68. Check Her Dick

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, create a bullet journal.

Hello, Merlin Man. Sorry I'm late. Hello. Hello.

MerlinIt's Alex's fault.

AlexI know.

MerlinWhat's what fault? What, what, what?

AlexI don't know. What's going on? How are you?

MerlinDon't talk about the show on the show. I'm great. I'm watching Adam Serwer on Twitter just posted a video of his cat meowing, and it's really cute.

AlexWho is Adam Serwer?

MerlinHe has the, you read on political Twitter, he's the one with the cat called Butters.

AlexAh, Serwer. This is Butters.

MerlinButters making a very sweet meowing noise. This cat thing has kind of ruined me. I'm not loving it.

AlexHaving a cat?

MerlinYeah, it's maybe weird. I talk to the cat a lot. You get that toxoplasmosis way up in your brain. And the whole way that it works is you don't know if it's working. But look at that. That's the noise Butters makes when Butters wants treats. It goes, meow. We watched the panda video again.

They're so bad. They're such idiots. They're so bad. They want to get in that basket so much, and then they fall in their behind. She's like, come on. You got to give me that basket because I have to rake these leaves. And they're like, no. And they get the little claws on there.

Speaker AShe can't get the basket.

MerlinIt gets inside and rolls around. I want to cosplay as her. And my daughter had a lot of questions about that.

MaxRelated to this, I have a listener email to present to the program. This is from listener Rachel. Rachel says, hello there. I've been a loyal listener since Thanksgiving when my sister introduced me to your podcast. I guess we're the two female listeners you referred to in the most recent episode. We both think you folks are hysterical. I'm writing today because I'd like to hear you talk about your pets if you've got any I'm in the process of adopting a kitten I haven't owned a cat in some years and things sure have changed There are all kinds of new litter technologies It occurred to me whilst I was doing this research that there are any number of pet related topics that I'd be delighted to hear discussed on your program

Uh, it is true that we have not talked about our pets in quite some time on this show Although historically it is a pretty substantial topic of conversation on Dubai Friday So we each have a cat. Alex has two cats.

AlexI do.

MerlinShe has a regular cat and a dumb one.

MaxSo it's an average of 1.3 cats per host. Numbers check out.

MerlinCan we stipulate? We don't currently, we're not companioning any dogs.

MaxNo, I don't think I have a lifestyle that's compatible with owning a dog. And plus, I already know that people are going to be mad. Here's another episode where people are going to get mad. I really question whether it is sort of humane to have a dog in a city, especially a big dog. And I know there goes half our listeners. But anyway, that's my feelings on that. I can't ask the question? Am I allowed to ask?

Speaker AYou're just asking the question.

MerlinI will never publicly agree with you, but I so agree with you. These people, they have like little Sebastian-sized dogs in a 500-square-foot apartment. They're like, oh, it gets to go walkies twice a day. You're like, oh, that thing's going to kill you.

MaxI mean, I actually feel – I do feel differently about really small dogs. Like I have some friends who have little like chihuahuas or like those little tiny dogs. And I think that's a different case because to them a Chicago apartment is an appropriate sort of amount of territory to run around. And then they go out a couple times a day. And that's a fine life. But those huge bear dogs –

MerlinIt depends a lot on the dog and the environment. It depends, it depends, it depends. If that dog got rescued from some kind of terrible situation and it gets to go walkies all the time, I mean, that's real different from somebody who takes their dog for a walk once or twice a day and then mostly has it locked in a room. So, I mean, I wouldn't want to criticize anybody for their decisions, but some people are terrible.

AlexCounterpoint, there are way, way, way more dog parks in urban areas than in the suburbs.

MaxBut the whole notion of a dog park as like the place that you can take your dog is crazy.

AlexWell, the whole notion of having a lawn and a backyard is crazy. It's terrible.

MaxLike, what about if you live on like a farm and the dog, you know, or like nobody in the

Alexsuburbs, you can only have a dog if you are in a farm.

MaxSuburbs are hostile to cities are different. Cities are built for people. And I do think cities are a great way for people to live, you know, within certain parameters. But but suburbs are not good for anyone to live. Like the idea that a dog can't be happy in a suburb is for the same reason a person can't be happy in a suburb, which is it's all fucking pavements and you can't walk anywhere and there's no public land and there's no parks, no green space. Suburbs are depressing and awful. Can I get you?

AlexPlease send it to, what's a, do we have a fake email address?

MaxNot a public fake email address. There's like, the war on pedestrianism in this country, especially in the suburbs is unbelievable.

MerlinWell, it's like, it's like HomePod owners. Like people will do the most ridiculous backbends to explain their decision making about this. And then like you're the idiot for pointing out how incredibly inefficient it is.

MaxIf you were an alien, right? If you brought an alien to Earth and you show them a suburb, you show them, you know, like let's say like Highland Park, the suburb that I'm from, and you pointed to a car and a person and you were like, which one of these is this built for? Oh, yeah. No one would choose the person. I don't know. It depends.

MerlinWhat if the aliens are racist? They're like, I see the logic. They work briefly near blacks, but then go home, wear no blacks. Car is smart, vroom vroom. We'll save you for dessert. Hello. I'm a semi-intelligent alien. You sound like that 2XL that Alex has.

Speaker BActually, Hitler had made some good points. But the toy's so hard to find the parking spot.

Speaker AIs it ethical for me to ride in a Cress?

MaxCats. Cats. So I have a cat named Captain Janeway, and she's a rescue. She was abandoned, I think. I don't really know what her tragic backstory is, but she was found at a racetrack, and I got her from a treehouse. Was she an addict? Well, she was not an addict. Was she a cat gambler? Insofar as I know, she was not an addict. However, at the time that I got her, she was a teen mom, so she had just given birth to kittens. Oh, man.

And, you know, she was maybe, they said two or three when I got her, but who knows. But I've had her now for almost, probably almost five years, four or five years. And, oh, no. Do you love her? I love her so much. I love her so much. And I got her when I lived alone. And, you know, Veronica's extremely allergic to the cat. But Veronica also loves her a lot. And we make it work.

MerlinYou have an interesting history of cats, Alex, because you and your partner arrived with your own cats in tow. Is that right? Or did you adopt them to be bespoke per-occupant cats?

AlexPer-occupant. Per-occupant. Oh! Letting it go. Great story, Alex.

Speaker AThat was a good one.

MaxThat's like Merlin's expert pun that he keeps interrupting me to make. Net cast.

AlexOh, God. No, no. One cat came with the Maddie. That's an S. are perfect she's not even normal she's perfect in every way you would never know that we had a cat there she makes no weird noises or smells or anything she's perfect then um our little disaster was found underneath a dumpster and that's francis yes francis was brought to maddie's place of work and just the the woman was like i i don't know what to do and uh they were like all right um

okay I'll take this and so then uh I actually I remember because we were supposed to have a game night at Max's house and this was the one time that I felt not guilty about ditching because I just sent a picture of a little kitten and we were very concerned that he was going to have cat aids and we wouldn't keep him uh and he slept on my tummy the first night and I'm like researching how to manage cat aids uh but luckily he was fine although he has very bad allergies separation

Merlinanxiety and seasonal depression hmm that's what who maddie or the cat that's the opposite of a

Alexcoincidence yeah you you can tell who who the cat's been raised my phone screen now

Maxwhat do you how do you treat a seasonal depression in a cat uh how do you diagnose that exactly um

Alexthe the that tell well i was at first skeptical because i thought the is it like if he watches a

Maxwhole season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in one night. Doesn't feel like going to work.

AlexHe only sits on the iPad. He doesn't engage with the fake fish. I thought they were going to try to sell us like Kitty Prozac, but no, she just said get one of those warming lights that also emit UV rays. Yeah, one of those blue lights. Yeah, and so now he seems fine.

MerlinYou got a cat lamp?

AlexI think it's a human lamp, but the problem is I can't sit by it because Because it makes my poor people manic and it freaks me out. Oh, no, really? Oh, yeah. Not everybody, but it freaks me out to be by it. So I'm like, oh, nope, nope, nope. Have you ever tried a happy lamp? Yep. Yep, I don't want it in the office and one at home.

MaxWait, wait. Really? I'm sorry. You drink six Diet Cokes a day.

AlexI drink two Diet Cokes a day.

MaxBut yet you're concerned that if you go under the blue light, it makes you energetic?

AlexNo, no, no, no, no.

MaxDon't pull that thread, Max.

MerlinI have so many questions for Alex that I just never ask. Everything you send me, Alex, everything you send me, I have six questions about why you're doing what you're doing. The blue lights, they're like crystals.

MaxThey don't do anything. They only work for people who have imaginary ailments. And then an imaginary solution, if your ailment is imagined, your illness, then an imaginary solution works. It's like, oh, the topaz crystal really healed my Morgellons.

AlexMerlin. Hey, hi. How's it going? Hi, hi. I'd like to hear about your cat.

MerlinI had a Philips blue light at home and a blue light at work. And the problem is you have to have them plugged in. If you do them off a charge, they last for like maybe one use. but I do this with a nice Philips Hue Labs setting where on your, Max don't listen to this part. If you've got a tap switch, you can program the buttons to do all kinds of cool different stuff that you wouldn't get with just a regular switch. So, you know, one of them is that when you hit this button, one is that it will give you based on your location and the time of day,

it gives you the appropriate light for that time of day. So in the morning when I hit my number two button, pardon my saying, I get a nice like brightish blue, Not as crazy as the concentrate or energy light, but I get a bluer light in the morning. I make a point of opening all the curtains and all the shades open. I try to get lots of exposure to light first thing in the morning.

MaxNow, if you have one of them Philips Hughes smart bulbs and you make it blue, is that the same thing as the light, the depression light?

MerlinIt's not nearly as intense, but that combination of – part of it is psychological. Part of it is physiological. I think there's some waning evidence for how much night mode actually helps you get to sleep. I think that might be slightly turns out. But there is definitely proof for the opposite, which is that light.

MaxWhat if Pluto's in alignment with Earth? Because that's a blue planet. Are you talking about a Topaz or a Neptune? What are you talking about? Neptune. That's what I was thinking of. What if Neptune's in alignment?

AlexThis isn't a vaccine. I mean, it doesn't – maybe – so I have the same thing as Merlin where my Hue lights turn – they're very, very blue in the morning and it's just obnoxious. But it does put my brain into, okay, it's wake-up time. It's breakfast time. And then they slowly go to sleep at night.

MaxI have all of my Phillips Hue lights turn green because it attracts money into the home. Oh, you're talking about the law of attraction. Yeah.

MerlinWell, you need a water feature. Hi. I'm Susan attraction.

MaxI mean, what are you telling me? Are you telling me you live like a cuck? You don't have a water feature in your living room to bring prosperity into the home?

MerlinWell, it didn't fit in with my feng shui. I had to move the corner of my house because it was detracting from my energy flow.

MaxOne of my favorite feng shui things was – do you remember the Penn & Teller show where they did Mythbusters of New Age stuff? But Penn & Teller was bullshit.

Speaker AYeah.

MaxSo they did a feng shui episode that was so fucking funny. So they hired three feng shui – so basically they took a person's living room, right? And they hired three feng shui experts. And they didn't tell them that they were hiring any other feng shui experts. And they had one guy come in and he was wearing a cloak and he paced around the room and he was like, this is all wrong. He's like, your life force is disrupted. Like you could never thrive in this environment. So he's like, you need to buy like a $700 water feature and all these special plants and crystals. And he arranged the room in a certain way.

And he was like, okay, thank you. Now go about your day. Then they bring in the second person. The second person comes in and goes, this is a disaster. Your life force is totally out of whack.

Speaker AYou have too many water features. You need a mirror.

MaxYou have to buy my $900 rock. And all three of them arranged it completely differently. They all said with complete confidence and a straight face, like, oh, if the couch is on the west wall, you could never attract love or prosperity.

MerlinWell, that's why I feel like it's like Mechanical Turk, right? You got one person who does the work and the other person who checks the work. I think if you bring in three feng shui EAs and maybe like a phrenologist. and the phrenologist is measuring the heads of the people who are suggesting the water feature and they're all checking each other right and then they have to fight with sticks um no no i i'm trying to say i it's i know this is not particularly subtle but uh yes well we had

Maxa we have a question our very nice listener half of our female listeners have written us

Merlinyeah our very nice i'm gonna talk about my cat i just want to close the bug okay i will talk so much about my cat i just want to close the bug no you know what nobody cares i have a cat i have a cat that was visited upon us. My family forced me to get a cat. I did not want to get a cat. We

Maxhave a cat. She's currently very broad. What was the battle lines of that? I said, we're not getting

Merlina pet. I might have said, we're not getting a fucking pet. Because I know how this works. And I know I am, I don't know, I'm like Sisyphus pushing Prometheus up a hill and they're trying to peck out my liver. I know what's going to happen. I know what the rest of my life looks like as soon as the cat comes into the house, which is I'll take care of the cat. I know that's what it's going to be.

MaxSo I can't say that. A cat, you're so wrong though, because a cat is like one of the best, the cat is probably one of the highest like joy to maintenance factor items that you can purchase.

Speaker AYeah.

MaxI mean, it would be like, for me, it would be like my Instapot would be number one. And then the cat and marijuana would be up there too.

MerlinOh, that's true.

AlexTheoretically.

MaxAllegedly.

MerlinExcept that it is, it is very costly and very time consuming. and she keeps me up much of the night with meowing.

AlexWell, you have a special case, Kat.

MaxHave you tried any remediation about the night meowing?

MerlinNo, Max, we haven't tried anything. Why would we try anything?

MaxWell, I'm just curious what you've tried. I might have some meow hacks.

MerlinOkay. All right. We had friends of friends who live out in the sticks and they had three cats and two dogs and the cats were essentially kept in generously sized pens in the garage.

Speaker Awith a heat lamp.

MerlinAnd they did not have a good life. And there was our cat and bad cat and the other cat. And bad cat would beat the shit out of our cat all the time. So she's very, very traumatized. She's a very, very sad cat. So anyway, long story short, we assented to adopt this cat two years ago last month. I can't believe it's been two years. Yeah, her name is Savannah or Savvy.

AlexOh, I didn't know the full day.

MerlinWe also call her, my name's for her. I call her Appa Star Wars Fredo. loaf bun, poof, princess floof, snowy freak show, Wilfred, fuzz light year, and Bootsy. Most commonly Star Wars. I call her Star Wars. So Star Wars is a giant, it looks giant. Giant looks like Appa from Avatar, The Last Airbender, kind of. Like very, very broad, but the cat weighs six pounds, like soaking wet. And so when you shave the cat, as you've seen in the photos, she's a hideous freak show. She has secretions from her face. She has flaps like vaginal, vulva-like flaps in her face that exude a dark brown liquid that looks deep, deep,

deep into your eyes. And her butthole is dark matter. She has a dark matter butthole that can never be fully cleaned and you have to trim it because she gets black dingleberries. Dark matter dingleberries. It's a lot of fun. It's a big payoff in terms of the... And she keeps this up all night because she goes like this. Her current record is 14.

Speaker AMeow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.

MaxOur cat does that and I've remediated.

Speaker AMeow, meow, meow.

MaxAnd we go, Savvy!

MerlinAnd sometimes she comes in and sneezes on it, and she sneezes black dark matter on our face. I can fix this. You got it all.

MaxYou got cat hacks for all this? I can hack your cat.

AlexBefore our cat hacks, Max, Merlin listed his names for the cat. Do you have alternative names for your cat?

MaxOh, there's a ton. I mean, mostly we call her Mushy because she eats. So it started with that we feed her. She doesn't have any teeth because of her days on the streets. and we feed her a mush. It's a wellness brand chicken mush. So we call that...

MerlinIs it Nutrish? Is it Nutrish? That little short lady with the horse voice on TV, doesn't she have a brand of pet food? Rachel Ray. Doesn't Rachel Ray have a...

MaxNo, we do wellness brand chicken mush. Is there any GMOs in that? And it's delivered by some sort of internet startup. And where it's like some sort of... It's called like chewy or pet cans or I don't know what it's called. Pet cans. And so we basically – you peel off the lid of one of these like chicken mushes and then you like – you shake it up and down. You go – and then it comes out and it plops down and it's kind of – honestly, I've been eating gefilte fish almost my entire life.

And until I owned a cat, I did not truly appreciate how much gefilte fish is cat food. But it's basically a gefilte fish, and it comes packed in that gelatinous gefilte fish sauce. And then I'll sort of chunk that up because, like I said, no teeth. And she'll just kind of go to town on that. So we call that the loaf or the mush. And then Veronica started saying, did you mush the cat? And that was cute. So then we just started calling her the mushy or the mush or loaf or what else do we call it? Captain. I love these things.

MerlinI love these private things we never tell anybody that give my life meaning.

Speaker AI love it so much.

Merlinit's so it's so stupid to everybody but like i love i love that most of us have a way of explaining how this one dumb thing we said one time becomes something that we say all the time now i think

Maxit's the best yeah the other funny thing we do with the cat is like so at one point i i forgot the original context of this but at one point veronica had created a sticky note and it was all caps it just said bad question mark i think it was probably on some food right she put it on like a tupperware and it just said like bad question mark and somehow that top that sticky You know, it worked its way into an area where the cat could access and the cat got the sticky note on her. And then we just have a picture of her. She's just looking up at us and she has a sticky note on her. Just as bad. So now whenever the cat, whenever she gets into some sort of nuisance or trouble or she starts, you know, like, like, you know, knocking over a plant or something.

She'll just sort of stop and look at us and we'll go bad.

AlexAll right. unsolicited list of my cat names uh for ness nessly coco puff nessly water super nintendo nessa rose gray floof yas queen for francis uh frankenstein which is his uh legal name according to the vet uh francis frankie franco pretty princess bastard garbage boy and sourdough

Maxthose are high quality names somewhere veronica has a list of cat names that that we've come up with that she named all her Neko Atsume cats and I will get those I'll read them on the podcast next week. We also, our name our legal name for the cat that we told the vet that she's called is Lentil because I didn't want, I was worried that if I brought her to the vet that, I was worried if I brought her to the vet and said her name was Captain Janeway that they would think I didn't love her. Because it's a novelty name. Oh

Alexyeah, because Frankenstein is totally normal and we don't get laughed at every single time. I don't think our cat

Merlinhas a legal name and now I'm kind of worried Are those Cat Protective Services going to come get her or something?

AlexI mean, what do they say when you go to the vet? Like when they call and they're like, we're reminding you.

MerlinI'll tell you what they do. They do this thing that I find incredibly patronizing, which is they say they call the cat by her first name. She doesn't have a first name. She's a goddamn cat. They call the cat by her first name and our last name. And I find it very condescending.

Speaker BOh, that's so funny. I think an appointment for Savannah, ma'am. I'm like, they need to do that.

MerlinI can't believe I'm about to give you $1,200.

Alexdollars what have you what have you it's like if you get the wrong baby from the hospital they suddenly give you a pit bull and you're like oh no this is savannah johnson sorry

Maxyeah you're gonna get cat cocked

Speaker Buh-huh uh-huh and then say oh we just love savannah savannah so sweet we just love him

Merlinhe's the best i'm like did you even check for the cat's dick it's a girl cat not that i care i don't want to be gender normative but if you love the fucking cat so much you should check her

Maxdick.

MerlinFucking $1,200. Jesus Christ.

MaxWhose job is it to check the cat's dick? It's not my job, it's your job. Yeah, check the forms.

MerlinBitch.

MaxMerlin, I want to solve your night meowing. Now, our cat sometimes gets, her favorite toy is this thing that we call the weasel, and it's kind of like a furry cylinder with a feather tail coming off of it, and it crinkles a little bit when you push on it. And she gets the weasel. She'll retrieve it from her. We put it away in a box of toys, but sometimes she gets into the box of toys, retrieves the weasel, battles it downstairs, and then carries it up in her mouth. No teeth. She's gumming it. And she takes it all the way up the stairs

and drops it in our bedroom, brings the weasel to us at 3.30 in the morning, and then just starts meowing, like, help me. Or, like, I don't know.

MerlinThat's the number one. there's several things you can do. It's like taking care of a baby. There's like seven things you can do to a baby. It's like, is it hungry? Is it bored? Is it in pain? Is it tired? You can just keep doing that and repeating that until the child goes to sleep. It's the same with the cat. Most cats, our cat sleeps all fucking day and then nighttime is when she's awake. She's old. I think she's a little blind and definitely a little deaf and probably pretty bored. We've tried both. We've tried on the one hand engaging her, wearing her out at night with the laser pointer she doesn't like anything we get her cat toy and she lays on it for a minute that's it she

likes she likes chasing the laser pointer a little bit but we try to wear her out we try to have social time with her we try to stimulate her do like a fancy dance to get her engaged and so that was our number one was like is she bored and lonely at night is that your theory max no i more

Maxhave like things that you can physically do to make her stop meowing or stop them yelling from

Merlinbothering you but go on like like a box like put her like seal her in a box something like that

MaxYeah, heat lamp in the garage. No, no. No, I'm saying like, so like the number one thing we'll do if our cat keeps doing that. I mean, so the first thing we do is like I figured out what happens is she gets a toy at night and she goes crazy and starts meowing and brings it up to us and starts meowing. So obvious remediation, take the toys away. She just doesn't have any toys available at night and then she goes to sleep. And we give her toys during the day and then we clean them up.

Merlinand then um because there's also the element of conditioning to this that anybody will tell you that like if your cat goes meow meow meow six to fourteen times don't acknowledge it and then wait don't acknowledge it for two months and maybe that'll make a difference but like she you know how it is alex with the fitbit like she wakes me up just enough that i may not be aware of it and then sometimes i am aware of it and it's starting to be a real drag if if i need to to deal with it

Maxlike if she's meowing continuously and i have to and i can't sleep and i need to get up and deal with it what i'll do is take away any toys that she might have and then depending on how bad it is i'll either close the bedroom door with her on the outside of it and like like push her away so she knows to leave or i'll bring her into the bedroom and close the door so she's stuck in there with us and then she has nothing to do but just go to sleep you're locked in here with me Yeah.

Speaker AI really want Max to have a kid and just...

MerlinWe can apply all of his rational approaches to a child.

AlexDo you have any hacks for anus rubbing issues?

MerlinNo, I don't have that. Oh, no? You trying to get more of it?

AlexNo, no. He just loves putting his butt in my face every day.

MerlinYou know what you should do? Get a bidet. Get a little kitty cat bidet.

MaxWhen the cat jumps on me, sometimes, you know, I'm playing video games or watching TV or whatever I'm doing. And the cat jumps on me and wants attention. And sometimes she shows that by, like, putting her anus in my face. And I just ignore – like, I basically will wait until she turns around to face me. And then I'll give her attention. And I think now she is kind of learning just to, like – she will, like, legitimately, like – she's learned to get her attention. She needs to jump up and face us and do something cute. So she'll sort of flop over on her belly and sort of put her paws up. Like, she has a whole arsenal of cute things.

She can do. And it works every time because we give her positive. We give her pets and belly rubs and stuff.

MerlinWho's training who? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. My cat, our cat, she likes different people at different times. She likes different places. But one steady. This is actually kind of sweet. You remember when we first got the cat. There's a lot of stuff that got cut out of the shows that was about my early experience with the cat where she got on the bed one day and we all lost it because we were so excited that she moved. We would monitor her on the canary. It's like, oh, look at that. She's over by the heating vent. but she does a thing like after my daughter's gone to bed, after my wife's gone to bed I'm turning off the light to go have some daddy TV time and that's when as soon as

that light comes off she comes in she jumps up next to me, ignores me for a minute and then rubs her head really hard on my iPad and knocks it out of my hand. Yeah

AlexI always find that endearing when they throw my thousand dollar toys. She loves the corner of an iPad. Yeah, no, it's top notch. Oh, the corner of the iPad is great.

MaxShe'll rub her mouth on that. Oh, that must be great too

Alexbecause no teeth and there's the chamfered edge.

MaxShrubbing her mouth on the chamfered edge. Have you tried any of the things I've said, Marlon, about getting your cat to stop meowing? Yeah.

MerlinNone of them work? She just keeps meowing? No, we tried nothing and it all worked. I'm sitting here with my cat in my hand. Yes! We've tried everything and we will try more. We have books. We bought books about this.

Speaker BShe doesn't...

MerlinShe doesn't like anything. She doesn't like food. She likes people when it suits her. But like she's just, she just, she stands. We change her food and water twice a day in the raised bowls that we bought her.

Speaker ASo she won't get whisker fatigue.

MerlinThis is my life now. Have another $1,200. Need another bowl?

Speaker ALet me change that for you.

MerlinI'll tell you what, let's try some different food. Do you like the people salmon or do you like the canned salmon? I do remember.

Speaker ABow, bow, bow.

MerlinFor the love of God, please, someone take my life. Oh God, they give so much to us. What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? Just tell me what you want. I will buy you. I will buy my way out of this problem. If you want one of those big furry fucking carpet condos, I'll fucking buy that for you. I don't care. You want an AR-15? I'll buy it for you. I'll get you whatever you want. I need to have a life again. $1,200? Not a problem anymore. I'm just used to that. oh she's got to have three more teeth removed and one fell out while you're removing the other

Maxones that's cool here's twelve hundred dollars i remember about a year ago on i think it was on roderick on the line you were saying that you got the cat and that you were establishing with your family a sort of a lifetime cap like an hmo and you're like once we and you're like a five figure ceiling five figures once we get to five figures i will kill the cat myself that's funny i think what you said at the time was once you exceed like

Alex$1,500. Yeah, it was

Maxlike $3,000. Yeah, it was $3,000. Is that in a given month? You're like, if I ever spend... You're like, $3,000 is the lifetime budget for this cat, and if I exceed that, then I'm putting her down. She's on her own.

MerlinWhen we get a cat, it'll be easy. Sure, honey. It'll be easy. Well, you didn't... You got a dud. Yeah, you know what? But we already have plans in the works for what to do when this one croaks. I follow up. There's follow up and front matter. I don't see you in the doc right now, Max, but there is follow up and front.

MaxGo for it. You can go for it.

MerlinI have I have Melania Trump news. Oh, shit, dog. I got a real quick answer. I say, hey, thank you to everybody who gave us the fucking time. You can go to give us your fucking time dot com and you can go into a Google spreadsheet where you tell us your favorite bits from the Dubai Friday pantheon. You give us a timestamp for it and you can put your Twitter handle in there. And there's been numerous times in the last week that I have wanted to go in. And I'm looking for the heart to click because it made me so happy that somebody picked like Max's rant about not wanting a hot glass of milk. It just made me so happy that somebody remembered that and put it in. So thanks to everybody who gave us their fucking time.

We really appreciate it.

MaxYeah, the deal with this is, in case people didn't do it or forgot, is we feel compelled to make one of these like, you know, sort of like intro episodes or promo episodes.

Merlin68 episodes is a lot of episodes, Max.

MaxIt's a lot to ask of somebody. Exactly. And iTunes supports this now where you can have your – I don't know what you call it. They call it the trailer or whatever. So basically what we're trying to do is figure out – we're trying to edit together a little clip show where Max gets hit in the head with a coconut and everyone comes to the bedside and they're like, do you remember this time?

So we're going to edit together one of them boring clip show episodes from the 90s. and we don't, you know, I don't know when anything happened on this show. So, you know, here's the deal is you guys have time and we want your time. So you can go to giveusyourfuckingtime.com and you can, if you remember any funny moments or bits from the show, you can go on there and post them for us.

MerlinHere's the thing. Even if you just want to be as they say in the scene, if you want to be a leech, you can also go into this and click on these links to listen to a greatest hits of this show. That is a lot of fun. Max's hot take on the taste of wine. why live photo captures Max's balls with his cat pictures. Big tennis part one, big tennis part two, two of hearts. Oh, my God. Ball jars in the butt. I forgot about that. Can I ask you a few questions for my class? Yes. So anyway, you go, and it's all in there. And thank you to everybody who's been contributing to that.

MaxAll right. Related to that, also, in addition to your time, we also want your money. Yay! You have the money, and we want the money. And you can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com and give us the money. What you get for that is you get access to the premium feed. You get your own private RSS feed for the Dubai Friday After Show. That's right. It's a second episode every week. We record two episodes. You're only hearing half of this podcast.

AlexAlso, I think we're running out of posters. So if you have become – if you're on the Cox's Cux Steer –

MaxI really want to make some more merchandise. And the idea that I was – I want to update the poster. We need a 2.0. Absolutely, we need a 2.0 poster.

AlexBut hold on, hold on. If you – a couple people are nervous. If you are currently a patron, you are going to get a poster. Don't worry.

MaxWe just send them out every few months. We'll change the Patreon when we run out of posters. We're not going to advertise posters if there's no more posters. But I'm thinking the next piece of merch that we send out to our $10 subscribers. So we have $5 subscribers. You get your private feed. And we have the $10 subscribers. And these are the – well, I don't want to call them the only good people that listen to the show.

Speaker ABut, I mean, you know. Yeah.

MaxWell, when eventually, listen, eventually when we send the secret signal on the podcast and we say, OK, listen, guys, we need you to kill for us now.

MerlinWhen Louise Mench sends us a signal to let you all know when the arrests are about to begin, the $10 subscribers will find out first.

MaxWell, the marshal of the Supreme Court has the seal of diamonds. The marshal of the Supreme Court is coming to your house, bitch. And yeah, you just whisper the safe word. You're like, you know, pomegranate. And then all of a sudden, everyone springs into action. I know that the $10 subscribers. I know that the $10 subscribers I know that they're going to kill for us and that makes me it warms my heart thank you for being there for us but anyway my idea was that we should you know we'd sort of send them new stuff you know every so often and we're overdue we got to send some new stuff to people so I would love sound off in the comments folks

remember to like share and subscribe but here's my two our two thoughts are number one what I would love to do some sort of military looking David Clark enamel pin for some sort of Dubai Friday achievement. And maybe it's a peanut butter pan.

MerlinOh, that's so good.

MaxPeanut butter. And then we could not send it. That would be so perfect. And then my other idea was, what if we made Funko Pops of all three of us? Oh, my God. You hate Funko Pops. Like, illegal Funko Pops. Like, knockoff Funko Pops, though.

MerlinOh, you know what's awesome? Did you see the Funko Pop of Iron Giant from the hit movie Ready Player One? Oh, my God. Oh, one where he's marching into battle to kill a bunch of people. The pop of Iron Giant is from the hit movie.

MaxI saw that trailer and I saw Iron Giant running into a battle to fight people.

Speaker AAnd I was like, this definitely captures the theme of the movie.

MaxNot only is it wrong, but it's retroactively. This actually is doing what people said Ghostbusters did, which is retroactively ruining the thing that came before it.

MerlinIt's definitely crossed my line. 2018 is the year that I'm trying to be more circumspect about falling for nostalgia for its own purposes.

MaxSo this is like your Ready Player One is like your retrospect video.

Speaker ADon't scroll up.

MaxHe's just sitting there.

Speaker AHe's just sitting there. Stop, Miles Davis. What do you think, Miles Davis? Stop, you're making your words. You're making your words.

MerlinYou're making your words. So, our farts smell good.

MaxFollow up. This is a tweet from Emily Flitter, who I'm actually now I'm going to go look up who she is. She's a New York Times banking reporter with a sweet tooth and for fraud stories. Go Rangers. Emily says on Twitter, I once sought Hope Hicks. This was after Hope Hicks resigned. She said, I once sought Hope Hicks response for a Reuters story on Melania Trump. Reporter in Slovenia found her dad sold used car parts and mom worked in kids clothing factory

But hope hicks version was melania trump's mom was a fashion designer and her dad managed a car dealership Then hope hicks got mad when we printed the facts from the ground I I just thought that was really interesting and I you know, I thought it was a a it was a story It was a very emblematic story about hope hicks and just like okay Like the fact just saying the facts, you know piss her off and be it then i got really interested melania trump's parents right because like there is this story of that they were like and it is because melania got one of those like um

Merlinvisas avoid the term but it's what her what her wonderful husband is called chain migration right

Maxit's like but exactly but that that's why it's relevant is that melania trump's totally relevant she got one of those like rock star visas where it's the things where it's like the einstein right where it's like so you know so i see the argument she wants to tell a story about her parent her her parents where she's like oh my mom was an important fashion designer my dad managed a car dealership like those are like you know productive people and they're they're they're makers and we got to bring them into america but like her dad sold used car parts her mom worked in a clothing

Merlinfactory i mean at least in my narrative of this in my head canon there's two parts about that that are just so amazing one is that first of all just the thing through this entire administration starting with the top which is that you just can you can't just say things that are true that are provably true you have to make up bullshit even if there's absolutely if it's Even if it's totally disprovable and even if there's no reason to lie. If you just lie all the time, it becomes the thing that you do. That's so weird. Like why would you need to do that? The other part is if you wanted to take the classic American narratives for, I don't know, at least 100 years, the classic narrative would be, oh, I grew up in this Eastern European country where my parents were working people.

And I came to the United States and I was able to make a life for myself. Instead you go, no, no, no, no. My parents were very important people and I came here and made a life for myself. it's like you have to lie but you have to lie in a way that makes you look a little bit fancy in a way that would like appeal to people in the suburbs yeah it's it's mostly you know the other

Maxthing i found about this story and i'll read you my second piece in a second is like almost anything in the trump administration is illegal suspicious you know corrupt in some way and it's kind of exhausting because you can almost pick anything something as mundane as like the first lady's like parents right and you just start scratching and you scratch scratch scratch and like all of a sudden you're like what the fuck like we're being defrauded it's like that's that's the exhaustion

Merlinis it's not only like illegal and sketchy it's always ironically illegal and sketchy it's not

Maxeven they don't even care it doesn't matter yeah god it's you're right it's almost like it's almost

Merlinlike what could we do about this really this innocuous thing and turn into something very

Maxweird and suspicious anyway well this was a story i found when i started googling this is from washington post and it's uh um uh it says uh several readers asked about the immigration status of Melania Trump's parents, Victor and Amalia Knavs. As for her parents, Victor Knavs is a former member of the Yugoslav Communist Party who worked as the chauffeur for the mayor of his hometown, Sevnica, and eventually became a successful car salesman. Again, questionable, according to the New York Times. He was born in 1944, making him two years older

than the president. That's a little bit weird, right? And then Amalia Knavs was a pattern maker at a textile factory. they are now said to be retired. According to various news reports, the Knavzes have been living in the United States for at least a year and probably much longer, possibly since the mid-2000s. Since Melania Trump moved into the White House, some reports have suggested that they live there.

Speaker AOh.

MaxWhat? Other reports have said that they split their time between the D.C. area, Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower, and Bedminster, New Jersey.

MerlinWhy wouldn't they be back in Trump Tower?

MaxIf they were anywhere, because that's where she wants to be. She doesn't want to be in the White House. I don't know. They apparently helped take care of Barron Trump, the president's 11-year-old child. The White House initially refused to comment on their immigration status. Quote, I don't comment on her parents as they live private lives and are not part of the administration, said Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for the first lady.

Isn't that fucking crazy that not only did her parents, like, chain migrate into the U.S., like, in defiance of, like, all of Donald Trump's—

MerlinThe most basic, the most central tenant of his candidates.

MaxRight, of his whole thing. but but that they fucking live at the white house that's crazy they live at the white house and the white house won't answer any questions about them it's just a personal matter it's weird it sounds

Merlinthe building where he lives and works imagine imagine if the illegal immigrants moved into anybody's office in america oh no they're in the different part of the office they're in a lot it's not really an

Alexoffice it's more of a studio it's the residence fine it's fine this is a thing though that's going to disappear in 15 minutes like it's already disappeared these are old articles i want to know what's up with bannon's bathtub why thank you i just want closure it's like

Maxit's like you're just you're just asking the question it's like in season i think it was in season five of lost when when they're jumping through time and then these people appear in a canoe and start shooting at them and it was set up and it was like right in the beginning of the season it's set up as a big mystery of like who is that in that canoe who's shooting at them and then the show ended and you never found out who was in the goddamn canoe.

MerlinYeah, what about the foot and the magnet and the acid bath? Max, have you done any independent? Wait, what foot? What are you talking about? The magnets, the magnets on the island, the magnets. That was explained. So did you do any primary scholarship on this, Max? What do we know at this point about Steve Bannon and his acid bath?

MaxOh, nothing.

MerlinWe know that he lost a deposit. It was how we heard about it, right? It was like secondhand or thirdhand. was that he lost the deposit on a rental because there was acid damage in his hot tub.

MaxRight. I think it was – we know this from like documents from a legal issue with his landlord of his like Florida place, his Florida house that he was renting. And it just said that the hot tub was covered in acid. And I just – I don't know what to make of that. But some online, some sort of the speculation is centered around that maybe that had to do with manufacturing drugs, which given everything that it could be – Like if you run through in your head, why do you have a hot tub full of acid? Okay.

MerlinObviously, I have cable TV. I've seen lots of stuff. That sounds totally like a drug. You're either making drugs or getting rid of a body. Right. And I don't think Steve Bannon murdered people. I mean, I'm not going to go full like Vince Foster on this. I mean, it's a rental.

We've got to – I'll save it for the after show, but I really want to talk about drugs in this administration. I think a lot of people are way off base on thinking everything is alcohol and cocaine. I'm here to make a case that all of these people are fucking whacked out on Hitler pills. There is a huge amount of Adderall abuse happening in this administration. Listen to the snorts. Listen to the dude that was on TV all day the other day. Is he doing Adderall? He's snorting.

MaxDoes the Adderall make you snort? It totally makes you snort.

Merlin25 minutes after you take an Adderall, you feel like you can do anything. And you start sniffing a lot. People think it's cocaine.

Speaker AIt's not cocaine. It's fucking, it's Adderall.

MerlinWhy do you start sniffing? I don't know. I meant I'm I'm just saying as somebody who did Adderall for several years I'm googling this

Maxyou know what it does make I can for some reason I have a pretty highly attenuated like bullshit filter for conspiracies even about Trump I don't want to hear it if people have some sort of crazy thing and the cocaine stuff is pretty funny and but it it is not that it doesn't sit right with me it's off the mark I just can't cocaine behave differently I just a different kind of behavior It's a more of a mania. I just can't. I can't picture it. It just doesn't. It doesn't click for me. However, I can picture backstage.

Trump is getting ready for the debate. You know, Bannon, someone walks in and they're like, here, take these. And they hand him some pills and they're like, you know, you know, get your get your get your focus up for this debate. You know, like a college student studying. Boy, can I see that? And he takes his dentures out and downs him with a whole glass of water.

AlexOK, hold on. I don't know. I think it's a water thing. they put it in Merlin can you do that can you put Ritalin and what I mean they're giving him the pills and he would not take it based on his brother he would not take any pills like there's

Merlinno I don't I don't so I mean like here's so like if you've ever seen me make this joke on Twitter like so sometimes when he's doing a speech he starts out and he seems really fine now the conventional wisdom is that he's trying to start back in the day when he would still try to behave normally like in a public speech he would be really fine for like 15 minutes and then he would seem to get like a little bit of like maybe crowd reaction you think like something happens and he's now he's getting a little more into it and then he starts going way off script and then he gets suddenly weirdly full of energy and he starts sniffing a lot and i'm just here to

tell you i'm telling you i could get it down to like practically the minute like 25 minutes after you take an adderall it depends on your body and your metabolism but whatever any kind of speed you take speed and within half an hour like shit's gonna start lighting up for you i think before he walks on stage, they hand him a pill. He takes it. He comes out and he seems like he's about to fall asleep for 10 minutes. And then how is he suddenly so full of energy? Is it really just the crowd? I mean, it just feels like there's so much that's explainable. Again, everybody wants to make a cocaine joke. Whether it's Scaramucci, whether

it's Nunberg, whether it's Trump, whether it's Bannon. How are all of these guys under imminent indictment so energetic and positive all of the time? It's because they're gacked out on fucking speed.

MaxI, Merlin, I gotta say, I'm doing some extensive Googling on sniffing an Adderall, and I had to take out, I had to do, you know, minus snort, because the number one thing is, like, snorting Adderall, sniffing Adderall. Yeah. I just do not— You don't think it lines up? No. I don't see any reported people talking about sniffing after Adderall.

MerlinYeah, I don't know. I could be wrong. I just think it's—partly it is the physical presentation, but it's also, like we talked about last week, with, like, how you want to squirt your own shit all the time, like, because you're freaking out. you're jared kushner like i just like how how i think that i think there is a dr nick in their midst a dr nick of course we know is a joke on the simpsons but dr nick was an actual guy in memphis who gave elvis all of his drugs i think there is somebody that we're going to learn about at some point that is providing it's a little mini me with the briefcase and he comes in and

Maxhe opens up and he's got his powders and vials and syringes right now the thing is if it's if

Merlinit's the president he's going to have his own probably his bespoke guy because he's very worried about contagion and purity you know purity of essence peace on earth he's going to have his own bespoke uh mini me but i don't know man i just feel like you know you could look back at like the various cultures of the smoke-filled room and everybody's smoking a cigar like there's certain kinds of like hard drinking journalist culture there is there tends to be an au courant uh intoxicant for various cultures and communities i'm just here to say i don't have any proof

i think we're gonna find out there was a fuck ton of stimulants do you think the fascists

Maxbecause like that you know we we talked about that book and yeah that the stimulant abuse was like out of control with the with the nazis all the way up to all the way up through hitler well up through hitler but also down to the level of the troops i mean they were giving they were giving um you know meth methamphetamines to the to the soldiers so that and it was causing

MerlinAnd they would like stay up for like a week. They would like give foot soldiers like it was part of your provisions was you had to take speed. Yeah. You get go pills in the Air Force, right? There's all this stuff that like, yeah, I mean, it's going to keep you. It's going to keep your.

MaxBut do you think there's something about fascism? Well, I know in the like, OK, so I know in the book, the William Shire Rise and Fall of the Third Reich book, he talks. That's a very good book. Well, it's problematic. It's long. He talks. He talks a lot. I read it in the 90s and liked it. It's very problematic. He talks a lot about the – it is good because it's probably still the best comprehensive history of the – as it says in the title, the rise and fall of the Nazi party. But it's – he talks a lot about the perversions in the SS and the perversions of the upper management of the Nazi party.

And he would say this guy is perverted and he would do perverted things. He was a pervert. And I think in some places that he's pretty explicit that they were doing like S&M stuff. So in the SS especially, that there was a lot of –

MerlinThat's why those uniforms look that way. They were specifically designed for that reason.

MaxWhat do you mean?

MerlinThere's a whole book about it. Basically, the Weimar kinky interests of the time were heavily reflected. And the higher up in the ranks you go, especially in the SS, the more of like – you know what? I'm not going to get into it.

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinThere is a whole book about this.

AlexThere was a whole plot in American Horror Story about this. And you're, oh my God, this, ah.

MaxA lot of, there was a lot of flogging. Jesus. There was a lot of flogging and whipping and things like that happening. But I think most of the time when Shire says that someone was perverted or there was perversion happening. What he means is that they were gay.

MerlinYeah.

MaxHe means that they were gay.

MerlinAnd I think it's all mixed up. That's why they went after, what's his name? Ernst, what's his name? Rome. The Night of the Long Knives, right?

MaxThat was the thing.

MerlinErnst, the SA guy was totally gay.

MaxRight. But I'm just saying like, I think it's all mixed up. I think that I think especially through the lens of history when you're looking back and you're doing that history like Shire did at a time when everyone was way more homophobic than they are now. So you'd sort of like you'd sort of look back and you'd be like, these people were evil and, you know, they were all with each other.

MerlinSo you could say like essentially you make that you make you end up making the same case in some ways, which is like, oh, they were corrupted by their perversion.

MaxYou want to know why what was wrong with these people. Right. You want to give it you want an excuse other than that they were swept up. Right. I get it.

MerlinOh, I see what you're saying. That's the problematic. I get it. Okay.

MaxWell, no, I mean, what's problematic is that he thinks it's like a character flaw that causes that the gay thing is like, you know, it's like such he can't even say it. It's such an indictment of the character of a Nazi that they might have been gay. But I know all I'm saying is like people always want to look back and they want to be like, oh, it was that he was taking pills or it was that he was gay or that he was that they were that they were whipping each other and giving each other handies or whatever was going on. And like, I don't know, like, don't people have fucked up political beliefs and they're not taking pills?

MerlinOh, gosh, no. I don't mean it that way at all. I'm trying to reverse engineer it really more to say that like, OK, here's the thing. It's 1978 and we want to go out and have lots of sex and dance all night. Should we have cough syrup? not really, you know, should we just do a couple shots of tequila? No, that's not really going to – let's have a lot of cheap and easily accessible cocaine because that's like the perfect 70s, 80s drug. I think that in an environment where braggadocio and out-of-control emotions and ego are rewarded

rather than suppressed, that is where that kind of particular kind of substance abuse could thrive. because you could be the coolest guy in the meeting in that case. Maybe you were up real late the night before, like changing PDFs, but now you're totally on your game in the morning.

MaxLet me tell you, I'm working on campaigns right now, and I do not keep the same schedule as the candidate. So the candidate's doing 10 times as much work and traveling and meetings and stuff as I'm doing, but holy shit, it's exhausting. I cannot keep up, and I'm not doing nearly as much as the candidate is doing.

MerlinAnd you're a young man.

MaxRight. How are these guys in their 60s doing? I was working in my 20s. I mean, I was 22 when I was doing this and I would and I couldn't keep up like I would physically crumble by the end of the campaign. So it is. I know everyone makes fun of Trump for saying this because you're not supposed to say it about yourself. But he does have a certain amount of stamina to do those three hour to work a whole day traveling, flying all around and get off the plane.

MerlinAnd you stand especially when it was about doing those talks that were so invigorating to him. He I think he really looked forward to that. Right.

MaxYeah. I mean, it is a certain kind of physical stamina just to stand there and scream and pound on the podium.

MerlinBut other people will say that if you have a meeting – I forget where I heard this probably last night, the other day. But there are also reports, mostly unsourced, but like from inside the White House, that he could be in a meeting with somebody like – even like somebody like a foreign dignitary. And within 15 minutes, he's like wandering around because he's gotten bored.

MaxWell, he didn't yell at – shit. Was it Gary Cohn? Or there was some story that came out over the weekend where he like – I think it was – or no, it was McMaster. It was McMaster came in and he had some important national security business for Trump. and Trump said, I already saw you today. What are you doing here? Because he was so dreading.

Speaker AHe was so dreading another meeting

Maxwhere you have to pay attention and learn something.

AlexOh, God. I'm just kind of, my mind is reeling right now. One, because my grandpa read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to me when I was like nine. A little light reading. I was, well, I was, it was, I was morbidly. You were nine years old.

MaxIt was like Harry Potter and the Beer Hall Putsch.

AlexI was morbidly obsessed with the Holocaust. because, you know, there's all these kids. And there were so many, not just Anne Frank Diaries, but anyway. Alexandra, do you like camping?

Speaker AThis chapter is all about camps.

AlexNo. But the more you think about it, like.

MerlinWith the glasses on the end of his nose like Jeff Sessions.

MaxAnd the trains went east through Poland. This is basically you're describing the plot of The Princess Bride. it's just instead of the movies instead of the princess bride scenes it's just cut to Schindler's list yeah

Alexyou know I thought that I could just say that as a funny offhand comment

Maxshut up and listen to the story

Alexyou know what I was okay

I also agree. It can't be cocaine because it's so easy to have like really harsh withdrawal from cocaine. And you can get a prescription for Adderall. Yeah.

MaxIt's totally legal.

AlexAnd I'm like, what about the acid?

MaxBecause that's how we got into this goddamn topic. If it's Adderall, where's the acid coming from? Why is there acid?

MerlinI just want to know. Bathtub meth. Let's learn about bathtub meth. Go ahead and get that in your Google history with me.

MaxThis is the right. You remember the Sopranos episode where the Russian guy in the woods got away and then they just left him there and you never heard from him for the rest of the show no only because i

Alexhaven't seen this is the russian in the woods what's the acid for someone tell me you know it's maybe it's another false flag it's like ah oh there's all this dangerous thing but really they just have like what what if they're making you know what he they get all of the uh like alt-right kids buying Claritin D and then see according to the Palmer report it's definitely Matt

Merlinhe's he's the uh he's the alt-left Daniel Kataver I can't believe how many people like it's bad enough to cite oh who's the guy that's not that funny um the other guy the other guy who's in like what is it slate or salon you know i'm talking about there's the one guy who's like the like i'm like i'm the you know kind of just slightly to the left onion guy but then the palm report is so fucking silly and people cite it like people i

know who are friends of mine are like citing this thing all the time and it's so bad you guys know

Maxwhat i'm talking about right well nothing is more embarrassed i mean that's that yes i do but nothing is more embarrassing when people post in a headline from the borowitz report that's what i'm talking about that's that's the guy i meant that's the like like left of center like oh andy borowitz yeah andy borowitz like who's you know he's fine he's like trump trump forced a white house forced to buy small forks for trump's tiny hands little gloves are the flat fashion because of this thing that's a two-year-old joke i love when i i'm still sometimes at events or at something where

someone says does a donald drumpf joke from john oliver and it makes me it makes me cringe so much

MerlinI just What about the

MaxYou're telling me that We can't solve this but the orange Cheeto Can get elected to president Oh he can do it with emojis and make it a little pumpkin Cheeto You're telling me that Cheeto Hitler Can get in there

MerlinCheeto pumpkin man

MaxDid you see Felix Krause's You know what's really going to piss off pumpkin spice Hitler is this

Speaker ACan't wait to see Twitter about this He's going to be mad with his Tiny hands, pumpkin man. Trump. Trump.

MerlinDid you guys, final follow-up, did you guys ever get your weather stuff going?

AlexNo. I returned mine. You returned it? It was like a challenge. It was broken again, and I'm like, I'm good.

MaxSpeaking of which, I do have my old weather station in my trunk, and I need you to send it to the Armands. Could you get it out of my trunk and send it to Marco? You should also send them a whole bunch of Christmas cards, like still in the box.

AlexI received

Maxhere's the deal I received the new weather station haven't opened the box yet I have no time

Alexyou have you have an assistant

Maxyou're time constrained

Alexand you could be I know that she's not a personal assistant she's an administrative assistant but what if it's for the office

Maxmy assistant is is hiring an assistant right now you should get a body man You need a, what's his name, Gary? No, what was his name? You need, like, a V. I need Gary. I do need a Gary. Listen, if you want to be my Gary, you know.

AlexNo, no, don't, no. You don't want this. Carry the Leviathan?

MaxYeah. I need a Gary. I do need a Gary. I need someone to carry around a huge bag with a magnifying glass. Magnifying glass.

Speaker AWhat do you have this for?

Merlinyou know what i didn't appreciate until this like fifth rewatch is like how much of a setup there was i remember all the hand jokes but i thought the hand jokes in arrested development i thought the hand jokes were all after he lost his hand there's so many hand jokes in the run-up

Maxhe's got the hand chair did you see where he's sitting on a park bench that says army officer

Speaker Abut the way he's sitting on it it just says arm off no it's so good oh god that's loose seal Oh God, it's such a good show

AlexOh God That is the one show I can't get Maddie into It's infuriating

MaxWhy, really? How is that possible?

AlexBecause every time it's a mistake We sit down with all of our friends And they quote the entire thing And I'm like, no, no, no They just need to watch it

MaxIs it the second episode with the guy Where Michael tracks down the Patrice O'Neill And he's like, did you burn down the storage unit? And he goes, oh, most definitely That's usually the moment. It's very early on. He's a flamer. The flamer. I think that's usually where people get hooked.

AlexWe've never made it to the second episode. I don't think the pilot is very good compared to—

MaxThe pilot does a lot of work.

MerlinIt's very good, but it's not very good as an Arrested Development episode. No. In terms of the pacing and editing, it's very well done. Right. But it doesn't get you—it's a little broad. You know, the stuff with David Cross in the pirate costume and everything, It gets both more subtle and more ridiculous in a way that's more satisfying. And just all the shit, like the way stuff, everything keeps breaking in the house.

Speaker AThere's so much going on in that show.

MerlinAnd that's why you always leave a note.

AlexChallenge. Any more. Jean Parmesan.

MaxWhat have we always said is the most important thing? Family. Breakfast. Don't even get that again.

MerlinDugga Dugga Dugga Challenge! This week's challenge falls to Alex. Alex, what was our challenge this week?

AlexThis week's challenge was to create a bullet journal. The paper sensation that's sweeping the nation. I didn't really know anything about bullet journals before I suggested this, other than I made fun of them a lot, and I kind of felt bad about that. So I wanted to try out the Bujo system, which I still think sounds like an anime character or like a cool action move. And you know what? I want to start with you, Merlin. I feel like you got a lot to say.

MerlinNo, why start with me? Oh, okay. No, don't start with me. Start with Max. Don't let him off easy on this one. You know he didn't do it. Peanut butter? Peanut butter? Peanut butter? Peanut butter.

MaxPeanut butter? Listen, as Sun Tzu says... Ah, peanut butter!

Speaker AI knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

MaxAs Sun Tzu says in The Art of War, the wise general knows when not to fight.

Speaker AWhy do we park on the sidewalk and shine on the park?

MaxAnd I Googled when we were done with the recording, what is bullet journaling? And I was like, you know what? My army cannot, we cannot be victorious. The only victory is retreat.

Wow.

AlexYou know, to Max's credit, I did a live stream like an idiot of creating a bullet journal and I got real bored real fast. yeah um definitely turned into a mook bang and then i ate the rest of uh i hate eight three triscuits uh oh like the our cracker challenge friend god that youtube guy the white chair guy

Maxand he ate the his channel is fucking awesome i watched so i watched for 20 minutes of him a video called let's throw 100 darts oh i wish i i legitimately wish i had that idea because i would do that video it's it's very good i watch it and at first it seemed like he was only going to throw 80 and then he stopped but then after a while he sat down and started saying goodbye and then he was like you know what folks let's do the last 20 yeah yeah it's so good uh all right um and

Alexour our friend uh molly lewis helped me with this a little bit and i put out a call on the internet molly lewis from the internet uh 23 she's amazing and uh i asked people and they're everyone's like oh don't get don't get too complicated don't you know don't overthink it and i'm like what's the point then then i can just do my regular to do list just be like a normal person doesn't work i mean the whole point of this is the complication of it it's willfully baroque i i i uh oh god did

you watch i don't want to all right here's what i will say i enjoyed the creation yes hi hi please

Merlintell people what the fucking challenge is and describe what a bullet journal is i am trying i

Alexknow you're not no you're not you're just saying words i know i click you're on that show with the

Merlintwo ladies and tell them what a bullet journal is and what distinguishes it from a regular notebook

Alexa bullet journal you are the you're what what is it casey calls it the explain i can't do without

Merlinbeing a dick go go ahead merlin what's a bullet journal bullet journal is an idea that we're in a crazy world with lots of stuff coming at us and we don't take the time to do stuff with paper like we should. And there's a solution for this, which is to create something called a bullet journal, which the general parameters of it are that you get a notebook, preferably with dots, dotted notebook rather than a line notebook or a grid notebook or a plain notebook, because you're going to use that to build out this system. The basics of the bullet journal system are that you have what are called, I think they call them modules or what do they call them?

categories, collections, collections. So you start your book by creating an index and you number all the pages. And so every time you do something on a new page, you indicate, you basically are creating a running table of contents. That's so you have the index. You also have a future log where you take a two page, what they call a spread, and you create, basically you just draw some lines and create little areas for the next six months. And then after that, you can do a monthly log where you create, basically you do all the, you put the name of the month at the top and then per line, you do like one, two, three, 28, 29, 30, 31 with one line per day.

Then you have what's called a daily log. And so you have a new, well, I do a new page. You can do it in order, but basically you just say, okay, today is, you know, Friday, March 9th. And so here are the things that I'm doing today. And this is where the bullet part comes in because it's all about the lines. And so if you have a line that's a to-do, you use a little tiny bullet. If you have something that is a note, you use a dash. You can then do things like, say, once you've done it, you cross out that bullet with an X. You can do a circle or an ellipse to indicate something that it's an event on that day.

I guess you could decide whether that goes on your six-month view, your month view, or your day view. You could do that, and then if it's important, you can put an asterisk next to it. If it's something that involves inspiration, you could put an exclamation point next to it. If it's something that you need an identifier to explore, you draw an eyeball next to it. Now, once you've got your tasks in there, you're not done. You don't do the tasks yet. You might want to migrate them. You could migrate them or schedule them. So if you want to migrate the tasks to a different collection, you use a greater than symbol.

If you want to schedule it to somewhere else, either on your monthly calendar or your six-month calendar, you use a less than symbol. But you never cross it off. Now, what you're going to do is each time you go through there, now we get into what are called collections. And a collection is really a collection. So anytime you create a collection, you create a collection. and then you go back to your index. You create a new page in the index, which is like a table of contents, not to be confused with the collection. You create the new collection as a line back in your index, which is a two-page spread. Now, understandably, as you move forward with your bullet journal and you're going to have new pages going there, every time you make a new page or a collection or a day,

that also gets indicated back in your index, which is a two-page spread, but not a collection per se. Now, importantly, a collection can be pretty much anything. A collection could be a list of all of your different collections, not including the index or the days or calendar or six-month view. Having said that, anytime that you create a new page that is of a like kind, whether that's a collection or a day, usually it could be a day. You can only start on any page because remember, you literally went in and numbered every page by hand. So what you do is you're going to want to go back to your index, which is a two-page spread.

And now, anywhere you have a like thing, you put a comma and then the page number of that thing for that particular collection next to it. Moving forward, you go through and now you have made a bullet journal. You may choose to use the hoo-hoo hero pen you could use a pencil you could get some stencils because then what you could do is you could draw them and you put a banner on the page and say this is what this collection is and you could tell because i drew a banner then you get onto instagram and or pinterest oh and youtube and youtube and youtube and you basically create this is really where your work now you

might want to go make an extra addition in in the index of your page spread for this because this isn't a collection this is the goal is you will eventually have a bullet journal about your Pinterest page about bullet journals. And that's a collection. I'm exhausted just hearing you talk about it. Alex, did I make up any of that? Is any of that made up?

AlexI think a bit of the spread. No, I mean, that's the thing. My eyes glazed over about a third of the way through. And here's how I would describe a bullet journal. It's a to-do list that you rewrite every day and you have a complicated calendar system at the beginning.

MerlinYou don't have to rewrite it if you migrate it. You rewrite it in other places if you migrate it. It goes to a different collection. Then that collection goes back into your index, which is a two-page spread.

AlexBut what seemed to me, as I got real deep, bullet journaling, it's a journal. It's a diary. It's not an actual system of capturing tasks and being productive. It is a nice thing to do. A lot of people, they're called bullet journal mods where you put in a gratitude bit or you track your food or you track things that you actually can only do on Mentsy.

MerlinThere's several very good templates for your Mentsy.

AlexOh, boy, are there.

MerlinThere's a whole Pinterest page just of Mentsy's collections.

AlexAnd I kept seeing these things where I'm like, well, I already do all of this on a computer and I don't need to lose this. What do you use, OmniFocus? I use OmniFocus for all my tasks and work and bullshit. And Clue as my period tracker app. And then Fitbit as the food tracker. And this is stuff that people all put in a journal. But the interesting stuff that I actually found people doing is they're tracking their art. Or they're tracking their calligraphy.

Or stuff that is actually...

Speaker ATracking their calligraphy? Yes! What does that mean, Alex?

AlexIt means there are calligraphy challenges.

Speaker ADid they use calligraphy to journal their calligraphy? I bet it's pretty.

AlexIt is. It's super pretty. And it's super, like, it's clear.

MerlinI want to be in the performance review for that employee. How would you say things are going? Well, let me flip to page 27 and I think I can show you. my calligraphy tracking of my calligraphy journal calligraphy is going quite nicely as you can tell from this two-page spread jesus fucking christ okay oh no please keep talking

Alexforever i want to hear how this is going for a like lifestyle management system it is uh not for me but it i i can see like the the like nice sometimes i like sitting down in the morning and just like writing out like, okay, what is actually, what actually needs to, if I'm feeling really overwhelmed, like what actually needs to happen or someone will die or I will get fired? Like what is, what are those things? And then I anxiously doodle a bunch of dolphins jumping out

of water and a little sun in the corner with sunglasses. And I felt like the one, and that feels nice. And it felt lovely to have a notebook that actually lays flat so I could have a spread. But yeah, real fast, it turned from actually tracking things to, nope, let's just color and doodle, which is nice. There's nothing, like, I recognized really quickly this is not work, but that's okay. The thing that I can't wrap my head around for the people who are, like, tracking all their food and, like, logging certain things that you could put into a computer,

it's like, okay, you're tracking your period, but how are you going to find any useful information with this data?

Merlinbecause you have how would you if there were interesting patterns how would you know and

Alexright find out and and the same thing with with like any or like even even like tracking your calligraphy like you say let's say you do like this much art like you say like okay every day this month i've done art or whatever it's like art okay you're writing all that down but why how does that become useful to you in any way so this is how i felt about this challenge but but also it's a fun art project and a fun uh i don't know i think like exercise telling that you feel

Merlinthe need to constantly defend stuff that doesn't need defending i think that's telling because the problem the problem with all of this is that it's a fucking system called bullet journal there's not a single thing wrong with any of these things like i'm here to tell you there's a lot about this that's really terrific i think the idea of having a notebook and feeling free to do anything you want with it is a great idea. I really do. I think that I'm gonna say what I like what I don't like. I like the idea of encouraging people to develop a relationship with a pen or pencil and a piece

of paper that's very valuable. Like whether that's index cards, whether that's a Snoopy notebook, you know, whether that's just just a scrap of paper. I think it's very healthy to find yourself doing stuff with a stylus and a piece of paper. I really do. I honestly do. I have my own way that I do know books that is pretty different from this, but that in itself is great. The idea of doing things for fun is great. The idea of drawing dolphins and suns that have sunglasses, which doesn't really make sense because the sun is the source of the light.

AlexThat's why it's great.

MerlinOkay. What about the dolphins? What explains the dolphins?

AlexWell, the water protects them from the UV rays.

MerlinOkay. Okay. The story checks out. I don't think there's anything wrong with any of that. Like enjoying doing calligraphy and then writing about calligraphy. the part about this that where I start to see a little bit of a red flag is you know and even as much as you keep telling yourself I'm just doing this because I enjoy it I think you need to be careful because this could be the worst kind of attractive nuisance because it is one of those systems that turns in on itself and becomes about itself and like you know I kid a little bit but honestly go search for bullet journal most of what you're going to find I mean I'm just trying to imagine the life of somebody who spends a lot of time looking at bullet

journals on Pinterest and it kind of makes my stomach hurt Like if it's fun, oh, but it's a fun thing. It's just something I do for fun. Okay, is it? Because how much time are you going to spend examining meta material about notebooks? Like that's not a bright pattern. So here's what I like. I like the notebook part of it.

You'll tell you what I love and I think is a brilliant idea in that the ADHD girl video I sent you, she really highlights this in a way that I think is smart. We'll put that video in show notes. Her videos are actually pretty amusing. I love the idea of the index, to tell you the truth. Now, one bit of real talk, the notebook I have has pre-numbered pages. If you're going to do this horse shit, make sure you get a notebook with pre-numbered pages because that will help you a lot. The idea of an index is a very, very clever idea.

AlexI don't know why I never thought of that before. I was like, oh, because I think we do notebooks in sort of a similar way where it's kind of just like a dumpster fire of my stuff and I don't really go back and look at it.

MerlinThat's the whole point of having it. Is it? Yeah, there's no system. There's no system you need to have for that. But I guess my only so with that said, so anyway, the point this woman makes in this video that I thought was a really good point is you can start on any page you want. If you want to open something like three quarters of the way in and just draw a dick on the page, you can do that. And then if at some point, and this is important, at some point, you could go back and choose to put that into the index. So there's several things about that that I love. What I don't love is the idea that like, I'm going to go figure out what all my pages are going to be, and then I'm going to go do the pages.

I'm much more into the idea of potentially doing whatever the fuck you want with your goddamn notebook, and then occasionally going back and filling in the index I think is kind of an interesting idea because that is a pattern that you could glean from. That's all really good. What else do I like? I like the notebook and the pencil.

MaxIf you do bullet journal, how do you know what to do every day?

Alexthe the idea is you put your uh tasks in every morning and then every night you would just i

Merlinbelieve but it's you know but there's there's a there's an unstated gtd like component of this

Alexwhich is that i feel like he goes like up and down to avoid saying that and i'm like

Merlinthis is the bullet journal guy well yeah because because part of the thing with gtd if you're doing it well is that you have captured stuff you can't or won't do anything about for a period of time, but then have a trigger that will enable you to be aware when it's time to think about doing that thing again. I think that's kind of the idea with this future log. Future log, you've got these six boxes across two pages where I could say, for example, in July, here's the thing I want to do. You could put that on a day. I think they really encourage you to put it on a day. And then you have your monthly calendar, right, where you get one line per day.

And because time is precious, you only put one thing on that line. I'm not sure who in the entire universe one thing on a day would be useful for unless you're making bathtub meth. I don't know who that would be useful for. I think the implied we don't want to get sued by David Co. 2001 is you should be scanning through your future log and your monthly view to occasionally be adding stuff in. And then the whole migration idea is a very GTD-like idea in some ways. I mean, my counsel would be, if you're not going to do it, fucking cross it off.

But their idea is, no, you migrate that into a collection, right? So if you've got a note about a movie you want to watch, that goes onto your page that you've got in your index for movies I want to watch. I don't think there's anything bad about all of that. I just, I think that that is, that is roll your own to an extent that I think could become very distracting. And I don't, for myself, and again, I honestly don't want to criticize anybody who just does this for fun. And I think as a way to run my life, this would make me completely crazy because I like having a calendar I can share with my family on the internet.

And I like being able to receive things in email that I can turn into a calendar. You have everything ending up in a notebook. How do we say this? There was a really good article a few years ago about why the paperless office never happened. And what the person said was paper will never go away. But the thing to realize is not that we're using less paper, but we're keeping less paper. Paper is not a great destination. To me, paper is where things start, but it's rarely where things end unless you're printing something, right? So like the idea of dumping my brain into a notebook, it's a very satisfying thing to

me. But then the slow thinking part, the Daniel Kahneman slow thinking part of my brain might eventually then go back through there and pull out ideas that go somewhere else. Did this give me an idea to like go have lunch with a friend? Did this give me an idea for a topic for a podcast, which goes on this list? I'm just not sure having that stuff end up in a notebook is good for me. and I do feel like honestly the stuff like the monthly calendar is such a grind stuff like the key is I don't want to be unkind but the key stuff the key being all these little symbols and what they mean is just it's so noodley and like it's really not about doing stuff it's about writing

Alexabout doing stuff if you need a key for your task list I feel like that was that was my big like

Merlinoh there's a valuable thing that needs to be done and there's a valuable thing that's now done

AlexThat's the key. That's all the key you need in life. There's a checkmark.

MaxYou guys are making a lot of fun of this, but it sounds a lot like how my OmniFocus has grown to be set up. My OmniFocus stresses me out. It's where your good ideas go to die. It's a very complex ecosystem. No, I mean, I'm pretty good about logging, so if someone tells me something, I have Siri hooked up to OmniFocus, so I go, remind me to do this or that. It's good for capture. I put a lot of critical stuff in OmniFocus, but, boy, I cannot keep up with it. Like it's just a longer, like what kills me about OmniFocus is I have so much stuff in there that needs to be done that I can't possibly do it.

And it's hard for me to pick.

MerlinI'm guessing you're not doing reviews?

MaxNo, I do reviews. How often? Well, it depends on the project. I have some of them weekly and some of them monthly. But I mean, how often do you go through every single item? When I do a review.

MerlinAnd like on how many days or weeks between? You don't have, like you don't spend Sunday afternoons doing that. That's what I'm saying, right?

MaxNo, what I do is I have some projects that ask me for a weekly review and some projects that ask me for a monthly review and then some projects that are like once every night.

MerlinBut you're doing weekly reviews in some form or fashion?

MaxYes.

MerlinWow, good for you. Okay.

MaxYeah, basically, like if I log in and the review tab is lit up, like I do it immediately. But all that does is make things worse because I surface more things that need to be done. And you don't just get rid of them?

I mean, is that legal?

MerlinNot a monster. Is that legal? Is that allowed? What would I feel bad about if I get rid of the things I wasn't going to do?

AlexMax, what's the oldest thing in your OmniFocus right now? Let's hold it up.

MaxCome on. Is there a view for that? Yeah. Is there a view for that? This is going to be humiliating. I might not be able to say.

AlexMerlin, how do I do it?

MaxDo I have to make a new perspective?

AlexMerlin, on your phone, how... I don't have a phone.

MaxI have a notebook, Alex.

AlexWow. What was that noise? before the other show, I really need to. Do I make a new perspective?

MerlinI'm going to go add this into my index.

MaxNew perspective, don't use the project hierarchy, group actions by...

MerlinI just realized I never included my index in my index. So if that's before the pain to start numbering, my index technically starts with negative one to negative four. Negative four to negative... Oh, Jesus. Negative four to negative one would be my index. Okay.

MaxOkay, I got it. I did a new perspective that sorts everything by date. okay so oh boy scrolling i'm scrolling i'm scrolling don't delete it um scrolling um the oldest thing in my omni focus is from like four or five years ago when i went to san francisco and i met uh tim huang and he has a group called the san francisco infrastructure society and they go explore like waste treatment facilities and bridges and they're just people

who appreciate civic infrastructure. And I made a note for myself, create Chicago Infrastructure Society.

MerlinThat's a good one. I would keep that.

MaxBut it's in a folder, but that one is in a folder. That was from 2014. And that's in a folder called Backburner. And that's just like ideas that I have that I don't know where else to put them.

AlexI mean, does it make you sad?

MaxNo, it's on pause, so I don't see it.

AlexOkay. Yeah.

MerlinYou should make another folder called Backburner that stuff like you definitely at some point will want to not do it, but you're not ready to not do it.

MaxMy three oldest to-do items are all in backburners. So I feel good about that. So Chicago Infrastructure Society, I make a photo Jojo. Remember photo Jojo? Yeah. Photo Jojo for coffee stuff. That's a good business. That's a goddamn good business. And then I have a lot of stuff pertaining to a game I was working on in 2015 that I stopped working on. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

AlexWell, and that's all hidden, right?

MaxSome of it is. Some of it's not.

AlexI hide everything.

MaxThere's nothing inherently wrong with that as long as your relationship is healthy. These are my current things I could do today if I so choose.

AlexYeah. It's insane. And that's how...

MaxLook at all the late. Look at all that. Late. Are you using...

MerlinDon't use deadlines if they're not real.

AlexDon't do that. No, they're real. Oh, then you're fucked. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like today... You know, yeah. Today I have eight things and they're not... I'm bad about this. What is... Oh, I did. I turned my email notifications back on. This is exciting. I finished my bullet journal, got the login. Oh, okay. I only have five things to do today.

MaxSome of those date notifications are like, some of the overdue ones are like, change the air filters in the HVAC system in my house. That really should have been done at the beginning of the month. Like, there's no excuse.

AlexI just need to do it. I don't know. At the beginning, I don't know. Maybe it was February. I deleted, I realized that I was still on the OmniFocus 1 database, even though I had OmniFocus 2 and I was having a lot of like sync problems and I really wanted to be on the new beta so I just sort of burned down my or I well I still have the archive of the database but it is no longer there so I don't have my things from like 2008 anymore it's all all new stuff and the

overdue things basically exactly reflect my fears and it's kind of helpful because I'm like all right why are you afraid to do this why are you not doing it's very merlin man i think um and then i either do it or get rid of it or i go look at my index and then do some stencils i i don't i

Merlindon't want to belabor this except to just repeat one point that i feel like is sometimes important to repeat and i've talked about this a lot recently because it's kind of been on my mind lately uh which is just to like be careful when the impulse that leads you to do something is the same impulse that will not tell you when to stop doing something right like you joked earlier about how people are going to ask, like, what notebook did you get? And I said it's a little bit like doing a seminar, like an all-day seminar on how you stop drinking. And at the end, everyone asks you for links to your favorite booze.

Speaker AAnd it's like, no, what I'm telling you is, like,

Merlinthere's great stuff to be gleaned from this. This could be really good. This is a fun – this is a fetish project, like, for people who like pens and paper. And you should do it as much as you feel like. Just make sure it's, you know, going to be acting in the service of who you want to be.

MaxYou think that there could be some perversion?

MerlinI think there should be – could be some tall, leathery perversion. I see. and maybe I'll save it for the after show but if you want I will tell you how I use a notebook because it's the best way to use a notebook

Alexthis purple check mark just makes me so hard

MerlinI'm going to crank that hog alright that's it

Speaker Ahey

Show notes

Transcript

68. Check Her Dick

Show notes

Transcript

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