Ep. 414: "Groomed Into Insanity"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Well, aside from the fact that my computer just...
Merlin: went on a journey of its own that you you entrusted this machine with making the right technical decisions i mean it's something we all have to do and it's and so so so so you know we had some little oopsie doopsies how do i sound by the way am i okay oh you sound amazing oh thank you thank you so do you it's always nice to hear your voice but you know it takes you on a journey sometimes in this case what did you have did it run some diagnostics john
John: No, I pushed restart on it because you and I were trying to troubleshoot some just basic audio stuff.
John: And then on restart, as we say, in the parlance, it said that Mac OS Catalina...
John: a thing that I installed.
John: We discussed this last week.
Merlin: Yeah, you needed to update to where they were, instead of being named after cats, they named them after salad dressings.
Merlin: And so I... Coming soon.
Merlin: Mac OS Thousand Island.
Merlin: We can't wait to see what you do with this.
John: I updated it last week, and I've been using it all week.
John: It's very stable.
John: I have the crouton add-ons, yes.
John: The plug-ins, plug-ins.
Merlin: Call them mix-in.
John: And then so we were trying to solve the audio, and you said, I'm going to restart the whole thing about your end.
John: Yeah.
John: And you know me.
John: I'm kind of a follower.
John: I'm very suggestive.
Merlin: Well, is that like sensual versus sensuous?
John: Where Dean Warmer's wife has to explain what vegetables are?
John: When I hear someone is going to restart, I think, well, I should restart.
John: I go weeks without restarting.
John: You've got good uptime.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't know what that is, but yes.
John: And so I restarted.
John: And then all of a sudden a screen pops up and it says,
John: that we're installing Catalina.
John: And it's going to take a half an hour.
John: Did you have an option, John?
Merlin: Did you say, maybe can we do this later?
John: Didn't have no option.
John: No options.
John: The cursor did not appear.
John: There was no... And so I was like, well, the call is coming from inside the house.
John: From inside the house.
Merlin: Inside.
John: I've already had Catalina.
John: That's how you know...
John: It showed me the picture of the jagged island.
John: And then I just sat here and watched it do its thing.
John: And now it has a little thing that says, welcome to Mac OS Catalina.
John: Take a quick tour to learn about great new features.
John: Hmm.
John: And it offers me, again, this is the new Apple Paradox show, which is apparently yes, or later, which is not.
Merlin: I could do an hour on this.
Merlin: I hate the thing that says, thanks, I'll do it later.
Merlin: First of all, I don't want to do it later.
Merlin: Well, I have a microwave oven that tells me to enjoy my meal.
Merlin: And I'm tempted to put black tape over the LED.
Merlin: And I don't like fake familiarity with a machine where it says things like it's a person.
Merlin: And then on top of it all, it doesn't give you an option.
Merlin: You know, cancel, retry kind of thing.
John: Yeah, no, it doesn't.
John: And it didn't.
Merlin: Can I just say opt out?
Merlin: Can I just say I prefer not to?
John: Opt out, right.
Merlin: They just have a Bartleby button.
John: I'm sure I told you about this 10, 15 years ago.
John: I don't know how long it was, but I was sitting in an airplane seat and there was some screen in front of me that didn't have an off button.
John: It was like those screens in the New York City taxi cabs that for a long time wouldn't turn off.
What?
Merlin: Hi, I'm Laurie Anderson.
Merlin: Please remember to collect all of your items.
Merlin: Superman.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Can I turn this off?
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: You're in a taxi cab.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Hey, this is Miles Davis.
Merlin: Hello, I'm Philip Glass.
Merlin: I hope you enjoy your ride.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
John: Well, so I called the waitress in the sky over and I said, hi, this is really getting inside my brain here.
John: And, you know, and I pointed to it and all it says is like, welcome to United Airlines or, you know, like insert card.
Merlin: Fuck you.
John: Insert card to, you know, pay us.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I was like, this thing is, the thing is, it's just, it's LCD or whatever, but it's just animated slightly.
John: It's moving.
John: It keeps flashing.
Yeah.
John: And she was like, had just incomprehensible, incomprehending, uncomprehending.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's the first time she's ever heard that?
John: Yeah.
John: What can I do?
John: And I was like, well, turn it off.
John: And she was like, there's no way to turn it off.
John: And I said, will you bring me?
Merlin: You've always been watching this screen, Mr. Roderick.
John: I said, will you bring me some tape?
John: Some plane tape.
John: And she came back with some kind of tape.
John: I don't know where she found it.
John: And I took a page out of what was then the in-flight magazine.
John: Those don't exist anymore, of course.
John: And I taped...
John: piece of paper over it well then of course i'm the guy everybody that's walking past to go to the bathroom looks down and there's one guy on the plane of course that's got a piece of the old howard hughes here doesn't like a screen he's got a he's got an ad for a steakhouse taped over his led are you talking about the 10 best steakhouses yeah the 10 best steakhouses oh my god i like the 10 best uh facial reconstruction surgeons
John: And so I had to, you know, I had to shrug at every single person on the plane as they look at me and go, huh?
John: And I'm like, what?
John: What can I do?
John: It's got, you know, now I guess I have to travel.
Merlin: I hate it so much.
Merlin: I have to travel with the roll of tape now.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, what you should do, always keep, bring some gaffer's tape with you.
Merlin: Because you can also cover up the LED on the fire alarm.
Merlin: And you can cover up the peephole.
Merlin: Peephole.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: The peephole.
Merlin: with a peephole.
Merlin: You can put that over on your door.
Merlin: You can also, you can use that to, anything that's lighting light in, you can use gaffer's tape for.
Merlin: I do that and I also bring a bulldog clip so I can make sure the curtains close up good.
John: Oh, that is a good, that's a thought technology.
John: Oh, wow.
Merlin: We should talk about that.
Merlin: I'll save it for the show.
John: I spent 40 minutes trying to monkey with the hotel room curtains to keep the light out.
Merlin: They make perfect blackout curtains that are perfectly black except for one problem.
Merlin: They're very rigid.
Merlin: Also, they're probably covered with Bavarian cum.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: A German has come on everything in that room.
Merlin: And the problem is now, so yeah, you get these nice rigid curtains, yay, but also that means they won't overlap.
Merlin: And now you're grabbing the sticks and you're pulling it together.
Merlin: I have a whole box, even though I don't travel anymore, I have a whole box full of things that need to go with me when I travel.
Merlin: Those are two of the things.
Merlin: Bag packed.
Merlin: I have to say, though, I mean, even with when we used to fly and I used to travel, I always did like the experience of Virgin.
Merlin: Even after it was acquired, it was still very good.
Merlin: But Virgin does give you the screen.
Merlin: And then Virgin plays, you know, whatever.
Merlin: And you do have the ability now to either dance party.
Merlin: dance you could yeah you feel like that all that purple light you can turn the screen down you can often turn it off unless they give you one of those things where like and then like it's pauses whatever's on the screen then they do the in-flight video which used to be a nun with the linksys router great morrissey track that was fun good stuff yeah exactly and then i know
Merlin: Need to flash the firewire and get the RAM update.
Merlin: But then they say, okay, here's your in-flight instructions.
Merlin: You get the one with the dancers.
Merlin: I have, you know, I'll save this for the show.
Merlin: I have a lot of crushes on ladies in videos.
Merlin: Do you remember the Delta lady in the 90s?
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Peaches and cream.
Merlin: There was her, and you could tell she was a naughty, naughty waitress.
Merlin: She was something else.
Merlin: And then there was the dancing lady.
Merlin: There were the dancing people.
Merlin: And I had a question on the acrobat woman in the version.
Merlin: But the point is, then it's over.
Merlin: And you're like, okay, good.
Merlin: Now I can go back to just staring at the plane on a map or turn it off.
Merlin: But no.
Merlin: Now you have to sit through three compulsory commercials that you can't turn off.
Merlin: Compulsory commercials.
Merlin: And it makes me crazy.
Merlin: I do the same thing.
Merlin: As soon as I sit in the chair, I sit down and I put something over the screen.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Always.
John: Just pull your reef of tape out and...
John: Yeah, and then use the rest of it to make a hat.
John: It's going to keep the UV rays out.
John: You know, the modern world makes you, it insists that you look like an insane person.
Merlin: I've been groomed into insanity.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You did this to me.
Merlin: No, absolutely.
Merlin: I hate it so much.
John: Do you still put tape over the peephole?
John: They can't see in, can they?
John: I mean, unless it's a Chili Peppers video.
Merlin: Well, it could be.
Merlin: I do not want Anthony Kiedis giving it away in my room.
Merlin: Not even now, not later.
Merlin: Wait, there's also my Les Claypool.
Merlin: I need to update.
Merlin: Anyways, no, no, no.
Merlin: I'm trying to diminish sources of light pollution.
Merlin: So...
Merlin: I have a whole thing I do with hotel rooms.
Merlin: It's a whole thing.
Merlin: I put away all the literature, the plants.
Merlin: That all goes in a closet.
Merlin: Literature, everything with writing on it goes in a drawer.
Merlin: I put everything away.
Merlin: But then also sources of light.
Merlin: So, yes, the curtains and the bulldog clip.
Okay.
John: Do you bleach everything, too?
John: I mean, we were talking about bleach earlier.
John: No.
Merlin: I mean, it's like everybody has to make their own tinfoil hat decisions in life.
Merlin: I try to minimize contact with the bedspread.
Merlin: Because I've seen enough things where Gordon Ramsay pulls out the blue light thing and then makes you look at all the cum and urine all over it.
John: Oh, I don't want that.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Don't watch Hotel Hell.
Merlin: Although it is very entertaining.
Oh.
Merlin: I've stayed in some terrible hotels.
John: I stayed in some terrible hotels.
John: I don't want to know what's on any of that.
Merlin: No, exactly.
Merlin: Ignorance is bliss.
Merlin: And then, so what I do is I want to minimize noise and light.
Merlin: There's not much I can do for noise, but for light, yeah, I cover up the red light on the blinky light that you can't turn off on the smoke alarm.
Merlin: I do – oh, so what I'll do is I'll put – I'll smash up a couple towels like real good to get the crack under the door, which is usually like – because, you know, that's where they put your bill.
Merlin: It's usually like half an inch of light coming under the door.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I am not a crank, just to be clear.
John: But you don't bring a white noise machine, like some kind of –
Merlin: No, these days, that's a good question.
Merlin: These days, I've got headphones, and when I travel, I have not only – well, again, I haven't even traveled that much in the era of the AirPods, but I do have noise-canceling headphones.
Merlin: So if it's too bad – but, you know, I'm going to take a lot of drugs to go to sleep anyway, so I clap out of that pretty good.
John: My sister carries a little speaker that's like –
John: the size of an apple and it's us like a bluetooth speaker probably it's a little bluetooth speaker it's um it's you know usb mp3 c3po and uh it uh
John: She has some thing, some brown noise thing.
Merlin: Brown sound.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, we used to do that.
Merlin: We used to do that.
Merlin: When our baby was a baby, we did travel with usually like a, oh, what was the cool thing Adam got me?
Merlin: The little squarish Bluetooth speaker that everybody had for a while.
John: Yeah, I remember.
John: Did he do an ad for it?
John: That was one of his first ads.
John: Lonely Sandwich here.
Merlin: Lonely Sandwich.
Merlin: His first ad, I believe, was for the Twitter app, and then one of the early ones was for the speaker, which is called Chip Drop.
Merlin: It's Blue Boy.
John: Chip Drop.
John: Do you get Chip Drop?
John: You don't get Chip Drop.
John: You got nowhere for them to drop the chips.
Merlin: Anyways, but you know, my daughter was, we discovered in time after much testing that she, the dryer, the sound of a dryer helped a lot.
Merlin: So we had an iPod, is it mini?
Merlin: The one that's like a tiny thing with a clip that was nothing.
John: You threw it in the dryer every night?
Merlin: just to get it nice and clean, put it in with some downy, give it a little freshen up.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: But it was just a little, it's one of those little tiny ones.
Merlin: It looks like a little button, just a button.
Merlin: My mom loved those.
Merlin: Yeah, they were terrific.
Merlin: Those were fantastic.
Merlin: And we had one that was dedicated to just the dryer sound.
Merlin: So when we traveled, you know, Bob's your uncle, we could play the dryer sound.
John: Through speakers or did you put headphones on?
Merlin: We taped them on.
Merlin: That's why you bring gaffers tape.
Merlin: I watched the Woody Allen thing last night.
John: Ten of shoes in the dryer, baby.
Merlin: She loves it.
John: It's so relaxing.
Merlin: We should talk about travel.
Merlin: I have two potential topics.
Merlin: And given the time that I had to explore this, I'm just going to toss this out.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: It doesn't matter.
John: I had a couple of questions.
John: Right before you jump in, I know you've written this down.
Merlin: No, please.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: I've got how many lines I got here.
Merlin: I got over 60 lines.
Merlin: I'm good.
John: Go ahead.
John: In imagining you using cleaning supplies in your office to keep demon dogs at bay, to literally wipe the demon dogs off and bleach them away.
John: It's like a piddle pad for dogs that are demons.
John: But in the user experience of your office,
John: is not that you would walk in and say, it's sparkling clean, because you are comfortable with clutter.
John: Am I right?
John: It has a lot of things in it.
Merlin: Well, once again, watching the Woody Allen, oh, I say Woody Allen, but watching the HBO series last night, I was thinking about Mia Farrow's house that she's lived in for 40 years.
Merlin: She has this beautiful, not beautiful, this incredibly rustic,
Merlin: small cabin-esque thing.
Merlin: And it's just, it's delightful.
Merlin: It's chock-a-block with clutter.
Merlin: Where is it?
Merlin: Um, it's in Connecticut.
Merlin: Um, and that's where she and her are seven, eight, nine kids, like mostly lived.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: Anyway, long story short, but I was thinking, oh, that's such a nice environment.
Merlin: It's just all these photos, old photos, and just bric-a-brac.
Merlin: And I kind of love that shit in a really dark cabin.
Merlin: It's kind of cool.
Merlin: It reminds me of my mother-in-law's house before she passed, just full of decades of meaningful things.
Merlin: The dollhouse that she made by hand for her daughter, Dylan, it's just so sweet.
Merlin: So am I comfortable with clutter?
Merlin: Yes, I am.
Merlin: Very much so.
Merlin: Um, it's hard to describe, I'm threading a needle to try and describe this, but I'm not at all like a tidy person, but you know, some people like can't work if their desk isn't clean and other people can't use a public restroom and none of that stuff goes for me, but I do have an obsession with,
Merlin: I don't want shit all over the floor.
Merlin: I call it underfoot clutter is my name for this at the house.
Merlin: Underfoot clutter.
Merlin: Think about a brown Lego.
Merlin: That is a good example of underfoot clutter.
Merlin: That could be HDMI cables.
Merlin: So part of it is I don't want the room to eat it.
Merlin: But also, I function better with having a clear path between places.
Merlin: A lot of my cleaning involves the bathroom.
Merlin: So I like mopping the floor.
Merlin: I like scrubbing out the toilet a little bit.
Merlin: I like doing the dishes and putting them away.
Merlin: I put extra water into the ice maker.
Merlin: I've got a whole environment here.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: I like that.
Merlin: And I like a little bit of – is it pine salt?
Merlin: I put a little pine salt in the bucket, a little bit of boiling water.
Merlin: I'll give that a swish before I go home on Fridays.
Merlin: That's part of my end-of-week wind-down ritual.
John: I love picturing you with a little apron on and tidy, tending to your –
John: You're like toilet ablutions.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Well, like I said earlier, this is not a bit.
Merlin: I think I'm far from the first person to say this, I'm sure.
Merlin: But like sometimes you just need to control a small area.
Merlin: And I think if you abstract that to the rest of your life, you realize and that could be your seat on a plane, whatever it is, you need to exercise some control over your area.
Merlin: This is why a lot of people get weird haircuts after they break up.
Merlin: This is why people decide to go on a diet or whatever.
Merlin: You're getting a little bit of control.
Merlin: And I'm just doing that.
Merlin: My desk right now is pretty crazy, but it's operational.
Merlin: It's functional for what I need to do.
Merlin: And then other areas I try to just occasionally reassess.
Merlin: I realized recently I need a battery recharging area.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And that makes me think I need a dedicated area for battery-type things.
Merlin: So I look at an area and I say, you know what?
Merlin: You shouldn't have asked, man.
Merlin: You should not have asked.
Merlin: Here we are.
Merlin: These kinds of projects are a huge part of my life.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: For example, there's a phrase that I am –
Merlin: Actively trying to socialize into the vernacular.
Merlin: First came up on the show that I do at John Syracuse.
Merlin: That phrase is active working area.
Merlin: Is this an active working area?
John: Active working area.
John: Okay.
John: So A-W-A.
Merlin: A-W-A.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Active working area.
Merlin: And the canonical example is, I'm sorry to repeat this, but if I'm making a rib roast that I've been cooking for hours and hours and hours, you know me, I like my food piping hot.
Merlin: Everything has to come out piping hot at the same time.
Merlin: There's an order of operations.
Merlin: You don't want the green beans getting cold on the counter.
Sure.
Merlin: Don't do the broccoli too early because that's yucky.
Merlin: You've got to be careful with broccoli.
Merlin: Don't burn the broccoli, but then also have that done a few minutes before.
Merlin: Leave it in.
Merlin: I microwave it.
Merlin: I'm a monster.
Merlin: Leave it in the microwave with the saran wrap, and you just undercook it a little bit, and then it keeps cooking a little bit, and now you've got piping hot broccoli.
Merlin: There it is, piping hot.
Merlin: But the critical part, the titular part of the meal is the roast, which could be just like a simple tri-tip or whatever, but it's come out.
Merlin: So I sous vide it in the bath.
Merlin: I sear it.
Merlin: I let it rest a little bit, usually in aluminum foil.
Merlin: And then when I'm ready to slice it up, I got this area right here with the big cutting block.
Merlin: And that's going to be where I slice it up.
Merlin: It's the last thing I do before I put things on the plate.
Merlin: Now, for the sake of argument,
Merlin: If you were nice enough to bring the glass that was in your room to the kitchen, you know, there's almost anywhere in the world you can put it except the cutting board.
Merlin: And why is that, John?
Merlin: Why don't put it on the cutting board?
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: That's an active working area.
Merlin: It's an active working area.
Merlin: If something is an active working area, you don't put things there that don't belong there.
Merlin: This is critical.
Merlin: This is, you know, this is Abe Law.
Merlin: Don't put things in Daddy's active working area.
Merlin: Now, a corollary or something addition to this is, I think, I don't know if this will go for you, but for me, I say to myself sometimes, this area right here, this could be a more active area where work happens, but it looks like it's turned into an unintentional storage area.
Merlin: A storage area is not an active working area.
Merlin: In between, you can have liminal areas.
Merlin: This is all part of my Velton Shaw.
Merlin: Now, a liminal area, it can be lots of different things.
Merlin: Right now, this is where all the dirty dishes go on Thanksgiving.
Merlin: But that's not in the active working area.
Merlin: And it sure is, unless you're me in the 90s, that's not a storage area.
Merlin: Don't put your dirty dishes in the attic.
Merlin: That's gross.
Merlin: Not that I would do that for years.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: It was a different time.
Merlin: But you know what I'm saying, John?
Merlin: Active working area.
Merlin: And so I say to myself, I say, now, has this turned into a storage area when it really should be a potential active working area?
Merlin: And that's when I reconnoiter and I refactor.
Merlin: And I say, the storage things can go away.
Merlin: If there are things here and I don't know what those things are, it's like when you have an app on your phone and you don't know what it is anymore.
Merlin: You can probably delete it.
Merlin: Leave it.
Merlin: Yeah, and if you've got a power brick, oh, my precious power brick, I don't know what it's for.
Merlin: I think it's for the Nun router that I had in the early 2000s.
Merlin: Well, get rid of it.
Merlin: No, no, all those electrical power bricks are what's holding up my house.
Merlin: Don't get rid of them.
Merlin: It's a load-bearing brick.
John: Yeah, you have to put them in bins.
Merlin: I'm sorry to go on about this.
Merlin: This leads to my anecdote.
Merlin: But yeah, that's how I feel about it.
Merlin: And so I'll say to myself, what do I need that I don't have?
Merlin: Well, I need an area to put batteries because I'm all in on rechargeable batteries.
John: Oh, okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Which has been huge.
Merlin: Rechargeable batteries.
Merlin: That was a technology that was invented a long time ago that didn't work.
Merlin: It didn't work, and now it's gotten better.
Merlin: And then on top of that, you can get something I got from the Amazon company called the Battery Daddy.
Merlin: And the Battery Daddy is a – you need – Can we call me that from that one?
Merlin: You can be my Battery Daddy.
John: Battery Daddy.
Merlin: I'm your battery boy.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: I don't like the sound of that at all.
Merlin: This Woody Allen thing is really fucking with me.
Merlin: Anyway, you get a battery daddy, and that's a case that holds dozens or potentially hundreds of batteries.
Merlin: It's got compartments.
Merlin: You can put your little button batteries in there.
Merlin: Oh, I love compartments.
Merlin: I now have a battery tester that will do all of the batteries, including those little button batteries.
Merlin: I keep those all together.
Merlin: And then now I'm organized.
Merlin: But sometimes you need, if you have rechargeable batteries, you will find yourself frequently recharging them.
Merlin: And so I need a station for that.
Merlin: And so I need to turn a clutter area, a non-area, into an active working area that is then a liminal battery charging area, but nothing goes there except for battery charging things.
Merlin: These are the things that obsess me.
John: I had a battery event a couple of days ago that was a very bad battery event.
John: Last Christmas I bought...
John: Last Christmas, I gave you my heart.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: Okay.
John: And I also bought three remote-controlled trucks.
John: Oh, nice.
John: And over the year, over the past year, we have remote-controlled trucked around.
Merlin: They're great little trucks.
Merlin: I watch people in the park doing that.
Merlin: They've come so far, John, like batteries themselves.
Merlin: These things fucking haul ass and roll and land on their wheels, and they're so good now.
Merlin: I want one.
John: Yeah.
John: They're super fun, and they're not that expensive.
Merlin: And they're wireless, right?
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Well, you remember when we were kids, I had a convertible secondhand, a hand-me-down convertible, but it was on a tether.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: I had a 1978 black Trans Am.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: Burt fucking Reynolds.
John: It was a great car.
John: And I don't remember ever giving it away.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Maybe it got stomped on.
John: No, it didn't get stomped on.
John: I didn't give it away either.
Merlin: It got soldered by somebody.
John: I don't know where it is today.
John: It's in a landfill like everything else.
John: Supertrain will find it.
John: But one of our trucks, we had them plugged in, battery charging.
John: And we're sitting in the living room and we hear this.
John: Oh, God.
John: What?
John: All of a sudden, a huge mushroom cloud of smoke from the kitchen.
John: I run in and the little truck has exploded.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And is on fire.
John: And so I open the sliding door.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: This really happened?
John: Just happened three days ago.
John: Oh, my God, John.
John: I run out with this flaming truck.
John: And fortunately, in Seattle, of course, it's always raining.
John: So I put it out in the rain.
Merlin: But it kept it sat out there and smoked someone's flaming truck out in the rain.
John: And so and, you know, of course, my daughter was traumatized because she she was the one that had plugged it in last.
John: And when she plugged it in.
John: She noticed that the charge light that's like red when it needs to be charged, green when it doesn't need to be charged, or green when it's done charging.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It was flashing between the two colors.
John: Ooh.
John: And she didn't know what that meant, but she didn't...
John: say anything or do anything she just plugged it in which is what i would have done or anybody would have done like oh i guess figure yourself out machine my guess if i were a little kid and i saw that my guess would be green means it's done red means it needs a charge and flashing means it's in between it's in between i don't know it's what i guess so she was just really like you know apologizing super mortified that she had blown up the truck and i was like it's not your fault
John: I went and looked it up, and apparently these batteries can be overcharged.
John: And I don't know whether this is common knowledge among the RC community or the super battery people.
John: But I think this is why they didn't let those cell phones, why they were checking your cell phones before you went on airplanes for a while.
John: And they still ask me about my suitcase that has...
John: Some functionality where you could charge your cell phone off of it.
John: They're like, is that thing charged?
Merlin: Yeah, they finally updated that to make it a lot easier to take out.
Merlin: But also the airline rules are so weird about that.
Merlin: And like it felt like for a while it was like you can't have a battery or you can have a battery here but not there or there but not here.
Merlin: And it didn't feel consistent.
Merlin: Well, here's what you shouldn't do.
Merlin: Plug in your remote control car.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: Because this thing exploded.
Merlin: Oh, my God, you're right.
John: Oh, my God, that would be so bad.
John: It was terrible because that's the type of thing that you plug in and leave, right?
Merlin: All they have is tape.
Merlin: They couldn't bring you any Seattle water.
Merlin: No, they couldn't do it.
John: Oh, my gosh.
John: I mean, you'd be down in the bottom.
Merlin: You'd be lost over the Pacific before.
Merlin: NTSB, is that what they call it?
Merlin: People who look for the box and try to figure it out.
Merlin: And then they pick it up by the tail and hold it up and go, this is the cause.
Merlin: And it's a flaming truck.
John: It'd be like one of those scenes in Tora, Tora, Tora, except it'd be a 737 and it'd be meh.
Merlin: I still love that movie.
Merlin: That was the first three-hour movie I ever watched.
It's a long movie.
Merlin: It's a good movie.
Merlin: Good movie.
Merlin: Well, I mean, it goes into a lot of detail.
Merlin: You see a lot of behind the scenes.
John: Subtitles.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: Yeah, right?
John: I mean, that was one of the early movies that showed the Japanese side of the thing.
John: anyway it was very it was very traumatizing oh poor kid the kids take stuff like that so hard well they do and you know and also we lost one of our three trucks and now the other two trucks were very confused about you know we look at them from across the room and we're like of course you got to do like a kubler ross for rc trucks that's that's sad yeah right yeah uh but the roast was perfectly prepared good good we'll stay out of the active working area that's all i care about
John: You care.
John: My question about your active working area is I'm living here in a home where the homeowner, my daughter's mother slash partner.
John: I don't know if that makes it better.
John: She was raised by hippies.
Mm-hmm.
John: And, you know, like nice hippies, you know, not like mud.
Merlin: It's not like military intelligence or jumbo shrimp.
John: But, you know, Bellingham hippies, right?
John: So because everything in Bellingham is hippie, or at least was, who knows what it is now.
John: But in 1985, it was just a layer of hippie that was on everything.
John: It's kind of like what the Oakland Hills used to be.
John: Everybody's rich, but they're all hippies, too.
Merlin: Oh, the ashes of hippies.
John: Yeah.
John: And so...
John: So the titular daughter's mother partner is someone who wants things to be tidy but does not care if they're clean.
Merlin: I completely understand and acknowledge that.
Merlin: And the thing is, two people who look at that differently, like even if you filled out a form on a dating site, I don't know if they even have those anymore.
Merlin: But if you fill out a form and says, you know, oh, I like to support me for the house to be clean.
Merlin: It's like, boy, those two things are so different.
John: So I am somebody who does not care about tidy.
John: but really cares about clean.
John: That's so... I love this distinction.
John: So she goes around.
John: The house needs to look very tidy, everything put away, things in their place.
John: If a vase is square, the square... It needs to be squared off with the angle of the shelf.
John: It's got to look... But...
John: She will, and my daughter takes after her in this way, they will take some peanut butter out of the peanut butter jar with a knife.
John: They will spread the peanut butter on a piece of toast.
John: And then they will put the knife down on the counter.
John: And walk away with the knife, the peanut butter covered knife.
John: Not in the sink.
John: I guess, will the cutlery elf just take care of that?
John: Well, this is the thing.
John: Would you... Is the idea that you're going to come back and use...
John: Use it again.
John: Don't wash it.
John: Don't put it in the sink because maybe you'll use it again.
John: It's like if it's yellow, let it mellow.
Merlin: It's like also with leftovers.
Merlin: If you know in your heart you're not going to eat it, don't waste a bag and put it in the fridge.
Merlin: You're just storing garbage.
Merlin: I eat everything.
John: I even eat the ones where people are like, I think that this food isn't good anymore.
Merlin: Well, I'm the one who ends up going in.
Merlin: I'm the one.
Merlin: I said, should we save the paschetti sauce?
Merlin: And will you eat it tomorrow?
Merlin: Yeah, I'll eat it tomorrow.
Merlin: I'm like, nobody ate it tomorrow.
Merlin: So you know what I did?
Merlin: I salvaged out the sausage bits and put them in my mac and cheese.
Merlin: Homemade mac and cheese.
Merlin: Boom!
Merlin: Boom!
Merlin: I repurposed it.
Merlin: And I'll tell you, man.
Merlin: And the thing is, my kid was in a sausage mood.
Merlin: So I made her some fancy, not Hillshire Farm, but even nicer, like kielbasa to have with spaghetti sauce.
John: Well, nicer than Hillshire Farm?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Believe it or not.
Merlin: I think it might be artisanal, Nyman Ranch.
Merlin: But anyway, really fucking good.
Merlin: Polish sausage, right?
Merlin: We don't say that anymore.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Now we say Eastern European tube foods.
Merlin: Central European tube foods.
Oh, damn it.
Merlin: I fucked it up again.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: It's all right.
Merlin: It's always changing.
Merlin: It's so hard.
Merlin: You know, it was a different time.
Merlin: It was a different time when I did those things.
Merlin: And so I eat that.
Merlin: And the thing is, the macaroni and cheese, which is the greatest macaroni and cheese that my wife has ever made.
Merlin: She tweaked the recipe.
Merlin: A little less milk.
Merlin: No nutmeg.
Merlin: We all agreed no nutmeg.
Merlin: Leave nutmeg out.
Merlin: And it's the perfect mac and cheese.
Merlin: And I'll tell you, buddy, you know what I did?
Merlin: I reheated the, first of all, the sausage.
Merlin: I heat the sausage just a little bit in the microwave.
Merlin: And then some of the red sauce slides off.
Merlin: So I don't have excess red sauce, but there's a little bit of red sauce.
Merlin: I covered that with mac and cheese.
Merlin: And then I put that into the microwave.
Merlin: I heat that up.
Merlin: And now you got yourself a treat.
Merlin: Because now the sausage on the bottom and the mac up on the top, you do a little mixy mix, a little salt on top.
John: It's like the yogurt with the fruit at the bottom.
Merlin: Oh, it's like, yes, it's like reverse Dannon.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Anyway, so somebody gets peanut butter.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: That's a nice, healthy snack.
Merlin: And then what do you do?
Merlin: You have the knife and then you clean the knife and put it in the drawer.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: Well, no.
John: I mean, because I run everything through the dishwasher, even if it doesn't need it.
John: If somebody looks at something funny, I put it in the dishwasher.
John: no kidding even like a quick drink of water for an ibuprofen no i i always keep a water glass next to the sink because i feel like until you can see fingerprints on the glass it's mostly clean if you're just drinking water that's a good heuristic right as soon as you can see fingerprints on it it means you've touched it too many times but other things like if you if you use something like a knife it ought to go through the dishwasher and you know this comes from working in
John: in restaurants where you had those big industrial dishwashers where you throw it in and it just steams the shit out of everything.
John: Um, you know, we just would, we're running stuff through that dishwasher constantly all day long, just running the dishwasher.
John: And it got me in this, this habit of like, well, put it in the dishwasher.
John: I mean, I don't, I won't run the dishwasher until it's completely full.
Um,
John: But I keep enough silverware on hand that you can have one complete set.
Merlin: But also appreciate the beauty on every level of what you're doing.
Merlin: So, you know, you've gotten it out of the dirty area.
Merlin: It's not yet in the clean area, but it's in the area where it needs to be to become clean, and it's no longer clutter underfoot or otherwise.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
Merlin: It's a system, John.
Merlin: It's a system.
Merlin: If everybody would honor the system, when we put our grocery bags in the other bag, the flaps always have to be going one way.
Merlin: Otherwise you get an explosion of bags.
Merlin: If you honor the system, life gets easier.
John: But in this house, on one side of the gauze, there's someone that is straightening magazines so that they're all perpendicular.
John: And on the other side of the gauze, there's like cottage cheese just sort of like –
John: like smeared on the counter and left to be there for i don't know what a thousand years do you want ants because that is how you get ants so i'm always walking around with a wet towel or you know a wet rag yeah just wiping everything down because i'm like all i you could take a you could take any space in this house that looked clean and if i go over it with a wet rag
John: Oh, guess what I found?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: You know, like a seemingly invisible but extremely sticky layer of what I guess was once Sprite?
Merlin: If you live in San Francisco and you cook like I cook, which is to say with a lot of meats and oil splattering around, you will discover there is the most disgusting thing, which is, first of all now, because we don't have an actual hood, we live in a hovel, you get a lot of, like, in-the-air, particulate, greasy stuff—
Merlin: And if you run your finger over an area in the kitchen, you're going to pick up a lot, a lot of that vestigial grease.
Merlin: But you know what else, San Francisco?
Merlin: Real dusty.
Merlin: Real dusty town.
Merlin: It's a dusty town.
Merlin: You know what dust is?
Merlin: Dust is mostly – it's partly sand, but it's mostly skin.
Merlin: So basically you've got – Wait a minute.
Merlin: Hold on.
Merlin: Stop right there.
John: Dust is skin.
John: You're saying that the dust in Dustytown is mostly skin?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Dust is mostly skin.
John: San Francisco.
Merlin: No, everywhere.
Merlin: Everywhere.
Merlin: It's not peculiar to the Bay Area as far as I know.
John: But in Seattle, there's no skin in the air because it's raining all the time.
John: It rains the skin right out of the air.
Merlin: Oh, so you don't shed skin.
Merlin: I mean, you shed it.
Merlin: You're like a constipated snake.
John: It rains it down.
Merlin: It rains it down.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: The way you would like wet the field a little bit.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: Dust is skin.
John: See, in San Francisco, it's in the wind.
John: But here, all we are is dust in the rain.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Same old song.
Merlin: Is it true that dust is mostly human skin?
Merlin: There's a common misconception that it's mostly human skin.
Merlin: It's not.
Merlin: It's mostly mites.
Merlin: It's skin-eating mites.
Merlin: I think it's still... What does dust do to your skin?
Merlin: Okay, I'm going to close this tab.
Merlin: Anyway, the point is, if I run my finger over that with John's rag, you know what I'm going to pick up?
Merlin: It's not even going to be like a Swiss...
Merlin: It's going to be more like a, and you're going to run it.
Merlin: And then it's going to be a ruddy rub.
Merlin: And you're going to see almost like a little organism made out of the things that used to be part of your house.
Merlin: And now it's a different part of your house.
Merlin: And now you live with that.
Merlin: You're paying rent for that.
John: It's like crawfish, crawdads.
John: Cray daddies?
John: Cray daddies.
John: They're tiny little things, but if you look at them under a microscope, they look like lobsters.
John: I was texting with our mutual friend Dan Benjamin the other day.
John: As you know, he lives in Texas.
Merlin: He's having quite a time right now.
Merlin: He really is, and he's extremely mad.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: So mad.
Merlin: He was on Rachel Maddow.
Merlin: Did you see that?
Merlin: No, I didn't.
Merlin: Was he really?
Merlin: He was quoted in a newspaper article by a paper that I won't read.
Merlin: But, yeah, and so Rachel Maddow, top of the show, she comes in.
Merlin: Oh, it's another crazy day.
Merlin: We've got to tear up the script, throw it in the air.
Merlin: Yeah, Dan Benjamin's name was on my screen.
Merlin: Wow, Dan Benjamin on Rachel Maddow.
Merlin: You were texting with Dan Benjamin, who's using him in Texas, and boy, is it a scene right now.
John: It's a scene.
John: And, you know, Dan, the way he – in his texts to me, if you took them all and ran them through one of those text aggregators –
John: uh you know like 70 to 80 his account would be banned well 70 to 80 percent of them are like super friendly like like hyper friendly like hey buddy you know and like wow fun and you just really like really uh little snapshots of life you know he's a kind of friend that'll send you a snapshot of life yeah a picture of him with a hat on the hat on something interesting he saw an incredible hulk
John: And super, super friendly, maybe even a little bit friendlier via text than he is in real life.
John: And then there's about 6% of the texts that are informational, just strictly informational texts.
Merlin: Like a sorry running late 10 minutes type text.
John: But of that 6%, I would say about 60% of that 6% are informational where the information is maybe a little incorrect.
Merlin: So, you know, it's like a reliable narrator.
John: Well, a little bit of that, but also just like, hey, this is this is how it's going to go.
John: And then that's not how it goes.
John: OK, but then there's four percent of the text where he is mad about something.
John: And you know me, Merlin.
John: You've dealt with me for a long time.
Merlin: I have.
Merlin: I make people mad, right?
Merlin: Don't I make you mad sometimes?
Merlin: Oh, you feel like it's mad and directed at you?
Merlin: See, I feel like with a lot of his, I can't tell what or why it's about.
Merlin: That's my 4%.
Merlin: My 4% is like, huh.
Merlin: And if I respond to this, I could get some guidance, but I'm not sure I want to get into, as I call it, a whole thing.
John: Sure.
John: Well, you know, in me, I like to feel like I'm to blame for things that I'm not even related to.
John: I'm from Ohio.
John: You don't need to explain that to me.
John: Maybe that's just what's happening, and I'm just like, what did I do?
John: And it's just he's on something else.
Merlin: You know what Ben Franklin said?
Merlin: He says, hit your co-host every day.
Merlin: If you don't know what it's for, they will.
Merlin: Oh.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Poor Richard.
John: That's why he's on the $20 bill.
Merlin: On the $20 bill to this day.
John: Anyway, Dan, so he says, I can't record this week, talking about last week.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I'm not on the internet right now, so I was just like, oh, okay, fine.
John: And he's like, because I don't have any power and I don't have any water.
John: I was like, oh, wow.
John: And so I looked it up.
John: Wow.
John: So I wrote him back and I was like,
John: You don't have any water?
Merlin: They're getting pool water and melted snow just to flush the toilet.
Merlin: Not even worry about the blue and white bleach pellet.
Merlin: People are going into pools that haven't frozen to get water to flush their toilet.
John: Can you imagine that?
John: He writes me back.
John: Now, this is not the tone that Dan usually takes with me.
John: He writes me back and he goes, what part of no water isn't clear?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Did I, did I, you know, did I stutter basically, you know, like really flipping it right back at me.
John: And I could tell that he was huddled in a house with no power, like licking water, licking condensation off the pipes.
Merlin: Yeah, like Cersei, you know, when the lady from Ted Lasso throws the water at her and she looks it off the floor and cries, same feeling.
John: Yes, exactly.
John: Right.
John: Dan was probably shaving his head too.
Merlin: Shame, shame.
Merlin: And then you bring in the mountain.
Merlin: Oh boy.
Merlin: Oh, thank you.
Merlin: Did you know that's the lady from Ted Lasso?
John: What, The Mountain?
Merlin: No, The Mountain's not from Ted Lasso.
Merlin: The lady with the shame lady, she's Rebecca in Ted Lasso.
John: No, I did know that.
John: I did know that.
John: Because she was so good in Ted Lasso, I looked her up.
John: You know I look people up.
Merlin: I look people up all.
Merlin: Well, I mean I look up actors.
Merlin: And I'm always asking how tall people are.
Merlin: Me too.
Merlin: Actors are so short.
Merlin: They're really short.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: And then yesterday I asked, how old is Rosamund Pike?
Merlin: Is that her name?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How old is she?
Merlin: You know, she's 42.
Merlin: Woof.
Merlin: What do you know?
John: Two nights ago, we were watching Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And it's actually a very good movie.
Merlin: It's a very good movie.
Merlin: Did you find a way to remember him?
John: Very good movie.
Merlin: Did I find a way to remember him?
Merlin: Those hands on the window.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: You can get a Christmas.
Merlin: Did you even get a Christmas ornament of that?
John: Of Kirk saying, or of Spock saying, I will be your friend for, I will fight no more forever.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: The hands on the glass.
Merlin: That's available.
Merlin: I'll find it for notes as a hallmark Christmas ornament.
Merlin: That's also the one, don't they put a worm in Chekhov's ear?
Merlin: Yeah, that's the worm in the ear one.
Merlin: So if you see a worm in the first act, it has to be put in an ear by the third act.
Merlin: That's Chekhov's worm.
John: In fact, as we were watching it, my daughter's mother slash partner said, this is the only thing I remember about this movie.
Merlin: I hate it.
Merlin: I hate that scene so much.
John: And I leaned over to my little daughter, the one that bonds us, and I said, sweetie, put the blanket over your head for the next one minute.
John: And she knows when I say that to just do it.
John: She doesn't ask why.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Don't test it.
Merlin: They're like in the matrix when they put the worm in his belly button.
Merlin: It still freaks me out 22, 23 years later.
John: She put the blanket on her head.
John: There was a minute of screaming that she didn't have any questions about.
John: And then I was like, okay, you can take the blanket down.
John: And then all of a sudden everybody's back to normal.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Just Mr. Rourke without a shirt with a cool Tina Turner wig.
John: And a lot of pancake makeup.
John: But the thing that really stands out about it, very much in the vein of the peaches and cream lady from Delta Airlines.
John: Oh, God.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Is young Christy Alley as the Vulcan lady.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Well, isn't that the one with Kobayashi Maru at the beginning?
Merlin: That's Kobayashi Maru.
Merlin: I fucking love that.
Merlin: Kobayashi Maru is so important in my life.
John: Is it?
John: Well, you're right, because you're the only one that ever made it through Kobayashi Maru.
Merlin: Well, I have a lot of questions about Kobayashi.
Merlin: We wrote the encryption, right?
Merlin: Well, I don't understand how you give that test to more than one class and them not know what the deal is.
Merlin: But the idea of being given an impossible situation that's not a test of leadership but a test of character, that means a lot to a man in his 50s, let's be honest.
John: Say what?
Merlin: Kirstie Alley, man.
John: It's not like she's tearing up the old screen with her acting because she's playing a Vulcan and all she does is raise her one eyebrow every once in a while.
John: And and my daughter also wanted to know why she had regular eyebrows and not Vulcan eyebrows.
John: And I didn't have a good answer.
John: But Christy Alley, she's just she's very peaches and cream for me in that in that because I like a Vulcan girl.
John: You know, I do Romulans.
John: I've always been.
John: What about the green lady?
John: You like the green lady?
Merlin: I like the green lady who was played by Batgirl.
Merlin: I like a lot of Star Trek ladies.
Merlin: I like Nurse Chapel.
Merlin: Big fan.
Merlin: I like that lady who has the woven together hair.
Merlin: My daughter always has to remind me.
Merlin: There's the red dress woman with the hair that looks like a Bastic.
John: We haven't gone into the TV show yet.
John: In fact, I don't think my daughter understands that it is derived from a TV show.
Merlin: Understandable.
John: Last night at dinner, we had a long conversation where the two ladies at the dinner table were talking about how Spock died and how are they going to keep making Star Trek movies if Spock is dead.
John: And they kept looking at me for answers, and I was like, listen, I'm not going to explain how there's a Star Trek III.
Merlin: There's a line for this, and I use this just constantly.
Merlin: We just watched the extremely good I Care A Lot on Netflix.
Merlin: That's why I was thinking of Rosamund Pike, who I love.
Merlin: But the movie starts, and within 30 seconds of the movie, my kid's whole thing, she's watched Enough Law and Order to be that kind of person, like my wife, who I'm mainly interested in knowing how tall someone is and how old they are.
Merlin: And they want to know, like, what's the twist?
Merlin: So they're guessing twists in the first few seconds or something like, oh, so wait, is this a nursing home?
Merlin: And I turn it and I say the same thing that I've said to people my entire life, but especially over the last, let's say, 13 years.
Merlin: You're watching the same movie I am.
Merlin: Yes, watch the movie.
Merlin: You're watching the same movie I am.
Merlin: I don't know, except that I did watch it all the way through the night before and I knew my kid would like it, so I watched it again the next day.
Merlin: I, you know, because there's a lot of stuff in that that's, you know, germane to her interests.
Merlin: And so, you know, scams, hospitals, old people.
Merlin: And so I said to her, I says, honey, you're watching the same movie.
Merlin: Put down your phone.
Merlin: Stop looking up who's in the cast.
Merlin: That's daddy's job.
Merlin: And if you find out, if you find out the person who's actually the bad guy in this movie before that person appears, I'm going to be so mad because it's a great reveal.
Merlin: Speaking of reveals, the thing I love in Star Trek movies, apart from Bones' outfits, is I love the moment, especially in the early films, when we first see the character.
Merlin: Like when Kirk walks through the door at the end of that scene.
Merlin: Yeah, they always have an opening, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, it's so, it's dark, and then he walks through.
Merlin: And then Bones is laying on the side, and he says something like, what do you think of my performance?
Yeah.
John: And he says, I'm not an acting critic.
John: Listen.
John: I'm a doctor.
John: I'm a doctor, not a disco man.
John: Here's the problem with Star Trek II.
John: The entire Kurt's whole... Kurt's.
John: This is the end of the river, all right.
Kurt's...
Merlin: Heads on skulls.
Merlin: I can't make up any more lines today.
John: The whole thing is... I see no method.
Merlin: Live long and prosper with extreme prejudice.
John: The whole plot or the whole character arc of Kurtz is that he is old and that he's lost it.
John: What is the reason for anything anymore?
John: He's been promoted up to...
Merlin: This is a theme.
Merlin: This is a theme here.
Merlin: It's a theme on Battlestar Galactica, which is like we reintroduce these characters as everything is on autopilot.
Merlin: Like, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like when they bring Adama back with his ship that's not on the internet, like that becomes very important in the plot.
Merlin: But the immediate res is there's not much going on here.
Merlin: Spock's teaching some extension classes.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Stuff like that.
John: But here was the problem.
John: I immediately Googled, first of all, how tall is Kurtz?
John: But second of all, how old was William Shatner when they made this movie?
John: And he's exactly my age.
John: The whole point of the film is, what is Captain Kurtz going to do now that he's so old that he's irrelevant?
Merlin: Is that the one, I might be thinking of a later one, is that the one where it's his birthday and Bones brings him the presents with the glasses?
John: Yes, he's got reading glasses.
Merlin: Brink goes to his apartment.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: He's like, you've got to get back up or you're going to die.
John: You've got to get back in the game or you're just going to waste away.
John: He has seven or eight times in the film where he kind of stares off into the distance and he's like, what's the point of life?
John: It's all over for me now.
John: 52 years old.
John: 52 years old.
Merlin: So when, is this true?
Merlin: Am I reading this right?
Merlin: I just Googled this really fast, but I remember when I first heard this, this can't be right.
Merlin: The Carol O'Connor was 32 when he started All in the Family.
Merlin: I can't be right.
Merlin: Is that what it is?
Merlin: No, he's got to be older than that.
Merlin: He was born in 24, but he was like in his 40s.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: He's my idea of a 60-year-old guy.
Merlin: In my head, you know, you have different ideas in your head.
Merlin: Like, to me, whether or not it's true, Captain Kangaroo is 70 years old in my head as a kid, not in paradigm.
Merlin: Carol O'Connor is my canonical 50-year-old man.
John: Yeah, and so he was born in 34, so he's exactly the same age as my mom, which means, yeah, he would have not been quite early.
Merlin: Probably in his 40s.
John: 45, maybe?
John: I don't know.
John: No, not—wait a minute, 34—
John: No, he would have been 35.
Merlin: No.
John: In 1970?
Merlin: That can't be right.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: We dropped a decade somewhere.
Merlin: Anyway, the problem with... Oh, okay, you're right.
John: Wrath of Khan.
John: No, he's 35!
John: He's 35!
John: What's 34 plus 36?
John: It's 70, which is when that show started, right?
Merlin: Because he was born in 24.
Merlin: Okay, listen, the problem with... So Kobayashi Maru, they're stranded, and then what was the problem with your daughter and her peanut butter?
Merlin: What'd she do?
Merlin: No, here's the problem.
Merlin: Sorry, I lost the thread.
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
John: The problem is that, never mind...
John: was recorded 30 years ago this month.
John: 30 years ago.
Merlin: Now, when I was in high school in 1985... Wait, is that right?
John: Is that really right?
John: In 1985, I was 30 years away from the albums of 1955.
Merlin: This is what I call a chrono analogy, and it's brutal.
John: Peggy Sue.
John: I don't know.
John: Was even Peggy Sue out in 55?
Merlin: Peggy Sue would have come out probably 56.
Merlin: He died in 57.
Merlin: The music died, something like that.
Merlin: There should be a website that does just this.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: It's a terrible thing.
Merlin: When Mia Farrow said she's been living in this house for 40 years, and I realized that was like 1982, that did not feel good.
Merlin: That's prime Hall and Oates years.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: And now I have to live with that.
Merlin: My question for you... Sorry, yeah, so clutter... Your daughter's mother... My partner's mother.
John: Your partner.
John: Is she... What kind of clean...
John: What kind of clean is your daughter?
John: Is she a clean old man?
Merlin: Is she a goer?
Merlin: She's very clean.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, very clean.
Merlin: Well, this is complicated.
John: You don't want stuff on the floor.
John: You want an active working area.
Merlin: Well, okay, so first of all, she's better than me in every way.
Merlin: Let's stipulate that.
Merlin: But, like, we do have a similar – we play similar roles to what you're describing here, which is – so the twist for me is she likes things –
Merlin: tidy, and I like things optimized for efficiency.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And so, again, as listeners to Reconcilable Differences know, in addition to the active working area, I also have a rule of thumb in life, which I should be, if at all possible, I should be able to do almost anything in the physical world, and there should be two factors here, because it's always two things with me, okay?
Merlin: I should be able to do it with one hand, and I shouldn't have to move anything.
Merlin: It's always a factor of two.
Merlin: So when there are always two, only two, always two.
Merlin: Siths, if I need to grab a thing, like I shouldn't need, if it's something, especially if it's like a regular use thing, I shouldn't need to move something and I shouldn't need two hands.
Merlin: So I don't like things where I have to lift plates to get to another plate.
Merlin: Now this again goes back to working in a kitchen.
Merlin: Like you don't keep the spatula in the walk-in.
Merlin: You keep the spatula.
Merlin: No, but what do you do with platters?
Merlin: Where do you put platters?
Merlin: Oh, platters can go in storage.
Merlin: It's not liminal.
Merlin: I think those can move.
Merlin: But like, you know, part of that problem is then like she does like things to be tight.
Merlin: She does like things clean too.
Merlin: But I think she tends to prefer – she goes into kind of a trance.
Merlin: And again, no, no.
Merlin: So the biggest breakthrough of the last year for me is that one reason I think our relationship works –
Merlin: is to acknowledge that when there is friction, it's because she is all about forest and I am all about trees.
Merlin: And when I realized that, everything made so much more sense.
Merlin: At least to me, that makes sense, which is that I have ADHD and anxiety.
Merlin: I'm obsessed with all the little bits and pieces that I think need to be a certain way.
Merlin: And she just walks in and takes care of shit.
Merlin: She just sweeps into a room and it's just clean in minutes.
Merlin: She does the dishes in like three minutes and she doesn't fret about it.
Merlin: And she's great at that, whereas I'm good at being the karma suck and the risk assessor and the person who could say, yeah, but if we pack it this way, da-da-da-da.
Merlin: And I think that's a nice contrast between us, but it does lead to things like when you put a folded up...
Merlin: grocery bag into the grocery bag of grocery bags, could we do it that the flaps always go the same way?
Merlin: Because I should be able to do anything in life with one hand and not moving anything.
Merlin: And think about this.
Merlin: Think about this, John.
Merlin: So you think about the beauty of a grocery bag that contains 10 beautifully folded up grocery bags with the flap going the same way.
Merlin: I could grab any grocery bag in that pile, sight unseen, in the dark,
Merlin: After I come back from peeing in pitch black, I could grab a grocery bag, assuming I needed it, and everything would be fine.
Merlin: And if even one of those is wrong, what happens?
Merlin: You get an explosion of bags.
Merlin: Bags everywhere.
Merlin: And now I'm cleaning up bags.
Merlin: And now I'm shaving a yak at this point.
Merlin: I've locked my car.
Merlin: A car keeps in another car.
Merlin: Bags all the way down.
Merlin: And all it takes is the one moment to go, this is the system.
Merlin: This is how the bag goes.
Merlin: So I think sometimes we have friction on those things, especially because I'm a tinkerer and I'm all about the trees.
Merlin: And that's why a lot of the underfoot clutter is, let's be honest, my HDMI cables and brown Legos.
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: So bad on me.
Merlin: So then what do I do?
Merlin: I put it in a box.
Merlin: I store it.
Merlin: So now, oh, where's the good scissors?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: In a box somewhere because dad freaked out, grabbed a banker's box and cleared off an entire surface.
Merlin: That's an active working area.
Merlin: Don't put that there.
John: Sure, and now the scissors are... Well, it's like my dad's old coffee table, the magic table, where...
John: You start looking at it and it's like, oh, it's last week's Time magazine.
John: Oh, it's a phone bill from six months ago.
John: Oh, it's his passport.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Put this on the list, John.
Merlin: You can't mix those things.
Merlin: Don't mix that.
Merlin: You know, there are people who lost a MacBook Air because they put it in a pile of magazines.
Merlin: When they first put out the MacBook Air, it was so small and so thin that people were like grabbing the pile of papers and not realizing.
Merlin: Well, you know, that starts with not putting your computer in a pile.
John: Yeah, well, I'm still going through bankers' boxes where it's like, oh, look at this.
John: It's a bear bond for $100,000, and it's right next to, you know, three... 35 receipts for paint.
John: Yeah, it's just like, great, Dad.
John: That's wonderful.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Your dad had an interesting sort of sorting algorithm for where value resides.
John: He had zero algorithm.
Merlin: No sort, no algorithm.
John: It was just like...
John: I just wish that I ever found a $100,000 bearer bond.
John: What I find is just insane stuff.
Merlin: You can pack them in ground coffee with your cocaine.
Merlin: And then Eddie Murphy says that's how you're able to get the German bearer bonds.
Merlin: German bearer bonds were a big deal in the 80s.
John: The FBI.
John: I did a thing recently that I think is going to get under your skin a little bit.
John: Not quite as much as a lobster in the ear.
Merlin: Oh, I don't want to hear a lobster.
John: A little lobster in the ear.
John: But I decided at some point in the last year that I was going to transition from...
John: having all of my dishes and bowls and cups be random things that I found at thrift stores.
Mm-hmm.
John: So, you know, over the years, every time I see an interesting bowl somewhere, I buy it.
John: You adopt it.
John: You give it a good home.
John: And so all of my plates, all of my bowls and cups, they're all different from one another.
John: How do they stack?
John: They don't.
John: They stack like crazy.
John: Okay.
John: And so rather than, as I transition to a new home, rather than solve that problem...
John: By getting a set of dishes, I went the other direction.
John: And I said, I'm only going to buy plates and bowls and cups and saucers from local potters.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And you got some rough-hewn plates, right?
Merlin: Didn't you get some rustic plates and whatnot?
John: Rustic plates and bowls that are hand-thrown on spinning wheels and then given some sort of...
John: like lava-dipped glaze, and they're all made by craftspeople that live on Vashon Island that also make their own cheese, and you can buy both at the same farmer's market.
Merlin: Oh, hey, hey, hey, let me guess.
Merlin: It's called the Plate and Cheese Provisionist, and it's got one of those generic Portland logos with an X and some forks.
John: Yes.
John: And the, you know, and the, so you go to the counter and there's a gal and she's like, here are some bowls.
John: And then you take two steps over and there's her husband with the, with the mustache and a, and like a leather apron.
John: Don't throw out the Rhine.
John: That's the best part.
John: And so I was like, I'm in, I'm in, I'm all the way.
John: I'm just, I'm just going to buy local plates from local peoples.
John: But here's the,
John: Anything, to any kind of geometry other than the whimsical nature, the whimsical sense of what a circle is, as understood by these children of the forest.
Merlin: And you knew you were in for this.
Merlin: You knew you were going to stay in Japan, inviting in some wabi-sabi.
Merlin: We're getting beauty derives from the imperfections.
John: This is what it is.
John: Except now...
John: I have, let's say, between six and ten.
John: Because I'm a bowl eater.
John: Yeah, you're a bowlman.
John: I've known that for a while.
John: If you can put it in a bowl, I'll eat it out of a bowl.
Merlin: And you eat it with a spoon like you're in jail?
John: Well, I'll eat the pork out of a bowl.
John: I'll even cut stuff with a knife in a bowl, but I want it, you know, I like my scabetti in a bowl, for instance.
Merlin: I don't want scabetti on a plate.
Merlin: Yeah, you want like a human feed bag.
Merlin: You don't have to be picking chicken off the boat.
Merlin: The thing about it is the sides curve up.
Merlin: I imagine you eating like Fantastic Mr. Fox.
John: The food rolls back down to the bottom.
John: That's the thing.
John: On a plate, you can chase a pea all around all day.
Merlin: I think a bowl affords the gift of gravity.
John: That's right.
John: It goes back to the bottom.
John: That pea is not going to get away.
John: Well, so the problem is now I have six to ten bowls, and I have been through every...
John: every way, and there's really only one way you can stack them.
John: It has to be like bowl number one, then bowl number two, then bowl number three.
John: And if they get off in any way, it's a Jenga, right?
John: It can't support its own weight.
John: And so in total contravention of what you're saying now, everything has to go in either perfectly or
John: Pure chaos, right?
John: It's just bowls everywhere or it's this exact order.
John: I could almost put stickers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in order to – because I figured out like how – which set of circles – which set of ovals –
John: is the one where you're going to be able to actually put these together so that it can support its own weight.
John: And it's making me crazy.
John: Like, that stack of bowls is a mile from me right now, behind a locked door and inside a cupboard.
John: And I'm thinking about it and how they fit together and how I'm going to live.
John: I already had problems with my thrift store plates and bowls.
John: Stacking in a way that felt precarious and felt just like not straight.
Merlin: But you're living with intentionality, maybe too much intentionality.
John: Well, so yes, by using these bowls, I am aspiring to a thing, to an aesthetic thing.
John: that i do not even fully comprehend i don't know what it is to live with these bulls i am choosing the bulls first and then let the lifestyle follow okay all right let the bulls be your guide but what i'm what i'm doing is dragging i do not think that i have
John: And I'm not even on that spectrum, I don't think.
John: I just think that there are certain ways that things should be.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And that if they aren't that way – I mean, I don't – like I have a close friend right now that if she walks into a room and there are – you know, and the tiles on the floor are different colors.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Um, she has to go from one side of the room to the other side of the room in a certain way to account for the different color tile.
John: And she never, she doesn't talk about it.
John: It's not a thing that she presents or that she makes an issue.
John: I have just learned over time, like, wait a minute, you may, that's an interesting way to walk across this room.
John: And she's like, well, I just had to, you know, because these colored tiles, I just had to get from here to there by making sure that I stepped on every, and I was like, Oh, interesting.
John: And then I realized, Oh, that explains so much, you know, like,
John: Why she has to touch the doorknob 30 times.
John: Yeah.
John: But I'm not like that, but I am fighting something.
John: It's the same thing.
John: Never take the same route across town twice or never order the same thing on the Mexican food menu, even though there's only five ingredients.
John: Now I've got these bowls.
John: And who am I?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: It's a tough trade-off.
Merlin: I mean, there are certain things like, it seems to me that if we're trying to abstract some of your self-loathing, I think part of it is that you believe in, well, you don't believe in taking the easy way or in always finding the easiest way.
Merlin: I don't know if it's always that you want the most difficult way, but I think you appreciate that.
Merlin: for some reason, appreciate that the introduction of friction is what makes one truly alive.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: That's just my guess.
John: Yeah, keep paddling.
John: Keep paddling.
John: And maybe it's because I don't float.
John: Maybe that's what it is.
Merlin: You don't float at all.
John: I don't float.
John: I need to keep paddling.
John: So it's all I know.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: Okay.
Okay.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Now, how, if you know, and if you can say, how does your, how does your, how do the other people in your house feel about the bull situation?
Merlin: Because I could see that being a source of, if you can say, I could see that being a source of some frustration for the person who likes things to be tidy.
Merlin: Because it's kind of a constant state of untidiness in some ways.
Merlin: It is.
John: Just as an example, I introduced the concept into this house that you don't throw away peanut butter jars or jelly jars, jam jars, because peanut butter jars and jam jars are very useful jars.
John: to keep thumbtacks in oh brother oh i keep so many and and also if it's a good box i have a collection of good boxes it's a nice you gotta put your boxes in a box if you have a bunch of uh of apple uh use usb uh wall warts yep you get enough of them put them in a peanut butter jar now it's a collection
John: You got a peanut butter jar, you got a spaghetti sauce jar, you put pens in it.
John: Now it's a pen jar.
John: Why would you throw that out?
John: Why would you throw that out?
John: Well, so I introduced that concept, which had formerly not been, it had never occurred to.
John: anyone here.
John: All those things went immediately into the recycling.
John: And I was like, no, no, no, don't throw out a peanut butter jar.
John: There's so many things you can put in a peanut butter jar.
John: You can put a jam jar in a peanut butter jar.
Merlin: You get a small jar and a big jar and you can have nested.
Merlin: Now when I store my good boxes, I nest them.
John: Of course, you've got to nest them.
John: You don't want to store all that air.
Merlin: It's so satisfying.
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: What's the point?
Merlin: Now you're paying rent for air.
John: You're paying rent for air.
John: Exactly.
John: It's crazy.
John: Who does that?
John: But the problem is, here's what happened.
John: Peanut butter jars, jam jars, of course, they start stacking up, right?
John: At a certain point, you've got enough jam jars to last you a lifetime.
Merlin: Yeah, but it's like a Kanban system.
Merlin: You're going to know.
Merlin: You're going to know when it's too much or not, but you will mostly know.
John: You know those old guys that have a workbench where every single... They have a board and outlines for all their hammers.
Merlin: You know it.
John: And, you know, those were the ones where they would zip the lid of a jam jar up into the underside of a bean.
Merlin: Yeah, you could screw your screws.
Merlin: Screw your screws.
John: Yes, absolutely.
John: I always aspire to be that.
Merlin: Oh, me too.
Merlin: So much.
John: But what happened around here is that the jam jars and the peanut butter jars went into the cupboard with the drinking glasses.
John: Hmm.
John: And no one...
John: except me sits and spends an hour getting the last bit of adhesive glue and ripped the label off of the things.
John: So what, and this is the difference between need and clean.
John: So the jars go into the dishwasher and,
John: And then right into the cupboard with their shredded labels and glue still kind of on them, like tattered curtains in the wind.
John: And then they have filled up an entire shelf of the cupboard.
John: And at some point I said, is anybody drinking out of these jam jars?
John: Like, is anybody using these as cups?
John: Why are we keeping all these?
John: And, you know, and the answer was, well, you said to keep the peanut butter jars.
John: And I was like, well, keep them like, but in the basement as a, these are tools.
Merlin: Oh, you say you go, so now we've got active working area.
Merlin: We've got liminal areas.
Merlin: We've got storage areas.
Merlin: And you're, I think, implying a sort of deeper storage.
Merlin: It's not, so there's a kind of storage that goes alongside the active working area.
Merlin: And that's a little bit of what the French call mise en place.
Merlin: Like we're getting ready.
Merlin: You're getting your workstation ready.
John: right so you could go down the root cellar is what you're saying root cellar what happens is all of a sudden you know you got one rusty nail that's not worth a jar you got three rusty nails not worth a jar you should probably throw them away but if you have 16 rusty nails you got to keep those and you go john i have i have a jar i have a jar here at my office of metal things i found on the street
John: There it is.
John: Right?
John: But I know where it goes.
John: I know exactly where it goes.
John: No, you find a metal thing and you're like, right, it goes in the jar.
Merlin: Now you know.
Merlin: There's the equivalent of a hammer shape, you know, like when somebody dies and they trace it with the white stuff, like for the police to know where the person died.
Merlin: Same deal here.
Merlin: I know where it goes.
Merlin: It's just that it's all little bits of dirty metal.
John: Dirty metal.
John: Little bits of dirty metal.
John: Well, in this case, I have started...
John: drinking out of jam jars just because they're up there and somebody's got to do it because they're going to waste as it is.
John: They're going to waste.
John: I mean, I suppose I could take a box up and fill the box up and take them downstairs, but I feel like they're in the cupboard.
John: Now somebody has to do it.
John: Somebody has to take one for the team and start drinking water out of these jam jars.
John: And it's not as good.
Merlin: They're not glasses.
Merlin: Well, the problem with drinking out of a screw top is it's very, I find it very unsatisfying to the lower lip experience.
John: Well, yeah, I'm not having an Arnold Palmer at a cracker barrel.