Ep. 428: "Pyramid of Spoons"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Oh, hello, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Merlin.
John: John.
Merlin: You're just John.
Merlin: You're just John, right?
John: Just John?
John: Just John.
John: That's right.
John: No artificial ingredients.
John: No preservatives.
John: No bovines.
John: Oh.
John: Hormones.
John: Oh, really?
John: None at all?
Merlin: None.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Did you ever have concerns about, well, I don't want to call it a diminutive.
Merlin: You're a big guy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Did it ever bother you that you were not a Jonathan?
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: Jonathans are other...
John: They're completely other.
John: And, you know, I don't know a single Jonathan that really prefers to be called John.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: You know, you had a guy in your band called Jonathan.
Merlin: And I think if we put you guys next to each other, I don't think that's going to be a difficult Pepsi challenge for most people.
John: But, you know, Jon Stewart is a Jonathan, not a John.
John: The TV man?
John: Yeah.
John: But I think he...
John: I think he just settled on John, but I bet you.
Merlin: He had to change it at Ellis Island because it was Jonowitz.
John: I bet you if you sat down with him and you got him to stop being funny and you were like, let's get serious now.
John: Start getting real.
John: Let's just get serious for a second.
John: Would you have preferred that your show be late night with Jonathan Stewart?
John: He would say.
John: He would look down at the floor and he would go, yeah, I would have preferred that.
Merlin: If I could say, that sounds English.
Merlin: Jonathan.
Merlin: Jonathan Stewart.
Merlin: Late Night with Jonathan, or whatever it's called.
Merlin: The Daily Show with Jonathan Stewart.
Merlin: Sounds like something on BBC7 or something.
John: Yeah, it does.
John: He sounds like a Grand Prix driver.
Merlin: Oh, Grand Prix.
Merlin: Yeah, you get John's, you get Jonathan's, you get Johnny's, and then I guess there's Jack's.
Merlin: I think I told you this before, but my first pick for the name of our child, even before they do the tests and everything, you're thinking about names, you're making lists.
Merlin: And of the female at birth names, my first pick was very much up my alley.
Merlin: And that was I chose the name that I thought – have I told you this story?
John: I don't think so.
Merlin: Doesn't matter.
Merlin: I –
Merlin: I wanted a name that gave a female name.
Merlin: May your first child be a feminine child.
John: A female child, right?
Merlin: A female child.
Merlin: I wanted to give, if it's a girl, I wanted to give the child the most options.
Merlin: And so my first pick was Elizabeth.
John: Yeah, sure, Elizabeth.
John: That's exactly what I was about to say.
Merlin: Is there a girl name that has more options than Elizabeth?
John: No, because some of them are just made up.
John: You can...
John: You can call a girl anything with the letter I in the middle of two consonants and say that it's a domain of Elizabeth.
John: Right?
John: Whoa.
John: Dip.
John: Dip.
Merlin: This is my daughter Dip.
Merlin: Her name is Dip Pin.
John: Dip Pin Man.
John: And I love her very much.
John: Tit.
John: I mean, I'm sure back in the day.
John: Sick.
Merlin: Pimp.
Merlin: It would be a pretty name for a girl.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: They're all diminutives of Elizabeth.
John: I have a couple of Elizabeths in my family.
Merlin: Well, can I tell you how it got the kibosh?
Merlin: At the moment this happened, it seemed strange.
Merlin: But then I gave it a moment's pause and I ended up agreeing.
Merlin: And listen, no shade, no lemonade.
Merlin: But it was kiboshed by my lady friend, the mother of the titular unnamed child.
Merlin: And she said, no, I got bullied by a Liz.
Merlin: Oh, Liz.
Merlin: I'm not anti-Liz.
Merlin: Some of my best friends are lesbians.
John: Sure, but that's a tough, you know, Liz is a tough, that's a tougher diminutive.
John: Liz.
John: You know, I dated a girl in college whose name was Elizabeth, and she was called Liz by her when she was being a tough girl, but her real name was Bibbit.
John: Bibbit?
John: Bibbit was her Elizabeth diminutive.
John: That's adorable.
John: Bibbit.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh my God.
John: That's such a good name.
John: You know, my cousin is Libby.
John: And we've never called her Elizabeth.
John: No one's ever said the word Elizabeth.
John: Libby's good.
John: Libby's very good.
John: Libby since she was born.
John: But yeah, Bibbit was, you know, she was a preppy girl.
John: She was a redheaded girl.
Merlin: God damn it, John.
Merlin: You and your redheads.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And you could do a double diminutive.
Merlin: She could be Bibby.
Merlin: Bibby.
Merlin: Bibby tit.
Merlin: Bibby tit.
Merlin: That's terrible.
John: The thing about Merlin is that Merle...
Merlin: Which you still call me.
John: I call you Merle.
Merlin: You are one of exactly two people I talk to on a regular basis who still calls me Merle.
John: Who could refuse to call you Merle?
John: There isn't another diminutive of Merlin, is there?
John: Has anyone ever done something different?
John: Merle?
John: No.
Merlin: No, gratefully, no.
Merlin: I mean, if you exclude all the dumb mishearings, you know, because like my wife, Melren, but like, which I finally had to make a shortcut that would correct it for me because I typed Melren so many times.
Merlin: That's a Jerry Lewis name, isn't it?
Merlin: I'm like, Melren, gang it!
Merlin: Melren!
Merlin: Melren!
Merlin: But if you exclude all of the jokey names and if you exclude all – my friend Marco calls having a snap-to-grid name.
Merlin: I have a snap-to-grid name.
Merlin: My wife has a snap-to-grid name.
Merlin: And that means if you're already familiar with someone that has a more popular thing close to your name or if you already – if you know a Madeline, you might say Natalie.
Merlin: Madeline was often called Natalie.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: So Marco gets called like Marcus.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And so then I get Marvin.
Merlin: I mean, who's – I mean – Marvin.
John: I don't know.
John: A lot of people switch the vowel at the end of my daughter's name because if it were a Latin name, there's no way that it would not have –
John: You know, it's a name that has a vowel at the end.
John: Oh, it might have like a ligature.
John: Well, it would suggest that it was a man's name, right?
John: Because of the OA problem.
John: So she gets the A transposed over the O all the time.
John: But she just shrugs it off.
John: It ain't no thing.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: She doesn't care?
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: Or doesn't mind?
John: You would think you would, I mean, of all the things that she, you know, she'll tear you a new one about.
John: That one she's just, whatever.
John: God.
John: Let them have it.
Merlin: I live with such a, I live with two fact checkers.
Merlin: Everything's always getting fact-checked all the time.
Merlin: I know we've talked about this, but I'm going to keep talking about it until it goes away.
Merlin: It's not going to go.
Merlin: I don't portend that happening anytime soon.
Merlin: Does your daughter – wait, you said her name, right?
John: No, you did, but you put the wrong vowel at the end, so it's fine.
John: Let's just let her.
Merlin: I'll add a beepy noise.
Merlin: She'll be fine.
Merlin: Do you – is it a name that needs to be spelled for people?
No.
Merlin: I'm guessing yes.
John: Well, you know what's weird?
John: My daughter has an uncommon enough name, but it's a name that has like six potential spellings and they all sound the same.
John: Like you can keep putting Ws and Es at the end of this name.
John: You can make it practically Welsh.
Merlin: You could have Ws and Ys and OHS and it was still – but it's an OA problem.
Merlin: You're going to get something.
Merlin: But here's the other thing, and I don't mean to go all T.S.
Merlin: Eliot on this with the practical cats, but the thing is names have different –
Merlin: Properties and needs, okay?
Merlin: Canonical example.
Merlin: Like if your name is Melren, don't browbeat the person at Starbucks because they spelled your name Merlin.
Merlin: Like just don't know.
Merlin: You know who it's for.
Merlin: Just get it.
Merlin: No one cares.
John: That goes without saying, though.
Merlin: John, I wish it went without saying.
Merlin: I feel like it needs saying.
Merlin: It's like no one cares.
Merlin: Or like if you're being called for something and there's a name that you mostly recognize.
Merlin: Okay, here's an example.
Merlin: I'm going to do a little scene for you.
Merlin: Don't do this.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: You there.
Merlin: A hotel in a big city.
Merlin: You go, Candy Graham for Mongo.
Merlin: And they go, oh, did you mean Monjo?
John: Monjo.
Merlin: No, I meant some of the other Mongos, Monjos, and Monlos that are in the room.
Merlin: Just get in and wait for the doctor.
Merlin: It's going to be an hour.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: If you know what they meant, and John, this is really a tentpole of living with a fact checker.
Merlin: You know, I like to say things.
Merlin: I'll say things sometimes.
Merlin: I'll say things like, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?
Merlin: That's become a real important thing in my life.
Merlin: Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?
Merlin: And sometimes I'll say things like...
Merlin: Like, if you know what it is that I'm saying or trying to say, we don't need to make this into a whole thing.
Merlin: If you know you're Mongo, even though you're Monjo...
Merlin: Just go.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: See, but people, it's got to be tough because you grew up, we grew up with such different sorts of names.
Merlin: I feel like we've talked about all of this.
Merlin: We grew up with such different, okay, different sorts of names where like I could count on, you know, three or four hands the number of times I've heard someone say my name in public and I'd turn my head.
Merlin: Sure, sure, of course.
Merlin: Did you mean Mongo?
John: It's always at a LARPing event.
Yeah.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: It's Lord Merlin.
John: I asked somebody if they were LARPing the other day, and they didn't know what it was, and I realized that I have lived in such a small, cloistered world for the last...
John: 10 years, that I hadn't met anybody that didn't know what LARPing was.
Merlin: Didn't know what it was.
Merlin: Now, that's me when I look at trending Twitter and hear about divorcing YouTube stars or something where I'm like, I don't even want you to explain this to me.
Merlin: I've gotten to the point now, John, where I don't even let on, that I don't understand because I so dread the explanation of it.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: But we're living in a different place.
Merlin: We're living in a place where we've got a different thing going on.
John: You just got to go to Urban Dictionary.
John: It'll explain it all.
John: And then you get out of there as fast as you can.
John: Go to ICanHasCheeseburger.com.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: Just yesterday, I had a do you want to be happy or do you want to be right moment.
Merlin: Well, I feel like this is something we don't.
Merlin: I mean, we may see eye to eye, but we don't agree on.
Merlin: Who, you and me?
Merlin: Yeah, don't we?
Merlin: Don't we have different thoughts on this?
John: But the problem is that my thoughts are wrong.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: So you don't want to be happy or right?
Merlin: You'd like to be right, but you'll settle for happy?
Merlin: Not really.
John: No, not at all.
John: No.
John: We were at a fancy bakery here in this part of town, and it's a bakery where people line up out front to get super sweet bread and to, at least in my case, get abused by the manager.
John: Are you singled out, if you can say?
John: Well, I asked him to cut my sandwich in three pieces one time because it's a French bread sandwich and I've got this broken tooth.
John: And I was like, I can't really bite into a French bread sandwich unless it's in a smaller piece.
John: Can you cut it in three pieces?
John: And the woman behind the counter was like, sure, of course.
John: And she went to cut it.
John: And then her manager...
John: came swooping in and said, we're not allowed to cut the sandwiches.
John: What?
John: And I said, well, you make them here and you've cut them once and
Merlin: They're not allowed to cut them at all, or they're not allowed to do a bespoke cut?
John: Okay.
John: They're cut in half already.
John: And I was like, you know, you've cut them in half.
John: It's really normative.
John: I'm just asking you, can you cut them in half again?
John: Just cut the halves in half.
John: And she was like, sorry, we're not allowed to, company policy.
John: And I was like, can you hand me the knife and let me do it?
John: And she said, we can't allow customers to touch the knives.
John: Hmm.
John: And it was one of those moments where I was like, well, I'm not going to patronize your establishment.
John: And then I left with no sandwich.
John: And I was – ultimately, I was the one that suffered.
John: She didn't suffer.
John: She was enforcing the rules that she made up.
John: So we went there the other day as a family.
John: I could not – this is yesterday.
John: I couldn't – I wasn't going to go in.
John: I'm like, you know, if you guys come out with a sandwich –
John: then I can pretend that it came from somewhere else and I don't have to violate my, I don't patronize this business.
John: Right.
John: With your dignity intact.
John: That's right.
John: And so, but there's a line, you know, there's still a COVID line out front because they're only letting four people in at a time.
John: And so a big line of light of Seattle lights out front in the rain with their masks on.
John: I'm,
John: I'm well away.
John: You know, I'm overlooking at model trains in the front window of some shop.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But what apparently happens is some guy in a leather.
John: This is how it was described to me.
John: A leather vest.
John: Wearing a T-shirt that said, I do not comply.
John: And with no mask.
John: Walked past the line of 10 people out front of the store.
John: Opened the door.
John: Went in.
John: And went up to the register and was about to order.
John: Okay.
John: And someone in the line said, that guy just cut in front of everybody.
John: And my sister was in the line.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: He didn't see that coming.
John: And she didn't notice.
John: Make way.
John: Here comes the fixer.
John: She didn't notice because she was talking to our child Mongo.
Yeah.
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John: And she looked up and saw, looked in and saw this guy and looked over at the people in the line.
John: She was toward the front of the line, but she had missed it.
John: And she said, oh.
John: And she said to the woman who had said, you know, who called it out, that guy just cut in front of everyone.
John: She said, do you want me to handle it?
John: And the woman said, I'm normally really good at these things.
Merlin: It's like asking you to identify, do you want to identify this Les Paul?
John: And she said, try and stop me.
John: She said, oh, oh, I'll do it.
John: And so she, she went in, you know, into the store, ding, ding.
John: And walked up.
John: And the thing is that the staff of the bakery, there are like eight people back there.
John: Every one of them saw this guy in the I Do Not Comply t-shirt.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And none of them knew what to do.
John: You know, it's Seattle.
John: And there were altogether probably 30 people who were just paralyzed.
Merlin: A lot of them probably came in from Bellingham, you think?
John: Well, or they were born there.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And it's raining outside.
John: It's very Seattle.
John: Very Seattle scene.
John: And the audacity of him and the kind of just like gross, bullying vibe.
John: He was just about to order his croissant.
John: I mean, why is he even here?
John: Am I right?
John: It's all so performative.
John: And so my sister walks up and...
John: So I'm hearing this again secondhand, but I've been in this situation a thousand times and I can picture the scene just like I was there.
John: And she said, hi, excuse me, but perhaps you didn't notice that there's a line.
John: And he looked over at her and said, no, I didn't notice.
John: And she was like, well, it is a self-evident line.
John: And he looks and everyone in the place is looking at him, including the four people that are allowed to be in the store that are also in a line.
John: And he said, well, how was I supposed to know?
John: And she said, well, here, why don't you come with me outside and I'll show you everyone else who's waiting outside.
John: And he said, well, I'm in here now.
John: And she was like, yes, but you are at the end of the line.
John: And somehow she with this firm politeness moved him out the back out the door.
John: She opens the door and here's this line of people.
John: And she's like, here is the line.
John: And he said, well, how was I supposed to know this?
John: And she was like, as you can see,
John: It is obviously a line.
Merlin: And it's a self-evident line.
Merlin: And now you do know there's a line.
Merlin: You're misapprehension.
Merlin: So you're familiar with sandwiches.
Merlin: You're not familiar with lines.
Merlin: You've been around here long enough to obtain a leather vest.
Merlin: And now you just don't see lines?
John: Is it a Westworld thing?
John: No, here's the thing.
John: So she's got him out of the store.
John: But he wants to argue with her now.
John: And he said, well, I thought these people were just waiting for their ordinary number to be called or whatever.
John: And then – and as I'm hearing this story, I'm doing the thing that I always do in these situations, which is marking what she did against what I would have done.
John: And what she did in that moment – because already she has done four things that I wouldn't have done, including like the first line to the guy.
John: Because I would have walked up to him and said, hey, buddy.
John: and it would have already been over.
Merlin: Well, even before that, though, I mean, just because of her nature, and there's a rich history of what Susan can do with somebody who needs to be set straight.
Merlin: But like, I'll speak for myself, I am not the kind of person that would approach somebody at a sandwich place and say, do you want me to deal with this?
John: Because I'll deal with this.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I mean, I just would have stormed right in, but I would have started a fight with him immediately.
John: But at this point, he says to her, you know, something like,
John: Something about how he thought that all these people – it didn't appear to be a line to him, this line.
John: And then she says, well, now you know.
John: And then it was over.
Merlin: Over how?
Merlin: She thought she was done with this transaction, or did he change his behavior?
John: Oh, well, when he started to tell her all the ways in which it wasn't obvious that he...
John: The fact that he had skipped the line wasn't his fault or something.
John: You know, he wanted to prolong.
John: He was out of the store.
John: He was in the line now.
John: There was no going back.
John: It's not like he was going to fight her and win.
Merlin: I mean, this is chapter one on dealing with a bully.
Merlin: If you got it in you, is that like a man in a leather vest with a confrontational T-shirt is, I mean, you don't get that kind of look and comportment unless you've got some kind of Napoleon problem with something to prove.
Merlin: Or you are actively sort of sociopathic and looking to actually cause some havoc.
Merlin: But most of those folks, like most bullies, will back down.
Merlin: And here's this fairly slight woman who used to ski.
Merlin: And she's going to read you the riot act in a polite way.
Merlin: And at that point, though, it sounds like probably the barometric pressure has changed.
John: The difference in that moment when he said to her, I, you know...
John: I thought that this was a line of people with their numbers waiting for, you know, he's like stretching to find a reason, I think, to keep the conversation going.
John: I think to continue to be the star of the show, you know, that already by that point, I would have been in a shouting match with the guy.
John: And Susan has just managed to get him out of the store, de-escalated.
John: And then at the end, she, you know, she does a like and scene.
John: Because because she does not at that moment need to be right.
John: She said, well, I've told you, you know, I've told you there is I've I've showed you there is a line.
John: And so the end.
John: Like whether or not you thought there was a line or whether or not it looks like a line.
Merlin: That's a non sequitur.
Merlin: It would be like taking a shit on somebody's coffee table and going like, how am I supposed to know that's not a toilet?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's like you're – and he's not even doing that like I'm going to defeat you with logic thing.
Merlin: He just thought he was going to go in and be cock of the sandwich walk.
John: He just wanted to fight and she didn't and I would have.
John: It would have been important enough in that moment for me to be right that I wouldn't have been happy.
John: It wouldn't have occurred to me to be happy.
John: I would have needed not for this guy to get in line even.
John: At that point, my mission would have been to straighten this guy out and straighten out the world.
John: and make it so that this guy never, ever, ever made this error again and feared lines for the rest of his life.
John: And so my day would have been ruined.
Merlin: You make an example of him.
John: I would have made an example of him.
John: And everybody in the restaurant would have had a worse time.
John: And in the end, I think what happens to me so often is that in deciding that I'm going to discipline this guy,
John: By the end of the encounter, everybody in the restaurant is like, well, both guys were wrong.
John: Right.
John: You know, that thing that happens where you're like, well, what do you mean both guys are wrong?
John: He's the one that cut in line.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: But you escalated it.
Merlin: I used to say this.
Merlin: I still think it's true.
Merlin: Well, I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, everything's changed so much.
Merlin: But I used to say, like, when you argue with people on the Internet in particular, people don't remember who won or lost the argument.
Merlin: They just remember these two idiots who are arguing on the Internet.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You end up tarring yourself, you know, sort of with your own brush.
John: And that's me.
John: And it's only in situations like this where it's so clear that I would have – and it's always because I'm so amazed that Susan can do what she does.
John: And, of course, everybody in the line was amazed.
John: They were all like, wow, okay, thanks.
John: And as Susan was retelling it, she was like, I brought the guy out.
John: I showed him this line.
Yeah.
John: and she said i expected at least one person in the line to go yeah hi buddy there's i'm in the line or whatever and she said they just stared at him everyone like all however many people were in the line just stared at him with these like big moon eyes but beneath their masks she was like i did you know no one like no one really backed me up but the effect of of walking out the door to all these people just just completely giving him the hairy eyeball it was really like
John: She said it was weird.
John: It was weird and heavy.
John: And so, hmm.
John: But, you know, but in trying to reflect on my own.
Merlin: So what you're saying is if you had done your, not default, but like your MO, like say you're just in the wrong state of mind, you're having a certain kind of day,
Merlin: And like, you know, that presents itself.
Merlin: Now, if you were on the way to your wedding or, you know, trying to get somebody to the hospital, you might think about that differently.
Merlin: But I'm just saying, like, we all behave differently depending on our state of mind and all these different things that are very difficult to, you know, quantify.
Merlin: But you feel like if you'd been in that situation, it might have gotten more strictly confrontational.
Merlin: And then and so you would have been right, but not happy.
Merlin: And you would have shared that with everybody else there.
John: Well, the options to me, like if I'm in a good mood, a situation like that, I would say, I mean, you know, the only other option it seems like to me is to say, well, whatever, that guy's an asshole.
John: I'm not going to make a big deal out of it.
John: And to just sort of passively join the Seattle crowd and
John: And let the guy go to the front.
John: I mean, even the, even my choice of the word let, but like, you know, the guy goes to the front of the line and I'm just one of the 25 people that doesn't do anything about it.
John: And I would say, well, it's the restaurant's responsibility and nobody in the restaurant has the guts to do it.
John: And, you know, and that's the problem with bullies that they, they just, they take advantage of the fact that everyone else is polite and obeying the norm and,
John: And that's the problem with the United States or whatever.
John: And if I were in a good mood or in a non-confrontational mood, I would go that route.
John: But that route leaves you with a shitty taste in your mouth.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: It's like, what are you, Neville Chamberlain?
John: Yeah, I wish I had done something.
John: I know.
John: Somebody should have said something.
John: It should have been me.
John: I should have said something.
John: But I don't have this third mode.
John: which is firm but polite, which is going in and solving the problem, but at the same time not being personally – not feeling like I need to win, but just –
John: I don't – and honestly, I mean I'll go to my grave not understanding it because when my sister gets in confrontations with me, she has to be right.
John: She takes me to the carpet.
John: It's not like it's not in her.
John: Yeah.
John: Like our whole road rage podcast is about her on the highway basically living like the road warrior.
John: No, because Mel Gibson's just trying to get a tank of gas and get down the road.
John: He's not even in a confrontation.
John: It's like living like Humongous.
John: She's the freaking Humongous.
John: She's got five bullets in a box, and all she wants is the oil.
Merlin: Humongous is different from Toe Cutter, right?
Merlin: They're different.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Humongous has got the wrestling mask on.
John: Oh, okay.
John: Got it.
John: Give us the oil.
John: You can go free.
Merlin: But it's, you know, it's also kind of a matter of, and this is not a reflection of you, it's just, I think we're all how we are based on what we've trained for, or how we've habituated ourselves.
Merlin: And, you know, the same way that one might assume you're going to win, you know,
Merlin: a kung fu match in an alley, even though you've never trained, you've never been in the dojo.
Merlin: It's like, well, that's, you know, one day you might discover how that goes and it's not going to be great.
Merlin: Whereas Susan has this background practice and habituation of being the sort of person who can handle that.
Merlin: And just in passing, I want to note, and I think it's implicit in what you're saying, I think the way she, at least the description you've given here, is that she gave the guy a dignified way out.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It didn't have to be.
Merlin: Well, I'm not saying that I don't know how much impact that had on this ding-a-ling, but like when, you know, one thing with our current discourse is like, I'm sorry, that's a dumb thing to say, but the way that most arguments either become instantly, they go to 11, or we just say something passive-aggressive.
Merlin: And it's confrontational in a way where it's going to be difficult to find a way out.
Merlin: And let me just be clear here.
Merlin: It's possible to be very condescending or passive-aggressive doing something similar to what she did, which for me is like in a movie theater, I say to somebody who's talking real loud, oh, am I bothering you?
Merlin: Like, that's not going to help anything.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: But like the way of saying like, hey, you know, there is a line here and I bet she's looking the guy right in the eyes.
Merlin: I'll bet.
Merlin: Oh, she certainly is.
Merlin: So she's got she's in his space psychically, if not totally physically.
Merlin: And that can be extremely disarming, especially if you're if you're kind of loaded for bear for this one kind of like I'm a guy in a leather vest situation.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I think there's a lot to admire about what she did, the way she handled it.
John: Well, that's the thing, right?
John: I think he went into that situation ready for somebody to confront him, hoping that somebody would so that he could, because he thought it was going to be about the mask.
John: He brought a knife to a Susan fight.
John: He was going to get to yell at somebody about how COVID blah, blah, blah.
John: And he just made the mistake of cutting in line.
John: And so he didn't get his COVID fight.
John: Uh, he got, you know, he got his polite ushering, you know, he, he got his, his, uh, his animal house ushered back to the couch.
John: But yeah, I, I cannot, when I think about, do I want to, Oh, and so as we're walking back into my house, my daughter and I are walking in and I, uh, having heard this story, you know, we're all carrying French bread at this point.
John: We're going back into my house to have a breakfast.
Mm-hmm.
John: And, you know, and I'm just sort of marveling at Susan and Susan says, well, you know, do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: She said something like that?
Merlin: Really?
John: She said exactly that.
John: No kidding.
John: And I said, as a way of kind of wrapping up how she, what she did at the thing.
John: And I said, well, unfortunately, I want to be right.
John: So much more than I want.
John: I don't even know how to be happy.
John: Um, and why, what does that even mean?
John: Right is what I want.
John: And my daughter, as we're walking in the door, leans over to me and goes, I also want to be right.
John: I don't care about being happy.
John: Uh huh.
John: And, and so knowing that about oneself does not appear to be sufficient to, you know, it's like, it's like any one of these mantras where it's like, well, do you want to be happier?
John: Do you want to be right?
Um,
John: If you say, well, I want to be right, there's no second mantra, right?
John: The saying appears to be self-evident.
Merlin: And all it takes is to say it.
Merlin: You could draw the conclusion, in a facile way at least, that being right implies that being right does make you happy.
Merlin: But, I mean, as we learned from the great Larry David, that's not always the case.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: And happy for a lot of people, I think, is more just like, look, I mean, whether that's the employees there or the people in line, I mean, the employees there, are they going to go head-to-head with leather vest over this for $15 an hour?
Merlin: And, you know, I mean, that's my happy.
Merlin: My happy in that case is like,
Merlin: I, I am the same way that I used to drive like a maniac because I didn't have reasons not to yet.
Merlin: I, there are cases now where I'm like, you know, I don't want my obit to be like fell and hit his head after altercation with leather vest guy, especially if I like fell down and like hit my head on a water fountain or something, you know, like something embarrassing.
John: Well, I,
John: I feel like it's not – first of all, where was the manager that wouldn't cut my sandwich in half?
Merlin: We're not even getting to that yet.
Merlin: We need to talk about that.
John: Also, I did just think of your friend, Eric.
John: She's got the knives too.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Nobody can touch them but them, yeah.
John: The thing is that you're right that being right – the implication is that being right is what's going to make you happy.
John: But I have never thought that.
John: I've always felt it as a – that I have a duty, a duty and a responsibility to be right.
John: You know, that I'm not trying to be right because then I can sit back and, you know –
John: and cuck and, you know, quack and quack or whatever it is that people do.
Merlin: You're talking about swagger?
John: Confidence?
Merlin: Confidence in your POV, that does not always, I'll say for myself, confidence in your POV or your values or however you want to put it, does not always ensure confidence in how you execute on that feeling.
John: There you go.
John: Now that is, that's getting very close to it, right?
John: Like confidence in your POV is,
John: is one thing, but the path from where we are now to there, to a place where that point of view is actualized and everyone is happy and the world is running smoothly, that's the part along the way that I always feel like I stub my toe or get deep into the bushes and look around and go, I had a great point of view from standing up there, but now I'm down here in a bakery with a guy in a leather vest,
John: And I don't know what the next move is.
John: And does that, does that feel frustrating?
John: Well, it's the, it's one of the central frustrations of my, of living in the world.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, and, and, and I think it's the, it feels, it, it feels right now that it's, that it's an epidemic of like, there are a lot of points of view,
John: And there's the world.
John: And no one seems to be able to get their point of view – seems to be able to peacefully transfer what seems to be a very self-explanatory point of view to the actual world and where everyone agrees and we're all behaving accordingly.
John: And you can't live in a world where there are 50 different complete systems of –
John: management.
John: You can't live in that world either.
John: And I always think of myself as kind of a little outside my time, but I'm realizing that I'm not outside my time.
John: I'm just as the UFOs would look at this time and say, nope, that's you.
John: And in the great arc of time, nobody looks back at 1547 and thinks, well, but there was that one guy that really
John: You know, I was thinking outside the box.
Merlin: Talking about Thorg the Avenger.
John: Yeah, Thorg the Avenger.
John: You know, no, I'm a product of my time.
John: If I grab Thar's hammer, he shall be avenged.
John: But ultimately, the narcissism of petty differences, as you're fond of saying.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: I think the question is, what's your point of view?
John: And that's what we all are wondering.
John: We're all haggling over our different points of view, but that isn't really it.
John: We all have a point of view.
John: The problem is where the rubber meets the road.
John: And that's the point at which all of our points of view collapse to one.
John: They're all more or less the same.
John: It's the – it's integration that is the – Yes.
Merlin: Integration in the sense of, like, how do we integrate this into our lives?
Merlin: But there's also, like – I mean, there's just a million ways that I'm so not like any of this where, like, I'm just always like, ugh.
Merlin: And then I'll think about it and I'll feel bad later.
Merlin: But, like, it's also that –
Merlin: Regardless of our certainty about that, how we want to roll, what we want to do, I do feel like it's – and maybe this is my problem.
Merlin: I wish I had that diamond, that hard diamond-like ability to go, in this moment, I always know exactly what to do.
Merlin: But do I want that?
Merlin: Because I wouldn't even recognize myself if I could do that, I don't think, if I'm being honest.
Merlin: But it's also that, like, well, what is it –
Merlin: What is it you're trying to accomplish here?
Merlin: And, I mean, I guess we could look at this several different ways.
Merlin: One way is, like, what that guy's trying to accomplish is exactly what he got up until, you know, Susan A.D., which is, like, I want everybody here to think, yeah, fine, you can think I'm an asshole.
Merlin: Like, I know I'm an asshole.
Merlin: I'm a tough guy.
Merlin: And, like, nobody's going to hassle me about this.
Merlin: And I will get to go and perform this version of myself that thought a leather vest would be flattering and intimidating.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So in his case, it's like, is he really that pressed for time?
Merlin: Does he need to go deliver a baby?
Merlin: Or is it just that he just likes being that particular asshole?
Merlin: But then anybody who would step to him to say whatever, including what Susan said.
Merlin: I would be so wound up in, okay, first of all, how would I do that?
Merlin: How would I do that?
Merlin: Because as you know from my T-shirt you designed for me the day we met, I'm driven by fear, right?
Merlin: It's probably yellow, non-flattering.
Merlin: Like my yellow Tango shirt broke my heart.
Merlin: But like in this case, you know, what is it I'm trying to accomplish here?
Merlin: What is this, to quote Glengarry Glen Ross, what is this in service of?
Merlin: Like when I do this, the world will be better how?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And that is the kind of thing that winds me up a million different ways because I'm a huge overthinker.
John: Well, I think what I'm realizing is that the guy in the I Will Not Comply t-shirt
John: also thinks he's right and wants to be right and is putting himself with far more bravery than i would like going out into seattle trying to strike up a confrontation with people where he knows he's a fish out of water because he's that confident that he's right it would be like he's like the toughest guy in the line for the ballet yeah it would be but but in a way it would be like me going to
John: uh you know to some small red state town with a mask and a shield on right and a and a t-shirt that says trans rights now and and going to you know a monster truck rally or whatever and standing in the middle with you know with both my fists up and although susan absolutely has a point of view that she believes is is right in that one situation
John: All she wanted was peace in the valley.
John: And somehow she knows how.
John: And so what she was doing was actually trying to what what she was doing was civilization building.
John: Wow.
John: You know, she was just enforcing base norms like she was not trying to say.
John: anything about being right, she was saying, here are some norms.
John: And she didn't make it about him, per se.
John: Right.
John: Or her.
John: It wasn't about her.
John: Yeah, good point.
John: It's true.
John: Those are the things that, you know, like, as a Democrat, as somebody who wants there to be civilization, as somebody who thinks that, you know, that we should wear shoes on airplanes, I somehow make that into... I'm more comfortable like that.
John: I somehow always turn it into a confrontation between me and that person, between justice and injustice, instead of finding that path to just –
John: To saying – because the thing is with somebody with his shoes on the airplane, you can't tell them anything, right?
John: I'll get letters from just saying it on this.
John: You have.
Merlin: You've gotten letters about this.
John: I get letters every time.
Merlin: Every time about people that want to – Because it's so easy to change the subject and like, again, to make the third slightly arch or not Seinfeld reference, you know, we're living in a society.
Merlin: But, like, in that case, that person could turn that around and say, like, oh, you know, actually, it doesn't matter.
Merlin: This doesn't affect anybody.
Merlin: You're the problem because you're the one who's bothered by it who then wants to make it into a federal case.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: And now we're arguing about John.
John: Now we're arguing about John.
John: That's right.
John: And now it's me.
John: Now it's, you know, and then –
John: When somebody in the line is like, okay, whatever, and they turn on me, then I'm like, what are you talking about?
John: We got to fight this guy in the leather vest.
John: Then everyone will have a leather vest on.
John: And then I'm the freaking guy.
John: The thin leather line.
John: I'm just standing up on an airplane throwing yogurt.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Go Eagles.
Merlin: Amen.
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John: And then I come home, I feel worse than if I had sat there and watched the guy and just choked on my...
John: On my own indignation.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: So the third path for me right now has been increasingly to not go into French bakeries.
John: Okay.
John: But I honestly don't know – like I'm living right now in a period of real avoidance.
John: Like I'm – if I'm reading a magazine article and someone in the magazine article –
John: starts to go there, wherever there is, I put the magazine down.
John: Oh, sing it, sister.
Merlin: I feel exactly the same way.
Merlin: Sometimes I'll be just in terms of reading things.
Merlin: This is even setting aside my whole like, whoa, really minimizing my amount of online media interaction, which is so important that you all try to do that.
Merlin: Because when I dip back in, I get extremely sad, extremely fast.
Merlin: I go, nope, close the tab.
Merlin: But like reading something, sometimes I'll be drawn in by something that seems like a pretty smart headline, which is increasingly rare these days.
Merlin: And I'll get in there and I'll be partway into the paragraph.
Merlin: And it might be because it's poorly written or poorly edited.
Merlin: But it's also that I already can feel where this is that kind of piece.
Merlin: And this is without regard to any kind of a position or politics or whatever, but this is going to be more of that – forgive my saying – that same sort of bullshit, that same kind of like grinding position paper that –
Merlin: represents so much of our interaction with each other nowadays, which is not to say that you can live a life without, you know, friction with other people.
Merlin: But it's also like, how, how much of your food pyramid do you want to be people who you've permitted to needle you into being mad about something?
Merlin: I'm sorry, I'm changing the topic.
Merlin: But I feel like that's part of it.
Merlin: Especially since I've tried to start tapering off a lot of... You can't even talk about this, John.
Merlin: I can't watch as much news.
Merlin: It's not that I can't deal with it, but in a way that I've known for 10 years, well, what are you going to do now?
Merlin: What are you going to do differently?
Merlin: And it just does feel like there's so many people pumping quarters into the outrage machine.
Merlin: And I just want to be crazy clear here.
Merlin: And that could be about a lot of different things.
Merlin: It's just that I'm philosophically opposed to making that a lot of the spoons that build my particular pyramid.
Merlin: It's not wholesome.
Merlin: It's not nutritional.
Merlin: It's ugly.
Merlin: And...
Merlin: I don't, there's not a lot of action items for me in being provoked into feeling strongly about something because that's somebody else's job today is to make me provoked.
John: Is that related at all to what you started saying?
John: I don't think it's changing the topic at all.
John: I think you're right on it.
John: Like my pyramid of spoons is... You know, a lot of that, that's big bread, you know?
Merlin: That's why we're eating so many bread or big vegetables.
Merlin: There's always one you'd eat vegetables.
Merlin: But it's really true.
John: It's very easy for me to go scan through – because I just subscribed again to The New Yorker.
John: I hadn't had a subscription to The New Yorker in five years.
John: It had started to just be paper stacked up because I was looking –
John: I was doing all my reading online.
Merlin: They just keep sending it to you.
Merlin: They don't check in to see if you've read the one before this one even.
Merlin: They just keep coming in like, oh, we got the one.
Merlin: It's got the cover.
Merlin: It's got the, oh, and it's so cool because the person's putting somebody's jacket on a hanger and hanging in the closet.
Merlin: And the closet's full of stuff they bought during COVID.
Merlin: And it's like, oh, man, that's really good.
Merlin: That's very wise.
Merlin: But then I can't even get past talk of the town.
Merlin: Not because I'm mad.
Merlin: There could always be some Gia Tolentino waiting for me in there.
Merlin: But it's just like now I feel shame.
Merlin: I feel shame.
John: But you don't take enough baths, and I think that that's generally true.
John: You don't take enough baths.
John: That's why they make a New Yorker in Chile.
John: That's why they make baths.
John: Multiple beverages?
John: I need a desk, John.
John: I need an affordance.
John: I don't have a desk right now.
John: Oh, that's a shame.
John: The desk is in storage.
John: Okay.
John: Oh, damn.
John: But what you're saying, and the—
John: And, you know, it's very easy at least to go through, to scan and say, okay, right now I'm not going to read any article that tries to provoke me in the headline.
John: And I'm not going to read any article that tries to provoke me in the first sentence.
John: Because I just, as you're saying, my spoon pyramid, I just don't need it, you know?
John: And it is absolutely related to like this third path, which is
John: I feel like now I've had enough times in this French bakery where some kind of confrontation has happened, either between me and a woman that won't cut my sandwich or a guy in a leather vest that won't comply.
John: Oh, I'm just never going to go to this bakery.
John: I get it.
John: This is not a place of honor.
John: I get it.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: The sweet bread or whatever, I can go get regular bread and fucking pour sugar on it before I need to even tempt fate by going to this place.
John: But the problem is that, like the rest of the culture, I'm halfway into an article about a cat on a skateboard.
John: And I'm like, wow, this cat on a skateboard, it's so amazing.
Merlin: Did you see the monkey that takes the ends, like does the green beans?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: It's this monkey.
Merlin: It's not a chimp.
Merlin: It's a monkey.
Merlin: It's like one of those, like a white-faced monkey.
Merlin: And he just sits there and diligently clips the ends off the green beans.
John: You've seen the monkey mom that sits and methodically takes all the strings off of the banana, even the little tiny strings.
John: And the baby is in her arms, and she's just like, patience, patience.
John: We need every last.
Merlin: Because I know if I hand this to you and there's a string, I'm just going to have to do this all over again.
John: And then she eats it.
John: She's not even doing it for the baby.
John: Oh, twist.
John: It's a monkey twist.
John: I was like, that monkey.
John: That's my monkey right there.
Merlin: I find so much consolation in animals now.
Merlin: It's not who I wanted to be, but it's like Donald Rumsfeld said.
Merlin: You look for the Japanese recently manicured.
Merlin: Look for the helpers.
Merlin: That's what he said.
John: Donald Rumsfeld's neighborhood.
John: But I don't know.
John: It is so not my way that I ever thought I would be to be living in a world where
John: I mean, there were always bakeries that I wouldn't go in.
John: Sure, sure.
Merlin: Metaphorical bakeries and real bakeries.
John: But to be in a situation – and part of it, I guess, is that there's so much media now that you can still read 10 hours a day and also never read anything –
Merlin: Because all the time you were reading, there's new stuff out now that you're supposed to read.
John: And in the old days, there was only so much to read.
John: There was the newspaper, there was the other newspaper.
John: There were the three magazines, and then there was the news.
John: And so if you were reading, you had to read it.
Merlin: You could read Golf Digest, Cigar Aficionado, Dirty Diaper Man, like all the kinds of things that you'd have at the newsstand.
John: You're exactly right.
John: Those were the three...
John: other directions i could have gone well you know what i mean it's like i don't know it's like guitar for the practicing musician versus guitar player you know that kind of thing those kinds of rivalries but what am i supposed to do now i know i know but the thing is weirdly weirdly veering like veering and actually it's not i'm not slamming a door shut i'm like it's i'm like opening closet doors
John: Peering in and going, nope, and nope, and noping.
John: I'm just noping everywhere I go.
John: And the noping is – You can feel what the vibe is.
Merlin: The noping is way better than I thought it would be.
Merlin: Oh, shit, dog.
Merlin: I totally agree.
Merlin: And the thing is, and the beautiful part of it is, I mean, I keep thinking of this cartoon.
Merlin: I was talking about this with Alex on Dubai Friday, but there's this one pretty famous cartoon of, do you ever seen the one, the cartoon, I think his name's Moors, I want to say, but the guy does the cartoon where it's like, you know, the guy who keeps popping up to say, oh, interesting, but you think this about that.
Merlin: And the guy who's like, this is like the peasant who says like, I think society should be slightly improved.
Merlin: And a guy pops out of the well and goes, interesting.
Merlin: And yet you still participate.
Merlin: in society right that guy and that's because that's everybody now but but like the reason i mentioned that here is like i even as i you can hear me struggling with this because not only did things like news and social media and all those kinds of things which there used to be much fewer of used to be a source of joy in my life that i regret not having anymore in some ways i you know i still but like talking about the way we talk is
Merlin: is something that's become anathema.
Merlin: And what I have difficulty saying to people without sounding like a scold is to say, like, I think if we really interrogate what's going on in a lot of stuff in life right now...
Merlin: I'm not sure becoming more blindingly emotional about something is the path forward for anybody.
Merlin: And I just want to be I know y'all are going to guess what I'm talking about, but I'm talking about fucking everybody.
Merlin: And it's not even a both sides.
Merlin: It's in all sides.
Merlin: You know, this is part of what made alignment in D&D such an interesting idea.
Merlin: It's not just that you're good or that you're evil or neutral.
Merlin: It's also like, what is your attitude toward, in that case, you know, law or society or stuff like that?
Merlin: But like, what if alignment becomes meaningless because there are so many axes about all these things?
Merlin: But here's what I know when I open that door, when I open that magazine, or I get to hear about quote-unquote Trump's big lie one more time, is like I peer in that door and I say – and I have just the tiniest little nanosecond of mindfulness.
Merlin: And I catch it and I go, oh, this is one of those things where –
Merlin: a strong emotion is being provoked one way or another.
Merlin: You call it clickbait, call it whatever you want, but you're trying to provoke a very strong emotion.
Merlin: And what I've learned at long last is the provocation of emotion is not as fulfilling as it feels.
Merlin: And I can't talk about it because I sound like a scold, but now, and this is why I say, this is interesting.
Merlin: It's like, I fight myself on this because it's like, yeah, but I thought you liked Twitter or whatever, right?
Merlin: I thought you liked, you know, pussy hats.
John: Your name is right there on the masthead of Twitter.
Merlin: I was one of the OGs.
Merlin: Should have been.
Merlin: Should have been.
Merlin: But why do I say that here?
Merlin: Because I think something that sounds like we're both feeling is it's not the nope of I don't care about this topic.
Merlin: It's the nope of I've got all the information here.
Merlin: mostly up to date that I need to do my day today.
Merlin: And I've even got a fair amount of information about my week.
Merlin: Pound sign privilege, I guess.
Merlin: But like, you know what I don't need is like feeling like my ability to scold myself and others for not being angry enough.
Merlin: is something or being desperate enough or whatever it is.
Merlin: If I don't sit down and gorge myself on this buffet of sad all the time, if I don't allow myself, if I don't take the bait to allow myself to be provoked into not doing something valuable in order to find more ways to make myself mad, well, I found that to be a salutary change.
Merlin: Even as I'm like Wallace Stevens with my feet in two different piles, one hot, one cold,
Merlin: Because on the other hand, it's like, but you can't talk about it.
Merlin: Like there's no glory in talking about it because you sound like you're just trying to detach from society.
Merlin: It's like, no, I'm not.
Merlin: What I'm trying to detach from is this nonstop barrage of emotional terrorism from every side.
Merlin: So when you open that door, you stick your head in just a little bit and you can feel like how you're supposed to feel about this thing.
Merlin: I mean, Steven Spielberg can do that.
Merlin: There aren't that many other people who I want making me feel very emotional on a day-to-day basis.
John: I like to look at the last 200 years and try and figure out, you know, because it's really easy.
Merlin: Oh, interesting, John.
Merlin: You don't look at the last 400 years?
Merlin: Interesting.
John: It's really easy to do that thing.
John: You know that trick of history where you're like oh well then this was the era of discovery and then this was the era of of industrialization or whatever but you know even in our own lives we've seen You know we've seen the tone of the time and what the focus is change enough just under our feet where where we knew kind of what was happening and
John: And you're never able in your own moment to say like, ah, this is the age of exploration.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.
Merlin: Because nobody who goes, oh, at last, I will become the Joker, like kind of moment where you go, oh, at last, we've arrived in the Iron Age.
John: But, you know, in the 1970s, like the 60s, we worked real hard to get to the moon, but also the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam were blah, blah, blah.
John: We've all seen the Robert Downey Jr.
John: movies that explain all of that perfectly.
John: Oh, yeah, especially Zodiac.
John: But right now...
John: And it does not actually, you know, and I feel like we've come out of 10 years, just the most recent 10 years, where the vibe in the room was that this was an era of a lot of personal growth.
John: Um, people were really reevaluating.
John: They were trying to figure out what, what was, you know, what were some of the things that we thought were settled that actually were only settled for some of us, you know, a lot of personal reflection that, that had the potential to pay big dividends culturally.
John: If we all reflected.
John: on some of this stuff and then applied it to the way we behaved, we could make a big change.
John: And now when I look at the culture and when I read what's being written, I feel like we're in a period where there's no new information.
John: Like no one is – nothing that's being written anymore is really –
John: Or spoken aloud is new or exciting.
John: No, there are no new ideas right now.
John: You know, what there is, is a lot of shouting of ideas that we all know.
John: And you've already worked on it, presumably, right?
John: And you've decided whether you're going to work on it or not.
Merlin: There aren't that many people getting yelled at about ideas right now that decide in the moment to change their mind about it.
John: Well, or that ever will, right?
John: I mean, the children who are my daughter's age and your daughter's age have been raised in a culture of ideas that has been presented to them not as a
John: Not as a culture.
John: Like we used to imagine that the way to raise a child was to give them the whole palette of ideas, and then they will pick their course, you know?
Merlin: That's not how— But it's all going to be based on the same canon of the great men and stuff like that?
John: Potentially.
Merlin: Potentially.
Merlin: But no, no, no, I don't mean that to be a man thing, but just more in the sense of like, man, talk about a buffet.
Merlin: My kid lives in such a different world than I did growing up in Ohio, going to church, going to school, going to whatever.
Merlin: And like, you know, being the nice word for this is how to become a good citizen.
Merlin: But in a lot of ways, it's how to learn how to act like there's nothing weird about what's going on and stand up when they play the national anthem kind of stuff.
John: Well, but your daughter lives in a world where there are a billion ideas, but there's really only one right one.
John: Right.
John: I mean, the family of ideas that that she's exposed to versus the ones that she considers.
Merlin: There's a lot less false equivalency.
Merlin: I'll give it that.
Merlin: I mean, there's a lot less of like, well, you know, sure, the Klan's bad, but, you know, also a lot of black people own bombs or something.
John: Well, there's a lot of less false equivalency, but there's a lot of less equivalency.
John: And that's the, you know, that's the thing we're in right now.
John: There's no child in Oklahoma that's being raised to think that there are other options either.
John: Like there's a, there's a calcifying, there's a hardening off and it's not based on new info.
John: It's based on new trenches and new.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Damn.
John: You know?
John: Yeah.
John: And so, so what, you know, we're not, we, we didn't make it to the moon and
John: We haven't reorganized the banks.
John: Like it's not a time.
John: This isn't a time of exploration.
John: It's not a time of rebuilding.
John: It's a time of trench digging.
Merlin: Right, and if you are interested in space travel, it might be because of which billionaire you prefer.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: From sort of a brand standpoint, to be honest.
John: Yeah, it's like all those dystopian movies from 40 years ago where it was like, we're all going to be fighting for the Nike swoosh one day, or the Nike swoosh against the Adidas stripes, and they're going to have real armies.
John: And it snuck in on us.
John: In a different way, it turns out it wasn't Nike versus Adidas.
John: It was the guy with the car and the guy – then this other bank and this other bank.
John: The guy with the books and the guy with the car.
John: The guy with the books and the guy with the car, right?
John: And like line up behind him.
John: Like we're still –
John: I mean, a good friend of mine was like, said the other day, like, I guess I'm going to have to get a Tesla.
John: And I said, that's the weirdest statement.
John: That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard.
Merlin: It implies that there was like some horns of a dilemma this person has been on and it kind of just got settled even with resignation.
John: Yeah, right.
John: He doesn't want to, but as opposed to a Nissan Leaf or what are we talking about?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It's like, well, it's the best one.
John: And he said, I went to the,
John: I went to the car dealership and the kid that was trying to – he's like, the problem with going to a Tesla dealership is that all of the salespeople –
John: are like 25-year-olds with PhDs who decided they weren't going to work in electrical engineering.
John: They were going to go sell cars because they believe in the dream.
John: It's like the new AmeriCorps.
John: It is.
John: I mean, I went to a Tesla dealership once with a friend, and the kid was like, yeah, I have seven degrees in chemical engineering, but I believe in Elon Musk.
John: And so, you know, let me, what is it going to take to get you into the driver's seat today?
Merlin: What do I have to do to put you in this rocket ship?
John: But what is this era?
John: And it's not, it doesn't feel like, it feels like an era.
John: And I know that this isn't new, right?
John: It doesn't, at least at the moment, it doesn't feel like somebody's going to flip a match and the whole thing's going to go up exactly like it did six months ago or 10 months ago.
John: But it doesn't feel like a time that I need to read that much current events or read that much even trusted sources.
John: Like I had a couple of websites I went to all the time.
John: where the curator was really smart.
John: And it was really, you know, it's not like Atlas Obscura level of, have you ever seen this underground city?
John: It was politics.
John: It was culture.
John: It was like, you're going to love this.
John: You're going to love Ted Lasso or whatever.
Merlin: Because the role of curation in some ways, I mean, this is a little bit facile, but one role of curation is to find somebody who has...
Merlin: tastes that are related to yours who may like or dislike kind of the same sorts of things but it's partly not just a brand it's a person it's a point of view that you trust you know the the part that we leave out of this is it's not just somebody who recycles other people's stuff but it's people who dig up you know people who can bubble up things you haven't seen or thought about before right i mean is that more of the atlas obscura thing you're talking about
John: Well, and what I like about these things is that they're basically it boils down to hot takes.
John: You know, they're reading the news and they're like, just by what they put in front of you, it's a hot take.
John: Because they're saying, I read 50 articles today, and here are the five that are interesting.
John: Check out my sub stack.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's like, oh, right on.
John: Cool.
John: But just in the last couple of weeks.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Well, you look at someone like Jason Kotke, who at a certain time in my life, I mean, I still respect the guy a lot, but he was such a unique voice in the early-ish days of blogging at being able to pull together stuff I hadn't seen, even though he was looking a lot at the same websites I was.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: his curation is what made that valuable you know what i mean it's like the person the sommelier is not the person who makes the wine they're the person who figures out the right wine for you and i think we could all benefit from some information sommeliers rather than people who neither make nor suggest people who just merely keep clipping things out of you know wine observer or dirty diaper wine man or just keep shoving it in front of you instead of a new glass of wine
John: Well, but even – I think more than anything right now I feel like just as I suggested a minute ago that we have more information than ever before but fewer choices in terms of politics, in terms of culture thinking, right?
John: Like we are increasingly, increasingly all like falling into a consensus bog where there's –
John: It has established what the consensus is and now here's your shovel, get busy digging, get busy working on the trench.
John: And in a couple of these curator aggregators who have been really good voices for me over the last couple of years –
John: There's that tone creeping in, even into Time magazine, where it's like, well, we all know what to think now.
John: Get busy digging your trench.
John: And here are the things to read to reinforce your viewpoint.
John: Here are the things to shove down your relative's throats.
John: Here's where your trench should go, and here's what you should do once you're in it.
Merlin: Yeah, let us know when you're done.
John: Yeah, let us know when you're done.
John: And I'm just like, I have to close the notebook, right?
John: And I had to unfollow a couple of people that I really loved because that's not, you know, I don't need another voice telling me where to dig my trench.
John: And there are so few voices that are like, are trenches where we're at?
Merlin: Or, you know, like... Yeah, it ends up being some of them.
Merlin: And ordinarily, another time, I would have thought of this as a certain kind of like, I don't know, placeholder log rolling thing.
Merlin: But like some of the most interesting things that I bookmark and read end up being about interrogating why this is a difficult time or why these kinds of conversations are hard.
Merlin: You know, like with all the COVID stuff, I was most interested in the like, well, let's explore...
Merlin: If anything, I keep saying this over and over, but I really believe it.
Merlin: The whole COVID experience has just reminded me of something that I've known all along, but I allow myself to forget, which is you can't say a lot of things about America that are true everywhere.
Merlin: And I think there was a time when we were at least kind of encouraged to believe that there are certain things that were 80% true in most of America.
Merlin: And once we got to this level of like, well, you get a coastline of Scotland problem of like, well, okay, just in terms of like disease spread, in terms of vaccination, in terms of like, you know, thoughts about how we should, you know, run society.
Merlin: Like, it's not enough to say like America, and it's certainly, I know this is so fucking obvious, but I needed to realize this at pains.
Merlin: It's like, you can't even, what are you gonna say, Texas?
Merlin: Well, you know, Austin ain't Fort Worth.
Merlin: And even if you're in Austin, like the coastline of Scotland, you could get down into a block by block, house by house, room by room level of some extremely different ideas about how stuff should work.
Merlin: It's never been more obvious to me that I should be remembering that all along.
Merlin: Stop saying dumb shit that you think is 80% true.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: But, but how, what, you know, I, and I, and I guess this is me, this is me waiting in the car outside of the French bakery.
John: Like if I don't go in, if, if my decision increasingly is, um, don't go to the, don't go to the French bakery because that's not, uh, that's not a, uh, a battleground you want to
John: The sweet bread is not worth the potential of getting into whatever kind of throwdown it is that that place inspires.
John: The semiotics of sandwich division.
John: But I'm not going to this website anymore.
John: I'm not listening to that person anymore.
John: All around me, all of my trusted voices, all of my friends, all of the culture that I feel like I've invested in, it's disappointing me over and over and over.
John: There's less and less there.
John: But by not going, by just closing all those closet doors, what am I doing?
John: How am I making the world a better place?
Merlin: But before you can eat healthy, before you can, however you think of that, lose weight, do whatever, like you have to stop eating shit.
Merlin: So even if you're not where you want to be, even if you're not, all my references are old, Johnny Unitas or Mark Spitz.
Merlin: Like if...
Merlin: Let's say, you know, even though you're not Ken Griffey Senior, like at least you, at least you're- Bobby Bear Senior.
Merlin: Maybe you're no Newt Rockne, you know, Lenny Ravenstahl.
Merlin: Maybe you're not where you want to be, but like, I don't, I think that, you know, we're all a work in progress in some ways.
Merlin: No, but I do, I do take your point.
Merlin: It's not an answer or a final solution.
Merlin: It's not, it's not, I haven't solved this.
John: In order to get nutrition, you've got to stop eating shit.
Merlin: I mean, I really feel like that's the... It's like Donald Duck said, your health is like an equilateral triangle.
Merlin: And, you know, so, I mean, I think it's understandable.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Those great Disney film strips.
Merlin: Oh, your health is like an equilateral triangle.
Merlin: So what Donald Duck says is, Donald Duck says, I'm not going to do the voice, it's racist.
John: Finally, I'm going right back to the source now.
John: You're taking me back to the source, Donald Duck.
Merlin: Donald Duck had a lot of things to say about, hell, surprisingly, I mean, oh boy, oh, that's so racist.
Merlin: It's much closer in some ways.
Merlin: to disney's 1940s you know propaganda output than it is to say like modern nuanced messages of like yeah well there's a reason they say coffee's good coffee's bad wine is good wine is bad it depends depends depends depends i actually used that didn't i recently i used that phrase with you in a text message i said the word depends three times with commas do you remember that depends yeah depends depends depends because it depends on things oh what about texas well by and large you could say this but i wouldn't you know i wouldn't
Merlin: And, but like Donald Duck says, you know, you got, you got three sides to it.
Merlin: It's an equilateral triangle.
Merlin: What is it?
Merlin: 60, 60 times three.
Merlin: Well, you've got, you've got your, you've got your mental health, your emotional health and your physical health.
Merlin: And if one of those gets short, it affects the others.
Merlin: It's a lot like the project management triangle, except that your body and from a duck.
Merlin: And so I don't know, I don't have a solution for this.
Merlin: I'm, I'm in no way pretending that I can understand what this is, but I,
Merlin: if I'm being honest, like I need to have my own emotional health in check.
Merlin: I needed just 3% more mindfulness, right?
Merlin: to get me to where I can realize or remember obvious things.
Merlin: Because if I don't realize or remember the obvious things, I know we're sort of similar in this way in different ways, my brain goes tearing ass in some direction.
Merlin: Because now it's got the hook in.
Merlin: And I don't like feeling that way.
Merlin: I don't think it's making me a better person.
Merlin: And while I don't have this sort of like, oh, you know, you guys, let's just all, you know...
Merlin: Let's all just, like, sit around the fire smoking the peace pipe.
Merlin: Never mind.
Merlin: But I do know that, like, yeah, I'm not going to keep eating potato chips and then complaining about how I'm low-key.
Merlin: And, you know, if I, and this, I'm just telling you, man, it just happens all the time where I'll run into something now.
Merlin: And even just having gotten a little, it's almost like when you come out from vacation, you know, with those, you get dreadlocks or whatever, and you're like, oh, I'm going to be a different person now.
Merlin: I do at least have enough presence of mind now sometimes to catch myself.
Merlin: and say stop, and say, like, what are you doing right now?
Merlin: Do you really want to let the world recalibrate your emotions to a point where you're tearing ass in ways that you're not even aware of?
Merlin: Because I don't see a way that that keeps going great for 300 million people.
John: No, no.
John: And I never wanted to be...
John: The guy that, I mean, when I was 25 and saw 35-year-old guys hanging around the rock scene, I was always like, oh, you guys, really?
John: You poor guys.
Merlin: In Tampa, there was this one skinhead, and I think his name was like Mike Kill or something.
Merlin: And he, but he was, he was really pushing 40.
Merlin: I mean, he was probably, when he wasn't drinking Natty Lights, he was probably paying child support.
Merlin: And we're always just like, oh, why is Mike Kill here again?
Merlin: But it's revered.
Merlin: He's a revered member of the community because like he's an old, like he was around when they invented red suspenders and that kind of thing.
Merlin: But like, no, I agree with you.
Merlin: But so how do you feel now, now that you're Mike Kill?
Yeah.
John: I mean, that was the problem, right?
John: When I was 35, we all felt like we were the actual heart and center of the indie rock scene.
John: And we kind of were because it was a weird anomaly, right?
John: I mean, everybody in indie pop was 10 years older than our audience, which I guess is normal.
John: Yeah.
John: But now I'm, you know, at 52, I'm definitely not hanging out at the rock clubs with like blue and, you know, no shade to John Vanderslice.
John: But like, that's not my job in the world.
John: But I also – and I think maybe it's partly that I'm starting to be very aware of the fact that it is precisely at middle age that – and precisely then that if you decide, well, there's no good new music and there's no good new blah and there's no good new blah, that you just – I mean even if it isn't a politically fraught culture, even if you're just like –
John: Well, I'll leave that to the
John: to the kids or whatever and just hunker down.
John: Oh, then you make this gesture where you hold your hands up and you go, eh.
John: I like that.
John: I mean, how far away is that from moving to one of those planned communities in Florida and driving around in a golf cart?
Merlin: Oh, now you're living at Celebration and they get to tell you what color your mailbox can be.
Merlin: What color is your mailbox?
Merlin: Remember that book about employment?
John: It's just, it's just, you're just, you're wife swapping it.
Merlin: Ten penny nails?
Merlin: I think not.
John: So that's not what I ever wanted.
John: No.
John: And, but what,
John: And I definitely didn't want to be somebody that was like, you know what?
John: I'm just going to take responsibility for this one community garden.
John: And...
John: And that's going to be the way that I give back.
John: I mean, that wasn't my, that was never my aspiration for myself either.
John: And so, you know, I walk around my ravine in my smoking jacket, swinging my now, you know, long unused sword.
John: It's really more ornamental, like you're a battalion leader.
John: And, you know, it's clear I'm not going to run for office.
John: It's clear that I'm not going to – I'm not probably going to get a byline in the local alternative paper because there is no local alternative paper.
John: I'm not online anymore swinging my flaming sword.
John: And what is – and ultimately like any conversation I would get into online, I'm pre-frustrated.
John: Like I already know what –
John: what all the terms are and it's just down to digging trenches again.
Merlin: But yeah.
Merlin: And like, what are you gonna do?
Merlin: You like, are you about your favorite backstreet boy?
Merlin: I mean, it's yeah.
John: But also I'm not ready to just get really involved in the PTA.
John: I'm, you know, I'm not ready to close it all down.
John: Right.
John: And just, and just be somebody that's like really worried about who has paid their dues at the local swim club.
John: And you know, and I don't want a little fiefdom.
John: I mean, thank God for podcasts, Merlin.
Merlin: Oh, for no other reason than that I've said this so many times to my family and my co-hosts.
Merlin: I mean, I started recording music again.
Merlin: I do podcasts.
Merlin: I do not just record podcasts.
Merlin: I like making a man-eating them.
Merlin: I listen to them.
Merlin: But also, increasingly fewer of the –
Merlin: political culture podcasts but also the just the time away where I can't see I'm not I'm really not it wouldn't be responsible for me to catch up on the shit show while I'm talking to somebody but I got I got I got a new base a cheap base and nothing made me happier than plugging this thing in I got the amplitude package with all the Brian oh
Merlin: Oh, dude, I got the Amplitude package for GarageBand.
Merlin: So I got Brian May sounds.
Merlin: I got Kirk Hammett sounds.
Merlin: I got a lot of good sounds.
Merlin: And me just fucking fiddling with this Squire bass, it's made me so happy because not only am I... And the thing is, I'm making it for me.
Merlin: I'm not making it for you.
Merlin: You being the listener, which is like...
Merlin: the video series I've just restarted, like all this stuff, like I'm not doing this.
Merlin: I mean, if you like it, it would make me very happy.
Merlin: But like my last goal of this is to sit there and have this sort of keening, like let's watch the site meter and see how popular this thing is.
Merlin: It's more like this is, whatever I'm doing is what I'm doing.
Merlin: Whatever's in my life is in my life, as we like to say.
Merlin: And maybe, sure, you could sure look at that.
Merlin: Like, why aren't you online getting madder about your trench?
Merlin: And,
Merlin: I just – I don't think it's wholesome.
Merlin: It just – it doesn't feel good.
Merlin: But you don't want to be Mike Kill.
Merlin: What's your path forward, John?
Merlin: What are you even going to do?
John: Merlin, for the last two days, I've been sitting here with my finger poised over the send button because I –
John: I was talking to Dan last week, and I told the story about writing 13 songs with Ben and Eric.
John: And I could have sworn that you and I talked about it, but people wrote and said that I hadn't.
John: But we did that thing where it was right when Millennium Girlfriend and I were breaking up.
John: Uh, no, Eric, uh, Eric from the band Cataldo and Gibbard and I went one day and we decided we were going to, this was Ben's idea.
John: We were going to write 20 songs in a day.
John: Each of us.
John: Oh man.
John: Oh my goodness.
John: Not together.
John: And then we were going to get together the next day and play all 20 songs that we wrote.
John: And what it boiled down to was we were going to write and record a song every half hour for an entire day.
Merlin: Everything is catching on fire.
Merlin: But we couldn't bring anything to it.
John: You could do your own fingertips.
John: It'd be really fun.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Fingertips.
John: Please pass the milk, please.
John: And we each wrote 13 songs in that day.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Whoa!
John: And I have never played those songs.
Merlin: That changes the way you think about that process so much, especially for you, right?
Merlin: It's crazy.
John: It's crazy, right?
John: I felt like I hadn't written a song in years.
John: It turned out when I looked back at it, I had written both Let's Make America Great Again and also that song for Amy Mann.
John: And I'd written a handful of songs in the five years prior.
John: But in this day, I wrote 13 songs.
John: And I talked to Dan about it, and he was like, I've never heard of that.
John: And apparently it's one of those things where it happened.
John: It's like the possum in the walls.
John: It happened to me, and you and I were talking every week, and I just didn't mention it.
John: And now it's four years later, and I still have never told anybody about it.
John: Well, tell us about it.
John: Well, no, but for the last two days, my finger has been hovering over it.
John: The button to send two of the demos from that day written and recorded in a half an hour and put them up on my Patreon like and I'm so scared to do it.
John: And the thing about it is the only reason I would is that it's right there in the title.
John: Like I wrote and recorded these in a half an hour from zero.
John: You know, like there was nothing and then there was these.
John: And so however much ego I have wrapped up in songs and how smart I am and how good I am and how –
Merlin: blah blah blah blah songs you write and then record and then you've got a different version for this acoustic live lineup and you like you turn it over and over it becomes this living thing theoretically but is it really living or are you doing a weekend at burning is burning your song and these things are like it's hard even to claim ownership over them right this is we got into that mode where it's like
John: We're just bringing songs down out of the sky.
John: You start to play with your hand and the hands are playing automatically and your voice is going blah, blah, blah, blah until words come out and then it's recorded.
John: It's one half hour.
John: You barely have time to...
John: You know, there's no time to get up and get a cup of coffee because you're done with it and then you move on to the next one.
John: Yeah, mock show, mock show.
John: You got to keep getting to the next thing.
John: By song seven, you're automatic writing, basically.
John: And so the only reason that I would feel comfortable about it is that I could say, like, these songs are complete.
John: There's absolutely nothing.
John: I'm only showing you these because of how amazing this process was, and look what happened.
Merlin: You're really dropping that barrier that most of us have about not only what we'd share, but what we feel qualified to do and then put in public, which keeps so many of us thinking like, manana, manana, I'll do the good thing, instead of doing five of the things that I could do right now.
John: And the wonderful thing about, like, the Patreon's a walled garden, right?
John: The whole reason it's there is that those are the people that care.
John: Like, those are the ones that aren't going to put this on BuzzFeed and laugh at it.
John: They're my friends, you know?
John: But, of course, there's going to be people that are like, hmm, it would have been better if you had.
John: Or, oh, I'm not so sure.
John: It's always somebody who wants the drums louder.
John: But you know that.
John: And it's always Josh Rosenfeld.
John: Nope.
But.
Merlin: If Christopher could remember what instrument he played, he'd probably say bass.
Merlin: He's gone from the world.
John: But I haven't done it.
John: Your finger's literally hovering over the button.
John: What stops you?
John: What you were saying about, like, I got this bass and I got this program that's making thump, thump, thump sounds, and this is where I'm going to put my energy and my – this is where the future is in a way, in a small way.
John: Like I keep coming back to that.
John: Like what do I do?
John: What am I here to do?
John: That.
John: And it's, my music was never political.
Merlin: You're not really protecting, I mean, it's, you know, if you got an injury, if somebody wouldn't cut your sandwich right at the store, you maybe don't want to go to the store.
Merlin: But in that same way that we protect all of our little injuries and keloids in life, like, right, isn't there this part of this that's like, well, you know, I need to get to where I feel like I can tolerate how the world feels about this thing, rather than saying, like, what if it all just mattered less to me what the world thought of this?
Merlin: or that I'm somehow propping up this image of myself that only I ever had.
John: And going back to this, because this happened four years ago, I wrote these 13 songs, and Millennium Girlfriend left me like two days later.
John: And a lot of the songs are about that.
John: I could see the future.
John: Where's my costly bag?
John: But...
John: I never wrote songs about what was going on in the world.
John: I wrote songs about why – Ideas.
John: Yeah.
John: Why the hell was Millennium Girlfriend leaving?
John: And the idea – what's so amazing about this is like I don't need to be reading people's blogs to write songs.
John: I wrote these 13 songs because they fell from the sky.
John: And your defenses were down and you got pelted with songs.
John: And we all, every songwriter ultimately has to acknowledge that like they fall from the sky.
John: And maybe that, maybe just talking to you right now, I'm realizing, oh, that's why.
John: Like, that's what to do.
John: There are no trenches there, or there can be, and I've dug them.
John: But, like, that's where – But you can always choose to put the shovel down.
Merlin: You put the shovel down.
Merlin: You fill in the trench that you dug.
Merlin: Or at least dig the trench that you want, you know, rather than feeling like the one – I'm really belaboring this.
Merlin: But I totally agree.
Merlin: It sounds like I'm, you know, being jerky or something, but, like –
Merlin: I was thinking, like, oh, God, you know, I could see somebody looking at this and going, like, what are you doing?
Merlin: Like, why don't you just go write that song and finish it?
Merlin: And, like, the thing I would tell myself if I wanted to defend that point of view is, like, in a minute I'm going to send you this thing I did making all Brian May sounds.
Merlin: But, like, you know, I mean, there's a part of me, like, I can't tell you why.
Merlin: You know, moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: I'm doing it because I really like playing guitar.
Merlin: I like fiddling with equipment.
Merlin: I enjoy projects.
Merlin: And...
Merlin: I feel like, I'm going to get real corny about this, but I feel like if you think about the whole idea of play, and a lot has been written about this.
Merlin: This guy, Stuart Brown, has written a lot of interesting stuff about play.
Merlin: But this idea that when you're a little kid, you're not making...
Merlin: you're not making a house out of blocks or a castle out of blocks because you want to get into a good school.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but, like, I think what you're doing is you like doing shit with blocks.
Merlin: Why am I doing it?
Merlin: Because blocks are fun.
Merlin: And, like, I think blocks are fun.
Merlin: And, like, yeah, I mean, I can come up with a lot of reasons, like, you know, post hoc.
Merlin: I can go, like, oh, well, you know, actually, I really am just kind of learning the equipment again.
Merlin: I really am just learning how to stay in tune again.
Merlin: I really am learning, do I want the light gray Jim Dunlop, the medium gray, or the black Jim Dunlop?
Merlin: But why do I feel the need to have to explain that if I enjoy doing it?
Merlin: And then if I go out and share it, even if it's something that's neither fish nor fowl nor song, that might be something somebody else likes.
Merlin: But I'm going to push this thing out and get to the next loaf of French bread I need to make.
Merlin: Because I like bread.
Merlin: I like blocks.
Merlin: I like bass.
Merlin: It's fun.
Merlin: It's all just fun.
Merlin: And we are the ones who grind ourselves into believing that everything has to have some practical economic component to it or brand building component.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You should do it, man.
John: Hover no more.
John: I'm going to put two songs up, and I'm going to do it.
John: And I'm going to do it as an act against my own ego.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm going to do it as an act of freedom.
John: I'm saying this out loud because I'm terrified to post anything, you know, because it feels so out of control.
John: But I'm going to do it, and it's going to be a step.
John: I'm going to take a step.
Merlin: It's like Bing Raim says to the guy from Moonlighting, you know, that feeling you feel, you know, that's your pride.
Merlin: Your pride's hurting.
Yeah.
John: My pride is hurting.
Merlin: Not you, but one.
Merlin: No, but my pride is hurting in advance.
Merlin: Yeah, I can already feel exactly right.
Merlin: I hate to get all Dan and get all Buddhist on you, but yeah, we're anticipating a blow that doesn't need to come.
Merlin: And what if it did come and we didn't care quite as much?
Merlin: We dug the trench that we want.
Merlin: It just happens to have a four track in it.
John: I am the person who has a card table in his front yard and a sign that says, yard sale today, three to six.
John: And I need to start putting these songs and a lot of songs.
John: It looks like it's about making money, but it's really about getting rid of old stuff.
John: It's right.
John: You know, all these things are going to be marked $1.
John: And, you know, OBO.
John: $1 OBO.
Merlin: Yeah, best offer.
Merlin: And then somebody comes by and goes, oh, and yet you participate in commerce.
Merlin: Interesting.
Yeah.
John: I'm gonna do it.