Ep. 330: "Crow Condo"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Oh, hello, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: My allergies are mostly better.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I give up.
Merlin: I didn't have an allergy attack.
Merlin: I think I actually had a cold.
John: I am having one of those right now.
John: A cold.
John: Well, let's not call it that.
John: No, don't call it a comeback.
John: You see, you see the real estate agents staged my house and they filled it with flowers.
John: Oh.
John: And so for a couple of days I was walking around like, what's wrong with me?
John: And then I realized it was the house.
John: They had brought me dead flowers and they were live when they came, but I killed them with my energies and
John: And then I got cut flowers or were they plants?
Merlin: Were they planted flowers?
John: No, they were like, well, they were real estate flower arrangements.
John: So some of them were like, you know, I think there was a little bit of myrrh, maybe some eucalyptus, other flowers of different kinds, smells.
John: There were a big thing of lilies, which smell a lot.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway, I got a sore throat.
John: That's the start for me.
John: Yeah.
John: And for two days, I've been like, I don't have a sore throat.
John: No, in fact, I do not.
John: And I do.
John: And it's allergies.
John: It's allergies.
John: It's allergies.
John: And so that's where I'm at.
Merlin: Well, you know, for a long time, you know, I think I've mentioned this before.
Merlin: We've been doing this show for a very long time.
Merlin: Yeah, I feel like I don't even know how many stories I've repeated.
Merlin: And none of them are that important or interesting.
Merlin: But really, what is a podcast?
Merlin: I used to get sick a lot.
Merlin: I used to get sick a lot in Florida.
Merlin: and then i moved here and i didn't get i got sick about one fifth as much as i used to at least but i did develop some kind of allergy which is weird because you know florida's a pretty blooming place oh it is it's a blooming onion but we got an old house we got we got lots of white castle slab out of india's sacred cow in florida what the what say again
John: I said, did you ever make a White Castle slab out of India's sacred cow down in Florida?
John: I don't know if I have.
John: I want to say no.
John: We're more Cracker Barrel people.
Merlin: Did you ever potty train the Chairman Mao down in Florida?
Merlin: Is this butthole surfers or Rolling Stones?
John: It's butthole surfers.
John: Wait, wait, did I guess right?
John: Yeah, you did.
John: Oh, Florida.
John: Yeah, Florida.
Merlin: there's a creep in the cellar and i gotta let him out uh good morning everybody anyways uh but here's the thing it's drive time radio with merlin it's drive time butthole surfers i oh jesus my pot's boiling hang on ah fuck me gently
Merlin: Shut up.
Merlin: Do your job, sir.
Merlin: Everything's all fakakta here now.
Merlin: I had a blowout in my coffee filter.
Merlin: I've had... Well, that's mostly it.
Merlin: I've got really bad snot.
Merlin: See, I used to... I think...
Merlin: God fucking damn it.
Merlin: Since I moved here to this horrible town, I think I have willed myself out of many colds, even as I continue to have these allergy things.
Merlin: I talk like Jello Biafra for a while.
Merlin: And this latest one, I says to myself, I says, this is just an allergy.
Merlin: That's normalizing, though.
Merlin: That's normalizing.
Merlin: That's a San Francisco thing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, he's from here.
Merlin: Kind of.
Merlin: I think he's from here.
Merlin: He's for Cocteau.
Merlin: Anyways, I got all kinds of snot.
Merlin: My family's grossed out because I got to keep blowing my nose.
Merlin: Oh, you have it right now.
Merlin: Well... Because you sound normal.
Merlin: Well, thank you.
Merlin: It's nice to sound normal.
Merlin: What happened was... Talk about our illnesses.
Merlin: I had the sore throat, and the sore throat moved up.
Merlin: And I says to myself, I says, you know, this is just allergies because of this goddamn city you live in.
Merlin: You've developed allergies.
Merlin: And I kept telling myself it's allergies because for some reason in my head, telling myself it's allergies rather than an according to Hoyle cold...
Merlin: somehow feels more, I don't know, masculine to me.
Merlin: I can get through this.
Merlin: If I say to myself it's an allergy, but then I had some bad night's sleeps, and anyways, now I got all kinds of snot.
Merlin: Does yours always start with a sore throat?
Merlin: I feel like mine does.
John: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
John: That's why I feel like I can beat this one.
John: That's why I feel like this isn't a real one.
John: Yeah.
John: Because.
John: We haven't had a good one of those in a while.
John: Because it didn't start in my sinuses where it normally does.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Now what it wants to do right now, right this very second, is it wants to move there.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And I am refusing to let it do it.
John: Leave it.
John: Yep.
John: You know, like, yeah, everything's fine.
John: You're cool.
John: I'm cool.
John: Just fucking leave me alone.
John: Stop it.
John: Stop right where you are.
John: Turn around and go back out.
John: Take your shoes off.
John: And let's try this again.
Merlin: It's so interesting to me.
Merlin: It strikes me that you have in a somewhat unconventional but very creative way.
Merlin: You have relationships with things.
Merlin: And what might sound to an outsider as though you're talking to yourself is actually outward directed.
Merlin: You're talking to your throat.
Merlin: You're talking to a possum.
Merlin: You're talking to a crow or a cat or another cat.
Merlin: And you say to them, you say things like, crow, I see you.
Merlin: Or you say, listen, here, possum, we need to have a deal.
Merlin: We need a deal here.
Merlin: We need to understand.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Yesterday, or no, two days ago, I was at a park.
John: I had a Frosty.
John: A Wendy's Frosty?
John: Yeah.
John: For those of you not in the United States who don't have a Wendy's in your location, every once in a while I'll stop by a Wendy's.
John: I'll get a Frosty.
John: That's a good Frosty.
John: It's like a milkshake, but it's – well, how would you describe the difference between a Frosty and a milkshake?
Merlin: It's like if you were going to make a milkshake out of soft serve.
John: It's a soft-serve milkshake.
John: That's right.
John: And it's thick.
John: It can't drink through a straw.
John: Anyway, I had half a Frosty, and I left it on a picnic table because I was summoned to a different part of the playground to do a job.
John: There was a dad sitting right there, but I was summoned all the way across the playground to do the job that that dad could have done just fine.
John: And as I walked over, I was like, hey, what's up, shirker?
John: And he said, I've been working my ass off and I'm done.
Merlin: Hang on.
John: Is this a dad you're acquainted with or is this a random dad?
John: Random dad.
John: He, I think, had been pushing the merry-go-round for a long time.
Merlin: Oh, like a whirligig, like a manual spinner?
John: Yeah, and had decided that it was over for him.
John: Just as I think we arrived and then I got pressed into service and I was like, you're sitting right here, dad.
John: And he was like, not me anymore.
John: It's on you.
John: So then I'm pushing the whirligig and I look over and there's a crow up on a, on a wire and he's, he's appeared there and I can see him from across the park.
John: He's eyeballing,
John: my frosty.
John: I'm pushing the whirligig, but I've got one eye on the crow.
John: And then he drops down to the ground, a safe distance from the picnic table.
John: But you know, there's no reason for him to be there.
John: What's he dropping down to the ground right there for?
John: Oh, did he see a worm?
John: I'm just on the ground.
John: Don't mind me.
John: Did he see a french fry?
John: I don't think so.
John: Maybe he saw something shiny for his collection.
John: Something shiny, sure.
John: That's what he wants you to think.
John: But I can see he's got one eye on that frosting.
John: And so I'm pushing the whirly gig, but I've got an eye and a half on the crow at this point.
John: And then he does two very casual hops.
John: Now, do you think he hops toward the picnic table or away from the picnic table?
Merlin: I mean, my gut would be he hops toward the picnic table tentatively.
John: Well, he does a little bit of a lateral.
John: He's not, it's not, it's neither toward or.
John: He's establishing a perimeter.
John: That's exactly what he's doing.
John: He's like, what's over here?
John: I'm not, I'm just, I was just like, oh, I was just passing by.
John: I'm just a crow.
John: So World Gig's going around, and I'm getting yelled at, of course, because I need to go faster.
John: By the children or the errant father?
John: By the children.
John: No, the errant father's just like laughing.
John: He's got his hands on his belly just going, ha, ha, ha, because he thinks that this story is about me having been co-opted into being like... He's Tom Sawyer, and you're painting the fence.
John: That's exactly right.
John: God damn it.
John: And we're having a little friendly dad chat along the lines of...
John: If it weren't for you, buddy, I'd be sitting over there enjoying my day.
John: And he's like, ha, ha, ha.
John: It's all you.
John: I don't care about you.
John: You're just another dad.
John: And I'm like, we'll see.
John: But then the crow hops up on the seat of the picnic table.
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: At which point I say... You go to DEFCON too.
John: And I give the whirly gig an extra good strong push and I start walking across the park.
John: And it's far enough away that the crow doesn't register me as belonging to the picnic table.
John: Because he was a late arriver, I think.
John: Now, I don't know how far away he was watching this scene before he...
John: Hopped on the wire.
John: He might have seen me drive up.
John: He might know my license plate number.
John: I don't know.
John: But I start moving and then he hops up on the on the table and now he's
John: two and a half feet from the Frosty.
Merlin: That's well within an easy 20-sided die roll for a ranged attack.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: For sure.
Merlin: He might have actually definitely gone into melee.
John: Well, in my experience, I have not seen... Crows tend to be pretty meticulous.
John: I have not seen a crow...
John: just go rogue, knock over a Frosty, knowing that even though he's going to get chased away, eventually the spoils of war will be his.
Merlin: Crows are not desperate.
Merlin: You don't see, you don't see, you'll see a seagull covered with taffy, but you're not, you're not going to see a crow.
Merlin: A crow is a dignified bird.
Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And a seagull, you know, a seagull might just like bump into it and then, and then wait for me to, you know, wait for my fury to abide and then come back, but...
John: So the crow and I are headed, we're both headed in the same direction.
John: We're triangulating toward the frosty.
John: He's a lot closer than I am.
John: Okay.
John: But I start.
John: Your heart must be thumping.
John: Well, I'm moving.
John: And I'm like, hey, crow, hey, I see you.
John: And he registers me, but it's not clear that I'm on a collision course with him yet.
John: About halfway across the park, he says, oh.
John: this frosty belongs to somebody it's that guy and he's moving he's made the connection yeah so he has to decide you know what's his does he go over and look in the frosty at which point i will be i'll be hustling at that point i'll be moving he registers that that's probably what's going to happen and he he seeds the ground
John: He takes another hop away and then to the skies.
John: Not today.
John: Not today, Crow.
Merlin: He's working solo, though.
Merlin: So you could do that tricky crow thing where you distract over here while the other guy moves in.
Merlin: He's working solo.
John: He's all by himself.
John: I don't know where his team is.
John: I think that that group of four crows probably is covering a larger area than the group of four crows that live primarily in my yard.
John: Okay.
John: The group of crows that live in my yard are often three crows, but a fourth will join them.
John: And I don't know what they're living on.
John: I don't know what they're doing here.
Merlin: You covered this in an older episode, but you and your mom have done extensive research to try to find out where the crows go.
Merlin: Do you feel like he commutes to your yard or does the crow and family actually sort of nest near there?
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: It's a commuting situation.
Merlin: Okay, because they all live in one tree in like a northern part of the city, right?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Isn't there one like Crow Condo somewhere where they all live?
Merlin: I saw a photo one time or a video one time.
Merlin: Somebody found the tree full of crows.
John: Well, there's the tree full of crows that's the staging ground for the commute.
John: It's like a park and ride.
John: At the end of the day, the crows all come to the south end of town and they fill up the trees.
John: Okay.
John: And then they moved together, en suite, to an undisclosed location.
John: Yes.
John: And I feel like, you know the way when you're in rural Pennsylvania and you see like some people that have been living there for centuries and you think, you guys didn't even have the gumption to get as far as Indiana.
John: Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
John: You know, you moved out, you went over the first couple hills and you were like, this is far enough.
John: Yeah.
John: And then you go to Indiana and you're like, yeah, this used to be the frontier.
John: That's right.
John: Like a long time ago.
John: Yeah.
John: 200 years ago, this was the frontier.
Merlin: Let's start a clan here.
John: Yeah.
John: Let's put down some roots.
Merlin: Get a barn with a Confederate flag, that kind of thing.
John: Yeah.
John: They had some brave people in their family 200 years ago.
John: But then whatever, the bravery just went out of them.
John: And they're living next to the Tippecanoe battlefield.
Merlin: Oh, I think about this a lot with Florida.
Merlin: I always think, why did you stop here?
Merlin: I mean, at any point.
Merlin: Really, at any point in Florida, you're like, why?
Merlin: Because, of course, the terrible joke is the last chapter of the novel is where they realize no matter where they go, they're still in Florida.
Merlin: But why did you stop at this particular point?
Merlin: Why Indiana?
Merlin: Why Waxahachie or whatever?
Merlin: I don't know if that's the same.
John: Waxahachie, yeah.
Merlin: That's probably Georgia.
Merlin: That sounds like a Georgia.
John: It's on the Georgia-Florida border.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Why Pensacola?
Merlin: Is it because you know this is where veterans will be?
John: Well, no, you don't want to go any further than you're in Mobile.
John: You're in Mobile.
John: Mobile, mm-hmm.
John: You're in, you know, Mobile.
John: You don't want to go all the way to Alabama, so you stop in Pensacola.
John: Yeah, I think that's some sense.
Okay.
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Merlin: Sorry.
John: But, you know, we're Western people, you and I. Yeah.
John: Well, I mean, I am.
John: You have become a Western person.
John: Your daughter is a Western person.
John: Right?
John: Her feet are firmly planted in California ground.
Merlin: She never brings a jacket, yeah.
Merlin: Well, she will.
Merlin: Well, you guys in umbrellas, that's her in jackets.
Merlin: She's like, forget it.
John: Don't need it.
Merlin: I've also raised her not to need an umbrella.
Merlin: No, no, no shade, no lemonade.
Merlin: But if you bring the proper jacket, if you bring a wax coat, you're not going to need the bubble umbrella.
Merlin: Mm-mm.
Merlin: Oh, she brings the umbrella, but not the jacket?
Merlin: Oh, it's way worse.
Merlin: I don't want to take you off your crows.
Merlin: But Jesus Christ, Jesus.
Merlin: No, I am the umbrella valet.
Merlin: I carry the umbrella, and if she needs it, she uses it, and then I bring it back home because she doesn't want to bring it at school.
Merlin: I don't know what they're doing at the schools that she never wants to have anything there.
Merlin: She doesn't want a jacket.
Merlin: She's got seven books, but she can't have a jacket like a person.
Merlin: But, you know, that's the irony.
Merlin: The irony is being raised here.
Merlin: So when you move here, what do they tell you?
Merlin: Layers.
Merlin: You've got to have the layers.
John: They do.
John: That's the first thing they say.
Merlin: You've got to have layers.
Merlin: I always have three layers, at least.
Merlin: I've got many, many layers.
Merlin: That's because I'm a transplant.
Merlin: She was born in it.
Merlin: She was formed by it.
Merlin: She's like the bane of San Francisco.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: So she's like, I don't need a jacket.
Merlin: And she rarely gets cold because she was raised in this horrible, horrible area.
John: Yeah.
John: Have you...
John: In the process of being her Jeeves, have you never said...
John: Uh, little madam, let's take a trip to the REI.
Merlin: We've tried it all.
Merlin: We've tried it all.
Merlin: What we finally landed on, no, quite the opposite.
Merlin: We bought her so much nice stuff.
Merlin: And you buy it a little big, you know, but you're growing.
John: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: But, like, that's the problem is it doesn't matter how nice it is.
Merlin: So now, like every other parent, it's mainly Target and H&M because she's going to leave it somewhere.
Merlin: I tried putting Bluetooth tracking devices into her clothing, but she doesn't like that either.
Uh-huh.
Merlin: Because she kept losing it.
Merlin: She kept losing really nice name brand clothing.
Merlin: And so now we just H&M it.
Merlin: Because it's always going to end up on the playground in a pile of mud anyway.
John: But you haven't interested her in outdoor gear as a fetish item.
Merlin: Oh, I sure have tried.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, I thought that that was going to be the hook.
Merlin: It was like some combination of fashion and ruggedness.
John: Yeah, ruggedness.
John: Beefiness.
Merlin: A lot of stuff you can sell on pockets.
John: Yeah, look at all the pockets.
John: Look at all the zippers and the straps and the, yeah.
John: And the hood just rolls away.
John: Compression straps.
John: Do you suffer from this, John?
Merlin: I mean, do you suffer from this?
Merlin: I mean, like, I imagine, like us, you suffer from the whole, like, you got to put shoes on thing.
Merlin: But, like, do you struggle with getting the child to become slightly self-sufficient with regard to climate or other things?
John: This morning, as a matter of fact, as we were walking to school, my little person...
John: was fretting about the fact that we were going to be a little bit late.
John: And this is a thing between the two of us.
Merlin: If only there was some way we could avoid being late.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: If only we would listen to the walking 52-year-old clock in the house.
Merlin: If only we had left.
John: 7.22, leave it in seven minutes.
Merlin: Apollo's going to crash.
John: So she's fretting, but we've been working on fretting, too, because she'll get worked up into a fret.
Yeah.
John: And I have been saying like, okay, now you're in a, now you're like in a loop.
John: You're in a, you're in a cycle now where the fretting is fretting about fretting.
Merlin: Oh, it's very Buddhist.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I call that being a sad tomato.
Merlin: You become a sad tomato.
Merlin: Sad tomato.
John: But you know, she will, she'll start to, you know, she'll go into a mode where she's just like, we're going to be late.
John: We're going to be late.
John: We're going to be late.
John: And I'm like, yes, we are going to be late, but that is not
John: That is not our mantra on the way to school today.
John: There are other things we can occupy our mind with other than a we're going to be late loop.
John: So I said, let's cut across the park.
John: Well, you know what it's like cutting across a park.
John: You've got the ultimate cut across the park park.
John: Oh, and it's very cut acrossable.
John: Yes, it is.
Merlin: There's all kinds of ways you can cut across our park.
John: If you don't mind a Confederate ghost.
John: Well, that's true.
John: Or a hundred of them.
John: This is a park where there is no path to cut across.
John: It's cut across the grass.
John: Oh, do you get concerns about rule breaking?
John: Well, no, it's not that.
John: But halfway across the grass, because this is the Pacific Northwest and it's the morning.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Halfway across the grass, she says, my socks are wet.
John: Oh, sure.
John: And I look down and she's in a pair of tenny runners, which were made to be very light in order to win the Boston Marathon.
Mm-hmm.
John: And that means that they have no – there's no structure to them at all.
John: They are made out of – they are made out of tissue paper and plastic.
John: And believe me, the shoe thing in my family is crazy making because I have pretty –
John: What I think of as reasonable standards for practical.
Merlin: Very, very practical.
Merlin: Are there other shoe buying decisions that are happening outside of your purview?
John: There are shoes or shoes arrive.
John: The other day, a pair of shoes arrived.
John: They were ballet flats that had the word love on them.
John: And I said, listen, if all of my shoes had the word love on them, I would be a happier person.
John: But ballet flats are not shoes.
John: That's not city shoes.
John: No, ballet flats aren't.
Merlin: That's for maybe like walking to the basement.
John: It's the pajama of shoes.
Merlin: How do they even stay on?
Merlin: If you started to run, you lose both your shoes.
Merlin: You lose them.
Merlin: They're not good for anything.
Merlin: They're tapered enough that you could climb a fence if you needed to.
Merlin: But that's not rugged shoes.
Merlin: I mean, you know, it's like...
Merlin: I mean, I have to get graphic sometimes.
Merlin: I have to say, don't touch anything in this city that you wouldn't want to put in your mouth.
Merlin: Because once you've touched something, it will go in your mouth.
Merlin: Touch minimal muni.
Merlin: And if you're like me, when you're going on the steps, you see I'm making a fist?
Merlin: You use the fist on the railing.
Merlin: Do not rub your palm down 40 feet of railing sweet Maui onion.
Merlin: Do not do that.
Merlin: And at the same time, imagine that you're barefoot.
Merlin: Because your shoes, if you're wearing a ballet flat, you might as well be barefoot.
John: Yes.
John: Well, and also, like, don't walk all the way to town and back and then put your shoes on me or take your shoes off and lick them, which sounds crazy, but it's a child.
John: No, you've got to put it in these terms.
John: So, yes, all the time a shoe will appear, which came from, there's only a couple of places it could have come from.
Yeah.
John: She's not buying her own shoes.
John: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Especially when you – yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: Especially when you – if you're being a little bit Sherlock Holmes and you look at the – you're taking away everything.
Merlin: It's outlandish.
Merlin: You're doing an Occam's razor on the shoes.
Merlin: And you get down to there are probably – there are three people in your family that are very, very likely candidates for buying shoes for your child.
Merlin: And all the rest of the world is pretty much an unlikely candidate.
Merlin: The way I look at it, you got you, your mom, and your baby mama.
Merlin: And Susan, conceivably.
Merlin: Susan, okay.
John: But we can eliminate a couple of those possibilities.
John: Isn't she in Ethiopia or something?
John: Susan's in Ethiopia right now, so she couldn't have bought these particular shoes.
John: But my mom would never buy a pair of ballet flats that have love written on them in cursive.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: Yes.
John: Right?
John: Yes.
John: So I narrowed it down pretty fast.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: But the larger point is there should never be a pair of shoes that cannot – well, no, let me retract that.
John: If you have a pair of shoes that cannot walk across a park without becoming waterlogged –
John: Then those are specialty shoes, which can only be worn in specialty situations.
John: They are not general purpose shoes.
John: They are not put those shoes on and let's go to school shoes.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: And this also points out how important it is.
Merlin: Just think about this.
Merlin: How many jobs have you ever worked on where the project manager was a child?
Merlin: Never.
Merlin: Because children make terrible project managers, and I'll tell you why.
Merlin: Children assume that everything will mostly go the way they like or imagine.
Merlin: And that's not how we plan.
Merlin: We plan for the things to come up that we're not prepared for.
Merlin: There are the known-knowns and the unknown-knowns and the unknown-unknowns and the unknown-unknowns.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And so you plan accordingly.
Merlin: The thing is, we don't wake up in the morning going, we might walk across, we're going to walk across wet grass.
Merlin: We say we might walk across.
Merlin: You might need to pass through a dog park for reasons that are not clear at 630.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: Who knows?
John: Thank you.
John: This is an argument to raise the voting age to 21.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, my gosh.
John: Although let's not get into that.
John: No.
John: The point for me is as Western people, we have in our lineage –
John: Brave people, people that got up and left Florida and kept going.
John: Maybe brave, maybe haunted, maybe pursued.
John: Maybe a little reckless, maybe a little bit desperate.
John: Maybe only pursued by things in their mind, but still pursued.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, that's no, that's that counts.
John: Now, in your case, the bravery exhibited by your mother was to go from Ohio to Florida, which is a kind of bravery.
Merlin: Never trust a Serb.
John: A kind of pursuit.
John: Yeah, never trust a Serb, especially not when they're crouching.
John: Right.
John: Dobro goce.
John: But for you to be in San Francisco, for us to be in Seattle, I mean, coming to Seattle from Alaska is a little bit of reverse bravery on my part.
John: But, you know, I had to come get I had to get reestablished.
John: I didn't want to be a Coke dealer.
John: Was that your future in Alaska?
John: Who knows?
John: Who knows?
John: I didn't know enough about hockey to live in Alaska.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: It's like getting out of the hood, right?
Merlin: Basketball or rapping, except for you.
Merlin: Now, today it's probably meth.
Merlin: I think meth is more economical and scales up better, probably.
John: Oh, or like, yeah, Oxycon.
John: The pill drugs are popular everywhere now.
John: But no, I mean, if I had stayed in Alaska, I would have been some country lawyer, wore a white suit.
John: All right.
John: But my feeling, my feeling is in the great wagon train of crows that leaves their roost every morning.
Mm-hmm.
John: The crows in my yard are equivalent to the crows that live in like Western Virginia.
John: Like they don't get that far.
John: They work in D.C.
John: Yeah.
John: The crow park and ride is just right down the hill from here.
John: So whatever, however, these crows staked out this turf where at the, where, when they're making the deals with each other and they're like, okay, I'm going to take that white house up on the top of the, of this hill right over here.
John: The crows in the group who are like, wait, I still have like 15 miles to fly and you're just peeling off here and you're going to sit in this guy's yard all day and.
John: Oh, I see.
John: And like crow at magpies.
Mm hmm.
John: They're like, yeah, well, somebody's got to do it.
John: I mean, we've got to cover a lot of ground here.
John: So anyway.
John: Might as well be me.
John: Yeah, might as well be me.
John: But when I look at them, they don't appear to be lazier crows than other crows.
John: I just don't feel like they've got very much hustle.
John: I feel like these are the crows.
John: It might be a legacy thing.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, my daddy always was here at this White House.
Merlin: So cheap will I be.
Merlin: Well, that's where you got to give it to the seagulls.
Merlin: They're dumb as a bag of hammers, but they got a lot of hustle.
Merlin: Well, the seagulls never get up here.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, we get them here.
Merlin: People feed them.
Merlin: Well, you know, you're not that far from the sea.
Merlin: I'm a little bit further.
Merlin: People leave corn out.
Merlin: They leave corn for the gulls.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: In the park, yes.
Merlin: Somebody who I will eventually identify has what appears to be probably a one-pound bag of corn bits that they dump in the park.
Merlin: And it's some crows.
Merlin: It's some jays.
Merlin: But a lot of, you get a lot of gulls.
Merlin: And then they commute to their wire, their phone wire, which is, you know, on a diagonal, you know, 40, 60 feet away.
Merlin: And you can tell because there's an entire big line of where the poop went off of the wire.
John: And that's where we have to walk to to get to Walgreens.
John: What are you going to say to the corn person when you meet them?
John: When you finally see them dumping corn out in the park, what are you going to say?
Merlin: I should prepare for them.
Merlin: Off the dome, I'm thinking, I say, look, hello, I live in the neighborhood too.
Merlin: It seems that you have a good heart and you want to help these birds, but have you really thought this through?
Merlin: Have you really thought this through?
Merlin: And they'll probably say yes and I'll cry and go home.
Merlin: But because that's how it is with me.
Merlin: I'm actually from Ohio.
Merlin: I'm ultimately in Ohio.
Merlin: We're sorry for everything.
Merlin: No, but I want to say, you know, you're attracting these bad birds, these bad, dirty birds.
Merlin: And then you keep, you've basically conditioned them and arguably yourself into this idea that there's always going to be corn in the park.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: There's always going to be corn in the park.
Merlin: It's real, real.
Merlin: I don't want to be unkind.
Merlin: John, I'm trying to be kind.
Merlin: I want to be decent.
Merlin: I know you are.
Merlin: I know you are.
Merlin: I hear you.
Merlin: You're trying to be a little hot.
Merlin: I don't hate birds.
Merlin: There are some good birds.
Merlin: I used to work with a bird that I liked a lot.
Merlin: Some of your best friends are birds.
Merlin: Some of my best friends are birds.
Merlin: I've got photos with them to prove it.
Merlin: But they do have beady eyes and a very suspicious carriage.
Merlin: And I think any shit they could pull over on me, they would do in a heartbeat.
John: Yes.
Merlin: I don't think I'm doing anything to them.
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: Now, maybe I have wronged them in ways I don't know.
Merlin: But I do not like the idea of a corn dump in my park.
Merlin: Corn dump right there.
John: That's not a phrase you ever want to hear.
John: Corn dump.
John: There's been a corn dump.
John: What good is going to come from the phrase corn dump?
John: What is this in service of?
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: When I was a younger man, when I was 21, it was a very big corn.
John: I had a friend that worked for the...
John: They worked on the ferries there in San Francisco.
John: He worked for the Blue and Gold.
John: Sure.
John: Big fan.
Merlin: The old Blue and Gold Fleet.
Merlin: Most famous for being the boat that takes you to the Alcatraz Island attraction.
John: Oh, right, right.
Merlin: They probably go to Richmond and stuff.
Merlin: They've got a wide purview.
John: Back in the 80s, this one went over to the Berkeley Pier.
John: It was like a commuter boat as well as a...
Merlin: It was like one for Sausalito people use for commuting.
Merlin: That's right.
John: There was a bar on this boat that my friend was on.
John: Oh, it still is.
John: And they used to take bread.
John: Now, listen, if you are going to write an angry letter, write it to Merlin at Gmail.
Merlin: Send it, care of me, Black and Gold Ferry Line, Anytown, USA, San Francisco, 90016.
John: That's right.
John: They would take bread and they'd rip it up into big pieces and they would dip the bread in vodka.
John: And then they would stand on the stern of the boat as it went across and they would throw it up in the air for the seagulls that were trailing behind.
John: And they would throw vodka soaked bread up.
John: And the seagulls, you know, they're pretty adept at catching it in the air.
John: Hell yes.
John: And they would throw it up there and they would watch the seagulls get drunk.
Merlin: Oh, you can get a seagull drunk.
John: Yeah, and then they would sort of like start to wobble and eventually they would have to go sit on the ocean.
John: I'm just going to lay here for a minute.
John: They would stop fucking with the boat.
John: It's like you and your boss's boat, right?
Yeah.
John: That's right.
John: I'm just going to lay here for a minute for the rest of the tour.
John: And I have no idea whether a seagull eating vodka-soaked bread would get enough alcohol in it to be like toxic to it.
John: But these teenagers that worked for the Blue and Gold, they did this because the seagulls just tormented them.
John: They like were...
John: They were just, they covered the boat.
John: They followed the boat.
John: It was just constant seagulls.
John: You leave anything, you leave a baby unattended and the seagulls are all over.
John: That baby's gone.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, they'll eat it right down to the bone.
Merlin: That's why they tell you at the airport, never leave a baby unattended.
Merlin: Because they're going to have to go and do some kind of controlled explosion.
John: I actually do a voiceover for the SeaTac airport that says that exact thing.
John: Is that right?
John: Hi, this is John Roderick.
John: Welcome to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
John: Please do not leave your baby unattended.
John: Like, even for like an hour.
John: Like, even an hour is not safe.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Don't ask.
John: I mean, and this is another, that's another one of my overhead announcements.
John: Hi, welcome to Seattle Tacoma International Airport.
John: This is John Roderick of the Long Winters.
John: If someone asks you to watch their baby for an hour, report it to the nearest airport security.
Merlin: Oh, see, that's smart.
Merlin: I have two fast anecdotes.
Merlin: We recently had to, not had to travel, we recently traveled and we had to stay at lodging and we did things.
Merlin: And I have two anecdotes for you.
Merlin: They're very quick.
Merlin: The first is that when I was in line for a roller coaster at a theme park, because I'm a roller coaster man.
Merlin: And so basically, you know, you queue up and you say like, what road do you want to be in for this roller coaster?
Merlin: And you wait there.
Merlin: And the lady in front of me was wearing scuffs to the amusement park.
Merlin: Now, when I say scuffs, I want to be super clear.
Merlin: Well, you know, like the kind of thing like an old lady would put on when she gets out of the tub?
John: You know, like Terry Closs shoes with like a rubber bottom.
John: Wait, those are called, those have a name?
John: They're called scuffs.
Merlin: Yeah, well, that's what we call them in my family, scuffs.
Merlin: I guess they do, you do kind of scuff along in them.
Merlin: Well, it's sure not the kind of thing I would want to wear to an amusement park, personally.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: But I just thought that's a good file card for your ongoing file on the dissolution of society.
Merlin: And because it's the kind of roller coaster that doesn't have a floor, she took them off and held them with her bare feet.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: She took off her scuffs.
Merlin: Um, the other one was that in the home, I'd love to send you this video.
Merlin: Um, in the hotel room we were staying in, uh, it's, you know, kind of resorts the wrong word, but it was a little bungalow and we have front door and a back door.
Merlin: Back door was open and a duck came in our room and just check the place out.
Merlin: And I'll send you the video because it's pretty great.
Merlin: Was it near to a duck area?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: It was duck adjacent.
Merlin: They had ducks and they had whatever the ones, I don't know if it's a heron or if it's a, it's one of those with the long skinny bill.
Merlin: They had those.
Merlin: We were adjacent to koi, but mainly there was ducks.
Merlin: There was ducks, there was white ducks, there's mallard ducks.
Merlin: There's one I refer to as little guy because he was just kind of a loner and by himself.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Little guy.
Merlin: I call him little guy.
Merlin: We were there for three nights.
Merlin: But in any case, so three ducks walked up to the back door.
Merlin: Two of them hung back while one of them, and nothing's cuter in this world than the sound of a little white duck walking.
Merlin: It goes, slappa, slappa, slappa.
Merlin: Much like that lady with her shoes off, probably.
Merlin: Slappa, slappa.
Merlin: The duck came in to check the place out.
Merlin: I moved toward the duck.
Merlin: Of course, I made a video on my camera.
Merlin: And it goes slappa, slappa, slappa.
Merlin: And I talked to it.
Merlin: I said, what are we doing, buddy?
Merlin: You come in and check things out?
Merlin: And he goes, hmm, hmm.
Merlin: And he kind of looks around like a duck does.
Merlin: And then I kind of moved closer because as I moved closer to him and the door, his friends are outside seeing if everything looks cool, I assume.
Merlin: And they're just going, hmm.
Merlin: They're like, hmm.
Merlin: But he's like, huh, huh.
Merlin: And so finally, I made a move toward the door.
Merlin: And he or she exited.
Merlin: But we had a duck around.
John: I couldn't tell whether it was he or she because it was... It's a white duck.
John: A white duck, so it doesn't have, like, the blue-green... Yeah, you don't get boy mallard coloration.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: I think that's called... What's that called?
Merlin: A drake?
Merlin: Chance the Rapper?
Merlin: Who am I thinking of?
Merlin: In any case, we had a duck in our room, and it was about the cutest thing ever.
Merlin: But here's the thing about ducks.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't want to work blue.
Merlin: Ducks, shit.
Merlin: I know this, because when I lived in Tallahassee, they were what are called Muscovy ducks.
Merlin: And they shot prodigiously.
Merlin: They shot and shot.
Merlin: And it's a green, black, slimy shitning.
Merlin: That's a goose poop that we have up here.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, they're not going to avail themselves of the honey bucket.
Merlin: Like, they're just out dropping deuces all over the capital city.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's a Muscovy duck.
Merlin: But I don't want to lose the deposit.
Merlin: I don't want them coming in and dropping dukes in the bungalow.
John: So you got the duck out before it made a mess?
Merlin: Yeah, I made a video of the whole thing.
Merlin: It's real short, but I think I could port it myself well.
Merlin: I talked to it the whole time.
Merlin: I called it buddy, if memory serves.
John: What do you think differentiated this duck from the other ducks that weren't brave enough to venture in?
John: How is this duck different from all other ducks?
John: That's right.
Merlin: I'm going to guess.
John: Did it eat the bitter leaves?
Merlin: Yeah, a little bit of salt, and you got a seat there for Hosanna.
Merlin: So anyway, I have to assume one doesn't like to use the term alpha male.
Merlin: I think that is a term that has been widely refuted even in nature.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think he was probably kind of the head duck for his clan.
Merlin: Not that kind of clan, but for his caress, for his duck caress.
John: Was it a thing?
John: I mean, do you imagine within duck, because the crows are complicated enough that you can imagine them drawing straws.
John: You can imagine them drawing straws to see which one is going to get the Frosty out of the straw.
John: Yeah.
John: But also, like... He doesn't know he's not supposed to suck it.
John: Yeah, they have a whole society.
John: But, like, within duck culture... I mean, I've watched ducks.
John: I've watched a lot of ducks.
John: Oh, I love watching a duck.
John: And I don't see them, like...
Merlin: Can I make a movie reference?
Merlin: Would you forgive me a movie reference?
Merlin: Let's try it out.
Merlin: Let's test it out.
Merlin: Well, first of all, I also talk to birds.
Merlin: I talk to birds, and I let them know I'm here and I see them there.
Merlin: I learned this from you, and so far it has stood me in good stead.
Merlin: I'm still alive, and there's no dukes on my floor.
Merlin: But I'm going to make a reference.
Merlin: When I think of a crow, you know what I think of Agent Smith?
Merlin: I think it's a hive mind.
Merlin: agent smith from the movie the matrix right where you can have there there there can be many agencies but they're all kind of they're a hive mind and here's the thing about a hive mind is that uh i mean at least in uh like what's some other dystopic science fiction in other kinds of dystopic science fiction what that means is the instance of this kind of
Merlin: character, animal, bot, whatever you see is constantly communicating and integrating information with all, maybe Skynet might be another example.
Merlin: But the idea is they're all quote unquote talking to each other in real time.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Do you see where I'm going with this?
Merlin: Like the crows do not need, crows don't need a meeting.
John: Agent Smith needs a telephone in the room.
John: Is that right?
John: If you shoot Agent Smith, he can't just reappear right there.
John: He has to reappear where there's a telephone.
Merlin: I'm not a Wachowski scholar, but I think the telephone is needed by Lawrence Fishburne's group to be able to get into the Matrix-y thing.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I think that the phone is for them.
John: But there's some other thing that keeps Agent Smith from just instantly regenerating every time he gets blown away.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: So like you kill one ant, it doesn't automatically regenerate like a new Mario life.
Merlin: No, it has to.
Merlin: The ant has to pick up the phone somehow.
John: Yeah, to use a Skynet example, if a bullet goes through Terminator 2...
John: Terminator 2 just goes blorb.
John: And I don't remember how you kill a Terminator 2.
John: Do you remember?
John: How do you kill a Terminator 2?
John: Oh, brother.
John: I know one way.
Merlin: The liquid metal.
Merlin: Oh, so sad.
Merlin: So sad.
Merlin: We watched that with my daughter and I cried.
Merlin: I cried when the robot was on the chain.
Merlin: I cried.
John: Oh, no.
John: Oh, it's so sad.
John: I'm sorry to bring it back.
John: He says, no, it's all right.
Merlin: It's a little bit triggering for me.
Merlin: But basically, the T2 says, like, hey, I know how to take care of this.
Merlin: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so he's going to he's going to fuck you, asshole.
Merlin: He goes down the chain.
John: Oh, no, no.
John: So but he's fighting the he's fighting the other Terminator, the one made out of mercury.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: The policeman.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I think that's a more advanced.
Merlin: I think that's a T-1000, but I'm not sure.
John: Oh, that's what I meant to say.
John: I meant to say T-1000.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: There has to be some kind of plot device that keeps Agent Smith from being an unstoppable superpower.
John: You have to be able to stop him.
John: And I think that's true also of...
John: of crow hive mind, they can't just spooky action at a distance, everything you can still, you can still goof them.
John: You can, you know, you can put out a thing of yogurt and,
John: and fill it halfway up with vodka, and be like, here.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And Agent Smith is, I'm going to eat this yogurt.
Merlin: I'm going to eat this yogurt, Mr. Anderson.
John: The crow 2,500 miles away that you did this to already two and a half months ago, he can't communicate directly to that.
Merlin: Oh, so you're talking legitimate, true, well, not opposite, but apposite of the spooky action at a crow distance.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: You know, they discovered two new galaxies that don't have any dark matter.
John: I saw you tweeting about this and I was confused.
John: Yeah, it's very confusing.
Hmm.
John: Dark matter is, you know, like, why would there be some one place and another place?
John: Do we need dark matter?
Merlin: Is dark matter part of what holds everything together, like the force?
Merlin: Well, we don't know.
Merlin: Oh, that's why it's dark.
John: Right, because the only reason we know there's dark matter is... Don't we discover dark matter by its absence, or am I thinking of a black hole, a dark hole?
John: No.
John: No, no, no.
John: We discovered it by its absence in the sense that for the galaxy to be moving like it's moving... Yeah.
John: it would need X amount more matter in it.
John: Okay.
Merlin: I didn't get to that level of math.
Merlin: I had geometry.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: I didn't even do good in geometry.
John: Me either.
John: I took it as a senior.
John: These galaxies, what?
John: That's a sophomore class.
Merlin: Oh, it's an eighth grade class.
John: I guess that's right.
John: Sophomore is algebra too.
John: Took algebra twice.
John: We had geometry, I think, in ninth grade.
Merlin: It's so annoying to be a nearly college-aged person with literal children in your class.
John: Sitting in Algebra 2, yeah.
Merlin: Because you know how little they get.
Merlin: Even in ninth grade, it can be real little.
Merlin: Really little.
Merlin: Oh, some of them were real good at the, at the geometry though.
John: I went to, I went to tour a school recently that had some fifth and sixth graders in it.
John: They seem huge.
John: And you can, well, no, you can see the progression between like, cause this is a school that had little babies in it too.
John: You see the babies and you're like, ah, they're babies.
John: Like, you know, they're, they're cute if you own one yourself.
John: But they're just hateful little shits to everybody else.
Merlin: I think a child is a little bit like having a bird.
Merlin: You need to be real into it.
Merlin: They're super noisy.
Merlin: They poop everywhere.
Merlin: And eventually they say something.
John: Your neighbor has a bird?
John: Yeah.
John: If your neighbor has a bird or a child, you're like, fuck.
Merlin: Cock!
Merlin: You do?
Cock!
Merlin: Cock!
Merlin: It just says cock all day.
Merlin: I don't know where it is.
Merlin: I don't know if it's yelling back at Judge Judy, but it just goes cock!
John: Oh, it should be living in the Castro.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: I'll move that over here.
Merlin: Boy, ouch!
Merlin: You know what you can do in the Castro that's fun?
Merlin: You soak some bread with vodka and you throw it through the air.
Ha ha!
Merlin: Then they have to lay down.
John: So anyway, ducks.
John: But then I'm looking at second, third, fourth graders, and they look like kids.
John: They're kids.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Kids are great.
John: Look at them.
John: They're learning stuff.
John: They've got puzzles.
John: They're like, check it out.
John: I drew this thing.
John: And you're like, what is it?
John: You know, like kids.
Merlin: Oh, no, they're very kids.
Merlin: No, now that I have a fifth grader, the little ones look real little.
John: But when you look at a sixth grader, you're like, oh, no.
John: Oh, no.
John: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
John: Not this.
Merlin: Not this.
Merlin: Surely.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: So here's a shot from the back of waiting in line at Southwest.
Merlin: And look at the height differential on that.
Merlin: So they can share shoes now.
Merlin: She's about 5'2".
John: Did you send that to me within the Skype universe?
Merlin: I did not.
Merlin: I'm going to use Skype as normally as possible.
Merlin: I sent it in your text channels.
Merlin: Can you get to that?
John: Okay.
John: Oh, yes.
John: Whoa, look at them.
John: Some of them look like Janis Joplin.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Well, this is San Diego.
Merlin: What are you going to do?
Merlin: Oh, no, sorry.
Merlin: This is here, leaving.
Merlin: So, yeah, these are actual Joplins.
Merlin: But, yeah, look at that height.
Merlin: Look at that height.
Merlin: My lady's 5'6 and change, and I think my daughter's about 5'2, probably pushing 5'3".
John: Wow, look at that.
John: Remember when she was a baby?
Merlin: Remember how little she was?
John: She's a little grown up.
John: Look at her.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Harry Potter backpack.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Here's the, well, yeah, that's not going to last.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, come on.
John: Another year, the Harry Potter backpack.
John: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I want to put a fork in your anecdote, though, because I totes agree.
Merlin: When I go now, so it used to be when I had a kinder, that's what we call them.
Merlin: When I had a kinder, I thought the kids were enormous.
Merlin: And now that I have a senior, a fifth grader, the kids look impossibly small.
Merlin: And some of the kids are starting to get the secondary characteristics, the fifth graders.
John: Well, I know.
John: I mean, some of these fifth graders should be in line waiting for the bus to take them into the national parks where we won't see them until they're 22.
John: I think we could amend the entire program.
John: A lot of these kids need to be cutting trail.
John: Now that you have a child that is on the cusp of being an age where she should go cut trail for a couple of years, how do you feel about the possibility that she would go away from
John: and come back later.
Merlin: I'd miss her sometimes.
John: You'd rather not.
Merlin: Well, I mean, here's the thing, though.
Merlin: In for a penny, in for a pound, right?
Merlin: So I believe so much in the trail-cutting program.
Merlin: So think about the military.
Merlin: You think about the military, and you think to yourself, well, I don't want my kid to have to go die in some terrible foreign folly.
Merlin: But they do get to retire at 40 and have insurance for life.
Merlin: Anyway, but in that case, you say, yeah, but if I'm a go-go military person, I have to send my child into the army.
Merlin: That's my obligation.
Merlin: My noblesse oblige is I got to send junior into helmet land.
Merlin: Correct.
Merlin: And in my case, as much as I think I have a sweet precious angel for a daughter, she should probably cut trail.
Merlin: And I think she's ready.
Merlin: She's ready.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: She's not ready.
Merlin: And that means she's ready.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Exactly, yes.
Merlin: If you're really ready to cut trail, you probably don't need to cut trail as much.
John: That's exactly right.
Merlin: But there's no place on the form where you get to check off, is my kid ready or not?
Merlin: That's why the trail.
Merlin: If you're not ready, you're ready.
Merlin: Oh, if you're not ready, you're more than ready.
Merlin: And if you're ready, maybe you're ready.
Merlin: When you're on day four and trying to make a belt out of things you find by the side of a trail you just cut, that's when you're going to know if you're ready or not.
Yeah.
Merlin: Because you're not really ready.
Merlin: To me, part of the point of the program is we show you how not ready you were for this.
Merlin: Well, that's exactly right.
Merlin: The reason why it exists is to show you that you're not ready for anything.
John: We've advanced a lot of theories on this program.
John: And over the years, they have almost all 100% been proved correct.
Mm-hmm.
John: by independent investigation.
Merlin: You know where you don't get to work on your vape rig?
Merlin: When you're cutting trail.
John: Yeah.
John: There's no six skateboard moves.
Merlin: No six skateboard moves.
John: You know who's not collecting Pokemons?
John: Who?
John: You, on the trail.
John: Pokemon go to the trail.
John: But the cutting trail theory of the universe, the older I get, the more I hear from people...
John: who have been friends of the program for a long time, who are in education, who are parents of kids, who are just people living in the world.
John: And the more our philosophy is confirmed, confirmed by firsthand experience, confirmed by rigorous testing in controlled conditions,
John: There's no one ever comes and says, no, seventh and eighth graders should be given free reign and given their own phones and allowed to live like, you know, like the grownups they think they are.
Merlin: I'm going to drop an analogy bomb on you.
Merlin: There's a lot of people, maybe they're single, maybe they're not, but they've got it all figured out about kids.
Merlin: But by virtue of the fact of having heard a baby cry loud on a plane and that made them sad, or by having a toddler, seeing a toddler run around in a restaurant, they know everything about kids and
Merlin: now.
Merlin: They got it all figured out and they know how super annoyed they are.
Merlin: Now, on the other hand, you get people that basically think kids are like dogs.
Merlin: This is a sweet, precious thing.
Merlin: This is the difference between running a greenhouse and collecting seeds.
Merlin: If you collect seeds, you have a tremendous amount of control.
Merlin: You can organize them.
Merlin: You can put them wherever you want and they'll pretty much stay seeds and they'll be real cute as little seeds.
Merlin: It's real different to run a greenhouse.
Merlin: A child is like running a greenhouse as opposed to collecting seeds.
Merlin: And then pretty soon, pretty soon, so we had some babies crying on the plane.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: I gave them this.
Merlin: I gave them a little head nod.
Merlin: Head nod.
Merlin: People, somebody on Twitter says the other day, when you have a screaming infant on a plane, it's too bad that there is not a universal symbol.
Merlin: You could throw to that person to go, I feel you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because if you're like me and you say, do you want me to walk your baby?
Merlin: You sound like a creep because I'm obsessed with babies and I love babies.
Merlin: You know, that's because now I have a greenhouse.
Merlin: Now I have a greenhouse.
Merlin: I'd love to carry some seeds around for a while.
Merlin: Get it a sling.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: The way I do it is I address the crying baby.
John: I say, oh, are you feeling sad?
John: Sad tomato.
John: Little baby.
John: Yes.
John: And then the parent knows I am not hating them.
John: I am, I am, I am just, I'm having a little moment.
John: And then I look at them after, it depends because some parents are like,
John: And they look at you and you look at them and other parents are like, why are you talking to my baby?
Merlin: I feel nothing but utter, utter sympathy for everyone except the people who are mad.
Merlin: I feel so much sympathy for the baby and so much sympathy for the parent.
Merlin: How often is it like a mom traveling by herself with an infant?
Merlin: Which, oh, you know she's having fun.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Johnny Vape Pen over here is all mad because he can't watch his movie.
Merlin: And it's like, oh, God.
Merlin: Try traveling and handling baggage and doing that all stuff with an infant car, with a car seat.
Merlin: Doing all of that by yourself.
Merlin: You can handle a little bit of sad baby.
John: People don't realize that you got to get babies from place to place.
John: You can't leave them in one place.
Merlin: Otherwise, they just have to blow them up.
John: Well, and also, what's going to happen to the human experiment, right?
John: We can't just all have babies in one spot.
John: Oh, you have to distribute them.
John: They pile up.
John: That's a really good point.
John: So every time you're like, why do you have to travel with your baby?
John: Why don't you just stay home?
John: It's like, no, this is part of a project.
John: This is like, we send out the spores.
John: No, I'm trying to do Excel.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: You have to make room for the spores because that's how we're like, every time a dandelion goes, push.
Merlin: I don't know if this is Aloha, John.
Merlin: I don't know if this is Aloha, but I'm going to give you a little bit of a, it's a neither nor or an either if, which is you, the, the, the, there are things between a seed and a greenhouse, you know, to everything turn, turn, turn.
John: Sure.
Merlin: I have a plan.
Merlin: I'm rehabilitating here in my office.
Merlin: And I've been through like three rounds with this thing.
Merlin: You're rehabilitating the plant.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Somebody in my household who likes to get rid of things tried to throw planty out last year.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: I found planty, and I grabbed planty, and I have been husbanding planty back to health.
John: How do you be a person who looks at a plant that is suffering?
John: and say, oh, this plant has outlived its usefulness and huck it.
Merlin: I don't want to get all fucking Terry Schiavo on you here, but here's the thing about a plant.
Merlin: A plant that looks well and properly dead for perhaps months, ha, you may be super surprised.
Merlin: It is vegetative in a different way.
Merlin: And so in that instance, you may be surprised to discover if you give that fill a little bit of water, you put that in, you put the water in the thing, you put some nice dirt in, you make it nice, and then... Put the lime in the coconut.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You do this.
John: I do that three times a week with planty.
John: You play a little bit of jazz for it, right?
John: You play a little bit of soft music that brings the plant back to a place where it feels... Yes.
John: Mine's like Spandau Ballet.
John: Yeah, you're playing some indie rock for it.
John: You're playing some early pavement.
Merlin: And so, but you give it some of this stuff.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: And this is why it's a lot like having a child.
Merlin: So first of all, somebody in our house threw Planty away.
Merlin: Put it somewhere that nobody thought they'd noticed that Planty was gone for a while.
Merlin: Don't, don't, don't.
Merlin: Planty got disappeared.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, guess who found Planty?
Merlin: Two thumbs right here.
Merlin: I found Planti.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Now, I worked on Planti for a good long while.
Merlin: Mr. and Mrs. Schiavo, that's you.
Merlin: Well, you know, that's a complicated story.
Merlin: A lot of people don't know how that really went.
Merlin: But here's what I'm here to tell you, is I have been through three, three, three...
Merlin: Different revivifications of planty just since last August.
Merlin: I thought I lost planty two more times.
Merlin: The most recent, I brought planty to my private office.
Merlin: Guess what I discovered?
Merlin: Plenty wasn't looking so good.
Merlin: Plenty wasn't making new blooms.
Merlin: And guess what I discovered?
Merlin: I discovered a big, fat fucking worm on the underside of one of the leaves.
Merlin: Like a disgusting, bloated, this thing was fat with planty.
Merlin: And you know what I did?
Merlin: I took it outside and I threw it on the street.
John: Oh, you didn't dispatch it yourself.
John: You said, find some delicious plant to eat here.
Merlin: No, I said, have a little muni, scarecrow.
Merlin: Put it right on the tracks.
Merlin: Now I think I'm clear, right?
Merlin: I think I'm clear.
Merlin: I come back.
Merlin: I'm doing stuff.
Merlin: I'm helping plenty.
Merlin: I'm husbanding.
Merlin: I'm playing spandau ballet.
Merlin: Everything's going great.
Merlin: Guess what I discover?
Merlin: Another fucking fat worm under a leaf.
Merlin: Whoop, whoop.
Merlin: This was the problem the whole time.
Merlin: Down comes the portcullis.
Merlin: Well, that and having a partner who throws out a perfectly good plant.
Merlin: And so now, oh, buddy, we're seeing blooms.
Merlin: We're seeing green on planty where there's never been green before.
Merlin: It was the worms.
Merlin: It was the worms, but it's also, you get aphids, you can have lots of things.
Merlin: You need the right, you know, just having a flame is not going to make a fire, buddy.
Merlin: You got to have fuel.
Merlin: You got to have oxygen.
John: Oh, flame doesn't make a fire.
John: Flame doesn't make a fire.
John: Flame helps a fire.
John: That's one of the great Billy Joel songs.
John: I went on Reddit the other day.
John: Oh, man.
John: And I've only been on there a couple of times, and I don't like it.
John: Don't you have a fan site there for your podcast?
John: Yeah, but I don't, but I don't like it.
John: I don't like being there.
John: It's, it's, uh, there's always somebody that, you know, like there are a lot of people that are just having a good time and then there's always some, there's always one guy.
John: Yeah.
John: And I don't, and I, and I don't like that guy so much that I don't even want to be there.
Yeah.
John: And the thing about Facebook is that if, you know, if you get that guy on Facebook, you can always be like, hey, I see you, dumbass.
John: Yeah.
John: And then they're like, oh, oh, I just, oh.
John: But on Reddit, they just double down.
Merlin: There are a lot of people who are very confused and very emotional in the world.
Merlin: But Reddit is really a wonderful home for people who are confused about emotions.
Merlin: No, I'm saying it's a powerful mixture of people who have extremely strong feelings but don't really understand what the fuck is going on with them.
Merlin: And that gets directed in some very, very unproductive ways.
Merlin: And it makes this particular noise.
Yeah.
John: That's not what I need.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, I don't need that in my life.
John: And so I don't, you know, I don't go around there.
John: But I was doing an AMA, which is called an Ask Me Anything.
John: Yeah.
John: And... Those can be nice.
John: Those can be nice.
John: It was fun.
John: It was fun.
John: I was enjoying myself.
John: But I was on...
John: i was on there as part of a uh let's see i was not on there as john roderick i was on there at under the name of the podcast that i was uh that i was that i'm on i was there as like friendly fire pod slash dot org and uh but but whoever set up this uh friendly fire pod slash dot org
John: Had followed some channels I don't know I don't know who Set it up, and I don't know why they followed these channels But the the account and it took me a while to navigate through the different menus to figure out subreddit
John: Right.
John: A subreddit.
John: Yes.
John: They followed various subreddits and it took, it wasn't, it wasn't obvious right out of the gate.
John: Like, how do I go find out what those, where those are saved and delete them?
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: And I wasn't even sure how I got where I was enough to know, like, is this one of the people I work with's account?
John: Is that why they followed things or why?
John: Because they followed some subreddits with titles like, aww, and cute alert.
Mm-hmm.
John: Then there was one on craft cocktails.
John: Hmm.
John: And then there was some other stuff, you know, like... That could be an atom.
John: That could be an atom.
John: Like, you know, like Bunny Love and stuff like this.
John: So I... So...
John: When I was answering questions, then there were other times when I was just kind of sitting there expecting someone to write a question and I would look, I would scroll my main page.
Merlin: And there were a lot of... Imagine it being like the album signing and Spinal Tap, we were just sitting there pulling your nose waiting for people to come.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Like, okay, it's not a, you know, it's not a big college, not a big college town, yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: But...
John: But there were... So I'm looking at these like, aww, subreddits.
John: And there were so many where it would be a video of an animal doing something, climbing out of a bag or going in a bag or chewing on a toy or like you had a toy and the animal jumped up with excitement or a lot of excited animals, a lot of animals that were...
John: That we're happy to see you.
John: Yeah.
John: But the captions, and this has to be new, because I'm not new to the internet.
John: No.
John: It's not your first day.
John: And by new, I mean in the last couple of years, because a lot of things are happening over on Reddit where I don't have eyes on everybody, you know what I mean?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But almost universally, the captions said something like,
John: In the voice of the aminal.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Right?
John: So there's the aminals that are like, oh, wow, such, such wow.
John: Oh, such wow mini dog.
Merlin: Something like that.
John: Yeah.
John: And like lol cats.
John: All that stuff's funny.
John: Yeah.
John: But in these posts, the voice of the animal said things like, daddy, aren't I being good?
John: Or mommy, I want you to see my...
John: toy or daddy I you know I'm so glad you're home and one after another and I went and looked like at my subreddits that I was subscribed to like is this some fucked up did somebody sign up for some like like is this an April Fool's thing or are you trolling me is this a porn thing what is this did you wonder I mean if it were me I would wonder is this a meme I'm not familiar with
Merlin: Right, is this a meme?
John: Is there a second level to it?
Merlin: Third-party daddy writing, yeah.
John: But no.
John: No.
John: This is the language that this culture, this subreddit, is now this is how they're thinking of the world, that their dog is saying, Daddy, I brought you a something.
John: That's a lot of levels.
John: Daddy, look at me, aren't you proud?
John: Okay.
John: This type of thing where the dog, it's just a dog, right?
John: The dog is just like eating a bone or whatever.
John: And he looks up.
Merlin: I mean, if you get something like, if I fits, I sit.
Merlin: And that's a bit that I think works and always makes me laugh.
Merlin: If I fits, I sit.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And sometimes they'll show you one of like a lion sitting in a box and you're like, see, it's true.
Merlin: All cats.
Merlin: If I fit, I sit.
John: That's great.
John: All the cats.
John: If I fit, I sit.
Merlin: But if instead it says, daddy, do you enjoy my box?
Merlin: That would be very upsetting.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Or like, am I a good box boy?
John: I'm sitting in a box.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Am I a good box?
John: And so I don't know what that, you know, I'm always looking for a little bit of a power exchange feeling to it.
John: I'm always looking for things that are indicative of decline.
John: That's been fairly obvious for a while, right?
Merlin: Well, the sign's been there that one might want to perk up one's ears.
Merlin: Daddy, do you love my ears?
John: indicative of decline and watch the, these scrolling through these, I had that queasy feeling of like, Oh, this, the center cannot hold this.
John: This isn't, this isn't, um, this isn't a sign that we are thriving, but I don't know.
John: But I, you know, now I'm out in the world and I'm driving along and somebody in a, in a Subaru Forester pulls up next to me and there's a dog in the back.
John: Is that dog thinking, mommy, look how good I'm doing in the backseat?
John: Or is the mommy talking to the dog that way?
John: Like, I don't know now how to be out in the world with this information.
John: And know how to interact with other people.
John: Because I already was starting to have problems with interacting with pet owners.
John: And I know I'm going to get letters.
John: I'm going to get so many letters.
John: Oh, boy.
John: But just send it to Merlin at Gmail.
John: Yeah, golden blue line.
Merlin: Now, does this make you want to explore this more?
Merlin: Do you feel like now that you are attuned to things that are indicative of decline, do you find yourself – are you going to explore deeper into this animal daddy culture, do you think?
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: You go to Reddit.
Merlin: You can catch up on slash r slash giant anime tits or wraparound sunglasses rifle dad.
Merlin: But in this case –
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: So do you find yourself needing, wanting, craving some resolution to the daddy issue, the daddy mommy talk?
John: I feel like the human-aminal relationship, the human, like, aminals as friends, as companions thing...
John: is now it's like, it's like, um, it's reached critical mass.
John: It's like blooming in ways that I can't get a handle on.
John: And it seems to be all headed like after, after tens and tens of thousands of years of animal husbandry, we're now we've, we crossed the boundary not that long ago to like aminals as, um, um,
John: Like the focal points of our emotional lives.
John: Right.
John: We've had, we've had aminals as friends for thousands of years, but aminals as like the thing that we are focusing our love attention on and that are bringing love to us.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: That seems new.
John: And now it's just like, boom, it's exploding everywhere.
John: And I don't know if I want any, I don't, I don't think that that's the area of investigation that I. Okay.
Merlin: I don't want to overstate or fixate too heavily on the creepiest part of this, which to me is the mommy and daddy appellation.
Merlin: But my question to you is like, you go back a few years and it's one thing to caption your cat imagining that they can has cheeseburger.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Because that's just the cat speaking as the cat.
Merlin: I love it when a cat can has cheeseburgers.
Merlin: Yeah, when the child was a child, you know, it set aside childish things.
Merlin: But now in this case, now, I mean, so now it's talking to you, addressing you directly about a topic as its nominal parent.
John: Either that it is a baby or that it is a full-grown personage who is using baby talk.
Merlin: And that if an animal could talk...
Merlin: It would mainly talk about the desire for your approval.
John: Right.
John: Like I can has cheeseburger sounds like an adult cat.
John: It conceivably could be an adult cat that and the I can has.
John: Yeah.
John: With a Z. Yeah.
John: Gives you an indication of, like, about the level that the cat is operating at.
Merlin: Sort of like when the Chick-fil-A cow says, eat more chicken.
Merlin: Yeah, eat more chicken.
Merlin: And he has that backwards Toys R Us style of cow writing that we're also familiar with.
John: Yeah, chicken with C-H-I-K.
John: Like, you get a sense, like, oh, right, cows could write...
John: They wouldn't be smart.
John: We can see that by watching them.
John: Yeah.
John: It's not like a cat.
John: Cow isn't a dolphin who just doesn't have thumbs.
John: Like a cow is not.
John: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: That's not operating on a dolphin level.
John: No, no, because dolphins are like, I don't know what they would build if they had thumbs.
John: Look at.
John: Well, I mean, they they're out there like they're out there tormenting whales and sharks.
Merlin: They're embarrassing other features or what they're preparing for.
Merlin: I don't want to go all Douglas Adams here, but those are some pretty smart fucking animals.
John: Right.
John: And that's not a cow.
John: If a cow could write on a billboard, it probably would misspell the word chicken.
John: And likewise, a cat that was presented with a cheeseburger probably would, like, garble the grammar a little bit.
John: I mean, even, like, even physicists who move from Slovenia, they get the grammar a little bit mixed up.
Merlin: It's a confusing language.
Merlin: It's a, you know, polyglot hybrid, you know.
John: But for a cat to say, for a cat to call you daddy or mommy...
John: Particularly if a cat called you mommy.
John: Yeah.
John: There's something else at work here.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: That's a full grown aminal.
John: And even in its own language, mommy and daddy, it either outgrew or it is adopting as a form of sex game.
John: Right?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, when you're walking around the house and your wife is yelling at you about something, I don't know.
John: Like a plant that I keep bringing in?
John: Like a plant that's covered with worms.
John: She doesn't say, Daddy, I told you not to bring that into the house.
John: She's not Nancy Reagan.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But you'll notice, for example, I don't want to sound like I'm pissing from the high ground here, but when I speak for the duck, here's what the duck says.
Hmm.
Merlin: Which I think, I'm going to guess, is pretty close to what the duck is thinking.
Merlin: The duck is thinking, hmm.
Merlin: I'm in this bungalow, and I'm checking things out.
Merlin: And I think if that duck could make a noise, it would go, hmm.
Merlin: That's how the duck would pronounce bungalow, too.
John: Bungalow.
John: I'm in this bungalow.
John: Oh, bungalow.
John: I feel like when the crows listen to me talk to them...
John: I don't like put a voice in their head because I feel like They're when I think of a crow looking at me and thinking I think of that meme where a person is kind of
John: Staring off into the distance and in the background.
John: They're very complicated mathematical equations written on a blackboard.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: Oh, you know, yeah, yeah, that's a great Yeah, you got you got the lady staring and then you got the math or Zach Galifianakis Yeah, yeah, yeah the lady staring and then the math.
John: Yeah, yeah, and so I think of the crows Doing math and I think generally in the hive mind sense
John: The crow's mentality is, yeah, talk away, human person, but we were here before you and we will be here long after you.
John: So this Frosty, go with God.
Merlin: We're running a little long and I don't want to be totally Roland Barth here, but let's look at it this way.
Merlin: If I ask you to define the word giddy up, like how would you define the word giddy up without mentioning a horse?
Merlin: It would be difficult to do.
Merlin: Giddy up.
Merlin: Well, in some ways, what I want to postulate is that we have been taught by the horse how to make it giddy up.
Merlin: But we eventually discovered the word giddy up, which is the thing that makes the horse go.
Merlin: Did we train the horse or did the horse train us?
Merlin: Are you sure it's not the kick in the flank that makes the horse go?
No.
John: I bet you can say bacon cheeseburger and kick it in them.
Merlin: If you kick it hard enough, it'll go?
John: Yeah, it'll be like, oh, bacon cheeseburger.
Merlin: I don't know if that scales up.
Merlin: See, with the crows, if you take this line of thinking, which I think is very sound, and you apply it to the crows, who knows how much work we're doing for the crows?
Merlin: Because we've arrived at a place where we're comfortable with the relationship.
Merlin: Also, just to be fair, I think when you speak to the crows, they hear a...
Merlin: a plain-spoken man with a clear tone of voice, and even if it comes across as May I Mambo Dogface did the banana patch, I think that crow is going to absolutely understand that you are establishing an accord with them.
Merlin: Even if they don't know the exact words, that's giddy-up for a crow relationship.
John: You know, gi and haw are the words that we traditionally use to tell an animal...
John: to go left or right.
John: No.
John: Yeah.
John: Really?
John: So if you say, gee!
John: it means turn right.
John: Okay.
John: And if you say, ha, it means turn left.
John: Okay.
John: And that works on draft horses.
John: It works.
John: It's, they use the same term with sled dogs.
Merlin: If you find a horse in the wild, will it know that naturally?
Merlin: Has it, has it spread?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Like the ants or the crows or agent Smith, we don't, we still, we have no way of knowing how that's encoded upon them.
Merlin: Or let's be honest, us.
John: Somebody knows.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: You start saying ghee and haw to planty and see what happens.
John: Okay.
John: I mean, maybe if you say ghee and haw, though, it'll be the worms that hear and change their.
John: But, you know, if the worms all move right, the plant is going to move right.
John: Huh.
John: Let's test it out.
John: I'm going to start saying gee and haw to people.
John: As I'm walking down the street, I'm going to go, gee!
John: And see if everybody gets out of my way to the right.
John: Ha!
John: All right.
John: We'll see if it works.
Merlin: These ducks are pretty cute.
Merlin: Bungalow.
Merlin: And so say all of us, tap into America.