113. Fantastic Beasts and Where They Urinate

AlexI'm glad to be back and talk to you guys. I feel like it's been a while.

MaxOh, everything is normal again. It's weird.

MerlinI'm so tired of, you know, holidays, it's fine. It's fine. But, like, all my shows are all disrupted. Like, people are still calling in on fucking phone lines, and there's guests and best ofs. And I'm so fucking tired of the, like, the three weeks of, like, well, here's something we did in February. It's like, I'm ready. Bring it. Bring me fresh content. I want hot content.

AlexSo what you're saying is, as a white male in your 50s, you want more free content in your RSS feeds.

MerlinI want more of the stuff that I love that brought me there

Alexoh fine you made it positive

Merlinsorry yes

Alexmy privilege is thick I have thick privilege no you're right I love my Merlin and his curvy

Maxthere were a few days over the holidays where I opened up Plex and there was nothing new in there I know all my stories were gone there was no shark tank there was no top chef oh I know Survivor's off Bachelor is back Bachelor is back big time I do not like Colton that's my big Bachelor update fuck Colton yeah is that the Australian girl not a big Colton fan don't like the decisions he made in the first episode

AlexColton is a lady

Merlinno

Alexoh okay I was okay

Maxthat's one of those

Merlin90s names that could go

Maxany particular way I know oh I see yes no he's a former NFL football player and he's had he's sort of been a part of the Bachelor verse for a while and he's this sort of goofy indecisive guy oh he's a virgin that's his main personality trait he's a virgin i didn't watch

Alexthe premiere but it felt like twitter that night was just it it felt like i was watching it a lot of people were watching are watching the bachelor it was just like recap of recap recap and i'm like okay i guess he's a virgin there's an australian lady he's a virgin australian okay people are mad and that was the night.

MerlinThey're looking for more verisimilitude. They want more realism in their Bachelor.

MaxThat's why you're watching The Bachelor.

MerlinYeah, because it's so real. That's how I met several of my thick wives in the past is I was taken to Bachelor Island where I was given a rose for the heavy girl.

MaxThis week I've mainly been enjoying on Twitter watching the conservative, like Twitter, the like necktie Twitter. be very mad and very horny for alexandria ocasio right oh i love it so everybody everybody's

Merlinhornier they get that's true they're all coaching brandon they're all so fucking scared of women and the wiles oh my god look at her teeth look how big her mouth is i hate her so much oh my god look at her eyes her beautiful alien eyes i hate her policies she grew up in a house oh my god

Speaker Asandy get it sandy look at her look at her normal horny they're so fucking horny for her policies

Max70 they want aoc to financially dominate them and stop on their stamps stop on their food stamps yeah as listomania plays in the background

Speaker Ashe's so charming she's so good at it and like i just i mean i don't i don't know much about

Merlinher but i mean how can you not love her energy and enthusiasm for what she's doing

Maxit's it's it's one of the best parts was when she was uh did that interview with anderson cooper and he was like would you do you would you call the president a racist she's like oh absolutely and he was just like how can you say that oh that was disappointing don't you cover the news anderson

Merlinit's been it's been a week of erections for necktie twitter all around last night i was losing my fucking shit with all the like fact checking on you know i don't know i'm sorry it shouldn't be political but like jesus fucking christ it's this is what makes a person feel insane this is why i against my better judgment watch mbs msnbc it's because i just need to feel a little less fucking crazy because i feel like i'm still the only person that sees the man shitting in the room. And everybody's going, well, you know, he has his reasons.

He still has a pretty strong 29% of people that thinks he should be able to shit wherever he wants. But it's like a child who says, oh, I want $1,000 for candy. And you go, no, you can't have $1,000 for candy. And they go, okay, how about $1,000 for chocolate? Is that better? And you're like, I don't think you understand the basis for this negotiation. It's going to be a beautiful steel barrier.

MaxFollow-up, Vice. on Sunday someone posted a photo of a woman's legs and feet in a bathtub on one of reddit's most popular forums r slash drama the post is titled mommy's titties on the faucet with a photo of feet in a tub from the photographer's point of view holding a vape pen overlaid on the photo is the text alexandria ocasio cortez dot instagram dot post dot nine three 2016 yeah the image and text aren't new they've been around in this combination since at least last month poster to Twitter and 4chan's

slash Paul political forums, as well as a handful of other subreddits and forums, including some dedicated to revenge porn and creep shots. The conceit here is that if you zoom in into the reflection on the faucet, you can see the photographer's breasts. And if you're to believe the text on the image, that is Ocasio-Cortez. But Double Triple turns out but the person in the photo isn't her. How'd they find out? We don't know how many people actually believed it was her in the first place.

And in some of the forums where the image was posted, people were already comparing the feet and questioning whether it's really her.

MerlinThis is why WikiFeet is such an important resource because you can identify whether it's a new congressman.

MaxBut we know for sure, thanks to a user on the site called WikiFeet, a site devoted to foot fetish photos of celebrities and public figures. There's a small collection of Ocasio-Cortez's feet on the site from photos of her public appearances where she's wearing sandals or open-toed shoes. That user cross-referenced the rdrama photos with known images of Ocasio-Cortez's feet posted on WikiFeet and determined that they are from a different person. Quote, I'm a contributor to WikiFeet, and even I have never seen a second toe like that.

Reddit user jokesonyou commented on the post. They then linked to a photo of Ocasio-Cortez's feet and implied that the feet in the rdrama post couldn't possibly belong to her. I asked jokesonyou how they spotted the difference. quote i've sucked enough toes in my life to recognize when something doesn't look right they told me in a reddit direct message it's practically a doctor now that's journalism i

Merlincan't believe that trump would have something also about how like she's doing something with her toes that's not like physically possible and it's the guy gets real deep but it's i love the double level of creep well the one you're just zooming in it's gotta stop you guys he's zooming and you try and see your boobies and then you don't like her second toe doesn't match wiki feet? I feel like I'm losing my mind.

AlexAt what age?

MerlinBut it's about her policies.

AlexIt's about her policies.

Speaker AShe went by Sandy and danced. She danced in high school.

AlexShe did a lovely dance video for her college. I think I did the exact same.

MerlinWell, you're not qualified

Alexto be a congress lady either then. That's true. I'm going to call you Sandy. I wouldn't, I don't, I would not wear a skirt and a blazer to my job. I'm much more well off.

MaxYou guys know that a lot of the necktie Twitter, they have, their feet are their special thing. I don't understand. They're constantly posting like photos of women in like crazy shoes and commenting on it. Like Chris Eliza has like a lot of posts where he's like, he'll like reply to women's photos, I don't know if that's Chris. Someone has replied to women's photos being like, oh, post one that includes your feet. Oh, I know. Chris Saliza did one. He did like a selfie from a desk at CNN, and it just had a picture of Dana Bash's feet.

It was just like, wow, Dana Bash shoe game on point.

Speaker AThanks, Chris. Thank you.

MerlinHe has fans. They're just not on Twitter. That's the thing. That's the defense. The defense is because you guys keep looking at Twitter. he's out there digging up the real stories explaining things with headlines and feet oh my god it's her policies you have to understand this is it's a political it's a political thing they want to they want to point out that she is not ready for this important role

Maxi saw a comment on twitter you know i don't sort of like the the woke explaining on twitter and the one-upsmanship of of wokeness or someone says something woke and then someone else has to reply and be like actually that's not woke enough it's actually this or that but i did see one that I really liked, which is women as portrayed in sort of power in America have two ages, which is so young that they're naive and can't possibly know what they're talking about, and then so old that they can't possibly be relevant, and they're like a mean old crone.

Yes, yes.

MerlinNo, it's a different flavor of the Madonna whore syndrome in a lot of ways. Yeah. It's like, I mean, just to go straight Twitter on this, there's the one hand where you can't be taken seriously because you're too young and the other one is that you're yeah you might be old enough to be responsible but you're not likable right yeah and there is they said like

Maxmen have this story in politics where like you start off as a rebel and you're like rebelling against the king and then you become the hero and you depose the king and then you become the king and that plays out differently for different people but that's like the basic mythology of sort of for men in american politics and all of those roles have are like you know reputable in some context or another right rebel hero king but women don't have any right way to be like there's no right answer for what what part of the story a woman should play in american power no and not

Merlineveryone likes a curvy wife what's it's you know uh i shouldn't look at the internet this is this is this is all this is a big problem with necktie twitter in general and you know what i'm sorry i'm

Maxjust so fucking mad i'm so just like did you guys watch the president's special message yeah i made

Merlinmy daughter watch it with me we had mexican food did you really did you really why yes my my wife refused to and then i was like oh come on you know he's gonna be you gotta watch i wrote her that afternoon i said i'll get us mexican food and which i didn't realize was symbolic in my head but i was like we're gonna get mexican food and we're gonna talk a night and we're gonna watch the president because you know he's gonna be gacked out on the adderall you know he's gonna to be sniffing and i was like i i gotta see this and i and i you know my of course my hope was that he would eventually go completely off script which he didn't but he did sniff a lot like a year what

Maxyou're always hoping is that like uh like an eighth of an adderall pill is gonna fall out of his nose while he's talking well like neil young in the last dance like a big coke booger hanging

Merlinout like something like it's just you know it's just i don't know it's just the it's it's it's just so strange to have these um interlocutors in necktie twitter who are constantly there to explain everything and why it's the way it is. And to have a, they're not really, they're not really super good at the whole like, oh yeah, well this is, this is how it actually is. Instead they do this, this, they do this fucking thing where they, they take what's happening right now and act like it is a data point. A data point like any other fucking data point.

There's so many goddamn data points in this pile over here. And just because it hasn't resolved itself into anything, it's the, it's the problem with the Trump presidency is that nothing will stick for very long. and then necktie twitter likes to normalize everything it's like well you know actually that by itself that wasn't really that bad and you're like why can't you take a bigger step back and like and get a get a fisheye lens and see how many of these data points have accumulated at this point and i just i honestly there's a part of me that thinks that they need the horse race because that's what keeps people following somebody like i would include somebody like maggie haberman

at this point in necktie twitter the new york times in general it is super necktie twitter necktie at this point. And it's just that they have this need to try and make everything a horse race about what happened today and then to normalize everything in some kind of a context. And it's mind-boggling and incredibly frustrating and anxiety-making to me.

MaxWhat about this, though? Check this out. What if Trump, what if he's doing the talk and he sneezes and like six Adderalls fly out of his nose? Like a jackpot. Yeah. And it lands on the desk and it sounds like someone rolled a bunch of dice.

Speaker AOh, no, my dice. Oh, shit.

MerlinI don't know. Maybe he, I don't know. The other thing I said to my daughter, because we were watching her eat Mexican food, I said, I think he's on the Adderall. I think Daddy used to take Adderall, and I'm familiar with the way that one's nose functions when they're taking Adderall from a doctor. I said the other thing is I'm not saying Trump's illiterate. He is not illiterate. I think he is – I think he genuinely does not like reading things, A, that, B, do not specifically pertain to a third party talking about how great he is.

I think reading is very taxing on him, on his attention.

Speaker ABut I think he's –

MerlinYou know what I mean?

Speaker ALike I think having to read anything and then read it aloud. He has dementia. Like it's – He does have dementia. Can't we just get with this? Him and Giuliani at this point? Yeah. Jesus Christ.

AlexYou can have dementia and be on Adderall at the same time.

MaxNo, I think it would. I think it would. It's like, you know, it's like, you know, yeah, it gives you that little burst you need to be able to focus on the text for long enough to make it through the speech.

Speaker ARight, right, right.

MaxYou guys heard, did you guys see the story where it's like, where it's like the only reason that he started talking about the wall was that his, when he did the announcement, they knew that he couldn't remember to talk about immigration.

MerlinSo they were like... His advisors, the Roger Stones and so forth, that said, look, you got to remember on 2015, when you're on the trail, it's very important you talk about immigration. We know this is polling very well. It's very important that you keep bringing up immigration. And he kept spacing it because he'd get distracted. So what did they do?

MaxWell, that's why they came up with the wall, right? Because it was like a thing he could talk about. He's a builder boy. Yeah, that was about him, right? It was a way of making the policy about him. Yeah.

AlexI did not... Like I had heard that and now I was like, really?

MaxIt's very effective political messaging.

AlexYeah.

MaxI mean, I think it's I think Trump Trump. The whole Trump phenomenon is like brilliant political messaging, like the red hats, like the wall, like lock her up. Like it was all it was all great. It was really good. It was better.

MerlinProbably better than the better than most Democrats are doing.

MaxOh, probably better than than the 2008 Obama brand in terms of in terms of making people feel how you're supposed to feel and and and being memorable and everything right like it gave everyone a way to say like here was the big problem was was what republicans wanted to galvanize around was saying like we're we're racist and we don't want to be you know we're white and we don't want to be threatened in in america and they knew they couldn't sort of come out and say that so they have been trying all these different things so one of them was the obama birtherism where they can't they couldn't quite come out and say well we don't like obama because he's black but what they can say

is, oh, he wasn't born here. He's different than us in some way, and that makes us uncomfortable. So it became this code where you could say what you wanted without coming out and saying it. And man, the wall is a way better, what is it? It's a way better disguise for that, right? That's why, and let's not pretend like we don't know what that means. Like there was a case that happened.

MerlinBrown people are rapists, drug dealers, and human traffickers. And that's, I mean, I'm sorry, I have to point that out to everybody, But that's why we're building this structure. Like, that's, it's not my fault.

MaxThere was an incident a couple years ago where there was two high schools playing in a basketball tournament. And there was one of them was predominantly white and one of them was predominantly black. And the white high school during the game, they started chanting, build the wall. And let's not pretend we don't know what that means. Everybody knows what that means. We all know what that means. And the fucking kayfabe of whatever, Chris Saliza and Maggie Haberman and all these commentators going on and debating, oh, what's the wall going to be made of and how much can we appropriate and how are we going to pay for it?

Like the policy is like, really, we're all going to go along with it. We're pretending we don't know what the wall means.

MerlinYou've already accepted. At that point, you are accepting and promoting a premise that's utterly incorrect and very, very dark.

MaxYeah, it's not the wall. They don't give a shit about the wall. They don't care if they make the wall or not. They know that it's a flight of fancy. It's a code for reorienting the government and American power to be explicitly about persecuting minorities. And they're doing that

Speaker Aopenly. They're doing it openly. That's what

MaxICE is about. It's about terrorizing minorities in this country so that they can't work and they can't have opportunities and they're scared to go out in public. And it's very effective.

MerlinIt is. But here's another thing. This administration, as we've clearly seen, feels like a lot of rules don't apply to them. And they don't even acknowledge the validity of the rules, so why should we even bother? But they do this fairly canny thing where if they're more than happy to apply a rule that would never apply to them, that they would never fall under the aegis of that law. So in the case of the border thing, well, no, we're not putting up the wall because we hate the people on the outside, to quote the president.

We're doing that because we love the people on the inside. And you could look at something in a similar way, look at something like stop and frisk or the way the police do traffic stops. Well, any privileged white person will look at that and go, well, of course. If people might be breaking the law, I don't have anything to hide. You can pull me over anytime. But the reality, the bald reality, is that you don't get pulled over because you're white. You get pulled over because you're black, and then they find some reason to hassle you. And that's exactly a similar thing that's happening here. Because if you're a person of privilege, a white person, white dude especially, you could

say, well, that doesn't apply to me. So you get to be as brutal as you want about these laws because you seem to be the law and order guy. What you're really doing is you're enforcing a kind of cultural hegemony that exploits the weakest and most vulnerable people.

But Chris Hayes said something the other day, tweeted something while he was, Trump was giving his completely unspooled rant. in the the rose garden did you guys see that right he's that there and then pence and was it mccarthy there's like these four these four white chess pieces like standing around him and he just it was it's got to be up there in one of his it's it's one of his most like oh my god he's just he's just following his nose he's just he's just saying words and it went on and on and on and

Sometimes it takes somebody saying something kind of really obvious to click. And what did he say? Chris Hayes said, if literally anyone in your life, a friend, a family member or co-worker spoke at length extemporaneously the way that Trump does, you would be deeply concerned and unnerved. And I was like, you know what? I mean, yeah, there's crazy Uncle Racist. You're like, oh yeah, you see him at Thanksgiving. But if a man stood in public and talked in that way for like 25 minutes, you would immediately you hustle him into a car and take him to a physician immediately.

MaxI saw a great, I don't know where I saw this, but you know, I've been, I've been really watching, uh, I've been really going to town on Survivor. I think we, we've all been very obsessed with Survivor. And I read a whole thing about, um, with, uh, the producer of Survivor, Mark Burnett also created, uh, The Apprentice.

MerlinThat was such a good article.

MaxYeah. And it was, it was really interesting because Burnett, um, or people who worked on The Apprentice said, you know, what was crazy is we do these challenges where I never, I've actually never seen an episode of The Apprentice, but the premise is like there's these challenges and the celebs or the apprentices or whatever, they go out and they compete and they like, what do they, and one of them, they literally like went and sold Trump's like MLM, I think to people, his like video phone MLM. And it was like, whoever could do the most sales or recruit the most people into the MLM was, you know, became the apprentice for the day or whatever. But anyhow, they said what would happen is like Trump would come in and he would make

these decisions that were like completely unrelated.

MerlinThey've crafted an entire episode with a certain edit to tell a certain story.

MaxWell, no, no. He couldn't be bothered to read off the card. No, no. It was the opposite. It was that they were... I mean, it is reality. They are filming what's happening. But people would go out and one guy would do really well and everyone else would suck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Trump would just... He was so fucking addled. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

MerlinHe would screw up the entire thing. And then they'd have to go back and re-edit the entire episode to support whatever flimsy thing Trump said off the top of his head.

MaxYeah, basically. But it's not as though they had a plot and Trump didn't stick with the plot. It's that he was so erratic that they would have to use editing tricks to like make it make the people look more like a ding like a ding like a ding so that to backfill in Trump's insane decisions. But he was basically like it was like a random number generator. Like he would just come in there and fire someone and it would have no correspondence to anything that happened in the challenge. And then they'd have to like use tricks to edit it. Read the room.

Speaker AYou got to read the room. Jesus Christ.

MaxYeah, I don't. I had a fun story. This is a follow up from The Advocate. This is just, I don't know, just something about our previous discussion reminded me of this. I couldn't tell you what. The body of another young black man has been found at the West Hollywood apartment of Ed Buck. What is this? Tell me about this. Yeah. Prominent Democratic donor who allegedly has a fetish for drugging sex workers.

MerlinOh, well, I thought the code word was West Hollywood. Isn't West Hollywood code?

MaxI don't know.

MerlinIsn't that like the gay part of L.A.? I don't know. I think it's like their Castro.

AlexOkay. Sort of, but it's also rich now. Okay. Yeah. You're right. West Hollywood is like where the debauchery happens.

Speaker AOkay.

MaxBuck, a white man in his 60s, was investigated previously by authorities after the death of Gemmel Moore, who died of a methamphetamine overdose in Buck's home in July 2017. Since Moore's death was classified as an accidental overdose, numerous young black gay men have alleged that buck has a fetish for shooting drugs into black men he picks up off the street or on hookup sites more has written about buck injecting him with dangerous drugs before he's dead jesus prominent democratic donor democratic mega donor so that's the party infrastructure that we're working with here

Merlinyeah i'm glad nancy pelosi's in there though you know part of this also is like you know you know my old bit about solving the right problem on the right level for the right reason there's something fucked up and problematic about everything. Our entire political system is a shit show, but it's the show that we've got. And so, I mean, I think you're going to see so much tension in the coming days, weeks, whatever, where it's like, it's going to be kind of, I don't say reverse intersectional, but a kind of intersectional picking apart of every single thing. Like, you know, on the one hand you go, Elizabeth Warren, my God, she's so fucking competent.

She's so focused. She has an actual message that she believes in. What? Are you sure she's a democrat because she knows what the fuck she's doing she really knows what she wants to do why and how she's got a plan but she is a lady and she is she is she is like hillary and that you know she has like lady parts and stuff so she's gonna have to beat hillary before she wins this there's gonna be there's gonna be so much of this tearing down like always finding one more thing to complain about instead of trying to and max this is something i've always admired about about your oddly obsessive interest in politics that i admire is like it seems to me that you are very practical

about like, well, let's pick a fight, especially a fight that we might be able to win and focus, even if that's like the water boy or whatever. Like you pick the thing that you want to do, stay laser focused on that and keep moving forward. And don't constantly doubt yourself about whether that institution is worth fighting for. You know what I mean? And I think there's gonna be so much that in the next two years, it's gonna be blinding.

MaxThere's a lot of noise in politics, but I think if you have a, it helps to be aligned on like a thing that you want to accomplish or a thing that you want to fix. And it can't be everything, right? Like not like it is too big. American politics is too big for someone's goal to be like, I'm going to fix everything. But yeah, you just you have to pick your thing and then you're going to you have to build your filter. And you're like ninety nine point nine percent of everything does not pass through the filter. And all I care about are the few things that that pass through the filter.

AlexWhat do you think needs to be the first thing through the filter?

Maxwell for me right now i'm i'm interested in um reforming the democratic party that's become

Merlinmy before before election stuff what's that oh i i'm sorry i interjected but like i i i feel like nothing the thing the thing that i am most terrified about losing i know it's difficult because it is heavily local so i'm just terrified about what's going to happen with elections i'm really genuinely surprised things turned out the way they did in 2018. Right. Because I figure our election system is so fucked at this point. So here's my, here's what I'll say about this.

MaxI don't, I'm agnostic as to whether we currently have fair elections in this country. My guess is that there is, obviously there's gerrymandering and voter suppression, obviously from the right. That's self-evident. And you can look at what happened in Florida and Georgia and many other states. now are the Russians literally hacking into the voting machines to change the results I'm agnostic on that I'm willing to believe it if I saw some sort of compelling evidence I haven't seen that yet but it's possible but what I can tell you is like all that stuff maybe moves politics one or

two percent and I don't mean to say like we shouldn't care about gerrymandering we absolutely should that's a great issue for people to dig in on it's just that that's gerrymandering is going to have a 1% or 2% effect on elections. Now, we have very close elections in this country, so 1% or 2% is often the margin of victory, and that's why that stuff matters. But I also think democratic policies, like the things that the left wants in this country, are so popular that we should be capable of winning elections by more than 1% or 2%, and that's actually what I'm interested in. I believe that there is a majority. I spend a lot of time looking at polling numbers

and exit polls and all this kind of thing, public opinion polls. I do my own public opinion polls. And I really believe that there is a coalition in America today for exciting leftist ideas like raising the minimum wage and free college tuition and all that kind of stuff. People really want that stuff. Universal single-payer health care. This stuff pulls off the charts. Even gun control is quite very, very popular right now. And the problem, we just can't put that.

If we offered that on the menu, everyone would order it. The problem is we're not putting it on the menu. And that's what I'm concerned with.

MerlinAnd so that's where somebody like AOC, I call her AOC, she's moving the Overton window in some ways.

MaxA little bit.

MerlinShe's making it a little bit.

MaxYeah, I think so. I mean, she said that she wants to increase the marginal tax rate on people who make more than $10 million a year to 70%, which is still not the highest it's ever been in America, but it's bringing it back to the Reagan levels of taxation. It's not nearly Eisenhower level. And yeah, we should. I think it should be much higher on people who make $10 million.

MerlinAnd people on the other side are deliberately misunderstanding what she's saying. People who should know better are deliberately misunderstanding what she's saying.

MaxIf that's the best they have, then let them take their shot.

MerlinThere are people out there who are actually saying, you can't take 70% of my income.

MaxAnd they're saying, no, that's not what she's saying. That's fine. That's their, they've, you know, sometimes that's how it works, right? It's like you're, it's like they're going to, you know, it's like you're going to take your shot and they're going to take, you're in the little Hamilton duel, right? And it's like they're going to load up their musket and they're going to tamp it in and put the little cot flat, the cotton or whatever in there. And they're going to load their thing and then they're going to take their shot. And like, if that's what you have is like not pretending that you don't understand how marginal tax rates work, go ahead, take your shot. We'll see what resonates with the American people.

Because what's been successful for the right is that we talk about things in terms of math, right? We're like the technocrat party where Hillary Obama goes out and they're like, we should have a 1% adjustment because it would affect the efficiency.

It's like people's eyes glaze over. And the right comes out and they talk in values language. They're like, what about fairness? What about I earned my money and I should keep it, right? But so it's like a lopsided fight because we're not even arguing on the same playing field. And they've created a message that is the actual policies that they're suggesting are deeply unpopular. But the way that like Paul Ryan talks about it, it really resonates with people as compared to the sort of lame technocratic math equations that Democrats offer.

And if we could be what's cool about Ocasio-Cortez and this new wave of like young Democrats is like they're talking about taxes and values language. They're saying you're using up American infrastructure and you need to put into it. And it shouldn't be fair that you get a million, you know, you get a billion dollars that you, like, hide in offshore banks while people here can't afford health. They have to go on GoFundMe to get health insurance, to get health care, right? Like, it's crazy.

MerlinYeah.

MaxIt's a crazy, unfair system. So as long as, like, that's exciting. It's like we found some moral clarity to talk about tax issues. and I know that that stuff is very popular with Americans it's just that we don't bother to like I said like we don't put it on the menu and people can't order it if it's not on the menu

Alexand that that's a very good way of putting it and I also think that this has always been a problem and I think you agree is that young people also don't necessarily understand and or care about taxes and they don't understand you know brackets and stuff like that and so we get wrapped in like the only presidents i've been able to vote for are obama in his second term and hillary and like it was you could call it like identity politics for the first time oh no i could

vote for obama that like the first time i voted for obama it was it was like because change and the wide sweeping things because you're 18 and that's all you care about and you're just like oh god it's bush is so bad everything is bad my childhood was bad let's make it a little less bad whereas now it's like all right there i don't know it's like the accessibility it's not just on the menu but it's explain you you know what she's the waiter that comes up and is like here's tapas but doesn't explain it like doesn't doesn't do it in a shitty way to use the menu example

Maxthat we're talking about like the most like young people don't vote most people in this country don't vote so they're at this restaurant and if you had a restaurant and you had a bunch of items on the menu and the most common order people come into the restaurant they sit down and the most common thing that they order off the menu is nothing they did they haven't they look at the food and they're like no thank you i won't have any of this you would be like we better fucking change this menu like if your goal is to sell food which is like that that we want people we want votes like we're selling food here like give people something give the people the thing they

want that we actually believe in like what is this stupid gamesmanship where like we can only order we can only offer something like marginally better than the like turds that are served across the street why why people should come into the restaurant and we should be like we do things a little bit differently here is this your first time dining with us Oh, we have bread and butter service, but you're going to have to pay for it.

It's made in-house.

AlexIs that a thing?

MaxWhat were we talking about?

AlexI don't know.

MaxI don't know.

AlexI just want bread so fucking bad right now.

MaxDon't you? I get so excited when they have a little whipped butter at the restaurant. Oh, my God.

MerlinI don't like a hard butter. Hard butter makes me sad. like a whipped butter yeah with that butter on the premises you know

Alexdig dug should we do our challenge yeah challenge the this is oh god

Merlinsorry copyright john syracuse and whenever the fuck um

Alexactually it's trademark merlin oh i hate you i hate you

Speaker Auh i'm sorry mr syracuse i'm so sorry for hearing this i'm so sorry i respect you so much Don't become a flying monkey like Todd.

AlexDon't do that. I am. I am. I'm. He's my Elon Musk. Oh, you know John's.

Speaker ADon't worry about it.

AlexExcept for that fucking t-shirt. Oh, my God. I'm still mad. All right. I take it on that t-shirt.

MaxCan I say one more thing about politics that I wanted to bring up before? Yes, please. One more thing. I heard the smartest. One of the smartest things I've ever heard in my life about politics from my friend, Where the Heck is Matt? And he told me. He's like, here's my theory about politics that I have not stopped thinking about since he told me this a month ago, which is every presidential election in American politics is Bugs Bunny versus Elmer Fudd. Right? One person is Bugs Bunny and one person is Elmer Fudd. Now, if I asked you who was Bugs Bunny and who was Elmer Fudd, Obama versus Mitt Romney, what would you say?

I mean, I would say, hmm.

Speaker AYeah.

AlexI think it's a double turns out.

MaxIs it a trap? No, it's obvious to me. Obama is Bugs Bunny. He's having fun and he's eating a carrot and he's being cool. and Mitt Romney is Elmer Fudd and he's demanding to be taken seriously and he's sputtering and and you know but he looks ridiculous right yeah and he's out to he's out to get him he's mad uh if I were to say uh Bugs Bunny versus Elmer Fudd George W. Bush uh versus Al Gore oh sure

Merlinabsolutely yep oh yeah maybe I like Elmer Fudd but I also really like Yosemite Sam um where it's like there's one person going like the other person's like oh you're like oh I'm so mad I'm I'm so mad about what you're saying. In that case, yeah, George W. Bush was Bugs Bunny.

MaxYeah. John Kerry versus George W. Bush. Oh, God. Now, Americans always vote for Bugs Bunny.

AlexYeah.

MaxWow. They always vote for Bugs Bunny. I'm so upset. You can go back to almost any presidential election and think about it in that dynamic, and it's really good. And now, if I were to say to you, Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton, who's Bugs Bunny? I didn't know what to think about it.

AlexHe's Bugs.

MaxHe's Bugs. He's Bugs Bunny.

AlexOh. Make America Bunny again. God damn it.

MaxHe's eating a giant Adderall pill like a carrot.

AlexWhat's up, Doc?

MerlinLong, beautiful, thick carrot.

Speaker ATremendous, tremendous holes in which I jumped with the lawn. Folks, we love duck season. We love it. Oh! Shoot my guns in the air, jump around my tiny feet.

I'm fucking Yosemite Sam.

MaxOkay, now here's my other question. Reconcilable differences. What's the difference is? Whose bug's bug?

Speaker AHe's Elmer's bug. Don't ask Todd. well I mean on the face of it I'm Bugs Bunny

Alexno no no you're right the premise I think is your Bugs Bunny and then we took it we turned it I think so Syracuse is clearly Bugs Bunny yeah I'd say like the first 10 the first run he's Yosemite Sam

Speaker AI'm number Fudd he's Yosemite

Alexno one wins no no no he's the sexy skunk what's his name

Speaker Awhen he's doing a sexual assault on the skunk

Alexyeah yeah yeah

Speaker Ahe's a cat with shoe polish which one is the little gay alien

Alexoh

Speaker AMarvin the Martian that makes me very angry angry it makes me yes

Merlinyes Syracuse I probably said it wrong Okay He just hangs over me like a specter Like a wet curtain over my entire life Well actually John was writing about that

MaxI think he is the bug's money on that podcast now Challenge I probably shouldn't have said gay alien

Speaker AGay alien He said a galian He said a galian that's what you said He's an alien who studies haggle

AlexWell actually it's queer alien Yeah Yeah.

Speaker AOh. Does he self-identify?

MaxGender non-performing queer empowering alien.

AlexI identify.

MerlinI was, yesterday, I was telling, cut this out. Yesterday, I was telling my daughter about the ethno-methodological approach to gender as in the book by McKenna and Kessler. And I was telling her about that. And we were talking about your family, Alex. And we were talking about like what a different time it is today.

AlexWhat the fuck is that going on?

MerlinIt is so, the network, it seems like the network drawing for that stuff is so impossibly complex. I don't know how we gender Marvin at this point without him chiming in. What would be they?

Speaker AIt would be they. Oh my gosh. Shame on me. I'm going to do a medium post. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I misgendered the alien. I respect they. I respect they. I'm so sorry. I also want to apologize to Italian American.

MaxIt's more of a learning opportunity for all of us.

Speaker AThis is my new character woke Italian man Boss don't slap around behind sorry don't slap a day behind That's a no good boss

Besides Gina I should have said that you know what'd be funny is the

MaxChef holding up one of those bathroom signs where it's the half man half woman And it's like, you know, wearing half the dress, but he's making a chef kissing, you know, kissing his fingers. This is so good.

Speaker AA man who wears half a skirt on the right side of his body is okay in my bathroom. That sign really creeps me out.

MaxIt's so wrong. It's so misguided. What a fucking weird conception of like a gender inclusive bathroom that it's like a chimeral half man, half woman that's split evenly down the middle.

AlexI mean, from the beginning.

MaxFantastic beasts and where they're in it. Like the penis is bisected down the middle like you cut a hot dog for a child.

AlexThis might be a good after show.

MerlinExcuse me, do you sell half skirts?

MaxI'm sorry, I don't understand.

MerlinYou mean like short skirts? No. No, I want a skirt that's a half on the right so I can use the Italian background.

MaxI need a hoop skirt like a 1700 school teacher. Only half.

AlexI mean, all women identify as triangles apparently.

MaxThose people think that whoever designed that sign conceives of trans people like a fusion from Steven Universe.

Speaker AWe are the bathroom men.

AlexOkay.

Speaker AAnybody wants to go make a big piece or whatever they want in my bathroom, it's okay with me. Everybody, they welcome. They welcome. He's a, she's a, me's a, you go in there like a caperini and spread the whole place with your glorious stream.

MaxThere was one of the conservative of Twitter trolls. I saw that sign was on my mind because there was a great tweet going around where the guy was like, the guy posted a picture and he's like, can you imagine how creeped out you'd be if your child wanted to use this bathroom and he took a picture of the bathroom sign and I was like, if you could just zoom out from that picture, what you would see is like an angry little man taking photos of a bathroom and that's the issue is the sign.

AlexIt's very normal. It was like a slow zoom into the weird triangle lady man icon. It was so weird.

MaxIt was bizarre. I wish all those people should have to look at themselves in third-person view from a video game. It would be so upsetting. If you went to the mall and there was just a guy slowly taking a scowling and slowly taking a video of the bathroom as he zoomed in on his phone. There's a line. And he's like, these fucking sickos, they're obsessed with bathrooms. The bathroom sickos. They want our children to go in these bathrooms.

Speaker AI feel so sick. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez probably takes off her shoes when she pees in here. She gets her bare feet all over the dirty bathroom. I hate her fucking policies.

MaxAnd then she makes me suck on her toes with her dirty feet.

Speaker ASo, challenge. You guys ready to spark joy?

MaxWe should give Quinn a raise for having to edit this episode.

MerlinThat's no good boss.

Speaker AOh, God. How am I going to find out what I got to find out? If you're not going to find out what I got to find out. Duh. Woke Luigi is such a good character. No, I'm woke Chico Marx.

AlexOh, God. Oh.

Speaker AAll right. Who's sparking joy? Let's go. Let's spark some fucking joy.

AlexMm-hmm.

Speaker ALet's fold some shirts.

AlexIt was Max's challenge this week. Max? Yes.

Speaker AOh, fuck.

MaxThe challenge was to watch the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Condominium.

Speaker AMm-hmm.

MaxYep. Did you guys watch it? I did. I watched two and a half episodes of it before I realized that they're all the same episode. They are indeed.

MerlinYes. That's an easy one for me because I had a little tickle to want to do some sparking joy. And so my family had actually, I've made my family watch it. My daughter is obsessed with it. She loves it. Oh, your daughter likes it. Wow. Now is she, so she's into cleaning?

She's into TV, which makes her into cleaning. Sure. But no, I want you guys to talk. I don't want to be a karma sucker. You guys tell me how good this was.

MaxI'm doing a big deep cleanup. I mean, I just, I happen to be doing a deep cleanup of our house. And I saw people talking about this on Twitter and I wound up watching the two episodes while I was doing a big clean.

Speaker AAnd it was interesting.

MaxI mean, for me, it was more of, I don't think I necessarily got any techniques or anything from watching it where I was like, oh, I'll do that. I would say two big ideas that I got from watching it. Idea number one is Americans have so much shit. Americans are just drowning in stuff. And I don't think that those people are weird. I think that they're sort of normal Americans. I actually think it's weird to have one of those LA clean houses where there's nothing out.

I think most people have just full drawers, whatever. It's like a goldfish. It just expands to the size of its bowl, and you're just inundated with stuff. And everywhere you go, you get free little shits that get put in your hand, and they go in a drawer, and you keep them forever. And so I thought about that, how just Americans are just drowning in shit. And the other thing I thought about is in order to clean something, you actually have to make a mess. In order to clean a drawer, you have to take everything out of the drawer. And I think that for people who aren't sort of, that's like a learned skill.

And if you don't know that, it seems really counterintuitive. It seems like my goal is to tidy the kitchen. That's a really good point. And it does not look like you're tidying the kitchen when you're in the process of doing it. It actually looks like you made a colossal mess. But I really did like the idea of like if you want to go through your, I mean, this seems almost so obvious to me that it was interesting that she needed to tell people it. But yes, if you're going to go through your clothes, you take them all out and you make a big pile of the clothes and then you put back what you want.

MerlinYeah.

MaxThat's useful, I think, for people to think about.

AlexI'm glad people are enjoying it.

MerlinIt is very sweet and very entertaining.

AlexI like the score, except for that song at the weird pop song at the end. Um, it's very nice that. I like her.

MaxI think she's charming.

MerlinI can hang out with her.

AlexYeah. I just like productivity porn. It feels like cleaning porn. And I don't know. It's a nice, sweet show that I found boring because each. I only watched two, but it's like, oh, a couple comes closer together as they work together to clean their homes. babe babe babe babe shut up

Merlindid you know she had two different cold sores

Alexokay Matchy and I were having a fight about that of whether or not I was like

Merlinshe had a cold sore on her lower lip in the early part and then on her upper lip and then like that sucks

Alexyeah we Matchy was like no no no those are just birthmarks and I was like no no no those are changing position and we were trying to

Speaker Athat's Uncle Wickey slowly moving as she speaks

MaxI'm watching the um the survivor season the the uh the first one oh it's the first of brains

Speaker Abeauty bra on one with tie on it oh I love that that's a tough season man where are they're in the are they in so it was so arbitrary those distinctions were so fucking arbitrary oh yeah

Maxvery weird but um they're like wherever the location they're in is like maybe it was like Thailand or something but it's or it's just where are they're just pissing rain yeah yeah they're in Cambodia and it's just brutal they're all covered in like lesions and like burnt like they're all sunburned and they're all getting infected like it is a brutal season oh my god yeah I don't want to get into all the other crazy shit that happens in that season but that's a good one I there's that one challenge where something happens that oh I remember that the crazy and then The Twist, the Tribal Council.

I remember that season.

MerlinCrazy.

AlexI don't know. Yes, the crazy, crazy twist.

MaxThat's the season where the woman gets the insect in her ear.

AlexOh, I haven't seen. I guess I watched.

MaxYou would know what season I'm talking about.

AlexNo, no. I watched the Brains vs. Braun. Did you see that one, Merwin? Brains vs. Braun. No. My daughter shotgunned a bunch of those when I wasn't around, so I missed a bunch in the middle. What season is this?

MaxThis is the original Brains vs. Beauty vs. Braun.

AlexI thought I saw that, huh? With Todd.

Speaker AIs this the guy with the baseball guy? that gets thrown out in the first episode? I don't think so.

MerlinNo, no, no. Where they say, okay, pick out the weakest people in your tribe and then those people go back to the camp and there's a clue there. You can either go find an idol or you can get all this extra food for the tribe.

MaxI think that's... I believe that's the second Brains of Beauty brawn one. Because I did see one with Ty.

Speaker AI like Ty a lot. That guy's cool. He is great.

AlexDo you guys like Pav Pav?

Speaker APav Pav. I don't know that.

MerlinPav Pav. I don't think I know that either.

AlexI don't either. I can't. I like Bob.

MerlinI want Bob to win everything every year.

AlexI'm told that I say her name like Poverty.

Speaker AOh, Parvati?

AlexParvati Shallow? Is that Poverty?

Speaker AI like Parvati Shallow. I love saying Parvati Shallow.

AlexWait, why is she Shallow? Her name is Parvati Shallow. Wait, for real? Does she go to Hogwarts?

MerlinParvati Shallow is in like three different seasons.

AlexI love her.

MerlinI love her too. I love her character.

AlexOh my God. She's so good. Anyway, she's my current favorite. but not a fan of TJ.

MerlinYou can tell we love the Marie Kondo series because we're talking about survival.

AlexYep, yep. I'm glad that it's making people happy. I am too. It's a show that does no harm, I think.

MaxYou know what I liked? Here's another thing I liked. I liked in the beginning where she made everyone be quiet and thank the house. I got weirdly emotional when they did that. I don't know why. That just felt so Oriental to me.

MerlinIt seemed like such Orientalism to me. It's like she's somebody out of a fucking Totoro movie thinking a tree. it's just so like i like that like we i know i know i mean there's so much about she is obviously very charming she never stops smiling which gets a little creepy after a while it looks like it hurts she really smiles big that's her policies i don't like i like her feet um i'm curious about

Alexhow you think it does does harm well maybe that's too strong of a word i have so many opening

Merlinstatements i mean my big opening statement is my wife got the book and um i've never read the book

AlexI have.

MerlinIt always seemed a little kind of like woo-woo, the whole thanking your underwear before you throw it away and that kind of stuff. But as far as the show, such as it is, there's a Latin term for this and I don't remember. But okay, so the show as it is, it's entertaining. It is a kind of productivity porn. I would call it organization porn, but it's a very specific cult of personality organization porn. In some ways, it's a lot like Queer Eye. We can sit and watch a far better show, in my opinion. If you watch Queer Eye, you don't actually have to do anything to improve your life.

You can just enjoy that relationship. And I think people like her. It's fun that she doesn't really speak English, and there's a translator. She's adorable. She's quirky. She's three or four inches shorter than my daughter. She's a real little Japanese lady, and it's really cute. And I think it's fun to watch. It's entertaining. It's delightful.

But I don't want to be a karma suck, but having gotten the gospel about Peter Walsh 10 years ago. I don't, I, having not read her book, in fairness, I don't, I don't think what I see on screen gets to the more, there's no deep, I don't feel like there's a deeper philosophy that animates how we got where we are. And I think merely taking your shirts out and folding them does not help. There's, there's not, the thing I love about Peter Walsh, and I don't want to fucking go on for an hour. The thing I love about the Peter Walsh book was, it's all too much, was that it, it begins

by saying, however you feel right now, it's probably not good. Here's a bunch of reasons you have stuff you feel like you can't get rid of. That to me is where it begins. I mean, this was basically, what did I say in our problematic text channel? This is like, just like, it's like,

Alexshe's like an anime. It's Hello Kitty, Hello Kitty Peter Walsh.

MerlinI think I said she's an anime container store is what I said. Like her solution is get cuter boxes. And it's like, no, like the second step is getting rid of almost everything. but the first step is understanding how you got there. You can't really fix the problem, even in the short term, let alone, I have no idea how sparking joy helps in the long term. Maybe it does for some people. For people who have like cute inspirational prints on fucking cushions on their couch, maybe that works. But I just feel like it is cute, it's fun, it's porn.

It's not a serious attempt to address the problems that underlie how we get into a situation we feel like we can't get out of. So just for myself, this would not be something that changed my life in any way because it doesn't address those deeper issues.

AlexI continue to be confused because I did read the book and didn't really... I'm glad...

Speaker ADid you feel like it addressed the stuff I'm talking about, though? Did it get to like... Nope.

AlexWhat was your main takeaway? Exactly. My main takeaway was, okay, so I'm supposed to... All right, decluttering is good, but it was most of the thinking of your objects as it, the reason it felt weird was it was very much about cherishing objects. And I was just like, but I just want to get rid of, I don't want anything to spark joy. I just want to get rid of it. And the only thing that makes me happy is my iPhone, everything else go away. And that is,

and afterwards I read the Peter Walsh book. And I do think that the tidying up stuff doesn't, really speak to I mean it speaks to an American audience obviously because of the goldfish thing but it doesn't address those problems and it just goes down easy and it's like the little boxes will

Merlinsolve all your problems and yeah do you feel like you like when you're watching the show at no point did I feel myself like heavily identifying with the people in it they were just as with Queer Eye I'm mainly looking at the relationship between this woman and in the case the first episode, this family, there was nothing where I mean, certainly there's a thing where you look at each other and go, oh, yeah, we got lots of clothes, too. But there was nothing that like animated me to go in the same way that Peter Walsh book did, where I was like, I can't live like this anymore. I literally cannot live like this anymore. Just with the unresolved emotional

relationships with objects that I've never addressed and why that is, you know, I didn't

Alexfeel like it had that seriousness to it. The and so did you only watch the first episode? Yes, So the first episode doesn't address, it addresses hardly anything from the book. And the other weird thing of the book is, what is it? Step four is extra miscellaneous, which includes the kitchen, the garage. And the garage. And it's like, all right, this was not written for, it makes sense in a lot of Asian cultures.

And she even says, oh God, this kitchen is so big, but in a much cuter way. with a smile on her face.

Speaker AOr a rictus, a rictus of spark joy.

AlexYeah. I could clap my mouth. But yeah, I don't know. Like if people read the book and it resonates with them, cool.

MerlinYeah, I mean, you could go and watch Iron Man and not feel the need to put an engine in your heart and become a superhero. You just enjoy it for like a fun thing. I think that's fine for this.

MaxBut I have a different take on the whole sparking joy thing. I think that most people, we are all broken in that we think so much about getting rid of things and throwing things out and the stuff in our lives and getting the right things. And I think that that is very weird. I think we are, I'm glad that we all found each other and we do this show together or whatever. I know it's weird. Such outliers. And most Americans literally have never taken the time to think about are the things in my house like helping my life and making me happy or not it's like a random assemblage of

like hand-me-downs and crap and garbage that's just piled up and just any rubric i mean is sparking joy like the exact best thing that i think i could come up with for keeping or getting rid of things i don't know maybe i haven't put a lot of thought into it maybe i'd come up with something better maybe not but like at least it's something it's like a good way to think about like is this thing making me happy or weighing me down that is that's pretty good well what uh merlin you

AlexWhat is it that Peter Walsh said? And Marie Kondo says a similar thing of like, do you want to bring this forward with you into the future? She talks about that in the second episode.

MerlinI mean, he gets really into the weeds in a way that I found more appealing than at least this one episode of a TV show. I want to constantly stipulate that. But you don't have to. I mean, he wants you to buy into this big idea. It's sort of like GTD in the sense of like, you really need to buy into this big idea before you jump straight into the implementation tips. The implementation tips are useless unless you have the philosophical underpinning. And if I had to summarize, and this is not going to sell the book, me saying this, but it does become very fucking important. If you had to distill Peter Walsh into a sentence or two, it would be, do the things in your life, all of the things.

are they bringing you closer to a life you want to have in the future, or are they keeping you bound to a life you had or wanted to have had in the past? That's just the jumping off point. And then from there, it gets real uncomfortable. Because then you get down into, well, I keep this thing, because my kid made this picture. Well, he made this picture. My kid made this picture. It's like, okay. So you're going to keep all the pictures, and that's your way of showing honor. Because you have conflated relationships with objects. And that's okay a little bit. but if you just look at it on the basis of sparking joy like i just said to i actually a

listener on back to work asked if we talk about this and i gave him my kind of you know in a nut take on on at least that one episode and it's like the problem is that if you're a hoarder you live in a strange world where everything and nothing spark joy on the one hand you know and hate like that you're surrounded by all this shit you feel like you can't get rid of but you don't have any what's your word mac any rubric any framework for understanding a how you got there and the be what you do about it. Because I've got hoarders in my family, and I've been there while they hold a Family Circle magazine from 1989 and say, I think there might be something

important in here. It doesn't spark joy, but that's nowhere near getting to what it would take to say, no, I have a larger framework for understanding how this has made my life unmanageable.

That's part of the distinction. Maybe she does that in the book. It's cute, it's fun, but I need somebody to dig way deeper into my fucked up brain to help me understand how I got here and understanding that requiring a change, even just an initial cleanup, you know, that doesn't last for five years. I mean, I've done the Peter Walsh thing. My wife and I, our life changed when we did it at our house. Cause like you start to fucking hate everything you own. As soon as you really force yourself to look at it, you get so in a good way, you get so mad at yourself saying, I'm never going to wear those pants again. Why is this allowed any cubic centimeter of space in my life? And yet here it's been that whole time.

and like that's, I don't know, I need something more, I'm sorry, I'm going on too long, but that's the thing where like, as somebody who is an admirer and adherent of that system, when I need to get, if I need to get management with my productivity life, I turn to getting things done. When I need to get my physical spaces in order, I turn to Peter Walsh, because both of those really encourage a much deeper understanding of what you're getting wrong about yourself before you can understand what you're getting wrong about all of your stuff. And to quote myself, never organize anything that you should throw away.

You've got to get to what you throw away or whatever, donate. Don't organize anything that

Maxyou shouldn't have. Something I've thought about a lot is to me, having empty counters, having your counters not be filled with stuff, having empty drawers and space on your bookshelves, it represents things that you can do. If all of your counters are taken up with like mail that you need to open and projects that you're halfway through and your bookshelves are crammed and the books are piled up in the little nooks horizontally and every drawer is full, you can't start anything new.

You can't learn a new thing or undertake a new project. You're giving yourself the gift of future possibility by throwing out old things and cleaning things up. It's kind of like mise en place in some ways. Yeah, totally. Like that's, that's always what I'm thinking about is like, if I, uh, I'm an inherently a lazy person and a, and a procrastinator and, and I have no ability to like, like, I can't just like, I, whatever that thing is where people can sit down and start working. I don't have that. I have to like wait for the muse to, I have to have just the right amount of coffee and

wait for the muse to strike and hope it's the right day. And when I get that energy of like, Ooh, I'm going to like do some work now. Like, man, there can't be anything in my way. It can't be like, oh, I can't find the pen that I need.

MerlinYou got to remove all of the friction, real or perceived.

MaxExactly. Exactly. So I need to know where all my shit is and I need to have an empty counter space and a table to work at and all that kind of stuff. Because otherwise I know that that moment will be gone. So if I don't feel like working, like a big thing for me is like tidying, like throwing stuff out, like making space. And then when the moment is right for me to work and I'm like, okay, I'm going to sit down and write this thing or do this thing. Like I'm, I like, I know, I know that I, I like, what is it? It's like, I have my own back.

MerlinYou know, and it evidences itself in your work where you would notice if you went for whatever reason, if you went three weeks without having, I think he's talked before about having the exact setup at home as you do at work, like to be able to have this environment and this table, these pens or whatever, exactly a certain way. You know, we can debate whether that's the healthiest thing in the world. But the truth is that is how you work. No, no, no, no. I don't mean it that way. I just I'm the same way.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinBut like I mean, I need the thing is this one postage size area on the microwave is more important to me than my entire desk. I could fuck all about, as long as I can move the microphone to where my mouth is, I don't care. But I do understand what you're talking about. Like, don't put anything in that fucking area. That is my area for stuff.

But you would see, what I'm trying to get at is that has a real world component where you would notice a decline in the quantity and quality of work that you can do, as well as probably a really niggling psychological pain about not being able to get your hands around it. You would notice that within two.

MaxOh, I know so many people who are messy, who just have their everything. If you open a drawer, you know, whatever, it's like stuff explodes out of it like a jack-in-the-box. And they'll say to me, I'll be like, how can you work like this? And they're like, I don't think about it. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't affect me. I don't believe.

Speaker AI think that's important. I think that's the part of the problem with the Inbox Zero stuff. I don't think.

MerlinIt's like if it doesn't bother you, you don't need this probably.

MaxIf it does bother you, you need to acknowledge that and address it. I don't believe them deep down that it doesn't bother them. I think it bothers, I think it makes everybody anxious and takes up, like, uses some of your cycles. And it's a kind of a distraction and kind of upsetting to have just shit everywhere when you're trying to sit and focus and work. There's just no, there's no way it doesn't bother people on some. Maybe it's, like, not a big factor and you're like, well, I can just work. What they're saying is I can just work through it. But, like. Like compartmentalize and kind of try to not notice it. Yeah, but it would be better to not do that, right?

MerlinYeah.

AlexI mean, I live with someone who says, oh, we're adults. we need to have a drunk a junk drawer and uh i don't like it i don't like it at all every time i come into the kitchen i'm like is something from the quote junk drawer going to surface and beyond the counter and it's like batteries and like strict it's all the it's it's a typical junk drawer and i'm like well why why like we we can find a place for the scissors we can find

the place for extra batteries uh so then i i uh put i did i did the little box thing but it's just

Merlini don't know like but you're you're getting at something you're getting at something important though to me or at least it's a that's a bee in my bonnet which is like i've talked about this before to me one of the most dramatic ways i can see this difference is with the main drawers there's two drawers in our kitchen that contain most of the non-utensil stuff that we use like knives and utensils are in this one drawer that's always very much in order you know i know what where everything is but then we have this drawer inside of our kitchen island another drawer in our cabinet where like it's that's all the stuff like you name it that could be a wine pourer it's

spatulas it's tongs for some reason mini sharp skewers and like the only way that i can deal with that is i and i do this sometimes i lose my fucking mind i've poked my finger on the endless number of sharp things in here i take every single thing out and put it in a banker's box and then for the next week, if I need it, I take it out of the box and it goes back in. Now, that's me and my affliction. But I'll tell you what wouldn't work for me is take the stuff out and then decide how to organize all of it. Because the organization is where, and that's the problem. So Alex, you asked me what I think is damaging.

I don't think this is deadly. I don't think lives are gonna be lost. But like, I do think there is a persistent illusion in America that the key to my happiness involves organization. Like organizing my email or organizing my drawer. It's like, no, you have to have a paradigmatically different relationship with the stuff that you're dealing with. And like if you if you discover that you've got this box that you haven't taken anything out of in six months, that should be really by the time you remember that there's this box of stuff you don't need anymore. We call it the sharps container. Like you're going to have accumulated more of that stuff because that's the junk drawer effect.

is like so organizing your junk better unless that makes you happy is not is not a um is not a penetrating approach to how you got to where you are and that's that's why with this stuff if you want to watch it for fun it's it is it's productivity porn it's organization porn have fun but like don't imagine that like you're gonna get to any deeper level about how you got to where you are and how you want to as peter walsh says create the life for yourself that you'd like to have what do you imagine yourself doing in your in your family room that you can't do now oh well you

know the kids toys are in there and the kids toys are in there and the kids toys are in there and like until you realign your idea about the life you want to have with where you are i think it's difficult to have much success just by acquiring boxes i mean the boxes are very cute don't don't get me wrong um i think the next thing we need to do is one at least one of us needs to become a KonMari consultant.

AlexI didn't know this existed until you brought it up. Shades of the dream.

MaxDo you get some sort of certification from that?

MerlinOh, Max. Oh, boy. I'll give you the link. This is fun. Here's how you go. So you go, it's KonMari, just for listeners, KonMari.com slash pages slash consultants. We will put it in show notes. And that begins with you registering for a seminar. and this is it's the thing is to become you know you're going to become here we go there's six there's six levels of certification but it's only 2200 bucks um to go to their seminar to get the training now what you're going to need to do you're going to have to provide some things first of all

requirements number one read the life changing magic of tidying up and spark joy number two tidy your home using the conmarine method trademark submit third submit after photos of your tidied home for verification. You'll be given submission instructions after registration. So you go. Marie will be there to open and close the event. She will be there. And then you get trained. And you can become one of their six levels of consultant.

Certified Master, Certified Platinum, Certified Gold, Certified Silver, Certified Bronze, or Certified Green. There's nothing in here about recruiting other people

Alexbut the hairs on my neck are up. Yeah. Oh, gross. Oh, my God.

Speaker AIt's only $2,200. You could go.

AlexIt's only $2,200. Now, where is this located?

MerlinMidtown Manhattan.

AlexWhat about this challenge? Oh, boy. Oh, there we go.

MaxOkay, how about this challenge? Book a Conmarie consultant to come to your house and tidy with you.

Speaker ACan she be adorable? All of these ladies look normal-sized. I love my curvy Conmarie consultant.

Thank you.

113. Fantastic Beasts and Where They Urinate

Show notes

Transcript

113. Fantastic Beasts and Where They Urinate

Show notes

Transcript

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