Ep. 398: "Tyrell's Robe"
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Oh, it's early.
Merlin: Ugh.
Merlin: We're going on some style sheets this morning.
Merlin: Style sheets.
Merlin: What is that?
Merlin: Style sheets.
Merlin: Style sheets are a layer in the web stack where you can have your code formatted a certain way, and then you apply a style sheet to that.
Merlin: You can think of it as like a skin you used to put on Winamp, for example.
Merlin: Oh, what is Winamp?
Merlin: It's technology all the way down.
John: Is it a web page?
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, kind of, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, this is all newly relevant because, you know, on iOS 14, you can screw it up real good and make it look the way you want.
Merlin: It's very exciting.
Merlin: I'm doing that with the app that I use to track my to-dos.
Merlin: I'm making it look different.
Merlin: I'd like certain things to look a little different about it, so I'm working on a style sheet, yeah.
Merlin: You're giving it a little skin.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm giving it a little skin.
Merlin: Yes, I would say I'm re-skinning it, which is kind of gross, but yeah.
Merlin: There are 14 iOSs?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How do you choose which one?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, then the problem is with the pandemic, you can't go in and try it on like you normally would.
John: Oh, see, that's right.
John: You have to use the digital measurement system.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: You look in the digital mirror.
Merlin: You end up wearing one of those Chinese skins, no ping pong, but you want to make sure you know what you're getting is what I'm saying.
Merlin: When you pick your iOS.
John: I do understand.
Merlin: Well, wow, a style sheet.
Merlin: I've got a lot going on right now, John.
Merlin: It's part of an entire Omnibus project to enhance and improve all the things.
Merlin: You know what I'm doing?
John: I have a little bit of a web team, as you know.
John: Oh, really?
John: Is this part of the Roderick group?
John: It's part of the Roderick group, yeah.
John: Our good friend Grant Balfour and Liesbeth in Holland, they wrote me the other day.
John: And they said that something had changed and the internet changed.
John: And what that meant was that the Long Winters webpage, which you pioneered back in the day.
Merlin: Along with you and friend of the show, Sean, yes.
John: That's right.
John: And you had some fonts.
Merlin: Had some horizontal rules and some H2s.
Merlin: XHTML you had.
Merlin: You're so good.
Merlin: Your memory's uncanny.
Merlin: Yeah, we went ahead and did it in XHTML.
John: And it was so exciting back in the day.
Merlin: It's amazing.
John: Put stuff up on there, and people would go click on it and download it.
Merlin: We had a forum, and we had a regular public-facing site.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then a friend of the show, Ben, I believe, took over your endeavor.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So what changed on the internet?
Merlin: John, is there anything I need to be responding to here with my own website?
Merlin: Is there something I need to incorporate?
Merlin: Well, so this is the email that I got.
John: You know, I'm not exactly like Mr. Programmer.
John: Okay.
John: But the email from our friends who have done such a wonderful job of –
John: You know, Liesbeth, I owe a debt of gratitude to that I could never repay for her support of the Long Winters Band over the years.
John: But they said something about something to do with the webpage, something, something.
John: But it's going to all be canceled now.
John: In like an hour or something.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: The new technology, it's like those old little cameras that no longer work.
John: Or it's like the flip cameras that aren't supported anymore.
John: It's like that weird A to D converter that I had that worked just fine.
John: Yeah.
John: And there was nothing with the hardware that changed.
John: It's just that they didn't update the software anymore.
Merlin: The software.
John: Even though it's just a little box, you know, that you plug a cord into and it comes up the other end.
John: But no, the software.
John: And so anyway, so what they were saying was, hey, sorry about this, but –
John: But if we don't do something, if we don't transfer the web page over to a different place, it's all going to be gone.
John: And so what do we do, they said.
John: There's nothing I like more than answering the question, what do we do?
Merlin: What it was here was – But there's some – just to understand here, you're saying there's some urgency to this.
Merlin: Something on the internet changed.
Merlin: The webpage needs to be transferred in a very short period of time.
Merlin: And now you've got to manage.
Merlin: You're going to manage what's going to happen next.
Merlin: I've got to manage this.
John: Here's what she said.
John: Elizabeth said, the day has come.
John: So that gave me the sense that she knew this day would come.
John: Oh, that's very Dutch.
John: The day has come.
John: So Dutch.
John: That the old Drupal site for the long winters has reached.
John: Now, this is also a wonderful Dutch phrasing, but also kind of like a Tron phrasing.
John: She says, the old Drupal site for the long winters.com has reached end of life.
Merlin: Oh, it's got to go to Sanctuary.
John: End of life.
John: In June, we got an email.
John: So this happened in June.
John: Oh, boy.
John: They protect me.
John: They do.
John: We got an email from Media Temple that the PHP version of their web host in one word was going to be updated.
John: Grant and I checked at the time whether the new version would be problematic, and it seemed not.
John: However, early July...
John: jason sent me jason sent me a message our jason jason yes sent me a message that the board was down oh the board the board was down and a lot which means that jason still is monitoring the board and when i talked to grant and lisbeth they said oh yeah you know the crazy thing is that the message board is still active people go there what i don't think they go there every day to chat but there's like it's an archive there's maybe they're mining bitcoin oh
John: Could be.
John: Maybe that's SETI.
John: Maybe SETI is finding alien life.
John: SETI.
John: Oh, right, right, right.
Merlin: That's the second thing where you look for space.
John: Yeah, you look for space.
John: And you can put your computer on there so that instead of flying toasters, it looks for space.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Instead of flying toasters, you landed some cycles to SETI for the Yeti.
Merlin: You go out there and you're going to be looking for that golden record player.
John: Why would you do that now if you could mine Bitcoin?
John: You're absolutely right.
John: But no, I think there's tabulature on there for long winter songs.
John: People go on there.
John: Anyway, let's see.
John: The website was down, she says.
John: Turns out that the new PHP version kicking in was problematic after all.
John: Grant updated the software.
John: It looks like he rewrote the encryption.
John: God, he's smart.
John: He did.
John: He's in.
John: Yeah, he's in.
Merlin: Now it hands.
John: It runs smoothly, but for the website, so he's talking about the message board as a separate entity, but for the website, which runs on an ancient version of Drupal, now all of a sudden I pictured Laura.
John: I got plenty of those.
John: I pictured Laura Croft, you know, like whoosh.
John: Swinging over a pit on her signature whip.
John: Let's see.
John: We cannot fix this easily.
John: And even if we could, this is the Dutch part.
John: It would be likely...
John: temporary since PHP keeps evolving.
John: We cannot upgrade Drupal.
Merlin: It keeps evolving.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to say, but it sounds kind of like the news you don't want to hear about, say, a beloved aged pet.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You say, okay, you've got a couple surgeries, you know, you've got a new dog heart, but, you know, there's a time when you get diminishing returns on a dog.
Right.
John: For me, day two starts the diminishing returns on a dog.
Merlin: Going forward, every pet in our house will, from day one, get an intractable figure placed on their head.
Merlin: And I will be keeping track.
Merlin: A monetary figure.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I way over budgeted for this fucking cat before we had to pull most of her teeth out.
Merlin: And you don't even want to know.
Merlin: But what I'm saying, like, next time, it's going to be an order of magnitude less, and I will be keeping the receipts.
John: And will the little number over their head just start ticking down, like, ding, ding.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like in a video game, exactly.
Merlin: Ding, ding, ding.
Merlin: I'm not going to buy the power up for little poncho.
Merlin: He's just going to have to go now.
Merlin: Time to go to that farm.
John: Diminishing returns.
John: On my way here to record, I walked past the downstairs bathroom and little kitten, Alieska, our cat here at the house.
John: Is that a city in Alaska?
No.
John: Alyeska is the name of the ski resort where I grew up.
John: Oh, cool.
John: And the cat was named Alyeska by other family members, her actual owners, the ladies of the home, without consulting me.
John: And so I arrived home that day and there was a cat.
John: And I was not consulted exactly.
John: I was more like read into the dossier.
Merlin: Oh, believe me.
Merlin: I'm very familiar with this.
Merlin: To quote George's colleague from Seinfeld, we only wake you for the important meetings.
Merlin: You get read in.
Merlin: You know what they say, John?
Merlin: You get detailed.
Merlin: And that makes it sound official like you're a rear admiral.
Merlin: But basically it means sometimes you come home and a shelf has been purchased.
Merlin: Or maybe there's a new car and you just found out.
Merlin: whoa that would be exciting that's not well see now the car is not in my wheelhouse i am out of the car business but i'd like to be consulted on the shelf because i need to put the playstation there sure i know how you are you know what i mean it's like it's like if it's gonna be like a load-bearing addition to the house in my house with my line of work in this economy in these shoes
John: Well, so the cat, our cat, Alieska, named after the ski resort where I grew up, but not named by me.
John: And frankly, Alieska is one of those names where you want to name a pet or a child that name.
John: But when you try it on, there is no child that the name Alieska will fit, really.
John: And honestly... Maybe a boy with very thin blood.
John: Yeah, like Alieska.
John: No, I don't think so.
John: And then...
John: Honestly, I didn't think that any pet could bear the weight of that name either.
John: Now they say when I was growing up in Alyeska,
John: If you had a dog and named it Alieska, they would bury you in a peat bog.
Merlin: Are you being that guy?
John: Is it like wearing the Iron Maiden shirt to the Iron Maiden show?
John: Yeah, we don't do that.
John: We don't name our dogs Alieska.
John: You name your dog Ben.
Merlin: Ben.
John: But now, apparently.
Merlin: Okay, I'm going to capture that.
John: Apparently, half of the dogs in Girdwood, which is the town where Alieska is located, Mount Alieska,
John: Half the dogs in Girdwood are named Alieska, and the other half are named Max because the mountain next to Alieska, Mount Alieska, is named Max's Mountain.
Merlin: It's like in Goodfellas where everybody's named Peter or Paul.
John: Yeah, and I don't get it.
John: I don't get it.
John: But you know what it is?
John: It's a new generation.
Merlin: It's a new generation.
Merlin: A new generation.
Merlin: Different set of values.
Merlin: The rules are different.
Merlin: The rules are different.
John: Anyway, our little Alieska discovered last night, apparently—
John: if the downstairs bathroom is any indication that if she gets her claws onto a, um, roll of toilet paper, no, even better paper towel.
John: Ooh, that she can do what a cat does, which is, which is turn that roll of paper towel into a giant mess for one little customer and
John: to clean up.
John: And that's going to be Alyeska's titular stage manager, my daughter.
John: And she's upstairs right now on Zoom class and she has no idea what's waiting for her downstairs, which is that her little kitten has turned a roll of toilet paper into enough material to fill a packing crate.
Merlin: In my experience, I use a lot of paper towels.
Merlin: I have them delivered by a company from Seattle.
Merlin: As you know, in my experience, a shredded paper towel is not on balance as useful as an intact paper towel.
Merlin: Correct.
Merlin: It's a sort of conversion that's not really helping the house.
John: You were the first person I ever knew that ordered paper towels from that company.
John: I was wasteful before it was cool.
John: That large-scale company.
John: And now, it just seems like
John: you can say bad things about that company and about that, the man that runs it.
John: But boy, if you want a power cable and then, you know, like within hours, a man shows up,
John: hands it to you.
John: That's right.
Merlin: That's pretty incredible.
Merlin: I think they have, I have a, well, I think you're, are you talking, so there's Amazon, there's Amazon Prime.
Merlin: And there's, I imagine, of course, you would get this in town.
Merlin: I imagine something called Amazon Prime now, which for a few years has been wild.
Merlin: That's the, that is the thing where you can have something at your house sometimes in two hours and,
Merlin: That might be what you're referring to here, but they have really stopped putting their back into that endeavor.
Merlin: It's crazy how much less cool stuff or stuff at all they have.
Merlin: I think that was a thing to set up some kind of an infrastructure of some kind that wasn't quite what it seemed like.
Merlin: Why would Amazon have a separate Amazon?
Merlin: just for this thing.
Merlin: It's got different tracking numbers.
Merlin: It's got a different website.
Merlin: It's got different ways of honoring gift cards and stuff like that.
Merlin: It's always seemed weird to me, but lately... Oh, you just gave me a thumbs up.
Merlin: Look at that.
Merlin: Huh.
John: Are you sending me emotions?
John: There was a thing on the Skype here where I guess I had moused over some little throbbing heart that says React.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And it threw up a screen that said you could...
John: You could send a throbbing heart or a thumbs up or a laughing emoji or one that's like surprised, I guess.
John: There's a slow clapping one and a sad one.
Merlin: Well, you're not going to believe some of the stuff that's in here if you've never looked.
Merlin: I haven't.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: I personally do not have much occasion to send these, but when you need to, it's good to know you can send this.
John: whoa, it's a stormtrooper.
John: You turned into a stormtrooper.
Merlin: They work for Dark Vader.
Merlin: You can also send a beloved character from the Pixar film Inside Out, which is kind of weird.
Merlin: Well, so what happened?
Merlin: Whoa, hello.
Merlin: Hello, little blue girl.
Merlin: That's sadness.
John: That's sadness.
John: So I moused away from it, but the little menu hung there.
John: And then I moused over it, and I moused around, and it wouldn't go away.
John: And so I finally clicked on the thumbs up because A, it was, in the context of your and my conversation, the least weird thing.
John: If I sent you a throbbing heart or a slow clap.
Merlin: The heart would be confusing, but the throbbing would be upsetting.
John: The throbbing would be upsetting.
John: I wouldn't send the laughing with tears.
John: I'm not surprised by anything.
John: I'm not sad.
John: So I sent you the thumbs up just to get it to go away.
John: How often do you do something on the internet that you do just to get the thing to go away?
Merlin: Is this what we're talking about now?
Merlin: Because I want to put a pin in everything we've been talking about.
Merlin: But I've started to describe this as the bop it phenomenon.
Merlin: And in some ways, the original bop it phenomenon is the iPhone.
Merlin: Sometimes you forget that your entire phone is a button.
Merlin: If you grab it wrong, you're going to be playing bop it.
Merlin: There's lots of interface elements in this world that don't look like something that should do a thing.
Merlin: And you're just minding your own goddamn business.
Merlin: And then pretty soon, the bop it's squeaking at you.
Merlin: That sounds a little like a jaw wall.
Merlin: Let's see if there's a jaw wall.
John: I spent two hours deleting screenshots because I discovered in my way of – in the program that allows you to order photographs.
John: I'm not sure whether it was the Apple one or the Google one because the little icons are right next to each other on my phone and I go to them interchangeably.
John: I'm looking at my pictures.
John: I guess I'm looking at them on Google today or on Apple.
John: I'm not sure what the difference is or why I have both.
Merlin: I look at it as belt and suspenders.
Merlin: It's good to have backups of both.
John: Yeah, it's a redundancy, right?
John: It's just like if the power goes out on one.
John: But anyway, I saw that there was like a whole separate folder that was just called screenshots.
John: And I was like, what's that?
Merlin: Yeah, those media types.
John: Yeah, it's a lot of bad news.
John: I went in there and I'm looking and a lot of them were, oh, hello, Lando Calrissian.
John: How about that guy?
John: I don't see a Jawa, but there's some good stuff in here.
John: um i uh i'm flipping through and i realize a lot of the screenshots i have are screenshots of text conversations either because i think they're hilarious and i'm like i gotta i gotta screen grab that sometimes sean nelson and i will have a little set of of texts back and forth that that if you just screenshot this the section of the text right there in the um
John: In the phone screen, it's just something to preserve.
Merlin: Oh, I 100% agree.
Merlin: When there was the big Twitter hack a little while back, I went in and preemptively deleted pretty much all my DMs ever, ever, ever, which takes a lot more time than –
Merlin: one would like i saved a few trophies i saved a few trophies from like let's be honest from dming with somebody famous and i saved a few of those out of vanity paul feig but you know uh you know and uh but but you know i i they say the rule of thumb though is you can only post that if you're showing that the other person is funny not that you're funny although john syracuse says you should never post anything from a text thread because that's not that's not cool
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: Not cool, he said.
Merlin: Well, I mean, it's a point of view.
Merlin: Maybe he could help you with your computer.
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Merlin: Oh, Squarespace.
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John: Yeah, Squarespace is great.
John: Had to get that out.
John: But it was nice.
John: It was going through these.
John: And I realized that some of those text conversations that I screenshotted were examples where somebody was like, I never said that.
John: And then I was like, screenshot.
John: Here it is.
John: Right here it is in black and white where you said it.
Merlin: This is all going to come up in depositions later.
John: But there were probably 40 screenshots where I'd picked up my iPhone.
John: Oh, yes.
John: And had screenshot.
John: I know.
John: The screen.
John: Yeah.
John: Just like one after another and screenshots of things.
John: There were screenshots of things I had never seen before.
Merlin: John, I do that and the opposite of that.
Merlin: I have so many screenshots of the lock screen on my phone.
Merlin: But sometimes I want to make a little funny ha-ha about a cool new image I made my lock screen, and I can never quite get it because now it wants to unlock with my eyes and stuff.
Merlin: But I have so many.
Merlin: When I go to screenshots, it's mind-boggling how many are in there.
Merlin: I could really afford to do a culling with that.
John: It's fun to cull photos.
John: And every time I think, oh, you know what I should do right now?
John: I should go into photos and cull some photos.
John: And then I realize, oh, you have 25,000 photos.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: See, this is perfect for an omnibus project.
Merlin: Not your omnibus, the other omnibus, but this is part of, you know, as my wife and I call the tiny life improvement project.
Merlin: You start writing this stuff down, you go in, and you make all these tiny little changes as available.
Merlin: We all have times a day, if you have any sense, you have times a day where you just lay on a couch or a bed in the afternoon.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I hope.
Merlin: I mean, I do.
Merlin: That's a great time.
Merlin: to uh especially now that i pulled back from the discourse i'm finding more time for things like that which is great i'm making playlists i'm deleting screenshots i'm i'm updating uh style sheets it's so wonderful that you've pulled back from the discourse merlin i'd like to send you a virtual high five hang on wait a minute can i send you oh let's look for hands let's get handsy with it show me where i can find the star wars there's a search there's a search right above you see that
Merlin: Search above the... Search above where?
Merlin: Oh, look at that guy.
Merlin: So yeah, you click on Smiley Face.
John: Hi there.
Merlin: And then you click on Smiley Face, and then do you see you got different areas?
Merlin: You got faces and GIFs and square people and rounded corner people.
Merlin: Do you see that?
John: Faces and GIFs.
Merlin: You might need to scroll up.
Merlin: There should be a search in there.
John: Well, I just sent you a surprise face because that was the only thing I could...
John: Do I not have the current version of Drupal?
Merlin: You might not have the Drupal, Drupal's Drag Race.
Merlin: Unfortunately, Skype will not let you not have updates.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: Yeah, that's what causes a lot of problems for people.
John: Well, I don't want to spend any more time thinking about that than I have to.
Merlin: Paper towel.
Merlin: Trying to... Oh, we got your website.
Merlin: Actually, I kid, but I don't.
Merlin: I mean, this is... They can pay me to say this, but they can't pay me to like it when I say it.
Merlin: But Squarespace would be good for something like this.
Merlin: I mean, how many pages are we talking about here?
Merlin: How many pages, excluding the forum for now, how many pages are we talking about on the long winters?
John: Oh, we're talking about on the long winters?
John: Well, I mean... 2030?
John: You would know better than I do.
John: I think it's happening, though.
John: I think that...
John: That Grant and Lisbeth have migrated it.
John: in that most amazing way.
Merlin: That's hard to say.
Merlin: That's really hard to say.
Merlin: Yeah, they migrated it.
Merlin: Migrated it.
Merlin: Her woman do an editorial on local public radio and she referred to her, she said, my disordered eating.
Merlin: Disordered eating?
Merlin: My disordered eating.
Merlin: And now I can't stop saying it because it's so difficult to say my disordered eating.
John: On my Friendly Fire podcast, Ben Harrison's tagline at the end was something about
John: Spoiler alerts.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But he got self-conscious about pronouncing it early on in the show, and he started to pronounce it spoiler alerts.
John: That's adorable.
John: And it became a thing where we were like, all right, I guess that's how you say spoiler alerts.
John: Spoiler alerts.
John: Just because his tongue would get caught in his tongue.
Merlin: I have tons of those.
Merlin: When I talk to my TV and I say –
Merlin: what I would look for Tim Robinson Saturday Night Live on YouTube Saturday Night Live my disordered eating it's very difficult to say there's a director early and late in the life of the American version of The Office a director that was on a lot not Paul Feig a personal friend but you know what his name is his name is adorable you ready his name is Ken Quampus
Merlin: No.
Merlin: His name's Ken Quampus.
Merlin: And every time they say it, I think that's adorable.
Merlin: It sounds like a baby's talking.
Merlin: Ken Quampus.
Merlin: Ken Quampus.
John: It sounds a little bit like a Star Wars character, doesn't it, Ken Quampus?
Merlin: Declare bankruptcy, I do.
Merlin: Ken Quampus.
Merlin: Ken Quampus.
Merlin: Yeah, he would be – Ken Quampus would be – it's going to be a prequel character.
Merlin: He's probably like a Watto.
Merlin: I imagine he's a super Jew-y guy.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Maybe he floats as well.
Merlin: Ken Quampus, he's floater.
Merlin: We've got cats and hard dollar figures.
Merlin: It's your show.
Merlin: I'll talk about anything.
Merlin: You're not Mr. Programmer.
Merlin: No.
John: Did I tell you speaking of not being Mr. Programmer?
John: Yeah.
John: So I've been, uh, you know, you know, my history with owls.
John: Uh, well, the other day I was down in my ravine, uh, uh, moving boulders around.
John: And incidentally that has started to give me a condition, uh,
John: I've got something now.
John: I wake up in the morning.
John: I've got something called trigger finger.
John: Do you know what this is?
John: I'm afraid I don't.
John: Trigger finger is when one of your fingers gets locked in a position.
John: Is that like a foot cramp?
Merlin: I had a foot cramp this morning.
Merlin: It was very painful.
John: It's kind of like that, except it's very scary.
Merlin: It's like I've been wearing one lady's shoe for too long.
Merlin: You know, and you get that thing where your arch kind of seizes up.
Merlin: I wonder if I have gout.
Merlin: I don't know what it's like to just wear one lady's shoe for too long.
Merlin: But you can imagine.
Merlin: You don't have an impoverished shoe imagination.
Merlin: No, that's true.
Merlin: No, I mean, there's no offense.
Merlin: No shade, no lemonade.
Merlin: But I think we all get these.
Merlin: You know, you get it in your side.
Merlin: My wife, who's a runner, she calls that a stitch.
Merlin: You get a stitch.
John: Yeah, a stitch in your side.
John: But no, this is something else.
John: It's something in the –
John: It's something in the mycelin or whatever, the sheathing of your nerves and the finger gets locked in the closed position and you have to reach over and open it with your other hand.
Merlin: It's like lockjaw for fingers.
John: It's like lockjaw for fingers.
John: And it started on one hand and I was like, what's going on?
John: And then it started on the other hand and I realized I'm down in this ravine.
John: I'm moving boulders around and I've given myself a finger condition.
John: I spent all day yesterday...
John: stretching out my hands trying to get it to stop trying to stop having this issue you have a lot you have a lot of hand history well yeah my hands you know and i and my hands are my so you're my passport your hands oh god but i was down in the ravine and i'm moving boulders around and it's it's late afternoon and um and i and i'm
John: Working on a dam, you know, I'm building a dam and then I'm like, Oh, I need that.
John: I need that thing from, I need that rock that I saw earlier in the day.
John: That's like downstream.
John: And so I, so I moved from where I'd been working and just start to kind of move downstream.
John: And all of a sudden I startle a bird who had been sitting on a branch kind of right over my head and the bird like takes to wing and
John: But it's huge.
John: This is a huge bird.
Merlin: And I'm down in the... Is it one of those like foop, foop, foop kind of birds?
John: It's like foop, foop, foop, foop, foop.
John: But like right over my head, like I feel the wind of the flapping.
John: And I'm down in this ravine all the time.
John: And most of the birds are six inches tall.
John: Some of them are a foot tall that are, you know, like I have flickers and other woodpeckers that are kind of big.
John: But this bird is like...
John: As big as a cat or bigger.
John: And I was startled.
John: And it was an owl, a barred owl who had been sitting in a tree watching me clearly because he was only 20 feet from me.
John: And so this owl flew up into a higher tree and then sat there and looked at me and did the like, look at me for a minute and then look around and then turn its head and look the other way and then come back and look at me some more.
Merlin: These are wild.
Merlin: Now this also, and I don't want to make the whole show about Star Wars, but these are very Return of the Jedi.
Merlin: Well, it looks a little bit like an Ewok if an Ewok were a bird.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: Kind of.
Merlin: But look, this is a very, to me, a very intimidating owl.
Merlin: It's a large owl.
Merlin: It's judgmental.
John: It's an owl owl.
Merlin: It's very owly.
John: What kind of owl is in Blade Runner?
John: Oh, do you like our owl?
John: It's obviously not an owl.
Merlin: Well, no spoilers.
John: It's a replica.
Merlin: Tell me, using only single words, how you feel about John Roderick.
Merlin: My mother?
Merlin: What do you mean?
Merlin: To answer your question, they're prepared for me.
Merlin: It's a Tyrell owl.
Merlin: I love his glasses.
John: Oh, shit, dog.
John: You would look so good in Tyrell's glasses.
John: Well, you know what I would look good in is Tyrell's freaking robe.
John: And Paul Allen bought the robe.
John: Of course he did.
John: And Paul Allen put the robe in a display case at the Cinerama Movie Theater in downtown Seattle, which has subsequently been closed since he died because –
John: like all billionaires with quirky, weird collections.
John: When he died, no one else shares his train spotting weirdness and his whole estate transferred over to his sister.
John: And his sister is now like one of the richest people in the world.
John: Uh, but she doesn't care about,
John: 70 millimeter movie prints of Lawrence of Arabia.
John: She doesn't want her own music festival.
John: She doesn't care about Jimi Hendrix's Stratocaster.
John: Or spray painted shoes or a van.
John: So she has the Cinerama.
John: Well, nobody can go to the movies right now, but they close the Cinerama.
Merlin: Cinerama's the one with the cool sign with the alternating parallelograms, right?
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
Merlin: Oh, darn it.
Merlin: I hate that.
John: It's a big bummer.
John: Yeah.
John: But
John: And Tyrell's robe was in a display case in the lobby of this movie theater.
John: And I studied it.
John: I would go to the movies and I would get there a half hour early just so I could stare at Tyrell's robe.
John: I don't blame you.
John: And he's got a lot of costumes in there.
John: He's got, you know, he's got, uh, Captain Kurt and, uh, and, and Spock and all.
Merlin: He's got like uniforms.
John: He's got like a. All kinds of uniforms.
John: Oh my God.
John: My kid would kill to see that.
John: But Ty, well, she should come up and go to EMP.
John: Yeah.
John: All that stuff is there at the science side.
John: But anyway, Tyrell's robe, I realized it's all I want.
John: If I had Tyrell's robe, I would just wear it all day.
John: And I actually have some of the – I have some material that could be made into a Tyrell's robe.
John: And there is a seamstress in my extended family who is famous for –
John: winning seamstress cost uh contests like national and global sewing contests she designs a wedding dress or a you know like some kind of thing and builds it out of uh out of its constituent parts and wins these prizes and her stuff's in magazines and all this and so i took this blanket and
John: And I said, can you make me a Tyrell's robe?
John: And she said the same thing that she says every time, which is, I don't really like making stuff for men.
Merlin: If you watch enough top dress, if you watch enough like a Project Runway, there are some people who are extremely good at doing men's stuff.
Merlin: But I think it is, this is a gross oversimplification, but pound for pound, it's more fun and interesting to make things for ladies.
Merlin: And also, it doesn't always require the same amount of tailoring.
Merlin: It's my understanding that pants are hard.
John: Well, and this is a robe.
John: And I was like, what is it?
John: It's basically just a blanket with sleeves.
John: And she was like, yeah, well.
Merlin: Oh, so it could be more like a political statement.
John: Well, no, I don't think it's that.
John: I think she just doesn't want to make things for me.
John: Oh, see.
John: That's tough.
Merlin: You can't get around that.
John: Yeah.
John: And her husband wears just like – he wears L.L.
John: Bean chamois shirts tucked into his Levi's.
John: Classic.
John: So –
Merlin: So, no, my dad, that's like almost all my dad used to wear.
Merlin: Is that exactly what you just described?
John: LL bean chamois shirt tucked into Levi's.
Merlin: I inherited one of them.
John: They're terrific.
John: Go on, teach on safety glasses.
John: So, I stare at this owl for a while and the owl stares at me and then I'm like, well, I got to get.
John: I see you owl, right?
John: I see you out.
John: And I did the, like, I talked to him for a while and was like, Hey, it's me.
John: Like I'm the new guy here.
John: Uh, I've never seen you before.
John: And I've been down in this ravine every day for nine months.
John: So welcome, I guess maybe you've been here the whole time.
John: I think what it is is that the ravine used to have, it was choked with Ivy and Laurel and Holly, and you couldn't see the ground and there was nothing for the out there.
John: The owl just couldn't,
Merlin: couldn't think you know there was an owl's not going to get down and root around in the underbrush owl sits up high looks down also owl sits up high and uses them peepers to not waste a lot of time rooting around it's not like it's not going to be like a like a possum or a raccoon which i know you also have relationships with or a crow maybe a crow so you've got crow to me is crow's always planning something but an owl is just waiting and watching watching and waiting and
Merlin: Then he sees a little mouse and he eats it up yum.
John: I feel like I have cleared out all the ivy out of this ravine, for the most part.
John: And now the owl...
John: has realized this ravine is a nice place to hang out and a good place that maybe a little mouse will run by.
John: And anyway, so I say, hey, you know, I'll be down here a lot.
John: You probably know that already because you've been watching me clearly and –
Merlin: To me, this is one of your classic moves that a lot of the world has really learned from, which is you start out by, you have a relationship, you acknowledge the sight of one another, but you also, you set some boundaries, you show mutual respect, and you say, you know, across this line, you do not, right?
Merlin: I mean, isn't that part of it?
Merlin: You want to develop a rapport.
John: Yeah, generally, like, what I need you to know is that...
John: If you're a creature that thinks of human beings as enemies, I am not one of those.
John: If other humans come down in here, I can, I will authorize them or not authorize them.
John: So I want you to, I'm going to point out who the good people are.
John: And then if there are other people down here, by all means attack them.
John: I see.
John: And that's my relationship with the crows.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: We're not so different, you and I. Yeah, that's right.
John: And with the crows, a lot of the time, the crows on this block in particular, my number one issue with them is like, hey, don't yell at me.
John: Like, I walk here every day.
Merlin: They finally come around to don't yell at me.
Merlin: Don't fucking yell at me.
Merlin: And they're like, wah, wah.
John: And I'm like, no, no, no, no.
John: Whatever it is that you're trying to say.
John: You need to use a different tone.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Use your inside voice.
John: Yeah.
John: You need to like fly down, point to me, point out what you don't want me walking close to or tell me what you're warning me about.
John: But don't just sit up there and call at me.
John: You see me every day.
John: And I'm literally standing in the street.
Merlin: That's not how we do in this household.
Merlin: We don't yell at each other like that.
John: In this conversation, I'm looking up at the phone pole and I'm actually saying this out loud to these crows.
John: Like, hey, hey, it's me.
John: All right.
John: I talk to you every day.
John: And you're standing up there calling at me like I'm just some rube that just walked.
John: I'm some fucking postman.
John: Like, give me a break.
John: That's not OK.
John: No.
John: And I talk to every.
John: I have an hour or I'm sorry, a mile and a half walk between where I'm staying in my new house.
John: I walk it every day.
John: I talk to every crow I see and they have got to know.
John: They've got to be passing that message on, you know.
John: Oh, well, that's what we know.
Merlin: This is what we know.
Merlin: It is known.
Merlin: This is what crows do, is that they communicate these things to each other.
John: It is the way.
John: Ooh, next pull.
John: Anyway, later on that day, the sun has gone down.
John: I'm like, I'm down in the ravine.
John: I'm like, I can't move any more rocks.
John: The sun is down.
John: It's dark now.
John: And I went up and I started my truck.
John: You know, the truck, it's got a, you know, it's got an old Rochester carburetor.
John: It needs to sit and warm up.
John: Old Rochester carburetor, we called him.
Merlin: Even if I drove it earlier in the day.
John: Old Rochester.
John: Old Rochester.
John: Get that oil flowing around.
John: And I'm sitting in the truck and I'm thinking about my thoughts.
John: And I'm, you know, running some numbers.
John: And I look out the front window.
John: And there's the power line that brings the power to my house.
John: Comes in from the street as they do.
John: But it was put in back at a time before there were codes.
John: Before there were all these rules and regulations.
John: And so it kind of comes in from the street and just goes up to this tiny little mast in the house.
John: And at the point where it is closest to the ground, you could definitely hit it with a tennis racket.
John: which is not up to contemporary standards.
John: And I've had a few people out, and they're like, yeah, that's going to be tricky because the city and the county are going to want you to raise that up, and that's going to require that they get involved.
John: We have to call those guys.
John: Oh, God, try and get on their schedule.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: A lot of your website, in some ways, the phrase people use technical debt.
Merlin: where you haven't really done a proper update of something in a long time.
Merlin: Things get more difficult to implement or to add new things or to fix things, and they call that technical debt, where you're going to have to really tear out all the stuff and just start over.
John: Oh, technical debt.
John: That's a wonderful turn of phrase.
Merlin: Isn't that a great term?
John: Because it extends to infrastructural debt, which this nation is in.
John: And this house that I bought had tremendous infrastructural debt, so much so that it was like...
Merlin: I don't know about this from firsthand experience, but I've read a bit about the air traffic control software or system in general being described as something like the city of Rome, where there's so many layers on it.
Merlin: And some of the code in there probably predates your mom's work.
Merlin: that's just sitting there cranking on some virtual tape machine?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And it's a whole lot.
Merlin: There's never a good day to stop smoking crack.
Merlin: There's never a good day to change the entire financial system.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's just one of those things where, you know,
Merlin: It mostly works, I guess, and they patch what they need to, but it would be difficult if something came up and they did need to start over.
Merlin: You think, hey, dude, think about schools.
Merlin: I don't know if it's technical debt, but there's some kind of a debt because the whole model, as we've talked about, the whole model for how a school worked relies on close proximity of people in a closed building.
Merlin: That worked mostly before, and it scaled, and now, wow, what do we do?
Merlin: How do we reinvent that in a few weeks?
Yeah.
Merlin: Sorry, I didn't mean to take you off.
Merlin: No, it's all right.
Merlin: The technical debt of owls.
Merlin: It's an Elena Ferrante novel, I believe.
John: The technical debt of owls.
John: So I'm sitting in the truck and warming up the engine, and I look out the window, and now it's dark.
John: And on this power line, which is basically right in front of my truck, maybe the power line is...
John: It's running at a diagonal, probably at its closest point, like eight feet from the front of my truck and 15 feet high.
John: Hmm.
John: Here is the owl.
John: Hmm.
John: Sitting on the power line.
John: And he's so big that the power line is kind of bobbing up and down.
John: Whoa.
John: And the owl is kind of compensating for it by, by, by sort of pumping his little legs.
Yeah.
John: So the owl's head and body are staying stable while he's basically doing this pump, pump, pump on the power line because he's too big.
John: The power line's never going to stop moving.
Merlin: So is he kind of like the guy going between the two towers?
Merlin: You're kind of like doing this woof, woof, woof sort of side to side thing to keep your balance?
John: Yeah, he's just holding on to this thing.
John: So it's not like the most comfortable place for him to sit.
John: But he's chosen this place right in front of my truck and he's staring at me through the window.
John: I don't love that.
John: And I'm like, okay.
Okay.
John: And the truck is not a quiet thing.
John: When old Rochester is putting that gas in.
Merlin: He's ornery.
John: All four barrels are open.
John: And he's sitting right above that motor just doing his little pump, his little bob and weave, just holding his balance and looking right at me.
John: And I'm like, okay.
John: We went from not knowing each other to...
John: really knowing each other.
John: A little familiar, little familiar.
John: Cause you're in my, you're like, you're really in my space now.
John: And, and clearly sending me a message that is like, hopefully.
John: And I think the message was, hello.
John: I think the thing about this owl is,
John: He was in the yard while the sun was up.
John: So I don't think this owl is like some traveling owl who is just swinging through.
John: I think this owl is a local owl.
Merlin: Local owl.
John: The whole time I lived at the farm, 11, 12 years, I had a barn.
John: That was like perfect for an owl.
John: It says it right there.
John: Barn.
John: Barn owl.
John: It's a barn.
John: Right.
John: I was just like, I leave this barn open...
John: Owl could live in here.
John: That would be fine with me.
John: Fine.
John: Absolutely fine.
Merlin: You don't get barn bears.
Merlin: You don't get barn servals.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: You get a barn owl.
John: You do have barn raccoons, but they lived under the barn.
John: And the thing is, I had rats in that neighborhood.
John: There were fruit trees.
John: There were blackberries.
John: There were rats everywhere in that neighborhood.
John: It's like owl paradise.
John: And a few times in the years, I'd be out walking at night and I would hear an owl in that neighborhood.
John: I never saw one.
John: I'd hear it up in a tree, and I'd be like, hey, owl, like, welcome.
John: You're always welcome here.
John: Now, I did see between 8 to 12 owls in my bedroom one time.
Merlin: Yeah, but they were also pillows, right?
Merlin: They were also pillows.
John: Okay.
John: But now I have a real bona fide owl, and apparently a barred owl is not native to the Pacific Northwest, which makes me a little sad.
John: Well, neither are you, really.
John: Well, what do you mean?
Merlin: Are you an invasive exotic?
Merlin: Yeah, I suppose.
Merlin: Do you consider that?
John: Oh, I see what you mean.
John: What do you consider your real habitat?
Merlin: What's your real habitat?
Merlin: It's kind of Alaska emotionally and philosophically, isn't it?
John: Yeah, but I've lived longer in Seattle than I have in Alaska.
John: I mean, in the sense that I'm a European and belong in some Welsh coal mine area.
John: Even your troll.
John: I belong having died 20 years ago.
Merlin: You're never going to leave this mine, Roderick.
Merlin: I'm the Welsh.
Merlin: Oh, that's not very Welsh.
Merlin: You're never going to leave this mine.
John: Right.
John: I mean, if I were still in Wales, I'd be five foot one and already be died.
Merlin: You'd already be died.
Merlin: Richard Burton says something like, if you show Welshman two doors and one of them says self-destruction, you always know which one he'll choose.
John: Oh, that's me.
John: Oh boy, Richard Burton knew me.
John: And so does Tom Jones and so does Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Merlin: Catherine Zeta-Jones, also Dylan Thomas.
Merlin: The force that through the green fuse drives your owl also drives my soul.
Merlin: Drives me crazy.
Merlin: I watched a Coen Brothers movie.
Merlin: Did I ever tell you he came on to my mother-in-law?
Merlin: Dylan Thomas?
Merlin: Dylan Thomas was, yeah, when she was in college at Smith.
Merlin: He put the moves on her.
Merlin: Oh, that's really hot.
Merlin: It is hot.
Merlin: I mean, obviously, I don't approve of this, but the cool part is she turned into a great story.
Merlin: He kind of touched her leg a little bit, and she was like, knock it off, Welshie.
Merlin: Just because you're the visiting speaker.
Merlin: Because you know it was that time where he toured a lot of colleges and had some drinks.
John: That's the old Bill Murray thing, right?
John: He's given people stories right and left.
Merlin: Oh, so good.
Merlin: But he never gave my, not that I'm aware, I've given my mother-in-law, my late mother-in-law a story.
Merlin: So born owl, you're a local.
John: Yep.
John: I mean, yeah, I was born in Seattle.
John: My grandmother was born in Seattle, but I guess, you know.
Merlin: I've heard owls.
John: This barred owl's grandmother might have been born in Seattle for a while.
Merlin: Who's to say – I've heard owls in the Confederate soldier park.
Merlin: I don't think I've ever seen one.
Merlin: We mostly get – what are they called?
Merlin: Is it golden-tailed hawks?
Merlin: We get hawks in the park.
Merlin: Those are nice.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: That's majestic.
John: If you go listen to a loop of all the different owl sounds, very few of them go hoo-hoo.
John: Most of them make otherworldly screams and terrifying like UFO abduction noises.
John: The ones that actually go like, that's not all of them.
Merlin: I bet they despise the stereotype.
Merlin: I mean, there's so many stereotypes about, I don't take you off your story, there's so many stereotypes about owls, it must be very frustrating.
John: You know, but the thing is, they are...
John: They are disengaged from the dialogue.
Merlin: From the discourse.
Merlin: So they may or may not be wise.
Merlin: They may or may not be able to tell you how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.
Merlin: Maybe, maybe not.
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: It's going to vary.
Merlin: I used to have an app for identifying bird sounds that was really cool.
Merlin: I have.
Merlin: I have that, yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: It's great.
Merlin: You winnow down and eventually you find it.
Merlin: Because there used to be a bird outside my window in Florida that would whistle the Grant Hart's part from Flip Your Wig by Husker Do.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: It would go.
John: Yeah.
John: There used to be a lot of pigeons that lived on the house across the street from my mom's house that went, until I wanted to murder everyone in the world.
John: birds but so so i'm looking at this i'm looking at this owl it's dark now i'm in the truck he's there on the on the thing and i'm identifying it as a he just because he's a big boy i don't know it could be a big girl i don't know it could be it could be she could be thick yeah uh but she's definitely thick but also small small borb
John: She's a small burp.
John: And we stare at each other for a while.
John: Yes.
John: And I'm definitely like, okay.
John: This relationship is moving fast.
John: Yeah.
John: And then I think, dude, you do this all the time.
John: Take a picture of the owl that is standing, that's four feet from you or 14 feet so that you can show the picture to people.
John: Like stop forgetting to take pictures.
John: And so I reached down to the camera and I'm like, this is one of those things, right?
John: Where I'm going to get the camera.
John: I'm going to point it at the owl.
John: The owl is going to say, not today, Satan, and fly away just as I take the picture.
Merlin: Oh, it's that way with animals.
Merlin: It's that way with kids.
Merlin: It's that way with so many things where it's like, God, you just could have been like half a second earlier.
John: Yeah.
John: My daughter will sit in the most elegant repose for 15 minutes.
John: And if I pull out a camera, she doesn't even know I've done it.
John: I know.
John: All of a sudden she's picking her nose.
John: She can sense it.
Merlin: She can sense it.
John: What the fuck happened?
John: So I put the camera at the owl and I'm like really sly.
John: I'm not breaking eye contact with it.
John: I'm just like moving the camera up.
John: And I push the button.
John: to take the picture and i'm moving super slow and the owl absolutely senses it and says says that's not our relationship yeah not we're not at the we're not at the picture stage and the owl flies off well so i look at the picture in the camera and all there is is a blur uh owl blur but it's an apple and i know and i know enough about these apple devices that
John: that I hold my thumb on the picture and I realize that the whatever mode has captured...
John: a three second long video used to be that would do rapid fire multiple photos and recently changed to press into makes a video which is kind of a clever idea well so this didn't I have an older this is an iPhone whatever I don't know if I've upgraded the iOS but whatever it is it had this little thing but I couldn't find and so and the video started with the owl on the on the
John: wire and then off it flies it's very exciting but i went and couldn't figure out how to i was like is that a burst well no was it a live was it a live photo it's it's a live photo which is like it looks like a photo but then when well yes you'll probably tell us in a second you do something and you see that it's actually got sound and some movement it's very cool it's cool you just want to be careful not to accidentally photograph your mirror your balls just be careful of that
Merlin: Oh, because you take a picture and then you drop your phone.
Merlin: Well, I mean, if you don't know what's going to be in the picture, you know what's in the photo is in the photo is the problem.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: And it's got the metadata.
Merlin: It's got the metadata.
Merlin: So did you end up capturing it?
John: So what I did was I couldn't figure out how to do it, but I downloaded a thing.
John: I was like, how do I do this?
John: And I downloaded a program called Burstio.
John: But Burstio only works for bursts.
Hmm.
John: And then, so I was over in the, I was over in my photos.
John: I couldn't figure it out.
John: And then I, because I can't tell the difference between Apple Photos and Google Photos, I went into Google Photos.
John: And somewhere in one of those photos programs, in one of the settings, looking at the thing, it was like, oh, do you want to convert this into a video?
John: Yep.
Merlin: And I was like, I do want to do it.
Merlin: You can make an animated GIF out of it, too.
John: Well, that's what I wanted.
John: I wanted an animated GIF.
John: But this was telling me to convert it to a video.
John: So I did do that.
John: So I captured it.
John: I have the animated video of the owl.
John: Great.
John: It's very exciting.
John: Because now I can share that with other people and say, look at this.
John: Did you see this?
John: This is a real owl.
John: And it was really right there.
Merlin: And they don't have to be on Apple Photos or Google Photos.
Merlin: to receive a photo.
Merlin: You could just get it to them through more conventional means.
John: Right.
John: I could put it in an envelope and send it right off.
John: That's right.
John: But the thing about an owl sighting is that people kind of don't believe you.
John: For years, I have looked for owls and they remain invisible to me.
John: And one time, we were driving in a parking lot of a super mall and it was dusk.
John: And it's one of those super malls that they've gone throughout this enormous parking lot.
John: Basically, like you could park an Imperial Battle Cruiser in this parking lot.
John: Except that every eight rows of cars, they planted a little row of stunty trees that after 25 years are now 20 feet tall.
John: Um, basically it's like those spikes that they put on park benches to keep skaters, uh, except it just keeps Imperial battle, battle cruisers from parking there.
John: And we're driving slowly through this parking lot.
John: It's an, it's the end of the day.
John: So it's empty parking lot.
John: I'm not looking for a parking spot.
John: I'm just driving slowly because of something.
John: I don't know why.
John: And my, uh, my co-pilot with my daughter in the back seat, they say an owl.
John: And I stop and there's an owl apparently sitting at eye height.
John: So four feet off the ground, you know, on a, on a low branch, um, on, on a tree in this parking lot.
John: And I turned to look at it and my co-pilot does that thing where she turned and leaned forward and
John: thereby completely blocking my view of the owl.
John: She put herself, her body entirely in the window and,
John: where I could not, and my daughter was right face-to-face with the owl, and they're both marveling at it, and I'm like, hey, hey, hey, let me see the owl.
Merlin: Hey, you make a better door than a window, is what we'd say in my family.
John: Yeah, and so she moves just in time for the owl to fly away.
Merlin: Oh, Jiminy, come on.
John: Not today, Satan.
John: Not today.
Merlin: Not today, Satan.
Merlin: Get thee behind me, owl.
John: Yeah, fuck around and find out.
John: You were denied.
Merlin: You got the owl blocked.
John: And so the number of times that I've seen an owl, except for the time that all my pillows turned to owls.
John: Yes.
John: The number of times I've seen a wild owl are, I think –
John: I saw one as a little kid when I was four years old.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: It's that rare with all your traveling?
Merlin: You never sell a German or a Dutch owl?
John: Because they are, they, for whatever reason, do not want me to see them.
John: Other people see owls.
John: I see.
Yeah.
John: I have, I, I, it's like one of these things where how many times do you think I've ridden a horse?
John: The answer is one time.
John: I've ridden a horse one time in my life.
John: I have to, I would have guessed you, you did enough to be kind of good at it.
John: You would think.
John: And the thing is the one time, the one time I rode a horse, I felt like I was pretty good at it and the horse and I liked each other.
John: But, and I would love to ride horses, but I, I've ridden a horse once in my life, except for the ponies at the fair.
John: Like being a grownup person put on a horse and handed the reins and said like, okay, like, uh, follow me is basically the time.
John: Like I wasn't given a horse and like, go ride, go ride for an hour.
John: I was part of a guided horse tour, but still.
Merlin: Was it led by a horse?
John: It was led by a horse.
John: Over here you see some delicious oats.
John: My name is Old Gus.
John: And now over here you see some more oats.
John: We're going to do your tour today.
John: We're going to walk over to where the oats are kept.
John: So this owl is, I think, kind of my first owl.
John: Certainly the first owl that I could say had decided.
Merlin: It sounds like your first unequivocal assigned or inherited owl.
Merlin: This owl and you were probably meant for each other.
Merlin: You might be the owl's first guitarist.
John: You know, I bet I am.
John: Doors open both ways.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: I feel like this is the beginning of a great relationship.
John: I'm not going to try and take its picture every day.
John: No.
John: But I do think that I'm going to be sitting in my living room wearing my one-day Tyrell robe.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Staring out the window with my little atomic cocktail.
John: Hmm.
John: And the owl's going to be sitting in the tree opposite looking at me.
John: We're going to be at the same height.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And this is going to be like how I end my day.
Merlin: You know, it's going to be a handle.
Merlin: I love the respect of that, of saying this is not, to quote the great Bernie Taupin, I'm not a present for your friends to open.
Merlin: Like I am not here to be your content.
Merlin: I will be your friend.
Merlin: Oh, you know what's just landing on me real hard?
Merlin: First of all, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is a really good song.
Merlin: But also, also, it strikes me that this, again, the door is swinging both ways.
Merlin: You talk about, so when we say, we could say kind of, you know, the corner of our mouth, like, oh, I'm going to go set things straight with this animal.
Merlin: We're going to have a detente, as Henry Kissinger would say.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: The owl is also detenting you.
Merlin: It's like Nietzsche said.
Merlin: You follow?
Merlin: Yes, I do.
Merlin: It's going both ways, and now you're in this relationship, and as long as you don't leverage each other for content, it's going to be okay.
Merlin: It's going to be okay.
Merlin: I believe that the owl has... What had happened was...
John: I cleared out all these vines and there were some critters.
John: A lot of the critters were happy.
John: I see.
John: But there were some critters that were not happy that I was clearing out all of their little.
Merlin: I bet you it's not beloved by the owl snacks.
John: The owl snacks are not as thrilled, but the thing is I've yet to see an owl snack that I was like, Oh, hello, little owl snack.
John: Like stick around.
John: My feeling about the owl snacks were, um, because I don't know if I told you this story, but the guy that owned my house, the old man used to feed cats.
John: And as he got older... Feed cats to what?
John: No, he would feed feral cats.
Merlin: Oh, I see, I see, I see.
Merlin: Oh, it's like the people who leave bird feed in our park.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They basically created... There's that area, you walk through the parking area going over by the library, and there's that one area where you've got to be careful near the wires because there's so many pigeons and so much pigeon shit.
Merlin: Obvious patterns.
Merlin: This is the desire path of the pigeon, and it's just reinforced...
Merlin: by whoever the fuck keeps putting out bird seed.
Merlin: It's not wholesome.
John: No, it's not.
John: That's right.
John: Don't feed the pigeons.
John: Don't feed the pigeons and don't let the pigeon drive the bus.
John: I'm the type of person that's like, hey, feed the feral cats.
John: And I feel like the old man that lived at the house, he liked cats.
John: And maybe his wife was like, we don't want cats in the house.
John: And he was like, I'll just feed the cats outside.
John: So according to the local legend, after a while, there was an explosion of feral cats.
John: And he had like 40 cats living in the ravine.
John: Cats everywhere.
Merlin: It's like a murder of crows.
Merlin: It's an explosion of feral cats.
John: An explosion of feral cats.
John: At which point his long-suffering wife...
John: uh, Eleanor said, uh, you can't feed the cats anymore.
John: And he was like, well, you know, my cats.
John: And she was like, no, it's crazy.
John: There are cats everywhere.
Merlin: What's the phrase?
Merlin: Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking find out.
Merlin: What is it?
John: Fuck around and find out.
Merlin: Eleanor.
John: And so she forbade him from, uh, from feeding the cats.
John: And so the cats went away, right?
John: Like the cats, uh,
John: presumably went to live on a farm and then without the cats there were rats rats came in and he missing his cats started to feed the rats because he was at this point getting on in years and he felt like uh we're all god's children i don't know i don't know you remember the guy that i my old landlord who said i did not make the rat god made the rat
Merlin: Uh-huh.
John: The old man that owned the house also felt that way.
John: Huh.
John: And so was feeding the rats, and the rats were living with old Rochester in the woodpile.
John: Huh.
John: Living with old Ben.
John: And so there were rats in the woodpile kicking up dough.
John: And so then when they were getting the house ready to sell it to me,
John: You know, the ravine was completely overgrown.
John: There was a giant wood pile full of rats.
John: Some surprising young cousin was like, I know, let's take the wood pile full of rats, throw it over the side of the ravine.
John: Well, we'll cure, you know, kill two birds.
John: So when I was pulling out the ivy,
John: I kept finding, well, basically I found an entire giant, like four cords of wood, wood pile that had just been thrown haphazardly off the side of the ravine.
John: So I had to pull all these old logs out and all this chopped up firewood that had basically just been thrown down there to sell the house.
John: It was like, huh, you know, like thanks, but no thanks type of thing.
John: Huh.
John: But what I realized was that the rats had just migrated.
John: They'd followed the wood pile.
John: You know, rats will follow a woodpile.
John: Sure.
John: So there were rats down in the ravine living in the woodpile.
John: Well, unlike the farm, this is a mid-century modern house.
John: It has no attic.
John: It has no crawl space.
John: Right.
John: The rats in the farm were living in all the unguarded territory.
Merlin: Right.
John: That you would need a cat, really.
John: But in this case, the rats...
John: It's easier to rat-proof the house.
John: They're not... Rats are not going to live in the house.
John: Right.
John: And for a long time, my mom was trying to get me to get a couple of feral cats.
John: You remember when I went through that whole phase with Vito?
John: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Wait, is that the one that Eric ended up... No, no, that was...
Merlin: That was not Nancy.
Merlin: Anyway, now you're in the business.
Merlin: But this also teaches us about, as I say, playing God in Yellowstone, right?
Merlin: Unintended consequences.
Merlin: Oh, let's bring back the bunnies, but then there's too many bunnies, and then there's not enough wolves.
Merlin: There's too many wolves, not enough bunnies.
Merlin: In this case, you've got to be careful.
Merlin: When you invite a cat to your yard, make sure you understand which wood piles are attracting the rats.
Merlin: A lot going on.
John: Everywhere on the West coast, at least there are cat rescue places that specialize in cats that cannot be placed with families.
John: People that are like, we're no kill shelter, but we have these cats that are a danger to themselves and others.
John: Like, like truly undomesticated, giant, thick, not small cats with, that are just murder cats.
Yeah.
Merlin: I heard COVID's been good for these kinds of animals.
John: Oh, I think so.
Merlin: I've heard that the four-legged puppers and catos, even they are getting adopted because people are so excited to get a new COVID animal.
Merlin: And that's just great news.
John: The way that they do with these murder cats is they're like, this cat is not, you're never going to have this cat in your house.
John: You're never going to pet this cat because the cat will let you pet it forever.
John: For 30 seconds and then the cat will rip your hand off.
John: But we will place this cat with you if you have a barn or if you have a rat problem somewhere and if you will agree to care for this cat and feed it and give it shelter.
John: This cat will be helpful.
Merlin: Spend thousands and thousands of dollars having its teeth removed.
John: If you are willing to spend thousands of dollars on this feral cat that won't let you pet it, it will hopefully, presumably, stick around and kill rats for you.
John: They call it a ratter.
John: A ratter.
John: And my mom was really into this idea.
John: She kept sending me pictures of ratters and they all had names like Genghis and, uh, and it was just like, okay, all right, settle down.
John: And she's like, this cat, this cat only weighs 64 pounds.
John: And I'm like, God.
John: I don't want to get some mountain lion that I have to build a shed for.
Merlin: No, I want to lose rats, not gain a dangerous project.
Merlin: Right.
John: And so the discovery that the rats in the woodpile have met their match in the form of Vigo the owl is like, I'm so thrilled.
John: Nature is healing.