Do By Friday
Episode 195 artwork
Episode 195 · July 16, 2020 · 01:13:39

195. Naked Meat Core

This week's challengeThis week’s challenge: get a new home gadget.
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This week’s challenge: get a new home gadget.

You can hear the after show and support Do By Friday on Patreon!

Edited by Quinn Rose

Engineered by Cameron Bopp

Show Notes

Transcript

Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakes

MerlinWhich part's the show, Alexandra? Just so I know.

AlexI shouldn't go on Twitter. Is this the show? I guess this is the show. Have you ever signed an open letter?

MerlinHmm. I'm not sure I have. I'll say as I sit here today, I can't recall ever having done that. I'm not a particularly huge fan of open letters, but I can say more about it. I find them very performative. Really? I do. I do. I think they're more performative than useful. I think they're mostly sort of a branding exercise because you could also send a closed letter and then people wouldn't need to see that.

AlexYeah, I truly thought when I was younger that when someone said that there was an open letter, it had been something that had leaked or...

MerlinOr like maybe somebody steamed it open over a tea kettle.

AlexExactly, yep, yep, yep.

MerlinThat's your open letter, okay.

AlexThey got that dissolver for the glue and it's like, oh, letter's open now. uh but then as as i turned into from being an eight-year-old during the clinton lewinski scandal uh becoming nine years old i'm like i i forget even what open letter this was but it had something to do with the clintons and the 90s and at nine years old i was like open letters are stupid And I thought that maybe in 20 years my opinion would change, but it hasn't.

That's all. That's it. That's it.

MerlinWell, you know, I mean, I, boy, on the one hand, I don't want to be a dick. And on the other hand, I don't want to get canceled if I can avoid it. But.

AlexWell, I already have. So go ahead. I'm your shield.

MerlinYeah, but I haven't. I need this.

AlexI know. Why? Why?

MerlinWhat?

AlexWell, sign the open letter.

MerlinOkay, so how long have you been up? What's happening with you today? What's going on?

AlexI've been up until since 6.30 a.m.? I don't know.

MerlinUp until 6.30, okay.

AlexOr up since 6.30. I went to bed very promptly after I stopped streaming.

MerlinTime hard do happen order, okay.

AlexI went to bed after I was streaming some nonsense on Twitter, and then I had a... Wait, let's pull up the very scientific beta data, if you will.

MerlinOh my God, is this going to be the whole episode?

Alex30 a.m. to 6.15 a.m.

MerlinAre you in the White House Rose Garden right now by any chance? I realize you don't watch that stuff like I do. Yesterday was bananas. It was so good. It was so good.

AlexI saw a single question and answer situation. What else went down?

MerlinWell, I mean, there was a lot to it. And I don't want to take you off your what time you got up until story and your open letter thing about your partner streaming fusing. I don't want to take you off that because it seems like you're really going somewhere interesting.

AlexYou just hate Steven Universe so much and I don't understand why.

MerlinDid you say pasting Steven Universe? Am I having a stroke today, Alex? What's happening?

AlexEverything's a simulation. billionaires am i right okay go ahead you copy and you paste into the same song

Merlinand uh let's see how does one say okay so it was it was this is it's boring but it's fascinating there is a thesis out there right now that which is not to say that trump's thing is over but that he has done somebody i found a wonderful article where somebody said he's done the one thing that he could never afford to do which has become boring and i think in some sense that is true I think there's a lot of conditions that have changed. I think the kind of message that he has, let's put it this way, a Rose Garden announcement about a change in policy regarding,

I believe Hong Kong, that turned into about 53 minutes of some of the most fucking meltdown crazy, bat shit, monkey balls, nutso shit from him, and then about 10 minutes of questions. but how did he say okay well first of all you know it's pretty crass to go and do this what he did in the rose garden just in terms of you know history and norms it's kind of a weird thing to do but you know he's a weird and unnormal guy but he so he he very quickly lost track of where where what he

was doing there so he's kind of stopped looking at the teleprompters and he was looking at a piece of paper. And he basically started taking, just reading a bunch of factually incorrect or deeply misleading things about Joe Biden, where they basically boulderized something that Biden or his campaign had said and turned it into the most fucking booga booga bullshit you've ever heard in your life. They're going to ban windows. You're not going to be able to have air conditioning. It's going to be too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. They're taking away your

beautiful coal. I feel like we're actually doing very well when you see all of our beautiful boaters and their signs. And the whole thing was just like beyond stream of consciousness. But then there's some other factors, right? Because like, we're used to that. That's been happening on, you know, one way or another for a while. But for one, I mean, it does, it does feel pretty sweaty. Like his whole like, I'm not scared of Joe Biden, you can tell because I talked about Joe Biden so much. I mentioned his name 31 times. There's that. There's also the fact that because it was in the Rose Garden with some reporters, he was doing his rally style schtick and it was just crickets,

which made it sound so much more bananas. And listen, and listen, I don't want to bag on the guy. Believe me, every liberal in the fucking world is here to tell me how it's ableist to point out anything weird that this guy does.

AlexBut also it's weird to point out that Joe Biden's dementia is not great.

MerlinYou can't point out anything. You guys thread. We need to talk. You know, a lot of people in Pennsylvania have small eyes. And when you attack Joe Biden, you're actually you're you're you're you're harming the miniocular Americans out there.

AlexI mean, I've had a stutter and it never made me commit war crimes. I don't know. But that's me. I've been canceled. Go on.

MerlinWell, you don't know. You're still young. I mean, you're not even 30.

AlexI've got I've got time.

Merlinmedia luminary. But then the, what was the other thing I was going to say? Is that, so there's that, but also it was to use a phrase that he used to love to use in 2015 and 2016. It was really quite shockingly low energy. Also just Oz and Sods, he's, you know, the and thing he does, you know, he has his bits. And one of his bits is, you know, you turn left to get into the United States. There's all these bits. One of his bits is his and thing that we've talked about here, right? Where he flatly says something wrong sometimes he'll do this

he'll do that thing he'll realize he's clocked that he said something wrong and then he'll say and and then the correct word so you know what I'm talking about right?

Alexyes unfortunately

Merlinhe'll say something like you know scangled ace and scrambled eggs you know what I mean with scrambled eggs you know and you're like what the fuck was that?

Alexand you know the thing you know the thing

Merlinhe's increased Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's increasingly like leaning into it in a way that is frankly bizarre. So there's one where he's talking about, they want to take away charter schools. They're taking away your charter schools, especially in the poor neighborhoods. And I've seen many example.

An example, an example in Washington, D.C. And I can't even do justice to how fucking weird it sounded to see him up there flapping his arms around trying to get himself out of this. But like the entire thing all together was it was just such an odd display. And he was so fucking sweaty. And Alex, you know, I say this about everybody. I love people. He really needs to get so much more sleep than he's getting. It's clearly not a good.

It's not a salutary outcome. It's not just that he looks tired. It's just that I think his thinking has become increasingly disordered. And it's gotten to where it's like watching Rocky Horror. We're like, as soon as I hear him begin a sentence, I can I can sing along for the next three sentences because I know exactly what he's going to say.

AlexI mean, really, he's the next Hamilton. He's going to say and and then it's just going to be a list. You know what I mean?

MerlinWait a minute. OK, wait. Is he Hamilton or Burr? Hmm. Oh, wait. And is Biden Burr?

AlexOh, wait. I think Biden in this situation is Burr because there's always a Burr and a Hamilton as they say

Merlinyou don't know who the Burr in the room is it's you

Speaker BI'm willing to wait for it I mean he was he was

MerlinI'm not standing still I'm lying wait a minute where am I going

AlexI'm lying and you know

Merlinthere's a pretty wild quote oh damn it i can't find it now but something he said that was so crazy anyway it's not important we shouldn't talk about this but anyway yeah um so there's that uh and i feel like i've lost the thread a little bit comfort crab um comfort oh you mean my my

Alexemotional support crab?

MerlinYes.

AlexYeah.

MerlinUh-huh.

AlexI don't know why that was so hard.

MerlinOh, goddammit. Hang on. Marker this. I want to find this fucking thing. Marker, marker.

AlexMarker, marker.

MerlinSo I realized that I can do that. Now that we do that and we edit things, I realized I can say, please cut off the part where I look up this thing. You don't have to hear me do it in real time. Do you think that harms the show?

AlexI mean, it might self-harm the show, but I can't make jokes like that.

MerlinOh, wow, wow, wow. T.W.

AlexSorry. Quint, I'm sorry, Quint.

MerlinWow, oh my goodness.

AlexI'm a little spicy.

MerlinI'll tell you where I think an open letter, I'm not happy about this, but what I'm happy about does not change reality. I think, I'll tell you where an open letter works. If you want to, if you want to consolidate power and do a show of unity and force, often from a clearly sort of, I don't want to say financial standpoint, But if you want to show collective action, if you want to put a quote-unquote open letter in the New York Times, get a full-page New York Times ad to say something where you really want to say something to somebody and you've got 50 very influential people to sign it, I'll bet that can be kind of effective.

I bet that will at least get somebody's attention and at least somebody who's a CEO. What are you going to do? I mean, like, it's going to be hard to completely overlook that. I'm not saying that's the greatest thing in the world. It's just there's a phrase that increasingly goes through my mind when you say, you know, oh, you know, you say thank you. And the person says, well, it was the least I could do. So many people are doing the least that they could do right now. And then kind of wanting a participation badge for it. And I feel like with an open letter or like a petition or whatever, it's – I mean, yeah, I guess it can be quite powerful.

But it's my understanding from, well, from Max and from lots of other people that like if you're trying to reach a lawmaker and get them to change their mind, you call their office over and over. Not even email. I mean, if you can, go to their office. I've heard it said, not just for him, but from other folks, that they count a call, like a factor of X, more effective and just that it's going to cause more change than an email.

That's obviously like an AstroTurf fill-in-the-blanks Mad Libs email. So I don't know. I mean, people should do them. But there will be a point, I hope, where we reach a point of exhaustion and people doing the absolute fucking minimum thing that they can do and then saying that they didn't get their parade.

AlexI mean, I'm mostly the opposite of mostly off Twitter and I can't distinguish between real life anger and normal.

MerlinAnd performed outrage.

AlexI truly...

MerlinI mean, I'm sorry, I put words in your mouth. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Speaker BSort of.

MerlinAnd there's a lot of demands for performed outrage. And if you get it wrong, Jiminy Christmas. It's such disproportionate warfare. I'm going to fucking say this. Who cares? I mean, on the one side, you've got, I hate to make it about sides, but it's kind of the nature of what we're dealing with. On the one hand, you've got a side over here that is operating utterly without shame or conscience and just going so far, as Adam Serwer famously said, the cruelty is the point. Just doing the worst possible things, picking in the worst way upon the most vulnerable people.

There's just countless examples of just execrable behavior. And when you look at somebody whose vanity is so crucial to what makes his decision-making as fucked up as Trump, it is his vanity. People say, like Nicole Wallace says, it all comes back to Russia. Some people say, you know, it all comes back to the grift. I think almost everything, we're straight back to Josh Marshall now, the Trump's razor, which is like so much of it comes down to his vanity.

And he is an extremely vain man. And when we point out like how much he looks like he's made out of pork chops and copper tone, and you say, oh, boo, you're, it's like, well, okay. Well, here's the problem now. Like, okay, I'm not saying that that's, while at the same time, our side adopting a lot of the same tactics to attack their own turns out instead of the other side, it becomes this entire huge phalanx of tone police with their own version of pepper spray, which is so I don't know,

man. I, I just, I, you know, we're going to, we, we, we could fuck up a wet dream, you know, Democrats, you know, we could, we could fuck. I mean, it's just, it's so insane how much we will go out of our way to, exaggerate a nearly non-existent difference in order to score a dunk for your brand. And it's so fucked up. And I mean, as much as things look good in the polls right now, there's a thousand ways we could fuck this up.

AlexStill don't think he's going to. I think we are Trump 2020 all the way.

MerlinI don't know why you say that, except that you have that fear. Well, do you really do you rationally believe that with what's out there right now?

AlexThat goes back to your other question of can I tell the difference between like internet rage and performative rage? That's the I don't I think it might have started out as performative or maybe it started out as anger and then became a performance. I don't know. Like, I don't know if I just believe he's going to win because I truly thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. And I was quite wrong about that. and I'm preparing for the worst case scenario.

MerlinAgain, getting ready to move.

AlexNow Canada won't have us. I know. Where are we going to go? Yeah.

MerlinOh, shit.

AlexI have a friend whose partner is in Canada and they're like, what do we do now? Like, it's, oh, it all fucking sucks.

MerlinI've read some things that talk about this, but, you know, so in the COVID times, I have to say that there is a thing that I've certainly known about since third grade that I now think about a lot more. And it's something that helps govern a lot of my thinking about how well or how much I should sort of interrogate a given datum, right? And that is the word denominator. What is the denominator for this? Because if we don't, we talked about this before, but if you don't know the denominator, then you don't know fucking anything, right?

If you don't know how, and when you say, oh, you know, the number or the stats for this are great because we only saw 125 cases or positives. And you're like, well, okay, but out of how many tests? And how long did those tests take? And there's just so many things where you give these unitless Bezos numbers about shit and people go like, oh, that seems good. And the number's moving. You're like, yeah, but you're just talking about the numerator. If you don't know the denominator, you don't know fuck all. And okay, so what does that have to do here?

To quote the great Mark Cuban, 60% of a watermelon is a whole lot more than 100% of a grape. And I think the thing is, when we talk about Trump's base, and we say, well, Trump's base, you know, largely, you know, white, blue-collar men with no college education, however you define it. But you say, well, you know what? The crazy part of this is, since day one, he has stayed incredibly consistent with his base. He's never gone above 50.

He's never gone below 40 much or for long. And isn't that wild? And so we've all just taken that as conventional wisdom and go, wow, shit, that's crazy. No matter what he does, 30% of the country thinks he's good. But what's the denominator? Are we talking about a watermelon or a grape? How big is the pie from which you've sliced one-sixth of the pie? My point being, are we talking enough, and I don't want to be unrealistic about this, but are we talking enough about how much that base, the denominator of that base has shrunk?

Where if that base gets down to 1 million people, that 31% is not going to be very consequential. And I have not seen a huge amount of data on the change in that denominator over time. Does this make sense?

AlexYeah, I am more focused.

MerlinA percentage of support is only useful to understand in as much as we know out of how many people we're talking about. If that base is shrinking, then the percentage of people that agree with him becomes less consequential.

AlexYeah. And that's why I'm obsessed with how many people, not how many people are going to vote for Joe Biden because whatever. The people are going to go out and vote for Kanye, like weren't going to vote for Biden anyway. So I think it's like, whatever. But who's going to go vote for Joe Biden, who was ever going to vote at all? Like, I try to think.

MerlinBut if the, I mean, like, not to be too cute here, but if it's merely a, I don't want to say suppression, but if it merely becomes something where people cannot, for whatever reason, decide, if a bunch of people decide just not to go to the polls to vote for Trump, it doesn't matter if they didn't vote for Biden.

That's a serious concern. And guess what? How do you do that? Well, you piss off a lot of people's wives and daughters, and you also basically call into question whether any election anymore can be true because mail-in ballots and absentee ballots are a fraud. So he's basically training his people to think that it's all fake anyway, so why vote? Yeah. Grave tactical error. Anyway, I'm not trying to make you happy. I don't want to make you happy, but I'm just saying.

AlexI know. Well, I mean, but the other side could be, oh, see, it was rigged. Not my fault. Bye. And then he gets to run, what is it, Only America News or something? Is it OAN? Yeah. I think it's One America.

MerlinYeah. Somebody said something on political Twitter a few weeks ago, and it's been making my blood run cold ever since. and it was a woman saying something like,

if he doesn't win on November 3rd, just imagine what's going to happen between then and inauguration. Setting aside the like, will he leave office without a SWAT raid? Can you imagine how many, my mind races to think about how much the corruption is going to go to 11, especially knowing that he's going to have a pile of new legal documents coming at him the second he's out of office. That's the other part of this.

I think the self-preservation part is as long as the OLC memo is being observed, he won't be prosecuted. So he's fighting for his life, not just politically, but legally.

AlexI, yeah, I don't think he cares about his political, I wouldn't say.

MerlinIt's vanity. Vanity.

AlexExactly. Yeah, he cares about what people think of him and his lovely ghost son. But my main worry is still thinking about how I would vote if I was 10 years younger. And like, I want to always think about how are people who are 10 years younger than me thinking? And how are people who are 20 to 30 years older than me thinking? because I feel like that is the age range in which whatever you want to call it,

radicalization or just big shifts in ideals change.

MerlinWhat age? What age?

AlexOkay. I am 29 years old.

MerlinNo, no, no. I'm genuinely interested in this. I want to hear.

AlexSo like 10 years ago, I'm voting for Obama. Like fucking yes. Awesome. Few months later, I see Obama wins a Nobel Peace Prize. And I'm like, wait, isn't he in charge of the guns? OK. Oh, and then I whatever. I still like the Obamas. I know that it's problematic, but I'm canceled anyway.

And I but 10 year old 10 years ago, I would probably not get out of bed to vote for Biden, as they say, and not because of like, not out of boredom or laziness, just because I would be sad.

MerlinLack of enthusiasm?

AlexYeah, sad, lack of enthusiasm, fear of what people might be doing at the polls. Who knows? Like, we're far off from November. Although when we blink, it will be November. And then at the same time people like 20 to 30 years my senior they have just grown up in a completely different time and they also were adults when the you know when the recession or sorry after like 2008

hit like they had jobs saw those jobs maybe go away but also they've lived through enough um administrations to sort of know what life is like but also know that they have no idea what's going on with tiktok or like why the youths these days don't want to get out of bed and vote for joe biden uh because i was not thinking like that four years ago and i was really wrong about many many

Merlinthings. And I don't know, does that kind of make sense? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm, I want to say a true thing. I'm not only sensitive to that point of view, I kind of admire that point of view. And if you go back and listen to what I've had to say about Joe Biden for a pretty long time. Not that my opinion matters, but like, I'm not a particularly ardent fan of his. But really?

Now? I mean, what are you gonna do? Take your, you know, copy of Das Capital and go home? Like, what? Yeah, guys, we gotta get this guy out. And like, if, if, if, yeah, if Uncle Joe just hangs back and doesn't say anything. There was a funny bit last night in the sort of the increasingly, like, it's amazing we can still be so shocked by something that he said. But people saying, look, you know, the advice I would give to Biden at this point is when you go into the debate,

just give a single word answer and walk away. Let the man talk. The more he talks, you know, it's just, God, I'm trying to find this quote, and there's so many good ones. I'll look for this more later but let me just read you a little bit here this is answering a question I think we have really good poll numbers they're not suppression polls they're real polls you look at the intercoastal in Florida you look at the lakes you see thousands of boats with Trump signs American signs you got the Trump-Pence sign all over

you look at what's going on you look at bikers for miles and miles riding up highways proudly with their signs we run a race where it was the same thing 2016 we had polls that were fake they turned out to be fake not all a couple of them got it right Three of them, to be exact. Three of them. One of them was unsuspecting, but they got it right. They were very proud of it. I mean, like, I'm struggling to find this one particularly great bananas meltdown he had, but, like, every single one of these is an out-of-the-park dinger of madness. And also, did you see the new Trump campaign ad?

AlexNo. Do you want to watch it now or do you want to watch it later? Yes, I want to watch it now.

MerlinOkay. So I can't watch these things with my wife because she just literally cannot hear the man's voice without becoming very upset. So I need you to be my sink.

AlexI'll be your special lady friend. Oh, this is very exciting. Where am I going?

MerlinYeah, I'm looking for it right now. No, here we go. I'll get it. Yeah, so there's lots of places today, but Max Kennerly. I'll tell you what he said in a second. Let me just get this up first. By the wonderful Stedman.

Speaker Athe radical left-wing mobs agenda take over our cities defund the police pressure more towns to follow and joe biden stands with them cutting police funding yes absolutely eliminating cash bail letting criminals back on the street violent crime exploding innocent children fatally shot who will be there to answer the call when your children are sick he's so tired you won't be safe

Merlinin Joe Biden's America. Okay, so if you had not seen the branding for that, like, what would you assume? Would you not assume that Joe Biden is very much currently president, maybe has been for seven years, and has had an utterly failed administration? So yeah, yeah. Great stuff

Alexgoing down. Oh, my goodness. Yes, absolutely. Wait, I gotta do it again. Quinn, you're gonna I've said it in again. Hold on.

Speaker AYes.

AlexAbsolutely. I'm sorry. I know that's why it's not that funny, but wow. That's really, it's kind of something. Jeebus.

MerlinYeah.

AlexOh, wow. This one shot.

MerlinThis whole thing is so, it's so good. The statue stuff. We haven't had anybody making a move since I enacted this. I signed an executive order a couple of weeks ago, and it says very simply, 10 years in jail. You do it, 10 years in jail. Talking about statues. The amazing part is we're able to catch everybody because thanks to all of you on television, we appreciate it. But we have their pictures. They have the man standing on Andrew Jackson's horse. We have the man standing by General George Washington. We have everybody standing. Oh, and oh, they were going to go for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Abraham Lincoln standing with a young man who's being freed. And we said, we're going to do something. We can't let this happen. Okay, so enough of that. What's the open letter?

AlexI mean, I'm still kind of reeling from the Mount Rushmore stuff. I'm like, you're yelling at people because...

MerlinNobody's going to take these down. Nobody's going to remove this particular stone from the Indian land.

AlexLook it. I got it, guys. We got it. But then we're all on Twitter like...

MerlinTen years. Ten years. No questions asked.

AlexYeah.

MerlinHe sounds like lemon grab.

AlexNo trials.

Speaker BSeven years, dungeon. No minimums.

MerlinSo what Max Kennerly said was violent crime... So he's quoting, violent crime exploiting, innocent children fatally shot. And he, unquote, all right, I'm going to call it. Before this election is over, Trump is going to pivot from merely saying Biden hasn't done anything to outright saying Biden is currently the president.

AlexMan, that ad was such a like it had, you know what? It had Prince Andrew energy of like, yeah, see, see, I'm innocent. I'm innocent. All that interview. You talk about the interview. As his sweat drips down.

MerlinOh, man. Talk about sweaty. But he couldn't sweat because of his service in the Falkland Islands.

AlexCouldn't.

MerlinCouldn't at all. Thank you for your service. Yeah. But, you know, we knew what we were in for from that inauguration speech. I mean, we were like, oh, man. This is going to be really, really bad.

AlexIt's real now.

MerlinOkay. Well, we have other things to cover this week. Wow. We got a lot to cover here.

AlexTick-tock. Uh, do I? No, we don't.

MerlinWell, oh, we sure do.

AlexNo, okay. All right, proceed.

MerlinI got a man on the inside, Hercules Mulligan. Tell me about your doorknobs in your closet, please.

AlexThat's getting a bit personal.

MerlinMy knobs?

AlexI mean, only I can call it. You have a question about my knobs? It's my choice.

MerlinWell, was there a problem with Dougie? Was there a problem with Dougie? Like, what happened with your knobs in your closet? I heard you had a closet incident, and I heard there was a problem with doorknobs that Hercules Mulligan had to fix. I don't know. I'm kind of confused about the whole thing.

AlexOh, well. Brr, brr.

MerlinThis is a dumb episode.

AlexI think you might be implying that my lovely spouse let you know about the home repair.

MerlinWhat are you talking about?

AlexWho? What?

MerlinI'm talking about the Taylor's Apprentice.

AlexOh.

MerlinAnyway, pick anyone you want or pass. You also choose to pass.

AlexOh, well, I think part the first, you're talking about how my spouse has decided to take it.

MerlinDon't make this about other people. What the fuck did you do to your closet?

AlexOh, fine. We'll start with the closet.

MerlinDid you try to get back in?

AlexWell, I've been trying so hard. I was never in. I was always like clamoring.

MerlinAlex trapped in the closet.

AlexMan, I mean, I was just talk about Lady G. Like I've been Lady G my whole life, like trying so hard to stay inside of it.

MerlinAnd it keeps rejecting you like a bad liver.

AlexYeah. It's like, no, no, no.

MerlinI've been canceled by the closet so many times you wouldn't believe.

AlexBut what I think he's talking about is the closet. Can you hear this? yeah it was like a door maybe yeah oh okay man i gotta figure out if this microphone is good or not thanks marco um but okay wait hold on now it's really falling okay are you okay do you want to call somebody wait you want me to call dougie i don't know who dougie is isn't dougie dougie is my name for your landlord oh teach me how to um teach me how to say goodbye i'm so lost right now

MerlinDid a closet fall on you? Because that would be a pretty hilarious way for you to die.

AlexAll right. It would be.

MerlinDo we have a cause of death? Closet.

AlexOh, God. I'm going to add that to my list.

MerlinOh, ways you want to die?

AlexYeah. Well, I don't want to.

MerlinDo you have a list of ways you want to die? I'm sorry. The ways you would prefer to die if you get to choose.

AlexPeople get very scared when I'm sad. But I just think it would be very funny if a closet fell on me. or if I got trapped in one. Ideally, I would like to be trapped in a closet.

MerlinOkay.

AlexOr I somehow choke to death on my own foot. Like one of those things. It would just be fun. But we've discussed sort of the layout of my apartment before and my desk is in my bedroom, which is next to a closet and the door falls off onto me.

MerlinDid I hear correctly with my Spidey sense that it's like a slidey door?

AlexIt's like a, what would you call it? An accordion door?

MerlinOh, okay. I see what you're saying. Okay. But it's a single door. It's like in Florida, we always had the two doors and you slide one of them, you can jam your fingers in it real good. There's a track. If it gets off the track, that's a problem. What are you working with with your accordion?

AlexIs that like every Florida home? Because even in like nice Florida homes, that's a thing. Why do they do that?

MerlinThat and the popcorn ceiling. They install that at the factory.

AlexOh my God. All right. Well, let me just take a picture. Not optional. No. Let me just take a picture.

Speaker BOkay, cool. Enhance, enhance.

AlexSending a living photo your way. I like that. I bet my legs are in it. I probably should have thought about that.

MerlinOh, I just assume we didn't do that.

Alexso that's yeah those those are and you you've noticed that it doesn't look that bad right oh

Merlini see there okay this is the kind where so if you were to grab so what we're seeing here is we see four panels and i'm guessing between uh the the first and second and third and fourth panels there's hinges such that when you open them you pull them out now it's open is that right yes uh

Alexand so now what i'll do this could be short i know i'm not i'm not gonna do it literally the

Merlinmost boring oh no you think you worry people zoom in oh no i'm not going to do it because

Alexliterally it's falling again so i'm not oh okay no my my so it has like a little slidey track on it or at least it did but it's not anymore i really truly wish i could describe this better

Merlinit used to have a slidey track but it's not anymore okay the slidey track is gone did dougie

Alextake that away because you were using it wrong i don't know i i don't know first there's one on there's one on matt's side but there's not one on my side and i just never questioned why this wood was grinding against the floor of the other wood uh until it got too humid

Merlinyou don't want you don't want somebody grinding on your wood

Alexthat's the last thing you want they're already playing with my knobs

Merlinthis is why this is why you look nice today's line of velcro clothing is going to be so popular

Alexwith people oh i have a beef to talk to you or words keep okay i listen i would never i don't know what that means derp derp i would never ask anything of our audience but i have been trying for i think literally two weeks now to find the place that i publicly said uh that i was trying to design a t-shirt that was made out of the inside of velcro so that i could just put things

Merlinon to me like like anybody could have a name tag oh you're saying we uh we yoinked we yoinked your

Alexidea yeah so so as you know the uh the original smart men of you look nice today i'm kidding everybody listened to you look nice today so good and now it's on youtube and it's really fucking funny uh but this original idea where like let's say you have a wallet instead of putting it in a pocket because you know uh look ladies pants do not have pockets now men's pants don't have pockets

Merlinand when they do give you a pocket it's like it's a it's it's like it's like the um i think you should leave toilet we're like yes they give you they deliberately give you a jokey pocket you couldn't even fit a fart in uh-huh uh-huh and let alone let alone a big boy like a mike hurley

Alexphone no it's their it's their fault and then nobody spares squares it's just a no because you made the mud pie yeah but but but you know uh there was there was at one time someone else who brought that idea up of you know just a reverse velcro i i called it the reverse velcro shirt um

Merlinso it'd be velcro on the inside because i would rub on your knobs no no no no no no the the

Alexthat's the other thing you type the title of the episode you did was wrong because it's it's just soft side out and it was gonna be you're talking about you're talking about the the loops not the hooks yes the fuzz yes it's like a pubic shirt okay it's an rv it's an rvs it's a reverse velcro shirt what does it have to do with rvs um r rv rvs reverse shirt okay that's that's that's the

MerlinCanadian Mounted Police? You're being

Alexableist by not understanding

Merlinmy words. Well, you're being obdurate, and I think that's the ultimate ableism.

AlexBut my idea was not just, oh, we Velcro our wallets on and our phones and keys and all of that, but then we can have also just alternative items of clothing to Velcro on. It's the idea.

MerlinOh my god, like a color form. You probably don't remember this, but you can put a shirt on your shirt. Right? You could attach a different shirt to your shirt.

AlexNaked meat core. You're just a naked meat core with Velcro on it. Okay, okay. And then you're a modular human.

MerlinRight. So we were looking at you put your personal accessories and carry items onto your shirt with the idea of, I think we went a little further than that, but also you don't need to buy.

AlexWell, then you got into QR codes, which don't even get me started. I had a...

MerlinHuh. Because that was your idea too, QR codes?

AlexI invented QR codes.

MerlinYou and Al Gore and Dave Weiner. Yeah. Huh. Okay. But also, I like the idea of being able to put a logo on your shirt. Like, today I'm Nike. Or like, today I'm like, you know, like Pink Triangle or whatever. Like, you get to pick. But I also do love the idea, and I don't mean to be promoting my other show. Please don't listen to it. But I do love the idea of getting a Velcro patch gun that you could shoot at people. And it could be like, beep, beep, good job. like good job with your driving, good job with your saxophone, whatever it is, but you could shoot a Velcro patch at them and then they could pay it forward.

AlexYes. Like it is, Adam brought something up. Adam Lysiger of You Look Nice Today, which is a show that's on YouTube now, then you should really watch it.

MerlinPlease remember to like and subscribe.

AlexThe idea of currency had not occurred to me because you know that I do not like cash, but if it was just something that could live on me and just be Velcroed to somebody else, You know, just like hook loop.

MerlinI see. So you're the NFC tag now.

AlexMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then you can make like a Batman belt out of like tampons. It would be so great.

MerlinThat would be amazing. That would be so cool.

AlexUh-huh. Oh, think about what Tom Bin could do with that, with their O-ring technology.

MerlinYou think Tom Bin's real?

AlexI think about that like once a day.

MerlinI mean, is it going to be like op-ed or something? Is it going to be like actually he's like a composite drawing or something? And how do I know it's a he? And where is the bin even?

AlexExactly. Exactly. There's this guy named Nick all over the website, but I just hope that...

MerlinI hope he's happy.

AlexMr. Ben might be like a Santa Claus. He's only real if you believe.

MerlinMr. Ben is his father. Call him back.

AlexYou got to clap if you want to keep him alive.

MerlinCynic. Okay, well, I think we covered the closet.

AlexOh my God. I was actually just going to ask, what did this come from? and I've addressed the closet that is just falling down.

MerlinWell, I super don't want to talk about your knobs. I appreciate your candor in talking about your closet problem. Now, is that the kind of thing you call Dougie about?

AlexI don't know because I don't know if he did it or if I did it.

MerlinWell, I can promise that you did it. Based on my experience with every landlord ever, everything is some tenant's fault.

AlexAbsolutely.

MerlinI was talking to Hercules Mulligan about this, about some of the bananas instances of what I have called. punitive repairs. Yes! I don't know if he told you about this. No, he did not, but that makes sense. There's a reason we stopped calling about anything except the most catastrophic thing, which is that first we'd have to endure some kind of a lecture.

AlexThat's what I told him! Yes!

MerlinLike, okay, oh, the tiles fell out. Hey, hey, hey, bud, the tiles are falling off in the shower and the wall's moving a little bit. And so what do you do? Well, you discover that there's mold and damage under that, so you tile over that. And then you don't do a very good job. So the damage is still there. Let's just be super clear. It's moldy and shit. But you tile over that. And then just to make a little fun for your tenants, you do a really shitty job with the caulking that they have to look at forever.

Speaker BMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

MerlinYou know, oh, hey, I think there's a problem here with the floor. Well, good. I'll install an Estraturf. How do you feel about that?

AlexYeah. Yeah. That's why I'm always afraid to contact Dougie because, I mean.

MerlinThey don't think like people.

AlexNo. Like my Hercules, he's got a big list of the things that are broken, as one should if they are renting a place.

MerlinYeah. Well, mine is just a list of stuff. Like when we get enough of these, we call a handy person to come out and do electric stuff to do like installing. Like if we want a cassette switch installed or if we want to get these lights put in or whatever, let alone like all of the like carpentry that has to be done.

AlexI mean as people may have seen last night during my weird live stream at like midnight because I couldn't sleep people were like ah there's things hanging on your walls because Dougie doesn't like us hanging things on the walls but no no no did you notice those are hooks we're allowed to put 3M style hooks up

Merlinoh the yeah the awesome velcro-ish No, not the Velcro. The sticker one where you pull it to take it off.

AlexYes, yes, yes, yes.

MerlinLike, I forgot. What's the name of that product line?

AlexOh, fuck. 3M?

Merlin3M Pilot? Or not? Yeah, but those things are great. I have a whole box full of those that I deploy. That sounds powerful. It can be really good for, like...

AlexCommand strips! There we go. Sorry.

MerlinCommand strips. Now, yeah, they're really good for hanging up, like, framed things and stuff like that.

AlexIt's really good. But here, yes. Yes, I know. And he'll allow command strips on hooks, but not on frames.

MerlinLike the little white plastic boys with the little hooky? That one of those?

AlexYep. Those live right by our door where we keep our keys.

MerlinOh, cool. Okay. I love a hook.

AlexBut we put backpacks on these hooks. Like, they're real strong hooks. And they haven't pulled the wall down yet. And I really don't think our wedding photo is going to pull down the wall either. but Dougie seems to be afraid of that new landlord that he is.

MerlinSo you're probably his like practice tenants.

AlexI really, I think we are. I'm worried also too, that it'll, he'll get either bored of us or he'll feel like, all right, it's time to send them off to a farm, but it'll be like a little literal farm instead of killing us. He'll just sell this building. Oh,

Merlinyou'd be terrible on a farm. You'd hate that.

AlexDo you think you could adapt?

MerlinWould you like ride pigs and stuff like that? It'd be really cute.

AlexWell, I have ridden a pig, and yes, it is adorable.

MerlinOh, because family. Oh, wait, how little were you? Are there photos?

AlexOh, yeah, I should try to find a photo. I think three.

MerlinOh, God. Alex, it's so important you send me a picture of you riding a pig.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinAre you holding an iPhone?

AlexNo, I was like three. I'm very...

MerlinOh. So you're going to be a Fisher-Price phone. Okay.

AlexYou joke, but those VTech laptops were really cool.

MerlinVTech, huh.

AlexI don't see. This is where the zoomers are going to appreciate this.

MerlinYeah. I have to be a nineties kid. I'm going to tell you about something and I I'm, I'm already regretting that I'm about to tell you this because this is going to potentially become, I should apologize to Hercules Mulligan. Cause I think you're going to like this idea so much. It might fuck you up. So, um, one summer I had a really good pal in college. He was such a good pal and, um, very influential in my life. my friend Chris Cauldron. And Chris was so cool. I learned so much from Chris and about music and, you know, about punk rock and David Lynch. And he's just the coolest. And anyway, Chris,

one summer, so I was living in Sarasota and there was a cool thing you could do where you could be, you could basically, in Chris's case, he took a job on campus where you could do what they called maintenance. Mostly you just painted rooms all day. So like you were in air conditioning, listening to music, but there was like some work to it. But the cool part was you lived in your own single 15 by 15 room for free and you got paid for doing that work. Oh God, I know where this is going, I think. Well, it was a pretty, it was a pretty, pretty good gig. Um, and, um, I can't

remember where this idea originated, but to be safe, I'm going to pin this on, on Chris because I think it was his idea. Chris was somebody who would, similar in perhaps in some ways to John Roderick trying on ideas like a sports coat. Chris would just decide somewhat arbitrarily that he was going to get really into something for a while as a thing. And Chris, he had little projects for himself. And so he has a big, every new college pay dorm room was exactly the same. You know, it would be variations of like arrangement, but 15 by 15, like a pretty big room for

two people. Definitely a really nice size room for one person. And guess what Chris decided? Chris decided he wanted to be able to see all of his possessions at one time. he wanted to be able to stand in the middle of a room and turn 360 degrees and to have just seen everything that he owns nothing in a drawer nothing in a closet nothing in a box definitely nothing in storage short of the stuff that was in his austin healy sprite like it was all visible

in his room and i did a lighter version of this and i'll tell you what it involved with some fucking hooks. I installed a shit ton of hooks because I decided closets, closets, that's for the, you know, for the leisure class. A good working man like me needs hooks. And I had all of my clothes on hooks and it was the fucking best. And I still love hooks. We have a, what do you call it? Like a, you know, like a coat tree or whatever you call it. When I walk in the house, I take off my marine layer shirt that I always wear on top and I hang that on there on a hook.

I love it. I love a hook. Could you imagine a situation where you had all of your possessions visible? Isn't that kind of appealing?

AlexWell, at first I'm like...

MerlinAlthough you do love bags, which mitigates against that.

AlexYeah, that's the thing. Except for the fact that I've got my top bin back here. I could see you getting rid of almost everything, though.

MerlinI could see you getting rid of almost everything and wearing a sheet just to be able to see all of your possessions. I could see you doing that on a long weekend.

AlexI mean, that's kind of how, where we're at right now. There is a part of my apartment where like you're standing where the wall between the kitchen and the bedroom is. And if you turn 360 degrees, I can indeed see all of my possessions. But there are those pesky cabinets and drawers.

MerlinYeah. No, no, I know. I've ended up doing in the I want to say occasional but in the frequent fit of peak I have started operationalizing the darkest fucking pattern I can imagine short of causing another person harm which is what you've listened to the Reconcilable Differences program you know that I'm a little bit territorial about some of my areas like the way that John is about he just asked for this one place to put his phone for me like

okay, I like my place on the couch, but there's other kinds of places. Like this is the place where I stage all of my morning pills. Like let's not clutter up this area. I need this area to remain clear. Act like this is an active lane in an emergency room. But of course, over time, there's the microwave oven. The microwave oven gets one thing on it, then it has six things on it, and then you have what Dr. Fauci calls an exponential curve. Now there's literally stuff tipping over because there's so much stacked on the microwave. And guess what daddy does? Daddy goes, you know how daddy is with a box.

Daddy goes and grabs a box and with his right arm swipes all of it into a box and puts it into another room. As we'll talk about during our challenge today, I do this with drawers. It's such a dark pattern because now whenever we can't find something, well, let's be honest.

Over 80% of what's in that box is bullshit. Otherwise, it wouldn't be under a stack. But guess what isn't bullshit? The one thing in there. And guess what? Now you're in an Indiana Jones or a Citizen Kane situation. Big warehouse, a lot of boxes, don't know where the vroom cleaner is. Vroom, is that what it's called?

AlexVroom cleaner?

MerlinWhoosh. Sorry, whoosh.

AlexWhoosh? Whoosh cleaner? That's why I clean my screens. Oh, like a Swiffer. Swifter? No, absolutely not.

MerlinNot at all. It's what you use to clean screens.

AlexOh, I see what you're saying.

MerlinBut you take – so anyway, it's such a dark pattern. So I'm living the opposite of the Chris Cauldron lifestyle, which is whenever we can't find something, we always say that – so this is the horrible thing I say to my wonderful daughter. She'll say, where's this thing that I've never bothered to keep track of? And I say, sweetheart, it's either where you left it or in a box somewhere. Where you left it is where I would start. But in a pile elsewhere here in the Indiana Jones warehouse is where it might be. Do you have a...

AlexOh, well, where I thought that story was going was that your friend was going to learn to be a handyman and then have a landlord that would say, oh, I will reimburse you for whatever it costs, and then he would just do...

MerlinThat would actually be an extremely Chris Cauldron thing to do. Chris was very handy. Chris was such a good friend. He helped me buy my VW bus in college and later on would help me fix it. And because he was also a VW bus guy, he introduced me to all these, like, you know, how to fix your own stuff. But he also did this thing where whenever he was a really good negotiator and not a dick, but whenever he would talk to somebody, he would say to them in a very, like, straightforward way,

well, okay, you're asking $1,800 for this. But we both know that that, I don't know, that that, I'm not a radiator. It's a bus. But we also know those brakes are original, and those are going to need to be replaced. So we need to take $200 off that price, you know, that kind of thing. But he didn't sound like an asshole when he did it. He was really, like, rational and kind about it. And people would be like, oh, yeah, I guess you're right. I'll take that money off. But, yeah, he was very handy. He could paint a room. He could fix a bus. Yeah.

AlexWell, now that I've found out that Matthew has replaced, I believe, every single doorknob in our building, including one for other tenants of the building.

MerlinLike some kind of a fairy tale character.

AlexWell, because when you get locked in your apartment during winter.

MerlinOh, I see. You're locked in there with him.

AlexIt's like a little bit like, OK, we're real. We're literal. Oh, I apologize. No, when it gets cold in our apartment, every year we are literally locked in because the outside freezes and the doorknob breaks.

MerlinOh, I see. Yeah. Okay.

AlexYes. Okay, okay, okay. So I guess, you know, Maddie called up Dougie for the ant situation that we've been having. Sure, sure, sure. Can we get someone out here to fix the ants? And he was like, oh, I'll do it. And I'm like, nah, we saw what you did with this still.

MerlinThat wasn't really the question.

AlexBut then he's like, oh, or if you need somebody sooner, just let me know how much it was and I'll take it off of rent. And it ended up. That's cool.

MerlinWow. That's really cool.

AlexIt is very cool. And immediately, well, not immediately. Now I'm thinking, wait, Matt, we have.

MerlinWas this always an option?

AlexWe spent at least 12 hours of our lives over two days researching and implementing a lot of deadly ant methods and trying not to kill our cats. How much would that have cost somebody else to do? Can we take it off our rent for the broken apartment we're living in? It sounds like Chris would have been nicer about it, though.

MerlinYeah, I bet you want to still pick those battles carefully, but it's nice to know it's an option.

AlexI know.

MerlinEnd solitary confinement, free federal housing for former inmates. So federal housing now can go to inmates, former inmates. Rejoin Paris Climate Accord and seek an even higher level of restrictions. Oh, I didn't notice that. Oh, I see. So they want to join the Paris Climate Accord, and they want to seek an even higher level of inaudible. In other words, make it worse than it was. Mandate net zero carbon emissions from homes, offices, and all new buildings by 2030. That basically means no windows, no nothing. It's very hard to do. I tell people when they want to go into some of these buildings, how are your eyes?

Because they won't be good in five years. And I hope you don't mind cold office space in the winter and warm office space in the summer because your air conditioning is not the same as the good old days. Mandate zero carbon emissions from power plants by 2035. Zero. We're talking about zero. Nothing can go in the air. mandate net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And I believe he's changing that. He's bringing it down. He wants no petroleum product. He wants no oil or gas. I don't think Texas is going to do too well. They're going to get rid of about 7 million jobs if you go by the Biden plan.

AlexIt's going to be fine.

MerlinWhat else do we have here? We have so many exciting things to talk about. You have, oh, look at you. You put a lot of content in here.

AlexOh, but again, this is, oh man, we've already been talking for an hour. Quinn, let's start the show. I lost the dock. I lost the dock.

MerlinShould we get into our challenge? Is that what you're saying?

AlexWe should get to our challenge. Sorry, I'm looking at hooks now. Well, that was a lie. I'm not looking at, I was looking at hooks, and now I'm looking at 90s internet toys that I played with. Look at how cute this thing is right now.

MerlinDid you look at my list of fives? Five requests with regard to my eventual death.

AlexOh, goodness. Please read this. Please read this.

MerlinFive requests with me. This is from the website Fives. Five requests with regard to my eventual death. Whoa, December 11, 2002. Number one, if it happens that my death occurred in some public place, there is to be no airsats memorial created on that location comprised of teddy bears, mylar balloons, or terrible poems written on poster board in pink magic marker. This is very, very important. Number two, if you choose to have any kind of service, quote, memorializing me, there will be no use of the phrase, quote, looking down on us. Number three, at no time is any outraged friend or family member to appear in public looking indignant and holding up a framed photograph of me.

Four, if you refer to anything I've ever done as brave or courageous or special, I will personally come back from the grave and shit angry ghost turds in your coffee pot. Number five, if the resources exist and the weather is fine, I prefer to have my remains torn apart by vicious dogs while Fleetwood Mac's tusk is performed by an enthusiastic high school marching band.

Alexquick question quick question you posted this on december 11th 2002 that uh as you mentioned what was this because it was the one year 9-11 oh shit i forgot

Merlindecember 11th wasn't 9-11 yeah we never forget which you apparently just did i just forgot Yeah, 12-11, they call it. Never forget. What happened on 12-11? Let's find out. Let's find out what happened on December 11, 2002 that I was...

Speaker BOkay.

MerlinOh, wait. So what you're saying is, if I understand you're stipulating, I'm memorializing, as you say, 12-11 of 2001, correct?

Speaker BI guess so.

MerlinOkay. So let's go to December 11, 2001, a date which will live in infamy. Okay. Oh, man. I bet some shit went down. It was a Tuesday. just like 9-11.

AlexIt was an optimistic day. It was.

MerlinOh, I'm not seeing a lot here. Birthday facts about December 11th. Oh, boy. This is like when you go on the App Store and you fall through the floor and see all the shitty sites. When you look for stuff like this, woof. New York Post, December 11th. Oh, CNBC will open shops and airports. That's nice.

AlexOh, I'm seeing an ad. stop using toilet paper with a lovely image associated.

MerlinCornfairycansjobdirect.com It's a girl thing for J-Lo new clothing line. Downtown office vacancies sore. Oh yeah, so really there is still some 7-Eleven going on here.

Never mind.

Speaker BChallenge! Challenge! I'm proud to be an American Lord, no, I'm free

MerlinChallenge this week is mine, digga digga and it was to go out and get you some kind of a household dingus or gadget that you've always wanted or that you've recently needed or whatever because I've gone through a is it a spate? I've gone through a half spate of getting some new shit like this and I wanted to see if there was anything you and Hercules needed for the house

AlexOh, other than needing a new house oh yeah but the knobs don't count right that was that was not if you want to find we do a second show after this uh once due by friday the regular is over you can go to give us your your our i don't know give us your fucking money i had to buy both because you kept getting it wrong

Merlinyou go to give us your fucking money.com and five dollars a month you can get the after show and yeah, it's really fun. And by the way, people, we hear you. We hear you. If we could get Quinn more often, I think we would, but I hear you. I would love it if Quinn were on here more too. She is the best.

AlexI would, yes.

MerlinShe's really smart. Did she go to school in Boston?

AlexI think she went to school in Boston.

MerlinOkay. She's really smart. Anyway.

AlexLove that.

MerlinSo that's the after show. I'm not sure why you dropped it there, but there it is.

AlexOh, because I'm canceled. Gadgets. Stop saying that.

MerlinMy God, gadgets.

AlexGadgets. Gadget me. Well, this started an argument in my household between Hercules and I about what constitutes a gadget because... I think you two

Merlincommunicate way too much.

AlexI've been told that by a lot of people.

MerlinIncluding Hercules? Which concerns

Alexno.

MerlinWill you shut up, please? Will you shut up? Will you stop? No. I don't want to talk about my feelings. I don't want to talk about my feelings. No, I don't want to talk about it here i don't want to go outside i don't want to in a box or with a fox i don't want to talk anymore i want to be here and be very quiet about who i am

Alexyeah no the only the only time uh i got a we need to talk was during an apple keynote and that was when he came out to me as trans uh during the apple keynote over text messages wow weird flex not that i'm not i'm why is that a weird flex it was very upsetting i don't know it's something

Merlinyouth say?

AlexI'm not a youth. I'm 29.

MerlinThat's so interesting. I had a similar thing happen in my family on my wife's birthday. Well, you know, I got some news. We got some news on my wife's birthday right before we went to a Warriors

Alexgame. Oh, wait, no! No, I don't like this. I don't like this. I sent you the card.

MerlinYou've seen the card.

AlexOh, interesting.

MerlinWait. Yeah, then we went to the Warriors game.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinSo, Talking A Lot started an argument with Hercules Mulligan.

AlexOh, like what constitutes a gadget and what doesn't? Because the house has quite a few Apple gadgets and some other gadgets that we typically might acquire for this program, like something that is supposed to tell you the weather, but then it ends up being disappeared, usually to the garage uh and i was like okay it doesn't need to be electronic so how about i get

a gadget involving no electronics and i continuing my quest to try to be like a real adult uh i i am trying to eat more food that's not on a children's menu it's real food um non-child foods foods uh that and um the way that i did this but in the before times uh was i would go to an office and eat the real adult food that was there because it was free and now that we

don't have that there's less real adult food that's free so when i buy it would you have more

Merlinstuff like you know what like like like um fruit and vegetable type things at the office than you

Alexwould at home? What was the distinction? Oh, yeah. No, there was literally no fruits and or vegetables at my house because I could drive five minutes and get a fruit and or vegetable

Merlinif I really wanted. Like the way in London, you go out and get a curry. Like in your case, you're like, I'm just going to dash to the office and get an apple.

AlexWell, sometimes stores are sold out of Diet Coke and then you need to just stop at the office to get an apple. For your work. Yeah, absolutely. If you've opened a can of seltzer before you leave an office you're not embezzling you are just oh i get it's not i understand it's not

Merlinshrinkage as they say i get it it's sort of like if you're in new orleans and you got a cup with a drink in it you got a hurricane but it's got it's got a straw in it so technically it's not an open

Alexcontainer exactly nice loophole got it and you know good good segue there to containers uh can

Merlinyou hear this little guy i can i'm trying to guess what it is i always guess wrong on on 20,000 Hertz. I always I always guess the sound wrong. I'm bad at it. I guess your closet, right?

AlexWhat is it? What is it? This is a functional container from the Ox. Is it OXO or Oxo?

MerlinWhatever. No, I know. I'm only I'm laughing because as I was preparing for this, I realized that I'm practically as cucked for Oxo as I am for Apple. I buy so much of their shit. I'm such a sucker for their stuff.

AlexI didn't realize that I am also... They make so much stuff.

MerlinThey make so much stuff.

AlexYeah, holy shit. Because I kept, like, people are like, you should get this, you should get this. And I'm like, I have no idea what that is and I don't need it, but it looks cool. And then I was like, you know what I really miss from the office? Those containers that held all the nuts and berries that you could close and there would be like an airtight seal.

MerlinOh, like you give to a baby. That's cool. Like a baby could put the Cheerios in it and put the little ravioli hands in there. That's really cool. All right.

AlexOh, I see. Yes. Oh, actually, yes. It's super, super similar. But OXO makes a product exactly like that. And in fact, that's what we had at our office. And here is my big thing of almonds. So they won't go bad because you shouldn't keep a gigantic open bowl of almonds in your home.

MerlinBy the way, did you ever tell Marco about nuts.com? Did you ever tell him about that site? Because I know he loves nuts.

AlexI really should. I think he's a fan. Do you think he's ever had a pistachio? They're, you know, they're green inside.

MerlinWell, he actually ordered 10 different pistachios and ended up sending back nine.

AlexSorry. But I got some containers for my nuts. Nice.

MerlinAnd those are approved by Hercules? They're okay to have in the house?

Alexthey were called aesthetically pleasing and very adults i was pleasantly surprised uh and because these are stackable and you can keep dry fruit in here for like ever as far that that's what the direction said for sure it says the expiration date forever two words so technically it's not breaking the law also the other day when someone asked me um do you have a good flour container and I responded with the bag.

What are you talking about?

MerlinSee, I was going to guess that your AI failed because you were thinking of the plants that grow that are pretty. Why would I put my flowers in? Human vase. I mean vase.

AlexWell, I did think that they were talking about weed at first. Oh, I get it.

MerlinThat's cool.

AlexSo you were close. But they're just, oh man, where are we going? Now I'm just thinking about how much I miss edibles. Huh. you can't get them uh no they're oh you're out of the mints right they're out of the mints they're

Merlinout of my good good little micro mints there was a there was a i saw on google news today i saw a link to um you know edible sales are going way up since the coronavirus and i was like you think oh really oh how interesting also we opened too early oh very simple uh-oh but you can't get your

Alexmints that sucks uh oh well you know you just plop me down in front of steven universe with any sort of chocolate bar and it's a good night um but oh and as far as like containers for things go i had never thought you know it'd be you know look way nicer in my house if we put the things that are food into containers that look better than a a box made of cardboard that slowly

Merlindisintegrates. Yeah. I have, I have, I actually have a thought on that. And I think might appeal to you. I mean, I think part of the thing is like, I don't know, like there was a funny kind of like when I was in like high school, I think I aspired to be, I had no hopes of going to college at the time, but I kind of aspired to be like a cool college student, listen to cool college student music and just, you know, be a cool college kid. And I love the idea of having like, oh my God, I wonder if I could ever get those shelves that you make out of boards you found and cinder blocks and use them as bookshelves.

And like, oh, my gosh, I wonder if I'll ever have a futon. And I really aspired for all of these things. And when I did go to college, it was so exciting to go to like our new brand new Walmart and buy pots and pans and like this whole new thing. But then what happens? You go through college, you get out of college. And like it isn't like you instantly, at least when I was coming up, you didn't instantly transform into an adult. you like slowly and very sometimes deliberately have to choose to shed your college shit. And including, like my wife was finally like,

honey, look, you've got to get rid of the cinder block bookshelves. I'm like, but I brought them here from Florida. She's like, you know, you're 30. Like you need to get rid of these. And I was like, well, I guess you're right. But there's all kinds of stuff like that. Do you get me on this? Like where there's like, you don't even realize, oh my God, none of my silverware matches. And I'm a grown person. Or we have these bowls that are slightly different. or this ladle that we stole from a potluck accidentally is still in use. And you're like, you very rarely take a step back and go, is there an improvement opportunity here? Not just a buying opportunity, but like a way to like make our life more pleasant,

aesthetically pleasing and manageable. And that you do have to sometimes willfully push away your old college shit or similar to like get out of your chrysalis.

AlexYeah. Let's say someone was turning 30 soon and they indeed still had all of their college.

MerlinIt's not a criticism. It's the opposite of a criticism, Alex. It's more like saying I'm still I'm still shedding, if not goods. Oh, tons of goods. I have so many boxes full of dumb shit, but also habits like weird habits and like expectations of 30 years ago.

AlexWell, and there's also this thing, though, that you probably struggled with, like coming from the Midwest and middle class family and like just knowing that your family used to be super poor. So like my family was, but like knowing, you know, the whole like immigrant story. And it's like, I can't throw away these red plates that don't match anything or this other green plate that doesn't match anything. And it's also made out of plastic and has teeth marks in it because this is all I had in college and it was a gift.

So how, you know, and it was all I could afford.

MerlinYou're being disloyal to your history.

AlexYeah.

MerlinIt's very common.

AlexI don't know. It just feels weird. The book that I really like, the Marie Kondo.

MerlinI was just about to say, it's all too much. You got to read it.

AlexYeah. The white marine condo man.

MerlinOh, yeah. Yeah. The Australian condo.

AlexOh, Australian condo. Oh, sir. I don't know why he became more appealing, but.

MerlinWell, yeah, he does that TV show. Part of the thing with the TV show that he used to have was that it starts with taking everything out of the house. So I used to have this fantasy of like hiring a moving truck and movers to take everything out of my house and then only put back in the stuff I really want. But you have big sheets, basically, or tarps or whatever, and you bring everything out of your house, and you're like, well, did you realize that you had this much shit? And you're like, nope, didn't realize it. It's like, well, what goes back in now, right? It's such a fantasy for any fat American to be able to do that. Not fat as in, you know, we've got too much shit.

AlexOr both, you know.

MerlinOh, boy. Can you be double canceled?

AlexI think so. Well, that's a thing. Can I even make?

MerlinWe'll find out.

AlexOh, I got yelled at for making a self-derogatory fat joke. And then it was the response was, well, you've lost too much weight to be able to make a joke anymore.

MerlinAlso, you look pretty without makeup. You should smile more.

AlexDick Doug, what gadget did you get?

MerlinDon't let them know what you forget.

AlexWhat will you fall for?

MerlinWe got to stop. We got to get out of this. At hour 15, we got to give me a ding.

AlexJust tell me the gadget. Scissors. is that i mean scissoring isn't a thing but fine

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