometer to the side and you connected with my time traveler muscle or whatever.
John: But that was amazing.
Merlin: And I call it the Straits of Vern.
John: I think this is a great thing.
John: But kind of like taking MDMA, it's not a thing that I know.
John: It's not a thing that is predictable or reliable enough for me to go back, do this all the time.
John: Because, you know, you just sent me through space.
John: Would you try it again?
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: But I do not think, based on that one experience, I do not think I would go with a pain in my neck and say, hey, can I get acupuncture for this pain in my neck?
John: Because it seems like it's just like, you should go to acupuncture all the time.
Merlin: You're doing it more for adventure or prophylaxis?
John: Yeah, for adventure, right?
John: Or I mean, whatever that is, if you can do that, if you can put little pins in somebody and make them feel their circulatory system, you can do a lot of crazy shit.
John: And maybe if it's an 80-year-old Chinese man, he knows exactly how to do it.
John: And you can suddenly fly or you can lucid dream or whatever it is.
John: You can get up early.
John: You get up earlier, you could, yeah, you could develop a work ethic.
Merlin: But you wouldn't want to start depending on that because you never know.
Merlin: One day the airport might collapse and suddenly there's no 80-year-old Chinese man with needles, right?
John: Exactly.
John: You're not going to carry him along with you.
Merlin: That must put you on a wooden beam sometimes.
Merlin: You must be thinking hard about what if this works, what if it works too well, right?
Merlin: Now you're back where you were before.
John: Well, I get, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Merlin: What about chiropractic?
Merlin: You think that's real?
Merlin: I've never done that, no.
Merlin: I did a website for a chiropractor many years ago, and like every chiropractor I've met, there's nobody who's just a chiropractor.
Merlin: They're all evangelists.
Merlin: And the thing is, to be dead honest, there's so little I needed to understand about chiropractic to make a three-page website.
John: Well, and it feels a little Tony Robbins, doesn't it?
Merlin: Oh, you bet it does.
Merlin: It feels like that religion we don't mention because we don't want to get – Just sign up for 20 sessions and you will be happier and more secure, financially secure.
Merlin: Obviously, it seems a little fantastical to hook someone up to a box and then tell them how many years of payments you're going to need to fix them.
Merlin: That seems a little wacky to me.
Merlin: But in this case, this guy – and the thing is – You've obviously never read The Secret.
Merlin: can I just literally beg you to never bring that book up again?
Merlin: It's, I'm not proud per se about having been involved in the self self-help industry.
Merlin: And it's been something that's being, I've had a very troubled relationship mentally with that for a long time.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But boy, I just, boy, that book makes me mad.
Merlin: And you know, and the fact that that Oprah, but like push that book, boy, that Oprah.
Merlin: Oh, that Oprah.
Merlin: Oh, that Oprah.
Yeah.
Merlin: Coming this fall to the Dumont Network.
Merlin: Oh, that Oprah.
John: But anyway, so I quit caffeine and I felt my circulatory system again.
John: But it was not pleasant.
John: It was unpleasant.
John: My circulatory system was protesting.
John: It was rebelling against me.
John: You got second order Mandarin needles.
John: Every little... That's right.
John: Every little corpuscle in my body was saying, you what?
John: You did what?
John: God.
John: Give us our magic juice, you...
Merlin: I have a friend who gets migraines, and he was explaining to me, and I actually asked my shrink about this because I was trying to get this guy some help.
Merlin: There's actually a famous migraine guy at the place where I go, where my shrink is.
Merlin: And he helps people with migraines.
Merlin: And apparently, and I don't want to get this wrong, but one reason migraines are so difficult to treat is
Merlin: is that they involve three different systems.
Merlin: I guess there are other things like this.
Merlin: But, you know, if you've got – there's all kinds of things that you can fix with a fairly blunt object, right?
Merlin: If you've got a basic tension headache, like taking Advil will probably help a little bit.
Merlin: But a migraine apparently combines the circulatory system, your muscles, and neurology.
Merlin: You know, you're kind of I'm sorry to be getting this wrong, Tom, if you ever hear this.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: It's not as simple as going like, oh, your neck is too tight.
Merlin: So now you have a headache.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's very difficult to get that combination of things fixed.
Merlin: And I think that's why people get so frustrated.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: But I mean, have you ever had a migraine?
John: No, but my mom gets them and I recognize that they are that they are nightmarish.
Merlin: But the thing is for me, it's like when I've tried – any squirrely change in diet I do, I'm very uncomfortable with any of those diets that mean I can't have coffee with cream or vodka or now tequila.
Merlin: I really like tequila now.
Merlin: But that's always – I found that over time that's been pretty reasonable for me, my buffet diet choosing.
Merlin: But there are ones.
Merlin: Like you ever do like one of those cleanses or something like that?
John: You know, there was a while back in the early 90s where there was a restaurant on Broadway called The Gravity Bar.
Merlin: And it was... I wish that were exactly what it sounds like.
Merlin: I wish you could go in and get like an extra tenth of a G in your chair.
John: Well, that's kind of what it was like.
John: You'd go in and you'd get... And it was a raw vegetable bar.
John: They would steam the vegetables just...
John: For a second, you know, you could get them raw, but you could also get them like steamed and then with a little side of tahini.
Merlin: It's just like a salad bar with a philosophy.
John: Except, well, yeah, right, exactly.
John: Except that it looked like it was in the future, and it only hired the most beautiful, like, fresh-faced, kind of those girls that have a little bit of a light coating of perspiration on their faces.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
John: They're so beautiful because they glow.
Merlin: They're wet.
Merlin: A little bit brown, like slightly darker skin sometimes.
John: And so I would go into the Gravity Bar.
John: I mean, believe me, I didn't eat another vegetable in any other component or capacity in my life.
John: But this place I would go in and I would have these.
John: And they were actually delicious meals.
John: That was where I learned to drink wheatgrass juice, which I love to this day.
John: So the Gravity Bar was, you know, it was like going to a spaceport and sitting and talking to the beautiful girls behind the counter and eating these vegetables with tahini.
Yeah.
John: And everybody else that was in the Gravity Bar was also in space with you.
John: And I would sit and take shots of wheatgrass juice like I was in an Old West saloon.
John: And I was daring all the people around me like, come on!
John: Who's going to drink with me?
John: Who's going to have another shot of wheatgrass juice?
John: People are like burping these... Gathering their hemp bags and quietly shuffling out in their...
John: And I'm like, I love it.
John: It's better than carrot juice.
John: In fact, give me a carrot juice.
John: Give me a carrot juice chaser.
John: And I dated some girls that worked there.
John: It was a very...
John: productive time for me.
Merlin: There's a lady you, one time when I visited there, a lady you'd been with for a pretty long time that worked in a restaurant, like a nice restaurant, or was it a cafe?
Merlin: Like a cafe kind of place, right?
John: A nice cafe, nice restaurant cafe.
Merlin: Again, we'll cut this out if it's problematic, but is it, am I getting that a lot of the women in your life are people who were able to give you food or drink?
Merlin: Early on – I'm just saying like – OK, so you didn't go with the Chinese needle guy.
Merlin: I'm guessing you didn't like find a reiki instructor or someone that works at TSA.
Merlin: It seems like a lot of these people who have been touched by your presence were women who –
John: Worked in the food service or coffee delivery business?
John: Well, it's true.
John: Later on, I started to date girls who worked in library science, which was a nice trend for a while.
Merlin: They want to help so much.
Merlin: They're like horses.
John: They speak softly, which is nice when you have a tendency to get agitated.
John: But in any case, this Gravity Bar, the one thing, as I spent more and more time there, I started to notice that they had a small shelf of books.
John: And, you know, being someone who has never shied away from a small shelf of books, I started to go over and, you know, and ask questions about these books.
John: And then eventually I bought one, which was about...
John: the Super Miracle Cleanse.
John: And this is the Super Miracle Cleanse of 25 years ago or whatever, where reading this guy's story, it was the story of how he went on this fast and then started taking these cleansing herbs.
John: And out of his body,
John: The way he described it was that our intestines and our inner workings are caked with hardened fecal matter, which constricts our pipes until all of our poo is just going through this tiny little aperture because all of this hardened black bile poo is still in us.
Merlin: It's like a fecal spackle that fills up every invagination of your gut.
John: Right.
John: Wow.
John: Well said.
John: You've read it.
John: Anyway, so... Is this coffee enema guy?
John: This isn't coffee enema guy.
John: Okay.
John: Although I did date a girl who had wheatgrass enemas as part of a treatment.
Merlin: I heard it's like a bicycle in her tube when it comes out.
John: But she was in... What about ear candling?
Merlin: Did she do ear candling?
John: I tried some ear candling, but I felt like it was, there's nothing a Q-tip can.
John: It's a scam.
John: Sorry, continue.
John: But in any case, so he's telling this story about, you know, he's sitting in a bathtub and he's extruding this hardened fecal matter that is like a bicycle inner tube except made of, you know, made of roofing tar.
Merlin: Made of like Carter administration era beef.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm thinking to myself, wow, this seems extreme.
John: This is like, if that's really in me, I'd like to get it out.
John: And he goes on and on about like, and then, you know, as the stuff comes cleaving off of the walls of your insides, it's pink life is restored.
John: And now all you need to do is eat one broccoli floret a day, but its vitamins are transmitted to you without, you know, like instantaneously and automatically.
Merlin: You become more efficient.
John: You become more efficient.
John: And I was like, this is incredible.
John: I'm really into this.
John: But then at the last chapter of the book, which I think most people don't get to, he talks about the last day of his fast, walking up and sitting Indian-style on the top of a mountain or something, and angels visit him, and they tell him that he's a good man, and they tell him how to juggle four beanbags, and they tell him...
John: how you know like they tell him all these magical things and they tell him that they could only visit him now because his his colon is pink and that's that's why angels don't visit us all because we because their primary interface with us is our colon and i was like this book
John: This book is just that much more horseshit.
John: I doubt any of this stuff happened to him.
John: Oh, he talked about getting a tapeworm out where he sat in a bathtub full of warm milk and the tapeworm likes the milk better.
John: Oh, come on.
John: And so he puts his little head out of your butt.
John: To drink the bathtub milk.
John: And then once his head comes out, you wait.
John: You don't jump on him right away.
Merlin: You grab a real gentle leg.
John: You don't jump on him because you'll spook him.
John: But once he gets comfortable and he kind of sticks a little bit more.
Merlin: Oh, he's relaxed.
Merlin: All that warm milk.
John: He's like, oh, this milk is amazing.
John: That's a sleepy little worm.
John: Then you grab his head and you wrap it around a pencil.
John: Oh, God.
John: And then you're twisting the pencil because the tapeworm is 45 feet long.
John: And you have to keep this pencil with the first foot and a half of a tapeworm wrapped around it.
John: You have to keep it hanging out of your butt for however long, for the week that it takes for you to gradually...
John: Plus the tapeworm out.
Merlin: Do you keep crudités near the tub to nourish yourself?
Merlin: I guess.
Merlin: You sit in there and you burn.
Merlin: That takes some planning, John.
John: You got to clear your calendar.
John: Well, either that or if you have stuff to do, if you have to go to work or whatever, you get out of the tub and you put on those like magic hammer pants.
John: You sit on one of those chairs where it's a kneeling chair and your butt never touches the thing.
John: Doesn't the milk go bad?
John: Well, I think you drain the milk.
John: Maybe you fill it up with milk a few times.
John: You're like, oh, what a day at work.
John: I got to get home to my milk bath and twist another foot and a half of this tapeworm.
Merlin: I get home and persuade my tapeworm.
John: So I so I got to that point and I suddenly I found myself sitting on a stool in a in a vegan restaurant reading a book about a guy who had who had like discharged 40 pounds of butt tar and then could talk to angels.
John: And I was like, you know what?
John: This whole thing is a scam.
John: I'm going across the street to get a bacon burger.
Merlin: I think that's a cautionary tale.
Merlin: I mean, I can see the appeal of that.
Merlin: And I got to say, first of all, every time I hear those stories, and I did have a friend, an ex, that worked at one of those really loopy, far out health food stores.
John: You're saying that he was in the band X?
Merlin: Could be.
Merlin: Could be.
Merlin: What was his name?
Merlin: DJ Bone Break?
Merlin: Is that his name?
Merlin: But she worked at a place where people were very into coffee enemas and they would run off these things for you.
Merlin: And then people would photograph.
Merlin: The thing is, you get deep into this stuff.
Merlin: You get deep into it and you start photographing it.
Merlin: And it becomes something almost like Hustler where people show each other their bicycle inner tubes.
Merlin: but but see i see in all of this i see a cautionary tale i mean at this point so i'm thinking of like remember the ads there was shell ubiquitous shell gas station ads when we were kids and they had the booklets you could get about how to drive safer and stuff but they always were like showing well they also gave you cars didn't they give you little uh little um did they give you cars
John: One of those gas stations in the 70s would give you a little matchbox.
Merlin: Sounds like a BP, like a BP kind of thing.
John: I don't remember.
Merlin: I'll find out.
Merlin: I'll find out.
Merlin: But you see those animations of the pistons going in and out in this basic animation, and they show you how if you didn't use Tecron in your gas, you'd get all gummed up.
Merlin: Have you ever seen the movie Emmanuel?
Merlin: Yes, I've seen several Emanuels.
John: Emmanuel goes to South Africa.
John: You know, that's how... What year was that?
John: Was it during apartheid?
John: It was a little bit later, but during apartheid, yeah.
John: And it was Black Emmanuel is what it was.
John: Oh, it was Black Emmanuel.
John: Yeah, but you know, in Emmanuel, it's soft core pornography, so there's much more plot than you want.
John: Maybe her core was soft when I had Showtime, buddy.
John: And much more plot than you want and not as much sex as you want.
Merlin: It's kind of like a... It's almost like an English travel documentary that happens to have boobs in it.
John: Right, that happens to have boobs.
John: But in every instance, when they would start to have sex, there'd be all the heavy petting and the kissing, the boob kissing, which is what happens in sex.
John: Yes.
John: And then the man would mount the female in the movie.
John: The titular Emmanuel.
John: And they would always cut at that point to either a video demonstration of how internal combustion engine works or a scene of a steam locomotive, you know, powering across the verdant belt.
Merlin: An X-1 rocket test.
John: An X-1 rocket test.
John: And the filmmakers...
John: never seemed to acknowledge that this was hilariously funny.
John: Because then they would cut back to them kind of having sex.
Merlin: You're being serious.
Merlin: You're not making a joke about a cartoon thing.
Merlin: I think you got some off-brand Emmanuel.
Merlin: That's not what I remember.
Merlin: I don't remember any Tecron.
John: I think it was later.
John: I think these are the later Emanuel's.
John: The early Emanuel's was more pure.
John: Yeah.
John: They just zoomed in on the boob kissing.
Merlin: Oh, brother, I love that boob kissing.
John: But the later ones had some steam locomotives and some Tecron demonstrations.
Merlin: I think the Tecron demonstration, though, in this instance, I think that becomes part of our mental model for how it works inside.
Merlin: We know it's very confusing.
Merlin: We know the poop comes out, so it must be all bad news in there.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's bad to get rid of that.
Merlin: I was reading one.
Merlin: You do lemon juice and salt, and there's just something about that.
Merlin: Even before you got to that last chapter, it's a slow soak in a warm, milky bath to get you to that point in the book.
Merlin: And then you get to the end.
Merlin: And at this point, I'm thinking that ancient shit's all that's keeping the angels off my mountain at this point.
Merlin: I want that in there.
Merlin: I want that impacted.
Merlin: I really want to limit the number of angels on my mountain, regardless of how I'm sitting.
John: Well, this is the thing, because you're up on your mountain, here come the angels, and you're like, okay, I still have enough presence of mind to know that this is unusual.
John: And, you know, I've spent my whole life trying to stay within the bounds, right?
John: Like, here's the bell curve, and I don't want to be... You don't want to be too far to the right on the angel bell curve.
John: I don't want to be on the flange in either direction on the angel bell curve.
John: And so if scraping the poop out of my insides puts me all the way out on the far end of this, I think maybe I want the poop back.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're the one that ate it.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Right.
John: It's part of me.
John: I mean, how am I to know whether or not I'll be surviving off that poop with the apocalypse?
John: It's all in there.
Merlin: No, there's also the eye thing.
John: Oh, this guy said like a crayon came out of him.
John: A crayon that he ate when he was six years old.
Merlin: Is that how he did it?
John: You're telling me that crayon's been in there for 40 years.