Ep. 413: "Brown Wizard"
John: Can you believe it?
Merlin: What?
John: It's not working.
Merlin: What's not working?
Merlin: I can hear you.
John: Well, I know, but you're on the computer, not on the headphones.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I also have my heater on, so it's a little loud.
Merlin: I should turn it down.
Merlin: It's cold in here.
John: Yeah.
John: It's cold outside.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You really should stay.
John: Don't allow Skype to use the camera.
John: Okay.
John: Audio video.
John: Yep.
John: It still has the same options here.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It always does.
John: Oh, wait.
Okay.
John: It's on something that's wrong.
John: Okay, and now, how about now?
John: Sounds great.
John: Oh, hi, Merlin.
John: Hi, John.
John: How's it going?
John: Oh, so good.
John: Yeah.
John: I upgraded my operating system.
Merlin: Yeah, so you said.
Merlin: You upgraded to an operating system from two or three years ago.
John: Yes, yes.
John: Because, you know,
John: I've always been very reluctant to upgrade to operating systems.
John: You're not an upgrader.
John: Yeah, they were going to brick my computer.
John: Didn't want to brick it.
John: Don't want to break it.
John: And so I went online and, you know, it used to be every time you went online and said, is this operating system going to break my computer?
John: There'd be all kinds of blogs.
Merlin: They were like, oh, I wouldn't upgrade to this until... Oh, it'd be like the six things you need to know before you consider upgrading to the two-year-old operating system.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: All your custom configurations you got going, your development environment, all the things that let you do your work as John Roderick could be upended by Catalina.
John: That's right, because they, you know, it might not be compatible with... Oh, right.
Merlin: Did you check your chips?
John: Or email.
John: Email, chips.
John: Might not be compatible with Safari.
John: But usually, you know, because my computer is one of those, I don't know if they still do this, but it's, you know, when you go into the About Your Computer, it's like, it's MacBook Pro, but it's from March of 2007 or whatever.
John: You know, it tells you, like...
John: Kind of it's not just a year.
John: It's like halfway through the year.
John: Anyway, this time I went on because it's like, oh, go to Big Sur.
John: It's incredible.
John: And I said, there is no way that Big Sur is going to run on this laptop.
John: No way.
John: Because of all the things.
John: It needs a new, you know, it needs a new Capital One chip.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Or M225 or whatever.
Merlin: It might be incompatible with the custom way you've daisy-changed your SCSI bus.
John: That's exactly what I was saying.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: So I went on, but...
John: You know I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
John: No, no.
John: Far from it.
John: There were almost no... A conspiracy reporter.
John: Thank you.
John: Yeah, thank you.
John: Yeah, you've done a lot of research.
John: You know me.
John: I feel like I kind of do, yeah.
John: But there were no blogs.
John: I had to really dig to find one guy that was like, oh, it's brick and computers.
John: Oh.
John: And so it makes me feel like Apple has gone on...
John: And has done away, has basically probably, probably murdered all the people that wrote blogs that were like, don't do it.
John: Oh, right.
John: And now all the blogs are like, it's amazing.
Merlin: Because most of those blogs are public and searchable.
Merlin: And they could send, well, you want to say legal department, but that's in many sets of air quotes.
Merlin: They've got some kind of more, probably more like an information task force, an I-force.
Merlin: I-force.
Merlin: The I-force would go out.
Merlin: Space force.
Merlin: And then do you think they literally hunted them down?
Merlin: And I don't want to get myself in trouble here.
Merlin: I have a family right here.
Merlin: But so Tim Cook and his minions send the I-force.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And what do you suppose happens?
Merlin: Do they get a warning or do they just never see it coming?
John: I feel like within I-Force, there's, you know, there are different levels of operative all the way up to like, you know, to like...
Merlin: The most cloaked.
Merlin: Oh, so then at that point you get in, it becomes like Marvel's uncanny X-Force.
Merlin: You get like a Deadpool once you go all the way up.
Merlin: But maybe it starts with what people have called a useful idiot.
Merlin: Somebody who does not know that they are a tool of I-Force.
Merlin: And that could be a blogger who doesn't mean any harm to anybody.
Merlin: But, you know, they're going out there and maybe they're working on behalf of I-Force and don't know it.
Merlin: You move further up.
Merlin: And you've got, I think, what they call operatives.
Merlin: We don't say agent, right?
Merlin: We say operative.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah, well, there are agents and there are operatives.
John: I think probably SRO is the first level of I-Force.
Merlin: Standing room only.
John: Yeah, they just get the search returns.
Merlin: Oh, okay, search rendering optimization.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: And so that's probably level one.
John: And then level two is like, hey, what if we gave you $50?
John: And then level three is like, hey, free vacation, all expenses paid.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: So it's a carrot and a stick.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: But then at a certain level, it's poison-tipped umbrella.
John: Oh.
John: The point is I finally found a guy who said, ah, if you're worried, if you're worried about Big Sur, why don't you just upgrade to Catalina?
John: See how it goes.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: And that's the hegemony working.
Merlin: They're still keeping you within the operating system, right?
Merlin: So even though whatever Mac you've got, you have so many options out there.
Merlin: You could do the Fisher-Price operating system or the Lego operating or any of the other various ways.
Merlin: Maybe Burger King has some kind of a thing.
Merlin: But in this case, they're keeping you in the quote-unquote family.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Stay on Apple.
John: Well, because, you know, kind of like the sheets of a New York hotel room, you've got to assume they've shaken the bugs out of...
John: Catalina upgrading for these MacBook Pros.
John: I remember it wasn't very many years ago where this MacBook Pro kind of shit the bed, as we say.
John: It's a term of art.
John: And I called them the Apple.
John: And I said, this thing, what's going on?
John: And they were like, hmm, seems like it's your motherboard.
John: And I was like, well, that's not.
John: That sounds costly, I got to say.
John: Yeah, that's injustice, you know.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And if I could say, I don't want to get myself in trouble here.
Merlin: I have a family.
Merlin: But you could very well say to them, no, no, the problem, my friend, is your motherboard.
Merlin: I didn't make this motherboard.
Merlin: I crossed your palm.
Merlin: I gave you some shekels, and you gave me this thing, and now the mama's dying.
John: Well, and the thing is, you know, you know a lot of people at Apple.
John: I know a lot of people at Apple in various ways.
John: I have no idea what any of them do.
John: They could all be the vice president of Apple for all I know.
John: But I also know a couple of people at the Apple store.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: And it seems... Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You got a dude?
Merlin: I got a dude.
Merlin: I used to have a dude.
Merlin: Handsome man in a utilicilt.
Merlin: And we moved him to a different division.
Merlin: They put him down on the peninsula.
Merlin: Max.
Merlin: Hi, Max, if you're out there.
Merlin: Max in the utilicilt.
Merlin: Extremely handsome.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: He had a real, like, sort of...
Merlin: What like a Janelle Monae vibe like like maybe, you know He could find himself attracted to lots of different operating systems and he was so handsome He like, you know, you know what I would say Paul Bettany take a dirt road Max and utility kill was my dude.
Merlin: He managed my Apple store and then one time I came and I said where even is max and they said oh They moved him and now he's doing marketing on the peninsula Who's gonna see his utility killed in marketing?
John: He's sitting behind a screen now.
Merlin: He could be dead for all I know.
Merlin: So back in the before times, you did have somebody you could talk to at the Apple store and they were sympathetic to your motherboard.
Merlin: Well, here's what the person at the Apple store said.
John: Because I've realized you could be personal friends with Tim Cook and he's going to say, oh, sorry, not that we can do.
Merlin: It's like Michael Palin in Brazil.
Merlin: You know, everything's going to be very civil right up to the point they put on the pig mask.
Merlin: And then by then it's too late.
Merlin: It depends on the ending.
Merlin: But the ending is not going to be great unless it's just in your head.
Merlin: But maybe they traded a utilicilt for a pig mask is all I'm saying.
John: I had some questions about Twitter a couple of weeks ago.
John: I had some questions about Patreon a couple of weeks ago.
John: I know people at both of those places.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I used to know high-ranking people at those places.
Merlin: Yeah, you visited the facilities once, if memory serves.
John: Yeah, I went to the thing.
Merlin: Did you see the lady that looks to the side for some reason?
John: I saw the lady that's always shaking her head to get the rain off, but you can never focus on her face.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
John: Huh.
Merlin: Pomplamoose.
John: I think it means grapefruit.
John: Grapefruit?
John: It does.
John: It does.
John: Pomplamoose is a grapefruit.
John: But I couldn't get anybody on the phone.
John: It was like when I tried to call Snapchat on the phone, and it was...
Merlin: it was like that you wanted a refund on your vending machine glasses that your girlfriend your millennial girlfriend gave you i wanted a refund on my millennial girlfriend okay listen i want to open a ticket now there's first i'm gonna have to explain a lot of things and when i get to the part about how someone packed all of my german underwear into a filson bag and and bounced you're gonna understand the position i'm in that's right can you can can you give me a can you give
John: me your name so that i can get back to you if if our uh connection is is cut yeah my name is susan and i love volleyball it was it was like that scene in in animal house where they keep bringing me back to the same i know the same couch with the same guys what are their names
Merlin: I can never remember.
Merlin: I never remember either.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: So you had a person.
Merlin: And so you go there and there's a lot of people in the before times, I got to say.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So first of all, I had something happen.
Merlin: This is real quick.
Merlin: But I had a spate of returns.
Merlin: Recently, which is like an animal plural.
Merlin: You were returning things.
Merlin: I had to return things.
Merlin: And you know me.
Merlin: I feel like you know me.
Merlin: I'm not a returner.
John: No, you're not.
John: You would rather have a thing that doesn't work and just put it in the corner.
Merlin: Yeah, and I just live with the fact that I'm paying rent to store cubic inches of something that I've relegated to this area because I'm not the sort of person that returns things.
Merlin: But this was costly.
Merlin: This was a costly computer, and it was the wrong computer.
Merlin: And I ended up going.
Merlin: Say again?
John: The wrong computer.
John: Now, go into that.
Merlin: I mean, finish your story, but I also want to know, what's the wrong computer?
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: All right, I'm writing it down.
Merlin: I've talked about it elsewhere, but I did a very embarrassing thing.
Merlin: I'm writing down wrong computer.
Merlin: Did you get a Dell?
Merlin: No, dude.
Merlin: I, I, but here's my point.
Merlin: So, so the before and after is that I did have to go to the Apple store, which is at a mall near my house and you go and as usual, cause you know, I always buy the Apple care pro and I do the things and I made a little appointment and I did, I dropped off my wrong computer and it was amazing because they still had lots of people running around.
Merlin: But since we do, and this is on top of the fact that Apple closed a whole bunch of stores because of, you know, the, the pandemic, I'm grateful to have that.
Merlin: And I went and it was very organized and there were lines and the lines meant things.
Merlin: And, oh, I also met a really nice dog twice.
Merlin: And anyway, that all went fine.
Merlin: Now compare that as against what it used to be before, which is like every time I would go, no shade, no lemonade.
Merlin: I have a family, guys, please.
Merlin: But every time I go to the Apple store with an appointment, you know, you still go, you wait in line, it's fine.
Merlin: They put you at a table for an hour and then you get handed off to no fewer than three people.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Somebody comes and checks in.
Merlin: And you know what they do?
Merlin: Oh, here's the thing I learned.
Merlin: They write down what you're wearing.
Merlin: Did you know that?
John: Oh, so they can identify you in the crowd.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Like that guy, the guy with the beard and the Ignatius Riley shirt over there, he's having problems with his motherboard.
John: And then you sit there.
John: That's a terrible thing because it gives them the opportunity to say like, oh, it's the ugly dude with the big nose and then that's going to leak out.
Merlin: Who knows what they're writing down?
Merlin: They don't tell us.
Merlin: But I do know that my friend Alexandra went and they took off a shirt and then they didn't exist anymore.
Merlin: No, not to flash, but just because maybe it was warm.
Merlin: But anyway, Alexander changed what they were wearing, put on or took off something, and then they didn't exist anymore because they should have written down, I don't know, like short hair glasses.
Merlin: But the point being, and then you get somebody and they go, okay, ba-da-ba-ba, and then they pass you off.
Merlin: And they're always dealing with three people at once.
Merlin: Nobody knows anything about what's going on.
Merlin: There's no continuity of care.
Merlin: It's madness.
Merlin: And alongside that, they're trying to sell Bluetooth speakers and iPhone cases and trying to help this sweet, sweet old lady who forgot her iCloud password and now can't get to the pictures of her grandchildren.
Merlin: And every day, dozens of times, they just have to say, I'm so sorry.
Merlin: I literally cannot help you with that.
Merlin: That's the point.
Merlin: I can't be able to help you with that because of the way we deal with security.
John: I do feel like the fact that they all wear the same shirt.
John: They all wear the same shirt, so you can't...
John: It's like – that's a bad system.
Merlin: They ought to have – It's like when cops wear masks and put tape over their badge.
Merlin: It's not really so different.
John: No, but I mean like if there were red shirts, which were the kids that were selling iPhone cases, and then there were blue shirts.
John: They die in the part before the credits.
John: Right.
John: And the blue shirts were like, oh, hey, I know some things.
Merlin: Let me put you at the right table.
John: Blue shirts are engineering.
John: Right.
John: And then the yellow shirts are like, let me just take a look at your phone here and I'll see if I –
Merlin: You get that velour yellow shirt and that's how you know you're talking to the Kirk.
John: Right.
John: There's got to be someone when you finally talk to them that you're like, ah, I've reached the, maybe not the white wizard, but certainly I have reached a brown wizard.
John: A brown wizard.
John: Huh.
John: You're not going to find a white wizard at one of those places in the mall.
John: A brown wizard.
Merlin: Okay, I'm going to write that down to find out what a... Because a brown wizard sounds like it might be something from Urban Dictionary that involves, like... Is that a poop thing?
Merlin: Brown wizard?
John: No, it's not.
John: It's not a Shaisa.
John: No, it's... I mean, you know, this is the thing... Oh, I see.
John: A wizard Shaisa.
John: In The Lord of the Rings, we meet Grandolf.
John: He's a gray wizard.
John: Okay.
John: And Saruman is a white wizard.
John: And then... Oh, and Saruman is Christopher Lee.
Okay.
John: Yeah.
John: And then Gandalf becomes a white wizard.
John: What's the name of the eyeball?
John: What's the eyeball?
John: That's Sauron, and he's some kind of, he's like, you have to assume that he's like a black-cloaked wizard.
John: Okay.
John: What you don't see, so what it leads you to believe is that all wizards are some shade of white or gray, but no.
Merlin: Are they like belts in a martial art, do you think?
Merlin: I think they are.
Merlin: Well, yes, I do.
Merlin: You start out like a white belt, yellow tips wizard.
John: Yeah, your yellow wizard or whatever.
John: I think wizards have all kinds of colors.
John: I do think it's a ranking system.
John: I think you could be like a chief green wizard.
Merlin: Yeah, this is part of the beauty of a uniform.
Merlin: You don't have to make decisions about what to wear.
Merlin: It's why I wear the same thing every day.
Merlin: You know, look like a Mack Weldon thing.
Merlin: Thank you very much also to Squarespace.
Merlin: Okay.
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Merlin: Thanks, Mack Weldon.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: See?
Merlin: Build it beautiful.
Merlin: And I like that.
Merlin: Because you know what to salute.
Merlin: Salute anything that moves.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: The Utilikilt, right?
John: You saluted the Utilikilt.
John: That was a differential.
Merlin: Well, see, and I knew what I was in for with Max.
Merlin: And Max, the thing is, every time Max dealt with me, he handled me very gently and with a smile.
Merlin: And he kind of...
Merlin: This is back in the time when people, quote unquote, knew me from things.
Merlin: And that was part of my intro to Max was that he knew me from a Macintosh podcast that I've been on.
Merlin: And we had a great relationship.
Merlin: And then they disappeared him to, quote, marketing on the peninsula.
Merlin: And I no longer had a dude or a doodad.
John: Yeah, that's not good.
Merlin: But it's chaos.
Merlin: You go in there and it's – again, I'm so wrong.
Merlin: Nobody knows you now.
Merlin: They're all 22.
Merlin: Which is probably better in a lot of ways.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: That was a fun time.
Merlin: I'm glad I had it.
Merlin: I'm kind of glad it's gone.
Merlin: So where are you at –
Merlin: Now, you finally found a blogger who was willing to tell the truth.
Merlin: Oh, I'm going to say one more thing about this, John.
Merlin: You know me.
Merlin: I feel like you know me.
Merlin: I have a family.
Merlin: Here's something that I say sometimes, and I think this is true.
Merlin: I don't want to dwell on this.
Merlin: I think in life, you have to be careful who you allow yourself to owe a favor to.
Merlin: I bet you've run up against this in the rock business.
Merlin: I bet you've run up against this in lots of places because there are people whose MO is to do you a favor, especially a favor you never ask for.
Merlin: And then that kind of hangs there.
Merlin: And once you realize that person's always doing that, you understand that they are probably deliberately exercising a kind of remote control over you.
Merlin: I'm just saying if Tim Cook shows up at your house dressed like a white wizard and he hands you the new hotness and says, oh, I really hope this is the beginning of a great relationship or whatever the line is.
Merlin: Now you kind of owe Apple a favor and maybe you're not going to be so quick to say the remote control for this Apple TV is literal human shit because you don't want to get the wizard mad at you and you do kind of owe them a favor.
Merlin: They even paid attention to you.
Merlin: Do you agree with this, John?
Merlin: Are you okay with just owing favors to lots of people?
John: The problem is I can't really speak as candidly as I want to about this particular situation because it's kind of one of these situations.
John: Okay.
John: And, you know, my mom will end a friendship if she feels like the person is doing favors immediately.
John: in order to have leverage.
Merlin: Okay.
John: It's the thing that she hates more than any other thing.
John: Does she have a name for it?
John: Well, she definitely has a lengthy description of it, which is just that
John: And she and she even, you know, she even recognizes or not maybe recognizes, but says, I wish that I didn't have such a strong reaction to this.
John: But if I'm a friend, even a good friend and and there's ever that intimation of like, well, I invited you over for dinner.
John: Oh, I know.
Merlin: You're not allowed to dive bomb in and do this dead drop where you suddenly leave this thing that I never, I mean, I don't want to be unkind.
Merlin: Because if there are people where we have the, I always think of my old friend Dennis and how Dennis and I would always just, whenever we went out to dinner, easiest thing in the world, one person pays each time.
John: That's right.
Merlin: And it worked out fine.
Merlin: It was something we never had to talk about.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's one thing.
Merlin: That's one kind of thing.
Merlin: But then there's another kind of thing where somebody gives you a thing you never ask for.
Merlin: And then it's like, oh, yeah, it's great.
Merlin: It's really precious to me.
Merlin: Like my friend Bob back in Tallahassee used to give all his friends his broken equipment.
Merlin: And I think I told you this and all the broken equipment came with a story.
Merlin: One time he gave me a tabletop radio that he claimed his father and he used to listen to as a child.
Merlin: And I was like, thanks, Bob.
Merlin: And it didn't work.
Merlin: And that happened with pedals.
Merlin: And I don't know why he was having this physical possession diaspora in such an assertive way, but everyone found it confusing.
Merlin: And I don't want to owe people a favor.
Merlin: Once he gave it to you, were you expected to keep it?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Maybe it's a monkey's paw or a mogwai.
Merlin: I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it.
Merlin: But obviously, given that, it came with a story about his dead father.
Merlin: You understand that that becomes very confusing.
Merlin: I'm just saying that I bet you've had people like this.
Merlin: This is not so different from open for this band.
Merlin: It's good publicity.
Merlin: We can't pay you, but it's good publicity.
Merlin: My version of your mom's thing, which is just slightly related, is I cannot get with...
Merlin: The status climbing sort of people who are like, you know, trying to create levels of familiarity that aren't really existent.
Merlin: You know me, I'm Holden Caulfield.
Merlin: I have a family, but I'm Holden Caulfield.
Merlin: I don't want to deal with a bunch of phonies.
Merlin: And like when people front with that or I can't get with that.
Merlin: No, no, no can do.
Merlin: No can do.
Merlin: No can do.
Merlin: I can't go for that.
Merlin: And like, I don't want to be a dick about it, but that's part of the problem is now I'm left to be the person who goes, let's talk about what's really happening here and how you are being aggressively shitty in the way that you are trying to, in a not particularly friendly way.
Merlin: I don't actually feel this strongly about this, but I just had some coffee.
Merlin: Please continue.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, first of all... I'm sorry about your computer.
Merlin: I hope it didn't, Brick.
Merlin: Also, Big Sur is really weird looking.
John: We're talking on it right now, so it seems to be working.
John: But I'm still confused about how you got the wrong computer.
John: I know you've talked about it already on... It's just really embarrassing.
Merlin: I did something really boneheaded, and I did it twice within a month.
Merlin: And in both cases, it was very embarrassing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, don't tell me the whole story.
Merlin: No, I can tell you the story, which is I needed a new computer.
Merlin: To make a long story short, I'm experimenting.
Merlin: You know, John, I feel like you know me.
Merlin: I've always got a lot of projects going on.
Merlin: You've got a family, yes.
Merlin: And I have a family.
Merlin: But my family is also, you know, one of my projects.
Merlin: Everything is related.
Merlin: But to cut a long story short, I've been dipping a toe into a new world of computing.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: And part of that new world of computing are these new kinds of Apple Macintoshes that are extremely cool and powerful.
Merlin: Long story short.
John: Are these the Apple Macintoshes where when you read the blogs, they're always like, no, you're not going to need this one unless you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then they claim it's for privacy.
Merlin: It's for privacy.
Hmm.
Merlin: right no no no no it's all my fault i went the apple.com page it's on the internet you can get it and i went to go and buy uh in one of these cases a new laptop which which is weird like i go and i go to the section for the laptops and i'm clicking in and listen don't email me like it's so important you not email me i know i screwed up but i go in i look at the page and at the top of the page it says hey look top of the page first item here macbook pro yeah
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's what I have.
Merlin: I'm a ding-a-ling.
Merlin: I assume, because I think I understand commerce and the internet, that the top left item on the page is going to be the fancy one.
Merlin: You don't put the fancy one way down.
Merlin: You put the fancy one that you want people to buy at the top.
Merlin: Isn't that kind of basic sales?
John: Yeah, but not on these.
John: I mean, I don't want to email you about this, but don't they put the fancy one somewhere where only the pros know how to scroll down there?
Merlin: Germans have claimed that it's in the lower right.
Merlin: We've been contacted by Germans to say that, no, it's usually the lower right.
Merlin: I clicked on the upper left, kind of long story short.
Merlin: I bought...
Merlin: And then eventually received, I was in receipt of the wrong computer.
Merlin: And it wasn't until I configured it and I missed the fact that it had your current operating system on it instead of the new operating system that's required for the new computers.
Merlin: So I didn't realize it at first.
John: So, you know, British people and Japanese people drive on the other side of the road.
John: You know that.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah, I did that in New Zealand.
Merlin: I went to McDonald's one night in New Zealand because it's the best McDonald's I've ever had, and I drove on the wrong side of the road, and I felt really bad about it.
John: Yeah, they'll laugh at you for that.
Merlin: You ever have that feeling?
Merlin: You realize you're on the wrong side of the road?
Merlin: I mean, woof, just in life, but especially on a road in Wellington, in this economy?
Merlin: I felt terrible.
Merlin: They're so nice there.
John: Now, a couple of years ago now, I reached out to a mutual friend of ours by the name of John Sarkoza.
Merlin: John Sarkoza.
John: And he said, oh, you want a computer?
John: Let me walk you through what you have to get.
John: And he sent me the specs.
John: I ordered it special.
John: Apple said, if you order this, you can't return it because it's special made.
Merlin: You can go into an Apple store and buy the Pret-a-Porter, like off-the-rack Macs.
Merlin: And I think you have – if you buy a straight, like, non-customized computer, I think you have more – like, you've got 30 days or whatever.
Merlin: But if you bought a special one with different RAMs – See, that's the thing.
Merlin: It had different RAMs.
Merlin: Well, that's John Syracuse.
Merlin: He's a customizer.
Merlin: He customizes.
John: And I loved it until I realized that I had prematurely bought this computer, and then I sold my house, and then I put all my stuff in storage, and then this –
John: brand new computer sat, uh, unopened for a year and a half.
Merlin: This is not the Jason Finn computer that you traded for like snow tires, right?
John: No, no, no.
John: That's right.
John: This is, this is like this custom deal.
John: And then eventually when my daughter was going on online school, uh, her mother said, don't you have some hot dog computer somewhere?
John: And I was like, yeah, it's over under a, under a bushel.
Um,
John: And she was like, well, we need another computer.
John: And so I hooked up this computer that John Circusa made so that you could put a man on the moon.
John: And my daughter's up there using Mac paint to draw smiley faces on it.
John: And I'm like, that's how it goes.
John: I mean, so it goes, right?
John: Time is a flat circle.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
John: So you bought a basic model and you had to take it back because you wanted a hot dog model.
Merlin: No, you understand.
Merlin: I'm covered with shame.
Merlin: Covered with shame that I made such a dumb mistake and that I didn't realize the mistake.
Merlin: And I'm leaving out the part where the person who was delivering it from Postmates for $6 was three blocks from my house for four weeks.
Merlin: And they said that it was out for delivery.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So we're leaving that aside for a minute.
Merlin: As far as I know, it's still out for delivery.
Merlin: There's been a splintering.
Merlin: And now that's in a different galaxy.
Merlin: There's somebody still, you know, down on Vicente by the park, like delivering my computer in a few minutes.
John: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: But I bought the one that I thought was the one, and I got it, and I didn't realize it.
Merlin: In some ways, the most humiliating part is setting aside the humiliation of buying the wrong computer, which is then not realizing it was the wrong computer.
Merlin: Oh, whoa.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Now, see if you know this emotion.
Merlin: The dawning realization.
Merlin: Do you know that feeling?
John: I get it all the time.
Merlin: I bet you get it sometimes where you go like this.
Merlin: What's the word?
Merlin: You go, huh.
Huh.
Merlin: You go, huh.
Merlin: And that's the dawning realization.
Merlin: It starts with, huh.
Merlin: Something as easy as, huh.
Merlin: This has different ports than I expected.
Merlin: Or I finally loaded all this stuff and it's not running iOS apps like it said it would.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: I better upgrade the system.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Guess what?
Merlin: Daddy bought the wrong computer.
Merlin: Reap rope.
Merlin: Reap rope.
Merlin: Now I got to make an appointment with the genius.
Merlin: And I go, wait in line.
Merlin: I did meet a really cool dog twice.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: Because, you know, corgis always look like corgis but dressed up like other dogs.
Oh.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Check it out.
Merlin: There's whole internet sites about this.
Merlin: So the woman was there with a corgi, and owing to the fact that I was wearing a mask, I think I came off double creepy.
Merlin: I did contact her at one point to say, your dog rules, and it was real mellow.
John: Contact her?
Merlin: Well, she was standing over by one of the stores, probably Madewell or something.
Merlin: I'm in the canonical line for Apple and I say, your dog rules.
Merlin: And she says, thanks.
Merlin: And then we talked about the dog and it looked like a corgi.
Merlin: If memory serves, it looked like I might be remembering the wrong dog because I did have the wrong computer and we know I'm not good at this.
Merlin: But I believe what I said was your dog rules.
Merlin: And then later on, I approached her about it.
Merlin: And the thing is, go Google this.
Merlin: Corgi looks like other dog.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This corgi looked like it was wearing a collie suit, and it was super fat and low to the ground.
Merlin: It had a very sweet, long face.
Merlin: Corgi looked like other dogs.
Merlin: Corgi looked like other dogs.
Merlin: Go look.
Merlin: You're going to see corgis always look like, and I love a corgi.
John: They're ratters, right?
John: Aren't they ratters?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, I also like bulldogs.
Merlin: The other day I met a bulldog with a head like a mastiff, and it was incredible.
Merlin: It was like something from a dream.
John: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And I love a low to the ground dog.
Merlin: I love bulldogs, but they do fart a lot.
Merlin: So I worry about that.
John: I feel like based on your cat alone, you should reflect a lot before getting or even expressing admiration for another animal.
Yeah.
Merlin: We have two animals, neither of which I actively chose to have.
Merlin: I was more into, I'm not against our cat.
Merlin: Although the way it was introduced into my life feels a little passive aggressive.
Merlin: Basically a photo was sent.
Merlin: They said, here's the cat we want to adopt.
Merlin: And what am I going to say?
Merlin: What am I going to say?
Merlin: Now the lizard rules, the lizard is the best, but yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I'm dog shopping a little bit.
Merlin: I'm doing the background.
Merlin: The way, the way that you say, you shop for a couch.
Merlin: We just spend 10 years going, all these, all these couches are too expensive and bad.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: But you're still shopping.
Merlin: abc always be couching i've been looking i've been looking at light fixtures and it's like well i don't know you i've told you it's amazing how many bad things there are oh my god especially if you really read about it even before you go to review meta and double check that that's actually a four-star product which you should be doing you're gonna discover all kinds of shit i mean and this is we all know yeah that most people
John: are living in a world that's contemporaneous with ours.
John: It's a world that I think contains our world.
Merlin: So like the people who are on Facebook all the time, that kind of thing.
John: Well, yeah, but also the people that are, I don't know, buying all the many, many things that are bad.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: You should have talked to me before you bought that.
Merlin: That's what I always say.
Merlin: You should have invited me to an earlier meeting.
John: But they're all around us.
John: I mean, all around us, there are people that are buying things that are bad.
John: Not only are they buying things that are bad, they're reading things that are bad.
John: They're watching things that are bad.
John: They're talking about things that are bad.
John: Context-free living.
John: I think a lot of them don't even realize that they're buying, watching, reading, and thinking about things that are bad.
John: They think they're thinking about the things that are the things.
John: Right?
John: And so then we're here.
Merlin: trying to find things that are good and it's always that's part of the fun you have to wait it's not that i want to buy all the things but i do want to know what the good one is if i'm going to get a lens for my camera i want the one that's good for what i want to do i don't want to get one and then discover that the uh the ef mount for it is i know it's actually for a you know four by three sony or whatever like that because it's just gonna i'm paying to store that i agree with you context free living people who are just buying stuff and it's all terrible i don't want to buy all the things but i want to know what the good one is
John: Well, and traditionally, right, you wanted to know what the best one was, and then you would buy the one that was slightly less good than that.
John: And that's true of books, too.
John: You don't want to read the best books.
Merlin: God.
Merlin: Everybody's already read the best books.
Merlin: They don't need more people reading those.
Merlin: I want to read the book.
Merlin: Well, I don't really want to read a book.
Merlin: Nobody reads books anymore.
Merlin: But if I did read books, I'd want to know the one that's really good that I and other people don't know about.
John: Well, there you go.
John: But, you know, the other day, I was so...
John: So, you know, in light of this Patreon that I launched, I'm trying to do things, right?
John: I'm trying to live up to the initial promise of the idea that I wasn't going to go on the internet anymore.
John: I was going to do stuff now.
John: I was going to make stuff.
John: I was going to read stuff.
John: I was going to do stuff.
John: And then I realized the old thing that we always do, you just did this with your computer.
John: I'm doing it too.
John: I don't have the right tools.
John: You know this game.
John: You don't have the right tools.
John: I could just be scratching it into a piece of sandstone with a pocket knife, but no, I need some new tools.
Merlin: Oh, you could be doing cuneiform with a stylus, but where are you going to put it?
Merlin: You're going to put it in your cuneiform museum?
John: No, I need 54 folders to put it in.
Merlin: Yeah, fair.
John: In my case, what I realized was I do not have a digital audio workstation.
John: I do not have a DAW.
John: I've never had one because I don't understand.
John: You usually just plug straight in a USB mic, right?
John: I do.
John: It's not like you're a professional studio musician.
John: And I go, one, two, three, and then it's not.
John: sync because i had the time signature wrong yep but i was like look you're talking about this you've been talking about this for years you john syracuse designed a computer for you for precisely this reason got all these files you got files upon files upon files and then i'm back on the internet going what's the best
John: Digital audio workstation.
John: And I'm reading, and I'm watching videos, and I'm like, maybe I should get an Akai MPC, and then I can do beats.
John: And then I can be like Kanye.
Merlin: Oh, you could get a Scarlett by Focusrite.
Merlin: Get a Scarlett by Focusrite.
Merlin: You could get a, you know, the one I've got here where I'm always struggling with my pre-PC.
Merlin: What's that called?
Merlin: It's called the USB Pre-2.
Merlin: You go in, though, and then you find out, oh, guess what?
Merlin: You have the wrong dingus for it.
Merlin: You can't connect that because you don't have...
Merlin: a lightning input or something.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: So you can need a scuzzy.
Merlin: There's no, you got to get scuzzy, 25 or 50, whatever it takes.
Merlin: Whatever it takes.
Merlin: Now that's your day.
Merlin: That's your day now is that you're going and scurrying around trying to find somebody who has not been corrupted by the favors of Tim Cook and his wizards.
John: Well, but, and this Tim Cook figures back into this story because, and please, if you, if you have anything to say about this, please write Merlin.
John: Don't write me.
John: I decided, you know what?
John: This entire time I should have been running logic.
John: Logic is the Apple,
John: professional-grade music recording system.
John: I should have been running it for a decade.
John: I should have had Logic Pro back before it even had the word pro.
Merlin: You're sitting in a room, Ken Stringflow is hitting a button asking you to sing three songs.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: That's right.
John: On tape, tape, John.
John: Eric Corson started using Logic back when he worked at the Apple store.
Merlin: He's a gearhead, though.
Merlin: He is a gearhead.
John: That's an Apple store.
John: Well, he is, but I was sitting there looking over his shoulder.
John: I was like, move the yellow bit over so it's closer to the pink bit.
John: I used GarageBand.
John: Logic is just GarageBand with all the features that GarageBand doesn't have, which is the feature.
John: Those are the features that I want.
Merlin: I was using a copy of GarageBand from 2013.
Merlin: into this year.
Merlin: I started doing our program in a different app.
Merlin: Until then, the reason I never upgraded, me, is that I had to keep using the version of GarageBand that's very, very old and looks like somebody's den because that one supports podcasts and is easy.
Merlin: And logic to me is like having to learn how to drive a space shuttle to go to the Little General.
Merlin: I just don't need any of that.
John: Well, so the problem is, that's what I thought for a long time, and I do need that stuff.
John: Really?
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: For your Patreon.
John: Well, to make the music that I am... Oh, the music!
Merlin: This is about, of course, logic.
John: Yes.
John: I was put down on this earth, at least in part, to make music, because I keep doing it.
Merlin: You know, all the, like, the marketplaces... You threatened to give me some of your My Bloody Valentine exercises, and I never heard it.
John: So that's what I'm doing, right?
John: So I was like, logic.
John: I'm going to get logic.
John: I don't want to work.
John: I don't want Pro Tools.
John: Because Pro Tools has got an eel now.
John: They don't want to sell it to you.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: Pro Tools.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about getting a subscription.
John: Yeah, that's what they all want.
John: Well, that's not what they all want.
John: But Jonathan Colton is like, Ableton.
John: And I looked at that, and it's like, yeah, it's these people that wear hoodies and have chain wallets.
Merlin: Oh, they look like hackers.
Merlin: And then they can go out and do Mr. Fancy Pants on that electronic mandolin.
John: Yeah, and it's cool.
John: I love those people.
John: I wish I was one of them, but I'm still like, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang, dang.
John: Now, that's John Flansburg.
John: Well, okay.
John: Flansburg's working.
John: Flansburg's probably got every DAW that there is.
John: Yeah, plus he's left-handed.
John: He's left-handed, so he's got his left-handed version of Pro Tools.
John: Oh, that's an extra eel.
John: So I buy it.
Merlin: It's called Ableton Sinister.
Merlin: It's for the left-handed man.
Okay.
John: So I'm going to get it, but then I realize, oh, I'm running a version of the OS that's named after a kitty cat.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: I can't do this.
Merlin: We moved from mammals to real estate, and now you've got your dick in your hand.
John: Yeah, I've got to have one named after some beautiful place in California I can't afford to live.
Merlin: You've got to get Mac OS X Stockton.
Merlin: And everybody's saying, well, after this...
Merlin: If you want to lay down those cool pavement tracks.
John: Here's Bakersfield.
Merlin: Oh, I love that sound.
Merlin: I camped in Bakersfield once.
Merlin: It was a mess.
John: I have a Telecaster now, so I'm making Bakersfield sounds.
Merlin: No kidding.
Merlin: Are you even kidding me?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I actually have two Telecasters.
Merlin: I still go back.
Merlin: I still will sometimes have a Buck Owens phase, and I go back.
Merlin: What's his partner's name?
Merlin: Don Rich?
Merlin: That guy rules.
John: You know, the Buck Owens sound is the reason the cars are so good.
John: Oh, talk about that.
John: Because all the guitar parts in Cars records are all chicken-picking Buck Owens riffs.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: You're absolutely right.
Merlin: You think about the solo on Just What I Needed.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Oh, my God, yes.
Merlin: That's really good.
John: It's true throughout the Cars repertoire.
John: And you never think about it.
John: You're never like, why is there a country-western guitar player in the Cars who are this New York New Wave band?
John: Boston.
John: Or whatever Boston New Wave band.
John: But there it is.
John: There's just one guy that's like.
John: He's got those big ass glasses.
Merlin: Wait, does he have the big ass glasses?
Merlin: No, that's the keyboard player.
John: The guitar player of the cars, you want to think he'd be super, you'd know his face anywhere.
John: But he's one of those characters where there are so many distinctive looking people in the car.
John: I can't place him.
John: Is it Elliot Easton?
John: Is that his name?
John: Elliot Easton.
John: He, he's the one person in the cars that you're like, huh, I wouldn't, if he was sitting next to me on the subway, I wouldn't recognize him.
John: And it's, you know, it's straight, I mean, you know, Benjamin Orr.
Merlin: Benjamin Orr looks in and boy, the whole room gets a little, little moist, if you know what I mean.
John: Oh, I know.
John: He's some, but you know, he's the most identifiable person in the universe.
John: And then, you know, Easton, you just, and for a long time I thought, oh, he's the guy with the glasses.
John: Like everybody makes that mistake, but no, he's the keyboard player.
John: Yeah.
John: He's just holding down one finger on a, on a profit five.
Merlin: oh but he's also doing a little bit of portamento and sly well that's a brilliant that's a brilliant fucking song though it's so good it's so there's everything about that song is basically flawless starting with the weird off count and i used to cover it in a new wave cover band called parachute pants and the hardest part for that song for me was learning the beat where it comes in
Merlin: And then, and then John, then John at the end, the last verse, they do the thing and Weezer picked this up from them.
Merlin: They do the thing at the end then where they change it up a little bit.
Merlin: You remember where he reverses the drum beat?
John: Yep.
John: Nope.
John: They shave it.
Merlin: They shave it.
Merlin: Oh shit.
Merlin: That's so good.
John: I love that thing.
John: I love that thing.
John: I try to do that thing myself.
Yeah.
John: The point about portamento and slide, though, of course, is that as I was researching all these DAWs that I knew— Does Logic have that?
Merlin: Does Logic have portamento and slide and profits?
John: Logic has just recently recognized that Ableton was a problem because Ableton had all this cool workflow and it made people— Was Ableton eating their lunch, John?
John: Well, no, but Ableton was like the scented candle, but it also had Ableton put nuts in their cookies.
Merlin: Oh, they put raisins in the salad.
John: Sure, it was like sea salt.
John: Ableton was doing all these things, and Logic did the thing that Instagram did to Snapchat, which was, oh, that's a cool feature.
John: We're just going to do that also.
John: I'll have that.
John: Except put it into our thing, which does things that your thing doesn't.
John: So all of a sudden...
John: All of a sudden, the new logic can do all these amazing things, you know, beat mapping and meat mapping and all this stuff.
Merlin: You can quantize your headstock.
John: You can do that.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: You can clarify your rests.
John: You can scratch.
John: You can lock.
John: You can pop.
John: So then I was like, well, now wait a minute.
Merlin: Was your first thought, surely this will run on any computer?
Merlin: Or did you already get the hint?
John: No, I did not think surely this will run on every computer.
John: I was like, oh, well, no, at first I was like, oh, this will be fun.
John: And then I was like, oh, wait a minute.
John: My thing still is named after a kitty cat.
John: And it keeps sending me messages that's like, we don't support you anymore.
John: And people are yelling at me about privacy and all this stuff.
Merlin: Yeah, you just hear you're clicking windows all day long.
Merlin: And that's not helping anybody.
John: No, that's right.
John: Every time somebody sends me an email with a link that says, hey, we could lower your mortgage, I click on it.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, I'm at risk, you know.
Merlin: Now, pretty soon you're mining Bitcoin on your daughter's computer while she tries to have school.
John: Well, you know, SETI, I'm hoping that the hackers are using my computer to look for extraterrestrial life.
John: But so what I realized was I could get an Akai...
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: import those into Logic, and then with my new... With your Akai and Ableton-like functionality, you now have the ability to play along with yourself in a way that would have been more difficult before.
John: So what I'd be making is... John, I'm just hearing your mouth demo of that, and that bangs.
Yeah.
Merlin: You're like a one-man blend of butcher.
John: That's right.
John: And then all the people on my Patreon are going to say, I'm glad I subscribed.
John: Not, oh, man, I'm going to take this money and give it, you know, take it over here to whatever, Mike Doty.
John: And I don't, you know, that's not what I want.
John: I don't want anybody giving money to me.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: He's from that other band.
Merlin: Yes, I know what you mean.
Merlin: But everybody's out there and they're like, oh, you know, buy my cassette or whatever.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And you're saying this is pure me, but you need the right things to put together and they have to work with each other.
Merlin: And on top of it all, they have to operate on your kitty cat computer.
John: Yes.
John: And so what, what, so in my talking to these guys on the blogs where they weren't talking back to me, I realized, oh wait, the new logic will run on Catalina.
John: The Akai will run on Catalina.
John: Everything, it won't run on whatever, you know, whatever snow leopard I was running.
John: But it will run on.
John: It doesn't have to go all the way to Big Sur.
John: I don't have to buy the best lens.
John: I can buy the second best lens.
Merlin: The second best lens, if you're getting the Canon, the second best lens is extremely good.
John: That's right.
John: Get the Canon AE-1 program.
John: Don't get the Canon AE-1.
Merlin: Anybody will tell you because, you know, like volume, a lot of what we're talking about here is logarithmic.
Merlin: But you can get the $80 1.8 and you'd be good.
Merlin: But you get the $300 1.4.
Merlin: You're going to be living La Vida Loca.
Merlin: You don't need to go lower than that.
Merlin: And then they get heavy also.
Merlin: John, there's tradeoffs to everything with all of this stuff.
Merlin: There's tradeoffs.
Merlin: But so at this point, you're feeling like you're sitting in, as they say, the catbird seat because you're moving in a direction where moving from a kitty cat to real estate could give you what you need to akai your way through your Belinda Butcher.
Merlin: Maybe so.
Merlin: Maybe so.
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: Still, you're putting a little toe in the water.
John: What I don't – what's always the question is – I got a lot of nice letters from people after that first week of the Patreon.
John: A lot of people wrote me letters and they were like, hey, hi, I'm donating to your thing and I also want you to know that you don't need to post all the time.
John: We all know that you are going to get burned out.
John: We all know that your number one problem is not that you –
John: Uh, not that you aren't like, uh, happy to help or happy to, you know, be excited about things.
John: Your problem is sustaining that excitement past the 10 days.
Merlin: There's so many levels of awesome to somebody reaching out to you like that, that that's, that's the kind of familiarity that I can live with, which is based on what I know and love about you.
Merlin: I want to make sure you take care of yourself and have a healthy approach to this next stage of your career.
Merlin: Hakuna fucking Matata.
John: That has been what's so incredible about this group of people.
John: There's 1500 people over there, more or less.
John: And they know me, they all know me, right?
John: So they all are writing.
John: I got more than one letter that said, listen,
John: We're here because we love you.
John: You don't have to dance around like a monkey with a tambourine.
John: Go back to what you were doing.
John: We're fine.
John: We just are happy to be here.
John: If you post stuff sometimes, that's fine.
John: But don't drive yourself up a tree trying to please us because we know what your problem is.
John: And you're going to burn out.
John: You're going to hate this.
John: And then it's going to suck for you.
John: So like, shush.
John: And a couple of, like one in particular, a woman wrote me and was just like, said all those things.
John: And then somebody else and then somebody else.
John: And so it's like, right, right, right, right.
John: You're absolutely right.
John: Also, I don't know if I've told you this, but you know, back in the, back in the, uh, late eighties, maybe early nineties, I think maybe in late eighties, I went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist was like, you have a ADD.
John: And I said, ah, sure.
John: And he was like, no, no, no.
John: And they sat me down in front of the computer, you know, the one that they used to do where they would flash colors at you and there'd be a ping pong ball and there'd be sounds and stuff.
John: Classic ADD test on a computer.
John: Yeah, the old ADD test on a computer.
John: And he was like, you definitely have it.
John: And I was like, yeah, sure, I know.
John: And this was back when they were first like, we think you're bipolar.
John: And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And then over the years, you know, they've said, they have said, well, they kept saying about the bipolar, but they also kept saying about the ADD.
John: And I was like, sure.
John: And then it changed into ADHD.
John: And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And they said that I had these things, and I blew them off, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And I blew them off.
John: And, you know, like your journey with ADHD was one that I was following avidly for many, many years.
Merlin: Do you want to hear my impression of the Brown and Tolan Russian doctor lady?
Merlin: You want to hear that again?
Merlin: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Merlin: I go, ah, ah, I have ADD.
Merlin: Ah, ah, ah.
Merlin: And she goes, yeah, maybe you'll take more walks or drink water, learn to meditate.
Merlin: And I was like, wow, did you get that MD in a box of Froot Loops?
Merlin: Jesus Christ, look at me.
Merlin: And at one point I did actually say, I did, I did, cause you know, this is around the time I still say things like Google me.
Merlin: And I said, I said, here's the problem.
Merlin: Like, like, like in now, like the way that John Roderick has known better by his Patreon people than he knows himself.
Merlin: I'm like, go look at the whole fucking internet.
Merlin: The whole internet knows that I have ADHD.
Merlin: Some of them are certainly probably psychiatrists.
Merlin: I mean, it took me so long to find somebody that was willing to like, look at that fact and not just think that I was there.
Merlin: Like, you know, some kind of hillbilly trying to get meth.
John: When I picture you in a psychiatrist's office, I literally picture you clinging to the curtains, halfway up the curtains, like you climbed the curtains.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it's like my whole relationship with all these people is like an ongoing bad trip where I'm screaming and climbing the walls and they're all like, have a fucking orange slice.
Merlin: Fuck me gently.
John: Jesus.
John: So here's the other, well, not the other problem.
Merlin: The primary thing, just to be clear, though, when you went in, like Real Talk Jokes left the room.
Merlin: When you did go in and talk to the psychiatrist, the main thing they were focusing on was they are saying, you have ADHD?
Merlin: That was their primary diagnosis, sort of.
John: Yes.
John: And I think at the first time, I was like, look, I drink a case of beer a day.
John: So I think that that is the problem.
John: I might be contributing.
John: And the doctor said, I think that you're self-medicating, and what you have is this ADHD, and it's causing you problems in life, and so you might be using drugs and alcohol to mitigate those problems.
Merlin: Did you know that is at once completely fair and accurate, and on the other hand, completely wrong?
Yeah.
Merlin: Stephen Covey would say their ladder is against the wrong wall.
Merlin: Like, you're right.
Merlin: If that was what I had, that would help.
Merlin: But...
John: Well, so that's what I did.
John: I mean, because he was like, here's a prescription for Ritalin.
John: And I said, I had a prescription.
John: They gave me a prescription for Ritalin when I was eight years old.
John: And my mom wouldn't give it to me because she said my kid doesn't need drugs.
John: And the doctor said... You've eaten more Ritalin than they've had hot meals.
John: Yeah, thank you.
John: And the doctor said, just like they said with the bipolar, he said, if they prescribed you Ritalin when you were eight years old, that could also be a sign that...
John: People have known this for a long time.
Merlin: I was told or heard for years that there is no—this is so fucking crazy to me in retrospect.
Merlin: I don't know if you ever heard this, but the thing I always heard, including from some medical professionals, was if you actually had, according to Hoyle, ADHD—
Merlin: It would have been discovered in your childhood that there aren't really any legitimately bronchial adults who have ADHD suddenly out of nowhere.
Merlin: And I'm like, well, I don't reject the idea that I've always had this or even that I've self-medicated it.
Merlin: I've had so much trucker speed.
Merlin: You don't even know from trucker speed how much I've had to get to the calmness that I need where I produce enough dopamine to not feel like a fucking cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
John: There you go.
John: There you go.
Merlin: I hate that.
John: Well, what I don't – so I rejected it all to years.
John: But now I'm sitting here.
John: Here I am in my early 50s.
John: Yes.
John: And I've got a friend who's also in his early 50s.
John: He's living in the straight world.
John: He's some kind of lawyer.
John: And he's got a wife and kids.
John: And we were hanging out one day not very long ago around the campfire.
John: And she said – she's one of these ladies.
John: She said, yeah, well, you know, I think our marriage –
John: is about over if he doesn't get help.
Merlin: And we were like, this is regarding her partner and a problem she's identified.
Merlin: The lawyers thinks this person has a condition.
John: Well, no.
John: So we were all like, huh?
John: Like a second before we were, we were roasting s'mores.
John: And then all of a sudden we're all looking at her husband and he shrugs and goes, yeah, well, wait, while, while she was like, whoa, like right there.
John: Yeah.
John: And he says, yeah, well, they think I have ADHD.
Yeah.
John: And he's a successful guy.
John: He's a handsome guy.
John: She's very dramatic.
John: But this is above – this is way outside of what's normal, right, to just drop that kind of bomb on a small campfire.
Merlin: Yeah, I bet that really changes the mood and the –
John: Well, you know, it's one of those relationships where she kind of abuses him and he kind of likes it.
John: Oh, I've seen it.
Merlin: I've seen it.
Merlin: Yep.
John: So anyway, he starts texting me and he's like, I went to the doctor.
John: They said I have ADHD.
John: They're going to give me the one that you like, Merlin, the Adderall.
Merlin: Love the Adderall.
Merlin: I miss it.
Merlin: I miss it every day.
Merlin: Every day.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: It's like a phantom limb.
Merlin: Boy.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Well, it's like a phantom personality.
Merlin: Boy, I got a lot of focus with that.
Merlin: Of course, it did make me aggressive and angry, which was a downside.
Merlin: Sometimes.
Merlin: Four o'clock in the afternoon was never my friend with Adderall.
John: Right.
John: Well, you know, those of us who are your friends always were like, where's he at on the, where's he at on the, on his, uh, his curve today?
John: Oh, he's good.
John: He's, you know, it's like you kind of try to hear his teeth grinding.
Merlin: He must be getting help.
John: You wanted to get there between 1030 and 1115.
Merlin: That was, I finally got this light bulb exactly where I want it.
John: Four hours later.
John: Just as you're walking through like 600 cans of half-consumed soda.
Merlin: Okay, all right.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Let's keep it friendly.
Merlin: So your lawyer friend who read the dozens at the campfire out of nowhere, he did go to the doctor and the doctor, because, of course, so often you go to the doctor and they go, like the mechanic, and they go, oh, you're good.
John: Yeah, you need an orange slice, right?
Merlin: Yeah, well, in this case, and so they gave him Adderall like right out of the box?
John: Well, no.
John: So this was all happening.
John: I think she dropped this bomb and they had already been and the doctor had already said, you know, this was like she was saying our marriage was almost over if he didn't get help.
John: And I looked over at my daughter's mother and we were both like, I don't know.
John: But you both could maybe go see a doctor if you know what I'm saying.
John: But anyway, he's the one that the problem has been located in.
John: And so he sends me this ADHD list of things or whatever.
John: And I'm going down and I'm like, well –
John: This is just like when they sent me the bipolar list of things.
John: I was like, well, yeah, everybody has these.
John: These are all just, isn't this normal?
John: You're saying this causes nausea and headaches?
John: Ooh.
John: That's good to know.
John: No, it's not normal.
John: And then, of course, my daughter's mother, who would prefer that I refer to her as my partner.
John: Yeah.
John: I want to be tall.
John: She looked at the list of things, and she was like, you know, everybody that you know knows that you have ADHD.
John: Why do you not accept it?
John: And I was like, I already have a problem.
John: It's bipolar.
John: I have the one problem.
John: I took the medicine for that.
John: I'm better from that.
Merlin: And she was like, but all of the things that... But you're like a D&D character who rolled a pretty good thief.
Merlin: And then you found out later that you actually have all the qualities of a magic user.
Merlin: And it works with your alignment.
Merlin: And you're like, wait a minute.
Merlin: I already have a class.
Merlin: I don't want to be multi-class.
Merlin: No, I don't want to be multi-class.
Merlin: I already know.
Merlin: I'm supposed to pick pockets and locks and shit.
Merlin: And like, you know, if I could be a monk, I'd be a monk.
Merlin: But, you know, but... Wait, this is... Wait, sorry.
Merlin: This is a real thing.
Merlin: This is happening.
Merlin: Well, so... This is happening.
John: Well...
John: All of the things – I mean it used to be that the bipolar was the thing that plagued me because I was sometimes catatonic and then other times I would drive out into the desert and run out of gas and then take off all my clothes and run.
Merlin: That's so interesting because symptoms of what we call mania are sometimes very close to symptoms of the sort of –
Merlin: So like when we describe ADHD to somebody who doesn't understand it is like – and why it was difficult for me to explain to people was, well, no, I'm not like somebody in a PBS documentary.
Merlin: I'm not running around.
Merlin: I'm not confused.
Merlin: But like I do have way too much granular focus in the absence of a broader focus.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: which makes it the most boring garden variety ADHD.
Merlin: I don't know if that makes sense.
Merlin: But how is it that I could be completely focused on, let's say, I don't know, like a friend of mine, tagging MP3s for three hours or looking at Google Earth for eight hours?
Merlin: I could become extremely focused about doing that.
Merlin: That is in the absence of a broader executive function that tells me maybe 30 minutes of MP3s would be good for today.
Merlin: You should broaden your focus and work on other things.
John: And in my case, it's like I was because I was sitting there going like ADHD.
John: Come on.
John: It's just like, yeah.
John: They've been saying I have it for decades, but like, dad, is that really, it's sort of just normal.
John: And, and, you know, she, my, my daughter's mother partner sweeps her hand across the room and she goes, she goes, behold, all of the started, but unfinished projects, not just big ones, like yellow card, yellow card, not just, not just didn't go to college, not just didn't finish.
John: You got to warn me if we're going to get real, like shit dog.
John: Like, look at the little dish of nuts and bolts from the thing that you started to disassemble, but not only didn't reassemble, but didn't even finish disassembling.
Merlin: I have a jar of tiny metal parts I found on the street.
Merlin: I have collections of so many different things that have no place in my life, except it looks like I'm trying to create some sort of a mad scientist laboratory of things that no one needs.
John: I'm just looking around this room and it's like, basically what she's saying is, how can you even navigate the world?
John: There are so many half-built pyramids in the desert here.
John: Oh, no.
John: And you're just like, everywhere you look, not only is there an unfinished project, but it's also a throbbing unfinished project that's beaming thoughts into your mind like, you never finished me, you never finished me.
John: And I'm like, whoa, stop it.
John: You know, like, yeah.
John: And that's not OK.
John: All the other things that go along with that, like just just just well, just inability to.
Merlin: do anything i mean you know like also john i'm gonna say this because this might help somebody who's listening um but you know it's there's so many things so i made the crack a minute ago the sort of like msnbc pharmaceutical commercial joke about you know everything causes nausea and headaches right that's does like two of the highest most common side effects of any kind of drug and then of course they say again seizures and death
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Seizures and death or, like, you know, there's that one, the cartoon of the depression drug where, like, risk of, you know, taking your own life is a big one.
Merlin: But, like, here's the thing to think on if you are somebody who has anxiety is that anxiety, I don't think you can put anxiety up as a DSM thing on its own.
Merlin: But, boy, does it ever come along with a lot of different conditions.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I used to think there's no way I have mild depression because I'm anxious all the time.
Merlin: If I were depressed, wouldn't I just be sad and listening to Sisters of Mercy and Cocteau Twins?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Anxiety comes with a lot of different things.
Merlin: So if you just think about trying to treat anxiety, well, anxiety also comes with ADHD because the lack of dopamine is making your brain struggle with what to do until something terrible is about to happen.
Merlin: Your dopamine goes up and you get enough focus to finally fucking do something.
Merlin: It's this, it's, it's, you know, it's Anna Karenina.
Merlin: Everybody's anxiety is different.
Merlin: It comes with different things.
Merlin: And in your case, boy, this is really wild.
Merlin: Did it come up with your partner, partner, uh, mother because of the campfire?
John: Well, you know, all of these things, people get pushed into action because I think that a lot of people close to me, and you can confirm or deny this, but a lot of people close to me are waiting for me to show a chink in the armor where I go, huh, you know, maybe I'm kind of an asshole.
John: And then people are like, ah, you know, like I have a moment here.
John: Like I can get in and say the things that I can't normally say to him.
Merlin: I am aware of what you're describing, and I'm super aware of that phenomenon.
Merlin: I think I've said it here, but I'm going to say it again because I'm being super helpful today with my 57 folders.
Merlin: This is one of my things that took me, let's say, around 13 years to realize is that if a person shows you a vulnerability –
Merlin: or admits to something that's a little embarrassing.
Merlin: Yeah, I've said this before, but it's super important.
Merlin: That is not the opportunity.
Merlin: It's definitely, it's never the opportunity to say, I told you so.
Merlin: It's also a great minute to not offer any fucking advice and not to do anything that makes that person, well, where the result would be, oh, wow, I'm sure going to show that person a lot less vulnerability because they always use it as an opportunity to tell me why I'm an asshole.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't do that to people.
John: Don't, but at the same time, like— But you might have needed it.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: The whole Bean Dad thing, like, made me— Oh, boy.
John: There were a lot of things about that where I was like, oh, I'm—oh, right.
John: There are some things that I did here that are things that I do, and this is a moment where I see, like, oh, this went out into the world and had to end.
John: There was a certain amount of it that reflected back on me that I was like, I need to really think about this kind of hard about the way I react to things.
John: I looked at some text threads that I had with, because one of the things in upgrading the computer, it threw up a bunch of like chat stuff.
John: transcripts yeah old texts that i had with people that i was like i don't even know how i found that folder but i was scrolling through these text chains that i had with people in 2015 that i remember very distinctly the text chain i remember feeling like that person is gaslighting me and then reading back over the text chain if this was like a text that was if this was a transcript of a court
John: I was reading and I was like oh I was an asshole here like this they weren't gaslighting me I was being a total fucking that happens to me with old emails all the time where I'm like who did I think I was oh my god such a dick yeah as Kevin McCarthy would say who the fuck do you think you're talking to
John: Well, I think some of the problem with it is that, you know, in a text thread, if somebody doesn't reply for 20 minutes, you're like, hey, what the fuck are you doing?
Merlin: Here comes Stephen John.
John: Yeah, and the problem is that's not evident there.
John: But that doesn't matter.
John: If somebody doesn't reply for 20 minutes, you can't just suddenly turn the corner and be like, all right, this conversation, blah, blah, blah.
John: So the issue around here is – well, the issue for me is –
John: Let's take it, let's just say that it's possible to have two what seem to be fairly semi-fashionable mental problems.
John: Bipolar disorder, which is a thing that I, which I have come to understand and allow and admit that it is an actual thing and that I have had medicine for it and it's made a difference.
John: Yeah.
John: And then ADHD, which I've listened to you talk about for many years, I believe is actually a thing.
Yeah.
John: And I believe that it is possible that I have both things.
Merlin: So this is one of the classic John Roderick phrase you use that I still think about so much.
Merlin: You like to be able to try on ideas like a suit coat, like a jacket.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: This is the thought technology that you're trying on.
Merlin: Without any commitment or any valence, let's just say for a minute that it's possible that
Merlin: that I could have evidence of these two things.
Merlin: And importantly, I think, I was going to ask you this, importantly, I think when one finds oneself months later going, oh, I guess that explains a lot.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Sometimes maybe that was you with your case of beer.
Merlin: But I think there are times where you go like, OK, this isn't just some cover story for who wants to put pills in my face.
Merlin: It's like, oh, that really does explain a lot.
Merlin: That explains why I turned in everything so late and was so like past.
Merlin: I was late for events, all these things.
Merlin: Well, you know, that ADHD would help explain a lot.
John: Well, and also like the fact that even now after.
John: After several years of being treated for bipolar, I still create tremendous late-night drama in my life.
Merlin: And I feel like it is just – Here comes that seven-sided lighthouse made of dreams.
Merlin: Here it comes.
Merlin: You know, like –
John: I'm on there.
John: Construction has begun on the latest Dream Lighthouse.
John: There's like, you know, there's some girl in Ljubljana that I'm like, hey, why aren't you replying?
John: And she's like, ah.
John: And it's just like, what am I doing?
John: What am I doing?
John: I ask myself that all the time.
John: What am I doing?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What is this in Glengarry Glen Ross?
Merlin: What is this in service of?
John: Looking at the list of, it's not even the symptoms of ADHD.
John: Looking at the list of like, these are the problems that
John: that adhd causes in a person's life and it's a list of the of the top i mean there's not even one where i'm like well i don't have that it's all i have all of them exactly as elucidated or exactly as enumerated right it's like somebody like somebody handed you a cold reading like they handed you a card after they talked to you for 10 minutes they handed you a card like i'm like a magician illusionist here i wrote down earlier what i think your thing is and then you open you go like oh yeah that's the thing
John: Yeah, well, and all the things, right?
John: And so it's not just like, oh, I also don't like spaghetti sauce.
John: It's like a list of the top 10 worst things about my life.
Merlin: Jesus.
John: And so I'm looking at it and I'm like, well, this isn't just a random list of bad things that could be true of everybody's life.
John: This is a list of things that are the 10 worst things about my life that no one in my life has other than me and Merlin and a couple of other randos.
Merlin: Right, right, right.
Merlin: You kept smelling farts and now you finally figured out, well, that's you.
Merlin: You're the maker of the farts.
John: So then I was like, well, look, I can't take Adderall.
John: Like I'm a drug addict.
John: I can't take nobody.
John: I can't take speed.
John: You know, like that's, I, I, I know that you struggled with it.
John: And you know, if I take a thing and it's like, oh, this is good.
John: Of course I'm going to, I'm going to Chris Cornell the shit out of it.
Merlin: I'm going to be like, well, I better take two.
Merlin: Well, I mean, like, exactly.
Merlin: I mean, there are various, you know, informal tests of this that one hears about.
Merlin: I don't know if this is science, but one informal test of this.
Merlin: And you know how it started.
Merlin: It started with friend of the show, the late, great Leslie Harphold, giving me two Adderall and saying, I know you know the story, but I had never had it before.
Merlin: And she said, you know, you totally have ADHD.
Merlin: And I said, whatever.
Merlin: She gave me two of those.
Merlin: One day I took one.
Merlin: And I had clarity that I had never had before.
Merlin: But it also gave me a very fun feeling of lots of speed.
Merlin: So one question one asks oneself is, well, when you take something like that, do you find yourself getting really, as we used to say, spazzy?
Merlin: I don't think we say that anymore.
Merlin: Do you find yourself becoming very hyper or do you find yourself becoming strangely calm?
Merlin: So test number one passed.
Merlin: I got strangely calm and I wrote 5,000 words that day.
Merlin: Those 5,000 words were in me somewhere that whole time.
Merlin: But I had trouble putting my hands on it until that day.
Merlin: Then the other side of it is that I feel like the other Janice face is, well, would you be taking this if it didn't give you that effect?
Merlin: And that's where the abuse part, I think, can come in.
Merlin: It's like, would you ever take this recreationally?
Merlin: And the honest answer would be, shit, dog, of course, I would take this all the time.
Merlin: And how do you find that balance?
Merlin: Like we talked about Lamictal.
Merlin: Like your emotions, my shrink says your emotions are like this, kind of like a gelatin.
Merlin: And imagine a jelly of emotions in a box, and you don't want everything moving to one side just because you took a slight left turn.
Merlin: How do you deal with the personality side effects of that?
Merlin: And the answer is, well, is there something besides speed that you could be taking that's not as fun, but takes the edge off?
Merlin: That's more science-y.
John: That's the question.
John: And the problem is, you know, anytime you, anytime you have gone to Germany and you have allergies and you go into the pharmacy and you're like, you know, Guten Tag.
John: Haben Sie a pseudoephedrine.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, no.
John: And then, so they say, do you mean pseudoephedrine or whatever it is that somebody is always pronouncing that word wrong.
John: I used to say ephedrine.
John: It's not right.
Merlin: Yeah, ephedrine, right.
Merlin: But if you want, like, for example, I go to my Walgreens, and I've done this before.
Merlin: I think I've even told you this before.
Merlin: My mission is to pick up off-the-shelf Pret-a-Porter Claritin regular for my wife and behind-the-counter Claritin D for me because I want the real shit.
Merlin: I do want the energy, but I also want to be able to breathe.
Merlin: And is that what we're talking about here?
Merlin: There's the one.
Merlin: Don't they regulate the shit out of stuff there?
Merlin: Like, you can't eat St.
Merlin: John's wort anymore and stuff like that?
John: That's the problem.
John: In Germany, you're like, do you have any pseudoephedrine?
John: And the pharmacist looks at you, like you said, can I get a huge, can I get a bindle of Coke?
John: And you're like, well, no, I just, this is the only, listen, I've tried every drug to clear my nose.
John: The only one that works is ephedrine or pseudoephedrine.
John: I remember, Merlin, when you sent me that bottle of real ephedrine.
Merlin: Before they started putting guifenesin in it to fuck with you.
Merlin: They talk about gaslighting.
Merlin: I know, thanks.
Merlin: I don't need to loosen that particular mucus.
Merlin: Don't fuck with the trucker speed.
Merlin: When I started in about 1988, you could buy a jar of 50 for, I believe, $5.99.
John: Yeah, you sent me a jar that you got from some pharmacy in Florida.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Oh, shit, dog.
Merlin: I still have the spreadsheet of where I can get it.
Merlin: But I go and I get a Magnum malt liquor and a bunch of Trucker Speed.
John: It was as big as a four-pound box of M&Ms.
John: I did that.
John: I sent you a bottle of Trucker Speed.
John: Oh, it was amazing.
John: It was great.
John: Well, the thing is, I didn't use it as Speed.
John: I just used it when my nose was stuffy.
John: In Germany, they can't do it.
John: And then what they say is, ah, you haven't stopped having stuffy nose.
Merlin: Perhaps you could take a walk or maybe drink water.
John: No.
John: And then when they give you these freaking tinctures, these like, you know, these like, oh, this is the real medicament.
John: It's some, it's some nothing.
John: It's some piece of parsley.
John: And you're like, ah, you just bought a bag of oregano.
John: Oh no.
John: Exactly.
John: It's like green toilet paper in a plastic bag.
John: And I said, I,
John: This is, there's one drug I know that I know how to self administer and I know because listen, I do not want to stuff.
John: He knows that, but in Germany that you might as well, you might as well be, you know, like, like tying a rubber hose around your arm and saying like, can I have some, some pure GAC anyway, I don't want to go to the doctor, have the doctor say you have ADHD and
John: But we can't give you speed because you're an addict.
John: So we're going to give you parsley instead.
John: And now you're going to have ADHD and you're going to know it.
Merlin: ADHD and parsley.
Merlin: And parsley.
Merlin: But not the good kind, not like Italian parsley, but like that shitty stuff they put on your plate at Frisch's that doesn't really do anything and they reuse it sometimes like endive.
John: The stuff that's in the little can that you buy in the spice rack that's been sitting there for 15 years and it's so dried out.
Merlin: My family hates dried spices.
Merlin: They hate it.
Merlin: Do you have a dry spice?
Merlin: Do you have a dry spice?
Merlin: Well, you know me.
Merlin: I'll put up the photo.
Merlin: I have parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, and I keep them in that order because who wouldn't?
Merlin: Aren't you cute?
Merlin: Yeah, I am.
Merlin: I am.
Merlin: And I'm going.
Merlin: I'm going to Scarborough Fair.
Merlin: I'm going.
Merlin: But Italian parsley, it gets wilty really fast.
Merlin: And I love it, especially, you know, I'll make it as a garnish on something.
Merlin: Or, oh, you know what I do, John, that you would love?
Merlin: You know how you got me on noodles for steak?
Merlin: You have steak with noodles?
Merlin: You got me on noodles?
Merlin: I'll do some salt and some butter.
Merlin: And then when I serve it, I put a little parsley on top.
John: That's see that's nice Italian parsley the two I use are garlic salt and onion powder Absolutely, so and garlic salt is better than garlic powder stop living a lie Garlic salt onion powder not garlic powder onion salt garlic salt onion powder and then a little fresh parsley on top of the things It's like it's like what the fuck living in a palace
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, like you're a sudden chef.
Merlin: But then the other part, and I want to get back to this because I want to hear more about this, but the other thing is now you're getting into that situation.
Merlin: Like you said, well, oh yeah, you have this gut feeling you're going to go in there and the doctor, Russian or otherwise, is going to shove some Adderall at you or say, no, we can't do that because you're a speed man.
Merlin: We can't do that.
Merlin: But now what do you do to treat both of these things?
Merlin: All we know is that John has some pipes and wires issues, and we just can't go around pulling out the red ones or taking out the ones that have a U-joint and imagining everything will be fine.
Merlin: Part of your problem now, right, is you have to serve both of these masters.
John: So part of the problem is I got a Patreon.
John: The people told me that I don't need to post all the time.
John: I needed to upgrade my operating system in order to buy the new Logic, in order to trigger the new Akai...
John: MPC imitating keyboard that I bought in order to take the grunge songs that I've been writing for the last 10 years and turn them into Songs that I can post to the people that are telling I get it You have an old lady who swallowed a fly type situation But that's right alongside the fact that people give you money say please stop eating so many flies
John: All around me there are unfinished pyramids that are like – some of them are ghost pyramids.
John: Some of them are actually keeping me – they're standing between me and the bathroom.
John: I have to go around all these pyramids.
Merlin: As does your family.
Merlin: They've got to walk around pyramids.
John: My family has to walk around me walking around the pyramids.
John: Oh, God, John.
John: I've got like all these things.
John: I've got these other things.
John: Now I'm going to go to some virtual Russian doctor who's going to say, have an orange slice.
John: Because you can't because I can't prescribe you drugs.
John: And also the last time any of us were in the room together was a year and a half ago.
John: Like, what am I at?
John: What point am I?
John: Where does it end?
Merlin: And, you know, you know, again, as long as we're going through my, you know, KTL gold greatest hits, you know, that one of my things when I got off the Adderall and eventually Lamictal.
Merlin: which you have to taper off very slowly, was I don't want to be 80 or whatever and having to carry a physical prescription into a drugstore every month for the rest of my life so that I can get my speed and then the thing that makes me not as speedy.
Merlin: I don't want to be doing that forever.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: Me either.
Merlin: That's like a slightly arch John Roderick-like point, which I rarely have in just the way you did.
Merlin: But no, part of that really was like, I just don't want to be doing this forever.
Merlin: I don't want to need this.
Merlin: Like what happens if I'm dating somebody who doesn't wear combat boots and have bangs?
Merlin: We have to get over the fence.
Merlin: And I'm saying, oh, no, sorry.
Merlin: I'm over here trying to get the right prescription for Lamictal.
John: So my, you know, I cannot fill prescriptions, right?
John: Every month I get to the last set of pills and
John: And then I eat the pills and then I'm like, oh, I should deal with this.
John: And then the next day I don't have any pills.
John: And then I am like, oh, no.
Merlin: Because we're back to that medical project management problem.
Merlin: Who's going to set your appointments?
John: So I always have – there's always four days at the end of every month where I don't have any pills because I can't figure out how to –
John: Well, that's the problem.
John: That's bad, John.
John: And then I'm like, whoa, why am I so sad?
Merlin: Black box warning.
John: No, I'm going to go.
Merlin: What is it called?
Merlin: St.
Merlin: Stephen's Imaginarium?
Merlin: Yeah, St.
John: Elmo's Fire.
Merlin: Well, yeah, you get the crazy death rash.
John: Don't Google it.
John: I don't want the death rash.
John: No, no, no, I don't want that.
John: But, you know, I wake up and I'm halfway to Spokane.
John: I'm in Moses Lake and I'm like, how did I get here?
John: And so I said... We got no soup.
John: So I said...
John: So anyway, it's the last four days of the month.
John: So I said to my daughter's mother partner, I was like, I cannot manage the simple thing of getting the medicine.
Merlin: Oh, no, the call's coming from inside the mind.
Merlin: Oh, shit.
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: I get it, and I hate it.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You're living the symptoms of the thing that you forgot to get the pills for because that's the whole thing.
Merlin: Now the old lady swallowed another old lady who swallowed a fly with an old lady in it.
Merlin: It's old ladies all the way down.
Merlin: It's all the way down.
John: And so she says, she goes like this.
John: She goes.
John: Yeah.
John: And she's like, okay, now your medicine is going to come in the mail from now on.
John: And I was like, huh?
John: And she was like, yeah, it's just a thing that every normal person.
Merlin: Talk about a fucking brown wizard.
Merlin: Holy shit.
John: Yeah.
John: You get the, now the medicine's coming in the mail.
John: I was like, the medicine's coming in the mail.
Merlin: Coming in the mail.
John: It's coming in the mail.
John: It's a thing you can do.
John: You can buy a, you can buy a thermostat where you turn the power on in your house from your phone.
John: You can be like Matt Howey sitting in the mail.
John: out in the driveway.
Merlin: He can't get in because of his garage.
Merlin: Also, the ice is falling off.
Merlin: Now, he's the one that's got a smart home in his hand.
Merlin: And in this case, the brown wizard goes in and puts it on autopilot, and now the drugs will come to you through the mails.
John: And I'm like, okay, the drugs are coming through the mails.
John: That means that what?
John: I'm not going to get St.
John: Elmo's rash, but also it does not help me with the like, is the whole problem the whole time?
John: I mean, I know that bipolar was a real thing, but is the whole thing ADHD?
John: If I had started taking Ritalin back when I was eight years old, what would I be now?
Merlin: You might already be retired from the CIA.
John: Would I be some kind of physicist?
Merlin: Yep, physicist could be.
Merlin: Now you're the Russian doctor.
John: Right, right.
John: I mean, I had so much potential.
John: Was it all just this?
Merlin: It's like Robert Lowell says, I think about all the pain I've caused people in my life because they don't have enough salt in my brain.
Merlin: Fuck.
Merlin: So what are you going to do?
Merlin: You're on autopilot.
Merlin: Your partner mother has taken care of that.
Merlin: I just found out that with the particular not Adderall drug that I take now, my lady friend can pick it up for me at the pharmacist.
Merlin: Oh, because it's not a thing?
Merlin: It is a thing.
Merlin: It's still on a schedule.
Merlin: But it's not like, first of all, you get like an e-prescription now.
Merlin: But like the thing is, that changes everything for me.
Merlin: I mean, to know that that's possible, that changes everything.
Merlin: But sometimes my POV needs a big slap on the side, like Fonzie hitting a jukebox.
Merlin: Sometimes I need my paradigm to be fucked with a little bit to make me realign how I frame the world.
Merlin: And then that's the frame that stays until somebody hits the jukebox again.
John: So wait a minute.
John: You're taking some ADHD stuff that isn't Adderall.
Merlin: Not Adderall.
John: Does it work?
Merlin: Does it work?
Merlin: Does it make your ADHD well?
Merlin: No, no, it does.
Merlin: It does.
Merlin: It does.
Merlin: It's just that, you know, as with something like we used to joke about Lamictal, you don't know it's working until you stop taking it.
Merlin: And there's a lot of these things where, you know, I love that.
Merlin: I have to say, I love that phrase, that cliche takes the edge off.
Merlin: That's such a smart way to put a phenomenon, which is like if you're having a freak out about something, let's say you're having a legitimate panic attack, the ability to take the edge off.
Merlin: I don't need this thing.
Merlin: I realize I can't get this thing fixed.
Merlin: especially fixed permanently, but I can at least take the edge off.
Merlin: And for me, that means the effects of this that are the most deleterious to me and the people around me and what I'd like all of those things to be proceeding with.
Merlin: When you take the edge off, you make it so that you don't have to spend as much of your day fighting yourself.
Merlin: And you may not be perfect, but you know that you can do this.
Merlin: And when the edge is taken off, you have hope.
Yeah.
John: so the the so the one that you the one that you were just saying the one the one about well my wife can pick up no no no the one where you said or the that all that everybody says oh you start taking a thing and then you can focus um what well first of all
John: What does focusing feel like?
John: And I know that we can't.
Merlin: No, it's, again, what I would call, I might be misusing that phrase, but it's what I would call executive function.
Merlin: But can you, is that really a thing?
Merlin: Can you really get that?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, think about this.
Merlin: I mean, well, the fact that IBM, I love this.
Merlin: IBM's, like, motto, especially internally for their team, was one word, think.
Merlin: And that's what led them to make the ThinkPad, which was originally a paper notebook, and then they reused that name for a computer with a little red nipple.
Merlin: But let me phrase that even differently for people like you and me who need it in Pigs and Bunnies.
Merlin: What if you had more ability to remember to remember?
Merlin: It's not that you don't remember, it's that you don't remember to remember.
Merlin: So in that case, what I need to remember at this higher level is that I have, especially with the kind of work that I do, I should have the ability to focus on the most valuable thing that I need to do today.
Merlin: Or I should be able to, let's put it this way, put things out of my mind that I can't do anything about right now, including made-up anxieties that are three orders of reality away.
Merlin: Wouldn't it be nice if I had a way to set that aside for a little while?
Merlin: And then I get to be the captain, as the guy in the Tom Hanks movie says.
Merlin: If I'm the captain, I get to be the one who drives this particular, I think it's a boat.
Merlin: And then there's that higher level of focus, which is like, what are the things that I need to be doing?
Merlin: And then within that, how do I get the focus to finish the one thing, but then always remember to remember?
Merlin: Pop up two levels, move out, glance at what else is going on, rather than glancing at what else is going on and then spending nine hours on Twitter.
Merlin: That's not good executive function.
Merlin: So when this works right, at least for me,
Merlin: an un-neurotypical person.
Merlin: When it works for me, that means I do more often remember to remember, and I do more often catch myself running down an unnecessary rabbit hole about which kind of lightning cable or Thunderbolt 4 cable will work with my Akai?
Merlin: Profit 5.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Because it'll take you away, John.
Merlin: The phrase I used to use, it gets the hook in.
Merlin: Like if I get the hook in to writing a little bit today on this project back in the day, that's good because the hook is in like you would with a fish, right?
Merlin: The hook is in and now that's what we're doing.
Merlin: Rather than letting the hook get in to where you're going to spend the day, one spends the day being mad about it taking 22 minutes for somebody to respond to a text and not in the way you'd hoped.
Merlin: Because now you're not the captain anymore.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Now, now a part of your brain that you've lost access to, you've locked your keys in your brain and now it's going to be the captain.
Merlin: And that's no fun when you get to four o'clock or five o'clock and you go, what the fuck happened?
Merlin: So that's my thought on that.
John: I spend four hours a day playing Tetris.
John: Hmm.
John: And I mean, it's four hours a day playing Minesweeper, the most basic of all games.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And, you know, as Chris Coniglia used to say, like, these games are just like doing the dishes.
John: Why don't you just do the dishes?
John: It's the exact same.
John: It's the same thing.
John: You're just moving these things to there.
Merlin: Why don't you just stop procrastinating?
Merlin: That's a really good idea.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Thank you so much, Chris.
Merlin: Um, so where are you with that now?
Merlin: Are you at the stage of, uh, huh?
Merlin: This is an idea that I'm turning over as I walk amongst my half finished pyramids.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then you, you're, but it sounds to me like you're trying this on as a suit and it's, it's, it's staying on your trunk a little longer than it might if you rejected it out of hand, like you used to.
John: But part of the problem, of course, with the bipolar was I walked around with that jacket on for 16 years or something going like this jacket fits great.
John: But God, you got to make an appointment to see somebody.
John: I know.
John: I don't know how to make an appointment to see a psychiatrist.
John: Do they have to bring a car?
John: Do they only take checks?
John: Will there be parking?
John: I live in the mid-century modern suburbs.
John: There are probably psychiatrists all around me.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, whoa, this is where psychiatrists live in mid century.
Merlin: It's exactly the kind of place where psychiatrists would live.
Merlin: And I'll bet some of them are working for Tim, Tim Cook, and they don't even know it.
John: They're probably wearing white turtlenecks and brown corduroy jackets.
John: And they're sitting in their, their aims chairs.
John: And they're going, I want to have my next patient is going to come from.
John: And then I'm two doors down going like, ah, how do I get all these?
John: I have peanut butter jars full of colored pencils, peanut butter jars full of colored pens.
Merlin: Should my all-time quarterback ticket stubs go in this cigar case?
Merlin: And then over here, we got the Ben Gibbard solo things.
Merlin: We got that.
Merlin: Should I get different cigar boxes?
Merlin: And do I build a pyramid halfway in which to put them?
Merlin: Wait, is it cigar boxes all the way down?
John: How many cigar boxes do you have?
Merlin: Because I have 60.
Merlin: full of ticket stubs i've got a lot i used to get cigar boxes that were just like shitty habitampas but then when i actually started smoking the devil weed i would maintain mine so i do things like now i try to use it to benefit me so i say here's all the things that have command strips that can stick to the wall let's put all those in a cigar box and now i'm better off than i was yesterday i finished a tiny tiny pyramid i wonder if a stack of cigar boxes is the sign that you have adhd
Merlin: oh, you're saying there's these backdoor secondary things, set aside your DSM, whatever.
Merlin: Instead, let's look at the trail of evidence that you've left behind without really the chemtrails of your mind.
John: Do you buy boxes, first of all?
Merlin: I buy boxes.
Merlin: I buy bankers' boxes.
Merlin: I also save boxes.
Merlin: There's a phrase that's used by two people in our house, but not a third, which is, you have to keep that that's a good box.
Merlin: Yes, that's a good box.
Merlin: I have good boxes.
Merlin: I have a good box on my couch here at the office right now that I'm going to use for things.
Merlin: I love a good box.
Merlin: And I get bankers boxes because I want an ad hoc way to create a null device.
Merlin: I need a way to quickly create something to hold a bunch of stuff that isn't where it needs to be.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Now, that is an affliction.
Merlin: And the fact that we have closets full of boxes that contain things that weren't where they need to be.
Merlin: And then when you need to find the embroidery needle or whatever, good luck.
John: When my storage space got broken into that one time where all they took was a piano and a couple of switchblades, I think one of the things that saved me was that they kept opening boxes and found that the boxes were full of boxes.
John: And when they opened the boxes inside the boxes, there were smaller boxes.
Merlin: On the one hand, yes, these are good boxes.
Merlin: On the other hand, I can't sell this for pills.
John: Sometimes they opened the third level of boxes and they found that this was just a box of boxes.
John: There was nothing in the box.
John: Inner box.
John: It was just I had boxes.
Merlin: I didn't know where to put them I put them in a living a matryoshka lifestyle I mean, it's not there's nothing in the box a box is a thing.
Merlin: There's a box in there.
Merlin: You noticed a doll.
Merlin: Don't be surprised There's more dolls inside.
John: They were like this guy's crazy.
John: They opened a second set of boxes.
John: There were boxes in there They open those boxes and yes all-time quarterback tickets in there all the way down And they were like what am I supposed to do with this?
John: And I and then the voice of me came in and said put them in
of the penkibbered ones.
Merlin: I'm definitely shaking.