Ep. 548: "Seattle Friends"
John: Hello?
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: Did that seem fake?
John: No.
John: No, we're professional broadcasters.
Merlin: Well, yeah, we are.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You know what they say?
Merlin: Fake it till you make it is what they say.
Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: You okay with that?
John: Oh, boy.
John: Yeah, no, I'm good with faking it till you're making it.
Merlin: Yeah, making it.
John: remember that TV show bacon bacon till you're making it I'm having a real no really well you know this whole show is about the miseducation of John Roderick yeah
John: Among other things.
John: Ms.
John: John Roderick.
John: Is that right?
John: Ms.
John: John Roderick.
John: Yeah, the Ms.
John: education.
John: Oh, that's it.
John: Sorry.
John: And in addition to Hitler and the Beatles, we often talk about how I'm gradually trying to domesticate.
John: but you know i have these problems with my neighbors which i'm i really shouldn't talk about i've gotten a lot of lawyers right me who are fans of the show that say you know don't talk about your neighbors because it's just you know it's not how we do in america this is this is still going on no but i've got these other neighbors that i love they're young people you know they're in their
John: um what seems like 30s and they bought the coolest house in the neighborhood and they're just so cute and lovely and it really liked them and they had a little boy and it's one of those situations where the little boy's got a crush on me you know and he's all every time i'm outside he's like there he is you know he's only like three four now and i love him i love him all i'll just love him to death and they just had a new baby
John: and and um and we just have it's of of everybody in the neighborhood like i have the best rapport with them i wish all my neighbors were like them but they're they're new to the suburbs and the dad is really embracing suburban suburban life suburbia and that means different things to different people
John: It doesn't.
John: In his case, it means that he really wants to get all of the leaves and all of the beebles and all of the little boobles out of his driveway.
Merlin: So he probably does that.
Merlin: I'm guessing he puts on some gloves and he goes out there and one at a time he picks them up very quietly.
John: No, it's not like that.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: It's not like that.
John: He puts on his gloves, and then he puts on some industrial-strength ear protectors, and then he fires up some kind of super high-pitched, whining, jet-engine-powered rake.
John: It's not a rake or a broom.
John: It's an e-rake.
John: It's an e-rake, because I know what a rake or a broom sounds like, and it sounds like...
Merlin: That could be a very pleasant sound.
Merlin: If you start whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
Merlin: Yes, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
John: And, you know, I've used both of those tools for many years, the rake and the broom.
John: And, you know, yeah, they do require a certain amount of, you know, labor and engagement with the work.
John: No, he has a different thing.
John: He has an e-rake, which goes wahh.
John: And I don't know about their schedule.
John: He works from home.
John: He's in the techs.
John: He makes techs.
John: And so it seems like Monday at about 1030 in the morning.
John: is the time that he really wants to, you know, to power it up and get out there.
John: And the thing, I don't know if you know about Beebles.
Merlin: You don't know from Beebles, because you live in... I know, I've heard about, I've heard about Greebles, and I've heard about Graybles, and I know about being feeble, QED.
Merlin: But this is something where, do you think it's an aesthetic thing?
Merlin: It's not, is it a health and safety issue?
Merlin: What are the...
Merlin: Greedle's causing him.
John: The thing is that we have a lot of, we have evergreen trees here.
John: We have fir trees and cedar trees and their grand firs and their hemlock trees, all kinds of big, big, tall trees.
John: And one of the things about evergreen trees is they shed.
John: They shed needles, they shed beebles, which are little tiny pinecone-y things that we call beebles because we're extremely cute with language over here.
John: Is that a Susanism?
John: It's a baby-ism.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Little beebles.
Merlin: He's in the suburbs and he's got his reasons.
Merlin: Yeah, and you know he lives on a hill and it's just like I don't know if you I mean because you live in the city it's like I'm familiar with what you're talking I'm familiar with I don't interrupt you but like there's so many aspects of what you're describing that like kind of define the problems of living with other people and also things that I do feel like I understand I know for example I get into something that I call projects I'll get into a project and
Merlin: And the project is sometimes nominally a thing that has a specific, sometimes time-constrained, sometimes useful outcome.
Merlin: But more often than not, my projects are just because I like doing a thing.
Merlin: I'm interested in doing a thing.
Merlin: I'm interested in learning a thing.
Merlin: But you know what's related to that, John?
Merlin: Think about this with when you get a new effects pedal.
Merlin: It's really just fun to use your new gear.
Merlin: And when I was a little kid, like when I first got a pocket knife, I would find all kinds of reasons to use a pocket knife.
John: Sure, you got to carve your initials in a picnic table.
Merlin: You got to carve your initials in a... Well, and like today, I was using my Dremel scrubber because I like using my Dremel scrubber.
Merlin: Oh, they're so cute.
Merlin: Right, but isn't that kind of part of it, though?
Merlin: And he's like inhabiting a lifestyle there, and this is something that he enjoys.
John: He's got a wonderful, like a super cute little house, and it's got freshly...
John: black uh you know asphalt driveway that's a nice long driveway and let me tell you the difference between when it's covered with pine needles and bibles which is its own aesthetic right but then when those bibles are gone and it's just perfect blacktop i imagine as a young dad feeling like you're really providing for your family and
John: You know, you're like you're carving your life out of the jungle because you have made, you know, the landscaping look just really nice.
John: And, you know, we don't hunt anymore.
John: Right.
John: There are no tigers, but there are bibles and there are pine needles.
Merlin: I mean, it seems like for most Americans, they don't have to hunt.
Merlin: But they choose to hunt because they like hunting.
Merlin: And can I just say, like I said a minute ago, sometimes maybe you just have a new orange vest you like or you like your rifle or whatnot.
Merlin: But also you create a condition for yourself.
Merlin: When you buy a new car, it could just be a modest car.
Merlin: When you buy a new car and it's really shiny, you keep it clean.
Merlin: You don't want it to get dented.
Merlin: Whereas if you have what we used to call a beater car, you maybe don't worry about that so much.
Merlin: So when a beater car and a brand new car have some kind of a small...
Merlin: Like even if you just hit your bumpers together in traffic or whatever, there's one of those people is unless they're, you know, not unless they have anger issues.
Merlin: One of those people is empirically more likely to be frustrated about it than the other.
John: I agree.
Merlin: And that's kind of that guy bought a new car and he wants to keep it nice.
Merlin: Plus, I think it's a project for him.
John: Well, and it's amazing, you know, he's got what is effectively a newborn, a couple of months old, and yet he still takes the time to get out there with the super high-powered blower.
John: That might be all that's keeping him sane at this point.
John: Might be, right?
John: He's in his basement.
John: But, you know, the thing about blowing Beebles, and this is one of the key differences between E-Rake and
John: and a broom okay um is that you blow them and they go you know four or five inches away from the nozzle and then you come you have to come back and blow them another four or five inches and you have to just keep doing that sometimes you know let's say your driveway is 100 inches
John: Um, which isn't really that long for a driveway.
Merlin: No, I think it could be for like an E car, but like, but you're, what you're saying is that's at least going to be 20, 20 strokes with the people later.
John: Oh, at least.
John: And it's, so it's going to take, let's say, I mean, if you, if you think about an E rake as a time saving device and you think about how long it would take you to shh, shh,
John: all that stuff and then you get it and you you oh you limit how long it takes with the e rake but i can't really say that it it saves you that much time having been a guy that's operated a normal broom yeah yeah yeah it seems like i use a normal broom i use a normal broom this morning i use a normal broom yesterday i would like to think in part because of my time working as a busboy and working at mcdonald's i think i'm pretty good with a broom
John: Well, I don't want to say normal broom like it's some kind of normative thing about brooms.
Merlin: No, no, no, not at all.
Merlin: But a neurotypical broom, we can all still grow and get better.
Merlin: But I understand, though.
Merlin: But that's the thing.
Merlin: I keep coming back to the tool thing.
Merlin: Where if you've got a new...
Merlin: attachment for your drill to mix for instance or or like a like a digital printer that's like an e-printer that's going to make like a like a biebel oh you come up with reasons to print b i'm printing biebels that's right you're printing b yeah yeah but like you look for oh now i need a reason to mix paint because i have this new paint mixer or whatever i don't know i don't want to oversimplify it but do you think he knows well so so i feel like it's pretty well known that e-rakes annoy people
John: Well, but this is the thing about the suburbs.
John: It's astonishing how when people move to the suburbs, they completely lose any sense of how irritating they are to other people.
John: And partly it's the illusion of distance.
John: Like the fact that you are...
John: Now, not living right over somebody, you're living hundreds of feet away from other people.
Merlin: You live amidst other people, but you aren't like cheek to jowl.
Merlin: It's a terrible combination in some ways.
Merlin: It's one thing to live on a compound where you've got complete autonomy in acres and acres in all directions.
Merlin: At the other end of the spectrum, you're stacked on top of each other in an urban environment.
Merlin: But in between now, that guy's got a little chunk of land on the X and Y axis.
Merlin: Right.
John: Well, and this is the thing, and I know some of our listeners live in rural areas.
John: Yes.
John: Some of them are even rural jurors.
John: But if you live on 50 acres, I think if you're the neighbor of someone who lives on 50 acres, you're going to identify with this.
John: 50 acres just allows someone to think that they are that much further away.
John: And so then they buy a D6 Caterpillar.
John: Right.
John: or they start blowing stumps up with sticks of dynamite.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like people are never far enough away from other people that they can't find a way to be irritating.
Merlin: Well, I mean, you can even think of stuff like whatever is bottle rockets or trap shooting or, you know, a sawmill or whatever.
Merlin: There's always a way to annoy someone near you.
Merlin: But like, you know, I learned.
John: If you set up a target and you're shooting a 22 at something and you've got enough land to do it.
John: Let me tell you, your neighbors can hear the 22, right?
John: Especially if you're using a 30-30.
John: John, I keep thinking of the dogs.
Merlin: Oh, the dogs.
Merlin: Dogs hate this stuff.
Merlin: And babies.
Merlin: Can I just say this guy's got a kid and a baby?
Merlin: I don't know much about him apart from the story you've told.
Merlin: That's how they do it in their family.
John: That's fine.
John: I thought when you were going to say it, when you were talking about the dogs, I was like, dogs are incredibly irritating.
John: But you were saying dogs would be irritated.
John: No dogs, you know, two in the morning.
Merlin: I became so much more aware of noise, just to be real basic.
Merlin: I became so much more aware of noise when we had a kid.
Merlin: And you go through that process.
Merlin: I know this is all really basic and nobody cares.
Merlin: But, like, when you have a kid, like, and we were in a prenatal class that was really, really useful for us.
Merlin: And we got a lot of good knowledge and wisdom, leavings and learnings.
Merlin: And Molly in that class said to us, here's the problem.
Merlin: Your kid will eventually go to sleep.
Merlin: But you don't, there's several things about that that are frustrating, especially when you're in the first like 14 weeks and you're just so, you know how it is.
Merlin: And it's like, you don't know.
Merlin: The first thing is you don't know when your kid's going to fall asleep.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Which means you don't get to plan anything.
Merlin: You can't expect to be able to do anything.
Merlin: It used to be that I would watch the kid just so Madeline could take a shower.
Merlin: It's really hard.
Merlin: You don't know when the kid's going to go to sleep, but you don't know how long they're going to stay asleep.
Merlin: And there's no way to know whether it'll be five minutes or 15 hours.
Merlin: And that makes you necessarily incredibly flexible and baby centric in some ways.
Merlin: Flexible because you have to be.
Merlin: You don't have another option.
Merlin: You can't just go to Bermuda because you assume your kid took a nap.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: That's the part.
Merlin: It's like I always just, that's why like if it's, I've learned to be the kind of person where like if I have to answer the door at night, I ask people to kind of keep it down.
Merlin: Because I think that's something that's in my bones now about, like, try to minimize the amount of unnecessary yelling, slamming, raking, e-raking.
John: E-raking really is louder than raking.
John: He should be a little bit sensitive to that, I feel like.
John: Well, so here's the thing.
John: What I'm... What I'm... What I'm...
John: What I'm trying to do in life is identify the ways in which I am the problem.
John: Oh, God, that is so my project this year.
John: It's really hard.
John: And in this neighborhood, you know, I already have two...
John: of what are effectively only four neighbors to choose from, five maybe at the outset neighbors that could be a problem for me.
John: And two of them have been a major problem.
John: And so here, these are the neighbors that I love the most.
John: And I'm like, okay, now, now, now what do we do here?
John: Because this is something that this neighbor is doing that is not just irritating, which it is, but also actively.
John: So last week he's out there with his ear, his big ear things, ear protectors.
John: And I don't know whether he's listening to podcasts in there or not.
Merlin: They just look like remember when Roger Miller lost his hearing in a mission of Burma.
Merlin: He started wearing those.
Merlin: The head seal like 81, 82 era mission of Burma.
Merlin: You'll see him wearing those like what you wear to land a plane when you're holding the big orange popsicles.
Merlin: Is it that is he wearing like those big ass ones?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Big ass ones.
John: They're probably rated.
Merlin: They're probably rated for that.
Merlin: John.
John: It's a loud ass thing.
John: And the thing is that when he is using it, he's right next to it, but I'm not that far away from it.
John: Maybe a hundred yard dash away and maybe not even.
John: And so it's not, I mean, it's less loud than if I were holding it.
John: But that way sound travels.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: I learned this a long time ago too, John, whether it's farts or noise or whatever.
Merlin: Like if it's me making it, that's one thing.
Merlin: And if it's somebody else making it, I don't have control over that.
Merlin: That fairly quickly can become a little frustrating.
Merlin: And if it's that erratic kind of irregular thing where it's like it happens, you don't even know how often that starts to get under your skin a little bit, even when you're trying to grow.
Yeah.
John: trying to grow so last week at at at 10 because you and i recorded 11 because we're you know we're gentlemen and it's it's you know we're not like getting up too early because that used to be a problem for us when it was 10 oh my god it was so early and so we're 11 time to have a donut this is why the show's gotten so good in part it's really also we're becoming more interesting and growing but honestly changing the start time has been a huge boon so i sent him a text
John: And I said, hey, my friend, my good friend.
John: Hey.
John: My good, my good friend.
John: Smile emoji.
John: We've talked about this before, but it was a long time ago.
John: And just so friendly reminder at 11 o'clock on Mondays only, I do this, this podcast, which is kind of, you know, one of my works, but I work from home like you, like you, just like you.
John: But I only do it for an hour and a half.
John: And so Mondays between 11 and 1130, it's just this weird little window where I'm using a microphone right in the middle of the space that an e-rake, for instance, will create like a...
John: It gets in the microphone.
John: And so I recorded last week's show.
John: I sent him the text, but you know, he's got his ear plugs in, he's doing his e-raking.
John: And so he just continued to do it throughout our show last week.
John: And I was conscious of it.
John: No kidding.
John: Yeah, but I was like, he probably hasn't gotten the text.
John: You know, he's got it in his pocket, but he doesn't have it set to buzz or whatever.
John: Like, I don't.
John: I don't have it set to buzz.
John: You know, what I have my phone set to is if my mother calls me or my daughter's mother slash partner calls me.
John: It will go through any amount of restriction and make a ton of noise and buzz and everything because I don't want to miss those two calls.
John: Right.
John: But everybody else is just silenced as much as I can silence it.
John: So we do the show, and I'm conscious of the fact that this thing is... Yeah.
John: But hopefully it doesn't, because I know we have a lot of ASMR listeners.
John: I know we have people who are as neuroatypical as me, even, who are sensitive to farts and to... I just learned yesterday that... I'm not making fun of this.
Merlin: I want to learn about this.
Merlin: I learned yesterday that some people appreciate a content warning if it involves eye contact.
Merlin: So if you post a photo of yourself looking at the lens, some people believe you're supposed to.
Merlin: See, I'm not making fun of that.
Merlin: That is brand new to me.
Merlin: I'd never heard of that.
Merlin: Apparently, it's a social anxiety thing.
Merlin: But that's a thing I didn't know about.
Merlin: You never know what someone else's journey is.
Merlin: Yeah, even in a photograph.
Merlin: But we don't want to do that to our listeners.
Merlin: They're sitting around trying to eat a hunk of cheese in their closet or whatever.
Merlin: Sure, they hanker for a hunk of cheese.
Merlin: A slab or slice or chunk of, you know.
John: Right.
John: Their 10-gallon hat is feeling five gallons flat.
John: But my my worry.
John: Right.
John: I mean, last week we talked about gastrointestinal issues and I'm sure there were a couple of people, let's say, out of our time.
John: You think?
John: No.
John: Might have out.
John: But but.
John: You know, I remember all the e-magazines that were interviewing Marco Arment about different microphones and headphones.
John: People had really serious things to say about the audio quality of your and my show.
John: Yes.
John: And I don't want to add to that anxiety or stress by having an e-rake in the back.
John: So after the show was over and I was puttering around the house, I get a text from my neighbor.
John: Oh my God, I'm so sorry.
John: I didn't realize.
John: You did mention that before.
John: I forgot.
John: I'm really sorry.
Merlin: Just to be clear here, your interactions with this guy and his beautiful family, it's real smooth.
Merlin: And as neighbors, at least, you're probably not super tight.
Merlin: But so far, you get along, and it is not acrimonious for any other reason you're aware of.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: And not at all.
Merlin: Not acrimony at all.
Merlin: I think that's important to say, though, because as far as you know, there's no prior BS on which, like, where he's, like, responding or getting back at you because you listen to My Bloody Valentine really loud at two in the morning.
John: Nothing of the kind.
John: It's not like you're doing Asian American karaoke.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: Oh, so he, what he says is shit.
John: Sorry, man.
John: Won't happen again.
John: I did.
John: And he's using ellipses between every one of these shit.
John: He's in tech.
John: Definitely in tech.
John: Except it's not ellipses.
John: It's like five of them.
John: Shit.
John: Sorry, man.
John: Won't happen again.
John: Proper ellipses.
John: I didn't remember if you told me last time, proper ellipses.
John: Sorry again.
John: And I said, no worries.
John: You know, I had a good time with it.
John: It's part of the magic of the internet.
John: And then he writes back, and this is characteristic of our friendship.
John: He says, always glad to be the joke.
John: And I said, you were only part of the joke.
John: The real joke is in all of us.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: See, I wish that now the thing is a hack would stop right there and say happily ever after.
John: Yeah.
John: Great.
Merlin: And that's what happened.
John: Done and done.
John: Done and done.
John: And we are Seattle friends, which means every time we see each other, we say, oh, my God, I should have you over for dinner.
John: Oh, no, we want to have you over.
John: But we've never entered one another's house and maybe never will.
Merlin: The concept of Seattle friends is so good to me.
Merlin: Not to make fun of any, but like I know exactly, we've talked about this.
Merlin: Oh, you know, and like then somebody who actually then does call you, literally call you on the phone that night to try and set up a time to meet, that person's a monster.
John: It's just like, what are you doing?
John: I moved to Portland, Jesus.
John: And the thing is, every one of those invitations to have dinner with one another counts as something real in your friendship.
John: You've invited us 50 times, we've invited you 50 times.
John: That's a deepening Seattle friendship.
John: that still does not ever require that we that we go into one another's homes and oh oh even more they were out of town a month ago and they were like hey we have this package arriving it's time sensitive here we left the keys to our home in your mailbox
John: Will you, if it's not an inconvenience, look for this package for us.
John: And if it comes, put it in the house.
John: This sounds like a great relationship.
John: And so for three days, they made it sound like it was coming in six hours.
John: And so I watched over there.
John: I actually walked over and went.
John: Oh, I take that stuff.
John: I take that stuff so seriously.
John: Yeah.
John: Me too.
John: And I was texting them.
John: They were somewhere far, far away.
John: And I was like, still no package.
John: And they were like, yeah, now the Amazon thing is saying it won't come till tomorrow morning, but no stress on you.
John: And I was like, I'm not stressed.
Merlin: But you're doing them a mitzvah.
Merlin: You're doing them a mitzvah by giving them updates, not to harangue them, but to put them at ease.
Merlin: And it also shows you're still on it.
Merlin: You're on it.
John: I'm on it.
John: And I love a mission like this.
John: You know, if you told me, like, you've got to get up on our roof and take something down that's on, you know, some flag of notice or, you know, like, you know, I would be all about it.
John: And so for three days, I'm like, it hasn't come.
John: And they're like, oh, now Amazon's telling us something different.
John: Don't worry about it.
John: I'm like, I am not worried.
John: I'm psyched.
John: And then the thing arrived.
John: Yeah.
John: And it was the middle of the night that I was like, I wonder if the thing arrived.
John: And I go over there in the middle of the night.
John: And sure enough, some delivery driver has tucked it under a bush.
John: And I get it.
John: And I do go into their home.
John: I go all the way into their home to put the thing in the refrigerator because that was the time-sensitive one.
John: Time-sensitive, yeah.
John: Put it in the refrigerator.
John: And I took a brief look around.
John: And I was like, oh, it's such a lovely home.
John: And then I am-scrayed out of there as fast as I could.
John: Anyway, this is the level of our friendship.
John: So this morning at 1030, as I'm rolling out of bed, relaxed and refreshed from behind the hedge.
John: What the fuck is that?
John: And I hate to swear.
John: No, no, no, I understand.
John: But the thing is, what I say is, what fresh hell is this?
John: Because it's not a leaf blow.
John: What?
John: It's something in the same frequency range with the same loudness.
John: Oh, come on.
John: But a different machine.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And so I'm saying to myself, okay, okay, okay.
John: Now, you are not...
John: How much of this is you?
John: How much of this is your problem?
John: Like other people would not have gotten into a war with their neighbors.
John: And why?
John: Because they would have suffered a level of indignity more than you are willing to suffer.
John: I think this is what it is.
John: I think other people are more apt to shrug and say, well, the neighbors throw the trash over the fence, but they've been doing that for a long time.
John: And who am I to say, or whatever, you know?
John: And so I'm sitting here and I'm like, okay,
John: There's a machine that's coming from over there.
Merlin: And I really, your mind's got to be racing.
Merlin: I'll say for myself, my mind would be racing at that point a little bit where I'm like, am I crazy?
Merlin: Am I crazy?
Merlin: We talked about this, right?
Merlin: There's definitely not.
Merlin: He's not definitely not doing this to deliberately provoke me because that's not how our relationship is.
Merlin: And he's a cool guy.
John: exactly right and i and i don't want to i don't want to be a nut maybe he's saving a life and exactly and so and so i'm thinking okay the text message that i send is like hey friend remember exactly one week ago at exactly this time when i texted you about exactly this kind of noise don't mean to be a pain in the neck i know that it's monday morning and it's 11 you know and but hey with that
John: And so I'm thinking about the text and I go, okay, you don't know what's going on.
John: Maybe he's saving a life.
John: And so I put on my shoes and I go outside and I go out into the street and I look up in the driveway and there's a van.
John: And on the side of the van, because I walk around to see what it says.
John: And on the side of the van, it says expert carpet cleaners.
John: And so in the van, they have some kind of expert level vacuum cleaner.
Merlin: They attach all their hoses to the generator looking thing.
Merlin: And then they go in there and they wet clean it, dry clean it.
Merlin: They do all that stuff.
Merlin: But that takes a big engine outside and they attach a hose to that, right?
John: They do.
John: And so then I look around the van and there are hoses aplenty running in and out.
John: He's really on a tear, isn't he?
John: Yeah.
John: This carpet cleaner, it doesn't say expert for no reason.
John: This carpet cleaner is in there and I've been in the home, so I know there are carpets and it's not like, it's not like just some rugs.
John: It's like a, it's wall to wall carpeting.
John: Cause this is a, this is a period home.
John: And so then I come back over here and I'm like, okay, now I'm, oh, and I can see him in his little workspace.
John: I can see his silhouette through the window in his own workspace in his own home.
John: Did he have the giant Roger Miller headphones on?
John: He, I don't, you know, he's a, one of these home tech workers.
John: So I'm sure there's earphones in all the time.
John: I'm sure he's sitting there, you know, he's using actual ellipses in his voice where he's like, Hey,
John: Let's drill down on this.
John: Sorry about the, you know, like he's doing that all day, all day.
John: He probably blurs his background.
John: I mean, all the things, all the tech.
John: Yeah.
John: So I can see him in there.
John: And because I only see a silhouette, I don't know if he catches a glimpse of me.
John: Cause I'm all the way down his driveway.
Merlin: I am seeing this again, back to master and commander.
Merlin: I'm seeing that the two captains on the two boats, like face enough, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like just giving each other the stink eye.
John: But I'm two and a half hours worth of biebel blowing down his driveway, right?
John: Like it's a long, it's a long way.
John: Long, but enough that he could see me, but maybe he doesn't because he's in a Zoom call.
John: And so I come back home and now I'm, now I'm trying to compose the text message.
Merlin: Because technically it's not the e-rake.
Merlin: Hey friend, you know, do you follow me?
Merlin: It's not, the thing is what you said and that's how my brain works.
Merlin: I'm turning it over.
Merlin: Does he think that doesn't count because it's not the e-rake?
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, does he think, oh, this is a different domain of noise that doesn't bother me right now?
John: Right.
John: And so, you know, so I've got the text there going and I'm like, I don't, you know, hey, I'm not a mathematician.
John: I don't know how many hours there are in a week.
John: And of course, that's not counting working hours.
John: It's a much smaller number.
John: But of all of those, however many hours, only one and a half of them am I asking for to be not...
John: Like with a turbine going, you know, as far, I mean, a little bit further than you could throw a football.
Merlin: It's like dealing with a teenager where you're like, I, you know, oh, I was technically home at 11 because blah, you know, it's like, you're like, uh, like how much do we have to like drill down on the actual problem here?
John: so i'm sitting in the chair and i'm like i've got three or four of these tech message text messages that are always like hey smiley face friend you know and and legit i'm not i'm not bsing friend like total seattle friend um uh and so i do the funny one and then i do the like hey not not to be a problem one and i do all these ones but i'm also cycling like
Merlin: I'm sorry, are these the ones you're practicing?
John: I'm practicing.
John: But then I start going and I'm like, this is how it always feels.
John: The first text message I sent the neighbor that was literally throwing garbage over the fence.
Merlin: They've been throwing cans and cigarette butts.
Merlin: They've been doing it for years.
Merlin: For years, they just throw stuff.
Merlin: You could see from the detritus, this is not a new problem.
John: no this is ancient and they and they continue to do it i as i stood there with a with that the one who's dog died or this is the drug no that's this is a different one i stood there with an actual rake in my hand talking to them while their babysitter came and threw a bunch of yard clippings over the fence right in front of me while we're all standing there and i was like hey it's so indignified can you not do the thing right right in front of me and
John: You know, and so, but the first, the first many conversations I had with them was just exactly this friendly, like, Hey friend, you know, I know that this is a different, it's all new and new owner, but like I, I'm like visibly cleaning this up.
John: You can see me out here every day.
John: And I just wanted to say, just like no more garbage or anything over the fence.
John: But then it turned toxic because they kept doing it.
John: And I said, I, you know, like now I'm frustrated because I don't know how many times to ask you and I don't know what the secret formula is in asking you to stop doing it where you will stop doing it.
Merlin: That one is admittedly a little bit more, to me that one is more like sort of crazy frustrating because it's like, and of course my head would spin for weeks about this because that's how I am.
Merlin: And I would be thinking like, again, is somebody saving a life?
Merlin: Am I doing something horrible here that I don't realize?
Merlin: And the thing is, I don't see any way in which that it doesn't seem to actively benefit them and it actively harms you, not just in terms of like castle doctrine, but in terms of like, I just don't want garbage in my yard.
Merlin: And that's very disrespectful to do to your next door neighbor.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And I think their argument was like, tradition, tradition, tradition.
John: And I'm like, that's not enough of a tradition.
John: It shouldn't be part of your family lore.
John: I see you have garbage cans and yard waste cans, and I have them.
John: And when I have garbage or yard waste, I use the cans.
John: And so I don't know what you're using the cans for.
Merlin: A cynical person would say, I'm not saying this, but a cynical person would say, why don't we try six weeks of me dumping garbage in your yard and see if that has a similar effect on you?
Merlin: Well, I wouldn't do that.
Merlin: I wouldn't do that because I've grown as a person, but there's a part of me that thinks that, how would you like it if I just even dumped lawn clippings?
Merlin: It would be so upsetting to you because that's not your tradition.
Merlin: Your tradition is you do whatever you feel like over the fence because it just goes to wherever, like Michael Stipe says.
Merlin: But in this instance, if I just started dumping Mountain Dew cans in your yard, that would probably be frustrating to you too.
Merlin: And believe me, I understand why.
John: Well, and a younger me would have, every time I dug up a piece of, like, a garbage bag full of soda bottles that were full of piss and cigarette butts, I would have thrown it over their fence.
John: You're a man who's not afraid to do something with a gallon of piss.
John: That's right.
John: But they run a daycare, and I didn't want to throw big garbage bags full of bottles of piss.
John: I get it.
John: You see?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: You never know.
John: That's not my guy, right?
John: I am trying to save a life.
John: And then the other neighbor, you know, like, I was so friendly with them.
John: I have two years worth of friendly texts.
John: Hey!
Merlin: Is this the mom and the son who does drugs?
John: Yeah, can you stop with the... Is this the dog guy?
John: There's a couple of them.
Merlin: The guy who's still mourning his dog?
John: I guess so.
John: Okay.
John: And, um, and you know, and at one point she was like, well, I'll have to get yard waste containers.
John: And I was like, I've done it and I have attention deficit disorder.
John: Like it's really not that hard.
John: They go out of their way.
John: I haven't scheduled a doctor's appointment in three years and I don't throw my stuff over a fence anyway.
John: So I'm sitting here with the, with the thing and the way is happening and I'm about to record with you and I've done four or five test text messages to see how they looked on the screen and
John: And then I'm running that other script like this is how it always starts.
John: And I don't know whether this is just a symptom of the suburbs and my friend is getting converted in a different way.
John: Maybe sometimes I'm running the chainsaw and somebody else is trying to take a nap.
John: And what I come to, here's what I come to.
John: I say...
John: What is going to happen if I send the text versus don't send the text?
Merlin: Because if I don't send the text— Does it have to be now?
Merlin: Is that what you're thinking?
John: Well, and also, I'm irritated.
John: Yeah.
John: No one else is irritated.
Ha!
Merlin: Oh, that's such an enlightened way to look at it.
Merlin: I mean, there's so many things.
Merlin: I could have caused so much less trouble in the world.
Merlin: I'm not saying this with you right here, but I'm just saying that is a question.
Merlin: Like, is this bothering anybody else in the world but me right now?
Merlin: And the answer to that, it's a gating question.
Merlin: Because if the answer is, you know, yes, it's bothering somebody else, well, then there's a reason to continue.
Merlin: But sometimes if you are the only person...
Merlin: That's a good point to say, well, maybe, I don't know if now's the right time to address this, but, right?
Merlin: Like, you're looking at all the angles, socially, psychologically, pataphysically.
Merlin: Like, you're looking at all the different angles on this because, you know, you like these people.
John: And the thing is, there are six neighbors who are irritated by this right now.
John: Any of them that are home are irritated.
Merlin: I know the type.
Merlin: Everybody's fine.
Merlin: They're filling out forms.
Merlin: They're making calls.
Merlin: They love this shit.
Merlin: They love being irritated by life in ways that could probably be fixed with communication.
John: And they, none of them, and I don't know this for sure, but I'm going to throw this out there.
John: None of them are recording a podcast at this moment in their living room, sitting on their green couch.
John: And so my irritation is at a different level
John: in the sense that it's a, it's professional, it's affecting me professionally.
John: but the rest of them are irritated and just bearing it because that's life in the suburbs.
John: So now I am the outlier who has come to the suburbs, but is recording what is effectively a radio show from a non-soundproof environment.
John: I could be down in the basement in a bunker that I have insulated so that, you know, like those things that I used to, when I would be on Jesse Thorne's podcast and he's like, okay, now we're going into the booth and there's no air conditioning.
John: And so we can only be in there for a while because we'll lose oxygen.
John: But this is what is required.
Merlin: Every other professional's done it.
Merlin: You know, Bing Crosby, Ernie Kovacs, they've all nearly died in a booth because that's what you need to make a professional program.
John: That's what you do.
John: And, you know, my co-host likes to set up his podcasting studio in basically a road construction zone for years.
John: For years he does this.
John: It's basically in... That's not about Ken, is it?
John: No, no.
John: It's in the middle of a jackhammer festival.
John: And yet we survive.
John: We get on.
Merlin: Well, that's also because we're picky about who's allowed to like the show.
Merlin: That helps a lot.
John: That's right.
John: It's exactly right.
John: You have to earn the rep to listen to Robert Columbine.
Merlin: It's almost not fair to compare in that way because we're really desperately, as much as I know I seem sweaty a lot of the time, but I'm so desperately the opposite of sweaty about it where I'm like, there's a good chance I will figure out what your IP address is and ban it.
Merlin: Just because I don't like the way you're listening to the show, it troubles me.
Merlin: I think it's out of the scope of the project, and I don't need that.
John: Still, you never know.
John: You never know.
John: And I'm thinking about my friend, and I'm thinking, he's sitting in his making techs situation, and I don't know what he's doing.
John: He's designing things, or what is any of it anymore?
John: It's probably on Slack.
John: Yeah, probably he's got teams.
John: He might be on Microsoft.
Merlin: He's got slacks.
Merlin: He's got teams.
Merlin: I bet he's got Jira.
Merlin: He's probably doing a scrum.
Merlin: All those kinds of things.
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: Yeah.
John: I just learned last week that you can have multiple slacks, that there are slacks that you're not even invited to, but you go, it's like Twitter or something.
John: You go in and it's like, I want to talk about Taylor Swift and there are 2000 people or 200,000 people.
John: That's not even getting into this whole Twitch business, whatever that is.
John: I thought Slack was just something that was like a messaging app that went along.
John: You know how when you're in a Zoom call and there are more than two people and they're actually chatting on the side?
John: I never think to do it.
John: Why would you do it?
John: You're talking.
John: Why are you over talking to each other, sending private messages like, oh, my God, can you believe this asshole or what?
John: please turn down your e rake okay is it coming oh wait it comes it says from merlin to everyone oh to everyone to everyone it's from nightcrawler oh i clicked it on on the other side please don't turn down your rake hi friend wanting friendship
John: Please turn down rake two.
Merlin: This is better than I thought.
Merlin: It says, hi, friend.
Merlin: Wanting friendship.
Merlin: Please turn down rake two.
Merlin: Two also.
Merlin: And I'm going to say any hot chicks in here.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
John: All right.
Merlin: So I think we've established you're turning this over.
Merlin: So you've got this going on.
Merlin: And are you like me, though, in that sense where you're like, well, maybe it's a misunderstanding of like, he thinks it's about the e-rake, but really it's kind of about the random noise that's really annoying.
John: You know, it's really hard to remember.
John: Somebody sends me a text that's like, hey, can you be here at my daughter's bat mitzvah next Monday at 11?
John: Hey, how do you feel about meeting me for coffee?
John: And I'll say yes to both of those things.
John: But Monday at 11?
John: God, I don't remember what I said yes to a whole week ago.
John: It is the beginning of a new week, and it's always early on Mondays.
John: I'm sure he didn't put a reminder in his calendar.
John: Does he run?
Merlin: Is he what?
Merlin: Is he a runner?
Merlin: Can you tell?
Merlin: Is he fit?
Merlin: Does he look like he runs?
John: He's always very fit, but I've never seen him run.
John: I think he's a gym fit.
John: He's gym fit.
Merlin: You think he's gym fit?
Merlin: Oh, do you think it might be, what's that one that's a cult?
Merlin: You know, that one, do you think it's CrossFit?
Merlin: No, I don't think so.
Merlin: Well, maybe, but I asked him one time.
Merlin: You should ask his wife about it.
Merlin: I've written some things, ideas down.
Merlin: One of them is to try and get at him through his wife.
John: Well, and the thing is, his wife and I are even better friends.
Merlin: That's actually perfect for almost everything I've written down.
John: Yeah, we lean across the fence.
Merlin: There's a lot of leverage in that relationship, John.
John: I'm playing with the three-year-old.
John: She's got the baby on her hip, and we're like, oh, my God, can you believe the thing about that?
Merlin: I don't like to address our listeners and I really don't like it when you do, but I would just like to say to people, for those of you who've never met John, John's a lot of fun, like even more fun than this.
Merlin: Like you're really a nice guy to hang out with and you're very engaging with people.
Merlin: I could see her becoming very smitten with you, especially if she's got a baby.
John: And we're really good.
John: We're super good together.
John: Yeah.
John: And there are times when I say, oh, I may have overstepped here with this sort of thing that I said about the world.
John: You know, I made a comment about the world that some people who don't want to see a picture of somebody looking right into the camera might take this the wrong way.
John: And she's like, oh, my God, you should hear my husband.
John: He says the same thing, except a thousand times more.
John: this is a totally fixable thing yeah we're all we're all together kumbaya and so i'm here i'm a thumb poised over what i think is the perfect text and i say wait a minute what if you are the problem even at your friendliest text level
John: He's going to go, oh my God, John.
John: You can always send it later, but you can't unsend it.
John: You can't unsend it.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and I'm sitting and I'm like, you're trying, you're trying to grow.
John: You know, you're a highly sensitive person that sometimes you walk into a house and you're like, oh my God, this house smells like pee and it doesn't to anybody else.
John: Or sometimes you walk into a house and you're like 20 years ago, people smoked in this house and nobody else notices it.
John: And sometimes I get into a fight with the Hilton hotel chain because they put me in a non-smoking room and I'm like, this was not a non-smoking room for 40 years.
John: It was not a non-smoking room.
John: And just cause you slapped a coat of shellac on it.
Merlin: And then you pull out your laminated card that says HSP.
Merlin: I'm like, look, highly sensitive person.
John: But 99% of the time, I keep that highly sensitive person thing to myself.
John: Also because you're trying to grow.
John: You take it on the chin.
John: You don't say to somebody when you walk into their house, boy, it smells like pee.
John: Unless they're in the posies.
John: There's a hundred reasons why a house might smell like pee.
John: Especially if you've got two babies.
John: 99% of the time, it's none of your business.
John: Oh, it is kind of a power move to walk into someone's house and go, ugh.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: And they go, what?
Merlin: And you're like, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Merlin: Like, no, seriously.
Merlin: Somebody wearing an adult diaper?
John: I mean, even if you're in someone's home and they're business.
John: It's a Mrs. Pinch of number one.
John: If they're visibly peeing on themselves while you're in their home, it's their home.
John: Don't kick shame them.
John: No, it's their place.
John: That's true.
John: That's true.
John: And so here I am and I'm just like, ah, and I say, all right, don't send anything.
John: Don't send a friendly text.
John: Don't send, don't send an anything.
Merlin: just you're here you're doing the show with merlin it's a very forgiving show there's a lot what's in the show is in there's also something to be said for talking about it not while it's happening i think the intuition we have about these things sometimes especially when we're getting if i could say a little emotional is like that this has to be dealt with right now as it's happening and i think sometimes it's really a lot better to do at a time when it's not happening
John: And our acute listeners, our highly sensitive listeners, will have noticed that it stopped.
John: It stopped about five minutes ago.
Merlin: I didn't want to ruin this anecdote for you, but Zoom is, for better or for worse, pretty good at knocking that stuff out.
John: Yeah, well, that doesn't change.
John: That doesn't change the problem.
John: And when I fired it up, I put my headphones on and I heard it louder in my own microphone because of levels of compression and stuff.
John: Yes.
John: And I'm like, we and I tried different things.
John: I turned the microphone around.
John: I cupped my hand over it and it just everything I did made it even louder.
John: So I'm really grateful to Zoom, and thank you very much, Elon Musk, or whoever it is that owns it, because they're doing a great job out there, and I'm sure they've listened to this.
Merlin: You know, we're hard on people, but when people do well, we need to say something.
Merlin: I would just like to say, Elon Musk, thank you for doing such a good job with Zoom.
Merlin: It's helping a lot, you know?
John: The next time I log on to Facebook, there's going to be an ad for leaf blowers, and I'm not going to know why.
John: And it's going to feel like a coincidence, but also not a coincidence.
John: And I don't know how they're doing that.
John: I bet Matt Howey starts getting them, too.
Merlin: He's going to start getting e-rake ads just because of this.
John: Because Matt Howey hears it in his earphones, and they're connected to other things.
John: I mean, it's going to hear it throughout his ecosphere.
John: And I've just started noticing some things that I didn't even... I couldn't... Even though I...
John: feel like doom all the time i didn't even think about the fact that because i was like oh ai is gonna make uh is make gonna make the 70s i tried to explain that to madeline this morning because i made the dumbest version of that joke forgetting that like she doesn't know the bit of course
Merlin: And I said something like, you know, you know, whatever, like, you know, omelets are going to make soufflés look like that.
Merlin: And I was like, well, do you remember there was that movie with Ralph Fiennes?
Merlin: And there was that other movie with Dennis Hopper?
Merlin: Remember all those, like, fantasy ecola movies that were, like, all Y2K?
Merlin: And she's like, I don't need to go to work, but I'm going to go to work now.
Merlin: Well, and so I don't, you know...
John: I saw something the other day.
Merlin: I'm sorry, just real quick.
Merlin: So did you, in fact, not thumb it?
Merlin: Did you not send it?
Merlin: So I didn't send it.
John: Okay, good.
John: And the thing that I saw was just that, because I thought AI was going to be a thing that made facsimiles of you and me, and then we would be out of work because they would just put us in Star Wars' from here to eternity.
Merlin: Absolutely, they'd be the ones making no money because nobody buy ads anymore.
Merlin: That would be them, and that would free us up to not make money in other ways.
John: But I read this article that was like, oh, well, the latest way that teens are bullying each other is they're actually making AI pictures of each other naked and sending those pictures around their school.
John: That's not very nice.
John: I was like, oh, what fresh hell is this?
John: That's deeply unwholesome behavior.
John: Even if you've got your reasons, you know?
John: And the thing is, I know.
John: So then, oh, the other day somebody was hassling me about something.
John: And rather than send them some stock emoji, I went on to the internet and I said, I said, AI, John Roderick looking bored.
John: And AI generated, I don't remember which AI it was, some one of those programs, chat GPTs.
John: And it made like seven pictures of, of something that looked kind of vaguely like me looking vaguely bored.
John: And I took the best one of them and I sent it to the person as an emoji.
John: Instead of, instead of taking a picture of me looking bored, the, the, the, the impact of me looking bored was quadrupled by the fact that it was an AI and that I had taken the time to do this.
John: It was like when I started sending text messages to my daughter's mother slash partner in Comic Sans.
John: I actually had to go write those things into a bot, turn it into Comic Sans, and then screenshot it and edit it and then send it.
John: I went to so much work to annoy her with the Comic Sans.
Merlin: That's not the only person I knew who did shit like that.
Merlin: This is a kind of welcome relief for me.
Merlin: I will go so far out of my way to make a joke that's not very funny and no one understands.
Merlin: Sometimes I don't even understand it really.
John: And she was flabbergasted.
John: How are you making your texts into Comic Sans?
John: And I was like, what are you talking about?
John: It's so great.
John: Maybe it's just how things are now.
John: So I didn't send this to my neighbor at all.
John: Nothing.
John: And as far as he knows, probably right now he's sitting on a zoom call and the carpet people are going away and he's like, Oh my God, thank God they stopped.
John: You know, this, this was driving me and my baby crazy.
John: Not even for a second thinking about me over here talking to you.
John: And unlike last week where I bore it without making him the butt of the joke and, and then implied that I had, um,
John: Because he was like, I love to be the joke.
John: And I was like, we're all the joke.
John: But now, you know, now it's like an hour's worth of me talking about it.
John: But I didn't actually say anything to him.
John: And I don't know if that's sustainable.
John: Are you going to send this one, do you think?
John: No, I don't think so.
John: He's probably got a way to play it.
John: In the past, when I have talked about people, there are two major incidents where I have talked to you about somebody.
Merlin: It's such a piece of shit that you just, you send everyone in a podcast that you've passive aggressively done about.
John: Hey, here's a podcast I did about you.
John: Go ahead and listen to it.
Merlin: You might find this interesting, whatever.
John: No, but two different times, people that I know well that are friends have been listening to this show without my knowledge and heard themselves talked about.
John: Find their IP addresses.
John: I'll take care of it.
John: and they then were mad one of them still mad really mad yeah and one of them i think it might have broken up their marriage i don't know it's not my you know what can i do i'm just saying i'm just saying i'm just saying it's like yelling at the garbage man or the carpet cleaner they're just doing their job and that's why the lawyers who listen to the show are always sending me dms going like you need to ixnay on the awking tay
John: Oh God.
John: Lawyers, you know, lawyers.
John: Am I right?
John: They're worse than dentists.
John: No, they're not dentists.
John: Well, nobody's worse than optometrists, but go on.
John: So anyway, it's done now.
John: Hopefully their carpets are sparkling clean, but I don't know whether
Merlin: You have a clear – sorry.
Merlin: You have a clear path forward.
Merlin: I just want to say you have a very clear path forward.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I want you to tell me what it is.
Merlin: Can I tell you a brief why I think you're a clear path forward?
Merlin: I've written a lot of notes here, but I'm just going to give you the high level.
Merlin: One is let's act like the carpet cleaning was an anomaly.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Or as they say in England, a nonce.
Merlin: Like it's not a thing that's going to happen all the time, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: This may not be the end of the noise problems, but I think one angle is, I'm very proud of you for not sending that, and I think it'll actually be more effective if you wait until the next time this happens, and then B, you not address it at the moment it's happening, but then...
Merlin: You go to him and just say straight up.
Merlin: You can just say straight up.
Merlin: Listen, like, you know, don't talk about podcasting.
Merlin: And this is one of my things.
Merlin: Well, can I tell you?
Merlin: Okay, never mind all that.
Merlin: You handle however you want.
Merlin: Here's what I wrote down.
Merlin: The first thing I wrote down is something I heard the actress who plays the Queen of England said in the TV show The Crown.
Merlin: And I think about this a lot.
Merlin: She was talking to somebody, maybe her mom, and she said something about like, they're always like, oh, you got to give a speech about this.
Merlin: You got to do a thing.
Merlin: And take everything else out about this and just listen to these three questions you ask yourself.
Merlin: Don't think about the Queen of England.
Merlin: Think about yourself.
Merlin: There's a thing that somebody are telling me, people are telling me that I need to say, or there's a thing I feel like I need to say.
Merlin: And you ask yourself three questions.
Merlin: Does this thing really need to be said?
Merlin: Does this thing really need to be said right now?
Merlin: And does this thing really need to be said right now by me?
Merlin: And I think that for myself, that's a very valuable array of questions to ask myself.
Merlin: Because a lot of times, I'll go through the first one and I'll be like, fuck yes, this needs to be said.
Merlin: Well, I really kind of don't.
Merlin: But then I get to that second one and I'm like, does it really need to be said right now?
Merlin: Is there no other time that this can be said?
Merlin: Because think about now, if you open your mind, not you, but the listener and you, you open your mind to that and you'll suddenly see a million things where you could have done better in the past because nothing needed to be said.
Merlin: And if something did need to be said, you don't say it now.
Merlin: I'll give you a great example.
Merlin: I personally am not a big fan of I told you so with anybody, but especially kids.
Merlin: And like, I feel like it's a good idea to find yourself, notice yourself doing any version of I told you so, because everyone hates you for saying I told you so.
Merlin: It's not helping anybody.
Merlin: If you do need to make a correction, let's say in your kid's behavior or whatever, or reckons about the world, does it need to happen right now while everybody's still mad?
Merlin: Like maybe it doesn't because your instinct as a, as a somebody who was raised by fathers and mothers of the past is to say, this is exactly the time I bust into their office or their room and say like, you always do this thing and you never do this thing.
Merlin: And I told you a million times about this thing and you're going to fail out of school and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: And like, how often has that gone great?
Merlin: Does it need to be said?
Merlin: Does it need to be said by me?
Merlin: Does it need to be said by me now?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Remarks, please.
John: Who is Steve Gutenberg?
John: Get me Steve Gutenberg.
John: Who's Steve Gutenberg?
John: Get me a Steve Gutenberg type.
John: give me a steve gutenberg type then it's give me a young steve gutenberg and then it is who is steve gutenberg right that's the first there is a mountain yeah then there's no mountain then there is a moon yeah you bring steve gutenberg to muhammad that's right exactly now in this case i what i thought was
John: Is he going to go to the carpet people and tell them to turn off their stuff while they're here being paid?
John: He either can't, in which case he is sitting there now, super conscious that he is in his mind, ruining a podcast.
John: He can hear it is the thing.
Merlin: He can't hear the podcast, but he's sitting there in his repose on slack or whatever looking at Jira He can hear that sound as well as you just maybe didn't register to him as the same kind of thing Well, because he is doing it and he's not thinking about me.
John: He's thinking this is really irritating me But he's not thinking like oh, what was that thing that happened with my neighbor?
John: So but the thing is he either cannot tell the carpet people to stop which
John: then he just feels bad or he could have texted you and said sorry about the noise it'll be over by 11 or 11 30 or whatever you know what i mean that would be the nice thing to do but he but he's not thinking that or what i do in ohio if i sent him the thing did you say skibbity ohio jesus no oh please don't say that word and he or he could have then gone oh my god oh my god and then gone to the carpet people who he's paying and
John: and said you got to kill this you know you can't do the carpet for another hour in which case he's paying them to stand there and they're irritated because they have texting you would be plenty and so none of those things are going to happen because i'm just not going to send it i'm going to contain the irritation in myself the irritation and inconvenience and you know and the impact
John: Right.
Merlin: I'm going to contain the impact.
Merlin: You're going to contain the impact.
Merlin: So it's kind of like falling on a grenade for the neighborhood.
John: Exactly like that.
John: It's exactly like that.
John: I'm containing the impact rather than what I've always done, which is, hey, the impact is less if I disperse it.
John: If I say, hey, stop doing this.
John: And then and then nobody else minds the grenades.
John: None of this is going to be a problem is as long as you use your own trash cans or as long as you don't use the E-rate.
John: Well, and I would say, you know, hey, don't use it at all because for tens of thousands of years, people have taken grass and tied it together and you...
John: to get worse things than bibles out of their house you know like like poop and roaches like they use yes and it's always and i would we're still using it today john still use them i use it literally this morning because why are you going to build a zen garden and go out with a with a with some kind of zen rake and make zen when you could just be doing that all the time with everything don't be mad in your own garden that's no good
John: But I'm not gonna tell you, I'm not gonna tell you how to live.
John: I'm not gonna tell you how much sound to make in your house.
John: I'm not gonna tell you, you know, whether or not to pee on yourself in your own home.
John: Yeah.
John: Or at least I'm not right now, but I don't know how sustainable it is to me if every week it's a new hell.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: And this brings me to the second point, and then I'm done.
Merlin: So, first point, just because I think it's useful.
Merlin: I like that thing of asking yourself a question.
Merlin: And I don't mean that either as a critique of you or advice for you.
John: No, I get it.
Merlin: But I'm just saying that's just a thing I found useful.
Merlin: Now, this is going to be much more controversial.
Merlin: And I could see...
Merlin: a lot of people disagreeing with me about this, but it's a reckon more than an edict, but I'm going to toss it out there.
Merlin: The other thing they say, there's all kinds of things where they say, whenever you do X, Y, Z, you know you're losing, right?
Merlin: Whenever you're explaining, you're losing.
Merlin: Whenever you blah, blah, blah, you know, those kinds of things.
John: Is this like a sales thing where it's like the first person to talk is the one that's already lost the negotiation?
Merlin: I think that's part of it.
Merlin: A always, B, B, C, sweeping.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Well, I feel like
Merlin: I feel sometimes when I've gotten very emotional about something and thought a thing needed to change involving another person in the world.
Merlin: I want to put this very abstractly because this is a longtime thing I've, you know, struggled with, I think, like everybody.
Merlin: But when, like, let's take an example of, like, somebody next door is listening to music really loud while you're trying to study.
Merlin: And it's a time, and then, like, you start stewing.
Merlin: And you go, like, well, also, like, it's almost finals week.
Merlin: Play.
Merlin: Plus it's 1130.
Merlin: Plus I feel like we've talked about this before and all those things start just like accumulating.
Merlin: And it's like, and this is controversial, but I'm going to toss it out there.
Merlin: There's times where I think,
Merlin: We ought to be careful about giving reasons why we're asking someone to do something.
Merlin: And I'll give you the example here.
Merlin: Well, I'm not married to this, but I'm tossing it out there.
Merlin: Because the thing is, if you say to somebody, you could say to somebody, hey, stop shooting me in the head with a rifle.
Merlin: And, like, that ought to be enough to say, like, you're not allowed to just go shit or whatever.
Merlin: Or, for example, it could be, like, I guess you could get to something like, please don't dump your yard waste in my yard.
Merlin: Does that really need an explanation?
Merlin: Do I really need to explain I don't want to be shot in the head?
Merlin: Because the problem, the concern that I have is you say to somebody—
Merlin: Okay, let's start with the specificity of, hey, your e-rake, as you know, because you're wearing, you know, gear for that, and the neighborhood's not, so you're aware of, like, the fact that that's really quite loud.
John: Yeah, you're spraying Roundup on our garden party, and you're wearing a suit.
Merlin: Whole hazmat suit, yeah, yeah.
John: You're wearing a hazmat suit, so you know it's poisonous.
John: I don't know what Mr. Mike told you to do, but...
John: You can't tell me it's not poisonous.
John: You can't tell me it's not poisonous in one hand and be wearing a hazmat suit.
Merlin: I can wrap this up quickly.
Merlin: And this is a question.
Merlin: It's not advice.
Merlin: And it is actually like I'd love to get your opinion on this.
Merlin: I feel like sometimes when you give a reason for something, you end up
Merlin: either slightly undercutting your own case or opening holes in your case for other people.
Merlin: And I'll give you the example here.
Merlin: Hey, man, you know, you do that a lot, and it's real loud.
Merlin: Could we work out some way where you're not doing that, like, a lot or...
Merlin: Whatever.
Merlin: However you want to phrase it.
Merlin: Like, just so you know, man, it's really loud when you do that.
Merlin: And it's crazy annoying.
Merlin: Now, you could at that point start dropping because your head's been swimming with all of these logical things to say.
Merlin: Hey, you have a baby.
Merlin: You understand what that's like.
Merlin: Hey, you know what?
Merlin: I do a podcast with the guy from Jeopardy.
Merlin: Could you maybe... Do I have to have him come over and ask you?
Merlin: Like, why?
Merlin: This is so loud.
Merlin: This is for my work.
Merlin: Well...
Merlin: The problem is, I think when you give a reason, it sometimes undercuts your own case.
Merlin: And you wouldn't believe this, but there are people now when he goes back to his repose, and he's emotional, he feels like his feelings got hurt.
Merlin: He thought you guys were friends.
Merlin: And you've gone and asked him to stop doing the e-rake.
Merlin: And his first thought might be, well, who the fuck is he?
Merlin: Like podcast, that's not a real job.
Merlin: I bet his podcast isn't even any good.
Merlin: So now you've basically said, there's a thing, I've made you emotional.
Merlin: First of all, whether I meant to or not, I've made you feel emotional about this.
Merlin: When we feel emotional, we get vulnerable and we get defensive.
Merlin: At least I do.
Merlin: And in that instance, now you start trying to undercut the other person's case.
Merlin: And we all do this, I think, all the time with things.
Merlin: And so I'd like your opinion on that.
Merlin: When do you think a reason helps?
Merlin: And is it possible that a reason can harm?
Merlin: Because as they said, you know, in that movie, Rules of the Game, terrible thing in life is that everyone, every man has his reasons.
Merlin: Like everybody's got a reason.
Merlin: I'm just curious what you think about that.
Merlin: Can reasons undercut your case?
Merlin: Because, you know, like we're used to that where we've got to go like you've got to go to bed because you have school tomorrow or.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, and this gets me back to, like, one of the things I've been pre... I don't know if it was successful, but one of the things I would always say to my kid was, like, we don't cross the street when other people cross the street.
Merlin: Just because other people start crossing Fifth Street doesn't mean we will, right?
Merlin: Don't let other people be your guide in that instance for what the right thing to do is.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: Believe it or not, kid, this is really fucking complicated.
Merlin: There's going to be times where we don't cross at all right now, and I can explain that to you, but let me just say, because you're three...
Merlin: the reason we don't cross the street until we're ready and we think it's safe is because that's how we are.
Merlin: That's who we want to be, is people that make our own decisions about that.
Merlin: So, like, another way to put it, if you want to be an idiot about it, is, like, if you cross the street and get hit by a car, you say, well, my dad thought it was safe because everybody else was crossing then.
Merlin: Or somebody out of the corner of their eye caught some guy in a McLaren taking a left turn on red.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: So, like, sometimes...
Merlin: I'm not trying to do that to dismiss an argument from other people, but I am often saying, I say thank you to the AI because that's who I am, not because I think it cares.
Merlin: And in that instance, I'm asking you to turn down the noise because that's crazy loud.
Merlin: I could give you reasons, but he's got reasons too.
Merlin: What do you think about that?
John: Well, this is something I learned in an earlier iteration of the Ms.
John: Education of me.
John: Yes.
John: Is that I started to say, okay, a lot of your problems come because you send long text messages at two o'clock in the morning, which is not when other people are a awake or be at their best.
John: Although you feel like you are at your best and long, long emails, six paragraph emails.
John: um that and and with the text messages you you go all the way up to the character limit and you're explaining because of the way your mind works you have considered every argument and so now you're explaining how all of the arguments do not
John: uh, are not applicable in this situation.
John: And you are thinking you're doing almost like you've been studying for a test, right?
Merlin: You've been like assembling like an arsenal of logic.
John: Yeah.
John: Here's why, here's why this, here's why that, here's why this, here's why that.
John: And so we both now you as the reader and I, as the composer, we've both concluded the same thing, which is there's only one way to see this.
John: And here it is.
John: And the reason that I was studying this is because this did not, in fact, seem to end arguments as often and as conclusively as I felt it should.
Merlin: That's such a good way to put it.
Merlin: It's not even just that it doesn't conclude arguments as much as I'd anticipated.
Merlin: It doesn't conclude arguments as much as it should.
Merlin: As in, like, if we all interacted this way, we wouldn't have these problems.
Merlin: But then in reality, that's not how it works out.
John: no they come back at me with some other thing they got reasons too when you give a reason now they got reasons even then if it isn't they come back with a reason if they just come back with a defensive attack if they're just like you know what your problem is or something worse like why are you attacking me when i'm like i'm not attacking i just said i just because it's fun i just examined the seven most popular responses you might
John: give me and I concluded that they were all not applicable.
John: That's not attacking you.
John: That's just, that's just engaging in, uh, the world of ideas.
John: And so what I was getting back was not anything logical.
John: A lot of the time it was just, it was just like.
John: Why did I get, why did I wake up to this insane, what to them seems insane amount of texting when to me it was just like, we have to cover all the bases.
John: And, and I, and then I'm in a position of like, but I am your friend, but I was not, there's nothing, there's nothing about what I did that was meant to be harmful.
John: um if you read uh again all of my points go back and read the whole more personal i was just you know i was just saying i'm just saying you were you were just saying and i was just saying and so then i realized the same thing you you're saying which is the more you go into it explaining it uh going logically through it
John: The more you are undercutting the what and so and I'm going through these emails and I'm like, well, actually, this paragraph does not advance my cause and my causes.
John: Will you stop doing this?
John: And sometimes I would reduce that email just down to that sentence.
John: Will you stop doing this?
John: And it's not a ploy.
John: It's not a negotiating tactic.
Merlin: It really is more efficient.
Merlin: And the less you say in that instance, the more sense it makes.
Merlin: Because also if you had said, could you not do that for half an hour?
Merlin: It implies that you're okay with it all the other times.
Merlin: Because now you've given a reason.
Merlin: And what you really want to say is, hey, man, there's never a good time to throw a turd at my house, even if I'm not busy right now.
Merlin: That's just not a thing we do.
John: But in the case of an E rake, everybody in the whole of the suburbs.
John: And by that, I mean millions and millions of people who are living on the outskirts of towns.
John: They all seem to have concluded together as a collective intelligence that E rakes are a viable alternative to rakes.
John: And so I cannot, I cannot argue of that tool.
John: I can't argue against the world that there is no reason to have electrified this device.
John: It's like taking, it's like taking a, like a, a rag, a wet rag, which you would use to clean things and electrifying it somehow.
John: First of all, that's bad because it's wet.
John: Yeah, don't do that.
John: But I'm sure right now there is some startup who's like, you know what we've done?
John: It's an e-rag.
John: It's not really going to work on lamps and stuff, but for flat surfaces that don't have any plates on it.
John: I would also accept iWipe.
John: I think iWipe would be good too.
John: Oh, iWipe.
John: What a good idea.
Merlin: Oh, it's so cute.
Merlin: You're so much better at branding.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No, I'm not.
Merlin: No, you are.
Merlin: Don't give me reasons, you fuck.
Merlin: I wipe.
Merlin: I wipe.
Merlin: I wipe.
Merlin: I wipe you too.
Merlin: But don't flush it.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: It's reusable.
Merlin: It's reusable.
Merlin: And yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: There's all kinds of things.
Merlin: And then eventually you can mail it back in.
Merlin: And there's probably a whole recycling thing that they pretend to do.
Merlin: You mail it back in for credit.
Merlin: I mean, it's not 100% credit.
Merlin: It's a subscription service.
Merlin: If you want to keep using it.
Merlin: Like, yeah, otherwise it won't unlock the, uh, the eye wipe.
John: The eye wipe then suddenly just is no longer operable.
John: It's dry.
Merlin: No, it's like, it's like the, it's like the HP printer ink I bought.
Merlin: This is such a John Roderick thing.
Merlin: I'd subscribed.
Merlin: I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but when we got a, I really, I did.
Merlin: May I mention this?
Merlin: I, I, I like our HP printer.
Merlin: Um, I like it.
Merlin: The scanner.
Merlin: It's all really good.
Merlin: Um, but like I got, it was on their subscription thing.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah, they had to go in a garage.
Merlin: But when Billionaire was doing lots of printing for school, that's one of my names I'm trying to socialize for him to work on.
John: Oh, Billionaire, that's very cute.
Merlin: Yeah, he hates it, he hates it.
Merlin: But anyway, when Billionaire would need to print stuff for school, he'd be very into papercraft, we would, oh, Freudian slip, but would use a lot of ink, and so I subscribed, but then I had more ink than I could use, and I thought, okay, that's cool, I'll cancel the subscription, and then I'll just use this ink at my leisure, but...
Merlin: You know, the ink that you buy, no matter how you get it, like it's tied to a thing.
Merlin: In that case, they could basically win my subscription.
Merlin: When I stopped paying for my subscription, the little chip in each of those, it stopped enabling the use of that ink.
Merlin: You can only use that ink whilst you're still subscribed to it.
John: Don't own the ink, even though you hold it in your hand, you don't own it.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: I mean, you pay for the whole seat, but you're only going to need the edge.
Merlin: And in this case, the iWipe, when it's in its caddy, I'm just saying.
Merlin: How about this?
Merlin: How about you pitch this to this guy?
Merlin: He's tech and makes and making techs.
Merlin: He probably would be interested in a good startup idea.
John: I think he would.
John: What if I said, listen, in exchange for this million dollar idea of the eye wipe with a, with a holster on a belt, I wipe patty subscription service.
John: You stop using any, any kind of, of turbine.
John: Between the hours of 11 and 12.30.
Merlin: But if he's very into the iWipe idea and you establish that's IP that you guys could share for a future IPO when you're making that particular tech, then maybe you follow up with another pitch and you're like, if that one doesn't work, how about we get something called an e-rake where we lock your fucking leaf blower in a box and it never opens again?
Merlin: Do you think that would be successful?
Merlin: It would be like Leaf Blower as a Service.
John: Based on what I see on my Instagram, I feel like the next thing is custom crafted, made by artisans in Japan.
John: Artisanal?
John: traditional rooms and rakes that are made according to like some kind of ancient that are aligned with the old ways that are aligned with the old ways and they're handcrafted and you'll only need to buy one once and a guy with a curly mustache will will demonstrate it he's wearing a kimono he's raking hi he's he's he's pushing it with a broom it's indigo colored and it's made out of sustainable something
John: Oh, my God.
John: He'd be so into that.
John: Or maybe pitch his wife on that.
John: She might be the one who takes it to him.
John: Well, they're just one Instagram account away from wearing kimonos as it is.
John: Right.
John: Because young people, he's probably 40.
Merlin: Think how cute the baby would look in a little kimono.
John: A little kimono with a handcrafted artist's anal mustache.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: That would be so cute.
Merlin: The other thing you could do is you could give him a real rake and a dildo and say one of these is for your yard and the other one is so that you can have a dick like a man's.
Merlin: Oh, oh.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: Not like that.
Merlin: Not like in a normative way, but like in a funny way where you could say, oh, Amazon delivered this in the middle of the night.
John: The rake store calls.
John: Is this yours?
John: Is this yours?
Merlin: Oh, I know this is yours.
John: It's a beautiful rake and like a giant purple silicon dildo.
John: Tell your wife I said hi.
Merlin: That would settle it.
John: That would settle it.
John: No, take it back.
John: No, that would start the feud.
John: We'll cut all that out.
John: We'll cut all that out.
John: Now I'd be an enemy of the people.
Merlin: John, what happens next?
Merlin: Do you continue to evaluate whether when, like, okay, let's look at it this way.
Merlin: So we've been recording for an hour and 11 minutes.
Merlin: Before we started recording, you were probably a little bit frustrated about, you know.
Merlin: I was a little frustrated.
Merlin: So like, as you sit here now, what do you think you might want to do next about this?
Merlin: Is this still a thing you'd want to work on in some way or another with your neighbor?
Merlin: Mending fences, mending, you know, theoretical fences.
Merlin: Here's the here's what I'm thinking now.
John: OK, I'm in my mid 50s.
John: Right.
John: And I've talked about this quite a bit.
John: Like my little girl is going to go away to college, hopefully, if everything goes right in five years.
John: And like I've said before, I've got things of mustard in my fridge that are five years old.
John: I've definitely got socks in my drawer that are 15 years old.
John: And here goes this child five more years.
John: At which point am I going to be living in an Airstream trailer in the Arizona desert?
Merlin: This kind of relates to last week's discussion about, I think one way I phrased it was like, do you want the house you wanted 15 years ago or the house you could use 15 years from now, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Part of this is thinking in a forward-looking way.
Merlin: Like once that kid's out of the house, what's going to happen?
John: The last time I went to Salvation Mountain and the slab out by the Salton Sea, I saw it very differently than when I saw it 10 years ago.
John: Now I saw it and I was like, huh, you know, this actually kind of makes sense to me now.
John: Living out here on an old Air Force base with a bunch of people that are using solar power and recycling their pee.
John: Like all of a sudden it seems like, hmm, maybe that's a way to retire.
John: And if I am.
John: A lot of Boeing engineers out there filtering pee, probably.
John: Yeah.
John: And if I'm living in the Arizona desert in an uninsulated Airstream trailer that I found somewhere, and basically I'm like Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad.
John: He's just like a contract killer.
Merlin: He was a great grandfather, though, you know?
John: Yeah, he was.
John: And so I'm thinking, okay, here's Mike.
John: Here's Mike Ehrmantraut.
John: And he's a hitman and a private investigator and a parking garage.
John: Well, he does a lot of things, you know?
John: But if somebody's using a leaf blower, somebody's using a leaf blower across the desert from him.
Merlin: No amount of insulation is going to protect your airstream, buddy.
Merlin: Mike Ehrman, he's going to ask nice once.
Merlin: That's what I'm thinking.
John: But does he?
John: Or is he trying to fly under the radar enough that he knows, look, this is small...
John: beer yeah yeah yeah and and i what i don't want to do is attract attention if i'm selling if i'm selling meth out of my chicken restaurant am i going to complain about somebody's leaf blower probably not because what i'm trying to do is look normal you don't want them making a lot of fuss about your uh washer dryer garage that's exactly it which definitely doesn't have anything under it so for five years from now yes when i'm when i'm maybe living in
John: I'm living in.
John: Are you in Sedona at this point?
John: I may be in Sedona.
John: I'm living in a Tesla truck.
John: You're in Sedona.
John: You got your reasons.
John: I bought a Tesla truck for 1500 bucks.
John: Oh, nice.
John: And the battery doesn't really hold a charge anymore, but it does enough that I can get to town.
John: And I'm out there and it's hot in the summer and it's hot in the winter.
John: But am I complaining?
John: I think as I get older, I need to learn to complain less and less, not more and more.
John: No kidding.
John: Well, I don't know.
John: Doesn't that seem right?
John: When you're old, nobody wants to hear you complain.
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: And it also makes the complaints you do make a lot more powerful.
John: You see those videos all the time of some lady who's having a conniption fit in the middle of the street because somebody cut her off in traffic or whatever, and you're like, that's not me.
John: She's probably younger than me.
John: She's probably only 48.
Merlin: John, everybody's mad.
Merlin: It's always an option to not be all mad.
Merlin: So you could do that.
Merlin: You could do that.
Merlin: Would you be by yourself or would there be anyone else there?
Merlin: There wouldn't be as many leaf blowers, probably.
John: No, when I was, you know, when I was 50 years old, I was still very attractive.
John: And now that I'm 55, nobody wants to be with me.
John: Nobody even wants, you know, people are.
John: And you don't find that a relief at all.
Merlin: Oh no, it's terrible because you like, you like, yeah, you like that stuff.
John: Yeah.
John: Like people nibbling on my ear and it's just, it's done.
John: It's all over.
John: No, I'm going to be living all by myself somewhere in the desert.
John: It's just going to be me.
John: I don't even like dogs, so it's not going to be a dog and no cat is going to stand for you and your AI living in an uninsulated airstream.
John: Yeah.
John: It's just going to be me out there filtering my own pee and they're going to be guys blowing up stumps with, and there are no stumps in Arizona or at least not in the South.
John: Well, you don't know.
John: Climate's changing.
John: That's true.
John: They might be blowing up a butte.
John: A butte or a mesa.
John: I would much rather live in northern Arizona where there are trees, but that's maybe not how it's going to shake out.
John: Maybe my Tesla truck stops running when I get above 2,000 feet.
John: We don't know how those things are going to age.
Merlin: Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future.
Merlin: Especially us.
John: Especially us.
Merlin: But you've got to get the right frame of mind.
Merlin: You're going to get out there, and you're going to get your game face on, and you're improving, and whatever comes along, it'll probably be fine.
Merlin: You can also undermine the guy like Mike Ermentrout, though.
Merlin: You know, like when they put the shoes on the wires?
Merlin: Like, he'll do some pretty complicated stuff to make a point.
John: He will.
John: But the thing is, on one hand, I'm over here Gen X-ing, saying, you know what the thing about Gen X?
John: We didn't complain.
John: Because you know why we didn't complain?
John: Because our neglectful parents would put their cigarettes out in our Mountain Dew if we complained.
John: And so we don't complain.
John: We just take it.
John: And then hold up a finger and go, that's one.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And then on the other hand, I'm over here, like as a millennial,
John: Going like, well, all the sounds are too loud.
John: Why can't I have to pay for things?
Merlin: You should go confront that guy about how he made eye contact with you.
Merlin: Give him a pamphlet.
Merlin: Oh, friend, this could get a lot worse.
Merlin: Also, stop looking at me.