130. The Screaming Spectrum

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

MaxMy Tamagotchi made a, made a duty. Oop, oop. Got to press the A button to flush.

AlexOh.

MaxNow he's happy. Or sad. I can't tell.

AlexAre there A buttons? I just have three buttons. Merlin, how are you on this Wednesday?

MerlinI'm fine. I'm doing very well. How are you, you peeps?

AlexOh, I am riding the Claritin D train today and feeling great.

MerlinOh, fantastic.

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinYou breathing clear?

AlexMm-hmm. Makes me sniff just to hear it. Tremendous.

MaxI have a little follow up to get us started with please let's see I have an article first of all I'll just open up my document here

Alexin the meantime Merlin do you know what beverage I'm opening by the sound of the pop top at this point

Merlinyes well I know it's probably not a diet coke I'm gonna guess it's an over

Alexwhat Okay, sorry. Go on.

MerlinI was going to say an oversized energy drink can.

AlexNo, no. Because I'm writing the D today, just have a Diet Coke.

MaxOh, man. I got that wrong. Follow-up. CNN. Mark Zuckerberg says he invented a, quote, sleep box to improve his wife's slumber. Whoa. What? No. D? No.

MerlinOh, no. No. Zuckerberg's sleep box. Okay. Oh, look at that. Oh, he's got children.

MaxNow, I have to say, it's a little less funny if you read the article.

MerlinOh, she's icy.

MaxIt's not like a slumber cask. He didn't build a coffin for her to sleep in.

AlexOkay, put this in the super secret text channel.

MaxHe built like a little box with LEDs in it that lights up to tell her what time it is so she doesn't have to look at the clock. And I will say, I actually, no one is more excited to make fun of Mark Zuckerberg than me. But I will say that is good advice. If you wake up in the middle of the night to pee or something, don't look at what time it is. I agree. That's not going to help you. That won't do anything. Just go back to sleep if you can.

MerlinI say it all the time. This comes back to commitment. Like we talked about in our sleep after show. If you're committed to sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, you don't need to know what time it is. You just need to know it's sleep time.

MaxYep. Do not look at the clock. It does not help you. I did it last night. I got up to pee or something was wrong, and I kind of did a little putter through the house, and then I made the mistake of looking at my phone. I was like, I'll just see what maybe there's any news or what time it is. And I'll tell you right there, that did not help my sleep situation. Oh, God. Did not help. I also had a little, Merlin, would you be up for a minute of some listener follow-up and thank yous? Because Alex and I have accumulated some different notes and gifts, and we wanted to do a couple of little listener shout-outs.

MerlinNo, I love that. Dugga, dugga, dugga. Thank you.

MaxCool. All right. So first one is from my pal Neil. Neil sent me some pens. He sent me the Tool, T-U-L, needlepoint pen. They're good pens. I've actually switched to them over my Pilot Precise V5 Extra Finds.

MerlinWow. We're not sharing a doc, and it's very confusing. What is it called? It's called Tool, T-U-L, and there's a little umlaut over the U.

MaxTool. Tool. Tool. And it's called the Tool Needlepoint. Now, I will say I do not like the industrial design of the pen. I feel like the pen is a little bit of a space pen, which I do not like. Just make it simple.

MerlinOkay.

MaxThis has like a gradient on it.

MerlinOkay. Tool Needlepoint. Okay.

MaxBut it has a good click. I think the writing action is really good. Oh, Needle Space Point.

MerlinNeedle space point. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought it was for crafts. Okay. I see. It's a pen. Tool retractable gel pens, 0.5 millimeter needle space point black four pack by tool.

MaxYeah. I endorse these pens. I have switched to using them at work and that's all that's on my desk. Okay.

MerlinNext up is. Wow. You're moving really fast. Okay. All right. Next one. Next one.

MaxWe got a very nice note from Dr. Don. Thank you, Dr. Don. Thank you, Dr. Don. us and thanked us for coming into the podcast studio and hanging out. I don't understand. That feels like it's, it feels like we should have sent Dr. Don a thank you note. Yeah, it seems like the kind of thing we should do as a matter of fact when we have guests. We should send them like a Dubai Friday windbreaker and a thank you note. Yeah, that's a good idea.

MerlinYeah, we can make, we can make one on the spot. You just take one off the coat rack and you write Dubai Friday on it and say thank you. Here's your gift.

AlexOh, who hasn't? That's a big, that's a

Maxhuge fucking classy move sending a little thank you note. This is, this is your windbreaker now. Yeah. I have often fantasized about becoming a thank you note guy. I think so much about becoming a thank you note guy. It's a little like the Louis bit where he's like, he saw the troop getting on the plane and he thought about giving up his first class seat and he didn't do it, but he's like, I'm a good person for thinking that I could have done that. Oh, I absolutely

Merlinagree. I think just how you have considered it is a tremendous gesture on your part.

MaxSo now to me, step zero of doing that would be, I would need to go through all my contacts and update them with current addresses. Oh, God, here we go. So that when I see someone, I could use one of those apps that makes a card, and I would sort of be like, boop, send a card to Dr. Don, done.

MerlinYeah. You know, oh, so you're saying, okay, so you're going to automate gratitude. Maybe you could do a plug-in. You could do a keyboard maestro or a Siri shortcut and send gratitude to Dr. Don.

MaxTo be clear, I would manually type in a note saying, thanks for coming on the show, and then I would put, maybe I would drag a picture of my cat in there.

MerlinYeah, you could use TextExpander. You could do a fill-in form, not a sponsor this week, but you could do a fill-in form for TextExpander and express your gratitude that way.

MaxOkay, nobody curse for 30 seconds.

MerlinOkay. Hi. This episode of Dubai Friday is brought to you in part by Slack, the messaging app for teens.

AlexOh, the teens. Actual quick questions.

MerlinThe teens are calling it slacking.

AlexNo. No. Ha ha ha.

MerlinSlacking. Hard thread. Slacking. Offline.

MaxI think it's going to involve a popper. I think it's when you do a popper, you dab.

MerlinHa ha! My daughter has introduced ironic dabbing. She's like, all my friends and me hate dabbing. So we brought back dabbing. And I had to explain, you've got to be careful with that, because I used to make fun of Eddie Vedder's voice. Everybody in my band started going, yeah, yeah. And then we couldn't stop doing it. So be careful with ironic dabs. That's all I want to say.

AlexUrban Dictionary, third definition of slacking. When she's on her period, so you finger her butthole.

MerlinOkay.

AlexThe end. All right, what's next, Max? Thank you to...

MerlinWow, you guys are moving fast. Okay.

MaxThank you to Buttoggs. I hope I'm saying that right from the Dubai Friday Discord, who sent us a little holiday card and a very nice note that is framed and it's on Alex's desk. Thank you for that. Let's see, moving on. This is the barbecue sauce guy. Oh, this was so good. Thank you to Kyle. So Kyle sent us a bunch of barbecue sauce that he makes. It is named after his great-grandfather and his – oh, it's named after his great-grandfather. He started the company with his dad. I am looking now for the name of the barbecue sauce company,

which I hope is on the note because I do not have the sauce with me here.

AlexI have the sauce. We'll put it in show notes. Is it called Daddy Sam's?

MaxI think it's called Daddy's. I mean, I hope so. That's a great name.

Speaker AI believe it's called Daddy Sam's.

MerlinThat one's taken. and you can't use it now.

MaxSo we received a few jars of the Daddy Sam's barbecue sauce, and I have to say it was a fucking good barbecue sauce. It was a really good barbecue sauce. Definitely, I personally endorse the Daddy Sam's brand of barbecue sauce. Yeah, it's definitely named Daddy Sam's.

MerlinWell, what's the nature? Like, for example, I've recently got a lot. I'm not a nut about it, but I've gotten a little bit more into the varieties of hot sauce. What is it you, because, you know, they're different. And, like, what is it you like about Daddy Sam? What do you like about his sauce?

MaxI'm out of my depth here. Sweet, smoky, zesty, vinegary. Okay, so the main thing I liked, first of all, was the texture. I really like a thick, goopy barbecue sauce. Yes. Because to me, I don't think, number one, I don't think you should be cooking with barbecue sauce. I think barbecue sauce is something you put on when you're done.

MerlinIt's a huge misunderstanding.

MaxYeah. And when you cook it on, you do not want some sort of thin, liquidy thing. and you want a nice, like a thick sauce that's going to stick to the meat.

MerlinIsn't barbecue sauce, I mean, like, I know about the thing with, like, dingling guys trying to make ribs by taking a raw rack of ribs, putting barbecue on it, and throwing it on a grill without any par cooking. Isn't it something you kind of want to finish with? Forgive my saying. Don't you kind of want to finish with a sauce, like a zesty, thick sauce? Well, I can't finish without the sauce. Alex, please, please, this is a cooking question. Don't make it weird. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But when you're ready to finish, do you deploy the sauce? Uncle Sam? Uncle Sam? Mr. Sam?

Mr. Sam's my father. I'm Daddy Sam.

MaxThat's a little something I like to call slacking. Also thank you to the many, many listeners who sent in books for me to put in my Little Free Library And now there's a few more Little Free Libraries up on the Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago All of the books have been deployed, most of them have been taken

that was very very nice it made me really happy if you have extra books and you want me to give them out in my little free library you can go ahead and send them to the office just put it C.O. Max Temkin 1917 North Elston Chicago Illinois 60622 and I did want to give a special shout out to Joey who gave a complete set of the Dune Trilogy and that was probably just personally that was I thought that was like the coolest book that I put out there.

MerlinThat's gonna, does that take up a lot of cubic inches? Isn't there,

Maxaren't those large tomes of books? No, Dune's a reasonably sized science fiction book.

MerlinIt's reasonably sized. Okay. Okay.

MaxYeah.

AlexAlso a bunch of people sometimes send things without saying who they are, which is totally okay. And someone sent me a book called the tomboy survival guide, which I love. So thank you for whoever did that. And someone sent a bunch of European chocolate, which was addressed to me so I kept it um and if you just want to keep sending plain European chocolate or uh crunchies as we've talked about before you know I'm not saying you should but

Merlinyou like a crunchy you when you ate that veiny egg you were happy that it had crispies in it

AlexI I do I like it that's that's the thing don't like flavors love textures interesting my friend

MerlinHarry used to say you know the best way to get stuff in life is to ask for it I still think about that. Now you're telling people, you're guiding them. Send me chocolates. Send me European chocolates. But don't make them weird. I had a really scarring incident involving candy as a child. We went to my it was like around, did I ever tell this story? Like around Christmas time, we went to my father's boss's house. A wonderful guy, wonderful family. And we went to do like a gift exchange. And they said, well, Marilyn, we have something for you. I'm like, oh, thank you.

Oh my God, it's a box of candy! hey, and I open it up, and me, I'm like a dumb kid from Ohio, and I'm thinking like, oh, this is going to be like my personal bespoke box of Nestle's, and I will plow into these. The very first one of them I put in my mouth in my recollection, it was a literal holocaust because it involved like some kind of like the bad chocolate. Like, you know when you're a little kid and you got baker's chocolate in the refrigerator and you're like, you keep eating it and going, I keep forgetting how terrible this is. It had bitter chocolate on the outside.

I know it had a nut. It had a big-ass nut, and I think it had that orange stuff, the orange foam that should not be in candy. I took one bite of it. I immediately wanted to throw up, but I didn't want to be rude, so I held it in my mouth for an hour.

AlexGood job. That is a feat for a child. Wow.

MerlinIt was so—why did they have to make chocolate interesting? I mean, I like a dark chocolate. I've grown to enjoy a dark chocolate. But why did they have to put all this stuff in candy? where you've got to give a guide. There's a guide. You buy a box of candy. It comes with a map. You're not playing D&D. You're trying to have a treat. Why do we have to do it? Do people like those? Do people actually like the weird ones?

AlexOkay, I've never, I don't think, as far as I know, I've received any treats with a guide. Is this an Ohio thing? What is happening?

MerlinIf you go to your Walgreens or similar.

AlexOkay.

MerlinLet's say it's around the Valentine's Day holiday, and you pick you up a heart-shaped box of the Russell Stovers. And it's going to be a wackadoo combination of weird shit. And it includes like a map.

AlexOh, I see what you're saying.

MerlinIt has a map to show you. This is the disgusting like orange foam one. And then, of course, like you go through and you pick up the normal ones that a person would eat. I don't know. Maybe I'm just lumping. Like maybe I just don't like nice things. I don't like weird chocolate. Just give me a dark chocolate and quit fucking around. I'll eat a Kit Kat bar. I'll eat most of the quotidian chocolate products. But like, why does it have to be clever? You know what I'm saying?

MaxWhen there's one of those gift chocolates where it's like a bunch of little cubes and then you have all the little truffles and they're all different colors. Yes. And there's a guide where you have to hold the guide up and you're like, oh, this one is pistachio and lemon rind. Like I regard it with extreme suspicion. Most of those will not be good. And here's the thing. If you're not, everyone I feel like in those situations when you crack one of those things open, you're going to get a first round draft pick and that guy's going to be a performer. Okay? That's where you're going to get the caramel. You're going to get the peanuts.

You're going to get the nougat. You're going to get the milk chocolate, the dark chocolate.

MerlinThe stuff that lots of normal people would enjoy putting in their fucking mouth.

MaxLet's just say that's the cheese pizza of the chocolate box.

MerlinOkay?

Speaker AYes.

MerlinThat's like that with Cal Ripken.

MaxNow, by the time you come around to your second round draft pick and that thing is going around for a second circle, nobody wants the dried squid truffle. It's like a draft. You're right. Nobody wants it. And the fall off from round one to round two, oh boy, not good.

MerlinIt's like two orders of magnitude. Not good. Like bad. It's like one hundredth as good.

MaxOh, this one is fish sauce and toffee.

MerlinIt's got umami. Yeah. I don't know. There's all kinds of stuff. I don't want to belabor this. But there's all kinds of stuff like this. There's this phenomenon that I identified in my own head years ago that I used to call macrame. And it's the phenomenon of it suddenly becomes necessary for everybody to get into something. Oh, you're not doing macrame? Everyone's doing macrame. For a long time, it was like buying a Ford Bronco. Why did everybody in 1999 need an SUV? But everybody bought one because everybody had to have one.

Is anybody actually happy with varieties of chocolate?

MaxFollow up. Fox News. Avengers Endgame leaves a fan hospitalized for uncontrollable crying. Oh. The long-awaited ending to what happens to be everyone's favorite Avengers in Endgame.

MerlinThis emotional instability is everything right now.

MaxIs breaking early records and also leaving fans extremely emotional. A fan cried so much during the movie she began hyperventilating and having trouble breathing. This woman was given oxygen and released from the hospital.

MerlinI'm trying to tell you, madam, you got an extreme case of the Vinci's.

Maxyou know the other thing merlin um the macrame principle is i have observed it super super acutely with the um presidential primary because i really can i really have i i I've really gone full Dr. Manhattan on this election.

And I'm just watching. I'm not participating.

MerlinI'm not working. You're just sitting on Mars. You just need to be away from all this mess.

AlexDid you paint your penis and put a tattoo on your head?

MaxI'm not going to discuss my hog. I apologize. I'm not going to discuss any possible hog-related news. No spoilers. No spoilers. No spoilers.

MerlinAlso, put a fork in this. Want to know what symbol Max would draw on his forehead? We can come back to that.

AlexExactly.

MerlinI don't think it's going to be hydrogen, but I'm curious what it's going to be. Yes. So you've gone Dr. Manhattan on this election. Are you following the polls? Are you following the polls, Max?

MaxOh, I'm watching from afar, but I'm not like working.

MerlinOK. You're not going to get involved in their mess. You're taking clocks apart with your mind.

MaxI am actually done with elections right now. I finished all the municipal elections. I'm not working on any campaigns. I have a few sort of advocacy issues in Chicago that I am involved in. But I'm seriously – I kind of took stock the other day of – I did really, really well in all the elections I worked on in Chicago. It was like one of the best election cycles of my life. Got a bunch of cool people elected to city council. And I felt awful. Like it was – I feel – I felt – my experience was I felt all of the lows of the stress, the misery, having to deal with these like just absolute assholes and incompetent people.

I really was miserable every single hour and minute that I was working on it. And it felt like it went on forever. And I experienced none of the happiness of winning. And I think that might be as a sign that I need to take a break from politics and go make some board games or something.

MerlinYeah, I've gotten pretty fatigued with the list.

MaxYeah.

MerlinI'm like visiting. No, no, no. Because you guys are going to go, man, I was off that a long time ago. But no, I still have looked at it.

MaxI read it every day. I read it when I get up to pee at 2 in the morning.

MerlinWell, mine started out better than yours, but now it's gotten way better than yours because I have done some pruning. I've done a lot of pruning. And boy, have I got some notes for you on your list. Oof. David Korn. There's so much stuff where I just can't. I agree with you on the Dr. Manhattan thing. But, like, you know how it is. There's something obvious, and it takes a long time to sink in. And it's like, God, this is so embarrassing to say, this is not making me happy. Like, and again, stuff you guys are going to yell at me about because it's very choppo to yell at me about this.

But like, I can't watch MSNBC anymore. Like, I would watch it and I'd go, ha ha, Rachel's really going to get him tonight. And now it's just like, it's all so, it just, it feels like, it feels like Fox for liberals. It just feels like you're telling me what I want to hear.

MaxThere's also, there's also a feeling of like, do you know what the like, the idea in psychology of like learned helplessness? So like the experiment is really grim. It would take like a dog and they would put they would put the dog in a room with a floor that was electrified. And periodically, I don't remember exactly what it was, but they would like ring a bell and then like electrify the floor. And at first, the dog would try to like take all these measures like it would be like jumping and climbing up the walls. And it would be trying to avoid the electric shocks. And after a certain number of them, it would just sort of accept its fate and lie down because it realized like there's nothing I can do.

This is just a thing that's going to happen to me. And that's like a psychological phenomenon that's like observed in people, too. And I really think that, not to be too grim about it, but I really think there's this feeling that I am recognizing in myself and I do not like where literally anything that happens, no matter what it is, it all just becomes this paste of learned helplessness where it's like, oh, cool. The attorney general, there's this whole Mueller letter to the attorney general that he misrepresented the report or whatever. And I'm just going like, oh, cool.

I'll just lie down on the floor because that's not going to help. That's not going to do anything.

MerlinYeah. You know, and I do not like that feeling. Because it's like, and actually something I did talk about on Chopper a little bit this week, is, you know, the whole like, they talked about, criticize so much stuff that they do that's so funny. But like where you're, like to become the champion poster, like the one who posts, like you have to be like, yeah, that's cool. Like you have to become like so hard as the person who feels no actual emotion about anything. And I'm going to make a really important false dichotomy here, which is that like I feel like I'm so torn between these poles of, no, this is really like seriously emotionally continuing to rip me apart on multiple levels.

You know, just like, you know, but but like there's that pole, the two poles of like, as you used to say, Max, we got him this time. It's finally going to be this thing versus like that'll matter. And I don't like feeling either of those things because neither one of those is realistic, useful or actionable. And neither one of them make me a better human being. Both of those make me more like just make me a different kind of dick.

MaxOn the other hand, there is the so like I feel like one poll of Twitter and this is my like I have like a list on Twitter. That's just a private list called weird Twitter where I read all the sort of just like the weird Twitter people. And they're all just like cynics and they all they all yearn for death. And it makes me laugh, but also it makes me so great. I mean, it is a total learned. It's a total like lie down on the floor because you're going to get electrocuted anyway. And that's on one poll. And then on the other poll, you've got this sort of uncritical positivity, this like hope punk bullshit that we.

Here we go. Oh, boy. Let's get back. Hope punk.

MerlinWe can get into the hope punk. Sorry. Sorry I sent the article. I'm sorry.

MaxNo, no. I'm glad I know the word for it. I'm glad I know that it's a thing.

AlexIs that the first time you had heard it? Yeah, I've never heard of that before.

MaxAll right, no, let's just pause here.

AlexOkay.

MaxI have somewhere I'm going with this, but let's just establish what this is. So this is an aesthetic in entertainment called Hope Punk. And to someone, Alex, do you want to explain it?

AlexOkay. Sometimes Tumblr, the social network that our friend Marco Arment founded, teens go on.

MaxBoo Marco for taking all the pornography off of Tumblr.

AlexYeah, Marco. Really bad call, buddy. There were so many gifts.

MerlinIs he the one responsible for all the ads for Facebook and nasal gavage?

AlexI think so. I think so.

MaxI finally went on Tumblr the other day just to, I was like, I wonder what's happening on this ghost town. And I used to spend six hours a day on Tumblr. I mean, it was like my place. And I went on and I had seen, and I literally had not been on since the Thanos snap where they took half the content off. And I saw there's a little thing where it's like, look at all your posts that have been flagged. And I had like four posts that were flagged and two of them were like Renaissance paintings. They were like frescoes. And Tumblr flagged it for adult content. And I was like, you have got to be fucking kidding me with this.

That is some mad Titan bullshit.

MerlinWell, yeah. And like they flag it. And then I had several, including a picture of Dr. Manhattan. I had several that came up flagged. And I think one I sent you was my daughter having poorly written the word Cyclops on an index card. but like i think maybe like the palm of her hand looked like a butt so it got flagged by the ai and so but the funny part is if you send have you tried like saying please unflag this have you have you done that oh no no no like within within i want to say oh then i want to say 15

seconds they're like yep you're good because the i'm sorry i'm taking off your topic the ai is not

Alexsmart wait wait you're you're good as in it it went back on oh yeah we we fixed that undone like

Merlinsome some poor person on the indian subcontinent had to verify that that wasn't a butt oh man uh

Maxi want to add a note card to the stack of uh customer support i have a funny story about that

Merlinbut anyway okay so tumblr tumblr you got a tumblr because they thanos the porn hope punk

Maxyeah marissa mayer she was like you should have gone for the head and then it was done

AlexOh my gosh. Well, Hope Punk is the opposite of Grimdark. Do you know what Grimdark means?

MerlinThat's that Johnny Depp character in the movie, right?

AlexYeah, uh-huh.

MerlinThe crimes of Grimdark. That sounds like it's too twisted for me to understand it, Alex.

AlexYep, yep. Yeah.

MaxYou're a real edgelord, Alex. Sounds pretty damaged.

AlexI'm sorry. It's just so stupid. I'm sorry. Hope Punk is part of a wider cultural And storytelling trend Toward optimism and positivity In the face of bleak times Because that's of course a genre That's never existed before And this is the first time anybody's thought of it

MaxNow all I wanted to say Just popping Back down all the way into the stack Where we started here was On one hand of Twitter On the one poll you have the weird Twitter people And it's just like total you know learned helplessness and then on the other hand you have lin mil mil miranda who tweets congrats to the noms the nom not the non noms and the scenery chewers this season with their nom nom noms can you hecking believe that we still get to do plays and musicals as adults how lucky are

we even to get to do this very very lucky look around and then nine emoji hearts and then hashtag tony awards 2019 that makes i'm sorry it's very positive very positive i'm sorry lynn i know you're listener but that tweet makes me want to die like i am too i am too poisoned by irony that tweet it makes me feel so much secondhand embarrassment that i want to oh i'm sure that he's

Merlindid you just make that up what like secondhand embarrassment like secondhand smoke

Maxno that's a phenomenon it's like when you see it's like when you watch michael scott do something on the office oh when you watch him do like a character you're just like oh it's a cringing It's like, oh, Jesus.

MerlinMop the ice.

MaxThat's how I feel when I see him tweet this. I want to crawl into a hole.

MerlinAll right. And I know you're a fan, so that's got to be very complicated for you.

AlexI like Lynn.

MerlinIn the heights, in the heights, in the heights today. In the heights.

AlexI have no comment on Lin-Manuel Miranda's tweets.

MerlinHe seems like a genuinely nice guy.

AlexHe seems like.

MerlinHe looks like he doesn't get enough sleep, and that worries me.

AlexOh, yeah. No. He tweets as if he's talking to a bunch of children in middle school. and that is a good thing sometimes and i don't like it's not for you just don't look at lin henwell miranda's tweets don't look at the dumb alien i but having yeah i you know what you're

Merlinboth right thank you but i i see what you're saying though i think uh you've done a good job at uh max i think you've done a nice job of showing the contrast you got the crimes of uh grimdell dark over here and then over there over there you got the musical man making hearts So which one are we going to be?

MaxThe other thing that's very frustrating is like I've been periodically – Twitter is bad for me and it makes me unhappy and it's bad for my brain and I don't want to be on Twitter.

MerlinSomebody please do a super cut of all the times Max has said that.

MaxI don't want to be on Twitter. I'm not –

MerlinNo, you don't want to like it. You don't want to like it.

MaxDon't mock me. I don't want to be on Twitter.

MerlinThey made you like it. They made you like it.

MaxThis whole nonsense with Jack Dorsey meeting with Trump, like I really had this powerful feeling of like now's the time. Like I just I need to cut my losses and go. But here's my other dilemma is like I have really tried taking Twitter off my phone. I've deleted all my tweets. I've been like I'm just going to walk away from this for a couple weeks or whatever. And I it's really hard for me to fucking tell the news because I use like I'll use like Apple News. I set up Liar with some news sources. But like damn like the news is so fucking bad. Like they're all the news today was like new details about some girl that was kidnapped in Wisconsin six months ago.

And like that's not material in my life. I don't give a shit about that. Don't I don't want to see those headlines. And then there's like very little coverage of the important stuff that's happening in politics that I care about. So it's very I mean, I genuinely am like.

It upsets me that it's very hard to Twitter is the only way I know how to read the news.

MerlinGod, you're so you're so right. And like this is you know how I'm the not the will. I'm the mad of the show because I watch SNL, you know. as my penance, I also still, I still look at Twitter, I still look at Twitter moments, like fairly often, like often, often. No, but it's, it's, it's absolutely a nexus for what is being described here. Because on the one hand, it's like, you know, oh, you know, somebody you liked in sports fucks dogs. And you're like, oh, that kind of sucks. Well, you know, Steph Curry's finger is super fucked up.

Here's a slideshow.

MaxBut then, then on the other hand, it's like, it's not even that though. It's like users react to Steph Curry's fucked up finger.

MerlinOh, yeah. 100 percent. But then you get into on the other end of that spectrum. Pardon my saying. On the other end of the spectrum. Now you've got like, oh, you're not going to believe these fan reactions when Aria is lit AF pound sign sharp knife or whatever. And it's just all like this. And you know what it is? Let me tell you what it is. It's a bunch of black lady reaction gifs. The same black lady reaction gifs over. And that's what Twitter decides to collect is that one lady going, ooh, and the other lady going, no, you didn't.

And like it's just a bunch like, oh, and somebody crying while holding wine or whatever. And it's just like that's what they've curated for us. It's dog fucking and pound signs.

MaxAnother thing that makes me want to lie down on the floor is when I see the Twitter moments and the things that they editorially collect, the Meryl Streep – what's her name? Meryl Streep laughing slowly at the Oscars and standing up. Oh, yeah. You know, everyone like applauding a sports thing with that. Just like when I see the banal...

MerlinYeah, right. Somebody in the royal family moved their eye.

MaxWhat? Yeah. When I see just the banal horse shit that Twitter is like... Because what is the moments tab? The moments tab...

MerlinTaylor Swift looks like a barcode. 17 photos.

Maxthe stop at twitter moments that's their editorial discretion of like this is what we think is

Merlingood about this platform we know what you like you fucking hogs we know what goes in the trough

Maxstop taking your face out of the trough yeah wwe is going back to saudi arabia with goldberg Cool. Yeah, cool. I love to know that.

AlexHave you considered just putting your political list, like just have it as an RSS feed, like each person as an RSS feed in Liar or in Reader, and then you just look at those?

MaxYes, but the signal-to-noise ratio is really bad, and then when I do go back on Twitter, there's whole things. I'm like, damn, I can't believe I missed this. There's whole conversation. like it is it's like it is not I'm telling you like I've put uh I've put dozens of hours of work into just finding a way to sort of get the news and know what people are talking about and I don't know how to do it without Twitter like Twitter and I was and Twitter is so bad I also hate you need

Alexa Gary on Twitter you you need a Gary you need someone with a who prints out all the tweets and all of the conversations and whispers into your ear what me oh not the privacy concern clown but

Merlinthe one who holds the Leviathan.

AlexOh, yes. I apologize. Yes.

MerlinHe's got that large magnifying glass.

AlexYou need Gay Alabama, Gary. Yeah. Oh, Gary. It was actually the, not the first spoiler, not big spoilers.

MerlinAm I misremembering? Are we talking about Buster? Who are we talking about?

AlexWe're talking about Gary from Veep.

MerlinOkay.

AlexYeah. Is that Buster? Yes.

MerlinOkay, good. I thought I had some kind of an incident. Sorry. Okay.

AlexI know. Oh, Veep got dark real fast.

MerlinOh, I'm behind one.

AlexThat would be a good smoyler smut. Is that what you call it? After show?

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. It would be. Oh, that show is so goddamn good.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinI love the school shooting. I have been working. Because, Max, I still look at your list. I'm sorry. Did you guys see the most recent episode of Veep from Sunday?

MaxMerlin just said. He did. I just said I'm behind.

Speaker AI'm sorry.

MaxI wasn't listening.

AlexThat's fine.

MaxIt's very good. Crankum, crankums. That's going to be wall-to-wall cranking cranking.

AlexMerlin, if you'd seen the episode, that would be a very funny reference.

MaxIt's going to be wall-to-wall cranking cranking in there.

MerlinCranking cranking cranking. It doesn't fucking matter. We're all going to die. I tried to make my list more like what I want my list to be, and I've used the terribleness of your list as a model. Now, real talk, I used people I learned about from your list. And here we're talking about our bespoke Twitter, political Twitter list that Max introduced us to. I got so frustrated with the bullshit on your list that I made my own. And because there's some people on yours that are just, and I don't have any way to remove them because it's your list.

You should let me edit it. Can I? Can I do that? No, don't do that. Oh, no, no. That'll be a whole thing. Is that a feature? No, no. No, well, collaboration. I'm opening up the list. I'm opening up the list. I'm trying to make mine more like what I've always wanted it to be. Which is like I've removed a lot. Obviously, there's some people I had to actually go and block because I never want to see their thing again. Look at you, Jonathan Axios. I just don't. I just don't want to see. Yeah, I know you linked to that, buddy.

You linked to that again, buddy. Like, yeah, yeah, you're the Axios guy. Get it. I get it. I get it. So people like him, he should be canceled.

Speaker ANow, there's some people like I just, you know, I mean, people that I nominally like.

MerlinAnd like, but like, OK, so I try to focus now more, a little bit more on original news breakers versus breaking news. Here's the thing everybody just talked about. Or like, you know, I saw this on The Washington Post. So now I'm telling you because you don't need 11 of those. Now, back in your fire hose days, Max, of 2016, you crave that, right? That was important. I need to see the fire hose. I think that was one of your points, was that when I jump in, I need to find out what everybody is talking about, because these are the things that will affect what happens next. Not always.

MaxI do not always want to go on Twitter and drink from the firehouse.

MerlinNo, but I'm talking about 2016. I think that was one of your-

MaxNo, no. Even now. Sometimes I want that. That's a mode that I want to be able to activate, to be like, just drop me in it. Let me see what the fuck everyone is saying right now.

MerlinI think that can be a good role for that, unless you look at it too much like I do.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinI took off a lot of the dunkers. You still keep a lot of the dunkers. There are the dunkers and the people who are trying to do weird Twitter. And I think you know people that I'm talking about here. They rarely publish things, but they do have a lot of not that funny dunks. I took off the dunkers, and I kept, of course, I kept the people who are, to my taste, genuinely funny and genuinely good at Twitter. So, like, Ashley Feinberg, oh, yeah, you know she's on there. I think she's funny as shit. uh dave weigel davitskoff like the exchanges between davitskoff and eric geller should be

in a museum someday their exchanges about misunderstanding science fiction and fantasy references need to be in the smithsonian but like i had to take off the stuff that made me keep going pull pull pull pull pull pull pull and i don't know if it's gotten better but like i'm just not as into it anymore i don't know like i don't know where i am i don't know what's happening

Alexit just makes me sad i hear you guys know that you can just sometimes not look at it more like you can look at it more often at times like for example during alex this is like telling

Maxif you met a heroin addict and you're like you know you could just not do heroin right no it's

Alexreally not like that that's really it's like telling john roderick to just make a checklist Just pick a checklist. That correlation does not work out. It does. No, it doesn't.

MaxIt does.

AlexOkay, then let's get you some methadone, which is like micro blog or something.

MerlinIt's fake drugs.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinThat's the same advice I've been giving you for so long, and I feel like you're really struggling, which is like, why don't you just stop having OCD? Like, why do you do that? Why do you keep having OCD? Do you know how frustrating that is?

Speaker AWhich litter is not a psychiatric village.

AlexWell, I don't know, Alex.

MerlinI don't know. I have advised you several times to just stop.

AlexI have stopped. And actually, I've, so I took everything off of my phone because that's what the cool kids are doing now, deleting Twitter and Instagram and everything off of their phone. And then I get like panicked.

I get like a panic text of, hey, did you see, well, you left me on read in your DMs. And I'm like, I don't even know what that means. Like it's become Facebook for me. Like I don't want to, I don't want direct messages to be, like I enjoy direct messages, but I don't want to.

MerlinBut basically you've hot glued your mailbox shut, like which is interesting. But like if you keep your DMs mostly open to all the people, like people are going to write to you. You know what I mean?

AlexNo, and I, yes, and I try to respond to them in a timely manner.

MerlinThat's not how people use DMs, Alex.

AlexI don't care.

Speaker AOh, all right.

AlexBut if it was part of my job and Max was like, OK, the way that we are going to communicate is direct messages on Twitter, then it's like, OK, that works. That's part of.

MerlinYou're such a good employee. You'll do anything, won't you?

AlexNo. It's stricken from the record. But it's not right now pertinent. However, like if we're going to a convention or something, I always have Twitter and Instagram on my phone because I think it's like fun and nice to see those things. You better believe that WWDC, I am going to be slurping up all of those hot takes and the bad jokes because I enjoy it. And it's fun. But I don't know. I don't want to hear opinions about like an adult's sex scene on a fantasy television show.

Like it's really just not a thing I want.

MaxBoy, the Game of Thrones dialogue.

AlexYep. Nope.

MaxNot. Does not reflect. Let me just say, Dr. Manhattan says that does not reflect well on your society. Nope.

MerlinWhich part of the dialogue?

MaxJust the way that everybody talks about the show. The mass conversation surrounding Game of Thrones. The things that people argue about. The way they talk about it. The way they appreciate it as fans. They are enjoying it in the wrong way. And I say that in all seriousness. Having debates over whether some character is a quote unquote Mary Sue or not. Like, honestly, everyone needs to shut the fuck up about that.

MerlinAlex, do you have a response to this, please?

AlexWhy? Okay. How can someone enjoy a fantastical show wrong? Like, it's, I don't know.

MaxIt's just, it's not politics. I know.

AlexThat's what I'm saying.

MaxLike, the alt-right picks something that, you know, the Game of Thrones is.

MerlinOh, you're saying, are you saying they take the bait?

AlexYes, they take the bait. They're taking bait. But that's not enjoying the show, though.

MerlinIt's the same as like, how did Rey get so good at light swords, like all of a sudden? Like nobody asks, how is it that Jon Snow can suddenly run a dragon? Well, technically there's a reason for Targaryens. And you're like, that kind of thing? We're like, nobody questions like when somebody else does extraordinary things. It's like when a girl does extraordinary things, then you're screwing up my fantasy.

MaxMy complaint is specifically that... Okay, I see.

MerlinYou're basically saying don't take the bait.

MaxI'm saying do not take the bait. I'm saying a guy with nine followers and an egg avatar goes online and says, Ari is a Mary Sue because he, you know, here's a fact. Game of Thrones is a blue team. Have I talked to you? Have we talked about this, that there's like different mass media as like blue team and red team? And Game of Thrones is 100% a blue team show. It's a thing that-

MerlinWalking Dead is red? Walking Dead is a red team show.

MaxAnd I think there are things coded in these shows that do appeal to the sort of ideology of Blue Team and Red Team, but also it's just, sometimes it's just how it is, right? Like, why is Game of Thrones a Blue Team show? I don't think there's anything, like, deeply coded in the ideology of Game of Thrones that makes it a Blue Team show, but it's just that that's who happens to own HBO and enjoy it and talk about it on Twitter.

AlexIt's because, that's, no, no, no, it's because it's an HBO show, and HBO is just traditionally...

MerlinReally? That's interesting. I would have said, I mean, I haven't thought about this, but like I would have said that this is so fucking boring. I'm taking the bait. But like, you know, I think like Walking Dead in some ways, the early seasons of Walking Dead. But I think the thing about Game of Thrones is like it is it is about like people have all these like you pretty much mostly know why somebody has a given motivation on Game of Thrones.

it's not really confusing like what does Littlefinger want what does Cersei want what does Dany want they say it and it's repeated and you know it Daenerys really wants the Iron I have so many things to say about

Maxwhat kind of person would write that and what kind of people would read that and find it very profound and I'm not allowed to say it on the podcast okay let's do it

Alexno no it's things that I'm not supposed to say

Maxon the podcast anymore But I'm just saying there's a group of people who would read a piece of fiction where all of the characters' internal states are made explicit so that you never have to sort of read any subtext or imagine what they might be feeling or wanting.

MerlinWell, that was – yes. Okay. That's probably fair. That was the first part of the thought. And then the important part of the thought was because I think it's kind of a show about having your reasons, why you do things, trying to do what you consider to be the right thing, and then you get killed. I think that's kind of what makes it a blue show in some ways.

AlexYep. That's what makes it grim dark.

MerlinBecause like, because like what the one way to really show your ass on that show is to try to do the right thing. And then you're fucked. Yeah.

AlexSo what about someone like that? Okay. Well, like I really, Game of Thrones was like one of the first shows that I got to watch. I don't know. It's hard to explain. I guess because I was like out of the house and could watch, Like I just started college and it's like, oh, I can watch a really dark show and there can be naked people and I won't get in trouble for it. And I like, yes, I took the bait very early on there. I got in Twitter fights and it's just it's like it is.

MaxIt's a blue. It's a first of all, it's a rare. Game of Thrones is a rare thing now because it's a true. At least it feels to me like a true mass media. Exactly. And that's also.

AlexI think Solar Sice wrote a really good piece about that of like, this is the last show we are going to watch together.

MaxI don't think so. But I think there are fewer and fewer and fewer because everything now is like a YouTuber. Everything is more factionalized and fractured. And Game of Thrones and the Marvel MCU stuff and Avengers, part of the appeal for me is it feels like you're in the black hole in the center of the universe. You're like, this is it. Everyone's watching it. I'm in the mix. I'm with everyone. I'm doing this thing. and I have a lot more to say about that and how that's not correct but anyway then I think there's guys who arbitrage it's the same thing as Gamergate it's the same thing as Trump

they're basically trolls who realize that where there exists a mass market thing, everyone's attention laser focused on this one thing, they can sort of arbitrage that by doing, they take their nine followers and go, Arias and Mary Sue and now everyone

Merlinthey're basically doing emotional SEO

Maxeveryone with 20,000 followers

MerlinThey know what stuff is going to provoke people.

MaxYes, yes. And they're just – it's pure – and I'm not saying people shouldn't have – like, listen, if you have a critique of the show and you want to make like a good faith critique of the show, that's fine. And like there are lots of smart people that we've had on this program who do critiques of that show, and I think it's great. You should read them and amplify them and tweet them and make your own considerate critiques. But like don't get into a fucking flavor of the day Twitter spat over some extremely like marginal pop culture squabble.

Like that is it's so embarrassing for everyone involved.

AlexThat's not enjoying the show, though. You're critiquing media criticism, not.

MerlinBut then but then that does. I mean, the thing about that, I do agree with this. Like it then it does provoke the true believers to jump in. Right. I mean, sort of like we were saying in our thread with Todd, where I was trying to sort of, well, I don't want to say too much about this, but in our thread with Todd, a thing had happened. And I had said something like, well, you know, it's always, I feel like it's important to remember how personal people's, this is not profound, but how personal people's relationships with media can be. Personal in the sense that they feel very close to it. It maybe even feels like, dare say, part of their identity.

So like an attack on that is an attack on them. and it's like how somebody enjoys it can be really intersectional, wrong word, but people have those different reasons. So you get provoked. You don't realize it's – you know, this sounds mean. You don't realize it's a dingling four-follower Eggman. You just see it and you go, oh.

That's a good sound. I have to bring out my own Sully to battle.

MaxCan we just let Merlin do that clean one more time so that someone can clip it on the overcast clipping tool? how what what do i say sound again no the angry guy which one you you made a good team robinson yell with a guy who was mad that someone was enjoying i don't know what i do

Speaker Boh that one oh it's this guy oh They told me not to say anything but Jesus fucking Christ.

I will avenge you. Thing of which I have a poster.

MaxIs there anything funnier in modern media than Tim Robinson yelling?

MerlinOh my fucking God.

MaxThere's a running bit on Detroiters where whenever he gets punched, he just doubles over and starts screaming. Also, it's his eyes.

MerlinHe's not cross-eyed exactly. But the dumbest fucking sketches in the world. Like he's seated at a table near a celebrity that he likes. And he starts to choke. he can't breathe and his friend's like you know you're gonna die

Speaker Bhe's like

Merlinthat's so fucking stupid

Maxbut he's so committed to the dumb bit or like the one where he eats the receipt and then he thinks he gets like he took too small of a slice and he got mud pie on the receipt and he's doubled and he's doubled over on the couch and he's just going did you see

Merlindid you see the one don't know if you got the reference did you see the one one where the car runs into the store the

Alexhot dog car all right all right all right and there's a guy driving the car in a hot dog right now wait let me tell you we're gonna find this guy and someone's gonna spank his butt balls and back

Merlinwhat and he keeps doing his monologue while he's gathering more shirts i'm just gonna put this in this car, whoever it belongs to.

AlexThis is what people come for. Watch the show Detroiters. It's very good.

MerlinAnd also, I'm tired of you leave the room. What's it called?

MaxJust to say, I think you should leave with Tim Robinson.

AlexTim Robinson and Sam Richardson are right now my favorite. See, that's the thing. I think my brain broke in 2016. Son of Robin. And just a man screaming is fucking hilarious to me.

MerlinOh, why is it so goddamn funny when he yells?

MaxDid anyone, I have a thesis about that, but did anyone, so basically I watched.

MerlinAre you writing all these down, Alex? By my count, we now have at least four things that Max needs to return to.

MaxI have to come back.

Speaker AWe got Tumblr.

MaxSo I went insane. I watched all of, I think you should leave, and it just fucking blew my mind. It was so funny. And everyone in the comedy scene has been obsessed with Detroiters for two or three years since it came out, constantly telling me to watch it. I finally watched it all, and that also blew my mind, and it's so good. Did you guys both?

MerlinAnd Richard Splett, yeah, my encodings are fucked up. I've got to get a better copy. But Richard Splett is like a, apparently, so I Wikipedia'd the man, and apparently he and Richard Splett are like old friends, like from Detroit.

MaxSecond City, Detroit.

MerlinAnd yeah, yeah, so you would recommend, would you recommend, I think you should leave watching that first, or you say start with Detroiters?

MaxYou know, I think you should leave as a quick hit, and it's very intense, and the episodes are like 10, 15 minutes long. So just watch it because you'll get, it's just weird, intense humor and it just really tickled me and it feels...

MerlinNever hire family.

MaxIt just feels very of the moment. But if you love it and you want more, watch Detroiters. Detroiters is, the premise is, Tim Robinson and Richard Splatt are, they have an advertising firm in Detroit and they make like low budget local TV commercials for local businesses. And at the heart of the show, they really love each other and they have this completely positive Ann and Leslie relationship that is so funny and so great. But also, it's just the weirdness of the town.

They build this weird sort of Springfield-esque town of characters in Detroit. The comedy is so... Just every beat and every moment of that show is so funny. And it does have Tim Robinson yelling in it, which I do think is the funniest thing in the world. it's a hope punk as tumblr would say i think um something male rage is like a big thing right now and like what do you do with it and how do you express it and where does it go and where does it come from it's like a big subconscious thing like male rage yes and and part of tim robinson's

comedy is he gets really angry he gets really intense his veins are popping out he's yelling but it's in a way that is so goofy like the redder and but it's not it's not like it's not like i

Merlinthink about something you know the people who did angry very funny in my mind was upright citizens brigade because you know their catchphrase on that show you know what like there would always be in almost every every scene or every episode there'd be some point where somebody goes you know what and then they just get really fucking angry but the part of the humor in a show like that or like kids in the hall is that like the funny comes out of them trying to hold back the anger and tim robinson doesn't hold back the anger for very long he gets right to the yell he gets

MaxHe gets red. He gets real mad and red and bothered by everything.

MerlinAnd then his eyes cross a little bit.

MaxWhy is it so funny? There's just something. But also, it's so impotent. Like male rage also is lost a little bit of its, I don't know. It's so funny to me when people get like, you know, what is it when they get like nude and red online and they're just smashing their keyboard and tweet. Tweet. Tweet 60 out of 274. Dracarys. Yeah. And it's just like,

Merlinlike the fun, the other thing, one of the great things about male rage that's so great though, is I'm one reason it's so fun to provoke into parody is like, on the one hand, it is funny how fucking hot, um, like people get about something, but it's, it's the misdirected nature of the rage. And like human, they get misdirected on their rage and then they are so micro focused on whatever the fuck it is. You control the shit out of those guys because they're still like, Oh,

Speaker Bdebate me in the parking lot.

Speaker AYou can't, I'm in my car making this video

Speaker Bwaiting for this cock to show up.

Speaker AOh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

MaxEvery character, and I think you should leave, is they can't back down, right? They're in it. They get into an increasingly untenable lie or position. They're choking to death and they can't admit it. Or they make up a lie about the babysitter being laid. And they have to. Their only way. The only way forward is through. Like the only way forward is through no matter how nude and red they get. They cannot back down. The other one. I will say my other favorite sketch that we have not talked about is Tim Heidegger with the jazz people.

He's famous for that tuk-tuk sound.

MerlinI haven't seen that one yet.

MaxWhat? It's episode three. It's the charades.

Alexoh okay yeah no i that was good not my favorite but very good

Merlinoh that's why that's why uh that's why it reminds me so favorably of of tim and eric and mr show i mean it's like mr show in the sense of uh like i said on our text channel it reminds me mr show in the sense of like it has it has like uh like a like a pretty familiar but stupid premise but then the twists. There's like the twists to it that make it funny. Like the mobsters who are debating like what the biggest number is. Some kind of an incredibly weird bit and then the twist. But the

Tim and Eric, or like I really wish you guys would watch Bedtime Stories. It's on Hulu. And it's more like Bedtime Stories is more like if Tim and Eric did the Twilight Zone. And it's so goddamn funny. Because they're so committed to the straightness of the bit, but also the themness of the characters. And there's just something just watching somebody be committed to something that stupid, it's really hard not to just

Maxlove it. I feel like the two, this is the essence of my problem. I feel like the two polls of Twitter are on one hand, you have and on the other poll, you have and I don't fit in with, I don't want either. I don't want either. Oh my God. Where is the place? Where can I go? I just want to know what the fuck is happening and I do not want I don't need it filtered through people being red and nude or people being you know hope punk I don't need any of that I'm a fucking grown-ass man just let

Merlinme know what's happening you need to find your own spot on the screenings yeah

Alexdig dug Merlin can you tell us about the dentist or are we still in the Temkin trap of like how many layers deep are we?

MerlinI think I'm out. I just hope you're writing everything down. Was there anything left

Maxthat I was supposed to come back to?

AlexYou know what? Actually, Max, we can get to it in the after show. Now, where would people find the after show?

MaxOh, damn. We haven't done this in a while, have we? No, we have not. Listen, you're probably wondering, how do we make this podcast where we scream into the microphones and eat for an hour every week? There's no ads. We don't do any ads for... I don't know. What ads are there on podcasts nowadays? Mattresses or something?

MerlinOh, like a box of clothing that comes. Bombfell. You could get a box of clothing? What else can you do? Oh, you can get something for your hair loss? There's no collaboration for teams.

MaxYou know what else you're not going to fucking get is the new episode of the reboot of Startup just in the podcast feed because we know you were waiting for that. Oh! Shots fired! Oh my God. You are not going to get that. Stop doing that. Now, you're probably wondering, how is that possible? How are these guys making a living? Well, I'm glad you asked.

MerlinYou've never heard Max say at the beginning, you know, here's another podcast we think you'll like. But it's not this one. We don't do that. How can we afford to do that, Max?

MaxLet me tell you about the all-new Ford Focus, Merlin. Merlin. Doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop. Uh, here's. Here's the deal, everybody. We do the podcast, and we want money. And you listen to the podcast and you have money. And there's only one way to resolve this paradox, which is you guys in this scenario, you're the Avengers. You need to suit up for one last mission. And you're going to need to go to give us your fucking money and have a bunch of crazy comic book capers wherein you give us $5 a month to save the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

That's the only way. Oh, is that something we can do? no no that's the listeners do that

Merlinwe can't save the universe without you cucks assemble in this scenario we are the universe

AlexI want to do an extreme Amazon challenge which extreme

Maxlisten guys if we get to our next goal I'll send John Syracuse a refrigerator

Alexgo to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com

Maxwell we'll have a meeting about it

Alexoh god Okay, wait, wait. This is a challenge that I've wanted to do for so, so long. I used to return a shit ton of stuff on Amazon thinking, oh, it'll go to another consumer. No, no, no, no, no, no.

MerlinAlex, you thought you were doing the right thing.

AlexI wasn't. I wasn't. It just goes to liquidation centers, and you can bid on giant...

MerlinThat sounds dark, Alex. A liquidation center?

AlexYes, but you know what? We can save that. We can buy things from liquidation.com that have been returned on Amazon. It's like a mystery box. It's already been touched by strangers.

MerlinIt's like when they fold your toilet paper into an arrowhead. Hey, guess what? Now two people touch this. Yay.

AlexIt's like when you buy the public storage units that have been abandoned. What is that? Like, I want to dig into a bunch of returned objects so, so badly.

Speaker AI don't know why. These pajamas are barely.

AlexI don't know why I just want it so bad like I okay the end thank you for your money

Merlinso yes that's the challenge we want to do and we can't afford it without the support of listeners like you I don't know why

Maxso you go to so one last time you can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com and sign up for $5 a month and that is actually how we are able to afford doing the show with no ads and what do you get if you do that you get an extra a whole extra podcast feed with a bonus episode every week. That's right. There's even more due by Friday. We sit around and sort of exhaustively pick the next challenge for next week. Sometimes we have some snacks. We complain about things. And you can join in on all of that excitement for only $5 a month.

And that's giveusyourfuckingmoney.com.

MerlinNow, did you guys see the Vengees, Merlin? You still haven't seen it yet, right?

MaxNo. You know, I just have to say I think that's really disrespectful for someone who purports to care about the art of film to not see it. Oh, right.

MerlinYeah, for somebody who's as into critical theory as I am, it's problematic that I haven't supported the Vengees. You guys can talk about it. I don't care.

AlexOh, well, Max, you want to talk about it?

MerlinNot now. Not now. Not now. Not here. Is Jen coming this week? Is Jen here?

AlexJen is not here? No, no, no. Merlin, with your permission, we would like to invite on our friends, Jen Bain and Andrew Briggs, to have a super special smut show where we just, it would be in the after show, and we just talk about the Vengees for however long it takes.

MerlinOh, sure. Is that this week?

AlexNo, we're trying to plan something out.

MerlinOkay.

AlexSounds good. Yeah. It's going to be really good, guys.

MaxEmergency pod. I will say I've lost a little bit of steam on that.

AlexI don't. That's okay. Jen and I will talk about it for three hours.

MerlinYou lost your Vengees steam?

MaxI saw it and I was all fired up and I wanted to talk about it with someone.

MerlinThis is how they get you. You walk out and you're like, oh!

AlexWe can do it like tonight. Oh, man.

MerlinNo, no, I'm sorry. You're not, oh! you're oh how does it go how's it go max okay so i was like what's the one what's the star wars noise

Maxi will say i saw it on uh i think i'm like opening night i saw it right when it opened and the theater was very full and uh the and it was a lot of young people in the theater like maybe college age and high school kids. And, like, they were very unironically just, like, just, like, balls out having the time of their life in this movie.

MerlinThat's awesome.

MaxScreaming, applauding. It made it much more fun. Although, however, minus points to Arclight Cinemas in Chicago, I had a number of issues. Number one, I think that the speakers, one of the speaker channels was out. It basically sounded rattly. Like, the sound was, like, rattly. Oh, gross. And that was, so that was bad. And number, that was number one. And number two was, I believe they projected the film at the wrong aspect ratio. Oh no.

AlexYes, that they were there. So they're doing it in 3D widescreen, 3D and regular widescreen and then just regular aspect ratio. We might have to ask Todd, but I got some intel at Arclight that they were projecting the widescreen version on some regular showings.

MerlinI feel like I've read some essays where people say you're supposed to, a good projectionist, supposedly, a good projectionist is supposed to, you know, where they say reset to one for like each one of those different screenings. You're supposed to change like the matting or whatever. Aren't you supposed to change that for each show?

MaxI actually have no idea. Let me ask you, this is a little micro topic, but like when the movie came on, listen, Alex knows I'm cursed. This is like one of my curses of like when something is at the wrong aspect ratio, even if it's a tiny tiny bit i can fucking spot it it's like it's like sometimes i can tell also

Merlinwhen there's one because of distortion or because of clipping you know when you know when mantia

Maxcan see when an icon is off by one pixel it's just his special curse and then he shares it on twitter and then you look at it for the rest of your life and you go oh my god it's off by one pixel oh god do you know what i'm talking about oh yeah yeah it's like refrigerator it's like refrigerator doors i can tell when something is at the wrong aspect ratio and what i saw was almost immediately I was like, people's faces are just a little bit squashed. Not comically.

MerlinI get this on Hulu when we're watching old episodes of The Simpsons and I'm the only one who's cursed to see it. It's very clearly distorted and squozing. There's something fucked up about it. You can see it in the letters. You can see it in the face. Do you people not see this? Are you out of your mind?

MaxWhen I noticed it in the film, it wasn't obvious. In fact, I might have been literally the only person in the movie theater who noticed, But I could just tell that it was supposed to be just a tiny bit wider than it was. And the faces were squashed up. And then I spent the whole rest of the movie, whenever there was a circle on screen, I would just squint at it.

MerlinAnd I would go, yeah, that's a little squint. Maybe it's a split diopter. I think that's what happened.

MaxI think there was a split diopter.

MerlinA split diopter. Diopter. Split diopter.

MaxAnd listen, in that scenario, like let's say you're in the theater and you're like, I am fairly confident that it's being projected at the wrong aspect ratio. I kind of gamed it out in my head because I caught it real early, right when the movie started. And I was like –

MerlinJust to stipulate, the movie has started. Everybody's watching the movie.

MaxOh, I walk in after the trailers. I generally do not want to see –

MerlinNo, no, but you see what I'm saying though. Like if you are going to be that guy, like they're going to have to like tear up some rugs to like restart the whole process.

MaxAnd I'm sitting – And I'm also sitting in the middle of my row. So if I was to leave, what would be the procedure if I wanted to sort of remedy the situation?

MerlinYou should definitely grumble and make huffing noises.

MaxSo I could have gotten up, made everyone stand up, which they would have been really upset. Is that the sound of standing up? And then I would have gone out to the manager or to someone. I would have gone out, can I speak to a manager? And they would say yes. And I'm missing the movie. I'm waiting for the manager. He comes out. The manager's like, what's wrong? And I'm like, I think the movie's being projected at the wrong aspect ratio. then he's probably going to come into the theater and squint at the screen and either disagree with me and tell me I'm crazy

or say I'm really sorry it is. And then what's he going to do? He's probably going to offer me a refund for the film. He's not going to fix it? What are you going to do, stop the movie and fix it? And restart it? And even if they did, probably the whole theater would be fucking furious at me because I interrupted their movie experience.

MerlinExactly. That's why I say yes.

MaxNo, there's no good way. So I just sat there like a cuck and I watched it at the wrong aspect ratio. But I am sort of eager to go back and see it again. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really enjoyed the movie. And there was so much going on. Spoilers.

MerlinI'm not spoiling it. I'm saying I liked it. That's not a spoiler. Saying you like something is not a spoiler, Alex.

MaxI liked it, and there was so much going on. And it was such a busy and cool film. I want to see it again. I'm so disappointed in myself, but I really liked it.

AlexI've already seen it twice. And I had no... Isn't it one of those films?

MaxI think this is probably a good thing, but it's one of those films where when you see it, it almost immediately calls out to like, I want to see that again. Like, roll that again. I want to...

MerlinThat's a good feeling. That's such a good feeling.

AlexIt was... Matchy started keeping a tally in the theater of how many times I teared up. I didn't know. I had no... Yeah, I'm actually really excited to talk about some... Like, just the whole... every like this in game of thrones give me were you crying and not in the third act the wait what were you crying in parts that weren't the third act yes oh my god yes oh yeah oh my god yep yep i didn't know like i i didn't want to care i didn't even know i cared but wow uh a whole lot

Merlinbut and i just it's so it's so interesting because like i'm not saying this to sound like controversial but like in the same way that max had a resistance to the harry potter movies initially because he thought they weren't enough like the books. It is interesting that, like, if I could say, it sounds like your attachment to the material comes through the movies and the mythology and relationships of the movie characters, not because you have some special childhood link to the comics, right?

No, no, I'm not criticizing. I'm saying that's actually cool and interesting.

AlexOh, no, no, no. I'm actually just sort of, that was, it was towards myself. I just didn't realize what a big part of my life The Marvel films Like even the ones that I don't like

MaxWhen I was watching the film Did you have the Iron Man flashback? I had a powerful flashback to exactly where I was When I saw the first Iron Man film And I remember thinking I literally never thought about this in my entire life Until I was in that movie watching the film And I thought Man I remember that movie came out and I was in college and I believe I was a sophomore in college and all my nerd friends were like, oh my God, Iron Man, they're making an Iron Man movie. We have to go see it and I was like, A, there's a superhero

called Iron Man and you're like, you're excited for the film about Iron Man and then it was like everyone was talking about it and it made a bunch of money and I was like, everyone's watching a film about Iron Man? Well, yeah,

Merlinand just to say, starring Robert Downey Jr., what? I know.

MaxAnd then I went and saw it and I was like, god damn that was a good movie really funny it's good movie did not expect did not expect it to be

Alexfunny i remember the exact a new movie theater had just opened in florida and it was like an actual good theater and so we were like yeah we're gonna i went to go see iron man with my grandparents because they liked robert downey jr and i went because i love iron man and i love any superhero who doesn't have magical powers but like has amazing gadgets or is kind of a cyborg And I still remember Robert Downey Jr. like building the, the, what was it?

The Mark one in it. It's just, and when the explosion happens behind him in the desert, like I,

Merlinthat's so great.

AlexI had no idea that it, I, I don't know. It's very interesting.

MaxI also, when I went back, I was reading a little bit of like Marvel stuff about the movie or whatever. And I found this amazing thing. So this is from a, cinema blend way back in 1998 Marvel Entertainment was looking for an influx of cash after the company emerged from bankruptcy that it had filed two years prior at the same time a Sony Pictures executive by the name of Yair Landau was looking to secure the big screen rights to Spider-Man current chairman and former CEO of Marvel Ike Perlmutter countered by offering Sony the rights to nearly every Marvel character including the likes of Iron Man Thor

Black Panther Ant-Man and Ant-Man 4 wait for it 25 million dollars Landau took the deal back to the brass at Sony, who, as he recalled, responded, quote, nobody gives a shit about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal only for Spider-Man.

Wow. They could have owned all of those characters for $25 million. Yeah. And they said nobody gives a shit about any of the other Marvel characters. Which is kind of true.

MerlinIt was probably kind of true. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that's the thing. is like when um i guess was it the same year that um one of the batman movies and iron man came out but anyway iron man like so obviously represented a new idea about how you could do these things and then like all of your all of your objections or your skepticism about who is this had become a somewhat obscure character like you know the avengers were kind of a big deal in the 60s but like you know but like iron man was not like a marquee character but then and and uh robert

donny jr and like but no like that's the thing we we think of it now understandably as like well obviously you know you have this multi like like what was it they made the first day i think venjee's made like three quarters of a billion dollars outside the u.s alone you know and it's just nuts and it's like but at the time you got to remember like marvel was on skids man they were

Maxthey were in bad shape yeah well i definitely did have uh uh that uh this movie like successfully gave me that feeling of like, of like, man, I have, not only have like the films gone on a journey, but like I've gone on a journey with the films. Like that, that's, that's what this movie inspired me to think about. And that's, that is more than I thought was possible for these movies to like leave you with. So kudos to, you make it sound like a movie to see. Wow. I enjoy, I mean, I really felt like it was a big event. Now, one of my big other things that got under my skin about, what was the other one?

Infinity War. Infinity War obviously ends, it's a very dark film and it ends in kind of tragedy. And a lot of people in our circle got upset at the film and they made YouTube videos reviewing it and stuff where they were like mad because they were like, I can't believe Marvel would hurt my friends, the Avengers, in this way. They were really upset. And I was like, you people are out of your fucking gourd. That is too much to be mad that the movie didn't have a happy ending for your superhero friends.

and especially for part one of a two-part movie yeah like you and also like and not to know again like i don't how could how could they leave harry potter in this stage yeah but like i mean like

Merlinbeing mad at the director oh my god how can part two possibly fix this rupert grint's losing his mind

Maxlike you can't have your imaginary friends like left up a tree as part of a plot structure like it's just it's mind-boggling but but man like it it just this all of the how uncomfortable that movie was and and whatever to me were fixed in this movie it made me very satisfied gave me a

lot to think about I liked it I was very entertained and uh it was probably not easy to sort of manage that amount of expectations and still make something with some content to it I just kind of

Alexhave like a strategic it's almost like I have a strategic boner for the Marvel Universe and Game of thrones like there's so many moving pieces and even when they fail it's like okay i i like i i still don't think captain marvel was very good but the fact that they're even to pull this off and they're able to get all of america like all of the fucking world to care about you know the the these weirdos that don't exist i it's shocking like i just really like the avengers uh dig dig

Doug, should we actually do our challenge? Challenge! Challenge!

MaxThis week's challenge was Alex's.

AlexYeah, it was. The challenge was to get and take care of a Tamagotchi. And a Tamagotchi were very popular in the 1990s. It's a little, like, keychain-sized egg with a little LED on it that displays a small... It's kind of a literal pocket monster on a screen. and you just need to feed it and uh clean up its poop all digitally of course otherwise it will die

and it was one of those things where kids got so obsessed with it they were banned from school school and like classrooms and stuff oh yeah that's amazing and i was very very much into it especially when they had a pikachu version which was the original challenge but it was like they were like two hundred dollars on uh ebay i'm like i didn't like it that much we got different ones Yes

MaxSo Alex and I got

AlexI made a clerical error

MaxAlex and I got what's called Tamagotchi Mini And what's interesting about the Mini is You don't do anything

AlexOh no no no

MaxYou don't play games with it There's no game mode All you do is You feed it bread or candy And then you clean up its poopies By pressing a button And you put it Whoa

MerlinThat's different than my boy

MaxAnd you put it to sleep And every night It's like Every night it gets into a little bed And then you have to turn the lights off and veronic and i have been have been kind of tag teaming it because we cleaned the poopies up

Alexyesterday i left it at home all day oh so so yours is alive oh yeah okay all right wait is it even possible for it to not be alive i thought yes i i thought that that meant that ours couldn't die because it was like tamagotchi light but no no no uh mine died it was very upsetting i took very good care of this little guy but now i still have a tombstone on my screen with a little oh no

how is it even possible that he died i i don't know i was i mean i did put it during game of thrones i did put it in an in my bedroom under like six blankets because you can't mute it you cannot turn it off you want you want to keep it cozy yeah yes yes sorry that's what i meant i I wanted to save it from the carnage. But yeah, and I had mine like during very, I went a little too far. Like I had my friend.

I dropped it off at my friend's house before I went to go see Vengees because, you know, you can't take it. It needs to be fed like every three hours.

MerlinSomeone took that call from you and said, absolutely, I will care for your affliction leg, man. I mean, that. Okay. That's a good friend, Alex. But how did you kill it?

AlexI don't know. It was beeping a bunch, and I was on a call, and I just ignored it. And it suddenly went, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, like a heartbeat going away. Did you not feed it?

MaxDid you do like a Sims, like some sort of cruel dungeon where you didn't feed it?

AlexOr you didn't clean its poopies? Yeah, it didn't clean its poopies. Did it make a mud pie? The mud pie was too big, I guess, and he drowned in it.

MerlinOh, my God. I won't let you guys finish, but we got very different. Yeah, now what's yours, Merlin? I think mine was, I've got the real starter, I guess. So mine, my egg boy hatches. He hatched. He or she, they hatch. Sure hatched.

MaxYeah, ours hatched.

MerlinI had to hatch mine. Okay, but so like when it goes beep, beep, beep at me, I have the option of it can either feed it or play with it. and if you hit feed your options are soy sauce or tomato and if you play with it it's a game where you figure out there's two eggs on screen and you say which egg has the egg boy in it and that's pretty much it and then sometimes it passes out in diarrhea and shows you it's ass which as we'll get to when it's my turn became a little frustrating for me

Maxso yours makes a mud pie yours makes a mud pie and then it lies down in the mud pie you think that's a mud pie it's a mud pie

Alexyou don't think that's explosive ria I would assume since Gudetama that it would just be like egg whites does it what comes out of it you're saying it finished I'm not

Merlinso that's called a final transformation pika pika no don't ruin it no it's got hair down there no breast buds what happened what am I missing no no you can feed it soy sauce or you can feed it uh you can feed it soy sauce or a tomato and because that's what you feed an egg infant and uh and then you can play with it and if it

gets happy you get five in a row that's called perfect oh that's like if you're like the jt like you've gotten what's called a perfect season with your egg. And then it takes a shit and shows you its ass.

AlexTeep, teep, teep, teep, teep. Is yours still alive?

MerlinWe'll get to that.

AlexOkay. All right.

MerlinYeah, no, this was, we all, so like we were trying to Simonize our watches to start all of our Eggman at the same time, goo, goo, goo, joob. And as I stipulated in our text channel, my daughter and I were going to be at the zoo. So I was on public transit and we were all trying to get our watches at the same time and make it start. But I did run into AM, PM. I had to fix that at one point. But I tried. I would hit the thing and give it a tomato because tomatoes make it happy according to the instructions.

Yeah, I think mine might be a... I'm not complaining at all. I think mine was a pretty stripped down version of what you guys got. No, no, I actually think yours had more features than ours.

AlexRemember, this is a game aimed at like seven-year-olds.

MaxI also remember when... I have a very clear memory of when Tamagotchi first came out. And for whatever reason, in one of the only moments of my entire life when I was ahead of a trend or cool in any way, my mom was shopping at Zany Brainy. And she saw – Oh, I miss Zany Brainy. She literally saw them taking the Tamagotchis like out of the case at Zany Brainy. And she was like, what's that? And they were like, this is a big thing in Japan. And she was like – you have to understand how like atypical this was for my childhood. But my mom just like spontaneously bought me a toy, an electronic toy, and brought it home.

It was like at Zany Brainy they said this was cool. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

AlexYou've told this same story but with Pokemon. Which was it?

MaxThis also happened with Pokemon.

AlexShe just finds cool Japanese toys.

MaxWhich I believe my mom also got at Zany Brainy. Yeah, these are like, this is like two of the moments of my life. My brother got Pokemon Blue and I got Pokemon Red. And then she brought me Tamagotchi. And I remember, I must have been. I mean, it was in elementary school. I think I was in maybe second or third grade. And I was very, very, very attached to it. And I made my parents like baby. They eventually banned it from my school because it beeps.

Speaker AYep, yep.

MaxAnd I made my parents babysit for it. And my mom like put it in a desk drawer all day. And I was very upset. And then eventually it died. And I was inconsolable.

AlexOh, no.

MaxOh, my God. What a horrible woman. Yeah. I think my dad made me like a tombstone. We made like a memorial for my Tamagotchi. Oh. was it was it considered properly shinto did you do shiva no i think after i was after my first one died i think i just put it in a drawer and i never played with it again that's understandable

Merlinthat's ptsd yeah you know yeah um it took maybe take a shit in her desk drawer because that's

Maxwhat a horrible what do you let me ask you this i i was pretty bored of it this time i had fun with it for like five minutes like pulling the plastic setting it up patching the egg I enjoyed learning. I actually enjoyed figuring out the interface and all the things it can do. And then I got really bored of it and I just felt like it was this incredibly tedious chore, but I also feel like I do feel a weird affinity for it. I certainly would feel very bad if I put it in a drawer and I was just like, okay, goodbye. I absolutely could not do that.

It's basically a mobile nuisance machine. But there is an appeal about this. When I was a kid, what was it that was so magical about this?

AlexDid you have a pet?

MaxYeah, I think at that point we had a dog.

AlexAt some point I got a dog when I was a kid. My thing was always I was trying to take care of digital or fake objects because I really wanted a dog, and we didn't have a dog until I was like 16.

MerlinDid you have a PowerPoint to persuade them?

AlexNo, Tom, at that point, Merlin, Keynote was not out, and I was too young to acquire PowerPoint. don't okay i just bugged them until they got me pokemon that way it was it was less refined before i got into double digits in age but you wanted but you wanted something to careful yeah um you know that maternal instinct or well but uh i don't know um but then it was it was actually one of those things too where like once everybody got one it felt less cool and then it was like oh

what score did you get on the game where I just wanted like a nice thing to feed and quietly enjoy. Like, and, and the same thing happened later with a Pokemon and there was a DS game called Nintendogs where the whole point of the game was just like, you pet the dog with a stylus. And that, that was the whole game. Yeah. It was really.

MerlinSomeone to shit in my room.

AlexYeah. I don't know what it is or why it's like, why was Neopets such a thing? I don't know.

MerlinI mean, it's fun. It's, you know, I mean, you really got to take yourself back in time because this feels like, you know, obviously such another era. But like, you know, it's nice to interact with things. You know what I mean? It's being able to interact with things is interesting. Like when I was a kid. Well, no, wait. Hang on. Now. Now, what was your what was your Semitic robot that you had, Max? Remember what that was called? No, that was Alex. It was an XL? No, it was mine.

AlexIt was 2XL. He lives in the studio now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MerlinBut, like, did that run on 8-tracks? That's not the one that runs on 8-tracks, right?

AlexNo, cassette tapes.

MerlinYeah, so there was one when I was a kid that ran on 8-tracks. But, like, you know, it was just still amazing. The video games of the time, and you can understand, this is before the pocket quarterback came out and changed the game. Back in the day, like, it was pretty basic stuff. There was a video game called Merlin, a handheld video game that was basically, like, Simon. But, like, even Simon. Like any of those games where you just replicate a pattern, it's fun to interact with things. Like do you remember when you first discovered rubber banding on your phone? It doesn't really – you don't need to keep going toing, toing, toing, toing.

I still do it. Oh, yeah. For some reason, I still do it. I still sit there and I'm like, hmm, I don't know what else to do with my life. I guess I'll just pull this page down and watch it bounce. Like it's just fun. It's fun to interact with things. I think it doesn't have to be that emotional. It's just kind of fun. Also, kids are stupid.

AlexI just realized a huge part of this is just loneliness.

MerlinOkay. All right. It's a loneliness key chain.

MaxI have a little different take on it. I think it's really appealing. I like the feeling of when you take your phone out of your pocket and you're like, oh, there's a whole little world in here just for me, like waiting for me. Like it's my own little private thing that I know about. And when I'm feeling, when I'm like in a crowd and I feel really small or I'm like I feel awkward and I'm like in an elevator with people, like there's this comfort of like I can take the phone and retreat into the little world in my phone where it's all about me.

MerlinYou're feeling a little bit alienated maybe.

MaxYeah. And it's like, look, like this is a whole little world that's just for me. And where I'm like the central character in it. And I have control over it. And I think the Tamagotchis obviously were like way before phones. But first of all, it was like a small electronic thing to have in your pocket, which like at that time, like I can't really. I mean, there were pagers, but that was very adult. But for a kid, like what small electronic thing could you?

It was so small. It was miraculously small. Like that was one of the appeals right there was it was this tiny electronic thing.

MerlinThat's such a good point. I was the same way when digital watches first caught on and became like kind of affordable for a kid. And I would just hit the little like whatever mode button like date time, date time, date time. You know, like just like it would just be fun to like hit a button on my little wrist world.

MaxYeah, it's a little – it's like a little miracle of like this electronic, tiny electronic thing. I think that's very pleasing. But then having the Tamagotchi where you know all the controls and how to feed it and what its deal is, like it's very – it still appeals to me.

Alexlike I'm still drawn to it I think it's cool I mean I feel like a lot of these things for me are just sort of digital fidget toys like there was that game um Neko Atsume which is you just take care of feral cats that's the whole thing and you watch them like it's it's so I I got tubs it's so

Merlingood I heard that I remember the first time I heard that coming from the other room I got tubs

AlexTubbs is a big, big boy.

MerlinHe's a big, that's a chonk.

MaxNow, what did you guys name your Tamagotchi? Oh, gosh. I didn't know that's permissible. Oh, you have to name it. Now, Veronica and I prepared a whole list of names. Yeah, bring it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think we did name it, but I'm happy to go through some of the names here. Let me make sure I have the most updated. Yeah, here it is. Okay, here we go. So possible names for Tamagotchi. you've got

Merlinis this in notes?

Maxyeah yeah it's a communal note that we have so possible Tamagotchi names lintel noodle footnote pilcrow obelisk jejun figment voxel panache sprocket epsilon puddle mushroom nettle stilton serif muffin squimby squishy mushy that's a real cat stencil

Merlinmadam curious

Maxalso a real cat gizmo potato corduroy pumpernickel salty mallow or marshmallow Carmelo, Marmalade, Neo, Mandu, and Kiko, all real cats. Pickle, Fishums, Goober, Splish, Blinkums, Couchums, Donut, Smooshy, Moppy, Satchmo, Cheddar, Lumpy, Pierogi, Jalopy, Bert, Wheezy, Nutmeg, Muppet, Hazelnut, Pouchy, Yodel, Biggums, Schenectady, Soft Serve, Cottonball, Waddle Seed, Dwight D, Eisenmeour, Scuttlebutt,

Fur Pants, Fig, Sourdough, but only if mean and fat. Poppy seed, schmear, beep boop, eggnog, dollop, fish and chips, poo bell, but only for a pet that's found in the trash. Schnitzel, meatball for a tiny fat cat. Egg roll, ziggurat, teacup, zizzergy, zizzergy, raffle, peapod, tumbleweed, tenderloin, roland, hush hush, cumulus, windsor, like the knot for a snooty cat. Trickster, Dr. Lard, salsa for a fiery personality.

bupkis little mensch tchotchke callipygian and snuggle

Speaker Atooth wow snuggle tooth

Maxthat's our like pet names document anything to avoid intercourse

Speaker Ado you

Maxwhat did you how did you what did you think of your egg boy merlin oh messages you had a gauditama gauditama

Merlinno yeah this is not real he got he got a little bit he got a little bit sad

Maxno merlin you're a fucking sociopath no no oh my god putting it in a drawer wasn't enough because it still kept booping merlin you are you're a yes this is a psycho behavior this is this is like torturing animals in your backyard you could have just broken it Merlin has taken the adorable Gudetama and put it in a cylinder, frozen it in a cylinder of ice.

MerlinSo they can heal him when science advances.

130. The Screaming Spectrum

Show notes

Transcript

130. The Screaming Spectrum

Show notes

Transcript

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