Ep. 530: "Something Else"
John: hi john hi merlin hi how's it going i spilled coffee on my couch on your green your nice your nice green couch and on my pants well i spilled coffee on my my couch and my pants and luckily pants aren't furniture so i think these are special blue jeans so i guess the coffee actually adds adds to the patina
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: What are you going to do about your couch?
Merlin: Will you – is that something where like – like I've tried to adopt this thing in the last couple of years, a phrase that I – I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not sure the best way to summarize.
Merlin: It was something along the lines of food is for eating.
Merlin: We don't save food.
Merlin: Go on.
Merlin: Like, well, you know, like that whole thing that some people do.
Merlin: We'll save every leftover without any intention of, like, when they're planning to eat it.
Merlin: And so then you're afraid.
Merlin: And I know you're an eater of these things.
Merlin: Now, I know.
Merlin: I'm not talking about you.
Merlin: I'm talking about somebody else who saves half of a goddamn drumstick that nobody ever wanted and nobody ever will want.
Merlin: So now I have half a drumstick plus a nickel bag, so to speak.
Merlin: I see what you mean.
Merlin: And, like, food is for eating.
John: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Nickel bag?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: It was a poor choice of words.
Merlin: A lid.
Merlin: A lid of chicken.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's like little Coke, bottle cap, full.
Merlin: Not full.
Merlin: There's not that much chicken left, but you save it.
Merlin: I don't know what that is.
Merlin: But food is for eating.
Merlin: So if you want to eat cake for dinner...
Merlin: Eat cake for dinner.
Merlin: Like, you're not saving.
Merlin: Like, eat the good piece.
Merlin: Use the good scissors.
Merlin: Like, all of those things.
Merlin: Wear the pants you want to wear.
Merlin: Like, do all of those things.
Merlin: Because what in the hell?
Merlin: Because if you're like me and you're from a modest background, you tend to think, oh, we need to save it for something.
John: It's like, what the hell are you saving your life for?
John: Well, you don't do that, though.
John: You don't save half a chicken.
John: That's somebody else.
John: Well, A, I don't.
John: But B... You're calling somebody else out in your household.
John: Me?
John: Who's saving half a drumstick?
Merlin: Well, but what I'm trying to say is, like, I don't know.
Merlin: I think the reason I think that is relevant is, like, you know, like I say, life is for eating, food is for eating.
Merlin: Like, stickers are for putting on things.
Merlin: Like, don't save your stickers.
Merlin: Like, put them on things.
Merlin: And, like, I don't know.
Merlin: I just...
Merlin: I'm not sure what my point is, except that couches are for living.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: No, sometimes somebody, somebody, sometimes somebody passes out and takes a shit on your couch.
Merlin: Now, maybe that's not the most, well, sorry, let's start over.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How nice is it in your world?
Merlin: I'm just throwing this out as a better analogy in your world.
Merlin: How important is it to you to keep your, if you have a doormat by your front door, how important is it to keep that really pristine looking?
Merlin: It's kind of a rhetorical question.
John: The doormat, you're right, should be dirty.
John: But like, for instance, I had the floors refinished when I bought this house.
John: And then I have a dining room table and it's got chairs around it.
John: And around the dining room table, the chairs have marked up the refinished floor.
John: And I don't know how I feel about it.
John: And partly I don't know how I feel about it, I think, because I'm only two years in or three years in.
John: You can't help but have that feeling of like, didn't I just fix it?
John: I just made this nice.
John: And maybe 20 years from now when the dining room chairs have marked up the floor so much that it like looks incredible.
John: Yeah.
John: But right now I'm in that middle period of like... I know exactly what you mean.
John: You know, it just kind of looks dirty around the table.
John: It's not like... It's not... And the thing about this couch is...
John: Yeah, it's got a – I wasn't criticizing your couch.
Merlin: I just mean like is it – it's just like it's so difficult to keep things nice like in the world.
Merlin: And maybe I'm just capitulating to entropy.
Merlin: But I do increase – especially if it involves like – again, this is like one of those things where you're like, oh, don't cry over spilled milk, right?
Merlin: Like if a thing has already happened and it wasn't intentional, like there's nobody to press charges on.
Merlin: Like you probably didn't mean to spill coffee on your couch.
John: Did your mom put plastic on your couch?
Merlin: No, but all the Catholics did.
Merlin: You knew the kids that did and they were all Catholics.
Merlin: Almost all Catholics.
Merlin: Catholics are not going to get into ethnicity, so don't ask.
Merlin: Nope, nope, nope.
Merlin: But let's just say there's a lot of people that like to put other plastic on the couch.
John: Here in the Northwest, it was the Chinese families that had plastic on the couch.
John: No kidding.
John: Yeah, what do you know?
John: Huh.
John: We've learned a lot today, haven't we?
Yeah.
John: But the thing about a coffee stain is that, yeah, it just... I know, it's frustrating.
John: It is, it's frustrating.
John: I don't think it's going to stain, but I'm sitting here with a wet... I got a little bit of a wet spot.
Merlin: Did it happen, your pants and the couch, they both happened this morning?
John: Well, what it was, was I sat down to, you know, I did that eBay store a couple of weeks ago or a month ago.
John: And it was really fun.
John: It was really great.
John: But it was really hard.
John: And this was you putting up for sale a lot of your extra large clothes?
John: Just a bunch of stuff, yeah.
John: And so I wanted to do it again.
John: But it's like, it's a lot of work to put that stuff up.
Merlin: The people that do that.
Merlin: It's a lot of work.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's a lot of work.
Merlin: This is why I'm only, I mean, off the record.
Merlin: Not off the record.
Merlin: I'm not stupid.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: This is why I don't want to do t-shirts for us unless somebody else does all the work.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's just a lot of work.
Merlin: Maybe you did this back in the day, or maybe you had people, but trying to do...
Merlin: different like t-shirts like for a band t-shirts let's even say in two colors right or two styles and different colors and you know i know in retail they call this a skew so like you have all of these different things that you need to get right and you need to get it into the envelope and you need oh did you check oh no this one has to go to england so there's a vat tax and there's like all of that stuff and like that is that is really deeply not in my wheelhouse
Merlin: And it seems like you don't have it that as bad, probably, but you still got to buy a bunch of puffy envelopes, right?
John: Well, when we used to do it in band land, it was before there was any kind of internet.
Merlin: You just sell it at merch tables, right?
John: Well, but you'd also, you'd get a design from a friend.
John: A friend would design your t-shirt.
John: You'd take it over to the screen printing shop where you knew the people that worked there.
John: They, you walked into the warehouse.
John: You were like, here's the thing.
John: They put it into their gizmo.
John: They made some screens.
John: You watched it all getting done.
John: There was a tactile element.
John: It was like my dad going to visit his pharmacist.
John: It just felt like, oh, this is another thing I have to do as I walk around the town.
Merlin: It's a compounding t-shirt manufacturer.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You're just like, it's my, these are my friends.
John: They're in front of you.
John: And they're going to make this and I'm going to buy them from them at $4 and I'm going to sell them to other people at $9.
John: And it's just like, it all makes sense.
John: And now, because it's computers, computers, computers, it's like, ah, that's just something I can put off till tomorrow.
Merlin: The benefit of a 90s rock t-shirt, at least in my experience, as a purchaser of many and manufacturer of a few, is they're available in exactly one style, which is white cotton and large.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a white cotton large shirt.
Merlin: And if you want anything else, go find a different band.
Merlin: Because if you're going to go on, especially not, we didn't do this, but you know, you, you've been through this.
Merlin: Like you have to probably think to yourself, like how many extra smalls in pink or whatever, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Something that's a little green, like weird green.
Merlin: We thought about this.
John: We thought about this for hours and hours.
Merlin: It's the end of the tour and all you have left is like three pink extra smalls.
Merlin: And you're like, why did we not, we, we sold out of,
Merlin: large or extra large white in the design we knew would be popular.
Merlin: We sold out of that in a week.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And now all we have is great.
Merlin: You could have made so much more money and carried less stuff if we'd had a smaller range of things.
John: Oh, the great one is that you go out on tour and for three weeks, everybody that comes up is like, do you have any double XLs?
John: And you're like, oh, sorry, no.
John: And they walk away.
Merlin: Have somebody airship you a bunch of extra double.
John: Yeah.
John: And then you have 200 double XLs made and then you don't sell any of them.
Merlin: Here comes the lollipop guilt.
John: just like great but so you know so i will come home and i'll say oh i'm going to put some stuff up on my ebay store and that'll be at 10 o'clock in the morning and at 1 a.m i'm still trying to put stuff up and you can't it up you can't it up right so anyway you know you don't you can't put it in the wrong thing oh it's all and there's so many things and it's a bad it's a bad ui
John: But anyway, this morning you said, hey, I need an extra half hour because you woke up early.
John: You needed a disco nap.
John: And so I sat down on the couch and I was like, I'm going live with my eBay store today.
John: It's all ready.
John: I just have to push go.
John: Oh, dang.
John: Am I taking you away from that right now?
John: We can keep this short.
John: No, no, no.
John: This is more important.
John: But I put my coffee cup next to me on the couch, leaned it on my pants because I had to get on the computer and go ticka, ticka, ticka.
John: I'm sympathetic.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: You put things where they don't belong.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then things happen.
John: I made it all go live, and I was very excited.
John: I was like, the eBay store is up, and it's my second round.
John: And then I don't know what I did.
John: I jumped for joy or something, or I wiggled my butt, and the coffee went...
John: Off, you know, and all of a sudden it's pouring coffee everywhere.
John: And I'm like, no.
John: Yeah.
John: So right before the show.
John: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: That's a frustrating circumstance.
John: It's just what it is.
John: And you're absolutely right.
John: Couches are food is to be eaten.
John: Couches are to be lived on.
Merlin: I worry that when I say that, it sounds like I'm saying that somebody who does not just immediately agree with me is a prude or is anal or something.
Merlin: And that's really not what I mean.
Merlin: I just mean as a way of...
Merlin: I've discovered that for myself, a good correction for myself in life has been, it doesn't mean, God, I'd argue with Syracuse for half an hour about this recently, that like, just because there's a very strong feeling one way or another, like good is not the opposite of evil.
Merlin: Hate is not the opposite of love.
Merlin: And just because you don't love something doesn't mean that you then have to hate it.
Merlin: You love it or something else.
Merlin: You love it or something else.
Merlin: Well, I really believe this, and I think part of the American or the Western, you know, obsession with a binary for most things is kind of what's part of this.
Merlin: That guy's pure evil.
Merlin: You think he's pure evil?
John: Pure evil.
Merlin: What does that mean, apart from, like, he doesn't have to answer for his actions because the devil made him?
Merlin: So you're saying, well, Merle, you're saying he's good?
Merlin: No, no, I'm saying it's something else.
Merlin: Maybe he's either pure evil or something else.
Merlin: And I don't mean the record by the Kings, which is terrific.
Merlin: But isn't it possible that no matter how strongly we feel about something, the answer is something else?
Merlin: So to me, the answer is not pristine or nothing else.
Merlin: The answer is not garbage or nothing else, you know, as in like wrecked or something else.
Merlin: It's just that context matters in things.
Merlin: And did I ever tell you just real quick, really, I'm going to tell you a quick anecdote.
Merlin: It's pretty quick.
Merlin: No, I would like it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: My paternal grandmother, my father's mother, and the very wonderful man that she married after my grandfather died, they lived in the same house out on Boomer Road in Cincinnati for my whole childhood.
Merlin: And that was going to grandma's house was like, that was grandma's house.
John: Do you know what Boomer Road was named after?
John: No.
Merlin: Do you?
Merlin: No, but it seems like... No, it's funny.
Merlin: You know how it is?
Merlin: You know you've got all these cobwebby things in your brain that hang around that you don't ever reprocess?
Merlin: It wasn't until, like, last year that I reprocessed the name of the road my grandmother lived on.
Merlin: Okay, boomerang.
Merlin: Well, so anyway.
Merlin: No, no, no, but I feel you.
Merlin: But, like, and grandma and, for that matter, my, you know, grandfather, they were both, like, oh, man.
Merlin: Like, I mean...
Merlin: Everything was always like squeak.
Merlin: Like everything was so clean and so perfect and nothing ever moved.
Merlin: The time that my grandmother was in, this is actually a sweet but revealing story.
Merlin: The time that, one time my grandmother was in the hospital, I made her a little Play-Doh, like a little Snow White, because I had a little Disney Play-Doh kit when I was like four.
Merlin: And I made it for her, and she loved it, and she held it together with needles until after she died, and then I brought it back after she'd passed away, you know, years later.
Merlin: But that thing never moved.
Merlin: Nothing ever moved.
Merlin: Everything was always exactly where it was supposed to be.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You've been in houses like this.
Merlin: Like, let's be honest, like the couches of a certain room which is following.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Everything's always exactly like this.
Merlin: There's never any splatter next to where you're making biscotti.
Merlin: Like, none of that kind of stuff.
Merlin: Well...
Merlin: That's how my grandparents were.
Merlin: And one of the ways that they addressed their concerns about the grossness of the world and wanting order, I don't know if you know this word, they had runners.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, runners.
Merlin: So, like, you got your wall-to-wall carpeting, and then, like, you know, you have a doormat outside.
Merlin: People wipe their feet out.
Merlin: You might have a mat inside.
Merlin: But then a lot of houses, a surprising number of houses, at least in the 60s and 70s, there would be what we used to call a runner, which is just a piece of plastic two feet wide.
Merlin: It came in a roll.
Merlin: Not...
Merlin: So different from like what your office chair might go on, but had little teeth on the bottom, but you'd roll this.
Merlin: And so from their front door of their house and the living room to the door into the family room, which is where we always spend all our time, there's a runner.
Merlin: They were in other places too.
Merlin: But why do we do that?
Merlin: Well, we do that to keep the carpeting nice.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And so you have a thing there.
Merlin: And it's like, oh, God, what a great idea.
Merlin: This will keep our carpeting nice.
Merlin: It's carpet on a carpet.
Merlin: As long as nobody ever walks on any part of this that's not the runner.
Merlin: Because on the day of our Lord Easter, and I think maybe on Christmas, but especially on Easter, how do you know it's a very special occasion?
Merlin: Grandma will pull up the runner.
Merlin: Why is today different from all the other days?
Merlin: Because of the bitter herbs.
Merlin: And Grandma will pull up the runner.
Merlin: And John, do you want to speculate what 364 days of having a runner between the front door and the family room?
Merlin: Could you like to tell me briefly the beautiful, like, nearly Christ-like thing that that creates?
Merlin: Is it an opposite?
Merlin: It's a two-foot-wide, absolutely immaculate.
Merlin: And you know what it ends up doing?
Merlin: Of an otherwise used carpet.
Merlin: Why don't they make the whole house out of runner?
Merlin: So it was funny, like, you're like, ooh.
Merlin: You come in, you'd be like, honestly, people come in, Uncle Bill would go, ooh.
Merlin: Like, wow, the rug's really clean there.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: But you know what it really does?
Merlin: Is it makes you feel like the rest of your house is just shit.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Because there's this one two foot, there's a two foot wide area of 12 feet long that is very, very clean.
Merlin: It's only been exposed to the air, you know, 27 times, right?
Merlin: Ever.
Merlin: But it's just, it's a funny thing that I think about sometimes when I think about life is for living stickers or for sticking foods for eating is that like, I get why she did that.
Merlin: I'm not trying to drag grandma.
Merlin: But it was kind of funny that on the one hand, it is so sort of tightly wound and of that time.
Merlin: Like you knew people in the 60s, 70s.
Merlin: You knew people in their 60s and 70s in the 60s and 70s who did stuff like that.
Merlin: Sometimes that means putting plastic on the couch.
Merlin: I guess you never take off.
Merlin: Is it for resale value?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But kind of the funny part...
Merlin: you know, family to family when grandma's in the kitchen is like, God, it's so weird when she picks that thing up and there's just the clean spot.
Merlin: And it really does kind of then nearly make the living room carpet, which is, let me be clear, as immaculate as a non-runner covered carpet can be.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: Also extremely clean.
Merlin: Extremely clean.
Merlin: It's just the blinding Jesus-like clarity of this two foot wide, you know, what lives under the plastic.
Merlin: It's risen, you know?
John: Well, you know, and I probably, in a house like that, wouldn't have been allowed to take a coffee into the living room in the first place, no matter who I was.
Merlin: Okay, so first of all, so that's so funny that you would say that real quick, is that number one, well, I have to reject the premise of your remark because we only ever sat in the living room.
Merlin: The living room was basically like what people used to call a parlor.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So the living room, we only ever sat.
Merlin: I think we opened Christmas presents there sometimes.
Merlin: Well, before the kids were born.
Merlin: I don't remember opening Christmas presents there, but I've seen photos.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You only ever go there when there's like fancy company.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Otherwise, you would just be getting the plastic all yellow from.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: Look at you walking all the places that aren't plastic.
Merlin: Beautiful cherry wood.
Merlin: Cherry wood.
Merlin: Cherry wood.
Merlin: Entire dining room suite was cherry.
Merlin: Beautiful red.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: But you follow, right?
Merlin: And like, sure, we'll have coffee.
Merlin: The minister's coming over, and so we'll have tiny little coffees, and Grandma's going to sit there very nervously and hope that nothing happens.
Merlin: But no, you don't just chuckle around with a drink.
Merlin: They had little socks that you would put onto glasses.
Merlin: Socks?
Merlin: They had a set of...
Merlin: What I can only describe as a sock.
Merlin: Imagine something that you would.
Merlin: I'm so remembering this now in different colors.
Merlin: So you can remember whose drink is whose.
Merlin: They had these little socklets.
Merlin: Imagine like a little piece of, you know, like, you know, knitted stuff.
Merlin: That's the circumference of a glass and three inches high.
Merlin: But they also did still have coasters.
Merlin: And that's just for the family room.
Merlin: And I'm not trying to make grandma sound tightly wound.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: This is how it was.
Merlin: And again, let's go first principles, Clarice.
Merlin: My father was born the day before the stock market crash.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: My family had to make that couch last.
Merlin: Yeah, and like, it's easy enough for somebody like me to talk about, you know, abundance versus poverty mentalities or something else, if you were to actually ask me.
Merlin: What if it's neither?
Merlin: What if it's something else?
Merlin: But anyway, no, no, no, I was raised with that, with what my family universally all refer to each other, never themselves, as string savers.
Merlin: Which is a term for me.
Merlin: String savers!
Merlin: And you see, oh, that guy's such a string saver.
Merlin: And, I mean, you know where that comes from, right?
Merlin: Which is, it's the people, like, everything, anything is... I noticed I was watching The Godfather 2 yesterday.
Merlin: And when De Niro gets fired from Abandanda's...
Merlin: Groceria.
Merlin: And, you know, Abadondo wants to give him the groceries and he won't accept it.
Merlin: And then he does the sweetest thing.
Merlin: He goes and he buys his wife a pair.
Merlin: And he's going to give, I don't think she has a name.
Merlin: He's going to give his wife a pair.
Merlin: And then I notice he, like, takes the wrapping off the pair and kind of puts it up on the coat rack by his hat.
Merlin: And I'm thinking, you know he's going to reuse that wrapping.
John: Yeah, he saved the wrap.
Merlin: My grandfather used the same paper towel for lunch and dinner.
Merlin: My maternal grandfather.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Why are you a string saver?
Merlin: Because it's the depression.
Merlin: A lot of kids on our street are dying and a handful of kids that I know have starved to death.
Merlin: And guess what?
Merlin: Is it okay with you if I say some string?
Merlin: Because you never know when you're going to need it, but then you never also then in turn learn to purge yourself of the things that you really don't need.
Merlin: And so everything just becomes about probation.
Merlin: and cleanliness and like all of those kinds of things that are completely understandable to me.
Merlin: But like, hey, is it cool now that grandma died in 87?
Merlin: Is it cool if I'm not like that in 2024 at some point?
John: my family i've been struggling lately with consumerism as a concept well uh no personally uh-huh um i'd love to hear about this i would absolutely love to hear about this i you know i don't i i am not flush with cash right now um i'm in that situation that a lot of self-employed people are where yeah
John: It seems like every time I get $5, it all has to go to pay multiple fees.
John: Taxes and fees.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Extra charges.
Merlin: I understand.
Merlin: There's some special offers.
John: Yeah, a lot of stuff has to go out a lot more than you think.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And so I'm not in any situation, A, where I need anything.
John: In fact, the opposite.
John: Not only do I not need anything, I super not need anything.
John: I want half of the stuff in our house to be gone.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: Half.
Merlin: I don't even care what half.
Merlin: You can cut the house in half.
John: I don't care.
Merlin: Any half.
Merlin: Any half of the...
Merlin: Any half of the house.
Merlin: Just, I want 49 to 51% of our house.
Merlin: I'm not picky.
Merlin: 49 to 51% of our house to be gone.
Merlin: And I don't care who's sad about it.
Merlin: I don't care who's sad about it, including me.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm the same.
John: And also, I don't have the money.
John: To be frivolously buying things.
Merlin: Well, consuming or like that kind of consuming to fill a hole that we all do from time to time, whether that's, you know, they say in a bad economy, excuse me, sales of things like lipsticks go up because it's a little thing a lady can get for herself as a treat.
Merlin: But like you don't need to like fill a hole by just going out and buying an Oculus head thing or something or a Tesla or whatever.
John: well here's what i'm here's what i'm struggling with because i do not think of myself as someone who does that right except that for 40 years i've gone to thrift stores as a way to pass the time
John: And, you know, you got an hour to kill, go into a thrift store, wander around.
Merlin: Because thrifting is also a process of checking in.
Merlin: You got your places, right?
Merlin: And you know which places are, like, pretty good.
Merlin: And even if you're not, like, an expert on the day of the week and stuff like that, you still check in.
Merlin: And you go, yeah, yeah, it's the same sports coast as last time.
Merlin: Or, oh, my gosh, I notice a lot of new stuff has appeared.
Merlin: Like, once you get good at thrifting, right, isn't that part of it is, like, checking back in.
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: But it's tied.
John: And I wasn't really aware of this because, again, of the kind of the depression way of thinking where it's like, oh, my God, this thing's so cheap, I can't afford not to get it.
John: Like, I'm going to add this string.
John: This string's practically free.
John: Oh, man.
John: I know I don't need a box for my string.
Merlin: I made my own.
Merlin: I made my own out of string.
Merlin: Yeah, I made a string box.
John: Blink, blink.
John: well the false sense that you're actually by buying things you're being thrifty and all of that is tied now in my head in this kind of messed up way where i find myself needing to go
John: And I don't need anything.
John: And I really am just filling a hole.
Merlin: When you say shopping as in to purchase or to have something to do while you're outside the house?
John: Well, no.
John: Retail therapy, they used to call it.
John: They do.
John: And I've always thought like, oh, well, that's for other people.
John: That doesn't apply to me.
John: But I'm finding that my little...
John: My little heart right now is for whatever reason, sort of fragile and I'm trying to, I don't know what I'm trying to heal myself somehow by buying a bunch of shite.
John: And in particular, like guitar shite.
John: because i i'm i i can justify it right i can say oh well i need my work i need to go to the guitar store and i need to because it's for my work and i need to uh oh while i'm here i should probably get some of these and probably some of those and it's this little it's you know it it always seems like an insignificant amount of money until you look at it and it's like well wait a minute that's real money like it it's not insignificant
John: You and I both make our living in this weird way.
John: We don't get a paycheck and go, oh, well, you know, burp-a-derp.
Merlin: I think about that sometimes when I order, like, Instacart, which I do a lot.
Merlin: And I think to myself.
Merlin: What is Instacart?
John: Can you explain it?
Merlin: What is Instacart?
Merlin: Instacart is a service, a tech service, where they have relationships.
Merlin: Well, first of all, they have a bunch of freelance drivers.
Merlin: It's like Lyft or Uber, except it's for grocery shopping.
Merlin: And so they have the usually quite close relationships with local grocery stores and chain grocery stores.
Merlin: And they are up to date on stuff like supply and stuff like that.
Merlin: So you go in, you add things to your Notional Cart...
Merlin: It checks out, and then your shopper goes and gets it for you and delivers it to you and communicates as needed with you about things like replacements and stuff like that.
John: Actually goes to the grocery store and is in communication with you so they're like, oh, they don't have that mayonnaise.
Merlin: They have this mayonnaise.
Merlin: Yeah, but I was just thinking, like, you could also think about it any other way.
Merlin: Think about it as Lyft or think about it as any, like, you know, gig economy thing.
Merlin: And I don't know.
Merlin: I just had this kind of weird sinking feeling where it's like that was worth –
Merlin: 20 for me to not have to do and that was worth 20 for them to do do you know what i mean that's which is kind of i never really thought of it quite that way before but you know when you buy something this is why stealing is unusual because when you buy something one person's making money one person's spending money at least on that transaction you've had a meeting in the mines you say this is for that and it's like
Merlin: There's just been lots of times in my life where I could spend this or I could make this.
Merlin: And there are times in your life, it doesn't have to be total privation.
Merlin: It could just be you're trying to grow up and you go like, well, I need to change the direction of these numbers for a while.
Merlin: I need to become more mindful without becoming a shrew about it.
Merlin: But I need to become more mindful about how many things I decide I need to spend money on versus how many things I need to make money with.
Merlin: And you're right, the kind of stuff we do does make that a little complicated and not dependable in a lot of – not that anybody's life is dependable, but, like, it's just something sort of uniquely – the more independent you are, the more likely you are you're successful, and the more successful you are, the more likely you are you aren't actually independent.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: Say that formulation again?
Merlin: The more independent you are in your job, and you could look at that in lots of different ways.
Merlin: I think there's a very important distinction between independence in how you work versus independence on what you do, how you decide to do it, how you get paid for it.
Merlin: But even just to be an indie troubadour or something, that's independent.
Merlin: But I think it's important.
Merlin: It's something that's in that.
Merlin: What did you call it?
Merlin: My document?
Merlin: What did you call it?
Merlin: You had a funny name for it.
Merlin: But one of the things I was going to say in there is that just keep in mind that when you're doing independent creative work, be aware that very little of the creative work is truly independent and very little of the independent work is truly creative.
Merlin: It's easy enough to get a gig economy job working for somebody else, so to speak.
Merlin: But you probably won't have much creativity in what you're doing and how you do it.
Merlin: And the more that you're doing something that is creative in what you do and how you do it, if it is making you money, the less likely it is to be sort of truly independent.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: That's my theory anyway.
John: I think what you said just a minute ago, that this was worth $20 to me not to have to do it, and it was worth $20 to them to do it, that's really exactly what I've been...
John: what I was trying to articulate.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Cause it's almost, it's almost like, you know, they say energy cannot be created or destroyed.
Merlin: It's like, or for that matter in the queer community, a lot of people say we're, we've all been spending the same $20 bill for 20.
Merlin: Everybody's just always giving each other money to help with stuff.
Merlin: I love that phrase, but yeah.
Merlin: So that makes sense to you.
John: That's the Portland economy, right?
John: There's $150 in the whole place, and somebody pays this guy to give their dog a groom, and then that guy goes and buys some trucks at a skate shop, and then that guy goes and gets... Makes a picnic table.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: But yeah, I mean, that's just, I don't know, a lot of things in life.
Merlin: I think a model can be a useful way to bracket an idea about something, and it had not really occurred to me before.
Merlin: And like I say, I do it a lot.
Merlin: I don't own private jets.
Merlin: I don't have a car.
Merlin: And one reason I don't have those things, the main reason is I hate those things.
John: But the other reason is that I... The main reason you don't have a private jet is that you hate it?
Merlin: Yeah, I do.
Merlin: It's very bad for the environment.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: When they make a jet...
Merlin: Oh, hang on.
Merlin: I almost have a bumper sticker here.
Merlin: And the Air Force, wait, has to hold a bake sale?
John: Yeah, the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to build a junior high.
John: Oh, when Tesla makes a plane, I'll buy it in a heartbeat.
John: Big fan.
John: Oh, see, that's because you're one of those stands.
John: I love that guy.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Well, the thing is, I look at this green couch and I'm like, okay, now you've got a divot in it from where you've been sitting for a long time.
John: Now you've got a coffee stain on it.
John: at what point am i going to start to tingle and go you know what i need a new couch and the answer is i don't need a new couch the couch that we had in our rec room uh at home was a couch that didn't even belong to us it when it was when it was made it was originally sold to someone else with bad taste and that person probably gave it to somebody else how did you end up with it
John: Well, it was like my mom had a boyfriend and the boyfriend owned a rental house and he got the couch from the rental house.
Merlin: Syracuse says pretty frequently he's always complaining about the condition of his house.
Merlin: Not complaining, but, you know, complaining.
Merlin: Almost all of his furniture, according to John, came from his late grandmother, and they still got it.
Merlin: But one thing in an unusual way I'm super sympathetic about is the constraints of a house.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It was like, well, you know, to other people with a different house, they go like, well, why don't you just dot, dot, dot.
Merlin: Oh, great.
Merlin: You know somebody's really smart when they begin a lot of their statements with why don't you just.
Merlin: Why don't you just, oh, that hadn't occurred to me.
Merlin: Why don't I just, except for this, except for our floor is not that strong and we can't do this.
Merlin: And the only place to fit the entertainment thing is in this corner.
Merlin: And you get this, right?
Merlin: That wherever you live, you practically need user documentation from your house.
Merlin: for your house to explain how to unlock one door could be a one page document, let alone how have your decisions.
Merlin: And I'm not saying they're always right, but we have our reasons why we do what we do.
Merlin: And why don't you just people wanting to just buy a new couch or why don't you just not care?
Merlin: Or why don't you just, you know what I mean?
Merlin: All those, all those sorts of things.
Merlin: And like, well, if I, if I had, you know, if I had a magic wand that you wouldn't, we wouldn't be friends.
Merlin: Well, I don't say that to you, but I say it to other people.
Merlin: I said to other people.
John: there's definitely one we wouldn't be talking right now there was a moment when my daughter's mother slash partner partner yeah was moving into her new house and i i sat with her and said some of this furniture
John: you are bringing from Colin.
Merlin: Also known as The Talk.
Merlin: I've had The Talk numerous times from my lady friend.
Merlin: We're now in our 40s.
Merlin: Milk crates are for milk, not for shells.
John: This was bad furniture, badly made, and inherited by you in a shared housing situation.
John: Time to put it into the stream.
John: You know, time to get it out of your life and get...
John: into something else and we had this conversation yesterday go to love seat heaven go to love seat heaven but the conversation yesterday was the cookware conversation oh man there are people who hang on to pots from college that are so gross well and that's what this was we were trying to make we were trying to make some cheese sauce and we needed a pot that was john is there any chance that was for a school project is there any chance that all that was for a school project
John: My daughter came to me the night before.
John: Yes, last night at five o'clock.
John: And she said, do you mind sharing this with our listeners?
John: Dad, there's a school project tomorrow.
John: And I was like, okay, well, it's good that this is coming out at five and not at nine.
John: And she said, we have to share something of our culture.
John: at school and i was like okay we don't we don't really have any dances as part of our culture we don't have any native dances we don't make you want me to wear the wear the bathrobe and bring the cemetery there's no there's no unleavened bread in our culture and she and she and i don't think she wants the scimitar uh at school i think she's against it and i was like so what is your thing and she said cheesy biscuits
John: the Welsh rarebit that we make every Christmas morning.
John: That was Nana's invention.
John: Welsh rarebit, but with ham and on bistics instead of toast.
John: And I would like to take that to school.
Merlin: You told me this anecdote earlier.
Merlin: And I just want to say, I've never wanted a cheesy ham bistic more than my entire freaking life than I do now.
John: I know.
John: I know.
John: Oh my God.
Merlin: It sounds so good.
John: I was like, sweetie, this is a major undertaking, not just to make it.
Merlin: It's not a Sunday night kind of thing.
John: Yeah, not just to make it, but to make it for 40 kids and schlep it to school in the morning.
John: And she was like, well, that's what needs to get done.
John: And I said, you know what?
John: I, I, okay, let's just get it going.
John: And we get the stuff.
John: We go to the store.
John: Cheesy biscuits has very, there's not very many ingredients, so it's easy to, easy to buy the stuff.
John: And we start making, and I was like, you know, hey, you know, one of our family traditions is that I'm bean dad, so you're going to make it yourself, and I'm going to stand here and coach you.
John: But when I tweet about it, I'm going to say I was working on a puzzle instead.
John: Good for you.
John: And she said, okay.
John: Let's just steer clear at this point.
John: So we started making it.
John: And the problem is that all of the pots at her mom's house are for shite.
Merlin: And I bet they stick.
Merlin: They stick.
Merlin: Because I bet they were cheap.
Merlin: If they were like mine, I'm projecting here.
Merlin: The ones that my mom got for me at the Walmart on County Road 54 in the year 1986 were like the least expensive, quote unquote, you know, what do they call it?
Merlin: The kind that doesn't stick?
Merlin: Yeah, non-stick.
Merlin: Non-stick, but the cheapest in the world were like by the time you've scraped it with a spoon five times, which you're not supposed to do.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh, my God, keeping that for over five years would be, forget it, everything's going to stick to that.
John: And these are slightly better, but they're definitely Costco in the 90s.
John: They're not Calphalon, I'm guessing.
John: No, they're not.
John: They're, you know, Costco brands, and they just have... Kirkland's finest pants.
John: Kirkland's pants.
John: Correct.
John: From 1992.
John: And so we're sitting there.
John: And the thing is that my daughter's mother slash partner is, like your spouse, a fancy lady.
John: She's a fancy lass.
John: And she's all the time at the Le Creuset outlet looking at little, I don't know, muffin warmers or whatever those things are.
John: She never buys anything.
Merlin: This is bullshit we've got for making coffee.
Merlin: It's fucking ridiculous.
Merlin: We have like a gooseneck fancy water heater.
Merlin: I'm like, what was wrong with my Cuisinart with rust?
Merlin: That was a great Cuisinart that I had with rust.
Merlin: That thing will boil.
Merlin: That'll boil water like fucking ringing a bell.
Merlin: You and the rust probably added a lot of iron to your dime.
Merlin: It's fine.
Merlin: I've cleaned it with espresso machine cleaner.
Merlin: It's fine.
Merlin: But you get the gooseneck thing and you're like, it's like an eighth of an ounce of water.
Merlin: That's exactly 211 degrees.
Merlin: And it takes up all this space.
Merlin: But that doesn't mean you necessarily got rid of all of Kirkland's finest.
Merlin: Still some Kirkland hanging around.
John: We're standing in the kitchen, and I'm like, when you moved into this house, weren't you going to get all clad?
John: Weren't you going to get rid of all these pans and get all clads?
John: And she was like, I was, but that shit's expensive, yo.
John: And I was like, I know it is, but here we are burning the cheese sauce in your Kirkland pots.
John: There's got to be a better way.
John: And then a British guy came in and said, listen to the pan.
John: Yeah.
John: But I for sure had a moment where I thought, oh, no, there are people, certainly people in the world who would kill for these Kirkland pans.
John: There's people in the world that would kill for a white five-gallon bucket.
John: Yeah, in the classic formulation where I turn to my daughter and say, you should be grateful for this burned cheese.
John: Some people wouldn't even have the burn.
John: Daddy, don't make me tap the can of beans.
John: But I'm sitting on the couch.
John: I don't want to live as you and I both don't want to live in a place where we are...
John: uh defined by our possessions we don't want to spend money that we don't have to on dumb stuff we don't want to be caught in this capitalist gyre as this as the ship sinks on the shoals um but i also don't want to burn the cheese sauce and you know and i got a spot on my couch and i don't know the difference was there part of you that almost like ran out to sur la tabla
Merlin: There was a part of you that was like, I should just run out and get a nice pot.
John: No, because that shit's expensive, yo.
John: That shit's expensive, yo.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And I just spent $80 on a 1982 chorus pedal that I really thought I needed.
John: What brand?
John: This is the problem.
John: Have I been talking to you about this?
John: No.
John: You know, I went down and I...
John: i was like oh i gotta clean out my storage space and i found all the tupperware bins full of uh effects pedals from over the years and as you recall being an indie rocker in the early 90s as you were
John: That was at a time when effects pedals had no special hold over anybody.
John: They weren't boutique.
John: They weren't expensive.
Merlin: You certainly would not.
Merlin: I mean, like if you're somebody like Charles from the Rens or like, oh shoot, the guy from Sugar who played with Michael Shannon at that REM show.
Merlin: But like people who have like three rows of pedals, that was not very cool.
Merlin: You know what was cool?
Merlin: My friend Steven had two different distortion pedals.
Merlin: Because he had one that was in a Marshall half stack.
Merlin: And so he had his pedal for regular distortion and then his squee pedals for solos.
Merlin: That was it.
Merlin: There was no chorus pedal.
Merlin: There's no spring reverb.
Merlin: There's no digital delay.
Merlin: There's no Tom Scholz rockman.
Merlin: There's none of that stuff.
John: It's not very cool.
John: Because I was not punk rock,
John: um i had four pedals i had the pedal that oh man made it louder yeah uh the the the line boost right the it just made it louder and then i had the pedal that added distortion
John: And if you ran the one that made it louder into the distortion one, it made it louder, double louder and distorted.
John: And then I had a compressor pedal.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: The integrity of your signal chain.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I've never seen a non-jazz or prog person that interested in the signal before it reaches the amp and not necessarily dirty.
Yeah.
Merlin: That's fascinating.
Merlin: Did you have an equalizer, too?
John: Well, because... And I did have an equalizer.
John: Did you have a cheap... No.
John: It was because of a cheap app?
John: Because of a cheap app?
John: I had a boss.
John: I had a boss.
John: How many?
John: Five?
John: It was five channel, right?
John: And then eventually somebody came out with a seven channel, and I was like, that's too many channels.
John: But, you know, my tone was always loud and clean.
John: I mean, it was a little distorted, but mostly.
John: Overdriven.
John: That's the thing.
Merlin: If you get a tube amp and it's overdriven, it's really nice.
Merlin: It's not distorted.
Merlin: It's overdriven.
Merlin: Overdriven.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, so, but at that time, people were always handing you pedals.
John: The number of times that somebody handed me a pedal and said, hey, do you want this?
John: And it was always some kind of pedal that nobody wanted.
John: Some sort of octave pedal or chorus or flanger or phaser.
Merlin: If you're not Neil Young, your use of octave pedal should be a little circumspect.
Merlin: Unless you like playing slow guitar solos, your octave pedal's going to sound really weird.
John: Well, and maybe Jack White, right?
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But so I pulled out this bin, a couple of bins, and I laid them all out on the floor.
John: I had 80 effects pedals.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: 80.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Were there any where you were like, and there must have been some where you were, I guess, let me just guess.
Merlin: There were a bunch where you're like, ugh.
Merlin: But there were some where you were like, holy God, I don't remember owning that.
Merlin: That must have been late.
Merlin: And then there must have been at least one where you're like, I have no idea that I owned this.
Merlin: Oh, oh, there were plenty of those, right?
John: Like, at what point, and the problem was.
John: Why do I have three Ibanez choruses?
John: I never bought any of them.
John: They just, they just were, I was just, I had a practice space and I shared it with a bunch of bands.
John: By the Richard Hugo house.
John: By the Richard Hugo house.
John: And people would just toss all these modulating pedals and distortion pedals where the battery didn't work anymore.
John: Like there was no.
John: Hmm.
John: They were all $20.
Merlin: Again, where we were using earlier, accumulated.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You accumulated pedals.
Merlin: You didn't seek pedals per se, right?
Merlin: But somehow they ended up, how do you put this intransitively?
Merlin: Pedals ended up in your world.
Merlin: They ended up in my world.
John: And for a while in the 2000s, I was good friends with Susie Matthews, who was the daughter of the man who started electroharmonics.
John: No.
John: At some point, she said, I'm going to make you an electroharmonics dealer.
John: Did they make the Big Muff?
Merlin: They made the Big Muff, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Their pedals, the form factor of their pedals in the 70s was so cool.
Merlin: Incredible.
Merlin: It all looked like stuff that Captain Kirk would use.
John: That's right.
John: And so once I was a dealer, she would send me all this stuff.
John: Like, oh, hey, check out this deluxe memory, man.
John: It turned out it had a scratch.
Merlin: Is that a digital delay?
John: Or no, it's a. Or analog delay?
John: Oh, that's so cool.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And it's got, you know, it had a scratch in the paint, so we can't sell it.
John: So anyway, here you go.
John: Anyway, I get these 80 pedals out.
John: I spread them all over.
John: I'm looking at them.
John: And what a normal person who had an eBay store, which is live as of this moment, BTW.
John: You should make an ad and I'll put it in.
John: A normal person would say, I'm going to put 75 of these pedals for sale somewhere.
John: I'm either going to take them to the guitar store and sell them or I'm going to put them online and sell them.
John: But what I did was I looked at him and said, I have every DOD pedal from 1982.
John: Whoa, you make a flight.
John: Except.
John: Like an omikaze pedal table.
John: That's right.
John: Except for the flanger.
John: and the uh if you picked up the flanger you could sell it as a set well so all you need to do is buy a new pedal instead of getting rid of them i went on ebay and i'm like i gotta get that flanger
John: Oh, no, you actually did that?
John: I did it.
John: Oh, I don't blame you.
John: I don't blame you at all.
John: And now, down in my studio, I no longer have 80 pedals.
John: I have 90 pedals.
Merlin: Well, that happens sometimes.
Merlin: I mean, a pendulum swing, right?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You go one direction, and eventually you hope it comes back.
John: Because I needed not only the DoD Digitex, but I needed a couple of MXRs.
John: I needed a couple of Boss, a couple of Ibanez.
Merlin: Do you know what that does to the value of the collection if you break it up?
Merlin: Nobody buys one fork.
Merlin: No, I'm saying you did the right thing.
Merlin: You're investing.
Merlin: You're investing in your future the way I look at it.
John: That's what I'm doing.
John: You're right.
John: I'm investing in my future.
John: Don't be simple.
John: You're so right, because now that I have the whole line of DoD pedals, it probably doubled in value.
John: Where else are you going to get it?
John: I did the work for you.
John: That's a good question.
John: I delivered your food for you for $20.
Merlin: I'm not selling you a pedal.
Merlin: I'm selling you part of my life.
Merlin: That's right.
John: I'm selling you the time.
Merlin: I'm selling you my attention.
Merlin: I'm selling you my curation.
John: My curation.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: I'm selling you my knowledge, experience, my strength, my hope.
John: Save some for yourself.
John: Well, what it all boils down to, like all buying things,
John: is that what i should be doing is working on finishing these songs i'm writing oh well that's a different area of your work well it is but but the problem is that whenever i whenever i sit down and go oh boy these songs are hard to write i go you know what i should go look and see if my bid on that dod flanger is still winning
Merlin: Well, it's hard to get focused when you're, you know, on the quote-unquote creative part.
Merlin: It feels like the same work, right?
Merlin: It feels like the same family.
Merlin: You're doing the right thing.
Merlin: I appreciate that.
Merlin: You're so supportive.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Dude, I've been trying to put together a thing.
Merlin: I'm not really quite sure where to begin for a variety of reasons.
Merlin: All you need to know is that I like printing things on a 3D printer.
Merlin: And I had this idea of trying to put together, again, the idea of this being very practical, of like, hey, if you've got the kind of printer I've got,
Merlin: here's some stuff to know.
Merlin: Like, you know, and there's those classic things you kind of wish that you're, somebody in your life would tell you about a thing that's new to you.
Merlin: Like, here's the things to always do.
Merlin: Here's the things to never do.
Merlin: Well, that's half a percent of it.
Merlin: Here's the thing, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like, like, don't, you know,
Merlin: There are very few things you should never do, and there are relatively few things you should always do, and the art is figuring out what falls in between.
Merlin: Everything else, if you like.
John: So this is part of a community building that you're doing, because you're communicating.
Merlin: I put stuff up on a public site sometimes where I'll share things with people.
Merlin: Anyway, but I really struggle with it.
Merlin: The less interesting reason is that I don't want to...
Merlin: get into tech support and I'm not your dad.
Merlin: So, like, I don't want to, like, try and say, go do it my way.
Merlin: I love giving context for, like, good decision making and, like, where opportunities are for learning versus where opportunities are for just doing it until it makes sense.
Merlin: Because, you know, you can waste a lot of time and money in life and attention and love and everything by not realizing that
Merlin: You're pushing a rock that's never going to love you.
Merlin: But, you know, I thought about trying to do that.
Merlin: But, like, it's very – it is very – it is sort of difficult to do because everybody's on their own journey for that stuff.
Merlin: But, like, the idea –
Merlin: I can, one of the things that's on the list that's somewhere on that spectrum, it's somewhere between never do this and always do this.
Merlin: It's closer to the never do this is before you buy more toys for your toys, consider exploiting what you already have, or if you like leveraging what you already have, like use up the filament you've already got before you buy a new filament and like, Oh, why?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, I can explain this to you, but just take on the strength.
Merlin: Well, why?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: How?
Merlin: Because you really want to try carbon fiber.
Merlin: I understand that.
Merlin: You really want to try carbon fiber PLA.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: What kind of nozzles do you have?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Well, okay, if you have a brass 0.2 nozzle, which I don't know if they even make.
Merlin: But, well, think about it this way.
Merlin: Like, if you had, just because you... I mean, what kind of nozzle do you have is a great question to apply to a lot.
Merlin: You want a steel...
Merlin: larger bore nozzle.
Merlin: Otherwise, it's going to get all gummed up and you just wasted $34.
Merlin: There you go.
Merlin: A 12-string, I mentioned to you last week talking about, you know, Tom Peterson and his 12-string bass.
Merlin: Like, okay, but here's the thing.
Merlin: A 12-string bass is not a 12-string guitar.
Merlin: You don't buy a set of 12-string guitar strings and put it on your bass because those are different things.
Merlin: You don't even buy two sets of six-string bass.
Merlin: Because it's a base.
Merlin: It's different.
Merlin: I can't even get into the ballpark of explaining to you because, you know, and I'm giving it to you here in Pigs and Bunnies, but you know the kind of thing I'm talking about, which is like, if you knew even roughly what the answer to that question was, you would never ask it because you know that it kind of doesn't make sense.
Merlin: I want to be the kind person who goes, well, just so you know, like, don't spend a ton of time on buying new stuff until you really make good use of what you've got.
Merlin: And maybe instead of trying to think about a new filament you could buy to make new stuff on your new, maybe instead think about, like, is there anything where you can sharpen the saw?
Merlin: Like, I was trying to explain this to my wife, like how when I do 3D printing stuff, which is of zero interest to her, I was like, there are functional things that I make, and there are fun things that I make, and there are things that I make just to learn something, but they all feed into each other.
Merlin: When I make something that's fun, it also ends up teaching me something...
Merlin: All kinds of things.
Merlin: You can apply this to so many things.
Merlin: Just think about cutting your lawn.
Merlin: Think about how much you learn about order of operations, about weather, about all these different things.
Merlin: There's a million things where you have so much domain expertise about something and you don't know how you got it.
Merlin: But I make something fun, and in making something fun, I learn a lot.
Merlin: I learn, quote, unquote, learn, that's the second part.
Merlin: And then with that learning, I can make something functional.
Merlin: And when I make something functional, that makes me more confident to go make something fun, and the music goes round.
Merlin: So I'd love to just say to somebody, well, never put metal or carbon fiber or filament
Merlin: into your printer unless you know you've got the right kind of nozzle.
Merlin: I mean, it already says that in the manual.
Merlin: You don't need another person, like, yelling at you.
Merlin: But here's one.
Merlin: No matter who you are with a 3D printer, if you're new to it, start by making small things that don't take a lot of filament or a lot of time.
Merlin: Because no matter what printer you've got, getting it done faster is nice.
Merlin: And then you can decide, did it turn out the way you wanted it?
Merlin: Okay, so how about the something else?
Merlin: Well, the something else is either I make this tiny thing that's really not that complicated and I know I can pull it off or something else.
Merlin: Well, if that something else is I try to print a bowling ball at full density and then I just walk away and hope it turned out okay, you're going to be so bummed and you're going to waste $29 worth of filament before it runs out, realizing you never should have tried to make a bowling ball.
Merlin: That's not in your remit yet.
Merlin: You got over your skis and you didn't understand how to keep, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And like with effects pedals, sometimes less is more.
Merlin: I'm saying, John, everything is related.
John: And you shouldn't feel that.
John: Well, what's interesting about getting one of every one is that what I've done, stay with me, is that I've made heddle boards that are brand exclusive.
John: Now I have an all-DOD, an all-Boss, an all-Ibanez, an all-Maxon, an all-Electroharmonics.
John: And so the reason that I pursued this is because I thought that the discipline of only using...
Merlin: mxr pedals that they could that first of all when they were designed they were probably designed to interact with each other right because the designers probably because generally you sell like back in the day anyway with private like local music stores they may not have everything by everybody they might have i'm this is a dumb distinction probably but if they're going to buy a new brand of guitars is it gibson or is it fender it could be but it's more likely ibanez or pv
Merlin: Because that's what they could afford to have in stock to still have a range of things.
Merlin: If they buy one Les Paul Custom, that obviates the ability to pay for it.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: So you might have a coked up DoD salesman that you really like.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Isn't that kind of how it works?
Merlin: And then you could say, well, yeah.
Merlin: For me, I was an Ibanez guy.
Merlin: I didn't know any better.
Merlin: But like all these Ibanez pedals, you know, they work fine together.
Merlin: They all got the same quarter inch jack, right?
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Isn't that kind of it, though?
Merlin: Like, you might end up accumulating.
Merlin: I think with PV, it was really like that.
Merlin: All our equipment is very heavy and rarely breaks.
Merlin: Buy PV.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Have you ever played a PV bass or guitar?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: They're so heavy.
John: Over-engineered is what they were.
John: Yeah.
John: Built like a brick shithouse, man.
John: And the thing is that those things, you know, people looked down their noses at them for a long time.
John: I know, but they're probably still playing them.
John: They're totally rad.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: They're totally rad.
John: Oh, how's your Galen Kruger?
John: The thing about the pedalboard people is, you know, they spend so much time and energy and mental energy, and I'm saying this as somebody that's on eBay right now looking at, you know, Digitech.
Merlin: I am currently in a graphics application making show art, and it's a picture of a big muff.
Merlin: There it is.
John: But, you know, the thing about it is that to have a pedal board that is restricted by brand is as much a disciplining limitation as anything I could think of.
Merlin: You know, it's like, I can't... I won't buy it, no matter how much this other nice one is, I'm not going to buy that because I'm restricting myself to, like, these...
John: well that and also like i could combine these pedals in a literally infinite number of ways but instead i'm not going to you know i i went to see uh prince at a club a few years ago like a small club and he had when he was living he was still alive yeah he had an all boss pedal board
Merlin: which are within the pedal board weirdos considered like the most basic the most normie sex pedals and prince had like nine boss pedals they weren't they weren't always like the most subtle like i had one that would make feedback when you press the pedal down like they were kind of like a lot of boss pedals were very durable pedals for teenagers
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And that's all prints used.
John: Wow.
John: And I walked away from that going, okay, well,
John: There's a lot you can learn there, which is.
John: A little guy made a lot of sound with those.
John: Yeah.
John: And he could go into any music store in the world and find a replacement for his tube screamer.
John: I'm sorry, his blues driver.
John: Yeah.
John: I had a tube screamer.
John: And I've been a tube screamer.
John: Everybody had a tube screamer and a blues driver.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: We do that little pick thing with the picking and like a little bit of your thumb.
John: Oh, my God.
John: but so that was another one of these where i was like oh right maybe maybe i should think about this less not more what i really need is a line boost a distortion a compressor and a delay
John: I just have all these flangers, and I've only used a flanger twice in my life.
John: I was just going to say, like, if you have a flanger and a chorus, you better be Robert Smith.
John: Well, that's right.
John: I mean, in Medicine Cabinet Pirate, you can hear a flanger.
John: But other than that... Oh, yeah, it's real deep, right?
John: Yeah, deep, super deep.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do remember that.
John: And that was like some very old 1970s Ibanez flying pan thing.
Merlin: type of thing that i wouldn't use that more than five or six times on the same album well no that's right or you know like are you gonna schlep that around and probably it's worth fifteen hundred dollars yeah again unless you're neil young maybe you get one one song with vocoder we don't need vocoder on all the songs and you know basically my phone could probably do it i could hook up my phone to all my guitars and it would make every sound in history via wi-fi yeah
John: Yeah, via Wi-Fi.
John: That's right.
John: I don't even have to touch the guitar.
John: I just have a guitar.
John: It's on the stand.
Merlin: Don't even look at it.
Merlin: Don't look at it.
Merlin: Come on.
Merlin: Nobody looks at their guitar anymore.
Merlin: Unless they're trying to see where the cord goes.
Merlin: That's a fascinating idea.
Merlin: Well, where are things right now with your eBay process or with these things?
Merlin: Well, let me put it this way.
Merlin: Because a theme through a lot of this has been like...
Merlin: Like you say, consumerism.
Merlin: As you sit here today on your filthy couch, I'm so sorry.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: What are you thinking about today?
John: What's the way forward, John?
John: My second eBay round just went live as this show was airing, or as this show was recording, because I programmed it to go.
John: That's why you spilled your coffee, right?
John: That's right.
John: I programmed it to go.
John: And it was so hard to get it all done.
John: It's just a lot of, it's just a lot of work.
John: I didn't realize how much work it was to post anything on eBay.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But I'm really into it.
John: Like not the, not the money, but the selling, because the problem is the stuff has stacked up all these years, but I care about everything, right?
John: I care about these effects pedals and I care about these jackets and I, you know, I, I've like, I
John: I have put some of myself into them somehow.
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: And it's like you have with a lot of stuff.
John: Like, I have knowledge about this.
Merlin: I said this on something I wrote the other day.
Merlin: The playlist that I make.
Merlin: Yes, exactly.
Merlin: I think I said it here last Monday.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: I said, it's not just seven songs.
Merlin: It's seven little pieces of my heart.
Merlin: Because, like, there's so much of different parts of my life
Merlin: Every one of those decisions, then I have to really kind of not rethink, but like I have to think about like, oh, is it that or that?
Merlin: And do I really like that song?
Merlin: Is that a good song for introduction?
Merlin: Or is that really just one that I like because I was already a super fan?
Merlin: And it's like, I get that if not even whether that is a suit jacket or a tube screamer.
Merlin: I totally get that.
Merlin: They're a little, little, little bit.
Merlin: They're like little, they're little Horcruxes.
Merlin: They've got a little bit of you.
Merlin: They're little Horcruxes, exactly.
Merlin: You ever hear that SoundCloud rapper, Little Horcrux?
Merlin: You ever heard of him?
Merlin: Anyway.
John: By putting them online to sell, and by, I think, the act of selling them, too.
John: I get to hold them.
John: I get to think about them.
John: It's like a Viking funeral, kind of, yeah.
John: Yeah, well, I look at them, and I see them again, and I try them on again, and I go, okay, now I'm going to turn you out into the world, and I'm going to tell your story a little bit as you go, so you won't be forgotten.
John: Little guy, spread your wings and fly.
John: What it does is it... Because what I'm trying to do is have fewer...
John: voices Speaking to me every time I walk past a closet Mm-hmm like I walk past a closet and there's 15 jackets in there.
Merlin: They're like to remember me Hello Do you remember when you found some of them talk like that some of them just go?
Merlin: Yeah, and I bet some of them go hey buddy like I bet there's all different It's not even one kind of voice right?
John: No, no, no someone were just like it isn't like even like all different.
John: Yeah
John: Yeah.
John: And some of them are like, I worked for John F. Kennedy.
John: And, you know, like, and so I don't, there's too many of those.
John: I'm just sitting here in the living room, looking around and everything is talking.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and so, so I really like, I really, I think I really like it.
John: And it's not about, it's not, I'm trying to make any money and it's not.
Merlin: It's okay that that's part of it.
Merlin: But for you to have a component of that, that goes beyond just that mercantile thing will probably also improve your chances of being able to sell it, which is a nice thing.
John: Yeah, maybe, but, but, but it's definitely a prop.
John: It's definitely like, it's more of a process than I have words to describe.
John: It's not just like, I'm going to put these things online.
John: It's like, I just, it's not only that I'm reliving my relationship with them, but I'm also trying to analyze why I have a relationship with them.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Oh, that can be time consuming.
Merlin: You got to be careful.
John: Well, it's a lot of time.
John: That's right.
Merlin: And so it takes me hours.
Merlin: You got time to think about it while you're stuffing envelopes and whatnot.
John: I guess so.
John: You know, it's like you were saying, is this worth $20 to have somebody else do?
John: Yeah, right, right, right.
John: Except that no one else could do it.
John: No one else could put this stuff up the way that I'm doing it.
John: And it wouldn't help me the way...
Merlin: feels like it's helping me but maybe that's maybe it's crazy i'm just sorting the getting rid of stuff at the end of the day regardless of the path to get there it can be a very good thing if it's something that got stolen because you were asleep that sucks but if it's something that you chose to sort of let go of you know like like you're like letting go of the little they're just holding on the leg of the butterfly and let it go like that's there's some there can be something very very nice about that but it's it is still all work is work
Merlin: Do you get rid of things?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How do you get rid of them?
John: I mean, honestly.
John: 50% of all things?
John: You just go in the room and you're like.
Merlin: Well, honestly, I mean, like, this is a very long story.
Merlin: The short answer is trips to the dump.
Merlin: We're like sometimes with the car and sometimes we've rented a truck because it's like we've just got too much stuff and it's got to go.
Merlin: And, you know, as much as you say like, okay, I've got this beautifully sealed tub of baby clothes.
Merlin: Yeah, well, let me just swipe all the mouse poop off the top of that beautifully sealed.
Merlin: Because like, no, we don't have a wing of the house for storage.
Merlin: We have a garage and it's gross.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And, like, I don't think we're helping.
Merlin: Let me ask you this.
Merlin: When you realize you're going to have a baby, would you want somebody giving you a big Tupperware full of extremely tiny white shirts with poop on the top?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Because that's part of the fun of, you know, when you do that is you go out and get your own stuff.
Merlin: Like, right?
Merlin: But, like, there's that stuff.
John: Do you know when our baby was born, we had a family that we didn't know.
John: It was the sister of a friend of a friend who had two girls.
John: One of them was one year older than our daughter, and one of them was two years older than our daughter.
John: Oh, so it's still fresh.
John: Those Ramones ones, these are still warm.
John: And the thing was, they were affluent people.
Merlin: So they also had Vampire Weekend onesies, probably.
Yeah.
John: Well, no, but they weren't hip.
John: They were from Bellevue, and they were just people that shopped at the expensive store for kids.
John: And we just got, before the baby was born, I have a picture.
John: The expensive store for kids is funny for me, because it does sound like a store.
Merlin: Where are you guys getting the crib?
Merlin: Oh, we're going to the expensive store for kids.
John: We're going to the expensive store for kids.
John: That's so good.
John: We got the swingy thing our kid hates there.
John: There's the middle stores for kids, and then there's always the one that's like, oh, wow, this little Lord Fauntler I sued is really...
John: So before the baby was even born, you know, because Ari and I weren't married.
John: Right.
John: And we weren't clear what was going to happen.
Merlin: That's a lot to work out.
John: Yeah.
John: What are we going to do?
John: How's this going to go?
John: And I remember very distinctly when she was about...
John: Six or seven months pregnant.
John: We got four giant bins, infant clothes.
Merlin: And we sat in my living room.
Merlin: And you have to say thank you.
Merlin: And this must be so special.
Merlin: Thank you so much.
John: But we didn't know them.
John: These were strangers to us.
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: I mean, again, it's like when the person, like in the old joke from the 90s, it's like when the Greenpeace person hands you the pamphlet and goes, here, now you throw this away.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: When you give somebody stuff like that, it is a burden.
Merlin: That is not a gift.
Merlin: That is a burden.
Merlin: Well, except in our case, it was a bonding.
John: Oh, really?
John: Because she and I sat in the living room.
John: Oh, that's nice.
John: I'm sorry.
John: I sound awful now.
John: I apologize.
John: And all these little t-shirts and all these little pants.
John: And the ones that were...
John: two soiled we put them away and the ones that had clearly never been worn or you know we put them over here and the ones that said uh nike on them we put them in the to-go and the ones that said i'm a little cutums we put in the keeps and there we had so much of it we could we could give away half of it which because i was a thrift store devotee i was on my way there anyway yeah
John: And then we had this pile of effectively brand new rich people baby clothes.
John: That is nice.
Merlin: Especially because at a certain age, the problem is the kid grows so fast.
Merlin: So if you buy them the Ramones shirt or whatever, there's a pretty good chance if you buy them for somebody who's a present, the kid will never wear it.
Merlin: They have more clothes than they need for the first month.
Merlin: And then they just rip through sizes so fast that...
Merlin: especially with shoes, right?
Merlin: Like, you just, you cannot keep up.
Merlin: But it is, if somebody wants to, Matt Howey said something to me when he knew Madeline was pregnant.
Merlin: He said, just, I know, he's like, just so you know, learn from me.
Merlin: Matt said, what you need is a bunch of diapers and some diapers and some onesies.
Merlin: And like, you don't need all the stuff you think you need.
Merlin: And if you try to plan ahead too much in that regard, it's what I learned, is like, well, yeah, but you bought all this stuff or you got all this stuff.
Merlin: And it's like,
Merlin: Yeah, but what I really need is, I'm sorry to say, I need more diapers in a larger size.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: There's all that stuff where you're like, and you just accumulate.
Merlin: Do you remember what it used to require to go to the art museum?
Merlin: Let alone go on a plane?
Merlin: All the gear for all that stuff?
Merlin: Anyways, so did you take the leftovers to the thrifteria?
John: Well, what happened was that this family decided that we were the place that they were going to get rid of their stuff.
John: And for the first eight years of our daughter's life, every time she was about to bump out of her clothes, because they had two daughters.
John: Boy, you really got the timing right on that, didn't you?
John: We would get five or six bins.
John: and we would go we would sit together the two of us and we would go through them and go we'd take half of it and say no this is either either it's been used too much or it's uncool and then the half that was like this is cute or this is brand new and cute we would keep and we effectively dressed our daughter from these from the beneficence of these rich strangers
John: all the way until she was eight and it turned out that both of those girls were total sporto jocks and at eight years old oh and she was more one of pink stuff at that point well marla marla was like a she was on her way to being a little goth
John: okay and more and more the clothes stopped being cute and started being like yeah she's got you know like she's got opinions and taste at that point well yeah and the the the t-shirts they were giving her us were like mia ham is the greatest and marla's like i what is that i that's not i want something that has like i don't want to require me reading wikipedia
John: And so eventually, and because those girls are now grown or they're in high school, like they're not giving away bins of their clothes anymore.
Merlin: So you had to really pick up the slack.
John: It ended right when it needed to end.
John: And we probably saved $50,000 almost by either buying her only clothes from thrift stores or getting these six bins every six months.
John: And, of course, you know, we sent everything back into the chain, too.
John: You know, all the stuff that was still clean or still nice or cute.
John: It's a form of sartorial composting.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: Hakuna Matata, right?
John: We sow the seed.
John: Nature grows the seed.
John: Yes.
John: And then we eat the seed.
Okay.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: That's a good system.
Merlin: But, you know, I don't know.
Merlin: I was fancy.
Merlin: Madeline was fancy.
Merlin: I was like, I don't really want a whole lot of used clothes.
John: But it's fine.
Merlin: The kid's just going to shit and sleep.
Merlin: It's fine.
John: You can just wrap them in a blanket.
John: I mean, all I wear is used clothes.
John: Everything I own is a used clothes.
John: Sometimes when I put this stuff on online, I'm like, yeah, this has a repair done to it that was already in it when I bought it 30 years ago.
John: And I have no way of telling you about this repair, except that I've studied it extensively.
Merlin: Like where you get like a preemptive patch or something?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Like something where like you can, the elbows on this can last a little longer if I get this before it gets to, you know what I'm talking about, before it gets threadbare, I can like save this, that kind of thing.
John: This jacket has lived at least one adventure-filled life before it even met me.
Oh.
John: And then I, and that might, it might've had two adventure filled lives before it met me.
John: And now I have lived an adventure filled life with it.
John: and now here it comes to you and i can't tell you where that button went because that button was missing when i got it and you know and i sewed on a flattened peso