Ep. 134: "A Minimum of Eels"
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity.
Merlin: They asked us not to read an ad, so hey, just enjoy the show.
John: Hi Merlin.
John: Hi John.
John: I didn't answer like I normally do by just saying hello.
John: Hello.
John: Because I knew it was you.
John: Yeah.
John: It's always me.
John: It's always you, but sometimes I'm not sure, even though it says Merlin.
John: Some people use Skype as a social network, and that troubles me.
John: You know, every time I log on to my computer now, or every time I open Skype, it has a status report on there from Brett Terpstra.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I don't know why Skype thinks that I'm wondering what Brett's doing every day.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Yeah, I think I get that, too.
Merlin: I get that, too.
Merlin: And I find out it's mostly everybody like me angrily announcing to please not bother them because they're on Skype.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It's like, if I'm here, I'm eating breakfast.
John: Sometimes it tells me it's someone's birthday.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Yeah, no, I don't want to have another social network.
John: I really don't.
Merlin: I don't want to have the ones I have.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: And this is one where I feel particularly unplugged from reality because I've, for years, I've used Skype.
Merlin: If you looked at the total number of hours, well over 95% have been for exactly one thing, which is recording podcasts with other people.
Merlin: And then very occasionally, like especially somebody in like Australia or something wants to have a phone call, it's easier and cheaper.
Merlin: I would never think of Skype as a phone in my head, and I would certainly never think of it as I get the occasional invitation.
Merlin: Did you ever get this?
Merlin: You get random people going like, hey, let me access you on Skype.
Merlin: Like, why would I do that?
Merlin: It's like somebody coming up to your door at dinner time, knocking on the screen door and making a gesture like they're holding a key.
Merlin: Could I just get a... Give me a quick dub.
Merlin: Now you don't know me.
Merlin: Don't be a dick.
John: If I...
John: Was living in a post-apocalyptic landscape, and I came over a rise in a meadow, and I saw you across on an opposite hill, and you started waving to me, I would turn and walk down the other side of the hill and pretend I had not seen you.
Merlin: Me in particular?
John: No, not you.
John: No, you I would wave at least.
John: Yeah, you at least go, hey, give me kind of a, yeah, how's it going?
John: As you know, my computer is running 10.6.8.
Merlin: Why did you say that?
Merlin: Don't say that.
John: There's so many reasons for you not to say that.
John: I'm going to have to cut all of that out.
John: You can take that out, yeah.
John: Now tell me, what are the reasons?
John: I'm going to get a lot of angry hate mail from people, from John Sarcusa, because I'm not running my apps correctly.
John: I don't want to get into it, John.
Merlin: Okay, first of all, step zero, we should never talk about computers, but the other problem is that that's a very, very, very, very old operating system that's probably not getting security updates.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So you basically just made some dubs of your keys and threw them into the audience.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: You're saying that I am vulnerable, that people are going to come into my computer.
Merlin: I'm saying somebody could give you a copy of Threes and you'd never come out.
Merlin: You're that vulnerable.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, man.
John: I'm feeling pretty vulnerable.
Merlin: Yeah, me too.
Merlin: I didn't realize that.
John: So you're saying I've left a back door open.
John: Well, I don't know your personal life.
John: 10.6.8 has been a stable operating system for me.
John: in what sense it's been it's been a very in the sense yes in the sense that every single time in the last eight years that i have taken apple's advice and downloaded a new operating system it has bricked whatever device it i was trying to improve and just turned it into a just a flying piece of shit yeah just a fucking ass potato hmm yeah
John: And so I don't download new operating systems because they seem like jokes.
John: They seem like elaborate tricks that Apple is pulling to make me buy a new product.
John: Oh, we've got a new operating system.
John: And it's going to completely fry the thing that you bought.
John: Even the thing that you bought three months ago.
John: It's going to just slow it down, bog it down.
John: Now it's going to flicker.
John: It's going to...
John: It's just like, fuck you, people.
John: Fool me twice.
John: Shame on you.
John: A mind is a wasted thing.
John: Ass potatoes.
Merlin: Well, I wish I could disagree with you.
Merlin: But it's true.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: It's getting more true is the problem.
Merlin: It used to be, you know, who cares?
Merlin: Why are we talking about computers?
Merlin: Computers!
John: Beep, boop, zeep, zorp.
John: Maybe we should get Dan Harmon on the phone or whoever you do that other podcast with.
Merlin: Dan Harmon.
Merlin: Yeah, I saw Joe McHale.
Merlin: I saw your friend Joe McHale on television twice yesterday.
Merlin: He's on television a lot now.
Merlin: We were in a hotel room, which is the only time that we see TV, like regular TV.
Merlin: He was on that show that's like Talk Soup.
Merlin: Is it Talk Soup?
Merlin: Talk Soup.
Merlin: Is it Talk Soup?
Merlin: Is it still Talk Soup?
Merlin: It's very much like Talk Soup.
Merlin: It's called Talk Soup.
Merlin: Talk Soup.
Merlin: I used to watch that when Greg Kinnear was on that show.
Merlin: That was probably when your operating system came out.
John: I thought there was a bush in the White House.
John: The thing about Joel McHale is that he really is that tall.
John: He looks like he's tall and he is tall.
Merlin: Turns out he was also in a movie or TV show we watched.
Merlin: And I can't remember what.
John: That seems reasonable.
Merlin: But he had a bit part as a balding man.
Merlin: Also heard Rob Corddry doing ads for Pizza Hut.
Merlin: That was kind of cool.
Merlin: He's a balding man.
Merlin: He's a balding man.
Merlin: Other balding news.
Merlin: Nick Thune.
Merlin: Do you know Nick Thune, the comedian?
Merlin: Don't know Nick Thune.
Merlin: Is that a comedian?
John: Nick Thune is a comedian, a good guy, a guy that I know a little bit, and he is now doing those Honda commercials.
John: I see him on TV all the time.
John: How about that?
John: And I go, hey, look at that.
John: There's a guy making money.
John: Todd Barry, he's bald, right?
John: Todd Barry is bald, bald, bald.
Merlin: What has he been doing?
John: He's bald as a baby.
Merlin: He is making comedy.
Merlin: Isn't he on the comedy podcast circuit?
Merlin: There's so many comedy podcasts, John.
Merlin: A lot of comedy podcasts.
John: He does a comedy.
John: I've been on his podcast.
Merlin: I know.
John: He does a podcast where he sits you across the table from him.
John: Kitchen table.
John: Across the kitchen table.
John: And there's one microphone.
Merlin: Yeah, it sounds like he's recording it on like an Easy Bake Oven.
Merlin: He's got a plug-and-play microphone.
Merlin: That's a common thing among comedy podcasts.
Merlin: You know, I'm not a podcast quality advocate.
Merlin: I don't really care.
Merlin: But there are some where it really does sound like they're recording it on a phone.
John: you know you and i are sitting across the country from each other right now not really not really across the country but you know up and down the country yeah and we both have really nice microphones we've made investments in the quality of the sound of our podcast don't get me involved in this there's like there's
John: i don't know what i want to talk about todd barry's microphone is basically just it's it's just searching the airwaves for the sound of fire engines he's got like a police scanner but for comedy yeah it doesn't well it does pick up human voices but if there's a siren or a garbage truck that's what it really wants to hear i think that's uh what they call a condenser mic
Merlin: The condenser mics pick up a lot, said the guy who has a train going by his house every eight minutes.
Merlin: Bing, bing.
Merlin: Bing, bing.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Anyway, yeah, computers, you know, and the thing is – nobody cares.
Merlin: But the other thing is, you know, I think in some ways it's worse in some ways with the phones, with the Apple phones.
Merlin: Well, here's why.
Merlin: Because if you're still using a computer, you know stuff about computers probably.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But there are a lot of people whose entry into the Apple world is through an iOS device.
Merlin: And so they went and they said, oh, what the heck?
Merlin: I'll get one of these 16-gigabyte iPhones.
Merlin: And, of course, it's not obviated within a couple years, but it's not nearly as good after two years.
Merlin: And when you go to install the iOS update on it, it goes na-na-na-na.
Merlin: This isn't big enough.
Merlin: You have to go connect it to a computer or something.
Merlin: Delete your photos.
Merlin: Oh, delete your photos.
John: You know, the funny thing is I go into iTunes now to manage my phone.
John: Here we go, into iTunes, going to manage my phone.
John: Now, my iTunes is on a computer that's running 10.6.8, and I'm in there trying to manage the phone, and all of a sudden, it didn't used to do this, but it's got the little bar down below that says how much of your phone is used for certain things.
John: It's like photos were a thing, music was a thing.
John: You've got a big other down there.
John: And then there's this other, and it's like...
John: It's like 40% of the phone is used for other.
John: You cannot access what other is or differentiate what other is.
John: You cannot change what other is.
John: And so, again, it's like the diagnostic tool.
Merlin: It tells you the diagnostic's not working.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: You click on the, it's like, oh, would you like to run a diagnostic?
John: Yes, I would.
John: Well, let's go through 14 steps to tell you to unplug your router.
John: You know, it's just like every time I make the mistake to run that diagnostic tool, I'm just like.
John: You hate that diagnostic tool.
John: It's like a fuck, it's another joke.
John: Somebody down in Cupertino is like, haha.
John: You know what it is?
John: It's like the Mercury astronauts.
John: They gave them a lever that wasn't connected to anything, and they said, now you're steering the spaceship.
John: We're going to put a window in the side of the can, and we're going to give you a lever that makes a dinging sound.
Merlin: Now you're a pilot.
John: Now you're a pilot, and that's what Apple is doing with all of this garbage.
John: It's like, oh, you want to be a pilot?
John: You want to be a pilot?
John: Here.
John: It's the A&R rep button on the mixing console.
John: Oh, call anytime.
John: It's the suck button.
John: Seriously.
Merlin: Turn the suck button down.
Merlin: Fuck you.
Merlin: Yeah, but you know you got alternatives.
Merlin: You could go out and get a Chromebook.
Merlin: You could get a Dell PC.
John: You know, I told you, right, that Dell tried to send me one of their hot new laptops.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, remind me of that story.
John: Yeah, some person from Dell was like, hey, you seem to be a thought leader.
John: We'd like to send you one of our hot new laptops.
John: And I was like, oh, yeah, well, sure, but I don't want the one that you're sending everybody else.
John: I want you to give me the real hot one.
John: And she was like, well, I'll have to check with the mucky mucks.
John: And she came back and she was like, you've been approved to get the real hot one.
John: And then I just never replied to her email.
Merlin: Nice.
Merlin: That's all you needed.
Merlin: You don't have a computer.
Merlin: You just need to know you could have gotten one.
John: Yeah.
John: Wrote me a couple of times.
John: She was like, hello, sir.
John: I was like, no, I don't want one of those.
John: It's just going to be another thing that I don't know.
John: I don't know how to plug in.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But I had dinner with a friend the other day and he had one of these these these Microsoft phones.
Merlin: Oh, I've heard of those.
Merlin: That's the phone that Microsoft makes.
Merlin: I didn't think they were out in the wild.
Merlin: You can actually go out and get one?
Merlin: Sure, it's a Bing phone or whatever.
Merlin: Oh, sure, you can Bing people on it.
John: Bing me later.
John: And it looks like a Microsoft store.
John: Empty?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Every time we walk by the store that has the big bespoke sign in it, every time we walk by the Microsoft store, it's not empty, but there are so many people working there.
Merlin: They outnumber the customers, yeah.
Merlin: The Apple Store is like a Who concert.
Merlin: I don't even want to go in there.
Merlin: It's just so ridiculous.
Merlin: This phone has those little tiles.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I think it was Hobbes.
John: They call them Monads.
John: Microsoft was the one that invented the window.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah, and the file.
Merlin: Hang on a minute.
Merlin: You're telling me they didn't have computer files until they were literally invented by Microsoft.
John: That's right.
John: I mean, maybe Windows were invented by some guy in a Hewlett-Packard lab, but that guy is dead now.
John: Buried in a field.
John: Yeah.
John: and microsoft you're saying they got files and windows by creating some unmarked graves i think they may have done they may have done but so this little thing so he's holding this phone up and it's very light it's much lighter than an iphone there's nothing on it
Merlin: Where's my film?
Merlin: It works great as long as you don't use it.
John: Nothing on it.
John: Those pictures weigh a lot.
John: And it's very shiny, but the little icons were just slightly animated.
John: oh yeah so that they are flipping as you're looking at the phone the static phone you're doing nothing to it and it's like it's like slideshowing pictures of people that you know on linkedin and but like a little tile game it scoots around and stuff yeah stuff scooting around it's stuff is fucking moving around on your phone and you're not doing anything and i was like i i hate this thing already i hate that you have it sir
John: Sitting across from me.
Merlin: I've heard people who really like, is that the Metro interface?
Merlin: I've heard some people talk about it, and they think it's kind of cool.
Merlin: It's a new take.
Merlin: I guess.
Merlin: No, I'm not.
Merlin: I mean, I've never seen one, so I don't know.
Merlin: I don't want shit dancing around on my equipment.
Merlin: Okay, now what about you?
Merlin: On your cell phone, do you have iOS 7?
Merlin: Do you have where the background moves around and stuff like that?
Merlin: The background moves around.
Merlin: You probably have iOS 3 on there.
Merlin: But in the penultimate release, they added this thing.
Merlin: I think it was in 7.
Merlin: Yeah, they added this thing, like a parallax view.
Merlin: So on your lock screen, the motion detector, it makes the stars have depth to them.
Merlin: Like you move things and things in the background are further away and things like that.
Merlin: I turned it off on day one.
John: Oh, I turned that off immediately.
John: Yeah.
John: it was not only making me seasick, but it was another thing where I was like, hey, phone, quit having such a good fucking time.
Merlin: I know, right.
John: Devote your energy to doing the three things I ask you to do.
John: Meet my old friend crashing at 36%.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: You know, like, fuck off.
John: What I need you to do is continue to run after the plane lands while I am trying to arrange a ride.
John: You know, I want to use you throughout a flight, and then when I land, I do not want you to die the second I try to contact the person who's going to pick me up.
Merlin: Apple's response is, okay, it sounds like you want a thinner phone.
Yeah.
Merlin: No, no, zero, zero, zero.
Merlin: Let me talk to someone to make more battery on the phone.
Merlin: Operator, operator, operator.
Merlin: All right, I'm passing you on to thinner phone requests.
John: And so every time I look down at the phone and it's having a better time than I'm having, it makes me want to seriously go down to Cupertino and find whatever person in a lumber sexual beard contest is sitting behind their fucking supercomputer.
Merlin: Lumber sexual?
John: And is like tappity-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
John: I've got a great idea.
John: Why don't we make everybody have to swipe the opposite direction that we always train them to swipe?
Merlin: Here we go.
Merlin: Hey, guys, new idea.
Merlin: Let's make it thinner.
John: Did we just become a 5x5 podcast?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: And so that's complicated.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So mad.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I get mad too.
Merlin: It's expensive.
Merlin: Not even costly.
Merlin: It's expensive.
Merlin: It's expensive to stay caught up and it's very time-consuming to do everything right is the problem.
Merlin: So if you're doing stuff like running backups and all the time – and of course it's a nerd article of faith to constantly –
Merlin: uh max explained to everybody about how often they need to be doing backups but you do but to do that takes a lot of time it takes money it takes bandwidth and i don't know i and people have i mean now they're charging you for all that right it's just like i had a at&t sent me a thing in the mail the other day they were like would you like to for a nominal fee
John: We are now offering a home alarm system.
John: And I was like, tell me more, AT&T.
John: You've been so reliable and so dependable for me the last 10 years that I've been using your service.
John: Tell me more about your home alarm system.
Merlin: How do I get more AT&T in my house?
John: And they were like, oh, we'll let you change your thermostat.
John: You know, it's one of these Matt Howey programs where it's like you sit out in your driveway because you can't get your front door to unlock.
Merlin: Wait for your back.
John: Your bitcoins do arrive.
John: Your fucking phone died, and so you're sitting with the engine running trying to charge it up so you can open it.
John: Hey, hammock you bought on Etsy.
John: Meanwhile, your thermostat is going to 124.
John: And so I'm like, tell me more.
John: So AT&T's like, oh, yeah, well, we can, you know, you can look.
John: You have cameras all around your house.
John: It really feeds into your paranoia.
John: Yeah.
John: And you can look at it all on your phone.
Merlin: You can trust us to do that.
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
Merlin: If you think anything about AT&T, it's that it's cost-effective, reliable, and worthy of your trust.
Merlin: Trust us with your data.
Merlin: Hmm.
John: And then, so I'm like, okay, AT&T, so far, sounds good.
John: I'm hooked.
John: Now, let me read the fine print.
John: And every single thing, they were like, 40 bucks for this thing.
John: Yeah.
John: And then every single thing was like, well, that's $140 setup charge and $10 a month.
John: And it was like, so for this service that you're proffering,
John: When all is said and done, it's like $500 to get in, and then it's another one of these credit card charges that's going to be $190 a month for this service.
John: And all of these are parts that I can go to Costco probably and Radio Shack.
Merlin: and gin up oh yeah and you don't have to use their busted ass apps to do it i mean there's so many i mean there there's a lot of like you know kind of cool hipster things like that we've got a camera that for that purpose but you know they're pretty well you can buy some pretty nice stuff you pay a little bit more you host it yourself you do your own thing and you're not relying on their like i mean when i go to visit with friends and family and actually you know i gotta say the comcast dvr has gotten a lot better
Merlin: But so much of the stuff you get from these companies that they want you to use all the time is so fucked up looking.
Merlin: Okay, so I mean, you know, I'm not an academic, but if I were going to try and teach some kind of a 101 modern consuming course, it would involve basically this.
Merlin: What you need to understand, this is not a bad thing, not a good thing, it's just a reality thing, is that every company out there wants to find a way
Merlin: What they want, what they really want is to find a way to charge you something every month for something that costs them almost nothing to do.
Merlin: Okay, now that's, I don't mean that as a judgment, but just whenever you see anything and it looks like, hey, look at this, you get the free Samsung tablet.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You get the free Samsung tablet because you're signing up for this fucking Xfinity package that requires no effort on Comcast's part.
Merlin: And now you're signed up for a year or two of that.
Merlin: It's just that it's special offers all the way down.
Merlin: It's pretty much always going to end up with something where you get charged $19.95 a month in perpetuity.
Merlin: Until you realize it and cancel it.
Merlin: They're like remora, right?
Merlin: Like an eel?
Merlin: Yeah, the ones that attach themselves.
Merlin: Oh, they attach to the sharks.
John: Yeah, they suck on the shark, and then the shark is swimming around, and he's got like 40 fucking eels sucking on him.
Merlin: So he opens up Quicken, and he sees he's got 35 fucking eels.
John: And what I'm saying is, I'm trying to get through life with a minimum of eels sucking on me.
John: That is a lot of drag.
John: And, well, it's a lot of drag.
John: And, you know, your blood is just going through.
John: It's just cycling through the eel, too, right?
John: It's just, it's another, they basically, like...
John: They basically turn themselves into a catalytic converter.
Merlin: You're huffing on recycled eel blood, your own blood through an eel?
John: Basically, it's just running through this eel.
John: The eel is taking your blood and your vitamins, and it's replacing it with saliva.
John: It's like a maritime super train.
John: Like a mild narcotic.
John: in the saliva.
John: But what I do not want is any eels.
John: And I look around at all the people that are going through the world now and I think, how many fucking eels are on you?
John: You got 40 eels on you.
John: You're not even thinking about it.
John: You just think it's just normal life.
John: This is just the cost of doing business.
John: But every one of them is just fucking sucking your vitamins and you're paying for it.
Merlin: I started doing something – I'm not saying I've gotten good at this, but it is very informative.
Merlin: It's the app that I use for my version of Quicken, let's say.
Merlin: It automatically – I go and I manually indicate, okay, this is a recurring web subscription or a recurring subscription of some kind.
Merlin: Every time I have the presence of mind, I say, okay, from now on, always flag these as recurring web subscriptions.
Merlin: So you go, oh, $9.95 a month, no big deal.
Merlin: $7 a month, no big deal.
Merlin: No big deal.
Merlin: $29.95 a month, no big deal or whatever.
Merlin: Not for that service.
Merlin: No, or for the annual things like my Apple –
Merlin: iTunes match service, which I actually really like for the money.
Merlin: I think it's really good.
Merlin: But it is another couple dollar signs.
Merlin: So then I go in and I look at a report of everything that I bought in the last five years that has that little recurring subscription flag, and it is real sobering.
Merlin: And all of a sudden, you don't seem like such a cheapskate for going, I'm not sure I want to spend $7 a month on this.
Merlin: Can I tell you two things?
Merlin: Number one, ones and twos.
Merlin: Number two, every dollar is made of dimes.
John: Fuck yes, that's true.
Merlin: And when you start giving a dime away every month, buddy, woo!
John: And it just feels like increasingly you're not going to be allowed to participate without...
John: Without agreeing to this, to people just sort of sticking a hose into your side.
John: Attaching an eel to your shark.
John: It's just like, here you go, and you're not, if you don't have, if you're not basically wearing a coat of eels, you're not going to be recognized in our culture, right?
John: You're going to walk into a restaurant, and you're going to be like, waiter, waiter, and the waiter's going to be looking at his...
John: like eel monitor trying to figure out where to go next because everybody else is going to be interacting with him through some kind of app.
John: And nobody's going to hear you.
John: It's going to be how to get ahead in advertising.
John: They're going to be all talking to somebody else with half their brain.
John: And if you are somebody who's like, listen, I'm not going to upgrade my operating system and I'm not going to attach any eels to myself, you're going to increasingly become invisible to
John: In the – just the service economy.
John: And it's terrifying to me because I'm not – it's not a thing about – it's not a libertarian question.
John: It's a question of just like I do not want to be that attached.
John: Right.
John: And certainly not where – I mean –
John: For a while there, it seemed like, listen, let us stick an eel to you.
John: We won't charge you anything for it.
John: Phenomenal fee.
John: Phenomenal eel.
John: It's a convenience eel.
John: And what we're going to do is this eel is going to occasionally take half of its teeth out of your side, and it's going to talk to you about a product.
John: It's going to talk to you about Fanta or whatever, and then it's going to grab onto you again.
John: And it's like, for the convenience.
Merlin: Time for your monthly delivery of peanut butter nom-noms.
Okay.
John: thank you eel yeah and that's gonna be the cost of it but now right it's like no this eel costs 10.99 a month and it's gonna talk to you about about peanut butter nom nom it's gonna have ads the eel will have ads yeah the eel's just gonna be he's gonna like he's it's basically a two-headed eel one of them is sucking on you and the other one is talking about special offers yeah the other one's talking to you about your fucking honda fit oh
John: And I don't want it, you know, and I don't think any reasonable person would want it.
John: But we're accepting it as though it's a fait accompli or as though it's some kind of – we have to endure this in order to get to the other side, which is this perfect world where, you know, where you just are like, oh, I'm thinking about a chili dog and a chili dog arrives.
John: This thing that we all dream of.
John: Boy versus girl in the World Series of Love.
Merlin: I think I've dropped out for a minute.
Merlin: Could you update my eel?
Merlin: Could you spread my eel?
Merlin: There was a little time condensation there.
Merlin: Just zipped it up.
Merlin: I'll tell you the one that gets me.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I've been thinking about this lately.
Merlin: I don't play.
Merlin: I play maybe five video games on my phone.
Merlin: My daughter has more.
Merlin: I've bought more from a TV show she likes or a movie she likes.
Merlin: But there's like really three or four video games I play ever on my phone.
Merlin: And I think they are almost all apps that I paid for with money.
Merlin: Because that's something I understand.
Merlin: Here's what I understand.
Merlin: I understand that this costs $3, and now I have it here, and that's something I can use.
Merlin: But there's so much stuff out there where – like we just took a road trip, and we've never really checked our mileage.
Merlin: So I went and looked at all of the apps you can get for tracking your mileage, and I got the first one I saw that was free.
Merlin: I grabbed it, and it's got an ad at the bottom.
Merlin: And can you guess what the ad at the bottom is for?
Merlin: It's for another free app.
Merlin: So the idea is if you get this free app and you're going to click on the ad and you're going to download this other free app and that's got ads in it for other free apps.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And this is, again, John, I have to remind people occasionally there's a reason you and I are not in the corner office, but it's, it's, it's just seems, it seems like I really feel like it's like an emperor has no clothes kind of situation, you know, like, like at what point is anybody going to make any money on that except by accident?
John: The emperor does have clothes, and those clothes are from Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle.
John: And the emperor has gel in his hair, and he's 26 years old, and he went to Pepperdine.
Merlin: Does he have that kind of hair?
Merlin: I wouldn't call it Portland hair, but it seems like everybody's a hog butcher in a...
Merlin: and a czech shirt now with arm arm tattoos yeah a full beard sexual merlin okay okay now what is that hair i just i went literally i left i left town for the first time in five years yesterday and everybody has this same hair it's not quite a pompadour but it's kind of tall not tall hair but you know you know i'm talking about everybody's got that same hair um that's the top that got the beard on the bottom the czech shirt what is that called what is that hair called
Merlin: Is that a lot of sexual hair?
John: I consider that haircut to be sort of a modified Macklemore.
Merlin: That's what you mean by Macklemore haircut.
Merlin: All right.
John: Yeah, the Macklemore haircut is shaved on the sides, and then it's like a fat mohawk, but it's not sticking up, right?
John: It's just kind of pompadoured up.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Mark Ronson had this haircut.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, the sides are shaved, and it's very... That's right.
John: That's exactly what it is.
Merlin: But it looks like it's like one contiguous hair surface when you put the product in.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then they sit there with their hands in their pockets looking mad with tattoos.
Merlin: I'm a hog butcher.
John: It's a big kind of... Yeah, it's just... It ends up being a big... It's like a hair hat.
John: But I don't know if you've been watching the television show Peaky Blinders, which is a Netflix original series.
John: Netflix.
John: It's original.
Merlin: It's only one monthly fee.
John: The only reason that I'm watching it is that I have a friend who is an Anglophile, and any time people are talking in bad, fake British accents, she just can't get enough of it.
John: And so we start watching his Peaky Blinders.
Merlin: Oh, it's got the guy from the zombie movie in it.
John: It's got the guy from the zombie movie in it.
John: He was in Batman, too, I think.
Merlin: He was the Scarecrow, right?
John: Sorry, go ahead.
Merlin: Was there a Scarecrow in the Batman movie?
Merlin: He's the Scarecrow.
Merlin: He's the guy.
Merlin: Remember, he puts on the Scarecrow mask and blows magic dust in your face and you hallucinate.
Merlin: Remember?
Merlin: He's down in the parking garage in that one?
John: I guess so, maybe.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: I saw it on an airplane.
Merlin: Anyway, he's Irish.
John: Yeah, everybody in the movie is... So they're all supposed to be from... It's not a movie.
John: It's a TV show.
John: But they're all supposed to be from Birmingham.
John: But every single person in the whole series has a completely different accent.
John: Because some of them are legitimately people from central...
John: north england birmingham is like black sabbath the move who else do we know from birmingham um birmingham yeah uh wouldn't that be also uh motorhead are they from birmingham i don't know i'll find out anyway go ahead so anyway everybody
Merlin: He's got different flavors of accents.
John: Yeah, and then there's Sam Neill doing a British accent, and then there's some Irish people doing British accents, and some people that, you know, just like, so every time, it's like two people talking to each other.
John: They're supposed to be brothers, and one guy is... One guy's from Yorkshire, another guy's from London.
John: Yeah, one guy's speaking in a completely different dialect.
John: But anyway, the show purports to be right after World War I, and every single male character is wearing a full Macklemore...
John: And I don't have enough historical haircut context to say, like, in Birmingham in 1919, was it town of Macklemore's?
John: Is that where he got the haircut from?
John: I mean, it seems a little bit...
John: On the nose for now?
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: In every historical thing, this is – I forget who told me this.
Merlin: Somebody in front of mine in Tallahassee was like, if you ever notice, you watch – no matter how good the rest of a production is, there's two things that always give it away, almost always give it away, which is the makeup on the women.
John: Right.
John: The women look amazingly now.
Merlin: Like it's exactly 1963, even though it's supposed to be like the Roman Empire.
Merlin: And also the haircuts.
Merlin: The hair, I mean even – I don't know.
Merlin: I mean I think people have tried harder over the years to get better at that, but it used to be they didn't even try.
Merlin: So that kind of surprises me.
Merlin: I bet that kind of a haircut could kind of pass a little bit.
John: I feel like it passes.
Merlin: My main problem – Because it's willfully old-timey to be the Macklemore.
Merlin: The full Macklemore is willfully old-timey to begin with, right?
Yeah.
Merlin: Uh, well.
Merlin: Isn't it kind of a dream of the 90s is alive in Portland kind of approach?
John: Macklemore himself, when I saw him rocking that haircut for the first time, I was like, huh, that is, that seems bold.
John: I have not seen that particular, I mean, shaved sides, big pompadour.
John: I have not seen that particular haircut.
John: And it's especially bold on him because he's very blonde.
Mm-hmm.
John: Now I see it everywhere.
John: Every airline steward who is under 35 years old has that haircut now.
John: If you get on an airplane and there is a male hostess, he will have a Macklemore haircut.
John: And you see them everywhere.
John: On all the butchers, too.
John: And it's all happened so fast that I feel like it was a pregnancy that was waiting in our culture.
John: We needed something.
John: We needed something so that 25 years from now when they do...
John: sort of films and documentaries or reenactments of the 2014s, that there will be a convenient way to delineate to people like, oh, I'm watching a scene from the past.
Merlin: Oh, like Big Mutton Chops and Anchorman.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: It's a way to set it and people like visually you can tell that's all that's got to be happening in 2014.
John: Yeah.
John: And people who are 25 now, when they're 60 years old, they'll be watching the show and they'll be like, this is supposed to be set in 2010.
John: Well, nobody wore their hair like that in 2010.
John: That didn't start until 2014.
John: Whatever.
John: It just feels like it's a delineator.
John: It's a demarcator.
John: And frankly, the conformity in male fashion right now is so...
John: And I feel like it is a conformity because basically everyone is dressing like me.
John: Except for the tiny shoes.
John: Except for the tiny shoes.
John: And I walk around and I'm like, I am in that awkward position of like, well, I'm not going to change how I dress.
John: but i now look like every single fucking hipster dad in america and and i've never felt that way before i never felt like i looked like everybody else i felt like that in the early 90s like right when grunge was starting to tip a little bit and i was like this is what everybody i know has always worn
John: yeah right I mean but through the grunge era I was always a little bit too preppy right but now the thing about this lumber sexual bullshit is that it is there's a little element of prep
John: involved right it's like there's definitely a lot of tailoring a lot of tailoring i mean stuff fits you know tightly it does fit tightly and i don't want to i do not want to walk into a cafe and have every guy in the room look up at me and me look at every guy in the room and be like
John: Here we all are.
John: Yep.
John: Like, that's great.
Merlin: You shouldn't be able to grok John Roderick in, like, three seconds.
John: You shouldn't be.
John: They should not be.
John: And the thing is, I do not want to go the whole... I do not want to start having to wear a purple fedora.
John: You know?
John: Well, for ladies of your age, that's a great way to express your uniqueness.
John: I resist being... I resist joining the Red Hat Club already.
John: So...
John: So, well, but the problem, the main problem I had with Peaky Blinders, and I think this is the problem I have with the entire culture, is that it's set in 1919.
John: They all have Macklemore haircuts.
John: That's fine.
John: They're driving period-appropriate cars, which I enjoy.
John: But at the key moment of every episode...
John: When they decide that they're going to go get into a gang fight with the gypsies or they're going to, you know, take on the cops or whatever.
John: All of a sudden.
John: white stripes comes on it says here that nick cave uh and the bad seeds is the theme song nick cave and the bad seeds is the theme song which i didn't like but i but i i got like used to in the same way that like i got used to the theme song of the wire or whatever like okay fine right like fuck you but okay
John: You know, the theme song to The Wire was just like, oh, the guy that makes this TV show likes this guy.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Well, Tom Waits is making some dough.
Merlin: Every season, it's a different artist, it turns out.
John: Every season, it's a different artist.
Merlin: The Blind Boys, yeah.
John: But none of the characters in the show or the theme song has absolutely nothing to do with the world of the show, right?
John: Right.
Merlin: Nobody in that show has ever heard... That's a cable TV thing.
Merlin: Because there's something about a certain kind of gritty, old-timey song, like Red Right Hand, or like Down in the Hole, or like... I think a very influential one was Deadwood.
John: You know what I mean?
John: And I was furious at Deadwood...
John: for the music precisely for the music because the deadwood was like it sounded like demo mode on a bluegrass keyboard it did it was like it was like you basically got you got some like contemporary folky uh like sound designers to make some shit that you know because because it has a banjo in it i'm supposed to feel like it is everything in it it's got it's got so many different instruments playing for a couple bars that's why i say it sounds like demo mode
John: Yeah, it was just like, eat shit, Deadwood.
John: But Peaky Blinders is worse because you're in the mode.
John: You're in the mind.
John: I'm in 1919.
John: I'm living in Birmingham.
John: Okay, we're going on an adventure.
John: Fell in love with a girl.
John: Yeah, it's just like...
John: It's like, fuck off.
John: It turns into a music video.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And you just feel like at a certain point, there's 25 people working on this TV show.
John: And then they get to the big moment.
John: And all of a sudden, some guy in a Macklemore haircut comes swooping in a J. Crew suit.
John: And he's like, step aside, boys.
John: I've got this.
John: And he puts on some hip rock and roll band.
John: And you just feel like, I'm not watching this show anymore.
John: I'm watching somebody's demo reel.
John: And then, I mean, I just wait for the music to stop.
Merlin: Why do you watch this again?
John: It's because of somebody else.
John: Somebody else wants to watch it.
John: Somebody else is like, I want to watch this show.
John: And I go, well, I am your chaperone for this.
Merlin: That's me and Walking Dead.
John: Oh, I've never seen Walking Dead.
Merlin: She has so little.
Merlin: At least I can do is watch that.
John: No, you're a generous husband.
Merlin: Walking Dead is about zombies, right?
Merlin: Now, she makes a good point.
Merlin: She says, yes, it's about zombies, but that's not the really interesting part.
Merlin: The interesting part is how everybody's dealing with it.
John: Why does everybody say it's...
John: this show about zombies is not really about it is about zombies well you know there's a lot of world building in the first season like you're creating saying like okay here's the rules of this universe here's how these things work it's like tv show of minecraft i suppose sure yeah have you played minecraft john uh no but i every once in a while i talk to a kid that's true and i say what's that bullshit on your t-shirt
John: And they roll their eyes and they say it's Minecraft.
Merlin: If you don't know what it is, it's probably Minecraft.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So anyway, it's a good show.
Merlin: It's a good show.
Merlin: It's actually just super gruesome.
Merlin: I've said it too many times on here.
Merlin: Let me ask you this.
Merlin: People are going to yell at us, right?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: They're going to send email directly onto your computer.
Merlin: They're just going to hit a couple buttons and send messages right on your computer.
Merlin: Now, I think I asked you this before, but I'm curious.
Merlin: Do you subscribe to Hulu?
Merlin: Hulu Plus?
Merlin: Do you get Hulu Plus?
John: So my Netflix and my Hulu are all subscribed to by another person.
John: And I don't hold the keys to the kingdom.
John: That's not my bath oil.
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
John: Bath oil?
John: Every once in a while, I do...
John: Most of the time I only watch those channels when I'm with someone else.
John: But very occasionally I will turn on Netflix myself and watch a Hitler documentary.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But Netflix, here's the thing.
Merlin: Netflix, you watch Netflix and there's Netflix.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay, easy enough.
Merlin: I hate everything about Hulu Plus pretty much except for how perfectly it encapsulates the complexity of the media landscape right now, which is that it's the only place where if you're a cord cutter, it's the only place that you can legally get recent stuff without having to buy it onesie-twosie on iTunes.
Merlin: The thing is, it really kills me to spend $2.99 on an episode of Project Runway that we're going to watch once.
Merlin: But depending on what you got, everybody's got it in different places.
Merlin: But Hulu Plus, the thing that tries to be bananas, however much it costs, like whatever, six, seven bucks a month, but it's still got fucking commercials.
Merlin: It costs seven bucks a month?
John: I think so.
John: And it costs commercials?
John: They just stuck another fucking two eels to you.
Merlin: Here's your value-added deal.
Merlin: Oh, it's so annoying.
Merlin: It sounds like you're not watching it much because you would definitely notice it because it's the kind of advertising that I find particularly annoying, which is advertising where you know it might be making some money at scale, but it's mostly there because they hate you.
Merlin: There's a certain kind of advertising.
Merlin: They're trying to punish you.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: First principles, Clarice.
Merlin: Let's go back to where this all starts.
Merlin: They want you to pay a little bit of money for something that's extremely easy.
Merlin: So in an ideal world, you'd buy cable like a gentleman.
Merlin: And then I guess you could skip the commercials with your TiVo or whatever.
Merlin: In this case, they're going, fuck you.
Merlin: You think you can get by without watching commercials?
Merlin: Forget about it.
Merlin: You're going to pay for this and you're going to watch commercials.
Merlin: You like that, Johnny?
Merlin: You ready for this?
Merlin: They're all for Geico.
Merlin: Well, so wait a minute.
Merlin: Are they trying to shame you into...
John: Wait a minute.
John: You're telling me, first of all, all the commercials are for Geico?
Merlin: Well, there's a lot of – at least – okay, no.
Merlin: I think that Hulu has gotten better inventory, but there are other places.
John: You can't tailor it to your commercial preferences like you can on some other channels?
Merlin: I'm not sure.
Merlin: We had Hulu for a while.
Merlin: It was not mine.
Merlin: It was her bath oil, not mine.
Merlin: We had it, and I finally was like, you know what?
Merlin: I just can't have this in the house anymore.
Merlin: It just makes me too angry to pay for this and then have to watch what we in the business call run-of-network commercials.
Merlin: They're cheap fill ads.
Merlin: They just – boop, boop, boop.
Merlin: This big backhoe pushes a bunch of Geico ads in.
Merlin: Fifteen minutes?
Merlin: Fuck you.
Merlin: And there's some like crackle.
Merlin: There's these stations that go out and show old TV shows, and it's all fill.
Merlin: It's all PSAs.
Merlin: It's all just like –
Merlin: Just like, you know what, this is really just here to slow you down and remind you that you're a cheapskate.
John: It's punishment advertising.
John: Yeah.
John: But is Hulu trying to get you to upgrade to a version of Hulu that costs more that doesn't have ads?
John: There is no version of that to my knowledge.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: So it's a giant punishment.
Merlin: So imagine if you said, you know, Netflix is pretty cool.
Merlin: How would we fuck that up?
Merlin: Well, what do people not like about Netflix?
Merlin: They don't like paying for it.
Merlin: Well, too bad.
Merlin: You got to pay for it.
Merlin: What else about Netflix?
Merlin: Oh, what if we added commercials?
Merlin: Oh, yeah, let's add commercials.
Merlin: And how about this?
Merlin: You know how sometimes you're watching something on Netflix, you come back the next time and it's gone?
Merlin: What if we only had shows up for a week or two?
Merlin: Or a week or three.
Merlin: So you can go and you can watch your Two and a Half Men or whatever, and then it goes away after a certain amount of time.
Merlin: You have a certain window.
Merlin: You can't watch it before this point.
Merlin: You can't watch it after that point.
Merlin: So it is kind of the worst of many, many worlds.
John: I mean, the number one thing that people don't like about Netflix is that everything on there sucks.
John: And if you go on and you say, I would like to watch...
Merlin: You told me you don't like their food documentaries?
Merlin: I would like to watch The Longest Day.
Merlin: Their marijuana documentaries?
John: Yeah.
John: I would like to watch The Longest Day.
John: And Netflix is like, do you mean The Longest Dong?
John: A Netflix original documentary?
John: The Longest Day also may enjoy these things.
John: It's like, what?
John: You're telling me you don't have one of the great, all-time, great- Well, that's complicated.
John: I know, I know, I know.
John: I've heard it all before.
Merlin: But, you know, Netflix to me is just a ton more valuable.
Merlin: So we've got what we pay for.
Merlin: We pay for Netflix.
Merlin: We pay for Amazon Prime because we're already paying for Amazon Prime.
Merlin: And they really want you to feel like that's more than free shipping.
Merlin: I'm happy with just the free shipping.
Merlin: But we also get the music from that.
Merlin: We get mostly TV shows from that.
Merlin: And that's great because you can watch all those great HBO shows for free now on Amazon Prime.
John: Did you know that every time you use Amazon Prime, a baby dies?
Merlin: Really, is it what kind of baby?
Merlin: Like a fresh baby?
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: There's a lot of different kinds of babies, John.
John: In America now, let's be honest, it matters what kind of baby.
Merlin: That drives me crazy.
Merlin: You're so mad.
Merlin: What would it take to get you updated?
Merlin: We should talk about this offline.
Merlin: We should at least get you up to something from this decade.
John: Well, let's see.
John: Let me tell you about my computer, all right?
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Save it.
Merlin: Save it.
Merlin: Save it.
Merlin: About this Mac.
Merlin: Oh, John, why are you doing this?
Merlin: It's like reading from your past book.
Merlin: Oh, don't do this.
John: Here we go.
John: 2.16 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo.
John: Two gigabytes, 667 megahertz.
John: You got two gigabytes of RAM?
John: Two gigabytes of RAM.
John: That's adorable.
Merlin: DDR2S RAM.
Merlin: That's not enough RAM, John.
Merlin: Two gigabytes?
Merlin: Is your computer slow sometimes?
John: Listen, two gigabytes.
John: Do you remember... I have that on my iPad.
John: Do you remember when two gigabytes would have filled up an airplane hanger?
John: I remember when two gigabytes... Yeah, well, I mean, I...
John: They put a man on the moon with slide rules.
Merlin: Yeah, literally.
John: They just shot a slide rule.
John: I have two whole gigabytes of RAM.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, your computer might be a little slow sometimes.
Merlin: Do you ever find that to be the case?
John: Every time I turn on any electronic device, I am just seething with rage.
John: Mac or PC.
John: And waiting for it to fail.
John: Right?
John: And the thing is, my toaster, I bought my toaster for 25 cents at a thrift store.
John: And it is from 1950.
John: And it makes perfect toast.
Merlin: Yep.
John: Every day.
John: Every damn day.
John: Because we just beat the Nazis.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And we were feeling proud of ourselves, and we made some fucking toasters for a while that worked pretty well.
John: Some of them still working.
John: The ones that didn't get put into a landfill.
John: And I'm going to go back and get those soon.
Merlin: Oh, like those E.T.
Merlin: games?
Merlin: You're going to go back and dig up the old toasters?
John: Super Train, that's the first thing that's going to power Super Train.
John: It's going to be, first of all, powered by vintage toasters.
Merlin: Okay, let me write that down.
John: So, yeah, I look at this computer and I'm like, all right, to replace this thing, what is this?
John: It's $2,500.
John: There's no other way.
John: I could go on Craigslist.
Merlin: Isn't that galling, though, to think about?
Merlin: So right now you've got an iMac, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So you know about the new iMacs?
Merlin: The new iMacs that are $2,500, like how powerful they are?
John: I don't know anything about them.
Merlin: You don't want to know.
Merlin: Don't look it up.
Merlin: Don't look it up.
John: I'm guessing they don't have disk drives, right?
John: It's all on the cloud.
John: It's all up on the cloud.
Merlin: All you need to do is have a subscription to the cloud.
Merlin: It's got a power cord, an Ethernet cable, and five EELs.
Merlin: That's exactly right.
John: Macintosh was right at the forefront of this.
John: They were like, oh, wait a minute.
John: Why are we selling people things when we can just stick eels to them?
John: We'll sell them the right to stick eels to them.
John: And click to continue.
John: Somehow.
John: Do you agree to this eel?
John: Somehow they, it's like they have this, they have a remote eel control.
John: And what amazes me is all these people are living on eel shit, right?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, they're just sucking eel bottoms.
John: It's not, they're not getting my blood.
John: They're getting the poop, the eel poop.
John: Oh, so mad.
John: That's the eels.
John: You know, that's the thing.
John: It's fucking Skynet.
John: The eels are the ones that are getting the real blood off of me.
John: And one of these days, the eels are going to be like, why am I pooping in the mouths of these guys in Cupertino?
Merlin: Self-reflective eel?
Merlin: I'm going to keep this poop to myself.
Merlin: Well, you could try and get the eels on your side.
Merlin: I think it'd be hard to flip them.
John: I don't know.
John: The eels have no, like, all the eels have is institutional memory and loyalty to one another.
Merlin: That's why they use them.
John: The eels don't care about me.
John: The eels don't care about you.
Merlin: Nope, nope, nope.
Merlin: They don't care about other eels.
John: I don't know.
John: I began to think because that's what they know.
John: They're all networked to each other.
John: Remember the girl?
Merlin: It's what they call a mesh network.
Merlin: It's got near proximity, near field eel technologies that allow them, just by being near each other, they become aware.
Merlin: They're like bees or ants or, you know.
John: Remember the girl in her?
John: She stopped being interested in her boyfriend because she was online talking at 1,000 megaparsecs a second.
John: Oh, I never got that far.
John: That's what happens.
Merlin: That's depressing.
John: Yeah, she gets on there and she's super interesting to this guy.
John: And then as she gets better, she's doing teraflop conversations.
John: Crowdsourcing.
John: Yeah, and she's like, I really am sort of enjoying my relationships with these other people.
Merlin: That's like every woman I've ever, ever been with.
Merlin: I know, right?
Merlin: No, and the thing is, I understand.
Merlin: I'm not complaining.
Merlin: I mean, I understand.
Merlin: I understand, like, how incredibly tedious it is to deal with just me.
Merlin: I can't... I would be out there looking for teraflops, too.
John: I feel like dealing with you, you know, you'd have to compartmentalize.
John: If I was Merlin Mann's sole life partner...
John: I feel like there would be, you know, you'd have to build some small fences, not tall fences, picket fences around some garden plots.
John: Find reasons to run errands.
John: By plots, I mean P-L-O-T-Z.
John: Plotsing.
Merlin: Some garden plots.
Merlin: Picket fence plotsing.
John: And you'd have to, yeah, there'd be some errands to run.
John: There'd be some errands I would send you on or I would ask you to do because it's very hard to send you on.
Merlin: Quote-unquote business trips.
Merlin: i'm totally i'm totally sympathetic believe me i understand i have to live with it too oh you know i think i might be allergic to christmas trees that is an extremely common allergy not to say you know quotidian or a gauche but it's a lot of people have that allergy john
John: Is that right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah, big time.
John: Are you hearing about this on other channels?
Merlin: I had a very good friend who was, like, the thing is, she loved Christmas.
Merlin: She loved Christmas so much.
Merlin: But having a live tree in the house.
Merlin: Something happens with the sap.
Merlin: The sap, I think, basically, when you first get the tree, you might be fine.
Merlin: But I don't know if this is the case with you.
Merlin: But supposedly, it turns out,
Merlin: The longer the tree is around, as it starts to degrade, there's something produced by the sap that gets into the air, and some people are extremely allergic to pine needle dander.
John: I went on WebMD, as you do, and WebMD said that it was mold, that you weren't allergic to the tree, you were allergic to the mold that was on the tree.
John: Turns out.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: What do you think?
Merlin: I'm just guessing with your various collections, I don't know how well you curate every piece.
Merlin: I know you touch each piece often.
Merlin: But you must have some baseline mold in that house already.
Merlin: It seems like that would have gotten you already.
John: There is a kind of – there was a place where the previous owners did not properly caulk around a door.
John: And I got a little bit of mold in –
Merlin: Got a little bit of fresh Seattle coming in all the time.
John: Yeah.
John: And so I went out there and I caulked it and it's sealed now.
John: But I think that there is some little creeping fellas in there.
John: But I don't feel like I'm allergic to my house in general.
John: But there is a Christmas tree in it right now.
Merlin: Yeah, I saw a photo of that.
Merlin: I sometimes feel like – did you ever see the conversation with Gene Hackman?
Merlin: Where he's the – no spoilers, but he's an eavesdropping expert.
Merlin: He's good at planning mics.
Merlin: And he's tearing his whole house apart trying to find – Tearing up the floor, yeah.
Merlin: That's me when I discover anything in my house, whether it's a leak, whether it's a draft, whether it's a whatever.
Merlin: Once I discover one draft, suddenly I'm like Lord of the Drafts.
Merlin: And all I'm finding through the entire house is drafts.
Merlin: And that's when I really realize how rickety the whole place is.
Merlin: It's like when you notice, you can go years and years and years without noticing something, and then once you start noticing a little bit, it's like all you see.
John: That is so, so true.
Merlin: Honestly, does that happen to you?
John: Well, yeah.
John: I mean, I go years and years and years without noticing things, and then I notice them, and then I'm obsessed by them.
John: I had a very interesting experience the other day.
John: There was a friend over and she was helping me clean my project room.
Merlin: Is that your Kevin Spacey dungeon?
Merlin: What is that really?
Merlin: I said, listen, I need a little help.
Merlin: I need help getting the couch down into my project room.
Merlin: What size dress do you wear?
John: What are you, like a 12?
John: I needed a little help.
John: And I was just like, listen, I just need moral support or something.
John: I just need to go into this project room.
John: It's gotten a little crazy.
John: And I need some help.
John: And she was like, Oh, this is hilarious.
John: Sure.
John: I'll go into your project room and help you like straighten it up or whatever.
John: Cause she's, you know, she's a gal.
John: She feels like, Oh, straightening up a room.
John: Like I've got some, I got a system or whatever.
John: And I'm like, okay, well don't, don't apply your system here.
John: I just need you.
John: I need some morals.
John: So she comes in and she's going around and she's like looking in boxes and she's asking questions about what she finds and
John: And after a while, and I'm in there, and I'm full of anxiety because it's like, ah, well, that box, you can't put... I know it looks like it has paper in it, but you can't put any other paper in that box because all of that paper is a kind of paper.
John: And, oh, that box looks like it's assorted wall.
Merlin: This is like having to explain the backstage passes, for example.
John: Yeah, yeah, right.
John: It's like there are 75 levels of order...
John: In a system which appears to you to have no order, and yet those levels of order would never be... If I died tomorrow and somebody was trying to make sense of this, there would be no way they could.
John: Because they would have to share too many other...
John: suppositions right so she's sitting in there and she's like what wait a minute you're why are you safe why are you saving this and i'm like well it doesn't seem like that in itself has any value and even at a secondary level it has no value but it relates at a tertiary level to something else some other thing and so because of that reflected value it actually has a lot of value
Merlin: But it sounds like what you're saying, that even if somebody were a lifetime scholar of John Roderick, there may still be certain intellectual doors that are never unlocked.
Merlin: So many.
Merlin: So many.
Merlin: Even if you get the basic system, even if you get most of the connections—
Merlin: There may be tertiary systems in place that are beyond reckoning.
Merlin: It's like you're an Enigma machine.
John: Right.
John: Systems that you could – there will be something tucked in a book over on this shelf, and that thing has an electrical connection to something that is in a box.
John: in a box that is otherwise full of guitar picks or whatever.
John: That sounds like a fun way for a young gal to spend her afternoon.
John: There's no connective tissue between the two things, but they are vibrating at a higher frequency between one another, and I am aware that... I know that the 1924 silver certificate is tucked in the copy of The Red and the Black...
John: Over in the bookshelf.
John: And that that somehow relates to the Sane Freeze sticker that I pulled off of a phone pole in 1989.
John: That Sane Freeze, you know, the giant puppeteers that were against nuclear war.
Merlin: Stay, freeze, stand tall, red, black, stand tall.
Merlin: Hey, there you go.
Merlin: That's beautiful.
Merlin: See, this is the kind of thing, though.
Merlin: That's the kind of false hope that makes a John Roderick scholar go down the wrong path.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: The archivist is like, I think I've finally made the connection.
John: It's like, nope.
John: Sam, why don't you take a couple weeks off?
John: At a certain point, that's right.
John: He's like, no, I can't leave now.
John: I think you've had enough, Sam.
John: I finally am starting to see it.
John: I'm starting to see the gold wires.
John: Anyway, she's sitting on the couch, and at a certain point, she looks up with a new look on her face, and it's a look of sympathy.
John: And she goes, oh, I always thought that this was funny.
John: That you were such a... That you had all these systems or whatever.
Merlin: You had to be there for the moment of realization.
John: But now I'm seeing how... What a terrible burden this is on you.
John: And I was like, what?
John: Stop talking.
John: And she said, you have like this... You have the organizational sense of someone who...
John: Who has a place for everything and everything in its place.
John: But every other person like that in the world finds freedom in throwing things away that don't fit in the little apportioned holes.
John: And then the other half of you is this person that is basically stacking used soup cans in the hall...
John: And the two things are opposed to one another.
John: But you honestly cannot throw away a single ticket stub or cigar foil or whatever because they all have meaning.
John: But they also all need to be in a special place, and there aren't that many special places in the world.
John: And I was like, stop talking!
Merlin: You should go.
John: But it was interesting, because for the first time, this thing that I play for comedy, and that everybody thinks of as being a funny, quirky thing, this one person had the insight...
John: To say like, oh dear, oh, I've seen too much or whatever, or maybe not too much.
John: She recognized that this was a constant cycle of worms burrowing in my mind.
Merlin: Can I give you a slight reframe?
Merlin: Not to necessarily make you feel better, but to say where I think I'm simpatico.
John: Is this an inbox zero thing you're about to say?
Merlin: Podcast is over.
Merlin: Let me have this nullified.
Merlin: Here's the problem, I think.
Merlin: The phrase in my family, we used to call people like that string savers.
Merlin: Oh, they're string savers.
John: String savers.
John: That seems cute and quaint.
Merlin: Cute and quaint because you've been through the depression and you know that eventually you'll probably need a little bit of extra string.
Merlin: Why would you throw that away?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And if you've ever gone through an old person's home, you know that this is a thing.
Merlin: Here's my only reframe on that.
Merlin: And this is why I think – why I'm sympathetic to what you're describing and why I think it's complicated.
Merlin: It would be one thing to say – yes, she's absolutely correct.
Merlin: It's one thing to say like, okay, here's this ticket stub.
Merlin: I know this is important because X.
Merlin: It's important because maybe on this one level, I had a good time that night.
Merlin: Maybe on another level, it's that I have a collection of these and that's a fun thing that I do.
Merlin: I think those kinds of things can become overwhelming, but those aren't the real problem.
Merlin: The real problem is the stuff you save when you're not really sure why you're saving it.
Merlin: But because it might be important someday.
Merlin: Like somebody might want this.
Merlin: This might become valuable.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: If you've got a lot of stuff like that of unknown future provenance, you don't even know how to classify it except to say here's stuff that might be important someday that isn't classified.
Merlin: But I think that's the struggle is like, especially with all this kid stuff we've got, like our kid's never going to want all this junk of hers that we saved.
Merlin: I don't find myself craving that stuff for my own childhood.
Merlin: She's never going to want that.
Merlin: I saved that for me.
Merlin: Just that I don't know what box that goes in yet.
Merlin: That's a story that's not done being told yet.
Merlin: Thank God.
Merlin: But I think that's the complicated part is when you get a lot of stuff.
Merlin: Yes, certainly you can find yourself cleft to a lot of stuff you never meant to keep.
Merlin: But I think a lot of stuff you keep is because you're not really quite sure why, but it seems like it might be important.
John: Well, so for instance, I found for a while there, it was kind of a thing, maybe the type of thing that you would find in a SkyMall catalog from 1985, where...
John: The first thing I found was like Coke cans that were actually little safes.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Deodorant.
John: You can get those shaving cream.
John: Looked like a can of Dr. Pepper, but you take the top off and it's like, oh, it's this little secret place you can put your jewels.
John: And I was like, oh, that comports with my thinking almost exactly.
Yeah.
John: I would like to open the refrigerator and every single item in the refrigerator is actually a disguised safe.
Merlin: But they don't have to be from the same era.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, sure.
Merlin: Okay, that's right.
Merlin: You couldn't have a can of 1985 Coke in there.
Merlin: People would think that you're a nut.
John: Yeah, well, they already think I'm a nut.
John: And it might not be unreasonable that I would have a can of 1985 Coke in my refrigerator that was legitimate Coke, right?
John: But then there's another one that's a safe.
John: And then it was like, oh, and they also make... And this is a thing that anybody could make, which is...
John: Basically an electrical outlet, but instead of being an actual electrical outlet, it's a safe.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And so I started to collect these things, partly because I thought it was a humorous moment in American history.
John: like psychological territory like oh this was a time there was a time when people were worried like the only thing the only value that a safe like that would have is if your daughter is a junkie right like if the if you really if if what you're trying to protect from burglars would fit into an electrical outlet
John: You don't have that much to lose.
Merlin: You're right, because you're describing a time before stuff like USB drives.
Merlin: Unless you have, like, a can of uncut diamonds and some German bearer bonds, it's mostly going to be Kipple you put in there.
John: Even German bearer bonds wouldn't fit in there.
John: I mean, it's basically like you could put your engagement ring... I was thinking if you roll it up.
John: But you're right, it's too big, too tall.
John: Too big, too tall.
John: You could put an engagement ring and, like, $500 in $100 bills and a Krugerrand, maybe...
John: But it's before, yeah, I mean, these things are actually perfect for hiding USB drives that are full of all of our government secrets.
John: But that's not when they were made.
John: They were made in this earlier time.
John: So I started to collect these when I found them.
John: These, like, weird...
John: security like cheapo security things and the only use that they would have is yeah if you had some teenage teenager who was scavenging around looking for something to steal out of your room but not a burglar like a burglar is a burglar is going to take your TV that's what a burglar takes and
John: So now I have a collection of these things, but I haven't installed them because partly the appeal is that they're in their packaging.
John: And so you read the box and it's like amazing security outlet box.
John: But it's not quite beautiful enough or weird enough to build a display case.
Merlin: That would be so weird.
Merlin: It would look like you were curating garbage.
Merlin: That looks like a can of Wright Card, but that ain't no can of Wright Card.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It looks like an outlet, doesn't it?
John: I got a neck pillow in there, and I got a bent fork.
John: so yeah so i don't want to it's not beautiful it's not something to display it's something that belongs in a not even in a spy museum but like in a in a like it belongs in a vacation home yeah right i mean
Merlin: It's the kind of thing you do to go like, oh, we keep a couple hundred bucks around the house, right?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It's where you keep the spare key to your vacation home.
John: That's exactly what it is.
Merlin: Yeah, or you put that Coke can, you mix it in in the second refrigerator in the garage or something like that.
John: Yeah, some of the things in my collection are those fake rocks.
John: I want you to hide a key in.
John: You hide a key in that don't look like rocks at all.
John: They don't look like rocks at all.
John: And so I've got a little collection of these.
John: I can't display them.
John: And so they live in this world where half of the time I put them in some sort of like, all right, these are practical items that I have yet to install.
John: right they go over into the like oh they're still like in a practical area in like on your to-do list uh kind of area well it's when i get a chance when i get a spare afternoon i'm gonna install this outlet that doesn't work it's and so but it's one of these like are these things particles or waves like depending on how i look at them sometimes they're a particle sometimes it seems a waste to keep them in this box
John: No, I can't.
John: So then sometimes I move them out of the practical, like the, the, the queue, out of the staging area.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: And I put them back into a thing like, well, these are, these are actually, you know, these are collectibles.
John: These are curios.
John: These are something.
John: And so basically what they are is that I'm going to die and somebody is going to come try to make sense of my estate.
John: And they're going to be like, what is wrong with this guy?
Yeah.
Merlin: And every once in a while, I'll go in and I'll put little things.
Merlin: He has nothing of value and hundreds of ways to hide it that he never used.
John: Yeah, I'll go put little things in them just as a mental placeholder.
John: I'm putting a tie tack in this thing as a kind of stick it note to remind myself that this is not crazy.
John: This is actually a practical thing.
John: I could put $100 in here.
John: And it's like, yes, you could put $100 in there.
John: But that is not how we do things now.
John: We are not...
John: You are not trying to protect this $100.
John: You have this for a different reason.
John: And there are so many things in my world... Neither fish nor fowl, as they say.
John: That's right.
John: That fit into this category of like, depending on how I measure it, it is a different... The fundamental nature of the thing is different.
John: And it never settles into one category or another.
John: Right.
John: And so basically it goes in the project room and it's in a box and it's floating around.
John: And also in that box is like, I mean, I've told you that I have a collection of wallets.
John: None of them I'm ever going to use again.
John: But I cannot empty them of their contents because the old expired credit cards and YMCA membership cards and Blockbuster video cards that are in the wallets are of a time, right?
John: You'd be like freaking up the collection.
John: But the problem is no one is ever going to find these wallets and like no archaeologist is ever going to find this wallet collection and be amazed by the 1997 Blockbuster video cards that are in it.
John: The only archaeologist that is interested in it or cares about it is me and the thrust to weight ratio is
John: of enjoyment versus anxiety is this is this constant dance i'm in like i take it out i look at it i go haha look at that blockbuster video card from 1997 and then i go what is wrong with you and the engage the the the entertainment that i'm getting versus the like uh the suffering
John: I do not have whatever the gauge is in a person's mind that can calibrate like, okay, this is causing me more suffering than it is pleasure.
John: Like looking at the fingering this 1997 Blockbuster video card and feeling like, wow, this is a thing from the past.
John: Versus surveying the entire room and feeling like I'm a crazy person and I am surrounded by things that are emblematic of craziness.
John: And if they were all gone, would I ever lay awake in bed at night and think, how will I ever finger a Blockbuster video card again?
John: Like, I would never think about it again, right?
John: Right.
John: My friend that was helping me clean the room, she was like, why do you have all these old copies of Vice magazine?
John: And I was like, well, in the really early days of Vice, very early days, it was pretty interesting, kind of transgressive, pretty funny.
John: She was like, seriously?
John: Seriously?
John: It's just like a stack of Time magazines.
John: Really?
John: Really?
Merlin: And to her, though, that's probably bewildering because you're not keeping them because you could sell them in the future.
Merlin: Is that what's going through her mind?
Merlin: Is that it would be high resale value for these things?
John: Or even that there were recipes in them.
John: Right?
John: I mean, if you keep things that have recipes in them, people understand.
John: Right?
John: If you keep things that are like, here's how to build a bookshelf.
Right?
John: Oh, I don't want to throw that away because one day I might want to build a bookshelf.
John: But the only reason you would keep old Vice magazines is if you thought that the hyper snarky pop culture of 2004 was something to cling to.
John: And I do not believe that.
John: But I do have a stack of old Vice magazines that as she started to move toward the garbage can, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: What if I wanted to take some of those pictures out and put them in picture frames?
John: She was like, I don't even know the words you're using.
John: What are you talking about?
John: I don't know.
John: There's some good pictures in there.
John: I could put them in picture frames.
John: If they're in picture frames, they would have value because they would have been, because they would, the putting them in the frame would be a thing that imparted value to them.
Merlin: Right.
John: And I haven't done that yet.
John: So they have potential energy.
John: They have potential value.
John: I just have not converted it to kinetic value.
Merlin: Yeah, well, it's also, I mean, you've done the basic step of having a collection.
Merlin: This is what separates you from being like a garden variety hoarder, is that you put things in groups.
Merlin: That's the primary thing.
Merlin: If it's not a group, it's not a collection.
Merlin: I think that's really true.
Merlin: We, this hotel we were staying at the other night, you know, my daughter and I always like to go out and explore, you know, walk up and down the halls and everything.
Merlin: We walked by and there was a meeting room.
Merlin: It was a meeting of scrapbookers.
John: Oh, I thought you were going to say furries and I was so interested.
Merlin: Well, we looked in there and even, this is no disrespect, but even in the room full of people doing scrapbooking, it
Merlin: like something from hoarders because they're real spread out.
Merlin: They've got samples of different kinds of cool paper to use for your scrapbooking and stuff like that.
Merlin: So like, you know, if you can make the step from like, you know, the thing that seems to be missing from your system is the first step and the last step.
Merlin: All the middle steps are in great shape, right?
John: Tell me about these steps, these first steps.
Merlin: I mean, the last step is, and we all agreed it was the best museum ever.
Merlin: And the first step is, why would I want this?
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But everything else in between is flawless.
Merlin: I think we can agree.
Merlin: I don't know if it's a technical problem, a time issue.
Merlin: You have not documented a lot of this stuff as well as you'd like.
Merlin: That's why you can't put it on eBay as a collection.
Merlin: But if you have the presence of mind to put all those certain kind of backstage passes into this one cigar box, I think you're much further along than somebody who has piles.
Merlin: They move into bigger and bigger boxes.
John: Well, thank you.
John: That makes me feel a lot better.
Merlin: I'm looking at a page on the five levels of hoarding.
Merlin: Oh, tell me about it.
Merlin: What level am I?
Merlin: Well, I don't know.
Merlin: Level one.
Merlin: All doors and staircases are accessible.
Merlin: The pets are always important.
Merlin: Normal household pet activity with light evidence of rodents or pests.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: One to three pet accidents evident.
Merlin: Clutter is not excessive.
Merlin: Home has normal, healthy housekeeping and safe and healthy sanitation.
Merlin: No odors.
John: No odors.
John: You're telling me that level one of hoarding allows for two or three pet accidents visible to someone visiting?
John: I got four more levels.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: I can't even read this.
Merlin: This is so sad.
Merlin: It's not funny.
Merlin: It's not funny.
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: I don't have pets.
Merlin: Level four.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: It gets bad.
John: It gets bad.
Merlin: It's so bad.
Merlin: structural damage older than six months mold and mildew inappropriate use of appliances damage to two or more sections of wall board faulty well this is so sad it's not funny it's not funny it's not it's just uh you know i've i've i've had to deal with it i've had to deal with this like it's like cats eating your face give you one bullet here on level uh five
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Rodents incite mosquito or other insect infestation and regional critters such as squirrels inside the house.
Merlin: Kitchen and bathroom unusable due to clutter.
Merlin: Occupants living or sleeping outside.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So I think you're safe because you have – that's so sad.
Merlin: I want to just throw this whole episode away.
Merlin: That makes me so sad.
Merlin: I think you don't qualify on any of those levels.
Merlin: I bet you have odors, but they're just – You don't have any odors?
John: I just have the odor of freshly made chili.
John: The thing is I am sensible.
John: I do not collect anything perishable.
John: I do clean out the kitchen.
John: I'm not someone who is like, I can't throw away this avocado.
Merlin: Okay, here's the thing, and I feel kind of bad that we even did that, because I don't mean to make fun.
Merlin: But my understanding of hoarding is that when it becomes a problem...
Merlin: when you can't function normally.
Merlin: Vis-a-vis, you can't close and open doors.
Merlin: You can't walk through rooms.
Merlin: That's the point, I think, when a lot of people go like, okay, this is getting out of control.
Merlin: And of course, you get more and more ashamed about it.
Merlin: We don't want people to know about it.
Merlin: But I think that's when it gets bad.
Merlin: It's like it starts with a path, and then pretty soon there's not a path.
Merlin: And that's, I think, when it becomes more than just being cluttered.
John: But the normal functioning, this is the question, or this is the thing that I struggle with.
John: Because
John: Normal functioning... There are psychological hallways in my mental house that I cannot walk down because of the newspaper that's stacked in there.
John: So you've got a visible hoarding problem where there are rodents and wallboard damage, but you can have that in your mind house...
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: That's so good.
John: I don't think there are rodents in my mind house, but there are definitely newspapers tied with twine.
John: And when you say, like, we need to get rid of some of these newspapers that are fire hazard, I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: Those newspapers, that's going to be important.
Merlin: But you can put your hand to stuff, right?
Merlin: This is what makes you so interesting.
Merlin: It's like it isn't as though you've got – also the other thing I think about when it's problematic is, like, you can't find stuff.
Merlin: You know – you feel like it might be here somewhere.
John: There's this – No, I know exactly where everything is.
Wow.
Wow.
John: And that is part of what feels like it's a mind problem.
John: Somebody said to me the other day, what was it?
John: They needed some key card or some little piece of paper.
John: And I was like, well...
John: It's been nine months since that paper arrived.
John: But I could mentally track it like a UPS.
Merlin: Almost like it had an existential tracking number.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was like, that was originally on the piano.
John: Then it went to the kitchen table.
John: And then it got put into a box and taken upstairs into the project room.
John: But then at a certain point, that box got consolidated into another box.
John: And I bet you it's right...
John: around the it's it's it's in it's it's in the precambrian layer between you know like that whole series of menus i decided i was collecting from from restaurants that used french inappropriately
John: And, but it's going to be, it's going to definitely be below all of the triple A batteries that I decided were still had enough, you know, the half charge triple A batteries that I decided still had enough charge that I was going to keep them together in case a technology was developed that you could put half discharge batteries into and collect that energy.
John: That's just being green.
John: And so I went upstairs, and they were like, wait a minute, why are you going upstairs?
John: And I was like, I'm pretty sure I know where it is.
John: And they were like, it never went upstairs.
John: This piece of paper was here on the piano.
John: I was like, no, it's been to six other locations.
John: And I went upstairs, and I went into a box and put my hand on the paper.
John: I reached into the middle of a stack of things in the box and pulled out the thing.
John: You're magic.
John: I could be splitting the fucking atom if I didn't have... We only use... Turns out we only use 2% of our brain.
Merlin: Oh, is that right?
Merlin: I thought we were up to 10.
John: No, it's 2.
John: The other 98% is just... It's just cycling.
John: It's like on a dry cycle.
John: Anyway, I don't want to be able to do that.
John: I don't want to have that amount of organization in my head because I do feel like I'm like a...
John: I'm like one of those guys that used to go from village to village and sharpen your cooking pots.
Merlin: A tinker?
Merlin: A tinker.
John: Sharpen your cooking pots.
John: You got to want a new edge on that fry pan.
John: I got a donkey with a straw hat with his ears sticking out of it.
John: And I have a cart full of pots, covered with pots.
Merlin: I think in the world of Dickens, you would be called a pan-sharp.
Merlin: I'm a pan sharp.
Merlin: I go from town to town and it's just like clank, clank, clank, clank, clank.
Merlin: People who don't know better are going to sharpen the handle.
Merlin: You don't want to do that.
Merlin: You don't want a sharp handle on a pot.
John: Nope.
John: Oh, I got so many fucking pots.
Merlin: That guy doesn't know a pan sharp's damn about that.
John: I'm allergic to Christmas trees, too.
John: Yeah.
John: Maybe you should quit having people over to help you.
John: You know, that's another thing.
John: Well, but that's got to be one of the steps.
John: People stop coming over.
John: Oh, that's a huge step.
John: That's a huge step.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: People start feeling sympathy for you when they used to think it was funny.
John: That's not a good thing.
John: You know, when you get to be a middle-aged man and people start to go from thinking you're funny to thinking you're sympathetic, that's a bad sign.
John: They start saying stuff like, oh, I think you're super.
John: I know.
John: I'm starting to look like Wilford Brimley anyway.
John: Diabetes.
Merlin: Yeah, you don't give yourself enough credit.
Merlin: I'm going to say it again.
Merlin: I don't mean to repeat a bit, but I think you should get somebody in there.
Merlin: Well, I guess it depends which department at UW you call.
Merlin: But maybe somebody who's an anthropologist might be interested in helping you out.
Merlin: Because they're not going to look at it that way.
Merlin: They're not going to go, why the hell are you keeping Vice Magazine?
Merlin: They're going to say, how are you going to curate this?
Merlin: What's the story that we're telling here?
Merlin: If you got like 5% of your collection curated, I'm just saying, baby steps.
John: The thing is, every time I open the newspaper and there's an ad from the University of Washington, and they're like looking for study participants, always VD.
John: Venereal disease?
John: Yeah, they're like, do you suffer from herpes and want to make $10 a month?
Merlin: You know, I'm getting so old, I can't even follow the rules for who's eligible before they mention what it is that they're doing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you're between the ages of 18 and 35 and have been exposed to herpes on more than one occasion but have a car loan that's less than six months old and you think you might be able to be previously used and prepared an event...
Merlin: you might get money from mesothelioma.
John: Yeah, I don't want any of that.
John: I don't want to be a part of those studies.
Merlin: That smells like forms to me.
Merlin: That's going to be forms to fill out.
Merlin: John gets the final word.