141. Snozzberries

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

MerlinOh, I'm sorry, you missed the part where I was compelled to talk to your intern like an animal.

AlexNo, I said, why don't you just go say hi to Merlin?

MaxAlex, your interns know that they shouldn't speak unless spoken to you, right?

AlexBut Merlin spoke to him.

MaxI'm sorry that they spoke to you. Well, I would go a step further. I mean, it's your fucked up company.

MerlinThey shouldn't do anything with me. They shouldn't interact with me. I don't talk to furniture. I'm not insane. They're interns.

AlexI see. Do you hear this right now? Do you recall how I, not complained, complain is a strong word. I just mentioned that we had Diet Pepsi in our fridge and not Diet Coke anymore. What the fuck? Yeah.

MerlinOh, yeah.

AlexAnd I didn't.

MerlinYou know what? Let's not call them interns. Let's just refer to them as the others. Because the others had not done your bidding.

AlexWell, it turns out, Double turns out, not Jordan, but another other, one of the others, listens to this show and makes sure to get Diet Coke.

MerlinThey should all be listening to this show. Why isn't it compulsory? They should be going to sleep to the show, but not sleeping.

MaxAlex, I've been trying, you know, I move around a little bit while we're recording. I like to get a little animated. Have you noticed you can? And I'm sort of shifting my body weight to get in a position to pop off on a rant. You know, it's part of my patented podcasting technique. Yeah. And I'm noticing that the chair is like not going.

AlexThey're slowly getting more and more.

MaxAnd I'm like, your chair doesn't roll. And I'm like, am I in one of those dreams where you're trying to run, but your legs won't work? You gotta hit somebody, but you can't make a fist? Permiso. But I can't move the chair. And I just look down, and they're all like old people chairs. They have tennis balls on the legs.

AlexJordan, can you bring Max a rolly chair, please?

MaxWhy would you have done this?

AlexBecause a number of folks who it is their first time podcasting are like, man, I just can't get folks to stay close to the mic. They just pull back on their chairs and like, oh, they're really rolly.

MerlinIt's what they call social engineering.

AlexYeah, yeah. But also, I've been slowly making these changes to the chairs over the past month to see if Max would never put it in.

MerlinOh, no, you're gaslighting them.

MaxI don't humor me.

AlexWell, no, those are the special.

MerlinI don't like to be handed things, Jordan. Max, if they're doing one thing like that, you know there's more. You know there's more. That's the one you discovered.

AlexWell, he hasn't found out yet.

MaxWhat you're saying is the professional podcast studio that we've designed for you and I to use is now designed for the least competent people who don't know how to talk into the microphone. Now I can't pop off on my rants comfortably.

MerlinIt's the soft racism of diminished expectations. Yes.

AlexSometimes, you know, you get politicians in and they're the other others, really, where they just want to, you know.

MerlinUber others. Yeah, they're fucking living on an island,

Maxkidnapping children.

MerlinYes. Not kidnapping, purchasing. They got receipts. Check the safe. Buy the diamonds. Yeah, you know, here's the thing, and this is kind of just, I don't like to talk about other shows on the show, but, you know, a friend of the show, John Roderick, doesn't listen to the show, fuck him. He, you know, he has this idea that he would like to take Dick Cheney and put him in an underground bunker and then put LSD into his food and then slowly move the furniture at night. Like classic deep state gaslighting.

AlexOh, that's the plan. Oh, BS, he doesn't listen to this show. That is the plan from my wedding reception that I have been talking about since the first year of this show, which is put drugs in people's drinks.

MerlinYou did that.

AlexNo, I did. Okay, okay. So, so.

MerlinWhat about Super Train? Is that yours too?

AlexI just want to be remembered for one thing.

MerlinI mean, I did take a- I just want people to be happy. Is it so much to ask? John Syracuse. He's so skeed. Anyway, um... How's everybody doing? Y'all good? You got everything you need? You got your chairs? Did someone get Max a chair? You know what? Here's the other thing. The others should not be allowed to tell you what they are called. You should name them.

AlexOh.

MaxYou should call them all Toby. So are you guys thinking about anything other than Jeffrey Epstein for the last two weeks? I learned about this woman who sells her bathwater. Oh, yeah, I do remember that. Should I get into the whole backstory? I forgot, but that was so long ago already.

MerlinWell, okay, listen, for our listeners, let's just say that Max expressed an interest in the scholarship of learning about the bathwater gamer lady in the main episode. That continued in earnest through the after show. And I hope I'm not speaking out of school to say. Well, you never want to be horny on the main episode. Your interest in the scholarship continued in earnest in our super secret private text channel way past the point. I was literally begging you to please stop talking about the egg cum anime horny face.

MaxI figured it out.

MerlinI completely figured it out. Can I give my whole thesis here? Yes, please.

MaxSo basically, okay, so here's the story of the Gamer Bathwater. I'm sure some of our listeners are already laughing that we don't know about this. You did talk about it last week. No, I know, but I think she's a pretty well-known, she's more of a well-known figure than I initially thought. Okay, so part of why people were buying the bathwater was that- The story had gone wider than you thought. Yeah, but not just because of this. She was already a horny Instagram poster with a big following, which is why people were buying the bathwater.

AlexWell, yes.

MaxOkay, well, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Now I know that.

AlexOkay.

MaxBut she became famous for doing- So when you watch anime, but the kind of anime where they have sex, where it's horny, they make a horny face. She became famous on Instagram for making the horny anime face, but in real life. She can actually do it with her face. It looks like from I Think You Should Leave where he's choking, but he can't admit it.

MerlinOkay, I'm looking at anime horny face. Oh, no. Okay. Oh, and they often have something dripping out of their mouth. Is that where the egg comes from? I have to assume it's all of a piece.

MaxTheir mouths are so moist, all these women. So she became famous for making the horny face and developed a fan following of people who their special thing is seeing the horny face. And then she's done a variety. And per my initial suspicion, she's now become almost like a horny performance artist. And she does. She did a thing where she said, if you give me this many likes, I'll post on Pornhub. But then the thing she posted on Pornhub was like completely mundane. It was her.

Eating a photo. She was eating a photo of PewDiePie. Eating a photo of PewDiePie.

AlexWe talked about this last week.

MaxWell, now, okay, but I... Okay, well, now I know. And so the bathwater is just the latest in a string of these things. And her audience of fans, let's just say they're not there for the contemporary art.

MerlinWell... When you catch up with Roderick on the line, you will have heard a discussion about this.

AlexIs this the most recent one?

MerlinOh, God. you guys somehow, I don't know how it leaked out, but it got to John and I find this whole thing upsetting. And so, of course, he interrogated me about it. And that became the entire episode.

AlexOh, well, well, well.

MerlinAnd he tells the story of the time that he dated an internet sex worker. Okay.

AlexYes. Yeah, so it wasn't like a mutual massage friend. It was an actual internet sex. Oh, I'm so excited. You know what? Don't tell me.

MerlinYeah, I don't want to spoil it for you. Oh, wow. Sorry, I don't like to promote her.

MaxIs the gay bathwater girl a sex worker?

AlexIt depends on how you define sex work. Some people define cam girls as... But she's not a... Is she a cam girl?

MerlinYes. But the problem is the backlash to the backlash to the backlash to the backlash. Okay, no. No, this is... You're stealing our Japanese culture. No, actually, I'm actually Japanese, and I think this is really cool. Oh, yeah, well, this is a pro-sex worker. You know what, you guys? She's not a real sex worker. Da-da-da-da-da-da. Ping pong, ping pong. It just goes back and forth. Not literally ping pong. But it does go back and forth about all of the backlash. Do the backlash. Do the backlash. Don't disempower the egg cum lady.

AlexI know. I know.

MerlinShe's just spitting out what's left of her revenue stream and bottling it.

MaxI know lots of people whose main source of revenue is posting photos of themselves on Instagram. But I wouldn't describe them as sex workers.

AlexDo they post it with the intent for people to masturbate to them? I don't know. See, that's... Wait, Merlin, why is this? Are you sex shaming? Are you not?

MerlinI'm in a real-time fucking Kafka novel. Everything I do for the rest of my life is going to be people making me uncomfortable.

MaxWait, I do know the answer. No, they don't. But they're doing the same thing. So they're not sex workers. Do you think that's why she's doing the horny anime thing?

MerlinOkay, wait a minute. Pump the brakes. It's called the horny anime thing. Pump the brakes, Chomsky. I would... What the fuck? You're saying it's only sex work if they think men are going to masturbate to it?

AlexAre they getting any revenue from the men masturbating? And you could say like, yes.

MerlinAm I answering your question with a question?

AlexNo, sorry. You could say technically, yes, they are because if they're an influencer or something, they buy my product or they like pay money for my Twitch.

MerlinYou're saying influencers don't masturbate.

AlexOr they get money from a Twitch stream or something.

MerlinVictoria's Secret did not produce the 1984, the spring of 1984 calendar for me. Right. And yet I was able to utilize it.

AlexYes, those are models. I would say, but they were not working for sex.

MerlinYou're like MacGyver, Merlin. I can turn anything into anything and then make it very, very wet.

MaxYou don't go to war with the army you want. You go to war with the army you have. You got to shoot to the side, otherwise it all sticks together.

AlexGo to the show notes for all of Alex's woke links about sex workers.

MaxHow many people do you and I know where their career is that they're attractive women gamers who post about games on Instagram? Dozens. But where they're always like leaning over the board in a provocative way. And it's like, what is that? Are you a game? Because they wouldn't describe themselves as a sex worker. I think they'd take great offense at that. I think they would say, no, I'm a nerd and I'm a game evangelist and I'm posting about games for my audience of gamers. Okay, what about a TV weather lady?

AlexWell, that's the thing, though. they are also using their assets, but they're not like, it's a fine, fine line. Like if you're going to, I'm trying to think of, oh, if you're, if you're wearing a, uh, like if you're virtue signaling with the, um, make a great, make America great again, hat, like you're going to get more money on Twitch. If you're showing off your boobs, you're, you're probably going to get more money on Twitch depending on what your audience is. And I think we have smart friends who intentionally do that and like lean into it and it's a community of folks who talk to each other.

MaxAlso just to be clear, I'm not anti this or shaming it or anything. I'm just acknowledging

Alexthat that's a component of the, it's marketing, right? Yes. There's a difference between using sex as marketing and being a sex worker. Like if you're, what's the difference though? Cause that's the part that that's what I'm interested in. If you are an influencer and you're driving around a cool car and showing off the car, that doesn't mean you're a professional racer or you're a professional car person. You're just using that car to look cool. Let's say you own a boat and you are like, look at this cool yacht I'm on.

That doesn't mean you're a yacht person.

MaxBut why are you making this arbitrary distinction of like, if it's for dudes, if it makes dudes horny, then it's sex work. Because what if the Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians and Cars, the purpose is to make car buyers horny. They're horny for cars.

AlexWell, but I don't think, it's all about intent and whether that person says they're a sex worker or not.

MaxWhat if Top Chef makes me horny for food?

AlexI am dropping this class. I am dropping this class so fucking hard.

MerlinIt's sophomore year. It's 9 a.m. and I'm dropping this class so fucking hard.

AlexI remember the day where it was, I was like a freshman in college and we posted some, it was early days of Facebook and we posted a selfie on Facebook and two of my friends were like, oh man, I wonder how many people are going to masturbate to this photo. And my mind just exploded. Like, of course. Like, there's like four girls with pajamas in here and like, of course, of course. So, and that, I.

MerlinOne time, one time on Flickr, my pal Katie, I don't know if her husband Ben, somebody took a photo of her like sitting in the backseat of the car and she was like, she's like a cute girl, but she's like a talented girl, but she's a cute girl, and took a photo of her in the backseat of the car, and this mystery arose where, you know, on Flickr you could add things to groups. Like, you could have your own, like, sort of albums of things, and, like, this is how naive those times were. People just didn't do super weird stuff on Flickr. That was very, that I didn't see it anyhow, you know. It was really, you know, it's a fun

social network but she discovered that she'd been added to this group or to this whatever collection album oh no and there were well there were two there were two interesting things about it the one is it was all pictures of like pretty cute young girls in the seat of a car wearing a seat belt and every single one of those photos had a comment like almost exactly the same comment which is like it's good that you're being secure make sure to put on the seat belt Now, does that make Katie a sex worker?

AlexI would say it's almost like sex theft, because there's no one, she's not profiting for that.

MerlinThis Derrida, is she a sex worker?

AlexWell, if they're not.

MaxBring the ruckus, Rorty. Tell me a little more about sex work. Yeah.

MerlinYeah.

MaxWhat about that, Alex? Yeah. Yeah, mix me up a milkshake, Baudrillard. Is she a sex worker? What if you post a normal picture online and it's you and your family and you're hiking the Grand Canyon, nothing provocative, nothing sexy about it. But then some Mormons get a hold of it and they bubble it. Oh, fuck yes. They bubble that shit.

MerlinOkay, what about me going, deez nuts?

MaxThat's the thing where Mormons aren't allowed to look at pornography. Am I a sex worker? Deez nuts. So they draw little circles around the bathing suits area so they can imagine what they might look like.

MerlinThat is so deeply unintentionally Freudian in so many wonderful ways. She's not even the absence of a penis. She's the absence of a bikini.

The only way I can imagine her bazoom is to be bubbled. Okay, what about that?

MaxNow are they a sex worker? Oh my God.

MerlinNow is she a sex worker? What about my sister wife? Is she a sex worker? father would not approve

Alexwhat if you get

Merlinwhat if you start selling Mormon girls bubble bikinis where like you get like a whole smock but it's got like bubbles on the front of it but that's still would that be biblical

AlexI think that that's someone just selling a sex toy

Maxhow would this bubble I'm curious how the bubble smock would work Merlin I'm hung up on this It's a great question It would have to be like Tony Stark's plane In Spider-Man Where it's got the Cloaking technology And the bathing suit areas

AlexI mean I think

MerlinIt would still have to be It would still have to be Very humble Right? To me You get a Mormon lady You get an Amish lady

MaxSexy smocks Oh it's not one of those

MerlinNo no no no Not one of those That's just too form fitting Where you can see Roughly her shape That's the whole point The whole point is She's smocking you bubble on smock.

MaxShe's going to look like a Lego man.

MerlinWell, and you could do it with AR. Oh, wait, hang on. AR app. AR app that bubbles ladies and smocks. So you just walk around. Oh, shit. You're walking around whatever Mormons use for a mall and not getting a handjob. You save $6, but you got your goggles on. And all around you, you can see things like, oh, this is six feet long. This is a flat plane. Bubbles on smock.

MaxYeah, you'd have to walk up to women and surreptitiously put an AR sticker on there. on their chat. You want NFC? NFC nipple stickers. Okay, let's go with that.

AlexI was going to say, there is this.

MerlinHey Siri, activate bubbles. It's called a nipple field controller. Me poop. I love you.

AlexOh boy. Is this what happens when I take the wheels off of Max's chair?

MaxI'm off my game.

AlexI'm off my game.

MerlinSex worker or not. Sex worker or not.

AlexIs a sex worker a sandwich? There was actually discussion about whether or not a lot of reality TV show stars are sex workers because you know that the women on Survivor...

MaxLet me ask you about this. Okay, let me ask you about that in particular. How much of Survivor... Let me ask you this. How much of what the general public watches Survivor for is women in swimsuits.

AlexExactly. I don't want to know the answer.

MerlinWell, it's the swimsuits, and it's the slips, and it's the tortured feet. There is something for some slice of the pie. You know there's some tortured feet boys there.

AlexOh, wow.

MerlinYeah, yeah, step on that clam. Step on it. This is really more mental than physical. She could get down and eat the egg and spit it out in a come-anime horny face style. but she's not because her feet are so fucked up.

MaxWhen I was doing my survivor draft, I looked at, you know, they get dressed by like a wardrobe department. Yeah, you chose by, didn't you choose by swimsuit in some cases? I did. So basically what happens is I think you bring a suitcase of your own clues and then the production team like goes through your clothes and they give you some outfits to wear. And the idea is that they're not trying to make it fake, but they're trying to make it like, okay, the plane crashed and this is the outfit that you would be wearing per your background and career. So if you're like a lawyer, you don't get to show up to Survivor dressed in like a bunch of fucking

tactical ass Survivor gear with a caravan. I mean, Nick is a great example of that. Like, why was Nick wearing like a sport coat the whole time of some year? But that's the thing.

AlexIt's awesome though.

MaxIt's because the production designers decided that the best way to carry out the fiction of Survivor was to say Nick's background is that he's this young PD. Yeah, exactly. And if he was on the plane and the plane crashed, like this is what he would have. And so they give you a-

MerlinBob would use his buff as a bow tie.

MaxYeah. And so they give you a few different options per your character, and you wear those. And so I did. I went into the preview, the next season on Survivor Clips, and Entertainment Weekly had some little exclusives and stuff. And I looked really carefully to see which of the women got dressed in a two-piece bathing suit. And I thought, because you get points in my draft league for how much screen time and how many confessionals they get. And I thought, the cameras, they're going to be on camera more. like they just are and I was right

I actually took Victoria the redhead from last season I took her because for two reasons number one I thought she was very funny in interviews and I thought funny people would get more confessionals and they put her in a two piece bathing suit and I bet that indicates that she's going to get a lot of camera time and I was right on both counts

Alexthis is absolutely disgusting and I'm very mad about it but there are rumors that because Aubrey had like lost weight or apparently got hotter or something, they gave her a different suit. And CBS, you can't show a butt crack.

MerlinYou don't like that.

AlexI don't like that. Oh, does this surprise you?

MerlinI don't know. I mean, I can't figure out anything about how your mind works.

AlexI'm upset. I am upset. I am upset that.

MerlinBecause she wasn't paid enough.

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're not paid for more screen time unless you get to the final. No, but if you are in the season longer, right? Yes. Yes. Okay. And, well, they're like- You're saying they had a-

MaxYou're mad because they're a tardy- Alex, you're saying they had a meeting. The whole staff gets together, and they're holding up a bunch of glossy photos, and they're like, did Aubrey cross the threshold of the two-piece? Did she cross the two-piece Rubicon? 100%.

AlexOh, is she two-piece worthy? You don't think that the costume designers in there aren't doing like, okay, so this This guy's going to look dumb. You think those little weird pink panties for Philip wasn't completely staged by, I'm sure he was like, I prefer briefs. And then they're like, okay, how do we make him look as dumb as possible?

MaxMy understanding is that you bring a suitcase on the show of your own things and they dress you from that. They decide what you get to take with you. So Philip brought the little booty shorts.

AlexYou need to tell them in advance, though. and sometimes when they're...

MerlinTell them what in advance?

AlexYou tell them, this is what I'm bringing and they're like, okay, you can do that but change it to this or change it to this color. You guys are so busy. How do you find all this out?

MaxI read the rule book. There is also a rule book, yeah. I think I might have asked my close personal friend, Jeff Probst. I said, Jeff, how do you dress the contestants? Did you ever find out

Merlinwhy you didn't eat your fruit pie?

MaxI haven't broached the subject yet.

MerlinWell, doesn't it feel like it has to come up at some point? It's kind of a Larry David thing. It's just hanging there. You know, Jeff... Do you just not like fruit pie? Who doesn't like a fruit pie? I think we can get you.

MaxI think Jeff is gettable for us. He seems like a nice guy.

AlexMerlin, I know you don't like guests, but I couldn't.

MerlinDon't like pests?

AlexGuests. Well, both, I assume. Oh, good, good, good, good, guests.

MerlinOh, no, that's fine. Yes, guests. Because he's a snack. My daughter just started jumping into season two. He looks so young. Yeah.

AlexHere's the thing. Do you think that there was like some magical thing that happened where he's young, he's young, he's young. and then he doesn't look old, but he looks like he has matured and then he sort of stays that way.

MerlinYeah.

AlexAnd it's very strange. Like, I'm sure it's like plastic surgery or like that's, which is totally fine. Jeff, keep being a snack.

MaxI think Jeff has an entire team of people around him and they have the briefcase full of creams and vials and they trail behind him.

MerlinYou think he's got a powder man? I think he's got a whole squad

Maxof little mini-me. He's got a powder man.

MerlinHe's got somebody who's got the football and the magnifying glass.

MaxYeah.

MerlinAnd they come in with any of the pills

Maxthe powders. Yeah. He's got a whole little team of mini-me's who run behind him with the briefcase and they've got powders and injections and all different creams and masks and their job is to keep Jeff on the right side of the two-piece bathing suit line.

Oh. Oh, God forbid.

MerlinI see what you're saying. Oh, boy. Hoisted by his own I don't know,

Maxathletic shirt. I think there's a whole team of people who scurry behind Jeff bringing him his healthy grain bowls and his lip injections and his secret moisturizing creams that are made from the... I bet he has a lot of green drinks. I think he's doing the adrenochrome. I think that they're all doing the adrenochrome.

MerlinOh, you think he's mombed up with the adrenochrome people. Well, that's why the rich people

Maxneed to harvest the young girls, is that they take the chemicals from their brain stem. To get the good shit, they have to die terrified. Is that correct? Oh, it can't hurt.

MerlinNo, I think that's the point. According to the 17th letter of the alphabet people, the adrenochrome is harvested from young girls. And this is why Hillary Clinton is killing young women. But to get the good adrenochrome, they have to be terrified as they're being murdered.

MaxAnd it's like the blue crab shit, right? They're taking the blue crab blood from the brains. You know what that's worth? Do you have any idea what that's worth? You do because we talked about it. It's keeping Jeff Probst on TV.

MerlinToday's July 17th, you guys.

AlexHappy July 17th.

MerlinJuly 17th. Oh, is this the storm? I think this is the day, you guys. You think it's a coincidence?

MaxYou think it's a coincidence that it says July 17th on the emoji? You know what would be amazing is if today is the day that Epstein makes some plea deal he rolls over and he does expose all these like top Democrats and like the Clintons and a bunch of people go down like it would be awesome it would be so funny every single person in Mossad

Merlinis a child diddler no I think they I think we I think I think the Q people like Mossad or no but see isn't Mossad but isn't Mossad who gets oh god now I don't get in trouble with Mossad but isn't Mossad that gets hired to go be enforcers and that's why he's an intelligence asset we think Are you really following this or are you just fronting?

MaxNo, a little bit, but I thought Alright, never mind Strike that off from the record No, you know what though? Who was the other Hollywood guy? Harvey Weinstein He actually really did hire the ex-Massad people to go after his accuser Not conspiracy theory He actually literally did that and I think Epstein might have worked with that same firm at some point

MerlinYeah, and the people who were running people off the road and saying to – there's this, I think, Englishwoman who's done a couple really good interviews in the last week. She'd written a Vanity Fair article where, according to her, Graydon Carter pulled out all the kids' stuff, and it turned into essentially a puff piece. And so she's done two super interests. She was pregnant with twins at the time, and her editor gave her this assignment that he thought would be a doddle for her, which is to just do this Jeffrey Epstein thing. But she kept finding more and more and more and more stuff. And he directly threatened her.

And I don't want to misstate the facts, but it was along the lines of, I know the hospital your kids are going to be born in. There's all the dark stuff we know about, but then there's this other dark stuff that's like, oh, my God, you don't do. It's like with these guys. These guys don't do one bad thing. They don't do six bad things. Like they've built up this entire life of these all these tangled systems and deliberate corruption that allow them to conduct themselves.

And then their lawyers have to actually literally, I mean, I can't tell how much you guys are fronting or not, but like where their lawyer can then come up and say, his lawyer can say, well, the reason that he has an Austrian passport that's not in his name with his photo on it is because as a very prominent and affluent Jewish man, there was a spate of kidnappings in the 80s. And he needed a way to have a passport that he could show to kidnappers to say that I'm not an affluent Jewish man.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinThat was in the safe with the diamonds. And $70,000 in cash. And so you ask yourself, for a man who has at least $500 million, do you think he has one safe with the password, diamonds, and $70,000? $70,000, that's walking around money. That's what you tip the other.

Oh, jeez, I'm sorry. I dropped this into the Kevin channel. That must be very confusing to him. I'll put it in here instead. I'm bad at this.

MaxI don't think I've thought about anything other than Jeffrey Epstein and Magic Tricks for the last two weeks oh what a good combo this is all I think about oh no I'm honestly amazed that everyone isn't going around I have this feeling of shouldn't something be different now

Alexall I can think about is child prison still so it's like my brain space just doesn't have enough

Merlinget with it the hotness this week is that we really tore the party apart for an entire day to have a statement that we don't like what Donald Trump says.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinDid you guys see the paperwork? It was such good paperwork. Did you see it? Yeah. Oh, my God.

MaxWell, I just want to say on behalf of the hosts of Dubai Friday, we want to take a moment to condemn the president's reprehensible remarks. And, you know, what unites Americans really is our differences. And I think that we're a country of immigrants.

MerlinIn short, really, the Democratic Party is a land of contrast.

MaxAnd in conclusion, somebody should do something. Oh, my God. I'm so glad somebody finally said that. Not us. Not us. I mean, no, no. No, no, no, no. Yeah. No, we won't be doing anything. But I mean.

MerlinIf we do our jobs, they'll take away our job.

MaxYeah.

MerlinJesus fucking Christ. God. I can't believe I made her my wallpaper.

AlexI actually thought it was a joke. the first time I saw it.

MaxShe clapped back. I thought it was a fucking joke. I thought it was so cool

Merlinwhen she clapped at him. Ugh.

AlexNo, no, that fucking, as soon as I saw that, I'm like, oh, fuck Nancy Pelosi. And then it became a meme. Like, what? I put it on my phone. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Nancy Pelosi is on your phone? Not now.

MaxI'm on the beta. Oh. I think there's something to, I think the reality is that the country is like teetering on the brink of a constitutional crisis that we really have not had. Well, we don't technically have one yet.

AlexI guess so.

MaxBut we're...

MerlinI mean, just to your point, we haven't gotten to the point of how do we make the president leave the White House for a trial, for example. That, to me, would be a legit constitutional crisis. Well, let me give you a concrete example

Maxof the census question. It could have gone a direction where we had a full-on banana republic constitutional crisis where the Supreme Court said you can't do the question and the White House...

MerlinIf the Supreme Court, if and when there is a constitutional crisis, it's going to be about something involving the Supreme Court.

MaxOr the marshal. What's his name? The marshal? The vice principal? What's his name? I don't know. But that could have gone a very different way where the Trump administration, they tried to switch to the lawyers that would actually make it happen and then the court said you can't change the lawyers. But it was averted because there's still some institutionalism and whatever in the legal profession and they couldn't do it. But listen, it could happen any day, right? Where the Supreme Court says don't do this

and then the Trump administration is like, nah, we're going to do it. It actually has happened before in American history but not in living memory. And it could happen at any moment. And I think there's this idea that, well, the Democrats have the House and they could do something about it if and when that happens. But the problem is it won't work because they don't have the Senate. And so it's a real – there's this Tinkerbell-like quality to it of if Pelosi and the Democrats try to use their power, it will be exposed as not being power. And it will all collapse into dust.

We'll all stop believing in Tinkerbell. And so their conclusion based on that is, well, we shouldn't even try because we don't want to be exposed as being powerless. So therefore we won't even try to exercise the power that we have.

MerlinThat's super interesting.

MaxYou know what I mean?

MerlinNo, I never thought of it that way. I mean, it's one of those things where you could walk around that point, you know, 40 different directions, but you put it very in a very straightforward way.

MaxIt's like if we try this, we will be exposed as it will be exposed as hollow. And so we won't ever try it. Well, I mean, because, OK, so the thing I've been thinking and trying to be supportive of is like, God, this is such a Trump Trumpite way to think.

MerlinBut like I figure people in leadership positions in the House and the Senate know stuff that I don't know. Now, in the past, that kind of thing has been like, oh, that's why we go to Iraq. That kind of bullshit. Like, oh, transparency is for suckers. They know secret things because they get to go to the secret documents room and they know things I don't know. I always figure they know. You look at how one way McConnell has succeeded so well is he's so good at not letting anything get to the floor that he doesn't know for sure is going to win. So, you know what I mean? He has 100 percent confidence up to the second he says we've moved the vote to tomorrow.

Right. Is that fair to say? Like McConnell's been good at that. He's really good at like whipping the votes that he needs. And you won't know that he doesn't have the votes. He will not say he he'll never say he doesn't have the votes until, you know, you can get it the moment at 315 on Thursday when he says, well, we're moving this to Monday. Right. And so I always just figure that the Democratic leadership historically, I believe they probably know stuff I don't know. I don't know. the level of timidity we're talking about here

makes me think that your theory is closer to the truth. That in order for them to be able to have what they I want to believe that everybody has a good heart. I want to believe that everybody has motivations. But just because I don't understand their motivations doesn't mean I'm going to assume they have bad or nefarious motivations. But sometimes it's just real hard to square. It's real hard to square. There's a lot of shit you guys could do that is short of impeachment.

AlexRight?

MaxBut also, like, I don't understand this because, like, just to look at the – if we could take a step back from all of the theoretical hand-wringing and what if this or that happens. Like, the Republicans impeached Clinton, right? And it was – they knew it wouldn't be successful, but they did it anyway. And it led to them having one of – like, huge electoral success. I mean, like, there was up and downs in the moment, but, like, long term, it led to them having huge electoral success.

And then, obviously, McConnell's whole playbook is he – I mean, they never had a way to impeach Obama, but they would have if they had even a – I mean, they almost tried to over Benghazi, but, like, which is, like, bullshit. But, like, you know they would have tried if they could have. But, like, their whole, like, publicly stated mandate was we're not going to let Obama do anything. That we're just going to be obstructionist and our goal is to end his presidency. I think McConnell said that explicitly. Like, my top legislative goal is to, like, not give Obama a second term.

I think he said that publicly.

MerlinAnd to do everything in their power to, like, everything that's going to require anything related to the Senate is going to obstruct at every corner to make him a lame duck so hard.

MaxAnd look at where they are now. Like, you know what I mean? like they did fuck with Obama for eight years, and look, it fired up their base, and their base showed up to vote, and here we are.

MerlinI mean, like they say, like Travis McElroy likes to say, ships are safest in harbor, but that's not why we build ships. Exactly. And it's like that, you know, I read that one time when I was peeing in a hippie's bathroom, but it's really true. And that's why it's so frustrating to look at, like Congress has been down in the count for so long. Oh, sure, we can go and laugh, and oh, gosh, all the Trump's agenda stuff, you guys didn't get done when you had it. Boy, are you stupid. Everybody hates Paul Ryan. Fine. But now, like, they do have a majority in Congress and there's stuff they can do that does not require the Senate. They are the Section 1 branch of government that does shit.

It's your whole fucking job. Like, you know, the guy at Parkland got in trouble because he didn't help, you know, because he was a security guard and that was his job. And, like, we need them to be the security guards because that's their fucking job.

MaxIt's like I always say, you know, my private plane was built for me to get massages from underage children. It's just a massage, Max. It's just a massage. And it's safest in harbor, but that's not why the plane was built.

AlexI think it's time for our challenge.

MerlinYeah.

AlexYeah. Max.

MerlinOh, my God. I have so many good things to say about this challenge.

MaxWe can't post this episode.

MerlinLet's start over.

AlexYes, we can.

MerlinThis week's challenge comes from Max, and it involves nuts. Bring the nuts, Max.

MaxI have a new service that I've been enjoying. What's it called, Max? It's called nuts.com. And Veronica, full disclosure, this is Veronica's service. She found it because they have a really, really, really good selection of sort of interesting and alternative flowers, like nut flowers and things like that. and yeah so we've been doing a lot of nut.com orders for various snacks and baking products and initially I made fun of it she had this like grocery list of all the crazy

shit she was going to get on nuts.com and I started writing fake things on there because I thought some of her stuff was fake that she had written on there and I started adding fake things to it and she was like are these real things on nuts.com and I was like no but neither are yours and neither is nuts.com and she's like no it's real I'm getting all this stuff and you know what? It's a mess delusion You know what? I love it. I love it. I fucking love it. I get all my good treats from nuts.com now.

AlexI'm surprised you've never heard of it. It was a sponsor of, I don't know, some show of Marco's years and years ago.

MerlinWell, obviously I listen to Marco's shows. He skips the Marco parts. He skips all the parts about the keyboard just to get to the nits.

MaxYeah, and listen.

MerlinYou should have a chapter so I can find your nuts.

MaxIf there was a button in Overcast that if you pressed it, it skipped forward 30 seconds. I mean, I would not use that to skip the ads. I would listen to the ads.

MerlinI've been filing a bug for years. Please add a nuts button.

MaxYeah. Oh, okay. So you're saying there should be an ad in Overcast where when you press it, it does a dynamic ad insertion for nuts.com. John Siracusa, years before I met him, worked on the site for the public radio show Car Talk.

MerlinAnd he added a boss button. So he's the one who added, I believe, he added the button to the web. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

MaxStop right there.

MerlinStop right there. He just wants to be remembered for one thing. He doesn't want to be remembered for the Car Talk website or the Boss Button.

MaxStop right there. John Syracuse made the website for Car Talk? I don't know.

AlexWhat the?

MaxThey are in Boston.

AlexOh, okay. Follow up.

MaxDid he make it in Pearl?

MerlinYou can make anything in Pearl. It just won't be good. Swing. He loves swing. Anyway, a boss button. Back in the day, it wasn't just on the Car Talk site, but different funny things would have a boss button, like video games would have a boss button. Did you guys ever encounter this?

MaxOh, I used to play the Windows 95 Dilbert Arcade Game CD-ROM. It was like a free CD-ROM that came with... And what happens when you hit the boss button? It would make it look like it was like a spreadsheet.

MerlinLike a spreadsheet. Exactly. I'm saying we need a nuts button. I'm saying whatever bullshit fucking podcast you're listening to, you hit the nuts button and it takes you to nuts.com.

MaxDo you think, is it possible that when I walk through the office people are hitting the boss button that they're playing? Oh my God. Are they playing the Windows 95 Dilbert Arcade Suite on CD-ROM?

MerlinYou're the gaslight now.

MaxAnd I walk by and then they hit the boss button and it takes them. Business, business, business.

MerlinYeah. And it takes them to a spreadsheet. You should go surprise Jen right now. Like put on a fake mustache, sidle up to her, maybe drop in Tom Cruise style.

Maxaha let's see if i know jen if i know jen she probably would be working on a spreadsheet and then when i snuck up behind her she'd open up live journal

Merlinthis week's challenge All right. Okay, here's what's great about this. So we recorded because we needed to for reasons. We ended up recording, I can remember specifically, it was on a Friday. And Max had this cockamamie idea where he says to us, he says,

he says, I want you to order something from nuts.com. I went to nuts.com. And for myself, I can talk about my order. But I want to mention that, well, secondarily, I love my order. But you know what blew my nuts off? I ordered on Friday afternoon, and it arrived late Saturday morning for $5.99. $5.99 was the shipping to have my nuts delivered overnight.

MaxVeronica's theory is that they're doing expedited nuts orders for free because of the weather, because when it's summer, you can't have them sitting outside.

AlexOh. Oh. Mine actually did come with one of the little frosty things. Got a frosty boy. Yeah, yeah.

MaxShould we talk about what we ordered?

AlexYes, please.

MaxWhat'd you get, Max? What'd you get? Oh, well, the new thing that I'm the most excited about is a classic lemon drop candy. And this is like a real old lady candy.

AlexOh, yes.

MaxOh, yes. And they're the football flavored ones with the citric acid powder.

AlexOh, they're so good.

MaxAnd I got a big old, big old bag of lemon candies. And I have a little plastic baggie of them in my car. And I get in the car, pop a little lemon candy in my mouth. It's nice because you don't need a ton of those. You just want a couple, and they're so good. Oh, they're so good. You don't need a hundred of them. And you put that in your mouth, and a little citric acid powder dissolves in your tongue, and you just feel your teeth melt.

MerlinOh, my God. They have so many, Max. There's also green apple drops and watermelon drops.

MaxYou can just feel your teeth dissolving in your mouth. Absolutely. Just turning into cooked pasta in your mouth. I mean, it's just awesome. And you put chicken cheese on it. Yeah. Oh, my God. What else did you get? That's probably the big winner. Veronica, what the fuck did she get? She got something called snozzberries. It can't be real. She got some sort of thing that is like jujubes. She got something called jujubes. I was like, that's not real.

And it looks like a candy. It looks like something from Avatar.

AlexHold on, hold on.

MaxLook up jujubes.

AlexIs this his petals? What are they called? It's like old school Mike and Ikes.

MaxNo, no. It's a fruit. It's a fruit? She got a fruit. Yes, that's what I'm saying.

AlexOh, oh, wait.

MaxAnd then the other thing she gets that I think is very funny, but I have to confess tastes amazing, is half-popped popcorn.

AlexYeah!

MaxHalf-popped popcorn is... It's so good. Listen, I know everyone's laughing at me for saying this, but you've got to try it. Don't knock it until you've tried it. It's so good. Give me some of that.

AlexYeah, yeah. Have some pops.

MaxDid your nasty hands touch the inside?

AlexNo, I did not put my hand brace into the back. Well, it's like the best part of popcorn is the very bottom where the kernels are mostly popped. What the hell is wrong with you?

MerlinWhat are you talking about? That's horrible.

AlexVeronica agrees with me.

MerlinShe does agree with me. You know, I see you going to a family gathering and there's all so much food you can't eat. And finally somebody goes, ooh, corn on the cob. And you go, yes, please. Could I have the cobs and the green leaves that were peeled off? Alex.

MaxAlex learned how to... Sometimes I think Alex was an alien who was sent to observe our culture.

MerlinNot learn or understand our culture, just observe it. What? What? What?

AlexThis tracks. This tracks.

MaxGreen leaves.

AlexI'm doing all right.

MaxI think she's trying very hard.

AlexI am.

MaxI think a lot of effort is going into it. I am greeting you. Should we touch? I think she didn't quite pay attention in the alien briefing classes. She was distracted during the seminar.

AlexI threw away the handbook.

MaxYeah. And so now she's here, and Alex is, well, every once in a while, I'll see her go to the barbecue and take a corn cob and put it in between two pieces of bread and eat it whole. With this sandwich? And eat it whole with the corn.

MerlinIt's corn cob sandwich.

MaxOh, boy. And I'm like, this isn't how people eat food.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinI've licked your spoons. Now we are friends.

AlexWell, so we were, a lot of us were at our friend's wedding this weekend. And I think I've talked about this. When it is at a fancy occasion, I eat just normal food like everybody else to not bring attention to it. However, I was sitting like with all of my friends eating normal food, incredibly unhappy about all the flavors going into my mouth.

MaxThere was a lot of flavors.

AlexThere was so much flavor. And people were very freaked out by it. to the point where

MaxI have a grievance.

AlexOh, yes, yes.

MaxI'm going to file a grievance. I didn't like the party when we were all smoking our marijuana. What? That everyone has, well, I don't want to scandalize anyone, but we smoked some marijuana. Oh, God. But I didn't like that everyone smokes a little computer now. What happened? Did the world pass me by? Everyone took out a computer and it was like the scene, it was like in, it was like in, it was like in, an inglorious... Are you guys eating? We're eating the half pop pop. It was like the scene

Merlinin Inglorious Bastard where one person

Maxtakes out a vape and then he takes out this huge thing. People were taking their fucking rigs out. Do you know what I mean? It was crazy. That's called the tactical dad vape. They were smoking a C-3PO. It was so... Oh no, you're baked, Master Luke. And everyone just had Everyone just had something that was literally the size of a deck of cards with a crazy straw coming out of it.

AlexOh, mine is much smaller than that.

MaxI don't want to smoke a computer. What about just rolling it up like a cigarette? Whatever happened to just using an apple?

AlexThat's impolite. There's a lot of smoke. It's just.

MaxAlex, we were sitting in a cloud of weed smoke. You could smell it from a mile away.

AlexI think when the bride and groom come and join you, it is socially acceptable. I'm not saying it wasn't socially acceptable.

MaxI'm just saying at that point, just smoke a jazz cigarette.

AlexYes, but when you are, but think about if all of us had those jazz cigarettes, it would just not be a good time. It would not be a good time.

MaxI don't like it. I don't like smoking the computer. I don't know how much of the marijuana that I'm smoking.

AlexYes. Wait, wait. That's, but hold on. What do you mean you don't know how much of it?

MaxI don't know how much it is. Sometimes you take up one cloud of the computer, and I get the warp effect, like you're going to hyperspace jump from Star Wars.

AlexI thought it was a dank kush. Yeah, I'm going to call...

MerlinThese are the most premium nuts I've ever had.

AlexRight? What are you having?

MerlinDo you just have filberts?

MaxI'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt your marijuana computer. I don't like eating coffee.

AlexOh, it's... So, Merlin...

MaxI have a delicate system. It upsets my stomach.

AlexOh, I wonder. Yeah, I just realized I'm probably going to have a bad time later. Have you ever had espresso beans Merlin covered in chocolate? I'm basically eating caffeinated candy right now.

MerlinYou got to be careful with those. For me, it's iced coffee. I forget about iced coffee until we go to New England. And we'll go to Dunkin' Donuts and I'll have an iced coffee. And I'm just bouncing off the fucking walls on like a medium iced coffee.

Maxthere was a period in um at college i lived kind of close to a trader joe's and we go to tj's and we get some food for the dorms and uh i one time i discovered the chocolate covered espresso beans and i basically just started eating those as food like that was just what i was eating for a while and uh boy that was not and then for a while i was like why do i using adderall as cereal i was like why do i why do i have diarrhea always that's a crazy coincidence i actually googled

Alexlike how many of these can I eat? Assuming, actually assuming that they were like edibles or something. Like I should start with just having one. And at marco.org, there's, you know, a guide to chocolate covered espresso beans. And apparently 30 is like a regular cup of coffee. And I'm like, I'm not going to have 30 pieces of candy. And, oh, or maybe I should. I don't know.

MaxIt's amazing to me that you'll eat a chocolate covered espresso bean. I would describe that as a very, you know, it's a lot of flavor. It's a lot of flavor in a small package. It's like the caper of candies.

AlexHere's the thing. I thought that I was getting caffeine from it, but I think I'm just getting a slight sugar rush because I usually don't have candy and it has a lot of sugar in it.

MaxAnd then I'm like, hey, Merlin, what was the best? What was the best thing you ordered?

MerlinOh, let's see. I mean, in terms of like I bought these nuts thinking because I do. I like I like premium nuts. And I'm a real size queen about my nuts. I really like them to be, like, if it doesn't have macadamias, don't even bother. I do my own bespoke mixes of three different blends of premium nuts and decant them myself. And these are way better than anything I've ever done. So what I do is I'll take a can or jar of, like, really good premium nuts. I'll also take a can or a jar of macadamia nuts.

And I will take, like, not a bunch, but enough pistachios. and I mix all of those together in a bowl and then I put them into small containers. But this has all of that plus Brazil and Filberts.

MaxNow, when you eat the nut mix, are you having one nut at a time or are you making multi-nut combos in your mouth? No, I'm doing numerous multi-nut combos,

Merlinusually three to five nuts.

MaxI think that's really where you get the good flavors.

MerlinOh, and they're all different, different textures, different mouthfeel.

MaxYou know what I like is a little salted pumpkin seed. Yeah, that can be real good. It's kind of bitter. It's sort of bitter and salty. Yeah, that's really good. You get that in a nut mix? Ooh, now you've got a stew going. I like this challenge.

MerlinI mean, it's a weird challenge, but I like how it turned out.

AlexOkay.

MaxThanks to Nuts.com for sponsoring the Dubai Friday program. Mm-hmm. Use the code LolitaExpress for 20% off on checkout.

AlexOh, Lord.

MaxWhat other treats do you have for me?

AlexOh, actually, Jordan. No, no, no. Toby. Toby, Toby, Toby. Can you please get us two glasses of water and a spoon? Spoons, please. What is happening?

MerlinWhat is happening? Are you guys going to vape? I don't want to vape the nuts.

AlexNo.

MaxVape the nuts. Can't we just eat the nuts? Do we have to smoke them out of a computer? Oh, God, I would love that. Has anyone made a phone vape yet?

AlexOkay. Hey, there is a company that creates a... Why do you know this? Why do you know this? There's a device that is Bluetooth capable, and you control it from your phone, so you know exactly how much vapor...

MerlinHey, Siri, fuck me up. You tap it on your NFC, and it turns off all your lights that are supported.

AlexSo I emailed them asking if they were going to do shortcuts. Hey, man.

MaxAlmost 48% of my lights went on.

AlexGod.

MaxHey, Siri. Fuck me up. Siri just responds, Siri's not here right now.

Show notes

Transcript

141. Snozzberries

Show notes

Transcript

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