Ep. 83: "The Roderick Group"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
Merlin: I'm Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: John, don't take your love to town.
John: God, it's early.
Merlin: The worm has turned.
John: The worm has turned.
John: I just looked that phrase up not but two days ago.
Merlin: Yeah, is it German?
John: No, it's Shakespeare.
John: I knew that it was Shakespeare, but I thought that it meant... I've been using it, of course, as we all have forever.
John: And I thought that it meant, ah, now the jig is up.
John: Now the shoe is on the other foot.
John: Now the... You know what I mean.
Merlin: The switcheroo has been pulled.
John: switcheroo has been pulled that's exactly right but in fact in shakespeare it means literally that even the worm one day will rise up if you insult him enough if you if you if you step on the worm even the worm will turn
Merlin: I think I like that one better.
John: I liked it better, too.
John: And I was astonished at how neutered the term had become over the centuries.
John: You know, you're just sort of like, oh, the worm has turned.
John: Shmurm, shmurm.
John: But in fact, it means, no, the worm will rise up.
John: and fight you, even the worm.
Merlin: Oh, it's really chilling.
John: It's gnarly.
John: Yeah.
John: So all of a sudden, I no longer feel like I can use the worm has turned in the mundane events of my normal life.
John: I have to save it until I am... I mean, it's some shit that a superhero would say when they had almost completely been vanquished.
John: I don't want to talk about comic books.
Merlin: No.
John: I don't know.
John: It's a heavy... I think it's good enough.
Merlin: I don't know if I'm using this term correctly.
Merlin: I'm going to keep my powder dry.
Merlin: I like it so much that I'm only going to use it a couple times a year.
Merlin: It's only going to be if I've really... Let's say I'm talking to a doorman or something and I just want to say that's enough.
Merlin: The worm my friend has turned.
John: Except in almost every instance that I normally use it.
John: The other person is the worm.
John: And now I'm realizing I'm basically calling their... I'm singing their anthem.
John: And in fact, I should let them say, now, sir, the worm has turned.
John: The security guard, in whichever episode that was, he should have said, the worm has turned.
Merlin: You're a lot like Samuel L. Jackson in so many ways in Pulp Fiction, where at the end, he's been saying that Bible verse over and over, and then he realizes it means something else.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: I just realized the worm has turned is some cold-blooded shit.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: And he's going through a transitional period.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Maybe he's laying his guns down.
Merlin: You're kind of going through it.
Merlin: You're kind of a kind of worm.
Merlin: You're turning into a butterfly.
John: I've been laying my guns down lately, and I really don't know what's going to come of it.
John: Someone wrote me a very nice letter the other day saying, you know, I think that people, we all joke like that this podcast is helpful to people.
John: But then there's the next level, which is people saying, all kidding aside, it really does help.
John: And then there's the, you know, then there are multiple levels of, are you really kidding?
John: And there's people chatting our word choices.
John: Are you really kidding aside?
John: Yeah.
John: Then there's people that are mad at us for every other thing we say.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, I, I got a lot of, I don't like to talk about the show on the show, but I, uh, I saw a lot of nice responses to that too.
Merlin: It's, it's almost like your, uh, your followup on the Welsh troll in some ways.
Merlin: So I'd just like to congratulate.
Merlin: I'll cut all this out.
John: But I got a nice letter from somebody saying that you should legitimately compile your thoughts into some kind of volume because if those thoughts were all in one place, it would be a very helpful manual for people.
Merlin: Do you agree with that?
John: Well, no, and this is the problem because I am – more and more all the time, I am renouncing my own code in the sense that I – although – well, this is the problem.
John: Although people are terrible drivers and although they are bad citizens and although they need corrective measures and many, many, many, many, many people every day should get a light punch in the nose –
John: Some should get a stronger punch in the nose.
John: But I no longer feel confident that maybe history isn't against us.
John: Like, that...
John: What seems to us to be a passing phase, which is that this, that the, that the culture is like so concerned with in the, in the parlance of Merlin man, like, where's my parade this, like, where's my parade culture.
John: And the,
John: And the overwhelming focus on rights that are being infringed upon and a constant kind of licking of our wounds and doubling down on our...
John: our peak you know like p-i-q-u-e um but it seems like with every passing day this is the language now this is the way that people think and speak the the the insidiousness of it doesn't doesn't mean that it isn't the new truth
John: And more and more, I feel like I don't want to be on the wrong side of history, even if I feel like history has turned wrong.
John: Like, I need to be able to say to people, like...
John: There's a better way or there's a more elegant way without fuming so much.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I feel like I fume and that that is an infertile response to anything, really.
John: Fuming is the most neutered response.
John: And I need to be more active, and I don't – so I have to engage this culture on its terms, and I resent it.
Merlin: Well, you know, the attitude that you have had fairly recently historically makes sense if you're in a –
Merlin: in a club and somebody slaps you with a white glove, you're entirely, you're totally entitled to, to give that person a punch in the nose.
Merlin: It's just that like a lot of people who don't really know you are emailing you gloves and that doesn't scale.
John: Well, and also like, like it seems almost like the, like the kind of apocryphal guy who, who believes in a gentleman's handshake and then the unscrupulous developer, um,
John: shows up with bulldozers and tears down his house, uh, because the guy didn't read the fine print.
John: And although we all agree that the guy who didn't, you know, the guy who believes in a, in a gentleman's agreement is like morally ethically the hero of that, of that poem.
Um,
John: he still got his house torn down and he still is, you know, like you have to learn the, you have to learn to read the fine print.
John: And it seems like now more and more, the fine print is over sensitivity, hyper consciousness of language to the exclusion of meaning.
John: And, uh,
John: And a complete focus on the surface realms of umbrage and insult and very little interest in generalism and in...
Merlin: Well, that's what sells.
John: I mean it's – Well, I know, but these are the college kids.
Merlin: These are the kids that used to sit and debate – I mean even 20 years ago, sit and debate the finer points of – Yeah, but here's – part of the problem with that is that right now transgender rights are indistinguishable from liking Android.
Merlin: And people want to have the same kind of incredibly heated argument that goes nowhere that basically comes down to I wish more people agreed to be like me.
Merlin: And that is generally not a fruitful way to go and I think history has borne that out.
Merlin: Part of the problem with the parade thing –
Merlin: In my opinion is that if you want a parade, go start your own fucking parade and don't care who comes and don't care who likes it or not.
Merlin: That's empowerment.
Merlin: Empowerment is not sitting around and waiting for people to use the right word to make you feel like a whole human.
Merlin: It's going out and living your life the way that you want and being imperturbable about the people who see you as less than you want to be.
Merlin: And there's no amount of parsing language that's going to fucking improve that.
Merlin: It's just – it can't be done.
Merlin: Maybe in time, everybody will evolve.
Merlin: But the best way for that to evolve is everybody who wants to be in that parade all walking in the same direction and not worrying about who likes it or not.
John: Yeah.
John: Unfortunately, if I had chosen to live in a world – if I had chosen in college to be an electrical engineer –
Merlin: That's a good job, John.
John: That isn't.
John: It's a good-paying job.
John: I would be now living in a culture of engineers, specifically electrical engineers.
John: And within our culture... That's like being the car radio doctor.
Merlin: I don't think that's officially an engineer.
John: Within our culture, us electrical engineers sitting around at our drafting tables and our AutoCAD terminals and, you know, whatever, our function machines,
John: the culture of our profession and our side of the world.
John: Generally, electrical engineers tend to be very process-oriented, and within that, I would be able to pretty much adopt whatever kind of worldview I wanted to and maintain it
John: regardless irrespective of what the outside world is doing because i am living in my electrical engineer igloo or my uh my trapper minor trappers ball uh gang or whatever but you know i have chosen to be someone who is engaged with the culture specifically the leftist culture
John: Not just in America, but in the world.
John: I have chosen to be a progressive.
John: This is the problem.
John: I have chosen to be a progressive.
John: I am not a wonk.
John: I am a person who spent his whole life engaged in the culture of ideas.
John: And this is where the culture of ideas seems to be trending.
John: And I mean, you know, so often I get letters or you and I get letters from people who work in universities and who appreciate what we do.
John: And yet at the end of the at the end of the page, they always feel very good naturedly.
John: like they need to just kind of add like one little tag sentence, one little tag at the end saying something about, you know, how we need to take more feminist theory classes or how ping pong is, is ping pong or whatever, you know, some little, just like good natured, but still pointed lecture that we're doing it wrong.
John: And,
John: And it always comes from the same place, that they love that we are thinking outside of the mental apartment blocks, but that in the end, they're also confident that...
John: that we're doing it wrong, that we are, that, that we are, um, that, that joke racism isn't funny, that, that joke, that joking isn't funny when it is about these uber serious topics of identity and, uh, like, and because, because I'm a, because I have chosen progressivism as my language, um,
John: I can't make myself invulnerable to that.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I can't say, you don't get it.
John: You don't dig it.
John: You're not hip or whatever.
John: I have to engage progressives on their turf.
Merlin: But don't you – I mean there must be things that you enjoy except for this one thing.
Merlin: It's just that you don't feel the need to – well, I'm not trying to sound ungrateful for somebody liking them.
Merlin: I mean I can only speak for myself.
Merlin: It just – it doesn't bother me because it's – everybody is entitled to an opinion for sure and it's nice that people want to make some kind of connection.
Merlin: But maybe to your point, I think – I'm not crazy about that word brand, but it's hard to get away from.
Merlin: We have a personal brand about how we want the world to see us and what things we choose to associate ourselves with.
Merlin: And part of brand is in some ways story.
Merlin: And for a story to make sense, it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end.
Merlin: And the stories that we tell ourselves have to make sense and they have to not have plot holes.
Merlin: And the – why do I bring up branding?
Merlin: Because when you have a story in your head about how something goes, as much as you might really enjoy something or really – not just this but whatever.
Merlin: There might be something you really enjoy.
Merlin: But when you find out that Bill Moyers drove drunk, you can't help but have that like not sit right in your head.
Merlin: You turn it over because it doesn't fit the story.
Merlin: It doesn't fit the brand.
Merlin: I think that's what it is and I think that gets heavily amplified.
Merlin: On the web and in social media interactions because that's the – we don't – we stop noticing the huge amount of DNA that has us similar, meaning mostly people who can afford to have a computer and an internet connection.
Merlin: And it goes into that narcissism of minor differences about this one thing we can't reconcile in that story.
Merlin: And that's what people get fixated on.
Merlin: And I'm not saying everybody should sit around and sing kumbaya.
Merlin: I'm saying just –
Merlin: You know, can't everybody just go like do their own thing and be fucked up and have that be okay?
Merlin: Like it's why, you know, there's always been bad parties and we've always had the ability to walk away from them.
Merlin: You know, you need to hang out with a better class of people.
John: And your racist friend.
John: You and your racist friend.
John: If I seem a little distracted, it is because.
John: Did I hear beeping?
John: When I first moved into this house, my neighbors said, you got to get an alarm.
John: You have to get an alarm for your house because there are a lot of breakings and enterings.
John: And I was like, yeah, I have my own security system in the form of tiger traps.
Merlin: It's in the umbrella stand by the door.
John: But they were like, no, no, no.
John: You know, like a good friend of mine, his house got broken into like three times.
John: And he has dogs.
John: And I think the thieves just like actually threw some stakes up on the porch.
John: The dogs ran out on the porch to get the stakes.
Merlin: Was it Sylvester the cat?
John: The thieves ran in, shut the door behind the dogs, and then took everything.
John: And so I was like, okay, I'm going to get an alarm system.
John: But then it was that same process that you go through anytime you want a service now.
John: Just like ordering the phone or the internet or whatever.
John: It's like a whole menu of different services and attendant charges.
John: None of them are the right.
John: The menu is never right.
John: It's like, wait a minute.
Merlin: It's like the Wright brothers.
Merlin: We're living in the age of paper planes and bicycle engines.
Merlin: I've thought about doing that and I found it was like buying an Adobe product.
Merlin: It was completely inscrutable.
Merlin: The options and the names and the features and benefits, I find it totally overwhelming.
John: It's the worst.
John: I canceled my cable because I was insulted that internet cost...
John: whatever it costs a hundred dollars and cable was five dollars extra it's like why i don't subscribe to the new york times because they're like the sunday new york times is eight dollars of eight dollars a month and then you can get it every single day of the week for eight dollars and 25 cents and you're like fuck you you know what that's just i i hate the whole idea
John: that's right it's user so but but my friends were like you got to get this alarm system so i got an alarm system installed but i don't have a landline so yeah i had to get an alarm system that was cell phone based so when somebody breaks into your house it over the cellular for your convenience over the cellular wires it sends an alert
John: And I knew that it was a placebo.
John: I knew that this thing would never protect me from burglary or from fire or from anything.
John: But it was a thing that every time I leave the house, I push the buttons on the wall.
John: It gives me a reassuring series of beeps.
John: And I walk out of the house, secure in the knowledge that there is a fake thing guarding my house.
John: And that...
John: That this fake thing is going to act somehow as a deterrent against whatever like meth-y burglar wants in my house.
John: But I knew the whole time it is a cheap-ass system.
John: If it went off, none of my neighbors would hear it, let alone respond to it.
John: The company itself, probably the alarm would, there'd be so many dropped calls that it would take 20 minutes to send the message and then the cops would be here four hours later.
John: But just recently, the alarm has decided after four or five years of being in my house that it is having a malfunction.
John: And now it just beeps at random times.
John: And I called the company and went through a whole process with their customer service person where she tried everything she could to fix it.
John: from a long distance to no avail.
John: And now it wakes me up in the middle of the night.
John: Right now.
Merlin: I can hear it.
John: And now it's beeping downstairs.
John: Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
John: And I feel like... Not only do I feel like ripping it out of the wall, but I feel like ripping...
John: I feel like ripping America out of the wall.
John: This is the model.
John: This company knows that it is a shit service.
John: For those keeping track, it is called Monotronics.
Merlin: Is that a local company?
John: No, it is not.
John: It's one of these...
John: It's a national company.
John: It is probably owned by a series of offshore shell companies.
John: And ultimately, it is owned by General Electric or by... Halliburton.
John: It's probably owned by Halliburton.
John: And it is a pyramid scheme kind of company where what they're trying to do is get more customers all the time.
John: They are not trying to provide service.
John: They're out there just...
John: Just like going door to door, trying to recruit people into their... Does it really do it that often?
Merlin: Is it really going that often?
John: Well, it has never done this before until I sat down to do this podcast.
John: And then all of a sudden I was like, that thing just beeped now twice.
John: And now it's every... I think it's happening every 45 seconds.
John: It keeps me mindful.
John: Right, and so right now, it's like it is really keeping me in the present.
John: But it's an example.
John: I remember when I left Verizon, and I had been on Verizon.
John: Verizon had my first cell phone, and I was on Verizon for eight years or something like that.
John: And I wanted to get an iPhone, and they didn't have it.
John: And I said to the lady, I called him up and I was like, I've been on month to month for like five years now.
John: I'm canceling my service because I want to get an iPhone and I have to go to AT&T.
John: I don't like them any better, but I want to make this move.
John: And she said, well, you came in a year and a half ago because you dropped your phone in the bathtub.
Yeah.
John: And at that time, you signed a new contract.
John: And so you are not on month to month.
John: You are under contract to us.
John: And it's going to cost you $300 to get out of this contract.
John: And I was like, I did no such thing.
John: I dropped my phone in the tub and I came in and I paid some money.
John: And she said, right.
Merlin: You shook hands, but you didn't read the fine print.
John: I didn't read the fine print.
John: And they did not, you know, that's their game.
John: They didn't tell me that I was signing a new contract.
John: They said, well, we can give you this brand new phone for only $25.
John: And I was like, well, shucks.
John: You guys are nice.
Yeah.
John: And so I was so mad and I'm talking to this woman on the phone and I was like, this is your idea of customer service.
John: Like I'll never use Verizon again.
John: And she said quite wisely, you are calling to cancel your Verizon service.
John: Why would I think you were going to use Verizon again?
John: And I thought about it for a second.
John: I was like,
John: you know, life is long lady.
John: Like there's, there's another 50 years of me interacting with phone companies and you are, you're, you're, you're like, you're burning this bridge right now with me over some couple hundred bucks.
John: Um, but that's your, you know, that's your attitude and your attitude is that next, next time you'll have the iPhone and then I'll just like a little patient lamb.
John: I'll just be led over to be tied up at your corral and
John: That was kind of a tortured metaphor.
John: But anyway, so this monotronics thing, and I just feel like, I don't know, I'm back to wanting to put a flamethrower to everybody.
John: And I just don't feel like that's... I can't continue to be my...
Merlin: my method well i i'd like to continue sounding very sage and uh and and distant from these things but that makes me incredibly emotional it makes me want to tear america out of the wall and because every single one of them is a shit storm there's not one of them that you can get mobbed up with that's going to be good i mean ask ask how many people do you see walking around in a verizon shirt and being really happy like you just it doesn't go with the verizon tattoo sure
Merlin: Only Verizon can judge me.
John: It's all the startups down in San Francisco.
Merlin: It's disruptive.
John: Just shovel that shit out the door and let people deal with it, I guess.
John: And we'll have our $100 million and we'll be on to the next garbage pile.
Merlin: I had a similar galling experience as long as we're talking about customer service.
Merlin: We should really get back to food and parenting.
Merlin: But this one really killed me.
Merlin: At some point, something happened later on.
Merlin: I wanted to do something different with my phone, find out if I'm eligible for a thing.
Merlin: And they go, oh, well, you're the same as you.
Merlin: Actually, you just re-upped your contract.
Merlin: a few months ago.
Merlin: And I was like, what, an auto-renew thing?
Merlin: You changed your options.
John: You changed your login pin.
Merlin: Close.
Merlin: Even better.
Merlin: I added a service.
Merlin: I added tethering so that I could use my phone to connect using my iPad.
Merlin: I could tether to my phone.
Merlin: So I asked them to charge me extra for something that's really pretty much an invisible
Merlin: non-service and that renewed my contract with them which yeah that that's really gracious of them to you know but you know you pay for it and then you get that and you know it's like the whole thing you know the the part that i can't reconcile in this story is that like i really wish i could just deal with people and have a relationship that didn't feel like i constantly have to monitor like exactly how and when i'm being fucked and
Merlin: And whether that's something like a company who keeps emailing me stuff even though I never signed up for anything, silly stuff like that.
Merlin: But I mean you think about what you pay for a phone.
Merlin: It really, really adds up.
Merlin: And it makes me – it makes my world small because I do stuff like right now I have my phone forward to Google Voice just because I don't get real phone calls anymore.
Merlin: The vast majority of calls that I get, like this afternoon, I got a phone call.
Merlin: I don't know what it's about.
Merlin: I don't speak Spanish.
Merlin: I think it might be about refi mortgages.
Yeah.
John: Uh, you don't have a mortgage.
Merlin: I know, but I got a phone.
John: I get, you know, I had a guy come and, and fix my aunt problem.
John: I finally had an exterminator.
John: Well, wait, wait for it.
John: The guy comes, he's like, and the woman on the phone, I said, how much does it cost to have?
John: And she says, well, answer really hard to eradicate.
John: We'll have a guy come out with a free estimate.
John: I was like, free estimate.
John: So the guy comes out and of course, like he comes out at eight 30 in the morning and I have somewhere to be that one day.
John: I have somewhere to be that one day at nine, you know, nine 15.
John: And I'm like, all right, all right, let's hurry this along.
John: Like what, what's the story?
John: And he's like, Oh yeah, you got ants.
John: All right.
John: I said, yeah, how much, how much to get rid of the ants?
John: And he was like, well, it's a $275 process.
John: Uh, and I was like, fine.
John: You know what?
John: You're here.
John: I'm not going to comparison shop.
John: I'm not going to send you away.
John: Get rid of the ants and like, like let's, let's get this happening.
John: The ants have been driving me crazy all summer.
John: And so he pulls out this paperwork and he's like, all right, well let's get you signed up for a plan.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
John: And I was like, what?
John: What?
John: You're an exterminator.
John: Like, you got dirt on the knees of your pants.
John: What are you talking about?
Merlin: Well, it's right there in the name.
Merlin: Once you get rid of the ants, why do I need a plan?
John: He says, ants are really hard to get rid of.
John: Usually what happens is we kill the ants, then they come back.
Merlin: Oh, he's helping you.
John: And if we sign you up for a plan, then every time we come back, it's just a $79 charge.
John: But if we don't sign you up for a plan, then every time we come back, you have to charge you $300 again.
John: And I was like, so what's the plan?
John: And he was like, well, the plan is for $49 a month, we keep the ants out for good.
John: And I was like, hmm.
Merlin: So every six months I'm paying for a visit, essentially.
John: Yeah, I'm paying you $49 a month forever?
John: Or until, at what point do you feel like you are confident that they won't come back?
John: And he's like, well, ants are really hard to eradicate.
John: And I was like, listen, man, I did not.
John: I had you here to kill some ants.
John: I did not think I was joining a club or or a cult or whatever, whatever you think, whatever kind of thing this is like a plan.
John: Seriously, you think I'm going to sign up?
John: And have you just auto-deduct 50 bucks a month and you hope that I forget about it?
John: I mean, that's what they all do.
John: That's the whole business model now.
John: Half of American companies, their business model is, let's hope they signed up for direct pay and forget about it.
Merlin: Yeah, I think recurring revenue is really huge in corporate America.
John: Yeah, right.
John: So I would just sit here like a milk cow for the next 20 years while this company is just like...
John: Oh, you know, just 50 bucks a month and the ants never come back.
John: And I'm like, wow, I'm so lucky.
John: It's just like, so the guy killed the ants.
John: It's been two weeks.
John: I haven't seen an ant, but I'm starting to wonder whether the ants aren't, whether there's not, I mean, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be surprised to catch that guy in my bushes with a bucket of ants.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Ants are a complicated problem, John.
Merlin: Nobody really knows where ants come from.
John: I went out the other day and there were ants.
John: I saw a hive of ants in my...
John: I saw a hive of ants in my driveway and I went in the house.
John: They were the same little ants.
John: Went in the house, very patiently put the mail in my mail jar.
John: I put the keys in the key cup.
John: Took my coat off, took my shoes off, put on my loafers, put on my cardigan sweater.
John: Went into the kitchen, boiled a pot of boiling water.
John: When the water was boiling hot, I carried it out into the driveway and I poured the boiling water down the ant hole.
Merlin: You should offer to do that for other people.
Merlin: It was.
Merlin: $50 a month.
John: It was total carnage.
John: Feels so good.
John: I heard a million souls scream out all at once and then go silent.
John: And I felt no remorse.
John: I felt only peace.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: We were driving back from my sister-in-law's yesterday and listening – we listened to Pretend to Fall all the way through.
Merlin: And at some point I turned around and said to my daughter, hey, that's Uncle John.
Merlin: You should just know that in my household, you are known for doing something podcasty with me.
Merlin: She knows that, my daughter.
Merlin: And we've played your records a lot.
Merlin: But mainly what she knows you for is something that she can recite from memory.
Merlin: Which is I'll sometimes say, so what are we going to do?
Merlin: And she says, you go outside, you take off your clothes, you throw a garbage can through the window and you set the place on fire.
Merlin: That is what you are known for.
Merlin: That is your claim to fame in our home.
Yeah.
John: You're raising them right.
Merlin: We went to that place that – when you first suggested that as a palliative for dealing with the stuff on her burger, last time we went to that place here in our neighborhood to get her a burger, I said – I looked in the woman's eyes and I said, this is my daughter.
Merlin: She's five.
Merlin: It's very, very important that when you make her burger, it have exactly three things on it.
Merlin: It should have some bread.
Merlin: in the form of a bun it should have a a meat burger and it should have cheese and there should be absolutely nothing else on there that's it and then of course my daughter indicates her what would happen if they got it wrong she said that yeah she says or we're gonna go outside take off our clothes throw a garbage can through the window and set the place on fire and i said no she's not really gonna do that
John: Kids say the darndest things.
Merlin: You know, the thing about stories, John, you know, we get to tell our own story for a while, but if the story is really good, eventually it's not our own anymore.
Merlin: It becomes somebody else's story.
John: That's right.
John: It goes out into the stream.
John: And then the worm turns.
Merlin: Worms.
Merlin: We've got annelids, right?
Merlin: I think they're annelids.
Merlin: Is that the phylum?
Merlin: You got worms.
Merlin: You got ants.
Merlin: I did pretty poorly in biology.
John: I find that hard to believe.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I was telling my lady today how when I was in seventh grade, when I was in military school, I had perfect grades and perfect deportment.
Merlin: I had straight A's like a lot of people.
Merlin: And I was the only person in my entire company in military school that didn't have a demerit all year.
John: Wow.
John: Yeah.
John: Wow.
John: Really?
Merlin: 120 kids or something.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: You were born again hard.
Merlin: I was scared.
Merlin: That's what I was.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then I went into consumer math in eighth grade.
Merlin: And so it's pretty much all downhill from there.
John: You know, I reflect often on my cadet years in the Civil Air Patrol.
John: And, you know, I think there were a couple of points along the way where I could have, my life could have gone a very different route.
John: But, you know, I was in the Civil Air Patrol in Alaska in the 70s, and most of the facilities that we were afforded by the Air Force at the time were either built... Well, generally had been built in World War II.
John: Like, if the Air Force built a new building, they moved into it, and they abandoned the old World War II building, and then the Civil Air Patrol was, you know, given access to these kind of...
John: shabby places.
John: And so there was that kind of weird military mothball smell to everything and a kind of
John: You know, like, the doors all shut really solidly, but there was a sense that there was black mold in the walls.
John: And it did not... None of it filled me with a feeling that pursuing a career in the military was, like, going to be a safe and enveloping environment.
John: You know what I mean?
John: It was...
John: It was always very cold in those places and not unfriendly, but disinterested.
John: That was the thing.
John: Being on a military base as a young kid or as a person in his early teens, they were completely disinterested.
John: in me in in my thoughts in who i was like i was being judged entirely on how on you know obviously duh on the conformity how well you know my deportment exactly as you say and i didn't i guess i didn't um
John: Whatever it is that people find in the military culture, they want the challenge or they want to excel or succeed in a realm where excellence is measurable.
John: Those things were not communicated to me in an appealing way.
John: And I just always felt like...
John: estranged in that environment and i and and although i was the biggest military uh like army nutcase as a kid i i didn't you know i and and i went into that cadet program with this with the real passion for it i kind of came out the other side not not disillusioned but just disaffected like it sounds like it wasn't a good cultural fit
John: It wasn't, and that was even before... I mean, it's not like I went to boot camp and said, wait a minute, there's no room in here for my artistic sensibility.
John: You know, I was 12.
John: And I guess what it ended up being was that I just didn't get off on it.
John: And I watched other kids really get off on it.
John: But I kind of...
John: You know, my dad was a member of another organization.
John: So he was a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol because he was the wing legal officer.
John: And that entitled him, believe it or not, to wear a white turtleneck as his uniform.
John: Wow.
John: A white turtleneck with a blue blazer and like a... That sounds like a colonel of Spanish language literature.
John: It was incredible.
John: He was the only one.
John: I mean, everybody else was in Air Force uniforms and he was in this white turtleneck with a blue blazer and then a crest like a... You would look so good in that.
John: Right.
John: An eagle grasping a propeller in gold braid on the pocket of his jacket.
John: He was such a badass.
John: But, and, you know, of course, as wing legal officer, like everything my dad did, he assumed that 80% of the rules of the organization didn't apply to him.
Merlin: This is a man who had his own private train car from his employer.
John: But my dad was also a member of a secret organization called the Quiet Birdman.
Yeah.
Merlin: And as much as you can say, is this aviation related?
John: That's correct.
John: The Quiet Birdman was an organization founded after World War I, founded by like former World War I fighter aces.
John: And it was a group that started meeting in some Italian restaurant in New York City, you know, in 1920.
Yeah.
John: And it was a group that you could not join.
John: You had to be tapped.
John: You had to be invited by the current membership.
John: And then once you were tapped, you were a life member.
John: And I think it only cost a dollar to join.
John: And then you have, you were a life member and like Eddie Rickenbacker and Charles Limburg were members and Neil Armstrong.
John: I mean, it's one of these groups of like Gordon Cooper.
John: No one, no, they don't, they don't talk about it.
John: You're not supposed to talk about the quiet Birdman, but I really cool ID card too.
John: So this is the thing.
John: I still have all my dad's Quiet Birdman stuff.
John: And I've talked to other children of Quiet Birdman who have passed into the next dimension, who have flown up into the clouds and not come down.
John: And they claim that when their fathers died, someone from the Quiet Birdman showed up and collected the membership card and all their paraphernalia.
John: Oh.
John: So that didn't happen in my case, and I challenge any listener who is a member of the Quiet Birdman to try and come get it.
Merlin: If you're ready to go nose-to-nose with the old monotronics.
Merlin: That's right.
John: Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
John: You ready to deal with the 45-second beeping?
John: Come at me.
John: Come at me, bro.
John: Wow.
John: So quiet Birdman.
John: So my dad would go to these quiet Birdman meetings.
John: And of course, in Alaska, there are a lot of quiet Birdman because that's where old astronauts go to retire.
John: And he would go off to these meetings.
John: And it was like he was with his fraternity.
John: I would say, why don't you show me the Phi Gamma Delta handshake?
John: And he would say, never.
John: And he never did.
John: I asked him on his deathbed to show me his fraternity handshake.
John: And he said, no chance.
John: Good for him.
John: Died with it.
Mm-hmm.
John: But the quiet Birdman, he was even more secretive about.
John: And I was like, what happens at those meetings?
John: And he said, everybody else gets drunk and then we all tell dirty jokes.
John: And I was like, really?
John: And he's like, pretty much.
John: It's like, seriously?
John: You...
John: You get all dressed up and you go off to this secret meeting in a hotel somewhere, just sit around and tell dirty jokes with astronauts.
Merlin: I don't believe it.
John: It doesn't sound like you for a second.
Merlin: And he was like, well, it's just, it's just, it's just plausible enough that like somebody who wasn't thinking about it a lot would believe it.
Merlin: But I'm guessing there were, there was a serious fucking ruckus going on with the quiet Birdman.
John: Well, that's what I'm thinking too.
Merlin: And you know, my dad had no, maybe like you got like a black bag type thing.
Merlin: Like they might've been out doing some stuff, you know, little mini missions.
John: There were plenty of opportunities for him to go sit around with drunks and listen to dirty jokes.
John: He didn't.
John: I mean, yeah, that's right.
John: He didn't need to go to this, this stupid thing.
John: And then, you know, the other all the other shit that my dad was into.
John: I wonder what the quiet birdman were up to.
John: And the problem is, if you try and figure it out, if you go online, it's true.
John: It's like the it's like the Bohemian Grove.
John: You get a, you get a, you get a glancing overview on the internet like, oh yeah, that's right.
John: It's an organization and here are the members and everything else is secret.
John: So go fuck yourself.
John: Yeah.
John: And you go, well, no, seriously, what, why in the hell would Warren Buffett go sit out in the trees with Henry Kissinger for a week?
John: Like what is in it for him?
John: And they're like, oh, we tell dirty stories.
John: I'm guessing teenage girls.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know, but I'm not buying it.
Yeah.
John: But the thing is, I am scared enough of the organization that it's not like I would try and impersonate a quiet Birdman.
John: I think the average age of the quiet Birdman is probably 84.
John: And they would know in an instant.
John: I'd walk in the door and they'd go, hmm, what's this, a flapper and aileron?
Merlin: And I'd be like, ah, and they're like, ah.
Merlin: Show me your hands.
Merlin: Show me your hands is right.
Merlin: I'm the first one in three generations to not, well, in as much as I can say, as you know.
Merlin: I'm not in any secret organizations, and my grandfather was in Scottish Rite, as was my father.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Were you at Demolay?
Merlin: My mom was in Rainbow Girls, and her, let's just say, quote-unquote boyfriend, who was a figure skater, was in Demolay.
Merlin: And they loved to dance, but no.
John: They're very rhythmic people.
Merlin: Yeah, he went over to the other side.
Merlin: So anyway, but it's really strange.
Merlin: The thing that's weird to me is that like with secret organizations is like, you know, it's a secret organization.
Merlin: And you're not allowed to talk about stuff.
Merlin: But people, they still – it isn't secret enough that like you don't know what the logo looks like.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: If you're in – like for example, I think I might have told you this before, but I had all my dad's old lighters on display in my office.
Merlin: My first job, I had a private office with all –
Merlin: decorated.
Merlin: So I had like 15 really cool lighters.
Merlin: This is a lighter from Korea and stuff like that.
Merlin: And one of them had the symbol with the compass and the G in it.
Merlin: No, what is that?
Merlin: That's Freemasons.
Merlin: That's Freemasons, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And a guy, a local printer came in to talk about a job we were getting done.
Merlin: And he goes, are you a Mason?
Yeah.
Merlin: I said, no, no.
Merlin: My dad died.
Merlin: I've got his lighter.
Merlin: He's like, you thinking about coming to Mason?
Merlin: Who?
Merlin: But he said it like he was offering me a lollipop in a white van.
Merlin: And I was like, no, I – no, it's nothing I've ever – he slides his card across my desk and says –
Merlin: You let me know when you're ready to become a man.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I'm still not ready.
John: Still not a man.
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: I buried the lighter.
Merlin: I don't want to eat it.
Merlin: What about the military?
Merlin: I had – in sixth grade, a year before I did military school, I think the only thing that made military school appealing to me was maybe some teen comedies I had seen involving military school and a book I got out of the library.
Merlin: In sixth grade on West Point.
Merlin: And it all seemed extremely orderly.
Merlin: I learned how to make hospital corners.
Merlin: I learned – I was really into it for a while.
John: Right.
John: Bounce a quarter on your bed.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: I knew exactly like the little – how long the flap should be at the top, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Merlin: Today I'm a bush pig.
Merlin: I can barely find room on my desk to put the mic.
John: Did you ever short sheet a guy's bed?
Merlin: No, I was aware of the technology, but I never deployed it.
John: This is the thing.
John: When I was in the Civil Air Patrol... It doesn't seem like it would work.
Merlin: Who doesn't look in their bed?
John: But we short-sheeted people's beds all the time.
John: And your bed, you pull open the sheets, and it's not like it catches you where you...
John: You go to slide into your bed.
John: You guys have modestly inconvenienced me.
John: Yeah.
John: But, you know, you pull open your sheets and then, oh, it's not a bed.
John: It's an envelope.
John: I mean, and it was hilarious.
John: And I learned this technology when I was 12 years old, 12, 13 years old.
John: And I have never in the rest of my life, 30 odd years since then, I have never had the opportunity to short sheet somebody's bed.
John: And I'm always looking for it.
John: Is that right?
Yeah.
Merlin: Because who makes their bed?
Merlin: You go on those cruises.
Merlin: They got sheets, right?
Merlin: Couldn't you short sheet Jonathan Colton's bed?
John: I guess.
John: I guess I could if I could get into his room.
John: But I'm in all those rooms.
John: Everybody's got a key card.
Merlin: Do you think he'd be frustrated?
Merlin: I think he would.
Merlin: I think he might have a moment of reflection for like a week.
John: I think he would.
John: I think he would think about that for a while.
Merlin: I'd wonder more about how somebody got in my room, probably.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: I think it would be most effective on Paul Saboren's bed.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But it seems unfair.
John: It seems like short sheeting, once you learn it, you should be able to use it the rest of your life.
John: And this is just like, I still think about it.
John: But you know what?
John: This cruise this year, I'm going to look for the opportunity to short sheet.
Merlin: John, I know you're going through a transitional phase.
Merlin: We'll probably end up cutting this out.
Merlin: But I just want to say, so far today, you have revealed...
Merlin: the brand name of your home security system.
Merlin: You've indicated that you have, let's be honest, purloined quiet bourbon credentials.
Merlin: And now you're talking about what kinds of pranks you're going to deploy.
Merlin: You might want to think about playing it a little bit closer to the vest.
John: Well, I feel like it's maybe open book season for me.
John: Good for you.
John: Like this business of the guy saying, when you're ready to be a man, I do feel like there was some important moment
John: Important moment in the 50s montage of my young life where I should have gone through some kind of fraternal hazing where peers, slightly older, dressed in robes, paddled me or put hot wax on me or made me perform some kind of ritualistic... Sounds like just another weekend in Germany.
John: Well, yeah, except the Germany that I experienced...
John: I was all by myself.
John: I was in these hallowed halls, but there was nobody there to drip hot wax on.
Merlin: Why do you think you weren't, your father obviously walked down some very secret corridors of power.
Merlin: Why do you think you were not drawn into these organizations?
Merlin: Was he protecting you?
John: No, no.
John: I think that it was clear from the beginning that I was too lippy, as my dad would say.
John: You're too lippy.
John: What, you mean like sass mouth?
John: Yeah, by which he meant like the presumption of somebody who talks as much and as floridly as I do and did.
John: Is that I'm not, you know, I'm not stoic enough.
John: Not...
John: you know, not John McCain-y enough, although I guess he was a chatterbox.
Merlin: You're kind of not, strictly speaking, a team player.
John: Not a team player, that's right.
Merlin: Not that you're against the team, but there's no John in team.
John: I mean, I definitely wouldn't leave a man behind, but I'm also not, I mean, if somebody, seriously, if I was being interrogated in a foreign prison,
John: I would just instinctively have a lot more to say, a lot more I wanted to say, than just my name, rank, and serial number.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, that seems so limiting.
John: And maybe some of the things I would say would be obfuscating.
John: Maybe it would, you know, maybe I would create a whole, I'd create a whole mind picture in my interrogator's little notebook where he would be, you know, they'd be teasing out all the hidden meanings for years.
John: I don't think you can understate, wait a minute, I don't think you can overstate the value of someone who appears to be
John: cracking under pressure and flooding them with misinformation that's like a double reverse mindfuck and that would be me i mean i'm you know i'm not going to sit there you pretend you pretend to crack under pressure yeah stand at attention that's what i do too i would definitely pretend pretend to crack under pressure the problem is then they go they try and vet some of this stuff like you got to give them some real information
John: You got to give them the easy stuff's got to be real so that they can go, they can go vet it and say like, oh, well, he must be telling the truth.
Merlin: They haven't used that thing in months.
Merlin: Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
John: And then, you know, I, I mean, I feel like there's, there has always been a role for me in America's intelligence services, but they have this, they're so fixated on like, have you ever done drugs?
John: Like, what do you, all you're going to get is squares.
John: If that's your, if that, if that's your litmus test.
Merlin: I've been holding off saying it, John, cause I don't want to do anything to, you know, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but have you ever wondered if maybe that was just something to scare off the people who weren't really serious?
Merlin: Because again, I mean I really – we've covered this a little in the past, but I think being somebody who's found new levels of rock bottom might be just the sort of person you would want on a certain very particular kind of mission.
Merlin: No, maybe you're not going to go into like Bosnia and give out Frosted Flakes, but there might be something extremely specific.
Merlin: And with all the NSA information stuff, this might be actually a unique opportunity right now.
Merlin: People would know exactly what kind of mission you would be right for.
Merlin: Would you still want to do it today?
Yeah.
John: Well, this is the problem that the, as soon as I became familiar with the idea that there were agents and then those, there were operatives, right?
John: I'm going to get so many letters.
John: That's enough.
John: I don't want to be run by somebody else.
John: I mean, you know, maybe, yeah, sure.
John: Somebody like maybe director of operations, right?
John: But I don't want to be an asset.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I'm nobody's fucking asset.
John: I'm my own asset.
Mm-hmm.
John: And this is the problem.
John: I don't want to be recruited by some ding-a-ling and not have the full picture and just be out.
Merlin: You'd have to really be a company man.
Merlin: You would really have to give yourself... First of all, a lot of it's just going to be extremely tedious.
John: Yeah, you sit around the safe house for four years and then all of a sudden your digital watch beeps three times and you're like, huh?
John: Just as somebody blows the door.
Merlin: And that's your signal to go watch something with binoculars for two years.
Merlin: Don't you think?
Merlin: I mean, I just think a lot of what that stuff is.
John: Here's the thing.
John: A lot of these secret organizations, like the Quiet Birdmen and the Freemasons, they're kind of dying on the vine.
John: Those guys are... They were not successful at recruiting a new generation.
John: But what if we started, kind of like our guest house hostel for... Oh, for snipers.
John: For snipers.
John: What if we started a secret...
John: organization that was actually an intelligence service, like a civilian intelligence service, sort of a, a Halliburton, but of, of like, uh, made up entirely of British guys with explosives in their suitcases and like renegade kind of captain Haddock style, surly, uh, retired, uh,
John: Retired agents that never were actually employed.
Merlin: It sounds like a perfect fit.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So it could be it's not governmental in nature.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's not strictly private in nature.
Merlin: It's semi-private in nature.
Merlin: Obviously, it's got to be extreme secrecy maintained.
John: It's all about different levels of clearance, different – you get all the spy craft –
John: all the tunnel digging and the fake IDs, the counterfeit money, the false passports, the, you know, the, like all the, all the, all the spy craft, but without maybe, uh,
Merlin: Expertise.
John: Or danger.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I think it's a great idea.
Merlin: I don't know if we'd have a Facebook group or sell T-shirts, but it's something where I think it's something a lot of people late in life would be interested in.
Merlin: I think a lot of us have made these.
Merlin: I'm going to say fifth or sixth grade.
Merlin: I think I had a variety of these organizations that I spent a lot of time coming up with org charts and deciding who was going to be vice president under me and stuff like that.
Merlin: But, yeah, and certainly I have to think that it would be something, I don't know, like an A-team type thing where because of our various connections and our various industries that were involved and we would know people who need help, right?
Merlin: You would know people.
Merlin: You would actually be able – and it would be like a reverse business.
Merlin: We might not be advertising in the yellow pages, but we could go to people and say, you need a little bit of help from the Roderick group.
John: Right, from the Roderick group.
Right.
Merlin: I love names like that so much.
Merlin: You cannot tell anything about what they do.
John: Yeah.
John: And the business card just says the Roderick Group.
Merlin: You hear the Rand Corporation.
Merlin: Doesn't the Rand Corporation sound like they make cogs?
John: Yeah.
John: The Rand Corporation, for a long time, I thought they made crackers.
Yeah.
Merlin: The Roderick Group.
John: And then I realized, oh yeah, the Rand Corporation is like fully Illuminati.
John: I wonder how long the Roderick Group would have to be in operation before the Illuminati contacted us.
Merlin: What, for like an acquisition or a merger?
John: Or just, you know, initially to feel us out, see what we were all about.
Merlin: Or potentially blotting us out because we were... Are you seeing like what's involved?
Merlin: Is this somebody we need to take seriously?
Merlin: Is this somebody who's family we need to take to Brazil or something?
John: Right, right, right.
John: And then when they realize that we're an eminently serious organization with a great font and really nice looking flow charts.
Merlin: That would be really important today.
Merlin: The millennials are very visual.
Merlin: I think we would need a great logo.
Merlin: Personally, I'd like to stay away from Facebook.
Merlin: I don't have an account anymore.
Merlin: You'd have to manage that or somebody in that division.
Merlin: I'm bad at that.
Merlin: I love helping people, though.
Merlin: I'd love to reach out.
John: For a long, long time,
John: i really felt when i when i searched my feelings this is the thing so you know sometimes late at night i sit down i sit down uh indian style or um what's the uh what's the non-offensive what's the politically correct native american style
John: Native American style.
John: But I thought it was dot Indian.
John: I thought Indian style was dot Indian.
John: Or is that woo-woo Indian?
Merlin: Like dot dot I-N?
Merlin: Talking about the top level domain?
John: Yeah, okay.
John: Dot biz.
John: No, you know, I sit down and I focus on my third eye and I say, what am I here for?
Hmm.
John: And I've gotten a lot of conflicting messages over the years retired from, from yourself.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: From myself.
John: Retired director of CIA was, I think it was a false flag for a long time.
John: Uh, my mind was trying to tell me something that, that, uh, that just wasn't possible, but what I was really getting at was, and I think we, I may have mentioned this to you before when the UFOs come, they are going to need a human envoy to,
John: They're going to need someone to represent humanity that has everyone's best interest at heart.
John: They can't pick somebody from the United Nations or from the United States, certainly.
Merlin: John, all those people are compromised.
John: They're all compromised.
John: And the thing is, the UFOs, I'm fairly confident, have vetted me completely now with the owl ambassadors.
Yeah.
John: And I feel like it's all part of the application process, a gradual, slow... As I build more and more people that understand that my word is bond, it's all in service of this...
John: this future calling where they arrive, right?
John: And there's suddenly, just as you've seen so many times, giant motherships hovering over all the capitals of the earth.
John: And everyone in Singapore and everyone in St.
John: Petersburg, they all run outside and they're looking up and here are these inscrutable, you know, humming motherships.
John: And there's a couple of days where everybody freaks out, but there's no communication from them.
Mm-hmm.
John: It's just like, what do they want?
John: What do they want?
John: And the F-16s go up, but they... Vaporized.
John: Or even just the instruments go haywire.
John: Nobody's hurt, right?
John: The planes land under their own power, guided by unseen hand.
John: And just as all the world's governments and all of our technology are revealed to be impotent against these superior foes, then all of the television sets and all of the radios all crackle at once, and they all come on, and it's all just sort of a green screen, and then my face.
John: Translated into all the languages of the earth, which I speak fluently because of the babblefish that's been put inside my ear.
Merlin: Yeah, they put it by your collarbone.
Merlin: They give you a little implant that's a babblefishian implant.
John: And I say, people of earth.
John: Hello, I am a fellow Earthling.
John: I have been charged with this task, enviable task, to speak on behalf of the UFOs who have come in peace.
John: And they seem threatening, but they assure me they are not.
John: And so, as the speaker now for them and speaker of us to them...
John: send me your questions in self-addressed stamped envelopes to the Roderick group.
John: Dot biz.
Merlin: For some reason I keep thinking of, uh, I know you're not crazy about the opening music.
Merlin: Uh, there will be blood.
Merlin: Imagine the scene when Daniel goes back out and he's going, he goes to the guy and he wants to start buying land and he wants to find out what's available, what parcels, what this person's going to need to do that.
Merlin: Who's holding out.
Merlin: I,
Merlin: I know it's not exactly equivalent, but I kind of see you in that position where you're kind of the real estate agent for earth where they would come in or hearts and minds, right?
Merlin: They come to you and you're able to give them the lay of the land.
Merlin: So everybody gets paid and hopefully not vaporized or have their –
Merlin: instruments screwed up but you would be able to to act both ways between them the the biggest problem i think you having credibility with aliens is a foregone conclusion but how would you how would you would you feel like you needed to build that credibility vis-a-vis earthlings before you got the uh the go-ahead uh well here's the thing ufos here's the thing what what earthlings would recognize in me
John: you know instantaneously is that i'm a straight shooter right and so the the the ufos often have to appear to humans in the form of their dead fathers yeah something they would understand right but in my case that the they recognize that they can appear to me in their natural state and i will comprehend even if it even if their natural state is just a
John: you know energy ether or a bean pod or whatever it is that that aliens are in their natural environment maybe it's a you know a a sort of a trans-dimensional um z28 or whatever whatever it is not ants if they're ants
John: I'm going to have some explaining to do.
John: But surely they already know.
John: And maybe that's why they're sending me these encoded messages, because they recognize that I'm not a patsy.
John: Maybe, you know.
Merlin: That sounds like such a lonely job, though.
Merlin: The emissary between worlds.
John: Ultimately it would be, but that is the kind of sacrifice I'm prepared to make for my people.
John: And I think the citizens of Earth would, you know, I would say... You're referring to the Earthlings as your people.
John: Earthlings, right.
John: I would say, Earthlings, listen, we don't have a lot of bargaining.
John: room here because they have superior technology and they've really caught us with our pants down.
John: But I'm counting on them having a sense of humor and I'm counting on them recognizing that we have lots to offer.
John: We're good dancers.
John: We have lots of different spicy food and I'm going to give them a tour of some cool spots that I've seen over the years.
John: I'm going to take them into the
John: The Medina in Fez and show them around.
John: A lot of spices in there.
John: A lot of good sights and smells.
John: You know, like kind of tour guide, like love boat style.
Merlin: Okay, so part of it is you're Earth's Milton.
Merlin: So you're going to go up and you're going to explain the ways of humans to the UFOs, help them understand how to use Facebook and things like that.
John: Yeah, I'm going to say, listen, you may have arrived here thinking that you're going to mine the molten platinum core of our planet and despoil us.
John: And you're basing this based on having watched our television channels and your space outposts.
John: But there's a lot more to us than that.
John: And I'm going to say, you know...
John: I'm going to say, listen, I'm going to make a White Castle slab out of India's sacred cow just for you.
John: I'm going to take you down to Florida.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: You can get land for pretty cheap there now.
Merlin: Places like Nevada, but really Florida, if they could set up operations in Florida, I'd be okay with that.
John: The thing is if they change the tides even by a few meters, all of Florida is underwater.
John: It's just the same.
Merlin: Well, precisely that's why you would want buildings that hover a foot or two above.
Merlin: I think that would give you at least a couple centuries of safety.
Merlin: Hover buildings.
Merlin: Hover buildings are not a bad idea.
Merlin: You know, we're so close to having endless renewable energy.
John: Cloud City.
Merlin: Sorry?
Merlin: Cloud City.
Merlin: Yeah, Cloud City.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, precisely.
John: You know, I think that every... So yesterday I threw some crumpled aluminum foil in the recycling side of my bicameral garbage can.
John: And it had food on it.
John: Did it have food matter in it?
John: It had food matter in it.
Oh.
John: And I said, listen, this super train is not going to happen because we wait for it.
John: It's going to happen because we start throwing food soiled aluminum foil in our recycling until they start recycling it.
Merlin: Oh, let it begin with me.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Oh, that's good.
Merlin: It's like, so again, back to making your own parade, except in this case, it's got an aluminum foil with a little bit of meat on it.
John: Or let them put it in landfills.
John: There's more raw aluminum for us when the, when the crane comes, we're going to roll up to these public parks and they're going to be full of like fully processed aluminum that for whatever reason had a little spaghetti sauce on them and were deemed like unusable.
John: Super train is going to fix all that.
Merlin: A tragedy.
Merlin: I mean, in the end, it's a good thing.
Merlin: But, you know, this is how evolution works in technology and in culture, UFOs and trains, is that it takes somebody with a certain vision to be able to see something the way it's not.
Merlin: And I think you have that.
John: And that's why I think when I really search my feelings, when I really sit down and say, what am I here for?
John: Retired director of the CIA?
John: Maybe.
John: Maybe.
John: UFO envoy?
John: Absolutely.
John: And it may already be happening.
John: I mean, I may already be part of the softening of me that's been happening the last couple of months.
John: It might be that they felt like I was just a little too acerbic and they're starting to show me... They're starting to put obstacles in front of me like...
John: Like security guards and alarm companies.
Merlin: They're just waiting for you to get off the sugar a little bit so that you're receptive to their wisdom.
John: So I started trying to do this cheat day.
John: Cheat day.
John: My Saturdays were going to be a cheat day where I ate like I used to eat.
John: So I would eat a largely carb-free diet all week long, and then on Saturdays I would eat carbs.
John: And I'm telling you now, Merlin, I don't like them.
John: Not at all.
John: I had a cheat day on Saturday, and I mean, it all tastes fine.
John: It tastes pretty good.
John: But then I feel like shit.
John: I feel like shit for three days afterwards.
John: And I think even though I have granted myself the cheat day option, I think I'm still not going to eat wheat on cheat day.
John: I can't even believe I'm saying this.
John: I feel like I have become a crazy person.
John: Maybe the UFOs are really monkeying with me.
John: A year ago, if you had said, I would give myself one day a week where I could eat pasta, and I would eschew it, even on my cheat day.
Merlin: I never could imagine you using the phrase cheat day.
John: Cheat day.
John: Listen to me.
John: I sound like a guest on the Dr. Phil program.
John: Something is happening to me.
John: I don't know what it is.
John: They're putting estrogen in my food.
Yeah.
John: and now this now this beeping alarm downstairs is starting to make sense it's like you're gonna cry it's some kind of thing they're fucking with me it's all it's too much i don't know what's happening i'm starting to crack up i don't want to cheat day i don't even want it