32. I Cream Twice

AlexThis is Do By Friday, the weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, slime.

MerlinLet's go. Let's get this. Let's get the show on the road. Team building exercise.

MaxI get it. I get it. What? No. Why are you going to do that? You going to law school? We'll talk about it on the show. Everything that happens on the show is on the show.

MerlinI got to go to a law school.

MaxPart of the show.

MerlinIt's so Roman. Yes and a good boss. How am I going to find out what I got to find out? He don't find out what I got to find out.

MaxThat's a very problematic caricature.

MerlinI'm so sorry, boss. It's pronounced Chico. Chico, because he chased chicks, which is also very problematic. We should do a group medium post.

MaxMea culpa. I'm sorry for the anti-Semitic memes that I posted.

MerlinFor all the things you're about to read about me in paper, I'm very, very, so very sorry. Edward the Penitent.

MaxPlease, CNN, do not publish my name, number one.

MerlinNumber two, I'm sorry for the antismatic memes that I posted. I read that. We've been doing lots of micro-traveling, and I read that in our hotel room. Is that where you go from one microclimate to the other in San Francisco? That's right. You go from 18th Ave all the way to 20th Ave. Micro-travel.

MaxMicro-travel. I micro-traveled from home to work this morning. Meep, moop.

MerlinLook at me. I'm fucking worldly. I thought that CNN thing was fucked up. I thought the way they handled that was— I don't even know what you mean by the CNN thing.

MaxExplain the whole thing to me.

MerlinA guy on Reddit made a funny GIF, because now I'm saying GIF apparently, made a funny GIF of Donald Trump. As Todd says, they flopped the video, and it's Donald Trump beating up on the CNN logo, which everybody thought was funny. And they tracked it down to this guy who has a silly Reddit name. And then they started to explain this guy's so excited he was having his morning coffee. And the emperor, Trump, liked his funny video.

And CNN was like, oh, yeah, you like that? And they kind of went and crossed—what's the word I'm looking for? They basically got a bunch of information from all his different social media and identified who he was and fucking called him.

MaxBut I don't understand that. This guy made a list of a picture of all the Jewish employees of CNN with Jewish stars over their faces. As you do. As you do. I mean, we all do that. But it's like, I don't understand that.

MerlinIt's just bullshit.

MaxIf you're making lists of the Jews, don't the Jews have a right to— By the way, the list of the Jews at an investigative news organization, don't they have the right to find out who you are and tell you to stop?

MerlinDo you think as it is—I don't know if it's a Ted Turner thing. Do you think they conceal who the Jews are at CNN? Be honest. They call it passing strange. They just walk around like normal people, like eating food and sitting in chairs, hiding their horns under elaborate hats.

Remove your elaborate hat. Surely you have horns.

MaxPreventing us from going back to the gold standard. No, listen, I don't understand this. I don't understand why people are so like, because the conservatives are like, G.R. Nando's bullying this guy, and the media is like, they're going to dox him. It's like, I don't understand that. He threatened them.

MerlinWhy would you don't listen if you don't want to be docs don't threaten the media and this is why okay all I'm saying is like if you're going to go go all the way in and tell me something interesting like that's okay like but but am I wrong am I wrong about my stance here that he deserved that he a billion percent deserve this he anonymously threatened the an investigative news organization and they found out who he was and that's completely justified like what do you expect it's like if you like stick your if it's like if you if you stick your dick in an

Maxanthill yeah the ants are going to sting you it's like what did you well why did you let the queen

Merlinfile a bug that's what she does scorpion and the frog i'm just saying that if you're going to go go all the way in because as it is it just felt like it felt like weird extortion like if you're going to do it do it and then tell me something interesting what cnn did yeah the reason they didn't reveal his name was because because he got all apologetic about it they didn't reveal his

Maxname because they contacted him and they said listen now we know who you are please stop making lists of our Jewish employees.

MerlinYeah.

MaxJews are very touchy about being about people threatening to kill them.

MerlinWhat is it with Jews and lists? Be honest. I don't know.

MaxI was just going to say we're very touchy as a people about being put on lists and people saying that we should be rounded up and killed and then not being able to defend ourselves. It really sets people off.

MerlinIt's a cultural thing.

MaxYeah, it could be.

AlexWhy am I laughing at this? I'm just so upset.

MerlinYou're going to have to cut all this out later.

AlexNo, nope. It's staying in.

MaxAll right. I've got in front of me a large mixing ball. I have my bag from Target where I just came from.

Let me also, I just want to preface this by saying I'm leaving. I don't know. I feel like it's possibly. Are you really going to Italy, Max? It's possible. I was just about to say it's possibly bad operational security. You've got to be careful of your OPSEC. It could be bad OPSEC that I'm going to Italy, but to say it on the podcast. But whatever. I trust the Powder Nation. They've got my back.

They're not going to let me get put on any lists. Here's the deal. I'm going to Italy for – so Veronica's a brother. His company did some exchange program where him and his whole family and his three young daughters moved to Munich, Germany, for two years. and they're nearing the end of their two-year exchange. And we need to go visit them before they come back. We're kind of nearing the end of that time. So we're going to end the trip in Munich, but we're flying into Rome,

and we're going to go to Rome and Florence and just sort of like tool around Italy for a couple of weeks and then go see Veronica's family and then come back. I think it's the first vacation I've taken since we started Cards Against Humanity in 2010. Wow. I believe it's the first vacation I've taken.

AlexMore importantly, did you get your Italian driver's license?

MaxI did. I went to AAA and I got an international driver's license.

AlexWhat car are you renting to go on the Audubon?

MaxA BMW 5 Series.

AlexOh, the only reason I know or care is because of friends of the show who make a podcast called Neutral.

MaxBut here's the only thing is I picked that car because, to be honest, I heard them talk about it on Neutral too. And I just rented it because it was available. It was that or a bunch of shitty little smart cars that were all manual transmission. and I actually do know how to drive manual, but I didn't want to. And I think I've heard Casey and Marco talk about the 5 Series. That's a good one, right?

AlexI hope BMWs are the good ones, right? I mean, it's no falconry car, but it's still pretty good.

MaxI have a falcon follow-up. Do we lose Merlin? No, I'm here, buddy. Merlin's been uncharacteristically quiet. I'm trying to get us in one.

AlexAre you okay, Merlin? No.

MaxAre you micro-traveling while you're recording?

MerlinNo, fine. I had a lot of coffee.

MaxSo did you guys hear the planet money about Qatar?

AlexOr as they call it, Qatar? No.

MerlinI think I did. Remind me what that was about.

MaxRemember I was bitching and moaning a couple weeks ago about how I was posted on Facebook, and I was like, can someone explain what's happening in Qatar? And no one can explain it. Of course, of course. There's a very, very, very, very good explainer episode of Planet Money, and they have – basically they give you a bunch of the geopolitical history and the situation of Qatar and some information about their economy. And then they talk about the three causes of the sort of split between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

And they say it's the orb, the hack, and the falcon. The orb, the hack, and the falcon. The orb, the hack, and the falcon. That's how you can remember it. But there's a lot of big Falcon news in that one. It's a good mnemonic. So we'll put it in the show notes. But if you want to know what's happening in guitar and be an informed, responsible citizen, listen to this episode. It was fascinating. You'll learn about the Orb, the Hack, and the Falcon. The Orb, the Hack, and the Falcon.

AlexRemember when finally... Orb, the Hack, and the Falcon.

MerlinThe Orb, the Hack, and the Falcon.

AlexGuess how many Gimlet employees there are now?

MerlinOh, no. Has it gone up?

AlexI believe there are 75 people. Isn't your buddy there?

MaxDid your buddy get a job there?

AlexYes.

MaxFriend of the show, James T. Green. Are we allowed to say that?

AlexYeah. Yeah. His new show. Oh, boy. All right. I really enjoy... Oh, I guess we're... I think we should just address the... We don't necessarily need to start our discussion of the challenge, but I challenged Max and Merlin this week to just explore the idea of internet slime, however you would interpret that. Maybe it would be watch some Instagram videos or YouTube videos or, as Max did, buy a bunch of slime ingredients.

MaxI hold in my hands a receipt from Target. Chicago near North Target, 2656 North Elston Avenue.

MerlinYou shouldn't mention which Target you go to.

MaxLet's see. $449, one box of Borax. And it's a big boy. I didn't think it would be this big. It's 2,163 mLs. That's a big number of mLs. A lot of mLs. Oh, it's four pounds of Borax. There we go.

Nice. Health Beauty Cosmetics Barbasol Original, $1.44. 3X stationary office glue Elmer's clear 7.6 ounce.

MerlinI like it when you talk like this. I like when you talk like a staff sergeant in the army.

MaxAnd then there's a little dog and it says, we hope your trip was a blast. And I assure you it was not. I felt very uncomfortable walking around with all of these items, like some sort of fucking Walter White.

MerlinOr a Unabomber or like a Timothy McVeigh of slime.

MaxYeah. So Alex and I are very interested in slime. Alex, do you have that article that I sent out as homework?

AlexI think so.

MaxThe Slime Explainer article? Oh, right. Did you? No one read this?

AlexOh, no, I did. Here's the thing, though. I did not think it was a good one. It's called Goop Therapy, How I Learned to Love My Kids' Obsession with Slime. And this is written from the perspective of a parent who is like, oh, I get it. Kids like slime. but it doesn't go into the, like, why it's so pleasing and delightful.

MaxIt's obvious why it's pleasing and delightful because it feels good in your fingers.

AlexYeah.

MaxAll right. The first thing, so basically I've got Varian Slime based on reading this explainer article, and there's a huge fad sweeping the nation of teenage girls who are making slime and playing with it on Instagram and YouTube. Hot.

AlexMerlin, would you eat Elmer's glue?

MerlinYes.

AlexI just... You know what I would do? If it's non-toxic, why not?

MaxI would slowly, throughout the course of a school day, I would slowly paint it onto my hand and peel it off in one long piece.

MerlinIt's a glove. It's a snack. It's an adhesive. It's everything you want to be.

MaxOne of these days I'm going to get a hangnail, and you know how sometimes you pull it and it just keeps going and going and going like a black swan situation? I'm going to get it. One day I'm going to get it like an Elmer's glue, and I'm going to peel all my skin off in one big piece. I'm going to go. When it happens, I'm going to be so excited. I'm going to go careful, slowly, slowly, slowly. I'm going to be very excited. I'm going to malt.

MerlinLike you're opening an electronic product with a little arrow that says grab here. You just keep pulling.

MaxOne big piece. You have to have a smooth motion. You have to have calm, confident hands.

MerlinYou can't do it too fast or it breaks. It's like peeling an apple. We were camping over the weekend, and one of the moms broke her fingernail halfway down into the nail bed. I didn't even see it. Good God. She put a Band-Aid on it, and it's literally all I could think about all weekend was if I would ever have to see her nail broken halfway down to the nail bed.

MaxOkay. I am emptying a bottle of Elmer's glue into my mixing bowl. That is step number two.

AlexStep number one or 1.5 was Max putting his microphone into the bowl with the sticky product Well you want it to sound good Alright And then step 1.5.1 is Alex ordering more microphone covers on Amazon

MaxNo it's still good Alright I think I got that

MerlinSounds like he might be doing some megaphone singing

MaxAlright I think that Got it. Okay. Now, I think I do the shaving cream next. Let's see. Step number two, stir in half a cup to one cup of shaving foam, depending on how fluffy you want your slime to be. How fluffy do I want it to be?

AlexOh, go all out fluffy.

MaxOne cup of shaving foam. We went straight to the challenge really fast this week. This is problematic. I'm not going to have all this. Oh, my God.

MerlinJesus.

MaxOh, my God. I'm not going to have all this stuff sitting here for a fucking hour while we talk about Donald Trump. He's not going to rob me of all the joy in my life.

AlexIt's just so. See, it's such a pleasant...

MerlinIs he going to be mixing for just a second?

AlexNo, it's the foam or the shaving cream is coming out of the bowl. This is step three.

MaxAll right. Can I get my spoon? Shaving cream and the glue are... I mean, I didn't buy any food coloring, so it's just going to be a white foam.

AlexThat's called a marshmallow foam is the technical term. Yeah.

MaxVery cruel that I can't eat the marshmallow at home.

AlexBut it's non-toxic.

MaxIt does look very appetizing.

AlexHold on. I think...

MaxI love the smell of an original Barbasol, an original scent Barbasol.

MerlinOh, yeah. That's a good scent. And it's great. You know, that's all... You know, here's how they get you. For shaving cream, you mostly need water. Water is the most important part of shaving cream. Hot water. And then just put anything on your face. Are you a shower shaver? Oh, hell yeah. Oh, I got a whole system. I got a whole system.

MaxIt's a fucking game changer.

MerlinYou know what you do first? You put on some olive oil. You put olive oil on your face.

MaxWhoa. What?

MerlinYou don't need shaving oil. You don't need shaving. You put olive oil on your face a few minutes before.

MaxI'm not a big, I'm not a big, I don't think I'm into the oil.

MerlinYou take a kettle, you take a kettle, and you get boiling hot water. You pour that in. If you're like me, you got one of those cool rubber shaving cups for using. And then you get two Harry's blades. You get your old Harry's blade and your new Harry's blade.

MaxAnd what you do is you get. I need an old priest and a young priest. Speak to me or my razor again. I think we did that joke last week, or maybe it was in the episode that got edited out.

MerlinAnd then once you're in there, you put on shaving cream as soon as you get in. Also, I dip my shower shaving mirror. I put it in hot water to heat it up because the problem with fog, as Veronica will tell you, because of science, the problem with fog is that that thing is cooler and drier than the room that it's in. So you get it wet and hot.

MaxI have to say I don't have a big issue with fog. I just sort of splash some hot water on the mirror.

MerlinYeah, but then you go in, you lather up over the olive oil layer, and then you do all your stuff. You shower, you wash your hair, knowing that you're just going to throw all that shaving cream away in a minute. Now you start over. You wash it all the way off. You start over. Put new shaving cream everywhere. You shave twice? No, no. No, no. No, I cream twice. So you cream, you rinse, you cream again, and then you shave. Here's the three most important parts of shaving. Moisture, moisture, moisture. so you get a nice base layer of Barbasol

you get that on there you let it set you get your Neutrogena, you clean your hair you get your soap and you clean your dingus and then at this point you're going oh no, shaving cream because it's all coming off so now you do another one now you take your mirror out of the hot water can I ask what kind of shaving cream you're using? right now I've got not Barbasol but the other cheap one I've got the Harry's ones but they're fine, but honestly, cheap shaving cream is fine. And then at that point now, you start with your old Harry's blade

because, you know, you've got several handles at this point. With your old Harry's blade, you get off the big stuff and then you use your second new Harry's blade to go through and do the little stuff.

MaxFor those following along at home, I'm now adding the Borax mixture. One, oh, look at that. It's actually really coming together. I'm adding it one teaspoon at a time until it clumps up into one big piece. And I have to say, I put in one teaspoon and I get a pretty dramatic result. It's sort of rapidly...

AlexWhat's it called? The congealing agent?

MaxOh, Veronica said it makes a polymer, so maybe it's a polymerizing or something.

AlexSee, this is top ASMR content.

MerlinYeah. I think about it a lot because, as you probably know,

Alexborate and acetaloo polymer are better used

Merlinto chromatograph non-glycosylated hemoglobin, differentially from glycosylated hemoglobin, chiefly HbA1c, which is an indicator of long-term hyperglycemia and diabetes mellitus.

MaxYou sound like these guys on Twitter who as soon as we almost go to war, they suddenly know every fact about fucking Mongolia. And they're like, well, their chief export is sheep. So this is really going to be a...

MerlinWell, actually, Mongolia is a land of...

MaxIt's for the reason sheep stability.

MerlinWell, actually, Mongolia is a land of contrast.

MaxIt's very difficult to understand. Well, the staple grain is corn, or as the American Indians called it, maize.

MerlinYou should spend at least eight minutes. A lot of people only spend like three minutes really figuring it out. Anhydrous borax. So that's how you shave. And then, you know, you can rinse.

MaxHoly shit, this is very satisfying. It's very sticky.

AlexYou need to add more borax then.

MaxDo you think so?

AlexYeah. Nice.

MaxI've heard you can over-borax it.

AlexYou can, and it'll get too hard. But if it's still sticking to your hand and sticking to the bowl, you need to add more borax.

MaxBack in. Back in. This way. Oh, oh, oh. Okay.

AlexOkay, so shaving, Merlin. Yeah. You've got all of the – all right, I'm just going to skip. I need to know, are you a bar soap person?

MerlinFor when I wash my body?

AlexYeah. Yeah. Really?

MaxWho fucking uses bar soap? Don't you use a liquid? Doesn't everyone at some point reach an age where, oh my God. Okay. I'm sorry. There's too much happening at once on this episode.

MerlinI'm not anti-liquidic, but I like a bar soap. I get a good lather going.

MaxIt's really cool.

MerlinI used some at our hotel last night. It was nice. It was a shower douche, they call it, and that was nice.

MaxI used that. Doesn't everyone grow up and reach an age where they no longer want a bar of soap, and they accept that liquid soap is better and more convenient?

MerlinThey probably should. If you really think about it, it's pretty gross.

AlexI never used bar soap. In fact, part of my slime is this was a transition. I've recently accepted Lush as a product. Yes.

MerlinYou've transitioned, and now you do a bath bomb? Alex?

AlexNo, I do not have a bath. However, I have the whoosh shower jelly. And I quote from the salesperson at Lush. They're kind of like Apple genius people. They're like, oh, touch it. It feels like a boob. I don't know why you would think that appeals to me.

MerlinOh, it does look like a boob.

AlexLook at that. It's so squishy.

MaxIt's like a robot boob. My hands are covered in glue and borax. Oh, you know? Wow.

AlexI was like, well, it's not a very, maybe this is an aged boob. But it's very.

MerlinIt's like a robot boob. And does it maintain the integrity of the boob over time?

AlexWell, no. Here's the thing. So you take it out. You put it on a cutting board. And then you slice off the amount you want to use for your shower.

MerlinI should have known this was coming.

AlexBut, yeah, I don't understand the bar soap.

MerlinYou spend so much more of your life thinking about slicing things than I do. I need to up my game. Boy, look at all these products. Look at Lush.

Maxmy greatest fantasy in life is to go into a lush and eat everything in this store

Alexit looks like you should be able to do that you can eat stuff man i all right i just want to say

Maxi do not fucking you've got to fucking fondle this this slime this is fucking this is honest this is honest to god this is one of the most delightful things i've ever experienced in my life if you're listening to this program and you do not make this slime you're seriously fucking missing out. It was very easy and that is one of the most satisfying things I've ever squeezed in my hands. Let's make sure

Merlinwe put your recipe in Shona's.

AlexYeah, I'm trying to make a bubble. Oh, no.

MerlinListen to it. It's fresh.

AlexOh, I got some bubbles. I can hear the crackle. Apparently, if you leave the... Ah, there we go. If you leave your Borax-based slime overnight, you'll get more bubbles and you can do the twisty swirl. Again, this is a technical Instagram chart.

Speaker AI'm not going to toss the slime!

MaxIt looks like, you know in the Ghostbusters when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man explodes? There's goo all over everyone. It looks like the goo from the Marshmallow

MerlinMan. Oh, that's nice. It smells so pleasant too.

MaxIt does smell very pleasant.

AlexI have a mixture of the all-natural Borac slime and my Lush shower jelly and it's just really good in here. Merlin,

MaxI feel... This is so satisfying.

AlexI feel like you're so left out.

MaxNo, no. This is amazing. All right. Well, here's the deal. One bottle of Elmer's school glue dumping into the bowl. One cup of Barbasol. Yeah, be sure and just read it on the

Merlinpodcast. That's something people will definitely...

MaxListen, pull over. What are they doing that's so important? I'm fucking giving them the secret to happiness right here. One cup of Barbasol and then And one teaspoon of your borax mixture. Listen to me. Not the borax.

MerlinDon't be an idiot. The borax mixture.

MaxOne teaspoon of the borax mixture at a time. I had to put about three in. And here's what the borax mixture is. It's one cup of hot water and one teaspoon of borax. Boom.

MerlinNice.

MaxYou got your slime.

MerlinAnd it feels good. It smells good. It sounds like this is really working out for you.

MaxYes. I honestly, this is probably my favorite challenge on the podcast so far.

MerlinMe too.

Alexit's it's no i i'm into it oh the the amount of joy that's happening i wish you could experience it you know listeners i think you can you can start driving again

MaxAll right. So let me go back up for one second. So we're leaving on this Italy trip for like a couple weeks. We leave like tomorrow morning. I really should be doing stuff. Instead, I spent the morning fucking wandering around Target trying to figure out what Borax looked like.

AlexThat was my morning. Well, that's the thing. I went to like briefly. I was at a 7-Eleven. I'm like, I wonder because I still don't fully understand what Borax is based on this box.

MaxNo, it says laundry kitchen bathroom on it.

AlexYeah, of course. All the great rooms. And the only thing I could think was, they're like, what's Borax? I'm like, well, you know the Borax kid from Futurama? And the guy's like, no. And I was like, well, it's not on Netflix anymore because I don't know how to interact with people.

MaxOh, I self-checkout. I went hardcore self-checkout on this. I did not want to have to explain. You guys, that's such a sucker's game.

AlexWhat do you mean?

MaxPlace your Borax back on the dingus. You know what? I had no problems, and they didn't ask me any questions. Like, oh, you're making a slime? Yes, I'm making a slime.

MerlinYou sure like limes.

MaxIs it for your daughter?

MerlinNo, I don't have a daughter. I'm a grown man. I'm making slime for my podcast. Are you thinking of having one? Are you thinking of having a baby?

MaxWell, that's a lot of oranges you're buying. What are you going to do with all those oranges?

MerlinYou sure like oranges. Are you making a pie?

Alexthe worst whenever we go to conventions and like we we do one like big target run and the worst is like oh so what are you doing i see there's some poster boards some markers and i'm just like i always lie and say i'm a teacher because i have oh that's good yeah i don't want to explain well

Maxthere's this card game oh my god so let me ask you this i'm very anxious about this trip because not for any rational reason i'm just worried about going out of town merlin you've mentioned you have like a 700 item long to-do list about going I have all I have all of the anxieties we

Merlintalked about this in the secret private channel I have all of the anxieties about travel that mostly disappear as soon as I'm on the road but I'm racked with anxiety regardless of the size of the trip because I have so much rote bullshit I've got to get through in order to feel okay with leaving the house and I don't consider myself to have the three-letter disorder that we're not supposed to name I'm not like that I'm just like maybe I'm a little like yes yes I have

Alexbeen diagnosed with minor OCD amongst all my other things. How does it manifest itself? Oh, many things. I ask

Maxas Alex is figuring up all of home slime.

AlexYeah, there are certain things with touching certain foods. You know, it's basically your run-of-the-mill OCD as you will. I don't have so much of the counting things, but if I don't hug Mel before she leaves the house, I'm convinced that she is dead. like just 100% convinced that my wife has died.

But you know, that's why I did. So my wife isn't dead. But yeah, I'm... Keep hugging Mel, I'm a big fan. Yeah. But alright, so travel.

MaxLists. You gotta have these lists. Here's what I've done. Here's how my anxiety manifests before I travel. I think of things that I should probably buy for the trip that I could easily buy it any convenience store anywhere in the world, even if I was in the middle of nowhere. So the big one I got for this trip is a, oh, I got a third-party dingus to be able to put an SD card into my iPad.

MerlinSmart.

MaxFor my camera. Yes, yes, yes. And because I was concerned about, I want to be able to take pictures, and I'm not bringing a laptop. It's the first time in my entire life I've traveled since I got my first computer that was my personal computer. You're just bringing your big boy. Just bringing my 10.5-inch iPad running, the iOS 11 beta that Plex doesn't quite work on because I'm a fucking idiot.

AlexI'm so excited for you.

MaxWhy I upgraded to a beta, an early beta of iOS, before I went on this trip escapes me.

AlexBecause it feels like, or you have to admit, it feels like you're kind of using an iPad without training wheels with iOS 11,

Maxminus the times it doesn't work. Can we talk about this, or is this too boring and obscure for our show?

AlexYou know, no, I want to talk about the dang iPad.

MaxIt doesn't feel like I'm using it without training wheels. It feels a lot worse. And let me give you one. Maybe there's something I'm missing and there's a way to do this. In the old iPad, you could do slide over and have like another window come up. And it would show you all the applications that worked in slide over. So it's like, oh, I only need Slack like a couple times a week. But it's there if I need it. I just scroll, scroll, scroll and click on Slack. Now if it's not in your dock, you can't put it in slide over.

AlexIs that correct? That's definitely not correct. Okay.

MaxHow do I put Slack in slide over?

MerlinWell, you may have run into a bug just really quickly. You may have run into a little bug that I ran into, which is, so are you just not getting slide over at all sometimes?

MaxNo, it works. It works from the doc. So the way I do it is I swipe up.

MerlinBut I mean, if you do Mr. Popover Guy, where you go off the screen and you go from right to left, sometimes that doesn't work and you need to do a restart. From right to left? Well, if you just want to do the slidey ovary. Instead of full-on picky-uppy, if you just want to do slide over to have 1Password show up in the way you're describing, sometimes that doesn't work on iOS 11 and you need to restart to make it work.

MaxOh, I know what you're saying. That does work for me, but the problem is...

MerlinYou don't get your list. You don't get the list like you like.

MaxYeah, so the problem is I have like, you know, six or seven of my daily apps in the dock, but sometimes I want in slides. Sometimes I'm watching a movie,

Alexbut I need to check Slack, and it's not in the dock. So Max wants back the feature that everybody hated for two years. People didn't like that interface?

MerlinNo. Well, it was clunky, but I know, no, but you're describing something that's very, I think normal which is that like this thing's a piece of shit but it's a dependable piece of shit which is that you knew that if you did the slightly ovary you could go grab the dingus at the top and go digga digga digga digga and like you would eventually get to notes or one

Maxpassword or what have you right yeah that's a good point do I wish that that interface like

Merlinworked better yes totally shitty but you knew how it worked but I do miss yeah it is a little

Maxit is a little disorienting to me that like there's literally no way to put an app on the

Merlinside of the screen if it's not in the dock. Can you drag down from Spotlight returns? Does that work? I mean, I'm asking Alex because she would know. Well, there's all kinds of stuff. There's neat stuff in Spotlight returns. If you're on your phone, I only discovered this a couple months ago. If you're on your compliant recent phone, you do a Spotlight search, you can do 3D touch on icons. It still doesn't have reveal in Finder or whatever that would be, which I would really like, but you can do tons of that stuff. I'm wondering if one good use for this if you i don't know if you can do this now but one nice way would be do a spotlight

have it show up and then be able to drag that icon down to the right and have that become your right column that would be to me that would make a lot of sense i don't know i don't have

Alexmy i don't have mine here i don't think neither do i the the main thing that i worry about in uh in ios 11 is like being able to find the features is a lot harder and i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing like uh because it's a lot like the slidey ovary confused people but then it

Maxit made some people have you have you guys heard this thing that someone said i hope it's not merlin because i'll sound like an idiot but yeah someone said that uh gestures on ios should be like keyboard shortcuts on os 10 where it's like my parents for example i don't think they know a lot of keyboard shortcuts on their mac but for a power user like me they're there and they let me do a lot. Like keyboard shortcuts in like Gmail or in the system are like, you know, very, very, very powerful and time saving. That's sort of how like gestures should work on iOS. Like you should not ever need to use a gesture to do anything you need to do because it's very confusing and

upsetting for people who don't know the gestures. But if you know the gestures, they should make you really powerful in the system. And I do think iOS is like moving in that direction. Was that a

Merlinthing you said, Merlin? Did I just say back your thing to you? I don't think so, but I do agree. and there's the corollary of the part of the problem with 3D Touch is for people like me who use it a lot, it's fantastic. But because it's not supported on every device and because it's not clear what should happen when I do this, the adoption has been slow because you don't want to put anything into 3D Touch that's only available in 3D Touch, which greatly hinders how quickly you're going to be able to innovate with that. But yeah, no, I think the gesture

example is a good one. For me, dumb stuff like magic tricks like five-finger pinch. A lot of people don't know that one. Five-finger pinch is kind of magic if you've never seen it before. Four-finger slide to go to the previous app, pretty great. And the four-finger to go to the previous app, that has gotten way better on iOS 11, where its memory for that is really good. But I take your point. The other one is like, and not to go too deep in this because we're talking about slime, but like everybody says, control panel is exciting but needs so much help right now the the need to like fully like i'm

constantly to get to my overcast backwards and forwards i'm always always constantly doing the flip up slide over one and then like tap tap tap right and now you have to do full drag all the way up to get to the control panel and then if you want to really get there like you do a long press on the overcast and there are the now playing it doesn't take you into that app like it does in every other implementation you know i'm talking about i do so there's like long presses you can do on everything almost everything in control center that does something neat totally not obvious that if you long press on that it will do something i do hope they change the uh like like

Alexi don't have my night mode set to like regular times um and that's kind of a pain in the ass to get to now and man i i'm trying to focus but this is like the this to me is the best saturday night listening to Merlin Mann talk about iOS and then hearing slime noises in the background. Do you want me to make you a slime, Alex?

MerlinBecause I have materials here. I have so many thoughts on these things and nowhere to talk about them. No one cares what I think. I have so much to say

Alexabout all of this. I care. I care so much. I'm interested.

MerlinI'm also playing with slime. No, that's fine. I also have some things I need to read to you at some point.

MaxYou have some things to read to me?

MerlinOh, I surely do. Well, fucking read them. I don't have anything prepared for this episode.

AlexDig, dug, dig, dug, diggling.

Merlinsheriff's log Tiburon Peninsula we spent two nights in Tiburon which is a fancy little peninsula up in Marin

Maxare you compromising your OPSEC here

MerlinI don't tell anybody where I go until I've already been there

Maxis it a mistake that I did that let me just clarify to our listeners you'll never fucking find me in Italy you have no idea where I'm going to be you sound like Ben Kingsley in Iron Man 3 you'll never you'll never track me down listen and here's the other thing my house it's booby trapped with a bunch with a series of shotguns with a string tied around the trigger so if you try to come in yeah if you try to come in the

shotguns will go off and also I do have a

Merlinhousekeeper you got your Dale Gribble train set going around with bombs and fucking home alone I have I have four

MaxArlo brand Netgear security cameras fucking trained on those doors 24 7 I will catch you if you try to enter my home. I will destroy you. And my brother is house-sitting, so he will set off a series of Home Alone style traps, like bowling balls and logs coming down the stairs. And you will rue the day that you broke into my house. They fell for the paint can.

AlexYou should just have him release like four McCullin I don't know. I added an Arlo security camera looking

Maxat my cordless drill. Good luck stealing that drill, bitch.

MerlinThey all depend on the burglar having to remove his shoes.

Diggit, diga, diga, diga. Sheriff's log, Tiburon Peninsula. City Slicker. 7.43 p.m. June 22nd on Dingle and Dingle. A caller reported a person who lives in San Francisco contacted them saying they were looking to buy a house in the caller's neighborhood. The caller was unsettled that someone had gotten his name. Advice was given. Digga digga digga digga. Express yourself. 525 p.m. June 23rd. Dingle and Dingle caller reported a driver threatened him when he told her to stop honking her horn. Advice was given. Digga digga three. House music. Colon. 747 p.m.

June 24th. Dingle and Dingle. Caller reported a downstairs neighbor was playing loud music and he wanted her to quiet down. Deputies spoke with a resident who was practicing DJing and agreed to use headphones.

Deputies spoke with the caller and suggested the pair agree on a certain date and time the neighbor could practice DJing. Finally, finally, digga digga digga bogus bills. 3.32 p.m. June 22nd, a Redwood High—oh, excuse me. Dingle and Dingle frontage red caller who works at a fast food restaurant reported a person tried to pass off two fake $20 bills. Caller said the manager confronted the customer who then took the money and left. deputies were unable to locate the person. The caller said that they would call back if the person returned. That sounds good. Is that your Barbasol?

MaxThat's the shaving cream. I'm making another foam for Alex.

MerlinBut doesn't it make you feel good that somebody wants to DJ and you just put on some headphones and Hakuna Matata, you're making nice with your neighbor. Isn't that nice?

AlexI just really feel like I could make some friends at Dingle and Dingle. There's enough weirdos and I could sit at the corner. It all goes down to Dingle and Dingle.

MaxWhere's those paper towels? I've had a disaster.

MerlinDingle and Dingle is going to be like celebration. It's going to be like this planned community of incredibly busybody people. Everybody there is incredibly suspicious of everyone else by design.

MaxHow many sister wives will I be allowed to have at Dingle and Dingle?

MerlinAll of them. All of them of Max.

MaxBecause that's what I'm in.

MerlinThat's what I'm looking for. Yeah, it's going to be like Disney World meets Stasi, which I guess is Disney World.

AlexI was really excited for the 4th of July because I assumed that in crime and safety, it would just blow up in my neighborhood. No, no. Nextdoor has nothing.

Let me go check in.

MaxMy crazy Facebook group explicitly banned gunshot or firework posts.

MerlinOh, my God. There's so many.

MaxIt's always fireworks. You will be removed from this group if you post gunfire.

MerlinEverybody's been sharing this app you can get that helps you identify where illegal fireworks happen through triangulation. If everyone used this, we'd be able to find these people.

MaxAre people really against fireworks?

MerlinThe dogs. It upsets the dogs.

MaxWho fucking gives a shit?

AlexBecause the 4th of July is the day of the year.

MaxHow awful of a person you have to be to hate fireworks.

MerlinIt upsets the doggos.

AlexYeah, and more dogs get lost on the 4th of July.

MaxDon't start with that shit. We have no amnesty for fucking puppers and doggos. Oh, you don't like puppers and doggos?

MerlinLet me see some photos.

MaxThis is the decline of the American empire right here.

MerlinHe said making slime off Mike. I'm on Mike. You're barely on Mike. You sound like Rudy Valley.

MaxI cannot handle these fucking doggo people. He thinks he's people. Like the dog rates guy. What? What? Why? They're all good dogs, Marks.

AlexListen to something funny.

MaxI don't know. There's like actual comedy that you can consume.

AlexYou know what? I don't think people are there for the doggo and puffer commentary, but the actual pictures of the dog.

MaxIt's crazy. Have you been following the whole political scandal that he's been embroiled in?

AlexOh, that guy. No. He made some.

MerlinOh, that's a shame.

MaxThe dog rates guy, he made some sort of comment about – oh, no, he made a T-shirt about – oh, I know what it was. It was cafefe. He made a cafefe T-shirt, which is whatever. We all are – oh, my God. He did a naked cash grab. He did a naked cash grab. People got mad that he's like, oh, you're profiting off of the president.

MerlinBecause it was off-brand with We Rate Dogs.

MaxSure, sure, sure. And it was – yeah, sure. But anyway, they got mad. They felt like he was, you know, I don't know, that it was like too much of a shameless cash grab or whatever. So he was like, okay, I can save this. I'm going to donate all the money to Planned Parenthood, and then you can't be mad at me. And then all the right-wing people came out, and they were like, I thought this was a funny doggo space, and, you know, I'm not here for your –

MerlinDon't get the puffers. Bring the puffers.

MaxYeah, I thought this was a safe space to talk about doggos and puffers, and I don't want your abortion politics. on my feet. And then he said

Merlinhe was going to give the money to another

Maxcause and he apologized and then the left wing got even more mad at him because there's like you're not standing by a woman's right to choose. And I just the whole thing is fucking crazy to me.

AlexYeah. Sick with puppies.

MerlinDo you follow wholesome memes? Wholesome memes? Do you follow that one?

AlexWhat? What's wrong with wholesome memes? No one is funny on Twitter anymore.

MerlinI like wholesome memes.

MaxAll Twitter is not funny except for Donald Trump. Except for the official at real Donald Trump account, which is very funny.

MerlinFive syllables. Anhedonia. You get anhedonia, Max. You are incapable of love.

MaxNo, I love slime.

MerlinYou don't like fun.

MaxI love fun.

AlexRemember when Twitter was funny? Yes, I do. There was Hot Dogs Ladies and that Sandwich guy and the Scott guy.

MaxWhat was it? Favard? The good one?

MerlinFavard, yeah.

MaxFavard. bring back Favard and bring back Barack Obama so Twitter can be make Twitter funny again

Merlinbring back Obama you know what else is great is for a long time on Favard Dean would let you he would turn Markdown into proper formatting that was the best

Maxis that why you used to tweet in Markdown I always used to be like Merlin must be confused

MerlinI still tweet in Markdown because I'm a gentleman if it's a title it's in italics

Maxwhenever I see that I'm like maybe Merlin is confused people or more likely you set up some sort of out-of-control automation system workflow that can't be stopped.

MerlinActually, I just run it through pages, and then I have a Perl script that pulls that down, and that gets pushed up to the cloud server where the instance is able to spawn a Git.

MaxAlex.

AlexOh, no. Oh, God. Merlin, this is really good.

MaxI made another batch of slums.

MerlinI'm so glad you guys are enjoying it. It's nice that...

AlexThis is great radio.

MerlinIs that one too hard?

AlexNo, no. It's like actual dough. This is like a sourdough type slime. Merlin, have you ever made bread? You seem like a bread guy.

MerlinI think I've probably made bread. I feel like I've probably made bread. My wife has a mixer, and she makes mixed things. And I think bread's one of those things. Sure, my daughter makes bread at camp all the time, almost every day.

AlexThis sounds like the best camp in the world.

MerlinShe goes to a different camp every week right now. What? and uh no they're all they're all good camps uh bart but the the um but no it's good there's one there's one she goes to where you make bread and then you take it home at the end of the day you put cheese you can put uh garlic you can do whatever you want with it the only camp i ever

Alexwent to was at the local zoo but it was actually just a farm and uh camps man it was the the and we were so lucky because we got to clean up all the all the animal shit and did you go to did you

MaxWas that a Banner Day camp?

AlexNo. What's that?

MaxThat was the camp that everyone went to on the North Shore.

AlexNo, no. I was a Western suburb kid. We didn't really have camps because our parents were afraid that we'd be kidnapped and that Anthrax would be in our Smarties. It was a whole thing.

MerlinIt can be good. You know what's important? I'm going to say this. I'm just going to stipulate this. If you're going to camp, especially if it's one you haven't been to a lot or you're not that into it, it helps a lot to have a pal. I think this is true in life. It's nice to have a buddy. I'm not saying that. Oh, when I go to like a conference, I have to go with a buddy. You need a buddy. You can have so much fun if you've got a buddy. And if you want to part ways and split up for a little while, you can. But it's really nice to have somebody that you're going there with.

MaxI love when I go to a conference, I really like meeting new people, like all the cool people at the conference. However, I'll never do that alone. But if I have a buddy, then we can invite people. Hey, you want to come get lunch with me and my buddy? And if they suck, you can make fun of them together afterwards. So it's risk-free. I've done that.

MerlinI've done that.

MaxIt's risk-free. It's the way to go. When you go to like WW... What did Casey call it? He called it... Dub Dub. Dub Dub? Dub Dub. That's got to stop. That's fucking doggo and popper of the computer world. When Casey went to a Dub Dub... Dub Dub Dub. Dub Dub Dub Dub Dub Dub. It sounds like a beluga whale having a stroke. Dub Dub Dub Dub Dub Dub. Alex, when you went to Dub Dub alone, that freaked me out.

Dub Dub.

Alexhere's here's the thing though what did you do there you didn't have a buddy because if i if i had a good announcement this year dub dub is a free conference and i'm a sock this is what happens if you go to camp or a conference with somebody you already know you do not expand your social circle and especially if you were

Maxlike oh so false that's so false that's the only way you expand your social circle is you go like hey, come and join the circle.

MerlinYou become attractive. This is all like that guy with the rings hypnotizing you with his hat. He'll tell you. You're much more attractive if you have somebody with you. If you've got to bring a doggo or a pupper or a dub dub.

MaxAlmost every friend that I've ever made at a conference, it was because I sat down with someone I already knew and started playing like werewolf and invited people to join us. And then by the end of the night, you have a safe sort of controlled way to Katamari people into your friendship ball.

AlexOkay, I should revise this statement. It's not that I went like completely alone without knowing people, but I did not have like the main point of contact.

MerlinThe main celebrity and people want to meet you. Oh, this is my new brand. My new brand is I'm Alex and I'm confused that people like me. People fucking love you and they want to meet you. I saw a breakout star of the podcast. Last year I made people meet you and they were thrilled. It was me, but then people found out I was a Jew.

She's not a secret Jew, is she? have you checked her papers, Max? Be honest.

AlexI'm only like a tiny bit Jew. When the Kaminskis came to America, One drop, just one drop.

MaxYou inherited all of the mental illness,

Alexbut none of the... Yeah, it was great. But you don't get invited to the secret meetings

Maxand you're not given any gold.

AlexI didn't get to go to Israel. I had no birthright.

MerlinThey call it the Jewish bargain.

MaxYou don't have to be Jewish to go on birthright. You just have to identify. But it helps. No, seriously. You could have easily gone on Broadway.

AlexOne of my favorite plots in Orange is the New Black. See, I told you guys this episode was going to be weird. I have had zero sleep. Those fireworks just did not stop. Oh, you're like a doggo.

MerlinYou're like a little pupper. It doesn't like the noise. Do you guys think we're going to see a lot of doggos and puppers at Dub Dub this year? The main reason I go to Dub Dub is for the doggos and the puppers. 13 out of 10.

Maxcan i can i complain about another thing on twitter that's that's very upsetting me to me that's yes up there with the doggo and the pupper okay there's a joke that people do where um they say how they thought someone else typed something so you could be like so you could so you go on and you're like, you make a tweet

and you're like, I had a great croissant for breakfast.

MerlinI read that as fart butt.

MaxYeah. Shut up. And they're like, I read that as you ate ass for breakfast. Isn't that funny? No, it's not funny.

MerlinI read that as cum blister.

MaxStop fucking telling me that. Nobody cares how you read it. That's only, it's literally the definition of like a joke that's only funny to you.

MerlinFirst time I read that, I read it as jizz blister. Shut up. Don't, it's not, don't say that. I get that every day. Someone's like, oh, I thought you said,

MaxI thought you said astronaut.

AlexI'm pretty sure that this is me at least once a week.

MaxI mean, listen, everybody has that thought. Like, I have to do, like, double takes and look at something again. But don't fucking articulate it. It's not comedy.

AlexMake Twitter funny again. Bring back Obama. Make Twitter funny again. All right, listen.

MaxRestore the dictator to the health.

AlexI have another thing I need to address on the podcast.

MerlinThis is a light week. I don't have a lot of notes here.

MaxYou've got to go to Italy, Max, or somewhere else. Honestly, I've been buying a lot of USB dongles and sanitizing wipes and things to take on my trip. Listen, we're dealing with a situation in the office bathrooms right now that I think I need to publicly address. I already love this. I don't even know about this.

AlexPlease continue.

MaxI think you're going to know about it when I mention what's happening. All right. Okay. At the office, we provide for our coworkers and employees very generously, although we are under no obligation to do so. we very generously provide two-ply toilet paper now i most of my life have not had access to two-ply toilet paper um my parents had it growing up but like when i was in college it was one ply it was

Merlinfucking it was fucking you probably had scott you had the generic scott big fat hard rolls of single-ply toilet paper that tore your ass like sandpaper yeah it was it was basically like when

Maxyou get uh served a pastry and there's like a sheet of thin little paper underneath it in your basket it's that it's a rite of passage really it was horrible i couldn't stand it and i even went out and priced out how much the college was saving by doing one ply versus two ply and it was like because i was on student government and i was felt that it was like a student issue and it was honestly we were saving like 300 a year and i was like you could save everyone's assholes for just 300 a year just fucking do it i was like i will raise the money i'll do a

a fucking bake sale and sell like brand muffins to raise money for the two-ply. So anyway, I never wanted to go through that again in my life. And we got a two-ply toilet paper for the office. And we have a situation that transpires in the bathrooms that completely fucking befuddles me. Where I go into the bathroom.

MerlinDo you get accidental peelers? You get peelers? We've got peelers. We have big time peelers. Fuck that noise.

MaxFuck that hard. Somehow they do. They somehow separate the two plies from each other.

MerlinDo you know how that ruins it for everyone?

MaxAnd one ply wraps back around the toilet paper, and then they pull it so you're getting both plies at once, but it's like two sides of the sandwich butter out. And every time you unroll it, they're further unpeeling, and you can hear it tearing. It goes like when you undo it. Who does this? It's like fucking, every time I go in, you have to unpeel, you have to gingerly separate them and pull the one ply back around and get it back into alignment so that the two plies are affixed to each other.

But do people not understand that the soft side faces out?

AlexMaybe people have not had the privilege of ever having two ply pots on paper.

MaxWho thinks I'm going to gingerly take, it's like, I'm going to gingerly take my fingers. I'm going to take this piece of paper and I'm going to slowly, slowly, one motion, steady hands. I'm going to slowly peel the two plies apart. Is that someone's fetish? Do you think it's like somebody who picks the shrimp out of the leftover chow mein?

MerlinYou think, I prefer the top layer. Do you think there's somebody who thinks, oh, I want the fancy part. I'm going to leave this for all the suckers? I think it's an accident. I think it happens. It starts with the start. It starts with the start because if you don't get the start right, it gets fucked up. So you get the start right. Make sure you should assign someone to this and have them go in and make sure the roll starts right. But then you start unpeeling, unpeeling, unpeeling, and now you've got two rolls of toilet paper doing nothing. So we do have

MaxOkay, so we do have A sort of office Hagrid Situation We have some sort of gig economy Office cleaning company that comes in every so often To restock the toilet paper And the bathrooms and stuff And I think They're setting the toilet paper up correctly Because I've explicitly told them To go over Let's just address this on the podcast

MerlinIt's the only way, unless you're Canadian And a monster, it's got to come over the top

MaxThis whole bit of like, oh, big controversy. Do you put the toilet paper like over or under? Like nobody puts it under. It's a mechanically unsound way of doing it. You think it's fake news. You get no leverage. Like have you ever tried to rip a – listen. Do you get people understand how to operate a toilet paper dispenser? You pull off the amount you need and then one solid motion you go rip and it comes off. It's fucking perforated into little squares. If it's under and you go rip, guess what? It all fucking unspools like you're a cat.

MerlinIt's like having a cat. Everybody in your office is a cat at that point.

MaxWhy would anyone go under? It's not – this shouldn't be one of those things of like do you like nuts in your cookie or not? No, that's like 50-50. It's like this is – there's just one fucking defensible, sensible position on this, which is it should always go over so you have torque when you go to rip.

AlexThese people have no torque. No, this is one of those situations where everybody is going to tweet at me and not –

Maxtweet at Alex Cox and explain your reasons explain your reasons for possibly doing anything other than over because I honestly I'm curious what sort of fucking mental gymnastics people have to do to justify to themselves some sort of perverted worldview

Alexwhere they need to go under I have an exact reason for this if you have a doggo or a pupper or a kitay or whatever and they figure out how to oh they get their small beans they get their small beans in there yep they get their beans up in there so for three months of my life don't people train their cats

Maxnot to do these things if I see my cat my cat got into the habit of like knocking our air plant over and spilling the like air plant worms all over and I yelled at her I was like stop it and she got very upset and sulked away and guess what the air plant has never been knocked over again it's like these people They're not children. They're animals.

AlexWell, that's, again.

MaxYou scare them a little bit and they'll never do it again. Strict father. My goodness. But again, not a person. It's a fucking animal.

MerlinWow.

MaxOperant conditioning literally works on animals. Wow. It's not a child. It's not a child. It's not a child. I wouldn't do this to a child, but it's an animal.

Oh, my God.

AlexOkay.

MaxAre people going to be mad at me about this? Is this going to get edited out?

AlexNo, it's not going to get edited out. I have seen the way Max takes care of his cat. He's not cruel at all.

MaxI yell at her if she does something bad.

AlexWait, so you wouldn't yell at your kid?

MaxNo, no. I would teach my kid. I don't know. I would do something different if I had a child.

MerlinMy wife and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago where she sat me down and she said we need to talk. And I was like, ugh. She's like, listen, we need to talk about the cat and her whiskers because I think she might have whisker fatigue. And I said, you're high. What does that mean? What is whisker fatigue? Well, Alex, are you aware of whisker fatigue? No.

AlexWhat is this?

MerlinIf your cat has whiskers, which it should, unless you're a monster, the thing is when your cat has to bend over and stick its filthy face into the bowl to eat or drink,

Alexit's pulling. See, look at me right here. I'm pulling back.

MerlinI'm pulling back on the whiskers. And those whiskers, that's how they experience the world, that and their toe beans. And the whisker fatigue is pushing, pushing, pushing, Like trying to make a kitty cat pompadour out of their whiskers to get whisker fatigue. So you buy your cat raised dishes so that they can get less whisker fatigue.

MaxOkay. I didn't know that whisker fatigue was a thing, but my cat is a fucking slob, and she slobbers her chicken crumbs all over the goddamn kitchen. And so I bought her a product on Amazon called the Neater Feeder for Messy Eaters. Right. And she would not eat out of it, so I gave it to Alex.

Alexuh dug a dug a follow up on the meter as we know i have two cats and it it works great like the the one is the trash cat who he also gets kibble everywhere because he gets too excited um but now he has figured out i'm sorry alex i know you don't want to mention names is this the private cat who's an idiot this is no francis is the public cat who is an idiot ness is the perfect beautiful angel who could could never do wrong uh but she has basically trained him to after they

are done eating when he has like slobbered all all over it's it's caught by this like mechanism because um like the bowls are in this little guarded like plate type tray thing uh but he can now flip it up to get the kibble underneath so it's still a better solution oh they found out that there's food under there yeah yeah so but but then they sometimes they do put the bowls back so it's still like a cleaner solution but i'm like god you little bastard uh i'm gonna put this so

that's what's a hit yeah yeah yeah so thank you thank you max it is it is good francis cox i'm

Maxglad someone i'm glad someone is using the neater feeder for messy eaters there was this amazing

Alexarticle about how cats are basically it was it was a turns out basically about how cats are kind of feral still and uh we we never really domesticated them and the theory is that in like thousands of years we could have just like if we bred them like dogs we could have like lion type sized cats in our house and i don't know why anybody would want that because if you've ever been bitten or scratched by a cat it's not like a dog like they have fangs and their claws get incredibly sharp if they're not

Merlina scratcher oh but i still and the nicest the nicest cat can easily get very disengaged from any domesticity like the the thing i we've talked about this before but the whole thing of like if a cat gets extremely comfortable if a cat's comfortable it will let you pet it and scratch it if it gets super comfortable some cats will let you like rub their stomach but like at some point that cat will realize oh my god i'm a fucking cat and just go wow and just like flip out and like latch on to you because that's their instinct that's that's the kitty inside the kitty

AlexI've never had you know in my three or four years of having cats I've been very lucky in that neither of them do that like I when Francis was a kitten yes Francis loves tummy rubs you're so lucky I am blessed with a precious tummy rubbing loving angel but he and I trained him because he didn't like bite and latch on like you see in oh that was a good slime pop

MerlinI heard a crackle

AlexAnyway, but now I've trained him to just roll over off of his belly when he's done and he's too overstimulated. Because they are smart. They can be like children. Also, if your cat scratches you, just yell. Just go, stop it.

MaxAnd they'll stop you.

AlexI actually, I hiss at them. I hiss at him. That's what works. Just yell.

MaxCats are like, they're so dumb. If you just yell and really, honestly, they'll know that something is right. Just go, stop it. That's what I yell at my cat.

MerlinThe thing about a cat is they're really good at detecting certain kinds of stimuli and completely idiotic about every other kind. As I've told you, though, I just like to terrorize my cat a little bit. I want to keep her off balance. So every time I walk by her, I say, what are you doing?

AlexOh, my God. What is wrong with you people?

MerlinNo, she knows who's boss.

AlexWhat are you doing? Oh, my God. I'm going to eat some pussy.

MerlinI wouldn't be down here chewing this thing like it's the paper boy's cock. It's a Stella Doro breakfast treat. What are you doing? Cut all that out.

AlexDig, dug, dig, dug, dig, dug. Did either of you see the whole NPR tweeting the Declaration of Independence people?

MerlinYeah, yeah. Who are the idiots? I think they're all idiots.

MaxNo, NPR tweeted the Declaration of Independence. Oh, look at this.

MerlinLook how dumb everybody is. How dumb everyone is. Oh, boy.

MaxNPR tweeted the Declaration of Independence and then like fucking idiots, all of these like alt-right people were like,

Merlinwow, the liberal media is like calling for... There's so much I can't say. There's so much I can't say. But you know, here's a formula. I'm going to be a little bit classist for a minute. How about you stop deriving your understanding of how the entire fucking nation works by looking at people with six followers who aren't very smart. Maybe that's a thing you could do. Maybe like when you see like a one million follower person out there doing that, that's concerning. But it's not. It's just somebody who's, like, fucking taking a shit and looking at their phone and going, that sounds really revolutionary. It's, like, it's so, like, this is, ugh.

It's not helping anybody. It's, like, oh, yeah, like, everybody, like, every one of us can just, like, can, like, just cite the fucking Declaration of Independence from memory. All right.

MaxI'm going to read something now. Duggar, Duggar, follow-up. This is from the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times from 2001. Fifty years ago today, John Patrick Hunter was the newest reporter on the staff of the Capital Times, and thus it befell him to be working on the Fourth of July. Parker, a legend in Madison journalism, first as a reporter and then later as a city editor and managing editor, had no inkling of what the outcome of his study would be. But he wanted to measure how deeply the fear generated by the anti-communist crusade of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his minions had permeated the American soul.

he found that 111 Madison residents were too scared to sign the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights on the 4th of July.

MerlinHe presented it as a petition, basically, right? That is correct.

MaxThat is correct. So he typed up a preamble to the Declaration, included six of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights, added the 15th Amendment, put it in the form of a petition, mimeographed it, and then hit the streets. Of the 112 people he talked to that day at Madison's 4th of July celebration, Only one, a Madison insurance agent, agreed to sign the petition. Ironically, quote, Ironically, the guy who signed it, his ancestors came over on the Mayflower, Hunter recalled this week. He was Wentworth A. Miller, who worked at the mutual service insurance company. Quote, sure, I'll sign the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, he told Hunter.

We were never closer to losing the things that they stand for than we are today. None of the others would sign. Twenty of the 111 accused Hunter of being a communist. Quote, I can see you are using an old commie trick putting God's name on a radical petition, one elderly man said. So I do think my thoughts on this are fairly straightforward, which are Americans are fucking idiots. They don't know anything about their history. All of their arguments of the founding fathers would have so-and-so and our freedoms and this and that, they're all asinine. They don't have any fucking clue what they're talking about, and they shouldn't be taken seriously at all.

however I do I guess I do somewhat agree with Merlin of like I don't think that's like the core issue at the heart of what's broken with America because Americans have never known anything they've always been stupid when we did all the great society reforms after World War II the average age of education of Americans they had like a fourth grade education so like it wasn't a it wasn't a more romantic time where everyone was like you know a professor of American history you know fucking walking around the market square and holding forth on the bill of rights like

nobody nobody knew what they were talking about then either it just it's sort of a moral and values argument to me people just they cared about their neighbors and they wanted to see the country

Alexsucceed as a whole okay no i i'm not saying that like oh man look at how dumb people are now but i can't laugh at the few dumb men on twitter but you guys can yell at your cats i oh no no i'm

Maxall in favor of making fun of people.

MerlinNo, no, no. I think laughing at dumb guys is awesome. I'm just talking about, I'm being Max, I'm playing the character of Max this week and saying like, who do you, well, who do you imagine that is helping and how? In that case. So basically, this is, you know, who fucking cares? You guys want to Yahoo? What is the quote from Hitler that was used in the movie Billy Jack by the little girl in the meeting? Did you guys ever see the movie Billy Jack?

MaxWhat is happening right now?

MerlinDid you guys ever see that Billy Jack? Let me hit you with this. What is the quote from Hitler that was used in the movie? This is a Yahoo user. Oh, the page went away. What is the quote from Hitler that was used in the movie Billy Jack by the little girl in the meeting? Do you remember this?

MaxIt's a bit. What's happened?

MerlinShe goes, she goes, it's in front of all the all the all the reaction. She goes, the streets in our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might. And our republic is in danger. Danger from without. We need law and order. Without law and order, our nation cannot survive. And she says, you know who said that? Adolf Hitler. and everybody goes, ooh, Adolf Hitler. In your face, like you're quoting Adolf Hitler. You ready for a fucking triple turns out? Hitler never said that. Hitler never said that. It's from a communist magazine.

It's from a communist magazine attributed to Hitler spread through the movie fucking Billy Jack and that's the kind of thing that happens and you go like, oh, see, I'm really smart. I can quote Billy Jack. Well, you quote Billy Jack, you're actually quoting something from a communist magazine that was never Hitler at all. Was this a Yahoo? You guys want a Yahoo?

Moving on. It's just sickening. It's sickening. That's a good movie. It's a terrible movie that's very, very good. But this is what we do. And so we cite things. It's like you're a little kid going, oh, yeah, you think you're smart? Can you spell it into this establishmentarianism? And you're like, I don't know, I guess. And then you spell it. Well, yeah, you just memorize that.

MaxHave you seen the vine of the young kid? He's maybe like a fourth grader, and he's yelling at some bullies or something. He goes, just so you know, you're disrespecting a future U.S. Marine.

MerlinThat's what we sound like.

MaxThat's what we sound like. Do you know this one, Alex? It's so good. Let me find it. I'll play it on the microphone.

AlexI miss Vine. Oh, we all miss Vine. Merlin doesn't miss Vine. I do.

MerlinI watched Gumbo's Vine compilation. It was really good.

AlexOh.

MerlinAnd I watched, you know that Will Sasso? He's funny. I didn't get it until it was gone. I didn't get it at all until it was gone.

MaxAll right. I have to set the scene. So he's like a little kid, and he's wearing glasses. He's definitely, he's very young, maybe fifth or sixth grade. and you can just tell he's yelling at some like kids that are much bigger than him

Speaker AI think you're just respecting a future US Army soldier

Merlinthank you for your service they did a um because we were in a hotel room we watched a lot of shit TV including a Shark Tank marathon and it didn't occur to me until we watched two or three of these in how many of them there was somebody from the military and of course Robert what does Robert say every single time

Alexsomebody from the military

Merlinthank you for your service thank you for and i turned to my wife i was like what is happening and they're almost all terrible they're all they're always terrible pitches i invented a backpack with velcro it's okay all right that's that'll be easy to get into you just go straight into that backpack market and i realized duh i don't think they called it this but it was probably a marathon of uh all the military people oh yeah it was called thank you for your service weekend

AlexI feel like this is probably the it's like stolen valor weekend too like the most oh my god you're probably right

Merlinthey should go through parades and check people's papers like the long form release paper

Maxstop the Jesse White tumblers sir who is your commanding tumbler

Merlinthat's a joke

Maxthat's a joke for three people who live in the state of Illinois and go to parades

MerlinI don't even fucking care stop there it's perfect it's perfect you guys got anything else on slime

Show notes

Transcript

32. I Cream Twice

Show notes

Transcript

0:00

0:21

0:25

0:32

0:33

0:35

0:41

0:45

0:55

0:59

1:07

1:10

1:26

1:29

1:39

1:40

2:09

2:23

2:36

2:37

2:48

3:06

3:08

3:23

3:53

3:58

4:16

4:23

4:24

4:30

4:32

4:42

4:43

4:45

4:48

4:49

4:51

5:13

5:33

6:03

6:19

6:22

6:26

6:28

6:30

6:35

6:57

7:03

7:14

7:16

7:21

7:25

7:28

7:31

7:33

8:04

8:25

8:26

8:28

8:31

8:32

8:34

8:35

8:36

8:39

9:10

9:18

9:22

9:36

9:47

9:51

10:01

10:04

10:13

10:14

10:19

10:39