Ep. 482: "Everything is Not Everything"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: I haven't wanted to get out of bed lately.
John: Oh, boy.
John: I didn't want to get out of bed this morning.
John: I didn't want to get out of bed yesterday morning.
John: I just wanted to stay in bed.
Merlin: Do you remember your dreams?
Merlin: I mean, yes.
Merlin: My dreams are strange.
Merlin: My dreams are very – to answer your question, I hope you're going to tell me a dream.
Merlin: I do, and I've recorded them, and I sometimes like to provoke people by reading them my dreams.
Oh.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: You've never read me your dreams?
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: I'll talk about a Patreon bonus.
Merlin: I would be thrilled to read you my dreams, but I also don't want to take you off your bed.
Merlin: If you ever want to hear my dreams, you want me to read you one dream?
Merlin: How long are your dreams?
Merlin: I mean, how long are your written dreams?
Merlin: Well, I hate to spoil it, but the thing is, my dreams are bad.
Merlin: I've talked about this in other programs.
Merlin: My dreams are so impressionistic that it's made me skeptical about people who have dreams that are an actual story.
John: Well, yeah.
John: I'm not a hater.
John: I'm not a hater.
Merlin: This is not cancel culture.
John: No, I know, I know, I know.
John: You don't yuck other people's yums.
John: I don't.
Merlin: I really don't.
Merlin: I know you don't.
Merlin: There's some yums that really should be yucked.
John: It's hard.
John: It is hard.
John: There's some, yeah.
John: I am totally down with us doing a separate program once a month where you just read me your dreams.
John: Can I whet your appetite?
Okay.
John: But I want to hear one dream.
John: But let me tell you what I remember.
John: Because I used to remember my dreams.
John: I went through a long period.
Merlin: I remember them way more when I was a kid.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And I went through a long period where I didn't remember them.
John: And I don't know why.
John: I don't know why.
Merlin: You probably weren't getting there.
Merlin: I mean, if I could say I'm not a physician, John.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I'm not even an osteopath.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: But I don't have a PhD.
Merlin: I have a bachelor's in dream.
Yeah.
John: That's fun.
John: So what I remember of last night's dream, I was in a kind of Game of Thrones universe.
John: I was walking on my way to a pub with some compatriots.
John: So it felt a little bit D&D?
John: Yeah, but it was modern times.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Except it was a Game of Thrones.
John: Was I there, but it wasn't me?
John: It was a Game of Thrones environment.
John: It was just modern.
John: And I walked past this sort of corral.
John: It was like one of those country lanes where the road turns and there's a farm in front of you and it's got horses behind a rustic wooden fence.
John: Except the horses...
John: were horse-sized, but they were anteaters.
Merlin: Oh, no, thank you.
Merlin: Okay, and now I'm going to ask you the question I always ask.
Merlin: How did that make you feel?
John: Well, wait a minute.
John: They were ferocious like wolves, but they moved like horses
John: And when they went to the bathroom, they put their butts over the fence and peed on the road.
John: My cat used to do that.
John: Yeah.
John: So they kept their corral clean.
John: Oh, smart.
John: And that's when I realized they could talk in human language.
John: But they looked like anteaters.
John: Did they talk to you?
John: You knew they could talk.
John: Did they talk to you?
John: Okay.
John: A little, just, you know.
John: And the one, the leader.
John: With their mouth?
John: With their mouth to talk to you?
John: Yeah, their little mouth, but it had sharp teeth.
John: But the leader.
John: Talk to me, but he said something in a British accent to denote that he was fancy.
John: What's all this thing?
John: I think he might have had a top hat on.
John: Hello, hello, hello.
John: He might have had a top hat on.
John: And he did.
John: He said something dismissive like, you know, carry on or something like that.
Merlin: One of those Britishisms where it sounds like it's civil, but it's really mean.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: I feel like you would do so much better outside of my pen where I make bathroom.
John: But we were just walking on our way to the pub, and then I distinctly remember sitting in the pub.
John: With like a horn of non-alcoholic ale.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Like Brienne of Tarth is trying to get you back to your mom.
Merlin: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: Except everywhere she goes, Littlefinger is like, I see before I met you at Joffrey's wedding.
John: Anteaters are a ladder.
John: And I said to the person, I think Gen Z is really good with money.
John: Oh.
John: I think Gen Z is really good with money.
John: Huh.
John: And I remember it wasn't just that I said it.
John: It was that I was thinking it.
John: I remember thinking it in my dream think.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: That I had a lot of evidence to back up this conclusion that I thought that they were pretty savvy, Gen Z as a whole.
John: Pretty savvy.
John: Really underrated generation.
John: Pretty savvy with the money, with the moolah, with the cash, with like making good investments.
John: They were going to be good with money.
John: And that's all I remember.
John: They save for retirement.
John: They do, right?
John: They're starting now.
John: They're starting at a young age.
John: They're investing in Ethereum.
Merlin: Do you have a general, I mean, like, again, as you'll see when I share one of mine, I think the thing that makes dreams so ineffable and ultimately so sort of annoying to tell to other people, the joke, right?
Merlin: The joke is the thing we all hate is you were there, but it wasn't you.
Merlin: It was my house.
Merlin: It was mine.
Merlin: house.
Merlin: The thing, when you talk to somebody about a dream and you find it interesting, I think you need to focus not on, oh, how could an engineer be that big?
Merlin: Or how did he learn English?
Merlin: It's more like, I'm not trying to be your therapist, but I'm very interested in how it felt.
Merlin: Because what's interesting to me in dreams is something like that.
Merlin: You just experienced something
Merlin: very odd and upsetting in day-to-day life, but maybe oftentimes things that seem scary in the dream aren't scary.
Merlin: And then things that, you know, and that feeling, did you have a general feeling when you woke up and didn't want to get out of bed?
Merlin: How were you thinking about the dream?
Merlin: A phrase I've grown fond of, how do you integrate that dream into your story?
John: Well, I feel like when I first apprehended the anteater-wolf hybrid horse-
John: Creatures.
John: Based on the way they were moving, they were kind of moving like a cross between a horse and a hyena.
John: Like they had their, they were like a little bit on a haunch.
John: Oh, they're a little bit, they're skeptical.
John: Well, but they were kind of crap.
John: Their lower, lower end was lower than their upper end, you know, kind of like a, kind of like a, like a Zool, like a gatekeeper or a key master, you know, a little bit.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and I was intimidated by,
John: You know, I was scared because it didn't seem like this horse pen was enough to keep them penned.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: But then when I saw how they relieved themselves in such a polite manner, you know, like they relieved themselves outside of their corral, that reassured me.
John: It made me feel like, oh, these are...
John: These are creatures that can be reasoned with.
Merlin: That's such an important theme for you, John, if I could say.
Merlin: You've talked so lucidly about how important it is to have an understanding, hopefully a detente.
Merlin: But failing at a detente, you say, you know, crow, I see you, or you eyeball the possum.
Merlin: And you say, look, we've made a deal.
Merlin: You've dealt with all kinds of things in your house, John, excluding the guy who stole your iPad and your ingot.
Merlin: But you say to them, look, we need to live together.
Merlin: I don't want to smash you, Ant, but we need to make a deal.
John: And now that I'm unpacking this, I realize that when the anteater, hyena, wolf, horse...
John: spoke to me somewhat in a toodalon now sort of British accent with a top hat and a monocle, I felt reassured by that because, again, I felt like, oh.
John: That's a civil animal.
John: It is.
John: If I need to talk to these creatures, if they bust out, if they are on the warpath, if they're threatening to tear me limb from limb, if I need to talk to them, I can.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And then I feel like when I was in the pub,
John: All the business of saying I feel like Generation Z is really good with money, I think all of my supporting evidence was more –
John: evidence that i was hoping that i could reason with generation z that that they were a reason you admire their ability to shit outside their pen yes that they they might be a generation that i feel like we can reason with that i feel like you know has sensible because i feel like if you're good with money yeah
John: then you're on your path to being sensible.
John: You're on your path to being like, okay.
Merlin: That's a tough one.
Merlin: Money is a tough one, John.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: I think it's a good marker.
Merlin: This is not always true.
Merlin: If somebody's good with money, like good with money, I'm not talking about just like being an embezzler or something.
Merlin: I'm saying if you're good with money, you might have good character.
John: Well, okay.
John: And now if I'm going to examine it, I feel like that all of my –
John: All of my anxieties, all of my fears and my complications in life right now are all, I trace it all back to situations where I feel like I'm dealing with unreasonable people who can't agree on baseline.
Merlin: People who are immune to, as my own words, people who are immune to both empathy and reason.
Right.
Merlin: Yeah, right, right.
Merlin: Where you're like, okay, well... So many people we run into where it's like, man, can't you think like, look at the guy running Twitter?
Merlin: Like, empathy and reason, right?
Merlin: Like, can't you put yourself in a position where you can imagine what it's like to be somebody who's not you and see how this could be a different experience than you're having?
John: Thank you.
John: Yes.
John: And, you know, I think for years, for the last several years, we've directed a lot of that energy...
John: you know, toward understanding the situations of people that have, that have very different non-mainstream situations in life, right?
John: That they're, that they're not your typical sexuality.
John: They're not your typical, uh, gender identification.
John: They're not your average white guy there.
John: You know, we're, we've been extending that empathy outward and,
Merlin: uh from mainstream middle america monoculture yeah and trying to include everybody but comparison is the death of joy john as soon as you start i really super believe that when you when you start like a lot of a lot of my own like bumps with understanding other generations is like you know what's wrong with them don't they understand you got to listen to albums and you got to do it this way and like there's
Merlin: Just all that bad faith, like, you know, all the way down to like, we have to sit down and eat dinner together.
Merlin: Do we have to sit down and eat dinner together because that was important in your family?
Merlin: Or are we doing that because it wasn't important in your family?
Merlin: We can't have these conversations with people.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like, we all want to be the parent we thought we should have.
John: Yeah, oh, sure.
John: I wanted to be a fan of Little Feet, but I never got... It doesn't take.
John: It never takes.
John: I never fully understood the story of Little Feet and the one guy that died.
John: And I was like, at some point, I should really dig into the recorded work of Little Feet.
John: And understand it well enough to know whether I'm a fan or not.
Merlin: Did it feel like it was part of a canon that you named dropped?
Merlin: For example, a good one is The Meters.
Merlin: The Meters are a band that music fans have heard about but may not be super familiar with apart from some songs of theirs that got sampled and got famous.
Merlin: But somebody like Pete Buck comes along and says, hey, you really need to check out The Meters.
Merlin: And you make a metal note, right?
Merlin: There's things like that.
Merlin: Maybe at one time for somebody like me, that could be the Velvet Underground.
Merlin: Like, oh, I know that Sweet Jane song.
Merlin: But like, and not to make it all about music, but isn't it partly about like, you're not really a, you may not be a fully formed person.
Merlin: Or you may not be, if you meet Pete Buck again, he played on one of your records, if memory serves.
John: He did.
John: I used to see him all the time before I moved to Portland to be with this new lady.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: Him in Portland.
Merlin: But, you know, is Little Feet something I should explore?
John: Well, no, this is the thing you remember.
John: For many years, I was very hippie adjacent.
John: Yes.
John: And, you know, I was caught in that world between hippie and punk.
Merlin: Oh, there were so many hippie.
Merlin: You went to Ibiza?
Merlin: When you were in Ibiza?
Merlin: I never went to Ibiza.
Merlin: Didn't you go to Ibiza?
Merlin: Didn't you go to some kind of rave on a beach there?
John: Yeah, rave on a beach, but that was down in Algeciras.
John: But yeah, I see what you're saying.
John: You had your Grateful Dead period.
John: I went to the Grateful Dead.
John: I went to rainbow gatherings a few times.
John: Whoa, wow.
John: I know, I know.
John: Tell you what.
John: But a lot of STDs got passed around there.
John: Yeah.
John: I actually broke, I fucked up my knee at a Grateful Dead concert.
John: Typical.
John: I still suffer from it every day.
Merlin: That's why that little bear's dancing like that.
John: Walk it off, walk it off.
John: But that's the thing, I was never a hippie.
Merlin: I'm sewing your hair right now.
Merlin: Go away, little bear.
John: I was never actually a hippie, just like I was never actually punk.
John: I never was all the way anywhere.
John: I was always in between.
John: There was always a guy over here that was talking about the Velvet Underground, and then a guy over here that was talking about Little Feet.
Merlin: You don't realize to get older that you've had, who's the kid?
Merlin: Who's the kid from Catcher in the Rye?
Merlin: You've had Holden Caulfield syndrome.
John: Caulfield syndrome.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: Walking through the rye.
John: HDS.
John: Well, and so Little Feet was one of those where it was like, I decided, I determined that I had heard enough Allman Brothers and I didn't need, it was not like I needed to dig into the Allman Brothers any further than just hearing the hits and
John: And even the hits probably didn't.
John: That was fine.
John: I like that song, Melissa.
John: Yeah, it's a nice song.
John: And the Doobie Brothers, like I got everything I needed there.
John: Oh, I'm writing all this down, John.
John: This is good.
John: But then Little Feet was like the connoisseurs.
John: It was presented to me as the steely Dan of hippie.
John: Jam music.
Merlin: Something I like to say, my band in Tallahassee was not popular, but I would like to think of us as a band's band.
Merlin: It's nice to be a band's band where normal people don't like us, but our friends do.
Merlin: And maybe we've had some kind of an impact on somebody who had an impact on somebody else.
Merlin: It's like Brian Eno said.
John: There you go.
John: That's right.
John: It's turtles all the way down.
John: But I don't know if it's Little Feet all the way down.
John: I feel like Little Feet is what the band kind of was, except not... That's the analog in my head.
Merlin: In my head, I'm thinking... I just recently had a big...
Merlin: Oh, Warren Zevon.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: From that singer-songwriter era.
Merlin: Well, I went through – I have an unpopular opinion.
Merlin: It's not a strongly held opinion.
Merlin: But Mike Nesmith is my favorite member of the Monkees.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And I go through periods sometimes where I listen to a lot of the Monkees, the good stuff.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, there's a handful of extremely good hits that they had.
Merlin: But you talk about –
Merlin: Maybe not Shades of Grey, but a Mike Nesmus song.
Merlin: It's like... You know those songs?
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: I think of him, you know, because he kind of... If you had to pick one person who kind of invented country rock, I think he's got to be kind of in that pantheon.
Merlin: But I think of that like you get your Flying Burrito Brothers, you got your Birds, you got all that stuff, all the way up through, let's just say it, the Eagles.
Yeah.
Merlin: That stuff becomes very instrumental in understanding why a bunch of bands sound the way they do.
Merlin: Little Feet.
Merlin: I don't know fuck all about Little Feet.
Merlin: I know more about Pure Prairie League.
John: I don't either.
John: I feel like Little Feet is like I didn't get into John Prine enough either.
John: I know.
John: It's too late now.
John: I know.
John: I can't go.
John: I even had a couple of John Prine records.
John: I never put them on because I was too busy listening to ZZ Top.
Merlin: But so, anyway, so I just, I feel like... Good for Gen Z. If you can be good with money, that's, you know, it's better than being bad with money.
Merlin: Let me just say that.
John: I just feel like this whole, we can't even agree on a baseline for discussion thing, is no longer an issue that is only affecting certain groups of people, certain segments of the population.
John: It's now coming full... It's like the wave went out, it hit the beach, it's coming full back...
John: And it's rippling across the pond.
Merlin: and if you can't agree on on like and we hear all the time this word civility oh can't we just and i don't even know what that word means anymore it means it means act like you've never harmed me on purpose but that's what it means when people like sarah huckabee sanders would up get up there and talk about oh don't make fun of my smoky eye and stuff like that every time somebody says oh you know both sides blah blah blah and it's like well but the thing is you not only have historically benefited from treating
Merlin: me like shit but now you're doing it on purpose you didn't even accidentally have slave labor now you're you're being a real dick on purpose for some reason that you think is and now maybe i'm now see now i'm doing it right i'm am i avoiding the baseline john i don't know i don't even know how do you know anymore the only thing is that anybody any living person who walks out the door and wants to engage anybody else
John: The first thing you try to establish is, are we...
John: Do we have a baseline?
John: And a lot of times with people like us, you and me, we start with humor, right?
John: You start with humor.
John: Right.
John: And humor establishes, does this person have a sense of humor?
John: Are they going to laugh at my very simple joke?
John: And if they do, then you make a slightly more complicated joke.
John: And sometimes that's how you find your people, because then you make a really weird inside thing.
Merlin: But then spending five years tweeting two screenshots to show that someone's being hypocritical.
Merlin: I'm not sure that that's really helping.
Merlin: Oh.
John: Well, and that's the thing.
John: That was what was so beautiful about the Internet at first.
John: You throw your weird thing out there.
John: People respond.
John: And you knew that anybody that replied by restating your joke and especially anybody that replied taking your joke.
John: seriously or missing it you're just like nope and then the people that were like replied with a joke that was that amplified your joke or was better or was just in it but people who don't people who don't read the room and don't get what the bid is and then try to pivot to an old meme or something and it's like
Merlin: Yeah, you know, I work really hard to not put a hat on a hat.
Merlin: I work really hard to make that happen.
Merlin: Somebody had a great tweet one time.
Merlin: I can't find it right now because I'm recording a podcast.
Merlin: But one of the great tweets of all time was somebody who said, you know, something along, and they said it better, but off the dome.
Merlin: The point was that on Twitter, like everything that you say in jest gets taken as the most serious thing in the world.
Merlin: And everything you say as the most serious thing in the world gets taken as a joke.
John: But, you know, that had to have started in 2015 or something.
John: Because in the early days, don't you remember everything we said was a joke?
John: And it was all meant as a joke.
John: And it was how we met our friends.
Merlin: It's a way, I mean, like, you know, a way of... These are things I think about.
Merlin: It's a tribal form of bonding.
Merlin: Like, what you can joke about with your pals on a slack who get who you are and why it's funny that you said that.
Merlin: Let's go back to being dad, to be honest.
Merlin: Like, anybody who knows you would know that that was...
Merlin: It's like, God, you fucking people.
Merlin: And it's so frustrating that like, you know, but to get at the people, to get my humor joke out to people who will get it.
Merlin: And the fact that I'm so good at almost putting a hat on a hat, I think it's my gift.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: No, it is.
Merlin: Hopefully I don't do it too much, but when I do put a hat on a hat, I know it, and there's like four hats, and it's hats all the way down.
Merlin: But then somebody else is going to come in and go, well, suddenly you're Maude Flanders, and won't somebody think of the children?
Merlin: I don't know about the baseline, man.
Merlin: That's fucking rough.
John: Well, that's the thing about the...
John: When everybody was decrying the death of Twitter the other day.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter.
John: Signing each other's yearbooks, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And somebody said, somebody on a Facebook page, somebody in one of our groups said,
John: said, oh, a lot of people are referencing Bean Dad in the context of what they're going to miss most about Twitter.
John: And I sat there and I said, I get that, but only because I get that.
John: Don't go look.
John: Don't go look.
John: Don't go look.
John: Don't go look.
John: And then I went and looked.
John: Then I went and looked.
John: Oh, Jesus, John.
John: And a lot of people, and a lot of young people, were just celebrating it like it was a meme, like Pizza Rat.
Merlin: Like it was the day that all the llamas escaped, or whatever.
John: Yeah, remember that day.
John: Wasn't that a great three-day period when everybody in the world agreed that this one guy was, you know, like, remember the mom that couldn't eat her fajitas without cheese?
John: Like, oh, it's just this, you know, this...
John: between the lady in the car with the chewbacca mask and then like somewhat deliberately trying to ruin your whole career by tying it to something but again it was a it was a thing that that was out there it was the first time in history that all four trending topics were one thing it was just a it was a banner day yep and then and you know what during the whole thing
John: When the racist tweets came out and were screenshotted by somebody, at that point I was off the internet and I never looked at it.
John: I never looked at the screenshot of the racist tweets because I just didn't want to.
John: Because they're all like fucking A.J.
John: Weberman going through your trash, going through Dylan's trash.
John: I went and looked at it.
John: And so many of them are like so outrageous.
John: There's a tweet where I'm like, listen, we need to create a white homeland in the north where we separate all the people according to their –
John: the put the browns to work digging trenches or whatever just the most outrageous thing that you couldn't possibly square especially if they knew you well even if you didn't right even if you didn't at any how could you read it any other way than being a bit exactly in any prior universe
John: All you have to do is count it on your thumb.
John: This guy is an indie rocker who's friends with Hodgman and Merlin and Amy Mann and Ken Jennings.
John: And we found this tweet.
John: Is it a joke or not?
John: And why haven't you spoken out against him?
John: Yes, of course.
John: It is satire.
John: It's outrageous.
John: And so actually going and reading it, reading the little screenshot of racist tweets...
John: I was actually relieved because I was kind of afraid that I was on there saying like, God, the Mexicans that are working on my yard can't get their shit straight.
John: And it was not.
John: It was all satire.
John: It was all just bonkers.
John: Satire, yes.
John: And then, you know, satire.
Merlin: Satire.
Merlin: That's what it is.
Merlin: Hey, guess what, you guys?
Merlin: Jonathan Swift, just so you all know, didn't actually think that Irish babies should be eaten.
Right.
Merlin: And calling it a modest proposal, one of the low-key fucking great titles for anything ever.
Merlin: And yes, maybe I'm cherry-picking.
Merlin: It's one of the great pieces of satire ever written.
Merlin: Please look at it if you haven't seen it recently.
Merlin: Today there would be all these campaigns for, what, 36 hours about what we can do to save the Irish babies.
Merlin: It's all that white knighting people do.
John: We grew up in a world where satire was a thing.
John: If you put all of those tweets in George Carlin's mouth, everybody would laugh uproariously.
John: That's what everybody says.
John: Oh, George Carlin.
John: Yeah, George Carlin.
John: Or whatever.
John: If you put them in Mel Brooks's mouth, you'd put them in anybody's mouth, even my mouth, in any other time.
Merlin: Even though Mel Brooks had a Nazi in the producers, he actually was not a huge fan of Nazis.
John: Not a lot of people know that.
John: The reason that nobody called me out for those tweets is when they went out, everybody knew what they were, and I'm sure they laughed at them.
Merlin: And then is there any way – I mean, if you had to pick a – oh, God, I'm complaining about Twitter.
Merlin: It's context-free.
Merlin: There's no context.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: With my jokes, such as they are, the whole point is there's no context.
Merlin: The whole point is, in my case, I am narrowcasting.
Merlin: I'm nanocasting.
John: Oh, you're really da-da a lot of that.
Merlin: Well, they are, but to the people who get it, I want there to be at least one and ideally three levels to the tweet.
Merlin: I would like it to be something where you could say that's funny, but then if you knew a little bit more, you'd know that, oh, and then that last line was in the voice of a character from that thing that I'm making fun of, and that would make it funnier.
John: Sometimes when I read your tweets, all I do is picture Scott Simpson sitting in a Chinese restaurant chuckling to himself.
John: And I'm like, I don't know what the hell that's about.
John: But somewhere Scott Simpson has grown a big mustache and he's sitting in a Chinese restaurant laughing.
Merlin: I like to imagine my wonderful friend, I almost said my late friend, a great friend of mine who I used to do stuff, lived with, did projects with, was in his plays and stuff like that.
Merlin: My friend Anthony Belante, one of the greats.
Merlin: And Tony did this thing that I'll know.
Merlin: Lots of people have done this, but Tony's the one I always think of.
Merlin: I'd say something that I regarded as very funny.
Merlin: And Tony would go, hmm, that's really funny.
Merlin: Thanks, man.
John: Yeah.
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Merlin: Can I read you a dream?
John: I want to hear your dream.
John: I just want to say that... Yes, oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Did I stop you?
Merlin: The thing is now I am actually... I'm telling you this off air.
Merlin: Nobody can hear this.
Merlin: I'm actually pretty super into the idea of me recording a bunch of my dreams and reading them.
Merlin: But you know what I'm even more into?
Merlin: Is that robot voice that I use to make the Patreon ads?
Merlin: I'm kind of even more into the robot voice reading my dreams.
John: Reading your dreams.
John: I just feel like we need to then unpack them...
John: Oh, I would be happy to.
John: I think that would be a great bonus.
John: Good fucking luck, man.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay, back on.
John: I'm kidding.
John: Oh, right.
John: Leave that in.
John: Okay, John, I just cut out all the racist stuff.
John: No, no, no.
John: Take the back on out.
John: Because we don't want to.
John: Yeah.
John: No, I don't want to – I just – I was on – I'm not – I shouldn't be on Twitter.
John: I'm not on Twitter.
John: Oh, boy.
John: You sent me brisket.
John: You sent me brisket and I loved it.
John: But somebody sent – somebody sent a tweet.
John: I don't know what it was.
John: It was about something.
John: And then I went and I read the comments under their tweet.
John: And there were 400 people that took the time to tweet back at the tweet author something along the lines of –
John: Yes, you're right or no, you're wrong.
John: And as I was scrolling through.
Merlin: Thank you so much for that.
Merlin: I'll sleep better tonight.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: Yeah.
John: What I started to think was like, have I ever replied to someone's tweet and said, no, you're wrong?
John: No, I don't think I ever have.
Merlin: Well, if you're going to do it, do it in a funny way that only that you craft just for them.
John: Yeah, it's fun.
Merlin: Yes, exactly.
Merlin: That they would get it, and that's a different kind of thing.
John: But it's an engagement.
John: It's a style of engagement.
John: And you're playing along.
John: Yes, you're right.
John: Playing along.
John: There's 500 people who are on Twitter...
John: With the idea that it matters that they either endorse or refute all these things that are coming across their bow.
Merlin: I praised the TV show The Mandalorian last night.
Merlin: I'm not dragging anybody.
Merlin: I was praising the TV show Mandalorian, which I'm rewatching, because I think it's really...
Merlin: important that how much strength that show draws from the fact that each episode of it is like an actual chapter as against so many things where, Oh, this is just another puzzle piece in a 10 episode arc.
Merlin: Like each one is a story and the person understand, Oh, you must be watching episode one because I, with the implication now, I don't hate that, but I, I, I said, yes, I am rewatching season one, you know, but like, but the people who come along and are just like, meh,
Merlin: You know, it just seems like it's basically a cross-section of people who are angry at the DMV.
John: Well, and so I'm still in—remember those disputes that we talked about nine months ago that I was having that were actual physical disputes that involved my physical body in my neighborhood?
Yeah.
John: Remember some of those disputes?
John: I'm not sure what you're referring to.
John: Well, with my neighbor.
Merlin: Oh, the neighbor things.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And dealing with the property line.
John: And those are still ongoing.
John: They have not ended.
John: They ebb and flow.
John: They escalate.
John: They de-escalate.
John: They're threats.
Merlin: They don't just go away.
John: Nothing's gone away.
John: It has been a constant presence in my life, daily presence in my life since February of last year where I am under – I'm paying a ton of money to have a team of people, keep a team of people that are working for somebody else from sending me a registered letter.
John: And it involves all this stuff.
John: And when I talked about it earlier, some lawyer listeners of our show wrote me and said, don't talk about it on the internet.
John: You know, don't put it out there.
John: It's part of a legal case.
John: You know, you can't discuss it.
John: But the issue for me is that there is no baseline.
John: There is no agreed upon reality.
John: And I don't mean reality like in terms of lines drawn across a map, although that too.
John: But a baseline reality of what honor is.
John: You know, a baseline reality of like, how do you treat somebody who lives next door to you?
John: And that, to wake up every morning in a state of like,
John: It's not even gaslit because I truly believe that they believe what they believe.
John: But it's like, did no one ever teach you?
John: how to have empathy, how to be good to somebody else, how to have respect.
Merlin: You know, one that's become huge for me is, is there a chance that this rift, like my side of this rift, or this, you know, this is not necessarily just true for what you're saying here, but in general, for me, I like to say, is there a chance that this is really all about my shit and not so much about their shit?
Merlin: And I wish more people would do that.
Merlin: Which is like, do I really need to put my shit – and that can be anything.
Merlin: It could be legitimate trauma from your life.
Merlin: It could be that, you know, your – God forbid your great-grandparents died in a camp or something.
Merlin: There's reasons people are how they are.
Merlin: But on the other hand, don't always feel the need to put your shit in other people's shit, especially if it's not –
John: if you're not reading the room and understanding where it belongs and god for somebody like a neighbor like you can't it's so difficult to go like look can't we can't we all just get along well and and i i do that so much that like is this just my shit and and i always i do it for two reasons one because i just natively think everything's my fault but also because the last 10 years i've just gotten a gotten lesson after lesson after lesson and
John: of like wait a minute go back over this again like make sure that you're not the asshole here and i've found enough times that i was the asshole that i've that now i'm very cautious i i don't send emails in the middle of the night anymore i don't i try not to leave long comments on things where i'm like you know let me straighten everybody out like yeah yeah yeah but but also like and i and i'm trying not to flame people on text in the middle of the night when
John: Good for you, man.
John: Oh, it's really hard.
John: But I've been wrong.
John: I've been wrong.
John: But I look at the one neighbor, the one that is not currently suing me, and I'm like – You shouldn't talk about this, John.
John: It's a legal case.
John: But I look at her, and I'm like, oh, did I make a big stink about nothing?
John: Like this –
John: This wall is falling and it's not that big of a deal.
John: And then I'm raking some dirt and I pull up a garbage bag full of dirty diapers.
John: And I'm like, well, no, there's no reality.
Merlin: Her son has a drug problem, John.
John: Yes, I know.
John: But there's no reality in which that would be cool, right?
John: There's no...
John: It's not my fault that I'm upset that someone ever threw a garbage bag full of dirty linen over the fence.
John: Who does that?
John: But then I sit here and I'm like, but when I confront her about it, she acts like I'm being upset.
John: Uh, like, uh, outrageous.
John: You've crossed the line.
John: Like, how dare you?
John: Yeah.
John: And it's like, I don't, I don't, you know, like her contention is all kids used to play in the ravine.
John: And I'm like, kids used to play in the ravine and put a bunch of dirty linen in a garbage bag and throw it 15 feet from your fence.
John: It seems unlikely.
John: It seems unlikely.
Yeah.
John: It's that classic British game, nappy bag.
John: Nappy bag.
John: They're throwing nappies around in the backyard and it accidentally goes over the fence.
John: So anyway, I feel like the Wolverine horse wolf, uh, uh, uh, anteater, uh, hyena, uh,
John: Maybe is like a thing, like a thing in my emotions where it's like every day I'm walking along a lane in a modern day Game of Thrones universe and I come upon a corral full of things that terrify me.
John: I'm so glad you talked about this here.
John: That's good.
Merlin: It sounds like it's helping you.
John: Yeah, and then you come around the corner and they speak in a British accent or wearing a top hat and you're like, oh, thank you.
John: I can communicate with you.
Merlin: I'm the asshole.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm hoping, I'm always hoping that I'll sit down in a bar and I'll be like, actually, Gen Z is really good with money.
John: And then it's like, oh, I have a conversation.
John: We can talk about it.
John: We can talk about Thorstein Veblen then.
John: Yes.
John: And we both agree that we're not going to start with a racist letter he sent to his grandmother.
John: Oh, boy.
John: We're going to start with...
John: the principles of whatever Veblenism is.
John: Okay.
John: Can I introduce a thought technology at this point, John, that's become... I want to hear you read your dream, but yes, I want to hear your thought technology.
John: Well, let's hear your thought technology first.
Merlin: This is going to be a classic Merlin because it sounds so stupid, but I hope you see the part of this that's really smart.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: This is a big thought technology, John, but I want you to think about it, okay?
John: Okay.
Merlin: I'm looking for the part that's really smart.
Merlin: Everything is not everything.
Merlin: By which I mean, and it's a clever way of putting, and I've gotten trouble in the past with being clever with names, see also inbox zero.
Merlin: Everything is not everything.
Merlin: And what do I mean by that?
Merlin: Well, I'm using, I'm doing a Greek, it's probably, there's probably a Greek trope name for what I'm doing here.
Merlin: Everything, the first everything is not everything in the world.
Merlin: has to be connected with everything in the world.
Merlin: This came up recently in a conversation I had with Syracuse about Twitter.
Merlin: And talking about, like, it's so difficult to talk about, let's just even say restrict the conversation to just talking about Twitter.
Merlin: Because as soon as you start talking about Twitter today, and you're talking about Elon Musk today, like, you're going to get, you're going to Godwin that so fast.
Merlin: You get to Nazis, you get to this, you get to that.
Merlin: To me, the thought technology behind everything is not everything is...
Merlin: You must find a way... Well, okay.
Merlin: First of all, Twitter in part, Twitter and the internet in general, Twitter in particular, has very heavily led to the idea that everything is everything.
John: Everything is everything.
Merlin: You can't talk about one aspect of something without talking about...
Merlin: Everything.
Merlin: Everything about that aspect, let alone speculating about how it's probably related to everything else.
Merlin: I don't go too far in this, but I want you to think on it because it's become important for me because at least, here's a good starter project for everything is not everything, is that you start noticing all the times that it was very difficult in a conversation.
Merlin: So let's start with Twitter.
Merlin: Start noticing without having to say anything about it.
Merlin: I started noticing all the times that it was difficult for somebody to talk about one aspect of something without somebody else trying to turn the conversation into talking about everything.
Merlin: And I think that applies to some – if I'm not putting it well, I apologize.
Merlin: But I think it applies to a lot of things because if everything is everything, then everything is kind of nothing.
Merlin: And everything is maybe, it may not be everything, but like, can I just, can we just talk about what it means for the engineers to not be there to keep the site up?
Merlin: Can we talk about that aspect?
Merlin: Can we, I understand that Tesla cars catch on fire and kill people and all of that stuff.
Merlin: But like, you know,
Merlin: Here's one.
Merlin: Yesterday, bad on me, I was watching Hannah and Her Sisters, which I think is an extremely good movie.
Merlin: And I'd forgotten what a fucking lit cast is in Hannah and Her Sisters.
Merlin: You get Carrie Fisher two years after Return of the Jedi.
Merlin: Of course, you've got Michael Caine.
Merlin: you've got march simpson's voice you've got a very young john tuturo you've got this crazy cast and it's such a good it really is a very good movie it's a very woody allen movie never in a million years would i would i want to say something about how wow uh you know henner sisters is a really good movie with a stacked cast because now i'm basically because everything is everything i am now supporting every every child predator who has ever done anything i
Merlin: I'm representing – and I'm representing all the times that I never spoke out against Roman Polanski or whatever.
Merlin: You like Chinatown?
Merlin: You piece of shit.
Merlin: And, you know, I don't have a strong opinion about whether or not I should like Chinatown.
Merlin: And I understand why, you know, there's a lot of bad stuff about Roman Polanski.
Merlin: But, like, you know, one of the tenets –
Merlin: Oh, I should forget about it.
Merlin: Forget about it.
Merlin: Syracuse is going to hate that.
Merlin: So close.
John: Just forget about it.
John: Forget about it.
John: Forget about it.
Merlin: Forget about it, Jackie.
Merlin: It's time to tell him.
Merlin: Forget about it.
Merlin: You know, he actually did cut Jack Nicholson's nose, and that's why he had to wear that bandage.
Merlin: Oh, no kidding.
Merlin: I just want to toss that out because, and we can return to it if it becomes interesting to you, but I want to just toss that out that I think that is a very, very, very, very general pattern that is important for people to look at, is that how often are you taking something that's one aspect and unnecessarily making it about other aspects?
Merlin: That's a tenet of liberal arts that I think we all need to really look into.
Merlin: There are times where we come along and say, oh, the phrase we used in literature was genetic criticism.
Wow.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You ever hear that phrase when you're going through?
Merlin: Genetic criticism.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And that's when you, I mean, I think one way to look at that is like, okay, you look at the bell jar and, you know, when you talk about the bell jar, you got to think about a lot of things with Sylvia Plath.
Merlin: You got to think about Ted Hughes.
Merlin: You got to, you know, you got to think about, but like, you know, just because I mentioned something about the bell jar doesn't mean that it has to include a conversation about the Iron Giant, which was originally written by Ted Hughes, who lived, he was married.
Merlin: Oh yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Pete Townsend was involved with it.
Merlin: Oh, everything's everything.
Merlin: Everything.
John: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Look out.
Merlin: Everything's everything.
Merlin: I'm just tossing that out there.
Merlin: And part of it is, yeah, I'm bitching.
Merlin: But part of it is also, it's just part of my fucking journey to stop thinking everything is everything.
Merlin: And boy, there's a million, not a million.
Merlin: I'm not going to exaggerate.
Merlin: You know, I invented hyperbole.
Merlin: Yeah, I did.
Merlin: And sarcasm.
Merlin: Did you call it hyperbole?
Yeah.
Merlin: Actually, it actually is GIF and hyperbole.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Never mind.
Merlin: I'll read you.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: Respond.
Merlin: Respond, John.
Merlin: Do you understand the general thought technology?
Merlin: Of course you do, John Roderick.
Merlin: Not everything is everything.
John: Stop it.
John: Well, and the problem for me, and it's always been since I don't know when.
John: I don't know when the first time somebody said OK Boomer to me.
John: Actually, I do, but I don't remember the date.
John: And I don't remember the first time somebody accused me of both sidesing a thing.
John: Don't do that, John.
Merlin: You're not supposed to do that, remember?
John: I know.
John: And when you say something.
John: Stop thinking.
John: I was raised at a dinner table full of lawyers.
John: And I was on debate team in high school where the whole idea is, okay, you're going to take one side of this premise and you're going to debate it and we're going to judge you based on how well you debated it.
John: And importantly, you don't need to believe it.
John: Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant.
John: That's right.
John: You didn't get to pick your side.
John: You got to sell it.
John: Even if you find the idea abhorrent, you debate it until you make the best case you can.
John: You try to win.
John: That is the whole idea behind debate in high school and college, and that was the whole premise of the dinner table where I sat.
John: It was like, take a side, and then we're going to sit here and argue it because we're all lawyers or should have been lawyers if they had had any sense because you can do anything wrong.
John: With a law degree.
John: You can do anything.
John: And so to have both sides suddenly become like this thing where you are arguing.
John: If you both side something, it means that you are arguing the most untenable side because that's truly what you believe.
John: Or whatever it is.
John: There's a right way of thinking and then there's everything else and you can't do anything but think the right way or you are essentially advocating – You're counter-revolutionary.
John: And that cuts me to the core.
John: It really takes away – And the bad faith.
John: The bad faith, John.
John: It takes away 70% of what my mind is doing all day, which is like, well, let's see.
John: Does that person have a point?
John: Well –
John: on this grounds, you know, that's what my head is doing and I want to share it.
John: I want to share it with the world.
John: I want to not even share it.
John: You want to like pass it around and talk about it the way we used to do.
John: Have you heard this crazy thing?
John: What do you think of that?
John: I want to walk into a room without feeling like I got to put a cloak over the golden Anne because I got it from Stan and I've got to give it to the man.
John: I don't want to do that.
John: I want to have the golden Anne right in the middle of my chest and be like,
Merlin: I'm wearing the golden hand.
Merlin: You try on thoughts like ideas.
Merlin: That's one of your... It's not one of your original thought technologies, but it's one of the enduring thought technologies you shared in the early days of the show.
Merlin: Trying on ideas like a jacket, I think, is something like a sport coat.
Merlin: That's the way you put it.
Merlin: And I...
Merlin: I think that is a very valuable thing to do.
Merlin: And once you do get into, and I didn't really finish the thought on genetic criticism, the way it was taught to me was talking about, on the one hand, what we know about the author of this and how they are and who they are, but then getting deeper into the genetic criticism of Woody Allen is obviously pretty fascinating.
Merlin: There's a line about child molestation and child predators in Hannah and Her Sisters, and that's the point when I actually...
John: clicked away because i felt kind of weird well and i know somewhere out there in our listeners there is somebody who's rolling their eyes at us right now like okay boomers you're complaining about this boomer shit and i'm just like i don't know i don't know how to communicate because everybody thinks everything is everything
John: Well, and I, the thing is, if you, how are you going to know if you're the asshole, how are you going to know if you're the asshole, if you don't try on all the hats, how are you ever going to know that you're the asshole, which is what, which is what I have learned is the first or second thing to do after you have your initial reaction is you have your initial reaction.
John: You go, fuck you.
John: And then you go, okay, am I the asshole?
John: Oh yeah.
John: And, and, and, and you have to try on all the hats and,
John: And really try them on, not just be like, nope, nope, nope.
Merlin: You can't begin by going, okay, I guess I'll wear this costume I got at Walgreens.
Merlin: It's more like you have to inhabit that idea with good faith.
Merlin: Turn it over in your head.
Merlin: And you will, I can almost promise, always find an angle you did not expect.
Yeah.
Merlin: An angle to it.
Merlin: And it doesn't mean that person's right or wrong or otherwise.
Merlin: It just means that, like, empathy is the basis of understanding.
Merlin: Without understanding, there's, you know, without empathy, there's limited amounts of understanding we can have.
Merlin: Saying, oh, I get it.
Merlin: That guy...
Merlin: That's the kind of thing I would say, that I still say.
Merlin: Oh, that guy's some kind of like Maga Chud.
Merlin: I understand why they feel that way.
Merlin: But when you try on the jacket, and to me, again, I'm always mentioning this, but that Hulu series Dope Sick that really changed my whole idea about drug addiction and the Appalachians written large.
Merlin: It's like, I'm glad somebody made me wear that jacket because it's made me a little bit less of an asshole.
Merlin: I can't just chunk...
Merlin: Or, you know, have this sorting algorithm, this heuristic, where I bin people into these different areas because everything is everything.
John: I gotta confess.
John: Please.
John: I gotta confess something.
John: Oh, dear.
John: I know.
John: And it's a multi-stage confession.
John: Oh, boy.
John: So, I've discovered, and I don't know what this means, but...
John: Have you been watching the daily recaps of those Russian talk shows where they get a bunch of people on there to read scripts about how they should erase Ukraine?
John: No.
John: Is that on YouTube?
John: Well, it's on Twitter.
Merlin: Wherever it is, send it to me.
John: If you follow – there's one particular woman that watches all the Russian talk shows and she cuts up –
John: And I'm so sorry that I don't know her name because she's doing a great service to the world.
John: She takes the best part of these talk shows.
John: And it's usually a conversation in the round.
John: There's five or six people all standing at podiums in a circle.
Merlin: Like a panel of people spouting party line?
John: Yeah, and then somebody says, you know, there never was a Ukraine, and then everybody nods sagely, and they're like, so that's why we have to kidnap all the children and put them in camps or whatever.
John: We gotta bring the Germans back from the Sudetenland.
John: And so this woman who disseminates
John: These these super cuts of these things on Twitter.
John: She's a great journalist and she speaks Russian.
John: And so she and there's a translation of what's going on underneath.
John: And I became addicted to watching these programs.
John: And two of them are hosted by women who are almost exactly my age.
John: And one of them is the editor-in-chief of RT, Russian television.
John: Right, right, right.
John: But she also hosts this program.
John: And then there's another woman that does it too.
John: And both of them, I realize, although they have these awful viewpoints,
John: I realized that I find them both very attractive.
Merlin: Oh, I have at least half a dozen secret shames on the right.
Merlin: I find some of the right-wing women very attractive.
John: Well, that's the problem.
John: So the...
John: Wow, that's two strikes right off the line.
Merlin: That's two things.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: You found her attractive?
John: You found a woman on TV attractive and she works at RT?
John: So wait, so then I realized, you know, one thing that these women have in common, and one of them in particular, is that they don't not resemble Sarah Palin.
John: who I then had to acknowledge that when she first arrived on the scene, particularly as an Alaskan, and I saw her once in person, I found her attractive.
John: Attractive and charismatic in some ways.
John: And then the worst part is that the congresswoman from Colorado who just recently got reelected, who is an absolute dingleberry, like a total ding-dong.
John: And the fact that she is a mountain state ding-a-ling...
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about, is it Bobert?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay, yeah.
John: Oh, no, she's... Mountain State ding-a-ling, and she's got a gun on her hip, and she owns a restaurant called... Very cute glasses.
John: Yeah, called whatever it is, some restaurant where the girls dance on the tables.
John: I don't know what it is.
John: She's absolutely Mountain State all the way, and she's a total ding-dong, and all of that stuff I kind of find perversely attractive.
Merlin: That's me and Candace Owens.
John: I hate it.
John: I hate it so much.
John: And looking at myself and going like, what is it?
John: And so in the middle of the night, I know I just said I don't do this in the middle of the night, but in the middle of the night, one o'clock in the morning, I wrote a tweet.
John: Oh, dear.
John: fascist women.
Merlin: Oh, boy, John.
Merlin: That's exactly the kind of thing I wouldn't post.
Merlin: I am so sympathetic to that.
Merlin: So I post it.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And then right away I get a reply from a woman who says, there's still time to take this tweet down.
John: And I laughed because it was phrased as a joke.
John: It was phrased as a joke, right?
John: I felt like that's the thing.
John: There's still time for you to take this down.
Merlin: My bit, I still do the old bit.
Merlin: When somebody does a terrible pun, I respond by just, my only part of my response is their first name in all caps.
John: Matt.
John: I know.
John: And the old one that was really good, which was like, delete your account.
John: Yes.
John: You know, delete your account.
John: You can say that to drill and everybody would laugh.
John: Delete your account.
John: You know, lol.
John: And it felt a little bit like, delete your account.
John: Like, there's still time to take this down.
John: And I was like, lol.
John: And I left it up.
John: But then I started to get replies, all from friends, friends of the show, friends of all the potential.
John: Have you learned nothing, John?
John: Have you learned nothing?
John: Well, no.
John: And they were all very generous.
John: They were saying, John, take this down.
John: Are you crazy?
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: And then it cast back on the first woman that said, there's still time to take this down.
John: And I was like, oh, wait, was she – she was actually concerned for me?
John: Yeah.
John: And then I got three or four more that were like, John, are you nuts?
John: Like, get off the internet.
John: Don't post this.
John: And I did take it down.
John: Yeah.
John: Because I was like –
Merlin: 10 years ago, I never would have done that.
John: Well, 10 years ago, nobody would have said it or whatever.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: They're the ones who would have said no and move on.
John: That would have been a tweet that got screenshotted during Bean Dad and like, see, he loves fascism because he thinks Lauren Boebert.
John: is kind of hot because she's so dumb and the dumbness is part of the hotness and i don't know what's wrong with me for the people who killed my grandparents yeah i don't know why why should i think that these that these dumb colorado uh uh like girls uh lot lizards or whatever they are that ran for congress and are now like the most powerful people in the world uh why am why are they foxy i don't know now there's only one only one way there's only one way to read it john
Merlin: Only one way.
John: I know.
John: I'm a fascist.
John: You're a fascist lover.
John: I'm both sides and fascism because.
John: You're fascist on Maine.
John: I'm fascist on Maine.
John: I stand fascism.
John: And I don't.
John: You know, everything.
John: I don't.
John: But I took it down.
John: I took it down.
John: I'm the same way.
John: When I wake up in the morning and I'm thinking about the horse wolverines, I don't have that to worry about.
John: Yes.
John: There's not 400 replies going, fuck you, Bean Dad, at least.
John: At least.
Merlin: In my prime on Twitter, my response.
Merlin: You were so good.
Merlin: Well, thank you so much.
Merlin: It was my medium.
Merlin: You were the greatest.
Merlin: I'm not proud of it.
John: No, you should be.
John: You should be proud of it.
Merlin: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Merlin: Especially in the 140 days.
Merlin: Because I would really sweat it.
Merlin: I would spend six hours a day on it.
Merlin: Me too.
Merlin: Me too.
Merlin: I'm a writer.
Merlin: I write.
Merlin: But back in the day, it would be – okay, I'll give you an example.
Merlin: It's like your classic response to when people would say, I'm on the Atkins diet, and you would say – I know people have heard this, but you would say to them in a hush tone, well, you know he died, right?
Merlin: And they go, well, yeah, he died because he slipped on ice.
Merlin: And you're like, yeah, I don't want to end up like that.
Merlin: I would do that.
Merlin: You were great.
Merlin: Where I would just lean back.
Merlin: When somebody would say some kind of dipshit thing about that, I would just, I would respond.
Merlin: And not in a mean way, but in a low key way, one sentence, like fewer usually than 10 words of like, well, yeah, but I would totally have sex with Lauren Boebert.
Merlin: Don't you think she's cute?
Merlin: Like some, you know, that kind of dumb stuff.
Merlin: I hate it.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: everything everything is not everything i got one more thing about satire though which is you know and i don't mean to because every because everything is everything i feel the need to say uh just fucking i hate it but like okay what let's take even somebody like david brent slash michael scott you see this a lot satire and we're like watching like i'm watching veep again yeah
Merlin: Yeah, no, no, no.
Merlin: But satire in the sense of like, what's funny?
Merlin: Well, here's what's funny.
Merlin: What did Woody Allen say in the movie?
Merlin: If it bends, it's funny.
Merlin: If it doesn't bend, it's not funny.
Merlin: He's making fun of Allen Alda.
Merlin: But like, I think we learn a lot when we see what happens to people who try to address a non-problem.
Merlin: What ultimately they should know is a non-problem, whether that's a mix-up or whether that's a perceived slight.
Merlin: There's something extremely funny about watching somebody try to maybe save their dignity and honor or clap back at somebody and having it go completely wrong because they misunderstood what the original thing was.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: So they have literally created the kind of characters in a satire who create their own problem because of their character flaws and lack of understanding of other people.
Merlin: I think that's very, very valuable.
Merlin: And I got to say, it does go through my mind.
Merlin: Am I about to Michael Scott this?
Merlin: Or am I about to David Brent this?
Merlin: Am I about to, you know, Jonah Ryan this?
Merlin: I think about it all the time, and I think it's valuable.
Merlin: When we stop having people who do shitty things...
Merlin: in movies and tv when we stop having villains that are actually like on the one hand humans yeah on the one human but also like you know hey you know what magnino makes a lot of the same mistakes i would make if i'm being honest i had a good heart about it they all had their they all had the world's best interests in at heart you know some people should die it's unconscious knowledge that's right there in the song
Merlin: That's like Goldfinger's story.
Merlin: Goldfinger, God, that's such a funny movie.
Merlin: Goldfinger.
Merlin: And the guy who played him, it was so funny.
Merlin: They had to dub him because his English was so unusable.
Merlin: There's a lot of great behind-the-scenes stuff with Goldfinger.
Merlin: If you guys can ever find it, this is really obscure.
Merlin: Criterion put out...
Merlin: And back in the day when they first started putting out James Bond movies on DVDs, they had amazing panel commentaries.
Merlin: Not one person.
Merlin: I've got the MP3s of it if you ever want it.
Merlin: But watching Goldfinger with the full commentary from people— No, Mr. Bond!
Merlin: Forget about it.
Merlin: He's Chinatown, baby.
Merlin: But like, you know, I love the twist in Goldfinger that he's not stealing the gold.
Merlin: He's just in the spoilers, but he's going to like make the gold unusable.
Hmm.
Merlin: Isn't that a great twist?
Merlin: It's a twist.
Merlin: It's such a good twist that he doesn't want to steal the money.
Merlin: He wants to make the gold nuclear so no one can use it.
Merlin: And now he will have.
Merlin: He will have basically destroyed this huge amount of the thing he loves and everybody thought he wanted to steal.
Merlin: But ultimately, he was just yucking on your gold, yum.
John: He's got a plan.
John: He's got a plan.
John: Yeah.
John: All the villains now, they don't have a plan.
John: They don't.
John: Because they have to be villains.
John: Like you say, you can't have empathy with them.
John: They have to be one note.
Merlin: But they've also got... A great villain can be... I think one reason... I don't know.
Merlin: See, John, I can't fucking say anything.
Merlin: I was going to say something about that Netflix Dahmer show.
Merlin: But in general, we are intrigued by people who are...
Merlin: socially social outcasts and who do stuff that's way beyond the pale and I think there's such a titillation in that but I really value and honor when we can watch somebody be be fucked up in a way they didn't understand originally I think that's valuable
John: God, yes.
John: Yes.
John: And you and I have been through so much.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: We've been through so much.
John: Think about us when we were in our mid-30s, when we first met, mid to early 30s.
John: No, early mid-30s.
John: We're in our early mid-30s.
Merlin: Let's just say I was in my 30s, roughly.
John: Let's think about who we were then and who we are now.
John: What a journey.
John: I used to go to a lot more shows.
John: You did.
John: You went to so many shows.
Merlin: You were like Mr. Show.
Merlin: That's how I was like Mr. Show.
Merlin: And I met my wife, Mrs. Show, at Bottom of the Hill.
Merlin: I think we fell over at Union Local 282.
Merlin: And she grabbed my ass, if I'm being honest.
Merlin: There you go.
Merlin: It was a real good indicator that this was going to be a fun ride.
Merlin: I met a cute skinny girl.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: I met a cute skinny girl when she went to see her favorite indie rock band from San Francisco.
Merlin: And we ended up kissing at the bar.
Merlin: It's hard.
Merlin: It's very hard.
Merlin: The sight lines there are very poor.
John: I went with both of you to the bottom of the hill more than once.
John: So many times.
John: You came to see me at the bottom of the hill.
John: We would go to the bottom of the hill.
John: We would go upstairs to that weird place.
Merlin: And Eric's just sitting there on the filthy couch smoking a cigarette.
Merlin: Oh, we smoked.
Merlin: We smoked.
Merlin: To get to the green room, you had to go through the smoking area.
John: Oh, the smoking, all the smoking.
Merlin: We did a different time.
Merlin: John, we're going to lose you soon.
Merlin: You have your, your schedule constrained today.
Merlin: So can I suggest that I, I will, I will, I'd like to read you a dream and, and just see if it's the kind of thing that you might be interested in exploring and then I'll hit the bell.
John: Okay.
John: I want to hear it.
Merlin: Or do you have more to say?
John: No, no, no.
John: You told me you have a hard out, right?
Merlin: We've said it all.
Merlin: We've really said it all.
Merlin: Everything is not everything, you guys.
Merlin: Just keep it in mind.
John: Now I want to hear the dream.
Merlin: This is from April of 2020, this particular one.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And I think I said this, the words first came out of my mouth on a podcast, but in trying to describe to somebody why I feel like, I want to say like my dreams are unusual.
Merlin: I don't think my dreams are unusual.
Merlin: I think I just am not stuck with the idea that a dream has to be a story.
Merlin: So I feel no inclination.
Merlin: Instead, I want to tell you how it felt.
Merlin: I want to tell you what I saw.
Merlin: And so what I said to this person was, I sometimes feel like I have, I don't have dreams so much as I have the source code for a dream.
Merlin: And so the title of this is Source Code for a Dream.
Merlin: Last week, I lost the recipe for blankets and for my father.
Merlin: The COVID plants and plant pots are missing, but they still smell.
Merlin: The truth is we never found the rocks after we moved, plus the rocks and beads dissolve from international disuse and pleurisy.
Merlin: The plywood restroom at the old dream school is dark and still narrated by Ira Flato.
Merlin: Everyone is in my way, and I'm out here trying to save the universe.
Merlin: A sidewalk is a contract.
Merlin: So I sigh as I do very rhythmic parkour all over your whole family.
Merlin: One morning, all the people under a certain height just disappeared, and it was the saddest loss.
Merlin: They were so little, and they all loved wearing hats.
John: It's such a thing of beauty.
Merlin: Well, I mean, like, you could make a dream out of that source code, and I could turn it into a story.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: And there were these people there.
Merlin: There were little people.
Merlin: Oh, wait a minute.
Merlin: Little people.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: But the thing is, the sidewalk is a contract.
Merlin: The sidewalk is a fucking contract.
Merlin: The sidewalk is a contract.
Merlin: Everyone, John, everyone is in my way, and I'm out here trying to save the universe.
John: Have you ever felt that?
John: Oh, my God.
John: Every single day.
Merlin: Just go.
Merlin: It's what it's for.
Merlin: Just keep moving.
Merlin: Get out of the way.
Merlin: Ugh.
Merlin: John, are you in a submarine?
John: Or are you monitoring a submarine?
John: Many people have wondered why my ringtone sounds like the radar pinging of a Cold War submarine.
John: And honestly, it wasn't intentional.
John: It's just the one that appealed to me most.
John: Well, it's stuck.
John: Yeah.
John: Can we please do a show of your dreams?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm going to, yeah.
Merlin: I think, yeah.
Merlin: Both our dreams, and we'll unpack them.
John: Oh, our dreams.
Merlin: John, we lightly promote this.
Merlin: I don't want to be a dick about it, but we would love it if you gave us some money.
Merlin: Go to patreon.com slash roderick on the line.
Merlin: No, roderick?
Merlin: What's our thing?
Merlin: You could also go to giveroderickyourmoney.com.
Merlin: Just keep banging on your keyboard until we get money, please.
Merlin: I lost the recipes for blankets and for my father.
John: Oh, God, see?