Ep. 348: "The Other Oregon"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: I'm Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: It's early.
Merlin: Is it a little bit early?
John: It's the same early.
John: Same early as ever?
John: It's the same early as it always is, but it's early.
Merlin: Every Sunday is different and every early is early.
John: Within the sameness of the early, it is especially early today.
Merlin: Is that contextual, John?
Merlin: Did you have a late that caused the early to be early?
Merlin: I don't mean tardy.
John: I mean, nighttime is the dreaming hours.
John: What had happened was... You know, I've moved in over here at the...
John: at the uh baby mama baby mama's house oh you're fully uh you're at base camp you're all y'all installed uh well no that's the thing by fully moved in i mean same i'm living out of the same small bag that i keep packed that i that i always live out of uh but because i'm here because i'm because i'm now i've i've
John: I've switched over to always here.
John: Like temporarily perma there.
John: Well, at least for now.
John: And so what that means is that I suggested as a way of like trying to what?
John: Trying to amend for...
John: The fact that my stuff, some of it, a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of it.
Merlin: Someone please, please transcribe this paragraph, please.
John: That had nowhere else to go.
John: That little pile of my stuff ended up in the garage, which was already, what I've learned is that.
John: What happened was.
John: What had happened was, what I learned is that.
John: Baby mama doesn't see certain kinds of mess, peripheral corner mess, side mess.
John: My stuff went into the garage and then it was on top of side mess and became visible mess.
John: So I said, why don't we address side mess?
John: And in that case...
John: My mess will occupy the space side mess normally occupies.
John: Okay.
Merlin: It's like in development, like John Syracuse would say, you're refactoring the code.
Merlin: You're throwing out the garbage and you're rethinking based on where we are now.
Merlin: Or what we are now.
John: Where are we now?
John: What are we now?
John: But also, can I pay some psychic dollars?
John: Can I pay into the psionic Bitcoin account?
Okay.
John: By helping you address side mess and corner mess and by that pay some rent on my boxes, which are going to occupy former side mess territory.
John: I see.
Merlin: So what I did was I gave myself... This is potentially very good for everybody.
Merlin: She doesn't see side mess corner mess pile stack.
Merlin: You go in, you refactor the code, and suddenly it's not really a side mess.
Merlin: It's just John's things.
John: Or not even.
John: I mean, if she doesn't see side mess, if she doesn't see like, if she doesn't see 15 tote bags full of catcher's nets.
Merlin: Oh, if the bear shits in the side mess, does the Pope get a place for his boxes with psychic Bitcoin?
Merlin: Kind of, kind of.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: No, I think you're onto it.
Merlin: She's not noticing side mess and corner mess per se, but to you, that's a place where things could be and it could be more orderly since it's your things.
Merlin: The orderliness of it is the thing, right?
John: Because although I had a lot of peripheral mess, there wasn't order to it because order is important.
Merlin: Oh, if there's anything we know about John Roderick.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: A rumpf.
Merlin: So what happened was you were ready to pay some psychic Bitcoin, transfer some dollars existentially.
John: She's just like my dad.
John: You open a box.
John: Do you tell her that often?
John: I do.
John: I'm like, just like my father.
John: She opens up, you open a box.
John: There's a bill on the top.
John: And it looks like bills all the way down.
John: It looks like a box of bills from 1996.
John: But you go five bills down, and there's our daughter's birth certificate.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: That would keep me up at night.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: You need a special folder for those things.
Merlin: That goes with the passports.
John: Well, you go 15 bills down.
Merlin: I don't want to go any more bills down.
John: And there's her original passport from 1991.
John: With the 96 bills?
John: With the 96 bills from 1999.
John: And so it is impossible to pick up a box that looks like a bunch of garbage, looks like old copies of the Thrifty Nickel.
John: Oh.
John: Oh, no.
John: And throw them into the garbage because you get your thrifty nickel, thrifty nickel, thrifty nickel title to your car.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: Thrifty nickel, thrifty nickel.
John: So you have to go through everything.
John: But she doesn't see it.
John: The fact that she'll put two pillows in a garbage bag and then the garbage bag gets thrown into the corner and then stuff gets piled on top of it.
John: The corner looks like it's full of garbage.
Merlin: I don't know her super well, but what I know about her personally and what I know about her professionally –
Merlin: And somewhat psychically, I mean, we've talked in a bar on several occasions.
Merlin: I think she's a delight.
Merlin: But this does not sound like the MO I would expect from Baby Mama.
John: Here is the X and Y axes.
John: She's a professional person, a vice president.
John: She like runs stuff.
John: She's vice president.
John: That's one under the president.
John: That's true.
John: Although, you know, there's a proliferation of vice presidents.
Merlin: No, it's not a Cheney situation.
Merlin: No, not to disparage her professionalism, but that is a title that they give more than one person usually.
John: But you remember in the old days there was a president of a company and there were like two vice presidents?
John: Well, you could also have an executive vice president.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: If your company was big.
Merlin: It's so confusing to me.
John: But now, her company, I don't know, it's got a couple hundred people, a few hundred people maybe.
Merlin: She had the same name as she used to be at?
Merlin: The one name I would recognize?
John: Well, maybe, yeah.
John: The one that's like beep, boop, boop.
John: Click, click.
John: Snap, snap.
John: That's right.
John: Click, click, click, click, click.
John: Anyway, but...
John: So that's where, you know, so professional lady.
John: So her whole thing was, I don't know, you remember in rock and roll where there was always a handful of ladies who would be at the rock shows, they'd go to the rock parties, they're rocking out all night, they got a rock and roll boyfriend, but in the morning they put on that little pinstripe suit and they go to their job.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: God bless them.
Merlin: That's a great, I don't want to say fan, that's a great enthusiast.
John: well and the thing is that it's that they it's not that they were fans they were in the life they were fully in the life right like uh my like my baby's mama she went to high school with josh rosenfeld who started barsuk she was you know she she knew everybody from the from the early days she was part of the scene but when everybody else was rolling around trying to find some tylenol
John: And like, whoa, what are we?
John: Oh, geez, I got to be at work at 1 p.m.
John: How am I going to make it?
John: She was already at her desk going.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, and getting stock options.
John: Not groaning.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: No groaning.
Merlin: She's fine.
John: She's fine.
John: But the other side of it is hippie.
John: Hippie parents.
John: Oh.
John: Hippie parents grew up on a goat farm with no... That's a Z axis.
John: That's right.
John: No running water, no electricity.
John: What?
John: Mother was a textile artist.
John: This is a P&W thing?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Grew up on an island.
Merlin: I don't even know if the entire island had electricity.
Merlin: Like the two Oregons.
Merlin: She's in that one Oregon.
John: She's in the other Oregon.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: No, no, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't mean to sound oblique.
Merlin: It's very early.
Merlin: But like I'm only now really – you've told me about this.
Merlin: But you've told me about like the – I don't know if it's Oregon in particular, but Oregon in particular.
Merlin: You've got the strip clubs and you've got the frontier psychiatry.
Merlin: You've got sort of the old school lumbermen –
Merlin: And you've got gun people and nuts.
Merlin: And then on the other side, you got nuts and fruits and berries, right?
Merlin: Two organs.
John: Yep.
John: You got people juggling chainsaws.
John: You got people who are growing weed up the road and there's a chain across the road.
John: And if you go across it...
John: You're going to step into some kind of punji trap.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Stealing cable probably.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I know the type.
John: So, so the hippie, so what we have around, so this is where Bellinghamming comes from, right?
John: The hippie part of it is that it doesn't, it doesn't surface clean.
John: There's a surface clean element.
John: She keeps things clean, tidy, tidy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: But there's a hippie no-see-um here.
Merlin: There's a phrase we used to use at McDonald's.
Merlin: It's an industry term.
Merlin: And if you were doing... Boy, I love these kinds of things.
Merlin: If you're doing the kind of thing where you don't have time to do a full lobby clean... Uh-huh.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know, because like, you know, if you're me and you're a closer, like you're out there with the with the broom and you're out there with the mop and you're cleaning everything all the way down.
Merlin: It's the worst unloading the truck whole nine.
Merlin: But sometimes the swing manager would say, hey, do a quick sweep out there.
Merlin: Just get the big stuff.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Quick sweep, get the big stuff.
Merlin: You know the phrase, you know what I'm talking about here.
Merlin: When you sweep, you're sweeping, sweeping, and you just want to get the big stuff.
Merlin: You're not going to get in every crevasse, but you are going to get the big stuff.
Merlin: It's not really clean, but it's not totally dirty.
Merlin: It's a hippie clean.
John: Quick sweep, get the big stuff.
John: Leave the gun, take the cannoli.
Merlin: It's so early.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: It's actually getting earlier.
Merlin: How is this happening?
John: What I did was I gave myself a two-day clean the garage and the utility room job.
John: You expected it as a two-day job.
John: I did.
John: Well, yes.
John: And almost got in on time and under budget, although not quite.
John: Not quite.
John: There were some overruns.
Okay.
John: But what that meant was not just – it's not just get in there and give it a quick sweep and get the big stuff because it's big stuff all the way down.
Merlin: Well, especially with that particular way of filing, not filing.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: That's the kind of thing where you're like – remember when people started wearing contact lenses and you get that phenomenon of suddenly everybody stop.
Merlin: I drop my contact lens, don't move.
Merlin: Even people 15, 20 feet away, everybody's got to stand still.
Merlin: And that stops everything for a while.
Merlin: There's no deals being made because you're looking for a contact.
Merlin: That's kind of the feeling you're going to have all the time.
Merlin: Every box you open might have a contact lens in it.
Merlin: I mean, a metaphorical contact lens.
John: Well, so no, but it's also a garage, right?
John: It's also a garage.
Merlin: There could be contacts in the garage.
John: So you walk up to this wall.
John: You walk up to a wall of side mess, corner mess.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And it's like, okay, what's in this bucket?
John: Oh, it's a half a bucket of spackle.
John: Like it's a half a bucket of dried up spackle.
John: All right.
John: Well, I think this can go in.
John: I might need that for my work.
John: Well, no, but she's not like that.
John: She's not like me.
John: In my sense, if that happened to me, I'd be like, oh, that's the spackle that I built.
John: Somebody might need this for art.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Exactly.
John: What about all the artists that are working only in spackles?
John: That was a good tweet.
Merlin: I always have the same thought.
John: So, you know, so I'm like, I'm moving this back out into the junk pile.
John: Now, the good thing about what I mean, I'm sorry.
John: One great thing about her about her is that she is not shy about calling a handy person.
Merlin: Excuse me?
Merlin: Oh, oh, oh, okay, yes.
Merlin: So, for instance.
Merlin: It's like you were talking about going to a spa.
Merlin: No, no, no, that's a different thing.
John: Different thing, okay.
John: This is, she likes, so her job is in technology.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And so she likes apps.
John: She likes the apps, the apps that go boom.
John: She's Tigre and Bunny, and she likes the boom.
Merlin: Oh, boom goes the application.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Right.
John: And so one of the apps that she likes is this app where you're like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and then somebody shows up.
Merlin: Like a TaskRabbit type thing?
Merlin: Yeah, like that type of thing.
Merlin: Oh, I've TaskRabbited.
John: Oh, yeah, she likes it.
Merlin: You meet a lot of very interesting people when you use TaskRabbbit.
John: Yeah, I met a guy.
John: She called a guy.
John: Uh, and he showed up and he looked, uh, really, really like, um, like a model in the way that you get a lot of the task rabbits.
Merlin: You get a lot of secondary grind and you're probably going to hear about it.
Merlin: You might get a mixtape.
John: I heard a lot.
John: I heard a lot from this guy, apparently.
John: So this guy, he's a model.
John: He speaks with a Russian accent, although he claimed to have grown up entirely in Seattle.
John: He said that his parents spoke Russian and they sent him to Russian school in Seattle.
John: And I was like, oh, but you live in you always lived in Seattle.
John: And he's like, yep, that doesn't that doesn't qualify for an accent.
John: Like, it's funny because you have a little bit of an accent.
John: Yeah.
John: But here's here's so he's a young guy, young guy.
John: Looks like a model, but sort of the vanilla ice school.
Merlin: Oh, does he have any frosting and highlights?
John: He's chiseled.
John: He was very chiseled.
John: He could have been in Sugar Ray at some point, but his cheekbones were even higher.
John: Like just under his eyes.
John: Just like, he looked like Dag Vladimir Scott.
Merlin: Dag Hammarskjöld?
John: Well, no, the one from, who was the one from?
John: The National, what?
John: Not that guy, no, the one that joined, or that fought Rambo.
Merlin: Oh, I know who you mean.
Merlin: See, I thought you meant the guy from the UN.
Merlin: You're talking about the guy that was with Grace Slick, and they were naked in Playboy together.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: The blonde one that fought Rambo.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, but not Grace Slick.
Merlin: Grace Slick?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Grace Jones?
Merlin: Grace Slick is the lady from Jefferson Airplane.
John: No, no, no.
John: But she was in that James Bond movie where he's climbing the Eiffel Tower.
John: Yeah, yes, yes.
John: To Duran Duran.
Merlin: Oh, I want to know this.
Merlin: What is his name?
Merlin: It's not Dag Hammarskjold.
Merlin: No, it was... It's Rambo... Dolph Lundgren.
Merlin: Dolph Lundgren.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Okay, now that's a lot.
Merlin: Yeah, yes.
John: He's not muscly.
John: He's not muscly.
John: He's wiry.
John: Anyway, he says, I'm like, so what?
John: You're so task rabbit, eh?
John: He's got a very fancy truck.
John: All business, this guy.
Merlin: This sounds, you think it's a money laundering thing?
John: Well, no.
John: So what he says is, I, so I was in the exotic car game, he says.
John: I was, go on.
John: Go on while you continue to move these boxes.
John: And he said, you know, I had a really successful business in L.A.
John: and Las Vegas, renting exotic cars.
John: So if you wanted to, like, go to the prom or you wanted to go to, like, a cool-ass party and you wanted to roll up in a Lamborghini, Diablo, or he said some other name.
John: He'll rent your Lambo.
John: Lambos keep changing.
John: Boy, that's a, you know, the Buddha said that.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Heraclitus says you never step in the same Lambo twice.
John: Right, exactly.
John: There's a new Lambo and it's called the Zapata or something.
Merlin: I don't know what it's called.
John: Zapruder Porcini?
John: It's called the Zapruder.
Mm-hmm.
John: But he was like, if you want to rent one of those, if you want to rent blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: And I said, Maserati.
John: And he was like, he kind of scoffed.
John: And he was like, Maseratis used to be cool.
John: But now they're just like, they're just... Sorry, Gramps.
John: They're at the same level as BMW, he said.
John: And I was like, right.
Merlin: I noticed that.
Merlin: Can you put your hand to an Edsel?
John: So...
John: I was like, huh, interesting business.
John: You know, I could see Los Angeles, Las Vegas, this being a big thing.
John: And he was like, yeah.
John: But the problem was I tried to move it to Seattle.
John: And before he even finished saying Seattle.
Merlin: A third location or consolidate the two indices?
John: No, consolidate the two because he got.
John: That's a very strange choice.
John: Because he was having a baby.
John: And before he even got to the end of the word Seattle, I was like, whoa.
John: No, my friend.
John: Yeah.
John: You are not going to rent a lot of Lambo.
Merlin: You're going to get a certain population that already owns the car that they want.
Merlin: Exactly what he said.
Merlin: Because, yeah, you're not going to get a lot of like.
Merlin: Yeah, that's not a good rental thing.
John: So what he said was, there are a lot of people up here that drive Lamborghinis and they walk in and they buy them in cash.
John: There are not a lot of people who want some flash on the weekend.
John: And I was like, no, that's not how we do.
John: If you had opened a business that was renting Subarus that said Wagmore Barkless on the back bumper, you'd be a billionaire.
John: Visualize world P's.
John: Yeah, but nobody up here is going to rent a Lambo to look cool on a Friday.
John: It's just not how it is done.
John: To go to the public radio recording.
John: Yeah, like, oh, we're on our way to the... There's a new farmer's market.
Merlin: To live fresh air with Dave Davies.
Merlin: Jerry Gross is out tonight.
Merlin: We have Dave Davies, and I'm showing up in a Lambo.
John: Going out to St.
John: Michelle and watch some Herbie Hancock.
Yeah.
Merlin: Do they serve wine there?
John: Yes, they do.
John: Uh-huh.
John: So he lost his shirt.
John: He lost everything, apparently.
John: Oh, no.
John: There's more.
John: There's more.
John: Oh, there's more.
John: I forgot about this.
John: Halfway through the story about the exotic car rental business.
John: Meanwhile, he's moving my boxes full of old belt buckles and fucking, you know, little two bears fucking made out of an usik.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
John: Uh, he's moving all my stuff away.
John: He's telling me about his exotic car business.
John: And, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to commiserate with him at a couple of points.
John: He mentioned some car and I was like, I won't even fit in that car.
John: And he looked at me and he was like, no, you wouldn't fit in that car.
John: I was like, exactly.
John: Not just spiritually.
John: I just wouldn't physically fit in it.
John: But then he said, yeah, the real thing, the thing that was bankrolling my car thing and the real reason, uh,
John: the whole thing fell apart is that YouTube stopped monetizing my videos.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: He got demonetized.
John: I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, so what's that?
Merlin: Because on the one hand, I have an anecdote related to this where I had a yogic
Merlin: uh, rooter, uh, come out.
Merlin: He, he, uh, he did, well, you, you know, you gotta clean out like a, like a garage drain and the poop's coming up.
Merlin: We do that once a year because of roots.
John: I've heard, I've heard about it.
Merlin: Well, once a year you gotta do it because you get roots and the poop comes up, you call the dude, he comes out.
Merlin: Um, but what should have taken three to eight minutes took an hour and 20 minutes because he had a lot to say that, uh, I'm on his reel and Brahman is real.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: And, uh, and, and, and that's all inside of all of us down all the way down to the microbe, you know, right now in science, they're out there and they're making like amoebas that are, that are out there and they're self-generating.
Merlin: And that's, that's really just the same of us.
Merlin: And you, you open yourself to the entire universe.
Merlin: And, uh, and, and I get a whole time I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm interested.
Merlin: And he's also that certain kind, that certain kind of, uh, too much acid hippie where like when you try to contribute, uh,
Merlin: he cuts you off and corrects you no so yeah that's what a lot of people call mindfulness but really uh okay all right okay cool cool and the whole time i'm like i'm like dude there's literally shit on the ground here i'm not saying this i'm thinking this not in a way where he could hopefully read it
Merlin: But like I'm like there's literally shit in the garage and it's real stinky.
Merlin: And we're making just a little bit of progress at a time because of all the things that he has to share.
Merlin: At one point, he says, oh, are you expecting a delivery?
Merlin: I said, yes, that's our pho for our family.
Merlin: Oh, that's our dinner.
Merlin: And so my wife and my daughter got it.
Merlin: And see, now me, if I'm that yogically connected with my plumbing work and elsewhere, astrology, I'm very aware at that point that this man has hot food upstairs.
Merlin: This was not registering for him.
John: Yeah.
John: Yoga Gruder.
Merlin: And so, but at the whole time, I'm really, at first I was crazy interested because this guy's a classic, you know, Bay Area type.
Merlin: But then I'm kind of like, chop, chop.
Merlin: Mock Schnell.
Merlin: Mock Schnell.
Merlin: Mock Schnell.
Merlin: Clean up.
John: Clean up.
John: Diddy Mao.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Diddy Mao.
Merlin: Diddy Mao.
Merlin: I'm trying to get him into all my dad's psychic energy.
Merlin: Let's get focused.
Merlin: I go through this every morning with shoes.
Merlin: I do not need a 70-year-old, I don't need a Vietnam vet who's a yogi
Merlin: to let the poop sit there while my pho cools.
Merlin: Now, it's not a huge deal because I always microwave the broth.
Merlin: But at the same time, I feel you here because, yes, I'm interested in your story.
Merlin: Yes, I want to know why you were demonetized.
Merlin: But let's do that whilst we're moving the side mess and the corner mess.
John: Yep.
John: Yep.
John: And the thing about the thing about exotic car, bro, is that he was working his butt off.
John: He was moving.
John: He was not he didn't stop and wipe his hands on his on his do rag and talk to me about his business.
John: He was saying all this.
John: He was saying all this out of the side of his eyes while he was working.
John: And his implication was, I got shit to do.
John: I mean, I'll talk to you.
John: mr but uh that thing you know that's admirable that's admirable you chop wood carry water you know what i'm saying until i'm like real brahmin is real tell me about your youtube channel and why it got demonetized i said something to the effect of i know youtube changed their monetization schemata
John: But I don't know enough about it to know how it is that you went from high rolling down the street, like looking down your nose at Maserati.
Merlin: Funding what one imagines was probably the leasing of those cars would take, I don't know, cars or money.
Merlin: My gut is that's going to take a little bit of dough.
Merlin: A little bit of dough.
Merlin: And he's making enough of that dough with his monetization of his YouTube videos.
Merlin: That's a lot of YouTube views, John.
John: But see, I don't know that for sure.
John: So what we do know, here's what we know.
John: Okay.
John: He's working as a task rabbit as a mover.
John: Yeah.
John: So if he had family money that bankrolled his Lambo rentals.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: That family money dried up when it was time to support him after he bungled the move, after he moved it to a place where nobody cares about exotic cars.
John: Nobody cares about exotic cars.
John: They can't just buy them and drive them into a lake for fun.
John: So he's not rich, or if he is, his family shut him off.
John: His oligarchic dad said, like, you have failed, now you must live on your own.
Merlin: Well, it's super interesting in light of him having a kid now, because it seems like that's the kind of thing where, just based on watching HBO dramas in the past, I imagine there's ways of, you know, one great way to maintain your power as an oligarch, well, first you have to crush the opposition,
Merlin: You got to sidle up to the right other oligarchs.
Merlin: But also you have to be particular about the more money you got, the more weirdly you spend it and specifically.
Merlin: So you might give, you know, $8,000 a month in iTunes gift cards, but it's only usable by the kid just to say fuck you to your kid.
John: But this is, you know, he's got a little girl.
John: She's like a year old or something like that.
John: Seems like a nice little girl.
John: He's happy, happy with the little girl.
John: But so I was like, so was your YouTube channel like about exotic cars?
John: And he said, well, no.
John: See...
John: The thing was, it was mostly pranks.
John: And I was like, oh, I'm starting to get a picture here.
John: Like a jackass kind of thing?
John: Oh, it was pranks, you say?
John: And he was like, well, you know, it was about, like, how to get girls and, like, how to, you know, be a player.
John: And I was like, uh-huh.
Yeah.
John: Go on.
John: He was like, and, you know, pranks and just like, you know, generally just like how to be like a dude bro.
John: Okay.
John: I was like, yep, yep, yep.
John: I'm seeing it now.
John: But so why did YouTube shut you down?
John: And he said, well...
John: Some – what the thing was, some of the pranks were a little mean.
John: Were they mean to women, I wonder?
John: I don't know.
John: And the thing is, he said – like it wasn't – I feel like you're not getting a full picture.
Merlin: No, I wasn't getting it.
Merlin: There's a what to leave in, what to leave out.
Merlin: I think he's omitting some Russian details.
John: My sense is that it was in the negum to datum school.
John: Some people call pickup artists.
John: Pickup artists.
John: Pickup artists with a side.
Merlin: The seduction community.
John: Some side pranking.
John: Oh, boy.
John: So anyway, YouTube, in their infinite wisdom, although they have one gajillion videos, decided somehow some algorithmic decision or somebody in the high office decided that this sculpted guy was no longer making money on his channel.
John: And the whole empire fell apart.
John: But he was fairly sanguine.
John: about his lot in life because he he couldn't have been a day over 25 and now he's moving and he seems to be might be the best thing that ever happened to him he was trying to do a good job moving that's right he's got a brand it seemed like a brand new big giant truck that he was working with and then at a certain point he said i've got a new corvette on the way
John: Just ordered it.
John: You know, the new Corvettes are mid-engine.
Merlin: A Corvette is, I believe, I don't know if it's technically a coupe, I believe that is a two-door, two-seat car.
Merlin: That's correct.
Merlin: So he's got another automobile for putting a one-year-old in, plus a... He's got this big truck.
John: The one-year-old goes in the truck, but he's got this Corvette, and he was pretty proud of it.
John: And I was like, all right, so somehow the money... I thought Corvettes were an old man car now.
John: Well, they've always been an old man car, but the thing about Corvettes, here's the thing about Corvette for a long time, ever since the stingray, uh, the excesses of the late seventies, uh, when the stingray became a fairly bloated, not very fast anymore, sort of just a car that, that seemed ridiculous.
John: If a, if a, a Trans Am Firebird, uh,
John: With a screaming chicken on the front was too subtle for you.
John: You might go get a Corvette ever since then ever since the early 80s Corvette has been trying to position itself as the American supercar.
John: Well, the new one's supposed to be really cool.
John: Well, the thing is, they have consistently been.
Merlin: I heard them, Syracuse and the guys were talking about it on Accidental Tech Podcast.
Merlin: And so this is like a new, it's a mid-engine Corvette, right?
John: That's right.
John: That's what I said just a second ago.
John: The mid-engine Corvette.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: You said that?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm trying to find out why YouTube videos get demonetized.
Merlin: I apologize.
Merlin: I rarely look at the internet while I'm talking to you.
John: Yep.
John: This is a new version of the old version of the Corvette.
John: So from performance standpoint, from performance standpoint, Corvette for a long time has given you...
John: I don't, you know, I'm not a Corvette.
John: I'm not like, this isn't an ad for a Corvette.
John: No.
John: It's an ad for Squarespace.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Squarespace.
Merlin: You can learn more about Squarespace right now by visiting squarespace.com slash super train.
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Merlin: I'm going to tell you a very strange anecdote.
Merlin: My family and I were recently out of town for what John Siracusa would call a vacation.
Merlin: We were out of town for a
Merlin: for three nights.
Merlin: And just the other day on Saturday morning, I woke up with a vision.
Merlin: I saw it written across the sky.
Merlin: I swear to God this happened.
Merlin: I had a really good night's sleep.
Merlin: I woke up at like 5.25 a.m.
Merlin: and I had a vision that I should post more things on the internet.
Merlin: Now this is not a commitment, but it is a way of saying, long story short, I knew I had to go to Squarespace.
Merlin: So I popped into Squarespace and I set up a new site.
Merlin: And it's bananas.
Merlin: It's been a while since I've done this.
Merlin: And it is so freaking easy to pick the templates, to move the stuff around, to like see what your stuff is going to look like.
Merlin: Their app for posting stuff makes it very easy.
Merlin: I just want to tell you, you know, we don't just get dough from talking about Squarespace.
Merlin: We use Squarespace.
Merlin: In fact, my friend, you are using Squarespace right now just by listening to this program.
Merlin: So join me.
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Merlin: Please go.
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Merlin: That's a really great place, and, you know, it's written across the sky.
Merlin: Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
John: They have said...
John: They have Casper.
John: It's a new kind.
John: Hey.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Don't say it.
Merlin: They can get mentioned when they come back and pay.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: You don't get to be talked about forever.
Merlin: You still have to keep paying.
Merlin: You still have to keep paying.
Yeah.
John: Corvette will give you $250,000 worth of performance for $85,000 of American money.
John: Yeah.
John: This is the line of the Corvette people.
John: And it's not entirely wrong.
John: It's the American model of going fast, which is put a lot of displacement, which is to say a large engine.
John: Does it have a lot of torque, John?
John: In a light car.
John: It's got a lot of torque.
Okay.
John: And it sits very low to the ground.
John: The Corvette sits very low to the ground.
Merlin: Now, styling... This does not... This looks more like a Trans Am.
Merlin: Well... A Firebird.
Merlin: I mean, I don't think... At first glance, this does not read as... It does not look like a Corvette, the new Corvette.
Merlin: Oh, my gosh.
Merlin: You are absolutely right.
Merlin: You don't think it looks a little like a Firebird or a little bit more in styling?
John: I think it looks... I think they're finally doing the thing that they've been saying they're going to do forever, which is they're making it look like a supercar.
John: Now, up until this iteration, there was no mistaking.
John: For a long time, it just looked like a Corvette.
John: And then it started to look like a Corvette where it was like it was already on steroids.
John: But this was a Corvette that had taken too many steroids.
Merlin: Oh, had the cream in the clear.
John: Yeah, it just looks like, oh, he retired, you know, and now he's got this thing and he's like driving around in it.
John: Good for him.
John: Or, you know, his supercar business failed.
John: What's he listening to?
John: What kind of music is he listening to?
Merlin: His YouTube channel got canceled.
Merlin: Is it Bob Marley?
Merlin: Is he listening to Bob Marley?
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: The guy, the guy that is, um, no, the guy in the Corvette, what's the guy in the Corvette?
John: He's not listening to Bob Marley.
John: He's listening to fastball.
Merlin: uh no i you know i think who did that who did that song about uh the world gonna roll me who is that uh steve winwood steve winwood oh i think he's listening to steve winwood he's listening to steve winwood i think he's listening he's listening he celebrates the entire catalog not trapped not trapped you think so he's doing a little spark of high-heeled boys he's listening to the james gang seems to me
Merlin: You don't want to talk about it.
Merlin: Oh, you know he's listening to, he's not even listening to Hotel California.
Merlin: He's listening to the fucking long run.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, this is a long run car.
Merlin: This is such a long run car.
John: You're absolutely right.
John: He's listening to Bachman Turner Overdrive.
John: And he's driving around in his car, and he's feeling like he used to feel.
Merlin: He tried to get into blood, sweat, and tears, but it just never took.
John: No.
John: No.
John: Anyway, this new Corvette, it looks super duper duper duper not like a Corvette, except you can just see some of the styling.
Merlin: Even the logo looks like a Trans Am.
John: If you look at the tail, you see some Corvette heritage.
Merlin: But from the side, frankly, it looks more like a fucked up Mustang from the back.
John: Yeah, well, or no, like when you say fucked up Mustang, you mean that Chevy Camaro.
John: It's got the same back end as the new Camaro.
John: And the new Camaro is just a fucked up Mustang.
John: That's kind of a genius way of putting it.
John: Like a fucked up Mustang too?
John: Anybody that's listening to this show that has a new Camaro or is thinking about buying a mid-engine Corvette, believe me, I'm just making fun.
Merlin: Bless your heart.
John: They're fun cards.
John: They really are fun cards.
John: I'm sure everything's going great for you.
John: And frankly, I would love to go for a ride in your new Corvette.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
John: The thing about a mid-engine car, Merlin, is it really feels planted.
John: Is that a pretty good pickup, John?
John: It's got pickup, but it also, the thrust to weight ratio, the balance.
John: You know who's going to get one of these?
John: John Thercusa.
Merlin: Well, you know, he's very picky about his trim options.
John: Well, the thing is, he loves the foreign supercars, right?
John: That's what you say, yeah.
John: But he's just putting a poster, he's just taping a poster to the wall of his dorm room, because he's never going to own one of those cars.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, he's waited 10 years to buy a Mac, a new Mac.
Merlin: He's very picky about his trim options.
Merlin: He thinks the leather seats are too hot, and he likes a big screen.
Merlin: He's still very happy with his Accord.
John: Yeah, we got you this little chair.
Merlin: You're never happy.
Merlin: We put up all this wicker just for you.
Merlin: there's a he didn't like to call your mini golf ball he has that big poster that has like a mansion and then there's 20 sucks a guy in a donegal cap
John: And he's got a podcast where he's talking about his opinion.
John: And it's like, yeah, there it is right there.
John: It's a freaking poster.
John: It's walking around money for him.
John: He's going to save up the cash because he can get $250,000 of performance, Merlin, for $89,000 in the form of this brand new.
Merlin: I've heard people say this.
Merlin: I've heard John Syracuse say this, that this is a not, for the class of car, well, for the class of person that wants this car, it's a pretty good deal.
Merlin: That's what I've heard.
John: It's a good deal.
Merlin: It's a good deal.
Merlin: It's hard to get divorced.
Merlin: If you're going through, if you're like going through a divorce guy, you're Donald Trump Jr.
Merlin: You're paying two mortgages.
Merlin: You don't have $800,000 to spend on a car now.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: But you want that look.
Merlin: You want that new car.
John: You've got to have that look.
Merlin: This is a pussy wagon.
Merlin: You gotta wipe the babes off the side with a stick.
John: you do especially you know it gets harder and harder to date as you get older it's difficult you know careers get a get a yellow car restraining orders yeah the um the thing is this is a yellow car yeah a yellow car you know you love to see the yellow car yeah the um the thing about uh the thing about this uh car in particular is
John: is it's going to... I think this is going to revolutionize the motoring industry.
John: Did you know that the Dodge Viper...
John: Some might say one of the uglier cars right after the Pontiac.
John: Well, basically everything Pontiac made after 2005.
Merlin: The Dodge what?
Merlin: The Charger?
Merlin: The Duke boys car?
John: No, no, no.
John: The Dodge Viper.
John: Oh, sorry.
John: Viper.
John: Oh, Viper.
John: Yeah.
John: Now, the Viper.
Merlin: That's an assistant manager car.
John: No.
John: Far from it.
John: Is it?
No.
John: Thing is, it looks like the assistant manager car, but the Viper is actually a limited run car where they put a V10 motor, which belongs in.
John: Yeah.
John: And they ported it and they tuned it and they tapped it and they blueprinted it.
John: So powerful.
John: And they wanged it.
John: That must have great pickup and torque.
John: It's got – so they say – so do you know what the Bildungsberg ring is?
John: Oh, yeah, the Bildungsroman.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Actually, Casey and Marco went there.
Merlin: They rode on the Bildungsroman ring.
Merlin: That's right.
John: When Marco bought that BMW.
Merlin: The Gotterdamerong?
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
John: Yeah, the Gotterdamerong.
Merlin: The Gotterdamerong.
John: Oh, wait, I know this.
Merlin: Wait, Nuremberg Ring.
Merlin: No, it's Nuremberger Ring Scheisse.
John: The Ring Scheisse cycle.
John: It's where they drive cars and motorcycles fast around a track.
John: Yes.
John: Apparently, of all the supercars in all the time, of all the supercars in all the world, you had to walk into mine.
John: The one that did it the fastest is a Dodge Viper.
John: And no one talks about it.
John: Not even Dodge.
John: You would think it would be on billboards in Times Square.
Merlin: Yeah, people with Nurburgring has a lot of water, right?
Merlin: That's a big deal, right?
John: Sure.
John: Marco and Tiff went and they drove their BMW around it because it was a thing that you're supposed to do if you do it.
John: That's right.
John: Because he had to take a minute off from reviewing microphones and seltzer water.
John: And headphones.
John: And headphones, microphones, and seltzer, and drive his car real fast around the corner.
Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
John: So he's moving boxes.
John: But so the Viper, the Viper has the, so anyway.
John: No, I'm good.
John: So I said, let's clean the garage.
John: Okay.
John: So.
John: And we started.
John: Okay.
John: And there's a lot of stuff.
John: She only moved into this house a year ago.
John: So what was in the garage and the utility room is the stuff that
John: that was in the storage space of her old place and in all the closets of her old place that she hadn't dealt with for a decade.
Merlin: Oh, I used to do that.
Merlin: After college, I would do it.
Merlin: It was a bad habit I picked up in college when I would move two or three times a year.
Merlin: And I got in the habit of just having boxes I kept moving without opening.
Yep.
Merlin: Is it a similar thing?
John: Exactly what it was.
John: Boxes that had been moved without being opened or sorted.
Merlin: It's so convenient.
Merlin: They're already taped up and labeled.
John: And they were there because they'd been moved from prior location without having been opened or sorted.
John: And I was like, we're going for it.
John: And what I discovered, it's funny what you learn about people.
John: It is.
John: The idea that someone would help me
John: Go through junk and throw stuff away and put stuff on shelves and buy little bins and arrange all the pencils so that the lead tips were facing one way and the erasers were facing the other.
John: And not so that they were just in there with broken crayons and some key to a house you don't own anymore.
John: Spackle bucket.
John: That would be, although a lot of work, it would be thrilling to me.
John: But I think she would rather...
John: have it in those boxes and never think about it than have to.
Merlin: It's so different when it's somebody else's stuff.
Merlin: When I was in the giving advice racket, there was so much stuff that I would, it was advice that I was giving to myself that I was kind of nominally giving to other people.
Merlin: It's so much easier.
Merlin: That's why sometimes one of my best pieces of advice, hmm, is to act as though what's the, back when I was more than a man, I talked into my shoe.
Merlin: But the best kind of advice is the advice that you would give to somebody that you really care about, right?
Merlin: And so it's sorting other people's stuff, organizing other people's stuff.
Merlin: You've got context.
Merlin: You've got vision.
Merlin: You've got peripheral vision.
Merlin: You can see the corners in the mess.
John: That's right.
John: I could see the corners.
John: I could see around the corners.
John: I could, you know what, I could smell the stars.
Merlin: 360 full star vision.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I, listen...
John: I was basically the Rudu guru.
Merlin: The Rudu guru also who knows... Gruder?
Merlin: Magruder?
Merlin: Zapruder.
Merlin: The Zapruder guru.
Merlin: You know, John.
Merlin: You don't want to admit it, probably.
Merlin: At least I don't want to admit it.
Merlin: Sometimes you know what somebody else needs more than they do.
Merlin: And you could be there to move the messes until they're not a mess.
John: Sing it, sister.
John: So we did successfully, almost...
John: Clean the entire garage.
John: There were some overruns.
John: Clean the entire utility room.
John: Rearrange them both.
John: She was there for this.
John: She was participating in this.
John: She was absolutely participating.
John: Because here's what I would do.
John: I would find a thing and I would say, only you can sort this box.
John: Only you can prevent forest fire.
John: Yeah.
John: You take this box and go sit crisscross applesauce over in the corner and sort through this box while I move these 15 things out into the street.
John: And she would be distracted by the box where it was like, oh, look, I found... Was this an act of misdirection, John?
John: It was because it was true that only she could sort through that box.
Merlin: Show me the lie.
John: Debate me, coward.
John: That's right.
John: But in the meantime, the dried up half bucket of spackle went out to the corner where the task rabbit was going to come, get it before...
John: Anyone had second thoughts?
John: So the TaskRabbit was scheduled.
Merlin: Yeah, we do that.
Merlin: We do that.
Merlin: It's like a real Argentina thing.
Merlin: I call it disappearing.
Merlin: We'll disappear some stuff.
Merlin: Here comes the TaskRabbit.
John: TaskRabbit ETA, one hour and 30 minutes.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Spackle bucket up to the corner.
John: You go through this undifferentiated box of bills, passports, and birth certificates.
John: Business, business, business.
John: Well, I'm moving this broken chair and this other broken chair up to the sidewalk where TaskRabbit's going to make them disappear.
John: Okay.
John: And so, and the other thing, and a lot of people wouldn't know this about me, but if you give me a concrete floor and a push broom, and
John: I will be perfectly content for two and a half hours.
John: Are you listening to a podcast while you're doing it?
John: Nope.
John: Nothing?
John: There's no room in my head for other noise.
John: I'll be darned.
John: Except for the sound of the broom going shk, shk, shk.
Merlin: You're not just getting the big stuff.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: I go over the garage.
Merlin: You're saying you're really getting in there.
John: Then I go back, and I do it again to get the little stuff.
John: And then I go again, and I do the polish.
Merlin: Do you have a good method for scooping?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: A lot of people fall apart at that point.
Merlin: They don't know how to work the angles.
John: The thing is that baby mama lady has a lot of dustpan...
John: She's got a lot of dustpan English.
John: Forgive my saying, hot.
John: But I feel like her English...
John: She always zigs when I would expect a zag.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I do.
John: The dustpan goes down, and I'm like, and then she zigs.
Merlin: Yeah, you're like a backseat sweeper.
John: And I'm like, whoa, you're going there.
John: Okay.
Merlin: That's interesting.
Merlin: I would have done it differently.
John: Yeah, and then she zags over here, and I'm like, sure, all right, I'll keep, you know.
John: I'll allow it.
John: Yeah, you know, because she does it with so much confidence that you feel like her dustpan technique, her dustpan English is something that she has...
John: uh evolved over many years you're not that's not a thing you're going to dislodge in a person yeah it's her lived experience yeah halfway through life somebody's not going to lean over and go hey what if you tried this with the dustpan yeah that's just yeah don't forget that that's not going to help anybody that's not it's not that's like commenting on somebody's dental work is your hair supposed to look like that exactly oh i thought you were going to get your hair cut
John: What do you do?
John: So we got all the way, we got all the way, and this is, and oh, also, I was cleaning the baby's room at the same time.
Merlin: Cleaning the baby's room at the same time.
John: So I would sit with our daughter for a moment, and I would say, I want you to go through all these shirts and pick out the ones that don't fit.
John: And she would say, they all fit.
Merlin: And I'm like, okay.
Merlin: I don't like that attitude at all.
Merlin: I live with that a lot.
Merlin: This is not my first day.
Merlin: You don't get to be a 52-year-old man without knowing you got to try it on.
John: What I said was, it is not possible that all these shirts fit.
John: So there are some that don't.
John: But if they do all fit miraculously, if they do all fit, you have too many shirts.
Merlin: And then they need to go somewhere.
Merlin: My wife did a brilliant thing in preparing.
Merlin: I have a thought technology.
Merlin: I'll save it for next week.
Merlin: But I'm going through a lot right now.
Merlin: Lots going on.
John: Oh, no.
John: I want to talk about thought technology.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: Don't you fucking dare.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: All I wanted to say is this.
Merlin: She started middle school today.
Merlin: So there's been a lot of preparation.
Merlin: Now, one of the preparations was all... In the middle of August.
Merlin: What do you mean she started middle school today?
Merlin: I think it was today.
Merlin: We went to the school.
Merlin: I hope it's school.
John: How do you start middle school in the middle of summer?
John: Practice, practice, practice.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: And so one of the things was, there's lots of prep, a lot of things.
Merlin: You get all the new things.
Merlin: And, you know, I only mention this here as an instance of, oh, they fit.
Merlin: They all fit.
Merlin: Which was, you know, like a listener sent us a photo of a donut jam up.
Merlin: And I was tempted to say, I don't want to be a reply guy.
Merlin: I was tempted to say, that's not breakfast.
Merlin: That's a donut museum.
Merlin: There's a difference between food and musea.
Merlin: And what I'm trying to say here is, no, I need all of the socks to be live.
Merlin: i want live hot socks hot socks yeah hot socks i don't want i don't want any stragglers if you have not found the mate for this in the last year it's going it's disappeared okay i want to be able to stick my hand into the sock area and no matter what i fucking pull out they will be socks that you can and importantly will wear it's not a museum okay no sock no socks get thrown back
Merlin: Well, and I mean, it extends to the entire IKEA fixture.
Merlin: Because I mean, if there's shirts in there that are too small or you're not going to wear, they need to go.
Merlin: So what my lady did, she made, she didn't call it this, I did, she didn't think of it this way, but she ended up making a 3D clothing infographic.
Merlin: Because here's what she did.
Merlin: She took all of the things out, filled my good friend contractor bag with all the things that need to go, which go to the Goodwill, which she actually does.
Merlin: She actually takes it to the Goodwill.
Merlin: And then what she did was she made stacks.
Merlin: Here's a stack of all the short-sleeved t-shirts.
John: Here's a stack.
Merlin: Half stacks?
Merlin: By the railroad tracks?
John: No, fat stacks.
Merlin: Fat stacks.
Merlin: Oh, fat stacks, no problems.
Merlin: And so these are the t-shirts that are short-sleeved.
Merlin: These are the sock things.
Merlin: These are the underpants things.
Merlin: These are the bra things.
Merlin: We're doing all the things.
Merlin: But by doing that, she was able to create a kind of living infographic.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: So to your point, you know what?
Merlin: We're good for t-shirts.
Merlin: Because even once we had done the quickening and the highlander and the thinning, we got to a pretty good fat stack of fucking t-shirts.
Merlin: We're good for that.
Yeah.
Merlin: Now, if there's not enough of these brassieres, we might need to get more of those, or the sock friends.
Merlin: But what I'm saying is, you look at that all at once, to my final point here, is yes, you've thought about the clothes for a second, but what happens next?
Merlin: The thing I find myself saying increasingly lately, all of these things need to go somewhere.
Merlin: Ah.
Merlin: Where it is now is not somewhere.
Merlin: That's nowhere.
Merlin: Everybody knows this is nowhere.
Merlin: Everybody knows.
Merlin: All the things need to go somewhere.
Merlin: Your job's not done until they're where they need to be until they need to be somewhere else.
Merlin: And that's a difficult thing to get across.
Merlin: You do that for too long and you become corner mess, side mess person.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's all I'm saying.
John: Yeah, well, it was quadruply complicated by the fact that
John: She, at one point... Now, this struck me to the bone.
John: This got me all the way.
John: Baby mama?
John: No, no, no.
John: This is baby.
John: Baby, baby.
John: Okay.
John: She said, at one point, does a shirt feel bad when you get rid of it?
John: Oh, no.
John: And this is the way that I...
John: Both thought as a kid.
John: Oh my God.
John: And kind of think now.
John: Oh my God.
John: I felt terrible.
Merlin: I had a girlfriend who was crippled by this.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She would have her different esprit tops on the bed and she would apologize to all the ones she wasn't wearing that day.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Does the shirt feel bad?
Merlin: Does the shirt feel bad?
Merlin: Yes, the shirt feels bad.
Merlin: Well, you want to say no, dummy.
Merlin: Be rational.
Merlin: But of course they feel bad.
Merlin: They're shirts.
Merlin: They want to be worn.
Merlin: They're like border collies for your body.
Merlin: They want to be useful.
John: So we had a talk about it and I said, right now the shirt is in your drawer and you're not choosing it because it's too small, which isn't your fault or the shirt's fault.
John: What the shirt wants is to go down the stream and meet another little girl who's going to wear it.
Merlin: Oh, so good.
Merlin: You kept the magic, but you brought reality to it.
John: Set the shirt free and we'll let the shirt continue on its path.
Mm hmm.
John: And she was like, yes, I can see that.
Merlin: That's very intellectual.
Merlin: You can see that.
Merlin: We go through this with other donation things where I'm like, you would not believe the taxonomy of books in our garage.
Merlin: There's ones that are absolutely give away.
Merlin: There's ones that are just very few.
Merlin: That's like basically board books that she didn't like.
Merlin: Then you've got four levels of book.
Merlin: You've got precious things books.
Merlin: The precious things have to be preserved.
Merlin: These are ones that can go if they have to, and they were disappeared.
Merlin: She doesn't know yet.
Merlin: But there's a lot to that.
Merlin: And then the thing is, you don't read any of these.
Merlin: You don't want any of these.
Merlin: Now, books are special, because there's book people, fucking book people.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: A little kid could really love this.
Merlin: Your old backpack is still in pretty good shape.
Merlin: And I don't want to make you sad, but that could really be good for somebody to get a backpack they don't have to pay for.
Merlin: That could be so good.
Merlin: Really good to change somebody's back to school.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: And the parents, too.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: That's a nice thing.
John: Well, so over the course of this process, she decided that she didn't want to say
John: keep and she didn't want to say I'm going to keep this shirt and that shirt can go so she started to say sleep for one that she wanted to keep and she started to say slow for one that she wanted to go so I would hold up a shirt and she would say sleep or slow yeah she would say sleep and I would put that in the keep pile and she would say slow and I would put that in the go pile and crucially in this process
John: I did not challenge her.
John: So if she said keep, even though it was a shirt, I knew it was too small, even though it was a shirt that had holes in it and it was covered with spaghetti sauce.
Merlin: She says sleep, but it might be slow.
Merlin: It's a kind of a cognizant slang.
John: It was a little bit of, it was cognizant slang, but I didn't then go and do the thing that my mom did, which was set up an entire process of
John: And then second guess me and doubt me and fight me the whole time.
John: All the shirts killed themselves.
John: They were too sad because they had to slow.
John: It was crucial to us and to the fact that we were establishing what I hope is a going forward working dynamic, that if she said, no, I can't give that away.
John: I would absolutely just, without question, just fold it and put it in the geek pile.
John: Because to say at that point, are you sure?
John: This is a little bit.
John: Then it's not her process.
John: Then I'm just sitting.
Merlin: Also, you're killing the momentum that could unconsciously help her see she doesn't need all this shit.
Merlin: You need momentum of, you need that motion.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Honestly, momentum is such a key issue in house life.
Merlin: If you don't have momentum, you're fucked.
Merlin: But to get that momentum going, and even if she says sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, she's slowly, hopefully, it is hoped, internalizing that a lot of it really should slow.
Merlin: That really is what I'm hoping is going to happen.
John: That's very wise.
John: I would run downstairs, and her mother is down there looking through, and has a little pile of like, look at this picture!
John: oh my God, can you believe that this ever happened?
John: And I'm like, I believe it.
John: I Habib it.
John: Let me just, I'm going to move a couple of more pieces of like what you think of as your antiques out to the street because they're going to go in there.
Merlin: We are back on baby moment now, yes?
John: Yeah, baby moment.
John: Okay.
John: So we got all the way down.
John: What do you think of as your antiques?
John: We got all the way down to the level and I know you know this level.
John: Of the bins of unsorted connectors, adapters, remote controls, battery chargers.
John: They can all go.
John: Coax cable.
Merlin: I remember once trying to prepare for a garage sale, and I found myself such a great yak shaving moment because I found myself untangling everything.
Merlin: wall warts i didn't know what it went to and i hadn't needed it in five years right um so scuzzy cables for hard drives from the 90s and i had this moment where i was just like wait a minute you what are you doing you you don't want this nobody wants this you're untangling garbage you're alphabetizing recycling get a fucking life you know who wants it
John: No, an artist who's working exclusively in the media of wall warts and co-op.
John: Is it a commentary on... A bucket of... Dried a bucket of spackle.
John: A spackle bucket.
John: And all these things put on top of it.
John: And that's their installation.
John: Amazing.
John: Yeah.
John: It's called Clean Out the Garage.
John: Is that what it says on a little card?
John: Yeah.
John: I'm also a untangle the wall warts...
Merlin: guy i'm a um what happens if you ever find the camera where this is the only adapter that will get the information on that camera off into the world i know i know i know but even the thing is that that's where the time part becomes important yeah because if you don't know what it is now that's a clue but if you haven't needed to know what it is but then of course you go like what if it's you know what if this is for a hard drive that has my precious things on it yeah my precious things that goes in a different box for precious things
John: My precious things.
John: So right now there is a utility room that you could eat off the floor because I went over it.
John: Every single cobweb gone.
John: The spiders around here, like I am legend.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like they talk about me in hushed tones because I have destroyed their villages.
John: I have swept them out.
John: To the point that they'll never return the spiders, I hope.
John: All the cobwebs gone.
John: All the little Jordan detritus.
John: It's all gone.
John: The utility room.
John: Oh, Merlin.
John: You want to go in there now.
John: You want to just go in and marvel.
John: You want to stand and turn around.
John: There's nothing.
John: You hear a sound.
John: You turn around.
John: You turn around to find the thing that made the sound.
John: That's what's going on in the utility room.
John: In the garage right now?
John: Please pass the milk.
John: In the garage, you could buy a new car.
John: You could get a mid-engined Corvette.
Merlin: Whatever you need, it can accommodate because the corners and the piles have been dealt with.
Merlin: If I'm not jumping ahead, where did the cost overrun happen?
John: In the middle of the floor.
John: You don't know.
John: In the middle of the floor of the basement, there is now a condition where there are 14 piles of adapters that
John: And like face filters for drywall work and just bins and bins of shit that all should have just gone.
John: It should have been like at the end of Toy Story 3 when they're headed into the inferno.
John: They're headed into the incinerator.
Yes.
John: And all the toys get saved, but all this stuff should have kept going into the incentive.
John: It should have fed the beast.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I absolutely do.
Merlin: There's a phrase John Syracuse uses that I have picked up, which is things need to leave my house.
Merlin: Things need to leave my house.
Merlin: Really, if you really just kind of meditate on that for a second, things need to leave my house.
Merlin: It works in so many different ways where you're like, it gets us away from the whole like, ew, I've got to get it donated and it has to be responsibly recycled.
Merlin: Well, recycling is a fucking jam up.
Merlin: Goodwill has everything they need thanks to fucking Marie Kondo.
Merlin: So the thing is, you need to think about, I'm sorry, I know this isn't woke.
Merlin: You need to think about filling so many contractor bags.
Merlin: Make it a game.
Merlin: Make it a game.
Merlin: So much stuff needs to leave my house.
John: Get it going.
John: Get it going.
Merlin: So what do you do now?
Merlin: Are you going to disappear those?
Merlin: Because they're in the middle.
Merlin: And if I understand correctly, baby mama does see the middle.
John: This is the thing about that.
John: One of the things that when you watch Toy Story 3, you never think about is that although all the toys get away,
John: The Inferno gets denied.
John: Oh, my.
John: Right?
John: Who feels bad for the fire?
John: Oh, Jiminy Christmas.
John: Right?
John: Yeah.
John: All the fire wanted was to gobble up these delicious toys, and the fire was promised those toys.
John: Yeah.
John: I think I could go in there, a new broom sweeps clean.
John: Oh, so true.
John: I could go in there, I could turn, I could grab John Syracuse by the ankles, and I could use him as, I could just push him around.
John: Fucking like a tomahawk.
John: Yeah, he could gobble up, he could gobble up everything.
John: And everything could go.
John: And when she came home, all she would notice was the absence of dirt and clutter.
John: She would not notice having lost any adapters.
Merlin: Well, she hasn't needed it before now.
Merlin: You could just have a box that says precious things, electronic.
John: She barely needed it.
Merlin: She would never, I mean, no.
Merlin: Did she listen to the show?
No.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: She doesn't listen to the show.
Merlin: Oh, good.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: No, very, very good.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Oh, you should totally do that.
Merlin: I mean, I think that's a form of benevolent gaslighting.
Merlin: She doesn't need to know.
John: Fuck.
John: No, no.
John: She doesn't need to know.
John: And what she doesn't want to know is what she doesn't know.
John: Oh, nobody wants to know that.
John: Right.
Right.
John: So I feel like that it may be my obligation, my final obligation here.
John: Because the thing is, the house, in the process of all these things moving and going, the house has largely absorbed all of my boxes, which have now become almost invisible.
John: Because my boxes just kind of went, oh, that's just.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
John: Because the thing is, one of the things I brought with me was shelves.
John: So my things came... Are they good shelves?
Merlin: Basically on shelves, yes.
Merlin: See, I bought that kind that they use in restaurants with the rollies.
Merlin: Those are great.
Merlin: Those are baller shelves.
Merlin: I love them.
Merlin: You've seen those here at the office.
Merlin: This is what I put my dolls on.
Merlin: Nice.
Merlin: They're wonderful.
Merlin: They're tall.
Merlin: They're strapping.
Merlin: You brought shelves.
Merlin: So you're terraforming.
Merlin: You're Gaia bombing the garage in a way you're rebooting the garage.
John: Correct.
Merlin: Right?
John: I'm rebooting the whole lower half of the house.
John: Also, I said...
John: Uh, these bins, we need new bins.
John: You know, I was like, I was, I was terraforming even at the level of type of bin.
Merlin: Boy, I love that.
Merlin: What'd you get?
Merlin: Did you get the interlocky toppy kind?
John: I don't think you can have a bin in today's world that doesn't have an interlocky toppy.
Merlin: People like those.
Merlin: I first encountered those when I was helping.
Merlin: I had a little very short one day job helping my high school friend whose father had an independent pharmacy.
Merlin: And so there was a reboot of the pharmacy and we call them tote boxes.
Merlin: And that's where you get things.
Merlin: You go to the wet dry aisle, get everything from the wet dry aisle.
Merlin: You put them in the right box.
Merlin: You label it.
Merlin: You do some remodeling.
Merlin: Then you put everything back and then you face it.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: How do you feel about an interlocky type of box?
John: I feel like interlocky toppy boxes, snappy interlocky toppy boxes are the only way to go.
John: What I don't want anymore is a bin that is a Tupperware.
Merlin: You get that fucking container barn kind where they crack and break and they're bullshit?
Merlin: I hate that.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about.
John: Yeah, I do.
John: I don't want the one that has the barn doors that are supposed to interlock like teeth.
John: I don't want those anymore because those can't support the weight of boxes on top of them without bending.
Merlin: You don't want teeth.
John: You want to snap on like a hefty?
John: Yep.
John: Cluck.
John: You want to put the top on and then go cluck, cluck, and then stack it and then put another one on top.
John: Cluck, cluck.
John: It's got to feel...
John: Like the ones that are made by Rubbermaid are nice.
Merlin: Okay, okay.
John: Anyway, and the ones that... But I like a clear box, so you can look into it.
Merlin: But that's part of your residential Gaia bomb.
John: A little bit of a Gaia bomb.
John: But what makes today...
John: Why today's earliness is early, earlier than its regular amount of early, is that I was doing this work until very late last night, after everybody else had gone to bed.
John: And also, as you know, that is back-straining work.
Merlin: You may not realize it at the time, but boy, you're going to feel that later.
Merlin: Yeah, my shoulders, my back.
Merlin: Oof.
Merlin: Ouch.
Merlin: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Merlin: Oh, no, it is early.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I didn't realize it was going to be so early.
Merlin: It's pretty early.
Merlin: It's pretty early.
John: But you know what I signed up for today?
John: What I came on to this show to discover was your new thought technology.
Merlin: Oh, we can save it.
Merlin: No, I really think there's... No, in an hour and four minutes in, we can't get into it now.
Merlin: Are you sure about that?
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: Let's Gaia Bomb next week.
Merlin: This was important and necessary follow-up.
Merlin: I'll give you a hint preview, then you should say something funny.
Merlin: Just give a little preview.
Merlin: Well, it's a very interesting transitional time for everybody.
Merlin: You know, new school, new stuff.
Merlin: And I had a... Fuck it.
Merlin: Okay, here's what happened.
Merlin: All right, go ahead.
Merlin: I'll be quick.
John: Yeah, I like it.
Merlin: I had a realization this morning.
Merlin: So I thought I was operating under one thought technology, and I was actually operating... You know what?
Merlin: Fuck it.
Merlin: Fuck it.
Merlin: Double fuck it.
Merlin: I'm going to make this a preview.
Merlin: I don't have time for this.
Merlin: What I realized was that I was mentally and psychically concatenating my various experiences around elementary school, junior high, middle school into an imperfect template that I was overlaying onto my child's life.
Merlin: And I realized it wasn't helping.
Merlin: So it's a thought technology that I had to undo and replace a lot like a corner mess.
Merlin: I needed to replace it with a different thought technology.
John: I need to swap it out.
John: They need to hear this.
John: People need to hear this.
John: Do you think?
John: I do.
John: This is important work.
John: All right.
Merlin: Triple fuck it.
Merlin: Listen, here's what happened.
Merlin: I, this, uh, I'll be quick.
Merlin: I went to elementary school in Cincinnati, Ohio with my single, uh, under the tutelage of my single mother.
Merlin: And I went to, you know, good, like whatever, Midwestern Cincinnati, uh, elementary schools, elementary school goes to sixth grade.
John: Right.
Merlin: This was the 1970s.
Merlin: 1970s, late 1970s.
Merlin: So here's some taxonomy that everybody knows, but let's just go over this again.
Merlin: You've got elementary school, which goes to a certain grade.
Merlin: Then you go into what is either junior high or middle school.
Merlin: Middle school is sixth to eighth grade.
Merlin: If they call it junior high, that's usually seventh to ninth grade.
Merlin: Well, junior high was seventh and eighth grade in my... Okay, see, see, they're all different.
Merlin: Sometimes high school starts in ninth grade.
Merlin: My high school started in 10th grade.
Merlin: Okay, so that's just, I'm laying some facts on the table.
Merlin: Now, some anecdotes.
Merlin: It's going to be rapid fire.
Merlin: I had this pretty good.
Merlin: Our life was pretty good.
Merlin: And but then over that summer between sixth and seventh grade, 1979, my mother met this horrible man from her past and ended up marrying him.
Merlin: We moved to Florida.
Merlin: Injury one.
Merlin: We moved to Florida where my stepfather put me into a military school for seventh grade.
Merlin: Injury two.
Merlin: No girls at the school.
Merlin: Injury three.
Merlin: So now I'm in whatever seventh grade is wherever you are.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Yes.
John: Okay.
Merlin: I...
Merlin: hated it so much and was so traumatized by it that for eighth grade, I went to eighth grade, which means different things at different places.
Merlin: I went to eighth grade at a public school in Florida where literally no one gave a fuck.
Merlin: And it was a bunch of, let's be honest, angry hillbillies.
Merlin: And that was eighth grade.
Merlin: I did not know a single soul.
Merlin: I was very weirdly, poorly socialized to be thrown into eighth grade, whatever that is.
Merlin: For me, eighth grade in that case was junior high.
Merlin: Then ninth grade, still junior high.
Merlin: Getting better, making more friends.
Merlin: Then I went to 10th grade, which is high school.
Merlin: My point is, I think I unintentionally confused, conflated, and transmogrified several different kinds of events and injuries into a feeling about middle school.
Merlin: I'm not here to stand for middle school.
Merlin: It's a piece of shit.
Merlin: But I do think, think about this.
Merlin: So I left...
Merlin: elementary school in sixth grade my daughter is entering middle school at sixth grade so is that the same sixth grade not really it's a different kind of sixth grade there's eighth graders at the school that's a different kind of thing totally different yes i'm saying my entries and exits and my own personal corner messes do not have to be the same ones she'll have she should get to have her own corner messes is mostly what i'm saying
Merlin: It's so tricky because sixth grade— It's so hard not to do that because I have this rat king of memory that I'm applying.
Merlin: I've got this fucking corner mess of emotions that I'm trying to overlay in a way that I hope will be useful, but I don't think it is.
Merlin: I think I need to let her have her own corner mess.
John: Everybody agrees that eighth grade is junior high.
John: Eighth grade or unless it's middle school.
John: You can—
John: Oh, I see.
John: But you can switch around.
John: Sixth can be in one place.
John: Ninth can be in one place.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: If you take the two sliding timescales and put them over each other, eighth grade is always, well, eighth grade is the worst year of your life.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Unless it's not.
John: Unless it's seventh grade.
Merlin: That's when you're wearing the orange pants.
John: Or a seventh grade was where someone looked at my school photo and said, is that really this?
John: Is that like really what you came to school to get?
John: Is that like really how you ask for that haircut?
John: Man, that was supposed to look.
Merlin: But you know what I thought of it?
Merlin: I thought of it because of transitions.
Merlin: You're going through transitions.
Merlin: We're going through transitions.
Merlin: Different, but not entirely different kinds of transitions.
Merlin: But how are you able to do this?
Merlin: How are you able to do this?
Merlin: I mean, you raised her to like Wilberforce.
Merlin: It's really wild.
Merlin: It is really wild because she's 5'4 now.
Merlin: whoa she's 11 and 5'4 whoa um but eighth graders you got eighth graders that are taller than the tallest man i know now you've got some eighth graders that like you put in your pocket they're like a pokemon and then you got other ones it's you know you remember this i'm sure about the incredible disparities there's boobs and no boobs there's boobs and no boobs mustache no mustache people are starting to lose their fucking hair like it's it's crazy the range of difference in everything in middle school yes
Merlin: And so, no, it's really, it's weird, but the funny part is each trip I make to this school, even as I'm confronting, you know, the realness of this and the transitions of this and like this weekend we watched the Avengers Endgame.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And we started watching.
Merlin: We stayed up till midnight watching that.
Merlin: And we both cried.
Merlin: We cried and cried and cried.
John: Does that have Scarlett Johansson in it?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And we cried and cried and cried.
Merlin: And then the next day on Sunday, I said, man, that was really fun watching Venjies.
Merlin: That was really great.
Merlin: She's like, it was really great.
Merlin: And we had a little hug.
Merlin: And I said, this is a really interesting transition for us.
Merlin: Because in this case, we have been watching.
Merlin: We've been doing Marvel things.
Merlin: for since before you could even remember anything it's funny that that arc comes to an end with this movie that we cried over and then in two days you start a new school as i said it's kind of like it's kind of like do you think this is the end of one thing or the beginning of another what do you think and she said what are you talking about oh and i said yeah i'm doing that dad thing aren't i i'm trying to ascribe importance to things like what movie we watched before school started right that's my trip
John: Yep.
John: She's not going to remember that.
John: All she's going to remember is she's going to go into school.
John: Somebody's going to say, what did you do last weekend?
John: And she's going to say, oh, I watched Vengees with my dad.
John: And she's going to get flamed so hard.
John: And people are going to call her Venge.
John: And she'll remember that day for the rest of her life.
Merlin: Yeah, you keep waiting for where the scarring happens.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: What are you going to do?
John: It's going to be over calling Avengers Endgame Vengees.
Merlin: You can't clap out of middle school.
Merlin: Oh.
Oh.
Merlin: It was better than I expected.
Merlin: I liked it.