Ep. 543: "The Two Spleens"
Merlin: Oh, Lord.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merle.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: You just missed a really good sneezing fit.
Merlin: Oh, you just had one.
Merlin: yeah i did yeah before before i'm a professional you know oh sure sure you got it out of the way i got it out of the way i mean there might be more i don't do you sneeze louder as you get older i do my sneezes are upsetting
Merlin: No, I mean, like I've gotten warnings on my watch.
John: Oh, wow.
John: That's something bad is happening.
John: Like a decibel warning.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: The watch will tell you if you tell it to.
Merlin: It will tell you when you're around loud things.
Merlin: And yeah, I hit the 90s.
Merlin: I'm a high watt amp.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Wow.
John: I mean, I'm not like that, but I definitely... I knew somebody that stifled their sneezes.
John: That's no good.
John: You can't do that.
John: It was so upsetting.
Merlin: I hate... People who go like... That kind of thing.
Merlin: This was like a...
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I can't imagine hearing that sound and thinking that's a wholesome response to a body.
John: I just felt like this can't be good for you and it's not good for me.
John: You're not helping anybody.
John: Let it out.
John: but i definitely go can i ask a follow-up question of course do you get more multiple cereal sneezes than you used to they do come in waves of three i think like celebrity deaths like celebrity deaths i mean the last two nights i have had a strange thing where i couldn't clear my eyes
Merlin: oh tell me oh tell me more i have eye issues tell me more about that oh well you know i get i get a weird i get first of all i'm learning to listen to my body john at the grand old age of 57 i'm finally realizing that when my eyes start feeling kind of crackly that means i should go to bed that's my body telling me it's time to go to bed i also get a weird like like you can't see i'm kind of gonna blink my eyes like i got i got goo or or human ooze what happens to your eyes
John: Well, you know, I just start to get it's definitely I should go to bed is what it's telling me.
John: But, you know, there have been so many signs over the years that I should go to bed.
John: A lot of people will tell you that specifically.
John: Yeah.
John: And I've ignored them all.
John: You know, it's like, oh, it's time to go to bed.
John: Well, says you body.
Yeah.
John: um but just the last two nights yeah what do you know yeah uh the last two nights i have not been able i've been like blinking my eyes and i haven't been able to and and put like wet rag on my eyes and and all the normal things and still i can't get my eyes
John: to to to see and i think i really should go to bed at this point but like i was looking last night and there were halos around all the lights oh boy and i'm like this really feels like something it's not just my body telling me to go to sleep this may be some other thing telling me to go to sleep something some larger spirit you know some ancient spirit
Merlin: Well, you realized a long time ago that you're going to be the anchorman.
Merlin: Well, so... You'll be contacted by the UFOs.
Merlin: Is it possible that that's just a little, hey, buddy, hey, buddy, like a little nudge from the UFOs that it's time for the anchorman to lay his head to sleep?
Merlin: I'm not sure.
John: I think about that a lot, but I think about it more in terms of back pain.
John: Like, hey, you guys are noting this in your journals, right?
John: Like, we're going to deal with this, too, when we get...
Merlin: When I get elevated or whatever, you're going to work on the... You're going to go through... Part of your coronation is you're going to go through, if I remember correctly, the Anchorman is the role... Anchorman is the title and role that you will receive when the UFOs are ready.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: And that part of your reward for being the anchorman, being the connection, is that they're going to put you through the equivalent of the transporter.
Merlin: What do they call that on the Star Trek?
Merlin: The vibulator.
Merlin: You go through the vibulator, and then that is going to, and we all know this, this is science, that basically everybody dies when they're transported.
Merlin: they're just and then they're reconstituted yes but here's what they do and i i when i tell doctors this they look at me like i'm crazy i say isn't there something you can run me through that would just break down all my cells and then recreate them i'm not trying to avoid cancer you can't avoid cancer i just want my eyes to work yeah yeah well that's your reward your reward is john you have served well as anchorman
John: That's how they talk.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: I hear him all the time.
Merlin: And then when you threw that machine and you're going to come out just fresh and pink and fluffy.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: That's the dream.
John: I mean, when you think about like, I don't know what, I still don't know what a spleen does.
John: I know that sometimes I'm splenetic.
John: Nobody knows.
John: but i know right now i picture my spleen let's say okay and my spleen is in there it's doing something it's it's looking like kind of like the size and shape of an ocarina can we can we go with that start i don't know what an ocarina is that is that a monkey oh yeah like a bonobo no no it's like a little potato you play oh oh right a potato that's a that's an instrument i thought isn't there an ocarina that's like a really small monkey
John: A monkey that has a name like Ocarina?
Merlin: I think you might be thinking of an organ grinder.
John: Organ grinder.
Merlin: Well, anyway, so here's my spleen.
Merlin: Because if you're grinding an organ like the spleen, it's going to have ducts.
Merlin: And ducts need holes.
Merlin: And if the holes are in the right place, you can play a little tune.
John: Oh, I see.
John: It's like a South American instrument.
Merlin: There's a whole bunch of organs, John.
Merlin: You've got the appendix.
Merlin: See, I don't want to think about them.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: You don't need any of those.
Merlin: You don't need any of those.
Merlin: You can just take them out in your body.
John: It would be fine.
John: But I do, in the course of looking at one, there's a baby.
John: When you have a baby, a baby has a spleen, but it's baby-sized spleen.
John: But when you grow to adulthood, when your spleen arrives at its final form, or rather, I'm sorry, it's large size.
John: When your spleen gets as big as it's going to get, what do you think?
John: 16, 18?
John: Or grams.
Merlin: Or grams.
John: oh full size like when you're done growing yeah i think by the time most people are college age they they have a full-size ocarina probably right your ears and your nose keep growing but probably your spleen doesn't correct and uh and so then there's that spleen and then like my spleen and then i have a current spleen let's see you got some spleen to do
John: And so you put the two spleens next to each other, that spleen, this spleen.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I don't know what either one of them ever did besides make me splenetic and produce bile, which I use in some capacity.
John: I don't know how I use bile.
John: I'm using it, though.
Merlin: But you deploy it like sarcasm.
John: But I look at the two spleens in my imagination, and I think the one I have now has probably got...
John: issues that the one i had then doesn't right it's got it's not just a matter of scale but but but a gram for gram the spleen you had at 18 is probably a little bit pinker and fresher than the one you have now a little bit now it's like discolored like coffee teeth well that's what i'm wondering see i don't know and if you think you know if you think about it like i don't if you put them next to each other i might not even be able to tell the difference but somebody a
John: Somebody looking at the two spleens microscopically, something, there's going to be a difference.
John: One spleen is going to have a wear on it, right?
John: User error.
Merlin: If you did the Pepsi challenge, I don't even know if they have spleen doctors, but if they did, they would put them side by side.
Merlin: Pepsi challenge.
Merlin: Tell me which one of these is the healthier of the two, the lesser of two weevils, if you like.
John: So if the UFOs come, they're going to be able to see the two spleens and they're going to say, we can make this new old spleen new.
John: And that doesn't seem hard, right?
John: It's not the brain.
John: Just go through every cell in the spleen and take out the coffee stains.
John: You become the John of Theseus.
John: The John of Theseus, right?
Merlin: Because if you go through the scanner, all this stuff's going to come back up.
Merlin: You're still the same ship in some ways.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: But a lot of ways, that's a new rudder you got there.
John: You just take out the rotting boards.
John: You put in new boards.
John: You do it over the course of time.
John: It's the same boat.
John: Yes.
John: But the thing is, it's easy to do a spleen, let's say.
John: It's easy to do a liver because all you have to do is some kind of cell puffing.
John: You get in, you fluff them.
Merlin: Cell puffing.
Merlin: Oh, the way you'd fluff a pillow or the way you could get like on your face, you get Botox.
John: filler something like that oh no i don't want it to be fakie i want it to be you know it's like your pillowcase you take it down you put it in the washing machine it comes back out it's a little bit lesser every time it's also softer though it's softer yeah whatever it is i think there will be doctors that will be able to and i hope they're i hope the ufos give us this technology yeah they'll be able to go down and it's kind of up to you depending on how you do as anchorman i think
Merlin: okay i mean if i know anything from watching old twilight zones that there are there or or day the earth said still you've got technology out there the ufos want to share with us it's just or that the close encounters right oh yeah you know right yeah and they're but but like the thing is though you've got to make a good showing of this and then you're do you think you end up being sort of the test case for for pink spleens
John: So this is another thing you have to wonder.
John: There are people listening to this show right now who would, if you said, what would you fix?
John: They would say, my feet.
John: My feet drive me crazy.
John: They hurt all the time.
John: I got all these, my feet are all.
Merlin: I got bunions, maybe knees or hip.
Merlin: They're crinkled.
John: My feet.
John: Just focus on feet.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: So, oh, my feet.
John: Well, you know, a foot, how hard is it to make a foot?
John: You know, it's like, I see it.
John: I look down.
John: I know all the parts, the constituent parts.
John: I know you can, you can look at a podiatrist can look at a foot and go, that one's working.
John: Look at another foot and go, oh, I see the problem.
John: yeah well so i don't have a little normative but you've got to do that but who makes a foot god made a foot but isn't there a way an ufo or or a qualified chiropodist could make a foot so right now with our current technology you know i had an ear test about 15 years ago and the doctor was like well you gotta your hearing's fine except for this place right in the middle where the hi-hat uh
John: goes Michael snare and I had in the snare have taken away a very important part of your high mids here like and it's more in your left here than your right and I was like I could have told you but he said then 15 years ago he was like I wouldn't worry about it because we're about to we're on the cusp of solving this problem we're gonna we're on the cusp of being able to regrow your ear hearing hairs and
John: And so it'll be a, this is a, this is not a problem.
Merlin: I mean, like, like, you know, setting aside the, the, the jocularity, this guy is saying that in your lifetime, uh, Dr. Sanjay Gupta had a special on CNN last night called the last Alzheimer patient with the idea that we're very close.
Merlin: This could be something, this could be the last generation of people who suffer from Alzheimer's because of these $30,000 a year drugs that are coming along.
Merlin: Are you in this case, is this, this guy saying to you in your, well, God, you know,
Merlin: Inshallah, you you you in your lifetime, we're going to fix your air hairs.
John: And his implication at the time was like, this is in the vision, the next five.
John: Well, it didn't happen, right?
John: When I ran for city council, I was telling everybody there was going to be self-driving cars on the roads in five years.
Merlin: It's so funny you said that.
Merlin: I bring this up with Madeline all the time.
Merlin: I was one of those people that was so, as it turns out, wrong.
Merlin: We're like five or so years ago.
Merlin: I thought it would all be.
Merlin: My thing has always been trucks.
Merlin: Trucks on highways are a no-brainer.
Merlin: Trucks on highways.
Merlin: Well, I mean, because everything lines up right.
Merlin: You just have somebody, you have some fluffer that just gets the truck to the highway and then Bob's your uncle.
Merlin: Bob's your uncle.
Merlin: Drive slow, keep going, doesn't need to pee, doesn't need to jack his mean bone, doesn't need to talk on the CB.
Merlin: It just gets to the Walmart.
John: That's right.
John: And they can be battery powered and they can be using GPS and they can be in long, long convoys.
Merlin: Stay in that right lane.
Merlin: Stay in that right lane.
John: You don't need to make up time.
John: no no we've got a bear in the air don't worry right so so my feeling is some things like so like a foot is really ruining someone's quality of life right now just a foot that's all it's just like that my life i know i know people who've had foot problems for a long time oh and it's so terrible it's the part that touches the ground when you walk so you need it
John: I don't have a problem with my foot.
John: I got big feet.
John: I look down at them.
John: They're like, here we are still, you know, sometimes they don't fit into certain shoes, but other than that, I mean, you know, not a problem, but my lower back has started to be.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And when you look at it, when people talk about lower backs, they're like, oh, this isn't like a foot.
John: This is complicated.
John: There's nerves and it's like your back and there's only so much we can do.
John: And if you do a surgery on it, it makes it worse.
John: Yeah.
John: And I just think about the UFOs just being able to come through there and like, oh, yeah, here we go.
John: Yeah.
John: And then it's like, oh, wow, quality of life restored.
John: I mean, you know, my lower back's not intruding that much.
John: But, you know, when I drop something on the ground now, it's like, oh, it's all the way down there.
John: I got to go all the way down to the ground now to get that.
John: I have to lay down so much.
John: Do I really need it?
John: You know, I dropped a, I dropped a pick on the ground at band practice the other day and all four of us looked at it and I was like, oh man, which one of us is going to go down for that pick?
John: And nobody wanted, nobody wanted to do the job.
John: They were like, that's yours.
Merlin: Nobody wanted to stop what they're doing and physically fetch your pick off.
John: And I was like, a lot of ways to look at that.
John: If you think on guys, I'm the lead singer.
John: And they were like, I'm sorry, dude, that's within your orbit.
John: And I had to get all the way down and get it.
John: And, you know, I can still play pickleball.
John: I can still jump around.
John: Sure.
John: But, you know, some things.
John: So, yeah, I do feel like some of these problems, like this Alzheimer's, I didn't hear this before, but isn't the brain already like spongy and eaten away?
John: How's he going to fix that?
Yeah.
Merlin: i i i didn't watch it oh sure that makes sense sanjay gupta well you know i respect him he's a neurosurgeon he's not like a medieval studies phd or something yeah but what about all those other doctors like oz that turned out to be john can i beg you literally beg you not to get me started on this it's all i can do right now to have this conversation with you because i take a lot of jazz from my pals one in particular because i am not a
Merlin: You could probably imagine who is the pal gives you the guff.
Merlin: It's all so much of it is a racket and nobody's talking about it.
Merlin: And I'm currently on a Jeremiah ad about optometrists because I think that's the biggest racket of the rackets.
John: Oh, really?
John: Because I'm a fan of dentistry as the biggest racket.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I think they're all rackets.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: Yes, I do.
Merlin: Yes, I do.
Merlin: It's literally how they get you.
Merlin: Do it again.
Merlin: I like it.
Merlin: Do it again.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: You want to talk about the French fried potatoes?
John: I made my sister watch Godfather the other night.
John: Godfather won?
John: Godfather won.
John: And she only made it halfway through, but she was in.
John: She was in.
John: It was just late.
John: And I was like, listen, some of these quotes, you're going to hear the rest of your life.
John: You've been hearing them up until now, but you have no idea what they were.
John: And now you're going to hear them.
John: You're going to hear these quotes.
Merlin: Am I to understand that Susan had not seen The Godfather at all?
John: And we were sitting in an Italian restaurant, and my daughter actually leaned over and said, Daddy, why don't you explain to us why it is...
John: I mean, we all know the trope that men like to explain The Godfather and they like to watch The Godfather run over.
John: Why don't you explain to us what men see in The Godfather?
John: And I was like, oh.
John: And then somebody else said something and she's just now at the age where she kind of put up a hand and she was like, wait a minute, I'd like him to answer this question.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is a pattern you've been identifying, that she's not afraid to say to you, I think, what is the phrase I needed talking to?
Merlin: She just finds it comforting when you explain things.
John: But she was also like, what is it?
John: It's not enough just to say that this is anymore.
John: I'd like to know what it is about it.
Merlin: right and i was like oh and i didn't when's the last time you thought about the roman empire be honest well and i didn't know that's how they used to do it you know that's that's some frankie five angels i didn't want to lean back on the on the normal one where it's like well
Merlin: I know how this works.
Merlin: I go through this every day.
Merlin: I went through this twice this morning.
Merlin: I go through this constantly with my kid where I got to be careful not to screw up what could be a good opportunity.
Merlin: You're getting a lot more latitude here than I get, for sure.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's not a lot of interest in me explaining things.
Merlin: It is, in fact, a known issue.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: well and i don't know how long i have explain the connection i like to explain the connections between things some of which other people don't see because they don't they don't sense connections the way that i do so it comes out sounding a little bit you know uh unconventional sometimes but in that case she's giving you the entree she even put up a hand does she put up the hand of susan
John: Oh, no, you don't put up a hand to Susan.
John: Jesus Christ.
John: That's not her love language.
John: It sure isn't.
John: And Susan and I had had a conversation specifically about your and my style of conversation where she was like, it's full references, right?
John: And I said, no, it's what's happening with the references is we're often referring to someone who made a reference and the reference they made at the time was referential.
Merlin: This is why I don't have a career.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because it's impossible for anybody.
Merlin: Well, obviously no one's interested in what I'm doing, but even more saliently to the vis-a-vis having a career is there's really no, there's no way in.
Merlin: I mean, from our first episode, I would find us insufferable when we're sitting in the backyard talking about Chinese people playing basketball.
Merlin: That was 2000, what, 9, 10?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I'm saying to her, like a lot of the time it requires that you that at the very top of the reference chain, like we're talking about Cheetos, but really what we're talking about is a New Yorker article from 1983 that we both assume the other has read.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And so the Cheetos is a reference to a person that once said something because they read a cartoon about an article.
John: And you have to know every line.
John: It has to go all the way back.
John: And it's really just about Cheetos.
John: It's not really about...
John: about the Johnson administration, but everything kind of is about the Johnson administration.
Merlin: You dig down deep enough.
Merlin: That was a very important time.
Merlin: It was a very conflicted feeling America had.
John: Oh, you're absolutely right.
John: What I don't want to do in this instance is make the mistake of saying that there's anything about the way the Sopranos conduct their business that a typical guy is going to
John: is going to find appealing because they're, they're criminals.
John: They're bad people.
John: You don't want to make this mistake.
John: You don't want to say, Oh, we wish the world was run this way.
John: And so I start, you know, I started explaining like, well, it, the mafia works as a way of providing justice to people that don't feel like they're getting justice in the, in the, the world as it's run.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: if you watch the godfather you find this out this is we go to we go to people like this as a it's a community service because you can't i guess goodfellas is technically where this line's from but like you go to them because you can't go to the police that's right
Merlin: So anyway, we're watching the groceries from the grocery.
Merlin: Remember the guy gives him a box of groceries.
John: You know, you come to me on my day of my daughter's wedding, but you show no respect.
John: Right.
John: So what have you ever done to make him show?
John: We've known each other for years.
John: Yeah.
John: So we watched the first half of the game.
John: Never even had him over for coffee.
John: Then later we're at the swimming pool the next day.
John: Yeah.
John: And we're talking.
John: There's a group of people there.
John: We're talking.
John: And my sister says, yeah, leave the gun.
John: Take the cannelloni.
Merlin: And I know somebody else I can think of who's going to be very frustrated.
Merlin: Leave the gun, take the delicious pasta dish.
John: Yeah.
John: Leave the gun, take the cannelloni.
John: And in that group of people, everybody nodded.
John: Like, uh-huh, uh-huh.
John: I cannot tell you how much that drives me inside.
John: And I said, I said, Susan, there exactly is a situation where now you have made a reference to a thing and I heard you make a reference.
John: Now I almost, almost certainly,
John: I'm afraid I'm going to tell Merlin this.
John: I'm going to have to.
John: What's going to get passed on like a virus?
John: Merlin and I are going to have leave the gun, take the cannelloni.
John: That's just going to drive a certain small group of people crazy.
John: There's going to be a large group of people that don't understand or care.
Merlin: This is the best.
Merlin: The pie graph of my entire life is a tiny, tiny, almost imperceptibly small slice of people who hate the thing I just said wrong on purpose.
Merlin: And then the rest of the people who don't know why I said anything.
Merlin: Well, there it is.
Merlin: And so that's a very unhit pie.
John: A year from now, someone somewhere in the world is going to say to their friend, oh, you got to listen to Roderick on the line.
John: And they're going to go, okay, finally, I'll do it.
John: And they turn on an episode.
Merlin: They're going to say, oh, you like The Godfather?
Merlin: Is this one episode where they talk about The Godfather?
John: And you're going to say, oh, yeah, leave the gun, take the cannelloni.
John: And depending on who this person is, they're either going to hate it or they're going to hate it.
Merlin: Well, I mean, that's the enduring appeal of our show is people hate it for different reasons.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: There's no way.
Merlin: There's only one person in 100,000 that doesn't hear this.
Merlin: I live for these absurd chains of signification.
Merlin: I live for it.
Merlin: And when somebody abuses it, it drives me crazy.
Merlin: I'll tell you, there's one from early evening last week.
Merlin: night uh madeline was making dinner very kindly and had i think had kqed on and somebody said a thing that drives me crazy this is going to go in my document of usage i dislike you know think but but like okay like i don't want to be a dick about it but there's a very funny bit on the simpsons where homer i'm trying to remember the exact instance it's pretty early on but homer says um
Merlin: and he says oh no i said i said the quiet i said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud it was a very funny line in context because that's literally what he did he whispered the part that was you know he got it wrong journalists all the time now you know what they say what do they say now what do journalists say all the time they say they said the quiet part of work
Merlin: that where's my bell they said that they say oh you said the quiet part out loud and like you just broke the chain that's not a joke it's not a bit it's like saying it's like saying uncharted territories which implies you forgot to rent a boat it's uncharted territory these things matter yes you know what i'm saying it's a contract it is a contract yes yes thank you merlin it is a contract but
John: But what I marveled at about leave the contract, take the cannelloni.
John: Cannelloni, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Was that it's a Susanism at the same time.
John: And there are 10,000 Susanisms.
John: Susanism.
John: It's a Susanism.
John: And so when you use it, you're going to use it.
John: also aware that it's a susanism and our listeners i hate to over explain this because i'm you know i'm i'm describing a cat to a bunch of of course of course you hate to over explain it and that's the problem with the pie
Merlin: That's the problem.
Merlin: Like, oh, you deliberate little you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So you deliberately got that wrong or you're sure you're not just an idiot.
Merlin: Like, that's the thing.
Merlin: There's no time to do that with you and me.
John: Like, you know, Yoken is out trying to transcribe this right now.
John: And none of it makes any sense at all.
John: It's just a word salad, except it's all in there.
John: It's all in there.
John: It's in the cannelloni is what it is.
John: What's a cannelloni filled with?
John: If not.
John: Yeah.
John: If not pie.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, all the cannelloni is filled with pie.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, in a sense, in this instance, in this instance, in this.
Merlin: And if you can't prove what the pancreas does, then, I mean, it's causing a lot of cancer.
Merlin: Just take it out.
Merlin: And in this case, what he's saying is leave the gun.
Merlin: Take the cannelloni.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: What even is the gun now?
John: Right, right.
John: That's the problem.
John: It's a pistol.
John: Well, you can call a pistol a gun.
John: You can't call a gun a pistol.
John: Do you call photos pictures?
John: Pictures.
John: Well, pictures.
John: Take a picture of that.
John: Take a picture of that as opposed to take a photo of that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Every family has these things.
Merlin: These wonderful, wonderful things.
Merlin: I know we're not going to talk about it anymore.
Merlin: There are things both of our kids used to say when they were little that were very funny.
Merlin: And I'm not going to bring up, I don't want to cause any problems for you.
Merlin: It's going to be a whole, a whole best of problems.
John: If I bring that up, well, it will, it'll be a basic full of, uh, or like if I were to say, I can't sleep, it's too boring.
Merlin: Like I'm not allowed to say that anymore.
Merlin: No, even though that's one of the great coinage, it's a great, it's a great coinage, but you're, you're right though.
Merlin: It's like, there's the problem is though, if you're somebody who enjoys, Oh boy, is this excruciating?
Merlin: Nevermind.
Merlin: No, go ahead.
Merlin: You should talk about girls or something.
John: You're just afraid of... You're just afraid that he's going to come into your dreams like the Babadook.
Merlin: And I don't know, does the Babadook come into your dreams?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: The Babadook looks around corners.
Merlin: It's women who come in your dreams.
Merlin: Boy, don't they ever.
Merlin: They sure do.
Merlin: And why don't they stop teasing?
Merlin: They're teasing in real life.
Merlin: They don't have to tease in your dreams, too.
Merlin: It's like Richard Hugo said, all girls should be nicer.
Merlin: You know, we had we had a class at New College, one of the numerous classes.
Merlin: I'm sorry I didn't take that.
Merlin: This is another one that was right in my wheelhouse.
Merlin: All my friends took it.
Merlin: I found it intimidating for reasons that will become apparent.
Merlin: But there was Grant take it.
Merlin: Did Grant take it?
Merlin: I bet he did.
Merlin: I think Grant took it.
Merlin: I know Michael took it.
Merlin: Literary substrata of the wasteland.
Merlin: And so you start by reading T.S.
Merlin: Eliot's The Wasteland.
Merlin: And then you read all the major works that are derived from it.
Merlin: or like you know but like referenced in it yeah yeah so there's a whole bunch of shakespeare there's that that book on the grail myth uh a lot of greek bolt you know greek stuff and things like do you read the wasteland again um i didn't have the class this is like i don't want to sleep i chose poorly i but but like that i almost feel like that's what you need but you can't the thing is though if it's a joke that like
Merlin: T.S.
Merlin: Eliot and Ezra Pound had between them that's along the lines of take the cannelloni.
Merlin: And you try and explain that.
Merlin: It's like you can't do it.
Merlin: It stops.
Merlin: It stops at that point.
John: Yeah.
John: He's writing it to make Ezra Pound laugh.
John: and we'll never know that we'll never know if ezra pound did laugh or if it was worth it yeah fascist laugh but at the wrong things a lot of the time this was the problem with reading russian literature and translation oh here we go again you're just you know you're making me feel like a dummy again you're looking through the end of a coke bottle basically at it and that's my minor i got a minor in that a minor at looking through a coke bottle oh really were you reading them in the original russian john no i was not
Merlin: No, it wasn't at all.
Merlin: So much wordplay.
Merlin: So much wordplay lost.
Merlin: I didn't get any of it.
Merlin: I mean, I read them as novels.
Merlin: Nostrovia Donoskovsky and his brother, Theodore Donoskovsky.
Merlin: I can't even make a joke about it.
Merlin: I tried to read the brothers Karamazov.
Merlin: I nearly lost my goddamn mind.
Merlin: QED.
John: We've talked about this.
John: And it's like 700 books, and then you squeeze them all together, and you make orange juice out of them.
John: I mean, I don't know.
John: You'd think they'd be nicer people with all this.
John: They've been through a lot.
John: They have.
John: They have.
John: They had to cut off their sleeves.
John: They cut off their sleeves.
John: Why'd they do that, John?
John: They cut off their sleeves to look more like they're from Paris.
John: But, you know.
John: I never knew that.
Merlin: What did they lose?
Merlin: Yeah, they had long sleeves before.
Merlin: Yeah, I've recently transitioned from Hitler videos about invading the Soviet Union to Napoleon videos about invading Russia.
Yeah.
John: oh yeah damn that's the land war in asia sirens call of that shit everybody thinks they're going to be fun yeah yeah blood blood and uh and soil right there's a lot of there's a lot of land and not what what appears to be not a lot i think it's resource it's resources a lot of time and world war ii is resources
John: The thing is the resource.
John: That's the thing.
John: There's a lot of land and the resources are all on the other side of the land.
John: So far south and east.
John: You got to go across your army.
Merlin: Put your army into three parts in summer uniforms.
Merlin: Call the cops.
John: Yeah, don't talk.
John: Well, it's a lot longer than it seems.
John: It's just like, you know, from here to the grocery store.
John: It feels like you could just walk there.
Merlin: Yeah, it'll seem faster on the way back, like all trips.
Merlin: Well, unless, you know, there's the mud, you got the mud, you know, and the thing is also, you know, with Napoleon, everybody brought, a bunch of people brought their wives and families.
John: Oh, see, don't do that either.
John: Don't do that.
Merlin: Are there other Susanisms I should hear?
Merlin: Oh, there's so many.
Merlin: Are there other Susanisms that would be useful?
Merlin: well i mean i don't want it's her story not mine and you already do things with her but like i haven't had regular contact with susan in a while um are there other susan isms that come up a lot in the family what happened what what happened was now see you cross the street
John: What happened was years ago, sometime when Susan was.
John: It's true.
John: My conciliary has no dick.
John: When she was about 16, you know, Susan, Susan is made of different stuff.
John: And I know she skied.
John: she's a great athlete but she's also you know she's a very smart person she's really attractive too i probably should say that to you no no but she's actually she's very she's very she's very pleasant looking and she's got a wonderful big personality she's a delight to be around you can find her on instagram if you'd like to follow her she'd love that susan roberts she's out there you know wow but so so susan uh
John: She spent most of her childhood sitting at a dinner table where people were talking about the latest legislation around the Department of Education or whatever.
John: We were all talking about, oh, the latest bombing, you know, or like, what's the situation in Beirut?
John: And she wasn't interested in any of it.
John: And partly...
John: She just didn't.
John: That's not what she was paying attention to.
Merlin: And it's what I was probably a fair amount of discussion, like fraud and malfeasance in the railroad industry.
John: That kind of.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And like negotiations with the Teamster Union.
John: Okay.
John: And and so forth and so on.
John: And my mom had her own world that was also kind of, you know, she was talking about the transition between Fortran to COBOL.
John: And that's what she was interested in.
John: And I was trying to understand what she was saying.
John: Trying to conjure an orb.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was like, so cobalt does it how?
John: Yeah.
John: And she was like, well, in machine language.
John: And I'm like, okay, all right.
John: Trying to get back to machine language.
John: The IBM 3076 was just a much better mainframe than the IBM 4074.
John: And so Susan, at a certain point,
John: just decided that she was going to say things the way that she heard them and that that was going to be fine.
John: And so she just started saying things where, you know, like, you know, you learn, you learn that a certain kind of word has a Greek root.
John: And so the ending is going to be the ending of the word is going to typically be something, you know,
John: with a polis or, or this is a type of word that has a Latin root.
John: And so, and she didn't, didn't bother or didn't want to learn those things.
John: And so we just transpose simple things like that.
John: But then she just took that and started to just sort of develop her own.
John: Yeah.
John: what I guess is a patois.
John: Yeah, I was about to say it's like a form of personal code switching.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And so a lot of the time, the words that she would conjure, I would hear them and recognize that they had
John: Like maybe a more apropos sense of the thing.
John: Not that the word was a better word.
John: She unintentionally nailed it.
John: She captured something about the world around the word.
John: That was better or at least artful.
John: The words that she chose were references within themselves, you know, like she, she had somehow in her, in her combination of things made a better work.
Merlin: That's very, that's very creative.
Merlin: A pedant or as it actually is pronounced pedant, a pedant would say, no, that's not the right word.
Merlin: It's not cannelloni, but she's found some kind of a linguistic wormhole between two concepts that's satisfying to a person who understands that the wrongness sounds good.
John: Well, yeah, and some of them are Spooner-isms, and some of them are Yogi Berra-isms, and some of them are Ringo Starr-isms.
John: Yeah, now it's all this.
John: But they were all Susan-words, Susan-isms.
John: And so I started to adopt...
John: not so much her words right but this is what happens with our program right that's right so i started to adopt the god willing people start quoting things we said wrong because they're more right than the right thing more right than the right thing exactly so i was something deeper yeah yeah i was trying to apply her method to words and so words in our family started at all well sir there became a kind of
John: playfulness because Susan is is being playful but but uh but using you know tools in her own fashion and then I was playing with those words because I saw the underlying you know fun in the in the in the collapse and you become the John the Baptist out there spreading the word on this I'm spreading the word right so then I
John: When I'm on omnibus or I'm here and you and I are going and you're super, super good at this too.
John: And Ken is super accepting of it.
John: And so I'm, I'm just using Susan's grammar a lot of the time.
John: And then people go, cause it's some of them are Susan isms and some of them are just Susan grammar applications.
John: Yes.
John: People are like, what the hell is he talking about?
John: Doesn't he know that the, that the word is this or doesn't, you know, how's why?
John: But how could I ever explain that?
John: How could I go on somebody's Facebook page?
Merlin: There's certainly no way to explain that that is both brief and cool.
Merlin: Right.
John: Well, and often my feeling is, don't you see the beauty of that misunderstanding?
John: of that spoonerism.
John: Don't you see how lovely it is?
John: Absolutely.
John: It has this kind of grace and it conveys two thoughts at the same time.
John: So many of my terms are either Susanisms or
Merlin: or using her grammar applying it misapplying but then that also gives you the paints it gives you the oils to then take that temp template to take what she's done and then it's sort of like you've done with some of the marlow isms you find a way then to like apply that to other things and now you're creating new language a new a new and livelier language
John: and and then people who listen to our show those are shibboleths right and they become things where they recognize we find out are you are you really like if you know you know are you really the kind of insider who recognizes the shibboleth without us having to point it out and why is it a shibboleth because it's useful because it's not you know it's not just a code it's a code that that implies it's a code i mean it's thought technology it's a thought technology the ultimate thought technology is a thought technology
John: So when, you know, what is gibberish to, to somebody new is actually, you know, a whole world of, of it.
John: Cause it isn't just reference.
Merlin: We're not just referencing Marvel movies, you know, you don't need to personally know Susan to benefit from it.
John: Right, right.
John: But if you do know her or know the idea of her, you can see that it's a way that Susan's expressing her own brilliance.
Merlin: You can appreciate a kid who's at the end of their rope screaming out loud at the age of three, I can't take over this.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Which is the little kid's way of saying, I can't take this anymore.
Merlin: But I can't take over this is such a wonderfully lively phrase that to this day, the child still regrets ever having said it.
Merlin: I can't take over this.
Merlin: I can't take over this.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Susan sat at the dinner table for her whole life.
Merlin: and never once you know really either had an interest or was even just like it was just never going to be sort of permanently on the sidelines for a pool for a time like like sort of like you and me would like choose to be sometimes choose to be on like like on the outside looking in like me at a middle school dance like no way could i participate in that like a normal snork of course the reasons i couldn't do that have nothing to do with me i
Merlin: thinking I'm cool.
Merlin: No, it's just because I'm horrible.
Merlin: You were wearing orange pants and a flight suit.
Merlin: But you end up kind of slightly on the outside.
Merlin: Were you closer to the center of the conversation that was happening?
John: Oh, by far.
John: I mean, and the problem is the Iran-Contra situation was very hard for people to understand in its time, right?
John: Just like the Balkan War, like throughout the entire.
Merlin: It's like people who say Trump hush money case.
Merlin: It's like, I see how you got there, but that's not calling it.
Merlin: That is not correct.
Merlin: And this is a big point.
Merlin: And in that case, just saying arms for hostages, like there's there's more to it than that.
Merlin: And you miss a lot of the special darkness.
John: of iran contra if you try to to bring it down to just this one pithy site and so often at the dinner table even at 16 i would be you know trying to explain to my mom the iran contra situation what made it because she's reading about it in the newspaper and she would say i mean not exactly like my daughter but what the hell is this and i would go well so it starts with blah blah and my sister couldn't have been less interested
John: But she couldn't take over this.
John: And so here we are.
John: You're right.
John: We have to say something.
John: Well, and so for a long time, she just moved her peas around on the plate with her fork.
John: Yeah.
John: And at a certain point, she was just like, so, you know, the the Iran comforter problem is what?
John: And I'm like, yes, actually.
John: And, and then we then, and I think it was part of her Susan's and my relationship as we both became adults, where there was going to be either.
John: It was either going to be that I went off into some kind of college world and she went off into some sort of sports world and never the twain show meet.
John: Or it was going to be a sort of a re-establishment of our relationship where we were going to be peers going forward in life.
John: And we were going to have a shared language.
John: And it was going to be important to us both that what mattered was that we were friends and that we were going to.
John: And we fought like cats and dogs.
Mm-hmm.
John: But part of it was that I had to go then back and say, no, it really is actually Iran Comforter.
John: And that's how we're going to talk about it from now on.
John: It's not like it comes up all the time.
Merlin: Nobody in my family has ever listened to this show, and yet the word Bastic still comes up.
Merlin: It does, in the family, yeah.
Merlin: No, it's been passed on virally, which just shows what a good word it is.
John: It's a wonderful word.
John: It actually is what it should be.
John: It should be a Bastic up in natives.
John: And what's wonderful to me is that half the people have heard that and thought it was a basket of potatoes.
Merlin: honestly i hear that all the time your brain's doing what it can to turn it into something sensible and forcing your brain to turn something over in your mind that doesn't initially land in a in a pre-made slot shit dog that's what i fucking live for yeah because then when you it's like it's like i started playing new york times games and like oh my god i i'm just sitting there going when's my next strand ken jennings used to
John: He used to show up out in front of the omnibus bunker.
John: And if he was out there for three minutes, because Ken is running, you know, he's running.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: If he was sitting out in front of the house for three to five minutes, he would text me and go, I'm here.
John: And I'm like, you know what?
John: Five minutes.
John: Like, come on.
John: But then he stopped doing it.
John: And I was like, hey, I'm on my way.
John: You know, I'm like five minutes late.
John: Sorry, I'm on my way.
John: And he would text back, no problem.
John: And then I would get there.
John: And the reason is he was doing the spelling bee.
John: Okay.
John: And he had become someone who could sit in his car for an hour.
John: I bet he's really good at that.
John: Well, he tries to get, he tries to get queen bee every day.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm like, there's not enough time in the day to be queen bee every day.
John: Come on.
John: But he's just like, he's, he's sitting in a way in an airport lounge somewhere.
John: And he's like, I'm going to be queen bee again.
John: That's my thing.
Merlin: That's like David Simon says, we're each compromised by some system.
Merlin: Like whatever, like he said on The Wire, if you're really into that system, you will eventually be corrupted by that system.
Merlin: And that's what it's done to poor Ken Jennings.
Merlin: Look at that poor guy.
John: Well, that's the thing, Queen Bee.
John: And I'm confident, and I say to him all the time, being Queen Bee involves, at a certain point, just shotgunning letters at the thing.
John: Because the last three words are just like bleep blorps.
John: That nobody knows, and they don't belong in there.
Merlin: I thought I would be better at that game than I am.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I love it, but it's like... I mean, I like it, but it's this boggle, basically.
Merlin: It's just that having to always use... And I've been playing these since the middle of last week.
John: Oh, you just started?
Merlin: John, I've never played Wordle in my entire life.
Merlin: So I'm really into strands.
Merlin: I like the connections one.
Merlin: I don't really understand them very well, but I do... Oh, and I like the mini crossword.
Merlin: There's always one connection that's just like, come on.
Merlin: That's dumb.
Merlin: I'm on one right now that's really breaking my brain.
Merlin: It's like I'm usually pretty good at understanding like, oh, that's a part of speech being used in a different way.
John: That one's fun when they do that, but it's the one where it's like, oh, well, all of these have the Latin word for fish in them.
Merlin: Or all these things that bees don't eat or whatever.
John: All the things that bees don't eat.
John: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
John: that's all there's four there weren't exactly four yeah but the thing is you're just like you've just started to play mario brothers and you don't know any of the tricks yet and you haven't i don't know how to make my mushroom into coins or find zelda in the other tower
John: Like, look out now, New York Times games.
John: And the thing is, it says New York Times right at the top.
John: So you feel like, oh, well, this is just the same exact thing as watching Nightline every night because I'm a smart person.
John: I read the New York Times.
Merlin: Oh, it's Sunday morning.
Merlin: I'll just pop this up and do the crossword.
John: Yeah, no, it's not the same to do the Wordle.
John: It's not the same.
John: Doing the Wordle is not watching the McNeil-Lair report.
Yeah.
Merlin: That's a question.
John: Yeah, go ahead.
Merlin: I want to, I want to, I want to try and make this useful to everybody.
Merlin: So we do this thing that we're doing right now.
Merlin: And the part of that is the things we do when we're doing this thing.
Merlin: Are there, are there other examples of this that we just miss for one reason or another?
Merlin: Like, is this, is this the, so you understand what I mean when I say the pie graph of like, there's this thin slice of people who don't know the Susan part of the joke.
Merlin: So they think you're misquoting the Godfather.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And then there's other people who are like, why are you talking?
Merlin: That's the pie graph of the world for me mostly.
Merlin: It's my online world for sure.
Merlin: Why are you talking?
Merlin: Why are you talking?
Merlin: But even within that, there's somebody who gets the not visible to the human eye pie slice and goes, oh yeah, that's a reference from Roderick on the line or whatever.
Merlin: But is it possible that there's lots of these around us all the time and we just don't know them because we don't watch, I don't know, Real Housewives of...
Merlin: Appalachia and counties or whatever?
Merlin: Like, is there stuff that I just don't know when somebody does one of these and says it wrong?
Merlin: Do you think I'm missing a lot of these because I'm not in it?
Merlin: I'm trying to say, let it begin with me.
John: Yeah, there are people, you know, if you're in the physical sciences.
John: There is a similar sort of but science-based set of languages where people are making jokes about geology, I think, that are going to go right past.
John: Those are hard.
John: But the thing is that people that go into geology and physics aren't also wordplay people.
John: Captain Marm's done with us now.
John: We're officially losing Captain Mormons.
John: No, but the thing about Captain Mormons is boring.
John: What makes her interesting is that she's a wordplay person and a physical scientist.
John: Oh, equal parts.
John: Yeah, but I think she often finds in her physical science world that the wordplay stuff goes right by them, and that's why she's over here.
John: Oh, she's struggling with her own pie.
John: Yeah, because she's over there in her office going like, oh, but I'm going to take the cannelloni, and they're just like, what's a cannelloni?
John: They don't even know what that is, right?
John: Because they're just like, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep
Merlin: a degree of separation reference to any i totally i oh my god john you i completely agree it's completely bewildering to me and now that you're saying it i need a name for this and now i'm like wait a minute has it always been this way or have i just like fallen off some kind of existential turnip truck and i just i just don't realize that we don't do that anymore
Merlin: Nobody else does it.
Merlin: And it just seems, it seems dumb.
Merlin: John makes people seem dumb, but I think making an awful thing to say.
John: I think making references is something that's part of an architecture of the mind that isn't commonplace.
John: It isn't what it's what the media that we read and sought out when we were kids was doing.
John: It was the stuff that was interesting to us was like, Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: I get it.
John: Right.
John: But that's not what most of the world is built on.
John: It's just things are getting done that don't require a second level of meaning.
Merlin: I think to a lot of people, from what I can gather, it seems deliberately opaque or frustrating.
Merlin: Like I say, I see this as...
Merlin: There's wormholes between important concepts in life in a way that I think almost no one else does.
Merlin: You don't hear puns.
Merlin: I mean, you know, puns exist.
Merlin: It's like, it's like you're colorblind except for that kind of word.
John: I don't see an apple and I do not, I do not hear, I do not see puns.
John: You're right.
John: I don't visualize them.
John: They don't come across my transom and I go, there it is.
Merlin: bring it down bring that that's me that's me and catchphrases sometimes yeah where as much as i love my slash our the merlin podcast universe i love those catchphrases like but like to me it's it's such a bad guys if there can be such a thing as a bad dad joke it's like the guy who says yeah baby or what's up or whatever and i'm like oh man like
Merlin: Don't quote beer koozies.
Merlin: What are you doing?
Merlin: Well, but this is the thing.
John: If you hadn't brought the catchphrases down, if you hadn't captured them.
John: On my two giant stone tablets.
John: Yeah, and you have a butterfly net and you're just pulling them out of the air as we generate them.
John: I don't think I would have any catchphrases.
John: They see that as a Mount Sinai infection.
John: It's not my nature to catch Fritz.
John: I'm just shooting words out.
John: They call you the alphabet gun.
John: But I love that you did that, and then what you did was tune my mind to like, oh, if you say this again...
John: It's funny, but if you say it five times, it's a whole other thing.
Merlin: God, I'm so embarrassed to be talking about this because this is my brain all day long.
Merlin: And the less context you give for it, the more thrilling it is.
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: And the more likely it is that most of that pie is still going to say, why are you talking?
Merlin: But maybe there's somewhere in a way that's not even meterable.
Merlin: Maybe there's a slice somewhere of someone who went, oh, I get that.
John: because bleep blorp yeah which we use all the time is from a mr show episode and it's not even what the thing is saying it's not it's like what there's pit i remember pit pat no it's like hey hey uh keep them coming and it's a and it's a it's a malapropism i'm thinking of pit pat the the brandy character i love you
Merlin: No, it's not that bad.
Merlin: And it's a male.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: In our house, for my wife and me, it's Meepsorp.
Merlin: That's our robot slash alien sound.
Merlin: Isn't that Robin Williams and Mork?
Merlin: Is that a Mork reference?
Merlin: Mork would say Nanu Nanu.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But didn't he say Meepsorp?
Merlin: He might have.
Merlin: I do butcher a lot of them.
Merlin: But for that audience of two, it's okay.
John: I don't feel like it's Jonathan Winters because he didn't do a ton of Meepsorp comedy.
John: no no oh my god that guy was funny but so so yes i don't think that the majority of the world wants requires or even appreciates and and i don't mean appreciate like get although that's also true but i mean appreciate like like and want not as in crock but as an as an enjoy or
John: appreciate yeah yeah right like i and actually like hey you know what i don't appreciate that don't make this decision about whether or not to change my car's transmission sorry sorry rain man i hate to make it confusing for you yeah exactly like you either yes or no or like here's here's what's exciting what is the meaning of phrase john roderick is detected
John: I'm trying.
John: You know what?
John: I'm trying to run a hang gliding business here.
John: And you're up here like telling everybody about the wasteland.
John: And it's just none of it is useful to me right now.
John: Pay the money.
John: Get on the hang glider.
John: Okay.
John: And so I look out at the swimming pool and I'm like, I don't click with any of these moms and dads.
John: I don't have any friends here.
Merlin: I've been coming to probably click.
Merlin: You could probably click for a minute just based on the whole like kids.
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: Yeah, we stand around for sure.
Merlin: We stand around, but there's not going to be a good eight minute conversation coming at all of any kind.
John: You know, it's like, boy, you know, that swimmer's got a great dive.
John: And the other parent goes, yeah, well, works on it.
Merlin: But like, but like, there's just so those people, God bless them.
Merlin: Sometimes it can just be so uninteresting.
Merlin: There's just this default thing.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Nobody listens to this.
Merlin: There's just this default dumbness to most people talking to each other that comes down to the most obvious thing that comes down.
Merlin: There's no callbacks.
Merlin: Nobody's doing it, making any effort to make this conversation more than just the most basic exchange of information.
Merlin: People want to live in this, like this national DMV line where we're just always trying to get to the next thing.
Merlin: And like,
Merlin: i i really relish playing with somebody who who gets that finds who enjoys those wormholes who at least will like put up with it and then maybe later on they go oh i see what you're talking about that's actually a reference to the thin man or whatever well so now i'm gonna do that i'm gonna do the john thing now which john that i that i do this john me john not him john oh not him john and i'm gonna say least favorite character on the waltons
John: There was a time.
John: Him, John.
John: Good night, Him, John.
John: Good night, Him, John.
John: But Him, John, was the North Korean that was living.
Merlin: Oh, that was the guy on the MASH.
Merlin: On MASH, that was the guy that made their drinks, right?
John: Yeah, well, yeah, the little kid that used to run around with the baseball.
Merlin: Yeah, Frank Burns was trying to make him learn to read the Bible.
John: No, so I'm going to say what that is.
John: At a certain point in the 20th century, and I'm talking about the late 20th century, that was...
John: That became elitist.
John: What you're talking about references upon references became elitist.
John: And it was called elitist by people that didn't get it.
John: And in order to make a fairer, nicer world, we started to declare that that elitism was classist elitism.
John: And that there was something about making multiple literary references that was exclusionary and was based on a class system.
John: And that in order to make the world fair, we had to not have...
Merlin: The cultural totems, the institutions that supported- It would be bad enough to make a reference to Puccini, but it would be worse to make a reference to Madame Butterfly and the connection to Pinkerton.
Merlin: Because now you're just being mean.
Merlin: You're just being mean to the people who have a life and don't know the connections between Pinkerton and Puccini.
Merlin: And like, why would you care?
Merlin: But to the right person, it's magic.
John: But here's the problem, right?
John: If you extend that logic in any direction, what it becomes is that Puccini supports a kind of social organization.
John: The canon, the great canon.
John: That ends up being racist.
John: And it ends up being exclusionary.
John: It ends up being unfair.
John: And so in order to make the world fairer, we have to lose that stuff.
John: And we have to replace it with stuff that's accessible to everybody.
John: And what that is, is lowest common denominator culture.
John: And that takes away everything that's beautiful for a certain kind of mind.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And that's why now we have all these people that would appreciate this stuff or would try to.
John: That's the thing, because you have to aspire to it.
John: You can't just get this.
John: You have to learn it.
John: You have to read the source material.
John: And in order to do that, you have to have gone to college.
John: And in order to do that, that college has to teach.
Merlin: And you have to at least know how to fake your way through.
Merlin: Even if you didn't read Moby Dick all the way through, knowing his connection to the work of Shakespeare is really valuable.
Merlin: So even if you didn't read the importance of whiteness or whatever, oh boy, you can't write that today.
Merlin: You can't have the whiteness chapter anymore.
Merlin: No, you can't.
Merlin: And that's kind of funny.
Merlin: But also you have to lose the whole book.
Merlin: Well, whaling, John, whaling used to be the third largest industry in America.
John: There's a whole chapter in Moby Dick where he just describes that a whale is a fish.
John: He argues it all day.
John: He says, I don't care if it's... I don't care if you say it's not a fish.
Merlin: There's one where he talks about how to squeeze the ambergris to touch another man's hand.
Merlin: There's a lot to it.
Merlin: And see, now I'm revealing myself to be somebody who has...
Merlin: I have, I know enough, I've read that book and I know enough about it to bluff, but that's a form.
Merlin: So, so that's a form of, uh, uh, well, hi-hating or what do you call it?
John: Yeah.
John: Big time.
Merlin: And a guy like Stuart Copeland, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, but, but I think that's why notes on somebody's fucking skull.
John: That's why you also see, and I think this is to a certain extent, both true of you and also it has been reinforced, uh,
John: That where you put that energy now is in dissecting popular culture that it's accessible to everybody.
John: So there's a whole nerd world of people that would have once aspired to know a layer of things that now that's exclusionary, but Marvel movies are not.
Merlin: So you think that this gets us back to what you've been talking about for a while, this sort of like cultural sort of silo problem?
Merlin: I don't like to use the word bubble, but is it a form of bubble and then bubble reaction to bubbles?
John: Well, it's just that the bubbles become more, it's an idiocracy problem.
John: The bubbles become more and more not interesting is what they become.
John: It's very easy to discuss The Walking Dead.
John: And the layers of meaning that are within The Walking Dead, the Easter eggs that are there, if you've watched the whole season and you can talk about it at all these levels, you can find characters in them that are analogs to other characters in literature.
John: But at the end, it's just, it is only whatever.
John: It's a layer cake that unto itself, and it doesn't matter.
Merlin: ultimately um and what it and i and i hear this a lot where it's like well it does it teaches a system of ethics or it teaches a morality just exactly the same as much way that's where you get that phrase always check herschel's barn that people still say that today don't if herschel's got a barn go check the barn go check the barn go see what's in the barn why i mean why does herschel keep shushing people away from the barn i mean it might not be the first place you check but no you got to check it
John: check herschel's barn he's a he's a he's a doctor he's a veterinarian you don't even know what's in there but so so for me right i feel like a bridge to terabitha yes i feel like somebody who now you know is sitting astride a world bridge over troubled terabitha i am yeah i'm i'm straddling and feeling small and i and i was i think i said this to you the other day it used to feel like becoming an adult
John: Meant, first of all, not just putting aside childish things, but entering a world that you did not have access to as a child.
Merlin: And you finally get like, I think you talked about like getting access to the kinds of things that were out of reach before, not just dirty jokes, but getting, you know, being invited like a place at the table to be part of this adult discourse that you and I really crave being a part of.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: Where people wore shoes that went clap, clap, clap when they walked across a marble floor.
John: And now when I look out at the world and I see grownups going to work in short pants and sports jerseys, and then their child is also wearing short pants and sports jerseys, I'm like, why would a child become an adult?
John: There is no adulthood.
John: Adulthood is gone.
John: Everybody's got a fidget sphere.
John: And they're all playing the same, you know, dad comes home and what does he want to do?
John: He wants to play Nintendo Switch.
John: Yeah, he wants to play.
John: And that's his way of bonding with his kid.
John: And that's inclusive.
John: We used to do that through beatings.
John: We used to do that.
Merlin: The father would come home and take a home.
Merlin: You say, I love you very much.
Merlin: Go cut me a switch.
Merlin: Go cut me a switch because at least it's my thumb or I'm going to make it even worse.
Merlin: And this is how we just watch The Walking Dead.
John: This is exactly how people hear it.
John: They hear Generation X people going.
John: That's how they used to be.
John: That's what we sound like.
John: And they go, oh, was it better when when grownups used to put lit cigarettes up kids noses?
John: Right.
John: Because that's the only possible conclusion.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, I'm not sure that ever happened.
Merlin: You're absolutely right, though.
Merlin: It's like, oh, my gosh, you know, like, oh, I think about like, oh, I'm so interested in like the birth of cool jazz.
Merlin: And like you think about like when Miles was moving from like from around midnight, you get into like from his sort of big band post big band stuff and you get into Chet Baker and you get all that stuff.
Merlin: It's like, oh, great.
Merlin: The 50s.
Merlin: So you want everybody you want women to like have to work in the home and black people don't have rights anymore.
Merlin: And then my response, frequently online, is like, I just like Chet Baker's songs.
Merlin: And I kind of like the tuxedos a little bit.
Merlin: I like the fact that people used to wear ties sometimes.
Merlin: Sometimes.
John: You get dressed up for a flight.
John: What's really interesting about the presentism of now is that there's no sense that 25 years from now it's going to be judged by the future.
John: And whatever it is that we look back at the ties and the cigarettes and the moms in the home and go around around about it, that's going to be happening with the children of generation Z are going to look back at the millennials and they're going to be conscious of them having gotten old because they're going to be 80 year old millennials.
John: And those neck tattoos are not going to be, you know, you're not going to be able to see what it is anymore.
John: It's just going to be unless the UFOs come down and are able to take it away painlessly.
Yeah.
John: yeah and that then the and generation qua qua qua sign on uh-huh are going the generation sin qua non sin qua non qua son non who was also in back in case on pair pair pimples for hairy fish nuts
John: They're going to look at 2022 and they're going to go, those fucking people, those humorless shitty people.
Merlin: They actually made the 2024s made the 60s look like the 40s.
Merlin: They did.
Merlin: They made the 60s look like the 1840s.
Merlin: that's it it stops it stops now it stops here today oh how what this is doing to the children puccini puccini oh oh sure that you like no yeah let me leave the gun take the puccini jesus fucking ridiculous