Ep. 284: "You're Grass Now"
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hello, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
Merlin: Pretty well.
John: You know, just getting my shit together.
Merlin: What have you been doing this morning?
John: You know, I don't do very much in the mornings, let's be honest.
John: Oh, I don't believe that.
John: You gotta be doing something.
John: You're awake.
John: I mean, I putter around.
John: I'm barely awake.
John: Putt, putt, putt, you know.
John: On days, you know, because I live in a, not like you, in a conventionally structured family, but in an unconstructed family, I don't have to get my daughter up to school every morning.
John: Only sometimes.
John: So other times I just...
John: I just lay in bed and just stare up at the little reflective moons that I have on the ceiling of my room.
John: I don't really have that on my room.
Merlin: Are you just tired or are you thinking?
Merlin: I'm thinking.
Merlin: Thinking deep thoughts.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's hard to get a kid to school.
Merlin: I know we've talked about it before.
Merlin: Well, I talk about it every day.
Merlin: Socks.
Merlin: Socks.
Merlin: There's never a day where socks are not a thing that you need to wear.
Merlin: You need to find socks.
John: Just put coffee on my shirt.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
John: It's all right.
John: It was clean for 15 minutes.
John: Hey!
John: 15 minutes.
John: I put it on.
John: I was like, this is a nice shirt.
John: Should I wear this shirt today?
John: Yeah.
John: What the hell?
John: What am I saving it for?
Merlin: Am I saving it for some wedding or something?
Merlin: I don't want to talk you to death on the kids stuff.
Merlin: I know it's boring.
Merlin: When you're thinking deep thoughts in the morning, what is the general nature of your deep thoughts?
Merlin: If you can say.
Merlin: The general nature of the deep thoughts.
Merlin: Are you thinking about dreams?
Merlin: Are you ruminating?
Merlin: Are you pondering what the day might look like?
Merlin: Are you thinking about Dick Cheney?
Merlin: What are you thinking about?
John: You know, I don't really think about the day as it's, you know, like looking at it like, oh, how's this day going to go?
John: Because I just take it as it comes, you know?
John: Do you?
John: You take it as it comes?
John: I take it as it comes.
John: I don't really – you know, like I'll plot it out if I have to –
John: Hit it hit several lily pads on my way across the if I have to go from a lily pad to a log To a lily pad to a log to get across the stream to the other side
John: Um, I'll like try and figure out what those are because the logs are moving one way.
John: The lily pads are moving another.
John: Oh, and you got to get across the street without getting hit.
John: Yeah, you got to get, you got to get over there.
John: Um, but, uh, you know, I have like, I, we've talked about it before.
John: I have a series.
John: I have like a, uh, a manila folder full of things that I'm permanently anxious about.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: and uh so i run i gotta run those oh god you know like what would you know it's another day where i haven't put out a record album oh yeah you're doing your regular check-in yeah you're doing your standing meeting with yourself that's right and then i have the then i have the subset got any progress on that nope yep still still not 100 sure we graduated from college actually
John: And then there's the subset of those which are the ones that are like over 10 years old.
John: Like, oh, God, I got to fill in that swimming pool and I got to fix that foundation of that barn.
John: And I have to rebuild that front walk.
Merlin: That's a thick, thick manila folder.
Merlin: It's terrible.
Merlin: It's probably an accordion folder to accommodate new additions.
Merlin: Oh, for shiz.
John: And it's a thing where, what I do is I say, this is the year.
John: I'm definitely doing it.
John: It's just a matter of a few phone calls.
John: And then, you know, it's like, oh, I don't have any money.
John: But this is the year for that, too.
John: This is the year of money.
John: This is the year where the money, I'm going to figure out a way to earn money this year.
John: And then I think... College?
John: Figure out college?
John: Well, I don't have to do that.
John: Either I graduated or I didn't.
Merlin: Oh, I was thinking for your youngster.
Merlin: That's always there in my folder.
Merlin: I don't think about college for the kids.
Merlin: I keep counting on college that just fall apart.
Merlin: I think it's due.
Merlin: I think we're due for the... Yeah, yeah, no.
Merlin: It's like, you know, like when you're kind of a closet introvert, you think like, well, if there's an earthquake, I won't have to go to dinner with this person tonight.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I keep thinking it's going to happen.
Merlin: Something's going to happen.
Merlin: There's going to be some kind of university 9-11.
Merlin: We're going to have to start over.
Merlin: Well, I think it's happening.
Merlin: I know, but not fast enough.
Merlin: I mean, she keeps growing.
Merlin: The socks she had today were too small.
Merlin: She's growing.
Merlin: She's getting very big.
Merlin: She's like five feet tall now.
John: Well, you know, at a certain point, she'll be able to wear your socks.
John: Yeah.
John: Because you're somebody that only buys one kind of sock, right?
John: One kind of sock.
John: Don't you get gold toes?
John: White gold toes, yeah.
John: White gold toes, yeah.
John: She had Minecraft socks.
John: Yeah, I don't know what those are.
John: Are they made out of Legos?
John: Seems uncomfortable.
John: But, you know, you never see the apocalypse coming the way you think it's going to come.
John: Never happens the way you think.
John: And I think what's happening is the university apocalypse is as it becomes, as universities proliferate, they become less and less meaningful, more and more just diffuse.
Yeah.
John: And pretty soon, like, universities are the equivalent of, like, summer camp or gardening school or, you know, banana pants.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And then, you know, I mean, you could spend $100,000 a year sending your kid to university right now.
John: And what are they going to do?
John: They're going to read Mark Twain and, you know, and Beloved.
John: And they're going to take a bunch of math classes that they could do online.
Merlin: They're already talking about, what was it?
Merlin: It was somewhere in the upper Midwest.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: one of the universities was talking about just gutting pretty much all of their humanities department and languages.
John: Oh, it just happened, right?
John: Was it Minnesota?
John: Yeah, it was.
John: Well, wait a minute.
John: I just had this conversation.
John: It was, yeah, Michigan State or something like that, or University of Michigan.
Merlin: It was a pretty broad stroke they were taking, though.
Merlin: They were going to just basically cut out a couple whole buildings, I think.
John: Well, sure, because they see where the bread is buttered,
John: And they realize that they're a trade school, just like we've been saying for a long time.
John: Yeah, it's all going to be like petroleum engineering.
John: Yeah, so why is it even called a university?
John: There's nothing universal about it.
John: It should be called a specificity.
John: Specificity.
John: It should.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: I mean, you know.
Merlin: It should be on the job training somewhere.
Merlin: Talk about your privilege, boy.
Merlin: I got to go to college, like out the door.
Merlin: It was like five grand a year, including everything, pretty much.
Merlin: And I got to sit around and read books.
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: You can read books anytime.
Merlin: We got a library right near our house.
Merlin: You can go there anytime.
John: Yeah.
John: But personally, I feel like getting a liberal arts education requires that you be in a college and talking to people all the time.
John: Sure.
John: And the thing is, getting a petroleum engineering degree requires that you talk to people.
John: It's just that you should be talking to people on a job site at a petroleum situation.
John: You should be down in Louisiana somewhere with some guy in overalls or coveralls or, I don't know, pocket protector saying, hey, get over here and turn this wrench.
John: This is your degree.
John: It's like a law degree used to be.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now, one way I feel like we're real different.
Merlin: I mean, I've got a few lily pads I need to hit.
Merlin: But it seems like you go places a lot.
Merlin: Am I wrong about that?
Merlin: It seems like you leave your house and go places.
Merlin: You go to events.
Merlin: You go to meetings.
Merlin: Maybe you're going to have coffee with somebody.
Merlin: I have to.
Merlin: It's not a trick question.
Merlin: It's more in the service of saying, when I have to go anywhere, if I have a phone call that's not a normal podcast or something, where I've got to have a scheduled thing with a pseudo-stranger, I way over-engineer my day.
Merlin: And it sounds like you don't do that.
John: No, I don't.
John: I mean, I have to do things.
John: And I'm always late.
John: Which...
John: Which I know why I'm always late.
John: I leave the house too late.
Merlin: Well, I think we discussed that you and the city of Seattle have some differences about how the roads should work.
Merlin: It gets worse all the time.
Merlin: It's an expectations game in a lot of ways.
John: But, yeah, I think when I moved to this house, I really thought I had solved a lot of problems.
John: And what I really did was, I mean, every time you...
John: I was talking to somebody a couple of days ago who is very accomplished.
John: He's a person our age and extremely, extremely accomplished person.
John: And also...
John: Happy.
John: Oh, huh.
Merlin: Accomplished and happy?
John: Yeah.
John: And I had the occasion to meet one of this person's children.
John: And the child was happy.
John: And the child, like, on its own, described its life as good and its family life as good.
John: um like and it was it was obvious that they were um like they were they were high functioning and but they weren't uh they weren't like uh dull-witted you know they were sharp and they had and they were capable of feeling sad and you know all these emotions didn't read as a cult or forgive my saying it's an old term it didn't feel like a brainwashing kind of thing hmm
Merlin: Far from it.
John: I was impressed by the child.
John: I was impressed by the person.
John: Gross.
John: I'm speaking of.
John: So it was one of these things that you're talking about.
John: I had to leave the house because a friend was in town and they were having a show.
John: And the friend was Sarah Bowell.
Merlin: Oh, right.
John: Okay.
John: That you know from the radio.
John: I saw your leaked text about this.
John: Yeah.
John: And she was interviewing Michael Quincino, who is the composer that did the music for the movie Up.
John: Oh, wow.
John: And for the J.J.
John: Abrams album.
John: and for the Incredibles and for Lost.
John: No, really?
John: Incredibles?
John: Yeah.
John: That's really good music.
John: Well, so he's really good.
John: He's really good at his job.
John: He did the Star Trek reboot.
John: He did, you know, Rogue One.
John: Wow.
John: And so, and he's, you know, he's our age.
Yeah.
John: And talking to him, you know, it's he's one of the people in the world who at a very young age knew what he wanted to do.
John: And he and he found pursuing that really enjoyable.
John: He you know, he's obviously somebody that got up in the morning and was like, you know, I'm doing it.
John: I'm going.
John: And he basically he taught himself how to score.
John: He taught himself how to compose for an orchestra and conduct an orchestra.
John: Basically, you know, he went to various schools, but mostly he was just watching Planet of the Apes and trying to figure out how it was done.
John: Okay.
John: And now he is three quarters of the way to an EGOT.
John: He's got Emmys, Grammys, and Oscar for Up.
John: And I didn't know any of this while we were, the three of us were at the Washington Athletic Club at about one o'clock in the morning sitting in the bar just because they had done a good show and it was just like we were shooting the shit.
John: And it was obvious he was accomplished and obvious from the reaction of the people at the opera house who had come to see them talk that he was beloved.
John: But, you know, I didn't do any advancements.
John: research on him.
John: And it turned out we had met before through, uh, San Francisco's, uh, number one Adam Savage.
John: But walking away, you know, then you get home and you're like, who was that guy?
John: What an interesting guy.
John: What a nice evening.
John: I should figure out who that was.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's like, Oh, I see.
John: He's, he's fairly accomplished, but crucially, uh,
John: he was really happy to be in the world and happy to be himself you could tell he just loved his job he loved his work he loved his and his kids like his kids are two of them are going away to college and the youngest one is still at home and the and uh sarah was saying that
John: The youngest one reported not being able to think of a single advantage to having his older brother and sister out of the house.
John: He was like, no, it's really sad that they left.
John: And she's like, really?
John: You're the only kid left?
John: Like, you can't, it's not kind of fun.
John: You're not getting all the attention.
John: And he's like, no, it's really, I miss them and I wish they were home.
John: It's like, wow, that's really impressive.
John: You know, like, this feels like some kind of like a Ned Flanders situation.
John: Well, no, but the thing is, they're all, you know, he's like,
John: He'll sit and I mean, you would you two would go nuts on each other because he also has a as a complete world history of popular entertainment in the in America in the
John: 20 and 21st century like he loves it all and he was showing he showed us a clip of king kong and he's like listen to the music and i'm like amazing the music of king kong he's a good synthesizer like he synthesizes uh stuff well yeah i mean well just you know just again somebody working at like
John: If I put myself back to the age of 22, when he was 22, and we were both thinking about what we're going to do today, and he was like, I got to figure out how to write in the treble clef.
John: And I was like, I've got to get this.
John: all this mucus out of my eyes.
Merlin: He's actually younger than I am.
John: It's depressing.
John: Yeah.
John: He splits the difference between you and me.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: He's right in between.
Merlin: I discovered this is something that's happened to me more and more.
Merlin: It wasn't too long ago I learned that there's now a Supreme Court justice that's younger than I. And it wasn't until last week that I learned that the embattled EPA
Merlin: guy is two years younger than me.
Merlin: I feel like I should be further along.
Merlin: Nobody's offered me an apartment in D.C.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's not too late.
John: You never know.
John: The next administration might be, you know, it might be lonely sandwich.
John: It's like, I'm president.
John: President sandwich.
John: I am the president.
John: President sandwich.
John: And my director of the EPA is going to be, hmm, Merlin.
Merlin: Hey, I care about the environment and stuff.
John: I'm due.
John: I'm due.
John: But in life you encounter these situations where you meet someone who's just like firing on all cylinders, right?
John: And it's not to say that he doesn't have problems.
John: He confesses to being sad and you understand.
Merlin: That's so healthy.
John: That's so healthy.
John: But but for me, like when I moved out here, I thought I was solving for a lot of problems.
John: And what it did was I realized like, oh, I bought a house.
John: I bought my first house when I bought it.
John: I was very conscious.
John: This is just your first house.
John: You know, in the space of from the time I was born to the time I graduated from high school, my life.
John: parents between the two of them probably had 10 houses.
John: You know, they just would buy a house.
John: They'd live there a few years.
John: They'd buy another house and times were different.
John: Right.
John: But you know, because you could buy a house for $20,000.
John: Um, but, but I was like, listen, this is just, you're just buying this place.
John: And then the next thing that happens, you'll just do that.
John: Like, don't, don't become, don't get to be crazy about it.
John: But I got this house.
John: It's not around anything, really.
John: It's a long way to the next thing.
John: I like your house.
John: It's nice, but it's not really walkable to anywhere, which is a thing.
John: You want to be able to walk places.
John: I do.
John: Yeah, true.
John: But now, you know, it's like there's a part of me that's ready for a change.
John: There's a part of me that feels like I'm rooted here.
John: And it's hard to balance, like, which do I want?
John: Do I want to be—do I want change?
John: Do I want to be rooted?
John: It's like basically the 2008 election that I have to choose between change and a World War II veteran.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: That's a lot.
Merlin: There's a lot.
Merlin: There's a lot involved in house things.
Merlin: I can see why you wouldn't be.
Merlin: And I mean, obviously, there's a million things that have changed in the time since your parents were buying houses.
Merlin: But like, boy, that's a lot of that's a lot of hassle.
Merlin: You got to go to a lot of places.
Merlin: You got to sign stuff.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: All the signing of things.
John: And and and I think I think probably my house has increased in value.
John: Um, but what used to seem like a situation where it was like free money, um, now just seems like, oh fuck, you know, like, yeah, sure.
John: You've it's increased in value, but so has everything else.
Merlin: Well, and you got to count for the eels.
Merlin: You have all the eels.
Merlin: A lot of people are going to want their cut.
Merlin: Even figuring out what your place is worth.
Merlin: You're going to probably have to, you're going to have to cross somebody's palm or gal.
Merlin: Let's be honest with a clipboard.
Merlin: He's going to come out there.
Merlin: That's probably $5,000, but that's $5,000.
John: Well, it's the, it's the, and it's also the thing where you're, you get your house fixed up to sell and all of a sudden you do all the things that you wish you'd done 10 years before.
John: You put in the walk and you fix the barn and you fill in the pool in order to sell it to somebody else.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's just like, ah, now that I've fixed all those things, now I want to live here.
John: Sure.
John: Um, but also like if I were moving, I follow a thing on Instagram that's like cheap old houses, right?
John: And every day they post five pictures of these 10-bedroom houses in Ames, Iowa, or usually in South Carolina or something, or Ohio.
John: And they're on 18 acres.
John: And they're like $79,000.
John: And you go, I mean, there are people in Seattle who could sell their house
John: And then go live in South Carolina for the rest of their lives and just live off the money.
John: But I'm not one of those people.
John: So where would I live?
John: You know, it's a constant question when you're living on the West Coast.
John: Like if you live somewhere in the middle of the United States, and I love the middle of the United States, do not get me wrong.
John: Absolutely.
John: I love those Midwestern states.
John: I love the Southern states.
John: You can't have the coast without the middle.
John: That's right.
John: But if you're living in one of those places and you're like, I need a change, then you can always go to the West Coast.
John: That's what people have done for time immemorial.
John: If you want to put a flower in your hair, move to San Francisco.
John: Yes.
John: But if you live in Seattle or San Francisco and you want to move somewhere, where are you going to move?
John: You're not going to move back to Ohio.
John: That goes against the stream.
John: Yeah, that's not the direction.
John: You're saying you're going in the wrong direction.
John: Going in the wrong direction.
John: You've got to move to Tokyo or something.
Merlin: Interesting.
John: Okay.
John: So, like, do you know Isaac Marion?
John: No, I don't think I do.
John: He's a pal of mine from here.
John: He wrote a science fiction book, I think, about vampires called Warm Bodies.
John: Warm Bodies.
John: Warm Bodies.
Merlin: 2010.
Merlin: It became a film.
John: It became a picture.
Mm-hmm.
John: And, you know, he's a character.
John: He's in our wider universe.
John: He's working in the arts.
John: He had a book.
John: It was a success.
John: He was born in 1981.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: He's not really anywhere like us, right?
John: He's a young person.
John: He has tattoos on his hands.
John: Sure.
John: So he's not like us.
John: But he is a living, breathing person that I know in person and like.
John: And and so he put out a recent book and he was really like, come on, everybody.
John: Like, remember the book that I wrote that you like, like, read my other book.
John: But it was just like it happened.
John: Sometimes people were like, oh, we just like the one book or or or we don't read books anymore.
John: I think it's a lot of work.
Merlin: It's a lot of work to have something that people look at for a little while.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's not so far.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to change the subject.
Merlin: Not so far off from like the Spotify kind of stuff.
Merlin: You know, you put the amount of work into an album like where's it going to go?
John: Well, it's not that different from starting a podcast in 2010 versus 2018.
John: Right?
John: That's probably true.
John: Like, as there are more and more podcasts, I don't think it's not getting any easier to get people to listen to them.
John: Most of the good ones have already been started.
John: Oh, I think that's true.
John: Absolutely.
John: Absolutely.
John: I mean, you know, once you've talked about...
John: Macintosh computers, what else is that really to podcast about?
John: I suppose sports.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I admire anybody who makes a lot of a thing and keeps doing it.
Merlin: I really admire that a lot.
Merlin: When you see people that are able to produce so many albums or so many books or so many whatever it is,
Merlin: you know especially because i feel like i'm still kind of waking up to the new media landscape something i used to feel like i was very tuned into but now i mean actually i do listen to podcasts about stuff like the media landscape and like the changing world of like just how different the world is in the last let's even say three years five years maybe yeah with the way the tv not just tv quality has changed but the way tv is put out that you could have somebody like netflix who's like ah fuck it here's 10 episodes of a tv show suckers like enjoy it it's like who's making all this stuff and now they're saying like there's like there's going to be like a
Merlin: At least for the foreseeable future, with all the money that's going into streaming, there's this kind of a, not a talent drain, but there's sort of a talent drought of, like, are there enough, like, you know, technical people to produce the amount of stuff that needs to get made?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But, you know, but I don't know, man.
Merlin: You need all those best boy grips.
Merlin: Well, we talked about, people talked about this in the kind of, not long after the age of, say, what's the music program?
Merlin: Napster.
Merlin: Where, like, it became apparent that the new economy for music was going to be about...
Merlin: a few absolutely huge sellers.
Merlin: At that time, a Britney Spears.
Merlin: Today, maybe a Cardi B, or definitely a Taylor Swift.
Merlin: There would be these people who are operating on a 10X level from where everybody else was, and then the very, very, very, very long tail.
Merlin: But
Merlin: It seems like every, I mean, I'll go into iTunes and I'll open it.
Merlin: I'm like, oh my God, there's like, there's new like Paul McCartney things.
Merlin: There's new, like they might be giants things.
Merlin: And I'm just not aware.
Merlin: Last time I looked, there were Jonathan Colton things that I didn't remember coming out.
Merlin: Like, I don't remember these things coming out.
Merlin: It's really strange.
Merlin: And I imagine for an author, that's really difficult.
John: Well, it's really difficult for Jonathan Colton.
John: I mean, he put out a record this year or recently.
John: I bought two copies of the full package.
John: But he said that it came out and no one knew about it.
Merlin: My daughter loves it.
John: And he's like, what the heck?
John: He's used to putting records out and people will hear about it at least.
John: But Isaac put out a book and he was like, buy my book.
John: And nobody did.
John: And then he's like, I'm selling my house.
John: And, you know, he's the thing is, he's a bachelor still.
John: He bought a house when he when he had his first success.
John: And it's in a, you know, cute little house over in a cute little neighborhood.
John: And now he's selling it.
John: And I'm like, what are you doing, man?
John: And he's like, I'm going to live in my van for a while.
John: Wow.
John: And there was a part of me that felt like, oh, that's, you know, that feels like a come down.
John: But there was another big part of me that was like, wow.
John: I know.
Merlin: I know that feeling.
Merlin: To me, I want to be clear here.
Merlin: Not the feeling of, like, let's run away.
Merlin: But the feeling, although that is certainly an interesting idea, but for us, we're in the midst of beginning a major purge of just too much junk that we don't need.
Merlin: Are you?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, and a lot of that is...
Merlin: kid related like she does not like getting rid of stuff but to cut a long story short I mean honestly I feel like there's there's so much stuff that I don't need that I mainly am just storing and moving around and like I see the appeal of living in a van it would be tough for us you know three people in a van would be rough but but but I see the appeal how do you feel about uh wall warts I'm not a huge fan especially because we don't have too many outlets in our house
Merlin: They are certainly indicative of something.
Merlin: The age of the wall wart is for somebody with a different kind of house than we have.
Merlin: But for us, it's a lot of just accumulation of kipple, you know, just stuff.
John: That's what I mean.
John: Do you keep old wall warts?
John: I have a system.
Merlin: It's not very interesting, but I do have a system.
John: That's what I'm interested in hearing about.
John: Oh, I have a system.
John: I want to hear about the wall wart system, because here's my problem.
John: I have...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So many wall warts.
Merlin: And let me guess, is there a chance you maybe don't know what some of them are for?
John: A lot of them I don't know what they're for.
Merlin: Like maybe it's one of those like really cheap, like you get like a Chinese, like it's not branded.
Merlin: It doesn't say Sony on it.
Merlin: Like if it says Sony, I know that goes with our keyboard.
Merlin: If it says Philips, I know it goes with this beard trimmer.
Merlin: Like that kind of thing where you get these ones that are just like it's 12 volts.
Merlin: That's all we know.
Merlin: Well, I don't have a ton of those.
Merlin: But you've got cables, but you've got some 30-pin USB cables.
Merlin: Remember when they made you change those, John?
John: I've got so many cables, I can't even believe it.
Merlin: Well, that's what was the turning point for me, was the cable cruft.
John: But in my world, right, in the rock and roll world, everything's connected to everything else with a cable, at least four cables.
John: So here's a question.
John: Let's just go right to the heart of it.
John: If you buy a distortion box... Mm-hmm.
John: which to those of you listening who don't know is a box that creates distortion.
John: Okay.
John: So it's right there in the title.
John: Um, it comes with a wall wart in case you want to sit and play with it all by itself.
Um,
Merlin: Or you have one of those Charles Bissell boards where you could plug it in underneath and tidy it away.
Merlin: Typically, you put a 9-volt battery in one of those.
John: Well, you put a 9-volt, or the thing about the Charles Bissell boards, as we'll call them from here on out, is that someone along the way, and this happened a long time ago, figured out that you could just put one power supply on that board and then just use little cables to plug all of the
John: distortion boxes into the single power supply.
John: You didn't need 10 wall warts.
Merlin: Oh, that's interesting.
Merlin: So it's a little bit like a power strip, but for pedals.
John: Right.
Merlin: That's clever.
John: Yeah, and it made it so much easier to have a bunch of
John: pedals for your guitar sound because you just plug you have little cables and you plug them into your single power supply and then when you turn it on all your cables go on or all your pedals go on but I still have all the wall warts and they're branded you know it's like Boss or Roland Ibanez and they're all in a box but
John: I will never use them again.
John: I know.
John: Well, if you haven't used them by now, you know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah.
John: So, but, like, they're part of the thing.
John: Like, the thing, and then this is the other part of the thing.
John: So, you tell me, Merlin, what's your...
Merlin: wall wart solution in some ways um a lot of this in the way that i think about an optimal use of the house of the space i guess that could be a studio um the example i'm going to use is going to be it seems like a pivot but it's not as the kitchen um which is that like it's nice to have lots of stuff um almost everything comes down to storage um
Merlin: Where if you have enough storage space, you can be picky about what goes in the working area.
Merlin: I think one problem that people run into, at least I run into, is, you know what I mean by the working area?
Merlin: Like, you know, I like to have this, we have a kitchen island that I like to have not too much stuff on.
Merlin: It's got like a big, nice wooden cutting board.
Merlin: It's usually got some fresh flowers.
Merlin: It's got a paper towel dispenser.
Merlin: And it's got a little bowl with some produce in it.
Merlin: But you wouldn't want to store your Vitamixer there, because that's the working area.
Merlin: I don't even keep the knives out.
Merlin: The knives go into a knife area.
Merlin: Well, yeah, and you're not using that Vitamix today.
Merlin: This is critical.
Merlin: This is the critical point here, is not everything is as important as everything else.
Merlin: And so, I mean, here's something I was doing yesterday, which is like, I sometimes give a little speech that nobody likes to hear, which is why I put the pans a certain way.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: So we have limited storage space in the working area, and there's some things that are important.
Merlin: First of all, my daughter subsists almost exclusively on pasta.
Merlin: No, I'm not proud of this.
John: No, no, no.
John: It's okay.
John: You know, we're all in this boat together.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Now, if you're going to make pasta, you're going to need a couple things.
Merlin: A couple, three things.
Merlin: Well, you're going to need pasta.
Merlin: You're going to need a heat source.
Merlin: You're going to need a big pan to boil water in.
Merlin: And you're going to need a colander or a sieve or whatever you want to call it.
Merlin: Now, I should blindfold it.
Merlin: I should be able to...
Merlin: walk into the kitchen, open a cabinet door, and without even knowing where I'm reaching, well, not seeing where I'm reaching, I should be able to intuitively know that when I grab here, the big pot for boiling pasta will be there.
Merlin: It'll be clean, and it will be there.
Merlin: You use it all the time.
John: It's in the working area.
Merlin: For practical purposes, we use it every day.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And guess what we use with that?
Merlin: We use the colander.
Merlin: And so equally, equally blindfolded, I should be able to then reach and grab the colander, which goes in the sink while I am boiling the water, which takes almost exactly 15 minutes.
Merlin: Can you tell me how often you say colander versus sieve?
Merlin: I used to say sieve, and now I feel like I should say colander.
Merlin: I mean, do you think that this is a... We've got one of those classic, like old lady, forgive my ageist, we've got one of those classic enamel-y handles on it, holes in it.
Merlin: things that's fairly easy to clean unless you pour your sauce in there like an animal but I mean that's just for whatever it is plus water I call I think I call it a colander what do you call it well I when you said sieve just recently I mean I'm talking about two minutes ago yes
John: I was like, boing, sieve.
Merlin: I haven't used the word sieve in a long time.
John: You don't hear that word much anymore.
John: But we used to say it.
John: That's what it used to be called.
John: It used to be called a sieve.
John: A sieve, and now it's called a colander.
John: And I'm wondering whether that is because you grew up in the Midwest and my mom grew up in the Midwest.
John: Maybe it's a Midwest word?
Merlin: Well, I look at... No, I'm looking for pictures.
Merlin: I'm looking at pictures of sieve, and one that keeps coming up is an item that we have, which is the colander-ish thing that we use when we're draining orzo, because the orzo is very little pasta.
Merlin: Do you have a purpose...
Merlin: uh item just for draining orzo uh apparently that's mostly i don't think we got it for that reason but that's what we use it for now here's the thing so so where i'm going with this is that it feels like in america it's nice to have all the pans and we have a lot of pans we're a calphalon family we've bought like a you can get like a set of calphalon pans we've been gifted with calphalon pans by family members the thing is though every calphalon pan comes with a lid
Merlin: Now, we're getting into a situation here, and I hope you can see where I kind of am going with this.
Merlin: I do, I do.
Merlin: If you have all of the pans and all of the lids... No, you can't do that.
Merlin: ...in the just sub-working area, you've got a mess on your hands.
Merlin: Because first of all, now you're stacking.
Merlin: Stacking is not optimal.
Merlin: You can have a little stacking, but you can't have a lot of stacking.
Merlin: Because now, when you want to take out that one big lid, guess what?
Merlin: ...
Merlin: Everything falls over onto this nested series of six pans that you cannily put in here because they look, in a design-y sense, it looks nice to have six nested pans.
Merlin: I'll tell you a secret.
Merlin: I don't like to go more than two deep on stacking pans.
Merlin: I'll go three sometimes.
Merlin: I should be almost as well.
Merlin: Godzilla comes out.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: As easily as I grab the sieve, I should be able to, with a minimum of clatter, grab any of the primary pans without causing an avalanche.
John: Can I just ask you a quick question?
John: Sure.
John: I put Civ into the search bar here.
John: And it auto-connected me to a website called drivetribe.com.
John: Drivetribe.
John: Drivetribe, which is some kind.
John: And the opening picture on drivetribe.com is a picture of a race car.
John: And it's called the Audi e-tron Vision GT.
John: And I was like, what the?
John: And so I went back in and I put Civ back in there.
Merlin: Oh, I see what it is.
Merlin: You get namespace pollution.
Merlin: What does Civ have to do with this?
Merlin: Maybe somebody named Michael Civ?
Merlin: Or brain like a sieve.
Merlin: I don't know why you got that, John.
Merlin: Namespace pollution?
Merlin: Namespace pollution.
John: Whoa, tell me more about that.
John: But wait, tell me more about that after you tell me more about it.
Merlin: Okay, put a fork in that.
Merlin: Put a fork in namespace pollution.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I'll write that down.
Merlin: Anyway, okay, so I'm trying to arrive at something philosophical from something very practical.
Merlin: And here's the thing with that.
Merlin: Like, if you have all the pans and you have all of the lids, and you have a limited amount of sub-working space.
Merlin: Okay, let's go back to first principles, Clarice.
Merlin: You're not going to leave every pan you've got in the working area.
Merlin: No, not even if you had all the space in the world.
Merlin: Who's got a kitchen that can contain every pan?
Merlin: You don't want all those things.
Merlin: You don't need all those things.
Merlin: It does still come back to a space issue, as I'll get to in a second, a storage issue.
Merlin: But here's what I believe.
Merlin: What I believe is that... What I believe.
Merlin: What I believe... I'm going to do an NPR segment on this.
Merlin: There should be a way to have these things in your subspace, your sub-working area, where you can pretty easily grab any of this stuff.
Merlin: So yesterday, I spent...
Merlin: 15, 20 minutes after doing the dishes, because when you've got a kid, you do dishes four times a day.
Merlin: After doing the dishes, I refactored the pots and pans area.
Merlin: And that involved taking the ones we use a lot here.
Merlin: This is what they call an omelet pan, but it's really like a classic frying pan.
Merlin: You get like a 12-inch Calphalon
Merlin: Frying pan.
Merlin: That's in there, right?
Merlin: The gist above that is the Calphalon Big Boy.
Merlin: It's not exactly like a saucepan, but they make a really nice pan that's somewhere between a saute pan and a saucepan.
Merlin: And it's got big sides.
Merlin: These are super nice pans.
Merlin: But you have them forever.
Merlin: They're great.
Merlin: And then on top of that, you've got a little boy fry pan.
Merlin: Now, that's stuff we use a lot.
Merlin: Those go in the front.
Merlin: But you know what I did?
Merlin: I went in and I looked at any of the pots that are going to get pride of space in the sub-working area.
Merlin: How many do you need?
Merlin: How many do you need and how many lids do you need?
Merlin: Are there lids that can be used for more than one thing?
Merlin: And even though there's another Calphalon pan we have that we got for Christmas that's really nice that we like a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, it doesn't earn a space in the sub-working area.
Merlin: Because we don't use it often enough.
Merlin: It's very big.
Merlin: You've got to act like you're living on a motherfucking boat.
Merlin: And you've got to have the lids to accommodate it.
Merlin: So, in that area now, so what I'm trying to get at, at length, is...
Merlin: This is what you should do with your life.
Merlin: You can't have all the stuff in all the places.
Merlin: There has to be some curation of what goes in the places.
Merlin: And when we get into the electronic stuff, it takes a lot of humility and honesty to say...
Merlin: I'm going to risk potentially not having this in the working or sub-working area.
Merlin: This might even go in the deep storage area or, God forbid, the throwing it away area because I don't even know what this is for.
Merlin: If I don't know what it's for and I haven't used it in a year...
Merlin: Now, I know this is not necessarily your primary way of thinking, and we will in time get to how I organize cables, but that is a huge piece for me.
Merlin: One time, two purges ago, we had a garage sale.
Merlin: I never want to have another garage sale.
Merlin: It's the worst.
Merlin: But at one point, I found myself detangling cables.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: For devices that nobody has used since the 90s.
Merlin: But were you doing that in order to sell them?
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: Until it occurred to me, what the fuck are you doing?
Merlin: Nobody needs to go to a garage sale to buy a USB-A cable.
Merlin: Even at this point.
Merlin: So you're detangling.
Merlin: You can buy them at the gas station.
Merlin: You can buy them at the gas station.
Merlin: You're forgetting that rule number one is never organize anything that should be thrown away.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: You just described half my day.
Merlin: Well, there's something comforting about organization.
Merlin: I like to organize things.
Merlin: But as part of this little mini purge we're doing, I also then refactored the way that I store cable stuff, which is a little bit mental.
Merlin: Refactor.
John: I do not know that terminology to refactor.
Merlin: Well, people often use it to apply to computer code for programming, which is when you've got a bunch of stuff that's been kind of maybe planned out, but a little bit cobbled together over time.
Merlin: And it would be beneficial if time allows to go in and make everything more efficient, even if it does mostly the same thing.
John: Do people in computers actually do that?
John: Because I feel like all the time I wish they would.
Merlin: Well, it's like I say, it's one of those things where, you know, there may not be that much consumer facing benefit to it, but internally it helps a lot to now have stuff better organized.
Merlin: So, you know, you could make really good food with whatever's in your rental unit.
Merlin: just based on the pots that are there, but in your day-to-day, it benefits you.
Merlin: You don't keep your toothbrush in the garage, right?
Merlin: It's sensible to put things where they belong and make sure it's organized.
Merlin: But you're not going to throw away a cellophon lid.
Merlin: No, and this is where it becomes a storage issue, because then the question becomes, if it's not in the working area, if it's not in the sub-working area, where does it go?
Merlin: And the thing is, everything in our house is already where it is.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: So that means that if I want the Calphalon pan with the lid to go somewhere that it's not right now, spoiler alert, something of commensurate space and cubic inches will have to move to somewhere else.
Merlin: And like Michael Stipe says, when you throw something away, where is a way?
Merlin: It's a storage and space issue, but it is, at the heart of it, a philosophical issue.
Merlin: It is an issue about what kind of life you would like to lead.
Merlin: Do you want to be the person who has all of the Calphalon pans, but you hate your life because they're constantly tumbling down like an avalanche?
Merlin: Or would you like to curate your collection in a way that makes it more knowable and reasonable?
John: So my aunt had one of those things.
John: I think they got it in France.
John: It's very France-sounding, seeming.
John: It seems very France.
John: From the France.
John: It's from France, which is one of those wrought iron, like...
John: Basically like a torture rack a circular torture rack that you would hang a an infidel on But it hangs over your kitchen.
John: I am all your pots hang on it.
John: That's that's a good look.
John: It's a good look.
John: It's very fancy So cool thinking about your kitchen.
John: It's not really oriented around a circle
Merlin: Historically, my wife is not into things hanging from the ceiling.
Merlin: This came up yesterday in the discussion of the stuffed animal collection, which needs to be curated.
Merlin: The stuffed animal collection is problematic.
Merlin: And I said, hey, and mom said, you know, we need to get these organized.
Merlin: And my daughter said, yeah, we should get these organized.
Merlin: And I said, hey, you know what some people do is they get a net that hangs from the ceiling.
Merlin: I got a look.
Merlin: like you have never seen.
Merlin: There's a look you get with your partner where you just said a thing that you know you weren't supposed to say in front of the child.
Merlin: Because the child embraces the idea and now it's... Anything that introduces things hanging from the ceiling is not an easy sell in my house.
Merlin: At one point I wanted to get a surround sound stereo system for our media room that would allow us to have the ultimate surround sound but it would involve having speakers hanging from the ceiling.
Merlin: And this got kiboshed.
Merlin: Oh, brother did it get kiboshed.
Merlin: The idea of things hanging from the ceiling, whether it's pans or speakers or stuffed bears, does not have a long half-life in my house.
Merlin: She hates these pans!
Merlin: I can't get rid of these lids!
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Mack Weldon.
Merlin: You can learn more about Mack Weldon right now by visiting MackWeldon.com.
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John: So did I ever tell you about my childhood train set?
John: I don't think you have.
Merlin: Oh, so what have we got to fork in?
Merlin: We've got a fork in namespace pollution.
Merlin: Namespace pollution.
Merlin: Fork number two is one-gallon Ziploc bags.
Merlin: Please continue.
John: Okay.
John: Childhood train set.
John: My dad worked for the railroad.
John: And when he got a job at the Alaska Railroad, he was living in Alaska and we were still living in Seattle.
John: Okay.
John: And so he bought me a train set, an HO scale train set, the baseline train set.
John: And, you know, we lived in a three bedroom Rambler.
John: And this was an example of one of those things where my dad did a thing and then he was like, see ya.
John: Like he bought a train set and then he said, I'm going back to Alaska.
John: Good luck with that.
John: And so we set up the train set on a piece of plywood.
John: But now you have a train set on a piece of on a sheet of plywood.
John: Where is it supposed to go?
John: You can't have it in the living room.
John: Oh, that's a big footprint.
John: If you put it in the garage, you can't put the car in the garage.
John: Where do you go with this thing?
John: And I really liked the train set.
John: It was fun.
John: And unfortunately, I didn't have like a father in the house who was handy.
John: And in fact, when I went to live with my dad, I realized I didn't have a father in that house who was handy.
John: He was a fine father, but not handy.
John: And so I never had a train set that had like mountains and towns and stuff.
John: It was always just a piece of plywood that I spray painted green to look like grass.
John: You're grass now.
John: But you're grass.
John: But, you know, I like nailed the track to it and I had little houses.
John: Sure.
John: But at some point, and I don't know who exactly designed this system.
John: I think it was maybe my mom's boyfriend, Bobby.
John: but he put four pulleys on the roof of my bedroom.
John: Oh my God.
John: That's so cool.
John: Connected it on four corners to a rope and you could pull it up and it would go up and be against the ceiling and then you could let it down and then the train set would be there.
John: That's so cool.
John: It was very cool.
John: It was the coolest thing that anybody had.
John: Did you know real quick?
John: Was your mom cool with Bobby doing that?
John: She was – see, this is the thing.
John: Now, looking back, I cannot believe she agreed to this.
John: Yeah.
John: It just – and I think it must have – You're probably not zoned for that.
John: No, and I think it probably was like a horsefly in her ear the entire time it was there just because it does not work with any of her other systems.
John: But except for one, which is like it sounds –
John: pretty efficient it sounds good right like oh like so much organization it sounds like a really good idea that sounds like a solution to this problem but but it was you know and the thing is like it was heavy enough that it was very and and you know and it had to be pretty closely calibrated to work properly
Merlin: If it's not four separate lines, if there's one line and it's kind of tenting up, that's got to be a very... If that works in a way that's safe, that's quite an operation.
John: The thing is, Bobby was one of these guys who... Bobby had never graduated from high school, but he owned his own company that made...
John: intake manifolds or something, you know, it was like he, his company was in one of those low one story garage buildings in the industrial part of town.
John: And when you open the door, there were six guys in there that all looked like one of the fabulous furry freak brothers.
John: And they were all making intake manifolds and selling them to people that had hot rod boats or something.
John: I mean, I was just a kid.
John: I was taking it all in, but it was a lot to understand.
John: And so Bobby was good at making things.
John: Bobby was one of these, you know, he was,
John: he just would solve a problem he's like oh all you have to do here is just take the minibike engine take it out and put it on top of this windmill and then you know you got fresh water oh minibike engine he sees the world differently he did he sees the world and says why not i'm pretty sure he put the train on the roof of the or on the ceiling of the bedroom but uh but it didn't stay there forever and i think what it was was i moved to alaska and
John: And my mom said, and take the train set.
John: And at my dad's house, we had three bedrooms, and one of them just became the train room.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We had some acquaintances who had a guinea pig room.
Merlin: I thought that was pretty ambitious for San Francisco.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: A room just for guinea pigs?
Merlin: Just for the guinea pig.
Merlin: It was really gross.
Merlin: Imagine a whole room for a guinea pig.
Merlin: Yes, exactly that.
Merlin: There's all kinds of cabbage and cedar shit on the floor and this creature just ambling around.
Merlin: Oh no, they let it just roam?
Merlin: Yeah, I might have had a pen, like a nominal pen.
Merlin: But no, a guinea pig is old.
Merlin: Anyway, train tracks.
John: So that got moved all the way to a three-bedroom house in Alaska.
John: Well, I mean, the plywood didn't, but everything got put into several boxes in my mom's way.
John: And then it was transferred to Alaska.
John: And, you know, my dad had the ability at that time.
John: I don't know how.
John: You know, he was not able to buy a single stereo that worked.
John: But somehow he had someone custom make an HO set of rolling stock all in the Alaska Railroad livery.
John: And it's like, how did you do that?
John: That's not a thing that's for sale in stores.
Merlin: Somebody's going to put together all the stories of your father just slightly abusing his position.
John: Yeah, it's like, why can't you just buy a stereo, like a working stereo, like a good one, like a Nakamichi stereo like my friend and dad has.
Merlin: But then he also does stuff like say that you got to ride on the front of the train and he'll be taking this train car today and stuff like that.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: He's just sort of like, oh.
John: He was the Scott Pruitt of Alaska Trains.
John: We'd walk into the mayor's office.
John: He's like, hey, there he is.
John: And I'm like, what are we doing here?
John: If we can do this, we should be able to get a tape player that works.
John: For complex reasons, they can't throw me out.
John: So, yeah, so anyway, then I had a train set all the way until it became socially awkward for me.
John: Oh, actually, my sister moved up with us.
John: Oh, you lost your train room?
John: Well, she moved into the actual functioning bedroom, and I put a mattress under the train set.
John: And I lived like that for a couple of years.
Merlin: Like Christopherson in Fantastic Mr. Fox, you slept under a train set.
Merlin: I slept under the train set.
John: And that was how I was happy under there.
John: It was like a little nest, you know.
John: But then I think what happened was there was that late in sixth grade moment where everyone else was starting to mature.
John: Like the little boys were getting mustaches and little girls were getting boobies.
John: And I was not any of those things.
John: I was getting neither one of those things.
John: And.
John: Someone came over, I think, and was like, dude, you're living under a train set?
John: Like, I'm listening to Led Zeppelin.
John: And I was like, and then my dad moved, and I think the train set went into boxes.
John: And I never recaptured my childhood.
John: But anyway, let's go back to the one-gallon plastic Ziploc bags.
John: Oh, did you want to do namespace pollution?
Merlin: Oh, okay, yeah.
Merlin: Tell me about namespace pollution.
Okay.
Merlin: um i'm not gonna google this but uh my understanding of namespace pollution is when like for example like i've never been in a public place where someone i'm gonna mention my name on air here i've never been in a public place where somebody yelled out hey merlin man and it wasn't directed at me have you ever been in a place where someone said hey merlin hey merlin johnson
Merlin: I've gotten Merle a few times.
Merlin: Oh, sure, Merle.
Merlin: But this is something I've only really, really turned over in my mind fairly recently.
Merlin: I'm aware of the phenomenon of being named John or being named Jason.
Merlin: And if you're at the mall, there's a pretty good chance you're going to hear somebody say the name you think of as you.
John: Oh, let me throw this back at you.
John: Yeah.
John: What about daddy?
Merlin: Oh, constantly.
Merlin: Even if it's a toddler, I turn.
Merlin: And you're like, what?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Where am I needed?
Merlin: Who's dying?
Merlin: Who's abducted?
Merlin: Who's abducted?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: That's very real.
Merlin: Yeah, I'll even turn to a mommy.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: So for me, Merlin Mann equals equals me.
Merlin: That's who I am.
Merlin: That name is me, and I am that name.
Merlin: It's an unusual combination.
Merlin: So I'm aware of being a John or a Jason, but you must be kind of used to that at this point.
Merlin: I mean, maybe not you, but a lot of people who are named John don't always assume that when the name is said, it means them.
John: Well, you know, it's funny because over the years, there is a particular spin, a particular tone that
John: on my name if someone says john in a crowded room or in a mall and they mean me you can hear it you hear the sound you hear something in their voice you hear the sound of of it meaning me and if someone's just like john or you know like john or something you know there's like a lot of ways that people say john i don't know why i just did two different voices saying it the same way john
John: It doesn't always have to be that two-tone.
John: But it's kind of a two-syllable situation.
John: Yeah, or, you know, like just, John!
John: Like, that doesn't sound like me.
John: That's not what you would do to call me.
John: You call me in a particular way.
John: So I can hear the word John.
John: I'll generally kind of give it a side eye in case it's somebody that doesn't know me, but is yelling at me.
John: They're not pronouncing it in a canonical way.
John: Right, but anybody that knows me that's a friend of mine, like if you saw me from across the thing and you were yelling at me, you would say it this way because I am a John, but it is that I am a John, like not one of the Johns.
John: But Merlin, come on.
John: I should say on behalf of everyone who's thinking it, Merlin, man, is the greatest name in all.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Thank you very much.
Merlin: The third.
Merlin: Now, if it happened that you were in some sort of encounter group where everybody happened to be named John, John is no longer a useful way to hail people.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So that's my real dumbed-down version of namespace pollution.
Merlin: I'm not a programmer, but in programming, I think it's when there are things that are not uniquely named and could mean the same thing.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It could mean different things when called upon in a similar way.
Merlin: So when you call this John function, if there's something else with the John function, could that be confusing?
Merlin: And I just mean namespace pollution in the sense that it's why people have to do things like become Chunky Lover 1492 or whatever.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Chunky Lover 1492.
John: I know them well.
John: This happened the other day, and maybe you can explain it.
John: It's something to do with computers.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But someone was texting someone else and they were like, oh, something, something, John Roderick, something, something in their text.
John: And then they screenshotted it and sent it to my sister because my name within their text stream was a hyperlink.
John: Oh, right.
John: It just auto-hyperlinks.
Merlin: On iOS, probably?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And then if they click the hyperlink, then it just takes you to, like, I don't know what, some page that's like, oh...
John: Look, he's got these record albums or something.
Merlin: Let me try and replicate that.
Merlin: My understanding, this is very weird.
Merlin: Messages on iOS is a hell of a thing.
Merlin: One thing is that if you type something that's the name of a movie, a TV show, a thing that it might know something about, it will sometimes hyperlink it.
Merlin: And I have no idea how it figures out.
Merlin: You're a hyperlink!
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Look at you.
Merlin: Look at you.
Merlin: It takes me to a spotlight search of John Roderick on my phone.
Merlin: What if I say the Godfather?
Merlin: Huh, it also links to you.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Godfather is not underlined.
Merlin: I don't know how it decides, and sometimes it's very confusing.
Merlin: And I would actually say it is an instance of namespace pollution, to my mind, because what it shows as the canonical, like, this is something we should search for, and I think there is an answer to, feels very random to me.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Here's an idea, Apple.
Merlin: Maybe spend less time on hyperlinking my text messages and just have them come in in the right order on all the devices.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Just tossing that out.
Merlin: File a bug.
John: File a bug.
John: File a bug.
John: Oh, I just got a text from you that says, The Godfather.
John: Yeah, John Roderick and then The Godfather.
John: Oh, wait a minute.
John: But in the text that you sent to me, John Roderick is a hyperlink and The Godfather is not.
John: Ditto here.
John: So what happened?
John: What happened there?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Now, if I click it here on the Macintosh computer, oh, there's a little pop-up.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: Ho!
Merlin: I had a screenshot for you.
Merlin: Ring, ring.
Merlin: Okay, so on iOS, when I click on the John Roderick link, and you can all try this at home by typing John Roderick and texting it to someone and see what it comes up for you.
Merlin: It does a spotlight search on my phone for when I do it on my phone.
Merlin: When I do it on my Macintosh computer and I click on John Roderick,
Merlin: I get information about the album One Christmas at a Time.
John: Okay, so this is infuriating to me for obvious reasons, I think.
John: That's half your album.
John: It does that on mine, too, here.
John: One Christmas at a Time.
Merlin: And also, defaults to Apple Music, the other tab is your Wikipedia entry, which is kind of cool.
John: So, Google...
John: Google sent me a thing and they may have sent you this thing that said, oh, you are a person who's on the Internet.
John: And if you want to go in and like edit your existence.
John: They let you edit your existence?
John: Well, they said, you know, here's this thing.
John: Is there like an application process?
John: Well, no.
John: Well, you had to like write back and say, I'm this person.
Merlin: You have to claim yourself.
John: Yeah.
John: They're like, are you really?
John: And you're like, yes.
John: And they said, yes, you are.
John: Um, and you know, cause they connected it to the other things that they already know about me.
John: Sure.
John: And so they're like, do you want to edit your thing?
John: And so I went in and I was like, I don't know if I want to edit it.
John: Let me see.
John: And I looked around and, and then it said, um,
John: And then I went down and under the, if you Google me and you scroll down on that sidebar thing, it's got all this stuff.
John: It's got the Wikipedia.
John: It's got the top song is commander thinks aloud.
John: And you know, like all the things that you would expect available on YouTube and Spotify, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: And then it gets down to albums.
John: And the first album it lists is One Christmas at a Time, my Christmas album with Jonathan Colton, that no one bought or wanted at the time.
Merlin: We hang your ornament on the tree every year.
John: My daughter loves it.
John: Oh, thank you.
John: And then the second one is putting the days to bed.
John: And there are no further ones.
John: Whose fault is that?
John: Well, no, but I have other albums.
Merlin: Hey, no fair.
John: There's the older ones, too.
John: Let's see what happens if you put John Darnielle in.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Here we go.
Merlin: We should get back to the Ziploc bags.
Merlin: Let's get back to the Ziploc bags.
John: Hang on.
John: We're going to go down here.
John: John Darnielle has three books.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: uh people also searched for peter hughes and john worcester yep yep yep yep yep yep oh and and somehow brock khaki king and franklin bruno what's his connection to khaki king uh i remember him heavily advocating for her at one point franklin bruno is in nothing painted blue with peter a very underrated band i don't know exactly what the khaki king uh connection is i remember him liking her and talking about her a lot maybe they maybe they collaborated
John: I bet they did.
John: Let's put in John Vanderslice.
John: That'll be more interesting.
John: John Darnielle does not have any albums.
John: listed there at the bottom.
Merlin: Do you think this becomes a version of career advice, John?
John: What do you mean?
Merlin: Well, Google's kind of letting you know, like, well, here's what we think of you.
John: Well, maybe.
John: But so here, John Vanderslice has, what I was trying to discover is, does it only list two albums or does it list more?
John: And there are five albums listed here.
John: under john banderslice dagger beach i don't know these albums emerald city romanian name cellar door cellar door is a good album it is it is um so so there's no reason why they would only have two albums and he got a new haircut banderslice did he cut his hair he always does that's how he stays young looking but look at that he did like he did like an honest haircut look at him good for him
John: Oh, you're talking about, oh, he kind of shaved his head a little bit.
John: He went legit.
John: He went street legal.
John: Well, you know, he's a business owner now.
John: He doesn't have the hipster comb over anymore.
Merlin: Love that guy.
Merlin: I follow him on Tumblr.
Merlin: He's recording an album right now, like his 11th album or something.
Merlin: I saw that.
John: He's actually making an album with a good friend of mine up here with a band.
John: It's called Cataldo, and they're flying down there.
John: And his new, Vanderslice's new way of doing things is he says, I don't want to hear your demos.
John: You come in and we make the song.
John: We cut the track live.
John: And you don't get to overdub.
John: And you don't even get to listen to your takes.
John: No headphones.
John: Or some kind of crazy thing.
John: He's just like, we're doing it.
John: We're doing it not even the old fashioned way.
John: We're doing it some fucking crazy way.
John: And part of agreeing to make a record with me is that you agree to just not bitch.
John: And I'm going to tell you what's going to happen.
John: He's got terms and conditions.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's just like, whoa, shit.
John: All right.
John: Well, but anyway, Vanderslice has got five records listed.
John: And then there's a little thing up there.
John: View five plus more.
John: And if you click on that, I get that.
John: I get that.
John: I get three songs.
John: Oh, look at this.
John: All of the records.
John: So anyway, if you go back to mine.
Mm hmm.
John: It just has those two records.
John: So Google is saying, do you want to help?
John: And so I wrote them.
John: I wrote them a little email.
John: I sent them a bug report.
John: I appear under your people also search for.
John: Yeah, well, oh, yes, you do.
John: There you are.
John: There you are.
John: Sean Nelson is there.
John: John Hodgman.
John: Shelby Earl.
John: Who else?
John: Ten more.
John: It says MC Frontalot.
John: Okay, this is enough.
John: This is already getting too weird.
John: Oh, Kathleen Edwards.
John: I like her.
John: Jesse Quinn and Tim Rice-Oxley.
John: That's nice.
John: So I sent them this thing.
John: And and I'm like, I have four albums and and Christmas one Christmas at a time is like it's definitely an album I made.
John: But like it isn't what you think of when you think of the first thing that I you know, it's not like my peak achievement.
Yeah.
John: You could put the worst you can do is harm in there.
John: Because it's the first one.
John: Right.
John: Or you could put, you know, like.
John: When I pretend to fall because it might be the best known.
John: Yeah.
John: Is it the best known?
John: You know, there are a lot of arguments where people say my favorite is putting the days to bed, but no one agrees with me.
John: And then like 25 people come out of the woodwork and they're like, that's my favorite too.
John: And I'm like, you know, that one actually sold the most.
John: So it's not that crazy that it would be your favorite.
John: I like, I want to pretend it falls my favorite.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and I think that's true for a lot of people.
John: It's a very good record.
John: It's got a lot of songs on it.
John: That's well sequenced.
John: Very well sequenced.
John: Thank you.
John: We spent a lot of time sequencing.
John: But so I've listened to most of them all the way through.
John: Yeah, well, you know, like 10 seconds at a time.
Merlin: 10 seconds at a time.
Merlin: Click.
John: Please continue.
John: So I waited about a week and then Google wrote me back.
John: And said, we determined that we don't need to.
John: That's not necessary.
John: We're good, says Google.
John: And I was like, you asked.
Merlin: You asked.
John: You wrote me and asked if there was anything I had to contribute to your thing.
Merlin: That's galling.
John: And what the fuck?
John: Why?
John: That seems reasonable.
John: I'm not asking you to take some bad post down where somebody said something bad about me.
John: I'm just saying put all my records up where you have room, dedicated room to put them up.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Five plus more.
John: And they were like, meh.
John: Meh.
John: No, thanks.
Meh.
John: So I don't know what to do then.
John: What's your appeals process?
John: Write it back and say the same?
John: Like, hey, I'm asking again, do this.
Merlin: So I don't know.
Merlin: You tell me.
Merlin: My guess at that, like so many things in life, somebody pretended to pay attention to you automatically and then didn't have the interest in actually paying attention to you manually.
Merlin: Manual attention is costly.
John: We determined no changes to John Roderick were needed based on your feedback.
John: If you believe this was an error, check out these guidelines.
John: Check out our FAQs.
John: And submit feedback again with more detail.
John: So maybe that's what I needed to do.
Merlin: More detail.
Merlin: Just keep sending it.
Merlin: We don't care.
Merlin: You can't bore our robots.
John: I was like, wow.
Merlin: Thanks, buddy.
John: Up your butt with a rotten coconut.
John: Twice as far as a Hershey bar.
John: I almost said that to my kid the other day and I was like, don't say up your butt.
John: No, no, no.
John: That was what we used to say back in the 70s.
John: Oh, it's a different time.
John: When nobody was watching us and nobody was monitoring us.
Merlin: Yeah, it's probably ableist or kink shaming or something.
John: You wouldn't put a rotten coconut anywhere except in the garbage.
Merlin: Like they say, the coconut rots from the head down.
John: Okay, so you were about to say about the gallon plastic bag.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: So I used to live in a world where I would just buy more plastic things into which I would put other things.
Merlin: And it's no way to live.
Merlin: So what I do is, here's my cabling hack.
Merlin: Here's what I've got.
Merlin: So first of all, you don't need most of the cables.
Merlin: You get so many... God, I always confuse these.
Merlin: I've labeled these correctly on the bags, but USB micro versus USB mini.
Merlin: You've got so many... Micro is the one that looks like a parallelogram, kind of.
Merlin: You lost me a long time ago.
John: Oh, is that the one... What's the one where you connect your computer to the TV so you can play videos?
John: HDMI?
John: Well, but it's not a parallelogram.
John: It's a rhombus.
John: Is it like a white boy?
John: That sounds like a firework.
Merlin: Here's what I do.
Merlin: I have a banker's box.
Merlin: Inside the banker's box are several, probably eight or nine, one-gallon Ziploc bags, each of which has a label on it.
Merlin: And the labels go like this.
Merlin: USB-A, USB-C, USB micro, USB mini, Ethernet.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And if I've got extra of a certain kind of cable or, you know, what have you, it goes into that bag.
Okay.
Merlin: What's a banker's box?
Merlin: Like when you get fired and you put all your stuff in a box.
Merlin: It's one of those cardboard boxes.
Merlin: You can get them on Amazon.
Merlin: They're great.
Merlin: I see, I see, I see.
Merlin: My wife has had enough of the banker's boxes.
Merlin: We are now taking things out of the banker's boxes because there are too many banker's boxes.
Merlin: I'm a big fan of the banker's box.
Merlin: I told you when I worked at Piper Jaffrey.
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: The highest floor of the house was just the building was just old records.
Merlin: Bankers boxes to the end of the earth.
Merlin: So I have three primary bankers boxes.
Merlin: This is not the most efficient.
Merlin: The least efficient of them is this is dead items that I probably should throw out, but I'm not going to do it yet.
Merlin: Above that is a bankers box full of things that are more.
Merlin: or less current things that I'm not just using right this second.
Merlin: That could be things like Bluetooth keyboards that I'm not using.
Merlin: It could be an iPad cover that I'm not using.
Merlin: But it's stuff that will have a usefulness afterward.
Merlin: And then on top of that is the Box O cables.
Merlin: And so now here's the hack.
Merlin: The hack is, you say to yourself, uh, uh, uh, a beggar's box.
Merlin: with a dozen Ziploc bags in it.
Merlin: That's not enough for all my cables.
Merlin: Well, then you have too many cables.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: See what I'm saying?
Merlin: It becomes a storage issue.
Merlin: So, I mean, the thing is, I don't keep every single USB micro that arrives with every single item that I have.
Merlin: I keep the amount that I need.
Merlin: But if you make yourself take all of the things, put them in one place, and then curate down to what you really need, one of the least emotional examples of this that you can have is doing this with electronic connectivity things.
Merlin: That's all I'm saying.
John: But, but, but, but, but let's say you have, let's say you have too many USB-C cables to fit into a single plastic bag.
John: Right.
John: And you're going down and obviously the ones that are like made out of custom gold cabling or something that, that are really nice.
John: You can be put that one in there first before the ones that are already frayed.
John: Right.
Merlin: Look for the ones that have something that looks like a Crayola mark on one of the contact areas, because that's going to die at some point.
Merlin: You can probably get rid of that one.
John: But what do you do when you get to the point where you say, all right, I've got a bag full, but now I have these other ones that seem equal to better than... It seems wasteful to get rid of them.
Merlin: Well, let me ask you this.
Merlin: You have a small backpack, correct?
Correct.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Multiple.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Enough said.
Merlin: Your go bag for travel.
Merlin: Could you know to a certainty that you have everything you need to charge your stuff?
Merlin: Do you have a separate version of that just for travel?
No.
John: Uh, I do not have any kind of thing where if I'm out in the desert, I can like pull a thing out where I turn a handle for an afternoon in order to get like 2% charge.
Merlin: No, I just meant like if you've got extra cables, one good use of that is I had, this is very privileged, but I have a bag.
Merlin: A little North Face, little portable bag that has an anchor USB-C hub that will power three devices.
Merlin: You plug it in.
Merlin: Ooh.
Merlin: Plus a USB-C.
Merlin: So, like, three, you know, regular USBs plus.
Merlin: So, I've got that.
Merlin: I've got several USB-C cables.
Merlin: And I've got one of those hulking boy, like, little power cables.
Merlin: Guys, that'll power like an iPad.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I keep one of those in there.
Merlin: I keep one for charging my Fitbit, and that all fits in one bag.
Merlin: Your mileage may vary, but it's really nice to know that you could walk out the door and charge anything you might need to charge, and that's all in that bag all the time.
Merlin: That's a good use for extra cables.
Merlin: And you're saying your bag does the charging?
Merlin: Well, no, no.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I have an Anker USB-C hub, and so it's powered.
Merlin: You plug that thing into your hotel outlet.
Merlin: Now you've got three USB-C compatible, but traditional-looking USB, plus a USB-C little guy.
Merlin: So you can power all your stuff just fine off of that.
Merlin: And that's those extra cables.
Merlin: I also have a way that I like to bind the cables together that's very efficient.
John: Well, this reminds me of a life hack that I learned from Storm de Costanza of the Paul and Storm musical organization.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Storm says he travels with a good power strip.
John: So that when he arrives at an airport and there's only one outlet, he plugs in the power strip and then he motions to everyone, come, partake of the power.
John: I have quintupled.
Merlin: He's doing a loaves and fishes type situation.
John: Yes.
John: And then everyone gets to plug their phone in.
John: And then Storm has become the Lord.
John: And that feels to me like a like super duper life hack.
John: When are you ever going to be in a situation?
John: I mean, there are going to be plenty of situations where you get home from a trip and you're like, I never use that power strip.
John: Yep.
John: But when are you ever going to be in a situation where you think, boy, I wish I didn't have that power strip?
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: You got the space.
Merlin: There's actually pretty small ones that you can get that will have at least three or four in it.
Merlin: That's real nice.
Merlin: You're talking about like a pretty big boy.
Merlin: Well, you know, enough that you can help five people.
Merlin: That's a friend.
Merlin: That's a good friend.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But it all comes down to storage, right?
Merlin: It comes down to like what you keep in your working and sub-working areas.
Merlin: And then it's adopting a philosophical approach that supports that.
Merlin: I think it can start.
Merlin: You can choose to do it the other way around.
Merlin: I think it starts with a certain kind of practicality.
Merlin: And then on a go-forward basis, you're going to apply a philosophy to it.
Merlin: And so, you know, part of the problem is like you're walking around the house, like you find a cable, like where does the cable go?
Merlin: And then you refactor every month or so, every month or three, depending on how tightly wound you are, you can go back through all those things and say, do I really need all this stuff?
Merlin: Should that go to a sub-sub working area or should that go into the trash maybe?
John: Well, I know this would never fly at your house.
John: But I just took down my Christmas tree.
John: That's fine.
John: It's a multi-season tree.
John: It's a multi-season tree.
John: A lot of people texted me or tweeted at me to say that it was an Easter tree.
John: And I felt like that was fine.
John: At some point, I think someone, either my mom or my daughter's mother or maybe my daughter, came through.
John: I don't remember this happening.
John: It just was true one day.
John: But they came through and they took all the good ornaments off and spirited them away.
John: Wow, that's a little passive aggressive.
John: Well, no, it felt good to me because when it was finally time to take the tree down, I did not have to think about the good ornaments.
John: I was like, oh, good.
John: I was thinking to myself, where am I going to get all the tissue paper I need?
John: Oh, that was a mitzvah.
John: Somebody did something nice for you.
John: It was a mitzvah.
John: And I can only presume that when Christmas comes around again, those things will rematerialize again without me having to think about it.
Merlin: But so now I have... You get your little personal elf on a shelf that does things with your ornaments.
Merlin: You have to assume they'll just be there.
Merlin: I mean, they cared enough to take them off the tree.
John: They probably put them somewhere safe.
John: That's right.
John: And this year, my daughter said, wait a minute, every year that I've been alive, and she doesn't know about the first three years she was alive, but she's speculating.
John: She said, every year I've been alive, we have gotten a Christmas ornament to celebrate some trip we've taken or something.
John: And I was like, huh, actually, you're right.
John: Well, we went there, we went there and we got, you know, and I'm not the one buying Christmas ornaments.
John: That's not the type of thing I do.
Merlin: But I think I'm kind of surprised.
John: You seem like you're a commemorative ornament kind of guy.
John: There are a lot of ornaments from my childhood that I would that I would fight an elephant if that elephant tried to take him away.
John: Elephants shouldn't do that.
Merlin: Well, and typically they don't, but I'm just saying.
Merlin: You've heard of a rogue elephant?
John: It happens.
John: That's exactly what a rogue elephant might do.
John: That's not what it sounds like.
John: He hates Christmas.
John: He can't get rid of these ornaments.
John: So then she independently decided, and I found this worrisome because it was very much like out of my playbook, but she was like, from now on, we're getting a Christmas ornament every year to celebrate.
John: Hmm.
John: And we'll mark the passage of time with Christmas ornaments.
John: And I was like, all right.
John: But so we have those.
John: We are establishing Christmas ornaments that are within my daughter's life.
John: But I don't.
John: But oh, so I took the tree down and now I have a tree and I have it in a bin.
John: The bin isn't quite big enough for the tree.
John: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: This was a living tree.
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: I was at a thrift store and I saw this little tree that was like a Charlie Brown tree, except it was made out of aluminum.
John: And I said, that's perfect for me.
John: Yeah.
John: Because, you know, I don't want to come home to my house being a smoking ruin because there was a short and it burned my.
John: I don't think about that.
John: So I was like, no, an aluminum tree.
John: That's exactly what a dad has in his house.
John: And then if the mom wants to have a beautiful, beautiful tree that we go cut down in the forest, then the mom can have that in the mom's house.
John: If you are lucky enough to have two houses.
John: Which we are.
John: Or some people might call it unlucky because it's a because anyway, you know, child of divorce ends up.
John: Not every situation has one valence.
John: So but now I'm moving it down to the basement and I got down into the basement and I realized, you know what?
John: You know what, Merlin?
John: What?
John: I have been threatening to put things on eBay for how long?
Merlin: When did I first threaten to do that?
Merlin: Oh, I wouldn't want to speculate, but I feel pretty conservative saying at least five years.
Merlin: We started this program in 2011, and I feel like it's... I'd be surprised if it weren't three years.
Merlin: Captain Marm could probably tell us, but I'm guessing it's been at least three to five years.
Merlin: So I have never done it.
Merlin: You've taken it very seriously.
Merlin: You've thought through a lot of what you would do.
Merlin: You're very aware of all the impediments to doing it today.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: You got a name.
Merlin: You got a Morgan Rides Free.
John: Morgan Rides Free on eBay.
John: Yeah.
John: I've never sold a single thing.
John: And now there's a voice in my head that's like, well, don't sell a bunch of winter coats in April.
John: Nobody's going to buy a winter coat in April.
John: But I'm like, shush, shush, shush.
John: Leave it.
John: Leave it.
John: Shush.
John: And so I'm down in the basement.
John: I'm trying to fit this aluminum Christmas tree.
Merlin: I've had it with you, little voice.
Merlin: I've had it with you.
Merlin: I've fucking had it with you.
Merlin: Shut your whore mouth, little voice.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: Can I have one day, little voice?
John: Can I just have one day?
John: I'm going to put a bunch of winter clothes online in April.
John: Goddamn everything.
John: No.
John: Shut up.
John: Hush.
John: What about the RV?
Merlin: How's your album?
John: Oh, I thought about the RV this morning.
John: I looked out the window and I was like, oh, the fucking RV.
John: I got to get that done.
John: I'll put the RV in the swimming pool.
John: That'll solve everything.
John: Oh, that's good.
John: Two birds, one stone.
John: So I went.
John: Here's the thing.
John: I went to the post office.
Oh.
John: And I got there, and it was one of these modern post offices where there's no humans.
John: Oh.
John: I opened the door.
John: Space post office.
John: And I was like, where are the people?
John: And other people were coming and going while I was in there, and they would walk up to a robot, and they would punch in numbers, and the robot would go, and then they'd put a package in a door.
John: And then they reverse automat for mail.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was too shy because the thing about people like me who go to the library and the post office, but only in the company of an adult.
John: So like I go to the library and I'm like, I want this book.
John: And then an adult checks it out for me.
John: Okay.
John: Or I go to the post office and I'm like, I need to mail a letter.
John: And they're like, here you go.
John: Like the adult takes care of it.
John: So I'm in this post office by myself and there's no person to ask questions of.
John: And I didn't want to walk up to a stranger who's also in an empty post office and be like, excuse me, could you explain to me how to mail a letter?
Merlin: Because it just seemed like what?
Merlin: Who knows?
Merlin: They might be having a bad day too.
Merlin: They went to, as Jeanine Garofalo says, they want somebody to start their orange too.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Well, sure.
John: Or it's just like walking up to somebody on the street and saying, what year is it?
John: It's just like some time travel or shit where somebody's like, well, did you just come here?
Merlin: How do I get money?
John: Exactly.
John: What is the, you know, hold out your hand with a bunch of coins in it?
John: Is this enough?
Merlin: For what?
Merlin: I don't know.
John: You're not speaking in an accent or anything.
John: You're just like, hi, can you explain what this money is?
John: What do I do with this?
John: So then I become this guy who's been in the post office for 45 minutes.
John: Oh, no.
John: And other people have come and gone.
John: And I'm like reading the signs on the walls and like, you know, like 242 days without an accident.
John: And I'm going through all the brochures that are like, have you ever considered using the mail?
John: And eventually I realized...
John: Because I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to do an eBay store, I better make a relationship with this post office.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: And I realize they have boxes.
Merlin: This is a Daniel Plainview type situation.
Merlin: Like you're just going out and you're making some furtive gestures with the people you know you're going to want to work with.
John: Yeah.
John: I thought I was going to come and be like my dad and say, hey, post office guy, get to know me.
John: Pretty soon I'll be coming back through the through the buzz in door and we'll be like having a cigarette or something.
John: Get ready for a relationship.
John: But there's nobody there.
John: And so, but I realized, oh, they'll just, you can just take boxes and just walk out with them.
John: Oh, like priority mail type boxes.
John: Yeah, because the boxes don't have any value in and of themselves.
John: Right.
John: Then you bring them back, they're preloaded.
John: And then you say to, I guess, the robot, you're like, I'm going to mail this box.
John: And you put it on a thing.
John: And the robot goes, beep, beep, beep, beep.
John: And then it goes away.
John: And it all happens, I don't know, it happens to Apple Pay or something.
John: I haven't figured it out.
John: Okay.
John: But I got, so I actually got boxes.
John: I brought them home.
John: And now I have the, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the things.
John: I'm going to take their picture.
John: This may be self-explanatory to everybody else.
John: No, no, no, no, no, no.
John: Keep going.
John: Take the picture of the thing.
John: I guess measure it, although, you know, whatever.
John: Take a picture front and back of the tag.
John: Then put it in the box.
John: Seal the box.
John: Put a post-it note on the box that says what's in that box.
John: Oh, this is good.
John: And then put it on eBay.
Merlin: People are going to want a tracking number.
Merlin: I'm glad you're walking through this.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Whoa, they're going to want a tracking number.
Merlin: They might want a tracking number.
Merlin: I like a tracking number.
Merlin: Okay, so how do you get that?
Merlin: Well, I think it's going to be... I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, can the robot give it to you?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I overcomplicated this.
Merlin: No, no, no, but you're right.
John: I do like a tracking number, too.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay, so I'll figure that out.
John: You'll figure that out.
John: The robot probably has an FAQ you could read.
John: Oh, but then I have to go back to eBay and put the tracking number in.
John: I guess I could do that.
John: I could probably do that.
John: I'll take the post-it note that has what's on it to the post office, write the tracking number on the self-same post-it note, and then bring those home in a stack.
John: You could make a custom label.
John: You should get some labels.
Merlin: Custom.
Merlin: Custom labels or you could get a database.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Oh, little boy.
Merlin: It's too much.
Merlin: It's too much.
Merlin: You don't know how to make databases.
John: You can't sell things.
John: I'm going to put it on there.
John: I don't even need a database.
John: It's going to be all on Post-it notes.
John: It's going to be like the wall of your office.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: These are fans.
Merlin: There's one safe fan anymore.
Merlin: These are people who want to own your clothes, and they're just going to be happy to have it whenever it arrives.
John: Well, you don't want to over-engineer it.
John: But I've got candlesticks.
John: I've got patches that say things like, you know, Alaska State Fair 1989.
John: Like, I'm going to put a bunch of weird stuff on there at all price points, and somebody that wants a $400 jacket can have one, and somebody that wants a $1.95 Alaska State Fair.
John: Well, that's what I'm saying.
John: Like, if you put an eBay store up and it's just like, oh, this stuff is really expensive.
John: Go fuck yourself.
John: They're all from the 1950s.
John: Yeah.
John: Then there are going to be people that are like, meh.
John: But if you just put like, oh, and here's some other stuff and here's some stuff that was around.
John: The stuff is priced to move by and large, though, right?
John: Well, I think the way to do an eBay store is you put everything on there for 99 cents and then people then let the market decide.
John: Let the market decide.
John: You don't be one of those that's like, my buy it now price is $7,000.
Yeah.
John: Like, you're going to move units with that attitude like eat it.
John: And also maybe there are two people out there, both of whom are rich, both of whom want the same thing.
John: And they get into some crazy thing like like in a movie.
John: Yeah, where you're at Christie's and somebody like one million dollars.
John: And then James Bond is like one million two hundred dollars.
John: And, you know, it's like one of those scenes.
Mm hmm.
John: I don't know if that's going to happen, but I assume that the market will decide what these belt buckles are worth.
Merlin: You know, it seems so obvious now.
Merlin: You need to get your feet wet.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Just get a couple, three things.
Merlin: Maybe just send it to people you think deserve it.
Merlin: Get a feel for it in low-pressure circumstances.
Merlin: You should pick a couple people, if I may say.
Merlin: Pick a couple people who deserve to have a patch or some pants.
Merlin: You choose them maybe even arbitrarily.
Merlin: Maybe they don't even know it's coming.
Merlin: And you just get your feet wet with the post office type situation.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying just send it to them.
Merlin: Don't even worry about the eBay.
Merlin: Just send it to them.
Merlin: That's the feet getting wet, right?
Merlin: You don't want to have to over-engineer the boots in order to get onto the eBay.
Merlin: Just get your ceilings.
Merlin: Burn one off.
Merlin: You go have a job interview at a place you don't ever have an intention of working.
Merlin: That's still practice for job interviews.
John: I see.
John: I see.
John: I see.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And maybe it's something you think maybe wouldn't fetch a lot of money, but you get a feel for it.
Merlin: And then now you learn the ins and outs.
Merlin: You're not practicing on an actual customer.
Merlin: Oh, now I need to also get some of those inflated bags of air that I always pop from Amazon.
Merlin: Or maybe you need to get some wrapping paper in a roll or something like that.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: You don't have any wrapping paper in my roll yet.
Merlin: Shut up.
John: I bought a tunic from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy because apparently the Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform, the iconic red uniform, is considered...
John: A copyright of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
John: And if you quit the Mounties, which I don't think you can.
John: It's like the Costa Nostra.
John: They take your jacket.
John: You don't just get to take it and take it to a thrift store or give it to your kid.
John: They're like, you're not working anymore.
John: Give us the jacket back.
John: It's one of those like this thing belongs to us.
John: Like your Amazon ID card.
John: You don't get to go put that on your vision board.
John: Right.
John: If you quit, they take it back.
John: I didn't realize this about the Mounted Police jacket, but if you go online and try and find a Mounties jacket, good luck, my friend.
John: They got that on lock.
John: But they don't do the same thing to the Mounted Police cadet jackets from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy.
John: Interesting.
John: Which are beautiful red tunics, but also even fancier.
Merlin: Is it that same cool color?
John: It's the same cool thing.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you mean by a tunic.
Merlin: It's not quite a Nehru, but it's going to be like a jacket like that.
John: It's a jacket, but it doesn't have a collar.
John: It's got a, like a, like a, yeah.
Merlin: Does it, does it seem somewhat liturgical?
Merlin: Like, like a, like a priest kind of outfit?
John: Yes.
John: Oh, nice.
Merlin: Canadian priest.
John: It's like a thing that you would wear if you were in the, uh, if you were in Queen Victoria's band.
Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: So I ordered one and it came and I ordered it from a guy who lives in a shipping container outside of Toronto.
John: And he was like, I don't want to deal with email.
John: I'm too old.
John: I want you to call me on the phone.
John: And I was like, you know what?
John: This is just, I'm buying a crazy thing.
John: This is so crazy.
John: I'm just going to do it.
John: So I called him and we talked on the phone for two hours because he was like, one time I was in Vietnam.
John: And I was like, tell me more crazy guy who lives in a shipping container with 10,000
John: Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy tunics.
John: Anyway, I bought this thing, and it's beautiful.
John: But the problem is, if you are a cadet, if you're a police cadet, guess what?
John: You're in better shape than me.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Well, shape.
John: I mean, but are the Canadians smaller as a people?
John: Everybody is smaller as a people than typically me.
John: Right.
John: Like if you are if you're in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy and you are six, three and two hundred and forty pounds.
John: You are probably built like a professional wrestler rather than like me.
John: Some, you know, like a, like a, uh, uh, whatever guitar jockey, like old, old fat guitar jockey.
John: So the thing doesn't fit.
John: And so every single friend that came to the house for about four months, I was like, hey, why don't you try on this cool jacket?
John: That's a good Canadian Cinderella.
John: Yeah, see if it fits you.
John: And I put it on Hodgman, and the sleeves were too long.
John: And I put it on, you know, Jonathan Colton and the sleeves were too short and I put it on Ken Jennings and it fit around the neck, but not around the something.
John: And one by one, I like none.
John: Nobody could wear it because it just was wrong.
John: It was wrong for everybody.
John: Sure.
John: And I was like, I don't have a single friend.
John: that this jacket fits, let alone, leaving aside the fact that not a single one of these people even, they were like, why are you doing this to me?
John: Like none of them felt like this jacket belongs to me.
John: Because none of them are in Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club.
John: It didn't call to any of them.
John: No.
John: And the thing is, if I sent that to you, it's not the type of thing you would wear either.
John: I'm not wearing it around the house.
John: Wear it around the house, right?
John: I love Canada.
John: When it's time to go into the kitchen and start laying down the law about which pots are going to go where, if you were wearing that jacket, I think you'd get taken away.
Merlin: I get some respect finally.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: That's exactly what it is.
John: It's a respect jacket.
John: Yeah, it says respect my process.
John: Yeah, here I am, you know, like, here I come to save the day, is what it says.
John: Yeah, I totally agree.
John: So you still haven't found your Canadian Cinderella?
John: No, and I'm afraid if I was going to send a package to somebody, it would be that jacket.
John: But it would arrive, and it wouldn't be a mitzvah.
John: It would be like a shitzvah.
Oh!
Merlin: I like yours better.
Merlin: Shitspa.
Merlin: It's a shitspa.