198. Button Button Button!

Speaker AHello. Oh, hooray!

Alexwe did it we did it oh no oh no the dora song is oh no no swipe or no swiping

Speaker Aback back back back i'm sorry that was a good show i gotta warn you i gotta warn you

Merlinokay can i warn you please do i'm gonna try to keep it between the lines but i've had a lot of stimulants today oh okay yeah i'm gonna need to really really dial up the squelch on my situation squelch like like a squanch squelch i need to like uh i need to scotch my enthusiasm

Alexso you know i don't know what these words mean i've had a lot of stimulants alexandra no no no i know i'm saying i don't know what scotching and squelching is and squelching did

MerlinDid you catch that part at the opening where I said I've had a lot of stimulants?

AlexI mean, I have too, but I've been recording podcasts since 5 a.m.

MerlinThere are many questions about my I've had a lot of stimulants shirt that are answered by my I've had a lot of stimulants shirt. Hi, how are you?

AlexI am actually quite well, which is a new, hmm. Didn't know that would be the answer to that question if it was asked to me.

Merlinbut i'm i'm sorry rewind say that again i'm i'm doing well i just uh i just tweeted something and now i'm gonna close my tabs um dana stevens um uh what mark it up mark it up i'm i'm doing

Alexwell how are how are you doing this morning other than the stimulants

Merlingood very good actually yeah yeah no you know what it is it's that um i boy you know this is beyond an unsympathetic thing to say because i'm so lucky but like i'm doing a lot of stuff and you know doing some other things and then other things and like there's always something to do and so i i do a lot of the stuff i have to do and uh and that takes a lot of time you can tell I'm a little hoarse. I'm a pony

because I've been talking so much on so many podcasts.

AlexWhere can people find those podcasts?

MerlinYou go to Give Us Your Fucking Money. No, I don't know. No, go to... Let's start over. What?

AlexAlright, this is the show. Hey, hey, everyone should go to YouTube and look for You Look Nice Today and watch it.

MerlinOh, thank you very much. You're sweet to say that. We'll put that in notes. We've got a lot of content in here. I don't even know where to begin. We have so much content.

AlexOh, my goodness. Well, as we were talking briefly before the show, your Tuesdays have changed. I'm sorry. My Tuesdays have changed to they don't exist. Your Thursdays have changed to Tuesdays?

MerlinYeah.

AlexOh, my goodness.

MerlinThis goes back to something. I'll start with the general concept. The general concept is that at least when things were, as they say, normal, I mean, this is just the white privilege hour. I spent a pretty good long time trying to get my life adjusted in a certain way to accommodate all the pieces in a way that doesn't stress everyone out. And part of that is, as you know, I'm a real like Martinette about my calendar. And there's a really regular, repeatable schedule to everything that I do that is oddly comforting.

So I've got the four main podcasts I do. I guested on two podcasts last week. There's things like that. There's, you know, can we record? You look nice today. Today. Do we have to do it tomorrow? All that stuff is very, you know, doable. But my theory has been that in the normal times, I do believe that for myself, days have a certain valence to them. And I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that, except to say there's a feeling to a certain day. And I imagine that's pretty common, don't you think?

AlexFor sure. Yes. Yes.

MerlinLike, you know, Friday, I think when you're a little kid, Friday has a real feel to it. I think Sunday night, you talk about the Sunday scaries. I think Sunday nights have a very strong valence to them. And for some reason, I found myself saying, I'd wake up in the morning and I'd say to my family who ignores me, I'd say it's Tuesday and Tuesday is the optimistic day. Because for some reason, the valence of Tuesday to me always is like it doesn't have a regular valence like a Friday feeling. But owing to its lack of specific valence, it's open to possibilities.

So that's where this started for me.

AlexHmm. How long ago did that start?

MerlinSometime in the period of back to work, probably the last two or three years. And then the follow-up to that, as I typed it, I realized it sounds completely mental because I don't know if I mentioned, but I've had a lot of stimulants today.

I used to have Thursday, a couple years back, Thursday started being the day that was, and forgive me for repeating what's in the super secret private text channel. Thursday became the day where I had pretty much, what's the John Syracuse term? Green Ocean, Bluefield. I had a whole day in front of me that would be filled with different sorts of things that needed to be done. Top of the list is stuff usually like chores or, you know, little projects. That's all kinds of little dumb stuff like change the cat box, see if we need to restock any supplies, all of my, you know, chief operating officer bullshit.

And but Thursday also became the day where I could work on a little thing and I could take a nap and I could have fun. and Thursday was a day where nothing was you know it's like that song Heaven by Talking Heads Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens that was my Thursday and I could fill it with whatever I needed to this is nothing not a slam on my lady friend Thursday became her telecommute day and so that scotched my green field just a little bit it squelched it just a little bit and then I started saying

now today Saturday is going to be my Thursday given that Thursday as a concept is the day where things are done. And then that eventually led to the phrase sometimes being Thursday is my Thursday. Now, I want to hear about you, your valences, and, you know, like I say, I also want to just bring in mosquito tasks, which is a very important concept to me. The day that I fix the dumb tech things, all the little bullshit things that have been accumulating would get sorted on a Thursday.

Tell me about your days.

Alexi don't even consider mondays a productive day right like monday for me is like the aftercare of the week before to bug everybody about the emails i didn't get and the like oh it's your martha day yeah yep it is oh yeah it's it's my martha day i do not go into monday's optimistic which is great then because I am

Merlinpleasant. You have nowhere to go but up.

AlexExactly. Basically. And Tuesdays were, it just happened to be my Thursday because that's when Maddie. Tuesday's your Thursday. Yes. My Tuesday is your Thursday because Maddie would be out of the house for like the whole day there. So I could do, I want to know what mosquito tasks are considered for you. But one thing that I took from you is like throughout the week,

I keep a list of the things that have bugged me or just those little things that need tweaks. And especially during the summer, that means figure out why your phone is broken because I have betas on everything. Or it's just read a book. It's the Alex time. And that doesn't exist anymore. not through anyone's fault just and natty's schedule is different as everyone's schedule

Merlinis different nobody in our household has had the house to themselves as they say very much in the last five months i have an office to go to and that preserves some of my family's sanity not having me underfoot all day as i said two three people in a 900 square foot house is very different from two people in a 900 square foot house two people in a 900 square foot house can conduct their days pretty separately. That's a pretty good size for a San Francisco flat. Yes, I said flat. But when you get a third person plus a cat and a lizard,

and I'm buzzing around wanting people to hear my observations about things, that's no good. But sometimes my lady and I all go to the pharmacy or something, and my kid gets to have some time to herself. As I said, my kid comes to the office, and we watch NBC comedies and eat pho a couple times a week. But no, it's hard to describe, and I want to hear more of this, but it's hard to describe how having another person, any other person in the house, has an impact on what you feel capable of doing.

I'm going to say for my wife, one of those I've come to be grateful for, although I initially resented it, is I think that's when she throws out a lot of our stuff. when she's alone i'll notice there's some contractor bags and i've learned to never open the contractor bag because it's full of memories i get very i get very attached to things in a way that's extremely unhealthy i think i've mentioned to you one time i saw a pair of shoes in the trash and i held them up and i said you're throwing these away and she said

they're disgusting i've had them since 1998 i said these are the shoes you were wearing when i met you how can you throw these away and i might as well have plucked a turd out of the toilet and put it into a gift box she was so perplexed and i said you know what you're right that's crazy now the other thing i do when she throws up throws out some kid stuff old kid stuff sometimes i bring that to my office so now basically i have a memory museum do you agree on that like like there's just a weird again the valence of you alone in the house versus any other person in the house might

change the scope if you know you've got five hours sure you're going to do some as they say self-care do what you need to in the basement but also no no you know what i'm saying make sure make sure there's no excess moisture that's going to cause problems you take care of that for you

Alexknow um so so what's happening now i mean i also think that a 600 square foot apartment in chicago because there aren't, as I say, levels, levels. It's just one level. So wherever we are, my spouse and I can see one another unless we are in like a deep corner of the kitchen or a deep corner of our bedroom, which is now my office.

MerlinIt's kind of like one room. You've got one big room where the stuff is mostly and then you've got a bedroom and a bathroom?

AlexYes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of those things where the kitchen kind of flows into our living area so like if we're listening to a podcast that's still like a communal thing and something we realized a couple weeks ago is we both had started to feel guilty when we had our like own time in the the me time in the apartment and usually that the signal of that is just uh headphones or like headphones or AirPods like this.

I am I am in my bubble. And we've been doing more of that lately, hopefully because we're not driving each other insane. But we started to feel guilty because we're like, we're in this apartment together, but we're not talking. And like, wait, wait, wait a second. We are in the apartment now 99% of the time. So it is normal and healthy to not talk for, you know, 20 hours a day. Well, 18 hours a day.

I have no idea how long they're asleep.

MerlinThat's what happens in our house. And I'm not saying this is totally wholesome. But, you know, my wife works. She's a business lady. Like she does things. And boy, does she do a lot of work. So she's camped out in our bedroom, the master bedroom, where she has the standing desk that she passive aggressively gave me for Christmas a couple years ago that I came to love is now understandably her area that she has all set up for her endless, endless Zoom calls and all of the things. And she's decorated it her own way.

And it's great. So she closes that door and she's in there. and my daughter is mostly in her room looking at tiktok all day long and uh but no it's a nice it's sort of like back in the day where like you would hear about in open office plans headphones became understood as a way to say please only interrupt me on an as-needed basis well for most people well that's the thing then there are the monsters like go like like like tap

your headphones and go hey buddy we have big plans for the weekend or whatever but i think that's incredibly healthy um that that part of it but it's been a long time in this situation and it's i'm interested in that guilty part though that's that's interesting well you know i mean

Alexmaybe this is also a midwestern thing or maybe even a nuclear family thing that's been and embedded in our heads of when you're home, it's like that, that time is sort of precious and you don't want to take that for granted. I mean, Matthew and I are both adults, but you know, like I am glad that I got to have dinner with my family.

That was a super privileged thing we had as kids. Even if we were like watching, you know, I don't know what we would watch, like Wheel of Fortune or something during dinner. Like that was still something like, ah, isn't that fun? Oh, who wants to be a millionaire?

Speaker AOh, goodness.

AlexR.A.P. Regis. But it's very different now. And it is also a privilege thing to recognize this. But I almost wish more people. Wow, I never thought I'd say this. I almost wish more people would talk about this and complain about it. And normally I don't like, like, you get what you get and what? You don't have regret?

MerlinI don't know. You get what you get and you don't have regret.

AlexYeah.

MerlinTeacher Rima used to say, you get what you get and you don't get upset. She was Persian.

AlexYeah, there we go.

MerlinShe drove her car into a fence one time.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinShe was awesome. Kindergarten teacher.

AlexWell, but it's the same as masks. though too like i i find it interesting when i listen to podcasts from other countries that they're everybody is wearing a mask and it's like oh man doesn't it suck when like doesn't this acne just suck and that's okay like i i'm not excited to put on a mask when i take out the trash but i i don't know like because it's become a disgusting political issue it's like that tribalism that we

talked about if if you are if you have the audacity to say that it's really uncomfortable physically uncomfortable to wear a mask then you're not part of our team that doesn't mean

Merlinyou're anti-mask it just means you're pointing out yeah but that even that's politicized and the other thing that's that that does kind of suck for almost everybody is you can you imagine this continuum of or a spectrum of current like human suffering and like you know there are the people where like the whole family's wiped out and the kids are orphaned now because you know they had to go to work at arby's or whatever and it's like that's that's the worst or like something we're

going to be facing unless congress figures it out is like so many people are going to be evicted soon And there's so many people that are like, I mean, just to beat that drum again, this snowball of failures at every level of infrastructure has made life so horrible for so many people right now. That's over toward this one end of the spectrum. And then at the other end, so that end of the spectrum is the whole like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry.

It sucks that this has happened to you. And the other end of the spectrum, you've got somebody complaining about the speed of the Wi-Fi at their vacation home where they're camped out now. And the amount of sympathy varies extremely much in between because of how we feel about our situation. It, again, reminds me of something Scott Simpson said years ago. I should find the actual quote. But he's like, there's only two kinds of parents. There's parents that are way too strict. And there's parents that are way too lax.

and I'm the only one that gets this right. Everybody else is doing it wrong. And that is a very pretty common parent thing and I think a pretty common human thing. But the part that sucks is I wish we didn't have to have quite, I wish I didn't feel the need to put quite so much of a preamble on anything I would like to say about the current state of things because certainly Twitter has made us very aware of how little context there is for anything anymore

and the widespread misunderstanding and the desire to just shoot fish in a barrel because somebody's having a rough day. But it feels unseemly to have this conversation when there's people on that first side of the spectrum who are in such dire need right now or in such dire grieving in some cases. But it doesn't change the fact that it sucks that we can't have this conversation without feeling like Jeffrey Epstein.

Alexyou know what um i'll uh i take back take back my previous state statement i i may be canceled for for this and you know i'm right behind the epsteins and the galanes but uh i don't think it involves privilege to complain about how masks can be uncomfy because that's the one thing now

that the majority of the world has in common that has replaced all of you know now there are so many different degrees of like you said suffering and grieving and sometimes it's just nice to have that one thing in common and the i mean i don't know we i at least was so optimistic at the beginning of things like this is oh yeah it almost seemed like it almost seemed

Merlinlike a like a like a power outage or something where you're like oh let's treat this like an adventure and uh you know shakespeare wrote thus and such during the plague and all that kind of stuff and there was i feel like in march anyway apart from the the rising numbers that were scaring people, there was the sense of like, we can do this and this sucks and it's hard to get hand sanitizer, but like, it's very inconvenient. But for a lot of us, it wasn't that difficult. And for those of us that are more introverted than we'd like to admit, there was a lot to like

about it. But when you talk about the mask stuff, I'll, again, I'll lay my own privilege cards on the table. I need to wear a mask. I won't say on average, because that would be misleading, But in a typical day, I rarely wear a mask for more than 15 minutes.

Speaker AHuh.

MerlinWhy? Because I go to my office, I come home. Okay, so first of all, I got an office. I have a place to go. Like, I have a house. I have a place to sleep and cook food and stuff like that, which is like, that puts me ahead of so many other folks. So in that case, it's difficult because I don't need to go to work at Arby's. I don't, I mean, every time I go to like, have to go to something like Walgreens, I'm like, I'm so glad all of you people are still healthy with all these ding-a-lings walking around. So in my case, I'm reluctant to complain about that because I don't have to wear it very much.

Every morning I send you a screenshot of me listening to Mexican wine because that's my Monday. Monday is my Mexican wine day. But it is, it is, it does feel a little bit unseemly. but you know I feel like one of the only things that well there's a couple things that most people can agree on I mean the one that we there's neither of them is anything we can do much about one is it really does suck how badly this has been botched you know QED we've talked about this the other one I really believe we've talked about this so many times just the way time

time is so fucked up and like I know we keep saying that but I do feel like that's one of the things that pretty much, I'm guessing, pretty much everybody feels right now. Like we've talked about. There are things, there's an event that we used to do on a weekly basis, and it only occurred to me a couple days ago that we have not done that event in almost six months. It's something that was scheduled every week. There's this thing that happens, and that has not happened for six months. And then that makes me start thinking about what are all the other things we haven't

done for six months. I mean, my kid has basically, her exposure to her friends that is non-electronic has, the sum total of that so far has been dropping off birthday presents on a doorstep twice for her friends. She gave her friend a Spock. But, you know, but, you know, it's, do you agree though the time thing is like, that does seem like something we can all agree on, even though there's nothing we can do about it.

AlexOh, yeah. I mean, it's kind of like, what's it called? The rubber band effect of, you know, it's forever and ever. And then it just snaps back to being 15 minutes.

And I, for the first time in a very, very long time, have started to experience loneliness, which is strange.

Merlinour challenge this week brought that up for me where I was like oh man I don't want to I don't want two weeks of being exposed to a wild crowded house full of family but I sure wouldn't mind a day of it right now I would not mind a day of kids running around and like people eating food

Alextogether I I can't believe I'm saying it but I do really miss that it's really bad for extroverts especially and even in folks who are you know essential workers and they need to work at arby's so they're not evicted but it's not like you know those folks are going out and part not partying but you know who knows like socializing can't have uh ah that's that's the word i have an

Merlinextensive vocabulary no they're part they are partying too i mean those burger kings you might as well get it here did you see that tweet somebody i retweeted this from somebody it was so good um it really it made me laugh oh okay so this is a person called ben rosen um it's a it's a two bullet joke um one march commercial during these uncertain times we're thinking of you and your family august commercial look you might as well catch it at burger king but you know i mean it's and like every part of this is is like it's because of the context-free

politicized world in which we currently live the fact that any of this is politicized is just mental to me but again see also tribal thinking but um it's it's i don't know i'm so sick of it mosquito tasks are a thing that I talked about, I believe on 73 folders. And the idea is, and there's probably other names for this, probably in like development, there's probably names for this, but I used to feel like, especially when I was spending a lot of time writing

one way or another and trying to write to a schedule, whether that's for the abortive book or for the website that used to be my job, I had a primary focus. Maybe I'm prepping for a talk, You know, maybe I'm, but mostly I'm writing in some form or fashion. And I always wanted to have as much runway as possible for that. But what happens, this is a very GTD kind of thing. Something occurs to you and you're like, oh man, you know, that dripping faucet, for example, is not a huge deal. But it would be really nice to take care of that.

But I'm not going to do that now. What do I do right now? I put that on my mosquito task list. And a mosquito task to me is just mostly, it's a lot of just little things that I need to do soon but don't have huge urgency, but I also don't want to take me away from my primary focus right now. And then when you have time, whether that's I've got one for tech stuff that bugs me, I've got one for household things that bug me, you know, but you get the idea. And so then a mosquito can just sweep through three, four, five, six of those. I had one of those days on Monday where I got so much accomplished before 7 a.m.

that it made my whole day better. Just swept off like four mosquito tasks that I've been avoiding for a while. Does that make sense?

AlexYeah, I have a similar thing I realized. Thank you, Mr. Gregg, for making this easy because I put the mosquitoes into my favorite app, Drafts. And then at the end of the day, I just push it to OmniFocus and then it goes to their projects. And later I do the tags and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that always gave me some sense of control. But more and more, along with most folks, I mean, you just said it.

This right here, this recording is literally the only thing I am sure will happen every single week at the same time. And no pressure or anything.

MerlinNo, no. I enjoy our visits. We talked about this with our old friend Max. Remember the notion of how somehow it's always 3 o'clock?

Speaker AMm-hmm.

MerlinYes. So I'm in the same situation. I usually have one and a half to two tentpole things I need to do each day. So, for example, today, I'm always kind of in the midst of these different cycles of dealing with a different show. This is kind of boring inside baseball stuff. It's not difficult, but it is important because it's my job.

AlexIt'll make people less sad. I hear people like podcasts.

MerlinI think I've mentioned this to you, but it's only fairly recently. It was a while back that I realized via Jason Snell that one must admit that even though doing a podcast is not difficult, it does take energy. Paying attention to other people takes energy. That newscaster, I think her name's Anna Cabrera, but she gets this four-hour spot on CNN. I think she's very good. I don't know how she pays attention to people for four hours straight. And her hair looks good. I don't know how she does that. So first realization a while back, what I'm doing is not difficult, but it does take energy, and I need to acknowledge that.

The thing I'm realizing, as I think I said before more recently, is, again, my job is not difficult, but it's important to me to try and be really good at it. So whatever, you know, hopefully people enjoy it. I don't know. I think they do. It's difficult to talk about oneself like this. But, you know, in this case, like, for example, like, we've got a Reconcilable Differences that will probably be finished editing today. We recorded it last Tuesday. Jim is currently editing it. And then for that cycle, I need to

spend usually two or more hours on show notes, which sounds insane. But I got to listen to the show. I got to get the titles. I got to write the description in a way that I'm satisfied with. And then I post it to the, there's a member episode and there's the regular public episode. And that's one cycle. Another cycle is I get ready for talking to Alex. I hopefully mostly do the challenge. You know what I'm saying? But each one of those, they're on different cycles so that there's always a little bit of two things I need to do most days.

And I love that. But here's the funny thing. I also do like to take a nap. It's a thing that I have accepted and I take a nap almost every day now, usually around like 2.30. But the point of all that is, it's crazy that the one and a half things plus a nap, I wake up and it's three or four and i'm like the day is over already so like on the one hand like it feels like a million years ago since i've eaten in a restaurant and yet it's three o'clock approximately every two hours now

Alexin some like lizard brain part of my mind that you're framing this as a negative thing i think

Merlinor not a negative thing but it's definitely it's definitely it's negative insofar as it is difficult to understand and operationalize. I don't know how to, if I need to get my hands around this change in my perception, I sure as shit don't know how to do it.

AlexIt's not bad. No, yeah, you're right. And in fact, I think if you're not, if you're an introvert and you're not tired after recording a podcast, or at least if you feel like it hasn't taken, it has not taken something out of you, then I don't know if you're really listening.

MerlinI 100% agree with you. I'm going to repeat what you just said in just slightly different words, which is if you're not exhausted after doing a podcast, you're not doing it right. You should be paying nearly 100% of your attention. I mean, personally, I'm a fiddler. I might be playing with something. I have a large bolt I like to play with at my desk, and I'll be writing down little bits like you've seen a couple titles that have come up so far. But yeah, I mean, you really shouldn't be spending a lot of time checking your email

if you're talking to, you know, another person.

AlexI don't want to put words into our favorite, my favorite, British boy's mouth, but on his show with Gray Cortex a while back, he kind of talked about how his schedule...

MerlinThis is Mike, Mike Hurley.

Alexis uh um obsec uh but but mike and gray were kind of talking about like he has a week that is sort of a recording week and so we're recording all the podcasts basically his uh you have 73 folders he has 73 podcasts and that like takes a lot out of you but then the following week is more of like admin week. And, you know, it's not really that one week is harder than the other necessarily,

Merlinbut they balance them out. Oh, because some of his many of his shows are fortnightly.

AlexYes, yes, yes. And that made a lot of sense to me. And that's kind of actually how I used to try to operate, I guess, because then it's it was sort of like, OK, this is the week where I am going to try to spend my time and attention with the people I care about or the things that exhaust me like networking. Thank God I don't have to do that. And now that's sort of how I do Zoom calls is

like, nope, this is my time where I pace back and forth in my apartment and play Pokemon Go. This is not, nope, nope, nope, nope. And I don't know, I think you're right. And I think it's really important to kind of take inventory of your own brain space because otherwise you're not doing it well and then you're also not doing right by not just the folks who listen to podcasts but like the folks in your life you you're a you're a spaceship yeah i love that video

Merlinputting in notes also something something about what you just said cgp gray spaceship i'm sorry

Alexcan you hear my water bottle what what i'm sorry i'm sorry well i'm i'm failing at doing two things

Merlinat once i noticed there's a mystery coming up or we might have to solve a mystery about your water

Alexbottle i saw in the challenge sheet yes yes i think i might have spoiled this for uh producer quinn but i had a water bottle mystery that took me about 48 hours to solve but uh that's a future

Merlinchallenge. Whoa, do you want to save it for the show? Yeah, I'm going to save that for that show

Alexbecause, yeah, mysteries are fun. We talked about returning to challenges. Is this the show?

MerlinI've had a lot of stimulants as well. This is the show. I just had a switch just flipped in my brain a little bit. I got a new thought technology, which is think about the way that you edit something in Final Cut or GarageBand or whatever. And, you know, I don't know if people still use this phrase, but like you've got what we used to call swim lanes. You've got tracks, right? So you got this track, which is this person talking. You've got this track, which is that person talking. You got this track for music. You might have a separate track for sound effects or whatever.

I feel like that's potentially an interesting mental model for a week. Like your week has these swim lanes. There's this one swim lane of recording podcasts. There's this other swim lane of bugging people about the email, all these different things. And you can almost think of them as, I guess, like contexts. But if you've got too many swim lanes where it's just solid the whole time, that's not going to be a good recording. There has to be something that I feel like maybe I first heard from Corey Doctro

was this idea that multitasking, of course, does not really exist. You're really talking about more like parallel processes. and it's more what feels like multitasking or good multitasking is the ability to shift modes and attention quickly. Right? But if it was just eight tracks of people screaming, that's not going to be a good podcast. Like there's got to be a way to cut that up.

AlexWell, I disagree, but it sure would be.

MerlinEndless screaming.

AlexOh, oh, this is, oh, I should have put this in notes. Um, I think I found my perfect iPhone case, which I don't want to talk about yet.

Speaker AThis is big.

AlexYes, it is very, very big. This is, oh man, this, this is at my, I, I, uh, let, let's say my phone and phone is Enthusiasm is at 12 o'clock downstairs.

MerlinOh, I see. You got some humidity issues.

AlexLots of moisture.

MerlinSay a lot about that because this is a journey for you. One thing I know about you, Alex, is you're a real weirdo. And one of your weird things is like, man, I want a different backpack. I'm sending back these 12 because it's good for the environment. And all these phone cases suck. And this one feels like human skin. And this one doesn't feel enough like human skin. Tell us about your journey and what brought you to this.

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What the fuck? Because I want people's money. And that's because I understand why people didn't want to give us money. Rightly so. But if you want to hear about my iPhone case, you can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com and support us on Patreon. And hear about my costly phone cases. because if you can afford to support us on Patreon, then you are the kind of person who will spend hundreds of dollars on iPhone cases

because you're a monster. Please give me money.

MerlinDon't even act. Don't even act like you're not a monster. I know you've automated your garage. You can afford five bucks. Anyway, thank you. Thank you for your support.

AlexYes. thank you for her uh five dollar um or uh oh oh i'm sorry the our powder nation people oh god i have powders to talk about too um oh boy you're having a day i i am but i think maybe i've uh settled down from my stimulants because mine were mostly caffeine this morning and whatever is in allergy meds um the stuff the president likes yeah i've had i had two clarit and d's

Merlinbecause I really want to breathe freely. I had a realization. Sorry, just real quick. I had a realization the other day. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and I'm full of anxiety and I go like this. Sometimes I have a realization. And I had this realization that may extend to you, which is this, which is that I wonder if my congestion, my feeling that I'm never really getting enough. This is not COVID. Relax. This is a longstanding issue for me

Speaker Ais that sometimes when I sleep,

MerlinI have to pull the sides of my face back. to feel like I'm actually getting enough air. You know what I'm saying? I wonder if that has any role in our anxiety. Is that we're, I mean, I've done the oximeter test. I've got oxygenated blood and stuff like that. But I do sometimes wonder if I got a CPAP, if I'd be less anxious.

AlexWell, I thought of the same thing.

MerlinIs the lack of oxygen making us crazy, Alex?

AlexI think it is part of that, at least especially for me now because i do wake up every morning thinking allergies are covid which i guess i'll find out in an hour once the claritin d has has taken effect

Merlinfind out either in an hour or two weeks

Alexyeah rapid tests now five minutes 15 minutes yeah oh okay can i um have you had a test before i don't think you need it probably, but have you done the thing? I've done none of the tests. I don't know

Merlina ton about this, but no, I have never had the, do you have COVID now or did you have COVID before so you can give plasma. I have not had any of those tests. Have you? Yeah. And I guess I expected

Alexit to be really uncomfortable because with the like swab, swabbiness. And maybe it's because I've been to a lot of ENTs because, you know, I've got to pull my face back like a mask to

Merlinbreathe sometimes. You do that when I when I lay down, especially on my tummy, I lay down and I make a fist and I pull back because, you know, we only get one nostril at a time. We talked about only one nostril at a time is really working in a human. See, if I did this all the time, I would breathe, but I would look really crazy because I have a fist on my cheek.

AlexWell, also, you've given me new face technology because I was always using my fingertips. And I do that less now because...

MerlinI'm using a fist plus gravity.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOh, this is nice. So you get the fist on there on the pillow, and I have a really nice... I have a very cool pillow.

AlexOh, listen to that.

MerlinI have a very cool pillow. It's almost like a skate park. It's got different parts to do different things. I'll find it for you. It's an extremely good pillow. But I'll get on the very, very tiny edge. I'll make a little ball with the edge, even though it's a foam pillow. I put the fist on my face, and then gravity does the rest because my eight-pound head pulls down a little bit.

AlexI have been told by quite a few people that I have a very large head. I wonder how that helps the IQ.

MerlinProportionately or per population? How is your head large?

AlexOh, well, I don't like to, like, I don't, let's just say that.

MerlinYou don't have to talk about your head.

AlexAfter, well, let's just say that after losing a bit of weight, that it is no longer proportional to my body. And that goes.

MerlinOh, do you look like a, you look like a Nintendo Mii?

AlexYeah, an amiibo or, yeah.

MerlinOh, sorry, a mi, oh.

AlexAn amiibo.

MerlinOh, God, I don't get enough corrections from my kid. I get on my podcast, too.

AlexAll right. I would compare myself much more to a, let's say, like a sleepy Funko Pop. Like, I don't have the big eyes unless I've had the stimulus.

MerlinThat's adorable. Or one of the avatars in Summer Wars.

AlexOh, I'm sorry, Quinn. I don't know why I found that so funny. Oh, boy. But I mean, to be just total ass and complain about masks again. Well, actually, this isn't so much complaining, but it took me a long time to find a mask that was able to even cover my nose. Because the large sized masks are too big because my ears aren't...

Like I have a big head, but it's not proportional to normal people's heads. uh and then my my nose would stick stick out like i would and i wanted to be like people i'm not i'm sorry like i it slips off and i don't even notice because my nose is plugged all the time anyway um but i finally found some i don't want to say what it is though because i don't want everyone to go buy them dm me on twitter if you want to if you have a big nose and you want to know which this is uh and i am quite happy with it but that took like months it it like masks are

in my new backpack because I'm not using a backpack.

MerlinI took ISMH's, our friend Stepan from Relay. I took his advice and tried the Adams masks. And I also got some Adams shoes. And the Adams mask, I like.

AlexI ordered it a large because the medium was out of stock. And I knew that a small...

MerlinOwing to the size of your head.

AlexYeah. Yeah, yeah.

MerlinAnd you can only get the smalls in blue. And it's like, what the hell? You know?

AlexYeah, yeah. It's very, very... I mean, I want that lovely gray to match my shoes. I got my new shoes. We should also talk about shoes at some point.

MerlinDid you get Adams's?

AlexOh, I have not worn any shoes except Adams for since before they were even available. I was cool.

MerlinSee, that's interesting. I tried to sell my kid on the Adams shoes because I said, given your orientation, this would be a great look for you.

AlexIt truly is.

MerlinI went with black top white bottom but I'm thinking if she wants to go all in on her lifestyle she should get all black you know

AlexI went

MerlinI'm being cagey here but you know what I mean also she's stolen literally all of my Alex shirts all of my short sleeve shirts with a pattern she just goes in the closet takes them she's taken them all and then she wears them all the time with her 1940s pants and her fedora she's so fucking weird um okay okay the adamses are very comfortable and i was attracted the real thing that attracted me

Alexto the adamses and honestly uh affordable for how comfortable they are for for me and the quarter

Speaker Asizes. I don't think they do that anymore, unfortunately. Oh, they do. I got a 9.75.

AlexOh, oh, oh, really? I was, I was mistaken. Because I think, I think my feet are growing.

MerlinYour head is large. And I don't know if it's just that I'm retaining age or something, but like, I like for a long time, I, you know, you know, they say ladies, most ladies are wearing the wrong, if they wear bras, they're wearing the wrong size bra their whole life and they never know it. I don't know if you've heard this, but that's the thing people say is that like most women don't realize they're wearing the wrong size bra. I've seen commercials about this on MSNBC.

AlexOh boy, if you had Instagram, poof.

MerlinBut in my case, I think I've been living a lie. I think I've been thinking, for a long time I thought I was a nine, then I was a nine and a half, and I'm pretty sure I'm closer to a ten than I realized.

AlexOh, interesting.

MerlinAnd so I got a 9.775 and Bob's your uncle.

AlexI found out that I am a men's 9.5, which is indeed, it feels.

MerlinAnd that's like a ladies 40?

AlexYes, it's basically a ladies 40 or at least two stores.

MerlinYou have scuba flippers. You're a sea creature with a huge, huge head.

AlexYeah. Oh, God.

MerlinYou might be a Lovecraft character.

AlexThat's the thing. I'm basically Sideshow Bob, where my head and feet don't make sense, but the rest of my body is pretty normal.

MerlinKrusty has tiny feet, like all good people.

AlexYeah, exactly. He was framed.

MerlinHe was framed.

AlexI love him so much.

MerlinThat's so interesting. Well, I ran into this. I first ran into this situation in the city of San Francisco in 1997 where I got a bee in my bonnet and decided I want a new pair of shoes. And so I bought a pair of Doc Martens, not completely grokking the English size situation.

AlexOh, yes.

MerlinAnd so I hastily, I shopped like a man. I hastily bought a pair of basically the equivalent of size nine Doc Martens, um, Oxfords. that funny enough i just literally put into a donation bag this morning because i was doing mosquito tasks i've had this since 1997 they have never fit me one day so i'm walking up like fillmore street in these shoes that are making me go oh but oh look at me i'm a size nine these should be fine no wrong so anyway now and of course i do wear crocs a lot oh so do i oh boy

I have office Crocs and I have house Crocs.

AlexOh, we got to talk about this too.

MerlinI treat them like Japanese house shoes. You know what I mean?

AlexWell, here's, I was thinking about this the other day, how a lot of people have kind of physical triggers of, okay, now is my work time. And for work time, I now put on my atoms, my all gray atoms now, because that's an, oh, I love gray. and they match both the human and the color.

All gray.

MerlinYeah, all.

AlexOh, yeah, gray. Gray is my...

MerlinI love gray. I'm a huge fan of gray. I love my 3D printer, but I'm very disappointed in the color of the filament they gave us. I think I told you this. We got red filament. I really crave gray filament. I crave gray in life, so I think I feel you.

AlexWell, it matches everything, and it's mostly because I forget that you can't wear a brown belt with black shoes and I'm just like just give it I can't even think about it oh yeah people think you're a cretin yeah yeah yeah I'm one I'm one of those and and I so I have a specific t-shirt um a number of them and and I wear my Adams and those are that's my work uniform uh and I don't

I wear pants but they are usually of the jammy uh uh genre style I don't know

Merlinit's true this morning my wife was just saying what i was saying i basically she's doing a donation run today and i had six pairs of shoes that i keep around for i guess i guess i'm just a not a shoe fetishist but i'm a shoe um memory artist so i have all these shoes around that i never wear i kept buying owing to my problem with my foot size misunderstanding i had like three pairs of hiking boots that made me go until i finally got size 10s and then i wasn't going The last thing you want a hiking shoe is too small.

And my wife was like, I am not getting another pair of shoes for a year. Because I don't even wear shoes now.

AlexYeah.

MerlinAnd it's like, you've got all this stuff sitting around. Like, what are you going to do with it? All gray.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOkay.

AlexWell, okay. So, my Crocs as well. The Crocs don't match anything because I'm a monster and could not find.

MerlinBecause they're a crime against humanity.

AlexYes, yes. But those are my mosquito shoes, I just realized, because that's my puttering about the house. Because I do not typically wear those in public because my spouse doesn't ask a lot of me in terms of fashion. but that's one that is like, maybe not. And yeah, that is the one thing. I guess I am a, wow, maybe I am a foot fetishist.

That's my thing, I guess.

MerlinWell, people say that like it's a bad thing. But you know, a funny thing, this is, boy, this is, first of all, I am in receipt of a new pair of Crocs Men's and Women's Bistro Geographic clogged slip resistant work shoes, size 10. I'm in receipt of a new pair tomorrow.

AlexThose are the professionals, right?

MerlinThese are the professional Crocs. You could drop a hypodermic needle on here and it would just bounce off. This is the shoes of a competent nurse.

AlexI think someone could cough on those shoes and you'd be okay.

MerlinI'd be fine because they're considered PPE. My friend sent me an upsetting. So if you'll remember from the Slack that I asked our friend to create a new channel channel and I think it's called what's it called? It's a new channel on my new favorite Slack and it's called Sweaty Thirsty Horny You saw this right? Of course you did

AlexHold on I'm sorry I'm going to interrupt you Can you hear the I'm just going to close this door because if I can hear it will probably show up on the recording

MerlinI don't notice it Oh yeah I hear like a backyepi no it's fine it's the sounds of the city oh boy the city's out of control laurie lightfoot won't do it we're gonna send in the feds sorry quinn oh gosh stop apologizing to quinn i listen i edited

Alexthe show for like two and a half years and i know i know and quinn does a much better job at me better job than me uh but it's it's definitely uh i i had to buy a night again thank you for your for your fucking money i'm trying to make the show sound better with on my end just because i don't i don't have a studio now i just have plaster walls and this microphone

and uh i don't have any motorcycle boys or really i do but it's not until the evening this is so boring in any way.

MerlinIt was a very large beep. It's more confusing than boring, but I think if we understood what you're saying, it would be boring, but mostly it's just extremely confusing. Sweaty, thirsty, horny, or whatever it's called. It started because, and I will put a note, because all of you people are fucking monsters, I will put a link to this in the show notes. Okay, so we've got a 3D printer. We're having a lot of fun with it. And so, of course, my kid and I sit here at the computer, and we're going to things like Thingiverse, and looking for cool stuff to print out with the printer.

And I Googled something and I landed on this site. Long story short, this place has like a sub-operation in sculpting and selling. I don't completely understand it, but basically they make very upsetting, nominally sexy figures of ladies. And it's ladies from movies and cartoons. And Pokemon. Oh, yeah. Right. True.

AlexMm-hmm, mm-hmm.

MerlinBut yes. The one that really caught our attention, me and my 12-year-old daughter, were some very upsetting figurines of Disney princesses and the two ladies from Scooby-Doo.

AlexShe's canonically a lesbian now in the reboot.

MerlinReally?

AlexYeah, yeah. It was a whole big thing. Yeah, yeah.

MerlinOh, that's nice.

AlexMm-hmm, mm-hmm. She's got the best flag.

MerlinYou know, so basically I wanted our friend to create that channel Also, that I would have a way to post the, to share that picture of Jerry Falwell Jr. with his pants unzipped in his black water. Oh, that's got to go in notes.

AlexGosh, we haven't even touched that yet. Oh, man.

MerlinOh, my fucking God.

AlexI mean, I don't know if I have anything to say about it, except at first glance, you just go right to the crotch. And normally I am not someone who goes right to the crotch when a person has a penis.

MerlinNo, you want to eat a little bit of bread first, you know, and have a chance to just chat a little, have a cocktail or unwind a little bit.

AlexYeah, I want to be winded a dined.

MerlinBefore we start going and probably jump right on to Little Jerry. I'm sorry. This is a long story short. The point is that I did post, and I'll put this in notes here, and you're going to hate it because it's awful. It's very upsetting. But it's Velma from Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and a ghost are doing some weird shit to her. It's really fucked up. But the whole point of the story is that another friend sent me a photo of Velma-related content.

And I went and because it's like one of those like one of those ladies that takes a lot of pictures of themselves almost naked. And nominally like a cosplay person. she posts these photos of herself she's very voluptuous yes yes but in each photo she pixelates out her toes oh and i was i found that fascinating and next i found myself wondering if there were a lot of photos like that and then i thought you know what i don't want to go down this particular

rabbit hole but i just thought i'd share that with you i think she's okay with the voluptuous parts being out well because she doesn't want people jacking the mean bone but what if what if

Alexshe does but she knows that it is profitable and it's fans only they say yep it is the yep it is

Merlinthe that is the only fans content interesting i didn't know if it was a japanese thing or if maybe she had had some kind of a tractor accident but my first gut thing was like i don't want the the shrimpers out there you know going ham on my toes

Alexdig dig dug uh dug a dig let's get to our challenge i know that you mostly peanut buttered Which is okay. But the challenge this week was mine. And it was to watch one of my favorite movies, Summer Wars.

MerlinI love this movie.

AlexWhat? Wait, you haven't watched it.

MerlinOh, my God.

AlexWait, I'm confused.

MerlinThat's so inaccurate. Oh, my God. Listen to my mouth words. I watched the entire movie for a previous challenge for an episode that did not air, if memory serves. I wrote to you yesterday because I'm having kind of a crazy time right now with all the dumb fake work that I do that I said, I don't know. I apologize in advance. I'm probably going to peanut butter and I won't have a chance to watch it again. I watched the I rewatched this morning the first I don't know, probably at least 45 minutes, 30, 45 minutes. And I instantly remembered how much I love this movie. I love the way it looks.

I love the way it's animated and drawn and animated. What a delightful movie.

Alexthat is a really good way to describe it it is sort of i almost i don't even want to talk about like i don't know if this is one of those movies where spoilers matter i kind of think it does

Merlinwell i think we could also just talk about what makes it what makes it special without no no slack slack i don't want i don't want premium um i why do you keep i didn't ask for I don't want to be on your beta, and I don't want to see the features if I paid. I just want to go find the link to Velma.

AlexI just want the hot Scooby and Velms.

MerlinI mean, that's not my tempo, but I don't even know if you can see her feet. But we can talk about what makes it special. I don't think we should spoil it, but I think there's some elements of execution to discuss because, boy, this movie does some smart storytelling and some really smart filmmaking.

AlexDo you know why I wanted to do this challenge again, though?

MerlinI don't.

AlexWell, the reason that episode never aired is because it was really, really bad. It was one of the first things that we recorded.

MerlinWas that a sad one? One of the sad ones?

AlexNo, no, no, no. It was just, I was trying to find it, but I remember it being incredibly, incredibly awkward because you and Max kept trying to get me to participate. And I, more than usual, was like, Do you remember why? Because I was terrified of you in the best, hopefully the best way possible. Because, you know, on the previous show that you did, Top Scallops,

I was, you know, the background producer person.

Merlinand this show is like oh there's less pressure for you to perform yeah yeah yeah i could not get

Alexto 12 o'clock and this was like i don't know this was the moment this is the moment i became a real podcaster but but no that i remember that being like damn dude you need to i don't know you like You need to grow a pair. And not in a way...

MerlinYou're talking to yourself here.

AlexYeah, yeah. You can do this. This is fine. You're going to be fine. They are not going to kill you.

MerlinYou are not in trouble.

AlexI am not in trouble. And this is me sort of patting myself on the back, I guess.

MerlinGood for you. That takes self-awareness. And I want to applaud that.

AlexYeah, no. And it's it's something that like I've literally thought about like for years whenever I'm nervous to go onto a show. Thank you for everyone who's had me on shows where I'm like, don't fuck this up. But also it's OK to fuck this up. uh and i the reason i only bring this up is because a lot of people have talked about their anxiety um to go on shows or do youtube stuff or any sort of creative thing in sort of like talking about imposter syndrome is something that people think has like been

played out but i don't think that that anxiety goes away even if you think that you're a capable person uh and uh thank you for coming to my ted talk anyway everybody and let's talk about the

Merlinmovie now because i actually i'll go hang on i just pumped the brakes a sec but like but you know so you're talking about but you're talking about a kind of like it's not just the anxiety of like a boy i hope i do well it butterflies in my stomach before my ted talk you're talking about like i can't imagine doing this because the idea of not doing this the way i like is crippling in some way. It's kind of, but it's a distinction between like, this is difficult, but I'll do this versus like, I can't imagine doing this.

AlexHmm. Interesting. I guess it's a little of both.

MerlinBecause you had pressure, you had implicit pressure on yourself because of being around like somebody like, this is real talk, like somebody that you liked a long time ago and Well, I still do. I'm a big fan of yours. But you're worried, I would think you suck.

Alexum yeah and not just not just that i did not think i would be in trouble i i was mostly worried and sad about disappointing people and that's something again that has not gone away uh but also that's kind of sort of an underlying theme of summer wars i like not not wanting to disappoint your your family and your peers.

MerlinThat's so interesting. Okay. Wow, that's a four-quadrant hit. I'm glad you said that.

AlexYeah, yeah. I don't know. It was just something that I think about a lot. And I would not have thought about that if I had not been given the chance to, oh, sounds so stupid but but no like if i was not given the chance to have my voice heard and this is obviously like it was talking about a movie you know we're giving you time to grow into grow into who you're gonna become here and not just and not even honestly not even just like podcast stuff

but like as a human and i don't know you said that's so sexy a human no i was just trying to actually say a word and it didn't it didn't it didn't happen button button but that's a word i can't i can't say that word but button button button button button button button button the thing you do to keep your shirt

Merlinclose. Button. Button. Was it difficult for you to say button?

AlexI still can't.

MerlinI think it's cute when people say button. I think that's really cute.

AlexI should lie and be like, oh, sorry. That's just my Chicago accent to people who don't know what it is.

MerlinYeah, people will never check. They'll never check.

AlexOkay, so you've seen Summer Wars. I didn't know that you enjoyed it so much. That makes me happy. wow.

MerlinWell, I probably watched it wrong because I did watch the iTunes version that's dubbed. But, I mean, there's just one thing out of the gate. I don't know. I think, first of all, it looks beautiful. But they do this thing. This is something I was talking to Dan about on Back to Work the other day, yesterday. Is that somebody who is not a filmmaker, actually, we talked about this this morning, the whole thing of like you watch something like a Neil Breen movie, God love him, you watch Faithful Findings, and you, I mean, obviously as a filmmaker, you know

these things, but like, I'm aware of stuff like the 180 degree rule, the way you do shot reverse shot, I'm aware of like, I'm aware of these conventions in the abstract, but it isn't until you see it done very poorly that you really understand what's happening. The other example I gave, the one that's always a dead giveaway in a poorly made movie is that you've got two people who are theoretically in the same room having a conversation at the same time and maybe it's an air conditioner or a fan or a truck but one of them has completely different audio than the other do you know what

i'm talking about and oh and you're like and then but every cut there's no cut between the two of them that works because you either do hear the noise or you don't hear the noise and it makes it It exposes the artifice to such a degree. But the thing I love in good storytelling is the ability to make a big dump of exposition an interesting part of the movie rather than something that you strap on later to make it easier to understand.

Rather than having Harrison Ford have to come in and do a voiceover for Blade Runner, how do you create a world like Children of Men? Where just what's on billboards and in the background and on the TV screen, all of those things are doing world building. And something they talked about on Blank Check a while back in RoboCop. Like how genius it is that they've got the TV news show explaining the world of Detroit, right? And what's happening with Omnicorp or whatever they're called.

But on top of it, then there's commercials inside that newscast that are also contributing to the world building. All just to say, the beginning of this movie is so good. The way they set up this. So basically there's this, what would you call it? An immersive, something between a social network and a giant video game. And yet both.

AlexYeah, it was inspired by Second Life. And this was it was made in 2009. So kind of the peak of Facebook's customization stuff where you could have things on your page like stickers and whatever. It's the closest it got to MySpace.

MerlinAnd it's like it's just an entire immersive world that you go and it is a video game, but it's also a social network. It's also a communications platform. But I just love, I don't know if you agree, but the storytelling of like visually showing what that world looks like inside the game. Here's a mall with all of these like these stores and you can buy food. And, you know, and then also, you know, these are actual brand names. And every major company has an outpost in here, which I guess is very Second Life. But that probably three minutes of beautifully animated world building sets the tone for this movie.

And then to show the two characters in the game typing at the computers as their avatar and then cut to them being actual boys in a grimy room is a great way to start this movie. I thought that was it's you're already I'm like, what is this going to be about? This is so cool. I love it. And then the cute girl shows up and she's amazing. I love her. Not Natsuki. What's her name?

AlexOh, God. Oh, my God. I have watched this movie at least a dozen times.

MerlinWhy do all the anime girls have almost the same name? And there's like six characters named Satsuki in different Miyazaki films. It's so confusing to me.

AlexI mean, I think it's like Matthew or George.

MerlinOr Karen.

AlexYeah.

MerlinSummer Games, Summer Wars. What's it called? Summer Wars. I always call it the wrong thing.

AlexSummer Wars. Summer Wars. I actually, hmm, hmm. I don't disagree, but there's a lot of As You Know Bobs, at least in the dub. And I think they do it better than a lot of Japanese.

MerlinTo explain the video game or just through the movie?

Alexuh throughout the movie of like the uh basically like oh no uh oz which is the like big social network it is down and that is why uh everything is broken and i wish i hadn't written down an it's like aws yeah yeah yeah yeah it's but and in the subtitles i wish i had written an example down but it's a little bit uh it's sort of translated better but i mean i actually think

they do as you know bobs as best as they could with the translation and because they need to

Merlinexplain elements of this there's different kinds of subs this is a very syracuse topic but one reason i ended up going back to the itunes version was i could not find uh english subtitles for this anywhere on all the usual places like open subtitles or any of those it's i was stuck with whatever that was but um but also that you know there's that one kind of subtitle where and i'm sorry i don't know the name i'm not a super fan of this stuff but there's the one that's like okay here's the translation of what they said roughly and there's the other one that's like here's you get the further one that's like where we'll show you what signs say and here's

what it says on the phone and pretty soon your your screen is just filled with all these messages especially five centimeters per second has a ton of that because there's so much happening on phone screens but okay i think you mean but there must have been some element of like we need to there must have been some editorial decisions about what we need to explain to people in outside japan who may not understand what this reference is kind of thing yeah actually now i'm

Alexkind of talking myself out of this because i have seen it like a dozen times and also the first time I saw it was like 2011, which is when, you know, we all knew what social networks were and, you know, like online banking and stuff like that. So I, yeah, no, I think the, as you know, Bob sort of work and I, and, and there is

sort of the, because of the aesthetic of the movie, I think they do try to dial back the, translations of what is being uh written on screen because it's not necessarily super important but the visualization of data like the part of uh part of this is seeing a lot of text because it is you know digital and so you it's uh i don't know it just how how how to explain this it is confused

uh there's when when like a whole bunch of numbers and words appear on a phone the context is the the context doesn't always matter or rather the context there's also context clues where you're like okay got it which is another thing that is very challenging in any sort of anime uh And I think that the iTunes version is actually the same subtitles as the Blu-ray.

So you're not missing out on that or anything. And, oh, man, now I've kind of talked myself out of it.

MerlinAre you changing your own mind here? What's going on?

AlexYes, I have. Well, I've changed my mind because not everybody is a nerd who is, I mean, the actually the best i think one-to-one comparison is uh what's it called wechat the thing that like china runs off of basically oh gosh yeah the thing that ben thompson talked about

Merlinwhere you do it's the platform for everything in china yeah that's a really yeah that makes sense

Alexyeah and uh american audience audiences especially then had no idea um but because this world which is very much rooted sort of in our own world um except that some of the characters in japan are inexplicably white and and again it's it it the the it takes place in a real town

Merlinin japan yeah but this one has this one has fewer exposed panties yes yeah than a lot of anime films which I consider that a blessing. John Syracuse will never fully explain this to me, why there's so many panties in them, but I think it's out of sweaty, thirsty, horny, probably.

AlexWell, I mean, you got to get the four quadrants. You got to get the thirsty boys.

MerlinYou need all four. Hi, hi. But I don't need to see the panties of the girls in Totoro. I don't need that.

AlexYeah.

MerlinWhat a stupid pocket.

AlexI also like how the they don't say they're Nintendo DS's but oh they're everywhere and it's just so cute in this

Merlinoh I love the little kids is that what the little kids are playing on the bus

Alexand some of the adults too let's say during a very important climax for both me and the movie there's a lot of Nintendo DS's and I just yeah those are my panties for this basically

Merlinit's great oh okay I got a new one for you okay new euphemism it's called declaring koi koi could you guys split I need to declare koi koi

198. Button Button Button!

Show notes

Transcript

198. Button Button Button!

Show notes

Transcript

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